DAWN IN THE HILLS
It was a night that the Maccabee did not readily forget. Since the
girl had moved on to avoid him, he had become alive to a delinquency
that was more of a sensation than an admission. His thought of her,
that had been a diversion before, now seemed to be a transgression. An
incident of this nature during the fourteen years of his life in
Ephesus would have engaged his conscience only a moment if at all, but
at this last hour it amounted to a deflection from his newly resolved
uprightness.
Julian rode in a constant air of expectancy and increasing irritation.
The slightest sound from the haunted hills elicited a start from him
and his intense attention until the origin of the sound proved itself.
Many Passover pilgrims who had proceeded by night passed under his
close scrutiny and from time to time he stopped the Maccabee in a
speech with a peremptory command to listen. All this engaged the
Maccabee's interest, but he made no comment until, on occasion of his
casual word in praise of the fidelity of Aquila, Julian flew into a
rage and reviled the emissary until the Maccabee brought him up with a
sharp word.
"Enough of that!" he exclaimed. "What ails you, man?"
Julian caught his breath and after a silence replied in a voice
considerably sweetened that Aquila was a conscienceless pagan and not
to be praised till he was dead. But the Maccabee, with the girl
uppermost in his mind, believed that his cousin was inwardly resenting
his preëmption of the pretty stranger. The fact that Julian had
changed the pace of their advance confirmed him in this suspicion.
From the smart trot that they had maintained from the time they had
left Cæsarea, they had declined to a walk. Julian next showed
inclination to loiter. He spent an unusual length of time at every
spring at which they watered their horses; an unseen break in his
harness engaged a prolonged halt on the road; he stopped at an
unroofed hut to rouse sleeping Passover pilgrims who had taken refuge
within to ask how far they were from Jerusalem, and wrangled with the
sleepy Jew for many minutes over the hazy estimate the man had given
him. With each of these pretenses the Maccabee's conviction grew that
the girl had something to do with the altered behavior of his cousin.
And with that growing conviction, he became the more convinced that he
ought to maintain an espionage of Julian.
At midnight they were both tired, exasperated, moody, and determined
against each other. They had not journeyed thirty furlongs.
In one of the high valleys in the hills a great well bubbled up from a
hollow by the road, overflowed the stone basin that the ancients had
built for it and wasted itself in the undrained soil about. Here,
then, was one of the few marshes in Judea. The road by a series of
arches crossed it and continued up the shoulder of the hills toward
the east. All about it flourished the young growth of the rough sedge
grass, green as emerald. The spot was treeless and marked with broad
low hummocks of new sod.
Julian halted.
"Shall we camp here?" he asked.
"It hath the recommendation of variety," the Maccabee said wearily.
"Eheu! How I shall miss the greensward of Ephesus! Yes, we'll camp!"
They dismounted and while Julian unpacked their blankets, the Maccabee
collected dead reeds and cedar twigs and built a fire. Then he
stretched himself by the sweet-smelling flame.
"She can not have kept up with our horses; indeed it is unlikely that
they moved far," he thought, and thus assured that there was no danger
to the girl for whom he had become a self-constituted guardian, he ate
a piece of bread, drank a cup of wine and fell asleep.
His slumber was not entirely unconscious. So long as the movements of
his cousin continued regular about him, he lay still, but once, when
Julian approached too near, his eyes opened full in the face of the
man about to lean over him. The Ephesian raised himself hastily and
the Maccabee's eyes closed again.
"A pest on an eye that only half sleeps!" Julian said to himself. "He
hasn't lost count on the minutes since he left Cæsarea!"
The morning broke, the sun mounted, the deserted road became populous
with all the previous day's host of pilgrims, and the silence in the
hills failed before the procession that should not cease till night
fell again. Through all the shouting at camel and mule, the talk of
parties and the dogged trudging of lonely and uncompanionable
solitaries, the Maccabee slept. From time to time Julian, who had
wakened early, gazed with smoldering eyes at the insolent composure of
his enemy sleeping. But slumber with so little control over the senses
of a man was not to be depended upon for any work that demanded
stealth. At times the gaze he bent upon the long lazy shape half
buried in the raw-edged grass was malevolent with uneasiness and hate.
Again, some one of the passing travelers that bore a resemblance to
the expected Aquila would bring the Ephesian to his feet, only to sink
back again with a muttered imprecation at his disappointment.
"A pest on the waxen-hearted satyr!" he said to himself finally. "Why
should he have been more faithful to me than to his first employer! I
am old enough to have learned by this time not to trust my success to
any man but myself. Now where am I to look for him--Ephesus, Syene,
Gaul, Medea? Jerusalem first! By Hecate, the fellow is handsome! And
these Jewesses are impressionable!"
The rumination was broken off suddenly by a glimpse of an old deformed
man bearing a burden on his shoulders, followed by a slender figure,
jealously wrapped in a plebeian mantle that left only a hem of silver
tissue under its border. They were skirting along the brow of the hill
opposite, away from the rest of the pilgrims on the road. Both were
walking slowly and the old man seemed to be examining the farther
slope, as if meditating a halt. Julian got upon his feet and watched.
He saw the old man sign to the girl presently and they moved down the
farther side of the hill and were lost to view.
Julian cast a look at the sleeper and hesitated. Then he scanned the
road; he might miss Aquila. He seemed to relinquish the intent that
had risen in him, and sat down again.
After a while as his constant gaze at the passers-by led him again
toward the overflowing well, he saw there, standing in a long line,
awaiting turn to dip a vessel in the water, the old bowed servant,
with a skin in his hand. The girl was nowhere to be seen.
Julian sprang to his feet and, hastening across the road, considerably
below the well, climbed the hill in the direction in which he had seen
the girl disappear.
That watchful alarm in the brain which, at moments of demand, is
instantly alive in certain sleepers, aroused the Maccabee almost as
soon as the stealthy, receding footsteps of Julian died away. He
stirred, sat up and looked about him. Julian was nowhere to be seen.
Both horses were feeding a little distance away. The Maccabee sprang
up and looked toward the well. There patiently but apprehensively
waiting was old Momus. The girl was not with him. Suspicion grew vivid
in the Maccabee's brain. The tender rank grass about him showed the
print of his cousin's steps as they led away toward the road. He
followed intently. The slim marks of the well-shod feet led him across
the dust of the road up into gravel on the slope and finally eluded
him on the escarpment that soared away above him.
The Maccabee hurried to the top of the declivity to gain whatever aid
that point of vantage might offer and from that height saw below him
to the west a single nook shaped of rock and hummock and a tree out of
which rose a blue thread of smoke. He dropped down the farther slope
at a pace little short of a run.
He mounted the slight ridge that overlooked the depression in time to
see Julian of Ephesus appear over the opposite side. Within, with her
mantle laid off, her veil thrown back, the girl knelt over a bed of
coals, baking one of the Maccabee's Milesian ducks. Julian had made a
sound; the Maccabee had come silently. She looked up and saw the less
kindly man first, flashed white with terror, sprang to her feet with a
cry, and whirled to flee up the other side. There she confronted the
Maccabee with hands extended to ward off the encroachment of his
cousin. Without an instant's hesitation she flew into the Maccabee's
arms. His clasp closed around her and she shrank against him, clinging
to the folds of his tunic over his breast with hands that were
tremulous.
Her flight to him for refuge achieved an instant change in the
Maccabee. The fear of defeat, the primal hate of a rival, died in him.
All that remained was big wrath at the presumption and effrontery of
Julian of Ephesus. He had no definite memory of what followed, because
of the rush of blood in his veins, the whirl of pleasurable sensation
in his brain and the weight of a sweet frightened figure pressed to
him. The Ephesian went, leaving an impression of a most vindictive
threat in the glittering smile and the motion of his shapely hand
clenched at the victorious Maccabee. The girl drew away hastily. The
veil was over her face and through its silken meshes he saw the glow
on her cheeks and the sweep of her lowered lashes down upon that
bloom.
She was faltering her thanks and her apologies.
"It is mine to ask pardon," he exclaimed, still smoldering with wrath.
"I had no part in this, except to interfere with this bad companion of
mine. I did not follow you; believe me."
It confused her to know that he had guessed why she had moved from
their encampment the night before. As necessary as old Momus had made
it seem to her then, it seemed now to have been ungrateful. She could
make no reply to that portion of his speech.
"My servant went to the well," she said. "He will return presently. I
am not afraid now."
"I am; you ought to be. I shall wait till your extraordinary servant
returns."
At this decided speech Laodice showed a little panic.
"No, no! I am not afraid. He--"
But the Maccabee ignored the implied dismissal.
"I owe him both a reproof and thanks for leaving you here alone for
any wayfarer to approach--and for me to discover. I wish," gazing
abroad over the broken horizon, "there were no well between here and
Jerusalem, and that he were as thirsty as Tantalus."
She made no reply to this remark, but her whole presence expressed
discomfort in his determination to remain.
"Heathen Hecate ought to get him in these wilds for forcing that cruel
journey on you last night, when you were so weary and sad! There was
no good in it. He wanted simply to get you away from me! Let us hope
that Titus has got him for his museum by this time, and be at ease!"
She raised her head and reproach flashed through the meshes of her
veil.
"Momus is a good man," she said.
"He can not be," he insisted. "Have I not set forth his iniquities
even now?"
"It was a short task," she maintained. "But time is not long enough to
count his virtues."
"I can spend time better," he declared.
He saw her silken brows lower in a spirited frown and he was glad. She
was showing some other feeling than that dead level of unhappiness
that had possessed her from the first moment he had seen her. His was
not the heart contented to go astray after a tear. Men fall in search
of joy.
"Momus is carrying a burden under which more brilliant men would
falter," she averred. "I am beyond reckoning his debtor!"
"Since he has shifted that sweet burden for a time on my shoulders, I
will forgive him for his looks. If he will stay away, I'll be his
debtor further. But enough of Momus! I came to ask after your health,
when your long journey by night is done."
"I am well; we did not journey all night."
"Sit, I pray you. There is no need for you to stand with that air of
finality. I am not going, yet. I went back to your camp last night
within a short time after I left you and found the camp broken and
your fire lonely. I wanted to offer you my horse."
"We did not walk all night. We camped a little farther on, and moved
at daybreak this morning," she explained.
He cast a reflective look at the sun and considered how much time
Julian of Ephesus had lost for him upon the road, or else how long he
had slept, that this pair, who had camped all night and had journeyed
afoot by day, had caught up with him.
"Still it was a cruel journey--for those little feet," he said.
She glanced involuntarily at her sandals, worn and dusty.
"Yes," he said compassionately, following her eyes. "But let me see no
more, else I meet this good and burdened Momus with the flat of my
hand when he comes! What is he to you?"
"My servant--now almost my father!" she insisted, trying to cover the
tacit accusation that she had made in admitting by a glance that she
was weary. "He orders all things for my good. Do you think that each
of the stones over which I stumbled to-day did not hurt him worse
because they hurt me? Do you think he would have me go on, unless the
stake were worth the pain I had to endure? Say no more against him!"
The Maccabee shrugged his shoulders; then noting that she still stood,
he smoothed down a spot of the sand with his foot, tossed upon it one
of the sheepskins that Momus had unrolled, and extending his hand
politely pressed her down on the place he had made. Then he dropped
down beside her, lounging on his elbow.
"What is the stake?" he asked after he had composed himself.
She hesitated, regretting that her defense of Momus had led her to
hint her mission and touch upon her husband's ambition.
"The welfare of hosts!" she replied finally.
"Heavens! What a menace I was!" the Maccabee smiled.
She colored quickly and he resented the veil that was shutting away so
much that was fine and fleeting by way of expression under its folds.
"But you are just as dangerous," he declared. "Now, we should be in
Jerusalem this hour. Our welfare and the welfare of others depend upon
us--I mean my companion and me. But there is no devoted prodigy to
bear me away--thank fortune! I have come out of a great turmoil; I
must plunge into a greater one before many days. Let me rest between
them. It will be a long time before I shall possess anything so sweet
as the smell of this cedar fire and the picture of you against this
fair sky!"
She looked down quickly.
"Was Ephesus in turmoil?" she asked disconnectedly.
"Ephesus was never in any other state! A fit preparation for the
disorder in Jerusalem! I was met at Cæsarea with such tales as
depressed me until it required such delight as you are to bring back
my spirits again! What takes you to Jerusalem?" he asked earnestly.
"The Passover? God will forgive you if you neglect it one year.
Nothing but the sternest necessity should send any one there at this
hour."
"My necessity is stern--it is Judea's necessity," she answered.
"More similarity!" he exclaimed. "That is why I go! Certainly Judea's
fortunes have bettered with you and me both hastening to her rescue.
Come, let us compare further. I am going to crown a king over Judea!"
She raised her veil to look at him with startled eyes. The glimpse of
her face, for ever a delight and an astonishment to him because of its
extraordinary loveliness, swept him out of the half-serious air into
which he had fallen. He stopped and looked at her with pleased,
boyish, happy eyes.
"Aurora!" he said softly. "I see now why day comes gradually. Mankind
would die of excitement if the dawn were unveiled to them like this
suddenly every morning!"
She released the veil hurriedly, but before it fell he put out a hand,
caught it and tossed it back over her head.
"Be consistent with your part," he said, still smiling. "No man ever
saw day cancel her dawn and live."
It was pleasant, this sweet possession and command. How much like an
overgrown boy he had become, since she had wakened to find herself in
his power that morning in the hills! The harshness and inflexibility
had left his atmosphere entirely. She was only afraid of him now
because he had refused to be dismissed. But she drew down the veil.
"I, too, expect a king," she said in a lowered tone. "A conqueror and
a redeemer."
"The Messiah?" he said, and she knew by the inflection that he had not
meant that King when he had spoken.
He noted that her hair was coiled upon her head when he threw back her
veil and he turned to that at once.
"You wear your hair in a fashion," he said, "that once meant that
which men dislike to discover of a woman whom they greatly admire. I
hope it is no longer significant."
"I go," she said after a silence, "to join my husband in Jerusalem."
The Maccabee's lips parted and an expression of disappointment with an
admixture of surprise and vexation came over his face. But what did it
matter? Were she as free as air, he was a married man. The humor of
the situation appealed to him. He dropped his head into the bend of
his elbow and laughed.
"Welladay, this is a respite for us both, then," he said. But
realizing that an admission that he was married might hopelessly
reduce their hour to a formal basis, he took refuge in a falsehood.
"My companion expects to meet a wife in Jerusalem," he continued. "A
royal creature, daughter of an ancient and haughty family, with all
her life purpose congealed in lofty and serious intent, her coffers
lined with gold and her face as determined and unbending as Juno's
with her jealousy stirred. He is not delighted, poor lad!"
Laodice sat very still and listened. There was enough similarity in
this story to interest her.
The Maccabee, seeing that he had made an impression with this
deception and feeling somehow a relief in making it, went on,
delighted with his deceit.
"He has not seen her since he married her in his childhood, but he
knows full well how she will look when he meets her."
Surprise paralyzed Laodice. Was the smiling and dangerous companion of
this man, her husband?
The Maccabee, meanwhile, deliberately remarked her charms and
recounted their antithesis in making up a picture of the woman he
expected to meet as his wife.
"She will, according to his expectations, be meager and thin, not
plump! Thoughtful women and women with a purpose are never plump! And
she will be black and pale, all eyes, with a nose which is not the
noble nose of our race. She will be religious and it will not make her
happy. She will realize her value to her husband and he will not be
permitted to forget it. She will be ambitious and full of schemes. She
will be the larger part of his family, though by the balance she will
weigh not so much as an omer of barley."
Laodice got upon her feet in her agitation and raised her veil to
stare at this slander. Was this a picture of herself she heard? The
Maccabee was enjoying himself uncommonly.
"She will wear the garments of a queen, but--how little a slip of
silver tissue will become her!"
Laodice looked down in alarm at her gleaming garment, and reached for
her mantle. The Maccabee had no idea how much pleasure he was to
derive in making his own story, Julian's. He continued, almost
recklessly, now.
"Small wonder that he is so delinquent in the wilderness, with such
square-shouldered righteousness awaiting him in town! Forgive him,
lady, for his iniquities now, for he will be a good man after he
reaches Jerusalem; by my soul, you may be sure he will be good!"
Laodice gasped under the pressure of astonishment and indignation. It
was bad enough to be pictured thus unprepossessing, but to be suddenly
made aware of her husband in a man whom she feared, was desperate. She
stared with frank and horrified eyes at her tormentor.
"But--but--" she stammered.
"True," he sighed. "One can not know what calamity forces another into
misdeeds. Now were I my unfortunate friend, perhaps I should afflict
you with my hunger for sweetness also."
And that smooth, insinuating, violent pagan was Philadelphus
Maccabaeus! But what had her father said of him, as a child? "Quick in
temper, resourceful, aye, even shifty, stubborn, cold in heart, hard
to please!" And to this man she must present herself, late, penniless
and unhelpful. Panic seized her! How could she go on to Jerusalem!
That long graceful figure stretched on the sand was speaking. What was
it in his voice that drew her so mightily from any terror that
possessed her at any time?
"Sit down, sit down! I have more to say," he was urging her.
She obeyed him numbly.
"He gets worse as he approaches the city. I think I ought to leave
him. It will not be safe to be near him when his moneyed lady claims
him for her own!"
"She--she--" Laodice burst out, "is--may be such a woman!"
"Such a woman as you! No; she will not be. That is what makes him bad.
And now that I bethink me, perhaps it is just as well that you proceed
to Jerusalem. He may comfort himself with a sight of you, now and
then."
"I? I comfort him?" she exclaimed.
"By my soul I know it! What blunders Fortune makes in bestowing wives!
Perchance your husband could have got on as well without so radiant a
spouse, while my poor beauty-loving friend must needs be paired with
a--Alas! there is too much marrying in this world!"
There was a ring of genuine dejection in his voice and when she looked
down at him, she saw that his eyes were larger and more sorrowful than
she believed they could be. He was hurting himself with his own
deceit. She looked away hastily, frightened at the sudden tenderness
that his pathetic gaze had wakened in her.
"Alas!" he went on. "The greatest sacrifice and the frequentest in
this world of cross-purposes never gets into poetry. I--" he halted a
moment and looked away, "I ought to be sorry for her, too. She is not
getting the best of men."
"Verily!" she exclaimed impulsively.
He whirled his head toward her, stared; then with a flash of intense
expression in his eyes burst into a ringing laugh that shook him from
head to foot. He flung out his hand and catching hers passed it across
his lips without kissing it, and let it go before he regained
composure enough to speak.
"No! Not a good man! Verily! But hath he no cause to be delinquent?"
"No!" she said stubbornly. "He has judged her without seeing her,
when, by your own words, he expects her to bring him fortune and
position. What is he bringing her?"
The Maccabee looked at her thoughtfully before he answered.
"Nothing! Not even his heart!" he vowed.
Laodice caught her breath in an agony of indignation and distress.
"He does not in any way deserve--" she stopped precipitately. She was
about to add "the great fortune he is to get," when she realized that
she was taking this husband nothing--not even her own heart. She went
on, for the first time a little glad that she was penniless.
"He may find--neither fortune, nor position, nor heart awaiting him!"
she finished pointedly.
The Maccabee pulled one of his stubborn locks that had fallen over his
eyes. The smile grew less vivid.
He had no comment to make to this. Meanwhile Laodice looked at him.
"Shall--you be with--your friend in Jerusalem?" she asked.
"It depends on his wife," he retorted with a grimace.
She would be glad if this tall, comely trifler, with a voice as
musical as some grave-toned viol, were to be seen from time to time to
relieve the tedium of life with the offensive Philadelphus. This
admission instantly brought a shock to her. She had learned to study
herself in these last few days since she had become aware of the ways
of the world. Life was to be no longer a period of obedience to laws
which the Torah had laid down; it was to be a long resistance against
desirable things that she yearned for but which she dared not have.
She learned at this moment that she could be her own chief
stumbling-block, and that love, the most precious illumination in
every life, might be a destruction and a consuming fire. She looked at
this man, who lounged beside her, with a new sensation. He was
winsome, and therefore the more perilous. That smooth insulting
stranger whom this man had revealed as her husband with all his
violence and license was a humble and harmless thing compared to this
one, who had snared her by his care of her and by his charming self.
She felt a desire to cry out for Momus to take her back to the inner
chamber of the shut house in Ascalon, away from her danger to herself
and from the sight of the man who had done her no harm--yet.
She did not know how plainly all this wrote itself on her candid face.
Wise pupil of that unbridled school, the city of Diana, he could read
in that slight frown on her forehead and the pathetic curve of her
lips, that she was contented with him--that she was not glad to go on
to that husband in Jerusalem. He was near to her before she knew he
had moved.
"After all," he was saying in a low voice, "I am glad you are going to
Jerusalem. You shall not be lost from me again. Whose house shall I
ask for when I can not endure separation longer?"
She moved away from him. There was a step behind her and Laodice,
coloring shamedly, looked straight into the accusing eyes of Momus who
stood there. The stranger rose.
"I shall see you again," he said to her.
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. The next instant he was
gone.