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Tor, A Street Boy of Jerusalem

<h1>CHAPTER XI LOVE TRIUMPHANT</h1> To Pilate, governor of Jerusalem, seated upon the ivory chair of office before the palace, came the message of his wife. He glanced down at it with some impatience, when Diomed thrust the tablets into his hand with a hurried word of explanation. “Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man,” he read, “for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.” The message was signed and sealed with the signet of the Roman princess. Pilate’s pallid and heavy face whitened to the lifeless hues of the wax upon which the fateful words were written. Before him stood the drooping but still majestic figure of the Nazarene, robed in the purple robe of his torture and wearing the crown of thorns, a piteous sight, before which angels were vailing their shamed faces. Beyond the strong cordon of the Roman guard surged the wildest, cruelest mob of all the ages. The governor rose to his feet slowly, and, advancing to the side of the prisoner, exclaimed in his loud, passionless voice, “Behold the man!” Mocking laughter, furious incoherent shouts, coupled with the dreadful, insistent, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” burst out in wilder clamor. Pilate looked forth over the sea of terrible upturned eyes, and his huge limbs trembled beneath him. Again he glanced at the pale, melancholy face of the prisoner. “The fellow is naught but a Jewish peasant,” he assured himself. “And after all, what use to cast Roman justice before dogs. They will have none of it.” Loudly he called for water in a basin, and in sight of them all washed his hands with spectacular solemnity, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it!” Back came the mocking, inhuman cry, “His blood be upon us and upon our children!” Pilate ground his teeth in impotent rage, and, seizing Jesus roughly by the shoulder, he thrust him forward in the face of the mob. “Shall I crucify your King?” he shouted derisively. “We have no king but Cæsar!” was the blasphemous answer. And with that word was the scroll rolled up and sealed with the seven seals of wrath against the day of wrath. And they took Jesus and led him away. On that same day Tor was again a prisoner. The wife of Pilate in real pity had commanded that the child should be comfortably entertained in the servants’ quarters until all should be over. Diomed, to whom the carrying out of this commission was entrusted, spoke softly to the beggar in the presence of his mistress, bidding him follow. Out of sight of the lady the Greek laughed aloud in his scorn. “Here is a guest for our honorable entertainment,” he said to the chief butler. “My lady the princess hath commanded it. In which of the chambers of state shall I lodge my lord?” The official sniffed his disdain. “Is it an animal?” he demanded. “It is an animal, most sapient Clodius,” laughed Diomed. “A Jewish swine—eh?—albeit a small one. Give him food and wine, excellent Clodius, for he is chiefly bone—this animal.” Tor ate, for he was starving; also he slept fitfully, for he was exhausted with fear and weeping. The sun shone warm and friendly from the cloudless spring heavens, and the child, lying upon a rug which one of the slaves had flung down for him, drowsily watched the ceaseless dance of young grape leaves in the soft warm wind. The tumult without had suddenly ceased, and an ominous silence lay heavily upon the city. Tor thought lovingly of his Master in the intervals between dreams. “He has gone away safely with the men,” he told himself. “I shall again find him, and he will heal blind folk as before.” So drowsing and murmuring soft prayers to his invisible Father, the beggar child rested in the house of Pilate, while without the walls of the city his Master, the King, was already hanging upon the cross. Within the great kitchens of the palace cooks were busy preparing the noonday meal; dishes and cups clattered cheerfully, and the merry voices of maidens burnishing the great wine-flagons mingled with the chirp and whir of sparrows flitting back and forth in the blue air. Suddenly, and without warning, the bright light of the spring noon began to fail. There was no fog, no storm, but a veil of lurid darkness was drawn heavily across the sky. Doors and windows were thrown wide, and terror-stricken faces stared up into the threatening heavens. Marcus, the crusty porter of the palace, stood fast in his place, his dull face blanched and terrified in the failing light. “’Tis the vengeance of the gods,” he muttered. “The Man of Nazareth was innocent!” Servants and underlings crowded the passages in terrified groups. “Open to us, Marcus,” they cried, beating upon the doors till they trembled upon their heavy hinges. “Earthquake!” wailed a voice from without. “The gods are shaking this evil city!” The porter drew the great bolts with tremulous haste, and with one accord all rushed into the street. Scarcely knowing how it had befallen, the beggar child found himself on the street with the others, running—running he knew not whither, through empty streets which echoed his light footfalls as in the dead of night. Somewhere, afar off, there was the tumult of a great multitude. Tor stopped to listen, then ran on, thinking of his Master, who was waiting for him in the fast-gathering darkness. He reached a gate—which gate he knew not, but it yawned wide and unguarded. Not far away Tor could hear the frightened sobbing of women, the strong curses of terrified men, the wailing of little children, blending with the hurried trampling of myriad feet. Suddenly athwart the darkness flamed a blood-red, silent flash illumining the heavens from east to west. Against this lurid background loomed three crosses, stark and black. And now across the gloomy valleys sounded the sullen crash of rocks, the fall of giant trees, while the sick earth groaned aloud and trembled beneath its terrible burden. Tor stood stock-still in the midst of the road. In that instant of frozen horror he comprehended what had happened. “Oh, my Father,” he groaned, the foundations of his childish faith reeling with the reeling earth. And the Omnipotent Love answered this feeble cry of the least of his children, even as it answered that far-reaching, agonized appeal which was sounding forth from Calvary. And so in a moment—or an eternity—the heavens cleared and the April sun shone brightly upon the crosses with their piteous burdens, upon the terror-stricken multitudes returning to doomed Jerusalem, upon riven tombs and shattered mountains, upon a little child, comforted of his Father, gazing with Christ-touched eyes upon the cross of his King. They took away the body of Jesus before sunset, wrapping it in fine white linen and odorous spices, and laying it to rest in a garden hard by. Tor watched all, understanding little of the significance of the rock-hewn tomb, of the great stone before its door, of the Roman guard which was shortly stationed before the sealed sepulchre. <div class="tei tei-figure" style="text-align: center"> <ANTIMG src="images/p168.jpg" alt= "“HIS WICKED FACE DISFIGURED WITH RAGE AND PAIN.”" /> <div class="tei tei-head" style= "text-align: center; margin-top: 1.00em; margin-bottom: 1.00em"> “HIS WICKED FACE DISFIGURED WITH RAGE AND PAIN.”</div> </div> When all was finished the child returned to the city, sustained by some strange expectation which he could have explained to no one. As he would have entered the gate he came upon a woeful figure standing without and beating upon its breast. It was Chelluh, his wicked face disfigured with rage and pain. “My eyes,” he groaned. “The sight of that accursed cross burnt them like a devouring flame.” And so it was. And so will it ever be. He who can look upon that cross of agony without tears of love and pity, henceforth sees only the blackness of darkness. The eyes of his soul are withered. Tor led the blind man to his old place by the gate, and fetched him his cup, his staff, and his water-gourd. “Now go, little dog, buy me oil and wine,” cried the beggar, with one of his frightful maledictions, “and return to me quickly, for I am devoured with this flame.” But Tor, looking upon him sorrowfully, knew that he could no more serve this evil master as in the old days. “I have done thus far for thee,” he said in his clear childish voice, “because of the King, my Master, and because of my Father in heaven. But I can no longer abide in thy presence. Farewell!” And with this he was gone, his naked feet making no sound upon the stones of the street. Many days thereafter did Chelluh send forth his dolorous cry for alms in the doomed city of Jerusalem, for he lived until the terrible days of the Roman siege, perishing at last of hunger in his chosen place by the Damascus gate. In the green garden-close, hard by Calvary, where the Roman guard paced ceaselessly back and forth before that silent tomb, Tor lingered, unnoticed and unafraid as the birds that flitted among the branches of the blossoming trees. It comforted him to be near the resting-place of his Master; and the lusty life of the young summer sent vague thrills of expectancy through his brown limbs, as he lay upon the warm earth watching the shifting leaf-shadows playing upon the sealed door of the sepulchre, and the slow-moving figures of the guard clad in the scarlet and gold of imperial Rome. Toward midnight of the second night, when the great passover moon rode high in the heavens and the garden slept in its silver light like the garden of a dream, the child slept, too, held in the soft clasp of a vision which laid cool fingers of delight on his drowsy lids. When he awoke he lay for a full minute staring into the branches of the olive-tree above his head. The gray-green leaves were all alive with a tremulous motion in the fresh morning breeze; a newly-awakened bird trilled softly somewhere in the depths of the garden; the aromatic breath of serried lilies swept his cheek like a caress. It was happiness to have slept—to be once more awake. Then he remembered. The Roman guard had disappeared; this much Tor perceived at a single glance. A second searching stare told him much more: the door of the tomb gaped wide, beside it stood a young man clad in white garments. Tor approached this radiant figure unafraid. “Where is the man who opens eyes?” he asked quite simply, for the empty tomb appeared nothing strange to the child newly emerged from his healing dreams. “He is not here,” the young man made answer, with grave sweetness. “He is risen, as he said. Behold he goeth before you into Galilee; there shalt thou see him.” Tor opened wide eyes of rapture upon the angel. “My Master is alive!” he [pg 174]whispered to himself. “I shall see him.” He turned as if in a dream, his naked feet making no sound as he brushed, light as the dawn, past the ranks of lilies. There was a woman yonder. She was weeping with a smothered sound of long-drawn sobs. Tor laughed softly in his joy. “He is alive!” he repeated under his breath. Then he saw with wonder that the woman was no longer alone. She was speaking to the Risen One, her voice wrenched with sobbing: “Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” The child’s Christ-touched eyes knew him though the woman did not. He sank to his knees, his face shining with the dazzling light of the new day. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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