"You think me a monster," said the American, "but remember, since we
left England the atmosphere has changed."
"Remember, too," I said, "that this man can do you no harm unless you
intrude yourself upon his superstitions again. Leave the country
immediately; depend upon it, he is following you."
"That's not possible," said the American, "for _I_ am following _him_.
Until I come up with him I can do nothing, and my existence is not worth
a pin's purchase."
I shuddered, and we parted. My mind told me that he was right, but my
heart clamored above the voice of reason and said, "_You_ could not do
it, no, not to save a hundred lives."
Ah, father, how little we know ourselves--how little, oh, how little!
When I think that _he_ shrank back--he who held life so cheap--while
_I_--I who held it so dear, so sacred, so god-like--Bear with me; I will
tell all.
I met the American at intervals during the next six days. We did not
often speak, but as we passed in the streets--he alone, I always with my
loquacious interpreter--I observed with dread the change that the shadow
of death hanging over a man's head can bring to pass in his face and
manner. He grew thin and sallow and wild-eyed. One day he stopped me,
and said: "I know now what your Buckshot Forster died of," and then he
went on without another word.
But about ten days after our first meeting in the slave market he
stopped me again, and said, quite cheerfully: "He has gone home--I'm
satisfied of that now."
"Thank God!" I answered involuntarily.
"Ah," he said, with a twinkle of the eye, "who says that a man must hang
up his humanity on the peg with his hat in the hospital hall when he
goes to be a surgeon? If the poet Keats had got over the first shock to
his sensibilities, he might have been the greatest surgeon of his day."
"You'll be more careful in future," I said, "not to cross the fanaticism
of these fanatics?"
He smiled, and asked if I knew the Karueein Mosque. I told him I had
seen it.
"It is the greatest in Morocco," he said. "The Moors say the inner court
stands on eight hundred pillars. I don't believe them, and I mean to see
for myself."
I found it useless to protest, and he went his way, laughing at my
blanched and bewildered face. "That man," I thought, "is fit to be the
hero of a tragedy, and he is wasting himself on a farce."
Meanwhile, I had a shadow over my own life which would not lift. That
letter which I had received from home at the moment of leaving Tangier
had haunted me throughout the journey. Its brevity, its insufficiency,
its delay, and above all its conspicuous omission of all mention of our
boy had given rise to endless speculation. Every dark possibility that
fancy could devise had risen before me by way of explanation. I despised
myself for such weakness, but self-contempt did nothing to allay my
vague fears. The child was ill; I knew it; I felt it; I could swear to
it as certainly as if my ears could hear the labored breathing in his
throat.
Nevertheless I went on; so much did my philosophy do for me. But when I
got to Fez I walked straightway to the English post-office to see if
there was a letter awaiting me. Of course there was no letter there. I
had not reflected that I had come direct from the port through which the
mails had to pass, and that if the postal courier had gone by me on the
road I must have seen him, which I had not.
I was ashamed before my own consciousness, but all the same the
post-office saw me every day. Whatever the direction that I took with my
interpreter, it led toward that destination in the end. And whatever the
subject of his ceaseless gabble--a very deluge of words--it was forced
to come round at last to the times and seasons of the mails from
England. These were bi-weekly, with various possibilities of casual
arrivals besides.
Fez is a noble city, the largest and finest Oriental city I had yet
seen, fit to compare in its own much different way of beauty and of
splendor with the great cities of the West, the great cities of the
earth, and of all time; but for me its attractions were overshadowed by
the gloom of my anxiety. The atmosphere of an older world, the spirit of
the East, the sense of being transported to Bible times, the startling
interpretations which the Biblical stories were receiving by the events
of every day--these brought me no pleasure. As for the constant
reminders of the presence of Islam every hour, at every corner, the
perpetual breath of prayer and praise, which filled this land that was
corrupt to the core, they gave me pain more poignant than disgust. The
call of the mueddin in the early morning was a daily agony. I slept
three streets from the Karueein minarets, but the voice seemed to float
into my room in the darkness, and coil round my head and ring in my
ears. Always I was awakened at the first sound of the stentorian
"Allah-u-Kabar," or, if I awoke in the silence and thought with a
feeling of relief, "It is over, I have slept through it," the howling
wail would suddenly break in upon my thanksgiving.
There was just one fact of life in Fez that gave me a kind of melancholy
joy. At nearly every turn of a street my ears were arrested by the
multitudinous cackle, the broken, various-voiced sing-song of a
children's school. These Moorish schools interested me. They were the
simplest of all possible institutes, consisting usually of a
rush-covered cellar, two steps down from the street, with the teacher,
the Taleb, often a half-blind old man, squatting in the middle of the
floor, and his pupils seated about him, and all reciting together some
passages of the Koran, the only textbook of education. One such school
was close under my bedroom window; I heard the drone of it as early as
seven o'clock every morning, and as often as I went abroad I stood for a
moment and looked in at the open doorway. A black boy sat there with a
basket for the alms of passers-by. He was a bright-eyed little fellow,
six or seven years of age, and he knew one English phrase only: "Come
on," he would say, and hold up the basket and smile. What pathetic
interest his sunny face had for me, how he would cheer and touch me,
with what strange memories his voice and laugh would startle me, it
would be pitiful to tell.
Bear with me! I was far from my own darling, I was in a strange land, I
was a weak man for all that I was thought so strong, and my one
besetting infirmity--more consuming than a mother's love--was preyed
upon by my failing health, which in turn was preying upon it.
And if the sights of the streets brought me pain, or pleasure that was
akin to pain, what of the sights, the visions, the dreams of my own
solitary mind! I could not close my eyes in the darkness but I saw my
boy. His little child-ghost was always with me. He never appeared as I
had oftenest seen him--laughing, romping, and kicking up his legs on the
hearth-rug. Sometimes he came as he would do at home after he committed
some childish trespass and I had whipped him--opening the door of my
room and stepping one pace in, quietly, nervously, half fearfully, to
say good-night and kiss me at his bedtime, and I would lift my eyes and
see, over the shade of my library lamp, his little sober red-and-white
face just dried of its recent tears. Or, again, sometimes I myself would
seem in these dumb dramas of the darkness to go into his room when he
was asleep, that I might indulge my hungry foolish heart with looks of
fondness that the reproving parent could not give, and find him sleeping
with an open book in his hands, which he had made believe to read. And
then for sheer folly of love I would pick up his wee knickerbockers and
turn out its load at either side, to see what a boy's pockets might be
like, and discover a curiosity shop of poor little treasures--a knife
with a broken blade, a nail, two marbles, a bit of brass, some string, a
screw, a crust of bread, a cork, and a leg of a lobster.
While I was indulging this weakness the conviction was deepening in my
mind that my boy was ill. So strong did this assurance become at length,
that, though I was ashamed to give way to it so far as to set my face
toward home, being yet no better for my holiday, I sat down at length to
write a letter to Wenman--I had written to my wife by every mail--that I
might relieve my pent-up feelings. I said nothing to him of my
misgivings, for I was loth to confess to them, having no positive
reasons whatever, and no negative grounds except the fact that I was
receiving no letters. But I gave him a full history of my boy's case,
described each stage of it in the past, foretold its probable
developments in the future, indicated with elaborate care the treatment
necessary at every point, and foreshadowed the contingencies under which
it might in the end become malignant and even deadly unless stopped by
the operation that I had myself, after years of labor, found the art of
making.
I spent an afternoon in the writing of this letter, and when it was done
I felt as if a burden that had been on my back for ages had suddenly
been lifted away. Then I went out alone to post it. The time was close
to evening prayers, and as I walked through the streets the Talebs and
tradesmen, with their prayer-mats under their arms, were trooping into
the various mosques. Going by the Karueein Mosque I observed that the
Good Muslimeen were entering it by hundreds. "Some special celebration,"
I thought. My heart was light, my eyes were alert, and my step was
quick. For the first time since my coming to the city, Fez seemed to me
a beautiful place. The witchery of the scenes of the streets took hold
of me. To be thus transported into a world of two thousand years ago
gave me the delight of magic.
When I reached the English post-office I found it shut up. On its
shutters behind its iron grating a notice-board was hung out, saying
that the office was temporarily closed for the sorting of an incoming
mail and the despatch of an outgoing one. There was a little crowd of
people waiting in front--chiefly Moorish servants of English
visitors--for the window to open again, and near by stood the horses of
the postal couriers pawing the pavement. I dropped my letter into the
slit in the window, and then stood aside to see if the mail had brought
anything for me at last.
The window was thrown up, and two letters were handed to me through the
grating over the heads of the Moors, who were crushing underneath. I
took them with a sort of fear, and half wished at the first moment that
they might be from strangers. They were from home; one was from my
wife--I knew the envelope before looking at the handwriting--the other
was from Wenman.
I read Wenman's letter first. Good or bad, the news must be broken to me
gently. Hardly had I torn the sheet open when I saw what it contained.
My little Noel had been ill; he was still so, but not seriously, and I
was not to be alarmed. The silence on their part which I had complained
of so bitterly had merely been due to their fear of giving me
unnecessary anxiety. For his part (Wenman's) he would have written
before, relying on my manliness and good sense, but my wife had
restrained him, saying she knew me better. There was no cause for
apprehension; the boy was going along as well as could be expected,
etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
Not a word to indicate the nature and degree of the attack. Such an
insufficient epistle must have disquieted the veriest nincompoop alive.
To send a thing like that to _me_--to me of all men! Was there ever so
gross a mistake of judgment?
I knew in an instant what the fact must be--my boy was down with that
old congenital infirmity of the throat. Surely my wife had told me more.
She had. Not by design, but unwittingly she had revealed the truth to
me. Granville Wenman had written to me, she said, explaining everything,
and I was not to worry and bother. All that was possible was being done
for our darling, and if I were there I could do no more. The illness had
to have its course, so I must be patient. All this is the usual jargon
of the surgery--I knew that Wenman had dictated it--and then a true line
or two worth all the rest from my dear girl's own bleeding mother's
heart. Our poor Noel was this, and that, he complained of so-and-so, and
first began to look unwell in such and such ways.
It was clear as noonday. The attack of the throat which I had foreseen
had come. Five years I had looked for it. Through five long years I had
waited and watched to check it. I had labored day and night that when it
should come I might meet it. My own health I had wasted--and for what?
For fame, for wealth, for humanity, for science? No, no, no, but for the
life of my boy. And now when his enemy was upon him at length, where was
I--I who alone in all this world of God could save him? I was thirteen
hundred miles from home.
Oh, the irony of my fate! My soul rose in rebellion against it.
Staggering back through the darkening streets, the whole city seemed
dead and damned.
How far I walked in this state of oblivion I do not know, but presently
out of the vague atmosphere wherein all things had been effaced I became
conscious, like one awakening after a drug, of an unusual commotion
going on around. People were running past me and across me in the
direction of the Karueein Mosque. From that place a loud tumult was
rising into the air. The noise was increasing with every moment, and
rising to a Babel of human voices.
I did not very much heed the commotion. What were the paltry excitements
of life to me now? I was repeating to myself the last words of my poor
wife's letter: "How I miss you, and wish you were with me!" "I will go
back," I was telling myself, "I will go back."
In the confusion of my mind I heard snatches of words spoken by the
people as they ran by me. "Nazarene!" "Christian!" "Cursed Jew!" These
were hissed out at each other by the Moors as they were scurrying past.
At length I heard a Spaniard shout up to a fellow-countryman who was on
a house-top: "Englishman caught in the mosque."
At that my disordered senses recovered themselves, and suddenly I became
aware that the tumult was coming in my direction. The noise grew deeper,
louder, and more shrill at every step. In another moment it had burst
upon me in a whirlpool of uproar.
Round the corner of the narrow lane that led to the Karueein Mosque a
crowd of people came roaring like a torrent. They were Moors, Arabs, and
Berbers, and they were shouting, shrieking, yelling, and uttering every
sound that the human voice can make. At the first instant I realized no
more than this, but at the next I saw that the people were hunting a man
as hounds hunt a wolf. The man was flying before them; he was coming
toward me: in the gathering darkness I could see him; his dress, which
was Moorish, was torn into shreds about his body; his head was bare; his
chest was bleeding; I saw his face--it was the face of the American, my
companion of the voyage.
He saw me too, and at that instant he turned about and faced full upon
his pursuers. What happened then I dare not tell.
Father, he was a brave man, and he sold his life dearly. But he fell at
last. He was but one to a hundred. The yelping human dogs trod him down
like vermin.
I am a coward. I fled and left him. When I got back to my lodgings I
called for my guide, for I was resolved to leave Fez without an hour's
delay. The guide was not to be found, and I had to go in search of him.
When I lighted on him, at length, he was in a dingy coffee-house,
squatting on the ground by the side of another Moor, an evil-looking
scoundrel, who was reciting some brave adventure to a group of admiring
listeners.
I called my man out and told him of my purpose. He lifted his hands in
consternation. "Leave Fez to-night?" he said. "Impossible, my sultan,
impossible! My lord has not heard the order!"
"What order?" I asked. I was alarmed. Must I be a prisoner in Morocco
while my child lay dying in England?
"That the gates be closed and no Christian allowed to leave the city
until the morning. It is the order of the Kaleefa, my sultan, since the
outrage of the Christian in the mosque this morning."
I suspected the meaning of this move in an instant, and the guide's
answer to my questions ratified my fears. One man, out of madness or
thirst for revenge, had led the attack upon the American, and a crowd of
fanatics had killed him--giving him no chance of retreat with his life,
either by circumcision or the profession of Islam. But cooler heads had
already found time to think of the penalty of shedding Christian blood.
That penalty was twofold: first, the penalty of disgrace which would
come of the idea that the lives of Christians were not safe in Morocco,
and next, the penalty of hard dollars to be paid to the American
Minister at Tangier.
To escape from the double danger the outrage was to be hushed up.
Circumstances lent themselves to this artifice. True, that passage of
the American across country had been known in every village through
which he had passed; but at the gates of Fez he had himself cut off all
trace of his identity. He had entered the city alone, or in disguise.
His arrival as a stranger had not been notified at any of the "clubs" or
bazaars. Only one man had recognized him: that man was Larby, his guide.
The body was to be buried secretly, no Christian being allowed to see
it. Then the report was to be given out that the dead man had been a
Moorish subject, that he had been killed in a blood-fued, and that the
rumor that he was a Christian caught in the act of defying the mosque
was an error, without the shadow of truth in it. But until all this had
been done no Christian should be allowed to pass through the gates. As
things stood at present the first impulse of a European would be to fly
to the Consul with the dangerous news.
I knew something of the Moors and their country by this time, and I left
Fez that night, but it cost me fifty pounds to get out of it. There was
a bribe for the kaid, a bribe for the Kaleefa, and bribes for every
ragged Jack of the underlings down to the porter at the gate.
With all my horror and the fever of my anxiety, I could have laughed in
the face of the first of these functionaries. Between his greedy desire
of the present I was offering him, his suspicion that I knew something
of the identity of the Christian who had been killed, his misgivings as
to the reasons of my sudden flight, and his dread that I would discover
the circumstances of the American's death, the figure he cut was a
foolish one. But why should I reproach the man's duplicity? I was
practising the like of it myself. Too well I knew that if I betrayed any
knowledge of what had happened it would be impossible that I should be
allowed to leave Fez.
So I pretended to know nothing. It was a ridiculous interview.
On my way back from it I crossed a little company of Moors, leading,
surrounding, and following a donkey. The donkey was heavily laden with
what appeared to be two great panniers of rubbish. It was dusk, but my
sight has always been keen, and I could not help seeing that hidden
under the rubbish there was another burden on the donkey's back. It was
the body of a dead man. I had little doubt of who the dead man must be;
but I hastened on and did not look again. The Moors turned into a garden
as I passed them. I guessed what they were about to do there, but my own
danger threatened me, and I wished to see and know no more.
As I was passing out of the town in the moonlight an hour before
midnight, with my grumbling tentmen and muleteers at my heels, a man
stepped out of the shadow of the gateway arch and leered in my face, and
said in broken English, "So your Christian friend is corrected by
Allah!"
_Moorish English, my son, or Spanish?_
Spanish.
It was the scoundrel whom I had seen in the coffee-house. I knew he must
be Larby, and that he had betrayed his master at last. Also, I knew that
he was aware that I had seen all. At that moment, looking down from my
horse's back into the man's evil face my whole nature changed. I
remembered the one opportunity which the American had lost out of a
wandering impulse of human tenderness--of saving his own life by taking
the life of him that threatened it, and I said in my heart of hearts,
"Now God in heaven keep me from the like temptation."
Ah! father, do not shrink from me; think of it, only think of it! I was
fifteen hundred miles from home, and I was going back to my dying boy.
* * * * *
_God keep you, indeed, my son. Your feet were set in a slippery place.
El Arby, you say? A man of your own age? Dark? Sallow? It must be the
same. Long ago I knew the man you speak of. It was under another name,
and in another country. Yes, he was all you say. God forgive him, God
forgive him! Poor wrecked and bankrupt soul. His evil angel was always
at his hand, and his good one far away. He brought his father to shame,
and his mother to the grave. There was a crime and conviction, then
banishment, and after that his father fled from the world. But the
Church is peace; he took refuge with her, and all is well. Go on now._