第18章

Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms to encircle his neck;and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by.Did she go with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok.Did she pass the lofty mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled under and behind and around.Did a troop of mules and camels come near her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.

And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and even some of their rocky gorges.She could find her way among them all without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her to keep her out of the way of harm.While Ali was a little fellow he was her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.

And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars.

So, casting off her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery, and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air.She could see nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds about her.

Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not touch it.

By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind, which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness.Thus, in the spring, when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter would be on her lips.Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and, having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his eyes bent down.

But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed.

More often her joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature of joy.A circle of joy seemed to surround her always.

Her heart in its darkness was full of radiance.As she grew her comeliness increased, though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early maidenhood.

Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars that stood in it.And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things; it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled in native grace about her.Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine.A flood of sunshine seemed to follow in the air wheresoever she went.And certainly for Israel, her father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.