Saul Of Tarsus Part 28

"Whom then wouldst thou please in this vengeance? Not Stephen! Then wilt thou comfort thyself with b.l.o.o.d.y work, while the tomb stands between thee and Stephen's restraining hands?"

Marsyas threw up his head defiantly, shaking off the influence of the argument.

"Do ye in all truth follow the doctrine that bids you suffer without requital?" he demanded, even while feeling that his logic was impotent.

"G.o.d directs all things; if it be His will that we shall suffer or escape, G.o.d's will be done!"

"It is cowardly!" Marsyas declared with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

The preacher came closer. "I believe that thou art determined and sincere. Suppose Saul fell into thy hands, as an evil-doer, and the Law was ready for his blood, and G.o.d bade thee withhold thy hand.

Would it be easy?"

"No, by my soul!"

"Look then at me and answer. Is it easy for me, who hath suffered exactly thy sorrows, to stand still and wait on G.o.d?"

Marsyas looked at the preacher. He was tall, spare and old, his hair and his beard were so white that they shone in the torch-light, and his face was so thin and colorless that he seemed already to have put off the flesh. But his eyes glowed with fire and youth. Here of a surety was no weakness to call into account.

"No," he answered again.

"Then, O my son, which of us is truly subject to the Lord?"

"Ye crucify yourselves to an unnatural doctrine! It is not human to bow to it!"

"When thou canst do as we strive to do, my son, thou shall know that it is divine."

Marsyas looked at Eleazar, and the rabbi, who had his eyes fastened on the preacher, spoke for the first time.

"That is sweet humility, while ye are oppressed," he said, in a voice almost prophetic. "But will ye remember it, when ye come into power?"

Power! Had any of that congregation a hope for power? The word startled them. They looked at the rabbi's garments, clothing a huge frame, the strength of the Law typified, and wondered at his words.

Even the preacher had no ready answer. The intimation of the Nazarenes in power on the lips of an expounder of the Law was not conducive to instant comment.

"So ye were in the Jews' place, what would ye do?" he asked again.

Marsyas looked at the rabbi in surprise, but meanwhile the preacher answered.

"Christ's doctrine suffereth no change for rank or power."

"Watch; forget it not!" Eleazar turned to Marsyas. "I have seen, my brother," he said. "This is not the method. Let us wait; our time will come."

Contented to go, Marsyas turned with the rabbi and together they pa.s.sed through the gathering to the door. But before they went out, Marsyas spoke again to the silent congregation.

"Rest ye," he said, "we are not informers." They went forth.

CHAPTER XIII

A TRUST FULFILLED

Marsyas came forth moodily convinced by Eleazar's words. No; it was not the method. Revenge would have to come through another medium than the Nazarenes. Stephen had told him before that the privilege of taking vengeance had been removed from the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time Marsyas had not believed it of the whole sect; but now he was not too much irritated to be convinced.

"Is there any doctrine too mad to get it followers?" he said.

"O brother," Eleazar said, with his chin on his breast, "it is a period of change. The world wearies of its manner from time to time. Surfeit of good is not less common than surfeit of evil, but it is deadlier.

Men tire of their G.o.ds as they do of their women, and thou, being an eremite and unfamiliar, may not know that death is much more desirable than enforced toleration of satiety."

Marsyas heard; satiety was only a word to him and the rabbi's earnestness carried no conviction for him.

"It is the time for change; rest under old usages is no longer possible. But Israel hath endured a long, long time in one habit."

"Give me thy meaning, Rabbi."

"Thou and I are good Jews, Marsyas, yet I can not say that of a surety of any other man in Judea. I have come from Jerusalem, David's City, the rock of Israel, but the hosts of schism possess it from the Ophlas to the uttermost limits of Bezetha!"

"Rabbi!"

"I have seen; I have seen. Saul hath set for himself a task of emptying the sea. In Jerusalem they come singing to torture and death, but armies of them go fleeing into the rest of Judea and all the world.

And, hear me, thou true son of Israel, the pastor of the apostates we heard this night declared at least one truth. The Pharisee hath diffused an influence; he hath scattered a pestilence."

Because it was a new charge against Saul, Marsyas accepted it.

"Is there no help against him?" he exclaimed.

"Marsyas, there stirreth a dread fear in me that he is the instrument of the time. If not he, then another would have been called by the spirit of change--"

"There is no such extenuation in me!" Marsyas broke in.

"Might promises no allegiance to its ministers," the rabbi replied.

Marsyas recalled his history for evidence to corroborate this hope that Saul's calamitous work might recoil upon him. From Prometheus to Augustus, the declaration was sustained. He lost sight of the rabbi's actual concern. Saul covered his horizon; he could not know that Eleazar looked upon the Pharisee as only a detail in an immense stretch of grave possibilities.

The young man made no reply. A hope had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him that night before his sense could grasp its reality, but the disappointment had not weakened his intent. His hope, for the moment centered upon the Nazarenes, turned again upon Agrippa. He did not permit himself to speculate on the prince's possible failure.

At an intersecting street they parted, without further plan than that they should meet again.

But the next morning when Marsyas came with little spirit into the sunless counting-room, his first visitor was Agrippa's lugubrious old courier, Silas.

With a cry, Marsyas wrenched open the wicket and seized the old man's shoulders.

"Dost thou bring good or evil news?" he cried, unable to wait on the slow servant's deliberate speech.

"Perchance either, or both," the courier answered, fumbling in the wallet for his written instructions. "Perchance that which thou already knowest, and that which may be news. At least, I fetch thee a ransom."

"G.o.d reward thee for thy fidelity," Marsyas replied, "and forget thy sloth! Here, let me help thee to thy message."

He put away the servant's inflexible fingers and wrested the parchment from the wallet. It was wrapped in silk and sealed with wax. It was directed to Marsyas. He ripped it open hastily and read: