VIII

On the summit of Ebal, a little east of the ruined fortress, is the

wreckage of _Khirbet Kuneisch_--in Syrian Arabic, "The Little

Church." Some twelve feet distant from the skeleton of its tiny

sanctuary there is a tomb hollowed in the living rock.

And in this place the Mother of Ugliness dwells alone with her

sorrow. Secured against the intrusion of the curious or thievish

(did either discover the jealously-guarded secret) by the belief

common to Syria and the East generally, that Afrits, ghouls, and

vampires inhabit such ancient tombs.

Goats are cropping the short, sweet herbage. They are Ummshni's and

come--like the willow-wren and chiffchaff, the robin and the

yellow-and-white European wagtail--at her low, twittering call.

Others, feeding lower down on the wild gum-cistus and the thyme that

clothe the crumbling limestone terraces, have recognised their

mistress, and follow her footsteps, as, with the big hand of the lame

Arab leaning on her frail shoulder, she toils up the path upon Ebal's

northern side.

"See, here is my little house, O Ali Zaybak, Bedawi...." Panting,

she shows him a broken flight of limestone steps descending to the

eastward-facing entrance of the tomb.

Supported in deep-cut grooves, on either side the low square aperture

that serves as the entrance, is the circular stone employed of old

times as the door of such a burial place; a block of the shape and

size of a millstone--having no central hole to admit the shaft. A

knob that projects from the surface of the stone some three or four

inches below its upper rim, and another at an equal distance above

its lower rim, can be used as the fulcrums of the human lever, that

when necessary, rolls back the stone. From within, the tomb can be

opened or closed in the same way.

"Canst thou roll away the stone, cousin?" asks Ummshni-Esther, "for

'tis a task that tries me sorely. Yet must I ever close my little

house in this fashion when I leave it,--more need than ever now since

Turks came to the Mount!"

"But if they came when thou wert here, and found the door open?" asks

John Hazel, from midway down the steps.

She nods her head, and from between the folds of the Syrian veil

comes her dry, rustling chuckle.

"Knowest thou what I would but need to do to send them down the

Mountain quicker than they came up it? Even step boldly into the

doorway, and--by the sunlight if 'twere day,--or by the flare of a

brand from my fire if it were night--unveil and show them!

This--that makes the Turk spit, and the German show his teeth in a

grin, and the Englishman say, 'Poor devil!' or 'Poor thing!'--and all

three hurry away from the sight. My one-eyed, crumpled face, that

save thyself, O John my cousin! and one other!--is the best friend I

own. What, dost thou hold back at the threshold until thy hostess

bids thee enter?" For as the great stone rolls groaning into the

opposite groove, leaving a narrow irregularly-shaped entrance, John

has turned towards her, reaching up a long mahogany-coloured arm and

huge hand to help her: "Verily then, in the name of Him Who sent

thee, be thou welcome under this roof!"

So the two, so strangely met, so far apart and yet so nearly

related--pass into Ummshni's strange, desolate home--out of the early

morning sunshine, for it is barely seven o'clock. Three milch-goats

with their kids troop after, their little split hoofs making a soft

pattering; and at a sign from his cousin, John Hazel closes the

entrance with the stone....

It is not dark within the tomb, nor is there any closeness in the

atmosphere. This has a pleasant, dry coolness that is soothing, like

the tempered light. Both the air and the light come through long

cracks and chinks in the roof of limestone slabs, dressed with the

hammer in bygone centuries, and intersected by glittering streaks of

crystalline carbonate; and the sloping sides that, like the roof,

Nature has thickly clothed with bracken and bramble. The place may

be about ten feet in height--and owns three rooms or mortuary

chambers--in whose sides are shelves, hollowed in the limestone

rock--to receive the embalmed and swaddled bodies--of which (if any

have ever rested there), the passing ages have left no trace.... The

third chamber is some thirty feet in length and reaches under the

ruins of The Little Church. Here, within a hearth of mud and stones,

a wood fire smoulders; its smoke escaping unnoticed through a hole in

the roof above it into the nave of the ruined building overhead, that

is thickly mantled with tamarisk, and choked with cactus,

prickly-pear, and the spina-Christi thorn. Various cooking-pots and

vessels hang from pegs driven into chinks in the walls of limestone.

Here are a stool or so, and a small folding-table. Here, too, a

native bed--brought up here piece by piece--stands on one side, with

some coarse woollen coverings folded on it. Some clean, but ragged

draperies of blue cotton-print, and veils of coarse towelling such as

Ummshni wears,--hang on a cord stretched from wall to wall, with a

thick overgarment for use in winter, an Arab _abâyi_ of woven camel's

hair.

And that is all. No anchorite could own less than little Ummshni,

but the poor soul makes John welcome with what she has.

She makes him lie down on the _anghareb_--folds the camel's hair

mantle into a pillow for his head--milks the goats, and brings him a

bowl of the thick, frothing-white, pleasant beverage. He empties it

and says, setting down the bowl:

"Thanks, O my hostess! May milk never be wanting in thy house! ..."

"May God bestow upon thee long life and prosperity!" returns the

thin, shadowy voice, in the set terms of the response to the formal

expression of gratitude: "You have honoured me! ..."

"By your life, O lady! I have honoured myself! ..."

"By your eyes, O my guest! I am the distinguished one!" She laughs

her queer little dry laugh, and says, kneeling by the hearth, and

rousing the embers into a glow by puffs of breath from between her

veils, and bits of dry fuel discreetly thrust into the reddest

places: "Yet why should thou and I talk as Mohammedans? Are we not

Jews?"

"Well, I dunno! ..."

"Thou dost not know? Not even that this is New Moon? Wouldst thou

not be in Shool this morning, if 'twere possible?"

"Well, I can't say for sure. That is, about myself. Of course, I'm

certain about you and your mother! ..."

"Ah'h!" She winces as at a sudden knife-thrust and sinks back on her

heels, trembling visibly. "The beloved one--is--is alive?"

"Alive and well, that is--as well as she can be! ... You didn't

know?" John asks in surprise.

"How should I know within a year? ... News filters in but very

rarely." She masters herself, rises to her knees, and goes on

coaxing the fire, but the reddening embers hiss as her tears keep

dropping on them from underneath her veils. "And it is best she

should believe that--that I am--that I died when Jacob! ... O, my

cousin, have pity! ... Let us speak of her no more! ..."

"All right. Count on me! ..."

He watches as the little flitting shape glides about the dusky

chamber, and in and out of the narrow door,--bringing to feed the

fire,--more dry fuel, of which she has a heap in the outer chamber,

that serves as a store-room. From whence, presently conjuring ripe

figs and olives; fresh eggs, green coffee-beans, salt and rough

sugar, and a little stone mortar and pestle; some flaps of unbaked

native bread and a wooden dish of goat's-milk butter, she boils the

eggs; roasts and pounds the coffee; bakes the bread upon a metal cone

placed amongst the embers; and assembling the constituents of a

decent meal--including a jug of fragrant coffee, and another of

boiling goat's milk, upon a little battered metal tray--sets it upon

the little table at his side, and brings him a bowl of water, a bit

of soap and a coarse, clean cloth.

"Washing and--benediction, Cousin John."

He washes and mumbles something, reddening under his head-cloth.

"Now eat and drink, mingling the coffee with milk in the good French

fashion." She gives a small sigh. "Would I had better to offer

thee! But than this there is nothing else."

"The tucker's A-1. But you--"

"Trouble not for me. I am a Syrian woman.... I eat my food after

the man has fed...."

Intuitively perceiving that she shelters behind this excuse her

sensitive horror of her own disfiguring mutilation, John protests no

further, but applies himself to the eggs, coffee, bread and butter

and fresh fruit, with hearty good will.

When he is satisfied she clears away; pours boiling water into a big

earthen bowl; fetches lint, bandaging and arnica from a burial-shelf

where she seems to have some store of things like these, and tying

back her long sleeves in true Fellaha style, by knotting the ends and

slipping them over her head, addresses herself to the fomenting and

bandaging of the sprained ankle, saying:

"If thou hast tobacco with thee, smoke, O my Cousin John!"

And so he brings out a packet of maize-leaf paper, and a bag of good

Arabian tobacco, stowed away with divers other requisites upon his

large person, and rolls himself a thick cigarette. She gives him a

light with a flaming stick from the fire, as he is feeling for his

matches; and at his:

"Thank you, little Esther!"

--bends her poor face low over the damaged ankle, to hide the tears

that will break forth anew. For thus did old Eli Hazaël speak to his

daughter's child, and this deep voice is very like his: and the

familiar words re-open deep, unhealed scars in her wounded and

suffering heart. Thus there is deep silence in the tomb, broken only

by their breathing; by the flitting sound of Esther's movements

within the cool, dusky place--and by the soft munching of the three

goats and their kids in the outermost chamber--where a heap of grass

and herbage has been heaped to meet their needs. Indeed, this

newly-found friend who has come into the desolate creature's life, as

though dropped from the skies--which in fact he has been!--is so

silent that Ummshni looks up in wonderment. John is smoking his

strong Arab cigarette with deep, regular inhalations of enjoyment,

and staring at a piece of ancient sculpture that catches the

sunshine--still that of early morning, that falls through an aperture

overhead more strongly as the Day-Lord climbs higher in the eastern

sky. It is the bust of a man, nearly life-sized; carved in the

shallowest relief, and bearing remains of colouring; surrounded by a

half-circle of reddish rays, from which, possibly, the gold has

centuries ago faded. His head is noble, haggard and mild--the long

tresses of waving, reddish-yellow hair mingle with the beard, which

is slightly pointed--the splendid forehead is deeply scored with

lines, there are premature markings of care about the eyes. These

are blue, and austere under dark, widely arching eyebrows, though the

stern lips smile sorrowfully. Under this ray-crowned

half-length--which is bounded by a line of blackish colour--is

roughly chiselled the Sacred Monogram. Below the letters of the Holy

Name is the date of the Year 400 of the Christian Era. As the

lengthening ray reaches this, the soft voice asks from between

Esther's veiling draperies:

"At what art thou looking, my Cousin John? ..."

"Just at--that." He points to the stern and gentle Face rather

awkwardly.

"It is the Messiah of the Christians. Didst thou not know?"

"Well, of course I'm aware of that. Only, as you're a strict Jewess,

it struck me as somehow curious to see it here."

"It is of great ancientness. It was here when this grey, evil world

was young and golden-haired, and perhaps even more evil than it is

now."

"Then it was pretty rotten! But, in fact, I was thinking as I looked

at that sculpture, that the man who did it must have seen the ah--the

Original. Though unless he happened to have a dream or a vision, the

date quite puts the lid on that idea."

"If by chance it should be really like the Founder of Christianity,

He hath a servant who resembles Him. For--that is the very face of

the man whom thou and I would deliver! He lies in the hut of the

Prisoners' Field, with the high fence of barbed-wire about its

edges--that is beyond the gate of the city, opposite the Mohammedan

Tombs. And--and," there is a quavering break in the faded voice,

"since yesterday before the Prayer-Call they have not given him food

or water--obeying the strict orders of--one whom I dare not name!"

Quick panting breaths heave the wasted bosom under the old blue

cotton garment, the little dusky fingers clutch nervously at her

coarse veil. "All day I waited near the gates--thinking by some

cunning wile, some secret bribe, such as hath often served before

now--to win over the Turks on guard to give me entrance. But, though

they licked their lips at the promise of wine and tobacco, and

sweetmeats, and love-messages to be carried to the women of the Suk

and the Bazâr--they did not dare to let me in. O, my cousin, I fear

for the life of the Master!--I fear! ... And all night I lurked near,

hiding whenever they changed the guard, in some covert of the Waste

Places where they throw the city refuse--and jackals and owls and

pariahs and lepers and malignant spirits dwell. And when the

day-brow lifted I left one to keep watch--even a poor leper woman who

is faithful. And I bought meat, and wine, and came back here to boil

soup and milk for him. For to-night I shall try again," her glance

goes to the bundle of canes she has leaned up in a corner, "and this

time, by the help of the Most High!--this time I shall not fail!"

"Look here, aren't you ever afraid?" John asks, in mingled pity and

admiration.

"Oh, yes, I am always terrified!" Her veils are shaken with her

trembling and he can hear the chattering of her teeth. "Ever since I

took upon me this work of helping the miserable and those who suffer,

I have been frightened, John my cousin,--to the very core of me....

But I go on! ... There is no choice!" She wrings the little,

shaking, dusky hands, and now once more quick sobbing shakes her.

"Were there not things to do--sick folks to serve--dangers to evade

or face--what were life worth to The Mother of Ugliness? Think, O

think! ..."

Looking at the little quivering thing crouching down beside the now

faintly glowing embers, John thinks, and comprehends, though not

quite all.

"When I recovered sense and partial sight--after the horrors of which

thou knowest!--it was to find myself in the house of a good, poor Jew

of Nazareth, whither--may the Holy One reward his charity! he had

bribed the soldiers to carry me under cover of night. They, who were

bidden--I being as one dead and covered with blood--to dig a pit and

cast me in with quicklime--were glad to be saved the trouble at gain

of certain moneys. Later, by the secret sale to another man,--a

Hebrew jeweller,--of an emerald necklace I had worn on the day when

the _sabtiehs_ arrested me--and which I had stitched into my clothing

in the first hours of captivity--I know not whether it was overlooked

or whether they did not dare to seize it--because!--" she does not

finish the sentence--"I repaid the good Jew, though I found it hard

to thank him. Hard as I find it even now...."

There is such tragedy in the low, whispering voice, such blistering

truth in its plain, naked utterances, that John Hazel shudders as he

listens to her....

"For I desired to die, when I did not remember Jacob! When I thought

of him--what I wanted more than Death was--" A coal-black

diamond-bright eye, sends a shaft from between the veils straight

into the man's eyes. "Thou knowest. Three little words will hold it

all:"

"_Revenge on Hamid...._"

Her veiled head nods at each slowly-uttered word.

"Verily, ay! but I did not want to say it. For that it was possible

to endure this ordeal of Life. To kill him in some slow, strange,

unimagined way, I would have given"--she laughs dryly. "What had I

left to give, my soul being dead in me,--my body the foul thing his

touch hath left it!--and the face my mother used to kiss, a mask to

scare babes and men? Then I said,--I will wait and hate! ...

Patience and hatred may bring me that I crave for. Meanwhile,

keeping near him--I will succour those whom he hath wronged, feeding

my hungry hatred with their curses--until the day comes when I shall

hunger no more! ..."

"And surely the day of reckoning will come. Only be patient a little

longer!" says the deep, stern voice that Katharine Forbis knows.

"How like thy voice is to our grandfather's. Almost I could believe

that Eli spoke then! How strange, that he and thou, so greatly

resembling, should never have met," sighs the woman beside the fire.

"Of Hebrew hast thou any?"

"None but a word or so."

"Well, well, it matters not! Go on speaking in Arabic, or in the

English that is thy home-speech--or in French if it pleases

thee--thou art Hazaël in any tongue."

"It pleases me best to listen to thee. Tell me now, after what

fashion wouldst thou have thy vengeance? ..." The man's voice sinks

lower, and his face is very grim.

"My cousin, let us not speak of it!" she entreats in a whisper. He

sees a wave of trembling pass over the fragile creature, huddled in

her coarse disguise beside the rude stone hearth.

"Yet when a man bitten by a mad dog, goes to a Pasteur Institute for

inoculation, he must--if it be possible--take the head of the dog."

The fierce black eyes are upon her, and their strength seems a

palpable weight bearing upon her frailness. "Since the beginning of

this War, surgeons have attained wonderful skill in building up the

bodies and faces of men, that other men have broken. When thou shalt

go to the greatest of these, saying: '_Give me back my beauty!_' I

promise thee, little Esther, thou shalt carry the head of the dog!"

The big teeth gleam in the dark face, and she answers with her

chuckle, the thin derisive cachinnation that is so far removed from

mirth:

"And if such a miracle might be wrought, could thy great surgeon's

scalpel cut from my woman's soul the scars that make it hideous?

Could he burn from my memory with his electric wire, the things that

I have borne? Could he set my feet amongst the flowers on the hills

near Kir Saba, with Jacob's and Reuben's, and Leah's, and little

Benjamin's--and brim my heart with the happiness that was Life's

golden wine? Could he give me back my father and our grandfather,

the good old man who so loved me? How strange it is to remember that

if I had not vexed my mother--and worn the chain of emeralds that

were old Eli Hazaël's birthday gift, that day the _zabtiehs_ seized

me, walking in the olive-groves near my father's house at Haffêd--I

should have had nothing of value to sell for the wherewithal to live."

"It was Fate! Tell me, my little Esther, how old art thou?"

She laughs in her strange way.

"On that day--the thirtieth of Ab, in the Year of the World

5674,--the 8th of August, 1914--as thou wouldst write it--I was

eighteen, my cousin John...."

Sickened to the very core, the man can barely keep back a groan.

Twenty-one last August, and "beautiful as a rose of Sharon," to quote

Old Mendel, and aged, withered, warped, body and soul, into the

Mother of Ugliness. Words escape him, born of a sudden thought:

"Jacob and thy Cousin Eli are dead, like thy father, and our uncles,

and our grandfather and thy little brother Benjamin. But--but Reuben

the son of Ephraim lives. Has no one told thee?"

"Verily, I knew it. But"--her head is bowed and the words come faint

between her veils--"the young girl whom Reuben loved lives no more.

Even though thy surgeons might work the bodily miracle. Even if the

herb Forgetfulness sprang from these stones, I would not gather it,

and lose the memory of certain things that have lightened my labours,

and sweetened my sufferings in this cruel place. As for my

vengeance--more than once I have been very near it! Wilt thou

believe?--I have opened mine hand and let the thing go!" The little

dusky hand quivers into sight, shuts, opens and vanishes. "So--and

so--the sharpness of desire for Hamid's blood having abated,

since--since I came--to the knowledge of him!"

The little hand waves from the covert of her veils towards the

ray-encircled head, past which the illuminating beam of sunshine has

travelled. John, seeing this, says with something of astonishment:

"Knowledge of--the Christ? ... And thou a Jewess?"

"I speak of the servant, not of the Master, good Cousin John. For

that stern, beautiful face is strangely like his whom thou didst come

here to seek."

"I'll make a note of that. It may be useful." John Hazel's strong

black eyes glue themselves upon the Face upon the wall, as the Mother

of Ugliness goes on, whisperingly:

"This I have thought, seeing the life of the Sidi who is His servant.

Thou art listening? ..."

"Verily, my little Esther. For it is needful for me to hear these

things concerning the man."

So, with a full heart trembling on her timid lips, sometimes speaking

in her swift, cultured Arabic, sometimes in her English that is

tinctured with a Parisian accent--always speaking of the priest as

the Sidi, or the Master, she tells John all she knows, up to the

moment of Father Julian's arrest.

"And what happened then?" John asks.

"They took the Master to the--the Bey's room, over the gateway.

The--the Bey accused him of pricking on the prisoners to rebellion.

A German officer who was there bore testimony that the Master had so

acted. He boldly--for he is as a lion, without fear--denied this, in

the face of his enemies. All this I heard from a Turk, a _posta_ of

the guard at the Barracks. The man loves a shameless woman of the

Bazâr--and--and I carry messages between them, no office being too

low for Ummshni, the Mother of Ugliness. Can dirt defile dirt?"

In her faint voice she asks the bitter question. John says, grinding

his teeth:

"Damn it, Esther, drop that! I can't bear it!"

"Swear not, my Cousin John, but hear. _He_--" John knows she is

speaking of Hamid--"He says to the Master: 'You tell me this, that

and the other thing I do, gives offence to your Christian Messiah. I

pay no heed, and, He lets me alone, because He has no power to punish

me. For it is Allah and Allah only who rebukes the evil and rewards

the virtuous. And to prove this, I shall put you under guard--in the

barbed-wire enclosure where we kept the British War-prisoner

officers. There is plenty of room to walk about, and a wooden hut

where you may sleep. You will have grass, and clean air, but nothing

to eat or drink--unless you sign this paper that I have here--saying

that you repent of the slanders you have spoken against me before my

face. Sign it now in the presence of witnesses, and you will be sent

down to join the other War Prisoners at Smyrna. Do not sign it--and

you will be taken to the wired enclosure, and any one found giving

you food or water, will be beaten to death with _asayisi_. This will

give your Nazarene Prophet, Whom we Turks and the Kaiser of the

Alamani and his officers--who are all good Mohammedans--esteem very

highly!--a chance to prove how great He is, and how He values you--by

keeping you alive....'"

John licks lips that have suddenly grown dry.

"And what did Father Forbis say to this--not particularly original

devil?"

"He told Hamid he was an ordinary priest, with no pretence to extra

sanctity, and that if this was a challenge to the Christ, he as His

servant refused to take it up...."

"And then?--"

"'Deprived of food,' the _posta_ says the Master said, 'I perish like

any other miserable mortal. Yet if it were my Maker's Will that I

should live through such an ordeal--I should live! ...'"

"Some priest that!" John imagines a voice like Katharine's saying 'I

should live!' and a thrill goes through him. "And Hamid?--"

"Hamid said: '_We will wait and see!_' and all the Germans laughed.

It is a phrase well known in England? ..."

"And dam' well hated too! But your Father Forbis is a peach....

Worthy to be his sister's brother...."

"She is so beautiful and noble? ..."

"All that," says loyal John, "and more! ..."

"Ah! I am glad. For I have thought much since I have known the

Sidi, and learned in watching, somewhat. This amongst other things:

that to be abject, ill-used, poor and despised, even as a lame

sparrow in the sight of men--and to go about doing good, with one

hate in the nest of the heart that chirps for vengeance, that is

human, human enough! But to be all this, without hate or

bitterness--to be wronged and pity the wronger!--being sinned

against, to pardon and love the sinner, this is Divine! ..."

The softly-breathed words fall upon the air like scattered

rose-petals, diffusing sweetness as they fall.

"If Jesus of Nazareth were not the Son of the Most High, O John, my

cousin! after no other fashion will He come when He comes. Taking

nothing from the world but a crust, and a garment to cover Him.

Seeking the things that are held despicable by men. His Gospel Love,

Forgiveness, Sacrifice. His only diadem the Shekinah. His path

beset by thorns-- His triumph Failure.... His end a gibbet! ...

What other could it have been?" ...

John admits....

"No other. For if there's one thing more prejudicial to a man than

sheer Disinterestedness--I'm at a loss to name it! The world must

have a motive--and it likes a mean one best. I don't pretend I've

ever gone particularly deep into the subject, but I've sometimes

thought--that if it were possible to see Jesus of Nazareth clearly

for the Christians--we Jews might find Him to be very much a Jew!"

"Perhaps we shall see Him so, one day! ..."

She rises with noiseless, supple ease, and takes her bundle of sticks

from the corner.

"Thou art weary. Deny it not, thy jaws ache with yawning, and

already I have seen thee nod.... Take off thine upper garment and

head-cloth, for it is warm here. Lie down and sleep, though the bed

be somewhat short for legs as long as thine. For I have things to

do--for the Master! '_What things?_' Oh! the man! ever asking

questions! ... Broth to make, milk to scald, these pipe-stems," she

shows her bundle of new, clean canes, five feet long, bound by a

generous length of red India-rubber tubing, "to fit together after a

plan. The Master shall not die of hunger to-night, the Most High

being my helper. For I shall be helped!" She nods her small, veiled

head. "It is borne in upon me, since I have found thee, the Bedawi

who did not spit when I let him see my face. There is another Arab

here," she gives her dry little rustling chuckle, "an Emir with his

following. He did not spit or curse, either, and his grey eyes said,

'_Poor thing!_'"

"The hell you say! ..." John, who has been horizontal, sits up

suddenly and blurts out in English. "Forgive me, little Esther, but

I happen to be on the track of an Arab with grey eyes. Where does

the bloke hang out?"

"If thou speakest of the Emir Fadl Anga, he who lodges at the Khan

et-Talab under that title--having with him two Bedu of the Beni Asir,

and the horses of all three--"

"Good egg!" John sits up on the string bed in his brown camel's hair

_kumbas_, grinning joyfully, and hugging his knees: "Does one of 'em

carry a reed-cage chock-full of pigeons, strapped back of his saddle?

Think!"

"Ay, verily, the Emir Fadl Anga being pigeon-master to one of the

Princes of Mecca. Or such is the story that is told in the Bazâr."

There is incredulity in the weary voice. "He hath brought the birds

as a gift to the German General commanding at Nazareth, for use, so

they say, in the Intelligence Department there. When the

pigeon-master Sergeant Major comes from Nazareth, he will take

them--and leave a cage of birds that have been trained by himself.

All this I had in the Bazâr.... Where art thou going? ..."

John, lowering his feet to the stone floor, and reaching for his Arab

head-cloth, very decidedly replies:

"To the Khan et-Talab, to dig out my man. For he's my man, this Fadl

Anga."

"And how wilt thou get to the Khan, lame as thou art?"

"_I_ dunno!" John gingerly tests his bandaged leg: "You've handed me

a poser. What's to be done?"

"What wouldst thou do, if it were possible for thee to go? Think now

and say! ..."

He rests his brawny arms upon his knees, and says, slowly, as the

fierce light in his black eyes dies out and leaves their surface dim

and lustreless:

"I'd find out which was Fadl Anga's room--loaf into the courtyard

among the horses, camels, goats, Arabs and Fellah grooms--squat down

under his window, and sing--not out loud, but just between my teeth--"

Sagely she nods her little veiled head:

"_Bouche fermée_,--some English song that is a sign agreed upon

between you. Sing it me now, for I will go, and carry thy disguised

Englishman the message, while thou remainest here--watching the soup

that it be not burned or boil over."

For all unnoticed while they talked, she has set a covered earthen

pot containing water, and some kind of meat that she brought up with

her, and has chopped fine and mixed with herbs, amongst the glowing

ashes; and a faint steam, not unsavoury, is already beginning to

spiral through the hole in the knobbed lid.

"Is it agreed upon? ..."

"I should smile! ..."

She understands the odd utterance as assent and says with a diamond

sparkle between her veils:

"Now sing me thy song. And give me thy message, but otherwise advise

me in nothing of how I am to do. For, verily, I am the Mother of

Cunning as well as the Mother of Ugliness, and have carried the lives

of many men between these hands of mine!" Laughing softly, she

stretches them out. "And they are not as big as thy hands, my giant

Cousin John."

"You blessed little brick!"

He reaches out and captures in his own, one of the little dusky

hands, gently squeezes it, lets it go, and takes from his neck a

square of parchment that hangs there, suspended by a slender green

silk cord. On one side are two interlaced triangles outlined in

thick black ink. On the other a square containing Arabic letters of

the Sacred Name--within a double circle in which have been traced and

thickly inked--the Signs of the Zodiac.

"That's that! ... Makes some Arab amulet, doesn't it? ... I cribbed

the figures from the title-page of Pittaker's Almanac, and the Name

off an inscribed tile. Two letters are stitched inside this--I've

another letter hidden away inside my _tarbûsh_, but that I'll deliver

myself to Father Forbis. Meanwhile, you're to get this somehow into

Fadl Anga's hands. If--but mind you not _unless_ he tumbles to the

first bars of 'Loch Lomond.'"

"Is it 'Loch Lomond'? That was one of the English songs we learnt to

sing at my Paris boarding-school," says the Mother of Ugliness.

"Hear now, O my cousin, if I remember it aright? ..."

She has a little faded voice, sweet but thin, and in this she sings

to him the familiar refrain of the ballad that--hummed by a battered

private of London Territorials--sitting on a captured bag of Turkish

Army biscuits after Sheria--conjured up the chintz drawing-room at

Kerr's Arbour, and Katharine Forbis singing at her piano in the

twilight--before the stern, absorbed eyes of an Arab who knelt at

prayer....

So it follows that, having taken a sparing meal of bread and fruit,

and milk, the amulet containing the letters being hidden upon her

person, and the song stowed away in her head, Ummshni-Esther sets

forth, under the blaze of the sun of twelve o'clock midday (going by

the watch under Ali Zaybuk's sheepskin wristlet, which is set at

European time). He limps to the entrance of the tomb to let her out,

and stands watching until the little slender, veiled figure--wrapped

in the ample outer garment of coarse yellow-white sheeting, worn by

Syrian women, passes from his sight.

"Good luck to you, you regular little Maccabee!" he mutters. "Now

all You Big Old Men, butt in and help her! ... It's up to you to help

her.... For she's thoroughbred to the backbone, if ever a woman

was...."

"_Thud, thud--thud! Thud thud thud--thud! THUD!_"

The guns are still arguing heavily and persistently--in the hills

west of Jerusalem, and in the vicinity of Hebron.... South, over

Junction Station, the inflated grey bulks of three observation

balloons wallow against the cloud-piled horizon, over the huge

ark-like hangars that kennel them, as the experts in the dangling

baskets read off, and transmit to their Headquarters by Wireless, the

silvery flashes of helios from the hills. A Fokker biplane of pusher

type with a Falk machine-gun mounted in her bows, is trying to drive

down one of the observers; the rattle of the aviator's weapon

sounding like the clickett of a typewriter. While a single-seater

monoplane _Taube_ with a "Roland" bomb-dropping device, is

endeavouring to deal in a similar manner with the other O.B.'s, and a

British Anti-Aircraft gun mounted on a motor is spraying vicious

little shells of H.E. and shrapnel at the Germans, from

rapidly-changing vantages upon the ground below.

Even as John gets interested in the battle, the Fokker, hit in her

petrol tank by a projectile, suddenly vomits flame, and drops like a

singed moth, downwards. The Taube departs in haste for

Hebron--seeing a half-squadron of D.H.6's coming over from the

aërodrome near G.H.Q. further down south.... Germany has few eyes in

the air in these days, and the Turk is well-nigh wingless. But

difficulties of transport threaten to hold the British up at Nebi

Samwil; and knowing this, the enemy's resistance stiffens. The sun

will not sink on Ottoman dominion in Palestine, while the

Turco-German forces hold the Jerusalem-Shechem road.

There is a glorious view from the summit of the Mount of Cursing,

silvered with streams on her lower slopes, clothed with her groves of

olive and almond, fig and apricot, orange and pomegranate, as high as

there is soil enough to hold their roots. Through a gap in the Hills

of Galilee, snow-crowned Hermon stands out in splendid relief against

the deep blue sky. East, across the Jordan, are the Mountains of

Gilead, Osha's summit conspicuously capped with a streaming panache

of cirro-stratus; the coastal Plain of Sharon rolls emerald to the

turquoise lip of the Mediterranean, and the huge bulk of Carmel

thrusts out into the glittering distance a fortress defying the

uttermost assaults of Time.

"Some view!" John comments, baldly, in his acquired idiom, narrowing

his eyes under the hand that shields them from the sun. Yet in his

heart he is drunken with the beauty--captive forever to the spell of

this land of Palestine....

"_Thud, thud!_ ... BOOM! ..."

A colossal tree-shaped column of woolly brown vapour rises in the

west where lies Jaffa. "We" are blowing up Turkish ammunition-dumps

and provision stores.

"_Rat, tatt, tatt--tatt 't tat!_" go the machine-guns in the hills to

the south....

"_Thud, hud, thud 'd 'd! ..._"

Great happenings are in the air. Trained as John Hazel is in the

unimaginative school of London's Stock Exchange and the City, his

keen Oriental brain is quickened to this consciousness. Time, after

many ripening centuries, is giving birth to The Event foretold by and

foreshadowed in prophecies, dreamed of by vision-seers. Can it be

that after all these centuries of exile, Christianity is to give back

Palestine to the Jews? ...

The onyx ring attracts the man's black eyes as he brings down the

hand that shaded them. He tells himself that, after all, he wasn't

quite such a blooming mug as little Esther thought. He remembers

binding a cotton rag about the finger that wears the ancient

heirloom, on the eve of the start from Ismailia. Somehow, the rag

must have come off, either before, or when, he jumped from the

aëroplane, at the signal of Essenian.

"The treacherous Egyptian brute! One of these days--" There is a

promise in the hiatus that bodes ill for Essenian. There is also a

token, adhering to the ring, that bodes not over-well for John. Only

a speck of bright green sealing-wax, sticking in a fold of the

lion-skin of Hercules, that was not there when its wearer left the

house in the Rue el Farad, to dine with the Pasha at the Aviators'

Club.