Part 12

But the freedom and peace of the shepherd's life comforted Malchus. He rose with the dawn and led forth the flock, and when they had reached the pasture land the beasts browsed slowly forward till near upon noon, when he called them in to shelter from the torrid heat in the shadows of the rocks or thickets. There he milked a goat or sheep for his midday meal and, having drunk, stretched himself full length in the shade while the sheep stood together with hanging heads and the goats drew apart and lay down to rest. Then, when the breathless urgence of the noon was past, Malchus called them out to pasture again till sunset, when he led them back to the encampment, where the women were waiting to milk the ewes and female goats. Each beast knew the woman that milked it and went of its own accord to the accustomed tent. With the darkness the herd lay down to rest where the horses and camels were gathered about the tents, and the sheep dogs mounted guard through the night, prowling to and fro with frequent snarling and barking. Sometimes a wolf came out of the rocky hills, and at his approach the flock would suddenly shrink together in a panic and the dogs set up a loud baying. Then the shepherd with beating heart leaped up and raised a clamor to drive off the thief; but often, when the night was moonless, a small, agonized bleating was heard in the darkness and, when the light returned, the flock was the less by a lamb. When no green herb remained within a short distance of the camp, Malchus had to lead the flock further afield, and sometimes for many days together they were out in the open desert, since it was too far to return to camp each night. At such times the sheikh used to ride out once in two or three days to see that all was well with the flock.

Malchus was glad of this peaceful occupation. All day he had the solitude that he desired and he was dependent upon no man, for by his labor as shepherd he earned the milk which he drew from the flock for his sustenance. In that high desert country the air was pure and sweet and, except during the burning noon-tide hours, the sun was less fierce than in the lower deserts he had known. His body, under the daily exercise and the healthy diet of milk, grew firm and strong and his sleep was the deep sleep of honest weariness. No visions, good or evil, came to him there. That grim battle ground of the spirit in which he had lived so long, where the difficult pursuit of holiness and the endless struggle against evil were alike an unceasing torment and all earthly things were but the outward manifestation of striving spiritual forces, seemed now a country remote as the moon. He had been carried, it seemed, into a peaceful limbo where all was simple and kindly, and he loved the innocent beasts that answered his call and intrusted themselves to his guidance. Only two things marred his life's serenity--the knowledge that he had failed before the great ordeal of the spirit and had basely withdrawn from God the life he had dedicated to Him, and the unappeasable desire of love which flamed up, still undiminished, in dreams of Helena and the abiding memory of the cane-gatherer which lived on in his mind unexorcised by all his agonies of repentance and prayer. The presence of his fellow captive, Veronica, also disturbed him, and made those unbidden memories more real and vivid than before. But alone in the high desert with his flock he had many days of peace in which it seemed to him that he was not altogether excluded from the mercy of God, and as he led them from patch to patch of the sparse herb or, unsheathing the sword which he carried to guard them against wolves, set himself to cut a bundle of dry thorns for his lonely camp fire, he prayed to God from a full heart for final deliverance.

Yet in other moods, the fear came upon him that the untroubled quiet of his life was not the peace of forgiveness, but the silence of utter exclusion. Perhaps he was no longer tormented by evil spirits or visited by comforting visions because the battle was over and lost and Satan waited, secure of his prey, for the moment of his death. Then horror came upon him and he lay on his face in the dust in the agony of desperation. But those despairing moods were less frequent than the other moods of serenity in which it seemed to him that his life as a shepherd was a blessed respite from the tempestuous life of hermit.

But one evening the sheikh called him to his tent. To reward him for his honest service, he told Malchus, he was resolved to give him the woman Veronica as his wife. "For every man," he said, "has need of a woman to ease his loneliness and to pitch his tent and serve his food." Malchus thrust out protesting hands, declaring that he was a monk and might not marry, and the woman, besides, was married already. But, hearing his generosity scorned, the sheikh's face grew dark with anger and he drew his sword and would have killed Malchus if he had not run for refuge to his mistress, the sheikh's wife, and grasped her hand. Perforce he resigned himself to the sheikh's will and, hearing that he submitted, the sheikh was appeased and a tent was set apart for Malchus and Veronica and they were married after the manner of the Arabs.

But when at the end of the day they had been brought together into the tent and left alone, Malchus turned his face from Veronica and crouched in a corner of the tent. He believed now that the Arabs had been sent to capture him only that his damnation might be the more certain. He was being inescapably drawn to commit once more the sin which had imperiled his immortal soul. But as this thought grew to terrible certainty in his mind it brought with it another--the thought that it was surely Satan, and not God, who had led him back through the wilderness to his cell and shown him the cane-gatherer waiting for him. His sin, indeed, was unforgivable, God had abandoned him from the moment he had committed it. He knew now that all hope was past. The bitterness of death entered into his soul and with a choking sob he bowed his head to the dust. But one thing, at least, he could do, one act to bear witness before God that his soul still desired chastity. Rising from the ground, he drew his sword from its scabbard and turned the point to his heart.

But in the little moonlight that pierced the darkness of the tent the woman saw the gleam of the sword and cried out. The sword slipped from his trembling hands.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"Do not be afraid," answered Malchus. "I will not harm you."

But Veronica was groping toward him in the dark. She set her foot on the fallen sword. "Tell me," she whispered, "what you were going to do."

No reply came from the motionless figure half seen in the darkness before her. She spoke again:

"Swear to me by Jesus Christ that you will not kill yourself because of me. Rather, if such is your wish, turn your sword against me, for I am as anxious as you to preserve my chastity. I fled even from my lawful husband for the sake of Christ, and when the Arabs captured me I was on my way with the holy woman, Melania, to enter the White Convent which is outside the walls of Alexandria. May we not, then, live together in chastity, loving one another with a spiritual love? I will cover up my face and speak to you only when necessity compels. So we shall escape the sheikh's displeasure, for he will never know that we are not in truth husband and wife."

When Malchus heard these words and perceived the mercy of God, he knelt down in the tent and offered up thanks to Him who is the sinner's salvation. Veronica also prayed in a corner of the tent apart, and when they had made an end they lay down to sleep, for at dawn Malchus would have to go far out into the desert with the flock and Veronica would follow him, leading the ass on which they would load their tent and a few household utensils. In those days the herb was becoming rare and they had to seek it so far afield that the shepherd and his flock were often a whole month away from the Arab camp. But at intervals of three or four days the sheikh, as was his custom, rode out to see that all was well, and, perceiving that Malchus took good care of the flock, he was content.

For many weeks Malchus and Veronica lived together chastely in the sandy solitudes, sharing their single tent and eating together; and although they seldom spoke and Malchus never saw her face, yet he knew that a kindness toward her was growing up in his heart, and, imagining the face that he could not see, he had come to imagine it always as the face of Helena. So day by day, as he sat lonely among the high rocks and tended the grazing beasts, or lay drowsing at noon in the shadow of some great stone or thorn bush, or watched nightly with the prowling sheep dogs under stars which seemed every moment about to shower down in their bright millions on to the dim gray desert, his heart began more and more to turn back with longing toward his cell.

Then his mind grew fruitful with schemes. The sheikh, secure in his confidence in Malchus, never visited them now more often than once in four days, and Malchus began to see that it might be possible for him and Veronica to escape. He knew where the river lay. From the rocky heights above their present grazing-grounds he had seen its thin silvery scroll gleaming far to the west. If they could carry enough food and water for six days they might be able to reach the river and find there a boat or some northward-moving caravan.

One evening, when Veronica had finished milking the ewes, Malchus, returning to their tent, found her in tears. Her trouble was so great that she was unable to disguise it and she sat with her face bowed in her hands, her shoulders shaken by sobs. At first, when Malchus questioned her, she could not speak, but before long she had gained control of herself. "I think," she sobbed, "that we shall be captives until our death, and when I reflect that I shall never enter the holy life for which I have left my husband and my home, despair comes upon me, for it seems that God has not found worthy the life I have offered to him."

Then, for the first time, Malchus spoke to her of his schemes. "But for wanderers in the desert," he said, "there waits hunger and parching thirst and infinite weariness of the body. Would you risk these things, and worse, for the bare chance of escape?"

"I would gladly risk death itself," she said; and seeing her so ready, Malchus began to build up a plan.

"We must wait till the moon is almost at the full, and we must wait, too, for a day when the sheikh comes to visit us so that we may have all the interval between that visit and his next before our flight is discovered. It will be a long journey, four days at the least, and, if we wander a little out of our direction, perhaps six or seven. And I must set about preparing food for the journey and water skins in which to carry water, so that we shall not have to linger on the way, seeking for these things, for water and green herbs may be very scarce in the part of the desert that we must cross."

During the days that followed, Malchus killed two kids and dried their flesh for food, and from their skins he made water skins. It was the shepherd's duty every second day to lead his flock to one of the desert pools, for sheep must drink at least once in two days, and next time he led them to the water Malchus took the skins and brought them back filled. The moon was already waxing toward the full and, everything being ready, Malchus and Veronica waited anxiously for the sheikh's visit.

He came, late one afternoon, cantering on his long-tailed mare, with two companions. He began at once, as they had feared, to count over the flock, and soon noticed that two kids were missing. When Malchus told him that they had died, his face darkened and they waited with stopped breath for what he would do. But next moment it seemed that he accepted Malchus's tale, for his face cleared and he spoke of other matters, and soon he and his two companions mounted and rode away.

Malchus and Veronica stood watching them as they grew smaller and smaller and then vanished over the last visible wave of the desert with bowed heads and cloaks filled out with the wind of their speed.

[Illustration: woodcut]

_Chapter Fifteen_

Then they began with feverish haste to prepare for flight. First they dug out of the sand the kids' flesh and water skins which they had buried to hide them from the sheikh, and then, leaving their tent standing, they led the flock to the nearest pool, because Malchus could not bring himself to desert the innocent beasts where they would perish of thirst.

When the light had almost gone and the flock had lain down about the pool, they loaded the flesh and the two water skins on their shoulders and struck out into the void. For a while the dead ashes of the sunset guided them; then suddenly the heaven was full of stars, waking depth beneath depth in glittering shoals, and when they had marched a little above an hour the orange disk of the moon rose out of the ghostly sands and the whole desert glimmered white and visionary under the paling and brightening moonlight. They fled on in haste, not daring for more than a few minutes and at rare intervals to throw down their burdens and ease their aching shoulders. Crest beyond crest and trough beyond trough, the desert dropped downward beneath their stumbling feet and the uplands they had left grew up higher and higher behind them, lines of black ramparts against a luminous heaven. Dawn found them faint with weariness on a rock-strewn waste between two crests. For two hours still they labored on, till Veronica stumbled and fell and could not rise. Then they ate a little of the flesh and drank some water and laid themselves down to sleep a little in the shadows of the rocks.

But it was not long before their fears awoke them, and soon they were hastening on again until burning noon, brooding breathless upon the fiery sand, drove them to seek the shadow. And now their failing bodies, grown careless, in their dire exhaustion, of peril and death, claimed the repose without which they could no longer endure the labors demanded of them. They slept till the noonday ardor was long spent; then, waking with renewed energy and renewed fear, they plunged on through the hot and clogging sand, turning their heads sometimes as they hurried onward, to scan the horizon behind them. But the horizon was bare and all the great spaces they had traversed empty of life, and moonrise saw them plodding painfully toward the ever-receding crest of a vast undulation in the sand, beyond which opened the star-hung emptiness of night. In all their journey they spoke hardly at all; all their strength and all their breath were needed to carry them on. But without the help of words, fellowship and sympathy were strong between them, born of the fears and hardships they had shared. Sometimes Malchus, reminding himself that his companion was but a woman, would urge Veronica to take more rest and food, but Veronica bore up with an energy equal to his own and for him the steadfastness of body and soul in this small woman was a thing for wonder and admiration.

It was in the morning of the fourth day that, as Malchus turned to 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]