Opposite them, in the farther wall, was the shrine of the goddess, in which her statue stood. About this shrine hung bronze lamps of beautiful workmanship, in which burned perfumed oil and frankincense. In front of the shrine, which was paved with African marble, was a slab of smooth granite, eight feet long, six broad, and about four in height. Around this knelt a company of priestesses, all but one of whom were robed in yellow. The one, whose bowed head could hardly be seen, was clad in a single garment of white veiling; and her hair, unbound, fell in a brown curtain to the floor on either side of her. Charmides, taking his eyes from the group of worshippers, looked again around the room. About it, built into the walls behind the pillars, were half a hundred dim niches, shadowy, unlighted, of indeterminable depth, the purpose of which he failed to divine. Except for these, the pillars, the shrine, and the altar, there was nothing to look at in the room, for the walls were bare of inscriptions, and there were no other statues than the one of Ashtoreth in her sanctum.
This survey finished, Charmides turned all his attentions to the group of priestesses at the end of the room. They were now chanting aloud; and, from the restlessness among the company of men, Charmides decided that the ceremony was approaching a point of interest. Presently Kabir seized his hand and the two of them followed in the wake of Hodo, who was eagerly forcing a passage into the front rank.
All those in the first row were, whether by chance or design Charmides could not know, young, more or less comely, and dressed with extreme elegance. As the rhapsode gained his new position he felt upon him the eyes of half the company; and not a few whispers relative to his fair skin and his fine physique reached his ears. His speculation as to the reason for this was presently forgotten, however, for the women down the room had formed into a semicircular phalanx, in the very centre of which stood the white-robed, unveiled girl. Then, to the sound of a processional chant, all of them began a slow advance up the hall towards the orderly ranks of men. The Greek caught a new order of whispers, now, that rose about him on all sides. Of these he understood here and there a phrase: "Beautiful this time!" "Her hair is her veil!" "Ashtoreth will that she choose me!" "Baal did well to let her come!" And then, as the chant ended and the women halted ten feet from the front row of men, every sound ceased. After a short pause the priestesses separated into two groups, and from their midst the white virgin came slowly forth. At her appearance every man dropped upon one knee, Kabir pulling the wide-eyed Greek down beside him. Again there was a pause, during which Charmides felt his heart beating uncomfortably. The maiden was regarding the ranks of men before her. Slowly, fearfully, her eyes moved along from face to face, their passage marked here and there by a sharply drawn breath from some one before her. Charmides, entirely ignorant of the meaning of this rite, watched her with tentative interest. She was young, her face as white as her robe, her big, half-terrified eyes of a dove-gray color. Pretty--very pretty--she was, as pretty as Doris--but not beautiful. Charmides had, of late, been picturing too divine a beauty to feel any tremor of eagerness before this gentle priestess of Ashtoreth.
All at once her eyes flashed to his. He drew back, earnestly hoping that she would pass him by. But this was not to be. The gray orbs halted at the blue ones, moved languidly over his perfect face, descended to his shoulders--arms--body--and at last a faint tinge of red crept into her deathly cheeks. She nodded once to him, murmuring half a dozen indistinguishable words. Instantly Charmides felt two violent shoves, the one from Kabir on the right, the other from Hodo on the left.
"Rise! Rise to your feet!" Kabir whispered, peremptorily.
Charmides obeyed.
"Go forward to her. The hierodules will take you."
Charmides went towards the girl. Before he had reached her two of the other women advanced to his side and took him by the hands, at the same time recommencing their chant. Thereupon the whole company, women and men, began a slow march back towards the shrine. Charmides was still in the maze of his first surprise. He walked mechanically between his conductresses, his eyes fixed on the back of the sacrificial maiden who moved in front of him. At twenty paces from the altar the general company stopped. Only Charmides, the girl, and two priestesses advanced till they stood directly in front of the shrine with the altar behind them. Then a hush fell upon the multitude, and Charmides experienced a sudden tremor--a dread of what was to happen next. He had no idea whatever for what purpose he had been chosen, whether it threatened his life, endangered his freedom, or gave promise of honor. Kabir had been eager for him to go, however; and it was evident that many had desired his place. At any rate, the blood in his veins was Greek--and Doric Greek. This thought brought tranquillity, and he stood with renewed indifference till a move was made that struck him like a blow. At a certain phrase in the chant the two women stepped to either side of the white virgin, unclasped the two wrought pins that held her robe upon the shoulders, and, with a quick twist, let the garment fall to the floor.
There was an impulsive quickening in the song. Slowly the girl faced Charmides, her head drooping, her hands clasped before her, her brown hair falling about her shoulders. Supported on either side, she moved towards him till her knee touched his tunic. Charmides took a hasty step backwards, not hearing the faint sigh that escaped her lips. Then one of the priestesses frowned.
"Take her up to Ashtoreth!" she said, pointing from the girl to the stone altar.
Now at last Charmides understood, and he turned white with wrath. For an instant he let his eyes rest in utter scorn, utter disgust, upon the three women in front of him. Then he hurled at them a Greek phrase, fortunately incomprehensible to the multitude. Lastly, unheeding the look of abject terror that was overspreading the face of the girl, he turned upon his heel and began to walk rapidly down the long hall to the door.
By this time the chant had given place to a rising chorus of astonishment and wrath on the part of the men, and of woe on the side of the women. Still the Greek, absorbed in his own displeasure, kept on his way, and would presently have been outside the building, when Kabir, darting from the throng, seized him roughly by the shoulders.
"Charmides! Thou fool! What do you?"
The rhapsode, frowning angrily, tried to shake off his companion, but Kabir's hands were strong.
"Know 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 Phnician 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 Phnician 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 Phnicia.
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--ka--Bab-i-lu.
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 Bedawin 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 up at the master of the caravan. Hodo gave a quick exclamation of dismay and cried out:
"Tirutu! Bring me some water!"
One of the men sprang to his feet. "Gladly! Yet he will not drink."
"Not drink! Allat help us! Why?"
"He has emptied his own skin and will not accept of water from ours."
Hodo nodded his understanding. "Go, then, to my tent, and bring one of the skins of extra water, together with a jar of the wine of Helbon--and see that you move like Raman!"
Charmides understood not a word of this conversation, but he surmised its trend, and essayed to say something in Phnician. Coherent speaking, however, had become impossible; for his tongue was swollen out of all shape, and his mouth was on fire with fever. Hodo laid a gentle hand upon his forehead, smoothed the hair back from it, noted the inflamed and pitiable condition of the wide, blue eyes, the brilliant fever-flush that burned upon the fair cheeks, and his face grew graver still.
"The journey will go hard with him," he muttered.
Tirutu presently returned with the damp pigskin on his shoulder, and a small, glazed stone flask in his right hand. Ustanni, the second of Charmides' fellow-tentsmen, was already at Hodo's side with a bronze cup. This they filled with a mixture of water and wine, and then Hodo, lifting the Greek's head upon his arm, held the drink to his lips.
Charmides' nostrils quivered like an animal's. The tears started to his eyes, and there was a convulsive working of the saliva glands in his mouth. For one agonized moment he resisted the temptation; and then, with the abandon of a creature half crazed, he drank at a gulp all that the cup contained, and begged guiltily, with his fevered eyes, for more.
Hodo let him take all that he wanted. Then food--bread, dates, and cooked sesame--was fed him. Next his eyes, rendered almost useless by the desert glare, were rubbed with a balm brought from Hodo's tent, which reduced their fever and inflammation in a miraculous way. Two hours later, at the forming of the caravan, Charmides' camel was led out and fastened next to Hodo's at the head of the line; and when the Greek, walking more easily than for three days past, came to mount, he found a full water-skin strapped upon the animal's back, and two little jars of Hodo's rare wine balancing each other on either side of its neck.
Venturing to remonstrate feebly at this lavish generosity, the rhapsode was silenced by a flood of angry eloquence from Hodo, who finished his tirade by saying:
"Drink as often as yours is the desire, for I tell you this truly: Shamash is pitiless to those who pray not to Mermer; and, in drinking of his gift, you will do honor to the god of Rains. I will not leave you behind me in the desert, Charmides; and yet I cannot carry your dead body on to Babylon. Therefore you will do well to live. For I think that the Lady Istar will be displeased if, when you are so near, you desert her for the Queen of Death. So, Charmides, again I bid you drink; shut your eyes to the sun; eat and sleep as you can. See that you heed these words." And with a little chuckle at his own advice, Hodo mounted his beast, and, after the usual tumultuous rising, with many shouts and much wielding of his hide-whip, set the caravan once more in motion.
For forty-eight hours more Charmides, making a strong effort, stubbornly refusing to admit that he was still sick, made an appearance of recovery from his indisposition. He talked with Hodo, asking welcome questions about trade, life, and home. He spoke to those members of the caravan from whom hitherto he had held aloof. And he made a desperate effort to learn from the leader a few phrases in the Babylonish tongue. This last, however, proved a Herculean task. The Greek race was notoriously the least apt of any nation at learning foreign tongues. Phnician had been difficult enough; but when it came to the harsh, thick accents, the many syllables, and the curious construction of this other language, the language of the people of Istar, Charmides found it an apparently hopeless task, from which, in his present condition, he shrank miserably.
The desert days crept on. The hours from red dawn to redder twilight were filled with fainting prayers for night and darkness. And when night came, and with it the golden moon, it seemed that the heat scarcely lessened; for up from the yellow sands rose a burning stream of day-gathered fire that made the very camels wince, and called forth many a smothered curse and groan from the long-seasoned men. Yet these nights were wonderful things. The high moon overshadowed all her lesser lights, so that the sky around was strung with few stars; but these glittered with dazzling radiance against their luminous background. And when the dread dawn approached, and the moon grew great on the western horizon, balanced by the long, palpitating lines of light in the east, the sight, to any but desert travellers, was a thing to pray to. Charmides, indeed, in spite of his condition, did marvel at the miracles of the sky. But his lyre was heavy in his hands, his voice too cracked for song, and he could but sit, drooping, on his camel, head throbbing, body on fire, drinking in the golden fire, and wondering vaguely if he should ever find the Babylon that he sought, or whether Apollo had destined him for a different and a higher place.
Another besides the Greek had begun to speculate on the same subject.