MANY moons waxed and waned before Hilarion heard more of his family or indeed saw a soul from the Pomponian villa. He began to be seriously concerned, therefore, and after the first long-drawn pang, suffered when Erotion came not to say “farewell,” as she had promised, her memory settled as a dead weight upon his heart and he only roused himself with painful effort to minister to his devotees as usual. But concerning his brother also, no direct word reached him, though the absence of Arcadius was in a measure explained. For there came evil news of the State. Gratian had fallen far below his early omens and the monarch now grew into a reproach rather than a promise. He even condescended to appear publicly in the uncouth fur garments of a Scythian savage, and his love for the chase first brought shame, then scorn to his legions. Murmurs thrilled the ranks of the Western armies, and presently a man renowned in war, one Maximus, a Spaniard, was lifted to the purple and invited to accept the Empire by a soldiery ignorant of his true qualities. Thus the rude isle of Britain saw a Roman emperor accept his destiny; and not only did the might of that island support Maximus, but all Gaul quickly received his sovereignty. Gratian, making war at the time against wild animals in the neighbourhood of Paris, quickly fled to the South; but his course was stayed at Lyons, and before he could summon the forces of Italy against the usurper, he perished under a treacherous sword.
Maximus, not content with a share of empire, now aimed at Italy; and in his turn he fell, for Theodosius, the Emperor of the East, proved faithful to the family of Gratian. Nigh Aquilea perished the upstart, Maximus, and with him fell his son; but the generosity of a Christian conqueror supported the traitor’s aged mother and orphan daughters. Thus goodness and evil are mixed in the chalice that holds a great man. The first Valentinian had illustrated this rule, and Theodosius, who abounded in the highest virtues and could pardon the citizens of Antioch their crimes, yet inhumanly massacred the Thessalonians. There is ever an ingredient in princes that escapes historian or biographer; but which, denied us, renders reconciliation of their contradictions impossible.
Now the second Valentinian reigned in Gratian’s stead, and Arcadius had secretly hoped that the new monarch might annul various edicts of his dead brother and return to the Pagan priesthood certain valued allowances and privileges of late taken away from them. But he reckoned without the Christian hierarchy, daily growing more powerful. The Churchman Ambrose, now towered upon the shining horizons of the new Faith, and a mind capable of influencing the mighty Theodosius, swiftly dominated the amiable and pious lad who for a moment ruled Italy. The old gods were being routed on every hand and their temples closed or opened anew in the name of Christ.
Gloomed by these things, which had only reached Hilarion fitfully from the mouths of peasants, Arcadius remembered his brother, and upon a sad-coloured day of mist and silence he climbed the hills and appeared before the cavern.
“I have done ill to be absent so long,” he said, “but you were seldom out of my thoughts though affairs and tribulations have kept me from you. They were not always such that I could expect you to share my sorrow.”
Hilarion embraced his brother.
“All is well with Ceres and the boy?”
“All is quite well with them.”
“And — and Erotion, your kinswoman?”
“We will speak of her anon. For the moment cheer me, as you can. What says Marcus? I do not mean our revered parent, but the Antonine. ‘Enter into every man’s Inner Self,’ he urges, ‘and let every man enter into thine.’ But how many portals worth entering will grant an entrance, and at how many does not the knocker fright us from the door? With you and me, however, that is not so. We are one.”
“Of late that thought has been my only consolation,” replied Hilarion.
“I should like to believe that the miseries of the times are weighing upon you as they weigh upon me,” continued his brother; “but your part, no doubt, continues to be a frozen abstraction, removed above the tribulations of your kind.”
“For the moment I have sorrows enough of my own,” confessed the hermit, and Arcadius eyed him curiously. The survey convinced Hilarion’s brother that something was indeed amiss. The solitary had grown very thin, and the only bright thing about him was his eyes. He looked pale, untidy, unfit, unhappy.
“You are ill, brother. You have been overdoing it. I curse myself that I have not been looking after you more closely,” cried Arcadius; but Hilarion shook his head.
“If I am slightly emaciated and less comely, that is to the good,” he answered. “I have nothing to grumble at in reality but my own faulty nature. Tell me about yourself.”
“I find that as the mind develops,” answered Arcadius, “the hope of happiness grows fainter. That is a melancholy discovery, and everybody has got to make it, be he monk or country gentleman. My old ideals fade. I must plan my future days and ambitions upon a new foundation.”
“Our minds are moving — that is in itself a hopeful fact,” replied his brother, but without conviction.
“The sum is well stated by rare Juvenal,” answered Arcadius. “For what says he? ‘Pray for a sound mind in a sound body, for a good finish, not a doubtful continuation,’ which is to say not an eternal becoming as the metaphysicians propose, but a glorious being, such as flesh and blood rightly demands. So many of you Christians do nothing but look forward, and miss the journey of life itself by consequence. ‘Fear not death,’ adds the poet, ‘but when it comes, recognise it for the last though not the least of Nature’s blessings.’ He is spiritual and exalted in his sentiments. He would have us choose the labours of Hercules rather than those of Venus and, before all, seek peace through virtue, wherein alone it shall be found. Nothing about happiness, mark you; yet for a man who follows this direction, Fortune is no goddess. He stands alike indifferent to her promise of friendship, or her threat of enmity.”
Hilarion sighed.
“It is all very well for you, who have a good and beautiful wife and a noble son, to turn up your nose at Venus,” he answered. “It is easy to despise what we possess and pretend our treasures are of little worth; but what did we feel about them before we won them? This: that they represented all things vital to content, happiness and life itself?”
Arcadius stared; then a sunshine of delight broke over his face and transformed it.
“You’re in love! How human, how refreshing! How close it brings us! This is indeed blessed news.”
“ ‘Blessed news’ you call it,” answered the other in hollow accents. “You have imagination — you read the poets — then try to conceive what this must mean to me. I am in love, as you say; and could a more appalling, unexpected and shattering event have crashed into the serenity and fancied security of my unfortunate existence?”
“Great Gods! You talk as though it were a crime to fall in love, brother.”
“For me it was. Such a thing ought to have been utterly impossible to one armed as I am, fixed as I have ever been on the celibate ideal and its implications.”
“Doesn’t this prove the celibate ideal a myth?”
“Far from it; nothing is proved save my own pride and abominable self-assurance. I always knew too well that I was a sinner, but never feared to fall into such a trap as this.”
“What have you done, after all?” inquired his brother.
“Nothing particularly grievous until now,” confessed Hilarion. “But I had my full share of the old Adam, of course, like the best and worst of us, and I should have looked far more sharply after it and not felt so insanely confident.”
“Men are born babes, not sinners,” replied Arcadius, “and to talk of ‘original sin’ is to talk nonsense, as I have already told you. Your sin, if I may say so, Hilarion, is not to fall in love with a high-minded and noble girl, but to have fallen in love with yourself. That is the trouble with you, as it was with Narcissus. Your sin — I hate the word — lies in evading a brave man’s destiny, his battle with life, his duty to his neighbour. I’m not preaching, because of late I find myself committing the same grave errors. You and I are making a similar mistake in opposite ways. This is only to show that our natures are one, though our religions are two. Your fault, dear brother, lies in the things you are doing to ensure your own salvation. You seek to intimidate and impress the people with your righteousness; but your devotees are far more useful than yourself. They carry on the world’s work, not you — just as my slaves are justifying their existence, not I. The least of these is more valuable than Hilarion, or Arcadius. To be busy about nothing but your own little soul is in my opinion to argue a soul barely worth saving. Does your personal discomfort in this den bring anybody else nearer your God, even if it brings you nearer? Does your present life beget a ray of happiness for any created creature but the badgers? Emphatically, no. Therefore accept this warning and amend your days, even as I design to amend my own.”
“You know nothing at all,” replied Hilarion and argued a little tactlessly, seeing that he was talking to a married man.
“We can leave me out of the question,” he began; “and whether my vocation is good, or no. One must judge for oneself about that. But we are for the moment confronted with the fact that I am in love. My Church already finds the sex question to bristle with difficulties. Christianity may soon be deploring the fact that there should be such things as women at all. The Fathers deprecate their existence very definitely. But certain problems are already solved, and we now know that only the Almighty’s plan for perpetuating the race justifies marriage. It follows that we endure the institution and propose to elevate it into a sacrament and something much more respectable than, at present, we find it. But wedded Christians, by the nature of things, cannot vie with the single in selfless devotion to what alone matters; nor can they fairly hope to enjoy a solitary’s share of the ultimate, heavenly reward. This is self-evident justice.”
Arcadius stared, then he sighed.
“Oh, Constantine, Constantine!” he cried, “your conversion has ruined the world and delivered it, chained and bound, to a most tragical error. But ‘conversion’ will not much longer be the word, for if those in power think thus, ‘conversion’ will soon spell ‘compulsion.’ Is Christianity going to end this world while showing us the way to the next?”
Then he returned to Hilarion.
“You are at the parting of the roads,” he said, “and your next step may mar a valuable man and end a beautiful life. Surely no creed would smile on such a catastrophe?”
“What man? What life?” inquired the hermit. “I mar no man and threaten no life. All I have ever demanded are the best possible conditions for communion with my Maker and advancement of my soul.”
“And yet I speak the truth. Others can fall in love as well as you. The man you will wreck is yourself; the beautiful existence you will assuredly terminate belongs, at present precariously, to my wife’s cousin, Erotion.”
His brother turned pale.
“What evil has befallen her?” he asked.
“She has had the doubtful fortune to love also,” replied Arcadius, “and it remains to be seen whether she loves a man or the selfish shadow of a man. Love has come to her as the whirlwind to the threshing-floor. She is swept away upon it, and if nothing happens to temper her tragic suffering, she will soon perish.”
“She loves me!” gasped Hilarion.
“Why not? Cupid is no respecter of persons, yet can be exceedingly intelligent and gracious when in a pleasant mood. Take my own case. Was there ever a couple better matched, more one at heart, more perfectly suited each to the other than Ceres and I? It is true that you have just doomed us to a lower table at your celestial banquet, where, beneath the salt, we shall see you reclining among the few honest bachelors; but she and I shall be together; and that very possibly may be quite heaven enough for us.”
“Don’t think I meant anything personal,” stammered Hilarion.
“No, no; you will still be my dear, twin brother. But I spoke of Cupid and declared that he will often make a kindly shot and bag a brace well suited to each other. And I assert that my wife’s cousin would have made you a magnificent wife, while you must have been the perfect spouse for such a serious-minded and earnest maiden. Instead, what is going to happen? You are floored by reality and will henceforth be mighty little use to God, or man, so far as I can see; and as for Erotion she will die. She is in the doctor’s hands at this moment, and Rufus knows perfectly well what’s the matter with her, though he calls it by another name in the usual, silly, professional manner.”
“This is awful news,” murmured Hilarion. He sat, a monument of despair, staring before him into the eye of the East wind with his hands in his beard and his cowl fallen back upon his broad shoulders.
“I was not going to tell you the sad truth about her,” explained Arcadius, “for if, as I imagined, you had not thought of her again, it had only been to harrow you to relate her sufferings, though you were the cause of them. A man cannot be asked to wed a maiden because she desires him to do so; but since you are also perfectly and completely in love with her, surely there ought to be hope for you both? The world must go on, whatever you say, and if — ”
“Peace! Peace!” cried Hilarion. “Would you have me behold in the guise of my brother, the Tempter of mankind — the Arch-Enemy — the Master of the Pit?”
“Nothing is gained by calling me names,” answered Arcadius, “and who the Master of the Pit may be I have yet to learn. Keep your nerve and be self-possessed. It was time you knew these things, for to destroy a fellow-creature whom you love appears to me an action that neither good Christian nor Pagan would smile upon. Consider your dilemma. You decline to wed Erotion. Why? That your soul may win the highest place. But, seeing that Erotion will most certainly sink into the earth if you do not marry her, what price are you going to pay for your saintship? Embarrassing, is it not?”
“Appalling,” admitted Hilarion.
“I venture to think,” continued Arcadius, “that your halo would be a trifle tarnished under any such distressing circumstances; and, after all, it is quite a question whether eternity, even with a halo, might be as refreshing as the same lengthy period spent beside a dear and loving wife. A halo as an everlasting companion is a bleak thought. Again — you don’t know all there is to know. You and your party may be hopelessly wrong about marriage putting a man out of the hunt for saintship. You must admit that a clever woman helps one forward, and even a good woman may do the same. They are seldom both clever and good, as in the case of Ceres, but you can’t have everything, and there is no doubt that Erotion, who is a Christian now and was a perfect character before, would do much to help you on your way and nothing to hinder. You have seen what a tower of strength to each other man and wife occasionally can be; why, then, should you suppose that two perfectly mated people must mutually hinder on the road to your heaven? How much more likely that united they may attain to a higher reward than either alone. For at least such a couple have stood up to life; and why you should be more handsomely rewarded for running away from it I fail to appreciate.”
“You don’t grasp the point,” answered Hilarion hopelessly.
“Yes I do,” replied Arcadius, “because I have experience and estimate the value of what I tell you. I am twice as good a man as I was before I married Ceres, and I mean to be twice and four times as good at no distant date. With a wife like mine and such a god as Pan, I ought to blush for myself, for I am not worthy of either. But ere long I hope to be. There are great ideas moving in my mind — Pan has doubtless put them there. They don’t involve running away from my wife and family, however. Ceres had a daughter six weeks ago. All is well, and we are going to call her Pomona Maria, after the goddess of fruit trees and the gracious human Mother of your Man-God.”
“I am very glad,” replied Hilarion. “Let her be a Christian, dear brother.”
“She shall be exactly what she wishes to be,” replied Arcadius. “My only care is to see the young fountain of her mind spring pure from its pure sources. To poison wells is an evil deed, but venial to poisoning youthful minds. You Christians promise all manner of things for your infants — a great and futile profanity if you look at it justly, for who can promise for another? Have I convinced you?”
“Far from it,” declared Hilarion. “I view with the utmost uneasiness your arguments — so to call them. I mean, of course, regarding Erotion.”
“Well then, hear a wiser than I. Let Pan have a chat with you.”
Hilarion flushed.
“Be careful of what you are saying,” he answered stiffly. “You know that I don’t believe in Pan.”
“Why not? I believe in your God — in all three of them. After all, the proof of the god lies in his worshippers. Few other proofs are ever offered. You must believe in Pan, if for no other reason than that I believe in him. He is a restful, a kindly, a wise deity, and it cannot hurt you to listen to him. He may agree with you — I have no idea of the opinion he will deign to express.”
“Hurt me he certainly cannot,” answered Hilarion. “There is nothing that can pierce my armour but my own weakness.”
“Then let him speak. He was willing that Ceres should become a Christian, recollect. There is nothing paltry about him. He is, in fact, a god, though he may be but a shadow from your point of view. Truth cannot contradict truth, and who knows that what my god says to-day, your God may affirm to-morrow? Let that be the test. If Pan advises after such wisdom that your heavenly Counsellor contradicts him, I will say no more; but should my god say ‘do thus and thus,’ and your own Director offer you like advice, then, surely, it will be impossible for you to remain longer in doubt of your duty — both to god and woman?”
“You suggest a most irregular course,” replied his brother, “for what shall any god, in whom I do not believe, have to say to me that can matter to me? I will, however, for the love I bear you — ”
“And Erotion.”
“For the love I bear to all my fellow-creatures, and out of a great desire to do the right thing, I consent to this unusual expedient. I warn you, however, that though he speak with the tongue of angels, I shall severely discount his suggestions and submit each and all to a higher authority.”
“It’s a bargain,” agreed Arcadius. “Of course,” he added, “I cannot speak for my god. He may not believe in you any more than you believe in him; but I feel fairly sanguine. Many bear the thyrsus who do not know the god, and many know the god who do not bear the thyrsus. I mean that you may find Pan something far nearer to your heart than you imagine; and he loves you, whether you will or no, for he told me so.”
“I shall be true to my principles,” replied Hilarion, “but meantime keep me not in suspense. My heart is breaking for that sick girl. Leave me now, best of kind brothers, for I would pray for her.”
“Do so — we will leave no stone unturned to save her,” promised Arcadius.
Then he kissed his haggard twin and descended the mountain feeling exceedingly sanguine.
“We weave our own garlands round the eternal gods,” he thought, “until often, struggle as they may, they cannot show us their divine faces for what we have hung and heaped upon them.”