by Howard Pyle
“I don’t think the Baptist ought to have been executed at all,” said Gilderman, briefly.
Mr. Wright smiled, and then looked quickly sober. He had for the moment forgotten Gilderman’s radical and socialistic proclivities. He thought that they were very foolish, but he was too practical a man and had too much good sense to argue the point.
The messenger-boy appeared at the open door. “Go down to Pengrist & Ball’s,” said Mr. Wright, “and tell Mr. Pengrist that Mr. Gilderman is here.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy and disappeared.
VII. AMONG THE ROMANS
GILDERMAN HAD MADE an appointment by note to dine that evening at the “Romans” with his friend Stirling West. His father-in-law had asked him to dine at the rectory, but he had declined. The truth was, that he was hungering for a taste of that sort of masculine society which he could only find at the club.
The “Romans” was a pseudonym for the International Club. Why it was so called can better be understood than explained. The International Club, though large, was really one of the most select clubs in the metropolis. Its membership was almost entirely composed of plutocrats. With these was a sprinkling intermixture of the politicratic class. The chief ruler of the nation was an honorary member; Governor Pilate was a member, and so were others among the rulers of the nation. But almost the entire body of the club was composed of plutocrats–such men as Mr. Dorman-Webster among the patriarchs, and Gilderman among the juniors.
The club was always pretty full at this time of the year. Wives and families were yet out of town, and the men came here to dine. Gilderman went early and secured a table by the open window, and sat there reading while he waited for his friend to come. The breeze came in at the open windows every now and then, swaying and bellying the gaudy awning outside. The stony street below looked hot and empty in the sloping light of the sinking sun. Every now and then Gilderman looked around from his paper–the room was beginning to fill. There was a distinct air of informality about everything. Many of the men wore tweed suits.
At last, Stirling West sauntered into the room and dropped into his place. “How d’e do, old man?” said he. “Beastly hot, isn’t it? How did you leave the madam?”
“Not very well–her mother’s with her.”
“So I heard. By-the-way, I see his reverence is at the rectory.”
“Yes; he came down last night in the Nautilus. Have a cocktail?”
The dinner was over and they were sitting in the café. Gilderman had been talking to his friend concerning his religious views. He had been led into that current of talk from discussing the execution of John the Baptist.
“By Jove! old man,” said Stirling West, “I wish I had your enthusiasm–I do, indeed. I believe you really believe in all that sort of stuff you’re talking to me about.”
The air about them was blue with tobacco smoke. Their coffee-cups at their elbows were empty, except for a black remainder at the bottom; the saucers half full of the scattered cigar-ashes that had been tilted into them.
Gilderman recognized that his talk was out of place, but he still continued. “Why do you call it stuff, Stirling? It’s only stuff to you because you don’t believe in it. The future life in another world is as real to me as–as going out of this café into the smoking-room yonder. What is life without such a belief as that? If you regard this life as all that there is for a man to live, then the world is a pit of misery worse than hell, and God is a jesting devil juggling with the misery and the pangs of mankind whom He created for His own amusement. Just look at it, Stirling, in the light of reason. Here we are with more than we want, trying to tickle our stomachs into an appetite by all this made-up stuff we’ve been eating. Go only just around the corner yonder and you’ll find men and women living like maggots.”
“Oh yes; I know all about that sort of socialistic rot,” put in Stirling West. “But how the deuce am I to help it, old man? I didn’t put ’em there, and I can’t go nosing around in their beastly tenements. What’s the use of thinking and worrying about it, anyhow? What’s the use of stirring up all that sort of a row about a thing a man can’t help?”
“But, don’t you see,” cried Gilderman, enthusiastically, stretching out his hand across the table and opening it tensely, “if this life’s only the first step in a man’s existence, how beautifully all the inequality and the injustice of the world is made equal and orderly in view of the world to come. We are all passing through a little state of probation. What does it matter if a man is rich or poor for these few short years of life?”
“By Jove! it matters a deuced deal, I can tell you,” said Stirling West. “Look here, Gildy, you don’t know, and nobody knows, that he has a life to live after he’s dead.”
“Yes, I do,” said Gilderman; “I know it as well as I know that I’m alive now.” But even as he spoke he knew that there were moments when he doubted it.
“No; you don’t know it. You believe it, but you don’t know it. Well, old man, a bird in the hand’s worth two in the bush, any day. My life’s a bird in the hand–it’s a lark, you know–and I’m going to get all the fun out of it there is in it. I’m dead sure I’m alive now, and I’m not sure of what is to come after I’m dead. You may bet your life I’m not going to throw away my present chances for something I don’t know about.”
Gilderman paused for a little while. “Oh, well,” he said, presently, “it doesn’t matter. If God don’t want you to see the truth, you can’t see it, and no man can make you see it. He has His own divine way of regenerating every man. I believe–you don’t believe; I see–you don’t see. It is neither to my credit nor to your discredit. It is simply that we’re made as we are.” A sudden chill of doubt came over him even as he spoke. Such a chill of doubt often struck across his spirit even when he was in the very heat of his enthusiasm. And then again it occurred to him how absurd and out of place it was for him to be discussing such things in the café of the International Club, in the midst of the smoking, the empty coffee-cups, and the humming undertone of masculine talking.
Stirling West sat smoking in meditative silence for a while. By-and-by he suddenly spoke again. “By-the-way,” he said, “have you seen Olivia Carrington yet?”
Olivia Carrington was a notable concert-hall dancer who had just been imported into the country. Gilderman had thought that his companion had been meditating upon what they had been saying. The sudden change of topic made him feel still more the absurdity of his late enthusiasm. “No, I haven’t seen her,” he said.
“By Jove, she’s a daisy! What do you say to go around to the Westminster and see her this evening?”
“I don’t know. All right, I’ll go with you.”
They pushed back their chairs and arose. Gilderman realized very thoroughly what an egregious fool he had been.
They went out into the smoking-room. A group of men were clustered at the great, wide window that looked out upon the street below. Some of the men were standing, some were sitting. Among them was Pontius Pilate. He looked up at Gilderman as he drew near. He was a large, rather fat, smooth-faced man. His skin was colorless and sallow. He had a high, bald forehead, closely cropped gray hair, a hooked nose, and keen, gray eyes deep set under straight, hard brows. His face was square, and his mouth was set in a singular impassivity of expression. His whole face wore the same air of impassive calm–it was like a mask that covered the life within. He looked rather than spoke recognition as Gilderman approached.
Gilderman drew near. The man who was talking was one Latimer-Moire. He had just returned from an automobile expedition, during which he had come into touch with the marvellous works that were afterwards to stir the whole world into a religious belief. He was telling the others how the divine miracles of Christ appeared to a young Roman who, like himself, looked down upon them from the pinnacle of his earthly station.
“... And, by Jove! I tell you what it is,” he said, “you fellows have no idea of all the crazy hurrah those poor devils are kickin
g up down there. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. You can’t even get a decent meal anywhere for the crowds of people everywhere who eat up everything. You can’t go anywhere but you hear of the Man and His miracles. It wasn’t till we got to that place, though, that we struck the worst of it all. The town was full of people–a beastly crowd.
“Well, nothing would do Tommy Ryan but he must see one of those miracles they’re all talking about. So we put up at the hotel, and got some one to show us where He was to be found. Tommy’s man went along with us, and it was a good thing we took him, for when we got near the house, there was the street all packed and jammed with the crowd. It seemed there was a delegation of preachers and elders or something, who had come to interview Him and get Him to do something. Tommy was all for seeing what they were at. So his man, and another fellow he tipped, pushed a way for us through the crowd, and we managed to get into the house. We contrived to edge our way along the entry until we came to a room where He and the ministers were. The place was packed so that we could hardly see anything. Hot? Well, rather! And so close that we could hardly draw a breath. As for the smell–you could cut it with a knife–I thought of all kinds of things you might catch and be sick.
“The ministers and their people were as dead in earnest as though their lives depended upon it. What they wanted was for Him to show them a miracle. As for Him, He just sat there and never made a motion. ‘Show us a sign,’says one of the ministers. ‘If you are, indeed, the Christ, show us a sign.’’A wicked and adulterous generation,’ said He, ‘ask for a sign, but there shall be no sign given them but the sign of the prophet Jonah.’”
“What did He mean by that?” said young Palliser.
Everybody laughed, and even Governor Pilate smiled.
“But what in the deuce did He mean?” insisted Palliser.
“Mean?” said Latimer-Moire. “How should I know what He meant?”
“What did He look like?” asked Gilderman.
“Look like? Oh, I don’t know; just like any other man. Well, after we had come out of the place, we saw some of His people outside–His mother and His brothers. His brothers had come to look after Him. I felt deucedly sorry for ’em–decent, respectable-looking people enough.”
“By-the-way,” said Sprague, “did you read about His feeding all those people?”
“Oh yes,” said Latimer-Moire; “they were all talking about it down there.”
“Hullo, Stirling,” said a young man who had just that moment joined the group. “How about Olivia Carrington? Are you going to see her to-night?”
West laughed. “Yes,” he said, “I’m going to take Gildy to see her.”
“You see, Gilderman,” said the young fellow, “Stirling’s dead gone on the girl. He goes to the Westminster Gardens every night, and takes her out for a spin along the drive every afternoon.”
Gilderman looked at West, who again laughed.
“They say you’re having Norcott paint her portrait,” said Le Roy Barron.
“No, I’m not,” said West. “Norcott’s doing it off his own bat, for a picture to send to the Academy or somewhere, I believe.”
“By-the-way,” said Barron, “I see poor old Herod’s let them execute John.”
“Yes,” said West, “we may all thank Salome for that. Tommy Ryan was telling me all about it this morning. It seems that there was something going on down at Herod’s place last night, and Ryan was asked. It was a pretty wild sort of affair. After supper, the girl danced for them on the table in the supper-room, à la Carrington. I guess they were all pretty lively–anyhow Herod promised he’d give her whatever she’d ask him. And what does that woman, her mother, do but put her up to asking to have poor John the Baptist put out of the way. Herod would have backed out if he could, but the women held him to his promise.”
“By-the-way, Gildy,” said Latimer-Moire, “you’re sort of on the religious lay; what do you think of all this row?”
Governor Pilate turned and looked briefly at Gilderman.
The question was so sudden that Gilderman did not know what to say. “I don’t know that I’m especially on the ‘religious lay,’as you call it,” he said, after a moment’s pause; “but I suppose that every man must believe more or less in something or other.”
As he spoke he felt that his words were rather an excuse for his convictions than a proclamation of them.
“You see, governor,” said Latimer-Moire, “Gilderman still clings to the old theological superstitions of the past ages–heaven and God and a resurrection of the soul and all that sort of thing. He’s a good fellow, is Gildy, but he don’t seem to be able to emancipate himself from the shackles of tradition that his grandfather left behind him. Why, Gildy, my boy, nobody believes in anything nowadays.”
“Don’t they?” said Gilderman. “I think they do. If they don’t believe in heaven and God and the resurrection of the soul, as you phrase it, they must believe in the world, the devil, and themselves.”
“You are wrong, Mr. Gilderman,” said Governor Pilate, calmly, “so far as I am concerned. I don’t believe in anything–not even in myself. I know I like a good dinner and a good glass of wine and a pretty woman, but I don’t believe in them. As for all this about Christ, to tell you the truth, I have not followed it very closely, for it doesn’t interest me particularly. I have heard a good deal said about it now and then–such as you young men have been talking just now–but I have read nothing of it in the newspapers. I find life too short to read everything that’s printed nowadays. If one undertakes to read everything, one reads nothing. I try to pick out what is absolutely needful to me and to leave the rest. I find all I need in the report of current politics and the stock markets.”
Olivia Carrington was acting in the play called “Le Chevalier d’Amour.” The great scene that had made such a hit was where she, as the Marquise, dances upon the top of the table in the inn yard, seducing the jailers from their duty while the scamp of a chevalier escapes. Gilderman sat watching the woman in her gyrations amid a cloud of gauzy draperies. He recognized the pleasure he felt in the seductive spectacle as an evil pleasure, rooted in a nether stratum of masculine brutality, but, nevertheless, he yielded himself to it.
As the girl came forward in answer to the loud applause and bowed her acknowledgment to the house, she shot a glance like a flash at the box where Gilderman and his friend sat. “Isn’t she a daisy, Gildy?” said Stirling West enthusiastically, as he continued to clap his hands together. “Come on around back of the scenes and I’ll introduce you.”
It was thus that the life of the Romans just touched the divine agony of that other life lived by the poor carpenter who was Jehovah-God in the flesh; it was thus that their two lives just touched but did not commingle.
VIII. ONE OF THEM NAMED CAIAPHAS BEING HIGH-PRIEST THAT SAME YEAR
DURING THE WINTER it became more and more certain that Bishop Godkin was dying, and that Dr. Caiaphas would be chosen his successor.
The poor bishop had been sick for nearly a year past. Then the cause of his illness was found to be an internal malignant disease.
At first, even after the nature of the trouble had been diagnosed, he had battled against his mortal sickness, now feeling better and now again more ill, and for a long time his family had hoped against failing hope that it might not be what the physicians had decided it to be. Then, at last, towards the end, came the time when it became no longer possible to disguise the inevitable fact. Bishop Godkin must die–the end was certain and was very near, and nothing, not all the skill of modern surgery, could save him. It was dreadful for Mrs. Godkin and the two Misses Godkin–both elderly spinsters–and they fell, for a time, prostrate under the blow that the attendant physicians had to administer. Then they somewhat rallied again from that prostration, and, after a while, again began now and then to hope, for there were times when there would be a respite in the ghastly sickness.
Meantime the work upon the unfinished temple was being pushed fo
rward with a renewed vigor after the freezing cold of the winter. Stone by stone, bit by bit, it grew towards its slow completion. It seemed to those poor women, in these dark days of their trouble, to be peculiarly tragic to look out of the broad, clear windows of the bishop’s house, across the open plazza-like square, and to see everything over there at the towering structure so busy and full of life; to hear the ceaseless clink-clicking of hammer and chisel, and now and then the creaking of block-and-tackle; to see always the restless moving of the workmen among the blocks of marble, and the débris scattered about under the sheds in front of the south nave–to see all this and then to think of the muffled stillness of the sick-room over yonder, where, maybe, the physician sat listening patiently to the sick man as he maundered on about his discomforts.
Everybody believed that Dr. Caiaphas would be the next bishop–that is, everybody except Dr. Caiaphas himself. He desired the honor so much that he did not dare let himself believe–hardly to let himself hope. He used to go every day or two to visit the dying man. It was always a distressing task to him, but he resolutely set himself to do it as cheerfully as possible. He used to dread it very much; the sight of the unpreventable squalor of a sick-room, even as comfortable as this, was very revolting to him–the smell of the medicines and the sight of the basins and towels, the half-drawn curtains, the silent, shadow-like movements of the trained nurse, and always the sick man himself–the centre of all this attention–sitting propped among the pillows in a great arm-chair by the table. There were generally flowers in the tall tumbler on the table; they only made everything seem still more ghastly with their insistence of something sweet and pretty where nothing could be sweet and pretty.
Dr. Caiaphas used to return from such visits with an ever-haunting recollection of that pinched, haggard, eager face that had once been so rosy; of the bent, lean figure that had once been so plump–its helpless hands and its legs wrapped up in blankets–the lean brows already gray with the shadow of approaching death; all these made still more terrible by the attempted comforts of the sick-room.
