CHAPTER XV

THE FALSE BALANCE

Marsyas did not sleep the sleep of a man worn with exertion and excitement. Instead he lay far into the night with his wide eyes fixed on the soft gloom above him. He had many diverse thoughts, none wholly contented, many most unhappy.

The instance of apostasy under the roof troubled him; not as apostasy should trouble one of the faithful, but as an impending calamity. He had strange, terrifying, commingling pictures of Stephen's dark locks in the dust of the stoning-place, and the pretty disorder of yellow-brown curls thrown over his arm. His purpose against Saul of Tarsus seemed to magnify in importance, by each succeeding momentous event. He remembered Cypros' charge and bound himself to keep it, again and again through the dark troubled hours. It was a long way yet until he could triumph over the powerful Pharisee, and the stretches of misfortune that could ensue, in the time, were things he drove out of his thoughts.

When at last he fell asleep, he dreamed that he stood on Olivet and watched Saul and Lydia seeking for him in the trampled s.p.a.ce without Ha.n.a.leel, while a crucifix, instead of the moon, arose in the east.

The old Essenic habit was strong in Marsyas. In spite of his long wakefulness, the dark red color in the east which announced the sunrise yet an hour to come was as a call in his ear.

He arose while yet the night was heavy in the halls of the alabarch's house and the whisper of the sand lifting before the sea-wind was the only sound in the Alexandrian streets.

The stairway was intensely quiet and he hesitated to descend. But at the end of the upper corridor a slight dilution in the gloom showed him a loft let into the ceiling. He went that way and came upon another stairway leading up and out into the open. He mounted it and found himself on the roof of the house.

At the rear was a double row of columns, roofed, and hung with matting which inclosed an airy pavilion where the dwellers of the alabarch's house could flee from the heat closer the earth. It was furnished with antique Egyptian furniture, taborets of acacia, seated with pigskin, a diphros and divan, built of spongy palm-wood, but seasoned and hardened by great age, and grotesquely carved by old hands, dead a century.

The young man entered and, seating himself, awaited the day and the arousing of the alabarch's household.

The Jewish housetops toward the east made an angular sea, broken by parapets and summer-houses in relief against the red sky, and the pavements in gloom. Strips of darker vapor meandering among them showed the course of pa.s.sages leading with many detours into the great open, where was builded the Synagogue of Alexandria. It was of tremendous dimensions, yet so majestically proportioned as to attain grace, that most difficult thing to reconcile with great size. The type of architecture was Egypto-Grecian,--repose and refinement, antiquity and civilization conjoined to make a sanctuary that was a citadel. Here, the forty thousand Jews of Alexandria could gather, nor one rub shoulder against his neighbor. Marsyas looked with no little pride at the triumph of the G.o.d of Israel in this stronghold of paganism. What a reproach it must be to them that had departed from the rigor of the Law!

He became conscious of the little cross. He drew it forth from its hiding-place and looked at it. It was made of red cedar, slightly elaborated, and the cord pa.s.sed through a small copper eyelet at the head. To his unfamiliar eye, it was a dread image, at once a suggestion of suffering and retributive justice. He had not seen one since his last talk with Stephen.

The acute wrench the reflection gave him now incorporated a fear for Lydia. Saul of Tarsus should not lay her fair head low! He braced his fingers against the head and foot of the emblem to break it, when suddenly a bewildering reluctance seized his hand. At the moment of destruction, his hand was stayed. Stephen had loved it and died for its sake, and Lydia--

His resolution dissolved; slowly and unreadily he put the crucifix back in his bosom, over his heart.

At that moment, a little figure, on the brink of the housetop, was projected against the glowing sky. It was firmly knit and outlined like an infant love. The apparition brought, besides startlement, a prescient significance that made his heart beat. Synagogue and Alexandria dropped out of sight. He saw only the rosy heavens with a beautiful girl marked on them.

He arose, and the new-comer turned toward him and approached. And Marsyas watching her, in a breathless, half-guilty moment, told himself that never before had the fall of a woman's foot been a caress to the earth.

He saw that she carried over her arm a many-folded length of silk, in the half-dusk, like a silvery mist, very sheeny and firm. Here and there he discovered flame-colored streaks in it. One of the morning-touched vapors in the east, pulled down and folded over the girl's arm, would have looked like it. At the threshold of the summer-house, she let the arm fall which carried it, dropped the many folds and with a sudden uplift and deft circle of her hand, partly coc.o.o.ned herself in the silken vapor. Her eyes, lifted in the movement, fell on Marsyas. With a little start, she unfurled the wrapping and doubled it over her arm.

"I pray thy pardon," he said, with a sincerity beyond the formality of his words. "I am an intruder. But--the Essenes do not keep their beds long."

"Neither do all Alexandrians," she said, recovering herself. "Thou art welcome, for I would speak with thee."

She put up one of the mattings by a pull at a cord, and sat down on a taboret. She laid the silk across her lap and folded her hands upon it.

"I pray thee, be seated. I have not said all that I would say concerning last night. Art thou well--unhurt?"

The morning lay faintly on her face and he saw that she was paler and sadder of eye than was natural for one so young and so round of cheek.

He was touched, and his answer was a tender surprise to him.

"Thou seest me," he said, making a motion with his hands, "but thou--I would there were less of last night in thy face!"

"I am well," she said, as her eyes fell. "For that I give thee thanks, and for the security of my fame among my friends--and--the sacrifice thou madest to preserve it!"

She meant his evasions that had kept the true story of her rescue secret. He was glad she touched so readily upon the subject. It gave him opportunity to relieve his soul of part of its burden.

"I was glad," he a.s.sured her. "Now, that thou art still safe, I pray thee, lady, preserve thyself. None in all the world is so able to understand thy peril as I!"

She looked at him, remembering that Agrippa had told them that he had been accused of apostasy.

"Are--are these--thy people?" she asked in a whisper.

"No; but dost thou remember why I went with such haste to Nazareth?" he asked.

"To save a life, thou saidst."

"Even so, I failed."

She caught her breath and her eyes grew large with sympathy.

"I failed," he continued. "I went to save a friend who had gone astray after the Nazarene Prophet. But they stoned him before mine eyes."

Her lips moved with a compa.s.sionate word, more plainly expressed in all her atmosphere.

"They cast me out of Judea," he went on, "because I was his friend.

Wherefore I have tasted the death and have died not; I have suffered for their sin, yet sinned not!"

He had never told more of his story than that, but her eyes, filled with interest, fixed upon him, urged him to go on. Believing that he might deliver her if he told more, he proceeded, but the sense of relief, the lifting of his load that followed upon the course of his narrative were results that he had not expected in confiding to this understanding woman. At first he felt a little of the embarra.s.sment that attends the unfolding of a personal history, but ere long the fair-brown eyes urged him, with their sympathy, and consoled him with their comprehension. He left the outline and plunged into detail, and when he had made an end, the glory of the Egyptian sunshine was flooding Alexandria.

At the end of the story, Lydia's eyes fell slowly, and the interest that had enlivened her face relaxed into pensiveness. She was oppressed and sorrowful, almost ready to be directed by this man of many sorrows.

But he leaned toward her.

"Henceforth, therefore," he said, "I am not a man of peace, but one burdened with rancor and vengeful intent. I go not into En-Gadi, but into the evil world to use the world's evil to work evil. I am despoiled and blighted and without hope. Is that the inheritance which thou wouldst leave to them who love thee?"

She drew away from him, half alarmed.

"I--I am not a Nazarene," she faltered.

"Do not go to them, then!" he urged eagerly. "Do not listen to their teachings; for whosoever listens must die!"

"I went yesterday for a different cause," she said finally, "but before, of interest."

"But thou art a faithful daughter of Abraham; be not led of any cause.

Remember yesterday!"

"Yesterday?" she repeated quietly. "Why yesterday? Only the faith of the oppressed was different. We of Israel's faith in Alexandria know many of yesterday's like, and worse!"

"Suffer, then, the sufferings of the righteous! Be not cut off for a folly!"

She fell silent again, and smoothed the silk on her lap.

"Justin Cla.s.sicus told me of them," she began finally, "and their very difference from other philosophies, new or old, the simple history of their Prophet attracted me. I sought them out, and learned that an Egyptian merchant who traded in Syria had pa.s.sed through Jerusalem at the time of the Nazarene Prophet's sojourn in the city, and had become converted to His teaching. He returned to Egypt and planted the seed of the sect in Rhacotis. And of power and attraction, he gathered unto him men of his like. Finally he carried his teaching into the lecture-rooms of the Library and all Alexandria heard of the Nazarenes.