Free, mighty, noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little white island of the sea! His mother's home! England!
Yes, he would go back to it.True, he had no friends there now;but what matter of that? Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps.His mother! Ruth!
But he had Naomi still.Naomi! He spoke her name aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair.
Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.
Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards.The animals were picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the voices of men and women came from inside the tents.
Fires were burning under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel that he had not eaten since the previous day.
"I must have food," he thought, "though I do not feel hungry."So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs hailed him."Markababikum!"they cried from where they sat within.
"You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!" Their land was the world.
Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans and black bread.It was very sweet.A man was eating beside him;a woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.
Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones.All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
"On a long journey, brother?" said the man,"No, oh no, no," said Israel."Only to Semsa, no farther.""Well, you must sleep here to-night," said the Arab.
"Ah, I cannot do that," said Israel.
"No?"
"You see, I am going back to my little daughter.She is alone, poor child, and has not seen her old father for months.
Really it is wrong of a man to stay away such a time.
These tender creatures are so impatient, you know.And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I suppose we must humour them--that's what I always say."
"But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!" said the woman.
"Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister," said Israel." Well, peace!
Farewell all, farewell!"
Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the darkness overtook him.It came down from the mountains like a dense black cloud.Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side.Still for a while he toiled along.Every step was an effort.The ground seemed to sink under him.It was like walking on mattresses.He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless.
A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop."After all, it is better," he thought."Strange, how things happen for the best!
I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I will get no sleep at all.
No, for I shall have so many things to say and to ask and to hear."Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart.
"Yes, I must sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!"When he awoke the sun had risen.The sea lay before him in the distance, the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky.
He was on the borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river, which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey.It was now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his home near Semsa.Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white walls, and perched on the hillside.
Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange orchards.
But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could see now.She would see for him also.How sweet to see through Naomi's eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe.All the world was new to her, and strange and beautiful.It would be a second and far sweeter youth.
Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then.Two months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from a sweet girl to a lovely woman.A great soul beamed out of her big, slow eyes.He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father; and she led him here and there, and described things to him.He could see and hear it all.
First Naomi's voice: "A bow in the sky--red, blue, crimson--oh!"Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness:
"A rainbow, child!" Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice of his poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the street--Within my heart a voice Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
He sang the song to himself as he toiled along.With a little lisp he sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was making was Naomi's voice and not his own.
