It seemed that he had only slept for a few minutes when some one shook him by the shoulder and he awoke to a hushed, multitudinous noise which seemed to fill the whole desert. It was the sound of hundreds of muffled footsteps churning the sand, the low muttering of a great company, the snuffling and breathing of camels, and the creaking of their harness and loads. The sky was cold and bright as polished steel. Malchus saw with amazement that it was not more than an hour from the dawn. He stood up, feeling stiff, weary, and very old. A great blur of shadowy forms moved against the clear sky and, like the distant rocks and hills of an unstable world, the fantastic shapes of camels swayed above them. The air was sharp and searching: he could see the breath of the camels smoking upward in a thin fume.
With the others who had crossed the river, he took his place in the rear of the shadowy host, and before they had marched an hour the dawn broke like a sudden summer on their right flank and their left was accompanied by a long saw-edged shadow like a mountain range that flowed and undulated in pace with them. Too soon upon the dawn came the torrid sunlight, burning up the morning coolness and adding another torment to each suffering life in the great sinuous retinue. As they went on their way, new companies joined them, and before long Malchus and his companions were no longer in the rear, but in the middle of the line of march. Noon came, burdening them with its relentless pressure, and Malchus, as in his lonely desert wanderings, fell into that monotonous rhythm of movement in which the body labors on wearily of its own accord and the mind is lulled into a stupor.
Suddenly a tremor ran through the company, a spasm of doubt, apprehension, then of sharp fear. Malchus thrilled to it with the rest and, seeing many heads turned eastward, he turned his eyes in that direction and saw a great cloud of dust that moved toward them like a sandstorm. He watched it keenly, anxiously, till it grew to a company of white-cloaked riders. Rapidly they came nearer and nearer still. They were Arabs. Perched on their long-legged camels, they crouched eagerly forward. Their long cloaks streamed behind them. Soon they were so close that if they had been going to cross the course of the caravan they would have swung to the right or left; but still they swept on, straight for the center. Then suddenly the caravan broke into three. The van detached itself from the rest and flew cowering forward; the rear turned and shrank backward on its tracks. A small company in the middle, which included Malchus and his companions and a dozen laden camels, halted, terrified and bewildered by its sudden isolation. The white-cloaked riders swept round them in a circle and closed in upon them.
Malchus awaited the outcome like one in a trance. Was this, he wondered numbly, God's retribution for his cowardly flight from the ordeal appointed by Him? Without hope and without fear he watched some of the Arabs dismount and move among the captured company, carrying drawn swords in their hands. Soon an Arab approached him also, and he was led away to where four camels lay waiting. The small heads with their great eyes and haughty muzzles moved, scornfully inquisitive, on the top of the long bird-like necks. The Arab stopped before the first and signed to Malchus to mount. A figure wrapped in a black cloak was already in the saddle. Malchus climbed up behind it. The figure did not stir, and Malchus, too, neither stirred nor spoke, waiting idly for what should happen.
When all the prisoners were mounted and a party of Arabs had taken charge of the captured camels, one of the Arabs came up and beat up the four grumbling beasts and the company began to move. The van and the rear of the caravan, which had fled forward and backward, were no longer in sight. They had vanished among the rocks and sandhills.
Malchus, looking for the sun, saw that they were now traveling due east. At first they moved slowly, but soon the leaders broke into a canter and Malchus and his unknown companion were flung against each other. The violent swaying began to give him great pain, and, seeing that his companion was also distressed, Malchus put his arms about him that they might steady each other. Thus bound together, they were able to avoid the swaying and buffeting which had tormented them and endangered their safety when apart. The thought of Alexandria, which, when he had joined the caravan, had grown for Malchus into something beautifully and terribly real, had shrunk back now into a dream. Perhaps he would never go there now, and his mind effortlessly began to picture the city—the streets, his parents' house, his own house, and that little door, so piercingly familiar, which opened into Helena's garden. He paused at the door, hesitated; something—he could not remember what—held him forcibly back, but he shook off the restraint and opened the door. He went in quickly and secretly, shutting the door behind him, and stood breathless at the beauty of the place, at the gentle stirring chequer of sunlight and leaf shadows, the flowers drooping in clusters from the trees and swelling in mounds of blended colors from the grass, the fountains—silver ghosts half-seen among the trees—filling the place with the cooling rustle of water. He ventured forward upon a grassy walk, but figures moved among the trees and he hid himself till they had passed. "Where is she?" he asked himself with ecstatic fear, and just as he was going to move again he saw that Helena was watching him through the boughs. She came toward him, her eyes shining with pleasure, and he stood waiting. A voice called him loudly and commandingly from the garden gate. He trembled, for he knew that it was the voice of God; but he lingered like a disobedient child and Helena caught him by the shoulders. Then, submitting wilfully to his desire as he had done when the cane-gatherer came to his cell, he threw his arms around Helena, whispering into her ear little passionate phrases, deliciously aware of the smallness and suppleness of the body in his arms. Then a startling rush of wind in his ears and a gust of sand in his face, and he awoke to the flowerless desert and the weary lurching of the camel. But still he was no more than half awake; still his mind thrilled to the sweetness of his meeting with Helena, his arms still felt that soft weight of her body. Though a man is not responsible before God for his dreams, was it not deadly sin to take delight in the memory of them? But this was more than a memory. He still held the soft body in his arms. He cried out in fear and the cry roused him from his drowsiness. The body that he clasped was the body of his fellow captive. He shuddered and loosed his grasp, as if what he clasped were a thing unclean. But at his cry and the loosing of his arms his companion turned, and at the same moment another gust of wind blew the cloak from the muffled face. Malchus saw with horror and despair that the face looking at him was the face of a woman.
Was she an evil spirit in human form? Or was it that God had rescued him from his cowardly flight and his desperate attempt to return to Alexandria, and brought him again, with an inexorable indulgence, face to face with his sin? Malchus did not know; but he knew that he was in dire jeopardy and he prayed from his heart, making the holy sign at the end of each prayer. And still, despite his prayers, the woman remained on the saddle in front of him, so that he knew she was no demon, but a creature of flesh and blood like himself. The speed of their going had slackened to a walk, but now again the leaders of the company urged on the lurching beasts and again Malchus and his companion clung together for safety. And Malchus cried to the soul within him: "O my soul, such is the outcome of your attempt to escape the judgment of God and return to the life which you had cast off."
Chapter
Fourteen
Late in the evening of the second day, when the sky was already curdling into darkness and those sharp points of brightness which are called the stars, they halted. They had reached the Arab encampment. A dark cluster of tents showed square and angular on the gray plain and the air was full of the mournful bleating of the flocks which had been brought in from pasture. Then the same Arab came and made their camel kneel down, and Malchus and the woman stepped stiffly into the sand and lay down apart to rest in the place appointed for them.
Soon after the dawn Malchus awoke. A tall figure stood beside him, who ordered him to rise up and follow him. It was the sheikh of the company who had captured them, and he led Malchus toward the largest of the tents and, lifting the curtain of the doorway, took him inside. A woman crouched on the floor, preparing food. The sheikh told Malchus that this was his mistress whom he must obey, and Malchus, being defenseless, bowed himself down before the Arab woman. Then food of curdled camel's milk was given to him for himself and the woman who had ridden with him, and he returned to the place where he had slept. Of the rest of the captives he saw nothing, and, being alone with the woman among a strange people, Malchus was forced to converse with her daily, to the peril of his soul. But he did not allow his eyes to fall upon her, for he had seen that she was young and beautiful. Her name was Veronica. She was a married woman of his own race. Her husband's house was in Lycopolis, and when she had fallen into the hands of the Arabs she had been traveling to Alexandria; but of her life and circumstances Malchus knew no more, since he forbore to question her or to talk with her more than was needful. She herself spoke no more than he, but when she did so the soft low note of her voice thrilled him, for it was too like the voice of Helena—so like that, whenever she spoke, old memories and old delights woke again in his heart and dreams of Helena troubled his nightly sleep.
After a few days the sheikh led Malchus out and set him in charge of their flock in place of the Arab shepherd who was so old that he could scarcely drag his parched and wearied body as far as the meager pastures where the beasts found a daily sustenance. For two days the old shepherd accompanied Malchus, showing him where the sparse herb sprang among the rocks and thorns, and in the evening when they had returned to the tents he sat with Malchus, teaching him the names of the sheep and goats. Each had its own name and each when called would raise its head and come to the call. The Arabs scorn the shepherd's lot, preferring the monotonous idleness of the camp to the free and open life of the herdsman, and none of them will undertake it except from bare necessity.
But the freedom and peace of the shepherd's life comforted Malchus. He rose with the dawn and led forth the flock, and when they had reached the pasture land the beasts browsed slowly forward till near upon noon, when he called them in to shelter from the torrid heat in the shadows of the rocks or thickets. There he milked a goat or sheep for his midday meal and, having drunk, stretched himself full length in the shade while the sheep stood together with hanging heads and the goats drew apart and lay down to rest. Then, when the breathless urgence of the noon was past, Malchus called them out to pasture again till sunset, when he led them back to the encampment, where the women were waiting to milk the ewes and female goats. Each beast knew the woman that milked it and went of its own accord to the accustomed tent. With the darkness the herd lay down to rest where the horses and camels were gathered about the tents, and the sheep dogs mounted guard through the night, prowling to and fro with frequent snarling and barking. Sometimes a wolf came out of the rocky hills, and at his approach the flock would suddenly shrink together in a panic and the dogs set up a loud baying. Then the shepherd with beating heart leaped up and raised a clamor to drive off the thief; but often, when the night was moonless, a small, agonized bleating was heard in the darkness and, when the light returned, the flock was the less by a lamb. When no green herb remained within a short distance of the camp, Malchus had to lead the flock further afield, and sometimes for many days together they were out in the open desert, since it was too far to return to camp each night. At such times the sheikh used to ride out once in two or three days to see that all was well with the flock.
Malchus was glad of this peaceful occupation. All day he had the solitude that he desired and he was dependent upon no man, for by his labor as shepherd he earned the milk which he drew from the flock for his sustenance. In that high desert country the air was pure and sweet and, except during the burning noon-tide hours, the sun was less fierce than in the lower deserts he had known. His body, under the daily exercise and the healthy diet of milk, grew firm and strong and his sleep was the deep sleep of honest weariness. No visions, good or evil, came to him there. That grim battle ground of the spirit in which he had lived so long, where the difficult pursuit of holiness and the endless struggle against evil were alike an unceasing torment and all earthly things were but the outward manifestation of striving spiritual forces, seemed now a country remote as the moon. He had been carried, it seemed, into a peaceful limbo where all was simple and kindly, and he loved the innocent beasts that answered his call and intrusted themselves to his guidance. Only two things marred his life's serenity—the knowledge that he had failed before the great ordeal of the spirit and had basely withdrawn from God the life he had dedicated to Him, and the unappeasable desire of love which flamed up, still undiminished, in dreams of Helena and the abiding memory of the cane-gatherer which lived on in his mind unexorcised by all his agonies of repentance and prayer. The presence of his fellow captive, Veronica, also disturbed him, and made those unbidden memories more real and vivid than before. But alone in the high desert with his flock he had many days of peace in which it seemed to him that he was not altogether excluded from the mercy of God, and as he led them from patch to patch of the sparse herb or, unsheathing the sword which he carried to guard them against wolves, set himself to cut a bundle of dry thorns for his lonely camp fire, he prayed to God from a full heart for final deliverance.
Yet in other moods, the fear came upon him that the untroubled quiet of his life was not the peace of forgiveness, but the silence of utter exclusion. Perhaps he was no longer tormented by evil spirits or visited by comforting visions because the battle was over and lost and Satan waited, secure of his prey, for the moment of his death. Then horror came upon him and he lay on his face in the dust in the agony of desperation. But those despairing moods were less frequent than the other moods of serenity in which it seemed to him that his life as a shepherd was a blessed respite from the tempestuous life of hermit.
But one evening the sheikh called him to his tent. To reward him for his honest service, he told Malchus, he was resolved to give him the woman Veronica as his wife. "For every man," he said, "has need of a woman to ease his loneliness and to pitch his tent and serve his food." Malchus thrust out protesting hands, declaring that he was a monk and might not marry, and the woman, besides, was married already. But, hearing his generosity scorned, the sheikh's face grew dark with anger and he drew his sword and would have killed Malchus if he had not run for refuge to his mistress, the sheikh's wife, and grasped her hand. Perforce he resigned himself to the sheikh's will and, hearing that he submitted, the sheikh was appeased and a tent was set apart for Malchus and Veronica and they were married after the manner of the Arabs.
But when at the end of the day they had been brought together into the tent and left alone, Malchus turned his face from Veronica and crouched in a corner of the tent. He believed now that the Arabs had been sent to capture him only that his damnation might be the more certain. He was being inescapably drawn to commit once more the sin which had imperiled his immortal soul. But as this thought grew to terrible certainty in his mind it brought with it another—the thought that it was surely Satan, and not God, who had led him back through the wilderness to his cell and shown him the cane-gatherer waiting for him. His sin, indeed, was unforgivable, God had abandoned him from the moment he had committed it. He knew now that all hope was past. The bitterness of death entered into his soul and with a choking sob he bowed his head to the dust. But one thing, at least, he could do, one act to bear witness before God that his soul still desired chastity. Rising from the ground, he drew his sword from its scabbard and turned the point to his heart.
But in the little moonlight that pierced the darkness of the tent the woman saw the gleam of the sword and cried out. The sword slipped from his trembling hands.
"What are you doing?" she cried.
"Do not be afraid," answered Malchus. "I will not harm you."
But Veronica was groping toward him in the dark. She set her foot on the fallen sword. "Tell me," she whispered, "what you were going to do."
No reply came from the motionless figure half seen in the darkness before her. She spoke again:
"Swear to me by Jesus Christ that you will not kill yourself because of me. Rather, if such is your wish, turn your sword against me, for I am as anxious as you to preserve my chastity. I fled even from my lawful husband for the sake of Christ, and when the Arabs captured me I was on my way with the holy woman, Melania, to enter the White Convent which is outside the walls of Alexandria. May we not, then, live together in chastity, loving one another with a spiritual love? I will cover up my face and speak to you only when necessity compels. So we shall escape the sheikh's displeasure, for he will never know that we are not in truth husband and wife."
When Malchus heard these words and perceived the mercy of God, he knelt down in the tent and offered up thanks to Him who is the sinner's salvation. Veronica also prayed in a corner of the tent apart, and when they had made an end they lay down to sleep, for at dawn Malchus would have to go far out into the desert with the flock and Veronica would follow him, leading the ass on which they would load their tent and a few household utensils. In those days the herb was becoming rare and they had to seek it so far afield that the shepherd and his flock were often a whole month away from the Arab camp. But at intervals of three or four days the sheikh, as was his custom, rode out to see that all was well, and, perceiving that Malchus took good care of the flock, he was content.
For many weeks Malchus and Veronica lived together chastely in the sandy solitudes, sharing their single tent and eating together; and although they seldom spoke and Malchus never saw her face, yet he knew that a kindness toward her was growing up in his heart, and, imagining the face that he could not see, he had come to imagine it always as the face of Helena. So day by day, as he sat lonely among the high rocks and tended the grazing beasts, or lay drowsing at noon in the shadow of some great stone or thorn bush, or watched nightly with the prowling sheep dogs under stars which seemed every moment about to shower down in their bright millions on to the dim gray desert, his heart began more and more to turn back with longing toward his cell.
Then his mind grew fruitful with schemes. The sheikh, secure in his confidence in Malchus, never visited them now more often than once in four days, and Malchus began to see that it might be possible for him and Veronica to escape. He knew where the river lay. From the rocky heights above their present grazing-grounds he had seen its thin silvery scroll gleaming far to the west. If they could carry enough food and water for six days they might be able to reach the river and find there a boat or some northward-moving caravan.
One evening, when Veronica had finished milking the ewes, Malchus, returning to their tent, found her in tears. Her trouble was so great that she was unable to disguise it and she sat with her face bowed in her hands, her shoulders shaken by sobs. At first, when Malchus questioned her, she could not speak, but before long she had gained control of herself. "I think," she sobbed, "that we shall be captives until our death, and when I reflect that I shall never enter the holy life for which I have left my husband and my home, despair comes upon me, for it seems that God has not found worthy the life I have offered to him."
Then, for the first time, Malchus spoke to her of his schemes. "But for wanderers in the desert," he said, "there waits hunger and parching thirst and infinite weariness of the body. Would you risk these things, and worse, for the bare chance of escape?"
"I would gladly risk death itself," she said; and seeing her so ready, Malchus began to build up a plan.
"We must wait till the moon is almost at the full, and we must wait, too, for a day when the sheikh comes to visit us so that we may have all the interval between that visit and his next before our flight is discovered. It will be a long journey, four days at the least, and, if we wander a little out of our direction, perhaps six or seven. And I must set about preparing food for the journey and water skins in which to carry water, so that we shall not have to linger on the way, seeking for these things, for water and green herbs may be very scarce in the part of the desert that we must cross."
During the days that followed, Malchus killed two kids and dried their flesh for food, and from their skins he made water skins. It was the shepherd's duty every second day to lead his flock to one of the desert pools, for sheep must drink at least once in two days, and next time he led them to the water Malchus took the skins and brought them back filled. The moon was already waxing toward the full and, everything being ready, Malchus and Veronica waited anxiously for the sheikh's visit.
He came, late one afternoon, cantering on his long-tailed mare, with two companions. He began at once, as they had feared, to count over the flock, and soon noticed that two kids were missing. When Malchus told him that they had died, his face darkened and they waited with stopped breath for what he would do. But next moment it seemed that he accepted Malchus's tale, for his face cleared and he spoke of other matters, and soon he and his two companions mounted and rode away.
Malchus and Veronica stood watching them as they grew smaller and smaller and then vanished over the last visible wave of the desert with bowed heads and cloaks filled out with the wind of their speed.
Chapter
Fifteen
Then they began with feverish haste to prepare for flight. First they dug out of the sand the kids' flesh and water skins which they had buried to hide them from the sheikh, and then, leaving their tent standing, they led the flock to the nearest pool, because Malchus could not bring himself to desert the innocent beasts where they would perish of thirst.
When the light had almost gone and the flock had lain down about the pool, they loaded the flesh and the two water skins on their shoulders and struck out into the void. For a while the dead ashes of the sunset guided them; then suddenly the heaven was full of stars, waking depth beneath depth in glittering shoals, and when they had marched a little above an hour the orange disk of the moon rose out of the ghostly sands and the whole desert glimmered white and visionary under the paling and brightening moonlight. They fled on in haste, not daring for more than a few minutes and at rare intervals to throw down their burdens and ease their aching shoulders. Crest beyond crest and trough beyond trough, the desert dropped downward beneath their stumbling feet and the uplands they had left grew up higher and higher behind them, lines of black ramparts against a luminous heaven. Dawn found them faint with weariness on a rock-strewn waste between two crests. For two hours still they labored on, till Veronica stumbled and fell and could not rise. Then they ate a little of the flesh and drank some water and laid themselves down to sleep a little in the shadows of the rocks.
But it was not long before their fears awoke them, and soon they were hastening on again until burning noon, brooding breathless upon the fiery sand, drove them to seek the shadow. And now their failing bodies, grown careless, in their dire exhaustion, of peril and death, claimed the repose without which they could no longer endure the labors demanded of them. They slept till the noonday ardor was long spent; then, waking with renewed energy and renewed fear, they plunged on through the hot and clogging sand, turning their heads sometimes as they hurried onward, to scan the horizon behind them. But the horizon was bare and all the great spaces they had traversed empty of life, and moonrise saw them plodding painfully toward the ever-receding crest of a vast undulation in the sand, beyond which opened the star-hung emptiness of night. In all their journey they spoke hardly at all; all their strength and all their breath were needed to carry them on. But without the help of words, fellowship and sympathy were strong between them, born of the fears and hardships they had shared. Sometimes Malchus, reminding himself that his companion was but a woman, would urge Veronica to take more rest and food, but Veronica bore up with an energy equal to his own and for him the steadfastness of body and soul in this small woman was a thing for wonder and admiration.
It was in the morning of the fourth day that, as Malchus turned to stare backward on their tracks, two shapes rose suddenly upon the sky line. In a moment they had dropped downward from the blue and were descending the pallid gold of the desert. They were camel-drivers. Malchus said nothing of it to Veronica, but his eyes anxiously scanned the country that lay about them. They were rounding the slow curve of a hillside. On their left the desert fell away to a wide, empty hollow; on the right, not far above them, it heaved itself against the sky in a rampart of broken rocks. Malchus led the way upward. Their only hope was to find some cleft or hollow in the rocks. He shot a glance backward. The riders had disappeared, but he could see their tracks, scrawled in a long curve down the slope to where a nearer crest hid them, and Malchus's trembling imagination pictured them scouring the intervening hollow and mounting faster and faster to the new crest on which, at any moment, they would appear, terrifyingly enlarged. The knowledge that in that silence and emptiness a secret death was rushing toward them, the sense of a headlong pursuit about to burst upon them when and where he did not know, but terribly soon and terribly near, gripped his heart in a hand of ice. He threw his arm about the laboring Veronica, urging her up the rising ground toward the rocks. Then, high above them, a great ragged disk of black shadow appeared among the rocks and Malchus knew that God, who is the Help of the helpless and the Hope of the hopeless had opened a cavern for them in the cliff. They climbed desperately toward it, gripping the sheer rocks with their hands, and flung themselves within. Shrunk together into a dark corner, they huddled breathless, listening while it seemed to each of them that the loud beating of their hearts filled the whole cavern with dull vibrations. Then, crouching there they grew aware that they were not alone in the cave. Some other living thing was near them; the air was thick with the rank, tawny smell of a wild beast. But in their dire extremity they had no fear for any beast, for all their fear was fastened upon their pursuers, who at any moment would break in upon them. "If it please God," whispered Malchus, "this cave shall be our salvation; but if He forsake us, at least it will receive our dead bodies."
Suddenly the golden mouth of the cave was blurred with shadow. A man holding a drawn sword in his hand stood in the sunlight, so close that, leaning forward, they might have touched him. They held their breath, immovable as stone. Then the man, who, because his eyes were unaccustomed to the darkness of the cave, could see nothing, shouted into the echoing mouth. "Come out, you runaway slaves," he cried. "Your master is waiting for you below."
But as he shouted, something stirred in the darkness at the other side of the cave and a great beast sprang at the man and hurled him to the ground. His sword leaped from his loosened grasp and clanged upon the rocky floor. Staring into the bright mouth of the cave, they saw that the beast was a lioness. She stood for a moment with her forepaws and her great head planted upon the prostrate body; then slowly she dragged it into the cave where her cubs waited. From the man there came not a sound, but they could hear the hot breathing of the beast like a wind throttled in a cleft of the rocks.
For a long while all was still. Then again a shadow troubled the brightness of the cave's mouth; the shadow of a great arm swept suddenly across the sunlit wall, and the voice of the sheikh, their master, rang through the vault. Waiting below, he had become impatient when his companion did not return with the captives, and now he had come himself in great wrath. "Ho, Zogreb!" he shouted, and the well-known voice struck terror to their hearts. "Bring them out. Why do you delay?"
With his sword raised he took three paces into the cave. But again the lioness sprang like a tree-trunk hurled from a catapult, and the sheikh went down before her as his servant had done. His last agonized cry filled the cavern with the very voice of horror, and then there was silence but for the dragging of the heavy corpse along the floor.
Then Malchus and Veronica rose up and went forth from the cave, and, climbing down the rocks, they saw two camels picketed below. Then both fell upon their faces and offered up thanks to Him who is the Help of the helpless and the Hope of the hopeless, who had sent the lioness to deliver them from their oppressor and had given them the two camels to carry them back into freedom. And when they had eaten and drunk of the store of provisions which they found upon the camels, they loosed the picket ropes and mounted, and an hour before sunset of the same day they came to the banks of the Nile.
They followed the river, and as darkness fell they reached a town where a north-bound ship was taking cargo for Alexandria. It was even then almost ready to cast off. Malchus and Veronica made haste to unload the camels, and while Veronica sat guarding the loads on the wharf, Malchus led away the camels and sold them to provide money for their passage. And within the hour they lay on the deck and the great sail yawned above them in the feeble breeze, and above the sail, above all their world of sand and rock and water, yawned the profound blue of the night filled to its uttermost recesses with luminous galaxies which showered their images on the black crystal of the river gliding endlessly northward. They lay motionless: a great peace had fallen upon them. It seemed that their lives, having rushed down through a great turmoil of fears, agonies, and despairs, had suddenly swung to rest in a dark, quiet pool. And in Malchus's mind so great was the peace that he had ceased to look forward into the future.
It was Veronica's voice that recalled it to him. "Do for me now one thing more, my brother," she said. "Lead me to the White Convent without the walls of Alexandria. There we will bid each other farewell and you will be free."
The words fell like a dirge upon his ears. How calmly Veronica spoke of their parting. He himself had forgotten that they were to part. The terrible adventures and hardships of their long flight had, for him, drawn them together by a hundred bonds of sympathy. Day by day he had seen the great spirit shining in the small, calm face and carrying the small body through ordeals that even a strong man might fear to face, and his own spirit had bowed in reverence before her nobility. Now, remembering that in a few days he was to bid her farewell, his soul shrank within him at the thought of the separation. It was as if the noblest part of himself was to be cut away from him. And during the long, calm days of the voyage he sat silent and unmoving beside her while the endless golden hills, the long lines of emerald palm grove and the broken temples and monstrous sculptured gods of a race long dead glided past them and were lost in the all-devouring distance. And it seemed to him, as he watched that endless flux and dissolution, that all the human things of his own world—the love, the beauty, the swift adventure—were being slowly but irrevocably withdrawn from him, leaving him cold, stripped, and solitary, a shape of rock exposed to the warring tempests of heaven and hell till it should be weathered down to a handful of pure gold or a heap of restless sand. At night, when he slept, his dreams turned always to Helena. In every dream now she was in danger or captivity, calling to him to save her, to take her back to him. Her voice came to him small and faint from behind closed doors, out of thick darkness, across impenetrable forests. Sometimes for a brief moment she stood before him, close and vivid; but as his heart warmed into final happiness she faded from his sight with an unfinished appeal on her lips. Sometimes he dreamed of one of his earlier loves and sometimes, too, of Veronica, but always at the end of the dream the face, or body, or voice resolved itself into Helena, as though Helena were for him the essence and symbol of all womanhood.
Chapter
Sixteen
Malchus sat outside the closed gate of the White Convent. He had faithfully led Veronica to her destination; an hour ago she had entered the gate and with the closing of the gate behind her she had left the world forever. She had approached the convent as a lover approaching her beloved, and as she bade farewell to Malchus and his eyes fell upon her for the last time her face shone with the ecstatic gladness of a saint entering Paradise. Yet, though that moment was also the moment of his own freedom, Malchus felt none of her gladness. He felt only homeless and abandoned; it was as though his heart were dying within him. He found comfort only in the thought of Alexandria, whose walls and towers showed a mile to the east above the greenery of a vineyard. There, it seemed to him, Helena waited to give him that peace which he had sought so long. Kneeling beside the convent wall, he prayed desperately for guidance, but still his thoughts and desires drew him to Alexandria so strongly and so insistently that at last he came to believe that, for some hidden reason, it was God's will that he should enter the city. He delayed, perplexed and timid, till he fell asleep, seated there in the gray dust under the convent wall.
When he woke his soul was trembling like a harp string at the touch of a half-forgotten dream. Some heavenly vision had come to him and gone again, leaving a trouble like the echo of incomprehensible words. Then, as he groped for the meaning of the vision, the words took on clearness and sense. "Go into Alexandria," they seemed to say, "and follow your desires, for thus you shall find your peace."
That, it seemed, was the only answer to his prayer. He rose and, with slow and doubtful steps, began to make his way toward the city, and at sunset he entered the court of Diocles the poet and stood by the little fountain which leaped from a fringe of tall blue irises, while the slave went to announce his name. He had not waited for more than a minute when a quick step sounded in the portico and Diocles, with the familiar movement of his wide shoulders, came hurrying forward with outstretched hands.
"My dear Malchus!" he cried in his deep, ringing voice, laying his two hands on Malchus's shoulders. "At last you have returned after all this time. And you left us without a word ... without a hint, how many years ago?"
"A lifetime, for me, Diocles!" Malchus replied, gazing at his friend as at some incredible vision.
"Yes, a lifetime indeed, my friend; for you are changed beyond belief."
Malchus did not reply, for he realized now for the first time the full magnitude of the change which had come over him. For Diocles was not changed; he was the same as when Malchus had last seen him, but it seemed to him that he himself was beholding his friend and the familiar house across a gulf wide as the grave, for the man and the place, so familiar to his sight, were strange, immeasurably strange, to his mind and soul. He felt that he had dropped back suddenly into a life whose language he had forgotten and he could do nothing but gaze at Diocles in speechless bewilderment. Diocles saw his distress and, throwing his arm about Malchus's shoulder, led him into the house.
"Come, my friend," he said, "you are exhausted. The slaves shall take you to the bath and I will seek you out some fresher and more comfortable clothes than those you are wearing at present. When you are bathed and rested you shall tell me your adventures, which, I am sure, must have been of the strangest." Diocles clapped his hands and the slaves came and led Malchus to the bath.
But the slaves, as they bathed the parched body and anointed it with unguents, gazed at Malchus in astonishment, for, overcome by the waking of a hundred memories, his dazed mind had sunk into a stupor and it seemed to them that the nerveless body and limbs that they handled were the body and limbs of a puppet.
When he was bathed and dressed, one of the slaves led him to the portico where Diocles reclined, waiting for him. The poet rose at his approach and led him to a couch beside his own. "Lie here, my dear Malchus," he said, "and rest. You are still, I think, too tired to talk. Try to sleep for a while. I will give orders that no one is to be admitted."
Malchus lay down without a word; then, looking up at his friend, his eyes kindled for a moment to something of their old intensity.
"Tell me," he asked, "before I sleep, of Helena."
"Still of Helena, my poor Malchus? But what can I tell you? Helena has gone. Months ago she left us almost as suddenly as you did. She had been ill for a while and suddenly one day we heard that her villa was closed and she had gone abroad—to Constantinople, it was said. The villa is closed still and nobody can tell us whether or not she will ever return."
Malchus made no reply, but Diocles, looking into the worn face of his friend, saw the lips turn gray and a look of deeper suffering contract the wrinkled flesh about the eyes, and as he laid his head back upon the pillow he turned away his face like a dying man.
For many days Malchus stayed on, a lonely stranger, in the house of Diocles. When friends, some of whom had been his friends, visited Diocles, he avoided them, for he could no longer talk to them. Their fluent, cultured talk had lost all meaning for him, and he sat silent among them, his eyes like the eyes of a wild creature that has been trapped in a cage. Diocles saw that some devastating experience had transformed his friend and was careful to guard him from all annoyance. In time, he hoped, Malchus would recover something of his old self. And sometimes, indeed, it seemed that he was awaking from his stupor, for by degrees, when he and Diocles were alone, he began to break silence. He spoke always of the past, of his old life in Alexandria; but his talk was always vague and hesitating and he questioned Diocles often, as though he were blindly seeking for some clue in events which he himself had half forgotten. It was as though he were recovering from a long and severe illness.
One day he dared at last to walk out into the city. He went alone, walking slowly and shrinkingly, keeping close to the walls like a man who fears an ambush. And indeed he had cause to fear, for on all sides from streets and squares and porches the ambushed memories arose like strong perfumes from flowers, till the present reality about him was confused and darkened by the stronger and more tyrannous reality of the past, searching out and delicately torturing the hidden nerves of spirit and sense. As he gazed about him he knew that he had lost that awareness of place and time, of the here and the now, by which a man is able to relate himself to his temporal surroundings. His spirit had strayed, it seemed, into some interspace between past and present, his old life in Alexandria, his present ghost-like haunting of those old scenes, and the remote, holy, and terrible life of the desert; for all of these diverse lives were present to him and all were equally real or unreal.
Such was the mood in which he wandered through the city. Soon he found himself standing at the door of Helena's garden. His instinct had led him there. But now another instinct—the instinct of the hermit who had fled from the cane-gatherer and shrunk away from the presence of Veronica—tightened his muscles in a spasm of revulsion, and with clenched fists and suddenly indrawn breath he drew back from the door. He was on the point of hastening away, when those words which had come to him in the dream struck again upon his sense so clearly that it seemed that some invisible presence had spoken them in his ear. "Go into the city and follow your desires, for thus shall you find your peace." But to what purpose had his desires led him to the house where Helena was no more? Even if he should try to enter the deserted garden, he would surely find this door barred against him. The very door looked deserted; it was weather-worn and caked with dust, and the weeds encumbered the threshold. He stood irresolutely gazing at it. Then, obeying an idle impulse, he stretched out his hand and laid it on the latch.
To his surprise, the door opened. He went in and closed it quickly behind him.
The garden was beautiful in its abandonment; the paths that had been so faultless in the old days were covered with weeds; the grass of the lawns, formerly short and smooth as the fur of a squirrel, stood a foot high, and the flowers had broken bounds and changed the place into a jungle rich with a hundred odors and colors. Its beauty soothed the heart which ached for its desolation.
Walking slowly and softly like one who enters a holy place, Malchus made his way toward the house. He came upon it round a tall grove of rose-laurels, thick with blossom. Like the little door and the garden, it was desolate. He stood like one in a trance, gazing with incredulous eyes. It faced him blindly. He felt that he was looking into a dead and eyeless face which till now had always shone for him with a thousand welcomes. Still, as if attracted by the misery of it, he walked on and stood by the tall porch. Suddenly his heart leaped. Rapid footsteps were approaching him. He turned. An old man stood before him. Malchus knew him—he was Helena's house steward.
"What are you doing here?" the old man asked. There was both fear and challenge in his voice.
"You do not recognize me, Ammon," Malchus answered him. "I am Malchus, the son of Sempronius. I have been away for a long while and, finding the garden door open just now, I entered. Let me come in and look round the house too, and then I will depart."
"I am sorry, sir, but you cannot enter."
"But why? Surely..."
"My mistress gave strict orders, sir."
"Yes, against inquisitive strangers, Ammon; but an old friend.... Come, let me go in." Malchus was about to enter when the old man seized him by the cloak.
"Stop, sir! Stop! Let me explain." Malchus turned impatiently and saw that the old man was trembling. The sight of his trouble roused a sudden, enthralling doubt in Malchus's mind, and his persistence became the more stubborn.
"You know me, my friend," he said. "Why make all this trouble? I am not a thief."
"I implore you, sir, to go away. The gate should not have been left open. It was all my fault, and the consequences..."
"That is soon remedied, Ammon; and, as it happens, no harm has come of it." Malchus, too, was trembling now. The old man stood wringing his hands.
"Do not speak so loud, sir. Let me explain, since you will not go; but promise me on your honor that you will not reveal what I tell you."
"I promise."
"My mistress is still here."
Malchus gasped and clutched the old man's shoulder. "Here? In the house?"
"Yes, sir."
"I must see her."
"You cannot, sir. She has given strict orders that not even her dearest friends are to know that she is here."
But Malchus had forgotten the old man. The beating of his heart was stifling him and, flinging out his arms, he rushed past Ammon into the house.
It echoed to his footsteps like an empty tomb as he hastened from chamber to chamber. Each was empty till he came to the small inner chamber which had been Helena's private sitting room. As he entered it, two slaves rose quickly from their watch beside a couch and hurried toward him with hands raised to bar his approach. Malchus could see that on the couch behind them some one lay motionless.
When he did not stop, each of the slaves seized one of his arms and with a strength born of his frenzy he dragged them with him toward the couch.
The face that stared blindly at him from the couch was not the face of Helena. As he staggered back in horror it seemed to him at first that the heavy, leonine mask foully discolored with brown blotches was not a human face at all. Yet the shape of the linen-covered body was human, and he saw, with a shudder, that a naked human arm, horribly thickened and corroded, lay across the breast.
He turned away his face. His eyes met those of Ammon, who had followed him. "Take me to your mistress," he pleaded in a broken voice.
The old man nodded toward the couch.
Malchus covered his face with his hands. "No!" he moaned. "No! Such things are not possible."
Then a harsh, stertorous voice was heard in the room. "Who is it?" the voice asked.
A silence, filled by the thick breathing of the leper, followed the question.
"Ammon," the voice began again, "answer immediately. Who is this stranger?"
Malchus turned and fell on his knees, but with eyes averted from the couch. "It is I, Helena—Malchus. I have come back."
Again there was silence. Then the reply came:
"Go away. I do not know you. Ammon, order the slaves to drive him out with whips."
But Ammon and the slaves stood motionless beside the couch, and Malchus, with a cry like the snapping of a cord, fled from the room and ran stumbling through the garden till he fell headlong in the long grass.
Chapter
Seventeen
So Malchus found his cure. When he came to himself the sun was low. A coolness breathed through the trees and the long grass in which he lay. It seemed to him that he had awakened out of a long fever. His mind was clear and cool like the garden about him. A bond within him had snapped, as at birth the bond is severed that binds the child to the mother. The past had broken from him and plunged away like an avalanche into the depths far beneath him, leaving him high and lonely like a single granite rock which has escaped the crash; and as he stood up in the grass he knew that he was cured of the long distemperature of earthly love.
He stood waiting. Soon the sun would set. But as he waited, the light grew and soon the garden was filled with the pure essence of early sunlight. The sunset and the hours of darkness had passed over him as he lay in the grass, and already the new day had risen. Without hesitation he made his way to the garden door and, closing it behind him, turned his steps, as he had done once before, toward Lake Mareotis. Soon he had left the city and threaded the long vineyards, and now he stood on the wharf at the edge of the lake. A ship was waiting and, going on board, he sat down and covered his head with his cloak. It was as if time had rolled back and a part of his life were repeating itself. But this time he followed no one, for he needed no guide or support, being sufficient to himself. Out in the desert his trial awaited him, but now he went forward in confidence, desiring only his cell which faced the east high on its sandy hill, for there, he knew, he would find his salvation.
[Transcriber's note: Odd and unusual spellings are as printed.]