LOVE TRIUMPHANT
To Pilate, governor of Jerusalem, seated upon the ivory chair of office
before the palace, came the message of his wife. He glanced down at it
with some impatience, when Diomed thrust the tablets into his hand with a
hurried word of explanation.
“Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man,” he read, “for I have
suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”
The message was signed and sealed with the signet of the Roman princess.
Pilate’s pallid and heavy face whitened to the lifeless hues of the wax
upon which the fateful words were written. Before him stood the drooping
but still majestic figure of the Nazarene, robed in the purple robe of his
torture and wearing the crown of thorns, a piteous sight, before which
angels were vailing their shamed faces. Beyond the strong cordon of the
Roman guard surged the wildest, cruelest mob of all the ages.
The governor rose to his feet slowly, and, advancing to the side of the
prisoner, exclaimed in his loud, passionless voice, “Behold the man!”
Mocking laughter, furious incoherent shouts, coupled with the dreadful,
insistent, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” burst out in wilder clamor.
Pilate looked forth over the sea of terrible upturned eyes, and his huge
limbs trembled beneath him. Again he glanced at the pale, melancholy face
of the prisoner. “The fellow is naught but a Jewish peasant,” he assured
himself. “And after all, what use to cast Roman justice before dogs. They
will have none of it.” Loudly he called for water in a basin, and in sight
of them all washed his hands with spectacular solemnity, saying, “I am
innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it!”
Back came the mocking, inhuman cry, “His blood be upon us and upon our
children!”
Pilate ground his teeth in impotent rage, and, seizing Jesus roughly by
the shoulder, he thrust him forward in the face of the mob. “Shall I
crucify your King?” he shouted derisively.
“We have no king but Cæsar!” was the blasphemous answer. And with that
word was the scroll rolled up and sealed with the seven seals of wrath
against the day of wrath.
And they took Jesus and led him away.
On that same day Tor was again a prisoner. The wife of Pilate in real pity
had commanded that the child should be comfortably entertained in the
servants’ quarters until all should be over.
Diomed, to whom the carrying out of this commission was entrusted, spoke
softly to the beggar in the presence of his mistress, bidding him follow.
Out of sight of the lady the Greek laughed aloud in his scorn. “Here is a
guest for our honorable entertainment,” he said to the chief butler. “My
lady the princess hath commanded it. In which of the chambers of state
shall I lodge my lord?”
The official sniffed his disdain. “Is it an animal?” he demanded.
“It is an animal, most sapient Clodius,” laughed Diomed. “A Jewish
swine—eh?—albeit a small one. Give him food and wine, excellent Clodius,
for he is chiefly bone—this animal.”
Tor ate, for he was starving; also he slept fitfully, for he was exhausted
with fear and weeping. The sun shone warm and friendly from the cloudless
spring heavens, and the child, lying upon a rug which one of the slaves
had flung down for him, drowsily watched the ceaseless dance of young
grape leaves in the soft warm wind.
The tumult without had suddenly ceased, and an ominous silence lay heavily
upon the city. Tor thought lovingly of his Master in the intervals between
dreams. “He has gone away safely with the men,” he told himself. “I shall
again find him, and he will heal blind folk as before.” So drowsing and
murmuring soft prayers to his invisible Father, the beggar child rested in
the house of Pilate, while without the walls of the city his Master, the
King, was already hanging upon the cross.
Within the great kitchens of the palace cooks were busy preparing the
noonday meal; dishes and cups clattered cheerfully, and the merry voices
of maidens burnishing the great wine‐flagons mingled with the chirp and
whir of sparrows flitting back and forth in the blue air.
Suddenly, and without warning, the bright light of the spring noon began
to fail. There was no fog, no storm, but a veil of lurid darkness was
drawn heavily across the sky. Doors and windows were thrown wide, and
terror‐stricken faces stared up into the threatening heavens.
Marcus, the crusty porter of the palace, stood fast in his place, his dull
face blanched and terrified in the failing light. “’Tis the vengeance of
the gods,” he muttered. “The Man of Nazareth was innocent!”
Servants and underlings crowded the passages in terrified groups. “Open to
us, Marcus,” they cried, beating upon the doors till they trembled upon
their heavy hinges. “Earthquake!” wailed a voice from without. “The gods
are shaking this evil city!”
The porter drew the great bolts with tremulous haste, and with one accord
all rushed into the street.
Scarcely knowing how it had befallen, the beggar child found himself on
the street with the others, running—running he knew not whither, through
empty streets which echoed his light footfalls as in the dead of night.
Somewhere, afar off, there was the tumult of a great multitude. Tor
stopped to listen, then ran on, thinking of his Master, who was waiting
for him in the fast‐gathering darkness.
He reached a gate—which gate he knew not, but it yawned wide and
unguarded. Not far away Tor could hear the frightened sobbing of women,
the strong curses of terrified men, the wailing of little children,
blending with the hurried trampling of myriad feet. Suddenly athwart the
darkness flamed a blood‐red, silent flash illumining the heavens from east
to west. Against this lurid background loomed three crosses, stark and
black. And now across the gloomy valleys sounded the sullen crash of
rocks, the fall of giant trees, while the sick earth groaned aloud and
trembled beneath its terrible burden.
Tor stood stock‐still in the midst of the road. In that instant of frozen
horror he comprehended what had happened. “Oh, my Father,” he groaned, the
foundations of his childish faith reeling with the reeling earth.
And the Omnipotent Love answered this feeble cry of the least of his
children, even as it answered that far‐reaching, agonized appeal which was
sounding forth from Calvary. And so in a moment—or an eternity—the heavens
cleared and the April sun shone brightly upon the crosses with their
piteous burdens, upon the terror‐stricken multitudes returning to doomed
Jerusalem, upon riven tombs and shattered mountains, upon a little child,
comforted of his Father, gazing with Christ‐touched eyes upon the cross of
his King.
They took away the body of Jesus before sunset, wrapping it in fine white
linen and odorous spices, and laying it to rest in a garden hard by. Tor
watched all, understanding little of the significance of the rock‐hewn
tomb, of the great stone before its door, of the Roman guard which was
shortly stationed before the sealed sepulchre.
[Illustration: “HIS WICKED FACE DISFIGURED WITH RAGE AND PAIN.”]
When all was finished the child returned to the city, sustained by some
strange expectation which he could have explained to no one. As he would
have entered the gate he came upon a woeful figure standing without and
beating upon its breast. It was Chelluh, his wicked face disfigured with
rage and pain. “My eyes,” he groaned. “The sight of that accursed cross
burnt them like a devouring flame.” And so it was. And so will it ever be.
He who can look upon that cross of agony without tears of love and pity,
henceforth sees only the blackness of darkness. The eyes of his soul are
withered.
Tor led the blind man to his old place by the gate, and fetched him his
cup, his staff, and his water‐gourd.
“Now go, little dog, buy me oil and wine,” cried the beggar, with one of
his frightful maledictions, “and return to me quickly, for I am devoured
with this flame.”
But Tor, looking upon him sorrowfully, knew that he could no more serve
this evil master as in the old days. “I have done thus far for thee,” he
said in his clear childish voice, “because of the King, my Master, and
because of my Father in heaven. But I can no longer abide in thy presence.
Farewell!” And with this he was gone, his naked feet making no sound upon
the stones of the street.
Many days thereafter did Chelluh send forth his dolorous cry for alms in
the doomed city of Jerusalem, for he lived until the terrible days of the
Roman siege, perishing at last of hunger in his chosen place by the
Damascus gate.
In the green garden‐close, hard by Calvary, where the Roman guard paced
ceaselessly back and forth before that silent tomb, Tor lingered,
unnoticed and unafraid as the birds that flitted among the branches of the
blossoming trees. It comforted him to be near the resting‐place of his
Master; and the lusty life of the young summer sent vague thrills of
expectancy through his brown limbs, as he lay upon the warm earth watching
the shifting leaf‐shadows playing upon the sealed door of the sepulchre,
and the slow‐moving figures of the guard clad in the scarlet and gold of
imperial Rome.
Toward midnight of the second night, when the great passover moon rode
high in the heavens and the garden slept in its silver light like the
garden of a dream, the child slept, too, held in the soft clasp of a
vision which laid cool fingers of delight on his drowsy lids. When he
awoke he lay for a full minute staring into the branches of the olive‐tree
above his head. The gray‐green leaves were all alive with a tremulous
motion in the fresh morning breeze; a newly‐awakened bird trilled softly
somewhere in the depths of the garden; the aromatic breath of serried
lilies swept his cheek like a caress. It was happiness to have slept—to be
once more awake. Then he remembered.
The Roman guard had disappeared; this much Tor perceived at a single
glance. A second searching stare told him much more: the door of the tomb
gaped wide, beside it stood a young man clad in white garments.
Tor approached this radiant figure unafraid. “Where is the man who opens
eyes?” he asked quite simply, for the empty tomb appeared nothing strange
to the child newly emerged from his healing dreams.
“He is not here,” the young man made answer, with grave sweetness. “He is
risen, as he said. Behold he goeth before you into Galilee; there shalt
thou see him.”
Tor opened wide eyes of rapture upon the angel. “My Master is alive!” he
whispered to himself. “I shall see him.”
He turned as if in a dream, his naked feet making no sound as he brushed,
light as the dawn, past the ranks of lilies. There was a woman yonder. She
was weeping with a smothered sound of long‐drawn sobs. Tor laughed softly
in his joy. “He is alive!” he repeated under his breath.
Then he saw with wonder that the woman was no longer alone. She was
speaking to the Risen One, her voice wrenched with sobbing: “Sir, if thou
hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take
him away.”
The child’s Christ‐touched eyes knew him though the woman did not. He sank
to his knees, his face shining with the dazzling light of the new day.