Part 2 (1/2)
It was a message of new life, of hope beyond the grave, of joy, of peace; she begged to be received as a catechumen. It was not long before she knelt at Monica's side before the altar to be signed on the brow with the Cross of Christ--the joyous first-fruits of the seed that had been sown in tears.
One by one the slaves followed their mistress's example, hungering in their turn for the message that brought such peace and light to suffering and weary souls. Was it for such as they? they asked. And Monica answered that it was for all, that the Master Himself had chosen to be as One that served.
The whole household was Christian now, with the exception of Patricius, and even he was growing daily more gentle, more thoughtful; the mysterious forces were working on him too. His love for Monica was more reverent; his eyes were opening slowly to the beauty of spiritual things. The old life, with its old pleasures, was growing distasteful to him; he saw its baseness while as yet he could scarcely tear himself free from its fetters--the fetters of old habit so hard to break. He noticed the change in his mother, and half-envied her her courage. He even envied the slaves their happy faces, the new light that shone in their eyes and that gave them a strange new dignity.
Monica, watching the struggle, redoubled her prayers; her unselfish love surrounded her husband like an atmosphere of light and sweetness, drawing him with an invincible power to better things. She would speak to him of their children--above all, of Augustine, their eldest-born, the admiration of his masters at Madaura. He was astonis.h.i.+ng everybody, they wrote, by his brilliant gifts. He had the soul of a poet and the eloquence of an orator; he would do great things.
Madaura had been all very well up till now, his father decided, but everything must be done to give their boy a good start in life; they must go farther afield. Rome was impossible; the distance was too great and the expense too heavy. Patricius's means were limited, but he resolved to do his utmost for his eldest son. Carthage had a reputation for culture and for learning that was second only to that of Rome. If strict economy were practised at home, Carthage might be possible. In the meantime it was not much use leaving the boy at Madaura. Let him come home and remain there a year, during which he could study privately while they saved the money to pay his expenses at Carthage.
The suggestion delighted Monica. She would have her son with her for a whole year. She would be able to watch over him just when he needed her motherly care; she looked forward eagerly to Augustine's return.
The old, intimate life they had led together before he went to Madaura would begin again. Again her boy would hang on her arm and tell her all his hopes and dreams for the future--hopes and dreams into which she always entered, of which she was always part. She would look once more into the boy's clear eyes while he confessed to her his faults and failings, and see the light flame up in them as she told him of n.o.ble and heroic deeds, and urged him to be true to his ideals.
And so in happy dreams the days went past until Augustine's return; but there was bitter grief in store for Monica. This was not the same Augustine that they had left at Madaura two years ago. The days of the old familiar friends.h.i.+p seemed to have gone past recall. His eyes no longer turned to her with the old candour; he shunned her questioning look. He shunned her company even, and seemed more at ease with his father, who was proud beyond words of his tall, handsome son.
He was all right, said Patricius; he was growing up, that was all.
Boys could not always be tied to their mother's ap.r.o.n-strings. The moment that Monica had so dreaded for Augustine had come then; the pagan influences had been at work. Oh, why had she let him go to Madaura? And yet it had to be so; his father had insisted.
She made several efforts to break through the wall of reserve that Augustine had built up between himself and her, but it was of no use.
He had other plans now into which she did not enter, other thoughts far away--how far away!--from hers. A dark cloud was between them.
One day she persuaded her son to go out with her. The spring had just come--that wonderful African spring when the whole world seems suddenly to burst into flower. Asphodels stood knee-deep on either side of the path in which they walked; the fragrance of the springtime was in their nostrils; the golden sunlight bathed the rainbow earth. It was a walk that they had loved to take of old, to delight together in all the beauty of that world which G.o.d had made.
Monica spoke gently to her son of the new life that lay before him, of the dangers that beset his path. He must hold fast to the Law of Christ, she told him; he must be pure and strong and true.
There was no answering gleam as of old. The boy listened with a bad grace--shame and honour were tugging at his heart-strings, but in vain. The better self was defeated, for the lower self was growing stronger every day.
”Woman's talk,” he said to himself. ”I am no longer a child.”
They turned back through the glorious sights and sounds of the springtime; there was a dagger in Monica's heart. On the threshold she met Patricius. He wanted to speak to her, he said. She slipped her arm into his, smiling through her pain, and they went back again, between the nodding asphodels and the hedges of wisteria, along the path she had just trodden with her son.
There was an unwonted seriousness about Patricius. He had been thinking deeply of late, he told her. He had begun to see things in a new light. It was dim as yet, and he was still weak; but the old life and the old religion had grown hateful to him. Her G.o.d was the true G.o.d; he wanted to know how to love and serve that G.o.d of hers. Was he fit, did she think, to learn? Could he be received as a catechumen?
The new joy fell like balm on the new sorrow. Monica had lost her son, but gained her husband. G.o.d was good. He had heard her prayers, He had accepted her sacrifice. Surely He would give her back her boy.
She would trust on and hope. ”He will withhold no good thing from them that ask Him.”
A few days later Patricius knelt beside her at the altar. Her heart overflowed with joy and thankfulness. They were one at last--one in soul, in faith. A few steps distant knelt Augustine. What thoughts were in his heart? Was it the last struggle between good and evil?
Was the influence of his mother, the love of Christ she had instilled into him in his childhood, making one last stand against the influences that had swayed him in Madaura--that still swayed him--the influences of the corrupt world in which he lived? We do not know. If it was so, the evil triumphed.
CHAPTER V
HOW AUGUSTINE WENT TO CARTHAGE, AND HOW PATRICIUS DIED A CHRISTIAN DEATH
Augustine's year at home did not do for him what Monica had hoped.
His old pagan schoolfellows gathered round him; he was always with them; the happy home-life seemed to have lost its charm. The want of principle and of honour in most of them disgusted him in his better moments; nevertheless he was content to enjoy himself in their company. He was even ashamed, when they boasted of their misdoings, to seem more innocent than they, and would pretend to be worse than he really was, lest his prestige should suffer in their eyes. There were moments when he loathed it all, and longed for the old life, with its innocent pleasures; but it is hard to turn back on the downhill road.
He tells us how he went one night with a band of these wild companions to rob the fruit-tree of a poor neighbour. It was laden with pears, but they were not very good; they did not care to eat them, and threw them to the pigs. It was not schoolboy greed that prompted the theft, but the pure delight of doing evil, of tricking the owner of the garden. There was the wild excitement, too, of the daring; the fear that they might be caught in the act. He was careful to keep such escapades a secret from his mother, but Monica was uneasy, knowing what might be expected from the companions her son had chosen.
Patricius was altogether unable to give Augustine the help that he needed. The Christian ideals of life and conduct were new to him as yet; the old pagan ways seemed only natural. He was scarcely likely to be astonished at the fact that his son's boyhood was rather like what his own had been. He was standing, it is true, on the threshold of the Church, but her teaching was not yet clear to him. His own feet were not firm enough in the ways of Christ to enable him to stretch a steadying hand to another.