Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 33

'Out of the way there, rascals! Place for the Prefect! What are you squabbling about here, you unmannerly monks?' shouted peremptory voices from behind. The crowd parted, and disclosed the apparitors of Orestes, who followed in his robes of office.

A sudden hope flashed before Philammon, and in an instant he had burst through the mob, and was clinging to the Prefect's chariot.

'I am a free-born Athenian, whom these monks wish to kidnap back into slavery! I claim your protection!'

'And you shall have it, right or wrong, my handsome fellow. By Heaven, you are much too good-looking to be made a monk of! What do you mean, you villains, by attempting to kidnap free men? Is it not enough for you to lock up every mad girl whom you can dupe, but you must-'

'His master is here present, your Excellency, who will swear to the purchase.'

'Or to anything else for the glory of G.o.d. Out of the way! And take care, you tall scoundrel, that I do not get a handle against you. You have been one of my marked men for many a month. Off!'

'His master demands the rights of the law as a Roman citizen,' said Peter, pus.h.i.+ng forward a.r.s.enius.

'If he be a Roman citizen, let him come and make his claim at the tribune to-morrow, in legal form. But I would have you remember, ancient sir, that I shall require you to prove your citizens.h.i.+p before we proceed to the question of purchase.'

'The law does not demand that,' quoth Peter.

'Knock that fellow down, apparitor!' Whereat Peter vanished, and an ominous growl rose from the mob of monks.

'What am I to do, most n.o.ble sir?' said Philammon.

'Whatever you like, till the third hour to-morrow-if you are fool enough to appear at the tribune. If you will take my advice' you will knock down these fellows right and left, and run for your life.' And Orestes drove on.

Philammon saw that it was his only chance, and did so; and in another minute he found himself rus.h.i.+ng headlong into the archway of Pelagia's house, with a dozen monks at his heels. As luck would have it, the outer gates, at which the Goths had just entered, were still open; but the inner ones which led into the court beyond were fast. He tried them, but in vain. There was an open door in the wall on his right: he rushed through it, into a long range of stables, and into the arms of Wulf and Smid, who were unsaddling and feeding, like true warriors, their own horses.

'Souls of my fathers!' shouted Smid, 'here's our young monk come back! What brings you here head over heels in this way, young curly-pate?'

'Save me from those wretches!' pointing to the monks, who were peeping into the doorway.

Wulf seemed to understand it all in a moment; for, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a heavy whip, he rushed at the foe, and with a few tremendous strokes cleared the doorway, and shut-to the door.

Philammon was going to explain and thank, but Smid stopped his mouth.

'Never mind, young one, you are our guest now. Come in, and you shall be as welcome as ever. See what comes of running away from us at first.'

'You do not seem to have benefited much by leaving me for the monks,' said old Wulf. 'Come in by the inner door. Smid! go and turn those monks out of the gateway.'

But the mob, after battering the door for a few minutes, had yielded to the agonised entreaties of Peter, who a.s.sured them that if those incarnate fiends once broke out upon them, they would not leave a Christian alive in Alexandria. So it was agreed to leave a few to watch for Philammon's coming out; and the rest, balked of their prey, turned the tide of their wrath against the Prefect, and rejoined the ma.s.s of their party, who were still hanging round his chariot, ready for mischief.

In vain the hapless shepherd of the people attempted to drive on. The apparitors were frightened and hung back; and without their help it was impossible to force the horses through the ma.s.s of tossing arms and beards in front. The matter was evidently growing serious.

'The bitterest ruffians in all Nitria, your Excellency,' whispered one of the guards, with a pale face; 'and two hundred of them at the least. The very same set, I will be sworn, who nearly murdered Dioscuros.'

'If you will not allow me to proceed, my holy brethren,' said Orestes, trying to look collected, 'perhaps it will not be contrary to the canons of the Church if I turn back. Leave the horses' heads alone. Why, in G.o.d's name, what do you want?'

'Do you fancy we have forgotten Hieracas?' cried a voice from the rear; and at that name, yell upon yell arose, till the mob, gaining courage from its own noise, burst out into open threats. 'Revenge for the blessed martyr Hieracas!' 'Revenge for the wrongs of the Church!' 'Down with the friend of Heathens, Jews, and Barbarians!' 'Down with the favourite of Hypatia!' 'Tyrant!' 'Butcher!' And the last epithet so smote the delicate fancy of the crowd, that a general cry arose of 'Kill the butcher!' and one furious monk attempted to clamber into the chariot. An apparitor tore him down, and was dragged to the ground in his turn. The monks closed in. The guards, finding the enemy number ten to their one, threw down their weapons in a panic, and vanished; and in another minute the hopes of Hypatia and the G.o.ds would have been lost for ever, and Alexandria robbed of the blessing of being ruled by the most finished gentleman south of the Mediterranean, had it not been for unexpected succour; of which it will be time enough, considering who and what is in danger, to speak in a future chapter.

CHAPTER XVII: A STRAY GLEAM

THE last blue headland of Sardinia was fading fast on the north-west horizon, and a steady breeze bore before it innumerable s.h.i.+ps, the wrecks of Heraclian's armament, plunging and tossing impatiently in their desperate homeward race toward the coast of Africa. Far and wide, under a sky of cloudless blue, the white sails glittered on the glittering sea, as gaily now, above their loads of shame and disappointment terror and pain, as when, but one short month before, they bore with them only wild hopes and gallant daring. Who can calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight?.... And yet it was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over all nations, she had sat upon the mystic beast-building her power on the brute animal appet.i.tes of her dupes and slaves: but she had duped herself even more than them. She was finding out by bitter lessons that it was 'to the beast', and not to her, that her va.s.sal kings of the earth had been giving their power and strength; and the ferocity and l.u.s.t which she had pampered so cunningly in them, had become her curse and her destruction.... Drunk with the blood of the saints; blinded by her own conceit and jealousy to the fact that she had been crus.h.i.+ng and extirpating out of her empire for centuries past all which was n.o.ble, purifying, regenerative, divine, she sat impotent and doting, the prey of every fresh adventurer, the slave of her own slaves.... 'And the kings of the earth, who had sinned with her, hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and devoured her flesh, and burned her with fire. For G.o.d had put into their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of G.o.d should be fulfilled.'.... Everywhere sensuality, division, hatred, treachery, cruelty, uncertainty, terror; the vials of G.o.d's wrath poured out. Where was to be the end of it all? asked every man of his neighbour, generation after generation; and received for answer only, 'It is better to die than to live.'

And yet in one s.h.i.+p out of that sad fleet, there was peace; peace amid shame and terror; amid the groans of the wounded, and the sighs of the starving; amid all but blank despair. The great triremes and quinqueremes rushed onward past the lagging transports, careless, in the mad race for safety, that they were leaving the greater number of their comrades defenceless in the rear of the flight; but from one little fis.h.i.+ng-craft alone no base entreaties, no bitter execrations greeted the pa.s.sing flash and roll of their mighty oars. One after another, day by day, they came rus.h.i.+ng up out of the northern offing, each like a huge hundred-footed dragon, panting and quivering, as if with terror, at every loud pulse of its oars, hurling the wild water right and left with the mighty share of its beak, while from the bows some gorgon or chimaera, elephant or boar, stared out with brazen eyes toward the coast of Africa, as if it, too, like the human beings which it carried, was dead to every care but that of dastard flight. Past they rushed, one after another; and off the p.o.o.p some shouting voice chilled all hearts for a moment, with the fearful news that the Emperor's Neapolitan fleet was in full chase.... And the soldiers on board that little vessel looked silently and steadfastly into the silent steadfast face of the old Prefect, and Victoria saw him shudder, and turn his eyes away-and stood up among the rough fighting men, like a G.o.ddess, and cried aloud that 'the Lord would protect His own'; and they believed her, and were still; till many days and many s.h.i.+ps were pa.s.sed, and the little fis.h.i.+ng-craft, outstripped even by the transports and merchantmen, as it strained and crawled along before its single square-sail, was left alone upon the sea.

And where was Raphael Aben-Ezra?

He was sitting, with Bran's head between his knees, at the door of a temporary awning in the vessel's stern, which s.h.i.+elded the wounded men from sun and spray; and as he sat he could hear from within the tent the gentle voices of Victoria and her brother, as they tended the sick like ministering angels, or read to them words of divine hope and comfort-in which his homeless heart felt that he had no share....

'As I live, I would change places now with any one of those poor mangled ruffians to have that voice speaking such words to me....and to believe them.'.... And he went on perusing the ma.n.u.script which he held in his hand. ...............

'Well!' he sighed to himself after a while 'at least it is the most complimentary, not to say hopeful, view of our destinies with which I have met since I threw away my curse's belief that the seed of David was fated to conquer the whole earth, and set up a second Roman Empire at Jerusalem, only worse than the present one, in that the devils of superst.i.tion and bigotry would be added to those of tyranny and rapine.'

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice asked' 'And what may this so hopeful view be?'

'Ah! my dear General!' said Raphael, looking up. 'I have a poor bill of fare whereon to exercise my culinary powers this morning. Had it not been for that shark who was so luckily deluded last night, I should have been reduced to the necessity of stewing my friend the fat decurion's big boots.'

'They would have been savoury enough, I will warrant, after they had pa.s.sed under your magical hand.'

'It is a comfort, certainly, to find that after all one did learn something useful in Alexandria! So I will even go forward at once, and employ my artistic skill.'

'Tell me first what it was about which I heard you just now soliloquising, as so hopeful a view of some matter or other?'

'Honestly-if you will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself-it was Paul of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a ma.n.u.script of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

'It is execrable Greek. But it is sound philosophy, I cannot deny. He knows Plato better than all the ladies and gentlemen in Alexandria put together, if my opinion on the point be worth having.'

'I am a plain soldier, and no judge on that point, sir. He may or may not know Plato; but I am right sure that he knows G.o.d.'

'Not too fast,' said Raphael with a smile. 'You do not know, perhaps, that I have spent the last ten years of my life among men who professed the same knowledge?'

'Augustine, too, spent the best ten years of his life among such; and yet he is now combating the very errors which he once taught.'

'Having found, he fancies, something better!'

'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.'