With the solid soil of the ancient Roman road beneath his horse's feet, Marsyas rode north, between the hills of Judea, with the head of Mt. Ephraim before him. The early morning of the second day broke over him, fresh on the long straight road, leading over the border into Samaria, past the Well of Jacob, and through the city of Samaria. At noon the third day he turned at the parting of the ways, and rode east, along the southern edge of the Plains of Esdraelon, until, through a crevice in the hills, he saw the Jordan sparkling in its valley below. It was an old familiar way, thence, north once more, fording a hundred mountain brooks that fed the river of the Holy Land. The narrow fertile strip that lay between the hills and waters of the Sea of Galilee, unto Tiberias, he accomplished after night. At dawn he entered Magdala, at mid-morning Capernaum, and, leaving the margin of the beautiful lake, he passed north into the rocks, ridges and forests once more. Through marshes and sedge, with the waters of the Jordan in the heart of it, he forded the south arm of Lake Huleh and entered Itrurea.
The country changed but the road did not. It was still the same compact ribbon of stone and soil in the marsh as it was in the hills, as it was in the fertile lowlands. Ahead of him, through the hills it stretched, through the oaks of Bashan, under cliffs surmounted by castles, or hillsides marked by temples. And when the oaks left off, and the hills fell back and the streams dried into dead, sapless beds watered only by infrequent rains, the road continued on.
The fifth dawn, he rode down a pass, through a rocky defile, and the Syrian desert was before him.
He had bought provisions for two days' journey at the last village in the fertile lands; his horse was freshened after a night's feeding on the herbage in the hills, and Marsyas' heart was resolute.
Even the road no longer led him on, but he touched his horse with his hand and passed into the wilderness.
At a huddle of huts for goat-tenders, he found that Saul and his party had passed at noon the day previous. The Arabs there besought him to remain until the evening, for none traveled under a Syrian noonday and escaped evil consequences. But Marsyas wrapped his head in his mantle, watered his horse and pressed on. He had no time to lose.
The Antilibanus, a glaring ridge of chalk, heightened at intervals into peaks that held up their blistering cold winds from the heat-blasted day, and swept them down by night to confound the stunned earth with ice. The shale from their easternmost slopes sprawled out on the desert and scarred it with rock and gravel until the blowing sands buried it. Far to the east, the lap of the desert dropped down into emptiness, marked by a level of intervening atmosphere. Beyond that were bald hills outlined against the horizon.
Between was a cruel waste, tufted here and there by gray-green, scrubby growth, half-buried in sand and rooted in gravel. There was color, but it was the dye of chemicals, not refractions; chalks, not rainbows. The drop of water has only the true range of the spectrum and its merging grades, but sands may be erratic, chaotic. Thus, the wadies, sallow meanderings in the trembling distance, were bordered with dull fawn and dull lavender—ashes of scarlet and purple; wherever hummocks arose there were ground-swells of lifeless gray and saffron—burned-out blue and gold. Over it all were sown burnished fleckings of myriads of mica particles, like white-hot motes from the face of the sun itself. The air was flame; the sky a livid arch that no man dared look upon.
At high noon, Marsyas hid from the deadly sun in a crevice in a narrow canyon; but pressed on while yet the scorching air burned his nostrils. At night, he rode through bitter winds, or broke his fast with the inky outlines of jackals squatting about the rim of the immediate landscape. He met no man, and had no desire for companionship with the burden of his stern thoughts to attend him.
He did not have the murderer's heart in him; he did not go forward in a whirl of passion and fury; it did not once occur to him to ambush the Tarsian; he did not ponder on a plan of action when the moment should arrive; not once did he strike the fatal blow, in his imagination, nor speak with Saul, nor follow himself after the deed was done. His ideas were largely in retrospect, or centered upon the necessity of his work. His love of Lydia, his love of life, his natural impulses toward generous things were put away from him with firmness, as things which had no place at such a time. His composure was almost resignation. He knew then, that which he had never been able to understand,—how men of great souls and previous noble lives could in all calmness kill another by design.
A glittering white ridge had shaped itself out of the pale blue sky of an early morning, while yet he rode in the hills. It was Hermon, with the unmelted snows of the winter covering its crown. Opposite it, he came upon another miserable cluster of hovels, the abode of pestilence, want and superstition, and there found that Saul had passed through the village at high noon that day. Marsyas purchased water for his horse and rode on. Saul was now only a half-day's journey ahead of him.
He had come far, without rest. Even now, with the crisis of his long journey at hand, he labored under prostrating weariness and a torturing desire to sleep. He had periods of mental blankness from which he aroused with a start. But as the night's cold deepened, after the day of withering heat, the sharp change added to the weakening influences. He meditated on the Feast of Junia and the succession of Classicus, until his body became a column finishing the front of Agrippa's palace, at which a mob at Baiæ threw stones. He flinched, and the night on the desert of Syria passed across his vision once more. But it was good to lie down on the couch at the triclinum of Caligula, restful, indeed, if it were sinful. But not for long, because Lydia was beside him, and he spent hours imploring her to give up Jove and pour libations to Jehovah instead, for since Saul of Tarsus was Cæsar, she would be chained to a soldier under sentence in the Prætorium. Even now there approached a decurion with manacles thrown over his shoulder!
Again, he saw the drooping head of his horse before him in the dark, the pallid stretch of sand, and felt the sweep of harsh winds on his face.
But Lollia Paulina had laid her sesterces on this worn-out animal, when she knew that Cneius Domitius' horses were the best in the Circus! Why did the woman insist on sitting with him, when she wanted so much to be with the Roman? But nobody was good. Even Stephen had died in heresy, and Lydia, for whom he had lost his soul, was an apostate! The multitude had her! Classicus turned his back upon her! Flaccus stood within twenty paces of her and leveled a pilum at her breast! And Saul bound his arms! Help! Mercy—
But a brambly desert shrub had caught at his garments, and its sharp dead thorns had pierced him.
The next mid-morning he rode up a chalky ridge and saw the picture that had brought praise to the lips of the prophets of despair, when Israel was a captive with no hope.
It was a vale so enchanting, so perfect, so golden that he doubted his eyes and feared that it was an unreality the desert had fashioned to lure him on to destruction—or another but kindlier dream.
Yellow roadways, slender and winding, wandered hither and thither through emerald oceans of young grain, past ancient vineyards and orchards of olives, and citrons, and groves of walnuts. Yonder was a cluster of palms, pilasters of silver with feathery capitals, and under it was builded a little town—a hive of soft-colored houses, half smothered in delicate green.
Beyond, the roads spread out again, from their convergence in the little settlement, and ran abroad once more between hedges of roses and oleanders, across the River Pharbar, curving midway across the vale like a simitar dropped in the green, through crowding gardens, among low-lying roofs, past spreading villas of the rich, on to a glittering vision of towers, walls, cupolas, white as frost on the head of Mount Tabor in the morning.
At his feet was Caucabe the Star; in the distance was Damascus.
Marsyas drew up his jaded horse and looked, not at the beauty of the scene, for he did not wish to see it now, but down the roads. Over every yellow ribbon his gaze passed until, beyond the limits of the white-towered town, he saw a cluster of small moving figures.
"O rememberer of no wrongs," he said to his horse, "only a little way and thou shall rest and I shall rest!"
He pressed on, past Caucabe the Star, down the hedges of roses between the emerald oceans of young grain and the odorous shade of orchards.
The sun climbed higher, more heated, more merciless; the oleanders gave up their fast fragrance until the night fell again; the vineyards curled, leaf by leaf, the young grain drooped and wilted, the orchards pent in the heat under their boughs, the yellow roads became streaks of brass and the tyrant of the desert stood at its meridian.
Another stadium, and Marsyas drew up his horse sharply.
Sixty paces ahead was a wayside pool, overshadowed by tall trees—an irresistible invitation to the traveler seeking refuge from the sun. A lean, bowed figure in rabbinical robes stood beside a mule that drank of the spring. Half a dozen men in the garments of Levites stood by their own beasts with rein in hand while they drank.
Marsyas felt in his belt for his knife, and curbing his thirsty horse lowered down on Saul of Tarsus. In his association with hardy pagans, athletæ and the exquisite Herod, he had in a measure forgotten the feebleness of Saul.
"He is weak!" he said to himself. "But what mercy hath he shown the weak?"
He recalled the terrible desert, remembered that Saul had sworn to bring back the Nazarenes to Jerusalem for trial—back across that empire of death! And Lydia, gentle and without hardihood, against whom he could not bear to think of the wind blowing strongly, was to go that way!
The Levites watched the Pharisee narrowly; one of them, whom Marsyas recognized as Joel, made tentative movements toward unpacking the supplies from one of the burden-bearing beasts. But the Pharisee drew up the bridle of his mule and led it to the roadside toward a stone by which he could mount. The eyes of the Levites followed him in a troubled manner, and Joel sat down as if to show that he believed the rabbi would not proceed in the noon.
"Up!" said Saul calmly, "we shall continue to Damascus."
The troubled Levites stared at him, and Joel presently objected:
"But—but it is the noon! And the heat is cruel!"
"We can proceed, nevertheless," was the reply.
The stupefied Levite stumbled to his feet, and the party led their beasts out into the sun. Marsyas with a fierce word dismounted and strode toward them.
At his second step he faltered. Silence dropped upon the blazing plain of Damascus—silence so sudden, so absolute that his footfall startled him. He saw that the movement of Saul's party had been arrested. Arm lifted, or foot put forward, stayed in the attitude. The utter stillness seized them as a commanding hand. Then all the noon grew dim, not from the abatement of the sun's light, but by the coming of a radiance infinitely brighter. Descending from above, instantly intensifying as if the source that shed it approached as fast as stars move, a single ray, purer than the glitter on Mount Hermon, and more inscrutable than the face of the Syrian sun, stood among them.
Its presence was not violent but all-compelling. The group at the pool fell down in the dust and lay still.
Silence such as never before and never again lay on the plain of Damascus, brooded about them.
Out of it a single voice issued, low, trembling, filled with fear and reverence. It was Saul of Tarsus, speaking:
"Who art Thou, Lord?"
Presently he spoke again, eagerly, humbly, and still afraid:
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
[Illustration: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" (missing from book)]
After a long time, the hot breeze made a whispering sound in the sand of the roadway; the leaves in the hedge at hand stirred and fluttered. Joel, the boldest of the Levites, cautiously raised his head, and presently got upon his feet. His fellows, taking heart, rose, one by one.
A young stranger in the robes of an Essene was kneeling among them with large dark eyes fixed in pity upon Saul.
The rabbi had made an attempt to raise himself, but had paused transfixed. Humility made an actual light on his forehead; his pinched features were stunned with helplessness.
The terrified Levites crept closer to one another, but Joel finally wet his dry lips and spoke in a half-whisper:
"Rabbi?"
There was no answer in words, but slow tears rose, brimmed over the lids and crept down the sun-burned hollow cheeks.
The young stranger came quickly and knelt beside the rabbi and laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.
"Brother Saul?" he whispered.
The face of the rabbi came round, but the gaze missed its mark and wandered over the men about him. There was no vision in the eyes.
"He is blind!" a Levite whispered.
The young stranger slipped the hand from the shoulder around the bowed figure, and, supporting Saul in his arm, looked down with infinite sorrow and concern at the darkened eyes.
"We will abide here," he said at last, to the Levites, "until the noon passeth."
The Levites looked in a little fear at the spot where they had been so mysteriously overwhelmed, but Marsyas lifted Saul and bore him back into the shade he had left to continue unto Damascus.
All of his own passion and purpose had been swept away, leaving his mind to the tenantry of the sweetest content he had ever known. Though he had seen no man nor heard a voice, he knew that the Lord had visited Saul, and that the eye of the Lord beheld Saul's work.
After that reverent translation of the supernatural event, he troubled himself no more concerning the vision.
Absolute relief possessed his soul; rest of spirit so all-comprehensive that it strengthened his body, peace so whole that it bordered on gladness, and confidence, new, delicious and simple, embraced all his being. The old restless ambition was so stilled and soothed that it seemed to have been fulfilled; the old Essenic cynicism that had slandered all the world, tinctured his friendships with distrust and his love with fear, was dissipated like a distorting illusion; his hates, his thirst for revenge, his impatience with the deliberation of God, and his self-dependence were things unremembered. He did not understand his change and did not seek after its meaning; his feelings did not even hark back to the old love for Saul. Pity and filial solicitude, sensations that on a time he could not have believed possible as shown to Saul, made the strength of his arm gentle and his service reverential. He thought now of Lydia, with worshipful, marvelous homage, as if his soul knelt to her. He had ceased to be afraid for her or to fear that he would not find her. Everything good became possible; the prospering of virtue, the fidelity of Agrippa, the prevention of Flaccus and the favor of Cæsar, even the restoration of his beloved, seemed to be things absolutely assured.
He did not say these things to himself; they were simple convictions that made themselves felt in a tender blending which amounted to perfect waiting on the Lord.
He did not know that his face had become beautiful, or that Joel looked askance at him or that the other Levites wondered if he had come to them in the great light. So when the sun stood three hours above the horizon, he raised Saul from the shade of the walnut grove and passed on to Damascus.
The golden haze reddened over the glorious Damascene plain, the distance became obscured; the purple triumphed; then the royal color over the world began to run out into plum shades, and the sudden night came up from the east.
But before this hour at one of the north gates of Damascus, the halting group of Levites, the stricken man among them, and the silent, kindly young stranger appeared before Aretas' wiry black Arab sentry that held that post.
They did not know the ways of the Pearl of the Orient, and they wished to find Via Recta—Straight Street. There Judas, a Pharisee of wealth and power, expected to entertain Saul.
Though the Cæsars possessed the city's fealty, exacted tribute, installed Jupiter in the temples and the eagle on its standard, it was still the dominion of Rimmon, vassal of Nimrud, high place of the sons of Uz. It had submitted to Alexander of Macedon as placidly as it suffered the wolfish Roman, who would pass, likewise. It notched its calendar by the rise and fall of nations, and marked its days by the sway of kings. It had propitiated Time, hence there was no death for Damascus; it steeped itself in the oils of the Orient and so was spiced against decay. There were Romanized colonnades along the streets, but the winged bulls of the dromoes, the stucco-work and the tiles, the swaying of carpets from balconies obscured their influence. Architects of Cæsar's extravagances scowled at the giant structures that were old in Baalbec's time and looked their defeat; Chaldean philosophers contemplated the trenches worn in the rock pavements by the feet of men and held their peace; olives, as old as Troy, cast their leaves down on the heads of Greeks who shook them off impatiently, but the sons of Abraham could point to a mound of clay and say: "This was a temple which our father builded unto God, before you all!"
The Jewish tincture had never been abated even, much less worked out.
Therefore, as the agitated travelers from Jerusalem passed through the gate they went with their own kind by legions. The slow mule was there, outnumbering the Arab's troops of horses, which were mettled, nervous creatures, caparisoned like kings; there were Israel's camels, bearing howdahs, rich as thrones; tall stalking dromedaries in tasseled housings and tinkling harnesses, passing as ships pass over ground-swells, with undulations dizzying in their ease; and these, mounted by the sons of Abraham, were more in number than the Hindu palanquins, Roman lecticæ, Greek litters, and Gentiles afoot.
Marsyas glanced about for the eye of a citizen whom he might approach and ask his way, but the turmoil for the moment confused him. Into the gate or out of it passed wealthy travelers, faring in state; itinerant merchants; squads of Aretas' soldiery, and through and among these, eddying and swarming, shouting, hurrying and trading were venders, beggars, carriers, slaves, citizens, Jews in gowns, Arabs in burnooses, Greeks in chitons, Romans in tunics, idlers, actors, scribes, notaries, priests and magistrates—of twenty nationalities, of every rank and age.
Marsyas met face to face a Pharisee of erect and imposing figure, with flowing beard and aggressive features, who drew his spotless linen draperies away from contact with the ceremonially unclean horde at the gate. The man had stopped and was gazing from his commanding height over the rush of pilgrims flowing into the walls of Damascus.
Marsyas approached him.
"I seek Judas, a Pharisee, which dwelleth in Straight Street!"
"I am he," the Pharisee interrupted, examining the young man for some familiar feature which might justify the Essene's initiatory.
"Thou art well-met, sir; we bring unto thee, thy guest, Saul of Tarsus, stricken by a vision on the roads and blind!"
"Even am I here, awaiting him," the Pharisee exclaimed. "Thou bringest me evil tidings! Lead me to him, I pray thee."
The Levites stood with Saul outside the path of the exit to the gateway, and Marsyas led Judas to the stricken rabbi. Hebrew servants followed respectfully after their master.
"Brother Saul," Marsyas said, "I bring thee thy host; he will care for thee."
The sightless eyes of the rabbi turned toward the speaker, and Marsyas thought that a shadow crossed the forehead.
"Woe is me!" Judas exclaimed, "that thou shouldst come thus afflicted, brother! But perchance the vision was a blessing on thee!"
"He does not speak," Marsyas explained. "I do not belong to his party. I joined them to offer aid."
"Then the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob reward thee," Judas said. He signed to his servants, who brought forward a litter in which Judas had meant his guest should proceed to Straight Street. Saul was lifted into it; Judas climbed in beside him; the servants shouldered the litter, and, with the Levites following, bore it away into the city.
Marsyas looked after it until the narrow ways between the high unsightly mud walls hid it.
Then he put his hands together and smiled.
"The Nazarene bade me ask for Ananias!" he whispered.
But Ananias was a favorite name among the Jews of Damascus. Weariness and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty diverse directions, sent Marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and Lydia still unfound.
The next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to search for Ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the Ananias he sought was a Nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the protector of his beloved.
He found Ananias, the wine-merchant, and Ananias, the tanner, banished to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and Ananias, the priest; and Ananias who was a native of Antioch and of mixed blood, but unalterably a Jew; and Ananias, who was a soldier, drafted into garrison service by Aretas, who had taken the city from Antipas; and Ananias, the steward of Sidon who had robbed his master and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and Ananias, who was a reader in the Synagogue. And for two other days, he sought Ananiases patiently and with pathetic hope.
At sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the street, and between the two there passed a communication with the fingers. To others, not associated with Nazarenes, the sign meant nothing, but Marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped.
It was the sign of the cross!
He overtook the woman who had passed him.
"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?"
The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face. She was a Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm.
"Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired by the unhappy.
"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he said. "I shall not betray him."
"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the white gate, at the end of the street?"
Marsyas assented.
"Knock," she said.
He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate. There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the property wall on each side. And there was a seat of tamarind with fallen leaves upon it.
"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor in his voice. Whither had his courage departed?
"Enter," the woman said.
Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman toward the bower of ipomoea.
Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and disappeared through a door at the end of the room. A moment later, the tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged from the interior.
Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips. He clasped his hands and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene.
Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed behind him and signed to the young man to pass in.
Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center under a hanging lamp. There, with her head bright under the rays, sat Lydia.
Her face was toward him when he entered. She flung down the skein of wool she was winding and sprang up. But the look on Marsyas' face arrested her cry. One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes kindled with sudden triumph. She came to him as if more than distance between them and danger had been overcome. Marsyas swept her into his arms and folded her to his heart.
"No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine own!"
Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her.
"O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust than to live in thy love without it! Blessed, thrice blessed the hour which gave me both!"
"O my Lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in the holy garment of thy love! Blessed am I and consecrated!"
"I believed in thy wisdom, love!"
"I had no wisdom but love!"
"The Lord heard me, my Marsyas, for I was near mine extremity, and I could not have endured much longer!"
"I had reached my extremity, Lydia, and then the Lord gave me His hand."
She turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh. Her eyes flashed on him a light of new interest.
"I never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed.
"I never was happy till now!"
"Why now, and not before?" she asked.
There was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he could tell what had marked it.
He led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap.
"Listen, and when I have done, know that the Lord loved us, and hath joined us with His own hands."
Beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's stone before the Synagogue in Alexandria, he told with simple directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing fear that he would not save her from Saul. He had her follow him to the Temple, where he met Eleazar and received the dire news that Saul had departed for Damascus; and thence along the old Roman road through the length of the Holy Land, up past his native hills and the waters of the Sea of Galilee, and the marshes of Lake Huleh, into the desert, and on to the beginning of the beneficence of the Pharbar and the Abana, until he brought up within sixty paces of Saul at the wayside pool. All these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in Alexandria. But when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the prostration of Saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual in her.
"Naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same interference could turn me again into the old way!"
She lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness.
"Didst thou hear what the Spirit said?" she asked.
"We heard nothing, except Saul's words, which I told thee."
"And did Saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy Stephen?"
"He did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in a trance!"
"And thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath against him?"
"I have done that thing, Lydia."
She held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured.
"Wherein art thou different, then, from the Nazarenes of Ptolemais who showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst have hurled them against Saul?" she asked.
For a moment there was silence. Then he arose on his knees and raising his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine enlightenment shone in his eyes.
"I know who came unto us there," he whispered. "It was the Christ!"
She laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a moment, is prayer.
Then Marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands. The red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she laid it about his neck and blessed him.
When the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and the spirit of human love was strong between them, Lydia bade him listen, while she told him one other surprising thing.
"At the command of a heavenly vision, Ananias went this day unto the house of Judas the Pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where Saul lay, blind and dumb. And by the gift of the Lord Jesus, Ananias laid his hands on Saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight. So he arose and followed Ananias unto this house—"
"Here?" Marsyas cried.
"Unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he stood up and glorified Jesus of Nazareth, and received baptism unto the Church of the Nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!"
Marsyas was silent. More than wonder filled his heart. Presently he said, as if speaking to himself:
"Is this thine hour, O my martyred Stephen? Art thou content? Sleepest thou the better, knowing that I have followed thy testament for Saul, rather than mine own oath against him?"
Lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his. Feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the hand.
"Give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew, pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it! Let me serve it, now!"
"And thou wilt not regret the peace of En-Gadi, in the world that can not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of one who does not fear the answer.
"I owe En-Gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and mother to me when I had neither. Its teaching and its practices are pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world. But with the help of Him who made thee strong and Stephen fearless, I shall not want pent-in walls to be happy and upright."
"Let Ananias teach thee, my love; let Saul show thee his heart; and then—"
"Send us back unto Alexandria, with the faith of Christ on our lips and the peace of His love in our hearts. Tell me that I may go with thee, Lydia!"
"I have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the Judean hills."
On the third day after his arrival in Jerusalem, Herod the king was in his privy cabinet arranging, with his own hands, the graven gems and articles of virtu, prizes brought from his trip to Antioch. The door was dubiously opened, and Agrippa, without turning his head, knew who stood there, for only one in the palace had been commanded to enter the king's presence without announcement.
"Well, Silas?" Agrippa said, contemplating the elusive tints of a jade goblet.
The old man pulled at the gorgeous uniform of master of horse, that hung from the peasant shoulders and answered:
"A friend of thy unfortunate days is without."
Agrippa's brows lifted and drew toward each other in a manner half-amused, half-vexed.
"The friends of my unfortunate days are the friends of my fortunate days; wherefore, they would liefer be known as friends of Agrippa the king, than of Agrippa the bankrupt. Give them their due and call them the king's companions. And Silas?"
"Yes, lord."
"The king would as lief forget that he ever had a misfortune."
Silas looked perplexed and rubbed his forehead.
"But who is it that stands without?" Agrippa continued.
"The Essene."
"What! Marsyas? By the Nymphae—beshrew me! By the beard of Balaam, I shall be glad to see him! Fetch him hither!"
Silas nodded in lieu of a bow.
"Lord, there is one with him; shall she enter also?"
"Who?"
"The alabarch's daughter."
"Nay! The little Athene! Terpsichore's best! Not so; though, by Bacch—Balaam! she would be a fit jewel for this place. It shall be an audience hour. Go, summon the queen, and have the Essene and his priestess come to us in our hall!"
The master of horse backed away, but, catching Agrippa's smiling eye, turned his back, remembering his privilege, and hurried out, as if he expected an arrow between his shoulders.
The king shut down the lid of the shittim-wood chest upon the priceless trifles still unpacked, locked it, and said the while to himself:
"The Essene hath heard of the Pharisee Saul's apostasy and hath come to demand his punishment of me. Behold me grant it, with kingly gravity. It will attach the extremists to me all the more, for I hear the Sicarii are wanting the heretic's blood! And he fetches the little Lysimachus with him! Aha! En-Gadi hath lost—that which it never had, in truth."
He looked at his hands and at his garments.
"Nay, it will be just as well if the lady sees me looking my best!"
He slammed the door of his cabinet behind him, locked it and hurried away in the direction of the royal wardrobe.
In an hour he ascended the dais in robes of purple velvet with the Pharisee fringes in gold. Cypros, filled with pleasurable anticipations, was beside him in the garments that Mariamne had worn. The king cast an eye over the carpeting, the canopy and the gorgeous dressing of his throne and said to Cypros:
"Perpol! the place reeks with the smell of newness! But be not conscious of it! Perchance none will guess that the hands of the upholsterers are still warm on the fabric."
The genuflexions of the series of attendants at the archway and beyond marked the coming of Marsyas and Lydia. A Jewish chamberlain within the hall bent to the pavement and announced to the king that his visitors approached. Agrippa relaxed even more comfortably in his throne and let his scepter fall into his lap. But Cypros, more conscious of her debt to those who visited her now than of her state, smiled and moved forward and looked down the long chamber for the first glimpse of them.
But it was not the Marsyas and the Lydia she had expected to see. Even to one of her unready perceptions, the change upon the two was strangely marked.
They came side by side, both in the simple white garments of the ceremonially clean, but Marsyas' head was uncovered and Lydia's locks were wholly unbound, after the custom of Jewish brides. Within a few paces of the throne-dais they stopped. With all her former grace, Lydia sank to her knees, but Marsyas, after the oriental salaam, stood beside her.
Cypros, with her eyes shining, and after an eager glance at her lord, arose and stepped to the edge of the dais. Then Agrippa got up, with his purple trailing effectively, and came down from his high seat, and approached his guests.
"It is the one pain of mine exaltation," he said as he extended his arms to Marsyas, "that mine old loves believe that they must approach me now with humility."
"Yet they no less expect that thou wilt raise them," Marsyas said, returning the king's embrace.
Agrippa lifted Lydia to her feet and kissed her.
"There, by my kingdom!" he exclaimed. "I rejoice at thy wedding for the privilege it gives me! May joy be thy portion, and peace and abundance and years be multiplied unto you both! Evoe! as the heathen say! But for your sanctified atmosphere, I would have the trumpeters blow you a fan-fare!"
He handed Lydia to Cypros, who waited almost tearfully.
"Go, let the queen congratulate thee that thou hast wedded an upright man in the beginning and saved thyself of the pain of making him one—as she had to do! Come up," he continued to Marsyas, "and sit at our feet. And tell us of yourselves."
With his arm over Marsyas' shoulder, he went back to his dais, and sitting, had Marsyas take the guest's chair at his side, while Cypros bestowed Lydia on a velvet cushion at her feet.
"So much, so long my story, that I falter at its beginning, as one beginning a day's journey at sunset," said Marsyas.
"Thou needest but to essay a beginning; let me lead thee," Agrippa observed. "Let me satisfy the questions in thee, ere I be entertained. First, of Flaccus. I sent messengers to Cæsar from Antioch detailing the high offenses of the proconsul, hinting treason against the government of the emperor and other charges which excite Caligula most, and ere I departed I had from Cæsar's own hand the tidings that a centurion had been despatched to Alexandria to arrest Flaccus and bring him to Rome for trial. And the further news, which will raise thee, sweet Lydia, to calm content. The Jews are to be restored their rights, the prisoners freed, and better times assured to thy people."
Lydia clasped her hands, and her eyes filled with relief.
"And my father?" she asked in a low voice.
"Especially commended to Cæsar's favor! The black days for the Alexandrian Jews are over, unless Caligula force upon them his pet madness that he is a god and amenable to worship."
"Mad, at last!" Marsyas exclaimed.
"Never otherwise," Agrippa answered. "I hear that he has proclaimed Junia to be Athor, and hath set up a white cow in a temple to be propitiated in the wanton's name!"
Marsyas looked at the downcast lashes of Lydia and loved her for the silence she kept.
"Will she—be—empress?" Cypros faltered, in womanly fear of some unknown evil.
Agrippa laughed and dropped his hand meaningly on Marsyas' arm.
"If she should be, here is Marsyas yet to protect me!" he said. But Marsyas did not smile.
"What!" Agrippa cried; "still an Essene?"
"No," said Marsyas, "but the Lord forfend that the woman should ever become Augusta!"
"Never fear! She is too poor. Caligula, like any other mortal god, would prefer a dowry with his consort! And that, by Janus—ah—er—Jacob! brings me up to somewhat relative to our old fortune-seeking friend, Classicus."
"But," Marsyas protested with a show of his old-time spirit, "I shall not agree that Classicus sought Lydia for her riches alone!"
"The unhappiest remark, the crudest accusation thou didst ever force me to defend!" Agrippa exclaimed, glowering at Marsyas. "Now, how shall I convince thy sweet bride that I had not meant that any man could love her less than her dowry!"
But Lydia smiled, first at Marsyas and then at the king, and said: "Let us hear of Classicus."
The king clapped his hands, and an attendant bowed to the floor in the archway.
"Bring hither the letter from Alexandria, which my scribe answereth," Agrippa said. In a moment a package was put into the king's hands.
He unfolded it carefully. "It is fragile," he said, "reed paper—papyrus, of his own curing, and written with a quill. Evil days for Classicus; but observe, he hath not forgotten the latest fashion in folding it. Listen:
"To the Most High and Gracious Prince, Herod Agrippa, King of Judea, from his servant and subject, Justin Classicus, the Alexandrian, greeting:
"That thou hast come unto thine own, that thou hast triumphed and the day of fulfillment hath dawned, that the Jews of the hallowed soil of Canaan have again a king from among them, I give thee congratulations and God-speed, and offer thanks to the God of our fathers.
"Would to that same God who hath magnified thee, that the sway of thy scepter extended unto us, here, in Alexandria.
"Our misfortunes are beyond words. Particularly am I most unfortunate. Because of my friendliness to the alabarch, and subsequent turning upon Flaccus in thine own extremity, I am reduced to the utmost poverty, having neither food nor raiment beyond that which a faithful freedman supplies me out of his own little store.
"Since mine own people are imprisoned within a fourth of their territory, nor one permitted to come forth upon pain of dreadful death, I can not hope for help from them, much less from the Gentiles, who take particular delight in my humiliation.
"In thee I have hope. I pray thee number me among thy helpless ones and give me of thy bounty something to do to clothe and feed me, and sufficiently gentle that I may not be proscribed among my kind—"