CHAPTER III
From the entrance
to the Holy City, equivalent to what is now called St. Stephen's Gate, a street
extended westwardly, on a line parallel with the northern front of the Tower of
Antonia, though a square from that famous castle. Keeping the course as far as
the Tyropoeon Valley, which it followed a little way south, it turned and again
ran west until a short distance beyond what tradition tells us was the Judgment
Gate, from whence it broke abruptly south. The traveller or the student
familiar with the sacred locality will recognize the thoroughfare described as
part of the Via Dolorosa - with Christians of more interest, though of a
melancholy kind, than any street in the world. As the purpose in view does not
at present require dealing with the whole street, it will be sufficient to
point out a house standing in the angle last mentioned as marking the change of
direction south, and which, as an important centre of interest, needs somewhat
particular description.
The building
fronted north and west, probably four hundred feet each way, and, like most
pretentious Eastern structures, was two stories in height, and perfectly
quadrangular. The street on the west side was about twelve feet wide, that on
the north not more than ten; so that one walking close to the walls, and
looking up at them, would have been struck by the rude, unfinished, uninviting,
but strong and imposing, appearance they presented; for they were of stone laid
in large blocks, undressed - on the outer side, in fact, just as they were
taken from the quarry. A critic of this age would have pronounced the house
fortelesque in style, except for the windows, with which it was unusually
garnished, and the ornate finish of the doorways or gates. The western windows
were four in number, the northern only two, all set on the line of the second
story in such manner as to overhang the thoroughfares below. The gates were the
only breaks of wall externally visible in the first story; and, besides being
so thickly riven with iron bolts as to suggest resistance to battering-rams,
they were protected by cornices of marble, handsomely executed, and of such
bold projection as to assure visitors well informed of the people that the rich
man who resided there was a Sadducee in politics and creed.
Not long after
the young Jew parted from the Roman at the palace up on the Market-place, he
stopped before the western gate of the house described, and knocked. The wicket
(a door hung in one of the valves of the gate) was opened to admit him. He
stepped in hastily, and failed to acknowledge the low salaam of the porter.
To get an idea of
the interior arrangement of the structure, as well as to see what more befell
the youth, we will follow him.
The passage into
which he was admitted appeared not unlike a narrow tunnel with panelled walls
and pitted ceiling. There were benches of stone on both sides, stained and
polished by long use. Twelve or fifteen steps carried him into a court-yard,
oblong north and south, and in every quarter, except the east, bounded by what
seemed the fronts of two-story houses; of which the lower floor was divided
into lewens, while the upper was terraced and defended by strong balustrading.
The servants coming and going along the terraces; the noise of millstones
grinding; the garments fluttering from ropes stretched from point to point; the
chickens and pigeons in full enjoyment of the place; the goats, cows, donkeys,
and horses stabled in the lewens; a massive trough of water, apparently for the
common use, declared this court appurtenant to the domestic management of the
owner. Eastwardly there was a division wall broken by another passage-way in
all respects like the first one.
Clearing the
second passage, the young man entered a second court, spacious, square, and set
with shrubbery and vines, kept fresh and beautiful by water from a basin
erected near a porch on the north side. The lewens here were high, airy, and
shaded by curtains striped alternate white and red. The arches of the lewens
rested on clustered columns. A flight of steps on the south ascended to the
terraces of the upper story, over which great awnings were stretched as a
defence against the sun. Another stairway reached from the terraces to the
roof, the edge of which, all around the square, was defined by a sculptured
cornice, and a parapet of burned-clay tiling, sexangular and bright red. In
this quarter, moreover, there was everywhere observable a scrupulous neatness,
which, allowing no dust in the angles, not even a yellow leaf upon a shrub,
contributed quite as much as anything else to the delightful general effect;
insomuch that a visitor, breathing the sweet air, knew, in advance of
introduction, the refinement of the family he was about calling upon.
A few steps
within the second court, the lad turned to the right, and, choosing a walk
through the shrubbery, part of which was in flower, passed to the stairway, and
ascended to the terrace - a broad pavement of white and brown flags closely
laid, and much worn. Making way under the awning to a doorway on the north
side, he entered an apartment which the dropping of the screen behind him
returned to darkness. Nevertheless, he proceeded, moving over a tiled floor to
a divan, upon which he flung himself, face downwards, and lay at rest, his
forehead upon his crossed arms.
About nightfall a
woman came to the door and called; he answered, and she went in.
"Supper is
over, and it is night. Is not my son hungry?" she asked.
"No,"
he replied.
"Are you
sick?"
"I am sleepy."
"Your mother
has asked for you."
"Where is
she?"
"In the
summer-house on the roof."
He stirred
himself, and sat up.
"Very well.
Bring me something to eat."
"What do you
want?"
"What you
please, Amrah. I am not sick, but indifferent. Life does not seem as pleasant
as it did this morning. A new ailment, O my Amrah; and you who know me so well,
who never failed me, may think of the things now that answer for food and
medicine. Bring me what you choose."
Amrah's
questions, and the voice in which she put them - low, sympathetic, and
solicitous - were significant of an endeared relation between the two. She laid
her hand upon his forehead; then, as satisfied, went out, saying, "I will
see."
After a while she
returned, bearing on a wooden platter a bowl of milk, some thin cakes of white
bread broken, a delicate paste of brayed wheat, a bird broiled, and honey and
salt. On one end of the platter there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the
other a brazen hand-lamp lighted.
The room was then
revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling broken by great oaken
rafters, brown with rain stains and time; the floor of small diamond-shaped
white and blue tiles, very firm and enduring; a few stools with legs carved in
imitation of the legs of lions; a divan raised a little above the floor,
trimmed with blue cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen
blanket or shawl - in brief, a Hebrew bedroom.
The same light
also gave the woman to view. Drawing a stool to the divan, she placed the
platter upon it, then knelt close by ready to serve him. Her face was that of a
woman of fifty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look
of tenderness almost maternal. A white turban covered her head, leaving the
lobes of the ear exposed, and in them the sign that settled her condition - an
orifice bored by a thick awl. She was a slave, of Egyptian origin, to whom not
even the sacred fiftieth year could have brought freedom; nor would she have
accepted it, for the boy she was attending was her life. She had nursed him
through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break the service. To
her love he could never be a man.
He spoke but once
during the meal.
"You
remember, O my Amrah," he said, "the Messala who used to visit me here
days at a time."
"I remember
him."
"He went to
Rome some years ago, and is now back. I called upon him to-day."
A shudder of
disgust seized the lad.
"I knew
something had happened," she said, deeply interested. "I never liked
the Messala. Tell me all."
But he fell into
musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said, "He is much changed, and
I shall have nothing more to do with him."
When Amrah took
the platter away, he also went out, and up from the terrace to the roof.
The reader is
presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the house-top in the East. In the
matter of customs, climate is a lawgiver everywhere. The Syrian summer day
drives the seeker of comfort into the darkened lewen; night, however, calls him
forth early, and the shadows deepening over the mountain-sides seem veils dimly
covering Circean singers; but they are far off, while the roof is close by, and
raised above the level of the shimmering plain enough for the visitation of
cool airs, and sufficiently above the trees to allure the stars down closer,
down at least into brighter shining. So the roof became a resort - became
playground, sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place of
music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer.
The motive that
prompts the decoration, at whatever cost, of interiors in colder climes
suggested to the Oriental the embellishment of his house-top. The parapet
ordered by Moses became a potter's triumph; above that, later, arose towers,
plain and fantastic; still later, kings and princes crowned their roofs with
summer-houses of marble and gold. When the Babylonian hung gardens in the air,
extravagance could push the idea no further.
The lad whom we
are following walked slowly across the house-top to a tower built over the
northwest corner of the palace. Had he been a stranger, he might have bestowed
a glance upon the structure as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness
permitted - a darkened mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered,
passing under a half-raised curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that
on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky,
lighted with stars, was visible. In one of the openings, reclining against a
cushion from a divan, he saw the figure of a woman, indistinct even in white
floating drapery. At the sound of his steps upon the floor, the fan in her hand
stopped, glistening where the starlight struck the jewels with which it was
sprinkled, and she sat up, and called his name.
"Judah, my
son!"
"It is I,
mother," he answered, quickening his approach.
Going to her, he
knelt, and she put her arms around him, and with kisses pressed him to her
bosom.
CHAPTER IV
The mother resumed her easy position against the
cushion, while the son took place on the divan, his head in her lap. Both of
them, looking out of the opening, could see a stretch of lower house-tops in
the vicinity, a bank of blue-blackness over in the west which they knew to be
mountains, and the sky, its shadowy depths brilliant with stars. The city was still.
Only the winds stirred.
"Amrah tells
me something has happened to you," she said, caressing his cheek.
"When my Judah was a child, I allowed small things to trouble him, but he
is now a man. He must not forget" - her voice became very soft -”that one
day he is to be my hero."
She spoke in the
language almost lost in the land, but which a few - and they were always as
rich in blood as in possessions - cherished in its purity, that they might be
more certainly distinguished from Gentile peoples - the language in which the
loved Rebekah and Rachel sang to Benjamin.
The words
appeared to set him thinking anew; after a while, however, he caught the hand
with which she fanned him, and said, "Today, O my mother, I have been made
to think of many things that never had place in my mind before. Tell me, first,
what am I to be?"
"Have I not
told you? You are to be my hero."
He could not see
her face, yet he knew she was in play. He became more serious.
"You are
very good, very kind, O my mother. No one will ever love me as you do."
He kissed the
hand over and over again.
"I think I
understand why you would have me put off the question," he continued.
"Thus far my life has belonged to you. How gentle, how sweet your control
has been! I wish it could last forever. But that may not be. It is the Lord's
will that I shall one day become owner of myself - a day of separation, and
therefore a dreadful day to you. Let us be brave and serious. I will be your
hero, but you must put me in the way. You know the law - every son of Israel
must have some occupation. I am not exempt, and ask now, shall I tend the
herds? or till the soil? or drive the saw? or be a clerk or lawyer? What shall
I be? Dear, good mother, help me to an answer."
"Gamaliel
has been lecturing today," she said, thoughtfully.
"If so, I
did not hear him."
"Then you
have been walking with Simeon, who, they tell me, inherits the genius of his
family."
"No, I have
not seen him. I have been up on the Market-place, not to the Temple. I visited
the young Messala."
A certain change
in his voice attracted the mother's attention. A presentiment quickened the
beating of her heart; the fan became motionless again.
"The
Messala!" she said. "What could he say to so trouble you?"
"He is very
much changed."
"You mean he
has come back a Roman."
"Yes."
"Roman!"
she continued, half to herself. "To all the world the word means master.
How long has he been away?"
"Five
years."
She raised her
head, and looked off into the night.
"The airs of
the Via Sacra are well enough in the streets of the Egyptian and in Babylon;
but in Jerusalem - our Jerusalem - the covenant abides."
And, full of the
thought, she settled back into her easy place. He was first to speak.
"What
Messala said, my mother, was sharp enough in itself; but, taken with the
manner, some of the sayings were intolerable."
"I think I
understand you. Rome, her poets, orators, senators, courtiers, are mad with
affectation of what they call satire."
"I suppose
all great peoples are proud," he went on, scarcely noticing the
interruption; "but the pride of that people is unlike all others; in these
latter days it is so grown the gods barely escape it."
"The gods
escape!" said the mother, quickly. "More than one Roman has accepted
worship as his divine right."
"Well,
Messala always had his share of the disagreeable quality. When he was a child,
I have seen him mock strangers whom even Herod condescended to receive with
honors; yet he always spared Judea. For the first time, in conversation with me
to-day, he trifled with our customs and God. As you would have had me do, I
parted with him finally. And now, O my dear mother, I would know with more
certainty if there be just ground for the Roman's contempt. In what am I his
inferior? Is ours a lower order of people? Why should I, even in Caesar's
presence; feel the shrinking of a slave? Tell me especially why, if I have the
soul, and so choose, I may not hunt the honors of the world in all its fields?
Why may not I take sword and indulge the passion of war? As a poet, why may not
I sing of all themes? I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a
merchant, why not an artist like the Greek? Tell me, O my mother - and this is
the sum of my trouble - why may not a son of Israel do all a Roman may?"
The reader will
refer these questions back to the conversation in the Market-place; the mother,
listening with all her faculties awake, from something which would have been
lost upon one less interested in him - from the connections of the subject, the
pointing of the questions, possibly his accent and tone - was not less swift in
making the same reference. She sat up, and in a voice quick and sharp as his
own, replied, "I see, I see! From association Messala, in boyhood, was
almost a Jew; had he remained here, he might have become a proselyte, so much
do we all borrow from the influences that ripen our lives; but the years in
Rome have been too much for him. I do not wonder at the change; yet" - her
voice fell -”he might have dealt tenderly at least with you. It is a hard,
cruel nature which in youth can forget its first loves."
Her hand dropped
lightly upon his forehead, and the fingers caught in his hair and lingered
there lovingly, while her eyes sought the highest stars in view. Her pride
responded to his, not merely in echo, but in the unison of perfect sympathy.
She would answer him; at the same time, not for the world would she have had
the answer unsatisfactory: an admission of inferiority might weaken his spirit
for life. She faltered with misgivings of her own powers.
"What you
propose, O my Judah, is not a subject for treatment by a woman. Let me put its
consideration off till to-morrow, and I will have the wise Simeon -"
"Do not send
me to the Rector," he said, abruptly.
"I will have
him come to us."
"No, I seek
more than information; while he might give me that better than you, O my
mother, you can do better by giving me what he cannot - the resolution which is
the soul of a man's soul."
She swept the
heavens with a rapid glance, trying to compass all the meaning of his
questions.
"While
craving justice for ourselves, it is never wise to be unjust to others. To deny
valor in the enemy we have conquered is to underrate our victory; and if the
enemy be strong enough to hold us at bay, much more to conquer us" - she
hesitated -”self-respect bids us seek some other explanation of our misfortunes
than accusing him of qualities inferior to our own."
Thus, speaking to
herself rather than to him, she began:
"Take heart,
O my son. The Messala is nobly descended; his family has been illustrious
through many generations. In the days of Republican Rome - how far back I
cannot tell - they were famous, some as soldiers, some as civilians. I can
recall but one consul of the name; their rank was senatorial, and their
patronage always sought because they were always rich. Yet if to-day your
friend boasted of his ancestry, you might have shamed him by recounting yours.
If he referred to the ages through which the line is traceable, or to deeds,
rank, or wealth - such allusions, except when great occasion demands them, are
tokens of small minds - if he mentioned them in proof of his superiority, then
without dread, and standing on each particular, you might have challenged him
to a comparison of records."
Taking a moment's
thought, the mother proceeded:
"One of the
ideas of fast hold now is that time has much to do with the nobility of races
and families. A Roman boasting his superiority on that account over a son of
Israel will always fail when put to the proof. The founding of Rome was his
beginning; the very best of them cannot trace their descent beyond that period;
few of them pretend to do so; and of such as do, I say not one could make good
his claim except by resort to tradition. Messala certainly could not. Let us
look now to ourselves. Could we better?"
A little more
light would have enabled him to see the pride that diffused itself over her
face.
"Let us
imagine the Roman putting us to the challenge. I would answer him, neither
doubting nor boastful."
Her voice
faltered; a tender thought changed the form of the argument.
"Your
father, O my Judah, is at rest with his fathers; yet I remember, as though it
were this evening, the day he and I, with many rejoicing friends, went up into
the Temple to present you to the Lord. We sacrificed the doves, and to the
priest I gave your name, which he wrote in my presence - 'Judah, son of
Ithamar, of the House of Hur.' The name was then carried away, and written in a
book of the division of records devoted to the saintly family.
"I cannot
tell you when the custom of registration in this mode began. We know it
prevailed before the flight from Egypt. I have heard Hillel say Abraham caused
the record to be first opened with his own name, and the names of his sons,
moved by the promises of the Lord which separated him and them from all other
races, and made them the highest and noblest, the very chosen of the earth. The
covenant with Jacob was of like effect. 'In thy seed shall all the nations of
the earth be blessed' - so said the angel to Abraham in the place
Jehovah-jireh. 'And the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to
thy seed' - so the Lord himself said to Jacob asleep at Bethel on the way to
Haran. Afterwards the wise men looked forward to a just division of the land of
promise; and, that it might be known in the day of partition who were entitled
to portions, the Book of Generations was begun. But not for that alone. The
promise of a blessing to all the earth through the patriarch reached far into
the future. One name was mentioned in connection with the blessing - the
benefactor might be the humblest of the chosen family, for the Lord our God
knows no distinctions of rank or riches. So, to make the performance clear to
men of the generation who were to witness it, and that they might give the
glory to whom it belonged, the record was required to be kept with absolute
certainty. Has it been so kept?"
The fan played to
and fro, until, becoming impatient, he repeated the question, "Is the
record absolutely true?"
"Hillel said
it was, and of all who have lived no one was so well-informed upon the subject.
Our people have at times been heedless of some parts of the law, but never of
this part. The good rector himself has followed the Books of Generations through
three periods - from the promises to the opening of the Temple; thence to the
Captivity; thence, again, to the present. Once only were the records disturbed,
and that was at the end of the second period; but when the nation returned from
the long exile, as a first duty to God, Zerubbabel restored the Books, enabling
us once more to carry the lines of Jewish descent back unbroken fully two
thousand years. And now -”
She paused as if
to allow the hearer to measure the time comprehended in the statement.
"And
now," she continued, "what becomes of the Roman boast of blood
enriched by ages? By that test, the sons of Israel watching the herds on old
Rephaim yonder are nobler than the noblest of the Marcii."
"And I,
mother - by the Books, who am I?"
"What I have
said thus far, my son, had reference to your question. I will answer you. If
Messala were here, he might say, as others have said, that the exact trace of
your lineage stopped when the Assyrian took Jerusalem, and razed the Temple,
with all its precious stores; but you might plead the pious action of
Zerubbabel, and retort that all verity in Roman genealogy ended when the
barbarians from the West took Rome, and camped six months upon her desolated
site. Did the government keep family histories? If so, what became of them in
those dreadful days? No, no; there is verity in our Books of Generations; and,
following them back to the Captivity, back to the foundation of the first
Temple, back to the march from Egypt, we have absolute assurance that you are lineally
sprung from Hur, the associate of Joshua. In the matter of descent sanctified
by time, is not the honor perfect? Do you care to pursue further? if so, take
the Torah, and search the Book of Numbers, and of the seventy-two generations
after Adam, you can find the very progenitor of your house."
There was silence
for a time in the chamber on the roof.
"I thank
you, O my mother," Judah next said, clasping both her hands in his;
"I thank you with all my heart. I was right in not having the good rector called
in; he could not have satisfied me more than you have. Yet to make a family
truly noble, is time alone sufficient?"
"Ah, you
forget, you forget; our claim rests not merely upon time; the Lord's preference
is our especial glory."
"You are
speaking of the race, and I, mother, of the family - our family. In the years
since Father Abraham, what have they achieved? What have they done? What great
things to lift them above the level of their fellows?"
She hesitated,
thinking she might all this time have mistaken his object. The information he
sought might have been for more than satisfaction of wounded vanity. Youth is
but the painted shell within which, continually growing, lives that wondrous
thing the spirit of man, biding its moment of apparition, earlier in some than
in others. She trembled under a perception that this might be the supreme
moment come to him; that as children at birth reach out their untried hands
grasping for shadows, and crying the while, so his spirit might, in temporary
blindness, be struggling to take hold of its impalpable future. They to whom a
boy comes asking, Who am I, and what am I to be? have need of ever so much
care. Each word in answer may prove to the after-life what each finger-touch of
the artist is to the clay he is modelling.
"I have a
feeling, O my Judah," she said, patting his cheek with the hand he had
been caressing -”I have the feeling that all I have said has been in strife
with an antagonist more real than imaginary. If Messala is the enemy, do not
leave me to fight him in the dark. Tell me all he said."
