The Golden Heart
S.P. Hurst
Table of Contents
Fatima
In a certain town in North Africa, up a steep street in the neighborhood of the Kasbah, or fort, stood an old Moorish house inhabited by several families. Though all were respectable, and well thought of in the Arab town, none were so highly esteemed as the family of Sidi Abd-er-Rahman ben el Hadj Abd-er-Rahman, and it was to this family that Fatima belonged. (This name literally means “Mr. Slave of the Merciful One [God] son of the pilgrim [to Mecca]”.)
There were several reasons why the father of Fatima was respected by his fellow-townsmen. First, because he came of the best Arab stock, being descended, as was said, from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet. Second, because he was considered a great taleb, or reader. Third, because he had remained in all respects a strict Moslem despite knowing French and working in a French government office.
Now Fatima had from her earliest days been her father’s darling. Indeed, he took almost as much pride in her, his only child, as if she had been that desire of every Moslem heart-a son.
From the very first Fatima had been beautiful, and that is a thing which few fathers can resist. On the seventh day of her life, when the customary feast took place, and she was solemnly bathed and perfumed with orange-flower water, when her hands and feet were stained with henna, and her eyebrows joined in one brown line above her tiny nose-on that day, I say, there was almost as much rejoicing over Fatima as if she had been a boy. And this is a rare thing in Arab society.
Yes, it was important to begin by being beautiful, but when she began to talk it was soon seen that she was clever as well, and this increased her father’s pride in his little Fatima. He made up his mind that she would not be ignorant like other Arab women, but that when she was old enough he would hire a sheikh-a Teacher-to teach her the Koran (the Moslem sacred book), and that later, when she might no longer be seen by a man who was not a relation, he would teach her himself.
Now as he thought about it all, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman considered the sorrows and evils that darken the lives of Moslem women. It pained him to think that in a few years his little Fatima would lose the innocent look in her eyes, and would learn to gossip and quarrel like the idle woman who, even in that respectable house, were always in and out of each other’s rooms, wasting their time, and often talking about things that it would be better not even to think of.
One evening, as he was coming back from the government office where he worked, he was thinking of Fatima’s future, and it surprised him to realize how much it burdened him. He felt so oppressed, that instead of going straight to his rooms, though he could smell his supper cooked and waiting, he went up the stone staircase that led to the roof, and stepped out into the moonlight to get a breath of air. As he walked across the bright white terrace, and leaned his arms upon the parapet, a beautiful scene opened before him. Below the flat-roofed houses, which crowded together down the steep hillside, the great Mediterranean Sea lay gray and silky in the moonlight, and across it, from the shore almost to the horizon, stretched a quivering pathway of silver light. Over this pathway, a long way off, a little sail boat was flitting along like a gray moth.
As he gazed over the shining water, some long-forgotten words flashed across Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s mind: “This is the way, walk ye in it.” Where had he heard them? Somewhere long ago-ah! yes, now he remembered-a low, whitewashed room, domed and pillared, and a lady, tall and gentle ...
“O, father, come, the supper is cooked!” It was a little voice at his side that spoke, and a small, soft hand was slipped into his, with a tinkle of silver bangles as it moved. His little Fatima had come to fetch him. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, still thinking of his boyhood, followed her downstairs, not heeding her chatter, till a familiar word caught his attention.
“Oh, father,” Fatima was saying, “Zenib is here, the little grand-daughter of old Baya who lives on the third floor. And she says that now every day she is going to the house of Lalla Christabel, to work at embroidery with the daughters of the Arabs.”
“What?” cried her father. “What are you saying about Lalla Christabel?” Then, as they neared the door of their room, he gave a slight, warning cough, so that if there were any women there other than his own wife, they would have time to hide, or at least veil themselves, according to Arab custom.
“It is well,” said Fatima, reassuringly. “Only Zenib is here. Come, O Zenib,” as a little figure stole out of the shadows, her scarlet handkerchief making a bright spot of color in the twilight. “Come and tell father about the house of the English.”
“I know, I know,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman as he seated himself cross-legged on a cushion, without taking any notice of his wife, who at once placed before him a steaming dish of onions and potatoes. Then, going back a step or two, she stood and watched him eat, but not before he had muttered a hasty “Bismillah” (in the Name of God) which is the universal Moslem prayer before meals. “I know Lalla Christabel. She has lived in our town for years. She is a good woman, and Inshallah (if God will) you shall go to her and learn embroidery with Zenib.”
Fatima’s face shone with joy. “Is it the truth, O father?” she cried, putting her little arm round Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s neck, and bringing her face close to his.
“Let me alone,” said her father; “for what hungry man wishes for caresses till he has finished his meal? Yes, it is the truth, I will take you myself tomorrow.”
All this time Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had not consulted his wife by so much as a look. Now, however, he half turned towards her and said; “Do you understand, O woman? Tomorrow, I will take our daughter to learn embroidery at the House of the English.”
“It is well,” she replied, “I too have seen Lalla Christabel when she has visited old Baya. She told us a story.”
“What about?” interrupted Sidi Abd-er-Rahman.
“It was about Sidna Isa” (our Lord Jesus), Zubeida replied. But at this name Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s face grew troubled. He let go of Fatima, and rose abruptly.
Then, turning to his little daughter, who stood wondering, said, “When you are older, I will teach you the true way, the way of our Lord Muhammad.” And, drawing the hood of his burnous (hooded cloak) over his head, he went out into the night.
What were Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s thoughts, as he descended the steep cobbled street that led to the Arab cafe? He was thinking of the difference between Christianity and his own faith of Islam, that difference which he had first seen as a boy under Lalla Christabel’s influence, and had tried with more or less success to banish from his mind. This evening’s little episode had stirred up the old memories, and, to his dismay, the conflict threatened to begin again.
“Two religions are at strife in my breast, O woe is me, that my heart should become a battleground.”
In self defense he repeated under his breath the Moslem creed, “La ilaha illa Allah; Muhammadu rasoul Allah.” (There is no God but God; Muhammad is the apostle of God!)
And even as he did so, there stole through the stillness of the night the haunting cry of the muezzin, he who five times a day stands on the gallery of the Mosque, the church of Islam, calling the faithful to prayer. “Allah hu Akbar! Allah hu Akbar!” (God is most great) it began, and Sidi Abd-er-Rahman listened, standing still in the moonlight, till the words of the creed he had just recited rang out also over the quiet town. He sighed deeply, as the tones of Lalla Christabel’s voice, even more haunting in their appeal, seemed once again to change the second phrase: “God is great,” he remembered her saying. “God is great, and Jesus is the Son of God.”
It is here, almost at the outset, that the Islam and Christianity part company. It is a very serious offense for a Moslem to say that God has a Son. Moreover, Moslems are taught that Jesus, even as a Prophet, is second in importance to Muhammed, the sixth century founder of their religion. They also deny that Jesus died, declaring that God caused another to take His place on the cross. These differences between Islam and Christianity were rapidly reviewed by Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, as he walked along. But there was another difficulty which began to trouble him afresh (how well he remembered it from the old days!) It was the knowledge of the fury aroused among Moslems if ever one of their number should “change his religion.” True, a man might believe what he chose, so long as he kept his beliefs to himself, but Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had not attended Lalla Christabel’s classes for several years without learning that real Christianity demands an open confession of faith in Christ. Also it involves breaking with certain Moslem social usages which are connected with religion, notably the annual fast of Ramadan. Only a few years before, a sensation had been caused in the town by the violent persecution of two men who had dared to break the fast openly. One of them had had to flee the country while the other had mysteriously disappeared, and the police had never got to the bottom of the mystery.
And yet with all this, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was going to place his only daughter under those same Christian influences! Well, he had come through them and remained a Moslem. They were good influences morally, and the happiest days of his childhood he knew had been passed in the “House of the English.”
The next day Fatima, clinging to her father’s hand, went happily down the many steps which led to the House of the English. She was rather silent, for she was shy by nature, and the more so today because she was dressed in some of her best clothes. Not her very best-those were of silk and velvet and hand-embroidered lace, and were kept for feast days-but her pink flowered jelabba, or loose robe, her muslin kamidja, or loose bodice, her head-handkerchief of several bright colors, and over all a proper little haik, or shawl, like her mother’s, of soft white stuff with silk stripes in it. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, glancing down proudly at the little figure by his side, kept saying, every half-dozen steps or so, “Do not fear, O my daughter.” Yet he himself had a curious half-feeling of fear, due in some way to those old memories of his boyhood which still kept crowding in on him. A few minutes more, and they were standing in the central court of a tall Arab house like their own, open to the sky, and surrounded by pillars supporting a gallery, and there was Lalla Christabel herself, who happened to be crossing the courtyard at that moment and came towards them with a welcoming smile.
“It is you, O Abd-er-Rahman!” she exclaimed, “you, after so many years!” She spoke in good Arabic, with the foreign intonation which had so fascinated him as a boy. “No, I have certainly not forgotten you! And is this your little daughter?” She held out her hand to Fatima, who kissed it respectfully. But Lalla Christabel stooped low down to the child (she was very tall), kissed, and drew her close to her side.
“My daughter!” The touch of fatherly pride in the young man’s voice was not lost on Lalla Christabel. “She is called Fatima. I want her to come and learn embroidery,” he added, somewhat abruptly.
“I shall be very glad,” the lady replied. “Her fingers are small (caressing them) but I think they will be able to work quite nicely. And you, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, oh! it is good to see you again. What! Do you have to go? Sit down and talk to me a little.” She led the way to a whitewashed room, the floor covered with matting, on which red, oblong cushions were laid in rows. “No, I have not forgotten you,” she repeated, after a pause. “Often I have wondered what had become of you.” And she looked at him a moment, with kind, inquiring eyes, then devoted herself again to the child at her knee. But the glance had abashed Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, and he, too, looked down. “And you are grown up since then, and are married, and a father? If Fatima will take me to the house, I will gladly come and see your wife.”
“I will write the name of the street, and the number of the house,” and Abd-er-Rahman drew from under his burnous a neat French pocket-book and pencil.”
“So you have learned to read and write French,” she said with interest, as he tore out the slip of paper and handed it to her. “And you read in Arabic, too. You are a great taleb, Abd-er-Rahman!”
“I am surprised,” he said, “after all these years, that you have not forgotten.”
“No,” she said again, “I have not forgotten. And you, O Abd-er-Rahman, have you forgotten? Or do you still read in the Gospel about our Lord Jesus? I remember I gave you the Gospel of John.”
“I do not read,” he replied.
“Do you still have the book?”
“It was taken from me,” he said, looking down. She rose and crossed the room to the bookshelves.
“Which is easier for you to read, French, or spoken Arabic?”
“French,” he replied.
She placed in his hand a small book, bound in red. It was the New Testament in French. “You are a man now, Abd-er-Rahman, and can keep your books to yourself, whatever they are. And I will continue to pray to God, as I have prayed all these years, that the light may shine on your soul.”
He took the book murmuring indistinct thanks, and rose to go.
“And this little one,” she said, rising also, “who is no longer afraid, will stay with us this morning, and I will send her safely back to you at mid-day.”
“Remain in health,” he said, and she replied, “God bless you, go in peace.”
Little Fatima, quite content and trustful, remained with her new friend.
The Golden Heart
This was the beginning of happy days for Fatima. After that first morning, she went daily to the English house with Zenib. Lalla Christabel had been right about the little fingers, which soon learned to hold the round embroidery-frame and to put in dainty stitches with the bright-colored silks.
Besides the needlework, the girls were taught to read and to write in Arabic. Not the learned language of the books, but the simple speech of the home and streets. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was greatly delighted when little Fatima, after a few weeks of teaching, was able to name every letter of the alphabet, and also to write it on a slate.
“It is well, O my daughter,” he said, patting her on the head. “If I had sent you to the French school, you would have learned to read and write only in French, and not in your own language.”
But the thing that Fatima liked best of all at the House of the English was the Bible talk which Lalla Christabel gave every morning in the “Arab” room.
The little girls sat on red cushions in a half circle in front of her, and she told them stories so beautifully, and drew such clever pictures on the blackboard with colored chalks that no one could help listening and looking.
These stories were different from any that Fatima had ever heard. There was never anything about djinn (spirits) in them, such as used to frighten her sometimes on the country roads, coming back from a visit to some saint’s. Nor were they mischief-making tales about one’s neighbors, and the wrong or foolish things that they had done or were supposed to have done, like the tales told by the Arab women who used to come and visit Fatima’s mother. The people in these Bible stories were all dead long ago, and yet they seemed as real when Lalla Christabel talked about them, as the people living in the same street, and having the same joys and sorrows as herself.
I said the people in these stories were all dead long ago. But there was one wonderful Person who had not only died, but had risen from the tomb, never to die again, and who was the Friend of all the children of men, big and little, rich and poor, sinful and holy.
And as the days went on, it was the story of this One that most took hold of little Fatima’s mind, and it was for this One that her heart began to long, that He would take her into His arms, and bless her, as He had blessed the children long ago.
Now, as you have seen, Fatima was her father’s darling, and she had always been accustomed to run to him and tell him anything that pleased her. So it was natural that she should want to tell him over again the stories that had so delighted her at the House of the English.
But soon a sad thing happened. One evening, they were sitting together as usual on their cushions beside the low round table, the supper having just been cleared away. Fatima, nestling in her father’s arm, began to tell him in a low, clear little voice the story of the cross. But when she came to the words “Jesus died,” suddenly her father took away his arm, and placing the child in front of him almost roughly, and holding her there: “Understand,” he said, “O Fatima, that Sidna Isa (our Lord Jesus) did not die, on the cross or anywhere else.”
Little Fatima, surprised but not frightened, looked at him with great grave eyes.
“O, father, this is the truth! Lalla Christabel told us, and she always tells the truth.”
“Don’t talk to me,” and Fatima saw her father’s face darken, as it had darkened once before at the name of Jesus. “They lie who say that Sidna Isa died. As for Lalla Christabel, she believes what her father told her. What have I to do with him?”
“What’s the matter, what’s the matter?” asked Zubeida, coming towards them with a cooking-pot in her hand. She had been sitting in a sort of heap, at the far end of the room, washing the supper things in a weary manner. Poor Zubeida was nearly always tired.
“That’s my business, O woman, and not yours,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman gruffly. “Go and finish washing your pots.”
It was not surprising that after this Fatima stopped telling her father the sweet story of Jesus. But her childish faith was not at all disturbed by his denial of the death of the Savior. She knew that the people around her, her father included, did not worry about telling a lie when they thought it would serve their purpose. On the other hand, she felt quite sure, though she could not have explained why, that Lalla Christabel’s word was entirely to be trusted.
It was beyond Fatima’s powers, however, to understand why her father should have been so angry at the idea of the Lord having died. Did not all men die? The really wonderful thing, which it might have been harder to believe, was that He had risen from the grave.
She did not yet know that the Moslems, out of respect for the sinless character of Jesus Christ, reject with horror the idea that God should have given Him over to such a terrible death, and that their religion teaches that, almost at the last, He was lifted up to heaven, and that another (some say Judas) was made to take His place on the cross.
One night, as she was lying nearly asleep on her little mattress on the floor of the inner room, Fatima heard herself and her prospects being discussed by her father and her uncle, her mother’s brother, and, raising herself on her elbow, she tipped her head carefully on one side to hear what they were saying.
Fatima’s uncle, whose name was Saleh, was a strict Moslem, and he was shocked to find that his little niece was receiving Christian teaching.
“Why do you allow it, Abd-er-Rahman?” he was saying. “When the child is a little older, she will change her religion and become a Christian, and there is nothing more troublesome than a woman who does such a thing.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman laughed scornfully. “No woman does such a thing,” he replied.
“I assure you,” said Saleh with warmth, “that in our country only last month, three women cut themselves off from Islam, and were baptized in the name of the prophet Jesus.”
His brother-in-law exclaimed with horror, “And where were their husbands that these women could disgrace themselves in such a manner?”
“One was a widow,” Saleh replied, “and she had been living for some time with the Christians. Another was married, but her husband, curse him, had been bewitched after the same fashion, and went into the water with her. The third was their daughter, a girl only a few years older than Fatima. And who will marry her now, I should like to know? He will never get a husband for her.”
“Fatima is my daughter, and she will never dare to disobey me.” The little listener heard him breathlessly, and noted the pride and strength of will in his deep voice. But she was of the same determined nature, and something like defiance began to grow in her soul.
“Now listen to me, Saleh,” continued her father, “I am not such a fool that I cannot control my own daughter. I am keeping my eyes open, and as soon as Fatima has learned what I mean her to learn, I will take her away and get her other teachers. What do you suppose a child of nine can know about religion? Do you want to know why I send her every day to Lalla Christabel?”
“Why, to embroider, of course, and to read and write the spoken Arabic. Embroidery is all very well; it keeps a girl out of mischief, till she has her own husband and children to look after; but what is the use of that sort of reading? She can’t read the Holy Koran, even if there were any reason why she should! If I were in your place, I should hire a sheikh and have her taught properly.”
“Not so fast, my brother, not so fast,” replied Sidi Abd-er-Rahman. “As I told you before, I am not such a fool after all. Of course, I could get Lalla Yamina to teach her embroidery. I should have to pay her for the lessons, but what is that to me? And I could hire a sheikh to teach her to read the Koran. But Lalla Yamina is a wicked old gossip and I will not have Fatima learn her bad ways. And as for the Koran, I know it as well as you, brother, and I tell you this, it is very well for men like you and me, but it is no book for women and children.
“On the contrary, the books that are read at the English house, though they contain some lies-but what story does not?-these books are good books, and the people at the English house are good people, and will bring up the child well. No, no, don’t talk to me. I know what I am doing with my daughter.”
“And what,” sneered Saleh, “do you understand by bringing up a child well?”
“I want Fatima,” replied her father, “to be obedient to me; to be honest, and industrious in the house; not to use bad words or scream at her neighbors; and when she is married, to look after her husband and children, and not to play the fool with other men. All this they teach them at the house of the English.”
Saleh was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I must admit that I have not noticed the same thing in my town. And, no doubt, if the women were really to walk in these ways, it would save us a lot of trouble.”
“I never saw such a woman as Lalla Christabel,” said Abd-er-Rahman. “I don’t believe she ever screamed at anyone in her life. And she is a great taleba too. Oh, yes, the Christians’ lives are better than ours. If only they would say the Shahadda (creed) they would get to heaven sooner than we! I should like Fatima to be like Lalla Christabel. In short, brother, I want her to have a Christian character, but not to be a Christian.”
After this, the two men became silent, and in a few moments Fatima was asleep.
One day Lalla Christabel sent to bring Fatima to her study, a quiet, bright room built on the flat roof, the walls of which were lined with books, pictures, and maps of North Africa.
Lalla Christabel was seated at her writing-table with a letter in front of her, and in her hand was a small miniature painting in a mother-of-pearl frame.
“See, Fatima,” she said, “this is a picture of my very dear friend in England.”
Little Fatima looked at it a long time with her grave eyes. “She is a beautiful lady,” she said at last.
It was certainly a sweet face that looked at her out of the faintly-colored picture. The blue eyes in particular charmed Fatima, accustomed as she was to the brown ones of Africa. They were not quite smiling, she thought, but looked ready to do so.
“This lady,” said her friend, “who loves you, Fatima, and prays for you too, is longing to know, as she writes in her letter today, that you have trusted in the Lord Jesus as your Savior and given your heart to Him.”
There was a pause, then the child said simply, “Yes, I have.”
Lalla Christabel hugged her tightly. “Hamdullah,” she murmured, kissing the soft cheek, “Hamdullah!” which is the sweet-sounding Arabic for “Praise God.”
Then, to Fatima’s surprise, she placed in her hands a tiny packet. “It is her gift,” she explained, “to be given to you when you could say the words that I have now heard from your lips. Open it, Fatima.”
With trembling fingers, Fatima did so. Inside was a tiny golden heart on a chain.
For a moment, she was speechless with surprise and pleasure. That this beautiful lady should have sent to her, an unknown one, such an undoubted token of love!
“This little heart for you, O Fatima,” said Lalla Christabel, “is a picture, isn’t it, of your little heart for Jesus? That is the meaning of my friend in giving you this gift.”
“I will wear it always, always,” cried the child, as Lalla Christabel clasped it round her neck.
The Test
Lalla Christabel now became a frequent visitor in Fatima’s home. Zubeida’s wistful face took on a new expression as she listened to her gentle teaching. From the first, she drank in every word, so that Lalla Christabel was soon able to pass from the simpler Bible stories to the deeper teaching of the Lord’s death, and the power of the precious blood to cleanse from all sin.
So it was not long before Zubeida, too, opened her heart to the Savior, and found in Him a Friend and Comforter such as she had never dreamed of in her poor, almost loveless life.
It was beautiful to see the change in Zubeida after she had made this great discovery. Even Sidi Abd-er-Rahman noticed the new brightness in her eyes, and the gentleness of her voice and manner. Up to this time, she had often been irritable with him, and although this was mostly due to ill-health, yet to Sidi Abd-er-Rahman it seemed unjust in the extreme, for he considered himself a very good husband, as, indeed, comparatively speaking, he was.
“O, Zubeida, this is a very good dish that you have prepared for me,” he remarked once at the noon meal.
Zubeida beamed with happiness, for she had taken special pains with its preparation, in order to please her husband.
“The last time I had it,” continued Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “there was not enough pepper, and as for the onions, I could scarcely taste them. How is it that you have cooked so much better lately? “
Zubeida became bold. For some time she had been praying for strength to confess Christ to her husband, and now suddenly the strength seemed given.
“I do it to please our Lord Jesus,” she replied, “and since I have given my heart to Him, He helps me with my cooking.”
There was a pause. “The dish is excellent,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, for he could think of nothing else to say. Then he remembered his own words regarding his little Fatima. “I want her to have a Christian character but not to be a Christian.”
But could Zubeida really be thinking of “changing her religion?” “No matter,” he muttered to himself, as he put on his burnous and went off to the café. “No matter, she is only a woman!”
Poor Lalla Dorothy was having a bad time. She was Lalla Christabel’s young helper who taught the native embroidery to the little Arab girls, and since quite early morning everything had been going wrong. To begin with, the sirrocco was blowing, the hot wind from the desert which always gave her a headache. Then Lalla Christabel had been obliged to go out, and had left her to give the little girls their Scripture lesson. This made her nervous, for she knew that her Arabic pronunciation still amused her pupils, especially the younger ones.
Worst of all, the children were determined to be naughty. Three or four embroidery frames were pushed on to her lap, their owners all clamoring for attention at the same time.
“I am not coming to embroidery tomorrow,” said the biggest girl, with a meaning look at the others, some of whom laughed rudely.
“And why not, O Yamma?” asked Lalla Dorothy. “We have a feast in our houses,” two or three answered at once.
“Do not scream, O my daughters,” said Lalla Dorothy. “What feast, then, is this?”
“It is the Mouloud,” replied Yamma, with a defiant look. “The Birthday of the Prophet.”
The look was lost on Lalla Dorothy, whose head was bent over an embroidery-frame. But now Yamma took up a familiar strain, the rest joining in mischievously, one after another.
“Jesus and Muhammad are keef-keef (the same)! Jesus and Muhammad are the same!” Little Fatima had laid down her frame, and sat quite shocked, looking now at Lalla Dorothy, now at the young rebels at her feet.
“O Yamma, you know this is not the truth,” Lalla Dorothy said gravely. She had hoped great things for Yamma, and her fair young face flushed with disappointment. “Do me the favor of being quiet.”
“It is the truth, Yamma has the truth!” cried the chorus of excited voices, while little Zenib chimed in, more in bravado than anything else.
“Jesus is good, and Muhammad is good! The same thing! Both are good. This is the truth. The truth, O Lalla Dorothy!”
Poor Lalla Dorothy did not know enough Arabic to argue the matter, so she could only shake her head sadly, and command silence.
But when Lalla Christabel heard of this little incident, she quite understood. “It is just the mouloud coming on,” she said consolingly. “They are always restive at these feast-times.” And she arranged that Lalla Dorothy should take the children to the seaside on the chief day of the feast, because some of the proceedings are such that they are better away from them.
“Fatima’s mother will certainly allow her to go,” said Lalla Dorothy.
“I am not so sure about her father,” Lalla Christabel replied.
Lalla Christabel was right. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman would not hear of Fatima’s being away on the great day of the mouloud. He was determined that she should keep the feast, and Zubeida also.
For some time past, he had been growing more uneasy about the teaching which his wife and daughter were receiving from the Christians. Zubeida’s words, though he had never mentioned them again, lingered uncomfortably in his mind. Moreover, his brother-in-law, Saleh, from his distant home in the mountains, had taken the trouble to write him a long, warning letter on the same subject.
“Now,” thought Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “at the mouloud it shall be seen by all that my wife and daughter are good Moslems. Not one item of the feast shall be left out in my house. My wife shall go with the other women to the baths, the cemetery and the tomb of the marabout (pronounced marraboo, a Moslem “saint”). Fatima shall have the best toy that I can buy her, and as many sweets and cakes as she can eat.”
On the first evening of the feast, when they go with candles to the special service in the mosque, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, coming in from the French town, produced a cardboard box from under his burnous and handed it to Fatima. After much unwrapping of tissue paper, a beautiful doll appeared dressed in the latest Parisian style, and able not only to shut and open her eyes, but to walk across the floor, and to say, with a charming doll-accent, “Oui” and “Non,” “Merci,” and “s’il vous plait.”
No need to ask if Fatima was pleased. Laying for a moment her precious new baby in the box, she flung her arms around her father’s neck.
“I love you, I love you!” cried the child. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman took her on his knee.
“And I, do I love you, O Fatima?” he asked, looking into the glowing face.
“Yes, father,” she replied, nestling against him.
“Would I ever beat you, O my daughter?” he went on, after a pause.
Fatima was surprised. “Oh, no, father,” she replied at once. “Certainly you would never beat your daughter.”
“Because I love you, O Fatima, I would beat you, but only for two reasons. First, if, when you are older, if you refuse to marry the man that I choose to be your husband; and secondly, if you ever change your religion.”
“What does that mean, father, to change one’s religion?” asked the child.
“No matter now,” he replied, relieved. “You will know when you are older. Tomorrow, you will take your new doll, and go with your mother to the baths. The next day, you will visit the marabout in the country. This is the children’s feast, and I want my daughter to have a happy time.”
Poor Zubeida, cooking at the other side of the curtain, had overhead the conversation between Fatima and her father, and had understood better than the child what Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was driving at. She was far from well, and her hands, usually so deft, trembled as they kneaded the semolina.
A few hours earlier, Lalla Christabel had called, and Zubeida, of her own accord, had told her that she did not wish to go to the marabout as was the custom during the feast.
“I do not want to walk in two ways,” she had said simply. “The way of Christ is best, and I wish to walk in that only.”
Lalla Christabel, rejoicing in the clear light that had come to Zubeida’s soul, told her that she must expect her husband to be angry; and together they prayed that strength would be given for the coming trial.
The next day an opportunity came to tell her husband. Missing a little silver case which she had been in the habit of wearing around her neck, he asked abruptly, “Where is your charm?”
“I have put it away,” she replied.
“And the paper that was inside, that the marabout wrote for you when you were ill?”
“It is burnt,” she said, looking full at him. “O, my husband, I have no more need of charms, and I do not wish ever to go to the marabout again. Jesus is my Savior now, and He can do for my body all that the marabout could do, and also very much more.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had a good deal of self-control, but his face grew white as he looked at his wife.
“Don’t be a fool, Zubeida,” he said, keeping himself with an effort from seizing hold of her. “You know what is in front of you; do you wish to die, burning the marabout’s writing just at this time? Now understand, tomorrow I will give you money, and you will go with the rest to the marabout, and ask him to write you a fresh paper,” and, without waiting for an answer, he strode off out of the house.
“She won’t dare to disobey me,” he said to himself, as he went towards the café. “What! Should it be said that Abd-er-Rahman ben el-Hadj Abd-er-Rahman could not govern his own house?”
Zubeida Remains True to the End
On that morning, many of the women in Zubeida’s house went to visit the graves of their relatives in the Arab cemetery. To the younger children, who knew little of sorrow, this was a pleasant enough outing, as indeed it was to many of the women also, for it meant getting away from their hot and stuffy houses, and enjoying a little outside life. Most of them, however, young though they might be, had lost one or more babies, and the mourning over the little graves was only too real.
Fatima had a little brother buried there, and, as they approached the cemetery, her mother stopped to buy a sprig of green to put on his grave. Fatima, too, bought a bunch of yellow jonquils from the same stall, but one flower she drew out from among the rest, and placed it, Arab fashion, behind her ear.
It was a wonderfully lively scene through which they passed on the road leading to the cemetery. Between the rows of eucalyptus trees a stream of women, dressed in freshest white, was passing to and fro, with little red-capped boys darting in and out, and girls in bright trousers, jelabbas (loose tunics), and head-handkerchiefs. By the roadside were groups of street musicians, playing on drums, reed flutes, and the two-stringed snitra; while here and there a wild-looking man was reciting verses in praise of Muhammad.
When they reached her baby’s grave, Zubeida sat down heavily, for the walk had been too much for her. She was almost too tired to move on to the bright-colored rug which Fatima spread for her on the grass. Without speaking, she handed the green branch she had brought to the child, who placed it carefully in the little round hole at the head of the grave. As Fatima looked up, she saw Lalla Dorothy standing beside her.
“Your mother is ill,” Lalla Dorothy said sympathetically, and, sitting down beside her, she put her arm round Zubeida.
“She is tired,” said Fatima; “every day she is tired. But, see, she is already better. This is the grave of my little brother Omar,” Fatima added. “Come, and I will show you the graves of my grandfather and my uncle.”
They walked hand-in-hand, in and out among the rough pathways and white and blue-tiled graves, with here and there a plaster dome topped by a crescent. Lalla Dorothy tried to read the Arabic writing on the tombstones, but it was the Arabic of learned books, and she could only make out a little here and there. The two familiar words she did keep on seeing were, “Allah” and “Muhammad.” But never the sacred name of “Jesus.” And a verse she had read somewhere kept ringing in her head: And I dream of a night in lands afar, Where dawning is scarce begun, And still the crescent, and still the star, But never the risen sun.
(The crescent is the emblem of Islam and the star of the Turkish Empire.)
It was hot, and they sat down for a few minutes in the shade of a group of cypress trees. Lalla Dorothy began to teach Fatima a text from the gospel of John, which she had set to a strain of Arab music, picked up from a flute-player in the street Kool min yamin bee Ma yemoot shee Abadan.
(“Whosoever believeth in Me shall never die.”)
Returning to the baby’s grave, they found Zubeida putting together the rug, water-pot, etc., which they had brought from home, intending to spend some hours in the cemetery.
“I am better,” she said feebly, “but I think I will go home.”
Lalla Dorothy walked with them to the end of their street. “Don’t forget the words we have been singing,” she said to Fatima, as she kissed her good-bye.
Notwithstanding her husband’s resolve, Zubeida never went to the marabout’s again.
As Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was leaving the café late in the afternoon, a messenger came hurriedly towards him, announcing the glad news of “the filling of the house;” in other words, that a new little member had been joined to the family. Adding, to the father’s special joy, “A son, O Sidi!”
Arrived at his home, he found little Fatima seated on a cushion, very solemn and important, nursing her new brother, whom old Baya had just placed in her lap. The rest of the chattering women, hearing a man’s step, had disappeared, like rabbits into their holes. Fortunately, the doings of the feast would keep them out of the way for the remainder of the evening.
Poor little new brother, whom Fatima fondled with such a wondering tenderness! Old Baya shook her head meaningfully, as she held him up for his father’s inspection.
“And Zubeida?” he asked.
Baya shrugged her thin old shoulders. She was by no means in a hopeful state of mind. Little Fatima, whose thoughts till now had been occupied with the baby, was seized with a sudden fear. Going over to where Zubeida lay, she slipped her hands into her mother’s.
Zubeida opened her tired eyes. “Lalla Christabel,” she whispered.
Fatima slipped out of the room, and, forgetting the gathering darkness, ran down the steep streets to the House of the English.
Lalla Christabel, on hearing of the bad opinion of old Baya, at once sent for the French lady doctor, and then, taking Fatima’s hand, she went home with her, without giving a thought to the fact that it was supper-time, and that she was very tired.
Her presence was a great comfort to Zubeida, who had herself no hope of recovery; and, knowing what is expected of Moslems when dying, was afraid that in her weakness she might be induced to say the Muhammadan creed, which some believed to be a sort of passport to paradise.
Lalla Christabel did not leave till the doctor arrived, and Zubeida already seemed better. But in the middle of the night Fatima, who had fallen asleep against her will, was awakened by excited voices. The room was full of women, pressing round Zubeida’s bed, trying to rouse her, taking her by the hand, calling on her to open her eyes, and repeating in tones, angry, coaxing or entreating.
“Say the shahadda! Say the shahadda!”
There was a lull, as they made way for Fatima. Kneeling down at the head of the bed, the child whispered, “Yimma!”
Zubeida opened her eyes, which were full of love and longing as they rested on Fatima. “The baby is gone,” she said peacefully, and I am going, too-to-”
There was a pause. “Say the shahadda!” whispered old Baya.
Zubeida’s lips moved. The women leaned forward, breathless. But the sound came full and clear-”JESUS!” And this was Zubeida’s last word.
Very early the next morning, little Fatima went to the House of the English and asked to see Lalla Christabel. The English maid who opened the door had been told not to let the children in before half-past seven, but, seeing by the distressed little face that something was wrong, she took the child’s request upstairs at once.
Lalla Christabel was having coffee in her own room, and immediately sent for Fatima. She was not surprised at the sad news which the little girl just managed to give her, before breaking down altogether.
Lalla Christabel took her in her arms. All the great motherliness of her heart went out towards the weeping child.
Gradually the sobs ceased. “She never said the shahadda,” said Fatima at last. “They tried to make her, but she would not. She said that she was going to Jesus, and as soon as she said it, He took her.”
“And the baby?” Lalla Christabel asked.
“Dead,” said Fatima, and a great sob overcame her again. “And the women,” she added presently, “the women said it was because mother put away her charm and the writing that the marabout gave her. That is not true, is it?”
“No, that is not true,” said Lalla Christabel. “The only thing that is true is, that our Lord Jesus loves your mother, and your baby brother, and has taken them to be with Himself. All little children are safe with Jesus, and all the big people who put their trust in Him. Do you remember what He said to Martha, ‘He that believeth in Me shall never die’?”
Little Fatima repeated the text softly. These words, and the loving voice and arms of her friend, were a wonderful comfort to her. She clung to Lalla Christabel’s hand all the way down to the street door.
“I will come this evening,” said her friend, “and then I shall hope to see thy father.”
Those who have passed through the same sorrow as our little Fatima will understand what a dreadful day this was to her. Before it was over, the body of the dear mother and her little one had been laid to rest in the Moslem cemetery. Hour after hour, the women were in and out of Fatima’s home, wailing piteously for their dead sister, knowing nothing of the heavenly home that had received her, nor of the sweet welcome of the Lord Jesus.
Mingled with the voice of mourning came many comments on Zubeida’s refusal to say the shahadda, and on her discarding of the Moslem charms. Some bemoaned these, as it seemed to them, fatal mistakes; some abused Lalla Christabel and her teaching; one or two, and amongst them old Baya, held to it that Lalla Christabel was a good woman, and that it was a pity she would not crown her piety by herself saying the shahadda.
Little Fatima, weighed down with grief, yet nursing in her heart a comfort of which they knew nothing, sat very still, hour after hour, on a cushion by the mattress where her mother had lain, not saying a word except when she was spoken to.
Saleh’s Plan
Sidi Abd-Er-Rahman was more deeply moved than he would have supposed possible by the death of his wife. A thoughtful man, he had read a good deal on the subject of marriage, and the place that women ought to have in society, and like many educated Moslems of the day, he felt that family life, and therefore national life also, can only be at its best where a man is the husband of one wife, and of one wife only.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had always been true to this belief, though he was rich enough to have taken a second wife (Moslem religious law permits a man to have four wives), if he had so chosen. He found it the easier to do his duty in this respect, because he was really interested in his work, and in his spare time was a keen reader. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was singularly free from low tastes, and although he went daily to his cafe, he was known there as a serious, silent and reserved man.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman knew, and admitted it to himself, that his seriousness, and his Christian-like ideas of marriage were to be traced back to his early boyhood under the influence of the English lady, Lalla Christabel. Her love and devotion to the Moslems had impressed him as nothing else could have done. The personality of Lalla Christabel had captured his boyish imagination. She seemed to understand boy-nature so well, and then she was such a great scholar, who could read fluently in English, French and Arabic.
With all this, however, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was not inclined to become a Christian. What he wished was, that Moslems, and especially Moslem women, should learn to live good lives, such as these English Christians lived, and yet remain true to the beliefs of Islam and the members of its great brotherhood, scattered as it was among so many nations. Zubeida, as we have seen, had just begun to make him uneasy in this respect, when she refused to go to the marabout or wear her charm. Now she was dead, and he had forgiven her, and remembered only how sweet and gentle she had become since giving her heart, as she expressed it, to the Lord Jesus.
Abd-er-Rahman would not mention this remark of Zubeida’s to anyone, not even to little Fatima, during those sad days, when she came and nestled in his arms, longing more to comfort than to be comforted by him, though her own heart was aching sadly.
As time went on, several troubles pressed upon his mind. First, what was to happen in his home now that the wife and mother was gone? In these North African houses, inhabited by a number of families, unmarried men and widowers are not welcome. Fatima was too young to take upon herself the cares of a family, and, besides, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman wished her to go on with her classes at the English house. The time would soon enough come when she would have to be veiled (At about eleven years old girls are veiled, and soon afterward they are secluded in their homes), and not be seen going constantly to and fro through the streets.
He hated the thought of marrying again. It was spring-time, and the weather was too warm for the season of year; he felt weary and depressed. In his weakness, the words which had occurred to him on the roof in the moonlight, now nearly a year ago, kept repeating themselves in his head, to his worry and annoyance: “This is the way, walk ye in it.”
“This is the way, walk ye in it.”
“What is the way?” Sidi Abd-er-Rahman asked himself angrily. Once or twice he thought he would go to Lalla Christabel, and complain to her that the words she had taught him were getting on his brain. But he knew very well what her answer would be.
One day, he received a letter from his brother-in-law, Saleh, which lifted for a time the cloud from his brow. Saleh had heard of a well-paid post in the town, and had made up his mind to sell his house and bring his wife and family to live in the Kasbah. “And inshallah (If God will), O my brother,” the letter continued, “we two will join our households in one, and my wife shall cook for us all, and look after your little daughter, in the place of her mother who is dead.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was not hard to persuade on this point, but little Fatima heard the news with mixed feelings. She had never seen her aunt, and was terribly afraid of being screamed at, or even beaten by her. She knew too well that Zubeida’s gentle ways were not the ways of all women in the Arab town.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman determined that he would consult Saleh about his state of mind, which was becoming more and more heavy and sad. As it happened, however, some weeks passed before his brother-in-law could arrange his affairs and come up to town. With a curious pressure, almost against his will, he found himself longing to go and confide his troubles to Lalla Christabel.
He went one evening after supper. A good-looking boy of the wealthier class opened the door. From the room just inside came a buzz of voices. The boys’ class was there, learning to read in the Arabic gospel.
Lalla Christabel came out at once.
“You are past this now,” she said with a smile, pausing to look back with him for a moment at the red caps bending over the books (Arabs keep on their caps and take off their shoes when coming indoors).” But it brings back old times to you, does it not? Abdullah,” (to the boy who had opened the door), “you are mullah (master) here till I come back.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman made Fatima his excuse for coming. “I am pleased,” he said abruptly, “with the work she does, and she is a good girl. She is better than when she came to you at first. I want my daughter to grow up to be a good woman.”
“I know,” said Lalla Christabel. The sympathy in her voice and look brought a rush of feeling to Abd-er-Rahman, and he said what he had never intended.
“If I should die,” he muttered, “will you take my child, and be a mother to her? I am not poor,” he added apologetically, “I would arrange for payment. Will you take her then, O Lalla Christabel?”
“Indeed, I will,” she replied gently. “I love your Fatima. But Abd-er-Rahman, why do you speak like that? Inshallah, you have many years yet to live.”
“Inshallah,” he replied dully.
“Poor fellow,” she said, compassionately. “Your spirit is narrow, and your heart is heavy. You are very lonely without Zubeida. But she is at peace, I know. At peace, with God-and you will see her again, if you will walk in the way that she walked, and that leads to where she is.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman started and looked up.
“This is the way, walk ye in it!” he exclaimed. “Every day, every hour, I hear these words in my head.” “God speaks them,” she replied gently.
He was silent.
“There are other words,” she continued in her quiet voice. “Our Lord Jesus said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.’”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman felt no thrill of response, but he also felt no resentment. Rather a sense of peace and resignation stole over him, like ointment upon a wound.
“Come back soon, Abd-er-Rahman,” said Lalla Christabel, as she saw him out at the door.
But much was to happen before they met again.
The worst of Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s depression was soon over. His work kept him busier than usual at the office, and then there were things to be arranged in preparation for the arrival of Saleh. Added to this, the weather had changed for the better, and everyone who had been languishing in the sirrocco took courage and pulled himself together. The sky was clear and blue, and a fresh breeze blew through the Arab town.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, however, was still thin and pale, and looked older than he had done. Saleh, fresh from the country, was shocked at his brother-in-law’s appearance.
If he had not had interests of his own to serve, Saleh would certainly have advised Abd-er-Rahman to find another wife. However, the sale of his place in the mountains had not brought him in as much as he expected, and he thought it would be cheaper for the two families to live together. He knew Abd-er-Rahman well enough to feel sure that, if he were to marry again, he would prefer to have his house to himself. Therefore Sidi Saleh “advised his head” (as the Arabs say) as to another cure for his brother-in-law’s melancholy. After keeping his eyes and ears open for a few days, especially at the cafés, he felt quite sure that Abd-er-Rahman’s trouble was, apart from the loss of his wife, a religious one.
“Marriage and religion,” mused Saleh to himself, as he smoked his water pipe outside the Arab café, and watched a game of dominoes going on at his feet, “Marriage and religion are the two great things in a man’s life. As it does not suit me that my brother should marry again at present, I must turn his attention to religion.”
As soon as he saw his chance, Saleh introduced the subject.
The Fear of the Veil
“I see,” remarked Saleh to his brother-in-law, one night after supper, “that you are still going to the House of the English.”
Now this was a lie, for what Saleh specially wanted to know was whether Abd-er-Rahman was still going there. He looked at his brother-in-law closely as he spoke, and thought that Abd-er-Rahman almost started.
“I go there,” he replied evasively, “to ask after the progress of my child in reading and needlework.”
“Of course, of course,” said Saleh. “And sometimes you stay to read awhile, like the other men who go there?”
“Not at all,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman. “When I come back from my work I am tired. I don’t care to go out in the evening.”
Saleh saw that his brother-in-law was on his guard.
“It must be very interesting,” he remarked tactfully, “to read the gospels with such a great taleba as Lalla Christabel. I should not be at all surprised, brother, at your doing so. But, of course, a man of intelligence can read quite as well at home. I see you have one of their books there, the gospel of John.”
“I don’t read it,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman.
“Give it to me,” said Saleh. “Ah!” in a tone of superiority, turning over the leaves, “this is not good Arabic. This is the Arabic, my brother, of women and children, and of ourselves, of course, in the common affairs of life. Not the Arabic of the Holy Koran, of the Prophet (upon whom be peace). I must say I should not care to read anything in such a poor style!”
“One can buy all the Injeel (Gospel) and the Torat (Old Testament) too, in classical Arabic,” his brother-in-law replied. “Lalla Christabel reads in them herself. When she first came here, she studied for two years under a learned sheikh who had come from the desert, near Tebessa.”
“Listen to me now,” said Saleh. And he began to recite, in a rich, musical voice, the beautiful opening chapter of the Koran, called in Arabic the Fatiha: In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds!
The Compassionate, the Merciful!
King of the Day of Judgment!
Thee do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help!
Guide Thou us on the right path!
The path of those to whom Thou art gracious!
Not of those with whom Thou art angered, nor of those who go astray.
As Saleh went on he became lost, as it were, in the rhythm of the words; he swayed himself backwards and forwards, his eyes half-closed; his face had a rapt expression. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman listened, fascinated; and so did little Fatima, sitting silently with her aunt in the inner room, tenderly nursing her baby cousin asleep in her arms.
Suddenly Saleh stopped.
“So,” he cried, gathering a wealth of meaning, as an Arab can, into the one word, and drawing a deep breath. “What do you think of that, my brother?”
“Good,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “good.”
“Better than the Injeel, eh?”
“Better,” Abd-er-Rahman replied.
“I have heard that recited,” said Saleh, “many a time under the stars, when the caravan stopped to rest beside a well in the desert. On the way to Mecca, brother, on the way to Mecca! You have never been to Mecca?” (Mecca, in Arabic the sacred city of Islam. All Moslem men who have the health and means are expected to make the pilgrimage at least once.)
“Never.”
“You have not visited the sacred mosque, the incomparable Kaaba. You have not kissed the holy stone, the black one which Allah himself set in its foundation in the time of Adam (upon whom be peace) and Eve, the mother of all living! Whiter than snow was the stone at that hour, since when, however, it has turned black by the kisses of the pilgrims! But you, O Abd-er-Rahman, as yet have never donned the ihram, the white robe of the pilgrim to Mecca! At the place of Abraham you have not prayed, nor drunk water from the sacred well of Zemzem; nor run between the hills of Safa and Marwa! The three pillars of Mina you have not stoned, neither the ‘Great Devil,’ the ‘middle pillar,’ nor the ‘first one,’ with seven small stones! Finally, brother, thou hast never yet fulfilled the great duty of a good Moslem, in the sacrifice of a sheep or other animal as the climax of the pilgrimage. How then, O my brother, dost thou hope to stand in the great day of Judgment?”
Abd-er-Rahman hung his head.
“You are young,” Saleh went on, “but who knows? Death may come to a man when he is young, as well as to a woman. You have money, O Abd-er-Rahman, and, of course, you do intend to make the pilgrimage some day?”
“Of course,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman.
Saleh laid his hand on his brother-in-law’s shoulder. A delightful sense of power possessed him. It was not the first time he had seen men yield under the influence of his recitation of the Koran. (The sacred book of Islam, containing some fine passages, among much that is undesirable. It consists of the utterances of Muhammad, compiled and written down by his followers.)
“Come with me,” he said.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman tried to pull himself together.
“Leave me, leave,” he cried, “a man cannot make up his mind all at once to such a step. I have my child, my work at the office-”
Saleh gave an easy laugh.
“Inshallah,” I shall go this year,” he replied, “and you, brother, you will go with me.”
As the weeks went on, Abd-er-Rahman came more and more under the influence of his brother-in-law. Saleh supplied a lack in Abd-er-Rahman, a decision of character which was a support to him. Saleh’s mind was not so deep and thoughtful as Abd-er-Rahman’s, but he was quick and clever, and his emotions were stronger.
Without troubling himself really to study his own religion, he gave himself up easily to the feelings produced by the services in the mosques, the call to prayer repeated five times daily from their minarets or towers, and that wonderful musical recitation of the Koran, either singly or in company with others. He had been to Mecca, and had seen the vast multitudes of the faithful assembled there, free for once from the critical eyes of the Christians.
What had Christianity to show like that? He remembered wonderful scenes in the desert, and the restrained power that breathed in those bowed lines of worshippers, in snowy burnouses, their faces to the ground beneath the glow of sunset. Such were the magnetic influences which kept Saleh a firm believer in Islam.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman did not share Saleh’s emotional delights. He was a more serious thinker. Deep down in his heart, since he was a little boy in Lalla Christabel’s class, was the conviction that true religion must result in right character and right conduct. Deep down in his heart he wanted to be good, and he wanted his fellow-Moslems to be good; to lead, as it were, Christian lives, though at the same time, as he had said about Fatima, not to be Christians.
It was no wonder, as he looked at the men and women about him, at their superstitions and evil customs, at their religious fanaticism, and their immoral lives, and at his own powerlessness to help them, that Sidi Abd-er-Rahman often carried a heavy heart.
It is now time for us to see what little Fatima has been doing and thinking all this while.
Needless to say, she missed her mother terribly, and at first it gave her pain to see her aunt more or less take her mother’s place. This aunt, whose name was Aiccha, was a young and handsome woman, her hair brightly dyed with henna, fond of jewelery and lively clothing, and not particularly fond of her ten-months-old baby-girl. She was kind to Fatima in her own way, being good-natured rather than motherly.
She also found the little girl very useful, and left the baby largely in her care. She herself spent much time in gossiping and drinking coffee with the other women, and in making couscous and various sweets, which the men of the house were not slow to appreciate. Fatima would have felt the change still more, but that she spent a great part of her time at the House of the English. It was Lalla Christabel who really mothered her, and to whom she clung with a child’s deep devotion.
But more and more a new trouble made itself felt in her mind. Ever since Saleh came she had seen less and less of her father. And not only so, but less and less was she able to confide in him. Something, she did not know what, kept them from talking together about her mother. In a vague way, Fatima felt it was the same reason that made them silent about the Bible teaching given to her by Lalla Christabel.
One afternoon, he came into the inner room, where she was working alone. Sitting down, he watched her silently. Fatima lifted an earthen water-pot, and raising her arms, stood on tip-toe to place it on a high shelf. It came upon Abd-er-Rahman suddenly that his little daughter was growing up.
“Come here, O Fatima,” he said. She turned, flushed with her effort, and looking prettier than he had ever seen her. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman held out his arm.
“You are growing into a big girl,” he said. “How old are you, my daughter?”
“I think eleven years old.”
“Eleven,” he repeated, wonderingly. “Why you will be a woman soon. It is certainly time you were putting on the veil.”
A sudden fear came over Fatima. For some time she had lived in dread of this, and she was always glad that she was still small and childlike for her age. One by one, the little girls in the class at Lalla Christabel’s had been veiled for the walk to and fro; and soon after this, one by one they had dropped off, and the sad news spread that they couldn’t come to the house any more.
Abd-Er-Rahman Goes to Mecca
Fatima’s arm was round her father’s neck and, hiding her face, her voice sounded coaxingly.
“Not yet, father,” she pleaded, do not make me wear the veil yet.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was touched. “After all,” he said, drawing her on to his knee,” you are only a little one. But tell me, Fatima, do the boys and men look at you in the street?”
“A little,” she confessed.
“Draw your haik over your face, and never stop to buy sweets, or look at anything.”
“O father,” she said, “I will ask Lalla Dorothy to fetch me in the morning, and to bring me home in the afternoon, as she does the bigger girls.”
“Good,” he replied, relieved, “and, see, say nothing of all this to your uncle.”
Poor Sidi Abd-er-Rahman! But he felt almost justified in hiding something from Saleh, because of the much greater thing, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which he was about to perform at his wish. After a pause, caressing the child, he said: “I am leaving you, my daughter, for a while. Your uncle and I are to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.”
She gave an exclamation of dismay.
“Don’t fear,” he said, soothingly, “I will not be away for very long. I will see many places on the way,” he continued. “Egypt, the land of our lord Moses; Cairo, that great city, with the largest school for Moslems in the world; and Jerusalem.”
“Jerusalem!” she repeated, and the little voice was awed and tender. “Jerusalem! where our Lord Jesus died!”
“Where He did not die,” exclaimed her father. “Don’t you remember, I told you that that was an error on the part of Lalla Christabel? Everyone who has read the Holy Koran knows that the Messiah never died, but that another was sent in his place. Why do you say this thing to me again?”
“I forgot, father,” she murmured.
“Forget all such stories,” he said, “only remember to live as Lalla Christabel teaches you. To tell the truth, to speak only good words, to be diligent, to be at peace with those around but forget all those tales about the Prophet Jesus (upon whom be peace), which differ from the ones that are in the Koran. This is what I command you before I go away, and I know that Lalla Christabel herself teaches you that children are to obey their parents!”
The poor child was puzzled. But, as she cast about for some answer, a step was heard, and Saleh came in. At once Fatima shrank into herself, and, getting up from her father’s knee, she went back to her work.
The boy Abdullah, who had opened the door of Lalla Christabel’s house to Sidi Abd-er-Rahman on his last visit there, was one who would have been noticed anywhere for his handsome face and fine bearing. He was the only son of his father, a well-to-do man living in a picturesque Moorish house on the hills overlooking the bay. The lad was receiving a first-class French education, but on his weekly half-holidays he found time to attend Lalla Christabel’s afternoon classes.
He was one of those natural leaders so often found among boys, and acted from the first as her assistant, keeping the class in excellent order. Abdullah hoped in a year or so to pass on to college, and afterward to be trained as a surgeon. His hands were as neat and quick as his intellect was bright, and he excelled in the handicrafts which were taught at the English house. He was interested too in Lalla Christabel’s Bible-teaching, but as yet he showed no sign of that deeper heart touch which makes a boy turn to the Savior, and submit to Him as Lord and Master all the fresh young powers and energies of his life.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was determined, before leaving for Mecca, to pay a farewell visit to Lalla Christabel. When he arrived at the English house, Abdullah again opened the door. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman looked at him closely.
“Are you not,” he said, “the son of my former friend and school fellow, Abdullah ben Acchour?”
“Abdullah ben Acchour, O Sidi, is my father,” the boy replied, “and he lives upon the hill, at Djenan el Ouarda.”
“Salute your father from me,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “and tell him that I hope to have the pleasure of visiting him before I start for Mecca.”
In Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s mind a plan was already forming, in which Abdullah ben Abdullah was to play a large part.
Lalla Christabel’s face was grave and sad as she entered the room. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman rose stiffly to greet her. It was strange what a hardness had come upon his face and manner since he had spent so much time with Saleh.
“I am very sorry,” Lalla Christabel said when he had explained his plan.
“You do not understand,” he answered. “You are an Englishwoman and a Christian.”
Lalla Christabel, like all who do understand, felt that a great deal was indeed beyond her, and that the deepest things of the soul are known only to God.
“No, I do not understand,” she answered humbly. “But God understands. He knows whether you are seeking Him with all your heart. He knows whether you are the slave of man, or really, as your name says, Abd-er-Rahman, the slave of the Merciful One.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman felt himself convicted, and a dark flush rose to his cheek. In his wretched divided state he had scarcely known what was the real reason of his going on pilgrimage, but now Lalla Christabel’s words seemed to cut clear down between motive and motive, and he felt ashamed of himself, and angry at the yoke that Saleh had laid on him.
Lalla Christabel was not one to take advantage of a sudden emotion. She felt that she had said almost enough. She dared not force him to a decision which could only be partial and passing. One more word she did add, however.
“Your need, O Abd-er-Rahman,” she said, “is God Himself. And I tell you plainly-and in your heart you know-Mecca is the last place in the world where you will find Him.”
It will be necessary now to pass over quickly the months in which the father of Fatima was absent on pilgrimage. It was in the hot days of July that a steamer bore him away from the coast of North Africa, and out of sight on the shimmering sea, together with hundreds of fellow-pilgrims.
Little Fatima’s heart was sad as she stood on the house-top in the early morning and watched the last puff of smoke grow faint upon the horizon. Mecca seemed a long way off, and six months a long time of separation. In a dim way, too, without anyone having told her, she felt that this journey was not for good. Forebodings filled her heart. Worst of all, Lalla Christabel had gone away for a much needed rest, and the Mission was closed till October.
Fatima was growing very fast, and this, added to the heat of the summer, made her languid and tired. Moreover, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had left orders that his daughter was not to go out alone, except into the one or two streets close to her home. These streets were hot and stuffy. Fatima could no longer go to the public gardens with her little friends, to enjoy the shade of the palms and the cool splashing of the fountain.
But the months passed; autumn came with its refreshing rains, and the scorched hills above the town grew green with the new grass. Best of all, Lalla Christabel came back, followed soon by Lalla Dorothy fresh and rosy from her English home.
Lalla Christabel now found an opportunity of having several talks with Fatima. Knowing that the time would soon come, in the ordinary course of things, that the little girl would be veiled and secluded in her home, and feeling also that Sidi Abd-er-Rahman would come back from Mecca a much stricter Moslem than he went, she took occasion to speak to her on matters which, in happier lands, are put off till a much later age.
She talked to her of marriage, and of her own wish and constant prayer that a husband might be found for her who had also given his heart to Christ.
She explained to her how much better it would be if she could persuade her father not to give her in marriage until a year or two later than is the custom among the Moslems of North Africa. (16 is the lowest legal age under the French Government, but old-time custom sometimes leads to evasion of this law.)
At last, the morning arrived when the steamer was due which should bring back Sidi Abd-er-Rahman and Saleh from their long journey. For a week the house had been excited, especially as the day on which the travelers were to arrive was the first one of the mouloud.
Everything was scrubbed and polished; the walls were freshly painted white, and as for the washing of garments, one could scarcely walk across the roof, so intersected was it with clotheslines, hung with snowy-white clothing or brilliant with all the colors of the rainbow.
Now, however, everything was in order, and the February sun shone upon clean faces and spotless garments, with many new pairs of shoes, head-handkerchiefs, or necklaces of lively beads.
The mouloud! What memories it brought of that sad time, some two years before! Aunt Aiccha, though full of her own plans of amusement, was not a heartless woman, and really wanted Fatima to forget, and to enjoy herself with the other children. She bought her nuts and halouat (sweets) and a new pair of bright green shoes.
“Poor thing, she is thinking of her mother,” she explained to a neighbor who remarked on the young girl’s grave face. “But, on the other hand, she rejoices because she is going to see her father again. Is that the truth, O Fatima?”
“The truth,” she answered, brightening, yet feeling ashamed and surprised that she was not more glad at heart.
For she could not rid herself of the feeling that things would not be the same between herself and her father, that he and she would both be changed, and that the change would not have brought them nearer, but set them farther from each other.
Abdullah Ben Abdullah
At first sight of her father, Fatima felt a sudden relief. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, healthy and well set-up, went straight to his young daughter and embraced her with true fatherly heartiness.
“You are grown!” he exclaimed, “and you are prettier than ever! I am proud of you, O Fatima!”
She flushed with pleasure. Such a flush is the one thing needed in a little Arab girl to make her beauty perfect.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman instantly remembered the boy Abdullah.
The next morning, when Fatima was ready to go off with her aunt to the Turkish baths, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was shocked to see her unveiled. Her little snow-white haik, indeed, was drawn over her head, quite hiding the orange silk handkerchief which in its turn hid the dark curls beneath its tight-drawn folds.
“What!” he exclaimed,” you don’t wear the ajar! It is high time to put it on. See here, Aiccha, this girl must not go in the streets unveiled!”
“So I say,” replied her aunt, “and I have said so to herself, but she would not wear it. She said, that you said she was only a little one.”
“That was months ago,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman. “Look here, binti, I will buy you some of the very finest muslin and lace, and you will make one for yourself. Do me the favor,” he said to Aiccha, “to lend her one for today.”
So for the first time, the thin muslin handkerchief, that means so much, was stretched across the little girl’s face, leaving only the beautiful eyes visible, and tied firmly at the back of her head.
Fatima was not surprised, though it gave her a sudden shock, that her father had insisted on her beginning to wear the veil. And now the worse thing happened. She was no longer allowed to attend the classes at the mission. It was the old story; she was too big to be seen in the streets; in a few years, she would be married; she must now stay at home, and, presently, she would begin to work at her trousseau. But behind all this, was Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s determination to prevent his daughter’s becoming a Christian. He saw clearly that with Fatima’s intelligence, and the Bible teaching she had received at the English house, she could never be a good Moslem, if she were left in the ignorance of Islam common to most Arab women. No, she must learn to read the Koran, and its doctrines, to some extent, must be explained to her. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had come back from Mecca with a new religious zeal, and was eager to teach his daughter, while her mind was still young and impressionable, the tenets of his faith.
He had read somewhere, and was inclined to believe, that no nation can hope to rise above the level of its women, and he saw in Fatima the makings of a woman able to influence others of her sex, and perhaps even the men-folk of her future family. In the hands of such women lay, he felt, the power to bring back the golden days of Islam.
And so the bright child-life passed into the shadow of seclusion which is still the lot of millions of Moslem women.
Next to Sidi Abd-er-Rahman and his daughter, there was perhaps no one connected with the mission, for whom more prayer was made, or on whom higher hopes were set, than Abdullah ben Abdullah. Lalla Christabel, always looking eagerly for one who would stand out as a leader to bring his fellow-Moslems to Christ, could not help feeling that the divine choice had fallen upon this boy.
At the Bible talks, his eye was always bright, his answering quick and to the point. But look as she would, Lalla Christabel could not see in him the slightest sign of that inward struggle which sets in when the soul realizes that to accept Christ means also to break with Islam; that the new wine, if put into old wine-skins, can only burst them, and itself be spilled and lost.
His very frankness baffled her. She would not force his confidence, but waited till he should give her the opening she longed for, to press home the truth to his personal consciousness. Meanwhile, the time was drawing near that Abdullah should leave school, and enter on his college course at the university of Paris.
One day, Lalla Christabel was speaking to the boys about the rich young ruler, who went away from Christ sorrowful because he had great possessions. As her eyes rested on one or another of the young strong faces before her, and especially on that of Abdullah, she pleaded with them, to whom so much had been given of natural power and promise, to come now to the Savior who alone could save, and could make out of each individual life the very best. Suddenly, she saw Abdullah’s eyes fill with tears.
He waited for her after the class. His whole aspect was changed. All the bright insouciance was gone from his face, and he was deeply moved. All the cumulative teaching of the past months seemed to have burst in upon his consciousness.
“Oh, what should I do?” he exclaimed passionately. “I am like that young ruler. I will have great possessions. I will see life and the world. I will learn the secrets of nature and medicine, to bring healing to my people. But if I now confess Christ, all is over. My father will disinherit me, and I will be cast on the streets. What will become of my future? How will I ever be able, as a wanderer and an outcast, to benefit mankind?”
“The Son of Man,” she replied gently, had “not where to lay His head.”
“Oh, Lalla Christabel,” cried the boy, and the storm in his soul seemed to subside, “You have never told me, but I know you gave up the certainty of earthly fame and honor, yes and all your earthly hopes, to follow Him!”
A faint flush came upon his friend’s face. “Jesus beholding him, loved him,” said Lalla Christabel, still so very gently. “I am sure, Abdullah, you will never forget that look.”
There was silence for a few moments. Then, Abdullah spoke. The flush had died from his face and a look of hopelessness came over him. “If it were only my father!” he said with a sigh. “But he is about to marry again, and the bride and all her family are the strictest Moslems.”
“And who is the bride?” asked Lalla Christabel.
“Rucheia bent Ahmed, the sister of Saleh, the brother-in-law of my father’s friend, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman!”
This wedding took place as arranged. Abdullah the younger, though he was obliged to share in the merry-makings which preceded it, felt little interest in them. This was the third wedding of his father that he could remember. Possibly such events were ceasing to be events in his eyes. But his mind was full of the prospect of going to Paris, and his thoughts, it must be confessed, ran rather on the subject of clothes!
Already he pictured himself, dressed as a Frenchman, in a fur coat and great leather gloves, motoring through the snowy streets of that wonderful Paris. What a change from the sunny Moorish villa, with its waving palms and rose gardens!
If Abdullah’s heart remained cold towards the marriage of his father, it was far otherwise with Saleh, the brother of the bride. Saleh had had a great deal to do with bringing about the match. Always on the lookout to strengthen the cause of Islam, he saw the advantage of uniting his family with that of Abdullah ben Acchour, for on his own side there was the religious influence of a long line of marabouts, and, on the other, great wealth, and favor in the eyes of the French Government.
The wedding being over, Saleh now became a frequent guest at Dar-el-Ouarda, and now it was that he began cunningly and skillfully to work for another end which he had long had in view.
He knew that Abdullah the younger was attending the classes at the House of the English; and fearing lest the boy, now so closely connected with his own family, should become a Christian, he determined to spy on him, and find some excuse to stop him going there. He therefore employed a youth, of the name of Ibrahim, to join Lalla Christabel’s Bible Class, under pretense of wishing also to read the gospel.
Ibrahim’s eyes were sharp, and so was his appetite for the substantial sum promised him by Saleh, should his mission be successful. He soon found out that Abdullah had private talks with Lalla Christabel. It was only a step further to catch snatches of what was said, by listening at the crack of the door; and, this accomplished, Ibrahim informed Saleh of the conversations, as well as other trifling matters; adding a few details from his own imagination, and, finally, assuring Saleh that he was quite right, and that Abdullah, if not already a Christian, was certainly on the way to becoming one.
Saleh’s next step was to invite himself to stay for a time at Dar-el-Ouarda, on the pleas of ill-health, and the hope that the change of air would do him good. Once there, he saw a good deal both of the elder Abdullah and the bride, his own sister Rucheia. It was not hard for Saleh and Rucheia, united in aim and of strong personality, to persuade the old man to interfere in his son’s movements, and to do all in his power to keep him from leaving the ranks of Islam.
Abdullah’s father was easier to influence than Sidi Abd-er-Rahman had been. Abd-er-Rahman had a strong underlying moral sense, which had been trained by Lalla Christabel as well as by the reading of Christian books. The character of the older Abdullah had no such foundation. His conscience had long been dulled by self-indulgence. With this slackness of morals, he combined a religious habit which made him keep strictly to the Moslem ritual of prayer, almsgiving and the rest; and a desire to be well thought of which made him abhor the idea of his son’s breaking with the society of Islam, as Saleh now persuaded him was only too likely to happen.
In order to prevent this, Saleh argued that Abdullah should at once marry his son to a Moslem girl and suggested his own niece, Fatima, the daughter of Abd-er-Rahman. As she had now for several years been kept from all Christian teaching, and had been instructed in the Moslem religion, Saleh considered her a safe wife for the young Abdullah.
He thought it best, however, to leave the arranging of this matter to Rucheia. It was enough that he had brought about the first linking of the two families; he did not wish his brother-in-law to suspect him of working for his own ends in the affair. But Rucheia’s influence over her husband at this time seemed to know no bounds.
Abdullah’s Declaration
Marriages now seemed to have become the order of the day, and Saleh to have taken on the character of match-maker. By means of successful trading, he had, within a year of his coming to the town, made a good sum of money, and he now wished to move into larger rooms and have his family to himself. He therefore encouraged Sidi Abd-er-Rahman to let Aiccha find him a suitable wife. The lady was found, the arrangements were made, and, one beautiful summer evening, the bride was brought home-Fatima’s stepmother, amid much excitement and beating of drums.
She was a handsome girl of twenty-one, with a decided will of her own, and somewhat lacking, Fatima could not help feeling, in a sense of refinement. Her voice was loud, and she put together the wrong colors in her clothes. This was because she departed from the pure native style of dress and wore the sort of Arab garments which are trimmed in half-French style, with cheap lace and ribbons. She loved pink, which did not tone with the reddish-brown color she had dyed her hair. She also used too many beads, and too much gilt and tinsel.
She was no housekeeper, and from the first took upon herself to lord it over Fatima, making her do the cooking which she herself disliked. Meanwhile, she spent her time in visiting and receiving the other women in the house, and in doing the heavy gold embroidery with which a certain kind of Arab coat is decorated.
And what about Fatima? In these first secluded years of her young girlhood, she fared better than many others, for she was able to read and write, as well as to make and embroider the clothes for her future wedding; so that, with the housework already mentioned, her time was fully occupied. She submitted with a good grace to the lessons her father gave her in the Koran, that difficult religious book of the Muhammadans, with its beautiful passages which she did not fail to appreciate; while as to those parts which, alas, made very undesirable reading, Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was careful to keep them from her notice. She was allowed to receive visits from her English friends, and sometimes to be escorted, carefully veiled, to spend a few hours in their house. But she was not allowed to attend the Bible classes, and her New Testament and other Christian books were taken from her. Fortunately, however, she knew many passages by heart, as well as a number of hymns, which it cheered her to sing very softly by herself. And she always prayed that those around her, and especially her father, might yet be brought to Christ.
But, at last, the time drew near for her marriage to the young Abdullah, whom she had never seen. And because she always cherished the desire for a Christian husband, should such an one ever appear, and because she had no idea that Abdullah was himself a secret believer in Christ, she determined to make a last appeal to her father for the postponement, at least, of her wedding.
An opportunity came one day when she was alone with Sidi Abd-er-Rahman. He was seated on some low cushions, carefully sharpening a reed-pen, a thing at which his long, shapely fingers were particularly clever. Fatima crept up to him, with the old childish movement, laying her soft cheek for a moment against his. She knew that her father loved her, and that he was feeling already the pang of the coming parting. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman put down the pen, and looked at her affectionately. “What do you want, my daughter?” he inquired.
“O, Father,” cried the young girl, “I beg you, do not marry me to Sidi Abdullah ben Abdullah!”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman frowned slightly. “A woman must marry,” he said, “and Abdullah is a good lad. I would not give you to any other.”
“O, Father,” she pleaded, “let me wait a little longer. Do me the favor, oh do me the favor, not to marry me yet!”
“My daughter, don’t worry,” her father replied kindly. “In truth, there is no cause for such fear. Yours will be a beautiful home and a kind and indulgent husband. I am very much pleased with you,” he went on. “You are more beautiful even than I had hoped. You can read and write, as well as cook, sew and embroider. Abdullah will be a learned and wealthy man, and he ought to think himself lucky to get such a wife. Neither are you ignorant of religion, for I myself have taught you the truths of the holy Koran.”
Fatima was trembling. “Father,” she faltered, “I have studied the Koran according to your will. I know all about Sidi Muhammad. But he is not my prophet. O, father, I have given my heart to the Lord Jesus, and I can never take it back.”
Abd-er-Rahman’s quick temper fired up. “You are a little fool,” he answered roughly.” Put this infidelity away once for all. Otherwise-”
She rose and stood before him, firm, though flushed and trembling, the picture of youthful grace and dignity.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman’s wrath melted as suddenly as it had been kindled. “O my child,” he said, “let me hear no more foolish words; and I on my part will forget and not regard them, seeing you are on the eve of your marriage, and your reasoning is therefore less calm than usual. But, listen, keep silent on this matter to all others except your father. Do not disgrace me, Fatima! You are a woman now, and must walk in the path of Islam. Your husband is a good Moslem, and he will expect it of you.”
It was about this time that Abdullah and his father had a conversation on the same subject. The boy was becoming impatient that definite arrangements should be made for his college course in Paris which had been long delayed. The talk, however, turned out somewhat differently from his expectations.
His father sent for him to the ouest-ed-dar, or central court open to the sky. The floor was paved with squares of black and white marble; in the middle was a fountain playing in a sculptured basin. Goldfish swam in the basin, and the water gave a low, dreamy sound as it fell. The sides of the court, where the gallery was supported on twisted pillars of white marble, were beautiful with Moorish tiles, in soft colors and many different patterns.
Abdullah’s father was reclining on an arrangement of embroidered cushions, between two of the marble pillars. He was a small, shrunken old man, his face had the delicate look of parchment, his hair was perfectly white, his flowing robes were of silk and cashmere, and about him hung a strong odor of musk. On a stand beside him were grapes and sweets, and a tambourine decked with lively ribbons. He received his son graciously. Some minutes passed in meaningless talk; at last, the old man said: “How old are you, O Abdullah?”
“Eighteen,” the youth replied.
“A ripe age to take a wife,” rejoined his father. Abdullah laughed. Accustomed to think of himself merely as a student, and lately almost as a westerner, he was not yet inclined to take his father seriously.
“No, father,” he replied playfully, “what would I do with a wife, and in Paris?”
“She will not accompany you to Paris,” said his father. “During your absences, she will remain with our family. Returning two or three times in the year, you will find your wife waiting for you.”
Young Abdullah began to look serious. “Do you indeed desire me to be married, O my father?” he asked.
“I am an old man,” replied his father. “Allah knows how long I may have to live. Of course, my son, I desire to see you married before I die.”
“And to whom?” asked the boy.
His father looked at him narrowly. “Not to any of these French-educated girls,” he said, meaningly. “No, no, my son’s wife will be none other than a good Moslem!”
Abdullah started, suddenly aware of the pitfall before him. Then, recovering himself quickly, “Are there any other wives to be had?” he asked.
His father shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps,” he said. “At any rate, there are other husbands to be had, but-” with sudden anger, “I will not have my son to be one of them! Is it true,” he cried, turning upon him, “that you are thinking of changing your religion?”
Abdullah flushed, but he faced his father squarely. “Who has been telling you such things?” he demanded, instinctively seeking to gain time. All at once, there flashed across his mind a vision of the white-domed room at the House of the English, and the cunning eyes of Ibrahim fixed upon him. Almost at the same moment he remembered the words, which for so long had haunted Sidi Abd-er-Rahman: “This is the Way; walk ye in it.”
Was it the answer to Lalla Christabel’s prayers? Was it the new, true manhood asserting itself in him? Looking his father full in the face, and with perfect calmness, he replied: “You say truth. I am a Christian!”
Then Sidi Abdullah ben Acchour fell into a terrible passion. From his white lips torrents of words poured forth, which ought to be banished from the Arabic dictionary. At last there came a lull, a sudden weakness, and he lay back breathless on the cushions.
There was a sound from the side of the court, like the jingle of a woman’s anklets. The archways were growing dark, but Abdullah thought he saw a curtain move. The boy clenched his teeth. He hated to think, as he must, that Rucheia was at the back of this plot against him.
“Go!” gasped his father.
And the boy, shaken in nerves but not in resolution, obeyed.
Saleh Plots Again
Abdullah crossed the court, and, passing through an archway, walked rapidly along the garden path towards that wing of the house where his own rooms were. Here all was still and peaceful. The light of the half-moon, low down over the sea, came softly through, the orange-trees. As he neared the door, he became aware of a peaked, shadowy heap on the pavement against the tiled wall. “Ya Mustapha!” he cried.
The heap moved and rose. It was his faithful servant, a youth four or five years older than himself, a native of the southern desert. Mustapha, who had been waiting thus motionless for over an hour, grinned in silence, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight.
He opened the door, and Abdullah went in, also in silence. They passed along a cold stone passage, up one staircase and down another, then up again, Mustapha going in front with a lamp. At last, they came out on the house-top, and, walking half round it in the moonlight, arrived at Abdullah’s private rooms.
There were two of them, and they were connected by an archway covered with a striped woolen curtain. Mustapha expected that his master would settle down to his books in the outer room, which he used as a study; instead, however, he went straight into the tiny bedroom, and, taking the lamp from the servant, “Leave me now, O Mustapha,” he said, “I wish to sleep.”
Mustapha looked at him anxiously. “Ill?” he queried.
“Not ill,” replied Abdullah, with a face paler than the moonlight should have made it.
“Not ill,” repeated Mustapha, with satisfaction and a grin of relief. “Do you wish coffee, O Sidi?”
“I do not wish it.” And, as the servant withdrew, Abdullah flung himself down on the richly-covered mattress which formed his bed.
Meanwhile, Saleh, who had been lurking in one of the rooms opening off the oust-de-dar, had joined the old Abdullah whom he found leaning back upon his cushions, white, and exhausted from his fit of passion.
“Do not trouble yourself,” said Saleh, as he poured out a glass of water, which the old man drank trembling. “Leave me to deal with the boy. Where is he now?”
Saleh had heard from his hiding-place almost all that had passed between the father and son. When he learned that Abdullah had probably gone to his room, “Let him stay there,” said he, “till his head cools.” Whereupon, Saleh followed Abdullah across the garden and upstairs finding Mustapha seated at the outer door, his knees up to his chin, wrapped in his burnous, and listening for the slightest sound from without.
“Dog, son of a dog,” he whispered, shaking him cautiously, “is your master within?”
“Within, O Sidi!”
Whereupon, Saleh crept on tiptoe-he had already taken off his shoes-to the door of Abdullah’s room, locked it, and took out the key.
“Infidel, son of an infidel!” he commanded under his breath, “come away with me!”
Mustapha began to whimper. “I want to stay with my master!” he said, struggling under the hands of Saleh, who had seized hold of him by the burnous.
“Walk behind me, and say nothing, or, by Allah-”
Mustapha followed him down the stairs, still whimpering childishly.
But under his burnous, drawn closely across his face, he hid perhaps the broadest grin he had ever indulged in. For he knew that Abdullah had already escaped, and was now well on his way to the House of the English.
It was a strange hour, almost midnight, when Abdullah arrived at the House of the English. What would the neighbors think to hear such a knocking at that quiet place at such a time? He did not have to wait long, for Lalla Christabel, unlike the rest of the household, had not yet retired to rest. Putting her head out of a window, which from a great height overlooked the street, she was relieved, if surprised, to hear Abdullah’s voice.
“It is I, Abdullah,” he said in a low tone, which yet was clearly heard in the silence of the night.
“Wait a moment, O Abdullah, I will come,” and, taking a lighted lantern from a recess, and, without waking anyone, she went downstairs, and, as quietly as she could, opened the heavy street door.
“I have run away,” the boy said quietly. They went into the white-domed lower room which had once been a private mosque, and sat down in the circle of light made by the little lantern.
Abdullah’s eyes were bright and brave, and Lalla Christabel read their secret. “You have confessed Christ, Abdullah!” she exclaimed. “Thank God!”
“It is finished,” said the boy. “I have broken with my father, and he will never change his mind. I cannot become a doctor, for he will give me nothing now. All I wish is to be baptized at once into the name of the Messiah, and find some work to make my own living.”
“We can get you work,” said Lalla Christabel, “and I feel sure that M. le Cure will baptize you without further delay. But, O Abdullah, Have you counted all the cost? Will your father be content to cast you off, and let you make your own way, or-will he follow you?”
“I don’t know,” the boy replied. “I only want to be baptized at once. When I have passed beneath the waters, I will feel that I have really cut myself off from the old life. My father will feel it too.”
“Thank God, Abdullah!” she repeated. “Thank God for His wonderful grace! But we can do nothing tonight. As soon as the house is astir, I will send for M. le Cure. Meanwhile, I think it will be wise for you to pass the rest of the night next door, in the douira, (little house, annex) with the biskri (water-carrier from Biskra). He is a faithful old fellow, and will ask no questions.”
When Abdullah was safe in the douira, Lalla Christabel returned to her room, but not to sleep. On the eve of baptism, when the enemy is mustering his forces about the soul that was forever lost to him, it behooves the Christian to gather an opposing strength at the throne of grace. Abdullah, too, prayed.
As soon as it was light, Lalla Christabel sent for M. le Curé. She was fully aware of the danger of Abdullah’s father, or someone else belonging to him, appearing at the last moment to prevent the baptism. When the messenger had started, she wakened Lalla Dorothy and the rest of the household, and, briefly explaining the circumstances, asked them to help in making the necessary arrangements.
It was possible, by a system of pipes connected with the well under the central court, to flood a portion of the boys’ classroom, where the floor was a little lower, to a depth of nearly three feet. This the ladies, with Abdullah’s help, succeeded in doing in about an hour’s time; and, just as they had finished, M. le Curé arrived together with an Arab helper, himself a baptized Christian.
This man had brought a set of garments, made in native fashion but entirely in white; and, after embracing the new candidate with real emotion, he invited him into an adjoining room. Meanwhile, a few minutes conversation with Lalla Christabel assured him that Abdullah was ready to be baptized.
Lalla Dorothy stood in the passage by the street door. “Do not open if anyone comes,” Lalla Christabel had said to her, “but call me first, as there may be trouble.”
Suddenly, there was a loud knocking at the door. Lalla Christabel, exchanging a look with M. le Curé, came out of the baptismal room, letting fall the heavy curtain behind her.
“Who is there?” she asked.
“It is I, Sidi Saleh, brother to the stepmother of Abdullah ben Abdullah. For the love of Allah, let me in quickly!” Saleh’s voice sounded choked with emotion.
“It is early, O Sidi,” Lalla Christabel replied. “Perhaps it would suit your convenience to return at a later hour, say eight o’clock. We are not accustomed to receive visitors at sunrise.”
“Nothing but great trouble and necessity,” Saleh replied, and his voice seemed ready to break, would have caused me to come thus early. My sister’s husband, alas, is at the point of death!”
The curtain was pushed aside, and Abdullah, his face blanched, appeared in the archway“What is that I hear?” he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.
Lalla Christabel signed to him to be silent.
“He has sent for his son, who is the apple of his eye,” Saleh went on, in the same grief-stricken tones.
“I am very sorry,” said Lalla Christabel. She looked doubtfully at Abdullah. Was this tale true?
Saleh’s quick ear had caught Abdullah’s footstep. “O, my son,” he almost sobbed. “Open the door and come! Your poor father may have already breathed his last!”
“Alas!” cried Abdullah. “I am the cause of all this! The grief and anger which I made him suffer last night has brought on this illness;” And he rushed to the door and threw it open.
Lalla Christabel stood aside, watching the scene intently. As soon as Saleh saw Abdullah, he fell on his neck, and embraced him with tears and cries.
“O my son, my poor son!” he sobbed. “It is to me you will have to look, when your dear father is no more!”
Lalla Dorothy could not bear the sight of Saleh’s apparent grief. Her lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. But Lalla Christabel, usually so sympathetic, stood immovable. The expression on her face did not change. She simply watched.
“And now, my poor son,” said Saleh, “there is, as you know, not a moment to be lost. A car is waiting at the foot of the steps.”
“But the clothes!” cried the boy.
“No matter about that!” And Saleh threw a burnous over him, which he had brought on his arm.
Abdullah turned a white, distressed face to Lalla Christabel.
“Remain in peace!” he said.
“Remember,” she replied, “that whatever happens, you are His alone.”
Saleh looked up, surprised.
“Yes,” he said, “that is true. He belongs to his father, O lady, remain in peace!” But Abdullah understood.
“He will keep you,” said his friend, as she grasped his hand in parting. “But be careful, Abdullah.”
As they went up the steps, Saleh began to rearrange his burnous. “Just see my state!” he said to Abdullah. “I am indeed overwhelmed with grief! Here is the car. I will tell you all as we drive along.”
To Abdullah’s surprise, after a few minutes the car stopped at the foot of a native street. “Come with me a moment,” said Saleh, dismounting. “I have a message to the sheikh who lives in this second house.”
Abdullah felt a misgiving. But something, he could not tell what, made him get out of the car and follow Saleh.
The door of the house was closed, but it opened without Saleh having knocked.
They entered an almost dark passage. There was a slight scuffle, a smothered exclamation. Then the heavy door banged behind them.
Saleh’s Strange Dream
“Never, never have I seen you look so beautiful!” exclaimed Rucheia.
Much against Fatima’s will, they had dressed her in the clothes she was to wear on the approaching day of her wedding. Many meters of rich satin brocade, of a lovely rose color, fresh from Damascus, had gone to the making of these wedding serouals, (very wide trousers, old Turkish style) which now hung in graceful folds nearly to the ankles. The shoes were covered with gold embroidery. The bodice was of the finest lace-work, of a flower-pattern, and spangled with golden sequins. The head-handkerchief was a harmony of soft colors, interwoven with threads of gold and silver.
The slender figure was loaded with the old family jewelry; great clasps of golden filigree work; heavy earrings, consisting of half-loops of pearls; across the forehead, rows of ancient gold coins; ruby pendants hanging from the neck; bracelets heavy and light, of curious design and workmanship; rings on several of the shapely fingers; one just given to her today, engraved with the family name, and handed down through many generations. And there among them was a tiny golden heart upon a chain.
Rucheia, full of pride, loosened the handkerchief above the chaplet of coins, and let a dark curl or two steal out from beneath the shimmering folds.
She began to make remarks about Abdullah, and the coming happiness of the little bride, which distressed Fatima. Suddenly, to Rucheia’s anger, she burst into tears. Turning from her fiancé’s stepmother, she flung herself down on a pile of cushions, and, covering her face with her hands, sobbed as though her heart would break. Just then the curtain swung aside, and Sidi Abd-er-Rahman came in.
“What is this?” he exclaimed, turning sternly on Rucheia.
“The little fool,” said Rucheia, “is crying because she does not want to get married.”
He sat down beside Fatima, and put his arm around her. The sobs ceased. Sidi Abd-er-Rahman still had a wonderfully soothing influence upon his young daughter.
“Leave us,” he said to Rucheia. When she had gone, “You must be married sometime,” he said. “And if you are afraid, the sooner it is over the better. You will know then that in the case of yourself and Abdullah all such fears are vain. With him, too, you may see something of the great world, a thing which does not happen to many Moslem women.”
“O Father,” she cried, clinging to him, “I am not a Moslem! I never have been one since mother died! I am a Christian as she was, and I do not want to marry any man who does not likewise believe in Christ.”
“Enough of this!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “I will not hear such infidelity from the lips of my own child!” And, as if suddenly possessed by some messenger of the Evil One, he broke out into terrible abuse against Christianity, Lalla Christabel, and the weeping, shaking girl in his arms. Then Fatima’s heart failed her. A dreadful sense of faintness crept over her. Suddenly, she let go of her father, and fell.
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman was not prepared for this sudden movement. He caught at the girl to save her, but, instead, only succeeded in giving her a push, so that she fell with her head against the corner of the oak chest which had contained the wedding garments.
To her father’s horror, Fatima lay still. He shouted for Rucheia, who came running.
“She is dead, she is dead!” she wailed, wringing her hands. “You have killed your daughter!”
In a moment, the room was full of women, weeping and wailing, and surrounding Fatima, who lay motionless.
“I am going for the doctor!” shouted Sidi Abd-er-Rahman.
As he rushed down the steps, he almost knocked over a man who was coming up.
“O Sidi, O Sidi,” exclaimed the latter, who, like Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, was breathless and agitated. “I have a message for you, O Sidi!”
“Then deliver it quickly, or by Allah, I will send you rolling down the stairs!”
The messenger took him at his word, and wasted no time in breaking the news gently.
“Abdullah ben Abdullah,” he said, “on the eve of his marriage, has disappeared. Nobody knows where he is, but it is supposed that he has run away to France and become a Christian. Therefore, the marriage of your daughter, O Sidi, cannot take place at present. Here is the letter from my master, the father of the bridegroom.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman stuffed it into his burnous.
“Leave me,” he cried. “My daughter is ill! No, there can be no marriage for the present!”
On the day that Fatima was declared out of danger, a visitor was announced at the House of the English. It was an old man, small and frail, with a face the color of parchment, but with fine features and brown eyes that were still shrewd and piercing.
The old man was Abdullah ben Acchour, the father of the vanished bridegroom. The story he told would have sounded strange in some ears, but to Lalla Christabel, who listened to it without a word, it seemed natural enough. Such a difference does it make in the mind of a listener to have been day by day behind the scenes in prayer.
Abdullah was taken into the private drawing-room, which, as he seated himself in the largest chair, his flowing silks filled with a delicate perfume. He said that the night before, as he was sleeping in his own chamber, Saleh had come to him, in a state of great terror. The cause of this was a dream that he had just had; and, walking about the room, in wild and excited tones, he had related the whole thing to Abdullah.
He dreamed that he was back in the days when Abdullah the elder had been in business as a rich merchant, and he Saleh, was seated with him in his counting-house, counting out money, coin by coin, into a great number of linen bags. Presently, he came upon a sack, not of linen like the rest, but of heavy Damascus silk, on which was embroidered in Arabic, “Belonging to the Prophet.” “What!” thought Saleh, “and this villain my brother-in-law, who is already as rich as two men, has stolen the Prophet’s money and placed it in his own treasury! But, by Allah, I will take it and keep it for the Prophet (upon whom be peace), so will the weight of this money bring me great merit at the Day of Judgment!”
So he took the bag, Abdullah’s face being for the moment turned away, and placed it in a dark room in a certain house in the Arab town, locking the door for greater safety, and putting the key in the pouch hanging at his girdle. And he kept returning to the room to see that his treasure was safe. But, one day, just as he opened the door and looked in, behold, the sack of gold rose up before him, and, passing through the window (the iron grill of which did not prevent it) it flew far away over the sea, so that his eyes could not follow it in its flight.
“Then a great trembling seized upon me,” continued Saleh, “as you see it still, my brother, and I was forced to come and tell my story in your ears.”
“And what,” I asked, “do you take to be the meaning of this dream?”
“Truly,” replied Saleh, “nothing but the misery in which I find myself would have induced me to confess to you that, a week ago today, I shut up your son Abdullah in a dark room in the second house of the street of Sidi Okbah.”
“That was the dream,” said Abdullah, stopping and wiping his brow.
“Yes?” said Lalla Christabel, with a far-away and yet intent look in her eyes; and then she waited.
“One thing more I must relate,” went on Sidi Abdullah after a pause, “not only on the day that the sack flew away, but on all other occasions when my brother-in-law went to look at it, he found it labeled, not as before, ‘Belonging to the Prophet,’ but with these words instead, ‘Belonging to the Lord Jesus.’”
“It was a beautiful dream,” Lalla Christabel said. “And what did Sidi Saleh think was the meaning of it?”
“He has no doubt in his heart,” replied Abdullah, “but that he must let my son go free to walk in the way that he himself has chosen, although this is a new way, and not that of our fathers.”
“And you, are you willing also to set Abdullah free?”
“What can I do?” asked the old man pathetically. “Things are changed since I was a boy. Moreover, I see that the way of peace is not with us Moslems, but with Christians such as thyself. Why should not the way of peace be the Way of Truth also? But God knows best.”
“The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Lalla Christabel answered gently. “All this Jesus claims to be. All this I have proved Him to be. And there are many thousands of others, who can tell you the same thing. All, I think, who having heard the glad tidings, have been enabled to bow their hearts beneath His will; and who, in saying before God, Inshallah, think also of Jesus Christ.”
A sort of tremor passed through the old man’s frame, and Lalla Christabel, leaning forward, just caught the murmured word, “Inshallah!”
But would Abdullah the elder indeed set his feet to walk in the Way? Would Saleh, the immediate effect of his dream over, remain firm in the conviction that he must keep his hands off the young life that had accepted Christ? Lalla Christabel felt that the time was one of crisis, and therefore, of urgent prayer. She did not even ask to see the young Abdullah, but was not surprised when he presented himself a little later the same evening.
“And now, Abdullah,” said Lalla Christabel, when the first glad greetings were over, “I have great news for you concerning your marriage with Fatima. I could not tell you sooner, for it would have made trouble. I had to keep the secret on both sides. But now the path is clear, and there is no need for secrecy any longer. Fatima is a Christian.”
A bewildered look came over the boy’s face. He regarded Lalla Christabel in silence. Then he seemed to look in upon himself, slowly realizing what this news might mean. At last, with a sigh, more of wonder than of regret: “If I had only known!” he exclaimed.
“O, Abdullah,” she replied, “it is so much better as it is! See how the hand of God has been at work upon your father, upon Saleh, and upon yourself, in bringing you to the point where you must acknowledge Christ. Fatima, too, has confessed Him to her father, and I feel sure that Sidi Abd-er-Rahman is convinced of the truth in his heart.”
“Then will I marry Fatima?”Abdullah asked simply. Lalla Christabel smiled.
“Inshallah!” she replied, softly. “I think so, Abdullah!”
At last, a day came when Lalla Christabel felt it would be safe to speak to Fatima about Abdullah. As strength returned, an anxious look had come into the young girl’s eyes. Lalla Christabel believed that Fatima would be quite content to marry Abdullah when she found that he was a Christian. Still she was relieved when Fatima herself opened the subject.
“Lalla Christabel,” she began, in a voice still weak from illness, “they won’t marry me yet, will they?”
“No, indeed,” replied her friend reassuringly. “All your affair now is to grow well and strong.”
Fatima’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to get better,” she whispered, “for then my father will make me marry Abdullah after all.”
“Fatima,” said Lalla Christabel, “if Abdullah were a Christian, would you be willing to marry him then?”
The girl looked up, wondering. “Abdullah and I used to play together when we were little,” she said with a sudden smile. Then a pleading look came into her eyes.
“O, Lalla Christabel,” she said, in the old, trustful childish way, “will you make him to walk in the Way?”
Lalla Christabel bent over her. “Fatima,” she said very quietly, “Abdullah belongs to the Lord Jesus. He is walking in the Way now.”
Fatima opened her eyes more widely than she had ever done since her illness. Then a feeling of shyness crept over her. She flushed and turned her face away.
Lalla Christabel went on stroking the dark hair. She avoided looking at Fatima. Her eyes were resting on an Arabic text that hung on the wall: “This is the Way, walk ye in it.”
“Dear Fatima,” she said at last, “when you were well again, I can wish nothing better for you than that you would become Abdullah’s wife.”
Sidi Abd-er-Rahman came to see Fatima. He found her on the terrasse overlooking the sea. Father and child embraced each other tenderly. But, oh, the joy of his first words!
“My daughter,” he exclaimed, “I see it all now. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God!”
Just then, Lalla Christabel crossed the terrace to her study. “Do not let me disturb you,” she said, and would have passed within, but Sidi Abd-er-Rahman followed her, saying, “I have something to tell you.”
“Come inside,” said Lalla Christabel.
It was the room where little Fatima had first confessed Christ, and where she had been given the little golden heart which was still around her neck, and which, in the past difficult days, had been the only Christian symbol left to her. And still upon the table stood the miniature of the English lady who had sent it, with the blue eyes looking just ready to smile.
“Ever since my daughter was ill,” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, “I have been asking God to give me the Holy Spirit! For I knew that your belief was that the love and joy and peace of your life was from Him alone.”
“Yes,” she replied, “I am sure of that.”
“And when I say the Holy Spirit,” he hastened to add, “I do not mean the angel Gabriel (Moslems call the angel Gabriel the Holy Spirit). But I mean, as you do, the Lord Himself.”
“I know,” said Lalla Christabel.
“I am not like you and yours,” Sidi Abd-er-Rahman continued humbly. “But something has happened to me since I have prayed this way, something that I did not expect.” He drew a long breath, and, looking straight in his friend’s face, he said deliberately: “I know now in my heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
Lalla Christabel clasped his hand. “Hamdullah!” she exclaimed, with all the gentleness of a deep joy. “Hamdullah!”
“I cannot tell you how I know it,” went on Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, his face full of an almost childlike wonder, “but I know it, and I would lie to you now if I were to say anything else.”
“Hamdullah!” she repeated.
“That decides all!” said Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, and again he drew a deep breath, as of one whose course is taken and his mind made up. “For if Jesus is the Son of God, then it is He, and not Muhammad our prophet, Who must be Lord and Savior of the world!”
“Yes,” she replied, “that decides all. That decides victory over all the forces of Satan, and of men. ‘The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what can man do unto me?’”
“You are thinking of Saleh,” he said. “He has been too long my master. But I have a new Master now, and He is stronger than Saleh.”
“Stronger than Saleh,” she repeated, “and stronger even than Satan himself.”
“O, Lalla Christabel,” he went on, after a pause, “from time to time I might have seen the truth, but I would not open my eyes. Pride held one eye shut, and fear the other. Can God forgive such sin?”
“God can forgive everything,” she replied, “to those who come to Him in the name of Jesus Christ the Savior. Shall we go to Him together now?”
And putting her arm around Fatima, they knelt down.
... ... ...
Within a few days, Saleh and all his household had packed up their goods and left the town. They were to settle near the edge of the desert, where Saleh had interest in large herds of camels and goats. No particular reason was given for his departure, but, before leaving, he sent his little son to Lalla Christabel with the money to buy an Arabic testament which he said he intended to read in his new home.
Meanwhile, the day drew near on which Sidi Abd-er-Rahman, Fatima, and Abdullah ben Abdullah were to be baptized together in the jama (place of assembly, i.e., mosque) at the House of the English. It was the wish of all three that the baptism should take place before the marriage of Fatima and Abdullah. By the consent of both fathers, the young couple were allowed to see each other several times before the wedding, Fatima being unveiled. Nothing was said about this outside the family. The two met in Lalla Christabel’s roof study. Fatima smiled shyly on her old play-fellow, and each time the hearts of the youthful pair were drawn nearer to one another.
What a deep, calm joy settled over the House of the English, and over these two whose lives were becoming united in both a heavenly and an earthly sense!
To Lalla Christabel it was like sailing, after a night of storm, into calm seas and the glow of sunrise.
It was the day after the baptism, Fatima’s wedding-day. The white pillars and stone benches of the jama were garlanded with flowers from the service of the evening before. The bridegroom, the two fathers, and M. le Cure, who performed the ceremony, were the only men present, but a number of veiled women from the House of the Roses looked on from behind a thin curtain.
The bride was all in white silks, made in the Arab manner, and wore only a little jewelry. She was covered from head to foot with a transparent veil of gauze, and crowned with fresh orange blossoms from Djenan el Ouarda. The golden heart hung around her neck.
Never before, in the memory of living man, had an Arab Christian wedding taken place in that town. Fatima had asked to be married with a plain golden ring, like the lady of the golden heart, who herself had sent the ring from England, and-oh, crowning wonder-an invitation to the bride and bridegroom to visit her in her distant home before settling down for the coming college session in Paris. Fatima was to accompany her husband to the great French capital, where they were to live at first in the house of a devoted couple who were dear friends of Lalla Christabel.
So the service proceeded. The hands of Fatima and Abdullah were joined by the M. le Curé; the ring was placed upon the bride’s finger; the old favorite hymns were sung in Arabic; and then the blessing was pronounced.
Fatima’s cup of joy was indeed full.
... ... ...
The sun was setting over North Africa. The white houses and flat roofs of the Arab town stood out brightly on the hillsides, the lower slopes of which were already darkening. The little French steamer was well on her way north, over the waters of the Mediterranean, crimson with the sunset.
Fatima and Abdullah stood together on the deck. Their eyes were turned, now upon a certain minaret in the Arab town, now upon a white dome among the palm trees, on the hills overlooking the bay.
The minaret, square and white among the cypresses, with its muezzin gallery and faint coloring of ancient tiles, stood between Fatima’s childhood home and the House of the English. The dome was the dome of Djenan el Ouarda, in the rose garden where Abdullah the elder was finding, in a sense better than this visible sunset could bestow, “light at evening time.”
Then Fatima’s eyes turned towards the other side of the bay, where the white stones of the Arab cemetery stood out bright and clear, among cypresses and fig trees. Tears stole into her eyes. Her mother lay there asleep, and she was going far away.
Did Abdullah read her thoughts? “We are going,” he said gently, “to the lady of the golden heart.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling through her tears.
“But you,” said Abdullah, “you are my Lady of the Golden Heart, God’s beautiful gift to me!”
Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.