Istar of Babylon Part 23

Charmides, looking into her face, smiled at her with his soul in his eyes. Then he turned again to Ribata. "My lord," he said, "thou hearest.

Thou wilt not take her from her heart; and her heart is with me."

"By Nebo and Bel, I will take her!" cried Ribata, furious at last. "Do I not buy her? She is my chattel. You, foreigner, can, at my word, be slain like a dog!" With a heavy stride, and a mien that had more than menace in it, he strode over to where Ramua stood cowering at Charmides'

shoulder.

He had put out his arm to grasp her, and the knife became visible in Charmides' hand, when suddenly there was a faint exclamation from the other end of the room, and a little figure came running forward, and projected itself in a heap at Ribata's feet.

My lord paused and looked down into an elflike face, with a pair of wide-open, black eyes, and a little mouth of rosy hue, parted just so as to show a row of snowy teeth. Ma.s.ses of unbound hair hung loosely around her head and neck. Beneath her tattered vestment the lines of a remarkably graceful little body could be discerned. Ribata, looking at her steadfastly for a moment, found something in her face that caused his own to relax its unpleasant expression.

"Thou art--Baba--!" he said, with a recognizable imitation of her way of speaking, and an ensuing grin at his success.

"My lord remembers!" said Baba, with every appearance of coquettish delight.

Ribata laughed as he touched a scarlet rose on his embroidered tunic. "I remember--sprite," he said.

"My lord, I am Baba, the sister of Ramua. I have no lover nor husband.

Behold, were my lord to ask it, I am my lord's. Let him take me in Ramua's place for half the gold that he offers for her!"

Ribata, Beltani, Ramua, most of all Charmides, stared at Baba in open amazement at her shameless suggestion. All of them judged her exactly according to her words. Only one in the room guessed at the real reason for this unparalleled act, and he, knowing that reason, wept and loved her. Bazuzu, who had long ago realized the great, concealed sorrow in her life, was capable now of appreciating her unbounded devotion, and in his secret heart he hated Ramua for the innocent part that she played in this pitiable drama.

Ribata, his thoughts quite turned out of their angry channel, looked for a long time down into the lively, witchlike face, and finally a smile parted his severe lips.

"Good Beltani, hearest thou thy daughter?"

"My lord, I have heard her," returned the woman, in a subdued fashion, not sure that Baba had not found the real solution of their difficult problem.

"And thy words, woman?"

"May my lord accomplish his will," she replied, disclaiming all further responsibility.

My lord, who by this time began to find himself not absolutely certain of his will, bit his lip and looked thoughtfully from Baba to Ramua, and back again. The goat-girl sat at his feet, curled up like a kitten, her eyes staring unwinkingly into his face, her lips pressed together in apparent anxiety. Her whole _ensemble_ struck Ribata as peculiarly pleasing. Ramua was hiding her face from his gaze, and certainly her figure was not so graceful as that of her sister. Baba was not pretty, in the correct sense of the word; but Baba, he felt, would not weep for another in his presence.

"Straighten thy garments, bold one, and rise up. Thou shalt come with me," he said, suddenly, with a half shrug of the shoulders.

Ramua quivered, whether with delight or displeasure she scarcely knew.

At any rate, it was not to Baba that she turned. Baba was strange to her, all of a sudden; was some one to pity, perhaps, but also to be ashamed for. Her good-bye to her sister was reluctant and very gentle, but not warm. Beltani, satisfied, now that one daughter had found wealth and the other a husband, kissed her little one light-heartedly. Black Bazuzu pressed his lips to each of her bare feet, feeling her quite as worthy of the homage as his sovereign could be. Last of all, on her way out of the house of her childhood, Baba pa.s.sed Charmides. His blue eyes looked into hers for an instant with an expression of puzzled distaste.

She had won for him his life's happiness. This was all his thanks. Baba knew his mind, and a dull, half-human smile crept over her face--a smile that Ribata would not have thought pretty had he been watching her just then. On the threshold of the door, however, Zor was standing; and as she perceived her goat, which she had always loved better than she loved herself, she suddenly seized the creature by its silken hair and gave it a wrench that drew from Zor a long bleat of indignation. Ribata, catching this proceeding on the part of his new possession, laughed deeply. Here, at last, was something original.

Day had crept in upon Baba in her new home before, at last, she could turn her face to the wall of her luxurious prison-house, and wail out her little agony alone, in the pale, golden light of the new dawn.

IX

BABYLON BY NIGHT

Baba's departure into her new life left an unexpectedly large gap in the household of the tenement. The child's personality had been very strong; and though she had been little heard, little seen even, she had been much felt. Charmides especially found this true. He had always believed, when he played and sang for himself at home, that Ramua's presence had given him the support of understanding and sympathy. He was scarcely willing to admit, even to himself, that, in the absence of Baba, the pleasure of improvisation had materially lessened. Baba's action in going to Ribata he still misunderstood. But as time pa.s.sed and the want of her was as strong as ever, she came gradually to a.s.sume in his mind a place that she had dreamed of filling but had never hoped to attain.

Though Baba was at liberty to visit her home, if she chose, during the four or five hours at mid-day, when her lord would never demand her presence, she had the strength to withstand the temptation, knowing that by such visits her unhappiness would be greater than ever. Her homesickness was pitiable enough. She managed to conceal it from the eyes of the curious very well. Her tears would never flow when any one was near. But by day and by night the iron entered into her soul; and as day followed day, the weight of the hours past, and yet more the presage of those to come, crushed her spirit with a merciless slowness. Baba was too young to realize the healing power of time, how it bears forgetfulness on its kindly wings, how its shadow becomes finally a shield by which the keen daggers of remembrance are blunted and turned aside. She did not know that the human soul can suffer only so far. Her capacity seemed infinite. She appeared to have entered into an eternally dreary land, the boundless valley of shadow. She wept till tears were gone. Day renewed the misery that night confirmed. Finally, when she had come to dream wildly of death as the one desirable thing, the limit of her unhappiness was reached and the tide turned. The beginning of the change for the better was made by the appearance of Zor, her beloved goat, who had mourned for her mistress so continually that life in the neighborhood with her became impossible, and finally Bazuzu carried the creature to the gates of Ribata's palace, and commanded the magnificent slaves of the portal to carry it instantly to the Lady Baba. The Lady Baba being, at the moment, an unconscious but none the less real power in my lord's household, Bazuzu was obeyed with alacrity, and the eunuch that led the animal into the court-yard, where Baba lay alone upon her cushions, could only stand in open-mouthed astonishment to see that lady run forward, screaming with delight, throw her arms about the animal's neck, and clasp it to her heart with a warmth that my lord had never discovered in her.

Zor herself baaed with joy; and, having completely forgotten the anything but affectionate parting of two weeks before, put her nose to her mistress' cheek and loudly sounded her pleasure.

Baba always remembered this meeting as the first ray of light in her gloomy existence. Little by little, now, the luxury of her new home began to grow more worthy in her eyes, when she contrasted it with the squalor of her childhood's home. Little by little, as the feeling of silken garments became more familiar, she lost the craving for her rags, and the hair that could fall in unrebuked tangles round her face. The courts, the halls, and the rooms of Ribata's beautiful abode, no longer looked vast, barren, and tomblike to her eyes. Ribata himself was not an object of terror now. He had always been gentle, always kind, with her.

This, long ago, she had begun to realize. And now, at length, a visit to the tenement began to seem possible--desirable. Bazuzu, indeed, had come to see her more than once, to bring her her mother's love, and to say that she and Ramua would see her as soon as she could come. Ramua was very busy and very happy. Her wedding with Charmides was to be celebrated before the first rains of Tasritu (September), and it was now well along in Ululu, the last of summer. Baba heard the news without surprise, but determined to wait till the knot was tied before she went back to see her home.

The time came soon enough. It was not quite three months after the Greek's first sight of the Great City that he took up that city as his abode for life, bound to it by every tie that can bind a man to his home. Throughout his wedding-day, with its quaint ceremonies and its high feasting, Charmides' mind was upon his mother and her distant land.

Could she only know his wife, see her for an hour, behold her pretty gentleness, and read her great love for him, Charmides felt that Heraia would rejoice with him. But, as it was, through this, the most important day of his life, the youth was rather silent and grave, save when Ramua looked at him with her shy, inquiring smile.

The wedding ceremony was long and fatiguing. It meant prayer and purification in the morning before the a.s.sembled images of the G.o.ds.

Then there was the procession to the nearest temple, the signing of contracts, the giving of Ramua's hard-won dower by Beltani, and Charmides' reverent pledge to support, protect, and cherish his wife so long as she should remain faithful to him. Then his wrist and hers were bound together with a woollen cord, a prayer was chanted, there was a great blare of trumpets and clashing of cymbals, a public proclamation that Charmides had taken unto himself Ramua, the daughter of Beltani of the tenement of Ut, and then, at last, the sacrifice. The chief portion of the animals slaughtered was carried to the house of the bride for the wedding feast, which lasted as long as the food held out.

Not till early evening did Charmides find himself alone. The guests had departed, and Ramua and her mother were up-stairs in the little room that Charmides had taken for Ramua and himself on the top floor of the tenement. The Greek seated himself on a stool in the door-way of the living-room, watching the sunset, that poured, a river of living gold, over the lane and square before him. The thought of Sicily and his family there was with him still; and he tried, for a little while, to be alone by the sea with his parents and his brother. With all his soul he prayed to Apollo for happiness in the new life, for forgiveness of any past wrong, for a blessing for his wife, and a continuous renewal of their love for each other. Then between him and Ramua came the thought of little Baba. Her life was dishonorable, despicable, in his eyes; yet it was she that had saved him either from a great crime or the loss of that that was dearest to him. Did she know of her sister's wedding? If she knew, why had she not come to it? There was no telling. But, in any case, he thought of her very kindly to-night, as he sat alone with the gathering dusk.

Charmides' head was bent with abstraction and he was no longer looking at the square before him. Presently a four-footed creature ran against his knee and laid its head there. He looked up quickly, to find Zor at his side and Baba in the square. She came towards him through the twilight like a wraith, in her trailing, silken garments, with her hair piled up on her small head in a crown of black braids fastened with wrought golden pins. Beneath the dark hair her face looked very pale and pointed. It was infinitely different from the face he had known. There was no longer anything of the child in it. The elf-look was gone. In its place was an expression of gentle weariness, of patience, of long-suffering that affected the Greek strangely. As she came closer he looked her full in the eyes, and, with one of his old, shining smiles, held out both hands to her.

Baba had steeled herself to meet any greeting, but this was the one that came nearest to breaking down her self-control. She managed to answer the look steadily; and no one, least of all Charmides, could have dreamed how her heart was bleeding. She gave him her hands, and he saw what she carried in one of them.

"For Ramua's bridal," she said, placing on his knee a long, golden chain of Phnician workmanship. It was far more valuable than anything Ramua had dreamed of possessing; and Charmides, examining the fine work on the metal links, said so to her.

Baba dropped her eyes. "It was from my lord to me," she said. "But it is my hand that brings it to Ramua. Thou wilt let her wear it--for me--Charmides?" The tone was doubtful.

Much as he might not have desired it, the Greek could not refuse her.

"Ramua is above. Go thou and make thy costly gift to her thyself, Baba."

Baba bent her head, accepting the dismissal with the unquestioning obedience that she had had instilled into her all her life through.

While she mounted to her sister, to hear the tale of that sister's perfect happiness, Charmides sat him down again, the current of his thoughts quite changed; his dreams all of the new life, no longer of the old.

One week and then another pa.s.sed away. The rains had come upon the land, and all Babylon rejoiced that the fiery summer was over. Wonderful and terrifying were these rains. Sometimes, for six hours at a stretch, the skies would open wide, and all the waters of the upper air descend upon the earth in such floods that, by the time they had pa.s.sed away, and Raman and his demons ceased to scourge the souls in Ninkigal, Babylon would lie quivering in mud, her brick huts melted into shapeless puddles, her drains overflowing with water and refuse, her river tearing along through its high-bricked banks, threatening to inundate all Chaldea, from Cutha to the gulf. And yet--one short day of sunshine and the a-Ibur and all the squares were dry again; the ca.n.a.ls flowed soberly between their banks; the troops of beggars, children, and dogs came out from their lurking-places, and homeless ones gathered their scant furniture out of the muddy ruins and began the yearly task of rebuilding their unstable homes.

The days were growing short, and Charmides, whose work at the temple occupied more time than formerly, while his salary had correspondingly increased, frequently walked home at the very end of twilight. One evening, during the first days of Arah-Samma (October), the young Greek, who had been detained by a special sacrifice in honor of the full moon, was wending his way homeward by its light. His steps were slower than usual and betrayed the reluctance that he felt. His mood was arbitrary.

For the first time since his marriage, for the first time in his life, perhaps, Charmides felt a great craving for masculine society. The idea of the eternal supper with Ramua and her mother, the evening spent in hearing his wife discourse upon effeminate matters, or in poetry of his own making, palled upon him. Were there a single man in all this city whom he could call comrade, Ramua might have waited for him in vain to-night. So at least thought Charmides, as he loitered along in childish ill-humor; and either Sin or Apollo must have read his heart.

Presently, as he came to a turn in the way, he espied, just emerging from a door on the left, a whilom familiar figure, bandy-legged, crook-shouldered, with spotless white cap and tunic, and a walk by which he would have been recognized at the end of the world. Without perceiving Charmides, he turned towards the south. But the Greek, his heart leaping with pleasure, darted forward and grasped the little fellow by the shoulder.

"Hodo!" he cried, in Phnician. "Hodo! Dost thou forget me?"

"By Nebo, my little Greek!" shouted Hodo, blinking violently once or twice, and then opening his eyes wide with delight. "Well, my Greek!

Still in Babylon? And how? And where? I will turn my steps in the way of thy going."

"They go in mine already. Come you home with me, Hodo, and greet my wife."

"Wife--_wife_! Horns of Bel! Why, Greek, thou art the wonder of my heart! 'Home'--to thy 'wife'! Who may she be? Thou hast not won the G.o.ddess over?"

Charmides flushed, but did not lose his temper. "Come you home and eat of my bread, and behold the light of Ramua's eyes."

"Oh, ay. Give you thanks. I will in happiness break bread with you.

Then, later, come you out with me where I am going--to the temple of the false Istar. Let us behold the witches who wander abroad; the vultures that s.n.a.t.c.h at the bodies of the fallen in the pale beams of Sin; and the vampires and ghouls that haunt the Great City by night. The Lady Ramua will sleep soundly enough for this only time."