When Darius left the queen, he gave over the miserable Phraortes to the
guards, to be cared for, and bent his steps towards the gardens. It was
yet early, but he wished to be alone, and he supposed that Nehushta
would come there before noon, as was her wont. Meanwhile, he wished to
be free of the court and of the queen. Slowly he entered the marble gate
and walked up the long walk of roses, plucking a leaf now and then, and
twisting it in his fingers, scenting the fresh blossoms with an almost
boyish gladness, and breathing in all the sweet warmth of the summer
morning. He had made a mistake, and he was glad to be away, where he
could calmly reflect upon the reason of his being deceived.
He wandered on until he came to the marble pavilion, and would have gone
on to stray farther into the gardens, but that he caught sight of a
woman's mantle upon the floor as he passed by the open doorway. He went
up the few steps and entered.
Nehushta lay upon the marble pavement at her full length, her arms
extended above her head. Her face was ghastly pale and her parted lips
were white. She looked as one dead. Her white linen tiara had almost
fallen from her heavy hair, and the long black locks streamed upon the
stone in thick confusion. Her fingers were tightly clenched, and on her
face was such an expression of agony, as Darius had never dreamed of,
nor seen in those dead in battle.
The king started back in horror as he caught sight of the prostrate
figure. He thought she was dead--murdered, perhaps--until, as he gazed,
he saw a faint movement of breathing. Then he sprang forward, and
kneeled, and raised her head upon his knee, and chafed her temples and
her hands. He could reach the little fountain as he knelt, and he
gathered some water in his palm and sprinkled it upon her face.
At last she opened her eyes--then closed them wearily again--then opened
them once more in quick astonishment, and recognised the king. She would
have made an effort to rise, but he checked her, and she let her head
sink back upon his knee. Still he chafed her temples with his broad,
brown hand, and gazed with anxious tenderness into her eyes, that looked
at him for a moment, and then wandered and then looked again.
"What is this?" she asked, vacantly, at last.
"I know not," answered the king. "I found you here--lying upon the
floor. Are you hurt?" he asked tenderly.
"Hurt? No--yes, I am hurt--hurt even to death," she added suddenly. "Oh,
Darius, I would I could tell you! Are you really my friend?"
She raised herself without his help and sat up. The hot blood rushed
back to her cheeks and her eyes regained their light.
"Can you doubt that I am your friend, your best friend?" asked the king.
Nehushta rose to her feet and paced the little hall in great emotion.
Her hands played nervously with the golden tassels of her mantle, her
head-dress had fallen quite back upon her shoulders, and the masses of
her hair were let loose. From time to time she glanced at the king, who
eyed her anxiously as he stood beside the fountain.
Presently she stopped before him, and very gravely fixed her eyes on
him.
"I will tell you something," she said, beginning in low tones. "I will
tell you this--I cannot tell you all. I have been horribly deceived,
betrayed, made a sport of. I cannot tell you how--you will believe me,
will you not? This man I loved--I love him not--has cast me off as an
old garment, as a thing of no price--as a shoe that is worn out and that
is not fit for his feet to tread upon. I love him not--I hate him--oh, I
love him not at all!"
Darius's face grew dark and his teeth ground hard together, but he stood
still, awaiting what she should say. But Nehushta ceased, and suddenly
she began again to walk up and down, putting her hand to her temples, as
though in pain. Once more she paused, and, in her great emotion laid her
two hands upon the shoulder of the king, who trembled at her touch, as
though a strong man had struck him.
"You said you loved me, once," said Nehushta, in short, nervous tones,
almost under her breath. "Do you love me still?"
"Is it so long since I told you I loved you?" asked Darius, with a shade
of bitterness. "Ah! do not tempt me--do not stir my sickness. Love you?
Yea--as the earth loves the sun--as man never loved woman. Love you? Ay!
I love you, and I am the most miserable of men." He shook from head to
foot with strong emotion, and the stern lines of his face darkened as he
went on speaking. "Yet, though I love you so, I cannot harm him,--for my
great oath's sake I cannot--yet for you, almost I could. Ah Nehushta,
Nehushta!" he cried passionately, "tempt me not! Ask me not this, for
you can almost make a liar of the Great King if you will!"
"I tempt you not," answered the princess. "I will not that you harm a
hair of his head. He is not worthy that you should lift the least of
your fingers to slay him. But this I tell you--" she hesitated. The king
in his violent excitement, as though foreseeing what she would say,
seized her hands and held them tightly while he gazed into her eyes.
"Darius," she said, almost hurriedly, "if you love me, and if you desire
it, I will be your wife."
A wild light broke from the king's eyes. He dropped her hands and
stepped backwards from her, staring hard. Then, with, a quick motion, he
turned and threw himself upon the marble seat that ran around the hall,
and buried his face and sobbed aloud.
Nehushta seemed to regain some of her calmness, when once she had said
the fatal words. She went and knelt beside him and smoothed his brow and
wild, rough hair. The great tears stained his dark cheek. He raised
himself and looked at her and put one arm about her neck.
"Nehushta," he whispered, "is it true?"
She bowed her head silently. Darius drew her towards him and laid her
cheek upon his breast. His face bent down to hers, most tenderly, as
though he would have kissed her. But suddenly he drew back, and turned
his eyes away.
"No," he said, as though he had regained the mastery over himself. "It
is too much to ask--that I might kiss you! It is too much--too
much--that you give me. I am not worthy that you should be my wife.
Nay!" he cried, as she would not let him rise from his seat. "Nay, let
me go, it is not right--it is not worthy--I must not see you any more.
Oh, you have tempted me till I am too weak--"
"Darius, you are the noblest of men, the best and bravest." Then with a
sudden impulse it seemed to Nehushta that she really loved him. The
majestic strength of Zoroaster seemed cold and meaningless beside the
fervour of the brave young king, striving so hard to do right under the
sorest temptation, striving to leave her free, even against her will.
For the moment she loved him, as such women do, with a passionate
impulse. She put her arms about him and drew him down to her.
"Darius, it is truth--I never loved you, but I love you now, for, of all
living men, you have the bravest heart." She pressed a kiss hotly upon
his forehead and her head sank upon his shoulder. For one moment the
king trembled, and then, as though all resistance were gone from him,
his arms went round her, locking with hers that held him, and he kissed
her passionately.
When Zoroaster awoke from his long sleep it was night. He had dreamed
evil dreams, and he woke with a sense of some great disaster impending.
He heard unwonted sounds in the hall outside his chamber, and he sprang
to his feet and called one of the soldiers of his guard.
"What is happening?" asked Zoroaster quickly.
"The Great King, who lives for ever, has taken a new wife to-day,"
answered the soldier, standing erect, but eyeing Zoroaster somewhat
curiously. Zoroaster's heart sank within him.
"What? Who is she?" he asked, coming nearer to the man.
"The new queen is Nehushta--the Hebrew princess," answered the spearman.
"There is a great banquet, and a feast for the guard, and much food and
wine for the slaves--"
"It is well," answered Zoroaster. "Go thou, and feast with the rest."
The man saluted, and left the room. Zoroaster remained standing alone,
his teeth chattering together and his strong limbs shaking beneath him.
But he abandoned himself to no frenzy of grief, nor weeping; one seeing
him would have said he was sick of a fever. His blue eyes stared hard at
the lamp-light and his face was white, but he did not so much as utter
an exclamation, nor give one groan. He went and sat down upon a chair
and folded his hands together, as though waiting for some event. But
nothing happened; no one came to disturb him in his solitude, though he
could hear the tramping feet and the unceasing talk of the slaves and
soldiers without. In the vast palace, where thousands dwelt, where all
were feasting or talking of the coming banquet, Zoroaster was utterly
alone.
At last he rose, slowly, as though with an effort, and paced twice from
one end of the room to the other. Upon a low shelf on one side, his
garments were folded together, while his burnished cuirass and helmet
and other arms which he had not worn upon his rapid journey to Ecbatana,
hung upon nails in the wall above. He looked at all these things and
turned the clothes over piece by piece, till he had found a great dark
mantle and a black hood such as was worn in Media. These he put on, and
beneath the cloak he girded a broad, sharp knife about him. Then
wrapping himself closely round with the dark-coloured stuff and drawing
the hood over his eyes, he lifted the curtain of his door and went out,
without casting a look behind him.
In the crowd of slaves he passed unnoticed; for the hall was but dimly
lighted by a few torches, and every one's attention was upon the doings
of the day and the coming feast.
Zoroaster soon gathered from the words he heard spoken, that the banquet
had not yet begun, and he hastened to the columned porch through which
the royal party must pass on the way to the great hall which formed the
centre of the main building. Files of spearmen, in their bronze
breastplates and scarlet and blue mantles, lined the way, which was
strewn with yellow sand and myrtle leaves and roses. At every pillar
stood a huge bronze candlestick, in which a torch of wax and fir-gum
burned, and flared, and sent up a cloud of half pungent, half aromatic
smoke. Throngs of slaves and soldiers pressed close behind the lines of
spearmen, elbowing each other with loud jests and surly complaints, to
get a better place, a sea of moving, shouting, gesticulating humanity.
Zoroaster's great height and broad shoulders enabled him easily to push
to the front, and he stood there, disguised and unknown, peering between
the heads of two of his own soldiers to obtain the first view of the
procession as it came down the broad staircase at the end of the porch.
Suddenly the blast of deep-toned trumpets was heard in the distance, and
silence fell upon the great multitude. With a rhythmic sway of warlike
tone the clangour rose and fell, and rose again as the trumpeters came
out upon the great staircase and began to descend. After them came other
musicians, whose softer instruments began to be heard in harmony with
the resounding bass of the horns, and then, behind them, came singers,
whose strong, high voices completed the full burst of music that went
before the king.
With measured tread the procession advanced. There were neither priests,
nor sacrificers, nor any connected with any kind of temple; but after
the singers came two hundred noble children clad in white, bearing long
garlands of flowers that trailed upon the ground, so that many of the
blossoms were torn off and strewed the sand.
But Zoroaster looked neither on the singers, nor on the children. His
eyes were fixed intently on the two figures that followed them--Darius,
the king, and Nehushta, the bride. They walked side by side, and the
procession left an open spaced ten paces before and ten paces behind
the royal pair. Darius wore the tunic of purple and white stripes, the
mantle of Tyrian purple on his shoulders and upon his head the royal
crown of gold surrounded the linen tiara; his left hand, bare and brown
and soldier-like, rested upon the golden hilt of his sword, and in his
right, as he walked, he carried a long golden rod surmounted by a ball,
twined with myrtle from end to end. He walked proudly forward, and as he
passed, many a spearman thought with pride that the Great King looked as
much a soldier as he himself.
By his left side came Nehushta, clad entirely in cloth of gold, while a
mantle of the royal purple hung down behind her. Her white linen tiara
was bound round with myrtle and roses, and in her hands she bore a
myrtle bough.
Her face was pale in the torchlight, but she seemed composed in manner,
and from time to time she glanced at the king with a look which was
certainly not one of aversion.
Zoroaster felt himself growing as cold as ice as they approached, and
his teeth chattered in his head. His brain reeled with the smoke of the
torches, the powerful, moving tones of the music and the strangeness of
the whole sight. It seemed as though it could not be real. He fixed his
eyes upon Nehushta, but his face was shaded all around by his dark hood.
Nevertheless, so intently did he gaze upon her that, as she came near,
she felt his look, as it were, and, searching in the crowd behind the
soldiers, met his eyes. She must have known it was he, even under the
disguise that hid his features, for, though she walked calmly on, the
angry blood rushed to her face and brow, overspreading her features with
a sudden, dark flush.
Just as she came up to where Zoroaster stood, he thrust his covered head
far out between the soldiers. His eyes gleamed like coals of blue fire
and his voice came low, with a cold, clear ring, like the blade of a
good sword striking upon a piece of iron.
"Faithless!"
That was all he said, but all around heard the cutting tone, that
neither the voices of the singers, nor the clangour of the trumpets
could drown.
Nehushta drew herself up and paused for one moment, and turned upon the
dark-robed figure a look of such unutterable loathing and scorn as one
would not have deemed could be concentrated in a human face. Then she
passed on.
The two spearmen turned quickly upon the man between them, who had
uttered the insult against the new queen, and laid hold of him roughly
by the shoulders. A moment more and his life would have been ended by
their swords. But his strong, white hands stole out like lightning, and
seized each soldier by the wrist, and twisted their arms so suddenly and
with such furious strength, that they cried aloud with pain and fell
headlong at his feet. The people parted for a space in awe and wonder,
and Zoroaster turned, with his dark mantle close drawn around him, and
strode out through the gaping crowd.
"It is a devil of the mountains!" cried one.
"It is Ahriman himself!" said another.
"It is the soul of the priest of Bel whom the king slew at Babylon!"
"It is the Evil Sprit of Cambyses!"
"Nay," quoth one of the spearmen, rubbing his injured hand, "it was
Zoroaster, the captain. I saw his face beneath that hood he wore."
"It may be," answered his fellow. "They say he can break a bar of iron,
as thick as a man's three fingers, with his hand. But I believe it was a
devil of the mountains."
But the procession marched on, and long before the crowd had recovered
enough from its astonishment to give utterance to these surmises,
Zoroaster had passed out of the porch and back through the deserted
courts, and down the wide staircase to the palace gate, and out into the
quiet, starlit night, alone and on foot.
He would have no compromise with his grief; he would be alone with it.
He needed not mortal sympathy and he would not have the pity of man. The
blow had struck home with deadly certainty and the wound was such as man
cannot heal, neither woman. The fabric of happiness, which in a year he
had built himself, was shattered to its foundation, and the fall of it
was fearful. The ruin of it reached over the whole dominion of his soul
and rent all the palace of his body. The temple that had stood so fair,
whither his heart had gone up to worship his beloved one, was destroyed
and utterly beaten to pieces; and the ruin of it was as a heap of dead
bones, so loathsome in decay, that the eyes of his spirit turned in
horror and disgust from the inward contemplation of so miserable a
sight.
Alone and on foot, he went upon his dreary way, dry-eyed and calm. There
was nothing left of all his past life that he cared for. His armour hung
in his chamber in the palace and with it he left the Zoroaster he had
known--the strong, the young, the beautiful; the warrior, the lover, the
singer of sweet songs, the smiter of swift blows, the peerless horseman,
the matchless man. He who went out alone into the great night, was a
moving sorrow, a horror of grief made visible as a walking shadow among
things real, a man familiar already with death as with a friend, and
with the angel of death as with a lover.
Alone--it was a beginning of satisfaction to be away from all the crowd
of known and unknown faces familiar to his life--but the end and
attainment of satisfaction could only come when he should be away from
himself, from the heavy body that wearied him, and from the heavier soul
that was crushed with itself as with a burden. For sorrow was his
companion from that day forth, and grief undying was his counsellor.
Ah God! She was so beautiful and her love was so sweet and strong! Her
face had been as the face of an angel, and her virgin-heart as the
innermost leaves of the rose that are folded together in the bud before
the rising of the sun. Her kiss was as the breath of spring that
gladdens the earth into new life, her eyes as crystal wells, from the
depths whereof truth rose blushing to the golden light of day. Her lips
were so sweet that a man wondered how they could ever part, till, when
they parted, her gentle breath bore forth the music of her words, that
was sweeter than all created sounds. She was of all earthly women the
most beautiful--the very most lovely thing that God had made; and of all
mortal women that have loved, her love had been the purest, the
gentlest, the truest. There was never woman like to her, nor would be
again.
And yet--scarce ten days had changed her, had so altered and disturbed
the pure elements of her wondrous nature that she had lied to herself
and lied to her lover the very lie of lies--for what? To wear a piece of
purple of a richer dye than other women wore, to bind her hair with a
bit of gold, to be called a queen--a queen forsooth! when she had been
from her birth up the sovereign queen of all created women!
The very lie of lies! Was there ever such a monstrous lie since the
world first learned the untruths of the serpent's wisdom? Had she not
sworn and promised, by the holiness of her God, to love Zoroaster for
ever? For ever. O word, that had meant heaven, and now meant hell!--that
had meant joy without any end and peace and all love!--that meant now
only pain eternal, and sorrow, and gnawing torment of a wound that would
never heal! O Death, that yesterday would have seemed Life for her! O
Life, that to-day, by her, was made the Death of deaths!
Emptiness of emptiness--the whole world one hollow cavern of
vanity--lifeless and lightless, where the ghosts of the sorrows of men
moan dismally, and the shadows of men's griefs scream out their wild
agony upon the ghastly darkness! Night, through which no dawn shall
ever gleam, fleet and fair, to touch with rosy fingers the eyes of a
dead world and give them sight! Winter, of unearthly cold, that through
all the revolving ages of untiring time, shall never see the face of
another spring, nor feel its icy veins thawing with the pulses of a
forgotten life, quickened from within with the thrilling hope of a new
and glorious birth!
Far out upon the southern plain Zoroaster lay upon the dew-wet ground
and gazed up into the measureless depths of heaven, where the stars
shone out like myriads of jewels set in the dark mantle of night!
Gradually, as he lay, the tempest of his heart subsided, and the calm of
the vast solitude descended upon him, even as the dew had descended upon
the earth. His temples ceased to throb with the wild pulse that sent
lightnings through his brain at every beat, and from the intensity of
his sorrow, his soul seemed to float upwards to those cool depths of the
outer firmament where no sorrow is. His eyes grew glassy and fixed, and
his body rigid in the night-dews; and his spirit, soaring beyond the
power of earthly forces to weigh down its flight, rose to that lofty
sphere where the morning and the evening are but one eternal day, where
the mighty unison of the heavenly chorus sends up its grand plain-chant
to God Most High.