第22章

She flung off her slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh with delight.

Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.

It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder, the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling of the levanter in her hair.

This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the harp.But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it.

She lifted her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she played, she laughed again and again.

There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white fingers flying across the strings.

There was something gruesome and awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.

Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was agape.

And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words they passed between them."Where has she learnt it?"asked a Moor."From her master himself," muttered a Jew.

"Who is it?" asked the Moor."Beelzebub," growled the Jew.

"God pity me, the evil eye is on her," said an Arab."God will show,"said a Shereef from Wazzan."They say her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran.""No," said the Arab; "she sent her girdle." "Anyhow, the child is a saint," whispered the Shereef."No, but a devil," snorted the Jew.

"Brava, brava, brava!" cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered and laughed as the girl played."What did I tell you?" she said, looking toward her husband."The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either.