To this day I cannot tell. As I followed Glaucus out of the room, while in the act of turning round to close the door, I had my Master at a disadvantage. I saw him, but he did not see me. His head was drooping. The light was gone from his face; the eyes were lacking their usual lustre; the forehead was drawn as if in pain. It was no longer Epictetus the God-absorbed, but Epictetus the God-abandoned. If I had turned to him with a reproach, “Epictetus, you are breaking your own rule. You are sorrowing, sorrowing in earnest,” would he have replied, “No, only in appearance, not from within”? I do not think he would. He was too honest. To this day I verily believe that for once, at least for that once, our Master broke his own rule and felt real “trouble.” And I love him the better for it. That indeed is how I always like to remember his face—as I saw it for the last time, not knowing that it was the last, through the closing door—clouded with real grief, while I was leaving him for ever without farewell, never trusting so little in his teaching, never loving the teacher so much.
CHAPTER XXIX
SILANUS MEETS CLEMENS
We walked on together, both of us silent, till we came to Glaucus’s rooms. “Farewell,” said he. I replied that I would come in to see whether I could help him to make arrangements for his journey. He said nothing, but suffered me to enter. For some time I busied myself with practical matters. So did Glaucus. But every now and then he stopped, and sat down as though dazed. I questioned him about his journey and time of starting. Finding that only two or three hours remained, I urged him to rouse himself. “It will be of no use,” he said, “but you are right.” Then he exclaimed bitterly, “Am I not obeying Epictetus? Am I not making myself a stone?” “Not quite,” said I, “for a stone feels nothing. You are worse than a stone. For you feel much, yet do nothing to help those for whom you feel.” “Thank you for that,” said he. Then he roused himself. He did injustice to Epictetus, yet I perceived, as never before, how harmful this “stone-doctrine”—if I may so call it—might prove to many people.
I have no space, nor have I the right, to describe more fully Glaucus’s private affairs, the courage, affection, and steadfastness with which he bore the burdens of his family and saved his father and sister from their worst extremity. His course was different from Arrian’s. Arrian remained outside the fold. Glaucus found peace as I did. And I know that many a suffering soul in Corinth suffered the less because Glaucus, having experienced such a weight of sorrow himself, had learned the secret of lightening it for others. He died young, thirty years ago, but he lived long enough to “fight the good fight.”
Our last words together, as he was in the act of departing, I remember well: “What was that you said to me, Silanus, about waiting and having one’s strength renewed?” It was from Isaiah. I repeated it. Then I added, “But I spoke the words, I fear, because I had once felt them to be true. I did not quite feel them to be true at the moment when I repeated them to you. Perhaps I was not quite honest, or at least not quite frank.” “Then you don’t hold to them now?” said he. “God knows,” said I. “Sometimes I do, sometimes I do not. For the most part I think I do. I believe that there is good beneath all the evil, if only we could see it, or at least good in the end, good far off.” “Then” replied he, “you believe, perhaps, in a good God?” “I hope I may hereafter believe,” said I, “nay, I am almost certain I believe in a good God now. But, if I do, it is in a God that is fighting against evil, a God that may perhaps share in our afflictions and in our troubles.” “What?” said he, “you, a pupil of Epictetus, believe that God Himself can be troubled! Then of course you believe that a good man may be troubled?” “Indeed I do,” said I. “At least I half believe it about God, and wholly about man.” “Then you think I have a right to be troubled. You are a heretic.” “We are heretics together,” said I. “You have a right to be troubled, and I to be troubled with you.” “Thank you, and thank the Gods, for that at least!” said he. “Do you know,” said I, “that I am certain that Epictetus felt troubled too, for your sake? I saw him when he did not see me, as I was leaving the room; and I could not be mistaken.” “Ah!” said Glaucus, drawing in his breath. Then suddenly, as we were clasping hands in our last farewell, he added “Do not think too much about those scrawls!” And before I had time to ask his meaning, he had ridden away.
Returning to my rooms, I put away my lecture-notes and took out the gospels. But I could not read, and longed to be in the fresh air. As I rose from my seat to go out, my first thought was, “I will take no books with me.” But Mark happened to be in my hand, the smallest of the gospels. “This,” I said, “will be no weight.” But it weighed a great deal in the rest of my life, as the reader will soon see.
Before long, unconsciously seeking familiar solitudes, I found myself on the way to the little coppice where some days ago I had seen Hesperus above the departed sun, and Isaiah had shed on me the influence of his promise of peace. “Now,” said I sadly to myself, “I have with me a book that calls itself the fulfilment of that promise. But it fulfils nothing for me.” As I spoke, and drew the book from the folds of my garment, several pieces of paper fell on the ground. When I picked them up, I found—what I had completely forgotten—Glaucus’s “scrawls.” I thought they would contain some requests to perform commissions for him in Nicopolis, or to convey messages to friends, and that he might have written these in the lecture-room when he expected to hear news that might call him suddenly away. But they were something quite different. The first that I opened was entitled “A Postscript,” written in verse, rallying me upon my advice about “waiting.” It shewed me how Glaucus, too, had been affected, not only by the lecture that drove him from the room, but also by that saying of Epictetus concerning Zeus (“He would have if he could have”) which had disturbed me so much. It was wildly written as Glaucus himself confessed: but I will give it here, because—besides being a rebuke to me, and to all teachers that preach a gospel they do not feel—it shews how Epictetus himself, the perfection of honesty, stirred up in an honest and truthful pupil questionings and doubts that he could not satisfy or silence:
POSTSCRIPT.