Valeria’s senses swam. To give her strength she bought bread with the coin yet in her hand, and ate it as she walked. It was now night, and the ways no longer crowded. She was moving toward the Appian Gate. Carts rumbled by, then passed horse-litters or palanquins borne by slaves;there were people afoot, revellers and tavern-haunters, Romans on graver business, freedmen, slaves, beggars, men and old women, women of the streets and those who accompanied them. Dogs prowled, there came strains of music, flashes from swinging lanterns, stretches of vacancy and darkness. She passed a shop with a painted rose for sign and entered one of those spaces of what seemed dark emptiness. Seemed, for presently she heard before her stumbling feet and sobbing breath, and overtook a woman, going also toward the Appian Gate.
There appeared to be no one abroad here in the night-time who concerned them or gave them notice.... They came together to the gate, not closed yet for the night. A press of folk of the poorer sort were going and coming. A keeper stopped the two, demanding their business. “I sell flowers,” said the woman, “and an order has gone wrong! I must out to my patron’s to see about it. Why, you know me—Lais the Greek!”
It seemed that that was true. The man struck her upon the shoulder, took a kiss and let her by. He thought that the other woman, who seemed old and bent, was of her company. The two passed to Rome without the walls. The night was powdered with stars. Before them stretched the Appian Way with the great tombs upon it, and backward upon either hand, rich gardens and villas. There was far to go to Cæsar’s house upon this road.
Lais the Greek sobbed again. “What doubt that I too die, and my shop? And what care I now if we do?”
Valeria walked in silence. She looked before her, but truly she was seeing the waste field outside the Sabine Gate.
But it seemed that the other woman had passed onesilence and not come to another. “Men—men! Dæmons are their gods and dæmons are themselves!... It is true what the Christians say.... So many years ago, Valerian, but all things find us out!”
“Valerian,” said Valeria. “Lais the flower-seller....Where are you going, Lais?”
“To Cæsar’s villa. You do not look old any longer. I have seen you before. Who are you?”
“Valeria is my name.... Why are you going to Cæsar?”
“Valeria! Valeria!I might have guessed that! You are going, too, to beg, beg, beg with your face against Cæsar’s feet!—Oh, your daughter, too! Oh, that vestal for whom they dig a chamber under ground—”
“Where is your daughter, the dancer?”
“Valerian’s daughter? In danger. Are not all things that are Valerian’s in danger? I, a poor freedwoman, I too shall perish, as will you, Valeria.... But it is these daughters. Ai! Ai! The daughters of women!”
They made on. In the dimness the flower-seller, coming against some obstruction, stumbled and was brought to the ground. Valeria stooping helped her rise. The touch drew each to each. They stood for a moment under the stars, clinging close, each to each.
“How,” asked Valeria, “is thy daughter in danger?”
“Was spawned an intelligencer, a spy! He swelled and lives to hunt out all who have blood the colour of Valerian’s! Some neighbour told him.... Went a word to the wolf-dogs, ‘Iras the dancer has blood the very colour! Perhaps in secret Valerian cherishes her, and will be hurt by her hurt, as by the vestal’s—’”
“Oh-hh!”
“What does woman’s moaning do?... They took my girl, saying that she was to dance at Cæsar’s feast.—O Hecate, hear me! We thought it only a palace feast with men and women and toying and dallying! I kissed her and laughed when she went. That was yesterday. No, it was the day before yesterday. Yesterday it was that I heard through Priscus of ruin and death, blooming for all that ever were called Valerian’s—blooming so for the dancer Iras!”
“O Flavia, thy woe!—O the flowers of this garden!”
“Then I went with Priscus whom I had nursed of a fever and who is a Christian and has a brother who serves a knight that is of Cæsar’s band. So by littles we learned—but that brought it to this very sunset.... So I heard that she was taken to that villa where devil’s ill is done. Cæsar is there, and men of Cæsar’s bosom!”
They had come to cypress trees by a huge and marble tomb. Lais’s limbs failed her, she sank upon the earth and stretched her arms along it. Valeria, standing, regarded the huge shadow of the night. Her lips moved. “Women against men—crowned men.... Helpless—helpless! Where they will ravin, they will ravin. Where are our arms, where are our minds, where are our souls?... And some they make courtesans, and some they make vestals. And the one they feed upon, and they cry for more women for food. And the other must be pure, and if she breaks their law—once, once—they slay her, making for her a terrible death! And each way they themselves are lawless and cruel. And where is any advocate, and any god?”
Lais rose from the earth—they went on together—they had miles to go. Hurrying all they might, lurking in shadows of tombs while other night-farers went by, thenight was late when they came to the grove that was Cæsar’s, and the wall that enclosed a vast garden, and the long gleam, far from the road, showing that country-house, lighted still, revelling still!
They would not go to the gate and the lodge with the prætorians there—that would be almost certainly never to pass! They sought where they might climb the garden wall. A stream went by, close below the walls, flowing to Tiber. Turning from the road, they went along this water, moving out of the moonlight, under the shadow of the wall, seeking some stout twist of the over-covering ivy. What they should do when they reached the garden, when they reached the house where spread before every door would be guards and slaves, they did not know. They knew that what they did must be called hopeless. Yet was there a wildness of hope. They did not think at all of themselves. One saw only Flavia, the other Iras. They themselves were already dead, and Valerian was dead, but there were the daughters....
They came, still seeking through the ivy, to a door in the wall, clamped with iron. They tried it, but it was fast, resisting all their strength. Lais leaned against it. “I tremble, I tremble!... O Iras! thou wast truly my all!”
They went a little farther, still creeping by the wall. The bank here was steep, the stream turbid and swollen from a recent storm among the mountains. It went by them with a hollow sound, and the moon whitened the wave. Something lay beside the bank, caught and uplifted by a great stone, half in, half out of the water. When they came to it they saw that it was the naked body of a woman.... Lais put her arms beneath and raised it wholly upon the bank. There was no life, and there hadbeen many a wrong inflicted before life went. Lais began to laugh. “Iras! Get up and dance, Iras! Dance for Cæsar, and every man his friend!”
When Valeria saw that there was no moving her, nor making her attend, nor drawing her farther, nor winning her to go back, nor help for her, nor any sense that might be appealed to, she left the flower-seller there, the dead girl in her arms. She herself went on, feeling among the ivy for that twisted stem to climb by. She found such an one, put hand and foot to it and mounted to the top of the wall, crept over it and dropped into the garden beneath. She was in a laurel grove with a white statue rising from the middle, then in a long alley of like trees. The branches arched into a low roof, the moon was shut out, she had a sense of suffocation, she felt the chamber underground by the Sabine Gate. Her hands, locked before her, beat the dark. The alley widened, she came out into the light and saw and heard Cæsar’s house, flaming with lamps, yelling with drunken mirth.
Slaves stopped her ere she reached the door. Her will, one-pointed, strove to bear all through. “I have a message for Cæsar! Woe is, if he does not hear it!”
“Who let her pass? She came on a wind from the mountains.—She is a sibyl!—Cæsar may flay us if we do not let her in.—Call the Captain of the Guard!”
He came—a man who had been bred upon the hills in sight of Rome.
“I have a message for Cæsar. It imports him to hear!”
“Take the mantle from her.—Valeria, wife of Valerian, I guess that message!”
Yet she saw Cæsar, and flung herself at his feet. He was drunken and sated. “Take her away! Send her to Rome.Let her see the vestal punished who defiled the House of Vesta!”
“Cæsar! My message—”
The emperor’s eyes closed. “There was left an order to bring that same Valerian to the Mamertine. When she has seen the vestal buried, fling her with Valerian there!”
Dark was that chamber of the Mamertine where at the last she came to Valerian. She came with white hair though she was not old. They sat side by side, all things being now so equal, and feared not the coming death. When finally daggers and ropes were brought them they took the keen blades in their hands with a smile.
“How much have we been through together!” said Valerian. “This little, low door also!”
“We are greater than we know, and have been longer together than we remember. Farewell, Valerian, until I see thee again, and may it not be long!”
Each marked and drove the dagger into the vital place. The blood gushed, their hands clasped, their eyes darkened.
Themighty oak forest, the mighty forest of beech and fir and chestnut, birch and ash, stretched north and south and east and west. Clearings there were, but the clearings soon dipped into forest. The clearings were rifts in a clouded heaven, sunny patches on a shadowed ocean. Fine threads of light, rude roads, tracks, paths, tied clearing to clearing. Timber houses rose from the open spaces. Sometimes there rose only one house, sometimes two or three together, more seldom quite a number grouped in one great clearing. The houses were of great untrimmed logs, the roofs of thatch. They were as rude as the time in the northern forest; a few houses, many huts. Fields there were, irregularly sown, and great meadow stretches by the streams for the numerous cattle. From the air an eagle might see that all these clearings, great and small, made a constellation, and that there were other constellations linked to the first by some type of road driven across leagues of forest. Taken all together, they indicated a tribe or nation of northern folk. Off in the rounding mist where the forest tracks broke, beyond leagues of smooth, succeeding forest, abode other and similar nations. And all the tribes and nations, though they were so similar, spent much of their time in warring against one another. To the southward, beyond the eagle’s horizon, far and far and far beyond, were the provinces of Rome, and the power of Rome, and farther, farther, farther south, Romeitself. And all the constellations, and all the barbarian tribes and nations hungered after the fatness thereof.
The eagle, over-flying an oaken and a beechen world, might look down upon a clearing beside a broad and limpid stream, and upon the house of Terig, chief of a Gothic tribe. The house was large and low, built of fir-wood, heavy-walled, well-roofed, a great place according to the barbarian mind. It had dependent huts in number, it looked forth upon the river where were fish, and upon fields of wheat and rye, and upon pasturage over-roamed by a vast herd of cattle, and upon the forest filled with hunters’ fare. And into its great hall came, every day, to feast with Terig, a hundred Gothic men and women. And when Terig sent forth and called a folk-meet came, from clearings far and near, hundreds to the green field before the house where grew an oak so old no bard could guess when it was born. And when Terig said war came to Terig Oak all of the nation that might walk or be brought in the great ox-wagons.
It was a shield-clashing and a war-like people, tall and strong of body, both men and women. For virtues it had courage and chastity, great personal liberty side by side with a chieftain-loyalty often carried fantastically far, comrade-loyalty, a considerable feeling for truth, and some perception of justice. There held a northern and barbarian reverence for women. It had imagination, and was a worshipper of the powers of nature, vaguely personified. It had iron, but little silver and gold. It had not letters. Its bards made some amends for that. Now and again came contact—antennæ touching—with the Roman provinces to the south. Then was brought news of strange powers and gifts! There were Goths who hungered for these, as therewere many Goths who hungered for other wealth of Rome.
Sometimes the forest was dark and heavy with gloom, and sometimes it was wholly an airy gold. Sometimes it stood breathlessly silent, and sometimes it whispered and spoke. Alleda, the young maiden, hostage from a Vandal tribe, brought up since childhood in the house of Terig, liked it silent and liked it speaking. She and Alaran, the son of Terig, old to a day with her, liked it in all its ways. They wandered together in its aisles and caverns, purple and green and brown and gold, and, kneeling, drank from its springs and streams, he for pleasure drinking from her cupped hands, and she from his. They lay in the sunshine, they fled from storms; in the open glades or from the bare hilltop they looked for the rainbow.
Alleda wore a chemise of white linen and a skirt of woollen dyed gentian blue. She had shoes of doeskin and a mantle of the wool. Now her hair hung loose, and now she braided it in two long thick braids that fell to her knees. Alaran had a tunic of soft leather, brown like the wood in autumn, and leather shoes with thongs that crossed and recrossed and were tied at his knee. He had a cloak of red, and a woollen fillet around his head to hold an eagle feather, and in his belt a sheathed knife. Alleda had been given by the Vandal chief her father to Terig when she was little, pledge of quietude on the part of the Vandals. For ten years she and Alaran had roamed the forest in company. It seemed to them that they had been always together. Sometimes they quarrelled, but oftener they were good friends.
Terig, looking at them upon a time, said to himself, “If the Goths and Vandals marry there may be a son who,one day, shall rule them both!” The idea pleased him, and he turned it over and over, drinking mead out of a great silver cup that, passing from hand to hand, had come to him from Rome, sitting beneath his oak tree of whose age no bard had record. That was when Alleda and Alaran were very young. Terig, hunting and fighting and judging, sleeping and eating and drinking, let several years go by. Terig’s wife was dead, but his sister, Fritha, headed the women and gave him, when he asked it, good advice. Terig, a good giant two thirds of the time, and the other third a monstrous, ravening wild boar, went his ways and let Alleda and Alaran play another while. When they were children no longer, but boy and girl, Terig sent an embassy to the Vandal chief. His wisest warrior went and the bard who ate at Terig’s table, and with them a band of shield-clashing young men. When they returned, bringing with them certain great ones from among the assenting Vandals, Terig summoned a folk-meet. Alleda and Alaran were betrothed, under the Terig Oak, in the presence of Goths and Vandals. When they were eighteen they should be wed.
Alleda and Alaran, now youth and maiden, roamed the forest or sat beside the river and bending over saw two fair creatures in the glassy flood. They had a boat named Black Swan, and they rowed in this where they would. They fished together, they found the honey hives in rocks and ancient trees, they told each other all their adventures of body or spirit. At sunrise they might be heard singing: when evening came, or on weather days when men and women crowded into the hall and the fire was heaped with wood, they sat as near each other as they might. Emberic the bard sang loudly of Gothic glory, Gothic heroes andheroines. Alleda and Alaran, listening, kindling, sought eyes with eyes, soul with soul.
Terig, chancing to observe them one day, said to himself: “He is too much with her, too little with the young men. That is not as it should be. I cannot live forever, and he must learn to be king in his turn.”
Terig turned it over before he slept that night. In the morning he summoned Alleda and Alaran and gave his Gothic commands. Henceforth they were less and less alone together.
Alaran hunted with the young men, played at games of war with the young men, went with chief men on Terig’s errands to neighbouring constellations. He grew in stature and breadth of shoulder and strength of arm. His voice deepened, his mind changed. Terig Oak saw in him leader, saw in him king, when Time should beckon Terig.
Alleda sat beside Fritha and span, or walked beside the river with young women, or roamed with them the forest, or roamed alone. More and more she went alone. Thrown back upon herself she found within herself companions. But she loved Alaran and missed him. And once they met unawares by a forest stream, and all the woods were full of light, and a thrush was singing like a freed spirit. Moved they knew not how, they fled each to the other’s arms. “Alleda!”—“Alaran!” Then came Terig, hunting with his son, and they sprang apart. And, presently, sitting alone, she heard, deep in the wood, Alaran’s horn.
In the autumn of that year Terig, hunting afar in savage woods, had a boar’s tusk driven through his thigh. His men brought him to Terig Oak on a litter of boughs. There he must lie abed, the wound doing ill. It continuedunthriving, though Fritha had healing wisdom, and though the priests came from the sacred grove and made incantations above it. Terig lay upon bear-skins, swearing and fevered and growing weak, and the wise women tried and the wise men, but none could heal the wound. Terig saw an ox-death before him, and shut his eyes in a sick distaste.
At this moment came Victorinus to the Goths.
Valentinian II was emperor, Syricius pope. Victorinus had held a bishopric, but zeal for the conversion of the heathen ate sleep from his eyes and flesh from his bones and from his heart willingness to rest in the cushioned places of the Church. He resigned his bishop’s crook, took a staff of oak, tied to it a cross, drew about him ten of his spiritual sons, and with them fared from the Gallic city, till then the scene of his labours. He fared northward, crossed after many days the Rhine, fared onward, northward, and eastward. He was not for tribes and nations who might hear daily of Christ and Paul; he was for barbarians who had never heard or heard but the faintest rumour. He was told of a Gothic people that had not moved with other Goths into Dacia. Victorinus turned his face in that direction. At last he and his following came to islands in the forest ocean, came to Goths, came to Terig Oak.
He stood in his Roman dress, with the oak staff and the bound cross advanced, and ranged behind him the ten Christian men and three barbarian converts, who served him for interpreters. Not tall, in his sixtieth year, he was dark and spare and filled with fire, had eyes that glowed and a voice of gold and honey. He would speak with the king of these home-staying Goths.
“Terig is sore wounded and ill in his bed.”
“O heathen folk, so much the more should we speak with your king! Else he may die unsalved.”
Alaran cried, “O Roman, are you one-who-heals? A boar tusked him.”
“I have healing, young man,” answered Victorinus, “for direr wounds. Let me see him.”
“Come, then,” said Alaran. “Who heals Terig, what care I if he be stranger or home man?”
Terig lay on bear-skins, very grim, looking silently at his ox-fate. Staff in hand, Victorinus stood and regarded him, while in at the ample doorway crowded the bishop’s own following and the household of Terig.
Victorinus beckoned from the ten Probus, the Milanese physician. “Heal the flesh if you can, Probus. So we may sooner come to his soul.”
Probus the physician healed Terig the Goth, whereby Victorinus got permission to dwell in the forest hard-by Terig Oak, to fell trees and build for himself and his followers a house, and for his god a church. For the time being that was all he won. Terig said that he was well contented with his own gods, and yawned whether Victorinus spoke persuasively, or with a solemn and threatening air. But the newcomers might use the forest. Did not the deer and the bear do that? Moreover, Terig would send men to help in the hewing and building. And Terig would not let interfere the priests of the sacred grove.
Victorinus and the ten Christians and those who would aid them cut down great trees and trimmed logs and built a chapel in the forest and beside it a lodge for themselves. By the time it was done came the winter, with snow and ice upon the river, and with howling storms. Terig sent the men from the south skins of beasts to keep them warm,and they made a fire in the middle of their great hut, and the smoke went up through a hole in the roof. Sometimes barbarians came and sat with them about their fire, and sometimes they went into Terig’s hall. Victorinus worked with his hands and his brains. He learned that winter the tongue of the Goths, for he saw that interpreters knew not how to give gold and honey, fire and light. He closely watched the barbarian life, seeking doors into their fortress. Meeting one day Emberic the bard, he asked instruction. At first Emberic scorned him and would not give it, then came the thought of imposing Gothic glory upon the Roman mind. Emberic nodded, sat beneath a fir tree and chanted the tribal praise. Warming to the task, he threw aside the bear-skin from his shoulders. The snow was coming down, and Victorinus, shivering strongly, looked with longing upon the discarded covering, but presently repented that weakness, tore himself from base desires, braced himself to endure hardness for the gospel’s sake. He sat in the snow and listened to Emberic. All in all, that winter, Victorinus did much, learned much. But all to whom he would speak, through his interpreter, or haltingly now with his own tongue, of Christ and his Bride the Church, broke away with the saying that Terig’s gods were their gods.... The priests of the grove came to see the lodge and the chapel. They were not many. He gathered that there had been a quarrel between Terig and them, and that they held their grove on sufferance. “O God, my God!” breathed Victorinus. “This is the time—this is the time! If the barbarian king were won, all were won! And though they be blindly won, thou wouldst, little by little, enlighten their blindness!”
The priests of the grove looked darkly upon him andhis ten, and upon their fair chapel and house, and spoke with contempt and with gestures of scorn. If they might they would have driven him and his men forth, burning what they had built; doubtless, if they might, would have seized and bound and slain them upon the grey stone in the middle of their twilight wood. But they might not do any of that for fear of Terig. Speak evil of foreigners and foreign gods they might and did. But Terig’s word stopped the ears of Terig’s men, drew the venom from the priests’ whispering.
The winter climbed toward spring. Suddenly flared war between Goths and a tribe of the Heruli. Terig and all his fighting men and Alaran his son quitted Terig Oak, marched, shouting and singing, through the forest. The women and the home men went with them a long way, but at last, parting, poured back to Terig Oak. Here Fritha ruled till Terig should return.
Now there were flowers in the forest, and unfolding leaves and the first singing of birds, the humming of bees, the passing of butterflies, and throughout the days sunshine and balm. Alleda roamed where she would, and now she dreamed of Alaran, and now she held converse with those late-found companions within herself. She did not name these, but they might be named “Love-of-Beauty,” “Longing-for-Wisdom.”
The timber lodge was built, the timber church was built. The altar was there, the space for worshippers, the table for communicants, the benches for listeners to the sermon. But save for Victorinus and the ten and the three converted whom they had brought with them from the Rhine, there were no worshippers, no communicants, no listeners. To Victorinus the chapel ached like his heartfor converts, for even one—one! “One, Lord, one!—for ofttimes one bringeth many!”
Victorinus walked in the forest, praying as he walked. Growing impassioned, he no longer prayed aloud, and after awhile no longer moved about, but kneeled where he found himself, at the hemlock edge of a brown dell in the wood. With clasped hands, with moveless limbs, he struggled, he wrought for that blessing. “One, Lord, one—!”
“Roman—Roman! Roman—Roman!”
Victorinus raised his eyes. There was a woman seated beneath the hemlocks upon the other side of the dell. He rose to his feet. She made no movement to come to him; she called him across to her. The bishop in Victorinus felt injury, recoiled, whereupon the saint, likewise there, laid hands upon that arrogance. “A barbarian and a woman, Lord!... Am I not come to barbarians, and didst not Thou Thyself, signal in Thy lowliness, ofttimes speak first with women?”
Victorinus descended the brown bank upon which he had kneeled, crossed the dell, and mounted by huge roots of trees to where sat the woman who had called. Halfway over the distance he saw who it was—Alleda, the Vandal maiden, who was to be wed to Alaran, the son of Terig.
Victorinus’s heart leaped. His eye was quick, his wit was swift. “Lord, Lord, if I win her to Thee, may she not win her husband who shall be king of this people? Was that not what Patricius said, advising us who went to the barbarians to gain their queens? Lord, Lord, Thou who wishest the world to come to Thee dost not disdain to make Thy nest in women’s hearts!”
He mounted to the huge root, coiled upon itself like a serpent, making a seat for the Vandal girl.
“Roman—Roman!” she said. “To whom were you kneeling over there?”
Victorinus had now, in some sufficiency, the language of the questioner. And he had his voice of gold and honey, and his eloquence of the mind, and the fire that burned in him, and the light behind the fire. Alleda listened, and her eyes were wistful, for within, and that before Victorinus’s arrival, she had become the seeker. She listened, and when she rose to retrace her steps to Terig’s house she said, “I will come again and listen.”
“To-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
Day after day she turned her steps where she might meet the stranger with his message from a world out of this world. They met oftenest in the glade before the church, under trees where sang all the birds. The little timber building stood before them while Victorinus the bishop painted the Church, the spiritual Bride and Mother. He drew with strength and beauty, he painted with lovely colours; enthusiast, he was skilful to lift the soul into that fragrant air, to press to its lips the cup of sober inebriation. The chapel stood before them, the lodge and the garden that the ten brethren were making. Over all played the sunshine, sailed the white clouds.
“Where do you go?” asked Fritha of Alleda.
“I go to hear that Roman talk of his god. His god speaks to my heart more than do our gods.”
“Our gods are good enough for Terig and me.”
“I say naught against them,” said Alleda, “but I climb past.”
Victorinus preached Christ, leading her guardedly from height to height. With all his soul he would have her soul for his Lord. He saw that it was a deep soul and in need. He wished its individual salvation, and always, behind it, he saw looming tribes and nations, captured for Christ....
He preached Christ, and she listened with parted lips and deep eyes. She heard of a god who cared, and that she did not perish when she died. It came hauntingly, as though she remembered that, but had forgotten and now remembered again, vividly and eternally. He preached of sin, and she acquiesced. She knew that she sinned. He preached salvation, through the love of God, and because he thought fit not to dwell here upon the terrors of his doctrine, she read it to be through her love of God as well as through God’s love for her. She acquiesced; when she loved and practised good she had joy; not else. That joy was salvation. She was somewhat silent, not quickly and easily moved as were many converts of his acquaintance. Because of that seeming coldness, and because he found mind in her questions, Victorinus put his own mind fully and strongly to the work. From things she said of the gods of her people—to the Christian, dæmons—from processes of her thought that now and then she let him see—he found an undue expansiveness in her idea of good. He must prune away that wildness, bring into bounds that barbarian tolerance of ideas without kinship, show her the narrow way, the one lighted way. His will, his imagination, his genius worked; on all sides he laid siege to her soul to take it solely for Christ and the growth of His Church.
He took her in the spring-time, in her ductile youth, in the void and loneliness made by Alaran’s going. He tookher in a longing of her nature for what she knew not, save that it was higher than she had climbed, in an inward trying of the wings and straining of the vision toward some cloud-banded eyrie. He preached a subtile Stair, an unseen Wing. He preached Christ, and he saw the fire slowly kindle in her eyes, and her frame begin to tremble.
One day it came to him to speak of the women in the Church of his God. He told of holy women, pure in the faith, standing fast in good works, dividers of bread to the poor, nurses and consolers of the sick, visiting the captive. He told of maidens who would not wed, but, putting by the sweetness of the flesh, remained virgin, dearer so to their heavenly Lord. He told of women who were wed, who were mothers, who turning to Christ had, some the sooner, some after years of strivings unutterable, the joy of bringing husband or son to His fold Who was only safety, only joy. He told of martyr women, told at length their suffering and triumph, told of Blandina, Felicitas, Perpetua, and many another. He told of the women of Jerusalem, of the sisters of Lazarus, of the Magdalen, of the Mother of Christ. He found, drawn into this barque, that there was much that he must say of women. The Vandal maiden stood with her eyes upon the little church set in the violet aisle of the forest. Victorinus made an end of his relation and sat looking at his clasped hands. He had not before in mind drawn these women facts together. He was moved, thinking of his own mother, who in her arms had brought him to the Church, and of his mother’s mother, who had sealed her faith with her blood in the Diocletian persecution.
Said Alleda, “If it is Truth, I would persuade Alaran whom I wed.”
“O maiden!” answered Victorinus, “not alone yourlord who will be king of this folk, but through him this folk, this nation! Great would be your service, and dearly would Christ smile upon you!”
That was one day. Three passed before she came again. “Tell me now of the Soul Immortal, of Heaven, and of the Healing of the Nations!”
The flowers increased in number, the trees put forth their leaves, the ice melted from every sunken, shadowed pool, the host of birds sang from morn till eve. Victorinus the bishop, with the heart on fire, and the tongue of gold and honey, gained the convert for whom he prayed. He saw her tremble and burst into a passion of tears; he saw her lift herself from the earth where she had thrown herself, kneel and stand and lift her hands, her face, to the sky; he saw in her face the breaking light of an inner heaven.
Alleda bent before the altar in the chapel in the wood, Alleda confessed Christ. The ten brethren witnessing, Victorinus baptized her. It was done in secret, so many upon the face of the earth that yet was in the grasp of the Prince of the Powers of the Air being baptized in secret. One day it should be known....
It was Victorinus who advised that secrecy. Of all temporal things in this forest, he wished the marriage of Alaran and Alleda, and the continued love of Alaran for Alleda. Unknown to himself, he wished the death of Terig. If Alaran were king in Terig’s place, then might Alleda, when her woman’s wiles had wrought a yielding and propitious hour, then might Alleda, kneeling, say, “I am Christian: O lord and husband, become Christian with me!” Then might she bring Victorinus to him, and Alaran hearken as Terig had not, and all the Goths be baptized with their king. Victorinus dreamed so....
“Why do you look so happy?” Fritha asked Alleda. “Have you dreamed that Terig scatters the Heruli, and that Alaran can hardly be told from Terig?”
Alleda laughed. “I have dreamed that Terig and Alaran both shall come into a kingdom!”
She came still to the glade by the church to be further taught of Victorinus. He had great power over her; she gave him devotion who had brought her soul bread. If her reason murmured at aught he said, she reproached herself and rocked her reason to sleep. To so much her reason said, “It is so,” and she would give faith to the rest. He exalted faith, and she learned so to exalt it. He held it above all virtues, and she gave her hands, too, to holding it so.
Victorinus had now for her an affection, a solicitude. He found that she was too ready to laugh, too admiring of mere light and sun and motion, too filled with earthly life. “Lord, Lord, I confess to Thee that my lower man doth find pleasure in her so, but not my higher man, Lord! Let me teach her horror of this world, thought only of Thy Heaven! Let me show her the blackness of any here, the blackness of woman here, whom the Tempter first approached, knowing her weakness! Let me show her the filth and smallness of her soul, which yet Thou lovest and hast saved! Lord, Lord, let me make her only, solely, beggar for her soul and the soul of him who will be her husband, and the souls of this people!”
Now he taught of the Fall and Condemnation and of the Fire of Hell and Eternal Loss. Nor did he give what he taught metaphysical being, for here he erred himself, nor saw with any clearness what his words figured. But he used his eloquence, his age and subtlety, to press backher mind as his own was pressed back, to erect before hers as before his own an image of Consternation. The Vandal woman paled and stood transfixed. Hell ... Eternal Loss!
Back through the forest, shouting to victory, bringing spoil from the Heruli, came Terig and Alaran and the fighting men. All was rude joy at Terig Oak, joy and drinking, feasting and rest. Fighting men crowded into the hall or lay strewn like acorns around the oak; home people made a surrounding ring or pressed in and out. Emberic chanted deep and strong that victory, its incidents and its heroes. Now one warrior and now another shouted corroboration, or made a point and amended the song. Men, women and children held festival. The priests, coming from the grove, claimed sacrifice. Terig gave it from among the captured herds and prisoners. Terig Oak went in rude procession to the grove and circled the stone while the priests slew the victims, then returned to the tree and the mead-drinking. But Alleda did not go.
Alleda said to Alaran, “I will not!”
“If evil come to Terig Oak they will say, ‘Because one stayed away.’”
“Say as they will, I will not!”
“What reason?”
“O Alaran, if you will listen I will tell you—”
But Alaran was angered and would not listen. But he stood between her and Terig. “Let her be!” he said to Terig and Fritha. Alaran had fought the Heruli like the thunder god descending on that land. Moreover, he had planned warfare as Terig could not plan. Now he held before the folk their joining with the broad stream of the Goths and descending like the torrents after winterupon those famed, rich lands far to the south. Terig and Terig’s men gave Alaran what he would.
Alleda left the drinking, feasting, chanting, boasting throng in Terig’s hall and about the oak. She left the warrior-serving, laughing, triumphing women. She stole to the forest and to the glade by the church. “O my father!” she cried to Victorinus. “Christ is my Bridegroom! He is my All! You tell me that to keep sacred to Christ is man or woman’s Heaven and the service that they owe! You tell me that the blessed Paul was right when he said that to be virgin is better than to be wed. O my father! There is love for Alaran in my heart, but now is there higher love for Christ! I would cleave to Him and wed no man—”
“No,” said Victorinus. “No!”
Now he must show her that women might not always do as they would, but must serve high purposes which others devised. Somewhere in his nature he stood to worship the virgin in her, and strenuously in Gaul and in Italy had he preached virginity in man and in woman. But she must wed the king-to-be of this barbarous people, bring him and them to Christ, give them a prince who from the cradle should be Christian! “O God, who through winding ways bringest all to Thee, give me power to bind her to the horns of Thy altar—”
He made her sit before him, and through a summer afternoon he taught her her duty here. As the sun went down red, he ceased. She stood up, pale, but with eyes that glowed like the eyes of Victorinus. She raised her clasped hands, “O high God, high and most sweet! Hear me swear to Thee, that I will bring Thee Alaran and this Nation!”
Spring touched summer. Terig sat very long one evebeneath Terig Oak, his back to the huge bole, his tankard of mead beside him. Fritha, passing, turned aside to find out his dreaming. She touched his shoulder, then his brow, she looked closely, she laid hands over his heart. Then she cried loudly. “Terig! Terig!—Alaran!”
Terig was dead. All the Goths moaned greatly for him. They came from clearings far away, they filled the dark forest with chants of sorrow. The bards strung the strings of their rude harps, they sang Terig’s might and his glory and the might of dark Death. The priests of the grove played their part. A great pyre was built for Terig, at dusk it was kindled. All night the flames reddened the surrounding wood. Men and women circled the heap with cries and invocations.
Daybreak came, and the flames were gone, and the embers dying to ash. The fighting men raised upon their shields Alaran, son of Terig. They bore him so around Terig Oak. They dashed upon the tree mead and water and called it Alaran Oak. They seated Alaran in Terig’s chair, and for him clashed their shields and shook their spears. Men and women blended their voices in the shouting. Alaran was king of these Goths in Terig’s stead.
Alaran was tall and broad of shoulder, yellow-haired, with yellow hair upon his upper lip, with sky-blue eyes. When the shouting came to an end, he stood, and, spear in hand, promised to be as Terig. One week the folk feasted at Terig Oak.
Alaran and Alleda met by the riverside, over them willows and poplars, before them the wide stream. “Now I will that we wed,” said Alaran, “when the wheat is ripe, at the midsummer feast!”
“I will so, too!”
“You are fairer than ever you were,” said Alaran. “You stand in my heart, and it is bright flame and bright flowers around you!”
“As wheat and vines and rivers is my love for you and it has always been so!... But we must travel on, though we carry love in our arms—like a child, like a child!”
The grain ripened, the year came to midsummer. Men and women gathered to the marriage of the chief of these Goths and Alleda the Vandal. There came also, many leagues through the forest, chief men and bards of the Vandals.
Alleda came to the glade and spoke with Victorinus. “They talk around the oak of joining with other Goths and pouring south against your country!”
“The City of God is my country,” said Victorinus. “Our country-love is to bring souls to Christ.”
“The priests of the grove come to Alaran and persuade him to thrust out you and the ten brethren, and to tear down the church!”
“Wed him, besiege him with your spirit, win, and this little church shall give place to a great church, all this people hewing and building! But for me, have I not longed, O my Lord and God, to be counted among Thy martyrs?”
She came again after three days. Her eyes shone. “Alaran has pledged me that no harm shall come to you and the brethren, nor to my lovely church!”
“When thou art queen, child, thou shalt win him! He is further on the way than was Terig.”
She sat at his feet. “O my father, tell me of wedded life in the land that Christ trod, and the lands where His Church grows! Although virginity be the highest, still even the other must be more beautiful there than here.”
Victorinus kept silence for a little, pondering what he should say to this barbarian girl whom he had brought to Christ, for whom he felt affection, from whom he hoped nothing less than action that should turn forest thousands into Christians.
He thought it was more beautiful there than here. Here was a rude equality, a practical freedom of woman, stepping by the side of man, that grated harshly upon all his sensibilities. He never denied that the soul of woman was as valuable as the soul of man. That came from Christ; it must be; it was taken so. But Christ had been about the business of the City of God, and had given to Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s. Christ, saying naught of the matter, had therefore let rest with man, so long as man was upon this earth, man’s authority over woman. That was man’s due since he was God’s creature and woman but drawn from him in his sleep, his dream, as it were; man’s due since Eve had sinned and tempted Adam, and God had said,Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee!Christ had let that rest.As was fitting!said underneath the breath a man within Victorinus. Where Christ had said naught, Paul had affirmed.Yea! let it rest. It is as it should be!in effect had said Paul.—Victorinus’s mind dwelled upon the Jewish scriptures, and saw that all through it has been as it should be.
His mind returned to that Pagan life into which he had been born, which had flowed about him, which yet flowed. That Pagan life was in the power of dæmons—Jove, Apollo, Mercury, all dæmons! But even in that life God guided some things underneath, as it were through hidden ways. Splintered notions must have come, down brought from Eden and Noah’s time and Father Abraham, whirledacross in some wind to Greece and Italy. Even there existed some fitnesses in common life that the dæmons had not blasted. The subordination of woman in all places where the governing word must fall—that had come by the breath of God! Even in paganry the female dæmons weighed less, ruled in lower places than the male. Even the dæmons could not overturn the Eden word.
Victorinus’s imagination touched and tasted all the sweet humilities that in ages Eve had put on. He loved them in her; familiar they were and dear! This barbarous people in their northern clime, kept by dæmons huge, uncouth and dark, were even further than the old Pagan world from the Eden wind. Naught in them so honestly shocked, so scandalized him, as did that freedom in forest and field and house of the barbarian women. Hardly might it be said that they did not war; ofttimes he heard of them going in number with the men. That was barbarous, abhorrent! They were not now found among the priests, though it was said that it had been so. But there were prophetesses among them, greatly listened to. That might pass; it had been so in Bible land and other lands; so that they were curbed, and man ruled in the Church! But in these forests they gave their word in council; they with the men chose policies, laws and rulers. Victorinus’s mind recoiled violently. And outdoors and within they spoke freely as did the men; they held their own; they would or they would not! A king might rule men and women, though no further than they would; the priest of the grove might chain men and women with the dæmon’s chain; the old might claim reverence from the young. But man as man was not ruler, nor was woman as woman ruled.
Victorinus liked best the way to which he was used,liked it perhaps not wholly alone because he was used to it. Because he liked it best he truly thought it more beautiful. These forest ways were but more dæmon ways for entrapping souls! Pride was a horrible evil, and pride in woman most horrible.... He thought of his mother and sisters and all his women kindred, and their gentle virtues. In memory their ways caressed him, soothing, pleasing him. Man needed contrast, foil....
By now he had for Alleda a fatherly solicitude, affection. She was his convert, the soul saved—and the dedicated means to great ends. He thought now, sitting here pondering the matter, that he would make that which he had wrought as perfect as he could. He would plant Christ in the centre, and around flowers that should be of that Gardener’s garden—flowers of faith, humility and obedience. He would plant them in all the ways, earthly and heavenly, so that nowhere should the dæmons be able to approach, because the flowers’ beauty and fragrance should drive them back. In all the alleys of pride he would plant them.
His mind had over-travelled all this in much less time than it has taken to tell.
Alleda sat beneath a green and spreading beech, and before her across the glade rose the little church, and the house of the Christians and the garden that they worked in. She was nineteen. Her knees were bent, her head was bowed to the great and flowering Presence in her heart. She was not now inclined to look aside at things brought forward to see if they truly glowed and warmed in that Presence, or if the Presence extended not to them its mantle of light. She was in an attitude to take them on authority, and she was not perfected in disentangling authorities.
“Hearken to me, maiden,” said Victorinus, “and though I preach the right abasement of woman, doubt not that I love you and that Christ loves you!... I would tell you, if I may find the tongue wherewith to praise her, of a Christian woman with whom I had acquaintance one time in Milan, the mother of a man, who, when he has unravelled wholly the tissue of his own errors, may gain a great name in the Church of the Living God. No saintlier might you have found than this Monica, nor no purer example to all women! I have heard another woman and a wife say that Monica, advising many wives together one day, did say this to them. ‘From that time when you have heard read to you the marriage writings, do you hold them, according to God’s will, as indentures whereby you are made servants, and so, keeping in memory your condition, do you in no place nor time set yourself in opposition to your husband. Only,’ she said on, ‘in so doing, you must in no-wise betray nor slackly serve Christ, who is your Master over your master.’—Truly, child, the Church could have said no different nor better!”
“I do not understand,” said the barbarian woman. “Yet there is something that comes up in my mind—”
She sat with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, her eyes upon the earth.
Victorinus watched her somewhat uneasily. Presently he began to speak of the just virtues of women, and he spoke in gold and honey. “More and more,” he said, “you the barbarians and we the civilized will touch and clasp and mingle. Never too soon can right notions steal among you—”
He was not sure that Alleda was listening. She seemed sunk in herself. “Child!” he said sharply.
She dropped her hands at his tone, and he saw that she was smiling. “Is Alaran better than me? Christ is better. But is Alaran? I think that we are the same. Why, then—”
Iron came into Victorinus’s voice. “Will you deny Scripture and set your reason against Almighty God’s—”
The forest murmured, the white clouds sailed overhead, thistledown in the air, and the air thistledown in the ether. At the bottom of the glade, taking and holding the human eye, stood the little church, and from the garden beside came the sound of the brethren at work.
Midsummer was here, and Alleda and Alaran were wed. Autumn came, winter followed, spring swept in song and colour over the land.
“You believe—you believe!” said Alleda.
“Almost I believe,” answered Alaran. “But I will not hasten. There is much to think of.”
The days grew long and warm. When the wheat had begun to ripen birth-pangs took Alleda. As a rule barbarian women gave birth easily, but here was some difference. Alleda lay in anguish, and the sun sank and rose again and sank and the babe was not born. Fritha and the wise women wrought, but nothing was of avail. Through and around Alaran Oak a silence held save when Alleda cried out.
“Naught answers. She will die!” said Fritha.
Alaran ran through the moonlighted forest to the lodge of the Christian men. “Victorinus! Victorinus!”
The moonbeams, streaming through the open door and window, flooded the church. Victorinus was kneeling there. “Is she lightened? Is the babe born?”
“You had one with you who healed Terig’s wound—”
“Alas! It was Probus who died in the winter—”
“She will die. They all say it.—Roman! She says that you have a great god. Beg your god to make her live! If she lives I will turn Christian—I and Alaran Oak and all the Goths by the river.” He broke away. Victorinus heard him brush the trees as he went.
All night Victorinus lay before the altar and prayed. “O God, God, this people! Now is the day for them to come. O Lord Jesus, will it not please Thee to draw them to Thee through every forest aisle, to see them around Thy building here like the blades of grass for number? O sweet Jesus! and this little stream that runs hard by for the water of baptism.... And the woman herself, Lord—”
The dawn turned the sky red behind Alaran Oak. In tree and bush the bird began to sing to the bird on the nest. The mist rose like a ghost from the river. Alleda gave a great cry, then lay still.... Voices of women arose, rejoicing.
Fritha went to Alaran crouched by the hearth. “The babe is born!”
“Will she live?”
“Yes, yes!”
Victorinus took his staff and with two brethren behind him went to Alaran Oak.
At the edge of the forest Alaran met him. “She lives! She lives! She and the babe live!”
Victorinus lifted his staff. The morning light struck upon the cross atop. “Christ gave the boon! Pay, O barbarian, the debt thou owest!”
Alleda came out of the hut of Death and lay breathingthe air of every day, the babe beside her, in the hollow of her arm. Alaran sat by the couch spread with coarse linen of the women’s spinning. Her eyes sought his. He put his yellow head down beside her. “Yes, yes. We are going to be Christians together!”
“Salvationis within you. The Kingdom of God is within you.” Dorotheus, hermit in the desert, kneeling in his cave mouth from two hours past midnight to sunrise, said that five thousand times, said it at last with an even sound like the clacking of a mill, the droning of bees or the voice of locusts. The east grew rosy, the sand ridges translucent, marvellously hued; up rushed the fiery sun. Dorotheus rose from his knees, took the scourge and plied it. Having done that, he next soberly got breakfast—a handful of dates, a small piece of bread broken from a long, twisted loaf, gift of the last pilgrim making round of the anchorites scattered in the desert, a measure of water from the jar in the corner. As he ate he looked across the intervening sand to the very small oasis where he cultivated a garden. The palms moved in the morning wind, tufts of green feathers cutting the absolute blue. It seemed the only motion in the world, unless it were the moving, too, of scant tufts of desert grass immediately about this cave that was no true cave but one of many ancient excavations, made, God knew how long ago, by idolatrous Pharaohs, building tombs to their own reproach!
The oasis was uninhabited save by a few birds and some small and wary four-footed and creeping life. There now came from it, having done his own foraging through the night, the jackal that Dorotheus had found, wounded and separated from the pack, and had tamed, naming it Arlaafter his birthplace on the Danube. Arla trotted across the sand, rubbed himself like a dog against his master, wagged his tail, was talked with, and at last went off to the depth of the cave, to lie there out of heat and light and sleep until the pleasant dusk came again. Dorotheus uncovered with reverence, took from its shelf with clean hands the Book of the Gospels which was the cave’s precious possession, took, and kneeling read the parable of the wheat and the tares. When it was done, he prayed, stretched flat before a great wooden cross fastened to the cave wall. That also done, he rose, took up the palm mat that he was weaving, and with a heap of palm fronds beside him, sat again in the opening of the cave.
This time he faced from the oasis to the wider spread of the desert, two leagues of sand waves between him and the monastery in whoselaura, or circle of hermitages, this cavern was numbered. He with other anchorites wove palm mats and baskets. At intervals came monks, gathering up what was done and taking to the monastery, whence all were sent in trade to the nearest city. Dorotheus’s fingers, that at first had been unskilful at the work, moved now with the precisest ease. Born thirty-six years before upon the Danube, of Christian parents, educated in Italy, in Verona, a soldier under Odoacer, King of Italy, left for dead on the field of Soissons, captive among the Franks, maker of a daring escape, wanderer in Spain, recipient one night of a dazzling vision, turning to the Church, catechumen, baptized, crossing to Africa, wanderer there through dangers and strange adventures, monk at last and ascetic—he had now woven palm mats for six years, woven palm mats and made his garden and walked the desert up and down.
Fast and vigil and discipline had made him lean but not emaciated, deep-eyed but not dim-eyed. In the desert were all manner of hermits, and some lived but to torture themselves, and some through long disuse of mind were nigh mindless. There were others who were “moderates.” Dorotheus was of these. The greater reputation clung to the self-torturers, the chained to rocks, the unsleeping, uneating, the ever-scourging, the sealed-eyes, the drawers-back from water. To most in this time these seemed the more saintly. They were the great seers of visions, hearers of voices, wrestlers with dæmons, workers of miracles.
Perhaps Dorotheus, too, aspired to saintship, but found it not wholly upon that road. Ascetic, he yet rested human. He abode in the desert, a man of strong frame, tawny-haired, supple-fingered, with a working and a questing mind and a soul that was learning itself. For a long time he had had a life of outward adventure; now he was adventuring inward.
The sun rode high, the desert swam in heat. The sun went to the west. Dorotheus put by the mat, ate again sparingly of the bread and dates, drank of the water, then taking a hoe that he had fashioned for himself crossed the glaring sand to the oasis.
Here was neither heat nor glare, but shade rich and sweet, shade, and cool sliding water, and upon the side opposed to his cave the little garden like a sliver of Paradise, that he had made for the love of making. Dorotheus applied himself to hoeing the earth about the roots of vines which he had procured from the monastery vineyard. The grapes hung down, green yet, but when they were ripe he did not propose to eat them, nor yet to presswine from them. The birds would eat them, the birds and Arla the jackal.
Looking east, between the palm stems, he saw the desert waves, low and high, like coloured, solidified water, saw his own cave and the expanse beyond, and far on the horizon a smudge which would be the palms of the great oasis that held the monastery. When in his hoeing he turned, there rose before him, back wall to his garden, a small forest of palms with other trees and shrubs and linking creepers. You could not see far into it: almost at once a green gloom shut down. For reasons he had never pierced it.
It might be a quarter-mile through to the western edge of the oasis, and to the desert waves on that side, low and high, like coloured, solidified water. And thence it might be two leagues and more to the palms and the springs in the desert where was builded the convent village of St. Agatha, dwelled in by a thousand nuns. And thelauraof St. Agatha, the circle of her women anchorites, swinging out into the desert, touched at its far eastern point, as thelauraof the monastery, swinging into the desert, touched at its far western point, the little oasis and those ridges of desert stone, long since dug into by vanished kings. And eastward from the green islet the hermit Dorotheus had his cave, and westward from it the hermit Dorothea had hers. Between them was the oasis, and each made a garden upon the edge facing his or her cavern. And between the gardens was the quarter-mile of thickly growing palms and other trees, of green gloom and netting creepers, and no track across, made by nature, or by man or woman. The quarter-mile might as well have been the diameter of the globe.
But not quite so. Each hermit, wandering in the desert that swept around the watered hand’s-breadth, had taken the other’s presence in gleams and intimations. Perhaps each had seen the other afar; perhaps from some sand crest each had marked the other digging in a garden. Perhaps through the wilderness between had come perceptions of human neighbourhood. Each had knowledge that two hermitages bordered this green spot in the desert—his own and a woman’s, her own and a man’s. Perhaps other threads of light, quiverings, vibrations, travelled to and fro by roads beneath and above all usual consciousness. But there was no such contact as is customary between neighbours pledged to one mode of life, and dwelling but a quarter-mile apart, no friendly passing of the time of day, no exchange of the fruits of the garden, no deeper converse and gifts of ideas. There was no close contact, no near vision nor speech together at all.
The two, man and woman, dwelled in caves beside fruit trees and cool water, and were weavers of palm mats and makers of gardens by virtue of being “moderates”—rather, in the eyes of the sixth century, a deplorable weakness than any virtue! Your true ascetic from the bone outward, your unadulterate hermit-saint, your anchorite with never a Laodicean smirch, abhorred oases!—These two, monk and nun, were, then, “moderates.” Nevertheless, for the man to have gazed, free-willed, upon the woman, and for the woman to have gazed, free-willed, upon the man, and for the two to have stood and talked, that by either, pledged to God, and walking the sixth century, would have been taken to slant toward the unpardonable sin.
Dorotheus hoed the earth around his vines, and then hetended orange trees, citron and pomegranate. The sun rode low, and the palms cast hugely long shadows. The sun touched the horizon, and the sand turned into rose-coloured glass. Arla the jackal came out of his den, stretched and shook himself, then trotted over the sand to the water, slipping beneath the trees. Dorotheus, too, kneeled by the water and drank. Then he shouldered his hoe and he and the jackal went up the sand slope to the cave. As they went they heard distantly the bell that was fastened about the neck of the goat that had followed the hermit Dorothea from St. Agatha. And at the turn of the night, when he waked, he heard through the thin, desert air, the crowing of a cock which she had bought with palm baskets from some desert vagrant.
The day of Dorothea had been much like the day of Dorotheus. Details might differ, but essentials did not. Before cockcrow she kneeled upon the sand before the cave, she lay upon her face and prayed. “Salvation is from within.... The Kingdom of God is within you.... O God, let the Kingdom dawn!” prayed Dorothea. When she rose the east was a pearl, and all the desert sand a pearl, and the trees of the oasis grey pearl above a rope of mist. She took the scourge of cords and used it, laid it by and prayed again, “O God, the long pilgrimage through the desert!—O God, let me lift and cleave to Thee!” Sunrise brightened the sand, gave its poised waves a thousand hues, then up came the red globe, and the day, or short or long, was here. Dorothea got her breakfast—a few raisins, a little bread, a measure of water from the jar in the corner. Across the sand, at the edge of the oasis, the goat Even I cropped its meal, and the cock Welcome strutted and clapped its wings. Dorothea was so “moderate” that she smiled tosee them both. Likewise her moderation was such that both the cave and she herself were clean.
The nun as well as the monk had a Book of the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles. Her cell, as his cell, had fastened to the wall a great wooden cross. Dorothea, standing before the sloping shelf upon which it was laid, read the first pages of the Gospel of Saint John, then stretched herself upon the rocky floor before the cross. “In the beginning.... O Light that shineth in darkness—”
She, also, wove palm mats and baskets; she, also, across the sand, at the edge of the oasis that faced her cell, made a garden. Her morning rites performed, she crossed the glaring sand to the shadow of the palms. She wished water to reach a spot that was more arid than it should be, and she dug with a spade, which she had begged from the convent, a canal through which it might flow. She worked with strength and expertness where at first she had worked weakly and unskilfully. Practice in digging, as in other things, was like a waking memory....
This was her birthday. She was thirty-four years old.... She saw the house in Alexandria in which she was born, and the wealthy Claudius, her father, vaunting his marble statues, his gems, and his descent from Vigilius and Eudocia, martyred in Rome three hundred years ago, and her mother Verina, a fair-haired, silent woman, born across the middle sea, of a Roman father and a barbarian mother, and the nurse Anna with her endless story-telling, merry and sad, and other house slaves for whom she felt fondness, and her teachers Sylvanus and old Hipparchus.
Upon her knees she took out the black earth with her hands and heaped it in a wide basket. The cock Welcome pecked after her, and the bell of Even I made not far away arhythmic sound.... All her old, Alexandrian, gay companions when she passed from the schoolroom to the world. Alexandrian life—Alexandrian life.... The daughter of Claudius—the daughter of Claudius....
The trench that she was making was growing deeper. She worked with strong, sweeping, ordered movements. Behind her stood the thickly growing palms and netting vines of that undisturbed belt between her garden and the garden of the hermit Dorotheus.... She found that without conscious thought she had turned so that the barrier wood was before her. She was sitting back upon her heels, the spade lying idle beside her, and she was gazing through the wood. What was a quarter-mile of tree-thronged space?... The daughter of Claudius—the daughter of Claudius....
She sprang to her feet, left the garden and went back to the cave. She opened again the book upon its shelf and read, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” She closed the book, took the basket she was weaving and sat with it in the cave mouth. Alexandria ... and all the crises of her life there—Claudius’s daughter—Claudius’s daughter! She wove the palm shreds in and out. Her fingers had been trained in fine work and upon the lute—she wove the basket very skilfully. Perhaps, in practising, she remembered, too, how one made baskets. At any rate, now she had been digging in the earth of this oasis, now she had been making palm baskets, now she had fasted, watchedand prayed, hermit in this cave, for four torrid summers and four winters of balm. Thirty-four to-day. “Lord, Lord, let me not think of me and my years—”
At sunset she heard the jackal bark. Had she not heard it she would have been startled, so much was its voice a part of this disk of earth she lived upon. She expected it as Dorotheus, on the other side of the oasis, listened for the bell of Even I and the crowing of the cock Welcome. He did not know their names, nor she that the jackal was named Arla. From pilgrims going the round of the desert anchorites each had gained knowledge that the oasis stood between the cells of the hermit Dorothea and the hermit Dorotheus. Each knew that the other was “moderate,” not bitterly, keenly, marvellously ascetic. Each knew how he—how she—disappointed the pilgrims.
Night in the desert was a lovely thing. The daughter of Claudius lay and admired—the daughter of Verina gave mystic meanings to the large bright stars and the ebony and ivory of the sand—the nursling of Anna heard the palm tops telling stories—the pupil of old Hipparchus heard again read Plotinus and Porphyry—the Christian nun thought, “If it were healed how lovely were the world!” She slept, till Welcome waked her with his crowing.
However rapidly might move the hermit’s inner world, however packed and thronged the spiritual time, outwardly one desert hour, one desert day, was highly like another. Nor did the inner world move always swiftly, smoothly, and into spiritual time came dry seasons. The desert disease was listlessness, attacking body and mind, listlessness, and strange spells of homesickness and of craving for red pottage.... The regimen for that was the scourge and prayer.
Dorotheus thought that what came upon him was that listlessness. He had known it before, and the homesickness and the craving for red pottage, known them and valorously fought them, as witnessed scars upon his shoulders no less than strong wrestlings in prayer stored up—somewhere. These moods did not come so often now, and he was prepared to fight them when they came. But this time, do what he would, the listlessness clung. Moreover, he began to see dæmons. He forced himself to work in the garden, though his arms trembled, and the palm trees seemed to be walking to and fro. Then came common sense in a flash. “And I have seen soldiers by the hundred take fever—!” But immediately upon that he merely saw and heard dæmons again; moreover, he grew heated and began to break down the vines and the bushes, “do nothing” having given place to “do everything.” He would carry the palm grove up to the cave, then there would be no hot sand to cross!
Dorothea studied the four Gospels and prayed, stretched before the cross. She worked at basket-making, and finished the ditch in the garden that carried the water where she would. When the sun began to sink she walked in the desert, she and her long shadow on the sand. Even I and the cock would stay by the grass and the black earth and the water.
As she turned, Arla the jackal came out of the oasis. Welcome, much alarmed, took to a tree, the bell of Even I began to jangle. But Arla left them both alone and went straight to Dorothea. He was only a greyish-yellow, sizable, part dog, part wolf, and she presently saw that there was no wolf to-day. “Dog, dog! what is it?” she asked.
Arla went from her toward the palms, came back and pulled at her robe. “What is it? What has happened?” But he could not tell her, could only tell that something had happened, and that she should come with him. After awhile, she, being “moderate,” went.