Part 9 (1/2)

Do you know the Hamadsha Mosque? It is a place in a side street sacred to the preaching of a fanatical follower of one Sidi Ali bin Hamd.o.o.s.h, and to certain wild dances executed in a gla.s.s and fire eating frenzy. I thought I should like to hear a Moorish D. L. Moody, and one day I went there. As I was going in I met a man coming out. It was Larby. 'Beeba!'

he whispered, with a tragic start--that was his own name for me on the journey. 'Keep your tongue between your teeth,' I whispered back. 'I was Beeba yesterday, to-day I'm Sidi Mohammed.' Then I entered, I spread my prayer-mat, chanted my first Sura, listened to a l.u.s.ty sermon, and came out. There, as I expected, in the blind lane leading from the Hamadsha to the town was Larby waiting for me. 'Beeba,' said he, with a grin, 'you play a double hand of cards.' 'Then,' said I, 'take care I don't trump your trick.' The rascal had thought I might bribe him, and when he knew that I would not I saw murder in his face. He had conceived the idea of betraying me at the next opportunity. At that moment he was as surely aiming at my life as if he had drawn his dagger and stabbed me.

It was then that I disgraced my principles.”

”How? how?” I said, though truly I had little need to ask.

”We were alone, I tell you, in a blind lane,” said the American; ”but I remembered stories the man had told me of his children. 'Little Hoolia,'

he called his daughter, a pretty, black-eyed mite of six, who always watched for him when he was away.”

I was breaking into perspiration. ”Do you mean,” I said, ”that you should have--”

”I mean that I should have killed the scoundrel there and then!” said the American.

”G.o.d forbid it!” I cried, and my hair rose from my scalp in horror.

”Why not?” said the American. ”It would have been an act of _self-defense_. The man meant to kill me. He will kill me still if I give him the chance. What is the difference between murder in a moment and murder after five, ten, fifteen, twenty days? Only that one is murder in hot blood and haste and the other is murder in cold blood and by stealth. Is it life that you think so precious? Then why should I value _his_ life more than I value _my own_?”

I s.h.i.+vered, and could say nothing.

”You think me a monster,” said the American, ”but remember, since we left England the atmosphere has changed.”

”Remember, too,” I said, ”that this man can do you no harm unless you intrude yourself upon his superst.i.tions again. Leave the country immediately; depend upon it, he is following you.”

”That's not possible,” said the American, ”for _I_ am following _him_.

Until I come up with him I can do nothing, and my existence is not worth a pin's purchase.”

I shuddered, and we parted. My mind told me that he was right, but my heart clamored above the voice of reason and said, ”_You_ could not do it, no, not to save a hundred lives.”

Ah, father, how little we know ourselves--how little, oh, how little!

When I think that _he_ shrank back--he who held life so cheap--while _I_--I who held it so dear, so sacred, so G.o.d-like--Bear with me; I will tell all.

I met the American at intervals during the next six days. We did not often speak, but as we pa.s.sed in the streets--he alone, I always with my loquacious interpreter--I observed with dread the change that the shadow of death hanging over a man's head can bring to pa.s.s in his face and manner. He grew thin and sallow and wild-eyed. One day he stopped me, and said: ”I know now what your Buckshot Forster died of,” and then he went on without another word.

But about ten days after our first meeting in the slave market he stopped me again, and said, quite cheerfully: ”He has gone home--I'm satisfied of that now.”

”Thank G.o.d!” I answered involuntarily.

”Ah,” he said, with a twinkle of the eye, ”who says that a man must hang up his humanity on the peg with his hat in the hospital hall when he goes to be a surgeon? If the poet Keats had got over the first shock to his sensibilities, he might have been the greatest surgeon of his day.”

”You'll be more careful in future,” I said, ”not to cross the fanaticism of these fanatics?”

He smiled, and asked if I knew the Karueein Mosque. I told him I had seen it.

”It is the greatest in Morocco,” he said. ”The Moors say the inner court stands on eight hundred pillars. I don't believe them, and I mean to see for myself.”

I found it useless to protest, and he went his way, laughing at my blanched and bewildered face. ”That man,” I thought, ”is fit to be the hero of a tragedy, and he is wasting himself on a farce.”

Meanwhile, I had a shadow over my own life which would not lift. That letter which I had received from home at the moment of leaving Tangier had haunted me throughout the journey. Its brevity, its insufficiency, its delay, and above all its conspicuous omission of all mention of our boy had given rise to endless speculation. Every dark possibility that fancy could devise had risen before me by way of explanation. I despised myself for such weakness, but self-contempt did nothing to allay my vague fears. The child was ill; I knew it; I felt it; I could swear to it as certainly as if my ears could hear the labored breathing in his throat.

Nevertheless I went on; so much did my philosophy do for me. But when I got to Fez I walked straightway to the English post-office to see if there was a letter awaiting me. Of course there was no letter there. I had not reflected that I had come direct from the port through which the mails had to pa.s.s, and that if the postal courier had gone by me on the road I must have seen him, which I had not.

I was ashamed before my own consciousness, but all the same the post-office saw me every day. Whatever the direction that I took with my interpreter, it led toward that destination in the end. And whatever the subject of his ceaseless gabble--a very deluge of words--it was forced to come round at last to the times and seasons of the mails from England. These were bi-weekly, with various possibilities of casual arrivals besides.