XX

He is kept concealed--for though Turkish vigilance is somewhat

relaxed in Shechem--there would be short shrift for the slayer of

Hamid, were he known to be living still. Perhaps it may be because

of this, that though his wounds slowly heal, John grows no stronger.

A Jewish surgeon, related to Benjamin Sebastia, who is brought by

stealth to see the patient, examines him, and goes away, shaking his

head.

"Too late! It would always have been too late, however soon you had

called me," he says to Sebastia as he takes his leave. "The man must

have had a giant's strength to live through such an ordeal. My

brother was a powerful man, yet he died under the rods.... Heart a

wreck! ... Lungs.... Pff! ... May die at any moment! ... _Shalôm!_

To the Downfall of the Ottoman Power, and the Restoration of Jewry!"

and he drains his glass of Palestine Tokay and refuses his fee, and

goes. And his verdict is cautiously broken to John Hazel, who

comforts weeping Esther, declaring the opinion of a Hebrew in a

_kaftan_ and fur hat and side-curls, with a Paris Diploma--not worth

a British damn! He is even a shade better next day, as though in

sheer defiance of the owner of the Paris Diploma and the side-curls

and _kaftan_....

He has known how the months change by the flowers that Esther brings

him, and others that Inaini, smiling, produces from the folds of her

veil. Great clusters of crimson anemones, crocuses, purple and

white; grape hyacinths, tulips and daffodils--and it is March. More

anemones of varied, jewel-bright colours, purple, pink, and crimson;

jonquils, and white and yellow Marguerites. Yellow, blue and lilac

lupins--narcissus and violets, iris and cyclamen--and wealthy April's

here.... He likes the anemones and looks at them for hours, drowsily

turning them in his well-nigh helpless hands.... For the creamy ones

are like Katherine's skin, and the rose-red are her blushes, and the

brown-gold are--or so he thinks--the colour of her eyes.... The rows

of velvety hairs that fringe the centre of the corolla are black as

her eye-lashes--black as her hair.... But the scent of violets

brings her back, complete in her sweet womanliness, with the Chapel

and Kerr's Arbour for a background to it all....

Now come great sheaves of lilies, phlox and gladioli, and it is May,

the Month of the Rose. Masses of perfume, colour and fragrance are

brought to the cellar in the jeweller's back-yard. And John plays

with them, or stares at the whitewashed wall, or listens as Esther

reads to him from a copy of the Jewish Scriptures, a volume belonging

to their host, printed in Hebrew and Arabic. The Messianic

Prophecies are what he hears most gladly, and oftenest asks for. One

day as she closes the Book at the end of a passage from Isaiah:

"_And He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our

iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by

His stripes we are healed._"

"That--that is why it was said to me that night!--" she hears the

slow voice whisper: "'Thou hast suffered for obedience to thy

father's fathers, and for the keeping of the Oath, and for the love

of one woman. But I, that I might do the Will of My Father--and thy

Father--and for the love of all mankind.'"

"O my Cousin!" Habitually now, the soft Arabic speech flows to and

fro between them, "Who was it said those words to thee? ..."

"It was on the night--" the scarred head turns on the high-propped

pillow--"the night after the beating. My hands and feet were

torture, and I had a great thirst. And there came a light on the

wall of the hut, and Somebody spoke to me, and the blood cleared from

my eyes, and I saw Him then...."

"Who--who was He?" She draws an awed breath.

"He said He was my Friend--and I believed Him. You could not see Him

as I did--and doubt any more. Dost thou recall the fresco in the

tomb on Ebal? It is not like--how could it be His likeness? But the

man who made it had seen Him in a Vision, and caught the faintest

shadow of His look."

"I--do not understand...."

"It does not matter. But that is why I was so sure I should not die

just then.... I cannot yet enter Jerusalem, for there is blood upon

my hands that has been shed in vengeance--but, I am to wait near the

City until I get the Sign...."

"Dearest, art thou quite sure--"

"I doubt not, being certain. Now, having breath enough--I would

speak of other things. When I am dead, thou wilt write and tell the

things to my mother--and go to thine own mother at Alexandria. She

is wealthy and so art thou, thou dost need no provision, so the

Fortune of Eli Hazaël, our grandfather, will go to build and endow

the Hebrew University."

"But thy brother, Maurice, what of him?"

"It is borne in on me," the black eyes are momentarily dimmed, "that

Maurice is dead. I have felt it for a long time. My mother must be

sorely grieved. He was her dearest son."

"Art thou not dear to her also?" Esther asks sadly.

"She will sorrow for me too--but not as she does for Maurice. And

she has a good friend, an old flame,--a Dutchman in the City, Herman

Van Ost his name is--and she will marry him now. She would have

married him years ago, but Maurice did not wish it. There is another

task for thee yet, my Sweet. Dost thou shrink from it, Little One?"

"Nay. For thou art Hazaël, and the Head of our House. Surely I will

obey thee. Have thou no doubt of me! ..."

"Kind One! ... Brave One! Little Judith in Israel!-- Surely thou

wilt be rewarded for thy courage and thy faith. Listen now! ... When

I who am the littlest and least of all the Hazaëls shall be gathered

to our fathers--thou shalt seek out Katharine Forbis--wherever thou

shalt hear of her--and carry word from me." The voice deepens and

grows strong: "Say--there is no longer an Hazaël left of the male

line, to guard the Ashes. The Oath is fulfilled--the Debt is paid!

Katharine and her children--and theirs following them--must take upon

them to be Guardians of the Shrine."

"What Oath was it?"

"The Oath made sixteen hundred years ago and more, by Hazaël Aben

Hazaël. Remember!--she is to take the Urn back to Kerr's Arbour, and

house it under the altar in the Chapel there.... And her children

will reverence it--knowing its sacredness. Perhaps," the black eyes

are shining now with a light that is soft and gentle, "perhaps there

will be a little boy--with eyes like his mother's--who will ask for

the story oftener and love it more than the

others--because--because--his name will be John ..."

"Ah, dearest!--dearest! ..."

"Do not cry. All this when I have departed.... Till then I would be

forgotten by all I used to know."

"Then thou wilt say I have done right when I tell thee that some two

months back--when thou wert very feeble--diligent search was made for

thee. Even under the eyes of the Turks and Germans--a man whom thou

knowest ventured into this place."

"One whom I know! ..." The black eyes flash, the scarred head turns

towards her on the pillow: "Is his name Yaill?"

"His name is Colonel Edward Yaill, though sometimes he calls himself

the Emir Fadl Anga. He was garbed as a Moghrabi sugar-merchant--but

I knew his eyes again. So I sought him out, and guessing at thy

pleasure in the matter, I told him thou couldst not be moved--and he

went away from here."

"It is well. Now I talk no more, sweetheart, for breath is hard to

come by. Do one thing that I ask before the daylight goes. Take off

thy veil, little Judith, and let me see thee plainly. For once! I

will not ask again, if my asking hurt thee so!"

She falters a refusal, then yields at his entreaty.

"Shut thine eyes for a little moment, and open when I call...."

He shuts his eyes and opens them, to see Esther sitting at the

bed-foot.... A figure girlish in its youth fulness, pathetic in its

slender fragility, and veilless, save for the tresses of her rich

black silken hair. She parts the hair with two little brown hands,

then throws it back on either side, revealing the face it has

covered--and a sob catches in the man's throat, and his eyes are wet

with tears....

For that side of Esther's face that is never shown is beautiful,

strangely beautiful. The great dark eye under the arched black

eyebrow, the little aquiline nose, with proud curved nostrils, the

delicate mouth, the rounded chin, are of purest Hebrew type. She

bears his scrutiny awhile, then lifts the discarded covering, adjusts

it with quick, slender hands--and is Ummshni once again.

"Will that do? Hast thou looked enough?" she asks with a touch of

sharp regret for her lost heritage of Beauty.

"I have looked.... And I have seen--as I knew I should!" says John

placidly, "that thy face, my little Esther--is lovely as thy soul.

Now I will rest, for I am done. Perhaps I shall walk to-morrow...."

Comes the month of June, with ardent suns, and July with skies of

fire. Esther reads to John in another Book--a copy of the Syriac

Gospels picked up on a stall in the Bazâr--of One Whose teachings she

has been reared to hold as rank blasphemy. But her Hazaël has

commanded it, and she obeys Hazaël, and reads of Him Who raised the

dead to life, and opened the eyes of those born blind, and made the

lame to walk. Here in this land of Palestine nearly two thousand

years ago. But time goes on and this lame man does not walk yet....

It is October, the month of Asphodel, and Shechem is swept clean of

Germans and Turks, as the brown line moves up north. The great

Commander-in-Chief of the E.E.F. has carried out his leopard-pounce

on Nazareth,--whence Von Sanders and his Headquarters Staff have

fled--Tiberias and Amman have been occupied by British Forces, and

the stronghold of Turkish Power at Damascus has fallen, before the

colossal, tottering bulk can balance on its feet.

No available garments of European make can be adapted to John's

hugeness. Esther and the jewel-dealer's wife are in despair, then

hit upon a brilliant idea. A vast pair of Turkish drawers of yellow

and white striped-cotton are tucked into the baggy tops of immense

soft yellow boots. Over an Arab _jubba_ of white cotton material

goes a loose-sleeved Arab over-robe of brown camel-hair. They cover

him with a black felt _tarbûsh_, and a white silk _kuffiyeh_ bound

with a scarlet head-rope, and swathe him in the voluminous folds of a

primrose-coloured _jerd_. Now, with the beard that he has grown in

captivity at Shechem, the mother at home in London would not know her

son again.

The German Commander with his merry men departed in haste for Aleppo

when the huge khaki torrent rolled upon Samaria from the South....

The Turks of the garrison escaped over Jordan, the batteries on the

flank of Ebal were taken by the British, and the Patriarchs and other

notables deported from the Holy City are chartering vehicles to take

them back again.

Some of these are quaint enough. To witness, the ancient

travelling-landau, piled with luggage of a heterogeneous description,

packed with Armenian Fathers, and drawn by a tall camel and a small,

rebellious mule. But the hooded bath-pony-chair of largest size, a

venerable derelict of British make left by some wealthy traveller

years ago to moulder in the courtyard of a Shechem hotel, to which a

diminutive red-tasselled donkey has been harnessed, and in which is

seated a prodigiously obese and bushy-bearded Arab, possibly takes

the palm....

Three women run beside the chair, drawn by the small donkey driven by

an Arab urchin with a sharpened palm-wood stick. As the chair rolls

through the east gate, and moves in the rolling dust-cloud with a

column of other vehicles, past the Wired Place and the Mohammedan

Tombs, the little donkey stops.

"_Shalôm, Sidi_! Health and recovery be thine--and Happiness with

the Blessing!" says the wife of the jewel-dealer, bidding John Hazel

farewell.

"Farewell, O woman of gentle heart.... Remember me to thy husband.

And farewell, kind Inaini.... Sometimes remember us! ..."

"Farewell, my lord.... My lord will not soon forget Shechem!" says

Inaini, with a flash of brilliant eyes and teeth from between her

flowered veils....

"Nor thee. May the Most High reward thee for all thy charity! ..."

"It was nothing!" says the woman, almost sullenly, but John can hear

her sob....

"O my friend! O my sister! Farewell, good-bye! Little Mother of

Ugliness, my heart is sore to part! ..."

The jewel-dealer's wife hugs the little white-robed figure. Esther

embraces her, and then Inaini--and the honest woman and the courtesan

go away together, both red-eyed with weeping behind their shrouding

veils. And the big bath chair drawn by the little donkey--with the

huge Arab in it and the little woman and the native boy running

beside it--is lost in the stream of traffic on the Jerusalem-Shechem

Road.

It is a day of dust and sun, and the big man in the bath chair drawn

by the little donkey is as feeble as he is heavy, and unfitted to

bear fatigue. It is night by the time they have left the plain, and

the road climbs amongst the hills, that are ridged and furrowed with

the traces of War, as the face that is shaded by the white _jerd_,

and the body that the sick heart's throbbing shakes, and the man's

misshapen hands and feet are scarred by the Turkish _asayisi_....

Sunset flames over the Western Sea and all the land is rosy-dyed when

at last he looks on the ancient City, the bourne of his desires. Set

between east and west upon three hills, of which the lesser, Ophel,

has vanished--the limestone spurs of Sion and Moriah upholding her,

she turns her back upon the ocean plain and the mild damp airs that

blow from it, to fill her lungs with the burning winds and

dust-storms of the Wilderness--where the Son of God and Saviour of

mankind was tempted of Satan, and Jordan's yellow waters flow towards

the abyss of the Dead Sea.

They go no farther that night, for the sick man cannot bear it, but

hire two rooms, almost clean, and newly whitewashed, at the Khân of a

little mud-built Mohammedan village that sits on a hill beside the

road.

The left wing of the London Division were entrenched here before the

Occupation, and the Advance that moved them north.... The whitewash

of the Khân of Shafât has familiar names scribbled upon it, attached

to caustic comments on the price of native eggs, dates, cheese,

oranges and olives, as compared with their quality and their size.

And here the little party stay. For the big man in the bath chair

can travel no farther. Many days pass and he can move again; and the

little donkey is harnessed to the chair by its tasselled traces, and

the Arab boy with the palm-stick, and the little veiled woman run by

it--and the queer _cortége_ halts by and by where the broad dusty

track that leads south and a shade west to the Damascus Gate, forks

off on the left to the less broad, better-kept carriage way

that--following the line of the mountain-ridge, leads--south and a

trifle east--to the Mount of Olives, passing the Tombs of the Kings.

In the shadow of the south wall of the royal enclosure, the sick man

signifies his wish to halt. All day he lingers there, content, and

for the greater part in silence; shares with his meek nurse and the

Arab boy such food as they have with them--and when the short dusk

heralds Dark, is loth to leave the spot. Next day they are there

again--and the next day and the next. It is here, he signifies to

his patient nurse, that the Message he waits will reach him--and

content that Hazaël should be content, she knows no other will.