By Mr. Saltus
HISTORIA AMORIS
THE POMPS OF SATAN
IMPERIAL PURPLE
THE ANATOMY OF NEGATION
VANITY SQUARE
THE PERFUME OF EROS
MARY MAGDALEN
_A Chronicle_
_By_
EDGAR SALTUS
NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
MCMXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1891,
BY EDGAR SALTUS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
Transcriber’s note
MARY MAGDALEN
CHAPTER I.
I.
“Three to one on Scarlet!”
Throughout the brand-new circus were the eagerness, the gesticulations,
shouts, and murmurs of an impatient throng. On a ledge above the entrance
a man stood, a strip of silk extended in his finger-tips. Beneath, on
either side, were gates. About him were series of ascending tiers,
close-packed, and brilliant with multicolored robes and parasols. The sand
of the track was very white: where the sunlight fell it had the glitter of
broken glass. In the centre was a low wall; at one end were pillars and
seven great balls of wood; at the other, seven dolphins, their tails in
the air. The uproar mounted in unequal vibrations, and stirred the pulse.
The air was heavy with odors, with the emanations of the crowd, the cloy
of myrrh. Through the exits whiffs of garlic filtered from the kitchens
below, and with them, from the exterior arcades, came the beat of
timbrels, the click of castanets. Overhead was a sky of troubled blue;
beyond, a lake.
“They are off!”
The strip of silk had fluttered and fallen, the gates flew open, there was
a rumble of wheels, a whirlwind of sand, a yell that deafened, and four
tornadoes burst upon the track.
They were shell-shaped, and before each six horses tore abreast. Between
the horses’ ears were swaying feathers; their manes had been dyed clear
pink, the forelocks puffed; and as they bounded, the drivers, standing
upright, had the skill to guide but not the strength to curb. About their
waists the reins were tied; at the side a knife hung; from the forehead
the hair was shaven; and everything they wore, the waistcoat, the short
skirt, the ribbons, was of one color, scarlet, yellow, emerald, or blue:
and this color, repeated on the car and on the harness, distinguished them
from those with whom they raced.
Already the cars had circled the hippodrome four times. There were but
three more rounds, and Scarlet, which in the beginning had trailed
applause behind it as a torch trails smoke, lagged now a little to the
rear. Green was leading. Its leadership did not seem to please; it was
cursed at and abused, threatened with naked fist; yet when for the sixth
time it turned the terminal pillar, a shout that held the thunder of Atlas
leaped abroad. Where the yellow car, pursued by the blue, had been, was
now a mass of sickening agitation—twelve fallen horses kicking each other
into pulp, the drivers brained already; and down upon that barrier of
blood and death swept the scarlet car. In a second it veered and passed;
in that second a flash of steel had out the reins, and, as the car swung
round, the driver, released, was tossed to the track. What then befell him
no one cared. Stable-men were busy there; the car itself, unguided,
continued vertiginously on its course. If it had lagged before, there was
no lagging now. The hoofs that beat upon the ring plunged with it through
the din down upon Emerald, and beyond it to the goal. And as the last
dolphin vanished and the seventh ball was removed, the palm was granted,
and the spectators shouted a salutation to the giver of the games—Herod
Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee.
He was superb, this Antipas. His beard was like a lady’s fan. On his
cheeks was a touch of alkanet; his hair, powdered blue, was encircled by a
diadem set with gems. About his shoulders was a mantle that had a broad
purple border; beneath it was a tunic of yellow silk. Between the railing
of the tribune in which he sat one foot was visible, shod with badger’s
skin, dyed blood-red. He was superb, but his eyelids drooped. He had a
straight nose and a retreating forehead, a physiognomy that was at once
weak and vicious. He looked melancholy; it may be that he was bored. At
the salutation, however, he affected a smile, and motioned that the games
should continue. And as the signals, the dolphins and the seven balls,
appeared again, his thoughts, forsaking the circus, went back to Rome.
Insecure in the hearts of his people, uncertain even of the continued
favor of the volatile monster who was lounging then in his Caprian
retreat, it was with the idea of pleasing the one, of flattering the
other, that he had instituted the games. For here in his brand-new
Tiberias, a city which he had built in a minute, whose colonnades and
porticoes he had bought ready-made in Rome, and had erected by means of
that magic which only the Romans possessed—in this capital of a parvenu
was a mongrel rabble of Greeks, Cypriotes, Egyptians, Cappadocians,
Syrians, and Jews, whose temper was uncertain, and whose rebellion to be
feared.
_Annonâ et spectaculis_ indeed! Antipas knew the dictum well; and with an
uprising in the yonderland, and a sedition under his feet, what more could
he do than quell the first with his mercenaries, and disarm the second
with his games? Tiberius, whom he emulated, never deigned to appear at the
hippodrome; it was a way he had of showing his contempt for a nation.
Antipas might have imitated his sovereign in that, only he was not sure
that Tiberius would take the compliment as it was meant. He might view
such abstention as the airs of a trumpery tetrarch, and depose him there
and then. He was irascible, and when displeased there were dungeons at his
command which reopened with difficulty, and where existence was not
secure. Ah, that sausage of blood and mud, how he feared and envied him!
An emperor now, a god hereafter, truly the dominion of this world and a
part of the next was a matter concerning which fear and envy well might
be.
And as Antipas’ vagabond fancy roamed in and out through the possibilities
of the Caesar’s sway, unconsciously he thought of another monster, the son
of a priest of Ascalon, who had defied the Sanhedrim, won Cleopatra,
murdered the woman he loved the most, conquered Judæa and found it too
small for his magnificence—of that Herod in fact, his own father, who gave
to Jerusalem her masterpiece of marble and gold, and meanwhile, drunk with
the dream of empire, had made himself successor of Solomon, Sultan of
Israel, King of the Jews, and who, even as he died, had vomited death and
crowns, diadems and crucifixions.
It was through his legacy that Antipas ruled. The kingdom had been sliced
into three parts, of one of which Augustus had made a province; over
another a brother whom he hated ruled; and he had but this third part, the
smallest yet surely the most fair. Its unparalleled garden surrounded him,
and its eye, the lake, was just beyond. In the amphitheatre the hills
formed was a city of pink and blue marble, of cupolas, porticoes, volutes,
bronze doors, and copper roofs. Along the fringe of the shore were
Choraizin and Bethsaïda, purple with pomegranates, Capharnahum, beloved
for its honey, and Magdala, scented with spice. The slopes and intervales
were very green where they were not yellow, and there were terraces of
grape, glittering cliffs, and a sky of troubled blue, wadded with little
gold-edged clouds.
Yes, it was paradise, but it was not monarchy. It was to that he aspired.
As he mused, a rancid-faced woman decked with paint and ostrich-plumes
snarled in his ear:
“What have you heard of Iohanan?”
And as with a gesture he signified that he had heard nothing, she snarled
again.
Antipas turned to her reflectively, but it was of another that he
thought—the brown-eyed bride that Arabia had given him, the lithe-limbed
princess of the desert whose heart had beaten on his own, whom he had
loved with all the strength of youth and weakness, and whom he had
deserted while at Rome for his brother’s wife, his own niece, Herodias,
who snarled at his side.
Behind her were her women, and among them was one who, as the cars swept
by, turned her head with that movement a flower has which a breeze has
stirred. Her eyes were sultry, darkened with stibium; on her cheek was the
pink of the sea-shell, and her lips made one vermilion rhyme. The face was
oval and rather small; and though it was beautiful as victory, the wonder
of her eyes, which looked the haunts of hope fulfilled, the wonder of her
mouth, which seemed to promise more than any mortal mouth could give, were
forgotten in her hair, which was not orange nor flame, but a blending of
both. And now, as the cars passed, her thin nostrils quivered, her hand
rose as a bird does and fluttered with delight.
On the adjacent tiers were Greeks, fat-calved Cypriotes, Cappadocians with
flowers painted on their skin, red Egyptians, Thracian mercenaries,
Galilean fishermen, and a group of Lydians in women’s clothes.
On the tier just beyond was a man gazing wistfully at the woman that sat
behind Herodias. He was tall and sinewy, handsome with the comeliness of
the East. His beard was full, unmarred at the corners; his name was Judas.
Now and then he moistened his under lip, and a Thracian who sat at his
side heard him murmur “Mary” and some words of Syro-Chaldaic which the
Thracian did not understand.
To him Mary paid no attention. She had turned from the track. An officer
had entered the tetrarch’s tribune and addressed the prince. Antipas
started; Herodias colored through her paint. The latter evidently was
pleased.
“Iohanan!” she exclaimed. “To Machærus with him! You may believe in fate
and mathematics; I believe in the axe.”
And questioningly Herodias looked at her husband, who avoided her look,
yet signified his assent to the command she had given.
The din continued. From the tier beyond, Judas still gazed into the perils
of Mary’s eyes.
“Dear God,” he muttered, in answer to an anterior thought, “it would be
the birthday of my life.”