Part 4

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.

After a long ascent the ravine bent sharply eastward, and, having turned the bend, Malchus came suddenly into an enchanted spot. For here the passage widened out into a great hall and there fell upon the sight a delicious greenness, and on the ears, blurred and enriched by innumerable echoes, the babble of flowing water. Malchus stood and drank in the scene. Not far from where he stood lay a dark pool in whose center a spring sent up a cone of silver water which rose and fell incessantly with a soft musical din so inviting that he could scarcely restrain himself from running forward and throwing himself into the pool. Flowering reeds and long green ferns waded in its shallow margins, and from the rock walls festoons of feathery green starred with white and yellow flowers, hung down till they trailed upon the grass which covered the floor. The air was soft and fragrant with green leaves and the scent of flowers, and it seemed to Malchus that he had suddenly stepped into Paradise. At the upper end of the hollow Serapion lay stretched at full length under a canopy of hanging green. Malchus could see from where he stood the regular rise and fall of his breast. He was asleep; and, lying in that lovely scene with his goatskin suit, his tangled hair, and his staff laid on the grass beside him, he appeared to be no longer the stern ascetic of the desert, but rather the kindly Pan of some Greek idyll. Malchus, having drunk of the pool and bathed his hands and face, lay down. His whole body, every limb and every muscle, tingled with relief. A profound sleepiness descended upon him. The leaves and rocks about him grew blurred and his eyes closed; to open them again required an effort almost beyond his strength. Yet he dared not sleep for fear Serapion should depart before he awoke. How blissful to fall asleep and sleep on till this consuming weariness was slaked. It was only by recalling that terrible sense of his utter loneliness which had assailed him when Serapion had cast him off, that he held himself to his resolve to persevere.

After what seemed no more than a few minutes he sat up suddenly in a terror. He must have slept, and for a long while, for the hollow was dim with twilight. The pool was a bubbling vat of liquid ruby and overhead the summits flared upward into a sky of crimson fire. The delicious babble of water still flowed on as if to soothe away all fear and all change. But Malchus sprang to his feet. It was too dark to see if Serapion was still where he had last seen him, and he hurried stealthily, his heart fluttering with dread, round the border of the pool. Then he halted suddenly and struck his hand to his mouth to stifle a cry of relief, for Serapion had only moved out into the open and was seated with his back to him in his familiar attitude. Malchus was sure that in a few minutes he would rise and continue his march, and at the thought that he, too, must rise and leave that beautiful spot came the other more overwhelming thought that this was the last time in his life that he would look upon flowers and green things and running water. He stretched out his hand, gathered a broad leaf, and laid his cheek against it, feeling its cool glossy texture and breathing in its green fragrance. Then, moving back to where he had slept, he loosed his sandals, flung off his cloak and suit, and stood naked beside the pool. His flesh shone pearly and dull in the twilight and the curves of his breast, belly, and thighs caught a faint rosy lacquer from the gleaming water. From where he stood he could see the motionless figure of the hermit. Then he stooped down, setting the palms of his hands on the ground, and, extending first one leg and then the other, slid into the pool. Divine coolness inclosed him. What bliss to throw up his arms and sink forever through cool fathoms of peace and oblivion! But the time was short and after a brief immersion he crept on to the bank and, opening his wallet, broke off a piece of his loaf and allayed his hunger. Then he dressed quickly, for it was now so dark that he could not see whether Serapion was still there or not, and taking up his stick, he went forward.

Serapion was gone, but Malchus could hear him not very far ahead, stirring the loose stones whose dry echoes startled the hollow. For, once the ravine left the spring, it became barren again and loose stones falling from the cliffs cumbered the way. The gloom made progress more difficult, but when at last Malchus emerged on to the upper desert a huge moon hung its mottled shield low over the east, calling a suppressed glimmer from the sand, and from every stone and every hump and hollow in the sand a long transparent shadow. Already its light was strong enough to enable Malchus to see distinctly the slow shape of Serapion moving in front of him, and soon it was sailing remote and brilliant in the deeps of the sky, and the desert beneath it shone marvelously white as if shrouded in newly fallen snow. And as if by the influence of the moon, so absolute a silence had fallen upon the desert that at the sense of it the heart stood still and Malchus took refuge from it by fixing his attention on the swing of his legs and body as he followed the ghost-like shape of the hermit, less real now than the shadow that jutted blackly from its feet and was drawn onward horizontally across the sand like a wide black sleigh.

Suddenly the tense silence broke in a hideous shriek, and in a moment a chorus of shrieks followed the first, remote, inhuman, like the shrieking of tortured souls. Malchus halted, chilled with terror, and looking anxiously ahead at Serapion he saw that he too had stopped. His right arm moved; he was making the sign of the Cross; and Malchus remembered what the hermit had told him of the evil spirits that haunted the desert, taking the form now of human beings, now of hyenas and jackals. Following the hermit's example, he too made the sign of the Cross and whispered a prayer as he moved again on his way.

So through the long night they tramped onward, and as, amid the weariness of the body and the fears of the mind, his thoughts turned for shelter to the beautiful green hollow in the ravine, and he realized, with a tremulous ecstasy mixed with tragic regret, that he had cast love and beauty, quiet happiness and the warm joys of the body, behind him forever. Ahead of him lay only solitude, desolation, and strange fears, a life of fierce discipline for soul and body, a terrible and wonderful life whose grimness held for his restless and fanatic soul the keen, indestructible beauty of a diamond.

_Chapter Six_

Upon a high, desolate terrace looking eastward across descending waves of desert to where the Nile gleamed like the track of a snail under the long ramparts of the further shore, Serapion's cell stood half sunk in the loose sand. A mound of sand, driven up by the prevailing wind, buried its northern wall to within a few feet of the roof. The southern and western walls were less deeply buried, and on the eastern side a little trench which the hermit kept clear of the encroaching sand led up to the door. There was no sign of other habitation; the little hut stood alone, a solitary watch tower beneath which the illimitable desert extended north, east, and south, its pure unbroken desolation changing hour by hour from the blandest to the most sinister beauty, but always unreal, unearthly as some waste of the unpeopled moon.

The sun was dropping toward the west; soon it would dip below the sandy ridge that rose behind the cell, and Malchus sat in the sand, leaning his back against the south wall, and watched the slanting shadow which would soon inclose him. It was the moment when the long-hoped-for respite from the torrid heat of the day descends like balm upon the desert. Malchus sighed and leaned back his head against the warm stone wall. He felt as weak as if he were at the end of a severe illness, and when he drew in his breath his head, filled with a strange dizziness, seemed to grow light and unsubstantial. The desert journey had been long and exhausting. With little interval for rest the hermit and his undesired disciple had toiled on through hours of torrid daylight and moonlit darkness, and it was night again when they reached their journey's end.