VI.
“Are you better?”
The road that skirted the lake had branched to the left, and there an easy
ascent led to the hill beyond. On both sides were carpets of flowers and
of green, and slender larches that held their arms and hid the sky. Above,
an eagle circled, and on the lake a sail flapped idly.
“Yes, I am better,” Mary answered.
From her eyes the perils had passed, but the splendors remained,
accentuated now by vistas visible only to herself. The antimony, too, with
which she darkened them had gone, and with it the alkanet she had used on
her cheeks. Her dress was olive, and, contrary to custom, her head
uncovered.
“You are not strong, perhaps?”
As Judas spoke, he thought of the episode in the synagogue, and wished her
again unconscious in his arms.
“I have been so weak,” she murmured. And after a moment she added: “I am
tired; let me sit awhile.”
The carpet of flowers and of green invited, and presently Judas dropped at
her side. About his waist a linen girdle had been wound many times; from
it a bag of lynx-skin hung. The white garments, the ample turban that he
wore, were those of ordinary life, but in his bearing was just that
evanescent charm which now and then the Oriental possesses—the subtlety
that subjugates and does not last.
“But you must be strong; we need your strength.”
Mary turned to him wonderingly.
“Yes,” he repeated, “we need your strength. Johanna has joined us, as you
know. Susannah too. They do what they can; but we need others—we need
you.”
“Do you mean——”
Something had tapped at her heart, something which was both joy and dread,
and she hesitated, fearing that the possibility which Judas suggested was
unreal, that she had not heard his words aright.
“Do you mean that he would let me?”
“He would love you for it. But then he loves everyone, yet best, I think,
his enemies.”
“They need it most,” Mary answered; but her thoughts had wandered.
“And I,” Judas added—“I loved you long ago.”
Then he too hesitated, as though uncertain what next to say, and glanced
at her covertly. She was looking across the lake, over the country of the
Gadarenes, beyond even that, perhaps, into some infinite veiled to him.
“I remember,” he continued, tentatively, “it was there at Tiberias I saw
you first. You were entering the palace. I waited. The sentries ordered me
off; one threw a stone. I went to where the garden is; I thought you might
be among the flowers. The wall was so high I could not see. The guards
drove me away. I ran up the hill through the white and red terraces of the
grape. From there I could see the gardens, the elephants with their ears
painted, and the oxen with the twisted horns. The wind sung about me like
a flute; the sky was a tent of different hues. Something within me had
sprung into life. It was love, I knew. It had come before, yes, often, but
never as then. For,” he added, and the gleam of his eyes was as a fanfare
to the thought he was about to express, “love returns to the heart as the
leaf returns to the tree.”
Mary looked at him vacantly. “What was he saying?” she wondered. From a
sea of grief she seemed to be passing onto an archipelago of dream.
“The next day I loitered in the neighborhood of the palace. You did not
appear. Toward evening I questioned a gardener. He said your name was
Mary, but he would tell me nothing else. On the morrow was the circus. I
made sure you would be there—with the tetrarch, I thought; and, that I
might be near the tribune, before the sun had set I was at the circus
gate. There were others that came and waited, but I was first. I remember
that night as never any since. I lay outstretched, and watched the moon;
your face was in it: it was a dream, of course. Yes, the night passed
quickly, but the morning lagged. When the gate was open, I sprang like a
zemer from tier to tier until I reached the tribune. There, close by, I
sat and waited. At last you came, and with you new perfumes and poisons.
Did you feel my eyes? they must have burned into you. But no, you gave no
heed to me. They told me afterward that Scarlet won three times. I did not
know. I saw but you. Once merely an abyss in which lightning was.
“Before the last race was done I got down and tried to be near the exit
through which I knew you must pass. The guards would not let me. The next
day I made friends with a sentry. He told me that you were Mirjam of
Magdala; that Tiberius wished you at Rome, and that you had gone with
Antipas to his citadel. In the wine-shops that night men slunk from me
afraid. A week followed of which I knew nothing, then chance disentangled
its threads. I found myself in a crowd at the base of a hill; a prophet
was preaching. I had heard prophets before; they were as torches in the
night: he was the Day. I listened and forgot you. He called me; I
followed. Until Sunday I had not thought of you again. But when you
appeared in the synagogue I started; and when you fainted, when I held you
in my arms and your eyes opened as flowers do, I looked into them and it
all returned. Mary, kiss me and kill me, but kiss me first.”
“Yes, he is the Day.”
Of the entire speech she had heard but that. It had entered perhaps into
thoughts of her own with which it was in unison, and she repeated the
phrase mechanically, as a child might do. But now as he ceased to speak,
perplexed, annoyed too at the inappositeness of her reply, she came back
from the infinite in which she had roamed, and for a moment both were
silent.
At the turning of the road a man appeared. At the sight of Judas he
halted, then called him excitedly by name.
“It is Mathias,” Judas muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to
them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His
eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath,
and his garments were dust-covered.
“Where is the Master?” he asked; and at once, without waiting a reply, he
added: “I have just seen Johanna. Her husband told her that the tetrarch
is seeking him; he thinks him John, and would do him harm. We must go from
here.”
Judas assented. “Yes, we must all go. Mary, it may be a penance, but it is
his will.”
Mathias gazed inquiringly at them both.
“It is his will,” Judas repeated, authoritatively.
Mary turned away and caught her forehead in her hands. “If this is a
penance,” she murmured, “what then are his rewards?”