The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 43

Abbot Pambo, as well as a.r.s.enius, had been dead several years; the abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, by a hermit from the neighbouring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, and his loving wisdom.

While still in the prime of his manhood, he was dragged, against his own entreaties, to preside over the laura of Scetis. The elder monks considered it an indignity to be ruled by so young a man; but the monastery throve and grew rapidly under his government. His sweetness, patience, and humility, and, above all, his marvellous understanding of the doubts and temptations of his own generation, soon drew around him all whose sensitiveness or waywardness had made them unmanageable in the neighbouring monasteries.

Never was the young Abbot Philammon heard to speak harshly of any human being, and he stopped, by stern rebuke, any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens.

One thing was noted, that there mingled always with his prayers the names of two women. And when some worthy elder, taking courage from his years, dared to hint kindly that this caused some scandal to the weaker brethren, "It is true," answered he. "Tell my brethren that I pray nightly for two women, both of them young, both of them beautiful; both of them beloved by me more than I love my own soul; and tell them that one of the two was an actress, and the other a heathen." The old monk laid his hand on his mouth and retired.

The remainder of his history it seems better to extract from an unpublished fragment of the lives of the saints.

"Now when the said abbot had ruled the monastery of Scetis seven years with uncommon prudence, he called one morning to him a certain ancient brother, and said: 'Make ready for me the divine elements, that I may consecrate them, and partake thereof with all my brethren, ere I depart hence. For know a.s.suredly that within the seventh day, I shall migrate to the celestial mansions.' And the abbot, having consecrated, distributed among his brethren, reserving only a portion of the most holy bread and wine; and then, having bestowed on them all the kiss of peace, he took the paten and chalice in his hands, and went forth from the monastery towards the desert; whom the whole fraternity followed weeping. And having arrived at the foot of a certain mountain, he stopped, and blessing them, dismissed them, and so ascending, was taken away from their eyes.

"But the eldest brother sent two of the young men to seek their master, who, meeting with a certain Moorish people, learnt that a priest, bearing a paten and chalice, had pa.s.sed before them a few days before, crossing the desert in the direction of the cave of the holy Amma.

"And they inquiring who this Amma might be, the Moors answered that some twenty years ago there had arrived in those mountains a woman more beautiful than had ever before been seen in that region, who, after distributing among them the rich jewels which she wore, had embraced the hermit's life, and sojourned upon the highest peak of a neighbouring mountain.

"Then the two brothers, determining to proceed, arrived upon the summit of the said mountain.

"There in an open grave, guarded by two lions, lay the body of Philammon, the abbot; and by his side, wrapped in his cloak, the corpse of a woman of exceeding beauty, such as the Moors had described. And by the grave-side stood the paten and the chalice, emptied of their divine contents. Whereupon, filling in the grave with all haste, they returned weeping to the laura.

"Now, before they returned, one of the brethren, searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found nothing there, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher.

"And it came to pa.s.s years afterwards that certain wandering barbarians of the Vandalic race saw this bracelet in the laura of Scetis, and pretended that it had belonged to a warrior of their tribe."

So be it. Pelagia and Philammon, like the rest, went to their own place; to the only place where such in such days could find rest; to the desert and the hermit's cell.

Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone, whether at Hypatia or Pelagia, Cyril or Philammon.

Two Years Ago

Kingsley's "Two Years Ago" has been said by his son to be the only novel, pure and simple, that ever came from the pen of the famous writer, Published in 1857, it was begun two years earlier while staying at Bideford. At this time Kingsley was deeply interested in the Crimean War, and many thousands of copies of his pamphlet, "Brave Words to Brave Soldiers," were distributed to the army. His military tastes no doubt go a long way towards explaining his doctrine in "Two Years Ago"

that the war was to exercise a great regenerating influence in English life. Although the story is in many respects weaker than its predecessors, it nevertheless abounds in brilliant and vivid word-paintings, the descriptions of North Devon scenery being probably unsurpa.s.sed in English prose.

_I.--Tom Thurnall's Wanderings_

To tell my story I must go back sixteen years to the days when the pleasant old town of Whitbury boasted of forty coaches a day, instead of one railway, and set forth how there stood two pleasant houses side by side in its southern suburb.

In one of these two houses lived Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land agent, and justice of the peace. In the other lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor of medicine, and consulting physician of all the countryside. These two men were as brothers, both were honest and kind-hearted men.

Dr. Thurnall was sitting in his study, settled to his microscope, one beautiful October morning, and his son Tom stood gazing out of the bay window.

Tom, who had been brought up in his father's profession, was of that bull-terrier type so common in England; st.u.r.dy, middle-sized, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, his face full of shrewdness and good nature, and of humour withal. It was his last day at home; tomorrow he was leaving for Paris.

Presently Mark Armsworth came in, and Tom was seen cantering about the garden with a weakly child of eight in his arms.

"Mark, the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place while he is so fond of little children."

"If she grows up, doctor, and don't go to join her poor dear mother up there, I don't know that I'd wish her a better husband than your boy."

"It would be a poor enough match for her."

"Tut! She'll have the money, and he the brains. Doctor, that boy'll be a credit to you; he'll make a noise in the world, or I know nothing. And if his fancy holds seven years hence, and he wants still to turn traveller, let him. If he's minded to go round the world, I'll back him to go, somehow, or I'll eat my head, Ned Thurnall!"

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and next day went to Paris, and soon became the best pistol shot and billiard-player in the Quartier Latin. Then he went to St. Mumpsimus's Hospital in London, and became the best boxer therein, and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning prizes and certificates without end, and becoming in time the most popular house-surgeon in the hospital; but nothing could keep him permanently at home. Settle down in a country practice he would not.

Cost his father a farthing he would not. So he started forth into the wide world with nothing but his wits and his science, an anatomical professor to a new college in some South American republic.

Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual revolution had just taken place, and that the party who had founded the college had all been shot. Whereat he whistled, and started off again, no man knew whither.

"Having got round half the world, daddy," he wrote home, "it's hard if I don't get round the other half."

With which he vanished into infinite s.p.a.ce, and was only heard of by occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains, the Spanish West Indies, Otaheite, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places, sending home valuable notes, zoological and botanical.

At last when full four years were pa.s.sed and gone since Tom started for South America, he descended from the box of the day-mail at Whitbury, with a serene and healthful countenance, shouldered his carpet-bag, and started for his father's house.

He walked in, and hung up his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk. Not finding the old man, he went into Mark Armsworth's, frightening out of her wits a pale, ugly girl of seventeen, whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon recovered her equanimity, and longed to throw her arms round his neck as of old, and was only restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now. She called her father, and all the household, and after a while the old doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son.

Tom Thurnall stayed a month at home, and then went to America, whence he wrote home in about six months. Then came a long silence, and then a letter from California; and then letters more regularly from Australia.

Sickened with California life, he had crossed the Pacific once more, and was hard at work in the diggings, doctoring and gold-finding by turns.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss," said his father.

"He has the pluck of a hound, and the cunning of a fox," said Mark, "and he'll be a credit to you yet."

So the years slipped on till the autumn of 1853. And then Tom, at the diggings at Ballarat, got a letter from Mary Armsworth.

"Your father is quite well in health, but his eyes have grown much worse, and the doctors are afraid that he has little chance of recovering the sight, at least of the left eye. And something has happened to the railroad in which he had invested so much, and he has given up the old house. He wants you to come home; but my father has entreated him to let you stay. You know, while we are here, he is safe."

Tom walked away slowly into the forest. He felt that the crisis of his life was come.

"I'll stay here and work," he said to himself finally, "till I make a hit or luck runs dry, and then home and settle; and, meanwhile, I'll go down to Melbourne tomorrow, and send the dear old dad two hundred pounds."

And there sprang up in him at once the intensest yearning after his father and the haunts of his boyhood, and the wildest dread that he should never see them.

_II.--The Wreck_

Half the village of Aberalva is collected on the long sloping point of a cliff. Sailors wrapped in pilot-cloth, oil-skinned coast guardsmen, women with their gowns turned over their heads, while every moment some fresh comer stumbles down the slope and asks, "Where's the wreck?" A shift of wind, a drift of cloud, and the moon flashes out a moment.

"There she is, sir," says Brown, the head-boatman to the coastguard lieutenant.