Saul Of Tarsus Part 12

At last Agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock. Satisfied that he was clean and intact, he laughed a little.

"By the hat of Hermes, this was n.o.ble apparel to wear through the bowels of the earth. _Eheu_! I was at my best, and not so much as a she-bat saw me!"

Eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face of Silas; but Marsyas was plunged in his own reflections.

"This is the country-side west of Jerusalem," Agrippa resumed presently, for the young Essene's information. "Yonder," pointing north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence. We are an hour's journey by daylight above ground, from the Tower of Hippicus. But we are not beyond the zone of danger yet."

Marsyas did not answer. Reaction had set up within him against the foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise. He had thought of himself and had been concerned for Agrippa; he had planned and had achieved ends. Entanglements straightened, immediate danger pa.s.sed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly. He did not want to see that Canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey. The wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure. His heart was bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless to pray and hope now. The presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to befall him. Agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated him. He had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off. But the prince spoke, and his words were helpful.

"Marsyas, I know thy pain. I, too, had a beloved friend foully murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him to death sowed ashes on my heart. But the time of the Lord G.o.d, slow as it approaches, fell at last. The only bitterness in my cup of fierce triumph was that it was another, and not I, who accomplished, at the end, the undoing of the murderer."

"The Lord G.o.d forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter rejoinder. "Vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand but mine!"

"Thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!"

It was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's experience. It did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and the a.s.surance of sympathy. Agrippa continued in his pleasant voice.

"This persecution will cease ere long. It is only Jonathan's device to make him noted as one zealous for the faith. He is much disliked. It is reproach enough for a High Priest to be popular with the Sadducees: it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by Rome; it is an insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, Levitically; but this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality.

Wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which Vitellius must respect. But Jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and I and Vitellius and the discerning Jews will achieve no more against him than flies whining about a wall! What folly! How oft we believe a thing to be so, because we wish it to be so! Vitellius does not see how the stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes. So Jonathan's time is short and the persecution will cease with him. His minion will be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made. Be of hope; thy day is not distant."

But Marsyas' brow blackened.

"A n.o.ble reflection!" he exclaimed pa.s.sionately, "and one that should soothe the Tarsian's dreams! Binding and stoning and killing in his zeal for an usurper of the robes of Aaron! Shedding sweet blood--doing irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt--a thing to be given over to-morrow! O thou G.o.d of wrath! If it be not sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the Law!"

Meanwhile Agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young Essene's distress, arose briskly.

"Up! up!" he said. "It is not at variance with Vitellius' extreme methods to empty the whole Praetorium into the hills in search of us.

Up, fellows! To Ptolemais!"

Marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the fine garments that covered him. He remembered that he had not brought his soiled Essenic robes with him. He unslung his wallet and extended it to Agrippa.

"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of that high place to which this may help thee! The vengeful spirit is not of choice a patient thing! I shall wait--but to achieve mine ends.

G.o.d prosper thee! If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."

"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.

"To En-Gadi, for the present."

"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of Saul's marked creatures."

"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly. It was another count against the Pharisee.

"Thou art much beset. Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou be not found. Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is long."

To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen G.o.dlessness to meet precarious fortunes. The whole course of his life had been entirely reversed in a few hours. Resolute and strong as the Essene was, his face contracted painfully.

Agrippa laid a hand on his arm.

"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he were speaking to a child. But in that moment, Marsyas told himself that there would be no returning to his old peace.

"Come with me," Agrippa continued. "I will afford thee protection and thou shalt provide me with funds."

He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.

"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.

The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white and majestic on her heights. The morning blue that encroaches upon the noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere; distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than daylight--it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.

Thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs and griefs and hopelessness. It was the Holy City, upright with the G.o.dliness of David, lawful in the government of Solomon; sacred with the presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies. Here, Sheba might have stood first to be shown the glories of Solomon; here, Alexander might have drawn up his Macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence he was next to conquer. Marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty welling of tears in their springs.

"Behold it!" Agrippa said. "We go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou shalt return to it justified; I shall return to it crowned. Believe in that as thou believest in Jehovah!"

He drew the young Essene away and signed to the servitors.

In the days that followed, Agrippa tactfully and little by little won Marsyas out of his brooding. Delicately, he sounded the young man's nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts could be diverted. Stirring incidents of the Herod's own astounding history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous athletae, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged Marsyas'

attention in spite of himself. Gradually his sharpened interest began to choose for itself. Expectancy of things to come communicated by Agrippa presently possessed Marsyas.

All this was a new and inviting experience for the young Essene, as well as an alleviation. He had lived a placid, pa.s.sionless life with the old Essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two.

Evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered and wavered, lost only for an hour. By the time the journey to Ptolemais was ended, Agrippa had stepped into his own place in the heart of the bereaved young man.

Ptolemais was built for solidity and strength. Its houses were defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor front and wall the most una.s.sailable on the Asiatic seaboard. From the plains of Esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky--embodied defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its triremes into her roadsteads.

In a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, Agrippa stopped. A house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that.

"Enter," said the prince to Marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities of Agrippa's palace."

He unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court, knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open.

An uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter.

Marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess cut off by curtains from the interior of the house. A bronze lamp was in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner. No other furniture was visible.

The prince dismissed the two servitors and they pa.s.sed behind the curtains, Eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who seemed quite oblivious of his glances.

"Send hither your mistress, Drumah," Agrippa said to her. She bowed and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman hastened into the apartment.

With a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his breast.

"Oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she exclaimed. "That thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy hireling to meet thee!"

He laughed lightly and kissed her.

"I have brought also a guest, Cypros," he said. For the first time her eyes lighted on Marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband.

"I pray thy pardon," she murmured.

The light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and since his journey to Nazareth Marsyas had learned to look on women with an interested eye.

She was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the matron, and the Jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf, let no single grace lose itself under drapery. But it was the face that held the young Essene's attention. There, too, was the blood of the Herod, for Agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were refined almost to ethereal extremes. Flesh could not have been whiter nor coloring more delicate. The effect rendered was an impression of exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as if to still a fluttering heart. Her beauty was not aided by strength of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple, defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men.