_THE SCAPEGOAT_
Although in comparison with _The Bondman_, _The Deemster_ or _The
Manxman_, _The Scapegoat_ is not a masterpiece, yet it is in no sense a
failure, or derogatory to the gifted hand that wrote it. Written next in
order after _The Bondman_, _The Scapegoat_ seems to be an aftermath of
that, one of the three greatest works, in our opinion, of Hall Caine.
It is bitter without much sweetness, and it draws out its long note
of human woe without one cheering ray. Tenderness and hope are indeed
present, and they are the avenues through which the writer approaches
his story, and the means whereby he enchains the hearts of his readers,
gladdening and strengthening their souls by his own fervency of belief.
Hall Caine has a wonderful power of creating atmosphere. In this novel
of _The Scapegoat_, we tread the tortuous streets of a Morocco town, we
think in the inflated metaphors of its inhabitants, we brush against the
varied costumes that denote their myriad nationalities. We feel religious
antagonism to be a race-element, Oriental cunning and cruelty matters of
course; and we read of the Spaniards as though they were to us a strange
people from a far-off continent, so thoroughly has the writer imbibed the
spirit of his tale.
Israel ben Oliel is a man hardened by circumstance. He is a Jew whose
father married for gain and knew no paternal tenderness. Brought up in
England, Israel returns to his native country, Morocco, on the death of
his father, and takes the post of assessor of tributes for the Kaid of
Tetuan. His calling, though pursued at the first with justice, makes
him to be hated by the over-taxed people, and on his marriage with the
daughter of the grand Rabbi, they gather before the house to curse and
prophesy evil. Ben Oliel and his wife, Ruth, take up their worse than
lonely life in Israel’s house in the Jewish quarter. For long they have
no child and are held in derision by the Jews their neighbours; but
after the space of three years their prayers are answered, and on the
birth-night of the child, Israel prepares a feast and invites his enemies
that he may triumph over them.
Israel … leapt up from the table and faced full upon his guests,
and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now you know why you are
bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice with me over my
enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he lifted a
winecup and drank himself.
They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio
into the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced
them again.
“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed
the winecup out of his hand and it broke into fragments on the
floor. His laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice
rose to a shrill cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you
brought me low, you made me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has
lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy that God would not
suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among
my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best of
you. More than that—more than that—my son shall yet see—”
The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said;
“a girl!”
For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No
matter! She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none
to show them mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers
remembered against them! She shall see them beg their bread, and
seek it in desolate places! And now you can go! Go! go!”
He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he
was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumfounded and
with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry
from the inner room.
It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and
went in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil
instinct, followed him and listened from the threshold.
Ruth’s face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice
came from them.
And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest, joy of my joy
and pride of my pride?”
Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said, “The Lord has
counted my prayer to me as sin—look, see; the child is both dumb
and blind!”
Israel sinks yet deeper in the contempt of his countrymen because of
what seems to them a manifest judgment of God. And he, knowing his
condemnation to be unjust, is soured by the knowledge, and, in rebellion
against God and man, changes his hitherto upright dealings, becoming
in very deed a persecutor of the people. Meanwhile he has taken into
his household a little negro waif as a companion for his stricken
child Naomi. He grows up to be the devoted follower of Israel in his
adversities. When Naomi has reached her seventh year, her mother dies,
and is buried in the Jewish cemetery by six State prisoners from the
jail, for none other in his isolation can Israel find to help him. He
returns to his orphaned child and wraps around her all his thought, all
his tenderness. Nightly he reads to her from the _Koran_, doing his best
to dispel the terrible fear that she, knowing nothing of God, may stand
condemned in the next life; for in a vision of the night, he has seen
Naomi going out into the wilderness as the scapegoat for his sins. So
seven more years pass and Israel’s heart softens towards the people under
him, and he begins to hate the tyrannies that are exercised over them.
And in the disturbance of his heart he takes a journey out to where the
prophet Mohammed of Mequinez, a man who has given up all to the cause
of the poor and afflicted, holds his camp of refugees. The prophet tells
him: “Exact no more than is just; do violence to no man; accuse none
falsely; part with your riches and give to the poor:” and with the hope
in his heart that such sacrifice will turn God’s face towards Naomi,
Israel returns home on foot, giving away all that he carries with him
except that which his necessities require. He reaches home in tattered
Moorish clothing which at first prevents his recognition.
Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”
“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered,
“what of her?”
“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.”
Israel laughed—his laugh was like a scream.
“More than that—a strange thing has befallen her since you went
away,” said Ali.
“What?”
“She can hear.”
“It’s a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali
to the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and
sobbing and saying, “Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my
son; I did not know what I was doing. But do not torture me. If
what you tell me is true, there is no man so happy under heaven;
but if it is false, there is no fiend in hell need envy me.”
And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father—come
and see.”
Naomi has gained her hearing in an illness, and it is with suffering that
she learns to bear sound. It is long before she can speak. Israel has
sorrowed at her suffering and almost reproached God with her dumbness. A
plague of locusts is eating up everything off the face of the land. The
Jews in vain beseech the Almighty to send His floods, and then turn their
thoughts to the sinner among them whom they believe to be drawing down
God’s wrath on their nation. They select Israel and assemble with the
purpose of putting him to death. Walking in the town he stumbles across
the people who are crowded together expecting him.
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; see 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.
Naomi can now speak, and Israel’s world is a happier one. Issuing from
his house in the night time, he goes into the poorest quarters of the
town on errands of mercy, and soon in his liberality becomes a poor man.
The people, seeing his poverty, account for it by the supposition that
he must be falling from the Kaid’s favour, and curse and jeer at him all
the more openly. From secret charity, Israel determines to renounce his
position as servant of the wicked Kaid, and waits upon him to deliver up
the seal of office. The Kaid receives him at first with suspicion, then
with contempt, finally with insult. The wife of the Kaid strikes Israel
with her fan.
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 anyone—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 had 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!
Katrina, the Kaid’s wife, pretends to see in this nothing but imposture.
Telling her husband that Naomi’s defects have been assumed, she imparts
her own rage to him, and he sentences both Israel and his daughter to be
put out of the town.
“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!”
In the now driving rain Naomi and Israel are thus paraded in the streets,
and all the townsfolk mass themselves to follow in a huge, howling,
jeering procession. Naomi walks with closed eyes, not being able to bear
the light, and for several days she seeks shade and darkness, almost in
terror. Once out of the town, they find people who are kind to them,
giving them food and garments; and they settle in a hut among their
new-found friends. Israel’s little remaining money is expended on a few
sheep and oxen, and a living is found from the sale of wool, butter and
milk, which they send into the town with the neighbours’ market produce.
They live in happiness for some months until a crushing blow falls. One
of Israel’s last acts of mercy while in office was to liberate a number
of prisoners. The knowledge of this has now come to the Kaid’s ears, and
he orders the arrest of Ben Oliel. Israel is hurried away to a distant
prison, and Naomi is left alone, a child in knowledge both of the world
and of the dangerous people around her. The thought of the evil that may
come to her preys upon Israel’s mind in his helplessness, and gradually
reduces him to insanity. His comrades, in their sympathy, do all they
can to arouse him, and fresh prisoners as they arrive tell of the Kaid’s
tyrannies, and of how the people of Tetuan regret their treatment of
Israel, wishing him back among them. The kindly efforts are useless,
until the wit of the prison tells a harrowing tale in the hope of
bringing Israel to tears.
That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the
prisoners tied up their cotton handkerchiefs and lay down to
sleep, Tarby sat beside Israel’s place with sighs and moans and
other symptoms of a dejected air.
“Sidi, master,” he faltered, “I had a little brother once, and
he was blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother’s son. But you
wouldn’t think how happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi, he
never missed anything, and so his little face was like laughing
water! By Allah! I loved that boy better than all the world!
Women? Why—well, never mind! He was six and I was eighteen, and
he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over, Sidi, and big
white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn’t see. Well,
a bleeder came from Soos—curse his great-grandfather! Looked at
little Hosain—‘Scales!’ said he—burn his father! ‘Bleed him and
he’ll see!’ So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for
a minute—half a minute! ‘Oh, Tarby,’ he cried—I was holding him;
then he—he—‘Tarby,’ he cried faint, like a lamb that’s lost in
the mountains—and then—and then—‘Oh, oh, Tarby,’ he moaned. Sidi,
Sidi, I _paid_ that bleeder—there and then—_this_ way! That’s why
I’m here!”
It was a lie, but Tarby acted it so well that his voice broke in
his throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel’s
hand.
Tarby is successful, and with his tears the old man’s madness leaves him.
Hardly has he regained his sanity when the order comes for his release,
and Israel in joy and thankfulness hurries away to rejoin his child.
In the meanwhile, much has befallen Naomi. At first she clings to her
lonely hut, refusing the neighbours’ hospitality; but little by little
she gathers from their talk some idea of what her father’s life in
prison must be, and finally determines to follow the custom expected
from prisoners’ friends and relatives, in carrying food to him. She sets
out with a pannier of loaves and another of eggs on either side of her
borrowed mule, paying no heed to the expostulations of the good people
around her. But as her journey progresses her heart begins to sink.
Knowing nothing of evil, and expecting friendliness from all men, she is
disheartened by the knowledge that now forces itself upon her, and as, by
theft, and in payment for her lodging, her stock of food diminishes, she
almost resolves to turn back. By this time she has reached Tetuan, and
close to the town gates she is met and recognised by a former servant of
Israel.
The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled,
but that Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In
another moment the poor frightened girl, with all her brave
bearing gone, was weeping on the black woman’s breast.
“Whither are you going?” said Habeebah.
“To my father,” Naomi began. “He is in prison; they say he is
starving; I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don’t know
my way, and besides—”
“The very thing!” cried Habeebah.
Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win
emancipation at the hands of her master, and paradise for her
soul when she died. Naomi, who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima.
That was all. Then her troubles would end, and wondrous fortune
would descend upon her, and her father who was in prison would be
set free.
Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what
it meant. The differences of faith were less than nothing, but
her father was everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah’s bold
promises like a drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
“My father will be let out of prison? You are sure—quite sure?”
she asked.
“Quite sure,” answered Habeebah stoutly.
Naomi’s hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and
her poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her
new-born worldliness.
“Very well,” she said. “I will turn Muslima.”
The two go together to the Kaid, who, seeing Naomi’s beauty, resolves to
ward off the threatened displeasure of the Sultan by making a gift of
her at the coming royal feast But in the interim, Naomi’s former nurse
has found her and told her, that to embrace Mahometanism would mean
separation from her father. The girl halts long in her distress. She is
sent to the harem, and from the harem to the prison. She is given her
choice of Mahometanism or death, and is finally overborne by the Jews
of Tetuan, who, coming to her prison bars, entreat her to renounce her
religion.
That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was
occupied by a group of Jews. “Sister,” they whispered, “sister
of our people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has
robbed us of all we had that he may pay for the Sultan’s visit.
Listen! We have heard something. We want Israel ben Oliel back
among us. He was our father, he was our brother. Save his life
for the sake of our children, for the Basha has taken their
bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we pray.”
Thus it comes to pass that Israel is released from prison, and hastens
in his ignorance to the place where he had left Naomi, only to find
it empty. He is told that she is in the women’s apartments at the
Kaid’s palace, and the news breaks down his reason; he stays, in the
childishness of insanity, in the home of his former happiness.
The Sultan enters Tetuan amid much outward pomp, but there is an
undercurrent of treachery. A rumour of the coming of the Mahdi, Mohammed
of Mequinez, is in the air, and beneath that, a feeling of something
more—of the revolt which shall abet the Spaniards in their expected
siege of the town. The Mahdi comes, and demands the freedom of Naomi,
but without success. Leaving the palace, he decides to follow the plan
at which he had before hesitated, the plan of co-operation with the
Spaniards. This plot has been contrived by Ali, the boy whom Israel had
trained from childhood; and he has gained the promise of support from all
the principal townspeople.
Ali’s stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the
Spaniards brought up to the gates of the town on the very night
when the whole majesty and iniquity of Barbary would be gathered
in one room; then, locking the entire kennel of dogs in the
banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and burning it to the ground,
with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like rats in a trap.
One danger attended this bold adventure, for Naomi’s person was
within the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to
find his way into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah
gate, and deliver up to another the key that should serve as a
signal for the beginning of the great night’s work.
Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at
the Kasbah there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at
the proper moment for the siege—no one in Tetuan on whom the
strangers could rely not to lead them blindfold into a trap.
To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in search of the Mahdi,
revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help in the downfall
of his master’s enemies by leading the Spaniards at the right
moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
Evening falls, and Ali proceeds to carry out his plans. He passes into
the palace, finds Naomi, and leads her to the Mahdi. Then he joins the
Spaniards, but forgets to lock the doors of the banqueting hall; and
when the town gates open to the enemy, news is carried to the palace
and the guests scatter, most of them escaping. Ali, in his hatred, hunts
the deserted palace for the Kaid, and in so doing meets with his death.
The Kaid, having stayed behind to secure his money-bags, finds himself
entrapped, and is stoned to death by the enraged townspeople.
Meanwhile the Mahdi has taken Naomi to her dying father; and over the
deathbed of Israel they are betrothed. So ends _The Scapegoat_.
It will be seen that to carry out such a plot as this, with its almost
miraculous crises, needs a high standard of literary skill. That the
writer has succeeded there can be no doubt, for Naomi stands out, a
creature of living flesh and blood, in whom nature and circumstance work
to perfection through suffering. Israel’s character is followed in its
development, with convincing truth: the sudden rush of joy that elates
the man, the reaction that depresses him, the acts of mercy that soften
him—all lead irrevocably to the final scene of a soul reconciled to its
God. In this novel, as in all the best work of Mr Caine, the keynote is
suffering, but suffering that of itself ennobles and purifies.
Whilst writing _The Scapegoat_, Mr Caine suffered severely from
neurasthenia; his illness, of course, had effect upon his work, making it
more sombre and gloomy than it might otherwise have been. When the work
was published he received an urgent request from the Chief Rabbi asking
him to visit Russia and write about the persecutions of the Jews in that
country. He went in 1892, armed with signed documents from Lord Salisbury
and the Chief Rabbi which were calculated to gain his admittance wherever
he sought to go. The novelist was most warmly received wherever he went;
but he was never able to make use of his experiences in the form of a
novel. The subject, he felt, was altogether too vast for his experience:
it would require years of study which he could not give. On his return to
London, he lectured before the Jewish Workmen’s Club in the East End,
“in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget that audience,
the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was
subjected by some of those poor exiles of humanity.”