Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church

by Nathan C. Kouns

"But I loved my mother! I must weep for her."

"Yea, daughter, weep as much as thou wilt. That is but natural and proper. So perhaps thou wouldst weep if she had gone to Alexandria, leaving thee behind; yet thou wouldst take comfort in the hope that she would come to thee again. So now she hath gone to Jesus, and is safe with him, and thou must take comfort in the hope, nay, in the very certainty, that, while she returneth not, perhaps, unto thee, thou shalt soon go unto her. And thou, being a Christian girl, shalt not vex thy heart with the hopeless sorrow that the heathen feel."

And the girl was comforted indeed, and her pleasant faith aided the buoyancy of health and youth in helping her to weary down the sorrow that followed the loss of her young, beautiful, and beloved mother; because the power of that faith brought the world's Consoler very near, and Death to her was shorn of his greatest terrors.

It was agreed among them that Theckla and Am-nem-hat should reside permanently at the cottage. The old man and Arius soon brought all of his possessions from the hermitage, even to his favorite goats; and, some of the neighbors assisting them, they built another room of stone, into which the ancient's manuscripts, his furniture, and his accumulation of coin, were all safely stowed away. And, all things having been thus satisfactorily arranged, the old man was conveyed in the boat around to Apollonia, and thence he took shipping unto Alexandria, where he produced before the orphans' court the depositions and other papers committed unto him by Hatasa; and, as guardian of Theckla, leased the houses which she owned in the city, and received and brought back to Baucalis with him some elegant personal effects that had belonged to Hatasa; her relatives consenting thereto without much opposition, and stipulating only that, if the girl should die, they were to be immediately informed of the fact; and that, if she should live, she was to come to the city as soon as she became of age. They were all pagans, and the old priest would have gone almost any length to avoid placing his young and beautiful Christian ward within the range of their influence. And, having transacted all things necessary, in a very few days the old man returned gladly to Baucalis--a place to which his heart seemed bound by stronger and more beautiful associations than had ever come into his long and lonely life elsewhere on earth, not even excepting Thebes and Ombos, nor his own quiet hermitage upon the mountain-side.

And the aged priest at once installed himself as the tutor of Theckla; and he taught to Arius, also, such science and literature as then were known unto the wisest men of Egypt; but some things he continued to learn from the boy himself.

And so the next four years glided quietly away, during which the routine of their peaceful lives pursued its usual course; and in their flight Arius became a tall and graceful youth of twenty; Theckla grew into a blooming and exquisitely beautiful woman of sixteen; for in the ardent Libyan latitudes the girls grow quickly into womanhood. These years made small changes in Ammonius and Arete; they told lightly upon the venerable Am-nem-hat, whose pure and quiet life had been favorable to longevity and to the preservation of his faculties unimpaired even unto an extreme old age; and Thopt herself bore the flight of time quite well, becoming almost imperceptibly more fixed and rigid in all her actions and opinions, and more and more impressed with the idea that Christianity was an excellent and beautiful thing for wise and perfect people like those among whom her lot was cast, and might even have suited her if it had not sought to abolish the relation of mistress and slave between herself and Arete, "contrary to nature and to common sense," she said; but that old grudge she could never entirely get over.

CHAPTER XV.

LOVE AND PARTING.

During these four years a great change had occurred in the heart and in the person of beautiful young Theckla. There came a gradually developing fullness and roundness over her whole form; the sharp, angular lines of childhood faded away in the softer curves of maturity; a deeper color bloomed upon her peachy cheeks; a sweeter, more unfathomable light burned in her dark, soft eyes; the delicate pink hue under the skin, which in all Egyptians of the higher classes, whose complexions are untanned by a hard life and constant exposure, proves the ancient race of the land of Kem to be consanguineous with the Aryan rather than with the Nigritian family of man, became more clearly and deliciously defined; and a sort of intangible self-consciousness grew up within her heart which intuitively led her to keep her hands off the boy companion whom she loved as a brother, and, without understanding why she did so, she ceased to romp and tumble around with him as she had been accustomed to do during the first year of her residence at Baucalis. In place of casting aside her gown and plunging into the waters of the bay with him, when she went to bathe, she went alone, or with Arete. Yet there was not the slightest tendency to prudishness in this gradual withdrawal of that tactual familiarity with Arius which had characterized her first intercourse with him; but, without ever having been talked to or lectured at on the subject, her chaste, pure soul instinctively drew from the very spirit of the gospel lessons fine boundaries of feeling that made her unconsciously observe even the most delicate bounds of maiden modesty. But this retiring somewhat within herself--this ceasing from the outward, demonstrative signs of trust and affection--was physical only: for the boy and girl grew daily nearer and dearer to each other; grew daily more trustful and confidential with each other; and daily became more and more identified in interest, thought, and feeling. They talked not of love any more than an affectionate brother and sister would have done, but the affection that united them to each other seeped down dew-like to the very roots of life in both. Ever his care and watchfulness for her grew more tender and respectful, and ever the smile with which she acknowledged his constant little attentions grew more bright and trustful; and, from this basis of evenly developing physical, intellectual, and spiritual progress and perfectness in both of them, their souls leaned unto each other, and mingled in an affection as chaste, strong, and intimate as human nature knows, growing together day by day, and attuning themselves to perfect concord in all the utterances and aspirations of their beautiful and happy lives--a human love that was impossible to pagan civilization, and is almost impossible to ours, but that flourished in its almost divine sweetness and beauty in the primitive Christian communities, side by side with thaumaturgy and the graces of that spiritual life which hath almost become a dream unto the world rather than a blessed reality.

So those four years passed fleetly and pleasantly away, and Arius was now a very tall but graceful youth of twenty, and Theckla was an exquisitely beautiful woman of sixteen, when Ammonius told his son that the time had come at which he desired him to go to Antioch in Syria, and pursue his studies with the Bishop Lucanius, for four or five years, preparatory to his ordination as a presbyter--if, indeed, his heart was still set on preferring to be a teacher and a preacher of the gospel to all other vocations; whereupon the young man at once answered that no earthly inducement could lead him to abandon the ministry, for which he had always considered himself set apart; and immediately the family began to make preparations for the young man's departure.