done as much in abandoning what seemed to him all the good of life in
order to cast in his lot with the people of God?
Perhaps Deborah did not deliberately and of intent carry on this
comparison. The thought of the Greek came into her mind of itself.
She drove it out as she would have frightened a sparrow away from the
lattice.
She then indulged the reminiscence of the various ways in which, since
she had dedicated her life to her country, she had been useful to
Judas. She did not doubt, even in her humility, that he spoke honestly
when he said that he needed her. But the sparrow came back to the
lattice. Had not God also led her to help this Greek to his better
faith? And did not he need her?
She drove the sparrow away. She said that it should never come again.
But, even as she said so, the sparrow twittered at the lattice.
She became puzzled with her question, "Why can I only by positive
effort exclude this man from my mind? Why are his face, and form, and
accents, and traits, and offered love always with me? Why does he press
upon me as the daylight against the window, to be excluded only by
drawing close the curtain?"
She had often observed a spring in the meadow, which the herdsmen tried
to fill up and destroy; yet it broke out again, because its veins were
deep and full beneath the earth. Was there such a spring of love for
the Greek in her heart?
Then her problem became one of casuistry. Would it be right for her to
give herself to Judas when she could not exclude another man from her
thoughts, though he could not come into her life? Would not that be
essential meretriciousness?
She had schooled herself to the habit of quick decision. So now she
would pronounce judgment. Judges on the bench sometimes grow pale when
they realize the immense consequences of their renderings; so Deborah,
rapidly as her mind worked, passed an hour in a tragedy. She rose from
the controversy strangely unnerved, until she steadied herself with
her indomitable will. She stood out in the light that came through the
latticed window, streaming in the last ray of the sunset. She hesitated
to say the fateful words, which she knew must not be recalled, for she
could not endure a repetition of the debate. Her face was uplifted to
the sun-gleam; her hands tightly clenched behind her back--just her
attitude, she remembered, when she made up her mind to become a spy
three years ago, there in the ravine by the Fort of the Rocks. Her lips
moved. Her words came heavy and cold, as if she had been changed from
a living woman into a speaking statue:
"The Greek cannot come into my life.
Nor--can--my--life--enter--into--that--of--Judas. God help me!"
She threw herself upon the divan, and the sun went down.
XLVIII
A BROKEN SENTENCE FINISHED
General Agathocles recognized the magnanimity of Judas in granting him
the alternative of remaining in Jerusalem under the honorable guard of
Dion, or of joining his own people. He chose the latter course. Yet
from day to day he postponed his departure. It was whispered that his
fatherly affection and authority would ultimately win back his son from
his Jewish allegiance; but a few, among them Jonathan, shook their
heads at this.
At length the General must take up his journey.
"My son, it may be--but the gods forbid it--that we shall not meet
again. I would always keep you in my mind as in a mirror. It will not
be enough that I learn of your welfare, and your doings; I would make
your very thoughts my own, and so live within your life, be it glad or
sorrowful. You have revealed to me that much of your thought will be
given to this woman you have learned to love. May she prove all that
your partiality has dreamed her to be! But beware! We do not love our
ideal, so much as we idealize what we love. I would see this woman, so
that I may know more of yourself, since it is evident that her image
moulds itself in you as a seal in wax. If I can see her, I will more
plainly see you."
Together they sought the house of Elkiah. The outer door being ajar
they entered the court without announcement, and without being observed
by the actors in a scene at the moment transpiring. Dion would have
advanced, but Agathocles laid his hand upon his arm and detained him.
The fountain statue of Aphrodite had been removed. The water shot up as
of old in a thin shaft, and fell in spray upon the surface of the broad
lower basin, glistening like the dust of gold in the morning sunshine.
Beside the fountain in a great chair sat Gideon ben Sirach. Deborah
was with him. The old man's eyes seemed enchanted by the play of the
sparkling water. He extended his hands and clutched as if to hold the
warmth of the sun that fell upon them. His features were drawn out of
shape by the palsy. Dion thought of a house from which the occupant
is about to remove, its furniture displaced, much of it already gone;
for Sirach's face was empty of the old expression of his soul. It was
evident that much of the meaning of his life, the furniture of his
mind, had been removed even from his memory. Deborah sat upon a little
bench, where Sirach's feet also rested. She took his withered hands,
and rubbed them as if to impart to them some of her own vitality.
"You can hear to-day, Gideon?"
His eyes turned toward her, but his features were as immobile as a
death-mask.
"You have no pain, Gideon? And God's own peace is with you? Yes, I
can read it in your eyes. Judas is now lord of Jerusalem; do you
understand? He bids me say that your master's property shall be
sacredly kept until its rightful owner comes home. He and I will seek
him. You hear, and understand? Gideon, you are an old man, and near to
the life of the blessed. Let me put your hands upon my head, that the
daughter of Elkiah may have the blessing of her father's friend. Here,
by this very fountain, my father and your master have often sat in the
years that are gone."
She bowed her head, and lifted Sirach's thin white fingers to her
black hair. So white were they that they seemed like points of light,
radiating the blessing they would impart.
Agathocles whispered to Dion: "Come away! This is no place for a
stranger."
They walked far down the street before either of them spoke. At length
Dion awoke his father from his reverie.
"You have seen her, father."
"There was never but one fairer woman," replied Agathocles. "Dion, with
such a woman to love you, I could leave you willingly in Jerusalem or
in the desert. Does she give you her favor? If so, here abide. If she
will not love you, Dion, flee; flee with me--to the wars, over the
seas, anywhere; and pray that the gods give you every day a drink from
Lethe's waters of forgetfulness. That woman, my boy, will fill a man's
heart or break it. Does she love you?"
"I would that I knew, father."
"Then find out, and at once. If so, stay here. Become a Jew, an Arab,
or what she bids you. Her answer will make Jerusalem either Elysium or
Tartarus for you."
"But," replied Dion, "I would that you knew her. I may not tell her
that my father left the city without caring to speak a word with her.
Though she love me not, I have been too intimate in the house of
Elkiah for so unkindly a departure."
"It shall be as you say," replied the General. "What women these Jews
have! Dion--but no--I will not say it; for what slips down from the
lips never climbs back again. Let us go again to the house of Elkiah.
An old Greek never loses his gallantry. If your heart fails you, Dion,
I will pay my own homage at her feet. Does that prick you? Come."
When they re-entered the court, Deborah had risen. She stood by the
chair, holding Sirach's hands and gazing closely into his eyes. Hearing
footsteps, and supposing them to be those of the servants, she did not
turn to look, but cried:
"Quick! Help! Sirach is stricken. See! His eyes do not follow one. I
fear he is dead. Sirach! Gideon! Alas, he does not hear."
The two men drew near. Deborah, absorbed with the face that was growing
rigid, and with the hands that were becoming as lead in her grasp, did
not recognize the visitors. Agathocles startled her. Forgetting that he
was a stranger, and caught by sudden emotion, he exclaimed:
"By all the gods! It is Sirach, servant of Shattuck! How came this man
here? Dion, tell me, knew you this man?"
Then, the first surprise past, the General made his obeisance to
Deborah, as Dion announced his name:
"My father, General Agathocles, begs to salute the daughter of Elkiah
before he leaves the city."
Deborah rose. The gracefulness of her courtesy as she recognized her
visitors matched her beauty. The Greek afterward said it was as
fitting as the light is to the flame which emits it.
"You are welcome to our home, sir, both for your own sake and the sake
of Dion. But do you know this good man whom God has just taken from us?"
"I knew him," replied the Greek, bowing beside the stiffening form. "I
knew Gideon ben Sirach. And aye for a good man too."
He raised the deformed arm of the dead man, and pressed it to his lips.
He drew up Sirach's loose sleeve, and looked long upon a terrible scar
that lay among the shrivelled muscles. Then, speaking to himself,
seemingly unaware that he was uttering his thoughts aloud:
"To this poor hand, good Gideon, do I not owe more than to any other,
living or dead? These arms brought me my greatest treasure--the only
treasure I would live for, or die for."
Then, raising his face as if to discern the spirit of Sirach hovering
above his body, as it was believed by many in that age that newly
departed spirits were loath to venture suddenly out upon the great
unknown journey, and remained for a while near to their former house of
clay--he said:
"Gideon, let me speak the gratitude that I have longed these years to
tell into your living ears. Sirach! Alas, I have found him too late. My
thanks, good lady, to all in this house that such a man came to no want
in his last days."
Agathocles noted the surprise upon his son's face, and, looking
anxiously from one to another, asked:
"Did Sirach ever tell his story in this house?"
"We know his story," replied Deborah. "Never was man more faithful to
man than this man has been."
Agathocles took from her words more than she had meant.
"O Gideon! Gideon! why were not your lips stricken dumb before they had
uttered it?"
He shook the dead body in anger. "Gideon, you gave me my boy. Why did
you steal him away from me?"
He turned back and paced the court in his excitement. Suddenly he
stopped before Dion.
"Now I know why you would be a Jew. It was because you knew that you
are one. But I swear by all the gods! I swear by the memory of my sweet
Agnes! Dion, you are mine. Sirach lied to you. Believe him not. Dion,
you are my boy."
He held the young man fast as he would some captive seeking to escape.
"And ever shall be yours, my father," replied Dion.
"Father? Say it again, Dion. That is a sweet word from your lips--sweet
as were the kisses of your mother. Swear to me, Dion, that not even
Gideon's story shall separate us."
"I swear it by Sirach's corpse that you are my father, and ever shall
be."
"Well, then"--taking Dion's cheeks between his hands--"then believe
Sirach. He has spoken the truth."
"But this is strange," replied the young man. "Gideon mentioned not
your name, father. He told us a story of Ctesiphon, the friend of one
Nahum."
"He spake not my name at all? He told you not that Agathocles was not
your father? Then, Gideon, you were faithful to me. But why, now, did
not those still lips open and check mine before they had uttered the
fatal words? But let it be so, since Dion is still my own."
"But who, then, was Ctesiphon, father?"
Agathocles stood a moment in thought. He then took Dion's arm and led
him away.
"Come, my boy; this is no place for us. Pardon me, my lady; let us not
intrude these matters of our privacy. We will come again, and take part
in honoring Sirach in his burial."
But what change had come over the fair woman? As the Greek had seen her
sitting by the side of the dead man, he noted how pale she was within
the hood of her raven hair; how Niobe-like was her attitude. Now she
was transformed, radiant; the blood tingeing her cheeks like sunshine
on snow. Her lips seemed to be about to utter some passionate cry. Her
hand clasped that of Dion.
* * * * *
There was another who saw this tableau and knew its meaning. Judas
Maccabæus had entered the court at the moment, and, as his custom was,
without heralding. He paused by the entrance. He took in at a glance
all the scene,--and saw also some things which were not outwardly
acted. Noting that he had been unobserved, he went silently out,
and with bowed head tramped along the Street of David, through the
Cheesemakers' Street, and out to the Hill of Ophel, where he sat long
upon a ruined coping of the Gymnasium, and gazed down the Valley of
Kedron, and over the slopes of the mountains of the Wilderness. But, as
Meph, who had followed him, said to a comrade, "Judas looked, but he
saw nothing."
* * * * *
Deborah had led her visitors into a room adjacent to the court. Here
Agathocles narrated that part of Sirach's story which the old servant's
sudden infirmity, many days before, had cut short.
"Ctesiphon! Well did Sirach give him praise. It was Ctesiphon who dared
to plead for the Jews before the raging Ptolemy. It was he who, when
the elephants were about to trample the Jews in the arena, went in
among them, and dragged Nahum away.
"Nahum's daughter, Sara, was at the time concealed at my house. I had
loved my neighbor's child alway, though we were of different races.
After King Ptolemy's rage had abated--thanks chiefly to Ctesiphon's
influence with the King--the Jews often came to my house when they
visited their kinsman Nahum. Thus I often saw your father, Shattuck.
He was a princely fellow; of wondrous gentility; and withal as much
shrewdness as any of his race. My money I left with him, sure of
its proper usury. He soon won the affection of Sara, and they were
betrothed and wedded according to their nation's custom. The coming
of Sara's child, and the death of Shattuck, her husband, were near
together. The attempt upon little Gershom's life led me to take Sara
and her babe to my home. To better protect her from unknown enemies I
brought her to Macedonia. There she became my wife. She took the name
of Agnes for better concealment of her identity. Her child Gershom she
consented to call Dion. But this is no place to open the memories of a
broken heart."
He rose to go away. Deborah besought him to remain.
"No, no!" he replied, and he passed into the street, leaving Dion to
piece together the story as he might; or, if he cared, to begin his own
life-story anew.
An hour later a horn sounded from the parapet of the house of Elkiah;
for such was the custom of the Jews, that the passers-by might know
that death was within the walls. They washed the body of Sirach,
trimmed the hair and nails, and wrapped him in new white linen. They
laid the form upon a bier. A rabbi came, and spoke words of eulogy over
a faithful servant. Women entered the court, with dishevelled hair,
and, to the accompaniment of flutes, chanted a weird mourning dirge,
and cast dust of ashes toward the body.
About sunset a little procession emerged from the house. Ephraim would
have taken the position of chief mourner, as befitted his condition at
a fellow-servant's burial; but Agathocles displaced him, and walked
nearest to the bier. Dion went by his side.
Thus they buried Gideon ben Sirach on the slope of the vale of
Jehoshaphat, in the family tomb of the house of Shattuck--for so Dion,
now Gershom ben Shattuck, ordered it to be.
XLIX
THE HIDDEN HAND
From the burial of Gideon ben Sirach, Dion and Agathocles walked
leisurely back toward the city. They had much to talk about, both of
the past and future, and took a path less frequented than the common
road.
Not far from the city gate stood a beggar. His filthy hair matted
itself about his head, and fell upon his bare and begrimed shoulders.
His chief garment might have been the remnant of a wine-skin, which was
tied with strings about the upper part of his body. His legs and feet
were bare--an advantage to such creatures, for his lower limbs at least
would get a bath of air and sunshine, and that of an occasional shower.
About his neck hung a basket which made its mute solicitation for alms.
"These fellows are as proud as priests," said Dion. "They will ask
nothing of us, and will thank us for nothing we give."
"He poses like the statue of a god I once saw in Cyprus," commented
Agathocles. "They had just dug it up out of the mud, and hadn't scraped
it."
"Don't go near him," replied Dion. "His filth doubtless has wings. Yet
it is well to give him a stater. He is supposed to mumble a blessing,
and I need one."
Dion advanced toward the man, and put his hand into his bosom to draw
his purse. The beggar sprang upon him with a cry of fury.
"At last I have you, you damned whelp of Shattuck!"
He drew a knife from beneath his dirty sheep-skin, and aimed a blow at
the breast of Dion. The thrust had surely done its intended work, but
for the quick evasion of the practised soldier. Before the wretch could
repeat the blow Dion had closed with him, grasped the uplifted arm with
his left hand, and with a dexterous wrench bent his assailant until his
head and heels nearly touched; then laid him on the ground.
Agathocles started to help. He was instantly confronted by another
person who darted from behind a great olive-tree. But the General had
drawn his sword. The villain, though armed with a dagger, dared not
venture the encounter. He turned to flee; but the weapon of Agathocles
was through his body.
Dion stood a moment over the beggar he had felled.
"What madness is this?" he asked.
"Kill the wretch," cried Agathocles.
"Nay, father, my sword would not drink such foul blood."
They tied the wrists of the living man with the stout cords of his
beggar's basket.
"Why this assault?" asked Dion. "Were you mad with hunger?"
"Aye, hunger for you," replied the man.
"Who are you?" asked Dion.
"The scar on your forehead knows me, if you do not. But for the man you
have just buried, you had never had tongue to ask who I am."
"I ought to know this man's face," said Agathocles, studying him
closely. "For years I have seen these eyes, like those of a panther as
it slinks away from one it dares not attack. In Alexandria, in Macedon,
in Rome, I have seen these same eyes spying on me. Let me squeeze his
secret out of him."
The General's hands were upon the man's throat.
"I am Cleon. Do you know me now?" gasped the wretch.
"Cleon? There was a Cleon in Alexandria, a vile procurer for the
beastly Ptolemy. Yes, those eyes are Cleon's, as sure as ever snake
owned his. But I never harmed you, Cleon. Why do you pursue me?"
"You lie!" wheezed the man. "You were always in my way. You call me a
snake. Well! have you not both writhed when I bit you? You, Dion, have
drunk my poison; and the great Agathocles was in the mines in Sicily,
where I--I--Cleon sent him. I have had my vengeance. Now take yours."
"I see it all," said the General. "This Cleon, panderer to the vilest
folk of Alexandria, was the agent of those who would have stolen the
estate of Shattuck, but for the influence of Ctesiphon and myself, and
the help of Gideon. It was Cleon's hand that struck you, Dion, when
a babe; the mark of which blow Gideon carried to his grave. It was
the same hand that mixed the poison for us both in Macedonia. It was
this man's tongue, black with perjury, that gave the lying information
against me to the Romans."
"Well, now you know me," said the man with assumed indifference, "you
can only kill me."
"Let us take him into the city," said Agathocles. "This man is so
false that I can hardly believe his damning confession against himself
without better evidence."
"Not into the city! Not into the city!" cried the captive. "Not into
the city! For God's sake, kill me here."
He writhed, not seemingly to break his cord, but rather to wrest his
soul from the grip of his own body, and thus escape from life ere some
deeper curse should befall him.
"Not into the Holy City! Not near to the Temple! O God of Abraham!
Mercy! Mercy! Not into the city!"
He raised his head, and, before his captors were aware of his purpose,
he dashed it against a stone, as if to make an exit for the spirit that
felt itself being consigned to perdition.
"Ah, Cleon," said Dion, "there is a worse poison than you have mixed
for us; poison that no medicine will purge from the blood. You have
swallowed your own memories, and they grip hard, do they? But why
should you pray to the God of the Jews? Such a scoundrel as you cannot
be Jew."
The man's response was a compound of the most dreadful oaths and vilest
expletives known to the tongues of Jew or Greek.
"You tempt me to kill you," said Agathocles; "but that might end your
misery. We will let you live. If you dread the Temple, then to the
Temple you shall go."
The commotion had drawn a crowd. Among them was Ephraim, the old
servant of Elkiah. He at once identified Cleon as a Jew who in
his youth had been driven from Jerusalem by the libertine set of
young men, as one infected with vices which were too fetid for even
their debauched tastes. One of his unconscionable pranks had been
the defiling of some of the sacred vessels of the Temple--which
doubtless accounted for his dread of dying near the holy precincts. In
Alexandria--so Ephraim had heard--he had been refused admission to the
Synagogue, and had openly apostatized, assuming the Greek name of Cleon
instead of his own, Naaman.
The dead accomplice of the false beggar could not be identified. He was
clearly not a Jew. On his body were found several letters written in
Aramaic, the common language of Syria and adjacent countries. One of
these read as follows:
"More money? Not an obole until your job is finished. We cannot depend
upon the fool Cleon. Go with him. Stick to his heels. He cannot
be trusted by himself. Ben Shattuck is in Jerusalem. He is called
Dion,--a captain once in the Greek guard. But he has scented out his
own Jewish blood, and will go back to it, like a dog to his vomit.
Send proof that you have executed your business with him, or, by the
tail of Satan, I will have you accused of the crimes you have already
committed."
This letter was unsigned.
"I should know that writing," said Dion. "It is none other than that of
Menelaos."
"The same, no doubt," said Ephraim, studying it carefully. "I could
tell you more of that Priest than has yet been published. But bring not
this reprobate into the city. Maccabæus is cleansing the place, and
would not abide such foulness. My counsel is that you deal with him
here."
"Leave him to us," shouted the crowd.
In spite of Dion's remonstrance they tied the living man to the body
of his dead confederate, and carried them both down to the Valley of
Hinnom.
What things were there done may not be written.
L
THE VENGEANCE OF JUDAS
It required no especial acuteness on the part of Judas to discern the
meaning of that tableau he had witnessed in the court of Elkiah's
house, when Deborah stood hand in hand with Dion. It was clearly as
significant to him as the fabled scene in which Eros awakens Psyche
with a kiss would have been to Agathocles. He had also overheard enough
of the General's story to discover that, if Dion were his rival for the
affection of Deborah, he himself, though of the blood of Mattathias,
which had been kept pure from foreign taint through all generations,
had in this respect no advantage over his competitor. As Gershom ben
Shattuck, Dion could satisfy the strictest interpreter of the Law. The
Prophet Nehemiah himself could have found no flaw in Shattuck's line,
with all that Reformer's zealotry against mixed marriages.
Strong man that Judas was, the keen eyes of Meph, who had watched him
as he came out of Elkiah's doorway that day, noted that the giant
staggered a little, just for an instant. Others remarked that the great
man seemed unusually absorbed with his own thoughts, and did not return
their salutation as was his custom.
"A big raid, doubtless, to clean out the tribesmen from around Hebron;
or a campaign in the direction of Antioch itself," a captain of the
guard was overheard to say.
"Or something as momentous," was the reply of a comrade, "for it takes
a heavy project to press Judas' head that far down upon his shoulders."
Judas shut himself up in his private chamber.