第61章

ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE

It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok, and no rain had yet fallen.The eggs of the locust might be hatched at any time.Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were coming green out of the ground would wither before them.

The country people were in despair.They were all but stripped of their cattle; they had no milk; and they came afoot to the market.

Death seemed to look them in the face.Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they offer petitions to God for rain.

They had long ceased their prayers.Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, "It is written!"Israel was busy with other matters.During these six-and-twenty days he had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he held under the Kaid.No longer could he serve two masters.Too long had he held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other.Recompense was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was no longer possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the man beneath him.

To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible, and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina, was a waste of shame and spirit.Besides, and above all, Israel remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had made already.Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to Naomi, for putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world.Would His great hand be idle now--now when he most needed its mighty and miraculous power when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was mourning and crying for sweet sight of the world and he himself was about to put under his feet the last of his possessions that separated him from other men--his office that he wrought for in the early days with sweat of brow and blood, and held on to in the later days through evil report and hatred, that he might conquer the fate that had first beaten him down!

Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan.He made his preparations, and they were few.His money was gone already, and so were his dead wife's jewels.He had determined that he would keep his house, if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material comfort as well as her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and belongings were more luxurious than their necessity would require or altered state allow.

So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from Morocco city.When these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple rugs and mattresses which are all that the house of a poor man needs in that land where the skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he sat in the patio--Ali as well as the two bondwomen--for he had decided that he must part with them also, and they must go their ways.

"My good people," he said, "you have been true and faithful servants to me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad, since you grew to be big and helpful.Little I thought to part with you until my good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already, and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan.So this is what I have concluded to do.

You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah, being given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when my power, which now is little and of no moment, was great and necessary--you belong to me.

Well, I give you your liberty.Your papers are in the name of Ben Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal--that is the last use but one that I shall put it to.Here they are, both of them.Take them to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will ratify your title.

Then you will be free women for ever after."The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with exclamations of surprise and consternation."Allah!""Bismillah!" "Holy Saints!" "By the beard of the Prophet!"And when at length he put the deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of hysterical weeping.

"As for you, Ali, my son," Israel continued, "I cannot give you your freedom, for you are a freeman born.You have been a son to me these fourteen years.I have another task for you--a perilous task, a solemn duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more.

My brave boy, you will go far, but I do not fear for you.

When you are gone I shall think of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who could not keep you, we may not always be apart."The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment.

That strange disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had forced itself upon his unwilling mind.But that Israel, the greatest, noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs of rasping Jews and the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would--should fall to be less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should send him away--him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old playfellow--Allah!

Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his master mean?