The Scapegoat

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Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.

That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
ordinances and commandments of God.

Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
straightway be divorced by her husband.

Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.

"Send me away from you!" she cried. "Send me away!"

"Not for the place of the Kaid," he answered stoutly; "no, nor the
throne of the Sultan!"

At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their
tears together. But he comforted her at length, and said, "Look up, my
dearest! look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord
may deal with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?"

At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full
of a sudden thought.

"Then let us ask of the Lord," she whispered hotly, "and surely He will
hear our prayer."

"It is the voice of the Lord Himself!" cried Israel; "and this day it
shall be done!"

At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And
Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and
the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: "O Lord, have pity on
this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace
in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a
child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as
she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be
satisfied."

But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his
eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not
be appeased, saying: "How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies
triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the
lurking-places of the streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord,
and rebuke their counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is
patient and her heart is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and
her first-born shall be sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and
it shall be Thine--if it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear
me, O Lord, and give heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.
One child, but one, only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is
before Thee. How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?"

The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without
delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This
request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef
was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the
believers paid him tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready
to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels
packed with tents. He was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan,
and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him. They had never been
separated before, and Ruth's concern was that they should be so long
parted, but Israel's was a deeper matter.

"Ruth," he said when his time came, "I am going away from you, but my
enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also
they will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for
your husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you
will not hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will
answer them not at all."

And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should
be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and
if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then
they parted with many tears and embraces.

Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
of his own house.

And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with
tears of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great
news on her tongue.

"Listen," she whispered; "I have something to tell you--"

"Ah, I know it," he cried; "I know it already. I see it in your eyes."

"Only listen," she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.

Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had
asked for was to come.

Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,
and kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the
chances which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she
told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor
company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and
dumb to all the world.

During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded
that if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if
it was a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell
of how when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and
say, "O Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this
child I prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer." And Israel told of how
his son should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how
in those days it should come to pass that the children of his father's
enemies should crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
bread. Thus they built themselves castles in the air for the future of
the child that was to come.

Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of
the Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to
Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and
he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So
he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg
of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three
Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife
had been summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.

Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
and Reuben Maliki. "They cursed me," he thought, "and I shall look on
their confusion." His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also,
but well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.

And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should
sit save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, "Come, let bygones be
bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together."
So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.

And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table
in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed
it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep
back his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and
dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once
more, he taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they
understood of his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and
asked, "What is it?"

"Wait! Only wait!" Israel answered. "You shall see!"

At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.

"I am a sorrowful woman," she said. "Some evil is about to befall--I
know it, I feel it."

But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink
as much as their hearts desired.

They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
to go, but Israel cried, "Stay! Stay, and see what is come!" and under
the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.

Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
know--Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and at every new name he laughed
again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the slave
woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
born.

At that Israel was like a man distraught. He 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, 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 God 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. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
God 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 asses by his name, and the dogs
would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses 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 pass 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 title.

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 God'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 God by reason of it, and his quarrel with
God 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
circumstances 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 quantity, 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 God 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 harassed, 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 asses 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 God.

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 abasement, 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 God to take it.

"Take it!" she cried--"take it! Make haste, O God, 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! God 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 shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
full as a shell on the shore, 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 passed 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!"