|
|
Blind Orion Searching for the Rising
Sun - Nicolas Poussin, 1658
The house of Elkiah was one of the most stately in Jerusalem, though inferior to
the structure which, in more ancient days, rose from the same foundations.
Whenever Elkiah told of his ancestral dignities he was apt to show his listeners
what were now the cellars and sub-cellars of the house, the great stones of
which, by the flat indentations chiselled about the borders, proved that they
were as old as the days when Solomon built the Temple, and perhaps wrought by
the same Phœnician workmen. The second story, and the battlements which enclosed
the roof, were of newer construction, and had evidently been made of the débris
of a former and more palatial edifice, for an occasional huge and broidered
stone showed upon the street in ancient architectural pride
— just as some
moderately circumstanced people wear an occasional jewel left them by their
richer forebears.
The residence of Elkiah thus maintained a relation to the other and ordinary
houses of the city not unlike that which its occupant held to his
fellow-citizens. He traced his blood to the days when another Elkiah stood high
in the court of Solomon, and thence back to the settlement of the land by the
emigrants from Egypt. This could be attested by the official records, and was
illustrated by numerous priceless antiques now stored away in secret closets cut
into the solid walls, but which in safer times had ornamented the house from
battlement to court.
For many years Elkiah had been the Nasi, or President of the Sanhedrin, that
combined ecclesiastical and secular court of seventy-two men who legislated for
and judged the people. Of late years the Sanhedrin itself had become utterly
debauched by the gold of Egyptian Ptolemies and Syrian Antiochuses, in their
rivalry for the possession of Palestine. Most of the members of this sacred
council had become Hellenized, and adopted Greek philosophies and customs; and
now that the Syrian monarch had invaded the city, these renegades saved
themselves from being despoiled by becoming despoilers of their brethren. A
former High Priest, Joshua, had changed his name to the Greek Jason, as the
Greeks scornfully said, for the sake of the "Golden Fleece." The present
incumbent of the sacred office, Menelaos, had been circumcised as Onias, and was
now the chief of the traitors in the sacrilegious extinction of the national
religion.
The crowning grief of the venerable Elkiah was the apostasy of his own
first-born son, Benjamin, who had taken the heathen name of Glaucon, and thus
shamed the house of his fathers while he protected it from the general pillage.
The late afternoon of the day following that of Dion's rescue of Elkiah from the
mob the old man was reclining upon the thick rug and pillows which Deborah
— for
so was his fair daughter called — had spread upon the roof. Here he loved to lie,
sheltered from view by the parapets, while his eyes followed the white clouds
which flecked the deep blue of the sky —
"Jehovah's banners," he called them
— or
caught the gleam of the Temple roof when he was disposed to pray.
"Where is Caleb?" he asked.
A lad of some ten years was lying in the upper chamber, the room which, like a
little house by itself, occupied half of the roof upon which it opened. Hearing
his father's call, the child sprang up, and in an instant was by Elkiah's side.
"Here am I, father!"
With his long black hair clustering upon his white chiton, and his large black
eyes, the boy resembled his sister. One would have noted, however, a strange
look; the pupils too widely expanded, as when one tries to see in the dark. And
this the child had been doing ever since, five years ago, his sight was
destroyed by a strange malady which not even the physician Samuel could cure,
for all that this learned man was skilled in the potencies of herbs, the baleful
and blessed beams of the stars, and even the deeper mysteries of the words of
the Rabbis.
Little Caleb was marvellously beautiful in spite of the stare of his blind eyes
and the marble pallor of his face. It was a child's face, yet there was in it
the placid sweetness of a woman's look, and at times it seemed to glow with the
intelligence of riper years — for the boy had thought and felt more than most men
had done.
Caleb knelt down by his father's side, and kissed his forehead. The old man's
harsher features relaxed at the touch of the young lips, and tears sprang to his
eyes as he drew the lad to his breast.
"Blessed be God, who has left me this fair image of my Miriam! Come, Caleb, and
look for me. Your blind eyes are better than mine, which my sins have smitten.
Can you see the chariots of the Lord?"
"Nay, father, but you have taught me to trust in Him who is Himself like 'the
mountains round about Jerusalem.' What need have we for chariots? Can He not
save by His word as well as by war?"
"True, child! Yet I myself once saw, when the impious Apollodorus raged through
our street, slaughtering all he met, and no one could stand against him, I
saw—or do I dream it?—I saw a heavenly warrior, clad from head to foot in solid
silver, waving a sword of fire, who stood before the wicked man, and smote him
to the ground. But when they lifted the heathen there was not the sign of the
stroke upon him, though he breathed no more. Would that the Avenger might come
again, and speedily! But until He come —
until He come — we must trust the word,
only the word. Bring the Roll of the Prophet. It surely tells of the times that
are now passing."
The boy felt for his sister's hand. Taking it, he pressed it against his blind
eyes — a way he had of checking his own too violent feeling. He whispered, as he
felt her comforting touch:
"Sister, the troubles have surely broken our father's mind. He does not remember
even yesterday."
Then, raising his voice, "You have forgotten, father, that the soldiers came and
searched the house and took the Books away."
Elkiah passed his hands over his forehead as if to smooth the mirror of his
memory. Recollection came, but with it a rage that shook his decrepit form until
Deborah's kiss allayed his emotion.
"No matter for the Roll, father," said Caleb. "You know that I can repeat what
the Books say. Now that I am blind, I keep in memory all that I hear. In that
way God lets me have more, perhaps, than if I could see even to white Hermon
there in the north."
"Bless the eyes which the Spirit of the Lord has opened!" cried the old man.
"Tell me, child, what says the Prophet of this monster who calls himself our
King — Epiphanes, the Glorious
— for shame!"
"The Prophet says," replied Caleb, quoting the words of Daniel, "that his heart
shall be against the Holy Covenant, and they shall pollute the Sanctuary of
Strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and shall place the
Abomination that maketh desolate."
"Woe! Woe upon Jerusalem!" cried Elkiah. "Why did I not slay the impious
Apollonius, that child of Satan, when he rode into our Holy of Holies? Alas! the
breath of the Lord has withered the arm of Elkiah that it cannot smite. But the
Avenger will come. He will come yet. What says the Prophet further, my son?"
Caleb continued, "And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall be corrupt
with flatteries."
"Ah!" groaned the old patriot, his voice gurgling in his throat like the growl
of a wild beast. "And my own son, the son of Miriam, corrupted by the flatteries
of the Greek! My Benjamin turned into a Glaucon! God forgive me for having
begotten a traitor!"
Elkiah sat upright on the rug. With averted palm he swept the air, as if he
would banish from his heart its paternal instinct. He then covered his face with
his hands and cried: "O my Miriam! I thank Thee, O God, that Thou didst take her
ere she knew this. But, Lord, why didst Thou take my Miriam, and leave me
that — that —
traitor? But read on, child."
Waiting a moment until his father's paroxysm had passed, Caleb completed the
prediction: "But the people that do know their God shall be strong, and shall do
exploits."
"Do exploits? Be strong? That we shall," shrieked the old man. "Your hand,
Deborah! My sword! I will go and smite the Syrian."
"Nay, father, that cannot be," said Deborah, as she laid the exhausted form back
upon the pillows. "Let the children fulfil the Prophet's word."
"The children! My children!" muttered the old man. "One of them a heathen,
another blind, and the other only a girl. Deborah, oh, that thou wert a man, or
could wear a sword like the Deborah of old!"
Deborah summoned Ephraim, an old servant of the house, who with Huldah his wife
assisted in bringing Elkiah into the roof chamber; for the air grew cold as the
sun dropped behind the citadel by the Joppa gate, and left only his golden glow
on the top of Olivet eastward.
Little Caleb stood a while leaning over the parapet, his face showing the
tremendous movement of his soul, now expressing some ineffable longing, and now
hardening under some heroic purpose. He turned toward the Temple as if he could
see the sacred precincts: but suddenly his great blind orbs were directed
southward. As his sister returned to the roof he called to her.
"Deborah, there is a strange noise beyond the city gate, over Ophel!"
"Dear child, you are not yet familiar with the cries at the heathen games. The
shouts come from the gymnasium."
"Why, sister, I know all sounds. I know by the dog's barking whether he has the
fox on the run or at bay, or has lost him in the hole. And men cry just as the
brutes do. I don't need to hear words. I sometimes follow the games in the
gymnasium off there. Now it is the hum of the crowd before the contests begin;
now the cheer for the runners; the laugh when the wrestlers tumble; the rage of
the losers; the joy of the crowd when a favorite wins —
I hear it all. But,
Deborah, somebody has been hurt over there. Can't you hear something sad in the
murmur on Ophel? It is as the fir-trees moan when a storm is coming."
The End
ϟ
THE LITTLE BLIND SEER
is an excerpt from
"Deborah, A tale of the times of Judas Maccabaeus"
Author: James M. Ludlow
Copyright, 1901, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
|
