Scourged by his master’s mild reproof of him for loitering, Zeyd needed
no second reminder to make haste. With the bounds of a goat he scaled
the rocks and ran along by the foot of the city wall. The noble words
which had enthralled him to forget duty boomed in his brain, making earth
heaven, wrapping him in a cloud of gorgeous imagery. As he neared the
gate, a band of soldiers marched out silently, attended by a little horde
of ragamuffin Jews and Christians. The arrow of the sheykh, he scarce
perceived them, intent only upon the will of his master, to do which was
in itself a rapture. He measured not his pace on such an errand, and it
was with surprise, when nearing the house of the Frank physician, that he
found sweat streaming from every pore.
He knocked thrice before anyone answered, and then it was not Ismaìl’s
voice, but that of the serving maid, which smote his ear:
“Who is there? What would you?”
“It is I, Zeyd ebn Abbâs, having an errand to the khawâjah.”
“Art thou alone out there? Is it sure there are none beside thee?”
“By Allah, it is sure. Who else on earth should there be?”
“Then enter and behold the work of thy master. O day of my grief! O
wicked day!... The hakìm is not in the house. It is now two hours since
he went forth. Allah grant they have not killed him also, the wicked
ones!”
Thus lamenting, she let Zeyd in. He dared not, for his soul’s weal,
glance at her unveiled face. Her sobs and reproaches vexed him. They
called for retort, but he dared not parley with the mistress of so great
attractions.
“Y’Allah! Come and see what thy master has done for us, his benefactors!
The hakìm will soon return, in sh’ Allah, and then thou shalt hear truth
for once in life. It is two hours since he went out to the house of the
consul. Aha, a proper vengeance shall overtake thee and thy master and
all thy race of dogs!”
She dragged him through into the court. She had the strength of a jinni.
Her clutch rent his clothing, which had been ragged enough before. Yet he
dared not offer resistance lest, at touch of her, desire should master
him.
A second voice of woe assailed his ears. It came from the shadowed side
of the yard, from out a vault, of which the door stood open.
“Go in! Look!” shrieked his conductor, dragging him to that doorway.
Zeyd strove after the superior smile of one who humors a madwoman, but
his look changed quickly to horror and his hands flew up. There, within,
upon a low couch, lay the form of Ismaìl the doorkeeper, stiff in death,
the face fixed in a travesty of its wonted kindly grin. The brow seemed
to have shrunk away from beneath the turban, the cheeks had sunken; the
white beard seemed a growth independent of the chin it fastened on.
It was no longer the man, simple yet so wise, whom Zeyd had known and
revered, but something derisive, harsh, and terrible, a menace and a
curse.
Beside the corpse lay Fatmeh on her face, weeping bitterly. The girl who
had admitted Zeyd pushed past him and kicked the prostrate one again and
again, then, kneeling, beat and pinched her unmercifully, screaming:
“Weep! Weep! By the Gospel, I will make thee weep, O cause of misfortune
to the house that sheltered thee. Foul daughter of a Muslim, weep louder,
louder! Oh, if all you Muslimûn were made on the pattern of him who lies
there, then earth would be a different place! Cease not to weep, lest I
tear thy eyes.”
In the frenzy of her spite, she had forgotten Zeyd. When he flung her
back by main force, she looked on him with blind eyes a moment. Then with
the hiss of an angry serpent she strove to scratch his eyes, spitting
venomously.
“May Allah blind and maim thee! All shall die—thou and thy wicked sheykh,
and this woman, and, the rest of you—all—all! My lord went to the
consul—the consul, hear you? And the end of all of you is concerted, if
not accomplished.... Ah, devil! What wouldst thou? Let go; let go, I say!
O Allah! O Blessed Lord!”
Anger had driven from Zeyd’s mind every thought of goodness. He saw only
the charms of the woman, remembered only her brutality to Fatmeh, and the
affronts she had put upon himself. With clenched teeth and blazing eyes,
he was working to master her when the voice of the Frank called without.
In the same minute she ceased struggling and he let go.
Then, too late, Zeyd remembered that he had come on an errand of apology;
and he hung his head. Was he himself any better than the Circassians?
Truly, a man uninspired was no more master of his own impulses than
is a sword in a strong hand. Crestfallen and ashamed, Zeyd went and
humbled himself before the physician. He tried to give his message. But
the unbeliever would not listen, making moan in his own fashion, which
was not that of the son of an Arab, with gestures and a bitter cry, but
simply a sardonic grinning and muttering, the while his hands trembled,
clasped and unclasped nervously.
“Begone! Walk! Go out of my house! Have I not seen enough of thee and thy
master? A good return—is it not?—for all I did for the girl. He brings
the city against me. He kills my doorkeeper, the best of men. He shall be
severely punished, word of an Englishman! The consul says so. But as for
me, I lose my appointment. The society will not retain me after all this.
I have to thank thy master for much—very much. I think so indeed. He is a
good man, not so? Excellent! Ah, ha, ha!... Speak not! Begone! Walk! And
take the woman with thee. Let me see the end of all of you!”
There was no reasoning with a creature so plainly distraught. “Begone!”
he kept repeating, till at last Zeyd renounced all further attempt to
pierce his understanding and said, a little irritably:
“To hear is to obey.”
Zeyd went back into the death chamber, murmured “Peace to the upright!”
by the corpse of the kind old negro, and taking Fatmeh by the hand
raised her and led her forth. By the outer door of the house stood the
weeping maidservant. She opened for them and, as they passed out, struck
Fatmeh such a blow beneath the shoulders that she groaned and fell
forward, coughing violently. Zeyd thought her stabbed. He turned to take
vengeance, but the door was shut.
Fatmeh lay upon the cobbles of the narrow lane, groaning and coughing by
turns; while Zeyd raised hands of denunciation against that house of sin,
calling to Allah for justice upon her murderers. No help, no human form,
was at hand. The accustomed seat of the sherbet seller was empty.
Soon, however, to his vast relief, Fatmeh rose up, expressing her
readiness, and he led her to the khan.
It was the heat of the day when no one fares abroad who can help it.
Those they met were too indolent to take note of the tousled raiment of a
woman or the mad mutterings of a man, who at a glance seemed mere beggars.
On arrival at the khan the host put many anxious questions to them out
of the kindness of his heart. He was more than repaid by the thrill of
Zeyd’s narrative.
“Ma sh’ Allah!” he exclaimed at the end. “It is not good to frequent
unbelievers. The sheykh—dear, righteous man!—he thought no evil—that is
known. And yet it was not good. I myself could have informed him harm
would come of it.”
He readily undertook to lodge Fatmeh with his own women.
While they yet stood talking in the doorway, an ass, saddled and bridled,
was led out from the adjoining stable. It was followed by an aged fellâh,
who gave a coin to the hostler. The fellâh then bestrode the beast,
groaning like a camel with the exertion. Zeyd, recognizing his wife’s
sister’s husband’s uncle, hailed him joyfully.
“I cannot stay. I have waited long enough,” muttered the donkey rider,
in agitation. “Allah knows they may be already at my house, clasping my
doorposts, needing my protection. I am old and have no stomach for the
fray. Yet they went off bravely, that handful against a whole city. I
was proud of their friendship though I slipped away. No doubt but that
they have slain the Frank and all belonging to him, and have destroyed
his house with fire. They come from wilds wherein vengeance is a sacred
right—as it should be, O my son—as it should be. They know not the law
of this city which takes no count of religious motives. They will flee
from the punishment to my house, and I must be there to shield them if I
can.”
“Was the riot then so serious, O my uncle? They spoke of it as a jest.”
“Hadst thou seen their faces, heard their heartsome shouts as I did, thou
wouldst never ask—‘was it serious?’”
“Alas, for their wickedness. Very surely they are the worst of men. May
Allah destroy the house of every one of them.”
The fellâh contradicted Zeyd hotly: “Nay, may Allah prosper them. Art
thou, then, also their enemy? Blessed guests have they been to our
village. The fame of them has made us respected in all the neighborhood.
They are good—the best possible—to their friends. What matter though
they be bad to their enemies? Can all men use the same eyes? May Allah
preserve them. In thy grace, O my dear!”
Pressed by the old man’s heels, the donkey started, its shod hoofs waking
echoes in that deep-walled place.
Zeyd followed, in search of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn, for whose safety
he grew anxious. Talking of danger and punishment had brought into the
foreground of his remembrance details which had failed to impress him
at the time—in particular, the company of soldiers which had passed
him by the city gate, and the confusion in the Frank’s mad speech of
Shems-ud-dìn with the Circassians. Apprehensions, spurred by indigestion
of the various insults he had been forced to stomach, made his soul groan
within him. At unawares he ran instead of walked—a strange sight in the
city at high noon.
At length he stopped to inquire of a group of good Muslims standing
gossiping before a cobbler’s stall, whether anyone had seen the Sheykh
Shems-ud-dìn and his unmistakable adherents. The men turned from their
questioner to glance meaningly one at another. The cobbler it was who
answered.
“W’ Allah!” he exclaimed, pausing, needle in air, from his sewing at a
certain slipper. “Go and ask at the Mehkemeh. A hundred Muslimûn are shut
in there, and they say the English consul is judging them in place of
our rightful Câdi. Ah, those Franks are devils. There is no end to their
enormities. And our lords, who suffer them, are little better.”
Zeyd stayed to hear no more. He ran on, panting, with misty eyes. Upon
the fastened door of the courthouse a crowd pressed, enjoying a grievous
outcry from within.
“Ha, they beat the malefactors. That is good,” said a Nazarene to his
neighbor. “He knows his business, this English consul.”
Zeyd thundered in vain at the door. None opened, and the crowd jeered at
him. With heart near to breaking, he gave up the attempt and ran headlong
toward the Haràm. A great pulse throbbed in his brain, seeming the pulse
of the whole world, for every object of his gaze beat with it.
The aged Mahmûd Ali, Chief of the Learned in the Holy City, was coming
out of the Mosque El Aksa on the arm of a young disciple—his senile
blindness doubled for the moment by the sudden sunlight dropped on him
like a dazzling veil—when Zeyd, the son of Abbâs, fell groveling at his
feet.
“Who is it, O my son?” quavered the sheykh, much alarmed; for he could
not discern the form of the suppliant whether of man or beast.
“It is some mad derwìsh,” replied the lad supporting him.
“Nay, it is I, Zeyd, the servant of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn. Mad am I
now, and with reason, for they kill my master.”
“O Allah, is it possible? Expound the matter, O most faithful of
servants.”
The old man heard the story sadly to an end. Then he bade his disciple
lead him beneath some trees which grew by the place of washing. There, in
the shade, he sat down and, taking an inkhorn, a reed, and a leaf from
his girdle, wrote hurriedly.
“Here is a word from me to the Câdi,” he said to Zeyd. “This is not the
first time I have had to rebuke the slaves of this Mutesarrif. They
plead, and with a measure of justice, that it is hard for few to govern
many without indulging the majority. None the less it is iniquitous.
I here threaten him with the curse of El Islâm. I adjure him by his
father’s grave. His father was a good old man, a friend to me. If he
remember not his father, then is he rightly accursed.”
Armed with that writing, Zeyd sped across the honored pavement to where
his slippers lay beside the steps; and thence to the Mehkemeh, where he
arrived bathed in sweat, and mouthing oddly—a maniac to all appearance.
The crowd, now much diminished, withdrew from him in alarm. His knocks on
the massive door reverberated as though the hall within had been as empty
as it was silent.
“Open, O sons of Eblìs. In the name of Allah. In the name of El Islâm,
open, or it shall be the worse for you.” Zeyd knew not what he cried. He
had forgotten dignities. What mattered anything? It was the Last Day.
At that high call, the door was opened a little. Its keepers, expecting
to behold some functionary, gaped on the vision of a sweat-blind vagrant.
By allowance of their stupor the wretch shot past them into the court.
“Who is this? What means this?” cried a voice of anger. Zeyd was aware
confusedly of men innumerable rising from the ground with shouts and
harsh laughter. In that peopled dimness he faltered, dazed and abashed.
He heard the voice of the enemy, the voice of Hassan Agha, calling:
“Behold the grace of Allah. It is he, the murderer, the rightful victim,
brought to us by a miracle. O Excellency, slay that wicked man and spare
us.”
Then, of a sudden, he espied the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn, and it was as if a
light shone upon him suddenly. With a glad cry he was going toward his
master when strong arms seized and carried him, kicking, before the judge.
“Praise be to Allah! We have here the culprit—not a doubt of it. We will
soon extract his confession,” sighed Yûsuf Effendi, with immense relief.