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

and carnal man, who pervertest Holy Scripture into a cloak for thine own licentiousness, as if it spoke of man’s base and sensual affections, know that this book is to be spiritually interpreted of the marriage between the soul and its Creator, and that it is from this very book that the Catholic Church derives her strongest arguments in favour of holy virginity, and the glories of a celibate life.”’

Synesius was still silent.

‘And what do you think I saw in my dream that that man did when he found these Christians enforcing, as a necessary article of practice, as well as of faith, a baseless and bombastic metaphor, borrowed from that very Neo-Platonism out of which he had just fled for his life? He cursed the day he was born, and the hour in which his father was told, “Thou hast gotten a man-child,” and said, “Philosophers, Jews, and Christians, farewell for ever and a day! The clearest words of your most sacred books mean anything or nothing’ as the case may suit your fancies; and there is neither truth nor reason under the sun. What better is there for a man, than to follow the example of his people, and to turn usurer, and money-getter, and cajoler of fools in his turn, even as his father was before him?”’

Synesius remained a while in deep thought, and at last— ‘And yet you came to me?’

‘I did, because you have loved and married; because you have stood out manfully against this strange modern insanity, and refused to give up, when you were made a bishop, the wife whom God had given you. You, I thought, could solve the riddle for me, if any man could.’

‘Alas, friend! I have begun to distrust, of late, my power of solving riddles. After all, why should they be solved? What matters one more mystery in a world of mysteries? “If thou marry, thou hast not sinned,” are St. Paul’s own words; and let them be enough for us. Do not ask me to argue with you, but to help you. Instead of puzzling me with deep questions, and tempting me to set up my private judgment, as I have done too often already, against the opinion of the Church, tell me your story, and test my sympathy rather than my intellect. I shall feel with you and work for you, doubt not, even though I am unable to explain to myself why I do it.’

‘Then you cannot solve my riddle?’

‘Let me help you,’ said Synesius with a sweet smile, ‘to solve it for yourself. You need not try to deceive me. You have a love, an undefiled, who is but one. When you possess her, you will be able to judge better whether your interpretation of the Song is the true one; and if you still think that it is, Synesius, at least, will have no quarrel against you. He has always claimed for himself the right of philosophising in private, and he will allow the same liberty to you’ whether the mob do or not.’

‘Then you agree with me? Of course you do!’

‘Is it fair to ask me whether I accept a novel interpretation, which I have only heard five minutes ago, delivered in a somewhat hasty and rhetorical form?’

‘You are shirking the question,’ said Raphael peevishly.

‘And what if I am? Tell me, point-blank, most self-tormenting of men, can I help you in practice, even though I choose to leave you to yourself in speculation?’

‘Well, then, if you will have my story, take it, and judge for yourself of Christian common sense.’

And hurriedly, as if ashamed of his own confession, and yet compelled, in spite of himself, to unbosom it, he told Synesius all, from his first meeting with Victoria to his escape from her at Berenice.

The good bishop, to Aben-Ezra’s surprise, seemed to treat the whole matter as infinitely amusing. He chuckled, smote his hand on his thigh, and nodded approval at every pause—perhaps to give the speaker courage—perhaps because he really thought that Raphael’s prospects were considerably less desperate than he fancied....

‘If you laugh at me, Synesius, I am silent. It is quite enough to endure the humiliation of telling you that I am—confound it!—like any boy of sixteen.’

‘Laugh at you?—with you, you mean. A convent? Pooh, pooh! The old Prefect has enough sense, I will warrant him, not to refuse a good match for his child.’

‘You forget that I have not the honour of being a Christian.’

‘Then we’ll make you one. You won’t let me convert you, I know; you always used to gibe and jeer at my philosophy. But Augustine comes to-morrow.

‘Augustine?’

‘He does indeed; and we must be off by daybreak, with all the armed men we can muster, to meet and escort him, and to hunt, of course, going and coming; for we have had no food this fortnight, but what our own dogs and bows have furnished us. He shall take you in hand, and cure you of all your Judaism in a week; and then just leave the rest to me; I will manage it somehow or other. It is sure to come right. No; do not be bashful. It will be real amusement to a poor wretch who can find nothing else to do—Heigho! And as for lying under an obligation to me, why we can square that by your lending me three or four thousand gold pieces—Heaven knows I want them!—on the certainty of never seeing them again.’

Raphael could not help laughing in his turn.

‘Synesius is himself still, I see, and not unworthy of his ancestor Hercules; and though he shrinks from cleansing the Augean stable of my soul, paws like the war-horse in the valley at the hope of undertaking any lesser labours in my behalf. But, my dear generous bishop, this matter is more serious, and I, the subject of it, have become more serious also, than you fancy. Consider: by the uncorrupt honour of your Spartan forefathers, Agis, Brasidas, and the rest of them, don’t you think that you are, in your hasty kindness, tempting me to behave in a way which they would have called somewhat rascally?’

‘How then, my dear man! You have a very honourable and praiseworthy desire; and I am willing to help you to compass it.’

‘Do you think that I have not cast about before now for more than one method of compassing it for myself? My good man, I have been tempted a dozen times already to turn Christian: but there has risen up in me the strangest fancy about conscience and honour.... I never was scrupulous before, Heaven knows—I am not over-scrupulous now—except about her. I cannot dissemble before her. I dare not look in her face when I had a lie in my right hand.... She looks through one-into one-like a clear-eyed awful goddess.... I never was ashamed in my life till my eyes met hers....’

‘But if you really became a Christian?’

‘I cannot. I should suspect my own motives. Here is another of these absurd soul-anatomising scruples which have risen up in me. I should suspect that I had changed my creed because I wished to change it—that if I was not deceiving her I was deceiving myself. If I had not loved her