CHAPTER VI.
Athribis the slave bent lower—lower yet. What was this that he saw? He was on the roof of the house in Alexandria. Through an open space beside the wind-sail next to him, he could look into a small room below.
In that room, his master Heraklas knelt and carefully drew a brick from its place in the wall. Putting his hand into some hole that seemed to be behind the bricks, Heraklas produced a roll of papyrus. He glanced stealthily around, and, kneeling still, unrolled the writing, and read in eager haste, one hand on the brick, ready at the sound of any coming footsteps to thrust the papyrus quickly into the wall again. It was a thing well pleasing to the treacherous soul of Athribis that he should have discovered some secret of his master.
"What is the writing, that he hideth it there?" the slave questioned himself.
Heraklas continued to read. Stretched on his perch, and straining his neck to look, Athribis deemed the time long. His prying eyes noted carefully the distance of the loose brick from the floor. Athribis did not recognize the papyrus as one that he had seen before. The sight of any papyrus, however, had been distasteful to him since the night of his adventure on the roof, but he thought the papyri of that escapade safely burned long ago. He knew that Heraklas' mother had ordered those destroyed that were found on the roof. Athribis supposed the one also burnt that had fallen into the court. What else should have become of it? No suspicion concerning it had crossed his mind till now.
"Oh, that I could see what he readeth!" wished Athribis vainly. "What meaneth that large sign? Is it the 'tau'?"
Heraklas farther unrolled the papyrus, and the mark of the cross that had caught Athribis' eye and had interested him, vanished. The mark seemed to the slave like the Egyptian "tau" or sign of life; used afterwards, curiously enough, by the Christians of Europe as a prefix to inscriptions. Numbers of inscriptions headed by the tau have remained even to the present time, in early Christian sepulchres in the Great Oasis.
"If that were the tau, there may be no harm in the writing," thought Athribis sullenly. "Yet why hideth he here?"
The supposed sign of the tau rolled in sight again, as Heraklas shifted the papyrus.
Heraklas had discovered the papyrus when it hung from the palm in the court. Seeing the character of the writing, he had kept the roll for secret perusal. He conjectured that the thief, supposed to have been on the roof, might have dropped the roll. During the three months that had elapsed since Heraklas found the papyrus hanging from the palm, he had come often to this secret hiding-place. He knew his mother would destroy the Christians' Book, if she saw it. He knew the servants were not to be trusted in the matter.
Frequently, during the first month, he had thought that he would destroy the papyrus, and, as often, he had deferred doing so, so much was he always drawn back to reading it. At the end of the second month, Heraklas read with even more eagerness than at first. Here was something that even the maxims of Ptah-hotep had not attained. Never had Heraklas seen such a book as this Gospel of John. Its words followed him when he was not reading. Why should the words of Jesus of Nazareth cling to one's memory with so persistent a force? Was it true that "never man spake as this man"?
Even when Heraklas passed outside the city streets, and walked the northern cliffs beside the sea, he was constrained to remember that it was along these craggy places that, men said, a century and a half ago, Mark, the first Christian apostle to Alexandria, had been dragged by cords, at the time of the feast of the god Serapis. Then, tradition said, there had arisen a dreadful tempest of hail and lightning, that destroyed the murderous heathen.
Was the Christian God greater than Serapis, the great deity of Egypt?
Such thinking sent Heraklas back again to study the papyrus of John's Gospel. And now Athribis wearied, waiting for Heraklas' reading to end.
Suddenly Heraklas, attracted perhaps by the silent force that lies in a human gaze; lifted his head from his reading, and glanced upward. Athribis had not time to start aside. The eyes of the two met in a long, piercing gaze! Heraklas sprang to his feet. The papyrus fell, on the loose brick beside him.
Athribis' head vanished instantly, and Heraklas, snatching the papyrus, wound it closely, and thrust it into his garments.
He hastily replaced the loose brick. No safe place for the papyrus would the hole be, hereafter.
When he met Athribis afterwards in a corridor, Heraklas felt his heart beat more quickly against the hidden roll. But the lad was stern in outward semblance.
"Athribis!" he said.
The slave bent before the lad.
"How wast thou where I saw thee?" demanded Heraklas.
"I was attending to the salted quail. Thou knowest they are drying on the roof," explained Athribis, meekly.
Heraklas felt compelled to accept the excuse. There were quail drying, according to the custom of lower Egypt.
"But what was it that I read in his face, as he looked down at me?" Heraklas asked himself.
Thenceforward, unspoken, yet felt as surely as though expressed, there existed in Heraklas' mind a constant suspicion of Athribis.
Heraklas carried the papyrus roll with him, day and night. Well did he know the danger, but he said to himself that he would not be dictated to by a servant. That was the ostensible reason he gave himself for not immediately burning the roll. In reality, he knew that the words of the Christians' Book had pierced his soul. He dared not burn the book. He stood before its searching words a convicted sinner.
The suspicion of veiled surveillance that haunted Heraklas made him cautious of reading his, papyrus at home. He sought places, to read it abroad. Hidden among the crags beside the sea, or in the vines on the banks of Lake Mareotis, Heraklas read, and waged the soul-struggle that had risen within him.
One day Heraklas had hidden himself among the northern crags beside the great sea. His eyes were bent upon his roll. He had been reading John's record of the conversation between Christ and the man who was born blind.
"Jesus said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"
The man whose eyes Christ had opened, answered and said, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?"
"Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"
It seemed to Heraklas that there came to him, also, Christ's solemn question. With awe-struck lips, Heraklas whispered, out of a heart that craved its answer, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?"
Heraklas bent above his roll. The answer of the Lord was there. "It is He that talketh with thee."
The lad dropped his papyrus, and covered his face. He bowed in awe. For a long time he knelt there, pouring out his soul in prayer—but not to Egypt's gods. And that which is written of the blind man was fulfilled in Heraklas, also—"And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him."
When Heraklas rose from his knees, the sun was high in mid-heaven. It was the time at home when his mother would burn myrrh to the sun. But no prayer to Re or hymn to Horus escaped Heraklas' lips. How should he, who rejoiced in the knowledge of sins forgiven, pray more to false gods?
A holy awe and a great joy wrapped his soul. The burden of sin that had oppressed him, the hopeless burden which had not ceased to cause Heraklas misery even when he made offerings to Isis and poured forth prayers to Serapis, was gone, gone at the touch of Jesus.
Plucking from his girdle his carnelian buckle, that signified to an Egyptian the blood of Isis, said to wash away the sins of the wearer, Heraklas leaned forward, and flung the rosy ornament far into the white foam of the waves below. He could not wear that heathen sign, even though his mother had given the ornament to him.
"O Isis," murmured Heraklas, as he lost sight of the carnelian buckle within the waves, "I care not for thy blood! I know whose blood hath washed away my stain."
With reverent rejoicing, he concealed his papyrus and turned homeward.
He passed into the great city. A woman was worshiping before a statue of the god Chonsu, the moon. Heraklas went by quickly, making no sign of reverence. Glancing back, he saw the woman gazing after him.
A little farther on stood a statue of Anubis. Other men, as they passed, gave homage, but Heraklas did not turn his head toward the idol. He noted, in the stalls and in the shops, the altars and little idols. When he next went to purchase anything, must he do reverence? Heraklas met a beggar and dropped a coin into his hand.
"Isis and Osiris bless thee!" wished the suppliant.
Heraklas' lips parted to answer. Should he, who had been blessed of the Lord, seem to accept the blessing of idols? But the beggar turned to another giver, and Heraklas hurried on his way.
Before he could reach home, a sacred procession came in sight. Already Heraklas could plainly see the leopard-skin that fitted over the linen robes of the Egyptian high priest who was coming. Twelve or sixteen inferior priests walked beside the superior one. The high priest's lock of hair, pendant on one side of his head, became more and more plain to Heraklas with every step of the procession.
"They carry the shrine of the sacred beetle of the sun," suspected Heraklas. "I cannot meet them!"
He turned, and dashed down the first opening that presented itself. The passage led him utterly out of his way.
"But better so," meditated Heraklas, "than that I should have met that skin-dressed priest!"
He stopped an instant. His circuitous way had led him in sight of a spot where he had once seen the Christian woman, Marcella, and her daughter Potamiaena, passing on their way to martyrdom. How awful a form of martyrdom was it that Alexandria visited upon that beautiful Christian daughter! Gradually, hot, scalding pitch was poured over her body, in order that she might endure the utmost torture possible.
Heraklas looked around him at the proud, beautiful city.
"O Alexandria, Alexandria!" he whispered, "in thee is found the blood of the saints!"
For a moment the thought of such a death, as a Christian's punishment, overcame him. Yet he remembered that it was through Potamiaena's martyrdom that the soldier, Basilides, was led to become a Christian also. He refused to take a pagan oath, and was brought to martyrdom.
When Heraklas reached home, he was trembling. His short journey had been freighted with silent meaning.