第10章

For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw, and pretending not to hear what he heard.But every day his heart bled at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very soul had sickened, and he cried, "Have done, Ruth!--for mercy's sake, have done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison.Her eyes are darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the grave's.Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her father's speech.

The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the first face she will see will be the face of God."At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.

The hope that she had cherished was dead.Israel could comfort her no longer.The fountain of his own heart was dry.He drew a long breath, and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.

The child lived and thrived.They had called her Naomi, as they had agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself, and a mockery it seemed to name her.At four years of age she was a creature of the most delicate beauty.Notwithstanding her Jewish parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn.

And if her eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul;and if her ears were silence, there was music within her heart.

She was brighter than the sun which she could not see, and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear.She was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage, and never did she fret at the bars which bound her.

And, like the bird that sings at midnight, her cheery soul sang in its darkness.

Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the sound of laughter.With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose again in the morning.She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.

She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the sense of touch and feeling.With this she seemed to know the day from the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark.

She knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by the brushing of his beard.She knew the flowers that grew in the fields outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap, as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands.She seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she would lay on her bosom.

And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.

Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them that were about her.Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she knew no delight like to that of playing with other children.

But her father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did she ever meet.

Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel.

She herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off from the parents of other children;and yet again, once more, alone as a child that is blind and dumb.

But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel.

The boy's name was Ali, and he was four years old.His father had killed his mother for infidelity and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out of prison, he had that day been executed.