Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church

by Nathan C. Kouns

"Yea," she answered, "and I see that it is best to wait. But I want my mother; she is sick indeed."

Very soon the agile youth returned, bringing the saw with him, and Ammonius immediately swam out to the bull's hide, and sawed away two of the timbers at the intersection thereof, and quickly drew the raft close up against the shore, and took up the quilt and cast it to Arius, telling him to spread it out upon the ground, and in his strong arms lifted up the unconscious woman and bore her up the bank and gently laid her upon the quilt. Soon Arete and old Thopt joined them; and Arius and his mother took each an end of the quilt upon which the woman lay, and Ammonius gathered up the other two ends, and they bore her gently but swiftly to the cottage; and old Thopt took the girl's hand in hers and followed them as quickly as her growing infirmities permitted.

Arete and old Thopt stripped the poor lady of her elegant apparel that was soaked through with sea-water, and rubbed her vigorously with woolen cloths, clothed her with warm woolen gowns out of Arete's wardrobe, and gave her hot tea made of such shrubs as were known to their simple domestic pharmacy. The sufferer manifestly got much relief from this treatment, but it was only too apparent that the terrible exposure to which she had been subjected had taken hold upon the very roots of life in her beautiful but delicate frame. Her unconscious murmurs were uttered in the Egyptian tongue, and, no sooner had old Thopt heard it, than a strange excitement seized her, and she answered the lady in the same strange speech, crooning over her like a mother over a sick child, or more like some affectionate animal licking its wounded young; for the Egyptian speech evidently shows the syllabication into articulate sounds of thoughts that were primarily expressed in signs and grimaces--the translation of brute means of communication into words; and its original rudimentary form is as direct and unveiled in the expression of passion and emotion as the actions of an animal could be.

The maiden, Theckla, having been well rubbed, well clad in dry garments, and well fed with hot soup and viands, seemed almost free from any ill effects of her long exposure upon the raft; and, being assured that her mother was tenderly cared for, rapidly recovered her strength and spirits.

The famous medical school at Cyrene educated many men in all the learning of a profession which was then in its infancy, and so thoroughly infested with charlatanism that even the most eminent professors of the art of healing commanded but small respect among intelligent people; and the Christians especially had no faith in their pretended ability to cure disease. In ordinary cases they trusted to careful nursing, and the curative power of nature in people whose freedom from vice and whose simple, healthful manner of life gave the patient every chance of recovery, without the use of incantations, charms, and poisons, which then constituted the chief resources of professional pharmacy; and in desperate cases they anointed the stricken one with oil, obtained the prayers of the Church in his behalf, and calmly awaited the issue; having neither any inordinate love of life nor any distressful fear of death, and looking upon even a fatal issue of the illness as a change that was often better than recovery--a happy release from the cares and uncertainties of earthly life, that was neither to be too rashly sought for nor too anxiously avoided. Hence the women at the farm themselves assumed the care of their interesting patient, and gave her constant and affectionate attention, but no drugs except such simple remedies as were in common family use, of all of which old Thopt had a very thorough knowledge. The old woman believed that sound and refreshing sleep is the secret of health and longevity, and that no one would die so long as this blessing was obtainable; and hence, in her opinion, the poppy was a panacea. The bark of certain species of the willow she knew to be good against malarial fevers, and this was her favorite remedy in every disease which manifested a remittent or intermittent form. She had no hesitation in declaring that the lady would be ill a long time, and that whether she would live or die must depend upon the vital forces she had to draw upon; for old Thopt had always remained at least a semi-pagan, and, if there was any Christianity in her, it was inextricably tangled up with the remnants of the old religion which she had learned in her home upon the Nile. She loved her mistress passionately and devotedly, just as a faithful dog might have loved, and she refused to accept the freedom offered to her by Arete when, under the influence and instructions of Ammonius, that lady had become a Christian; because one of the fixed and immovable articles of her ancient creed was that many Egyptians were created to be slaves, and that she was one of them; so that it would have been a measureless impiety for her to set up herself to be free. If she had any hatred of the new religion, it grew out of the fact that that faith undertook to abolish the relation of mistress and slave between Arete and herself. She had not undressed and washed her patient without immediately perceiving that she was one of that aristocratic class who had come into the world to enjoy all of its advantages, and to be waited upon by slaves, as was demonstrated to old Thopt's satisfaction by the fineness of her kilt, girdle, and gown, and by the delicate pink-color of her flesh beneath it; and the old woman would as soon have thought of organizing a rebellion against Anubis, the jackal-headed god himself, as to have thought of withholding proper reverence and care from the superior being who had been cast upon her guardianship. So that the Christian charity of Arete and the inborn sense of duty and obligation which generations of inherited servitude had made second nature in old Thopt combined to secure faithful and untiring care in behalf of the sick woman, and one or the other of them was in attendance upon her day and night.

But as Ammonius had carried her from the raft to the land, and on the way up to the house, he had heard her utter unconsciously, in the Egyptian language, disjointed sentences which caused him much anxiety; and, as soon as her immediate wants had been attended to, he charged the family that they were not in any way to apprise the lady that she had fallen into the hands of Christians until such time as he might deem it proper to instruct them otherwise; but that they should be as diligent in their care of her as if she had been the sister of them all. Before the close of the first day's watching beside her patient, Arete found ample reason, in the lady's feverish revelations, for the injunctions which her husband had given concerning her. She talked almost incessantly: now of her home in Alexandria; now of the rulers of Egypt; now of her husband Amosis, and of her daughter; now of some special mission which Amosis had undertaken at Rome; now of the fearful tempest; now of a desperate struggle upon the raft between her husband and some one else, in which both had fallen into the sea together. The substance of this disjointed and feverish babbling left no doubt upon Arete's mind that the lady's husband was in the service of the rulers of Egypt, and high in the confidence of both the priests and of the government; nor that he was a bitter adversary of the Christians; nor that, when overtaken by the tempest, he was on his journey to Rome, to obtain from the Emperor larger authority to persecute the Christians, even to extermination, in Egypt and throughout Northern Libya. She gathered also that when the officer and his wife and child had betaken themselves to the raft as their last hope of safety, some one, seeing that all order and discipline were lost, inflamed by a guilty passion for the beautiful woman, had leaped upon the raft with them as it was leaving the vessel's side, and that a desperate struggle had occurred between the husband and the intruder, in which both had fallen into the sea; and that the lady herself regarded the very name of Christians with detestation and horror, and fully sympathized with her husband's purpose to persecute them; and she had expected him to reap great and rapid advancement from his zeal against the churches. And, although not unconscious of the element of danger lurking in their intercourse with such a conscientious hater of Christianity, Arete felt even larger compassion for her beautiful patient's pagan darkness than for her physical illness; but she fully realized the propriety of her husband's caution upon the subject.

And so the weary days went by, and on the sixth morning the fever broke, and left the poor lady with restored consciousness, but physically as weak and helpless as an infant.

During these days, Arius and Theckla had become fast friends. She was a beautiful child, but an Egyptian of the aristocratic class. Her hair, which was as black as jet, curled profusely all around and over her shapely head in luxuriant masses. Her forehead was low and broad, the face a perfect oval from the full temples to the point of the plump, delicate, projecting chin, while the small, full-lipped mouth was red as a cherry, the upper lip notably short and voluptuous. The black, arched, delicate eyebrows nearly met at the root of the high, straight, delicately chiseled nose, and the large, dark eyes, soft, black, and fathomless, free alike from fire and languishment, were of a kind found nowhere on earth except along the Nile--full, wide-open eyes that seemed calm and untroubled as the sightless orbs of any sphinx, yet full of mystery as is the old, old land of Kem. Arius soon discovered that the girl was remarkably bright and quick, but that she could neither read nor write, all the instruction she had ever received (and she had been very carefully taught) having been communicated by oral teaching. Her native tongue was, of course, that of Egypt, but she spoke Greek with fluency, and Latin also, but with difficulty and hesitation.

On the evening of the day on which she had been rescued from the waves, the boy and girl were playing and chatting together in the shade before the cottage. The sun was just sinking beyond the distant mountain-range, when the girl said, "Do you go at sunrise or at sunset?"

"Go whither?" said Arius.