stare backward on their tracks, two shapes rose suddenly upon the sky
line. In a moment they had dropped downward from the blue and were
descending the pallid gold of the desert. They were camel-drivers.
Malchus said nothing of it to Veronica, but his eyes anxiously
scanned the country that lay about them. They were rounding the slow
curve of a hillside. On their left the desert fell away to a wide,
empty hollow; on the right, not far above them, it heaved itself
against the sky in a rampart of broken rocks. Malchus led the way
upward. Their only hope was to find some cleft or hollow in the
rocks. He shot a glance backward. The riders had disappeared, but
he could see their tracks, scrawled in a long curve down the slope to
where a nearer crest hid them, and Malchus's trembling imagination
pictured them scouring the intervening hollow and mounting faster and
faster to the new crest on which, at any moment, they would appear,
terrifyingly enlarged. The knowledge that in that silence and
emptiness a secret death was rushing toward them, the sense of a
headlong pursuit about to burst upon them when and where he did not
know, but terribly soon and terribly near, gripped his heart in a
hand of ice. He threw his arm about the laboring Veronica, urging
her up the rising ground toward the rocks. Then, high above them, a
great ragged disk of black shadow appeared among the rocks and
Malchus knew that God, who is the Help of the helpless and the Hope
of the hopeless had opened a cavern for them in the cliff. They
climbed desperately toward it, gripping the sheer rocks with their
hands, and flung themselves within. Shrunk together into a dark
corner, they huddled breathless, listening while it seemed to each of
them that the loud beating of their hearts filled the whole cavern
with dull vibrations. Then, crouching there they grew aware that
they were not alone in the cave. Some other living thing was near
them; the air was thick with the rank, tawny smell of a wild beast.
But in their dire extremity they had no fear for any beast, for all
their fear was fastened upon their pursuers, who at any moment would
break in upon them. "If it please God," whispered Malchus, "this
cave shall be our salvation; but if He forsake us, at least it will
receive our dead bodies."
Suddenly the golden mouth of the cave was blurred with shadow. A man
holding a drawn sword in his hand stood in the sunlight, so close
that, leaning forward, they might have touched him. They held their
breath, immovable as stone. Then the man, who, because his eyes were
unaccustomed to the darkness of the cave, could see nothing, shouted
into the echoing mouth. "Come out, you runaway slaves," he cried.
"Your master is waiting for you below."
But as he shouted, something stirred in the darkness at the other
side of the cave and a great beast sprang at the man and hurled him
to the ground. His sword leaped from his loosened grasp and clanged
upon the rocky floor. Staring into the bright mouth of the cave,
they saw that the beast was a lioness. She stood for a moment with
her forepaws and her great head planted upon the prostrate body; then
slowly she dragged it into the cave where her cubs waited. From the
man there came not a sound, but they could hear the hot breathing of
the beast like a wind throttled in a cleft of the rocks.
For a long while all was still. Then again a shadow troubled the
brightness of the cave's mouth; the shadow of a great arm swept
suddenly across the sunlit wall, and the voice of the sheikh, their
master, rang through the vault. Waiting below, he had become
impatient when his companion did not return with the captives, and
now he had come himself in great wrath. "Ho, Zogreb!" he shouted,
and the well-known voice struck terror to their hearts. "Bring them
out. Why do you delay?"
With his sword raised he took three paces into the cave. But again
the lioness sprang like a tree-trunk hurled from a catapult, and the
sheikh went down before her as his servant had done. His last
agonized cry filled the cavern with the very voice of horror, and
then there was silence but for the dragging of the heavy corpse along
the floor.
Then Malchus and Veronica rose up and went forth from the cave, and,
climbing down the rocks, they saw two camels picketed below. Then
both fell upon their faces and offered up thanks to Him who is the
Help of the helpless and the Hope of the hopeless, who had sent the
lioness to deliver them from their oppressor and had given them the
two camels to carry them back into freedom. And when they had eaten
and drunk of the store of provisions which they found upon the
camels, they loosed the picket ropes and mounted, and an hour before
sunset of the same day they came to the banks of the Nile.
They followed the river, and as darkness fell they reached a town
where a north-bound ship was taking cargo for Alexandria. It was
even then almost ready to cast off. Malchus and Veronica made haste
to unload the camels, and while Veronica sat guarding the loads on
the wharf, Malchus led away the camels and sold them to provide money
for their passage. And within the hour they lay on the deck and the
great sail yawned above them in the feeble breeze, and above the
sail, above all their world of sand and rock and water, yawned the
profound blue of the night filled to its uttermost recesses with
luminous galaxies which showered their images on the black crystal of
the river gliding endlessly northward. They lay motionless: a great
peace had fallen upon them. It seemed that their lives, having
rushed down through a great turmoil of fears, agonies, and despairs,
had suddenly swung to rest in a dark, quiet pool. And in Malchus's
mind so great was the peace that he had ceased to look forward into
the future.
It was Veronica's voice that recalled it to him. "Do for me now one
thing more, my brother," she said. "Lead me to the White Convent
without the walls of Alexandria. There we will bid each other
farewell and you will be free."
[Illustration: woodcut]
The words fell like a dirge upon his ears. How calmly Veronica spoke
of their parting. He himself had forgotten that they were to part.
The terrible adventures and hardships of their long flight had, for
him, drawn them together by a hundred bonds of sympathy. Day by day
he had seen the great spirit shining in the small, calm face and
carrying the small body through ordeals that even a strong man might
fear to face, and his own spirit had bowed in reverence before her
nobility. Now, remembering that in a few days he was to bid her
farewell, his soul shrank within him at the thought of the
separation. It was as if the noblest part of himself was to be cut
away from him. And during the long, calm days of the voyage he sat
silent and unmoving beside her while the endless golden hills, the
long lines of emerald palm grove and the broken temples and monstrous
sculptured gods of a race long dead glided past them and were lost in
the all-devouring distance. And it seemed to him, as he watched that
endless flux and dissolution, that all the human things of his own
world--the love, the beauty, the swift adventure--were being slowly
but irrevocably withdrawn from him, leaving him cold, stripped, and
solitary, a shape of rock exposed to the warring tempests of heaven
and hell till it should be weathered down to a handful of pure gold
or a heap of restless sand. At night, when he slept, his dreams
turned always to Helena. In every dream now she was in danger or
captivity, calling to him to save her, to take her back to him. Her
voice came to him small and faint from behind closed doors, out of
thick darkness, across impenetrable forests. Sometimes for a brief
moment she stood before him, close and vivid; but as his heart warmed
into final happiness she faded from his sight with an unfinished
appeal on her lips. Sometimes he dreamed of one of his earlier loves
and sometimes, too, of Veronica, but always at the end of the dream
the face, or body, or voice resolved itself into Helena, as though
Helena were for him the essence and symbol of all womanhood.
[Illustration: woodcut]
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Sixteen_
Malchus sat outside the closed gate of the White Convent. He had
faithfully led Veronica to her destination; an hour ago she had
entered the gate and with the closing of the gate behind her she had
left the world forever. She had approached the convent as a lover
approaching her beloved, and as she bade farewell to Malchus and his
eyes fell upon her for the last time her face shone with the ecstatic
gladness of a saint entering Paradise. Yet, though that moment was
also the moment of his own freedom, Malchus felt none of her
gladness. He felt only homeless and abandoned; it was as though his
heart were dying within him. He found comfort only in the thought of
Alexandria, whose walls and towers showed a mile to the east above
the greenery of a vineyard. There, it seemed to him, Helena waited
to give him that peace which he had sought so long. Kneeling beside
the convent wall, he prayed desperately for guidance, but still his
thoughts and desires drew him to Alexandria so strongly and so
insistently that at last he came to believe that, for some hidden
reason, it was God's will that he should enter the city. He delayed,
perplexed and timid, till he fell asleep, seated there in the gray
dust under the convent wall.
When he woke his soul was trembling like a harp string at the touch
of a half-forgotten dream. Some heavenly vision had come to him and
gone again, leaving a trouble like the echo of incomprehensible
words. Then, as he groped for the meaning of the vision, the words
took on clearness and sense. "Go into Alexandria," they seemed to
say, "and follow your desires, for thus you shall find your peace."
That, it seemed, was the only answer to his prayer. He rose and,
with slow and doubtful steps, began to make his way toward the city,
and at sunset he entered the court of Diocles the poet and stood by
the little fountain which leaped from a fringe of tall blue irises,
while the slave went to announce his name. He had not waited for
more than a minute when a quick step sounded in the portico and
Diocles, with the familiar movement of his wide shoulders, came
hurrying forward with outstretched hands.
"My dear Malchus!" he cried in his deep, ringing voice, laying his
two hands on Malchus's shoulders. "At last you have returned after
all this time. And you left us without a word ... without a hint,
how many years ago?"
"A lifetime, for me, Diocles!" Malchus replied, gazing at his friend
as at some incredible vision.
"Yes, a lifetime indeed, my friend; for you are changed beyond
belief."
Malchus did not reply, for he realized now for the first time the
full magnitude of the change which had come over him. For Diocles
was not changed; he was the same as when Malchus had last seen him,
but it seemed to him that he himself was beholding his friend and the
familiar house across a gulf wide as the grave, for the man and the
place, so familiar to his sight, were strange, immeasurably strange,
to his mind and soul. He felt that he had dropped back suddenly into
a life whose language he had forgotten and he could do nothing but
gaze at Diocles in speechless bewilderment. Diocles saw his distress
and, throwing his arm about Malchus's shoulder, led him into the
house.
"Come, my friend," he said, "you are exhausted. The slaves shall
take you to the bath and I will seek you out some fresher and more
comfortable clothes than those you are wearing at present. When you
are bathed and rested you shall tell me your adventures, which, I am
sure, must have been of the strangest." Diocles clapped his hands
and the slaves came and led Malchus to the bath.
But the slaves, as they bathed the parched body and anointed it with
unguents, gazed at Malchus in astonishment, for, overcome by the
waking of a hundred memories, his dazed mind had sunk into a stupor
and it seemed to them that the nerveless body and limbs that they
handled were the body and limbs of a puppet.
When he was bathed and dressed, one of the slaves led him to the
portico where Diocles reclined, waiting for him. The poet rose at
his approach and led him to a couch beside his own. "Lie here, my
dear Malchus," he said, "and rest. You are still, I think, too tired
to talk. Try to sleep for a while. I will give orders that no one
is to be admitted."
Malchus lay down without a word; then, looking up at his friend, his
eyes kindled for a moment to something of their old intensity.
"Tell me," he asked, "before I sleep, of Helena."
"Still of Helena, my poor Malchus? But what can I tell you? Helena
has gone. Months ago she left us almost as suddenly as you did. She
had been ill for a while and suddenly one day we heard that her villa
was closed and she had gone abroad--to Constantinople, it was said.
The villa is closed still and nobody can tell us whether or not she
will ever return."
Malchus made no reply, but Diocles, looking into the worn face of his
friend, saw the lips turn gray and a look of deeper suffering
contract the wrinkled flesh about the eyes, and as he laid his head
back upon the pillow he turned away his face like a dying man.
For many days Malchus stayed on, a lonely stranger, in the house of
Diocles. When friends, some of whom had been his friends, visited
Diocles, he avoided them, for he could no longer talk to them. Their
fluent, cultured talk had lost all meaning for him, and he sat silent
among them, his eyes like the eyes of a wild creature that has been
trapped in a cage. Diocles saw that some devastating experience had
transformed his friend and was careful to guard him from all
annoyance. In time, he hoped, Malchus would recover something of his
old self. And sometimes, indeed, it seemed that he was awaking from
his stupor, for by degrees, when he and Diocles were alone, he began
to break silence. He spoke always of the past, of his old life in
Alexandria; but his talk was always vague and hesitating and he
questioned Diocles often, as though he were blindly seeking for some
clue in events which he himself had half forgotten. It was as though
he were recovering from a long and severe illness.
One day he dared at last to walk out into the city. He went alone,
walking slowly and shrinkingly, keeping close to the walls like a man
who fears an ambush. And indeed he had cause to fear, for on all
sides from streets and squares and porches the ambushed memories
arose like strong perfumes from flowers, till the present reality
about him was confused and darkened by the stronger and more
tyrannous reality of the past, searching out and delicately torturing
the hidden nerves of spirit and sense. As he gazed about him he knew
that he had lost that awareness of place and time, of the here and
the now, by which a man is able to relate himself to his temporal
surroundings. His spirit had strayed, it seemed, into some
interspace between past and present, his old life in Alexandria, his
present ghost-like haunting of those old scenes, and the remote,
holy, and terrible life of the desert; for all of these diverse lives
were present to him and all were equally real or unreal.
Such was the mood in which he wandered through the city. Soon he
found himself standing at the door of Helena's garden. His instinct
had led him there. But now another instinct--the instinct of the
hermit who had fled from the cane-gatherer and shrunk away from the
presence of Veronica--tightened his muscles in a spasm of revulsion,
and with clenched fists and suddenly indrawn breath he drew back from
the door. He was on the point of hastening away, when those words
which had come to him in the dream struck again upon his sense so
clearly that it seemed that some invisible presence had spoken them
in his ear. "Go into the city and follow your desires, for thus
shall you find your peace." But to what purpose had his desires led
him to the house where Helena was no more? Even if he should try to
enter the deserted garden, he would surely find this door barred
against him. The very door looked deserted; it was weather-worn and
caked with dust, and the weeds encumbered the threshold. He stood
irresolutely gazing at it. Then, obeying an idle impulse, he
stretched out his hand and laid it on the latch.
To his surprise, the door opened. He went in and closed it quickly
behind him.
The garden was beautiful in its abandonment; the paths that had been
so faultless in the old days were covered with weeds; the grass of
the lawns, formerly short and smooth as the fur of a squirrel, stood
a foot high, and the flowers had broken bounds and changed the place
into a jungle rich with a hundred odors and colors. Its beauty
soothed the heart which ached for its desolation.
Walking slowly and softly like one who enters a holy place, Malchus
made his way toward the house. He came upon it round a tall grove of
rose-laurels, thick with blossom. Like the little door and the
garden, it was desolate. He stood like one in a trance, gazing with
incredulous eyes. It faced him blindly. He felt that he was looking
into a dead and eyeless face which till now had always shone for him
with a thousand welcomes. Still, as if attracted by the misery of
it, he walked on and stood by the tall porch. Suddenly his heart
leaped. Rapid footsteps were approaching him. He turned. An old
man stood before him. Malchus knew him--he was Helena's house
steward.
"What are you doing here?" the old man asked. There was both fear
and challenge in his voice.
"You do not recognize me, Ammon," Malchus answered him. "I am
Malchus, the son of Sempronius. I have been away for a long while
and, finding the garden door open just now, I entered. Let me come
in and look round the house too, and then I will depart."
"I am sorry, sir, but you cannot enter."
"But why? Surely..."
"My mistress gave strict orders, sir."
"Yes, against inquisitive strangers, Ammon; but an old friend....
Come, let me go in." Malchus was about to enter when the old man
seized him by the cloak.
"Stop, sir! Stop! Let me explain." Malchus turned impatiently and
saw that the old man was trembling. The sight of his trouble roused
a sudden, enthralling doubt in Malchus's mind, and his persistence
became the more stubborn.
"You know me, my friend," he said. "Why make all this trouble? I am
not a thief."
"I implore you, sir, to go away. The gate should not have been left
open. It was all my fault, and the consequences..."
"That is soon remedied, Ammon; and, as it happens, no harm has come
of it." Malchus, too, was trembling now. The old man stood wringing
his hands.
"Do not speak so loud, sir. Let me explain, since you will not go;
but promise me on your honor that you will not reveal what I tell
you."
"I promise."
"My mistress is still here."
Malchus gasped and clutched the old man's shoulder. "Here? In the
house?"
"Yes, sir."
"I must see her."
"You cannot, sir. She has given strict orders that not even her
dearest friends are to know that she is here."
But Malchus had forgotten the old man. The beating of his heart was
stifling him and, flinging out his arms, he rushed past Ammon into
the house.
It echoed to his footsteps like an empty tomb as he hastened from
chamber to chamber. Each was empty till he came to the small inner
chamber which had been Helena's private sitting room. As he entered
it, two slaves rose quickly from their watch beside a couch and
hurried toward him with hands raised to bar his approach. Malchus
could see that on the couch behind them some one lay motionless.
When he did not stop, each of the slaves seized one of his arms and
with a strength born of his frenzy he dragged them with him toward
the couch.
The face that stared blindly at him from the couch was not the face
of Helena. As he staggered back in horror it seemed to him at first
that the heavy, leonine mask foully discolored with brown blotches
was not a human face at all. Yet the shape of the linen-covered body
was human, and he saw, with a shudder, that a naked human arm,
horribly thickened and corroded, lay across the breast.
He turned away his face. His eyes met those of Ammon, who had
followed him. "Take me to your mistress," he pleaded in a broken
voice.
The old man nodded toward the couch.
Malchus covered his face with his hands. "No!" he moaned. "No!
Such things are not possible."
Then a harsh, stertorous voice was heard in the room. "Who is it?"
the voice asked.
A silence, filled by the thick breathing of the leper, followed the
question.
"Ammon," the voice began again, "answer immediately. Who is this
stranger?"
Malchus turned and fell on his knees, but with eyes averted from the
couch. "It is I, Helena--Malchus. I have come back."
Again there was silence. Then the reply came:
"Go away. I do not know you. Ammon, order the slaves to drive him
out with whips."
But Ammon and the slaves stood motionless beside the couch, and
Malchus, with a cry like the snapping of a cord, fled from the room
and ran stumbling through the garden till he fell headlong in the
long grass.
[Illustration: woodcut]
[Illustration: woodcut]
_Chapter
Seventeen_
So Malchus found his cure. When he came to himself the sun was low.
A coolness breathed through the trees and the long grass in which he
lay. It seemed to him that he had awakened out of a long fever. His
mind was clear and cool like the garden about him. A bond within him
had snapped, as at birth the bond is severed that binds the child to
the mother. The past had broken from him and plunged away like an
avalanche into the depths far beneath him, leaving him high and
lonely like a single granite rock which has escaped the crash; and as
he stood up in the grass he knew that he was cured of the long
distemperature of earthly love.
He stood waiting. Soon the sun would set. But as he waited, the
light grew and soon the garden was filled with the pure essence of
early sunlight. The sunset and the hours of darkness had passed over
him as he lay in the grass, and already the new day had risen.
Without hesitation he made his way to the garden door and, closing it
behind him, turned his steps, as he had done once before, toward Lake
Mareotis. Soon he had left the city and threaded the long vineyards,
and now he stood on the wharf at the edge of the lake. A ship was
waiting and, going on board, he sat down and covered his head with
his cloak. It was as if time had rolled back and a part of his life
were repeating itself. But this time he followed no one, for he
needed no guide or support, being sufficient to himself. Out in the
desert his trial awaited him, but now he went forward in confidence,
desiring only his cell which faced the east high on its sandy hill,
for there, he knew, he would find his salvation.
[Illustration: woodcut]
[Transcriber's note: Odd and unusual spellings are as printed.]