



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK ZIA

BY

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
SPENCER BAIRD NICHOLS
AND
W. T. BENDA





And it came to pass nigh upon
nineteen hundred and sixteen years ago





THE LITTLE HUNCHBACK ZIA

The little hunchback Zia toiled slowly up the steep road, keeping in the
deepest shadows, even though the night had long fallen. Sometimes he
staggered with weariness or struck his foot against a stone and
smothered his involuntary cry of pain. He was so full of terror that he
was afraid to utter a sound which might cause any traveler to glance
toward him. This he feared more than any other thing--that some man or
woman might look at him too closely. If such a one knew much and had
keen eyes, he or she might in some way guess even at what they might not
yet see.

Since he had fled from the village in which his wretched short life had
been spent he had hidden himself in thickets and behind walls or rocks
or bushes during the day, and had only come forth at night to stagger
along his way in the darkness. If he had not managed to steal some food
before he began his journey and if he had not found in one place some
beans dropped from a camel's feeding-bag, he would have starved. For
five nights he had been wandering on, but in his desperate fear he had
lost count of time. When he had left the place he had called his home he
had not known where he was going or where he might hide himself in the
end. The old woman with whom he had lived and for whom he had begged and
labored had driven him out with a terror as great as his own.

"Begone!" she had cried in a smothered shriek. "Get thee gone, accursed!
Even now thou mayest have brought the curse upon me also. A creature
born a hunchback comes on earth with the blight of Jehovah's wrath upon
him. Go far! Go as far as thy limbs will carry thee! Let no man come
near enough to thee to see it! If thou go far away before it is known,
it will be forgotten that I have harbored thee."

He had stood and looked at her in the silence of the dead, his immense,
black Syrian eyes growing wider and wider with childish horror. He had
always regarded her with slavish fear. What he was to her he did not
know; neither did he know how he had fallen into her hands. He knew only
that he was not of her blood or of her country and that he yet seemed to
have always belonged to her. In his first memory of his existence, a
little deformed creature rolling about on the littered floor of her
uncleanly hovel, he had trembled at the sound of her voice and had
obeyed it like a beaten spaniel puppy. When he had grown older he had
seen that she lived upon alms and thievery and witchlike evil doings
that made all decent folk avoid her. She had no kinsfolk or friends, and
only such visitors as came to her in the dark hours of night and seemed
to consult with her as she sat and mumbled strange incantations while
she stirred a boiling pot. Zia had heard of soothsayers and dealers with
evil spirits, and at such hours was either asleep on his pallet in a far
corner or, if he lay awake, hid his face under his wretched covering and
stopped his ears. Once when she had drawn near and found his large eyes
open and staring at her in spellbound terror, she had beaten him
horribly and cast him into the storm raging outside.

A strange passion in her seemed her hatred of his eyes. She could not
endure that he should look at her as if he were thinking. He must not
let his eyes rest on her for more than a moment when he spoke. He must
keep them fixed on the ground or look away from her. From his babyhood
this had been so. A hundred times she had struck him when he was too
young to understand her reason. The first strange lesson he had learned
was that she hated his eyes and was driven to fury when she found them
resting innocently upon her. Before he was three years old he had
learned this thing and had formed the habit of looking down upon the
earth as he limped about. For long he thought that his eyes were as
hideous as his body was distorted. In her frenzies she told him that
evil spirits looked out from them and that he was possessed of devils.
Without thought of rebellion or resentment he accepted with timorous
humility, as part of his existence, her taunts at his twisted limbs.
What use in rebellion or anger? With the fatalism of the East he
resigned himself to that which was. He had been born a deformity, and
even his glance carried evil. This was life. He knew no other. Of his
origin he knew nothing except that from the old woman's rambling
outbursts he had gathered that he was of Syrian blood and a homeless
outcast.

But though he had so long trained himself to look downward that it had
at last become an effort to lift his heavily lashed eyelids, there came
a time when he learned that his eyes were not so hideously evil as his
task-mistress had convinced him that they were. When he was only seven
years old she sent him out to beg alms for her, and on the first day of
his going forth she said a strange thing, the meaning of which he could
not understand.

"Go not forth with thine eyes bent downward on the dust. Lift them, and
look long at those from whom thou askest alms. Lift them and look as I
see thee look at the sky when thou knowest not I am near thee. I have
seen thee, hunchback. Gaze at the passers-by as if thou sawest their
souls and asked help of them."

She said it with a fierce laugh of derision, but when in his
astonishment he involuntarily lifted his gaze to hers, she struck at
him, her harsh laugh broken in two.

"Not at me, hunchback! Not at me! At those who are ready to give!" she
cried out.

He had gone out stunned with amazement. He wondered so greatly that when
he at last sat down by the roadside under a fig-tree he sat in a dream.
He looked up at the blueness above him as he always did when he was
alone. His eyelids did not seem heavy when he lifted them to look at the
sky. The blueness and the billows of white clouds brought rest to him,
and made him forget what he was. The floating clouds were his only
friends. There was something--yes, there was something, he did not know
what. He wished he were a cloud himself, and could lose himself at last
in the blueness as the clouds did when they melted away. Surely the
blueness was the something.

The soft, dull pad of camel's feet approached upon the road without his
hearing them. He was not roused from his absorption until the camel
stopped its tread so near him that he started and looked up. It was
necessary that he should look up a long way. He was a deformed little
child, and the camel was a tall and splendid one, with rich trappings
and golden bells. The man it carried was dressed richly, and the
expression of his dark face was at once restless and curious. He was
bending down and staring at Zia as if he were something strange.

"What dost thou see, child?" he said at last, and he spoke almost in a
breathless whisper. "What art thou waiting for?"

Zia stumbled to his feet and held out his bag, frightened, because he
had never begged before and did not know how, and if he did not carry
back money and food, he would be horribly beaten again.

"Alms! alms!" he stammered. "Master--Lord--I beg for--for her who keeps
me. She is poor and old. Alms, great lord, for a woman who is old!"

The man with the restless face still stared. He spoke as if unaware that
he uttered words and as if he were afraid.

"The child's eyes!" he said. "I cannot pass him by! What is it? I must
not be held back. But the unearthly beauty of his eyes!" He caught his
breath as he spoke. And then he seemed to awaken as one struggling
against a spell.

"What is thy name?" he asked.

Zia also had lost his breath. What had the man meant when he spoke of
his eyes?

He told his name, but he could answer no further questions. He did not
know whose son he was; he had no home; of his mistress he knew only that
her name was Judith and that she lived on alms.

Even while he related these things he remembered his lesson, and,
dropping his eyelids, fixed his gaze on the camel's feet.

"Why dost thou cast thine eyes downward?" the man asked in a troubled
and intense voice.

Zia could not speak, being stricken with fear and the dumbness of
bewilderment. He stood quite silent, and as he lifted his eyes and let
them rest on the stranger's own, they became large with tears--big,
piteous tears.

"Why?" persisted the man, anxiously. "Is it because thou seest evil in
my soul?"

"No, no!" sobbed Zia. "One taught me to look away because I am hideous
and--my eyes--are evil."

"Evil!" said the stranger. "They have lied to thee." He was trembling as
he spoke. "A man who has been pondering on sin dare not pass their
beauty by. They draw him, and show him his own soul. Having seen them, I
must turn my camel's feet backward and go no farther on this road which
was to lead me to a black deed." He bent down, and dropped a purse into
the child's alms-bag, still staring at him and breathing hard. "They
have the look," he muttered, "of eyes that might behold the Messiah. Who
knows? Who knows?" And he turned his camel's head, still shuddering a
little, and he rode away back toward the place from which he had come.

There was gold in the purse he had given, and when Zia carried it back
to Judith, she snatched it from him and asked him many questions. She
made him repeat word for word all that had passed.

After that he was sent out to beg day after day, and in time he vaguely
understood that the old woman had spoken falsely when she had said that
evil spirits looked forth hideously from his eyes. People often said that
they were beautiful, and gave him money because something in his gaze
drew them near to him. But this was not all. At times there were those
who spoke under their breath to one another of some wonder of light in
them, some strange luminousness which was not earthly.

[Illustration with caption: "'Perhaps when he is a man he will be a
great soothsayer and reader of the stars'"]

"He surely sees that which we cannot. Perhaps when he is a man he will
be a great soothsayer and reader of the stars," he heard a woman whisper
to a companion one day.

Those who were evil were afraid to meet his gaze, and hated it as old
Judith did, though, as he was not their servant, they dared not strike
him when he lifted his soft, heavy eyelids.

But Zia could not understand what people meant when they whispered about
him or turned away fiercely. A weight was lifted from his soul when he
realized that he was not as revolting as he had believed. And when
people spoke kindly to him he began to know something like happiness for
the first time in his life. He brought home so much in his alms-bag that
the old woman ceased to beat him and gave him more liberty. He was
allowed to go out at night and sleep under the stars. At such times he
used to lie and look up at the jeweled myriads until he felt himself
drawn upward and floating nearer and nearer to that unknown something
which he felt also in the high blueness of the day.

When he first began to feel as if some mysterious ailment was creeping
upon him he kept himself out of Judith's way as much as possible. He
dared not tell her that sometimes he could scarcely crawl from one place
to another. A miserable fevered weakness became his secret. As the old
woman took no notice of him except when he brought back his day's
earnings, it was easy to evade her. One morning, however, she fixed her
eyes on him suddenly and keenly.

"Why art thou so white?" she said, and caught him by the arm, whirling
him toward the light. "Art thou ailing?"

"No! no!" cried Zia.

She held him still for a few seconds, still staring.

"Thou art too white," she said. "I will have no such whiteness. It is
the whiteness of--of an accursed thing. Get thee gone!"

He went away, feeling cold and shaken. He knew he was white. One or two
almsgivers had spoken of it, and had looked at him a little fearfully.
He himself could see that the flesh of his thin body was becoming an
unearthly color. Now and then he had shuddered as he looked at it
because--because--There was one curse so horrible beyond all others that
the strongest man would have quailed in his dread of its drawing near
him. And he was a child, a twelve-year-old boy, a helpless little
hunchback mendicant.

When he saw the first white-and-red spot upon his flesh he stood still
and stared at it, gasping, and the sweat started out upon him and rolled
down in great drops.

"Jehovah!" he whispered, "God of Israel! Thy servant is but a child!"

But there broke out upon him other spots, and every time he found a new
one his flesh quaked, and he could not help looking at it in