The Scapegoat Part 15

"My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!"

Israel opened the casket.

"Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere."

"You have seen them here, Reuben."

"Here?--do you say here?"

"Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago."

"Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these."

Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in expressions of contempt.

Israel watched him closely. "Give them back to me," he said; "I can go elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling."

Reuben's lip straightened instantly. "Wrangling? Who is wrangling, brother? You are too impatient, Sidi."

"I am in haste," said Israel.

"Ah!"

There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said, "The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with them?"

"To buy them," said Israel.

"_Buy_ them?"

"Yes."

"But I don't want them."

"Are they worth your money?--you don't want that either."

"Umph!"

A gleam of mockery pa.s.sed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx, the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from s.n.a.t.c.hing them away.

But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.

"Five hundred dollars--I can give no more," Reuben had said.

"Do you say five hundred--five?"

"Five--take it or leave it."

It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel pa.s.sed through was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves--made, like desert graves, of upright poles and dry branches thrown across--the butchers lay at their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. "Buy! buy!

buy!" they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor pa.s.sed between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.

a.s.ses and mules crushed through amid shouts of "Arrah!" "Arrah!" and "Balak!" "Ba-lak!" It was a lively scene, with more than enough of bustle and swearing and vociferation.

There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for penance. "G.o.d forgive me," he muttered, "_G.o.d forgive me, G.o.d forgive me,_" and at every repet.i.tion he pa.s.sed a bead. A customer approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, "How much?" The merchant continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. "(_G.o.d forgive me_) How much? (_G.o.d forgive me_) Four pesetas (_G.o.d forgive me_)," and round went the restless rosary. "Too much," said the buyer; "I'll give three." The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, "(_G.o.d forgive me_) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your tooth (_G.o.d forgive me_); gave four myself (_G.o.d forgive me_)." "Then I'll leave it, old sweet-tooth," said the buyer, as he moved away. "Here!

take it for nothing (_G.o.d forgive me_)," cried the merchant after the retreating figure. "(_G.o.d forgive me_) I'm giving it away (_G.o.d forgive me_); I'll starve, but no matter (_G.o.d forgive me_), you are my brother (_G.o.d forgive me, G.o.d forgive me, G.o.d forgive me_)."

Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days to come. Then he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to escape observation.

His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a strange procession. It was a procession of penance and pet.i.tion, asking G.o.d to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were Berbers were bareheaded also.

"In the name of Allah, the Compa.s.sionate and Merciful!" the Imam cried, and the Muslims echoed him.

"By the G.o.d of Jacob!" the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words after him.

"Spare us! Spare the land!" they all cried together. "Send rain to destroy the eggs of the locust!" cried the Rabbi. "Else will they rise on the ground in the suns.h.i.+ne like rice on the granary floor; and neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we ourselves will die, and our children with us!"

And the Jews cried, "G.o.d of Jacob, be our refuge."

And the Muslims shouted, "Allah, save us!"

It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--the haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike, walking and praying in the public streets together.

Israel drew close to the wall and pa.s.sed by un.o.bserved. And being come into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that, if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no merit could he make of his poverty.

"Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her," he thought. Naomi was his hope and his salvation. His faith in G.o.d was his love of the child. He was only bribing G.o.d to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.

The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from Tetuan and his heavy taxings.

"It's Israel ben Oliel," whispered one.

"G.o.d of Jacob, save us!" whispered another.

"He has followed us for the arrears of taxes."

"We must fly."

"Let us go home first."

"No time for that."

"There is Rachel--"

"She's a woman."

"But I must warn my son--he has children."

"Then you are lost. Come on."

Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within, had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures of G.o.d, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in bitterness.

By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their b.r.e.a.s.t.s so that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart made for pity.