Long screens of blowing sand, long filmy processions of sand which
had taken on human and animal forms, came streaming toward him out of
the distance. There was sand everywhere. His eyes and mouth and
ears were full of sand; sand coated his skin and filled his clothes,
and the ground, the air, and the sky were full of flying sand. It
was as if the desert itself had risen against the outcast, had taken
on a fierce, vengeful mobility which would soon engulf him, consume
him, disintegrate and dry him till he himself was nothing but a cloud
among clouds of blowing sand, whirling restlessly from desert to
desert, with no more life than a vague and changing form and a thin,
crying voice like the voice of despair. Dust to dust; ashes to
ashes. The words whirled in the emptiness of his mind as the sand in
the empty air, and he nestled his head in his clasped arms and lay on
his face, still as a boulder, while the sand hailed against his
leather tunic and mounded itself about him till it overflowed in
rivulets over his neck and arms and legs.
[Illustration: woodcut]
With darkness the storm grew fiercer. The wind shrieked and howled
about his prostrate, half-buried body and through the wind came other
and wilder howls, now far off, now close and terrible. Then
something touched him, and again and again. Something heavy and
four-footed stood upon his back. It moved, and then he felt a hot
snuffling breath against his cheek. He turned his head in horror and
opened his eyes. Green eyes stared down at him. He clenched his
fist and struck out. The creature moved away, but slowly, and
Malchus felt that it was still lurking close by, with others, waiting
its time. Then a more terrible outburst of howls severed the night.
He was surrounded by howling, yelling beasts. Raising his head, he
could see their eyes glinting, now green, now red, all round him.
They beat him, trampled on him; their claws tore at his naked arms
and legs. He sprang to his feet and flung himself forward, waving
his arms, and there was a scattering of vague shapes in the darkness
and the wind was for a moment more densely loaded with sand. No
longer daring to lie down, he moved onward, slowly, feebly, painful
step by step, and only when it grew light did he dare to submit and,
abandoning all effort, sink to the ground in a stupor.
[Illustration: woodcut]
When he awoke he was sitting up, with a strong arm supporting him. A
young man knelt beside him, offering him a cup of water. A cake of
dried dates lay on a flat stone beside him. He drank the water
greedily and then ate the dates; then he turned his eyes to the young
man's. They were deep, untroubled blue eyes like the eyes of a
child. As they met Malchus's they were full of a gentle solicitude.
"How do you come to be here, so far from mankind?" he asked Malchus.
"I was a hermit," Malchus replied, in a voice that was hardly more
than a sigh.
"I too am a hermit," answered the young man. "My cell is only a few
yards away. When I came out this morning I found you lying here."
He helped Malchus to rise. "Come into my cell," he said, "for you
are half dead."
Malchus shook his head. "I cannot," he said, "for I am not worthy.
I have committed the unforgivable sin and I must go my way."
"Whither are you going?"
Malchus pointed forward into the desert.
"But can I do no more for you, my brother?" the young man asked him.
"Pray for me," Malchus replied as he began to move away. "Pray that
I myself may some day dare to pray again."
The young hermit stood watching the meager, plodding figure which
soon the desert gathered out of his sight into its arid heart....
Week after week Malchus pushed on. At first he was fed by the
hermits upon whose lonely cells he chanced often enough to escape
starvation, for in those days the number of hermits in the desert was
very great. But after a while the cells grew less frequent and he
began to enter a stark country which seemed to have been stripped of
all life. Only once in that quarter did he come upon a cell. It
stood gaunt upon the naked rock, itself more like a rock than a house
built by mortal hands. In it lived an aged and venerable hermit who
had spoken with the great Saint Anthony face to face. There were no
springs in that waterless waste and the ancient man was compelled to
collect in sponges the dew which fell only in the last two months of
the year. Every evening he set out the sponges on his roof and
before dawn he squeezed the dew out of them into a cistern. In this
way he was able to collect enough water for the whole year. He set
food and water before Malchus and questioned him about his journey.
"I do not know whither I am going, my father," Malchus replied, "for
I who was a hermit have committed the unforgivable sin and I fly
onward into the pathless wilderness that I may escape from humanity
and from my sin."
"For him that truly repents," the old man answered, "there is no
unforgivable sin. But if, being a hermit, you committed sin, it was
because you did not perpetually set death, and that which follows
death, before your eyes; for he who has his eyes perpetually fastened
on death comes to a state of understanding which forever releases the
soul from temptation. Each day the hermit must set his soul to
contemplate this mortal body of ours and must speak thus with the
voice of his soul to each part of it in turn: 'O legs, which have
strength to move yourselves and to stand up, stand up before the
presence of your Lord.' And to the hands: 'O hands, so soon to decay
and crumble into dust and never again be clasped together; before
that hour of dissolution comes, stretch yourselves out in
supplication to the Lord.' And to the whole body: 'O body, rise and
worship God and bear me up that I may offer praise and prayer to the
Lord with a good heart, before we are separated one from another and
I go down into the place of forgetfulness and am fettered in
everlasting darkness, and you consume away and rot and become a thing
of loathing and putrefaction. For if you follow after the delights
and pleasant things of the world you will surely cast me into
never-ending torment.' My son," the old man concluded, "if you
meditate thus always until the truth of these things has bitten
itself into your heart and mind, it will be impossible for you
thereafter to commit sin."
Then Malchus, having eaten and drunk, arose and bade the holy man
farewell.
Thenceforward all human habitation ceased, but still he traveled
onwards. His food was now the meager herbage springing in rare
places among stones or in the frail shadow of thorn-bushes, and his
scarce drink was from a desert well or some foul and clotted pool
which still lingered stagnating among the sandhills.
One morning, after many desolate days, he saw far ahead of him on the
pale floor of the desert as it were a ragged black cloth. It was
about four hours after dawn, and as he walked on he saw also that the
desert before him was streaked with green. Then, as he drew nearer,
he saw that what had seemed to be a black cloth was in truth a great
herd of browsing beasts; and when, at noon, he came up with them, he
found that they were buffaloes. They were feeding upon the green
herb which sprang plentifully in that place. Some of them lifted
their great lowering heads as he approached, and he was afraid and
was about to turn aside, when two figures, dark as themselves, stood
upright in the midst of the herd. When they saw Malchus they began
to come toward him, making their way among the beasts. And Malchus
saw that they had the forms of men and that they were naked and their
bodies covered with hair. He stood, his limbs weak with terror, for
he was sure that they were demons, but as they drew near, one of them
shouted to him, "Do not be afraid, for we are men like yourself."
Malchus made the sign of the Cross, but still they came on. "If you
are men," he asked them, fearfully, "why are you living among wild
beasts?"
The one who had spoken before replied: "We were once monks in a great
monastery, the monastery of Tabenna; but we both desired the life of
solitude, so we left the monastery and wandered into the desert
alone, and at length we came here. We have been here for forty
years. I am an Egyptian and this brother is a Lybian." Then he
began to question Malchus. "Tell me," he said, "how it goes with the
children of men. Do they still build houses and ships? Do the
ancient cities still stand and are their kings and governors still
subject to the powers of evil? And what of the land we knew? Do the
river waters still rise in flood once in the year?"
Malchus turned away with a sign of repulsion. "I cannot answer such
questions, for I, too, have abandoned the world." Then he turned to
the two creatures again, his eyes still fierce with suspicion.
"How," he muttered, "can you be men? For if men were to remain here
naked and without shelter, their bodies would be burned up by the
summer sun and frozen to death by the winter cold."
"We are men indeed," answered the Egyptian, "though we graze the
green herb with the beasts, and God has given to our naked bodies the
power to endure both heat and cold."
Then those two human creatures turned from him to the nearest patch
of herb, and there crouched upon their hands and knees and began to
feed. And the great beasts that browsed about them accepted them as
one of themselves and, moving forward as they cropped the herb, they
inclosed them in their midst and Malchus saw them no more.
With a heavy sigh he resumed his way. "Here," he said to himself, "I
have crossed the limit of the human world." But still he fled
onward, for his despair drove him, and again he was a creeping thing
upon the powdery floors of the desert, goaded daily by remorse,
horror-stricken, and tortured nightly by the devils into whose power
he had give himself, his body all the while blistered by the noonday
fire, shaken by the chills of night, consumed by hunger and thirst
and strange fevers. Throughout that time he trusted for his
sustenance to what green herb he might find, for he would collect no
food to carry with him, being determined to leave in God's hands
whether he should live or die. And at last in a remoter desert of
rock and sand he saw the dark mouth of a cave in the rock. He
climbed up to it and looked inside, and when his eyes grew accustomed
to the dimness he saw a man seated within with his back to the
entrance. Malchus took up a stone and beat against the rock after
the custom of the hermits, but the man did not move, and thinking
that he might be at prayer or in a state of meditation, Malchus sat
patiently outside, waiting till he should have finished. Yet after
many hours the man had not moved, and when Malchus knocked again more
loudly he took no notice.
But Malchus could not bring himself to depart. He was desperate, in
his long loneliness, for the comfort of a human voice; even a short
phrase, a human word or two, would be something to take back with him
into the great void where the only voices were the voices of those
embodiments of evil which tormented him by night. And so he entered
the cave and laid his hands on the bowed shoulders of the seated man.
Then, to his horror, the figure swayed, paused, and suddenly crumbled
beneath the weight of his arms into a wreckage of bones and dry
powder. The powdery dust stuck to his hands and steamed up into his
nostrils, and he sprang back, sickened to the heart and, turning
round, fled in horror from the cave.
Dust to dust. All about him now was dust and sand, the dried and
crumbled residue of extinct life. For now he had reached the limit
not only of humanity, but of life itself, and nothing was left for
him but to parch and disintegrate with all else, a prey to the
relentless heat and cold and the eternal restlessness of the winds.
With a shudder of loathing he shook that gray human dust from his
hands; but as he stared into the open palms the thought came to him,
in the words of the aged holy man, that those hands of his would ere
long decay and crumble into the same gray dust. Why, then, should he
turn with loathing from what he himself was so soon to become? For
whether the soul is destined for eternal bliss or eternal torment,
dust is surely the destiny of the body. As he pondered those words,
spoken by the soul to the hands, he remembered how they continued,
"Before that hour of dissolution comes, stretch yourselves out in
supplication to the Lord," and for the first time since his frenzied
flight had begun he felt within him the desire and the courage to
pray.
He was passing now by a solitary rock shaped like an altar, and it
came into his mind that it had been set there as a sign that his
prayer would be accepted. He approached it and knelt down before it.
"O Saviour of mankind," he prayed, "guide me through this desolation
to the place where I may at last find forgiveness." He remained long
in prayer and when he rose he felt for the first time that a little
core of light had begun to dawn in the blackness of his despair.
Each day, after that, he prayed, and night by night the hauntings of
the demons were diminished and he knew that the tyranny which the
powers of evil had gained over him was abating. He felt now that he
was under heavenly guidance as day after day he wandered on, heedless
of the changes in the great monotony of sand that seemed boundless as
the earth itself, until he began again to come upon the solitary
cells of the hermits. Some were empty and ruinous, but in others he
found the stern inhabitant who shared with him his scanty store of
bread and water. The impulse to fly from himself which had first
driven him out on his long pilgrimage, had spent itself, and he began
to think that when he came to a suitable place he would stop there
and build himself a cell in which, by a life of stern repentance, he
might pursue that forgiveness for which he had prayed.
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Thirteen_
When that thought had grown to a resolve, night had fallen. A full
moon rising heavy and ripe out of the horizon was transforming the
night into a pale and spectral day, and Malchus determined to travel
on through the night and to choose for his abode the place where he
should stop to rest an hour before dawn. And so he tramped on, and
when it seemed that the night was flagging and dawn was not far off
he halted on a ledge midway up a sandy slope and, nestling down into
the deep, loose sand which still kept beneath the surface the warmth
of the departed day, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, sunlight brooded heavy upon the world. His memory was
confused and it seemed to him that this was no more than many of his
awakenings in the unknown desert. Then the voice of his soul spoke
as loud and clear as if an unseen speaker stood beside him. "Here is
the place," it said, "in which you must seek forgiveness." And
hearing those words, Malchus remembered that where he lay was the
place in which he had resolved to remain. He rose up to survey it;
but as he raised his eyes astonishment seized him, then horror and
despair. Was it a hideous delusion, or had he been led during all
these days not by Heaven but by demons? For, like a sudden and
murderous onslaught, the discovery flashed upon him that he was
standing before his own cell. And not only that, but, as he
continued to glare dumbly at the familiar scene, he saw that a few
yards away, small and slim in her straight gown, the cane-gatherer
stood watching him. At that a frenzy came upon him and, snatching up
stones in both hands, he rushed forward, hurling them at the girl and
snatching up more and hurling again. But as he drew near to her her
face became distorted and hideous and she dissolved before his eyes
like a wraith; and Malchus stood poising a great stone in his right
hand and staring foolishly on vacant air. He dropped the stone, but
as he turned, with doubt and fear in his heart, toward his cell, he
saw the girl come round the corner of it and--lovely again as when he
had first seen her--vanish into the doorway. A shuddering came upon
him like an ague, for now he understood that this was God's answer to
his prayer that he might be guided to the place where he should find
forgiveness. It was not by flying from his sin that he could
overcome it, but by facing it. And now, in answer to his prayer, God
had brought him face to face with the bodily symbol of his sin. He
understood, but his courage sank before the ordeal; he felt that he
was not yet strong enough to face the terrible and supreme struggle
which involved the fate of his immortal soul. For, despite the long
weeks of austerity in the inner-most desert, his mind was still
troubled by earthly weaknesses and earthly desires: even after this
long mortification of the flesh the desire of the flesh was still
alive. How could he be sure, then, that he would have the strength
to conquer? Could he stand firm against that girl, mortal or demon,
waiting for him there in his cell? He stood trembling, for even this
brief sight of her had aroused in him all his old half-conquered
desire. If he were to fail again in the contest, how irrevocable
this time would be his damnation. He braced himself and, raising his
arms to Heaven, cried for mercy. "O Father," he prayed, "try not my
weakness too sternly. Drive me not away from Thee." He took a few
trembling steps toward the cell. Then he stopped. The odds were too
terrible; his courage suddenly broke like a wall that collapses upon
itself, and with hands thrust out before him like one groping in
utter darkness, he turned his back on the cell and ran down the slope
to the desert plain below.
He neither knew nor cared where he was going. He did not even know
why he ran. As when Helena had cast him off, he felt that his life
was broken in two. But now it was worse; for, to a man who is
fleeing from God, no new hope, no saving ideal, can ever come.
Henceforward he would be no more than a beast cast out from the herd,
wandering lonely and disconsolate till death should bring
deliverance. Worse, even worse, than that; for to him death would
bring not deliverance, but inescapable and everlasting torment.
He had stopped running. His feeble body had of its own accord stood
still, and, swaying like a tree in the wind, his head muffled in his
cloak as if to shut out all existence, he tried to collect his
thoughts. But his mind was dark and empty. A whirlwind of misery
and despair filled its emptiness, and he stood, without a will,
without thought, blind, stark as a desert rock, empty as a tomb.
Suddenly he started with fear. A touch had fallen upon his arm and a
well-known voice sounded in his ears. "My son, I saw you in a vision
as you were returning to yourself and I have brought you the money
which I received in Alexandria for your weaving." A hand drew down
his hand and put money into it. "It was told me in Alexandria that
God has freed your father from the burden of the flesh. Give thanks
to God, then, that he has given freedom to your father and has loosed
from you another earthly bond."
Malchus stood immovable. He dared not lower the cloak from his face
lest his eyes should meet the eyes of Serapion. A hand fell on his
shoulder as if to comfort and exhort him, and in a little while
Malchus felt that he was alone. Then only did he dare to lower his
cloak. A hundred paces behind him a lonely figure retreated across
the sand, and Malchus knew that he had cast off his only friend. He
turned away with a sob and continued his aimless wandering; and, as
he fared on, the storm of passion abated and he understood what
Serapion had told him. At first the thought that his father was dead
was no more to him than an echo out of the remote distance; it came
to him as a surprise that his father should have been alive until so
lately. But soon his dissolved life began to crystallize in new
thoughts and emotions about this new thing and, as it were, to become
coherent again. For, now that his father was dead, his mother would
be alone, and he told himself that it was his duty to go to
Alexandria to help her to settle her affairs. That thought became
the center of his life; he fastened upon it as strayed birds of
passage settle in flocks among the rigging of a ship, finding there
for a moment foothold and repose in the homeless void of sea and sky.
His life took on again a meaning and direction and he did not
question whether it was truly love for his mother or the sight of a
refuge for his own mind that urged him on. He knew only that his
desires were fixed on returning to Alexandria.
And so he wandered on, not knowing where he was in the vast deformity
of the desert; and late in the evening he found himself on the bank
of the great river. Human shapes moved before him, and, following
them, he went on board a boat which stood with loosely hanging sail
at a wooden jetty. It seemed that it was about to cross the river
and he stationed himself lonely and apart on the deck, as he had done
long ago when he had followed Serapion on to the ship on Lake
Mareotis.
The passage of the river did not take long, but when they touched the
further bank it was already broad moonlight. The other passengers,
having disembarked, settled themselves in the sand on the edge of the
broad track which skirted the river. Malchus questioned one of them,
who replied that they were waiting for a caravan which was traveling
northward toward the towns and villages at the mouth of the river,
and Malchus resolved at once that he too would join the caravan. He
lay down in the sand not far from the other travelers, brushing away
the upper layers with his hands till he came down to the warmth that
lingered below, and soon, overcome with weariness, he fell into a
deep sleep.
[Illustration: woodcut]
It seemed that he had only slept for a few minutes when some one
shook him by the shoulder and he awoke to a hushed, multitudinous
noise which seemed to fill the whole desert. It was the sound of
hundreds of muffled footsteps churning the sand, the low muttering of
a great company, the snuffling and breathing of camels, and the
creaking of their harness and loads. The sky was cold and bright as
polished steel. Malchus saw with amazement that it was not more than
an hour from the dawn. He stood up, feeling stiff, weary, and very
old. A great blur of shadowy forms moved against the clear sky and,
like the distant rocks and hills of an unstable world, the fantastic
shapes of camels swayed above them. The air was sharp and searching:
he could see the breath of the camels smoking upward in a thin fume.
With the others who had crossed the river, he took his place in the
rear of the shadowy host, and before they had marched an hour the
dawn broke like a sudden summer on their right flank and their left
was accompanied by a long saw-edged shadow like a mountain range that
flowed and undulated in pace with them. Too soon upon the dawn came
the torrid sunlight, burning up the morning coolness and adding
another torment to each suffering life in the great sinuous retinue.
As they went on their way, new companies joined them, and before long
Malchus and his companions were no longer in the rear, but in the
middle of the line of march. Noon came, burdening them with its
relentless pressure, and Malchus, as in his lonely desert wanderings,
fell into that monotonous rhythm of movement in which the body labors
on wearily of its own accord and the mind is lulled into a stupor.
Suddenly a tremor ran through the company, a spasm of doubt,
apprehension, then of sharp fear. Malchus thrilled to it with the
rest and, seeing many heads turned eastward, he turned his eyes in
that direction and saw a great cloud of dust that moved toward them
like a sandstorm. He watched it keenly, anxiously, till it grew to a
company of white-cloaked riders. Rapidly they came nearer and nearer
still. They were Arabs. Perched on their long-legged camels, they
crouched eagerly forward. Their long cloaks streamed behind them.
Soon they were so close that if they had been going to cross the
course of the caravan they would have swung to the right or left; but
still they swept on, straight for the center. Then suddenly the
caravan broke into three. The van detached itself from the rest and
flew cowering forward; the rear turned and shrank backward on its
tracks. A small company in the middle, which included Malchus and
his companions and a dozen laden camels, halted, terrified and
bewildered by its sudden isolation. The white-cloaked riders swept
round them in a circle and closed in upon them.