CHAPTER X
HANNATHON
The village or “city” of Hannathon in the Land of Israel saw startling changes as a result of the Syrian raid. Gone were the flocks and herds; gone were the stores of oil and wine; gone was the lately garnered grain, and they who had journeyed to Jerusalem to the feast returned to scant supplies. It was Eli who waited for them at the foot of the hill and broke the news to the little companies as they arrived, but Caleb, father of Miriam, came not.
“He tarrieth a day or two behind us,” said his friends, and Eli waited impatiently one day and a second and yet a third after the last of his townsmen had straggled up the hill. Then it was Sarah, and not Caleb, who met his view, riding dejectedly her faithful and weary beast and leading the other, on the back of which was bound something still and covered.
As Caleb had traveled, making what haste he could in pleasant anticipation of home and family, he had been set upon by thieves. He had not risen from the narrow, rocky road in which he had fallen from the blows of the robber band, but the timely arrival of other pilgrims had doubtless saved her from the same fate. They had dragged his body into a convenient cave while they tried frantically to restore breathing, but finding it quite useless they had bound the burden to the back of his patient ass and accompanied her to within sight of Hannathon.
In the pitiful horror of her tale Eli felt that his own was matched. If he could only spare her! But he could not, and told her as tenderly as possible. She listened numbly, without exclamation, without tears. It was as if brain and nerves had already borne more than they could take cognizance of. After a time he helped her up the hill, where Judith was waiting; waiting in dread of the displeasure she knew she merited, yet keyed up to defiance. There was, however, no harsh rebuke. In fact, Sarah seemed scarcely to recognize her as she leaned heavily upon Eli. Hastily Judith unrolled the thickly padded rug or quilt which served as a bed and the two laid her upon it. Without a word she turned her face to the wall and Eli beckoned the girl to the door, where he whispered the sad news concerning Caleb.
Later in the day a crowd of white-faced men and women laid the body reverently away and sealed the rocky tomb with a heavy stone. Sarah, on her bed, appeared unconscious of all that passed, and Judith would not leave her. After doing a hundred things which occurred to her as necessary for the bodily comfort of her kinswoman, the girl patiently watched the long night through, the one witness to Sarah’s dumb agony. Eli was, of course, with his mother. A neighbor, coming to offer her services, had said that Hannah might not live.
Mad fancies took possession of Judith that awful night. She had the feeling that every hour was a year and that, by morning, she would be an old, old woman. Again, she was a mother, brooding over a sick babe, and she stroked the head on the mattress and murmured soothing words. At other times she had a wild desire to shriek, to tear her hair, to stamp and rave, but in the presence of that awful stillness came peace. In the gray of the morning she opened the heavy front door and let in a stream of sweet, cool air. As she stood there her mind cleared.
There was something tangible about that long street with its flat-roofed houses, seen dimly through the mist; there was something tangible about that silvery rim rising higher and higher in the east and gradually dissipating the shadows; there was something tangible in the chill wind that swept over and around her. In a little while she would go for fuel. They would enjoy the warmth of a fire even if there was little to eat. As she turned back into the house Sarah broke her long silence. She was holding something in her hand and peering at it.
“Neither husband nor son,” she was saying in a voice very unlike her own, “but this—this—which can avail nothing; this for which hath been spent the earnings of years; this for which Caleb was slain and which was yet not found because I had hidden it; this which hath no power to avenge my daughter or to bring me back my loved ones or to do aught but torment with its impotency.”
Raising up on her elbow, she threw out of the door whatever it was she held in her hand, and lay back exhausted. After a moment she went on in that strangely rambling tone: “Neither husband nor son to avenge the captivity of my daughter; to—”