Near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the proconsul's mansion,—an incident which would speedily have spread wildly over the Brucheum had not the shrewd Lysimachus come in Roman dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk. The slave who conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he did not lapse from courtesy. If he had prejudices they had to await a popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against the Jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul.
Flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium. The torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk. The shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature.
As the Jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment, petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the Roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand unconsciously. His elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his cheek on his clenched hand. The undimmed gaze of the Jewish magistrate detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before.
But Flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention.
"Come up, Lysimachus," he said. "There is a chair here, for thee."
The alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that Flaccus had indicated.
"This," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes."
"Or conspiracies. Plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk. Well, has the Herod sued?"
"Not he, but his lady."
"His lady! By Hecate, the mystery is solved. Thus it is that he hath been able to borrow every usurer poor from Rome to Damascus!"
"He wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words until I show thee what they mean. She is beautiful and virtuous; a Herod and married—a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare as to be out of nature—therefore, phenomenal. So we toss our yellow gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath afforded—being unusual."
"Virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married. No woman is faithful except she loves her love. A just procession in the order of the Furies' reign. The warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy, anointed and worshiped."
"This melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, Avillus. You Romans take womankind too seriously."
"When womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse, methinks she is a serious matter. What sum does she want?"
"Three hundred thousand drachmæ."
"O Midas; give her the touch! Let all her possessions be gold! Didst advance it to her?"
"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
"Temperate Jew! To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy purse. Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
"Beshrew the jest! Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent wives. And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me serious. The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
"Rest thee in that small matter. Thou and I can spare her sesterces enough to ship her back to Judea."
Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
"She would not be satisfied," he said at last. "She wants three talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread. It seems that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Cæsar—"
"O, that is the way of it! I know of that man! Well, then, perchance it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to the pawned one chafes. I hear that he is young and comely."
"Forget the slanderous jest, Flaccus; I am ashamed of it. What shall I do in this matter?"
"Lend her three talents."
"She would buy the man's freedom, but what then? She would still be here in Alexandria as penniless as ever."
"The consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in abeyance," the proconsul said slyly. "She will get the three hundred thousand drachmæ, yet!"
"She will not," the alabarch declared, "First, because I have it not; next, because I am not eager to pay a Herod's debts."
"Or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again."
The alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away. The attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions.
"What sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" Flaccus asked presently.
"Two hundred thousand drachmæ—but not to a Herod. I could lose five talents without ruin."
"Give her five talents, then; give it—do not slander a gift by calling it a loan."
"What! Toss an alms to a Herod? They would throw it in my face!"
"Jupiter! but they are haughty!"
The alabarch made no answer and Flaccus looked out at the night dropping over his garden.
"Why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked after a while.
The alabarch looked startled; it was Roman extremes, a trifle too brutal for him to dress in diplomacy. He demurred.
"Not brutal, Lysimachus," Flaccus said earnestly. "Herod can not use her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty. Thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford. Tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in Italy; that thou hast a crust for Agrippa—will she starve him by eating half of it, herself?"
Flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the alabarch's face.
"But why?" he asked.
"Why? Is it not plain to you? Keep her so that Agrippa will in honor have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!"
Now the alabarch laughed. "I am not so sure. Is it native in a Herod to love his wife so well? It would be a bad mortgage for me to foreclose—one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!"
"No, by Venus! She is too comely to play Dido. But try my plan, Alexander. It is well worth the experiment."
The alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum. "It—it is—" he hesitated. "But then, I should have them on my hands, under any circumstances."
He took a few more steps, and paused for thought.
"Well enough," he said finally, "we shall see."
With a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and disappeared.
Flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy meditation. The night fell and obscured him. He seemed to be waiting, but not with marked impatience.
Again the atriensis bowed before him.
"A lady who says she was summoned," he said.
"Let her enter. And bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not here—and only one."
The atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the vestibule, and Junia appeared.
"Hither, and sit beside me, Junia," Flaccus called to her.
He drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and Junia, dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it.
"What a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed. "But for the fact I owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me, to-night, not I to thee!"
"I came often enough at thy beck, Junia! It were time I was visited!"
"Thou ill-timed tyrant! I am expected at a feast to-night, and my young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house."
"Let him wait! I was his predecessor, and his better. Methinks thou hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late."
"No longer the man but the substance," she answered. "In the old days it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position."
"The first was love; the second calculation. Why wilt thou marry this obscure young Alexandrian—whoever he be?"
"To be assured of a living—to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me, thus long."
He leaned nearer that he might look into her face.
"So!" he exclaimed. "Does it chafe, in truth?"
She laughed. "No," she said. "Why should I prefer the provision of one man above another's? Young Obscurity's authority over me, his wife, would be no less tyrannical than Flaccus'—my one-time dear."
Flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles.
"Eheu!" he said. "I shall not be happy to see thee wedded—"
"Nor shall I; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her marriage, I shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my freedom. Alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of life early. There are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this bulging temple of thine, Avillus."
"Dost thou love this—boy? Beshrew him, let him have no name!"
"How? Dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, Flaccus?"
"What dost thou love, at all?" he asked.
"Sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly, less purple, less stiff—and less imposing!"
"Pluto! am I like that?" he demanded.
"To one that was thy dear in younger days. To one who does not remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming."
"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 pricks 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 Cæsar?"
"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's unfortunate preference of Sejanus, during the days of Sejanus' 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 Cæsar 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. Amusement 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 passion, 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 drachmæ—the cost of a single necklace Cæsar 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 Cæsar'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 assured 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 assured 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 documents 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.
"I hear," he said.
The proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew.
Meanwhile Marsyas lay on his straw pallet at the house of Peter, the usurer, in Ptolemais, night after night and made calculation.
By fair winds, Agrippa should reach Alexandria in so many days. Allowing time to begin and complete the negotiations for a loan, so many more days should elapse. Then the same number with a few allowed for foul weather would be required to return to Ptolemais. About such a day, so many weeks hence, he told himself he should be ransomed.
Six weeks is a long time for a free man to be enslaved. He sighed and turned again on his pallet and trusted in the God who does not forget prayers.
It was a strange, sordid biding of time for Marsyas. The man he served was the first of the kind he had ever known. The ascetic refinement of the white old Essene, the simple purity of Stephen, the polished rigor of the Pharisee Saul, the naïve sophistication of the Romanized Herod had constituted his social horizon, and he had come to believe that the world's manner was either cultured or simple.
But he went into the usurer's counting-room to meet the borrowing world, to be amazed and shocked and finally to fortify himself to control it.
It was not to change his nature; it was to develop latent powers in him that were the fruit of long generations of Judaism. At night his fingers were soiled by contact with the coins, the counting-room had become noisome with the day's heat and the unhappy humanity that had come and gone through the busy hours. But he summed up, not what he had sacrificed in soul-sweetness and optimism, for that was a loss he did not realize, but his triumphs in achieving whatever he had been bidden to do, in his mastery of men and things and in the thoroughness of his workmanship. However loudly his mind declared that he was out of place, he felt no great repugnance to his duty.
After the newness of his experience wore off, as it did in a very short time, the days began to go with wearing deliberation, as all days go that are counted impatiently. His sorrow and his wrongs were his only companions; as his anxiety for his liberty and Agrippa's success increased, his healthy indifference to his unwholesome atmosphere began to decline rapidly, his resentment against his oppression to grow. The six weeks ebbed out and passed. His anxiety flowed into his bitterness and his bitterness into his anxiety until they were one. Troubled about his liberty, he clenched his teeth and thought on Saul; thinking of his impotent position against the powerful Pharisee, he watched the harbor from the counting-room and trembled whenever a sail crossed it.
Inactivity became eventually unbearable, for an unemployed moment was a miserable moment. He could not devise a way to liberty, nor further aid his one ally into power, so he turned to his own resources against Saul.
Continuing cautiously to visit the proseuchæ by night, he learned something, which he heard casually at the time, but which eventually developed into a matter of importance. He heard that the Nazarenes were flying from Jerusalem in great numbers, scattering in bodies from Damascus to Alexandria, and from Jerusalem to Rome. The rabbis of Ptolemais were concerned to discover that there was a community hiding in the city, because they feared the evils of a persecution, established in Ptolemais, as much as the influence of the apostasy upon the faithful.
When Marsyas admitted casually to himself, after he had heard the tidings, that the apostasy must have numbers of followers, he was carried in his thinking to the realization that numbers meant strength and strength meant resistance. Why, then, should not these people turn on the Pharisee? Here, in a twinkling, he believed that he had discovered abettors, allies whom he could instantly enlist in his own cause.
But before he could deduce resolution from this electrifying admission, events began to mark his days.
Late one afternoon, after the time for his ransoming was out, a man approached the opening in the grating. The shadows in the badly-lighted chamber made client and steward and all the appointments in the dingy counting-room imperfect shapes to the eye. The new-comer leaned down to the opening and peered at Marsyas as he pushed a fibula of gold through the opening.
"I am in need," the man said. "Canst thou not give me the value of this in money?"
The voice was resonant and strangely familiar to Marsyas. In the gloom the great lifted shoulders of the man, bending from his height, brought back on a sudden the chamber in the college at Jerusalem. The young Essene came closer to the grating and looked at the applicant.
There was a mutual start of recognition; in Marsyas perhaps the chill that a fugitive feels who finds himself detected. The man was the Rabbi Eleazar.
"Thou! Here, with them?" the rabbi exclaimed in a suppressed whisper.
"I am here, Rabbi," Marsyas replied, "but alone."
Eleazar looked at him, but the examination under the difficulty of the gloom was not satisfactory; besides, there was the stir of others who had come in behind him and were able to listen. Marsyas swept the fibula into one of the coin-baskets and passed a handful of silver to the rabbi.
"Meet me without at the end of the first watch to-night," the rabbi added, as he thanked Marsyas. "Do not fear me, for I am also a victim of thine enemy."
Marsyas saluted him, and the rabbi disappeared. A figure in armor stepped up to the place where Eleazar had stood. He was helmeted and greaved and had a line of purple about the hem of his short tunic. He applied for a loan and yielded as indorsement the favor of Cæsar and the family name of Aulus. Marsyas withdrew hastily into the overhanging shadow of the grating, received the officer's note, counted out the gold and drew in a free breath when another stepped into his place. It was Vitellius' legionary.
"Am I run to earth?" Marsyas asked himself.
At the end of the first watch that night he prepared to follow Eleazar's suggestion, if only to discover what to expect. That he was not filled with confidence nor resigned to suffer what might befall him was evident by his slipping a knife into his belt when he made himself ready.
He went out into the unlighted street and looked about him for Eleazar. The tall figure of the rabbi emerged from the darkness a moment after Marsyas appeared and approached the young man.
"Have no fear," the rabbi said. "We are common victims of the same unjust suspicion; let us not be suspicious of each other."
"Thy words are fair, Rabbi, but I do not know thee. Whom I most trusted hath failed me of late; it must follow then that I am not sure of strangers. Tell me first thy business with me."
"I am Eleazar, the rabbi, who sat with Saul in the college that day when Joel, the Levite, came with news of Stephen of Galilee."
"I know that; also that thou knowest that Saul oppresses me. Thou art a rabbi and zealous for the Law. Art thou sent for me on Saul's mission?"
"No, brother."
"Or the proconsul's?"
"I know nothing of the proconsul; I am here, driven from Jerusalem by Saul who charged me with apostasy because I would not aid him in his oppression."
For a moment Marsyas was dumb with amazement.
"He is mad!" he cried when speech came to him.
"Is it madness when he persecutes others, but villainy when he oppresses thee?" Eleazar demanded.
"I pray thy pardon," Marsyas said quickly, "if I seem to miscall his work. It might follow in reason that he should accuse me, but thou—thou a rabbi, accepted before the Law and clean-skirted before all Judea—that he should accuse thee of apostasy seems to be the work of no sane man."
"But it is! He layeth plans keen as Joshua's who warred under God's banner, and he striketh with the strength of an army. Unless he is stayed he will devastate to the end!"
Marsyas came close and laid a hand on the rabbi's shoulder.
"What of Stephen?" he asked with stiffened lips. "How did it come to pass?"
For a moment there was silence, and then the rabbi drew up and shook himself.
"It will not help thee, young brother," he said, with an impatience which was only fortification against feeling. "It is ill enough to take a blasphemer and deliver him up to punishment; ask no more, for it wrenches me to think of it."
Marsyas stood frozen; he did not want to hear more, after the rabbi had spoken, but when the reviving current of life stirred in his veins, it was turned to a fever for vengeance. Now! Not to wait for safety, or for circumstances or for men or things. It seemed that he should not eat or sleep till his work was done.
Eleazar, seeking to turn the current of the young man's thoughts, which he believed, being unable to see his face, must be sorrowfully retrospective, asked presently:
"Art thou here with—them?"
"With whom?"
"The Nazarenes."
Marsyas seized the rabbi's shoulder with a fresh grasp.
"Where are they?" he demanded.
"Dost thou—in truth, dost thou not know?" he demanded.
"Accused though I am, I am a good Jew, Rabbi. Never until now have I wished to know where they house themselves. But even were it the powers of darkness which alone could help me, now, I should not hesitate! Where are these apostates?"
"Here, in Ptolemais. What wilt thou have of them, Marsyas?"
"Were not heathen and idolaters instruments for the Lord's work? Have not even the beasts of the fields served His ends?"
"What dost thou meditate?"
"Saul's undoing!" Eleazar heard him thoughtfully and answered after a silence.
"So be it, then; if thou choosest that spirit, it must serve. Thou hast a dead friend to avenge and I, the guiltless oppressed to justify. So the one end, the prevention of Saul's work, be attained, what matter if the spirit be mine or thine!"
"Well enough; the means, then! Where are these Nazarenes?"
"They—they meet on the water-front, nightly, since the oppression hath been instituted against them," Eleazar answered reluctantly, as if he doubted the propriety of betraying a knowledge of the apostates' habits.
"Nightly!" Marsyas repeated. "So then to-night! Where is the place? We will go there!"
Eleazar stood undecided and debated with himself. But the pressure of the young man's impelling firmness assumed material force against him and he yielded doubtfully.
"Come, then," he said, and his hesitation melted in the face of the other's decision.
Marsyas put himself at the rabbi's side and together they tramped through the dark streets toward the poorer districts of Ptolemais, along the harbor. It was poor indeed; the houses were the smallest in the city, low, square boxes of sun-dried earth little higher than a man's head and mere stalls for space and comfort. Each, however, had a numerous tenantry, and wherever doors were opened the two men saw within, now Jews, now Greeks or Romans. Although uproar and disorder common in the lower walks of the city went on in the environments, the particular passage Marsyas and the rabbi walked was quiet though not deserted. But it was a veritable black well, that maintained a swift slope for many rods and indicated the proximity to the water.
"How found you them, in this hole?" Marsyas asked, astonished, in spite of his intent thoughts, at the black labyrinth.
"I, too, was in hiding for my life's sake," Eleazar answered.
The brooding cornices of the houses, visible against the strip of starry sky, rounded suddenly and closed in upon the passage. Marsyas saw that they were nearing a blind end, when a door opened in the cul-de-sac, disclosing several other men preceding Marsyas and the rabbi.
"Haste!" Eleazar whispered, and, seizing Marsyas' hand, ran so that they reached the lighted doorway before it closed again.
They entered with the others, and the bolts were shot behind them.
They were in a single large chamber, rough, barren and barn-like. The gray drapery of cob-webs was sown with chaff; there was the fresh smell of grain with the mustiness of dust contending for prominence; the floor was dry packed earth that had not tasted rain for a century. High above the few resin torches burning on the walls, huge cedar beams traversed the ceiling which was tight, that no moisture nor the consuming rays of the sun should enter. It was an abandoned grain house, builded just without the reach of the highest storm-wave on the water-front.
There were two or three benches, but not seating capacity for the number gathered there. So the youths, women and children sat on the earth along the walls and left the benches to the older men of the assembly.
Marsyas glanced at the gathering. He saw there not one, but many races, however Jewish in predominance. In most of the number he found a common expression, which made him think. It was a certain delineation of fortitude, a brave patience that does not forswear persistence, however seriously the heart fears. In others, there were curiosity and expectation; in still others, apprehension and suspicion. These, he noted, seemed not to wear that look of uplift; intuitively, he knew them to be investigators, more or less convinced, at the moment. Others, he saw, came with bundles of belongings as if prepared for a journey.
Eleazar selected a place by the door and signing to Marsyas that he would sit and await the young Essene's will, dropped down on the packed earth, and, drawing up his powerful limbs, clasped his arms around them. The torch above his head threw the shadow of his projecting kerchief over his face and hid his features.
There was space between him and the next sitter, a young woman wearing the dress of a Jewish matron. She glanced uneasily at the huge stranger and drew closer to a man of her own age, on the other side. Marsyas, seized with a new interest, sat down between the rabbi and the woman.
At the farther end of the building a man arose. He had a pilgrim's scrip at his side; he put away a staff as he gained his feet, and the heightened color of the brown on his cheek-bones and his nose showed that he had but recently come from a long journey.
He raised his arms over the assembly, and each of those gathered there bowed his head and clasped his hands.
"O patient Bearer of the Cross," he prayed, "let us not faint thus soon—we who are driven on! Let Thy footsteps be illumined that we may go Thy way, even though they lead unto Calvary! Teach us Thy submission, quicken us with Thy love, clothe us with Thy charity, that they who oppress us may see that submission is stronger than rebellion, that love is more enduring than hate, that charity is broad enough for our enemies. And if it be Thy will that we should love the spoiler of Thy Church and the destroyer of Thy saints, teach us then to love that enemy!"
This of a surety was not what Marsyas had expected to hear. Undoubtedly the praying man spoke of Saul. The prayer continued.
"Lo, Thou hast tarried thus long away from us, and evil already gathereth thick about Thy people. In those days, when we asked and were answered, voice unto voice, we did not grope. Now, O Lord, we ask and there answers but the speech of faith left in us, and that in grievous hours—doth not bid the cup to pass from us!"
Marsyas' chin sank on his breast; somehow the faltering sentences fell on some keenly sensitive spot in his soul, for in spirit he winced, and listened intently, in spite of himself.
"Yet, judge us not as wavering, O Lord; we but miss Thee from our side, who loved Thee, O Christ!"
The sentence ceased suddenly at the edge of a break in the voice. It seemed that human sorrow had broken in on an inspiration, and the sound of a sob arose here and there from the bowed circle of Nazarenes.
Marsyas suddenly saw the dark trampled space without Hanaleel, the falling night, the still figure of Stephen stretched on the sand, the three humble mourners who of all Jerusalem were not afraid to sorrow for him, and the young Essene choked back a cry to the praying man,
"I know thy pain, brother!"
For that instant bond of sorrow it did not matter that, according to Marsyas' lights, the praying man blasphemed and besought another than the one Lord God as divinity. The Nazarene had loved a friend and lost him from his side; the voice had ceased and, in place of the warm content, only agony and emptiness abode in the heart.
"Show us Thy will; let us see and we shall follow; above all things quicken our ears that Thy loved voice may still be sweet in them across the boundaries of Death and through the darkness which embraceth our heads. Lo, Thou art with us alway even unto the end, we believe, we believe!"
There was too much human suffering, self-examination and beseeching in the prayer for it to help any who heard it. It was not like Stephen's prayers, which had seized upon Marsyas' spirit because of their unshaken confidence and beatification, and had terrified him, as assaults upon his steadfastness. In those moments, he had been afraid of the Nazarene heresy; now, he was stirred to pity for the heretics. The sensation added to his resolution against Saul.
Another voice roused him, by reason of its difference from that of the first speaker. It was not loud, but it carried and penetrated every dusty corner of the great space, with the strength and evenness of a sounded horn. The temper as well as the quality was different; it was triumphant, eager, glad.
"It is the hour of fulfilment, beloved; the accomplishment of the prophecy, for by persecution shall we who are witnesses to the truth be scattered into all the world that the gospel may come unto every creature. The flesh in us which crieth out and feareth death shall be the instrument whereby fleeing to save ourselves we shall go quickened into distant lands and testify. Wherefore let not any soul lament this day nor denounce the circumstance which sendeth him into strange places and unto the Gentile. Ye were not charged to save your flesh but to save your souls. And whosoever saveth his soul hath Christ in his bosom and Christ on his tongue; wherefore the Redeemer is not dead and buried, nor even passed from among you, but living and preaching numerously, by many tongues. Doubt not ye shall have your Gethsemane and your Calvary, yet likewise ye shall arise from the dead and enter into Paradise. The oppressor shall persecute, the rod hang over you, the Cross be set up, but though ye go forth unweaponed ye shall level walls and throw down tyrants by the power of love; ye shall conduct peace and mercy through the flights ye make from oppression, and Life everlasting shall begin where your hour is accomplished and ye die.
"If there be any among you who are timid in flesh that say in their souls, 'Let us find a secure place and live secretly and in godliness away from the abominations of the wicked,' verily I say unto such, if the world were precious enough unto the Son of God that He suffered death to save it, it is not too evil for the habitation of them who were in sin and ransomed by His sacrifice.
"If there be those among you given to wrath and vengeance who shall say, 'Let us fall upon the oppressor and put him to death,' verily I say unto such if the Son of God, who was despised and rejected of men, who raised the dead and cleansed lepers, directed not His powers to punishment and havoc, how shall ye, who are but lately lifted out of sin and damnation?
"Ye are ministers of peace and love and humility. Go forth and testify to these things in His name, and I who stand before you, elected of Him whom ye follow to speak His word, I say unto you that if ye testify faithfully, no persecutor shall triumph over you, no power shall overthrow you, no evil shall prevail against your souls!"
This was not the spirit Marsyas would select to aid him in his punishment of Saul; it was an alien doctrine opposed to nature; but he did not doubt the preacher's sincerity. His utterances were not strange to the ears that had listened with such fear to Stephen. But it seemed that one in the assembly was not satisfied.
"Yet the saints perish by the persecutor," the man spoke. "Behold Stephen is martyred already in Jesus' name."
Marsyas' eyes sought out the speaker; he was one of the unconvinced who sat apart and had become perplexed.
"O my brother, when was it said unto thee by the teachers of Christ that death is the end? I saw Christ on the cross; on the third day I saw Him living in the council of the apostles. The powers of evil pursued Him only to the tomb; there began the dominion of God, and He ascended unto Heaven and to eternal life. Believest thou this? Thy face sayeth me 'yea'; is it not written that they who believe on Him shall share each and all of His blessings? Wherefore, though Stephen died, he liveth triumphant over his enemies; so shall ye, who are faithful unto the end."
"But—but," the man objected, troubled, "is the Church to perish, thus, one by one? If we die in this generation, who shall gather the harvest of the Lord?"
"'Whoso would save his life shall lose it,' said the Master. Is it part of faith to fear that evil will triumph? Wilt thou hold off Life eternal that thou mayest bide a little longer in such insecurity as this life? And I tell thee that the fear of the adversary is awakened, and the strength of his forces is aroused. We measure by his rage against the elect his fear of Christ prevailing. No man leadeth forth an army with banners against that which is weak and which he fears not. Jesus, on whom thou believest, said, 'I have overcome the world.' Know then that the Church can not perish; that the persecutor rageth futilely; that the oppressor fighteth against the Lord. Doubt no longer, lest thy doubt become a fear that an enemy shall overthrow God!"
The young man who sat by the woman at Marsyas' side spoke next.
"I am submissive, Rabbi; yet, how far shall we fly? I am the bridegroom of Cana at whose marriage the Lamb was. When He changed water into wine He turned my heart into wondering, and from wondering into belief. But the sentence of wandering hath driven me out of Cana, out of Galilee, out of Judea into Syria. How far shall we flee, Rabbi?"
"We, too, are driven," many broke in at once. "Few here are citizens of Ptolemais; we have left our homes and have fled far. How long must we go on?"
"As far as God's creatures fare; as far as the Word hath not penetrated," was the answer.
The faces of many fell, tears stood in the eyes of others, and still others murmured wearily. The sun-browned pilgrim who had prayed and who had leaned with a shoulder and his head against the wall, while the teacher spoke, raised himself.
"My heart goeth out in pity for you," he said sorrowfully. "Behind you the consuming fire, before you the overwhelming sea. I am newly come from Jerusalem; I know what awaits you if ye fly not. Even the Gentile can not be worse than he who breathes out threatenings and slaughter against you, in the name of the Law. Fare forth; the world can not be worse; it may be kindlier."
Marsyas observed this man; in him was more promising material for his work than in the preacher. But the preacher looked over the congregation, by this time bowed and filled with distress.
"It is your Gethsemane," he said, turning the pilgrim's declaration into comfort, "but He sleepeth not while ye pray."
Marsyas looked over the congregation and saw here and there strong faces and bold, to whom the ordinance of submission must have been a bitter ordinance. He arose.
"I behold that this is a council, in which men may speak," he said. "I take unto myself the privilege, as one akin to you in suffering if not in faith."
His voice commanded by its Essenic calmness. Every eye turned toward him. They saw the habiliments of a slave covering the stature and dignity of a doctor of Laws. The preacher looked interested, and the congregation stirred toward the young man.
"By the words of your teacher," he continued, "I see that ye are summoned here to be banished. I see your reluctance; I know your sorrow, for I, too, have been driven on, even by your enemy."
"Who art thou, young friend?" the preacher asked.
"I am an Essene."
"An Essene!" many repeated, stirred into wonder at knowledge of the new apostleship.
"As was John the Baptist!" one declared.
"Nay, then;" a voice rose out of the comment, "thou shalt be kin to us in faith so thou acceptest Jesus of Nazareth."
"Let us lay aside the discussion of doctrine, in which we can not agree," the young man went on, "and unite in our cause against Saul of Tarsus."
The kindly eyes of the preacher became paternal as he gazed at the hardness growing in the young man's face.
"Our cause," he said gently, "is not Saul of Tarsus, but Jesus Christ."
"Are ye sincere in your boast that ye will not defend yourselves?" Marsyas demanded.
"What need, young brother? God defends us."
"Well enough; but what of the persecutor?"
"God will overtake him."
"When? When he hath desolated Israel, stained the holy judgment hall with tortured perjury, slandered the Jews before the world as slayers of the innocent? Your talk is all of the life hereafter; I, too, expect to live again; yet I am here to come and go at God's will, not Saul's! Even ye, in all your infatuation, will not call Saul's work God's work! I will not be driven and desolated by Abaddon!"
He did not wait for the preacher, who seemed prepared to speak.
"I was the friend of Stephen, of whom ye spoke with love to-night. Saul consented unto his death in spite of my prayers for him, and before I could save him. When I rebuked Saul for his bloody zeal he denounced me as an apostate and set the Shoterim upon me so that I am obliged to flee for my life. For mine own wrongs I do not care, but the blood of Stephen cries out to me, the spectacle of his death rises to me in my dreams, and the infamy of it fills my hours with anguish. Ye say he was one of your saints, a martyr in the name of your Prophet, a teacher and a power in your church. Ye claim that ye loved him. Yet ye make timid preparation to flee before the oppressor who brought him low, and lift no hand to avenge his death! Are ye men? Have ye loves and hearts? Do ye miss him—"
The pilgrim pressed his palms together and looked at the young man with passionate grief in his eyes. Marsyas turned his words to him.
"Was ever his touch laid upon you, warm with life and tender with good will? Did ever his eyes bless you with their light? Can ye take it idly that his hands grasp the dust and the tomb hath hidden his smile?"
The pilgrim covered his face with his hands.
"These be things that philosophy can not return to me!" Marsyas drove on. "I can not pray Stephen back to my side; I can not hope till his voice returns to my ear; I can not flee till I find him! And by the holy and the pure who have gone down into the grave before him, I know that ye can not! Is it no matter to you that his memory is held in scorn? Are ye not stabbed with doubts that he died in vain—even ye who believe thus firmly that he was right? And I, being a Jew and an upholder of the Law, can I be content, knowing he was cut off in heresy?"
The congregation began to move as he went on; men rose from sitting to their knees, as if prepared to spring to their feet. The preacher circled the room with a glance, but the eyes of the people were upon the young man.
"Your Prophet and my Stephen! And ye fly! There are certain of you that are strong men, and Stephen was as delicate as a child. There is blood and temper and strength and numbers of you, but Stephen went forth alone—and died! Where were ye? What of yourselves, now? Are ye afraid of the weakling Pharisee?"
There was a low murmur and men sprang to their feet, with flashing eyes and clenched hands. The pilgrim flung up his head and drew in his breath till it hissed over his bared teeth. Eleazar stood up by the young Essene and gazed straight at the preacher, as if holding himself in check until the leader declared himself. But the preacher put up his hands and hurried into the center of the building.
"Peace, children!" he said kindly but firmly. His hands lifted higher as the stature of his authority seemed to tower over the people. In the sudden silence those that had stood up sank down again, the pilgrim lowered his head and only Marsyas and the rabbi at his side seemed to resist the quieting influence of the pastor. The extended palms dropped and the Nazarene looked at the young Essene.
"Vengeance is mine and I will repay, saith the Lord. Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth is of the old Law and is passed away!"
"There, O strange pastor of a human flock, our ways part. I am a Jew, thou a Nazarene—our laws differ. Yet if, as ye preach, the God of Moses is also the God of your Prophet, ye are delivered sentences and punishments for evil-doing. Wherefore, if ye evade them, ye evade a divine command!"
"We do not punish; we correct. Punishment is God's portion."
"Are ye not instruments?" the young man persisted.
The preacher did not answer at once; his eyes searched Marsyas' face for some expression by which he might select his line of argument.
"Bethink thee, young brother," he said finally. "How would Stephen answer thee in this?"
Marsyas' demanding eyes wavered and fell; his lips parted and closed again; he frowned.
"Whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance? Not Stephen! Then wilt thou comfort thyself with bloody work, while the tomb stands between thee and Stephen's restraining hands?"
Marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the argument.
"Do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent.
"God directs all things; if it be His will that we shall suffer or escape, God's will be done!"
"It is cowardly!" Marsyas declared with flashing eyes.
The preacher came closer. "I believe that thou art determined and sincere. Suppose Saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the Law was ready for his blood, and God bade thee withhold thy hand. Would it be easy?"
"No, by my soul!"
"Look then at me and answer. Is it easy for me, who hath suffered exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on God?"
Marsyas looked at the preacher. He was tall, spare and old, his hair and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off the flesh. But his eyes glowed with fire and youth. Here of a surety was no weakness to call into account.
"No," he answered again.
"Then, O my son, which of us is truly subject to the Lord?"
"Ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine! It is not human to bow to it!"
"When thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it is divine."
Marsyas looked at Eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on the preacher, spoke for the first time.
"That is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice almost prophetic. "But will ye remember it, when ye come into power?"
Power! Had any of that congregation a hope for power? The word startled them. They looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge frame, the strength of the Law typified, and wondered at his words. Even the preacher had no ready answer. The intimation of the Nazarenes in power on the lips of an expounder of the Law was not conducive to instant comment.
"So ye were in the Jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again. Marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher answered.
"Christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power."
"Watch; forget it not!" Eleazar turned to Marsyas. "I have seen, my brother," he said. "This is not the method. Let us wait; our time will come."
Contented to go, Marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they passed through the gathering to the door. But before they went out, Marsyas spoke again to the silent congregation.
"Rest ye," he said, "we are not informers." They went forth.