第92章

Do you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for my return? And do you think, too," he cried, lifting one hand and his voice together, "that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on an errand of mercy His servant perished?

Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I say; you are a fool."The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage.But he was cowed.

He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of braggadocio--"And what if I do not liberate the girl?""Then," said the Mahdi, "if any evil befalls her the consequences shall be on your head.""What consequences?" said the Basha.

"Worse consequences than you expect or dream," said the Mahdi.

"What consequences?" said the Basha again.

"No matter," said the Mahdi."You are walking in darkness, and do not know where you are going.""What consequences?" the Basha cried once more.

"That is God's secret," said the Mahdi.

Ben Aboo began to laugh."Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,"he shouted to his people.

"Enough!" cried the Mahdi."I have delivered my message.

Now woe to you, Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come no more.Fill up the measure of your iniquity.

Keep the girl in prison.Give her to the Sultan.But know that for all these things your reward awaits you.Your time is near.

You will die with a pale face.The sword will reach to your soul."Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, "This is the last word that will pass between you and me.

So part we now for ever, Ben Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt, and death and hell."Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks under a blow.Then with head erect he went out unhindered.

But he was not yet done.In the garden of the palace, as he passed through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, "Abd er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful!

Listen: I hear the sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war.

My heart makes a noise in me for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near.Woe to you, Abd er-Rahman!

You have filled up the measure of your fathers.Woe to you, slave of the Compassionate!"The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State;the women of the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers.But his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.

"The Mahdi," they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.

The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah.The rabble of mountaineers of Aissawa were gone.Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms, were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.

The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings.In spasms, in gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father, who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.

These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled.Let come what would, the man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.

The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning, and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep.The town was quiet, the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest.It was a wonderful night.