Saul Of Tarsus Part 24

"Younger? Now, how much younger? Six years at most! Thou hast not changed in that time; why should I?"

"O Avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour, there is no appreciable change. But mark the difference an hour makes at sunset. But why this inquisition? Has Eros pierced thee in a new spot?"

"Pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it made!"

"What! Spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?"

"But Eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart. But of myself we may speak later; at present, I am moved to labor with thee for thine own welfare. Why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse, when there are men in pain for thy favor?"

She studied him a moment. "I can not take thee back, Flaccus; love's ashes can not be refired though the breath of Eros himself blew upon them."

"Impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound which I confessed just now? I am this moment only an arbiter for my better--my betters--"

"I shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said. "Methinks it is that which p.r.i.c.ks thee into activity for me."

"A wiser surmise than the first. But curb thy frivolous spirit; I am weighted with the business of the great. What dost thou here, O divinity, away from Rome and the arms of Caesar?"

"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's unfortunate preference of Seja.n.u.s, during the days of Seja.n.u.s'

greatness?"

"O Venus, can not the ban be lifted? Behold,"--stretching out his muscular arm, "Flaccus is a strong man."

"Even then, is Tiberius thy better in comeliness? Perchance he would not please me."

"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee. Have I not said I indorse two?"

"Two!"

"Two. Of Caesar first. His part in the bargain is really the smaller thing. Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days, who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's forelock--all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its wall."

"Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself? If thine impurpled countenance--for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh--if thine impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?"

"Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the toothless one."

"It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected.

"Thou hast done it before," he declared. "Thou art right expert."

She laughed and leaned back in her chair.

"Name me the comely one," she commanded.

"Agrippa." There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes very slowly and faced him. Amus.e.m.e.nt made small lines about her eyes, and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.

"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound.

Is it the Lady Herod?"

His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened his face. Presently he scowled.

"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."

"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth. "Sore! I tell thee, that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"

Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was declaring, with pa.s.sion, a thing which she could not believe possible.

Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out and resolved into cold ashes in half that time. That it should endure years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles, all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple. Yet to reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at her side was a task she could not attempt.

"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured. "Perchance the Jewess dropped madness from a philter in thy wine. And for simple cruelty, too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."

The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former experiences. But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing.

She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly:

"Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?"

"Both!" he answered. "The one accomplished, the other follows!" With a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers about her smooth wrist and bent over her.

"Help me, Junia!" he besought. "Weigh what I offer against the portion of any Alexandrian. By the lips of Lysimachus, the richest man in the city, I know how little even he may waste--two hundred thousand drachmae--the cost of a single necklace Caesar might put about thy throat. I never failed Tiberius; his esteem of me is great. I have only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy father, shall be lifted. Thou shalt return in honor to Rome; thy father shall be one of Caesar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place among the first of the patricians. And Tiberius lays no bond of fidelity upon his ladies. I saw thee, last night! I saw thee run thine eyes along the Herod's sleek length--curse him, it was that which undid me! I saw thy fancy incline toward him. It will be a new and pleasant game for thee, Junia--a game in which thou art skilled--but it is my life--my very life to me!"

She frowned at the jewels on her fingers. There was no reason why she should not lend herself to Flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his cause a.s.sured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her kind. But enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her. She was uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish. Meanwhile, the proconsul's gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her.

"Wait!" she fretted at last. "Thou art hasty! And perchance thou dost only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so solicitous last night!"

He remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the impatient surmise of this penetrative woman. Could such a thing be possible? He sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace.

"Let him come!" he said between his teeth. "Let him come!"

She worked her hand loose from him.

"Wait," she repeated. "Thou hast built gigantically on no foundation.

Let something happen. And if I am pleased to follow thy plans, I may; but be a.s.sured if I am not, I will not. My debt to thee is less than thy demands, Avillus."

She arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every movement.

"I shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time."

She made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium.

He stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis.

"Send hither the chief apparitor," he said.

The captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted.

Flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the doc.u.ments on the floor and by the dim light identified one.

"Take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make search for the man herein described. Seek him in Ptolemais, wherever a Nazarene warren hides, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria--meet every incoming ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army--but find him, or lose thy life!"

The chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown eyes.