The Scapegoat. Sir Hall Caine
with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he lifted a winecup and drank himself.
They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best of you. More than that—more than that—my son shall yet see—”
The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a girl!”
For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter! She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate places! And now you can go! Go! go!”
He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct, followed him and listened from the threshold.
Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came from them.
And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride of my pride?”
Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said “The Lord has counted my prayer to me as sin—look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”
At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his dry throat, “No, no, never believe it!”
“True, true, it is true,” she moaned; “the child has not uttered a cry, and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.”
“Never believe it, I say!” Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his arms to try it.
But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
And Ruth wept over it, saying, “Even if it were a son never could it serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!”
At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed themselves into the chamber, and they cried, “Peace! Peace!” And old Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, “Is it not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?”
Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, “What matter? Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!” But after that he staggered, his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves, “The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to slip.”
CHAPTER III
THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low, God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him mercy?
But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus, they would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the market.
He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily, “Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!” Then, turning quickly round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white walls crying “Allah! Allah! Allah!” would suddenly change their cry to “Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!” “Go on! Go on! Go on!”
He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber—they all despised him!
Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other, the better for his person.
It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman, though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan's army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry. In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute. The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He was a valiant soldier—the black blood of his slave-mother had counted for so much; but he was a bad administrator—he could neither read nor write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him. He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters of his