Part 1

[Frontispiece: woodcut]

DESERT

_A Legend_

By

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

_Author of "At the Sign of the Goat & Compasses"_

Woodcuts by E. RAVILIOUS

NEW YORK AND LONDON _Harper & Brothers Publishers_ 1926

DESERT: _A Legend_

Copyright, 1916, by HARPER & BROTHERS Printed in the U. S. A.

_First Edition_

H--A

Note

The basis of this story lies in a brief tale occurring in the Syriac version of Palladius's _Histories of the Fathers_, which is to be found in a beautiful English translation in Sir Ernest Wallis Budge's book _The Paradise of the Holy Fathers_. I have derived many other incidents and a great mass of details from the same work, but this story is otherwise imaginary in the sense that I have troubled little about historical or topographical accuracy. The quotations from Plotinus and Proclus are from Thomas Taylor's translations, which, for reasons entirely unphilosophical, I have altered in one or two places.

M. A.

[Illustration: woodcut]

DESERT: _A Legend_

[Illustration: woodcut]

_Chapter One_

It was not long past noon when Malchus, son of one of the foremost families of Alexandria, stepped out of his porch into the street. Everybody in the house was asleep; no one but the doorkeeper saw him go out. The street, too, was deserted. The arid heat of it struck against the sense like sounding brass. Its north side blazed with adamantine sunlight; its left was a long wedge-shaped trough of shade whose upper edge was bounded by the roof-ridges themselves, and the lower by their shadows zigzagging sharp-edged down the center of the paved roadway. Halfway down the street, on the shady side, two scavenger dogs were prowling, meekly sniffing the walls and pavement. A kite, small as a moth, sailed in the illimitable blue above. Malchus felt as if he had suddenly flung off a stifling cloak, dropped it from his shoulders and abandoned it in the street behind him. How easy it was, in the mood he was in, to discard relatives, friends, house, possessions, habits--all the material and spiritual accumulation of the past. In stepping from his house door he had stepped into a new life as easily as a swimmer dives from marble into water. The dogs, with tails down and lowered heads, slunk away at his approach and he turned the street corner and made for the southern boundary of the city. "Gone!" he said to himself, thinking of his house and the familiar street, and it seemed to him wonderful and unbelievable that he would never see them again. "Never again!" He tried in vain to realize the meaning of it and as he did so two stabs of pain shot through his heart. One was the memory of his mother making its desperate appeal--her hands, the calm, pure modeling of her temples, a sharp accidental pathos that came with her way of saying certain words; the other, keener, more cruel, more soul-shaking, was the memory of Helena, branded irremediably into every sense.

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He halted, rooted to the spot in the molten sunshine, his right hand convulsively grasping his staff, and behind him, on the white wall to his left, the cowled black shadow which like the ghost of his past had dogged him, now on this side, now on that, from the moment he had left the shade of his house, paused, waiting to follow him. With a great effort he blotted from his mind those agonizing appeals, and man and following shadow moved on together. Soon they had emerged from the streets and, leaving the main road to Lake Mareotis, had turned into one of the many paths through the vineyards which spread to the shore of the lake. The heat, there, had lost something of its heaviness. Though the lake was not yet visible, the sense of it refreshed and sweetened the air, and the disheveled garlands of vines festooned from tree to tree shed a soft litter of shadows along the paths. Soon through the long ranks of tree trunks and foliage he caught sight of the live sparkle of water and, after that, great tracts of glassy surface, gray with heat, came gradually into view. His hope was to reach the lake before the hermit, who had visited him a few hours ago, had crossed it. If he did so, he would certainly discover him on the next ship that sailed; but if the hermit crossed the lake ahead of him, it might be many hours before Malchus could follow, and, once he had entered the desert, it would be impossible to trace him. But the hermit had not had more than three hours' start and he must have taken longer to reach the lake than Malchus, who had walked rapidly. Now his path left the vineyard and emerged between two warehouses on to the wharf that edged the lake. Not the faintest breath stirred the sultry air. Malchus looked anxiously out across the water. Far as the eye could reach, its vast, featureless monotony was unbroken. It was impossible, then, that the hermit could have left the shore, for in such weather no ship could sail or be rowed out of sight in three hours.

At its left extremity the wharf swung outward into a jetty which formed a small harbor, but its right end broke off in an abrupt wall and thence the shore of the lake curved away westward, the vineyards encroaching almost to its white, sandy margin.

Malchus turned to the left toward the harbor. A mast rose above the level of the wharf and he walked along the stone embankment to inquire whether a ship would soon be starting. After walking fifty yards he crossed to the edge where a flight of steps descended to the level of the water, and found himself looking down into a ship lying alongside the wharf immediately under him. Seen from above, it looked strangely broad for its length. The great sail lay rolled up along the deck and five or six oars were shipped along each gunwale. Among coils of rope and piles of wooden cases a few men, leaning forward so that their backs and heads almost hid their limbs, moved like slow, heavy beetles. Malchus shouted down his inquiries, and one of the men straightened himself and turned up a round, coppery face.

"We start in an hour," he shouted back. "The master'll be here before long and you can fix up with him. It'll be slow work." He waved an arm to the sky. "All rowing to-day, worse luck!"

Having got this information, Malchus strolled up the wharf toward the other end. He wished to discover the hermit without being discovered by him, for he was determined not to approach him until they entered the desert. Now, therefore, as he paced along the wharf, he examined the shadowy nooks between the warehouses in the hope that he might discover him sheltering from the heat. But the nooks were as empty as the wharf itself and soon Malchus was approaching its western extremity. As he did so he became suddenly convinced that he was on the point of discovering the hermit, and, sure enough, as he reached the edge and glanced along the sandy shore, he caught sight of a small bare-legged figure seated on the white sand not more than fifty yards away. He had avoided the green shade of the vineyard a few yards behind him and sat immovable in the full glare of the sun, like a god carved out of wood. The sun was high, and his squat shadow lay like a black bowlder behind him.

Malchus moved into a shady nook between two sheds and rested there till it was almost time to go back to the harbor. Then glancing cautiously from his hiding-place, he saw that the hermit was coming toward him and soon he must have climbed on to the wharf, for Malchus saw a small gnome-like shadow slide across the bright gap between the sheds. He waited a little and then himself came out into the glare. The slim figure of the hermit was by this time more than halfway down the long line of the wharf--the only vertical thing followed by the only shadow in all the horizontal glare. Malchus followed him slowly. When he reached the harbor the hermit was already squatting in the bows of the boat with his cowl over his head.

Malchus found a place for himself on deck in a patch of shadow cast by a pile of cargo. The great wall of golden stone which towered above the side of the ship threw off the afternoon heat like a stove; the heaps of wooden cases beside him exhaled a hot aromatic smell and across it there came another smell, the flat, earthy smell of shallow water. Malchus closed his eyes. A feeling of utter serenity possessed him. The noise and movement of the crew about him served only to increase his sense of calm isolation. Nothing of this stress and bustle concerned him; for him there was nothing to do but to sit still. The ropes would be loosed, the ship would be pushed off from the wharf by men sweating at long poles, the harbor would recede, and the oarsmen settle, with the rumble of wood on wood, to their long, monotonous labor at the oars; and through it all--through the long smooth crossing of the lake unchanging except for the slow transition from afternoon to evening, evening to darkness and darkness back to dawn, sunrise and sultry noon--he would have nothing to do but sit with eyes open or closed, contemplating the ebb and flow of his thoughts and feelings.

A silence in the hubbub of preparation roused him: the moment for departure had arrived, and at a shout from the master the crew began to thrust away the ship from the harbor wall. Slowly the wall receded. Two oarsmen in the bows were already churning up the glassy harbor water and soon the ship glided out into the lake.

A plain of shimmering gray lay before them, but behind them the gray brightened to a milky blue where the shallows ran up on to the white margins, and in the shallows companies of flamingoes stood like long-stemmed rosy lilies, dreaming immovably upon the fainter rose of their reflections. Malchus gazed at them, and the thought came to him that each was a symbol of man contemplating the God in himself. The rowers began a rhythmical chant, swinging monotonously to their oars. Malchus closed his eyes. That chant and the rhythmical forward lurch of the ship were all he knew of the outward world; and after an hour the chanting ceased and his world dimmed to the heave of the boat and the regular plash and gurgle of the cloven water. He shut out all thought from his mind. He did not even try to determine what he would say to the hermit when he revealed himself to him in the desert, nor did he examine his feelings, desires, or beliefs. Whether or not his reason accepted Christ he did not inquire. He was passionately determined to submit himself without reservation, body and soul: therefore, he could not be troubled to reason about his belief. The idea of God and of his son Jesus Christ was burnt into his emotional life. It had been his intellect only--the intellect of an impetuous youth--which had rejected it. Now the elegant logical structure of his disbelief had collapsed before the emotional storm through which he was passing, and the old idea had flowered again upon the ruins. The words spoken by the hermit during their conversation a few hours ago had come to him as a revelation:--"We who are true Christians have no need of reasoning." That was the state of mind after which he had always been unconsciously striving. What a relief it was now to abandon all the troublesome mechanism of argument and explanation, to allow to impulse and emotion the authority for which, with him, they had hitherto always appealed in vain. He felt himself free at last. Never again would he submit to the imposture of logic. But it was no sluggish serenity into which he had escaped. The mind and the soul must, he knew, be disciplined, for only thus could they attain to perfect freedom. And now, as he sat on the deck with closed eyes, assuming already by an unconscious imitation the attitude of the hermit, he drew his attention inward, retiring into that innermost chamber of being which is one with the eternal and divine. At first his contemplation was disturbed by intruding memories and once he found himself spinning a long fantasy about Helena. How would she receive the news of his disappearance? He pictured her in tears, imploring his pardon too late. The picture gave him a fierce appeasement and his lips twisted into a grim smile.

The physical sensation of that smile roused him. How was he to master this idle wandering of the mind? For a moment he was overcome by discouragement, but soon he had lulled himself back into contemplation, and gradually his mind, wearied by the emotions of the day, threw off the burden of intruding cares....

He must have sat thus for many hours, for when he again opened his eyes he was astounded to find himself in darkness. Everything about him, the mast, the ropes, the piles of cargo, stood out sharply in planes and edges of frosty white, the rowers were modeled in flickering black and silver as they swung to and fro, and looking upward, Malchus saw a full moon, small, brilliant, and immeasurably high. Beside him lay a pool of blond silver light, so bright that it seemed as if it were itself the source of light. Everywhere it was as though the moonward faces of things were coated with phosphorus. The air had grown deliciously cool; a draught stirred about the deck as if the lake were breathing. Then a shout sounded above the noise of rowing and the rowers leaned back motionless upon their oars. There was silence above and below except for the clucking of water against the ship's still-moving sides and the tapping of a rope against the mast. The wind was freshening. Again a shout out of the darkness, and, with bumping of wood on wood, the rowers shipped their oars and then lined up along the sail, while others loosened the ropes at the mast. When all was ready there came another shout and the great sail swung up, huge as a house side, shivered and fluttered heavily in the wind, and then, as the ship came round, yawned out into a great dark cavern. The ship lurched slowly over, and growing up slowly out of the silence the hiss of moving water was heard along the sides.

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_Chapter Two_

The breeze which had sprung up during the night had weakened after daybreak, and now it had died away completely. It was almost noon. The men were once again sweating at the oars, but their labor would soon be over, for the southern shore of the lake was clearly in sight. Pale golden hills extending in horizontal terraces bounded the distance; along their bases the richer gold of the desert was barred by deep blue belts of palmgrove. Eastward, within a stone's throw of the ship, flights of wild-duck with their necks strained forward skimmed the face of the water. Many hours before, Malchus had awakened from a deep sleep to find himself afloat between the pale-green mirrors of sky and water in which the stars had faded to blurs of faint white radiance. He was cold and very hungry and had bought a loaf and a small mug of wine from one of the crew. He had drunk the wine and eaten a piece of the loaf, putting the remainder away into his pouch. Already it seemed an age since that early waking; to remember it in the noonday heat was to recall early spring in the height of summer. As for his previous life--the life which yesterday at this hour he was still living--it had receded into the remote past. It was as if the voyage across the lake had carried him into another world and separated him by many years from the self of yesterday. The crisis, crowned by his momentous decision, had come so suddenly....

Yet it was only a few hours ago, hardly a day and a half, that he had dined at the house of his friend Diocles, the poet. The feast had been a splendid one--splendid not only for its food and wines, but for its company and their talk. But by an hour after midnight the guests, though none of them had yet risen from his couch to depart, had long ceased to eat and, all except a few, even to drink. On the tables stood dishes of grapes, figs, and pomegranates, and crystal wine flasks and cups, but the guests had turned away from the tables, and the confused din of voices, glasses, silver, and the soft padding of the slaves' feet upon the marble floor had died down. There was no longer any general conversation, but isolated gusts of talk rose and relapsed, the tones now deep, now high, now rippling upward in a woman's laughter, like flutes, oboes, and bassoons played at random.

The host was Diocles, the poet, a splendid young man, easy mannered, imperturbable, with broad shoulders, pointed golden beard, and gray eyes which could be strangely piercing or, by a curious change, gentle and dreamy as though their gaze had been turned inward. He had been trying to engage the friend on his right in a philosophical discussion, but in vain, for Malchus replied briefly and fell back again into the gloomy abstraction in which he had passed the evening, his head propped on his right hand, his large eyes scowling at the floor. From this position he never moved except sometimes to steal a furtive glance at a woman who reclined at another table.

She was young and of an extraordinary beauty. Her profile in repose had the dreaming loveliness of a marble goddess, but when she laughed or spoke she was suddenly transformed into another creature, and, as if for the first time, the vivid colors of eyes, lips, and beautiful teeth flashed into life. Helena was her name; she was known throughout Alexandria for her beauty, her great wealth, and the proud independence of her manner of life. Both her wealth and her beauty brought her many offers of marriage, but to each she was accustomed to reply that it would be time enough to think of husbands when she had grown tired of lovers. Now she was flirting with a very young man who sprawled on the floor beside her couch and leaned his head back against its cushioned edge, gazing up at her as he talked. His head was covered with crisp golden curls and he had the full and regular features which so often accompany an amiable but stupid character. Sometimes detachedly, as though she were inspecting a fur, Helena stretched out a white arm and slowly stroked the boy's head, watching the tight curls spring up as they escaped from the weight of her moving hand. Then she would shoot a quick glance at Malchus, wrapped in his sulks, and when her eyes returned to her boy their vague and contemplative gaze showed that she was not paying the slightest attention to what he was saying.

On the next couch lay an old man with a smooth, fat face and a bald head which he wiped from time to time with a yellow silk handkerchief. The richness of his dress gave a certain majesty to a heavy and bloated body. He had the glazed eye of one who has drunk heavily and he was making vague, fumbling gestures with one hand, as if he were trying to drive away a fly. But he was not driving away a fly; he was beckoning, and at last a girl ran up and stood beside his couch. She was small and slim, with the pure, flower-like face of a child.

"Come here, Thaïs, you little imp. Why have you been avoiding me all night?" He spoke indistinctly; his consonants were causing him some trouble, and when he reached out a heavy arm the girl shrank back laughing. But soon she had submitted and sat down on his couch and allowed him to put his arm about her.

At that moment Helena rose and, as though she were the controlling force of the whole company, the sound of voices broke off sharp and everyone looked at her. She moved toward her host with the slow, exquisite poise of one to whom even walking is a conscious art. Her robe of silver tissue embroidered with blue and crimson leopards enhanced with its shining surfaces the forms and motions of her beautiful, supple body.

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And with her departure everyone became aware that the feast was over. Like a soundless tide the large silence of the night, of which the guests had recently been so oblivious, subtly took possession of the room, broken rarely by a murmured phrase, a giggle of laughter from one of the girls, or the snores of a sleeping feaster which rose from time to time out of the silence, soared up gradually and formidably, and exploded with a snort which aroused the sleeper to a fretful change of position. But over each interruption the silence closed like a flood, and audible in it, as if an integral part of it, streamed the cold, airy rush of a fountain, faintly seen like a silver ghost in the deep-blue hollow of the courtyard. Softly and incessantly it hissed, a silence grown audible. But to one who listened intently, small, clear sounds emerged from the pervading hush; sometimes a tiny spark shot with a crackle like the snapping of a cane splinter from one of the steady lamp flames and four pure musical notes made by water dripping from a leak in the fountain pipe into the basin below, repeated their little tune with monotonous persistence.

At the departure of Helena, Malchus had stirred himself on his couch with a long sigh. Her going had eased the intolerable oppression which had tormented him, as if with an insomnia of the nerves, all evening. Now he had sunk into a deep revery when a voice close beside him startled him into consciousness. "Like a fire that has burned itself out!" said the voice. It was the voice of Diocles, but when Malchus turned his head it seemed to him that Diocles had been talking to himself, for he was looking, not at him, but at the rows of feasters silent on their couches.

"What has burned itself out?" asked Malchus.