at home and consult the entrails and stars. But it was reported that
the Jews were accompanied by some of theirs. I overheard one say, 'The
prophetess, the Daughter of Jerusalem, is with us.'"
His eyes searched hers, but could discover no sign that she understood
his deeper meaning.
The diplomatic play between Dion and Deborah was like the sword play
of two expert fencers whose blades cling together. Glaucon unwittingly
relieved the tension by inquiring:
"As a soldier, do you advise my leaving the city, Captain Dion?"
"I as a soldier, or you as a soldier? Which do you mean?" laughed the
Captain.
"I am not a soldier," said Glaucon. "My position of influence is too
great for me to take such risks."
"If you were a soldier," said Dion, "I would advise you to make your
house a castle, and die behind your parapets. But no, I think that one
with so many other interests had better take refuge in the citadel or
at Antioch. The fact is, our forces have been utterly overthrown. The
Jews are in pursuit through the plain. Judas, I think, camped in our
camps at Lydda last night. But he will return; and if he strikes us
here we have not sufficient soldiers to guard the entire walls. We can
hold no more than the citadel."
"Then I will gather up all I can, and to-morrow have it removed to the
Tower of David," replied the frightened man.
"I commend your discretion," said the soldier, as Glaucon, summoning
his steward, left the apartment.
XXV
A JEWESS TAKES NO ORDERS FROM THE ENEMY
"And you, Captain?" said Deborah, with as much coolness as courtesy
when they were alone. "You will pardon my seeming lack of hospitality,
for you know that you are ever welcome at the house of Elkiah; but
should you not return to your duty? The riot in the street needs a
strong control. And are you not under orders from General Seron?"
"The General has forgotten what orders he has given," replied Dion.
"Or, if he remembers them, he will have to enforce them with a new
army from Sheol, for Seron has fled thither. It was bravely done,
but terrible. The General has already taken the only vengeance that
remained for his defeat. He has washed out his dishonor in his own
blood. We had scarcely entered the citadel when he turned to me and
said, 'Dion, this disgrace I shall never live to hear told. Do as I
do.' With that he struck his dagger to the heart of his wife, then
fell himself upon his sword point. I did not obey his order. I was too
cowardly for that."
Dion hesitated before he continued:
"But no, I was not cowardly. Deborah, since what has passed between
us, I owe to you the confession of my only reason for not following my
leader in his terrible deed. I thought of one very dear to me, from
whom I seemed to have been separated by long years, so slow did the
time creep in her absence--now among a people foreign to me. To this
woman I had once bound myself with a vow."
Deborah felt the blood coming to her cheeks.
Dion kept on: "While this woman lives, I must live, unless she bids me
die. But if she shall call me coward I will disprove her words by dying
at her feet. Does the daughter of Elkiah bid me follow my General? I
will obey. Since the turn of affairs at Bethhoron you will no longer
need one of hated race to protect you. As your Jehovah is my judge,
Deborah, I have lived for naught else since I felt the touch of your
hand at the Wady. I await your word."
How much one can live in a moment! The two preceding years lay there
in Deborah's memory like a landscape under the lightning. She saw this
man in his sacrificial friendship. She thought that she resented his
personal affection; but, that being eliminated, he was the noblest of
souls: a Greek, yet respecting her nation's faith even by the altar in
the Temple where he raised his protest in the endeavor to protect her
dying father; defending this house because it was a home; more tender
to her Caleb than his own brother had been. She asked herself, "Could
even Judas have shown nobler manhood? Would he befriend a household of
his enemies whose only claim should be their piteous need?"
With all hauteur gone, she extended her hand and said:
"Forgive me, Captain Dion! I have wronged you. I have been blind! I am
blind still!"
She thought she had looked him frankly in the face, and that she had
pronounced these words very calmly; she was unaware that she had
blushed, that tears came into her eyes, and that her hand trembled in
his.
Dion was more astute. Like an expert soldier he detected the favorable
turn affairs had taken at this critical juncture, and sought words to
press his advantage. But before he could speak Deborah had lapsed into
reserve. Was it her woman's pride that felt somewhat of resentment? or
was it the remnant of her former resolution which came as a forlorn
hope to her rescue? She said:
"You, sir, should be with your soldiers; and I--I have much to think
of."
"But pledge me, Deborah, that you will not go again to the army."
At this she stood erect and haughty, as a captive queen before her
captor might have done. She forced severity into her tone:
"I am a Jewess, sir, and must not take orders from the enemy."
"I do not command, I entreat," replied Dion. "By your own God, Deborah,
I swear to you that the slaughter of all the King's host is less to me
than that harm should come to a hair of your head."
"A very pretty speech," rejoined Deborah, with simulated sarcasm, "but
it is scarcely a speech befitting a Greek soldier. Is your faith like a
helmet which can be changed at will, that you can swear by a stranger's
god?"
"My faith! My faith!" exclaimed Dion. "We Greeks have no such faith as
yours. But a single faith have I--that all gods are one, or rather, as
your heroism has made me feel, that one God is all. The God of Israel
is the God of all nations. That you have taught me. I have found my
prophetess, if Israel has none."
"It is the true faith," said Deborah, "but how should you know it? Is a
girl's belief more to you than all your boasted philosophy?"
"Not a girl's belief, but a woman's life," cried the Greek
enthusiastically. "A life filled with the spirit of her God, is most
convincing. That has persuaded me. And yet, Deborah, these thoughts are
not altogether new to me. From childhood I seem to have had something
of this faith. Voices have spoken to me from an unknown world--a world
over this, as the sky domes all lands and seas. Our Greek gods are to
this God of yours as the bright things about us are to the sun. Though
the sun's face be hidden by clouds all things get their brightness from
it. And strangely, these voices I speak of seem to be recalling me to
something I had once known and forgotten, or to awaken something born
in me, but still latent and unintelligible. Your father's clear faith,
your own words, your devotion--these have been an interpreter of what I
have so vaguely felt. Believe me, Deborah, I commit no sacrilege when I
swear my devotion to the God of Israel."
Deborah listened with a delight not concealed by her expression of
wonderment.
"Tell me," she said eagerly, "tell me more of yourself, Captain Dion. I
pray you be seated. Did not your father have something of this faith?
Else who has taught you?"
"My father I have hardly known," replied Dion. "He was attached to the
court of Philip of Macedonia. When I was but seven years old he was
sent on an embassage to Rome, and never returned to us. My mother had
died four years before. Of her I have but dim remembrance, or perhaps
fancied remembrance, prompted by this."
He produced from his breast a small box enclosing a beautiful face
carved in relief upon ivory, and delicately enriched with flesh tints.
"This was the work of an Athenian who was greatly skilled in such art.
This face has ever been in my thoughts. No other face of woman ever
displaced it from my constant dream by day and by night, until----"
"Speak no more of that," said Deborah. "Let no stranger supplant your
mother's image in your love."
"At my father's death," resumed Dion, "I was made a page in the
household of Perseus, who succeeded Philip, until I was strong enough
to carry a sword. Since then the camp has been my home. I fought for
my King until he was utterly overthrown by the Romans; then I became
a wanderer. Hoping that Antiochus would war against my old enemy the
Romans, I gave him my sword. I did not seek such work as we have done
here. But enough about myself. Pledge me, Deborah, that you will not go
again to the army."
"Again to the army?" exclaimed Deborah. "Why, when you found me at the
Wady, did you not entreat me to return to my home here? And have I not
done so?"
"And it was well," replied Dion. "But it was said that at the fight
yesterday, the daughter of Elkiah encouraged the Jews. Your name was
heard shouted like a battle cry by the Maccabæans."
"My name!" said Deborah, in well-feigned amazement. "Captain Dion,
surely that bruise on your brow tells of some more serious blow you
must have received, to have imagined that you heard my name. And have
you not found me here?"
"Yes, I can give the lie to the rumor about your being in the battle;
and I will swear by Jehovah and all the gods, that I know to the
contrary, if the story should ever be repeated to your injury among the
people of the city."
"Do not swear it, Dion. If you believe in our God, keep His commandment
which says, 'Thou shalt not take the Name of God in vain,' and for a
Greek to swear as you propose to do would surely be in vain."
XXVI
TO UNMASK THE PRINCESS
The panic in Jerusalem soon gave place to a sense of security. This
was due not only to the fact that the Maccabæans had not followed up
their victory and attacked the city, but also in large measure to the
quieting counsel of Captain Dion.
"The defeat at Bethhoron," he declared, "was owing not to any superior
force of the Jews, but to the folly of General Seron in marching his
army so as to invite assault. Indeed, when the forward phalanges
recoiled upon those coming after, the Greeks defeated themselves.
That disaster might have occurred had no enemy attacked us. But the
force that Judas has, while sufficient to start a panic by its sudden
irruption under such circumstances, is too small to attempt the capture
of the city. His men are only peasants, and without armaments of siege.
Upon the walls one man could withstand many assailants; and from
within the citadel a woman might resist a company of men. Beside this,
intelligence has come that Lysias, the new Governor, has despatched our
most noted generals, Ptolemy, Nicanor, and Gorgias, with a force of
forty thousand footmen and seven thousand horse to utterly exterminate
the Maccabæans. If the rebels elude our new armies, it will be only by
leaving Judea, and taking refuge across the Jordan in the mountains
of Moab, where they will be as harmless to Jerusalem as are the beasts
which infest those wilds."
Under such counsel the people were calmed. As the terrible Judas did
not appear at the gate of the city--nor, as some imagined, like a bat
as big as a cloud, scale the walls with armed men under his wings--life
resumed its usual course among the inhabitants.
The reaction from fright did not even stop with a general sense of
security. The pleasure-loving people sought to recompense their days of
abstinence by extravagant indulgence.
In this they were charmingly led by the Princess Helena, whose grief
for Apollonius had been completely healed, if rumor were correct, by
the attentions of Glaucon. The enamored man had purchased her favor
by a relinquishment to her of his interest in the estate of Shattuck.
This transaction, told by Helena in confidence to Lydia, had come to
the knowledge of her husband Menelaos, the High Priest, who, claiming
to be partner with the renegade Jew in all ventures that paid, insisted
upon Glaucon's turning over to him, as through former agreement,
one-half the estimated prospective value of the estate. An open breach
between the two men was prevented by a stroke of business shrewdness
manipulated by the two women. Glaucon was induced to repurchase the
claim by payment to the Princess of a sum of ready money; which money,
it is needless to say, was shared by that gracious lady with the High
Priest himself, who still retained his half interest in the Shattuck
property.
Glaucon was readily reconciled to his loss through this deal, not only
by the affectionate rewards of his mistress, but by new discoveries
relative to the estate of Shattuck. Its value was greater than he had
at first surmised, embracing heavy mortgages upon adjacent property.
All this time Glaucon's relations with the Princess were an offense to
Deborah which, with all her art, she could scarcely conceal. She must
tear the fair veil from this hideous creature. But how could she do
so without confessing her own double life, since it was in the spy's
disguise she had discovered all that she really knew of the woman? In
her remonstrances with Glaucon she dared not go beyond interrogations
and insinuations, which her brother resented with warmth.
"If we have not known her, others have," said he. "Her coming to meet
Apollonius in Samaria was an event in the camp."
"And excited no scandal?"
"Scandal? Hera, the wife and sister of Jove, did not escape the taunt
of tongues. The fairer the flower the fouler the insect that stings it.
You yourself, Berenice, have had unsavory things said of you; but who
would believe them?"
"Still," interposed Deborah, "you know for a certainty nothing about
her lineage."
"She has told me all," replied Glaucon. "The blood of the great
Alexander is in her veins, mingled with that of the Ptolemies. But do
you not see her royalty in her very look and form and manner? The gods
do not make such caskets except for priceless gems."
"The hetæræ of Greece are the fairest women," suggested Deborah, with a
tone of contempt.
"But have you not seen how choice she is in the selection of her
friends?" argued he. "In Jerusalem she receives to her intimacy only
those of the most dignified position, like the house of Menelaos--and
the house of Glaucon."
"But tell me, brother, how many talents has she picked from your purse?"
Glaucon colored, but smiled, as he replied: "Well, is not that, too, a
princely habit?"
He quickly diverted the conversation from the uncomfortable direction
it was taking. The Princess had humiliated him in his own eyes by
outwitting him in the Shattuck matter; and as a marred mirror avenges
itself by marring the reflection cast upon it, so the image of Helena's
virtue had now at least one fault in Glaucon's judgment. She was over
sharp for him; an offense which at brief moments fretted his love.
But he was too proud to admit that Deborah had touched a spot in him
already sensitive through irritation, and quickly resumed the praise of
the Princess.
"How divinely she speaks! and upon what themes! Only courts have
such instructors as she has had. Alexander was not better taught by
Aristotle."
"Perhaps she sings and dances as well. Has she exhibited these
accomplishments also?" asked Deborah.
"How should I know of these things? My little sister, educated as
you have been in the narrowness of our former Jewish life, you
have not learned that a free-born Greek woman, much more one of
aristocratic family, is never allowed to reveal to the other sex such
accomplishments as you mention, even if she possesses them. These arts
of singing and dancing, beautiful as they are, are left to the slave
caste for performance. Athena is not Terpsichore. But, by the way,
there are some fine artists of that sort in Jerusalem. Several women
noted for their beauty of voice and limb came from Antioch with the
officers of Seron. They were nearly trodden to death in the flight.
They were found near Bethhoron, and brought to the city, where we need
entertainment. Meton, the chief of the city garrison, had them at the
castle last night; and I can get them here. Our Princess Helena and
Lydia, with Menelaos, will make a company before which they will be
proud to display their parts."
"Not here, Benjamin, in our father's house, not here."
"Then in the house of Menelaos."
"Not there, I beg you; for Menelaos bears the name of High Priest. Let
us at least respect the customs of Israel, if we no longer have its
faith."
"Let it then be in the Princess' house. She has no such silly
scruples," replied Glaucon petulantly. "It is the custom of the
aristocracy of Greece to hire their entertainers; poets to recite,
orators to declaim, pantomimists, dancers, players on instruments and
singers. Helena will arrange it all, if I ask her."
"And if you pay for it?" suggested Deborah, as Glaucon hurried away to
carry out his new conceit.
Deborah watched the curtain through which he had passed. Dark shadows
were flung upon her face from darker thoughts within. She paced the
floor as restively as a caged panther. The convulsive movement of her
fingers was as if they were clutching and stifling some hideous insect
which defiled them, and which she would fling away when she had killed
it.
"How long is this to be?" she murmured. "But that by my abiding here
Jerusalem will be the sooner rid of all this abomination, I would go to
the camp--or to the desert. But here I can best serve Judas. Patience!
Patience! But this impostor, this Princess, forsooth! She must be
unmasked."
XXVII
THE QUEEN OF THE GROVE
The court around which the house of Helena was built had, through
liberal draft upon the Princess' taste and Glaucon's purse, been
prepared for the entertainment. The jet of water which ordinarily
rose in the centre of the court was turned off, and the little marble
basin in which the bronze lotus leaves seemed to float was now covered
over with a platform extended and raised sufficiently to display the
performance.
Helena's nose turned too much upward for a Greek ideal when, late in
the day, she contemplated the meagre decorations. Glaucon had hired
a number of men and boys to gather wild flowers from the fields; but
the dread of the ubiquitous Judas had kept these gleaners within a few
rods of the city gate. Lamps enclosed in bags of various-colored linen
and silk were substituted for the lanterns of brass and silver and
opalescent stones which anciently had been the common adornment of the
houses of the well-to-do people.
But whatever was lacking in these respects was compensated by the
brilliancy of the chamber which, raised three steps above the pavement,
opened upon the court. This place was strewn with cushions and skins
of tiger and fox, so that the floor was not unlike the body of a vast
peacock lying with extended wings and tail. Amid these, and upon the
divans which ran round the three sides of the chamber, reclined fair
women; and hovering over them, like humming-birds seeking the sweet
of flowers, stood high officers from the garrison, and a few of the
richest of the Greek priests in gala dress.
Menelaos asserted the prerogative of his rank, and reclined with the
fair sex. Glaucon, as chief patron of the show, and more than patron of
the hostess, assumed a similar privilege.
"Is she not beautiful, my sister?" whispered the Jew as Helena,
having duly saluted her guests, with a wave of the hand indicated the
beginning of the entertainment.
Helena evidently overheard the compliment, and rewarded Glaucon with
a smile that would have captivated any voluptuary, though he were not
already infatuated, as was her present victim.
"She is very fair," replied Deborah.
"A palm-tree is not more stately among juniper bushes than Helena among
women," said the enamored man.
"Rather say as graceful as a spotted serpent coiling about a
palm-tree," interjected his sister. "What limbs for a dancer!"
Glaucon interpreted her comment to apply to another woman, who at the
moment seemed to have materialized out of the tangled lamp rays, and
appeared upon the platform in the court. This airy being stood long
enough to assure the spectators that she was of real flesh and blood.
Then, with hands outspread, she pivoted herself upon the slender point
of her foot, and gyrated with as little apparent muscular effort as
that of the wand which a juggler twirls upon his finger. Two other
women joined her. Together they writhed in the set forms of a dance,
which was designed to show through thin drapery the fine contour of
their persons, the proportion of their limbs, and grace of motion.
"Bravo!" cried Menelaos, tossing a handful of gold coins. As they rang
upon the pavement, the dancers, without stopping or marring their
orderly movements, picked up the gleaming spots.
"Bravo!" echoed Glaucon. "I have never seen it better done. I remember
the same figures executed by the famous Thessalian sisters at Antioch.
You recall the dance, do you not?"
"I am not sufficiently versed in the art to recognize the movements,"
replied the Priest.
"The wine will clear your wits," responded Glaucon, nodding to the
Princess for approval, which was so sweetly given that it proved
sufficient intoxicant to the Jew without need of any from the cup. He
clapped his hands, signalling to the servants, who filled the great
goblet.
"This wine," said Glaucon, "I had sent from the capital as a gift to
our fair hostess. Let her first spice it with a touch of her lips."
The Princess acknowledged the excellence of Glaucon's choice by
quaffing deeply, and then passed the golden vessel to her guests.
The girls again appeared, one carrying a cythera, another a tambour,
the third castanets. The first sang, to the accompaniment of her
instrument, a love song. Her voice had much natural sweetness, and gave
evidence of cultivation; but the notes soon became husky and harsh, as
if age-worn, although the singer could scarcely have passed her first
score of years. It gave proof of the dissipation which soon ends the
career of women of her class, unless they are possessed of sufficient
ambition and will to practise a measure of present self-restraint for
the sake of longer future indulgence. The two other girls joined in
the chorus with tambour and castanets, and afterwards executed a dance
which was pantomimic of the song.
Was it the gold that excited them, or is there a spirit of the dance
which resides somewhere in the air or in the light, and enters the
bodies of its votaries? These women became ecstatic; they seemed
to emerge from themselves, and to become each a living presence of
Terpsichore. They closed their eyes as if they danced in sleep. Their
lips were parted to inhale the intoxicating breath of their goddess,
who should thus supply the energy which physical motion exhausted.
The timing of their feet became as pulse-beats, rhythmic, strong,
flinging them through the forms of the dance, as a fever throb whirls
one through the maze of fantastic visions. They bent until their
dishevelled hair touched the floor, like stalks of grain beneath the
weight of golden tassels. Then, as the wind lifts the stalk and flings
high its bannered top, the women became erect. With instruments above
their heads, they swirled, each like a glistening whirlpool, until the
spectators were dizzied.
During the performance Helena had spiced the wine more than once with
her lips as she passed the cup to Glaucon.
"The dance is shamefully poor," said she. "How that girl mouthed her
words, and failed to give the right accent! The click of the castanets
is not timed to her motions. And the movement of her ankles--as
awkward as if her legs were flail-sticks. The girls are not artists.
Let them sing again, and I will show them how."
She rose from the divan and, seizing the cythera from the hand of one
of the performers, rendered the song with wonderful power. Now Helena's
notes floated as buoyantly as those of a lark, and anon sank into
exquisite softness and depth, as blue wings sink into the azure. Then,
dropping from her shoulders her outer robe, with snapping fingers in
lieu of castanets, she gave the dance.