CHAPTER IX
"—AS AN ARMY WITH BANNERS!"
Agrippa emerged at sunset from his apartment and descended to the first floor of the alabarch's mansion. The hall was vacant and each of the chambers opening off it was silent, so he wandered through the whole length of the corridor, composedly as a master in his own house. No one did he see until he reached the end of the hall, when there appeared suddenly, as if materialized out of the gloom, the brown serving-woman. The olive-green of her immense eyes glittered in the light of a reed taper she bore. She stepped aside to let him pass and proceeded to light the lamps.
Agrippa stopped to look at her, simply because she was lithe and unusual, but she continued without heeding him. On one of the lamp-bowls the palm-oil had run over and the reed ignited it; but with her bare hand the woman damped it and went her way with a running flame flickering out on the back of her hand.
"Perpol!" the prince exclaimed to himself as he rambled on. "No wonder the phenix comes to Egypt to be born."
At the end of a corridor he passed through an open door into a colonnade fronting a court-garden of extraordinary beauty. It was carpeted with sod, interlined with walks of white stone which led at every divergence to a classic Roman exedra. The awning which usually sheltered the inclosure from the sun had been rolled up and the cooling sky bent loftily over it. The inert summer airs were heavy with the scent of lotus, red lilies and spice roses which were massed in an oval bed in the center.
At that moment he caught sight of an indolent figure, half sitting, half lying in one of the sections of the exedra.
He knew at first glance that it was not the alabarch's daughter, and, remembering that his last glance in the mirror after his servant had done with him had shown him at his best, he moved without hesitation toward the unknown.
As he approached she raised her eyes and coolly scrutinized him. Her face, thus lifted for inspection, showed him a woman in the later twenties, and of that type which since the beginning could look men between the eyes. She was a Roman, but never in all the Empire were other eyes so black and luminous, or hair so glossy, or cheek so radiant. Her face was an elongated oval, topping a long round neck, which broadened at the base into a sudden and exaggerated slope of marble-white shoulders. The low sweep of the bosom, the girdle just beneath it, shortening the lithe waist, the slender hips, the long lazy limbs completed a perfect type, distinct and unlimited in its powers.
For a fraction of a second the two contemplated each other; perhaps only long enough for each to confess to himself that he had met his like. Then Agrippa came and sat down beside her, and she did not stir from her careless posture. So many, many of the kind had each met and known that they could not be strangers.
"The alabarch should turn his prospective son-in-law into his garden if he would speed the marrying of his daughter," the prince observed.
"He hath the daughter, the garden, and the notion to dispose of her," she answered, "but it is the son-in-law that is wanting."
"But in my long experience with womankind," he replied, "it would not seem improbable to believe that it is the lady and not the lover that makes the witchery of the garden a wasted thing. I have heard of unwilling maids."
"Unwilling in directions," she replied with a smile, "and under certain influences. For if there were any to withstand my conviction, I am ready to wager that there never lived a woman before whom all the world of men could pass without making her choice."
"And perchance," he said promptly, "if there were any to withstand my conviction, I would wager that there never lived a man before whom the world of women could pass without making his choice,—again and again!"
"Which declaration," she responded evenly, "publishes thee a married man; the single gallant declares only for one."
"O deft reasoning! it establishes thee a Roman. What dost thou here, in Alexandria where there is no court, no games, no senators, no Cæsar—naught but riots and Jews?"
"Jews," she said, scanning a rounded arm to see if its rest on the back of the exedra had left a mark on it, "Jews are red-lipped, and eyed like heifers. Sometimes brawn and force weary us in Rome; wherefore we go into Egypt or the East to seek silky and subtle devilishness."
Agrippa moved along the exedra and looked into her eyes. He saw there that peculiar expression which he had expected to find. It was a set questioning, one that runs the scale from appeal to demand—the asking eye, the sign of continual consciousness of the woman-self and her charms.
"Why make the effort? Only tell us of the East that you want us and the East will come to you."
"What? Oriental love-philters, simitars, poisoning, silks and mysticism in the shadow of the Fora and within sound of the Senate-chamber? No, my friend; we must hear the lapping of the Nile or the flow of the Abana, behold camels and priests, and the far level line of the desert, while we languish on bronze bosoms and breathe musks from oriental lips."
"It is not then the Jews," he objected. "They are a temperate, a passionless lot, that carry the Torah like hair-balances in their hearts to discover if any deed they do weighs according to the Law. No, Jews are a straight people. Thou speakest of the—Arab!"
She turned her eyes toward him and measured his length, surveyed his slender hands, and glanced at the warm brown of his complexion.
"So?" she asked with meaning. "An Arab?"
He continued to smile at her.
"And every Jew is thus minded?" she asked, observing later the unmistakable signs of Jewish blood in his profile.
"Unless he is tinctured with the lawlessness of Arabia."
"Ah!" She moved her fan idly and looked up at the sky.
"It is then, of a truth, the Arab, we seek," she added presently. "The Arab that knows no manners but his fathers' manners; who eats, drinks, loves, hates and conquers after his own fashion."
"Without having seen Jerusalem, or Rome?" he asked.
"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again. "Yes, without having seen Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
"Then, it is good only for a time—for as long as the surfeit of civilization lasts—which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his cattle!"
She laughed outright. "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment since! Wherefore the change?"
"Refinement in all things! To get it into an Arab, he has to be modified by alien blood."
"A truce! I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been entirely exhausted. I—meet new, desirable things—daily!"
Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul, resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade. Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is intense—once won. It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it, before it wearies of thee—even to the extreme of pursuing thee to Rome."
The proconsul and the princess approached. The deep-set eyes of the Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.
"Men seek for stray cattle in the fields of sweet grass, look for lost jewels in the wallets of thieves, and missing Herods in the company of beautiful women," he observed.
"It is good to have an established reputation, whether we be cattle or jewels or Herods," Agrippa laughed; "for, thou seest, we are disjointed and unsettled, seeing Flaccus now enduring a Jew, again attending a lady.
"Again," said the beauty, "we mark the work of circumstances, which led us into difference just now, O thou disputatious."
"Well said, Junia," the proconsul declared; "some ladies would make gallants out of the fiends! Know ye all one another?" the proconsul continued.
"Except my lovely neighbor," Agrippa replied.
"The Lady Junia, daughter of Euodus, who with her father hath been transplanted here from Rome."
In the colonnade Lydia, the daughter, appeared and beside her a man, by certain of the more obvious signs, of middle-age. But when he drew closer the more obvious gave way to the indisputable testimony of smooth elastic skin, long lashes and strong, white, unworn teeth that the man was not yet thirty. He was a little above medium height, spare, yet well-built except for a slight lift in the shoulders, beardless, colorless, with straight dark hair, bound with a classic fillet. His general lack of tone brought into noticeable prominence the amiability and luster of his fine brown eyes.
That he was a Jew was apparent no less by dress than by feature. His Jewish garments differed only in color and texture from those worn by his fathers in Judea. The outer gown was of light green scantly shot with points of gold.
The pair walked slowly as if unconscious of the presence of others, and the attitude of the man, bending to look into Lydia's face as she walked, was clearly more attentive than ordinary courtesy demanded.
"Approacheth Justin Classicus," said Flaccus. "In that garment he looks much like a chameleon that has strayed across an Attic meadow in spring."
"Behold, already the witchery of the garden!" Agrippa said softly to Junia.
"This," added the proconsul, introducing the new-comer, "is Justin Classicus, the latest fashion in philosophers, the most popular Jew in Alexandria."
Classicus bowed, glanced at Junia and again at Agrippa, and made a place for Lydia on the exedra, so that he might sit on a taboret at her feet.
"What news, good sir," Agrippa asked, "among the schools over the world?"
"News?" Classicus repeated. "Nothing. Philo is silent; Petronius is mersed in affairs in Bithynia; Rome's gone a-frolicking, scholars and all, to Capri."
"Alas!" said Flaccus; "nothing happens now but scandal; even the ancient miracles of divine visitations, phenixes, comets and monsters have ceased."
"But you say nothing of religion," said Classicus. "Yet possibly it follows, now, in order."
"After monsters, phenixes and the rest," put in Agrippa.
"What is it?" Flaccus asked.
"Perchance thou hast heard," Classicus responded. "It issues out of Judea, which adds to its interest, since we are accustomed to nothing but sobriety from Palestine."
"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
"A new Messiah!"
"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah! How many in the past generation, Cypros? Ten, twenty, a hundred? Alas! Classicus, that thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look forward! But what is a Messiah?"
"A god," said Agrippa.
"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
"Mirabile dictu!" Junia cried.
"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg. "What a task, what an ambition, what an achievement! I behold Cæsar's dudgeon. Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to be more than Cæsar!"
"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as his—school, if it may be so called. One of the followers appeared at the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago—an Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost caste for truthfulness."
"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "Why will they insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"
"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested. "Roman hard-headedness hath turned thee against our traditions!"
"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very gently. "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared frankly. "Tell me more."
"There is no more."
"What! Is it dead?" she insisted. "Dead as all the others? Then it is different only in its inception."
"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard. The Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present. Thou rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late—"
"Among us?" Lydia asked.
"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an inquiring eye.
"Is that the sect that the prefect has been warned to observe?" he demanded.
"Doubtless; it seems that their foremost fault is rebellion against authority," Classicus made answer. "So much for their doctrine of submission."
"Tell us that," Lydia urged.
"Apostasy," Agrippa answered for Classicus, "flagrant apostasy; for the Sanhedrim came out of the hall of judgment to stone an offender, for the first time in seven years. I saw the execution; in fact, in a way I was brought close to the circumstances by a friend of the apostate who was attached to my household."
"Is he with thee?" Flaccus asked pointedly.
"No, we left him in Ptolemais. But the note of their presence in Alexandria must have been sounded early, directly they arrived, for I departed from Jerusalem the day following the first movement against the sect, and thence to Ptolemais and Alexandria with ordinary despatch."
"They did not announce themselves," Flaccus replied. "Vitellius announced them. He wants an Essene who is believed to be among them."
Agrippa raised his head and looked straight at Flaccus. He remembered that he had betrayed Marsyas' refuge. Cypros drew in a breath of alarm.
"That was simply done, Flaccus," Agrippa remarked coolly.
The princess laid her hand on the ruddy flesh of the proconsul's arm.
"We have been frank with thee, my lord," she said, "and thou art a noble Roman—therefore a safe guardian of our unguarded words."
The others maintained a wondering silence. Flaccus smiled.
"Vitellius hath bidden me to look for him, adding with certain fervid embellishments that he hath sought everywhere but in Egypt and Hades. Vitellius is no diplomat. Whistling finds the lost hound sooner than search."
"But thou wilt not find him, noble Flaccus," Cypros besought in a lowered tone. "Yield us thy promise that thou wilt not betray him!"
"My promise, lady! Indeed, I gave it in my heart a moment since. Hear it now. Alexandria is subject to thee. Let him come and be our ward."
"I shall depend on that," Agrippa said decidedly. "For I shall despatch a servant for the man, the instant I can so do!"
"And yet," Cypros insisted, still distressed, "if Vitellius requires him at thy hands, how shalt thou avoid giving him up?"
Flaccus smiled at her with softened eyes.
"O gentle lady, the day the young man should arrive, I shall set the prefect on the Nazarenes in Rhacotis. If he be not found, none without this trustworthy circle shall have cause to believe that I am not in all conscience striving to help a brother proconsul run down a fugitive."
"A shrewd strategy," Lydia said dryly, "but one rather costly for the Nazarenes."
"The Nazarenes! Who wastes tears over them? Thine own straight people condemn them, lady."
"An exhilarating recreation, indeed," she repeated as if to herself, "for the prefect, the rabble Alexandrians and the Nazarenes! O seekers of esthetic sport, that will be a rare occasion! Yield me thy promise, my Lord Agrippa, that thou wilt tell us the day the young man arrives!"
Flaccus' face darkened for a moment, but at that moment the alabarch appeared in the colonnade.
"Here comes our host," said Agrippa. "Hast ordered the garlands, Lysimachus?"
"The feast is prepared," Lysimachus replied, and, turning to Flaccus, continued: "Thou shalt see, now, good sir, how Jews feast. In all thine experiences, thou hast never broken bread with a Jew."
"Not so!" Flaccus retorted, "for I was present at the Lady Cypros' wedding-feast!"
"Ho! Flaccus remembering a wedding-feast!" Agrippa laughed, as he arose, taking Junia's hand. "Mars, cherishing a confection!"
"Perchance," Cypros ventured, pleased and coloring, "if Mars' confections were more plentiful and the noble Flaccus' wedding-feasts less rare, they both might forget the one!"
"Never!" Flaccus declared, "though I were Hymen himself!"
As they proceeded toward the colonnade, Cypros drew closer to him.
"Thou canst not know what service thou hast done us by that promise," she said. "It is more than the youth's security; it means my husband's success. For in this young man, we have found Fortune itself!"
The proconsul made no answer, for his gray-brown eyes flickered suddenly as if a candle had been moved close by them.