In the tone, in the gesture that preceded it, and in its impertinence Caiaphas read Pilate's one yet supreme revenge, the expression of his absolute contempt for the whole Sanhedrim and the nation that it ruled.

From the rear the mob jumped at the t.i.tle as at a catchword. To them the irony of the procurator presumably was lost.

"King of the Jews!" they shouted. "Malka di Jehudaje, come down from your cross!"

It was a great festival, and as they jeered at Jesus they enjoyed themselves hugely.

In their vast delight the voice of Stegas was drowned.

"I am a Roman citizen," he kept repeating, his head swaying, and indicating with his eyes the wounds in his hands, the torture he endured.

"Kill me," he implored. And finding entreaty idle, he reviled the centurion, cursed the soldiery, and would have spat at them, but to his burning throat no spittle came.

The tongue of Dysmas lolled from his mouth. He had not the ability to speak, even if in speech relief could come. Flame licked at his flesh, his joints were severing, each artery was a nerve exposed, and something was crunching his brain. He could no longer groan; he could suffer merely, such suffering as h.e.l.l perhaps has failed to contrive, that apogee of agony which it was left for man to devise.

Stegas, catching the refrain the mob repeated, turned his eyes from the soldiery to the adjacent cross.

"If you are as they say," he cried, "save yourself and us."

As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, "Behold your king!" and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it to the Christ.

The sun was nearing the horizon. Caiaphas gathered his ample folds about him. He had seen enough. The feast, wretchedly embittered, was nearly done. There was another at which he must officiate: the shofa presently would sound; the skewering of the Paschal lamb it was needful for him to superintend. It was time, he knew, to return to the Temple; and as he gave a last indignant look at the placard, the lips of the Christ parted to one despairing cry:

"Eli, Eli, lemah shebaktani?"

Caiaphas, nodding to the elders, smiled with satisfaction.

At last the false pretender was forced to acknowledge the invalidity of his claims. The Father whose son he vaunted himself to be had disowned him when his recognition was needed, if ever it had been needed at all. And so, with the smile of one whose labor has had its recompense, Caiaphas patted his skirt, and the elders about him strolled back through the Gannath Gate to the Temple that awaited him.

The mult.i.tude meanwhile had decreased. To the crowd also the Temple had its attractions, its duties, and its offices. Moreover, the spectacle was at an end. With a blow of the mallet the legs of the thieves had been broken. They had died without a shriek, a thing to be regretted. The Galilean too, pierced by the level stroke of a spear, had succ.u.mbed without a word. Sundown was approaching. Clearly it was best to be within the walls where other gayeties were. The mob dispersed, leaving behind but the dead, the circling vultures, a group of soldiers throwing dice for the garments of the crucified, and, remotely, a group of women huddled beneath a protecting oak.

During the hour or two that intervened, the force which had visited Mary evaporated in strength overtaxed. She was conscious only that she suffocated. The words of the women that had drawn her to them were empty as blanks in a dream; the jeers of the mob vacant as an empty bier. To but one thing was she alive, the fact that death could be. Little by little, as the impossible merged into the actual, the understanding came to her that the worst that could be had been done, and she ceased to suffer. The departing hierarchy, the dispersing mob, retreating before encroaching night, left her unimpressed. To her the setting sun was Christ.

The soldiers pa.s.sed. She did not see them. Calcol called to her. She did not hear. The women had gone from her; she did not notice it. She stood as a cataleptic might, her eyes on the cross. Once only, when the Christ had uttered his despairing cry, she too had cried in her despair. In the roar of the mob the cry was lost as a stone tossed in the sea. Since then she had been dumb, sightless also, existing, if at all, unconsciously, her life-springs nourished by death.

Though she gazed at the cross, she had ceased to distinguish it. A little group that had reached it before the soldiery left had been unmarked by her. On the platform of her dream a serpent had emerged. In its coils were her immortal hopes. It was that she saw, and that alone. Those moments of agony in which the imagination oscillates between the past and the future, devouring the one, fumbling the other, had been endured, and resignation failed to bring its balm. She had believed with a faith so firm that now in its demolition there was nothing left-an abyss merely, where light was not.

A hand touched her, and she quivered as a leaf does at the wing of a bird.

"Mary, come with us," some one was saying; "we are taking him to a tomb."

Just beyond were men and women whom she knew. Joseph of Haramatham, a close follower of the Master; Nikodemon, the richest man in all Judaea; Johanna, Mary Clopas, Salome, Bernice, and the servants of the opulent Jew. It was Ahulah who had touched her; and as Mary started she saw before her a coffin which the others bore.

"Come with us," Ahulah repeated; and Mary crossed the intervening ridge to where the gardens were and the tombs she had already pa.s.sed.

At the door of a sepulchre the brief procession halted. Within was a room, a little grotto furnished with a stone slab and a lamp that flickered, surmounted by an arch. The coffin, placed on the slab, routed a bat that flew to the arch, and a lizard that scurried to a crevice. In the coffin the Christ lay, his head wrapped in a napkin, the body wound about by broad bands of linen that were secured with gum and impregnated with spices and with myrrh. The odor of aromatics filled the tomb. The bat escaped to the night. A stone was rolled before the opening, the brief procession withdrew, and Mary was left with the dead.

The momentary exertion, the bier, the sepulchre, the sight of the Christ in his cerements, the brooding quiet-these things had roused her. Her mind was nimbler, and thought more active. One by one the stars appeared. They would vanish, she told herself, as her hopes had done. Only they would reappear, and belief could not. It had come as a rainbow does, and disappeared as vaporously, little by little, before the full glare of might. For a minute, hours perhaps, she stood quite still, interrogating the past in which so much had been, gauging the future in which so much was to be. The one retreated, the other fled. Thoughts came to her evanescently, and faded before they were wholly formed. At one moment she was beckoning the unicorns from the desert, the winged lions from the yonderland, commanding them to bear her to the home of some immense revenge. At others she was asking her way of griffins, propounding the problem to the Sphinx. But the unicorns and lions took flight, the griffins spread their wings, the Sphinx fell asleep. There was no answer to her appeal.

Behind the sepulchre the moon rose; it dropped a beam near by. There is light somewhere, it seemed to say; and in that telegram from Above, she thought of Rome. She remembered now, in Rome was Tiberius, and in him Revenge. She smiled at her own forgetfulness. Yes, it was there. She would go to him, she would exact reparation; there should be another crucifixion. Pilate should be nailed to the cross, Judas on one side, Caiaphas on the other. Only it would be at Rome where there was no Pa.s.sover to interfere with the torture they endured. Things were done better there. Men were crucified, not with the head up, but with the feet; and so remained, not for hours, but for days; and died, not of their wounds alone, but of hunger too.

A chariot of dream caught her, and, borne across the intervening s.p.a.ce, she saw herself in a palace where there were G.o.ds and monsters, columns of transparent quartz, floors of malachite, roofs of gold. And there, on a dais, the Caesar lay. Behind him a fan, luminous as a peac.o.c.k's tail, oscillated to the tinkling of mysterious keys. In his crown was the lividity of uncolored dawns, in his sceptre the dominion of the world. An ulcer devoured his face, and in his ear a boy repeated the maxims of Elephantis. Mary threw herself at his feet, her tears fell on them as rain on leaves. "Vengeance," she implored; but he listened merely to the boy at his side. "Death is your servant," she cried. "You command, it obeys." The ulcer oozed, the face grew vague, he gave no answer. She stood up and menaced him. "Behind you spectres crouch; you may not see them. I do; their name is To-morrow." The murmurs of the boy were her sole reply. The roof crumbled, the flooring disappeared, the emperor faded, and Mary stared into s.p.a.ce.

The moon that had struck aslant the tomb had gone, but where its beams had fallen the message remained. There is light somewhere, it repeated. Across the heavens a meteor shot like a bee. In the air voices whispered confusedly. It is not in Rome, one seemed to say. It is not on earth, another called.

Mary clutched at her beating breast. The sky now was an opening rose. What the sunset had sown the dawn would reap. In the night that had enveloped, day raised a lattice, and through it came a gust of higher thought. It is not in revenge, a voice whispered. It is not in regret, another called.

"I know it," Mary gasped. "Yes, yes, I know it now. It is in faith."

"And in abnegation of self."

The stone which stood before the sepulchre had rolled away. At her side the Christ stood. In his eyes were golden parables, in his face Truth shone revealed. She stared, dumb with the unexpected joy of belief confirmed, blinded by the sudden light, while he who had rent the bonds of death pa.s.sed on into the budding day.

When the brief procession of the night before returned to the tomb, it was empty. At the door Mary lay, her arms outstretched and vacant.

FINIS MARIae.