Calcol’s command Simon had anticipated. He shouldered the cross. It was heavier to him than to the Christ, not in weight, perhaps, but in purpose. In the narrowness of the sook the crowd was impeded, but from the rear they pushed, surprised at the halt.
Mary sprang at the lattice. “It is you that shall move on,” she cried; “yes, you; and forever. The desert will call to you, ‘March;’ and the sea will snarl, [pg 234]‘Further yet.’ The gates of cities will deny you, and the doors of hamlets be closed. The eagles may return to their eyrie, the panthers retreat to their lair, but you will have no home, no rest, and, till time dies, no tomb.”
The old man gnashed back at her an insult more bestial than he used before, and spat at her through the bars. But Mary had turned to the Christ. He was surrounded now by some women who had filtered through the alley above. Johanna, Mary Clopas, the wife of Zebdia, and Bernice, a fragile girl newly enrolled. The latter was wiping from his face the stains of blood and dust. The others were beating their breasts, crying aloud.
Of the disciples there was no trace, nor yet of any of those who had greeted him as the Messiah. It may be that the admiring throngs that had gathered about him had faded before a superior force. It may be they had lost heart, belief perhaps as well. Invective never propitiates. Recently he had omitted to [pg 235]prophesy, he argued. The exquisite parables with which he had been wont to charm even the recalcitrant seemed to have been put aside, and with them those wonders which rumor held him to have worked. But now that pathos and grace which endeared, that perfection of sentiment and expression which exalted the heart, returned to him, accentuated perhaps by the agonies he had endured.
“Weep for me no more,” he entreated. “But weep for yourselves and for your children. The days are coming,” he added, with a gesture at the impatient mob—“the days are coming in which they shall say to the mountains, Fall on us; to the hills, Cover us. For if these things are done in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”
And in this entreaty, in which he exhorted them to view disaster otherwise than from the external and evanescent aspect, the voice of the prophet rang once more.
Mary as yet had not realized the full portent of the soldiery and the mob. [pg 236]When it was approaching it had occurred to her that it might be another triumphal escort, such as she had once seen surround him on his way to a feast. As it advanced, the roar bewildered, and she had ceased to conjecture; then the Master had fallen, and the old Jew had vomited his slime. At the moment it was that, and that only, which had impressed her, and she had answered with the force of that new strength which suddenly she had found. But now at the sight of the women beating their breasts, and the blood-stained face of the Master, an inkling came to her; she stared open-mouthed at the cross, at Calcol, and at the executioners that were there.
Then immediately that horrible longing to know the worst beset her, and she darted to where the centurion stood.
“What is it?” she gasped. “What are you to do with him?”
By way of answer Calcol extended his arms straight out from either side, his head thrown back. He was a good-natured ruffian, with clear and pleasant eyes.