FOB A WOMAN'S SAKE
The sails of the freighter had fallen slack in the breathless shelter
of the Alexandrian harbor. It was night, and only by daylight could
the seamen pull the vessel by oar through the devious, perilous lanes
between the fleets and navies packed in the greatest port in the world.
The freighter would lie to until morning. The passengers would land in
boats.
Its anchor rumbled down and plunged into a sea of stars.
It had been a ship of silence, manned by barefoot, cowed slaves,
captained by a surly, weather-beaten Roman and freighted with a
strange, sorrowful company. Now that the journey was at an end, there
were no shouts, no noisy haste, no excited preparation. When the wash
of the disturbed bay settled over the anchor and the reflected stars
grew steady again, there was silence.
Marsyas stood in the bow and looked ashore. Over the whole arc of the
southern heavens, he saw long, beaded strands of infinitesimal points
of fire, tangles, cross-hatchings, eddies and jottings of light--the
lamps of Alexandria. Right and left of him and embracing much of the
bay, the confusion of stars swept, culminating in the towering flame
surmounting the Pharos to the east, and failing in featureless
obscurity to the west. It might have been a congress of fireflies
tranced in space. But there came across the waters, not appreciable
sound, but the mysterious telepathic communication of animate life.
Marsyas sensed the heart-beat of the great invisible city under the
_ignes fatui_ swung in the purple night.
He did not contemplate it calmly. The mystery of impending destiny was
written over it all.
The silent company of Nazarenes was put ashore an hour later at the
wharf of the Egyptian suburb, Rhacotis, and together Silas and Marsyas
passed up through the easternmost limits of the settlement toward the
Regio Judaeorum.
They had not progressed beyond sight of their former traveling
companions, before the cluster of Nazarenes seemed to huddle and
recoil, and presently turn back and flee over their tracks.
As they rushed down upon the two Jews, the body seemed to have
increased greatly in number. The accessions were men, women and
children; some were very old, all apparently very poor, so that the one
small, female figure, in fine white garments showing under a coarse
mantle, was conspicuous among the rough dark habits.
Marsyas had time to note this one out of the many when the flying
company rushed about him; after it a body of city constabulary, at the
heels of which followed a howling mob of rabid Alexandrians. In an
instant, Marsyas and Silas were in the thick of the tumult. The
fugitives, demoralized by the attack of the constabulary, rushed hither
and thither; the mob closed in upon them and a moving battle raged in
the night on the square.
Events followed too swiftly for Marsyas to grasp them as they happened.
He had a heated sensation that he defended himself, defended others,
struck gallantly, received blows, snatched up a small figure in white
from the attack of a vindictive assailant, and then the running fight
swept by and away in dust.
He came to himself, panting and enraged, under a lamp, with a girl in
his arms. Confronting him with a stone in his hand was Eutychus,
petrified with amazement and apprehension. At one side, groaning and
bent double with kicks and blows, was Silas. At the other, a silent,
brown woman peered at the insensible girl. Up the street receded the
sounds of riot.
Marsyas permitted his angry gaze to fall from Eutychus' face to the
stone the servitor held. The fingers unclosed and the missile dropped.
Then Marsyas looked down at the girl in his arms. He drew in a full
breath. The hill bird in the broken wilds of Judea whistled again; the
incense from the blooming orchards breathed about him, and the flower
face that had looked back at him from the howdah rested now, white and
peaceful against his breast. Her long lashes lay on her cheeks, the
pretty disorder of her yellow-brown curls was tossed over his arm. He
was strangely untroubled for all that.
The brown woman watched him from the gloom.
Silas meanwhile had straightened himself and was gazing with
stupefaction at the insensible face on the Essene's breast.
"It--it--" he began, stammering before the rush of recognition and
astonishment. "It is the alabarch's daughter--hither, fellow!" to
Eutychus; "see this face! See whom thou wast pursuing."
Eutychus looked and fell immediately into a panic.
"I did not know her!" he cried. "By my soul, I did not know her! I
was only visiting vengeance on the apostates, with the people! How
should I expect to find her here!"
Marsyas broke in on his avowal.
"Do we go now to her father's house?" he asked of Silas.
"Even now!"
"Lead on, then. Eutychus! Follow!"
Silas looked at the brown woman in the shadows, who beckoned and,
turning, took roundabout and deserted passages toward the Jewish
quarter, so that the extraordinary party proceeded unseen to the house
of the alabarch. Once or twice, Eutychus attempted to press up beside
Marsyas and excuse himself, but he was bidden to be silent. Then, on
missing the charioteer's footfall, Marsyas turned to see him slipping
away. Immediately Silas was despatched to bring him back; and so,
placed between the two, he was dragged on to the house he had attempted
to injure.
Remembering Eleazar's statement concerning the breadth of the schism,
Marsyas was prepared to discover the alabarch a Nazarene.
"O Israel! after triumph over the oppression of the mighty, is this
your overthrow?" he said bitterly to himself.
Long before he reached the alabarch's house, the figure in his arms
stirred and made a little questioning sound. But against her manifest
wish, the promptings of his Essenic training and the admission that she
had been overtaken among apostates, something in him locked his arms
about her and brought a single word to his lips. The gentleness of his
voice surprised him.
"Peace," he said, and she lay still.
After he had said it, a sudden rage against Eutychus seized him. The
charioteer's part in the pursuit of the fugitive apostates assumed a
brutality and an enormity many times greater than it had originally
seemed. He took savage pleasure in anticipating turning over the
culprit to Agrippa for justice.
He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall. The
startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's
arms, the serving-man cried out. The brown woman answered with a
guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead
of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were
running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.
The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a
Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.
"Lydia! What hath befallen thee? Is she dead?" he cried.
Back of him came a rush of people. Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind
him, Cypros. With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the
details of their identity and remarked at random that one was a man who
wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.
The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and
exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was
heard. But Marsyas looked at the master of the house. He saw this
time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality,
his religion. In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing
of the Nazarene. Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his
breast. By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen
under the smoky street-torch. In the folds of her white dress,
beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross,
depending from a scarlet cord.
The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take
Lydia from Marsyas' arms. But with the instinctive feeling that none
must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a
motion.
"I will put her down," he said calmly.
Classicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already
turned toward the divan. With a quick movement, he slipped the
crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.
Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly
gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judaeorum with the brown
woman as an attendant. Catching with relief at this bit of foundation
for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.
Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine
and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her
recovery. Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.
Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the
outskirts. The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were
fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command. Before he could
understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.
"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the
group. "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest
to show the marks of experience. Tell us what happened."
Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation. If he frankly told
the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril. If he
evaded, Eutychus, wishing to justify himself and to escape punishment,
might wreck a fabrication by a word. But the young man made no
appreciable hesitation in answering. He caught the charioteer's eye
and held it fixedly while he spoke.
"I know little," he said. "From the ship we came up a certain street,
where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers. So disorderly the
crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street
was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the
guiltiest one. Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus,
the lady.
"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we
stayed to save the lady from the rioters. This done we came hither.
That is all."
"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.
The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower
lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.
"Sir, one does not stop to identify passing strangers when one fights
for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.
Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.
"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.
Marsyas answered directly.
"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."
Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.
"Who art thou?" he asked. "I met thee once, it seems."
"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him,
is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my
friend and companion. Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable
acquaintance."
Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer,
took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.
"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion. "Blessed
be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"
Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast
a beseeching look at the prince. The prince smiled.
"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he
said to the alabarch. "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as
great a crime as a love affair."
"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once.
"Stephanos,"--signing to a servitor,--"thou wilt take this young man to
the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort. If he
hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him. Remember, brother, I
am at thy command."
With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the
company and followed Stephanos.
But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his
hand. Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in
her rich white garments.
"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper. "Aye,
even more--a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."
He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.
"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said. "Thou who art an
Essene and a holy man!"
Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept
over him. He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and
reluctantly, she drew it away.
He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly
lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through
arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up
a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.
This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of
incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of
distant voices. His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told
himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make
in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted
slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.
As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own,
Drumah appeared. Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of
ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.
"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her
lips. "I was caught in a riot. It is nothing."
"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy
garments have bloodstains on them. Thou dost not know that thou art
hurt. O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and
volatile ointment. Eutychus, art thou there? Run to the culina and
get wine! Where is the physician?"
The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express
purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement,
stopped short and scowled.
"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her. "I am not in need of assistance.
The physician is with the master's daughter. I can care for myself.
Pray, do not give thyself trouble."
He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and
Stephanos.
He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred
to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a
much-needed warning to Eutychus. The more he considered his neglect,
the more serious it seemed. At last he hurried his attendant, and,
getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor. He
despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to
await the charioteer's coming.
As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand
column across the desert. Coming quite close to him, she dropped on
her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.
"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt. I shall
not forget!"
Rising, she flitted away.
Marsyas looked after her in amazement. It was the same slave-woman
whom he had helped at Peter the usurer's.
Cypros, with her head drooping, a delicate forefinger on her chin, came
slowly and sorrowfully into the hall. As Marsyas looked at her, she
seemed to him to be half-woman, half-child. But when she saw him, her
face lighted, her eyes glowed. With extended hands she came toward him.
"Nay, nay," she said, seeing that thanks were on his lips. "Do not
shame me with thy thanks, Marsyas, for I had a selfish use in releasing
thee."
"But I know, nevertheless, that I should have had freedom at thy hands
though I never saw thee again."
"Oh, be not so filled with confidence and sweet believing, else I fear
for myself," she said earnestly. "Nay, if I were wholly unselfish, I
should come to thee, this hour of thy honor, to bring thee praise. Yet
I come with mine own interest, to charge thee anew!"
"Command me; thou hast purchased me!"
"Not so; but thou hast purchased my husband, with the extreme of thy
sacrifice for his sake!"
"Lady, I did that thing for myself--for mine own ends!"
"Nevertheless, it was my husband who profited. Thou must learn that
much hath transpired here in Alexandria. The alabarch had not the
three hundred thousand drachmae to lend--"
Marsyas' forehead contracted; was not his work against Saul of Tarsus
progressing?
"--but he gave my lord in all readiness five talents, with which we
ransomed thee. It was all the good alabarch could afford, but it is
not enough for me and my babes. Wherefore Agrippa goes to Rome without
us. There, infallibly he will obtain money from Antonia, discharge his
debt to Caesar and settle Vitellius' vengeful search after thee. There,
he shall be restored to favor with Caesar and come into possession of
his kingdom!"
"How thou liftest my bitter heart!" Marsyas exclaimed. "Go yet further
and say that, thereafter, I shall have my requital, my hunger after
vengeance satisfied!"
"All that shall be," she said with gravity, "on one condition!"
"What?" he besought earnestly.
"That he who hath Agrippa's welfare deepest in his heart shall ever be
near my lord to protect him against himself!"
"O lady, even thou canst not wish thy husband successful with greater
yearning than I!"
"So I do believe! But hear me. Thou seest my husband; thou knowest
that he plans only for the moment, risks too much, is over-confident
and too little cautious! In the beginning he believes that he is
right, and thereafter and on to the end he acts, chooses friends, and
makes enemies as his conviction directs him. Thus he ruined himself
thrice over from Rome to Idumea. None but one so eager for his success
as I, but abler than I, can govern him! And thou must be his keeper,
Marsyas!"
"Thou yieldest me a welcome charge, lady," he said quickly. "Thou
knowest that I would not have him fail; wherefore, I yield thee my
word!"
"Be thou blessed! Yet there is more!"
In spite of her preparation, her face flushed, and she hesitated. Then
as if forcing herself to speak, she said:
"Thou--thou wilt keep my lord's love for me, Marsyas?"
"I do not understand," he said kindly.
"Thou didst not say such a thing when my lord asked thee for twenty
thousand drachmae. Thou didst get the drachmae; keep now my husband's
love for me. As thou didst offer thyself for his purse, offer thyself
for his soul--if need be!"
He frowned at the pavement and then at her. He had evolved enough from
her words to believe that her call aimed at his spiritual welfare and
he remembered that he was an Essene.
"Be his companion," she hurried on, "be more; be his comrade, his
abettor, even; sacrifice much; thy prejudices, even some of thy
spotlessness, but make thyself desirable to him. Then thou canst
control him. Promise, Marsyas! Oh, thy hope to overthrow Saul is not
dearer to thee than this thing is to me! Promise!"
"Be comforted," he said hurriedly, for there were steps approaching
from the inner room. "I shall do all that I can. More than that, one
less than an angel can not promise!"
She, too, heard the footsteps and passed up the stairs.
Looking up from his disturbed contemplation of the pavement, Marsyas
saw Classicus in the arch leading into the hall. If the young Essene
had been a cestophorus upholding the ceiling, the philosopher's gaze
could not have been more indifferent. He passed on and disappeared
into the vestibule.
Hardly had he passed, before the dark end of the corridor leading in
from the garden gave up the stealthy figure of Eutychus, running, bent,
purposeful and a-tiptoe, to overtake Classicus. Evidently he had not
seen Marsyas, for he passed without faltering and disappeared the way
Classicus had taken.
Instantly and as silently Marsyas followed.
At the porch, the alabarch bade his guests good night, and when Marsyas
brought up, he found Classicus just departing and Eutychus nowhere to
be seen. Surmising that there was a humbler exit for the servants, out
of which the charioteer had taken himself, Marsyas passed out directly
after the philosopher.
His surmises were not wrong, for the instant Classicus planted foot on
the earth without, Eutychus came out of the darkness and bowed.
"Good my lord," he began, "the story truly told is this--" but his
words babbled off into stammers and inarticulate sound, for Marsyas,
large in the gloom, stood over him.
"Thy master hath need of thee, Eutychus," he said in a soft voice. The
charioteer gulped and slid back into the door that had given him exit.
"Peace to thee, sir," the Essene said to Classicus, and bowing,
returned into the house.
"The truth of the story is this," said Classicus as he stepped into his
chair and was borne away, "the Essene is no Essene!"
At the farther end of the corridor within, Marsyas saw Eutychus
lurking. Silent and swift the young Essene went after him. The
charioteer, fearing for cause, fled and Marsyas followed.
Agrippa, on the point of ascending to his chamber, saw them flit
noiselessly into the dusk. His wonder was awakened. Drumah, with a
laver under her arm, was emerging from the kitchens when she caught a
glimpse of them. The prince stepped down and followed; Drumah slipped
after.
At the door leading into the colonnade of the garden, Marsyas seized
Eutychus.
"Thou insufferable coward!" he brought out. "Thou blight and peril
under a hospitable roof! I know what thou wouldst have said to the
master's guest!"
Eutychus paled and struggled to free himself, but Marsyas forced him
against the wall and pinned him there.
"If so much as a word escape thee, concerning the alabarch's daughter,
if by a quiver of thy lashes thou dost betray aught that thou knowest
to any living being, or dead post, or empty space, I shall kill thee
and feed the eels of the sea with thy carcass!"
Fixing the charioteer with a menacing eye he held him until he was sure
his words had conveyed their full meaning.
"I have spoken!" he added. Then he threw the man aside and turned to
go back to his room. But in his path, though happily out of earshot of
his low-spoken words, stood Agrippa; behind him, Drumah. Not a little
disturbed, Marsyas stopped. Eutychus saw the prince and expected
partizanship.
"Seest thou how thy servant is used by this vagrant?" he demanded.
But Agrippa laid his hand on Marsyas' arm.
"I do not know thy provocation," he said, "but I know it was just. Go
back! It is not enough. Teach him to respect thy strength. Thou hast
merely made him dangerous!"
But Marsyas begged Agrippa's permission to go on and the prince, still
declaring that the Essene had made a mistake, turned and went with him.
Drumah, with her head in the air, passed Eutychus without casting a
look upon him.