Marsyas came forth moodily convinced by Eleazar's words. No; it was not the method. Revenge would have to come through another medium than the Nazarenes. Stephen had told him before that the privilege of taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time Marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect; but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced.
"Is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said.
"O brother," Eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period of change. The world wearies of its manner from time to time. Surfeit of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier. Men tire of their gods as they do of their women, and thou, being an eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable than enforced toleration of satiety."
Marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's earnestness carried no conviction for him.
"It is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer possible. But Israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit."
"Give me thy meaning, Rabbi."
"Thou and I are good Jews, Marsyas, yet I can not say that of a surety of any other man in Judea. I have come from Jerusalem, David's City, the rock of Israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the Ophlas to the uttermost limits of Bezetha!"
"Rabbi!"
"I have seen; I have seen. Saul hath set for himself a task of emptying the sea. In Jerusalem they come singing to torture and death, but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of Judea and all the world. And, hear me, thou true son of Israel, the pastor of the apostates we heard this night declared at least one truth. The Pharisee hath diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence."
Because it was a new charge against Saul, Marsyas accepted it.
"Is there no help against him?" he exclaimed.
"Marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument of the time. If not he, then another would have been called by the spirit of change—"
"There is no such extenuation in me!" Marsyas broke in.
"Might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied.
Marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that Saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him. From Prometheus to Augustus, the declaration was sustained. He lost sight of the rabbi's actual concern. Saul covered his horizon; he could not know that Eleazar looked upon the Pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch of grave possibilities.
The young man made no reply. A hope had been snatched from him that night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment had not weakened his intent. His hope, for the moment centered upon the Nazarenes, turned again upon Agrippa. He did not permit himself to speculate on the prince's possible failure.
At an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that they should meet again.
But the next morning when Marsyas came with little spirit into the sunless counting-room, his first visitor was Agrippa's lugubrious old courier, Silas.
With a cry, Marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's shoulders.
"Dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the slow servant's deliberate speech.
"Perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the wallet for his written instructions. "Perchance that which thou already knowest, and that which may be news. At least, I fetch thee a ransom."
"God reward thee for thy fidelity," Marsyas replied, "and forget thy sloth! Here, let me help thee to thy message."
He put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment from the wallet. It was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax. It was directed to Marsyas. He ripped it open hastily and read:
"To Marsyas, the Essene, to whom Cypros the Herod would owe a greater debt, greeting and these:
"It hath come to us here in Alexandria that Vitellius pursues thee with a mind to punish thee for helping my lord away from his difficulty in Judea. The legate hath sent couriers broadcast over the Empire to seek thee out, but the noble Flaccus, Proconsul of Egypt, though forewarned and required to deliver thee up, hath promised thee asylum in Alexandria. Wherefore, if it please God that thou art preserved until my servant Silas reaches thee, do thou return to this city, secretly and with all speed.
"That thou care for thyself and that thy despatch be assured, I add further that there is much thou canst do for me. Delay not if the same good heart which suffered for us in Ptolemais still beats within thee.
"Thy friend,"CYPROS."
Within were three notes of a talent each, signed by Alexander Lysimachus, the Alabarch of Alexandria. Six weeks before, they would have been mere strips of parchment to Marsyas; to-day, with the commercial knowledge of a steward, Cæsar's gold would not have commanded more respect in him. But he crushed them in his hand and turned his face, suddenly grown pale and tense, toward the east and Jerusalem. They meant the beginning of the destruction of Saul!
Presently he signed to Silas to follow and led the way to old Peter, who sipped his wine in his sleeping apartment. On the way, they met a slave whom Marsyas despatched to the khan for Eleazar.
"But," objected Peter, with the querulousness of an old man, after the first flush of satisfaction over the return of his three talents, "I took thee in hostage, young man, because I wanted thy service as steward, not because I wished to please Agrippa."
"But I have summoned my better to take my place," Marsyas assured him. "Thou shall not be without an able steward, who will serve thee for hire."
And thus it was arranged when Eleazar arrived, that the rabbi should take Marsyas' place as steward and Peter, grumbling, but no less mollified, put on his cloak and repaired to the authorities to make the young Essene's manumission a matter of record.
By sunset all the negotiations were completed and Marsyas, with Silas, passed out into the twilight and proceeded toward the mole.
As they went, others were going; the freighter which was the first to sail for Alexandria bade fair to be crowded with passengers. Curious that so many wished to depart, Marsyas looked critically at the people as they moved toward the water-front. He saw that many of them had been with him in the Nazarene meeting the night before. They were obeying the command to move on.
Suddenly one of them, a young man in advance of two, old enough to be his parents, stopped and pointed with an outstretched arm.
Marsyas glanced in the direction the youth indicated.
The lower slopes of the immense western sky over the placid sea were delicate with the pale shades of a clear, cold, spring sunset. The point where the sun had sunk, alone glowed with a sparkling, golden brilliance. And set against that, far out in the bay, was a frail dark mast, crossed by a faint yard—a fragile crucifix sunk in a glory!
The elder man did not speak; the younger looked at the thing he had discovered, but as Marsyas hurried in agitation by the woman, he heard her speak softly:
"But it is bright—beyond!"
The sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter of the Alexandrian harbor. It was night, and only by daylight could the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world. The freighter would lie to until morning. The passengers would land in boats.
Its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars.
It had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves, captained by a surly, weather-beaten Roman and freighted with a strange, sorrowful company. Now that the journey was at an end, there were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation. When the wash of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars grew steady again, there was silence.
Marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore. Over the whole arc of the southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light—the lamps of Alexandria. Right and left of him and embracing much of the bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame surmounting the Pharos to the east, and failing in featureless obscurity to the west. It might have been a congress of fireflies tranced in space. But there came across the waters, not appreciable sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life. Marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under theignes fatuiswung in the purple night.
He did not contemplate it calmly. The mystery of impending destiny was written over it all.
The silent company of Nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the wharf of the Egyptian suburb, Rhacotis, and together Silas and Marsyas passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the Regio Judæorum.
They had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling companions, before the cluster of Nazarenes seemed to huddle and recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks.
As they rushed down upon the two Jews, the body seemed to have increased greatly in number. The accessions were men, women and children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits.
Marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid Alexandrians. In an instant, Marsyas and Silas were in the thick of the tumult. The fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in the night on the square.
Events followed too swiftly for Marsyas to grasp them as they happened. He had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others, struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight swept by and away in dust.
He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in his arms. Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus, petrified with amazement and apprehension. At one side, groaning and bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas. At the other, a silent, brown woman peered at the insensible girl. Up the street receded the sounds of riot.
Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the stone the servitor held. The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped. Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms. He drew in a full breath. The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and peaceful against his breast. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm. He was strangely untroubled for all that.
The brown woman watched him from the gloom.
Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast.
"It—it—" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and astonishment. "It is the alabarch's daughter—hither, fellow!" to Eutychus; "see this face! See whom thou wast pursuing."
Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic.
"I did not know her!" he cried. "By my soul, I did not know her! I was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people! How should I expect to find her here!"
Marsyas broke in on his avowal.
"Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas.
"Even now!"
"Lead on, then. Eutychus! Follow!"
Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and, turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house of the alabarch. Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent. Then, on missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping away. Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so, placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted to injure.
Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism, Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene.
"O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself.
Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms stirred and made a little questioning sound. But against her manifest wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms about her and brought a single word to his lips. The gentleness of his voice surprised him.
"Peace," he said, and she lay still.
After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him. The charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally seemed. He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the culprit to Agrippa for justice.
He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall. The startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's arms, the serving-man cried out. The brown woman answered with a guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
"Lydia! What hath befallen thee? Is she dead?" he cried.
Back of him came a rush of people. Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind him, Cypros. With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was heard. But Marsyas looked at the master of the house. He saw this time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality, his religion. In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing of the Nazarene. Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his breast. By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen under the smoky street-torch. In the folds of her white dress, beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross, depending from a scarlet cord.
The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take Lydia from Marsyas' arms. But with the instinctive feeling that none must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a motion.
"I will put her down," he said calmly.
Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already turned toward the divan. With a quick movement, he slipped the crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judæorum with the brown woman as an attendant. Catching with relief at this bit of foundation for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her recovery. Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.
Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the outskirts. The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command. Before he could understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.
"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the group. "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest to show the marks of experience. Tell us what happened."
Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation. If he frankly told the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril. If he evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment, might wreck a fabrication by a word. But the young man made no appreciable hesitation in answering. He caught the charioteer's eye and held it fixedly while he spoke.
"I know little," he said. "From the ship we came up a certain street, where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers. So disorderly the crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the guiltiest one. Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus, the lady.
"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we stayed to save the lady from the rioters. This done we came hither. That is all."
"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
Marsyas answered directly.
"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.
"Who art thou?" he asked. "I met thee once, it seems."
"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him, is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my friend and companion. Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable acquaintance."
Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer, took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion. "Blessed be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast a beseeching look at the prince. The prince smiled.
"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he said to the alabarch. "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as great a crime as a love affair."
"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once. "Stephanos,"—signing to a servitor,—"thou wilt take this young man to the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort. If he hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him. Remember, brother, I am at thy command."
With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the company and followed Stephanos.
But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his hand. Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in her rich white garments.
"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper. "Aye, even more—a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."
He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.
"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said. "Thou who art an Essene and a holy man!"
Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept over him. He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and reluctantly, she drew it away.
He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.
This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of distant voices. His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.
As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own, Drumah appeared. Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.
"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her lips. "I was caught in a riot. It is nothing."
"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy garments have bloodstains on them. Thou dost not know that thou art hurt. O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and volatile ointment. Eutychus, art thou there? Run to the culina and get wine! Where is the physician?"
The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement, stopped short and scowled.
"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her. "I am not in need of assistance. The physician is with the master's daughter. I can care for myself. Pray, do not give thyself trouble."
He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and Stephanos.
He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a much-needed warning to Eutychus. The more he considered his neglect, the more serious it seemed. At last he hurried his attendant, and, getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor. He despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to await the charioteer's coming.
As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand column across the desert. Coming quite close to him, she dropped on her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.
"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt. I shall not forget!"
Rising, she flitted away.
Marsyas looked after her in amazement. It was the same slave-woman whom he had helped at Peter the usurer's.
Cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came slowly and sorrowfully into the hall. As Marsyas looked at her, she seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child. But when she saw him, her face lighted, her eyes glowed. With extended hands she came toward him.
"Nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips. "Do not shame me with thy thanks, Marsyas, for I had a selfish use in releasing thee."
"But I know, nevertheless, that I should have had freedom at thy hands though I never saw thee again."
"Oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else I fear for myself," she said earnestly. "Nay, if I were wholly unselfish, I should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise. Yet I come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!"
"Command me; thou hast purchased me!"
"Not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy sacrifice for his sake!"
"Lady, I did that thing for myself—for mine own ends!"
"Nevertheless, it was my husband who profited. Thou must learn that much hath transpired here in Alexandria. The alabarch had not the three hundred thousand drachmæ to lend—"
Marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against Saul of Tarsus progressing?
"—but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we ransomed thee. It was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is not enough for me and my babes. Wherefore Agrippa goes to Rome without us. There, infallibly he will obtain money from Antonia, discharge his debt to Cæsar and settle Vitellius' vengeful search after thee. There, he shall be restored to favor with Cæsar and come into possession of his kingdom!"
"How thou liftest my bitter heart!" Marsyas exclaimed. "Go yet further and say that, thereafter, I shall have my requital, my hunger after vengeance satisfied!"
"All that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!"
"What?" he besought earnestly.
"That he who hath Agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be near my lord to protect him against himself!"
"O lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater yearning than I!"
"So I do believe! But hear me. Thou seest my husband; thou knowest that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident and too little cautious! In the beginning he believes that he is right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and makes enemies as his conviction directs him. Thus he ruined himself thrice over from Rome to Idumea. None but one so eager for his success as I, but abler than I, can govern him! And thou must be his keeper, Marsyas!"
"Thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly. "Thou knowest that I would not have him fail; wherefore, I yield thee my word!"
"Be thou blessed! Yet there is more!"
In spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated. Then as if forcing herself to speak, she said:
"Thou—thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, Marsyas?"
"I do not understand," he said kindly.
"Thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty thousand drachmæ. Thou didst get the drachmæ; keep now my husband's love for me. As thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself for his soul—if need be!"
He frowned at the pavement and then at her. He had evolved enough from her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and he remembered that he was an Essene.
"Be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him. Then thou canst control him. Promise, Marsyas! Oh, thy hope to overthrow Saul is not dearer to thee than this thing is to me! Promise!"
"Be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching from the inner room. "I shall do all that I can. More than that, one less than an angel can not promise!"
She, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs.
Looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, Marsyas saw Classicus in the arch leading into the hall. If the young Essene had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze could not have been more indifferent. He passed on and disappeared into the vestibule.
Hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of Eutychus, running, bent, purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake Classicus. Evidently he had not seen Marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way Classicus had taken.
Instantly and as silently Marsyas followed.
At the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when Marsyas brought up, he found Classicus just departing and Eutychus nowhere to be seen. Surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out of which the charioteer had taken himself, Marsyas passed out directly after the philosopher.
His surmises were not wrong, for the instant Classicus planted foot on the earth without, Eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed.
"Good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this—" but his words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for Marsyas, large in the gloom, stood over him.
"Thy master hath need of thee, Eutychus," he said in a soft voice. The charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit.
"Peace to thee, sir," the Essene said to Classicus, and bowing, returned into the house.
"The truth of the story is this," said Classicus as he stepped into his chair and was borne away, "the Essene is no Essene!"
At the farther end of the corridor within, Marsyas saw Eutychus lurking. Silent and swift the young Essene went after him. The charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and Marsyas followed.
Agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit noiselessly into the dusk. His wonder was awakened. Drumah, with a laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a glimpse of them. The prince stepped down and followed; Drumah slipped after.
At the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, Marsyas seized Eutychus.
"Thou insufferable coward!" he brought out. "Thou blight and peril under a hospitable roof! I know what thou wouldst have said to the master's guest!"
Eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but Marsyas forced him against the wall and pinned him there.
"If so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter, if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, I shall kill thee and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!"
Fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure his words had conveyed their full meaning.
"I have spoken!" he added. Then he threw the man aside and turned to go back to his room. But in his path, though happily out of earshot of his low-spoken words, stood Agrippa; behind him, Drumah. Not a little disturbed, Marsyas stopped. Eutychus saw the prince and expected partizanship.
"Seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded.
But Agrippa laid his hand on Marsyas' arm.
"I do not know thy provocation," he said, "but I know it was just. Go back! It is not enough. Teach him to respect thy strength. Thou hast merely made him dangerous!"
But Marsyas begged Agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still declaring that the Essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him.
Drumah, with her head in the air, passed Eutychus without casting a look upon him.
Marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and excitement. Instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed on the soft gloom above him. He had many diverse thoughts, none wholly contented, many most unhappy.
The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity. He had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm. His purpose against Saul of Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous event. He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it, again and again through the dark troubled hours. It was a long way yet until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of his thoughts.
When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled space without Hanaleel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east.
The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas. In spite of his long wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear.
He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the only sound in the Alexandrian streets.
The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend. But at the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him a loft let into the ceiling. He went that way and came upon another stairway leading up and out into the open. He mounted it and found himself on the roof of the house.
At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's house could flee from the heat closer the earth. It was furnished with antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century.
The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the arousing of the alabarch's household.
The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the pavements in gloom. Strips of darker vapor meandering among them showed the course of passages leading with many detours into the great open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria. It was of tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size. The type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,—repose and refinement, antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a citadel. Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor one rub shoulder against his neighbor. Marsyas looked with no little pride at the triumph of the God of Israel in this stronghold of paganism. What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from the rigor of the Law!
He became conscious of the little cross. He drew it forth from its hiding-place and looked at it. It was made of red cedar, slightly elaborated, and the cord passed through a small copper eyelet at the head. To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a suggestion of suffering and retributive justice. He had not seen one since his last talk with Stephen.
The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for Lydia. Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low! He braced his fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand. At the moment of destruction, his hand was stayed. Stephen had loved it and died for its sake, and Lydia—
His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back in his bosom, over his heart.
At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was projected against the glowing sky. It was firmly knit and outlined like an infant love. The apparition brought, besides startlement, a prescient significance that made his heart beat. Synagogue and Alexandria dropped out of sight. He saw only the rosy heavens with a beautiful girl marked on them.
He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached. And Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the earth.
He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm. Here and there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it. One of the morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the girl's arm, would have looked like it. At the threshold of the summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly cocooned herself in the silken vapor. Her eyes, lifted in the movement, fell on Marsyas. With a little start, she unfurled the wrapping and doubled it over her arm.
"I pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of his words. "I am an intruder. But—the Essenes do not keep their beds long."
"Neither do all Alexandrians," she said, recovering herself. "Thou art welcome, for I would speak with thee."
She put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a taboret. She laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it.
"I pray thee, be seated. I have not said all that I would say concerning last night. Art thou well—unhurt?"
The morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek. He was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him.
"Thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou—I would there were less of last night in thy face!"
"I am well," she said, as her eyes fell. "For that I give thee thanks, and for the security of my fame among my friends—and—the sacrifice thou madest to preserve it!"
She meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue secret. He was glad she touched so readily upon the subject. It gave him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden.
"I was glad," he assured her. "Now, that thou art still safe, I pray thee, lady, preserve thyself. None in all the world is so able to understand thy peril as I!"
She looked at him, remembering that Agrippa had told them that he had been accused of apostasy.
"Are—are these—thy people?" she asked in a whisper.
"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he asked.
"To save a life, thou saidst."
"Even so, I failed."
She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.
"I failed," he continued. "I went to save a friend who had gone astray after the Nazarene Prophet. But they stoned him before mine eyes."
Her lips moved with a compassionate word, more plainly expressed in all her atmosphere.
"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend. Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered for their sin, yet sinned not!"
He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on. Believing that he might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this understanding woman. At first he felt a little of the embarrassment that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with their comprehension. He left the outline and plunged into detail, and when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was flooding Alexandria.
At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness. She was oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of many sorrows.
But he leaned toward her.
"Henceforth, therefore," he said, "I am not a man of peace, but one burdened with rancor and vengeful intent. I go not into En-Gadi, but into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil. I am despoiled and blighted and without hope. Is that the inheritance which thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?"
She drew away from him, half alarmed.
"I—I am not a Nazarene," she faltered.
"Do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly. "Do not listen to their teachings; for whosoever listens must die!"
"I went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but before, of interest."
"But thou art a faithful daughter of Abraham; be not led of any cause. Remember yesterday!"
"Yesterday?" she repeated quietly. "Why yesterday? Only the faith of the oppressed was different. We of Israel's faith in Alexandria know many of yesterday's like, and worse!"
"Suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous! Be not cut off for a folly!"
She fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap.
"Justin Classicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of their Prophet attracted me. I sought them out, and learned that an Egyptian merchant who traded in Syria had passed through Jerusalem at the time of the Nazarene Prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become converted to His teaching. He returned to Egypt and planted the seed of the sect in Rhacotis. And of power and attraction, he gathered unto him men of his like. Finally he carried his teaching into the lecture-rooms of the Library and all Alexandria heard of the Nazarenes. Reduced in its frenzy, his faith had a burning and unconsumed heart to it. Many searched and many accepted it. I went once—with my handmaiden—and heard his preaching. And I saw in it a remedy for the sick world."
Marsyas looked away toward the Synagogue, glittering purely against the dark blue waters of the bay. He felt a recurrence of the old chill that possessed him, when he had failed to shake Stephen in his apostasy. But she went on.
"Since there is but one God there can be but one religion. I do not expect a new godhead, but a new interpretation of the ancient one. Bethink thee; all the world was not Rome, in the days of Abraham or Moses or Solomon or David. This is the hour of the supremacy of one will, one race. Man does not fear God so much when he does not respect his neighbor at all. Therefore, Rome, being autocrat of the earth, is an atheist. She hath set up her mace and called it God. There is no hope against Rome unless we hurl another Rome against it. That we can not do, for there is only one world. Sheol will not prevail against Rome, for Rome is Sheol. Only Heaven is left and Heaven does not proceed against nations with an army and banners. There is only one untried power in the list of forces, and the Nazarene hath it in His creed."
Marsyas knew what it was; Stephen was full of it.
"It is a difficult vision to summon," she continued, "but it may fall that a dove and not an eagle shall sit on the standards of Rome and that the dominion of God and not of Cæsar shall prevail on the Capitoline Hill."
She paused, and Marsyas, waiting until he might speak, put out his hand to her.
"I heard another building such fair structures of his fancy and his hopes," he said, with pain on his face. "Even though they were realized to-morrow, he can not see it; I, being broken of heart, could not rejoice. And Lydia—for they call thee by that name—I can not see another in the dust of the stoning-place!"
Her face flushed and paled and he let his hand drop on hers, by way of apology.
"Then, thou wilt give over the companionship of these people?" he persisted gently. She hesitated, and finally said in a halting voice:
"I—went—I knew that—by thy leave, sir, thou camest to them as a peril. Thou wast expected of the authorities, being doubly charged with apostasy and an offense against Rome, and they were permitted to go thither, by the legate, even by this household, in search of thee, when I and all under this roof knew that thou wast not among them. I—went to give them—warning—"
"Then, the call hath been obeyed," he said kindly. "Shut thy hearing against another. I thank thee, for the Nazarenes. Thou art good and wise and most generous—too rare a woman for Israel to surrender."
She arose, for sounds were coming up the well of the stair, which told of the awakening of the alabarch's household. She wrapped the silk in a closer roll and let the folds of her full habit fall over it. After a little hesitation, she extended her hand to him, and he took it.
Under its touch, he felt that his hour of mastery had passed. The gentle, thankful pressure had put him under her command.
When she disappeared into the well of the stairs, Marsyas, glancing about him, saw on the housetop next to him Justin Classicus. The philosopher was choicely clad in a synthesis to cover him completely from the chill of the morning air, while yet the warmth of his bath was upon him. His locks were anointed, his fillet in place. Even in undress, he was elegant. He rested in a cathedra, and contemplated his neighbor as distantly as he had the night before.
Not until after he had broken his fast with the alabarch and his daughter and returned again to the housetop did he see any other of the magistrate's guests. Junia's litter brought up at the alabarch's porch, and presently Agrippa came up on the housetop.
"How now?" he exclaimed, seeing Marsyas. "Is it the air or the sense of superiority over the sluggard that invites thee up at unsunned hours?"
"Both," Marsyas replied, giving up the diphros to the prince, "and the further urging of an old unsettled grudge. My lord, when dost thou proceed to Rome?"
"Shortly; after the Feast of Flora, which is to be celebrated soon."
"Nay; I pray thee, let it be directly," Marsyas urged; "for my bitterness unspent bids fair to rise in my throat and choke me!"
"Proh pudor! Cherishing a pulseless rancor with all fervor, when thou art here, in arm's reach and in high favor with that which should make back to thee all thou hast ever lost in the world! Oh, what a placid vegetable of an Essene thou art,—in all save hate!"
"I am to go to Rome with thee, my lord."
"Of a surety! My wife sees in thee a kind of talisman which will insure me favor with emperors and usurers, ward off the influence of beautiful women and give me success at dice!"
Marsyas glanced away from Agrippa and his face settled into uncompromising lines. Agrippa continued.
"Nay, thou goest to see that I make no misstep toward getting a kingdom. Welcome! Be thou hawk-eyed vigilance itself. But my pleasure might be more perfect did I know that thine and our lady's determination to crown me were less selfish!"
"Thou shalt not complain of more than selfishness in me," Marsyas answered calmly. "But by my dearest hope, thou shalt live a different life than that which hath ruined thee of late. I know that thou canst win a kingdom by a word; but thou shalt not lose it by a smile. For, by the Lord God that made us, thou shalt not fail!"
Agrippa turned half angrily upon the young Essene, but the imperfectly formulated retort died on his lips. He met in the resolute eyes fixed upon him command and mastery. Words could not have delivered such a certainty of control. In that moment of silent contemplation the contest for future supremacy was decided. Agrippa frowned, looked away and smiled foolishly.
"Perpol! Did I ever think to lose patience with a man for swearing to make me a king? But mend thy manner, Marsyas. Thou'lt never please the ladies if thou goest wooing with this rattle and clang of siege-engines!"
Junia appeared on the housetop. She came with lagging steps and sank upon the divan, gazing with sleepy eyes at Marsyas.
"I emancipated myself," she said, "from the study of new stitches, the neighbor's dress and the fashion in perfumes. A pest on your rustic habit of early rising! Here we are aroused in the unlovely hours of the raw dawn to achieve business, ere the sun bakes us into stupidity at midday!"
"A needless sacrifice to these Egyptians," Agrippa declared. "They are all salamanders. I saw a serving-woman in this house pick up a flame on her bare palm and carry it off as one would bear a vase."
"Vasti? Nay, but she comes from India; fled from servitude to the Brahmin priesthood to take service with the man who had pitied her once."
"The alabarch?"
"Even so. He bought the gold and onyx plates that he put on the Temple gates, in India, where he saw her and pitied her. So, she fled her owner and sought the world over till she found the alabarch to enslave herself anew."
"So! Small wonder, then, she is annealed like an amphora. Yet I had believed she was a bayadere."
"A bayadere?" Junia repeated.
"A Brahmin dancer, having the peculiarities of an Egyptian almah, a Greek hetæra, and a Pythian priestess, all fused in one. But now that she hath repented, she is rigidly upright and a relentless pursuer of evil-doers."
"Alas!" sighed Junia, still watching Marsyas, "is it not enough to grow old without having to become virtuous?"
Agrippa lifted his eyes to her face, and the look was sufficient comment. But Marsyas had been plunged in his own thoughts and did not hear.
"What is the Feast of Flora?" he asked.
The Roman woman smiled and answered.
"A popular expression of the world's joy over the summer. That was its original motive, but it has been conventionalized into a feast formally celebrating the reign of Flora. It was pastoral, but the poor cities walled away from the wheat and the pastures adopted it, in very hunger for the feel of the earth. It falls in the spring under the revivifying influence of awakening life and the loosed spirit of the populace grows boisterous. We become a city of rustics and hoidens. Pleasure is the purpose and love the largess of the occasion."
Agrippa smiled absently. These two remarks of diverse character were tentative. She was sounding Marsyas' nature.
"I shall not sail till it is done," Agrippa declared.
"A rare diversion to tempt a man from his ambitions," the young Essene retorted quickly. Junia had made her sounding. She persisted in her latter rôle.
"It is," she averred. "Flora is elected among the beautiful girls of the theaters; she typifies universal love; she runs, leaving a trail of yellow roses behind her, which lead the multitude on to the delight she means to take for herself—and that is all. It is merely a pretty feast, but the world is made of many well-meaning though blundering natures; and the revel does not always reach the high mark of refinement at its highest."
Agrippa's eyes on the Roman woman expressed intensest amusement and admiration, though they lost nothing of their cool self-possession.
"My lord," Marsyas observed coldly, "there are as choice evils in Rome."
Junia laughed.
"Evil! Tut, tut! How monstrous serious the little world takes itself! How great is its problems, how towering its philosophies, how bad its badness! See us wrinkle our little old brows and smile agedly over the creature impulses of children and forget that the gods sit on the brink of Olympus and smile at us. How we deplore the Feast of Flora—and out upon us! None—save perchance thyself, good sir, and thy rigid order—but goes reveling after pleasure and chooses a love or casts a stone at an offender—and soberly calls it a crisis or a principle! Philosophy! Discovering the obvious! Badness! Only nature, more or less emphatic! All a matter of meat and drink, shelter and apparel and the recreation of ourselves! Everything else is merely an attribute of the simple essentials. Is it not so, good sir?"
Marsyas shook his head. For the first time in his life he had heard the world forgiven and the sound of it was good. He could not help remembering Lydia's words, in contrast. But he was not convinced.
"It is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he said. "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine them to be greater. So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher God smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves and pains of Venus. But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them; nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble. It is therefore a serious world for worldlings."
Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.
"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said. "But go follow Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"