Complete works of hall c.., p.201
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 201
Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you’ll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!”
A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
“You must be right,” he said, “you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah! This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!” he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, “if you must give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come to me and say, ‘Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully; let me rest’ — why not? I say, why not?”
Israel answered calmly, “Because it would have been a lie, Basha.”
“So it would,” cried Ben Aboo sharply, “so it would: you are right — it would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and say, ‘Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.”
“Because it is true, Basha,” said Israel.
At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the patio, he said, “There is another thing that is true. It is true that on the other side of that wall there is a prison,” and, lifting his voice to a shriek, he added, “you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel. One step more—”
But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon his words.
And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha’s story of his ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin, shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood. But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan’s wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind’s eye Israel could see him there at that instant — sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here — fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back by his cubs.
But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man’s house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully? He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then courage! courage!
“Husband,” cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, “you must scour this vermin out of Tetuan!”
“You are right,” he answered. “By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.”
Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice of mockery, “Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office? But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well, and all that’s in it, and leave this town as a beggar.”
Israel stood unmoved. “As you will,” he said quietly.
“Where are the two women — the slaves?” asked Ben Aboo.
“At home,” said Israel.
“They are mine, and I take them back,” said Ben Aboo.
Israel’s face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he only drew a longer breath, and said again, “As you will, Basha.”
Ben Aboo’s voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. “Where is your money?” he cried; “the money that you have made out of my service — out of me — my money — where is it?”
“Nowhere,” said Israel.
“It’s a lie — another lie!” cried Ben Aboo. “Oh yes, I’ve heard of your charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they? Were they? Were they, I ask?”
“So you say, Basha,” said Israel.
“So I know!” cried Ben Aboo; “but all you had is not gone that way. You’re a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys — the keys of your house!”
Israel hesitated, and then said, “Let me return for a minute — it is all I ask.”
At that the woman laughed hysterically. “Ah! he has something left after all!” she cried.
Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, “Yes, madam, I have something left — after all.”
Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying, “El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure there!”
“It is true, madam,” said Israel; “it is true that I have a treasure there. My daughter — my little blind Naomi.”
“Is that all?” cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
“It is all,” said Israel, “but it is enough. Let me fetch her.”
“Don’t allow it!” cried Katrina.
Israel’s face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. “Make me homeless if you will,” he said, “turn me like a beggar out of your town, but let me fetch my daughter.”
“She’ll not thank you,” cried Katrina.
“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age. Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am yours, and no one save her father—”
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. “Trust me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are. Girls like better things. No, I’ll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here with me.”
Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would rather see her dead at my feet.”
Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don’t wag your tongue at your mistress, sir.”
“Your mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”
At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce any one — even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate — could clearly tell. She stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father! It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking, reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the girl’s face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips, her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time. This, only this, was she!
And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face, eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light, everything had entered at a blow — the white glare of the sun, the blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. “Oh! oh!” she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.
Israel saw everything. “Naomi!” he cried in a choking voice, and stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked, and paused and hesitated.
“Naomi!” he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into her father’s arms. And Israel’s heart was big, and he gathered her to his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, “Madam, we are in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His servant.”
Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object of his terror. “O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us! Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on them both! Allah! Allah!”
The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
“Brava!” she cried. “Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!”
Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying —
“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, ‘So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat!’ Thus let them pass through the streets and through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE RAINBOW SIGN
While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed for — the good and blessed rain — had come at last. In gentle drops like dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring down like a flood.
Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour! The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers cried “Balak” in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far away.
Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and gorgeous — notwithstanding the rain — in peaked shasheeah and crimson selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha’s order — Naomi first, barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes closed — and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of the townspeople had gathered together.
When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent, and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud exclamations of surprise.
“Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!” cried the Moors.
“God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!” cried the people of the Mellah.
“What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?” they all asked together.
“Balak!” cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to force a passage through the thronging multitude. “Attention! By your leave! Away! Out of the way!”
And as they walked the criers chanted, “So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to look black into each other’s face, to mutter oaths between their teeth, and to say in voices of no pity or rush, “He deserved it!” “Ya Allah, but he’s well served!” “Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!” “Look at him now!” “There he is at last!” “Brave end to all his great doings!” “Curse him! Curse him!”
And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came still the cry of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter, and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To think that they had ever been afraid of him!
As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.
“Balak! Balak!” cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the crier rang out over all other noises.
