THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.
The woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had
first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled
through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings
were, and what her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor
did Ben Aboo himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in
her own person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its
charms.
In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of
four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many
concubines that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept
lodged in one unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace.
The second condition was, that she herself should never be banished
to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should
openly share the state of her husband.
Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,
and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to
abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a
prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she
insisted on a public marriage.
They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted
six days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning
the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every
evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of
powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from
Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near
the Bab er-Remoosh. Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of
guests from among the chief men of the town were invited daily to
partake of them.
No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light
of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though
it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a
Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself
with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with
sorrow of the heart.
The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of
the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should
pay her court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be
invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with
some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having
heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a
children's feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and
caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning “To our
well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,”
and setting forth that on the morrow, when the “Sun of the world” should
“place his foot in the stirrup of speed,” and gallop “from the kingdom
of shades,” the Governor would “hold a gathering of delight” for all the
children of Tetuan and he, Israel, was besought to “lighten it with the
rays of his face, rivalled only by the sun,” and to bring with him
his little daughter Naomi, whose arrival “similar to a spring breeze,”
should “dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation.” This
despatch written in the common cant of the people, concluded with
quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and
more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses “of the
thickness of a hair.”
When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He
leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the
Spanish woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to
make a show of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as
uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks,
cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in
the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
everywhere.
Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had
been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be
dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself,
who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his
teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great
was the little black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would
talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and
often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to
him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him,
and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them
like a fury, and they would scamper away.
When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every
child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then
a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling
them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly
happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.
Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through
the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women
stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and
sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into
the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage,
past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and
finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a
great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors,
Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white
and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and,
perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every
eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made
for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people. “Shoof!”
muttered a Moor. “See!” “It's himself,” said a Jew. “And the child,”
said another Jew. “Allah has smitten her,” said an Arab “Blind and
dumb and deaf,” said another Moor “God be gracious to my father!” said
another Arab.
Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and
from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in
the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an
alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with
stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat
rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at
the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome
woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain, and vulgar.
Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina
drew Naomi to her side.
“So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?” said
Katrina.
Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
feet.
“The darling is as fair as an angel,” said Katrina, and she kissed
Naomi.
The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of
pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
and his face aglow.
Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.
But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl
leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost
rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
the boy's side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it,
and then a low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her
eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with
both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she
kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with
wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he
could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the
little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave
her.
“Leave her!” she cried. “Let us see what the child will do!”
At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp
pass to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling
on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it,
she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint
smile crossed her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched
its strings again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her
slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid
her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and
touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh
with delight.
Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes
of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds
such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them
some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder,
the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and
had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the
force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument
of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the
leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great
winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling
of the levanter in her hair.
This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted
her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she
played, she laughed again and again.
There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through
the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white
fingers flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and
awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard
nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.
Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was
agape. And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from
their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words
they passed between them. “Where has she learnt it?” asked a Moor.
“From her master himself,” muttered a Jew. “Who is it?” asked the Moor.
“Beelzebub,” growled the Jew. “God pity me, the evil eye is on her,”
said an Arab. “God will show,” said a Shereef from Wazzan. “They say
her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's
blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran.” “No,” said the Arab; “she sent her
girdle.” “Anyhow, the child is a saint,” whispered the Shereef. “No, but
a devil,” snorted the Jew.
“Brava, brava, brava!” cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered
and laughed as the girl played. “What did I tell you?” she said, looking
toward her husband. “The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh,
it's a brave imposture! Brava, brave!”
Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
sighed audibly.
“Good again!” cried the woman. “Very good!” and she clapped her
hands, whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
but the Jews continued to mutter, “Beelzebub, Beelzebub!”
Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did.
Had God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit
to spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech
that Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the
tenderness of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces
about him awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the
cries of the wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of
the girl's soul as it were no better than a vulgar show; and at that
Israel's wrath rose to his throat.
“Brava, brava!” cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
“You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.”
Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who
had married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi,
and remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
morning, and pure as the snow.
And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to
take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the
spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head
had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to
her face.
“Take her in!” said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped
up to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her
Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
“Stop!” he cried.
The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
“Do as you are bidden--take her in!” said Ben Aboo.
“Stop!” cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
“Madam,” he cried, “I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
my child belongs to me.”
So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,
and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to
know what he had done until he was gone.
Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies
bleat and bark “Beelzebub,” yet the child was an angel, though suffering
for his sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs
she had played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so,
Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her
powers. He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but
would the Lord yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day
take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant
and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his
heart as a man this sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi,
though helpless and simple and weak?