“Are you better?”
The road that skirted the lake had
branched to the left, and there an easy ascent led
to the hill beyond. On both sides were carpets
of flowers and of green, and slender larches that
held their arms and hid the sky. Above, an eagle
circled, and on the lake a sail flapped idly.
“Yes, I am better,” Mary answered.
From her eyes the perils had passed,
but the splendors remained, accentuated now by vistas
visible only to herself. The antimony, too, with
which she darkened them had gone, and with it the alkanet
she had used on her cheeks. Her dress was olive,
and, contrary to custom, her head uncovered.
“You are not strong, perhaps?”
As Judas spoke, he thought of the
episode in the synagogue, and wished her again unconscious
in his arms.
“I have been so weak,”
she murmured. And after a moment she added:
“I am tired; let me sit awhile.”
The carpet of flowers and of green
invited, and presently Judas dropped at her side.
About his waist a linen girdle had been wound many
times; from it a bag of lynx-skin hung. The white
garments, the ample turban that he wore, were those
of ordinary life, but in his bearing was just that
evanescent charm which now and then the Oriental possesses the
subtlety that subjugates and does not last.
“But you must be strong; we need your strength.”
Mary turned to him wonderingly.
“Yes,” he repeated, “we
need your strength. Johanna has joined us, as
you know. Susannah too. They do what they
can; but we need others we need you.”
“Do you mean
Something had tapped at her heart,
something which was both joy and dread, and she hesitated,
fearing that the possibility which Judas suggested
was unreal, that she had not heard his words aright.
“Do you mean that he would let me?”
“He would love you for it.
But then he loves everyone, yet best, I think, his
enemies.”
“They need it most,” Mary answered; but
her thoughts had wandered.
“And I,” Judas added “I
loved you long ago.”
Then he too hesitated, as though uncertain
what next to say, and glanced at her covertly.
She was looking across the lake, over the country of
the Gadarenes, beyond even that, perhaps, into some
infinite veiled to him.
“I remember,” he continued,
tentatively, “it was there at Tiberias I saw
you first. You were entering the palace.
I waited. The sentries ordered me off; one threw
a stone. I went to where the garden is; I thought
you might be among the flowers. The wall was
so high I could not see. The guards drove me
away. I ran up the hill through the white and
red terraces of the grape. From there I could
see the gardens, the elephants with their ears painted,
and the oxen with the twisted horns. The wind
sung about me like a flute; the sky was a tent of
different hues. Something within me had sprung
into life. It was love, I knew. It had come
before, yes, often, but never as then. For,”
he added, and the gleam of his eyes was as a fanfare
to the thought he was about to express, “love
returns to the heart as the leaf returns to the tree.”
Mary looked at him vacantly.
“What was he saying?” she wondered.
From a sea of grief she seemed to be passing onto
an archipelago of dream.
“The next day I loitered in
the neighborhood of the palace. You did not appear.
Toward evening I questioned a gardener. He said
your name was Mary, but he would tell me nothing else.
On the morrow was the circus. I made sure you
would be there with the tetrarch, I thought;
and, that I might be near the tribune, before the
sun had set I was at the circus gate. There were
others that came and waited, but I was first.
I remember that night as never any since. I lay
outstretched, and watched the moon; your face was
in it: it was a dream, of course. Yes, the
night passed quickly, but the morning lagged.
When the gate was open, I sprang like a zemer from
tier to tier until I reached the tribune. There,
close by, I sat and waited. At last you came,
and with you new perfumes and poisons. Did you
feel my eyes? they must have burned into you.
But no, you gave no heed to me. They told me
afterward that Scarlet won three times. I did
not know. I saw but you. Once merely an
abyss in which lightning was.
“Before the last race was done
I got down and tried to be near the exit through which
I knew you must pass. The guards would not let
me. The next day I made friends with a sentry.
He told me that you were Mirjam of Magdala; that Tiberius
wished you at Rome, and that you had gone with Antipas
to his citadel. In the wine-shops that night men
slunk from me afraid. A week followed of which
I knew nothing, then chance disentangled its threads.
I found myself in a crowd at the base of a hill; a
prophet was preaching. I had heard prophets before;
they were as torches in the night: he was the
Day. I listened and forgot you. He called
me; I followed. Until Sunday I had not thought
of you again. But when you appeared in the synagogue
I started; and when you fainted, when I held you in
my arms and your eyes opened as flowers do, I looked
into them and it all returned. Mary, kiss me
and kill me, but kiss me first.”
“Yes, he is the Day.”
Of the entire speech she had heard
but that. It had entered perhaps into thoughts
of her own with which it was in unison, and she repeated
the phrase mechanically, as a child might do.
But now as he ceased to speak, perplexed, annoyed
too at the inappositeness of her reply, she came back
from the infinite in which she had roamed, and for
a moment both were silent.
At the turning of the road a man appeared.
At the sight of Judas he halted, then called him excitedly
by name.
“It is Mathias,” Judas
muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried
to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth,
the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small,
and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of
breath, and his garments were dust-covered.
“Where is the Master?”
he asked; and at once, without waiting a reply, he
added: “I have just seen Johanna. Her
husband told her that the tetrarch is seeking him;
he thinks him John, and would do him harm. We
must go from here.”
Judas assented. “Yes, we
must all go. Mary, it may be a penance, but it
is his will.”
Mathias gazed inquiringly at them both.
“It is his will,” Judas repeated, authoritatively.
Mary turned away and caught her forehead
in her hands. “If this is a penance,”
she murmured, “what then are his rewards?”