Part 22 (1/2)

”I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, ”to resign my office.”

”Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. ”Man, man, are you mad?”

”No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. ”I must have been that when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”

Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, ”There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let me think!”

Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, ”What does it mean? What does it mean?”

In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. ”Wait!” he cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people about him. ”Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?

The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread should spy and pry on me?”

Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for no further a.s.surance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and protests. ”O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.

Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves, his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O Compa.s.sionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?

It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you know it.”

Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.

But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as slowly and calmly as at first, ”Basha, have no fear; I have not sold myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for myself alone.”

Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what poor s.h.i.+ft he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more, without disguise and without shame.

”And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, ”what riches have you gathered that you are at last content to h.o.a.rd no more?”

”None,” said Israel shortly.

Ben Aboo laughed l.u.s.tily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with Katrina.

”And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, ”without office and without riches how may you hope to live?”

”As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, ”serving G.o.d and trusting to His mercy.”

Again Ben Aboo laughed hoa.r.s.ely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.

”Serving G.o.d is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.

”Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.

At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.

”Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. ”Who are you that you dare wag your insolent tongue at me?”

”I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm--”your scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.

Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and the mistaken love of all men.”

While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose and thick lips and ma.s.sive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a s.h.a.ggy mane over his ears.

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

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