Petrus went up the mountain side with Hermas. The old man followed the
youth, who showed him the way, and as he raised his eyes from time to
time, he glanced with admiration at his guide’s broad shoulders and
elastic limbs. The road grew broader when it reached a little mountain
plateau, and from thence the two men walked on side by side, but for
some time without speaking till the senator asked: “How long now has
your father lived up on the mountain?”
“Many years,” answered Hermas. “But I do not know how many--and it is
all one. No one enquires about time up here among us.”
The senator stood still a moment and measured his companion with a
glance.
“You have been with your father ever since he came?” he asked.
“He never lets me out of his sight;” replied Hermas. “I have been only
twice into the oasis, even to go to the church.”
“Then you have been to no school?”
“To what school should I go! My father has taught me to read the Gospels
and I could write, but I have nearly forgotten how. Of what use would it
be to me? We live like praying beasts.”
Deep bitterness sounded in the last words, and Petrus could see into
the troubled spirit of his companion, overflowing as it was with weary
disgust, and he perceived how the active powers of youth revolted in
aversion against the slothful waste of life, to which he was condemned.
He was grieved for the boy, and he was not one of those who pass by
those in peril without helping them. Then he thought of his own sons,
who had grown up in the exercise and fulfilment of serious duties, and
he owned to himself that the fine young fellow by his side was in no
way their inferior, and needed nothing but to be guided aright. He
thoughtfully looked first at the youth and then on the ground, and
muttered unintelligible words into his grey beard as they walked on.
Suddenly he drew himself up and nodded decisively; he would make an
attempt to save Hermas, and faithful to his own nature, action trod on
the heels of resolve. Where the little level ended the road divided,
one path continued to lead upwards, the other deviated to the valley
and ended at the quarries. Petrus was for taking the latter, but Hermas
cried out, “That is not the way to our cave; you must follow me.”
“Follow thou me!” replied the senator, and the words were spoken with a
tone and expression, that left no doubt in the youth’s mind as to their
double meaning. “The day is yet before us, and we will see what my
laborers are doing. Do you know the spot where they quarry the stone?”
“How should I not know it?” said Hermas, passing the senator to lead the
way. “I know every path from our mountain to the oasis, and to the sea.
A panther had its lair in the ravine behind your quarries.”
“So we have learnt,” said Petrus. “The thievish beasts have slaughtered
two young camels, and the people can neither catch them in their toils
nor run them down with dogs.”
“They will leave you in peace now,” said the boy laughing. “I brought
down the male from the rock up there with an arrow, and I found the
mother in a hollow with her young ones. I had a harder job with her;
my knife is so bad, and the copper blade bent with the blow; I had to
strangle the gaudy devil with my hands, and she tore my shoulder and bit
my arm. Look! there are the scars. But thank God, my wounds heal quicker
than my father’s. Paulus says, I am like an earth-worm; when it is cut
in two the two halves say good-bye to each other, and crawl off sound
and gay, one way, and the other another way. The young panthers were
so funny and helpless, I would not kill them, but I did them up in
my sheepskin, and brought them to my father. He laughed at the little
beggars, and then a Nabataean took them to be sold at Clysma to a
merchant from Rome. There and at Byzantium, there is a demand for all
kinds of living beasts of prey. I got some money for them, and for the
skins of the old ones, and kept it to pay for my journey, when I went
with the others to Alexandria to ask the blessing of the new Patriarch.”
“You went to the metropolis?” asked Petrus. “You saw the great
structures, that secure the coast from the inroads of the sea, the tall
Pharos with the far-shining fire, the strong bridges, the churches, the
palaces and temples with their obelisks, pillars, and beautiful paved
courts? Did it never enter your mind to think that it would be a proud
thing to construct such buildings?”
Hermas shook his head. “Certainly I would rather live in an airy house
with colonnades than in our dingy cavern, but building would never be in
my way. What a long time it takes to put one stone on another! I am not
patient, and when I leave my father I will do something that shall win
me fame. But there are the quarries--” Petrus did not let his companion
finish his sentence, but interrupted him with all the warmth of youth,
exclaiming: “And do you mean to say that fame cannot be won by the arts
of building? Look there at the blocks and flags, here at the pillars of
hard stone. These are all to be sent to Aila, and there my son Antonius,
the elder of the two that you saw just now, is going to build a House of
God, with strong walls and pillars, much larger and handsomer than our
church in the oasis, and that is his work too. He is not much older than
you are, and already he is famous among the people far and wide. Out
of those red blocks down there my younger son Polykarp will hew noble
lions, which are destined to decorate the finest building in the capital
itself. When you and I, and all that are now living, shall have been
long since forgotten, still it will be said these are the work of the
Master Polykarp, the son of Petrus, the Pharanite. What he can do is
certainly a thing peculiar to himself, no one who is not one of the
chosen and gifted ones can say, ‘I will learn to do that.’ But you have
a sound understanding, strong hands and open eyes, and who can tell what
else there is hidden in you. If you could begin to learn soon, it would
not yet be too late to make a worthy master of you, but of course he
who would rise so high must not be afraid of work. Is your mind set upon
fame? That is quite right, and I am very glad of it; but you must know
that he who would gather that rare fruit must water it, as a noble
heathen once said, with the sweat of his brow. Without trouble and labor
and struggles there can be no victory, and men rarely earn fame without
fighting for victory.”
The old man’s vehemence was contagious; the lad’s spirit was roused, and
he exclaimed warmly: “What do you say? that I am afraid of struggles and
trouble? I am ready to stake everything, even my life, only to win fame.
But to measure stone, to batter defenceless blocks with a mallet and
chisel, or to join the squares with accurate pains--that does not tempt
me. I should like to win the wreath in the Palaestra by flinging the
strongest to the ground, or surpass all others as a warrior in battle;
my father was a soldier too, and he may talk as much as he will of
‘peace,’ and nothing but ‘peace,’ all the same in his dreams he speaks
of bloody strife and burning wounds. If you only cure him I will stay no
longer on this lonely mountain, even if I must steal away in secret. For
what did God give me these arms, if not to use them?”
Petrus made no answer to these words, which came is a stormy flood from
Hermas’ lips, but he stroked his grey beard, and thought to himself,
“The young of the eagle does not catch flies. I shall never win over
this soldier’s son to our peaceful handicraft, but he shall not remain
on the mountain among these queer sluggards, for there he is being
ruined, and yet he is not of a common sort.”
When he had given a few orders to the overseer of his workmen, he
followed the young man to see his suffering father.
It was now some hours since Hermas and Paulus had left the wounded
anchorite, and he still lay alone in his cave. The sun, as it rose
higher and higher, blazed down upon the rocks, which began to radiate
their heat, and the hermit’s dwelling was suffocatingly hot. The pain of
the poor man’s wound increased, his fever was greater, and he was very
thirsty. There stood the jug, which Paulus had given him, but it was
long since empty, and neither Paulus nor Hermas had come back. He
listened anxiously to the sounds in the distance, and fancied at first
that he heard the Alexandrian’s footstep, and then that he heard loud
words and suppressed groans coming from his cave. Stephanus tried to
call out, but he himself could hardly hear the feeble sound, which, with
his wounded breast and parched mouth, he succeeded in uttering. Then
he fain would have prayed, but fearful mental anguish disturbed his
devotion. All the horrors of desertion came upon him, and he who had
lived a life overflowing with action and enjoyment, with disenchantment
and satiety, who now in solitude carried on an incessant spiritual
struggle for the highest goal--this man felt himself as disconsolate and
lonely as a bewildered child that has lost its mother.
He lay on his bed of pain softly crying, and when he observed by
the shadow of the rock that the sun had passed its noonday height,
indignation and bitter feeling were added to pain, thirst and weariness.
He doubled his fists and muttered words which sounded like soldier’s
oaths, and with them the name now of Paulus, now of his son. At last
anguish gained the upperhand of his anger, and it seemed to him, as
though he were living over again the most miserable hour of his life, an
hour now long since past and gone.
He thought he was returning from a noisy banquet in the palace of the
Caesars. His slaves had taken the garlands of roses and poplar leaves
from his brow and breast, and robed him in his night-dress; now, with a
silver lamp in his hand, he was approaching his bedroom, and he smiled,
for his young wife was awaiting him, the mother of his Hermas. She was
fair and he loved her well, and he had brought home witty sayings to
repeat to her from the table of the emperor. He, if any one, had a right
to smile. Now he was in the ante-room, in which two slave-women were
accustomed to keep watch; he found only one, and she was sleeping
and breathing deeply; he still smiled as he threw the light upon her
face--how stupid she looked with her mouth open! An alabaster lamp shed
a dim light in the bed-room, softly and still smiling he went up to
Glycera’s ivory couch, and held up his lamp, and stared at the empty and
undisturbed bed--and the smile faded from his lips. The smile of that
evening came back to him no more through all the long years, for Glycera
had betrayed him, and left him--him and her child. All this had happened
twenty years since, and to-day all that he had then felt had returned to
him, and he saw his wife’s empty couch with his “mind’s eye,” as plainly
as he had then seen it, and he felt as lonely and as miserable as in
that night. But now a shadow appeared before the opening of the cave,
and he breathed a deep sigh as he felt himself released from the hideous
vision, for he had recognized Paulus, who came up and knelt down beside
him.
“Water, water!” Stephanus implored in a low voice, and Paulus, who was
cut to the heart by the moaning of the old man, which he had not heard
till he entered the cave, seized the pitcher. He looked into it, and,
finding it quite dry, he rushed down to the spring as if he were running
for a wager, filled it to the brim and brought it to the lips of the
sick man, who gulped the grateful drink down with deep draughts, and at
last exclaimed with a sigh of relief; “That is better; why were you so
long away? I was so thirsty!” Paulus who had fallen again on his knees
by the old man, pressed his brow against the couch, and made no reply.
Stephanus gazed in astonishment at his companion, but perceiving that
he was weeping passionately he asked no further questions. Perfect
stillness reigned in the cave for about an hour; at last Paulus raised
his face, and said, “Forgive me Stephanus. I forgot your necessity
in prayer and scourging, in order to recover the peace of mind I had
trifled away--no heathen would have done such a thing!” The sick man
stroked his friend’s arm affectionately; but Paulus murmured, “Egoism,
miserable egoism guides and governs us. Which of us ever thinks of the
needs of others? And we--we who profess to walk in the way of the Lamb!”
He sighed deeply, and leaned his head on the sick man’s breast, who
lovingly stroked his rough hair, and it was thus that the senator found
him, when he entered the cave with Hermas.
The idle way of life of the anchorites was wholly repulsive to his views
of the task for men and for Christians, but he succored those whom he
could, and made no enquiries about the condition of the sufferer. The
pathetic union in which he found the two men touched his heart, and,
turning to Paulus, he said kindly: “I can leave you in perfect comfort,
for you seem to me to have a faithful nurse.”
The Alexandrian reddened; he shook his head, and replied: “I? I thought
of no one but myself, and left him to suffer and thirst in neglect, but
now I will not quit him--no, indeed, I will not, and by God’s help and
yours, he shall recover.”
Petrus gave him a friendly nod, for he did not believe in the
anchorite’s self-accusation, though he did in his good-will; and
before he left the cave, he desired Hermas to come to him early on the
following day to give him news of his father’s state. He wished not only
to cure Stephanus, but to continue his relations with the youth, who had
excited his interest in the highest degree, and he had resolved to help
him to escape from the inactive life which was weighing upon him.
Paulus declined to share the simple supper that the father and son were
eating, but expressed his intention of remaining with the sick man. He
desired Hermas to pass the night in his dwelling, as the scanty limits
of the cave left but narrow room for the lad.
A new life had this day dawned upon the young man; all the grievances
and desires which had filled his soul ever since his journey to
Alexandria, crowding together in dull confusion, had taken form and
color, and he knew now that he could not remain an anchorite, but must
try his over abundant strength in real life.
“My father,” thought he, “was a warrior, and lived in a palace, before
he retired into our dingy cave; Paulus was Menander, and to this day has
not forgotten how to throw the discus; I am young, strong, and free-born
as they were, and Petrus says, I might have been a fine man. I will
not hew and chisel stones like his sons, but Caesar needs soldiers, and
among all the Amalekites, nay among the Romans in the oasis, I saw none
with whom I might not match myself.”
While thus he thought he stretched his limbs, and struck his hands on
his broad breast, and when he was asleep, he dreamed of the wrestling
school, and of a purple robe that Paulus held out to him, of a wreath
of poplar leaves that rested on his scented curls, and of the beautiful
woman who had met him on the stairs of the senator’s house.