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Page 5
All through the day he watched them--men and women and children who
belonged to one another, who rode together on their beasts, or walked
together hand in hand. Women on camels or asses held their little ones
in their arms, or walked with the youngest slung on their backs. He
heard boys laugh and talk with their fathers--boys of his own age, who
trudged merrily along, and now and again ran forward, shouting with
glee. He saw more than one strong man swing his child up to his shoulder
and bear him along as if he found joy in his burden. Boy and girl
companions played as they went and made holiday of their journey; young
men or women who were friends, lovers, or brothers and sisters bore one
another company.
"No one is alone," said Zia, twisting his thin fingers together--"no
one! no one! And there are no lepers. The great Caesar would not count a
leper. Perhaps, if he saw one, he would command him to be put to death."
And then he writhed upon the grass and sobbed again, his bent chest
almost bursting with his efforts to make no sound. He had always been
alone--always, always; but this loneliness was such as no young human
thing could bear. He was no longer alive; he was no longer a human
being. Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!
At last he slept, exhausted, and past his piteous, prostrate childhood
and helplessness the slow procession wound its way up the mountain road
toward the crescent of Bethlehem, knowing nothing of his nearness to its
unburdened comfort and simple peace.
When he awakened, the night had fallen, and he opened his eyes upon a
high vault of blue velvet darkness strewn with great stars. He saw this
at the first moment of his consciousness; then he realized that there
was no longer to be heard the sound either of passing hoofs or treading
feet. The travelers who had gone by during the day had probably reached
their journey's end, and gone to rest in their tents, or had found
refuge in the inclosing khan that gave shelter to wayfarers and their
beasts of burden.
But though there was no human creature near, and no sound of human voice
or human tread, a strange change had taken place in him. His loneliness
had passed away, and left him lying still and calm as though it had
never existed, as though the crushed and broken child who had plunged
from a precipice of woe into deadly, exhausted sleep was only a vague
memory of a creature in a dark past dream.
Had it been himself? Lying upon his back, seeing only the immensity of
the deep blue above him and the greatness of the stars, he scarcely
dared to draw breath lest he should arouse himself to new anguish. It
had not been he who had so suffered; surely it had been another Zia.
What had come upon him, what had come upon the world? All was so still
that it was as if the earth waited--as if it waited to hear some word
that would be spoken out of the great space in which it hung. He was not
hungry or cold or tired. It was as if he had never staggered and
stumbled up the mountain path and dropped shuddering, to hide behind the
bushes before the daylight came and men could see his white face. Surely
he had rested long. He had never felt like this before, and he had never
seen so wonderful a night. The stars had never been so many and so
large. What made them so soft and brilliant that each one was almost
like a sun? And he strangely felt that each looked down at him as if it
said the word, though he did not know what the word was. Why had he been
so terror-stricken? Why had he been so wretched? There were no lepers;
there were no hunchbacks. There was only Zia, and he was at peace, and
akin to the stars that looked down.
How heavenly still the waiting world was, how heavenly still! He lay and
smiled and smiled; perhaps he lay so for an hour. Then high, high above
he saw, or thought he saw, in the remoteness of the vault of blue a
brilliant whiteness float. Was it a strange snowy cloud or was he
dreaming? It seemed to grow whiter, more brilliant. His breath came
fast, and his heart beat trembling in his breast, because he had never
seen clouds so strangely, purely brilliant. There was another, higher,
farther distant, and yet more dazzling still. Another and another showed
its radiance until at last an arch of splendor seemed to stream across
the sky.
"It is like the glory of the ark of the covenant," he gasped, and threw
his arm across his blinded eyes, shuddering with rapture.
He could not uncover his face, and it was as he lay quaking with an
unearthly joy that he first thought he heard sounds of music as remotely
distant as the lights.
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