It was a splendid morning; not a cloud dimmed the sky which spread
high above desert, mountain, and oasis, like an arched tent of uniform
deep-blue silk. How delicious it is to breathe the pure, light, aromatic
air on the heights, before the rays of the sun acquire their mid-day
power, and the shadows of the heated porphyry cliffs, growing shorter
and shorter, at last wholly disappear!
With what delight did Sirona inhale this pure atmosphere, when after
a long night--the fourth that she had passed in the anchorite’s dismal
cave-she stepped out into the air. Paulus sat by the hearth, and was so
busily engaged with some carving, that he did not observe her approach.
“Kind good man!” thought Sirona, as she perceived a steaming pot on the
fire, and the palm-branches which the Alexandrian had fastened up by the
entrance to the cave, to screen her from the mounting sun. She knew
the way without a guide to the spring from which Paulus had brought her
water at their first meeting, and she now slipped away, and went down
to it with a pretty little pitcher of burnt clay in her hand. Paulus did
indeed see her, but he made as though he neither, saw nor heard, for
he knew she was going there to wash herself, and to dress and smarten
herself as well as might be--for was she not a woman! When she returned,
she looked not less fresh and charming than on that morning when she had
been seen and watched by Hermas. True, her heart was sore, true, she was
perplexed and miserable, but sleep and rest had long since effaced from
her healthy, youthful, and elastic frame all traces left by that fearful
day of flight; and fate, which often means best by us when it shows us a
hostile face, had sent her a minor anxiety to divert her from her graver
cares.
Her greyhound was very ill, and it seemed that in the ill-treatment
it had experienced, not only its leg had been broken, but that it had
suffered some internal injury. The brisk, lively little creature fell
down powerless when ever it tried to stand, and when she took it up to
nurse it comfortably in her lap, it whined pitifully, and looked up at
her sorrowfully, and as if complaining to her. It would take neither
food nor drink; its cool little nose was hot; and when she left the
cave, Iambe lay panting on the fine woollen coverlet which Paulus had
spread upon the bed, unable even to look after her.
Before taking the dog the water she had fetched in the graceful
jar--which was another gift from her hospitable friend--she went up to
Paulus and greeted him kindly. He looked up from his work, thanked her,
and a few minutes later, when she came out of the cave again, asked her,
“How is the poor little creature?”
Sirona shrugged her shoulders, and said sadly, “She has drunk nothing,
and does not even know me, and pants as rapidly as last evening--if I
were to lose the poor little beast!--”
She could say no more for emotion, but Paulus shook his head.
“It is sinful,” he said, “to grieve so for a beast devoid of reason.”
“Iambe is not devoid of reason,” replied Sirona. “And even if she were,
what have I left if she dies? She grew up in my father’s house, where
all loved me; I had her first when she was only a few days old, and I
brought her up on milk on a little bit of sponge. Many a time, when I
heard the little thing whining for food, have I got out of bed at night
with bare feet; and so she came to cling to me like a child, and could
not do without me. No one can know how another feels about such things.
My father used to tell us of a spider that beautified the life of a
prisoner, and what is a dirty dumb creature like that to my clever,
graceful little dog! I have lost my home, and here every one believes
the worst of me, although I have done no one any harm, and no one, no
one loves me but Iambe.”
“But I know of one who loves every one with a divine and equal love,”
interrupted Paulus.
“I do not care for such a one,” answered Sirona. “Iambe follows no one
but me; what good can a love do me that I must share with all the
world! But you mean the crucified God of the Christians? He is good and
pitiful, so says Dame Dorothea; but he is dead--I cannot see him, nor
hear him, and, certainly, I cannot long for one who only shows me grace.
I want one to whom I can count for something, and to whose life and
happiness I am indispensable.”
A scarcely perceptible shudder thrilled through the Alexandrian as she
spoke these words, and he thought, as he glanced at her face and figure
with a mingled expression of regret and admiration, “Satan, before he
fell, was the fairest among the pure spirits, and he still has power
over this woman. She is still far from being ripe for salvation, and yet
she has a gentle heart, and even if she has erred, she is not lost.”
Sirona’s eyes had met his, and she said with a sigh, “You look at me so
compassionately--if only Iambe were well, and if I succeeded in reaching
Alexandria, my destiny would perhaps take a turn for the better.”
Paulus had risen while she spoke, and had taken the pot from the hearth;
he now offered it to his guest, saying:
“For the present we will trust to this broth to compensate to you for
the delights of the capital; I am glad that you relish it. But tell me
now, have you seriously considered what danger may threaten a beautiful,
young, and unprotected woman in the wicked city of the Greeks? Would it
not be better that you should submit to the consequences of your guilt,
and return to Phoebicius, to whom unfortunately you belong?”
Sirona, at these words, had set down the vessel out of which she was
eating, and rising in passionate haste, she exclaimed:
“That shall never, never be!--And when I was sitting up there half-dead,
and took your step for that of Phoebicius, the gods showed me a way to
escape from him, and from you or anyone who would drag me back to him.
When I fled to the edge of the abyss, I was raving and crazed, but what
I then would have done in my madness, I would do now in cold blood--as
surely as I hope to see my own people in Arelas once more! What was I
once, and to what have I come through Phoebicius! Life was to me a sunny
garden with golden trellises and shady trees and waters as bright as
crystal, with rosy flowers and singing birds; and he, he has darkened
its light, and fouled its springs, and broken down its flowers. All now
seems dumb and colorless, and if the abyss is my grave, no one will miss
me nor mourn for me.”
“Poor woman!” said Paulus. “Your husband then showed you very little
love.”
“Love,” laughed Sirona, “Phoebicius and love! Only yesterday I told you,
how cruelly he used to torture me after his feasts, when he was drunk
or when he recovered from one of his swoons. But one thing he did to me,
one thing which broke the last thread of a tie between us. No one yet
has ever heard a word of it from me; not even Dorothea, who often blamed
me when I let slip a hard word against my husband. It was well for her
to talk--if I had found a husband like Petrus I might perhaps have been
like Dorothea. It is a marvel, which I myself do not understand, that
I did not grow wicked with such a man, a man who--why should I conceal
it--who, when we were at Rome, because he was in debt, and because he
hoped to get promotion through his legate Quintillus, sold me--me--to
him. He himself brought the old man--who had often followed me
about--into his house, but our hostess, a good woman, had overheard the
matter, and betrayed it all to me. It is so base, so vile--it seems to
blacken my soul only to think of it! The legate got little enough in
return for his sesterces, but Phoebicius did not restore his wages of
sin, and his rage against me knew no bounds when he was transferred to
the oasis at the instigation of his betrayed chief. Now you know all,
and never advise me again to return to that man to whom my misfortune
has bound me.
“Only listen how the poor little beast in there is whining. It wants to
come to me, and has not the strength to move.”
Paulus looked after her sympathetically as she disappeared under the
opening in the rock, and he awaited her return with folded arms. He
could not see into the cave, for the space in which the bed stood was
closed at the end by the narrow passage which formed the entrance, and
which joined it at an angle as the handle of a scythe joins the blade.
She remained a long time, and he could hear now and then a tender word
with which she tried to comfort the suffering creature. Suddenly he
was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor
woman’s affectionate little companion was dead, and in the dim twilight
of the cave she had seen its dulled eye, and felt the stiffness of death
overspreading and paralyzing its slender limbs. He dared not go into
the cavern, but he felt his eyes fill with tears, and he would willingly
have spoken some word of consolation to her.
At last she came out, her eyes red with weeping. Paulus had guessed
rightly for she held the body of little Iambe in her arms.
“How sorry I am,” said Paulus, “the poor little creature was so pretty.”
Sirona nodded, sat down, and unfastened the prettily embroidered band
from the dog’s neck, saying half to herself, and half to Paulus, “My
little Agnes worked this collar. I myself had taught her to sew, and
this was the first piece of work that was all her own.” She held the
collar up to the anchorite. “This clasp is of real silver,” she went on,
“and my father himself gave it to me. He was fond of the poor little dog
too. Now it will never leap and spring again, poor thing.”
She looked sadly down at the dead dog. Then she collected herself, and
said hurriedly, “Now I will go away from here. Nothing--nothing keeps
me any longer in this wilderness, for the senator’s house, where I have
spent many happy hours, and where everyone was fond of me, is closed
against me, and must ever be so long as he lives there. If you have not
been kind to me only to do me harm in the end, let me go today, and help
me to reach Alexandria.”
“Not to-day, in any case not to-day,” replied Paulus. “First I must find
out when a vessel sails for Klysma or for Berenike, and then I have many
other things to see to for you. You owe me an answer to my question,
as to what you expect to do and to find in Alexandria. Poor child--the
younger and the fairer you are--”
“I know all you would say to me,” interrupted Sirona. “Wherever I have
been, I have attracted the eyes of men, and when I have read in their
looks that I pleased them, it has greatly pleased me--why should I deny
it? Many a one has spoken fair words to me or given me flowers, and sent
old women to my house to win me for them, but even if one has happened
to please me better than another, still I have never found it hard to
send them home again as was fitting.”
“Till Hermas laid his love at your feet,” said Paulus. “He is a bold
lad--”
“A pretty, inexperienced boy,” said Sirona, “neither more nor less. It
was a heedless thing, no doubt, to admit him to my rooms, but no vestal
need be ashamed to own to such favor as I showed him. I am innocent,
and I will remain so that I may stand in my father’s presence without
a blush when I have earned money enough in the capital for the long
journey.”
Paulus looked in her face astonished and almost horrified.
Then he had in fact taken on himself guilt which did not exist, and
perhaps the senator would have been slower to condemn Sirona, if it had
not been for his falsely acknowledging it. He stood before her, feeling
like a child that would fain put together some object of artistic
workmanship, and who has broken it to pieces for want of skill. At the
same time he could not doubt a word that she said, for the voice within
him had long since plainly told him that this woman was no common
criminal.
For some time he was at a loss for words; at last he said timidly:
“What do you purpose doing in Alexandria?”
“Polykarp says, that all good work finds a purchaser there,” she
answered. “And I can weave particularly well, and embroider with
gold-thread. Perhaps I may find shelter under some roof where there are
children, and I would willingly attend to them during the day. In my
free time and at night I could work at my frame, and when I have scraped
enough together I shall soon find a ship that will carry me to Gaul, to
my own people. Do you not see that I cannot go back to Phoebicius, and
can you help me?”
“Most willingly, and better perhaps than you fancy,” said Paulus. “I
cannot explain this to you just now; but you need not request me, but
may rather feel that you have a good right to demand of me that I should
rescue you.”
She looked at him in surprised enquiry, and he continued:
“First let me carry away the little dog, and bury it down there. I will
put a stone over the grave, that you may know where it lies. It must
be so, the body cannot be here any longer. Take the thing, which lies
there. I had tried before to cut it out for you, for you complained
yesterday that your hair was all in a tangle because you had not a comb,
so I tried to carve you one out of bone. There were none at the shop
in the oasis, and I am myself only a wild creature of the wilderness, a
sorry, foolish animal, and do not use one.
“Was that a stone that fell? Aye, certainly, I hear a man’s step; go
quickly into the cave and do not stir till I call you.”
Sirona withdrew into her rock-dwelling, and Paulus took the body of
the dog in his arms to conceal it from the man who was approaching.
He looked round, undecided, and seeking a hiding-place for it, but two
sharp eyes had already detected him and his small burden from the height
above him; before he had found a suitable place, stones were rolling and
crashing down from the cliff to the right of the cavern, and at the same
time a man came springing down with rash boldness from rock to rock, and
without heeding the warning voice of the anchorite, flung himself down
the slope, straight in front of him, exclaiming, while he struggled for
breath and his face was hot with hatred and excitement:
“That--I know it well-that is Sirona’s greyhound--where is its mistress?
Tell me this instant, where is Sirona--I must and will know.”
Paulus had frequently seen, from the penitent’s room in the church, the
senator and his family in their places near the altar, and he was much
astonished to recognize in the daring leaper, who rushed upon him like
a mad man with dishevelled hair and fiery eyes, Polykarp, Petrus’ second
son.
The anchorite found it difficult to preserve his calm, and composed
demeanor, for since he had been aware that he had accused Sirona falsely
of a heavy sin, while at the same time he had equally falsely confessed
himself the partner of her misdeed, he felt an anxiety that amounted to
anguish, and a leaden oppression checked the rapidity of his thoughts.
He at first stammered out a few unintelligible words, but his opponent
was in fearful earnest with his question; he seized the collar of the
anchorite’s coarse garment with terrible violence, and cried in a husky
voice, “Where did you find the dog? Where is--?”
But suddenly he left go his hold of the Alexandrian, looked at him from
head to foot, and said softly and slowly:
“Can it be possible? Are you Paulus, the Alexandrian?”
The anchorite nodded assent. Polykarp laughed loud and bitterly, pressed
his hand to his forehead, and exclaimed in a tone of the deepest disgust
and contempt:
“And is it so, indeed! and such a repulsive ape too! But I will not
believe that she even held out a hand to you, for the mere sight of you
makes me dirty.” Paulus felt his heart beating like a hammer within his
breast; and there was a singing and roaring in his ears. When once more
Polykarp threatened him with his fist he involuntarily took the posture
of an athlete in a wrestling match, he stretched out his arms to try
to get a good hold of his adversary, and said in a hollow, deep tone of
angry warning, “Stand back, or something will happen to you that will
not be good for your bones.”
The speaker was indeed Paulus--and yet--not Paulus; it was Menander, the
pride of the Palaestra, who had never let pass a word of his comrades
that did not altogether please him. And yet yesterday in the oasis he
had quietly submitted to far worse insults than Polykarp had offered
him, and had accepted them with contented cheerfulness. Whence then
to-day this wild sensitiveness and eager desire to fight?
When, two days since, he had gone to his old cave to fetch the last of
his hidden gold pieces, he had wished to greet old Stephanus, but the
Egyptian attendant had scared him off like an evil spirit with angry
curses, and had thrown stones after him. In the oasis he had attempted
to enter the church in spite of the bishop’s prohibition, there to put
up a prayer; for he thought that the antechamber, where the spring was
and in which penitents were wont to tarry, would certainly not be closed
even to him; but the acolytes had driven him away with abusive words,
and the door-keeper, who a short time since had trusted him with the
key, spit in his face, and yet he had not found it difficult to turn his
back on his persecutors without anger or complaint.
At the counter of the dealer of whom he had bought the woollen coverlet,
the little jug, and many other things for Sirona, a priest had passed
by, had pointed to his money, and had said, “Satan takes care of his
own.”
Paulus had answered him nothing, had returned to his charge with an
uplifted and grateful heart, and had heartily rejoiced once more in the
exalted and encouraging consciousness that he was enduring disgrace and
suffering for another in humble imitation of Christ. What was it then
that made him so acutely sensitive with regard to Polykarp, and once
more snapped those threads, which long years of self-denial had twined
into fetters for his impatient spirit? Was it that to the man, who
mortified his flesh in order to free his soul from its bonds it seemed
a lighter matter to be contemned as a sinner, hated of God, than to
let his person and his manly dignity be treated with contempt? Was he
thinking of the fair listener in the cave, who was a witness to his
humiliation? Had his wrath blazed up because he saw in Polykarp, not so
much an exasperated fellow-believer, as merely a man who with bold scorn
had put himself in the path of another man?
The lad and the gray-bearded athlete stood face to face like mortal
enemies ready for the fight, and Polykarp did not waver, although he,
like most Christian youths, had been forbidden to take part in the
wrestling-games in the Palaestra, and though he knew that he had to deal
with a strong and practised antagonist.
He himself was indeed no weakling, and his stormy indignation added to
his desire to measure himself against the hated seducer.
“Come on--come on!” he cried; his eyes flashing, and leaning forward
with his neck out-stretched and ready on his part for the struggle.
“Grip hold! you were a gladiator, or something of the kind, before you
put on that filthy dress that you might break into houses at night, and
go unpunished. Make this sacred spot an arena, and if you succeed in
making an end of me I will thank you, for what made life worth having to
me, you have already ruined whether or no. Only come on. Or perhaps
you think it easier to ruin the life of a woman than to measure your
strength against her defender? Clutch hold, I say, clutch hold, or--”
“Or you will fall upon me,” said Paulus, whose arms had dropped by his
side during the youth’s address. He spoke in a quite altered tone of
indifference. “Throw yourself upon me, and do with me what you will; I
will not prevent you. Here I shall stand, and I will not fight, for
you have so far hit the truth--this holy place is not an arena. But
the Gaulish lady belongs neither to you nor to me, and who gives you a
claim--?”
“Who gives me a right over her?” interrupted Polykarp, stepping close up
to his questioner with sparkling eyes. “He who permits the worshipper
to speak of his God. Sirona is mine, as the sun and moon and stars are
mine, because they shed a beautiful light on my murky path. My life is
mine--and she was the life of my life, and therefore I say boldly, and
would say, if there were twenty such as Phoebicius here, she belongs
to me. And because I regarded her as my own, and so regard her still, I
hate you and fling my scorn in your teeth--you are like a hungry sheep
that has got into the gardener’s flower-bed, and stolen from the stem
the wonderful, lovely flower that he has nurtured with care, and that
only blooms once in a hundred years--like a cat that has sneaked into
some marble hall, and that to satisfy its greed has strangled some rare
and splendid bird that a traveller has brought from a distant land. But
you! you hypocritical robber, who disregard your own body with beastly
pride, and sacrifice it to low brutality--what should you know of the
magic charm of beauty--that daughter of heaven, that can touch even
thoughtless children, and before which the gods themselves do homage!
I have a right to Sirona; for hide her where you will--or even if the
centurion were to find her, and to fetter her to himself with chains and
rivets of brass--still that which makes her the noblest work of the Most
High--the image of her beauty--lives in no one, in no one as it lives in
me. This hand has never even touched your victim--and yet God has given
Sirona to no man as he has given her wholly to me, for to no man can
she be what she is to me, and no man can love her as I do! She has the
nature of an angel, and the heart of a child; she is without spot, and
as pure as the diamond, or the swan’s breast, or the morning-dew in the
bosom of a rose. And though she had let you into her house a thousand
times, and though my father even, and my own mother, and every one,
every one pointed at her and condemned her, I would never cease to
believe in her purity. It is you who have brought her to shame; it is
you--”
“I kept silence while all condemned her,” said Paulus with warmth, “for
I believed that she was guilty, just as you believe that I am, just as
every one that is bound by no ties of love is more ready to believe evil
than good, Now I know, aye, know for certain, that we did the poor woman
an injustice. If the splendor of the lovely dream, that you call Sirona,
has been clouded by my fault--”
“Clouded? And by you?” laughed Polykarp. “Can the toad that plunges into
the sea, cloud its shining blue, can the black bat that flits across the
night, cloud the pure light of the full-moon?”
An emotion of rage again shot through the anchorite’s heart, but he was
by this time on his guard against himself, and he only said bitterly,
and with hardly-won composure:
“And how was it then with the flower, and with the bird, that were
destroyed by beasts without understanding? I fancy you meant no absent
third person by that beast, and yet now you declare that it is not
within my power even to throw a shadow over your day-star! You see
you contradict yourself in your anger, and the son of a wise man, who
himself has not long since left the school of rhetoric, should try to
avoid that. You might regard me with less hostility, for I will not
offend you; nay, I will repay your evil words with good--perhaps the
very best indeed that you ever heard in your life. Sirona is a worthy
and innocent woman, and at the time when Phoebicius came out to seek
her, I had never even set eyes upon her nor had my ears ever heard a
word pass her lips.”
At these words Polykarp’s threatening manner changed, and feeling at
once incapable of understanding the matter, and anxious to believe, he
eagerly exclaimed:
“But yet the sheepskin was yours, and you let yourself be thrashed by
Phoebicius without defending yourself.”
“So filthy an ape,” said Paulus, imitating Polykarp’s voice, “needs
many blows, and that day I could not venture to defend myself
because--because--But that is no concern of yours. You must subdue your
curiosity for a few days longer, and then it may easily happen that the
man whose very aspect makes you feel dirty--the bat, the toad--”
“Let that pass now,” cried Polykarp. “Perhaps the excitement which the
sight of you stirred up in my bruised and wounded heart, led me to use
unseemly language. Now, indeed, I see that your matted hair sits round
a well featured countenance. Forgive my violent and unjust attack. I was
beside myself, and I opened my whole soul to you, and now that you know
how it is with me, once more I ask you, where is Sirona?”
Polykarp looked Paulus in the face with anxious and urgent entreaty,
pointing to the dog as much as to say, “You must know, for here is the
evidence.”
The Alexandrian hesitated to answer; he glanced by chance at the
entrance of the cave, and seeing the gleam of Sirona’s white robe behind
the palm-branches, he said to himself that if Polykarp lingered much
longer, he could not fail to discover her--a consummation to be avoided.
There were many reasons which might have made him resolve to stand in
the way of a meeting between the lady and the young man, but not one of
them occurred to him, and though he did not even dream that a feeling
akin to jealousy had begun to influence him, still he was conscious that
it was his lively repugnance to seeing the two sink into each other’s
arms before his very eyes, that prompted him to turn shortly round, to
take up the body of the little dog, and to say to the enquirer:
“It is true, I do know where she is hiding, and when the time comes you
shall know it too. Now I must bury the animal, and if you will you can
help me.”
Without waiting for any objection on Polykarp’s part, he hurried from
stone to stone up to the plateau on the precipitous edge of which he had
first seen Sirona. The younger man followed him breathlessly, and only
joined him when he had already begun to dig out the earth with his
hands at the foot of a cliff. Polykarp was now standing close to the
anchorite, and repeated his question with vehement eagerness, but Paulus
did not look up from his work, and only said, digging faster and faster:
“Come to this place again to-morrow, and then it may perhaps be possible
that I should tell you.”
“You think to put me off with that,” cried the lad. “Then you are
mistaken in me, and if you cheat me with your honest-sounding words, I
will--”
But he did not end his threat, for a clear longing cry distinctly broke
the silence of the deserted mountain: “Polykarp--Polykarp.” It sounded
nearer and nearer, and the words had a magic effect on him for whose ear
they were intended.
With his head erect and trembling in every limb, the young man listened
eagerly. Then he cried out, “It is her voice! I am coming, Sirona, I
am coming.” And without paying any heed to the anchorite, he was on the
point of hurrying off to meet her. But Paulus placed himself close in
front of him, and said sternly: “You stay here.”
“Out of my way,” shouted Polykarp beside himself. “She is calling to me
out of the hole where you are keeping her--you slanderer--you cowardly
liar! Out of the way I say! You will not? Then defend yourself, you
hideous toad, or I will tread you down, if my foot does not fear to be
soiled with your poison.”
Up to this moment Paulus had stood before the young man with out-spread
arms, motionless, but immovable as an oak-tree; now Polykarp first hit
him. This blow shattered the anchorite’s patience, and, no longer master
of himself, he exclaimed, “You shall answer to me for this!” and before
a third and fourth call had come from Sirona’s lips, he had grasped the
artist’s slender body, and with a mighty swing he flung him backwards
over his own broad and powerful shoulders on to the stony ground.
After this mad act he stood over his victim with out-stretched legs,
folded arms, and rolling eyes, as if rooted to the earth. He waited till
Polykarp had picked himself up, and, without looking round, but pressing
his hands to the back of his head, had tottered away like a drunken man.
Paulus looked after him till he disappeared over the cliff at the edge
of the level ground; but he did not see how Polykarp fell senseless to
the ground with a stifled cry, not far from the very spring whence his
enemy had fetched the water to refresh Sirona’s parched lips.