XLVII
A QUEEN OF ISRAEL?
The victory at Bethzur betokened a lengthened peace, for campaigns in other parts of his wide empire were absorbing the mind and resources of Antiochus. Judas took the opportunity to renovate Jerusalem as befitted the capital of the new nation. The immense spoils of recent victories went far toward providing means for refurnishing the Temple and palace; while the repute of Judas brought him such offered alliances as assured the safety and growing importance of his rule.
Some would have installed the hero in the office of High Priest, and thus combined all civil and religious authority in the one person. To this he would give no ear. The multitude hailed him with the title of King. This also he repudiated, saying, "I am not of the house of David, and none but the predicted One shall come to His throne." But no disclaimer on his part could prevent the enthusiastic huzzas when he passed along the streets or visited the camps on the hillsides. At times the word "Messiah" was heard. It never failed to bring such rebuke that the same lips dared not repeat the acclaim. The people after a time acquired the habit of greeting him with silent obeisance, for they knew that his great heart was hurt rather than elated by their praise.
Yet ambition was not foreign to the soul of Judas Maccabæus. If God had given him power, was he not to use it? If Israel was again resplendent, should not the chieftain of Israel wear the dignity? One thing he saw with special clearness—it was that authority must be centralized and compactly knit if it were to endure the fraying of factions; and, further, that it must be perpetuated in orderly descent if it were to outlive the generation which created it.
This latter consideration, that of an hereditary leadership, was incessantly urged by his brethren. At length Judas gave signs of yielding to their importunities.
"I see it," said he. "The rule of new Israel must descend from father to son. Then let Simon be King, or Jonathan."
"We dare not," replied Simon. "While Judas lives it were blasphemy to speak another name. The sword of the Lord is the sword of Judas. That Israel and its enemies know full well. King Judas!" cried he, waving his sword.
Every sword in the little circle was uplifted, while a reverent "Amen!" went round.
"I want no such thing as a crown," said Judas.
"Nor," rejoined Jonathan, "did you want to lead us in the field. For how many moons did you refuse to command, until it was clear that the people would follow none other? Judas is brave; but not Judas himself dare fight against the will of heaven."
"Well! A King! What then?" replied he after a pause.
"To marry. To found the Maccabæan dynasty," said Simon, glancing for approval around the circle.
Judas seemed staggered by the burden which was being bound upon him.
"Let him alone awhile," suggested Simon. "He sees the necessity, and will conquer himself in this as in other matters."
The day following Judas went to the house of Elkiah.
Long time he and Deborah conversed about the new hopes of Israel. Judas told of the embassage he was sending to Rome, of the service General Agathocles might render in Egypt, where the veteran was favorably known and where the age-long jealousy of the Ptolemies against the Seleucidæ was always ready to burst into hostilities. They spoke together with pious enthusiasm of the restored glory of the Temple, and the restitution of the ancient dignity of the priesthood.
The clouds were for the time lifted from the brow of the champion. Deborah noted the change. She had never thought of her friend as of prepossessing appearance; but now his strong and rugged features grew softer. There was a boyishness in his tone and manner which better suited his years than they did his experiences of exploit and care. She began to regard him as handsome. Deborah, in her modesty, as little suspected the cause of this transformation in her guest as the sun is conscious of his agency in brightening the objects he shines upon.
"The Lord has blessed me in two respects especially," said Judas, giving free rein to speech and feeling. "The spirit of our father, Mattathias, has been given to my brethren, any one of the four being fitted to take up the leadership if I should lay it down. With Simon to counsel, and Jonathan to plan, and Eliezar and John to strike, I am like one with four right arms. And, Deborah, God has given me your companionship. Without that I should have lost heart."
"Your words give me great joy," replied she, "for during these terrible years I have had one prayer deeper than all others—it has been for you; and that I might, however humbly, cheer and sustain you as became a daughter of Israel."
"And you will continue your sweet and helpful ministry, will you not?" he asked eagerly. "In this day of our prosperity I shall need you even more than in the past. I am accustomed to war; I have become, perhaps, too self-reliant there. But I know not how to organize peace. My hands are too hard for anything but swinging the sword. Alas! as Solomon said on coming to his throne, 'I am as a little child, and know not how to go out or come in.' Deborah, promise me that you will still——"
She interrupted him with eager, almost passionate, remonstrance: "Promise you? Judas, do I need to promise you anything? Do you not know that your own heart is not truer to our cause than mine is to you? If Judas should doubt me, it would kill me. Tell me some desperate venture by which I can prove my loyalty. Test me, I beg you."
"Some desperate venture? I know of one that will test us both. It is so desperate that I hesitate to speak it to the bravest woman of all Jewry."
What sublime audacity there was in her tone as she replied: "If the champion of Israel is afraid, let him not speak it. But know that the daughter of Elkiah dares to hear and to do whatever Judas may think."
"Such words would make any coward brave," replied he. "Deborah, the Jews would make me King."
"A King! Why not? You are already the King, by right of sword, by right of your people's love, and, if Heaven's will ever had reflection from earth, by the will of our God."
"You believe in me overmuch, Deborah."
"No! no!" she responded eagerly, "but Judas has this one great weakness, that he will not believe in himself. Can you not see that Israel must have a King, and that there is but one head on which the people will allow a crown to rest?"
"But, Deborah, I could not endure such an honor and such responsibility—alone. Will you share the venture with me? Will the Daughter of Jerusalem be its Queen?"
Deborah started as if he had struck her. The flush on her face became deathly pallor. She trembled as the most timid girl might have done before her captor in war.
"Forgive me, Deborah. I was too rude in testing your loyalty."
The blood came back to her cheeks. "Loyalty! Say not that word. Let Maccabæus as King command me, and I will die at his feet. But——"
She sat upon the couch and burst into tears.
"Forgive me! Forgive me!" he cried. "What have I said? I was blind and stupid. Loyalty? Loyalty I know is not love."
After a moment's silence she said: "Judas, we are both speaking we know not what. I, too, am but a child, and know not the way of my own thoughts. Do not take offence, my dear friend; but I would be alone. Pray for me. And I will pray for you, as I have always prayed—one prayer for us both. God will give us light."
"Your will shall be mine," he responded, but his manner betokened a struggle for submission such as no one had ever before seen in this strongest of men. He stood with bowed head. "We are but two children lost in the woods. God forbid that we must now find our way by different paths."
He went away.
Deborah remained for a long time in the spot where Judas left her.
"A Queen! A Queen of Israel! The Queen of the most kingly of men, though he were uncrowned!" What problems of political import were thus thrust upon her! What tides of ambition swept over her! The highest, deepest, purest ambition. She grew dizzy with the confusion of her thoughts. Their very weight seemed to paralyze her brain. She ceased to think, and sat down like one distraught.
At length her mind, rested by its brief vacuity, began again its working.
"A Queen!"
She dismissed this consideration; for, momentous as was the destiny it involved, there was something else that appealed more urgently for decision. She was a woman. To her a throne seemed but a passing circumstance. There was a deeper issue.
"Love is the abiding thing. Can I be—the wife of Judas? Could this man, noble as he is, possess my life, my soul? Is admiration, or even reverence and self-sacrificing devotion—is this love? Or does the soul have depths as well as heights; and does worshipful regard dwell on the heights, and love in the depths, so that they may be utterly remote from each other, indeed, antagonistic? Dion is not comparable with Judas. Judas is on the heights; nothing higher, save God Himself. But Dion—he has his place, too; but where?"
She now remembered that the beginning of Gideon ben Sirach's story, which had so nearly made a Jew of the Greek, started in her a glow of happiness, and that she had felt a strange disappointment at its conclusion, which still left him a Greek. What did this experience mean? Did she really love this alien? As one of foreign blood he could never come into her life. The laws of her people, especially as interpreted by the Jewish purists, would forbid such a thing as marriage with him. She had been taught this doctrine by her father. It was one of the underlying occasions of the war. The Maccabæans regarded pure blood as next to the purity of worship.
So she said, "Dion cannot come into my life."
Then, having settled the matter so far, she thought of Judas:
"What other woman of Israel would presume to decline such a proposal? And who am I to set an example of conceit?
"The Queen of Israel!"
Deborah felt the flush of womanly pride mantle her face. It was a moment when almost any other woman would have turned first to her mirror, and then dropped upon her knees to thank God.
But even as she framed the image of the popular hero within the thought of her personal possession of him, the figure of the Greek intruded itself into the picture. His image was in the background, it is true; but there it was, nevertheless. She could not help following him with the eyes of her fancy. Was not Dion's soul as fine-fibred as that of Judas?
Judas had sublime faith; but this he had inherited from his fathers. It was wrought through and through his nature by training in the Law since childhood. But Dion now had the same faith. And this he had himself acquired, without gift of birth, education, or circumstance. Is it not even nobler to force one's mind through a thousand errors to the truth than to have the truth born in one, to discover one's pearl after delving the seas for it, than to find it in one's ancestral treasure-box?
Judas had risked his life for the cause of Israel. But had not Dion 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.