The City of Delight | Page 5

creaking sounded in the distance, as if a great rusted crane swung in the wind. Again there were distant, voluminous flutterings, as if neglected and loosened sails flapped. Idle roaming donkeys brayed and a dog shut up and forgotten in a compound barked incessantly. Presently there came faint, far-off, failing cries that faded into silence. The Jew's brow contracted but he did not move.
From his position, he could see the port to the east packed with lifeless vessels. The stretches of stone wharf and the mole were vacant and littered with rubbish. The yard-arms of abandoned freighters were peculiarly beaded with tiny black shapes that moved from time to time. Far out at sea, so far that a blue mist embraced its base and set its sails mysteriously afloat in air, a great galley, with all canvas crowded on, sped like a frightened bird past the port that had once been its haven.
A strange compelling odor stole up from the city. Costobarus glanced down into his garden below him. It was a terraced court, with vine-covered earthen retaining walls supporting each successive tier and terminating against a domed gate flanked on either side by a tall conical cypress.
He noted, on the flagging of the walk leading by flights of steps down to the gate, a heap of garments with broad brown and yellow stripes. Wondering at the untidiness of his gardener in leaving his tunic here while he worked, Costobarus looked away toward the large stones that lay here and there in gutters and on grass-plots, remnants of the work of the Roman catapults the previous summer. In the walls of houses were unrepaired breaches, where the wounds of the missiles showed. On a slight eminence overlooking the city from the west center-poles of native cedar which had supported Roman tents were still standing. But no garrison was there now, though the signs of the savage Roman obsession still lay on the remnants of the prostrate western wall. So as Costobarus' gaze wandered he did not see far above that heap of striped garments in his garden walk, fixed like an enchanted thing, moveless, dead-calm, a great desert vulture poised in air. Presently another and yet another materialized out of the blue, growing larger as they fell down to the level of their fellow. Slowly the three swooped down over the heap on the garden walk. The tiny black shapes that beaded the yard-arms in port spread great wings and soared solemnly into Ascalon. The three vultures dropped noiselessly on the pavement.
Cries began suddenly somewhere nearer and instantly the tremendous booming of a great oriental gong from the heathen quarters swept heavy floods of sound over the outcry and drowned it. The vultures flew up hastily and Costobarus saw them for the first time. A chill rushed over him; revulsion of feeling showed vividly on his face. He shut the window.
Noon was high over Ascalon and Pestilence was C?sar within its walls.
It was the penalty of warfare, the long black shadow that the passage of a great army casts upon a battling nation. Physicians could not give it a name. It seized upon healthy victims, rent them, blasted them and cast them dead and distorted in their tracks, before help could reach them. It passed like fire on a high wind through whole countries and left behind it silence and feeding vultures.
As Costobarus turned from his window to pace up and down his chamber, Hannah's argument came back to him with new energy. He felt with a kind of panic that his confident answer to her might have been wrong. When a girl appeared in the archway, he moved impulsively toward her, as if to retract the command that would send her out into this land that the Lord had spoken against, but the strength and repose in her face communicated itself to him.
Above all other suggestions in her presence was that overpowering richness of oriental beauty which no other kind in the world may surpass in its appeal to the loves of men. Enough of the Roman stock in her line had given structural firmness and stature to a type which at her age would have developed weight and duskiness, but she was taller and more slender than the women of her race, and supple and alive and splendid. About her hips was knotted a silken scarf of red and white and green with long undulant fringes that added to the lithe grace in her movements. Under it was a glistening garment of silver tissue that reached to the small ankles laced about by the ribbons of white sandals. For sleeves there were netted fringes through which the fine luster of her arms was visible. About her wrists, her throat and in her hair, heavy and shining black, were