Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians. Elizabeth Miller
Presently the Greek took the tesseræ and threw them. The Roman glanced at the numbers up and smiled a little. The Greek scowled.
"The old defeat," he muttered. "Fortune perches on the standards of Rome even in a game of dice. Oh, well, we have had our day!"
The Roman stowed away the sesterces in a wallet and hung it again inside his tunic.
"Yes, you have had your day," he replied. "Marathon, Thermopylæ and Platæa—in my philosophy you can afford to lose a game of dice to a wolf-suckled Roman!"
The Greek sat still with his chin upon his breast, and the Roman, getting upon his feet, scrutinized the sluggish group of on-lookers.
His interest was not idle curiosity in the men. Such as they were to be seen cumbering the markets and streets of Jerusalem by day or by night throughout the year. They were types of that which the world calls the rabble—at once a strength and a destruction, a creature or a master, as the inclination of its manipulators is or as the call of the situation may be. Individually, it has a mind; collectively, it has not; at all times it is a thing of great potentialities overworked, and of great needs habitually ignored. That the man in scarlet should scan each one of these, as one appraises another's worth in drachmæ, was a natural proceeding, old as the impulse in the shrewd to prey upon the unwary. Out of this or that one, perhaps he could turn an odd denarius at another game of dice.
But when he looked reflectively at the west, where the broad brow of the hills was outlined against a great radiance, he calculated on the hour of remaining daylight and the distance from that point to another in Bezetha far across Jerusalem, and felt of his wallet.
It was bulky enough for one day's winnings, and entirely too bulky to be lost to some of the criminals or vagrants that would walk the night. With a motion of his hand he saluted the defeated Greek and the gaping group which sat in its place and watched him, and turned down the Mount toward Jerusalem.
To a casual observer it would appear that he was a Roman. He wore the short garments characteristic of the race, was smooth-shaven, and displayed idolatrous images on his belt, and, in disregard of Judean custom, uncovered his head. But his features under analysis were Arabic, modified, not by the solidity of Rome but by the grace of the classic Jew.
He was built on long, narrow lines, spare as a spear stuck in the sand before a dowar, but Judean flesh rounded his angles and reduced the Arabian brownness of complexion. He was strikingly handsome and tall; not imposing but elegant, modeled for symmetry of his type, not for ideality, for refinement, not for strength. His hands were delicate almost to frailty, his feet slender and daintily shod. Never a Roman walked so lightly, never a Jew so jauntily.
His presence was captivating. Naïveté or impudence, carelessness or recklessness, gravity or mockery were ever uncertain in their delineation on his face, and one gazed trying to decide and gazing was undone. Never did he reveal the perspective of a single avenue in his intricate and indirect disposition. He forwent the human respect that is given to the straight-forward man, for the excited interest which the populace pays to the elusive nature.
It was hard to name his years. He was too well-knit to be young, too supple to be old. The only undisputed evidence that he was past middle-age was not in his person but behind the affected mood in his soft black eyes. There was another nature, literally in ambush!
He had reached the gentler slopes of the Mount, when a young man dressed wholly in white approached from the north. The wayfarer walked hesitatingly, his eyes roving over the towered walls of the City of David. There were other wayfarers on Olivet besides the man in white and the man in scarlet. There were rustics and traveling Sadducees, in chairs borne by liveried servants, Pharisees with staff and scrip, marketers, shepherds, soldiers on leave and slaves on errands, men, women and children of every class or calling which might have affairs without the walls of Jerusalem. But each turned his steps in one direction, for the night was not distant and Jerusalem would shelter them all.
The hill was busy, but many took time to observe the one in white. The men he met glanced critically at his fine figure and passed; the women looked up at him from under their wimples, and down again, quickly; some of the children lagged and gazed wistfully at his face as if they wanted his notice. Even the man in scarlet, attracted by the wholesome presence of the comely young man, studied him carelessly. He was a little surprised when the youth stopped before him.
"Wilt thou tell me, brother, how I may reach the Gate of Hanaleel from this spot?" he asked. His manner was anxious and hurried, his eyes troubled.
"Thou, a son of Israel, and a stranger in the city of thy fathers?" the other commented mildly.
"The Essenes are rare visitors to Jerusalem," was the reply.
"Ah!" the other said to himself, "the bleached craven of En-Gadi. Dost thou come from the community on the Dead Sea?" he asked aloud.
"I journey thither," the Essene answered patiently. "I come from Galilee."
The man in scarlet looked a little startled and put his slender hand up to his cheek so that a finger lay along the lips. "Now, may thy haste deaden thy powers of recognition, O white brother," he hoped in his heart, "else thou seest a familiar face in me."
He lifted the other arm and pointed toward the wall of the city.
"Any of these gates will lead thee within," he said.
"Doubtless, but once within any but the one I seek, I am more lost than I am here. Wilt thou direct me?"
The man in scarlet motioned toward a splendid mass of masonry rising many cubits above the wall toward the north. "There," he said. "Go hence over the Bridge of the Red Heifer and follow along the roadway on the other side of Kedron."
As the man in white bowed his thanks, his elbow struck against an obstruction which yielded hastily. The two looked, to see the Greek who had been defeated at dice make off up the hill. The Essene caught at his pilgrim wallet which hung at his side and found it open.
"Ha! a thief!" the man in scarlet cried. "Did he rob thee?"
His quick eyes dropped to the wallet. There were many small round cylinders wrapped in linen within, evidently stacks of coin of various sizes from the little denarius to the large drachma; a handful of loose gold and several rolls of parchment which might have been bills of exchange. The Essene frowned and closed the mouth of the purse.
"A trifle is gone," he said. "He was discovered in time."
"If thou carryest this to the Temple, friend," the older man urged, "get it there to-night, else thou walkest in danger continually."
"I give thee thanks; I shall be watchful; peace to thee,"—and the young man walked swiftly away.
"Wary as the eyes of Juno!" the man in scarlet said to himself. "Essenes never make offering at the Temple; that treasure goes into the common fund of the order. Now, what a shame that the unsated maw of the Essenic treasury should swallow that and hold it uselessly when I need gold so much! Would that I had been born a good thief!"
He sauntered after the young Essene and idly kept him in sight.
"He walks like a legionary and talks like a patrician, but doubtless he hath the spirit of an ass, or he would not have let that knave of a Greek make off with so much as a lepton. I wonder if I should not seek out the thief and win his pilferings from him."
The Essene in the distance, just before he reached the Bridge of the Red Heifer, unslung his wallet and resettled the strap over his shoulder, but the purse did not reappear at his side. He had concealed it within his gown.
"I wish he were not in such uncommon haste; I might persuade him to loan it me. Money-lending is second nature to a Jew. There must be several thousand drachmæ in that wallet—enough to take me to Alexandria. I wonder if he sped so all the way from—Hercle! What an aristocrat!"—noting the Essene draw aside his robes from contact with the unclean mob at the opposite end of the causeway.
"What! do they resent it?" he exclaimed,