"Thou art famished. Men unfed ever talk of virtue. There are other things in the pannier besides figs and melons and grapes. Rolls of Egyptian flour, white as snow and light as foam-flakes; and roasted quails in peppered jelly, wrapped in fresh green leaves. And meat-balls with spices, cheese-cakes and saffron-curds, and bottles of cool Nile water and also a flask or two of yellow Theban wine. Let us go into yonder cave and eat and drink together. When thou art refreshed, we will talk, or if thou wouldst—sleep!"
And the movement of her lips in framing such words as "eat," "drink" and "together," had infinite allurement, but less than "refreshed" and "sleep." Her utterance of these bewitched and bewildered. Hazaël felt as one smothering in roses, or sinking in the embrace of perfumed arms upon a bosom smooth and cool as silk. And realising in a flash his desperate predicament:
"O Lord my GOD!" he cried aloud, "look upon my shame and see my sorrow! From the evil impulse, from the evil companion: from Satan the Destroyer and from judgment, do Thou in Thy Mercy deliver me!"
Whereupon the Princess Schabak with a burst of high, whinnying laughter, skipped backwards,—and nimbly as a mountain goat—leaped upon a ledge of rock jutting from the cliff-face high above the level of the astonished Israelite's head. At the same time the pannier in the cave fell over and burst open, disgorging a cataract of repulsive creatures; vipers with horns, chameleons with popping eyes, lizards, tarantulas, scorpions and huge brown bats,—which flying round and round in the dazzling sunshine beat about Hazaël's ears with their leathery, hooked wings and entangled themselves in his hair. Deafened, appalled, exhausted and choked with thirst, heat and stench, he fell down swooning,—fortunately for his reason!—within the shadow of the cave....
When he revived, the rocky gorge was filled with the crimson of the sunset. The blazing heat had abated somewhat, the fresh smell of water came to his nostrils, and he groaned and opened his eyes. Then he cried out in thankfulness to God, Who had sent him water in his extremity,—for at the very back of the cave a thread of wet showed on the wall above a natural basin in the rock bordered with delicate black-stemmed green ferns, that contained a draught or two. As the cool liquid flowed down his dried throat; life revived in him newly. He ate of his bread, soaking it, and also took some dates.
Then he found his staff, went up the pass, and squeezed through the narrow aperture. The path now became little more than a goat-walk upon the barren mountain's flank.
A vast prospect spread about and beneath him, upon the right hand of the desert and the Nile beyond it:—with the islands, cities, gardens, palm-groves, temples; the distant cataracts, and the ranges of sandstone and syenite beyond the towns on the Libyan bank. Looking to the east his eye embraced Mount Serbal and the terrible splendour of Sinai, the Tih Mountains and Desert of Sin. Nearer, he looked down upon the Gulf of Heroöpolis,—the town at its mouth, and the city of Clysma upon the plain of the promontory, with the Wilderness of Etnam, and the Arabian Desert beyond.... North to Syria, bordered with the blue fillet of the Mediterranean, his glance ranged; and then with a cool breath fanning his brow, and stirring in the folds of his garments, he lifted up his eyes—and beheld the immense round summit of Mount Derhor, gleaming—white as though hoary with innumerable ages, touched with the fading rose of the sunset and crowned with the evening star. A vast tract of snow-white limestone, not level, but tilted at a steep angle, traversed with innumerable waved ridges, crevices and fissures and resembling a petrified cataract, spread between the traveller and the base of the stupendous dome. An irregular building, like a Pagan tomb or temple, partly in ruins, could be seen upon the dome's eastern side.
Desolation. Not a grass-blade, not a bush, nor tuft of wormwood found nourishment enough to sustain life in all that arid region. Yet here the Athlete of Christ had lived since he quitted Tabenna; eating every third day of dried bread—of which a store was left for him at the oasis every six months—moistening the flint-hard cakes with water fetched from the spring in a heavy stone jar. When the water in the jar came to an end too soon, according to the monks of Tabenna and the Coptish boatmen, the Blessed One would eat the snow if it were winter; or gather the dew,—soaking it up with linen rags, or that porous fungus that much resembles sponge. And these he would suck, to quench the thirst that tormented him, nor would he, were this relief withheld, descend the mountain to fetch more water, until the arrival of the appointed day.
Night fell. So close together and so deep were the fissures in the limestone, that Hazaël determined not to attempt to reach the hermitage until the rising of the moon. So he waited, seated upon a boulder; a strange, wild figure, dishevelled, scarred and bleeding; with battered weapons, and robes dusty and ragged; burning with impatience to do his errand and return to the oasis whilst strength remained to him....
Suddenly the Mount from its base to its summit was girt with sheaves of towering flame of strange and marvellous colours. At the same moment a tumult broke forth of indescribable and hellish violence. Awful voices thundered opprobrium, or wakened the echoes of the precipices and chasms with shouts of hideous laughter, answered by other invisible beings from the fissures in the plain.
"Filthy monk! Scourge of the desert! Master of wild asses! ... Preacher to lizards! ... Awaken! Rise and get you gone out of this place!" ...
"Ah! ... Ah!" ... other unseen beings wailed in chorus: "Shall we never be rid of thee, thou Dweller on the Threshold? Begone! Depart from us! ... Were not the desolate places given to us, and the lands wherein no water flows?" ...
A frightful voice bellowed:
"Drive him forth! Assault him! Torment him with serpents! Worry him with jackals and wild dogs! Borrow the beaks and claws of eagles! Bid the lions devour him! Or if the wild creatures refuse, send against him from the Shrine of Pan another furious Satyr! ... Beleaguer him with phantoms in myriads of forms!"
And dancing fires girt the dome, playing over the moveless waters of the stony cataract, and pale figures of wraith-like mistiness, and dark shapes of mountainous stature seemed to surround and hem it in. And suddenly these appearances sank down and vanished before the terror-stricken sight of Hazaël: with groans, and yells, and blasphemies that caused the hair to stiffen upon his head, and cold sweat to bathe his limbs.
A flood of brilliance dazzled his eyes. From the violet-purple vault of the sky, in which the hosts of heaven were now gleaming, a ray of Light, of indescribable whiteness and luminosity descended, seeming to pierce the roof of the ruined temple beneath Derhor's giant dome. And Hazaël heard the sound of a harp masterfully played, and a man's deep voice singing:
"Let GOD arise!
And let His enemies be scattered.
And let all those who hate Him flee
Before Him!
Let them be destroyed
Even as smoke is made to disappear;
And as wax melteth before the fire—
Let the wicked perish
Before GOD!"
When the psalm ceased the column of light faded into a mild bluish radiance that lingered still above the dwelling of the Saint. Such absolute stillness reigned that the sigh of the night-breeze, and the groan of a metal bolt in grooves of stone, came to Hazaël across the distance. A door swung inwards; a light—not supernatural, but that of a palm-torch,—shone across the threshold, and a voice, strong and mellow as that of a young man, cried down across the steep expanse of sinister shadows:
"O man of Alexandria, seeking here a sinner!—draw near if you desire to, and do not be afraid!"
Hearing, Hazaël rose from the rock he sat on, and cried back in a tone of wrath:
"I am not afraid, O Athlete of Christ!—if it be you who speak to me! But wisdom counsels not to ascend this steep of perilous abysses—at least until the rising of the moon!"
Before his voice had ceased to echo amongst the stony waves of the tilted sea of shadows, the strong melodious voice of the solitary called back:
"The crevices are deep, and strange things abide in them!—and there is peril as you say. Yet if in the Name of the Crucified you struck out boldly among these solid waters, nothing of harm would come to you. For neither earthly dangers nor the malevolence of devils, have terrors for one armed with the Might of the Cross."
Hazaël shouted back, with a dinning at his ear-drums:
"The Eternal One, who brought the Chosen forth of this land of Egypt,—will guide me safely to thy door! For it is written that He does not forsake the righteous. Have I not in the strength of mine uprightness this day prevailed against a Succuba? Lo! before me the accursed demon fled, showing feet like the split hoofs of goats."
The voice replied melodiously across the distance:
"Blessed and glorified be He Who delivered thee! Glorified and blessed be Christ Jesus, His only begotten Son! Glorified and blessed be the Paraclete, the Comforter! Praised, blessed and magnified be the Holy Trinity, One in Three! Amen!"
Panting with defiance Hazaël thundered:
"The Lord is One! He is holy and His Name is holy, and the Holy Ones praise Him every day! Selah! Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, the Shield of Abraham! And blessed is he who even as Rabba Jehudah, called the righteous, can lift up both his hands to heaven, affirming that not one of the ten fingers upon them, is guilty of breaking the law of God!"
He ceased, and the voice of the hermit answered, saying:
"Nay!—but a thousand times more blessed is he, who,—not daring to lift a finger,—falls down prostrate before his Master, crying: 'Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner!' For it is written that He pitieth the humble, and turns away His face from the arrogant."
Now the moon, in her last quarter, rose from over the Red Sea. The limestone cataract, illuminated, took on a milky whiteness, in which the innumerable cracks and chasms showed like wavy bands of black. Hazaël grasped his staff and strode upwards, confident that within so many minutes he would be pounding at the ascetic's doors. But a dark cloud, not often seen save in the rainy season, suddenly veiled the lustre of the planet, and the Jew found himself standing in pitchy darkness, upon an ascending ridge between two deep chasms, unable to advance, or to retrace his steps.
Suddenly a gust of wind rushed down a cleft in the mountains, dragging at Hazaël's garments as though with invisible hands. A jagged double flash of violet lightning followed. Dazzled, the Jew trod upon a pebble of limestone; fell—and still retaining his grip upon his staff, found himself sliding towards the brink of the abyss upon his left hand. A deafening peal of thunder preceded a flash still more vivid, which illuminated the depths beneath. With starting eyes Hazaël beheld at the bottom of the gulf—which seemed about to swallow him—the monstrous putrefying body of a creature part-human and part-animal. And the thought of tumbling down to wallow in the Satyr's corruption, and share one tomb with the shag-thighed offspring of unnatural and hideous lust, wrought on the brain of the man so that he shrieked in desperation:
"Save me, O man of Christ!—I perish!"
And heard the voice of the hermit answer calmly:
"Man cannot save, but only Christ!"
Upon which, as the lightning hissed and crackled about him like flights of spears steeped in burning pitch and naphtha, and feeling his strength about to fail, Hazaël groaned out:
"Then pray to thy Christ to deliver me!"
And hearing no answer out of the distance, he resigned himself to despair. But from some source unknown, strength suddenly flowed back into him. His brain cleared, and by a sudden muscular effort he was enabled to draw back his body, rise—and stand upon his feet....
"Thanks,—thanks!" he stammered out, as though to the owner of some hand that had plucked him from peril. Then, in sudden anger, he dug his teeth into his lower lip.
The storm had passed. The calm light of the moon irradiated the immovable cataract of limestone: the Jew traversed the remaining distance safely, and stood before the door of the recluse.
XI
The lotus stems of the pillars had been once crowned by the sculptured heads of long-eyed women. These had in course of ages, by some convulsion of Nature or by the hands of man, been broken off. Their shattered fragments lay scattered near, and the stone beams supporting the roof rested upon the stems crookedly. The door-lintel supported a slab still displaying the winged orb of Ammon Ra. But through the symbol of the Sun had been roughly but deeply chiselled the Sign of the Crucified.
Hazaël knocked upon the heavy doors. Of massive cedar-wood strengthened with bronze plates, they would have resisted the assault of a catapult. The melodious voice said from within:
"If thou that knockest art a being of the Pit, begone unto thy master, Satan! But if thou art a son of man, state thy business and be brief."
And Hazaël cried:
"I am no phantom of the Pit, but the man who but now spoke to thee! Verily, as the God of Israel liveth, I speak truth, and mean no harm! Now open the door, O Athlete of Christ!—for I have a message for thee. But first thou must give me water to drink, for my tongue is stiff with thirst."
Upon which the voice said from within:
"Upon the threshold at thy feet in a wooden bowl, is water."
Hazaël groped with his hands, for the shadow of the wide lintel shrouded the portal in blackness; found the bowl, full to the brim; gave thanks, and swallowed the contents at one long draught. The Athlete's voice spoke again as the Jew replaced the empty bowl, inverted, on the threshold:
"Jew of Alexandria, it had been wiser to have saved some of the water. For until the sun sets again, in fulfilment of my Rule which I have taken on me, I neither open the cell door; nor—unless in prayer to God—or in holy songs glorifying Him, or in prophecies inspired of Him—utter one single word, unless He bids!"
With a fierce surge of anger, overpowering his previous sensations of awe, Hazaël struck his fist upon the solid cedar. He kicked it with his heavy boots of hippo-hide, and beat upon it with his metal-shod staff. No sound issued from within, in answer to entreaties or objurgations. Worn out at length, the Jew sat down upon the threshold. But then the suspicion budded that there might be a rearward door of egress, and he dragged himself to his feet and made the circuit of the place.
In vain his toil. No opening presented itself, except a chink one might barely have thrust a hand through.... Stooping and looking through this orifice he obtained a glimpse of the interior of the dwelling, which was filled with a pale, bluish light.
By this light could be distinguished the figure of the aged Christian ascetic, tall, and so emaciated by fasting and watching as to resemble a skeleton clothed with brown skin. A coarse white cloth which formed his outdoor habit had been laid aside, and clad only in a sleeveless vest of haircloth, he stood bolt upright, with joined uplifted hands, and eyes closed in recollection, in a stone niche built on the left side of the door of the cell; which contained nothing further beyond a mat of woven palm-leaves, a stone water-pot lying on its side empty, and a sickle, possibly used by its owner for cutting leaves and reeds.
There was something so grand and imposing about the venerable figure, with its white hair hanging upon its shoulders like a mantle, and its snowy beard reaching far below the waist, that violent words seemed profanation, and Hazaël remained dumb. The impulse to depart without delay was urgent, when on drawing back his head and standing erect, he became aware that the mysterious ray of celestial radiance, sign of the intimate and wonderful communion between this pure and fiery soul and the Divine Spirit from Whom all souls have emanated, had again descended from the heavens upon the dwelling of the Saint. Venturing again to look in, he found the cell irradiated, and felt a mysterious shock traverse him; realising that the eyes of the Saint had opened, and were gazing upon him from their ambush of white hairs. And they were the fiery eyes of a lion, and the radiant eyes of a child, and the eyes of a man who has seen and talked with Angels, so that it was not possible to support unmoved their scrutiny. Yet they were mild, kind and beneficent; and meeting the eyes that peered at him through the aperture, the old man thrice nodded his head. As who should say:
"Although my Rule prohibits me from speaking, it does not forbid me to listen. Say what is in thy mind, and return to the dwellings of men!"
And Hazaël cried to the anchorite through the wallhole:
"O Athlete of Christ!—I am a Jew, and from the bottom of my soul I hate and loathe the Christians, but thou art a just and virtuous man! Now hear my tale!"
The ascetic nodded as though replying:
"Say on, thou hater of Christians! but be not over tedious. For all my time I need for prayer."
And Hazaël cried:
"Listen then! My youth was spent at the town of Acanthon on Lower Nile, my father being a Rab, an interpreter of the Scriptures, and a pleader before the Courts. Small was his wealth, yet great his name, being descended in the male line from Ben-Hadad, King of Damascus, and in his veins on the female side flowed the Royal Blood of Israel. And one day he was carried home to our house dead!—having been struck upon the forehead by a beam of cedar carried through the Lentil Market on the back of a camel led by a Copt. And the bystanders told me concerning the Copt;—that seeing my father fallen and the blood from the wound covering his head, the camel-driver mocked him, crying: 'Which wouldst thou rather have, O Rab? The beam thou hast in thine eye now, or a mote? Answer!' And child as I was, I took an oath to be revenged for that man's hard-heartedness on all Christians. And to this day I have faithfully kept that oath."
He paused for breath and the recluse now answered:
"I know it, O Hazaël! Thou hast been a very scourge of Satan to the Servants of the Lord!"
And Hazaël cried back:
"Hear again, O Athlete of Christ! My mother married again, and my step-father was cruel, and I fled from the beatings and the evil words, to Alexandria. Awhile I hung about the quays, living on stray scraps thrown me there, and in the Jews Quarter, and then I met a noble man, a Roman in the Public Service,—who took me into his household, and fed and sheltered me. I grew up under his roof, and presently became his steward, and zealously I served him, using my power when I might, to keep that oath of mine. And knowing not that my patron had secretly become a Christian,—I brought upon him Ruin, Dishonour, Imprisonment and Death. Dost thou hear?"
The hermit returned mildly:
"Unhappy man, I hear thee. Thine excuse must be, thou hadst no thought of evil towards thy friend!"
"No thought, God He knows! And whether my patron suspected the truth, that I know not. But to the very last—he loved and trusted me! And when he had suffered the penalty of decapitation for his faith—torture being spared him in consideration of great services rendered to the Empire,—I stole his body secretly under cover of night. In the crypt of a deserted church it was reverently burned to ashes. These I placed in an urn—and swore an oath upon the urn in the name of the God of Israel,—that I and my sons and my sons' sons,—while there remains a living male of the blood of Hazaël—will be Keeper of the Ashes and Guardians of their Shrine! And I from the Abode of Shadows, the Lord Most High permitting!—will stretch forth mine hand upon those that descend from me—and counsel them aright! And when the last male of the race hath served and passed,—the debt shall be paid—and I cleansed of blood-guilt towards the man who was my friend!"
"The prayer being made from a repentant heart, hath reached the Throne of the Highest. Is that all thou hast to say, O Jew?"
Hazaël cried angrily to the anchorite through the wall-hole:
"Not so! For I have taken this journey to bring thee a message from my master, the noble Philoremus Fabius, late Prætor of the Taxes of Egypt at Alexandria, who is now amongst the Shades."
From the tangled ambush of his snow-white hair, fixing his radiant eyes upon the fierce eyes glaring through the wall-hole, the Athlete of Christ demanded:
"Was the man baptised a Christian?"
Hazaël answered roughly:
"Have I not said to thee but now,—that without having formally embraced the Faith of the Crucified, or received the waters of baptism,—Philoremus testified to Christianity, and suffered the penalty. Melittus, Abbot of Scete, Peter, the Patriarch of Alexandria, the monks Philip, Ammon and Geta, Theodore and Pæsius and others, underwent death by torture on the same day. In consideration of his great services to Rome, Philoremus suffered only decapitation by the sword. And I am commanded of him to entreat thee to pray that his sins may be forgiven. And that for him the Hand that was pierced may open the Gate of Hope! Dost thou comprehend? Hast thou heard distinctly?"
The head of the Saint inclined in assent.
"And—thou wilt pray as he desired?"
"Ay, if thou consent to forgive the Copt who slew the Rab thy father many years ago. For I declare to thee by the light that is vouchsafed me, that the blow from the beam was given unwittingly; and those who told thee that the man mocked, lied. And cease from saying and working evil against the Church of Christ. For dear to the Lord are His servants!"
And the Jew, struggling with himself, promised; and then cried:
"Tell me, O holy man! what is this Gate of Hope? ... Shall my master be admitted? ... Or—hath he already entered therein? ... I know that thou hast power to vanquish devils, and canst see beyond the Three Veils that baffle human vision. Therefore, answer me, I pray!"
The aged hands stiffened in the attitude of supplication. The eyes of the Saint looked upwards, seeming to pierce through the roof of stone, from which great bats hung in clusters, into Infinite Immensity. Moments passed and Hazaël waited. But when an hour had gone by:
"Wilt thou not speak?" he cried angrily.
There was no answer. Looking more narrowly he could not observe that the breast of the rigid upright figure lifted or sank with the natural act of respiration. He found himself shuddering with terror lest the anchorite should be dead. The weight of vast solitudes peopled only by eagles, bats and diabolical phantoms descended upon him crushingly. And in the voice of a suppliant he entreated:
"In the name of the Most High, give me a sign that thou livest!"
The hands fell apart. The upturned eyes quivered. A long sigh heaved the wide emaciated chest, and the great prominent ribs of the fleshless brown body, tenanted by the fiery soul of the great Athlete of Christ. Without otherwise stirring he reached down, seized a small harp from its place in the niche behind him, poised it upon his breast, swept the strings with his fleshless hands; and chanted in the powerfully melodious voice that had thundered upon the ears of the Jew down the cataract of limestone:
"Not through the wisdom of strange words:
Not by the power of incantations
Have the children of Christ acquired the Mystery of Life.
Nay! but by the power of Faith
Given to us by God,
Who is the Lord and Master of all!
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.
"Dearie, you must have guessed! You've always known that he did business in hides and tallow and tar, between Hamburg and Hull."
"I remember Hull when I was a kid, and the warehouse, and Old Mendel, who used to bring me peppermint-rock when he came to see my grandmother. He managed the business for her, didn't he, until my Uncle Ben took it over? But—my grandfather a Russian Jew! Let's bless our stars he wasn't a German! Where were you married to my father?"
"In a Maltese Synagogue. We lived at Malta until your father brought us to England, to establish a business-branch at Southampton. And we had hardly been settled there a year—you were only three when John died.... Pneumonia—this climate never really suited him! And I went home to mother with you and Maury, a baby of six months old. There was no bother about money. You know your father left us comfortably off!"
John cleared his throat and nodded. The bitterness of the last pill Fate had administered puckered his palate yet. Between the Jew of Palestine and the Jew of Russia, he had been wrought all Jewish. Not a single globule of British blood mingled with the Oriental tide that galloped through his veins. He asked, not wanting to know particularly:
"Did my father's people drop you, after he died, or was it you who decided to drop them?"
His mother returned with a sprightlier air—she was now sitting on the bedside.
"Oh!—well!—it was like this. While John was alive, his father, old Mr. Hazaël, sent me kind messages very often in his letters,—always written to John in Hebrew, by Amos the eldest son. For John came third in the family. Amos and Isaac had been years married and had heaps of children before John met with me. And after John died and we went to live at Hull, the letters kept on coming. It was my father's head-clerk who always translated them—Old Mendel was a learned man!—and wrote back the answers I dictated. Then my father died—poor father!—he never could forgive me for being only a daughter!—and Cousin Ben took the business over—and mother and I, with you and Maury—came here to London to live. Do you think I did wrong in dropping the correspondence? You know how your father's fortune was settled on you two children, with a life-interest for me; we need not go into that! There was nothing more to come to us—under any circumstances! And I wanted my two boys to be brought up as English gentlemen, and I don't think I've done quite so badly—do you?"
Her tone was almost pleading. John reached out a lengthy arm and hugged his mother warmly:
"Not by half, Old Thing! On the contrary. You thought it would be best for me and Maury to be British, and you rubbed it into us that we were, from the time we began to talk.... I remember at Loamborough, a Fifth Form fellow said to me over some rotten boggle of mine at Sunday Ques: 'With that bally big nose of yours, Hazel major, you ought to know all about the Children of Israel—' And, by George! I welted the beggar until he apologised. Later on, when I knew more about the Pater, I told myself that the English strain came from the mother's side. Now you've exploded that idea; I don't know that I mind much! ... Lots of people we're friendly with are as much Hebrews as ourselves,—and taking us in the lump, I call us a loyal lot!" He dug his long chin into the bedclothes covering the big knees he hugged; and went on speaking: "And Jewish blood is strong red stuff to have in one's veins, mind you! Great lawyers, great financiers, great actors, singers, painters, writers—people who are things and do things!—people who count—how many of them have got it!—in bulk or else diluted. And some of the prettiest women—and girls—"
"You're thinking of Beryl!"
"Well, I was thinking of Beryl...—Lee Levyson may belong to a Yorkshire family. He says so, and I've no wish to contradict him. And Dannahill blows a frightful lot about his good old English ancestors. But all the same—" He broke off to smile at his mother, who,—not as a rule demonstrative towards her elder son,—was stroking his big wrist, and half-absently trying to span it with the inadequate measure of her thumb and middle-finger; and ended: "You can take it from me that there ain't a single member of the Firm who oughtn't—if the truth were worth telling—to have a capital 'J' on his disc."
"His disc?"
"Well, I was speaking metaphorically. I mean the round tin identification-tag that's sewn inside of Tommy's khaki jacket, and worn on a chain soldered round his wrist when he's going to the Front. Mine'll be 'Private J.B. Hazel, No. 000, X Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London (Fenchurch Street) Royal Fusiliers.'"
"Do they put all that?"
"I rather think so, with letters for your religious denomination. Con. for Congregationalist, Wes. for Wesleyan, Meth. for Methodist, Bap. for Baptist, P.B. for Plymouth Brethren, C.S. for Christian Scientist, Mug. for Muggletonian, C.E., Church of England, R.C., Roman Catholic; J. for Jew, and Nil if you aren't of any religion. And I'd put down 'Nil' for mine!"
"What made you do that? Why not Church of England?"
"But I'm not Church of anything, any more than you and Maurice or the Lee-Levysons—or anybody!—belonging to the set of people we visit and meet and dine.... Nice, pleasant, sociable heathens—that's what we are, every one of us! We have plum-pudding at Christmas; and salt-fish with egg-and-oyster sauce on Good Fridays; and we drop in at Westminster Abbey to hear the Carols; and at Westminster Cathedral or Farm Street for the Passion Music;—or the Greek Church near the Russian Embassy, because the singing is worth hearing,—and other people go! And we scrum into St. Paul's for a Public Thanksgiving—or a Day of Humiliation, or a big Funeral or any other kind of Function.... And St. George's Hanover Square for Society weddings,—or the Brompton Oratory.... But religion.... Have any of us got it? ... 'You can search me!' as the American fellow says in the revue.... Still, if you'd like me to alter the letters on my disc I don't mind doing it. Only—instead of 'Nil' there'll be a big 'J' for Jew!"
She waxed shrill, driven beyond herself, used words long forgotten:
"But you're not one. You've never even set foot inside a Synagogue. We don't observe the Shabbos—I mean the Sunday!—we eat triphah meat like Gentiles. We're Meshumad—apostates, don't you understand? Orthodox Jews wouldn't even speak to us!—aren't we well enough as we are?"
"Would my grandfathers have thought so? Or my father?" ...
She caught her breath and clutched at her bosom, the deep, slow voice was so unlike the younger John's. Unobservant of the consternation in her face, he went on speaking, gradually recovering the manner and tone most usual with him:
"Alive, they'd have disowned us. Not being alive—what we observe or don't observe, can't affect them! The notion of a dead man stretching out a hand from the grave, and grabbing hold of his son by the scruff to drive the unlucky beggar on in the ancient ruts of his own prehistoric prejudices is exploded. For the dead are DEAD. There's no getting over that! And to let their thoughts, feelings, desires, convictions, influence us in Anything is to my mind, sheer sentimental piffle." John blew himself out importantly and waved away the subject, but came back, having something more to say: "I'm an ambitious chap in my way.... I'd like to make enough money on the Stock Exchange to buy the freehold of Covent Garden; and turn the Market,—the Arcades,—the shops and the Opera House into a Pleasure City,—run on American lines. But I've no ambition to live after I'm dead,—that I know of! ... If I get wiped out at the Front it won't make any difference to me whether they stick a cross over me—or a shield with some Hebrew letters painted on a white deal board.... Beryl can get married the day after if she wants to! ... I shan't ever know she's being kissed by another man. Nor shall I be one jot worse or better off because of the Good or Bad marks set against me. It matters how you live your life, because Morality is necessary—to preserve Health and maintain Decency, and so uphold the Law. But when one dies one's done with!—and the wisest rule of existence is, to live as long as possible, and enjoy things while one can! To succeed, to become famous, that's the only immortality—and to leave a son to carry on your name is a way of cheating Death!" He ended this confession of his creed by saying rather wistfully: "I meant to ask you.... Do you—do you think there's any chance of Beryl's marrying me before I go?"
"To the Front! ... Why shouldn't there be? Why not ask her?" ...
"Thanks awfully for the tip. I will!"
He was cheered by her absolute belief that he could not but prevail. For if she had forgotten her faith, and turned her back upon her people; she was a mother and a loving one. There was motherhood in her face and in her voice as she asked John:
"Haven't you even told Beryl—what you—where you're going, dear?"
"No! so if she's got a white feather keeping up her sleeve for me, she'll be disappointed, that's all! My hat!—listen to that clock striking! Do you understand it's gone two! You won't have any beauty-sleep,—and I've got to be at Regimental Headquarters at ten sharp to-morrow, to get my kit with the rest of the Fourth Battalion, and weigh in at Eaton Square at 11.30 to break the great news and show myself to the girl."
But when Mrs. Hazel had finally departed, John got out of bed, switched on a light and searched on the shelf that contained his private library, for a fat one-volume Encyclopædia that had been a School Prize. After some delving in this mine of knowledge, he emerged the wiser by the information appended:
"JEWS, an Asiatic race (Semitic), descended from the Hebrew Patriarch Abraham. Original stock migrated 2,000 B.C. from Ur in Chaldea, an important centre of civilisation, to the land of Canaan (Phœnicia) and from thence in time of scarcity to the rich pasture-lands of Egypt; from whence tradition has it that their leader and lawgiver, Moses, was divinely inspired to lead them, by way of the Red Sea Gulf and the Sinaitic Wilderness. Through his teachings they renounced polytheism and adopted a monotheistic form of worship. Language, Hebrew, a variant of the Canaanitish branch of the Semitic Group, approximating closely to Phœnician or Moabite."
The richer by this gem, John put back the book, switched off the light and got back into bed.
Sleep delayed in coming. As he stared wide-eyed into the darkness, fragmentary recollections of that long-dead father formed fresh pictures in his brain. He saw a room, with a table laid for dinner with white napery and glittering silver, the high child's chair by which he stood, a chubby boy in petticoats, waiting for strong, gentle arms to lift him to the seat. While the owner of the arms, a tall man, dark and grave, washed his hands at a shining metal laver hanging on the dining-room wall beside the door. The tall man wore his hat during this ceremony, and the towel he used was long and narrow, and had embroidered ends....
A similar laver had hung on the wall in his grandmother's private sitting-room, John remembered; carefully dusted, but never used by anybody as far as he had known. And over the laver had hung a plaque of metal, embossed with Hebrew characters: such a mezusah as one saw affixed to doorposts in the City: thickening as one got nearer to Houndsditch: becoming dense in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel Road and the Commercial Road, E....
He was destined to enjoy no beauty-sleep that night.
For this materialistic, hard-headed, commonplace young City insurance-broker was loyal of nature, capable of warm attachments; faithful in friendship and honourable; according to his somewhat narrow Code. And the country in which he had been reared, the home in which Life had unfolded for his infant consciousness, the associations amongst which he had developed from a gawky boy into a tall young man, were English: and he had not known previously how much that meant to him.
England was John Hazel's England, the City of London his by choice and adoption; the Tom Tiddler's Ground where he, a citizen and a patriot, had meant to pick up as much of the good stuff Money as he possibly could get. He loved Great Britain, her history, traditions, rulers and institutions with a love blind, instinctive, and deeply rooted, that embraced her Colonies and the Dominions Beyond the Seas. He had never lumbered up on his huge feet to do honour to the National Anthem; or cheered the King and Queen and the Prince of Wales, and other notabilities passing in procession to the Guildhall or elsewhere,—or listened to a patriotic speech at a City dinner,—or a West End public charity-function, without a big lump rising in his throat.
And since the blizzard of War had burst upon this, his mother-country, and the new, strange, dreadful life had replaced the pleasant, easy-going old one, his love for England had become a rage. The tramp of martial boots going through the darkened streets; the heavy roll of guns, ammunition and baggage-lorries; the columns of bronzed faces under khaki cap-peaks, streaming under arches of railway stations; the dreadful news bruited by the newspapers, shouted in the streets, clubbing you when you opened your Latest Edition;—the mourning weeds on the backs of strangers and friends; the darkness of streets and restaurants and public places; the thickly-curtained windows of one's own home and one's neighbours' houses; the Spy Scare—and the hovering, haunting menace of Invasion by Aircraft—increased his patriotic fever day by day. Great tears had splashed upon the dirty drab paper he had signed when he enlisted. And they were the tears of an Asiatic;—a Semite whose ancestors had come out of Ur in Chaldea—and whose native language was a variant of the Canaanitish thingumbob. Perhaps no genuine Englishman would have shed them. And yet, some pathetic parting-scenes at Railway Stations had removed John's previous impression that hefty, hardy, masculine Britons are never known to cry.
One is sorrowful to remember that beyond the narrow range of this young man's prejudices, and the stultifying influences of his environment, extended boundless vistas of which a more liberal and comprehensive range of reading;—fuel for the engines of the winged chariot of Thought and Imagination—might have made John Hazel free....
But he lay prone, dull and unimaginative; staring over the bedclothes at the pale watery gleam of the dressing-mirror opposite, while out of the mighty Past—reverberating and flashing to this hour with the thunders and lightnings of Sinai,—Patriarchs, Law-giver, Judges, Prophets and Sages, Poets, Kings, Statesmen, Patriots, Preachers, Warriors, Artificers and Craftsmen of vanished Israel and living Judæa—dominated by One Figure, unspeakably more benign and glorious—looked down in solemn pitying wonder on the young City insurance-broker, who was depressed by the sudden discovery, that not only on the father's side but on the mother's,—he had been born a Jew.
"Never mind, Old J.B.H.!" he told himself encouragingly. "Even if your ancestors did come out of Egypt with Moses, you're a pup of the Big Bull Bitch. And I'll tell you what, my boy! Good old England may count herself thundering lucky, if she gets a few hundred thousand others of the same breed to fight for her in this War!"
II
Panoplied for battle, in shoddy—misnamed khaki—of a deadly stale-mustard hue, bound with braid of whitey-yellow, garnished with the customary brass badges, buttons and buckles, and completed with the brown leather belt, bayonet-sling and bandolier; Private John Hazel—with a wire stiffener in the crown of his cap, and his pampered flesh wincing from the contact of the single Army rasper supplied him (for which, in the first flush of patriotism he had discarded his customary underwear)—presented himself before Beryl, his betrothed.
"Oh, come now, Bur'l!" expostulated Muriel, Beryl's younger sister, compassionate of John's immense discomfiture, as Beryl subsided on the Rossmore couch in tears; and her unlucky lover, standing huge and awkward in the middle of the Wilton carpet, opposing his own full-length reflection in a wall-mirror, realised that the collar of his tunic was strangling, that his hands were bigger than he could have believed them; and that the boots supplied by a grateful country would have comfortably fitted a Brontosaur.
"Tell him," moaned Beryl, "to leave me to my misery!"
"She never used to mind poor Beechy in kharks," the chagrined lover somewhat heatedly protested, on being banished from the drawing-room.
"Beauchamp was so handsome," said Beryl's sister Muriel, with her dancing dark eyes suddenly softening in tears, "and then you know,—he was an Officer of Regular Cavalry—and you're only a Common Tommy. Of course at the bottom of her heart Bur'l loves and respects you—but that's what's the matter, John, old thing! Wangle a Commission as soon as you can manage it"—the term "wangle" was coming into use just then—"do something Frightfully Distinguished—and she'll be as right as rain with you, really she will!"
"Think so? ..." said John, with obviously artificial lightness. "Well, say good-bye to her for me for now, will you! And—my crowd were guarding the line of the South Western until a day or so back—and if I'd screwed myself up to the point of joining up before,—I might have wangled a D.C.M. by dropping on a German in the act of laying a time-fuse bomb in a tunnel. Now they've sent 'em out to Malta to train, and yours truly and a band of other Brave Hearts—late washouts!—are being sent after 'em! So by-by, little girlie—for I've got to buy a Cardigan jacket and a few other things I want. You might tell me Beryl's full Christian name—it's got to go down in my Will, naturally!—and be entered for reference with the Nearest of Kin, at the War Office—so that they can let the old thing know if I get wiped out!"
John felt in a baggy front-pocket for a pigskin note-book, a parting gift from Maurice, and produced it, with a gold-mounted fountain-pen. Muriel dimpled again roguishly, and said with her bright eyes daringly challenging his own:
"We've only one first name apiece—but they're not 'Beryl' and 'Muriel'; nor are they particularly Christian, that I'm aware...." Then the consciousness of their recent loss, and her new black lisse, displaying a generous amount of slender black silk-stockinged leg, failed to subdue her girlish sense of humour. She clapped her hands and broke into a fit of laughter while John stared at her uncomprehendingly, the fountain-pen suspended over the memorandum-book. "Oh, don't goggle at me like that!" cried the girl. "You're too killing for anything! And so is your mother, and so is Maury—and so are Dad and Mater, and nearly every one in our set. And yet I'm Miriam—and Beryl is Rebekah—and poor darling Beauchamp was Benjamin—though they aren't going to have it on his memorial card, or stone! Do we really forget we're Jews—or do we all pretend until it's second nature? And why do we pretend—unless we're ashamed!—and why on earth should we be ashamed, that's what I want to know?"
Thus Muriel, confessedly Miriam; and John had found no better answer than:
"Why you or any of us should be ashamed I'm hanged if I know myself! But if ever I find out I'll write and tell you."
"Don't forget!" said Muriel-Miriam. "I'm coming to the door to see you off. Good-bye for now, J. old Bean! Put one for Bur'l here;—" the tip of a pretty, well-manicured finger indicated a particularly peachy place on Muriel-Miriam's right cheek,—"and another of the same on this side, for me. Ta-ta! I'll send you lots of cigs, when I know where you're training—and parcels no end when you get out to the Front! And tell me you'll go in for a Commission, and get a V.C. or something,—just to brisk old Bur'l up!"
"Oh! Tell her," said John with somewhat forced and clumsy humour, masking the slowly-kindling resentment in his heart, "that I mean to finish up my service in this War a private in the ranks—where I began it. And that when I—if I come back, she'll hear me singing: 'They've All Got a Sam Browne But Me,'—long before I come in sight."
"I shall listen for you!" said Muriel-Miriam, bursting with laughter, "but you don't think I'm going to give that message, I hope!"
She did not pass it on; but her younger sister Ida, a sharp child aged thirteen, who happened to be lingering in the neighbourhood of the umbrella-stand, communicated to Beryl her lover's parting message; to which,—or to the superior attractions of a certain Captain Hawtin-Billson (back from the Front with a shattered left arm and a Mention in Despatches) may be attributed Beryl's subsequent breakage of the engagement between herself and John Hazel, and the return of his ruby and diamond ring....
During the strenuous period of training that followed on John Hazel's joining up, his large reserve-fund of conceit was lowered by the merciless chaff of the ranks, and the vigorous language of his platoon-Sergeant, whose little red-veined eyes, glaring into his own, reflected in their muddiness his puny insignificance.
He learned to put on his puttees properly, clean his accoutrements, make his bed and condense his pack to regulation limits, under the instruction of one Lance Corporal Harris,—an ex-Boy Scout of appalling efficiency—as well as to gulp down his morning mug of tea, in defiance of the probability of the fluid containing in solution an ounce of Epsom salts. And by the time the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Fusiliers quitted their training-quarters at Malta, replaced there by a Fifth Battalion created in the interval—and were transferred to the fighting-line in Flanders; he had acquired the soldier's much-prized gift of summoning sleep at will. Also, he had learned to dispense with sleep, were the sacrifice required.... After months of bitter fighting at the Front he had learned to go unshaven, unwashed, and with unchanged linen,—endure the plagues of vermin in a crowded, unventilated dugout—share a fag with a man who had none; smoke the Army gasper in lieu of anything better,—and consume biscuit and bully mingled with dirt, and washed down with burnt-bread coffee; or Pimmington's Perfect Soup Substitute, boiled in a rusty jam-tin over a Tommy's Cooker,—with a gastronomic rapture that a dinner at the Carlton, the Ritz or the Savoy had previously failed to evoke.