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."