Meanwhile, the period of stagnation past, the current of life begins
to flow within and around Jerusalem. In the house of an English
Protestant Missionary Society without the walls, a Division has its
Headquarters. At the Sign of the Red Triangle, guides may be
obtained for the reverent conduct of soldier-visitors to the Holy
Places. Here also photographs for the folks at home, with lightning
hair-cuts and shaves, can be supplied with light refreshments.
Signboards along the Jaffa Road invite Crusaders from the Land of the
Ifrangi to partake at their own peril of sweets, ices and cakes....
And a Divisional Theatre flourishes in a tin-roofed shed, outside the
Gate of Jaffa, and a Cinema established in a ramshackle booth is
nightly packed to the walls.
Though the trenches and gun-emplacements on the Mount of Olives and
Mount Scopas yet speak of War, there are local tennis-parties on
badly neglected lawns, and even small dances to the accompaniment of
the gramophone. The donkey-boys and Cook's tourists are no more....
But there are Military Races and Military Sports; and divers
favourites, human and equine, are duly backed by the men of the
Expeditionary Army....
Within the City English soldiers guard the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre and Mohammedans the Haram. The depot of the A.S.C. is
lodged in the courtyard of a Jewish School.
English Military Nursing Sisters are housed in the Abyssinian
Patriarch's palace--the French Convent where the Turkish Army
Officers were, now shelters French soldiers--though the Turkish
Crescent and Star have not yet been obliterated from the Jaffa Gate;
and the Arab police, in black sheepskin caps and dark blue drill
uniforms, keep order as they used to under the Turkish _régime_....
Though the solemn boom of heavy guns still wakens all the echoes of
the Hills of Judæa, though Turkish batteries and Turkish troops move
in the neighbourhood of Jericho, and British motor-launches churn the
waters of the Dead Sea, the Holy City is wakening from her torpor of
years.... Kinder-gartens and boys' and girls' schools, Christian and
Jewish, Homes and Orphanages--the Teacher's University, the
Missionary Colleges, and the seminaries supervised by Catholic
Religious--revive like the withered blossoms of the so-called Jericho
Rose....
The Clothes-Market near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,--where skin
affections and fleas could be purchased at exorbitant
prices--re-opens. In the labyrinth of _bâzârs_ under the shadowy
arcades, the Jew and Arab pedlars set up their stalls of rosaries and
medals, gaudy religious pictures, and common household wares.
Sleek-haired Levantines and Syrians behind counters of modern shops,
offer antiques and souvenirs in mother o' pearl and olive-wood;
ostrich feathers, roses of Jericho, Syriac Gospels and Rolls of the
Law. German stores miraculously become Dutch, offer for sale
liqueurs, cigars, _sauer-kraut_ in barrels, tinned sausage, pickles
and chocolates.
And the People who Wait for Signs have come out of their various
hiding-places. The haggard man who carries a heavy wooden Cross and
wears a plaited Crown of Thorns, pants under his heavy burden from
station to station along the Sorrowful Way.... And the other, long
haired and wearing robes of white, waits again near the Jaffa Gate,
carrying his brightly-polished lamp, well trimmed and filled with
oil. He says he is one of the Virgins waiting for the Coming of the
Bridegroom.... And again, there is another, a handsome, martial
figure, in the panoply of a Knight of Malta, folded in a
cross-embroidered mantle, girt with a Crusader's sword....
Who knows what compact these and many more have made with One Whom
they acknowledge Master. They are content, for their belief in Him,
to be despised as fools. Calm, reasonable Christians shudder at, or
ignore, while the Children of Islam respect them. To their number
another is added with the passage of the days....
December draws to its end again. Tea-parties and concerts are given,
and the Representatives of the Three Great Faiths may be said to
fraternise. The Red Cross and the Society of St. John of Jerusalem
unite in splendid efforts for the good of War-ridden Humanity. The
olives are grey-green, and the palms are yellowing, and the first
pale mist of almond-bloom pinkens on the hillsides, above the hedges
of tamarisk--and Christmas Eve is here....
The portly Arab in the bath-chair drawn by the tiny donkey sits in
his accustomed place, from which fierce gales and heavy Winter rains
alone may drive him, in the shelter of the south wall of the
Enclosure of the Tombs of the Kings....
Two chaplains of the E.E.F. go by in their cross-badged khaki;
accompanied by an elderly Armenian in flowing black _kaftan_ and high
square head-dress.
"There's the New Crank," says an Oxford voice. "And the little
Syrian woman, and the bath chair and the donkey-boy--and the donkey
possibly--all waiting as usual for the Sign that doesn't come!"
"'The Sign.' What Sign? ..."
The second khaki chaplain looks with interest at the Arab. The
strong south wind has blown back the folds of his ample
head-covering, and it is plainly seen what kind of man the drapery
has concealed. His huge ears, swollen beyond all shape, hang down on
the bulgy, turgid flesh of the neck-folds, his huge hooked nose, and
long but shapeless upper-lip dominate an extraordinary acreage of
countenance that is ridged and knobbed and crumpled like a new-dug
potato-field. And his great hands and gigantic arms, wherever these
are visible, present the same appearance, to the chaplain's curious
eye.
"Would that be some obscure form of elephantiasis, do you think,
now?" he asks the Armenian ecclesiastic who walks by his side.
"It is not disease of any kind," the Armenian answers in English.
"The man has been beaten--nearly to death, and has lived--that is
all! ... Many of my friends, condemned to the severest punishment of
the Turkish _asâyisi_, have died under the infliction--as this man
was meant to do...."
"Speak lower!" It is the second chaplain in khaki who is speaking.
"That Arab understands you.... I saw it in his eyes...."
"Not he!" the first speaker returns. "He's an Arab pure and
simple--and some of the Tommies have dubbed him 'The Father of
Buffaloes.' The little woman with him has a nickname--somebody told
me.... "_Sabâh-el-kheir_, Daddy Buffalo.... _Khud_!--and good luck
to you! ..."
And a couple of Turkish _beshliks_ clink into the Arab's lap.
"Thy day be happy and blessed!" says a deep bass voice in answer.
The three pedestrians pass on, and the beshliks fall amongst the
straw in the bottom of the bath-chair. Unseen save by the sharp
glance of the Arab donkey-boy, who squats in the shadow of the wall
of the Enclosure, playing, with lines scratched upon the smooth
limestone, a game that is scored upon the walls and flags of old
Pompeii, as upon the recently excavated guard-room of the Herodian
Mercenaries, eighteen feet under the level of the Sorrowful Way. A
brace of coppers thrown to a sick man sitting by the wayside are
surely given in charity. Yet when the sick one dies, the Fund
amassed to build and endow the Hebrew University (the foundations of
which are being even now blasted in the rock of Mount Scopas) will be
enriched by a legacy of three hundred and eighty thousand pounds....
"What does it matter, Essie? Sweet One, why dost thou tremble?
Surely the gift was kindly meant!"
The speaker thinks that his companion has been hurt by the bestowal
of the coins. But she has not even seen the gift made, or heard the
giver's words....
A moment since, a grey Staff car, driven by a soldier-chauffeur with
the Great Headquarters' brassard--coming from the direction of the
station beyond the Montefiore Hospice, by the road that skirts the
City wall, to debouch upon the Road of the Damascus Gate--has passed
by the Tombs of the Kings. Driven at speed, it has flashed by,
carrying strangers with it. But one face was not strange.... One
voice; borne on the wind that blows from Samaria, has echoed in the
ears of Esther-Ummshni, bringing memories that brim the heart....
"I did not hear.... I thought I saw.... What is it, what is it,
Mabruk?"
For the Arab boy has run down the road to meet a messenger from the
Khân.
"What says he? ..." asks the deep, slow voice.
"He says--Mabruk says--" Esther commences, shaking like a wind-blown
reed of the Jordan behind her shrouding veils: "that strangers are at
Shafât. He says--"
"O Shaykh!--" Mabruk, a lanky crow-necked youngster, son of the
Mohammedan landlord of the Shafât Khân, importantly steps forwards:
"Great ones have arrived at my father's Khân. Two lords of the
Inglizi, and a lady, tall and beautiful. They have sent me in the
horseless carriage to bring back thee and the Sitti. This letter
also they have sent thee by thy servant's hands.--Behold! ..."
Mabrûk lifts the note to his eyes and forehead, and hands it over. A
folded sheet of paper, sealed with an impression of a well-known onyx
signet, and scrawled with some hastily pencilled lines in a beloved
hand:
"I am here, at the Khân at Shafât, with my brother and husband. Do
not be angry that we have come! Your aunt is with us. Tell your
Cousin Esther, whom I long to see and thank for my dear Julian, but
not as I'm longing to see and thank you! Alone, dear, dear
John!--because I'm jealous of the others. Your first word--your
first look have got to be for me. Come back in the car or send it
back to fetch--
Your loving, grateful
KATHARINE YAILL."