Complete works of hall c.., p.197
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 197
Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness, filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought, of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always, and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn was following God?
When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them, though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well, and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon him found a way to Naomi’s mind, they were for turning again and going back to the house.
“Come,” said Habeebah; “let us go — we are not safe.”
“Yes,” said Fatimah; “let us take the poor child back.”
“Come along, then,” said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi’s hand.
“Naomi, Naomi,” whispered Fatimah in the girl’s ear, “we are going home. Come, dearest, come.”
But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her. She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd, motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse, jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it was — it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
“Brothers of Tetuan,” the old man cried, “what are we waiting for? For the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say: ‘Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your profit?’”
The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once more silent, the thick voice went on: “And not the seed of Israel only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice, in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God, our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt; in the morning we say ‘Would it were evening’; in the evening we say, ‘Would it were morning’; stretch out your hand and help us!”
Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice continued: “Let us say to him ‘Lord Basha, there is no way of help but one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor, any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own people, and your servants will bless you.’”
The old man’s voice was drowned in great shouts of “Ben Aboo!” “To Ben Aboo!” “Why wait for the judges?” “To the Kasbah!” “The Kasbah!”
But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen. Naomi knew this voice also — it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.
“Why go to the Kaid?” said the voice like a peahen. “Does the Basha love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master? Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either, or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed.”
At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. “Away with the man!” “Away with him!” rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called for mercy or for patience.
While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
“And does God,” said Reuben, “any more than Ben Aboo — blessings on his life! — love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife, how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and speechless!”
Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi’s ears like the neigh of a breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering. “Come! Let us away!” But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. “Do you say that the Lord gave him riches? Behold him! — he swallowed them down, but has he not vomited them up? Examine him! — that which he took by extortions has he not been made to restore? Does God’s anger smoke against him? Answer me, yes or no!”
Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of “Yes!” And instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice, a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it — it was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and still deaf as a stone.
“Tut! What is all this talking about?” she snapped and grunted. “Reuben Maliki, save your wind for your widows — you don’t give them too much of it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool, am I? Well, I’ve the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben Oliel, isn’t it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He’ll laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you’ll have to work her a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are children!”
The people laughed — it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents of an angry sea. “She’s right,” said a shrill voice. “He deserves it,” snuffled a nasal one. “At least let us drive him out of the town,” said a third gruff voice. “To his house!” cried a fourth voice, that pealed over all. “To his house!” came then from countless hungry throats.
“Come, let us go,” whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered strange sounds to herself.
“To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!” the people howled in a hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez. By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.
But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and turning like worms on an upturned turf. “Why sack his house?” cried some. “Why drive him out?” cried others. “A poor revenge!” “Kill him!” “Kill him!”
At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of “He is there!” and then there was a great silence.
It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one mule and leading another.
He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out of their dry throats, saying, “May the God of Jacob bless you also, brother!” and “May the child of your wife be blessed!” Ah! those blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked. He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music. It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home, for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.
Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
Naomi heard them.
Then it seemed to Naomi’s ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the air, crying, “God has given him into our hands!” After that all sounds seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled by the distance.
But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped, and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on to his knees.
No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl that stood there — blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly beautiful — a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the thick barriers of Naomi’s senses everything was coming to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”
Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from their deed of blood as with the voice of God — she, the blind, the frail, the helpless.
Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over his enemies and say, “You thought God’s arm was against me, but behold how God has saved me out of your hands.”
But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter seemed to have dropped upon him.
At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”
Then the cup of Israel’s heart was full. His throat choked him. So he took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
CHAPTER XVI
NAOMI’S BLINDNESS
Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself, and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali’s impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.
Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond “Yes” and “No,” notwithstanding Ali’s eager questions, and Fatimah’s tearful blessings, and Habeebah’s breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
“Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,” Israel would say.
His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and lift her father’s hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife’s jewels. The night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm, Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past. He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill him. Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing had not come to pass. Man’s extremity had indeed been God’s opportunity and Ruth’s vision was all but realised.
Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel’s notice until then that he had been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there was a sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she must surely know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a woman; therefore she could not be with him to share his human joy.
As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft, so clear even in its whispers — there had been nothing like it in all the world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her favourite one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody wherein his own delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the death of the old Grand Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
