第70章

Blind beggars and feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at Israel from the back of the crowd.

As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came out into the town.The one was a company of soldiers returning to the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house;the other was a company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben Lolo.At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized the people.They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan.

The soldier and police fell into the humour of the multitude.

Salaams were made to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried, in his harsh, nasal croak--"Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him!

Make way! make way!"

Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the hyena.Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over Israel's head.

Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.

"God bless our Lord!"

"Saviour of his people!"

"Benefactor! King of men!"

And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.

All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing humiliation nor fear.His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned with a piteous fire.He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed with bread.Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred.

And, thinking that it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, "Forgive me, my child, forgive me." But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his soul, "She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation.She is walking through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking beside her!"The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate going out to Tangier and to Shawan.There the way was so narrow and the concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a stand.Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and said, so that all might hear, "Look at the crowds that have come out to speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember this day!""So you shall!" cried Israel."Until your days of death you shall all remember it!"He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and followed it no farther.It was the cry of the voice of a brother.They had been insulting calamity itself.

"Balak!" shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the procession moved again.

It was the hour of Israel's last temptation.Not a glance in his face disclosed passion, but his heart was afire.The devil seemed to be jarring at his ear, "Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice?

You might have been rich and great, and riding on their heads.

They would have honoured you then, but now they despise you.Fool!

You have sold all and given to the poor, and this is the end of it."But in the throes and last gasp of his agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper, "Be strong.

Only a little longer.Finish as you have begun.Well done, servant of God, well done!"He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry.Once he lifted his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron of faces black and white."O pity of men!" he thought.

"What devil is tempting _them_?"

By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near to the Bab Toot.No one had observed until then that the rain was no longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately over the arch of the gate.

Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign.It was God's hand in the heavens.To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!

What happened next Israel never rightly knew.His proper sense of life seemed lost.Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.

First the voice of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat."Then the voice of the soldier, "Balak! Balak!"After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.

When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi by the hand.