THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
“Basha,” said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
calmness--“Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this
hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.”
“Tut, man!” whispered Ben Aboo. “Do your new measles break out
everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?”
Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
great resolve.
“Basha,” he said again calmly and quietly, “if you were Sultan and could
make me your Vizier, I would not do it.”
“Why?” cried Ben Aboo; “why? why?”
“Because,” said Israel, “I am here to deliver up your seal to you.”
“You? Grace of God!” cried Ben Aboo.
“I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, “to resign my
office.”
“Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. “Man, man,
are you mad?”
“No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. “I must have been that
when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”
Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his
anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel
with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and
terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers
under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and
said, “There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let
me think!”
Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct
of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, “What
does it mean? What does it mean?”
In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. “Wait!” he
cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
about him. “Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?
The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I
knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought
him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread
should spy and pry on me?”
Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
protests. “O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves,
his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings
after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O
Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of
my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old
soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll
stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?
It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen
against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid
everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you
know it.”
Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded
and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary
and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up
at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if
anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for
ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful
spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base
disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as
slowly and calmly as at first, “Basha, have no fear; I have not sold
myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see
the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing
of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for
myself alone.”
Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made
what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he
had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's
steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn
of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of
braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a
humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had
truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again,
and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once
more, without disguise and without shame.
“And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, “what riches have you
gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?”
“None,” said Israel shortly.
Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
Katrina.
“And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, “without office and
without riches how may you hope to live?”
“As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, “serving God and trusting
to His mercy.”
Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel
stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
“Serving God is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.
“Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.
At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed
it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
“Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. “Who are you that you dare wag your
insolent tongue at me?”
“I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm--“your
scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.
Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them
by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and
have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets
among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are
up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and
the mistaken love of all men.”
While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his
turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face
to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke
again and said, “Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your
business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is
your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.”
In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as
he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of
the patio.
“Fool!” he cried. “So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!”
Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
“Who said it was the Sultan?” he cried again. “He was a fool. Abd
er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
That's it!”
So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of
Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side
to side like a caged and angry beast.
“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so? If
I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head
did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the
Prophet, I swear it!”
Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
answered calmly and sadly, “God's ways are not our ways, neither are
His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”
All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with
lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan
restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And
now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn
in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said
lightly, “Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its
teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?”
“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy
eyes upon her.
At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. “Husband,” she
cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope
you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you
from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own
foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet
you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are,
you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I
tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh,
trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!
He'll be master in Tetuan yet!”
Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry
cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers,
who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers,
Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may,
you'll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!”
A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
“You must be right,” he said, “you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!
This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and
I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him
place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could
find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his
enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and
none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own
hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them
I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya
Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of
his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!” he
cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, “if you must
give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come
to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I
have served you long and faithfully; let me rest'--why not? I say, why
not?”
Israel answered calmly, “Because it would have been a lie, Basha.”
“So it would,” cried Ben Aboo sharply, “so it would: you are right--it
would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.”
“Because it is true, Basha,” said Israel.
At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
patio, he said, “There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
the other side of that wall there is a prison,” and, lifting his voice
to a shriek, he added, “you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.
One step more--”
But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and
the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling
throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have
had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn
countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his
passion, and a retort upon his words.
And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of
rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,
shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was
the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.
But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head
wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the
dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's
wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye
Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry,
gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And
good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death,
lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose
brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him
there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back
by his cubs.
But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should
he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither
read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the
Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should
he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's
house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?
He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage
had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then
courage! courage!
“Husband,” cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile
to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, “you must scour this vermin out of
Tetuan!”
“You are right,” he answered. “By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.”
Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
of mockery, “Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well,
and all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar.”
Israel stood unmoved. “As you will,” he said quietly.
“Where are the two women--the slaves?” asked Ben Aboo.
“At home,” said Israel.
“They are mine, and I take them back,” said Ben Aboo.
Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he
only drew a longer breath, and said again, “As you will, Basha.”
Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. “Where
is your money?” he cried; “the money that you have made out of my
service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?”
“Nowhere,” said Israel.
“It's a lie--another lie!” cried Ben Aboo. “Oh yes, I've heard of your
charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
Were they? Were they, I ask?”
“So you say, Basha,” said Israel.
“So I know!” cried Ben Aboo; “but all you had is not gone that way.
You're a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys--the keys
of your house!”
Israel hesitated, and then said, “Let me return for a minute--it is all
I ask.”
At that the woman laughed hysterically. “Ah! he has something left after
all!” she cried.
Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, “Yes, madam, I _have_
something left--after all.”
Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying,
“El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure
there!”
“It is true, madam,” said Israel; “it is true that I have a treasure
there. My daughter--my little blind Naomi.”
“Is that all?” cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
“It is all,” said Israel, “but it is enough. Let me fetch her.”
“Don't allow it!” cried Katrina.
Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. “Make
me homeless if you will,” he said, “turn me like a beggar out of your
town, but let me fetch my daughter.”
“She'll not thank you,” cried Katrina.
“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
yours, and no one save her father--”
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. “Trust
me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are. Girls like better things.
No, I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here
with me.”
Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would
rather see her dead at my feet.”
Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don't wag your tongue at your
mistress, sir.”
“_Your_ mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”
At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood
trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered
the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and
how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets
scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered
thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell. She
stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly
with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open
iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up,
her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare
wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow
that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
This, only this, was she!
And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. “Oh!
oh!” she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.
Israel saw everything. “Naomi!” he cried in a choking voice, and
stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
and paused and hesitated.
“Naomi!” he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
her father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to
his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, “Madam, we are
in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His
servant.”
Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God
in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object
of his terror. “O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
them both! Allah! Allah!”
The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
“Brava!” she cried. “Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!”
Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of
his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of
Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the
lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and
at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying--
“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be
done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who
is a play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”