A hand touched her, and she quivered as a leaf does at the wing of a bird. “Mary, come with us,” some one was saying; “we are taking him to a tomb.”
Just beyond were men and women whom she knew. Joseph of Haramathaïm, a close follower of the Master; Nikodemon, the richest man in all Judæa; Johanna, Mary Clopas, Salomè, Bernice, and the servants of the opulent Jew. It was Ahulah who had touched her; and as Mary started she saw before her a coffin which the others bore.
“Come with us,” Ahulah repeated; and Mary crossed the intervening ridge to where the gardens were and the tombs she had already passed.
At the door of a sepulchre the brief procession halted. Within was a room, [pg 250]a little grotto furnished with a stone slab and a lamp that flickered, surmounted by an arch. The coffin, placed on the slab, routed a bat that flew to the arch, and a lizard that scurried to a crevice. In the coffin the Christ lay, his head wrapped in a napkin, the body wound about by broad bands of linen that were secured with gum and impregnated with spices and with myrrh. The odor of aromatics filled the tomb. The bat escaped to the night. A stone was rolled before the opening, the brief procession withdrew, and Mary was left with the dead.
The momentary exertion, the bier, the sepulchre, the sight of the Christ in his cerements, the brooding quiet—these things had roused her. Her mind was nimbler, and thought more active. One by one the stars appeared. They would vanish, she told herself, as her hopes had done. Only they would reappear, and belief could not. It had come as a rainbow does, and disappeared as vaporously, little by little, before the full glare of might. For a minute, hours perhaps, she [pg 251]stood quite still, interrogating the past in which so much had been, gauging the future in which so much was to be. The one retreated, the other fled. Thoughts came to her evanescently, and faded before they were wholly formed. At one moment she was beckoning the unicorns from the desert, the winged lions from the yonderland, commanding them to bear her to the home of some immense revenge. At others she was asking her way of griffins, propounding the problem to the Sphinx. But the unicorns and lions took flight, the griffins spread their wings, the Sphinx fell asleep. There was no answer to her appeal.
Behind the sepulchre the moon rose; it dropped a beam near by. There is light somewhere, it seemed to say; and in that telegram from Above, she thought of Rome. She remembered now, in Rome was Tiberius, and in him Revenge. She smiled at her own forgetfulness. Yes, it was there. She would go to him, she would exact reparation; there should be another crucifixion. Pilate should be [pg 252]nailed to the cross, Judas on one side, Caiaphas on the other. Only it would be at Rome where there was no Passover to interfere with the torture they endured. Things were done better there. Men were crucified, not with the head up, but with the feet; and so remained, not for hours, but for days; and died, not of their wounds alone, but of hunger too.
A chariot of dream caught her, and, borne across the intervening space, she saw herself in a palace where there were gods and monsters, columns of transparent quartz, floors of malachite, roofs of gold. And there, on a dais, the Cæsar lay. Behind him a fan, luminous as a peacock’s tail, oscillated to the tinkling of mysterious keys. In his crown was the lividity of uncolored dawns, in his sceptre the dominion of the world. An ulcer devoured his face, and in his ear a boy repeated the maxims of Elephantis. Mary threw herself at his feet, her tears fell on them as rain on leaves. “Vengeance,” she implored; but he listened merely to the boy at his side. “Death is your ser[pg 253]vant,” she cried. “You command, it obeys.” The ulcer oozed, the face grew vague, he gave no answer. She stood up and menaced him. “Behind you spectres crouch; you may not see them. I do; their name is To-morrow.” The murmurs of the boy were her sole reply. The roof crumbled, the flooring disappeared, the emperor faded, and Mary stared into space.
The moon that had struck aslant the tomb had gone, but where its beams had fallen the message remained. There is light somewhere, it repeated. Across the heavens a meteor shot like a bee. In the air voices whispered confusedly. It is not in Rome, one seemed to say. It is not on earth, another called.
Mary clutched at her beating breast. The sky now was an opening rose. What the sunset had sown the dawn would reap. In the night that had enveloped, day raised a lattice, and through it came a gust of higher thought. It is not in revenge, a voice whispered. It is not in regret, another called.
“I know it,” Mary gasped. “Yes, yes, I know it now. It is in faith.”