Part 16 (1/2)

In the tone, in the gesture that preceded it, and in its impertinence Caiaphas read Pilate's one yet supreme revenge, the expression of his absolute contempt for the whole Sanhedrim and the nation that it ruled.

From the rear the mob jumped at the t.i.tle as at a catchword. To them the irony of the procurator presumably was lost.

”King of the Jews!” they shouted. ”Malka di Jehudaje, come down from your cross!”

It was a great festival, and as they jeered at Jesus they enjoyed themselves hugely.

In their vast delight the voice of Stegas was drowned.

”I am a Roman citizen,” he kept repeating, his head swaying, and indicating with his eyes the wounds in his hands, the torture he endured.

”Kill me,” he implored. And finding entreaty idle, he reviled the centurion, cursed the soldiery, and would have spat at them, but to his burning throat no spittle came.

The tongue of Dysmas lolled from his mouth. He had not the ability to speak, even if in speech relief could come. Flame licked at his flesh, his joints were severing, each artery was a nerve exposed, and something was crunching his brain. He could no longer groan; he could suffer merely, such suffering as h.e.l.l perhaps has failed to contrive, that apogee of agony which it was left for man to devise.

Stegas, catching the refrain the mob repeated, turned his eyes from the soldiery to the adjacent cross.

”If you are as they say,” he cried, ”save yourself and us.”

As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, ”Behold your king!” and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it to the Christ.

The sun was nearing the horizon. Caiaphas gathered his ample folds about him. He had seen enough. The feast, wretchedly embittered, was nearly done. There was another at which he must officiate: the shofa presently would sound; the skewering of the Paschal lamb it was needful for him to superintend. It was time, he knew, to return to the Temple; and as he gave a last indignant look at the placard, the lips of the Christ parted to one despairing cry:

”Eli, Eli, lemah shebaktani?”

Caiaphas, nodding to the elders, smiled with satisfaction.

At last the false pretender was forced to acknowledge the invalidity of his claims. The Father whose son he vaunted himself to be had disowned him when his recognition was needed, if ever it had been needed at all. And so, with the smile of one whose labor has had its recompense, Caiaphas patted his skirt, and the elders about him strolled back through the Gannath Gate to the Temple that awaited him.

The mult.i.tude meanwhile had decreased. To the crowd also the Temple had its attractions, its duties, and its offices. Moreover, the spectacle was at an end. With a blow of the mallet the legs of the thieves had been broken. They had died without a shriek, a thing to be regretted. The Galilean too, pierced by the level stroke of a spear, had succ.u.mbed without a word. Sundown was approaching. Clearly it was best to be within the walls where other gayeties were. The mob dispersed, leaving behind but the dead, the circling vultures, a group of soldiers throwing dice for the garments of the crucified, and, remotely, a group of women huddled beneath a protecting oak.

During the hour or two that intervened, the force which had visited Mary evaporated in strength overtaxed. She was conscious only that she suffocated. The words of the women that had drawn her to them were empty as blanks in a dream; the jeers of the mob vacant as an empty bier. To but one thing was she alive, the fact that death could be. Little by little, as the impossible merged into the actual, the understanding came to her that the worst that could be had been done, and she ceased to suffer. The departing hierarchy, the dispersing mob, retreating before encroaching night, left her unimpressed. To her the setting sun was Christ.

The soldiers pa.s.sed. She did not see them. Calcol called to her. She did not hear. The women had gone from her; she did not notice it. She stood as a cataleptic might, her eyes on the cross. Once only, when the Christ had uttered his despairing cry, she too had cried in her despair. In the roar of the mob the cry was lost as a stone tossed in the sea. Since then she had been dumb, sightless also, existing, if at all, unconsciously, her life-springs nourished by death.