remember him."
"He went to Rome some years ago, and is now back. I called upon him to-day."
A shudder of disgust seized the lad.
"I knew something had happened," she said, deeply interested. "I never liked the Messala. Tell me all."
But he fell into musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said, "He is much changed, and I shall have nothing more to do with him."
When Amrah took the platter away, he also went out, and up from the terrace to the roof.
The reader is presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the house-top in the East. In the matter of customs, climate is a lawgiver everywhere. The Syrian summer day drives the seeker of comfort into the darkened lewen; night, however, calls him forth early, and the shadows deepening over the mountain-sides seem veils dimly covering Circean singers; but they are far off, while the roof is close by, and raised above the level of the shimmering plain enough for the visitation of cool airs, and sufficiently above the trees to allure the stars down closer, down at least into brighter shining. So the roof became a resort--became playground, sleeping-chamber, boudoir, rendezvous for the family, place of music, dance, conversation, reverie, and prayer.
The motive that prompts the decoration, at whatever cost, of interiors in colder climes suggested to the Oriental the embellishment of his house-top. The parapet ordered by Moses became a potter's triumph; above that, later, arose towers, plain and fantastic; still later, kings and princes crowned their roofs with summer-houses of marble and gold. When the Babylonian hung gardens in the air, extravagance could push the idea no further.
The lad whom we are following walked slowly across the house-top to a tower built over the northwest corner of the palace. Had he been a stranger, he might have bestowed a glance upon the structure as he drew nigh it, and seen all the dimness permitted--a darkened mass, low, latticed, pillared, and domed. He entered, passing under a half-raised curtain. The interior was all darkness, except that on four sides there were arched openings like doorways, through which the sky, lighted with stars, was visible. In one of the openings, reclining against a cushion from a divan, he saw the figure of a woman, indistinct even in white floating drapery. At the sound of his steps upon the floor, the fan in her hand stopped, glistening where the starlight struck the jewels with which it was sprinkled, and she sat up, and called his name.
"Judah, my son!"
"It is I, mother," he answered, quickening his approach.
Going to her, he knelt, and she put her arms around him, and with kisses pressed him to her bosom.
CHAPTER IV
The mother resumed her easy position against the cushion, while the son took place on the divan, his head in her lap. Both of them, looking out of the opening, could see a stretch of lower house-tops in the vicinity, a bank of blue-blackness over in the west which they knew to be mountains, and the sky, its shadowy depths brilliant with stars. The city was still. Only the winds stirred.
"Amrah tells me something has happened to you," she said, caressing his cheek. "When my Judah was a child, I allowed small things to trouble him, but he is now a man. He must not forget"--her voice became very soft--"that one day he is to be my hero."
She spoke in the language almost lost in the land, but which a few--and they were always as rich in blood as in possessions--cherished in its purity, that they might be more certainly distinguished from Gentile peoples--the language in which the loved Rebekah and Rachel sang to Benjamin.
The words appeared to set him thinking anew; after a while, however, he caught the hand with which she fanned him, and said, "Today, O my mother, I have been made to think of many things that never had place in my mind before. Tell me, first, what am I to be?"
"Have I not told you? You are to be my hero."
He could not see her face, yet he knew she was in play. He became more serious.
"You are very good, very kind, O my mother. No one will ever love me as you do."
He kissed the hand over and over again.
"I think I understand why you would have me put off the question," he continued. "Thus far my life has belonged to you. How gentle, how sweet your control has been! I wish it could last forever. But that may not be. It is the Lord's will that I shall one day become owner of myself--a day of separation, and therefore a dreadful day to you. Let us be brave and serious. I will be your hero, but you must put me in the way. You know the law--every son of Israel must have some occupation. I am not exempt, and ask now, shall I tend the herds? or till the soil? or drive the saw? or be a clerk or lawyer? What shall I be? Dear, good mother, help me to an answer."
"Gamaliel has been lecturing today," she said, thoughtfully.
"If so, I did not hear him."
"Then you have been walking with Simeon, who, they tell me, inherits the genius of his family."
"No, I have not seen him. I have been up on the Market-place, not to the Temple. I visited the young Messala."
A certain change in his voice attracted the mother's attention. A presentiment quickened the beating of her heart; the fan became motionless again.
"The Messala!" she said. "What could he say to so trouble you?"
"He is very much changed."
"You mean he has come back a Roman."
"Yes."
"Roman!" she continued, half to herself. "To all the world the word means master. How long has he been away?"
"Five years."
She raised her head, and looked off into the night.
"The airs of the Via Sacra are well enough in the streets of the Egyptian and in Babylon; but in Jerusalem--our Jerusalem--the covenant abides."
And, full of the thought, she settled back into her easy place. He was first to speak.
"What Messala said, my mother, was sharp enough in itself; but, taken with the manner, some of the sayings were intolerable."
"I think I understand you. Rome, her poets, orators, senators, courtiers, are mad with affectation of what they call satire."
"I suppose all great peoples are proud," he went on, scarcely noticing the interruption; "but the pride of that people is unlike all others; in these latter days it is so grown the gods barely escape it."
"The gods escape!" said the mother, quickly. "More than one Roman has accepted worship as his divine right."
"Well, Messala always had his share of the disagreeable quality. When he was a child, I have seen him mock strangers whom even Herod condescended to receive with honors; yet he always spared Judea. For the first time, in conversation with me to-day, he trifled with our customs and God. As you would have had me do, I parted with him finally. And now, O my dear mother, I would know with more certainty if there be just ground for the Roman's contempt. In what am I his inferior? Is ours a lower order of people? Why should I, even in Caesar's presence; feel the shrinking of a slave? Tell me especially why, if I have the soul, and so choose, I may not hunt the honors of the world in all its fields? Why may not I take sword and indulge the passion of war? As a poet, why may not I sing of all themes? I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant, why not an artist like the Greek? Tell me, O my mother--and this is the sum of my trouble--why may not a son of Israel do all a Roman may?"
The reader will refer these questions back to the conversation in the Market-place; the mother, listening with all her faculties awake, from something which would have been lost upon one less interested in him--from the connections of the subject, the pointing of the questions, possibly his accent and tone--was