CHAPTER XXX.
Slowly the hours dragged while Zillah awaited the coming of Hiram. Elnathan was as faithful to his charge as the huge mastiff was to the care of little Ruth; and there was very similar communication between them. The young Jew's eyes searched all the paths over the hills that converged at the family tent; his ear was quick to detect any approaching step; and he eagerly ran to meet every one coming, lest some interloper should spy out the strange guest. Then from a distance he would watch the Phœnician lady as she walked, or sat under the great terebinth. The part he had taken in her rescue had reacted in a strong fascination for her. How many romances he wove about this beautiful woman!—a different one for almost every hour, but all terminating in her flight, and all involving himself as in some form her protector. He had felt a sort of proprietorship in her destiny, as he did in that of Marduk since he had saved his life at the old crater; yet it was a proprietorship of absolute unselfishness, of obligation to cherish and guard, such as a father feels in his child.
Beyond that, Elnathan could not go. To admire Zillah's loveliness, of which he now and then caught a glimpse, seemed unlawful for him; for that belonged to her lover alone. He scarcely ventured to speak to her, lest his words might be a sort of profanation. He could only wonder and watch. She was his queen, and every fibre of his soul thrilled with loyalty.
Old Ben Yusef had much the same feeling as his son; but his curiosity was absorbed in his tenderness. Tears came into his eyes as he looked upon Zillah's face, now shadowed with trouble, now ecstatic with yearning. That there had been some barrier to her union with Marduk was enough to revive memories of his own early life, when his now buried Lyda, an alien from Israel, had cast her lot with his. His tent-home, the home of an outcast from the family of Judah, was itself a memorial of the triumph of love over traditionary proprieties; and it seemed as if the God who had blessed his married life had now sent this Phœnician maiden to his care.
Ruth did not need to catch the sentiment from her father and brother. The fresh impulses of her own young womanhood went out unreservedly to their guest. Zillah's need of sympathy quickly responded, and from the first greeting the two were in closest sisterly relation. Ruth's presence was a perpetual salâm, a benediction of peace and quiet to Zillah's perturbed soul. The Jewess, though only a child, was old enough to respect the privacy of the Phœnician's thoughts, and made no inquiries, content to find her way to the other's heart, and to feel that she brought comfort to it.
But there was one respect in which the kindness of Ben Yusef's household failed. Zillah could not rest. There was but one pillow for her, and that was the breast of Hiram. Why did he not come? A strange listlessness passed through her. All the third day of her sojourn at Giscala she hardly spoke, but talked all the night long in her sleep.
The fourth day brought the welcome visitor. Elnathan made the rocks ring again as from the adjacent hill-top he signalled Marduk's approach. Ben Yusef ran to meet him as if he had been a son. Even Ruth left the side of the Phœnician, and tripped far away to greet him.
But Zillah moved not from her seat under the terebinth. As Marduk came near and extended his arms in eagerness, she stared at him with stony eyes. Then a faint smile passed over her face. Her body swayed against the trunk of the tree, and would have fallen had not Marduk caught her.
"A passing swoon!" said Ben Yusef. "The gladness has been too much for her. Some wine, Ruth!"
The swoon passed. Zillah rose, and, wildly flinging her arms, cried, "I will go. I will go to him! See! this—this shall take me to him!" She felt for something in her bosom. Raising her clenched hand, and with a shrill cry, "I come, my Adonai, Hiram!" she fell again. They brought the unconscious form into the tent.
Moments passed, which to the watchers dragged themselves as if they had been hours. Hours passed, heavy and slow as nightless days. Days lapsed into weeks. But neither day nor night brought rest to the disordered brain of Zillah. Her tongue ran incessantly; now uttering some fear: "The priests! Moloch! Save him!" Now some pleasant illusion: "He comes! No need for a crown! See the rays about his head! Baal crowns him with his own beams."
Day and night her phantasy ran in one or other of these grooves. There was no sleep, only brief lulls in the wild storm of delirium. After some days, Elnathan brought a physician from Samaria, an attendant on the household of Sanballat. He murmured over the tossing body some magical incantations. These failing, he prescribed the usage among the tribes beyond the Jordan in cases of high fever; namely, to wrap the patient in wet cloths. Under this treatment she caught some periods of quiet sleep, but only to awake again in the world of ideal torment or ecstasy.
Her lover was almost equally insane at times with his grief. He accused himself of being the cause of her death through his attempt to rescue her from the shambles of Apheca.
"No, no," old Yusef said at such suggestions. "The Lord gave man wisdom. For the use of so much as he receives the man is responsible. What happens beyond our wisdom is the Lord's dealing, not man's. You did as you thought wisest and best. Afflict yourself with no censure. Say now with our Psalmist, 'It is the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good!'"
At times Marduk would stare at the sky, as if questioning whether this were not some curse of Baal. Then he would pray to Jehovah, into whose land he had come, to defend him from the assault of his old enemies, the gods of Phœnicia. But this mood was of briefest duration—only in moments when his grief made him forget his scepticism. Once he inquired of Ben Yusef if it were not possible that, through ignorance of the ways of the god of the land, he had inadvertently offended.
"The ways of the Lord are those of every honest man's heart," replied the patriarch.
"Is there no sacrifice I could offer? Behold all I have! Let it be burned! Nay, I will lie myself upon the altar willingly."
"Remember our Psalmist," Ben Yusef would reply. "'Thou delightest not in sacrifice and offering, else would I give it. The sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.' If you have sinned, my son, confess it in your thought, and let us pray the Lord for his mercy."
One day the old man stood facing the south, and raised his hand. His white locks floated in the breeze, while thus he prayed, using the words of Solomon at the dedication of the first temple: "Moreover, concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name's sake: hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for: that all the people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do thy people Israel."
Three weeks had passed. The patient had steadily declined in strength. She could no longer toss upon her couch, but moved only her hands under the impulse of her restless soul.
One day she lay very quiet. Ruth scarcely left her side. Suddenly a sharp cry rang through the tent. It was that of the watcher. Entering, the men witnessed a scene that confirmed their worst fears. Ruth was leaning over the couch, and gazing with fixed stare upon the face of her patient, from which the fever flush had vanished. The pallor and rigidness of death were upon her. Her eyes were lustreless, the balls upturned.
"Quick! quick! the draught!" The physician forced some drops through the stiffening lips. The eyes remained fixed.
"It is over! O Jehovah! I would have served thee! Cruel as Baal art thou!" cried Marduk, throwing himself across the couch.
"Hush!" said old Ben Yusef. "The doors of Sheol open. Upbraid no one here; not even thyself. 'The Lord gave. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!'"
The old man's trembling voice almost belied the submissive faith expressed by his words, for in a moment he too bowed his head and sobbed.
Ruth held the cold hand in hers, as if to force into it the warmth of her own life. So intense was her yearning look that it seemed as if her soul would break through her countenance and reanimate the face of the dead.
The silence was only for a moment, but it seemed a long time until the physician spoke.
"The doors of Sheol are closing again, and she—" He watched intently his patient's face as he completed the sentence slowly, and as if waiting to verify the words as he uttered them: "She—has—not—passed them."
There was slight twitching of the eyeballs. They resumed their normal position in their sockets. There was in them a soft gleam, as of recognition, not of the watcher, but of something very distant.
"The life throbs again in her wrists," cried Ruth, covering the hands she held with her kisses.
Zillah's eyelids fell, but it was in sleep. The breathing became regular.
"The fever has burned itself out; but it has burned up branch and stock, and left nothing but the root of life," said the physician.
A long sleep followed. At first consciousness came in lucid moments only. Then these periods lengthened until they became continuous.
Only Ruth was permitted to enter the sick-chamber. Zillah would look at her intently, evidently dividing her thoughts between wonder and admiration for the beautiful face of her attendant.
"Where am I?" she would ask.
"With me," would be the reply.
A kiss upon her brow was enough to restore perfect tranquillity, and with a smile the patient would go to sleep.
"What do I hear?" she one day asked.
"They are chanting our praises to the Lord for your recovery," said Ruth. "Listen!"
Old Ben Yusef was evidently the precentor, and the strong voice of Elnathan followed, accompanied by the well-known accent of Marduk:
"Bless the Lord, O my soul: ...
Who healeth all thy diseases,
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction."
"Shall I sing to you?" and the sweet child-voice sang:
"Jehovah my shepherd is."
So the time passed, except that, after a few days, Marduk took his place by the couch. One day he bore Zillah in his arms, and laid her upon the cot under the terebinth. Then he told how he had lain there with the same little angel of Jehovah watching him, the gentle Ruth.
The pure air of the hill country of Galilee; the simplicity of life among the peasants; the uplifting influence of their faith, so sublime, yet so consoling and soul-freeing; and the love of one whose heart was welded to hers in the fire of their mutual afflictions—these were the medicines which did more to bring health to the invalid's cheeks than all the arts of Egypt and Greece could have accomplished.
To remain themselves as peasants, communing with nature, with no cares beyond those of the fields and the flocks, was a pleasing dream that the lovers repeated to themselves, with such variations as the landscape has of cloud and shadow and color, while it remains the same in substantial contour.
But the project could not be realized. The sense of great duties he owed to his people impelled the Phœnician to think of a larger world. This may have come partly from his natural habit of mind and training, for he was born to rule, and nature left this birth-mark on his character as clearly as she depicted royalty in his face and bearing. He conceived a lofty ambition of reforming the religion of the Phœnicians into something conformable to reason, and inspiring to man's better impulses; purging its impurities and follies in the fire—let us confess it for him, since he did not confess it to himself—the fire which should be a veritable burning of Egbalus and many of his band of priestly bigots. Besides, he was bound to make this attempt in loyalty to Hanno, who had saved him from the cruelty of Moloch, and Zillah from the shame of Astarte, not for friendship's sake alone, but for his country's, and for the glory of the throne of Tyre. The wealth which he carried with him as the Tyrian merchant, Marduk well knew came from the private fortune of his friend; and honesty bade him return it in the only way in which it was possible to do so, by regaining his lost rank and inheritance as the acknowledged leader of his people.