The Man Who Died (5 page)

"Here sleep!" said the slave. "For the goats come no more on this
half–island. And there is water." He pointed to a little basin of rock
where the maidenhair fern fringed a dripping mouthful of water.

Having scornfully bestowed his patronage, the slave departed. The man who
had died climbed out to the tip of the peninsula, where the wave
thrashed. It was rapidly getting dark, and the stars were coming out. The
wind was abating for the night. Inland, the steep grooved up–slope was
dark to the long wavering outline of the crest against the translucent
sky. Only now and then a lantern flickered towards the villa.

The man who had died went back to the shelter. There he took bread from
his leather pouch, dipped it in the water of the tiny spring, and slowly
ate. Having eaten and washed his mouth, he looked once more at the bright
stars in the pure windy sky, then settled the heath for his bed. Having
laid his hat and his sandals aside, and put his pouch under his cheek for
a pillow, he slept, for he was very tired. Yet during the night the cold
woke him pinching wearily through his weariness. Outside was brilliantly
starry, and still windy. He sat and hugged himself in a sort of coma, and
towards dawn went to sleep again.

In the morning the coast was still chill in shadow, though the sun was up
behind the hills, when the woman came down from the villa towards the
goddess. The sea was fair and pale blue, lovely in newness, and at last
the wind was still. Yet the waves broke white in the many rocks, and tore
in the shingle of the little bay. The woman came slowly towards her
dream. Yet she was aware of an interruption.

As she followed the little neck of rock on to her peninsula, and climbed
the slope between the trees to the temple, a slave came down and stood,
making his obeisance. There was a faint insolence in his humility.
"Speak!" she said.

"Lady, the man is there, he still sleeps. Lady, may I speak?"

"Speak!" she said, repelled by the fellow.

"Lady, the man is an escaped malefactor."

The slave seemed to triumph in imparting the unpleasant news.

"By what sign?"

"Behold his hands and feet! Will the lady look on him?"

"Lead on!"

The slave led quickly over the mound of the hill down to the tiny ravine.
There he stood aside, and the woman went into the crack towards the cave.
Her heart beat a little. Above all, she must preserve her temple
inviolate.

The vagabond was asleep with his cheek on his scrip, his mantle wrapped
round him, but his bare, soiled feet curling side by side, to keep each
other warm, and his hand lying clenched in sleep. And in the pale skin of
his feet usually covered by sandal–straps, she saw the scars, and in the
palm of the loose hand.

She had no interest in men, particularly in the servile class. Yet she
looked at the sleeping face. It was worn, hollow, and rather ugly. But,
'a true priestess, she saw the other kind of beauty in it, the sheer
stillness of the deeper life. There was even a sort of majesty in the
dark brows, over the still, hollow cheeks. She saw that his black hair,
left long, in contrast to the Roman fashion, was touched with grey at the
temples, and the black pointed beard had threads of grey. But that must
be suffering or misfortune, for the man was young. His dusky skin had the
silvery glisten of youth still.

There was a beauty of much suffering, and the strange calm candour of
finer life in the whole delicate ugliness of the face. For the first
time, she was touched on the quick at the sight of a man, as if the tip
of a fine flame of living had touched her. It was the first time. Men had
roused all kinds of feeling in her, but never had touched her with the
flame–tip of life.

She went back under the rock to where the slave waited.

"Know!" she said. "This is no malefactor, but a free citizen of the east.
Do not disturb him. But when he comes forth, bring him to me; tell him I
would speak with him."

She spoke coldly, for she found slaves invariably repellent, a little
repulsive. They were so embedded in the lesser life, and their appetites
and their small consciousness were a little disgusting. So she wrapped
her dream round her and went to the temple, where a slave girl brought
winter roses and jasmine for the altar. But to–day, even in her
ministrations, she was disturbed.

The sun rose over the hill, sparkling, the light fell triumphantly on the
little pine–covered peninsula of the coast, and on the pink temple, in
the pristine newness. The man who had died woke up, and put on his
sandals. He put on his hat too, slung his scrip under his mantle, and
went out, to see the morning in all its blue and its new gold. He glanced
at the little yellow–and–white narcissus sparkling gaily in the rocks.
And he saw the slave waiting for him like a menace.

"Master!" said the slave. "Our lady would speak with you at the house of
Isis."

"It is well," said the wanderer.

He went slowly, staying to look at the pale blue sea like a flower in
unruffled bloom, and the white fringes among the rocks, like white
rock–flowers, the hollow slopes sheering up high from the shore, grey
with olive trees and green with bright young wheat, and set with the
white, small villa. All fair and pure in the January morning.

The sun fell on the corner of the temple, he sat down on the step in the
sunshine, in the infinite patience of waiting. He had come back to life,
but not the same life that he had left, the life of little people and the
little day. Re–born, he was in the other life, the greater day of the
human consciousness. And he was alone and apart from the little day, and
out of contact with the daily people. Not yet had he accepted the
irrevocable nail me tangere which separates the re–born from the vulgar.
The separation was absolute, as yet here at the temple he felt peace, the
hard, bright pagan peace with hostility of slaves beneath.

The woman came into the dark inner doorway of the temple from the shrine,
and stood there, hesitating. She could see the dark figure of the man,
sitting in that terrible stillness that was portentous to her, had
something almost menacing in its patience.

She advanced across the outer chamber of the temple, and the man,
becoming aware of her, stood up. She addressed him in Greek, but he said:

"Madam, my Greek is limited. Allow me to speak vulgar Syrian."

"Whence come you? Whither go you?" she asked, with a hurried
preoccupation of a priestess.

"From the east beyond Damascus—and I go west as the road goes," he
replied slowly.

She glanced at him with sudden anxiety and shyness.

"But why do you have the marks of a malefactor?" she asked abruptly.

"Did the Lady of Isis spy upon me in my sleep?" he asked, with a grey
weariness.

"The slave warned me—your hands and feet—" she said. He looked at her.
Then he said:

"Will the Lady of Isis allow me to bid her farewell, and go up to the
road?"

The wind came in a sudden puff, lifting his mantle and his hat. He put up
his hand to hold the brim, and she saw again the thin brown hand with its
scar.

"See! The scar!" she said, pointing.

"Even so!" he said. "But farewell, and to Isis my homage and my thanks
for sleep."

He was going. But she looked up at him with her wondering blue eyes.

"Will you not look at Isis?" she said, with sudden impulse. And something
stirred in him, like pain.

"Where then?" he said.

"Come!"

He followed her into the inner shrine, into the almost–darkness. When his
eyes got used to the faint glow of the lamp, he saw the goddess striding
like a ship, eager in the swirl of her gown, and he made his obeisance.

"Great is Isis!" he said. "In her search she is greater than death.
Wonderful is such walking in a woman, wonderful the goal. All men praise
thee, Isis, thou greater than the mother unto man."

The woman of Isis heard, and threw incense on the brazier. Then she
looked at the man.

"Is it well with thee here?" she asked him. "Has Isis brought thee home
to herself?"

He looked at the priestess in wonder and trouble. "I know not," he said.

But the woman was pondering that this was the lost Osiris. She felt it in
the quick of her soul. And her agitation was intense.

He would not stay in the close, dark, perfumed shrine. He went out again
to the morning, to the cold air. He felt something approaching to touch
him, and all his flesh was still woven with pain and the wild
commandment:
Noli me tangere!
Touch me not! Oh, don't touch me!

The woman followed into the open with timid eagerness. He was moving
away.

"Oh, stranger, do not go! Oh, stay a while with Isis!"

He looked at her, at her face open like a flower, as if a sun had risen
in her soul. And again his loins stirred.

"Would you detain me, girl of Isis?" he said.

"Stay! I am sure you are Osiris!" she said.

He laughed suddenly. "Not yet!" he said. Then he looked at her wistful
face. "But I will sleep another night in the cave of the goats, if Isis
wills it," he added.

She put her hands together with a priestess's childish happiness.

"Ah! Isis will be glad!" she said.

So he went down to the shore in great trouble, saying to himself: "Shall
I give myself into this touch? Shall I give myself into this touch Men
have tortured me to death with their touch. Yet this girl of Isis is a
tender flame of healing. I am a physician, yet I have no healing like the
flame of this tender girl. The flame of this tender girl! Like the first
pale crocus of the spring. How could I have been blind to the healing and
the bliss in the crocus–like body of a tender woman! Ah, tenderness! More
terrible and lovely than the death I died—"

He pried small shell–fish from the rocks, and ate them with relish and
wonder for the simple taste of the sea. And inwardly he was tremulous,
thinking: "Dare I come into touch? For this is farther than death. I have
dared to let them lay hands on me and put me to death. But dare I come
into this tender touch of life? Oh, this is harder—"

But the woman went into the shrine again, and sat rapt in pure muse,
through the long hours, watching the swirling stride of the yearning
goddess, and the navel of the bud–like belly, like a seal on the virgin
urge of the search. And she gave herself to the woman–flow and to the
urge of Isis in Search.

Towards sundown she went on the peninsula to look for him. And she found
him gone towards the sun, as she had gone the day before, and sitting on
the pine–needles at the foot of the tree, where she had stood when first
she saw him. Now she approached tremulously and slowly, afraid, lest he
did not want her. She stood near him unseen, till suddenly he glanced up
at her from under his broad hat, and saw the westering sun on her netted
hair. He was startled, yet he expected her.

"Is that your home?" he said, pointing to the white, low villa on the
slope of olives.

"It is my mother's house. She is a widow, and I am her only child."

"And are these all her slaves?"

"Except those that are mine."

Their eyes met for a moment.

"Will you too sit to see the sun go down?" he said.

He had not risen to speak to her. He had known too much pain. So she sat
on the dry brown pine–needles, gathering her saffron mantle round her
knees. A boat was coming in, out of the open glow into the shadow of the
bay, and slaves were lifting small nets, their babble coming off the
surface of the water.

"And this is home to you," he said.

"But I serve Isis in Search," she replied.

He looked at her. She was like a soft, musing cloud, somehow remote. His
soul smote him with passion and compassion.

"Mayst thou find thy desire, maiden," he said, with sudden earnestness.

"And art thou not Osiris?" she asked.

He flushed suddenly.

"Yes, if thou wilt heal me!" he said. "For the death aloofness is still
upon me, and I cannot escape it."

She looked at him for a moment in fear from the soft blue sun of her
eyes. Then she lowered her head, and they sat in silence in the warmth
and glow of the western sun: the man who had died, and the woman of the
pure search.

The sun was curving down to the sea, in grand winter splendour. It fell
on the twinkling, naked bodies of the slaves, with their ruddy broad hams
and their small black heads, as they ran spreading the nets on the pebble
beach. The all–tolerant Pan watched over them. All–tolerant Pan should be
their god for ever.

The woman rose as the sun's rim dipped, saying:

"If you will stay, I shall send down victual and covering."

"The lady your mother, what will she say?"

The woman of Isis looked at him strangely, but with a tinge of misgiving.

"It is my own," she said.

"It is good," he said, smiling faintly and foreseeing difficulties.

He watched her go, with her absorbed, strange motion of the
self–dedicate. Her dun head was a little bent, the white linen swung
about her ivory ankles. And he saw the naked slaves stand to look at her,
with a certain wonder, and even a certain mischief. But she passed intent
through the door in the wall, on the bay.

The man who had died sat on at the foot of the tree overlooking the
strand, for on the little shore everything happened. At the small stream
which ran in round the corner of the property wall, women slaves were
still washing linen, and now and again came the hollow chock! chock!
chock! as they beat it against the smooth stones in the dark little
hollow of the pool. There was a smell of olive refuse on the air; and
sometimes still the faint rumble of the grindstone that was milling the
olives, inside the garden, and the sound of the slave calling to the ass
at the mill. Then through the doorway a woman stepped, a grey–haired
woman in a mantle of whitish wool, and there followed her a bare–headed
man in a toga, a Roman: probably her steward or overseer. They stood on
the high shingle above the sea, and cast round a rapid glance. The
broad–hammed, ruddy–bodied slaves bent absorbed and abject over the nets,
picking them clean, the women washing linen thrust their palms with
energy down on the wash, the old slave bent absorbed at the water's edge,
washing the fish and the polyps of the catch. And the woman and the
overseer saw it all in one glance. They also saw, seated at the foot of
the tree on the rocks of the peninsula, the strange man silent and alone.
And the man who had died saw that they spoke of him. Out of the little
sacred world of the peninsula he looked on the common world, and saw it
still hostile.