Hypatia Part 17

'Having found it, most truly. But you must talk to him yourself, and argue the matter over, with one who can argue. To me such questions are an unknown land.'

'Well .... Perhaps I may be tempted to do even that. At least a thoroughly converted philosopher--for poor dear Synesius is half heathen still, I often fancy, and hankers after the wisdom of the Egyptian--will be a curious sight; and to talk with so famous and so learned a man would always be a pleasure; but to argue with him, or any other human being, none whatsoever.'

'Why, then?'

'My dear sir, I am sick of syllogisms, and probabilities, and pros and contras. What do I care if, on weighing both sides, the nineteen pounds weight of questionable arguments against, are overbalanced by the twenty pounds weight of equally questionable arguments for? Do you not see that my belief of the victorious proposition will be proportioned to the one over-balancing pound only, while the whole other nineteen will go for nothing?'

'I really do not.'

'Happy are you, then. I do, from many a sad experience. No, my worthy sir. I want a faith past arguments; one which, whether I can prove it or not to the satisfaction of the lawyers, I believe to my own satisfaction, and act on it as undoubtingly and unreasoningly as I do upon my own newly-rediscovered personal ident.i.ty. I don't want to possess a faith. I want a faith which will possess me. And if I ever arrived at such a one, believe me, it would be by some such practical demonstration as this very tent has given me.'

'This tent?'

'Yes, sir, this tent; within which I have seen you and your children lead a life of deeds as new to me the Jew, as they would be to Hypatia the Gentile. I have watched you for many a day, and not in vain. When I saw you, an experienced officer, enc.u.mber your flight with wounded men, I was only surprised. But since I have seen you and your daughter, and, strangest of all, your gay young Alcibiades of a son, starving yourselves to feed those poor ruffians-- performing for them, day and night, the offices of menial slaves-- comforting them, as no man ever comforted me--blaming no one but yourselves, caring for every one but yourselves, sacrificing nothing but yourselves; and all this without hope of fame or reward, or dream of appeasing the wrath of any G.o.d or G.o.ddess, but simply because you thought it right .... When I saw that, sir, and more which I have seen; and when, reading in this book here, I found most unexpectedly those very grand moral rules which you were practising, seeming to spring unconsciously, as natural results, from the great thoughts, true or false, which had preceded them; then, sir, I began to suspect that the creed which could produce such deeds as I have watched within the last few days, might have on its side not merely a slight preponderance of probabilities, but what the Jews used once to call, when we believed in it--or in anything--the mighty power of G.o.d.'

And as he spoke, he looked into the Prefect's face with the look of a man wrestling in some deadly struggle; so intense and terrible was the earnestness of his eye, that even the old soldier shrank before it.

'And therefore,' he went on, 'therefore, sir, beware of your own actions, and of your children's. If, by any folly or baseness, such as I have seen in every human being whom I ever met as yet upon this accursed stage of fools, you shall crush my new-budding hope that there is something somewhere which will make me what I know that I ought to be, and can be--If you shall crush that, I say, by any misdoing of yours, you had better have been the murderer of my firstborn; with such a hate--a hate which Jews alone can feel--will I hate you and yours.'

'G.o.d help us and strengthen us!'said the old warrior in a tone of n.o.ble humility.

'And now,' said Raphael, glad to change the subject, after this unwonted outburst, 'we must once more seriously consider whether it is wise to hold on our present course. If you return to Carthage, or to Hippo--'

'I shall be beheaded.'

'Most a.s.suredly. And how much soever you may consider such an event a gain to yourself, yet for the sake of your son and your daughter-- '

'My dear sir,' interrupted the Prefect, 'you mean kindly. But do not, do not tempt me. By the Count's side I have fought for thirty years, and by his side I will die, as I deserve.'

'Victorius! Victoria!' cried Raphael; 'help me! Your father,' he went on, as they came out from the tent, 'is still decided on losing his own head, and throwing away ours, by going to Carthage.'

'For my sake--for our sakes--father!' cried Victoria, clinging to him.

'And for my sake, also, most excellent sir,' said Raphael, smiling quietly. 'I have no wish to be so uncourteous as to urge any help which I may have seemed to afford you. But I hope that you will recollect that I have a life to lose, and that it is hardly fair of you to imperil it as you intend to do. If you could help or save Heraclian, I should be dumb at once. But now, for a mere point of honour to destroy fifty good soldiers, who know not their right hands from their left--Shall I ask their opinion?'

'Will you raise a mutiny against me, sir?' asked the old man sternly.

'Why not mutiny against Philip drunk, in behalf of Philip sober? But really, I will obey you .... only you must obey us .... What is Hesiod's definition of the man who will neither counsel himself nor be counselled by his friends? .... Have you no trusty acquaintances in Cyrenaica, for instance?'

The Prefect was silent.

'Oh, hear us, my father! Why not go to Euodius? He is your old comrade--a well-wisher, too, to this .... this expedition .... And recollect, Augustine must be there now. He was about to sail for Berenice, in order to consult Synesius and the Pentapolitan bishops, when we left Carthage.'

And at the name of Augustine the old man paused.

'Augustine will be there; true. And this our friend must meet him. And thus at least I should have his advice. If he thinks it my duty to return to Carthage, I can but do so, after all. But the soldiers!'

'Excellent sir,' said Raphael, 'Synesius and the Pentapolitan landlords--who can hardly call their lives their own, thanks to the Moors--will be glad enough to feed and pay them, or any other brave fellows with arms in their hands, at this moment. And my friend Victorius, here, will enjoy, I do not doubt, a little wild campaigning against marauding blackamoors.'

The old man bowed silently. The battle was won.

The young tribune, who had been watching his father's face with the most intense anxiety caught at the gesture, and hurrying forward, announced the change of plan to the soldiery. It was greeted with a shout of joy, and in another five minutes the sails were about, the rudder s.h.i.+fted, and the s.h.i.+p on her way towards the western point of Sicily, before a steady north-west breeze.

'Ah!' cried Victoria, delighted. 'And now you will see Augustine! You must promise me to talk to him!'

'This, at least, I will promise, that whatsoever the great sophist shall be pleased to say, shall meet with a patient hearing from a brother sophist. Do not be angry at the term. Recollect that I am somewhat tired, like my ancestor Solomon, of wisdom and wise men, having found it only too like madness and folly. And you cannot surely expect me to believe in man, while I do not yet believe in G.o.d?'

Victoria sighed. 'I will not believe you. Why always pretend to be worse than you are?'

'That kind souls like you may be spared the pain of finding me worse than I seem .... There, let us say no more; except that I heartily wish that you would hate me!'

'Shall I try?'

'That must be my work, I fear, not yours. However, I shall give you good cause enough before long' doubt it not.'

Victoria sighed again, and retired into the tent to nurse the sick.

'And now, sir,' said the Prefect, turning to Raphael and his son; 'do not mistake me. I may have been weak, as worn-out and hopeless men are wont to be; but do not think of me as one who has yielded to adversity in fear for his own safety. As G.o.d hears me, I desire nothing better than to die; and I only turn out of my course on the understanding that if Augustine so advise, my children hold me free to return to Carthage and meet my fate. All I pray for is, that my life may be spared until I can place my dear child in the safe shelter of a nunnery.'

'A nunnery?'

'Yes, indeed; I have intended ever since her birth to dedicate her to the service of G.o.d. And in such times as these, what better lot for a defenceless girl?'

'Pardon me!' said Raphael; 'but I am too dull to comprehend what benefit or pleasure your Deity will derive from the celibacy of your daughter .... Except, indeed, on one supposition, which, as I have some faint remnants of reverence and decency reawakening in me just now, I must leave to be uttered only by the pure lips of s.e.xless priests.'

'You forget, sir, that you are speaking to a Christian.'

'I a.s.sure you, no! I had certainly been forgetting it till the last two minutes, in your very pleasant and rational society. There is no danger henceforth of my making so silly a mistake.'

'Sir!' said the Prefect, reddening at the undisguised contempt of Raphael's manner .... , 'When you know a little more of St. Paul's Epistles, you will cease to insult the opinions and feelings of those who obey them, by sacrificing their most precious treasures to G.o.d.'

'Oh, it is Paul of Tarsus, then, who gives you the advice! I thank you for informing me of the fact; for it will save me the trouble of any future study of his works. Allow me, therefore, to return by your hands this ma.n.u.script of his with many thanks from me to that daughter of yours, by whose perpetual imprisonment you intend to give pleasure to your Deity. Henceforth the less communication which pa.s.ses between me and any member of your family, the better.' And he turned away.

'But, my dear sir!' said the honest soldier, really chagrined, 'you must not!--we owe you too much, and love you too well, to part thus for the caprice of a moment. If any word of mine has offended you-- forget it, and forgive me, I beseech you!' and he caught both Raphael's hands in his own.

'My very dear sir,' answered the Jew quietly; 'let me ask the same forgiveness of you; and believe me, for the sake of past pleasant pa.s.sages, I shall not forget my promise about the mortgage .... But-here we must part. To tell you the truth, I half an hour ago was fearfully near becoming neither more nor less than a Christian. I had actually deluded myself into the fancy that the Deity of the Galileans might be, after all, the G.o.d of our old Hebrew forefathers--of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and David, and of the rest who believed that children and the fruit of the womb were an heritage and gift which cometh of the Lord--and that Paul was right --actually right--in his theory that the church was the development and fulfilment of our old national polity .... I must thank you for opening my eyes to a mistake which, had I not been besotted for the moment, every monk and nun would have contradicted by the mere fact of their existence, and reserve my nascent faith for some Deity who takes no delight in seeing his creature: stultify the primary laws of their being. Farewell!'

And while the Prefect stood petrified with astonishment, he retired to the further extremity of the deck, muttering to himself-- 'Did I not know all along that this gleam was too sudden and too bright to last? Did I not know that he, too, would prove himself like all the rest--an a.s.s? .... Fool! to have looked for common sense on such an earth as this! .... Back to chaos again, Raphael Aben-Ezra, and spin ropes of sand to the end of the farce!'

And mixing with the soldiers, he exchanged no word with the Prefect and his children, till they reached the port of Berenice; and then putting the necklace into Victoria's hands, vanished among the crowds upon the quay, no one knew whither.

CHAPTER XVIII.

: THE PREFECT TESTED.

WHEN we lost sight of Philammon, his destiny had hurled him once more among his old friends the Goths, in search of two important elements of human comfort, freedom and a sister. The former be found at once, in a large hall where sundry Goths were lounging and toping, into the nearest corner of which he shrank, and stood, his late terror and rage forgotten altogether in the one new and absorbing thought--His sister might be in that house! .... and yielding to so sweet a dream, he began fancying to himself which of all those gay maidens she might be who had become in one moment more dear, more great to him, than all things else in heaven or earth. That fair-haired, rounded Italian? That fierce, luscious, aquiline- faced Jewess? That delicate, swart, sidelong-eyed Copt? No. She was Athenian, like himself. That tall, lazy Greek girl, then, from beneath whose sleepy lids flashed, once an hour, sudden lightnings, revealing depths of thought and feeling uncultivated, perhaps even unsuspected, by their possessor. Her? Or that, her seeming sister? Or the next? .... Or--Was it Pelagia herself, most beautiful and most sinful of them all? Fearful thought! He blushed scarlet at the bare imagination: yet why, in his secret heart, was that the most pleasant hypothesis of them all? And suddenly flashed across him that observation of one of the girls on board the boat, on his likeness to Pelagia. Strange, that he had never recollected it before! It must be so! and yet on what a slender thread, woven of scattered hints and surmises, did that 'must' depend! He would be sane! he would wait; he would have patience. Patience, with a sister yet unfound, perhaps peris.h.i.+ng? Impossible!

Suddenly the train of his thoughts was changed perforce:-- 'Come! come and see! There's a fight in the streets,' called one of the damsels down the stairs, at the highest pitch of her voice.

'I shan't go,' yawned a huge fellow, who was lying on his back on a sofa.

'Oh come up, my hero,' said one of the girls. 'Such a charming riot, and the Prefect himself in the middle of it! We have not had such a one in the street this month.'

'The princes won't let me knock any of these donkey-riders on the head, and seeing other people do it only makes me envious. Give me the wine-jug--curse the girl! she has run upstairs!'

The shouting and trampling came nearer; and in another minute Wulf came rapidly downstairs, through the hall into the harem-court, and into the presence of the Amal.

'Prince--here is a chance for us. These rascally Greeks are murdering their Prefect under our very windows.'

'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of guards. Why can't the fool take care of himself?'

'They have all run away, and I saw some of them hiding among the mob. As I live, the man will be killed in five minutes more.'

'Why not?'

'Why should he, when we can save him and win his favour for ever? The men's fingers are itching far a fight; it's a bad plan not to give hounds blood now and then, or they lose the knack of hunting.'

'Well, it wouldn't take five minutes.'

'And heroes should show that they can forgive when an enemy is in distress.'

'Very true! Like an Amal too!' And the Amal sprang up and shouted to his men to follow him.

'Good-bye, my pretty one. Why, Wulf,' cried he, as he burst out into the court, 'here's our monk again! By Odin, you're welcome, my handsome boy! come along and fight too, young fellow; what were those arms given you for?'

'He is my man,' said Wulf, laying his hand on Philammon's shoulder, 'and blood he shall taste.' And out the three hurried, Philammon, in his present reckless mood, ready for anything.

'Bring your whips. Never mind swords. Those rascals are not worth it,' shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the pa.s.sage brandis.h.i.+ng his heavy thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and the next moment recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged in--and surged out again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined force of his weight and arm, hewed his way straight through them, felling a wretch at every blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were plunging and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild monks clutching at him. 'Monks again!' thought Philammon and as he saw among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril's courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through him.

'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect--'I am a Christian! I swear that I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!'

'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch! Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.

The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help him!' But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.

'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the monks flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he was safe. He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia's house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew him into the court.

'Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!' simpered he, as he vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he could muster.

'Your Excellency--heroes all--I am your devoted slave. I owe you life itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpa.s.sed by the deliciousness of your cure. I would gladly undergo a second wound to enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet busying themselves on my behalf.'

'You wouldn't have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.

'Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!' bluntly observed a voice from behind' probably Smid's, and a laugh ensued.

'My saviours, my brothers!' said Orestes, politely ignoring the laughter. 'How can I repay you? Is there anything in which my office here enables me--I will not say to reward, for that would be a term beneath your dignity as free barbarians--but to gratify you?'

'Give us three days' pillage of the quarter!' shouted some one.

'Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small numbers.'

'I say,' quoth the Amal--'I say, take care, Prefect.--If you mean to tell me that we forty couldn't cut all the throats in Alexandria in three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay all the time--'

'Half of them would join us!' cried some one. 'They are half our own flesh and blood after all!'

'Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment. I know enough of the world never to have found a sheep-dog yet who would not, on occasion, help to make away with a little of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my venerable sir?' turning to Wulf with a knowing bow.

Wulf chuckled grimly, and said something to the Amal in German about being civil to guests.

'You will pardon me, my heroic friends,' said Orestes, 'but, with your kind permission, I will observe that I am somewhat faint and disturbed by late occurrences. To trespa.s.s on your hospitality further would be an impertinence. If, therefore, I might send a slave to find some of my apparitors-'

'No, by all the G.o.ds!' roared the Amal, 'you're my guest now--my lady's at least. And no one ever went out of my house sober yet if I could help it. Set the cooks to work, my men! The Prefect shall feast with us like an emperor, and we'll send him home to-night as drunk as he can wish. Come along, your Excellency; we're rough fellows, we Goths; but by the Valkyrs, no one can say that we neglect our guests!'

'It is a sweet compulsion,' said Orestes, as he went in.

'Stop, by the bye! Didn't one of you men catch a monk.?'

'Here he is, prince, with his elbows safe behind him.' And a tall, haggard, half-naked monk was dragged forward.

'Capital! bring him in. His Excellency shall judge him while dinner's cooking' and Smid shall have the hanging of him. He hurt n.o.body in the scuffle; he was thinking of his dinner.'

'Some rascal bit a piece out of my leg, and I tumbled down,' grumbled Smid.

'Well, pay out this fellow for it, then. Bring a chair, slaves! Here, your Highness, sit there and judge.'

'Two chairs!' said some one; 'the Amal shan't stand before the emperor himself.'

'By all means, my dear friends. The Amal and I will act as the two Caesars, with divided empire. I presume we shall have little difference of opinion as to the hanging of this worthy.'

'Hanging's too quick for him.'

'Just what I was about to remark--there are certain judicial formalities, considered generally to be conducive to the stability, if not necessary to the existence, of the Roman empire--'

'I say, don't talk so much,' shouted a Goth, 'If you want to have the hanging of him yourself, do. We thought we would save you trouble.'

'Ah, my excellent friend, would you rob me of the delicate pleasure of revenge? I intend to spend at least four hours to-morrow in killing this pious martyr. He will have a good time to think, between the beginning and the end of the rack.'

'Do you hear that, master monk?' said Smid, chucking him under the chin, while the rest of the party seemed to think the whole business an excellent joke, and divided their ridicule openly enough between the Prefect and his victim.