THE SPIRIT-MAID
The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
forward he became as father and mother both to the child.
At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
living and buried soul.
And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
world.
Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
speech.
For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
souls: alive, and yet dead?
Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
silence should be her speech for ever.
Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. “Yes” was a mystery
that could not at first be revealed to her, and “No” was a problem
beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and frowns were useless to teach
her. No discipline could be addressed to her mind or heart. Except mere
bodily restraint, no control could be imposed upon her. She was swayed
by her impulses alone.
Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil
and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for
approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he
stopped very suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his
energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort
in his case must be an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an
infirm creature from the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being
from the right hand of God. She was a living monument of sin that was
not her own. It was useless to go farther. The child must be left where
God had placed her.
But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human
kind, she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they
possessed. It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,
and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of
all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures,
and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of
belief. Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes,
could yet look upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf
with her bodily ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could
hear.
Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears
had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her
hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it
against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms
to encircle his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to
her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go
with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of
the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty
mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled
under and behind and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near
her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two
streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.
And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah
and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river
under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and
even some of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all
without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her
to keep her out of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was
her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet
heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school
every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny
white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the
crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her
feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded
whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from
the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off
her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and
clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of
airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could
neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery,
and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air. She could see
nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white
town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult
in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
about her. Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who
looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt
in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings
outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying
loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not
touch it.
By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were
the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,
which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child
into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring,
when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were
abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
eyes bent down.
But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
that stood in it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress
increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things;
it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
longing from causes that were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her
sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and
her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house. And sometimes,
in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through
the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she
came to Israel's room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her,
like a little white vision, standing by his bedside. What she wanted
there he could never know, for neither had he power to ask nor she to
answer, whether she were sick or in pain, or whether in her sleep she
had seen a face from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called
her away, or whether her mother's arms had seemed to be about her once
again and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him on
awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream, but thinking
all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow. So, with a sigh, he
would arise and light his lamp and lead her back to her bed, and more
scalding than the tears that would be standing in Naomi's eyes would be
the hot drops that would gush into his own.
“My poor darling,” he would say, “can you not tell me your trouble, that
I may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her.
My darling, my darling.”
Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle
out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might
ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still
greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God.
And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible
thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the
bar of judgment they would one day be brought together, and then how
should it stand with her soul?
Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would
not ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the
land of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears
to hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy
what He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His
little one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to
be a blessed saint in heaven.
Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a
Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his
own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that
had sent Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great
account, how should he answer to her for her soul?
Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that
knew not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights,
but at length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his
duty to Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the
Lord to her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as
the sands of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could
lead her. What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye
that saw God, and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching
from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of
the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the
Kings. And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one
free hand in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what
mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into
darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had
set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take her
father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book
to his knees.
And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
and make a mock at him, and say, “The child is deaf and hears not--go
read your book in the tombs!” But he only hardened his neck and laughed
proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, “Why waste
yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
alive, and who shall roll away the stone?” But Israel only answered, “It
is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.”
So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
and he would read the law which says, “_Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
nor put a stumbling-block before the blind._” But when his heart was
at peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
answered--
“_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp
of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,
and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and
went to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered,
I called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the
Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._”
And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, “It is good for me that
I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.”
Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read
of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both
blind and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet
in their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always
with them--there was a third, for there was God.