ON the eventful day, Erotion was borne to the Pomponian villa, that she might hear if any hopeful word could be spoken by the god of Arcadius. She had much doubted, with Ceres and Hilarion himself, whether they deserved to be sanguine — whether, indeed, such a step as Arcadius now designed did not partake of divination, or even sorcery — a deadly sin. But, seeing that the husband of Ceres had ever been a faithful disciple of the Pasturer, and feeling as many early Christians felt that this deity stood in a measure apart, they cheered each other as best they might and hoped at least no harm would befall them.
“If we are mistaken,” said Ceres gently, “it is certain that our own heavenly Mentors will soon make our error clear.”
At the Pomponian villa the cousins waited hand-in-hand — Erotion upon her couch, for she was still very sick, and Ceres beside her. They spoke on various subjects to distract their thoughts, but ever, as the night advanced, returned to Hilarion and Arcadius.
The lover of the hermit felt least hopeful; yet, when she feared some dire rebuke might fall upon Hilarion’s head for thus tampering with a false god, Ceres reminded her that Pan was at any rate old and wise, Hilarion still young and exceedingly inexperienced.
“After all, countless thousands of good men and women have died firmly believing in Pan,” she said, “and in many other gods and goddesses also who were far less satisfactory than he. I have often heard my husband relate this deity’s opinions, and whatever our Guides may think of Pan, he certainly has no quarrel with Them.”
So they talked, and when darkness hung heavy on the land and a candle told that it was two o’clock, their ears began to strain for the footfall of Arcadius.
“He cannot be much longer now,” declared Ceres. In her heart was a suspicion that not only her husband but his brother also might presently appear; but this dream of good tidings she dared not whisper to Erotion.
Meanwhile, at the entrance of Hilarion’s cavern, under a sky of autumn stars, sat Pan and discoursed with the twins.
He had come to them at his appointed hour and disdained not the yellow figs which Arcadius himself brought, with a flask of most exquisite wine.
Both brothers were nervous, especially the recluse, but Pan set them at their ease and appeared to be in a humorous mood.
“Who is this swarthy and sinister person I have met with in picture-books illustrating the new faith?” he inquired. “Artist monks paint him in their illuminated missals, and he is always either causing annoyance, or suffering the gravest indignities. I ask, because he is a very colourable imitation of myself with his horns and hooves; but he has an unkind face, usually carries a trident, suggestive of Neptune, and flourishes a much longer tail than mine.”
“You refer to bur personification of the Evil One, the Prince of Darkness, Satan,” replied Hilarion uneasily.
“I have heard of him,” replied Pan, “and much regret the Enemy of Mankind resembles one who would fain be humanity’s friend. However, artists are only answerable to their own ideals; we have to do with graver things, and indeed your faith is a very grave matter. Many scions are being grafted upon the original stock, and I hear that while your bishops and shepherds clatter their crosiers and crooks on one another’s heads, the sheep are a good deal alarmed. For errors of faith are already so easy, and so fatal, among you servants of the Galilean. Now you fight like demons to decide whether the Son was created out of nothing; now you belabour each other upon the question whether the trinity consists of Three Persons or Three Hypostases; and despite the gravity of these questions, you approach them in such a pugnacious and ferocious mood that wisdom flies your contests and the people stand trembling and waiting to know where safety and salvation lie. Sect and sect plot and counterplot, quibble and scratch each other’s eyes out — ostensibly for dogma, in reality for power — ever more power over the souls and bodies of the nations. And seeing these things, Hilarion here, and countless other men of peace, turn their backs on life and light and love, to seek living tombs as fit antechambers of the grave they welcome. It is interesting to observe that men will die for a sentiment, not for an opinion. Dogma is going to slay its thousands; but metaphysics has no martyrs. There is, indeed, none who looks sharplier after his own skin than a metaphysician, though, of course, he will tell you that he hasn’t really got a skin.
“Now, twin brother of my Arcadius, state your case and I shall declare what I think about it. Do not expect advice; but my frank opinion is yours.”
“Thus it stands with me, god Pan,” replied the young man firmly. “On the one side I am faced with the experience of human love. I turned my back upon it as you say; but it would not turn its back on me; and now my nature craves before all things for union with Erotion, of the House of Severus, a Christian maiden — one of my own converts in fact. Against this mighty experience my Faith cries trumpet-tongued, that the end of the world fast approaches — how fast no man can tell. It may be a year or two; it may be to-morrow; but our Scriptures tell us, and our Divine Master himself has stated, that the time is near. Seeing, therefore, that the end of the world and the judgment of the human race cannot be long delayed, have I the right to proceed as though this fiery ordeal were a thing of the remote future? Ought not I and Erotion and all men and women, rather than trifle with the joys of life in this world, to be flying from the wrath to come and concerning ourselves with the next world alone? That is the question to which I can find no answer, for my soul speaks with two voices and I stand between them deprived of the power of decision.”
“On his own showing,” added Arcadius, “my brother is not fit to judge. Thus it is with all who think as he does: they deprive themselves of the power of judgment; they scorn the social health of the community, flout the ordinary processes of nature, condemn all happiness, and so render themselves utterly unable to pronounce an opinion on the simplest problems of human policy. One world at a time is a very sane motto, whatever may be our opinions concerning another, and now Nemesis has descended upon Hilarion and he stands caught, as it were, in the net he has so ignorantly spun for his own feet.”
“This is no new thing,” replied the God. “Your Pagan teachers of old were quite as strict, and quite as often confounded right and wrong, becoming confused between the errors of the flesh and its lawful, natural pleasures. Plato will be found to talk much as your Saint Paul, and Marcus Aurelius was also something of a Christian before Christ. Epicurus, on the other hand, preserved a golden mean, founding his philosophy upon reason alone. Moderate and restrained pleasure helps to make the world go round smoothly, my friends, and to turn away from it is an act of pure superstition. Happiness, as I have often told Arcadius, is an universal desire and ideal, not put into your hearts for nothing. Far more depends upon it than you have yet grasped; and to decry happiness, as you affect to do, is to oppose natural instinct and waste time in a blind alley, since this particular instinct makes for good. Whereto, think you, your craving for misery will lead? Man is but man, and by lowering his vitality, denying himself the friendship of nature and declining her manifold devices for making this life worth while, he speedily renders it not worth while.”
“That it cannot be worth while is our conviction,” replied Hilarion.
“Nevertheless you have found for yourself that it may be of exceeding worth. And what follows your theories put into practice? You all become short-tempered, overwrought, unstrung, acerb, uncharitable and harsh. Your Christians are going to make a world of porcupines, spit-fires and tyrants — a world where man will find that his security is gone, his soul no longer his own, himself a slave without liberty of thought, or freedom of conscience. And this because what your Saviour intended should be a guide to compassion and ruth, is already wrested from the spirit of the Man-God and will presently become such a stone in humanity’s pathway that generations must fall bruised and bleeding before it shall be rolled from the road.”
“But the end of the world,” murmured Hilarion.
“Upon that subject you are misinformed,” replied the goat-foot god genially. “There is no immediate fear of any conclusion. The world is destined to continue for a very long time, and it will outlast not only your life, but the lives of many millions of mankind yet to be born. The world is, in fact, still young, as worlds go. It can even count upon a future when religions, that drift from East to West and pass after each other as the clouds pass before the wind, will finally thin away, giving place to the naked and ardent sunshine. From Olympus to Golgotha and onward to the Mount of Reason — these are but steps in the progress of human consciousness. The eternal truths remain forever few. A little child can count them. They have already echoed vainly upon human ears, and will still sound but faint and far off for many an age. It is by being selfish and patriotic that mankind gives evil its tremendous power. Between the Scylla and Charybdis of Creed and Greed his labouring bark still tosses and will toss while innumerable hosts go down to Dis. The end, however, is safe — within no god’s bosom — but at the heart of unborn men and women.”
They did not reply and Pan proceeded.
“And now, Arcadius, I will tell you of that one unclouded happiness which breeds no worm and brings no shadow. It is the happiness born solely on account of another; the happiness planned and wrought for humanity; the happiness begot of the outlook that eliminates self; the happiness of a Socrates or a Jesus. Men, not man, have often risen to this noble height; but never a community, never a nation. Go into the world, you twain; leave your villa and your cave and do what you may to comfort the uncomforted and bring a smile upon the faces of those who never smile. You can accomplish very little; but that is not your affair. Within your own gift at least lies the power to bring the highest happiness to yourselves that man may know. You stand as yet virgin of experience. You have both good qualities, which you are wasting; for Arcadius, with his slaves and lands and pelf, is just as useless as Hilarion, with his sandals and skull.”
“He has buried the skull, Mighty One,” said the disciple of Pan.
“Good,” answered the god. “It belonged to an Egyptian who prayed to the mummy of a cat, loved his fellow-creatures and did many kind little things, before they killed him for another’s error…. So thus it stands, my lads. If you would be happy, do good to those you will never see; help those you will never know; serve those who will never thank you; use your gifts of wealth, eloquence, sympathy for the benefit of all men. Do not stand and look on and shake your head from your front doorstep, Arcadius; no longer whine about your soul in this over-furnished cavern, Hilarion; but forget yourselves and throw your hearts and gifts and energies into the business of making the city of Rome a happier place than you know it to be. Arcadius can help the sick and suffering and do his little part to staunch the wounds and lessen the indignities of the poor and needy; Hilarion can speak burning words of faith and cheer and hope. He can follow his Master very effectively; and if his road leads to his Master’s cross, which is probable, what better place?
“You are greatly blessed, moreover, in your women. Ceres will prove a noble right hand for Arcadius; and her cousin may be entrusted to advance the ideals of Hilarion.”
“Can you hesitate, brother?” asked Arcadius. “If that which you would do shall be better done beside Erotion, can you hesitate?”
“Should the end of the world indeed be delayed — ” began Hilarion, and stopped.
Pan regarded him with a smile.
“Are there any Eleusinian mysteries in your faith?” he asked.
“Most certainly not,” replied Hilarion, “nothing of the kind.”
“I heard a rumour of Love Feasts,” replied Pan gently, “but I daresay it was only a Pagan rumour. You have adopted so many charming details from the old faith; and, in any case, where is the prosperous religion that has no part or lot with sex?”
“I have always told my brother that he went into this business too young,” declared Arcadius.
“But sex is the one thing we abhor,” answered Hilarion firmly.
“How different from your grandfathers,” replied Pan. “Now they glorified sex and honoured it with many a significant and healthy ceremonial. They went a trifle too far some times — who does not? But you are lost in the opposite direction. You ignore sex, insult it, deny it, do everything but escape it. That, being men and women first, Christians afterwards, you cannot do. And what results? The fair and sweet becomes foul and bitter. You assault a vital part of yourselves, and outraged Nature hits back with hideous blows. In the interests of spiritual development you would crush the sources of your being, with the result that sex loses its rhythm and too often becomes your sole, horrid preoccupation and possession. Asceticism, my good Hilarion, is merely sensualism spelled backward, and a man may as well seek to fly from his feet and hands as from the foundations of his physical existence. You dam the healthy human impulses, and they run over into your souls, stagnate and breed a pestilence. Healthful energies, designed that man may endure and rise to his remote destiny, are converted to soul-destroying demons by your folly; therefore drop this nasty nonsense; be a man, my friend, and face manhood. To fly from it is the highest cowardice, the greatest danger; for trust me, the soul that has honoured its body on earth will sooner win the nod of your good Peter at the Gate than that mistaken spirit who has dragged unclean thoughts, unclean dreams and unclean bones through a lonely desert. Quit this attitude of exaggerated respect for your own soul, Hilarion, and devote your span to the souls of other people, that your own may become worthy of respect. A soul should not rust out, but wear out on the business of other souls. Therefore take to heaven a soul polished by well-doing, not one mouldy with storage. Fight and die clean and game — both of you.”
“And marry Erotion first?” asked Hilarion humbly.
“Yes,” replied Pan. “Most emphatically marry Erotion first. There is nothing in your religion to forbid you from being a decent member of society, or from assuming the dignity, happiness and responsibility of a normal man. Feed up and take exercise and get well again. Then be married and go into the world — hearty, healthy, sane — to win your experience, enlarge your sympathy and do with your might what you will find within your reach to be done. And don’t break your shins on forms and ceremonies. Progress in morality never depended on religions and never can. Somebody has said, or will, that the religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next; but the righteousness of an age is the true light for those that follow; and as righteousness waxes and wanes from century to century, so may mankind hope or fear, setting his course for the good and avoiding the evil.
“Bless you both, and may whatsoever gods there be smile upon your endeavours.”
He rose, and while Arcadius knelt and kissed his stalwart hoof according to custom, Hilarion bowed respectfully. Even as he did so he felt a doubt that bolts from his own affronted deity might strike him. But nothing happened. As Arcadius had assured him on a previous occasion, truth cannot contradict truth; and was it not written three hundred years before Christ, that “Communion and friendship, temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men?”
Yet Arcadius felt conscious of a change in Pan, and before the deity stumped off upon his night-hidden way, he spoke to him.
“How is it with you yourself, dear God?” he asked. “It has ever been the selfish mortal’s custom to fling his troubles upon an immortal director and load the divine shoulders with burdens often of his own making; yet I do not stint my love, and love, being quick-sighted, perceives a change.”
“It is with me as with all of us in whom mankind puts trust and faith,” replied the god. “The measure of a deity’s success must ever depend upon the quality of his worshippers. The breath of our celebrants and votaries is the life in our nostrils; and as that diminishes, so must we abate. Godkind are in truth solely dependent on mankind, as light is nothing without darkness, heat nothing without cold, stability no more than a word without vicissitude and change. To-day new divine figures are at the meridian of man’s worship; a new evangel draws the heart and hope of humanity; a new dynasty of Heaven is to be exalted to the central throne; but the simple theology of your Christian primitives will be soon overlaid, corrupted, lost in the usual flood of myth and metaphysic. Meantime we constellations of Olympus sink to our setting under the dawn of your Triple Sun. We pass to the limbo of vanished pantheons and mythologies; we join the gods of Assyria and Persia and Egypt in their everlasting eclipse; we diminish and melt away as the snow upon Soracte, while human hope and fear, trust and affection depart from us. Some will vanish out of the heart of man for ever; while others may loiter as loved ghosts for all time. Of such am I, and my syrinx shall yet whisper by the river, my lonely altars win their worship down many an avenue of human years. For herds must roam upon the high lands, flocks silver the water meadows; and man, thinking on the mettle of his pastures, still spare a kindly thought for the Pasturer.”
He was gone, and though Hilarion suggested waiting until morn, Arcadius would not have it so, but made his brother descend straightway to Ceres and Erotion.
They found the women on their knees, lifted them up and filled their hearts with joy; but after Ceres and Arcadius had stolen from them, the lovers could do no more than clasp hands and gaze upon each other’s faces in silent and speechless bliss. Thus, indeed, did Aurora, goddess of dawn, find them, as she ascended out of the East, to pay her tribute of dewy tears at Memnon’s grave; and she woke roses in the pale cheeks of Hilarion and his lass, and flashed into their adoring eyes the light of the morning star and the rapture of the morning wind.