… Down to this day our friendship has needed no solder of sweet words to bind it, and I take pleasure in showing by means of this unpretending book that it is founded not only on personal liking and much agreement, but on some wholesome difference and even a little disputation. The Last Confession is an attempt to solve a moral problem which we have discussed from opposite poles of sympathy—the absolute value and sanctity of human life, the right to fight, the right to kill, the right to resist evil and to set aside at utmost need the letter of the sixth commandment. The Blind Mother is a somewhat altered version of an episode in an early romance, and it is presented afresh, with every apology, because you with another friend, Theodore Watts, consider it the only worthy part of an unworthy book, and also because it appears to be at all points a companion to the story that goes before it. Of Capt’n Davy’s Honeymoon, I might perhaps say that it is the complement of the other two—all three being stories of great and consuming love, father’s, mother’s and husband’s—but I prefer to confess that I publish it because I know if anyone should smile at my rough Manx comrade, doubting if such a man is in nature and not found among men, I can always answer him and say, “Ah, then, I am richer than you are by one friend at least,—Capt’n Davy without his ruggedness and without his folly, but with his simplicity, his unselfishness and his honour—Bram Stoker!”
A charming dedication, is it not? and interesting as a revelation of the motives which inspired the only three short stories we have from his pen. The Last Confession and The Blind Mother were issued in America under the title of the former. It is extremely unlikely that Mr Caine will ever return to the short story as a means of expressing himself; the form is of too limited a scope, and of too ephemeral a nature. A story entitled Jan, the Icelander, recently appeared in one of the weekly papers; but it was originally prepared by Mr Caine as a dramatic dialogue which, on one or two occasions, he recited in public.
As a poet, Mr Hall Caine has a great claim to our admiration. It is true, he has published no poetry in volume form, and little enough in the magazines, but what has appeared is of undoubted beauty. I am able to give here two sonnets which originally appeared in the Academy in the early eighties. Then, as now, the Academy and the Athenæum were the two foremost literary papers in the kingdom, and at this time Mr Caine was a critic on the permanent staff of both papers. It will be seen that both sonnets reveal a deep and unusual love of Nature; and it seems to me that that entitled Before Sunrise on Helvellyn ranks with the very best sonnets of Wordsworth. Besides its intrinsic beauty, it contains that “fundamental brain-work” which many critics hold to be an essential of a fine sonnet, although Mr Caine’s own criticism is that “it is wanting in the first quality of poetic style—flexibility.”
BEFORE SUNRISE ON HELVELLYN
This was published in the Academy of January 28, 1882; the following was published in the same paper on May 12, 1881, whilst Mr Caine was still in his twenty-eighth year.
WHERE LIES THE LAND?—(Wordsworth)
Other sonnets appeared at about the same time, particularly noticeable among which are three to Byron, Keats and Rossetti respectively.
But though poetry was Hall Caine’s natural means of expression, and to be a poet his earliest ambition, yet in his youth he recognised the fact that in order to reach a large public some other medium than verse was necessary. So poetry was more or less reluctantly abandoned, and fiction soon took its place.
As a critic, Mr Caine would undoubtedly have won a foremost place among the littérateurs of our time if he had devoted his whole life to that particular branch of his art; but soon after his thirtieth year professional criticism was abandoned in his absorption in novel-writing. From his earliest years the young student was a critic. He eagerly discussed every book he read with his friends and acquaintances, and his first contributions to the Press were in the form of literary criticism. When Lord Houghton first saw Caine as a very young man, he prophesied for him a great future as a critic, and there can be no doubt that his powers in this direction are altogether exceptional. I have read a large amount of criticism which he contributed to the Academy and Athenæum in the early eighties, and I was struck not only by the mature judgment and catholic taste displayed therein, but also by the ease and fluency with which he expressed his views. Those were the days of signed articles, and the curious reader may turn up for himself the back numbers of these two great literary papers and read those articles signed “T. Hall Caine.” He will find in them much to surprise him, for most of them are truly remarkable as the product of so youthful a writer.
Mr Caine was particularly fortunate in obtaining a place on the Academy staff. A complete stranger to Mr J. S. Cotton (at that time the editor of this paper), he called on him and asked for employment. “Certainly!” replied Mr Cotton, much to the young man’s confusion, for he had by no means expected so enthusiastic a reception. The acquaintance made in this way soon deepened to a warm friendship which is to-day valued by both men as much as it was twenty years ago.
The Bondman is a lurid picture of conflicting passions. Love, of an intense sadness, is set against hate and mischance. The strength of the story and the powerfulness of its narration lay hold of the reader’s imagination with a shudder, like a grim masterpiece of Rembrandt. Here is an extract from the opening book—Rachel, the Governor’s daughter, has left her home under the curse of her father, to marry a peasant Icelander, a good-for-nothing. Supported by his mother, they live on the brink of starvation. At last the husband, in shame, complains that if he had sixty crowns he would buy a fishing-boat; and Rachel sells her beautiful hair to procure the money, handing it over to him to make the purchase.
The old woman sat by the hearth and smoked. Rachel waited with fear at her heart, but the hours went by and still Stephen did not appear. The old woman dozed before the fire and snored. At length, when the night had worn on towards midnight, an unsteady step came to the door, and Stephen reeled into the house drunk. The old woman awoke and laughed.
Rachel grew faint and sank to a seat. Stephen dropped to his knees on the ground before her, and in a maudlin cry went on to tell of how he had thought to make one hundred crowns of her sixty by a wager, how he had lost fifty, and then in a fit of despair had spent the other ten.
“Then all is gone—all,” cried Rachel. And thereupon the old woman shuffled to her feet and said bitterly, “And a good thing too. I know you—trust me for seeing through your sly ways, my lady. You expected to take my son from me with the price of your ginger hair, you ugly bald-pate.”
Rachel’s head grew light, and with the cry of a baited creature she turned upon the old mother in a torrent of hot words. “You low, mean, selfish soul,” she cried, “I despise you more than the dirt under my feet.”
Worse than this she said, and the old woman called on Stephen to hearken to her, for that was the wife he had brought home to revile his mother.
The old witch shed some crocodile tears, and Stephen lunged in between the women and with the back of his hand struck his wife across the face.
At that blow Rachel was silent for a moment, and then she turned upon her husband. “And so you have struck me—me—me,” she cried. “Have you forgotten the death of Patriksen?”
The blow of her words was harder than the blow of her husband’s hand. The man reeled before it, turned white, gasped for breath, then caught up his cap and fled out into the night.
Stephen never comes back, and the son born to Rachel is christened Jason and is the “Bondman” of the tale. He is brought up by his mother in one of the meanest huts in the fishing quarter of the Icelandic capital, and supported by her drudgery. After nineteen years of flickering belief in her husband’s return, she comes by the knowledge that he is indeed living, but with another wife and another son, in the Island of Man. Broken-hearted and worn-out with hard living, Rachel sinks to her death, and, with her cold hand in his, Jason swears the oath that forms the motive of the book.
“My father has killed my mother.”
“No, no, don’t say that,” said the priest.
“Yes, yes,” said the lad more loudly; “not in a day, or an hour, or a moment, but in twenty long years.”
“Hush, hush, my son,” the old priest murmured.
But Jason did not hear him. “Now listen,” he cried, “and hear my vow.” And still he held the cold hand in his, and still the ashy face rested on them.
“I will hunt the world over until I find that man, and when I have found him I will slay him.”
“What are you saying?” cried the priest.
But Jason went on with an awful solemnity. “If he should die, and we should never meet, I will hunt the world over until I find his son, and when I have found him, I will kill him for his father’s sake.”
“Silence, silence,” cried the priest.
“So help me, God!” said Jason.
Stephen Orry, on leaving his wife, has left Iceland as seaman in an English ship, and deserted from it on touching the Isle of Man. There he finds a companion in “the slattern and drab of the island,” and though vaguely ashamed of her, marries her. Michael, “little Sunlocks,” is the offspring of this unhappy union, a union becoming more degrading and more horrible to Stephen with every year of the child’s life. The father’s tortured brain, after trying every other means within his knowledge, resolves to kill his son rather than leave him to grow up under the influence of such a mother, and with that purpose he takes the child out to sea in his little boat. This passage is one of most beautiful that Hall Caine has yet written.
Little Sunlocks had never been out in the boat before and everything was a wonder and delight to him.
“You said you would take me on the water some day. Didn’t you, father?”
“Yes, little Sunlocks, yes.”
It was evening, and the sun was sinking behind the land, very large and red in its setting.
“Do the sun fall down eve’y day, father?”
“It sets, little Sunlocks, it sets.”
“What is sets?”
“Dies.”
“Oh!”
The waters lay asleep under the soft red glow, and over them the sea-fowl were sailing.
“Why are the white birds sc’eaming?”
“Maybe they’re calling their young, little Sunlocks.”
It was late spring, and on the headland the sheep were bleating.
“Look at the baby one—away, away up yonder. What’s it doing there by itself on the ’ock, and c’ying, and c’ying, and c’ying?”
“Maybe it’s lost, little Sunlocks.”
“Then why doesn’t somebody go and tell its father?”
And the innocent face was full of trouble.
The sun went down, the twilight deepened, the air grew chill, the water black, and Stephen was still pulling round the head.
“Father, where does the night go when we are asleep?”
“To the other world, little Sunlocks.”
“Oh, I know—heaven.”
Stephen stripped off his guernsey and wrapped it about the child. His eyes shone brightly, his mouth was parched, but he did not flinch. All thoughts, save one thought, had faded from his view.
But no, he could not look into the child’s eyes and do it. The little one would sleep soon, and then it would be easier done. So he took him in his arms and wrapped him in a piece of sailcloth.
“Shut your eyes and sleep, little Sunlocks.”
“I’m not s’eepy, I’m not.”
Yet soon the little lids fell, opened again and fell once more, and then suddenly the child started up.
“But I haven’t said my p’ayers.”
“Say them now, little Sunlocks.”
Then lisping the simple words of the old Icelandic prayer, the child’s voice, drowsy and slow, floated away over the silent water:—
“There’s another verse, little Sunlocks—another verse.”
He finds it impossible to murder the innocent little one, and returns home to find his wife dead.
Then he decides to give the child away, never doubting but that the sunshine of his broken life would be an acceptable present to anyone. The Deputy-Governor, a man of great benevolence and generosity, is his choice; and the Governor accepts the trust, thereby estranging his wife and his own six sons. Adam Fairbrother, the Deputy-Governor, has a daughter of Michael’s age, and until little Greeba goes away to be brought up in the household of the Duke of Athol, the two children live and play together. Michael grows up to be his foster-father’s right hand, and the jealousy of the six sons and their mother cause a rupture in the family, the mother and sons taking the gift of all Adam’s private property and going away to live on it. At the age of eighteen, Greeba returns from London, and at the same time Stephen Orry reappears. He has gathered together two hundred pounds, and with it he asks that Michael shall go to Iceland, there to search out Rachel and her child and succour them from the poverty-stricken life in which Stephen had left them, so long before. Michael refuses the money, but accepts the charge, and takes ship for Iceland on the very day that Jason, in pursuance of his vow, reaches the Isle of Man.
Jason lands on the island, only to rescue his father from drowning and watch over him as he dies. He takes up life with Adam Fairbrother’s sons, and for four years grows in love for Greeba and her father. Then the office of Deputy-Governor is taken from Adam; and turning for home to his wife, in the house that he had given her, is refused admission. He remembers Michael Sunlocks, and determines to go to him in Iceland, leaving Greeba to live with her mother, and the love of none but Jason. The mother dies and the sons treat Greeba very hardly, so that she accepts the love of Jason. Then comes a letter from Michael which fans into flame the embers of her love. He writes to her, tells her of his position, and asks her to come out to him to be his wife. In a scene which shows the height of Jason’s nobility, Greeba takes back her love.
“It is no fault of yours, but now I know I do not love you.”
He turned his face away from her, and when he spoke again his voice broke in his throat.
“You could never think how fast and close my love will grow. Let us wait,” he said.
“It would be useless,” she answered.
“Stay,” he said stiffly, “do you love anyone else?”
But before she had time to speak he said quickly, “Wait! I’ve no right to ask that question, and I will not hear you answer it.”
“You are very noble, Jason,” she said.
“I was thinking of myself,” he said.
“Jason,” she cried, “I meant to ask you to release me, but you have put me to shame, and now I ask you to choose for me. I have promised myself to you, and if you wish it I will keep my promise.”
At that he stood, a sorrowful man, beside her for a moment’s space before he answered her, and only the tones of his voice could tell how much his answer cost him.
“No—ah, no,” he said; “no, Greeba, to keep your promise to me would be too cruel to you.”
“Think of yourself now,” she cried.
“There’s no need to do that,” he said, “for either way I am a broken man. But you shall not also be broken-hearted, and neither shall the man who parts us.”
Saying this, a ghastly white hand seemed to sweep across his face, but at the next moment he smiled feebly and said, “God bless you both.”
Greeba goes to Michael and Iceland, and Jason, remembering his vow, follows her. A succession of events have made Sunlocks the Governor of Iceland, for its short-lived Republic. Knowing that the man he is in search of is the Governor, Jason now finds that the Governor is Michael Sunlocks. Beside himself with the knowledge of all the man has unconsciously stolen from him, Jason dogs him with intent to kill, but, being discovered by Greeba, is denounced by her and sentenced to penal servitude in the sulphur-mines.
The six sons of Adam Fairbrother, discovering the purpose of Greeba’s flight from their home, decide that in brotherliness they will go to her and share her prosperity. Failing in their purpose, they successfully attempt to poison Michael’s mind against her, telling him that Greeba had loved Jason at the time that she had left the Isle of Man. Michael, in his revulsion of feeling, determines to take from Greeba the position for the sake of which he believes her to have married, and summons the Althing in order to resign his office of Governor. While the meeting is in progress, the doors of the Senate House are locked, and the building surrounded by Danish soldiers. The Republic is overthrown, and Michael Sunlocks, as a political prisoner, is sent to the mines.
Thus the most touching and at the same time the most terrible part of the story is reached. Touching because of the great love that grows up in Jason’s heart for Sunlocks, his bondfellow; terrible, because of the fiendish inhumanities of Michael’s lot. This is the description of the place of torment.
It was a grim wilderness of awful things, not cold and dead and dumb like the rest of that haggard land, but hot and alive with inhuman fire and clamorous with devilish noises. A wide ashen plain within a circle of hills whereon little snow could rest for the furnace that raged beneath the surface; shooting with shrill whistles in shafts of hot steam from a hundred fumeroles; bubbling up in a thousand jets of boiling water; hissing from a score of green cauldrons; grumbling low with mournful sounds underneath, like the voice of subterranean wind, and sending up a noxious stench through heavy whorls of vapour that rolled in a fetid atmosphere overhead. Oh, it was a fearsome place, like nothing on God’s earth but a mouldering wreck of human body, vast and shapeless, and pierced deep with foulest ulcers; a leper spot on earth’s face; a seething vat full of broth of hell’s own brewing. And all around was the peaceful snow, and beyond the line of the southern hills was the tranquil sea, and within the northern mountains was a quiet lake of water as green as the grass of spring.
Spurred by the cruel treatment of Sunlocks, Jason breaks away, carrying on his shoulders the half-insensible body of his now blind and maimed companion. They manage to reach the valley of Thingvellir, where the biennial of Althing is taking place, and there, as the custom allows, Jason demands justice and freedom. It is granted to him as a criminal of Iceland, but denied to Sunlocks as a Danish prisoner; and Sunlocks is therefore sent in his helpless, blind condition to the custody of a priest on an outstanding island. There Greeba, who has followed him in his wanderings, takes domestic service with the priest, that she may tend Michael and win back his love, and there Jason comes, to lay down his life for his friend after effecting his escape.
Thus ends one of the most powerful novels ever written, great by reason of its strength of thought and directness of utterance. And yet, here and there in its pages, are passages of wonderful softness, tender pictures of the consolation of childhood—little Sunlocks, little Greeba, and the little child Michael. This is what we grow to look for in Hall Caine, the tenderness and the tragedy of humanity. They form the strength of his novels, and it is they that will make them live through the ages, based as they are on truths and passions that are old as the world is old.
The publication of The Bondman established, once and for all, Hall Caine’s claims to genius; it confirmed the impression created by The Deemster, and there was hardly one dissentient voice in the verdict of the critics who proclaimed it as one of the masterpieces of the century. The late T. E. Brown wrote the following letter to Mr Caine immediately after reading The Bondman.
“Clifton, February 1890.
“My Dear Sir,—I have sent a review of The Bondman to the Scots Observer by same post; and I hope that it will appear in next Saturday’s issue.
“A thousand thanks for the work sent to me by Heinemann. How splendidly he has done it! I am reading it again with fresh interest and admiration. Nor is it otherwise than pleasant to me to find in your story some trail of what I must suppose is old inveterate Manxness. How curious that you should have preserved echoes, however faint, of your father’s talk! But why curious? Still you will agree with me that they ought to be ruthlessly (!) extirpated. They turn up in your English, not in your Anglo-Manx. I give an instance—after the verb threaten an inversion as with interrogations, e.g., ‘He threatened what would he do to them.’ Let me give that in your ear with full Manx flavour, and you will feel yourself standing very close to the Lob-y-Valley. But even without the flavouring, you perceive that it is Manx, though it may be a rusticity common to many parts of the country.
“Trailing behind her these insignificant appendages, your book floats forth to certain success, a magnificent craft, fit for deep waters and the large horizon. Good luck to her! Kindest regards to Mrs Caine and Ralphie, in which my daughters cordially unite.—Ever yours,
“T. E. Brown.”
This letter is but one out of many hundreds received by Mr Caine from all parts of the world, congratulating him on his success. The dramatic tension, so admirably sustained throughout every page of the book, took the literary world by storm, and the sale of the book to-day, eleven years after publication, is extremely large.
The Bondman was written with Mr Caine’s usual care. With his wife and child he paid a two months’ visit to Iceland, there to gather material and local colour for his book. It was begun in March 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, and was finished in October of the same year at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick. Always greatly attracted by Cumberland, Mr Caine had now settled down there permanently; it was not until a few years afterwards that he made his home in the Isle of Man.
Later in this year Sir Henry Irving commissioned him to write a drama with Mahomet as the central character. The subject fascinated him, and in a short time he was immersed in the study of Mahomet, his life and his times. Three acts were written in a fever of enthusiasm; and then came a great disappointment. The almighty British Public, hearing of Mr Caine’s work, took upon itself to be shocked, and, growing tired of silent indignation, raised its voice in alarm, and protested vehemently. The Press took up the cry and pointed out that British Mohammedans would certainly be offended. Sir Henry took alarm, and telegraphed to Mr Caine that the idea could not be carried out. But the dramatist was heart and soul in his work, and only spared the time to write a vehement article in The Speaker, pointing out that his critics were too hasty, before he went on with the writing of his play and finished it. Irving, of course, was as much annoyed as Mr Caine, and offered the latter a substantial sum to recompense him for the trouble he had taken; Mr Caine, however, refused to accept a penny, and offered his play to Willard for production in America. It was at once accepted, but has not yet been put on the boards.
Although in comparison with The Bondman, The Deemster or The Manxman, The Scapegoat is not a masterpiece, yet it is in no sense a failure, or derogatory to the gifted hand that wrote it. Written next in order after The Bondman, The Scapegoat seems to be an aftermath of that, one of the three greatest works, in our opinion, of Hall Caine. It is bitter without much sweetness, and it draws out its long note of human woe without one cheering ray. Tenderness and hope are indeed present, and they are the avenues through which the writer approaches his story, and the means whereby he enchains the hearts of his readers, gladdening and strengthening their souls by his own fervency of belief. Hall Caine has a wonderful power of creating atmosphere. In this novel of The Scapegoat, we tread the tortuous streets of a Morocco town, we think in the inflated metaphors of its inhabitants, we brush against the varied costumes that denote their myriad nationalities. We feel religious antagonism to be a race-element, Oriental cunning and cruelty matters of course; and we read of the Spaniards as though they were to us a strange people from a far-off continent, so thoroughly has the writer imbibed the spirit of his tale.
Israel ben Oliel is a man hardened by circumstance. He is a Jew whose father married for gain and knew no paternal tenderness. Brought up in England, Israel returns to his native country, Morocco, on the death of his father, and takes the post of assessor of tributes for the Kaid of Tetuan. His calling, though pursued at the first with justice, makes him to be hated by the over-taxed people, and on his marriage with the daughter of the grand Rabbi, they gather before the house to curse and prophesy evil. Ben Oliel and his wife, Ruth, take up their worse than lonely life in Israel’s house in the Jewish quarter. For long they have no child and are held in derision by the Jews their neighbours; but after the space of three years their prayers are answered, and on the birth-night of the child, Israel prepares a feast and invites his enemies that he may triumph over them.
Israel … leapt up from the table and faced full upon his guests, and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he lifted a winecup and drank himself.
They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the winecup out of his hand and it broke into fragments on the floor. His laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best of you. More than that—more than that—my son shall yet see—”
The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a girl!”
For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter! She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate places! And now you can go! Go! go!”
He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumfounded and with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct, followed him and listened from the threshold.
Ruth’s face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came from them.
And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest, joy of my joy and pride of my pride?”
Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said, “The Lord has counted my prayer to me as sin—look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”
Israel sinks yet deeper in the contempt of his countrymen because of what seems to them a manifest judgment of God. And he, knowing his condemnation to be unjust, is soured by the knowledge, and, in rebellion against God and man, changes his hitherto upright dealings, becoming in very deed a persecutor of the people. Meanwhile he has taken into his household a little negro waif as a companion for his stricken child Naomi. He grows up to be the devoted follower of Israel in his adversities. When Naomi has reached her seventh year, her mother dies, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery by six State prisoners from the jail, for none other in his isolation can Israel find to help him. He returns to his orphaned child and wraps around her all his thought, all his tenderness. Nightly he reads to her from the Koran, doing his best to dispel the terrible fear that she, knowing nothing of God, may stand condemned in the next life; for in a vision of the night, he has seen Naomi going out into the wilderness as the scapegoat for his sins. So seven more years pass and Israel’s heart softens towards the people under him, and he begins to hate the tyrannies that are exercised over them. And in the disturbance of his heart he takes a journey out to where the prophet Mohammed of Mequinez, a man who has given up all to the cause of the poor and afflicted, holds his camp of refugees. The prophet tells him: “Exact no more than is just; do violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give to the poor:” and with the hope in his heart that such sacrifice will turn God’s face towards Naomi, Israel returns home on foot, giving away all that he carries with him except that which his necessities require. He reaches home in tattered Moorish clothing which at first prevents his recognition.
Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”
“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered, “what of her?”
“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.” Israel laughed—his laugh was like a scream.
“More than that—a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,” said Ali.
“What?”
“She can hear.”
“It’s a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and saying, “Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true, there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no fiend in hell need envy me.”
And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father—come and see.”
Naomi has gained her hearing in an illness, and it is with suffering that she learns to bear sound. It is long before she can speak. Israel has sorrowed at her suffering and almost reproached God with her dumbness. A plague of locusts is eating up everything off the face of the land. The Jews in vain beseech the Almighty to send His floods, and then turn their thoughts to the sinner among them whom they believe to be drawing down God’s wrath on their nation. They select Israel and assemble with the purpose of putting him to death. Walking in the town he stumbles across the people who are crowded together expecting him.
With a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat, the crowd encompassed Israel, crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped, and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on to his knees.
No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl that stood there—blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly beautiful—a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the thick barriers of Naomi’s senses everything was coming to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”
Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; see seemed to glow like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from their deed of blood as with the voice of God—she, the blind, the frail, the helpless.
Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over his enemies, and say, “You thought God’s arm was against me, but behold how God has saved me out of your hands.”
But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter seemed to have dropped upon him.
At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”
Then the cup of Israel’s heart was full. His throat choked him. So he took her by the hand in silence, and down a long alley of the people they passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
Naomi can now speak, and Israel’s world is a happier one. Issuing from his house in the night time, he goes into the poorest quarters of the town on errands of mercy, and soon in his liberality becomes a poor man. The people, seeing his poverty, account for it by the supposition that he must be falling from the Kaid’s favour, and curse and jeer at him all the more openly. From secret charity, Israel determines to renounce his position as servant of the wicked Kaid, and waits upon him to deliver up the seal of office. The Kaid receives him at first with suspicion, then with contempt, finally with insult. The wife of the Kaid strikes Israel with her fan.
In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce anyone—even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate—could clearly tell. She stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father! It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking, reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must burst the bonds that bound them, and look, and see, and know!
At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He had brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
Katrina, the Kaid’s wife, pretends to see in this nothing but imposture. Telling her husband that Naomi’s defects have been assumed, she imparts her own rage to him, and he sentences both Israel and his daughter to be put out of the town.
“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them: ‘So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat!’ Thus let them pass through the streets and through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”
In the now driving rain Naomi and Israel are thus paraded in the streets, and all the townsfolk mass themselves to follow in a huge, howling, jeering procession. Naomi walks with closed eyes, not being able to bear the light, and for several days she seeks shade and darkness, almost in terror. Once out of the town, they find people who are kind to them, giving them food and garments; and they settle in a hut among their new-found friends. Israel’s little remaining money is expended on a few sheep and oxen, and a living is found from the sale of wool, butter and milk, which they send into the town with the neighbours’ market produce. They live in happiness for some months until a crushing blow falls. One of Israel’s last acts of mercy while in office was to liberate a number of prisoners. The knowledge of this has now come to the Kaid’s ears, and he orders the arrest of Ben Oliel. Israel is hurried away to a distant prison, and Naomi is left alone, a child in knowledge both of the world and of the dangerous people around her. The thought of the evil that may come to her preys upon Israel’s mind in his helplessness, and gradually reduces him to insanity. His comrades, in their sympathy, do all they can to arouse him, and fresh prisoners as they arrive tell of the Kaid’s tyrannies, and of how the people of Tetuan regret their treatment of Israel, wishing him back among them. The kindly efforts are useless, until the wit of the prison tells a harrowing tale in the hope of bringing Israel to tears.
That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the prisoners tied up their cotton handkerchiefs and lay down to sleep, Tarby sat beside Israel’s place with sighs and moans and other symptoms of a dejected air.
“Sidi, master,” he faltered, “I had a little brother once, and he was blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother’s son. But you wouldn’t think how happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi, he never missed anything, and so his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy better than all the world! Women? Why—well, never mind! He was six and I was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over, Sidi, and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn’t see. Well, a bleeder came from Soos—curse his great-grandfather! Looked at little Hosain—‘Scales!’ said he—burn his father! ‘Bleed him and he’ll see!’ So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute—half a minute! ‘Oh, Tarby,’ he cried—I was holding him; then he—he—‘Tarby,’ he cried faint, like a lamb that’s lost in the mountains—and then—and then—‘Oh, oh, Tarby,’ he moaned. Sidi, Sidi, I paid that bleeder—there and then—this way! That’s why I’m here!”
It was a lie, but Tarby acted it so well that his voice broke in his throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel’s hand.
Tarby is successful, and with his tears the old man’s madness leaves him. Hardly has he regained his sanity when the order comes for his release, and Israel in joy and thankfulness hurries away to rejoin his child.
In the meanwhile, much has befallen Naomi. At first she clings to her lonely hut, refusing the neighbours’ hospitality; but little by little she gathers from their talk some idea of what her father’s life in prison must be, and finally determines to follow the custom expected from prisoners’ friends and relatives, in carrying food to him. She sets out with a pannier of loaves and another of eggs on either side of her borrowed mule, paying no heed to the expostulations of the good people around her. But as her journey progresses her heart begins to sink. Knowing nothing of evil, and expecting friendliness from all men, she is disheartened by the knowledge that now forces itself upon her, and as, by theft, and in payment for her lodging, her stock of food diminishes, she almost resolves to turn back. By this time she has reached Tetuan, and close to the town gates she is met and recognised by a former servant of Israel.