The Yoke Part 20

For an instant after the sculptor had put the collar about her throat, Rachel stood motionless, her face flus.h.i.+ng and whitening with conflicting emotions.

But her indecision was only momentary. Rebellion was in the ascendant.

She thrust her fingers under the band and essayed to wrench off the offending necklace, but the stout fastening held and the flexible braid printed its woof on the back of the soft neck. Almost in tears she undid the clasp and flung the collar away.

It struck the earth with a musical ring, and the green of the wheat hid all but a faint ray of the red metal.

The rout of children descended on her, each clamoring a story of the accident. But without a word she marshaled them and turned once again toward the river to refill the hides. At the water's edge she kept her eyes resolutely from the broad dimpling breast of the Nile toward the south. She feared that she might see the light bari that was driving back to Memphis against that slow but mighty current as easily as if wind and water went with it.

But even before she turned again toward Masaarah, her better nature began to chide her. She remembered her impetuous act with a flush of shame.

"His peace-offering--a proof of his good will, and thou didst mistreat it, as if he had meant it for a purchase or a fee. The indignity thou hast petulantly fancied, Rachel."

After a time another thought came to her.

"The act was not womanly. Wherein hast thou rebuked him, in casting away the trinket? Thou hast the dignity of Israel to uphold in thy dealings with this young man."

When she reached the spot where the collar had fallen, she sought for it furtively, and having found it, thrust it into the bosom of her dress.

"I shall not keep it," she said, quieting the protests of her pride.

"I shall make him take it back to-morrow."

Entering her low shelter in the camp some time later, she found Deborah absent. Impelled by an unreasoning desire to keep secret this event, she hastily hid the collar in the sand of the tent floor and laid the straw matting of her bed smoothly over its burial place. Again she struggled with her pride and demanded of herself why she had become secretive.

"Fie!" she replied. "How couldst thou tell this story to Deborah?

Why, it is well-nigh unbecoming."

The dusk settled down over the valley. Deborah came in like a phantom from the camp-fires with the evening meal, and the pair sat down together to eat, Rachel silent, Deborah thoughtful.

"Another Egyptian comes to govern Masaarah," the old woman observed.

"Agistas departed but now, leaving the camp in charge of the under-drivers."

"It makes little odds with us--this change of taskmasters, Deborah--be he Agistas or any other Egyptian. They are masters and we continue to be slaves," Rachel answered after a little silence.

"Nay, art thou losing spirit?" Deborah asked with animation. "How shall the elders keep of good heart if the young surrender?"

"I despair not," the girl protested. "I did but remark this thing; and I have spoken truly, have I not?"

"Even so. But this evening there must be more recognition in thee of thy lot since it overflows in words. I, too, have spoken truly, have I not?"

Rachel smiled. "It may be," she said.

When they had supped, they went out before the tent to get the cooling air. It was Deborah again that first broke the silence.

"Elias is smitten with blindness from the stone-dust," she said absently.

"For all time?" Rachel asked anxiously.

"Nay, if he could but rest them and bathe them in the proper simples."

"Alas--" Rachel began, but she checked herself hurriedly. "He was my father's servant," she said instead--"the last living one. Jehovah spare him. One by one they fall, until I shall be utterly without tie to prove I once had kindred."

Deborah looked at the girl fixedly for a moment. Then she put up her hand and leaned on the soft young shoulder.

"Am I not left?" she asked.

Rachel pa.s.sed her arm about the bowed figure, with some compunction for her complaint.

"My mother's friend!" she exclaimed lovingly. "I know she died in peace, remembering that I was left to thy care."

"I mind me," she continued after a little silence, "how tender and frail she was. Thou wast as a strong tree beside her. I seem to myself to be mighty compared to my memory of her."

Deborah took the white hand that lay across her shoulder. "Thou art like to thy father. Thy mother was black-eyed and fragile--born to the soft life of a princess. Misfortune was her death, though she struggled to live for thee. Praise G.o.d that thou art like to thy father, else thou hadst died in thine infancy."

"Nay, hath my lot been sterner than the portion of all Israel?"

"Of a surety, thou canst guess it, for are there many of thy tribe like thee--without a kinsman?"

Rachel shook her head, and the old woman continued absently: "Of thy mother's family there were four, but they died of the heavy labor. Thy father, Maai, surnamed the Compa.s.sionate, was the eldest of six. They were mighty men, tawny like the lion and as bold--worthy sons of Judah!

But there is none left--not one."

"Ten!" Rachel exclaimed, "and not one remaineth!"

"Aye, and they died as though they were plague-smitten--in pairs and singly, in a little s.p.a.ce."

Deborah felt a strong tremor run through the young figure against which she leaned, and the arm across her shoulder was withdrawn, that the hand might clear the eyes of their tears.

The old woman discreetly held her peace till the girl should recover.

"Thou must bear in mind, Rachel," she began, after a long silence, "that Egypt had an especial grudge against thy house,--hence, its especial vengeance. Seti, the Pharaoh, began the oppression of the children of Israel, but the bondage was not all-embracing, in the beginning. There were Hebrews to whom Egypt was indebted and chief among these was thy father's grandsire, Aram. Seti paid the debt to him by sparing his small lands and his little treasure and himself when he put Israel to toil. Thy father's father, thy grandsire, Elihu, younger brother to Amminadab, who was father-in-law to Aaron, came to his share of his father's goods when Aram was gathered to his fathers.

This was in the latter days of Seti. Thy grandsire sent his little treasure into Arabia and bought lands with it. After many trials he caused to grow thereon a rose-shrub which had no period of rest--blooming freshly with every moon. And there he had the Puntish scentmaker on the hip, for the Arabic rose rested often. The attar he distilled from his untiring flower, had another odor, wild and sweet and of a daintier strength. When he was ready to trade he sent in a vial of crystal to Neferari Thermuthis and to Moses, then a young man and a prince of the realm, a few drops of this wondrous perfume. Doubt not, the Hebrew prince knew that the gift came from a son of Israel.

The queen and Moses used the attar. Therefore all purple-wearing Egypt must have it or die, since the fas.h.i.+on had been set within the boundaries of the throne. Then did Elihu name a price for his sweet odor that might have been small had each drop been a jewel. But Egypt opened her coffers and bought as though her idols had broken their silence and commanded her."

The old woman paused and reflected with grim satisfaction on the remote days of an Israelitish triumph.

"Meanwhile," she continued finally, "thy grandsire lived humbly in Goshen. None dreamed that this keeper of a little flock, lord over a little tent and tiller of a few acres, was the great Syrian merchant who was despoiling Mizraim.

"Next he became a money-lender, through his steward, to the Egyptians, and wrested from them what they had saved in putting Israel to toil without hire. So his riches increased a hundredfold and the half of n.o.ble Egypt was beholden to him. Then he turned to aid his oppressed brethren.

"He bribed the taskmasters or kept watch over them and discovered wherein they were false to the Pharaoh, and held their own sin over their heads till they submitted through fear of him. He filled Israel's fields with cattle, the hills with Hebrew flocks, the valleys with corn. Alas! Had it not been--but, nay, Jehovah was not yet ready. He had chosen Moses to lead Israel."

The old woman paused and sighed. After a silence she continued:

"Thy father fell heir to the most of his wealth, but not to his immunity. With a heart as great as his sire's he continued the good work. He wedded thy mother, the daughter of another free Israelite, and in his love for her, never was man more happy. In the midst of his hope and his peace an enemy betrayed him to Rameses, the Incomparable Pharaoh. And Rameses remembered not his father's covenant. So Maai's lands, his flocks, his home, were taken; thou, but new-born, and thy mother with her people were sent to the brick-fields--himself and his brothers to the mines; and in a few years thou wast all that was left of thy father's house."

The effect of this recital on the young Israelite was deep. Anguish, wrath, and the pain that intensifies these two, helplessness, inflamed her soul. The story was not entirely new to her; she had heard it, a part at a time, in her childhood; but now, her understanding fully developed, the whole history of her family's wrongs appealed to her in all its actual savagery. Egypt, as a unit, like a single individual, had done her people to death. Between her and Egypt, then, should be bitter enmity, rancor that might never be subdued, and eternal warfare.

Her enemy had conquered her, had put her in bondage, and made sport of her as a pastime. The acc.u.mulation of injury and insult seemed more than she could bear, and the vague hope of Israel in Moses seemed in the face of Egypt's strength a folly most fatuous.

"O Egypt! Egypt!" she exclaimed with concentrated pa.s.sion. "What a debt of vengeance Israel owes to thee!"