Drifting down a sluggish stream of drowsy after-dinner reflections;
brooding between a bellyful of varied meats, and a brain addled with
wine;--lost to the guiding, dominant idea of the Big Old Men, ranged
one behind the other like a sculptured procession of Assyrian
planet-gods, reaching back to the Beginning of Actualities whence
looked down the Biggest Old Man of All--John Hazel had been recalled
as suddenly as though a 5.9 shell had exploded in the Club courtyard,
and starting to his feet, upset the chair he had sat on; its
fall--with the crash of a breaking glass--making the men at other
tables look round.
"_In peril such as this, and you sit here drowsing!_"
It rang in Hazel's singing ears--the voice of the worshipped woman.
And in a moment the gorged Sybarite was gone. With a curt apology he
resumed the chair the Club attendant had picked up and now replaced
for him. A cool, resourceful man, instinct with force and energy,
sat looking at Essenian across the rose-filled bowl.
"If things are as desperate as you've said, why not have told me?
Let's thrash this out, Essenian Pasha, please!"
"With pleasure, but I must first know how Miss Forbis discovered that
her brother was living. For that she knows, in spite of her very
remarkable reticence,--was plain to me to-day. Was it you who broke
that news to her? ..."
"No ... She told me! ..."
"When? ..."
"This afternoon! ..."
"That is curious! ..." The tone was incredulous.... "Through whom
did she learn the fact?"
"Couldn't enlighten you! ..."
"How long has she known? ..."
"I'm unable to say! ..."
Scrutinising his guest between narrowed eyelids, sifting the
unwilling replies with inquisitorial care, it was patent to Essenian
that John knew, but would not tell. He tried again with no better
result.
"Has Miss Forbis by any unlucky chance, embarked--any other
person--in an effort to rescue her brother from the prison at
Shechem?"
This time John flatly lied:
"No! ..."
"That is well. I should certainly withdraw from the attempt if its
success were to be so handicapped."
"Handicap or none, whether you withdraw or not, I'm entered for the
running!"
"I did not say that I withdrew. On the contrary!"
"Good egg you! Now--"
John poured out a brimming glass of iced mineral water, emptied it,
and finished as he set down the empty glass:
"How far is Shechem from Ismailia?"
"Following the old Pilgrim's route overland--a distance of about 232
English miles. As the crow flies--or as I shall fly"--Essenian
smiled--"about 195 miles...."
"Thanks. When can we start? ..."
"For Shechem? ..."
"For Shechem! ..."
"That depends!" said Essenian with his titter, as John glanced at his
wrist-watch, and then at the elaborate clock,--mounted in captured
German gun-metal--that occupied a bracket over the door of the
dining-room: "That depends on your readiness to accept my conditions!
..."
"'Conditions'? You wait till now to talk of conditions!"
The black eyes were full on Essenian, and they had an angry stare.
"I have purposely waited until now! ..."
The cool, sinister strength that lay behind Essenian's veneer of
finical affectation, came home to Hazel as it had not previously.
This was the Essenian of his French observer-mechanic, the man who
had flown with a broken wing-stay, and a leaking petrol-tank, through
the hellish Austro-German fire in the battle of the Vulkan Pass.
"To push an advantage, consolidate a position and advance to a point
beyond is the science of warfare, and the secret of social influence.
Shall we discuss these conditions in my private room upstairs--or
would you prefer to stay here?"
John, looking round, saw no occupied table in their near vicinity,
and grunted surlily:
"Here's good enough for me! ..."
"My own experience supports your view.... Here is quite good
enough.... For the arrangement of the details of a plot, for the
carrying-out of a delicate and dangerous discussion, the ideal place
is--under the electric lights in the middle of a drawing-room, in the
stalls at a theatre--in the dining-room of a Club or restaurant, or
in the Throne Room at a Royal Levée...."
"Then let us get to biz. You've sprung a surprise on me--at the last
minute...." John added, fixing his heavy black stare on the gleaming
green eyes of the tiger-snake ambushed behind the roses;
"Still,--trot out your conditions! ... How much do you want in cash?
..."
"You are rude, Mr. Hazel.... But the young are always insolent!"
Essenian gave the little bleating laugh. "I want no money of you....
Rather I am what the British merchant would call a warmer man than
you are, in spite of the fact that you inherited from your
grandfather more than three hundred and eighty thousand pounds...."
"Upon conditions, Pasha! upon conditions!" jeered John, grinning over
the table; and roused to sudden venomous wrath, Essenian hissed at
him--leaning over the crimson flower-hedge until his fierce breath
beat on the other's face:
"Do I not know you have accepted those conditions? ... Are you not
living--in some degree--in your grandfather's house as a Jew? ...
Have you not the letter 'J' instead of 'Nil' on your
identification-disc? ... Do you not wear upon a chain about your neck
an enamelled Shield of David? If you die, or are killed--will they
not bury you, if anything be left of you to bury--under the Mogen
David as they bury a Jew?"
The sudden transformation of the languid, smiling oval into a face of
bitter fury evoked a sudden flash of intuition that made Hazel say:
"You seem to know something about it.... Do you happen to be Hebrew
yourself by any chance? ..."
"You are perspicuous." The face was bland again. "I am in fact
descended from an ancient Israelitish family of Elephantis. Not all
the sons of the Tribes followed the Law-giver out of Egypt. Many had
grown to love the land and--its many gods were good to them.... So
they stayed and prayed to the many, instead of following the One...."
"I know. Lots of shirkers stopped behind to make bricks for Pharaoh,
and to-day their descendants are laying sleepers, or digging
trenches, or piling shells for the good old British Government."
"You have perfectly mastered the shibboleth of loyalty, Mr.
Hazel...." The dark lips curled contemptuously. "I congratulate
you! But it is hardly necessary to maintain the pose. There is no
third person present, and I speak as an Asiatic to an Asiatic, as a
Hebrew to a Jew.... For many years I have served the British
Government in our East. These," he touched the rows of ribbons on
his tunic, "testify to the truth of what I say. While Britain's aims
and my own interests are synonymous, I shall continue to serve
her...."
"I should jolly well hope so! It's a cleaner job than plotting for
the Kaiser's dirty pay."
"And a more profitable--for Germany is finished. A burst bladder,
like her sister State with whom she hoped to dominate the world. The
sun of Russia sets in a morass of blood and mire and filth
unutterable.... Britain and France have reached their apogee of
greatness, and must now inevitably decline. The Ottoman Empire
fights to her fall. From the Farther East the Power will arise that
will sweep armies like straws before it--and entangle the necks of
the Northern nations within its weighted throwing-net! But of this
another time. Let us come to my conditions.... Do not interrupt me
until I have said my say! ... I am no Spiritualist--I laugh at those
who bear the name as babes, who try to peep behind the curtain when
the showman is admitted to the courtyard of the _harîm_ to amuse them
with his Shadow Play of the puppet Kharaguz. But in Spiritism I
believe.... Is it not the corner-stone of all revealed religions,
that deep conviction of the existence of a World Unseen! ... I have
myself made efforts--and not all unrewarded! to lift the border of
the Veil that hides the Future--to pierce through the thick mists
that screen the terrors of the Abyss Beyond...."
Artificial as were ordinarily the speaker's tone and bearing, he
spoke now, and looked like a man stirred to the very depths. His
hands vibrated, Hazel thought, like the limbs of a weaving spider.
He breathed quickly,--and a hundred lines, furrows and crowsfeet
previously unnoticed, appeared crossing, re-crossing and puckering
the dark skin of his agitated face....
"Mediums and clairvoyants in the European capitals--have I not seen
and heard them? With what result? This, that a few threads of
truth, undeniable and genuine,--were woven into a tissue of lies!
Seers and Descryers here in our East--with them I have fared better.
They only practise for the Initiate--they scorn to prostitute their
mystic gifts to the uses of the common herd. But by the
greatest--one day you shall meet them!--never have I known done what
you did to-day in my presence.... I mean--when you so marvellously
supplied the context of that cuneiform letter, filling up with a
bridge of Truth the gap between the Known and the Unknown.... How
strange that Eli Hazaël never dreamed of your astonishing faculty!
How wonderful, the combination in your person of the temperament of
the clairvoyant with the physique of the athlete! ..."
"Why keep on calling me a medium and clairvoyant when I'm nothing of
the sort! When I tell you I've never dabbled in that sort of thing.
And what is it--about the letter? Do you mean your translation of
the wedge-writing on the tile in the cabinet, that you reeled off
this afternoon? ..."
The Egyptian's eyes stabbed at John's face out of deep caves that had
suddenly hollowed about them. But he could not doubt the look and
tone of absolute sincerity. He blinked and muttered:
"You do not deceive.... You are speaking truth! ... By the Fire that
burns without Heat or Smoke!--you are an extraordinary young man! ..."
The room had gradually emptied about them: they sat in a desert of
unoccupied tables, from whose cloths soft-footed Levantine and native
waiters were clearing wineglasses, coffee-cups and empty
liqueur-bottles,--decanters, fruit-dishes, plates, and ash-trays full
of burned matches, and the stubs of cigars and cigarettes....
"You have not sought the terrible Gift--yet it has come to you. You
are not of the Baal Obh, who evoke the voices of departed spirits
from corpses and mummies--or of the Yideoni, who utter oracles and
prophesy, by putting into their mouths a dead man's bone. You are a
Teraph--a living Teraph--not the head of a first-born of a
first-born--prepared with salt and spices, having under the tongue a
gold plate on which magical formulas have been engraven.... And it
is she, the handsome Englishwoman, who controls the Man and the
Power! Who says to your mind, as the Chinese fisherman says to the
tamed cormorant: 'Dive!' ... And at the command you vanish into the
Unguessable!--you return, carrying in your pouch a fish from the Sea
on which swims the Serpent that bears up the Throne...."
He drew towards him an unused plate, reached with a shaking hand for
the part-emptied port-bottle, poured a little into a glass, and
dipping in a finger, rapidly traced in thick red wine upon the
shining white porcelain a square, divided into nine smaller by
horizontal and perpendicular lines....
"Dastûr. By your Permission, ye Blessed Ones!" John heard him
mutter, as he scattered a drop or two of wine at each corner of the
figure and filled in the squares with numerals.
"What are you up to, Essenian Pasha?" John leaned across
interestedly. "Looks to me like hanky-panky of the Egyptian Hall
kind."
"It is the Budûh of el Gazzali, a figure much used in our East. Only
instead of letters I am using numerals. Tell me, my friend--for of
course you are acquainted with it--what is the month, and the day,
and the hour, of the English lady's birth? ..."
"Damned if I know! ..."
"How can I believe you do not know, when she is so intimate a friend
that she wears a facsimile of the onyx gem that is on your hand now?
..."
"Why she has it I couldn't say.... It's an heirloom in her
family.... Now cough up your conditions, for I've waited long
enough. What do you want me to do in return for taking me somewhere
near the Prison Camp at Shechem, dropping me and picking me up--at a
given hour--with another man in tow? ..."
"Consent to be again--for me--as you were in the Rue el Farad." The
Egyptian obliterated the figure on the plate with a sweep of three
fingers, pushed the plate contemptuously from him and sat erect in
his chair. "Use your power--pass behind the Veil as you did this
afternoon. Here as you sit at this table--it can easily be managed.
For one half-hour!--" He pointed to the round-faced gun-metal
timepiece solemnly ticking over the dining-room door. "A quarter
even--calculated by that clock...."
"But haven't I already told you that's all tosh about my being
clairvoyant? ... Can't--"
"_Muakkad_! Yes, you have told me, but I have eyes and ears....
Think, O man! ..." Both supple hands darted at John over the
roses.... "Lord of the Daystar! cannot you understand? Would it be
no help to the success of this expedition if I were able to send you
in advance to the Camp at Shechem? A spy no sentry can arrest--no
walls keep out, no bullet silence.... Who hears--sees all and
remains invisible as the Afrit who flies by noonday, or the Angel who
witnesses sin!"
"But you.... Where do you come in? What's your particular little
stunt, Essenian Pasha?" The voice was heavily, oppressively
surcharged with suspicion and doubt....
"I will tell you, you who suspect one who has served you and eaten
and drunk with you. This is the year of Fate for me, this of the
Hejira 1335--by the Kalendars of the Ifranjis 1917. This coming
First of Safar--their November Sixteenth--is the beginning of the
month of my dread.... All may yet be well with me--for who knows his
danger is armed against it. And to have lived as I have is to have
learned to value Life! Only a few years more to wait until great
chemists have grown wiser.... A little, little span of years,--and
Man, created but to perish, will have done away with Sickness and
abolished Old Age,--and finally conquered the Enemy, Death....
Listen! ... I cannot be killed whilst flying--the Signs are all
against it. But in a year that has its birth in el Dali and el
Jadi--in a month that has the signs Akrab, and of the planets
Mirih,--I am in danger from a man and a woman. Peril had threatened
me the other day, when I dropped down in the midst of your lines--and
its source had been removed and my breast was broadened.... But the
Shadow still broods--the Finger points--and I must know who these Two
are--the people who menace me!"
"What happened before you landed in our lines, Essenian Pasha?"
John's interest had been prodded into life by the previous reference.
"Three days ago--or about--when the Turkish Anti-Aircraft guns
peppered you over--Hebron, wasn't it?--and Captain Usborn was
killed.... You see, I've been wanting to ask you about that poor
bloke. How did he get his gruel? ..."
"How?" The crouching khaki figure sat erect and the snaky eyes
glittered angrily. "You saw the corpse.... You handled it. A
shrapnel bullet killed him. And it was not at Hebron it
happened,--but at Shechem."
"That's odd! ... You said Shechem at first.... And--it wasn't a
shrapper! ..."
"What do you mean? ..." The voice was a snarl.
"Well, you see, I've got the bullet...."
"Where? ..."
"Here.... In my pocket.... And--the queer thing is--it's a
revolver-bullet. Not a German--it isn't nickel-coated. Might have
come from an English Webley of ordinary Army size."
"Show it me!"
John produced and handed over the little blunted cone of metal. The
deadly cold of the dry finger-tips that touched his in taking it
reminded him uncomfortably of the contact of a snake. He watched as
they turned the bullet about, and then held out his hand for it.
"You want this back again?" the harsh voice asked.
"Rather, if you don't mind!--" John grinned. "It's my latest
mascot." He took back the bullet, avoiding the other's touch, and
dropped it in his pocket again.
"How did you get it?" Avidly the sharp glance had followed the
action. "How can you be certain--that it is the bullet that killed
the man?"
"I helped to lift--the body--out of the observer's cockpit, and mine
was the head end...."
"_Th' h h!_ ..."
It was a sound like the hiss of a snake, betraying desperate interest.
"He--Usborn--had been shot through the head.... There was a scorch
on the left temple. On the right--a clot of brains and blood.
And--when I took hold of his head the bullet came away with that, and
dropped into my hand. That's curious, now I come to think of it ..."
"What is curious?"
"That burn on his left temple...."
"Perhaps the bullet was incendiary. The Germans use such things."
"You forget! I've got it--and it isn't!"
"Ah!" The voice had recovered its suavity. "I am now able to
account for its being a revolver-bullet. There were German officers
on the defence-works at Shechem--that they have strengthened since
the evacuation of Beersheba. And as they directed the gunners--we
circling the while and reconnoitring--Usborn also photographing--they
potted at us with their revolvers now and then...."
"How high were you flying?"
"A mile. I remember I looked at the indicator the moment before--it
happened."
"You're kidding, Essenian Pasha.... You know lots better than I do
that the range of a revolver taking a bullet of this calibre would be
barely 1,550 yards...."
"_Wannebi!_" Foam stood on the writhing lips, and the veins on the
back of the clenched hand that shook at John across the roses stood
out against the bronze skin like knotted blue cords. "By the
Prophet! though I am no son of his,--you, Hazel, tax my patience....
Usborn is dead, and buried two marches from Sheria. Let us discuss
the cause of his death when we have time to lose. Aid me to gain
enlightenment as only you can aid me!--and I help you to rescue this
Christian priest--this tonsured Franghi dervish--from the barbed-wire
cage at the Prison Camp of Shechem. Is it agreed? Speak, for
suspense devours my liver!"
"All right." John glanced round at the clock over the door of the
dining-room. "Nine-fifteen. I'm at your disposal till the long hand
marks the half-past."
"Give me time to get something I shall need from my room, and swallow
a draught of stimulant." Essenian beckoned one of the Levantine
waiters, gave a rapid order in his fluent French and clapped his
hands for his own man.
"_Saiyad_, I am here!" The Mohammedan body-servant who had waited,
erect and immovable in the background appeared at his master's elbow.
"What does my lord command?"
"Go to the room where I sleep, and bring me the velvet case from the
table at my bedside."
"My lord has said," the man quavered, paling under his
coffee-coloured skin, "that the low-born may not lay a hand upon the
Eye of Radiance, but at peril of blasting as by fire from the skies!"
"Unless thou art commanded. Go, and return in safety!"
The servant vanished and Essenian commented, with his little
contemptuous shrug:
"Even as the beasts are the rough and unlettered. What says Shaikh
Saadi in _The Garden of Roses_? I would quote the original,--but it
may be you do not know Arabic sufficiently well to appreciate the
pun."
"Some play upon _wahish_ and _wahsh_, I suppose?" Hazel suggested,
unexpectedly, as the servants stripped the table and fenced it round
with screens. "What's your poison this time? Something extra
special?" he inquired, as Essenian, with a shaking hand, drew his
little case of medicines again from his pocket and half-filled a
liqueur-glass from another of the vials it held.
"Something I seldom need to take, my King of Damascus. Unless after
severe physical exertion,--or unusual mental strain. To your health!
_Sirrak!_"
He swallowed the colourless, scentless contents of the liqueur-glass;
drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders,--and under the surprised
stare of John, became the man he had been....
"That is good! Now we get to what you call 'biz.' ..." He was
smiling again suavely as he took a shabby green velvet case from the
willing hands of his servant, banished the man beyond the enclosure
of the screens with a look and a brief order couched in the
vernacular,--and placed the case carefully on the cleared table-cloth
before his guest.
"Fine stone! What is it?" John asked curiously.
"A beryl, merely. Do not touch it with your finger lest the contact
dim its brightness."
Essenian had opened the case out flat upon the smooth white linen
surface, disclosing a sphere of radiance, resting on the slender base
of a little metal stand.
"Sit easily in your chair," he went on; "rest your hands on either
side of it.... Ah, I had forgotten! Where are those _mallâhe_?" He
took a pile of common native glass salt-cellars from a corner of the
table, where a demure-faced Levantine waiter had just placed them.
"Raise yourself on the chair a little. So! Now sit down again."
John complied, finding the seat rather higher than it had been
before. "Now I place one of the _mallâhe_ under each leg of the
table...." The table kicked four times gently. "Now the
Earth-currents cannot deviate astral--or Other Influences--and the
table is not too low. You are comfortable?"
"Fairly cushy, thanks! ..."
Dentists had asked John a similar question.
"You are not nervous, Mr. Hazel? ..."
"Why on earth should I be? ..."
"There is no reason. Look at the beryl, and do not remove your eyes."
"All right, I'm on! ... Mind! From the word 'Go!' fifteen minutes."
"Fifteen minutes.... Look steadily in the beryl. Now give the word!"
"Go! ..."
* * * * * * *
Resting a hand lightly on the table, on each side of the little
cup-topped pedestal supporting the gleaming, spherical stone, John
leaned forwards, steadily looking in it,--and the fold between his
beetling eyebrows smoothed, and the spark of excitement that had
kindled in his black eyes slowly smouldered out....
He had gone much further than he meant to have done, but there had
been no help for it. Katharine's desperate need of help, the more
desperate need of Julian, had thrust him over the edge of this pit
the astute Egyptian had dug. But whether Essenian were a wizard or a
charlatan--and at moments John was inclined to the wizard idea--he
had struck a bargain with the man, and he meant to stick to it. So
he held himself motionless, breathing easily, letting his mind range
whither it would, as he stared in the depths of the stone....
He had thought it shallow, and it was unfathomably deep; clear, and
it was opaquely green as sea-water.... And yet translucent as
sea-water can be,--with smooth swirls and rounded folds below the
jewelled surface--suggesting veils wrapped on veils, hiding some
mystery....
He checked an inclination to yawn. He was feeling sleepy and stoggy.
To keep awake he clung to the details of a certain September evening
in 1914. News had come that day to the office of the death of young
Dannahill,--and he, John, had returned by taxi to the family
roof-tree, to break to his mother and his brother Maurice--Maurice
who was now piloting a Handley-Page bomb-carrier 'plane on the
Western Front--the news that he, J.B.H.,--the John of the "Tubs" Club
in Werkeley Street, the John who was a votary of "Tango" and
Progressive Bridge; who talked knowingly of Russian Ballet, Musical
Comedy and smart Revues; the John whose cherished ambition was to
make a pile big enough to buy Covent Garden and turn it into a
Pleasure City to be run on American lines--was going to the Front.
He--the said J.B.H., had dined, and was comfortably full, after the
lean weeks of bully beef and rubber-tough Palestine mutton.... And
he had had a deuce of a lot of hock, of Heidseick Dry Monopole, and
three, or was it five Benedictines with coffee, to take away the
bitterness of that over-lauded Arab stuff....
Enough, perhaps, to make an ordinary man squiffy, but J.B. Hazel was
no ordinary man.... In fact, going by what Essenian Pasha said,--was
that Essenian Pasha talking? ... Or whose was that voice, mumbling,
mumbling.... Not in Arabic, of which John had a smattering, or in
Hebrew--he knew a little Hebrew--
In whatever language the voice was talking it was trying to push John
over the brink of Things Normal, into the abyss of Things that are
Not.
The launch of a battleship at Portsmouth Dockyard, witnessed years
previously, now came vividly back to the protagonist; a picture
thrown by the passing moment upon the screen of Memory. As Royalty
with mallet and chisel had severed the cord supporting the
bow--weights, whose fall knocked away the last dog-shores propping
the Dreadnaught, her vast steel hull had shuddered visibly.... The
thin wind keening through her glassless upper port holes and along
her vast unfitted decks--gaily beflagged, and speckled with
adventurous human pigmies--had sounded as though she wept.... Then a
hand had touched an electric stud--a bottle in a ribboned net had
crashed against the cliff-like bows of grey-painted steel, figured
with Roman numerals--and the giant, vibrating from stem to stern, had
begun to slide down the well-greased slipway,--towards the
oily-looking expanse of chill green water, speckled with floating
chips and orange-peel--smoking with little drab-white curls of clammy
Solent fog....
And John Hazel was the ship ... the sinister, relentless will that
thrust him down must be resisted.... He would not go! ... Had he not
promised somebody called Katharine...
Who was Katharine? ... He was rushing to the dreadful brink....
Without the anticipated shock or jar, he glided smoothly over....
* * * * * * *
"The big Inglizi soldier is very drunk," a Levantine waiter--one of a
silent group gathered near the dining-room door, whispered to a
comrade behind the shoulder of Essenian's Mohammedan body-servant.
"Hark, how he snores behind the screens!"
"_I_ do not think the _tomi_ drunk," whispered a countryman of the
Levantine's, speaking the same bastard Turkish-Egyptian dialect.
"For when the Effendim called for sealing-wax I peeped between the
screens, slily, and the Inglizi seemed to me more like one drugged
with the smoke of henbane sprinkled on the embers of a charcoal
fire.... Thus did he sit, with open eyes, staring into that thing
that shines so.... And--and the eyes were empty as the eyes of a
dead man--it was not good to look in them!"
"O son of a Maghribi dog! What is that to thee?" Essenian's
Mohammedan body-servant, who had overheard, hissed fiercely at the
offender. "Since when hast thou found it good for thee or thy like
to speak of the doings in this house! My lord and his guest confer
together upon matters too high for thee. What has it to do with thee
if they practise the _es Semiya?_ Do not persons of known probity
work magic both White and Black--and cast nativities! Cudgel thy
stupid wits and tell me how long since thou didst stop the clock
there? ... 'An hour-and-a-half....' Watch now for the signal! ...
When my lord's hand flickers between the screens, the weight is to be
set a-wagging.... Have the _ôtomôbilyâ_ ready at the door--the
Effendim travels with the Englishman this night to Ismailia--I, Yakub
Ali, sitting in front with the _wûgâkgi_ who drives,--running on the
solid earth made by Allah for the sons of Adam--instead of flying in
the air like a Jinni of the Jann."
_Book the Fourth:_ THE PASSING
I
In the Central Range of Western Palestine is an ancient Samaritan
township, the Shechem of the Patriarchs. High set above shore-level,
sheltered by mighty mountains on the North, East and South, looking
down a wady beaten in by-gone days by the hoofs of the cavalry of
Omri,--rutted by the silver and ivory chariot-wheels of King Ahab and
Queen Jezebel,--across low, undulant hill-ranges, to the twenty-mile
distant sea.
High set above sea-level, it lies on the floor of a long, fish-shaped
valley, between two towering limestone mountains. Distant a
mile-and-a-half at their summits, their bases nearly meet. One is
Ebal, the other Gerizim. They are the mounts by which the Chosen
stood to receive blessings and cursings.
The Samaritan Temple, that place of sinister mysteries, once stood
where are now great terebinth-trees, shading the ruins of an ancient
fortress upon Mount Gerizim. The rock of their Place of Sacrifice
shows its channelled surface above ground. To-day, a man standing
with the wind at his back, upon the crown of Ebal or Gerizim and
speaking loudly, would be heard at the summit of the opposite Mount,
and in the streets of the town....
The town, upon which the towering limestone heads of Ebal and Gerizim
and their fellows look down sternly, was in its heyday a place of
wealth, where luxury and lust ran riot, and men and women walked in
purple robes, or were carried in ivory litters; crowned with high
jewelled head-dresses, dust of gold powder lying thick in the spiral
curls of their jet black beards, and the frizzled waves or towering
coils of richly-luxuriant hair. Now their ancient place of abiding
is set about with ruinous stone mansions, girt with groves of waving
palms, fig-trees, olives and mulberries. Mean dwellings crowd on
narrow vaulted streets, under whose pavement you can hear the water
rushing. For there is no lack of water in Shechem. The crowded mud
Barracks behind the bazar has a well of pure water in its courtyard.
So cheap is the element that no one grudges this solace to the
prisoners of War.
Before the War the chief seat of the Turkish administration in
Palestine, the old town boasted a population of some 25,000 souls.
Thinned by conscription of the younger Jews, Samaritans, Arabs and
native Syrian Christians, it might have contained some fifteen
thousand, counting the garrison of Turkish infantry officered by
monocled and braceleted Germans,--when the fortified area of
Beersheba fell to the strategy of Allenby, and the routed left wing
of the Fourth Army Corps of Djemal Pasha, with the formidable
motor-driven siege-guns from the boasted stronghold fell back in rout
and confusion upon the area of Shechem.
Some directing Teutonic mind ordained, weeks previous to the
evacuation, that the Allied prisoners from the camps of Beersheba and
its vicinity, packed on Railway cattle-trucks or Army
motor-lorries,--should be transferred by railway to the town of
Shechem. It was to be converted by German gold, forced labour and
modern resources, into a stronghold of Ottoman power, against which
the expeditionary army of Britain should expend itself in vain....
There are already British War prisoners in the mud-walled Barracks at
Shechem, built round the courtyard containing the well. When on
these hunger-gnawed, vermin-ridden men rolls the flood of human
wretchedness from the camps of Beersheba and its neighbourhood,--they
are to learn the bitter truth that there are grades in Misery.
For a squat, sandy, pale-eyed Lieutenant-General of Turkish
gendarmerie, who acted as Commandant of the Beersheba prison-camps,
now supersedes the tyrant who has ruled at Shechem. The inmates of
the prisons there have been robbed, stripped, and beaten. They have
slept in tattered blankets upon mud or stone floors,--lived on a
daily quarter of a coarse brown loaf per soul--and a handful of beans
in oil.... They have undergone insult, and occasionally kicks and
blows, but Home parcels have occasionally reached them, and though
pinched, they were not famished.... Now the parcels are looted or
their contents rendered uneatable.... A loaf is shared amongst
twenty men, the pannikin of boiled beans yields each a bare spoonful.
Driven out at dawn by Turks with loaded hide-whips, to dig trenches
south and east of the old fortifications,--make emplacements for
Austro-German artillery, and lay down a system of interchangeable
rails for the Krupp motor-guns,--they are herded back at night to the
filthy pens where they are packed so closely that they cannot lie
down to sleep without lying on each other. Whence in the mornings
men suffocated by the press of the bodies of their comrades are taken
out dead....
These victims belong to the rank and file. Some officers are
quartered in the old stone-built prison. Yet others live in Turkish
Army tents in a barbed-wire enclosure at the eastern end of the town.
A ramshackle hut serves as their mess, when they have anything to
mess on. But they are not too crowded for decency, and sickness
spares them. Presently the officers are drafted away, four only
remaining,--and the congestion at the mud-built Barracks is somewhat
relieved. But Hunger, Overcrowding and Dirt have bred Dysentery,
septic skin-eruptions and Typhus Fever, and these claim their victims
by the score.
The Hospital near the new Turkish Barracks by the Arsenal, staffed by
the German Red Cross and the nurses and orderlies of the Red
Crescent,--being crowded with Turkish and German wounded--cannot
admit more than a few of the gravest cases of dysentery. The typhus
patients are removed to the Hospital under the auspices of the
Established Church of England Missionary Society, and
another,--devotedly tended by the Catholic Sisters of the Cross.
Helpers come from the Mission House of the Latin Patriarchate, who
unweariedly give their services wherever there is need.... But
desperate indeed would be the plight of the War prisoners--save that
through the blizzard of misery raging through the mud Barracks--the
courage and charity of one man shine like a steadfast star....
The man is a Catholic chaplain who has served with the Expeditionary
Forces at Gallipoli; has been taken prisoner and kept for awhile in
Hospital at Constantinople; has been drafted to Smyrna, and later, by
such haphazard chance as governs the lives of prisoners, has been
shifted to Beersheba, and thence to Shechem.
Unweariedly he alleviates, whilst sharing, the common misery.
Shaking with fever, hunger-bitten to the bone, ragged as any
scarecrow, red-eyed with sleeplessness, he moves from room to room
distributing such poor comforts as are obtainable. Helping the
convalescent, ministering to the sick, dispensing the Sacraments of
the Mother Church to the Catholic dying--cheering those of other
creeds with the words that are of God....
On a day in November, half-an-hour later than the morning prayer-call
from the minaret of the Great Mosque that was once a Church of the
Canons of the Holy Sepulchre--you are to see Father Julian Forbis
going his daily round.... The mud-walled courtyard is closed in on
three sides by the mud-built Barracks, and on the fourth by a high
wall topped by rusty iron spikes--a wall in which there is an archway
closed by a double gate, flanked on either side by guard-rooms. Over
the gateway is the office of the Turkish Commandant.
To-day the courtyard of the mud-built Barracks is full of sunshine
and packed with prisoners. Lying, squatting or standing, the
majority are squalid spectres on whose gaunt frames their foul and
tattered clothing hangs baggily, though some are bloated like the
corpses of men who have been long drowned. Though the assemblage is
sprinkled with Roumanians, Syrians, Jews, Armenians and Arabs,--these
last having a dungeon to themselves, of unutterable filthiness, the
bulk are of the rank and file of Britain's Crusading Forces.
Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, and British Territorials....
Actors, clerks, printers, shopwalkers and jockeys; farm-labourers,
electricians, gardeners, photographers, bakers, University
students,--representatives of every class and calling. One and all
strung to endurance by the spirit that makes heroes of ordinary
men....
The shadows of Ebal and Gerizim as yet fall westward. Their towering
summits and those of the lesser mountains, and the minarets of the
Great and the two smaller mosques look down into the dirty mud-walled
court, baking in the rays of the early sun, though the November
nights are chilly. Every stench the prison fosters seems intensified
by the heat. The loud buzzing of millions of flies mingles in a
bagpipe-drone with the noise of many voices, Eastern and
European,--talking in half-a-dozen languages and a hundred
dialects--and the hubbub has for its accompaniment the thudding of
distant guns. From the southwest, where the 54th British Division is
engaged with the enemy between the sea and Gaza. Nearer South, where
a bitter struggle is being waged by British Cavalry, armoured cars,
and the bombers and machine-gunners of the Royal Flying Corps, for
the possession of Junction Station--the next point after the fall of
Gaza, of tactical importance in Palestine. From the hills towards
Hebron those enemy forces, who have previously retreated to this
vantage, have descended into the Coastal Plain, to relieve the
pressure and stiffen the resistance of their comrades by
demonstrating a counter-attack. For if Junction Station, the key of
the northern railway-system, with its vast dumps of rolling-stock,
supplies, War-material and its camps of prisoners, shall fall into
the hands of the British--Jerusalem will be cut off from
communication save by Wireless with Turkey and Germany....
Day wears apace.... The winged hordes of Baal Zebub, like the humans
whom they feast on, are making the most of the sunshine. Fat white
maggots that will be flies presently,--and vermin still more
loathsome--crawl in the dirty straw on which the prisoners are
squatting or lying. Deep in the well the clear water shines like a
huge blue eye, reflecting the shadowless heavens above.
A man hanging over, seems to stare in the water, apparently
sheltering his eyes with both hands from the glare. He has the
crowned wings of the R.F.C. on the shoulder of his ragged shirt of
khaki flannel, and the clear water of the brimming well reflects the
three chevrons and crown of a Flight Sergeant, tacked upon its
tattered sleeve. Also the glittering lenses of a small pair of
folding binoculars, cunningly concealed by the curve of their owner's
hands.
"What be 'ee lookin' vor, Tom?" cautiously whispers a freckled
trooper of Devon Yeomanry, digging a painfully sharp elbow in the
airman's lean ribs.
Barney Mossam takes it on himself to answer,--being the accredited
wit and jester of the knot gathered about the well. He is a little,
broad-shouldered, bow-legged London Territorial, with a nose that has
suffered in bouts of fisticuffs; a carroty head, a broad humorous
grin, and a squint that points a joke. He speaks with the thick
catarrhal snuffle of the East End. Even in khaki his type proclaims
him of the Race of Costermongers.... Covent Garden Market is thick
with Barneys, all alike as peas from the pod....
"Ticklebats, my flash top," says Barney winking, "kind you used to
ketch a while back, wiv' a bottle tied on a string." He adds in a
thick whisper directed at the ear of the absorbed Flight Sergeant,
"Wot d'yer pipe, old Sky-gazer? Thinkin' it's abaht time we 'ad
another look-in from ours affectionately the Two-Faced Nightingale?"
"Ay. Unless he happened to come in the night!" The cautious whisper
of the reply only just reaches the ears for which it is intended....
"I 'eard a 'plane go singin' over 'ere 'bout twelve-thirty by my gold
ticker," says Barney. "But she was one of them there seaplanes wiv'
little canoes instid o' wheels. There ain't so many 'Un 'planes
abaht as there used to!--an' Turkey 'planes is gittin' as rare as--as
glass in the Strand an' Covent Garden Market--after the bloomin'
Zepps and Super Goths 'as paid the usual mornin' call...." His thick
whisper is barely audible even to the other: "Reckon that's why it
pays Old Two-Face to play the double game. Wiv' a patent trick
lever-switch--Gorblime 'im!--but 'e's clever! to cover the Union
Jacks on 'is under-wings with Red Crescents when 'e tips the stud....
'Wish _I_ 'ad a Turk face to pull over my reel one! Wouldn't take me
long to 'op out of 'ere! Wonder if 'e 'as the syme dodge fitted on
'is top wings? Give one o' my last three fags--I would!--to find out
'oo 'e is!"
"He's not an Englishman, thank God! He's pretty nearly a black one.
Dark as a Gyppo--or a Hindu. The other was white. Inside as well as
out. _That's_ why he was murdered!" returns the Flight Sergeant in
his wary whisper, without lowering his hands....
"Some blokes gits all the fun. 'Ow come you to see it, Sergeant?"
For once the Cockney's jest provokes no appreciative smile. The thin
hands sheltering the prized binoculars shake.... The whispering
voice shakes also--and its hurried sentences are punctuated by the
thudding of those distant guns....
"I've told you.... It's just a week since.... I was up in our room
there," the speaker contemptuously jerks his ear towards an upper
window of one of the Barrack buildings--"looking through this little
Zeiss glass that magnifies by 20. (I've told you how I took it off a
dead German airman at Huy.) ... And the Two-Faced
Nightingale--hovering not more than four hundred feet above the
Square in front of the big Khan,--was picking the place, damn him!
where he'd settled to drop his despatch-bag. He switched his Red
Crescents on over the Union Jacks--and the stunt brought the usual
roar of laughter from the people. Every one was out to stare,--the
streets as far as I could see, were packed, as well as the roofs....
Then he dropped his bag, plumb for the square,--swung round and
steered Southward. And,--keeping the glasses focussed on them, I saw
his white observer stand up, lean forward and touch him on the back.
He looked round and his white teeth flashed in his face sort of
spitefully.... The other fellow was handing him out cold truth in
ladlefuls, shaking his fist and raving like mad. Then--it happened
before you could wipe an eye! He--the pilot--cut out his
engine--turned round, and I caught the glitter of a revolver in his
hand. Then came the flash and the crack. And the white man buckled
up in the bottom of his cockpit--and the Two-Faced Nightingale
switched on and flew away South. And nothing was left on the blue
sky but a puff of brown cordite."
"The murderin' dawg!" Barney carefully moves from the coping-stone
of the well a burnt match, and a wisp of straw, that some eddying
draught of the hot breeze might carry into the water. "No fear of
'im gittin' copped. This 'ere queer go wot we calls Life's more on
the lines of a Drury Lyne Autumn Show than I twigged when I rallied
up 'long o' my pals on Fust Nights outside the good old Gallery
Entrance. On'y it's turned the wrong w'y raound. Vice gits all the
limes from both wings, an' all the clappin' from the Pit an' Gallery.
An' Virtue kips on the bare boards of a stinkin' Turkish
barrack-room, or 'unkers in the stinkin' mud, and 'unts things wot
'ops and crawls." He goes on, talking to himself, for the airman,
staring in the reflected patch of sky is suddenly absorbed to
deafness. "S'trewth! Wherever it does pay--off of the boards of a
Theayter--the 'Eroic Line don't go for nuts--not 'ere in Palestine!"
"Ye are richt! It pays nae better than it paid twa thousan' years
agone. But which is it better to be on--the de'il's side--or the
Lord's? I wuss to Him some voice frae Heaven wad speyk an' answer
me! ..."
The utterance--unmistakably Scotch--breaks in several feet above the
level of Barney's monologue. He looks up at a tall, gaunt,
red-haired Scot in the Border bonnet and ragged khaki kilt, and
badges of the Tweedburgh Regiment, and says with his characteristic
wink:
"'Ullo, Corp'ral Govan! Thet you? ..."
"Nae ither that I ken...." He is quite young, but he moves like an
old man, as he lets his long length slowly down on the mud beside the
Cockney, unheeding the invitation to take a straw, and hugs his hairy
knees. "Man! I wad gie the twa dirrty Turkish notes in ma pooch,
an' a guid British florin to the back o' them, to be anither chap
than Alec Govan the day. For I have seen what a man may scarce see,
an' keep his brain frae madness--ay! an' his tongue from cryin' oot
on God!" He rocks himself in silence, then says with a stifled
groan: "Man! dinna gawp at me. Do ye no' ken I hae been wi'
Ullathorne? ..."
"Ullathorne. That's your chum, ain't 'e? Wot abaht 'im?"
"Hae ye no' heird?" The long Scot stares at the Cockney wonderingly.
"Nuffin' but that 'e didn't come back last night wiv the
workin'-party. 'As 'e turned up?"
"Ay. They pitched him back intil oor room last nicht--a' the green
rods had left o' him. Weel I kenned they would do their warst once
they got their chance." There is foam on the livid lips. "They
drove him oot wi' the rest o' us to the Defence Warks yesterday
mornin', though he had the fever on him sair, an' couldna' stand
alane.... Weel, weel I wat why!" He is shaking as though with ague.
"An' he staggered an' reeled, an' knocked up against ane o' the
sentries--an' Hamid Bey was standing by wi' some of his gang o'
police.... By the grin on the pasty face of him, ye could tell he
was oot for murder. An' he ordered Ullathorne a hundred strokes for
brutally attackin' the man. They held us up an' made us watch whiles
they laid on to him. O Christ Jesus! ... First on the feet,
twenty-five strokes--then the back an' belly an' breist.... An' when
he fainted an' lay for dead, they drove us oot wi' their whips an'
left him lyin'; an' when we came back for the nicht-shift he was gane
awa' from there.... In the mirk o' the nicht, as I hae said, they
flung him in amang us,--nakit as a new-born wean--an' his raw flesh
hangin' in strips. As though the butcher had stairted to collop
him--an' changed his min' aboot it. A braw sicht for the mither that
bore him, an' the lass he should hae wed!"
"Gorblime the bloody beasts!" says Barney, gulping. His coarse hand
touches the thin arm in the tattered sleeve with the Corporal's
stripes, and does it gently too. "Will Ullathorne live? They don't
often live--our own chaps--do 'em?--though Turks seems some'ow
diff'rent."
"He was deein' when they broucht him back, puir lad! I hae left him
barely breathin'.... Father Forbis is wi' him noo.... Ullathorne is
nae no Catholic, but the Father has the Gift o' the Word. Sune--sune
he will be dead, my chum that I made at Gallipoli, the last o' the
auld company left aiblins mysel'!"
No tears come to the burning grey eyes that stare into vacancy.
"A' nicht I held him i' my airms! His bluid is wet upo' me. An' I
made a sang to sooth to him--we Govans aye had the bard's gift, they
say, in the braw auld days. And when he is dead--for I promised
him!--the haill Barracks shall hear't. The bonny sang o' the
Christian men killed by the Turkish hound!"
"Look wide O! One o' them Mo'ammedan guards 'as got 'is ugly eye on
you," urges Barney, apprehensive that the recklessness of grief may
bring Govan the fate of his friend. "While there's life there's
'ope! ... Pre'aps Ullathorne might git round yit!"
But Govan shakes his haggard head:
"I doot--I doot it sairly. But what can be done Father Forbis will
dae. He promised me he wouldna leave him as lang as there was breith
i' him. An' Forbis aye keeps his word. Here he comes! Luik at's
face..... Ullathorne has passed to his Maker!"
The Scot starts to his naked feet, and Barney Mossam sits up and
salutes, as through an archway on the ground-floor of the sordid
block of buildings opposite comes the figure of a tall, emaciated
man, followed by a burly, slovenly Turkish soldier and a grotesque,
hunchbacked shape,--recognisable only by the voluminous folds of the
coarse biscuit-coloured veil that covers its head, and falls to the
hem of its soiled blue cotton robe--as a Syrian peasant woman.
"Good morning, Mossam!" The intonations of the priest's voice, and
the smile that curves the mouth hidden by the reddish-golden beard,
and lights the sunken blue eyes, are very like Katharine's.... "You
are up and about again! ..."
"Couldn't lay up in the lap o' luxury no longer, Father!" drolls the
indomitable jester. "A man in my condition 'as to 'ave exercise to
sweat the suet off 'is bones."
The bones show as though the tattered uniform hung on clothes-props.
The priest glances at them compassionately, and then with gentle
friendliness at the haggard faces that turn to him, as he picks his
way delicately between the prone and squatting men.
"Move!" says the Turkish military guard in the greenish-yellow khaki
served out to the Ottoman forces in the War with Serbia, a huge
_posta_ whose fez sits on the extreme summit of his pointed head like
the red-paper-cap on a bottle of liquorice-powder,--who wears good
boots stripped from a British prisoner: and who speaks a bastard
mixture of bad Turkish and worse Arabic: "_Haide git_! Make way for
the _kassis_ and the woman! _Imshi_! Must ye be as the beasts?"
For a hyæna-like yell of joy has greeted the discovery that there are
oranges in one, and almonds and walnuts in the other, of two heavy
palm-fibre baskets carried by the misshapen, limping being who
follows behind the priest. The wretched creature is one of those
nondescript hangers-on that in the negligent East haunt such places
of misery as the mud Barrack-prison,--gaining a meagre subsistence by
washing the prisoners' tattered linen, running errands to the
_bâzâr_,--boiling broth or carrying water for the sick and
convalescent, and, when the guards can be bribed into
acquiescence--washing and laying out the bodies of the dead.
Bundled in her soiled rags--shrouded in the voluminous veil that
hides a face so disfigured by accident or disease, that no European
who has glimpsed can think of it without a shudder, and Orientals
express their abhorrence by spitting on the ground--the Mother of
Ugliness--thus nicknamed by some coarse wit among her
countrymen--passes without insult, ill-usage or outrage, where no
other of her sex, unprotected by deformity and hideousness, could
have escaped....
"Orangees. Glory be to God!--an' where did yer Reverence git thim?"
asks the owner of the unmistakably Irish voice, stretching gaunt
hands, shaking with fever, for one of the luscious golden globes.
"A friend brought them," briefly answers the priest, as he
distributes the fruit and nuts generously on all sides.
"God bless the friend! ... An' that's yourself, I'm thinkin'," grunts
the Irishman, driving his teeth deep into the juicy fruit.
"No, Sullivan, it was not I. You see the giver...."
"The Mother av' Ugliness, bedad! More power to her!" splutters
Sullivan, as the priest points to the crooked shape swathed in its
sordid veils.
"She has earned a prettier name here among us," says Father Forbis,
looking round at the faces,--pinched and white, or livid, or
fever-flushed, that crowd about him, and speaking with mild
authority. "She shall be called henceforth The Mother of
Kindness...."
He turns to the shrinking creature at his heels and repeats it in
Arabic.
"Sidi!" the woman implores in muffled tones, trembling so that the
folds of her coarse veils wave as though some vagrant breeze were
stirring amongst them:
"I have spoken! By you and other British in this place--" He looks
round sternly at the men, "the old name is forgotten. She is the
Mother of Kindness.... Let all of you remember that!"
"We'll not forgit, yer Reverence! ..."
"Verra weel, Sirr! ..."
"Sure we'll remember, Boss! ..."
"A' right, Sir!
..."
"_Han, Hâzrât!_ ..."
"Right O Father! ..."
"A'ay, Zur, for sure! ..."
"Yea, verily, it shall be as the Sahib orders!"
They answer him in a hundred voices, resonant bass, or cheery tenor,
coarse and refined, illiterate or educated,--flavoured with the
accent and in the dialect of every shire or county in the United
Kingdom--every country of the Dominions Overseas. And standing in
his ragged clothes, with a battered enamelled can of broth and
another of barley-water dangling from one lean hand, while the other
eases the heavy weight of a wallet of canvas, broad, slung about his
thin shoulders, and containing such medicines and dressings as may be
had--the Father surveys them smilingly--but with the spark in his
blue eyes that they know can leap to flame....
You are to see him as a tall, emaciated man of twenty-nine or thirty,
chalky-pale with famine and worn with lack of sleep. Eagle-featured,
broad-browed, blue-eyed; with long, untrimmed hair and tangled beard
of ruddy yellow-brown. Without the eight-pointed black metal star on
the lapel of his tattered khaki jacket, or the wisp of Roman collar
that still hangs about his neck, or the bartered Breviary and Office
book that bulges a front tunic-pocket--a ragged strip of purple stole
between its well-thumbed pages--you could not fail to recognise the
Religious by vocation; the cultured priest, the man born to dominate,
sway and rule.
"_Haide_! Let us go!" growls the Turkish guard, thrusting two
oranges and a handful of nuts in a pocket of his soiled tunic, and
kicking a man squatting in his path less viciously than as a matter
of form.
And the little procession of the tall priest, the red-fezzed guard,
and the bundle of soiled feminine clothing--brought up in the rear by
Corporal Alec Govan, moves towards the ground-floor archway on the
other side of the courtyard.