Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 4

'And that again very much on his plans.'

'Of course. You cannot be expected to-we will euphemise-unless it be made worth your while.'

Orestes sat buried in deep thought.

'Of course not,' said he at last, half unconsciously. And then, in sudden dread of having committed himself, he looked up fiercely at the Jew.

'And how do I know that this is not some infernal trap of yours? Tell me how you found out all this, or by Hercules (he had quite forgotten his Christianity by this time)-by Hercules and the Twelve G.o.ds, I'll-'

'Don't use expressions unworthy of a philosopher. My source of information was very simple and very good. He has been negotiating a loan from the Rabbis at Carthage. They were either frightened, or loyal, or both, and hung back. He knew-as all wise governors know when they allow themselves time-that it is no use to bully a Jew; slid applied to me. I never lend money-it is unphilosophical: but I introduced him to old Miriam, who dare do business with the devil himself; and by that move, whether he has the money or not, I cannot tell: but this I can tell, that we have his secret-and so have you now; and if you want more information, the old woman, who enjoys an intrigue as much as she does Falernian, will get it you.'

'Well, you are a true friend, after all.'

'Of course I am. Now, is not this method of getting at the truth much easier and pleasanter than setting a couple of dirty negroes to pinch and pull me, and so making it a point of honour with me to tell you nothing but lies? Here comes Ganymede with the wine, just in time to calm your nerves, and fill you with the spirit of divination.... To the G.o.ddess of good counsels, my lord. What wine this is!'

'True Syrian-fire and honey; fourteen years old next vintage, my Raphael. Out, Hypocorisma! See that he is not listening. The impudent rascal! I was humbugged into giving two thousand gold pieces for him two years ago, he was so pretty-they said he was only just rising thirteen-and he has been the plague of my life ever since, and is beginning to want the barber already. Now, what is the count dreaming of?'

'His wages for killing Stilicho.'

'What, is it not enough to be Count of Africa?'

'I suppose he sets off against that his services during the last three years.'

'Well, he saved Africa.'

'And thereby Egypt also. And you too, as well as the emperor, may be considered as owing him somewhat.'

'My good friend, my debts are far too numerous for me to think of paying any of them. But what wages does he want?'

'The purple.'

Orestes started, and then fell into thought. Raphael sat watching him a while.

'Now, most n.o.ble lord, may I depart? I have said all I have to say; and unless I get home to luncheon at once, I shall hardly have time to find old Miriam for you, and get through our little affair with her before sunset.'

'Stay. What force has he?'

'Forty thousand already, they say. And those Donatist ruffians are with him to a man, if he can but sc.r.a.pe together wherewith to change their bludgeons into good steel.'

'Well, go.... So. A hundred thousand might do it,' said he, meditating, as Raphael bowed himself out. 'He won't get them. I don't know, though; the man has the head of a Julius. Well-that fool Attalus talked of joining Egypt to the Western Empire.... Not such a bad thought either. Anything is better than being governed by an idiot child and three canting nuns. I expect to be excommunicated every day for some offence against Pulcheria's prudery.... Heraclian emperor at Rome.... and I lord and master on this side the sea. The Donatists pitted again fairly against the orthodox, to cut each other's throats in peace.... no more of Cyril's spying and tale-bearing to Constantinople.... Not such a baddish of fare.... But then-it would take so much trouble!'

With which words, Orestes went into his third warm bath for that day.

CHAPTER III: THE GOTHS

For two days the young monk held on, paddling and floating rapidly down the Nile-stream, leaving city after city to right and left with longing eyes, and looking back to one villa after another, till the reaches of the banks hid them from his sight, with many a yearning to know what sort of places those gay buildings and gardens would look like on a nearer view, and what sort of life the thousands led who crowded the busy quays, and walked and drove, in an endless stream, along the great highroads which ran along either bank. He carefully avoided every boat that pa.s.sed him, from the gilded barge of the wealthy landlord or merchant, to the tiny raft buoyed up with empty jars, which was floating down to be sold at some market in the Delta. Here and there he met and hailed a crew of monks, drawing their nets in a quiet bay, or pa.s.sing along the great watery highway from monastery to monastery: but all the news he received from them was, that the ca.n.a.l of Alexandria was still several days' journey below him. It seemed endless, that monotonous vista of the two high clay banks, with their sluices and water-wheels, their knots of palms and date-trees; endless seemed that wearisome succession of bars of sand and banks of mud, every one like the one before it, every one dotted with the same line of logs and stones strewn along the water's edge, which turned out as he approached them to be basking crocodiles and sleeping pelicans. His eye, wearied with the continual confinement and want of distance, longed for the boundless expanse of the desert, for the jagged outlines of those far-off hills, which he had watched from boyhood rising mysteriously at morn out of the eastern sky, and melting mysteriously into it again at even, beyond which dwelt a whole world of wonders, elephants and dragons, satyrs and anthropophagi,-ay, and the phoenix itself. Tired and melancholy, his mind returned inward to prey on itself, and the last words of a.r.s.enius rose again and again to his thoughts. 'Was his call of the spirit or of the flesh?' How should he test that problem? He wished to seethe world that might be carnal. True; but, he wished to convert the world.... was not that spiritual? Was he not going on a n.o.ble errand?.... thirsting for toil, for saints.h.i.+p, for martyrdom itself, if it would but come and cut the Gordian knot of all temptations, and save him-for he dimly felt that it would save him-a whole sea of trouble in getting safe and triumphant out of that world into which he had not yet entered .... and his heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness before him. But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward, whether in obedience to the spirit or the flesh. Oh, for one hour of the quiet of that dear Laura and the old familiar faces!

At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of a gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandis.h.i.+ng a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second, the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus, who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream. An old grizzled warrior at the stern, with a rudder in either hand, kept the boat's head continually towards the monster, in spite of its sudden and frantic wheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oars flashed through the water in pursuit. All was activity and excitement; and it was no wonder if Philammon's curiosity had tempted him to drift down almost abreast of the barge ere he descried, peeping from under a decorated awning in the afterpart, some dozen pairs of languis.h.i.+ng black eyes, turned alternately to the game and to himself. The serpents!-chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks and shaking of glossy curls and gold necklaces, and fluttering of muslin dresses, within a dozen yards of him! Blus.h.i.+ng scarlet, he knew not why, he seized his paddle, and tried to back out of the snare.... but somehow, his very efforts to escape those sparkling eyes diverted his attention from everything else: the hippopotamus had caught sight of him, and furious with pain, rushed straight at the unoffending canoe; the harpoon line became entangled round his body, and in a moment he and his frail bark were overturned, and the monster, with his huge white tusks gaping wide, close on him as he struggled in the stream.

Luckily Philammon, contrary to the wont of monks, was a bather, and swam like a water-fowl: fear he had never known: death from childhood had been to him, as to the other inmates of the Laura, a contemplation too perpetual to have any paralysing terror in it, even then, when life seemed just about to open on him anew. But the monk was a man, and a young one, and had no intention of dying tamely or unavenged. In an instant he had freed himself from the line; drawn the short knife which was his only weapon; and diving suddenly, avoided the monster's rush, and attacked him from behind with stabs, which, though not deep, still dyed the waters with gore at every stroke. The barbarians shouted with delight. The hippopotamus turned furiously against his new a.s.sailant, crus.h.i.+ng, alas! the empty canoe to fragments with a single snap of his enormous jaws; but the turn was fatal to him; the barge was close upon him, and as he presented his broad side to the blow, the sinewy arm of the giant drove a harpoon through his heart, and with one convulsive shudder the huge blue ma.s.s turned over on its side and floated dead.

Poor Philammon! He alone was silent, amid the yells of triumph; sorrowfully he swam round and round his little paper wreck.... it would not have floated a mouse. Wistfully be eyed the distant banks, half minded to strike out for them and escape,.... and thought of the crocodiles,.... and paddled round again,.... and thought of the basilisk eyes;.... he might escape the crocodiles, but who could escape women?.... and he struck out valiantly for sh.o.r.e.... when he was brought to a sudden stop by finding the stem of the barge close on him, a noose thrown over him by some friendly barbarian, and himself hauled on board, amid the laughter, praise, astonishment, and grumbling of the good-natured crew, who had expected him, as a matter of course, to avail himself at once of their help, and could not conceive the cause of his reluctance.

Philammon gazed with wonder on his strange hosts, their pale complexions, globular heads and faces, high cheek-bones, tall and st.u.r.dy figures; their red beards, and yellow hair knotted fantastically above the head; their awkward dresses, half Roman or Egyptian, and half of foreign fur, soiled and stained in many a storm and fight, but tastelessly bedizened with cla.s.sic jewels, brooches, and Roman coins, strung like necklaces. Only the steersman, who had come forward to wonder at the hippopotamus, and to help in dragging the unwieldy brute on board, seemed to keep genuine and unornamented the costume of his race, the white linen leggings, strapped with thongs of deerskin, the quilted leather cuira.s.s, the bears'-fur cloak, the only ornaments of which were the fangs and claws of the beast itself, and a fringe of grizzled tufts, which looked but too like human hair. The language which they spoke was utterly unintelligible to Philammon, though it need not be so to us.

'A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,' said the giant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; 'and understands wearing skins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.'

'I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal. What did to sack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.'

The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuira.s.s, and senatorial boots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every finger sparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.

'Asgard-Asgard! If you are in such a hurry to get to Asgard up this ditch in the sand, you had better ask the fellow how far it is thither.'

Wulf took him quietly at his word, and addressed a question to the young monk, which he could only answer by a shake of the head.

'Ask him in Greek, man.'

'Greek is a slave's tongue. Make a slave talk to him in it, not me.'

'Here-some of you girls! Pelagia! you understand this fellow's talk. Ask him how far it is to Asgard.'

'You must ask me more civilly, my rough hero,' replied a soft voice from underneath the awning. 'Beauty must be sued, and not commanded.'

'Come, then, my olive-tree, my gazelle, my lotus-flower, my-what was the last nonsense you taught me?-and ask this wild man of the sands how far it is from these accursed endless rabbit-burrows to Asgard.'

The awning was raised, and lying luxuriously on a soft mattress, fanned with peac.o.c.k's feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes, appeared such a vision as Philammon had never seen before.

A woman of some two-and-twenty summers, formed in the most voluptuous mould of Grecian beauty, whose complexion showed every violet vein through its veil of luscious brown. Her little bare feet, as they dimpled the cus.h.i.+ons, were more perfect than Aphrodite's, softer than a swan's bosom. Every swell of her bust and arms showed through the thin gauze robe, while her lower limbs were wrapped in a shawl of orange silk, embroidered with wreaths of sh.e.l.ls and roses. Her dark hair lay carefully spread out upon the pillow, in a thousand ringlets entwined with gold and jewels; her languis.h.i.+ng eyes blazed like diamonds from a cavern, under eyelids darkened and deepened with black antimony; her lips pouted of themselves, by habit or by nature, into a perpetual kiss; slowly she raised one little lazy hand; slowly the ripe lips opened; and in most pure and melodious Attic, she lisped her huge lover's question to the monk, and repeated it before the boy could shake off the spell, and answer....

'Asgard? What is Asgard?'

The beauty looked at the giant for further instructions.

'The City of the immortal G.o.ds,' interposed the old warrior, hastily and sternly, to the lady.

'The city of G.o.d is in heaven,' said Philammon to the interpreter, turning his head away from those gleaming, luscious, searching glances.

His answer was received with a general laugh by all except the leader, who shrugged his shoulders.

'It may as well be up in the skies as up the Nile. We shall be just as likely, I believe, to reach it by flying, as by rowing up this big ditch. Ask him where the river comes from, Pelagia.'

Pelagia obeyed.... and thereon followed a confusion worse confounded, composed of all the impossible wonders of that mythic fairyland with which Philammon had gorged himself from boyhood in his walks with the old monks, and of the equally trustworthy traditions which the Goths had picked up at Alexandria. There was nothing which that river did not do. It rose in the Caucasus. Where was the Caucasus? He did not know. In Paradise-in Indian Aethiopia-in Aethiopian India. Where were they? He did not know. n.o.body knew. It ran for a hundred and fifty days' journey through deserts where nothing but flying serpents and satyrs lived, and the very lions' manes were burnt off by the heat....

'Good sporting there, at all events, among these dragons,' quoth Smid the son of Troll, armourer to the party.