Part 7
An hour passed, then another, and by degrees, as a flower draws moisture from the soil in which it grows, his mind drank in something of the peace and silence which surrounded him. The shock had spent itself. He grew reconciled to the thought that he must leave Serapion. With the return of calm he could see more deeply into the hidden places of his spirit and he perceived that the days of stern discipline through which he had passed had planted in him a growing fervor, an aspiration which was becoming gradually more and more clear, as if the whole strength of body and soul were drawing itself together and fusing into one burning core. He felt, too, and mistook it for a virtue, the fanatic's pride in those mortifications of the flesh which in themselves are less than nothing. And as he fell to pondering again the hermit's life, the most arduous and the most exalted that man can pursue, his soul took fire and he longed to submit himself to the fiercest rigors of which man is capable. In the intensity of his emotions he rose to his feet and stood upright with glaring eyes and hands crossed upon his breast. The life he had chosen lay visibly before him, a ravaged waste beset with hunger and thirst and parching heat, with foul beasts and devils and the hidden terrors and torments of endless nights, and at the end of it that high Paradise of green boughs through which the wings of archangels moved like great lilies of scarlet and gold about the ineffable throne of God. From the wilderness around him he reached out his arms toward that remote salvation, struggling toward it across the obstacles that clogged his steps. But in a moment the vision had faded and he stood again englobed in the parched and glaring gold dust of the sandy hollow. In the exaltation of his dream he had staggered forward in the loose sand, and now he stood blindly wondering which of the two worlds was the real one, telling himself that this world of sand and heat which was so often present to his mind was but a ghost, and that the true reality was that spirit world to which the soul ascended only in the rare moments of divine ecstasy. As the sun dropped into the west and the material world melted again into the nightly holocaust, he knew that he stood on the edge of eternity and looked for a moment through the veil of things seen into the unspeakable mystery beyond; and as he turned back toward Serapion's cell, walking through the sunset as the three holy children walked through the fiery furnace, he felt that his mind had grown stern and unshakable as adamant....
When Serapion heard that Malchus was resolved to take upon himself the burden of the hermit he was filled with gladness. "Blessed be God and the Lord Jesus," he said, "who have given you the strength to choose aright. Far be it from me now, my son, to discourage you. Know then that six miles from here, to the south, there stands a lonely cell. Fifty years ago the blessed Poemon built it with his own hands and lived in it till the day when he rendered his soul to God. He died in the act of prayer, for when two of the brethren found him his dead body was bowed before the crucifix. Last time I went by the cell it was falling into ruin; it is for you to rebuild it. To-morrow, then, at dawn we will set out and you shall take with you tools--for I have some here--to help you to restore the place. You shall take also a half of our loaves and the water skin that I have just filled."
"But I cannot take the water skin, my father, for you have no other."
"Do not trouble yourself about that. If it were not right that you should have it, I would not give it to you. But go out now and scoop away the sand from the south wall of this cell. You will find buried there an ax and a spade."
While Serapion had been speaking, that tremulous sense, half fear, half delight, which is the very spirit of life, had crept into Malchus's heart and, going out as Serapion had directed him, he found the ax and the spade and brought them into the cell.
"To-night," said the hermit, "you must sleep, for when we have need of the body we must minister to the body."
_Chapter Nine_
The air was gentle and cool when they started southward next morning an hour before the dawn, carrying the spade and ax, the water skin, and two large baskets full of loaves. The desert, pale and impalpable as mist, lay gray and smooth before them, and Malchus felt that he was withdrawing still farther from the living world of men and rivers and green things, pushing on into a realm void of all outward life, the very battle ground of the soul. His heart was firm; with every breath he seemed to inhale a courage and power that were not of this world. Soon the long sky line on their left had lightened to a pale, crystalline green which before long became so intense that the eastward facets of every stone, every sandy hummock and tuft of hard desert grass, gleamed with a wash of greenish light. Their own slowly plodding figures were modeled on the left sides, even to the smallest fold and feature, in green and gray, and sharp green edges danced upon the ax and spade and the burdens that rose and fell with their moving backs. And as if that light were sensibly cold, a cool breath from the east touched cheek and hand and leg. Then quite suddenly night had become day, for green had flushed into saffron and saffron into orange. Malchus looked behind him. Unbroken desert stretched northward; the high ledge on which Serapion's cell was perched, so humanly familiar to him that it had come to be for him the very center and meaning of the northern desert, was lost in formless desolation. But the south, in this morning light, held nothing sinister; its pure solitude wore the pale, flushed beauty of a flower, and as they tramped onward Malchus drew into his nostrils a subtle tremulous peace which thrilled both body and soul. He closed his eyes for a moment and it seemed that his brain tingled with its gentle intoxication. In the depths of his mind, like dusky weeds waving on the bottom of a dark pool, the knowledge that to-night and every night henceforward he would be alone, utterly alone in this empty world, sent up a bubble of pain into his consciousness, and for a moment he lived again through the emotions of his one solitary night in Serapion's cell. But soon his exaltation of mind had exorcised all human weakness and he strode along at the hermit's side, strong and full of courage. The sun grew fierce; their lips clove to their teeth and the spittle turned thick in their mouths, and as they moved stubbornly on they were surrounded by the acrid fume of their own sweat.
It was still early when Serapion pointed to a hill not far ahead of them. Gaunt and bare, it rose above the plain like a ruined city which the desert had swallowed. But there had never been any city there; it was primeval rock and sand, and century by century the winds and rains were eating it down to the level nonentity of the desert.
Serapion stretched out an arm. "Upon that eastern slope," he said, "a broken rock juts from the smooth line of the hill."
Malchus shaded his eyes with his hand. "Yes," he said, "I see it, midway between the summit and the level ground."
"That is the cell of the blessed Poemon," said Serapion. "In half an hour we shall reach it."
Malchus stared at the small tooth-like projection, and in face of the iron reality his heart sank. How willingly at that moment would he have bound himself to tramp on forever through the hot sand at Serapion's side. Vain wish, for step by step the cell became more real, more inescapable. Soon it would reach its full stature and swallow him forever....
Like two great vultures about a foundered ewe, Malchus and Serapion, the only moving things in a motionless world, paced about the cell, examining it carefully and scarring the virgin face of the sand with their footprints. The cell, like Serapion's, was a small square divided by a partition into an outer chamber and a small inner oratory. The eastern wall, which had contained the door, had fallen into ruin, and with it the roof had collapsed, and a part of the other walls, but the oratory was still intact, though it was half filled with drifted sand which, year by year, had been blown in through the doorway and window.
"Here, my son," said Serapion, "is a refuge already prepared for you. See how God has preserved the inner room, which is the place of prayer, for a sign to you that however much the outer man is afflicted and maimed, the soul within is a refuge which no power can destroy."
Malchus took up the spade and, going into the cell, began to shovel the sand from the oratory. It was hard work for a body weakened by long fasting, and as he labored the sweat ran down his body and fell from his face in drops into the sand. He labored all morning and on, with flagging strength, into the afternoon; but before he had half cleared the chamber he was breathless and exhausted. Meanwhile Serapion had been scooping away the sand outside the cell with his hands and had brought to light some of the stones of the ruined wall and also a wooden door and a great earthenware trough. They rested for a while in the shadow of the cell and ate and drank a little, "for," Serapion said, "when the body labors for the soul it is worthy of its hire. To-morrow," he continued, "you must pile these loose stones into a heap ready to hand for rebuilding, for if you do not the sand will soon bury them again. But, as you see, we have found none of the old roofing. The thatch has long since been scattered by the winds and who knows what has happened to the fallen beams. But two miles westward from here there is a grove. It is the place of which I told you, where there is a spring at which I fill my water skin. There you can cut some new beams for your roof and gather reeds or grass for the thatch. There, too, you will find fallen palm leaves for your weaving. Take up the ax and we will set out now. There I shall leave you, for I must go back to my cell. There is no wind, and will not be to-day or to-night, so you will easily find your way back here by following our footprints. But first let us move the loaves and water skin into the oratory and set up the door to close the entrance."
When this had been done, Malchus and Serapion set out slowly through the burning sand.... Malchus stood alone under tall palm trees whose fans wove a shady roof overhead. There were other trees, too, and parched herbage and spiny thickets. The ground was strewn with fallen palm leaves and here and there a fallen tree or a broken branch. The pool of the water spring was parched dry; withered leaves stuck like scabs to its white stones. Not a breath stirred. A silence more awful than the open silence of the desert held the place under a spell. Malchus felt himself crushed by the weight of its solitude. Serapion had just left him, carrying with him a great bunch of dry palm leaves which he had collected for his weaving, and Malchus, standing there alone, felt that there was no longer any reason for living. For some minutes he stood immovable, lost in a mournful revery; then with a great effort he flung off his oppression as if it had been a physical burden and took up the ax.
He chose a fallen bough of suitable thickness and began to lop off the twigs and then to hack it into equal lengths. The wood was hard and the loud ring of the ax broke profanely on the silence. He cut three roof timbers; it was the most he could carry; and he realized for the first time how many journeys to the grove he would have to make before he had collected enough wood to cover his roof. Now he hoisted the three timbers on to his shoulders, and, straightening his back, began to move away. Burdened as he was, his feet plowed deeply into the loose sand and several times he had to throw down the timbers to ease his bruised shoulders.
By the time he had come within the sight of his cell the light was reddening toward sunset. The scene before him reminded him of that other sunset when Serapion had gone away to fill the water skin. The same process would repeat itself now--the brief glaring holocaust of earth and heaven, and then the ashen death which so quickly followed it, and Malchus remembered the grim wraith which had taken substance before his eyes out of the sand. But Serapion had warned him not to allow his mind to indulge in idle imaginings, and, having thrown down his burden, he began to collect together some of the scattered stones of the ruin into an orderly pile. But before he could do much the light faded and he lifted away the door from the entrance of the oratory, went in, and, having set up the door again behind him, began to pray. It had been a strenuous day, and body and soul thrilled with a sense of accomplishment. He prayed easily and joyfully, asking for strength and blessing in the life that lay before him.
As the rolling tracts of desert stretched every way from the small point of earth which was his cell, so, it seemed to Malchus, his future life stretched forward into the years, clear and smooth from the moment in which he stood. He confronted it calmly, and a sense of greatness--the greatness of time and of space and the great spaces of the spirit before which the other greatnesses are as nothing--filled his soul. He rose refreshed from his prayer, and having eaten a loaf he lay down to sleep, for Serapion had warned him that during the period in which he labored daily at the rebuilding of his cell it would be necessary for him to take more food and sleep than at other times.
Throughout all that time Malchus lived contented, his energy divided between prayer and hard bodily labor. His body was healthy with the daily toil and his mind, sufficiently occupied by the work, kept clean and limpid; the turbid sediment of past miseries, vain regrets, and tormenting desires, had sunk away into unconsciousness. The cell growing daily before his eyes, the difficulties of inexperience confronted and solved, the expeditions to the grove for wood and later for stones--for he used up all the stones he could find near the cell and still needed more--kept his life free from monotony, and it was not until, after many weeks, the work was nearing completion that he remembered that the life he was living was not the hermit's life, but only the preparation for it. Then he began to look forward with something like fear to the day when all would be finished, for then there would again be a great emptiness in his life. Then he would stand face to face with himself once more and it would need all his strength to live worthily in the sight of God. Then would come an end, or almost an end, to his journeys to the grove and his life outside his cell, for Serapion had told him that the hermit must never leave his cell except in case of necessity. Malchus knew that the life he was leading at present was not in itself profitable, for though it protected him from evil, it did not enable him to advance in spiritual excellence. It was a life apart from good or evil, like the life of an animal: and, thinking how calm and even pleasant it had become to him, he remembered how Serapion had said that it was not well, except for a very little while, for the soul to be at rest.
That night he awoke in sudden fear with the sense that evil was close to him, and next morning he saw that the sand round about his cell was pitted by many footprints. They were the footprints of cloven-footed creatures. One of them, larger it seemed than the rest, had entered the doorless outer chamber and had stood at the very door of the oratory, and Malchus, knowing that the powers of evil were drawing closer about him, thenceforward forced himself to work and pray more strenuously and to eat and sleep less.
_Chapter Ten_
And with the end of the labor of building came the end of contentment; for now all the easy purposes had gone out of his life and there remained only the high purpose of the hermit, too remote and difficult, it seemed, except for the rare moments of ecstasy. For some time he lived sunk in a profound depression. His body, deprived of healthy labor, rose up and tormented him. He prayed for long hours both day and night, but no comfort came to him from his prayers and it seemed to him that time had swept onward and left him stagnating, body and soul, in a shallow pool. His cell became hateful to him, and the weaving with which he tried to combat idleness was now a joyless drudgery. He felt nothing of that spiritual zeal which he had hoped would come to him when he had finally laid aside all worldly cares. Far from it. His life grew torpid and inert, lower than the life of the lowest beasts. His soul was an empty husk, his body vile, and his mind, emptied of all living occupation, began more and more to lose itself in the past. Old memories crowded about him and imprisoned him in their ghostly being and it was only by a fierce and exhausting watchfulness that he was able to drive them off. But they took revenge upon him by returning to him in his sleep, and he would wake horror-stricken from long rambling dreams of feasts and, worse, of sudden meetings with Helena or one of his earlier loves. One night Helena stood close beside him and touched him, sending a shudder through his flesh, half rapture and half terror, and he awoke suddenly with the sense of her penetrating every bone in his body. His cell was dark and cold as a tomb; a terrible silence held the desert and he felt the invisible presence of evil waiting breathless to fasten upon him. He sprang up and, beating his breast with his clenched fists, he prayed with a loud voice to shut out the unendurable silence. Could it be that in the sight of God a man was responsible even for his dreams? The violence of his nature was roused once again. By a great effort he threw off the deadly torpor which oppressed him and resolved to submit himself to a still more rigorous rule of life. Thereafter he ate only once in two days and slept for three hours only in forty-eight. He left his cell only once, at dawn, for his need, and when he did so he covered his face with his cloak for fear that the beauty of the world should weaken his spirit; and, that no opening should be left through which idle thoughts and waking dreams could assail him, he set himself an unalterable routine of recitation, prayer, meditation, and manual labor.
So he lived for many weeks; but in vain. For even when he had so schooled his body that his mouth and belly had almost ceased to clamor for water and food, his mind tormented him by urging him continually to go out from his cell, and whenever he ate or drank, the evil spirit of unrest tempted him, whispering, "Sip a little more water and eat another small crust of bread, for when these are finished it will be necessary for you to go out and seek more." But one morning, when only three more loaves remained, he opened the door of his cell and found a sackful of loaves leaning against it; and he took in the loaves, understanding that they had been sent for a sign that he must not leave his cell. But next day, when he was weaving, he finished the last of the palm leaves, and the spirit of unrest said, "Now at least you must go out, for unless you collect more leaves you will be without work for your hands." But Malchus hardened his resolve and, taking the largest mat he had woven, he picked it to pieces and so provided himself with enough material for many days' work. But soon he had finished the last drop of his supply of water and the spirit of unrest within him was glad, because now he would have to go to the grove to draw water, since man cannot live for long without water. But Malchus was strict with himself and determined that he would wait for a whole day without water, so that he might discover beyond doubt if it was God's will that he should go out of his cell. And throughout the next day no water came; his lips and tongue were parched and even the little water in the trough had been sucked up by the heat, so that he could not soak the leaf strips for his weaving. Then joy sprang into his heart and he took down the water skin and went out into the sunlight.
The day was still mild and it was a relief to move his cramped limbs and to gaze once again into the pure, unconfined freedom of the desert. The air was clean and cool against his skin and he recalled that moment in the green hollow when he had lowered himself slowly and rapturously into the pool. His progress was slow because of the deep, powdery sand and the weakness of his body, but it had now become natural to him that the ground on which he walked should always be sand, and he plodded on undistressed till the delightful green of the grove came in sight, and then took him to its shadowy heart. The spring, as he had expected, was flowing again. Where the white, parched stones had been, a crystal basin stood brimful, and the spell of the water had called up a fresh leafy fringe about it with flowers springing up among the green. Sprays of silver bubbles twirled up through the dark, clear, solid water. It was as if the spirit of peace and coolness had taken form in a crystal. Malchus sat down by the spring and wept. He made no attempt to restrain his tears, but allowed them to flow on, finding a relief in them as though all the hard and stubborn things in his heart were melting away. After he had sat there for a long time he rose and filled the water skin and, laying it down by the spring, he began to collect the fallen palm leaves. And as he roved from palm tree to palm tree with his eyes continually on the ground, the pleasure-lover in him kept asking him why he should not always live in this grove and why Serapion should not live there, too. What had they gained by living solitary in the barren desert that they could not have gained by living here? Then the fanatic in him showed him to himself as the great saint depending on no earthly support whether of human love, earthly beauty or pleasant food and drink; and, thinking of the weeks during which he had lived in solitude and of the exiguous diet he had endured, he grew reconciled to his arid life, for was he not already of that company of chosen souls whose lives are beautiful in the sight of God?
He had collected enough palm leaves, and now he raised his eyes from the ground. He had wandered a long way from the spring, and, hoisting the bunch of leaves on his shoulder, he turned and began to make his way back to it, for there he had left the water skin. When he reached the spring he was astonished to see a man sitting beside it. His hair was grizzled; he was almost an old man. Two newly skinned pelts lay on the ground beside him. He had laid them with the inward sides uppermost to dry in the sun. The livid surfaces shone like polished granite and flies buzzed loudly about them.
"Where do you come from?" Malchus asked him, "and how long have you been in the desert?"
"I am a hunter, as you see," the stranger replied, "and I have been in this country for eleven months. During all that time you are the first man I have seen."