I could not reveal to my sisters the approaching death of our father and the fears he had expressed about our legal guardian. I was astonished and somewhat relieved when he pa.s.sed the warmest eulogy upon Caiaphas the next morning, and told us to look to him for comfort and to rely on him for help in the greatest emergencies. What astonished me still more was, that this reliable friend never visited my father again.
We were greatly distressed that no medical aid was called in. The suggestion was always repudiated with a strange earnestness. Whatever the disease was with which our father was afflicted, he was plainly growing worse and worse. At last he refused to quit his chamber, or to admit any one into it. He commanded a little food and water to be placed upon a table on the gallery underneath his window; and what was singular, he only took it in during the night when no one saw him. These things threw us into the saddest consternation. We began to fear that he was losing his reason. We were frantic with excitement. We determined to see him and nurse him. We knocked at his door and window and entreated him to show himself to his children.
At last he called out in a voice which showed he had been weeping:
"Calm yourselves, my children! and pray to G.o.d. A great evil has come upon us, which can be concealed but a little longer. My soul is overwhelmed with misery, but my heart beats for my children with the tenderest love.
Ask me nothing at present; it is more than I can bear. If you love me and would obey me, keep away entirely from my chamber. Let no one come into the house-and least of all, your uncle Magistus."
We were rea.s.sured of his love and his rationality by these words; but they filled us with a vague terror and overwhelmed us with sorrow. We had no one to appeal to, no one to consult. We were commanded to keep everybody away. Thus several weeks of fearful suspense rolled by. The neighbors began to inquire about my father. His seclusion became the wonder and talk of the village. The interrogations, always disagreeable, became absolutely impertinent. The mystery had excited suspicion.
Worse than all, Magistus became a regular visitor to the gate. He questioned the porter in the subtlest manner. He obtained from him the facts that my father had never received any medical attention, that he had concealed himself in his chamber, and had not been seen for weeks, even by his children. He evinced the liveliest satisfaction. "The apple will soon drop," said he aloud to himself. All this was faithfully reported to us.
Three little sparrows in a nest among the green leaves, could not have been in greater trepidation with an ugly bird of prey gazing at them from a neighboring branch.
The denouement approached. We were whispering our sorrows together one day, seated by the little fountain in the inner courtyard of the house, upon which the door of our father"s chamber opened. Suddenly voices and footsteps were heard approaching. A moment after Magistus appeared, followed by a venerable-looking old priest and stately Roman centurion. My sisters clung to me in terror.
Without noticing us, the party rapped loudly on my father"s door, and commanded him to come forth. "In the name of the Mosaic law," said the priest; "and by order of the Roman governor," added the centurion. The words were repeated in a louder voice: the door slowly opened and my father stepped out, exclaiming, "Unclean! unclean!"
All fell back several paces.
"The scourge of G.o.d!" said the priest with deep solemnity.
"d.a.m.nable Eastern plague!" muttered the Roman soldier.
"Incurable! incurable!" exclaimed Magistus.
It was the leprosy!
That ghoul of diseases, which slowly devours a living victim, had made fearful ravages upon my poor father"s frame. His eyebrows and eyelashes were gone; his chin and ears were much swollen, and a pearl-white scaly ulcer deformed his forehead; his hands had a sickly and withered appearance.
We now understood the meaning of his strange conduct. The disease began first about the joints and the covered parts of his body. As soon as it broke out on the skin, the poor man had shut himself up to conceal his affliction and to avoid contaminating his family. Knowing himself stricken with a disgusting and incurable malady, which would exclude him from society and drive him away from his children, he bore the burden of his awful secret alone. Magistus had discovered his condition, and anxious to revenge himself upon virtues he could not imitate, and to get possession of the property, he laid the case before the authorities, and insisted that the law of separation should be executed upon his brother-in-law.
As the unhappy man stood in the doorway, he turned his eyes upon the pale faces of his terrified children, and, silently wringing his hands, looked upward to heaven. He was turning away, when all three of us sprang forward at once, and with cries which would have moved the coldest heart, fell at his feet and clung about his knees.
"Touch me not! my sweet children!" he exclaimed, in a hoa.r.s.e and feeble voice. "Touch me not. It is all over! Caiaphas will befriend my orphans."
He had not finished the words before several strange domestics, who had rushed in at a signal from Magistus, proceeded to drag us from the spot.
"Away with them!" said the hideous old man, fiercely. "Confine them in the farthest room. We want no young lepers-no more scourges of G.o.d."
"If it were a scourge of G.o.d," cried I, struggling to escape, "it would have been sent upon you and not upon my n.o.ble father."
We were carried weeping out of the courtyard. Looking back to the door, we saw the unhappy man waving his last adieu to us with his poor, sickly, withered hands.
The Mosaic law against the unfortunate leper was cruelly severe; but the Roman power which occupied the country and feared the ravages of leprosy among the soldiery, added greatly to its force and to the stringency of its execution.
The leper was sentenced to a social and civil death far more terrible to a man of sensibility than the mere separation of soul and body. He was driven from the face of his fellow-men, and dwelt in caves and hollow trees and deserted ruins. No one was permitted to touch him, to approach him, or even to speak to him. He was compelled to cry out, Unclean!
unclean! so as to warn every one of his dangerous proximity. He became literally the wild man of the woods and the mountains and the desert-the companion and sometimes the prey of wild beasts.
Those who had friends and money had little huts erected for them in remote but safe places, and were amply provided with food and even luxuries by servants who deposited the articles upon the ground at a considerable distance from their habitations.
Such was the fate of our good and generous father-the idol of our hearts and the model of all social and heroic virtues.
We spent the night in tears, and the next day in an agony of grief. I do not know who witnessed the dreadful ceremonies of the law. He was examined by the proper inspectors, and p.r.o.nounced unclean and incurable. He was led into the great highway. The people stood afar off. The priest in a loud voice p.r.o.nounced the curse of G.o.d upon him-the service of the dead over the living body. He cut him off from the congregation of Israel. The guards then drove him before them into some uninhabited place, and he disappeared from the sight of men.
He was always visible, however, to the hearts of his three little orphans.
We followed his steps with filial vigilance. We saw him toiling along in the sand of the desert, and we shared his burden of heat and hunger and thirst. We saw him seated under a palm tree, or in the shadow of some great rock, and we felt the sorrows of his thoughts as if they were our own. We saw him kneeling by the brook, and we mingled our prayers with his. We saw him sleeping in his lonely hut, lighted only by the moon, and we were comforted by his dream of angels and heaven.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]
II.
_CLOUDS GATHERING._
[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]
We were now orphans, and of that kind most to be pitied, who have fallen into the hands of a cold and selfish step-uncle. He had a father"s power over us, without a father"s affection to regulate and sanctify it. There was no one to supervise his conduct toward us; no appeal from his baseness or cruelty, unless his acts were so flagrant and unconcealed as to call down the vengeance of the laws.
This uncle whom we so much dreaded and had so much reason to dread, wore at first a smooth and pleasing mask. He came every day to see us, and endeavored by as much civility and kindness as he could counterfeit, to soften our feelings and satisfy us with our condition. He professed the deepest sympathy for our poor father"s calamity. He regretted the severity of the Jewish and Roman laws on the subject of leprosy, but excused them as a necessary protection to society. He a.s.sured us that our father had a comfortable lodge on the border of the wilderness, and that servants were despatched every other day with fresh supplies of food and wine and water.
This a.s.surance brought tears to our eyes and comfort to our hearts.
When the storm of our grief had abated a little, we requested to see our aunt; for we yearned for the presence and sympathy of woman. Magistus conducted us over to his residence which adjoined our own, but fronted upon another street. A high brick wall separated his garden from ours. He had a door cut in this wall so as to facilitate the pa.s.sage from one house to another. His mansion was completely concealed from the public eye by a thick grove of trees which surrounded it. In the most retired chamber of this quiet and really beautiful place, we found Ulema, my father"s invalid sister.
She was a middle-aged woman of extreme thinness and pallor. Her face was waxen-colored and ghastly. There was a wild terrified expression about her black eyes, which was absolutely painful. She had evidently been a great sufferer in mind and body. She received us with a faint, sickly smile, and then her features a.s.sumed an expression of profound pity. We supposed this was on account of the loss of our father. We did not know the reasons which the poor woman had for pitying any one who came within the shadow of Magistus.
After the interchange of a few commonplaces, our uncle cut short the visit on the plea of Ulema"s feeble and nervous condition. This visit was repeated every Sabbath after the morning sacrifice. Magistus always accompanied us, and drew us away as quickly as possible. My aunt had always the same expressions of terror and pity. Thus our repeated interviews added nothing to our knowledge of her character. In vain we pet.i.tioned Magistus to let us live with our aunt, or to let us visit her oftener, or to let us stay longer.
Our own home was sadly changed. The furniture, the pictures, the statues, the fountain, the flowers, were all the same, but there was an air of silence and melancholy about the whole place, as if the inanimate objects had felt and shared the misfortunes of the orphan children. There was a different sphere around us, a different light upon us. The organizing and unitizing spirit was gone;-the good and wise father, who made all happy and cheerful about him, and held his little household together in the sweet bonds of perfect order and peace.
It was a cruel act of Magistus to subst.i.tute servants and creatures of his own for those who had been with us from our infancy. We were soon surrounded by strange faces, so that our father"s house began to appear to us, what it really was, a prison. The domestics of an establishment acquire in time a coloring from the kind of life within it, as insects are colored by the leaves and bark of the trees they inhabit. Ours were respectful, obedient and cheerful; these were cunning, insolent and dishonest.
The chief butler or head servant was, however, a good character, who plays a remarkable part in my story. He was an African about thirty years of age, very black and homely. He was a eunuch, and dumb. These disadvantages, which at first excited a feeling of repulsion, were atoned for by a singular kindness, deference and sympathy, which were displayed in his features and manners. The other servants held him in great awe; for he had been brought from Egypt about three years before by a magician, and was supposed to be gifted with supernatural power.
It was this advantage in command, as well as a certain kind of talent, industry and reliability, which induced Magistus to give him the supreme charge of both households. He had been with us but a few days, before he had quite won our hearts by his friendly attentions and evident sympathy for our distress. I, who had been made suspicious by my father"s opinion of our guardian, detected in the face of Ethopus (for that was his name) the same expression of pity which shone in the features of our sick aunt.
All this, however, he concealed from Magistus with the greatest care; for he was always cold and impa.s.sive toward us in the presence of his master.
Unfortunately Ethopus was dumb. His communications at this time might have been of incalculable service to us. I endeavored to learn something of the habits and character of my uncle from the other servants, but on that subject they were as dumb as Ethopus; for whenever I approached it, they manifested signs of fear, and invariably put the finger on the lip.
I became dissatisfied with this secresy. I resolved to teach Ethopus to read and write, so that he might tell me his own story, and initiate me into the mysteries and dangers of my position. He comprehended my idea at once, and came to me secretly at hours when he knew Magistus was absent.
He had made some little progress,-though the difficulties of the first steps were very great,-when one evening Magistus walked slyly in and surprised us at our studies. We had been betrayed by one of the servants, who all acted as spies on each other.