IV

The break with the old life was as clean as if it had been cut with a

knife. Some faint image of a hermit’s cell, a bare lodging in a back

street of Antioch, a class-room full of earnest students, remained in

Hermas’ memory. Some dull echo of the voice of John the Presbyter, and

the measured sound of chanting, and the murmur of great congregations,

still lingered in his ears; but it was like something that had happened

to another person, something that he had read long ago, but of which he

had lost the meaning.

His new life was full and smooth and rich--too rich for any sense of

loss to make itself felt. There were a hundred affairs to busy him, and

the days ran swiftly by as if they were shod with winged sandals.

Nothing needed to be considered, prepared for, begun. Everything was

ready and waiting for him. All that he had to do was to go on.

The estate of Demetrius was even greater than the world had supposed.

There were fertile lands in Syria which the emperor had given him,

marble-quarries in Phrygia, and forests of valuable timber in Cilicia;

the vaults of the villa contained chests of gold and silver; the secret

cabinets in the master’s room were full of precious stones. The stewards

were diligent and faithful. The servants of the household rejoiced at

the young master’s return. His table was spread; the rose-garland of

pleasure was woven for his head; his cup was overflowing with the spicy

wine of power.

The period of mourning for his father came at a fortunate moment to

seclude and safeguard him from the storm of political troubles and

persecutions that fell upon Antioch after the insults offered by

the people to the imperial statues in the year 387. The friends of

Demetrius, prudent and conservative persons, gathered around Hermas and

made him welcome to their circle. Chief among them was Libanius, the

sophist, his nearest neighbour, whose daughter Athenais had been the

playmate of Hermas in the old days.

He had left her a child. He found her a beautiful woman. What

transformation is so magical, so charming, as this? To see the uncertain

lines of youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to discover the

half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured into perfect

loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear, serious eyes, not

forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the changed present--this is

to behold a miracle in the flesh.

“Where have you been, these two years?” said Athenais, as they walked

together through the garden of lilies where they had so often played.

“In a land of tiresome dreams,” answered Hermas; “but you have wakened

me, and I am never going back again.”

It was not to be supposed that the sudden disappearance of Hermas from

among his former associates could long remain unnoticed. At first it

was a mystery. There was a fear, for two or three days, that he might be

lost. Some of his more intimate companions maintained that his devotion

had led him out into the desert to join the anchorites. But the news of

his return to the House of the Golden Pillars, and of his new life as

its master, filtered quickly through the gossip of the city.

Then the church was filled with dismay and grief and reproach.

Messengers and letters were sent to Hermas. They disturbed him a little,

but they took no hold upon him. It seemed to him as if the messengers

spoke in a strange language. As he read the letters there were words

blotted out of the writing which made the full sense unintelligible.

His old companions came to reprove him for leaving them, to warn him of

the peril of apostasy, to entreat him to return. It all sounded vague

and futile. They spoke as if he had betrayed or offended some one;

but when they came to name the object of his fear--the one whom he had

displeased, and to whom he should return--he heard nothing; there was a

blur of silence in their speech. The clock pointed to the hour, but the

bell did not strike. At last Hermas refused to see them any more.

One day John the Presbyter stood in the atrium. Hermas was entertaining

Libanius and Athenais in the banquet-hall. When the visit of the

Presbyter was announced, the young master loosed a collar of gold and

jewels from his neck, and gave it to his scribe.

“Take this to John of Antioch, and tell him it is a gift from his former

pupil--as a token of remembrance, or to spend for the poor of the city.

I will always send him what he wants, but it is idle for us to talk

together any more. I do not understand what he says. I have not gone

to the temple, nor offered sacrifice, nor denied his teaching. I have

simply forgotten. I do not think about those things any longer. I am

only living. A happy man wishes him all happiness and farewell.”

But John let the golden collar fall on the marble floor. “Tell your

master that we shall talk together again, in due time,” said he, as he

passed sadly out of the hall.

The love of Athenais and Hermas was like a tiny rivulet that sinks out

of sight in a cavern, but emerges again a bright and brimming stream.

The careless comradery of childhood was mysteriously changed into a

complete companionship.

When Athenais entered the House of the Golden Pillars as a bride, all

the music of life came with her. Hermas called the feast of her welcome

“the banquet of the full chord.” Day after day, night after night, week

after week, month after month, the bliss of the home unfolded like

a rose of a thousand leaves. When a child came to them, a strong,

beautiful boy, worthy to be the heir of such a house, the heart of the

rose was filled with overflowing fragrance. Happiness was heaped upon

happiness. Every wish brought its own accomplishment. Wealth, honour,

beauty, peace, love--it was an abundance of felicity so great that the

soul of Hermas could hardly contain it.

Strangely enough, it began to press upon him, to trouble him with the

very excess of joy. He felt as if there were something yet needed to

complete and secure it all. There was an urgency within him, a longing

to find some outlet for his feelings, he knew not how--some expression

and culmination of his happiness, he knew not what.

Under his joyous demeanour a secret fire of restlessness began to

burn--an expectancy of something yet to come which should put the touch

of perfection on his life. He spoke of it to Athenais, as they sat

together, one summer evening, in a bower of jasmine, with their boy

playing at their feet. There had been music in the garden; but now the

singers and lute-players had withdrawn, leaving the master and mistress

alone in the lingering twilight, tremulous with inarticulate melody of

unseen birds. There was a secret voice in the hour seeking vainly for

utterance a word waiting to be spoken.

“How deep is our happiness, my beloved!” said Hermas; “deeper than the

sea that slumbers yonder, below the city. And yet it is not quite full

and perfect. There is a depth of joy that we have not yet known--a

repose of happiness that is still beyond us. What is it? I have no

superstitions, like the king who cast his signet-ring into the sea

because he dreaded that some secret vengeance would fall on his unbroken

good fortune. That was an idle terror. But there is something that

oppresses me like an invisible burden. There is something still undone,

unspoken, unfelt--something that we need to complete everything. Have

you not felt it, too? Can you not lead me to it?”

“Yes,” she answered, lifting her eyes to his face; “I, too, have felt

it, Hermas, this burden, this need, this unsatisfied longing. I think

I know what it means. It is gratitude--the language of the heart, the

music of happiness. There is no perfect joy without gratitude. But we

have never learned it, and the want of it troubles us. It is like being

dumb with a heart full of love. We must find the word for it, and say

it together. Then we shall be perfectly joined in perfect joy. Come, my

dear lord, let us take the boy with us, and give thanks.”

Hermas lifted the child in his arms, and turned with Athenais into the

depth of the garden. There was a dismantled shrine of some forgotten

fashion of worship half-hidden among the luxuriant flowers. A fallen

image lay beside it, face downward in the grass. They stood there, hand

in hand, the boy drowsily resting on his father’s shoulder.

Silently the roseate light caressed the tall spires of the

cypress-trees; silently the shadows gathered at their feet; silently the

tranquil stars looked out from the deepening arch of heaven. The very

breath of being paused. It was the hour of culmination, the supreme

moment of felicity waiting for its crown. The tones of Hermas were clear

and low as he began, half-speaking and half-chanting, in the rhythm of

an ancient song:

“Fair is the world, the sea, the sky, the double kingdom of day and

night, in the glow of morning, in the shadow of evening, and under the

dripping light of stars.

“Fairer still is life in our breasts, with its manifold music and

meaning, with its wonder of seeing and hearing and feeling and knowing

and being.

“Fairer and still more fair is love, that draws us together, mingles our

lives in its flow, and bears them along like a river, strong and clear

and swift, reflecting the stars in its bosom.

“Wide is our world; we are rich; we have all things. Life is abundant

within us--a measureless deep. Deepest of all is our love, and it longs

to speak.

“Come, thou final word; Come, thou crown of speech! Come, thou charm of

peace! Open the gates of our hearts. Lift the weight of our joy and bear

it upward.

“For all good gifts, for all perfect gifts, for love, for life, for the

world, we praise, we bless, we thank--”

As a soaring bird, struck by an arrow, falls headlong from the sky, so

the song of Hermas fell. At the end of his flight of gratitude there was

nothing--a blank, a hollow space.

He looked for a face, and saw a void. He sought for a hand, and clasped

vacancy. His heart was throbbing and swelling with passion; the bell

swung to and fro within him, beating from side to side as if it would

burst; but not a single note came from it. All the fulness of his

feeling, that had risen upward like a fountain, fell back from the empty

sky, as cold as snow, as hard as hail, frozen and dead. There was no

meaning in his happiness. No one had sent it to him. There was no one to

thank for it. His felicity was a closed circle, a wall of ice.

“Let us go back,” he said sadly to Athenais; “the child is heavy upon

my shoulder. We will lay him to sleep, and go into the library. The air

grows chilly. We were mistaken. The gratitude of life is only a dream.

There is no one to thank.”

And in the garden it was already night.

V

No outward change came to the House of the Golden Pillars. Everything

moved as smoothly, as delicately, as prosperously, as before. But

inwardly there was a subtle, inexplicable transformation. A vague

discontent, a final and inevitable sense of incompleteness, overshadowed

existence from that night when Hermas realised that his joy could never

go beyond itself.

The next morning the old man whom he had seen in the Grove of Daphne,

but never since, appeared mysteriously at the door of the house, as if

he had been sent for, and entered like an invited guest.

Hermas could not but make him welcome, and at first he tried to regard

him with reverence and affection as the one through whom fortune had

come. But it was impossible. There was a chill in the inscrutable smile

of Marcion, as he called himself, that seemed to mock at reverence.

He was in the house as one watching a strange experiment--tranquil,

interested, ready to supply anything that might be needed for its

completion, but thoroughly indifferent to the feelings of the subject;

an anatomist of life, looking curiously to see how long it would

continue, and how it would act, after the heart had been removed.

In his presence Hermas was conscious of a certain irritation, a

resentful anger against the calm, frigid scrutiny of the eyes that

followed him everywhere, like a pair of spies, peering out over the

smiling mouth and the long white beard.

“Why do you look at me so curiously?” asked Hermas, one morning, as they

sat together in the library. “Do you see anything strange in me?”

“No,” answered Marcion; “something familiar.”

“And what is that?”

“A singular likeness to a discontented young man that I met some years

ago in the Grove of Daphne.”

“But why should that interest you? Surely it was to be expected.”

“A thing that we expect often surprises us when we see it. Besides, my

curiosity is piqued. I suspect you of keeping a secret from me.”

“You are jesting with me. There is nothing in my life that you do not

know. What is the secret?”

“Nothing more than the wish to have one. You are growing tired of your

bargain. The play wearies you. That is foolish. Do you want to try a new

part?”

The question was like a mirror upon which one comes suddenly in a

half-lighted room. A quick illumination falls on it, and the passer-by

is startled by the look of his own face.

“You are right,” said Hermas. “I am tired. We have been going on

stupidly in this house, as if nothing were possible but what my father

had done before me. There is nothing original in being rich, and

well-fed, and well-dressed. Thousands of men have tried it, and have

not been satisfied. Let us do something new. Let us make a mark in the

world.”

“It is well said,” nodded the old man; “you are speaking again like a

man after my own heart. There is no folly but the loss of an opportunity

to enjoy a new sensation.”

From that day Hermas seemed to be possessed with a perpetual haste,

an uneasiness that left him no repose. The summit of life had been

attained, the highest possible point of felicity. Henceforward the

course could only be at a level--perhaps downward. It might be brief;

at the best it could not be very long. It was madness to lose a day, an

hour. That would be the only fatal mistake: to forfeit anything of the

bargain that he had made. He would have it, and hold it, and enjoy it

all to the full. The world might have nothing better to give than it had

already given; but surely it had many things that were new, and Marcion

should help him to find them.

Under his learned counsel the House of the Golden Pillars took on a new

magnificence. Artists were brought from Corinth and Rome and Alexandria

to adorn it with splendour. Its fame glittered around the world.

Banquets of incredible luxury drew the most celebrated guests into its

triclinium, and filled them with envious admiration. The bees swarmed

and buzzed about the golden hive. The human insects, gorgeous moths

of pleasure and greedy flies of appetite, parasites and flatterers and

crowds of inquisitive idlers, danced and fluttered in the dazzling light

that surrounded Hermas.

Everything that he touched prospered. He bought a tract of land in the

Caucasus, and emeralds were discovered among the mountains. He sent a

fleet of wheat-ships to Italy, and the price of grain doubled while it

was on the way. He sought political favour with the emperor, and was

rewarded with the governorship of the city. His name was a word to

conjure with.

The beauty of Athenais lost nothing with the passing seasons, but grew

more perfect, even under the inexplicable shade of dissatisfaction

that sometimes veiled it. “Fair as the wife of Hermas” was a proverb

in Antioch; and soon men began to add to it, “Beautiful as the son of

Hermas”; for the child developed swiftly in that favouring clime. At

nine years of age he was straight and strong, firm of limb and clear of

eye. His brown head was on a level with his father’s heart. He was the

jewel of the House of the Golden Pillars; the pride of Hermas, the new

Fortunatus.

That year another drop of success fell into his brimming cup. His black

Numidian horses, which he had been training for the world-renowned

chariot-races of Antioch, won the victory over a score of rivals. Hermas

received the prize carelessly from the judge’s hands, and turned to

drive once more around the circus, to show himself to the people. He

lifted the eager boy into the chariot beside him to share his triumph.

Here, indeed, was the glory of his life--this matchless son, his

brighter counterpart carved in breathing ivory, touching his arm, and

balancing himself proudly on the swaying floor of the chariot. As the

horses pranced around the ring, a great shout of applause filled the

amphitheatre, and thousands of spectators waved their salutations of

praise: “Hail, fortunate Hermas, master of success! Hail, little Hermas,

prince of good luck!”

The sudden tempest of acclamation, the swift fluttering of innumerable

garments in the air, startled the horses. They dashed violently forward,

and plunged upon the bits. The left rein broke. They swerved to the

right, swinging the chariot sideways with a grating noise, and dashing

it against the stone parapet of the arena. In an instant the wheel

was shattered. The axle struck the ground, and the chariot was dragged

onward, rocking and staggering.

By a strenuous effort Hermas kept his place on the frail platform,

clinging to the unbroken rein. But the boy was tossed lightly from

his side at the first shock. His head struck the wall. And when Hermas

turned to look for him, he was lying like a broken flower on the sand.