Chapter IX

He rose, and took from his pocket, and held out to Miss Forbis, a flat metal spatula of Eastern make, attached to a silver chain. She looked from the clumsy object in the big brown hand to the grave face above it, whose dense black eyes had a reddish glow; and saw that his temples and blue-shaven upper-lip and jaws glistened with points of moisture, though the sun had but the tempered heat of these first days of November, and a sea-breeze coming out of the West whispered among the leaves.

"How am I of his race?" she asked, after a moment's hesitation. "Please be good enough to keep the key.... One of these days I may muster curiosity to visit the shrine in the chapel. Just now, to tell the truth, I want more to talk to you. I've put it off, as one does dodge sorrowful things, but now I've got to tell you...." Her voice wavered and her lips were tremulous. "It has to do with the letter you brought me from Palestine...."

"I am quite as anxious to hear as you are to tell me. But first, Miss Forbis, you must visit the shrine in the chapel. You ought to have gone there before, but you wished to see the garden, and your wish is a command here,--I could only obey! But now--"

He offered her the clumsy key, coolly and imperturbably. There was incredulity in her tone, as she inquired:

"You don't mean that I must go, whether I wish it or do not?"

"I am sorry to coerce you," he said with stern distinctness. "You must understand that. But, before we hear the Sunset Call to Prayer from the Mosque of Sidi Amr, it is necessary that you should visit the shrine. Understand me--it is incumbent upon you as the representative of your family. You have to!"

"'Have to! ...'"

She rose to her feet, and her angry eyes swept over him contemptuously. To be ordered about by this man was intolerable--absurd.... They faced each other, and the old gulf opened and yawned between them--as it had in the drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour, eight months before.

"'Have to!' ... You rather forget yourself, don't you, Mr. Hazel? ..."

"I do what is my duty in enforcing respect to _him_!"

He drew himself to his towering height, folded his great arms, and looked at her calmly.

He spoke again, and the profound tones vibrated through her, like the sound of a Buddhist temple-bell....

"_Through the centuries since he died for the Faith of the Nazarene, Christian priests have blessed his ashes on one day in every year. Not even when Alexandria lay in cinders and ruin, was there lacking a son of the Hazaël to guard his relics here. But since Marcus Fabius the Tribune came here on his way to Britain with the Tenth Legion of Constantine,--and the son of Marcus, Florens Fabius--journeyed from Rome twenty years later,--and the Crusaders Fulk and Hew came eleven hundred and sixty years after, and Bishop Ralph in 1809, and Philip in 1881, to kneel before his shrine; no heart filled with his blood has beaten in the lonely chamber, no lips warm with his life have touched the chilly stone._"

The clang of the great voice ceased to oppress her sense of hearing. She bent her noble head in splendid humility, a great lady, rebuked by the descendant of an Hebrew steward, and said:

"You have reproached me very justly. My only excuse is--that I did not understand!"

He went with her across the lawn, and ushered her through the loggia door into a passage, and up a wide staircase leading by one short flight of steps to the single floor above. She took the curious Eastern key he silently offered her, and put it in the lock of the door he had stopped at. The lock yielded easily....

"Won't--won't you come too?" she whispered, oppressed with an increasing sense of awe, and John Hazel's voice answered from behind her:

"We are the Guardians of the Shrine, and yet we may not enter. It would not be according to the Law!"

Thus Katharine went in alone, her heart-beats quickened by the startled whirr of wings, as the busy swallows quitted their nest-building in the upper corner of one of the three tall windows, filled in with lattices of carved and painted marble, and looking on the garden, now all golden in the rays of the westering sun.

The ceiling rose to a frescoed dome, with an opening at the apex. The spice of incense and the perfume of flowers yet sweetened the still air of this place of memories. It was a revelation of wonderful art, its dome and walls covered with ancient frescoes, representing in all the opulent symbolism of early Christianity, the anchor, the palm, the Dove with the olive-branch; the Vine, the heavy ear of Wheat, the Fish, the Chalice encircled with rays of glory,--the Good Shepherd carrying His lamb. The carved and inwrought and costly screens of cedar and ebony-wood were all inlaid in mother o' pearl, silver and ivory. Nothing had been spared in money or labour, to perfect this--the replica in miniature, of the interior of a Coptic Christian Church. Save that seemly, exquisite neatness, and scrupulous cleanliness reigned here instead of dust and dirt, spider-webs, and bird and bat-droppings; and the disquieting disorder which too often, in the East, prevails in such a sacred place....

Katharine passed over the mosaic floor of red and green porphyry and grey crystalline syenite, and through the central opening in the latticed outer screen. The gates stood open, showing an altar, wrought of black Egyptian basalt, standing under a baldaquin of inlaid ebony-wood borne on four carved and inlaid columns, the rich embroidered curtains of the baldaquin being drawn back. Four man-high candlesticks of silver, holding great unlighted tapers, were set one at each corner of the basalt altar. On the altar was an upper covering of rich silk, embroidered with gold. On this were a censer of silver open-work, a silver-gilt or golden incense-box, and two golden candlesticks of magnificent workmanship flanked the usual copy of the Four Gospels, sealed in a gold and jewelled case.

Three silver lamps hung before the altar. In the central lamp alone burned a tiny votive flame. The altar was not raised above the floor.... Its front was uncovered, and a small square opening in this resembled a doorway.

In the cavity revealed by the opening stood an alabaster urn of funerary type and evidently of great antiquity. Katharine, kneeling on the upper step of the little sanctuary, could, despite the tempering of the light by the screens and window-lattices, clearly distinguish below the Greek monogram of the Sacred Name, in irregular lines of incised Roman capitals,--still rusty-bright with antique gilding,--the epitaph in faulty Latin:

"MARTYR CHRISTI, AMICVSPAVPERVM.

EGO PHILOREMUS FLORENS FABIVS. CLARISSIMVS. PRÆTOR VECTIGALIVM ÆGVPTORVM. ALEXANDRIA. SEPTIMVS ANNO AVGVSTI MAXIMIANVS ÆGYPTI IMPERATORIS. QUE VIXIT. ANN. XL. MENS. V.D. VII. MENSIS OCTOBRIS IDIBUS. PORTA SPEI INTROGRESSVS SVM."

A rough translation of which might run:

"_The Martyr of Christ, the Friend of the Poor. I, Philoremus Florens Fabius, of Senatorial Rank, Receiver-General at Alexandria of the Taxes of Egypt. In the Seventh Year of the Reign of Cæsar Maximianus, Emperor of Africa. Aged Forty Years, Five months and Seven Days. On the Ides of October, Entered in at the Gate of Hope._"