Saul Of Tarsus Part 15

"Art satisfied with thy service--serving a Roman?" was the demand.

"None has a better lord!" replied Marsyas quietly, but with an inward delight in leading the old man on.

"But it should be more lawful for thee to serve a Jew," Peter declared.

"A Roman's slave, a slave for ever; a Jew's slave, a slave but six years--"

Marsyas could rest no longer under the intimation of bondage.

"Good sir, I am not a slave."

"Ho! a hireling."

"No; a free man, unattached and serving for love."

Peter scratched his head. "For love only? Then why not come and be my steward for wages?"

"Thou canst not pay my price," he said with meaning.

The old man lifted his withered chin.

"Thy price!" he repeated haughtily. "And pray, sirrah, what is thy price?"

A figurative answer to add to his first sententious remark was on Marsyas' lips, but he halted suddenly, and a little pallor came into his face.

"On another day, I shall tell thee," he said after a silence, and the old man impatiently dismissed him.

Marsyas turned away from the heart of the city and went straight to the house in the suburbs.

He found Agrippa stretched on a couch where the air entered through the west lattice, and the place otherwise solitary. The princess and the children with the servants had gone into the city.

Marsyas came uncalled to Agrippa's side, and the prince noted the change on the young man's face. He looked expectant.

"My lord," Marsyas said, "thou didst say to me several days ago that thou didst hate a vower of vows. Yet no man is chafed by a vow except him who finds it hard to keep. Wherefore, I pray thee, for the prospering of the cause and mine, a.s.sure me once more of thy good intent toward Judea."

The Herod raised his fine brows.

"How now, Marsyas? Has the knowledge that I am a Herod been slandering me to you?"

"Nay, my lord; thou hast won me; and I shall not stop at sacrifice for thy cause, which is mine."

"What canst thou do, my Marsyas?"

"Get thee money."

"I give thee my word, Marsyas. It has been sorely battered dodging debts, yet it is still intact enough to contain mine honor. I give thee my word."

Marsyas lingered with an averted face, which Agrippa tried in vain to understand. He added nothing to emphasize his avowal; perhaps he realized at that moment, more keenly than ever afterward, how much a man wants to be believed.

Presently the young man spoke in another tone.

"Who is this Peter, that I may not ask him for a loan?"

"I owe him a talent already," Agrippa answered with a lazy smile, "which he advanced to me while he was yet my mother's slave."

"Then thou knowest him! How--how is he favored in disposition?"

"How is Peter favored? Are slaves favored? Nay, they are tempered like a.s.ses, cattle and apes--like beasts. Wherefore, this Peter is voracious, balky, amiable enough if thou yieldest him provender--not bad, but, like any donkey, could be better."

Marsyas' eyes fell again; it seemed that he hesitated at his next question, as though upon its answer turned a matter of great moment.

"Art thou in all truth a.s.sured that this Alexandrian will lend thee money?" he asked presently, beset by the possibility of doubt.

Agrippa laughed outright. "Jove, but this questioning hath a familiar ring! Surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, Marsyas, else his inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips! Will the Alexandrian lend? Of a surety! And even if not, then will my mother's friend, the n.o.ble Antonia, Caesar's sister-in-law. If Caesar had not been so precipitate and hastened me out of Rome, I should have borrowed the sum of her ten years ago. I have not borrowed of the Alexandrian ere this because I had not the money to carry me thither."

After a pause, Agrippa antic.i.p.ated a further question and continued.

"The Alexandrian is Alexander Lysimachus, the n.o.blest Jew a generation hath produced. Even Rome, that hath such little use for our blood, waives its ancient judgment against Lysimachus. He is alabarch of the Jews in Alexandria, able as a Roman, just as a Jew, refined as a Greek, versatile as an Alexandrian. I saw him four years ago, here, in Jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred soil. He had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty, and a sibyl for wits. I was afraid of her; I, a Herod and a married man, turning forty, was afraid of her! But get me the twenty thousand drachmae, Marsyas, and thou shall see her--_Hercle_--a thousand pardons!

I forgot that thou art an Essene!"

Marsyas stood silent once more, and Agrippa waited.

"And yet one other thing, my lord," the Essene said finally. "I serve thee no less for love, because I serve thee also for a purpose. Thou wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?"

"I give thee again my much misused word, Marsyas. Believe me, thou hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before.

Cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of warmth toward a maiden!"

Marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips. Without further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city.

He sought out the counting-room of Peter the usurer, and found within a commotion and a gathered crowd. The old man himself stood in a steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers about him. Without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins.

About her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so evidently perplexed that Marsyas immediately surmised that they had been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not understand.

The brown woman was pa.s.sive: the usurer behind his grating in such a state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his wrinkled forehead. His eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure would escape made the old man desperate.

"Have ye forgotten your mother-tongues?" he fumed at the polyglot a.s.sembly, "or are ye base-born Syrians boasting a nationality that ye can not prove? Hold! Let her not go forth, good citizens; doubtless she hath come from a foreign debtor to repay me! Close the doors without!"

Marsyas pressed through the crowd to the grating, and the old man discovered him.

"Hither, hither, my friend," he exclaimed. "See if thou canst tell what manner of stranger we have here."

The young Essene had been examining the woman; with a quick glance, now, he inspected her face. Dark the complexion, the eyes olive-green as chrysolite, mysterious and hypnotic; the features regular as an Egyptian's, but stronger and more beautiful; the physique refined, yet hardy. The mystic air of the Ganges breathed from her scented shawl.

The young man's training in languages was not overtaxed.

"What is thy will?" he asked in the tongue of the Brahmins.

"To exchange Hindu money for Roman coin," was the instant reply.

Marsyas turned to Peter.