CHAPTER X

A ZEALOT OF THE ZEALOTS

The man who has resolved that he will shake himself free from those human affections and human weaknesses which, like the corporeal necessities of hunger and thirst, seem to have been given us for our enjoyment rather than our discomfort, will find he undertakes a task too hard for mortal courage and for mortal strength. Without those pleasant accessories, like water and sunshine, the simple and universal luxuries of mankind, existence may indeed drag on, but it can scarcely be called life. The Great Dispenser of all knows best. His children are not meant to stand alone, independent of each other and of Him. While they help their fellows, and trust in His strength, they are strong indeed; but no sooner do they lean on the staff themselves have fashioned, than they stumble and fall. It wounds the hand that grasps it, and breaks too surely when it is most needed at the last.

Eleazar believed, when he quitted the Paved Hall in which the Sanhedrim pronounced their sentence, that the bitterest drop was drained in the cup he had forced himself to quaff. He had not anticipated the remorseful misery that awaited him in his own home—the empty seats, where _they_ were not—the tacit reproach of every familiar object—worst of all, the meeting with Mariamne, the daughter of his affections, the only child of his house. All that dreary Sabbath morning the Zealot sat in his desolate home, fearing—yes, he who seemed to fear nothing; to whom the battle‐cry of shouting thousands on the wall was but as heart‐stirring and inspiring music—fearing the glance of a girl’s dark eye, the tone of her gentle voice—and that girl his own daughter. There was no daily sacrifice in the Temple now; that last cherished prerogative of the Jewish religion had been suspended. His creed forbade him to busy himself in any further measures of defence which would involve labour on the Sacred Day. He might not work with lever and crowbar at the breach. All that could be done in so short a space of time had been done by his directions yesterday. He must sit idle in his stately dwelling, brooding darkly over his brother’s fate, or traverse his marble floor in restless strides, with clenched hands, and gnashing teeth, and a wild despair raging at his heart. Yet he never yielded nor wavered in his fanatical resolve. Had it all to be done once more, he would do the same again.

One memory there was that he could not shake off—a vague and dreary memory that sometimes seemed to soothe, and sometimes to madden him. The image of Mariamne would come up before his eyes, not as now in her fair and perfect womanhood, but as a helpless loving little child, running to him with outstretched arms, and round cheeks wet with tears, asking him for the precious favourite that had gone with the rest of the flock to one of those great sacrifices with which the Jews kept their sacred festivals—the kid that was his child’s playfellow—that he would have ransomed, had he but known it in time, with whole hecatombs of sheep and oxen, ere it should have been destroyed. The child had no mother even then; and he remembered, with a strange clearness, how he had taken the weeping little girl on his knee and soothed her with unaccustomed tenderness, while she put her arms round his neck, and laid her soft cheek against his own, accepting consolation, and sobbing herself to sleep upon his breast.

After this there seemed to grow up a tacit confidence—a strong though unspoken affection—between father and daughter. They seldom exchanged many words in a day, sometimes scarcely more than a look. No two human beings could be much less alike, or have less in common. There was but this one slender link between them, and yet how strong it had been! After a while it angered him to find this memory softening, while it oppressed him, whether he would or no. He resolved he would see Mariamne at once and face the worst. She knew he had avoided her, and held him in too great awe to risk giving offence by forcing herself upon him. Ignorant of Esca’s arrest, the instinctive apprehension of a woman for the man she loves had yet caused her to suspect some threatened danger from his prolonged absence. She watched her opportunity, therefore, to enter her father’s presence and gain tidings, if possible, of his brother and the Briton.

The hours sped on, and the fierce Syrian noon was already glaring down upon the white porches and dazzling streets of the Holy City. The hush of the Sabbath was over all; but it seemed more like the brooding, unnatural hush that precedes earthquake or tempest, than the quiet of a day devoted to peaceful enjoyment and repose. Her father was accustomed to drink a cup of wine at this hour, and Mariamne brought it him, trembling the while to learn the certainty of that which she could not yet bear to leave in doubt. She entered the room in which he sat with faltering steps, and stood before him with a certain graceful timidity that seemed to deprecate his resentment. His punishment had begun already. She reminded him of her mother, standing there pale and beautiful in her distress.

“Father,” she said softly, as he took the cup from her hand and set it down untasted, without speaking, “where is our kinsman, Calchas? and—and Esca, the Briton? Father! tell me the worst at once. I am your own daughter, and I can bear it.”

The worst, had she allowed herself to embody her vague fears, would have applied to the younger of the absent ones. It would have assumed that he was gravely wounded, even dangerously. Not killed—surely not killed! He turned his eyes upon her sternly, nay, angrily; but even then he could not tell her till he had lifted the cup and drained it every drop. His lip was steady now, and his face was harder, gloomier, than before, while he spoke—

“Daughter of Ben‐Manahem!” said he, “henceforth thou hast no portion with him who was thy kinsman but yesterday, neither with him the Gentile within my gate, who has eaten of my bread and drunk from my cup, and stood with me shoulder to shoulder against the Roman on the wall.”

She clasped her hands in agony, and her very lips turned white; but she said true—she was his own daughter, and she neither tottered nor gave way. In measured tones she repeated her former words.

“Tell me the worst, father. I can bear it.”

He found it easier now that he had begun, and he could lash himself into a spurious anger as he went on, detailing the events of the previous day; the charges brought forward by John of Gischala, the trial before the Sanhedrim, his own narrow escape, and the confession of the two culprits, owning, nay, glorying in their mortal crime. He fenced himself in with the sophistry of an enthusiast and a fanatic. He deluded himself into the belief that he had been injured and aggrieved by the apostasy of the condemned. He poured forth all the eloquence that might have vindicated him before Matthias and his colleagues, had John’s accusation been ever brought to proof. The girl stood petrified and overpowered with his violence: at last he denounced herself, for having listened so eagerly to the gentle doctrines of her own father’s brother, for having consorted on terms of friendship with the stranger whom he had been the first to encourage and welcome beneath his roof. Once she made her appeal on Esca’s behalf, but he silenced her ere she had half completed it.

“Father,” she urged, “though a Gentile, he conformed to the usages of our people; though a stranger, I have heard yourself declare that not a warrior in our ranks struck harder for the Holy City than your guest, the brave and loyal Esca!”

He interrupted her with a curse.

“Daughter of Ben‐Manahem! in the day in which thou shalt dare again to speak that forbidden name, may thine eye wax dim, and thy limbs fail, and thy heart grow cold within thy breast—that thou be cut off even then, in thy sin—that thou fall like a rotten branch from the tree of thy generation—that thou go down into the dust and vanish like water spilt on the sand—that thy name perish everlastingly from among the maidens of Judah and the daughters of thy father’s house!”

Though his fury terrified it did not master her. Some women would have fled in dismay from his presence; some would have flung themselves on their knees and sought to move him to compassion with prayers and tears. Mariamne looked him fixedly in the face with a quiet sorrow in her own that touched him to the quick, and maddened him the more.

“Father,” she said softly, “I have nothing left to fear in this world. Slay me, but do not curse me.”

The vision of her childhood, the memory of her mother, the resigned sadness of her bearing, and the consciousness of his own injustice, conspired to infuriate him.

“Slay thee!” he repeated between his set teeth. “By the bones of Manahem—by the head of the high‐priest—by the veil of the Temple itself, if ever I hear thee utter that accursed name again, I will slay thee with mine own hand!”

It was no empty threat to a daughter of her nation. Such instances of fanaticism were neither unknown to the sterner sects of the Jews, nor regarded with entirely unfavourable eyes by that self‐devoted and enthusiastic people. The tale of Jephthah’s daughter was cherished rather as an example of holy and high‐minded obedience, than a warning from rash and inconsiderate vows. The father was more honoured as a hero than the daughter was pitied for a victim. And in later times, one Simon of Scythopolis, who had taken up arms against his own countrymen, and repented of his treachery, regained a high place in their estimation by putting himself to death, having previously slain every member of his family with his own hand.(19) It would have only added one more incident, causing but little comment, to the horrors of the siege, had the life of Mariamne been taken by her own father on his very threshold. She looked at him more in surprise than fear, with a hurt reproachful glance that pierced him to the heart. “Father!” she exclaimed, “you cannot mean it. Unsay those cruel words. Am I not your daughter? Father! father! you used to love me, when I was a little girl!”

Then his savage mood gave way, and he took her to him and spoke to her in gentle soothing accents, as of old.

“Thou art a daughter of Manahem,” said he, “a maiden of Judah. It is not fit for thee to consort with the enemies of thy nation and of thy father’s house. These men have avowed the pernicious doctrines of the Nazarenes, who call themselves Christians. Therefore they are become an abomination in our sight, and are to be cut off from amongst our people. Mariamne, if I can bear unmoved to see my brother perish, surely it is no hard task for thee to give up this stranger guest. It is not that my heart is iron to the core, though thou seest me ofttimes so stern, even with thee; but the men of to‐day, who have taken upon themselves the defence of Jerusalem from the heathen, must be weaned from human affections and human weaknesses, even as the child is weaned from its mother’s milk. I tell thee, girl, I would not count the lives of all my kindred against one hour of the safety of Judah; and Mariamne, though I love thee dearly, ay, better far than thou canst know—for whom have I now but thee, my daughter?—yet, if I believed that thou, too, couldst turn traitor to thy country and thy faith—I speak it not in anger—flesh and blood of mine own though thou be, I would bury my sword in thy heart!”

Had Eleazar’s looks corresponded with his words, such a threat, in her present frame of mind, might have caused Mariamne to avow herself a Christian, and brave the worst at once; but there was a weight of care on her father’s haggard brow, a mournful tenderness in his eyes, that stirred the very depths of her being in compassion—that merged all other feelings in one of intense pity for the misery of that fierce, resolute, and desolate old man. For the moment she scarcely realised Esca’s danger in her sympathy for the obvious sufferings of one usually so self‐reliant and unmoved. She came closer to his side, and placed her hand in his without speaking. He looked fondly down at her.

“Abide with me for a space,” said he; “Mariamne, thou and I are left alone in the world.”

Then he covered his face with his hands, and remained without speaking, wrapped, as it seemed, in gloomy reflections that she dare not disturb. So the two sat on through the weary hours of that long hot Sabbath day. Whenever she made the slightest movement, he looked up and signed for her to remain where she was. Though it was torture, she dared not disobey; and while the time slipped on and the shadows lengthened, and the breeze began to stir, she knew that every minute, as it passed, brought her lover nearer and nearer to a cruel death. Thus much she had learned too surely; but with the certainty were aroused all the energies of her indomitable race, and she resolved that he should be saved. Many a scheme passed through her working brain, as she sat in her father’s presence, fearing now, above all things, to awake his suspicion of her intentions by word or motion, and so make it impossible for her to escape. Of all her plans there was but one that seemed feasible; and even that one presented difficulties almost insurmountable for a woman.

She knew that he was safe at least till the morrow. No execution could take place on the Sabbath; and although the holy day would conclude at sundown, it was not the custom of her nation to put their criminals to death till after the dawn, so that she had the whole night before her in which to act. But, on the other hand, her father would not leave his home during the Sabbath, and she would be compelled to remain under his observation till the evening. At night, then, she had resolved to make her escape, and taking advantage of the private passage, only known to her father’s family, by which Calchas had reached the Roman camp, to seek Titus himself, and offer to conduct his soldiers by that path into the city, stipulating as the price of her treachery an immediate assault, and the rescue of her kinsman, Calchas, with his fellow‐sufferer. Girl as she was, it never occurred to her that Titus might refuse to believe in her good faith towards himself, and was likely to look upon the whole scheme as a design to lead his army into an ambush. The only difficulty that presented itself was her own escape from the city. She never doubted but that, once in the Roman camp, her tears and entreaties would carry everything before them, and, whatever became of herself, her lover would be saved.

It was not, however, without a strong conflict of feelings that she came to this desperate resolve. The blood that flowed in her veins was loyal enough to tingle with shame ever and anon, as she meditated such treachery against her nation. Must she, a daughter of Judah, admit the enemy into the Holy City? Could the child of Eleazar Ben‐Manahem, the boldest warrior of her hosts, the staunchest defender of her walls, be the traitor to defile Jerusalem with a foreign yoke? She looked at her father sitting there, in gloomy meditation, and her heart failed her as she thought of his agony of shame, if he lived to learn the truth, of the probability that he would never survive to know it, but perish virtually by her hand, in an unprepared and desperate resistance. Then she thought of Esca, tied to the stake, the howling rabble, the cruel mocking faces, the bare arms and the uplifted stones. There was no further doubt after that—no more wavering—nothing but the dogged immovable determination that proved whose daughter she was.

When the sun had set, Eleazar seemed to shake off the fit of despondency that had oppressed him during the day. The Sabbath was now past, and it was lawful for him to occupy mind and body in any necessary work. He bade Mariamne light a lamp, and fetch him certain pieces of armour that had done him good service, and now stood in need of repair. It was a task in the skilful fulfilment of which every Jewish warrior prided himself. Men of the highest rank would unwillingly commit the renewal of these trusty defences to any fingers but their own; and Eleazar entered upon it with more of cheerfulness than he had shown for some time. As he secured one rivet after another, with the patience and precision required, every stroke of the hammer seemed to smite upon his daughter’s brain. There she was compelled to remain a close prisoner, and the time was gliding away so fast! At length, when the night was already far advanced, even Eleazar’s strong frame began to feel the effects of hunger, agitation, labour, and want of rest. He nodded two or three times over his employment, worked on with redoubled vigour, nodded again, let his head sink gradually on his breast, while the hammer slipped from his relaxing fingers, and he fell asleep.