"--AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS!"
Agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first
floor of the alabarch's mansion. The hall was vacant and each of the
chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole
length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house. No
one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there
appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown
serving-woman. The olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the
light of a reed taper she bore. She stepped aside to let him pass and
proceeded to light the lamps.
Agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and
unusual, but she continued without heeding him. On one of the
lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with
her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame
flickering out on the back of her hand.
"Perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on. "No wonder
the phenix comes to Egypt to be born."
At the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a
colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty. It was
carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at
every divergence to a classic Roman exedra. The awning which usually
sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling
sky bent loftily over it. The inert summer airs were heavy with the
scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval
bed in the center.
At that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting,
half lying in one of the sections of the exedra.
He knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and,
remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had
done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation
toward the unknown.
As he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him. Her
face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later
twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men
between the eyes. She was a Roman, but never in all the Empire were
other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so
radiant. Her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck,
which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of
marble-white shoulders. The low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just
beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy
limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers.
For a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps
only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his
like. Then Agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir
from her careless posture. So many, many of the kind had each met and
known that they could not be strangers.
"The alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if
he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed.
"He hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her,"
she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting."
"But in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not
seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that
makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing. I have heard of
unwilling maids."
"Unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain
influences. For if there were any to withstand my conviction, I am
ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world
of men could pass without making her choice."
"And perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my
conviction, I would wager that there never lived a man before whom the
world of women could pass without making his choice,--again and again!"
"Which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married
man; the single gallant declares only for one."
"O deft reasoning! it establishes thee a Roman. What dost thou here,
in Alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no
Caesar--naught but riots and Jews?"
"Jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back
of the exedra had left a mark on it, "Jews are red-lipped, and eyed
like heifers. Sometimes brawn and force weary us in Rome; wherefore we
go into Egypt or the East to seek silky and subtle devilishness."
Agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes. He saw there
that peculiar expression which he had expected to find. It was a set
questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand--the asking
eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her
charms.
"Why make the effort? Only tell us of the East that you want us and
the East will come to you."
"What? Oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and
mysticism in the shadow of the Fora and within sound of the
Senate-chamber? No, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the Nile or
the flow of the Abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level
line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe
musks from oriental lips."
"It is not then the Jews," he objected. "They are a temperate, a
passionless lot, that carry the Torah like hair-balances in their
hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the Law.
No, Jews are a straight people. Thou speakest of the--Arab!"
She turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his
slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion.
"So?" she asked with meaning. "An Arab?"
He continued to smile at her.
"And every Jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the
unmistakable signs of Jewish blood in his profile.
"Unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of Arabia."
"Ah!" She moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky.
"It is then, of a truth, the Arab, we seek," she added presently. "The
Arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks,
loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion."
"Without having seen Jerusalem, or Rome?" he asked.
"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again. "Yes, without having seen
Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
"Then, it is good only for a time--for as long as the surfeit of
civilization lasts--which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the
Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his
cattle!"
She laughed outright. "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment
since! Wherefore the change?"
"Refinement in all things! To get it into an Arab, he has to be
modified by alien blood."
"A truce! I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been
entirely exhausted. I--meet new, desirable things--daily!"
Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just
above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul,
resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade.
Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is
intense--once won. It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it,
before it wearies of thee--even to the extreme of pursuing thee to
Rome."
The proconsul and the princess approached. The deep-set eyes of the
Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.
"Men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost
jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing Herods in the company of
beautiful women," he observed.
"It is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or
jewels or Herods," Agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed
and unsettled, seeing Flaccus now enduring a Jew, again attending a
lady.
"Again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led
us into difference just now, O thou disputatious."
"Well said, Junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make
gallants out of the fiends! Know ye all one another?" the proconsul
continued.
"Except my lovely neighbor," Agrippa replied.
"The Lady Junia, daughter of Euodus, who with her father hath been
transplanted here from Rome."
In the colonnade Lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by
certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age. But when he drew
closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of
smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that
the man was not yet thirty. He was a little above medium height,
spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders,
beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic
fillet. His general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence
the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes.
That he was a Jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature. His
Jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by
his fathers in Judea. The outer gown was of light green scantly shot
with points of gold.
The pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and
the attitude of the man, bending to look into Lydia's face as she
walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded.
"Approacheth Justin Classicus," said Flaccus. "In that garment he
looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an Attic meadow in
spring."
"Behold, already the witchery of the garden!" Agrippa said softly to
Junia.
"This," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is Justin
Classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular Jew in
Alexandria."
Classicus bowed, glanced at Junia and again at Agrippa, and made a
place for Lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her
feet.
"What news, good sir," Agrippa asked, "among the schools over the
world?"
"News?" Classicus repeated. "Nothing. Philo is silent; Petronius is
mersed in affairs in Bithynia; Rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and
all, to Capri."
"Alas!" said Flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the
ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters
have ceased."
"But you say nothing of religion," said Classicus. "Yet possibly it
follows, now, in order."
"After monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in Agrippa.
"What is it?" Flaccus asked.
"Perchance thou hast heard," Classicus responded. "It issues out of
Judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing
but sobriety from Palestine."
"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
"A new Messiah!"
"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah! How many in the past
generation, Cypros? Ten, twenty, a hundred? Alas! Classicus, that
thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected
and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look
forward! But what is a Messiah?"
"A god," said Agrippa.
"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that
shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
"_Mirabile dictu!_" Junia cried.
"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg. "What a
task, what an ambition, what an achievement! I behold Caesar's dudgeon.
Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to
aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to
be more than Caesar!"
"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as
his--school, if it may be so called. One of the followers appeared at
the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago--an
Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a
remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost
caste for truthfulness."
"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "Why will they
insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like
the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies
to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"
"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested. "Roman hard-headedness hath turned
thee against our traditions!"
"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very
gently. "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to
contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over
a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a
doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified
for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared
frankly. "Tell me more."
"There is no more."
"What! Is it dead?" she insisted. "Dead as all the others? Then it
is different only in its inception."
"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard. The
Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present. Thou
rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are
unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late--"
"Among us?" Lydia asked.
"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an
inquiring eye.
"Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he
demanded.
"Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against
authority," Classicus made answer. "So much for their doctrine of
submission."
"Tell us that," Lydia urged.
"Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the
Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for
the first time in seven years. I saw the execution; in fact, in a way
I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate
who was attached to my household."
"Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly.
"No, we left him in Ptolemais. But the note of their presence in
Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I
departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against
the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary
despatch."
"They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied. "Vitellius
announced them. He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them."
Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus. He remembered
that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge. Cypros drew in a breath of alarm.
"That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly.
The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm.
"We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a
noble Roman--therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words."
The others maintained a wondering silence. Flaccus smiled.
"Vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid
embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in Egypt and Hades.
Vitellius is no diplomat. Whistling finds the lost hound sooner than
search."
"But thou wilt not find him, noble Flaccus," Cypros besought in a
lowered tone. "Yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!"
"My promise, lady! Indeed, I gave it in my heart a moment since. Hear
it now. Alexandria is subject to thee. Let him come and be our ward."
"I shall depend on that," Agrippa said decidedly. "For I shall
despatch a servant for the man, the instant I can so do!"
"And yet," Cypros insisted, still distressed, "if Vitellius requires
him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?"
Flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes.
"O gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, I shall set the
prefect on the Nazarenes in Rhacotis. If he be not found, none without
this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that I am not in
all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a
fugitive."
"A shrewd strategy," Lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the
Nazarenes."
"The Nazarenes! Who wastes tears over them? Thine own straight people
condemn them, lady."
"An exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself,
"for the prefect, the rabble Alexandrians and the Nazarenes! O seekers
of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion! Yield me thy promise,
my Lord Agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!"
Flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch
appeared in the colonnade.
"Here comes our host," said Agrippa. "Hast ordered the garlands,
Lysimachus?"
"The feast is prepared," Lysimachus replied, and, turning to Flaccus,
continued: "Thou shalt see, now, good sir, how Jews feast. In all
thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a Jew."
"Not so!" Flaccus retorted, "for I was present at the Lady Cypros'
wedding-feast!"
"Ho! Flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" Agrippa laughed, as he
arose, taking Junia's hand. "Mars, cherishing a confection!"
"Perchance," Cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if Mars'
confections were more plentiful and the noble Flaccus' wedding-feasts
less rare, they both might forget the one!"
"Never!" Flaccus declared, "though I were Hymen himself!"
As they proceeded toward the colonnade, Cypros drew closer to him.
"Thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise,"
she said. "It is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's
success. For in this young man, we have found Fortune itself!"
The proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered
suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them.