That day faded into dusk before Obil came to the home of the Rabbi Elkanah in its wilderness of grove and garden.
In darkness came Obil to that well-remembered gateway. But what meant this?
No lantern gleamed here from rose-wreathed pillar. No sound of any lute floated out from perfumed bowers. Only a lone beggar started up from dank shadows. Obil’s hand shivered as he dropped a gift into the beseeching palm and inquired of the rabbi and his house.
“Dost thou know?” came the quick, answering question, whispered with hot breath close in the ear of Obil. “Gone—gone! Some say dwelling in Jerusalem, some that he is gone to Capernaum. For he hates this house. Here died the lady Sarah, his wife. Here lived and died his son, the leper, hidden from the world.
“And”—here the beggar’s face again touched hotly the face of Obil—“didst thou know Obil, the Desert-lover, and Keeper of Camels for Abdul’s Caravan? His wife Miriam was niece to the great rabbi. It was the son of Obil and Miriam they took with deceit and hid away deep, deep in the inner courts of the palace here, to be companion of their son, the leper.
“Art thou Obil? Go, go! Let them tell thee these things in Hebron! Let them tell thee how thy son, the slave, caught the poison at last, how they thrust him forth into the highways, blind, to beg with the leper herd! There they will tell thee how one black night he wandered over yonder broken aqueduct wall and fell to the stones below, to lie dead and forgotten,—a Thing not to be touched or known! Go!”
In Hebron they told him all, in much trembling and fear. This it was that changed the heart of Obil.
Serve a God who only lived to Curse, and whose honored servants were like this? Never Obil. He would curse Jehovah, kill, and die.
But a strange spirit arose and grappled his soul within him. It said, “Wait! Kill now? Keep that for a joy to come. Nurse it, prize it, plan for it! Wait till he has reached the pinnacle of power and life is glorious and very precious to him! Strike now and lose the long joy of anticipation? Strike now and die? Do not be such a fool. Take your fill of life first. Have your will. Defy this Jehovah. Then kill, and die.” And again Obil went his way. On stormy galleys of the great sea, into mines of Spain, far north to strange icy coasts, into the whirling wickedness of Antioch, carousing from city to city in Egypt, but never more to the desert! His hand came to have no mercy. A heap of dead faces might stare at him beside their own charred threshold, and Obil could stand, jocund, eating grapes from the piteous vine.