The Scapegoat [97]
beautiful!" she cried, "how beautiful!"
She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water was the wonder of her dancing eyes. "Oh! how very beautiful!" she cried without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed again with a heart of glee.
Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny himself this choking rapture of her recovery. "Live on like a child always, little one," he thought; "be a child as long as you can, be a child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a child at all."
The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still. Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.
It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart. All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her, they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.
Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her favourite song was still her mother's:--
Oh, come and claim thine own, Oh, come and take thy throne, Reign ever and alone Reign glorious, golden Love.
Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow. And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young motherhood.
She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water was the wonder of her dancing eyes. "Oh! how very beautiful!" she cried without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed again with a heart of glee.
Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny himself this choking rapture of her recovery. "Live on like a child always, little one," he thought; "be a child as long as you can, be a child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a child at all."
The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still. Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.
It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart. All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her, they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.
Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her favourite song was still her mother's:--
Oh, come and claim thine own, Oh, come and take thy throne, Reign ever and alone Reign glorious, golden Love.
Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow. And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young motherhood.