The Sad Shepherd by Henry Van Dyke
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THE SAD SHEPHERD
[Illustration]
THE SAD SHEPHERD
A CHRISTMAS STORY
BY
HENRY VAN DYKE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1911
Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Published October, 1911
THE SAD SHEPHERD
I
DARKNESS
Out of the Valley of Gardens, where a film of new-fallen snow lay
smooth as feathers on the breast of a dove, the ancient Pools of
Solomon looked up into the night sky with dark, tranquil eyes,
wide-open and passive, reflecting the crisp stars and the small, round
moon. The full springs, overflowing on the hill-side, melted their way
through the field of white in winding channels; and along their course
the grass was green even in the dead of winter.
But the sad shepherd walked far above the friendly valley, in a region
where ridges of gray rock welted and scarred the back of the earth,
like wounds of half-forgotten strife and battles long ago. The solitude
was forbidding and disquieting; the keen air that searched the wanderer
had no pity in it; and the myriad glances of the night were curiously
cold.
His flock straggled after him. The sheep, weather-beaten and dejected,
followed the path with low heads nodding from side to side, as if they
had traveled far and found little pasture. The black, lop-eared goats
leaped upon the rocks, restless and ravenous, tearing down the tender
branches and leaves of the dwarf oaks and wild olives. They reared up
against the twisted trunks and crawled and scrambled among the boughs.
It was like a company of gray downcast friends and a troop of merry
little black devils following the sad shepherd afar off.
He walked looking on the ground, paying small heed to them. Now and
again, when the sound of pattering feet and panting breath and the
rustling and rending among the copses fell too far behind, he drew out
his shepherd's pipe and blew a strain of music, shrill and plaintive,
quavering and lamenting through the hollow night. He waited while the
troops of gray and black scuffled and bounded and trotted near to him.
Then he dropped the pipe into its place again and strode forward,
looking on the ground.
The fitful, shivery wind that rasped the hill-top, fluttered the rags
of his long mantle of Tyrian blue, torn by thorns and stained by
travel. The rich tunic of striped silk beneath it was worn thin, and
the girdle about his loins had lost all its ornaments of silver and
jewels. His curling hair hung down dishevelled under a turban of fine
linen, in which the gilt threads were frayed and tarnished; and his
shoes of soft leather were broken by the road. On his brown fingers the
places of the vanished rings were still marked in white skin. He
carried not the long staff nor the heavy nail-studded rod of the
shepherd, but a slender stick of carved cedar battered and scratched by
hard usage, and the handle, which must once have been of precious
metal, was missing.
He was a strange figure for that lonely place and that humble
occupation-a branch of faded beauty from some royal garden tossed by
rude winds into the wilderness-a pleasure craft adrift, buffeted and
broken, on rough seas.
But he seemed to have passed beyond caring. His young face was frayed
and threadbare as his garments. The splendor of the moonlight flooding
the wild world meant as little to him as the hardness of the rugged
track which he followed. He wrapped his tattered mantle closer around
him, and strode ahead, looking on the ground.
As the path dropped from the summit of the ridge toward the Valley of
Mills and passed among huge broken rocks, three men sprang at him from
the shadows. He lifted his stick, but let it fall again, and a strange
ghost of a smile twisted his face as they gripped him and threw him
down.
"You are rough beggars," he said. "Say what you want, you are welcome
to it."
"Your money, dog of a courtier," they muttered fiercely; "give us your
golden collar, Herod's hound, quick, or you die!"
"The quicker the better," he answered, closing his eyes.
The bewildered flock of sheep and goats, gathered in a silent ring,
stood at gaze while the robbers fumbled over their master.
"This is a stray dog," said one, "he has lost his collar, there is not
even the price of a mouthful of wine on him. Shall we kill him and
leave him for the vultures?" "What have the vultures done for us," said
another, "that we should feed them? Let us take his cloak and drive off
his flock, and leave him to die in his own time."
With a kick and a curse they left him. He opened his eyes and lay quiet
for a moment, with his twisted smile, watching the stars.
"You creep like snails," he said. "I thought you had marked my time
tonight. But not even that is given to me for nothing. I must pay for
all, it seems."
Far away, slowly scattering and receding, he heard the rustling and
bleating of his frightened flock as the robbers, running and shouting,
tried to drive them over the hills. Then he stood up and took the
shepherd's pipe, a worthless bit of reed, from the breast of his tunic.
He blew again that plaintive, piercing air, sounding it out over the
ridges and distant thickets. It seemed to have neither beginning nor
end; a melancholy, pleading tune that searched forever after something
lost.
While he played, the sheep and the goats, slipping away from their
captors by roundabout ways, hiding behind the laurel bushes, following
the dark gullies, leaping down the broken cliffs, came circling back to
him, one after another; and as they came, he interrupted his playing,
now and then, to call them by name. When they were nearly all
assembled, he went down swiftly toward the lower valley, and they
followed him, panting. At the last crook of the path on the steep
hillside a straggler came after him along the cliff. He looked up and
saw it outlined against the sky. Then he saw it leap, and slip, and
fall beyond the path into a deep cleft.
"Little fool," he said, "fortune is kind to you! You have escaped from
the big trap of life. What? You are crying for help? You are still in
the trap? Then I must go down to you, little fool, for I am a fool too.
But why I must do it, I know no more than you know."
He lowered himself quickly and perilously into the cleft, and found the
creature with its leg broken and bleeding. It was not a sheep but a
young goat. He had no cloak to wrap it in, but he took off his turban
and unrolled it, and bound it around the trembling animal. Then he
climbed back to the path and strode on at the head of his flock,
carrying the little black kid in his arms.
There were houses in the Valley of the Mills; and in some of them
lights were burning; and the drone of the mill-stones, where the women
were still grinding, came out into the night like the humming of drowsy
bees. As the women heard the pattering and bleating of the flock, they
wondered who was passing so late. One of them, in a house where there
was no mill but many lights, came to the door and looked out laughing,
her face and bosom bare.
But the sad shepherd did not stay. His long shadow and the confused
mass of lesser shadows behind him drifted down the white moonlight,
past the yellow bars of lamplight that gleamed from the doorways. It
seemed as if he were bound to go somewhere and would not delay.
Yet with all his haste to be gone, it was plain that he thought little
of where he was going. For when he came to the foot of the valley,
where the paths divided, he stood between them staring vacantly,
without a desire to turn him this way or that. The imperative of choice
halted him like a barrier. The balance of his mind hung even because
both scales were empty. He could act, he could go, for his strength was
untouched; but he could not choose, for his will was broken within him.
The path to the left went up toward the little town of Bethlehem, with
huddled roofs and walls in silhouette along the double-crested hill. It
was dark and forbidding as a closed fortress. The sad shepherd looked
at it with indifferent eyes; there was nothing there to draw him. The
path to the right wound through rock-strewn valleys toward the Dead
Sea. But rising out of that crumpled wilderness, a mile or two away,
the smooth white ribbon of a chariot-road lay upon the flank of a
cone-shaped mountain and curled in loops toward its peak. There the
great cone was cut squarely off, and the levelled summit was capped by a
palace of marble, with round towers at the corners and flaring beacons
along the walls; and the glow of an immense fire, hidden in the central
court-yard, painted a false dawn in the eastern sky. All down the
clean-cut mountain slopes, on terraces and blind arcades, the lights
flashed from lesser pavilions and pleasure-houses.
It was the secret orchard of Herod and his friends, their
trysting-place with the spirits of mirth and madness. They called it the
Mountain of the Little Paradise. Rich gardens were there; and the cool
water from the Pools of Solomon plashed in the fountains; and trees of
the knowledge of good and evil fruited blood-red and ivory-white above
them; and smooth, curving, glistening shapes, whispering softly of
pleasure, lay among the flowers and glided behind the trees. All this
was now hidden in the dark. Only the strange bulk of the mountain, a
sharp black pyramid girdled and crowned with fire, loomed across the
night-a mountain once seen never to be forgotten.
The sad shepherd remembered it well. He looked at it with the eyes of a
child who has been in hell. It burned him from afar. Turning neither to
the right nor to the left, he walked without a path straight out upon
the plain of Bethlehem, still whitened in the hollows and on the
sheltered side of its rounded hillocks by the veil of snow.
He faced a wide and empty world. To the west in sleeping Bethlehem, to
the east in flaring Herodium, the life of man was infinitely far away
from him. Even the stars seemed to withdraw themselves against the
blue-black of the sky. They diminished and receded till they were like
pin-holes in the vault above him. The moon in mid-heaven shrank into a
bit of burnished silver, hard and glittering, immeasurably remote. The
ragged, inhospitable ridges of Tekoa lay stretched in mortal slumber
along the horizon, and between them he caught a glimpse of the sunken
Lake of Death, darkly gleaming in its deep bed. There was no movement,
no sound, on the plain where he walked, except the soft-padding feet of
his dumb, obsequious flock.
He felt an endless isolation strike cold to his heart, against which he
held the limp body of the wounded kid, wondering the while, with a
half-contempt for his own foolishness, why he took such trouble to save
a tiny scrap of the worthless tissue which is called life.
Even when a man does not know or care where he is going, if he steps
onward he will get there. In an hour or more of walking over the plain
the sad shepherd came to a sheep-fold of gray stones with a rude tower
beside it. The fold was full of sheep, and at the foot of the tower a
little fire of thorns was burning, around which four shepherds were
crouching, wrapped in their thick woollen cloaks.
As the stranger approached they looked up, and one of them rose quickly
to his feet, grasping his knotted club. But when they saw the flock
that followed the sad shepherd, they stared at each other and said: "It
is one of us, a keeper of sheep. But how comes he here in this raiment?
It is what men wear in kings' houses."
"No," said the one who was standing, "it is what they wear when they
have been thrown out of them. Look at the rags. He may be a thief and a
robber with his stolen flock."
"Salute him when he comes near," said the oldest shepherd. "Are we not
four to one? We have nothing to fear from a ragged traveller. Speak him
fair. It is the will of God-and it costs nothing."
"Peace be with you, brother," cried the youngest shepherd; "may your
mother and father be blessed."
"May your heart be enlarged," the stranger answered, "and may all your
families be more blessed than mine, for I have none."
"A homeless man," said the old shepherd, "has either been robbed by his
fellows, or punished by God."
"I do not know which it was," answered the stranger; "the end is the
same, as you see."
"By your speech you come from Galilee. Where are you going? What are
you seeking here?"
"I was going nowhere, my masters; but it was cold on the way there, and
my feet turned to your fire."
"Come then, if you are a peaceable man, and warm your feet with us.
Heat is a good gift; divide it and it is not less. But you shall have
bread and salt too, if you will."
"May your hospitality enrich you. I am your unworthy guest. But my
flock?"
"Let your flock shelter by the south wall of the fold: there is good
picking there and no wind. Come you and sit with us."
So they all sat down by the fire; and the sad shepherd ate of their
bread, but sparingly, like a man to whom hunger brings a need but no
joy in the satisfying of it; and the others were silent for a proper
time, out of courtesy. Then the oldest shepherd spoke:
"My name is Zadok the son of Eliezer, of Bethlehem. I am the chief
shepherd of the flocks of the Temple, which are before you in the fold.
These are my sister's sons, Jotham, and Shama, and Nathan: their father
Elkanah is dead; and but for these I am a childless man."
"My name," replied the stranger, "is Ammiel the son of Jochanan, of the
city of Bethsaida, by the Sea of Galilee, and I am a fatherless man."
"It is better to be childless than fatherless," said Zadok, "yet it is
the will of God that children should bury their fathers. When did the
blessed Jochanan die?"
"I know not whether he be dead or alive. It is three years since I
looked upon his face or had word of him."
"You are an exile then? he has cast you off?"
"It was the other way," said Ammiel, looking on the ground.
At this the shepherd Shama, who had listened with doubt in his face,
started up in anger. "Pig of a Galilean," he cried, "despiser of
parents! breaker of the law! When I saw you coming I knew you for
something vile. Why do you darken the night for us with your presence?
You have reviled him who begot you. Away, or we stone you!"
Ammiel did not answer or move.
The twisted smile passed over his bowed face again as he waited to know
the shepherds' will with him, even as he had waited for the robbers.
But Zadok lifted his hand.
"Not so hasty, Shama-ben-Elkanah. You also break the law by judging a
man unheard. The rabbis have told us that there is a tradition of the
elders-a rule as holy as the law itself-that a man may deny his father
in a certain way without sin. It is a strange rule, and it must be very
holy or it would not be so strange. But this is the teaching of the
elders: a son may say of anything for which his father asks him-a
sheep, or a measure of corn, or a field, or a purse of silver-'it is
Corban, a gift that I have vowed unto the Lord;' and so his father
shall have no more claim upon him. Have you said 'Corban' to your
father, Ammiel-ben-Jochanan? Have you made a vow unto the Lord?"
"I have said 'Corban,'" answered Ammiel, lifting his face, still
shadowed by that strange smile, "but it was not the Lord who heard my
vow."
"Tell us what you have done," said the old man sternly, "for we will
neither judge you, nor shelter you, unless we hear your story."
"There is nothing in it," replied Ammiel indifferently. "It is an old
story. But if you are curious you shall hear it. Afterward you shall
deal with me as you will."
So the shepherds, wrapped in their warm cloaks, sat listening with
grave faces and watchful, unsearchable eyes, while Ammiel in his
tattered silk sat by the sinking fire of thorns and told his tale with
a voice that had no room for hope or fear-a cool, dead voice that spoke
only of things ended.
II.
NIGHTFIRE
"In my father's house I was the second son. My brother was honored and
trusted in all things. He was a prudent man and profitable to the
household. All that he counselled was done, all that he wished he had.
My place was a narrow one. There was neither honor nor joy in it, for
it was filled with daily tasks and rebukes. No one cared for me. My
mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed
in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a
beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull
life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There was nothing in it.
"I went to my father and claimed my share of the inheritance. He was
rich. He gave it to me. It did not impoverish him and it made me free.
I said to him 'Corban,' and shook the dust of Bethsaida from my feet.
"I went out to look for mirth and love and joy and all that is pleasant
to the eyes and sweet to the taste. If a god made me, thought I, he
made me to live, and the pride of life was strong in my heart and in my
flesh. My vow was offered to that well-known god. I served him in
Jerusalem, in Alexandria, in Rome, for his altars are everywhere and
men worship him openly or in secret.
"My money and youth made me welcome to his followers, and I spent them
both freely as if they could never come to an end. I clothed myself in
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. The wine of
Cyprus and the dishes of Egypt and Syria were on my table. My dwelling
was crowded with merry guests. They came for what I gave them. Their
faces were hungry and their soft touch was like the clinging of
leeches. To them I was nothing but money and youth; no longer a beast
of burden-a beast of pleasure. There was nothing in it.
"From the richest fare my heart went away empty, and after the wildest
banquet my soul fell drunk and solitary into sleep.
"Then I thought, Power is better than pleasure. If a man will feast and
revel let him do it with the great. They will favor him, and raise him
up for the service that he renders them. He will obtain place and
authority in the world and gain many friends. So I joined myself to
Herod."
When the sad shepherd spoke this name his listeners drew back front him
as if it were a defilement to hear it. They spat upon the ground and
cursed the Idumean who called himself their king.
"A slave!" Jotham cried, "a bloody tyrant and a slave from Edom! A fox,
a vile beast who devours his own children! God burn him in Gehenna."
The old Zadok picked up a stone and threw it into the darkness, saying
slowly, "I cast this stone on the grave of the Idumean, the blasphemer,
the defiler of the Temple! God send us soon the Deliverer, the Promised
One, the true King of Israel!" Ammiel made no sign, but went on with
his story.
"Herod used me well,-for his own purpose. He welcomed me to his palace
and his table, and gave me a place among his favorites. He was so much
my friend that he borrowed my money. There were many of the nobles of
Jerusalem with him, Sadducees, and proselytes from Rome and Asia, and
women from everywhere. The law of Israel was observed in the open
court, when the people were watching. But in the secret feasts there
was no law but the will of Herod, and many deities were served but no
god was worshipped. There the captains and the princes of Rome
consorted with the high-priest and his sons by night; and there was
much coming and going by hidden ways. Everybody was a borrower or a
lender, a buyer or a seller of favors. It was a house of diligent
madness. There was nothing in it.
"In the midst of this whirling life a great need of love came upon me
and I wished to hold some one in my inmost heart.
"At a certain place in the city, within closed doors, I saw a young
slave-girl dancing. She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple;
she danced like a reed in the wind; but her eyes were weary as death,
and her white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled, and the men
laughed at her. She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that
she would fain be rid of such a heavy-footed slave. I paid the price
and took her to my dwelling.
"Her name was Tamar. She was a daughter of Lebanon. I robed her in silk
and broidered linen. I nourished her with tender care so that beauty
came upon her like the blossoming of an almond tree; she was a garden
enclosed, breathing spices. Her eyes were like doves behind her veil,
her lips were a thread of scarlet, her neck was a tower of ivory, and
her breasts were as two fawns which feed among the lilies. She was
whiter than milk, and more rosy than the flower of the peach, and her
dancing was like the flight of a bird among the branches. So I loved
her.
"She lay in my bosom as a clear stone that one has bought and polished
and set in fine gold at the end of a golden chain. Never was she glad
at my coming or sorry at my going. Never did she give me anything
except what I took from her. There was nothing in it.
"Now whether Herod knew of the jewel that I kept in my dwelling I
cannot tell. It was sure that he had his spies in all the city, and
himself walked the streets by night in a disguise. On a certain day he
sent for me, and had me into his secret chamber, professing great love
toward me and more confidence than in any man that lived. So I must go
to Rome for him, bearing a sealed letter and a private message to
Caesar. All my goods would be left safely in the hands of the king, my
friend, who would reward me double. There was a certain place of high
authority at Jerusalem which Caesar would gladly bestow on a Jew who
had done him a service. This mission would commend me to him. It was a
great occasion, suited to my powers. Thus Herod fed me with fair
promises, and I ran his errand. There was nothing in it.
"I stood before Caesar and gave him the letter. He read it and laughed,
saying that a prince with an incurable hunger is a servant of value to
an emperor. Then he asked me if there was nothing sent with the letter.
I answered that there was no gift, but a message for his private ear.
He drew me aside and I told him that Herod begged earnestly that his
dear son, Antipater, might be sent back in haste from Rome to
Palestine, for the king had great need of him.
"At this Caesar laughed again. 'To bury him, I suppose,' said he, 'with
his brothers, Alexander and Aristobulus! Truly, it is better to be
Herod's swine than his son. Tell the old fox he may catch his own
prey.' With this he turned from me and I withdrew unrewarded, to make
my way back, as best I could with an empty purse, to Palestine. I had
seen the Lord of the World. There was nothing in it.
"Selling my rings and bracelets I got passage in a trading ship for
Joppa. There I heard that the king was not in Jerusalem, at his Palace
of the Upper City, but had gone with his friends to make merry for a
month on the Mountain of the Little Paradise. On that hill-top over
against us, where the lights are flaring to-night, in the banquet-hall
where couches are spread for a hundred guests, I found Herod."
The listening shepherds spat upon the ground again, and Jotham
muttered, "May the worms that devour his flesh never die!" But Zadok
whispered, "We wait for the Lord's salvation to come out of Zion." And
the sad shepherd, looking with fixed eyes at the firelit mountain far
away, continued his story:
"The king lay on his ivory couch, and the sweat of his disease was
heavy upon him, for he was old, and his flesh was corrupted. But his
hair and his beard were dyed and perfumed and there was a wreath of
roses on his head. The hall was full of nobles and great men, the sons
of the high-priest were there, and the servants poured their wine in
cups of gold. There was a sound of soft music; and all the men were
watching a girl who danced in the middle of the hall; and the eyes of
Herod were fiery, like the eyes of a fox.
"The dancer was Tamar. She glistened like the snow on Lebanon, and the
redness of her was ruddier than a pomegranate, and her dancing was like
the coiling of white serpents. When the dance was ended her attendants
threw a veil of gauze over her and she lay among her cushions, half
covered with flowers, at the feet of the king.
"Through the sound of clapping hands and shouting, two slaves led me
behind the couch of Herod. His eyes narrowed as they fell upon me. I
told him the message of Caesar, making it soft, as if it were a word
that suffered him to catch his prey. He stroked his beard softly and
his look fell on Tamar. 'I have caught it,' he murmured; 'by all the
gods, I have always caught it. And my dear son, Antipater, is coming
home of his own will. I have lured him, he is mine.'
"Then a look of madness crossed his face and he sprang up, with
frothing lips, and struck at me. 'What is this,' he cried, 'a spy, a
servant of my false son, a traitor in my banquet-hall! Who are you?' I
knelt before him, protesting that he must know me; that I was his
friend, his messenger; that I had left all my goods in his hands; that
the girl who had danced for him was mine. At this his face changed
again and he fell back on his couch, shaken with horrible laughter.
'Yours!' he cried, 'when was she yours? What is yours? I know you now,
poor madman. You are Ammiel, a crazy shepherd from Galilee, who
troubled us some time since. Take him away, slaves. He has twenty sheep
and twenty goats among my flocks at the foot of the mountain. See to it
that he gets them, and drive him away.'