in the body irrational desires and angers and other passions, but as
abolishing all these and as having, as far as possible, no communion
with the body._
Chalchas looked up and seeing that Malchus was listening attentively
he unrolled more of the scroll and chose another passage.
_It is not by running after external things that the soul beholds
temperance and justice, but she perceives them in contemplation of
herself and of that which she formerly was, and views them like
statues set up in herself which time has covered with rust. Then she
purifies them, even as if gold had taken unto itself life and,
because it was encrusted with earth, perceived not that it was gold
and knew not itself; but afterward, shaking off the earth which clung
to it, had been filled with wonder to behold itself pure and alone._
As if struck by a sudden thought, Chalchas laid down the book and
took up one of the others. As he unrolled it and began to search for
the passage he had thought of, Malchus's eyes wandered into the court
where a slim fountain leaped from a little grove of flowering plants.
The fountain, he thought, was a symbol of that pure being, always
vividly alive, yet always unchanging and self-sufficing, which the
philosopher vainly tried to define when he wrote of eternity and the
soul. Its clear watery music soothed his sense as the voice of
Chalchas had done; and as he listened the voice rose, gentle and
unobtrusive, again, the words it spoke mixing with the voice of the
water. _Dissimilar Natures ... The Immortal and the mortal ... The
spiritual and that which is deprived of spirit ... The indivisible
and that which is broken by division_,--the phrases danced like
bubbles on the surface of Chalchas's speech, and then Malchus was
once again listening attentively. _For by reason of all these things
there comes upon the soul mighty tumult and labor in the realms of
generation, since we pursue a flying mockery which is ever in motion.
And the soul, declining to a material life, kindles a light in her
dark tenement the body, but she herself is lodged in obscurity; but
by giving life to the body she destroys herself and her own spirit in
as great a degree as these can suffer destruction. For thus the
mortal nature participates in spirit, but the spiritual nature in
death, and the whole becomes a prodigy, as Plato beautifully observes
in his Laws, composed of the mortal and immortal, of the spiritual,
and that which is deprived of the spirit. For the physical law which
binds the soul to the body is the death of the immortal life but
giver of life to the mortal body._
Malchus raised his hand as a sign that the reading should cease, and
the Greek, taking up the books and the stool on which he had been
sitting, retired across the court.
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Four_
Malchus remained wrapped in thought till he was roused by the sound
of approaching footsteps, and, raising his eyes, saw one of his
slaves coming toward him, carrying a long palm-leaf mat which he
spread before Malchus saying:
"There is a hermit at the door, sir, with mats and baskets for sale."
He stood waiting for Malchus to speak and inspecting the mat
critically; and, believing that Malchus was debating whether he
should buy the mat or not, he added, "The weaving is unusually good,
sir."
But Malchus had not been considering the mat. The news that a hermit
selling palm-leaf mats was at his door had strengthened rather than
interrupted the train of thought which had occupied him since
Chalchas had ceased reading. Malchus knew from the fact the hermit
was selling mats and baskets that he must be one of the Christian
hermits from the desert. They were familiar figures in Alexandria,
for many of them, having tramped across the burning sands till they
reached the Nile or the southern bank of Lake Mareotis and having
there taken ship, appeared at rare intervals in the city to sell the
work of their hands and so earn enough to buy for themselves the bare
necessities of life.
Malchus himself, like most of his friends, had been born a Christian
and had been christened, for his parents were of orthodox faith. As
a child, like many children, he had taken religion very seriously.
The ceremonies of the church delighted him: he used to imitate them
very accurately in his nursery, repeating portions of the services by
heart to the astonishment of his nurse. Later he became a great
student of the Scriptures and was much taken up with his own
religious experiences and his successful or unsuccessful encounters
with sin. The priest who had charge of him predicted a pious future.
Then, quite suddenly, at the age of eighteen he changed.
Christianity, he discovered, was fit only for children and women. He
discarded it and proclaimed himself, with Diocles and the other
cultured young men who were his friends, a free thinker with a
sympathy for Greek classicism. They formed an exquisite society of
their own which, helped by Diocles's growing reputation as a poet,
became notorious for its artistic intellectualism, its refined
licentiousness, and the extreme elegance of its feasts. But no man
can change his nature, and in Malchus there was an impulsiveness, a
violence, which was much more in accordance with Christianity than
with Greece; and, though he would have been the last to admit it, he
retained in his attitude to life the mental habit of a Christian.
But the Christianity of Alexandria, with its endless bickerings and
riots, was a very different thing from the Christianity of the
desert. Everyone in Alexandria had heard of those strenuous desert
monasteries, buried in waterless wastes or high pitched on barren
hills, and of the hermits who fled from even that strict and
primitive existence and led solitary lives of incredible asceticism
in cells built by themselves in the sand-swept wastes of Nitria or
far south in the Thebaid. It was not so many years since Saint
Anthony himself, the greatest of the hermits, had died at a great age
and had been buried in an unknown desert grave, bequeathing his
leather tunic and the coverlet of his bed to the bishop Athanasius;
and the stories which were still told of his lonely battles against
evil spirits and those gnawing temptations which lay hold on men
living in solitude, held a strange and profound fascination for the
earnest, unquiet, and fanatical heart of Malchus.
The philosophers whom Chalchas had just been reading to him, reduced
life to mere thought and contemplation. In spite of the comforting
ideas which he had received from them, he had realized, as he
reflected on their words, that they could not help him, for his only
hope lay in strenuous action, while all they could offer him was
thought. The idea of a life of thought, of bodily passivity,
terrified Malchus. For one of his violent nature, passivity meant
despair; for passivity, he knew, would leave him at the mercy of his
misery and his desires. For him action was imperative. He must do,
not think, if ever he was to escape from himself and from Helena. He
longed to hand over the control of himself to some directing
discipline, to slave-drive his body, to tire himself out in some
austere bodily labor which should have an arbitrary but supreme
significance....
It was thoughts such as these that had leaped, like a sudden light,
into his mind when the slave had told him that a hermit stood at his
door, and it was for this reason that he roused himself and ordered
the slave to invite the hermit to enter.
The slave, leaving the mat where he had laid it, went off to obey,
and a few minutes later Malchus, raising his eyes, saw the hermit
standing in the court, immovable as a vision. He was an old man,
upright and gaunt. The small, sharply defined features and bright
eyes, looking out from a thicket of gray hair and short, thick beard,
gave an ingenuous, bird-like look to the sun-tanned face. Over his
right shoulder several long mats were slung, like the one the slave
had brought for Malchus to see, and strung on a rope which crossed
the same shoulder and was grasped in his right hand he carried on his
back a great bunch of palm-leaf baskets which rose above the height
of his shoulders on each side of his face. In his left hand he held
a staff.
After Malchus had beckoned to him twice the old man moved and began
slowly to approach.
"Come, my friend," said Malchus. "I should like to buy some of your
mats and baskets. Throw them down here and sit down yourself. My
slave will spread out each mat so that I can examine it."
The hermit flung down his load as if glad to be eased of it, and
Malchus saw that he was dressed in a rough tunic of untanned
goatskin. He wore it with the hair turned inward against his body; a
fringe of hair showed along the rough edges about his throat and
round each thigh. His arms and legs were bare and he was shod with
sandals. He ignored the couch which Malchus had ordered to be
brought for him and sat down on the sample mat, spreading his bent
knees outward and crossing his ankles. Malchus noticed the sharp
shinbones and the extraordinary thinness and brownness of the legs.
On their hairy, sun-parched skin patches of dry scurf showed white
through the black hairs like salt on a brick. He sat immovable, with
hanging head and fixed gaze, and there came from him the pungent
animal smell of stale sweat. Once the smell would have sickened
Malchus, but now it had no repulsion for him, for it savored of a
simple and primitive life free from the luxuries and refinements
against which his whole soul was in revolt.
"Before we attend to business," he said, "you must have some food and
wine."
The hermit slowly raised his head. "I should be glad of a handful of
dates and a cup of water," he said in a small, clear, tranquil voice.
"Wine would be better," answered Malchus. "You are exhausted. A
little wine will act as a tonic."
The old man shook his head. "To give a tonic to the body," he said,
"is to offer a weapon to the Enemy."
A slave brought him what he had asked for and he sat silently
munching the dates and sometimes taking a little bird-like sip from
the cup. There was something strangely touching in the spectacle of
him sitting there, quietly ministering to the bare need of his frail
body. For Malchus, in his present state of mind, he was a being from
another world--a world of liberation and new powers, mysterious,
peaceful, and ecstatic. In his attitude and his still gaze there was
the limitless serenity of the desert. Malchus longed to talk to him
intimately and frankly, and after a moment's thought he sent away the
slaves and, leaving his couch, sat down on the floor near the hermit.
"Listen to me, my father," he said. "I will buy all your mats and
baskets so that you will not need to wander from house to house,
because I want you to stay here and help me with your advice."
The old man's voice came clear and calm: "Why should you ask a
foolish man for advice?"
"You are not foolish, my father."
"I am foolish according to the wisdom of this world."
"I am not seeking for the wisdom of this world. I know that you are
wise in the wisdom that I desire."
"If you truly believed that I am wise, you would not want to ask me
questions. You would follow my example."
"But there are many ways of living wisely--different ways for
different men. Of late, my father, I have been in great trouble and
bewilderment and I cannot see my way. I desire the perfect life but
I do not know how to find it. Recently I have read some of the
writings of Plotinus and Proclus and I have found much that is good
and beautiful in them. When they write of becoming one with the
Divine my soul is drawn to their philosophy, but I am afraid of a
life of thought because I know that I shall not find peace in thought
alone. I hoped that you might explain to me a better way."
"I can explain nothing. We who are true Christians have no need of
reasoning, because we have the faith which is made perfect through
the love of the Lord Jesus."
"Is reason, then, of no value?"
"I will ask you a question. Which comes first, reason or mind? Is
reason the source of mind, or the mind of reason?"
"I should say that the mind was the source of reason, because
reasoning is an activity of the mind."
The old man nodded his head. "Then is not a bright and illumined
mind greater than reason? Faith is the divine reason and deeds are
truer and sharper than words."
"Tell me this, at least, my father. If I become a Christian and a
hermit shall I escape from the love of women and the desires of the
flesh?"
"No. They will assail you more fiercely in the desert than ever they
did in the city."
Malchus sat silent. He was accustomed to the impassioned arguments
of the town and was surprised that this old man, who had devoted his
whole life to his faith, should have no desire to convert others to
it. On the contrary, the replies he had given to Malchus's questions
seemed intended to repulse rather than to draw him toward the hermit
life. And yet, in the small, calm voice there had been no repulsion.
It was unclouded by violence or stress, more like the sound of
running water, or the murmur of the wind about walls and roofs. And
turning his eyes to the old man now, he saw that he had relapsed into
his attitude of contemplation, his head bent slightly forward and his
eyes gazing steadfastly before him; and as Malchus watched him he
raised his right arm without stirring his body and, reaching over his
left shoulder, drew over his head a linen cowl which Malchus had not
noticed before. It hung to his breast, covering his face, and when
he had dropped his hand to the ground again he remained immovable in
that attitude, like an idol carved out of wood.
Malchus rose and sat silent on his couch, occupied with his troubles
and vague desires and afraid to disturb the hermit. But after an
hour of immobility the old man rose, threw back his head cloth, and
began to walk toward the door. He had forgotten his mats and
baskets, but Malchus followed him and, touching his arm, offered him
a handful of money. He stopped and took the money with a nod of the
head, and was on the point of moving again, when Malchus spoke:
"I beg of you to stay here for a day or two, my father."
The old man turned his quiet, luminous gaze upon Malchus. "I cannot,
my son," he replied, "for as a fish dies when a man lifts it from the
water, so, if we hermits remain long among men, our minds become
troubled and perverted. I must return to the city not built with
hands."
"Which way will you go?"
"By the Lake Mareotis."
A sudden impulse made Malchus kneel down. "Bless me, my father," he
said.
The hermit lifted his right hand, and Malchus heard the small, clear
voice above him: "The blessing of God the Father and Jesus Christ the
Son be upon you."
Malchus rose to his feet. "Tell me your name, my father?" he asked.
"My name is Serapion," replied the hermit. He vanished quietly out
of the court and Malchus read in his face and movement that he was
setting out immediately on his long journey back to the desert....
After the hermit had gone, Malchus fell again into meditation. His
mind was in that state of ferment in which transformations which
normally take shape by slow degrees throughout months and even years,
may occur in the upheaval and agony of a single day. His soul,
disturbed and harassed by the gradual crumbling of his union with
Helena, had revolted suddenly and violently when she had deliberately
flaunted a new lover in his face, and he had turned with all the
fierceness of his nature, not against her, but against the whole life
and society of which he and she were a part. Then, snatching in
despair for some support in the ruin which had engulfed him, he had
seized upon the idea which had attracted him both in the philosophy
of the Neo-Platonists and in the Christian faith--the idea of a life
isolated and self-sufficing, relying neither on human relationship
nor on material support, but deriving its strength from a power
within or beyond itself to which it resigned itself completely. In
that idea he had felt a vague comfort even though the passivity and
emptiness which it seemed to imply had discouraged him. Upon this
the chance arrival of the hermit Serapion had come as a sudden
solution. In the old man's serene detachment, his primitive and
elemental air, Malchus had felt something more than a discipline of
the mind: these things spoke of a discipline of the body, a life of
physical battle, strenuous, unrelenting, the necessary and satisfying
counterpart to those battles of the soul. The brevity of his
replies, the perfect assurance of his faith, had embodied for Malchus
that security after which he was groping. The hermit's impatience of
argument, his lack of any desire to win over others to his faith, had
roused in him more zeal than the most impassioned pleading could have
roused. Now as he sat with bowed head he felt an excitement stirring
within him. He was like one who, having wandered long in the dark,
sees a light moving far ahead and, careless now of the pitfalls about
him, runs straight on, absorbed body and soul in the pursuit of that
vision of salvation.
It was in this state that his mother found him when, an hour after
the hermit's departure, she came to visit him. She advanced down the
portico, straight and dignified with her grave smile, and at the
sight of her a sudden longing rose in him to drop back into his
boyhood and take refuge again in her protecting love. It was a
momentary impulse, no more; for such a regression, even if it had
been possible, would have carried him back also into a life which had
now grown hateful to him. As he rose to greet her, she saw the
feverish light in his eyes, and when he had led her into an inner
room and they had sat down side by side, she laid a cool hand on his
forehead.
"Your head is cool," she said. "I was afraid at first that you had a
headache!" And, knowing that inquiries about his health always
irritated him, she went on, without waiting for him to speak, to talk
of various matters--of relatives and friends recently seen or heard
of, and of how Malchus's father had just secured a famous artist to
redecorate their dining hall.
"You must come and see the designs when they are ready," she said.
"The house will be yours some day, so you, as well as your father and
I, must approve of them."
Malchus felt himself suddenly recalled by that casual remark to the
world from which in spirit he had already traveled so far, and when
his mother went on to speak to him with gentle anxiety of his future,
he saw almost with the vividness of actuality the life which she
contemplated for him. It was not the life of luxurious
unconventionality which he had led for the last few years. It was
the life of aristocratic conservatism in which he had been brought
up, and the thought of it repelled him as much as the gay life
against which he was in revolt. But the sight of his mother's gentle
and earnest face as she leaned toward him with a little look of
inquiry disarmed all show of antagonism in him. He loved her, and
whenever, as so often happened, their sympathies clashed, he strove
always not to hurt her.
"We have a feast next Thursday," she said to him. "I know you
dislike these solemn dinners of ours, but come if you have nothing
better to do. It would please your father. Crassus and Pompilla are
coming and are bringing Julia."
"So you are still plotting, mother!" said Malchus with a smile.
She smiled back at him. "Well," she replied, "we have not yet quite
given up hope. You cannot deny, at least, that Julia is an excellent
young woman and that it would be a very good match. But if you do
not care about her, there are others. What your father and I are
thinking about most is the children. We were still young when you
were born, but your boyhood prolonged our youth. Since you left us
the house has been too quiet; we feel our age and long for your
children so that with them we can grow young again. Then, as you
know, your father is ambitious for you. We are both proud of the
fact that for generations the family has held high positions in the
state and it has been a disappointment to your father that you have
not followed the family tradition."
"I only wish," answered Malchus, "that I could satisfy you both in
this, but politics and government have no attraction for me, mother.
If I took up a government post I should be an irritable and
disillusioned old man before I reached forty."
"A thing too horrible to be thought of! Let us say no more about it,
my boy. It is useless, I fully admit, to do violence to oneself in
such matters. But you can have no such prejudice against marriage.
In that direction, at least, your father and I can reasonably indulge
our hopes." She rose to depart. "And you will come to our solemn
dinner?" Her lip curled humorously.
"If I am here, I will come," Malchus replied, and he accompanied her
to the house door and helped her into her litter.
_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.