SHIMEI BEFORE JULIUS.

The waking dreams of Shimei, in his chains

And darkness, were not altogether those

Foreshadowed by the soldier bitterly

To him — dreams of foreboding and despair

Only; that Roman had not learned that Jew.

The touch and prick of uttermost dismay

Stung him to one more struggle for himself.

Ere Julius, with the morning, had him forth

To inquest from his dungeon, that quick brain

Had ripe and ready, conjured up in thought,

For self-defense, with snare involved for Paul,

A desperate last compacture of deceit;

Desperate, yet deftly woven, and staggering,

Till the contriver was now quite undone,

Confronted with ascendant truth and power.

“What sayest thou, Jew,” with challenge lowering stern,

Asked the centurion of his prisoner,

“In answer to the charge against thee laid?”

“What say?” with shrug of shoulder Shimei said;

“Why, that thy soldier was too strong for me,

And haled me and bestowed me as he would,

While at his leisure then his tale he told,

Forestalling mine, to prepossess thine ear.

I come too late; for I should speak in vain.”

“Worse than in vain such words as those thou speakest.

Out on thine insolence, thou Hebrew dog!”

Savagely the centurion said. “‘ Too late’!

‘ Too late’! Know, Jew, too late it never is,

Where Roman justice undertakes, for one

Accused of crime to answer for himself.

True judge's ear cannot be‘ prepossessed.’

Even now, deserving, as thou art, to be

Buffeted, rather than aught further heard,

Speak on and say thy say; but give good heed

Thou curb thy tongue from insolence and lies.”

“From lying I shall have no need my tongue

To guard,” said Shimei; “but from insolence —

Beseech thy grace, a plain blunt man am I,

Will it be insolence, if I inquire

What is the crime that I am charged withal?”

Curtly the Roman said: “Attempt to bribe

A soldier, and a Roman soldier he,

To break his oath and be a murderer.”

“No stint of generous measure to the charge,”

Said Shimei; “yet I ought not to complain,

I, who a charge of ampler measure would

Myself have brought ( as well as he knew who now,

And for that very cause, accuses me )

Had I been first; and first I should have been,

But for duress, and also this he knew,

Thence the duress — outrageous act from him,

Lese-majesty committed against thee!—

I say, had I beforehand been with him

To gain thine ear and a foul plot disclose.”

The soldier stood in stupid blank amaze,

With silence by his discipline enforced,

To hear this frontless impudence of fraud.

He so much looked the guilt in slant implied

By Shimei, that no marvel Julius glanced

From one to the other of the two, perplexed,

Each the accuser and accused of each.

His soldier was a trusty man supposed;

The Jew came clouded and suspect as false:

But always it was possible repute

Accredited a man, or blamed, amiss.

“Thou riddlest like an oracle: be plain

And outright,” so to Shimei Julius spoke.

“Thou hast vaguely shadowed some worse shape of crime

Thou couldst reveal than that which seems revealed,

Accused to thee. What could be worse misdeed

Than breach attempted of a soldier's faith

To purchase murder?” “Breach accomplished,” said

Shimei, “were worse; and, in a just assay,

Worse to attaint the honor of a man

Upright and good and true, and of him make

A criminal worthy of death, and doomed

As such to die: yea, a far darker crime

Than were purveyal of the needed stroke

To end a little earlier some base life,

Forfeit at any rate by guilt, and fain

Itself to court such refuge from despair.

Still more were worse the crime whereof I speak,

Let the man so attainted in his truth

Be one that moment bearing office grave

As an accuser and a witness sworn

Against such very criminal himself.

Then is the crime no longer merely crime

Against the single man however just,

But crime against justice itself and law,

And even against the outraged human race.”

There was a stumbling incongruity —

Blasphemous, had it been less whimsical,

Whimsical, had it been less blasphemous —

Between the man himself and what he said.

His words were noble, or had noble been

But that the ignoble man who uttered them

Gainsaid them with the whole of what he was.

The soldier more and more astounded stood,

Or cowered, say rather, underneath the frown

Beetling and imminent of falsehood such,

Mountainous high, and like a mountain set

Immovable. ( Immovable it seemed,

But at its heart with fear was tremulous,

And, to the proper breath, would presently

Melt, like cloud-mountain massed of misty stone

To the wind's touch. ) As in a nightmare, he

Could no least gesture move to give the lie,

Browbeaten half to disbelieve himself.

Julius, nonplussed to see his soldier's air

Almost confessing judgment on himself,

Skeptic, yet therewithal impressed despite,

Imposed on even, by a mock-majesty,

The specious counterfeit of virtue wroth

But, though wroth, calm in conscious innocence,

Couched in the lofty words of Shimei,

While by his aspect blatantly belied —

Julius, thus wondering, curious, frowned and said:

“Cease from preamble, and forth with thy charge!

No further swelling phrases, large and vague;

But facts — or fictions — in plain terms and few.”

Audience at length prepared, so Shimei deemed,

His story, well before prepared, he told:

“I lingered late last night upon the deck:

Slow pacing up and down for exercise,

I strict bethought me how I best might quit

The serious task committed to my hands

Of seeking sentence on a criminal

There at the fountain and prime spring of law

And justice, that august tribunal last,

The imperial seat at Rome. While I thus mused,

The Providence that, dark sometimes and slow,

As to us seems, does after all pursue

The flying footsteps of foul crime with scourge,

Or human vengeance help to overtake,

Showed me a light, which, alas, quickly then

By envious evil powers in turn was quenched.

For it so fell that in the exceeding dark,

Unseen, I overheard the prisoner Paul

Broach a new plot of bribery and wrong.

He promised to the soldier keeping him

Large money — earnest offered, and received,

I plainly heard it clink from hand to hand.”

The soldier winced beneath the meaning glance

Shot at himself wherewith the subtile Jew

Spoke these last words; winced, and sore wished, too late,

That, as he first had purposed, he had shown

In proof to the centurion Shimei's gold

Shoved for a bribe into his hand, but here

Adroitly turned to use against himself.

What if his captain, prompted by such hint,

Should now demand to see that dastard gold!

He had been silent touching it because

His mere possession of it would, he felt,

Look too much like his paltering with a price;

But, after Shimei's words, to have it found

Upon him! With such disconcerting thoughts,

The soldier listened like a criminal,

As Shimei with calm iteration said:—

“Thus would Paul buy his keeper to forswear

Against the one man he most feared, myself,

That I had sought to bribe a soldier's faith,

Bargaining with him to fling overboard

His prisoner and so rid him from the world.

‘ Thou sawest,’ Paul told the soldier,‘ how at Sidon

An ample sum was put into his hands

By wealthy friends there': he all this now pledged

To be his keeper's, no denary short,

If but he would traduce me thus, and so

Both break the damning power I else could wield

Against him, and, besides, my life destroy.

Thy soldier yielded: grievous wrong indeed,

Yet him I can forgive, for less as bribed

He faltered, than as overcome he fell.

Paul is the master of an evil art

To make his subject firmly hold for true

What, free from sorcery, he would know was false.

He, in the very act and article

Of sketching what his victim was on me

To father, the illusion could in him

Produce of hearing his own words from me.

A trick Paul has of vocal mimicry —

Sleight of longiloquence, whereby he throws

To distance, as may like, his uttered words,

To make them seem another's, not his own —

Aided him here; I hardly knew, myself,

Hearing him speak, but that the voice was mine.

Thus I account for it, that, without blame

So much to him himself, he being deceived,

This worthy soldier, whom I never wronged,

Doubtless an honest fellow in the main,

Should in effect malign me so to thee.

“In my simplicity, and in my faith

Undoubting that, confronted fair with truth,

Falsehood must needs take on its proper shape,

Then shrivel, ashamed to be at all, I sprang

Suddenly up, discovered to the pair.

I never dreamed but they would at my feet

Fall, and for mercy sue; which Shimei —

Soft-hearted ever for another, where

Only himself is wronged, however hard

He steel his heart where stake is public good —

Had doubtless weakly granted out of hand.

But, to my wonder, and, I own, dismay —

This for the moment, but that weakness passed —

At a quick sign from Paul, the soldier seized

Me and consigned to dungeon for the night.

What followed more on deck, I can but guess.

I doubt not Paul completed work begun

In this poor soldier's mind, and fixed his faith

That all had happened as he made report.

I pray thee judge his error lightly; he

Was of another's will, against his own,

Possessed, loth pervert of a power malign.”

The soldier, hearing, was now witched indeed.

Partly his sense of flaw in rectitude —

Then suffered when he paltered with the bribe

Proffered by Shimei — shook him; and partly he

Descried a shift of refuge for himself

From dreaded blame at his centurion's hands —

Should Julius, as looked likely more and more,

At length accept the Hebrew's tale for true —

In letting it appear that Paul in fact

Had wrought upon him so as Shimei said,

To cheat him into honest misbelief.

This was the deeply calculated hope

Wherein that glozer, plotting as he went

With versatile adjustment to his need —

Need shifting, point by point, from phase to phase —

Provided for the soldier his escape

From the necessity of holding fast,

In self-defence, to his first testimony.

Thus, if all prospered, Shimei, yea, might yet

Save to himself the future chance to use

This soldier, more amenable to use.

Paul's keeper, thus prepared to falter, heard

Ambiguous challenge from the officer:

“What sayest thou, soldier? Wast beside thyself?

Dazed, hast thou then denounced the innocent man?”

Whereto ambiguous answer thus he framed:

“If I have done so, it was in excess

And haste of zeal to do a soldier's duty,

Misapprehended under wicked spell.”

“Thou art not sure? A witness should be sure;

More, be he one denouncing deeds essayed

Worthy of death; most, if besides he add

An office of the executioner.”

Thus the centurion to his soldier spoke,

Who answered, shuffling: “If my senses were

Rightly my own last night, I told thee true;

But if I was usurped by sorcery

To see and hear amiss — why, who can say?”

“Go find lord Felix, and, due worship paid,

Pray him come hither for a need that waits,”

So Julius made his soldier messenger.

“Grieving to trouble thee so far,” he next

To Felix, soon appearing, said: “I sent

To ask thee of the Jew in presence here.

Knowest thou aught of him that might resolve

A doubt how much he be to trust for true?”

Shimei shrank visibly, while Felix, glad

To vent his hatred of the pander, spoke:

“As many as his words, so many lies;

Trust him thou mayest — to never speak the truth.”

Wherewith the haughty freedman on his heel

Turned, as disdaining to use tongue or ear

Further in such a cause, and disappeared.

Julius in silence looked a questioning pause

At Shimei, who risked parrying answer, thus:

“Lord Felix is a disappointed man,

Who, if so soured, is gently to be judged.

Yet were it better he had stooped to speak

By instance, named occasion, wherein I

Had seemed to fail matching my words with deeds.

I own I sought to serve him in his need;

And if, forsooth, when he his hold on power

Felt slipping from his hands, I undertook

Freely, in succor of his fainting mind,

Somewhat beyond my strength to bring to pass,

In reconcilement of my countrymen

Against his sway unwontedly aggrieved —

Why, I am sorry; but failed promises,

Made in good faith, should not be reckoned lies.”

There seemed to the centurion measure enough

Of reason in what Shimei so inferred,

If truly he inferred, to leave the doubt

Still unresolved with which he was perplexed.

While the diversion of the incident

With Felix, and of Shimei's parrying, passed,

The soldier, so released to cast about

At leisure, thought of Stephen standing up,

In that so Sphinx-like silence, startlingly,

Beside him, in the darkness on the deck,

At just the fatal point of his own poise

For the returnless plunge in the abyss;

That Hebrew youth would doubtless testify

To Shimei's damning;— to his own as well?

That were to think of! What would Stephen say?

Must it not cloud his own clear truth and faith,

To have it told how he abode so long

A hearkener to temptation; how he took

Gold as for bribe, and greedy seemed of more?

Why had he not been first to speak of that?

Wisest it looked to him not to invoke

A witness of so much uncertain power

To bring his own behavior into doubt.

And Shimei showed such master of his part,

Equal to shifting all appearances

This way or that, as best would serve himself,

Promised so fair to make his side prevail,

Were it not well to choose the chance with him?

The soldier fixed to stake on Stephen naught.

Shimei meantime had otherwise bethought

Himself of Stephen — fearing, yet with hope

Prevailing over fear: hardly would he,

The soldier, risk to call such witness in.

Those twain diversely so with the same thought

Secretly busy, the centurion —

Whether by some unconscious sympathy

His mind drawn into current following theirs,

Like idle sea-drift in the wake of ships —

Startled them both alike with his next word:

“That Hebrew lad, Stephen they call him, go

Fetch him; say,‘ Come with me,’ and no word more.”

This to the soldier, who soon brought the youth.

“Some kin thou to the prisoner Paul, I think?”

Said the centurion. “Sister's son,” said he.

“I had thee well reported of, my lad;

Belie not thy good fame, but answer true,”

Julius to Stephen spoke, adjuring him.

“Knowest thou aught, of thine own eye or ear,

How Paul thy kinsman was bestead last night?”

Now Stephen had not yet to Paul declared

Aught of the strange disclosures of the night.

Seeing here the plotter of that nameless deed

Demoniac, in the part of one accused,

Witnessed against with damning testimony,

The soldier's, all-sufficing for his doom,

Before a judge as Roman sure to be

Swift in his sentence upon such a crime —

Prompt in his secret mind Stephen resolved,

As likeliest best to please his kinsman Paul,

Not to go further than compelled, to add

Superfluous proof against the wretched man.

Sincerely wretched now indeed once more

Shimei appeared; effrontery of fraud

And his vain confidence of hope forlorn

Abashed in him, intolerably rebuked —

Not more by this access of evidence

( Unlooked for, since that muzzle to his mouth

Had so well served to hold the soldier mute

From mention of the Hebrew lad ) — not more

Abashed thus and rebuked, than by the mere

Aspect of the clear innocence and truth

And virtue, honor and high mind, in fair

And noble person there embodied seen

In Stephen beamy with his taintless youth.

Was it some promise of retrieving yet

Possible for this soul, so lost to good,

That, broken from that festive confidence

Once his in the omnipotence of fraud

To answer all his ends, he thus should feel

Pain in the neighborhood of nobleness?

Unconsciously so working, like a wand

Wielded that cancels a magician's spell,

To shame back wretched Shimei to himself,

Nor ever guessing, in his guileless mind,

Of possible other posture to affairs

Than full exposure of the criminal

Already reached, no need of word from him —

Stephen to Julius frugally replied:

“Paul's case was happy, sir, if this thou meanest,

How fared he in the hap which him befell;”

Then, conscious of a look not satisfied

In Julius, added: “If instead thou meanest

What hap was threatened him but came to naught,

Then I shall need to answer otherwise.”

“This I would learn,” said Julius, “dost thou know,

Of certain knowledge, thine own eye or ear,

Where Paul was, and what doing, through the hours

Of last night's darkness? How was he bestead?

That tell me, if thou knowest, naught else but that.

Fact, first; thereafter, fancy — if at all.”

A little puzzled, but withal relieved,

Not to be witness against Shimei,

“It happened,” Stephen said, “that as the dark

Drew on, Paul with his sister Rachel talked,

They two apart; but nigh at hand I sat,

With others, on the deck. As the night waxed,

With darkness from the still-withdrawing sun,

And then from clouds that blotted out the stars,

Almost all went to covert one by one;

But Paul abode, and I abode with him.

Yet were we from each other separate,

And Paul perhaps knew not that I was nigh;

But I lay watching him and nursed my thoughts.

At first he paced, as musing, up and down,

Then, still alone, and still as musing, leaned,

In absent long oblivion of himself,

Over the vessel's side — into the sea

Gazing, like one who read a mystic book.

This and naught else he did, until a dash

Of rain-drops shredded from the tempest broke

His reverie; and then both he and I,

Meeting a moment but to say good-night,

Housed us for the forgetfulness of sleep.”

“Thou hast told me all? Communication none

Between Paul and this soldier keeping him?”

Straitly of Stephen the centurion asked,

With eye askance on Shimei shrinking there.

“With no one,” Stephen answered, “spake Paul word,

After that converse with his sister, till

I met him face to face and changed good night.”

“Thou hadst some fancy other than thy fact,”

Said Julius now to Stephen, “some surmise

As seemed concerning danger threatened Paul” —

But Shimei dimmed so visibly to worse

Confession of dismay in countenance,

That Julius checked the challenge on his lips,

And, turning, said to Shimei: “Need we more?

Or art unmasked to thy contentment, Jew?

Shall I bid hither Paul, forsooth, and let

Thee face the uncle, since the nephew so,

Simply to see, thy gullet fills with gall,

And twists thy wizened features all awry?

Aye, for meseems it were a happy thought,

Go, lad, and call thy kinsman hither straight.

Stay, hast thou seen him since last night's farewell?”

“Nay,” answered Stephen. “Well!” the Roman said;

“So tell him nothing now of what is here.

Say only,‘ The centurion wishes thee’;

Haste, bring him.” Stephen soon returned with Paul,

Who wondered, knowing naught of all, to see

What the encounter was, for him prepared.

Not till now ever, since the fateful time

When, buoyant with the sense of his reprieve

Won for a season from the contact loathed

Of Shimei, Paul rode forth Damascus-ward,

Had they two in such mutual imminence met.

Paul looked at Shimei now, not with regard

That, like a bayonet fixed, thrust him aloof,

Or icily transpierced him pitiless;

But in a gentle pathos of surprise,

With sorrow yearning to be sympathy —

Reciprocal forgiveness interchanged

Between them, and all difference reconciled:

A melting heaven of cloudless April blue

Ready to weep suffusion of warm tears,

The aspect seemed of Paul on Shimei turned.

Good will, such wealth, expressed, must needs good will

Responsive find, or, failing that, create!

But Shimei did not take the look benign

Of Paul, to feel its vernal power; downcast

His eyes he dropped and missed the virtue shed —

Missed, yet not so as not some gracious force,

Ungraciously, ill knowing, to admit.

“Thou knowest this fellow-countryman of thine?”

To the apostle speaking, Julius said.

“I know him, yea,” said Paul. “And knowest perhaps,”

Said Julius, further sounding, “what the chance

Of mischief from him thou hast late escaped?”

“Nay, but not yet have I, I trow,” Paul said,

“Escaped the evil he fain would bring on me.

He hates me, and, if but he could, he would

Quite rid me from the world; that know I well.”

“But knowest thou,” the centurion pressed, “how he

Plotted last night to have thee overboard

To wrestle, swimming, with the swirling sea?”

“Nay,” Paul said, “nay; I knew not that.” He spoke

Without surprise couched in his tone; far less,

Horror or fear expressed in look or act;

No sidelong stab at Shimei from his eye;

Only some sadness, with the patience, dashed

The weariness with which he spoke. “And yet —

And yet,” he added, half as if he would

Extenuate what he could, “it is his way,

The natural way in which he works his will.

His will I well can understand, though not,

Not so, his way. From that I was averse

Ever, but once I had myself his will.”

“Thou canst not mean his will to get Paul slain,”

Baffled, the Roman said. “Nay, but his will

To persecute and utterly to destroy,”

Said Paul, “the Name, and all that own the Name,

Of my Lord Jesus Christ from off the earth.”

At that Name, thus with loyal love confessed,

The hoarded hatred, deep in Shimei's heart,

Toward Jesus, which so long had fed and fired

The embers of the hatred his for Paul,

Stirred angrily; it almost overcame

The cringing craven personal fear in him.

Though he indeed spoke not, uttered no sound,

There passed upon his visage and his port

A change, from abject while malign, to look

Malign more, and less abject, fierce and fell.

It was a strange transfiguration wrought,

An horrible redemption thus achieved —

From what before one only could despise

To what one now, forsooth, might reprobate!

The quite-collapsed late liar and poltroon

Rallied to a resistant attitude,

Which stiffened and grew hard like adamant,

While further Julius thus his wiles exposed:

“The‘ way’ of this thy fellow-countryman,

O Paul, thou hast yet, I judge, in full to learn.

When, by the soldier whom he sought to bribe

For thy destruction, of his crime accused

To me, how, thinkest thou, he would purge himself?

Why, by persuading me that Paul, instead,

Had himself bought his keeper to forswear

Against him, Shimei, such foul plot to slay.

Hold I not well thou hadst something still to learn

Of the unsounded depths his‘ way’ seeks out?”

Julius said this with look on Shimei fixed,

Full of the scorn he felt, each moment more.

Like the skilled slinger toying with his stone

Swung round and round in air, full length of sway,

Through circles viewless swift, but in its pouch

Uneasy, at his leisure still delayed

For surer aim and fiercer flight at last,

And that, the while, the wielder may prolong

Both his delight of vengeance tasted so,

And his foe's fear accenting his delight;

Thus Julius, dallying, teased to wrath his scorn,

More threatening as in luxury of reserve

Suspended from the outbreak yet to fall.

The while the scornful Roman's wroth regard

Fixed as if caustic fangs upon the Jew,

The Jew, with stoic endurance, steeled himself

To take it without blenching. Full well felt

Through all his members was that branding look;

Though his eyes still were downward bent, as when

He dropped them to refuse Paul's sweet good will.

But suddenly now, he one first furtive glance

Lifting, as if unwillingly, to Paul,

Shimei takes on a violent change reverse.

A wave of abjectness swept over him

That drenched, that drowned, his evil hardihood

And wrecked him to a ruin of himself.

Julius who saw this change had also seen

Shimei's stolen glance at Paul; he himself now

Turned toward the apostle with inquiring eye.

What he saw seized him and usurped his mind —

His passion with a mightier passion quelled,

Or to another, higher, key transposed:

The wrathful scorn that had toward Shimei blazed

Became a rapt admiring awe of Paul.

For there Paul stood, the meek and lowly mien,

The sadness and the patience, not laid by,

But an unconscious air of majesty

Enduing him like a clear transpicuous veil,

Self-luminous so with cleansed indignant zeal

For God and truth and righteousness outraged,

That he was fair and fearful to behold.

God had made him a Sinai round whose top

A silent thunder boomed and lightnings played.

White holiness burned on his brow, a flame

The like whereof the Roman never saw

Glorifying and making terrible,

Beyond all fabled gods, the front of man.

The exceeding instance of this spectacle

It was, filling the place as if with beams,

Not of the day, but stronger than the day,

That had perforce drawn Shimei's eyes to see —

A moment, and no more. As seared with light

Fiercer than they could bear, again they fell.

Then all the man with saving terror shook

To hear Paul speak — in tones wherein no ire,

As for himself, entered, to ease the weight

With which the might of truth omnipotent

Pressed on its victim like the hand of God:

“Full of all subtlety and mischief! Thou

Child of the devil, as doer of his deeds!

Accurséd, if thou hadst but plotted death

Against me, death however horrible,

That I had found a light thing to forgive.

But to swear me suborner like thyself

Of perjury” — But the denouncer marked

How, under his denouncement, Shimei quailed:

He in mid launch the fulmination stayed.

His adversary victim's broken plight

Disarmed him, and a sad vicarious sense

Of what awaited such as Shimei

Hereafter, penetrated to his heart.

As shamed from his indignant passion, Paul

Instantly melted to a mood of tears.

This Shimei less could bear than he had borne

Those terrors of the Lord aflame in Paul.

The old man shaken with so many sharp

Vicissitudes of feeling, sharp and swift:—

Hope from despair, despair again from hope;

Then fresh hope from the ashes of despair;

That costly hardening of the heart with hate,

And steeling, to resistance, of the will;

Next, a soul-cleaving anguish of remorse,

New to him, mingled with forebodings new,

Menaces beckoning from the world to come;

These, with the unimagined tenderness

That now reached out and touched him in Paul's tears —

The old man, plied and exercised thus, broke

Abruptly from the habit of a life,

Utterly broke, and suddenly was no more,

At least for one sweet moment of release,

The hard, the false, the bitter, the malign

Shimei of old — changed to a little child!

In both his quivering hands his face he hid,

And, all his strength consumed to scarcely stand,

Wept, with convulsion poured from head to foot,

But made no other sign, to this from Paul:

“As I forgive thee, lo, forgive thou me,

Shimei, my brother! And Christ us both forgive!”

The Roman wondering saw these things and heard,

Nor moved in speech or gesture, touched with awe.

But when now all was acted so, and seemed

There nothing was to follow more, he turned,

And, not ungently, though with firm command,

Said to the soldier: “Lead him hence away

To keeping; make his manacles secure.

Thou wilt not, I suppose, a second time,

Try ear or tongue in parley — never wise.

Thou hast lost somewhat in this adventure; see

Thou win it back with double heed henceforth.”

So Shimei went remanded to his doom,

With Paul and Stephen pitying witnesses.