Shimei was venturing to let lapse his part
Of mere reporter to a talk supposed
Betwixt himself and the dull sentinel—
This to let lapse, or, if not quite let lapse,
Mix and confound with his own proper part,
Inveterate, unassumed, of scoffer free;
He saw the chiliarch sink so deep immersed
In hearing and in weighing what was said,
He deemed he might thenceforward trust his speech,
With scant disguise of indirection, aimed
As frankly for a keen intelligence—
The chiliarch's own, and not the sentinel's—
To snare his listener's now less warded wit.
Paul was clean gone indeed, gone otherwise
Than through the guile that he had dared impute;
But he, meantime, would such a chance not miss,
A golden chance that might not come again,
To prepossess the chiliarch's captive mind
With pregnant ill surmise concerning Paul.
There yet was unexhausted circumstance
Suggestively at hand, seed that but sown
Would a fine harvest of suspicion spring.
Point-blank his aim shifted to Lysias now,
He said: "Why did Gamaliel stay so long?
Why, indeed, come at all, but, having come,
Why so long tarry, wearing out the day?
Where is Gamaliel now? What did it mean
That that officious Hebrew youngster—he
Who, at Paul's wish, Gamaliel hither brought,
Who back and forth has flitted through the gate
All day, carrying and fetching as he liked—
What did it mean, I ask, that he bore in
Flagons of wine and loaves of bread? What mean?
Why, this, provision got to serve Paul's need,
When, issuing in Gamaliel's vesture, he
Should shuffle forth, Gamaliel, on the street,
To try the fortune of a runaway,
A hopeless runaway in Cæsar's world.
The clement chiliarch never would be hard
On an old dotard of a hundred years,
Found aider and abettor in such wile,
Where left behind in ward to take his chance;
Or, possibly, Gamaliel might not know,
Much more, not share, the stratagem of Paul.
It would be easy to put him to sleep
And strip him of his raiment, unawares,
For the exchange, unbargained-for, with Paul.
Paul has much travelled everywhere abroad
And freely commerced with all kinds of men.
He has the skill of many magic arts,
The virtue knows of many a mighty drug;
He can compound thee opiate drinks to drown
Thy thought and senses in oblivion.
He could compose thee in so deep a sleep,
Fair like an infant's, that not all the blare
Of all Rome's trumpets loud together blown
Could rouse thee ever from that fixéd sleep.
A dangerous wicked man to wield such power!"
The chiliarch stood suspended in fast gaze
On Shimei, not perusing him, but lost
In various troubled and confounded thought.
'Had he indeed been tricked? Was Paul such knave?
Had that young Hebrew, with his innocent
Bright look of truth and faith and nobleness,
Had he been hollow, false, base, treacherous,
And played upon a Roman father's heart
To rid a rascal out of custody?
Gamaliel—was that reverend-looking man,
That image of a stately-fair old age,
Was he a low complotter of deceit?
Or, if not that, had nameless turpitude
Abused such dignity into a tool,
Helpless, unwitting, of ignoble wile?'
Thought, question, doubt, suspicion, guess, surmise,
Tumbled, a chaos, in the chiliarch's mind.
Shimei paused, watching, with delight intense;
He felt the chiliarch fast ensnared, his prey.
Wary as was his wit, and ill-inclined
Ever to take a needless risk, or dip
His feet in paths wherein, once entered, he
Perforce must fare right forward, no retreat—
Though such in temper, such in habit, yet—
Either that instant suddenly resolved
That his true prudence was temerity,
Or trusting his resourceful craft to pluck
Desperate advantage from the jaws of chance—
Shimei dared interrupt the Roman's muse:
"Will not my lord the chiliarch now think well
To call Gamaliel into presence here?
Well frightened, the old man perhaps might tell
What passed in his long interview with Paul,
Something to help thee judge betwixt us twain,
Which it were well to credit, Paul or me."
The chiliarch started from his reverie;
"Go bring that Hebrew ancient here," he said.
Then neither Jew nor Roman uttered word,
Each busy with his own unsharéd thought,
Till the centurion from his quest returned,
Alone, and serious, no Gamaliel brought.
"I found"—but scarcely the centurion,
Faltering, had so essayed to make report,
When the wroth chiliarch snatched the word from him:
"Was not he there? Did he refuse to come?
The more loth he, the more to be required!
Gray hair will not atone for stubbornness;
Thou shouldst have brought him, though by greater force.
Something lurks here lends color to the tale
This hoar-head Jew has filled my ear withal.
I will Gamaliel see and learn from him—"
"But, sir," spoke up the loth centurion,
"Nothing from that old Hebrew wilt thou learn,
For—" "I will hear no 'fors,'" the chiliarch said,
"But, hark thee, have the man before me straight!"
Mute, the centurion, left no option, turned,
And, with four soldiers bidden follow him,
Went to the lodgment where Gamaliel slept.
Those five men, used to death in many forms,
Yet in the presence of such death were awed.
The four in silence took the sleeper up,
Motionless, with the couch whereon he lay,
And bore him, as to honored burial,
Into the court beneath the starlit sky,
And set him down before the chiliarch.
Like one of those gray monuments in stone,
Oft seen where church or minster of old days,
In secret vault or holy chapel dim,
Gathers and wards its venerated dead—
Marmoreal image of some man, supine,
Deep sunken, in marmoreal down, to sleep,
Safe folded in marmoreal robes from cold,
The meek, pathetic face upturned to heaven,
And thither-pointing hands forever laid
Together on the breast, as thus to pray
For the shriven spirit thence to judgment fled—
So, stretched upon his couch amid the court,
White with his age, yet purer white with death,
An unrebuking, unrebukable
Reminder of the nothingness of time,
Unheeding who beheld or what was spoke,
Silent, and bringing silence touched with awe,
There in marmoreal calm Gamaliel lay.
The simple presence of the living man,
In native majesty august with age,
Would have subdued who saw to reverence;
But the ennoblement and mystery
Of death, now added, wrought a mightier awe,
And almost breathless made the hush wherein
The chiliarch for the moment from the spell
Of Shimei's woven words was quite set free,
Seeing things true by his simplicity.
Breaking that hush, while never once his gaze
Unfixing from the features of the dead,
"Thou shouldst have told me this," said Lysias
To the centurion, gently chiding him.
But the centurion understood aright
That his superior's words were less as blame
Than as atonement meant for fault his own
In that his late too peremptory air—
This the subaltern knew, and answered not.
Shimei, alone not capable of awe,
Coolly had used the interval of pause,
To take the altered situation in,
And to his own advantage fit his part.
Two points of promise to his profit he
Saw, and at once to seize them shaped his course:
First, to release himself from duress there,
And, further, still to sow the chiliarch's mind
With seed of foul suspicion against Paul.
"Gamaliel mute," said he to Lysias,
"Might, peradventure, if but understood,
Even better witness to thy purpose prove
Than should he waken from his swoon to speak."