The City of Delight | Page 8

her
upraised face. The last of the rich color had died out of the girl's face
and with pitiful eyes and quivering lips she was stroking the desperate
hands that meant to keep her for ever.
Except for the sudden sobbing of the woman servant, tense and
anguished silence prevailed. The old merchant was confronted with a
perplexity that found him without fortitude to solve. He felt his strength
slip from him. He, too, covered his face with his hands.
At the opposite arch another house servant appeared, lifted a distorted,
blackening face and, doubling like a wounded snake, fell upon the
floor.
A moment of stupefied silence in which Hannah, with her mother
instincts never so acutely alive, turned her strained vision upon the
writhing figure. Then shrieks broke from the lips of the serving-woman;
the hall filled with panic. Hannah leaped to her feet and thrust Laodice
toward her father.
"Away!" she cried. "The pestilence! The pestilence is upon us!"

Chapter II
ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
News of the appearance of the plague in the house of Costobarus
traveled fast after the death of the gardener, who had fallen in the open
and in sight of the watchful inhabitants of Ascalon. So by the time the
house servants of the merchant were made aware of their peril by the
death of one of their own number, Philip of Tyre with the courage of
affection and loyalty stood on the threshold of the guest-chamber
informed of the situation and prepared to help. Hannah, supported by
the Tyrian's assurance of her rescue and protection, succeeded in urging
Costobarus and Laodice not to delay for her to the peril of the thrice
precious daughter.
So with his house yet ringing with the first convulsion of terror
Costobarus ordered his party with all haste to the camels.
Keturah, Laodice's handmaiden, had fainted with terror and was carried
parcel-wise over the great arm of Momus, the mute, out into the street
and deposited summarily on the floor of Laodice's bamboo howdah.
The camel-driver, Hiram, seemed only a little less stupefied than she.
The mute, with a face as determined and threatening as an uplifted gad,
drove him from the shelter of a dark corner out to his place on the neck
of his master's camel. Aquila, the emissary, showed the immemorial
composure in the face of disaster that was the badge of the Roman in
the days of the degenerate Cæsars, and, mounting his horse when the
rest of the party were in their places, headed the procession toward the
northeast.
From an upper window behind a lattice, Hannah cried her farewells and
fluttered her scarf. She was smiling the drawn, white smile of a mother
who is forcing herself to be cheerful in the face of danger, for the peace
of those she loves. Laodice understood the tender deception and when a
sharp turn of the street cut off the sight of the plumy trees of the garden,
she covered her face and wept inconsolably.

On either side of the passage there came muffled sounds from houses;
out of open alleys leading into interior courts stole the fetor of death
that even the spice of burning unguents could not smother. The whole
air shuddered with the drumming of heathen physicians in the pagan
quarters, through which the silence of long stretches of ominously quiet
houses shouted its meaning. At times frantic barefoot flights could be
glimpsed as households deserted stricken houses, but whatever outcry
arose came from bedsides. Ascalon fled as a frightened animal flees,
silently and under cover.
They rode now through a shrieking wind, burdened with sallow smoke
and dreadful odors. Denser and denser the cloud grew till the streets
ahead were hidden in yellow vapor and near-by houses loomed with
dim outlines as if far off, and even the sounds of death and disaster
became choked in the immense prevalence of smell. Blinded, with scarf
and kerchief wrapped over mouth and nostril, the fleeing party swept
down upon the very heart of that stifling mystery. Through it presently,
as the houses thinned out, they saw cores of great heat surmounted by
black-tipped flames that crackled savagely. Momus, now in the lead,
turned sharply to his right and the next instant had the wind behind him.
Almost involuntarily each member of the party looked back. Outside
the breach of the broken wall, standing clear to view with the wind
from the hills sweeping townward from them, were diabolical figures,
naked and black, feeding immense pyres with hideous fuel.
Past this grisly line, a camel with a single rider swept in from seaward.
The traveler lifted an arm and signaled to the party. Aquila seemed not
to see this hail, and rode on; but Costobarus, after the traveler motioned
to them once