THE MEETING ON THE SOK
Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen
years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the
father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since
her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
her fingers to teach them signs.
Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,
more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her
sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit
gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and
without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out
to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on
one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a
mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's
close abode, waiting to be born anew.
When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.
And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
fit of weeping.
“Tut! tut! what is this?” he said. “I will be back to-morrow. Do you
hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.”
When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
God Himself might have revealed to her.
“Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?” cried Fatimah.
“Alack! girl,” said Habeebah, “the maid is sickening again.”
And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic
slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she
awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the
evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along
in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter,
as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour
followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her
bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.
Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the
black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that
she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of
utterance.
At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children
at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of
the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which
was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of
some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no
more than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and
mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw
nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.
Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went
out together.
“Where are we going?” said Habeebah.
“Nay, how should I know?” said Fatimah.
“We are fools,” said Habeebah.
It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic
was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to
custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of
Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange
and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond
the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was
empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their
circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These
professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been
absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were
silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many
voices, from great numbers gathered within.
“The girl was right,” said Fatimah; “something has happened.”
“What is it?” said Habeebah.
“Nay, how should I know that either?” said Fatimah.
“I tell you we are a pair of fools,” said Habeebah.
Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she
led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble
frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed,
and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these
helpless children of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they
knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
“Listen! I hear something,” said Fatimah.
“Where?” said Habeebah.
“The way we are going,” said Fatimah.
On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her
goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither
altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight
forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the
goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
Then she could go no farther.
“Holy saints, what is this?” cried Habeebah.
“Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something?” said Fatimah.
“God's face shine on us,” said Habeebah. “What is all this crowd?”
An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered
on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of
haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare
shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures
in black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of
every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher
in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
braid on his new kaftan.
They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
impassively, at the vast company of Jews.
And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.
Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
muttering to themselves, “It is written,” they had returned to their
synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know
for whose cause the evil was upon them.
They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance
of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a
Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had
been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had
been unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold
himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and
interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race
and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the
Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God,
and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was
cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and
deaf, and was still without sight and speech.
Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as
He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger
be appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink
it, and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put
off any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the
people, and their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty
days the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other
days the young locust would have wings. Before the end of those
seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow to
the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover the face
of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather. The scythe would be
idle, the granaries would be empty, the tillers of the ground would come
hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
with them.
Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.
Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin?
Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, “It is written.”
That to appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until sunset
on the following day.
That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had
not broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of
Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.
The sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near
to their decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had
stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the
Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the
movement of the flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be “death,”
and the man under the gate would carry the tidings to the people
gathered in the market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would
come in procession and tell what steps had been taken that the doom
pronounced might be carried into effect.
Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes
to glance back towards the Mellah gate.
If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--these
children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years
before; again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than
the whole people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty
heads, if not their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat
might be killed by the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all
that some of their heads were bald, and some of their beards were
grizzled, and some of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce;
little children of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble.
Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching
ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness,
filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought,
of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher
leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always,
and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were
following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn
was following God?
When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from
danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a
reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon
him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going
back to the house.
“Come,” said Habeebah; “let us go--we are not safe.”
“Yes,” said Fatimah; “let us take the poor child back.”
“Come along, then,” said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
“Naomi, Naomi,” whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, “we are going home.
Come, dearest, come.”
But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her.
She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent
save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her
dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been
learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in
that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others
saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the
darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it
was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
“Brothers of Tetuan,” the old man cried, “what are we waiting for? For
the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one
thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a
humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been
driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say:
'Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has
stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been
silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the
houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have
seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles
of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and
the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your
profit?'”
The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once
more silent, the thick voice went on: “And not the seed of Israel
only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of
misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,
in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,
our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no
standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At
this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is
overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt;
in the morning we say 'Would it were evening'; in the evening we say,
'Would it were morning'; stretch out your hand and help us!”
Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
continued: “Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
people, and your servants will bless you.'”
The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of “Ben Aboo!” “To Ben
Aboo!” “Why wait for the judges?” “To the Kasbah!” “The Kasbah!”
But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those
waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen.
Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo,
the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the
three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.
“Why go to the Kaid?” said the voice like a peahen. “Does the Basha
love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such
affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo
be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master?
Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the
Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord
and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people
to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the
races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more
warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,
or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and
merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed.”
At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. “Away with the man!”
“Away with him!” rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
for mercy or for patience.
While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice
of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
“And does God,” said Reuben, “any more than Ben Aboo--blessings on his
life!--love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with
this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His
hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife,
how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben
Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the
day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this
offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and
speechless!”
Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
“Come! Let us away!” But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. “Do you say that
the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!--he swallowed them down, but has
he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that which he took by extortions
has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against him?
Answer me, yes or no!”
Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of “Yes!” And
instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice,
a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it--it
was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and
still deaf as a stone.
“Tut! What is all this talking about?” she snapped and grunted. “Reuben
Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them too much of
it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her
a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
children!”
The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
of an angry sea. “She's right,” said a shrill voice. “He deserves it,”
snuffled a nasal one. “At least let us drive him out of the town,” said
a third gruff voice. “To his house!” cried a fourth voice, that pealed
over all. “To his house!” came then from countless hungry throats.
“Come, let us go,” whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
strange sounds to herself.
“To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!” the people howled in a
hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.
But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
turning like worms on an upturned turf. “Why sack his house?” cried
some. “Why drive him out?” cried others. “A poor revenge!” “Kill him!”
“Kill him!”
At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly
in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of “He is
there!” and then there was a great silence.
It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one
mule and leading another.
He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out
of their dry throats, saying, “May the God of Jacob bless you also,
brother!” and “May the child of your wife be blessed!” Ah! those
blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked.
He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were
like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music.
It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a
lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And
Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the
sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home,
for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would
befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of
a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his
staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.
Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing
and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
Naomi heard them.
Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
air, crying, “God has given him into our hands!” After that all sounds
seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
by the distance.
But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped,
and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their
midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their
fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his
face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on
to his knees.
No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight
girl that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she
was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God
loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”
Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man
dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against
him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the
midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow
like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from
their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she, the blind, the frail,
the helpless.
Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the
procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how
it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come
upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over
his enemies and say, “You thought God's arm was against me, but behold
how God has saved me out of your hands.”
But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
seemed to have dropped upon him.
At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”
Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he
took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they
passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes
were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted
up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.