[Frontispiece: woodcut]
DESERT
_A Legend_
By
MARTIN ARMSTRONG
_Author of
"At the Sign of the Goat & Compasses"_
Woodcuts by
E. RAVILIOUS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
_Harper & Brothers Publishers_
1926
DESERT: _A Legend_
Copyright, 1916, by
HARPER & BROTHERS
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
H--A
Note
The basis of this story lies in a brief tale occurring in the Syriac
version of Palladius's _Histories of the Fathers_, which is to be
found in a beautiful English translation in Sir Ernest Wallis Budge's
book _The Paradise of the Holy Fathers_. I have derived many other
incidents and a great mass of details from the same work, but this
story is otherwise imaginary in the sense that I have troubled little
about historical or topographical accuracy. The quotations from
Plotinus and Proclus are from Thomas Taylor's translations, which,
for reasons entirely unphilosophical, I have altered in one or two
places.
M. A.
[Illustration: woodcut]
DESERT: _A Legend_
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
One_
It was not long past noon when Malchus, son of one of the foremost
families of Alexandria, stepped out of his porch into the street.
Everybody in the house was asleep; no one but the doorkeeper saw him
go out. The street, too, was deserted. The arid heat of it struck
against the sense like sounding brass. Its north side blazed with
adamantine sunlight; its left was a long wedge-shaped trough of shade
whose upper edge was bounded by the roof-ridges themselves, and the
lower by their shadows zigzagging sharp-edged down the center of the
paved roadway. Halfway down the street, on the shady side, two
scavenger dogs were prowling, meekly sniffing the walls and pavement.
A kite, small as a moth, sailed in the illimitable blue above.
Malchus felt as if he had suddenly flung off a stifling cloak,
dropped it from his shoulders and abandoned it in the street behind
him. How easy it was, in the mood he was in, to discard relatives,
friends, house, possessions, habits--all the material and spiritual
accumulation of the past. In stepping from his house door he had
stepped into a new life as easily as a swimmer dives from marble into
water. The dogs, with tails down and lowered heads, slunk away at
his approach and he turned the street corner and made for the
southern boundary of the city. "Gone!" he said to himself, thinking
of his house and the familiar street, and it seemed to him wonderful
and unbelievable that he would never see them again. "Never again!"
He tried in vain to realize the meaning of it and as he did so two
stabs of pain shot through his heart. One was the memory of his
mother making its desperate appeal--her hands, the calm, pure
modeling of her temples, a sharp accidental pathos that came with her
way of saying certain words; the other, keener, more cruel, more
soul-shaking, was the memory of Helena, branded irremediably into
every sense.
[Illustration: woodcut]
He halted, rooted to the spot in the molten sunshine, his right hand
convulsively grasping his staff, and behind him, on the white wall to
his left, the cowled black shadow which like the ghost of his past
had dogged him, now on this side, now on that, from the moment he had
left the shade of his house, paused, waiting to follow him. With a
great effort he blotted from his mind those agonizing appeals, and
man and following shadow moved on together. Soon they had emerged
from the streets and, leaving the main road to Lake Mareotis, had
turned into one of the many paths through the vineyards which spread
to the shore of the lake. The heat, there, had lost something of its
heaviness. Though the lake was not yet visible, the sense of it
refreshed and sweetened the air, and the disheveled garlands of vines
festooned from tree to tree shed a soft litter of shadows along the
paths. Soon through the long ranks of tree trunks and foliage he
caught sight of the live sparkle of water and, after that, great
tracts of glassy surface, gray with heat, came gradually into view.
His hope was to reach the lake before the hermit, who had visited him
a few hours ago, had crossed it. If he did so, he would certainly
discover him on the next ship that sailed; but if the hermit crossed
the lake ahead of him, it might be many hours before Malchus could
follow, and, once he had entered the desert, it would be impossible
to trace him. But the hermit had not had more than three hours'
start and he must have taken longer to reach the lake than Malchus,
who had walked rapidly. Now his path left the vineyard and emerged
between two warehouses on to the wharf that edged the lake. Not the
faintest breath stirred the sultry air. Malchus looked anxiously out
across the water. Far as the eye could reach, its vast, featureless
monotony was unbroken. It was impossible, then, that the hermit
could have left the shore, for in such weather no ship could sail or
be rowed out of sight in three hours.
At its left extremity the wharf swung outward into a jetty which
formed a small harbor, but its right end broke off in an abrupt wall
and thence the shore of the lake curved away westward, the vineyards
encroaching almost to its white, sandy margin.
Malchus turned to the left toward the harbor. A mast rose above the
level of the wharf and he walked along the stone embankment to
inquire whether a ship would soon be starting. After walking fifty
yards he crossed to the edge where a flight of steps descended to the
level of the water, and found himself looking down into a ship lying
alongside the wharf immediately under him. Seen from above, it
looked strangely broad for its length. The great sail lay rolled up
along the deck and five or six oars were shipped along each gunwale.
Among coils of rope and piles of wooden cases a few men, leaning
forward so that their backs and heads almost hid their limbs, moved
like slow, heavy beetles. Malchus shouted down his inquiries, and
one of the men straightened himself and turned up a round, coppery
face.
"We start in an hour," he shouted back. "The master'll be here
before long and you can fix up with him. It'll be slow work." He
waved an arm to the sky. "All rowing to-day, worse luck!"
Having got this information, Malchus strolled up the wharf toward the
other end. He wished to discover the hermit without being discovered
by him, for he was determined not to approach him until they entered
the desert. Now, therefore, as he paced along the wharf, he examined
the shadowy nooks between the warehouses in the hope that he might
discover him sheltering from the heat. But the nooks were as empty
as the wharf itself and soon Malchus was approaching its western
extremity. As he did so he became suddenly convinced that he was on
the point of discovering the hermit, and, sure enough, as he reached
the edge and glanced along the sandy shore, he caught sight of a
small bare-legged figure seated on the white sand not more than fifty
yards away. He had avoided the green shade of the vineyard a few
yards behind him and sat immovable in the full glare of the sun, like
a god carved out of wood. The sun was high, and his squat shadow lay
like a black bowlder behind him.
Malchus moved into a shady nook between two sheds and rested there
till it was almost time to go back to the harbor. Then glancing
cautiously from his hiding-place, he saw that the hermit was coming
toward him and soon he must have climbed on to the wharf, for Malchus
saw a small gnome-like shadow slide across the bright gap between the
sheds. He waited a little and then himself came out into the glare.
The slim figure of the hermit was by this time more than halfway down
the long line of the wharf--the only vertical thing followed by the
only shadow in all the horizontal glare. Malchus followed him
slowly. When he reached the harbor the hermit was already squatting
in the bows of the boat with his cowl over his head.
Malchus found a place for himself on deck in a patch of shadow cast
by a pile of cargo. The great wall of golden stone which towered
above the side of the ship threw off the afternoon heat like a stove;
the heaps of wooden cases beside him exhaled a hot aromatic smell and
across it there came another smell, the flat, earthy smell of shallow
water. Malchus closed his eyes. A feeling of utter serenity
possessed him. The noise and movement of the crew about him served
only to increase his sense of calm isolation. Nothing of this stress
and bustle concerned him; for him there was nothing to do but to sit
still. The ropes would be loosed, the ship would be pushed off from
the wharf by men sweating at long poles, the harbor would recede, and
the oarsmen settle, with the rumble of wood on wood, to their long,
monotonous labor at the oars; and through it all--through the long
smooth crossing of the lake unchanging except for the slow transition
from afternoon to evening, evening to darkness and darkness back to
dawn, sunrise and sultry noon--he would have nothing to do but sit
with eyes open or closed, contemplating the ebb and flow of his
thoughts and feelings.
A silence in the hubbub of preparation roused him: the moment for
departure had arrived, and at a shout from the master the crew began
to thrust away the ship from the harbor wall. Slowly the wall
receded. Two oarsmen in the bows were already churning up the glassy
harbor water and soon the ship glided out into the lake.
A plain of shimmering gray lay before them, but behind them the gray
brightened to a milky blue where the shallows ran up on to the white
margins, and in the shallows companies of flamingoes stood like
long-stemmed rosy lilies, dreaming immovably upon the fainter rose of
their reflections. Malchus gazed at them, and the thought came to
him that each was a symbol of man contemplating the God in himself.
The rowers began a rhythmical chant, swinging monotonously to their
oars. Malchus closed his eyes. That chant and the rhythmical
forward lurch of the ship were all he knew of the outward world; and
after an hour the chanting ceased and his world dimmed to the heave
of the boat and the regular plash and gurgle of the cloven water. He
shut out all thought from his mind. He did not even try to determine
what he would say to the hermit when he revealed himself to him in
the desert, nor did he examine his feelings, desires, or beliefs.
Whether or not his reason accepted Christ he did not inquire. He was
passionately determined to submit himself without reservation, body
and soul: therefore, he could not be troubled to reason about his
belief. The idea of God and of his son Jesus Christ was burnt into
his emotional life. It had been his intellect only--the intellect of
an impetuous youth--which had rejected it. Now the elegant logical
structure of his disbelief had collapsed before the emotional storm
through which he was passing, and the old idea had flowered again
upon the ruins. The words spoken by the hermit during their
conversation a few hours ago had come to him as a revelation:--"We
who are true Christians have no need of reasoning." That was the
state of mind after which he had always been unconsciously striving.
What a relief it was now to abandon all the troublesome mechanism of
argument and explanation, to allow to impulse and emotion the
authority for which, with him, they had hitherto always appealed in
vain. He felt himself free at last. Never again would he submit to
the imposture of logic. But it was no sluggish serenity into which
he had escaped. The mind and the soul must, he knew, be disciplined,
for only thus could they attain to perfect freedom. And now, as he
sat on the deck with closed eyes, assuming already by an unconscious
imitation the attitude of the hermit, he drew his attention inward,
retiring into that innermost chamber of being which is one with the
eternal and divine. At first his contemplation was disturbed by
intruding memories and once he found himself spinning a long fantasy
about Helena. How would she receive the news of his disappearance?
He pictured her in tears, imploring his pardon too late. The picture
gave him a fierce appeasement and his lips twisted into a grim smile.
The physical sensation of that smile roused him. How was he to
master this idle wandering of the mind? For a moment he was overcome
by discouragement, but soon he had lulled himself back into
contemplation, and gradually his mind, wearied by the emotions of the
day, threw off the burden of intruding cares....
He must have sat thus for many hours, for when he again opened his
eyes he was astounded to find himself in darkness. Everything about
him, the mast, the ropes, the piles of cargo, stood out sharply in
planes and edges of frosty white, the rowers were modeled in
flickering black and silver as they swung to and fro, and looking
upward, Malchus saw a full moon, small, brilliant, and immeasurably
high. Beside him lay a pool of blond silver light, so bright that it
seemed as if it were itself the source of light. Everywhere it was
as though the moonward faces of things were coated with phosphorus.
The air had grown deliciously cool; a draught stirred about the deck
as if the lake were breathing. Then a shout sounded above the noise
of rowing and the rowers leaned back motionless upon their oars.
There was silence above and below except for the clucking of water
against the ship's still-moving sides and the tapping of a rope
against the mast. The wind was freshening. Again a shout out of the
darkness, and, with bumping of wood on wood, the rowers shipped their
oars and then lined up along the sail, while others loosened the
ropes at the mast. When all was ready there came another shout and
the great sail swung up, huge as a house side, shivered and fluttered
heavily in the wind, and then, as the ship came round, yawned out
into a great dark cavern. The ship lurched slowly over, and growing
up slowly out of the silence the hiss of moving water was heard along
the sides.
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Two_
The breeze which had sprung up during the night had weakened after
daybreak, and now it had died away completely. It was almost noon.
The men were once again sweating at the oars, but their labor would
soon be over, for the southern shore of the lake was clearly in
sight. Pale golden hills extending in horizontal terraces bounded
the distance; along their bases the richer gold of the desert was
barred by deep blue belts of palmgrove. Eastward, within a stone's
throw of the ship, flights of wild-duck with their necks strained
forward skimmed the face of the water. Many hours before, Malchus
had awakened from a deep sleep to find himself afloat between the
pale-green mirrors of sky and water in which the stars had faded to
blurs of faint white radiance. He was cold and very hungry and had
bought a loaf and a small mug of wine from one of the crew. He had
drunk the wine and eaten a piece of the loaf, putting the remainder
away into his pouch. Already it seemed an age since that early
waking; to remember it in the noonday heat was to recall early spring
in the height of summer. As for his previous life--the life which
yesterday at this hour he was still living--it had receded into the
remote past. It was as if the voyage across the lake had carried him
into another world and separated him by many years from the self of
yesterday. The crisis, crowned by his momentous decision, had come
so suddenly....
Yet it was only a few hours ago, hardly a day and a half, that he had
dined at the house of his friend Diocles, the poet. The feast had
been a splendid one--splendid not only for its food and wines, but
for its company and their talk. But by an hour after midnight the
guests, though none of them had yet risen from his couch to depart,
had long ceased to eat and, all except a few, even to drink. On the
tables stood dishes of grapes, figs, and pomegranates, and crystal
wine flasks and cups, but the guests had turned away from the tables,
and the confused din of voices, glasses, silver, and the soft padding
of the slaves' feet upon the marble floor had died down. There was
no longer any general conversation, but isolated gusts of talk rose
and relapsed, the tones now deep, now high, now rippling upward in a
woman's laughter, like flutes, oboes, and bassoons played at random.
The host was Diocles, the poet, a splendid young man, easy mannered,
imperturbable, with broad shoulders, pointed golden beard, and gray
eyes which could be strangely piercing or, by a curious change,
gentle and dreamy as though their gaze had been turned inward. He
had been trying to engage the friend on his right in a philosophical
discussion, but in vain, for Malchus replied briefly and fell back
again into the gloomy abstraction in which he had passed the evening,
his head propped on his right hand, his large eyes scowling at the
floor. From this position he never moved except sometimes to steal a
furtive glance at a woman who reclined at another table.
She was young and of an extraordinary beauty. Her profile in repose
had the dreaming loveliness of a marble goddess, but when she laughed
or spoke she was suddenly transformed into another creature, and, as
if for the first time, the vivid colors of eyes, lips, and beautiful
teeth flashed into life. Helena was her name; she was known
throughout Alexandria for her beauty, her great wealth, and the proud
independence of her manner of life. Both her wealth and her beauty
brought her many offers of marriage, but to each she was accustomed
to reply that it would be time enough to think of husbands when she
had grown tired of lovers. Now she was flirting with a very young
man who sprawled on the floor beside her couch and leaned his head
back against its cushioned edge, gazing up at her as he talked. His
head was covered with crisp golden curls and he had the full and
regular features which so often accompany an amiable but stupid
character. Sometimes detachedly, as though she were inspecting a
fur, Helena stretched out a white arm and slowly stroked the boy's
head, watching the tight curls spring up as they escaped from the
weight of her moving hand. Then she would shoot a quick glance at
Malchus, wrapped in his sulks, and when her eyes returned to her boy
their vague and contemplative gaze showed that she was not paying the
slightest attention to what he was saying.
On the next couch lay an old man with a smooth, fat face and a bald
head which he wiped from time to time with a yellow silk
handkerchief. The richness of his dress gave a certain majesty to a
heavy and bloated body. He had the glazed eye of one who has drunk
heavily and he was making vague, fumbling gestures with one hand, as
if he were trying to drive away a fly. But he was not driving away a
fly; he was beckoning, and at last a girl ran up and stood beside his
couch. She was small and slim, with the pure, flower-like face of a
child.
"Come here, Thaïs, you little imp. Why have you been avoiding me all
night?" He spoke indistinctly; his consonants were causing him some
trouble, and when he reached out a heavy arm the girl shrank back
laughing. But soon she had submitted and sat down on his couch and
allowed him to put his arm about her.
At that moment Helena rose and, as though she were the controlling
force of the whole company, the sound of voices broke off sharp and
everyone looked at her. She moved toward her host with the slow,
exquisite poise of one to whom even walking is a conscious art. Her
robe of silver tissue embroidered with blue and crimson leopards
enhanced with its shining surfaces the forms and motions of her
beautiful, supple body.
[Illustration; woodcut]
And with her departure everyone became aware that the feast was over.
Like a soundless tide the large silence of the night, of which the
guests had recently been so oblivious, subtly took possession of the
room, broken rarely by a murmured phrase, a giggle of laughter from
one of the girls, or the snores of a sleeping feaster which rose from
time to time out of the silence, soared up gradually and formidably,
and exploded with a snort which aroused the sleeper to a fretful
change of position. But over each interruption the silence closed
like a flood, and audible in it, as if an integral part of it,
streamed the cold, airy rush of a fountain, faintly seen like a
silver ghost in the deep-blue hollow of the courtyard. Softly and
incessantly it hissed, a silence grown audible. But to one who
listened intently, small, clear sounds emerged from the pervading
hush; sometimes a tiny spark shot with a crackle like the snapping of
a cane splinter from one of the steady lamp flames and four pure
musical notes made by water dripping from a leak in the fountain pipe
into the basin below, repeated their little tune with monotonous
persistence.
At the departure of Helena, Malchus had stirred himself on his couch
with a long sigh. Her going had eased the intolerable oppression
which had tormented him, as if with an insomnia of the nerves, all
evening. Now he had sunk into a deep revery when a voice close
beside him startled him into consciousness. "Like a fire that has
burned itself out!" said the voice. It was the voice of Diocles, but
when Malchus turned his head it seemed to him that Diocles had been
talking to himself, for he was looking, not at him, but at the rows
of feasters silent on their couches.
"What has burned itself out?" asked Malchus.
The poet turned to him. "The feast, Malchus," he said, with a
gesture which included the whole room. "Look! Life here is frozen,
suspended as in a marble sculpture. At every feast I am conscious of
this moment when the feast has burned itself out. I watch for it,
for when it comes I feel that I am seeing more deeply into this
clouded pool of life. Don't ask me what I see, because I can't tell
you. What I see speaks to the emotions, not to the reason, and so it
can never be expressed except in poetry. But do you not feel that
some larger and more enduring power has entered the room and
superseded the small, isolated activities of all these helpless
folk--helpless now because of drunkenness or sleep, but just as
helpless when they are laughing, chattering, eating, drinking, and
making love? This moment shows us human life in a truer perspective.
It teaches us who are awake to it patience, resignation, love, and
pity. I picture men as fish in the sea suspended in the middle
waters halfway between the sea floor and the boundary of the bright
upper world, and occupied solely with feeding, playing, fighting, and
reproducing their kind. But when they rest from those activities the
greater number sink, drawn down by their own density, to the empty
darkness below; but a few, buoyed up by some bladder in the heart or
brain which is filled with a divine air, float upward to the surface
and afterward return to the middle waters with their heads filled
with dreams of sunsparks, starlight, vast moving shadows, and a
boundless dome of blue."
[Illustration: woodcut]
Diocles paused, and before he could continue, a voice broke,
profanely loud, upon the stillness of the night. It was a young man
who had lain long on his back, sleeping with half-open mouth and
firmly grasping an empty wine cup in his right hand. He had awakened
suddenly out of a drunken sleep, and was calling for wine. "Wine,
boy! Wine! Come, fill up!" he shouted, hoarsely. But his shout
disturbed no one and the sound of it vanished like a gaudy bird into
the silence of the court. The slaves had long since fallen asleep on
their bench in a corner of the hall, and even if they had been awake,
the young man had turned feverishly on to his side and fallen asleep
again before they could have filled his cup.
Diocles indicated the occurrence with a humorous shrug, and then,
turning to Malchus, appealed to him more personally. "I wish I could
teach you to be a poet, Malchus," he said.
Malchus smiled and shook his head. "The arts are not for me."
"Perhaps not. But when I said I wished to turn you into a poet I did
not mean that I wished you to write poetry. God forbid! There are
too many of us writing it already. I meant that I wished you to live
poetically. I wish even that I could turn you into a philosopher.
That at least would be a stage on the way to becoming a poet; for a
philosophic creed is good as a temporary discipline, though it kills
in the end. It is good while it feeds the emotions, but if we
persist in it for its own sake we pinion our souls with ropes made
out of withered truths. We must never allow the philosophers and
sages to enslave us; on the contrary, we must use them as our
servants. Nor must we allow life, any more than philosophy, to
enslave us, for we must retain the mastery of our senses. The end of
life is the perfect development of our faculties. If we allow life
to enslave us through our senses and desires we resign the control of
ourselves to blind chance and become like dead leaves in the
whirlwind, helpless in the face of adversity, like you, my poor
Malchus. That is what I mean by living poetically. It is something
more than living philosophically. It is to be open to every
influence from outside and to extend our knowledge deeper and deeper
inward into our own being."
"We shall never agree, Diocles. This careful self-control which you
preach is no good to me. It limits experience. How can we ever
_know_ if we shut our field of discovery within such narrow bounds?
It is only by abandoning ourselves to life that we can live fully."
"And whither does your abandonment lead you, my friend? Have you
been living fully to-night? No; you have spent the last six hours
tortured by jealousy and despair. That is not living, it is dying.
Let me be your physician. Come and live here for a month or two and
I will put you through a discipline which will help you to regain
control of yourself."
"Control of myself? If you could teach me how to forget myself it
would be more to the purpose."
"I will teach you how to forget Helena, which will be more to the
purpose still."
"How simple it seems to you, Diocles. But you, with your golden mean
and your carefully ordered life, cannot realize the intensity of a
passion such as mine for Helena. It is branded into my heart. What
can your rules and disciplines do for that? You must not bring
philosophy and poetry, but a knife, if you want to doctor me. I am
done for, like a fire which has burned itself out, as you said just
now with an unintentional aptness which startled me."
"Done for? But, my dear Malchus, Helena was not your first love.
You recovered from the others."
"They were different. I was younger then and I did not take them so
seriously."
"On the contrary, I should say that you took them more seriously
because more sanely. The disaster of your affair with Helena is that
you have not taken it seriously enough. Love is a perilous and
explosive thing, like fire. If you do not take fire seriously it
will devour life instead of warming and illuminating it."
Malchus shook his head. "In the difference between our use of the
word _serious_, Diocles, lies the whole difference between our two
minds."
"Then, in your own terms, Malchus--try to take love less seriously.
Try in your next love affair to be frivolous."
"I have done with love affairs, Diocles. I am sick to death of this
sort of life." He included the hall, the tables, and the recumbent
guests in a sweep of the arm.
"For the moment, Malchus," Diocles assented. "But in a few weeks,
when this amatory wound has healed, you will be reconciled to it once
more, for whatever else this civilization of ours has done, it has at
least produced the ideal mode of life for a cultured mind."
"Yes, and it is just this mode of life and this culture of the mind
which I have come to hate. You are going to say, Diocles, that
jealousy or love-sickness has poisoned my mind. I deny it. It has
not poisoned my mind, it has opened my eyes. The life we lead is
futile, both bodily and mentally. We boast of our broad-mindedness,
but really we have a mind for nothing. We believe in nothing except
not believing in anything. We dabble in all the religions and
philosophies and select the little bits that please us from each of
them, like children picking up colored shells on the beach."
"But, my dear Malchus, is not that the true wisdom? For thus we
allow our minds to nourish themselves naturally, like our bodies,
giving them a variety of foods and leaving it to them to select from
each the vital principle and to excrete the rest. To be bound to one
philosophy or one religion alone is the mark of a narrow mind."
"Only if we bind ourselves to it from idleness or cowardice, or for
some such unworthy reason. But the man who has made one religion or
philosophy a part of himself is not bound; he is freed. He has
gained a means of self-expression and has concentrated his emotional
life into a full channel instead of squandering it, as we do, in a
hundred trivial driblets. We refined and cultured folk have no
beliefs, no worthy enthusiasms, no prejudices."
"No prejudices? But I thought we had agreed years ago that to rid
ourselves of prejudices was the first step on the path of wisdom."
"We did, Diocles; and a more foolish idea, it seems to me now, could
not be conceived. Without prejudices our lives are empty, all the
fury has gone out of them."
"Fury, my dear Malchus? Well, you may have my share of fury. I have
no desire to return to the condition of a wild beast."
"It would be better for us if we were more like wild beasts."
"Well, you are not unlike one at present, if that is any consolation
to you. But explain yourself, my friend."
"I have already said what I mean, which is that this cultured,
sophisticated life takes all the vigor out of us. And not only out
of our minds, but out of our bodies, too. What does it leave for our
bodies to do? Nothing. We have limbs and muscles, strong and aching
to be used, yet if we wish to use them we must squander their
energies in some artificial occupation like games or hunting. Real
life ought to tax body, mind, and soul. It should be a contest, not
a series of elegant postures."
"Well, each according to his taste, my friend. But this mood of
yours will pass off in time. It is simply the result of your present
unhappiness. Meanwhile, since you feel the need of physical
exercise, why not try a few days of this despised hunting? It would
distract your mind as well as exercising your body, and if you have
reasonably good sport you will soon lose sight of the artificiality
of it."
[Illustration: woodcut]
The two friends had almost forgotten that they were not alone, but
now a movement on one of the couches interrupted their talk. One of
the girls had stirred and awakened. It was Thaïs, who had fallen
asleep on old Chronius's couch. She sat up bewildered, with
disheveled hair and shining eyes, lovely as a naiad rising from a
pool. Then realizing her surroundings she looked down in disgust at
the fat sleeping face of Chronius and, stretching out her hand to the
table, she took one by one four purple grape skins from his plate and
stuck them carefully on his nose, his chin, and his cheeks. Chronius
shivered and opened his eyes. "Don't! Don't! They're wet!" he
mumbled, making groping movements with his hands. But Thaïs held
down his hands, so that he could not brush off the grape skins, and
immediately he fell asleep again. Then with an indignant little
shake of her shoulders she rose and, smoothing her hair with one
hand, came toward Diocles and Malchus.
"Tell me, Thaïs," asked Diocles, rising as she approached and putting
an arm round her shoulders, "have you enjoyed yourself?"
"No, I haven't," replied Thaïs, without hesitation.
"Then my feast has been a failure."
Thaïs looked at him intently. "That is a polite lie, Diocles. I do
wish that everybody would not treat me as a child to whom one must
always be offering sweets."
"But what I said was not a lie, Thaïs. I meant it."
"How could you mean it? You're not in love with me. Why, then, am I
so important?"
"Because, my dear, you are young and innocent."
"Innocent?" replied Thaïs, with a wry smile.
"Yes, Thaïs, quite innocent. And youth and innocence are the most
beautiful and touching things in the world. If I were told that any
of these others had not enjoyed themselves--any except Gelasia, who
is young and innocent like yourself, or Malchus here, who is my
special friend--I should be horribly annoyed, because it would show
that I had been found wanting in the art of hospitality. It would be
as bad as if my poetry had been accused of technical weaknesses. But
when I hear that you have not enjoyed yourself, it does not annoy me;
it pains me, and it is much more serious to be pained than to be
annoyed. Annoyance is of the mind, but it is the heart that is
pained. But tell me why you have not enjoyed yourself."
Thaïs hung her head and was silent. After a moment she raised a face
in which shone the ingenuous seriousness of youth.
"It's always the same," she said. "I never know till afterward that
I have not enjoyed myself. I thought I was enjoying myself to-night."
"You were, dear child. I watched you."
"Yes, perhaps I was. I didn't mind even when that old pig Chronius
beckoned me over to his couch. But he touched me and stroked me too
much and I felt a sudden rage and smacked his face. Then I felt
ashamed, and I was nicer to him than I wanted to be, to make up for
it. However, he fell asleep soon, and suddenly I too felt sleepy, so
sleepy that I just settled down against him--feeling that he was a
bolster, you know, not a human being--and went off to sleep with my
head on his chest. But when I woke up just now and saw where I was
and saw his horrid old swollen face, I was, oh, shriveled up with
disgust. That's why I stuck the grape skins on his face. It was not
for fun; it was from fury, just as one might smudge an ugly painting.
And now I'm going. But before I go I'll tell you one thing. You are
the only man whose arm I could bear to have round me at present; and
that's a very great compliment, Diocles."
_Chapter
Three_
Half an hour later, Malchus was walking home, followed by his
servant. It was the moment of the false dawn. In that pale, watery
air, the familiar streets had changed their nature; they were hollow
and desolate, the humanity frozen out of them. No mortal hands had
made them; they had been grooved and sculptured by the slow labor of
natural forces, like the channels of some deep-sunk, faintly luminous
coral reef. In marble walls and colonnades, as they loomed up toward
the walking Malchus, there was a dull, milky glow as though a veiled
flame lurked within their substance. Overhead, stars showed their
faint, frosty sparkle, in a limpid steel-blue sky. Not a breath
rustled the palm trees and the tall rose-bays whose fantastic shapes
spired up above the garden walls; but as he passed an iron gate his
sense was caught by the subtle perfume of a flowering jasmine, which
spread its invisible snare across his path, and his heart suddenly
contracted with pain. Further on, as he turned a corner, a faint
draught smelling of the sea touched his face, and he saw beneath him,
like two polished shields, the glimmering expanse of the two harbors
with the Island of Pharos spread along their further rim in a long
violet mound on which, here and there, a light twinkled. Far in the
distance, from two different quarters, bright shafts of sound shot
upward alternatively and were lost; two cocks were challenging each
other in the silence, and Malchus felt that if he had opened his lips
and spoken out aloud the passionate appeals which oppressed his
heart, he would have heard, after a moment of listening, the voice of
Helena answering him far and clear across the city....
[Illustration: woodcut]
"Helena, my beloved, listen to me at least, before you leave me. I
cannot live without you any more than a man can live without his own
heart. Though I still speak and move my limbs like other men, the
soul within me is dying as surely as the body dies. I am the empty
shell of a man, a moving cenotaph filled only with misery. Be
merciful, beloved, even if you no longer love me. It cannot be that
I have no meaning for you, no part in you, or how should I feel this
intensity of pain? Helena, I could be content, even if you never
spoke to me nor looked at me, if only you would give your body back
to me. My mind, my senses are full of you; they have forgotten
everything else. My sense of touch remembers only the shape and
smoothness and warmth of your body, my sight its lines and curves and
colors. They are burned into me, branded indelibly. Even when I die
they will remain; and if, when all our generation is dead, men open
my coffin, they will find not my decaying body, but yours, perfect
and warm and ready to awake from sleep."
The cocks had ceased to crow; silence, like a clear and fragile
bubble, inclosed the whole world. Then pure and small from the
eastward came the voice of Helena:
"My foolish Malchus! I have been waiting for you ever since I left
the feast of Diocles. Do you not remember how I always loved to
tease you? You used to praise me for it afterward, because of the
wonderful renewal of our love which always came with our
reconciliation. And so, during this last month I have only been
playing with you. Did you imagine that I could exchange that stupid
young Heronion for you whom I have loved so long? Come back, my
foolish one: I will not torment you any longer."
A sparrow fluttered from the wall above him and Malchus awoke to find
that in the preoccupation of his daydream he had stopped and was now
leaning against the pillar of a porch. His servant was standing a
few paces behind him, surprised and troubled by his strange behavior.
The houses were now clearly visible; each had taken on its familiar
individuality. Color had come back into the trees and the flowers
which festooned the walls and porticoes and heaped their mounds of
color about the fountains in the squares. In half an hour the sun
would rise. Malchus, the pain at his heart dulled a little by his
hopeless imaginings, went on his way and, entering the house in which
he had lived ever since, four years ago, he had left the home of his
parents, lay down on his bed.....
He slept for five hours and awoke to confused memories of dreams.
His mind, still unresigned to despair, had projected its agony into
visionary struggles. At first he could remember nothing clearly, but
his heart retained, like a scar, a sense of thwartings,
disappointments, huge obstacles encountered but never overcome. Then
details began to return to him. Helena, vivid and desirable as in
her most ardent moments, had leaned to him with outstretched arms
from an upper window, and knowing that he was on the brink of the
solution of all his miseries, he had hurried to the door of the
house. It opened and he entered. But indoors the house was empty
and ruinous and he never found the upper chamber from which Helena
had leaned. He wandered from room to room vainly seeking for her,
but whenever he tried to get out of a room the door had vanished and
he searched desperately along walls of solid stone. Once Helena's
voice called him clearly and urgently from the next room, and after
desperate gropings for an exit he climbed perilously up the face of
the wall, clinging to projecting stones, and, pulling himself up to
the top, dropped over the other side. But there he found himself in
another doorless inclosure. Again Helena's voice called to him, but
further away now, and the same terrible struggle began again. It
seemed to him now, as he sat on the edge of his bed, a relief to have
escaped from that frenzied striving. His waking mind was frozen and
empty. The fire had gone out of his pain now; it had become a cold,
dull ache, and he remembered Diocles' phrase of "a fire that had
burned itself out." But with the name of Diocles, the memory of last
night's feast returned and Malchus found that an unappeasable hatred
of that life of refined luxury had entered into him. Its
hollowness--the trivial culture, the aimless contentment, the mumming
and miming, the little rules for gestures and speech which formed its
code of good manners--sickened him. He knew that he could never take
part in it again, but he did not realize that this sudden fierceness
against a mode of life which he had willingly tolerated for years was
merely the blind vengeance of his shattered passions....
The process of bathing and dressing seemed to him now a tedious
thing, but it was a thing which had become a part of his life and he
submitted to it and controlled his anger at the restless movements of
the slaves about him, enduring patiently until they should have
finished.
At last it was ended; but with nothing more to distract and anger
him, he found himself face to face again with the awful emptiness of
his life. A sudden bitterness, like a poisonous spring, flooded his
soul at the thought that there was no longer any motive for this
careful cleansing and beautifying. In the old days, this moment of
the completion of his toilet had been full of delightful
anticipation. Refreshed and invigorated by sleep and with the
heaviness of sleep dispelled and body and mind warm and tingling from
the touch of warm water and the unguents with which he had been
rubbed, he had contemplated the day that lay before him with an ever
renewed sense of adventure. During the last two years his love
affair with Helena had raised this daily pleasure to an ecstasy, for
then he had known that each day held for him the delicious and almost
magical renewal of their love. It was some months ago that he had
first become aware of a change in their relations. In what the
change consisted he could not exactly have said: a faint, indefinable
discord had sounded through the perfect harmony of their love. From
that moment their ardor had declined until Helena's feeling for him
had passed from indifference to something not far from hatred. How
had it started? Malchus did not know. But of this, at least, he was
sure--it had not started with him. No sooner had he asserted this
than a doubt rang a small silver bell in his mind and he became
conscious of things which he had not admitted to himself before--of
little failures, disappointments, wearinesses which had begun, some
months ago, to creep into his rapture. Their passion, formerly so
triumphantly effortless, had, it seemed, reached a limit which could
not be passed, and from that moment it was no longer a wonderful
still-renewed adventure, but a desperate reiteration of the physical.
And with this flagging of their passion he had begun to be aware of a
sense of stress, failure, emptiness, for which the union of their
minds could not compensate. Weariness of the flesh had begun to
assail him. But he had never confessed these things to Helena, for
he could not have expressed them in words; and, even if he had been
able to, he would not have dared, for, in spite of them, he still
desired her. His desire possessed him like a hunger, undiminished,
and as he watched her gradually receding from him the hunger only
became the more fierce. No, his love had not diminished; it was hers
that had failed them. And as he again came round to the unendurable
thought that Helena no longer loved him, bitterness overwhelmed him
and he sat staring again at the empty desolation of his life. By
degrees he came to feel that all love of women was a hateful thing, a
thing of feverish and restless longing whose brief fulfillment always
fell short of the hoped-for ecstasy. Perhaps the weak and clumsy
body was incapable of achieving that passion of which the soul
dreamed. He thought of older loves in the days before he had met
Helena, and he told himself now, in his cold, clear-sighted mood,
that his love for Helena was not the supreme passion of his life. It
was merely one of many. Each of his loves in turn he had proclaimed
to be the supreme passion; that was the illusion by which the fancy
always strove to cheat the soul into a disregard of the sure
disappointment. Each, as he saw it now, had begun with this parade
of flattering delusions, this intoxication which turned a girl into a
creature of more than mortal perfection and a brief quickening of the
pulses into an undying ecstasy, and he recalled the heartache of that
first moment when his eyes met the cold eyes of disillusion, the
sickening weariness of the attempt to pretend that all was still as
wonderful as it had been before. Yes, it was hateful and vile, this
itch for the impossible which no experience could cure. Yet even if
the dream were realized, what would it be worth? An ecstasy of
sensation made permanent would be an agony, a destruction for both
body and soul; it would be a thing more terrible than this
disillusionment and disgust which tortured him now....
It was the hour when he had been in the habit of listening to music
or the reading of poetry or philosophy, and now his musicians and the
Greek who was his reader approached to receive his orders. He sent
the musicians away, for he could not have endured the emotional
excitement of even the most sober music, but he retained his reader,
who began to unroll the epic poem from which, during the last week,
he had been reading to Malchus every morning. But Malchus waved it
away.
"Not poetry to-day, Chalchas," he said. "Read me rather some
philosophy; but not at length, for I cannot attend to arguments
to-day. Read me fragments--passages which will soothe me and help to
banish thought. I cannot choose. Choose, yourself, what you think
best."
The slave went out and returned with two or three books and a stool,
and seating himself near Malchus's chair, he unrolled one of the
books and began to read. At first Malchus understood nothing. He
could not detach his attention from the pulsing nerve of his misery
and he heard only the gentle inflexions of the reading voice and the
flights of words which dispersed like flocks of sparrows,
uncontrolled by any connecting sense. Then with an effort he forced
himself to focus his attention and gradually the sounds wove
themselves into meaning.
"What is it you are reading about, Chalchas?" he asked.
Chalchas looked up from the scroll. "About eternity, sir," he said.
"'_Hence it hastens to be in futurity_'"--Malchus repeated the last
phrase which still echoed in his memory. "What is it that hastens?"
"The universe, sir."
"Good. Read on from there."
_Hence_, read Chalchas, _it hastens to be in futurity, and is not
willing to stop, since it attracts existence to itself, in performing
another and another thing, and is moved in a circle through a certain
desire of essence. So that we have found what existence is in such
natures as these, and also what the cause is of a motion which thus
hastens to be perpetually in the future periods of time. But in
first and blessed natures there is not any desire of the future; for
they are now the whole, and whatever of life they ought to possess,
they wholly possess, so that they do not seek after anything, because
there is not anything which can be added to them in futurity._
The voice read on, but Malchus had ceased to listen. A phrase had
caught his attention and he repeated it to himself, feeling somehow a
vague consolation in it. In first and blessed natures there is not
any desire of the future. Surely it was just in that desire of the
future, the desire to continue his possession of Helena, that his
present misery consisted. If only he could achieve a state of
stability such as the philosopher seemed to be trying to define--a
state of peaceful being instead of this endless craving for the
unfulfilled. Again he focused his attention on the reading.
_What then, if some one should never depart from the contemplation of
eternity, but should incessantly persevere in admiring its nature,
and should be able to do this through the possession of an unwearied
nature; such a one, perhaps, running to eternity, would there stop
and never decline from it, in order that he might become similar to
it and eternal, surveying eternity, and the eternal by that which is
eternal in himself._
Malchus closed his eyes. The words and ideas, only half comprehended
by his reason, brought comfort to his heart. He withdrew his mind
from Helena and from the pain which obsessed him and concentrated it
within upon the pure awareness of being, the eternal in himself. But
soon, by no will of his own, his mind had escaped and was clamoring
again at the doors behind which Helena had withdrawn herself. How
could philosophy help a pain like his? It was beyond the control of
will. This beautiful system of thought in which mind broke from the
bonds of reason and flowered into ecstasy was accessible only to
untroubled minds.