Part 4

"I beg of you to stay here for a day or two, my father."

The old man turned his quiet, luminous gaze upon Malchus. "I cannot, my son," he replied, "for as a fish dies when a man lifts it from the water, so, if we hermits remain long among men, our minds become troubled and perverted. I must return to the city not built with hands."

"Which way will you go?"

"By the Lake Mareotis."

A sudden impulse made Malchus kneel down. "Bless me, my father," he said.

The hermit lifted his right hand, and Malchus heard the small, clear voice above him: "The blessing of God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son be upon you."

Malchus rose to his feet. "Tell me your name, my father?" he asked.

"My name is Serapion," replied the hermit. He vanished quietly out of the court and Malchus read in his face and movement that he was setting out immediately on his long journey back to the desert....

After the hermit had gone, Malchus fell again into meditation. His mind was in that state of ferment in which transformations which normally take shape by slow degrees throughout months and even years, may occur in the upheaval and agony of a single day. His soul, disturbed and harassed by the gradual crumbling of his union with Helena, had revolted suddenly and violently when she had deliberately flaunted a new lover in his face, and he had turned with all the fierceness of his nature, not against her, but against the whole life and society of which he and she were a part. Then, snatching in despair for some support in the ruin which had engulfed him, he had seized upon the idea which had attracted him both in the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and in the Christian faith--the idea of a life isolated and self-sufficing, relying neither on human relationship nor on material support, but deriving its strength from a power within or beyond itself to which it resigned itself completely. In that idea he had felt a vague comfort even though the passivity and emptiness which it seemed to imply had discouraged him. Upon this the chance arrival of the hermit Serapion had come as a sudden solution. In the old man's serene detachment, his primitive and elemental air, Malchus had felt something more than a discipline of the mind: these things spoke of a discipline of the body, a life of physical battle, strenuous, unrelenting, the necessary and satisfying counterpart to those battles of the soul. The brevity of his replies, the perfect assurance of his faith, had embodied for Malchus that security after which he was groping. The hermit's impatience of argument, his lack of any desire to win over others to his faith, had roused in him more zeal than the most impassioned pleading could have roused. Now as he sat with bowed head he felt an excitement stirring within him. He was like one who, having wandered long in the dark, sees a light moving far ahead and, careless now of the pitfalls about him, runs straight on, absorbed body and soul in the pursuit of that vision of salvation.

It was in this state that his mother found him when, an hour after the hermit's departure, she came to visit him. She advanced down the portico, straight and dignified with her grave smile, and at the sight of her a sudden longing rose in him to drop back into his boyhood and take refuge again in her protecting love. It was a momentary impulse, no more; for such a regression, even if it had been possible, would have carried him back also into a life which had now grown hateful to him. As he rose to greet her, she saw the feverish light in his eyes, and when he had led her into an inner room and they had sat down side by side, she laid a cool hand on his forehead.

"Your head is cool," she said. "I was afraid at first that you had a headache!" And, knowing that inquiries about his health always irritated him, she went on, without waiting for him to speak, to talk of various matters--of relatives and friends recently seen or heard of, and of how Malchus's father had just secured a famous artist to redecorate their dining hall.

"You must come and see the designs when they are ready," she said. "The house will be yours some day, so you, as well as your father and I, must approve of them."

Malchus felt himself suddenly recalled by that casual remark to the world from which in spirit he had already traveled so far, and when his mother went on to speak to him with gentle anxiety of his future, he saw almost with the vividness of actuality the life which she contemplated for him. It was not the life of luxurious unconventionality which he had led for the last few years. It was the life of aristocratic conservatism in which he had been brought up, and the thought of it repelled him as much as the gay life against which he was in revolt. But the sight of his mother's gentle and earnest face as she leaned toward him with a little look of inquiry disarmed all show of antagonism in him. He loved her, and whenever, as so often happened, their sympathies clashed, he strove always not to hurt her.

"We have a feast next Thursday," she said to him. "I know you dislike these solemn dinners of ours, but come if you have nothing better to do. It would please your father. Crassus and Pompilla are coming and are bringing Julia."

"So you are still plotting, mother!" said Malchus with a smile.

She smiled back at him. "Well," she replied, "we have not yet quite given up hope. You cannot deny, at least, that Julia is an excellent young woman and that it would be a very good match. But if you do not care about her, there are others. What your father and I are thinking about most is the children. We were still young when you were born, but your boyhood prolonged our youth. Since you left us the house has been too quiet; we feel our age and long for your children so that with them we can grow young again. Then, as you know, your father is ambitious for you. We are both proud of the fact that for generations the family has held high positions in the state and it has been a disappointment to your father that you have not followed the family tradition."

"I only wish," answered Malchus, "that I could satisfy you both in this, but politics and government have no attraction for me, mother. If I took up a government post I should be an irritable and disillusioned old man before I reached forty."

"A thing too horrible to be thought of! Let us say no more about it, my boy. It is useless, I fully admit, to do violence to oneself in such matters. But you can have no such prejudice against marriage. In that direction, at least, your father and I can reasonably indulge our hopes." She rose to depart. "And you will come to our solemn dinner?" Her lip curled humorously.

"If I am here, I will come," Malchus replied, and he accompanied her to the house door and helped her into her litter.

_Chapter Five_

The effect of his mother's visit was to harden Malchus's resolution. The thought of her alone and his love for her would have made him hesitate; it was what she represented that steeled his heart. For the life from which he was flying and the conventional life of the Alexandrian aristocracy were facets of the same hated existence. A shudder of loathing shook him and he felt within him a smarting sourness like a physical nausea. It would be useless to abandon only his own mode of life, for, if he stayed in Alexandria, sooner or later, he knew, his parents would recapture him. He must break away altogether, not only from one society or the other, but from Alexandria, from civilization itself. And so he shut the thought of his mother from his mind, for if he were to contemplate for a moment the pain he was about to cause her, his resolution would give way. He rose and stretched himself, drawing in a deep breath which surprised him by turning into a sob. Then with a sudden determination he went to his bedroom, undressed, and put on an old leather hunting-suit and a short cloak, and taking a leather pouch and a water-bottle, a serviceable staff and a little money, he went out into the court, crossed it, and without a glance behind him stepped for the last time out of the porch of his home....

But now, as he sat on the deck of the ship with his face toward the desert, this crowd of past events had faded for Malchus to no more than a thin and vaguely colored mist. His mind could not grasp the actuality of what had happened; it was numbed into a dream half tragic, half ecstatic. His bones and muscles ached from sitting so long on the hard deck and he stood up and stretched himself. From where he stood he could see the hermit. He was still sitting with his head covered in exactly the same position in which Malchus had found him when he went on board. Was it possible, Malchus wondered with awe, that the old man had never once moved during all those hours? Having stretched his cramped limbs, he sat down again, covered his head with his cloak, and became once more a solitary island of consciousness in the flux of time and tide. Even when the rowers stopped rowing and shipped their oars he did not stir, nor until the dry creaking of strained ropes told him that the ship was being hauled up to the landing place. Then with his cloak over his head he stood up to watch Serapion. The old man still sat immovable, but as Malchus watched him, without any show of surprise or of awakening consciousness, he calmly and deliberately stood up, moved slowly along the cumbered deck, and stepped on to the stone pier. Never once did he pause or look behind him, but with the same even pace he crossed the wharf and made for an opening in the row of white houses which bordered the lake. Malchus followed him. There was no danger in following him close, for, as Malchus knew, he would not look behind him.

The place where they had landed was no more than a straggling village, only a narrow belt of fields and vineyards dividing it from the desert, and soon their feet were plunging in the hot, loose sand and the long desert journey had begun.

For a mile the ground rose, making the labor of their going more arduous still, for at every step the sand filtered away downhill beneath their feet. At first Malchus fretted himself into a fever, but looking ahead at Serapion, he saw that he was plodding patiently on, content, it seemed, that each step should gain a little on the last; and, striving to imitate him, Malchus found that the exhaustion which had begun to assail him was more a matter of the mind than of the body, and that by shutting down his attention to the ground immediately in front of him and his energy to the achievement of the next step, he was able to preserve both body and mind from despair.

When next he looked ahead he was almost at the top of the slope and Serapion had disappeared. On the summit Malchus paused. He was standing on a great sandy swell, like an ocean roller dried into immobility. Halfway down the slope before him the figure of the hermit, shrunk to the height of a finger, made its infinitesimal progress across the undulating immensity of bleached gold-dust. The stark heat of the sun struck down as with a tangible weight and the sultry sand blazed it back, drier and more oppressive, from below. As far as the eye could strain there was nothing but sand--sand smoothed into vast plains, tossed up into hummocks, heaved into far-running swells, or exalted terrace above terrace in long broken ramparts. For a moment Malchus's heart failed him at a sight of such inhuman desolation. Then, without looking back, he began the descent, following the blurred footprints which ran diminishing in a long curve from where he stood to the elfin shape toiling with hardly perceptible movement far ahead. The sifting sand which had made the ascent so laborious made the descent easy, and by the time Malchus had dropped halfway down into the great trough of the desert he had gained ground on the hermit whose pace, uphill and downhill, never varied. Below him, away to the east, three ants crawled along the bottom of the trough. Minute by minute they grew larger. They were camels following the desert track which now began to show as a wide, traffic-ploughed furrow in the hollow beneath him. Serapion was crossing it now, and just before Malchus reached it the three camels passed in front of him and curved away northeastward, their foolish vulture necks straining out before them, the hooded riders lurching heavily to their awkward gait. Soon they had vanished into the emptiness, leaving only their broad spoor to prove that they were not specters of the wilderness.

The two travelers toiled on through the blazing afternoon. Serapion never slackened his pace, and Malchus, his head dizzy with the heat and glare and his legs aching from the unaccustomed labor, began to fear that his strength would fail him. It became more and more difficult to hold out against the despair provoked by the treacherous and shifty dust in which his feet sought vainly for solid resistance.

After he had again lost sight of the hermit, Malchus reached the summit of a still higher crest and came upon him not more than ten yards ahead of him. He was standing motionless, his arms extended sideways at right angles to his body, in the form of a cross. Before them lay a new realm of the desert. From east to west the sands rolled to the horizon in endless undulations, but in front of them high terraced ramparts cloven by ravines buttressed a vast tableland lifted high above that part of the desert in which they stood. Malchus sank to the ground and a delicious relief flowed like nectar through his aching body and limbs. He lay full length in the burning sand, his eyes still fixed on Serapion. The old man, like a traveler who sees far off his long-desired home, stood rapt in ecstasy. So long did he stand that it seemed to Malchus's tired mind that the shape before him was not a living thing, but a tree whose gaunt and broken branches had been withered by a century of suns. Malchus drew his cloak over his face and closed his eyes. When he opened them again Serapion had sunk upon his knees, his head bowed to the ground. Malchus waited patiently till he should rise again, for he was determined that, when he did so, he would reveal himself to him. The hermit remained long in that attitude, but Malchus could neither meditate nor pray. His mind and body were shaken with agitation and he could do nothing but lie watching Serapion, waiting anxiously for the thing on which he had set all his hopes to accomplish itself.

At last the old man rose, and Malchus, leaping up and stumbling through the deep sand, ran and seized his left hand in both his own. The old man seemed to be neither startled nor surprised, but he fixed his eyes intently on Malchus and, thrusting his staff upright in the sand, he made the sign of the cross with his free hand.

"Do not be angry with me, my father," cried Malchus, falling on his knees and still grasping the hermit's hand in his. "Yesterday I abandoned my friends and possessions in Alexandria and followed you. I overtook you at the wharf; I was with you on the ship; and I have followed you all this afternoon through the sand. Help me, my father, for you only can help me. I give myself into your hands; I am your slave."

In sign of his subjection Malchus threw himself on his face at the hermit's feet.

The old man looked down at the prostrate body. "My son," he said, "I believe that the God I serve will help you if you are in need of help, and that if your designs are evil he will discover your craftiness." He spoke thus because he was uncertain whether Malchus was not an evil spirit sent to tempt him. He recognized him as the rich Alexandrian to whom he had sold the work of his hands on the previous day, but this did not reassure him, for he knew well that Satan, who loves to lead astray the chosen of God, has the power to assume deceiving shapes. But when Malchus neither cried out nor changed his shape at the sign of the Cross, Serapion knew that he was innocent, for no evil spirit is strong enough to resist the holy sign.

Serapion, therefore, spoke to Malchus, ordering him to stand up. "For it is not right," he said, "that you should fall down before one who is a man like yourself."

Malchus rose to his feet. "What is it that you seek?" the hermit asked him.

"I seek to become a hermit," replied Malchus.

Serapion fixed upon him a gaze that was almost fierce.

"You do not know," he said, "what you seek. It is not possible for you, a man accustomed to ease and luxury, to become a hermit. Go back while the light lasts and you can still follow our tracks. You will reach the lake by sunset if you start now."

Malchus met the old man's gaze. "I shall never go back, my father," he said. "However hard the hermit's life, I know that I shall be able to endure it. Test me. Whatever you appoint for me to do, I will do."

"Have I not told you that you do not know what you are undertaking? If you wish to leave the world and live a holy life, go to one of the desert monasteries. There the life is austere but easy. If, after three or four years there, you feel a desire for great austerities, it will then be time enough for you to think of becoming a hermit."

"But I do not seek for an easy life nor a life in company with other men. I desire solitude and the greatest austerities that a man can undergo and live."

"My son, you do not understand what solitude in the desert means. When a man is left face to face with himself he comes near to madness, and until he has conquered the hunger of the belly and the desire of women he is endlessly tormented by dreams and visions. Even when his desires are subdued, the evil spirits take on a bodily form, seeking to delude him by day and torturing him by night, coming about his cell and sometimes even entering in and wrestling with him body to body: and they fill the night with their cries, more terrible than the cries of the jackals and hyenas."

Malchus waited till the old man had finished and then laid his hand upon his arm. "Do not deny me, my father," he said, "for my purpose is firm."

"I deny you for your good, my son," answered Serapion, "and now trouble me no more, for I have spoken too much and I must delay no longer in returning to the place where I should be."

As the old man turned away Malchus fell on his knees and stretched out his arms toward him.

At that the hermit turned on him, his eyes keen with anger. "Back!" he shouted, and snatching his staff out of the sand, he pointed with it toward the north. Then impetuously turning away, he began once more with his tireless mechanical tread to draw the slender trail of his footsteps onward still further into the untrodden waste.

Malchus lay for a while where the hermit had left him. He was broken in body and chilled to the heart. For the first time the sense of his utter loneliness came upon him. Serapion's cruel discouragement of his aspirations had exhausted him more than all the labors of the day. Then, easing his heart of a deep sigh, he wearily rose to his feet and began once again to toil in the track of the hermit.

For what seemed to be many hours they tramped across the great level waste stretching to the foot of the long escarpment which rose higher and higher as they imperceptibly approached it. Malchus, dazed by the monotonous labor of walking and the huge monotony which surrounded him on all sides, came to feel that neither he nor the small digit far ahead, to which he was mysteriously tied by the long narrowing trail of footsteps, stretched across the virgin sand, was making any progress, but rather that they were both condemned to toil endlessly, fruitlessly, and meaninglessly, each eternally alone in a landscape that never changed. Again he shut the outer world from his attention and with bent head and abstracted mind followed the trail step by step, never looking more than one pace ahead. And when again he raised his eyes it was to discover with a thrill of awe the golden wall of the escarpment towering gigantic before him. Here and there its endless length was broken by huge violet fissures. One of them opened immediately in front of him--a narrow ravine filled with blue shadow. The track that he followed pointed straight into its mouth and Serapion had disappeared within.

To enter the cool dimness of the ravine after the pandemonium of sunshine outside was a relief so delicious that Malchus dropped to the ground and, closing his eyes, lay for a while immovable. But the fear of losing Serapion soon roused him, and with aching limbs he continued on his way. The ground rose rapidly and the passage was for a long distance so narrow that two laden camels could not have passed down it abreast. The sandy floor and the precipitous rocks that walled it were of the same color as the desert, but here that color, shaded from the harsh glare of the sun, was mild and soothing to the eyes. Only, far overhead where the walls of the ravine inclosed a narrow channel of blue sky, their jagged summits blazed like a coping of solid fire.