Chapter
Five
The effect of his mother's visit was to harden Malchus's resolution. The thought of her alone and his love for her would have made him hesitate; it was what she represented that steeled his heart. For the life from which he was flying and the conventional life of the Alexandrian aristocracy were facets of the same hated existence. A shudder of loathing shook him and he felt within him a smarting sourness like a physical nausea. It would be useless to abandon only his own mode of life, for, if he stayed in Alexandria, sooner or later, he knew, his parents would recapture him. He must break away altogether, not only from one society or the other, but from Alexandria, from civilization itself. And so he shut the thought of his mother from his mind, for if he were to contemplate for a moment the pain he was about to cause her, his resolution would give way. He rose and stretched himself, drawing in a deep breath which surprised him by turning into a sob. Then with a sudden determination he went to his bedroom, undressed, and put on an old leather hunting-suit and a short cloak, and taking a leather pouch and a water-bottle, a serviceable staff and a little money, he went out into the court, crossed it, and without a glance behind him stepped for the last time out of the porch of his home....
But now, as he sat on the deck of the ship with his face toward the desert, this crowd of past events had faded for Malchus to no more than a thin and vaguely colored mist. His mind could not grasp the actuality of what had happened; it was numbed into a dream half tragic, half ecstatic. His bones and muscles ached from sitting so long on the hard deck and he stood up and stretched himself. From where he stood he could see the hermit. He was still sitting with his head covered in exactly the same position in which Malchus had found him when he went on board. Was it possible, Malchus wondered with awe, that the old man had never once moved during all those hours? Having stretched his cramped limbs, he sat down again, covered his head with his cloak, and became once more a solitary island of consciousness in the flux of time and tide. Even when the rowers stopped rowing and shipped their oars he did not stir, nor until the dry creaking of strained ropes told him that the ship was being hauled up to the landing place. Then with his cloak over his head he stood up to watch Serapion. The old man still sat immovable, but as Malchus watched him, without any show of surprise or of awakening consciousness, he calmly and deliberately stood up, moved slowly along the cumbered deck, and stepped on to the stone pier. Never once did he pause or look behind him, but with the same even pace he crossed the wharf and made for an opening in the row of white houses which bordered the lake. Malchus followed him. There was no danger in following him close, for, as Malchus knew, he would not look behind him.
The place where they had landed was no more than a straggling village, only a narrow belt of fields and vineyards dividing it from the desert, and soon their feet were plunging in the hot, loose sand and the long desert journey had begun.
For a mile the ground rose, making the labor of their going more arduous still, for at every step the sand filtered away downhill beneath their feet. At first Malchus fretted himself into a fever, but looking ahead at Serapion, he saw that he was plodding patiently on, content, it seemed, that each step should gain a little on the last; and, striving to imitate him, Malchus found that the exhaustion which had begun to assail him was more a matter of the mind than of the body, and that by shutting down his attention to the ground immediately in front of him and his energy to the achievement of the next step, he was able to preserve both body and mind from despair.
When next he looked ahead he was almost at the top of the slope and Serapion had disappeared. On the summit Malchus paused. He was standing on a great sandy swell, like an ocean roller dried into immobility. Halfway down the slope before him the figure of the hermit, shrunk to the height of a finger, made its infinitesimal progress across the undulating immensity of bleached gold-dust. The stark heat of the sun struck down as with a tangible weight and the sultry sand blazed it back, drier and more oppressive, from below. As far as the eye could strain there was nothing but sand—sand smoothed into vast plains, tossed up into hummocks, heaved into far-running swells, or exalted terrace above terrace in long broken ramparts. For a moment Malchus's heart failed him at a sight of such inhuman desolation. Then, without looking back, he began the descent, following the blurred footprints which ran diminishing in a long curve from where he stood to the elfin shape toiling with hardly perceptible movement far ahead. The sifting sand which had made the ascent so laborious made the descent easy, and by the time Malchus had dropped halfway down into the great trough of the desert he had gained ground on the hermit whose pace, uphill and downhill, never varied. Below him, away to the east, three ants crawled along the bottom of the trough. Minute by minute they grew larger. They were camels following the desert track which now began to show as a wide, traffic-ploughed furrow in the hollow beneath him. Serapion was crossing it now, and just before Malchus reached it the three camels passed in front of him and curved away northeastward, their foolish vulture necks straining out before them, the hooded riders lurching heavily to their awkward gait. Soon they had vanished into the emptiness, leaving only their broad spoor to prove that they were not specters of the wilderness.
The two travelers toiled on through the blazing afternoon. Serapion never slackened his pace, and Malchus, his head dizzy with the heat and glare and his legs aching from the unaccustomed labor, began to fear that his strength would fail him. It became more and more difficult to hold out against the despair provoked by the treacherous and shifty dust in which his feet sought vainly for solid resistance.
After he had again lost sight of the hermit, Malchus reached the summit of a still higher crest and came upon him not more than ten yards ahead of him. He was standing motionless, his arms extended sideways at right angles to his body, in the form of a cross. Before them lay a new realm of the desert. From east to west the sands rolled to the horizon in endless undulations, but in front of them high terraced ramparts cloven by ravines buttressed a vast tableland lifted high above that part of the desert in which they stood. Malchus sank to the ground and a delicious relief flowed like nectar through his aching body and limbs. He lay full length in the burning sand, his eyes still fixed on Serapion. The old man, like a traveler who sees far off his long-desired home, stood rapt in ecstasy. So long did he stand that it seemed to Malchus's tired mind that the shape before him was not a living thing, but a tree whose gaunt and broken branches had been withered by a century of suns. Malchus drew his cloak over his face and closed his eyes. When he opened them again Serapion had sunk upon his knees, his head bowed to the ground. Malchus waited patiently till he should rise again, for he was determined that, when he did so, he would reveal himself to him. The hermit remained long in that attitude, but Malchus could neither meditate nor pray. His mind and body were shaken with agitation and he could do nothing but lie watching Serapion, waiting anxiously for the thing on which he had set all his hopes to accomplish itself.
At last the old man rose, and Malchus, leaping up and stumbling through the deep sand, ran and seized his left hand in both his own. The old man seemed to be neither startled nor surprised, but he fixed his eyes intently on Malchus and, thrusting his staff upright in the sand, he made the sign of the cross with his free hand.
"Do not be angry with me, my father," cried Malchus, falling on his knees and still grasping the hermit's hand in his. "Yesterday I abandoned my friends and possessions in Alexandria and followed you. I overtook you at the wharf; I was with you on the ship; and I have followed you all this afternoon through the sand. Help me, my father, for you only can help me. I give myself into your hands; I am your slave."
In sign of his subjection Malchus threw himself on his face at the hermit's feet.
The old man looked down at the prostrate body. "My son," he said, "I believe that the God I serve will help you if you are in need of help, and that if your designs are evil he will discover your craftiness." He spoke thus because he was uncertain whether Malchus was not an evil spirit sent to tempt him. He recognized him as the rich Alexandrian to whom he had sold the work of his hands on the previous day, but this did not reassure him, for he knew well that Satan, who loves to lead astray the chosen of God, has the power to assume deceiving shapes. But when Malchus neither cried out nor changed his shape at the sign of the Cross, Serapion knew that he was innocent, for no evil spirit is strong enough to resist the holy sign.
Serapion, therefore, spoke to Malchus, ordering him to stand up. "For it is not right," he said, "that you should fall down before one who is a man like yourself."
Malchus rose to his feet. "What is it that you seek?" the hermit asked him.
"I seek to become a hermit," replied Malchus.
Serapion fixed upon him a gaze that was almost fierce.
"You do not know," he said, "what you seek. It is not possible for you, a man accustomed to ease and luxury, to become a hermit. Go back while the light lasts and you can still follow our tracks. You will reach the lake by sunset if you start now."
Malchus met the old man's gaze. "I shall never go back, my father," he said. "However hard the hermit's life, I know that I shall be able to endure it. Test me. Whatever you appoint for me to do, I will do."
"Have I not told you that you do not know what you are undertaking? If you wish to leave the world and live a holy life, go to one of the desert monasteries. There the life is austere but easy. If, after three or four years there, you feel a desire for great austerities, it will then be time enough for you to think of becoming a hermit."
"But I do not seek for an easy life nor a life in company with other men. I desire solitude and the greatest austerities that a man can undergo and live."
"My son, you do not understand what solitude in the desert means. When a man is left face to face with himself he comes near to madness, and until he has conquered the hunger of the belly and the desire of women he is endlessly tormented by dreams and visions. Even when his desires are subdued, the evil spirits take on a bodily form, seeking to delude him by day and torturing him by night, coming about his cell and sometimes even entering in and wrestling with him body to body: and they fill the night with their cries, more terrible than the cries of the jackals and hyenas."
Malchus waited till the old man had finished and then laid his hand upon his arm. "Do not deny me, my father," he said, "for my purpose is firm."
"I deny you for your good, my son," answered Serapion, "and now trouble me no more, for I have spoken too much and I must delay no longer in returning to the place where I should be."
As the old man turned away Malchus fell on his knees and stretched out his arms toward him.
At that the hermit turned on him, his eyes keen with anger. "Back!" he shouted, and snatching his staff out of the sand, he pointed with it toward the north. Then impetuously turning away, he began once more with his tireless mechanical tread to draw the slender trail of his footsteps onward still further into the untrodden waste.
Malchus lay for a while where the hermit had left him. He was broken in body and chilled to the heart. For the first time the sense of his utter loneliness came upon him. Serapion's cruel discouragement of his aspirations had exhausted him more than all the labors of the day. Then, easing his heart of a deep sigh, he wearily rose to his feet and began once again to toil in the track of the hermit.
For what seemed to be many hours they tramped across the great level waste stretching to the foot of the long escarpment which rose higher and higher as they imperceptibly approached it. Malchus, dazed by the monotonous labor of walking and the huge monotony which surrounded him on all sides, came to feel that neither he nor the small digit far ahead, to which he was mysteriously tied by the long narrowing trail of footsteps, stretched across the virgin sand, was making any progress, but rather that they were both condemned to toil endlessly, fruitlessly, and meaninglessly, each eternally alone in a landscape that never changed. Again he shut the outer world from his attention and with bent head and abstracted mind followed the trail step by step, never looking more than one pace ahead. And when again he raised his eyes it was to discover with a thrill of awe the golden wall of the escarpment towering gigantic before him. Here and there its endless length was broken by huge violet fissures. One of them opened immediately in front of him—a narrow ravine filled with blue shadow. The track that he followed pointed straight into its mouth and Serapion had disappeared within.
To enter the cool dimness of the ravine after the pandemonium of sunshine outside was a relief so delicious that Malchus dropped to the ground and, closing his eyes, lay for a while immovable. But the fear of losing Serapion soon roused him, and with aching limbs he continued on his way. The ground rose rapidly and the passage was for a long distance so narrow that two laden camels could not have passed down it abreast. The sandy floor and the precipitous rocks that walled it were of the same color as the desert, but here that color, shaded from the harsh glare of the sun, was mild and soothing to the eyes. Only, far overhead where the walls of the ravine inclosed a narrow channel of blue sky, their jagged summits blazed like a coping of solid fire.
After a long ascent the ravine bent sharply eastward, and, having turned the bend, Malchus came suddenly into an enchanted spot. For here the passage widened out into a great hall and there fell upon the sight a delicious greenness, and on the ears, blurred and enriched by innumerable echoes, the babble of flowing water. Malchus stood and drank in the scene. Not far from where he stood lay a dark pool in whose center a spring sent up a cone of silver water which rose and fell incessantly with a soft musical din so inviting that he could scarcely restrain himself from running forward and throwing himself into the pool. Flowering reeds and long green ferns waded in its shallow margins, and from the rock walls festoons of feathery green starred with white and yellow flowers, hung down till they trailed upon the grass which covered the floor. The air was soft and fragrant with green leaves and the scent of flowers, and it seemed to Malchus that he had suddenly stepped into Paradise. At the upper end of the hollow Serapion lay stretched at full length under a canopy of hanging green. Malchus could see from where he stood the regular rise and fall of his breast. He was asleep; and, lying in that lovely scene with his goatskin suit, his tangled hair, and his staff laid on the grass beside him, he appeared to be no longer the stern ascetic of the desert, but rather the kindly Pan of some Greek idyll. Malchus, having drunk of the pool and bathed his hands and face, lay down. His whole body, every limb and every muscle, tingled with relief. A profound sleepiness descended upon him. The leaves and rocks about him grew blurred and his eyes closed; to open them again required an effort almost beyond his strength. Yet he dared not sleep for fear Serapion should depart before he awoke. How blissful to fall asleep and sleep on till this consuming weariness was slaked. It was only by recalling that terrible sense of his utter loneliness which had assailed him when Serapion had cast him off, that he held himself to his resolve to persevere.
After what seemed no more than a few minutes he sat up suddenly in a terror. He must have slept, and for a long while, for the hollow was dim with twilight. The pool was a bubbling vat of liquid ruby and overhead the summits flared upward into a sky of crimson fire. The delicious babble of water still flowed on as if to soothe away all fear and all change. But Malchus sprang to his feet. It was too dark to see if Serapion was still where he had last seen him, and he hurried stealthily, his heart fluttering with dread, round the border of the pool. Then he halted suddenly and struck his hand to his mouth to stifle a cry of relief, for Serapion had only moved out into the open and was seated with his back to him in his familiar attitude. Malchus was sure that in a few minutes he would rise and continue his march, and at the thought that he, too, must rise and leave that beautiful spot came the other more overwhelming thought that this was the last time in his life that he would look upon flowers and green things and running water. He stretched out his hand, gathered a broad leaf, and laid his cheek against it, feeling its cool glossy texture and breathing in its green fragrance. Then, moving back to where he had slept, he loosed his sandals, flung off his cloak and suit, and stood naked beside the pool. His flesh shone pearly and dull in the twilight and the curves of his breast, belly, and thighs caught a faint rosy lacquer from the gleaming water. From where he stood he could see the motionless figure of the hermit. Then he stooped down, setting the palms of his hands on the ground, and, extending first one leg and then the other, slid into the pool. Divine coolness inclosed him. What bliss to throw up his arms and sink forever through cool fathoms of peace and oblivion! But the time was short and after a brief immersion he crept on to the bank and, opening his wallet, broke off a piece of his loaf and allayed his hunger. Then he dressed quickly, for it was now so dark that he could not see whether Serapion was still there or not, and taking up his stick, he went forward.
Serapion was gone, but Malchus could hear him not very far ahead, stirring the loose stones whose dry echoes startled the hollow. For, once the ravine left the spring, it became barren again and loose stones falling from the cliffs cumbered the way. The gloom made progress more difficult, but when at last Malchus emerged on to the upper desert a huge moon hung its mottled shield low over the east, calling a suppressed glimmer from the sand, and from every stone and every hump and hollow in the sand a long transparent shadow. Already its light was strong enough to enable Malchus to see distinctly the slow shape of Serapion moving in front of him, and soon it was sailing remote and brilliant in the deeps of the sky, and the desert beneath it shone marvelously white as if shrouded in newly fallen snow. And as if by the influence of the moon, so absolute a silence had fallen upon the desert that at the sense of it the heart stood still and Malchus took refuge from it by fixing his attention on the swing of his legs and body as he followed the ghost-like shape of the hermit, less real now than the shadow that jutted blackly from its feet and was drawn onward horizontally across the sand like a wide black sleigh.
Suddenly the tense silence broke in a hideous shriek, and in a moment a chorus of shrieks followed the first, remote, inhuman, like the shrieking of tortured souls. Malchus halted, chilled with terror, and looking anxiously ahead at Serapion he saw that he too had stopped. His right arm moved; he was making the sign of the Cross; and Malchus remembered what the hermit had told him of the evil spirits that haunted the desert, taking the form now of human beings, now of hyenas and jackals. Following the hermit's example, he too made the sign of the Cross and whispered a prayer as he moved again on his way.
So through the long night they tramped onward, and as, amid the weariness of the body and the fears of the mind, his thoughts turned for shelter to the beautiful green hollow in the ravine, and he realized, with a tremulous ecstasy mixed with tragic regret, that he had cast love and beauty, quiet happiness and the warm joys of the body, behind him forever. Ahead of him lay only solitude, desolation, and strange fears, a life of fierce discipline for soul and body, a terrible and wonderful life whose grimness held for his restless and fanatic soul the keen, indestructible beauty of a diamond.
Chapter
Six
Upon a high, desolate terrace looking eastward across descending waves of desert to where the Nile gleamed like the track of a snail under the long ramparts of the further shore, Serapion's cell stood half sunk in the loose sand. A mound of sand, driven up by the prevailing wind, buried its northern wall to within a few feet of the roof. The southern and western walls were less deeply buried, and on the eastern side a little trench which the hermit kept clear of the encroaching sand led up to the door. There was no sign of other habitation; the little hut stood alone, a solitary watch tower beneath which the illimitable desert extended north, east, and south, its pure unbroken desolation changing hour by hour from the blandest to the most sinister beauty, but always unreal, unearthly as some waste of the unpeopled moon.
The sun was dropping toward the west; soon it would dip below the sandy ridge that rose behind the cell, and Malchus sat in the sand, leaning his back against the south wall, and watched the slanting shadow which would soon inclose him. It was the moment when the long-hoped-for respite from the torrid heat of the day descends like balm upon the desert. Malchus sighed and leaned back his head against the warm stone wall. He felt as weak as if he were at the end of a severe illness, and when he drew in his breath his head, filled with a strange dizziness, seemed to grow light and unsubstantial. The desert journey had been long and exhausting. With little interval for rest the hermit and his undesired disciple had toiled on through hours of torrid daylight and moonlit darkness, and it was night again when they reached their journey's end.
Following Serapion cautiously, Malchus had watched him in the snowy moonlight as he entered his cell, and had then crept round to the back of it and lain down in the sand. He had no plan for the future. It was sufficient for him that he had arrived at his journey's end. Now Serapion could hardly refuse to help him. To prove to him that he was capable of severe asceticism, Malchus had determined to eat no more of his loaf. It lay in the wallet at his side, an endless temptation. His only indulgence was to take a little sip of water from his leather bottle twice a day. When first he had arrived he had sunk, from sheer exhaustion, into a heavy sleep which had lasted till long after dawn. But the following night, soon after he had fallen asleep, a wild howl close beside him had roused him in terror and he had seen a dog-like shape with drooping hind quarters slinking away through the moonlight. Those drooping hind quarters thrilled him with horror; they suggested something foul and unnatural, half vermin and half devil, and the thought that some such prowling creature might fall upon him while he slept had thrown him into a condition of alternate sleep and startled waking which was more exhausting than sleeplessness. Sometimes those shriller shrieks which had terrified him as he crossed the desert by night had broken out not far from where he lay, and he had seen black dog-like shapes moving along the sky line of the rising ground behind the cell.
Two days passed and Malchus neither saw nor heard the smallest sign of Serapion; yet each morning, shortly after dawn, he was aware, as if by some new sense, that the hermit issued from his cell and after a few moments went in again, and on the third day, as dawn was breaking, he saw him standing, a pale wraith on the pale sand, looking at him. He stood for so long that it seemed impossible to Malchus that, if he had been human, he would not have moved. Then, without word or sign, he turned and the wall of his cell hid him from view. Another day passed and that sole appearance of Serapion took on in Malchus's memory the nature of a vision. Worldly realities began to fade into something less apprehensible but more intense; his life passed like a strange, slow dream whose mood fluctuated with the oppression of the daytime, the sweet, too brief respite of evening, the dread of night, and the blessed consolation of returning dawn. At dawn and again at noon and nightfall he tried to meditate and pray, but when he did so a strange, serene apathy came upon him, like the apathy of the dying, and it seemed as if his heart and brain had dissolved into a mist. And by degrees his thoughts dwindled to nothing but thoughts of food and drink.
At night he dreamed of meat and wines. He sat again in his old home or in the house of a friend and watched the slaves enter, carrying dishes of delicious viands to which the desire of his soul reached out in delighted anticipation. Then the great crystal flagons would be set upon the tables; but always as the guests began to take their places he awoke to his gnawing hunger and remembered once more that he would never again eat dainty food; and, racked by the craving of his belly, he felt that he could have sold his immortal soul for food. Even in his waking moments, visions of food and drink began to tantalize him and often he would find that he had fallen into a long revery in which he was devising elaborate meals and lingering lovingly over the details. Then, with an effort of the will, he would banish these vain imaginings from his mind and try to fix his thoughts upon God and the soul.
At other times he lost the sense of hunger and fell into a mood of tremulous exaltation in which his senses seemed to have been refined of all that is earthly and physical. In that mood he ceased to be aware of the past or the future and existed in a present of subtle and fragile ecstasy too keen to be called pleasure and too exalted for pain. This state would hold him for hours and then it would crumble as if consumed by its own intensity, and in its place would come a black and mundane despair, or again that tyrannous craving for food which excluded all else. On the fourth day of his fast he had yielded so far to his craving as to open his wallet and take out the fragment of bread. The torrid heat of the desert had dried it to the hardness of a brick, but to Malchus, as he crouched on his knees, holding it in his hands as if it were some holy relic, it seemed a thing more precious than pure gold. He ran his hands lovingly over it, feeling a delight in the associations which it evoked. Then he bowed his head to it and smelled it, and instantly, as he ravenously drew in the savor of it, his bodily nature became one vibrating chord of desire. He felt the spittle collect in his mouth, and in another moment he would have been gnawing wolfishly at the crust if he had not, by a supreme effort of will, flung it far from him on to the sand and, with a cry like the cry of a wounded animal, covered his eyes with his hands. The smell of the bread still lingering on his hands prolonged his struggle, but soon he had gained a firmer control of himself and, bowed down as he was, he fell into a long, passionate prayer.
When he opened his eyes again he saw before him on the sand a shadow like the shadow of a tree trunk. He raised his head. Serapion stood there gazing at him. Malchus felt the heart leap in his breast, but he neither moved nor spoke. He remembered the fierceness with which Serapion had rejected him in the desert and he expected that now he would be still more angry. But the old man was contemplating him calmly and with a look in which there was no trace of anger, and presently Malchus heard the quiet voice which had stirred him so deeply when they had talked in Alexandria.
"What do you seek?"
"I seek to become a hermit," Malchus replied.
"While I watched you just now," said Serapion, "the evil spirits were hovering about your head in the likeness of flies. If I had not rebuked them they would have settled on you."
"I am ready to war with evil spirits," Malchus answered, "and with God's help I shall overcome them."
"I have told you," said the hermit, "that, being a man long accustomed to ease and luxury, it is impossible for you to become a hermit. If you wish to fly from your former life, return at least to the village on Lake Mareotis where we entered the desert, and work for your living there in the fields."
But still Malchus persisted. "Tell me what I ought to do to become a hermit, and I will do it."
"I have told you," answered the old man, quietly, "that it is not possible for you to become a hermit, but if you wish to lead the holy life, go to a desert monastery; there they will receive you. Here I live alone and often I eat only once in five days, and even then I do not eat a full meal."
He said this to dissuade Malchus from his impossible ambition. But Malchus replied: "For the last four days, my father, I have eaten nothing. There on the sand are the remains of the loaf which I last tasted before the end of our journey."
The old man, gazing at Malchus, knew that what he said was true. "Rise up," he said, "and get the bread which you threw away, and come into the cell."
Malchus obeyed. The doorway of the cell opened into a little room whose floor was the bare sand, and its walls the same rough stones as the exterior. A table stood near the door, on it a mug and two earthenware dishes, and a bench beside it; on the floor lay a sheepskin and a great heap of dried palm leaves, and from pegs in the wall hung a full sack and a goatskin containing water. A doorless opening led to a small inner chamber having an altar and a wooden crucifix, and, at the height of a man standing, a little window guarded by two wooden bars.
Malchus stood in the doorway with his fragment of loaf in his hand, waiting to be invited to enter; but Serapion took no notice of him. He was lifting down the water skin from its peg and, untying the neck, he poured some water into a dish. Then, going to the sack, he took out a little loaf and, dipping it in the water, began to eat. Malchus expected that he would invite him to eat, too, but Serapion had, it seemed, forgotten him, and Malchus, unable to endure the sight of another man eating, turned away his eyes and leaned his weary body against the door-post.
When Serapion and finished eating he stood up and began to chant the psalm called "De Profundis." Malchus stood upright and, as Serapion proceeded to chant the same psalm many times over, he joined in the chanting. When Serapion had chanted the psalm twelve times he fell on his knees and began to pray aloud, saying prayers up to the number of twelve. He did all these things in order to test the patience and forbearance of Malchus. But Malchus joined gladly in the psalms and prayers, for he felt that he was now receiving direction and help in what he should do.
When they had finished it was already late in the evening and, as Serapion seemed again to have forgotten him, Malchus resolved to return to his place outside. It seemed to him now a terrible thing to be going back to that state of spiritual torpor which came upon him in his loneliness whenever he had conquered the fierce obsession of bodily hunger; and so he turned, before leaving his cell, to Serapion.
"Will you not give me some rule, my father," he asked, "for meditation and prayer, for it is hard, without experience, to know how best to turn the soul to God."
Serapion was silent. He was considering the case of this young man so stubbornly determined to take upon himself the hard life of the hermit. He considered how he had fasted for four days and then, when bitterly disappointed in his hope of food, had been glad to join in the long psalm-singing and prayers, and how he had lain in the open unprotected for four nights and was ready now to go back uncomplaining to his place. And seeing so much good will waiting only for guidance to express itself in good works, the hermit was touched and, stretching out his hand in the dark, he took Malchus by the cloak and drew him back into the cell and toward the doorway of the small inner chamber. "Go in," he said, "and twelve times throughout the night you shall recite the psalm which we recited this evening. This you must do standing, but between every repetition kneel down and meditate upon the words until they become the very words of your soul crying to God."
Malchus groped his way into the little oratory and stood before the altar. To spend the night within four walls, undisturbed by the fear of prowling beasts, was for him the most blessed ease. Though his body was feeble from fasting and his brain dizzy from lack of sleep, his soul was warm with happiness at the prospect of passing the night as Serapion had instructed him, for it seemed now that he had been rescued from his own doubt and ignorance and that Serapion was beginning to relent toward him. He was glad that he had been set to perform not only a discipline of the soul, but also a discipline of the body. Once during the night, as he knelt in meditation, it seemed to him that his soul floated away from his body, and he saw his body bowed down before the altar and, standing upon the altar above him, the figure of a man with wings. Great wings they were, curving high above his shoulders and reaching downward to his heels, and every feather of them was plumed with rays of light. The figure grew clearer, brighter, it seemed to pulsate with the intensity of its brightness. Then Malchus's soul began to return to his body, his body roused itself with a little shudder, and he sat up on his heels and stared at the dark altar with a dazed mind. But the memory of the vision filled him with encouragement and he raised his aching body and stood again to recite the psalm.
When the daylight returned an unearthly peace had settled upon him. The voice of Serapion called him from the outer chamber, and Malchus found him standing at his table before a heap of dried palm leaves.
"My father," he said to the old man, "I feel that my soul is at rest."
The hermit looked up from a palm leaf which he was tearing into strips. "For a little while," he replied, "that is well."
"And it is not always well for the soul to be at rest?"
"No, my son, for it is by war and strife, and not by rest, that the soul advances in spiritual excellence."
"Is it then wrong to pray to be delivered from strife?"
"When strife comes upon us we must pray, not that the strife may be removed, but that we may have patience to overcome the strife."
"And what if I find myself for a long time at peace?"
"Then you must pray to God to let the strife return to you."
"But if strife is good, why do they that seek God fly from the towns and villages where, as I well know, there is endless strife for the soul?"
"Because worldly strife blinds and oppresses the soul; but here in the desert a man finds only the strife of the heart which is the path of spiritual excellence. Here the spirit is free from those other kinds of strife—the strife which arises from the ears, the eyes, and the mouth. But now," he said, "you must watch me so as to learn how to make mats and ropes of palm leaves. These dried palm leaves must be split up into ribbons, and when we have a good supply of ribbons we must lay them in the trough to soak."
As he spoke he was splitting up the leaves into long, narrow strips, tearing the leaf always along the grain, and when Malchus saw how the splitting was done he took a leaf and began to tear it in the same way.
"This," the old man went on, "is the easiest part of the work. It needs no more than a little care and neatness. But when we have finished the splitting I can show you at once how to plait, for I set some other strips to soak last night, that we should not be delayed by having to wait for these to soak, for the soaking is a matter of some hours."
The hermit ceased to talk and he and Malchus continued to work on the heap of leaves till Malchus's fingers, unhardened as yet by manual work, were covered with painful cuts from the sharp-edged leaves. When the whole heap was finished, the hermit stooped and, turning back the sheepskin which lay on the floor, disclosed a stone trough from which he lifted a dripping sheaf of ribbons which had been soaking all night. These he laid on the table and, having done so, threw into the trough those which they had just split. "Now," he said, "you must watch carefully;" and choosing the most suitable strips, he began slowly but with the deftness and precision of an expert to plait the first rows of a narrow mat. Having done so, he took the work to pieces and repeated the operation three times. And when he had plaited it again a fourth time he handed the piece to Malchus. "Now," he said, "take it, and take these soaked strips, too, and sit down outside in the shadow of the cell and continue from the point at which I stopped. Take also the sheepskin there, so that you can lay the strips on it and keep them out of the sand. When you have woven to the length of your arm, let me see what you have done."
Malchus obeyed, and for three hours he sat laboring patiently at the work, while the free ends of the strips escaped repeatedly from his inexperienced fingers and worked themselves loose, and the chafing of the strips hurt the cuts in his fingers, which were becoming more and more painful. When at last he had woven an arm's length he took it in for Serapion to inspect. The old man examined it critically, and then without a word unplaited all that Malchus had done. "The weaving is very loose," he said. "See that it is closer next time."
Malchus humbly took up the unraveled strips and went out to begin again. It was now the height of noon. Sky, sand, and surrounding air radiated a sultry glow, and Malchus, becoming every hour more feeble, felt as if he were imprisoned in an oven. So far from gaining any facility in weaving, it seemed to him that he was becoming more and more clumsy and, to add to his difficulties, the strips, creased and twisted by the first weaving, would not conform to a new texture. His fingers were bleeding now; the blood was staining the strips; and when after two hours he had finished, he found that his weaving was as loose as before. When he went in despair to show this new attempt to Serapion, the old man looked up impatiently and remarked, after a scornful glance at the work, that it was no better than before. "Take it to pieces and begin again," he ordered, and Malchus, concealing his bitter discouragement, went out and did so, trying again to improve the work. But by this time the strips were so creased and strained that even the greatest adept could have made nothing of them, and when Malchus, after a long, disheartening struggle, had finished, he saw that the weaving was now looser than ever. Tears of vexation stood in his eyes. He had been at work for over six hours and he was exhausted in body and mind. The pain from his fingers aggravated the pain in his heart and he felt that if Serapion set him to do the work for a fourth time he would be unable to prevent himself from breaking into sobs. But when Serapion had again examined the work, he laid it aside without remark and, turning to Malchus, asked him, "Will you eat, my son?"
The sudden release from the long strain almost snapped the feeble cord of Malchus's self-control. Tears ran down his cheeks, but with a last effort he mastered himself. "You know best, my father," he answered, "what is right for me to do."
The hermit, without further speech, set a dish of water on the table and, bringing a shell full of salt and four small loaves from the sack, he signed to Malchus to sit down with him at the table. Then he gave Malchus one of the loaves, and himself took Malchus's dry and sandy fragment, and they began to eat together, dipping their loaves in the water to soften them.
The hard, stale stuff seemed to Malchus more delicious than the rarest of the delicacies he had tasted at the feasts of Alexandria. The savor of it on his tongue and in his nostrils filled all his physical being with delight; but he forced himself to eat slowly, trembling lest his gluttony should become apparent to Serapion and should discredit him in his eyes.
When they had finished, Serapion spoke again. "My son," he said, "will you eat another loaf?"
"If you will eat another, my father, I will do so," answered Malchus; "but if you will not, neither will I."
"I have had enough," Serapion replied, "for I am a hermit and I have eaten already to-day."
"Then, I, too, have had enough," said Malchus, "for I seek to become a hermit."
Serapion dropped the other two loaves into the sack again, for he knew that after so long a fast it would be better for Malchus to eat no more; and seeing that his strength was almost spent for lack of repose, he bade him lie down in the cell and sleep, "for fasting and watching," he said, "are in themselves worth nothing, but only in so far as they minister to the soul."
Chapter
Seven
Malchus had been with Serapion for forty days and during all that time he had followed with gladness the orderly rule of life which the hermit prescribed. His thoughts and desires, surfeited of the refined sensuality of his former life, turned easily to this new life in which every privation and every act of discipline was for him a revolt against the hated past. It seemed as if his mind had been purged of desire, for during all that time he was untroubled by the lusts of the flesh; and as Serapion permitted him every evening to eat a small meal of bread and salt or of dried dates, the dreams and reveries concerning food and wine had ceased to molest him. He had soon mastered the art of plaiting palm leaves and could now make ropes, mats, and baskets which would be good enough to sell; and when the hours of prayer and meditation were over he fell to work on a mat or basket, rejoicing to see his own handiwork grow under his fingers. Only twice during these forty days had any human soul penetrated into the empty desert which inclosed them. Once when Malchus was chanting a psalm in the oratory he was surprised by the sound of a strange voice calling out a greeting which was answered by the voice of Serapion. At the sound of it Malchus forgot his chanting and, driven by curiosity, began to listen avidly to the conversation which followed the greeting. But Serapion called to him, bidding him continue his devotions, and putting a great constraint upon himself, he forced himself to continue until he had finished the appointed service. By that time there was silence in the cell, and when he came into the outer room he found Serapion alone. The old man did not speak, and Malchus, knowing that this silence was intended as a rebuke to his curiosity, took up a half-woven basket and went out. Far below him, swaying faintly above its black shadow on the immaculate sweep of the desert, a figure no larger than a weevil toiled southward toward the remoter deserts of Thebaid; and who he was and why he had come to the cell Malchus never knew.
The second visitor had come a few days later, leading an ass laden with baskets and sacks. An hour before he arrived, Malchus, who sat weaving a basket outside the cell, had seen a small dark blot moving upon the stainless face of the desert. He had watched it until it split into two blots, one larger than the other, and then tiny moving images of man and beast had grown slowly to creatures of natural size. When they had reached the foot of the slope below the cell, the driver had left his beast and climbed the sliding bank alone. He carried a leather sack slung over his left shoulder. The ass stood patiently below, flapping each ear alternately; from where he sat, Malchus could see the swarm of flies swaying like smoke about its head. The man had reached the top of the slope. It was evident that he did not see Malchus, for he approached the cell cautiously, as if hoping to escape notice. But before he could reach the door Serapion came out, and after they had greeted each other he took from the stranger the sack he was carrying, and then held out his hand. The stranger made a gesture of refusal. "Do not repay me, brother," he said, "for by accepting them as a gift you will confer a blessing on me."
"Take the payment that is your due, brother," answered Serapion; "for has not the Lord Jesus commanded us to owe no man anything?"
The stranger took the money that Serapion offered. "It shall go, then, to some one who has need of it," he said. That was the end of their talk. Serapion carried the sack into the cell, and presently brought it back empty; the stranger took it and with a brief farewell departed, and it seemed to Malchus a marvelous thing that, living alone in that inhuman desolation, the hermit should not be tempted to delay his visitor in talk.
When he had finished weaving the basket, Malchus returned to the cell and found the hermit standing by the table, which was covered with many little loaves of bread and a jar of oil. "By God's mercy," he said, "Brother Apollonius has brought us enough food for thirty days, and so I shall be spared the journey to the monastery in Nitria, which is the nearest place where bread can be obtained. That brother was once a merchant in Alexandria, but, being desirous to lead the holy life, he left his business and departed to Nitria; and since he was unable either to learn any handicraft or to watch and fast to any great degree, he took upon himself to go at regular intervals to Alexandria and buy there the things required by the brethren; and besides this, he carries pomegranates and raisins and eggs and other needful things to them that are sick among the hermits that live round about Nitria. Nor is that all; for when that is done, he goes forth, as now, to visit the hermits who live many miles beyond, bringing to them the things without which a man cannot live. But for this he is unwilling to receive payment, doing it for God's sake, and often when I have been absent from this cell, or praying in the oratory, I have afterward found food set upon the window-sill or left at the door. So has Brother Apollonius found for himself a way in which he can serve God and benefit the faithful."
While he was speaking, Serapion had taken from the sack the loaves which still remained there. There were only three of them. "See!" he said to Malchus. "If Brother Apollonius had not come to-day, I should have had to set out for Nitria to-morrow." Then with Malchus's help he dropped all the new loaves into the sack till it hung from its peg full-bellied as the carcass of a hind which a hunter has slung by the feet from the wall of his cabin.
"But the water skin, too, is almost empty," said Malchus.
"To-morrow," replied Serapion, "I am going to refill it."
He spoke as if it were an easy matter, and Malchus supposed, therefore, that there must be some spring not far off. But Serapion told him that the nearest spring was five miles away; "and this spring," he said, "is dry for two months of the year, and when last I filled the skin from it, on the day before I started for Alexandria, I saw that it was beginning to run dry. It will be quite dry by this time and so I must go to the river."
"But the river is many miles away," said Malchus.
"It is fifteen miles from here," answered the old man, "and as there is no moon at present I shall have to start early so as to reach the river before nightfall. At the first hint of daylight I shall start back, and before sunset I shall be here."
"I will come and help you," said Malchus, "for the skin, when full, must be a heavy load."
But the hermit would not allow Malchus to accompany him, and next day, when Malchus had finished his prayers, he found that Serapion was gone and the skin was gone from the wall, and, running out-of-doors, he espied, far off, the small figure which had grown so familiar to him during the long journey from Alexandria. Already it was halfway across the plain which extended, smooth as a sea of milk, from the foot of the steep descent beneath him to the next great wave of the desert. For a long time Malchus stood watching it with a strange sinking at the heart. Then he turned to his plaiting, and when he looked again Serapion had vanished over the next crest.
For the first time Malchus was face to face with utter solitude, and at the sense of it a profound loneliness descended upon him. He discovered now that, even during the hours when he had been unable to see or hear Serapion, he had always, by some unknown sense, felt the comfort of his companionship. For little by little, without being aware of it, he had fastened upon the old man all those bonds of human affection which he had so ruthlessly severed when he fled from Alexandria. Serapion had become for him his father, his mother, and his dear friend, and, deprived of him, he was deprived of everything. Everything but himself, for now, as in a fever, he had become sharply aware of himself as a thing separate from all else. At the same time vivid memories of his former life began to assail him. One after another they flowed through his mind, each with its own keen emotion; and last of all the face of Helena flashed upon his inner eye with the heart-shaking clearness of reality. He cried out aloud and, not knowing what he did, sprang to his feet and ran into the cell, as though to take refuge from some specter or prowling beast. There he fell on his knees and hid his face in his hands. The discovery that he had not, after all, escaped from the past, that he bore it still stored up within him and ready to spring to life and torture him in his moments of weakness, filled him with bitter discouragement. Crouching there immovable, he prayed passionately for strength, and after a while strength came to him and he rose from his knees and returned to his weaving. He had by now become so expert that he could work blindfold, and he sat now with his head cloth drawn over his face to keep off the flies which through the hot hours incessantly plagued every living thing. But now the hot, veering note of their buzzing brought comfort to him, for it raised a screen of sound between him and the huge silence which inclosed him, and soon the busy monotony of manual labor lulled his heart into resignation, and at last even into contentment. He was completing the largest mat he had yet made, and when he had finished the last rows he secured the loose ends and, standing up, spread it out on the sand. The texture was beautifully close and even. Malchus heaved a sigh of accomplishment and surveyed it with pleasure. But as he did so there came into his mind the occasion on which he had first completed a mat of sound workmanship and had carried it proudly to Serapion. Serapion had examined it carefully, nodding his head many times over it, and had then, without comment, spent an hour in pulling it to pieces. The ruthless destruction of his handiwork had pained Malchus deeply, and for the first time his heart had risen in revolt against the hermit; but he had controlled his tongue and had gone out and lain for an hour sulking behind the cell. By that time his pride had submitted and he was at peace again. In the evening Serapion had recited many times over the verses which contain that command of the Lord Jesus, "Set not your affections upon things of the earth"; and when Malchus had learned it by heart Serapion had set him to meditate upon it, "and do not forget, my son," he had said, "that to cast off the world of men is nothing, for unless a man has also cast off the smallest earthly delight, his soul is still of this world." And next morning, as Malchus went out to work, Serapion had looked up and said to him, "You have now mastered the art of plaiting leaves."
That memory now rose to rebuke his pleasure in the mat which he had just finished, but this time he did not revolt against the rebuke; he only lamented his failure to progress in the attainment of perfection, and in order to purge from his heart the smallest taint of pride, he sat down and sternly set himself to pick the beautiful mat to pieces. It was a slow process, not only because the mat was large, but also because he was taking care not to strain the ribbons, for he was determined to weave them into baskets. And when at last he had quite undone the work of many days, he set to work at once on the first of the baskets and worked on until it was finished.
By that time the sun had set. Arched immeasurably above the earth, the sky, deep beyond deep, was one great flame of scarlet. Blood-red and luminous, the desert from horizon to horizon blazed it back until in that world of sultry, all-pervading glow the very air seemed red. It was a moment of mysterious intensity, the symbol, it seemed, of that august sacrifice in which the divine blood had been poured upon the world as an atonement for the sins of man. Malchus, caught into a holy exaltation, stood with uplifted arms; the huge gray crucifix of his shadow extended down the long slope from his feet. "Redeem me also, O blessed Lord," he prayed; "burn out my sins with the fire of thy blood."
The moment faded. The face of the desert grew ashen-gray and soon the earth-floored, heaven-roofed furnace had changed to a pallid and desolate cavern from whose emptiness the chilled heart recoiled. Malchus lowered his arms, and as he did so a sudden draught fluttered past him and within a few feet from where he stood a little whirlwind troubled the sand. It grew, and soon a grim and threatening wraith rose upward to a giant's height and towered above him. The whirling sand had gathered itself into a human body. Malchus, speaking aloud the name of Christ, made the Sign of the Cross, and the life went out of the wraith and it collapsed into dust before his eyes. But the sight of it had troubled him. It was as if it had arisen, hard upon the divine mystery of the sunset, as a sign of that other mystery in which are hidden the powers of darkness and evil. A cold spasm shook his body, and, gathering together his work, he retreated into the cell and by the last vestiges of twilight ate his single meal of bread and salt.
He ate slowly because he dreaded the long, empty hours of darkness which lay before him; for now, for the first time, he realized complete isolation. He stared at the darkness of the cell and it seemed to him that it was thick and spongy, a gloom grown palpable. But the silence was more terrible than the darkness; its infinity and its horrible imminence shriveled his soul; its intensity seemed every moment to be on the point of concentrating into some terrible climax. Later in the night, he knew, it would break in those shrieks and howls which were even more harrowing than silence itself, and he found himself dreading the moment when the first howl should come. Yet silence and darkness and all the fears of the night could do nothing, he well knew, against the perfect safety to be found in prayer, and his mind turned to the oratory. But he felt a strange reluctance to move. If he moved, he felt, he would loose all these waiting terrors that had gathered silently about the cell. He controlled himself sternly and, standing up, repeated aloud the psalm which begins, "Save me, O God; for the waters are come even unto my soul." The sound of his own voice reassured him and the silence moved farther away.
When he had repeated the psalm twice he groped toward the oratory and paused for a moment in the doorway. Though he heard and saw nothing, he knew that the oratory was not empty. He waited with beating heart, and suddenly a fluttering, intermittent draught smote his face with soft, impalpable blows. Fear clutched at his heart, a fear which leaped up into horror at a sudden pattering of hands against the bars of the little window. With his right hand Malchus made the holy sign upon the darkness and repeated again the same psalm. When he had finished it he paused again, and now he could feel that the cell was empty. Then with a braver heart he entered and began his nightly prayers and meditations, and as he prayed aloud a warm sense of security settled upon him. Only when he stopped praying and fell to meditating did the terrible silence return, pouring in upon him through the window, welling coldly through the doorway, bringing a sense of the draughty void that encompassed him, till his soul struggled as if in deep water, and again he took refuge in prayer. He prayed until his words stumbled into nonsense and his body swayed like a tree in the wind, and, feeling that he was going to fall, he leaned against the wall of the cell. The relief of even that little respite sent a wave of luxurious numbness through his body; his heavy eyelids dropped for a moment as if by their own weight. Then slowly the dark form of a human head took shape upon a background of cloudy gold. It cleared, brightened, took on color and life, and the face of Helena gazed at him with shining eyes and parted lips of kindling passion. His own lips moved and he muttered her name with slow, incredulous delight.
Instantly long, derisive shrieks broke in upon the silence, then other shrieks, and others still, filling the night with an infernal chorus which roused into ghastly life the boundless void about the cell. Malchus sprang shuddering from his dream. His body was cold with fear, for he was convinced now that these nightly shrieks were in very truth the voices of those powers of evil which tower up out of the sand or lurk expectant in the silence, waiting for the moment when one of the faithful, flagging in the endless contest, should yield to them an accession of power. He prayed loudly and fervently, and soon the shrieks grew fainter, dying in bayings and howlings miles away down the wilderness.
For the remainder of the night Malchus, beating his breast and wrestling with bodily exhaustion and flagging spirits, persevered in prayer, remembering what Serapion had told him of the power of prayer. For once, Serapion had said, when he and the Abba Macarius had stood by night in the open desert, they had seen a great column of light set upon a hilltop and reaching up into the sky, and the blessed Macarius had told him that it was the prayers of the monks in the great monastery of Nitria ascending to the everlasting throne. And at last, as if in answer to Malchus's prayers, a gray, watery light filled the cell and the little window became a gleaming square, pure and clear as the gleam on a silver shield. Malchus, cold and exhausted, felt his soul thrilled by the blessed redemption of daylight, and, dragging his stiffened body into the outer chamber, he opened the door and went out.
Below him the infinite gray desert lay dwarfed and shrunk beneath a vast sheaf of golden light springing far beyond the blue hills which bordered the Nile. It was as though the prayers of all faithful throughout the length and breadth of Egypt had been gathered together into the east. And somewhere, an invisible atom in the lower grayness, Malchus knew that Serapion must at that moment be toiling back to him under the heavy load of the water skin.
Chapter
Eight
With the return of day Malchus's mind grew calm again and he remembered the terrors and struggles of the night as a man remembers vaguely the fever that has left him. Throughout the day he followed scrupulously the appointed order of his life, but as the day declined the prospect of Serapion's return roused in him an expectancy so keen that he could with difficulty prevent himself from running down the hill and starting off across the plain to meet the old man. But this, he knew, would displease him, and he resolved that Serapion should find him faithfully observing his duties. He denied himself even the relief of glancing from time to time across the desert for a first sight of him; but he could not quell his inward excitement, and as he sat weaving with the head cloth drawn over his face his nerves were alert and tense for the moment of Serapion's return. Even if he neither saw nor heard him, he would know instinctively that he was near. But hour followed hour, and Malchus, having finished another basket, lifted his cowl and saw that the sun was setting. He gathered together his work and moved with a heavy heart toward the cell. When he reached the door he saw Serapion standing within; he had prepared the table for a meal. Malchus's heart leaped into his throat; his impulse was to fling away his work and throw himself at the old man's feet. He checked the impulse and waited, humble and expectant, for Serapion to turn and greet him, and when he neither turned nor spoke Malchus shrank back, chilled into himself. As he laid away his work the old man's quiet voice broke the silence, "Have you eaten, my son?" and when Malchus replied that he had not, Serapion brought another loaf from the sack and they ate in silence.
Next morning, an hour before the dawn, Malchus heard the voice of Serapion calling to him from outside. He rose from his knees and, going into the outer chamber, opened the door of the cell. It was as if he had opened a door on eternity. Before him lay the bare, dead world of a burned-out planet, an ancient world, crushed and exhausted by the weight of never-ending time. At these twilight intervals mankind with its loves and angers and unearthly ideals shrank to a thing of no more account than a heap of stones or a fume of sand endlessly agitated in the eddies of a pool. Even the face of the world itself lost its separate reality and became a part of the expression of some divine or infernal mood, a mystery never to be fathomed by the mind, but waking in the soul an untranslatable echo. Malchus stood for a moment thrilled and appalled before he moved out to the edge of the terrace where the figure of the hermit stood so lifeless and immovable that Malchus could hardly believe that the voice which had called him had issued from it. So intense was the silence that it seemed that, when at last it broke, the whole of creation would be shivered with it.
But when Serapion spoke his voice was no more than a mote in the silence. "My son," he said, "the time has come for you to depart."
Malchus made no reply. Ever since Serapion had relented toward him and taken him into his cell he had deluded himself with the hope that he might remain always with the old man as his servant. Serapion had become a vital part of his life and the sudden discovery that he himself had no part in the life of Serapion chilled him like the presence of death. His only friend was casting him off and he felt that the heart in his body was shriveling and dying. Serapion did not even care what happened to him, for he added nothing to the order that he must depart; and though he had from the first refused to advise Malchus in his choice of the hermit life, saying that such a choice must come from within and not from without, yet now this indifference cut him to the heart. He did not know how careful Serapion's treatment of him had been from the beginning, nor that many of the things which had seemed to be accidental occurrences had been arranged by the old man in order to show Malchus to himself and give him the needful experience out of which to make his choice. He did not even perceive that before sending him away Serapion had given him a foretaste of that absolute solitude which was the hermit's daily life, and then had waited until that experience had sunk into his mind and spread its influence there.
He stood for a long while silent with lowered head, struggling with his emotions. Then, laying aside all shame, he fell on his knees before Serapion. "Let me stay with you, my father," he begged. "Let me be your servant."
He knew that his request was craven, that he had weakly fallen away from that unshakable resolve with which he had clung to the hermit despite the fierce repulse he had received. Where was that courage now? He waited like a fawning animal for the hermit's reply.
Serapion replied without looking at him, "He who is a servant himself has no need of a servant."
"Where, then, shall I go?" whined Malchus.
"Your own heart must tell you where to go, my son. But, for to-day, go out into the desert a mile or two from here and spend the time till nightfall in meditation. Then return and tell me what you have decided, for to-morrow you must depart."
Malchus turned away in despair and began to descend the sandy slope to the plain below. At the bottom he turned to the right and followed the base of the hill which wavered away southward. It was strange, after having lived so long within the little circle about Serapion's cell, to be wandering alone in the boundless waste of sand. The forty days which he had passed with Serapion seemed to include the whole of his life. The rest was dreams, for the days of his former life had receded far behind him. But the sufferings through which he had passed had left him feeble and over-sensitive, and as an uprooted plant seeks roothold in the smallest handful of earth, so his broken spirit clung to Serapion. Faced with the necessity of severing himself again from human ties, he shrank and shuddered as a sick man shudders at the knife.
He had fallen unconsciously into the patient, unhurrying tread which he had learned during the long desert journey. The line of the sandhills now curved westward and, finding a shady hollow carved out of the hill face, he turned into it. A clatter startled the hollow; he had disturbed two great birds which towered suddenly upward and vanished over the sandbank, leaving behind them a heap, half skeleton, half carrion. Malchus hesitated. He had long grown accustomed to do violence to his old fastidiousness, but he remembered that, now that the birds were gone, the carrion would become a gathering place for swarms of flies, and so he turned aside and, finding another hollow a little farther on, he entered it and sat down.
It was the first time in his new life that he had set himself to meditate on earthly matters. Hitherto his meditations had been a discipline of the soul, teaching it to ascend by means of prayer into the presence of God. Now, having shared for a while the life of a hermit, he must decide whether he had the will and the strength to follow that life himself. But he had made that decision once for all when he had left Alexandria and followed the steps of Serapion. Why, then, should he decide again? But Malchus knew that in truth he must decide again, for the first decision was made in ignorance and under the impulsion of a great storm of passion. Now he must decide out of experience and a quiet mind. Yet in his present mood how difficult it would have been to decide if he had not had that first impetuous decision to fire his will. For now his will was weak and passive, he could, of himself, have willed nothing positive. That strong craving for a life of self-discipline and fierce austerity had died down now to a mere acquiescence; now he felt strongly only about the things from which he recoiled, for from his old life he still recoiled with all the force of his being.
An hour passed, then another, and by degrees, as a flower draws moisture from the soil in which it grows, his mind drank in something of the peace and silence which surrounded him. The shock had spent itself. He grew reconciled to the thought that he must leave Serapion. With the return of calm he could see more deeply into the hidden places of his spirit and he perceived that the days of stern discipline through which he had passed had planted in him a growing fervor, an aspiration which was becoming gradually more and more clear, as if the whole strength of body and soul were drawing itself together and fusing into one burning core. He felt, too, and mistook it for a virtue, the fanatic's pride in those mortifications of the flesh which in themselves are less than nothing. And as he fell to pondering again the hermit's life, the most arduous and the most exalted that man can pursue, his soul took fire and he longed to submit himself to the fiercest rigors of which man is capable. In the intensity of his emotions he rose to his feet and stood upright with glaring eyes and hands crossed upon his breast. The life he had chosen lay visibly before him, a ravaged waste beset with hunger and thirst and parching heat, with foul beasts and devils and the hidden terrors and torments of endless nights, and at the end of it that high Paradise of green boughs through which the wings of archangels moved like great lilies of scarlet and gold about the ineffable throne of God. From the wilderness around him he reached out his arms toward that remote salvation, struggling toward it across the obstacles that clogged his steps. But in a moment the vision had faded and he stood again englobed in the parched and glaring gold dust of the sandy hollow. In the exaltation of his dream he had staggered forward in the loose sand, and now he stood blindly wondering which of the two worlds was the real one, telling himself that this world of sand and heat which was so often present to his mind was but a ghost, and that the true reality was that spirit world to which the soul ascended only in the rare moments of divine ecstasy. As the sun dropped into the west and the material world melted again into the nightly holocaust, he knew that he stood on the edge of eternity and looked for a moment through the veil of things seen into the unspeakable mystery beyond; and as he turned back toward Serapion's cell, walking through the sunset as the three holy children walked through the fiery furnace, he felt that his mind had grown stern and unshakable as adamant....
When Serapion heard that Malchus was resolved to take upon himself the burden of the hermit he was filled with gladness. "Blessed be God and the Lord Jesus," he said, "who have given you the strength to choose aright. Far be it from me now, my son, to discourage you. Know then that six miles from here, to the south, there stands a lonely cell. Fifty years ago the blessed Poemon built it with his own hands and lived in it till the day when he rendered his soul to God. He died in the act of prayer, for when two of the brethren found him his dead body was bowed before the crucifix. Last time I went by the cell it was falling into ruin; it is for you to rebuild it. To-morrow, then, at dawn we will set out and you shall take with you tools—for I have some here—to help you to restore the place. You shall take also a half of our loaves and the water skin that I have just filled."
"But I cannot take the water skin, my father, for you have no other."
"Do not trouble yourself about that. If it were not right that you should have it, I would not give it to you. But go out now and scoop away the sand from the south wall of this cell. You will find buried there an ax and a spade."
While Serapion had been speaking, that tremulous sense, half fear, half delight, which is the very spirit of life, had crept into Malchus's heart and, going out as Serapion had directed him, he found the ax and the spade and brought them into the cell.
"To-night," said the hermit, "you must sleep, for when we have need of the body we must minister to the body."