XXXVITHE TEMPTRESS
Thehouse of Elkiah had been measurably cleansed when Deborah emerged from the cellar and passed unobserved through the concealed stairway to her own chamber. Next day she came down into the court. A fawn could not have been more timid amid its captors than Deborah seemed as, with apparent surprise and startled look, she emerged amid a group of Greek soldiers whom Meton had left to guard the property. Equally amazed were the soldiers.
"Do not harm me. I will go back," cried Deborah, with tremulous voice.
"We'll not harm you," said an awkward man who was in command of the squad. He attempted a courtesy, which was half a military salute and half an act of gallantry such as in his peasant days he had practised upon country maidens. In executing these difficult tactics he let fall his sarissa, the iron head of which came in such perilous proximity to Deborah that it seemed to belie his words.
"We'll not harm you, lady. We have no orders about you, seeing that the General didn't know you were here."
"You will be kind to me, truly?" she begged.
"By all the gods, yes! Stand back, men!"
"I was afraid to come out of the place CaptainDion hid me in when the Jews took the house. I heard the men shouting, and thought they were searching for me." She trembled like a child.
"No, lady, we were not looking for you, for we supposed you had got away," replied the good-natured pikeman. "We have taken out the dead soldiers which were piled pretty thick hereabouts, and some of them stuffed into corners where they have died like rats in their holes. But it's all cleaned up now, except the smell—blood smell always lasts until the moon changes. The cracks between the pavement stones are red, but we'll have them scraped too. But it was a pity to have knocked the arm off Aphrodite. The man that did that will never win himself a wife—or the goddess has no more blood in her than her statue has. It might have been your arm, lady, if Captain Dion hadn't hid you. I'll off to the citadel and tell the General that the Captain didn't let you escape. I knew he wouldn't. Captain Dion is the bravest of the whole garrison, and Meton ought never to have ordered a better man than himself under arrest. When Governor Lysias hears of it he ought to give Dion the castle, and send Meton to command the camels and ass drivers."
Deborah went to Glaucon's apartment. As she approached she heard voices. A glance between the curtains gave a picture of the pale face of her brother, and close to it that of the Princess. She was beautiful; yes, Deborah thought, as the head of a serpent on its arching neck, with its rainbow eyes charming its victim. The Princess' right arm was about the Jew's shoulder; her left hand on his, which gripped tightly a silken bag. This Deborahrecognized as that in which the jewels of the house of Elkiah were always kept.
"There is no other way, my dearest Glaucon, than that I propose," said Helena, half embracing him. "Menelaos is determined to have all you possess. Give me these—no, I will not ask that—but let me care for them. I can conceal them on my person. We will leave Jerusalem. In Antioch we can live together. The races, the dances, the wines, and all the pleasures of the world are there. If we tire of these things as they are in Syria, we may go to Rome, where half of what we have here will suffice for a lifetime. In Rome princes and princesses are known by their jewels and equipages, and no one searches for ancestry any more than for the pedigree of a beautiful horse."
Glaucon clutched the bag. At length he opened it.
"You may have some of them," he said. "This brooch of pearls was once worn by Arsinoë, sister of the great Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt. It came to my grandfather, who had made many loans of convenience to the house of Ptolemy, which were never paid. This cluster of diamonds belonged to the great Joseph, the tax-gatherer, whose palace of white marble is beyond Jordan. He needed a vast sum of ready money in order to buy the office of farmer of the revenues of Syria when our land was under Egypt. He outwitted a whole company of merchants from Tyre by offering single-handed more than they all together. It was my grandfather who advanced to Joseph the needed gold—which, of course, never was returned, as our possession of his jewels shows. Joseph had nothing finer than these in all his marble castle."
One by one the gems slipped from Glaucon's fingers into those of the Princess.
"And that! Oh, how magnificent!" cried she, as he drew a necklace of scores of precious stones, and spread it into shape upon the ebony table.
"That I must never part with. It was my mother's, and now is Debor—Berenice's," said Glaucon, gripping the necklace with hesitating fingers.
"But she can never claim it, now that she has gone over to the traitors, and is herself outlawed," argued the temptress.
"Yet it is hers," replied Glaucon, his voice softening as if a tear was diffused through it. "I cannot part with it."
"Glaucon, my love!" cried the Princess, taking his face between her hands, and kissing him upon the lips.
Deborah threw aside the curtain, and stood before the frightened couple.
"You monster!" cried she.
Both started from the seat. Deborah grasped the jewels which had fallen from the fingers of the startled Princess. The woman quickly recovered her self-possession.
"The traitress! The traitress! Ho, guards!"
"The strumpet of Antioch, how dare she come into the house of Elkiah?" retorted Deborah.
"By better right, I take it, than the Jewish spy," replied Helena.
"Glaucon, command her to leave this house," cried Deborah.
The coward imitated the chameleon, which changes its color according to the object that reflects the light upon it; for, as he looked from oneto the other of these women, he became for the moment the victim of each, and dared to decide for neither.
"If Glaucon will not purge his house of this refuse of the camp of Apollonius, then will I, that our mother's memory be not polluted. Begone!" She raised the curtain and pointed to the exit.
The Princess' dignity gave way before the indignant gaze of Deborah, as weak plants wither in the scorching rays of the sun. Still she moved not.
"Must I compel you?" Deborah exclaimed. She dexterously drew from Glaucon's side his sword, ere he could interpose, and poised it at the throat of her enemy.
"Your paramour Apollonius once quailed before the sword of the daughter of Elkiah. How shall I spare this miserable remnant of——"
The terrified woman did not wait for the completion of either the sentence or the threatened action. She ran shrieking from the chamber, and fell into the arms of—Dion.
For a moment the Captain held her; his surprise and the dimness of the passageway not being favorable to the clear vision of one who had emerged from the brilliant light of the open court. The Captain was the soul of gallantry to all of the fair sex, but the Princess and Deborah were in such utter contrast in his mind that the discovery of the unexpected personality in his arms wrought a spasmodic revulsion in his feeling. He loosened her embrace and flung her from him. This time she found a more solid anchorage for her fright—in the arms of Thersites, a Greek common soldier, who heldalso a mop with which he had been cleansing the statue of Aphrodite.
Thersites, being just then of less perturbable temper than Dion, or perhaps being more experienced in catching fleeing women, retained his captive long enough to grunt his gratitude with a kiss upon her cheek, entirely oblivious to the fact that such privileges the fair Helena had often sold as high as three shekels apiece in the market of Antioch.