Saul Of Tarsus Part 30

He was led presently into a dark porch and admitted into a hall. The startled porter glanced at him, and, seeing Lydia in the stranger's arms, the serving-man cried out. The brown woman answered with a guttural sentence or two, and by the time Marsyas, following the lead of the agitated porter, entered a beautiful chamber, people were running in from brilliantly-lighted apartments beyond.

The spare and elegant old figure in the embroidered robes and cap of a Jewish magistrate hurried toward him with terror written on his face.

"Lydia! What hath befallen thee? Is she dead?" he cried.

Back of him came a rush of people. Foremost was Herod Agrippa; behind him, Cypros. With the growing group, Marsyas ceased to note the details of their ident.i.ty and remarked at random that one was a man who wore a fillet and that the other was a woman and beautiful.

The number of servants increasing, the babble of questions and exclamations creating a great confusion, none who made answer was heard. But Marsyas looked at the master of the house. He saw this time, not the magistrate's alarm, but his character, his nationality, his religion. In that aristocratic old countenance there was nothing of the Nazarene. Marsyas let his eyes fall on the face against his breast. By the brighter light, he saw now that which he had not seen under the smoky street-torch. In the folds of her white dress, beautiful and rich enough for a feast, reposed a small cedar cross, depending from a scarlet cord.

The young Jew with the fillet about his forehead sprang forward to take Lydia from Marsyas' arms. But with the instinctive feeling that none must see but himself, he disengaged one hand and stopped the Jew with a motion.

"I will put her down," he said calmly.

Cla.s.sicus drew himself up to his full height, but Marsyas had already turned toward the divan. With a quick movement, he slipped the crucifix from about the girl's neck and thrust it into his tunic.

Out of the babble about him he learned that the girl had supposedly gone to attend a maiden gathering in the Regio Judaeorum with the brown woman as an attendant. Catching with relief at this bit of foundation for a story, he stood up prepared to tell anything but the truth.

Meantime, attendants and a house physician bent over the girl with wine and restoratives, and the company's attention was directed toward her recovery. Presently she put aside her waiting-women and sat up.

Marsyas glanced from her to the brown woman, who hovered on the outskirts. The handmaiden's great, mysterious, olive-green eyes were fixed upon him, half in appeal, half in command. Before he could understand the look the Jew in the fillet turned upon him.

"Come, we are learning nothing," he said in a voice that silenced the group. "Thou," indicating Marsyas with an imperious motion, "seemest to show the marks of experience. Tell us what happened."

Marsyas' mind went through prodigious calculation. If he frankly told the truth, he betrayed the girl to much misery and peril. If he evaded, Eutychus, wis.h.i.+ng to justify himself and to escape punishment, might wreck a fabrication by a word. But the young man made no appreciable hesitation in answering. He caught the charioteer's eye and held it fixedly while he spoke.

"I know little," he said. "From the s.h.i.+p we came up a certain street, where we met tumult between fugitives and pursuers. So disorderly the crowd and so extensive its violence that whosoever met it on the street was instantly caught in its center and mistreated as much as the guiltiest one. Thus I and Prince Agrippa's servant were caught; thus, the lady.

"We defended ourselves and should have escaped scathless, but that we stayed to save the lady from the rioters. This done we came hither.

That is all."

"Who were the fugitives?" the Jew in the fillet demanded.

The thick lips of Eutychus parted and he drew in breath, but the lower lids of the black eyes fixed upon him lifted a little and he subsided.

"Sir, one does not stop to identify pa.s.sing strangers when one fights for his life," Marsyas explained calmly.

Eutychus lost his air of trepidation, and his taut figure relaxed.

"Where was it?" the beautiful woman asked of the charioteer.

Marsyas answered directly.

"Lady, one does not locate himself in the midst of turbulence."

Lysimachus came closer to Marsyas.

"Who art thou?" he asked. "I met thee once, it seems."

"That," Agrippa broke in, "by every act he hath done since I knew him, is the most generous of Jews, Marsyas, an Essene, by his permission, my friend and companion. Know him, Alexander; it is a profitable acquaintance."

Marsyas flushed under the prince's praise, and Cypros, drawing closer, took his arm and pressed her cheek against it.

"Thrice welcome to my house," the alabarch said with emotion. "Blessed be thy coming and thy going; may safety be thy shadow!"

Marsyas, coloring more under the comment, thanked the alabarch and cast a beseeching look at the prince. The prince smiled.

"Let us supplement blessings with raiment and thanks with wine," he said to the alabarch. "This is an Essene to whom uncleanliness is as great a crime as a love affair."

"Thou recallest me to my duty," the alabarch returned, at once.

"Stephanos,"--signing to a servitor,--"thou wilt take this young man to the room which hath been prepared for him and give him comfort. If he hath any hurts, the physician will wait on him. Remember, brother, I am at thy command."

With these words, he bowed to Marsyas, who inclined his head to the company and followed Stephanos.

But at the arch leading into the corridor, there was a low word at his hand. Lydia, with the rough mantle dropped from her, stood there in her rich white garments.

"I owe thee my life," she said, in a little more than a whisper. "Aye, even more--a greater debt which I can not make clear to thee now."

He looked down into her lifted eyes, pleading for pity and forgiveness.

"I made thee traffic with the truth," they said. "Thou who art an Essene and a holy man!"

Something happened in Marsyas; a quickening rush of rare emotion swept over him. He took her small hand and held it, until, shyly and reluctantly, she drew it away.

He went then through broad halls, flooded with lights from costly lamps, past whispering fountains and motionless potted plants, through arches relieved by silken draperies which adorned without screening, up a broad flight of stairs to his own chamber.

This was all very beautiful and restful with its occasional whiffs of incense, or the musical drip of the waterfall or the soft murmur of distant voices. His lot had fallen in splendid places, he told himself, and, though opposed, by teaching, to the difference men make in each other, he was glad that he was not to live as a manumitted slave under the roof of the alabarch's house.

As he stepped into the chamber which Stephanos told him was his own, Drumah appeared. Startled at first sight of a man bearing marks of ill-usage, she stopped and cried out as she recognized him.

"I am not hurt, Drumah," he said, to quiet the rush of questions on her lips. "I was caught in a riot. It is nothing."

"But I see marks on thy face," she persisted, coming near him; "and thy garments have bloodstains on them. Thou dost not know that thou art hurt. O Stephanos," she cried to the servitor, "fetch balsam and volatile ointment. Eutychus, art thou there? Run to the culina and get wine! Where is the physician?"

The charioteer, who had appeared in the upper story for the express purpose of seeking Drumah to tell the details of the day's excitement, stopped short and scowled.

"I thank thee," Marsyas said to her. "I am not in need of a.s.sistance.

The physician is with the master's daughter. I can care for myself.

Pray, do not give thyself trouble."

He stepped into the apartment and dropped the curtain upon himself and Stephanos.

He had given himself up to the servitor's attentions, when it occurred to him that he had let slip a chance to deliver a telling and a much-needed warning to Eutychus. The more he considered his neglect, the more serious it seemed. At last he hurried his attendant, and, getting into fresh garments, descended again to the first floor. He despatched Stephanos in search of Eutychus and stopped by the newel to await the charioteer's coming.

As he stood, the brown waiting-woman came to him, gliding like a sand column across the desert. Coming quite close to him, she dropped on her knees at his side and touched her forehead to the ground.

"I am a Brahmin," she said in Hindu, "and I owe thee a debt. I shall not forget!"

Rising, she flitted away.