United States or Bosnia and Herzegovina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was Ahulah who had touched her; and as Mary started she saw before her a coffin which the others bore. “Come with us,” Ahulah repeated; and Mary crossed the intervening ridge to where the gardens were and the tombs she had already passed. At the door of a sepulchre the brief procession halted.
Martha was too feather-headed for an errand such as that. She thought of Ahulah, but some of those well-intentioned friends that everyone possesses had told of the misadventure to her husband, and the latter, cruel as a woman, had spat upon her, and now through the suburbs she wandered, distraught, incompetent to aid. Her brother occurred to her. It was on him she could rely.
She had been present, also, when the charge was made against Ahulah, and had comforted that unfortunate in womanly ways. “Surely,” she had said, “if the Master who does not love you can forgive, how much more readily must your husband who does!” Whereupon Ahulah had become her slave, tending her thereafter with almost bestial devotion.
“Whoever is without sin among you,” he declared, “may cast the first stone.” When he looked again the crowd had slunk away. Only Ahulah remained, her head bowed on her bare white arm. From the lateral chamber the priest still peered, the carbuncle glistening on his lip. “Did none condemn you?” the Master asked. And as she sobbed merely, he added: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”
The blue robe she wore was torn, and a sleeve rent to the shoulder disclosed a bare white arm. She was a wife, a mother too. Her name was Ahulah; her husband was a shoemaker. At the Gannath Gate, where her home was, were two little children. She worshipped them, and her husband she adored.
Oh, to see his nails pulled out, his outer skin removed, his tongue severed, his eyes seared with irons, his wrists slowly twisted till they snapped! to hear him cry for mercy! to promise it and not fulfil!—dear God, what joy was there! From the alley into which Ahulah had shrunk a man issued. He was sturdy as a bludgeon, and he had a growth of thick black hair that curled about an honest face.
Instinctively Mary turned. In the retreating figure she recognized Ahulah, and at once, without conscious effort, she divined that the dwelling against which she leaned was that of Baba Barbulah, the husband of the woman whom the Master had declined to condemn.
Already Ahulah was forgot. On the wings of vagabond fancy she was in Rome, demanding vengeance of Tiberius, wresting it from him by the sheer force of entreaty, and with it exulting in the death-throes of the procurator.
Word Of The Day