THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of
the new prophet for his guide and motto: “Exact no more than is just; do
violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give
to the poor.” That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if
any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been
an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.
“I'll do it,” he said; “at all risks and all costs, I'll do it.”
And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his
pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to
return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in
amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their
ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan
at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming
behind them penniless.
But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his
homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in
his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out
from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five
long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the
daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done
so much to wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would
do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of
his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the
sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would
meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance,
then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child
been so smitten of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child
bought God's mercy at so dear a price!
Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared
not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love
of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home,
it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity
and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three
sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence
in that town and province.
First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco
and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders
selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all
black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They
had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and
the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others
were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were
adorned, after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they
were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them
could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street,
the overseers of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection
for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them
nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old
women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black
maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl
of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and passed around.
“Now, brothers,” said the slave-master, “look see; sound of wind and
limb--how much?”
“Eighty dollars,” said a voice from the crowd.
“Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the
kisses of a king, eh? How much?”
“A hundred dollars.”
“A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.”
The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
round the crowd again.
“Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true
believers. How much?”
“A hundred and ten.”
“A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of a
girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her--she
speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing
I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep
her for myself. Now, for the third and last time--seventeen years of
age, sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact--how much?”
Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his
way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into
them with a cry of joy and pain together.
It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben
Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and
from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he
told, in broken Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were
the faces of the bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not
an eye among them all but was melted at his story.
Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, “I will give
twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty,” and straightway another
and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of
the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the
girl was free.
Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
broken way: “The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour
her and let you keep her with you always!”
That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the
dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having
crossed the markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that
were to smite out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue
tunic girded with a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied
about his head, was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees
cut into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a
Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and downcast look of
a race that is despised and kept under. His donkey was a bony creature,
with raw places on its flank and shoulders where its hide had been worn
by the friction of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying “Arrah!” to
it in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly. At
the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch was
crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated a moment,
as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it or to make the beast
trudge through the water. Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried
“Arrah!” again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way,
and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The donkey's legs were
broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry,
had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
it was dead.
At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
man with bitter reproaches. “Allah blot out your name, you thief!” she
cried. “You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
you dog of a Nazarene!”
This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
to hold her peace. “Silence, you young wanton!” he cried, in a voice
of indignation. “Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
trouble?”
It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a
renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's
face, and said, “You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
be a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when
your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you.”
Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
walk humbly before God, for God was great.
Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of
the town walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a
white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to
the entrance. He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty, and with
dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk
in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce
jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no
meaning. The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was
counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,
which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways of
life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it. The
man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and
Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.
Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
sign of how her soul was smitten.
On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of
his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.
And then, while they walked some paces together before parting, and the
prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at
Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned
Naomi.
“My father,” he said, “there is something that I have not told you.”
“Tell it now, my son,” said the Mahdi.
“I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has
her voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and
deaf.”
“Merciful Allah!” cried the Mahdi.
“Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
knows not God.”
“Allah preserve her!” cried the Mahdi.
“And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
water should not she also be clean?”
“God knows,” said the Mahdi. “He gives no rewards for repentance.”
“But listen!” said Israel. “In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak.
Man of God, will it come to pass?”
“God is good,” said the Mahdi. “He needs that no man should teach Him
pity.”
“But I love her,” cried Israel, “and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has
no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will
have mercy?”
The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, “The Lord sees all. Go your
way in trust. Farewell!”
“Farewell!”