CHAPTER VIII.

FROM JERICHO TO JORDAN.

“Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill Thy pitying Eye is on Thy creature still.”

“Wilt Thou not make, eternal Source and Goal, In thy long years life’s broken circle whole, And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?”—WHITTIER.

Jew and Crusader came to love each other after the manner of David and Jonathan, and they were both made stronger and happier men on account of this loving.

“Sir Charleroy, a year gone to day, thou and I climbed to glory.”

“Thou hast a prolific imagination or I a poor memory. I have no remembrance of either climbing or glory of a year ago.”

“I may well remember the greatest day of my life; the day thou tookst me up yon hill over against Jericho; I saw, as Elisha, in the presence of his great master Elijah, the mountains, that day, full of the chariots and angels of God.”

“But, Jew, the chariot separated Elijah and Elisha; we were, in thy ‘great day,’ made one.”

“True, but I got the prophet’s insight and power. Oh now I see Shiloh coming in the redemption of Jew and Gentile.”

“Radiant proselyte, give God, not me the glory.”

“I’ll call thee, knight, Jordan—my Jordan.”

“The Jew rambles amid strange conceptions. Why am I like that mighty stream?”

“Its bed and banks, God’s cup; they nobly serve, catching the pure waters of mountain springs and heaven’s clouds, to bear them, mingled with sweet Galilee, to the black burning lips of Sodom’s plains below. I was a dead sea, alive alone to misery; nothing to me but my historic past, and that sin-stained. I’m now refreshed and purified; sometime there’ll be life growing about me!”

“The highlands of Galilee gather from heaven, oceans of sweet, pure water, which Jordan, year after year, night and day, hurries down to the Asphalt sea; but still that sea remains lifeless and bitter. Even so, the clean, white truth comes to some, life-long, yet vainly. I think I’m little like Jordan, but much like that sea.”

“And yet, knight, all is not vain that seems so. I learned this once, long ago, in the vale of Siddim, by the sea of Lot. As I entered that place of desolation I thought of Gehenna! The lime cliffs about, all barren and pitiless as the walls of a furnace, shut out the breezes, and intensified the sun’s scorching rays. A solemn stillness, unbroken by wind, wave or voice of life, was there; suffocating, plutonic odors ladened the air, and a fog hung over that watery winding sheet of the cities of the plain. I watched that overhanging cloud until my heated brain shaped it into a vast company of shades; the ghostly forms of the overwhelmed denizens of those accursed habitations, now in mute terror and confusion, holding to one another desperately; fearing to go to final judgment. Once I thought they were together trying to look down into the depths, perchance to seek for vestiges of their ancient, earthly habitations. These fancies grew and grew upon me, mad dreamer that I was, until I was nigh to desperate fright; but I found some little angels on the shore who comforted.”

“Angels at Sodom?”

“Even so. The first was light and liquid silver; it sang a bar of nature’s tireless, varied melody by my footsteps. Ah, the little, fresh spring that burst forth through the rim of the crystalline basin, was an angel to me. Then I found others here and there. At first I was glad, then I began to pity them, and to wish I could change their courses. They all wended their ways to the desolate sea, and their sweet currents were swallowed up in the yawning gulf of death. ‘Vainly,’ I said at first. Then I saw other angels in the forms of bending willows, and gorgeous oleanders. Just then it all came to me; the springs, though small and few, were not in vain. The oleanders and the willow, whose roots kissed their fresh life, were evidences that the springs had been for good. Aye, more, the flowers rejoiced me in those desolations more than could the rose gardens of the Temple in days of happiness. Yea, knight, thou hast been a rivulet to Ichabod in a day when he wandered as among arid mountains and dead seas.”

“Blest child of Abraham, thy faith is great, though I be but a pitiable guide; yet I’ll adopt thy similes. Be thou and I, to each other, Jordan, rivulet and flower by turn; the fresh current gives life to plant and blossom, while plant and blossom both shade and beautify the streams. With both it shall be well, if we well learn to seek deep for the hidden springs of the life that can never die. Already thou hast blessed me very greatly, gathering truths I failed to find. Thou return’st to me multiplied all I bestow.”

“Would I could gather for all; for my race, so blinded! Oh, it is a tristful thought that the nearer I get to God, the further I get from them I love next after Him. Even my mother was wont to say to me, when, as a questioning boy, I inquired beyond the traditions of the Rabbis, that she’d disown me to all eternity as a heretic. My belief has made me an outcast to her, and yet the thought of her hating me tears my heart.”

“I’ll love thy orphaned heart.”

“Me? Love me; so far beneath thee and with such pauper power of payment?”

“Thy desolation makes thee rich; having none other to love, thou canst love me the more. Thou know’st this open secret of loving; its selfishness demands all; getting that it gives all. Fear not Ichabod, but that thou’lt find the hunger of thy heart well fed. It is as natural for us to love those we have helped as to hate those we have harmed. Thou know’st how men wonder that the Infinite can love the finite, but they forget, or never realized, that one may love because he has loved. So is it with God. He loves, and that He loves becomes therefore rich and worthful to Him.”

The morning after the betrothal, shall we call it, of these two men to each other, long before dawn the knight was wakened by a cautious step on the stone floor of his sleeping place. Sir Charleroy was at once all alert and leaped from the couch, sword in hand, expecting to confront some gipsy thief, for there had been a band of these wanderers hovering near the day before.

“Who’s there?” sternly he demanded, advancing, on guard meanwhile.

“Ichabod, Ichabod!” with trembling voice and in a half whisper. It was the Jew.

“I did not mean to fright thee,” he hurriedly explained, when he had recovered from his fear of being thrust through, “but I’ve news; bad news that would not wait!”

“What is the bad? Is it near?”

“Oh, knight, speak low—the news is bad enough and the ill, though not on us, close after us!”

“Thou art excited, my friend; sit down and then unfold the matter. Meanwhile I’ll light a faggot.”

“In truth, I can’t sit, and I’ve reason to be nervous.” Then the man spread out his arms and his fingers as if he would stand all ready to fly; his eyes wide open, staring as he talked.

“Our Sheik leaves Jericho to-morrow; summoned by the sheriff of Mecca. The sheriff is supreme to Moslem. The command is for war toward the east. Blood, blood; when will the world be done shedding blood!”

“Well, my loving alarmist,” replied Sir Charleroy, coolly, “that’s not very bad news. If the Sheik leaves us, we’ll be free; if he takes us, there will be a change and for that I could almost cry ‘Blessed be Allah!’ I am sickened, crushed, dry-rotted by this hum-drum life; this slavery; dancing abject attendance on a gluttonous master, whose sole object seems to be eating or dallying about the marquees of his harem.”

“Oh, Sir Charleroy, the change has dreadful things for us!”

“Why?”

“I heard that the runner bringing the mandate from Mecca brings also command that all prisoners, such as we, must be made to embrace Islamism, enlist to die, if need be, in this so-called holy war, or be sent to the slave mart.”

“This is a carnival for the furies! Why, Ichabod, the latter is burial alive; the former death with a dishonored conscience!”

“Sir Charleroy, I prefer the slavery.”

“Well, I prefer neither. Is the mandate final?”

“Yes; I’ve an order to commence packing at sunrise; by noon we will be enlisted or in chains.”

“Who gave thee these state secrets, so in detail? Perhaps ’tis only camp-fire gossip recounted for lack of novel ghost stories.”

“Ah, ’tis too true. I’d swear my life on it!”

“Rash, credulous; but which now, comrade, I can not tell.”

“Master, I had this from one that loves me as I love thee; the young Nourahmal, light of the harem, favorite of the Sheik.”

“Well, now it seems to me that this light of the harem is thy favorite rather than the Sheik’s.”

“She adores me.”

“Doubtless! Where a woman unfolds her mind there she brings all else an offering easily possessed. She seals her change of allegiance by scattering the secrets of the dethroned to the enthroned lover. ‘Nourahmal’? Is she as charming in form as in name?”

“Hold, now! If thou lov’st me thou will’st not continue thus to wound. I love that girl, but not the way thou meanest!”

“So? Is there an elopement pending?”

“Unworthy gibe! Say no more like it, but answer this: Is it not possible for a man and woman to be knitted together in soul, as I and thou have been, without the shadow of a remembrance that they are animals of different sexes?”

“Possible? Really I do not know. It may be possible, but so very rare that I have failed to hear of any such relationship.”

“Then thou shalt hear of it now in Nourahmal and me.”

“I’ll take both to Paris! Another wonder of the world! But explain further.”

“My Nourahmal is a captive; hates the man to whom she must submit as we hate him, and loves me with the new love that you have revealed to me, because I’ve shown her that I love her that way; so different from any thing she ever knew before.”

“Well, there are many women yoked to men for whom they feel no great affection, yet they glorify womanhood by their unfaltering loyalty. Loyalty is woman’s glory; the hope of society. If the women be traitors, then, alas!”

“Nourahmal is not a wife! The man that parcels out his heart to a dozen favorites buys but scraps in return. A woman in misery’s chains, without the bands of the confiding, utter love of her lord, will talk; she must talk, or go mad. I tell, thee, knight, such gossip is the panacea of suicidal bent. There’s many a woman kills herself for lack of a confidant!”

“Thou hast learned much philosophy going around the world, Jew, but perhaps not this bitter truth; the woman who is traitor to one man will be to another. Thou mayst be the next. What if she set us fleeing for the sake of laughing at our forced return?”

“Impossible, knight; she reveres me truly; even as she does God; just as I did Sir Charleroy when he brought me light and rest. I was to her what thou art to me. One day I told her women had souls, as dear to heaven as the souls of men! She laughed at me like a monkey, at first, and reminded me that were I a true disciple of Islam I’d know that only young and beautiful women go to heaven, and they even there have a lowly place. Thou knowest these infidels believe that the large majority of hellions are women.”

“Not strange Jew; they treat women as pretty or useful animals, and so degrade, not only themselves, but these very women. A woman so demeaned does not become heavenly, to say the least. But I think, if I were a Turk, I’d keep only argus-eyed eunuchs to guard my harem; in faith, I’d even have the tongues out of those guards.”

“There, now, thou dost jest again.”

“Well, go on, in seriousness. Tell us the pipings of this seraglio beauty.”

“I’ve won her over completely.”

“This is not strange. Poets are always valiant, victorious orators with women. The female heart is emotionally moved up to belief with little logic, if the speaker be fair, or musical, or brave!”

“I was none of these; I told her of the ‘Friend of Publicans and Sinners;’ that fed her soul. I do not believe there is a woman on earth that can resist that story.”

“Oh, well, I’m not going to forget that the first woman outran her mate in evil, nor that she exchanged the All Beautiful for the snaky demon.”

“It would be nobler for a knight, truer for all, to judge, if judge they will, by wider circles. Do not remember the sin of one, or a few, to the disparagement of all!”

“Eve, the best made of all, fell; then her weaker sisters are more likely to follow in her way,” said the knight.

“She found a sin and fell: thousands of her daughters have fallen by sins that men invented and thrust on them. Thou knowest that most women who go wrong, go in ways they would not without the temptings of the stronger will. The sin that ruins most is that to woman’s nature abhorrent, until honeyed over by the tongue of man.”

“Dexterous lance, art thou, Jew; but, anyway, some women are born bad.”

“No; I’m not able for one so wise as the knight, unless I’ve the strength of truth. I’ve heard that our wise men say that if we could trace the ancestry of any one evil, from birth, we would find somewhere, up the line, a father, prëeminent in wickedness. Say, women are weak to resist evil; then, say men are strong to propagate it. Now, which way turns the scale?”

“Oh, I say always, dogmatically, if need be, in man’s favor.”

“Let me see: Eve’s humanity that sinned was out of the finest part of Adam’s body, and the serpent which betrayed her was a male.”

“I’ll parry the thrust by asking why the Holy Writings reveal no female angels? I think there are none.”

“I’ve a wiser reason, knight. It is this: Man has so foully dealt with the angels in the flesh that God’s mercy reserves their finer spiritual counterparts for the sole companionships of heaven, which justly appreciates these holy, pure and tender creations. Heaven would not be perfectly beautiful without them and, methinks, can not spare one for a moment!”

“Not even to minister to a needy world?”

“Woman’s life is here, generally, all service, all ministry; her return to earth after death would be a work of supererogation. God sends back the male spirits to help restore the world their sex did most to ruin.”

Then both the debaters laughed out as heartily as they dared, but there was in the tones of the knight’s laughter a part-confession of defeat. After a time Sir Charleroy spoke again: “Thou art calm now, after this diversion, Ichabod; proceed with thy story of danger.”

“Well, Nourahmal——”

“Oh, yes, begin again with Nourahmal. Samson was a pretty good man for a giant, but he had a betraying Delilah!”

“True enough; but he had also a noble mother. Remember the better, rather than the worse.”

“I remember her peers, Mary and my mother.”

“So, then, when sweepingly condemning all the sex, please except the mothers, at least of those who may be thy hearers.”

“Good Jew, I’ll not wound thee!”

“No pity for me; pity thyself. Such thoughts as thou hast spoken wound thine own soul. We Jews have an order called ‘Tumbler Pharisees;’ they affect humility, shuffle as they walk and stumble on purpose that they may not seem to walk with confidence. Akin to them we have the ‘Bleeding Pharisees;’ they walk with shut eyes, lest they should see a woman, and, stumbling against many a post, are soon covered with their own blood, receiving real harm in flying from imaginary dangers.”

“‘_Maya, Maya_,’ Ichabod,” laughing aloud, exclaimed Sir Charleroy.

The latter, catching the knight’s arm, hoarsely whispered: “Hush! Thou mayst be heard. What dost thou mean by ‘_Maya_’?”

“Perhaps, Nourahmal! _Maya_ was the reputed wife of the supposed god Brahm of the Hindus. It is reported that she was in form like unto fog and her name means ‘illusion.’ A subtle truth, Jew; even a god, in love, is near a fog bank!”

“Thou dost not know Nourahmal and dost discredit her; that’s slander; thou dost know me and ridiculest me; that’s—but—I’ll not say it.”

“I’d not pain my Ichabod.”

“Nor discredit Nourahmal?”

“No; but did this angel, or Syren of thine, having shown the peril, present a map to a city of refuge?”

“Ah, poor, helpless girl! she has none for herself, much less for us. She just told me all and wept and kissed me a farewell, praying me to flee. I could think of no question in the delight of hearing her say, she hoped I’d meet her in Heaven, in peace away from Moslem and wars. Only think of her faith! All new; just a little while ago she did not know there was a heaven for women. I felt I could die then in peace. I’ve taught one woman that she is more than a pretty animal!”

“Then, Jew, to thee, life is worth living?”

“Oh truly! Oh, if this light could only spread over Egypt and all my own Syria!”

“Thy desire is akin to that of Mary’s son and noble. Certain it is that we can not spread that light by fighting to sustain the fateful Crescent.”

“By the glory of God, I never will.”

“Nor I, son of Abraham; so let’s decline.”

“And go to the slave mart?”

“Oh, no, not while I’ve a sword, Ichabod.”

“Then to flee is the word?”

“The eastern campaigning with the sheik, would be a little longer route to Paradise?”

“Perhaps not; I am assured that we are needed of God by the use He has recently made of us. He will keep us in our flight from bloody persecuting war, and possible apostacy.”

“I hate the last word! A knight enchanted of Mary can never become a renegade; not I, at least. I was born October ninth. Tradition says that the holy St. John Damascene, having had his hand cut off by the Saracens that day, was by Our Lady miraculously made whole, and lived long after to wield a powerful, facile pen in her behalf. I’ll trust my head and saber hand, used for her, to her protection.”

“And I’ll trust Him that led the wandering hosts of Moses; for ‘in all their affliction, He was afflicted with them, and the angel of His presence saved them; and He bore them and carried them all the days of old.’ Oh, master, I’ve comfort I can not tell, when I feel orphaned, by thinking of my Maker, not only as a Father, but as a Mother! God is our Mother when we, bereft of mother-love, most feel our need of it. So thou toldst me in the mountains.”

“True; but shall we try our escape now?”

“Nay, we had better wait till a little before dawn; the camp patrol is then withdrawn; then we’ll embrace freedom.”

“The Jew seems very confident.”

“Oh, I spent the hour after I met Nourahmal (God keep her), amid the palms for which Jericho is fitly named, and got a token.”

“A token?”

“My eyes were touched in the darkness.”

“Sweet Nourahmal followed thee?”

“No, but He that opened the eyes of blind Bartimeus near here.”

“What didst thou see?”

“Elisha healing the streams about this palm city, type of God healing the floods of bitterest fates; after that I saw Jericho’s walls falling at the blasts of Joshua’s trumpets, and remembered that his God then is ours now.”

“Didst thou see two poor men fleeing in the dark from peril to peril, pursued by a hundred horsemen, who saber-lashed them; a little further two corpses, one of a Christian the other of a Jew, on which fed fighting jackals?”

“I saw no such horror! I saw two led forth from their captors, as Peter from his dungeon; the angels that blinded the eyes of the monstrous men, who of old sought to defile Lot’s house, blinded the eyes of the pursuers of the two; and the angel of Peter gave them guidance and light. But come, the night-guard has retired; between now and the call to morning prayers is our opportunity.”

Out of the old stone stable silently knight and Jew glided, threading their way amid splendors they believed to be, but could not see. The ministering spirits were over and around them, their path was through the Kelt, the sublimest waddy of Palestine; but night shrouded the latter; their weak faith dimly discerned the other.

“Can’t thou see any way-marks, Jew?”

“I discern but few. Yet, what matter? It is enough that He who leads us sees?”

“The night is getting blacker and blacker; the omen makes my heart shiver as it beats.”

As the knight spoke there came a terrific crash of thunder and a succession of blinding lightning flashes. Sir Charleroy clasped the Jew’s arm and in startled voice questioned:

“Dost thou not fear these?”

“Why should I? The angel guides swing the torches of the unchangeable Father to give us glimpses of our way. All is well; I saw by the lightning flash that we are passing safely the camp lines of our captors.”

A few miles were over-past. The storm had abated a little, and the first streaks of dawn, like spears, were rising in the east.

“Would God, good Jew,” said the now wearied Sir Charleroy, “that the Prophet of the Moslem, who, near by here, is said once by a stamp of his foot to have brought forth from the rock a camel, were present to dance for us now.”

“He is not here, so we must help ourselves, knight.”

“Ah, my dear man, canst thou dance rocks into camels?”

“No, but there are houses nigh, and each thou knowst has it’s stable-yard in front.”

“But there is the thorny nubk tree, surrounding the herds.”

“I’ve faith to try my faith when all I have is faith.”

“What for; to steal a camel?”

“Oh, no; I’d not steal a camel but I’d borrow a couple of them. Two; for I’m not one of the knights who exhibit poverty, by riding double, thou dost know.”

“Borrow? Well so be it; the black infidels owe us for two years’ service. They borrowed us!”

“It’s pious to take the beasts; for we pay so honest debts of these heathens and shorten the list of their souls’ sins by removing from them, in our escape, the opportunity for our murder.”

“If this be sophistry, Ichabod, it is so sweet that it is taken as delightful truth.”

“Thou art persuaded?”

“No man can out run me, be he rabbi or priest, in condemning vices, if they be such as I do not care to practice, and I am a profound believer in every creed that’s sweet to my desires. Here action treads the heels of persuasion.”

* * * * *

On beasts, borrowed without formality, the fugitives hurried toward Jordan, only there to find a barrier to their progress in the angry torrent swelled by the recent storms. It was clearly futile to attempt a passage, and to tarry, waiting the ebb of the waters, was to bring certain detection. They turned the heads of their borrowed camels toward their master’s homes and waited the sunrise, meanwhile moving about to find some means of safety.

“Well, my comrade, I think it will not be long until those Turks will give our souls an Elijah-like ascension except that there will be no chariot. The morning shimmering on his mountain makes me think of this, Ichabod.”

“The tracks of our returning camels in the wet earth will guide our pursuers.”

“Suppose we climb a tree as Zacchaeus, since we can not have a chariot. By my plume! which I’ve not seen for a year, I think that would be safety; the Turks never look up except in prayer, and the wolf Azrael seldom prays. But God pity us! there they are coming.”

“To the tombs, master! On the left.”

“Refuge for jackals?”

“Yes, but also for the miserable, living and dead! Now haste!”

Sir Charleroy obeyed quickly, but recoiled with a groan of disgust as he suddenly pushed against an entombed body. He touched his hilt, as if determined to abandon attempt at flight, and then, overcoming the rash impulse to confront the pursuers, turned about, seized the corpse, and dragging it from its place, hurled it over the river bank into the torrent. He was in the dispoiled nich in an instant. A cry from the pursuers drew him forth. “See, Ichabod, the Turks are running along the river banks watching the mummy bobbing along in the torrent. See, it sinks. Ah, the brutes, how they shout! They think that body alive, and that one poor slave is hounded to death.”

“Jehovah Jeireh, now help us; they’ll soon be back,” cried Ichabod.

“Ah, I forgot; they’ll remember there were two of us.”

“Calm, Sir Knight, ‘By this sign I conquer,’ quoting thy words of another. I’ll go forth; the only one left; at least so they’ll think.”

Sir Charleroy turned and looked at the Jew, and was amazed to see him binding in front of himself a board having the ominous words, “Unclean” upon it.

“What; thou, a Jew, and touch that foul thing, worn to festering death by some leper!”

“Better night and a clean soul, though in a body burned by the cursed leprosy, than life in Moslem slavery.”

“But what if the disease cleave to thee, and we escape?”

“Sir Knight, thou wilt live to tell others that a once hated Jew was led of thee to truth, and after died a living death, that his benefactors might survive. I think such deeds cause noble lights to glow in human souls.”

“God bless and pity thee, Ichabod.”

“Ah, he does; even now. I see the scarlet line of Rahab, and it binds the pestilence that walketh by noonday.”

The furious pursuers spurred their steeds up toward the tombs, but as they beheld the solitary man, sitting in painful attitude with beggar-like palm extended and wearing the dread sign, they rapidly wheeled their steeds about and galloped away. The Moslem had heard that a Jew would suffer any torture rather than ceremonial pollution; hence judged that the object before them could not be the refugee they sought.

“I wonder not that the demoniac cut himself madly when among the tombs, good Jew. Sure it’s like going to glory to get out once more. Methinks freedom is only sweet when taken with fresh air! Well, we are out and the enemy thwarted.”

“Methinks, master, that the leper that died here, leaving no legacy but the sign of his death, did some good in unknowingly making me his heir.”

“And the corpse I disposed of so unceremoniously left me a house of safety, though small and musty. I’ve a bitter thought.”

“So, Sir Charleroy, tell it me, perhaps I can sweeten it.”

“I, the heir for a little time of that soulless clay, am like it.”

“Not much being here and alive.”

“I rather think like it. See me tossed about by strangers, robbed of my rights, helpless to resist fate’s tides, begrudged the room I occupy, and not one who once knew me to weep over my besetments.”

“Sir Knight, the miracles of our frequent preservation should make our murmurings dumb.”

In the evening Jordan ebbed a little and the two wanderers passed over. Nor did they regret the consequent immersing in its flood. No word was spoken as they passed through the current, for, before they entered, having remembered that at this Bethabara ford man’s Savior was baptized, they were each busy with his own meditations. When they stood on the other shore, Sir Charleroy reverently said: “Comrade, I prayed as we passed that we might have the dove of peace henceforth above our souls at least.”

“I prayed on my part that God would accept the act as the Christian’s typical burial to the world and separation from its sins.”

“How like death and birth is that beautiful type. They level all life.”

“Are our lives leveled? knight.”

“Henceforth; and we are brethren.”

“And our King and Savior was baptized here by the herald of His Kingdom, John?”

“Yea; here the new Judaism was formally inaugurated. Tradition says also that Jesus baptized his mother afterward at this ford.”

“How filial; how beautiful; how expressive! He was her God, yet her son, she his mother and disciple; and each by all ties and forms bound together in a fellowship of helpfulness.”

“The Jew’s an interpreter.”

“Sir Charleroy sweetens my trust as Jordan sweetens the bitter waters of Bahr Lut.”