After leaving his stepmother Demetrius made good use of his time and
dictated a number of letters to his secretary, a slave he had brought
with him to Alexandria, for the use of the pen was to him unendurable
labor. The letters were on business, relating to his departure from
Cyrenaica and his purpose of managing his own estates for the future,
and when they lay before him, finished, rolled up and sealed, he felt
that he had come to a mile-stone on his road, a landmark in his life. He
paced the room in silence, trying to picture to himself the fate of
the slaves and peasants who, for so many years, had been his faithful
servants and fellow-laborers, whose confidence he had entirely won, and
many of whom he truly loved. But he could not conceive of their life,
their toil or their festivals, bereft of images, offerings, garlands,
and hymns of rejoicing. To him they were as children, forbidden to laugh
and play, and he could not help once more recurring to his boyhood and
the day of his going to school, when, instead of running and shouting in
his father’s sunny garden, he had been made to sit still and silent in
a dull class-room. And now had the whole world reached such a boundary
line in existence beyond which there was to be no more freedom and
careless joy--where a ceaseless struggle for higher things must begin
and never end?
If the Gospel were indeed true, and if all it promised could ever find
fulfilment, it might perhaps be prudent to admit the sinfulness of man
and to give up the joys and glories of this world to win the eternal
treasure that it described. Many a good and wise man whom he had
known--nay the Emperor, the great and learned Theodosius himself--was
devoted heart and soul to the Christian faith, and Demetrius knew
from his own experience that his mother’s creed, in which he had been
initiated as a boy and from which his father, after holding him at the
font had perverted him at an early age, offered great consolations and
enduring help to those whose existence was one of care, poverty,
and suffering. But his laborers and servants? They were healthy and
contented. What power on earth could induce them--a race that clung
devotedly to custom--to desert the faith of their fathers, and the
time-honored traditions to which they owed all the comforts and
pleasures of life, or to seek in a strange creed the aid which they
already believed that they possessed.
He did not repent of his determination; but he nevertheless said to
himself that, when once he was gone, Mary would proceed only too soon
on the work of extermination and destruction; and every temple on the
estate, every statue, every whispering grotto, every shrine and stone
anointed by pious hands, doomed now to perish, rose before his fancy.
Demetrius was accustomed to rise at cock-crow and go to bed at an early
hour, and he was on the point of retiring even before the usual time,
when Marcus came to his room and begged him to give him yet an hour.
“You are angry with my mother,” said the younger man with a look of
melancholy entreaty, “but you know there is nothing that she would not
sacrifice for the faith. And you can smile so bitterly! But only put
yourself in my place. Loving my mother as I do, it is acutely painful
to me to see another person--to see you whom I love, too, for you are
my friend and brother--to see you, I say, turn your back on her so
completely. My heart is heavy enough to-day I can tell you.”
“Poor boy!” said the countryman. “Yes, I am truly your friend, and am
anxious to remain so; you are not to blame in this business--and for
that matter, I am anything but cheerful. You have chosen to say: Down
with the shrines! Perish all those who do not think as we do! Still,
look at the thing as you will, in some cases certainly violence must
ensue--nay, if no blood is shed it will be a wonder! You sum up the
matter in one common term: The heathen peasants on the estate. My view
of it is totally different; I know these farmers and their wives and
children, each one by name and by sight. There is not one but is ready
to bid me good day and shake my hand or kiss my dress. Many a one has
come to me in tears and left me happy.--By the great Zeus! no one ever
accused me of being soft-hearted, but I could wish this day that I were
harder; and my blood turns to gall as I ask--What is all this for--to
what possible end?”
“For the sake and honor of the faith, Demetrius; for the eternal
salvation of our people.”
“Indeed!” retorted Demetrius with a drawl, “I know better. If that and
that alone were intended you would build churches and chapels and send
us worthy priests--Eusebius and the like--and would try to win men’s
hearts to your Lord by the love you are always talking so much about.
That was my advice to your mother, only this morning. I believe the end
might be attained by those means, among us as elsewhere; ultimately it
will, no doubt, be gained--but not to-day nor to-morrow. A peasant, when
he had become accustomed to the church and grasped a trust in the new
God, would of his own accord give up the old gods and their sanctuaries;
I could count you off a dozen such instances. That I could have looked
on at calmly, for I want only men’s arms and legs and do not ask for
their souls; but to burn down the old house before you have collected
wood and stone to build a new one I call wicked.--It is cruelty and
madness, and when so shrewd a woman as your mother is bent on carrying
through such a measure, come what may, there is something more behind
it.”
“You think she wants to get rid of you--you, Demetrius!” interrupted
Marcus eagerly. “But you are mistaken, you are altogether wrong. What
you have done for the estate...”
“Oh! as for that!” cried the other, “what has my work to do with all
this? Ere the year is out everything that can remind us of the heathen
gods is to be swept away from the hamlets and fields of the pious Mary.
That is what is intended! Then they will hurry off to the Bishop with
the great news and to crown one marvel with another, the reversion
will be secured of a martyr’s nimbus. And this is what all this zeal is
for--this and nothing else!”
“You are speaking of my mother, remember!” cried Marcus, looking at his
brother with a touching appeal in his eyes. Demetrius shook his shaggy
head and spoke more temperately as he went on:
“Yes, child, I had forgotten that--and I may be mistaken of course, for
I am no more than human. Here one thing follows so close on another, and
in this house I feel so battered and storm-tossed, that I hardly know
myself. But old Phabis tells me that steps are being seriously taken to
procure the title of Martyr for our father Apelles.”
“My mother is quite convinced that he died for the faith, and she loved
him devotedly...”
“Then it is so!” cried Demetrius, grinding his teeth and thumping his
fist down on the table. “The lies sown by one single man have produced
a deadly weed that is smothering this miserable house! You--to be sure,
what can you know of our father? I knew him; I have been present when
he and his friends, the philosophers, have laughed to scorn things
which not only you Christians but even pious heathen regard as sacred.
Lucretius was his evangelist, and the Cosmogony of that utter atheist
lay by his pillow and was his companion wherever he went.”
“He admired the heathen poets, but he was a Christian all the same,”
replied Marcus.
“Neither more nor less than Porphyrius, our uncle, or myself,” retorted
his brother. “Since the day when our grandfather Philippus was baptized,
wealth and happiness have deserted this house. He gave up the old gods
solely that he might not lose the right of supplying the city and the
Emperor with corn, and became a Christian and made his sons Christians.
But he had us educated by his heathen friends, and though we passed for
Christians we were not so in fact. When it was absolutely necessary he
showed himself in church with us; but our daily life, our pleasures, our
pastimes were heathen, and when life began for us in earnest we offered
a bleeding sacrifice to the gods. It was impossible to retract honestly,
since a renegade Christian returning to the worship of the old gods is
incapacitated by law from making a will. You know this; and when you ask
me why I am content to live alone, without either wife or child--and I
love children, even those of other people--a solitary man dragging
out my days and nights joylessly enough--I tell you: I am openly and
honestly a worshipper of our old gods, and I will not go to church
because I scorn a lie. What should I do with children who, in
consequence of my retractation, must forfeit all I might leave them? It
was this question of inheritance only that induced my father to have us
baptized and to make a pretense of Christianity. He set out for Petra
with his Lucretius in his satchel--I packed it with my own hands into
his money-bag--to put in a claim to supply grain to the ‘Rock city.’
He was slain on his way home; most likely by his servant Anubis, who
certainly knew what money he had with him, and who vanished and left no
trace. Because--about the same time--a band of Saracens had fallen on
some Christian anchorites and travellers, in the district between Petra
and Aila, your mother chose to assume a right to call our father a
martyr! But she knew his opinions full well, I tell you, and shed many a
tear over them, too.--Now she has expended vast sums on church-building,
she has opened the Xenodochium and pours her money by lavish handfuls
clown the insatiable throats of monks and priests. To what end? To have
her husband recognized as a martyr. Hitherto her toil and money have
been wasted. In my estimation the Bishop is a perfectly detestable
tyrant, and if I know him at all he will take all she will give and
never grant her wish. Now she is preparing her great move, and hopes
to startle him into compliance by a new marvel. She thinks that, like
a juggler who turns a white egg black, she can turn a heathen district
into a Christian one by a twist of her finger. Well--so far as I am
concerned I will have nothing to do with the trick.”
During this harangue Marcus had alternately gazed at the floor and fixed
his large eyes in anguish on his brother’s face. For some minutes he
found nothing to reply, and he was evidently going through a bitter
mental struggle. Demetrius spoke no more, but arranged the sheets of
papyrus that strewed the table. At length Marcus, after a deep sigh,
broke out in a tone of fervent conviction and with a blissful smile that
lighted up his whole face:
“Poor mother! And others misunderstand her just as you do; I myself
was in danger of doubting her. But I think that now I understand her
perfectly. She loved my father so completely that she hopes now to win
for his immortal soul the grace which he, in the flesh, neglected to
strive after. He was baptized, so she longs to win, by her prayers and
oblations, the mercy of the Lord who is so ready to forgive. She herself
firmly believes in the martyrdom of her beloved dead, and if only the
Church will rank him among those who have died for Her, he will be
saved, and she will find him standing in the pure radiance of the realms
above, with open arms, overflowing with fervent love and gratitude, to
welcome the faithful helpmate who will have purged his soul. Yes, now I
quite understand; and from this day forth I will aid and second her; the
hardest task shall not be too hard, the best shall not be too good,
if only we may open the gates of Heaven to my poor father’s imperilled
soul.”
As he spoke his eye glistened with ecstatic light; his brother, too,
was touched, and to hide his emotion, he exclaimed, more recklessly and
sharply than was his wont:
“That will come all right, never fear, lad!” But he hastily wiped his
eyes with his hand, slapped Marcus on the shoulder, and added gaily: “It
is better to choke than to swallow down the thing you think right, and
it never hurt a man yet to make a clean breast of his feelings, even if
we do not quite agree we understand each other the better for it. I have
my way of thinking, you have yours; thus we each know what the other
means; but after the tragedy comes the satyr play, and we may as well
finish this agitating evening with an hour’s friendly chat.”
So saying Demetrius stretched himself on a divan and invited Marcus
to do the same, and in a few minutes their conversation had turned,
as usual, to the subject of horses. Marcus was full of praises of the
stallions his brother had bred for him, and which he had ridden that
very day round the Myssa--[The Myssa was the Meta, or turning-post]--in
the Hippodrome, and his brother added with no small complacency:
“They were all bred from the same sire and from the choicest mares. I
broke them in myself, and I only wish.... But why did you not come to
the stables this morning?”
“I could not,” replied Marcus coloring slightly. Then we will go
to-morrow to Nicopolis and I will show you how to get Megaera past the
Taraxippios.”--[The terror of the horses.]
“To-morrow?” said Marcus somewhat embarrassed. “In the morning I must go
to see Eusebius and then....”
“Well, then?”
“Then I must--I mean I should like....”
“What?”
“Well, to be sure I might, all the same.--But no, it is not to be
done--I have....”
“What, what?” cried Demetrius with increasing impatience: “My time is
limited and if you start the horses without knowing my way of managing
them they will certainly not do their best. As soon as the market begins
to fill we will set out. We shall need a few hours for the Hippodrome,
then we will dine with Damon, and before dark....”
“No, no,” replied Marcus, “to-morrow, certainly, I positively
cannot....”
“People who have nothing to do always lack time,” replied the other. “Is
to-morrow one of your festivals?”
“No, not that=-and Good Heavens! If only I could....”
“Could, could!” cried Demetrius angrily and standing close in front of
his brother with his arms folded. “Say out honestly: ‘I will not go,’ or
else, ‘my affairs are my own secret and I mean to keep it.’--But give me
no more of your silly equivocations.”
His vehemence increased the younger man’s embarrassment, and as he stood
trying to find an explanation which might come somewhat near the truth
and yet not betray him, Demetrius, who had stood watching him closely,
suddenly exclaimed:
“By Aphrodite, the daughter of the foam! it is a love affair--an
assignation.--Woman, woman, always woman!”
“An assignation!” cried Marcus shaking his head. “No indeed, no one
expects me; and yet--I had rather you should misunderstand me than think
that I had lied. Yes--I am going to seek a woman; and if I do not find
her to-morrow, if in the course of tomorrow I do not succeed in my
heart’s desire, she is lost--not only to me, though I cannot give up the
heavenly love for the sake of the earthly and fleshly--but to my Lord
and Saviour. It is the life--the everlasting life or death of one of
God’s loveliest creatures that hangs on to-morrow’s work.”
Demetrius was greatly astonished, and it was with an angry gesture of
impatience that he replied:
“Again you have overstepped the boundary within which we can possibly
understand each other. In my opinion you are hardly old enough to
undertake the salvation of the imperilled souls of pretty women. Take
care what you are about, youngster! It is safe enough to go into the
water with those who can swim, but those who sink are apt to draw you
down with them. You are a good-looking young fellow, you have money and
fine horses, and there are women enough who are only too ready to spread
their nets abroad...”
“What are you thinking of?” cried Marcus passionately. “It is I who am
the fisher--a fisher of souls, and so every true believer ought to be.
She--she is innocence and simplicity itself, in spite of her roguish
sauciness. But she has fallen into the hands of a reprobate heathen, and
here, where vice prowls about the city like a roaring lion, she will be
lost--lost, if I do not rescue her. Twice have I seen her in my dreams;
once close to the cavern of a raging dragon, and again on the edge of
a precipitous cliff, and each time an angel called out to me and bid me
save her from the jaws of the monster, and from falling into the abyss.
Since then I seem to see her constantly; at meals, when I am in company,
when I am driving,--and I always hear the warning voice of the angel.
And now I feel it a sacred duty to save her--a creature on whom the
Almighty has lavished every gift he ever bestowed on the daughters of
Eve--to lead her into the path of Salvation.”
Demetrius had listened to his brother’s enthusiastic speech with growing
anxiety, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and said:
“I almost envy you your acquaintance with this favorite of the gods; but
you might, it seems to me, postpone the work of salvation. You were away
from Alexandria for half a year, and if she could hold out so long as
that...”
“Do not speak so; you ought not to speak so!” cried Marcus, pressing
his hand on his heart as though in physical pain. “But I have no time to
lose, for I must at once find out where the old singer has taken her. I
am not so inexperienced as you seem to think. He has brought her here to
trade in her beauty, and enrich himself. Why, you, too, saw her on
board ship; I, as you know, had arranged for them to be taken in at my
mother’s Xenodochium.”
“Whom?” asked Demetrius folding his hands.
“The singers whom I brought with me from Ostia. And now they have
disappeared from thence, and Dada...”
“Dada!” cried Demetrius, bursting into a loud laugh without heeding
Marcus who stepped up to him, crimson with rage. “Dada! that little fair
puss! You see her day and night and an angel calls upon you to save that
child’s merry soul? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, boy! Why, what
shall I wager now? I will stake this roll of gold that I could make her
come with me to-morrow--with me, a hard-featured countryman, freckled
all over like a plover’s egg, where my clothes do not protect my skin,
and with hair on end like the top of a broom--yes, that she will follow
me to Arsinoe or wherever I choose to bid her. Let the hussy go, you
simple innocent. Such a Soul as hers is of small account even in a less
exclusive Heaven than yours is.”
“Take back those words!” cried Marcus, beside himself and clenching
his fist. “But that is just like you! Your impure eyes and heart defile
purity itself, and see spots even in the sun. Nothing is too bad for a
‘singing girl,’ I know. But that is just the marrow of the matter; it is
from that very curse that I mean to save her. If you can accuse her
of anything, speak; if not, and if you do not want to appear a base
slanderer in my eyes, take back the words you have just spoken!”
“Oh! I take them back of course,” said Demetrius indifferently. “I know
nothing of your beauty beyond what she has herself said to me and you
and Cynegius and his Secretaries--with her pretty, saucy eyes. But the
language of the eye, they say, is not always to be depended on; so take
it as unsaid. And, if I understood you rightly, you do not even know
where the singers are hiding? If you have no objection, I will help you
to seek them out.”
“That is as you please,” answered Marcus hotly. “All your mockery will
not prevent my doing my duty.”
“Very right, very right,” said his brother. “Perhaps this damsel is
unlike all the other singing-girls with whom I used so often to spend
a jolly evening in my younger days. Once, at Barca, I saw a white
raven--but perhaps after all it was only a dove. Your opinion, in this
case, is at any rate better founded than mine, for I never thought twice
about the girl and you did.--But it is late; till to-morrow, Marcus.”
The brothers parted for the night, but when Demetrius found himself
alone he walked up and down the room, shaking his head doubtfully.
Presently, when his body-slave came in to pack for him, he called out
crossly:
“Let that alone--I shall stay in Alexandria a few days longer.”
Marcus could not go to bed; his brother’s scorn had shaken his soul
to the foundations. An inward voice told him that his more experienced
senior might be right, but at the same time he hated and contemned
himself for listening to its warnings at all. The curse that rested on
Dada was that of her position; she herself was pure--as pure as a lily,
as pure as the heart of a child, as pure as the blue of her eyes and
the ring of her voice. He would obey the angel’s behest! He could and he
must save her!
In the greatest excitement he went out of the house, through the great
gate, into the Canopic way, and walked on. As he was about to turn down
a side street to go to the lake he found the road stopped by soldiers,
for this street led past the prefect’s house where Cynegius, the
Emperor’s emissary, was staying; he had come, it was said, to close the
Temples, and the excited populace had gathered outside the building,
during the afternoon, to signify their indignant disapprobation. At
sundown an armed force had been called out and had dispersed the crowd;
but it was by another road that the young Christian at length made his
way to the shore.