just finished, but this time he did not revolt against the rebuke; he
only lamented his failure to progress in the attainment of
perfection, and in order to purge from his heart the smallest taint
of pride, he sat down and sternly set himself to pick the beautiful
mat to pieces. It was a slow process, not only because the mat was
large, but also because he was taking care not to strain the ribbons,
for he was determined to weave them into baskets. And when at last
he had quite undone the work of many days, he set to work at once on
the first of the baskets and worked on until it was finished.
By that time the sun had set. Arched immeasurably above the earth,
the sky, deep beyond deep, was one great flame of scarlet. Blood-red
and luminous, the desert from horizon to horizon blazed it back until
in that world of sultry, all-pervading glow the very air seemed red.
It was a moment of mysterious intensity, the symbol, it seemed, of
that august sacrifice in which the divine blood had been poured upon
the world as an atonement for the sins of man. Malchus, caught into
a holy exaltation, stood with uplifted arms; the huge gray crucifix
of his shadow extended down the long slope from his feet. "Redeem me
also, O blessed Lord," he prayed; "burn out my sins with the fire of
thy blood."
The moment faded. The face of the desert grew ashen-gray and soon
the earth-floored, heaven-roofed furnace had changed to a pallid and
desolate cavern from whose emptiness the chilled heart recoiled.
Malchus lowered his arms, and as he did so a sudden draught fluttered
past him and within a few feet from where he stood a little whirlwind
troubled the sand. It grew, and soon a grim and threatening wraith
rose upward to a giant's height and towered above him. The whirling
sand had gathered itself into a human body. Malchus, speaking aloud
the name of Christ, made the Sign of the Cross, and the life went out
of the wraith and it collapsed into dust before his eyes. But the
sight of it had troubled him. It was as if it had arisen, hard upon
the divine mystery of the sunset, as a sign of that other mystery in
which are hidden the powers of darkness and evil. A cold spasm shook
his body, and, gathering together his work, he retreated into the
cell and by the last vestiges of twilight ate his single meal of
bread and salt.
He ate slowly because he dreaded the long, empty hours of darkness
which lay before him; for now, for the first time, he realized
complete isolation. He stared at the darkness of the cell and it
seemed to him that it was thick and spongy, a gloom grown palpable.
But the silence was more terrible than the darkness; its infinity and
its horrible imminence shriveled his soul; its intensity seemed every
moment to be on the point of concentrating into some terrible climax.
Later in the night, he knew, it would break in those shrieks and
howls which were even more harrowing than silence itself, and he
found himself dreading the moment when the first howl should come.
Yet silence and darkness and all the fears of the night could do
nothing, he well knew, against the perfect safety to be found in
prayer, and his mind turned to the oratory. But he felt a strange
reluctance to move. If he moved, he felt, he would loose all these
waiting terrors that had gathered silently about the cell. He
controlled himself sternly and, standing up, repeated aloud the psalm
which begins, "Save me, O God; for the waters are come even unto my
soul." The sound of his own voice reassured him and the silence
moved farther away.
When he had repeated the psalm twice he groped toward the oratory and
paused for a moment in the doorway. Though he heard and saw nothing,
he knew that the oratory was not empty. He waited with beating
heart, and suddenly a fluttering, intermittent draught smote his face
with soft, impalpable blows. Fear clutched at his heart, a fear
which leaped up into horror at a sudden pattering of hands against
the bars of the little window. With his right hand Malchus made the
holy sign upon the darkness and repeated again the same psalm. When
he had finished it he paused again, and now he could feel that the
cell was empty. Then with a braver heart he entered and began his
nightly prayers and meditations, and as he prayed aloud a warm sense
of security settled upon him. Only when he stopped praying and fell
to meditating did the terrible silence return, pouring in upon him
through the window, welling coldly through the doorway, bringing a
sense of the draughty void that encompassed him, till his soul
struggled as if in deep water, and again he took refuge in prayer.
He prayed until his words stumbled into nonsense and his body swayed
like a tree in the wind, and, feeling that he was going to fall, he
leaned against the wall of the cell. The relief of even that little
respite sent a wave of luxurious numbness through his body; his heavy
eyelids dropped for a moment as if by their own weight. Then slowly
the dark form of a human head took shape upon a background of cloudy
gold. It cleared, brightened, took on color and life, and the face
of Helena gazed at him with shining eyes and parted lips of kindling
passion. His own lips moved and he muttered her name with slow,
incredulous delight.
[Illustration: woodcut]
Instantly long, derisive shrieks broke in upon the silence, then
other shrieks, and others still, filling the night with an infernal
chorus which roused into ghastly life the boundless void about the
cell. Malchus sprang shuddering from his dream. His body was cold
with fear, for he was convinced now that these nightly shrieks were
in very truth the voices of those powers of evil which tower up out
of the sand or lurk expectant in the silence, waiting for the moment
when one of the faithful, flagging in the endless contest, should
yield to them an accession of power. He prayed loudly and fervently,
and soon the shrieks grew fainter, dying in bayings and howlings
miles away down the wilderness.
[Illustration woodcut]
For the remainder of the night Malchus, beating his breast and
wrestling with bodily exhaustion and flagging spirits, persevered in
prayer, remembering what Serapion had told him of the power of
prayer. For once, Serapion had said, when he and the Abba Macarius
had stood by night in the open desert, they had seen a great column
of light set upon a hilltop and reaching up into the sky, and the
blessed Macarius had told him that it was the prayers of the monks in
the great monastery of Nitria ascending to the everlasting throne.
And at last, as if in answer to Malchus's prayers, a gray, watery
light filled the cell and the little window became a gleaming square,
pure and clear as the gleam on a silver shield. Malchus, cold and
exhausted, felt his soul thrilled by the blessed redemption of
daylight, and, dragging his stiffened body into the outer chamber, he
opened the door and went out.
Below him the infinite gray desert lay dwarfed and shrunk beneath a
vast sheaf of golden light springing far beyond the blue hills which
bordered the Nile. It was as though the prayers of all faithful
throughout the length and breadth of Egypt had been gathered together
into the east. And somewhere, an invisible atom in the lower
grayness, Malchus knew that Serapion must at that moment be toiling
back to him under the heavy load of the water skin.
[Illustration: woodcut]
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Eight_
With the return of day Malchus's mind grew calm again and he
remembered the terrors and struggles of the night as a man remembers
vaguely the fever that has left him. Throughout the day he followed
scrupulously the appointed order of his life, but as the day declined
the prospect of Serapion's return roused in him an expectancy so keen
that he could with difficulty prevent himself from running down the
hill and starting off across the plain to meet the old man. But
this, he knew, would displease him, and he resolved that Serapion
should find him faithfully observing his duties. He denied himself
even the relief of glancing from time to time across the desert for a
first sight of him; but he could not quell his inward excitement, and
as he sat weaving with the head cloth drawn over his face his nerves
were alert and tense for the moment of Serapion's return. Even if he
neither saw nor heard him, he would know instinctively that he was
near. But hour followed hour, and Malchus, having finished another
basket, lifted his cowl and saw that the sun was setting. He
gathered together his work and moved with a heavy heart toward the
cell. When he reached the door he saw Serapion standing within; he
had prepared the table for a meal. Malchus's heart leaped into his
throat; his impulse was to fling away his work and throw himself at
the old man's feet. He checked the impulse and waited, humble and
expectant, for Serapion to turn and greet him, and when he neither
turned nor spoke Malchus shrank back, chilled into himself. As he
laid away his work the old man's quiet voice broke the silence, "Have
you eaten, my son?" and when Malchus replied that he had not,
Serapion brought another loaf from the sack and they ate in silence.
Next morning, an hour before the dawn, Malchus heard the voice of
Serapion calling to him from outside. He rose from his knees and,
going into the outer chamber, opened the door of the cell. It was as
if he had opened a door on eternity. Before him lay the bare, dead
world of a burned-out planet, an ancient world, crushed and exhausted
by the weight of never-ending time. At these twilight intervals
mankind with its loves and angers and unearthly ideals shrank to a
thing of no more account than a heap of stones or a fume of sand
endlessly agitated in the eddies of a pool. Even the face of the
world itself lost its separate reality and became a part of the
expression of some divine or infernal mood, a mystery never to be
fathomed by the mind, but waking in the soul an untranslatable echo.
Malchus stood for a moment thrilled and appalled before he moved out
to the edge of the terrace where the figure of the hermit stood so
lifeless and immovable that Malchus could hardly believe that the
voice which had called him had issued from it. So intense was the
silence that it seemed that, when at last it broke, the whole of
creation would be shivered with it.
But when Serapion spoke his voice was no more than a mote in the
silence. "My son," he said, "the time has come for you to depart."
Malchus made no reply. Ever since Serapion had relented toward him
and taken him into his cell he had deluded himself with the hope that
he might remain always with the old man as his servant. Serapion had
become a vital part of his life and the sudden discovery that he
himself had no part in the life of Serapion chilled him like the
presence of death. His only friend was casting him off and he felt
that the heart in his body was shriveling and dying. Serapion did
not even care what happened to him, for he added nothing to the order
that he must depart; and though he had from the first refused to
advise Malchus in his choice of the hermit life, saying that such a
choice must come from within and not from without, yet now this
indifference cut him to the heart. He did not know how careful
Serapion's treatment of him had been from the beginning, nor that
many of the things which had seemed to be accidental occurrences had
been arranged by the old man in order to show Malchus to himself and
give him the needful experience out of which to make his choice. He
did not even perceive that before sending him away Serapion had given
him a foretaste of that absolute solitude which was the hermit's
daily life, and then had waited until that experience had sunk into
his mind and spread its influence there.
He stood for a long while silent with lowered head, struggling with
his emotions. Then, laying aside all shame, he fell on his knees
before Serapion. "Let me stay with you, my father," he begged. "Let
me be your servant."
He knew that his request was craven, that he had weakly fallen away
from that unshakable resolve with which he had clung to the hermit
despite the fierce repulse he had received. Where was that courage
now? He waited like a fawning animal for the hermit's reply.
Serapion replied without looking at him, "He who is a servant himself
has no need of a servant."
"Where, then, shall I go?" whined Malchus.
"Your own heart must tell you where to go, my son. But, for to-day,
go out into the desert a mile or two from here and spend the time
till nightfall in meditation. Then return and tell me what you have
decided, for to-morrow you must depart."
Malchus turned away in despair and began to descend the sandy slope
to the plain below. At the bottom he turned to the right and
followed the base of the hill which wavered away southward. It was
strange, after having lived so long within the little circle about
Serapion's cell, to be wandering alone in the boundless waste of
sand. The forty days which he had passed with Serapion seemed to
include the whole of his life. The rest was dreams, for the days of
his former life had receded far behind him. But the sufferings
through which he had passed had left him feeble and over-sensitive,
and as an uprooted plant seeks roothold in the smallest handful of
earth, so his broken spirit clung to Serapion. Faced with the
necessity of severing himself again from human ties, he shrank and
shuddered as a sick man shudders at the knife.
He had fallen unconsciously into the patient, unhurrying tread which
he had learned during the long desert journey. The line of the
sandhills now curved westward and, finding a shady hollow carved out
of the hill face, he turned into it. A clatter startled the hollow;
he had disturbed two great birds which towered suddenly upward and
vanished over the sandbank, leaving behind them a heap, half
skeleton, half carrion. Malchus hesitated. He had long grown
accustomed to do violence to his old fastidiousness, but he
remembered that, now that the birds were gone, the carrion would
become a gathering place for swarms of flies, and so he turned aside
and, finding another hollow a little farther on, he entered it and
sat down.
It was the first time in his new life that he had set himself to
meditate on earthly matters. Hitherto his meditations had been a
discipline of the soul, teaching it to ascend by means of prayer into
the presence of God. Now, having shared for a while the life of a
hermit, he must decide whether he had the will and the strength to
follow that life himself. But he had made that decision once for all
when he had left Alexandria and followed the steps of Serapion. Why,
then, should he decide again? But Malchus knew that in truth he must
decide again, for the first decision was made in ignorance and under
the impulsion of a great storm of passion. Now he must decide out of
experience and a quiet mind. Yet in his present mood how difficult
it would have been to decide if he had not had that first impetuous
decision to fire his will. For now his will was weak and passive, he
could, of himself, have willed nothing positive. That strong craving
for a life of self-discipline and fierce austerity had died down now
to a mere acquiescence; now he felt strongly only about the things
from which he recoiled, for from his old life he still recoiled with
all the force of his being.
An hour passed, then another, and by degrees, as a flower draws
moisture from the soil in which it grows, his mind drank in something
of the peace and silence which surrounded him. The shock had spent
itself. He grew reconciled to the thought that he must leave
Serapion. With the return of calm he could see more deeply into the
hidden places of his spirit and he perceived that the days of stern
discipline through which he had passed had planted in him a growing
fervor, an aspiration which was becoming gradually more and more
clear, as if the whole strength of body and soul were drawing itself
together and fusing into one burning core. He felt, too, and mistook
it for a virtue, the fanatic's pride in those mortifications of the
flesh which in themselves are less than nothing. And as he fell to
pondering again the hermit's life, the most arduous and the most
exalted that man can pursue, his soul took fire and he longed to
submit himself to the fiercest rigors of which man is capable. In
the intensity of his emotions he rose to his feet and stood upright
with glaring eyes and hands crossed upon his breast. The life he had
chosen lay visibly before him, a ravaged waste beset with hunger and
thirst and parching heat, with foul beasts and devils and the hidden
terrors and torments of endless nights, and at the end of it that
high Paradise of green boughs through which the wings of archangels
moved like great lilies of scarlet and gold about the ineffable
throne of God. From the wilderness around him he reached out his
arms toward that remote salvation, struggling toward it across the
obstacles that clogged his steps. But in a moment the vision had
faded and he stood again englobed in the parched and glaring gold
dust of the sandy hollow. In the exaltation of his dream he had
staggered forward in the loose sand, and now he stood blindly
wondering which of the two worlds was the real one, telling himself
that this world of sand and heat which was so often present to his
mind was but a ghost, and that the true reality was that spirit world
to which the soul ascended only in the rare moments of divine
ecstasy. As the sun dropped into the west and the material world
melted again into the nightly holocaust, he knew that he stood on the
edge of eternity and looked for a moment through the veil of things
seen into the unspeakable mystery beyond; and as he turned back
toward Serapion's cell, walking through the sunset as the three holy
children walked through the fiery furnace, he felt that his mind had
grown stern and unshakable as adamant....
When Serapion heard that Malchus was resolved to take upon himself
the burden of the hermit he was filled with gladness. "Blessed be
God and the Lord Jesus," he said, "who have given you the strength to
choose aright. Far be it from me now, my son, to discourage you.
Know then that six miles from here, to the south, there stands a
lonely cell. Fifty years ago the blessed Poemon built it with his
own hands and lived in it till the day when he rendered his soul to
God. He died in the act of prayer, for when two of the brethren
found him his dead body was bowed before the crucifix. Last time I
went by the cell it was falling into ruin; it is for you to rebuild
it. To-morrow, then, at dawn we will set out and you shall take with
you tools--for I have some here--to help you to restore the place.
You shall take also a half of our loaves and the water skin that I
have just filled."
"But I cannot take the water skin, my father, for you have no other."
"Do not trouble yourself about that. If it were not right that you
should have it, I would not give it to you. But go out now and scoop
away the sand from the south wall of this cell. You will find buried
there an ax and a spade."
While Serapion had been speaking, that tremulous sense, half fear,
half delight, which is the very spirit of life, had crept into
Malchus's heart and, going out as Serapion had directed him, he found
the ax and the spade and brought them into the cell.
"To-night," said the hermit, "you must sleep, for when we have need
of the body we must minister to the body."
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Nine_
The air was gentle and cool when they started southward next morning
an hour before the dawn, carrying the spade and ax, the water skin,
and two large baskets full of loaves. The desert, pale and
impalpable as mist, lay gray and smooth before them, and Malchus felt
that he was withdrawing still farther from the living world of men
and rivers and green things, pushing on into a realm void of all
outward life, the very battle ground of the soul. His heart was
firm; with every breath he seemed to inhale a courage and power that
were not of this world. Soon the long sky line on their left had
lightened to a pale, crystalline green which before long became so
intense that the eastward facets of every stone, every sandy hummock
and tuft of hard desert grass, gleamed with a wash of greenish light.
Their own slowly plodding figures were modeled on the left sides,
even to the smallest fold and feature, in green and gray, and sharp
green edges danced upon the ax and spade and the burdens that rose
and fell with their moving backs. And as if that light were sensibly
cold, a cool breath from the east touched cheek and hand and leg.
Then quite suddenly night had become day, for green had flushed into
saffron and saffron into orange. Malchus looked behind him.
Unbroken desert stretched northward; the high ledge on which
Serapion's cell was perched, so humanly familiar to him that it had
come to be for him the very center and meaning of the northern
desert, was lost in formless desolation. But the south, in this
morning light, held nothing sinister; its pure solitude wore the
pale, flushed beauty of a flower, and as they tramped onward Malchus
drew into his nostrils a subtle tremulous peace which thrilled both
body and soul. He closed his eyes for a moment and it seemed that
his brain tingled with its gentle intoxication. In the depths of his
mind, like dusky weeds waving on the bottom of a dark pool, the
knowledge that to-night and every night henceforward he would be
alone, utterly alone in this empty world, sent up a bubble of pain
into his consciousness, and for a moment he lived again through the
emotions of his one solitary night in Serapion's cell. But soon his
exaltation of mind had exorcised all human weakness and he strode
along at the hermit's side, strong and full of courage. The sun grew
fierce; their lips clove to their teeth and the spittle turned thick
in their mouths, and as they moved stubbornly on they were surrounded
by the acrid fume of their own sweat.
It was still early when Serapion pointed to a hill not far ahead of
them. Gaunt and bare, it rose above the plain like a ruined city
which the desert had swallowed. But there had never been any city
there; it was primeval rock and sand, and century by century the
winds and rains were eating it down to the level nonentity of the
desert.
Serapion stretched out an arm. "Upon that eastern slope," he said,
"a broken rock juts from the smooth line of the hill."
Malchus shaded his eyes with his hand. "Yes," he said, "I see it,
midway between the summit and the level ground."
"That is the cell of the blessed Poemon," said Serapion. "In half an
hour we shall reach it."
Malchus stared at the small tooth-like projection, and in face of the
iron reality his heart sank. How willingly at that moment would he
have bound himself to tramp on forever through the hot sand at
Serapion's side. Vain wish, for step by step the cell became more
real, more inescapable. Soon it would reach its full stature and
swallow him forever....
Like two great vultures about a foundered ewe, Malchus and Serapion,
the only moving things in a motionless world, paced about the cell,
examining it carefully and scarring the virgin face of the sand with
their footprints. The cell, like Serapion's, was a small square
divided by a partition into an outer chamber and a small inner
oratory. The eastern wall, which had contained the door, had fallen
into ruin, and with it the roof had collapsed, and a part of the
other walls, but the oratory was still intact, though it was half
filled with drifted sand which, year by year, had been blown in
through the doorway and window.
"Here, my son," said Serapion, "is a refuge already prepared for you.
See how God has preserved the inner room, which is the place of
prayer, for a sign to you that however much the outer man is
afflicted and maimed, the soul within is a refuge which no power can
destroy."