The Scapegoat

by Sir Hall Caine

“No, but to another,” said Israel; “and you of all men can best tell me where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen—yet a poor man—the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.”

Then there was a long silence.

Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen, who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.

Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations with which rumour had charged him.

Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people, who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain, the lash, the wooden jellab—what else was left to him? Only the wail of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace—one lonely hour wherein none could bear him company—and what was wealth and treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth—what could it be but a will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of gold and silver—what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the prince of it!

Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure—so far away. Though all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling! His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?

Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them. Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their privations patiently—the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.

So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour, He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it. “The hunger is on us!” “Our children are perishing!” “Find us food!” “Food!” “Food!”

With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of their leader when he answered them.

First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and quivering nostrils. “Do you think I am Moses,” he cried, “that I should smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full? If you are naked, am I clothed?”