第66章

And while I am down yonder in the streets among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and the mistaken love of all men."While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey.

His swarthy cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.

But Israel did not flinch.With a look of quiet majesty, standing face to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke again and said, "Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your business nor your rewards.I mean to be your scapegoat no more.Here is your seal.It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these five-and-twenty bad years past.

I can carry it no longer.Take it."

In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the patio.

"Fool!" he cried."So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most merciful God, who would have believed it?

Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A prophet of the poor! O Merciful!

O Compassionate!"

Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.

"Who said it was the Sultan?" he cried again."He was a fool.

Abd er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third!

That's it! That's it!"

So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side like a caged and angry beast.

"And if I am a tyrant," he said in a thick voice, "who made me so?

If I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it?

Whose clever brain devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false judgments--what did I know of such things?

Who changed the silver dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people that murmured against such robbery?

Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the Prophet, I swear it!"Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he answered calmly and sadly, "God's ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts.He works His own will, and we are but His ministers.I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken myself.For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering."All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath.And now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, "Ah!

I thought your love of the poor was young.Not yet cut its teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?""About the time that you were, madam," said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes upon her.

At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger."Husband," she cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, "I hope you now see that I was right about this insolent old man.

I told you from the first what would come of him.But no, you would have your own foolish way.It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him.Yet you would not believe me!

You would believe him.Simpleton as you are, you are believing him now!

The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck.How? Oh, trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!

He'll be master in Tetuan yet!"

Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry.And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, "Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you'll lie in the same bed yet!

But where? Under the heels of the Jew!"

A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile came back into the face of Ben Aboo.

"You must be right," he said, "you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!

This is the dog that I picked out of the mire.I found him a beggar, and I gave him wealth.An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him place and rank.When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves.

I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned those he hated.

After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free.

All these years I have heaped fortune upon him.Ya Allah!

His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of his finger.And all for what? For this! For this! For this!

Ingrate!" he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, "if you must give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool?

Could you not come to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully;let me rest'--why not? I say, why not?"

Israel answered calmly, "Because it would have been a lie, Basha.""So it would," cried Ben Aboo sharply, "so it would: you are right--it would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also;you have sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it'""Because it is true, Basha," said Israel.