Volume Ii Part 18 (1/2)
And the holy man extended his hand, and Sergius saluted it reverently, and went out.
If the young monastic kept not fast hold of the holy forms prescribed immemorially for the third hour's service, there is little doubt he was forgiven in the higher court before which he was supposed present, for never had he been more nearly shaken out of his better self than by the Prince's proclamation. He had managed to appear composed while under Demedes' observation. In the language of the time, some protecting Saint prompted him to beware of the Greek, and keeping the admonition, he had come well out of the interview; but hardly did the Hegumen's door close behind him before Lael's untoward fate struck him with effect. He hurried to his cell, thinking to recover himself; but it was as if he were pursued by a voice calling him, and directly the voice seemed hers, sharp and piercing from terror. A little later he took to answering the appeal--I hear, but where art thou? His agitation grew until the bell summoned him to the chapel, and the sound was gladdening on account of the companions.h.i.+p it promised. Surely the voice would be lost in the full-toned responses of the brethren. Not so. He heard it even more clearly. Then, to place himself certainly beyond it, he begged an ancient wors.h.i.+pper at his side to loan him his triptych. For once, however, the sorrowful figure of the Christ on the central tablet was of no avail, hold it close as he might; strange to say, the face of the graven image a.s.sumed her likeness; so he was worse off than before, for now her suffering look was added to her sorrowful cry.
At last the service was over. Rus.h.i.+ng back to his cell he exchanged his black gown for the coa.r.s.e gray garment with which he had sallied from Bielo-Osero. Folding the veil, and putting it carefully away in his hat, he went forth, a hunter as the mult.i.tude were hunters; only, as we shall presently see, his zeal was more lasting than theirs, and he was owner of an invaluable secret.
On the street he heard everywhere of the rewards, and everywhere the question, Has she been found? The population, women and children included, appeared to have been turned out of their houses. The corners were possessed by them, and it will be easy for readers who have once listened to Greeks in hot debate to fancy how on this occasion they were heard afar. Yet Sergius went his way un.o.bservant of the remarks drawn by the elephantine ears of his outlandish hood, his tall form, and impeded step.
Had one stopped him to ask, Where are you going? it is doubtful if he could have told. He had no plan; he was being pulled along by a pain of heart rather than a purpose--moving somnolently through a light which was also a revelation, for now he knew he loved the lost girl--knew it, not by something past, such as recollections of her sweetness and beauty, but by a sense of present bereavement, an agonizing impulsion, a fierce desire to find the robber, a murderous longing the like of which had never a.s.sailed him. The going was nearest an answer he could make to the voice calling him, equivalent to, I am coming.
He sped through the Hippodrome outwalking everybody; then through the enclosure of Sancta Sophia; then down the garden terraces--Oh, that the copse could have told him the chapter it had witnessed!--then up the broad stairway to the promenade, and along it toward Port St. Julian, never pausing until he was at the bench in the angle of the wall from which he had overheard Demedes' story of the Plague of Crime.
Now the bench was not in his mind when he started from the monastery; neither had he thought of it on the way, or of the dark history it had helped him to; in a freak, he took the seat he had formerly occupied, placed his arm along the coping of the parapet, and closed his eyes. And strange to say, the conversation of that day repeated itself almost word for word. Stranger still, it had now a significancy not then observed; and as he listened, he interpreted, and the fever of spirit left him.
About an hour before noon, he arose from the bench like one refreshed by sleep, cool, thoughtful, capable. In the interval he had put off boyishness, and taken on manhood replete with a faculty for worldly thinking that would have alarmed Father Hilarion. In other words, he was seeing things as they were; that bad and good, for instance, were coexistent, one as much a part of the plan of creation as the other; that religion could only regulate and reform; that the end of days would find good men striving with bad men--in brief, that Demedes was performing the role to which his nature and apt.i.tude a.s.signed him, just as the venerable Hegumen, his father, was feebly essaying a counterpart.
Nor was that all. The new ideas to which he had been converted facilitated reflection along the lines of wickedness. In the Plague of Crime, told the second time, he believed he had found what had befallen Lael. Demedes, he remembered, gave the historic episode to convince his protesting friend how easy it would be to steal and dispose of her. The argument pointed to the Imperial cistern as the hiding-place.
Sergius' first prompting was to enlist the aid of the Prince of India, and go straight to the deliverance; but he had arisen from the bench a person very different from a blind lover. Not that his love had cooled--ah, no! But there were things to be done before exposing his secret. Thus, his curiosity had never been strong enough to induce him to look into the cistern. Was it not worth while to a.s.sure himself of the possibility of its conversion to the use suspected? He turned, and walked back rapidly--down the stairway, up the terraces, and through the Hippodrome. Suddenly he was struck with the impolicy of presenting himself to the cistern-keeper in his present costume--it would be such a help to identification by Demedes. So he continued on to the monastery, and resumed the black gown and tall hat.
The Hegumen's door, which he had to pa.s.s in going out again, served him with another admonition. If Demedes were exposed through his endeavor, what of the father? If, in the conflict certain of precipitation, the latter sided with his son--and what could be more natural?--would not the Brotherhood follow him? How then could he, Sergius, a foreigner, young, and without influence, combat a fraternity powerful in the city and most powerful up at Blacherne?
At this, it must be confessed, the young man's step lost its elasticity; his head sunk visibly, and the love just found was driven to divide its dominion with a well-grounded practical apprehension. Yet he walked on, out of the gate, and thence in the direction of the cistern.
Arrived there, he surveyed the wooden structure doubtfully. The door was open, and just inside of it the keeper sat stick in hand drumming upon the brick pavement, a man of medium height and rather pleasant demeanor.
”I am a stranger here,” Sergius said to him. ”The cistern is public, I believe; may I see it?”
”It is public, and you may look at it all you want. The door there at the end of the pa.s.sage will let you into the court. If you have trouble in finding the stairway down, call me.”
Sergius dropped some small coin into the keeper's hand.
The court was paved with yellow Roman brick, and moderately s.p.a.cious. An oblong curbing in the centre without rails marked the place of descent to the water. Overhead there was nothing to interfere with the fall of light from the blue sky, except that in one corner a shed had been constructed barely sufficient to protect a sedan chair deposited there, its poles on end leant against the wall. Sergius noticed the chair and the poles, then looked down over the curbing into a doorway, and saw four stone steps leading to a platform three or four feet square.
Observing a further descent, he went down to the landing, where he paused long enough to be satisfied that the whole stairway was built into the eastern wall of the cistern. The light was already dim.
Proceeding carefully, for the stones were slippery, he counted fourteen steps to another landing, the width of the first but quite ten feet long, and slightly submerged with water. Here, as he could go no further, he stopped to look about him.
It is true there was not much to be seen, yet he was at once impressed with a sense of vastness and durability. A dark and waveless sheet lay stretched before him, merging speedily into general blackness. About four yards away and as many apart, two gigantic pillars arose out of the motionless flood stark and ghostly gray. Behind them, suggestive of rows with an aisle between, other pillars were seen, mere upright streaks of uncertain hue fainter growing in the shadowy perspective. Below there was nothing to arrest a glance. Raising his eyes to the roof above him, out of the semi-obscurity, he presently defined a brick vault springing boldly from the Corinthian capitals of the nearest pillars, and he knew straightway the roof was supported by a system of vaults susceptible of indefinite extension. But how was he, standing on a platform at the eastern edge of the reservoir, mighty in so many senses, to determine its shape, width, length? Stooping he looked down the vista straining his vision, but there was no opposite wall--only darkness and impenetrability. He filled his lungs trying the air, and it was damp but sweet. He stamped with force--there was a rumble in the vault overhead--that was all. He called: ”Lael, Lael”--there was no answer, though he listened, his soul in his ears. Therewith he gave over trying to sound the great handmade cavern, and lingered awhile muttering:
”It is possible, it is possible! At the end of this row of pillars”--he made a last vain effort to discover the end--”there may be a house afloat, and she”--he clinched his hands, and shook with a return of murderous pa.s.sion--”G.o.d help her! Nay, G.o.d help me! If she is here, as I believe, I will find her.”
In the court he again noticed the sedan in the corner.
”I am obliged to you,” he said to the keeper by the door. ”How old is the cistern?”
”Constantine begun it, and Justinian finished it, they say.”
”Is it in use now?”
”They let buckets down through traps in the roof.”
”Do you know how large it is?” [Footnote: Yere Batan Serai, or the Underground Palace, the ancient Royal Cistern, or cistern of Constantine, is in rank, as well as in interest and beauty, the chief Byzantine cistern. It is on the right-hand side of the tramway street, west of St.
Sophia. The entrance is in the yard of a large Ottoman house in last street on the right of tramway street before the tramway turns abruptly west (to right) after pa.s.sing St. Sophia.