Israel faltered and said, "He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--"
"Who else but Israel the Jew?" said she, and then added, as by a sudden afterthought, "But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so wise and powerful!"
Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame, he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. "They tell me," he said, "that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has devils."
"Blind and dumb, poor soul," said the old woman; "but Allah has pity for the afflicted--he is taking her away."
Israel rose. "Away?"
"She is ill since her father went to Fez."
"Ill?"
"Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying."
Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered, and fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and d.a.m.ned for ever; for only devils out of h.e.l.l had made them that poor men"s souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
Would G.o.d not hear his prayer? G.o.d knew the child was very near and dear to him, and also that he was a lonely man. "Have pity on a lonely man, O G.o.d!" he whispered. "Let me keep my child; take all else that I have, everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is, let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am humble, and ask that alone."
On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and saw that he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with what splendour he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and creep into his house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred an hour before he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of every face in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now that he was so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself, eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was waiting for the night.
The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with thick stars, Israel pa.s.sed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight of him with looks of consternation.
"Israel!" cried one, and dropped his lantern.
Israel whispered, "Keep your tongue between your teeth!" and hurried on.
At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again, but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and, seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
"Habeebah!" he cried, and he knocked once more.
Then Ali came to the door. "What Moorish man are you?" cried Ali, pushing him back as he pressed forward.
"Ali! Hush! It is I--Israel."
Then Ali knew him and cried, "G.o.d save us! What has happened?"
"What has happened here?" said Israel. "Naomi," he faltered, "what of her?"
"Then you have heard?" said Ali. "Thank G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l need envy me."
And Ali answered through his tears, "It is true, my father--come and see."
CHAPTER XII
THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
WHAT had happened at Israel"s house during Israel"s absence is a story that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and the book was in her hands.
"Look at her, poor child," said Fatimah. "See, she thinks he will come as usual. G.o.d bless her sweet innocent face!"
On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from there to the gate of the prison.
The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly, and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of submission that was very touching to see.
"Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel," said Fatimah. "How long will she wait, poor darling?"
On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel"s fears on setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own reckoning with Naomi"s condition, Ali went off for the only doctor living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her tongue, and p.r.o.nounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.
About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water; Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner outside the door of her room.
The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of Tangier along with me!"
Meantime, Naomi"s delirium continued. It was gentle as her own spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke without ceasing throughout the time of her reason"s vanquishment. Not that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness, sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of entreaty.
All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat together by her bedside, holding each other"s hands like little children in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel, sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi"s voice in his dreams.
At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone, and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel"s caravan that should soon come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he came upon Israel"s men returning without him, and telling their lying story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and was coming behind them penniless.
Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, n.o.blest, mightiest man among men.
That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. "Liars and thieves!"
he cried; "tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all whipped through the streets for plundering my master."
The men shouted in derision and pa.s.sed on, firing their matchlocks as a mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.
While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was, therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. "The Imam is good, the Imam is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?" "Nay, but our Sidi holds not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our lord is our sultan, our lord is our king." "Shoof! What is Sidi against paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum." "But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?" "Then how can she say the Shemang either?"