The Scapegoat Part 8

Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she had known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes were closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was quiet, and who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted girl? Israel loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not so lonely while he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong, yet he was very weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi, and she was dumb in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little conversations with her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he could trick and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and speak to me! Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I shall hear her voice, for I love it! "Father!" she will say.

"Father--father--"

Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!

Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed, through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.

Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought he heard them--

It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying "Israel!"

And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, "Speak, Lord, Thy servant heareth."

Then the Lord said, "Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat."

And Israel answered trembling, "I have read."

Then the Lord said to Israel, "Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is cast for justice and for the Lord."

And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, "Would that the lot had fallen upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before Thee."

Then said the Lord to Israel, "On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of G.o.d."

And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said, "Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife, Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this man and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth."

Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were drops of blood, and cried, "What shall I do, O Lord?"

And the Lord said, "Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do."

Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, "Shall my soul live?

Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?"

But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and all around was darkness.

Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy that covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of it, that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had made, without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.

Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now grown to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate, Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the market-place for mules.

Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl, that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had not yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch her. And when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in silence, his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his foot to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with the two bondwomen beside her.

"Is she well?" he asked.

"Oh yes, well--very well," said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.

Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face, which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick, nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must let him go his ways without warning.

He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away from the beautiful arms that held him.

Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng of idle people looking on.

"Ali, my lad," said Israel, "if anything should befall Naomi while I am away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?"

"With all my life," said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no longer, but her devoted slave.

Then Israel set off on his journey.

CHAPTER IX

ISRAEL'S JOURNEY

MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died, and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a land where there is one n.o.ble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest n.o.bility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.

He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judges.h.i.+p, and went out into the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible, but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.

And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets, from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty, and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded, pa.s.sed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as Absalam had cheered his little fellows.h.i.+p at Tetuan: "G.o.d will feed us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He clothes the fields."

Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the gra.s.s and the broom had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some obstacles, but his time was long.

And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan, so he concealed it from the people of the country that he pa.s.sed through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was pa.s.sing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people think but that he had come to make a new a.s.sessment of their lands and holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse, and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a t.i.tle never before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre substance.

"A gift for my lord," they would say, "of the little that G.o.d has given us, praise His merciful name for ever!"

Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land in a desolate place, a bowl of b.u.t.termilk.

Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.

"Keep them," he would answer; "keep them until I come again," intending to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.

And when he had pa.s.sed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in the early morning.

"Peace be with you!" said the Kaid. "So my lord is going again to the Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!"

Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars who looked on with feverish eyes.

Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention of his journey.

"Welcome! welcome!" said the Shereef; "all you see is yours until Allah shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our lord the Sultan at Fez--may G.o.d prolong his life and bless him!"

"G.o.d make you happy!" said Israel, but he offered no answer to the question that was implied.

"It is twenty and odd years, my lord," the Shereef continued, "since my father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (G.o.d keep our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him."

"G.o.d will show," said Israel.

No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from their dishevelled heads and bowed.

That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen--guests in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with the Shereef's black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock that is warning to strike) a mult.i.tude of hungry and thirsty people with fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should proclaim the end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains stood ready to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and b.a.l.l.s of grain rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef, and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun was lazily sinking under the plain.