Part 6

When he came to the tree under which he had sat with her, Hiram, who was walking with a satisfied air among the flowers, said to him,

“You, there, are you one of the servants?

“Well, just be so good as to bring me a bowl for these roses.”

“I am not a servant,” said Jonah proudly.

“No?” said Hiram. “Then what are you? Are you interested in horses?”

“I am a prophet,” said Jonah.

Hiram made a small bow. “Forgive me,” he said. “In my country the prophets are dressed a little differently, because they have priestly connections. However, it is interesting to meet other kinds of prophets. It is an interesting profession. Well ... what a pleasant day it is. Perhaps you would do me the favor to prophesy me something.”

Jonah stared at him angrily. “I have some business with the Lady Judith,” he declared.

“She is in the house,” said Hiram. And the two men stood looking at each other with surprise and alarm.

Hiram went to fetch her. She came slowly, with downcast eyes, and cheeks as white as her own lilies. “How do you do, Jonah,” she said.

At the sight of her, Jonah felt his heart beating through his body, and a strange sweet sorrow rose up in his eyes. He wanted to say to her, “This is like coming home. I have been so unhappy, but you will comfort me. Because you love me, you will feel my sorrow. How sweet it is to have such a secret together.”

“How do you do, Judith,” he said; “I have been away.”

“Yes,” she said. And they stood without speaking, and without looking at each other.

“Well, did you have a good time?” she asked finally.

It troubled Jonah that she would not look at him. “I did not go away to amuse myself,” he said simply. And he added in a lower voice,

“Did you miss me?”

“Yes, I suppose so. At least ... I have been so busy. What hot days these have been.”

“I went to Bethel,” said Jonah. He wondered how to go on; he was puzzled and depressed. This was not as he had thought it would be.

“Didn’t you know?”

“No.... Did you prophesy again? What is going to happen now? My goodness, you prophets, you are always going about.

“I suppose you will be going back to the desert soon.”

Jonah stared at her. She kept her head down, and her hands twisted together. He began to feel as he did sometimes before God spoke to him, still and empty inside, with a terrible stillness, waiting for something.

“Judith,” he half whispered.

“Yes, Jonah,” she said, looking up at him, for only a moment, and then looking away again.

“All the time I was gone, I thought of only one thing. I remembered only one thing.”

“Yes, Jonah?”--ever so faintly.

“That night in the garden, and the white moon in the trees like a bird in the branches....

“Do you remember?”

Judith looked away. “That seems like so long ago, doesn’t it?” she answered.

“‘Long ago’?” cried Jonah, and his heart sank. “Why, it is no more than seven days ... Judith, have you forgotten?”

“No,” murmured Judith unhappily; “but I do not exactly remember....”

“You said you loved me,” he cried, in a voice which sounded like a croak.

She put the backs of her hands to her two cheeks, and whispered with bent head, “What must you think of me?”

“But,” stammered Jonah. Words would not come; he stood staring at her, eyes wide with unbelief.

“Forgive me,” she said calmly. “You can understand ... I hardly knew what I was doing. Do not think too badly of me.”

Jonah did not move or speak. But within him there were voices enough, too many. “What? I do not believe it. It is impossible. No, it is not impossible. Well, it has happened. But such things cannot happen ... to you, Jonah, to you....”

He was still, waiting for the clamor to subside, for the voices to reduce themselves to one voice. He was afraid to move even; bewildered, horrified, he was like a man clinging with his finger-tips to the edge of a precipice. If he moved ... if even a little earth slid from under his fingers....

No, he must keep very still; not a word, not a motion ... then it would all turn out right again....

It was Judith who moved, and spoke. Coming forward a step, she laid her hand timidly on his arm. “You will forgive me,” she said. “You have work to do in the world. You must go on, you must be a great prophet for my sake. I am going to be married. I shall be so proud of you.”

And turning, she ran back to meet Sarah, who was hurrying out of the house after her.

Jonah went home. His feet led him back down the hill to his mother’s house, but he did not notice where he was going. He felt strangely light-headed, almost as if he had been drinking. His set face, with wide amazed eyes, was lifted to the sky. And he kept thinking:

“Something has happened, something has happened....”

But what was it? Could he tell? Something had happened out of all reason, as though a tree had moved, and stood upright on its head. How could one believe such a thing? But there it was--on its head.

What was God about? And what had he, Jonah, done to deserve such a thing?

He passed the field where Aaron kept his cows. And suddenly, as he saw his brother in the distance, his shoulders sagged, his face broke into creases, his body seemed to fall together; and he stood weakly wringing his hands, while a wave of physical sickness stormed through his body ... remembering, remembering....

Then he went on again, with clumsy steps, and bent head.

If only it were something he could understand. But how could he understand it; how could he ever understand? How could one love, he wondered, and then not love? Love did something to one’s whole being; it made one gentle, and tender....

How could she have hurt him so, if she loved him?

And where was God all this time? What did He think about such a thing? “You, up there--God--what have You to say?”

Nothing.

He came slowly into the house, and sat down with his hands clasped between his knees. One look at him was enough for Deborah; she knew. But then, she had expected it. And keeping her glance busily upon her sewing, she began to sing softly to herself.

But her eyes were full of pain.

“_Men dead long ago. Have set me like a tree...._

“You are tired, my son.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“It has been hot. The poor always feel the extremes of weather most. If I had a daughter, I would never let her marry a poor man.”

And she glanced swiftly at her son, sunk in despair upon his stool.

“_Let the wind blow, What is that to me?_

“Everywhere I go,” she continued calmly, “they speak of you with such admiration. He is a real prophet, they say. Everybody expects great things of you. It makes me so happy.”

Still Jonah did not answer. And Deborah said, sighing,

“Is it time you were going back to the desert, Jonah?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Well, I suppose you are right. It will be a rest for you, after all this. We shall miss you. It will be peaceful in the desert.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I will send Aaron to you soon, with news, and some little comforts for you. Even if you have to live with the foxes, you can at least be comfortable.”

Slowly, putting her sewing away, she rose, and came over to him. “Jonah,” she said gently, and laid her hand ever so lightly upon his hair, “my boy....

“People are not very kind to one another.”

“No ... Mother....”

She began to sing again, softly, taking his head in her hands, drawing him gently to her:

“_My roots are in their dust, My roots are deep, I trust...._”

And Jonah wept, with his head against his mother’s breast.

“_My son is at my knee._”

XIII

Naaman sat beneath his acacia tree. Gentle and austere, his thoughts usually concerned themselves with the universe and with God, who he did not believe belonged exclusively to the Jews. However, he no longer felt called upon to say so, unless he was asked; then he stated his opinions with dignity but without the least hope of convincing any one. When any one wished to know why he, who loved peace, clung to such disturbing ideas, he replied, “I am an old man, and I like to have in my mind only what is comfortable there.”

Now, however, his brows were drawn in a frown, and he looked gloomily at Jonah, who sat with bent head at his feet. And his hands, as he caressed his long white beard, trembled with age, with pity, and with indignation.

“So, my son,” he said, “you have hurt yourself. When you were a child you used to come running to me with eyes full of tears, to show me some bruise you had received. I can still remember what I used to tell you: if you did not fall you would not get a bump. The one followed the other, almost as to make one believe that they were the same thing. And so I used to ask you: Jonah, are you crying because of the fall or the bump? Well, my son?”

Jonah smiled sadly. “Yes,” he replied. “And then you went on to say that I was not a philosopher. How that used to wound me, for I wished above all things to be a philosopher.

“Well, now it is the bump that has made me cry, Naaman.”

Naaman nodded his head. “Exactly,” he said. “But do you think perhaps you are any more of a philosopher than you were then? I doubt it, my son. For you bring me your bruise with the same astonishment as of old, not seeing that, having fallen, you can expect nothing else.”

Jonah spread out his hands in a gesture of discouragement. “How is one to stand upright in this world then, Naaman,” he said, “being but a man, and less than a god.”

The old hermit regarded him gravely. “You are not a man, Jonah,” he said finally; “although,” he added quickly, “you are not a god, either. But you are not a man in the sense that your brother Aaron is a man. Nor do you live in the world he lives in. You belong to another world altogether, as different from that one as Thebes from Nineveh.

“And that world, my son, where you belong, is not here, among the tribes, among the towns and villages. It is in the desert; it is in the wilderness, where there is quiet for God to speak, where there is room for His angels to move about. When you left Golan, your heart was like the desert, spacious and calm. But now it is like a crowded village, full of tumult and pain.”

“Yes,” said Jonah in a low voice, “it is full of pain.”

“I hoped you would not stay here,” continued Naaman; “I implored you to return to Golan, to your home. Yet you stayed; with the result it was impossible not to foresee.”

“I did not foresee it,” said Jonah.

“That is because you are ignorant,” said Naaman severely. “You do not know the world, yet you wish to live in it.”

“No,” said Jonah, “that is not true. For such things do not happen to everybody, or to other people. Why, love is holy, Naaman. It is as though God had told a lie.”

“Be silent,” exclaimed Naaman harshly, “and do not blaspheme. Love is not holy; and God does not lie. That alone is holy which concerns itself with holy things. But love ... no, my son; it is pain and impurity, it is violence and sorrow. The world of desire is the world of demons, of concealment, of Sathariel which hides the face of mercy.”

Jonah regarded the old man with astonishment. “You are so bitter,” he exclaimed; “I have never heard you speak in that tone before.”

Naaman peered off beneath his shaggy white eyebrows to the distant hillside, swimming in the haze of summer heat. For a moment he did not speak, but presently he said, sighing,

“You know but little of my life, my son. I, too, loved in my youth. Does that surprise you? Yes, it is hard to imagine that old men have ever been in love, swept by the flames of passion and of sorrow. And sometimes it is hard for the old to remember how it goes with the young men, with their joy, and their pain.

“I, too, was young like you, Jonah. Do you think your heart is the first to break? Other hearts have broken before; and other men have wept, as you are weeping. I know; for I, too, wept, Jonah, my son.”

He was silent. Jonah took the old man’s trembling hand between his two brown palms. “I am sorry,” he said. And he remained respectfully silent.

“But, Naaman,” he broke out at last, “what then is holy here on earth?”

Naaman replied gently and inexorably, “My son, the love of earth is holy, the love that God bears the least of His creatures, without desire, without envy, and without malice. That mercy and generosity with which the sun warms and the soil nourishes its flowers and trees, is holy; all that gives of itself, without reason, without measure, and without return. For that is the way of God; it is the way of the One, from which all things spring, to which all things return. Go back to the desert, Jonah; go back to the desert, and learn that God is One, and that His love is holy.”

But Jonah did not understand him. “Yes,” he said. “I shall go back to the desert, because that is all I can do. But I shall have no happiness, Naaman; my heart will never be at peace again. There is no beauty in the world for me now, ever. Oh, Naaman,” he cried suddenly, clasping his hands together, “if God loves His creatures, how can He make them suffer so?”

Naaman looked sadly at the young prophet whose face was hidden from him. “Must you have beauty, too, Jonah?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jonah.

Rising to his feet, he added, “You do not know what it is to love and to be unhappy.”

And he went home again. As he entered his yard, a green beetle crossed his path. He went a few steps out of his way in order to tread upon it.

XIV

And so Jonah returned to the desert, to his hut among the rushes in Golan. As he stood waiting for the ferry to take him across the Jordan, a party of soldiers coming from Hamath passed him on their way home. “There is Jonah,” they said, “the prophet. Now we shall have another war.”

“That is the sort of prophet to have.”

“Hurrah for Jonah.”

But Jonah paid no attention to them. He was thin and deathly tired, and his eyes, which burned with a deep and weary fire, were fixed on the distant hills beyond the river. There, Naaman had said, he would have peace again.

He walked northward through Tob, climbing from the river valley toward the table-land behind the hills. His heart was heavy, so heavy it seemed to weigh him down; and he walked slowly. At dusk he found himself still far from Golan, with a river yet to cross, and near the little pool at which he had halted on his way to Bethel, months before. How different life had seemed to him then. Why, it was not the same thing at all any longer; now it seemed like a dream, without reality, without anything about it that he could feel.

He sank down and looked around him.

The night came on. The shrill frogs sang together; and the little fox came out of his hole, and lay down beside Jonah, whom he recognized.

“Ah,” he remarked, as he settled himself comfortably at his side, “here is the man of God again.”

Jonah let his hand stroke the fox’s soft fur. His face was turned to the west, and he peered back through the darkness over the way he had come, as though trying to see again the home he had left. Uncle David, Aaron--his mother....

He remembered how she had pressed him to her breast as he departed. “Go, my son,” she had said, “go back to God. He misses you. Here is a little cake for the journey, and a few silver pieces. They are all I have. Buy yourself a coat on the way.”

She had sold her shawl to give him a coat. But he left the silver pieces in a pot before the oven. He wanted nothing, only to forget the sickness of his heart, the heaviness like a weight of lead in his breast.

“Cheer up,” she had said at the last; “see, you will forget all this after a while. There is the storm, and then the sun shines. Do not stay away too long. Who knows, maybe God will send you home again soon.”

And she had kissed him. No, he would not forget all this soon. Would he ever forget it? that was what he wondered. And Judith, with her brown eyes, and the scent of lilies and jasmine in the moonlight....

“O Judith, Judith, how could you do such a thing to me?”

His eyes filled with tears, and he bowed his head.

The fox stirred beneath his hand. “Well, Jonah,” he said sadly, “God is a raven. I believe that now, since a jackal ate my wife. He could not very well be a fox, and allow such things; or even an old man with a beard.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Jonah in a low tone; “perhaps He is a raven.”

Hearing this, the Devil, who was going by in the form of a scorpion, stopped, and said to himself,

“I shall tempt this holy man a little.”

And remembering how Jonah’s quiet and pious spirit had vexed him in the past, Satan considered how best to be revenged on the prophet.

“There is nothing like an odor,” he thought, “to hurt the memory.”

And he changed himself into a jasmine vine. The unwilling night wind, trembling and sighing, carried the fragrance of its blossoms toward Jonah, who shivered as though with cold.

“Ak,” he thought, “I can never forget.”

And staring with wide eyes at the west, he saw again the garden, with the moonlight falling through the leaves like honey; heard the voices of the old men under the trees, the whispers of lovers, and laughter, like a sound of flutes; felt on his hand the touch of her fingers.... Judith’s....

“What a beautiful night.... It makes me sad. Why does it make me sad, Jonah?

“Listen ... there’s a bird singing. Just think, in the moonlight; isn’t it sweet, Jonah? This is beauty, isn’t it.

“I could stay here forever.”

“Oh, Judith, Judith....”

“There is a smell of sulphur here,” said the fox, wrinkling up his nose.

But Jonah did not hear him. Something was hurting in his throat. He sprang to his feet, and took a deep breath. “Look,” he cried out to God, “look; it is I, Jonah.”

And he stood there, with bowed head, in the silence.

“This is very good,” said Satan to himself.

After thinking for a moment, the Arch-Demon decided to become a woman with brown eyes and brown hair. She came up to Jonah out of the darkness, timidly, draped in her shawls. “Well, Jonah,” she said, “here is the desert. See how quiet it is; what peace, what beauty. How happy we shall be here.”

“Go away,” cried Jonah, throwing out his hands in front of his face, “go away.”

“Why do you want me to go away?” asked the woman quietly. “Have I not come all this long way with you, as you wished? Am I not your love, tender and gentle and kind? Come, let me make you happy.”

And as Jonah stood trembling, unable to reply, she continued in her soft voice,

“Are you not young, Jonah, and lonely? The young ought not to be lonely. See how beautiful the night is with its stars, its clouds, half seen, half guessed, how the music of the wind rises over the desert and sings in the hills, softly, softly. It is a night for love, Jonah, for young hearts beating each to each in the silence, in the darkness. That is what life is for, Jonah, for lips to kiss, for hands to fondle.... There is no beauty like mine, Jonah, no voice like mine to hurt your heart so, no hands like mine to hold your face tenderly, to kiss your mouth, Jonah, and your tired eyes, your mouth and your eyes....

“And you in your little hut, all alone among the rushes, all alone, Jonah, all alone....

“You will always be alone now, summer and winter, winter and summer, your pillow the earth, harder and colder than my arms; only the song of birds and the sound of rain in your ears.... And you will never see me again, Jonah, never hold my young white beauty close to your breast, never feel, as other men, love singing in your heart, and peace folding down upon your eyes. You will be all alone, Jonah, with no one to tell the secret things in your heart to at the set of sun, at the rise of moon ... until at last, old and sleepy, you take my single kiss with you into the darkness ... alone in the darkness too, Jonah ... alone in the darkness....”

“O God,” cried Jonah, sobbing, “help me, help me.”

“God will not help you now,” said the woman.

The drowsy fragrance of her body spread through the night. “Come,” she said, holding out her arms to him.

“God cannot help you now, my poor Jonah.”

Jonah took a step forward, and fell upon his knees. And then, one by one far off and near, the demons of the desert broke into laughter, wild peals of laughter, bitter and full of pain, cruel and without pity.

“Ha, ha, ha.”

“Alone, alone....”

“God cannot help you now.”

Under that mocking clamor, Jonah swayed like a reed, beaten to the earth, his face hidden in his hands. And then, at last, when it seemed to him as though he could bear no more, the terrible laughter stopped. There was a cry, and then silence.

Jonah got up and looked around him. Nothing was to be seen; the woman had vanished.

The little fox had run forward, and seized the demon by the leg. Once again the desert was filled with a holy peace, as though brooding beneath the wings of angels.

“One can at least always help oneself,” remarked the fox.

He lay down next to Jonah with a contented sigh. And presently the man and the fox fell asleep together.