LOVE AND THE PATRIARCH
I was staying for some weeks at Howard's Hotel in Jerusalem (Iskender
Awwad, the dragoman, had transformed himself into the Chevalier
Alexander Howard, a worthy, if choleric, gentleman, and a good friend
of mine), and I rode out every day upon a decent pony, which I had
discovered in the stables at the back of the hotel. One afternoon a
nephew of the stable-owner, who was something of a blood, proposed
that we should ride together out towards Bethlehem. His horse was a
superb and showy stallion, quite beyond his power to manage properly.
My modest steed was fired to emulation, and, once beyond the outskirts
of Jerusalem, we tore away. At a corner where the road was narrow
between rocks, I do not know exactly how, the big horse cannoned into
mine and overturned him. I pitched headlong on some stones.
My first impression was that I had struck a wet spot in that arid
wilderness. Then I saw my horse at a great distance, galloping, and
heard the nephew of the owner saying that he must pursue it, while I
must mount his horse and ride on slowly.
'Not half a mile from here, upon that hill,' he said, 'is Katamûn, the
country seat of the Greek Patriarch. There you are certain to find
people who will have compassion. Would God that I had never lived to
see this day! Would God that I were in the grave instead of you!'
He seemed beside himself with grief and fear on my account; and yet
the sense of property remained supreme. His first concern was to
retrieve the runaway.
Bewildered and unable to see clearly, I did not mount the horse, which
would have mastered me in that condition, but led him slowly up the
hill to Katamûn. Upon the top there was a grove of trees, above which
peeped some flat roofs and a dome. At length I reached the gate of
this enclosure. It was open, and I led the horse along a sort of
drive, on which were many chickens and a tethered sheep, which,
bolting round a tree at our approach, became inextricably tangled in
its rope.
In a court between a little church and other buildings, a grim old
woman in a coloured head-veil looked at me out of a doorway. I called
to her that I had had an accident, and asked the favour of some
washing-water and a bandage. She stared at me in doleful wise, and
shook her head.
'Water! Bring me water!' I insisted.
She went indoors and fetched a man of the same breed, whose eyes grew
large and dull with horror at the sight of me.
Again I asked to be allowed to wash my head and face.
I heard the woman whisper: 'Shall I bring it?' and the man reply: 'Let
be! This blood-stained form is half a corpse already. He will surely
die. The horse, perhaps, is stolen. There has been a fight. If we
should touch him we might be concerned in it. Wait till the end. Then
we will summon his Beatitude, and have our testimony written down to
prove our innocence.'
Amazed at their stupidity, I took a step towards them, arguing. They
vanished headlong, when I realised for the first time that my
appearance was in truth alarming. Perceiving the advantage that
appearance gave me, I pursued them, promising them plagues in this
world and perdition in the next unless they brought some water
instantly.
The horse, which I was leading all this while, had been as quiet as a
lamb; but, frightened by my shouts and gestures, he became
unmanageable. I was struggling with him in the doorway of the house
when a large and dignified ecclesiastic came upon the scene, the
jewelled cross upon his cassock flashing in the sun. In the twinkling
of an eye, it seemed to me, he had subdued the horse and tied him to a
ring in the wall which I, in my bewilderment, had failed to see; had
seized me by the collar of my coat and driven me before him through a
kind of tunnel to a second court in which there was a cistern and a
pump. He worked that pump and held my head beneath it, cursing the
servants for a pack of imbeciles.
The man and woman reappeared, completely tamed. He sent them running,
one for stuff to make a bandage, the other for medicaments, but said
no word to me until the work was ended, when he grinned and asked:
'Art happy now?'
I told him that I felt a great deal better.
'Good,' he said, and led me by the hand into an upper chamber, richly
carpeted, and furnished with a cushioned divan, of which the windows
framed a wide view eastward over the Judæan wilderness.
There, sitting comfortably, he asked who I was and of what country;
and, hearing that I came from England, questioned me about the High
Church and the Low Church in that land, and whether they formed one
communion or were separate--a problem which he seemed to think of
great importance. He was glad, he said, that I was not a Roman
Catholic, a sect which he regarded as the worst of heretics.
But his concern with all these matters seemed perfunctory compared
with the delight he took in farming; for when I noticed from the
window some sleek cows munching in a small enclosure, he brightened up
and told me they were recent purchases. He talked about his poultry
and his sheep and goats, all of which he would be pleased to show me
if I cared to see them.
Accordingly, when we had drunk some coffee, which completed my
revival, he took me out and showed me round his small demesne. We
were standing in the shade of trees, discussing turkeys, when my
companion of the road arrived upon the truant horse. He was a member
of the Orthodox Greek Church.
What was my amazement when, having tied up the horse, he came with
reverent haste and knelt at my companion's feet, kissing his hand with
pious and devoted fervour. The grey-bearded priest, with full brown
eyes, and hair that curled below the tall black head-dress like a
trimming of grey astrakhan, with whom I had been talking so
familiarly, was no other than the successor of St. James, the Orthodox
Patriarch of Jerusalem. I had supposed him some sub-prior or domestic
chaplain. His Beatitude acknowledged my surprise by an ironic grin.
The new arrival, still upon his knees, embarked on a long story, told
in lamentable tones, about a man who was in love, and like to die of
it, with a young girl who was the sister of his brother's wife. It is
forbidden by the canons of the Eastern Church for two brothers to
marry two sisters.
'Is there no way by which he may obtain her lawfully?' the suppliant
asked.
The Patriarch assumed an air of weariness, and shook his head.
'If he were a Catholic or a Protestant he could obtain her lawfully.'
The Patriarch assumed an air of pitying scorn.
'The case is very hard,' the suppliant moaned, as he rose up from the
ground at last and cleaned his knees.
The Patriarch, with a shrug, remarked that it was so. The young man
should not have cast eyes upon a maid unlawful to him.
'The only way,' he said, 'is to obtain annulment of the brother's
marriage by proving it to be illegal in some way.' With that he left
the subject and resumed his talk concerning poultry. My companion of
the road was plucking at my sleeve.
I took leave of the Patriarch respectfully, with many thanks. He
clapped me on the shoulder, saying: 'Come again! And never seek to wed
the sister of thy brother's wife. Your Church does not forbid such
marriage--does it?--being still tainted with the Latin heresy. Why
does the Orthodox Church forbid it? Because it brings confusion into
families, and is indecent.'
He seemed to jest, but the look he gave to my companion as we rode
away was stern, I thought, and more than half-contemptuous.
Excepting that my head was bandaged, I felt well again; so we rode on,
as we had first intended, towards Bethlehem. Over a rocky land with
patches of pink cyclamen, black crows were wheeling in a sky of vivid
blue.
We came into the olive groves beneath the hill on which stands the
Greek priory of Mâr Elias, when my companion said ingratiatingly: 'If
you please, we will call at the monastery and take refreshment. The
monks are friends of mine. It was with the object of this visit that I
led our ride in this direction.'
As I raised no objection, we tied up our horses in the garden of the
monastery and went in. We found the Prior in the middle of a
tea-party, a number of Greek neighbours, of both sexes, being gathered
in a very comfortably-furnished room.
My friend, ere entering, implored me in a whisper not to tell them
that my accident was owing to his clumsy horsemanship. Instead, he
put about some story which I did not clearly overhear--something about
a fight with desert Arabs, redounding to my credit, I conclude, from
the solicitude which everyone expressed on my account when he had told
it. Some of the ladies present insisted on a second washing of my
wounds with rose-water, and a second bandaging with finer linen than
the Patriarch had used. Some monks, their long hair frizzed
coquettishly and tied with ribbon, helped in the work. I did not like
the look of them. My friend meanwhile was talking to some pretty
girls.
When we rode off again towards Jerusalem he asked me questions about
the Anglican and Roman Churches, and seemed to think it a sad defect
in the former that it lacked the faculty of dispensation with regard
to marriage.
After a space of silence, as we were riding down the hill by the
Ophthalmic Hospital, with the Tower of David and the city walls
crowning the steep before us, he inquired: 'Did you observe those
girls with whom I was conversing--especially the one with pale-blue
ribbons. It is her I love.' And, when I complimented him on his good
taste, he added: 'I think I shall become a Catholic,' and started
weeping.
I then learnt from his broken speech that he was himself the hapless
lover of his story to the Patriarch. The girl whom I had seen at Mâr
Elias was the sister of his brother's wife. I was as sympathetic in
appearance as I could be; but somehow all my sympathy was with the
Patriarch, who seemed to me the only man whom I had seen that day.