And when "Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. "And you are weeping for that?" he cried. "You think it much that the sweet child is dead--G.o.d rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!"
His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. "Look at me! Am I weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a thousandfold. Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without children? Hard bread with no water for sop. I asked G.o.d for a child. He gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked G.o.d to take my riches and give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but what was hearing without speech? I asked G.o.d to take all I had and give her speech. He gave her speech, but what was speech without sight?
I asked G.o.d to take my place from me and give her sight. He gave her sight, and I was cast out of the town like a beggar. What matter? She had all, and I was forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content, when she filled my heart with sunshine, G.o.d s.n.a.t.c.hed me away from her.
And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid, powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!"
In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning man. "Yet I do not weep," he cried in a thick voice. "G.o.d has a right to do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she"ll be mine again soon. Only if she lives--only if she falls into evil hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?"
He gave no time for an answer. "Naomi!" he cried, and the name broke in his throat. "Where are you now? What has--who have--your father is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep. You see I have a good cause, but I tell you I will never weep. G.o.d has a right--Naomi!--Na--"
The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose and cried in an awful voice, "Oh, I"m a fool! G.o.d has done nothing for me. Why should I do anything for G.o.d? He has taken all I had. He has taken my child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him take that too. Take it, I beseech Thee!" he cried--the vault of the prison rang--"Take it, and set me free!"
But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement, and "Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering down the floor, and singing, "El Arby was a black man."
Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot into the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who carried an order for Israel"s release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the visit, had pardoned Israel.
It was coals of fire on Israel"s head. "G.o.d is good," he muttered. "I shall see her again. Yes, G.o.d has a right to do as He will. I shall see her soon. G.o.d is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer can I leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey.
To-night?--yes, to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them?
You are very good. Everybody is very good. G.o.d is good. G.o.d is mighty."
Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, "A man"s a fool when he loses his only child. I don"t mean by death. Time heals that. But the living child--oh, it"s an unending pain! You would never think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well she"ll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in the morning. It"s always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that"s so that"s so."
His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of the jailer"s lantern.
"Farewell, brothers!" he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and brought it to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
"Farewell, master!" "Peace, Sidi!" "Farewell!" "Peace!" "Farewell!"
The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then silence--empty and ghostly.
In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--
El Arby was a black man, They called him ""Larby Kosk;"
He loved the wives of the Kasbah, And stole slippers in the Mosque.
CHAPTER XXII
HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them, she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil which had befallen her, but with her father"s warning voice and his last words in her ear: "Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will come back."
When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside her, but no skill to make and take them.
Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was not so much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn first, she knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand that had been wont to guide her.
The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some of the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people, oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must fend for herself.
"You cannot live here alone, my daughter," they said; "you would perish.
Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!
No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our own, and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures--"
"But he said I was never to leave this place," said Naomi. ""Stay here,"
he said; "whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.""
The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and murdered. It was in vain. Naomi"s answer was always the same: "He told me to stay here, and surely I must do so."
Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. "Tut!" they thought, "what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her father, he"ll never come back--never. Trust the Basha for that!"
But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness, they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly everything that her neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say among themselves, "Allah! she"s not such a baby after all; and if she wasn"t quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn"t so wicked--but then, G.o.d is great! G.o.d is great!"
Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, "He will come back, Naomi; only wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it will be to-day; you will see, you will see."
But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been there, her old content in her father"s command that she should never leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
"Who"s to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That will come to the same thing in the end, or he"ll die in prison."
Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought she did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father"s peril, and at length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman, and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and love were born in it. "He must be starving in prison," she thought, "and I will take him food."
When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in consternation and horror. "G.o.d be gracious to my father!" they cried.
"Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you"ll be lost, lost--worse, a thousand times worse! Shoof! you"re only a baby still."
But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. "He must be starving in prison," she said, "and I will take him food."
Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
"Allah!" they said, "who would have believed it, that the little pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!"
Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the country; also she churned some b.u.t.ter in the simple way which the women had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat"s-skin. In three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got up before them on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives whom she had seen going past to market.
When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. "Keep to the track as far as Tetuan," they said to her, "and then ask for the road to Shawan." One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a way that it might cover her face. "Faces like yours are not for the daylight," the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. "Poor mad little fool," they whimpered; "that"s the end of her! She"ll never come back.
Too many men about for that. And now," they said, facing each other with looks of suspicion and envy, "what of the creatures?"
While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her, and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as they pa.s.sed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning of shame.
Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
"He is starving in prison," she told herself; "I must lose no time." It was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the children mocked at her mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must needs be a base person because she was alone, or the men laughed and leered into her uncovered face.
Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had but to say to any that asked her of her errand, "My father is in prison, they say that he is starving; I am taking him food," and every one would help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and fewer still with pity and cheer.
The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this, a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs, s.n.a.t.c.hed a cake each as they pa.s.sed and munched them and laughed. Naomi tried to protest. "The bread is for my father," she faltered; "he is in prison; they say he--" But the expostulation that began thus timidly broke down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths choked with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
Naomi"s spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front still. To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor little illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now tumbling to pieces. After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found her feet mired with clay.
Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a fondak which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the south-western side. The darkness had closed in by this time, and she must needs rest there for the night, but never until then had she reflected that for such accommodation she would need money. Only a few coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in the shelter and safety of one of the pens that were built for the sleep of human creatures, and that her mule might be tethered and fed on the manure heap that const.i.tuted the square s.p.a.ce within. At last she bethought her of her eggs, and, though it went to her heart to use for herself what was meant for her father, she parted with twelve of them, and some cakes of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pa.s.s the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse between her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never get anything at all.
The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and of countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and between the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they signalled its advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks into the air, while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a cooing chorus. Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing, and playing the ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and quarrelling and fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel wielded by the keeper of the fondak. With such exercises the night pa.s.sed into morning.