The Blind Mother and The Last Confession Part 10

I am a coward. I fled and left him. When I got back to my lodgings I called for my guide, for I was resolved to leave Fez without an hour's delay. The guide was not to be found, and I had to go in search of him.

When I lighted on him, at length, he was in a dingy coffee-house, squatting on the ground by the side of another Moor, an evil-looking scoundrel, who was reciting some brave adventure to a group of admiring listeners.

I called my man out and told him of my purpose. He lifted his hands in consternation. "Leave Fez to-night?" he said. "Impossible, my sultan, impossible! My lord has not heard the order!"

"What order?" I asked. I was alarmed. Must I be a prisoner in Morocco while my child lay dying in England?

"That the gates be closed and no Christian allowed to leave the city until the morning. It is the order of the Kaleefa, my sultan, since the outrage of the Christian in the mosque this morning."

I suspected the meaning of this move in an instant, and the guide's answer to my questions ratified my fears. One man, out of madness or thirst for revenge, had led the attack upon the American, and a crowd of fanatics had killed him--giving him no chance of retreat with his life, either by circ.u.mcision or the profession of Islam. But cooler heads had already found time to think of the penalty of shedding Christian blood.

That penalty was twofold: first, the penalty of disgrace which would come of the idea that the lives of Christians were not safe in Morocco, and next, the penalty of hard dollars to be paid to the American Minister at Tangier.

To escape from the double danger the outrage was to be hushed up.

Circ.u.mstances lent themselves to this artifice. True, that pa.s.sage of the American across country had been known in every village through which he had pa.s.sed; but at the gates of Fez he had himself cut off all trace of his ident.i.ty. He had entered the city alone, or in disguise.

His arrival as a stranger had not been notified at any of the "clubs" or bazaars. Only one man had recognized him: that man was Larby, his guide.

The body was to be buried secretly, no Christian being allowed to see it. Then the report was to be given out that the dead man had been a Moorish subject, that he had been killed in a blood-fued, and that the rumor that he was a Christian caught in the act of defying the mosque was an error, without the shadow of truth in it. But until all this had been done no Christian should be allowed to pa.s.s through the gates. As things stood at present the first impulse of a European would be to fly to the Consul with the dangerous news.

I knew something of the Moors and their country by this time, and I left Fez that night, but it cost me fifty pounds to get out of it. There was a bribe for the kaid, a bribe for the Kaleefa, and bribes for every ragged Jack of the underlings down to the porter at the gate.

With all my horror and the fever of my anxiety, I could have laughed in the face of the first of these functionaries. Between his greedy desire of the present I was offering him, his suspicion that I knew something of the ident.i.ty of the Christian who had been killed, his misgivings as to the reasons of my sudden flight, and his dread that I would discover the circ.u.mstances of the American's death, the figure he cut was a foolish one. But why should I reproach the man's duplicity? I was practising the like of it myself. Too well I knew that if I betrayed any knowledge of what had happened it would be impossible that I should be allowed to leave Fez.

So I pretended to know nothing. It was a ridiculous interview.

On my way back from it I crossed a little company of Moors, leading, surrounding, and following a donkey. The donkey was heavily laden with what appeared to be two great panniers of rubbish. It was dusk, but my sight has always been keen, and I could not help seeing that hidden under the rubbish there was another burden on the donkey's back. It was the body of a dead man. I had little doubt of who the dead man must be; but I hastened on and did not look again. The Moors turned into a garden as I pa.s.sed them. I guessed what they were about to do there, but my own danger threatened me, and I wished to see and know no more.

As I was pa.s.sing out of the town in the moonlight an hour before midnight, with my grumbling tentmen and muleteers at my heels, a man stepped out of the shadow of the gateway arch and leered in my face, and said in broken English, "So your Christian friend is corrected by Allah!"

_Moorish English, my son, or Spanish?_

Spanish.

It was the scoundrel whom I had seen in the coffee-house. I knew he must be Larby, and that he had betrayed his master at last. Also, I knew that he was aware that I had seen all. At that moment, looking down from my horse's back into the man's evil face my whole nature changed. I remembered the one opportunity which the American had lost out of a wandering impulse of human tenderness--of saving his own life by taking the life of him that threatened it, and I said in my heart of hearts, "Now G.o.d in heaven keep me from the like temptation."

Ah! father, do not shrink from me; think of it, only think of it! I was fifteen hundred miles from home, and I was going back to my dying boy.

_G.o.d keep you, indeed, my son. Your feet were set in a slippery place.

El Arby, you say? A man of your own age? Dark? Sallow? It must be the same. Long ago I knew the man you speak of. It was under another name, and in another country. Yes, he was all you say. G.o.d forgive him, G.o.d forgive him! Poor wrecked and bankrupt soul. His evil angel was always at his hand, and his good one far away. He brought his father to shame, and his mother to the grave. There was a crime and conviction, then banishment, and after that his father fled from the world. But the Church is peace; he took refuge with her, and all is well. Go on now._

III

Father, I counted it up. Every mile of the distance I counted it. And I reckoned every hour since my wife's letter had been written against the progress and period of my boy's disease. So many days since the date of the letter, and Noel had been ailing and ill so many days before that.

The gross sum of those days was so much, and in that time the affection, if it ran the course I looked for, must have reached such and such a stage. While I toiled along over the broad wastes of that desolate land, I seemed to know at any moment what the condition must be at the utmost and best of my boy in his bed at home.

Then I reckoned the future as well as the past. So many days it would take me to ride to Tangier, so many hours to cross from Tangier to Cadiz, so many days and nights by rail from Cadiz to London. The grand total of time past since my poor Noel first became unwell, and of time to come before I could reach his side, would be so much. What would his condition be then? I knew that also. It would be so and so.

Thus, step by step I counted it all up. The interval would be long, very long, between the beginning of the attack and my getting home, but not too long for my hopes. All going well with me, I should still arrive in time. If the disease had taken an evil turn, my boy might perhaps be in its last stages. But then _I_ would be there, and I could save him. The operation which I had spent five years of my life to master would bring him back from the gates of death itself.

Father, I had no doubt of that, and I had no doubt of my calculations.

Lying here now it seems as if the fiends themselves must have shrieked to see me in that far-off land gambling like a fool in the certainty of the life I loved, and reckoning nothing of the hundred poor chances that might snuff it out like a candle. Call it frenzy, call it madness, nevertheless it kept my heart alive, and saved me from despair.

But, oh! the agony of my impatience! If anything should stop me now! Let me be one day later--only one--and what might not occur! Then, how many were the dangers of delay! First, there was the possibility of illness overtaking me. My health was not better, but worse, than when I left home. I was riding from sunrise to sunset, and not sleeping at nights.

No matter! I put all fear from that cause away from me. Though my limbs refused to bear me up, and under the affliction of my nerves my muscles lost the power to hold the reins, yet if I could be slung on to the back of my horse I should still go on.

But then there was the worse danger of coming into collision with the fanaticism of the people through whose country I had to pa.s.s. I did not fear the fate of the American, for I could not be guilty of his folly.

But I remembered the admission of the English Consul at Tangier that a stranger might offend the superst.i.tions of the Moslems unwittingly; I recalled his parting words of counsel, spoken half in jest, "Keep out of a Moorish prison"; and the noisome dungeon into which the young Berber had been cast arose before my mind in visions of horror.

What precautions I took to avoid these dangers of delay would be a long and foolish story. Also, it would be a mean and abject one, and I should be ashamed to tell it. How I saluted every scurvy beggar on the way with the salutation of his faith and country; how I dismounted as I approached a town or a village, and only returned to the saddle when I had gone through it: how I uncovered my head--in ignorance of Eastern custom--as I went by a saint's house, and how at length (remembering the Jewish banker who was beaten) I took off my shoes and walked barefoot as I pa.s.sed in front of a mosque.

Yes, it was I who paid all this needless homage; I whose pride has always been my bane; I who could not bend the knee to be made a knight; I who had felt humility before no man. Even so it was. In my eagerness, my impatience, my dread of impediment on my journey home to my darling who waited for me there, I was studying the faces and groveling at the feet of that race of ignorant fanatics.

But the worst of my impediments were within my own camp. The American was right. The Moor can not comprehend a disinterested action. My foolish homage to their faith awakened the suspicions of my men. When they had tried in vain to fathom the meaning of it, they agreed to despise me. I did not heed their contempt, but I was compelled to take note of its consequences. From being my servants, they became my masters. When it pleased them to encamp I had to rest, though my inclination was to go on, and only when it suited them to set out again could I resume my journey. In vain did I protest, and plead, and threaten. The Moor is often a brave man, but these men were a gang of white-livered poltroons, and a blow would have served to subdue them.

With visions of a Moorish prison before my eyes I dared not raise my hand. One weapon alone could I, in my own cowardice, employ against them--bribes, bribes, bribes. Such was the sole instrument with which I combated their laziness, their duplicity, and their deceit.

Father, I was a pitiful sight in my weakness and my impatience. We had not gone far out of Fez when I observed that the man Larby was at the heels of our company. This alarmed me, and I called to my guide.

"Alee," I said, "who is that evil-looking fellow?"

Alee threw up both hands in amazement. "Evil-looking fellow!" he cried.

"G.o.d be gracious to my father! Who does my lord mean? Not Larby; no, not Larby. Larby is a good man. He lives in one of the mosque houses at Tangier. The Nadir leased it to him, and he keeps his shop on the Sok de Barra. Allah bless Larby. Should you want musk, should you want cinnamon, Larby is the man to sell to you. But sometimes he guides Christians to Fez, and then his brother keeps his shop for him."

"But why is the man following us?" I asked.

"My sultan," said Alee, "am I not telling you? Larby is returning home.

The Christian he took to Fez, where is he?"

"Yes," I said, "where is he?"

Alee grinned, and answered: "He is gone--southward, my lord."

"Why should you lie to me like that?" I said. "You know the Christian is dead, and that this Larby was the means of killing him!"

"Shoo! What is my lord saying?" cried Alee, lifting his fat hands with a warning gesture. "What did my lord tell the Basha? My lord must know nothing--nothing. It would not be safe."

Then with glances of fear toward Larby, and dropping his voice to a whisper, Alee added, "It is true the Christian is dead; he died last sunset. Allah corrected him. So Larby is going back alone, going back to his shop, to his house, to his wives, to his little daughter Hoolia.

Allah send Larby a safe return. Not following us, Sidi. No, no; Larby is going back the same way--that is all."

The answer did not content me, but I could say no more. Nevertheless, my uneasiness at the man's presence increased hour by hour. I could not think of him without thinking also of the American and of the scene of horror near to the Karueein Mosque. I could not look at him but the blood down my back ran cold. So I called my guide again, and said, "Send that man away; I will not have him in our company."

Alee pretended to be deeply wounded. "Sidi," he said, "ask anything else of me. What will you ask? Will you ask me to die for you? I am ready, I am willing, I am satisfied. But Larby is my friend. Larby is my brother, and this thing you ask of me I can not do. Allah has not written it.

Sidi, it can not be."

With such protestations--the common cant of the country--I had need to be content. But now the impression fixed itself upon my mind that the evil-faced scoundrel who had betrayed the American to his death was not only following _us_ but _me_. Oh! the torment of that idea in the impatience of my spirit and the racking fever of my nerves! To be dogged day and night as by a bloodhound, never to raise my eyes without the dread of encountering the man's watchful eye--the agony of the incubus was unbearable!