CHAPTER XXII
"IN THE CLOAK OF TWO COLORS"
Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering and sat up. A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over the cancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.
In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas looked sleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stood near by.
"A message for thee," the slave said.
Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrapped in silk. Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.
"O MARSYAS:
"Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a woman addresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and more confidence.
"I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a little space before we are commanded to join Cæsar in Capri. In this time I have not seen thee nor thy lord.
"If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria may urge thee to accept the invitation I extend.
"There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.
"Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.
"JUNIA."
Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.
"Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.
He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.
In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days to prepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.
It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that had bent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem. He had permitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief had been replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunic and mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and there was the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms. He had assumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habit and had become not only a Roman but an exquisite. The change was not all in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man of experience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from his brow.
He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house and down the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa's magnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica that awaited him in the streets.
Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.
Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a great shock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was less conscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.
He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heights of marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation of triumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines between the seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals, cast it down in the gloom of the depressions. Glories clambered up the bosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, and might in marble and gold sat on the Palatine. Between were splendor and squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries and defilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.
The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered the Carinæ, along which he passed. Starvation and the excess of plenty, power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence met and passed. The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way for it with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fasces and maces. He did not proceed unnoticed. Albucilla, widow of Satrius Secundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languid senator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene; Ennia, wife of Macro, the prætorian prefect, leaned from her litter to cry him an invitation.
"To Tusculum! Come with us!"
"Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"
"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on. Running slaves pushed by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the lectica they bore contained Caligula, Cæsar's grand-nephew. Agrippina, a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he approached. Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him with a smile and a greeting. As the young Jew was borne on he did not realize that he had made room for three coming Cæsars in the Carinæ. After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off the Carinæ and began to mount the Esquiline. In a few minutes he was set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek temple, as compact as a fortification.
The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him into the vestibule and left him for a moment. Presently, a soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged him to follow. He was led into Junia's atrium.
The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli, turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise. But honest feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood before her.
"Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him. "Would thou wast a god! Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"
"Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.
She laughed and shook her finger at him.
"How hopeless a ruin thou art! A Jew speaking of the gods!" He led her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. With bright eyes and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.
"It is true!" she cried at last. "And I do not like to see it! Thou art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."
"A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "But tell me of thyself, and after that of them that remain in Alexandria."
"No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee. All thy misdeeds are known to me. When I forewarned thee of the various attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks! I have heard how thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a score of merry running courtships in the capital. I see thee, how thou hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. And thou an Essene! Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the salty desert of En-Gadi—some time! Overshadowing the Herod till in very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the atria to thee! Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"
The young man smiled a little bitterly. Cypros' charge had not been difficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay between him and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!
"But Rome enlarges," he protested. "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubble of Fortune: and I—having a purpose to be achieved in his success—I speed him—in mine own way. But enough of ourselves. Tell me of Alexandria!"
"But wait! I have not done. The charm of beauty hath lost its potency here in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful. The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, since every one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price. The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion's son bearing the ægis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in the mansions of the ancient Quirites! Wherefore there is only one rare, unpurchasable charm—newness—and Roman society speedily dulls the luster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially. Beware, my Marsyas!"
He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness, in a strangely unspiritual way. He had heard of upright atheists; somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, but irreligious chidings. Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony that he had changed.
"Be neither frequent nor democratic. Saith Agricola, the pleb, 'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!' By Castor! I had rather endure the contempt of the great than the approval of the small. Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts. And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."
"How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" he complained.
"But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity as thine. So thou wilt wait for me. Thou hast been in Rome four months. Tell me what happened in that time."
Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of his head.
"None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said. "I have not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea. Nay, then; hear me. He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repaired to the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and others his slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he had forfeited in twenty years. He came away radiant and under promise to return the following night, and dine with the emperor. But the next morning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, livid with wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa. One would think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor in reporting him. What followed but that the same imperial hand which had been stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next, extended in banishment over him."
"What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony. "Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."
"Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with a warrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia. And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped the information of our whereabouts, in Judea! I repaired to Rome, borrowed three hundred thousand drachmæ of Antonia, the univira, and despatched messengers to Cæsar and Herrenius Capito telling that the debt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome. So we laid the ghost of our debts. But feeling unhappy owing no man, I immediately borrowed a million drachmæ of Thallus, Cæsar's freedman, repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on the Quirinal. Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing to trouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions. But—!"
He stopped abruptly.
"O prescient contingent!" she said softly. "Does the Herod dally with his opportunities?"
"Worse: he affronts them! Worse: those opportunities are not alone for him! Part of them are mine!"
Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.
"Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging me into narrative. An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end. Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome looketh two ways for a new Emperor. Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son, and there is Caligula, Cæsar's grandnephew. Now Cæsar seeth in the little Tiberius a successor. Fatuous dotage! The prætorians are stubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniature boots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant. The reason is good enough to be a woman's! Be it as it may, that lean, sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"
"Hercle! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidias was with a stone!"
"Patience! On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the Porta Esquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum. Many were going, as many go every day. We had mounted our car, with Eutychus—would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!—as charioteer, when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mounted his. After them directly followed a cohort of prætorians. Their bright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightened little Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot and frightened his pair. The four bolted at once; the chariots upset and both princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of the advancing cohort.
"The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligula were helped to their feet. The lad withdrew to the roadside, but Caligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, so broad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, the whole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.
"Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management to become unruly. Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed him across the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of the charioteer. I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals. Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of his chariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways. The boy saw him coming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slave preparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheer Caligula.
"What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to the soldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"
"What! Did that thing openly?"
"Deliberately! The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalked back inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to cover Agrippa's slight. And after him rushed a crowd of senators and ædiles—his umbræ—to feed his hate of the Herod!"
"What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.
"He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."
"It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.
"He plays at legerdemain with Cæsar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed at his own narrative. "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberius to Agrippa's care and companionship. Cæsar will hear of this!"
"Inevitably! Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is its patron. And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, who gave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"
"Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.
"Of Flaccus!"
Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.
"Why of Flaccus?" he asked.
"What! Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? Dost thou not know that Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discovering it, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on the night of the Dance of Flora?"
Marsyas looked at her steadily.
"How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.
"Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.
"No!" he answered penitently.
"Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.
"Tell it me, then!"
"Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was sent here twenty years ago to marry Agrippa. So much he loved her, that twenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion was revived—stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of his youth. Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayed himself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless the proconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple of Rannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell to Cypros, in the night."
"How didst thou learn of this?"
"O simple youth! Is it then so common in Judea for powers to be discovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it? Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence? That is better. Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary, and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria. But the proconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice. And there he made an error. He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous to be a knave. So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true cause was unearthed."
"And Cypros?"
"Cypros? Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting any change? Beautiful statues do not change. What they express when they are finished they express until they are broken. When she came from under the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and her babes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."
"So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"
"She does not suspect him!"
"What!"
"Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am the author of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, more complimentary. I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless, would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdain thereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entail twenty diverse calamities. I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet to the bottom of his oceanic nature. I also know that the Lady Herod is an anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving. So with Agrippa out of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate the princess from her Arab, in vain. Wherefore I permitted the good alabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to the proconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxious hopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable winds to depart for Rome. I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsul study the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guile thereon. So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse of time in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccus resumed his visits to the alabarch's house. And for all outward signs, it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"
Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between his level brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth to the thought of man.
"Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippa that did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it was I—and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"
"What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm. "Thou!"
"Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he went on, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low. And Agrippa was taken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between his shoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant—until I told him—three days out at sea!"
After a long silence, she said softly:
"And that was thine errand—for Flora!"
Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.
"Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thou know? How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrect history?"
"Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling. "Tell me of—Classicus."
Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.
"Classicus? Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but not executive ability—wanting cunning, not courage. Now he leads us to believe that he examines a new religion—that same heresy for which he plunged thee into the Rhacotis peril. Some one put him up to it—mark me. Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which the little Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"
"And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.
Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on the leaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.
"Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Oh, Lydia dances and studies and makes ready for her marriage with Classicus."
One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement of critical news. After it, Marsyas arose.
"I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voice which she had never heard before and did not understand. "I thank thee for thy counsel—and thy news."
He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it was not steady.
"And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on. "We are summoned to Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister to Tiberius. Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."
"Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself to change."
He pressed her hand and passed out.
At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.
"Perpol!" the prince cried. "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"
But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on. Agrippa looked after him.
"Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated. "That is an honest youth, and Junia must let him alone."