a troop of dancing girls entered. They were of various races; the fair
Caucasian from the Euxine, the Egyptian whose hue was the reflection
of her desert sands, swarthy half-black Arabs from beyond Jordan, and
Nubians whose faces seemed cut from solid jet--slaves whom Apollonius
had captured or exchanged for other spoil of battle. These rendered
the various songs and dances of their native lands. One performed the
hazardous exploit of stepping to the throbbing of the zither between
a score of sword blades, set with points upward. Another honored
Apollonius by advancing on her hands, seizing the ladle of the wine jar
between her toes, and dexterously filling with its contents the empty
cup of the commandant.
"Let Apollonius, the valiant conqueror of Jerusalem, show us a daughter
of Israel. He is making a harem of them, if report be true," cried one.
"Jewish maidens will not dance on anything except the thin air. So we
had to hang a score of them yesterday," replied Apollonius. "But I will
show you a genuine Jewish Cupid."
"A circumcised Cupid! Apollonius' wit is as sharp as his knife," cried
Kallisthenes.
The Governor whispered to an attendant. In a few moments there was
thrust into the room a naked boy. His limbs were exquisitely moulded.
His large distended pupils shone with strange lustre in the flashing
lights of the jewelled lanterns. His outstretched hands and cautious
step showed that there was no sight in his eyes.
"Bravo! Bravo! Cupid is blind! Well thought, Apollonius! Let us see to
whom he has brought a message from the goddess," said Sotades.
At this moment Kallisthenes uttered a cry of surprise and horror. He
leaped to his feet and pointed to the great bowl from which the wine
was taken.
The servant, whose attention had been unduly drawn to the revellers,
had inadvertently laid the ladle across the brim of the crater,--a
thing regarded as ominous of dire calamity to some one of the guests,
the evil to be averted only by the instant cessation of the revelry.
The feasters looked, and echoed the consternation of the Feast Master.
The guests unceremoniously rose, and were hastening as fast as their
uncertain legs and frightened attendants could carry them, when
Apollonius recalled them. "A curse on the slave! Let us appease our
Nemesis of the feast with the offal of the villain who has broken its
rules!" and lifting the crater he felled the unfortunate man who had
perpetrated the dire omen.
As the guests, half sobered by the scene, stood about the prostrate
body Apollonius said:
"Hear you, good friends, to-morrow we will treat you to something more
ominous still. We will offer another sacrifice,--a sow upon the Jews'
altar in the Temple, court. Attend me there. Farewell! Bacchus protect
his own!"
Dion took the hand of Apollonius.
"My thanks, General, for your aid in recovering this child, whom I will
return to his home."
The Governor lowered his voice:
"Serve me as well when occasion requires, Captain Dion; and if Elkiah's
daughter does not reward your service with her favor, tell her what she
owes to Apollonius, and I will cast my bait."
The revellers dispersed to their various quarters, some to the citadel,
some to the camps outside the walls, and some to the mansions from
which they had ejected the owners. One or two of the slaves lighted
torches of resinous wood to guide the feet of their masters along the
stones, which were slippery with the sewage thrown from the doorways,
or poured over the roof parapets into the street. But most of the
servants were fully occupied in supporting the limp bodies of their
lords, and now and then lifting them out of the holes where, once
fallen, they insisted upon sitting, while they called for more wine, or
relieved themselves of what they had already taken.
VII
IN THE TOILS OF APOLLONIUS
Dion hastened toward the house of Elkiah, leading the blind child by
the hand. As they threaded their way through the narrow streets, Caleb
told his story of the day's adventures. He had been seized in the
afternoon, and taken somewhere beyond the walls, among the soldiers in
the tents. He overheard his captors talking of the reward that Elkiah
would give for the return of his son, and intimating how much more
they could wring from Glaucon, when some one claimed him in the name
of Apollonius. He was led away, as he supposed, to be killed, and was
surprised at being conducted to the palace.
Dion plied him with questions, but could elicit no further information.
The Captain knew Apollonius too well to believe that the introduction
of a Jewish Cupid at the feast, and the rescue of the lad, were all
there was to his purpose. He pondered the problem in the light of the
Governor's well-known selfishness and sensuality. Did his design reach
to the possession of Deborah?
Coming to the house of Elkiah they were surprised to find the outer
door unfastened. Caleb ran up the stairs and heralded his coming with
many shouts.
Elkiah was sitting beside the wounded Benjamin in the darkness.
"The Lord be praised! His mercy endureth forever!" ejaculated the
father as Caleb flung himself into his arms.
"But where is Deborah?" cried the lad.
"Is not your sister with you? Then how came you hither, child?" replied
the old man, in that quick terror to which the events of recent days
had made him susceptible.
"I brought him here, sir. I, Dion."
"Met you not my daughter? You sent for her? No? I understand it not.
One came bringing as a token a bit of the lad's clothing, and pledged
to take her where the lost might be found. I thought the messenger had
come from you. Ere I could detain her, Deborah was gone. Was it not you
that sent? May I believe a Greek? Trifle not, I beseech you, with one
whose life-thread can endure but little more. My daughter! O give me my
daughter! If harm has come to her through thee, the curse of the Lord
rot thy bones! O my child! My child!"
"It is the trick of the soldiers. They thought to get Deborah too,"
cried Caleb.
"Alas," said Dion, "that you were not blind, and could see to take me
to the place where they kept you before the General sent for you."
"That I can do," said the boy. "I saw all the way."
"Saw?"
"Aye, with my feet and with my nostrils and with my ears, I saw
everything. Outside the walls we went down, down, down; it must have
been to cross the Kedron. Then we went up, up, up, fully halfway the
ascent toward Bethany. We went close to a cactus hedge, for I felt on
my cheeks the cool air the cactus breathes. Then over a broken wall,
for I fell among the stones. Next a house, high and of smooth mortar
walls, for I can tell such things by the echo one's footfall makes. The
tent we stopped at was near where horses, as many as threescore, were
tethered; this I knew from their neighing. It is an old camp, for the
odor of the dung was old."
"I have the spot," said Dion. "It is the camp of Cleanthes. Let me
away! But Glaucon, your Benjamin, does well?" bending a moment over the
sleeping form.
"So said the surgeon you brought," replied Elkiah. "But haste! O God of
Abraham, take my son if Thou wilt, but spare, oh, spare, my Deborah!
God be merciful! Thy billows are gone over me. Spare me that I may see
again the face of my child, and gather strength before I go hence, and
be no more!"
Caleb's judgment that Deborah had been decoyed by the soldiers proved
true. Her guide led her to the palace of Apollonius. On the way she
passed the roysterers returning from the banquet. The presence of the
soldier did not shield her from the insult of their tongues so well as
did her preoccupation with anxiety for her brother. She was left alone
in the antechamber of the Governor. Now and then she inquired in vain
of the passing servants for the blind child. Growing suspicious, she
endeavored to make her escape, but found the exits fastened, as she
tried them one by one.
At length the Governor came to her. He was flushed and unsteady from
the effects of his debauch, and accosted her with maudlin insolence.
"Ah, my pretty Jewess!"
"I came, sir, to claim the blind child, son of Elkiah."
"But suppose I should first claim the daughter of Elkiah. On the street
I let you go, but since you have come to me, well--that is different.
My will must rule in my own palace."
"Aye, the will of Apollonius, who has given his word for the safety of
the house of Elkiah," replied the girl undaunted.
"True, my fair one, and Apollonius will keep his word. You are in
danger anywhere else than here. None are safe in Jerusalem but those
who come beneath my shadow. To-morrow the soldiers will be let loose. I
cannot hold them back any longer. Elkiah's house may go with the rest
of the damned Jews. Apollonius' friendship is better than the sword of
his soldiers, eh, is it not?"
He put out his hands.
This terrible threat and the hideous alternative it presented to
her were too much for the girl to take in at once. She sank at the
monster's feet.
"Ah, my sweet one, don't do that. No slave shall you be to me; but I
will give you as many jewels as--as the fair Clarissa, the Queen of
the Grove of Daphne, wears. And I swear by your bright eyes, you shall
outshine the very goddesses of Antiochus' palace."
He stooped and touched her. Then she quivered as if stung by a scorpion.
"Mercy, sir! Mercy for the house of Elkiah! An old man, a blind child,
a wretched girl,--these are not enemies for the great Apollonius to
crush. Brave men would despise him for harming such."
"Humph!" grunted the Governor, "and they would despise me more for
letting such a splendid woman as you go to another,--even to Dion."
At this word Deborah leaped to her feet.
Apollonius held out his arms to her, but recoiled as he saw her whole
frame the impersonation of hatred and rage. He would as soon have
ventured to grasp a sheet of flame. Then his face hardened. Fixing upon
her a pair of cold, steely eyes, he assumed the pose of a bargainer.
Had each word been a knife-cut severing a piece of her flesh for the
weighing scale, he could not have more cruelly tortured her.
"I have heard that the daughters of Jewry are of such filial devotion
that they will give their lives for their sires. Will this one not give
Apollonius her friendship for her father's life?"
Deborah stood like a statue. The flush faded from her face as if her
soul had fled. She forgot for the moment the scene and the man before
her. She was with her father. She saw his face so white, with blood
on his beard. She imagined him led out to death; thrust over the city
walls; prodded with spear; tortured on the rack; having the tongue torn
from his mouth,--for such things had recently been done in Jerusalem.
The cry came from her lips:
"Give me my father's life!"
"Aye, and thine with it, sweet maiden," cried Apollonius, imagining
that his prey was yielding to his importunities.
But he was quickly undeceived. Deborah's whole form seemed to expand.
In the wine-dimmed eyes of her captor she was transformed from a
helpless girl into the most queenly of women, whose dignity awed him;
then into some avenging deity; a divine apparition of purity which had
come to scourge him for his lifetime of lust and cruelty.
"My life?" she cried. "Can a Greek understand this--that Elkiah would
slay his daughter with his own hand if he knew that Apollonius had
touched her?"
The soldier who had never quailed before men was cowed by this woman.
What was left of manhood in him asserted itself in maudlin apology. He
sought to appease the righteous fury he had excited.
But it was too late. The woman was no longer a suppliant. As a soldier
is turned by excitement of the battle into a fiend, so Deborah was
turned into a soldier, and now became her own defender. She withdrew to
the farther side of the apartment. As she did so she caught sight of
the sword of the General lying upon a table. She noted its hilt gemmed
with jewels, and its blade etched with heroic devices. She seized it,
and sprang like a tigress upon the unarmed man. As he crouched back to
avoid the stroke, Deborah stopped.
"Stay, I will not slay you like a caged beast. Let the great Apollonius
outrage a defenseless woman--a Jewish woman would despise herself if
she harmed a defenseless Greek. The daughter of feeble Elkiah will give
the brave Apollonius a chance for his life. Unbar the door, or let it
be said that a woman slew thee. I will not ask a pledge of a Greek to
spare my father. I would not trust the word he has already broken.
Jehovah of Israel will avenge my father's house! Unbar the door!"
Apollonius flung a quick glance around to discover a mode of escape.
Had he been fully possessed of his wits he would doubtless have found
some means of disarming his assailant. Yet the action of the woman was
so alert and resolute that most men would have been held at bay. She
poised the weapon for its lunge. Had the Jewess learned the art of
fence? Or did the quickening of her faculties by the intensity of her
purpose supply the deficiency of training? Her attitude was perfect
for the giving of the fatal blow. In the General's eyes at the moment,
if she were not Ares, the god of war, she was Athena armed,--no less
puissant.
The baffled chieftain had no alternative but submission. Yet it was not
mere submission to the accident of her advantage. There was a sort of
voluntary homage in the way in which, half sobered by the situation, he
yielded to the inevitable.
"The daughter of Elkiah has won her liberty," said he, with a wave of
his hand that nearly sent him sprawling. He staggered to where a bronze
plate hung, and struck it. As its signal was answered from without, he
cried:
"Ho, Servites, let the woman pass!"
Without losing for an instant her attitude of caution, Deborah passed
to the doorway. Putting the weapon beneath her robe, she said:
"This will I keep as the pledge of Apollonius' honor until he shall
win it back from braver hands than his own. Our God will raise us up a
defender. The Avenger of Israel shall come."
Pausing a moment between the curtains which Servites held back for her
passage, and fixing upon her captor a look of utter contempt, she drew
the sword again from her garment, and flung it ringing upon the marble
floor, with the exclamation:
"But no! Let it not be said that a Hebrew girl despoiled the General of
the Greeks. Apollonius may keep his sword until the Lord Jehovah gives
us a man strong enough to take it from him."
She passed out.
VIII
DEBORAH DISCOVERS HERSELF
With the impulse of flight Deborah glided out from beneath the portal
of Apollonius' palace. For a moment she glanced backward, as if her
soul would hurl its final malediction upon her enemy. Then she was
seized with fright as she realized her danger. The lanterns which
hung about the great doorway and throughout the court, with their
transparent screens of red and yellow and blue, glared upon her like
the eyes of demons. She ran at first without thought of her direction,
driven by a wild impulse to escape.
When she reached the open street the light of the moon, shining down
serenely between the house-tops, seemed like the white shield of some
heavenly defender to save her from the pursuing lanterns. She paused to
think. Whither should she flee? Should she flee at all? Caleb? Surely
he must be somewhere in the place she had left. With that thought her
feet became as lead. She could not desert the child.
She would go back, demand admission to the presence of the tyrant, and
risk anything, everything, for her brother's liberation.
Quickly she saw the futility of this project. She might not be
readmitted, and if so, Apollonius would now avenge himself by the
accomplishment of his original purpose. What should she do? If she
went to her home, would not some emissary of the enraged Governor
intercept her? Surely this proud and remorseless man would not let her
live to tell the story of his shame.
Partly from instinctive caution, partly from the feeling that the
darkness of the night better fitted her own uncertainty of purpose, she
kept close to the houses on the shadowed side of the narrow street.
Though she walked on rapidly, her soul stood still, like a sentinel
peering through the gloom that echoes the step of some as yet unseen
danger.
By her side at length loomed piles of fallen stone and half-standing
walls. These were the ruins of what a few weeks before had been the
elegant residence of Ben Isaac, one of the wealthiest merchants of
Jerusalem. It had been razed by order of King Antiochus, who had first
pillaged its treasures and then carried its master captive to Antioch,
and there exacted from him by torture the remnant of his riches.
Deborah turned in amid the ghastly wreck. The wild desolation so fitted
her experience that the spot seemed restful. The moon was sinking
toward the west, and poured its full lustre against a still-standing
wall. The very sharpness of the beams cut a block of contrasted
darkness on the side toward the east. Deborah climbed over the rough
stones and hid within the shadow.
Beneath her lay, like snowdrifts, the squat domes and flat roofs of
the houses in the lower Street of the Cheesemakers, once the homes of
honest artisans and tradespeople, now the sleeping-troughs of the vile
herd hired to trample out the life of the nation.
Beyond, the vision broken only by the massive shape of the Temple on
Moriah, lay the vale of Jehoshaphat, the quiet slopes of Olivet, and
the long hills to the north glittering here and there as the moonlight
fell upon the hated tents of the enemy. As the rising sea pours its
tide into a narrow creek, so there came upon her a sense of her
nation's shame and woe. At first her power of definite thought seemed
destroyed by the flood. Why could she not cease also to feel? Why could
she not die and become as insensate as the stones, these other ruins
about her?
At length she realized a strange transformation taking place within
her; she felt that she had grown suddenly to be no longer a child, but
a woman. Nor was she merely a woman of Jerusalem, but a strong avenging
spirit. She drank the bitterness of her own heart, and was intoxicated,
frenzied, with it. She, who had never felt anything but love, had now
learned to hate, and it seemed good to her. Then she became frightened
at this revelation of herself to herself. She had possessed a mastiff,
gentle, affectionate. Little blind Caleb would lie between its great
paws as in the lap of Huldah. Once the beast was stoned upon the
street. From that day his temper was changed. He became a savage brute;
doubtless his original wild nature reasserting itself. Was she herself
not some cruel, vicious spirit suddenly awakened?
She prayed, "God save me from myself!"
An answer came. It did not allay her excitement, but exalted her;
seemed to inspire her.
The music of revelry in the tents beyond the walls became to her
spiritualized senses like the timbrel and song of Miriam of old, when
that woman led the hosts of Israel by the waters of the Red Sea. Was
not her own name Deborah? and did not a Deborah once lead her nation
in battle? She remembered how her father had bemoaned her being only
a girl, unless she could grow into another Deborah indeed. She heard
again the words of the ancient song, "Awake! awake, Deborah! awake!
Awake! Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive!"
If she could not imitate the great prophetess, why could she not
emulate the deed of Jael, who drove the nail through the head of the
sleeping Syrian general, Sisera? Why had she not slain Apollonius? A
woman, a common woman of Israel, had delivered her land; why should not
she? She murmured aloud the words of the Scripture, "Blessed above all
women shall Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, be; blessed shall she
be above all women in the tent."
Then she prayed, "Oh, God of Israel, take Thy handmaiden for what Thou
wilt--for what Thou wilt!"
A chill, as of a wind from icy Hermon, ran through her frame, though
the night was not cold. Was this the breath of the Lord? Then her
blood became like liquid fire, and burned along the veins. Was she
in communion with the divine fury? Again her flesh felt a cooling
sensation, as if fanned and softly touched by an angel's wing. Was not
an angel with her? These experiences were repeated again and again.
Long time she sat upon a stone amid the ruins. She hailed the moonlight
that lay beyond as some all-watchful Power; the shadow in which she
sat became like some awful Presence. Was not this a token of God's
will, approving her own thought to become an avenger of the wrongs of
her people?
At length the moonlight faded; the shadow disappeared, for the dawn
sent its ruddy gleams along the east. That was to her the smile of the
Lord. Henceforth she was to be, not the daughter of Elkiah, but the
daughter of Jerusalem; the child of her nation; the sacrifice, if need
be, for her people. The fire had been put out on the Temple altar. Holy
priests could no longer bind the brutes for sacrifice. But the great
cause of God was itself the altar, and she--she would cling to that
altar, binding herself there by the cords of a willing consecration.
With the words of an oft-repeated psalm--words that had a meaning
infinitely deeper now than she had ever conceived before--"Lo, I come
to do Thy will, O God; bind the sacrifice to the altar," she stepped
out of the shadow of the wall into the blending light of the setting
moon and rising sun.
In an instant she darted back into her retreat. The stalwart form of
a soldier was passing; but she was too late to escape his detection.
The man halted, put his hand above his eyes as if to brush away the
darkness, and turned in among the ruins.
* * * * *
Captain Dion's search for Deborah in the camp of Cleanthes beyond the
Kedron had, of course, been fruitless. As he returned to the city, what
had heretofore been a vague suspicion of the treachery of Apollonius
became a conviction, and filled him with rage. Had he questioned
himself, he would have said that his wrath was because of the personal
insult the Governor had put upon him, in tricking him in his purpose.
He even thought of the slight at the banquet when Apollonius refused
to allow him the honor of being Feast Master. Dion was not aware--for
he had no skill in introspection--that he had been driven over the
stones of Kedron and through the streets of the city like a madman, by
love for a girl; that but for such fuel to his passion his resentment
against Apollonius might have died away, or been suppressed by the
sense that it was imprudent to antagonize one so much his superior in
rank.
Dion's mind was somewhat confused by its own effervescence when he
passed along the street in front of the house of Ben Isaac. His
attention was drawn by a figure moving amid the ruins. Was this some
strolling woman? Surely none would seek such a place at such an hour.
He was not superstitious, but might not this be some shade of the
slaughtered household of Ben Isaac? or, perhaps, one of the former
servants searching furtively for jewels and coins which were known to
have been concealed in secret nooks between the walls? His curiosity,
if not his soldierly duty, would have led him to inspect.
With drawn sword he strode in between the fallen stones.
"Out of this!" he cried.
Captain Dion was a brave man, but at the moment he preferred that any
pilferer might escape rather than he himself should encounter the ghost
of a dead Jew. With the sun rising and a goodly rattle of a carnal
weapon any self-respecting wraith from Hades ought to flit back to his
appointed shades.
He turned the angle of the standing wall. Surely that was no
apparition. Deborah stood with right hand uplifted to challenge the
intruder. It was the attitude Dion had seen within Elkiah's gateway.
He would scarcely have recognized her otherwise, so changed was she in
feature by the tragedy of the night.
"The daughter of Elkiah! Gods! why are you in this place? What villainy
have you fled from? Tell me, and I swear that I shall not sheathe my
sword until you are avenged."
The familiar voice recalled her.
"The child! My Caleb!" she cried.
"The lad! He is at home. I found him; I brought him."
Complete as had been her transformation from a child into a spirit of
vengeance, the kindly tone and news brought by Dion made her a girl
again. She felt her weakness, her need of protection. She sat upon a
stone, and the tears which she thought had been forever dried within
her by the terrors of the night, burst forth as from a fresh fountain.
"My dear Deborah----"