Lofts, Norah - How Far To Bethlehem by How Far To Bethlehem

Author:How Far To Bethlehem [Bethlehem, How Far To]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Caspar looked at his two companions and thought howpleasant it would be to hate them; the old man, so physically inexhaustible, with all his gabble about stars and his innate arrogance; the black man, so emasculate and servile. Yet there they were, his left hand and his right. Without them he could not ask for so little as a cup of water.

“What you saw,” Melchior said to Balthazar, ‘could have been the gateway to a Palace. Perhaps with your real eyes you have never seen one. I have seen many, with great gateways and towers and turrets, easily to be mistaken for cities….”

“With my real eyes I have seen palaces. In Egypt, in Tyre … places that you perhaps have never heard of. Believe me, I know a palace from a city as you know a radish from a melon. And I saw us, dressed just as we are and riding the camels we ride, passing into the gates of a city. I know,” Balthazar said, with the humility that has power because, being so low it cannot be struck down, ‘that you ridicule my vision. But I beg you, ask yourself; but for that vision, which brought me to you, where now would you be?”

“Lost and penniless, in a strange land,” Melchior said with equal humility.

“That I admit, and so, when he understands, will he. But I still say that Jerusalem is not my goal and I am positive that to go into Jerusalem will not only be a wicked waste of time, but, because of the waste, dangerous to the child.”

“Now I beg you to consider,” Balthazar said, ‘you look at the stars and see a child, connected with a star. I—dreaming, or tranced, what you will, see a star and the gateway of a great city. In ordinary terms, which of us, I ask you, carries most weight? He’—he nodded towards Caspar—‘has seen nothing, but he has paid and paid and paid. And he wishes, you tell me, to see Jerusalem. Could we not oblige him?”

“It is the waste of time,” Melchior said.

“That is all I deplore. You have been useful, he has been useful. I would gladly oblige you both. If you asked my right hand I would lay it on the block, willingly. But for nine months now I have followed this star and it does not, I swear, lead to Jerusalem. And time matters.”

“What are you gabbling about?” Caspar asked in the voice that often called the Five Hundred to attention. Melchior told him, shortly, honestly. And that gave Balthazar time to think up a really clinching argument.

“Suppose,” he said to Melchior, ‘you had not decided to halt at that inn where you found me. There was the twilight hour left; you could have ridden on, and five miles along the road found a better inn. Then you would have missed me and by now every one of his rose jekkals would have been spent, people cheating you as they did. Is it not

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