The Scapegoat | Page 8

stood
without.
"Peace! Peace!" he cried, "and shame! shame! Remember the doom of
him that shall curse the high priest of the Lord."
This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his
voice failing him, he said in a broken whisper, "My good people, what
is this? Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years
he has shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this
day that your women should lift up their voices against him?"
But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back,
and Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to
compose him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews
whispered, "It is the first-fruits!" and the Moors touched their foreheads
and murmured "It is written!"

CHAPTER II
THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah he
placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the English
fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a marble
staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but also with
windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put no
haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for tables
and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in this
wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
Jews.
And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out
of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly
it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had built
was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a prison
for his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his
intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had
reduced even her friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she
was the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast,
the companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.
Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce
with them was mainly by signs.
Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on Israel's
mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon bear a child. Then
would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman
might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would
make amends.
Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him.
It was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no

child was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she
began to cast down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of
longer life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he
perceived that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him.
He had been thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and
meanwhile she had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride.
After that he never went abroad but he came home with stories of
women wailing at the cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men
broken in heart for loss of their sons, and of how they were best treated
of God who were given no children.
This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment, half
deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the woman
Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and she
lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, "Israel ben Oliel, the
judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise up
children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!"
"Out upon you, woman!" cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions had
passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
him.
Israel knew his own heart at last. At