CHAPTER X
FLACCUS WORKS A COMPLEXITY
Near sunset the following day the alabarch appeared in the porch of the proconsul's mansion,—an incident which would speedily have spread wildly over the Brucheum had not the shrewd Lysimachus come in Roman dress, unostentatiously and hidden by the dusk. The slave who conducted the visitor to the master's presence was suspicious, but he did not lapse from courtesy. If he had prejudices they had to await a popular uproar for expression, and popular uproars at present against the Jews were manifestly in disfavor with the proconsul.
Flaccus received the alabarch in the great gloom of his atrium. The torches had not been lighted, the cancelli admitted only dusk. The shadowy shape of the proconsul, relaxed in his curule, alone and immovable, thus surrounded by meditative atmosphere, suddenly appealed to the alabarch as out of harmony with the legate's blunt nature.
As the Jew drew near, he saw rolls and parcels of linen and parchment, petitions and memorials, scattered about on the pavement, as if the Roman had let them roll off his table or drop from his hand unconsciously. His elbow rested on the ivory arm of his curule, his cheek on his clenched hand. The undimmed gaze of the Jewish magistrate detected lines in the hard face that he had never seen before.
But Flaccus stirred and drew himself up to attention.
"Come up, Lysimachus," he said. "There is a chair here, for thee."
The alabarch advanced and dropped into the seat that Flaccus had indicated.
"This," he observed, nodding toward the dark torch at the proconsul's side, "would lead me to believe thou art inventing rhymes."
"Or conspiracies. Plots and poetry demand the same exciting dusk. Well, has the Herod sued?"
"Not he, but his lady."
"His lady! By Hecate, the mystery is solved. Thus it is that he hath been able to borrow every usurer poor from Rome to Damascus!"
"He wins upon her virtue; but withhold thy interpretation of my words until I show thee what they mean. She is beautiful and virtuous; a Herod and married—a conjunction of circumstances in these days so rare as to be out of nature—therefore, phenomenal. So we toss our yellow gold into her lap in recognition of the entertainment she hath afforded—being unusual."
"Virtuous; that means, faithful to the man she married. No woman is faithful except she loves her love. A just procession in the order of the Furies' reign. The warm of heart, unrewarded; the unworthy, anointed and worshiped."
"This melancholy twilight hath made thee morbid, Avillus. You Romans take womankind too seriously."
"When womankind or a kind of woman can drain the world's purse, methinks she is a serious matter. What sum does she want?"
"Three hundred thousand drachmæ."
"O Midas; give her the touch! Let all her possessions be gold! Didst advance it to her?"
"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
"Temperate Jew! To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy purse. Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
"Beshrew the jest! Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent wives. And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me serious. The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
"Rest thee in that small matter. Thou and I can spare her sesterces enough to ship her back to Judea."
Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
"She would not be satisfied," he said at last. "She wants three talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread. It seems that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Cæsar—"
"O, that is the way of it! I know of that man! Well, then, perchance it is not so much because she loves her husband as because the debt to the pawned one chafes. I hear that he is young and comely."
"Forget the slanderous jest, Flaccus; I am ashamed of it. What shall I do in this matter?"
"Lend her three talents."
"She would buy the man's freedom, but what then? She would still be here in Alexandria as penniless as ever."
"The consular suggestion, it seems, only held thee a moment in abeyance," the proconsul said slyly. "She will get the three hundred thousand drachmæ, yet!"
"She will not," the alabarch declared, "First, because I have it not; next, because I am not eager to pay a Herod's debts."
"Or, chiefly, because thou shouldst never see it again."
The alabarch tapped the pavement with his foot and looked away. The attitude was confession to a belief in the proconsul's convictions.
"What sum couldst thou lend by pinching thyself?" Flaccus asked presently.
"Two hundred thousand drachmæ—but not to a Herod. I could lose five talents without ruin."
"Give her five talents, then; give it—do not slander a gift by calling it a loan."
"What! Toss an alms to a Herod? They would throw it in my face!"
"Jupiter! but they are haughty!"
The alabarch made no answer and Flaccus looked out at the night dropping over his garden.
"Why not hold the lady in hostage, here, for five talents?" he asked after a while.
The alabarch looked startled; it was Roman extremes, a trifle too brutal for him to dress in diplomacy. He demurred.
"Not brutal, Lysimachus," Flaccus said earnestly. "Herod can not use her well; it will be a respite from her long wandering and poverty. Thou canst say to her that the five talents are all thou canst afford. Tell her that it will do no more than beach them penniless in Italy; that thou hast a crust for Agrippa—will she starve him by eating half of it, herself?"
Flaccus laughed at his own words, but perplexity came into the alabarch's face.
"But why?" he asked.
"Why? Is it not plain to you? Keep her so that Agrippa will in honor have to redeem her if ever he become possessed of five talents!"
Now the alabarch laughed. "I am not so sure. Is it native in a Herod to love his wife so well? It would be a bad mortgage for me to foreclose—one cast-off female whose chief uses are for tears!"
"No, by Venus! She is too comely to play Dido. But try my plan, Alexander. It is well worth the experiment."
The alabarch arose and stepped down from the rostrum. "It—it is—" he hesitated. "But then, I should have them on my hands, under any circumstances."
He took a few more steps, and paused for thought.
"Well enough," he said finally, "we shall see."
With a motion of farewell to the proconsul, he passed out and disappeared.
Flaccus dropped back into his curule, and lapsed again into gloomy meditation. The night fell and obscured him. He seemed to be waiting, but not with marked impatience.
Again the atriensis bowed before him.
"A lady who says she was summoned," he said.
"Let her enter. And bid the lampadary light the torch, yonder, not here—and only one."
The atriensis disappeared, and presently a slave with a burning reed set fire to the wick in one of the brass bowls by the arch into the vestibule, and Junia appeared.
"Hither, and sit beside me, Junia," Flaccus called to her.
He drew the chair closer, which the alabarch had occupied, and Junia, dropping off her mantle and vitta, sat down in it.
"What a despot one's living is!" she exclaimed. "But for the fact I owe my meat and wine to thy favor, thou shouldst have come to me, to-night, not I to thee!"
"I came often enough at thy beck, Junia! It were time I was visited!"
"Thou ill-timed tyrant! I am expected at a feast to-night, and my young gallant doubtless waits and wonders, at my house."
"Let him wait! I was his predecessor, and his better. Methinks thou hast reduced thy standard of lovers of late."
"No longer the man but the substance," she answered. "In the old days it was muscle and front; now it is purse and position."
"The first was love; the second calculation. Why wilt thou marry this obscure young Alexandrian—whoever he be?"
"To be assured of a living—to cast off the hand thou hast had upon me, thus long."
He leaned nearer that he might look into her face.
"So!" he exclaimed. "Does it chafe, in truth?"
She laughed. "No," she said. "Why should I prefer the provision of one man above another's? Young Obscurity's authority over me, his wife, would be no less tyrannical than Flaccus'—my one-time dear."
Flaccus took her hand and run his palm over her small knuckles.
"Eheu!" he said. "I shall not be happy to see thee wedded—"
"Nor shall I; like the fabulous maiden who weeps on the eve of her marriage, I shall in good earnest heave a sigh over the days of my freedom. Alas! the mind grows old young, that learns the fullness of life early. There are as many ashes on my heart as there are in this bulging temple of thine, Avillus."
"Dost thou love this—boy? Beshrew him, let him have no name!"
"How? Dost thou love the usurer that lends thee money, Flaccus?"
"What dost thou love, at all?" he asked.
"Sundry old memories; perchance the image of a consul, less portly, less purple, less stiff—and less imposing!"
"Pluto! am I like that?" he demanded.
"To one that was thy dear in younger days. To one who does not remember the sprightlier man, thou couldst be less charming."
"Younger? Now, how much younger? Six years at most! Thou hast not changed in that time; why should I?"
"O Avillus; between the stage of the sun at noon and the previous hour, there is no appreciable change. But mark the difference an hour makes at sunset. But why this inquisition? Has Eros pierced thee in a new spot?"
"Pierced me twenty years ago and his arrow sticketh yet in the wound it made!"
"What! Spitted on an arrow during all those days thou didst love me?"
"But Eros has arrows and arrows, of many kinds, and two diverse barbs may with all consistency find lodgment at once in a heart. But of myself we may speak later; at present, I am moved to labor with thee for thine own welfare. Why wilt thou marry this boy, for his purse, when there are men in pain for thy favor?"
She studied him a moment. "I can not take thee back, Flaccus; love's ashes can not be refired though the breath of Eros himself blew upon them."
"Impetuous conclusion; hast thou forgotten the twenty-year-old wound which I confessed just now? I am this moment only an arbiter for my better—my betters—"
"I shall keep the twenty-year-old barb in mind," she said. "Methinks it is that which pricks thee into activity for me."
"A wiser surmise than the first. But curb thy frivolous spirit; I am weighted with the business of the great. What dost thou here, O divinity, away from Rome and the arms of Cæsar?"
"Dost thou forget that we were invited away, because of my father's unfortunate preference of Sejanus, during the days of Sejanus' greatness?"
"O Venus, can not the ban be lifted? Behold,"—stretching out his muscular arm, "Flaccus is a strong man."
"Even then, is Tiberius thy better in comeliness? Perchance he would not please me."
"I speak, now, to thy sordid self; but if thy maiden love of grace still lives in thee, there shall another serve thee. Have I not said I indorse two?"
"Two!"
"Two. Of Cæsar first. His part in the bargain is really the smaller thing. Thou, who couldst dint Flaccus' heart in Flaccus' stonier days, who upset Caligula's domestic peace, put gray hairs in Macro's forelock—all these in their doughty prime, methinks my poor doting ancient in Capri will fall like a city with a thousand breaches in its wall."
"Oh, doubtless," she admitted; "but what of myself? If thine impurpled countenance—for all it is as firm as cocoanut flesh—if thine impurpled countenance does not suit my Epicurean tastes, how shall I content myself with the toothless love-making of a mumbling Boeotian?"
"Thou canst comfort thyself with a comely bankrupt on the gold of the toothless one."
"It is complicated; too much duplication and detail," she objected.
"Thou hast done it before," he declared. "Thou art right expert."
She laughed and leaned back in her chair.
"Name me the comely one," she commanded.
"Agrippa." There was silence, in which she lifted her lowered eyes very slowly and faced him. Amusement made small lines about her eyes, and in her face was worldly wisdom mingled with a sort of friendliness.
"And now," she said in a quiet tone, "for the twenty-year-old wound. Is it the Lady Herod?"
His gaze dropped; emotion put out the half-humor which had enlivened his face. Presently he scowled.
"I have twitched the barb," she opined; "the wound is sore."
"Sore!" he brought out between clenched teeth. "Sore! I tell thee, that though it is twenty years since I stood and saw her bound to him by the flamens, I have not ceased day or night to suffer!"
Junia looked at him with frank amazement on her face; the proconsul was declaring, with passion, a thing which she could not believe possible. Such love as she knew, by the carefulest tendance, would have burnt out and resolved into cold ashes in half that time. That it should endure years, suffer discouragement, bridge distances and surmount obstacles, all uncherished and unrequited, was fiction, pure and simple. Yet to reconcile this conviction with the honest suffering of the bluff man at her side was a task she could not attempt.
"Flaccus, I never pained thee so," she murmured. "Perchance the Jewess dropped madness from a philter in thy wine. And for simple cruelty, too, for she is fond of her graceful Arab."
The proconsul raised his head and looked at her with such speechless ferocity, that she shrank away from him, remembering former experiences. But he dropped his head into his hands and did nothing.
She watched him for a moment then ventured discreetly:
"Is it thy wish to win him from her, or her from him?"
"Both!" he answered. "The one accomplished, the other follows!" With a sudden accession of emotion, he laid his short, powerful fingers about her smooth wrist and bent over her.
"Help me, Junia!" he besought. "Weigh what I offer against the portion of any Alexandrian. By the lips of Lysimachus, the richest man in the city, I know how little even he may waste—two hundred thousand drachmæ—the cost of a single necklace Cæsar might put about thy throat. I never failed Tiberius; his esteem of me is great. I have only to ask and the decree of banishment, or the sentence against thy father, shall be lifted. Thou shalt return in honor to Rome; thy father shall be one of Cæsar's ministers, and thou shalt take thy place among the first of the patricians. And Tiberius lays no bond of fidelity upon his ladies. I saw thee, last night! I saw thee run thine eyes along the Herod's sleek length—curse him, it was that which undid me! I saw thy fancy incline toward him. It will be a new and pleasant game for thee, Junia—a game in which thou art skilled—but it is my life—my very life to me!"
She frowned at the jewels on her fingers. There was no reason why she should not lend herself to Flaccus' schemes when her enlistment in his cause assured to her the realization of the highest ambitions of her kind. But enough of the creature impulse toward perversity, admitting that his gain would be as great as hers, restrained her. She was uncomfortable, uncertain, peevish. Meanwhile, the proconsul's gray-brown eyes, large, intense, demanded of her.
"Wait!" she fretted at last. "Thou art hasty! And perchance thou dost only make place for this mysterious fugitive for whom she was so solicitous last night!"
He remembered his own jest with the alabarch, and added thereto the impatient surmise of this penetrative woman. Could such a thing be possible? He sprang to his feet, all the intensity of his emotion concentrated in a spasm of fury and menace.
"Let him come!" he said between his teeth. "Let him come!"
She worked her hand loose from him.
"Wait," she repeated. "Thou hast built gigantically on no foundation. Let something happen. And if I am pleased to follow thy plans, I may; but be assured if I am not, I will not. My debt to thee is less than thy demands, Avillus."
She arose and put on her mantle, while he stood watching her every movement.
"I shall wait," he said presently, "only a little time."
She made a motion of impatience and withdrew from the atrium.
He stood motionless for a long time; then he called his atriensis.
"Send hither the chief apparitor," he said.
The captain of the proconsul's personal guard appeared and saluted. Flaccus, in the meantime, had searched through the documents on the floor and by the dim light identified one.
"Take this," he said, handing the apparitor the parchment, "and make search for the man herein described. Seek him in Ptolemais, wherever a Nazarene warren hides, in Jerusalem, in Alexandria—meet every incoming ship, spend the half of my fortune, wear out my army—but find him, or lose thy life!"
The chief apparitor looked unflinching into the proconsul's gray-brown eyes.
"I hear," he said.
The proconsul waved his hand and the soldier withdrew.