CHAPTER XI: THE LAURA AGAIN
Not a sound, not a moving object, broke the utter stillness of the glenof Scetis. The shadows of the crags, though paling every moment beforethe spreading dawn, still shrouded all the gorge in gloom. A windingline of haze slept above the course of the rivulet. The plumes of thepalm-trees hung motionless, as if awaiting in resignation the breathlessblaze of the approaching day. At length, among the green ridges of themonastery garden, two gray figures rose from their knees, and began,with slow and feeble strokes, to break the silence by the clatter oftheir hoes among the pebbles.
'These beans grow wonderfully, brother Aufugus. We shall be able tosow our second crop, by God's blessing, a week earlier than we did lastyear.'
The person addressed returned no answer; and his companion, afterwatching him for some time in silence, recommenced--
'What is it, my brother? I have remarked lately a melancholy about you,which is hardly fitting for a man of God.'
A deep sigh was the only answer. The speaker laid down his hoe, andplacing his hand affectionately on the shoulder of Aufugus, askedagain--
'What is it, my friend? I will not claim with you my abbot's right toknow the secrets of your heart: but surely that breast hides nothingwhich is unworthy to be spoken to me, however unworthy I may be to hearit!'
'Why should I not be sad, Pambo, my friend? Does not Solomon say thatthere is a time for mourning?'
'True: but a time for mirth also.'
'None to the penitent, burdened with the guilt of many sins.'
'Recollect what the blessed Anthony used to say--"Trust not in thine ownrighteousness, and regret not that which is past."'
'I do neither, Pambo.'
'Do not be too sure of that. Is it not because thou art still trustingin thyself, that thou dost regret the past, which shows thee that thouart not that which thou wouldst gladly pride thyself on being?'
'Pambo, my friend,' said Arsenius solemnly, 'I will tell thee all. Mysins are not yet past; for Honorius, my pupil, still lives, and in himlives the weakness and the misery of Rome. My sins past? If they are,why do I see rising before me, night after night, that train of accusingspectres, ghosts of men slain in battle, widows and orphans, virgins ofthe Lord shrieking in the grasp of barbarians, who stand by my bedsideand cry, "Hadst thou done thy duty, we had not been thus! Where is thatimperial charge which God committed to thee?"'.... And the old man hidhis face in his hands and wept bitterly.
Pambo laid his hand again tenderly on the weeper's shoulder.
'Is there no pride here, my brother? Who art thou, to change the fate ofnations and the hearts of emperors, which are in the hand of the King ofkings? If thou wert weak, and imperfect in thy work--for unfaithful, Iwill warrant thee, thou wert never--He put thee there, because thou wertimperfect, that so that which has come to pass might come to pass; andthou bearest thine own burden only-and yet not thou, but He who bore itfor thee.'
'Why then am I tormented by these nightly visions?'
'Fear them not, friend. They are spirits of evil, and therefore lyingspirits. Were they good spirits they would speak to thee only in pity,forgiveness, encouragement. But be they ghosts or demons, they must beevil, because they are accusers, like the Evil One himself, the accuserof the saints. He is the father of lies, and his children will be likehimself. What said the blessed Anthony? That a monk should not busy hisbrain with painting spectres, or give himself up for lost; but rather becheerful, as one who knows that he is redeemed, and in the hands of theLord, where the Evil One has no power to hurt him. "For," he used tosay, "the demons behave to us even as they find us. If they see us eastdown and faithless, they terrify us still more, that they may plunge usin despair. But if they see us full of faith, and joyful in the Lord,with our souls filled with the glory which shall be, then they shrinkabashed, and flee away in confusion." Cheer up, friend! such thoughtsare of the night, the hour of Satan and of the powers of darkness; andwith the dawn they flee away.'
'And yet things are revealed to men upon their beds, in visions of thenight.'
'Be it so. Nothing, at all events, has been revealed to thee upon thybed, except that which thou knowest already far better than Satan does,namely, that thou art a sinner. But for me, my friend, though I doubtnot that such things are, it is the day, and not the night, which bringsrevelations.'
'How, then?'
'Because by day I can see to read that book which is written, like theLaw given on Sinai, upon tables of stone, by the finger of God Himself.'
Arsenius looked up at him inquiringly. Pambo smiled.
'Thou knowest that, like many holy men of old, I am no scholar, and knewnot even the Greek tongue, till thou, out of thy brotherly kindness,taughtest it to me. But hast thou never heard what Anthony said to acertain Pagan who reproached him with his ignorance of books? "Which isfirst," he asked, "spirit, or letter?--Spirit, sayest thou? Then know,the healthy spirit needs no letters. My book is the whole creation,lying open before me, wherein I can read, whensoever I please, the wordof God."'
'Dost thou not undervalue learning, my friend?'
'I am old among monks, and have seen much of their ways; and among themmy simplicity seems to have seen this--many a man wearing himself withstudy, and tormenting his soul as to whether he believed rightly thisdoctrine and that, while he knew not with Solomon that in much learningis much sorrow, and that while he was puzzling at the letter of God'smessage, the spirit of it was going fast and faster out of him.'
'And how didst thou know that of such a man?'
'By seeing him become a more and more learned theologian, and more andmore zealous for the letter of orthodoxy; and yet less and less lovingand merciful--less and less full of trust in God, and of hopefulthoughts for himself and for his brethren, till he seemed to havedarkened his whole soul with disputations, which breed only strife,and to have forgotten utterly the message which is written in that bookwherewith the blessed Anthony was content' 'Of what message dost thouspeak?'
'Look,' said the old abbot, stretching his hand toward the Easterndesert, 'and judge, like a wise man, for thyself!'
As he spoke, a long arrow of level light flashed down the gorge fromcrag to crag, awakening every crack and slab to vividness and life. Thegreat crimson sun rose swiftly through the dim night-mist of the desert,and as he poured his glory down the glen, the haze rose in threads andplumes, and vanished, leaving the stream to sparkle round the rocks,like the living, twinkling eye of the whole scene. Swallows flashed byhundreds out of the cliffs, and began their air-dance for the day; thejerboa hopped stealthily homeward on his stilts from his stolen mealin the monastery garden; the brown sand-lizards underneath the stonesopened one eyelid each, and having satisfied themselves that it wasday, dragged their bloated bodies and whip-like tails out into the mostburning patch of gravel which they could find, and nestling together asa further protection against cold, fell fast asleep again; the buzzard,who considered himself lord of the valley, awoke with a long querulousbark, and rising aloft in two or three vast rings, to stretch himselfafter his night's sleep, bung motionless, watching every lark whichchirruped on the cliffs; while from the far-off Nile below, theawakening croak of pelicans, the clang of geese, the whistle of thegodwit and curlew, came ringing up the windings of the glen; and lastof all the voices of the monks rose chanting a morning hymn to some wildEastern air; and a new day had begun in Seetis, like those which wentbefore, and those which were to follow after, week after week, yearafter year, of toil and prayer as quiet as its sleep.
'What does that teach thee, Aufugus, my friend?'
Arsenius was silent.
'To me it teaches this: that God is light, and in Him is no darkness atall. That in His presence is life, and fulness of joy for evermore. ThatHe is the giver, who delights in His own bounty; the lover, whose mercyis over all His works--and why not over thee, too, O thou of littlefaith? Look at those thousand birds--and without our Father not one ofthem shall fall to the ground: and art thou not of more value
than manysparrows, thou for whom God sent His Son to die?.... Ah, my friend, wemust look out and around to see what God is like. It is when wepersist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our ownimperfections, that we learn to make a God after our own image, andfancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns ofHis light and love.'
'Thou speakest rather as a philosopher than as a penitent Catholic.For me, I feel that I want to look more, and not less, inward. Deeperself-examination, completer abstraction, than I can attain even here,are what I crave for. I long--forgive me, my friend--but I long more andmore, daily, for the solitary life. This earth is accursed by man's sin:the less we see of it, it seems to me, the better.'
'I may speak as a philosopher, or as a heathen, for aught I know: yet itseems to me that, as they say, the half loaf is better than none; thatthe wise man will make the best of what he has, and throw away no lessonbecause the book is somewhat torn and soiled. The earth teaches me thusfar already. Shall I shut my eyes to those invisible things of God whichare clearly manifested by the things which are made, because someday they will be more clearly manifested than now? But as for moreabstraction, are we so worldly here in Scetis?'
'Nay, my friend, each man has surely his vocation, and for each somepeculiar method of life is more edifying than another. In my case, thehabits of mind which I acquired in the world will cling to me in spiteof myself even here. I cannot help watching the doings of others,studying their characters, planning and plotting for them, trying toprognosticate their future fate. Not a word, not a gesture of this ourlittle family, but turns away my mind from the one thing needful.'
'And do you fancy that the anchorite in his cell has fewerdistractions?'
'What can he have but the supply of the mere necessary wants of life?and them, even, he may abridge to the gathering of a few roots andherbs. Men have lived like the beasts already, that they might at thesame time live like the angels--and why should not I also?'
'And thou art the wise man of the world--the student of the heartsof others--the anatomiser of thine own? Hast thou not found out that,besides a craving stomach, man carries with him a corrupt heart? Manya man I have seen who, in his haste to fly from the fiends without him,has forgotten to close the door of his heart against worse fiends whowere ready to harbour within him. Many a monk, friend, changes hisplace, but not the anguish of his soul. I have known those who, drivento feed on their own thoughts in solitude, have desperately castthemselves from cliffs or ripped up their own bodies, in the longing toescape from thoughts, from which one companion, one kindly voice, mighthave delivered them. I have known those, too, who have been so puffed upby those very penances which were meant to humble them, that they havedespised all means of grace, as though they were already perfect, andrefusing even the Holy Eucharist, have lived in self-glorying dreamsand visions suggested by the evil spirits. One such I knew, who, inthe madness? of his pride, refused to be counselled by any mortalman--saying that he would call no man master: and what befell him? Hewho used to pride himself on wandering a day's journey into the desertwithout food or drink, who boasted that he could sustain life for threemonths at a time only on wild herbs and the Blessed Bread, seized withan inward fire, fled from his cell back to the theatres, the circus, andthe taverns, and ended his miserable days in desperate gluttony, holdingall things to be but phantasms, denying his own existence, and that ofGod Himself.'
Arsenius shook his head.
'Be it so. But my case is different. I have yet more to confess, myfriend. Day by day I am more and more haunted by the remembrance ofthat world from which I fled. I know that if I returned I should feelno pleasure in those pomps, which, even while I battened on them, Idespised. Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singingwomen; or discern any longer what I eat or what I drink? And yet--thepalaces of those seven hills, their statesmen and their generals, theirintrigues, their falls, and their triumphs--for they might rise andconquer yet!--for no moment are they out of my imagination,-no moment inwhich they are not tempting me back to them, like a moth to the candlewhich has already scorched him, with a dreadful spell, which I must atlast obey, wretch that I am, against my own will, or break by fleeinginto some outer desert, from whence return will be impossible!'
Pambo smiled.
'Again, I say, this is the worldly-wise man, the searcher of hearts! Andhe would fain flee from the little Laura, which does turn his thoughtsat times from such vain dreams, to a solitude where he will be utterlyunable to escape those dreams. Well, friend!--and what if thou arttroubled at times by anxieties and schemes for this brother and forthat? Better to be anxious for others than only for thyself. Better tohave something to love--even something to weep over--than to become insome lonely cavern thine own world,--perhaps, as more than one whom Ihave known, thine own God.'
'Do you know what you are saying?' asked Arsenius in a startled tone.
'I say, that by fleeing into solitude a man cuts himself off fromall which makes a Christian man; from law, obedience, fellow-help,self-sacrifice--from the communion of saints itself.'
'How then?'
'How canst thou hold communion with those toward whom thou canst show nolove? And how canst thou show thy love but by works of love?'
'I can, at least, pray day and night for all mankind. Has that noplace--or rather, has it not the mightiest place--in the communion ofsaints!
'He who cannot pray for his brothers whom he does see, and whose sinsand temptations he knows, will pray but dully, my friend Aufugus, forhis brothers whom he does not see, or for anything else. And he who willnot labour for his brothers, the same will soon cease to pray for them,or love them either. And then, what is written? "If a man love not hisbrother whom he hath seen, how will he love God whom he hath not seen?"'
'Again, I say, do you know whither your argument leads?'
'I am a plain man, and know nothing about arguments. If a thing be true,let it lead where it will, for it leads where God wills.'
'But at this rate, it were better for a man to take a wife, and havechildren, and mix himself up in all the turmoil of carnal affections, inorder to have as many as possible to love, and fear for, and work for.'
Pambo was silent for a while.
'I am a monk and no logician. But this I say, that thou leavest not theLaura for the desert with my good will. I would rather, had I my wish,see thy wisdom installed somewhere nearer the metropolis--at Troe orCanopus, for example--where thou mightest be at hand to fight the Lord'sbattles. Why wert thou taught worldly wisdom, but to use it for the goodof the Church? It is enough. Let us go.'
And the two old men walked homeward across the valley, little guessingthe practical answer which was ready for their argument in Abbot Pambo'scell, in the shape of a tall and grim ecclesiastic, who was busilysatisfying his hunger with dates and millet, and by no means refusingthe palm-wine, the sole delicacy of the monastery, which had beenbrought forth only in honour of a guest.
The stately and courtly hospitality of Eastern manners, as well as theself-restraining kindliness of monastic Christianity, forbade the abbotto interrupt the stranger; and it was not till he had finished a heartymeal that Pambo asked his name and errand.
'My unworthiness is called Peter the Reader. I come from Cyril, withletters and messages to the brother Aufugus.'
Pambo rose, and bowed reverentially.
'We have heard your good report, sir, as of one zealously affected inthe cause of the Church Catholic. Will it please you to follow us to thecell of Aufugus?'
Peter stalked after them with a sufficiently important air to the littlehut, and there taking from his bosom Cyril's epistle, handed it toArsenius, who sat long, reading and re-reading with a clouded brow,while Pambo watched him with simple awe, not daring to interrupt by aquestion lucubrations which he considered of unfathomable depth.
'These are indeed the last days,' said Arsenius at length, 'spoken of bythe prophet, when many shall run to and fro. So Heraclian has actuallysailed for Ita
ly?'
'His armament was met on the high seas by Alexandrian merchantmen, threeweeks ago.'
'And Orestes hardens his heart more and more?'
'Ay, Pharaoh that he is; or rather, the heathen woman hardens it forhim.'
'I always feared that woman above all the schools of the heathen,' saidArsenius. 'But the Count Heraclian, whom I always held for the wisestas well as the most righteous of men! Alas!--alas! what virtue willwithstand, when ambition enters the heart!'
'Fearful, truly,' said Peter, 'is that same lust of power: but forhim, I have never trusted him since he began to be indulgent to thoseDonatists.'
'Too true. So does one sin beget another.'
'And I consider that indulgence to sinners is the worst of all sinswhatsoever.'
'Not of all, surely, reverend sir?' said Pambo humbly. But Peter, takingno notice of the interruption, went on to Arsenius--
'And now, what answer am I to bear back from your wisdom to hisholiness?'
'Let me see--let me see. He might--it needs consideration--I ought toknow more of the state of parties. He has, of course, communicated withthe African bishops, and tried to unite them with him?'
'Two months ago. But the stiff-necked schismatics are still jealous ofhim, and hold aloof.'
'Schismatics is too harsh a term, my friend. But has he sent toConstantinople?'
'He needs a messenger accustomed to courts. It was possible, he thought,that your experience might undertake the mission.'
'Me? Who am I? Alas! alas! fresh temptations daily! Let him send bythe hand of whom he will.... And yet--were I--at least in Alexandria--Imight advise from day to day.... I should certainly see my wayclearer.... And unforeseen chances might arise, too .... Pambo,my friend, thinkest thou that it would be sinful to obey the HolyPatriarch?'
'Aha!' said Pambo, laughing, 'and thou art he who was for fleeing intothe desert an hour agone! And now, when once thou smellest the battleafar off, thou art pawing in the valley, like the old war-horse. Go, andGod be with thee! Thou wilt be none the worse for it. Thou art too oldto fall in love, too poor to buy a bishopric, and too righteous to haveone given thee.'
'Art thou in earnest?'
'What did I say to thee in the garden? Go, and see our son, and send menews of him.'
'Ah! shame on my worldly-mindedness! I had forgotten all this time toinquire for him. How is the youth, reverend sir?'
'Whom do you mean?'
'Philammon, our spiritual son, whom we sent down to you three monthsago,' said Pambo. 'Risen to honour he is, by this time, I doubt not?'
'He? He is gone!'
'Gone?'
'Ay, the wretch, with the curse of Judas on him. He had not been with usthree days before he beat me openly in the patriarch's court, cast offthe Christian faith, and fled away to the heathen woman, Hypatia, ofwhom he is enamoured.'
The two old men looked at each other with blank and horror-strickenfaces.
'Enamoured of Hypatia?' said Arsenius at last.
'It is impossible!' sobbed Pambo. 'The boy must have been treatedharshly, unjustly? Some one has wronged him, and he was accustomedonly to kindness, and could not bear it. Cruel men that you are, andunfaithful stewards. The Lord will require the child's blood at yourhands!'
'Ay,' said Peter, rising fiercely, that is the world's justice! Blameme, blame the patriarch, blame any and every one but the sinner. As ifa hot head and a hotter heart were not enough to explain it all! As if ayoung fool had never before been bewitched by a fair face!'
'Oh, my friends, my friends,' cried Arsenius, 'why revile each otherwithout cause? I, I only am to blame. I advised you, Pambo!--I senthim--I ought to have known--what was I doing, old worldling that I am,to thrust the poor innocent forth into the temptations of Babylon? Thiscomes of all my schemings and my plottings! And now his blood will be onmy head-as if I bad not sins enough to bear already, I must go and addthis over and above all, to sell my own Joseph, the son of my old age,to the Midianites! Here, I will go with you--now--at once--I will notrest till I find hint, clasp his knees till he pities my gray hairs! LetHeraclian and Orestes go their way for aught I care--I will find him,I say. O Absalom, my son! would to God I had died for thee, my son! myson!'