Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face, Charles Kingsley [thriller novels to read TXT] 📗

the cavalcade set forth, turning out of the highroad into a by-lane, which the officer, who seemed to know the country thoroughly, assured would lead them to Ostia by an unfrequented route.

‘If we arrive there before sundown, we are saved,’ said he.

‘And in the meantime,’ answered Raphael, ‘between the dog and this dagger, which, as I take care to inform all comers, is delicately poisoned, we may keep ourselves clear of marauders. And yet, what a meddling fool I am!’ he went on to himself. ‘What possible interest can I have in this uncircumcised rebel! The least evil is, that if we are taken, which we most probably shall be, I shall be crucified for helping to escape. But even if we get safe off—here is a fresh tie between me and those very brother fleas, to be rid of whom I have chosen beggary and starvation. Who knows where it may end? Pooh! The man is like other men. He is certain, before the day is over, to prove ungrateful, or attempt the mountebank-heroic, or give me some other excuse for bidding good-evening. And in the meantime there is something quaint in the fact of finding so sober a respectability, with a young daughter too, abroad on this fool’s errand, which really makes me curious to discover with what variety of flea I am to class him.’

But while Aben-Ezra was talking to himself about the father, he could not help, somehow, thinking about the daughter. Again and again he found himself looking at her. She was, undeniably, most beautiful. Her features were not as regularly perfect as Hypatia’s, nor her stature so commanding; but her face shone with a clear and joyful determination, and with a tender and modest thoughtfulness, such as he had never beheld before united in one countenance; and as she stepped along, firmly and lightly, by her father’s side, looping up her scattered tresses as she went, laughing at the struggles of her noisy burden, and looking up with rapture at her father’s gradually brightening face, Raphael could not help stealing glance after glance, and was surprised to find them returned with a bright, honest, smiling gratitude, which met full-eyed, as free from prudery as it was from coquetry.... ‘A lady she is,’ said he to himself; ‘but evidently no city one. There is nature—or something else, there, pure and unadulterated, without any of man’s additions or beautifications.’ And as he looked, he began to feel it a pleasure such as his weary heart had not known for many a year, simply to watch her....

‘Positively there is a foolish enjoyment after all in making other fleas smile.... Ass that I am! As if I had not drunk all that ditch-water cup to the dregs years ago!’

They went on for some time in silence, till the officer, turning to him—

‘And may I ask you, my quaint preserver, whom I would have thanked before but for this foolish faintness, which is now going off, what and who you are?’

‘A flea, sir—a flea—nothing more.’

‘But a patrician flea, surely, to judge by your language and manners?’

‘Not that exactly. True, I have been rich, as the saying is; I may be rich again, they tell me, when I am fool enough to choose.’

‘Oh if we were but rich!’ sighed the girl.

‘You would be very unhappy, my dear young lady. Believe a flea who has tried the experiment thoroughly.’

‘Ah! but we could ransom my brother! and now we can find no money till we get back to Africa.’

‘And none then,’ said the officer, in a low voice. ‘You forget, my poor child, that I mortgaged the whole estate to raise my legion. We must not shrink from looking at things as they are.’

‘Ah! and he is prisoner! he will be sold for a slave—perhaps—ah! perhaps crucified, for he is not a Roman! Oh, he will be crucified!’ and she burst into an agony of weeping....Suddenly she dashed away her tears and looked up clear and bright once more.

‘No! forgive me, father! God will protect His own!’

‘My dear young lady,’ said Raphael, ‘if you really dislike such a prospect for your brother, and are in want of a few dirty coins wherewith to prevent it, perhaps I may be able to find you them in Ostia.’

She looked at incredulously, as her eye glanced over his rags, and then, blushing, begged his pardon for her unspoken thoughts.

‘Well, as you choose to suppose. But my dog has been so civil to you already, that perhaps she may have no objection to make you a present of that necklace of hers. I will go to the Rabbis, and we will make all right; so don’t cry. I hate crying; and the puppies are quite chorus enough for the present tragedy.’

‘The Rabbis? Are you a Jew?’ asked the officer.

‘Yes, sir, a Jew. And you, I presume, a Christian: perhaps you may have scruples about receiving—your sect has generally none about taking—from one of our stubborn and unbelieving race. Don’t be frightened, though, for your conscience; I assure you I am no more a Jew at heart than I am a Christian.’

‘God help you then!’

‘Some one, or something, has helped me a great deal too much, for three-and-thirty years of pampering. But, pardon me, that was a strange speech for a Christian.’

‘You must be a good Jew, sir, before you can be a good Christian.’

‘Possibly. I intend to be neither—nor a good Pagan either. My dear sir, let us drop the subject. It is beyond me. If I can be as good a brute animal as my dog there—it being first demonstrated that it is good to be good—I shall be very well content.’

The officer looked down on with a stately, loving sorrow. Raphael caught his eye, and felt that he was in the presence of no common man.

‘I must take care what I say here, I suspect, or I shall be entangled shortly in a regular Socratic dialogue.... And now, sir, may I return your question, and ask who and what are you? I really have no intention of giving you up to any Caesar, Antiochus, Tiglath-Pileser, or other flea-devouring flea.... They will fatten well enough without your blood. So I only ask as a student of the great nothing-in-general, which men call the universe.’

‘I was prefect of a legion this morning. What I am now, you know as well as I.’

‘Just what I do not. I am in deep wonder at seeing your hilarity, when, by all flea-analogies, you ought to be either be howling your fate like Achilles on the shores of Styx, or pretending to grin and bear it, as I was taught to do when I played at Stoicism. You are not of that sect certainly, for you confessed yourself a fool just now.’

‘And it would be long, would it not, before you made one of them do as much? Well, be it so. A fool I am; yet, if God helps us as far as Ostia, why should I not be cheerful?’

‘Why should you?’