In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Yea, it will come; it will surely come!" What else was possible when God, a justly offended God, was above all? We in the West have not a monopoly in the Tower of Siloam; that belongs to every religion, to none more rightfully than to the Faith of Islâm, which leaves all things in the hand of Providence.

The belief brought a certain fierce patience to the old man as he finished his preparations for the ghostly guests who, on that night alone, could partake of the hospitality of the living. The lamps, mere wicks and oil in little shells of baked clay, were ready luted to their places by mud, outlining the interior of the tomb where Deen Mahomed performed all the rites of his religion; outlining it so strangely, that when they were lit, the old man, kneeling before the white cloth spread upon the floor, looked as if prisoned in a cage of light. There was no darkness then, only that soft radiance reflected from the newly whitewashed walls upon that fair white sheet on which, with calm ceremony, he laid the little earthen platters of food one by one, designating their owners by name.

"This to my grandson, Rahmut, who has found freedom."

That was the last dedication, and the old voice trembled a little, ever so little, as it went on into the formula of faith in one God, speaking through the mouths of his Prophets. Not one prophet tonight but many, for were they not all on earth--Moses and Elias, Jesus and Mahomed--taking part in the Great Assize where those dead ancestors would plead for the living who had inherited their sins, their failures?

Before such a tribunal as that there must be justice--justice for all things just and unjust.

So, half-kneeling, half-sitting, the old Mahomedan waited for the finger of God to write his fate for the coming year upon his forehead--waited, resting against the wall, for the spirits of the dead to come silently, invisibly, to the feast prepared for them. And Rahmut had a Benjamin's portion to console him for those tears--those last tears!

II

The church-gong was chiming again, and again it was Shub'rât. Not for the first time since Deen Mahomed had put little Rahmut's platter of sweets among the Feast of the Dead, for the years had passed since the child had sat in the sunlight planting gardens. How many the old man did not consider; in point of fact it did not matter to his patience. In the end God's club must fall on the unjust; so much was sure to the eye of faith. Something more also, if the signs of the times spoke true. When the bolt fell it would not be from the blue; the mutterings of the storm were loud enough, surely, to be heard even by those alien ears. And yet Deen Mahomed, fanatic and church-chimer, standing on that hot summer evening beneath the sirus blossoms smiting the voice from the quavering disc of metal, knew no more than this--that the time was at hand. Whether it was always so, or whether the great Revolt was always pre-arranged, can scarcely at this distance of time be determined. Certain it is that many, like old Deen Mahomed, were simply waiting; waiting for the sign of God to slay and spare not.

Clang!

The mellow note went out into the darkening heat; for the sun was almost at its setting. St. John's-in-the-Wilderness showed all the whiter against the deepening shadows of the sky.