THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
entered Tetuan that day.
He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under
the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load
of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
them.
“Away!” he had cried. “Away with your uncleanness and deception.”
And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
off like a pariah dog.
As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in
line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some
standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at
full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length,
throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping
back, amid deafening shouts of “Allah! Allah! Allah!”
“Allah indeed!” cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without
fear. “That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
bloodshed. Away, away!”
The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for
the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out
in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked
men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the
Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark
flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive
and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering
darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the
frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each
fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head
against the stones until blood ran like water.
“Fools and blind guides!” cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
sheep. “Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
Away!”
At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after
various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding
ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence.
The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his
face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog
with his muzzle on his forepaws.
“Welcome,” he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
The Mahdi did not sit. “Ben Aboo,” he said in a voice that was half
choked with anger, “I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to
you if you send me away unsatisfied.”
Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
“What is it now?”
“Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?” said the Mahdi.
With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
his dusky muzzle had rested.
“Ah, do not lie to me,” cried the Mahdi. “I know where she is--she is in
prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.”
The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled
about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and
said with an air of mock inquiry, “Ya Allah! who is this infidel?”
Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, “Sir, I know who you are!
You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you
were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here--my guest and protector.
You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin
our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by
Allah you shall die!”
Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi
took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said--
“Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
death. You dare not and you cannot do it.”
“Why not?” cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a
swagger. “What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man
need know.”
“Basha,” said the Mahdi, “do you think you are talking to a child? Do
you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for
my return? And do you think, too,” he cried, lifting one hand and his
voice together, “that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on
an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I
say; you are a fool.”
The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was
cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of
braggadocio--
“And what if I do not liberate the girl?”
“Then,” said the Mahdi, “if any evil befalls her the consequences shall
be on your head.”
“What consequences?” said the Basha.
“Worse consequences than you expect or dream,” said the Mahdi.
“What consequences?” said the Basha again.
“No matter,” said the Mahdi. “You are walking in darkness, and do not
know where you are going.”
“What consequences?” the Basha cried once more.
“That is God's secret,” said the Mahdi.
Ben Aboo began to laugh. “Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,” he
shouted to his people.
“Enough!” cried the Mahdi. “I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
will reach to your soul.”
Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, “This is the last
word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben
Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt,
and death and hell.”
Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks
under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed
through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the
stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, “Abd
er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the
sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me
for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd
er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you,
slave of the Compassionate!”
The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of
the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But
his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly
thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.
“The Mahdi,” they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.
It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also
of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as
well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in
gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he
listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before
him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of
night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was
imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,
who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy
while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of
Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the
man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's
following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
“O Tetuan,” thought the Mahdi, “how soon will your streets be uprooted
and your sanctuaries destroyed!”
The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
and still saddled, were up and feeding.
The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
with God.
With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
of his fingers were also frozen.
Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face
that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
cheeks.
“My poor darling!” he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
Sultan.
“My brave girl!” he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
that was both pride and pain.
He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
could hear: “Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!”
This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
and said in almost a childish tone, “I suppose there is no help for
it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
but--”
“And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,” said the Mahdi, rising to
his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
impulse, should at length be carried into effect.