THE EREMITE IN SCARLET, AND THE BANKRUPT IN PURPLE
Lydia came upon Vasti, the bayadere, returning to the culina with a
flaring taper in her hand. The brown woman's eyes were fixed on the
flame and she whispered under her breath, till the licking red tongue
of the taper flickered and wavered back at her as if speaking in signs.
"What saith the Red Brother?" Lydia asked, in halting Hindu, for she
had begun to learn her waiting-woman's tongue.
"He keeps his own counsel, who is fellow to the Fire," was the answer.
"Thy neighbor, the philosopher, awaits thee within."
Lydia went slowly on.
When she entered the alabarch's presiding-room, Classicus arose from a
seat beside a cluster of lamps and came toward her.
"Thy servant at the door tells me that thy father is not in," he said.
"I came to speak with him of thee: but perchance it is better that I
tell thee that which I have to tell, before any other."
Lydia sat down on the divan, and Classicus sat beside her.
"I come to submit to thy scorn or thy pity," he said, "either of which
I deserve!"
"What hast thou done?" she asked, feeling a vague sense of fear.
"I have been Flaccus' fool!" he vowed.
Lydia's eyes grew troubled.
"What didst thou for him?" she asked in a lowered tone.
"I permitted him to catch me up in the city and rush me to Rome with a
memorial to Caesar, beseeching the emperor's aid in seeking the Lady
Cypros, who had been abducted."
Lydia's level brows dropped.
"Charging us with abduction?" she remarked.
"Charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing
from thy father's roof!"
Classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze.
"Why so late with the story?" she asked. "Why didst thou not come to
us before thou wast persuaded to go!"
"Charge me not with more folly than I did commit!" he besought. "I was
caught by his servants in the Brucheum and haled before him, where, in
all excitement, he told that the Lady Cypros was missing, and that I,
as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been
commissioned to enlist Caesar's interest in her cause! The vessel ready
for Puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail! I was not given
time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure,
much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!"
"And besides Flaccus, we must now take Caesar into consideration in
protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed.
"No!" he cried. "A friend of Agrippa's, whom I met in Rome, stopped me
in time!"
She looked away from him and he took her hand.
"Am I pardoned?" he asked plaintively.
"Thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in
this dangerous Roman! If only Agrippa would return, how readily the
skies would brighten for us all!"
"What wilt thou do if the Herod returns not?" he asked after a little
silence.
"Do not speak of it, Classicus," she said hurriedly. "Flaccus is
desperate."
"If Agrippa abandon Cypros," he offered, "she can divorce him, and
simplify the tangle."
"Oh, no, Justin! Cypros is bound heart and soul to Agrippa. Even if
he died, she would not turn to Flaccus! The dear Lord be thanked that
we have a virtuous woman to defend!"
"Nay, then, thou strict little rabbin, what shall we do?"
"How slow these ships! The last letter we sent to him can hardly have
reached Sicily!"
"He hath had a sufficiency of letters by this time! What was it he
wrote thy father, last: 'I come with all speed; but reflect that Caesar
is master over me: his consent is needful!' Ha! ha! Caligula would
give Agrippa half his Empire did he ask for it!"
She leaned her cheek in her hand, turning her face away from Classicus.
"Alas! I know why he lingers," she said to herself. "Marsyas hath
departed unto Judea, and Agrippa lacks his controlling hand!"
"I appreciate the peril threatening thy father's house," the
philosopher added after her continued silence, "and thou knowest thou
shall have my help--blundering as it may be!"
There were footsteps in the vestibule, and the alabarch stood in the
archway. Lydia sprang up.
"What," she cried, unable to wait for his report, "what said the
proconsul?"
The alabarch came into his presiding-room with a slow step; he let his
cloak fall on his chair, and stood in the lamplight worn and troubled.
Seeing Classicus, he greeted the visitor before he answered Lydia.
"Evil, evil; naught but evil," he sighed, "and threats. And the
proconsul's threats are never empty!"
"What does he threaten?" Classicus asked.
"Me--and mine."
"Alas! our people!" Lydia sighed.
"No, daughter! Thee!"
"Lydia!" Classicus exclaimed.
"Why does he threaten me?" Lydia cried.
The alabarch shook his head. "Flaccus betrayed only enough to show
that he will concentrate his vengeance against me and thee, or me
through thee, but thee of a surety, my Lydia! Yet, he was as dark and
ominous as the wrath of God!"
Lydia came close to her father and he laid his arm about her shoulders.
"Lydia, that bat escaped from Sheol, Eutychus, is openly attached to
Flaccus' train; once, he abode under my roof, where he could learn many
things. Has he any information against thee which Flaccus could use?"
Lydia's answer was not ready. It meant too much to tell that which the
alabarch groped after. Already she had surrendered until she was
stripped of all but her father's confidence, and her people's respect.
She could not cast off these ties to all that was desirable on earth.
And Classicus, silent and smug behind her, seemed to be a prepared
witness awaiting a confession. Conscience and human nature had the
usual struggle, and when she replied she did not raise her head.
"My father, Eutychus will never be at a loss for information. What
actualities he can not furnish, he may have from his imagination."
"Alexandria does not wait for charges against the Jews," the alabarch
said.
"But what says Flaccus?" Classicus urged after a silence.
"That I have abducted Agrippa's wife; that I have been guilty of
insubordination to him, my superior; that thou, my Lydia, art amenable
to him and all the people of Alexandria, and that he will proceed as
his information warrants, unless I produce Cypros--between sunrise and
sunset, to-morrow!"
There was silence.
"What wilt thou do?" Lydia asked in a suppressed voice.
"I can produce Cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable.
"No!" Lydia cried.
"If Agrippa cares so little for her--" the alabarch began, but Lydia
put off his arm and stood away from him.
"This matter is neither thine nor Agrippa's to decide! Cypros is a
good woman and she shall be kept secure--even against herself, if need
be! Thou shalt not bring her before Flaccus!"
"Lydia, I am brought to decide between her and thee!"
"Thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as Cypros," Classicus put
in, to Lydia. "We are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the
unknown charges Flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up
Cypros!"
"Flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women! He is not Caesar, beyond
whom there is no human appeal! Let him remember that it is no longer
the old man Tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man
Caligula, whose warmest friend is a Jew! Let him touch Cypros at his
peril!"
"Daughter, why should Caesar defend a woman for whom not even her
husband cares?"
There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white.
"Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she
asked.
The alabarch bit his lip and turned his head away.
"Granted, then," put in Classicus in his even voice, "that we shall
keep the lady in hiding and treat her to no ungentle usage! Now, what
will become of Lydia?"
The alabarch raised his eyes, filled with fire and desperation. Lydia
drooped more and more, and presently she put her hand to her forehead.
"Is there nothing to be done?" Classicus persisted calmly.
The silence became strained and lengthened to the space of many
heart-beats before he spoke again.
"Lydia can be hidden, with the princess," he offered finally.
Lydia raised her head, and looked at Classicus. Not for her the refuge
that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her
conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers
straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt. Whatever people sheltered
her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads. As Marsyas had
been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a
pestilence! She wondered if Classicus realized how thoroughly she
understood him. His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan.
"It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at
her words. Classicus submitted to her objection at once.
"Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent--and
this I offer last, because it is dearest to me. I have lands in Greece
and favor with the legate there. Flaccus' power can not extend beyond
his own dominions. Wilt thou not come to Greece--with me, my Lydia?"
Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected,
long ago, that when Classicus had hedged her about, he would offer his
hand as her one escape. Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips
grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes
of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman.
The alabarch had turned hurriedly away. But Classicus gazed, as if
awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their
jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.
The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly
upon the silence in the room.
A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch
up quickly.
"Master! master! The prince! The prince!"
"The king, thou untaught rustic!" Agrippa's tones, subdued but
mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.
Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by
reactionary emotions, did not move.
But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the
opening. Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it
passed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have
been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesserae or
hunting loans on bad security.
The other was Marsyas.
Classicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to
greet a king.
"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands
toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were
not more welcome than thou!"
"Better the unprepared alabarch," said Marsyas, "than any host who hath
expected his guests!"
The prince laughed, and discovering Lydia, bowed low to her.
"No change in thee, sweet Lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance
to the fillet of gold about his forehead.
Marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to
Classicus. With an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded
upon his composure and came to her.
"Hast thou not changed, Lydia?" he asked. The hand closing over his
did not belie the tremor in her voice.
"A blessing on you both," she said. "You are the redemption of this
house of trouble!"
"We have been everything but heroes in our days," Marsyas said.
"Welcome the opportunity!"
"Ho! Classicus!" Agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to
overthrow the tribute-demanding Sphinx or the Dragon?"
Marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he
made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself:
"Happy phrase, my lord King! There standeth the tribute-demanding
Sphinx, even now!"
Agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between Marsyas and
Classicus there stood no saving obstruction. Marsyas' nostrils
quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man
had worked against him. To find him now a guest entertained under the
roof he had striven to injure, brought the Essene's temper up to a
climacteric point. But he felt Lydia's presence, pacific, temperate
and persuasive, restraining him. Of all the many deceits he had used
throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of
practice as to offer a dispassionate word to Classicus.
He was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch.
"In all truth, that manifestation of Caesar's favor?" he cried eagerly.
"A truth!" Agrippa declared. "Rome made a dandy out of Marsyas.
Twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to Egypt! Twelve! All
armed; brasses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at
one. None short of three cubits in stature and visaged like Mars!"
Marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query.
"How is it with our lady?"
"Still in hiding from Flaccus," the alabarch replied.
Agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another.
"Surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to
such an extreme!"
"Delusion, lord," Marsyas repeated, facing him. "Let those first speak
who are not deluded. Then thou shall apply the word to him it fits."
"Good friends," the Herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly.
Marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own. He hath held
fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my
honest, timid wife hath awakened passion in the heart of this
proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of Egypt and Rome from which
to choose."
"Wilt thou continue further, lord," Marsyas said, "and tell them how
thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?"
"What, Marsyas! Make confession here, openly, of a thing which I blush
to confess to myself?" the Herod laughed.
"Never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!"
"Nay, then; so assured of clemency, I tell this behind my palms and
with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears!
Learn, then, for the first time, that Junia is the cause of my
disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as
she is bad. Until the unhappy Herod was blown of ill winds to
Alexandria, his single haven, she was Flaccus' mistress. When I
appeared, for no other cause than the Mightiness of her fancy, she
dropped Flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head.
There is the true story! Cypros, forsooth! Cypros is an upright Arab,
twenty years married and mother of three!"
"Junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably. "Junia constructed more of
Flaccus' villainies than Flaccus himself!"
"And will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" Agrippa
cried.
"Name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but I have a
further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when I stood
in fear of their interception! Thou hast not forgotten the attack on
thee on the night of Flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to
Flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy
disaster reached Alexandria, Flaccus put off his amiable front and
commanded me to deliver Cypros to him--"
"Commanded you to deliver Cypros to him!" Agrippa cried, the fires of
anger igniting in his eyes. "What had she to do with this?"
The alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to
justify his deeds.
"If it proceedeth to an accounting, I and mine will bear witness to her
innocence and loving fidelity to thee! Yet, remember, lord, she hath
the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus
long!"
Agrippa flushed darkly, but Marsyas stopped the retort on his lips.
"Let us not try each other! Go on, good sir," he pleaded.
"I refused, and he threatened to hurl the Alexandrians on the Regio
Judaeorum. But in the meantime, fate or fortune, God knows which,
ordered that Tiberius should choose Caligula to succeed him. The news
reached Alexandria and stayed Flaccus' hand, for then he stood in
wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial. But thou didst
tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and
his desires grew. No longer the Regio Judaeorum dared he threaten, but
me and mine--Lydia, above all!"
"Lydia!" Marsyas exclaimed.
"And I tell thee, my Lord Agrippa," the alabarch continued, by this
time a picture of refined indignation, "at this very hour I was brought
face to face with a hard decision between my daughter and thy wife!"
Marsyas turned toward Classicus, but the storm of denunciation that
leaped to his lips was checked. What should he win for his exposure of
Classicus, but scorn from Lydia, and a misconstruction of his motive?
Atavistic ferocity glittered in Agrippa's eyes.
"It is my turn!" he brought out between clenched teeth, "and I have a
long score, a long score with Flaccus! Where is my lady? Let her be
brought!"
Lydia broke in before the alabarch could answer.
"In hiding!" she answered quickly, and Marsyas fancied that she feared
a too explicit answer from her father. Before whom was she afraid to
disclose the princess' refuge, if not Classicus?
"Take four of my praetorians, then," Agrippa commanded, "and lead me to
her hiding-place!"
The alabarch bowed and summoned servants.
"Have we, then, delivered this house of peril?" Marsyas asked of
Agrippa.
"Flaccus," said Classicus, speaking for the first time, "may feed his
thirst for revenge!"
"Get but my lady, first!" Agrippa insisted. "Flaccus hath played and
lost! He shall pay his forfeit!"
The servants were ready with the alabarch's cloak; the porter announced
chariots waiting, and in an incredibly short time, Marsyas was alone
with Lydia and Classicus, in the presiding-room.
"I shall return to the ship and prepare it for voyage," Marsyas said,
in the silence that instantly fell. "Since I return to Judea with the
King, perchance I should say farewell!"
Lydia's lips parted, and her miserable eyes turned away from him.
"Await my father's return," she said in a low voice,
"Hath he far to go?" he asked.
"Yes--far!"
Classicus waited serenely for Marsyas' answer. In that composure
Marsyas read unconcern, which the Essene interpreted as hopelessness
for his own cause.
"So long as we abide in Egypt, we are a peril," he replied. "Even now
we have delayed too long!"
He extended his hand to Lydia, and slowly, she put her own into it.
The touch of the small fingers played too strongly upon his
self-control. He released them hurriedly and strode toward the
vestibule.
But at the threshold, indecision and astonishment and acute realization
of the meaning of the thing he was doing seized him. He whirled about.
Classicus stood beneath the cluster of lamps, his face alight with
triumphant superciliousness. Even under Marsyas' eye the expression
did not alter. Lydia seemed to have shrunk; her hands clasped before
her were wrung about each other in an agony of restraint, but the
pitiful appeal in her eyes was all that Marsyas saw.
In an instant he was again at her side, his heart speaking in his face.
"Thou wearest yet the free locks of maidenhood," he said, in a voice so
smooth and low that it chilled her, "perchance thou wilt tell me ere I
depart if thou art to marry--this man?"
For a moment there was silence; Marsyas heard his mad heart beating,
but if Classicus felt apprehension, there was no display of it on his
face. Then Lydia raised her head.
"No," she said, in a voice barely audible.
Marsyas turned upon Classicus, and between the two there passed the
silent communication of men who wholly understand each other. Then
Classicus took up his kerchief, and, with a smile and a wave of his
hand, walked out of the presiding-room.
But Lydia was out of reach of Marsyas' arms when he turned to her.
Crying and afraid, she motioned him back as he pressed toward her.
He stopped.
"Am I still unacceptable to thee, Lydia?" he asked.
"O Marsyas, thou returnest in the same spirit as thou didst depart from
me--unchanged, unchanged! But striving to change--for my sake! Do not
so, for me! Not for me!"
The grief and pleading in the black eyes that rested upon her changed
slowly. Rebuffed and stung he threw up his head.
"Better the old Essenic shape in which I was bound against thee and
thou against me?" he said bitterly. "So! The Essenes seem not to be
wrong in their teaching of distrust in women!"
If he expected her to retort, the compassion and gentleness in her
answer surprised him.
"Not that, my Marsyas," she said, coming nearer to him in her
earnestness. "But change does not consist in the raiment thou wearest,
nor in the claim to be altered. Thou canst not in truth believe that I
have done right! Thou forgivest me for thy love's sake, but thy
intelligence is no less critical! I can not, will not put away the
faith of the Master; I can not regret the spirit of the deed I did for
their sake. And between us it is as it was the night I sent thee from
me, so long ago!"
"But I have changed," he protested hastily. "The world hath taught me
much: I can understand; I can extenuate greater errors--I have done so;
believe me, it is only for thy sake--"
"But canst thou wholly acquit me--wholly justify me, Marsyas?"
He looked at her with pleading in his eyes, and made no answer.
"No man should wed or worship with a single doubt," she said.
Fearing more than he dared confess to himself, he caught her hands and
would not let her leave him.
"Lydia, I have not had the portion which God and women allot to most
men," he said almost piteously. "There are delights that should be
mine by right, but they are denied me! Other men have their dreams,
their moments of tender preoccupation. They can live again through
hours between only themselves and one other. They can feel again the
touches of a woman's hand upon them, the warmth of her cheek and the
love in her kiss. No matter the evil, the sorrows that follow, these
things are theirs, to hold in memory! No matter the time or the place,
they can summon it all from a song, drink it from a goblet of wine, or
breathe it in from a flower! It is twice living it; once, in the
actuality; again, in the dream! But I--I have nothing! My teaching
did not permit me to look forward to such a thing--and thou,
Lydia--Lydia, thou dost not permit me to look back upon it!"
Her eyes filled with tears, and a rush of tender words trembled on her
lips. His gaze, quickened by longing for the thing these signs
typified, caught the softening in her young face. He seized upon the
hope that it gave him.
"Dost thou love me, Lydia?" he asked.
"I love thee, Marsyas."
He drew her to him, put his arms about her and pressed her to his
breast. She did not resist him, for she was tired of contention with
herself, tired of distress, afraid of the menace the future showed her,
and withal fainting in hope. She dropped her head on his shoulder,
with her face turned up to him. Marsyas' soul filled to the full with
subdued, bewildering emotions. It was not the first time he had held
this sweet child-woman in his arms, but fear, tumult, impetuousness and
protest had claimed preeminence in his thoughts before. Now in the
quiet and shelter of the alabarch's deserted presiding-room, he found
new experience, new feelings. Under the low light of the clustered
lamp, he looked down on the face turned to him, smoothed with soft
touches the long, delicate black brows; passed light fingers over the
bloom of her cheek and saw the faint rose color come again in the white
lines the little pressure made; put back the loose curl fallen before
her perfect ear and marveled at its silkiness; watched the quiet
palpitation in the milk-white throat--sensed, somehow, the repose in
herself, the command, even in this momentary surrender, the divinity in
her womanliness. He was ashamed of his distrust, startled at his new
sensations.
Perhaps she saw the passing of feeling over his face, for she stirred
and would have raised herself, but the movement brought him back to
reality, and a fiercer rebellion against it.
"Nay, nay, Lydia; I love thee! It is my one virtue; my sinful soul
hath been married to thee these many strange months. Thou art become a
necessity to my life, as needful as bread and drink, as blood and
breath! Thou art the essential salt in my veins--the world to me!
Nay, more! Thou art love, for world is a word with boundaries! I have
striven for thy sake and I have not failed. I am able now to obtain
the quieting of thy chief enemy, the refreshment of the starved heart
in me, thirsting for revenge, and of our own security henceforward in
the world. Yet, I am not going to Judea with Agrippa. I abide here
with thee in Alexandria, until I have won the immediate safety of thy
body and thy soul!"
She strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and,
leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his
good night.