Part 38

"Verily, Allah be my witness! and it is a black shame to take the money that was the woman's marriage-gift. We were then very poor--but we had the three camels and the sheep and the goats also--though the beasts were little and thin. Then came the War, rolling all about us--with marchings and counter-marchings of hosts of men--and we sent my brothers south so that they might sell to the Inglizi soldiers before Gaza, all the olives stored in old oil-tins, and all the oranges, and tobacco, and grape-treacle, and figs of last year, that the Almani and Osmanli had not taken away...." John cannot for the life of him restrain this vitriolic touch. "And they went, and made much money--the Inglizi being fools and wealthy, moreover--as all these sons of Sheitan are. This was in the month Shbât; and coming home my two brothers encountered Fate, in the person of a Commander of the Almani (Germans), who seized upon the young men--they being far from their native village and not having their _warakas_ of Exemption on them--and sent them to dig trenches at the Bir-es Saba Works."

"A bitter tyranny the Most High beheld, and will avenge upon the doer!"

"Then there was fighting at the Wady Sheria--because having taken the strong place of Bir-es Saba, ay! and the ridges down to the sea, the British desired the Place of Good Wells." John is beginning to believe in Ali Zaybak, the Bedawi farmer, to the point of getting hot over that individual's fictitious woes.... "Came they--they came, and were as hornets about us, their _killis_ bursting with stench, and smoke, and ruin--and their Devil-Birds fighting the Devil-Birds of the Almani, and driving them down out of the air. One dropped an egg of Eblis that killed two of our camels, and broke the leg of the third. My father cried out on Allah and fell face downwards.... So my wife cried out and fell, and when I went to lift them, lo!--they were dead.... Yet was there no wound on either.... _Wallah_! Upon neither was there a wound! ..."

"Well do I believe thee. I have seen Death come after that fashion many times since the beginning of this War. What more, O Ali Zaybak? ..."

"This,--that my goats and sheep being gone from me--for the _Osmanli_ took them when they retired before the Inglizi--I have come to Shechem to seek my brothers, if haply they be alive and there! ..."

"Ay, but why seek them on the Mount of Cursing, and not within the town? ..."

Woman-like, she has put her little wasted, dusky finger on the weak spot in John's trumped-up story. Having done it, she goes on, as he racks his brain for a sufficiently-convincing figment:

"Thou wilt do this to-morrow, O Ali Zaybak the Bedawi, when the swelling of thy joint hath abated and thou art rested and fed. So creep in here between the stones--there is a sheepskin thou canst lie on--and in somewhat less than an hour I will come back to thee with food and drink."

"May Allah prolong thy years, O woman!" says John with the extravagant hyperbole and the sing-song inflection proper to Oriental gratitude. "May thy fortune be doubled upon thee, and, fair as thou art already, may the radiance of thy beauty out-dazzle the full moon!"

She gives a queer little rustling laugh behind the folds of her coarse, yellowish head-cloth.

"Sweet words, sweet words from a widower bereaved in Shbât! Belike," she cackles again, "thou hast come to the Mount of Cursing in search of another bride? Dost thou lust for the Unrevealed? See, then, O Ali Zaybak! what beauty hides behind this screen! ..."

And accompanying the words with a swift revealing movement, she whisks back the heavy veil from that mutilated left side....

"My God!" John very nearly exclaims, bleaching under his natural mahogany-colour, for a man old in War and hardened to the sight of wounded men may yet sicken at the sight of a woman mutilated like this. But he swallows the exclamation, and substitutes:

"I--am sorry! May Allah pity thee, poor soul! ..."

"And increase the wisdom of the Sidi! ..."

The Fellaha is re-veiled and between the pendent linen folds comes her little rustling whisper; chilling the blood of the pretended Ali Zaybak, under the now nearly vertical rays of the blazing Syrian sun....

"_Who, desiring Secret Intelligence for his War-Chiefs of the British Army, ventures into the midst of the enemy, disguised as an Arab and alone! ..._"

The words drop, coldly as lumps of hail, on the adventurous heart of the man. Discovered, and in the first hour by a Syrian peasant woman.... He forgets his pain, and drawn to his full height, fixes his black eyes threateningly upon her hidden face.

"What sayest thou? Hast thou no fear?"

"None--of a British officer, nor of a British soldier!"

The words, spoken in English with a Syrian-French accent, are such an unexpected shock, that John jolts temporarily back into his own adopted tongue:

"How the hell--ahem! How did you know--I'm--what you say I am?"

"Because" the voice is soft and refined, though it is thin and toneless: "Because--sir!--when I showed you my face--you did not--spit like a Mohammedan, or laugh like a German! And who"--the voice suggests the shadow of a mocking smile--"who but an Englishman would venture here--so ill-disguised and speaking such bad Arabic, and carry himself so confidently as almost to deceive me--in spite of the testimony of my two good ears--and my one very good eye."

The poor face she has shown to John is blind on that shattered left side. He knows a thrill of pity even as he asks:

"You won't give me away? ..."

"If 'give away' means to betray--no, I will not betray you!"

"Thanks. You're out Scouting on your own," says John, "unless I'm very much mistaken?" He adds still in English, as she lets this broad hint pass.... "Since we're to be pals of sorts, do you mind telling me your name? ..."

She gives her faint little whispering laugh.

"Ay, surely. It is Ummshni.... 'Mother Ugly' in your English tongue. In Arabic, 'Mother of Ugliness.' ...!"

"But--but I can't call you that! ..."

"You must. It is my name here. For you I have no other."

"Then shake hands, little Ummshni," John says promptly, and thrusts out his own huge, brown right hand.

"Need we?" She hesitates....

He says, encouragingly:

"Just once. To seal the bargain and show we're pals!"

"Once then...."

She hesitates an instant more. Now from enveloping folds, a small, shrunken, dusky hand steals out, and is engulfed in John's. And then a breathless cry, not loud, nor shrill, but terrible in its dire, agonised intensity bursts from the mouth of the distorted face that is mercifully hidden by the veil....

"God of my fathers! Who art thou?" The gasped-out words are once more Arabic. "From whence didst thou get the Ring of the House of Hazaël? ... Thy face, too.... It is the face of Eli! Thy voice.... Do not deny it! ... Thou art of the Blood! ..."

"Since you know it already I'll tip you the garden truth. I'm John Benn Hazel, old Eli's grandson from London. But who in the name of--wonder--are you? ..."

"Thy--thy unhappy Cousin Esther!" The words come stumblingly, between terrible, dry sobs.... "Oh, do not check me. Let me weep! I have not for so long! ..."

"Now by--the whole blooming, blessed row of Big Old Men, back to the Very Biggest!" John says between his teeth, as leaning on his heavy staff he stands staring blankly down at a little heaving bundle of coarse and common feminine drapery that crouches at his big sandalled feet amidst the short thyme-scented grass, "This is--this is the cherry in the cocktail! Just when I'd begun to think I wouldn't carry through--comes along the very sort of little woman to help me! This isn't Coincidence or anything like it. This is--just--Fate! ..."

"Help thee?" Her sobs have abated, she lifts up her bowed, head. "In what manner can I help thee? I can feed thee, tend thy hurt and hide thee. But there is something more than these.... Tell me what thou wouldst do? ..."

"Save a man!" No one is near, but he whispers it, stooping over the little figure. "A War Prisoner they've got here. Get him out--and get him away! ..."

"Yes--yes! Willingly will I help thee. Hath an Hazaël ever failed to answer to the Call of the Blood?" The little dusky hand clutches at his brawny wrist. She rises, and her eager breath mingles with his, and an eye diamond-bright, black as his own, flashes between her veils.... "What strength I have--what cunning and courage--are thine, to the threshold of Death and beyond it. But--but, John, my cousin! If I help thee to free thy man--thou must needs deliver mine."

"I'm not sweet on conditions--they're things that handicap. Who's your man?" The tone is decidedly gruff.

"He is an English officer.... There is no other in Shechem since the big German petrol lorries rolled out this morning. For the Turks have sent them all away ... I heard, to Aleppo."

"The hell you say! Forgive me, little Esther, but this is--pretty rough! For I'm here--bad Arabic and all--on the track of a British War Prisoner."

"Tell me his name," says the thin rustling voice, shaken still with emotion....

"Julian Forbis.... Father Julian Forbis," John answers, and she falters:

"O my cousin! in thine hour of need and mine the Most High, Blessed be He! hath verily sent thee. For--for--thy man and my man--are one! Come now to the secret place where I dwell alone with my sorrow. There we can talk freely--it is safer than here. Thy hand on my shoulder--what a big hand, like that of our grandfather Eli! ... Lean on thy staff, but on me too. I am stronger than thou wouldst dream...."

VI

The line held yesterday by the Turco-German forces has bent northwards at its western extremity, and southwards at its eastern end. Jaffa, the ancient Port of Jerusalem, has been occupied by Allenby's forces. Junction Station, the key of the north, now being in British hands, the enemy's Army, cut in two, has retired partly east into the mountains towards Jerusalem, and partly northwards along the Coastal Plain. The nearest line upon which its several portions can re-unite is the line Tul-Keram, Shechem. Reports from the Royal Flying Corps indicate the intention of Djemal Pasha and the other Corps Commanders to evacuate Jerusalem and withdraw to organise on the line Tul-Keram, Shechem.

It being vital to obtain a hold of this invaluable artery of thoroughfare, which traverses the Judæan range from north to south from Shechem to Jerusalem,--our Advance has wheeled to the right, and struck into the Hills with the object of wresting from the enemy the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

At the eastern end of the long fish-shaped valley, whose sides are shagged with olive-woods and running with springs, and in which lies Shechem, is a grassy, level expanse in the shape of an isosceles triangle--one of its longer sides being the road that runs east and west past the new Turkish Barracks, the Arsenal and the Hospital--and the other the road that--north of this--passing the Mohammedan Cemetery and the ancient Tombs that are upon the fringe of the limestone robe of Ebal, runs into an ancient Roman road, that completing the shape of the isosceles, goes north along the eastern flank of Mount Ebal to the little hamlet of Sichar, and south to the Holy City,--leaving on the left a Mohammedan well that has been built over the Tomb of Joseph, and some quarter of a mile farther on, a hillock shaded by mulberries and figs, and covered with ruins, enclosing _Bir Samariyeh_, or the Samaritan Woman's Well.

The top of the triangular patch of waste ground ends at the very gate of Shechem, being lost in the great mounds of immemorial ashes, brought down in ancient days from the Temple on Mount Gerizim. Wild fig and mulberry, olive and tamarisk--and thickets of the _zizyphus_ set with formidable thorns, that give the tree its name of Spina Christi--make a shabby jungle of the Ash Heaps, haunted by kites, crows and owls, pariah-dogs and jackals, who come to feast where the offal and refuse of the town are thrown. Here, too, lepers congregate; sick animals are thrust to die, dead ones are thrown to bleach and putrefy; and sometimes--even before the War--bodies of people robbed and murdered, or too destitute of friends to be given burial--huddle amongst the rank weeds and tangled undergrowth, or lie stark and dreadful, with blind eyes beaten by the lashing rains of Palestine, or staring at its pitiless sun.

When Allied War Prisoners first came to the town of Shechem, the isosceles triangle of waste ground--its shortest side indicated by the road that runs by the Tomb of Joseph towards the Well of the Samaritaness--was enclosed within a twelve-foot double fence of German barbed-wire, for the keeping of certain French and British officers, who declined to give parole. These lived in Turkish Army tents and messed in a ramshackle wooden hut near the eastern end of the enclosure; their rations, such as they were, being brought from the Turkish Barracks twice a day. Those officers who gave parole, causing less trouble to the authorities--were somewhat better treated, it may be allowed. The old stone prison near the Suk was alloted as their quarters. They were permitted to take exercise within certain bounds, even to visit the Latin Fathers, and the headquarters of the Protestant Mission, and better their diet by making purchases in the town bazar. To-day, Shechem, with her numerous mosques and her flat-brown roofs embowered in orange and pomegranate-trees--is bursting full of Turkish troops, and their German military masters; and destined ere long to rival Tul Keram as an Army H.Q. No British War Prisoners are left in her since the exodus of early morning, save four Berkshire and Devon Yeomen lying desperately sick at the Turkish Hospital--two London Territorials, and three Indian troopers in the charitable care of the Sœurs de la Sainte Croix....

Ah, and the solitary captive of the leaky wooden shanty in the Wired Enclosure, from which the Turkish Army tents have been removed, leaving round yellow patches of parched and trampled grass. Saving the Bey, certain of his German friends, several Mounted Police, and a guard of infantry from the mud Barracks--no other persons in Shechem suspect that Father Julian Forbis did not leave yesterday for Aleppo with the other British officers,--though possibly that dust-like one, the Mother of Ugliness, may have a certain inkling of the truth.

Upon a native _anghareb_, a short-legged, palm-wood bed-frame with coarse sacking laced upon it, he lies within the hut that used to be the Mess. Although it leaks in the winter rains, its timbers are of solid oak, and its door is heavy, and secured on the outside by a huge wooden lock. A padlocked iron fetter on the priest's ankle is linked to a chain finishing in a ring, running on an iron bar,--the ends of which, being bent, have been driven into the corner-posts at the end of the hut that is farthest from the door. Having thus secured the prisoner, the _bash-châwush_ of Mounted Police went away with his troopers and the escort. That was yesterday morning, possibly in the neighbourhood of nine o'clock. The common watch of gun-metal on the priest's wrist has stopped--as the result of brutal usage.... He can only calculate Time by the prayer-call from the mosques of the town....

No hint of the possible length of his confinement has been given, the _bash-châwush_ being an old hand and quite thoroughly understanding the torture of Uncertainty. No food was brought the prisoner yesterday or to-day; they have not even given him water.... Nothing has passed the man's lips--since on that morning of the Bey's visit he broke fast with the thin boiled wheat-porridge and the black bread on which War Prisoners are fed.

Mere hunger he can endure.... As a Religious of a strict Order he is well inured to fasting. But the thirst, aggravated by mental distress, sleeplessness and anxiety, is torture. His lips are cracked, and his throat and tongue so dried and leathery, that the effort to speak above a whisper would be positive pain.

The two narrow apertures that serve as windows are some eight feet above the floor-level. It is not possible to see out of them. Through chinks and knot-holes in the walls of stout though ancient timbers--it might be possible to get a glimpse through the twelve-foot fence of barbed-wire--out upon the road running east from the gates of the city, and the road running north and east by the Wadi Farab to the Jordan Valley, and southwards from Shechem to Jerusalem.... But the man chained to the iron bar lies in a feverish stupor on the sacking of the _anghareb_. There are strange noises in his ears like the clamour of voices in many tongues--like the clatter of innumerable hoofs, the rattle of wooden wheels and the vibrating grind and din of heavy motor-traffic; but he is too faint and weary to be curious as to their cause.

We know, that even as reinforcements of Turkish troops of the Redif and Mustaphiz are being rushed from the Caucasus to form reserves upon the fissured Plain of Ephraim--has begun the exodus of such inhabitants of Jerusalem as are not strict Mohammedans--or known to be Turco-German in views and sympathies.... Since the noon prayer-call, vehicles of every type, loaded with fugitives of the better class, have been rolling into Shechem, the roads leading to the town are blocked--a haze of dust envelops everything since the sun dried up the torrents of rain that fell at break of day....

Came yesterday, Von Geierstein, the once famous War Minister--now Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief on Germany's Battle Front in Asia--post haste from his Great Headquarters at the red city of Aleppo. To meet Enver Pasha, Djemal, and the other Turkish Commanders at Jerusalem, harangue the defeated generals, and reorganise the Turco-German War Plan on more successful lines....

Fallen into eclipse at the Court of Berlin as the result of his military failures at Verdun, horribly disconcerted by the disaster of the Vulkan Pass, inexpressibly sickened by the taking of Beersheba, the fall of Gaza and the loss of Junction Station,--the brilliant ex-favourite of Imperial Majesty (whose ambition has had more to do with the kindling of the brand of War than that of any other man in Germany--saving Von Tirpitz)--after warning Enver and Djemal of the uselessness of endeavouring to hold Jerusalem now the Gaza Line has been broken--left the Holy City this morning for Shechem, in his Œstler-Daimler, another with his Staff Officers, following, half his escort of armoured Scheff cars preceding him--the remainder, with his servants, bringing up the rear.

Even as the Governor, Izzet Bey, and Ali Fuad Pasha, Commander of Turkish Forces in the Holy City--issue the proclamations of their masters to the people, our troops are pushing up the passes into the Judæan Highlands; the sound of British guns comes even from the Vale of Sorek, thenceforward the din of battle grows louder hour by hour....

Already in Shechem, in Samaria and in Jericho--whither the Latin, Greek, Armenian and Coptic Patriarchs have been forcibly deported, with other ecclesiastics and notables, and wealthy Zionist Hebrews--the reign of terror that has prevailed in Jerusalem since Turkey joined issues with Germany--has begun. Ten Turkish pounds are asked, and got, by Mohammedan drivers for a seat in a carriage. Large numbers of the wealthier inhabitants, with the remaining chiefs of religious communities, have been warned by the Turkish Police to be in readiness for exile. No more vehicles being available for the transport of the victims, Djemal Pasha--venomous always, seasons the order with the intimation that the deported population will be compelled to travel on foot....

Spies swarm everywhere. Fear presses like a heavy hand upon the public mouth. Arrests, confiscations and requisitions redouble--populations quail under the lash of tyranny. Gallows are set up at the Jaffa Gate--there are hangings and shootings daily. The bodies of the victims of the last battue are left exposed for hours, to impress upon the population that, after four centuries of oppression, the Tartar is not disposed to surrender one of the Holy Cities of the Turkish Caliphate without a final orgie of extortion, brow-beating and blood.

The day wears on, no succour comes, and the priest's stupor of exhaustion deepens. Towards sunset there is a heavy knock upon the door of the hut.

"Come in!"

The captive's first effort to speak aloud results in a croaking whisper. The heavy Turkish lock scroops in its wooden mortice, and something like a smile twitches the lips of Julian Forbis. Is it not the very brutality of irony to knock upon a starving prisoner's door?

Now the door swings inwards, letting in a wedge of noon-tide brightness, but the visitors delay a moment on the threshold. And a strange voice says, as though in answer to a question, speaking in cultured Arabic, softly and melodiously:

"No! Nothing may be done in the Holy City; the influences there are too adverse. But at Banias!--and here on Mount Gerizim--"

Even as the utterance strikes with a strange, premonitory shock and thrill upon the consciousness of the prisoner, the door is pushed open to admit three men.

Two German Staff officers, tall, burly and swaggering, and a slight man, dark-hued as smoke, bearded, and of forbiddingly handsome countenance, arrayed in a dazzlingly white brocaded silk _kaftan_, girt with a gold embroidered crimson cincture, and a flowing _kuffiyeh_ or head-drapery of the same fierce sanguinary colour, bound with a thick twist of silver and gold cords.

Two German officers of inferior rank, with a lieutenant and sergeant-major of Turkish Mounted Police and several troopers, are seen beyond the threshold. Now the heavy door shuts the four men in together.... The priest lowers his feet to the stamped earth floor and rises to receive the visitors. But so weak is he that he totters, and sways as though about to fall.

His giddiness passing with the dimness of his sight, he discerns that one of his visitors is the tall, sunburned, trap-mouthed German general who visited the Barracks yesterday in company of the Bey, and whose order put the period of a shot from a gendarme's repeating Winchester, to Govan's crazy song.

His companion is a handsome person, as yet in the early fifties, superbly built and of heroic size and stature. The grey-green Field Service dress suits him to admiration; not a button or buckle is out of its true alignment; his gloves, belts, revolver-holsters and boots are of immaculate earthy-brown. His spurs are of steel and gold; his single-breasted Norfolk-shaped Service jacket shows, as does the other man's, the narrow silver lace, the crimson collar-edging and shoulder-cords of the Great General Staff--the Iron Cross dangling at the buttonholes of both by its ribbon of black and white. Both wear the ribbons and brochettes of many decorations. But the taller man displays, in addition to these, the Order of the Prussian Black Eagle with diamond swords, hanging by a swivel under his collar-hook. And noting this distinction, together with the wearer's physical beauty--for he is yellow-haired, blue-eyed, straight-featured, handsome still, as the Viking hero of some old Teutonic Saga--it flashes on the priest as his own blue eyes, set in hollow caves of exhaustion and hunger, encounter the visitor's--that the man can be no other than the fallen favourite of the Emperor of Germany, now Commander-in-Chief of his army in Palestine....