Mary Magdalen Part 5

"That he walks on the sea--"

"Nonsense!"

"That he turns water into wine, feeds the mult.i.tude, raises the dead--"

"Raises the dead!" And the tetrarch added in the _sotto voce_ of thought, "So did Elijah."

"That he had been in the desert--"

"With Aretas?"

"No; I questioned him on that point. He had never heard of Aretas, but he said that in the desert this Satan had come and offered him-what do you suppose? _The empire of the earth!_"

Antipas shook with fright. "It must have been Aretas."

"But that he had refused."

"Then it is John."

"There, you see." And Pahul dandled himself with the air of one who is master of logic. "That's what I said myself. I said this: 'If he can raise the dead, he can raise himself.' "

"It _is_ John," the tetrarch repeated.

"I am sure of it," the butler continued. "But he did not say so. Judas didn't either. On the contrary, he declared he was not. He said John was not good enough to carry his shoes. I saw through that, though," and Pahul leered; "he knew whom I was, and he lied to protect his friend. I of course pretended to believe him."

"Quite right," said the tetrarch.

"Yes, I played the fool. H'm, where was I? Oh, I asked Judas who then his friend was, but he went over to where a woman stood; he spoke to her; she moved away. Some of the others seemed to reprove him. I would have followed, but at that moment his friend stood up; a khazzan offered him a scroll, but he waved it aside; then some one asked him a question which I did not catch; another spoke to him; a third interrupted; he seemed to be arguing with them. I was too far away to hear well, and I got nearer; then I heard him say, 'I am the bread of life.' Now, what did he mean by that?"

Antipas had no explanation to offer.

"Then," Pahul continued, "he said he had come down from heaven. A man near me exclaimed, 'He is the Messiah;' but others--"

"The Messiah!" echoed the tetrarch. For a moment his thoughts stammered, then at once he was back in the citadel. On one side was the procurator, on the other the emir of Tadmor. In front of him was a drunken rabble, wrangling Pharisees, and one man dominating the din with an announcement of the Messiah's approach. The murmur of lutes threaded through it all; and now, as his thoughts deviated, he wondered could that announcement have been the truth.

"But others," Pahul continued, "objected loudly. For a little I could not catch a word. At last they became quieter, and I heard him repeat that he was the bread of life, adding, 'Your fathers ate manna and are dead, but this bread a man may eat of and never die.' At this there was new contention. A woman fainted-the one to whom Judas had spoken. They carried her out. As she pa.s.sed I could see her face. It was Mary of Magdala. Judas held her by the waist, another her feet."

Antipas drew a hand across his face. "It is impossible," he muttered.

"Not impossible at all. I saw her as plainly as I see you. The man next to me said that the Rabbi had cast from her seven devils. Moreover, Johanna was there-yes, yes, the wife of Khuza, your steward; it was she, I remember now, who had her by the feet. And there were others that I recognized, and others that the man next to me pointed out: Zabdia, a well-to-do fisherman whom I have seen time and again, and with him his sons James and John, and Salome his wife. Then, too, there were Simon Barjona and Andrew his brother. Simon had his wife with him, his children, and his mother-in-law. The man next to me said that the Rabbi called James and John the Sons of Thunder, and Simon a stone. There was Mathias the tax-gatherer, Philip of Bethsada, Joseph Barsaba, Mary Clopas, Susannah, Nathaniel of Cana, Thomas, Thaddeus, Aristian the custom-house officer, Ruth the tax-gatherer's wife, mechanics from Scythopolis, and Scribes from Jerusalem."

The fingers of Antipas' hand glittered with jewels. He played with them nervously. The sky seemed immeasurably distant. For some little time it had been hesitating between different shades of blue, but now it chose a fathomless indigo; Night unloosed her draperies, and, with the prodigality of a queen who reigns only when she falls, flung out upon them uncounted stars.

Pahul continued: "And many of them seemed to be at odds with each other.

They wrangled so that often I could not distinguish a word. Some of them left the synagogue. The Rabbi himself must have been vexed, for in a lull I heard him say to those who were nearest, 'Will you also go away?' Judas came in at that moment, and he turned to him: 'Have I not chosen twelve, and is not one of you a devil?' Judas came forward at once and protested.

I could see he was in earnest, and meant what he said. The man next told me that he was devoted to the Rabbi. Then Simon Barjona, in answer to his question, called out, 'To whom should we go? Thou art Christ, the Son of G.o.d.' "

Antipas had ceased to listen. At the mention of the Messiah the dream of Israel had returned, and with it the pageants of its faith unrolled.

Behind the confines of history, in the naked desert he saw a bedouin, austere and grandiose, preparing the tenets of a nation's creed; in the remoter past a shadow in which there was lightning, then the splendor of that first dawn where the future opened like a book, and in the grammar of the Eternal the promise of an age of gold.

Through the echo of succeeding generations came the rumor of that initial impulse which drew the world in its flight. The bedouin had put the desert behind him, and stared at another. Where the sand had been was the sea. As he pa.s.sed, the land leapt into life. There were tents and pa.s.sions, clans not men, an aggregate of forces in which the unit disappeared. For chieftain there was Might; and above, the subjects of impersonal verbs, the Elohim from whom the thunder came, the rain, light and darkness, death and birth, dream too, and nightmare as well. The clans migrated. Goshen called. In its heart Chaldaea spoke. The Elohim vanished, and there was El, the one great G.o.d, and Isra-el, the great G.o.d's elect. From heights that lost themselves in immensity the ineffable name, incommunicable and never to be p.r.o.nounced, was seared by forked flames on a tablet of stone. A nation learned that El was Jehovah, that they were in his charge, that he was omnipotent, and that the world was theirs.

They had a law, a covenant, a future, and a G.o.d; and as they pa.s.sed into the lands of the well-beloved, leaving tombs and altars to mark their pa.s.sage, they had battle-cries that frightened and hymns that exalted the heart. Above were the jealous eyes of Jehovah, and beyond was the resplendent to-morrow. They ravaged the land like hailstones. They had the whirlwind for ally; the moon was their servant; and to aid them the sun stood still. The terror of Sinai gleamed from their breastplates; men could not see their faces and live. They encroached and conquered. They had a home, they made a capitol, and there on a rock-bound hill Antipas saw David founding a line of kings, and Solomon the city of G.o.d.

It was in their loins the Messiah was; in them the apex of a nation's prosperity; in them glory at its apogee. And across that tableau of might, of splendor, and of submission for one second flitted the silhouette of that dainty princess of Utopia, the Queen of Sheba, bringing riddles, romance, and riches to the wise young king.

She must have been very beautiful, Antipas with melancholy retrospection reflected; and he fancied her more luminous than the twelve signs of the zodiac, lounging nonchalantly in a palanquin that a white elephant with swaying tail balanced on his painted back. And even as she returned, with a child perhaps, to the griffons of the fabulous Yemen whence she came, Antipas noted a speck on the horizon that grew from minim into mountain, and obscured the entire sky. He saw the empire split in twain, and in the twin halves that formed the perfect whole, a concussion of armies, brothers appealing against their kin, the flight of the Ideal.

Unsummoned before him paraded the regicides, convulsions, and anarchies that deified Hatred until Vengeance incarnate talked a.s.syrian, and Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pigmy for King of Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them until it occurred to Cyrus to change the Euphrates' course.

By the light of that legend Antipas saw an immense hall, illuminated by the seven branches of countless candelabra, and filled with revellers celebrating a monarch's feast. Beyond, through retreating columns, were cyclopean arches and towers whose summits were lost in clouds that the lightning rent. At the royal table sat Belsarazzur, laughing mightily at the enterprise of the Persian king; about him were the grandees of his court, the flower of his concubines; at his side were the sacred vases filled with wine. He raised one to his lips, and there on the frieze before him leapt out the flaming letters of his doom, while to the trumpetings of heralds Cyrus and his army beat down the city's gates.

It pa.s.sed, and Antipas saw Jerusalem repeopled, the Temple rebuilt, peace after exile, the joy of bondage unloosed. For a moment it lasted-a century or two at most; and after Alexander, in chasing kings. .h.i.ther and thither, had pa.s.sed with his huntsmen that way, Isis and Osiris beckoned, and the descendants of the bedouin belonged to Goshen again, and so remained until Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with them utterly had not Juda Maccabaeus flaunted his banner, and the Roman eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superber than ever, and from the throne of David, Antipas saw the upstart that was his father rule Judaea.

With him the panorama and the kaleidoscope of its details abruptly ceased.

But through it all the voices of the prophets had rung more insistently with each defeat. The covenant in the wilderness was unforgetable; in the chained links of slavery they saw the steps of a throne, the triumph of truth over error, peace over war, Israel pontiff and shepherd of the nations of the world.

The expectation of a liberator who should free the bonds of a people and definitively re-create the land of the elect possessed them utterly; his advent had been constantly awaited, obstinately proclaimed; the faith in him was unshakeable. Palestine was filled with believers praying the Eternal not to let them die before the promise was fulfilled; the atmosphere itself was charged with expectation.

And as the visions rushed through his mind, Antipas fell to wondering whether that covenant was as meaningless as he had thought, or whether by any chance this rabbi who had been arguing at Capharnahum could be the usher of Israel's hope. If he were, then indeed he might say good-bye to his tetrarchy, to his dream of a kingdom as well.

"Yes," Pahul repeated, "the Son of G.o.d!"

Antipas had been so far away that now he started as one does whom the touch of a hand awakes. To recover himself he leaned over and plunged his face in the jar. The wine brought him courage.

He must be suppressed, he decided.

"But," the butler continued, "I--"

The frontal of the palace was set with lights. The parasols of the palms had turned from green to black, the stars seemed remoter, the sky more dark. From beyond came the call and answer of the sentinels.

Antipas stood up. A fringe of his tunic was detained by a rivet of the bench on which he had sat; he stooped to loose it; something moist touched his fingers, and as he moved to the palace the black-faced ape sprang at his side and nibbled at the jewels on his hand.

CHAPTER V.

V.

The house of Simon Barlevi was gray, and in shape an oblong. It had a flat roof laid with a plaster of lime, about which was a fretwork of open tiles. Beneath, for doorway, was a recess, surmounted by an arch and covered with a layer of mud. On each side was a room.

In the recess, sheltered from the sun and visited by the breeze, Simon stood. His garments were white, and where they were not they had been neatly chalked. On the border of his skirt and sleeves were the regulation fringes, and on his forehead and about his left arm the phylacteries which Pharisees affect. He was not pleasant to the eye, but he was virtuous and a strict observer of the Law.

In the room at his left were mats and painted stools, set in the manner customary when guests are awaited. For on that day Simon Barlevi was to give a little feast, to which he had bidden his friends and also a rabbi whom he had listened to in the synagogue, and with whose ideas he did not at all agree. Save for the mats and stools, and a lamp of red clay, the room was bare.