A PRUDENT EXCEPTION
After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a
resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to
offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey. At
the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let
himself in with a murmured formula. In a little time he came forth
with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward
Gennath Gate. It was not written in the laws of his order that he
should make greater preparation for a journey. He had already
acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages
between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and
the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to
the hill town of Galilee.
So he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments
well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye
of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and
wearing unrest under his shell of calm. He had an unobstructed path, a
path ceremonially clean. He had but to hesitate on the edge of a
congestion, and the first gowned and bearded Jew that observed him
signed his companions and the way was opened. For the Essenes were the
best of men, the truly holy men of Israel.
He went down between the fronts of featureless houses, through the
golden haze of sun and dust that overhung the narrow, stony mule-ways,
until the distant dream towers of Mariamne, of Phasaelus and of Hippicus
became imminent, brooding shapes of blackened masonry, and the wall cut
off the mule-ways and the great shady arch of the gate let in a glimpse
of the country without. On one hand was the Praetorium, the Roman
garrison encamped in the upper palace of Herod the Great; on the other,
the houses of the Sadducees, the Jewish aristocrats, covered the ridge
of Akra. Marsyas came upon an obstruction. At a gate opening into the
street, camels knelt, servants of diverse nationality but of one livery
clustered round them, several unoccupied Jewish traveling chairs in the
hands of bearers stood near. In the center of the considerable crowd,
a number of Sadducees, priests of high order and Pharisees in garments
characteristic of their several classes were taking ceremonious
farewell of a man already seated in a howdah. No one took notice of
the Essene, who stood waiting with assumed patience until he should be
given room.
Presently the camel-drivers cried to their beasts which arose with a
lurch, priests and Sadducees hurried into their chairs, the servants
fell into rank, the crowd shifted and ordered itself and a procession
trailed out alongside the swaying camels toward Gennath Gate. A
distinguished party was taking leave under escort.
Marsyas repressed the impatient word that arose to his lips and
followed after the deliberate, moving blockade.
The rank of the departing strangers did not encourage the city rabble
to follow, and as the escort kept close to the head of the procession
the hindmost camel was directly before Marsyas and the occupant of the
howdah in his view. Over head and shoulders the full skirts of a vitta
fell, erasing outline, and, contrasting the stature with that of the
attending servant, he concluded that the small traveler was a child.
Under the dripping shade and chill of the ancient Gate they passed and
out into the road worn into a trench through the rock and dry gray
earth and on to the oval pool which supplied Hippicus, where a halt for
a final farewell was made. Again Marsyas was delayed, and for a much
longer time. He might have climbed out of the sunken roadway and
passed around the obstruction, but the banks above were lined with
clamoring mendicants, women and lepers, and he could not escape
ceremonial defilement that might more seriously delay his journey.
Meanwhile the courtly leave-taking progressed with dignified sloth.
Gradually Sadducee, priest and Pharisee moved one by one from the
departing aristocrat. At the hindmost camel the Pharisees stopped not
at all, but saluting without looking at the traveler, the priests
merely raised their hands in blessing; but the Sadducees to a man
salaamed profoundly, and passed on if they were old, or lingered
uncertainly if they were young.
A little flicker of enlightenment showed in the young Essene's
brilliant eyes, an angry tension in his lips straightened their curve
and he drew himself up indignantly. The young aristocrats tarried and
laughed his precious time away with a woman! That was the traveler in
the last howdah! Twice and thrice the time they had spent speeding the
rest of the party they consumed bidding the woman farewell, and every
moment carried danger nearer to Stephen.
Then an old voice, refined and delicate as the note of an ancient lyre,
lifted in laughing protest from the front, the young men laughed,
responding, but moved away to their chairs, the camel swung out into a
rapid walk, and crying farewells the party separated.
With abating irritation Marsyas moved after them. At the intersection
of the first road, he would pass these travelers and hasten on.
A breeze from the hills cut off the smell of the city with a full
stream of country freshness. Marsyas lifted his head and drew in a
long breath that was almost a sigh. His first trouble weighed heavily
upon him and its triple nature of distress, heart-hurt and
apprehension, sensations so new and so near to nature as to be at wide
variance with anything Essenic, moved him into a mood essentially
human. Then an exhalation from aft the fragrant spring-flowered groves
stole into the pure air about him, bewildering, sweet, and through it,
as harmoniously as if the perfume had taken tone, a distant hill bird
sent a single stave of liquid notes. The small figure in the howdah at
that moment turned and looked back, and Marsyas for the first time in
his life gazed straight into the eyes of a beautiful girl.
Spring-fragrance, bird-song and flower-face were harmony too perfect
for Essenism to discountenance. Without the slightest discomposure,
and absolutely unconscious of what he was doing, Marsyas gazed and
listened until the vitta fell hastily over the face, the bird flew away
and the garden incense died.
He passed just then the intersecting road, but he continued after the
last camel. He walked after that through many drifts of fragrance, and
many hill birds sang, but he knew without looking that the flower face
was not turned back toward him again.
He halted for the night at a little village and sought the hospitality
of an Essene hermit that lived on the outskirts. But in the night,
terror for Stephen, of that unknown kind which is conviction without
evidence and irrefutable, seized him. He endured until the early
watches of the morning and took the road to Nazareth while the stars
still shone.
He had forgotten his fellow wayfarers of the previous afternoon until
their camels, speeding like the wind, overtook him beyond Mt. Ephraim.
In a vapor of flying scarves he caught again a glimpse of the flower
face turned his way.
Then for the first time in his life he reviled his poverty that forced
him to walk when the life of the much-beloved depended upon despatch.
Nazareth, clinging like a wasps' nest under the eaves of its chalky
hills, was many leagues ahead, and the sun must set and rise again
before he could climb up its sun-white streets.
His hope was not strong. His plan had won such little respect from him
that he had not ventured to propose it to Stephen. It was extreme
sacrifice for him to make, a sacrifice lifelong in effect, and in that
he based his single faith in its success. Stephen loved him and would
not persist in the fatal apostasy, if he knew that his friend, the
Essene, was to deny himself ambition and fame for Stephen's sake.
He would get his patrimony of the old master Essene who held it in
trust for him, formally give over his instruction, bind himself to the
perpetual life of husbandry and seclusion, and then tell Stephen what
he had done and why he had done it.
Everything else but the appeal to Stephen's love for him had failed,
and he had shrunk from forcing that trial.
But Saul had meant to go to the Synagogue at once; there were
innumerable chances that he was already too late.
At noon he came upon the party of travelers again. A fringed tent had
been pitched under a cluster of cedars and the slaves were putting away
the last of the meal. He saw now as he hurried by that there was a
spare and elegant old man, in magistrate's robes, reclining with
singular grace on a pallet of rugs before the lifted side of the tent.
The girl sat near. He noted also that the master and the slaves fell
silent as he approached and looked at him with interest.
But he sped on, forgetting that it was the noon and that he was hungry,
heated and weary, and remembering only that the time and the distance
were deadly long.
There was the soft pad-pad of a camel-hoof behind him and a servant of
the aristocrat that he had passed drew up at his side. With a light
leap the man dropped from the beast's neck and bowed low. The ease of
his salaam and the purity of his speech were strong evidences of
training among the loftiest classes of the time. The attitude asked
permission to address the Essene.
Marsyas signed him to speak.
"I pray thee accept my master's apologies," the man said, "for
interrupting thy journey. He bids me say that he is a stranger and
unfamiliar with the land. We have found no water for the meal. Wilt
thou direct us to a pool?"
Marsyas checked his impatience.
"Save that I am in great haste I would tarry to direct him. But let
him send hence into the country to the westward, half a league to the
hill of the flat summit. There is a grove by a well of sweet water."
"Nay, the country is as obscure to us as the whereabouts of the pool,"
the servant protested. "We are Alexandrians and as good as lost in
these hills. If thou wilt speak to my master, he will understand
better than his foolish servant."
Irritation forced its way up through the Essenic calm. The servant
salaamed again.
"The Essenes are noted even in Alexandria for their charity," he said
deftly. Marsyas turned with him and went back to the fringed tent.
The old aristocrat still lounged gracefully, as no thirsty man does, on
his pallet of rugs, but the girl had drawn farther away and her eyes
were veiled.
"I perceived by thy garments that thou art an Essene," the old man
said, "and therefore a safe guide in this land of few milestones."
Marsyas thanked him and waited restlessly on the inquiry.
"We have not found a well since mid-morning and I crave fresh drink.
The water we bear is brackish."
"Bid thy servants go westward without deviation for less than half a
league, until they come unto a hill with a flat summit, which can be
seen afar off. They will find there a grove with a well."
"And none is nearer?" the old man asked idly.
"There is none nearer."
"My servants were bred to the desert; they are ill mountaineers. Thou
wilt show them the way?"
"They can not lose the way," Marsyas protested; "it is the flock's well
and all the hill paths lead to it. Think not ill of me, that I can not
go, for I am in haste."
The old man smiled a little.
"An Essene, and he will not stop to give an old man water?"
Marsyas frowned resentfully, but turned to the servant at hand.
"Get thy fellows and the water-skins and follow!"
He turned off the Roman road and struck into the hills to the west.
The servitors of the Alexandrian caught up amphoras and hastened after
him.
In less than an hour he reappeared before the man under the fringed
tent.
"Thy servants are returned. Peace and farewell."
"Nay, but it is the noon. Wilt thou not tarry and rest?"
"I go," Marsyas said resolutely, "to save a life."
"Ah, then I did wrong to delay thee! I remember that Essenes are
physicians."
"We can not cure the wicked of their evil intent, so I haste to save
one threatened with another's malice. My friend is in peril. I must
go unto Nazareth and return unto Jerusalem, before I can save him. And
even now I may be too late!"
The magistrate searched the young man's face and then the
half-incredulous curiosity passed out of his manner.
"Pardon mine idle wasting of thy precious minutes," he said soberly.
"Go, and the Lord speed thee!"
Marsyas bowed low, and keeping his eyes fixed on the gray earth, lest
they stray in search of the flower face, he turned again toward
Nazareth. He heard a very soft, very hurried and almost imperious
whisper, as he moved away, but he knew that it was not for him to hear,
and he did not tarry. But a word from the magistrate brought him up.
"Stay! It is not customary for any outside of thine order to offer an
Essene assistance, since we would spare thee the pain of refusal.
But--it hath been suggested that thy haste may permit thee to waive thy
scruples and accept help from me--as it hath been suggested--I filched
precious time from thee. Thou canst ride with us, if thou wilt, and
take my daughter's camel. She will come with me."
The brilliant eyes no longer obeyed the restraint which would keep them
from the flower face. He turned to the girl, shyly withdrawn under the
shade of the fringed tent, and knew by the lowered eyes and the warmer
flush mantling the cheek that it was she that had made these
suggestions.
Twenty reasons why he should accept the magistrate's offer arose to
combat the single stern admonition of Custom. He was not yet under the
Essenic vow to accept hospitality from none but Essenes, though he had
lived in its observance all his life; he could not reach Nazareth under
a day's journey and these swift beasts could carry him into the village
by midnight. And Stephen's life depended on it.
"We depart even now," the magistrate added, "and I promise thee no
further delay."
Ancient usage accused the young man on account of the woman, but by
this time she had arisen and passed out of his sight, as if in good
faith that he should not be troubled by her presence.
"Thou yieldest me invaluable aid," he said in a lowered tone, "and
since I am not an elected Essene, but a ward of the brotherhood and a
postulant, I am free and most glad to have thy help. Be thou blessed."
The magistrate acknowledged the young man's acceptance by a wave of a
withered white hand and the slaves made the camels ready to proceed.
At midnight, the rocking camels sped without apparent weariness up the
uneven streets of Nazareth, white under the stars. At the lewen of the
single khan, the drivers drew up and Marsyas alighted to go forward and
thank his host, but the magistrate slept, even while his servants
lifted him down from the howdah. As he turned away, regretfully, he
confronted the veiled girl, almost childlike in stature under the
protection of her tall handmaiden. She dropped her head modestly and
moved aside to let him pass, but he hesitated, and stopped. Few indeed
had been the words he had addressed to women in his lifetime, and now
his speech was more than ever unready.
"Thy father sleeps, yet I would not depart with my thanks unsaid. Be
thou the messenger and give him my gratitude when he waketh."
"It shall be my pleasure," she answered softly, "and may thy hopes come
to pass. Farewell."
"Thou hast my thanks. The peace of the Lord God attend thee.
Farewell."