Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians. Elizabeth Miller
discovering prophets and wonders. We are patriots, bound and hooped against an alien, but bursting wide with whatever chanceth to ferment within us. Let there but arise a Galilean who hath a gift or a grudge or a devil, and proclaim himself anointed, and he can gather unto himself a following that would assail Cæsar's stronghold, did he say the word."
He paused and seemed to recall what he had said.
"Yet, we are good Jews," he added hastily, "faithful followers of the Law and such as Israel might select to die singly for Israel's sake. No Galilean is ashamed of himself except when he permits himself to be led so far into folly that he can not turn back."
The Pharisee foresaw intuitively the young man's climax.
"The Law does not remit punishment for blasphemy, even if a soul turn back from its folly," he observed.
Marsyas' face became grave and he gazed at the place on the wall where quivered the reflection from the splendors of the Temple.
"Stephen is my friend," he said earnestly, "a simple soul, generous, fervid, and a true lover of God."
"If he be such, he is safe," Saul replied.
The young man fingered the scarf that girded him.
"The brothers at En-Gadi would receive him," he said.
"What need of him to retire from the world if he be a good Jew?" Saul persisted.
Again the young man hesitated. Saul was driving him into a declaration that he would have led forth gradually. Then he came to the Pharisee and laid a persuading band on his arm.
"Go not to the synagogue," he entreated. "Wait a little!"
"Wait in the Lord's business?" Saul asked mildly.
"Be not hastier than the chastening of the Lord; if He bears with Stephen, so canst thou a little longer. Give love its chance with Stephen before vengeance undoes him wholly!"
"Marsyas," Saul protested in a tone of kindly remonstrance, "thou dost convict him by thy very concern."
"No!" the young Essene declared, pressing upon the Pharisee in passionate earnestness. "I am only troubled for him. Let me go first and understand him, for it seems that there is doubt in the hearts of his accusers, and after that—"
"Thine eye shall not pity him," Saul repeated in warning.
"Saul! Saul! He is my beloved friend!"
"Moses prepared us for such a sorrow as apostasy among those whom we love. What says the Lawgiver—'thy friend, which is as thine own soul, thy hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death!'"
The lifted hands of the young Essene dropped as if they had been struck down.
"Death!" he repeated, retreating a step. "Wilt thou kill him?"
"I am more thy friend, Marsyas," the Pharisee went on, "because I am zealous for the Law. The heresy is infectious and thou art no more safe from it than any other man. And I would rather sit in judgment over Stephen, whom I do not know, than over thee, who art dear to me as a brother."
The young man drew near again.
"Dear as a brother!" he said. "Stephen is that to me. Even now didst thou ask if any had supplanted thee in my loves. No; yet my loves have broadened, so that I can take another into my heart. The Lord God be merciful unto me, that I may not be driven to choose one, for defense against the other! Even as ye both love me, love one another! Saul! Thou wast my earlier friend! I can no more endure Stephen's peril than I can uproot thee from my heart!"
Saul flinched before the concealed intimation in the words. A wave of pallor succeeded by hardness swept over his face, and Marsyas, observing the change, seized the Tarsian's hands between his own.
"Wait until I have seen him," he besought, "and if there be any taint in his fidelity to the faith, I shall stop at no sacrifice to save him. He is, if at all, only momentarily drawn aside, and as the Lord God daily forgives us our sins, let us forgive a brother—"
Saul tried to draw away, but the young Essene's imploring hands held his in a desperate clasp.
"I will give up mine instruction," he swept on. "I will retire into En-Gadi and take him with me! I will give over everything and become one of their husbandmen; I will have no aim for myself, but for Stephen! And if I fail I will take sentence with him! Wait! Wait! Let me return to Nazareth and get my patrimony! I will come then and take him at once to En-Gadi! Saul!"
But Saul threw off the beseeching hands and stepped back from the young man. The two gazed at each other, the Pharisee to discover a crisis in the Essene's look; the Essene to see immovability in the Pharisee.
Then the distress in Marsyas' face changed swiftly, and an ember burned in his black eyes. He straightened himself and stretched out a hand.
"I have spoken!" he said. Turning purposefully away, he went back to his place and took up his scroll. For a moment he held it, his eyes on the pavement. Slowly his fingers unclosed and the scroll dropped—dropped as if he had done with it.
Catching up his white mantle, he walked swiftly out of the chamber and Saul looked after him, yearning, wistful and sad.
Joel came out of the interior of the building.
"I will go with thee to the synagogue," he offered.
The Pharisee looked at him with cold dislike in his eyes, and, inclining his head, led the way out.
At the threshold of the porch he halted. In the street opposite two young men were walking slowly. One was slight, young, graceful and simply clad in a Jewish smock. The other was Marsyas, the Essene, who went with an arm over the shoulders of the first, and, bending, seemed to speak with passionate earnestness to his companion. The faces of the two young men thus side by side showed the same spiritual mode of living, and youthful purity of heart. But the expression of the slighter one was less ascetic than happy, less rigorous than confident.
As Marsyas spoke, the other smiled; and his smile was an illumination, not entirely earthly.
Joel seized Saul's arm, and held it while the two approached, unconscious of the watchers in the shadow of the porch.
"That is he," he whispered avidly. "That is he! Stephen, the apostate!"
Stephen turned his head casually, and, catching the Pharisee's eye, returned the gaze with a little friendly questioning; then he raised his face to Marsyas and so they passed.
The pallor on Saul's face deepened.
CHAPTER II
A PRUDENT EXCEPTION
After he had separated from Stephen, Marsyas went to the house of a resident Essene with whom he made his home, to be fed, to be washed, to offer supplication and to announce his decision to go on a journey. At the threshold of his host's house he put aside his sandals and let himself in with a murmured formula. In a little time he came forth with a wallet flung over his shoulder and took the streets toward Gennath Gate. It was not written in the laws of his order that he should make greater preparation for a journey. He had already acquainted himself with the abiding-places of Essenes in villages between Jerusalem and Nazareth and, assured of their hospitality and the provision of the Essene's God, he knew that he would fare well to the hill town of Galilee.
So he passed through the city by the walk of the purified, garments well in hand lest they touch women or the wayside dust, meeting the eye of no man, proud of his humility, punctilious in his simplicity, and wearing unrest under his shell of calm. He had an unobstructed path, a path ceremonially clean. He had but to hesitate on the edge of a congestion, and the first gowned and bearded Jew that observed him signed his companions and the way was opened. For