IN a guest-chamber of the House of Naaman Nathan hovered anxiously around his brother. They had heard the happy announcement of Miriam’s return, had seen the great house transformed into a scene of busy festivity as if some honored guest were about to arrive, had even stood at a distance and observed the bit of rivalry between the soldier who had brought her hither and Isaac, who assisted her to alight from the chariot into the arms of her waiting mistress, had noted the happiness in her countenance and had turned away, sick at heart. Later the servant who had been in almost constant attendance upon them had come to name the hour when they would be conducted to Adah’s apartments, but for the present they were quite alone.
Eli spoke dully, his whole attitude one of extreme dejection: “Strong were we to labor when we thought of the maid despised and ill-treated. Sacrifice was as sweet to us as the cool air of morn. Joyful were we as they who conquer in battle when we had this—and this—and this—” touching the separate pieces of jewelry which lay in a glittering heap beside him. “Enough and more did we deem them for her ransom, yet how little it profiteth! All of her impressionable years have been spent in the midst of such plenty, such riches as we in Israel knew not existed save in kings’ houses. Nor hath she been required to labor. Peradventure she scorneth toil. Her master refuseth to let her go, and she would not wish to be redeemed even if we had sufficient gold to purchase her freedom.”
He regarded the jewelry at his side with disdain. “Take it, Nathan. Let me never see it more nor speak thou of it to me. Wasted is our work, ill-spent are our years, blasted are our hopes. It is as a pomegranate tree which a man planteth in his vineyard and careth for, and lo, when it might have borne, the frost killeth it.”
He relapsed into bitter musings while his brother took the gold as he was bidden and, wrapping it carefully in its sheepskin coverings, put it in his bosom. Eli silently passed him the pearl, but neither of them looked at it, nor did they observe a figure which approached stealthily, peered through the partially opened door, and departed a little distance, remaining near enough, however, to note the comings and goings from that particular portal.
Eli was speaking again in the same despondent tone: “Peradventure she will have for us naught but contempt, and brought up in this heathen splendor she may not even care to remember her home in Israel, nor the mother who weepeth for her, nor the God of her fathers. Come, let us return before her words and actions reveal to us this shame. In an hour we are to see her, so the servant hath said. Let us hasten and depart lest a greater sorrow be ours.”
Nathan pressed him back into the seat from which he had risen. “Thou art beside thyself with grief and disappointment. Nay, but we will see the maid. We will tell her wherefore we are come. If she hath forgotten aught she should remember, we will teach her gently and patiently as a mother teacheth her babe, and we will plead for that mother whose heart will break if we return with ill news. Nay, but we will quit ourselves like men, and if there be blame, it shall be upon the maid and not upon us. Do thou remain here while I step into the courtyard and see if the servant cometh who is to conduct us to the apartments of her mistress. Wait, I say, until my return.”
And Eli waited. As Nathan crossed the threshold no servant was in sight, and, attempting to shake off the gloom which weighed upon him in spite of attempted cheerfulness, he walked slowly down the courtyard, turned into an adjoining one and crossed to yet another before he realized, with a start, that he was in unfamiliar surroundings. Lost in thought, he had not noticed that he was followed. Now, halting in confusion and seeking to recall how he had come, he was confronted by a figure oddly familiar. There was neither formal salutation nor friendly greeting, but only a look of insolent amusement.
“So thou hast changed thy mind,” said the newcomer. “Once thou didst refuse to remain in the company which would have brought thee straight to this house. Five years later thou hast come of thine own free will. Peradventure reflection hath brought wisdom, yet thou shouldst have known it was dangerous.”
Nathan was startled. The speaker continued.
“Isaac knew thee not yesterday, but thou couldst not so deceive me. Thou art the lad who once escaped out of his hand.”
Nathan considered it prudent to appear fearless. “Thou art Lemuel,” he said, slowly, “the soldier who captured Miriam and me in Israel.”
“Thou hast guessed rightly,” went on the other. “I am Lemuel, who forgetteth neither friend nor foe. One word from me to my master, Naaman, and thou wouldst indeed serve as bond-servant, not willingly but by right, for wert thou not fairly taken in war?”
Nathan determined upon escape, but the watchful Lemuel laid a detaining hand upon his shoulder. “Yet I may not speak that word, or, speaking it, may soften the tone with a gift. Thou canst procure thine own ransom more easily than the maiden’s. The same gold intrusted to me for my master—” he paused to give the better effect to his words.
Nathan was distressed.
“Or the pearl,” went on Lemuel, “and it may require all. Thy fate is in thine own hands. Come, what sayest thou? Which shall it be, thy freedom or thy gold? Thou hast not long to debate the matter. Thinkest thou I know not that the treasure is even now in thy bosom?”
Nathan gave the speaker a quick glance of anxiety. How could he know that?
“Come,” continued his tormentor, “what is the word that I shall speak?”
Before the now thoroughly frightened lad could frame a reply, Isaac stood before them. Frowningly he addressed himself to Lemuel.
“I will carry the word to our master, the word that a guest in his house hath been intimidated and an attempt made to rob him of his possessions. I will not soften it, neither will he.”
Lemuel held up a deprecating hand. “Thou art too harsh. Thou dost not remember that the lad was a prisoner, taken in open warfare. Should he not purchase his ransom?”
Isaac replied by a look, one long look of scorn and indignation, and Lemuel departed, failing miserably to maintain his old-time swagger. Isaac watched him, his lip curling. At last he turned to Nathan.
“Hadst thou intrusted thy treasure to him, never wouldst thou have seen it again, nor would my master have known of the matter. Guard it and thyself as well.”
Nathan stammered his thanks, wondering the while if he had not been delivered from one peril but to fall into another. He braced himself for the ordeal.
“The man hath spoken the truth,” he confessed, bravely. “Five years hath made a change in my appearance, but look thou steadily upon my countenance and thou wilt see that I am the lad who escaped out of thine hand. Behold, it is revealed. What owe I thee?”
The soldier regarded him with the same frank admiration as had Naaman on the day previous. “Thy courage is equal to thy resourcefulness and independence of spirit. What a soldier thou wouldst make! Not at first did I know thee, but soon did thy brother’s words bring thee to remembrance. Naught owest thou, for didst thou not guard and guide the maiden, Rachel, who was very dear to a friend of mine, a man to whom I owe my very life? Nor have I any claim upon thee after this lapse of time and we at peace with Israel and grateful because of the healing of my master by thy great prophet. Nay, fear not, but go in peace.”
Nathan would have gone instantly and with joy had he known the way, and so it came about that once more was he indebted to the soldier against whom he had cherished resentment for five long years. In the guest-chamber Eli had awaited his brother’s return in profound melancholy. The servant came to conduct them to the apartments of Miriam’s mistress just as Nathan and Isaac reached the threshold, but Eli sat still.
“Why go?” he asked, mournfully, in reply to Nathan’s sharp remonstrance. “If we find, as seemeth likely, that the maid hath chosen to forget all she should remember: Israel the land of her birth, her mother and her home, and more important than all else, Jehovah her God, how could we carry the tidings which would be sharper than a sword to the heart of her mother?”
Isaac regarded the speaker with surprise. “Hadst thou dwelt long in Damascus,” he said, “thou wouldst have heard that so far from forgetting Israel and Jehovah, the maid hath remembered with profit to the House of Naaman. The wonder of it is on every tongue.”
He recounted his master’s cure at the hands of the prophet, ascribing the suggestion to Miriam and praising her persistency. “In gratitude for this healing,” he went on, “Naaman and his whole house have since worshiped only Jehovah, the God of Israel, at which the maid greatly rejoiceth.”
Eli’s face glowed. “Sayest thou so? Upon coming to Damascus we first sought Ezekiel to obtain news of Rachel and to see if she knew of Miriam. Finding him long since dead and Rachel married and somewhere out on the hills with Benjamin, her husband, who is a shepherd, we then sought thee, fearing to mention Miriam’s name or to betray our errand lest obstacles be put in our way or our treasure stolen. From Amos, seller of perfumes, did we learn that one, Isaac, wast in the service of Naaman at this house. From thee we hoped to learn of the maiden’s whereabouts. Later we heard that an Israelitish maid, Miriam by name, was also here, so we sought to speak to the master.”
He paused, gazing at Isaac with a strange mixture of diffidence and resolution. “We came,” he went on, “thinking of thee as an enemy to be approached with cautious dread. We find thee a friend to whom we are much indebted.”
Nathan nodded, telling briefly his experience just past and joining his thanks to Eli’s, but Isaac waved aside the praise and, dismissing the servant, himself conducted them to the apartments where they were expected. Miriam was nowhere in sight. Adah listened languidly while Eli earnestly pleaded his cause, Nathan, as usual, in admiring silence. Isaac paced the courtyard without.
“And so because her master, thy husband, refuseth to accept a ransom,” Eli supplicated, “even though we have offered to become servants in her stead, I have determined to ask of thee a gift—the gift of the maid to her mother, who yearneth for her.”
Restless under those burning eyes, jealous for the reputation of her own household, she addressed him haughtily: “The same request hath already been preferred by Isaac, and although the maid is dear unto us, yet to-day hath she been told that she is not bound to the House of Naaman save by the cords of affection. When the rainy season is over, she is to go with her brother and his family, together with his flocks and herds, back to the Land of Israel, in the care of a captain and horsemen. Behold, before thou camest thou hadst thy desire.”
Cutting short Eli’s bewildered expressions of gratitude, she dispatched a servant in search of Miriam. To the waiting ones, it seemed hours before she came, although in reality it was but a few minutes. It was her fifteenth birthday and she was glowing with happiness, smiling radiantly upon the little world inside the walls of Naaman’s house.
Adah claimed her attention: “Another gift, little maid, an unexpected one: tidings from thy home in Israel brought by these two young men. Dost thou know them?”
Miriam turned, scanning their faces eagerly. Nathan smiled and Eli began to speak, but she interrupted with a joyous cry: “Eli! Nathan! How tall thou art grown! And how didst thou ever find me? But how glad I am, how very glad! Tell me, my mother and my father—”
It was the same Miriam Eli had last seen in Israel. Out in the courtyard Isaac heard the joyful greeting and through the partly opened door his eyes encountered Adah’s, looking past the young people. She beckoned him to her side for a whispered word.
“I fear the little maid will no longer be our little maid.”
The words were spoken in so low a tone he scarcely caught them, but they might have been shouted and Miriam and her visitors would not have heard. Isaac watched for a moment the little group so absorbed each in the other and sighed.
“Yea,” he admitted, sadly, “we have lost our little maid and thou and I will sorrow most.”