Part 51

"It is not disease of any kind," the Armenian answers in English. "The man has been beaten--nearly to death, and has lived--that is all! ... Many of my friends, condemned to the severest punishment of the Turkish _asâyisi_, have died under the infliction--as this man was meant to do...."

"Speak lower!" It is the second chaplain in khaki who is speaking. "That Arab understands you.... I saw it in his eyes...."

"Not he!" the first speaker returns. "He's an Arab pure and simple--and some of the Tommies have dubbed him 'The Father of Buffaloes.' The little woman with him has a nickname--somebody told me.... "_Sabâh-el-kheir_, Daddy Buffalo.... _Khud_!--and good luck to you! ..."

And a couple of Turkish _beshliks_ clink into the Arab's lap.

"Thy day be happy and blessed!" says a deep bass voice in answer. The three pedestrians pass on, and the beshliks fall amongst the straw in the bottom of the bath-chair. Unseen save by the sharp glance of the Arab donkey-boy, who squats in the shadow of the wall of the Enclosure, playing, with lines scratched upon the smooth limestone, a game that is scored upon the walls and flags of old Pompeii, as upon the recently excavated guard-room of the Herodian Mercenaries, eighteen feet under the level of the Sorrowful Way. A brace of coppers thrown to a sick man sitting by the wayside are surely given in charity. Yet when the sick one dies, the Fund amassed to build and endow the Hebrew University (the foundations of which are being even now blasted in the rock of Mount Scopas) will be enriched by a legacy of three hundred and eighty thousand pounds....

"What does it matter, Essie? Sweet One, why dost thou tremble? Surely the gift was kindly meant!"

The speaker thinks that his companion has been hurt by the bestowal of the coins. But she has not even seen the gift made, or heard the giver's words....

A moment since, a grey Staff car, driven by a soldier-chauffeur with the Great Headquarters' brassard--coming from the direction of the station beyond the Montefiore Hospice, by the road that skirts the City wall, to debouch upon the Road of the Damascus Gate--has passed by the Tombs of the Kings. Driven at speed, it has flashed by, carrying strangers with it. But one face was not strange.... One voice; borne on the wind that blows from Samaria, has echoed in the ears of Esther-Ummshni, bringing memories that brim the heart....

"I did not hear.... I thought I saw.... What is it, what is it, Mabruk?"

For the Arab boy has run down the road to meet a messenger from the Khân.

"What says he? ..." asks the deep, slow voice.

"He says--Mabruk says--" Esther commences, shaking like a wind-blown reed of the Jordan behind her shrouding veils: "that strangers are at Shafât. He says--"

"O Shaykh!--" Mabruk, a lanky crow-necked youngster, son of the Mohammedan landlord of the Shafât Khân, importantly steps forwards: "Great ones have arrived at my father's Khân. Two lords of the Inglizi, and a lady, tall and beautiful. They have sent me in the horseless carriage to bring back thee and the Sitti. This letter also they have sent thee by thy servant's hands.--Behold! ..."

Mabrûk lifts the note to his eyes and forehead, and hands it over. A folded sheet of paper, sealed with an impression of a well-known onyx signet, and scrawled with some hastily pencilled lines in a beloved hand:

"I am here, at the Khân at Shafât, with my brother and husband. Do not be angry that we have come! Your aunt is with us. Tell your Cousin Esther, whom I long to see and thank for my dear Julian, but not as I'm longing to see and thank you! Alone, dear, dear John!--because I'm jealous of the others. Your first word--your first look have got to be for me. Come back in the car or send it back to fetch--

Your loving, grateful KATHARINE YAILL."

XXII

Married. For a long time John has felt that she was married. Well, well, it was to be. His sovereign lady, his dear Princess, a wife, and soon, perhaps, a mother. God bless her and her husband. He is glad, glad, because of their happiness.... Holding the pencilled scrawl with the seal of the Hercules, his shapeless hand drops heavily back upon his knees.

"O John, my Cousin, answer me!"--Esther is eagerly speaking--"The Sign that thou hast waited for so long, was it not this? ..."

"Nay, Sweet!" He shakes his head. "This is a token from a friend beloved, but not the Sign I look for.... Now undo the Ring of Hazaël from the cord about my neck. Carry it to her at the Khân where she waits with her brother. Render it back to them both from me. Giving with the Ring, the Message I have taught thee!--I need not to repeat the words, they are written in thy heart...."

"But, dearest one--it was a message from the Dead, and thou art yet living...."

She looks anxiously in the speaker's face. Save that the black eyes have a strange glaze, and the puffed lips are lead-colour--and the beating of his damaged heart shakes the flowing draperies that cover him--there is nothing to rouse her fears.

"Take Katharine," there is a clang of masterful authority in the deep voice, "take Katharine the Message--from the departing Guardian of the Ashes. Return in an hour. Leave the child here to sit by me. One thing remains!--" He calls her back as she is turning meekly to obey him: "Kiss me, my Little Cousin, before thou dost depart."

She goes, and presently the hoot of a car testifies to her departure.... It nears the hour of sunset on this Vigil of the Nativity. There was a tang of frost early in the morning. But the rosy air is warm and still, the sky serenely splendid, the orange-breasted blackbirds pipe and trill, and clouds of little ash-coloured, grasshopper-like insects rise at the brush of footsteps through the short dun-coloured grass....

He sits there for a long time or a short time, he is not certain. To the soul upon the edge of Timelessness, many hours are as one.... The tiny donkey, hobbled, grazes at a little distance. The Arab child who drives the beast, plays the game that the soldiers of the Roman Guard played in the days of Herod, and then, grown weary, steals off to play elsewhere....

The sick man dozes heavily now, with jaw a little fallen, and black eyes that show glazed and dim between their parted lids.... The breaths that shake the puffed lips come slower and fainter. The Arab _jerd_ that swathes him ceases to tremble with the irregular beating of his heart....

Suddenly, his eyes stare wide and a strange cold thrill goes through him. He has been touched.... By whose hand? ... No messenger stands near.... Can it be that so strange a shock heralds the Sign that he has waited? ...

Midnight!--yet when he closed his eyes it was not yet sunset, the blind muezzin of the Mosque of the Throne of Solomon had not given the Call to Prayer.... And now, the Hosts of Heaven blaze from zenith to horizon. The full Moon stands over Bethlehem and the flood of radiant pale light makes Jerusalem a silver city, inlaid with jet and ebony....

Solemn black clouds heap over Moab. The Valley of the Kedron and the Vale of Our Lady Mary are swallowed in a gulf of shade. But Olivet is glorious in the brilliance that pours down on her, making a prone black giant under every lonely cypress, and a black cat crouching under every bush and stone.

Bells ring from all the convents, and churches in Jerusalem. All over Palestine bells ring for Christmas Day. From Bethlehem where He was born, comes the sound of joyful chiming. On the north wind the sound of bells is brought from Nazareth....

"Peace on earth!" ... John Hazel stands and listens, as from north, east, west and south the bells of Christmas ring.... A great cry breaks from him, of wild despair and anguish:

"O Christ, there is no peace for me while yet Thou art withholden. O Shepherd of all broken hearts! send me Thy promised Sign! Speak to me at least, you Big Old Men," he cries, "for I am lonely! ... Say to this John, the littlest and least of all the Hazaëls--that I have done my duty, and ye are content with me!"

The shuddering cry dies on the breeze. And a terrible voice answers:

"Not the least, but the greatest of all art thou.... For thou art our leader. Hear, now! The choice has fallen to thee. Worthy art thou to rule us, who canst so well obey! ..."

Wonderful sight.... On his left hand, on his right and before him. From the skirts of the Mount of Olives, to the Mohammedan Cemetery, and across the road of the Damascus Gate, to the site of the Unknown Tombs.... Rank upon rank of Big Old Men--stately as Kings, in flowing robes and high jewelled tiaras, and others in less ancient garb, and others in more modern garments--even down to the style of the present day. He sees his grandfather, Eli, and his own father, and his brother Maurice, and stretches his hands to them, crying, as they smile and wave to him:

"Tell me, is this the Sign that I was promised when I was chained to the bed in the Turkish hut and the Voice spoke to me? ..."

And all the Hazaëls answer in deep, tremendous voices, and then the turmoil quietens down, and the Biggest of all the Big Old Men stands forth and gives reply:

"We know not of any Sign, O John! Thou calledst, and we answered. Now hear Hazaël Aben Hazaël, who made the Oath of old.... Lead and we follow.... Command, and we obey thee. Speak, and deliver counsels--thou greatest of us all!"

John hesitates a moment, and then words come to him:

"O all ye Big Old Men, listen to me, the littlest! This is the lore I have gathered in the thirty-five years of my life. Human Love is a passing Breath--a rosy, flying Shadow. Happiness, Wealth, Honour, Fame--are cobwebs on the wind. Rank and Power are gilded stools, worm-eaten and rotten. Nothing is Real--nothing is true--but the Truths ye would not see! There is no gain save Sacrifice--no good save Renunciation!--no Way except the Way of the Cross--no Hope but in the Blood of CHRIST! He is our King! ... Now follow me, and we will do Him homage. Or cast me out from among you, and let me be forgotten. I, John, the littlest of all the Hazaëls, have said my say! ..."

"We hear!" The deep chorus of answering voices rose and rolled down on him.... "We hear. Lead on--we follow thee!"

"It is well. Wheel and face southwards, O ye Hazaëls! and form four men abreast in columns of companies."

He gives the order loud and clear, and the extended ranks of towering figures shift and change, and close in--and all the faces are turned from him, except the face of the very Biggest of all the Big Old Men. He says to John, in a voice that is very like John's own:

"I am the Captain of thy host. Give me the route of march."

"First to Bethlehem, the Place of His Birth, and then to His Death Place on Calvary," John answers, though his knees seem melting under him, and he has hardly any breath.

"And then? ... Whither go we? ... For the Gate of the Place where we abode is now shut behind us.... Is there not entrance for thee and me and these, by the Gate of Hope? ... The Gate that opened for Philoremus Fabius--that I saw when the Blemmyes gave me death! ..."

"But I do not know the Gate of Hope! ..." John falters, rather weakly, and the Biggest of all his Big Old Men answers him sternly now:

"The Crucified promised thee a Sign--and He deceives not. Ask now His Father in His Name--to open His Gate of Hope!"

* * * * * * *

And John hears his own voice blundering in the petition:

"O Christ, Who art the Very Truth, show now the Sign Thou promised! Lead us into the Land of Peace by Thine Own Gate of Hope! O look! ... Look, ye Hazaëls!--in the sky, over the Holy City! ..."

Obedient to the voice and the arm that is uplifted, the faces of the mighty host, are upturned to the sky. Faces that are dark and fierce, noble and mild, harsh and stern or gentle.... Faces of Kings and prophets and sages, leaders of hosts and seers of visions; men of the sceptre, men of the sword, men of the crucible, men of the scalpel; men of the pen, men of the spade and pickaxe--men of all ages and all climes--but Hebrew every one....

Over the ancient City that stoned her prophets, and cast out her Saints, having slain the Son of God--is another City, shining-walled, with radiant domes and towers. Figures more radiant walk upon her walls and crowd her housetops. John knows the City. Of it he spoke to Esther a little while ago.

A Gate is opened in Her walls between two shining towers. A Man stands on the threshold more glorious than the Sun. Majesty and meekness radiate from Him, with Love and Compassion and Mercy.... His Hands are stretched in welcome. They are Wounded, like His Feet. He speaks, touching His naked Side, where the gash of the Roman spear is:

"Come unto Me, My people! Here is the Gate of Hope! ..."

* * * * * * *

An earthly voice John Hazel used to think the loveliest of women's voices, calls him with eager breathlessness. Now a tall figure in a felt hat, with the Red Cross badge and ribbon, and a flowing cape of red-lined blue, comes swiftly down the road. A gallant, womanly creature with beautiful and tender eyes that John has often dreamed of.... They lighten as they fall on the great shapeless bulk of the man, who--dressed like an Arab--is sitting in an old bath-chair....

The little donkey grazes near, the Arab boy is not visible. It is just upon the flush of sunset, and the voice of the blind _muezzin_ at the Mosque of the Throne of Solomon comes faintly out of the distance, giving the Call to Prayer. Other voices take it up and die out in distance; and Katharine would speak now, but pauses as the Angelus rings its mellow triples from the Dominican Monastery behind the Tombs of the Kings, and the Chapel in the garden of the Syrian Patriarch....

She ends the little Latin prayer with the Sign of the Cross, and comes forward. Clouds of little dun insects like grasshoppers rise under her footsteps as she comes.... A tiny bird no bigger than a tit that is perched on the sick man's shoulder takes wing with a fluttering, silken sound. And a creature like a biggish mouse, with kangaroo-like hind legs, leaps away as Katharine comes to the side of the rickety bath-chair....

She calls the man who sits in it, and he does not answer, but leans back against his pillow, staring fixedly before him with his hands upon his knees. The Arab _kuffiyeh_ partly hides his face, so changed since she last saw it. But she catches the jut of the great hooked nose, and the glitter of the stern black eyes....

A cocksure woman is Katharine, who always thinks she is wanted. He does not speak, but she is quite sure he is glad that she has come....

"John Hazel! Are you vexed with me for thrusting myself upon you? I had to come! ... I simply couldn't stay away! ... You do know why, truest of friends! ... To thank you--to bless you! For Edward and for me, and Julian!" The eager words come pouring out as she kneels beside the chair. "Dearest, best, bravest one--come back with us to England! ... I will nurse you,--you will,--you shall get well! There MUST be happiness and health for you--it couldn't be otherwise! ... Say you'll come, or I shall kiss you. My husband told me to! ..."

She rises to her feet now and leans over him smiling, with a womanly-tender impulse to hug him to her breast. Her warm, sweet arm goes round the man's great neck, her pure breath fans his forehead. Her lips touch the scarred cheek--and the truth comes home to her.

That longed-for kiss has come too late for the last of the Hazaëls. He leaves it as his legacy to a new Keeper of the Shrine. The little boy who is to be, with eyes like his mother's.... The son of Yaill and Katharine--whose Christian name is John.

THE END