The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

"What sayest thou, Jew," with challenge lowering stern,
Asked the centurion of his prisoner,
"In answer to the charge against thee laid?"
"What say?" with shrug of shoulder Shimei said;
"Why, that thy soldier was too strong for me,
And haled me and bestowed me as he would,
While at his leisure then his tale he told,
Forestalling mine, to prepossess thine ear.
I come too late; for I should speak in vain."
"Worse than in vain such words as those thou speakest.
Out on thine insolence, thou Hebrew dog!"
Savagely the centurion said. "'Too late'!
'Too late'! Know, Jew, too late it never is,
Where Roman justice undertakes, for one
Accused of crime to answer for himself.
True judge's ear cannot be 'prepossessed.'
Even now, deserving, as thou art, to be
Buffeted, rather than aught further heard,
Speak on and say thy say; but give good heed
Thou curb thy tongue from insolence and lies."

"From lying I shall have no need my tongue
To guard," said Shimei; "but from insolence—
Beseech thy grace, a plain blunt man am I,
Will it be insolence, if I inquire
What is the crime that I am charged withal?"
Curtly the Roman said: "Attempt to bribe
A soldier, and a Roman soldier he,
To break his oath and be a murderer."
"No stint of generous measure to the charge,"
Said Shimei; "yet I ought not to complain,
I, who a charge of ampler measure would
Myself have brought (as well as he knew who now,
And for that very cause, accuses me)
Had I been first; and first I should have been,
But for duress, and also this he knew,
Thence the duress—outrageous act from him,
Lese-majesty committed against thee!—
I say, had I beforehand been with him
To gain thine ear and a foul plot disclose."

The soldier stood in stupid blank amaze,
With silence by his discipline enforced,
To hear this frontless impudence of fraud.
He so much looked the guilt in slant implied
By Shimei, that no marvel Julius glanced
From one to the other of the two, perplexed,
Each the accuser and accused of each.
His soldier was a trusty man supposed;
The Jew came clouded and suspect as false:
But always it was possible repute
Accredited a man, or blamed, amiss.
"Thou riddlest like an oracle: be plain
And outright," so to Shimei Julius spoke.
"Thou hast vaguely shadowed some worse shape of crime
Thou couldst reveal than that which seems revealed,
Accused to thee. What could be worse misdeed
Than breach attempted of a soldier's faith
To purchase murder?" "Breach accomplished," said
Shimei, "were worse; and, in a just assay,
Worse to attaint the honor of a man
Upright and good and true, and of him make
A criminal worthy of death, and doomed
As such to die: yea, a far darker crime
Than were purveyal of the needed stroke
To end a little earlier some base life,
Forfeit at any rate by guilt, and fain
Itself to court such refuge from despair.
Still more were worse the crime whereof I speak,
Let the man so attainted in his truth
Be one that moment bearing office grave
As an accuser and a witness sworn
Against such very criminal himself.
Then is the crime no longer merely crime
Against the single man however just,
But crime against justice itself and law,
And even against the outraged human race."

There was a stumbling incongruity—
Blasphemous, had it been less whimsical,
Whimsical, had it been less blasphemous—
Between the man himself and what he said.
His words were noble, or had noble been
But that the ignoble man who uttered them
Gainsaid them with the whole of what he was.

The soldier more and more astounded stood,
Or cowered, say rather, underneath the frown
Beetling and imminent of falsehood such,
Mountainous high, and like a mountain set
Immovable. (Immovable it seemed,
But at its heart with fear was tremulous,
And, to the proper breath, would presently
Melt, like cloud-mountain massed of misty stone
To the wind's touch.) As in a nightmare, he
Could no least gesture move to give the lie,
Browbeaten half to disbelieve himself.

Julius, nonplussed to see his soldier's air
Almost confessing judgment on himself,
Skeptic, yet therewithal impressed despite,
Imposed on even, by a mock-majesty,
The specious counterfeit of virtue wroth
But, though wroth, calm in conscious innocence,
Couched in the lofty words of Shimei,
While by his aspect blatantly belied—
Julius, thus wondering, curious, frowned and said:
"Cease from preamble, and forth with thy charge!
No further swelling phrases, large and vague;
But facts—or fictions—in plain terms and few."

Audience at length prepared, so Shimei deemed,
His story, well before prepared, he told:
"I lingered late last night upon the deck:
Slow pacing up and down for exercise,
I strict bethought me how I best might quit
The serious task committed to my hands
Of seeking sentence on a criminal
There at the fountain and prime spring of law
And justice, that august tribunal last,
The imperial seat at Rome. While I thus mused,
The Providence that, dark sometimes and slow,
As to us seems, does after all pursue
The flying footsteps of foul crime with scourge,
Or human vengeance help to overtake,
Showed me a light, which, alas, quickly then
By envious evil powers in turn was quenched.
For it so fell that in the exceeding dark,
Unseen, I overheard the prisoner Paul
Broach a new plot of bribery and wrong.
He promised to the soldier keeping him
Large money—earnest offered, and received,
I plainly heard it clink from hand to hand."
The soldier winced beneath the meaning glance
Shot at himself wherewith the subtile Jew
Spoke these last words; winced, and sore wished, too late,
That, as he first had purposed, he had shown
In proof to the centurion Shimei's gold
Shoved for a bribe into his hand, but here
Adroitly turned to use against himself.
What if his captain, prompted by such hint,
Should now demand to see that dastard gold!
He had been silent touching it because
His mere possession of it would, he felt,
Look too much like his paltering with a price;
But, after Shimei's words, to have it found
Upon him! With such disconcerting thoughts,
The soldier listened like a criminal,
As Shimei with calm iteration said:—
"Thus would Paul buy his keeper to forswear
Against the one man he most feared, myself,
That I had sought to bribe a soldier's faith,
Bargaining with him to fling overboard
His prisoner and so rid him from the world.
'Thou sawest,' Paul told the soldier, 'how at Sidon
An ample sum was put into his hands
By wealthy friends there': he all this now pledged
To be his keeper's, no denary short,
If but he would traduce me thus, and so
Both break the damning power I else could wield
Against him, and, besides, my life destroy.
Thy soldier yielded: grievous wrong indeed,
Yet him I can forgive, for less as bribed
He faltered, than as overcome he fell.
Paul is the master of an evil art
To make his subject firmly hold for true
What, free from sorcery, he would know was false.
He, in the very act and article
Of sketching what his victim was on me
To father, the illusion could in him
Produce of hearing his own words from me.
A trick Paul has of vocal mimicry—
Sleight of longiloquence, whereby he throws
To distance, as may like, his uttered words,
To make them seem another's, not his own—
Aided him here; I hardly knew, myself,
Hearing him speak, but that the voice was mine.
Thus I account for it, that, without blame
So much to him himself, he being deceived,
This worthy soldier, whom I never wronged,
Doubtless an honest fellow in the main,
Should in effect malign me so to thee.

"In my simplicity, and in my faith
Undoubting that, confronted fair with truth,
Falsehood must needs take on its proper shape,
Then shrivel, ashamed to be at all, I sprang
Suddenly up, discovered to the pair.
I never dreamed but they would at my feet
Fall, and for mercy sue; which Shimei—
Soft-hearted ever for another, where
Only himself is wronged, however hard
He steel his heart where stake is public good—
Had doubtless weakly granted out of hand.
But, to my wonder, and, I own, dismay—
This for the moment, but that weakness passed—
At a quick sign from Paul, the soldier seized
Me and consigned to dungeon for the night.
What followed more on deck, I can but guess.
I doubt not Paul completed work begun
In this poor soldier's mind, and fixed his faith
That all had happened as he made report.
I pray thee judge his error lightly; he
Was of another's will, against his own,
Possessed, loth pervert of a power malign."

The soldier, hearing, was now witched indeed.
Partly his sense of flaw in rectitude—
Then suffered when he paltered with the bribe
Proffered by Shimei—shook him; and partly he
Descried a shift of refuge for himself
From dreaded blame at his centurion's hands—
Should Julius, as looked likely more and more,
At length accept the Hebrew's tale for true—
In letting it appear that Paul in fact
Had wrought upon him so as Shimei said,
To cheat him into honest misbelief.
This was the deeply calculated hope
Wherein that glozer, plotting as he went
With versatile adjustment to his need—
Need shifting, point by point, from phase to phase—
Provided for the soldier his escape
From the necessity of holding fast,
In self-defence, to his first testimony.
Thus, if all prospered, Shimei, yea, might yet
Save to himself the future chance to use
This soldier, more amenable to use.

Paul's keeper, thus prepared to falter, heard
Ambiguous challenge from the officer:
"What sayest thou, soldier? Wast beside thyself?
Dazed, hast thou then denounced the innocent man?"
Whereto ambiguous answer thus he framed:
"If I have done so, it was in excess
And haste of zeal to do a soldier's duty,
Misapprehended under wicked spell."
"Thou art not sure? A witness should be sure;
More, be he one denouncing deeds essayed
Worthy of death; most, if besides he add
An office of the executioner."
Thus the centurion to his soldier spoke,
Who answered, shuffling: "If my senses were
Rightly my own last night, I told thee true;
But if I was usurped by sorcery
To see and hear amiss—why, who can say?"