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Tor, A Street Boy of Jerusalem

<h1>CHAPTER III THE MAN WHO OPENED HIS EYES</h1> To Tor, groaning in the wordless anguish of his hurts, came a soft inquiring touch on his heaving shoulders. Led by that kind instinct which guides all wounded creatures, the child had crawled away and hidden himself from unfriendly eyes in the mouth of a ruinous sewer hard by. Here he had lain long hours, exhausted with agony. The dog snuffed the small huddled figure from head to foot with short, anxious whines. Then he fell to industriously licking the one limp brown hand which crept out from beneath the ragged tunic. “Baladan,” whispered Tor, and shrieked aloud with the intolerable smart of rising tears in his blinded eyes. The shriek, faint as it was, reached the ears of a second boy, who was searching carefully from side to side of the gloomy little thoroughfare. “’Tis thou, Tor,” he exclaimed, stooping to stare in at the sewer’s mouth. “Art bad hurt?” “Oh, Dan, the accursed lash of the Roman smote my eyes,” groaned the child, and sputtered out some strange maledictions in the Egyptian tongue, which he had learned from his late master. The second boy pursed up his coarse lips into a soft whistle of comprehension. Then he bent down and stared briefly into the drooped face of the half-delirious sufferer. “Body of Bacchus!” he murmured, smiting his bare thigh with closed fist. “One more blind beggar in Jerusalem.” Then raising his fingers to his lips he gave vent to a shrill cry of summons. It was promptly answered by the soft thud of a water-carrier’s feet and the loud tinkle of his brazen cups. “Give him to drink,” commanded Dan, indicating Tor with a grimy forefinger. “The poor fool hath brought ill-fortune upon himself. ’Tis the evil eye of a surety.” With that he produced a copper coin, which the water-carrier acknowledged with a cup of water from the goat-skin on his back. “I will come again at sunset and give him to drink,” said the water-carrier, with a sidelong glance of fear and pity. Then the two departed, leaving Tor to his misery. How the child lived through the days and weeks that followed only Baladan knew. The dog warmed his master’s pinched body at night, keeping at bay other prowling beasts of the pariah race which ranged the deserted streets, as lawless and almost as fierce as wolves. He even fed him, more than once bringing fragments of bread and fish, stolen from a vender’s stall at the imminent peril of his life. Occasionally the friendly water-carrier visited the suffering boy, and the little wild children of the street, swarming like sparrows in the streets of Jerusalem, shared their infrequent crusts with him. By slow degrees the anguish of his wounds grew less poignant. The cruelly disfigured eyes were indeed wholly darkened, but they ceased to send burning shafts of fire to the tortured brain. The child slept fitfully, ate what he could get, and one day even smiled. This when Baladan brought him a meatless bone, laying it down at his feet with extravagant expressions of satisfaction. “Nay, good Baladan,” murmured Tor, patting his friend’s shaggy coat; “indeed I am not hungry to-day. Eat, dear beast,” and he thrust the bone into the dog’s mouth, and closed his sharp teeth upon it. Baladan understood, and the two rested together in the sunshine with something like real content. The charitable water-carrier had bestowed one of his brazen cups upon the blind boy, and this with his ruined eyes became his stock in trade. Little by little he learned to send forth the dolorous plaint of the blind mendicant. After a time he could find his way from place to place with the aid of the dog. And so it came to pass that there was one more blind beggar in Jerusalem. Once during these evil days of his darkness Tor fell in with his old master. It was on this wise: the child, grown bolder, had made his way farther than his wont into the more crowded thoroughfares of the city, and there his shrill cry for alms sounded loud and clear above the tumult of the market-place. He rattled his cup bravely as was the custom of the professional beggar, sending forth into the unfriendly world the old familiar plaint of the beggar, Chelluh. “Have mercy, kind lords of Jerusalem; have mercy on the sorrows of one born blind! Kind lord, kind lady, only a denarius, I beseech thee, and may Jehovah and all lesser gods be gracious unto thee!” Now it chanced that Chelluh himself had also come to the market-place to beg alms, and, hearing the child’s voice afar off, recognized it with the unerring ear of the blind. “Fetch me now to the voice that crieth my cry,” he commanded the one that led him. And when presently he was come to the place where Tor stood in the safe angle of two windowless walls, he stopped short with a malevolent smile. “Art thou of a surety blind, my son—that thou stealest my cry for alms as thou didst once steal my money?” he demanded. Tor trembled like a leaf in the wind at sound of the cruel voice. “Alas, I am indeed blind, good master,” he said beseechingly. “Have mercy upon me, for I—” The prayer ended in a muffled shriek for help as the blind man hurled himself upon the blind child, griping him in a very fury of malicious hatred. No one interfered. What, indeed, was the quarrel of two beggars in an angle of the wall? Trade pressed hard in Jerusalem as elsewhere, and a man must mind naught save his own business if he would prosper. So no one glanced that way when the blind man, having satisfied his lust for revenge, departed, leaving the child’s limp body upon the ground. Tor was not dead. He was only bruised and beaten and choked into insensibility, and after awhile he revived and crawled feebly away with the faithful Baladan. His begging-cup was gone, and he no longer dared to raise his voice to crave alms from the passers-by. Occasionally one tossed him a coin or a crust, but for the most part the child crouched all day in his corner motionless, starving. And the days and weeks dragged by. He was sitting thus one morning when the sun had climbed high enough to flood his darkened nook with yellow light. Tor could feel the warmth of its radiance in his chill darkness. He sighed deeply and spread forth his lean hands, wondering dully what it would be like to see once more. He had already forgotten the blue sky and the moving clouds, the flutter of green leaves over high garden walls and the glistening whir of bird-wings in the sunshine. His night was endless, unbroken by morning gleam or noontide glory. It meant cold and hunger and a thousand nameless miseries which he endured because he must endure. It would stretch on and on, he thought, to some far-off, hopeless end, when perchance he might sleep to awaken no more. Tor had looked upon such sleepers with a scared creeping of the flesh in the old days of seeing. Now the sleep seemed good, and quite stupidly and vaguely he longed for it. Somewhere, afar off, there was shouting and a sound of voices that chanted musically. The child listened with the sharpened attention which had grown to be his one defence and solace. In the old days his flying feet would have borne him swiftly enough to see what was happening. Now he could only listen, and wonder. “Perhaps ’tis some great prince come to Jerusalem,” he muttered, and tried to picture to himself the gay pageant of the marching troops, the gorgeous uniforms, the jeweled robes of the nobles, the chariots, the horses. And now the shouting grew louder, there was a noise of swift-hurrying feet, of confused questions and answers, while above all rose the clear musical voices of myriads of children crying in the rhythmic measures of the temple chorals: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed—Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Tor started uncertainly to his feet, a strange, new longing for something he knew not what stealing into his starved soul. Baladan whined uneasily, then, running to the street-corner and back again to his helpless master, began to utter short excited barks. The child’s thin fingers trailed the rough wall askingly; his timid feet crept nearer to the jubilant procession. “Hosanna—Hosanna to the King! Hosanna to the Son of David!” He had reached the open square, and, fearing to go further, he sank down once more in the shelter of a friendly column, hot tears stealing from his darkened eyes. “Oh, Baladan,” he moaned, “if I could only see!” And now the sweet chanting was growing momently fainter. Tor followed the procession in fancy. It was moving toward the temple, he knew,—that great pile of stone and marble and gold which towered above the tumultuous streets of Jerusalem like the glistening palace of a dream. Now it had passed into the outer courts, and a great and singular silence fell upon the city. It was broken after what seemed hours of waiting by light and rapid footfalls. “Tor,” cried an eager, breathless voice. “Where art thou?—Tor!” “Here!” answered the blind boy, starting to his feet and straining his sightless eyes in the direction of the voice. “Here am I. What wilt thou, Dan?” For he knew the voice and the step of his friend. “I have come to fetch thee to the temple,” breathed the boy excitedly. “Thou must come quickly, before the King has gone away to his palace.” “Did the King scatter coins among the crowd?” asked Tor eagerly. “Are the soldiers giving bread and alms to the people, as when Pilate came to Jerusalem?” “Nay, the man is like no other great one who ever came to Jerusalem,” answered Dan wonderingly. “He is verily a King though. Didst thou not hear the people shouting, ‘Blessed is the King that cometh!’ Hark you, the man is a strange King. He wears no crown, no jewels; he hath no soldiers, no money for the people. He came into the city riding on the colt of an ass; but the people cast even their garments upon the earth before him. I saw it, and shouted with the rest; and because I had no coat, I cut a green branch from a tree and cast it beneath the feet of his beast. So also did many others, when they saw what I had done. They cut palm-branches, olive-branches, and acacias from fields and gardens all along the way; ’twas a great sight! The big turbans came out in a rage to shut our mouths, but for once they could not. Come,—thou must come!” “Why should I come?” said Tor mournfully. “I am only a beggar—and blind.” “But thou shalt have thine eyes again, lad,” cried Dan exultantly. “The King is even now laying his hands upon the blind, the lame, and palsied, and they see and leap and walk forthwith. I myself have looked upon it. I will fetch thee to him.” “But the King would not touch me—a beggar, and unclean,” wailed Tor. “Look you, I am no better than Baladan, and the Jews hate and despise all dogs. He would spurn me—spit upon me. Nay, I will not go.” <div class="tei tei-figure" style="text-align: center"> <ANTIMG src="images/p048.jpg" alt= "“ ‘I HAVE SAID IT. I WILL TAKE THEE TO THE KING.’ ”" /> <div class="tei tei-head" style= "margin-bottom: 1.00em; margin-top: 1.00em; text-align: center"> “ ‘I HAVE SAID IT. I WILL TAKE THEE TO THE KING.’ ”</div> </div> Dan laid violent hands upon the blind boy. “Thou shalt go with me,” he said loudly. “I have said it. I will take thee to the King, then if he spurn thee—spit upon thee—Nay, but he will not spurn thee; I saw him, and I say that he will not. But if he heal thee not, what then? I will bring thee again to this place. There shall no harm befall thee.” The two boys made their way to the temple enclosure, slipping easily among the excited multitudes, unnoticed even as the little brown sparrows which flit among the great feet of horses in a crowded thoroughfare. And when they had come to the place where Jesus was, they found already gathered great numbers of blind and lame and withered and palsied, and the court ringing with the noise of their petitions mingled with the jubilant thanksgivings of those already healed. “Here, get thee betwixt these two cripples,” whispered Dan urgently. “Fasten thou onto this man’s tunic—so! Now go, and come again—seeing. I will wait for thee by this third pillar. Thou wilt see me.” The blind boy stumbled on behind his crippled guide, his heart beating so loud in his ears that he could scarce hear what the Voice said to him. But the thrilling touch on his sightless eyes sank to the depths of his soul. He saw—Jesus. Some one was pushing him from behind; Tor yielded to the pressure without a word—without a sound. His great eyes, wide and bright, still remained fastened upon the man who had healed him; but he uttered no sound of rejoicing. To Dan, watching beside the third pillar, came a sudden sickening sense of defeat. He made his way through the crowd and again laid forcible hands upon Tor. “Let me alone,” commanded Tor briefly. “I want to look at the man.” “Canst see him?” inquired Dan incredulously. Tor made no answer. He was thinking confusedly, vaguely, while one fixed purpose formed and lifted itself like a great, radiant light in his darkened understanding. “I shall follow him,” he said aloud, and his thin face shone strangely. “I shall see him always.” “Canst thou see, lad?” cried Dan, griping his friend’s shoulders impatiently, “or art thou crazed as well as blind?” Tor turned his bright eyes upon the other boy. “Can I see?” he echoed, and laughed aloud. Then, in a sudden ecstasy, he leaped upon a balustrade and shouted aloud the word which he had heard afar off in his darkness: “Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!” Myriads of child voices took up the cry, and it arose into the blue heavens far—far beyond the smoke of the sacrificial fires, till it mingled with the songs of angels before the great white throne. And there was joy in Heaven. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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