The Book of Khalid Part 12

"Here in this grand Mosque of Nature, I read my own Koran. I, Khalid, a Beduin in the desert of life, a vagabond on the highway of thought, I come to this glorious Mosque, the only place of worship open to me, to heal my broken soul in the perfumed atmosphere of its celestial vistas. The mihrabs here are not in this direction nor in that. But whereso one turns there are niches in which the living spirit of Allah is ever present. Here, then, I prostrate me and read a few Chapters of MY Holy Book. After which I resign myself to my eternal Mother and the soft western breezes lull me asleep. Yea, and even like my poor brother Moslem sleeping on his hair-mat in a dark corner of his airy Mosque, I dream my dream of contentment and resignation and love.

"See the ploughman strutting home, his goad in his hand, his plough on his shoulder, as if he had done his duty. Allah be praised, the flowers in the terrace-walls are secure. That is why, I believe, my American brother Th.o.r.eau liked walls with many gaps in them. The sweet wild daughters of Spring can live therein their natural life without being molested by the scythe or the plough. Allah be praised a hundred times and one."

CHAPTER IX

SIGNS OF THE HERMIT

Although we claim some knowledge of the Lebanon mountains, having landed there in our journey earthward, and having since then, our limbs waxing firm and strong, made many a journey through them, we could not, after developing, through many readings, Khalid's spiritual films, identify them with the vicinage which he made his Kaaba. On what hill, in what wadi, under what pines did he ruminate and extravagate, we could not from these idealised pictures ascertain. For a spiritual film is other than a photographic one. A poet's lens is endowed with a seeing eye, an insight, and a faculty to choose and compose. Hence the difficulty in tracing the footsteps of Fancy--in locating its cave, its nest, or its Kaaba. His pine-mosque we could find anywhere, at any alt.i.tude; his vineyards, too, and his glades; for our mountain scenery, its beauty alternating between the placid and the rugged--the tame terrace soil and the wild, forbidding majesty--is allwhere almost the same. But where in these rocky and cavernous recesses of the world can we to-day find the ancient Lebanon troglodyte, whom Khalid has seen, and visited in his hut, and even talked with? It is this that forces us to seek his diggings, to trace, if possible, his footsteps.

In the K. L. MS., as we have once remarked and more than once hinted, we find much that is unduly inflated, truly Oriental; much that is plat.i.tudinous, ludicrous, which we have suppressed. But never could we question the Author's veracity and sincerity of purpose. Whether he crawled like a zoophyte, soared like an eagle, or fought, like Ali, the giants of the lower world, he is genuine, and oft-times amusingly truthful. But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, if Khalid has found the troglodyte, whom we thought to be an extinct species, he should have left us a few legends about it.

We have visited the ancient caverns of the Lebanon troglodytes in the cliffs overhanging the river of Wadi Kadeesha, and found nothing there but blind bats, and mosses, and dreary vacuity. No, not a vestage of the fossil is there, not a skull, not a shinbone. We have also inquired in the monasteries near the Cedars, and we were frankly told that no monk to-day fancies such a life. And if he did, he would not give his brother monks the trouble of carrying his daily bread to a cave in those forbidden cliffs. And yet, Simeon Stylites, he of the Pillar, who remained for thirty years perched on the top of it, was a Syrian shepherd. But who of his descendants to-day would as much as pa.s.s one night on the top of that pillar? Curious eleemosynary phases of our monkish system, these modern times reveal.

On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present Work, we pa.s.sed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled bushes of the clematis. The muleteer stops near one of these and stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove, alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, "This must be the breviary of some monk."

No, it was an English book, and of American origin, and of a kind quite rare in America. Indeed, here were a find and surprise as agreeable as Khalid's sweetbrier bush. Henry Th.o.r.eau's _Week_! What a miracle of chance. Whose this mutilated copy of the _Week_, we thought? Who in these mountains, having been in America, took more interest in the Dreamer of Walden Woods than in peddling and trading?

We walk our mule, looking about in vague, restless surprise, as if seeking in the woods a lost companion, and lo, we reach a monarch pine on which is carved the name of--Khalid! This book, then, must be his; the name on the pine tree is surely his own; we know his hand as well as his turn of mind. But who can say if this be his Kaaba, this his pine-mosque? Might he not only have pa.s.sed through these glades to other parts? Signs, indeed, are here of his feet and hands, if not of his tent-pegs. And what signifies his stay? No matter how long he might have put up here, it is but a pa.s.sage, deeply considered: like Th.o.r.eau's pa.s.sage through Walden woods, like Mohammad's through the desert.

This leisure hour is the nipple of the soul. And fortunate they who are not artificially suckled, who know this hour no matter how brief, who get their nipple at the right time. If they do not, no pabulum ever after, will their indurated tissues a.s.similate. Do you wonder why the world is full of crusty souls? and why to them this infant hour, this suckling while, is so repugnant? But we must not intrude more of such remarks about mankind. Whether rightly suckled or not, we manage to live; but whether we do so marmot-like or Maronite-like, is not the question here to be considered. To pray for your bread or to burrow in the earth for it, is it not the same with most people?

Given a missionary with a Bible in his hip-pocket or a peasant with a load of brushwood on his back and the same gastric coefficient, and you will have in either case a resulting expansion for six feet of coffin ground and a fraction of Allah's mercy. Our poor missionary, is it worth while to cross the seas for this? Marmot-like or Maronite-like--but soft you know! Here is our peasant with his overshadowing load of brushwood. And there is another, and another.

They are carrying fuel to the lime-pit ahead of us yonder. What brow-sweat, what time, what fire, what suffering and patient toil, the lime-washing, or mere liming, of our houses and sepulchres, requires. That cone structure there, that artificial volcano, with its crackling, flaming bowels and its fuliginous, coruscating crater, must our hardy peasants feed continually for twenty days and nights.

But the book and the name on the pine, we would know more of these signs, if possible. And so, we visit the labourers of the kiln. They are yodling, the while they work, and jesting and laughing. The stokers, with flaming, swollen eyes, their tawny complexion waxing a brilliant bronze, their sweat making golden furrows therein, with their pikes and pitchforks busy, are terribly magnificent to behold.

Here be men who would destroy Bastilles for you, if it were nominated in the bond. And there is the monk-foreman--the kiln is of the monastery's estate--reading his breviary while the lime is in making.

Indeed, these sodalities of the Lebanons are not what their vows and ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their prayers,--not by any means. Their flesh-pots are not a few, and their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat estates--three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the clergy--can yield anything, from silk coc.o.o.ns to lime-pits? They will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them so long as they keep some reminiscence of business in their heads to keep the Devil out of it.

The monk-foreman is reading with one eye and watching with the other.

"Work," cries he, "every minute wasted is stolen from the abbey. And whoso steals, look in the pit: its fire is nothing compared with Juhannam." And the argument serves its purpose. The labourers hurry hither and thither, bringing brushwood near; the first stoker pitches to the second, the second to the third, and he feeds the flaming, smoking, coruscating volcano. "_Yallah!_" (Keep it up) exclaims the monk-foreman. "Burn the devil's creed," cries one. "Burn h.e.l.l," cries another. And thus jesting in earnest, mightily working and enduring, they burn the mountains into lime, they make the very rocks yield somewhat.--Strength and blessings, brothers.

After the usual inquiry of whence and whither, his monkship offers the snuff-box. "No? roll you, then, a cigarette," taking out a plush pouch containing a mixture of the choicest native roots. These, we were told, are grown on the monastery's estate. We speak of the coc.o.o.n products of the season.

"Beshrew the mulberries!" exclaims the monk. "We are turning all our estates into fruit orchards and orangeries. The cultivation of the silk-worm is in itself an abomination. And while its income to-day is not as much as it was ten years ago, the expenditure has risen twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their native soil."

And one subject leading to another, for our monk is a glib talker, we come to the cheese-makers, the goatherds. "Even these honest rustics,"

says he, "are becoming sophisticated (_mafsudin_). Their cheese is no longer what it was, nor is their faith. For Civilisation, pa.s.sing by their huts in some shape or other, whispers in their ears something about cleverness and adulteration. And mistaking the one for the other, they abstract the b.u.t.ter from the milk and leave the verdigris in the utensils. This l.u.s.t of gain is one of the diseases which come from Europe and America,--it is a plague which even the goatherd cannot escape. Why, do you know, wherever the cheese-monger goes these days ptomaine poison is certain to follow."

"And why does not the Government interfere?" we ask.

"Because the Government," replies our monk in a dry, droll air and gesture, "does not eat cheese."

And the monks, we learned, do not have to buy it. For this, as well as their b.u.t.ter, olive oil, and wine, is made on their own estates, under their own supervision.

"Yes," he resumes, placing his breviary in his pocket and taking out the snuff-box; "not long ago one who lived in these parts--a young man from Baalbek he was, and he had his booth in the pine forest yonder--bought some cheese from one of these muleteer cheese-mongers, and after he had eaten of it fell sick. It chanced that I was pa.s.sing by on my way to the abbey, when he was groaning and retching beneath that pine tree. It was the first time I saw that young man, and were I not pa.s.sing by I know not what would have become of him. I helped him to the abbey, where he was ministered to by our physician, and he remained with us three days. He ate of our cheese and drank of our wine, and seemed to like both very much. And ever since, while he was here, he would come to the abbey with a basket or a tray of his own make--he occupied himself in making wicker-baskets and trays--and ask in exchange some of our cheese and olive oil. He was very intelligent, this fellow; his eyes sometimes were like the mouth of this pit, full of fire and smoke. But he was queer. The clock in him was not wound right--he was always ahead or behind time, always complaining that we monks did not reckon time as he did. Nevertheless, I liked him much, and often would I bring him some of our cookery. But he never accepted anything without giving something in exchange."

Unmistakable signs.

"And his black turban," continues the monk, "over his long flowing hair made him look like our hermit." (Strange coincidence!) "On your way here have you not stopped to visit the hermit? Not far from the abbey, on your right hand coming here, is the Hermitage."

We remember pa.s.sing a pretty cottage surrounded by a vineyard in that rocky wilderness; but who would mistake that for a troglodyte's cave?

"And this young man from Baalbek," we ask, "how did he live in this forest?"

"Yonder," points the monk, "he cleared and cleaned for himself a little s.p.a.ce which he made his workshop. And up in the pines he constructed a platform, which he walled and covered with boughs. And when he was not working or walking, he would be there among the branches, either singing or asleep. I used to envy him that nest in the pines."

"And did he ever go to church?"

"He attended ma.s.s twice in our chapel, on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday, I think."

"And did he visit the abbey often?"

"Only when he wanted cheese or olive oil." (Shame, O Khalid!) "But he often repaired to the Hermitage. I went with him once to listen to his conversation with the Hermit. They often disagreed, but never quarrelled. I like that young man in spite of his oddities of thought, which savoured at times of infidelity. But he is honest, believe me; never tells a lie; and in a certain sense he is as pious as our Hermit, I think. Roll another cigarette."

"Thank you. And the Hermit, what is your opinion of him?"

"Well, h'm--h'm--go visit him. A good man he is, but very simple. And between us, he likes money too much. H'm, h'm, go visit him. If I were not engaged at present, I would accompany you thither."

We thank our good monk and retrace our steps to the Hermitage, rolling meanwhile in our mind that awful remark about the Hermit's love of money. Blindness and Plague! even the troglodyte loves and worships thee, thou silver Demiurge! We can not believe it. The grudges of monks against each other often reach darker and more fatal depths.

Alas, if the faith of the cheese-monger is become adulterated, what shall we say of the faith of our monkhood? If the salt of the earth--but not to the nunnery nor to the monkery, we go. Rather let us to the Hermitage, Reader, and with an honest heart; in earnest, not in sport.

CHAPTER X

THE VINEYARD IN THE KAABA

This, then, is the cave of our troglodyte! Allah be praised, even the hermits of the Lebanon mountains, like the prophets of America and other electric-age species, are subject to the laws of evolution. A cottage and chapel set in a vineyard, the most beautiful we have yet seen, looms up in this rocky wilderness like an oasis in a desert. For many miles around, the vicinage presents a volcanic aspect, wild, barren, howlingly dreary. At the foot of Mt. Sanneen in the east, beyond many ravines, are villages and verdure; and from the last terrace in the vineyard one overlooks the deep chasm which can boast of a rivulet in winter. But in the summer its nakedness is appalling.

The sun turns its pocket inside out, so to speak, exposing its boulders, its little windrows of sands, and its dry ditches full of dead fish sp.a.w.n. And the cold, rocky horizon, rising so high and near, shuts out the sea and hides from the Hermit the glory of the sundown.

But we can behold its effects on Mt. Sanneen, on the clouds above us, on the gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nts in the villages far away. The mountains in the east are mantled with etherial lilac alternating with mauve; the clouds are touched with purple and gold; the cas.e.m.e.nts in the distance are scintillating with mystical carbuncles: the sun is setting in the Mediterranean,--he is waving his farewell to the hills.

We reach the first gate of the Hermitage; and the odour peculiar to monks and monkeries, a mixed smell of mould and incense and burning oil, greets us as we enter into a small open s.p.a.ce in the centre of which is a Persian lilac tree. To the right is a barbed-wire fence shutting in the vineyard; directly opposite is the door of the chapel; and near it is a wicket before which stands a withered old woman.

Against the wall is a stone bench where another woman is seated. As we enter, we hear her, standing at the wicket, talking to some one behind the scene. "Yes, that is the name of my husband," says she. "Allah have mercy on his soul," sighs an exiguous voice within; "pray for him, pray for him." And the woman, taking to weeping, blubbers out, "Will thirty ma.s.ses do, think your Reverence?" "Yes, that will cheer his soul," replies the oracle.

The old woman thereupon enters the chapel, pays the priest or serving-monk therein, one hundred piasters for thirty ma.s.ses, and goes away in tears. The next woman rises to the gate. "I am the mother of--," she says. "Ah, the mother of--," repeats the exiguous voice. "How are you? (She must be an old customer.) How is your husband? How are your children? And those in America, are they well, are they prosperous? Yes, yes, your deceased son. Well, h'm--h'm--you must come again. I can not tell you anything yet.

Come again next week." And she, too, visits the chapel, counts out some money to the serving-monk, and leaves the Hermitage, drying her tears.

The Reader, who must have recognised the squeaking, snuffling, exiguous voice, knows not perhaps that the Hermit, in certain moments of _inkhitaf_ (abstraction, levitation) has glimpses into the spirit-world and can tell while in this otherworldliness how the Christian souls are faring, and how many ma.s.ses those in Purgatory need before they can rejoin the bosom of Father Abraham. And those who seek consolation and guidance through his occult ministrations are mostly women. But the money collected for ma.s.ses, let it here be said, as well as the income of the vineyard, the Hermit touches not. The monks are the owners of the occult establishment, and they know better than he what to do with the revenue. But how far this ancient religious Medium can go in the spirit-world, and how honest he might be in his otherworldliness, let those say who have experience in spookery and table-rapping.

Now, the women having done and gone, the wicket is open, and the serving-monk ushers us through the dark and stivy corridor to the rear, where a few boxes marked "Made in America"--petroleum boxes, these--are offered us as seats. Before the door of the last cell are a few potsherds in which sweet basil plants are withering from thirst.

Presently, the door squeaks, and one, not drooping like the plants, comes out to greet us. This is Father Abd'ul-Messiah (Servitor of the Christ), as the Hermit is called. Here, indeed, is an up-to-date hermit, not an antique troglodyte. Lean and lathy, he is, but not hungry-looking; quick of eye and gesture; quick of step, too. He seems always on the alert, as if surrounded continually with spirits. He is young, withal, or keeps so, at least, through the grace and ministration of Allah and the Virgin. His long unkempt hair and beard are innocent of a single white line. And his health? "Through my five and twenty years of seclusion," said he, "I have not known any disease, except, now and then, in the spring season, when the sap begins to flow, I am visited by Allah with chills and fever.--No; I eat but one meal a day.--Yes; I am happy, Allah be praised, quite happy, very happy."

And he lifts his eyes heavenward, and sighs and rubs his hands in joyful satisfaction. To us, this Servitor of the Christ seemed not to have pa.s.sed the climacteric. But truly, as he avowed, he was entering the fifth l.u.s.trum beyond it. Such are the advantages of the ascetic life, and of such ascetics the Kingdom of Heaven. A man of sixty can carry twenty years in his pocket, and seem all honesty, and youth, and health, and happiness.

We then venture a question about the sack-cloth, a trace of which was seen under his tunic sleeve. And fetching a deep sigh, he gazes on the drooping sweet basils in silence. No, he likes not to speak of these mortifications of the flesh. After some meditation he tells us, however, that the sack-cloth on the first month is annoying, torturing. "But the flesh," he continues navely, "is inured to it, as the pile, in the course of time, is broken and softened down." And with an honest look in his eyes, he smiled and sighs his a.s.surance.

For his Reverence always punctuates his speech with these sweet sighs of joy. The serving-monk now comes to whisper a word in his ear, and we are asked to "scent the air" a while in the vineyard.