The sun of a day in the second week of December, 1917, rose on the
last day of Ottoman dominion in the City that, since fifteen hundred
years before the Birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem, has been, at
regular intervals, the storm-centre of the world.
Panic followed on the arrival of some disintegrated units of a
Turkish transport-column with the news that the British occupied
Hebron; that their Advance held the Railway, and would soon be within
sight. "No lie," as ancient Fuller says, for the London Division was
at Lifta.
Hence general stampede ensued, and Turkish _postas_ of infantry,
indifferent alike to the loaded whips and the curses of their
officers, shed packs, bandoliers and rifles, and fled incontinent.
There was a running to and fro of Jewish and native Syrian citizens.
Wives and daughters called to husbands and sons, and brothers--long
hidden in underground vaults, or unsuspected attics, "The Turks are
running! Deliverance has come! ..."
By two o'clock noon Turkish troops, mounted and afoot, muddy, weary
and thoroughly disgruntled,--Field batteries, machine-gun companies,
baggage-lorries and ambulances of the Red Crescent--poured through
the Jaffa Gate from the west and south-west.
"_Gitmeya mejburûz_--we have to go!" the _postas_ called to wounded
comrades leaning from the Hospital windows, and the muddy torrent
rolled through the streets of the Holy City, and out at St. Stephen's
Gate upon the eastern side.
Towards dark, the Governor Izzet Bey went to the telegraph-office,
discharged the staff of trembling Turks, smashed the Morse
instruments with a hammer, and leaving in charge of the nervous Mayor
a letter of surrender--borrowed the Cape cart and team of an American
resident, and left for Jericho.... And by seven a.m. on the
anniversary of the day of the recapture of the Temple from Pagan
Seleucids by Judas Maccabæus in 165 B.C. the Ottoman inundation had
drained away into the sombre depths of the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
over the ancient Roman bridges of the Jordan--and cowed and bullied
citizens who had been beaten, dragooned and plundered--were mustering
courage to plunder in their turn.
The eagles of the R.F.C. wheeled in the azure overhead, but no
pageantry of any kind marred the entry of the Conqueror.
For years the gathering of more than three persons together in one
place had been punished by the Turkish police with fines,
imprisonment and beatings. Now the Turk had been thrust out, but
Fear lingered still. For, as the British
Commander-in-Chief--preceded by his _aides_ and Staff, and
accompanied by distinguished representatives of the Allied
Nations,--passed through the Jaffa Gate on foot, the huge concourse
of pale and hollow-eyed residents and townsfolk mustered on the roofs
and gathered in the streets--witnessed the thing almost in silence.
Dumb, for the most part, pallid, immobile, like people carved of
stone. Only, when from the Gateway before the Tower whose
foundations were laid by David--and whose walls were reared by
Suleiman the Magnificent--the Proclamation of Religious Freedom was
read in the Four Languages, a sob like the breaking of a great wave
broke from innumerable breasts, and eyes that had been dry for years
were wet with tears at last....
The work was done. By strategical pressure, without the graze of a
bullet on her sacred walls, the Holy City had surrendered. He did
not linger after the reading of the Proclamation. He received in the
square behind the Citadel the civil and religious notables of the
City--the Mayor of Jerusalem, the Shaykhs in charge of the Mosque of
Omar and Aksa, the Rabbis of the Spanish, German and Syrian
Synagogues, the Fathers Representative of the Syrian, Greek,
Abyssinian, Armenian and Latin Catholic Churches (their Patriarchs
having by the Turks been forcibly deported)--the Anglican Bishop, the
American Episcopalian--and Dissenting Ministers....
The brief ceremony over, he passed away as he had come, with his
following, through the Gate of Jaffa; his soldierly tread sounding
over the deep-buried threshold crossed in past ages by the war-horses
of David, the chariot-wheels of Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar--the
slave-borne litters of the Pharaohs, the tyrant-Kings of old
Assyria--as by the golden-studded white bull's hide sandals of
Alexander of Macedon, and from thenceonward how many conquerors
more....
Freedom and Peace came to the War-ridden City of the Prince of Peace
with the Wire Road and the Pipe-Line. To a mixed and
breathlessly-waiting queue of strangely-variegated nationalities,
(per medium of a standpipe, an A.S.C Sergeant and a turn-tap) the
Nile waters--cool and pure, if strongly flavoured with chlorine, were
dispensed, and sent flowing through Jerusalem.... Fulfilling the
ancient Egyptian prophecy, that when the waters of the Nile should
flow into Palestine--there should arise in the West a prophet, one
Al-Nebi, who should capture the Holy City that sits on three
limestone hilltops of old Judæa--and deliver the land from the
loathed dominion of the Turk.
This having yet to be done, he went away to do it! perhaps with a
passing smile at the breach in the City Wall made for the theatrical
entry of the German No-Emperor in 1898. His was the motive power
behind the long lines of moving men toiling northward under their
packs through the mud of Judæa, the long trains of groaning baggage-
and water-camels, the processions of waggons drawn by complaining
mules, the caterpillar-wheeled lorries, carrying tons upon tons of
food and ammunition, the Staff cars carrying red-tabbed officers
swiftly from point to point....
He was consolidating his positions on the Jerusalem-Shechem Road, and
thrusting his cavalry over the Jordan, while a Sergeant and file of
Military Police combed Alexandria for a defaulting London
Territorial, Acting Sergeant John Hazel, of the Fenchurch Street
Regiment,--who had failed to return to the Front at the end of the
fortnight's leave. He was moving on Bethlehem, while the defaulter
lay delirious on a string-bed, swathed in sheets of wet boracic
wadding--in the house of a Jew of Shechem. One Benjamin Sebastia, a
small dealer in precious stones, and a loyal friend to Esther
Hazaël--otherwise known to readers of this tale as the Mother of
Ugliness.
The cellar in Benjamin Sebastia's house had often served as a
hiding-place, being clean and dry and fairly free from stinks.
Through its thick stone walls no curious ear could catch the sick
man's ravings--when he called on certain Big Old Men to come to the
rescue--or poured mad love-words in the imaginary ear of a woman
named Katharine....
It seemed, he thought, poor crazed and suffering wretch! that he had
kept back from a man named Yaill a certain letter and, carrying out a
rescue by his own unaided hand, had claimed reward of this service
from the aforesaid Katharine. Through the long days and the longer
nights, when the scourge of self-reproach for this imaginary baseness
bit deep into the tortured soul housed in the tortured body, the
woman who sat beside him never once failed to answer:
"But, John Hazaël, my cousin, thou didst not do the thing!"
"Did I not? ... Is that true?" he would ask her over and over. "But
I wished to, I desired to...."
"And desiring, thou didst resist."
"That is good--if it be true...."
"It is true. Does Esther ever lie to thee?"
"No!" he would groan, lying there in his helplessness. "Now tell me
again how I was found, and brought to this place?"
"When--" (she would lay fresh pieces of soaked lint on the huge,
swollen body, or ease the perpetual, torturing thirst with some cool,
refreshing drink.) "When I ran away from Kir Saba, back to Shechem, I
found--"
"That I," there is a smile on the shapeless mouth--"that I had kept
my word to thee, and taken the head of the dog! I think the people
did not weep? ..."
"Nay. It was as the passing of a plague--the lifting of a
shadow--and the soldiers who had guarded the Wired Place openly
rejoiced. Many being set down for beating, and fines, and so
forth--because of neglect in the matter of keeping watch, on the
night of the Sidi's escape...."
"They got good rest that night, I think? ..."
"So good," she gives her little rustling laugh, "that all of them
swear they were bewitched, or that some friend of the Sidi's drugged
the rations sent from the Barracks--so that they slept like the
Seven, and waked to find him gone. So they were glad the Bey was
dead.... Especially the _sabtiehs_ of his command were glad, for
their old _bimbashi_ is now Commandant--and his name hath favour
among them--he being a merciful man."
"A merciful Turk is a rare bird," the formless mouth says grimly.
"And so--no suspicion attaching to her name--or thine--the Dervish
remaining silent--thou didst bribe the Gipsy woman of the Bazâr to go
with thee to the hut in the Wired Place, and take my body away...."
"Paying a price to the soldiers in the name of certain Jewish
townsfolk, who--it being known among them that thou wert a
Jew!--would have buried thee decently. And when--thinking thee a
corpse--I leaned over thee to cut away the knotted rag that hid the
Signet of Hazaël, from the cord by which thou hadst hung it round thy
neck--I saw, by the Mercy of the Most High!--that thou wert still
breathing. And even as I myself was brought into this place of
hiding, I and Inaini the Gipsy, carried thee here that night....
Some help I gave in the sickness of her child, she hath never
forgotten. May the Most High reward her! ... What had we done
without her strong arms to lift thee, and her poultices of healing
herbs.... Now sleep, for thou hast talked enough! See how thy poor
heart shakes thee! ..."
"One question more...." The puffy lips are blue, and he labours in
his breathing: "When shall I be able to stand again on these
elephant's feet of mine? ..."
She swallows her tears and answers:
"Soon, it may be.... Only be content, only wait a little longer!"
And propped on high-piled pillows, he promises obediently, looking
down his long misshapen bulk at his huge distorted feet.
"Very well! I will wait a little longer. Thou hast money to meet
the charges?"
"Plenty as yet, my cousin--without touching the sum that was in the
belt thou gavest me to keep. Tell me one thing.... If thou couldst
be moved--whither wouldst thou be carried, we escaping under cover of
night from this unhappy place? ..."
"To somewhere near Jerusalem," says the thick voice, feebly.
"To Jerusalem? ..."
She starts and looks at him, but the black eyes under their calloused
lids are fixed upon the opposite wall.
"I said to somewhere near there. I may not go to the City until I
get a message from One who is my Friend...."
"He has come there with the British since the Turks were driven out
of the City? ..."
The black eyes slowly move to meet hers. He shakes his scarred head:
"Nay. He has been waiting there for long--a very long time.... But
when I get a Sign from Him, then I must go up...."
"There is some great reason compelling thee?"
"There is something waiting for me at Jerusalem. I was told it that
night in the wooden hut. Tell me"--the voice is like a child's--"if
I cannot move, how shall I obey the Sign when it comes to me? ..."
She soothes him, thinking that his pain and weakness make him wander.
"Leave all to me. To-morrow may find thee strong. Only rest and
sleep now! ..."
And he sleeps, with heavy broken breaths of utter exhaustion and
weariness.