The Yoke Part 12

Kenkenes looked at him with a full realization of the incongruity of the youth of the man and the weight of the office that was his.

But at close range the scribe's face was young only in feature and tint.

He was born of an Egyptian and a Danaid, and the blond alien mother had impressed her own characteristics very strongly on her son.

He had a plump figure with handsome curves, waving, chestnut hair and a fair complexion. Nose and forehead were in line. The eyes were of that type of gray that varies in shade with the mental state. His temper displayed itself only in their sudden hardening into the hue of steel; content and happiness made them blue. They were always steady and comprehending, so that whoever entered his presence for the first time said to himself: "Here is a man that discovers my very soul."

Whatever other blunder Meneptah might have made, he had redeemed himself in the wisdom he displayed in choosing his scribe. Kenkenes had been led to ask how Hotep had come to his place.

"My superior, Pinem, died without a son," the scribe had explained; "and as my record was clean, and the princes had ever been my patrons, the Pharaoh exalted me to the scribes.h.i.+p."

Kenkenes had then set down a mark in favor of the princes.

"I doubt not," the scribe observed at last, "that my time of ease is short-lived."

The sculptor looked at him with inquiry in his eyes.

"When sedition arises and defies the Pharaoh in his audience chamber,"

Hotep went on, "it has reached the stage of a single alternative--success or death. Dost know the Lady Miriam?"

"The Israelite?"

"Even so."

"I saw her this day."

"Good. Now, look upon the scene. Thou knowest she is the sister of Prince Mesu, and the favorite waiting-woman of the good Queen Thermuthis.

She has lived in obscurity for forty years, but this morning she swept into the audience chamber, did majestic obeisance and besought a word 'with him who was an infant in her maturity,' she said. The council chamber was filled with those gathered to welcome Har-hat. Meneptah bade her speak. Hast thou ever heard an Israelitish harangue?" he broke off suddenly.

Kenkenes shook his head.

"Ah, theirs is pristine oratory--occult eloquence," the scribe said earnestly, "and she is mistress of the art. She told the history of Israel and catalogued its wrongs in a manner that lacked only measure and music to make it a song. But, Kenkenes, she did not move us to compunction and pity. When she had done, we had not looked on a picture of suffering and oppression, but of insulted pride and rebellion.

Instead of compunction, she awakened admiration, instead of pity, respect. For the moment she represented, not a mult.i.tude of complaining slaves, but a race of indignant peers.

"Meneptah--ah! the good king," the scribe went on, "was impressed like the rest of us. But finally he showed her that the Israelites were what they were by the consent of the G.o.ds; that their unwillingness but increased the burden. He pointed out the example of his ill.u.s.trious sires as justification for his course; enumerated some of their privileges,--the fertile country given them by Egypt, and the freedom that was theirs to wors.h.i.+p their own G.o.d,--and summarily refused to indulge them further.

"Then she became ominous. She bade him have a care for the welfare of Egypt before he refused her. Her words were dark and full of evil portent. The air seemed to winnow with bat-wings and to reek with vapors from witch-potions and murmur with mystic formulas. Every man of us crept, and drew near to his neighbor. When she paused for an answer, the king hesitated. She had menaced Egypt and it stirreth the heart of the father when the child is threatened. He turned to Har-hat in his perplexity and craved his counsel. The fan-bearer laughed good-naturedly and begged the Pharaoh's permission to send her to the mines before she bewitched his cattle and troubled him with visions. Har-hat's unconcern made men of us all once more, but Meneptah shook his head. 'The name of Neferari Thermuthis defends her,' he said; 'let her go hence'."

"'And I take no amelioration to my people?' she demanded. 'Nay,' he replied, 'not in the smallest part shall their labor be lessened.'

"Holy Isis, thou shouldst have seen her then, Kenkenes!

"She approached the very dais of the throne and, throwing up her arms, flung her defiance into the face of her sovereign. It were treason to utter her words again. I have seen men white and shaking from rage, but Meneptah never hath so much of temper to display. Far be it from me to say that the king was afraid, but I tell you, Kenkenes, mine own hair is not yet content to lie flat. She concentrated all the denunciatory bitterness of the tongue and p.r.o.nounced and gloried in the doom of the dynasty, heaping the blame of its destruction upon the head of Meneptah!"

The scribe finished his story in a whisper. Kenkenes was by this time sitting up, his eyes s.h.i.+ning with interest and wonder.

"G.o.ds! Hotep, thou dost make me creep."

"Creep!" the scribe responded heartily, "never in my life have I so wanted to flee a royal audience. When she had done, she turned and swept from the presence and no man lifted a finger to stay her."

For a moment there was an expressive silence between the two young men.

At last Kenkenes broke it in a voice of intense admiration.

"What an intrepid spirit! Small wonder that she did not heed the condemnation of the rabble at mid-day--she who was fresh from a triumph over the Pharaoh!"

Hotep's eyes widened warningly and he shook his head.

"Nay, hush me not, Hotep," Kenkenes went on in a reckless whisper. "I must say it. Would to the G.o.ds I had been there to copy it in stone!"

"Hus.h.!.+ babbler!" the scribe exclaimed, his eyes twinkling nevertheless, "thine art will make an untimely mummy of thee yet."

Kenkenes poured out his first gla.s.s of wine and set it down untasted.

The contemplated sacrilege in stone opposite Memphis confronted him.

"If Egypt's lack of art does not kill me first," he added in defense.

"Nay," Hotep protested, "why wouldst thou perpetuate the affront to the Pharaoh?"

"Because it is history and a better delineation of the Israelitish character than all the wordy chronicles of the historians could depict,"

was the spirited reply.

"But the ritual," Hotep began, with the a.s.surance of a man that feels he is armed with unanswerable argument.

"Sing me no song of the ritual," Kenkenes broke in impatiently. "The ritual offends mine ears--my sight, my sense. We have quarreled beyond any treaty-making--ever."

The other looked at him with amazement and much consternation.

"Art thou mad?" he exclaimed.

"Nay, but I am rebellious--as rebellious as the Israelite, for I have already shaken my fist in the face of the sculptor's canons. And the time will come when the world will call my revolt just. I would there were a chronicler, here, now, to write me down, since I would be remembered as the pioneer. I shall win no justification, in these days, perhaps only persecution, but I would reap my reward of honor, though it be a thousand years in coming."

"Thou hast a grudge against the conventional forms and the rules of the ritual?" Hotep asked, after a thoughtful silence.

"I have a distaste for the horrors it compels and am ignorant of their use," Kenkenes answered stubbornly.

"Kenkenes," the scribe began, "Law is a most inexorable thing. It is the governor of the Infinite. It is a tyrant, which, good or bad, can demand and enforce obedience to its fiats. It is a capricious thing and it drags its va.s.sal--the whole created world--after it in its mutations, or stamps the rebel into the dust while the time-serving obedient ones applaud. So thou hast set up resistance against a thing greater than G.o.ds and men and I can not see thee undone. I love thee, but I should be an untrue friend did I abet thee in thy lawlessness. Submit gracefully and thy cause shall have an audience with Law some day--if it have merit."

The young sculptor's face was pa.s.sive, but his eyes were fixed sadly on the remote stars strewn above him. He felt inexpressibly solitary. His zest in his convictions did not flag, but it seemed that the whole world and the heavens had receded and left him alone with them.

Again Hotep spoke.

"There is more court gossip," he began cheerily, as if no word had been said that could depress the tone of the conversation.

Kenkenes accepted the new subject gladly.

"Out with it," he said. "Within the four walls of my world I hear naught but the clink of mallet and falling stone."

"The breach between Meneptah and Amon-meses, his mutinous brother, may be healed by a wedding."