Istar of Babylon: A Phantasy. Margaret Horton Potter
you, I say, what you do?"
Charmides turned upon him. "I will not dishonor her, neither myself!" he said, in a voice husky with repression.
"Dishonor—in the rites of Ashtoreth! Nay, you would kill her, rather, then?"
Charmides shrugged.
"You have refused her after the presentation. That is a sign that she is displeasing to the goddess. She will now be offered up upon the altar of death. Her blood must wash away the shame you put on her. Her heart will be cut out and thrown to the dogs to eat."
The young Greek shivered and stood passive. His eyes wandered aimlessly over the scene before him. Kabir dropped his hold, but Charmides made no move to go on. He seemed to be considering. The company was eying him in an anxious silence that had something of respect in it. But the eyes of the doomed girl burned upon his back in mute, despairing entreaty. Every murmur had died away, and a deadly hush settled over the great hall. The lights burned calmly from above, and the odor of fresh incense became overpowering. Still the shepherd did not move. One instant more and Aris, the high-priestess, would send the order for the sacrificial knife. The Greek's thoughts wavered vaguely between his mother and his own natural instincts of purity on the one hand; and, on the other, the exigencies of the Phœnician religion. The struggle was fierce. Heraia's memory was infinitely dear, and the Greek idea of manhood strong within him. Still, death—death was terrible to his mind; and the death of this young girl—
His meditations were interrupted here. Something had suddenly clasped his feet, something lay twisted on the floor before him. A white body, half covered with the long locks of dishevelled hair that flowed from a lowered head, lay there on the stones. Two strained arms caught at his knees. A faint voice, choked with the tears of despair, was begging incoherently for the life that he could give. All of a sudden he melted. He bent his head, drawing a long breath of resignation. Then he stooped, lifted the girl in his arms, and carried her rapidly over to the altar of Ashtoreth. And the great bacchanal that followed upon his act the youth neither saw nor heard.
Kabir and Hodo were both of them abjectly respectful to Charmides next day. For all his defeat, the youth had been left their master, and he knew it. The name of Ashtoreth was not spoken before him in Abdosir's house; no mention ever after did either Phœnician or Babylonian make of the affair of yesterday; and in one day more Charmides had looked his last upon the city of the sea.
It was in a state of mental chaos that Charmides began his journey to Babylon. In the glare of midday the long row of well-watered camels, heavy laden with riches of the West, swayed to their feet, on the mainland of Tyre, and turned their heads in the direction of Damascus. Charmides had said good-bye to Kabir an hour before, and now sat his animal with an eager light in his eyes and a clutch of regret in his heart—desire for the new, love for the old. He tried hard that day to fix his mind on the great object of his journey, the goddess of Babylon, whom he was so soon to see. But all things around him were new, all things fair, and soon he gave up the attempt at abstraction to watch what went on around him. Far ahead, upon the foremost camel, was Hodo, the leader of the caravan, who, with his desert costume, had also donned an undeniable dignity of demeanor. Before and behind Charmides, in the very centre of the line, sat solemn Orientals whose nationality he did not know. Far to the right stretched flat, fertile fields of grain. To the left, at no great distance, the river Leontes flashed a tumultuous, sunlit course down to the sea. Eastward, in front, rose an uneven line of jutting hills, bathed in the luminous, tranquil light of intensely pure air. The day was hot, the motion of the camel so far rather soothing. Charmides' turbaned head drooped. His eyelids closed. Thoughts of Istar were mingled with memories of the white virgin. Presently, then, he fell asleep.
V
TO THE GATE OF GOD
Five days later the camels of a shortened caravan passed out of the Hittite city and turned their faces towards the southeast. It was early morning. Before them the sky was radiant with promise of the coming of the lord of day. Behind them, Damascus slept. Far to the right, a mere olive-colored shadow on the horizon, was the line of verdure that marked the course of the river Jordan, the eastern boundary of Phœnicia. Ahead, and on every side for endless miles, in infinite, sparkling, yellow waves, stretched the desert, a vast, silent plain of death, dreaded by man and beast; a foe that Assyrian armies had found more terrible than all the strength of Egypt; that Babylon in her mighty decadence knew to be a safer guard against plundering hoards than all her towering walls; that the wandering Hittites, Damascenes born of the burning sand, themselves would not venture upon at this season of the growing year. And into this, light-hearted, went Charmides the Greek, for the final proof of his steadfastness, the final trial of his strength, for which the reward was to be a sight of the great goddess—Ish-tar—kâ—Bab-i-lû.
Now, indeed, at this early hour, when night's sweetness had not yet been dispelled, Charmides, bareheaded, sat smiling at the sunrise, at the novelty of the sand-plain, at the steady, awkward trot of his camel, at the solemnity of the turbaned Babylonians before and behind him, and at Hodo's crooked little figure at the head of the line. There were twenty camels, well packed with articles of Tyrian and Damascene manufacture, and a man to add to each load. On the back of every animal, where the sight of it would not continually tantalize the desert traveller, hung a water-skin, still dripping from contact with the well, but not to be replenished for five weary days. Before their departure, Hodo had explained to the Greek the best hours for, and the most satisfying methods of, drinking; for these things had been reduced to a minute system by traders, in seasons when wells might go dry and water was in any case scarce. In consequence of his instructions, and the determination to obey them rigidly, Charmides found himself from the very first in a state of thirst. In the freshness of the morning this was not difficult to bear; but by noon, when the whole sky blazed like molten gold and the desert was a plain of fire, the desire for drink increased till it became a torture before which he weakened and fell. He took more than a cupful of water from his skin before the tents were pitched for the mid-day rest, and he felt himself an object of censure for the entire caravan; though, in truth, there was no trader of them all but had done the same thing many times, before long training had hardened him to endurance.
This caravan was the last to cross the desert that year; and the heat bore with it one compensation. The strong guard of soldiers, or fighting-men, that generally accompanied a caravan to guard it from plunder by the wild desert tribes, had been dispensed with. The forefathers of the modern Bedâwin were not hardier than their descendants, and they made no dwelling-place in the Syrian desert at this season. It was, indeed, dangerously late for the passage; and each succeeding day brought a fiercer sun and shorter hours of darkness. The rest at noon was long, but there was no halt at all by night. Oases wells were low, and there must be no lagging by the way. Hodo held daily council in his tent with the three eldest traders, to make sure of the best course to keep, and to save the few miles possible to save. At one of these conferences, some days out, the man that rode behind Charmides, Ralchaz by name, spoke to Hodo of the young Greek, suggesting that Charmides was bearing the journey hardly, and would need care if he were to cross the desert alive. Hodo, a little conscience-smitten with the knowledge of neglect, hastened off to the tent occupied by Charmides and two of the younger men. Here he found that it was, indeed, high time to attend to the rhapsode's condition.
Charmides was lying, face down, on the rug that covered the sand in the tent. Motionless, his body rigid, his hands clasped in front of him, making no sound, breathing inaudibly, he lay; while at a little distance his two companions, Babylonians, squatted together over their meal of locust-beans, bread, and dates, now and then regarding the youth with a kind of wistful helplessness.
Hodo, scarcely looking at the other two, ran to Charmides' side, knelt by him, and, placing a hand on his shoulder, cried out:
"Charmides! Charmides! Speak! What demon of sickness has got you?"
He spoke in Chaldaic, using the idiom that a Greek would not understand. The entreaty, however, had its effect. Charmides made an effort, rolled upon his back, and looked