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

it might have been different: but now—just because I do love her, I will not, I dare not, listen to Augustine’s arguments, or my own thoughts on the matter.’

‘Most wayward of men!’ cried Synesius, half peevishly; ‘you seem to take some perverse pleasure in throwing yourself into the waves again, the instant you have climbed a rock of refuge!’

‘Pleasure? Is there any pleasure in feeling oneself at death-grips with the devil? I bad given up believing in him for many a year .... And behold, the moment that I awaken to anything noble and right, I find the old serpent alive and strong at my throat! No wonder that I suspect him, you, myself—I, who have been tempted, every hour in the last week, temptations to become a devil. Ay,’ he went on, raising his voice, as all the fire of his intense Eastern nature flashed from his black eyes, ‘to be a devil! From my childhood till now never have I known what it was to desire and not to possess. It is not often that I have had to trouble any poor Naboth for his vineyard: but when I have taken a fancy to it, Naboth has always found it wiser to give way. And now.... Do you fancy that I have not had a dozen hellish plots flashing across me in the last week? Look here! This is the mortgage of her father’s whole estate. I bought it—whether by the instigation of Satan or of God—of a banker in Berenice, the very day I left them; and now they, and every straw which they possess, are in my power. I can ruin them—sell them as slaves—betray them to death as rebels—and last, but not least, cannot I hire a dozen worthy men to carry her off, and cut the Gordian knot most simply and summarily? And yet I dare not. I must be pure to approach the pure; and righteous, to kiss the feet of the righteous. Whence came this new conscience to me I know not, but come it has; and I dare no more do a base thing toward her, than I dare toward a God, if there be one. This very mortgage—I hate it, curse it, now that I possess it—the tempting devil!’

‘Burn it,’ said Synesius quietly.

‘Perhaps I may. At least, used it never shall be. Compel her? I am too proud, or too honourable, or something or other, even to solicit her. She must come to me; tell me with her own lips that she loves me, that she will take me, and make me worthy of her. She must have mercy on me, of her own free will, or—let her pine and die in that accursed prison; and then a scratch with the trusty old dagger for her father, and another for myself, will save him from any more superstitions, and me from any more philosophic doubts, for a few aeons of ages, till we start again in new lives—he, I suppose, as a jackass, and I as a baboon. What matter? but unless I possess her by fair means, God do so to me, and more also, if I attempt base ones!’

‘God be with you, my son, in the noble warfare!’ said Synesius, his eyes filling with kindly tears.

‘It is no noble warfare at all. It is a base coward fear, in one who never before feared man or devil, and is now fallen low enough to be afraid of a helpless girl!’

‘Not so,’ cried Synesius, in his turn; ‘it is a noble and a holy fear. You fear her goodness. Could you see her goodness, much less fear it, were there not a Divine Light within you which showed you what, and how awful, goodness was? Tell me no more, Raphael Aben-Ezra, that you do not fear God; for he who fears Virtue, fears Him whose likeness Virtue is. Go on—go on.... Be brave, and His strength will be made manifest in your weakness.’ ...............

It was late that night before Synesius compelled his guest to retire, after having warned him not to disturb himself if he heard the alarm-bell ring, as the house was well garrisoned, and having set the water-clock by which he and his servants measured their respective watches. And then the good bishop, having disposed his sentinels, took his station on the top of his tower, close by the warning-bell; and as he looked out over the broad lands of his forefathers, and prayed that their desolation might come to an end at last, he did not forget to pray for the desolation of the guest who slept below, a happier and more healthy slumber than he had known for many a week. For before Raphael lay down that night, he had torn to shreds Majoricus’s mortgage, and felt a lighter and a better man as he saw the cunning temptation consuming scrap by scrap in the lamp-flame. And then, wearied out with fatigue of body and mind, he forgot Synesius, Victoria, and the rest, and seemed to himself to wander all night among the vine-clad glens of Lebanon, amid the gardens of lilies, and the beds of spices; while shepherds’ music lured him on and on, and girlish voices, chanting the mystic idyll of his mighty ancestor, rang soft and fitful through his weary brain. ...............

Before sunrise the next morning, Raphael was faring forth gallantly, well armed and mounted, by Synesius’s side, followed by four or five brace of tall brush-tailed greyhounds, and by the faithful Bran, whose lop-ears and heavy jaws, unique in that land of prick-ears and fox-noses, formed the absorbing subject of conversation among some twenty smart retainers, who, armed to the teeth for chase and war, rode behind the bishop on half-starved, raw-boned horses, inured by desert training and bad times to do the maximum of work upon the minimum of food.

For the first few miles they rode in silence, through ruined villages and desolated farms, from which here and there a single inhabitant peeped forth fearfully, to pour his tale of woe into the ears of the hapless bishop, and then, instead of asking alms from him, to entreat his acceptance of some paltry remnant of grain or poultry, which had escaped the hands of the marauders; and as they clung to his hands, and blessed him as their only hope and stay, poor Synesius heard patiently again and again the same purposeless tale of woe, and mingled his tears with theirs, and then spurred his horse on impatiently, as if to escape from the sight of misery which he could not relieve; while a voice in Raphael’s heart seemed to ask him—‘Why was thy wealth given to thee, but that thou mightest dry, if but for a day, such tears as these?’

And he fell into a meditation which was not without its fruit in due season, but which lasted till they had left the enclosed country, and were climbing the slopes of the low rolling hills, over which lay the road from the distant sea. But as they left the signs of war behind them, the volatile temper of the good bishop began to rise. He petted his hounds, chatted to his men, discoursed on the most probable quarter for finding game, and exhorted them cheerfully enough to play the man, as their chance of having anything to eat at night depended entirely on their prowess during the day.

‘Ah!’ said Raphael at last, glad of a pretext for breaking his own chain of painful thought, ‘there is a vein of your land-salt. I suspect that you were all at the bottom of the sea once, and that the old Earth-shaker Neptune, tired of your bad ways, gave you a lift one morning, and set you up as dry land, in order to be rid of you.’

‘It may really be so. They say that the Argonauts returned back through this country from the Southern Ocean, which must have been therefore far nearer