Momus drew up his camel. The woman who had followed halted. Except for the hurried breathing of their beasts, a critical silence brooded over the moon-silvered wilderness. The moment was tense with the agony of human bitterness against the immitigable despatch of death. There could be no thanksgiving for their own safety from those who were not glad to be given life. Laodice resented her preservation; old Momus, aside from the wound of personal loss sore in his heart, was stricken with the realization of the grief of his young mistress, which he could not help. He did not raise his eyes to her face when he turned toward her; there was no speech. In the young woman's heart the pain was too great for her to venture expression safely. The silence was poignant with unnatural restraint.
Presently Momus inquired of her by signs if she wished to go on to the lifeless village below the camp. She did not observe his gestures, and Momus decided for her. He drove on and the woman, who had wrapped her cloak about her as the biting wind of the hills heightened through the narrow defiles to the north, followed.
But almost the next instant Momus drew up his mount so suddenly that Laodice was roused. He turned and began to make rapid signs. Laodice half rose as she read them and pressed her hands together.
"Seven days!" she exclaimed in dismay. There was silence.
Momus made the camel kneel. He dismounted slowly, and began to undo the tent-cloth in a roll beside the howdah. The woman rode up and instantly the mute stepped between her and his young mistress and went on with his work.
Laodice understood the question in the woman's attitude although, with true sense of an inferior's place, the stranger did not speak.
"We are unclean," Laodice said with effort. "We have come from a pestilential city and we have touched the dead. We can not enter a town with these defilements upon us, except to present ourselves to a priest for examination and separation. Furthermore, we must burn our unessential belongings. If you are a Jewess all these things are known to you."
The woman extended her hands, palms upward, with a grace that was almost dainty.
"Lady," she said behind her unlifted veil, "I am an unlettered woman and have been accustomed to the instruction of my masters. I am obedient to the laws of our people."
"You would have been in less peril to have ridden alone," Laodice sighed. "Our company has been no help to you."
"We can not say that confidently. There are worse things than pestilence in the wilderness," the woman replied.
Momus seemed to observe more confidence than was natural in the ready answers of this professed servant, and before he would leave Laodice to pitch camp, he helped her to alight and drew her with him. The woman remained on her mount.
Gathering up sticks, dead needles of cedar and last year's leaves, he made a fire upon which he heaped fuel till it lighted up the near-by slopes of the hills and roared jovially in the broad wind.
It was a pocket in the heart of high hills into which they had fled. The bold, sure line of a Roman road divided it, cutting tyrannically through the cowed hovels of the town as an arrow drives through a flock of pigeons. On either side were the dim shapes of great rocks and semi-recumbent cedars. Retiring into shadow were the darker outlines of the surrounding circle of hills, rived by intervals of black night where wadies entered. From their summits the flying arch of the heavens sprang, printed with a few faint stars, but all silvered with the flood-light of a moon cold and pure as the frost itself. It was unsympathetic, aloof and wild–a cold place into which to bring broken hearts to assume banishment from the comfort and companionship of mankind.
Laodice slowly and with effort began to separate those belongings which were to be laid upon the fire from those which were too necessary to be burned. The woman alighted but, on offering to assist, was warned away from the girl with a menacing gesture of Momus' great arm. The stranger drew herself up suddenly with a wrath that she hardly controlled but came no nearer Laodice. When the girl finally finished her selection, the woman begged permission to attend to the camels and getting the beasts on their feet led them together to be tethered.
Laodice, assisted by Momus, took up the condemned supplies and flung them one at a time upon the roaring fire. Little by little, with growing reluctance, the heap of spare belongings was examined and condemned, until finally only the garments they wore, the tents that were to shelter them and the essential harness of the camels were left. Then Momus drew from his wallet a fragment of aromatic gum and cast it on the blaze. While it ignited and burned with great vapors of penetrating incense, he unstrapped the precious casket, set it down between his feet, stripped off his comfortable woolen tunic and passed it through the volumes of white smoke piling up from the fire.
And while he stood thus a deft hand seized the casket from behind. There was a sharp, warning cry from Laodice. The old man staggered only a moment from the tripping that the wrench gave him, but in that instant of hesitation the pillager vanished.
The old mute shouted the infuriated, half-animal yell of the dumb and started in pursuit, but at his second step he saw the fleeter camel swing down the declivity, at top-speed, with the other trailing with difficulty at full length of its bridle behind. The next instant the muffled beat of the padded hooves drummed the solid bed of the Roman road, and the shapes of camels and fugitive were lost in blue darkness beyond the town.
There was no need for the pair left behind to await a realization of all that the loss meant to them. One running swiftly as a fine young creature can run when spurred by desperation, and the other, lamely but doggedly, as an old determined man, rushed down the rough side of the slope, leaped into the roadway and ran irrationally after the fugitive mounted upon a camel, fleeter than the fastest horse.
Momus saw with fear that Laodice on this straight inviting road would out-distance him to her peril. He shouted inarticulately after her, but her reply came back, high with desperation and terror.
"The corner-stone of Israel! All his treasure! God's portion, lost, lost!"
She was out of his sight. The sudden barking of dogs told him that she had crossed the outskirts of the village, and groaning with alarm for her the old man stumbled on after her. He saw lights flash out; heard shouts, and out of the confusion distinguished Laodice's, vehement and urging. The yapping of the town curs became less threatening and, by the time Momus reached the settlement, half-dressed Jews were hurrying east out of the village after the flying feet of the girl, in pursuit of the robber.
For unmeasured time, while the moon crossed its meridian and sloped down the west, the search continued. Momus did not overtake the fleet-footed party that preceded him. Stragglers that lost interest dropped back with him from time to time; but finding him dumb and immensely distressed, they disappeared eventually and returned to the town. One by one, at times by twos and threes the party dropped off. The three or four who remained helpful continued against hope, for simple pity for the girl. But when she dropped suddenly by the wayside, exhausted with the strain of many troubles, they stopped to tell her that the chase was fruitless and to offer their rough condolences.
Then Momus hobbled up to them. Laodice refused to raise her head to listen to them and they turned to the old man. But by signs, he showed them that his tongue was dead, and finally, with suppressed remarks upon the exceeding misfortune of the pair, they, too, disappeared. A thoughtful one invited them to return to the village. Laodice, careless now of what he should think of his exposure to pestilence, told him bluntly that they were unclean. Hastily he exclaimed at the sum of their troubles, hastily blessed them, and hastily departed.
There was a pallor along the under-rim of the east; the wind freshened with the sweet vigor of early morning.
Over the stunned silence came the sound of the infinite trotting of tiny hooves and a high, wild, youthful yell. Laodice, too worn to observe, sat still; but Momus, with a rush of old fairy-tales in mind, sprang to her side and seized her arm. His alarmed eyes searched the dark landscape for whatever visitation it had to reveal.
There was the rush of countless hoof-beats and a low cloud of dust obscured the crest of the hill just above them. The soft tremolo of multitudinous bleating came out of it. The quick excited bark of a fresh Natolian sheep-dog wakened an echo in one of the ravines through a hill on the opposite side of the road, while strong and insistent and happy the young cry preceded this sudden animation in the wilderness.
There was a fall of gravel on the slope over their heads and the next instant a fourteen-year-old boy descended upon the pair in a fall of earth, his sandaled feet planted one ahead of the other, his bare arms thrown above his head as he balanced himself, his long, stiff, crinkled black locks blowing backward, his face bright with the eager enjoyment of his simple feat.
After him came a veritable avalanche of Syrian sheep, scrambling to right and left as they parted behind Momus and Laodice and eddying around the young shepherd who stopped at seeing the pair. His yell died away at once, though the effort of sliding down a frozen, rocky slope had not interfered with a single note.
He might well have been a young satyr, fresh from the groves of Achaia, with his big, serious mouth and its range of glittering teeth, his shining deer-like eyes, wide apart, his faun curls low on his forehead, his big head set on a short neck, his shoulders yet childish, his slim brown body half smothered in skins, half bare as he was born, his large hard hand gripping a crook of horn and wood. His gaze at Momus was frank with boyish curiosity. His bright eyes plainly remarked on the oddity of the old servant's appearance. Having catalogued old Momus as worthy of further inspection, he looked then at Laodice. Under the lowering moon and the listless effort of coming day, her unmantled dress of silver tissue made of her a moon-spirit, banished out of her world of pallor and solitude. Before her splendid young beauty, pale with distress and weariness, he was not abashed. His simple eyes studied her with equal frankness, but with an admiration beyond words.
Feeling somehow that his sudden appearance might have distressed her, he said finally:
"Go on, lady, or stay as it pleases you. I will not hurt you."
Momus' shoulders submerged his ears in an indignant shrug. That this young calf of the pastures should insure him safe passage!
But Laodice was still filled with the calamity of her loss.
"Hast seen a robber, here, along this road?" she asked.
"Many of them," was the prompt answer.
"With a chest of jewels?"
The boy shook his head.
"I never examined their booty," he said with perfect respect.
"Or then a woman riding one camel and leading another?"
"Never anything like that."
Laodice, with this hope gone, let her face fall into her hands.
"His fortune given freely to Israel," she groaned. "His whole life's ambition reduced to material form for the help of his brethren–gone, gone!"
The shepherd grew instantly distressed. He looked at Momus and asked in a whisper what had happened. But the old servant signed to his lips irritably, and stroked his young mistress' hair in a dumb effort to comfort her. The silence grew painful. In his anxiety to relieve them, he bethought him of their uncovered heads and houseless state.
"Do you live in the village; or do you camp near by?"
Momus shook his head. Laodice appreciated the boy's concern for them but could not make an attempt to explain.
"Then," he offered promptly, "come have my fire and my rock. It is the best rock in all these hills; and my tent," he added, showing the skins that wrapped him. "I wear my tent; it saves my carrying it. Indeed I do not need it; you may have it. Come!"
He spoke hurriedly, as if he would thrust his desire to comfort between her and the wave of disconsolation that he felt was about to cover her.
Old Momus, sensibly accepting the boy's suggestion as the wisest course, raised Laodice and motioning the shepherd to lead on, led his young mistress up the hill as the boy retraced his steps. The flood of Syrian sheep turned back with him and followed bleating between the urging of the sheep-dog, as the boy climbed.
On a slope to the west as a wady bent upon itself abruptly before it debouched upon the hillside, there was a deep glow illuminating a space in the depression. The shepherd dropped down out of sight. His voice came over the shuffle and bleat of the sheep.
"Follow me; this is my house."
Momus led his mistress over to the wady. There the shepherd with uplifted hands helped her down with the superior courtesy of a householder offering hospitality. There was a red circle of fire in the sandy bottom of the dry wady, and beside it was a flat boulder at the foot of which were prints of the shepherd's sandals and, on the bank behind it, the mark where his shoulders had comfortably rested. He made no apology for the poverty of his entertainment; he had never known anything better.
"Now, brother," he said busily to Momus, "if thou'lt lend me of thy height, thou shalt have of my agility and we will set up a douar for the lady."
With frank composure he stripped off the burden of skins that covered him until he stood forth in a single hide of wool, with a tumble of sheep pelts at his feet. In each one was a thorn preserved for use and with these he pinned them all together, scrambled out on the bank, emitting his startling cry at the sheep that obstructed his path. From above he shouted down to Momus.
"Stretch it, brother, over thy head. I shall pin it down with stones on either side. Now, unless some jackal dislodges these weights before morning, ye will be safe covered from the cold. There! God never made a man till He prepared him a cave to sleep under! I've never slept in the open, yet. How is it with thee now, lady?"
He was down again before her with the red light of the great bed of coals illuminating him with a glow that was almost an expression of his charity.
She saw that he had the straight serious features of the Ishmaelite, but lacked the fierce yet wondering gaze of the Arab. Aside from these superior indications in his face there was nothing to separate him from any other shepherd that ranged the mountainous pastures of Palestine.
She, who all her life had never known anything but to expect the tenderest of ministrations, was humbly surprised and grateful at the free-handed generosity of the young stranger. Momus looked at him with grudging approval.
"It is kindly shelter," she said finally with effort, "and it is warm. You are very good to us!"
"But you have not eaten of my salt," he declared.
Momus showed interest. It had been long since the last meal in the luxurious house of Costobarus. The boy in the meantime produced unleavened loaves from the carry-all of sheepskin that hung over his shoulders, and without explanation disappeared among his flock. Presently he returned with a small skin of milk.
"We have goats in the flock," he said. "A shepherd can not live without a goat. You do not know about shepherds," he added.
Laodice thought that she detected tactful inquiry in his last remark and roused herself painfully to make due explanations to her host. But he waved his hands at her, with the desert-man's courtesy which covers fine points better than the greater ones.
"Eat my fare; I do not purchase thy history with salt and shelter," he said, with a certain sublimity of honor.
Momus ate, and looked with growing grace at his young host. But Laodice succeeded only in drinking the goat's milk and lapsed into benumbed gazing at the red glow of fire that cast its warmth about her. The shepherd talked on, attempting to interest her in something other than her consuming sorrow.
"These be Christian sheep about you, friends," he said, "and I am a Christian shepherd."
Momus sat up suddenly with a bit of the boy's bread arrested on its way to his lips. He was eating the fare of an apostate, of a despised Nazarene. The boy went on composedly.
"We are from Pella, the Christian city. We are, my sheep, my city and I, the only secure people in all Judea. We, I and the sheep, have been in the hills since the first new grass in February. We are many leagues from home."
"So am I," Laodice said wearily.
"Jerusalem?" the shepherd asked, glad he had brought out a response. "No? Yet all Judea is going to Jerusalem at this time. Are you fugitives?"
Momus nodded.
"Come then to Pella," the shepherd urged. "You will be fed there; Titus will not come there. We are poor but we are happy–and we are safe."
Laodice thanked him so inertly that he sensed her disinterest, and while he sat looking at her, searching his heart for something kind to say, she put out her hand impulsively and took his.
"God keep thee and forget thy heresy," she said. "If thou livest in Pella, Pella is indeed happy."
He laughed with a flush stealing up under the brown of his cheeks. A faint light came into Laodice's eyes as she looked at him; he returned her gaze with a gradual softening that was intensely complimentary. Between the two was effected instant and lasting fellowship. Before Momus' indignant eyes the shepherd was blushing happily.
"Who art thou?" Laodice asked.
"They call me Joseph, son of Thomas."
After a silence she said softly,
"I am not at liberty to tell my name." She remembered the secrecy of Philadelphus' mission. "Yet perchance if the God of my fathers prosper me and my husband, I may come to Pella–as thy queen."
The boy's eyes brightened and he drew in a sharp breath, but almost instantly the animation died and he looked at her sorrowfully. It seemed that she read dissent and sympathy commingled in his gaze. But he was a Christian; he could not believe and hope as she hoped.
"Can I do aught for you?" he asked disjointedly.
"Our duty is rather toward you, child," she answered, suddenly arousing to the peril they might bring their free-handed host. "We have newly come from a country where there is pestilence."
But he smiled down on her uplifted face, with immense confidence.
"I am not afraid. Besides, if I perish giving you comfort, I have done only as Jesus would have me do."
"Who is Jesus?" Laodice asked.
The shepherd made a little sign and bent his knee.
"The Christ!" he responded.
Momus plucked quickly at Laodice's sleeve and shook his head at her in an admonitory manner. He had laid down his bread unfinished. But the shepherd looked at him sympathetically.
"Never fear," he said. "It will not hurt her to hear about Him. He makes Pella safe from armies. Let her come there and see for herself."
Laodice pressed his hand.
"I shall come," she said.
He heaved a contented sigh–contented with himself, contented with her promise to come. Then he drew his hands away.
"The sheep are noisy; they will not let you sleep. We shall go." Then as if afraid of her thanks he drew away, and halted at the threshold of the shelter. Then the boy extended his hands with a gesture so solemn that both of his guests bowed their heads instinctively.
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you for evermore. Farewell," he said in a half-whisper.
He was gone.
Presently the rush of little feet swept after him and his high, wild, youthful yell rang faintly in the distance. The delicate crackling from the heated bed of coals was all that was heard in the sheltered wady roofed with skins.
For the second time within the past few hours, Laodice had met a Christian. Both had helped her; both had blessed her. And one was an old man and one was a child.
The interest of the recent interview and the excitement of the night slowly died away, leaving Laodice in the dead hopelessness of weary despair. She lay down suddenly with her face against the warmed sand and wept. Momus sat down beside her, covered her with a leopard skin taken from his own swarthy shoulders, and soothed her with awkward touches on cheek and hair, till her tears exhausted her and she slept.
Stealthily then the old man rolled up her own mantle and put it under her head and prepared to watch. And then as he sat with his knee drawn up, his head bowed upon it, the weakness of slumber gradually stole away his watchfulness and his concern.
Some time later, before the deliberate dawn of a March day had put out the last of the greater stars, two men on horses descended the declivity just above the shelter of sheepskins and attracted by the dull glow of the fire drew up cautiously.
At a word from one of the men, the other alighted and, peering from the shelter of a prostrate cedar, inspected the pair. After assuring himself that there were but two about the camp, one a woman and both asleep, he tiptoed back to his fellow.
"Only a man and a woman," he said. "Jews on their way to the Passover. Their fire is almost out. Let us ride on."
"What haste!" the one who had kept his saddle said. "One would think it were you going forward to meet a bride and her dowry! I am hungry. Let us borrow of this fire and get breakfast."
"Emmaus is only a little farther on," the first man protested. "I am tired of wayside meals, Philadelphus. I would eat at a khan again before I forget the custom."
"How is the pair favored?" the other said provokingly.
"I did not approach near enough," the other retorted. "It seemed to be an old man and a girl."
"Pretty?" the one called Philadelphus asked.
"I did not see."
"Married, Julian?"
"How could I tell?" Julian flared.
Philadelphus laughed, and dismounted.
"I shall see for myself," he declared, walking over to the sheltering cedar to look.
Julian followed him nervously, saying under his breath:
"You waste time deliberately!"
"Tut! You merely wish to keep me from seeing this girl," Philadelphus retorted.
He, too, stopped at the prostrate cedar and gazed under the sagging shelter of skins.
"Shade of Helen!" he exclaimed under his breath as the firelight gave him perfect view of the sleeping girl. "What have we here?"
Julian made no response. He drew nearer and looked in silence.
"Now what are they to each other?" Philadelphus continued. "Father and daughter; lady and servant or–a courtezan and her manager?"
At the continued silence of his companion, he argued his question himself.
"No such ill-fashioned peasant loins as his ever begat such sweet patrician perfection as that!" he declared. "And a lady rich enough to have one servant would travel with more than one or not at all–"
Julian broke in with sudden avid interest.
"Look at that deal of feminine flummery–that dress of silver tissue, the ends of that silken scarf you see below the covering–all those jewels and trinkets! Odd garb for travel afoot, is it not? It is a badge not to be put off even in as barren a market as this. She is going to Jerusalem for the Passover. He will carry the purse, however, mark me."
"How well you know the marks of delinquency!" Philadelphus said with a glimmer of resentment in his eyes.
"Who does not? What do the Jewish psalmists and proverbialists and purists depict so minutely as that migrating iniquity, the strange woman?"
"But look at her!" Philadelphus insisted. "I have not seen anything so bewitching since I left Ephesus!"
"No; nor a long time before!" Julian declared. "I must have a nearer look."
"Careful! You will wake her!"
Julian's face showed a sneer at his companion's concern.
"I'll have a care not to wake the old Boeotian," he said.
He stepped between Laodice and her sleeping servant. The mute with the stupor of slumber further to disable his dulled hearing, did not move.
"Young!" Philadelphus exclaimed in a whisper. "And new to the life!"
"Pfui!" Julian scoffed. "Sleep makes even Venus look innocent!"
"Then this is the most innocent wickedness I have seen in months!"
"So you catalogue innocence as a charm! It's not here. But if she had no beauty but that eyelash I'd be speared upon it!"
Philadelphus turned toward the old servant plunged in the exhausted sleep of weary age.
"Thou grizzled nightmare!" he exclaimed vindictively.
He glanced again at the girl. Julian had knelt beside her. Between the two men passed a look that was mutually understood.
"Remember," Julian whispered, "you are a married man."
Philadelphus paled suddenly with anger as the intent of his companion dawned upon him, but he put off his temper shrewdly.
"And so approaching a time when wayside beauties will no longer be free to me," he said, cutting off his fellow in the beginning of his preëmption. "And you have a long freedom before you."
There was so much challenge in his manner that Julian accepted it. He reached into his tunic and drew forth a pair of dice.
"We will play for her," he said.
The Maccabee put the tesserae aside.
"We will not use them," he said. "I know them to be cogged. Let us have the judgment of a coin."
A bronze coin of Agrippa was produced. Julian in getting at his purse brushed against the sleeping girl and as the pair glanced at her before they tossed, her large eyes opened full in Julian's face. A moment, almost breathless for the two, and terror flared up in her eyes. She started up, but Julian's hand dropped on her.
"Peace, Phryne!" he said.
She shrank from his touch, literally into the arms upon which Philadelphus rested his weight. She looked up into his eyes, and saw them soften with a smile, and moved no farther. Philadelphus took the coin.
"Let Vespasian decide for me," he said.
"For me Fortunatus," said Julian.
Philadelphus filliped the coin and flung out a strong and fending hand against his fellow covering it. Under the brightening day, the lowering profile of the old plebeian emperor Vespasian showed distinctly on the newly minted bronze.
Julian made a sharp menacing sound, and with clenched hands rose on his knees. But Philadelphus looked at him steadily, half-amused at the implied threat, half-inviting its fulfilment, and under his gaze, Julian rose slowly and drew away. Philadelphus tossed the coin after him. His cousin picked it up and put it in his purse.
Philadelphus looked down upon his prize.
Philadelphus looked down at his prize.
She had not flinched from him when she had found him beside her, with Julian threatening her. But now her wide open eyes fixed upon his brimmed with an agony of appeal. Innocent of the world's wickedness, she could only sense supreme peril in this mysterious game without understanding the stake. Momus was not in sight–dead for all she knew–and the desert was an ally against her. Over her, now, bent a face characteristic of a great spirit, yet one which was coeval with the times–times of violence and the supremacy of force. His lips were thin, the contour of his face angular at the jaw, the nose straight and long, his brows black and low over dark blue eyes of a fathomless depth, the forehead strongly molded, and marked with deep perpendicular lines between the eyes. He was dark, heavy-haired, young, lean, broad and of fine height even as he knelt beside her. Laodice did not note any of these things. She was only conscious of the immense power her terror and her helplessness had to combat. Back of all this iron selfishness, she hoped that somewhere was a gentleness, even if inert and useless. All her strength was concentrated in the effort to bring it to life.
He gazed at her, apparently unconscious of the desperation in the face lifted to him. The slow smile that presently grew again in his eyes was none the less unthoughted. He slipped his hand under a strand of her rich hair that had fallen and drew it out, slowly, at full length. Slowly his eyes followed it as inch by inch it slipped through his fingers. Old memories seemed to struggle to the surface; old tendernesses; recollection of pure hours and holy things; paganism dropped from him like a husk and the spiritual hauteur of a Jew brought the expression of the unhumbled house of Judah into his face. Through a notch in the hills a golden beam shot from the sun and penetrating this inwalled valley lay like an illuminating fire on the man's face and glorified it. Laodice's breath stopped.
Slowly his fingers slipped along the fine silken length of that shining strand until his arm extended to the full; and the end of the lock yet rested on her breast. Thus might have been the hair of that Rahab, who was no less a patriot because she was frail; thus, the hair of Bathsheba, who was the mother of the wisest Israelite though she sinned; thus the hair of that mother of Samson, who slew armies single-handed! Badge of Judah, mark of the haughty strength of the oldest enlightenment in the world! He would not initiate his succor of Israel with violence against its purest type.
He smiled slowly; slowly let the strand fall through his fingers. He looked into her eyes and she saw a sudden light immeasurably compassionate and tender grow there. A weakness swept over her; she felt that she had been longing for that light. Then he rose quickly and moved away.
Old Momus, the mute, with his head on his knees slept on.
Julian, who had been halted involuntarily by the attitude of his companion and had been an amazed witness of this extraordinary end of the incident, looked at Philadelphus' face in frank stupefaction. But Philadelphus laid a hand so forceful and compelling on his companion's shoulder that it left the pink print of his fingers on the flesh, turned him toward the horses and led him away.
"We will breakfast farther on," he said.
A moment and they were swinging down the stony side of the hill toward the east, and Laodice, with her hand clutching her excited heart, had not thought of flinging herself upon Momus. She raised herself gradually to watch them as far as she could see, and her fixed and stunned gaze rested with immense homesickness and longing on the taller man radiant against the background of a risen sun.
The Maccabee rode on, unconscious of Julian's critical gaze. The smile on his lips flickered now brightly, now very faint. The incident in the hills had not made him entirely happy, but it had awakened in him something which was latent in him, something which he had never felt before, but which held a sweet familiarity that the blood of his fathers in him had recognized.
Julian was intensely disgusted and disappointed. But there was still a sensation of shock on his shoulder where the Maccabee's iron hand had rested and his famous caution stood him in stead at this moment when a quarrel with such intense and executive earnestness in his companion's manner might prove disastrous. If quarrel they must before they reached Emmaus, now but a few leagues east of them, he must insure himself against defeat much less likely to be suffered from a man reluctant to quarrel. He had been hunting for a pretext ever since they had left Cæsarea, but this one, suddenly opened to him, startled him. He admitted now that it would not be wise to force a fight. Whatever must be done should be done with least danger to himself. It were better, he believed, to allay suspicion.
He spoke.
"How far is it to Jerusalem?"
"About eighty furlongs."
"Then if we continue, we shall approach the gates after nightfall."
"We shall not continue," Philadelphus remarked. "We shall halt at Emmaus."
"Do you think it would be better for us to camp here in the hills rather than to stop without the walls of Jerusalem between the city forces and the winter garrison of Titus and await the opening of the Gates?" Julian asked after thought.
"We shall wait in Emmaus," the Maccabee repeated, his soul too filled with dream to note the change in his companion's manner.
"You have already lost three days," Julian charged him irritably.
"Jerusalem may be besieged; it may be long before I can ride in the wilderness again," the Maccabee answered.
"Right; your next journey through this place may be afoot–at the end of a chain," Julian averred.
The Maccabee raised his brows.
"Losing courage at the last end of the journey?" he inquired.
"No! I never have believed in this project," Julian declared.
"Why?"
"Who believes in the prospects of a man determined to leap into Hades?"
But the Maccabee was already riding on with his head lifted, his eyes set upon the blue shadows on the western slopes of hills, lifted against the early morning sun. Julian went on.
"You go, cousin, on a mission mad enough to measure up with the antics of the frantic citizens of Jerusalem. It will not be even a glorious defeat. You will be swallowed up in an immense calamity too tremendous to offer publicity to so infinitesimal a detail as the death of one Philadelphus Maccabaeus. Agrippa has deserted the city and when a Herod lets go of his own, his own is not worth the holding. The city is torn between factions as implacable as the sea and the land. The conservatives are either dead or fled; pillage and disorder are the main motives of all that are left. And Titus advances with four legions. What can you hope for this mob of crazed Jews?"
Julian's words had been more lively than the Maccabee had expected. He was obliged to give attention before his kinsman made an end.
"You are fond of summaries, Julian," he said, "dealt in your own coin. Look you, now, at my hope. You confess that these Jews lack a leader. They have lacked him so long that they hunger and thirst for one. Also they have suffered the distresses of disorder so intensely that peace in any form is most welcome to them. Titus approacheth reluctantly. He had rather deliver Jerusalem than besiege it. I am of the loved and dethroned Maccabaean line–acceptable to every faction of Jewry, from the Essenes to the Sicarii. Titus is my friend, unless he suspects me as coming to undermine his better friend, the pretty Herod. I shall help Jerusalem help herself; I shall make peace with Rome; I shall be King of the Jews!–Behold, is not my summary as practical as yours?"
Julian laughed with an amusement that had a ring of contempt in it.
"There is naught to keep an astronomer from planning a rearrangement of the stars," he said.
But the Maccabee rode on calmly. Julian sighed. After a while he spoke.
"Well, how do you proceed? You tell me that these very visionaries whom you would succor have never laid eyes on you. What marks you as royal–as a sprig of the great, just and dead Maccabee?"
"I bear proofs, Roman documents of my family and of my birth. Certain of my party are already organized in Jerusalem and are expecting me, and I wear the Maccabaean signet. Is not that enough?"
"Nothing of it worth the security of private citizenship and a whole head!"
"No? Not when there is a dowry of two hundred talents awaiting my courage to come and get it?"
"Ha! That wife! But will you enter that sure death for a woman you do not know?"
"And for a fortune I have not possessed and for a kingdom that I never owned."
"She will not be there! Old Costobarus is not so mired in folly as to send his daughter into the Pit to provide you with money to–pay Charon."
"Aquila sent me a messenger at Cæsarea," Philadelphus continued calmly, "saying that Costobarus was transfigured when he had my summons. He feels that his God has been good to him to choose his daughter to share the throne of Judea. Hence, by this time my lady awaits me in Jerusalem."
Again Julian sighed.
"And there is none in Jerusalem who knows your face?" he asked after a silence.
"None, except Amaryllis, and she has not seen me since I was sixteen years old."
"And there also is an obstacle which I had forgotten to enumerate," Julian said argumentatively. "You have put your trust in a frail woman."
"Amaryllis may be frail," the Maccabee admitted, "but she is sufficiently manly to have all that you and I demand of a man to put faith in him. She is a good companion and she will not lie."
"Impossible! She is a woman!" Julian exclaimed.
"Even then," the Maccabee returned patiently, "her own ambition safeguards me. She can not succeed except as I am successful, and her purposes are of another kind than mine. She helps herself when she helps me. Therefore I am depending on her selfishness. It is usually a dependable thing."
"What does she want?"
"The old classic times of the heterae in Greece. She wants to be the pioneer of art in Jerusalem. It is a fertile and a neglected field. She had rather be known as the mother of refinement in Judea than as the queen of kings over the world."
"A modest ambition!"
"A great one. How many monarchs are forgotten while Aspasia is remembered! Who were the reigning kings during Sappho's time?"
"But go on. You repose much on her influence. Perhaps she has the will but not the power to help you."
"Power! She is the mistress of John of Gischala and actual potentate over Jerusalem at this hour."
"Unless Simon bar Gioras hath taken the upper hand within the last few days. Remember the fortunes of factionists are ephemeral."
Philadelphus jingled his harness. He was sorry that he had permitted this discussion. Now its continuance was particularly irritating, when he had rather think of something else. He was near Jerusalem; but he was not going forward, now, with the same eagerness, nor with the same enthusiasm for his cause. The incident in the hills had marked the change in him. It was not, then, with a patient tongue that he defended his intentions, which had grown less inviting in the last hour.
"How little your wife will enjoy her," Julian's smooth voice broke in once more, "seeing that the frail one is lovely."
"I do not know that she is lovely."
"What!" Julian exclaimed in genuine amazement. "You do not know that she is lovely! Years of correspondence with a woman whom you do not know to be lovely! Reposing kingdoms on a woman's influence whom you do not know to be beautiful!"
"Beauty is no tie," the Maccabee retorted. "Have you forgotten Salome, the Jewish actress who could play Aphrodite in the theaters of Ephesus, to the confusion of the goddess herself? They said she snared three procurators and an emperor at one performance and lost them in a day!"
"Have you seen her?" Julian asked with a sidelong glance. "Till your own eyes prove it, you should not accept that she is so bewitching."
"There is no need that I should see her; Aquila swears it! And I would take his word against the testimony of even mine own eyes."
Julian looked up in a startled manner and hurriedly looked away again. A half-frightened, half-amused smile played about his lips.
"Aquila is no judge of woman," he said finally. "And furthermore, they say she got to trifling with magic and prowling about the temples to see if the gods came true. They were afraid she would get them blasted along with her sometime for her sacrilege. I know all this because Aquila declared she attached herself to him in sheer poverty in Ephesus and swore to follow him to the ends of the earth."
The Maccabee smiled.
"Nevertheless, he told me that he was afraid of her, but that she was a woman and in need and he could not reject her."
Julian's eyes grew insinuating.
"How much then your behavior this morning would have shocked him!" he murmured.
The smile died on the Maccabee's face. Reference to the girl in the hills seemed blasphemy on this man's lips.
"And you do not recall your wife's face?" Julian persisted.
The Maccabee's face hardened more. But he shook his head.
"Fourteen years can change a woman from a beauty to–a–a Christian, ugly and old and cold," Julian augured.
The Maccabee turned his head away from his tormentor and Julian's laughter trailed off into a half-jocular groan.
"How much you harp on beauty!" the Maccabee said deliberately. "Are you then going to regret the actresses you left behind when I tore you from your exalted calling as the forelegs of the elephant in the theaters at Ephesus?"
Julian's face blackened. A foolhardy daring born of rage resolved him at that instant. He flung himself out from his saddle and raised his hand with a knife clenched in it. But the Maccabee with a composed laugh caught the hand and wrenching it about, dropped it, red and contracting with pain, at his companion's side.
"Tut! Julian, you are a bad combatant. If you must make way with a man," the Maccabee advised, "stab him in the back. It is sure–for you. Ha! Is this Emmaus we see?"
They had ridden up a slight eminence and below them was a disorder of fallen or decrepit Syrian huts in the hollow place in the hills.
It had been the history of Emmaus for centuries to be known. The feet of the Crucified One had pressed its ruined streets and His devoted chroniclers had not failed to set it down in their illuminated gospels. Army after army in endless procession had thundered through it since the first invader humbled the glory of Canaan, and few of the historians had forgotten to record the unimportant incident. Warfare had hurtled about it for centuries; the Roman army had come upon it and would continue to come. It had not the spirit to resist; it was not worthy of conquest. It simply stood in the path of events.
A single citizen appeared at the doorway of the most habitable house and looked absently over the heads of the new-comers. As they approached, the villager did not observe them. Instead, he looked at the near horizon lifted on the shoulder of the hills and meditated on the signs of the weather. It was Emmaus' habit to find strangers at its door.
Julian, with natural desire to be first on this perilous ground and away from the side of the man who had defeated him and laughed at him, rode up to the door. The villager, seeing the traveler stop, gazed at him.
Julian had about him an air of blood and breeding first to be remarked even before his features. The grace of his bearing and the excellence of his bodily condition were highly aristocratic. His height was good, his figure modestly athletic as an observance of fine form rather than a preparation for the arena. He was simply dressed in a light blue woolen tunic. A handkerchief was bound about his head. His forehead was very white and half hidden by loose, curling black locks that escaped with boyish negligence from his head-dress. His eyes were black, his cheeks tanned but colorless, his mouth mirthful and red but hard in its outlines. Clean-shaven, lithe, supple, he did not appear to be more than twenty-two. But there was an even-tempered cynicism and sophistication in the half-droop of his level lids, indifference, hauteur and self-reliance in the uplift of his chin. His soul was therefore older, more seasoned and set than the frame that housed it. Now there was considerable agitation in his manner, enough to make him sharp in his speech to the villager.
"Is there a khan in Emmaus?" he demanded.
"There is," the villager responded calmly.
"Where?"
The citizen motioned toward a low-roofed rambling structure of stone picked up on the native hills.
"Ask there," he said and passing out of his door went his way.
Julian touched his horse and rode through the worn passage and into the court of the decrepit khan of Emmaus. The Maccabee followed.
The Syrian host who was both waiter and hostler met Julian entering first.
"Quick!" Julian said, leaning from his horse. "Is there a young man here with gray temples? A pagan?"
The Syrian, attracted by the anxiety in the demand, followed a train of surmise before his answer.
"No pagans, here. Naught but Jews," he observed finally.
"Or a young woman of wealth? Quick!"
"No wealth at all; but plenty of women. The Passover pilgrims."
Julian heaved a sigh of relief and dismounted. The Maccabee rode into the court of the khan at that instant.
The khan-keeper took their horses and a little later the two men were led into the single cobwebby chamber, low-ceiled, gloomy, cold and cheerless as a cave. There they were given food and afterward a corner of the hall where a straw pallet had been laid and a stone trough filled with water for a bath. After refreshing himself the Maccabee lay down and slept with supreme indifference to the rancor of the man who had attempted to kill him.
But Julian had another idea than pressing his vengeful advantage at that time. He went out into Emmaus and engaging the unemployed of the thriftless town sent them broadcast into the hills in search of a pagan who was young, yet gray at the temples.
Some of them went–and they were chiefly boys who were not old enough to know that these strangers who come in pagan guise to Emmaus are full of guile. But none returned to him. They had neither seen nor heard of a pagan who was young though the white hair of an old man snowed on his temples.
So Julian storming within went out into the hills himself, to search.
Meanwhile the Maccabee, a light sleeper and readily restored, awoke and found himself alone. The khan-keeper informed him on inquiry that Julian had ridden away.
"Too fair a hope to think that he has deserted me," the Maccabee observed. "I shall await him a decent time. He will return."
He tramped about the chamber waiting for something that was not Julian, intending to do something but unable to define that thing. There was a vague admission that this last pause before his entry into Jerusalem where he must accomplish so much was an opportunity for some sort of preparation, but he lacked direction and resource. He was irritable and purposeless.
Out of the low door that opened into the lewen of the khan he caught glimpses of the town spread over the tilt of the hill before him. It had become active since he had looked upon it in the very early hours of the day. Over the gate he could see the toss of canopies and the heads of camels passing; he could hear the ring of mule-hooves on the stones and the tramp of wayfarers. There were shoutings and debate; the cries of servants and the gossip of parties. All this moved on always in the direction of Jerusalem. Few paused. The single shop in Emmaus became active; the khan caught a little of the drift, but the great body of what seemed to be an unending stream of pilgrims passed on. The Maccabee spoke to his host.
"What is this?" he asked.
The publican raised his brows.
"Hast never heard of the Passover?" he asked.
The Maccabee started. How far he had drifted from the customs of his people, to fail to remember its vital feast–he who meant to be king over the Jews!
He turned away a little abashed. The train of thought awakened by the khan-keeper's answer led him back to the hieratic customs of his race. What was his status as a Jew after all these years of delinquency? What atonement did he owe, what offering should he make?
He went out over the cobbled pavement of the lewen to the gate. Here he should see part of his people and learn from simple observation what material he would have in his work for Israel.
From his memories of the old Passovers of his boyhood, he saw instantly that there had come a change over Judea and the worshiping sons of Abraham.
They went in bodies, in numbers from a handful from some remote but pious hamlet to great armies from the leveled cities of Joppa, Ptolemais and Anthedon, from Cæsarea and Tyre and Sidon, from the enthusiastic towns in Galilee, and even from far-off Antioch and Ephesus. They were not fewer in number, because of a year of warfare and the menace of an approaching army upon the city in which they were to take refuge. But there were more–double, even triple the number that usually went up to Jerusalem at this time. For of the millions of inhabitants in Judea in the unhappy year of 70 A.D., a third of them were plundered and homeless refugees from ruined cities. Therefore, instead of the armies of men, happy, hopeful and enthusiastic, who had journeyed in former years to Jerusalem, there passed before the Maccabee a mixed multitude of men and women and children. Thousands carried with them all that warfare had left to them–pitiful parcels of treasure or household goods, or extra clothing; other thousands bore nothing in their hands, and by the wear in their garments and the hunger in their faces, it seemed that they owned nothing to carry.
The Maccabee noted finally the entire absence of the travelers who fared in state. Not in all that long procession that wound up the stony passage from the west, did he see a single Sadducee. There went mobs of laborers and farmers, tradesmen, servants and small merchants, but the Jewish friends of Rome that had once made part of the Passover pilgrimage a royal progress were nowhere to be seen. Under the vast, vivid blue of the mountain skies they moved, indifferent to the splendid benevolence of the untroubled day. The pure wind swept in from the radiance in the east, flinging out multi-colored garments and scarves, rushing with its bracing chill without obstruction through even the compactest mass of wayfarers. The cedars on the hills about the little town whistled continuously and at times some extremely narrow defile with an uninterrupted draft would take voice and cry humanly. But there was no responsive exhilaration to the vigor of morning on a mountain-top. The great ever-growing migration was dark, dangerous and moody.
Somewhere beyond the highest of the blue hills to the east, the white walls of the city of David were receiving all this. Somewhere to the west the four brassy legions of Titus were marching down upon all this. About the Maccabee were assembling all the circumstances that govern a tremendous struggle. Eagerness, earnestness, all the strength and resolution of his strong and resolute nature surged into his soul. It was his hour. It should find him prepared.
He turned out of the gate and crowding along by the stone wall to pass in the opposite direction from the flood of pilgrims pouring through Emmaus, he searched for the synagogue of the little town.
He came upon it, a solid square building of stone with an Egyptic façade and an architrave carved with a great stone flower set in an olive wreath. Without was the proseuchae, paved with boulders now worn smooth by the summer sittings of the congregation who gathered around the reader's stone. The Maccabee stopped at the gate and unlacing his pagan sandals set them outside the threshold.
Once over the stone sill with the imminent gloom covering him, he felt the old sanctity envelop him with a reproach in its forgotten familiarity. Old incense, old litanies, old rites rushed back to him with the smell of the stagnant fragrance. He heard again from the farther depths of the dark interior the musical monotone of a rabbi reciting a ritual. The voice was young and low. Presently he heard the responses spoken in a woman's voice, so tender, so soft and so sad that he sensed instantly the meaning of the sympathy in the young priest's voice. Out of the incense-laden dusk he found old custom stealing back upon him. His lips anticipated words unreadily; gladly he realized that he could say these formulas, also; he had not forgotten; he had not forgotten!
In this little synagogue in a poor town there were no privacies; communicants had to depend on the courtesy of their fellows for uninterrupted devotion. The wanderer had not forgotten this. So he effaced himself in the darkness and awaited his own turn.
He hardly knew why he had come. For what should he ask–forgiveness or for the hope of the King who was to come? What should he do–make atonement or promises; give an offering or ask encouragement? He did not doubt for an instant that he had done wisely in seeking the synagogue, but what had he for it, or what had it for him?
Meanwhile the voice of the priest, disembodied in the gloom, had put off its ritualistic tone and was delivering a charge:
"Since you are in haste to reach Jerusalem, you may depart, so that you will give me your word that you will in all faith abide upon the road seven days; and that at the end of the separation you will present yourselves for examination and cleansing at Jerusalem, and that you will in nowise transgress the law of separation on the journey hence."
The Maccabee heard the woman give her word. After a little further communication, he heard them move toward the entrance.
The white light from the day without revealed to him in a few steps, a veiled woman, a deformed old man and a young rabbi. He did not need to take the evidence of her dress or of her companion to recognize under this veil the girl whom he had won from Julian of Ephesus, in the hills, that very morning.
As if in response to his inner hope that she would see him, she raised her eyes at the moment she passed, and started quickly. Even under the shelter of her veil he saw her flush.
The next instant she was out of the synagogue and gone.
The Maccabee hesitated restlessly, forgot his mission to the synagogue and then, with no definite purpose, followed.
At the edge of town, where the huddle of huts left off and the gravel and rock and cedar began, he saw the priest dismiss the pair with his blessing and turn back.
Undecided, restless and regretful, the Maccabee lingered, looking after her as she went into the hills, unattended, except for an anomalous old man. The sun of noon shone on her silver dress that the dust of the wayside had not tarnished. He was gloomy and wistful without understanding his discomfort, and afraid for the beautiful unknown going out for seven days into the unfriendly wilderness.
There was the click of a horse's hoof beside him. He glanced up with a nervous start to see Julian of Ephesus, scowling, at hand.
"It is time," he said, "for us to be off."
The Maccabee instantly determined that Julian of Ephesus should not come up with this defenseless girl again.
"I am not ready," he returned promptly.
"It was three days, this morning, that you have lost. To-morrow it will be four."
"And Sabbath, it will be seven. A long time, a long time!"
The Maccabee turned and went back to the khan. A gap in the hills had hidden the girl in the silver tissue, and the blitheness of the Maccabee's spirit had gone with her.
By sunset, the Maccabee and Julian of Ephesus had taken the road to Jerusalem again.
As they reached the crest of a series of ridges there lay before them a long gentle slope smooth and dun-colored as some soft pelt, dropping down into a tender vale with levels of purple vapor hanging over it. At the end of this declivity, leagues in length, was a faint blue shape, cloudlike and almost merged with the cold color of the eastern horizon, but suddenly developing at its summit a delicate white peak. The sunset reaching it as they rode changed the point to a pinnacle of ruby before their eyes. Their shadows that had ridden before them merged with the shade over the world. Then with a soft, whispery, ghost-like intaking of the breath, a quantity of sand on the straight road before them got up under their horses' feet and moved away to another spot and dropped again with a peppering sound and was dead moveless earth again. The little breath of wind from under the edge of the sky had fallen.
In the silence between the muffled beat of hooves the Maccabee heard at his ears the quick lively throb of a busy pump. With it went the firm rush of a subdued stream. He was hearing his own heart-beat, his own life flowing through his veins. Since nature in him had hurried him out of the synagogue after its own desire, he seemed to have become primitive, conscious of the human creature in him. Now, though he rode through a bewitching air through an enchanted land, he did not ride in a dream. All his being was alert and sagacious. Though the confusion of footprints in the dust showed plainly where men had passed by thousands, he did not follow their lead. Over the tangle of marks lay a slim paw-printed, confident, careless trail of a jackal, following the scent to a well. The Maccabee was obedient to the instinct of the animal instead of the reason of man. At the end of that trail, surer than Ariadne's scarlet thread in the labyrinth, he knew that thirst had taken the girl in the dress of silver tissue. So as he rode along this faultless highway that fared level and undeviating by arches, causeways and bridges across mountains, over black marshes and profound valleys, he kept his eyes on the jackal's trail.
Long after moonrise they came to a spot in the road where the human marks passed on, by hundreds, by other hundreds deserted the road and clambered up the side of the hill. Over this deviation the jackal had trotted. The Maccabee, tall on his horse, raised his fine head and searched all the brooding shapes of the hills about.
The road at this point ran through a defile. On either side the slopes crowded upon the pass. Above them were bold summits with groves of cedars, and in one of these the Maccabee made out a thin curl of smoke dimly illuminated by a moon-drowned fire. Up there in the covert of the trees the girl in the silver tissue was resting from her perilous and outlawed journey.
"We will eat here," the Maccabee said abruptly to Julian.
"Eat!" Julian exclaimed. "What?"
The Maccabee signed to the pack on Julian's horse. Julian dismounted, shaking his head.
"What a savage appetite this travel in the untaught wilds of Judea hath bred in you, my cousin! You, whom once a crust of bread and a cup of wine would satisfy!"
But the Maccabee climbed out of the roadway and, finding a sheltered spot behind a boulder, kicked together some of the dead weeds and twigs and set fire to the heap with flint and steel. Then he lost interest in the preparation of his comforts. He turned to look up at the faint column of illumination in the little copse of cedars and presently, stealthily, went that way.
It was a poor encampment that he came upon.
From the low-growing limbs of a couple of gnarly cedars, old Momus had stretched the sheepskins which Joseph, the shepherd, had given them. Three sides of the shelter were protected thus, and the fourth side opened down-hill, with a low fire screening them from the mountain wind. Within this inclosure, wrapped in the coarse mantle of her servant, sat Laodice. She had raised her veil and its misty texture flowed like a web of frost over her brilliant hair and framed her face in cold vapor. In spite of the marks of grief that had exhausted her tears, the fatigue and discomfort, she seemed, to the Maccabee's eyes, more than ever lovely. He was angry with the hieratic banishment that sent her out to subsist by the roadside for seven days in early spring; angry with the harsh inhospitality of the hills; and angrier that he could not change it all. He looked at the old mute to see that he was carefully putting away the remnants of a meal of durra bread and curds. The primitive gallantry of the original man stirred in the Maccabee. He had come unseen; with silent step he departed.
A little later he stepped boldly into the circle of light from their camp-fire. To Laodice, in her lowly position, he seemed superhumanly big and splendid. Without mantle or any of the accessories that would show preparation against the cold, his bare arms and limbs and dark face, tanned, hardy and resolute, seemed to be those of a strong aborigine, sturdy friend of all of nature's rougher moods.
He did not look at Momus, who got up as quickly as he might at the intrusion of the big stranger. His dark eyes rested on Laodice, who sat transfixed with her sudden recognition of the visitor.
He held in one hand a brace of fowls, in the other a skin of wine.
When he spoke the polish of the Ephesian andronitis in his voice and manner destroyed the primitive illusion.
"Lady, I heard in the synagogue at Emmaus to-day the exclusion that is laid upon you for seven days. This is a hungry country and no man should waste food. I shall enter Jerusalem to-morrow by daybreak; we, my companion and I, have no further use for these. They are Milesian ducks, fattened on nuts. And this is Falernian–Roman. I pray you, allow me to leave them with your servant with my obeisances."
Without waiting for her reply the Maccabee passed fowls and skin into the hands of Momus who stood near.
"Sir," she answered unreadily, with her small hands gripping each other before her and her eyes veiled, "I thank you. It was not the least of my anxieties how we should provide ourselves with food under prohibition and in a country perilous with war. You have made to-morrow easy for us. I thank you."
"To-morrow; yes," he argued, seizing upon a discussion for an excuse to remain, "but the next day, and the next five days, what shall you do?"
"Perchance," she said gravely, "God will send us another stranger of a generous heart, with more than he needs for himself."
Not likely, indeed, he thought, would such beauty as hers go hungry as long as there were hearts in the wilderness as impressionable as his. But the thought of another than himself providing for her did not make him happy.
There was nothing more to be said, but he did not go. In his face gathered signs of his interest in her identity.
"Is there more that I can do for you?" he asked. "Have you friends in Jerusalem? I will bear your messages gladly."
But it was a grateful privilege which she had to refuse with reluctance. If her husband awaited her in Jerusalem, he must wait, rather than be informed of the cause of her delay at peril of exposing his presence in the city. She shook her head.
"There is nothing more," she added. "I thank you."
Dismissal was so evident in her voice that he prepared to depart.
"Shall you move on, then, in the morning?" he asked.
"We have seven days in the wilderness," she explained. "We can not hasten. It is only a little way to Jerusalem."
"But it is a long road and a weary one for tender feet," he answered; "and it is a time of warfare and much uncertainty."
She lifted her eyes now with trouble in them.
"Is there any less dangerous way than this?" she asked.
The Maccabee sat down and clasped his hands about his knees. This grasping at the slightest excuse to remain exasperated the perplexed Momus, who could not understand the stranger's assurance. But the Maccabee failed to see him.
"There is," he said to Laodice. "One can journey with you. I am under no restriction, and the rabbis do not bind you against me. I can secure you comforts along the way, and give you protection. There in no such dire need that I enter Jerusalem under seven days."
Laodice was confused by this sudden offer of help from a stranger in whom her confidence was not entirely settled. Nevertheless a warmth and pleasure crept into her heart benumbed with sorrow. She did not look at Momus, fearing instinctively that the command in her old servant's eyes would not be of a kind with the grateful response she meant to give this stranger.
"I have no right to expect so much–from a stranger," she said.
"Then I shall not be a stranger," he declared promptly. "Call me–Hesper–of Ephesus."
"Ephesus!" she echoed, looking up quickly.
"The maddest city in the world," he replied. "Dost know it?"
She hesitated. Could she say with entire truth that she did not know Ephesus? Had she not read those letters that Philadelphus had written to her father, which were glowing with praise of the proud city of Diana? Was it not as if she had seen the Odeum and the great Theater, the Temple with its golden cows, the mount and the plain and the broad wandering of the Rivers Hermus, Caÿster and Maenander? Had she not made maps of it from her young husband's accounts and then with enthusiasm traced his steps by its stony, hilly streets from forum to stadium and from school to museum? Had she not dreamed of its shallow port, its rugged highways and its skyey marshes? It had been her pride to know Ephesus, although she had never laid eyes upon it. Even she had come to believe that she would know an Ephesian by his aggressive joy in life! It went hard with her to deny that she knew that city which she had all but seen.
The Maccabee observed her hesitation and when she looked up to answer, his eyes full of question were resting upon her.
"I do not know Ephesus," she said quickly. "Are–are you a native?"
"No."
She wanted mightily to know if he had met the young Philadelphus in that city, but she feared to ask further lest she betray him.
"A great city," he went on, "but there are greater pagan cities. It is not like Jerusalem, which has no counterpart in the world. Even the most intolerant pagan is curious about Jerusalem."
She looked again at his face. It was not Greek or Roman, neither more indicative of her own blood.
"Are you a Jew?" she asked.
He remembered that she had seen him in a synagogue.
"I was," he said after a silence.
She looked at him a moment before she made comment.
"I never heard a Jew say it that way before."
He acknowledged the rebuke with the flash of a smile that appeared only in his eyes.
"A Jew entirely Jewish wears the mark on him. You have had to ask if I were a Jew. Would I be consistent to claim to be that which in no wise shows to be in me?"
"It is time to be a Jew or against the Jews," she said gravely. "There is no middle ground concerning Judea at this hour."
Serious words from the lips of a woman in whom a man expects to find entertainment are obtrusive, a paradox. Still the new generosity in his heart for this girl made any manner she chose, engaging, so that it showed him the sight of her face and gave him the sound of her voice.
"Seeing," he said, "that it is the hour of the Jewish hope, is it politic for us to declare ourselves for its benefits?"