 | CHAPTER XXI. El Fureidîs |  |
21. CHAPTER XXI.
“Good morning, M. Lapierre!” exclaimed a voice
behind the old missionary, who, on the third day after the
catastrophe, stood erect upon the projecting Falcon Perch,
and viewed the scene of desolation below.
“Peace be with you, my son!” responded the pastor, as
he turned and saw the Englishman. “You have been absent
from the village since yesterday. I began to fear you
had gone as you came, upon the wings of the night-wind.”
“I have been to visit my hosts at the convent,” answered
Meredith, taking his stand beside the venerable man. “Old
Hubert crept down from his eyrie two days ago to learn the
particulars of the misfortunes here, and carry back tidings
to the brethren. I saw him for a moment: it seems that
my disappearance on the eve of the disaster has created
considerable anxiety at the monastery, and I feared my
failing to return would be deemed discourteous, not to say
ungrateful, to my old friends there.”
“And this suffering member?” interrogated M. Lapierre,
laying his hand on Meredith's injured arm.
“Is better,” was the reply. “Had the limb been skilfully
treated at first, I have no doubt it would have healed before
now. As it is, the relief is wonderful, and I have a large
stock of patience on hand. The good Superior is charmed
with the success of his practice. I respected the etiquette
which prevails among the medical faculty so far as to conceal
and he feels himself qualified to receive a diploma, in view
of the wonderful cure he has wrought.”
M. Lapierre smiled. “And how does he view the calamitous
condition of El Fureidîs?”
“With similar self-complacency. He is persuaded that,
had the village been under the protection of his blessed
Lady Mary, it might, like the convent, have withstood earthquake
and flood; and at the moment when I encountered
Father Hubert in the village, he was rousing the credulity
of a wonder-stricken group of peasantry with accounts of
the various campaigns which the favorite saint of the fraternity
has for years been carrying on with the elements, and
always with unvarying success. It was the first time I had
ever seen anything of a proselyting spirit among the simple-hearted
recluses.”
“They are not the only men,” answered M. Lapierre,
“who will quote this visitation of Providence as an argument
against our Protestant faith. I have within a few
days seen several Druse Akals expostulating vehemently
with those of their race who have abandoned their ancient
mysticisms for our simple belief, and I this morning recognized
in the village a well-known Jesuit priest from Zahleh,
who will, no doubt, endeavor to excite the fears and superstitions
of the Maronite portion of our population. I do not
fear, however, for the steadfastness and patience of the majority
of my flock. I find them more reasonable and docile
than could have been expected. Some, indeed, are bitter
in their murmurings; and a few of our energetic young
men, who are bound by no family ties, have already turned
their backs upon a place which they believe to be under the
curse of the Lord, and have gone to try their fortune on the
sea-board.”
“Poor fellows!” said Meredith; “I met them half-way
across the mountain, with their wallets on their backs. I
am sorry for them,—sorry, too, for this discouragement to
the success of your mission.”
“Such instances as this do not discourage me,” said
Father Lapierre. “Even in the most favored lands, where
civil and religious liberty have for centuries exercised their
sway, the faith of whole communities is biased, if not shaped,
by their worldly interests; their theology is the superstructure
of which gold and policy are the corner-stones, and
the former sinks the moment the latter are undermined.
Who can wonder, then, if a people who have found refuge
from priestly tyranny and political oppression under a system
where prosperity and religion made common cause,
should shrink from that chastening of Providence which
has in a single night reduced them from comfort and peace
to beggary and desperation? For myself, when I see the
straits to which my poor people are driven, I can only
bless God for that experience of his love which has taught
me and many among my flock to trust in him, who, if he is
mighty to destroy, is mighty also to save.”
“So great a calamity,” suggested Meredith, “is in itself
a call for public sympathy and aid.”
M. Lapierre shook his head in the negative. “It would
be in your country,” said he; “but here, I grieve to say,
quite the contrary is to be anticipated. In the first place,
the slow and infrequent communications between one point
and another will prevent this disaster from becoming widely
known. Then, too, the event which to us seems so momentous,
is likely to excite little surprise or interest in a region
where everything in nature is liable to convulsions and
overturns. Such earthquakes as we have recently experienced
are by no means uncommon on these mountains,
unexplained cause, perhaps to hydrostatic pressure, the gases
beneath the surface are subject to ferment and explosion.
But these shocks are seldom widely felt, or accompanied
by destructive results. I do not hear that any other village
on the mountains has suffered at all in proportion to
ourselves. I doubt, indeed, whether the internal groan and
shudder with which the Lebanon seemed to cast off the
weight of El Fureidîs from its broad shoulders, would have
been the cause of anything more than a night's alarm and
a day's speculation and gossip, had it not been for the improvidence
of M. Trefoil, and the consequent undermining
of all the artificial foundations on which we depended for
our security. Singularly enough, the very causes which
had accomplished much and promised more for the prosperity
of our people have been instrumental in their ruin.
Ianthe seemed to have an intuitive foresight of some impending
calamity. How quickly her sad prophecy has been
fulfilled!”
“Did she, then, distrust the abilities of her husband, and
the soundness of his affairs?”
“She had had bitter experience in early life of his want
of prudence and moderation. She knew that his active,
enterprising spirit was accompanied by a corresponding
degree of recklessness and impetuosity, and naturally feared
that, when unchecked by her influence and persuasions, he
would launch into new and ruinous speculations. Like most
sanguine men, he has always suffered his yearly expenses
and outlay to run in advance of his profits; and Ianthe
confided to me, some months ago, her anxiety lest he had
laid himself under heavy obligations for the means of introducing
his final system of improvement into the factory.
Poor man! how infatuated he was with the project? It
it closed his eyes to the risk in which he was thoughtlessly
involving the villagers by barring up the mill-stream. In a
word, my poor, simple-hearted friend was, up to the time of
Ianthe's death, engrossed in his new scheme as a child is
engrossed with a toy, and, like a child, he forgot and cast it
from him when grief had changed the whole current of his
ideas.”
“It is a pity he ever undertook it,” said Meredith, in a
tone of soliloquy, and half blaming himself for the encouragement
he was conscious of having afforded to the work;
“but the villagers will scarcely find fault with one who has
proved the greatest sufferer among them all.”
“So far from it,” replied Father Lapierre, “that I am
touched to observe how completely they exonerate him from
any share in their misfortunes, and how disinterested they are
in their expressions of sympathy for the man to whom they
are indebted for all their past prosperity. They see that, if
their houses are damaged, and in some cases uninhabitable,
his little villa is a complete wreck; that, while their terrace-walls,
for the most part, require only partial repair, his
broader and more elaborate garden-plots are completely
washed away. They know that, if the master closed the
flood-gate to their injury, his daughter opened it at the sacrifice
of the best part of her heritage. Above all, they are
grateful to the Providence which has spared the lives of
themselves and their families, while many of them cannot
yet speak without tears of the sorrow which has befallen
the widowed husband and the motherless child.”
“All must feel themselves impoverished in the destruction
of the factory,” said Meredith. “It will scarcely ever
be rebuilt, I imagine.”
“I cannot foresee such a possibility. Even if M. Trefoil's
are, I fear, utterly exhausted.”
“Have you seen him this morning?”
“Yes! Havilah was persuading him to take some breakfast
when I left my cottage. I saw her afterward leading
him across the bridge to view the wreck of his property.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Meredith; “was that wise?”
“I suggested the idea myself,” replied Father Lapierre,
“in hopes that the current of his thoughts might be diverted
into a new channel, believing that nothing could be more
dangerous to his reason than dwelling constantly upon his
bereavement.”
“And how did the sight of the ruins affect him?”
“Precisely as one is ordinarily impressed by the misfortunes
of another man. He surveyed the spectacle with
astonishment, reiterated those phrases by which he continually
expresses his sense of the universal misery which
prevails, but seemed unconscious of any personal loss or
responsibility in the matter.”
“And so the whole obligation and weight of affairs falls
upon his child,” said Meredith, anxiously.
“No labor can be said to fall like a weight upon one who
assumes it with such cheerfulness as Havilah,” observed M.
Lapierre. “To see her devotion to her father, one would
think he had her undivided care; but the wounded villagers
find in her a nurse, the homeless children experience
a mother's tenderness at her hands, the strong men look to
her for counsel and encouragement, and the heads of the
village households hesitate not to cry out to her for bread.”
“Poor girl!” ejaculated Meredith, with a sigh and a
troubled countenance. “She will be overwhelmed, exhausted;
she is tasked beyond her strength.”
“Do not fear for her,” said Father Lapierre, composedly.
her day. I trembled, indeed, when I witnessed her agitation
beside her mother's death-bed. It was as if the fountains
of the deep were broken up. Rest and leisure could
not have restored the calm; but God in his mercy has sent
her care and toil, and with them peace. Do not believe,
young man, that labor was ever a part of man's curse.
Toil was made to follow in the track of sin; but it was for
man's sake that the dispensation came, not as an evil, but as
a remedy. You will some day learn, my son, if you do not
know it already, that to work for one's self is an antidote to
pain; to work for others is a panacea. If you doubt my
words, look in Havilah's countenance and read a confirmation
of their truth. There she goes now!” continued the
pastor, pointing to a little group who were climbing the village
pathway. “Bachmet is with her, and Abou; the old
man is leading one of his master's donkeys.”
“The little animal seems to be laden with corn!” said
Meredith, as he watched the approach of the party.
“Yes,” replied M. Lapierre, “they have been to seek supplies
from the stone granary at the villa, which fortunately
escaped the flood. No one will hunger so long as that
storehouse will furnish food. But it cannot hold out long
thus gratuitously distributed. God help my poor people
when this strong-hold fails!”
“They must return to their work,” said Meredith with
decision. “Their houses and vineyards are shattered and
wasted, I know, but the farm-lands of the plain yet promise
a harvest.”
“True,” rejoined M. Lapierre, “and my argument concerning
labor can never be more applicable than in their
case. Their miseries would be half relieved if they were
once more actively employed, and saved from that temptation
greatest snare to the industrious habits of our talkative and
gregarious people. But you do not realize half their discouragements.
In lands where taxation is moderate, and
justice fairly administered, communities may hope gradually
to recover from a shock like the present; but the misfortunes
of our peasantry, so far from exciting sympathy,
only expose them to the cupidity of a class of men who
proverbially lie in wait for occasions to satisfy their greediness
and rapacity, and who will soon, I doubt not, pounce
like vultures upon my poor flock.”
“How so?” questioned Meredith. “Is it not a proverb
with you, that `the wayfarer who is stripped is safe from the
robber'?”
“I will answer you in the equally trite saying, that when
one leg is disabled, the meanest things combine to trip up
the other. So long as the prosperity of El Fureidîs continued
unshaken, it was one among those favored villages
of the Lebanon which furnished sufficient for the wants of
its households and the exactions of the tax-gatherers. The
rulers must be satisfied, if the people starve; and nothing,
therefore, remains for our beggared peasants but to submit
to the interference of those farmers of the revenue, who,
loaning money at usurious rates of interest, profess to
stand between the Emir and his subjects, but who in reality
defraud the former, grind and oppress the latter, and fill
their own pockets at the expense of both. It is a hard lot
in any case to live under an unrighteous rule, but woe be to
those who, suffering intermediate agents to stand between
them and their rightful lord, find themselves lowest in that
scale where wrong begets wrong, and oppressions accumulate
in an increasing ratio. So fully has experience justified
this fact, that the Syrian can scarcely devise a more fearful
multiply your sheiks!' ”
“Why not persuade the villagers, then,” said Meredith,
his countenance manifesting a lively interest in the subject,
“to take an independent stand, and hold themselves aloof
from such dangerous arbitration?”
“Because, my friend,” answered the pastor, “they cannot
stand alone. Their wants are pressing; without capital,
they cannot even make the necessary repairs in their terraces
and orchards. These harpies in the guise of friends
will tempt them with money, and for the present I see
nothing for the poor husbandmen but to make the best contract
they can. Even now they are deliberating upon their
fate,” continued Father Lapierre, pointing out a knot of
men who were earnestly gesticulating at a little distance.
“I must find some means to disperse them. They are only
aggravating each other's hardships by mutual comparison.
This idleness is ruinous. They might at least employ
themselves in clearing away the rubbish from their dwellings.
M. Trefoil is alone in my cottage, Mr. Meredith,”
added the missionary, as, leaning upon his staff, he set off
to expostulate with the people of his charge. “Will you
give him your company in his daughter's absence? He
asked for you last evening,—the first time he has asked for
any one since the day we buried Ianthe. I do not despair of
your exercising a beneficial influence upon our poor friend.”
“I will see him immediately,” was Meredith's prompt
reply.
It was afternoon of the same day, and Asaad, still weak
and cramped in consequence of his recent sufferings, had
crept out from Father Lapierre's hospital, and seated himself
on the stone steps of the little church. The poor fellow's
attitude was dejected. The prospect before him, both
His home, his health, his occupation, all were
gone; and wherever his eye wandered, it encountered the
symptoms of a despondency equal to his own. At a little
distance from him stood two men, the one a tall, sun-browned
mountaineer, who, with uplifted hands and a deprecating
expression of face, was vehemently resisting the
arguments of his companion, a small, sinister-looking individual,
with heavy eyebrows, gray beard, and a hooked
nose. The dress and demeanor of the latter alike marked
him as a stranger. He wore a soiled tarboosh and a long
garment of coarse black cloth. With his left hand he
grasped the neck of a leathern pouch, which he now and
then tapped with the forefinger of the right, as if striving
to enforce his plausible words by this insinuating gesture.
With one eye obliquely cast, he took the mental measure
of his opponent; the other he never once removed from
his lean diminutive donkey, which, laden with saddle-bags,
was devouring, to its own and its master's satisfaction, a
little heap of dhourra, the contents of a damaged grain-jar,
which the half-starved animal had smelt out amid the
rubbish of the peasant's dwelling.
Apparently the ill-looking man carried his point, for he
presently tapped the majestic Syrian on the shoulder with
the patronizing tap with which one puts the final seal upon
a victim, and turned away to exercise his persuasions elsewhere.
The dissatisfied but despairing peasant winced
under the familiar touch, shrunk back a few steps, improved
the moment when his persecutor's back was turned
to bestow an infuriated kick upon the thin-ribbed donkey,
and then leaned against his door-post in hopeless apathy,
deaf to the cries of his children and indifferent to the
petition of his faithful helpmeet, who begged him to make
known to her the conditions of his fate.
The stranger, leading his donkey by the bridle, passed on
to the next cottage. Its owner was, or feigned to be, busy
in his ruined court-yard. Even the highest officers of state
respect the domestic privacy of the humblest Oriental, and
the mean pettifogger in rents and taxes could only stand
without and hail the object of his visit.
In a sharp key he summoned the husbandman to a parley,
but the call was disregarded. He reiterated his cry,
accompanying it with a threat; but the stout Druse, shrinking
from the shackles which he well knew awaited his freedom,
maintained an obstinate silence, and the stranger and
his donkey passed on.
Two men stood ready to receive him. Braced against a
terrace-wall, united in counsel, with the woe-begone yet excited
faces of conscripts anticipating the word of march, but
inwardly stirred to rebellion, they awaited his proposition.
The remorseless man of money broached his terms. The
helpless pair stood aghast.
“Who is that villanous-looking rascal?” exclaimed a
clear voice behind Asaad.
The latter looked up over his shoulder and saw the Englishman.
“It is Ben Hadad, the Armenian Jew,” answered
Asaad, with a groan.
“What is the old night-owl doing here?”
“Buying up the people's life-blood, Howadji. That
wretched donkey carries on his back the price of every
man's freedom in El Fureidîs.”
Ha, the hardened usurer!” cried Meredith. “And his
terms, Asaad? At what rate does he loan his gold?”
“Twenty, thirty, forty per cent, — whatever he can
wring from human necessities. Our misfortunes have made
it fifty to-day, if those men's faces do not lie.” And Asaad
pointed to the hard-pressed couple with whom the Jew was
chaffering.
“The Israelite has brought his money-bags to the wrong
market,” said Meredith. “He shall find himself outbid.
Hark ye, Asaad! Can you carry a message? Have you
strength enough left to clip the wings of that bird of
prey?”
A ray of light shot through the dim eyes of Asaad. “He
ruined my father more than a score of years ago,” exclaimed
the ex-foreman, vehemently. “The sight of him chills my
blood. But it would fire my soul to put a stumbling-block
in his path. These sore limbs would be healed by running
on any errand that would thwart Ben Hadad's schemes.”
“Listen, then!” and the Englishman distinctly pronounced
the words of the proclamation which he authorized
Asaad to circulate through the village.
“Do you mean so, Howadji? Can I trust my ears?”
cried Asaad, springing from his seat with the elasticity of a
well man.
“I mean what I say,” said Meredith; “but you must lose
no time in fulfilling your errand.”
Asaad snatched his turban from his head and tossed it in-the
air, gave a triumphant shout, and hastened down the
village pathway, proceeding, it is true, at a spring-halt, but
wholly unconscious of what would, a moment before, have
been torture to his cramped and swollen limbs.
Meredith, without waiting to watch the effect of his communication,
set out for a solitary walk upon the mountain.
“Is it the softness of the summer air, or the beauty of
the sunset, or faith in the love of Heaven, good father,
which makes the people so cheerful and happy to-night?”
asked Havilah, as, returning about sunset from active
duty in the village, she joined M. Lapierre, who stood
leaning on his staff at an angle of his cottage wall.
“The love of Heaven, no doubt, my child,” answered
come in the guise of man's benefactions.”
“Not in the benefactions of the man Ben Hadad, I
trust?” said Havilah. “I have heard the customary laugh
ringing once more round the sycamore-tree. Beni Salhook,
who was yesterday the most discouraged of all the peasants,
has begun to repair his broken roof to-day, and is now
smoking a pipe in his court-yard; and Saad, the miller, who,
forgetting the salvation of his family, has done nothing since
the accident to his mill but groan and wring his hands, is
singing—”
She checked herself abruptly, as, coming close to Father
Lapierre, she caught sight of Meredith, who had returned
from his stroll, and now stood, with an abstracted air and a
countenance of extreme gravity, just around the corner of
the cottage wall, which had until this moment concealed
him from her view. She had met him occasionally since
the night of the catastrophe; they had even reciprocated
slight offices of attention and service; but had never, as now,
encountered each other at a moment of quiet and mutual
leisure. Havilah was slightly disconcerted, but Meredith
did not seem to observe her embarrassment,—he scarcely
glanced at her,—he even walked away a few steps, as if to
avoid interrupting a conversation in which he claimed no
part.
“So old Saad is singing, is he?” asked Father Lapierre,
with an animated expression of interest.
“Yes,” said Havilah, resuming her narrative, “singing
a holiday song to his grandchildren. There seems to be a
jubilee among the villagers. I had not the heart to stop
and question them. I was afraid their merriment was only
echoing the hollow chink of Ben Hadad's gold.”
“In that case their laughter would soon be turned to
“But their gladness springs from a deeper source, and has
a better security than any fair promises of the Jew, Havilah.
El Fureidîs may well sound a note of jubilee to-night,
for she is safely rid of the stinging scorpion. Ben Hadad
has gone back over the mountains,—his money-bags as full
as when he came hither, but his hungry soul unsatisfied.”
“And the people?” questioned Havilah, with a relieved
but still anxious countenance.
“The people have found a surer banker, a more faithful
friend, my child,” said the missionary, laying a hand upon
Havilah's head, as if to temper beforehand the agitation
which he foresaw his communication would arouse. “The
Englishman”—and the old man glanced significantly at
Meredith—“has promised money to meet all their necessities;
he will make a contract with the government; he
himself will farm the land.”
For a moment Havilah stood gazing at M. Lapierre as
if her mind needed time to comprehend so great a truth.
Then tears of joy started to her eyes. A weight was lifted
from her heart, which fluttered like a bird set free. She
forgot herself,—was lost to everything but one rapturous
sense of gratitude. With radiant face and both hands
outstretched she ran towards Meredith, who, beyond the
sound of their voices, stood looking abroad into the valley.
His arms were folded over his breast; the prevailing joy
had reacted on the mind which had found relief in the
sympathy with others' pain; his soul was filled with gloom;
he did not perceive Havilah until she stood opposite to him,
with the windows of her soul wide open.
“You will repair the wrong my father has done,” she
cried; “you will save my mother's poor! Heaven will
reward and bless you. Heaven only can!”
He looked down upon her with grave wonder, as one
might look at a flower that had suddenly burst into bloom
at his feet, then slowly unfolded his arms, took her offered
hands in his, and answered with a chill, melancholy tone,
which was calculated to check and freeze her enthusiasm:
“I ask for no rewards, and I deserve no blessings at the
hand of God or man. Havilah, I have never served humanity
or Heaven. Let no one look for good at my hands.
I seek only to gratify the whim of an idler. One can
scarcely claim any merit,” he added, with scarce perceptible
irony, “for entering into competition with a Jewish knave
and usurer.”
The severe and settled hopelessness of his tone and manner
impressed Havilah even more than his bitter words.
She withdrew the hands which he could scarcely be said
to have retained at all, so cold and lifeless was his graps.
She would gladly have opposed that self-condemnation by
which her heart told her that he wronged a generous nature;
but misery, which asks for no sympathy and acknowledges
no claim, is a forbidding thing. Havilah was awed
by the spirit of gloom which she had herself invoked.
Her eyelids drooped, her lips refused any utterance. Subdued
and silenced, she stole away from Meredith's side,
passed Father Lapierre without even a look, and sought
refuge in the cottage.
“He carries happiness in his hand, but sorrow is at his
heart,” was her inward meditation. “He scatters blessings,
but himself eats the bread of grief.” The gentle compassion
which many had shared was now all expended on one,
and Havilah brushed away a tear,—the same tear which,
a moment ago, joy had sent flashing to her eye, but which
transformed itself, ere it fell, into a tear of pity.
| CHAPTER XXI. El Fureidîs | |