"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among my people; but G.o.d 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, dumbfounded 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!"
At that word Israel"s heart died within him, but he muttered out of his dry throat, "No, no, never believe it!"
"True, true, it is true," she moaned; "the child has not uttered a cry, and its eyelids have not blinked at the light."
"Never believe it, I say!" Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his arms to try it.
But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his arms and laid it again on its mother"s bosom.
And Ruth wept over it, saying, "Even if it were a son never could it serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!"
At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed themselves into the chamber, and they cried, "Peace! Peace!" And old Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, "Is it not written that no one afflicted of G.o.d shall minister in His temples?"
Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, "What matter?
Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!" But after that he staggered, his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves, "The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to slip."
CHAPTER III
THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object of contempt. G.o.d had declared against him, G.o.d had brought him low, G.o.d Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him mercy?
But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus, they would call their dogs and their a.s.ses by his name, and the dogs would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the a.s.ses the laziest in the market.
He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of pack-mules to pa.s.s he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily, "Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!" Then, turning quickly round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that t.i.tle.
He would go past the Saints" Houses in the public ways, and at the sound of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white walls crying "Allah! Allah! Allah!" would suddenly change their cry to "Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!" "Go on! Go on! Go on!"
He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of G.o.d"s displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they all despised him!
Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his soul. He had quarrelled with G.o.d by reason of it, and his quarrel with G.o.d had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other, the better for his person.
It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman, though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan"s brother in Morocco is not to be a Sultan"s favourite, but a possible aspirant to his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan"s army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.
In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo"s attention had been first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.
The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man was summoned to the Sultan"s presence, accused of appropriating the Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He was a valiant soldier--the black blood of his slave-mother had counted for so much; but he was a bad administrator--he could neither read nor write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary, Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but he was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily Ben Aboo foresaw the danger of some day coming into collision with the religious sentiment of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of circ.u.mstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
Israel"s first years in his strange office had satisfied his master entirely. He had carried the Basha"s seal and acted for him in all affairs of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo"s ambition began to override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to select a hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant quant.i.ty, at seven dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. "It is not just," he had said.
Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a gross and wicked tax, but Israel"s answer had been the same. "There is no evil in the world but injustice," he had said. "Do justice, and you do all that G.o.d can ask or man expect."
For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn of that day whereon he should need him no more.
But since the disaster which had befallen Israel"s house everything had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together, their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear of imprisonment, many were sorely hara.s.sed, and some were entirely ruined.
It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and their a.s.ses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must answer to it.
Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that had derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter--his faith in justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing as justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing as injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the wild scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with G.o.d.
But Israel"s heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
In that first hour of his abas.e.m.e.nt, after he had been confounded before the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of himself, but Ruth"s unselfish heart had even then thought only of the babe.
The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there was no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall, and called on G.o.d to take it.
"Take it!" she cried--"take it! Make haste, O G.o.d, make haste and take it!"
But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side and whisper "Take heart of hope, O Ruth! G.o.d does not afflict willingly.
Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!"
And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she would look at the pretty sh.e.l.l of its ear, and the ear was round and full as a sh.e.l.l on the sh.o.r.e, and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.
So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said, "It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue will yet speak to me, and make me very glad." And then an ineffable serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.
But when the time was come that a child"s eyes, having grown familiar with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth"s child did not open in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that a child"s ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a mother"s love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth"s child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
Then Ruth"s spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, "Wait, Ruth; only wait, only a little longer."
So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue, and never once across her baby"s face pa.s.sed the light of her tearful smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then, she would drop her head and say, "How sweet the air is to-day, and how pleasant to sit in the sun!"
"So it is," he would answer, "so it is."
Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh--a little shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face in confusion.