“I wish the night were over,” she said, with a sigh. “Tom is fast
asleep. Are you sure we have done everything properly? I am so anxious.
I cannot sleep.”
Mustaph suppressed a yawn.
“Allah is good!” he exclaimed wearily. “Ma’am must sleep, or else Elijah
not come. To stay awake is _harâm_—forbidden. I tell jackal _imshi_.
Ma’am sleep.”
So Anne returned to the interior of the cave, and wrapping herself in a
blanket, tried to fulfil the command. The howling and whimpering of the
jackals continued for some time, but she covered her ears, and did her
best to shut out the sound. She was, indeed, very tired, and since it
was necessary that she should sleep, she was determined not to keep
awake. Gradually she lost consciousness, until the cheerless cave
entirely disappeared, to be replaced by a phantomatic but more happy
slumberland. The night wore on, but nothing happened to disturb her
dreams, and she slept right on until a strip of light in the east
heralded the dawn. Then she awoke with a start to find her two
companions still asleep, the Arab in his place at the mouth of the cave.
Pulling herself together, she rose and stretched wearily, and then bent
over her beloved grandchild. He was lying in the same position, but so
still that he might have been a waxen figure instead of a human boy.
With an indefinable sense of alarm she knelt down beside him, and
scarcely knowing what she was doing, felt his heart and his wrist. Then
a low cry of anguish echoed and re-echoed through the silence of the
cavern—the cry of a broken-hearted woman.
For the light of her life had been extinguished—the boy was quite dead!
She remained in her kneeling position, totally stunned. It was possible
that lying on the floor the damp vapours had poisoned him, but it did
not occur to her yet to seek the cause; it mattered not how he died,
since there was no hope of his instantaneous resurrection. But while she
knelt, her eyes blinded with tears, there appeared before her mind’s eye
something which was almost akin to a vision. The cave in which she had
slept for so many hours became the rock-hewn sepulchre of Mary and
Martha’s brother, and in fancy she heard the sweet but authoritative
Voice: “_Lazarus, come forth!_” Oh, that that same Voice might utter the
command over the inanimate figure of her boy! But no, that Voice spake
no longer, save in the souls of men. Of a different nature, though no
less potent, were the miracles of to-day.
“_‘He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it him, even length of days
for ever and ever’!_” she quoted, in a whisper, as her lips touched the
ice-cold forehead of the lad. She had prayed that he might be cured,
that he might spend no more weary hours, and have no more pain. Ought
she not to be happy since God in His own way had cured the child?
Certain it was that for him there would be no more suffering and
weariness. “_‘Even length of days for ever and ever’!_” she repeated, as
she went to inform the Arab.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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