THE PRINCE OF INDIA (Historical Novel). Lew Wallace
their earthen cups with the bitter water afresh. A Prince of Hind did not come to them every day.
He tasted from a cup—his followers drank—and when the party turned away there were jars paid for to help all the blind in the caravan back to healthful vision.
“There is no God but Allah! Be merciful to him, O Allah,” the crowd shouted, in approval of the charity.
The press of pilgrims around the northeastern corner of the Kaaba, to which the guide would have conducted the Prince next, was greater than at the well. Each was waiting his turn to kiss the Black Stone before beginning the seven circuits of the House.
Never had the new-comer seen a concourse so wrought upon by fanaticism; never had he seen a concourse so peculiarly constituted. All complexions, even that of the interior African, wore a reddish desert tan. Eyes fiercely bright appeared unnaturally swollen from the colirium with which they were generally stained. The diversities the penitential costume would have masked were effectually exposed whenever mouths opened for utterance. Many sang, regardless of time or melody, the tilbiye they had hideously vocalized in their advance toward the city. For the most part, however, the effort at expression spent itself in a long cry, literally rendered—“Thou hast called me—I am here! I am here!” The deliverance was in the vernacular of the devotee, and low or loud, shrill or hoarse, according to the intensity of the passion possessing him.
To realize the discordancy, the reader must recall the multiplicity of the tribes and nations represented; then will he fancy the agitation of the mass, the swaying of the white-clad bodies, the tossing of hare arms and distended hands, the working of tearful faces turned up to the black-curtained pile regardless of the smiting of the sun—here men on their knees, there men grovelling on the pavement—yonder one beating his breast till it resounds like an empty cask— some comprehension of the living obstruction in front of the Jew can be had.
Then the guide, calling him, tried the throng.
“The Prince of India!” he shouted, at the top of his voice. “Room for the beloved of the Prophet! Stand not in his way— Room, room!”
After much persistence the object was achieved. A pilgrim, the last one in front of the Prince, with arms extended along the two sides of the angle of the wall where the curtain was looped up, seemed struggling to embrace the House; suddenly, as in despair he beat his head frantically against the sharp corner—a second thrust more desperate than the first—then a groan, and he dropped blindly to the pavement. The guide rejoicing made haste to push the Prince into the vacant place.
Without the enthusiasm of a traveller, calmly as a philosopher, the Jew, himself again, looked at the Stone which more nearly than any other material thing commanded idolatrous regard from the Mohammedan world. He had known personally most of the great men of that world— its poets, lawmakers, warriors, ascetics, kings—even the Prophet. And now they came one by one, as one by one they had come in their several days, and kissed the insensate thing; and between the coming and going time was scarcely perceptible. The mind has the faculty of compressing, by one mighty effort, the incidents of a life, even of centuries, into a flash-like reënactment.
As all the way from the first view of the sanctuary to arrival at the gate, and thence to this point, the Jew had promptly followed his guide, especially in recitation of the prescribed prayers, he was about to do so now; already his hands were raised.
“Great God! O my God! I believe in Thee— I believe in thy Book—I believe in thy Word—I believe in thy Promise,” the zealous prompter said, and waited.
For the first time the votary was slow to respond. How could he, at such a juncture, refuse a thought to the Innumerables whose ghosts had been rendered up in vain struggles to obey the law which required them to come and make proof of faith before this Stone! The Innumerables, lost at sea, lost in the desert—lost body and soul, as in their dying they themselves had imagined! Symbolism! An invention of men—a necessity of necromancers! God had his ministers and priests, the living media of his will, but of symbols—nothing!
“Great God! O my God!” the guide began again.
A paroxysm of disgust seized the votary. The Phariseeism in which he was born and bred, and which he could no more outlive than he could outlive his body, asserted itself.
In the crisis of the effort at self-control, he heard a groan, and, looking down, saw the mad devotee at his feet. In sliding from the shelf of the base, the man had been turned upon his back, so that he was lying face upward. On the forehead there were two cruel wounds; and the blood, yet flowing, had partially filled the hollows of the eyes, making the countenance unrecognizable.
“The wretch is dying,” the Prince exclaimed.
“Allah is merciful—let us attend to the prayers,” the guide returned, intent on business.
“But he will die, if not helped.”
“When we have finished, the porters will come for him.”
The sufferer stirred, then raised a hand.
“O Hadji—O Prince of India!” he said faintly, in Italian.
The Wanderer bent down to get a nearer view.
“It is the Yellow Air—save me!”
Though hardly articulate, the words were full of light to the listener.
“The virtues of the Pentagram endure,” he said, with absolute self-possession. “The week is not ended, and, lo!—I save him.”
Rising to his full stature, he glanced here and there over the throng, as if commanding attention, and proclaimed:
“A mercy of the Most Merciful! It is the Emir El Hajj.”
There was a general silence. Every man had seen the martial figure of the young chief in his arms and armor, and on horseback; many of them had spoken to him.
“The Emir El Hajj—dying,” passed rapidly from mouth to mouth.
“O Allah!” burst forth in general refrain; after which the ejaculations were all excerpted from prayers.
“‘O Allah! This is the place of him who flies to thee from fire!— Shadow him, O Allah, in thy shadow!—Give him drink from the cup of thy Prophet!’”
A Bedouin, tall, almost black, and with a tremendous mouth open until the red lining was exposed between the white teeth down to the larynx, shouted shrilly the inscription on the marble over the breast of the Prophet—“In the name of Allah! Allah have mercy upon him!”— and every man repeated the words, but not one so much as reached a hand in help.
The Prince waited—still the Amins, and prayerful ejaculations. Then his wonder ceased. Not a pilgrim but envied the Emir—that he should die so young was a pity— that he should die at the base of the sanctuary, in the crowning act of the Hajj, was a grace of God. Each felt Paradise stooping low to receive a martyr, and that its beatitude was near. They trembled with ecstasy at hearing the gates opening on their crystal hinges, and seeing light as from the robe of the Prophet glimmering through them. O happy Emir!
The Jew drew within himself. Compromise with such fanaticism was impossible. Then, with crushing distinctness, he saw what had not before occurred to him. In the estimation of the Mohammedan world, the rôle of Arbiter was already filled; that which he thought of being, Mahomet was. Too late, too late! In bitterness of soul he flung his arms up and shouted:
“The Emir is dying of the plague!”
He would have found satisfaction in seeing the blatant crowd take to its heels, and hie away into the cloisters and the world outside; not one moved!
“By Allah!” he shouted, more vehemently than before. “The Yellow Air hath blown upon the Emir—is blowing upon you— Fly!”
” Amin! Amin!—Peace be with thee, O Prince of Martyrs! O Prince of the Happy! Peace be with thee, O Lion of Allah! O Lion of the Prophet!” Such the answers returned him.
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