Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in wonder.

"Arise," he said; "I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and G.o.d bless you!"

So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.

And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat.

For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his new poverty such as his riches had never brought him--no, not once in all the days of his old prosperity.

At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily into Israel's face and said, "May the G.o.d of Jacob bless thee also, brother!"

After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of their blind grat.i.tude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet with hearts so different.

"May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!"

"May the child of thy wife be blessed!"

"Stop," he cried; "stop! you don't know what you are saying."

He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips; they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.

"No, no," he cried; "no, no, no!"

Then he pa.s.sed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town like one who was ashamed.

CHAPTER XV

THE MEETING ON THE SOK

Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears, touching her hand for a.s.sent, patting her head for approval, and guiding her fingers to teach them signs.

Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter, more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's close abode, waiting to be born anew.

When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead, as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.

And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a fit of weeping.

"Tut! tut! what is this?" he said. "I will be back to-morrow. Do you hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow."

When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered, and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside, sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.

The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which G.o.d Himself might have revealed to her.

"Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?" cried Fatimah.

"Alack! girl," said Habeebah, "the maid is sickening again."

And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter, as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.

Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of utterance.

At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened, her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct murmur of mult.i.tudinous life coming and going on every side.

Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no more than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.

Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went out together.

"Where are we going?" said Habeebah.

"Nay, how should I know?" said Fatimah.

"We are fools," said Habeebah.

It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of Jews stood under it in earnest and pa.s.sionate talk. There was a strange and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many voices, from great numbers gathered within.

"The girl was right," said Fatimah; "something has happened."

"What is it?" said Habeebah.

"Nay, how should I know that either?" said Fatimah.

"I tell you we are a pair of fools," said Habeebah.

Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed, and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these helpless children of G.o.d, going whither they knew not and wherefore they knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.

"Listen! I hear something," said Fatimah.

"Where?" said Habeebah.

"The way we are going," said Fatimah.

On and on Naomi pa.s.sed from street to street. They were the same streets whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.

Then she could go no farther.

"Holy saints, what is this?" cried Habeebah.

"Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something?" said Fatimah.

"G.o.d's face shine on us," said Habeebah. "What is all this crowd?"

An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving ma.s.s of haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures in black gowns and skull-caps. The a.s.semblage was of Jews only--Jews of every age and cla.s.s and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold braid on his new kaftan.

They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a vacant s.p.a.ce to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently impa.s.sively, at the vast company of Jews.

And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of man, and predicting fresh judgments from G.o.d. There was no evil which had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.

Yesterday, when they pa.s.sed through the town in their procession of penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam, that they might call on G.o.d to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their pet.i.tions ended, while the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and muttering to themselves, "It is written," they had returned to their synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know for whose cause the evil was upon them.

They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they were therefore ent.i.tled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.