The Scapegoat

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But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
answer to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's
cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
see the old man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.

Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
clamour of tongues.

It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice
coming to him as from far away.

"My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
father has come back to her!"

Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
more than he had asked or deserved!

Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.

No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in
joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.

When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
daily and hourly, "Watchman, what of the world?" At length it had found
an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
and deep and awful.

In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the
room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.

Ali was saying, "Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
returned yesterday, and said--"

And the bondwomen were crying, "Sidi, you were right when you went
away!" "Yes, the dear child was ill!" "Oh, how she missed you when
you were gone." "She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
Tetuan--"

And the old Taleb was muttering, "Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
to her spirit as well."

Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
of a soul.

And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
were calling to their children without, and the children were still
shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's
voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.

"Daughter! My dearest! My darling."

Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
holding Naomi in his arms.

It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
streets came to an end; the "Balak" of the ass-driver was no more heard,
the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
until all was still.

At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.

At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
protect her head.

Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
words of love, gentle words of hope.

"Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
Fear not, my child, fear not!"

Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,
but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
the storm.

Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
shrieked and moved around her?

Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,
and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--

"Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!"

With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
ashes!

Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.

If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
this evil upon him!

But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
breathless quiet.

And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.

"Ah!"

It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
nothing but an evil dream.

In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
and said within himself, "It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!"

Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
the room on tiptoe.



CHAPTER XIII

NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT


With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
disrobed.

It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
ears. They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played
so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.

She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.

Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
had bleated and barked "Beelzebub!" And if God in His mercy had taken
the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
human daughter, however helpless and frail.

Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But
day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
sinkings of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the
body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
blood.

What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.

To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
direction.

On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
his sight.

Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
laugh.

"Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?"

But no sound came back to him.

Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
voice of fear.

"Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?"

Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.

Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
deadened the sound of his voice.

Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
of the wood.

"My darling," cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
he paused and looked at her again.

The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
hair, and pattering; "Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
me! kiss me!"--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
crying, "Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!" as if the thrush
on the bough were singing, "Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
from?"--as if the young squirrel were chirping, "I'm not afraid, not
afraid, not afraid!" and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
"Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!"

"God bless her beautiful face!" cried Israel. "She listens with every
feature and every line of it."

It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother's old
spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali's harp, when
he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.

But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
wheresoever she went.

There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
tore the veil of their chastity.

But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at
last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
chief and dear delight.