Books: The Lost Word
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Henry Van Dyke >> The Lost Word
The voice sank into a dull rattle. The fingers closed once more, and
relaxed. The light behind the eyes went out.
Hermas, the master of the House of the Golden Pillars, was keeping
watch by the dead.
IV
LOVE IN SEARCH OF A WORD
THE break with the old life was as clean as if it had been cut with
a knife. Some faint image of a hermit's cell, a bare lodging in a
back street of Antioch, a class-room full of earnest students,
remained in Hermas' memory. Some dull echo of the voice of John the
Presbyter, and the murmured sound of chanting, and the murmur of
great congregations, still lingered in his ears; but it was like
something that had happened to another person, something that he had
read long ago, but of which he had lost the meaning.
His new life was full and smooth and rich--too rich for any sense
of loss to make itself felt. There were a hundred affairs to busy
him, and the days ran swiftly by as if they were shod with winged
sandals.
Nothing needed to be considered, prepared for, begun. Everything was
ready and waiting for him. All that he had to do was to go on with
it. The estate of Demetrius was even greater than the world had
supposed. There were fertile lands in Syria which the emperor had
given him, marble-quarries in Phrygia, and forests of valuable
timber in Cilicia; the vaults of the villa contained chests of gold
and silver; the secret cabinets in the master's room were full of
precious stones. The stewards were diligent and faithful. The
servants of the magnificent household rejoiced at the young master's
return. His table was spread; the rose-garland of pleasure was woven
for his head, and his cup was already filled with the spicy wine of
power.
The period of mourning for his father came at a fortunate moment, to
seclude and safeguard him from the storm of political troubles and
persecutions that fell upon Antioch after the insults offered by the
mob to the imperial statues in the year 887. The friends of
Demetrius, prudent and conservative persons, gathered around Hermas
and made him welcome to their circle. Chief among them was Libanius,
the sophist, his nearest neighbour, whose daughter Athenais had been
the playmate of Hermas in the old days.
He had left her a child. He found her a beautiful woman. What
transformation is so magical, so charming, as this? To see the
uncertain lines of-youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to
discover the half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured
into perfect loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear,
serious eyes, not forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the
changed present--this is to behold a miracle in the flesh.
"Where have you been, these two years?" said Athenais, as they
walked together through the garden of lilies where they had so often
played.
"In a land of tiresome dreams," answered Hermas; "but you have
wakened me, and I am never going back again."
It was not to be supposed that the sudden disappearance of Hermas
from among his former associates could long remain unnoticed. At
first it was a mystery. There was a fear, for two or three days,
that he might be lost. Some of his more intimate companions
maintained that his devotion had led him out into the desert to join
the anchorites. But the news of his return to the House of the
Golden Pillars, and of his new life as its master, filtered quickly
through the gossip of the city.
Then the church was filled with dismay and grief and reproach.
Messengers and letters were sent to Hermas. They disturbed him a
little, but they took no hold upon him. It seemed to him as if the
messengers spoke in a strange language. As he read the letters there
were words blotted out of the writing which made the full sense
unintelligible.
His old companions came to reprove him for leaving them, to warn him
of the peril of apostasy, to entreat him to return. It all sounded
vague and futile. They spoke as if he had betrayed or offended some
one; but when they came to name the object of his fear--the one
whom he had displeased, and to whom he should return--he heard
nothing; there was a blur of silence in their speech. The clock
pointed to the hour, but the bell did not strike. At last Hermas
refused to see them any more.
One day John the Presbyter stood in the atrium. Hermas was
entertaining Libanius and Athenais in the banquet-hall. When the
visit of the Presbyter was announced, the young master loosed a
collar of gold and jewels from his neck, and gave it to his scribe.
"Take this to John of Antioch, and tell him it is a gift from his
former pupil--as a token of remembrance, or to spend for the poor
of the city. I will always send him what he wants, but it is idle
for us to talk together any more. I do not understand what he says.
I have not gone to the temple, nor offered sacrifice, nor denied his
teaching. I have simply forgotten. I do not think about those things
any longer. I am only living. A happy man wishes him all happiness
and farewell."
But John let the golden collar fall on the marble floor. "Tell your
master that we shall talk together again, after all," said he, as he
passed sadly out of the hall.
The love of Athenais and Hermas was like a tiny rivulet that sinks
out of sight in a cavern, but emerges again as a bright and brimming
stream. The careless comradery of childhood was mysteriously changed
into a complete companionship.
When Athenais entered the House of the Golden Pillars as a bride,
all the music of life came with her. Hermas called the feast of her
welcome "the banquet of the full chord." Day after day, night after
night, week after week, month after month, the bliss of the home
unfolded like a rose of a thousand leaves. When a child came to
them, a strong, beautiful boy, worthy to be the heir of such a
house, the heart of the rose was filled with overflowing fragrance.
Happiness was heaped upon happiness. Every wish brought its own
accomplishment. Wealth, honour, beauty, peace, love--it was an
abundance of felicity so great that the soul of Hermas could hardly
contain it.
Strangely enough, it began to press upon him, to trouble him with
the very excess of joy. He felt as if there were something yet
needed to complete and secure it all. There was an urgency within
him, a longing to find some outlet for his feelings, he knew not how--
some expression and culmination of his happiness, he knew not
what.
Under his joyous demeanour a secret fire of restlessness began to
burn--an expectancy of something yet to come which should put the
touch of perfection on his life, He spoke of it to Athenais, as they
sat together, one summer evening, in a bower of jasmine, with their
boy playing at their feet. There had been music in the garden; but
now the singers and lute-players had withdrawn, leaving the master
and mistress alone in the lingering twilight, tremulous with
inarticulate melody of unseen birds. There was a secret voice in the
hour seeking vainly for utterance--a word waiting to be spoken at
the centre of the charm.
"How deep is our happiness, my beloved!" said Hermas; "deeper than
the sea that slumbers yonder, below the city. And yet I feel it is
not quite full and perfect. There is a depth of joy that we have not
yet known--a repose of happiness that is still beyond us. What is
it? I have no superstitious fears, like the king who cast his
signet-ring into the sea because he dreaded that some secret
vengeance would fall on his unbroken good fortune. That was an idle
terror. But there is something that oppresses me like an invisible
burden. There is something still undone, unspoken, unfelt--
something that we need to complete everything. Have you not felt
it, too? Can you not lead me to it?"
"Yes," she answered, lifting her eyes to his face; "I, too, have
felt it, Hermas, this burden, this need, this unsatisfied longing. I
think I know what it means. It is gratitude--the language of the
heart, the music of happiness. There is no perfect joy without
gratitude. But we have never learned it, and the want of it troubles
us. It is like being dumb with a heart full of love. We must find
the word for it, and say it together. Then we shall be perfectly
joined in perfect joy. Come, my dear lord, let us take the boy with
us, and give thanks."
Hermas lifted the child in his arms, and turned with Athenais into
the depth of the garden. There was a dismantled shrine of some
forgotten fashion of worship half hidden among the luxuriant
flowers. A fallen image lay beside it, face downward in the grass.
They stood there, hand in hand, the boy drowsily resting on his
father's shoulder--a threefold harmony of strength and beauty and
innocence.
Silently the roseate light caressed the tall spires of the
cypress-trees; silently the shadows gathered at their feet; silently
the crystal stars looked out from the deepening arch of heaven. The
very breath of being paused. It was the hour of culmination, the
supreme moment of felicity waiting for its crown. The tones of
Hermas were clear and low as he began, half speaking and half
chanting, in the rhythm of an ancient song:
"Fair is the world, the sea, the sky, the double kingdom of day and
night, in the glow of morning, in the shadow of evening, and under
the dripping light of stars.
"Fairer still is life in our breasts, with its manifold music and
meaning, with its wonder of seeing and hearing and feeling and
knowing and being.
"Fairer and still more fair is love, that draws us together, mingles
our lives in its flow, and bears them along like a river, strong and
clear and swift, rejecting the stars in its bosom.
"Wide is our world; we are rich; we have all things. Life is
abundant within us--a measureless deep. Deepest of all is our
love, and it longs to speak.
"Come, thou final word! Come, thou crown of speech! Come, thou charm
of peace! Open the gates of our hearts. Lift the weight of our joy
and bear it upward.
"For all good gifts, for all perfect gifts, for love, for life, for
the world, we praise, we bless, we thank--"
As a soaring bird, struck by an arrow, falls headlong from the sky,
so the song of Hermas fell. At the end of his flight of gratitude
there was nothing--a blank, a hollow space.
He looked for a face, and saw a void. He sought for a hand, and
clasped vacancy. His heart was throbbing and swelling with passion;
the bell swung to and fro within him, beating from side to side as
if it would burst; but not a single note came from it. All the
fulness of his feeling, that had risen upward like a living
fountain, fell back from the empty sky, as cold as snow, as hard as
hail, frozen and dead. There was no meaning in his happiness. No one
had sent it to him. There was no one to thank for it. His felicity
was a closed circle, a wall of eternal ice.
"Let us go back," he said sadly to Athenais; "the child is heavy
upon my shoulder. We will lay him to sleep, and go into the library.
The air grows chilly. We were mistaken. The gratitude of life is
only a dream. There is no one to thank."
And in the garden it was already night.
V
RICHES WITHOUT REST
NO outward change came to the House of the Golden Pillars.
Everything moved as smoothly, as delicately, as prosperously, as
before. But inwardly there was a subtle, inexplicable
transformation. A vague discontent--a final and inevitable sense
of incompleteness, overshadowed existence from that night when
Hermas realized that his joy could never go beyond itself.
The next morning the old man whom he had seen in the Grove of
Daphne, but never since, appeared mysteriously at the door of the
house, as if he had been sent for, and entered, to dwell there like
an invited guest.
Hermas could not but make him welcome, and at first he tried to
regard him with reverence and affection as the one through whom
fortune had come. But it was impossible. There was a chill in the
inscrutable smile of Marcion, as he called himself, that seemed to
mock at reverence. He was in the house as one watching a strange
experiment--tranquil, interested, ready to supply anything that
might be needed for its completion, but thoroughly indifferent to
the feelings of the subject; an anatomist of life, looking curiously
to see how long it would continue, and how it would behave, after
the heart had been removed.
In his presence Hermas was conscious of a certain irritation, a
resentful anger against the calm, frigid scrutiny of the eyes that
followed him everywhere, like a pair of spies, peering out over the
smiling mouth and the long white beard.
"Why do you look at me so curiously?" asked Hermas, one morning, as
they sat together in the library. "Do you see anything strange in
me?"
"No," answered Marcion; "something familiar."
"And what is that?"
"A singular likeness to a discontented young man that I met some
years ago in the Grove of Daphne."
"But why should that interest you? Surely it was to be expected."
"A thing that we expect often surprises us when we see it. Besides,
my curiosity is piqued. I suspect you of keeping a secret from me."
"You are jesting with me. There is nothing in my life that you do
not know. What is the secret?"
"Nothing more than the wish to have one. You are growing tired of
your bargain. The game wearies you. That is foolish. Do you want to
try a new part?"
The question was like a mirror upon which one comes suddenly in a
half-lighted. room, A quick illumination falls on it, and the
passer-by is startled by the look of his own face.
"You are right," said Hermas. "I am tired. We have been going on
stupidly in this house, as if nothing were possible but what my
father had done before me. There is nothing original in being rich,
and well fed, and well dressed. Thousands of men have tried it, and
have not been very well satisfied. Let us do something new. Let us
make a mark in the world."
"It is well said," nodded the old man; "you are speaking again like
a man after my own heart. There is no folly but the loss of an
opportunity to enjoy a new sensation."
From that day Hermas seemed to be possessed with a perpetual haste,
an uneasiness that left him no repose. The summit of life had been
attained, the highest possible point of felicity. Henceforward the
course could only be at a level--perhaps downward. It might be
brief; at the best it could not be very long. It was madness to lose
a day, an hour. That would be the only fatal mistake: to forfeit
anything of the bargain that he had made. He would have it, and hold
it, and enjoy it all to the full. The world might have nothing
better to give than it had already given; but surely it had many
things that were new to bestow upon him, and Marcion should help him
to find them.
Under his learned counsel the House of the Golden Pillars took on a
new magnificence. Artists were brought from Corinth and Rome and
Byzantium to adorn it with splendour. Its fame glittered around the
world. Banquets of incredible luxury drew the most celebrated guests
into its triclinium, and filled them with envious admiration. The
bees swarmed and buzzed about the golden hive. The human insects,
gorgeous moths of pleasure and greedy flies of appetite, parasites
and flatterers and crowds of inquisitive idlers, danced and
fluttered in the dazzling light that surrounded Hermas.
Everything that he touched prospered. He bought a tract of land in
the Caucasus, and emeralds were discovered among the mountains. He
sent a fleet of wheat-ships to Italy, and the price of grain doubled
while it was on the way. He sought political favour with the
emperor, and was rewarded with the governorship of the city. His
name was a word to conjure with.
The beauty of Athenais lost nothing with the passing seasons, but
grew more perfect, even under the inexplicable shade of
dissatisfaction that sometimes veiled it as a translucent cloud that
passes before the full moon. "Fair as the wife of Hermas" was a
proverb in Antioch; and soon men began to add to it, "Beautiful as
the son of Hermas"; for the child developed swiftly in that
favouring clime. At nine years of age he was straight and strong,
firm of limb and clear of eye. His brown head was on a level with
his father's heart. He was the jewel of the House of the Golden
Pillars; the pride of Hermas, the new Fortunatus.
That year another drop of success fell into his brimming cup. His
black Numidian horses, which he had been training for three years
for the world-renowned chariot-races of Antioch, won the victory
over a score of rivals. Hermas received the prize carelessly from
the judge's hands, and turned to drive once more around the circus,
to show himself to the people. He lifted the eager boy into the
chariot beside him to share his triumph.
Here, indeed, was the glory of his life--this matchless son, his
brighter counterpart carved in breathing ivory, touching his arm,
and balancing himself proudly on the swaying floor of the chariot.
As the horses pranced around the ring, a great shout of applause
filled the amphitheatre, and thousands of spectators wavd their
salutations of praise: "Hail, fortunate Hermas, master of success!
Hail, little Hermas, prince of good luck!"
The sudden tempest of acclamation, the swift fluttering of
innumerable garments in the air, startled the horses. They dashed
violently forward, and plunged upon the bits. The left rein broke.
They swerved to the right, swinging the chariot sideways with a
grating noise, and dashing it against the stone parapet of the
arena. In an instant the wheel was shattered. The axle struck the
ground, and the chariot was dragged onward, rocking and staggering.
By a strenuous effort Hermas kept his place on the frail platform,
clinging to the unbroken rein. But the boy was tossed lightly from
his side at the first shock. His head struck the wall. And when
Hermas turned to look for him, he was lying like a broken flower on
the sand.
VI
GREAT FEAR AND RECOVERED JOY
THEY carried the boy in a litter to the House of the Golden Pillars,
summoning the most skilful physician of Antioch to attend him. For
hours the child was as quiet as death. Hermas watched the white
eyelids, folded close like lily-buds at night, even as one watches
for the morning. At last they opened; but the fire of fever was
burning in the eyes, and the lips were moving in a wild delirium.
Hour after hour that sweet childish voice rang through the halls and
chambers of the splendid, helpless house, now rising in shrill calls
of distress and senseless laughter, now sinking in weariness and
dull moaning. The stars waxed and waned; the sun rose and set; the
roses bloomed and fell in the garden, the birds sang and slept among
the jasmine-bowers. But in the heart of Hermas there was no song, no
bloom, no light--only speechless anguish, and a certain fearful
looking-for of desolation.
He was like a man in a nightmare. He saw the shapeless terror that
was moving toward him, but he was impotent to stay or to escape it.
He had done all that he could. There was nothing left but to wait.
He paced to and fro, now hurrying to the boy's bed as if he could
not bear to be away from it, now turning back as if he could not
endure to be near it. The people of the house, even Athenais, feared
to speak to him, there was something so vacant and desperate in his
face.
At nightfall, on the second of those eternal days, he shut himself
in the library. The unfilled lamp had gone out, leaving a trail of
smoke in the air. The sprigs of mignonette and rosemary, with which
the room was sprinkled every day, were unrenewed, and scented the
gloom with a close odor of decay. A costly manuscript of Theocritus
was tumbled in disorder on the floor. Hermas sank into a chair like
a man in whom the very spring of being is broken. Through the
darkness some one drew near. He did not even lift his head. A hand
touched him; a soft arm was laid over his shoulders. It was
Athenais, kneeling beside him and speaking very low:
"Hermas--it is almost over--the child! His voice grows weaker
hour by hour. He moans and calls for some one to help him; then he
laughs. It breaks my heart. He has just fallen asleep. The moon is
rising now. Unless a change comes he cannot last till sunrise. Is
there nothing we can do? Is there no power that can save him? Is
there no one to pity us and spare us? Let us call, let us beg for
compassion and help; let us pray for his life!"
Yes; that was what he wanted--that was the only thing that could
bring relief: to pray; to pour out his sorrow somewhere; to find a
greater strength than his own, and cling to it and plead for mercy
and help. To leave that undone was to be false to his manhood; it
was to be no better than the dumb beasts when their young perish.
How could he let his boy suffer and die, without an effort, a cry, a
prayer?
He sank on his knees beside Athenais.
"Out of the depths--out of the depths we call for pity. The light
of our eyes is fading--the child is dying. Oh, the child, the
child! Spare the child's life, thou merciful--"
Not a word; only that deathly blank. The hands of Hermas, stretched
out in supplication, touched the marble table. He felt the cool
hardness of the polished stone beneath his fingers. A book,
dislodged by his touch, fell rustling to the floor. Through the open
door, faint and far off, came the footsteps of the servants, moving
cautiously. The heart of Hermas was like a lump of ice in his bosom.
He rose slowly to his feet, lifting Athenais with him.
"It is in vain," he said; "there is nothing for us to do. Long ago I
knew something. I think it would have helped us. But I have
forgotten it. It is all gone. But I would give all that I have, if I
could bring it back again now, at this hour, in this time of our
bitter trouble."
A slave entered the room while he was speaking, and approached
hesitatingly.
"Master," he said, "John of Antioch, whom we were forbidden to admit
to the house, has come again. He would take no denial. Even now he
waits in the peristyle; and the old man Marcion is with him, seeking
to turn him away."
"Come," said Hermas to his wife, "let us go to him; for I think I
see the beginning of a way that may lead us out of this dreadful
darkness."
In the central hall the two men were standing; Marcion, with
disdainful eyes and sneering lips, taunting the unbidden guest to
depart; John silent, quiet, patient, while the wondering slaves
looked on in dismay. He lifted his searching gaze to the haggard
face of Hermas.
"My son, I knew that I should see you again, even though you did not
send for me. I have come to you because I have heard that you are in
trouble."
"It is true," answered Hermas, passionately; "we are in trouble,
desperate trouble, trouble accursed. Our child is dying. We are
poor, we are destitute, we are afflicted. In all this house, in all
the world, there is no one that can help us. I knew something long
ago, when I was with you,--a word, a name,--in which we might
have found hope. But I have lost it. I gave it to this man. He has
taken it away from me forever."
He pointed to Marcion. The old man's lips curled scornfully. "A
word, a name!" he sneered. "What is that, O most wise and holy
Presbyter? A thing of air, an unreal thing that men make to describe
their own dreams and fancies. Who would go about to rob any one of
such a thing as that? It is a prize that only a fool would think of
taking. Besides, the young man parted with it of his own free will.
He bargained with me cleverly. I promised him wealth and pleasure
and fame. What did he give in return? An empty name, which was a
burden--"
"Servant of demons, be still!" The voice of John rang clear, like a
trumpet, through the hall. "There is a name which none shall dare to
take in vain. There is a name which none can lose without being
lost. There is a name at which the devils tremble. Depart quickly,
before I speak it!"
Marcion had shrunk into the shadow of one of the pillars. A bright
lamp near him tottered on its pedestal and fell with a crash. In the
confusion he vanished, as noiselessly as a shade.
John turned to Hermas, and his tone softened as he said: "My son,
you have sinned deeper than you know. The word with which you parted
so lightly is the key-word of all life and joy and peace. Without it
the world has no meaning, and existence no rest, and death no
refuge. It is the word that purifies love, and comforts grief, and
keeps hope alive forever. It is the most precious thing that ever
ear has heard, or mind has known, or heart has conceived. It is the
name of Him who has given us life and breath and all things richly
to enjoy; the name of Him who, though we may forget Him, never
forgets us; the name of Him who pities us as you pity your suffering
child; the name of Him who, though we wander far from Him, seeks us
in the wilderness, and sent His Son, even as His Son has sent me
this night, to breathe again that forgotten name in the heart that
is perishing without it. Listen, my son, listen with all your soul
to the blessed name of God our Father."