Although in comparison with The Bondman, The Deemster or The Manxman, The Scapegoat is not a masterpiece, yet it is in no sense a failure, or derogatory to the gifted hand that wrote it. Written next in order after The Bondman, The Scapegoat seems to be an aftermath of that, one of the three greatest works, in our opinion, of Hall Caine. It is bitter without much sweetness, and it draws out its long note of human woe without one cheering ray. Tenderness and hope are indeed present, and they are the avenues through which the writer approaches his story, and the means whereby he enchains the hearts of his readers, gladdening and strengthening their souls by his own fervency of belief. Hall Caine has a[150] wonderful power of creating atmosphere. In this novel of The Scapegoat, we tread the tortuous streets of a Morocco town, we think in the inflated metaphors of its inhabitants, we brush against the varied costumes that denote their myriad nationalities. We feel religious antagonism to be a race-element, Oriental cunning and cruelty matters of course; and we read of the Spaniards as though they were to us a strange people from a far-off continent, so thoroughly has the writer imbibed the spirit of his tale.

Israel ben Oliel is a man hardened by circumstance. He is a Jew whose father married for gain and knew no paternal tenderness. Brought up in England, Israel returns to his native country, Morocco, on the death of his father, and takes the post of assessor of tributes for the Kaid of Tetuan. His calling, though pursued at the first with justice, makes him to be hated by the over-taxed people, and on his marriage with the daughter of the grand Rabbi, they gather before the house to curse[151] and prophesy evil. Ben Oliel and his wife, Ruth, take up their worse than lonely life in Israel’s house in the Jewish quarter. For long they have no child and are held in derision by the Jews their neighbours; but after the space of three years their prayers are answered, and on the birth-night of the child, Israel prepares a feast and invites his enemies that he may triumph over them.

Israel … leapt up from the table and faced full upon his guests, and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he lifted a winecup and drank himself.

They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.

“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the winecup out of his hand and it broke into fragments on the floor. His laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best of[152] you. More than that—more than that—my son shall yet see—”

The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a girl!”

For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter! She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate places! And now you can go! Go! go!”

He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumfounded and with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.

It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct, followed him and listened from the threshold.

Ruth’s face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came from them.

And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest, joy of my joy and pride of my pride?”

Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said, “The Lord has counted my prayer to me as sin—look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”

Israel sinks yet deeper in the contempt of his countrymen because of what seems to them a manifest judgment of God. And he, knowing his condemnation to be unjust, is soured by the knowledge, and, in rebellion[153] against God and man, changes his hitherto upright dealings, becoming in very deed a persecutor of the people. Meanwhile he has taken into his household a little negro waif as a companion for his stricken child Naomi. He grows up to be the devoted follower of Israel in his adversities. When Naomi has reached her seventh year, her mother dies, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery by six State prisoners from the jail, for none other in his isolation can Israel find to help him. He returns to his orphaned child and wraps around her all his thought, all his tenderness. Nightly he reads to her from the Koran, doing his best to dispel the terrible fear that she, knowing nothing of God, may stand condemned in the next life; for in a vision of the night, he has seen Naomi going out into the wilderness as the scapegoat for his sins. So seven more years pass and Israel’s heart softens towards the people under him, and he begins to hate the tyrannies that are exercised over them. And in the disturbance of his heart he takes a journey out to where the prophet[154] Mohammed of Mequinez, a man who has given up all to the cause of the poor and afflicted, holds his camp of refugees. The prophet tells him: “Exact no more than is just; do violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give to the poor:” and with the hope in his heart that such sacrifice will turn God’s face towards Naomi, Israel returns home on foot, giving away all that he carries with him except that which his necessities require. He reaches home in tattered Moorish clothing which at first prevents his recognition.

Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”

“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered, “what of her?”

“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.” Israel laughed—his laugh was like a scream.

“More than that—a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,” said Ali.

“What?”

“She can hear.”

“It’s a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and saying, “Forgive me, my[155] brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true, there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no fiend in hell need envy me.”

And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father—come and see.”

Naomi has gained her hearing in an illness, and it is with suffering that she learns to bear sound. It is long before she can speak. Israel has sorrowed at her suffering and almost reproached God with her dumbness. A plague of locusts is eating up everything off the face of the land. The Jews in vain beseech the Almighty to send His floods, and then turn their thoughts to the sinner among them whom they believe to be drawing down God’s wrath on their nation. They select Israel and assemble with the purpose of putting him to death. Walking in the town he stumbles across the people who are crowded together expecting him.

With a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat, the crowd encompassed Israel, crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped, and lifted his heavy face[156] upon the people; but neither did he cry out nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on to his knees.

No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl that stood there—blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly beautiful—a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the thick barriers of Naomi’s senses everything was coming to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!

Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”

Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; see seemed to glow like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from their deed of blood as with the voice of God—she, the blind, the frail, the helpless.

Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how it was that in the hour of[157] his great need the gift of speech had come upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over his enemies, and say, “You thought God’s arm was against me, but behold how God has saved me out of your hands.”

But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter seemed to have dropped upon him.

At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”

Then the cup of Israel’s heart was full. His throat choked him. So he took her by the hand in silence, and down a long alley of the people they passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.

Naomi can now speak, and Israel’s world is a happier one. Issuing from his house in the night time, he goes into the poorest quarters of the town on errands of mercy, and soon in his liberality becomes a poor man. The people, seeing his poverty, account for it by the supposition that he must be falling from the Kaid’s favour, and curse and jeer at him all the more openly. From secret charity, Israel determines to renounce his position as servant of the[158] wicked Kaid, and waits upon him to deliver up the seal of office. The Kaid receives him at first with suspicion, then with contempt, finally with insult. The wife of the Kaid strikes Israel with her fan.

In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce anyone—even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate—could clearly tell. She stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father! It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking, reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must burst the bonds that bound them, and look, and see, and know!

At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He had brought to pass but[159] twice or thrice since men were born blind into His world of light. In an instant, at a th............