CHAPTER XXXVII
IN THE HOUSE OF ANANIAS
But Ananias was a favorite name among the Jews of Damascus. Weariness and the desire for slumber after inquiries which brought him twenty diverse directions, sent Marsyas to a khan when the night was old, and Lydia still unfound.
The next morning after refreshing and untroubled sleep, he began to search for Ananias, carefully withholding the explanation that the Ananias he sought was a Nazarene, out of an impulse to protect the protector of his beloved.
He found Ananias, the wine-merchant, and Ananias, the tanner, banished to the outskirts of the city, because of his unclean trade; and Ananias, the priest; and Ananias who was a native of Antioch and of mixed blood, but unalterably a Jew; and Ananias, who was a soldier, drafted into garrison service by Aretas, who had taken the city from Antipas; and Ananias, the steward of Sidon who had robbed his master and was now too rich and powerful to be punished; and Ananias, who was a reader in the Synagogue. And for two other days, he sought Ananiases patiently and with pathetic hope.
At sunset on the fourth day, he saw a woman meet another woman in the street, and between the two there passed a communication with the fingers. To others, not associated with Nazarenes, the sign meant nothing, but Marsyas caught the motion and his heart leaped.
It was the sign of the cross!
He overtook the woman who had passed him.
"I pray thee, friend," he said in a low voice, "canst thou tell me where Ananias, the Nazarene, dwelleth?"
The woman raised, a pair of calm gray eyes to his face. She was a Greek and fair, and her forehead was as placid as a lake in a calm.
"Art thou his friend?" she asked, with a touch of the caution acquired by the unhappy.
"I am a friend to many who have departed into the Nazarene way," he said. "I shall not betray him."
"Seest the house built upon the wall," she said simply, "that hath the white gate, at the end of the street?"
Marsyas assented.
"Knock," she said.
He blessed her with a look and hurried down the darkening passage.
With trembling hands, he rapped on the whitewashed gate, set deep in the thick clay wall, and presently the door swung open.
A woman in the house-dress of a servant stood there; behind her was a walk lined with white stones; cooing pigeons were disappearing into a cupola on the house within; an ipomoea, pallid with bloom, shaded the step; irises were pushing through the rich mold just inside the gate. There was the rainy rustling of leaves from the olive trees at the property wall on each side. And there was a seat of tamarind with fallen leaves upon it.
"Does Ananias, the Nazarene, dwell here?" Marsyas asked with a tremor in his voice. Whither had his courage departed?
"Enter," the woman said.
Marsyas stepped over the threshold of the white gate, that was latched behind him against opening from the outside, and followed the woman toward the bower of ipomoea.
Within a hall, lighted by a single taper, she gave him a seat, and disappeared through a door at the end of the room. A moment later, the tall spare figure of the pastor of Ptolemais and of Rhacotis emerged from the interior.
Marsyas sprang up, but no sound came to his lips. He clasped his hands and gazed with pitiful eyes upon the Nazarene.
Without pausing for the formality of a greeting, after the first movement of surprise, Ananias reopened the door that he had closed behind him and signed to the young man to pass in.
Marsyas stood in a large chamber, with a spot of light in its center under a hanging lamp. There, with her head bright under the rays, sat Lydia.
Her face was toward him when he entered. She flung down the skein of wool she was winding and sprang up. But the look on Marsyas' face arrested her cry. One glance of supreme examination and her large eyes kindled with sudden triumph. She came to him as if more than distance between them and danger had been overcome. Marsyas swept her into his arms and folded her to his heart.
"No more, no more!" he was saying, "from this time for ever more mine own!"
Trembling and smiling, while tears perfect as pearls glittered on her lashes, she put her arms about his neck and drew his head down to her.
"O my Marsyas," she cried, "better to die in the light of thy trust than to live in thy love without it! Blessed, thrice blessed the hour which gave me both!"
"O my Lydia, thou anointest me with thy forgiveness, and clothest me in the holy garment of thy love! Blessed am I and consecrated!"
"I believed in thy wisdom, love!"
"I had no wisdom but love!"
"The Lord heard me, my Marsyas, for I was near mine extremity, and I could not have endured much longer!"
"I had reached my extremity, Lydia, and then the Lord gave me His hand."
She turned him toward the light, and gazed up at his eyes with such earnestness, such penetration on her almost infantile face, that he pressed her closer to him and laughed a low laugh. Her eyes flashed on him a light of new interest.
"I never heard thee laugh till now!" she exclaimed.
"I never was happy till now!"
"Why now, and not before?" she asked.
There was silence; he could not tell her why he had changed, but he could tell what had marked it.
He led her to the chair she had left, and when she had sat, dropped at her feet and crossed his arms upon her lap.
"Listen, and when I have done, know that the Lord loved us, and hath joined us with His own hands."
Beginning at the time when he turned to find her gone from the reader's stone before the Synagogue in Alexandria, he told with simple directness of his wanderings, of his disappointments, of his growing fear that he would not save her from Saul. He had her follow him to the Temple, where he met Eleazar and received the dire news that Saul had departed for Damascus; and thence along the old Roman road through the length of the Holy Land, up past his native hills and the waters of the Sea of Galilee, and the marshes of Lake Huleh, into the desert, and on to the beginning of the beneficence of the Pharbar and the Abana, until he brought up within sixty paces of Saul at the wayside pool. All these things she heard with the sympathetic interest which had won him to her from the talk in the dawn on the housetop in Alexandria. But when he came to the supernatural visit of the great light, and the prostration of Saul and his own arising a man of subdued and sweetened nature, her eyes shone with a repressed excitement that was not usual in her.
"Naught but a miracle could have stopped me then; naught but the same interference could turn me again into the old way!"
She lifted his face and spoke to him with deep seriousness.
"Didst thou hear what the Spirit said?" she asked.
"We heard nothing, except Saul's words, which I told thee."
"And did Saul make thee a promise that he would persecute no more, or beg thy compassion or thy forgiveness for his work against thy Stephen?"
"He did not speak; he did not know me, for he was blind, and as one in a trance!"
"And thou hast withdrawn thy hand from him, and forsworn thine oath against him?"
"I have done that thing, Lydia."
She held fast to her composure, but her face was transfigured.
"Wherein art thou different, then, from the Nazarenes of Ptolemais who showed thee their doctrine of peace, and refused thee when thou wouldst have hurled them against Saul?" she asked.
For a moment there was silence. Then he arose on his knees and raising his hands clasped them on his breast, while the splendor of a divine enlightenment shone in his eyes.
"I know who came unto us there," he whispered. "It was the Christ!"
She laid her fluttering palms over his clasped hands and held them there, while each in his heart kept the silence, which, in such a moment, is prayer.
Then Marsyas withdrew a hand and took from the folds of his garment the little red cedar crucifix, and, kissing it, put it into her hands. The red cord was still attached to it, and, with solemnity on her face, she laid it about his neck and blessed him.
When the ecstasy of exaltation had passed away, for they were young and the spirit of human love was strong between them, Lydia bade him listen, while she told him one other surprising thing.
"At the command of a heavenly vision, Ananias went this day unto the house of Judas the Pharisee, and into the darkened chamber, where Saul lay, blind and dumb. And by the gift of the Lord Jesus, Ananias laid his hands on Saul's head, and the blind man straightway had his sight. So he arose and followed Ananias unto this house—"
"Here?" Marsyas cried.
"Unto this house, where, when he had broken fast and taken strength, he stood up and glorified Jesus of Nazareth, and received baptism unto the Church of the Nazarenes whom he persecuted hitherto unto death!"
Marsyas was silent. More than wonder filled his heart. Presently he said, as if speaking to himself:
"Is this thine hour, O my martyred Stephen? Art thou content? Sleepest thou the better, knowing that I have followed thy testament for Saul, rather than mine own oath against him?"
Lydia left his communings unanswered, but when he put his hands over his face and laid his head in her lap, her own tears fell with his. Feeling presently her touch on his hair, he raised his head to take the hand.
"Give it to me, my love," he said, "for it hath shaped my life anew, pointed me to the way that even the sacred dead would have me walk, and the joy and the comfort of all time to come lieth in the hollow of it! Let me serve it, now!"
"And thou wilt not regret the peace of En-Gadi, in the world that can not fail to be troublous, some time?" she asked, but with the smile of one who does not fear the answer.
"I owe En-Gadi a debt," he said, "for the brethren were as father and mother to me when I had neither. Its teaching and its practices are pure, and its peace is good for them who fear the world. But with the help of Him who made thee strong and Stephen fearless, I shall not want pent-in walls to be happy and upright."
"Let Ananias teach thee, my love; let Saul show thee his heart; and then—"
"Send us back unto Alexandria, with the faith of Christ on our lips and the peace of His love in our hearts. Tell me that I may go with thee, Lydia!"
"I have been waiting for thee since the day we met in the Judean hills."