The Scapegoat

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He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They
answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their
trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred
dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he
had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his
twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel
hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their
story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi
he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty,
noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little
white island of the sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go
back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?
Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful
gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name
aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on
her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be
so childish.

Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel
that he had not eaten since the previous day. "I must have food," he
thought, "though I do not feel hungry." So he stopped, and the wandering
Arabs hailed him. "Markababikum!" they cried from where they sat within.

"You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!" Their land was the
world.

Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled
beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a
woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while
she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.
Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young
girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and
baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three
stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.

"On a long journey, brother?" said the man.

"No, oh no, no," said Israel. "Only to Semsa, no farther."

"Well, you must sleep here to-night," said the Arab.

"Ah, I cannot do that," said Israel.

"No?"

"You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor
child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of
a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient,
you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I
suppose we must humour them--that's what I always say."

"But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!" said the woman.

"Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister," said Israel. "Well, peace!
Farewell all, farewell!"

Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense
black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness
ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on
every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort.
The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses.
He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke
out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from
somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no
choice but to stop. "After all, it is better," he thought. "Strange, how
things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I
will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and
to ask and to hear."

Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense
night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in
a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. "Yes, I must
sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch
by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how
beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!"

When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was
now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his
home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white
walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with
the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange
orchards.

But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could
see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's
eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world
was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far
sweeter youth.

Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had
appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from
a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father;
and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could
see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: "A bow in the sky--red, blue,
crimson--oh!" Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: "A
rainbow, child!" Ah! the dreams were beautiful!

He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice of his
poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song
she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
street--

Within my heart a voice
Bids earth and heaven rejoice.

He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he
sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was
making was Naomi's voice and not his own.

Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the
Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping
sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation
that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his
face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true,
but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had
passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering,
infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but
after a pause one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name
was Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, "Israel ben Oliel, our poor
Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God
has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of
you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!"

Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of
Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also
something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel,
who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. "I think my
hearing must be failing me," he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if
that did not greatly matter. "And to tell you the truth, though I pity
my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better
minister."

"Never!" cried the Jews in many voices.

"Anyhow," said Israel, "my life among you is ended. I set no store by
place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of
God I stand.' Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew where
the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do
you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You
remember her--Naomi--a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am
going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one
will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!"

Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was
on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation
stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.

And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him
of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began
to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His
absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since
he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain
shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.

At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the
little rush-covered house ought to be seen. "It's yonder," he cried, and
pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and
its strong rays were in his face. "She's there, I see her!" he shouted.
A few minutes later he was near the door. "No, my eyes deceived me,"
he said in a damp voice. "Or perhaps she has gone in--perhaps she's
hiding--the sweet rogue!"

The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. "Naomi!" he
called in a voice like a caress. "Naomi!" His voice trembled now. "Come
to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!" He listened.
There was not a sound, not a movement. "Naomi!" The name was like a
gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly
and simply, "She's not here."

He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a
slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his
face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before--for himself,
for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him.
Death! Oh, oh!

With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi--it must be she!

It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. "Where is she laid?" he
said in a voice of awe.

Fatimah saw his error instantly. "Naomi is alive," she said, and, seeing
how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, "and well, very
well."

That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a
cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
she had done.

"Where is she?" he cried. "Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
not here? Lead me to her, lead me!"

Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. "Alas!" she said, weeping, "that
cannot be."

Israel steadied himself and waited. "She cannot come to you, and neither
can you go to her." said Fatimah. "But she is well, oh! very well.
Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--"

With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
lived a lifetime in that moment.

"The palace!" he said in a bewildered way. "The women's palace--the
women's--" and then broke off shortly. "Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,"
he said.

And Fatimah stammered, "Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--"

"Fatimah," said Israel, with an awful calm. "Can't you see, woman,
I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
understand?--I want to go to my daughter."

"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more. She is
in the women's apartments--"

Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.

"Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."

But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. "Silence!"
he cried. "What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?"

Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. "O
God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
with God for it--"

He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, "Kill her, O God!
Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!"

At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way
while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look.
Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own
condition: "I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed
my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh
slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth."

Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly
and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared
to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer--always
the same--that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
seemed to hear a voice that cried, "Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!"
"Here! Israel is here!" he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling
him. The Kaid was the King. "Yes, I will go back to the King," he said.
Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt,
and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged
threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he
were a master still, "Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes; I am
going back to the King!"



CHAPTER XXIV

THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN


Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.

Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
and crying in a hoarse voice, "Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
Awake! Awake!"

In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
of various colours swung on many walls.

The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It
was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
air, and shouting as they went, "Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!"

Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.

It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
tambourines and crying in wild discords, "God bless our Lord!" "God give
victory to our Lord the Sultan!"

The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.

"Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!"

Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
even from their roofs.

And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
quarrellings, cursings.

"Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!"

"O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!"

"Curses on your grandfather!"

"Allah! Allah! Allah!"

"Balak! Balak! Balak!"

But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
gate.

By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused
and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.

When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
himself was at hand.

First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
transparent.

As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the
Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.

"God bless our Lord!"

"Sultan Abd er-Rahman!"

"God prolong the life of our Lord!"

He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
acclamations.

"All's well, all's well," they told each other, and pointed to the white
horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.

The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
Sultan with a shrill ululation: "Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!"

Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
articulate cries.

He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.

Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.