Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/266

244 how they live. Only now and again, at rare intervals, some one of them comes back to the monastery to communion and then disappears once more.

I rode away to Bir Hooker, where I stayed the night. That is on the other side of the salt marshes. There an enterprising British company is producing thousands of tons of caustic soda annually. The antique hermits chose this spot in the Desert because of the death-dealing odours which intensified their denial of the world, but in another era, behold British business men doing in the way of trade and worldly gain or duty what these others do in the name of denial of the world. As the Abbot said: There are various ways of serving God, the way of Martha and the way of Mary.

Still, the manager of the caustic soda works, a shrewd and circumspect Scotsman of Protestant temperament, would like to have the sixteen Patriarchs buried decently and, if he could, spend three days in each of the monasteries tidying up. "It's not showing due respect to the dead," said he, "nor is it sanitary, nor decent. I've nothing to say against the monks; they are simple and kind and hospitable. But they're just wasting their lives. They're doing nothing, making nothing."

The manager would show the monks how they ought to keep house. But better still, he would clear them all out. They are very good, very kind, there is nothing against them, but what are they