Part 8

Faith is the Sign of Love In the Soul made perfect. The wisdom of the heathen Is naught but words! Where is divination? Where the magicians who were of Egypt? Where are the phantoms of the errors of the Sorcerers?

Perished, broken, cast down and destroyed! Despised and contemned utterly Wherever the glorious Cross of Christ our Saviour Hath been upraised! O Tree of Victory! Triumphant throughout all the earth: Through thee doth chastity flourish And Virginity shed its light abroad!

Rejoice, ye martyrs! By whom death has been despised Because of the victory Of the conquering Cross! Sing, ye innumerable congregations Where is divination? Of virgins, male and female, Who preserve your bodies in holiness By the Power of the Cross!

O Gate of Hope! Carved in the Living Rock by the spear of the Roman! O Precious Blood Of Him Who was Crucified! O living Waters! Mingled in the Chalice of the Sacrifice-- For the regeneration and cleansing of souls! O little pain! O despicable torture! O paltry ordeal That Christ's athletes endure, Compared with His-- Who in His Body Suffered for the sins Of the whole world!

O great reward! Inestimable recompense, O crown of Victory! Triumphant palms! Entreat for me, ye legions of martyrs-- Supplicate for me, ye myriads of Confessors-- That like Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis-- Like Melittus, Abbot of Scete-- Like Peter, Patriarch of Alexandria-- Like Faustus the Presbyter, Rachobius and Eodoras-- Like Theodore, Ammon, Philip and Geta-- Like Paesius and Philoremus Fabius-- And like the Jew Hazaël-- (Who, rejecting the Gospel of JESUS Yet shall perish at the hands of idolaters For the upholding of His Honour) Even I, Littlest among Christ's servants-- May enter in at the Gate of Hope And drink of the new-pressed wine of Paradise!"

The singer ceased as dawn whitened the eastern sky, and the dome of Mount Derhor was reddened by the first rays of the sun. The harp, clutched in his rigid hands, still vibrated with the last chords struck upon it. But the Saint was once more rapt in contemplation, from which neither appeals nor threats could rouse him. Boiling with indignation at what he had heard, Hazaël shook the dust from his garments, and set off with rapid strides down the crevassed limestone slope.

He returned by the path round the shoulder of the precipice, and through the narrow cleft into the pass where he had suffered temptation of the demon; found some water yet remaining in the cave's tiny hollow, and, eating his last dates as he went, emerged at length from the porphyry ravine upon the desert plain upon whose burning soil he had discovered the charger of gold, saying to himself:

"I will hurry forward to the oasis of the spring,--fasten the camel to a tree there, and bring the Saracen back to assist me. It cannot be meant that so much treasure should be abandoned to serve no useful end! It should realise when sold, at least ten thousand talents. Half of this money belongs to the Athlete, seeing that his dwelling is in the mountain. With the rest I shall enrich myself, and return with my household to Palestine!"

But when he arrived once more in sight of the spot where he had found the treasure, he found there, gathered about it, a horde of savage Blemmyes from the Red Sea wilderness, who periodically penetrated the fastnesses of Derhor by some of the eastern defiles. Enraged at seeing these naked, painted heathens hoisting the mass of gold upon their shoulders, amidst shrill ululations of joy from the fierce, hawk-eyed women who accompanied them, the Jew swung his great staff high, shouting:

"Restore the spoil that another found before you, ye abominable ones!" and charged the Blemmyes, scattering them with tremendous blows.

But the savage idolaters only dispersed like jackals or vultures scared from a carcass, to gather again at a distance; and from thence discharged stones from their slings so skilfully that Hazaël was wounded and beaten to the ground. Then overpowering him, the barbarians strongly bound his wrists and ankles, and drawing them apart, secured each limb to a stake, driven deep into the soil.

Then, concluding that all men returning from the Inner Mountain must needs be Christian pilgrims, the chief of the band set his foot upon the breast of the Israelite and--speaking in bastard Greek--and brandishing his spear with menacing gestures--commanded him forthwith to blaspheme Christ, and abjure the Faith--or die amidst tortures unspeakable.

Upon which Hazaël shouted furiously:

"You ignorant rabble! I am a devout Jew, and will never accept the Nazarite Prophet as Messiah! and I have even brought persecution upon those who worship Him! Nevertheless, for love of Him my master Philoremus Fabius suffered death at Alexandria, and in His name the Saint of Derhor performs marvellous works. And I have sworn before the God of my fathers henceforth to abstain from speaking or doing evil against Christ's servants: yet I am not a Christian, and never will be!"

But the Blemmyes clustered about him like bees, stinging and pricking him with their sharp spear-points, and the savage women, reaching between the legs of the men, prodded him with thorns and tore his flesh with sharpened stones, so that there was not a whole patch upon his body, that was all gory red from head to foot. And they jabbered at him to blaspheme, urging incessantly:

"Execrate Christ and thou art free!"

He whom they tortured shouting lustily:

"Ye vultures of the Desert, I will not!"

Then, failing to work their will, they made upon his body a fire of dried camel's dung, and took the gold and went away.

While to the tortured Jew, dying amidst horrible agonies, it seemed that he saw his master Philoremus, joyful and smiling, standing near a Young Man apparelled in white, and of sublime and radiant visage, who extended towards the sufferer His beautiful wounded Hands.... And amidst a great Light and many voices, One Voice spoke, saying words inconceivably wonderful.... And the bands of mortality were peeled from Hazaël's vision, and his spirit passed beyond the Veil of the Unknown.

* * * * * * *

In the same hour the Abbot Pachomius at Tabenna, being in prayer at the conclusion of the morning Sacrifice, received a revelation and cried out:

"Lord! do Thou multiply Thy mercies upon the Jew Hazaël Hazaël, who rejecting the Gospel of the New Testament, hath yet died for Thee!"

And sending a messenger to the quayside where the faithful Ephraim waited aboard the vessel with the Coptish sailors, the Abbot warned the servant of Hazaël that evil had come to him.... Then Ephraim went forth into the desert with a strong party of armed Saracens on swift camels, and traversing the Valley of the Chariots, and climbing the pass north of the oasis of the spring, reached the place where the Blemmyes had put the Jew to death. The head, limbs and extremities, though scorched and shrivelled, remained unconsumed. The charred trunk had burst asunder, and within the hoops of the great blackened ribs, the indomitable heart of the just steward lay amidst grey ashes; all red, like a newly-quenched coal. Upon one of the dried-up hands hung a tarnished signet-ring that the Blemmyes had not noticed,--or had feared to meddle with, lest it might be a talisman.

It was the signet with the black onyx, given by the Roman Philoremus Fabius to Hazaël.... And Ephraim, taking the ring from the dead hand, scraped a shallow grave in the hot sandy gravel; buried the remains, and made above the spot a great pile of stones.

Then he journeyed back to Alexandria, carrying the news and the ring, and goods of Hazaël; and Miriam and little Leah wept sorely; and the boy Levi said Kaddish for the dead.

_Book the Second:_ THE SENDING

I

John Benn Hazel lived with his mother, and Maurice, his younger brother, at Campden Hill Terrace. Mrs. Hazel was a widow of long standing; well-to-do, well-preserved, well-powdered, dyed and corseted, and experienced in the ways of the world. Formerly, as she admitted, "a frightful flirt," she was still prone to recurrent attacks of the milder kind of friskiness. Of her two sons, she was chiefly mother to the more gifted Maurice--an illustrator of books of the exotic, precious, subtle type--and periodicals of the same pale cerulean hue. Before the War Maurice possessed a Marcelle wave and a Beardsley Line--both attained by infinite perseverance. Later he acquired the certificate of a Pilot-Aviator, and flew a Handley-Page bomber on the Western Front.

Mother and sons agreed marvellously, unless when one of Mrs. Hazel's elderly adorers, persons of ripe years and desirable financial solidity, endeavoured to persuade her to forsake her widowed state. The most favoured of these was a certain Mr. Herman Van Ost, London partner and representative of a thriving and long-established firm of Dutch bulb-merchants. As a stepfather John Hazel would have regarded the Dutchman with more or less placidity. But Maurice found the idea intolerable, and thus the bulb of Van Ost's hopes remained in the shop window; showing a pale green spike at intervals, in earnest of latent possibilities in the flowering line,--but never achieving more.

All three Hazels were members of the same mixed Club,--(who does not know "The Tubs" in Werkeley Street, W.)--and firmly believed the Parish of St. James's the hub of the civilised world. All three were ardent votaries of Bridge; all yearned to be admitted into the inner circles of Society, but were content to grasp at the outer fringe. All three adored Russian Ballet, Musical Comedy, Film Plays and up-to-date Revues. Each revelled in the Tango and thought no fashion in modes, colours, coiffures, furniture, manners and morals, so quite too frightfully fetching as the last. They were of sport, sporting; but their talk turned chiefly upon things of the theatre theatrical; and they always knew to a thousand how much the last Big Production had cost the Syndicate running such-and-such a West End house.

Sometimes they disagreed as to the exact weight of the gloves worn by the French pugilistic champion, and So-and-so, the hope of England--in their classical contest at the Punching Club; or as to the precise source whence Didi Debée obtained her celebrated strings of pearls, or grew warm over the rival merits of famous exponents of the Tango; or contradicted one another touching the precise terms in which Betty Ballorme had notified the Duke of Blankshire that a less economical nobleman would be more welcome in her flat. But if they quarrelled they made friends again over some more recent item of gossip. Jimmy Greggson had got a new gag, or a fresh wheeze in the Second Act of "The Filberts" at Riley's Theatre, just before the famous 'Dance of The Varalette.' Or a new supper-dish or a fresh dance-step would have appeared upon the menu of some eclectic restaurant cum-night-club, run by managers who catered for every variety of taste.

It will be seen that the sons of Mrs. Hazel were happy in their parent, whose business gift was not to be despised. In partnership with a peeress of somewhat clouded reputation she ran a millinery and flower-shop at a double frontage in Dove Street, Piccadilly: adding to her annual life-interest on her late husband's not inconsiderable fortune, a really handsome sum.

Probably her elder son inherited Mrs. Hazel's business aptitude though such a legacy is more usually held to be derived from the paternal side. The product of one of the lesser public schools (Loamborough may be quoted) and graduate of Brazingham University, he decided that it was possible to do Big Things without a string of piffling letters tacked on to your name. So, the City of London happening to beckon at that juncture, he leaped gladly to her grimy embrace, and his thirty-second birthday, occurring on the third of July, 1914, found him formally received and accredited as Junior Partner in the thriving firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, insurance-brokers of Cornhill. He was engaged to Beryl Lee-Levyson. He looked forward--under the summer sky fast blackening with fearful presages of tempest--not exactly with rapture, but with content--to their approaching marriage; a house in Eaton Terrace, S.W.,--Eaton Square being the address of the Lee-Levysons--having been inspected and approved, a week before the gates of Terror opened and the world grew pale with dread. In that first fierce spate of blood the elder son of Lee-Levyson, a promising young lieutenant in a crack Hussar regiment, was overwhelmed and swept away. The favourite grandson of Dannahill, Head of the Firm, a Sergeant in a London Territorial Regiment, later rendered distinguished service, and died gloriously on the thirteenth day of the First Battle of the Aisne. That September evening John Hazel got home to Campden Hill unusually late for dinner, bringing with him a clumsy parcel which contained:

_Item_: one coat highly polished at the elbows, kept for office night-work.

_Item_: a silver inkstand, a birthday present, inscribed: "_From S. and M.H._" (Sara and Maurice Hazel) "_to J.B.H., July 6th, 1914._"

Item: a tinted photograph of Beryl Lee-Levyson, a tall, willowy young woman in narrow diaphanous garments, with tightly-banded hair of pale gold, a bluish-pink complexion, a straight nose with a ripple in the bridge, large and well-opened light grey eyes, and the kind of smile that advertises an excellent set of teeth. It bore the inscription:

"_From Girlie, with Love to Her Best Boy._"

A box of cigars, a silver cigarette box, some well-browned meerschaum holders, and a burned briar-root pipe, completed the inventory of the property contained in the shapeless parcel which John Hazel lugged up to his room, and dumped upon his bed.

"What are these things?" asked his mother, coming in to tell John not to wait to dress, as she and Maury were going to look in at Riley's to see the 'Dance of the Varalette' once again before Jimmy Greggson went to the Front....

"Of course; good old Jimmy's a London Terrier! ... Did you ask about those? ..." said John, who stood at the looking-glass in shirt-sleeves, brushing his coarse strong curly hair with two big ivory-backed brushes, and meeting the maternal eyes in the mirror with something not unlike a scowl. All the principles instilled at Loamborough, by dint of many poundings, forbade him to embrace his mother and weep; yet strange wild impulses urged him to commit this sin against the Code of Correct British behaviour. He went on, looking at her in the glass, deepening his scowl and speaking gruffly: "They'd be frightfully in the way at the office.... I rather thought you'd look after them until I get back from the Front!"

There was a moment's pregnant silence in the room, while Mrs. Hazel with a wildly thumping heart, was realising how awfully she had dreaded that it would be Maurice who would have to go! ... Then she rustled over to John's side, reached up on tiptoe, though she was a tall woman, and giving him two little pecking kisses on the angle of his blue-shaven brown jaw, murmured something about getting up some champagne to-night to make up for the tinned _entrées_ at dinner, and rustled out of the room--John knew--to tell the news downstairs.

"What? Old J. going? ... Good for him!" was Maurice's languidly-approving comment on the intelligence.

Nobody grumbled, though John did delay to change, and came down arrayed in the gladdest rags his well-supplied wardrobe boasted, to tell his mother and Maurice of Sam Dannahill's glorious death. Such a frightful knock for the Firm, coming on the heels of the bad news about Beauchamp Lee-Levyson!--and how the Boss had taken the grim wire from the War Office "like a regular First Class Old Brick."

Ah, if in that bad quarter of an hour succeeding the opening of the telegram John could have looked through the fortunately opaque glass of the door with "Senior Partner" painted on it,--he would have seen no dignified white-haired City Insurance-broker, telling with a dry eye but a trembling lip how bravely Sam had died! but a frantic old grandsire, tearing his hair and beard, and crying even as David in the high gate-chamber: "My child!--my hope and comfort! O if it had been granted that I might die for thee, my boy, my beloved one!"

Pray observe John Benn Hazel, standing on the Daghestani hearthrug, with his back to the fern-filled fireplace in the Briton's customary style.

You saw him as a broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, deep-chested young man of thirty-two, six feet three in his stockings and proportionately powerful. His huge frame of bone, knit with solid muscle, was sparingly padded with tough hard flesh, covered with dull, dry brown skin that looked as though it needed to be soaked in blazing sunshine to become sleek and soft. Coarse, wiry, curly hair, densely black as the broad beetling brows and the deep-set eyes under them, closely capped his high dome-topped skull, and grew low upon his forehead,--tinged with blue where it was most closely clipped on the temples and about the ears,--and at the nape of the long thick neck, that needed the razor's frequent application even as the strong jaws, the long, deeply-channelled upper-lip, and the chin, quite abnormally long, with a dent in its squared end. His was a huge salient nose, thick and boldly curved, with mobile nostrils; and a large, rather loose-lipped mouth, purplish-red and frankly sensual, with a quirk of humour at the deeply-cut corners, and displaying a formidable array of big white teeth when he laughed. His large, well-shaped ears did not lie sufficiently close to his head for beauty, and the prominent Adam's apple of his muscular brown throat was the despair of City collar-makers; while no glove that hosier ever supplied could be got to button over his great wrist,--the joint of the ulna, Maurice bragged,--being as big as a pony's pastern. His feet were huge and clumsy as his hands, a fact too well known of Mrs. Hazel's Pomeranian. His excellent opinion of himself was much evident when he talked in his loud, deep, booming voice, or laughed at jokes of his own manufacture, which appealed to him more than others. When his sense of humour was really touched, his guffaw was an outrage on the nerves of other people, and fragile articles within reach of his lengthy arms were wont to be swept from shelves or stands. But Maurice was not driven to put his fingers in his ears, on this particular evening; nor was Mrs. Hazel to glance even once in apprehension at her Dresden china shepherdesses simpering on the mantel-shelf.

She came into John's room again that night, long after they had parted, with an excuse about being anxious to make sure,--in case he should not yet have switched off the electric lights,--that his blinds were closely drawn down behind the open windows, and the new curtains of green casement-cloth properly closed. The police had warned householders all along the Terrace. Not in the least deceived, John sat up in bed, looming bigly in a blatant suit of pink-striped silk pyjamas, conscious that upon his pillow was a big wet patch of which a Briton's hardy eyes ought to have been ashamed. The mother looked absurdly young, it seemed to her son,--with her still abundant auburn hair, as yet only lightly crisped with grey,--hanging in a thick loose plait down the back of her pale blue _crêpe_ dressing-gown, as she retreated from the window,--to examine the War-arrangements of which she had had to switch on the light:--pecked him again--upon his forehead this time--and said with elaborate casualness:

"You told us--among other amusing things--to-night at supper"--John was pleased to find that he had been amusing--"about the papers you had had to fill at the Army Recruiting place." ...

"Saying how old I am, and where I was born,--and what my father's nationality was--and what my religion is," John told her with a cheerful grin: adding as she lingered, apparently in expectation: "But the really funny things--regular howlers!--were on the spoiled papers lying about." His big body shook with a chuckle that was not genuine.

"Never mind the funny things just now! How did you answer that question about your father? ... What nationality did you say his was?" Her blue-grey eyes, still brilliant and effective, sparkled feverishly under knitted eyebrows. Her voice was sharp and strained, in the ears of her son. He answered with a dull flush darkening his heavy features:

"I said he was British. Isn't that good enough?" He added as he hugged his great bony knees, and stared over their barrier at the worried face of his mother: "You don't suppose I'd be ass enough to make a false declaration, even though the Pater's governor happens to be a Palestine Jew! Is the old chap still alive, by the way? If so, he must be getting on for a hundred!"

"He was sixty-nine when I saw him at Malta thirty years ago, and taller and broader than any of his sons--as upright as a column. You've a look of him--there are times when I see it!--but you take after your father more! ..."

"At any rate my father was naturalised an Englishman, and Hazel sounds English enough," said John.

"Yes--oh, yes!"

As she drummed on the foot-rail of the bedstead, imparting a rather unpleasant vibration to the tautened nerves of her elder son, John coughed a deep hollow cough to cover his embarrassment, and said gruffly;

"What's the matter with your telling me about my father and his people? I've never asked before, but I think I'd better know!"

"His first name was John, like yours, but the name is really Hazaël. The Hazaëls were wealthy merchants, exporters of produce from the Mediterranean Coast--and wines--chiefly from vineyards of their own."

"That stuff I've seen advertised--Palestine Port, Tokay and Muscatel,--sound and nourishing, twenty-five years old?"

"It's very good--and your father has often told me that even before the Colonies were founded in 1827,--when I've heard there were only ten Jews at Jaffa--his father's father's great grandfather was a vine-grower and exporter of wine. The business originally started in Egypt--they have a business house to-day at Alexandria--and another at Jaffa and a branch at Malta--where your father and I first met."

"Stop! ... What about you?"

"Me.... Oh--well! I was sixteen, and frightfully romantic, and supposed to be going in for what people called 'a decline.' ... Anæmia would be the proper name for it in these days: and Hull, where your grandfather had his place of business, was cold and gloomy; and Malta was supposed to be the cure.... I loved Malta! What girl wouldn't? All sunshine and flowery gardens, and violet sea, and turquoise skies. And all the fruit and' flowers one wanted--and a handsome man to squire one about! For your father was quite charming. He spoke beautiful English, and French like a native; he had been educated at Paris, they said, and when my father told me of John's intentions, I was ready to jump over the moon!"

She broke off, and John roused himself to say:

"Anyway, if the Pater was a Syrian Jew, your governor was British enough! ... Of course I never saw him, as the old man was dead and buried before we went to live with my grandmother. But Symons does sound like a good old English name!"

"That's why your grandmother persuaded your grandfather to adopt it. His real name was Simonoff, and she never liked it! She was a Yorkshire Isaacson!"

There was a pregnant silence before John asked in muffled accents:

"Was my grandfather on your side a Russian?" and was clubbed by the reply:

"He was a Russian Jew from Moscow."

"Oh, come! Don't rub it in!" The bedstead creaked protestingly.