THE MAN WHO OPENED HIS EYES
To Tor, groaning in the wordless anguish of his hurts, came a soft
inquiring touch on his heaving shoulders. Led by that kind instinct which
guides all wounded creatures, the child had crawled away and hidden
himself from unfriendly eyes in the mouth of a ruinous sewer hard by. Here
he had lain long hours, exhausted with agony. The dog snuffed the small
huddled figure from head to foot with short, anxious whines. Then he fell
to industriously licking the one limp brown hand which crept out from
beneath the ragged tunic.
“Baladan,” whispered Tor, and shrieked aloud with the intolerable smart of
rising tears in his blinded eyes.
The shriek, faint as it was, reached the ears of a second boy, who was
searching carefully from side to side of the gloomy little thoroughfare.
“’Tis thou, Tor,” he exclaimed, stooping to stare in at the sewer’s mouth.
“Art bad hurt?”
“Oh, Dan, the accursed lash of the Roman smote my eyes,” groaned the
child, and sputtered out some strange maledictions in the Egyptian tongue,
which he had learned from his late master.
The second boy pursed up his coarse lips into a soft whistle of
comprehension. Then he bent down and stared briefly into the drooped face
of the half‐delirious sufferer. “Body of Bacchus!” he murmured, smiting
his bare thigh with closed fist. “One more blind beggar in Jerusalem.”
Then raising his fingers to his lips he gave vent to a shrill cry of
summons. It was promptly answered by the soft thud of a water‐carrier’s
feet and the loud tinkle of his brazen cups.
“Give him to drink,” commanded Dan, indicating Tor with a grimy
forefinger. “The poor fool hath brought ill‐fortune upon himself. ’Tis the
evil eye of a surety.” With that he produced a copper coin, which the
water‐carrier acknowledged with a cup of water from the goat‐skin on his
back.
“I will come again at sunset and give him to drink,” said the water‐
carrier, with a sidelong glance of fear and pity. Then the two departed,
leaving Tor to his misery.
How the child lived through the days and weeks that followed only Baladan
knew. The dog warmed his master’s pinched body at night, keeping at bay
other prowling beasts of the pariah race which ranged the deserted
streets, as lawless and almost as fierce as wolves.
He even fed him, more than once bringing fragments of bread and fish,
stolen from a vender’s stall at the imminent peril of his life.
Occasionally the friendly water‐carrier visited the suffering boy, and the
little wild children of the street, swarming like sparrows in the streets
of Jerusalem, shared their infrequent crusts with him.
By slow degrees the anguish of his wounds grew less poignant. The cruelly
disfigured eyes were indeed wholly darkened, but they ceased to send
burning shafts of fire to the tortured brain. The child slept fitfully,
ate what he could get, and one day even smiled. This when Baladan brought
him a meatless bone, laying it down at his feet with extravagant
expressions of satisfaction. “Nay, good Baladan,” murmured Tor, patting
his friend’s shaggy coat; “indeed I am not hungry to‐day. Eat, dear
beast,” and he thrust the bone into the dog’s mouth, and closed his sharp
teeth upon it. Baladan understood, and the two rested together in the
sunshine with something like real content.
The charitable water‐carrier had bestowed one of his brazen cups upon the
blind boy, and this with his ruined eyes became his stock in trade. Little
by little he learned to send forth the dolorous plaint of the blind
mendicant. After a time he could find his way from place to place with the
aid of the dog. And so it came to pass that there was one more blind
beggar in Jerusalem.
Once during these evil days of his darkness Tor fell in with his old
master. It was on this wise: the child, grown bolder, had made his way
farther than his wont into the more crowded thoroughfares of the city, and
there his shrill cry for alms sounded loud and clear above the tumult of
the market‐place. He rattled his cup bravely as was the custom of the
professional beggar, sending forth into the unfriendly world the old
familiar plaint of the beggar, Chelluh. “Have mercy, kind lords of
Jerusalem; have mercy on the sorrows of one born blind! Kind lord, kind
lady, only a denarius, I beseech thee, and may Jehovah and all lesser gods
be gracious unto thee!”
Now it chanced that Chelluh himself had also come to the market‐place to
beg alms, and, hearing the child’s voice afar off, recognized it with the
unerring ear of the blind. “Fetch me now to the voice that crieth my cry,”
he commanded the one that led him. And when presently he was come to the
place where Tor stood in the safe angle of two windowless walls, he
stopped short with a malevolent smile.
“Art thou of a surety blind, my son—that thou stealest my cry for alms as
thou didst once steal my money?” he demanded.
Tor trembled like a leaf in the wind at sound of the cruel voice. “Alas, I
am indeed blind, good master,” he said beseechingly. “Have mercy upon me,
for I—”
The prayer ended in a muffled shriek for help as the blind man hurled
himself upon the blind child, griping him in a very fury of malicious
hatred. No one interfered. What, indeed, was the quarrel of two beggars in
an angle of the wall?
Trade pressed hard in Jerusalem as elsewhere, and a man must mind naught
save his own business if he would prosper. So no one glanced that way when
the blind man, having satisfied his lust for revenge, departed, leaving
the child’s limp body upon the ground.
Tor was not dead. He was only bruised and beaten and choked into
insensibility, and after awhile he revived and crawled feebly away with
the faithful Baladan. His begging‐cup was gone, and he no longer dared to
raise his voice to crave alms from the passers‐by. Occasionally one tossed
him a coin or a crust, but for the most part the child crouched all day in
his corner motionless, starving. And the days and weeks dragged by.
He was sitting thus one morning when the sun had climbed high enough to
flood his darkened nook with yellow light. Tor could feel the warmth of
its radiance in his chill darkness. He sighed deeply and spread forth his
lean hands, wondering dully what it would be like to see once more. He had
already forgotten the blue sky and the moving clouds, the flutter of green
leaves over high garden walls and the glistening whir of bird‐wings in the
sunshine. His night was endless, unbroken by morning gleam or noontide
glory. It meant cold and hunger and a thousand nameless miseries which he
endured because he must endure. It would stretch on and on, he thought, to
some far‐off, hopeless end, when perchance he might sleep to awaken no
more.
Tor had looked upon such sleepers with a scared creeping of the flesh in
the old days of seeing. Now the sleep seemed good, and quite stupidly and
vaguely he longed for it.
Somewhere, afar off, there was shouting and a sound of voices that chanted
musically. The child listened with the sharpened attention which had grown
to be his one defence and solace. In the old days his flying feet would
have borne him swiftly enough to see what was happening. Now he could only
listen, and wonder.
“Perhaps ’tis some great prince come to Jerusalem,” he muttered, and tried
to picture to himself the gay pageant of the marching troops, the gorgeous
uniforms, the jeweled robes of the nobles, the chariots, the horses. And
now the shouting grew louder, there was a noise of swift‐hurrying feet, of
confused questions and answers, while above all rose the clear musical
voices of myriads of children crying in the rhythmic measures of the
temple chorals: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed—Blessed is the King
that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
Tor started uncertainly to his feet, a strange, new longing for something
he knew not what stealing into his starved soul. Baladan whined uneasily,
then, running to the street‐corner and back again to his helpless master,
began to utter short excited barks.
The child’s thin fingers trailed the rough wall askingly; his timid feet
crept nearer to the jubilant procession. “Hosanna—Hosanna to the King!
Hosanna to the Son of David!” He had reached the open square, and, fearing
to go further, he sank down once more in the shelter of a friendly column,
hot tears stealing from his darkened eyes. “Oh, Baladan,” he moaned, “if I
could only see!”
And now the sweet chanting was growing momently fainter. Tor followed the
procession in fancy. It was moving toward the temple, he knew,—that great
pile of stone and marble and gold which towered above the tumultuous
streets of Jerusalem like the glistening palace of a dream. Now it had
passed into the outer courts, and a great and singular silence fell upon
the city.
It was broken after what seemed hours of waiting by light and rapid
footfalls. “Tor,” cried an eager, breathless voice. “Where art thou?—Tor!”
“Here!” answered the blind boy, starting to his feet and straining his
sightless eyes in the direction of the voice. “Here am I. What wilt thou,
Dan?” For he knew the voice and the step of his friend.
“I have come to fetch thee to the temple,” breathed the boy excitedly.
“Thou must come quickly, before the King has gone away to his palace.”
“Did the King scatter coins among the crowd?” asked Tor eagerly. “Are the
soldiers giving bread and alms to the people, as when Pilate came to
Jerusalem?”
“Nay, the man is like no other great one who ever came to Jerusalem,”
answered Dan wonderingly. “He is verily a King though. Didst thou not hear
the people shouting, ‘Blessed is the King that cometh!’ Hark you, the man
is a strange King. He wears no crown, no jewels; he hath no soldiers, no
money for the people. He came into the city riding on the colt of an ass;
but the people cast even their garments upon the earth before him. I saw
it, and shouted with the rest; and because I had no coat, I cut a green
branch from a tree and cast it beneath the feet of his beast. So also did
many others, when they saw what I had done. They cut palm‐branches, olive‐
branches, and acacias from fields and gardens all along the way; ’twas a
great sight! The big turbans came out in a rage to shut our mouths, but
for once they could not. Come,—thou must come!”
“Why should I come?” said Tor mournfully. “I am only a beggar—and blind.”
“But thou shalt have thine eyes again, lad,” cried Dan exultantly. “The
King is even now laying his hands upon the blind, the lame, and palsied,
and they see and leap and walk forthwith. I myself have looked upon it. I
will fetch thee to him.”
“But the King would not touch me—a beggar, and unclean,” wailed Tor. “Look
you, I am no better than Baladan, and the Jews hate and despise all dogs.
He would spurn me—spit upon me. Nay, I will not go.”
[Illustration: “‘I HAVE SAID IT. I WILL TAKE THEE TO THE KING.’”]
Dan laid violent hands upon the blind boy. “Thou shalt go with me,” he
said loudly. “I have said it. I will take thee to the King, then if he
spurn thee—spit upon thee—Nay, but he will not spurn thee; I saw him, and
I say that he will not. But if he heal thee not, what then? I will bring
thee again to this place. There shall no harm befall thee.”
The two boys made their way to the temple enclosure, slipping easily among
the excited multitudes, unnoticed even as the little brown sparrows which
flit among the great feet of horses in a crowded thoroughfare. And when
they had come to the place where Jesus was, they found already gathered
great numbers of blind and lame and withered and palsied, and the court
ringing with the noise of their petitions mingled with the jubilant
thanksgivings of those already healed.
“Here, get thee betwixt these two cripples,” whispered Dan urgently.
“Fasten thou onto this man’s tunic—so! Now go, and come again—seeing. I
will wait for thee by this third pillar. Thou wilt see me.”
The blind boy stumbled on behind his crippled guide, his heart beating so
loud in his ears that he could scarce hear what the Voice said to him. But
the thrilling touch on his sightless eyes sank to the depths of his soul.
He saw—Jesus.
Some one was pushing him from behind; Tor yielded to the pressure without
a word—without a sound. His great eyes, wide and bright, still remained
fastened upon the man who had healed him; but he uttered no sound of
rejoicing.
To Dan, watching beside the third pillar, came a sudden sickening sense of
defeat. He made his way through the crowd and again laid forcible hands
upon Tor.
“Let me alone,” commanded Tor briefly. “I want to look at the man.”
“Canst see him?” inquired Dan incredulously.
Tor made no answer. He was thinking confusedly, vaguely, while one fixed
purpose formed and lifted itself like a great, radiant light in his
darkened understanding. “I shall follow him,” he said aloud, and his thin
face shone strangely. “I shall see him always.”
“Canst thou see, lad?” cried Dan, griping his friend’s shoulders
impatiently, “or art thou crazed as well as blind?”
Tor turned his bright eyes upon the other boy. “Can I see?” he echoed, and
laughed aloud. Then, in a sudden ecstasy, he leaped upon a balustrade and
shouted aloud the word which he had heard afar off in his darkness:
“Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!” Myriads of child voices took
up the cry, and it arose into the blue heavens far—far beyond the smoke of
the sacrificial fires, till it mingled with the songs of angels before the
great white throne. And there was joy in Heaven.