The Scapegoat Part 9

Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage, and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!

Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town, through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.

"Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!" shouted the Shereef's black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him housed within.

From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. "Burn your father!

Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!"

"Selam!" shouted one of the black guard. "You dog of dogs! Your father was bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!

get up,--or I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your head! There!--and there!--and there again!" and at every word the b.u.t.t of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.

"Hamed el Wazzani!" muttered several voices within.

"Yes," shouted the Shereef's man. "And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his way to the Sultan, G.o.d grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and snoring in your dirt."

There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys, and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse, asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime, the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his cla.s.s and country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.

"I heard you were coming," he panted--"sent for by the Sultan--Allah preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that is--"

"Peace be with you!" interrupted Israel.

"G.o.d grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!" the Kaid continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--"he reached Fez from Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him."

"G.o.d will show," said Israel, and he pushed forward.

"Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired," puffed the Kaid, bowing again most profoundly. "Well, your lodging is ready--the best in Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--"

Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!

Israel could bear no more. "Basha," he said "it is a mistake; the Sultan has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him."

"Not going to him?" the Kaid echoed vacantly.

"No, but to another," said Israel; "and you of all men can best tell me where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez."

Then there was a long silence.

Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen, who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.

Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there pa.s.sed them in the fierce suns.h.i.+ne two men in the peaked shasheeah of the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pa.s.s over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without delay, that he might give good account of his stewards.h.i.+p, or else deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations with which rumour had charged him.

Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people, who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain, the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the prince of it!

Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by G.o.d's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!

His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?

Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included mult.i.tudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had pa.s.sed from Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but their substance had diminished, for only the dest.i.tute had joined them.

Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the Kaids whose provinces they had pa.s.sed through had stripped them of both in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.

So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and peris.h.!.+ What of the vain promises that had been made to them that G.o.d would feed them as He fed the birds! G.o.d was witness to all their calamities; He was seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour, He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.

"The hunger is on us!" "Our children are peris.h.i.+ng!" "Find us food!"

"Food!" "Food!"

With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry mult.i.tude in their madness had encompa.s.sed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of their leader when he answered them.

First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes and quivering nostrils. "Do you think I am Moses," he cried, "that I should smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?

If you are naked, am I clothed?"

But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he was saying in a very moving voice, "My good people, who have followed me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that, unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pa.s.s!

Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!"

At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of them, he said, "Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A present to the man of G.o.d and to his people in their trouble.'"

And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him, it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had opened and rained manna on their heads.

"It is an answer to your prayer," he cried; "an angel from heaven has sent it."

Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched throats--

"Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!"

And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together, and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great broken cry of thanks to G.o.d that He had sent them succour, that they might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, "I could have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I was a fool."

CHAPTER X

THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI

Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of the new prophet for his guide and motto: "Exact no more than is just; do violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give to the poor." That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.

"I'll do it," he said; "at all risks and all costs, I'll do it."

And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant to bring to pa.s.s he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming behind them penniless.

But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done so much to wipe out G.o.d's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance, then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child been so smitten of G.o.d, and never had any father of an afflicted child bought G.o.d's mercy at so dear a price!

Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing G.o.d out of his love of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home, it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence in that town and province.

First, it chanced that as he was pa.s.sing from the south-east of the new town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert pa.s.sage. Others were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were adorned, after their doubtful fas.h.i.+on, or the fancy of their masters, with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers p.r.i.c.ked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street, the overseers of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old women and the hoa.r.s.e voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and pa.s.sed around.

"Now, brothers," said the slave-master, "look see; sound of wind and limb--how much?"

"Eighty dollars," said a voice from the crowd.

"Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the kisses of a king, eh? How much?"

"A hundred dollars."