Part 13

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all the human things of his own world--the love, the beauty, the swift adventure--were being slowly but irrevocably withdrawn from him, leaving him cold, stripped, and solitary, a shape of rock exposed to the warring tempests of heaven and hell till it should be weathered down to a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.]