Part 40

"Knowest thou what I would but need to do to send them down the Mountain quicker than they came up it? Even step boldly into the doorway, and--by the sunlight if 'twere day,--or by the flare of a brand from my fire if it were night--unveil and show them! This--that makes the Turk spit, and the German show his teeth in a grin, and the Englishman say, 'Poor devil!' or 'Poor thing!'--and all three hurry away from the sight. My one-eyed, crumpled face, that save thyself, O John my cousin! and one other!--is the best friend I own. What, dost thou hold back at the threshold until thy hostess bids thee enter?" For as the great stone rolls groaning into the opposite groove, leaving a narrow irregularly-shaped entrance, John has turned towards her, reaching up a long mahogany-coloured arm and huge hand to help her: "Verily then, in the name of Him Who sent thee, be thou welcome under this roof!"

So the two, so strangely met, so far apart and yet so nearly related--pass into Ummshni's strange, desolate home--out of the early morning sunshine, for it is barely seven o'clock. Three milch-goats with their kids troop after, their little split hoofs making a soft pattering; and at a sign from his cousin, John Hazel closes the entrance with the stone....

It is not dark within the tomb, nor is there any closeness in the atmosphere. This has a pleasant, dry coolness that is soothing, like the tempered light. Both the air and the light come through long cracks and chinks in the roof of limestone slabs, dressed with the hammer in bygone centuries, and intersected by glittering streaks of crystalline carbonate; and the sloping sides that, like the roof, Nature has thickly clothed with bracken and bramble. The place may be about ten feet in height--and owns three rooms or mortuary chambers--in whose sides are shelves, hollowed in the limestone rock--to receive the embalmed and swaddled bodies--of which (if any have ever rested there), the passing ages have left no trace.... The third chamber is some thirty feet in length and reaches under the ruins of The Little Church. Here, within a hearth of mud and stones, a wood fire smoulders; its smoke escaping unnoticed through a hole in the roof above it into the nave of the ruined building overhead, that is thickly mantled with tamarisk, and choked with cactus, prickly-pear, and the spina-Christi thorn. Various cooking-pots and vessels hang from pegs driven into chinks in the walls of limestone. Here are a stool or so, and a small folding-table. Here, too, a native bed--brought up here piece by piece--stands on one side, with some coarse woollen coverings folded on it. Some clean, but ragged draperies of blue cotton-print, and veils of coarse towelling such as Ummshni wears,--hang on a cord stretched from wall to wall, with a thick overgarment for use in winter, an Arab _abâyi_ of woven camel's hair.

And that is all. No anchorite could own less than little Ummshni, but the poor soul makes John welcome with what she has.

She makes him lie down on the _anghareb_--folds the camel's hair mantle into a pillow for his head--milks the goats, and brings him a bowl of the thick, frothing-white, pleasant beverage. He empties it and says, setting down the bowl:

"Thanks, O my hostess! May milk never be wanting in thy house! ..."

"May God bestow upon thee long life and prosperity!" returns the thin, shadowy voice, in the set terms of the response to the formal expression of gratitude: "You have honoured me! ..."

"By your life, O lady! I have honoured myself! ..."

"By your eyes, O my guest! I am the distinguished one!" She laughs her queer little dry laugh, and says, kneeling by the hearth, and rousing the embers into a glow by puffs of breath from between her veils, and bits of dry fuel discreetly thrust into the reddest places: "Yet why should thou and I talk as Mohammedans? Are we not Jews?"

"Well, I dunno! ..."

"Thou dost not know? Not even that this is New Moon? Wouldst thou not be in Shool this morning, if 'twere possible?"

"Well, I can't say for sure. That is, about myself. Of course, I'm certain about you and your mother! ..."

"Ah'h!" She winces as at a sudden knife-thrust and sinks back on her heels, trembling visibly. "The beloved one--is--is alive?"

"Alive and well, that is--as well as she can be! ... You didn't know?" John asks in surprise.

"How should I know within a year? ... News filters in but very rarely." She masters herself, rises to her knees, and goes on coaxing the fire, but the reddening embers hiss as her tears keep dropping on them from underneath her veils. "And it is best she should believe that--that I am--that I died when Jacob! ... O, my cousin, have pity! ... Let us speak of her no more! ..."

"All right. Count on me! ..."

He watches as the little flitting shape glides about the dusky chamber, and in and out of the narrow door,--bringing to feed the fire,--more dry fuel, of which she has a heap in the outer chamber, that serves as a store-room. From whence, presently conjuring ripe figs and olives; fresh eggs, green coffee-beans, salt and rough sugar, and a little stone mortar and pestle; some flaps of unbaked native bread and a wooden dish of goat's-milk butter, she boils the eggs; roasts and pounds the coffee; bakes the bread upon a metal cone placed amongst the embers; and assembling the constituents of a decent meal--including a jug of fragrant coffee, and another of boiling goat's milk, upon a little battered metal tray--sets it upon the little table at his side, and brings him a bowl of water, a bit of soap and a coarse, clean cloth.

"Washing and--benediction, Cousin John."

He washes and mumbles something, reddening under his head-cloth.

"Now eat and drink, mingling the coffee with milk in the good French fashion." She gives a small sigh. "Would I had better to offer thee! But than this there is nothing else."

"The tucker's A-1. But you--"

"Trouble not for me. I am a Syrian woman.... I eat my food after the man has fed...."

Intuitively perceiving that she shelters behind this excuse her sensitive horror of her own disfiguring mutilation, John protests no further, but applies himself to the eggs, coffee, bread and butter and fresh fruit, with hearty good will.

When he is satisfied she clears away; pours boiling water into a big earthen bowl; fetches lint, bandaging and arnica from a burial-shelf where she seems to have some store of things like these, and tying back her long sleeves in true Fellaha style, by knotting the ends and slipping them over her head, addresses herself to the fomenting and bandaging of the sprained ankle, saying:

"If thou hast tobacco with thee, smoke, O my Cousin John!"

And so he brings out a packet of maize-leaf paper, and a bag of good Arabian tobacco, stowed away with divers other requisites upon his large person, and rolls himself a thick cigarette. She gives him a light with a flaming stick from the fire, as he is feeling for his matches; and at his:

"Thank you, little Esther!"

--bends her poor face low over the damaged ankle, to hide the tears that will break forth anew. For thus did old Eli Hazaël speak to his daughter's child, and this deep voice is very like his: and the familiar words re-open deep, unhealed scars in her wounded and suffering heart. Thus there is deep silence in the tomb, broken only by their breathing; by the flitting sound of Esther's movements within the cool, dusky place--and by the soft munching of the three goats and their kids in the outermost chamber--where a heap of grass and herbage has been heaped to meet their needs. Indeed, this newly-found friend who has come into the desolate creature's life, as though dropped from the skies--which in fact he has been!--is so silent that Ummshni looks up in wonderment. John is smoking his strong Arab cigarette with deep, regular inhalations of enjoyment, and staring at a piece of ancient sculpture that catches the sunshine--still that of early morning, that falls through an aperture overhead more strongly as the Day-Lord climbs higher in the eastern sky. It is the bust of a man, nearly life-sized; carved in the shallowest relief, and bearing remains of colouring; surrounded by a half-circle of reddish rays, from which, possibly, the gold has centuries ago faded. His head is noble, haggard and mild--the long tresses of waving, reddish-yellow hair mingle with the beard, which is slightly pointed--the splendid forehead is deeply scored with lines, there are premature markings of care about the eyes. These are blue, and austere under dark, widely arching eyebrows, though the stern lips smile sorrowfully. Under this ray-crowned half-length--which is bounded by a line of blackish colour--is roughly chiselled the Sacred Monogram. Below the letters of the Holy Name is the date of the Year 400 of the Christian Era. As the lengthening ray reaches this, the soft voice asks from between Esther's veiling draperies:

"At what art thou looking, my Cousin John? ..."

"Just at--that." He points to the stern and gentle Face rather awkwardly.

"It is the Messiah of the Christians. Didst thou not know?"

"Well, of course I'm aware of that. Only, as you're a strict Jewess, it struck me as somehow curious to see it here."

"It is of great ancientness. It was here when this grey, evil world was young and golden-haired, and perhaps even more evil than it is now."

"Then it was pretty rotten! But, in fact, I was thinking as I looked at that sculpture, that the man who did it must have seen the ah--the Original. Though unless he happened to have a dream or a vision, the date quite puts the lid on that idea."

"If by chance it should be really like the Founder of Christianity, He hath a servant who resembles Him. For--that is the very face of the man whom thou and I would deliver! He lies in the hut of the Prisoners' Field, with the high fence of barbed-wire about its edges--that is beyond the gate of the city, opposite the Mohammedan Tombs. And--and," there is a quavering break in the faded voice, "since yesterday before the Prayer-Call they have not given him food or water--obeying the strict orders of--one whom I dare not name!" Quick panting breaths heave the wasted bosom under the old blue cotton garment, the little dusky fingers clutch nervously at her coarse veil. "All day I waited near the gates--thinking by some cunning wile, some secret bribe, such as hath often served before now--to win over the Turks on guard to give me entrance. But, though they licked their lips at the promise of wine and tobacco, and sweetmeats, and love-messages to be carried to the women of the Suk and the Bazâr--they did not dare to let me in. O, my cousin, I fear for the life of the Master!--I fear! ... And all night I lurked near, hiding whenever they changed the guard, in some covert of the Waste Places where they throw the city refuse--and jackals and owls and pariahs and lepers and malignant spirits dwell. And when the day-brow lifted I left one to keep watch--even a poor leper woman who is faithful. And I bought meat, and wine, and came back here to boil soup and milk for him. For to-night I shall try again," her glance goes to the bundle of canes she has leaned up in a corner, "and this time, by the help of the Most High!--this time I shall not fail!"

"Look here, aren't you ever afraid?" John asks, in mingled pity and admiration.

"Oh, yes, I am always terrified!" Her veils are shaken with her trembling and he can hear the chattering of her teeth. "Ever since I took upon me this work of helping the miserable and those who suffer, I have been frightened, John my cousin,--to the very core of me.... But I go on! ... There is no choice!" She wrings the little, shaking, dusky hands, and now once more quick sobbing shakes her. "Were there not things to do--sick folks to serve--dangers to evade or face--what were life worth to The Mother of Ugliness? Think, O think! ..."

Looking at the little quivering thing crouching down beside the now faintly glowing embers, John thinks, and comprehends, though not quite all.

"When I recovered sense and partial sight--after the horrors of which thou knowest!--it was to find myself in the house of a good, poor Jew of Nazareth, whither--may the Holy One reward his charity! he had bribed the soldiers to carry me under cover of night. They, who were bidden--I being as one dead and covered with blood--to dig a pit and cast me in with quicklime--were glad to be saved the trouble at gain of certain moneys. Later, by the secret sale to another man,--a Hebrew jeweller,--of an emerald necklace I had worn on the day when the _sabtiehs_ arrested me--and which I had stitched into my clothing in the first hours of captivity--I know not whether it was overlooked or whether they did not dare to seize it--because!--" she does not finish the sentence--"I repaid the good Jew, though I found it hard to thank him. Hard as I find it even now...."

There is such tragedy in the low, whispering voice, such blistering truth in its plain, naked utterances, that John Hazel shudders as he listens to her....

"For I desired to die, when I did not remember Jacob! When I thought of him--what I wanted more than Death was--" A coal-black diamond-bright eye, sends a shaft from between the veils straight into the man's eyes. "Thou knowest. Three little words will hold it all:"

"_Revenge on Hamid...._"

Her veiled head nods at each slowly-uttered word.

"Verily, ay! but I did not want to say it. For that it was possible to endure this ordeal of Life. To kill him in some slow, strange, unimagined way, I would have given"--she laughs dryly. "What had I left to give, my soul being dead in me,--my body the foul thing his touch hath left it!--and the face my mother used to kiss, a mask to scare babes and men? Then I said,--I will wait and hate! ... Patience and hatred may bring me that I crave for. Meanwhile, keeping near him--I will succour those whom he hath wronged, feeding my hungry hatred with their curses--until the day comes when I shall hunger no more! ..."

"And surely the day of reckoning will come. Only be patient a little longer!" says the deep, stern voice that Katharine Forbis knows.

"How like thy voice is to our grandfather's. Almost I could believe that Eli spoke then! How strange, that he and thou, so greatly resembling, should never have met," sighs the woman beside the fire. "Of Hebrew hast thou any?"

"None but a word or so."

"Well, well, it matters not! Go on speaking in Arabic, or in the English that is thy home-speech--or in French if it pleases thee--thou art Hazaël in any tongue."

"It pleases me best to listen to thee. Tell me now, after what fashion wouldst thou have thy vengeance? ..." The man's voice sinks lower, and his face is very grim.

"My cousin, let us not speak of it!" she entreats in a whisper. He sees a wave of trembling pass over the fragile creature, huddled in her coarse disguise beside the rude stone hearth.

"Yet when a man bitten by a mad dog, goes to a Pasteur Institute for inoculation, he must--if it be possible--take the head of the dog." The fierce black eyes are upon her, and their strength seems a palpable weight bearing upon her frailness. "Since the beginning of this War, surgeons have attained wonderful skill in building up the bodies and faces of men, that other men have broken. When thou shalt go to the greatest of these, saying: '_Give me back my beauty!_' I promise thee, little Esther, thou shalt carry the head of the dog!"

The big teeth gleam in the dark face, and she answers with her chuckle, the thin derisive cachinnation that is so far removed from mirth:

"And if such a miracle might be wrought, could thy great surgeon's scalpel cut from my woman's soul the scars that make it hideous? Could he burn from my memory with his electric wire, the things that I have borne? Could he set my feet amongst the flowers on the hills near Kir Saba, with Jacob's and Reuben's, and Leah's, and little Benjamin's--and brim my heart with the happiness that was Life's golden wine? Could he give me back my father and our grandfather, the good old man who so loved me? How strange it is to remember that if I had not vexed my mother--and worn the chain of emeralds that were old Eli Hazaël's birthday gift, that day the _zabtiehs_ seized me, walking in the olive-groves near my father's house at Haffêd--I should have had nothing of value to sell for the wherewithal to live."

"It was Fate! Tell me, my little Esther, how old art thou?"

She laughs in her strange way.

"On that day--the thirtieth of Ab, in the Year of the World 5674,--the 8th of August, 1914--as thou wouldst write it--I was eighteen, my cousin John...."

Sickened to the very core, the man can barely keep back a groan. Twenty-one last August, and "beautiful as a rose of Sharon," to quote Old Mendel, and aged, withered, warped, body and soul, into the Mother of Ugliness. Words escape him, born of a sudden thought:

"Jacob and thy Cousin Eli are dead, like thy father, and our uncles, and our grandfather and thy little brother Benjamin. But--but Reuben the son of Ephraim lives. Has no one told thee?"

"Verily, I knew it. But"--her head is bowed and the words come faint between her veils--"the young girl whom Reuben loved lives no more. Even though thy surgeons might work the bodily miracle. Even if the herb Forgetfulness sprang from these stones, I would not gather it, and lose the memory of certain things that have lightened my labours, and sweetened my sufferings in this cruel place. As for my vengeance--more than once I have been very near it! Wilt thou believe?--I have opened mine hand and let the thing go!" The little dusky hand quivers into sight, shuts, opens and vanishes. "So--and so--the sharpness of desire for Hamid's blood having abated, since--since I came--to the knowledge of him!"

The little hand waves from the covert of her veils towards the ray-encircled head, past which the illuminating beam of sunshine has travelled. John, seeing this, says with something of astonishment:

"Knowledge of--the Christ? ... And thou a Jewess?"

"I speak of the servant, not of the Master, good Cousin John. For that stern, beautiful face is strangely like his whom thou didst come here to seek."

"I'll make a note of that. It may be useful." John Hazel's strong black eyes glue themselves upon the Face upon the wall, as the Mother of Ugliness goes on, whisperingly:

"This I have thought, seeing the life of the Sidi who is His servant. Thou art listening? ..."

"Verily, my little Esther. For it is needful for me to hear these things concerning the man."

So, with a full heart trembling on her timid lips, sometimes speaking in her swift, cultured Arabic, sometimes in her English that is tinctured with a Parisian accent--always speaking of the priest as the Sidi, or the Master, she tells John all she knows, up to the moment of Father Julian's arrest.

"And what happened then?" John asks.

"They took the Master to the--the Bey's room, over the gateway. The--the Bey accused him of pricking on the prisoners to rebellion. A German officer who was there bore testimony that the Master had so acted. He boldly--for he is as a lion, without fear--denied this, in the face of his enemies. All this I heard from a Turk, a _posta_ of the guard at the Barracks. The man loves a shameless woman of the Bazâr--and--and I carry messages between them, no office being too low for Ummshni, the Mother of Ugliness. Can dirt defile dirt?"

In her faint voice she asks the bitter question. John says, grinding his teeth:

"Damn it, Esther, drop that! I can't bear it!"

"Swear not, my Cousin John, but hear. _He_--" John knows she is speaking of Hamid--"He says to the Master: 'You tell me this, that and the other thing I do, gives offence to your Christian Messiah. I pay no heed, and, He lets me alone, because He has no power to punish me. For it is Allah and Allah only who rebukes the evil and rewards the virtuous. And to prove this, I shall put you under guard--in the barbed-wire enclosure where we kept the British War-prisoner officers. There is plenty of room to walk about, and a wooden hut where you may sleep. You will have grass, and clean air, but nothing to eat or drink--unless you sign this paper that I have here--saying that you repent of the slanders you have spoken against me before my face. Sign it now in the presence of witnesses, and you will be sent down to join the other War Prisoners at Smyrna. Do not sign it--and you will be taken to the wired enclosure, and any one found giving you food or water, will be beaten to death with _asayisi_. This will give your Nazarene Prophet, Whom we Turks and the Kaiser of the Alamani and his officers--who are all good Mohammedans--esteem very highly!--a chance to prove how great He is, and how He values you--by keeping you alive....'"

John licks lips that have suddenly grown dry.

"And what did Father Forbis say to this--not particularly original devil?"

"He told Hamid he was an ordinary priest, with no pretence to extra sanctity, and that if this was a challenge to the Christ, he as His servant refused to take it up...."

"And then?--"

"'Deprived of food,' the _posta_ says the Master said, 'I perish like any other miserable mortal. Yet if it were my Maker's Will that I should live through such an ordeal--I should live! ...'"

"Some priest that!" John imagines a voice like Katharine's saying 'I should live!' and a thrill goes through him. "And Hamid?--"

"Hamid said: '_We will wait and see!_' and all the Germans laughed. It is a phrase well known in England? ..."

"And dam' well hated too! But your Father Forbis is a peach.... Worthy to be his sister's brother...."

"She is so beautiful and noble? ..."

"All that," says loyal John, "and more! ..."

"Ah! I am glad. For I have thought much since I have known the Sidi, and learned in watching, somewhat. This amongst other things: that to be abject, ill-used, poor and despised, even as a lame sparrow in the sight of men--and to go about doing good, with one hate in the nest of the heart that chirps for vengeance, that is human, human enough! But to be all this, without hate or bitterness--to be wronged and pity the wronger!--being sinned against, to pardon and love the sinner, this is Divine! ..."

The softly-breathed words fall upon the air like scattered rose-petals, diffusing sweetness as they fall.