CHAPTER IX.
LITERATURE AND POLITICS.
“I have made the acquaintance of your old friend,” Charlie said to Cecil a few Sundays after this conversation.
“Oh, you mean Dr Yehudi,” said she. “How do you like him?”
“My Western mind admires him extremely, because he is so tremendously in earnest, but my Eastern mind is disgusted by his restlessness. Why can’t he let people alone? He must always be attacking some one’s cherished beliefs or pet foibles. If I was really an Eastern, I suppose I should regard him as a prophet, and become a disciple. But I really do believe there is something in it.”
“Something in what?” asked Cecil.
“Well—in the conversion of Jews, in spite of the thousand pounds. Old Yehudi is such a splendid fellow—with his power and talents he might have done almost anything if he had remained a Jew, but he has given it all up, and the way the Jews here hate him for it! He has a fascination for them, though; they go and argue with him by the hour, and then leave the house tearing their clothes and calling down curses upon him. But he’s awfully good to them, and the Moslems respect him tremendously. He seems to do a great deal of good in one way and another, but I can’t help thinking he would do better as a medical man. It must be a hopeless kind of work preaching to a set of poor wretches so horribly afflicted as some of them are.”
“Why don’t you offer to go and help him?” asked Cecil.
Charlie looked confused.
“How did you know?” he said. “Of course I can’t give up my time to anything of the kind now, but I did say something to him one day about throwing up this place and working under him. What do you think he said to me? He looked me over very slowly, and said, ‘My goot yong friend, you are what we call a rolling stone, never staying long in one place. In the Missions this is as bad as in the worldly affairs. Let me see you staying where you are for five years, working faithfully under the goot Balio Bey, and then come to me again.’ That was rather rough on me, wasn’t it? I wonder how he knew that Sir Dugald and I didn’t exactly hit it?”
“He knows Sir Dugald, and he is beginning to know you,” said Cecil; “and by his putting it in that way, he meant to show that it was not Sir Dugald’s fault.”