"I have closed the prince"s residence, dispersed his slaves among the families of his friends, and with Silas I am living under the roof of Antonia, in whose care I am permitted to receive letters. The Lady Junia is at Capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman"s part in the protection of Agrippa.
"May the G.o.d of our fathers arm thee.
"Peace to thee and thine.
"MARSYAS."
Lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap.
"I can not hope, my Marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art schooled in the understanding of women by Junia!"
The Roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the Jewish manner, Jewish penetration, and the Essenic coldness were strong and unaltered.
His well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips. There had been no word beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her endearments.
After a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father"s house.
She arose and going to the parapet looked over. Justin Cla.s.sicus"
chariot stood there. She caught the last flutter of his garments as he disappeared under the roof of the porch.
She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the guest. But Cla.s.sicus lingered. The alabarch was not like to be telling him the account of Agrippa"s latest misfortune.
She put away Marsyas" letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the golden flood of Egyptian sunshine. She had not ceased to love it, nor to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates. Saul of Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas" sake was a hidden menace now in its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up only so long as she hid in deceit. She felt unutterably lonely and friendless.
Presently Cla.s.sicus came up unannounced. She knew at a glance that he had learned from some source of Agrippa"s misfortune, and wondered for a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas" charge.
"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa"s disaster," he began, as he seated himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
Then Flaccus already had the news!
"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin. Not now is anything more precious than help, and nothing less possible."
"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia. What does it mean?"
"That I grow older, wiser, sadder--and less fortunate."
"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared. "I find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she asked, looking away.
"Nay, but it preaches universal love. Could I teach thee that, sorrow should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
"Not wholly," he admitted. "I have not yet been able to agree with them, that I, Justin Cla.s.sicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
He smiled, and Justin Cla.s.sicus" face was helped by a smile. Mirth possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and lighted torches in his eyes. But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian housetops.
"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned. "If it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the shepherd and thine enemy--learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be content with that, and no more!"
"The Lord forbid!" he cried. "If that should come to pa.s.s, learning this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone. "Save another hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy--the Nazarenes recommending that one leave them out of one"s catalogue of fellows!"
"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy? Hath thy search after their philosophy taught thee so much?"
He looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow.
"I can--be bought," he answered softly.
She remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the Dance of Flora, and her face paled a little.
"It is not the Nazarene way," she replied unreadily.
"Nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve. Shall I name my price?" His voice was clear and illuminating.
She arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the New Port. She felt the strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her. Not any of the many things she had hidden from all but Marsyas were unknown to him!
She turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly, and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head. His composure terrified her. He held out his hand.
"Think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou wilt tell me. Meanwhile I shall tell thy father that I have spoken with thee."
He took her fingers and kissed them.
"Farewell. And let the Nazarenes persuade thee, if I can not!"
A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from before the alabarch"s porch. Then with slow, weary steps she went down into the house. She would seek out her father, and discover what to expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod. Not until then would she entertain the suggested sacrifice which Cla.s.sicus had so deftly demanded.
But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the alabarch"s presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not from courtesy, but because she was a consideration. She took her place on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch"s chair and seemed to efface herself.
Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of the sentence. The old tone of a.s.sumed cordiality was gone. Flaccus had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
"The gossip of the lady"s arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir. She would be there engaging Antonia"s attention, which should be devoted without lapse, in other directions."
"The Herod"s lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus, thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of somber eyes to the proconsul"s face.
"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the beginning."
"At my suggestion. Then thou canst release her at my suggestion--and if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at this late day."