Stephen Part 36

On this journey for the first time in many months Saul found time to think. Habitually taciturn and forbidding, his subordinates did not venture to address the haughty Pharisee save when it became necessary; so for long hours the man sat silent, while his beast picked its slow and difficult way along the rocky roads.

Strangely enough his thoughts wandered again and again from the object of his journey; in these vernal solitudes the wily words of Annas faded from his mind. Something in the pure-eyed flowers that leaned in shy welcome from the roadside gra.s.s put him in mind of Stephen, the dead apostate, as he bitterly termed him. Before his mental vision there arose again that never-to-be-forgotten face; now radiant with the fire of youth and enthusiasm, as he remembered it in many a heated debate over law and prophecy; now stern and unrelenting as he p.r.o.nounced the terrible arraignment which yet echoed in the ears of the Pharisee: "Ye stiff-necked and uncirc.u.mcised in heart and ears; ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have now become the betrayers and murderers!" Then pallid beneath the icy shadow of approaching death, yet shining with a mysterious glory as he cried out, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of power." And yet again, touched with the mystic seal of the great deliverer as he had lain "asleep" on the stony ground beyond the Damascus Gate.

In vain did he endeavor to shake off these haunting visions, resolutely repeating aloud commands, prohibitions and long pa.s.sages of the law, rigorously observing the ceremonial washings and cleansings whenever the company halted beside a running stream. All was in vain, "Ye who received the law as it was ordained by angels, and kept it not!" sounded the inexorable voice. And with and through it, mingled the wail of women bereft of their little ones, the groanings of strong men beneath the scourge, the sullen clang of prison doors, and the clank of chains.

On the fifth night of his journey the agony became so intolerable that he left his tent and wandered out beneath the open heavens. "My G.o.d!"

he groaned aloud, "have I not kept thy law, and loved thy statutes? Yet have I no peace: my days are consumed with anguish. Surely thou hast hated iniquity and thou hast loved righteousness; behold now I have done all these things that thy name might be exalted before the people, that blasphemy and deceit might cease from out the land." And he vowed a great sacrifice before the Lord of fat sheep and oxen. But again came the haunting voice, "O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices for the s.p.a.ce of forty years. But behold, I will carry you away beyond Babylon--who have received the law ordained of angels and have kept it not."

"I have kept the law!" he cried aloud, and the hills replied in melancholy echoes, "the law--the law."

Then there crowded into his thought the faces of the four who had escaped out of his hand, and he remembered the look in the eyes of the maiden as she said, "I believe that he was put to death upon the cross that he might draw all men unto him and heal them from their sins, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness that the stricken Israelites might look and be saved," and with these words there mingled the solemn voices of prophecy, "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of G.o.d, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastis.e.m.e.nt of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all."

"G.o.d, if it be true," he murmured; and for a moment the soft radiance of that ever brooding presence of love had well nigh penetrated his dark soul, then he lifted his head stubbornly. "I cannot believe," he cried.

"I will not believe.--Shall I, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, accept a Messiah who hath died the accursed death? I am mad. I will not believe--unless I too can see the heavens opened."

He laughed aloud as he spoke the words, and the sound of his laughter fled away through the silent night to the dark hills which caught it and tossed it back upon him in mocking echoes.

On the morrow they journeyed in the plains of Anti-liba.n.u.s, a vast arid burning desert, wherein was neither water nor verdure, and the men and the beasts were parched by reason of the great heat. Certain ones of the company therefore besought Saul that they might tarry by the way.

"Let us rest till the heat of the day be past," they said, "then shall we with ease reach the village of Kaukab; there will we abide till morning, that we may enter Damascus before the hour of the great heat."

"We will not tarry," replied Saul, "until we reach Damascus." And there was that in his eye which forbade remonstrance. So they toiled on silently beneath the burning Syrian sky. The village of Kaukab--which is being interpreted the village of the Star--was reached, and pa.s.sed; and now before them lay the city of Damascus in all its beauty. "The City of the Paradise of G.o.d," for so has it been called in every age, embowered in gardens of palm and roses, its walls and towers of snowy whiteness shining like "a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald." A land of flowing streams, a city of cool fountains, set like a bit of heaven in the midst of a barren and thirsty land.

The exhausted wayfarers paused for a moment that they might feast their eyes upon the beauty of the scene, but Saul, with an imperative gesture, bade them hasten.

"We are not come to Damascus as one who journeyeth for his pleasure," he cried savagely; "we seek the blood of them that confess the accursed Jesus."

But even as he spoke the sacred name, some invisible power smote him to the earth; and a great light, brighter even than the fierce shining of the noonday sun, blazed round about him. In the midst of this terrible light he beheld a form upon which he gazed appalled; then was there the sound of a voice, and the words were these:

"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

True to the utter fearlessness of his soul, the man also has a question to ask, "Who art thou, Lord?"

And the answer came clear and decisive, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks."

Then indeed did the strong man tremble, and he made answer from out the depths of his soul, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"

"Arise, go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do."

The majestic presence was gone; the light faded to the light of an earthly noontide. Yet Saul still lay upon his face in the dust of the Damascus road. The men that journeyed with him stood speechless, staring at one another with livid faces. They had seen the blazing light, they had heard the strange and awful sound of a voice, but their eyes had been holden to the vision of the glorified Jesus.

Presently Saul arose from the earth, the first command of his newly-acknowledged Lord ringing in his ears, "Arise, go into the city."

But when he opened his eyes that he might obey the words, he opened them upon darkness. He was blind.

And they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

THE AMULET.

It was high noon in the desert encampment. The shadows of the palms, which had boldly displayed themselves in the early cool of the morning, had gradually retreated before the triumphant progress of the sun, till now they lay a shrunken heap about the slender stems of the trees, which in their turn scarcely dared murmur to their children of the coming hours, when the burning tyrant overhead should again be brought low and the shadows reign triumphant. Through the shimmering air came the insistent voice of dropping water, telling over and over again of great depths of refreshing hid away in the secret places of the rock, safe from the thirsty ball of fire above, safe from the hungry sands which crept uneasily to and fro about the rocky margin of the fountain.

The camels crouched in the meagre shade, their large, heavy-lidded eyes half closed; they heard and understood both the faint murmur of the palms and the voice of the water; therefore were they silent, being satisfied. But from within the tent of goat's hair close at hand there came the sound of voices. "These men," grunted an old camel, "they be forever making a noise with their mouths; why cannot they be silent, and look and listen as do we?"

This is what the voices were saying:

"G.o.d is good, my husband, and as yet I have scarce had room in my soul for more than the sense of that goodness which hath s.n.a.t.c.hed me from the jaws of death, and with life hath also restored to me the more precious treasure of thy love. Tell me how it chanced that thou hadst a hand in our rescue?"

"It is not unknown to thee, beloved, how that for many months my soul was a very h.e.l.l of fear and remorse. I was blood-guilty; I knew that upon my head rested the blood of an innocent man; nay more, I knew in my inmost soul that my crime was yet more deadly--that I, even I, had condemned to an accursed death the very Son of G.o.d. Yes, I believed; but alas, it was even as the devils, who believe and tremble and yet--are devils still. I cast thee forth because thou didst also believe, I, black-hearted wretch that I was, did p.r.o.nounce upon thee a curse, then my angel fled and the curse recoiled upon mine own head. I will not tell thee--I cannot--how I tried to strangle the ever-growing misery in my soul; how I flung myself, heart and strength, into the deadly persecutions against them that believed; all the while with the mean hope that the fire would drive thee back from the heavenly path which thou wast climbing into the black road down which I was plunging alone. I saw and gloried in the death of Stephen; I gloated over the agonies of them that suffered beneath the scourge; I outdid Saul of Tarsus in the work of denouncing men and women whose only crime it was to believe on G.o.d manifest in the flesh. There is a h.e.l.l, for I have sojourned there.

"One day I was told that thou wast in prison; that on the morrow thou wouldst be scourged--stoned. Issachar himself told me, with an air of mock sympathy.

"'She is less to me,' I declared to him coldly, 'than the stones beneath my feet.' But I lied when I said it. That night I begged Annas on my knees to have mercy.

"'I will have mercy,' he said. 'I will send a message to the woman within the hour,' and he called Caleb. I waylaid the man, and offered him gold to show me the message; he showed it me.

"That night I went to my chamber resolved to die before the light of another day, but each time that I lifted the dagger to my breast something seemed to hold my hand. At last I flung it from me and sank upon my knees, crying aloud, 'G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner! G.o.d be merciful to me a sinner!' Again and again I repeated the words till at last there came into my soul a great peace. G.o.d was merciful--I knew, I felt it; and then and there I made confession of all my guilt before him. 'I am guilty of the blood of him whom thou didst send to save me,'

I cried, 'yet he prayed in his last agony, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

"I rose up forgiven, and the morning dawned. 'I will go,' I said, 'to the place where she is to suffer, and there before them all I will make confession of my guilt and my belief; then shall I die also.'

"But when I had come to the place outside the Damascus Gate--very early, for I could not wait--I fell in with the man Ben Hesed, and because my soul was full even to overflowing, I told him all. 'I will die,' I said, 'with them.'

"'Nay,' he cried, 'rather must thou live, that thou mayest overlay the wickedness of the past with the pure gold of righteousness.'

"Thou knowest the rest, beloved."

Then the voices ceased for a s.p.a.ce, and the sound of the falling water again filled the stillness.

That evening when the shadows were displaying themselves once more in triumph, and the voice of the fountain had sunken to a low murmur because of the more insistent voices of the women who were filling their jars at its cool brim, Ben Hesed held converse with them whom he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from death. Their talk was sweet and comforting, as of those whose feet had trod the margin of the river of death, from whose hither bank the traveler can hear faint echoes of the heavenly melodies of the redeemed, and where every breeze wafts the perfume of the blossoming tree of life.

"It is good to have been near death," said Mary of Nazareth, "because it is good to have touched the boundary of the life more abundant. There is no terror to them that believe on him that hath conquered death; 'he that believeth hath everlasting life.'"

Afterward, while the day merged slowly into the night, they told Ben Hesed of all that happened to them since he had left them in Jerusalem; of the last days of Stephen, of his death and burial; of that stern enemy, Saul of Tarsus, and his unrelenting hatred of them that believed.

"Nay," said Anat, after a pause, "I know that he would have rejoiced truly had we but confessed as he bade us; there was a look in his eyes that was not all hatred; perchance G.o.d is leading him into peace by some sure way of his own, even as he led the Egyptian, Amu. Surely, G.o.d's ways are unsearchable."

"That is a true word," said Ben Hesed musingly. "But tell me of the Egyptian, Amu."

So Anat told him how that he had rescued Stephen from death by the sacrifice of his life, together with all the story of their own wrong at his hands. "I would that G.o.d had given him one more breath," said the girl sighing, "for then would he have told us the name of our mother's kindred."

Ben Hesed looked at the clear profile of the girl as she sat looking away into the afterglow which still burned dully at the horizon, and a haunting memory of the past suddenly awakened in his breast. "Hast thou aught that belonged to thy mother, maiden?" he said, and there was a strange thrill in his voice.

"I had anklets of wrought silver when I came out of Egypt," said Anat slowly, without turning her head; "also a necklace of coins; but when I was healed of my blindness I made an offering of these baubles to the Lord's poor. It was all that I had to give." Then she was silent for a moment. "I kept but one piece from the necklace; I thought that I should like that one small bit of my mother's past. It is a strange coin."

"Show it to me," said Ben Hesed.