Mary Magdalen Part 4

And now as she lay on her great couch these things returned to her, and subsequent episodes as well. There had been the lamentable grief of Martha, the added pathos in her brother's eyes. The estate of her father had been divided, and the castle of Magdala had fallen to her share.

Meanwhile she had been at Jerusalem, and from there she had journeyed to Antioch, where she had heard the beasts roar in the arena. She had looked on blood, on the honey-colored moon that effaced the stars, and everywhere she had encountered love.

Since then her hours had been grooved in revolving circles of alternating delights, and delights to which no shadow of regret had come. To her, youth had been a chalice of aromatic wine. She had drained it and found no dregs. Day had been interwoven with splendors, and night with the rays of the sun. Where she pa.s.sed she conquered; when she smiled there were slaves ready-made. There had been hot brawls where she trod, the gleam of white knives. Men had killed each other because of her eyes, and women had wept themselves to death. For her a priest had gone mad, and a betrothed had hid herself in the sea. In Hierapolis the galli had fancied her Ashtaroth; and at Capri, where Tiberius lounged, a villa awaited her will.

Her life had indeed been full, yet that morning its nausea had mounted to her heart. At the words of the rabbi the horizon had expanded, the dream of immortality returned. It had been forgot long since and abandoned, but now, for the first time since her childhood, something there was which admonished her that perhaps she still might stroll through lands where dreams come true. The path was not wholly clear as yet, and as in her troubled mind she tried to disentangle the past from the present the sun went down behind the castle, the crouching shadows elongated and possessed the walls.

An echo came to her, Repent, and the prophecy continuing danced in her ears; yet still the way was obscure. In the echo she divined merely that the past must be put from her like a garment that is stained. The rest was vague. Then suddenly she was back again in Machaerus, and she heard the ringing words of John. Could this be the Messiah her nation awaited? was there a kingdom coming, and immortality too?

Her thoughts entangled and grew confused. There was a murmur of harps in the distance, and she wondered whence it could come. Some one was speaking; she tried to rouse herself and listen. The room was filled with bats that changed to b.u.t.terflies. The murmur of harps continued, and through the wall before her issued a litter in which a woman lay.

A circle of slaves surrounded her. She was pale, and her eyes closed languorously. "I am Indolence," she said. "Sleep is not softer than my couch. My lightest wish is law to kings. I live on perfumes; my days are as shadows on gla.s.s. Mary, come with me, and I will teach you to forget."

She vanished, and where the litter had been stood a eunuch. "I am Envy,"

he said, and his eyes drooped sullenly. "I separate those that love; I dismantle altars and dismember nations. I corrode and corrupt; I destroy, and I never rebuild. My joy is malice, and my creed false-witnessing.

Mary, come with me, and you will learn to hate."

He disappeared, and where his slime had dripped stood a being with fingers intertwisted and a back that bent. "I am Greed," it said. "I sap the veins of youth; I drain the hearts of women; I bring contention where peace should be. I make fathers destroy their sons, and daughters betray their mother. I never forget, and I never release. I am the master. Mary, come with me, and you shall own the world."

The fetor of the presence went, and in its place came one whose footsteps thundered. "I am Anger," he declared. "I exterminate and rejoice. I batten on blood. In my heart is suspicion, in my hand is flame. It is I that am war and disaster and regret. My breath consumes, and my voice affrights.

Mary, come with me, and you will learn to quell."

He dissolved, and in the shadows stood one whose hands were ample, and whose wide mouth laughed. "I am Gluttony," he announced, and as he spoke his voice was thick. "I fatten and forsake. I offer satrapies for one new dish. I invite and alienate, I welcome and repel. It is I that bring disease and disorders. I am the harbinger of Death. Mary, come with me, and you shall taste of Life."

He also disappeared, and two heralds entered with trumpets on which they blew, and one exclaimed, "Make way for a.s.surbanipal, ruler of land and of sea." Then, with hors.e.m.e.n riding royally, Sardanapalus advanced through the fissure in the wall. On his head a high and wonderful tiara shone with zebras that had wings and horns. His hair was long, and his beard curled in overlapping rings. His robe dazzled, and the close sleeves were fastened over his knuckles with bracelets of precious stones. In one hand he held a sceptre, in the other a chart.

"I," he cried-"I am a.s.surbanipal; the progeny of a.s.sur and of Baaltis, son of the great king Riduti, whom the lord of crowns, in days remote prophesying in his name, raised to the kingdom, and in the womb of his mother created to rule. The man of war, the joy of a.s.sur and of Istar, the royal offspring, am I. When the G.o.ds seated me on the throne of the father my begetter, Bin poured down his rain, Hea feasted the people. My enemies I destroyed, and their G.o.ds glorified me before my camp. The G.o.d of their oracles, whose image no man had seen, I took, and the G.o.ddesses whom the kings worshipped I dishonored."

He paused and looked proudly about, then he continued:

"That which is in the storehouse of heaven is kindled, and to the city of cities my glory flies. The queens above and below proclaim my glory. I am Glory, and I am Pride. Mary, come with me, and you shall disdain the sky."

But Mary gave no sign. The clattering horses vanished, and two men dressed in women's clothes appeared. They bowed to the ground and chanted:

"The holy G.o.ddess, our Lady Mylitta, whose sacrificants we are."

Then came a form so luminous that Mary hid her face and listened merely.

"I," said a voice-"I am Desire. In Greece I am revered, and there I am Aphrodite. In Italy I am Venus; in Egypt, Hathor; in Armenia, Anaitis; in Persia, Anahita; Tanit in Carthage; Baaltis in Byblus; Derceto in Ascalon; Atargatis in Hierapolis; Bilet in Babylon; Ashtaroth to the Sidonians; and Aschera in the glades of Judaea. And everywhere I am worshipped, and everywhere I am Love. I bring joy and torture, delight and pain. I appease and appal. It is I that create and undo. It is I that make heaven and people h.e.l.l. I am the mistress of the world. Without me time would cease to be. I am the germ of stars, the essence of things. I am all that is, will be, and has been, and my robe no mortal has raised. I breathe, and nations are; in my parturitions are planets; my home is s.p.a.ce. My lips are blissfuller than any bloom of bliss; my arms the opening gates of life.

The Infinite is mine. Mary, come with me, and you shall measure it."

When Mary ventured to look again the vision had gone. They had all gone now. She had made no effort to detain them. They were tempters of which she was freed, in which she believed, and which were real to her. The wall through which they had come and departed was vague and in the darkness remote, but presently it dissolved again, and afar in the beckoning distance was one breathing a soul into decrepit rites. "Come unto me, all ye that sorrow and are heavy-laden," she heard him say; and, as with a great sob of joy she rose to that gracious summons, night seized her. When she awoke, a newer dawn had come.

CHAPTER IV.

IV.

In the gardens of the palace the tetrarch mused. The green parasols of the palms formed an avenue, and down that avenue now and then he looked. Near him a Syrian bear, quite tame, with a sweet face and tufted silver fur, gambolled prodigiously. Up and down a neighboring tree two lemurs chased with that grace and diabolic vivacity which those enchanting animals alone possess. Ringed-horned antelopes, the ankles slender as the stylus, the eyes timid and trustful, pastured just beyond; and there too a black-faced ape, irritated perhaps by the lemurs, turned indignant somersaults, the tender coloring of his body glistening in the sun.

"It is odd that Pahul does not return," the tetrarch reflected; and then, it may be for consolation's sake, he plunged his face in a jar of wine that had been drained, in accordance with a recipe of Vitellius, through cinnamon and calamus, and drank abundantly.

Long since he had deserted Machaerus. The legends that peopled its corridors had beset him with a sense of reality which before they had never possessed. The leaves of the baaras glittered frenetically in the basalt, and in their spectral light a phantom with eyes that cursed came and went. At night he had drunk, and in the clear forenoons he paced the terrace fancying always that there, beyond in the desert, Aretas prowled like a wolf. Machaerus was unhealthy; men had gone mad there, others had disappeared entirely. It was a haunt of echoes, of memories, of ghosts also, perhaps too of reproach. And so, with his court, he returned to his brand-new Tiberias, where the air was serener, and nature laughed.

And yet in the gardens that leaned to the lake the tranquillity he had antic.i.p.ated eluded and declined to be detained. Rumors that Herodias collected came to him with the stamp of Rome. One of his brothers was plotting against him; another, though in exile, was plotting too. It was the Herod blood, his wife said; and, with the intemperance of a woman whose ambition has been deceived, she taunted him with his plebeian descent. "Your grandfather was a sweep at Ascalon, a eunuch at that," she had remarked; and the tetrarch, by way of reply, had been obliged to content himself by asking how, in that case, he could have been grandfather at all.

But latterly a new source of inquietude had come. At Magdala, Capharnahum, Bethsada, there, within the throw of a stone, was a Nazarene going about inciting the peasants to revolt. It was very vexatious, and he told himself that when an annoyance fades another appears. Life, it occurred to him, was a brier with renascent thorns. And now, as he gargled the wine that left a pink foam on his lips, even that irritation lapsed in the perplexing absence of Pahul.

Pahul was a butler of his, a Greek whom he had picked up one adventurous night in Rome, who had made himself useful, whom he had attached to his household, whom he consulted, and on whom he relied. Early that day he had sent him off with instructions to run the demagogue to earth, to listen, to question if need were, and to hurry back and report. But as yet he had not returned. The day was fading, and on the amphitheatre which the hills made the sun seemed to balance itself, the disk blood-red. The lemurs had tired, perhaps; their yellow eyes and circled tails had gone; the bear had been led away; only the multicolored ape remained, gnawing now with little plaintive moans at a bit of fruit which he held suspiciously in his wrinkled hand.

Presently a star appeared and quivered, then another came, and though overhead were streaks of pink, and, where the sun had been, a violence of red and orange, the east retained its cobalt, night still was remote-an echo of crotals from the neighboring faubourg, the cry of elephants impatient for their fodder, alone indicating that a day was dead.

In the charm of the encroaching twilight the irritation of the tetrarch waned and decreased. He lost himself in memories of the princess who had been his bride, and he wondered were it possible that, despite the irrevocable, he was never to see, to speak, to hold her to him again.

Truly her grievance was unmeasurable, the more so even that she had not deigned to utter so much as a reproach. At the rumor of his treachery she had betaken herself to the solitudes, where Aretas her father was king, and had there remained girt in that unmurmuring silence which n.o.bility raises as a barrier between outrage and itself, and which the desert is alone competent to suggest.

"It is he!"

The tetrarch started so abruptly that he narrowly missed the jar at his side. On noiseless sandals Pahul had approached, and stood before him nodding his head with an air of a.s.sured conviction. The ape had fled and a stork stepped gingerly away.

"It is he," the Greek repeated-"John the Baptist."

Antipas plucked at his beard. "But he is dead," he gasped; "I beheaded him. What nonsense you talk!"

"It is he, I tell you, only grown younger. I found him in the synagogue."

"Where? what synagogue?"

Pahul made a gesture. "At Capharnahum," he answered, and gazed in the tetrarch's face. He was slight of form and regular of feature. As a lad he had crossed bare-handed from c.u.mae to Rhegium, and from there drifted to Rome, where he started a commerce in Btican girls which had so far prospered that he bought two vessels to carry the freight. Unfortunately the vessels met in a storm and sank. Then he became a hanger-on of the circus; in idle moments a tout. It was in the latter capacity that Antipas met him, and, pleased with his shrewdness and perfect corruption, had attached him to his house. This had occurred in years previous, and as yet Antipas had found no cause to regret the trust imposed. He was a useful braggart, idle, familiar, and discreet; and he had acquired the dialect of the country with surprising ease.

"There were any number of people," Pahul continued. "Some said he was the son of Joseph, the son of--"

"But he, what did he say? How tiresome you are!"

"Ah!" And Pahul swung his arms. "Who is Mammon?"

"Mammon? Mammon? How do I know? Plutus, I suppose. What about him?"

"And who is Satan?"

"Satan? Satan is a-He's a Jew G.o.d. Why? But what do you mean by asking me questions?"

Pahul nodded absently. "I heard him say," he continued, "that no man could serve G.o.d and Mammon. At first I thought he meant you. It was this way. I got into conversation with a friend of his, a man named Judas. He told me any number of things about him, that he cured the sick--"

"Bah! Some Greek physician."