Part 6

When he had finished weaving the basket, Malchus returned to the cell and found the hermit standing by the table, which was covered with many little loaves of bread and a jar of oil. "By God's mercy," he said, "Brother Apollonius has brought us enough food for thirty days, and so I shall be spared the journey to the monastery in Nitria, which is the nearest place where bread can be obtained. That brother was once a merchant in Alexandria, but, being desirous to lead the holy life, he left his business and departed to Nitria; and since he was unable either to learn any handicraft or to watch and fast to any great degree, he took upon himself to go at regular intervals to Alexandria and buy there the things required by the brethren; and besides this, he carries pomegranates and raisins and eggs and other needful things to them that are sick among the hermits that live round about Nitria. Nor is that all; for when that is done, he goes forth, as now, to visit the hermits who live many miles beyond, bringing to them the things without which a man cannot live. But for this he is unwilling to receive payment, doing it for God's sake, and often when I have been absent from this cell, or praying in the oratory, I have afterward found food set upon the window-sill or left at the door. So has Brother Apollonius found for himself a way in which he can serve God and benefit the faithful."

While he was speaking, Serapion had taken from the sack the loaves which still remained there. There were only three of them. "See!" he said to Malchus. "If Brother Apollonius had not come to-day, I should have had to set out for Nitria to-morrow." Then with Malchus's help he dropped all the new loaves into the sack till it hung from its peg full-bellied as the carcass of a hind which a hunter has slung by the feet from the wall of his cabin.

"But the water skin, too, is almost empty," said Malchus.

"To-morrow," replied Serapion, "I am going to refill it."

He spoke as if it were an easy matter, and Malchus supposed, therefore, that there must be some spring not far off. But Serapion told him that the nearest spring was five miles away; "and this spring," he said, "is dry for two months of the year, and when last I filled the skin from it, on the day before I started for Alexandria, I saw that it was beginning to run dry. It will be quite dry by this time and so I must go to the river."

"But the river is many miles away," said Malchus.

"It is fifteen miles from here," answered the old man, "and as there is no moon at present I shall have to start early so as to reach the river before nightfall. At the first hint of daylight I shall start back, and before sunset I shall be here."

"I will come and help you," said Malchus, "for the skin, when full, must be a heavy load."

But the hermit would not allow Malchus to accompany him, and next day, when Malchus had finished his prayers, he found that Serapion was gone and the skin was gone from the wall, and, running out-of-doors, he espied, far off, the small figure which had grown so familiar to him during the long journey from Alexandria. Already it was halfway across the plain which extended, smooth as a sea of milk, from the foot of the steep descent beneath him to the next great wave of the desert. For a long time Malchus stood watching it with a strange sinking at the heart. Then he turned to his plaiting, and when he looked again Serapion had vanished over the next crest.

For the first time Malchus was face to face with utter solitude, and at the sense of it a profound loneliness descended upon him. He discovered now that, even during the hours when he had been unable to see or hear Serapion, he had always, by some unknown sense, felt the comfort of his companionship. For little by little, without being aware of it, he had fastened upon the old man all those bonds of human affection which he had so ruthlessly severed when he fled from Alexandria. Serapion had become for him his father, his mother, and his dear friend, and, deprived of him, he was deprived of everything. Everything but himself, for now, as in a fever, he had become sharply aware of himself as a thing separate from all else. At the same time vivid memories of his former life began to assail him. One after another they flowed through his mind, each with its own keen emotion; and last of all the face of Helena flashed upon his inner eye with the heart-shaking clearness of reality. He cried out aloud and, not knowing what he did, sprang to his feet and ran into the cell, as though to take refuge from some specter or prowling beast. There he fell on his knees and hid his face in his hands. The discovery that he had not, after all, escaped from the past, that he bore it still stored up within him and ready to spring to life and torture him in his moments of weakness, filled him with bitter discouragement. Crouching there immovable, he prayed passionately for strength, and after a while strength came to him and he rose from his knees and returned to his weaving. He had by now become so expert that he could work blindfold, and he sat now with his head cloth drawn over his face to keep off the flies which through the hot hours incessantly plagued every living thing. But now the hot, veering note of their buzzing brought comfort to him, for it raised a screen of sound between him and the huge silence which inclosed him, and soon the busy monotony of manual labor lulled his heart into resignation, and at last even into contentment. He was completing the largest mat he had yet made, and when he had finished the last rows he secured the loose ends and, standing up, spread it out on the sand. The texture was beautifully close and even. Malchus heaved a sigh of accomplishment and surveyed it with pleasure. But as he did so there came into his mind the occasion on which he had first completed a mat of sound workmanship and had carried it proudly to Serapion. Serapion had examined it carefully, nodding his head many times over it, and had then, without comment, spent an hour in pulling it to pieces. The ruthless destruction of his handiwork had pained Malchus deeply, and for the first time his heart had risen in revolt against the hermit; but he had controlled his tongue and had gone out and lain for an hour sulking behind the cell. By that time his pride had submitted and he was at peace again. In the evening Serapion had recited many times over the verses which contain that command of the Lord Jesus, "Set not your affections upon things of the earth"; and when Malchus had learned it by heart Serapion had set him to meditate upon it, "and do not forget, my son," he had said, "that to cast off the world of men is nothing, for unless a man has also cast off the smallest earthly delight, his soul is still of this world." And next morning, as Malchus went out to work, Serapion had looked up and said to him, "You have now mastered the art of plaiting leaves."

That memory now rose to rebuke his pleasure in the mat which he had just finished, but this time he did not revolt against the rebuke; he only lamented his failure to progress in the attainment of perfection, and in order to purge from his heart the smallest taint of pride, he sat down and sternly set himself to pick the beautiful mat to pieces. It was a slow process, not only because the mat was large, but also because he was taking care not to strain the ribbons, for he was determined to weave them into baskets. And when at last he had quite undone the work of many days, he set to work at once on the first of the baskets and worked on until it was finished.

By that time the sun had set. Arched immeasurably above the earth, the sky, deep beyond deep, was one great flame of scarlet. Blood-red and luminous, the desert from horizon to horizon blazed it back until in that world of sultry, all-pervading glow the very air seemed red. It was a moment of mysterious intensity, the symbol, it seemed, of that august sacrifice in which the divine blood had been poured upon the world as an atonement for the sins of man. Malchus, caught into a holy exaltation, stood with uplifted arms; the huge gray crucifix of his shadow extended down the long slope from his feet. "Redeem me also, O blessed Lord," he prayed; "burn out my sins with the fire of thy blood."

The moment faded. The face of the desert grew ashen-gray and soon the earth-floored, heaven-roofed furnace had changed to a pallid and desolate cavern from whose emptiness the chilled heart recoiled. Malchus lowered his arms, and as he did so a sudden draught fluttered past him and within a few feet from where he stood a little whirlwind troubled the sand. It grew, and soon a grim and threatening wraith rose upward to a giant's height and towered above him. The whirling sand had gathered itself into a human body. Malchus, speaking aloud the name of Christ, made the Sign of the Cross, and the life went out of the wraith and it collapsed into dust before his eyes. But the sight of it had troubled him. It was as if it had arisen, hard upon the divine mystery of the sunset, as a sign of that other mystery in which are hidden the powers of darkness and evil. A cold spasm shook his body, and, gathering together his work, he retreated into the cell and by the last vestiges of twilight ate his single meal of bread and salt.

He ate slowly because he dreaded the long, empty hours of darkness which lay before him; for now, for the first time, he realized complete isolation. He stared at the darkness of the cell and it seemed to him that it was thick and spongy, a gloom grown palpable. But the silence was more terrible than the darkness; its infinity and its horrible imminence shriveled his soul; its intensity seemed every moment to be on the point of concentrating into some terrible climax. Later in the night, he knew, it would break in those shrieks and howls which were even more harrowing than silence itself, and he found himself dreading the moment when the first howl should come. Yet silence and darkness and all the fears of the night could do nothing, he well knew, against the perfect safety to be found in prayer, and his mind turned to the oratory. But he felt a strange reluctance to move. If he moved, he felt, he would loose all these waiting terrors that had gathered silently about the cell. He controlled himself sternly and, standing up, repeated aloud the psalm which begins, "Save me, O God; for the waters are come even unto my soul." The sound of his own voice reassured him and the silence moved farther away.

When he had repeated the psalm twice he groped toward the oratory and paused for a moment in the doorway. Though he heard and saw nothing, he knew that the oratory was not empty. He waited with beating heart, and suddenly a fluttering, intermittent draught smote his face with soft, impalpable blows. Fear clutched at his heart, a fear which leaped up into horror at a sudden pattering of hands against the bars of the little window. With his right hand Malchus made the holy sign upon the darkness and repeated again the same psalm. When he had finished it he paused again, and now he could feel that the cell was empty. Then with a braver heart he entered and began his nightly prayers and meditations, and as he prayed aloud a warm sense of security settled upon him. Only when he stopped praying and fell to meditating did the terrible silence return, pouring in upon him through the window, welling coldly through the doorway, bringing a sense of the draughty void that encompassed him, till his soul struggled as if in deep water, and again he took refuge in prayer. He prayed until his words stumbled into nonsense and his body swayed like a tree in the wind, and, feeling that he was going to fall, he leaned against the wall of the cell. The relief of even that little respite sent a wave of luxurious numbness through his body; his heavy eyelids dropped for a moment as if by their own weight. Then slowly the dark form of a human head took shape upon a background of cloudy gold. It cleared, brightened, took on color and life, and the face of Helena gazed at him with shining eyes and parted lips of kindling passion. His own lips moved and he muttered her name with slow, incredulous delight.

Instantly long, derisive shrieks broke in upon the silence, then other shrieks, and others still, filling the night with an infernal chorus which roused into ghastly life the boundless void about the cell. Malchus sprang shuddering from his dream. His body was cold with fear, for he was convinced now that these nightly shrieks were in very truth the voices of those powers of evil which tower up out of the sand or lurk expectant in the silence, waiting for the moment when one of the faithful, flagging in the endless contest, should yield to them an accession of power. He prayed loudly and fervently, and soon the shrieks grew fainter, dying in bayings and howlings miles away down the wilderness.

For the remainder of the night Malchus, beating his breast and wrestling with bodily exhaustion and flagging spirits, persevered in prayer, remembering what Serapion had told him of the power of prayer. For once, Serapion had said, when he and the Abba Macarius had stood by night in the open desert, they had seen a great column of light set upon a hilltop and reaching up into the sky, and the blessed Macarius had told him that it was the prayers of the monks in the great monastery of Nitria ascending to the everlasting throne. And at last, as if in answer to Malchus's prayers, a gray, watery light filled the cell and the little window became a gleaming square, pure and clear as the gleam on a silver shield. Malchus, cold and exhausted, felt his soul thrilled by the blessed redemption of daylight, and, dragging his stiffened body into the outer chamber, he opened the door and went out.

Below him the infinite gray desert lay dwarfed and shrunk beneath a vast sheaf of golden light springing far beyond the blue hills which bordered the Nile. It was as though the prayers of all faithful throughout the length and breadth of Egypt had been gathered together into the east. And somewhere, an invisible atom in the lower grayness, Malchus knew that Serapion must at that moment be toiling back to him under the heavy load of the water skin.

_Chapter Eight_

With the return of day Malchus's mind grew calm again and he remembered the terrors and struggles of the night as a man remembers vaguely the fever that has left him. Throughout the day he followed scrupulously the appointed order of his life, but as the day declined the prospect of Serapion's return roused in him an expectancy so keen that he could with difficulty prevent himself from running down the hill and starting off across the plain to meet the old man. But this, he knew, would displease him, and he resolved that Serapion should find him faithfully observing his duties. He denied himself even the relief of glancing from time to time across the desert for a first sight of him; but he could not quell his inward excitement, and as he sat weaving with the head cloth drawn over his face his nerves were alert and tense for the moment of Serapion's return. Even if he neither saw nor heard him, he would know instinctively that he was near. But hour followed hour, and Malchus, having finished another basket, lifted his cowl and saw that the sun was setting. He gathered together his work and moved with a heavy heart toward the cell. When he reached the door he saw Serapion standing within; he had prepared the table for a meal. Malchus's heart leaped into his throat; his impulse was to fling away his work and throw himself at the old man's feet. He checked the impulse and waited, humble and expectant, for Serapion to turn and greet him, and when he neither turned nor spoke Malchus shrank back, chilled into himself. As he laid away his work the old man's quiet voice broke the silence, "Have you eaten, my son?" and when Malchus replied that he had not, Serapion brought another loaf from the sack and they ate in silence.

Next morning, an hour before the dawn, Malchus heard the voice of Serapion calling to him from outside. He rose from his knees and, going into the outer chamber, opened the door of the cell. It was as if he had opened a door on eternity. Before him lay the bare, dead world of a burned-out planet, an ancient world, crushed and exhausted by the weight of never-ending time. At these twilight intervals mankind with its loves and angers and unearthly ideals shrank to a thing of no more account than a heap of stones or a fume of sand endlessly agitated in the eddies of a pool. Even the face of the world itself lost its separate reality and became a part of the expression of some divine or infernal mood, a mystery never to be fathomed by the mind, but waking in the soul an untranslatable echo. Malchus stood for a moment thrilled and appalled before he moved out to the edge of the terrace where the figure of the hermit stood so lifeless and immovable that Malchus could hardly believe that the voice which had called him had issued from it. So intense was the silence that it seemed that, when at last it broke, the whole of creation would be shivered with it.

But when Serapion spoke his voice was no more than a mote in the silence. "My son," he said, "the time has come for you to depart."

Malchus made no reply. Ever since Serapion had relented toward him and taken him into his cell he had deluded himself with the hope that he might remain always with the old man as his servant. Serapion had become a vital part of his life and the sudden discovery that he himself had no part in the life of Serapion chilled him like the presence of death. His only friend was casting him off and he felt that the heart in his body was shriveling and dying. Serapion did not even care what happened to him, for he added nothing to the order that he must depart; and though he had from the first refused to advise Malchus in his choice of the hermit life, saying that such a choice must come from within and not from without, yet now this indifference cut him to the heart. He did not know how careful Serapion's treatment of him had been from the beginning, nor that many of the things which had seemed to be accidental occurrences had been arranged by the old man in order to show Malchus to himself and give him the needful experience out of which to make his choice. He did not even perceive that before sending him away Serapion had given him a foretaste of that absolute solitude which was the hermit's daily life, and then had waited until that experience had sunk into his mind and spread its influence there.

He stood for a long while silent with lowered head, struggling with his emotions. Then, laying aside all shame, he fell on his knees before Serapion. "Let me stay with you, my father," he begged. "Let me be your servant."

He knew that his request was craven, that he had weakly fallen away from that unshakable resolve with which he had clung to the hermit despite the fierce repulse he had received. Where was that courage now? He waited like a fawning animal for the hermit's reply.

Serapion replied without looking at him, "He who is a servant himself has no need of a servant."

"Where, then, shall I go?" whined Malchus.

"Your own heart must tell you where to go, my son. But, for to-day, go out into the desert a mile or two from here and spend the time till nightfall in meditation. Then return and tell me what you have decided, for to-morrow you must depart."

Malchus turned away in despair and began to descend the sandy slope to the plain below. At the bottom he turned to the right and followed the base of the hill which wavered away southward. It was strange, after having lived so long within the little circle about Serapion's cell, to be wandering alone in the boundless waste of sand. The forty days which he had passed with Serapion seemed to include the whole of his life. The rest was dreams, for the days of his former life had receded far behind him. But the sufferings through which he had passed had left him feeble and over-sensitive, and as an uprooted plant seeks roothold in the smallest handful of earth, so his broken spirit clung to Serapion. Faced with the necessity of severing himself again from human ties, he shrank and shuddered as a sick man shudders at the knife.

He had fallen unconsciously into the patient, unhurrying tread which he had learned during the long desert journey. The line of the sandhills now curved westward and, finding a shady hollow carved out of the hill face, he turned into it. A clatter startled the hollow; he had disturbed two great birds which towered suddenly upward and vanished over the sandbank, leaving behind them a heap, half skeleton, half carrion. Malchus hesitated. He had long grown accustomed to do violence to his old fastidiousness, but he remembered that, now that the birds were gone, the carrion would become a gathering place for swarms of flies, and so he turned aside and, finding another hollow a little farther on, he entered it and sat down.

It was the first time in his new life that he had set himself to meditate on earthly matters. Hitherto his meditations had been a discipline of the soul, teaching it to ascend by means of prayer into the presence of God. Now, having shared for a while the life of a hermit, he must decide whether he had the will and the strength to follow that life himself. But he had made that decision once for all when he had left Alexandria and followed the steps of Serapion. Why, then, should he decide again? But Malchus knew that in truth he must decide again, for the first decision was made in ignorance and under the impulsion of a great storm of passion. Now he must decide out of experience and a quiet mind. Yet in his present mood how difficult it would have been to decide if he had not had that first impetuous decision to fire his will. For now his will was weak and passive, he could, of himself, have willed nothing positive. That strong craving for a life of self-discipline and fierce austerity had died down now to a mere acquiescence; now he felt strongly only about the things from which he recoiled, for from his old life he still recoiled with all the force of his being.