It was the first letter he had ever written to a woman; he did not dream that he had written so tenderly.
He rolled the parchment and addressed it to the princess.
There was nothing more to be done.
Was he not to see Lydia again?
Filled with rebellion and fear, he hurried toward the hall; in the semi-dark, cast by the lamp within the larger room, he saw a small figure slip quickly behind a hanging.
She had been waiting to have a stolen look upon him as he went!
He caught her in his arms and drew her out into the light. Under its revealing ray, he saw her lovely face smitten down with shame, but he lifted it, to kiss her eyes, her temples and her lips.
"Lydia! Lydia! I fear to leave thee!" he whispered.
She let her eyes light upon him, to catch his meaning, and when she saw terror for her apostasy and amazement for the thing she had done for the Nazarenes, a sudden misery leaped into her face. She tried to put him back.
"Lydia, Lydia!" he begged, feeling the repulse, "dost thou not love me, then?" His tone urged, his eyes pleaded.
For a moment, she was silent; then she said, with infinite pain:
"Marsyas, I broke off the trail of roses through Rhacotis, and held back the multitude from the Nazarenes. But thou art an Essene, and a Jew; wherefore, in thy sight I can not be justified. Forget not these things for my sake! Go, ere thy teaching hath cause to reproach thee."
"No, no!" he agonized. "Do not say that to me! Say rather that thou wilt turn away from this heresy and be led no more by it into transgression! Better thy sweet life and thy sweet fame than all the truth in the world!"
The word he used caught her. She waited and seemed not to breathe. He swept on.
"Art thou, beyond saving, a Nazarene?"
Her face fell, and her soft red lips were parted with a heavy sigh.
"From this night henceforward, Marsyas! I have purchased the blessing dearly."
She took the hands about her and undid them.
"Go!" she whispered. "Farewell, and the one God, that loves us all, shield thee from harm all the days of thy life!"
A moment and she was gone.
After a while he turned and walked with stumbling feet into the new dawn on Alexandria.
Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and sat up. A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.
In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas looked sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood near by.
"A message for thee," the slave said.
Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped in silk. Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.
"O MARSYAS:
"Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman addresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and more confidence.
"I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little space before we are commanded to join Cæsar in Capri. In this time I have not seen thee nor thy lord.
"If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria may urge thee to accept the invitation I extend.
"There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.
"Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.
"JUNIA."
Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.
"Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.
He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.
In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days to prepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.
It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that had bent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem. He had permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms. He had assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit and had become not only a Roman but an exquisite. The change was not all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his brow.
He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and down the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa's magnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica that awaited him in the streets.
Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.
Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.
He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals, cast it down in the gloom of the depressions. Glories clambered up the bosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, and might in marble and gold sat on the Palatine. Between were splendor and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and defilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.
The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the Carinæ, along which he passed. Starvation and the excess of plenty, power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met and passed. The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces and maces. He did not proceed unnoticed. Albucilla, widow of Satrius Secundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languid senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene; Ennia, wife of Macro, the prætorian prefect, leaned from her litter to cry him an invitation.
"To Tusculum! Come with us!"
"Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"
"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on. Running slaves pushed by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the lectica they bore contained Caligula, Cæsar's grand-nephew. Agrippina, a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he approached. Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him with a smile and a greeting. As the young Jew was borne on he did not realize that he had made room for three coming Cæsars in the Carinæ. After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off the Carinæ and began to mount the Esquiline. In a few minutes he was set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek temple, as compact as a fortification.
The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him into the vestibule and left him for a moment. Presently, a soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged him to follow. He was led into Junia's atrium.
The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli, turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise. But honest feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood before her.
"Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him. "Would thou wast a god! Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"
"Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.
She laughed and shook her finger at him.
"How hopeless a ruin thou art! A Jew speaking of the gods!" He led her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. With bright eyes and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
"It is true!" she cried at last. "And I do not like to see it! Thou art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "But tell me of thyself, and after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee. All thy misdeeds are known to me. When I forewarned thee of the various attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks! I have heard how thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a score of merry running courtships in the capital. I see thee, how thou hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. And thou an Essene! Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the salty desert of En-Gadi—some time! Overshadowing the Herod till in very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the atria to thee! Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
The young man smiled a little bitterly. Cypros' charge had not been difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
"But Rome enlarges," he protested. "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble of Fortune: and I—having a purpose to be achieved in his success—I speed him—in mine own way. But enough of ourselves. Tell me of Alexandria!"
"But wait! I have not done. The charm of beauty hath lost its potency here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful. The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price. The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's son bearing the ægis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the mansions of the ancient Quirites! Wherefore there is only one rare, unpurchasable charm—newness—and Roman society speedily dulls the luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially. Beware, my Marsyas!"
He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness, in a strangely unspiritual way. He had heard of upright atheists; somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but irreligious chidings. Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that he had changed.
"Be neither frequent nor democratic. Saith Agricola, the pleb, 'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!' By Castor! I had rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small. Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts. And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he complained.
"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as thine. So thou wilt wait for me. Thou hast been in Rome four months. Tell me what happened in that time."
Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head.
"None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said. "I have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea. Nay, then; hear me. He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had forfeited in twenty years. He came away radiant and under promise to return the following night, and dine with the emperor. But the next morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa. One would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in reporting him. What followed but that the same imperial hand which had been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next, extended in banishment over him."
"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony. "Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
"Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with a warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia. And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the information of our whereabouts, in Judea! I repaired to Rome, borrowed three hundred thousand drachmæ of Antonia, theunivira, and despatched messengers to Cæsar and Herrenius Capito telling that the debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome. So we laid the ghost of our debts. But feeling unhappy owing no man, I immediately borrowed a million drachmæ of Thallus, Cæsar's freedman, repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the Quirinal. Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions. But—!"
He stopped abruptly.
"O prescient contingent!" she said softly. "Does the Herod dally with his opportunities?"
"Worse: he affronts them! Worse: those opportunities are not alone for him! Part of them are mine!"
Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me into narrative. An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end. Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh two ways for a new Emperor. Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son, and there is Caligula, Cæsar's grandnephew. Now Cæsar seeth in the little Tiberius a successor. Fatuous dotage! The prætorians are stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant. The reason is good enough to be a woman's! Be it as it may, that lean, sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
"Hercle! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias was with a stone!"
"Patience! On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum. Many were going, as many go every day. We had mounted our car, with Eutychus—would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!—as charioteer, when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted his. After them directly followed a cohort of prætorians. Their bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened little Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot and frightened his pair. The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the advancing cohort.
"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula were helped to their feet. The lad withdrew to the roadside, but Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to become unruly. Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the charioteer. I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals. Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways. The boy saw him coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave preparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer Caligula.
"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"
"What! Did that thing openly?"
"Deliberately! The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover Agrippa's slight. And after him rushed a crowd of senators and ædiles—his umbræ—to feed his hate of the Herod!"
"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
"He plays at legerdemain with Cæsar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at his own narrative. "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius to Agrippa's care and companionship. Cæsar will hear of this!"
"Inevitably! Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its patron. And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, who gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
"Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
"Of Flaccus!"
Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
"What! Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? Dost thou not know that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the night of the Dance of Flora?"
Marsyas looked at her steadily.
"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
"No!" he answered penitently.
"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
"Tell it me, then!"
"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa. So much he loved her, that twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was revived—stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his youth. Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to Cypros, in the night."
"How didst thou learn of this?"
"O simple youth! Is it then so common in Judea for powers to be discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it? Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence? That is better. Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary, and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria. But the proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice. And there he made an error. He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to be a knave. So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause was unearthed."
"And Cypros?"
"Cypros? Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting any change? Beautiful statues do not change. What they express when they are finished they express until they are broken. When she came from under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."
"So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"
"She does not suspect him!"
"What!"
"Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am the author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more complimentary. I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless, would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail twenty diverse calamities. I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet to the bottom of his oceanic nature. I also know that the Lady Herod is an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving. So with Agrippa out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the princess from her Arab, in vain. Wherefore I permitted the good alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious hopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds to depart for Rome. I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile thereon. So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccus resumed his visits to the alabarch's house. And for all outward signs, it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"
Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to the thought of man.
"Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippa that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it was I—and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"
"What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm. "Thou!"
"Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went on, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low. And Agrippa was taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant—until I told him—three days out at sea!"
After a long silence, she said softly:
"And that was thine errand—for Flora!"
Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.
"Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou know? How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect history?"
"Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling. "Tell me of—Classicus."
Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.
"Classicus? Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not executive ability—wanting cunning, not courage. Now he leads us to believe that he examines a new religion—that same heresy for which he plunged thee into the Rhacotis peril. Some one put him up to it—mark me. Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the little Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"
"And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.
Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.
"Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Oh, Lydia dances and studies and makes ready for her marriage with Classicus."
One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of critical news. After it, Marsyas arose.
"I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice which she had never heard before and did not understand. "I thank thee for thy counsel—and thy news."
He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was not steady.
"And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on. "We are summoned to Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to Tiberius. Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."
"Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself to change."
He pressed her hand and passed out.
At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.
"Perpol!" the prince cried. "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"
But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on. Agrippa looked after him.
"Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated. "That is an honest youth, and Junia must let him alone."
When Agrippa returned to his house that night, he found old Silas sitting in the vestibule, opposite the place of the atriensis, his hands on his knees, his dull face uncommonly animated and expressive.
It was long past the hour when the household servants had retired, and the porter at the door was drowsy, but the instant Agrippa set foot on his threshhold Silas started up and bowed in excitement.
"An evil day," he said. "Thy wardrobe hath been entered and much fine raiment is gone."
"But thou hast made an evil night of it, Silas: thou shouldst have withheld thy calamitous recital until the morning. Hast discovered the thief?"
Silas bowed again. "I have: yet, I have been restrained from taking him."
"O pliable Jew! None but Cæsar can steal my wardrobe unmolested. Who protects the thief?"
"Marsyas."
"What! Marsyas? Save thou art too unimaginative to be a fictionist I should say thou makest thy story. Why does Marsyas protect my pillager?"
"He says we are well rid of the knave."
"Not if he carried off so much as a sandal-lace. I am a Jew and therefore jealous for my own property. Marsyas, as an Essene, is given to dividing without protest with thieves. I remember the Greek who helped himself to Marsyas' patrimony on Olivet. But who is the thief?"
"Eutychus."
"Eutychus! By Hermes, he could not help it with that face! But go on; what is the circumstance?"
"He took," Silas continued, "the umber toga, embroidered with silver, much of thy Jewish vestments, the gazelle wallet which contained thy amulet, and drachmæ and bracelets of gold. He is rich!"
"Of a surety: the knave hath only the more attached himself to me. What a pity! Otherwise we were well rid of him. And Marsyas bade thee let him go?"
"The young man was disturbed. According to instructions, he sent a messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid Eutychus have thy car ready to-morrow for thy visit to Tusculum. But the messenger presently returned with the information that Eutychus had not been seen about the stables that day. At the same moment, I discovered the losses among thy apparel. And Marsyas instantly suspected Eutychus. He sent two slaves in search of him. They returned in an hour saying that he had been discovered in Janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an Augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only tickle a Samaritan's throat. When they tried to bring him, he objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days."
Agrippa's forehead darkened.
"Even for that I should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed.
"It is not all. When the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force, they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and obliged to flee for their lives. I besought Marsyas, then, to permit me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning. Seeing that it was Eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he departed."
Agrippa yawned.
"To-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken. It is improvident to have so much philosophy as Marsyas. But what had the knave of a charioteer against me? It is Marsyas who hath enchanted Drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house. I shall speak with Marsyas to-morrow."
He took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor toward his rest. With the facility which characterized many of Agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind.
He had fenced with Caligula that morning, he had feasted with Macro that night. At midday he had slighted Piso, the enemy of both. Caligula had had him draw a sketch of Judea on the wax of the gymnasium floor and designate the possessions of the old Herod; Macro, in his cups, had asked confidentially if Caligula approved him. Altogether the day had been filled with tokens presaging success. He smiled sleepily, remembering Silas' extravagant concern over the robbery.
"Calamity is all in the mark on the scale of Fortune," he opined. "A year ago to lose a handful of drachmæ would have ruined me."
As he passed Marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped. The long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an interesting glimpse of the lighted interior. Within, Marsyas, seated at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his head on the writing. Almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand.
Astonishment gathered on the Herod's face.
In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that grasped it. Presently Marsyas dropped it. Then the night-wind, rising from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor. He got out of sight hurriedly.
After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall. Before it, along the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum. Agrippa looked at it. It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed by the tense grip of fingers.
Agrippa waited. After a slight movement within, silence fell again, and was not thereafter broken. The prince's eyes fell on the charred writing. It was almost at his feet. His fine head dropped to one side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a little and picked up the parchment. A moment later, in his own apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.
Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the identity, as he thought, of the one addressed.
"— me for loving thee — my punishment —. Yet —— sin against my teachi —— Willingly for thy sake ——— but to pretend —— continue my —— against —— which threatens thee. Have I lost — soul for a caprice —— and beseech levity — to lov — me? the pointing finger —— of sel — scorn! An outcast from Heaven —— truant from hell, haunting earth in search of thee for ever!—SYAS."
Agrippa's eyes sobered.
"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself. "I shall make an end of this!"
Junia raised herself hastily.
"Call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced Marsyas, and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various openings leading into the atrium.
"Away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the occasion of Marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex. "Bring me a shawl—close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, Iste; thou shalt pay for that scratch! Here, unwind the scarf about my hips and fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off! By Ate! Here: Caligula's note, spread open! Into the brazier with it. Do I smell of wine? Fetch hither—that fresco! The Pursuit of Daphne! Draw the arras over it! Quick! The unguentarium, I said, snail! The one with the attar. Now, look about. Is there anything in sight to disturb a vestal? If I find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!"
Mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing unseemly greeted their eyes. Junia sank back on her couch, not now so recumbent, but at ease.
"Go fetch the Jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by the fire in her eyes.
A moment later Marsyas appeared in the archway.
She arose and came to meet him. When he took her extended hands, she led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him.
"Sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the casement. "And speak first. Only a word, so I may see if the prologue is indeed as tragic as the mask."
"Let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be insufferable."
"Proh pudor! Thy friend the Herod hath just been here with pagan oaths upon his lips about thy dullness. I tell thee it is hard enough to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in his shoe. If thou wouldst manage him, be merry. Remember we have this Herod to crown, though he stood on the Tarpeian Rock and sang sonnets in dishonor of Cæsar."
"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.
She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget her, in his preoccupation.
"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly. "I do not resent thy lack of confidence in me!"
"Nay!" he exclaimed. "My lack of confidence, lady? What meanest thou?"
"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest signals of thy self-containment on thy brow. Wherefore, I am informed thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"
"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."
"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly. Listen!" She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.
"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's slander of the poor world in thee. The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant Prejudice controls even its images. I warned thee in Alexandria. I confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an elementary impulse rather than calculation. Flaccus is bad, but because he is in love. Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is ambitious. What? Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"
He shook his head.
"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said. "Thou offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to hold off my hand."
"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know. Whom wilt thou punish? Flaccus or Classicus?"
He hesitated. His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia, his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged only a mind, and not a spirit. Yet it seemed unfair to withhold anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.
"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one. I am stricken in my loves; one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me in mine intents concerning the other two. If I avenge the death of one, I displease his spirit! If I visit punishment on his murderer, I make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on. If I withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death. And him I help, I help for mine own use. My life is at cross purposes; my right hand worketh against the left!"
"Thy love?" she repeated softly, with a question in her tone. But he did not answer it.
"A hopeless tangle," she said at last, "from which our ruling philosophers, degenerate imitators of Pyrrho, offer but one escape. Turn from it, cease to trouble over it, leave it, cast off all thought and memory of it—and begin anew!"
He shook his head, his eyes on the pavement, his hands clasped before him. But the primrose hand found his again.
"Thou canst not, by the choicest revenge, force Thanatos to yield up thy dead; thou confessest the evil thou workest in revenge as equal to the satisfaction; thou complainest that thy love is faithless—what else? So many thy pains, I can not remember them all; but in them all there is not the worth of one of thy sleepless nights. If thou canst not be a Spartan, be a Stoic; if not an avenger, then a forgetter; if not a lover, then a gallant! Above all things, harken unto a pagan truth: love's a lusty wight and can suffer forty mortal wounds and love again. None but an ostrich loves but once! Perchance I was right at first; thou shouldst have begun thine education in the first of Flora's celebration."
He winced, but presently raised his head.
"What didst thou when the procession carried me away that night?" he demanded, searching her face.
"When thou didst go away with the procession?" she laughed. "I went with them—of a necessity."
"And how didst thou escape?"
"When they all departed after Flora danced."
Thus beyond doubt assured that she had witnessed the dance of Flora, he was afraid to inquire further, lest he betray Lydia. But he wanted mightily to know if she had recognized the alabarch's daughter.
The disturbing reflection diverted his line of thought. Many of the night's events which the greater one had overshadowed came back to him. He saw again the miraculous dance of Brahma on the roof of the Temple of Rannu, fled again with Lydia in his arms into the musky shrine and thence into the city; strove hard to convince himself that if he, sharpened of sight by love, had not recognized Lydia except for the bayadere's note and his acquaintance with Lydia's apostasy and her former defense of the Nazarenes, others could not have done so. Again he fought with Flaccus and discovered Agrippa in the dark and abandoned street in Alexandria. And now the image of Eutychus became particularly distinct.
His brow blackened suddenly and he sprang to his feet.
"It is solved!" he cried, striking the palm of one hand with the other. "By the wrath of God, he is Flaccus' emissary. He turned on Agrippa in Alexandria when Flaccus ambushed the prince! He was part of the conspiracy! It was no blind blow that Agrippa struck. And the soul in me nourishes a lie or he meditates more work for the proconsul in this!"
Throughout his intensely confident accusation, Junia had watched him with changing eyes. She had had to feel her way frequently in this last hour.
"What?" she asked finally.
In a few and rapid words, Marsyas told her of Eutychus' theft and flight, but his ideas hasted from his narrative to more testimony in favor of his conclusion. He remembered Eutychus' jealousy of Drumah, his ruffian mistreatment of Lydia when the prætor moved against the Nazarenes, his attempt to expose her to Justin Classicus because, his jealousy of Marsyas revived, he had no other way of retaliating; and finally of his humiliation at Marsyas' hands before Agrippa and Drumah.
"Bitter fool that I was not to understand him in time!" he cried. "In my soul, I know that we follow him to a pitfall in this matter!"
Junia slipped her fingers along the gilt grooves in the arm of the divan. Flaccus was a clumsy villain, of a surety! What overt conspiracies he evolved! A wild boar of the German forests would not make more clamor at its attacks! A wonder he had not exposed her, ere this. But for his influence, which made her a place in Cæsar's house, she had given up his service long ago. Her lips curled with disgust and perplexity.
"Forewarning," she said gloomily, "is a torture when forearming avails naught."
He caught the depression in her tone and turned to her quickly.
"Agrippa hath been here, Marsyas," she continued. "Yet he was not to be stopped, I thought, then, that it was only the knave's playing for time!"
"What dost thou mean?" he demanded. "Tell me!"
"Agrippa was here. Eutychus hath been caught, but Piso notifies the Herod that the prisoner hath appealed to Cæsar, claiming to have information against Agrippa which concerns Cæsar's life and welfare!"
Marsyas seized her arm.
"What sayest thou?" he cried.
"And since thou hast uncovered Flaccus' hand supporting the villain, Agrippa is in greater peril than I had supposed!"
For a moment the two looked at each other: Junia with uneasiness on her face, and Marsyas transfixed. He saw his plans against Saul of Tarsus tumbling; he saw the Pharisee triumphing over Lydia!
"It may still be hoped," she ventured, "that the knave lies!"
"Junia, thou knowest Agrippa! It is my terror lest the knave be armed with a truth!"
"Out with it all," she went on desperately. "The Herod is convinced that he is innocent—this time—of any ill-will against Cæsar, and he came here and spent the greater part of an hour, beseeching me to use my influence to hasten Cæsar's hearing of Eutychus!"
"In God's name, answer! Did you refuse him?"
"I did! I besought him to let Cæsar follow his own way, since the emperor is notedly slow in hearing charges in these later years. I assured him that Cæsar might be more displeased, urged against his inclination to hear a stupid slave, than the slave's charge could make him. But the Herod is more stubborn than the classic steed of Judea. He demanded haughtily of me, if I expected him to treat with a slanderer or beg a truce with a lie. Then I refused him my offices. Wherefore he hath posted off to Antonia!"
"She will not harken to him—!" he cried with sudden desperation.
"O Marsyas, this day I should be exorcised as a fury, bringing evil happenings. But better the sorry truth than a fair lie. Antonia hath lived out of the world for the last decade, as hast thou. But her seclusion hath achieved the opposite harm, that is hatched by solitariness. She retired, full of years and honor; the world, approaching her door, comes in fair garments, bringing tokens of esteem, talks of ancient triumphs, the virtues of Antonia and the great respect Cæsar hath for her. Wherefore, kindly treated by the world, remembering nothing but the good of the old days and believing in her sweet dotage that she crushed evil when she crushed Sejanus, her natural strategic sense hath been lost in a great, all-enveloping charity. Her natural nobility hath outgrown the wariness which aids youth, and her dimmed sight sees things of stature, only, or of high relief. She will see in the prince's desire only a desire to clear himself of a charge and she will honor him for it! She will do his bidding!"
Marsyas snatched up his cloak and sprang toward the archway.
"Let me to her!" he cried.
"Wait!" Junia cried. "Be prepared against defeat, though it never come! What wilt thou do, if she be immovable, or already gone—for Cæsar is in Tusculum to-day?"
Marsyas stopped and his face grew ashen. He saw Lydia again, among the stones of the rabble, and murder leaped into his heart.
"Kill Eutychus!" he declared desperately.
"It would be fatal for Agrippa," she protested.
His hunted ideas turned then upon Cæsar. Suddenly he rushed back to Junia and seized her hands.
"Thou art close to Cæsar," he said rapidly and with great supplication in his voice, "and thou art in Cæsar's favor! Beseech him and right Agrippa's mistakes, I implore thee! Help me, Junia! Be my right arm! Promise me thine intercession!"
Her face suffused, and she waited a moment before she could trust her voice.
"For thy sake, Marsyas," she answered. "I give thee my word!"
He pressed her hands to his lips and ran out of the house. She dropped back on her couch and put her fingers to her temples.
"Save Agrippa, to kill Saul, to save Lydia, for this Judean vestal's sake?" she speculated to herself. "And where doth Junia profit? Ah! I shall get him in debt, and extort mine own price! Jew or Gentile, he will not think it exorbitant, for under it all, he is a man! But to Tusculum!"
She clapped her hands and ordered her litter.