Saul Of Tarsus Part 60

Lydia raised her head, and looked at Cla.s.sicus. Not for her the refuge that was Cypros', for if Flaccus held in truth the secret of her conversion to the Nazarene faith, she would only lead his officers straight upon the Nazarenes all over Egypt. Whatever people sheltered her, she would bring disaster and death on their heads. As Marsyas had been under the oppression of Saul of Tarsus, she had become as a pestilence! She wondered if Cla.s.sicus realized how thoroughly she understood him. His face did not wear an air of respect for his plan.

"It can not be," she said quietly, and the alabarch looked startled at her words. Cla.s.sicus submitted to her objection at once.

"Then," he said, "there is but one other way that I can invent--and this I offer last, because it is dearest to me. I have lands in Greece and favor with the legate there. Flaccus' power can not extend beyond his own dominions. Wilt thou not come to Greece--with me, my Lydia?"

Lydia's gaze did not falter throughout this speech; she had expected, long ago, that when Cla.s.sicus had hedged her about, he would offer his hand as her one escape. Drop by drop the color left her face; her lips grew pale, and took on a curve of mute appeal; her eyes were the eyes of suffering, but not the eyes of a vanquished woman.

The alabarch had turned hurriedly away. But Cla.s.sicus gazed, as if awaiting her reply, at his smooth, thin hands, now stripped of their jewels, incident to the shrinkage in his purse.

The drip of the waterfall in the garden within came very distinctly upon the silence in the room.

A cry from the porter, speaking in the vestibule, brought the alabarch up quickly.

"Master! master! The prince! The prince!"

"The king, thou untaught rustic!" Agrippa's tones, subdued but mirthful, followed upon the porter's cry.

Lysimachus sprang toward the vestibule, but Lydia, transfixed by reactionary emotions, did not move.

But before the alabarch reached the arch, two men appeared in the opening. Except for the fillet of gold set so low on his head that it pa.s.sed around his forehead just above the brows, Agrippa might have been the same nonchalant bankrupt gambling with loaded tesserae or hunting loans on bad security.

The other was Marsyas.

Cla.s.sicus lifted his brows and arose to the proper spirit in which to greet a king.

"Count it not flattery, lord," the alabarch cried, extending his hands toward the new-comers, "that I say that Abraham's radiant visitors were not more welcome than thou!"

"Better the unprepared alabarch," said Marsyas, "than any host who hath expected his guests!"

The prince laughed, and discovering Lydia, bowed low to her.

"No change in thee, sweet Lydia," he exclaimed as she bent in obeisance to the fillet of gold about his forehead.

Marsyas stood a moment aside, his glance roving quickly from her to Cla.s.sicus. With an effort he put back the rush of feeling that crowded upon his composure and came to her.

"Hast thou not changed, Lydia?" he asked. The hand closing over his did not belie the tremor in her voice.

"A blessing on you both," she said. "You are the redemption of this house of trouble!"

"We have been everything but heroes in our days," Marsyas said.

"Welcome the opportunity!"

"Ho! Cla.s.sicus!" Agrippa cried jovially, "hast thou failed to overthrow the tribute-demanding Sphinx or the Dragon?"

Marsyas gazed at the philosopher standing with inclined head, while he made felicitous answers to the prince, and said to himself:

"Happy phrase, my lord King! There standeth the tribute-demanding Sphinx, even now!"

Agrippa addressed himself to the alabarch, and between Marsyas and Cla.s.sicus there stood no saving obstruction. Marsyas' nostrils quivered; he had fleeting but perfect summaries of the wrongs the man had worked against him. To find him now a guest entertained under the roof he had striven to injure, brought the Essene's temper up to a climacteric point. But he felt Lydia's presence, pacific, temperate and persuasive, restraining him. Of all the many deceits he had used throughout his precarious life of late, none seemed so impossible of practice as to offer a dispa.s.sionate word to Cla.s.sicus.

He was saved for the moment by an exclamation from the alabarch.

"In all truth, that manifestation of Caesar's favor?" he cried eagerly.

"A truth!" Agrippa declared. "Rome made a dandy out of Marsyas.

Twelve legionaries, before he would stir a step to Egypt! Twelve! All armed; bra.s.ses so polished that one looks into the sun who looks at one. None short of three cubits in stature and visaged like Mars!"

Marsyas cut off the prince's raillery with a direct and serious query.

"How is it with our lady?"

"Still in hiding from Flaccus," the alabarch replied.

Agrippa looked in astonishment from one to another.

"Surely," he said earnestly, "you have not carried this delusion to such an extreme!"

"Delusion, lord," Marsyas repeated, facing him. "Let those first speak who are not deluded. Then thou shall apply the word to him it fits."

"Good friends," the Herod protested, "all wise men cherish a folly.

Marsyas, being the wisest of my knowing, hath his own. He hath held fast against flawless argument and solid truth to the delusion that my honest, timid wife hath awakened pa.s.sion in the heart of this proconsul, who hath all the beauty and wit of Egypt and Rome from which to choose."

"Wilt thou continue further, lord," Marsyas said, "and tell them how thou hast explained this mystery to thyself?"

"What, Marsyas! Make confession here, openly, of a thing which I blush to confess to myself?" the Herod laughed.

"Never fear; thy audience hath already acquitted thee of blame!"

"Nay, then; so a.s.sured of clemency, I tell this behind my palms and with the prayer that the walls do not repeat it to my lady's ears!

Learn, then, for the first time, that Junia is the cause of my disaster, because, forsooth, she is as fickle and capricious a woman as she is bad. Until the unhappy Herod was blown of ill winds to Alexandria, his single haven, she was Flaccus' mistress. When I appeared, for no other cause than the Mightiness of her fancy, she dropped Flaccus and precipitated all manner of disaster upon my head.

There is the true story! Cypros, forsooth! Cypros is an upright Arab, twenty years married and mother of three!"

"Junia!" the alabarch repeated irritably. "Junia constructed more of Flaccus' villainies than Flaccus himself!"

"And will nothing dislodge this wild thing from your brain?" Agrippa cried.

"Name it what you will, lord," the alabarch answered, "but I have a further story to tell than all my fruitless letters told, when I stood in fear of their interception! Thou hast not forgotten the attack on thee on the night of Flora's feast; that, thou canst ascribe to Flaccus' jealousy, but how wilt thou explain that when the news of thy disaster reached Alexandria, Flaccus put off his amiable front and commanded me to deliver Cypros to him--"

"Commanded you to deliver Cypros to him!" Agrippa cried, the fires of anger igniting in his eyes. "What had she to do with this?"

The alabarch drew himself up, ready in his dignity and authority to justify his deeds.

"If it proceedeth to an accounting, I and mine will bear witness to her innocence and loving fidelity to thee! Yet, remember, lord, she hath the first right to ask why she hath been left without thy care thus long!"

Agrippa flushed darkly, but Marsyas stopped the retort on his lips.

"Let us not try each other! Go on, good sir," he pleaded.

"I refused, and he threatened to hurl the Alexandrians on the Regio Judaeorum. But in the meantime, fate or fortune, G.o.d knows which, ordered that Tiberius should choose Caligula to succeed him. The news reached Alexandria and stayed Flaccus' hand, for then he stood in wholesome fear of thy friend, the prince imperial. But thou didst tarry and tarry, and the more thou didst tarry, the more his hopes and his desires grew. No longer the Regio Judaeorum dared he threaten, but me and mine--Lydia, above all!"