  Saul, sullen, gloomy, and chagrined, over his discomfiture recently experienced, is visited, in his self-imposed seclusion at home, by Shimei, who, always by nature antipathetic to Saul, hates him virulently now for the affront from him received publicly in the late council. Shimei exasperates Saul with sneering, pretended sympathy for him over his defeat at Stephen's hands; at the same time disclosing the plot he has himself concocted, involving subornation of perjury, with alleged connivance on the part of the Sanhedrim in general, for the stoning of Stephen. Shimei gone, Saul, in the open court of his dwelling, sits solitary, brooding in the depths of dejection over the fallen state of his fortunes. SAUL AND SHIMEI.As if one, from some poise of prospect high, Should overlook below a plain outspread And see a bright embattled host, in close Array of antique chivalry, supposed Invincible, advancing, panoplied, Horseman and horse, in steel, and with delight Of battle pricked to speed, he—while that host, Swift, like one man, across the field of war, With pennons gay astream upon the wind, And arms and armor flashing in the sun, Moved to the sound of martial music brave— Might ask, "What strength set counter could withstand The multiplied momentum of such blow?" And yet, as, let a rock-built citadel Upspring before them in their conquering way, And, through embrasures in the frowning wall, Let enginery of carnage new and strange, Let cannon, with their noise like thunder, belch, Volleying, their bolts like thunderbolts amain Among those gallant columns, then would be Amazement seen, and ruinous overthrow; So, late, to Saul's superbly confident Assay of onset all seemed nigh to yield, Till that the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, Through Stephen speaking, made the utmost might Of eloquence ridiculous and vain, So was the duel all unequal, joined By Saul with Stephen on that fateful day. Though not ill matched the champions' native force And spirit, and not far from even their skill, Equipment disparate of weaponry— Human against Divine, infinite odds!— Made the conclusion of the strife foregone. Had mortal prowess against prowess been Between those twain the naked issue tried, Saul, with his sanguine dash of onset, might Perchance have won the day—through sheer surprise Of sudden and impetuous movement swift Beyond the other's readiness to oppose An instantaneous rally of quick thought Mustering and mastering his collected might. But the event and fortune of that hour Resolved no doubt which combatant excelled In wit or will or strength or exercise. Stephen was fortressed round impregnably, Saul stood in open field obvious to wound; Saul wielded weapons of the present world, Celestial weapons furnished Stephen—nay, Weapon himself, the Almighty wielded him. Saul knew himself defeated, overwhelmed. By how much he had purposed in his heart, And buoyantly expected, beyond doubt Or possible peradventure, to prevail, More than prevail, triumph, abound, redound, And overflow, with ample surplusage Of prosperous fortune far transcending all Public conjecture of his hoped success; By so much now he found himself instead Buried beneath discomfiture immense And boundless inundation of defeat. For multitudes of new believers won To Stephen's side from Saul's thronged to the Way, It was a nation hastening to be born, Like Israel out of Egypt, in a day. As Israel out of Egypt were baptized To Moses in the cloud and in the sea, So Israel out of Israel Saul now saw Baptized obedient into Jesus' name. Dissolving round about him seemed to Saul The earth itself with its inhabitants, And, to bear up the pillars of it, he A broken reed that could not stand alone! But, while thus worsted Saul forlornly felt Himself, he by whom worsted missed to know. His challenge was to Stephen; how should he Guess that in Stephen God would answer him? Unconsciously with God at enmity, But with God's servant Stephen consciously, Saul chafed and raged in proud and blindfold hate; Half yet, the while, despising too himself, Detected hating thus, by his own heart Detected hating, his antagonist, For the sole blame of visiting on him The fortune he had purposed to inflict. Still mutually exasperating each The other—Shimei came to him. Now Saul And Shimei were two opposites intense In nature, never toward each other drawn, But violently ever sent asunder; Yet chiefly by repulsion lodged in Saul, Spurning off Shimei, as the good the evil; For Saul instinctively was noble, frank, And true, as Shimei instinctively Was false, profound in guile, to base inclined. But strangely, since that council wherein Saul Fulmined his shame on Shimei's proffer vile, Shimei had felt the other's scorn of him A force importunate to tempt him nigh— Perverse attraction in repulsion found!— As evil ever struggles toward the good, Not to be leavened with virtue issuing thence, But leaven instead to likeness with itself. So Shimei came to Saul, as knowing Saul Spurned him avaunt with loathing; in degree Attracted as he was intensely spurned. Seen writhing, fain would make it writhe the more, Of Saul in his discomfiture. With mien Demure of hypocritic sympathy, The nauseating vehicle of sneer, Malignly studied to exacerbate The galled and angry feeling in Saul's mind, He thus addressed that haughty Pharisee: "The outcome of your effort, brother Saul, To vindicate the cause of truth and God— And therewithal justly advance somewhat Your individual profit and esteem As rising bulwark of the Jewish state, Whereby so much the better you might hope Hereafter to promote the general weal— This spirited attempt, I say, of yours Has in its issue disappointed you, You, and your friends no less, who, all of us, Together with yourself, refused to dream Aught but the most felicitous event To enterprise with so much stateliness Of dignity impressively announced By you, and show of lofty confidence. Astonishingly well; I should advise Your cultivation of it. Why, at times, When you display that absolutely frank And unaffected lack of modesty Which marks you, really, now, the effect on me, Even me, is almost irresistible; I find myself well-nigh imposed upon To call it an effect of majesty. "But, to sustain the impression, Saul, it needs, Quite needs, that you somehow contrive to shun These awkward misadventures; the grand air Is less impressive in a man well known To have made a bad miscarriage, such as yours. For in fact you—with sincere pain I say it— But served to Stephen as a sort of foil To set his talent off and heighten it. You must yourself feel this to be the case; For never since that windy Pentecost In which we thought we saw the top and turn To this delirium of delusion touched, Never, I say, till now were seen so many New perverts to the Nazarene as seems Managed, that memorable day, to make. It is a pity, and I grieve with you. Still, Saul, let us consider that your case, Undoubtedly unfortunate, presents This one alleviating circumstance, At least, that your defeat demonstrates past Gainsaying what an arduous attempt Yours was, and thereby glorifies the more That admirable headiness of yours Which egged you on to venture unadvised. For my own part, I like prodigiously To see your young man overflow with spirit; Age will bring wisdom fast enough; but spirit, Like yours, Saul, comes, when come it does at all, Born with the man. Never regret that you Dared nobly; rather hug yourself for that With pride; pride greater, since, through proof, aware You really dared more nobly than you knew. "Some increment too of wisdom you have won From your experience; not to be despised, Though ornament rather of age than youth. I may presume you now less indisposed And supplement mere obstinacy—fine, Of course, as I have said, yet attribute Common to man with beast—by counsel ripe And scheme of well-considered policy, Adapted to secure your end with ease. Economy of effort well befits Man, the express image and counterpart Of God, who always works with parsimony, Compassing greatest ends with smallest means, To waste no particle of omnipotence. "Count now that you have rendered plain enough What single-eyed, straightforward stubbornness Can, and cannot, effect in this behalf; So much is gained; now be our conscience clear To cast about and find some other means, Than mere main strength in public controversy, Of dealing with these raw recalcitrants. They lacked the grace to be discomfited In honorable combat fairly joined, Let them now look to it how much their gross Effrontery in overthrowing you Shall profit them at last. I have a scheme"— Spoke Saul, unwilling longer to endure The friction and abrasion of his words— "Your scheme, whatever it may be, cannot Concern my knowing; nothing you should plan Were likely to conciliate in me Either my judgment, or my taste, or please My sense of what becoming is and right. I pray you spare yourself the pains to unfold Further to me your thought; your work were waste." But Shimei, naught abashed, nay, rather more Set on, imagining that he touched in Saul The quick of suffering sensibility Replied: "Yea, brother Saul, I did not fail In our late session to observe what you Hinted of your unreadiness to accord Your valuable support to my advice, Advanced on that occasion loyally However far outrunning what the most Were then prepared frankly to act upon. We weaker, Saul, who may not hope to be In studying more profoundly than the rest, Are liable to be misunderstood Not seldom, when, through meditation deep And painful, we arrive to see somewhat Beyond the common, and propound advice Startling, because some stages in advance Of the conclusions less laborious minds Reach and stop at contented—for a while, But which mere halting-places on the road Prove in the end, and not the final goal. You probably remember, when I told The council that some good judicious guile Was what was needed, not one voice spoke up To second my suggestion. Very well, The lagging rear of wisdom has since then Moved bravely up to step with me, and now We walk along abreast harmoniously Upon the very road I pointed out; 'Guile' is the word with all the Sanhedrim. "But stay, you may perhaps not be apprised Exactly of the current state of things— You have kept yourself, you know, a bit retired Under the circumstances, all admit— Well, we have made some progress; I myself, To imitate your lack of modesty And don the egotistic, I myself Have not been idle; all in fact is now Adjusted on a plan of compromise, My own invention, everybody pleased. We shall dispose of Stephen for you, Saul: Council; Stephen arrested and arraigned; Production of effective testimony; A hearing of the accused; commotion raised, While he is speaking, to help on his zeal; Then, at the proper point, some heated phrase Of his let slip, a sudden rush of all Upon him with a cry of 'Blasphemy!'— Impulse of passionate enthusiasm, You know, premeditated with much care— And he is stoned; which makes an end of him. Such is the outline; not precisely what I could have wished, a little too much noise, The Mattathias tinge in it too strong— Still, everything considered, fairly good. The moment favors; for the very fume Has put it out of breath; nay, for the nonce, The wind sits, such at least my hope is, veered And shifted points enough about to bear A touch of generous violence from us; Then, as for those our rulers, they connive. "You see I have been open to admit Ideas the very opposite of my own. I am not one to haggle for a point Simply because it happened to be mine. The end, the end, is what we seek; the means Signifies nothing to the wise. 'Let us Be wise,' as our friend Nicodemus said, That day, with so much gnomic wisdom couched In affable cohortative, as who Should say encouragingly, 'Go to, good friends, Let us be gods'; wisdom and godship come, As everybody knows, with equal ease Indifferently, through simple conative, 'Let us,' and so forth, and the thing is done." This voluble and festive cynicism, Taking fresh head again and yet again, At intervals, to flow an endless stream, His vulgarly-presumed familiar airs And leer of mutual understanding, felt Rather than seen, upon his countenance; The gurgling glee of self-complacency That purred, one long susurrus, through his talk; The insufferable assumption tacitly Implied that human virtue was a jest At which the wise between themselves might grin Nor hide their grin with a decorous veil; These things in his unwelcome guest, traits all Inseparably adhering to the man, Or fibre of his nature, Saul recoiled From, and revolted at, habitually: They rendered Shimei's very neighborhood An insupportable disgust to him. Still did some fascination Shimei owned, Perhaps a show of wit in mockery, Playing upon a momentary mood Of uncharacteristic helplessness in Saul (A humor too of wilfulness and spite Against himself displacent with himself That made him hold his sore and quivering pride Hard to the goad that hurt it) keep him mute, "Well, as I said, friend Saul, I had no pride To carry an opinion of my own; The scheme I brooded was a compromise. I plume myself upon a certain skill I have, knack I should call it, in this line. I like a pretty piece of joinery In plot, such match of motley odds and ends As tickles you with sense of happy hit, And here you have it. See, I take a bit Of magisterial statesmanship to start With—go to Rome, as Caiaphas advised, Though not quite on his errand; Rome agrees To wink, while we indulge ourselves in what To us will be self-rule resumed, to her, A spasm of our JudÆan savagery. Thus is the way made eligibly clear For brother Mattathias with those stones He raves about on all occasions—rubbed Smooth, they must be, as David's from the brook, With constant wear in Mattathias' hands! Was it not grim to hear him talk that day? His dream of MaccabÆan blood aboil Made him a monomaniac on this point; He sees before him visionary stones, Imponderable stones torment his hands; Give him his chance, have him at last let fly A real stone, a hard one, at somebody, Who knows? it might bring Mattathias round. Stephen at any rate shall be his man, His corpus vile, as our masters say— Fair game of turn and turn about for him, Dog, to have handled you so roughly, Saul! Trick of Beelzebub, no manner of doubt. "But here I loiter, while you burn of course To hear what figure you yourself may cut In my brave patchwork scheme of compromise. I modestly adjoin myself to Saul, And so we two go in together, paired— A little of your logic let into A little of my guile, and a fine fit." Shimei had counted for a master stroke Of disagreeable humor sure to tell On Saul, the piecing of himself on him In plan, conscious of Saul's antipathy. Lacking the standard in himself wherewith To measure or assay the sentiment Of such as Saul for such as Shimei. Saul simply and serenely so despised Shimei, that nothing he should do or say Could change Saul's sentiment to more, or less, Or other, than it constantly abode, The absolute zero of indifference. Half absently, through fits of alien thought, And half with unconfessed concern to know What passed among his fellow-councillors Abroad, a little curious too withal Wondering how any artifice of fraud Could Saul with Shimei combine, to make Such twain seem partners of one policy— So minded, Saul gave ear, while Shimei thus The acrid juices of his humor spilled: "Here is the method of the joinery. You know you put it strongly that the end Of that pretended gospel which they preach, Would be to overturn the Jewish state, Abolishing Moses, and extinguishing Really sonorous rhetoric it was, That passage, Saul, and it deserved to win; But who can win against Beelzebub? Logic turned rhetoric is my idea Of eloquence, and my idea you Realized; but Stephen, without eloquence, Bore off from you the fruit of eloquence: Never mind, Saul, it was Beelzebub. Let rhetoric now go back to logic; you Demonstrated so inexpugnably The necessary inference contained In Stephen's doctrine, hardly were it guile— Though doubtless you will call it such, you have Your sublimated notions on these points— To say outright that Stephen taught the things You proved implicit in the things he taught; At all events, guile or no guile—in fact, Guile and no guile it is, if closely scanned— Here is the scheme:—We find some blunderheads, Who, primed with method for their blundering, Will misremember and transfer from you To Stephen what you stated on this point. These worthies then shall roundly testify To give the fellow his fair hearing ere His sentence—said fair hearing not of course Eventually to affect said sentence due— Shall, I say, swear that they distinctly heard Stephen set forth that Jesus Nazarene Was going to destroy this place and change The customs Moses gave us; bring about In brief precisely what, with so much force, You showed would surely happen"— "Shimei"— Saul interrupted Shimei again, Surprised into expression by the shock To hear himself mixed up in any way, Of indirection even, in fraud like this— "Shimei, I thought that nothing you could say Would further tempt me into speech to you; But you have broken my bond of self-restraint. Suborning perjury! That well accords With what you slanted at in council once, And what I trusted I had then and there Made clear my scorn of. Shimei, hear—I set My heel upon this thing and once for all Grind it into the dust." Promptly leered Shimei, interrupting Saul; "The thing goes forward just the same; you set It under foot—in your rhetorical way; I, in my practical way, set it on foot; No mutual interference, each well pleased. "B
ut, seriously, Saul, you overwork The idea of conscience. What is conscience? Mere Self-will assuming virtuous airs. A term Cajoles you into making it a point Of moral obligation to be stiff. Limber up, Saul, and be adjustable. Capacity of taking several points Of view at will is good. For instance, now, Probably Stephen may, at various times, Himself have stated quite explicitly What your rhetorical logic showed to be Inextricably held as inference In his harangues. Take it so, Saul, if so Render your conscience easier; I myself Highly enjoy my easy conscience. Still, Nothing could be more natural than that some, Hearers non-critical, you know, should mix Quite honestly swear falsely—to the gain Of truth. And to whose loss? Stephen's, perhaps, But other's, none. So, salve your conscience, Saul— Which somehow you must learn, and soon, to do; Unless you mean to play obstructionist, Instead of coadjutor, in the work You, with good motive, but with scurvy luck, Set about doing late so lustily. Conscience itself is to be sacrificed, At need, to serve the cause of righteousness. What is it but egregious egotism To obtrude, forsooth, a point of conscience, when You jeopard general interests thereby? One's conscience is a private matter; let Your conscience wince a little, if need be, In order that the public good be served. That is true generosity. 'Let us Be just,' said Nicodemus; good, say I, But in this matter of our consciences, Let us go further and be generous." As one who turns a stopcock and arrests A flow of water that need never cease, Of matter than at first that might be speech. With indescribable smirk, and cynic sneer Conveyed, sirocco breath of blight to faith In virtue and in good, he went away, Cheering himself that he had somewhat chilled Within the breast of that young Pharisee The ardor of conviction, and of hope Fed by conviction,—but still more that he Had probed and hurt the festering wounds of pride. Saul's first relief to be alone again, Rid of that nauseous presence, presently Was followed by depression and relapse From his instinctive tension to resist The unnerving spell of Shimei's influence. Saul found that in the teeth of his contempt For Shimei, absolute in measure, nay, By reason of that contempt, he had conceived Shame and chagrin beyond his strength to bear. That Shimei, such as Shimei, should have dared To visit Saul, and drill and drill his ears, With indefatigable screw of tongue Sinking a shaft through which to drench and drown This argued fall indeed for him from what He lately was, from what he hoped to be, Far more, in popular repute. The sting That Shimei purposed subtly to infix, With that malicious irony and taunt Recurrent, the intentional affront, All of it, failed, blunted and turned in point Against the safe impenetrable mail Of Saul's contempt for Shimei. But that Which Shimei meant not, nor dreamed, but was, Went through and through Saul's double panoply, Found permeable now, of pride and scorn, And wilted him with self-disparagement. He marvelled at himself how he had not, At first forthputting of that impudence, Stormed the wretch dumb, with hurricane outburst Of passionate scorn; a quick revulsion then, And Saul was chafing that he had so far Grace of rebuff vouchsafed, and honest heat, To creature lacking natural sense to feel Repudiation. Comfort none he found, No refuge from the persecuting though With thinking, "If I failed, I failed at least Not for myself, but God; I strove for God." But, ceaselessly, the image of himself, Humiliated, swam between to blur His vision of God. He could not cease to see Saul ever, in the mirror of his mind, And ever Stephen shadowing Saul's fair fame. |
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