第71章

LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE

Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which lies on the road to Tangier.From the hour wherein the gates had closed behind them, everything had gone well with both.

The country people who lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them kindness.One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind without a word and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders.Then a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to Naomi's feet.The woman wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the girl were bare.Their own people were haggard and hollow-eyed and hungry, but the hearts of all were melted towards the great man in his dark hour."Allah had written it,"they muttered, but they were more merciful than they thought their God.

Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home.It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent, such as the mountain Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an Irish cabin.And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been, who, escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney, had sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the land until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa.Unlike the better part of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and gloomy temper, and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours, and when he died his house had been left alone.That was the chance whereby Israel and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and unclaimed.

Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and values, yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes only from the hand of God.Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses grew at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had first caught the eyes of Israel.For suddenly through the mazes of his mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed to come back to him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen before.How this should be Israel could not tell, seeing that never before to his knowledge had he passed on his way to Tangier so near to Semsa.But when he questioned himself again, it came to him, like light beaming into a dark room, that not in any waking hour at all had he seen the little place before, but in a dream of the night when he slept on the ground in the poor fondak of the Jews at Wazzan.

This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi;this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.

Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.

And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content, lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.

Israel was poor, but not penniless.Out of the wreck of his fortune, after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was cast out of the town.These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen.He hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan.

The rains continued, the eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel found bread for both of them.With such simple husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.

And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his hope.He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.

"They are yonder," he would think, "wrangling, contending, fighting, praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet odour of God's proper air."But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life was the recollection of Naomi.God had given back all her gifts, and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing?

They were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and riches of gold and silver had been without it.And higher than the joy of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had been lifted away.