 | CHAPTER XVII. El Fureidîs |  |
17. CHAPTER XVII.
Winter had come and gone upon the Lebanon. Though
short, it had been unusually severe. Piercing winds had for
some weeks prevailed, and the early and latter rains, which
in the valleys were profuse and violent, had descended upon
the highlands in the form of deep and drifting snows.
The peasants of El Fureidis and other villages of similar
altitude had encountered on their mountains all the privations
and dangers of Alpine life. Some had even perished
of cold and exposure; and not a few had seen their camels
or mules sink inextricably in the snow, and, leaving the
poor animals to their fate, had made their way, frost-bitten,
to the nearest place of shelter. Nor were those who kept
themselves carefully housed exempt from a share in the
suffering entailed by the inclemency of the season. A favored
climate makes men improvident; and in a region
where summer ordinarily prevails for ten months of the
year, houses are ill fitted to resist the cold, the supply of
fuel is often insufficient, and at best the confinement within
stone walls is sadly irksome to those accustomed to luxuriate
amid soft breezes and beneath cloudless skies.
Never, therefore, was spring more gladly welcomed. With
the first peeping forth of the buds, children's faces peeped
out too from the half-open doorways; soon young and old
laughed to see with what giant strokes Nature was putting
on her colors; and daisies, clover, and scarlet anemones
husbandman beat high with hope as he watched the watering
of the ridges and the settling of the furrows, and marked how
the paths of the Lord dropped fatness. Truly might it be
said of sacred Lebanon, “The little hills rejoice on every
side; the pastures are clothed with flocks; the floods clap
their hands; the valleys shout for joy, they also sing.”
The Spring is royal in her bounty, she is prodigal of her
wealth. Not only does she renew the inhabited parts of the
earth, but the solitary places are made glad at her coming,
the lonely isles waft fragrance, the desert blossoms like the
rose, and God smiles on the ruins and the wrecks which man
has long since forsaken.
So Esh-Shukif, planted on a ridge of the Lebanon, huge
rampart of Sidonian commerce, the Castle Belfort of a chivalrous
age, the silent monitor of later times, rears itself as
a monument of human decay; but is written all over with
records of the perennial youth distilled upon it from an
Almighty hand.
No watchman is now stationed at the loophole, but through
chinks and apertures in the bevelled masonry streams the
same sunshine which once beat on the head of the Phœnician
guard who watched the approach of the winding caravan;
no banner floats on the tower, but its angles are defined
against the same blue sky beneath which Raynald of Normandy
unfurled his standard to the breeze. The Latin chapel
no longer resounds with anthems, masses, or Te-Deums, but
the birds of heaven have built their nests in the groined ceiling,
and the lonely arches re-echo their song; the spacious
parade-ground is no longer gay with the splendors of Tyre
or the chivalry of France, but through the crevices of its disjointed
stones vegetation has forced its way, and neither the
march of men nor the trampling of hoofs disturbs the flowers
horde, no Saracen troop, threatens to invade the empty
fortress, but fifteen hundred feet below the verge of the
parapet the foaming Litany rushes on with as wild a roar
as when it formed the main defence of the castle, and
sounded a warning to the foe.
What a strange old solitude it is! What a place for
meditation and self-communing!—a place where the earthbound
soul may dream and sigh and grow sad, a place
where the uplifted heart must wonder and adore.
Spectres of the past are reputed to haunt such spots.
Nor is Esh-Shukîf without its ghostly tenant, if we may
believe the report now agitating the village of Arnun,
whose superstitious peasantry have caught a fresh alarm
concerning their grim neighbor. Seated upon the rocks,
beneath a spreading tree, which is the trysting-spot of the
little hamlet, the eager gossips detail their startling experiences.
One had gone to look for his donkey, which had
a habit of straying into the vaulted stables of the castle;
but while scaling the difficult pathway the poor fellow's
progress had been arrested, and his senses bewildered, by
the sight of a gigantic form seated upon the abutment, and
waving him back by a forbidding gesture. Another, lost
at night, and seeking refuge in the fortress, had heard
heavy footsteps pacing the stone threshold, as if a sentry
were stationed there. The children of a third had been
checked in their sports amid the ruins, and sent terror-stricken
home, by the sighs and stifled groans which had
reached their ears from some unknown source; and half at
least of the inhabitants of the village were ready to testify
that they had just at nightfall observed a tall figure, standing
erect and still as a statue, upon the round tower at the
southwest corner of the castle.
Let the ignorant speculate and wonder. Let us follow
the ghost, and see if we cannot detect in him a familar object.
There he is just ascending to his nightly watch. The
villagers have spoken the truth, for now he stands upon
his post, with folded arms, looking like the stony apex to a
monumental column. We last saw him mounting his horse
and bidding farewell to El Fureidîs. Where has he been
since then, and how comes he here?
He has been in search of the Lethean spring. He
has come back more heavily laden than ever with memories
that will not sleep.
He has traced the Tigris and the Euphrates to their
source; he has sought out the spot where humanity was
cradled, but has failed to renew his youth; he has bathed in
the sacred river of the Arabs, but its healing waters have
had no power over his wounded spirit.[1]
In the disguise of a Mussulman, he has performed the
sacred pilgrimage. With a foreign garb and a foreign
tongue, he has imposed on the sons of the faithful. He
would gladly have disbelieved his own identity; but while
others were unsuspiciously silent, an inward voice continually
hailed him as “dog of an unbeliever.” He has performed
the seven perambulations around the sacred Kaaba,
and has kissed the paradise stone, now black with the sins
of mankind. The monotonous evolutions were simply symbolical
of his own painful round of thought; the darkened
stone was like the pendulum weight which time had hung
upon his heart.
He has ascended the Nile and wandered among the
picturesque ruins of Philæ. Alone with the stupendous
wrecks of a million lives,—only to realize with keener
pang that one living pain is mightier than a dead nation's
woe.
And then when he felt himself weary of wandering,
when, carrying his grief everywhere, he became accustomed
to the burden, when he looked the long future in
the face and saw no brighter prospect, this disappointed
man began, as old men do, to live in the distant past.
His manhood was a blighted, hopeless thing; but back
in the past lay his childhood,—a fair and sunny memory;
around which his tenderer thoughts might safely centre.
It seemed to him that he could lie down and sleep peacefully
beneath the grand old trees which had sheltered
him after his boyish fatigues; he fancied that the days
would be less long amid the familiar scenes where his
school vacations had sped so quickly; he felt himself invigorated
by the recollection of the sturdy independence
with which his father exercised sway over his household
and tenantry; he dreamed of the repose that dwelt in the
blue eyes of his earliest playmate,—eyes calm and undemonstrative,
but sisterly and true.
Yes, he would go home. There at least he would be
welcome. He would unite with his father in schemes of
usefulness; he would put his hand in his sister's; he
would make their fireside group complete, and they three
would, in mutual respect and love, walk life's path together.
Who says that fortune's arrows do not twice hit the
mark, that the lightning strikes but once in a single spot?
History and experience both testify to the contrary, for
blow follows blow in a nation's career, and human hearts
seem ruptured only to pave the way for some fresh stroke.
Meredith had reached the sea-coast, and was about to
not by a storm,—but by one of those missives from afar
which have convulsed and shipwrecked many a life. O,
who is there that carries not for ever on his heart one of
those messengers of fate, with its “should have been” and
its “in vain.” There was a sister's rebuke, mingling with
a sister's love, in the opening clause of the letter which
said, “O Robert, you should have been here to close our
father's eyes;”—there was the devotedness and the grief
of a friend, no less than of a servant, in the words of the
aged steward, who took up the pen where the dying girl
had let it fall, and wrote with trembling hand on the selfsame
page, “O master, dear young master, we did all we
could to save Miss Flora, but it was in vain.”
Both dead? Yes, both. The old man fell a prey to a
fierce distemper; the faithful daughter watched beside him
to the last, took the disease, and she too died.
They have known little of grief who have never felt
remorse. Bitterly did Meredith realize this, as now, for
the first time in his life, the torturing iron of self-accusa-tion
entered into his soul, and gave a tenfold edge to the
pang of bereavement. Death had glorified the departed,
but their death had revealed to him his true self in colors
darkened by an imaginative and morbid mind.
The father, whose prosaic ideas had always been at war
with his son's erratic tastes; the country gentleman, from
whose tiresome social routine the heir of the estate had
held himself obstinately aloof; the county justice, whom
the young philosopher had pitied as he beheld him year
after year balancing the petty details of right and wrong,—
was remembered, now that the grave had covered him, as
the injured but indulgent parent, the hospitable upholder
of an ancient line, the cherished benefactor, over whose
tear. The sister, who, moving in her little domestic sphere,
had led a life seemingly so uneventful as scarcely to need
a brother's sympathies, was imaged to him now as the serene
soul who, for aught he knew, had maintained a greater
struggle with herself than any he had been called on to
endure, who, consecrating her youth to the happiness of
home, had perhaps lived a heroine, who certainly had
died a martyr.
And what was he who was now left, the sole representative
of their heritage and their good name? A renegade
and a traitor,—a man who, deaf to the admonitions of conscience,
had wounded the hearts that loved him, had forsaken
the holiest duties, had met the punishment that was
his desert, and had been scourged at last into a recollection
of nature's claims only to learn that it was too late, and
that those claims must forever remain unfulfilled.
It is easier for the generous and sensitive nature to endure
grief than to be conscious of having entailed it upon
others. Stoicism and philosophy may avail in the one case,
in the other they are powerless. Meredith's spirit was far
more crushed by the sense of the irremediable wrong he
had done, than by the anguish he was called upon to suffer.
It was not the contrition of the religious soul, but it was the
natural humiliation of the proud heart which has been
outdone in filial love and manly self-sacrifice. It was not
submission, but it resulted in a prostration of self as utter
and entire as that which has its source in Christian humility.
It was not trust; it was helplessness.
Nor was his grief at Havilah's coldness any longer
what it had been. Not that this grief had been banished
by the influx of a fresh tide of misfortunes, but its character
was essentially changed. He no longer rebelled against
With a remorseful sense of his own ill-deserts, he could
almost welcome his punishment; he knew that present
pain could not retrieve the past, but he nevertheless accepted
it with the instinctive hope that it might to some
degree atone for it.
It was in this spirit that he wrapped himself in sorrow,
as in a mantle of sackcloth, and bowed his head to the
strokes of fate as meekly as the monks of old bowed to
receive their own self-torturing flagellations. It was in
this spirit that he left Sidon, whence he had intended
to set sail for England, and alone and on foot made his
way to the solitary castle of Esh-Shukif. It was in this
spirit that he had wandered for days among the ruins,
startling the peasant by the fixedness of his attitude,
affrighting the children by the long-drawn sighs that
echoed through aisle and corridor, and exciting the wonder
of the rude populace, who watched the afflicted man
standing on the watch-tower with face uplifted as if in
appeal to Heaven.
It would have been well for him if his appeal had been
to Heaven. But it was not. Look at him now. His gaze
wanders over earth, sea, and sky, like that of some lost
wayfarer who has ascended to a lofty post of observation
hoping to gain sight of the missing track. Whither
shall he go? For that is indeed the question he is striving
to settle. We congratulate ourselves that the world
is wide, and boast of our individual independence; but few
men are so insignificant or so free that their actions can
continue long unquestioned, and our English exile is not
yet so forsaken of his kind that he can be suffered to
ruminate any longer in an old and ruinous castle, destitute
of all the comforts of civilized life. The British Consul
anxious at his long absence. Abdoul, still in Meredith's
service, and left in charge of his effects, has confessed to
some suspicion of his intended pilgrimage to the fortress,
and has been sent in search of him. The young Arab
has followed skilfully on his master's route, has this day
arrived at the castle, bringing with him horses, sumpter
mules, and other travelling equipments. He has announced
himself and his errand, has stabled the weary animals, and,
while waiting further orders, has fallen asleep in one of
the deserted stalls. It only remains now for Meredith to
decide upon his future course.
It is sunset, and nature lies spread out before him like a
gilded map. He turns around and faces the different points
of the compass; but no beckoning hand is held out from any
quarter. The great mountains of the north seem to frown
upon him; he can almost feel the hot sun of the south beating
on his brow; on the east lies an untrodden desert; he
fancies, as he bends a listening ear towards the west, that he
can hear the sea whispering solemn dirges. Can either
path be expected to lure the traveller? The sun goes down.
Gray twilight overspreads the landscape. Lost in gloomy
apathy, the watchman on the tower gazes abstractedly on a
little cloud, the only spot on the otherwise cloudless blue.
It floats on and on, as if like himself it were the sport of
fate. It sails over his head, hovers a moment on the summit
of Jebel Rihan, then skirts the snowy crest of Hermon,
and at length pauses just aboce Lebanon, above the very
spot where nestles the little village of El Fureidis. The
sun has long been hid behind the horizon, and the trail of
light which the great lamp of day left behind it has almost
vanished; but the little cloud, as if by some magnetic power,
gathers up and concentrates the scattered rays, glows awhile
The mind that is subdued and weakened by suffering is
often guided by a shadow, and reads an omen in a cloud.
Meredith had unconsciously watched the airy wreath of
vapor, as if it were about to furnish an index to his uncertainties.
His pulse almost ceased beating as he saw it settle
over Lebanon. As it glowed in the red light, it seemed to
his excited fancy like a finger of fire pointing downwards.
As it faded away, he fancied it a messenger whose errand
was fulfilled.
Should he submit to its guidance? Should he follow
where it led? Should he return to the spot of which he
could not think without a pang? The profuse perspiration
which started to his brow betrayed a momentary conflict.
Had there been no such conflict, the fiery hand might perhaps
have beckoned to him in vain. But in the very pain
that it cost him his morbid mind saw a reason for obedience.
It would be no joy to revisit the scene of his disappointment,—it
would be agony to witness Havilah in the
experience of that innocent happiness from which he was
forever shut out. To see her thus, himself unseen, and then
depart alone, would be to drain the cup of bitterness to its
dregs. “Go, then,” whispered the persecuting spirit of
self-reproach; and passively yielding to the imaginary mandate,
Meredith resolved to perform unshrinkingly this further
act of penance which destiny seemed to demand of him.
Was there something sophistical and false in this mental
verdict? Was there all the while a more secret whisper
still, which invited him to return to El Fureidis,—a strange
fascination which lured him thither in spite of contemplated
pain? We may not tell. It is sufficient that, if so, he was
himself deceived, and that never did devotee pledge himself
zeal, than that with which Meredith vowed to lay
this final act of self-sacrifice on the atoning altar.
Decision of purpose instilled into him new life. He
descended from the tower and crossed the court-yard in
haste, as if fearing his resolution might fail him. His
horse knew his master's step and neighed, thus guiding
him to the spot where Abdoul lay sleeping. “Wake, Abdoul!”
exclaimed Meredith, tapping the youth on the
shoulder. “Secure your mules,” and he pointed to one
which had escaped from its tethering ring. “Feed and
groom the horses well. We have a three days' journey
before us, for to-morrow we start for El Fureidis.”
| CHAPTER XVII. El Fureidîs | |