CHAPTER XIII

A GOOD SAMARITAN

“He is opening his eyes! _He lives!_”

So spoke Vashti as she knelt beside the silent and recumbent form of Crispus.

The unmistakable rapture in her tone seemed to displease the woman standing beside her.

“Why should you be glad, child? He is an enemy to our race.”

“Mother!” said the girl, reproachfully. “Did he not save me from scourging?”

“Is that any reason why we should imperil our lives on his account? We shall be stoned to death if the Zealots learn that we are hiding a Roman in our house. Better for us that he were dead.”

“O, mother, hush! lest he should hear your unkind words.”

Crispus, though awake, heard nothing of this conversation, being too faint and confused at first to understand anything. Gradually, with the clearing of his senses, he discovered himself to be lying upon the floor of a low-roofed chamber that had latticed windows, and was prettily furnished in Oriental style. He wondered what place it was, and how he came to be there. Then, as memory began to assert its sway, he recalled the scene in which he had last closed his eyes--Eleazar’s glare of hatred, the swift sword-flash, the sharp pang of pain, and the sinking into darkness and insensibility.

He had expected sudden death at the hands of Eleazar; but clearly he was not dead yet. Some person must have removed his supposed corpse from the pile of massacred Romans, and who could that person be but the lovely maiden that knelt beside him?

He tried to lift himself upon one elbow, but fell back exhausted by the effort. There was no strength left in him.

“Are you in pain?” asked Vashti.

“No; only weak--weak!” he said in a voice that startled him; he could not speak above a hollow whisper.

Vashti placed her left arm beneath him; and, lifting him, she put a cup to his lips.

“Drink!” said she.

Crispus drank, of what he knew not--some dark liquid--but it seemed to endow him with new life.

“Eat!” was her next command.

Submissive as a child, Crispus ate of whatever her hand offered.

“And now,” continued she, “sleep, and sleep will give you strength.”

He wanted to ask questions, but Vashti enjoined silence by placing her finger upon his lip in so pretty a way that he was fain to do her bidding; so, closing his eyes, Crispus, almost against his will, dropped off to sleep again.

His sleep extended over several hours.

On waking he found Vashti by his side again, ready to minister to his wants; and, as these wants included a desire for knowledge on certain points, she proceeded to enlighten him.

“You are in my mother’s house,” said she. “This is my own chamber; and there,” she continued, pointing with pride to several tiers of shelves filled with papyrus rolls, “there are my Greek books.”

She then went on to tell him how he came to be there. After the massacre of the Roman garrison, Josephus, at her request, went to the fierce Eleazar and asked for the body of Crispus, saying, “He is a Roman noble, known to me. I pray you, let me give him honorable burial.” Eleazar’s reply was, “Take him; I war not with the dead.” When the supposed corpse of Crispus had been conveyed to her house Vashti sorrowed over it, but her grief suddenly turned to joy when she detected a movement of his lips.

By a happy stroke of fortune--the hand of God, Vashti called it--Eleazar’s sword had passed through the ribs of Crispus without injuring the vital parts. His seeming death was a swoon due to loss of blood, a loss so great that a few more drops might have ended the matter. There was life in him, however--faint it might be--but still life, life that with due care might be preserved. And so--for they durst not call in a physician, lest the truth should become known to the outside world--she and her mother, who had some knowledge of the healing art, had dressed his wounds and carried him to this chamber.

Vashti smiled sweetly when Crispus murmured his gratitude. “Now, I pray the gods that the Zealots may not discover this, your kindness to me.”

Then she told him of Metilius’ base appeal for life, a story to which Crispus listened with scorn.

“Rightly named Metilius--little coward!” said he. “What became of him?”

“The Zealots dismissed him with contempt.”

“What a life his will be! He’ll never dare show his face among Romans again.”

He attempted to raise himself, but, as on the previous day, found that he was too weak to do so.

“How long am I to lie here?” he said with something like a groan.

“Till your lost blood be made good.”

“When will that be?”

And though pre-informed by her mother that Crispus’ return to vigor was likely to be a matter of weeks, Vashti replied with a cheerful smile, “Not many days hence,” justifying herself by the knowledge that to put a patient in a desponding mood is to retard his recovery.

Vashti’s mother was named Miriam, an elderly dame, so hard and sour of visage, that Crispus could but wonder how she came to have a daughter so fair and graceful. He formed a somewhat adverse opinion of Miriam. True, she visited his chamber every day; but, as he could plainly see, her inquiries as to his progress were merely perfunctory; in spite of the fact that he was the son of the great Roman Legate of Syria, she looked upon him as an encumbrance--nay, more, as a positive danger, in view of Zealot rule, a person to be got rid of at the earliest opportunity; and Crispus inwardly chafed at being unable to oblige her in this respect. A Jewess of the orthodox, narrow-minded type, she was out of sympathy with Vashti’s ideals; and Crispus mentally blessed the late Hyrcanus in that he was of a different character from his wife, and had given his daughter an Hellenic as well as an Hebraic training.

The dissimilitude betwixt mother and daughter had become accentuated of late owing to Vashti’s conversion to Christianity. When questioned on this last matter, Vashti acknowledged, striving the while to hide her tears, that the change of faith had caused Miriam to become strangely hard and cold.

It was perhaps this growing spirit of estrangement on the part of Miriam that caused Vashti to find a solace in the companionship of Crispus, who, though a heathen, seemed more in sympathy with her than her own Judaic mother.

Crispus marveled at Vashti’s care for him, marveled still more as the days went by without any slackening of her ministrations. An ideal nurse, she seemed bent on doing everything within her power to render pleasant his enforced inactivity. Tactful to a nicety, she was never in the way and never out of it. Responsive to the passing whims of her patient--and what patient is not whimsical at times?--she could recognize when he wished for solitude, and would leave him to himself; if he were desirous of conversation, she was ever ready to meet his desire. On learning that he had a great liking for Herodotus, she drew that charming, old-world historian from her little library, and read to him day by day, seldom failing to illumine the subject with interesting comments of her own; and once, at eventide, she took her harp and sang in a voice so sweet that Crispus begged for a repetition of the pleasure; and, ever after that, as the shades of twilight fell, she would sing to him from that cycle of psalms which, though he knew it not, are destined to be sung till the end of time.

It puzzled Crispus that Vashti should so interest herself in him. Was this interest the expression merely of her gratitude, for the service he had rendered her in the synagogue, or was it the expression of a more tender sentiment? Was Vashti seeking to win his love? The thought troubled him. It was hard to be compelled to crush this rising desire on her part--that is, supposing it existed--for however pure, attractive, and beautiful Vashti might be, she was not for him; he must remain faithful to the unknown Athenaïs, not only because it was a point of honor for a Cestius to keep faith, but also because his ambition could not easily forego the kingdom dependent upon his mysterious marriage.

Vashti, it seemed, had a little brother, a child of eighteen months. One morning she brought him with some diffidence into the chamber, and, finding that Crispus did not object to his presence, but, on the contrary, derived considerable amusement from his infantine attempts at talking, she brought him every day; and though Vashti was “as learned as Minerva”--Crispus’ own expression--she proved herself in other respects a veritable tom-boy, playing at “hide and seek,” and romping round the room till the child fairly shrieked with delight. It was a new feature in her character, and one that pleased Crispus.

Tired at last of play the little fellow clambered upon his sister’s knee, and nestled against her breast.

Vashti’s remark that he was called Arad led to a talk upon personal names and their meanings; and, of course, Crispus soon fastened his attention upon her own name.

“Vashti is a Persian word said to mean beautiful,” she replied with a little blush.

“You could not change it for one more appropriate,” remarked Crispus, “unless it were----”

He paused. A wild suspicion had suddenly taken possession of him, a suspicion that set his pulses thrilling with a delicious pleasure.

“What new name would you suggest?” asked Vashti with a wondering smile.

“What do you say to Athenaïs?” he asked, watching her keenly as he spoke.

Was he mistaken, or did Vashti give a start as if she recognized the hidden purport of the question? Her surprise, if such it were, was quickly under control. She looked at him with eyes calm and unfathomable in their expression.

“No true Hebrew maiden would like _that_ name.”

“Wherein doth it offend?”

“It is derived from the name of a Grecian goddess.”

“And therefore suitable for one as learned as Athene.”

Vashti smilingly shook her golden tresses at the compliment.

“I do not like the name,” she said, as she gently rocked Arad to sleep.

So far Crispus’ experiment was a failure. There was nothing in her manner to suggest the hypothesis that she had been the veiled lady of Beth-tamar. Still, there seemed to be a sort of shadowy connection between her and the unknown Athenaïs. He reasoned thus:--Vashti was very like the statue of one, Pythodoris; that statue was the gift of Polemo; Polemo was he who had arranged the wedding of Athenaïs.

Crispus resolved to proceed warily.

“You appear to be well versed in Grecian history,” said he. “Can you tell me who Pythodoris was?”

Vashti became lost in thought for a few moments, and then replied:

“There was a queen of Pontus who bore that name. She died about thirty years ago.”

“Any relation to the present king, Polemo?”

“His mother.”

“Was she a beautiful woman?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” laughed Vashti. “Why do you ask?”

“There was a statue of her in the Prætorium.”

“Then if you’ve seen it you ought to know whether she were beautiful.”

“The statue was very like _you_.”

“Oh! then she wasn’t _very_ beautiful.”

“The statue was so like you that at first sight I thought it was meant for nobody else till the name Pythodoris, carved on the pedestal, corrected my error.”

Vashti’s eyes opened wide in wonder. She could assign no reason why the statue of Pythodoris should resemble herself.

“And she was the mother of the present king, you say? Have you ever seen this Polemo?”

Vashti replied in the negative.

“But he was present at the banquet of Florus.”

“Then I suppose I must have seen him without knowing him,” replied Vashti; and, having succeeded in hushing her little brother to sleep, she carried him gently from the room.

Something like a sigh escaped from Crispus as he realized that since Vashti did not know King Polemo she could not have been the veiled lady of Beth-tamar.

Next day when Crispus suggested that it might hasten his recovery if he could breathe the purer air of the roof, Vashti and her mother, lifting the cords at the head and foot of his pallet, carried it, albeit with some difficulty, up the short staircase and deposited it upon the flat roof beneath the shade of a trellis overhung with vine-leaves, so placing the pallet as to prevent him from being overlooked by the occupants of the neighboring houses; while at the same time an opening in the parapet near by enabled him, whenever he chose to raise himself upon his elbow, to observe a good deal of what was going on in the streets below.

All Jerusalem was resounding with the preparations for war. Though the aged and the wise might shake their heads gravely and hold aloof from the revolutionary movement, the young and the unthinking, elated at seeing the last vestige of Roman rule swept from the capital, flung in their lot with the Zealots and spent a considerable portion of each day in the performance of military exercises under captains appointed by Eleazar and Simon. The city walls were being repaired and strengthened, the very women and children laboring enthusiastically in the task. The air rang with the beating of steel upon the anvil, the steel that was to be dyed deep in Roman blood! At night Ophel was one red glow with the light that came from the various forges.

“They have hewn down the golden eagle from the gate of the temple,” said Vashti.

“They cannot take him from the sky, however,” replied Crispus, pointing to a magnificent specimen that was sailing aloft with slow and majestic motion. Suddenly, this eagle drooped its pinions, and, descending like a plummet, alighted upon the parapet just above the head of Crispus.

Vashti started back with a little scream; then, by motioning with her hands, she tried to make the eagle fly off; he took no notice of her, however, but sat with unruffled plumage, the embodiment of majesty and gravity. Try as she would Vashti could not get the eagle to stir, but, finding that he remained quiet and showed no disposition to attack either Crispus or herself, she relinquished her efforts and resumed her conversation, timorously glancing from time to time at the eagle, which kept its post as though it were some faithful sentinel appointed to watch over the patient.

This little incident was not without significance for Crispus, whose mind, in common with other minds of that day, saw an omen in anything out of the common. At the very moment when Eleazar was threatening him with death, he had appealed to sovereign Jupiter. Now, the eagle being the symbol of that deity as well as of the Roman empire, he could not help interpreting its presence as a heaven-sent assurance that Jove and the legions would effect his safety. Aware, however, that Vashti had no faith in his gods, he kept this opinion to himself.

In the evening the eagle flew off. The two watched till it became a mere black speck upon the glowing gold of the western sky--watched till it faded from view.

“It will return on the morrow,” said Crispus confidently.

Sure enough, next morning the eagle came winging its way eastward; and, as before, it alighted upon the parapet above the head of Crispus, as if bent on renewing its watch. Vashti, grown somewhat accustomed to its presence, viewed it now with less apprehension, and made no attempt to repel it.

“The money of the new government,” said she, with a sad smile, exhibiting a shekel, one of those pieces known to the Jews of after ages as “The money of danger,” and now, by reason of their rarity, eagerly sought by numismatists.

“If their fighting prove no better than their coinage, it will go ill with them,” remarked Crispus, who, on closely inspecting the supposed shekel, saw that it was in reality a Roman coin that had recently received in the Jewish mint a fresh stamp--namely, that of a palm branch encircled with Hebraic characters, whose signification was, “_The first year of the freedom of Zion_.”

So imperfectly, however, had the work been executed that the original effigy, the head of Nero, with its Latin inscription, was discernible beneath the Jewish impression.

“They try to efface Cæsar, but fail,” said Crispus. “Good! I accept the omen.”

At eventide the eagle flew off, returning again next morning. On the fourth day, however, it did not appear, nor on any subsequent day.