The Scapegoat | Page 4

from every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds
throughout Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him,
and wheresoever women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy
and the shelter of his face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them
save one thing only, but that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope
in life, but hope in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always
around him. Man that veils his face before the mysteries of the
hereafter, and science that reckons the laws of nature and ignores the
power of God, have no place with the Mahdi. The unseen is his
certainty; the miracle is all in all to him; he throngs the air with marvels;
God speaks to him in dreams when he sleeps, and warns and directs
him by signs when he is awake.
With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the
joyous child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with
a beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond
the wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged
fellowship of the poor behind them, having no homes and no
possessions, pass from place to place, unharmed and unhindered,
through that land of intolerance and iniquity, being protected and
reverenced by virtue of the superstition which accepts them for Saints.

Who are they? What have they been?_

CHAPTER I
ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was the
daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the
mother's was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house
of Sara's father, and he came over to England that he might have a
personal meeting with his correspondent. The English banker lived
over his office, near Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It
consisted of one daughter by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a
second wife, still living. They were not altogether a happy household,
and the chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife in
the home of the second. Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he
saw the difficulty. That was how it came about that he was married to
Sara. When he returned to Morocco he was some thousand pounds
richer than when he left it, and he had a capable and personable wife
into his bargain.
Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and
spending, always taking care to have much of the one, and no more
than he could help of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little
woman, hungering for communion and for sympathy. She got little of
either from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he. With the people
of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no
headway. She never even learnt their language.
Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel,
and for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely
woman. His coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew
to be a tall and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a
sweet and cheerful disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a
hard one. A Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle that
he was not born a Moor and a Mohammedan.

When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife, his
first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in Tangier.
The new marriage, which was only another business transaction to
Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported its
penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day
after day. By that time a second family had begun to share her
husband's house, the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to
the children, the domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony
was no longer possible. Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England,
taking Israel with her.
Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was
not warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her
husband's second marriage. If she had married into a foreign country,
she should abide by the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health
had long been poor, and now it failed her utterly. In less than a month
she died. On her deathbed she committed her boy to the care of her
brothers, and implored them not to send him back to Morocco.
For years thereafter Israel's life