“They have gone; gone to Israel; and I am left here!”
Astonished but not unsympathetic, Milcah attempted comfort, but the writhing, disheveled figure and the wild sobs frightened her. Running excitedly to her mistress, she succeeded in startling that lady out of her accustomed languor and a few moments later they both bent over Miriam with deep concern. Adah gathered the girl in her arms.
“Desirest thou to go to Israel, little maid? Thou dost, thou sayest? Thou art grieving for thy father and mother and thy home there? Nay, do not weep. Thou shalt go. Only be thou patient until we learn how it is with thy master.”
Gradually, under these assurances and Milcah’s ministrations, Miriam became calmer. Wearied by her outburst and half ashamed, she was persuaded to rest in a darkened room until she should feel quite herself again. To her own surprise, she found she was strangely weak and unnerved. For days she could not rise, and then she dragged about the great house, pale and dispirited, until the excitement of watching for the return of the party brought a little color to her cheeks and a little hope to her heart.
Meanwhile Naaman and his company proceeded on their long, long way in the scorching heat. Unerringly Isaac led his party out from the cool shade of the orchards surrounding the city of Damascus; by broad, rocky terraces to the wind-swept Plain of the Hauran, toward Mount Hermon’s rugged dominance in the south. Past wheat-fields and pasture lands, a few insignificant water courses and occasional small groves of trees. Over the plains they went, across the Jordan and up the broad and fertile Vale of Jezreel, brown in the midsummer heat and drought. A twist in the valley and they were in the basin in which Samaria was situated. Up, up, three hundred feet or more to the very top of the cone-shaped hill upon which sat the city itself, impregnable, beautiful, commanding a wide view of the Valley of Jezreel at its feet and the blue waters of the Great Sea (now called the Mediterranean) only twenty-three miles distant.
The approach of so large a procession could not remain unknown. Long, long before it wound its slow way up the hill, among the gardens and scattered houses of the suburbs, the watchman in the tower had noted its strength and its probable importance and hastily communicated this intelligence to the proper officials, who had, in turn, sent a message to the palace. Long, long before it entered the square chamber of masonry which in the Orient they call a gate, prepared to emerge therefrom into the city through the opening in another wall, the elders or judges sitting on the stone benches ranged along the two blank walls were ready with questions. Was their errand one of peace? Who were they and whence did they come? What was the purpose of this visit to their city and whom sought they?
Isaac’s duties multiplied. He was now not only guide but interpreter and the trusted servant who should present his master’s all-important plea to the city officials. More than this, he was the courteous diplomat who must secure the favor and the good will of these officials who would, at their discretion, give them safe conduct to the king. The examination into their credentials was conducted with great solemnity and consumed a vast deal of time, but with the happy result that the procession of foreign guests was conducted with much ceremony through the crooked streets of Samaria to the celebrated Ivory Palace of the king; those streets so narrow that two camels could not go abreast and leave room for foot passengers, so shaded from the heat of the sun by the windowless buildings on either side that, had it been more unusual, it would have been depressing.
In the East there is courtesy but no haste. One wing of the palace, with its own courts, was set aside for the use of the visitors, and trusted servants and high officials busied themselves in making these accommodations comfortable for those who honored the roof by their presence. Isaac was granted a formal interview with the chief officer of the palace, the occasion being much the same as in Syria, when he had appeared to request audience for his master with King Ben-hadad. Now as then an interval must elapse while the message was conveyed to King Jehoram and he returned an answer, but in consideration of the distinguished position which Naaman occupied in his own country and the compliment which his visit implied, this was considerably hurried.
The next day Isaac, chief servant of the embassy, received a call from the chief officer of the palace, appointing the hour and day when King Jehoram would receive in person the letter of King Ben-hadad and the officer whom it introduced. Naaman, tired from the long and exhausting journey, was glad to have a few hours of rest, but as the hardened soldier recovered somewhat from his pain and fatigue, he grew impatient for the interview. The hour came. Amid great splendor Naaman was conducted into the presence of the young King Jehoram, the letter was presented, courteous greetings and assurances of friendship were exchanged, and then Naaman was escorted back to his apartments to await the real answer to his plea; the favorable reply anticipated but not yet given! Though compatible with Eastern custom, it was a situation calculated to inspire distrust in the breast of the suffering Naaman and uneasiness on the part of his servant, Isaac.
In that portion of the palace they had just left the air was charged with excitement. The king, surrounded by his counselors, old and young, rent his garments with true Oriental display of grief and vexation. What power had he to cure a man of leprosy? Was he a god to kill and make alive? No reasonable human being would suppose he could do this thing. Nay, it was merely a pretext for Syria to declare war against Israel. Not content with petty raids on their fertile valleys almost every year; not satisfied with carrying off their flocks, their grain, their wine and their oil, and even a captive now and then; not content that Jehoram’s father, Ahab, had spared Ben-hadad’s life when the latter was at his mercy, and made a treaty of trade and peace when he might have been less generous; not satisfied with this and all of these, Ben-hadad now, without just cause, sought an open rupture. And Israel—was Israel prepared to resist an invasion? Nay, but as the ravenous dogs fell upon travelers in the night so would Syria fall upon them and rend them in pieces!