Complete works of hall c.., p.200
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 200
Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth of the upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up before Israel’s eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could not have drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the man who stood that morning in their place.
It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance of courtesy his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his waist. His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.
“Give me them up, Ben Aboo,” he was saying as Israel came to the threshold, “or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.”
“And pray what is that?” said Ben Aboo.
“That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.”
Ben Aboo’s brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made pretence to laugh, and then said, “And pray, my lord, who shall the murderer be?”
Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered, “Yourself.”
At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of this man whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear, and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed’s courageous behaviour in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had openly denounced her marriage.
“Wait, Sidi,” she said. “Is not this the fellow that has gone up and down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the law of Mohammed?”
At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he made pretence to laugh again, and said, “Allah! so it is! Mohammed the Third, eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You could never think how long I’ve waited that I might look face to face upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid.”
He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. “Wait no longer, O Ben Aboo,” he cried, “but look upon him now, and know that what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and die!”
Then Ben Aboo’s passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger, and cried, “Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear it!”
Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, “If I am a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall come to pass, both you and your father’s house will be destroyed. Never yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it like a dog.”
Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, “Take him! He will escape!”
But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
“In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest, your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with you, for all else had forsaken you — all save one, and that was your enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you with his heart, because you were fallen and dead.”
Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the vision upon him.
But recovering himself quickly, he cried, “Away! In the name of God, away!”
“I will go,” said Mohammed; “and beware what you do while I am gone.”
“Do you threaten me?” cried Ben Aboo. “Will you go to the Sultan? Will you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?”
“No, Ben Aboo; but to God.”
So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the Moorish manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and said, “I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas! Camel-skin coat? Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!”
Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said, “Listen! You have my seal?”
Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband, and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
“Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to eat or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever the thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass — do you hear? — in the hour wherein it befalls — Allah preserve me! — in that hour draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal — are you listening? — a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the sword. Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman! So shall there be mourning at my burial — Holy Saints! Holy Saints! — mourning, I say, among them that look for joy at my death.”
Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into Israel’s ear.
Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim — he scarcely saw the walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense — he scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid’s hot breath was beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the voice of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having chased away with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel and was saying —
“What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter — this Naomi of yours — that she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that happen, pray? No answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You kept it up well between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind, poor child. Think of it!”
Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the same place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, “Why are you a Jew, Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man — what’s to hinder you?”
Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: “Listen! The people about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I’ll make you my Khaleefa. Do you hear? — my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don’t you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
“Basha,” said Israel — he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced calmness— “Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that — this hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.”
“Tut, man!” whispered Ben Aboo. “Do your new measles break out everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?”
Israel’s face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his great resolve.
“Basha,” he said again calmly and quietly, “if you were Sultan and could make me your Vizier, I would not do it.”
“Why?” cried Ben Aboo; “why? why?”
“Because,” said Israel, “I am here to deliver up your seal to you.”
“You? Grace of God!” cried Ben Aboo.
“I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, “to resign my office.”
“Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. “Man, man, are you mad?”
“No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. “I must have been that when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”
Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, “There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let me think!”
Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, “What does it mean? What does it mean?”
In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. “Wait!” he cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people about him. “Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez? The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That’s it! I knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread should spy and pry on me?”
Satisfied with this explanation of Israel’s conduct, Ben Aboo waited for no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and protests. “O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again. Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites — his thieves, his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want to squeeze me of my little wealth — my just savings — my hard earnings after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O Compassionate! They’ll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I’m an old soldier — they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab — but I’ll stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me? It’s because I’m his brother — that’s it, that’s it! But I’ve never risen against him. Never, never! I’ve paid him all! All! I tell you I’ve paid everything. I’ve got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you know it.”
Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid’s abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as slowly and calmly as at first, “Basha, have no fear; I have not sold myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez — but not to see the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for myself alone.”
Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel’s steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more, without disguise and without shame.
“And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, “what riches have you gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?”
“None,” said Israel shortly.
Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with Katrina.
“And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, “without office and without riches how may you hope to live?”
“As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, “serving God and trusting to His mercy.”
Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
“Serving God is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.
“Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.
At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
“Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. “Who are you that you dare wag your insolent tongue at me?”
“I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm— “your scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people. Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That’s what I am, Basha, and have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets among your people — hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off — you are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and the mistaken love of all men.”
While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face to face with the tyrant, not a foot’s length between them, he spoke again and said, “Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.”
In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel’s hand as he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the patio.
“Fool!” he cried. “So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!”
Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
“Who said it was the Sultan?” he cried again. “He was a fool. Abd er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That’s it! That’s it!”
So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side like a caged and angry beast.
“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so? If I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false judgments — what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head did all this? Why, yours — yours — Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the Prophet, I swear it!”
Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he answered calmly and sadly, “God’s ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His ministers. I thought God’s justice had failed, but it has overtaken myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”
All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, “Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?”
“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes upon her.
At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. “Husband,” she cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil’s dues were in him. Yet you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are, you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh, trust him, he’s got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it! He’ll be master in Tetuan yet!”
