What a pity! Otherwise we were well rid of him. And Marsyas bade thee let him go?"

"The young man was disturbed. According to instructions, he sent a messenger to thy stables, without the walls, to bid Eutychus have thy car ready to-morrow for thy visit to Tusculum. But the messenger presently returned with the information that Eutychus had not been seen about the stables that day. At the same moment, I discovered the losses among thy apparel. And Marsyas instantly suspected Eutychus.

He sent two slaves in search of him. They returned in an hour saying that he had been discovered in Janiculum in a wine-shop, robed like an Augustan in thy umber toga, and making merry with wine that could only tickle a Samaritan's throat. When they tried to bring him, he objected, saying thou shouldst not miss him, seeing that thou hadst learned the pleasure of walking in thy less fortunate days."

Agrippa's forehead darkened.

"Even for that I should hand him over to the lictors!" he exclaimed.

"It is not all. When the two slaves then tried to fetch him by force, they were attacked by him and the wine-shop keeper and others, and obliged to flee for their lives. I besought Marsyas, then, to permit me to inform the authorities and have him taken, but he opined that the charioteer's insolence was new and sudden, wherefore full of meaning.

Seeing that it was Eutychus' intent to enrage thee, thou wast better not enraged; to wash thy hands of him and bless the day that he departed."

Agrippa yawned.

"To-morrow we shall search for him and have him taken. It is improvident to have so much philosophy as Marsyas. But what had the knave of a charioteer against me? It is Marsyas who hath enchanted Drumah, and who took him by the throat in the alabarch's house. I shall speak with Marsyas to-morrow."

He took himself with increasing effort up the stairs along the corridor toward his rest. With the facility which characterized many of Agrippa's troubles, the offender had already dropped out of his mind.

He had fenced with Caligula that morning, he had feasted with Macro that night. At midday he had slighted Piso, the enemy of both.

Caligula had had him draw a sketch of Judea on the wax of the gymnasium floor and designate the possessions of the old Herod; Macro, in his cups, had asked confidentially if Caligula approved him. Altogether the day had been filled with tokens presaging success. He smiled sleepily, remembering Silas' extravagant concern over the robbery.

"Calamity is all in the mark on the scale of Fortune," he opined. "A year ago to lose a handful of drachmae would have ruined me."

As he pa.s.sed Marsyas' door, he stepped back suddenly and stopped. The long curtain dragged on the floor at one side had given him an interesting glimpse of the lighted interior. Within, Marsyas, seated at a table, had at that moment flung away his stylus and dropped his head on the writing. Almost immediately he sprang up, and, seizing the parchment, thrust it into the blaze of the lamp at his hand.

Astonishment gathered on the Herod's face.

In the blaze the writing curled, the flame eating into the slow-burning parchment, burned low, but surely, reaching toward the fingers that grasped it. Presently Marsyas dropped it. Then the night-wind, rising from the sea, swept in through the cancelli with a shriek, put out the lamp instantly and swept the long dragging curtain against the Herod standing in the dimly-illuminated corridor. He got out of sight hurriedly.

After the first gust, the wind dropped, sending long streams of impelling draft through cancelli, doorway and hall. Before it, along the pavement, something came skittering out of Marsyas' cubiculum.

Agrippa looked at it. It was a roll of parchment, charred and crushed by the tense grip of fingers.

Agrippa waited. After a slight movement within, silence fell again, and was not thereafter broken. The prince's eyes fell on the charred writing. It was almost at his feet. His fine head dropped to one side, then to the other; he put his fingers into his hair, smiled a little and picked up the parchment. A moment later, in his own apartment, he unrolled it by his lamp.

Only a word here and there, at the end held in Marsyas' fingers, was legible, but Agrippa gathered from these the tone, the purpose and the ident.i.ty, as he thought, of the one addressed.

"-- me for loving thee -- my punishment --. Yet ---- sin against my teachi ---- Willingly for thy sake ------ but to pretend ---- continue my ---- against ---- which threatens thee. Have I lost -- soul for a caprice ---- and beseech levity -- to lov -- me? the pointing finger ---- of sel -- scorn! An outcast from Heaven ---- truant from h.e.l.l, haunting earth in search of thee for ever!--SYAS."

Agrippa's eyes sobered.

"Junia is a brand of fire," he said to himself. "I shall make an end of this!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DIGGED PIT

Junia raised herself hastily.

"Call the slaves," she commanded the servant who had announced Marsyas, and, in a moment, half a score of house-slaves rushed in from various openings leading into the atrium.

"Away with this and that and that," she exclaimed pointing to the statue of a bacchante, that had not been visible in the chamber on the occasion of Marsyas' expected calls; a tray of wine and a tablet with a list of charms and philters sent recently from a haruspex. "Bring me a shawl--close around my neck: curse thee for a blunderer, Iste; thou shalt pay for that scratch! Here, unwind the scarf about my hips and fold it less closely; the amulet, take it off! By Ate! Here: Caligula's note, spread open! Into the brazier with it. Do I smell of wine? Fetch hither--that fresco! The Pursuit of Daphne! Draw the arras over it! Quick! The unguentarium, I said, snail! The one with the attar. Now, look about. Is there anything in sight to disturb a vestal? If I find it afterward, twenty lashes for you all!"

Mistress and slave looked anxiously over the chamber, but nothing unseemly greeted their eyes. Junia sank back on her couch, not now so rec.u.mbent, but at ease.

"Go fetch the Jew," she said, the languor of her manner combatted by the fire in her eyes.

A moment later Marsyas appeared in the archway.

She arose and came to meet him. When he took her extended hands, she led him to the light of the cancelli and inspected him.

"Sit," she said, drawing him down on the divan under the cas.e.m.e.nt.

"And speak first. Only a word, so I may see if the prologue is indeed as tragic as the mask."

"Let the mask suffice," he answered, "the prologue might be insufferable."

"_Proh pudor_! Thy friend the Herod hath just been here with pagan oaths upon his lips about thy dullness. I tell thee it is hard enough to make him walk as he should, but a groaning comrade is a gravel in his shoe. If thou wouldst manage him, be merry. Remember we have this Herod to crown, though he stood on the Tarpeian Rock and sang sonnets in dishonor of Caesar."

"By the certainty of Death, I have," he said sententiously.

She looked at him and waited for him to go on, but he seemed to forget her, in his preoccupation.

"I am a generous woman, Marsyas," she said softly. "I do not resent thy lack of confidence in me!"

"Nay!" he exclaimed. "My lack of confidence, lady? What meanest thou?"

"In thy bosom, gentle sir, thou keepest thine own counsel, and wearest signals of thy self-containment on thy brow. Wherefore, I am informed thou hast thoughts that I may not know!"

"But I spare thee my sorrows, my cynicism, my hopelessness," he protested earnestly, "my disbelief in humankind."

"O Marsyas, wert thou not Jewish, I should call thee unmanly. Listen!"

She laid a warm hand, colored like a primrose, upon his.

"Thou wast an anchorite; thou didst attain manhood's stature and mind as an anchorite; into the world thou camest with all an anchorite's slander of the poor world in thee. The eye is a spaniel; the tyrant Prejudice controls even its images. I warned thee in Alexandria. I confess that there is evil in the world, but it is more the work of an elementary impulse rather than calculation. Flaccus is bad, but because he is in love. Agrippa does foolhardy things, because he is ambitious. What? Did the preachment afflict thee which I delivered the other day upon thy levity and riotous living?"

He shook his head.

"Nay, but this moment's preachment crosses me," he said. "Thou offerest pardon for all the wickedness in the world, and I, sworn to punish one evil deed, am thus constrained, if I harken unto thee, to hold off my hand."

"Now, thou approachest the deep-hidden secret which I may not know.

Whom wilt thou punish? Flaccus or Cla.s.sicus?"

He hesitated. His vital hate of Saul of Tarsus, his fear for Lydia, his love and its deep wound, were things too close to the soul for him willingly to bring forth and display to this woman who acknowledged only a mind, and not a spirit. Yet it seemed unfair to withhold anything, however sacred, from one who had unbosomed so much to him.

"I lead a selfish life and an unhappy one. I am stricken in my loves; one dead, one a murderer, a third faithless; a fourth I use to speed me in mine intents concerning the other two. If I avenge the death of one, I displease his spirit! If I visit punishment on his murderer, I make it possible for the destroyer of my love-story to go on. If I withhold my hand, I give another, much beloved, unto death. And him I help, I help for mine own use. My life is at cross purposes; my right hand worketh against the left!"