"You see, Gilderman," said the young fellow, "Stirling's dead gone on
the girl. He goes to the Westminster Gardens every night, and takes her
out for a spin along the drive every afternoon."
Gilderman looked at West, who again laughed.
"They say you're having Norcott paint her portrait," said Le Roy Barron.
"No, I'm not," said West. "Norcott's doing it off his own bat, for a
picture to send to the Academy or somewhere, I believe."
"By-the-way," said Barron, "I see poor old Herod's let them execute
John."
"Yes," said West, "we may all thank Salome for that. Tommy Ryan was
telling me all about it this morning. It seems that there was something
going on down at Herod's place last night, and Ryan was asked. It was a
pretty wild sort of affair. After supper, the girl danced for them on
the table in the supper-room, _à la_ Carrington. I guess they were all
pretty lively--anyhow Herod promised he'd give her whatever she'd ask
him. And what does that woman, her mother, do but put her up to asking
to have poor John the Baptist put out of the way. Herod would have
backed out if he could, but the women held him to his promise."
"By-the-way, Gildy," said Latimer-Moire, "you're sort of on the
religious lay; what do you think of all this row?"
Governor Pilate turned and looked briefly at Gilderman.
The question was so sudden that Gilderman did not know what to say. "I
don't know that I'm especially on the 'religious lay,' as you call it,"
he said, after a moment's pause; "but I suppose that every man must
believe more or less in something or other."
As he spoke he felt that his words were rather an excuse for his
convictions than a proclamation of them.
"You see, governor," said Latimer-Moire, "Gilderman still clings to
the old theological superstitions of the past ages--heaven and God and
a resurrection of the soul and all that sort of thing. He's a good
fellow, is Gildy, but he don't seem to be able to emancipate himself
from the shackles of tradition that his grandfather left behind him.
Why, Gildy, my boy, nobody believes in anything nowadays."
"Don't they?" said Gilderman. "I think they do. If they don't believe
in heaven and God and the resurrection of the soul, as you phrase it,
they must believe in the world, the devil, and themselves."
"You are wrong, Mr. Gilderman," said Governor Pilate, calmly, "so far
as I am concerned. I don't believe in anything--not even in myself. I
know I like a good dinner and a good glass of wine and a pretty woman,
but I don't believe in them. As for all this about Christ, to tell
you the truth, I have not followed it very closely, for it doesn't
interest me particularly. I have heard a good deal said about it now
and then--such as you young men have been talking just now--but I
have read nothing of it in the newspapers. I find life too short to
read everything that's printed nowadays. If one undertakes to read
everything, one reads nothing. I try to pick out what is absolutely
needful to me and to leave the rest. I find all I need in the report of
current politics and the stock markets."
* * * * *
Olivia Carrington was acting in the play called "Le Chevalier d'Amour."
The great scene that had made such a hit was where she, as the
Marquise, dances upon the top of the table in the inn yard, seducing
the jailers from their duty while the scamp of a chevalier escapes.
Gilderman sat watching the woman in her gyrations amid a cloud of
gauzy draperies. He recognized the pleasure he felt in the seductive
spectacle as an evil pleasure, rooted in a nether stratum of masculine
brutality, but, nevertheless, he yielded himself to it.
As the girl came forward in answer to the loud applause and bowed her
acknowledgment to the house, she shot a glance like a flash at the
box where Gilderman and his friend sat. "Isn't she a daisy, Gildy?"
said Stirling West enthusiastically, as he continued to clap his hands
together. "Come on around back of the scenes and I'll introduce you."
* * * * *
It was thus that the life of the Romans just touched the divine agony
of that other life lived by the poor carpenter who was Jehovah-God in
the flesh; it was thus that their two lives just touched but did not
commingle.