THE ROBE (47 page)

'But so far as the people are concerned who get these things, they would
be gifts, wouldn't you say?'

'No,' he thought she might reply, 'they would never be gifts. You see,
Marcellus--' And then she would go on to explain again how Jesus had felt about
gifts.

He pitched the heavy white shawl back on to the pile of homespun and glanced
up to see a tall, lean, rugged-faced fellow standing at the door of the tent.
The visitor grinned amiably and Marcellus invited him to come in. He sat down
on a camp-stool, crossed his long legs, and said his name was Hariph.

'Doubtless you came to see Justus,' said Marcellus, cordially. 'He is at
Reuben's house. If you call this afternoon, I think he will be there.'

Hariph nodded, but made no move to go; sat slowly swinging his pendent
foot and nursing his elbows on his knee, while he candidly surveyed the
furniture in the tent, the heap of homespun, and the urbane stranger from Rome.

'I think I have heard Justus speak of you,' said Marcellus, feeling that
if Hariph meant to stay awhile some conversation might be appropriate. 'You are
a potter, I believe. You make water-jars, and wine-jars, and things like that.'

Hariph nodded and the grin widened a little.

'Tell me,' went on Marcellus, hopefully, 'is it customary to use the
same sort of jar either for wine or water?'

'Oh, yes, sir,' replied Hariph, with deliberate professional dignity.
'Many do that. Water or wine--it's all the same. Oil too. Same pot.'

'But I suppose that after you've had oil in a pot, you wouldn't want to
put wine in it,' observed Marcellus, sensibly enough, he thought.

'No, that wouldn't be so good,' agreed Hariph. 'The wine would taste of
oil.'

'The same thing might be true, I daresay, of water in a jar that had
held wine,' pursued Marcellus. 'The water might taste like wine.'

Hariph stopped swinging his foot and gazed squintingly toward the
street, the fine lines on his temple deepening. Marcellus surmised that the
town gossip was trying to decide whether it would be prudent to discuss the
matter. After some delay, he turned to his young host and gratified him by
saying:

'Did Justus tell you?'

'Yes.'

'Did you believe it?' asked Hariph.

'No,' replied Marcellus, firmly. 'I should be much interested in hearing
what you think about it.'

'Well, sir,' rejoined Hariph, 'we ran out of wine at the wedding of my
daughter Anna, and when Jesus came he made wine--out of water. I don't know
how. I just know that he did it.'

'Did you taste it?'

'Yes, sir. I never tasted wine like that--before or since.'

'What was it--a heavy, potent wine?'

'N-no, sir,' Hariph screwed up his face indecisively. 'It was of a
delicate flavour.'

'Red?' queried Marcellus.

'White,' remembered Hariph.

'White as water?'

'Yes, sir.' Hariph's eyes collided briefly with Marcellus's dry smile,
and drifted away. Nothing further was said for a long moment.

'I am told that everyone was very fond of Jesus,' remarked Marcellus.

'Indeed they were, sir!' responded Hariph. 'He came late, that day. You
should have seen them when he appeared; the shouts of greeting; many leaving
their places to crowd about him. It was so, wherever he went, sir. Nobody had
eyes for anyone else.'

'Had you ever kept wine in those jars, Hariph?' asked Marcellus.

'Yes, sir,' admitted Hariph.

Marcellus nodded his head slowly and grinned.

'Well, thank you for telling me,' he said. 'I was almost sure there must
be an explanation.' He rose, significantly. 'I am glad you called, Hariph.
Shall I tell Justus you will be back later?'

Hariph had not risen. His face was perplexed.

'If it was only that one thing, sir,' he said, quite unaffected by his
dismissal, 'if it had been only that one time--'

Marcellus sat down again and gave respectful attention.

'But from that day on, sir,' continued Hariph, deliberately, 'there were
many strange happenings.'

'So I have heard,' admitted Marcellus. 'Let me ask you: did you see any
of these mysterious things done, or did you just learn about them from others?
Strange stories always grow in the telling, you know.'

'Has anyone told you,' asked Hariph, 'how Jesus fed a crowd of five
thousand people when he had nothing but a little basketful of bread and a
couple of smoked fish?'

'No,' said Marcellus, eagerly. 'Tell me, please.'

'Perhaps Justus will tell you, if you ask him. He was there. He was
closer to it--when it happened.'

'Were you there, Hariph?'

'Yes, but I was rather far back in the crowd.'

'Well, tell me what you saw. I shall be much interested in your view of
it. Where did all this happen?'

'It wasn't so very long after our wedding. Jesus had begun going about
through the villages, talking with the people, and large crowds were following
him.'

'Because of what he said?' interposed Marcellus.

'Partly, but mostly because of the reports that he was healing all
manner of diseases, and giving blind men their sight, and--'

'Do you believe that--about the blind men?'

'Yes, sir!' declared Hariph. 'I saw one man who could see as well as you
can, sir.'

'Had you known him before?'

'No, sir,' confessed Hariph. 'But his neighbours said he had been blind
for years.'

'Did you know them--his neighbours?'

'No, sir. They were from down around Sychar.'

'That kind of testimony,' observed Marcellus, judicially, 'wouldn't get
very far in a court of law; but you must have some good reason for believing
it. . . . Well, go on, please, about the strange feast.'

'Always there were big crowds following him,' continued Hariph,
undismayed by the Roman's incredulity. 'And sometimes they weren't easy to
handle. Everybody wanted to be close enough to see these wonderful things
happen; and you never could tell when it would be. It's no small matter, sir,'
Hariph interrupted himself to comment, 'when one of your own neighbours, as you
might say, who had grown up with the other youngsters of his village, and had
worked at a carpenter's bench, takes to talking as nobody else had ever talked;
and stopping in the middle of a speech to point his finger at some old man who
might be standing in the front row, with his mouth open and both hands cupped
behind his ears, trying to hear--and suddenly the old man yells
"Ahhh!" and begins dancing up and down, shouting, "I can hear! I
can hear! I can hear!" And Jesus wouldn't have stopped talking: he would
just point at the man--and he could hear!'

'Did you ever see Jesus do that, Hariph?' demanded Marcellus.

'No, sir, but there were plenty who did; people whose word you could
trust, too!'

'Very well,' consented Marcellus, indulgently. 'Now tell me about the
feeding of the five thousand people. You say you saw that?'

'It was this way, sir. It all began over in Capernaum. A lot of strange
things had happened, and the news had spread abroad until a great crowd had
collected--a disorderly crowd it was; for nobody was trying to keep them from
pushing and jostling and tramping on one another.'

'It's a wonder they didn't call out the legionaries,' said Marcellus.
'There's a fort at Capernaum.'

'Yes, and many of the soldiers were there; but I don't think the priests
and elders of the city wanted the crowd to be kept in order. They probably
hoped something would happen, a bad accident, maybe, so that Jesus could be
arrested for disturbing the peace.'

'But didn't he have a few close friends who might have ordered the
people to cease this confusion?'

'Yes, sir, Jesus had many close friends. He named twelve of them to be
known as his disciples. But they had no authority to give orders to that big
crowd. They were really beside themselves to know what to do. Reuben and I had
gone over to Capernaum--like everybody else--to see what was going on. When we
arrived, the people were pushing and struggling in the central plaza. I never
was in such a press, sir! Men and women with sick children in their arms, being
jostled roughly in the swaying pack. Blind men. Half-dead people on cots,
carried by their friends. There were even lepers in the crowd.' Hariph chuckled
grimly. 'Nobody jostled
them!'

'It's a wonder they weren't arrested,' put in Marcellus.

'Well, sir,' drawled Hariph, 'when a leper is out on his own, not even a
legionary is anxious to lay hands on him. And you couldn't blame the poor
lepers, sir. They hoped to be healed, too.'

'Is Jesus supposed to have healed lepers, Hariph?' Marcellus's tone was
heavy with doubt.

'Yes, sir. . . . Well, when the crowd became unmanageable, Jesus began
retreating, down toward the shore. Several of his disciples had run on ahead
and engaged a boat. And before the people realized what was happening, Jesus
and his twelve closest friends were pulling away from the beach.'

'Wasn't that a rather heartless thing to do?' queried Marcellus.

'He had tried to talk to them, sir, but there was too much confusion.
You see, the people who crowded in about him hadn't come to hear him talk, but
to witness some strange thing. They wouldn't even give way to the cripples or
the blind or the very sick ones borne on cots. And then, too, Jesus had just
received bad news. One of his best friends, whom old Herod Antipas had thrown
into prison, had just been beheaded. Word of it came to Jesus while he was
trying to deal with that unruly mob. You can't blame him, sir, for wanting to
get away.'

'Quite to the contrary, Hariph!' declared Marcellus. 'It's gratifying to
hear that he could be puzzled about something. It was lucky that there was a
boat available. Was the crowd enraged?'

'Oh, they behaved each according to his own temper,' remembered Hariph.
'Some shook their fists and shouted imprecations. Some shook their heads and
turned away. Some wept. Some stood still and said nothing, as they watched the
boat growing smaller.'

'And what did you and Reuben do?'

'Well, sir, we decided to go home. And then somebody noticed that the
boat was veering toward the north. A great shout went up, and the people began
racing toward the beach. It seemed likely that the party in the boat was making
for some place up in the neighbourhood of Bethsaida.'

'How far was that?' inquired Marcellus.

'For the boat, about six miles. For the crowd, nearly nine. It was a hot
day and rough going. That country up there is mostly desert. But everybody
went, or so it seemed. It was a singular sight, sir, that long procession
stumbling over the stones and through the dried weeds. It was far past midday
when we found them.'

'Did Jesus seem annoyed when the crowd arrived?'

'No, just sorry,' murmured Hariph. 'His face was sad. The people were so
very tired. They weren't pushing one another--not after that trip!' He laughed
a little at the recollection.

'Did he chide them for the way they had behaved in Capernaum?'

'No, sir. He didn't say anything for a long time. The people flung
themselves down to rest. Justus told me afterwards that Simon urged Jesus to
talk to them, but he wanted to wait until all of them had arrived; for some
were carrying their sick, and were far behind. He didn't speak a word until
they were all there. And then he stood up and began to talk. He did not reprove
us for trailing him to this place, nor did he have aught to say of the people's
rudeness. He talked about all of us being neighbours. We were all one family.
Everyone was very quiet. There wasn't a sound--but the voice of Jesus. And
remember, sir; there were five thousand people in that crowd!' Hariph's chin
twitched involuntarily. He cleared his throat. Marcellus studied his face
soberly.

'I am not one to weep easily, sir,' he went on, huskily. 'But there was
something about those words that brought the tears. There we were--nothing but
a great crowd of little children--tired and worn out--and here was a man--the
only man there--and all the rest of us nothing but quarrelsome, stingy, greedy,
little children. His voice was very calm, but--if you can believe me, sir--his
words were as ointment to our wounds. While he talked, I was saying to myself,
"I have never lived! I have never known how to live! This man has the
words of life!" It was as if God himself were speaking, sir! Everybody was
much moved. Men's faces were strained and their tears were flowing.' Hariph wiped
his eyes with the back of his hand.

'After a while,' he continued, brokenly, 'Jesus stopped talking and
motioned to some who had carried a sick man all that long way, and they brought
their burden and put it down at Jesus' feet. He said something to the sick man.
I could not hear what it was. And the sick man got up! And so did everybody
else--as if Jesus had suddenly pulled us all to our feet. And everyone gasped
with wonder!' Hariph grinned pensively and faced Marcellus directly with
childishly entreating eyes. 'Do you believe what I am telling you, sir?'

'It is difficult, Hariph,' said Marcellus, gently. 'But I think you
believe what you are saying. Perhaps there is some explanation.'

'That may be, sir,' said Hariph, politely. 'And then there were many,
many others who went to Jesus to be healed of their diseases; not jostling to
be first, but waiting their turn.' He hesitated for a moment, embarrassed. 'But
I shall not weary you with that,' he went on, 'seeing you do not believe.'

'You were going to tell me how he fed them,' prompted Marcellus.

'Yes, sir. It was growing late in the afternoon. I had been so moved by
the things I had heard and seen that I had not thought of being hungry. Reuben
and I, knowing there would be nothing out there to eat, had stopped at a
market-booth in Capernaum and had bought some bread and cured fish. In any
other kind of crowd, we would have eaten our luncheon. But now that we had
begun to feel hungry, I was ashamed to eat what I had before the faces of the
men about me; for, as I have said, Jesus had been talking about us all being of
one family, and how we ought to share what we had with one another. I should
have been willing to divide with the man next to me; but I hadn't much more
than enough for myself. So--I didn't eat; nor did Reuben.'