Chapter XXI

Meanwhile, the period of stagnation past, the current of life begins to flow within and around Jerusalem. In the house of an English Protestant Missionary Society without the walls, a Division has its Headquarters. At the Sign of the Red Triangle, guides may be obtained for the reverent conduct of soldier-visitors to the Holy Places. Here also photographs for the folks at home, with lightning hair-cuts and shaves, can be supplied with light refreshments. Signboards along the Jaffa Road invite Crusaders from the Land of the Ifrangi to partake at their own peril of sweets, ices and cakes.... And a Divisional Theatre flourishes in a tin-roofed shed, outside the Gate of Jaffa, and a Cinema established in a ramshackle booth is nightly packed to the walls.

Though the trenches and gun-emplacements on the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopas yet speak of War, there are local tennis-parties on badly neglected lawns, and even small dances to the accompaniment of the gramophone. The donkey-boys and Cook's tourists are no more.... But there are Military Races and Military Sports; and divers favourites, human and equine, are duly backed by the men of the Expeditionary Army....

Within the City English soldiers guard the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Mohammedans the Haram. The depot of the A.S.C. is lodged in the courtyard of a Jewish School.

English Military Nursing Sisters are housed in the Abyssinian Patriarch's palace--the French Convent where the Turkish Army Officers were, now shelters French soldiers--though the Turkish Crescent and Star have not yet been obliterated from the Jaffa Gate; and the Arab police, in black sheepskin caps and dark blue drill uniforms, keep order as they used to under the Turkish _régime_....

Though the solemn boom of heavy guns still wakens all the echoes of the Hills of Judæa, though Turkish batteries and Turkish troops move in the neighbourhood of Jericho, and British motor-launches churn the waters of the Dead Sea, the Holy City is wakening from her torpor of years.... Kinder-gartens and boys' and girls' schools, Christian and Jewish, Homes and Orphanages--the Teacher's University, the Missionary Colleges, and the seminaries supervised by Catholic Religious--revive like the withered blossoms of the so-called Jericho Rose....

The Clothes-Market near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,--where skin affections and fleas could be purchased at exorbitant prices--re-opens. In the labyrinth of _bâzârs_ under the shadowy arcades, the Jew and Arab pedlars set up their stalls of rosaries and medals, gaudy religious pictures, and common household wares. Sleek-haired Levantines and Syrians behind counters of modern shops, offer antiques and souvenirs in mother o' pearl and olive-wood; ostrich feathers, roses of Jericho, Syriac Gospels and Rolls of the Law. German stores miraculously become Dutch, offer for sale liqueurs, cigars, _sauer-kraut_ in barrels, tinned sausage, pickles and chocolates.

And the People who Wait for Signs have come out of their various hiding-places. The haggard man who carries a heavy wooden Cross and wears a plaited Crown of Thorns, pants under his heavy burden from station to station along the Sorrowful Way.... And the other, long haired and wearing robes of white, waits again near the Jaffa Gate, carrying his brightly-polished lamp, well trimmed and filled with oil. He says he is one of the Virgins waiting for the Coming of the Bridegroom.... And again, there is another, a handsome, martial figure, in the panoply of a Knight of Malta, folded in a cross-embroidered mantle, girt with a Crusader's sword....

Who knows what compact these and many more have made with One Whom they acknowledge Master. They are content, for their belief in Him, to be despised as fools. Calm, reasonable Christians shudder at, or ignore, while the Children of Islam respect them. To their number another is added with the passage of the days....

December draws to its end again. Tea-parties and concerts are given, and the Representatives of the Three Great Faiths may be said to fraternise. The Red Cross and the Society of St. John of Jerusalem unite in splendid efforts for the good of War-ridden Humanity. The olives are grey-green, and the palms are yellowing, and the first pale mist of almond-bloom pinkens on the hillsides, above the hedges of tamarisk--and Christmas Eve is here....

The portly Arab in the bath-chair drawn by the tiny donkey sits in his accustomed place, from which fierce gales and heavy Winter rains alone may drive him, in the shelter of the south wall of the Enclosure of the Tombs of the Kings....

Two chaplains of the E.E.F. go by in their cross-badged khaki; accompanied by an elderly Armenian in flowing black _kaftan_ and high square head-dress.

"There's the New Crank," says an Oxford voice. "And the little Syrian woman, and the bath chair and the donkey-boy--and the donkey possibly--all waiting as usual for the Sign that doesn't come!"

"'The Sign.' What Sign? ..."

The second khaki chaplain looks with interest at the Arab. The strong south wind has blown back the folds of his ample head-covering, and it is plainly seen what kind of man the drapery has concealed. His huge ears, swollen beyond all shape, hang down on the bulgy, turgid flesh of the neck-folds, his huge hooked nose, and long but shapeless upper-lip dominate an extraordinary acreage of countenance that is ridged and knobbed and crumpled like a new-dug potato-field. And his great hands and gigantic arms, wherever these are visible, present the same appearance, to the chaplain's curious eye.

"Would that be some obscure form of elephantiasis, do you think, now?" he asks the Armenian ecclesiastic who walks by his side.

"It is not disease of any kind," the Armenian answers in English. "The man has been beaten--nearly to death, and has lived--that is all! ... Many of my friends, condemned to the severest punishment of the Turkish _asâyisi_, have died under the infliction--as this man was meant to do...."

"Speak lower!" It is the second chaplain in khaki who is speaking. "That Arab understands you.... I saw it in his eyes...."

"Not he!" the first speaker returns. "He's an Arab pure and simple--and some of the Tommies have dubbed him 'The Father of Buffaloes.' The little woman with him has a nickname--somebody told me.... "_Sabâh-el-kheir_, Daddy Buffalo.... _Khud_!--and good luck to you! ..."

And a couple of Turkish _beshliks_ clink into the Arab's lap.

"Thy day be happy and blessed!" says a deep bass voice in answer. The three pedestrians pass on, and the beshliks fall amongst the straw in the bottom of the bath-chair. Unseen save by the sharp glance of the Arab donkey-boy, who squats in the shadow of the wall of the Enclosure, playing, with lines scratched upon the smooth limestone, a game that is scored upon the walls and flags of old Pompeii, as upon the recently excavated guard-room of the Herodian Mercenaries, eighteen feet under the level of the Sorrowful Way. A brace of coppers thrown to a sick man sitting by the wayside are surely given in charity. Yet when the sick one dies, the Fund amassed to build and endow the Hebrew University (the foundations of which are being even now blasted in the rock of Mount Scopas) will be enriched by a legacy of three hundred and eighty thousand pounds....

"What does it matter, Essie? Sweet One, why dost thou tremble? Surely the gift was kindly meant!"

The speaker thinks that his companion has been hurt by the bestowal of the coins. But she has not even seen the gift made, or heard the giver's words....

A moment since, a grey Staff car, driven by a soldier-chauffeur with the Great Headquarters' brassard--coming from the direction of the station beyond the Montefiore Hospice, by the road that skirts the City wall, to debouch upon the Road of the Damascus Gate--has passed by the Tombs of the Kings. Driven at speed, it has flashed by, carrying strangers with it. But one face was not strange.... One voice; borne on the wind that blows from Samaria, has echoed in the ears of Esther-Ummshni, bringing memories that brim the heart....

"I did not hear.... I thought I saw.... What is it, what is it, Mabruk?"

For the Arab boy has run down the road to meet a messenger from the Khân.

"What says he? ..." asks the deep, slow voice.

"He says--Mabruk says--" Esther commences, shaking like a wind-blown reed of the Jordan behind her shrouding veils: "that strangers are at Shafât. He says--"

"O Shaykh!--" Mabruk, a lanky crow-necked youngster, son of the Mohammedan landlord of the Shafât Khân, importantly steps forwards: "Great ones have arrived at my father's Khân. Two lords of the Inglizi, and a lady, tall and beautiful. They have sent me in the horseless carriage to bring back thee and the Sitti. This letter also they have sent thee by thy servant's hands.--Behold! ..."

Mabrûk lifts the note to his eyes and forehead, and hands it over. A folded sheet of paper, sealed with an impression of a well-known onyx signet, and scrawled with some hastily pencilled lines in a beloved hand:

"I am here, at the Khân at Shafât, with my brother and husband. Do not be angry that we have come! Your aunt is with us. Tell your Cousin Esther, whom I long to see and thank for my dear Julian, but not as I'm longing to see and thank you! Alone, dear, dear John!--because I'm jealous of the others. Your first word--your first look have got to be for me. Come back in the car or send it back to fetch--

Your loving, grateful
KATHARINE YAILL."