CHAPTER XXV.

Orion made his way home under the moonlit and starry night. He held his

head high, and not since that evening on the water with Paula had he

felt so glad or so hopeful. On the other side of the bridge he did not

at once turn his horse’s head homewards; the fresh night air was so

delightful, his heart beat so high that he shrunk from the oppression

of a room. Full of renewed life, freed from a burden as it were, he made

his way at a round pace to the house that held his beloved, picturing

to himself how gladly she would welcome the news that he had found Amru

ready to encourage him in his projects, indeed, to be a fatherly friend.

The Arab general, whose lofty character, intellect, and rectitude his

father had esteemed highly, had impressed him, too, as the ideal of

noble manliness, and as he compared him with the highest officials and

warriors he had met at the Court of Byzantium he could not help smiling.

By the side of this dignified, but impetuous and warm-hearted man they

appeared like the old, rigid idols of his ancestors in comparison with

the freely-wrought works of Greek art. He could bless the memory of

his father for having freed the land from that degenerate race. Now,

he felt, that lost parent, whose image lived in his soul, was satisfied

with him, and this gave him a sense of happiness which he meant to

cling to and enhance by every thought and deed in the future. “Life is a

function, a ministry, and a duty!” this watchword, which had been given

him by those beloved lips, should keep him in the new path; and soon he

hoped to feel sure of himself, to be able to look back on such deeds of

valor as would give him a right in his own judgment to unite his lot to

that of this noblest of women.

Full of such thoughts as these, he made his way to the house of Rufinus.

The windows of the corner room on the upper floor were lighted up; two

of these windows looked out on the river and the quay. He did not know

which rooms were Paula’s, but he looked up at the late-burning light

with a vague feeling that it must be hers; a female figure which now

appeared framed in the opening, showed him that he was not mistaken; it

was that of Perpetua. The sound of hoofs had roused her curiosity, but

she did not seem to recognize him in the dim starlight.

He slowly rode past, and when he presently turned back and again

looked up, in the hope this time of seeing Paula, the place was vacant:

however, he perceived a tall dark shadow moving across from one side of

the room to the other, which could not be that of the nurse nor of her

slender mistress. It must indeed be that of a remarkably big man, and

stopping to gaze with anxious and unpleasant apprehension, he plainly

recognized Philippus.

It was past midnight. How could he account for his being with Paula at

this hour?--Was she ill?--Was this room hers after all?--Was it merely

by chance that the nurse was in Rufinus’ room with the physician.

No. The woman whom he could now see pass across the window and go

straight up to the man, with outstretched hands, was Paula and none

other. Isis heart was already beating fast, and now a suspicion grew

strong in him which his vanity had hitherto held in check, though he had

often seen the friendly relations that subsisted between Paula and the

leech.--Perhaps it was a warmer feeling than friendship and guileless

trust, which had led her so unreservedly to claim this man’s protection

and service. Could he have won Paula’s heart--Paula’s love?

Was it conceivable!--But why not?

What was there against Philippus but his homely face and humble birth?

And how many a woman had he not seen set her heart on quite other

things! The physician was not more than five years his senior; and

recalling the expression in his eyes as he looked at Paula only that

morning Orion felt more and more uneasy.

Philippus loved Paula.--A trifling incident suddenly occurred to

his mind which made him certain on that point; he had only too much

experience in such matters. Yesterday, it had struck him that ever

since his father’s death--that was ever since Paula’s change of

residence--Philippus dressed more carefully than had been his wont. “Now

this,” thought he, “is a change that does not come over so serious a man

unless it is caused by love.”

A mingled torment of pain and rage shot through him as he again saw the

tall shadow cross the window. For the first time in his life he felt the

pangs of jealousy, which he had so often laughed at in his friends; but

was it not absurd to allow it to torture him; was he not sure, since

that morning’s meeting, quite sure of Paula? And Philippus! Even if he,

Orion, must retire into the background before a higher judge, in the

eyes of a woman he surely had the advantage!--But in spite of all this

it troubled him to know that the physician was with Paula at such an

hour; he angrily pulled his horse’s head round, and it was a pleasure

to him to feel the fiery creature, unused as it was to such rough

treatment, turn restive at it now. By the time he had gone a hundred

steps from those windows with their cursed glare, the horse was

displaying all the temper and vice that had been taken out of him as a

foal. Orion had to fight a pitched battle with his steed, and it was a

relief to him to exercise his power with curb and knee. In vain did

the creature dance round and round; in vain did he rear and plunge; the

steady rider was his master; and it was not till he had brought him to

quietness and submission that Orion drew breath and looked about him

while he patted the horse’s smooth neck.

Close at hand, behind a low hedge, spread the thick, dark groves of

Susannah’s garden and between them the back of the house was visible,

being more brilliantly lighted than even Paula’s rooms. Three of the

windows showed lights; two were rather dim, however, the result probably

of one lamp only.

All this could not matter to him; nevertheless he remained gazing at the

roof of the colonnade which went round the house below the upper floor;

for, on the terrace it formed, leaning against a window-frame, stood a

small figure with her head thrust so far forth to listen that the light

shone through the curls that framed it. Katharina was trying to overhear

a dialogue between the Patriarch Benjamin--whose bearded and

apostolic head Orion could clearly recognize--and the priest John,

an insignificant looking little man, of whom, however, the deceased

Mukaukas had testified that he was far superior to old Plotinus the

Bishop in intellect and energy.

The young man could easily have watched Katharina’s every movement,

but he did not think it worth while. Nevertheless, as he rode on, the

water-wagtail’s little figure dwelt in his mind; not alone, however, for

that of Paula immediately rose by her side; and the smaller Katharina’s

seemed, the more ample and noble did the other appear. Every word he

had heard that day from Paula’s lips rushed to his remembrance, and the

vivid and lovely memory drove out all care. That woman, who only a few

hours since, had declared herself ready, with him, to hope all things,

to believe all things, and to accept his protection--that lordly maiden

whom he had been glad to bid fix her eye, with him, on the goal of

his future efforts, whose pure gaze could restrain his passion and

impetuosity as by a charm, and who yet granted him the right to strive

to possess her--that proud daughter of heroes, whom even his father

would have clasped to his heart as a daughter--was it possible that

she should betray him like some pleasure-seeking city beauty? Could she

forget her dignity as a woman?--No! and a thousand times no. To doubt

her was to insult her--was to wrong her and himself.

The physician loved her; but it certainly was not any warmer feeling

than friendship on her part that made her receive him at this late hour.

The shame would be his own, if he ever again allowed such base suspicion

to find place in his soul!

He breathed a deep sigh of relief. And when his servant, who had

lingered to pay the toll at the bridge, came up with him, Orion

dismounted and desired him to lead his horse home, for he himself wished

to return on foot, alone with his thoughts. He walked meditatively and

slowly under the sycamores, but he had not gone far when, on the other

side of the deserted road, he heard some one overtaking him with long,

quick strides. He recognized the leech Philippus at a glance and was

glad, for this proved to him how senseless and unjust his doubts had

been, and how little ground he had for regarding the physician as a

rival; for indeed this man did not look like a happy lover. He hurried

on with his head bent, as though under a heavy burthen, and clasped

his hand to his forehead with a gesture of despair. No, this nocturnal

wanderer had left no hour of bliss behind him; and if his demeanor was

calculated to rouse any feeling it was not envy, but pity.

Philippus did not heed Orion; absorbed in himself, he strode on, moaning

dully, as if in pain. For a few minutes he disappeared into a house

whence came loud cries of suffering, and when he came out again, he

walked on, shaking his head now and then, as a man who sees many things

happen which his understanding fails to account for.

The end of his walk was a large, palatial building. The stucco had

fallen off in places, and in the upper story the windows had been broken

away till their open ings were a world too wide. In former times this

house had accommodated the State officers of Finance for the province,

and the ground-floor rooms had been suitably and comfortably fitted

up for the Ideologos--the supreme controller of this department, who

usually resided at Alexandria, but who often spent some weeks at Memphis

when on a tour of inspection. But the Arabians had transferred the

management of the finances of the whole country to the new capital of

Fostat on the other shore of the river, and that of the monetary

affairs of the decaying city had been incorporated with the treasurer’s

department of the Mukaukas’ household. The senate of the city had found

the expense of this huge building too heavy, and had been well content

to let the lower rooms to Philippus and his Egyptian friend, Horapollo.

The two men occupied different rooms, but the same slaves attended to

their common housekeeping and also waited on the physician’s assistant,

a modest and well-informed Alexandrian.

When Philippus entered his old friend’s lofty and spacious study

he found him still up, sitting before a great number of rolls of

manuscript, and so absorbed in his work that he did not notice his

late-coming comrade till the leech bid him good-evening. His only reply

was an unintelligible murmur, for some minutes longer the old man was

lost in study; at last, however, he looked up at Philippus, impatiently

tossing an ivory ruler-which he had been using to open and smooth the

papyrus on to the table; and at the same moment a dark bundle under it

began to move--this was the old man’s slave who had long been sleeping

there.

Three lamps on the writing-table threw a bright light on the old man and

his surroundings, while the physician, who had thrown himself on a couch

in a corner of the large room, remained in the dark.

What startled the midnight student was his housemate’s unwonted silence;

it disturbed him as the cessation of the clatter of the wheel disturbs a

man who lives in a mill. He looked at his friend with surprised enquiry,

but Philippus was dumb, and the old man turned once more to his rolls of

manuscript. But he had lost the necessary concentration; his brown hand,

in which the blue veins stood out like cords, fidgeted with the scrolls

and the ivory rule, and his sunken lips, which had before been firmly

closed, were now twitching restlessly.

The man’s whole aspect was singular and not altogether pleasing: his

lean brown figure was bent with age, his thoroughly Egyptian face, with

broad cheekbones and outstanding ears, was seamed and wrinkled

like oak-bark; his scalp was bare of its last hair, and his face

clean-shaved, but for a few tufts of grey hair by way of beard,

sprouting from the deep furrows on his cheeks and chin, like reeds from

the narrow bed of a brook; the razor could not reach them there, and

they gave him an untidy and uncared-for appearance. His dress answered

to his face--if indeed that could be called dress which consisted of

a linen apron and a white kerchief thrown over his shoulders after

sundown. Still, no one meeting him in the road could have taken him for

a beggar; for his linen was fine and as white as snow, and his keen,

far-seeing eyes, above which, exactly in the middle, his bristly

eyebrows grew strangely long and thick, shone and sparkled with clear

intelligence, firm self-reliance, and a repellent severity which would

no more have become an intending mendicant than the resolute and often

scornful expression which played about his lips. There was nothing

amiable, nothing prepossessing, nothing soft in this man’s face; and

those who knew what his life had been could not wonder that the years

had failed to sweeten his abrupt and contradictory acerbity or to

transmute them into that kindly forbearance which old men, remembering

how often they have stumbled and how many they have seen fall, sometimes

find pleasure in practising.

He had been born, eighty years before, in the lovely island of Philae,

beyond the cataract in the district of the temple of Isis, and under the

shadow of the only Egyptian sanctuary in which the heathen cultus was

kept up, and that publicly, as late as in his youth. Since Theodosius

the Great, one emperor and one Praefectus Augustalis after another had

sent foot-soldiers and cavalry above the falls to put an end to idolatry

in the beautiful isle; but they had always been routed or destroyed by

the brave Blemmyes who haunted the desert between the Nile and the Red

Sea. These restless nomad tribes acknowledged the Isis of Philae as

their tutelary goddess, and, by a very ancient agreement, the image

of their patroness was carried every year by her priests in a solemn

procession to the Blemmyes, and then remained for a few weeks in their

keeping. Horapollo’s father was the last of the horoscope readers, and

his grandfather had been the last high-priest of the Isis of Philae. His

childhood had been passed on the island but then a Byzantine legion

had succeeded in beating the Blemmyes, in investing the island, and

in plundering and closing the temple. The priests of Isis escaped the

imperial raid and Horapollo had spent all his early years with his

father, his grandfather, and two younger sisters, in constant peril and

flight. His youthful spirit was unremittingly fed with hatred of the

persecutors, the cruel contemners and exterminators of the faith of his

forefathers; and this hatred rose to irreconcilable bitterness after

the massacre at Antioch where the imperial soldiery fell upon all his

family, and his grandfather and two innocent sisters were murdered.

These horrors were committed at the instigation of the Bishop, who

denounced the Egyptian strangers as idolaters, and to whom the Roman

prefect, a proud and haughty patrician, had readily lent the support of

an armed force. It was owing to the narrowest chance--or, as the old man

would have it, to the interposition of great Isis, that his father had

been so happy as to get away with him and the treasures he had brought

from the temple at Philae. Thus they had means to enable them to travel

farther under an assumed name, and they finally settled in Alexandria.

Here the persecuted youth changed his name, Horus, to its Greek

equivalent, and henceforth he was known at home and in the schools as

Apollo. He was highly gifted by nature, and availed himself with the

utmost zeal of the means of learning that abounded in Alexandria; he

labored indefatigably and dug deep into every field of Greek science,

gaining, under his father’s guidance, all the knowledge of Egyptian

horoscopy, which was not wholly lost even at this late period.

In the midst of the contentious Christian sects of the capital, both

father and son remained heathen and worshippers of Isis; and when the

old priest died at an advanced age, Horapollo moved to Memphis where he

led the quiet and secluded life of a student, mingling only now and

then with the astronomers, astrologers, and calendar-makers at the

observatory, or visiting the alchemists’ laboratories, where, even in

Christian Egypt, they still devoted themselves to attempts to transmute

the baser into the noble metals. Alchemists and star-readers alike soon

detected the old man’s superior knowledge, and in spite of his acrid and

often offensively-repellent demeanor, took counsel of him on difficult

questions. His fame had even reached the Arabs, and, when it was

necessary to find the exact direction towards Mecca for the prayer niche

in Amru’s new mosque, he was appealed to, and his decision was final.

Philippus had, some years since, been called to the old man’s bedside

in sickness, and being then a beginner and in no great request, he had

given the best of his time and powers to the case. Horapollo had

been much attracted by the young physician’s wide culture and earnest

studiousness; he had conceived a warm liking for him, the warmest

perhaps that he had ever felt for any fellow-human since the death of

his own family. At last the elder took the younger man into his heart

with such overflowing affection, that it seemed as though his spirit

longed to make up now for the stint of love it had hitherto shown. No

father could have clung to his son with more fervent devotion, and when

a relapse once more brought him to death’s door he took Philippus wholly

into his confidence, unrolled before his eyes the scroll of his inner

and outer life from its beginnings, and made him his heir on condition

that he should abide by him to the end.

Philippus, who, from the first, had felt a sympathetic attraction to

this venerable and talented man, agreed to the bargain; and when

he subsequently became associated with the old man in his studies,

assisting him from time to time, Horapollo desired that he would help

him to complete a work he hoped to finish before he died. It was a

treatise on hieroglyphic writing, and was to interpret the various signs

so far as was still possible, and make them intelligible to posterity.

The old man disliked writing anything but Egyptian, using Greek

unwillingly and clumsily, so he entrusted to his young friend the task

of rendering his explanations into that language. Thus the two men--so

different in age and character, but so closely allied in intellectual

aims--led a joint existence which was both pleasant and helpful to both,

in spite of the various eccentricities, the harshness and severity of

the elder.

Horapollo lived after the manner of the early Egyptian priests,

subjecting himself to much ablution and shaving; eating little but

bread, vegetables, and poultry, and abstaining from pulse and the flesh

of all beasts--not merely of the prohibited animal, swine; wearing

nothing but pure linen clothing, and setting apart certain hours for

the recitation of those heathen forms of prayer whose magic power was to

compel the gods to grant the desires of those who thus appealed to them.

And if the old man had given his full confidence to Philippus, the

leech, on his part, had no secrets from him; or, if he withheld

anything, Horapollo, with wonderful acumen, was at once aware of it.

Philippus had often spoken of Paula to his parental friend, describing

her charms with all the fervor of a lover, but the old man was already

prejudiced against her, if only as the daughter of a patrician and a

prefect. All who bore these titles were to him objects of hatred, for

a patrician and a prefect had been guilty of the blood of those he had

held most dear. The Governor of Antioch, to be sure, had acted only

under the orders of the bishop; but old Horapollo, and his father before

him, from the first had chosen to throw all the blame on the prefect,

for it afforded some satisfaction to the descendant of an ancestral race

of priests to be able to vent all his wrathful spite on any one rather

than on the minister of a god--be that god who or what he might.

So when Philippus praised Paula’s dignified grandeur, her superior

elegance, the height of her stature or the loftiness of her mind, the

old man would bound up exclaiming: “Of course--of course!--Beware boy,

beware! You are disguising haughtiness, conceit, and arrogance under

noble names. The word ‘patrician’ includes everything we can conceive of

as most insolent and inhuman; and those apes in purple who disgrace the

Imperial throne pick out the worst of them, the most cold-hearted

and covetous, to make prefects of them. And as they are, so are their

children! Everything which they in their vainglory regard as ‘beneath

them’ they tread into the dust--and we--you and I, all who labor with

their hands in the service of the state--we, in their dull eyes,

are beneath them. Mark me, boy! To-day the governor’s daughter, the

patrician maiden, can smile at you because she needs you; tomorrow she

will cast you aside as I push away the old panther-skin which keeps my

feet warm in winter, as soon as the March days come!”

Nor was his aversion less for the son of the Mukaukas, whom, however,

he had never seen; when the leech had confessed to him how deep a grudge

against Orion dwelt in the heart of Paula, old Horapollo had chuckled

scornfully, and he exclaimed, as though he could read hearts and look

into the future--: “They snap at each other now, and in a day or two

they will kiss again! Hatred and love are the opposite ends of the same

rod; and how easily it is reversed!--Those two!--Like in blood is like

in kind;--such people attract each other as the lodestone tends towards

the iron and the iron towards the lodestone!”

But these and similar admonitions had produced little effect on the

physician’s sentiments; even Paula’s repulse of his ardent appeal after

she had moved to the house of Rufinus had failed to extinguish his

hope of winning her at last. This very morning, in the course of the

discussion as to the stewardship of her fortune, Paula had been

ready and glad to accept him as her Kyrios--her legal protector and

representative; but he now thought that he could perceive by various

signs that his venerable friend was right: that the rod had been

reversed, and that aversion had been transformed to love in the girl’s

heart. The anguish of this discovery was hard to bear. And yet Paula had

never shown him such hearty warmth of manner, never had she spoken to

him in a voice so soft and so full of feeling, as this evening in the

garden. More cheerful and talkative than usual, she had constantly

turned to address him, while he had felt his pain and torment of mind

gradually eased, till in him too, sentiment had blossomed anew, and his

intellectual power had expanded. Never--so he believed--had he expressed

his thoughts better or more brilliantly than in that hour. Nor had she

withheld her approval; she had heartily agreed with his views; and

when, half an hour before midnight, he had gone with her to visit

his patients, rapturous hopes had sprung once more in his breast.

Ecstatically happy, like a man intoxicated, he had, by her own desire,

accompanied her into her sitting-room, and then--and there....

Poor, disappointed man, sitting on the divan in a dark corner of the

spacious room! In his soul hitherto the intellect had alone made itself

heard, the voice of the heart had never been listened to.

How he had found his way home he never knew. All he remembered was

that, in the course of duty, he had gone into the house of a man whose

wife--the mother of several children--he had left at noon in a dying

state; that he had seen her a corpse, surrounded by loud but sincere

mourners; that he had gone on his way, weighed down by their grief and

his own, and that he had entered his friend’s rooms rather than his

own, to feel safe from himself. Life had no charm, no value for him now;

still, he felt ashamed to think that a woman could thus divert him from

the fairest aims of life, that he could allow her to destroy the peace

of mind he needed to enable him to carry out his calling in the spirit

of his friend Rufinus. He knew his house-mate well and felt that he

would only pour vitriol into his wounds, but it was best so. The old

man had already often tried to bring down Paula’s image from its high

pedestal in his soul, but always in vain; and even now he should not

succeed. He would mar nothing, scatter nothing to the winds, tread

nothing in the dust but the burning passion, the fevered longing

for her, which had fired his blood ever since that night when he had

vanquished the raving Masdakite. That old sage by the table, on whose

stern, cold features the light fell so brightly, was the very man to

accomplish such a work of destruction, and Philippus awaited his first

words as a wounded man watches the surgeon heating the iron with which

to cauterize the sore.

Poor disappointed wretch, sorely in need of a healing hand!

He lay back on the divan, and saw how his friend leaned over his scroll

as if listening, and fidgeted up and down in his arm-chair.

It was clear that Horapollo was uneasy at Philippus’ long silence, and

his pointed eyebrows, raised high on his brow, plainly showed that he

was drawing his own conclusions from it--no doubt the right ones. The

peace must soon be broken, and Philippus awaited the attack. He was

prepared for the worst; but how could he bring himself to make his

torturer’s task easy for him. Thus many minutes slipped away; while

the leech was waiting for the old man to speak, Horapollo waited for

Philippus. However, the impatience and curiosity of the elder were

stronger than the young man’s craving for comfort; he suddenly laid down

the roll of manuscript, impatiently snatched up the ivory stick which he

had thrown aside, set his heavy seat at an angle with a shove of amazing

vigor for his age, turned full on Philippus, and asked him, in a loud

voice, pointing his ruler at him as if threatening him with it:

“So the play is out. A tragedy, of course!”

“Hardly, since I am still alive,” replied the other.

“But there is inward bleeding, and the wound is painful,” retorted the

old man. Then, after a short pause, he went on: “Those who will not

listen must feel! The fox was warned of the trap, but the bait was too

tempting! Yesterday there would still have been time to pull his foot

out of the spring, if only he had sincerely desired it; he knew the

hunter’s guile. Now the foe is down on the victim; he has not spared his

weapons, and there lies the prey dumb with pain and ignominy, cursing

his own folly.--You seem inclined for silence this evening. Shall I tell

you just how it all came about?”

“I know only too well,” said Philippus.

“While I, to be sure, can only imagine it!” growled the old man. “So

long as that patrician hussy needed the poor beast of burthen she could

pet it and throw barley and dates to it. Now she is rolling in gold and

living under a sheltering roof, and hey presto, the discarded protector

is sent to the right about in no time. This mistress of the hearts of

our weak and bondage-loving sex raises this rich Adonis to fill the

place of the hapless, overgrown leech, just as the sky lets the sun rise

when the pale moon sinks behind the hills. If that is not the fact give

me the lie!”

“I only wish I could,” sighed Philippus. “You have seen rightly,

wonderfully rightly--and yet, as wrongly as possible.”

“Dark indeed!” said the old man quietly. “But I can see even in the

dark. The facts are certain, though you are still so blinded as not

to see their first cause. However, I am satisfied to know that your

delusion has come to so abrupt, and in my opinion so happy, an end. To

its cause--a woman, as usual--I am perfectly indifferent. Why should I

needlessly ascribe to her any worse sin than she had committed? If only

for your sake I will avoid doing so, for an honorable soul clings to

those whom it sees maligned. Still, it seems to me that it is for you

to speak, not for me. I should know you for a philosopher, without such

persistent silence; and as for myself, I am not altogether bereft of

curiosity, in spite of my eighty years.”

At this Philippus hastily rose and pacing the room while he spoke, or

pausing occasionally in front of the old man, he poured out with glowing

cheeks and eager gestures, the history of his hopes and sufferings--how

Paula had filled him with fresh confidence, and had invited him to her

rooms--only to show him her whole heart; she had been strongly moved,

surprised at herself, but unable and unwilling to conceal from him the

happiness that had come into her life. She had spoken to him, her best

friend, as a burthened soul pours itself out to a priest: had confessed

all that she had felt since the funeral of the deceased Mukaukas, and

said that she felt convinced now that Orion had come to a right mind

again after his great sin.

“And that there, was so much joy over him in heaven,” interrupted

Horapollo, “that she really could not delay doing her cast-off lover the

honor of inviting his sympathy!”

“On the contrary. It was with the utmost effort that she uttered all

her heart prompted her to tell; she had nothing to look for from me but

mockery, warning, and reproach, and yet she opened her heart to me.”

“But why? To what end?” shrieked the old man. “Shall I tell you. Because

a man who is a friend must still be half a lover, and a woman cannot

bear to give up even a quarter of one.”

“Not so!” exclaimed Philippus, indignantly interrupting him. “It was

because she esteems and values me,--because she regards me as a brother,

and--I am not a vain man--and could not bear--those were her very

words--to cheat me of my affection for even an hour! It was noble,

it was generous, worthy of her! And though every fibre of my nature

rebelled I found myself compelled to admire her sincerity, her

true friendship, her disregard of her own feelings, and her womanly

tenderness!--Nay, do not interrupt me again, do not laugh at me. It is

no small matter for a proud girl, conscious of her own dignity, to lay

bare her heart’s weakness to a man who, as she knows, loves her, as she

did just now to me. She called me her benefactor and said she would be

a sister to me; and whatever motive you--who hate her out of a habit of

prejudice without really knowing her--may choose to ascribe her conduct

to, I--I believe in her, and understand her.

“Could I refuse to grasp the hand she held out to me as she entreated

me with tears in her eyes to be still her friend, her protector, and her

Kyrios! And yet, and yet!--Where shall I find resolution enough to

ask of her who excites me to the height of passion no more than a kind

glance, a clasp of the hand, an intelligent interest in what I say? How

am I to preserve self-control, calmness, patience, when I see her in the

arms of that handsome young demi-god whom I scorned only yesterday as a

worthless scoundrel? What ice may cool the fire of this burning heart?

What spear can transfix the dragon of passion which rages here? I have

lived almost half my life without ever feeling or yearning for the love

of which the poets sing. I have never known anything of such feelings

but through the pangs of some friend whose weakness had roused my pity;

and now, when love has come upon me so late with all its irresistible

force--has subjugated me, cast me into bondage--how shall I, how can I

get free?

“My faithful friend, you who call me your son, whom I am glad to hear

speak to me as ‘boy,’ and ‘child,’ who have taken the place of the

father I lost so young--there is but one issue: I must leave you and

this city--flee from her neighborhood--seek a new home far from her with

whom I could have been as happy as the Saints in bliss, and who has made

me more wretched than the damned in everlasting fire. Away, away! I will

go--I must go unless you, who can do so much, can teach me to kill this

passion or to transmute it into calm, brotherly regard.”

He stood still, close in front of the old man and hid his face in his

hands. At his favorite’s concluding words, Horapollo had started to his

feet with all the vigor of youth; he now snatched his hand down from his

face, and exclaimed in a voice hoarse with indignation and the deepest

concern:

“And you can say that in earnest? Can a sensible man like you have sunk

so deep in folly? Is it not enough that your own peace of mind should

have been sacrificed, flung at the feet of this--what can I call

her?--Do you understand at last why I warned you against the Patrician

brood?--The faith, gratitude, and love of a good man!--What does she

care for them? Unhook the whiting; away with him in the dust! Here comes

a fine large fish who perhaps may swallow the bait!--Do you want to

ruin, for her sake, and the sake of that rascally son of the governor,

the comfort and happiness of an old man’s last years when he has become

accustomed to love you, who so well deserve it, as his own son? Will

you--an energetic student, you--a man of powerful intellect, zealous

in your duty, and in favor with the gods--will you pine like a deserted

maiden or spring from the Leucadian rock like love-sick Sappho in the

play while the spectators shake with laughter? You must stay, Boy, you

must stay; and I will show you how a man must deal with a passion that

dishonors him.”

“Show me,” replied Philippus in a dull voice. “I ask no more. Do you

suppose that I am not myself ashamed of my own weakness? It ill beseems

me of all men, formed by fate for anything rather than to be a sighing

and rapturous lover. I will struggle with it, wrestle with it with all

the strength that is in me; but here, in Memphis, close to her and as

her Kyrios, I should be forced every day to see her, and day after day

be exposed to fresh and humiliating defeat! Here, constantly near her

and with her, the struggle must wear me out--I should perish, body and

soul. The same place, the same city, cannot hold her and me.”

“Then she must make way for you,” croaked Horus. Philippus raised his

bowed head and asked, in some surprise and with stern reproof:

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” replied the other airily. He shrugged his shoulders and went

on more gently: “Memphis has greater need of you than of the patrician

hussy.” Then he shook himself as if he were cold, struck his breast and

added: “All is turmoil here within; I can neither help nor advise you.

Day must soon be dawning in the east; we will try to sleep. A knot can

often be untied by daylight which by lamplight seems inextricable, and

perhaps on my sleepless couch the goddess may reveal to me the way I

have promised to show you. A little more lightness of heart would do

neither of us any harm.--Try to forget your own griefs in those of

others; you see enough of them every day. To wish you a good night would

probably be waste of words, but I may wish you a soothing one, You may

count on my aid; but you will not let me, a poor old man, hear another

word about flight and departure and the like, will you? No, no. I know

you better, Philippus--you will never treat your lonely old friend so!”

These were the tenderest words that the leech had ever heard from the

old man’s lips, and it comforted him when Horapollo pressed him to his

heart in a hasty embrace. He thought no more of the hint that it was

Paula’s part to make room for him. But the old man had spoken in all

seriousness, for, no sooner was he alone than he petulantly flung down

the ivory ruler on the table, and murmured, at first angrily and then

scornfully, his eyes sparkling the while:

“For this true heart, and to preserve myself and the world from losing

such a man, I would send a dozen such born hussies to Amentis--[The

Nether world of the ancient Egyptians.]--Hey, hey! My beauty! So this

noble leech is not good enough for the like of us; he may be tossed away

like a date-stone that we spit out? Well, every one to his taste;

but how would it be if old Horapollo taught us his value? Wait a bit,

wait!--With a definite aim before my eyes I have never yet failed to

find my way--in the realm of science, of course; but what is life--the

life of the sage but applied knowledge? And why should not old

Horapollo, for once before he dies, try what his brains can contrive to

achieve in the busy world of outside human existence? Pleasant as you

may think it to be in Memphis with your lover, fair heart-breaker,

you will have to make way for the plaything you have so lightly tossed

aside! Aye, you certainly will, depend upon that my beauty, depend upon

that!--Here, Anubis!”

He gave the slave, who had fallen asleep again under the table, a

kick with his bare foot, and while Anubis lighted his master to his

sleeping-room, and helped him in his long and elaborate ablutions,

Horapollo never ceased muttering broken sentences and curses, or

laughing maliciously to himself.

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER I.

If Philippus found no sleep that night, neither did Orion. He no longer

doubted Paula, but his heart was full of longing to hear her say once

more that she loved him and him alone, and the yearning kept him awake.

He sprang from his bed at the first glimmer of dawn, glad that the

night was past, and started to cross the Nile in order to place half

of Paula’s fortune in the hands of Salech, the brother of Haschim the

merchant.

In Memphis all was still silent, and all he saw in the old town struck

him as strangely worn-out, torpid, and decayed; it seemed only fit to be

left to ruin, while on the other side of the river, in the new town of

Fostat, on all hands busy, eager, new-born vitality met his eyes.

He involuntarily compared the old capital of the Pharaohs to a

time-eaten mummy, and Amru’s new city to a vigorous youth. Here every

one was astir and in brisk activity. The money-changer, who had risen,

like all Moslems, to perform his morning prayer, “as soon as a white

thread could be distinguished from a black one,” was already busy with

his rolls of gold and silver coin; and how quick, clear, and decisive

the Arab was in concluding his bargain with Orion and with Nilus, who

had accompanied him!

Whichever way the young man turned, bright and flashing eyes met his

gaze, energetic, resolute, and enterprising faces; no bowed heads, no

dull, brooding looks, no gloomy resignation like those in his native

town on the other shore. Here, in Fostat, his blood flowed more swiftly;

there, existence was an oppressive burden. Everything attracted him to

the Arabs!

The changer’s shop, like all those in the Sook or Bazaar of Fostat,

consisted of a wooden stall in which he sat with his assistants. On the

side open to the street he transacted business with his customers, who,

when the affair promised to be lengthy, were invited by the Arab to seat

themselves with him on his little platform.

Orion and Nilus had accepted such an invitation, and it happened that,

while they sat in treaty with Salech, visible to the passers-by, the

Vekeel Obada, who had so deeply stirred the wrath of the governor’s son

on the previous evening, came by, close to him. To Orion’s amazement he

greeted him with great amiability, and he, remembering Amru’s warning,

responded, though not without an effort, to his hated foe’s civility.

When Obada passed the stall a second and a third time, Orion felt that

he was watching him; however, it was quite possible that the Vekeel

might also have business with the money-changer and be waiting only for

the conclusion of his.

At any rate Orion ere long forgot the incident, for matters of more

pressing importance claimed his attention at home.

As often happens, the death of one man had changed everything in his

house so utterly as to make it unlike the same; though his removal had

made it neither richer nor poorer, and though his secluded presence of

late had scarcely had an appreciable influence. The rooms formerly

so full of life now seemed dead. Petitioners and suppliants no longer

crowded the anteroom, and all visits of condolence had, according to

the ancient custom, been received on the day after the funeral. The Lady

Neforis had ceased fussing and bustling, the clatter of her keys and

her scolding were no longer to be heard; she sat apart, either in her

sleeping-room or the cool hall with the fountain which had been her

husband’s favorite room, excepting when she was at church whither she

went twice every day. She returned from thence with the same weary,

abstracted expression that she took there, and any one seeing her lying

on the divan which her husband had formerly occupied, idly absorbed in

gloomy thought, would hardly have recognized her as the same woman who

had but lately been so active and managing. She did not exactly mourn or

bewail her loss; indeed, she had no tears for her grief, as though she

had shed them all, once for all, during the night after his death and

burial. But she could not attain to that state of sadness made sacred

by memories with which consoling angels so often mingle some drops of

sweetness, after the first anguish is overpast. She felt--she knew--that

with her husband a portion of her own being had been riven from her, but

she could not yet perceive that this last portion was nothing less than

the very foundations of her whole moral and social being.

Her father and her husband’s father had been the two leading men in

Memphis, nay, in all Egypt. She had given her hand and a heart full of

love to the son of Menas, a proud and happy woman. It was as one with

her, and not by himself alone, that he had risen to the highest dignity

attainable by a native Egyptian, and she had done everything that lay

in her power to uphold him in a position which many envied him, and in

filling it with dignity and effect. After many years of rare happiness

their grief at the loss of their murdered sons only bound the attached

couple more closely, and when her husband had fallen into bad health she

had gladly shared his seclusion, had devoted herself entirely to caring

for him, and divided all the doubts and anxieties which came upon him

from his political action. The consciousness of being not merely much

but everything to him, was her pride and her joy. Her dislike of Paula

had its rise, in the first instance, in the discovery that she, his

wife, was no longer indispensable to the sufferer when he had his fair

young niece’s company. And now?

At night, after long lying awake, when she woke from a snatch of uneasy

sleep, she involuntarily listened for the faint panting breath, but no

heart now throbbed by her side; and when she quitted her lonely couch at

dawn the coming day lay before her as a desert and treeless solitude. By

night, as by day, she constantly tried to call up the image of the dead,

but whenever her small imaginative power had succeeded in doing so--not

unfrequently at first--she had seen him as in the last moments of his

life, a curse on his only son on his trembling lips. This horrible

impression deprived her of the last consolation of the mourner: a

beautiful memory, while it destroyed her proud and glad satisfaction in

her only child. The youth, who had till now been her soul’s idol, was

stigmatized and branded in her eyes. She might not ignore the burden

laid on Orion by that most just man; instead of taking him to her heart

with double tenderness and softening or healing the fearful punishment

inflicted by his father, she could only pity him. When Orion came to see

her she would stroke his waving hair and, as she desired not to wound

him and make him even more unhappy than he must be already, she neither

blamed nor admonished him, and never reminded him of his father’s curse.

And how beggared was that frugal heart, accustomed to spend all its

store of love on so few objects--nay, chiefly on one alone who was now

no more!

The happy voices of the children had always given her pleasure, so

long as they did not disturb her suffering husband; now, they too were

silent. She had withdrawn the sunshine of her narrow affection from her

only grandchild, who had hitherto held a place in it, for little Mary

had had a share in the horrors that had come upon her and Orion in her

husband’s last moments. Indeed, the bereaved woman’s excited fancy had

firmly conceived the mad notion that the child was the evil genius of

the house and the tool of Satan.

Neforis had, however, enjoyed some hours of greater ease during the last

two days. In the misery of wakefulness which was beginning to torture

her like an acute pain, she had suddenly recollected what relief from

sleeplessness her husband had been wont to find in the opium pillules,

and a box of the medicine, only just opened, was at hand. And was not

she, too, suffering unutterable wretchedness? Why should she neglect

the remedy which had so greatly mitigated her husband’s distress? It was

said to have a bad effect after long and frequent use, and she had often

checked the Mukaukas in taking it too freely; but could her sufferings

be greater? Would she not, indeed, be thankful to the drug if it should

shorten her miserable existence?

So she took the familiar remedy, at first hesitatingly and then more

freely; and on the second day again, with real pleasure and happy

expectancy, for it had not merely procured her a good night but had

brought her joy in the morning: The dead had appeared to her, and for

the first time not in the act of cursing, but as a young and happy man.

No one in the house knew what comfort the widow had had recourse to; the

physician and her son had been glad yesterday to find her more composed.

When Orion returned home, after concluding his business with the

money-changer at Fostat, he had to make his way through a crowd of

people, and found the court-yard full of men, and the guards and

servants in the greatest excitement. No less a personage than the

Patriarch had arrived on a visit, and was now in conference with

Neforis. Sebek, the steward, informed Orion that he had asked for him,

and that his mother wished that he should immediately join them and pay

his respects to the very reverend Father.

“She wished it?” asked the young man, as he tossed his riding-hat to a

slave, and he stood hesitating.

He was too much a son of his time, and the Church and her ministers had

exercised too marked influence on his education, for the great prelate’s

visit to be regarded otherwise than as a high honor. At the same time

he could not forget the insult done to his father’s vanes, nor the Arab

general’s warning to be on his guard against Benjamin’s enmity; and

perhaps, he said to himself, it might be better to avoid a meeting with

the powerful priest than to expose himself to the danger of losing his

self-control and finding fresh food for his wrath.

However, he had in fact no choice, for the patriarch just now came out

of the fountain-hall into the viridarium. The old man’s tall figure was

not bent, his snowy hair flowed in abundance round his proud head, and a

white beard fell in soft waves far down his breast. His fine eyes rested

on the young man with a keen glance, and though he had last seen Orion

as a boy he recognized him at once as the master of the house. While

Orion bowed low before him, the patriarch, in his deep, rich voice,

addressed him with cheerful dignity.

“All hail, son of my never-to-be-forgotten friend! The child I remember,

has, I see, grown to a fine man. I have devoted a short time to the

mother, and now I must say what is needful to the son.”

“In my father’s study,” Orion said to the steward; and he led the way

with the ceremonious politeness of a chamberlain of the imperial court.

The patriarch, as he followed him, signed to his escort to remain

behind, and as soon as the door was closed upon them, he went up to

Orion and exclaimed: “Again I greet you! This, then, is the descendant

of the great Menas, the son of Mukaukas George, the adored ruler of my

flock at Memphis, who held the first place among the gilded youth of

Constantinople in their gay whirl! A strange achievement for an Egyptian

and a Christian! But first of all, child, first give me your hand!” He

held out his right hand and Orion accepted it, but not without reserve,

for he had suspected a scornful ring in the patriarch’s address, and he

could not help asking himself whether this man honestly meant so well

by him, that he could address him thus paternally as “child” in all

sincerity of heart? To refuse his hand was, however, impossible; still,

he found courage to reply:

“I can but obey your desire, holy Father; but, at the same time, I do

not know whether it becomes the son to grasp the hand of the foe who was

not to be appeased even by Death, the reconciler--who grossly insulted

the father, the noblest of men, and, in him, the son too, at the grave

itself.”

The patriarch shook his head with a supercilious smile, and a hot thrill

shot through Orion as Benjamin laid his hand on his shoulder and said

with grave kindness:

“A Christian does not find it hard to forgive a sinner, an antagonist,

an enemy; and it is a joy to me to pardon the son who feels himself

injured through his lost father, blind and foolish as his indignation

may be. Your wrath can no more affect me, Child, than the Almighty in

Heaven, and it would not even be blameworthy, but that--and of this

we must speak presently--but that--well, I will be frank with you at

once--but that your manner clearly and unmistakably betrays what you

lack to make you a true Christian, and such a man as he must be who

fills so conspicuous a position in this land governed by infidels. You

know what I mean?”

The prelate let his hand slip from the young man’s shoulder, looking

enquiringly in his face; and when Orion, finding no reply ready, drew

back a step or two, the old man went on with growing excitement:

“It is humility, pious and submissive faith, that I find you lack, my

friend. Who, indeed, am I? But as the Vicar, the representative of Him

before whom we all are as worms in the dust, I must insist that every

man who calls himself a Christian, a Jacobite, shall submit to my will

and orders, without hesitation or doubt, as obediently and unresistingly

as though salvation or woe had fallen on him from above. What would

become of us, if individuals were to take upon themselves to defy me and

walk in their own way? In one miserable generation, and with the death

of the elders who had grown up as true Christians, the doctrine of the

Saviour would be extinct on the shores of the Nile, the crescent would

rise in the place of the Cross, and our cry would go up to Heaven for so

many lost souls. Learn, haughty youth, to bow humbly and submissively

to the will of the Most High and of His vicar on earth, and let me show

you, from your demeanor to myself especially, how far your own judgment

is to be relied on. You regard me as your father’s enemy?”

“Yes,” said Orion firmly.

“And I loved him as a brother!” replied the patriarch in a softer voice.

“How gladly would I have heaped his bier with palm branches of peace,

such as the Church alone can grow, wet with my own tears!”

“And yet,” cried Orion, “you denied to him, whom you call your friend,

what the Church does not refuse to thieves and murderers, if only they

desire forgiveness and have received absolution from a priest;

and that....”

“And that your father did!” interrupted the old man. “Peace be to him!

He is now, no doubt, gazing on the glory of the Lord. And nevertheless

I could forbid the priesthood here showing him honor at the grave.--Why?

For what urgent reason was such a prohibition spoken by a friend against

a friend?”

“Because you wished to brand him, in the eyes of the world, as the man

who lent his support to the unbelievers and helped them to victory,”

said Orion gloomily.

“How well the boy can read the thoughts of men!” exclaimed the prelate,

looking at the young man with approbation in which, however, there was

some irony and annoyance. “Very good. We will assume that my object

was to show the Christians of Memphis what fate awaits the man,

who surrenders his country to the enemy and walks hand-in-hand with

unbelievers? And may I not possibly have been right?”

“Do you suppose my father invited the Arabs?” interrupted the young man.

“No, Child,” replied the patriarch, “the enemy came of his own free

will.”

“And you,” Orion went on, “after the Greeks had driven you into exile,

prophesied from the desert that they would come and overthrow the

Melchites, the Greek enemies of our faith, drive them out of the

country.”

“It was revealed to me by the Lord!” replied the old man, bowing his

head reverently. “And yet other things were shown to me while I dwelt

a devout ascetic, mortifying my flesh under the scorching sun of the

desert. Beware my son, beware! Heed my warning, lest it should be

fulfilled and the house of Menas vanish like clouds swept before the

wind.--Your father, I know, regarded my prophecy as advice given by me

to receive the infidels as the instrument of the Almighty and to support

them in driving the Melchite oppressors out of the land.”

“Your prophecy,” replied Orion, “had, no doubt, a marked effect on my

father; and when the cause of the emperor and the Greeks was lost,

your opinion that the Melchites were unbelievers as much as the sons

of Islam, was of infinite comfort to him. For he, if any one--as you

know--had good reason to hate the sectarians who killed his two sons in

their prime. What followed, he did to rescue his and your unfortunate

brethren and dependants from destruction. Here, here in this desk,

lies his answer to the emperor’s accusations, as given to the Greek

deputation who had speech of him in this very room. He wrote it down as

soon as they had left him. Will you hear it?”

“I can guess its purport.”

“No, no!” cried the excited youth; he hastily opened his father’s desk,

laid his hand at once on the wax tablet, and exclaimed: “This was his

reply!” And he proceeded to read:

“These Arabs, few as they are, are stronger and more powerful than we

with all our numbers. One man of them is equal to a hundred of us, for

they rush on death and love it better than life. Each of them presses

to the front in battle, and they have no longing to return home and

to their families. For every Christian they kill they look for a great

reward in Heaven, and they say that the gates of Paradise open at once

for those who fall in the fight. They have not a wish in this world

beyond the satisfaction of their barest need of food and clothing. We,

on the contrary, love life and dread death;--how can we stand against

them? I tell you that I will not break the peace I have concluded with

the Arabs. ...”

“And what is the upshot of all this reply?” interrupted the patriarch

shrugging his shoulders.

“That my father found himself compelled to conclude a peace, and

that--but read on.--That as a wise man he was forced to ally himself

with the foe.”

“The foe to whom he yielded more readily and paid much greater honor

than became him as a Christian!--Does not this discourse convey the idea

that the joys of Paradise solely and exclusively await our damned and

blood-thirsty oppressors?--And the Moslem Paradise! What is it but a

gulf of iniquity, in which they are to wallow in sensual delight? The

false prophet invented it to tempt his followers to force his lying

creed, by might of arms and in mad contempt of death, on nation after

nation. Our Lord, the Word made flesh, came down on earth to win hearts

and souls by the persuasive power of the living truth, one and eternal,

which emanates from Him as light proceeds from the sun; this Mohammed,

on the contrary, is a sword made flesh! For me, then, there is no choice

but to submit to superior strength; but I can still hate and loathe

their accursed and soul-destroying superstition.--And so I do, and so I

shall, to the last throb of this old heart, which only longs for rest,

the sooner the better....

“But you? And your father? Verily, verily, the man who, even for an

instant, ceases to hate unbelief or false doctrine has sinned for his

whole life on this side of the grave and beyond it; sinned against

the only true and saving faith and its divine Founder. Blasphemous and

flattering praise of the piety and moderation of our foes, the very

antichrist incarnate, who kill both body and soul.--With these your

father fouled his heart and tongue...”

“Fouled?” cried Orion and the blood tingled in his cheeks. “He kept his

heart and tongue alike pure and honorable; never did a false word pass

his lips. Justice, justice to all, even to his enemies, was the ruling

principle, the guiding clue of his blameless life; and the noblest of

the heathen Greeks admired the man who could so far triumph over himself

as to recognize what was fine and good in a foe.”

“And they were right,” replied the patriarch, “for they were not yet

acquainted with truth. In a worldly sense, even now, each of us may aim

at such magnanimity; but the man who forgives those who tamper with

the sacred truth, which is the bread, meat, and wine of the Christian’s

soul, sins against that truth; and, if he is a leader of men, he draws

on those who look up to him, and who are only too ready to follow his

example, into everlasting fire. Where your father ought to have been a

recalcitrant though conquered enemy, he became an ally; nay, so far as

the leader of the infidels was concerned, a friend--how many tears it

cost me! And our hapless people were forced to see this attitude

of their chief, and imitated it.--Forgive their seducer, Merciful

God!--forming their conduct on his. Thousands fell away from our saving

faith and went over to those, who in their eyes could not be reprobate,

could not be damned, since they saw them dwelling and working

hand-in-hand with their wise and righteous leader; and it was simply and

solely to warn his misguided people that I did not hesitate to wound my

own heart, to raise the voice of reproof at the grave of a dear friend,

and to refuse the honor and blessing of which his just and virtuous life

rendered him more worthy than thousands of others. I have spoken, and

now your foolish anger must be appeased; now you will grasp the hand

held out to you by the shepherd of the souls entrusted to him with an

easy and willing heart.”

And again he offered his hand to Orion, who, however, again took it

doubtfully, and instead of looking the prelate in the face, cast down

his eyes in gloomy bewilderment. The patriarch appeared not to observe

the young man’s repulsion and clasped his hand warmly. Then he changed

the subject, speaking of the grieving widow, of the decadence of

Memphis, of Orion’s plans for the future, and finally of the gems

dedicated to the Church by the deceased Mukaukas. The dialogue had taken

a calm, conversational tone; the patriarch was sitting in the dead man’s

arm-chair, and there was nothing forced or unnatural in his asking,

in the course of discussing the jewels, what had become of the great

emerald.

Orion replied, in the same tone, that this stone was not, strictly

speaking, any part of his father’s gift; but Benjamin expressed an

opposite opinion.

All the tortures Orion had endured since that luckless deed in the

tablinum revived in his soul during this discussion; however, it was

some small relief to him to perceive, that neither his mother nor Dame

Susannah seemed to have told the patriarch the guilt he had incurred

by reason of that gem. Susannah, of course, had said nothing of the

incident in order to avoid speaking of her daughter’s false evidence;

still, this miserable business might easily have come to the ears of the

stern old man, and to the guilty youth no sacrifice seemed too great to

smother any enquiry for the ill-fated jewel. He unhesitatingly explained

that the emerald had disappeared, but that he was quite ready to make

good its value. Benjamin might fix his own estimate, and name any sum he

wished for some benevolent purpose, and he, Orion, was ready to pay it

to him on the spot.

The prelate, however, calmly persisted in his demand, enjoined Orion to

have a diligent search made for the gem, and declared that he regarded

it as the property of the Church. He added that, when his patience was

at an end, he should positively insist on its surrender and bring every

means at his disposal into play to procure it.

Orion had no choice but to say that he would prosecute his search for

the lost stone; but his acquiescence was sullen, as that of a man who

accedes to an unreasonable demand.

At first the patriarch took this coolly; but presently, when he rose to

take leave, his demeanor changed; he said, with stern solemnity:

“I know you now, Son of Mukaukas George, and I end as I began: The

humility of the Christian is far from you, you are ignorant of the

power and dignity of our Faith, you do not even know the vast love that

animates it, and the fervent longing to lead the straying sinner back to

the path of salvation.--Your admirable mother has told me, with tears in

her eyes, of the abyss over which you are standing. It is your desire

to bind yourself for life to a heretic, a Melchite--and there is another

thing which fills her pious mother’s heart with fears, which tortures it

as she thinks of you and your eternal welfare. She promised to confide

this to my ear in church, and I shall find leisure to consider of it on

my return home; but at any rate, and be it what it may, it cannot more

greatly imperil your soul than marriage with a Melchite.

“On what have you set your heart? On the mere joys of earth! You sue for

the hand of an unbeliever, the daughter of an unbelieving heretic;

you go over to Fostat--nay, hear me out--and place your brain and your

strong arm at the service of the infidels--it is but yesterday; but I,

I, the shepherd of my flock, will not suffer that he who is the highest

in rank, the richest in possessions, the most powerful by the mere

dignity of his name, shall pervert thousands of the Jacobite brethren. I

have the will and the power too, to close the sluice gates against such

a disaster. Obey me, or you shall rue it with tears of blood.”

The prelate paused, expecting to see Orion fall on his knees before

him; but the young man did nothing of the kind. He stood looking at him,

open-eyed and agitated, but undecided, and Benjamin went on with added

vehemence:

“I came to you to lift up my voice in protest, and I desire, I require,

I command you: sever all ties with the enemies of your nation and of

your faith, cast out your love for the Melchite Siren, who will seduce

your immortal part to inevitable perdition....”

Till this Orion had listened with bowed head and in silence to the

diatribe which the patriarch had hurled at him like a curse; but at this

point his whole being rose in revolt, all self-control forsook him, and

he interrupted the speaker in loud tones:

“Never, never, never will I do such a thing! Insult me as you will. What

I am, I will still be: a faithful son of the Church to which my fathers

belonged, and for which my brothers died. In all humility I acknowledge

Jesus Christ as my Lord. I believe in him, believe in the God-made-man

who died to save us, and who brought love into the world, and I will

remain unpersuaded and faithful to my own love. Never will I forsake her

who has been to me like a messenger from God, like a good angel to teach

me how to lay hold on what is earnest and noble in life-her whom my

father, too, held dear. Power, indeed, is yours. Demand of me anything

reasonable, and within my attainment, and I will try to force myself to

obedience; but I never can and never will be faithless to her, to prove

my faith to you; and as to the Arabs....”

“Enough!” exclaimed the prelate. “I am on my way to Upper Egypt. Make

your choice by my return. I give you till then to come to a right mind,

to think the matter over; and it is quite deliberately that I bid you to

forget the Melchite. That you, of all men, should marry a heretic would

be an abomination not to be borne. With regard to your alliance with the

Arabs, and whether it becomes you--being what you are--to take service

with them, we will discuss it at a future day. If, by the time I return,

you have thought better of the matter as regards your marriage--and you

are free to choose any Jacobite maiden--then I will speak to you in a

different tone. I will then offer you my friendship and support; instead

of the Church’s curse I will pronounce her blessing on you--the pardon

and grace of the Almighty, a smooth path to eternity and peace, and the

prospect of giving new joy to the aching heart of your sorrowing mother.

My last word is that you must and shall give up the woman from whom you

can look for nothing but perdition.”

“I cannot, and shall not, and I never will!” replied Orion firmly.

“Then I can, and shall, and will make you feel how heavily the curse

falls which, in the last resort, I shall not hesitate to pronounce upon

you!”

“It is in your power,” said Orion. “But if you proceed to extremities

with me, you will drive me to seek the blessing for which my soul

thirsts more ardently than you, my lord, can imagine, and the salvation

I crave, with her whom you hold reprobate, and on the further side of

the Nile.”

“I dare you!” cried the patriarch, quitting the room with a resolute

step and flaming cheeks.

CHAPTER II.

Orion was alone in the spacious room, feeling as though the whole world

were sinking into nothingness after the rack of storm and tempest.

At first he was merely conscious of having gone through a fearful

experience, which threatened to fling him far outside the sphere of

everything he was wont to reverence and hold sacred. For love and honor

of his guardian angel he had declared war to the patriarch, and that

man’s power was as great as his stature. Still, the image of Paula rose

high and supreme above that of the terrible old man, in Orion’s fancy,

and his father, as it seemed to him, was like an ally in the battle he

was destined to wage in his own strength.

The young man’s vivid imagination and excellent memory recapitulated

every word the prelate had uttered. The domineering old man, overflowing

with bigoted zeal, had played with him as a cat with a mouse. He had

tried to search his soul and sift him to the bottom before he attacked

the subject with which he ought to have begun, and concerning which

he was fully informed when he offered him his hand that first time--as

cheerfully, too, as though he had no serious grievance seething in

his soul. Orion resolved that he would cling fast to his faith without

Benjamin’s interposition, and not allow his hold on the two other

Christian graces, Hope and Love, to be weakened by his influence.

By some miracle his mother had not yet told the prelate of his father’s

curse, in spite of the anguish of her aching heart; and what a weapon

would not that have been in Benjamin’s hand. It was with the deepest

pity that he thought of that poor, grief-stricken woman, and the idea

flashed through his mind that the patriarch might have gone back to his

mother to accuse him and to urge her to further revelations.

Many minutes had passed since the patriarch had left him; Orion had

allowed his illustrious guest to depart unescorted, and this could

not fail to excite surprise. Such a breach of good manners, of the

uncodified laws of society, struck Orion, the son of a noble and ancient

house, who had drunk in his regard for them as it were with his mother’s

milk, as an indignity to himself; and to repair it he started

up, hastily smoothing down his tumbled hair, and hurried into the

viridarium. His fears were confirmed, for the patriarch’s following were

standing in the fountain-hall close to the exit; his mother, too, was

there and Benjamin was in the act of departure.

The old man accepted his offered escort with dignified affability, as if

nothing but what was pleasant had passed between him and Orion. As they

crossed the viridarium he asked his young host what was the name of some

rare flower, and counselled him to take care that shade-giving trees

were planted in abundance on his various estates. In the outer hall, on

either side of the door, was a statue: Truth and justice, two fine works

by Aristeas of Alexandria, who flourished in the time of the Emperor

Hadrian. Justice held the scales and sword, Truth was gazing into her

mirror. As the patriarch approached them, he said to the priest who

walked by his side: “Still here!” Then, standing still, he said, partly

to Orion and partly to his companion:

“Your father, I see, neglected my suggestion that these heathen images

had no place in any Christian house, and least of all in one attached,

as this is, to a public function. We, no doubt, know the meaning of the

symbols they bear; but how easily might the ordinary man, waiting here,

mistake the figure with the mirror for Vanity and that with the scales

Venality: ‘Pay us what we ask,’ she might be saying, ‘or else your life

is a forfeit,’--so the sword would imply.”

He smiled and walked on, but added airily to Orion:

“When I come again--you know--I shall be pleased if my eye is no longer

offended by these mementos of an extinct idolatry.”

“Truth and justice!” replied Orion in a constrained voice. “They have

dwelt on this spot and ruled in this house for nearly five hundred

years.”

“It would look better, and be more suitable,” retorted the patriarch,

“if you could say that of Him to whom alone the place of honor is due

in a Christian house; in His presence every virtue flourishes of itself.

The Christian should proscribe every image from his dwelling; at the

door of his heart only should he raise an image on the one hand of Faith

and on the other of Humility.”

By this time they had reached the court-yard, where Susannah’s chariot

was waiting. Orion helped the prelate into it, and when Benjamin offered

him his hand to kiss, in the presence of several hundred slaves and

servants, all on their knees, the young man lightly touched it with

his lips. He stood bowed low in reverence so long as the holy father

remained visible, in the attitude of blessing the crowd from the open

side of the chariot; then he hurried away to join his mother.

He expected to find her exhausted by the excitement of the patriarch’s

visit; but, in fact, she was more composed than he had seen her yet

since his father’s death. Her eyes indeed, commonly so sober in their

expression, were bright with a kind of rapture which puzzled Orion. Had

she been thinking of his father? Could the patriarch have succeeded in

inspiring her pious fervor to such a pitch, that it had carried her, so

to speak, out of herself?

She was dressed to go to church, and after expressing her delight at the

honor done to herself and her whole household by the prelate’s visit,

she invited Orion to accompany her. Though he had proposed devoting the

next few hours to a different purpose, the dutiful son at once acceded

to this wish; he helped her into her chariot, bid the driver go slowly,

and seated himself by her side.

As they drove along he asked her what she had told the patriarch, and

her replies might have reassured him but that she filled him with grave

anxiety on fresh grounds. Her mind seemed to have suffered under the

stress of grief. It was usually so clear, so judicious, so reasonable;

and now all she said was incoherent and not more than half intelligible.

Still, one thing he distinctly understood: that she had not confided to

the patriarch the fact of his father’s curse. The prelate must certainly

have censured the conduct of the deceased to her also and that had

sealed her lips. She complained to her son that Benjamin had never

understood her lost husband, and that she had felt compelled to repress

her desire to disclose everything to him. Nowhere but in church, in the

very presence of the Redeemer, could she bring herself to allow him to

read her heart as it were an open book. A voice had warned her that in

the house of God alone, could she find salvation for herself and her

son; that voice she heard day and night, and much as it pained her to

grieve him he must hear it now--: That voice never ceased to enjoin her

to tear asunder his connection with the Melchite maiden. Last evening

it had seemed to her that it was her eldest son, who had died for the

Jacobite faith, that was speaking to her. The voice had sounded like

his, and it had warned her that the ancient house of Menas must perish,

if a Melchite should taint the pure blood of their race. And Benjamin

had confirmed her fears; he had come back to her on purpose to beseech

her to oppose Orion’s sinful affection for Thomas’ daughter with the

utmost maternal authority, and, as the patriarch expressed the same

desire as the voice, it must be from God and she must obey it.

Her old grudge against Paula had revived, and her very tones betrayed

that it grew stronger with every word she spoke which had any reference

to the girl.

At this Orion begged her to be calm, reminding her of the promise she

had made him by his father’s deathbed; and just as his mother was about

to reply in a tone of pitiful recrimination, the chariot stopped at the

door of the church. He did everything in his power to soothe her;

his gentle and tender tones comforted her, and she nodded to him more

happily, following him into the sanctuary.

Beyond the narthex--the vestibule of the church, where three penitents

were flaying their backs with scourges by the side of a small marble

fountain, and in full view of the crowd--they were forced to part,

as the women were divided from the men by a screen of finely-carved

woodwork.

As Neforis went to her place, she shook her bowed head: she was

meditating on the choice offered her by Orion, of yielding to the

patriarch’s commands or to her son’s wishes. How gladly would she have

seen her son in bright spirits again. But Benjamin had threatened her

with the loss of all the joys of Heaven, if she should agree to Orion’s

alliance with the heretic--and the joys of Heaven to her meant a

meeting, a recognition, for which she would willingly have sacrificed

her son and everything else that was dear to her heart.

Orion assisted at the service in the place reserved for the men of his

family, close to the hekel, or holy of holies, where the altar stood

and the priests performed their functions. A partition, covered with

ill-wrought images and a few gilt ornaments, divided it from the main

body of the church, and the whole edifice produced an impression that

was neither splendid nor particularly edifying. The basilica, which had

once been richly decorated, had been plundered by the Melchites in a

fight between them and the Jacobites, and the impoverished city had

not been in a position to restore the venerable church to anything

approaching its original splendor. Orion looked round him; but could see

nothing calculated to raise his devotion.

The congregation were required to stand all through the service; and

as it often was a very long business, not the women only, behind the

screen, but many of the men supported themselves like cripples on

crutches. How unpleasing, too, were the tones of the Egyptian chant,

accompanied by the frequent clang of a metal cymbal and mingled with the

babble of chattering men and women, checked only when the talk became a

quarrel, by a priest who loudly and vehemently shouted for silence from

the hekel.

Generally the chanted liturgy constituted the whole function, unless the

Lord’s Supper was administered; but in these anxious times, for above

a week past, a priest or a monk preached a daily sermon. This began a

short while after the young man had taken his place, and it was with

painful feelings that he recognized, in the hollow-eyed and ragged monk

who mounted the pulpit, a priest whom he had seen more than once drunk

to imbecility, in Nesptah’s tavern, And the revolting creature, who thus

flaunted his dirty, dishevelled person even in the pulpit, thundered

down on the trembling congregation declarations that the delay in

the rising of the Nile was the consequence of their sins, and God’s

punishment for their evil deeds. Instead of comforting the terrified

souls, or encouraging their faith and bidding them hope for better

times, he set before them in burning words the punishment that awaited

their wicked despondency.

God Almighty was plaguing them and the land with great heat; but this

was like the cool north wind at Advent-tide, as compared with the

fierceness of the furnace of hell which Satan was making hot for them.

The scorching sun on earth at any rate gave them daylight, but the

flames of hell shed no light, that the terrors might never cease of

those whom the devil’s myrmidons drove over the narrow bridge leading to

his horrible realm, goading them with spears and pitchforks, with heavy

cudgelling or gnawing of their flesh. In the anguish of death, and the

crush by the way, mothers trod down their infants and fathers their

daughters; and when the damned reached the spiked threshold of hell

itself, a hideous and poisoned vapor rose up to meet them, choking

them, and yet giving them renewed strength to feel fresh torments with

increased keenness of every sense. Then the devil’s shrieks of anguish,

which shake the vault of hell, came thundering on their ears; with

hideous yells he snatched at them from the grate on which he lay,

crushed and squeezed them in his iron jaws like a bunch of grapes, and

swallowed them into his fiery maw; or else they were hung up by their

tongues by attendant friends in Satan’s fiery furnace, or dragged

alternately through ice and flames, and finally beaten to pieces on

the anvil of hell, or throttled and wrung with ropes and cloths.--As

compared with the torments they would suffer there, every present

anxiety was as the kiss of a lover. Mothers would hear the brain

seething in their infants’ skulls....

At this point of the monk’s grewsome discourse, Orion turned away with a

shudder. The curse with which the patriarch had threatened him recurred

to his mind; he could have fancied that the hot, stuffy, incense-laden

air of the church was full of flapping daws and hideous bats. Deadly

horror crept over him; but then, suddenly, the rebound came of youthful

vigor, longing for freedom and joy in living; a voice within cried out:

“Away with coercion and chains! Winged spirit, use your pinions! Down

with the god of terrors! He is not that Heavenly Father whose love

embraces mankind. Forward, leap up and be free! Trusting in your

own strength, guided by your own will, go boldly forth into the open

sunshine of life! Be free, be free!--Still, be not like a slave who is

no sooner cut adrift and left to himself than he falls a slave again to

his own senses. No; but striving unceasingly and of your own free will,

in the sweat of your brow, to reach the high goal, to work out to its

fulfilment and fruition everything that is best in your soul and mind.

Yes--life is a ministry.... I, like the disciples of the Stoa, will

strive after all that is known as virtue, with no other end in view than

to practise it for its own sake, because it is fair and gives unmixed

joys. I will rely on myself to seek the truth--and do what I feel to

be right and good; this, henceforth, shall be the lofty aim of my

existence. To the two chief desires of my heart--: atonement to my

father and union with Paula, I here add a third: the attainment of the

loftiest goal that I may reach, by valiant striving to get as near to it

as my strength will allow. The road thither is by Work; the guiding star

I must keep before me that I may not go astray is my Love!”

His cheeks were burning, and with a deep breath he looked about him as

though to find an adversary with whom he might measure his strength. The

horrible sermon was ended and the words of the chanting crowd fell on

his ear. “Lord, reward me not according to mine iniquities!” The load of

his own sin fell on his heart again, and his dying father’s curse;

his proud head drooped on his breast, and he said to himself that his

burthen was too heavy for him to venture on the bold flight for which he

had but now spread his wings. The ban was not yet lifted; he was not yet

redeemed from its crushing weight. But the mere word “redeemed” brought

to his mind the image of Him who took on Himself the sins of the world;

and the more deeply he contemplated the nature of the Saviour whom he

had loved from his childhood, the more surely he felt that it would

be doing no violence to the freedom of his own will, but rather be the

fulfilment of a long-felt desire, if he were to tell Jesus simply all

that oppressed him; that his love for Him, his faith in Him, had a

saving power even for his soul. He lifted up his eyes and heart to

Him, and to Him, as to a trusted friend, confided all that troubled and

hindered him and besought His aid.

In loving Him, he and Paula were one, he knew, though they had not the

same idea of His nature.

Orion, as he meditated, thought out the points on which her views

deviated from his own: she believed that the divine and the human

natures were distinct in the person of Christ. And as he reflected on

this creed, till now so horrible in his eyes, he felt that the unique

individuality of the Saviour, shedding forth love and truth, came home

to him more closely when he pictured Him perfect and spotless, yet

feeling as a man; walking among men with all their joy in life in

His heart, alive to every pang and sorrow which can torture mortals,

rejoicing with them, and taking upon Himself unspeakable humiliation,

suffering, and death, with a stricken, bleeding, and yet self-devoting

heart, for pure love of the wretched race to which He could stoop from

His glory. Yes, this Christ could be his Redeemer too. The Almighty Lord

had become his perfect and most loving friend, his glorious, but lenient

and tender brother, to whom he could gladly give his whole heart, who

understood everything, who was ready to forgive everything--even all

that was seething in his aching heart which longed for purification--and

all because He once had suffered as a man suffers.

For the first time he, the Jacobite, dared to confess so much to

himself; and not solely for Paula’s sake. A violent clanging on a

cracked metal plate roused him from his meditations by its harsh clamor;

the sacrament of the Last Supper was about to be administered: the

invariable conclusion of the Jacobite service. The bishop came forth

from behind the screen of the inner sanctuary, poured some wine into a

silver cup and crumbled into it two little cakes stamped with the Coptic

cross. Of this mixture he first partook, and then gave it in a spoon

to each member of the congregation who came up to receive it. Orion

approached after two elders of the Church. Finally the priest rinsed

out the cup, and drained the very washings, that no drop of the saving

liquid should be lost.

How high had Orion’s heart throbbed when, as a youth, he had been

admitted for the first time to this most sacred of all Christian

privileges! He was instructed in its deep and glorious symbolism, and

had often felt the purifying, saving, and refreshing effect of the

sacrament, strengthening him in all goodness, when he had partaken of it

with his parents and brothers. Hand-in-hand, they had gone home feeling

as if newly robed in body and soul and more closely bound together than

before. And to-day, insensible as he was to the repulsiveness of the

forms of worship of his confession he felt as though the bread and

wine--the Flesh and Blood of the Saviour--had sealed the bond he had

silently entered into with himself; as though the Lord had put forth

an invisible hand to remove the guilt and the curse that crushed him

so sorely. Deep devotion fell on his soul: his future life, he thought,

should bring him nearer to God than ever before, and be spent in loving,

and in the more earnest, full, and laborious exercise of the gifts

Heaven had bestowed on him.

CHAPTER III.

Orion had dreaded the drive home with his mother, but after complaining

to him of Susannah’s conduct in having made a startling display of her

vexation in the women’s place behind the screen, she had leaned on him

and fallen fast asleep. Her head was on her son’s shoulder when they

reached home, and Orion’s anxiety for the mother he truly loved was

enhanced when he found it difficult to rouse her. He felt her stagger

like a drunken creature, and he led her not into the fountain-room but

to her bed-chamber, where she only begged to lie down; and hardly had

she done so when she was again overcome by sleep.

Orion now made his way to Gamaliel the jeweller, to purchase from him a

very large and costly diamond, plainly set, and the Israelite’s brother

undertook to deliver it to the fair widow at Constantinople, who

was known to him as one of his customers. Orion, in the jeweller’s

sitting-room, wrote a letter to his former mistress, in which he begged

her in the most urgent manner to accept the diamond, and in exchange

to return to him the emerald by a swift and trustworthy messenger, whom

Simeon the goldsmith would provide with everything needful.

After all this he went home hungry and weary, to the late midday meal

which he shared, as for many days past, with no one but Eudoxia, Mary’s

governess. The little girl was not yet allowed to leave her room, and of

this, for one reason, her instructress was glad, for a dinner alone with

the handsome youth brought extreme gratification to her mature heart.

How considerate was the wealthy and noble heir in desiring the slaves to

offer every dish to her first, how kind in listening to her stories of

her young days and of the illustrious houses in which she had formerly

given lessons! She would have died for him; but, as no opportunity

offered for such a sacrifice, at any rate she never omitted to point

out to him the most delicate morsels, and to supply his room with fresh

flowers.

Besides this, however, she had devoted herself with the most admirable

unselfishness to her pupil, since the child had been ill and her

grandmother had turned against her, noticing, too, that Orion took a

tender and quite fatherly interest in his little niece. This morning

the young man had not had time to enquire for Mary, and Eudoxia’s report

that she seemed even more excited than on the day before disturbed him

so greatly, that he rose from table, in spite of Eudoxia’s protest,

without waiting till the end of the meal, to visit the little invalid.

It was with genuine anxiety that he mounted the stairs. His heart was

heavy over many things, and as he went towards the child’s room he said

to himself with a melancholy smile, that he, who had contemned many a

distinguished man and many a courted fair one at Constantinople because

they had fallen short of his lofty standard, had here no one but this

child who would be sure to understand him. Some minutes elapsed before

his knock was answered with the request to ‘come in,’ and he heard a

hasty bustle within. He found Mary lying, as the physician had ordered,

on a couch by the window, which was wide open and well-shaded; her couch

was surrounded by flowering plants and, on a little table in front of

her, were two large nosegays, one fading, the other quite fresh and

particularly beautiful.

How sadly the child had changed in these few days. The soft round cheeks

had disappeared, and the pretty little face had sunk into nothingness by

comparison with the wonderful, large eyes, which had gained in size and

brilliancy. Yesterday she had been free from fever and very pale, but

to-day her cheeks were crimson, and a twitching of her lips and of her

right shoulder, which had come on since the scene at the grandfather’s

deathbed, was so incessant that Orion sat down by her side in some

alarm.

“Has your grandmother been to see you?” was his first question, but the

answer was a mournful shake of her head.

The blossoming plants were his own gift and so was the fading nosegay;

the other, fresher one had not come from him, so he enquired who was the

giver, and was not a little astonished to see his favorite’s confusion

and agitation at the question. There must be something special connected

with the posey, that was very evident, and the young man, who did not

wish to excite her sensitive nerves unnecessarily, but could not recall

his words, was wishing he had never spoken them, when the discovery of

a feather fan cut the knot of his difficulty; he took it up, exclaiming:

“Hey--what have we here?”

A deeper flush dyed Mary’s cheek, and raising her large eyes imploringly

to his face, she laid a finger on her lips. He nodded, as understanding

her, and said in a low voice:

“Katharina has been here? Susannah’s gardener ties up flowers like that.

The fan--when I knocked--she is here still perhaps?”

He had guessed rightly; Mary pointed dumbly to the door of the adjoining

room.

“But, in Heaven’s name, child,” Orion went on, in an undertone, “what

does she want here?”

“She came by stealth, in the boat,” whispered the child. “She sent

Anubis from the treasurer’s office to ask me if she might not come, she

could not do without me any longer, and she never did me any harm and so

I said yes--and then, when I knew it was your knock, whisk--off she went

into the bedroom.”

“And if your grandmother were to come across her?”

“Then--well, then I do not know what would become of me! But oh! Orion,

if you only knew how--how....” Two big tears rolled down her cheeks

and Orion understood her; he stroked her hair lovingly and said in a

whisper, glancing now and again at the door of the next room.

“But I came up on purpose to tell you something more about Paula. She

sends you her love, and she invites you to go to her and stay with her,

always. But you must keep it quite a secret and tell no one, not even

Eudoxia and Katharina; for I do not know myself how we can contrive to

get your grandmother’s consent. At any rate we must set to work very

prudently and cautiously, do you understand? I have only taken you into

our confidence that you may look forward to it and have something to be

glad of at night, when you are such a silly little thing as to keep

your eyes open like the hares, instead of sleeping like a good child. If

things go well, you may be with Paula to-morrow perhaps--think of that!

I had quite given up all hope of managing it at all; but now, just

now--is it not odd--just within these two minutes I suddenly said to

myself: ‘It will come all right!’--So it must be done somehow.”

A flood of tears streamed down Mary’s burning cheeks but, freely as they

flowed, she did not sob and her bosom did not heave. Nor did she speak,

but such pure and fervent gratitude and joy shone from her glistening

eyes that Orion felt his own grow moist. He was glad to find some way

of concealing his emotion when Mary seized his hand and, pressing a long

kiss on it, wetted it with her tears.

“See!” he exclaimed. “All wet! as if I had just taken it out of the

fountain.”

But he said no more, for the bedroom door was suddenly thrown open and

Eudoxia’s high, thin voice was heard saying:

“But why make any fuss? Mary will be enchanted! Here, Child, here is

your long-lost friend! Such a surprise!” And the water-wagtail, pushed

forward by no gentle hand, appeared within the doorway. Eudoxia was as

radiant as though she had achieved some heroic deed; but she drew back

a little when she found that Orion was still in the room. The divided

couple stood face to face. What was done could not be undone; but,

though he greeted her with only a calm bow, and she fluttered her fan

with abrupt little jerks to conceal her embarrassment, nothing took

place which could surprise the bystander; indeed, Katharina’s pretty

features assumed a defiant expression when he enquired how the little

white dog was, and she coldly replied that she had had him chained up in

the poultry-yard, for that the patriarch, who was their guest, could not

endure dogs.

“He honors a good many men with the same sentiments,” replied Orion, but

Katharina retorted, readily enough.

“When they deserve it.”

The dialogue went on in this key for some few minutes; but the young man

was not in the humor either to take the young girl’s pert stings or

to repay her in the same coin; he rose to go but, before he could take

leave, Katharina, observing from the window how low the sun was, cried:

“Mercy on me! how late it is--I must be off; I must not be absent at

supper time. My boat is lying close to yours in the fishing-cove. I only

hope the gate of the treasurer’s house is still open.”

Orion, too, looked at the sun and then remarked: “To-day is Sanutius.”

“I know,” said Katharina. “That is why Anubis was free at noon.”

“And for the same reason,” added Orion, “there is not a soul at work now

in the office.”

This was awkward. Not for worlds would she have been seen in the house;

and knowing, as she did from her games with Mary, every nook and corner

of it, she began to consider her position. Her delicate features assumed

a sinister expression quite new to Orion, which both displeased him and

roused his anxiety--not for himself but for Mary, who could certainly

get no good from such a companion as this. These visits must not be

repeated very often; he would not allude to the subject in the child’s

presence, but Katharina should at once have a hint. She could not

get out of the place without his assistance; so he intruded on her

meditations to inform her that he had the key of the office about him.

Then he went to see if the hall were empty, and led her at once to the

treasurer’s office through the various passages which connected it with

the main buildings. The office at this hour was as lonely as the grave,

and when Orion found himself standing with her, close to the door which

opened on the road to the harbor, and had already raised the key to

unlock it, he paused and for the first time broke the silence they had

both preserved during their unpleasant walk, saying:

“What brought you to see Mary, Katharina? Tell me honestly.” Her heart,

which had been beating high since she had found herself alone with him

in the silent and deserted house, began to throb wildly; a great terror,

she knew not of what, came over her.

“She had come to the house for several reasons, but one had outweighed

all the rest: Mary must be told that her young uncle and Paula were

betrothed; for she knew by experience that the child could keep nothing

of importance from her grandmother, and that Neforis had no love for

Paula was an open secret. As yet she certainly could know nothing of

her son’s formal suit, but if once she were informed of it she would

do everything in her power--of this Katharina had not a doubt--to keep

Orion and Paula apart. So the girl had told Mary that it was already

reported that they were a betrothed and happy pair, and that she herself

had watched them making love in her neighbor’s garden. To her great

annoyance, however, Mary took this all very coolly and without any

special excitement.

“So, when Orion enquired of his companion what had brought her to the

governor’s house, she could only reply that she longed so desperately to

see little Mary.

“Of course,” said Orion. “But I must beg of you not to yield again to

your affectionate impulse. Your mother makes a public display of her

grudge against mine, and her ill-feeling will only be increased if she

is told that we are encouraging you to disregard her wishes. Perhaps you

may, ere long, have opportunities of seeing Mary more frequently; but,

if that should be the case, I must especially request you not to talk

of things that may agitate her. You have seen for yourself how excitable

she is and how fragile she looks. Her little heart, her too precocious

brain and feelings must have rest, must not be stirred and goaded by

fresh incitements such as you are in a position to apply. The patriarch

is my enemy, the enemy of our house, and you--I do not say it to offend

you--you overheard what he was saying last night, and probably gathered

much important information, some of which may concern me and my family.”

Katharina stood looking at her companion, as pale as death. He knew that

she had played the listener, and when, and where! The shock it gave her,

and the almost unendurable pang of feeling herself lowered in his eyes,

quite dazed her. She felt bewildered, offended, menaced; however, she

retained enough presence of mind to reply in a moment to her antagonist:

“Do not be alarmed! I will come no more. I should not have come at all,

if I could have foreseen...”

“That you would meet me?”

“Perhaps.--But do not flatter yourself too much on that account!--As

to my listening.... Well, yes; I was standing at the window. Inside the

room I could only half hear, and who does not want to hear what great

men have to say to each other? And, excepting your father, I have met

none such in Memphis since Memnon left the city. We women have inherited

some curiosity from our mother Eve; but we rarely indulge it so far

as to hunt for a necklace in our neighbor’s trunk! I have no luck as a

criminal, my dear Orion. Twice have I deserved the name. Thanks to the

generous and liberal use you made of my inexperience I sinned--sinned

so deeply that it has ruined my whole life; and now, again, in a more

venial way; but I was caught out, you see, in both cases.”

“Your taunts are merited,” said Orion sadly. “And yet, Child, we may

both thank Providence, which did not leave us to wander long on the

wrong road. Once already I have besought your forgiveness, and I do so

now again. That does not satisfy you I see--and I can hardly blame you.

Perhaps you will be better pleased, when I assure you once more that no

sin was ever more bitterly or cruelly punished than mine has been.”

“Indeed!” said Katharina with a drawl; then, with a flutter of her fan,

she went on airily: “And yet you look anything rather than crushed;

and have even succeeded in winning ‘the other’--Paula, if I am not

mistaken.”

“That will do!” said Orion decisively, and he raised the key to

the lock. Katharina, however, placed herself in his way, raised a

threatening finger, and exclaimed:

“So I should think!--Now I am certain. However, you are right with your

insolent ‘That will do!’ I do not care a rush for your love affairs;

still, there is one thing I should like to know, which concerns myself

alone; how could you see over our garden hedge? Anubis is scarcely a

head shorter than you are....”

“And you made him try?” interrupted Orion, who could not forbear

smiling, perceiving that his honestly meant gravity was thrown away on

Katharina. “Notwithstanding such a praiseworthy experiment, I may beg

you to note for future cases that what is true of him is not true of

every one, and that, besides foot-passengers, a tall man sometimes

mounts a tall horse?”

“It was you, then, who rode by last night?”

“And who could not resist glancing up at your window.”

At these words she drew back in surprise, and her eyes lighted up, but

only for an instant; then, clenching the feathers of her fan in both

hands, she sharply asked:

“Is that in mockery?”

“Certainly not,” said Orion coolly; “for though you have reason enough

to be angry with me....”

“I, at any rate, have, so far given you none,” she petulantly broke

in. “No, I have not. It is I, and I alone, who have been insulted and

ill-used; you must confess that you owe me some amends, and that I have

a right to ask them.”

“Do so,” replied he. “I am yours to command.” She looked him straight in

the face.

“First of all,” she began, “have you told any one else that I was...”

“That you were listening? No--not a living soul.”

“And will you promise never to betray me?”

“Willingly. Now, what is the ‘secondly’ to this ‘first of all?’”

But there was no immediate answer; the water-wagtail evidently found it

difficult. However, she presently said, with downcast eyes:

“I want.... You will think me a greater fool than I am... nevertheless,

yes, I will ask you, though it will involve me in fresh humiliation.--I

want to know the truth; and if there is anything you hold sacred, before

I ask, you must swear by what is holiest to answer me, not as if I were

a silly girl, but as if I were the Supreme judge at the last day.--Do

you hear?”

“This is very solemn,” said Orion. “And you must allow me to observe

that there are some questions which do not concern us alone, and if

yours is such....”

“No, no,” replied Katharina, “what I mean concerns you and me alone.”

“Then I see no reason for refusing,” he said. “Still, I may ask you a

favor in return. It seems to me no less important than it did to you, to

know what a great man like the patriarch finds to talk about, and since

I place myself at your commands....”

“I thought,” said the girl with a smile, “that your first object would

be to discharge some small portion of your debt to me; however, I expect

no excessive magnanimity, and the little I heard is soon told. It cannot

matter much to you either--so I will agree to your wishes, and you, in

return, must promise....”

“To speak the whole truth.”

“As truly as you hope for forgiveness of your sins?”

“As truly as that.”

“That is well.”

“And what is it that you want to know?”

At this she shook her head, exclaiming uneasily:

“Nay, nay, not yet. It cannot be done so lightly. First let me speak;

and then open the door, and if I want to fly let me go without saying

or asking me another word.--Give me that chair; I must sit down.” And

in fact she seemed to need it; for some minutes she had looked very

pale and exhausted, and her hands trembled as she drew her handkerchief

across her face.

When she was seated she began her story; and while her words flowed on

quickly but without expression, as though she spoke mechanically, Orion

listened with eager interest, for what she had to tell struck him as

highly significant and important.

He had been watched by the patriarch’s orders. By midnight Benjamin

had already been informed of Orion’s visit to Fostat, and to the Arab

general. Nothing, however, had been said about it beyond a fear lest he

had gone thither with a view to abjuring the faith of his fathers and

going over to the Infidels. Far more important were the facts

Orion gathered as to the prelate’s negotiations with the Khaliff’s

representative. Amru had urged a reduction of the number of convents and

of the monks and nuns who lived on the bequests and gifts of the pious,

busied in all kinds of handiwork according to the rule of Pachomius, and

enabled, by the fact of their living at free quarters, to produce almost

all the necessaries of life, from the mats on the floors to the shoes

worn by the citizens, at a much lower price than the independent

artisans, whether in town or country. The great majority of these poor

creatures were already ruined by such competition, and Amru, seeing the

Arab leather-workers, weavers, ropemakers, and the rest, threatened with

the same fate, had determined to set himself firmly to restrict all this

monastic work. The patriarch had resisted stoutly and held out long,

but at last he had been forced to sacrifice almost half the convents for

monks and nuns.

But nothing had been conceded without an equivalent; for Benjamin was

well aware of the immense difficulties which he, as chief of the Church,

could put in the way of the new government of the country. So it was

left to him to designate which convents should be suppressed, and he

had, of course, begun by laying hands on the few remaining Melchite

retreats, among them the Convent of St. Cecilia, next to the house of

Rufinus. This establishment was now to be closed within three days and

to become the property of the Jacobite Church; but it was to be done

quite quietly, for there was no small fear that now, when the delayed

rising of the river was causing a fever of anxiety in all minds, the

impoverished populace of the town might rise in defence of the wealthy

sisterhood to whom they were beholden for much benevolence and kind

care.

Opposition from the town-senate was also to be looked for, since the

deceased Mukaukas had pronounced this measure unjust and detrimental

to the common welfare. The evicted orthodox nuns were to be taken into

various Jacobite convents as lay sisters similar cases had already

been known; but the abbess, whose superior intellect, high rank, and

far-reaching influence might, if she were left free to act, easily rouse

the prelates of the East to oppose Benjamin, was to be conveyed to a

remote convent in Ethiopia, whence no flight or return was possible.

Katharina’s report took but few minutes, and she gave it with apparent

indifference; what could the suppression of an orthodox cloister, and

the dispersion of its heretic sisterhood, matter to her, or to Orion,

whose brothers had fallen victims to Melchite fanaticism? Orion did not

betray his deep interest in all he heard, and when at length Katharina

rose and pointed feebly to the door, all she said, as though she were

vexed at having wasted so much time, was: “That, on the whole, is all.”

“All?” asked Orion unlocking the door.

“Certainly, all,” she repeated uneasily. “What I meant to ask--whether

I ever know it or not--it does not matter.--It would be better

perhaps-yes, that is all.--Let me go.”

But he did not obey her.

“Ask,” he said kindly. “I will answer you gladly.”

“Gladly?” she retorted, with an incredulous shrug. “In point of fact

you ought to feel uncomfortable whenever you see me; but things do not

always turn out as they ought, in Memphis or in the world; for what do

you men care what becomes of a poor girl like me? Do not imagine that

I mean to reproach you; God forbid! I do not even owe you a grudge. If

anyone can live such a thing down I can. Do not you think so? Everything

is admirably arranged for me; I cannot fail to do well. I am very rich,

and not ugly, and I shall have a hundred suitors yet. Oh, I am a most

enviable creature! I have had one lover already, and the next will be

more faithful, at any rate, and not throw me over so ruthlessly as the

first.--Do not you think so?”

“I hope so,” said Oriole gravely. “Bitter as the cup is that you offer

me to drink...”

“Well?”

“I can only repeat that I must even drink it, since the fault was mine.

Nothing would so truly gladden me as to be able to atone in some degree

for my sin against you.”

“Oh dear no!” she scornfully threw in. “Our hopes shall not be fixed so

high as that! All is at an end between us, and if you ever were anything

to me, you are nothing to me now--absolutely nothing. One hour in the

past we had in common; it was short indeed, but to me--would you believe

it?--a very great matter. It aged the young creature, whom you, but

yesterday, still regarded as a mere child--that much I know--with

amazing rapidity; aye, and made a worse woman of her than you can

fancy.”

“That indeed would grieve me to the bottom of my soul,” replied Orion.

“There is, I know, no excuse for my conduct. Still, as you yourself

know, our mothers’ wish in the first instance...”

“Destined us for each other, you would say. Quite true!--And it was

all to please Dame Neforis that you put your arms round me, under the

acacias, and called me your own, your all, your darling, your rose-bud?

Was that--and this is exactly what I want to ask you, what I insist

on knowing--was that all a lie--or did you, at any rate, in that brief

moment, under the trees, love me with all your heart--love me as now you

love--I cannot name her--that other?--The truth, Orion, the whole truth,

on your oath!”

She had raised her voice and her eyes glowed with the excitement of

passion; and now, when she ceased speaking, their sparkling, glistening

enquiry plainly and unreservedly confessed that her heart still was his,

that she counted on his high-mindedness and expected him to say “yes.”

Her round arm lay closely pressed to her bosom, as though to keep its

wild heaving within bounds. Her delicate face had lost its pallor and

seemed bathed in a glow, now tender and now crimson. Her little mouth,

which but now had uttered such bitter words, was parted in a smile as

if ready to bestow a sweet reward for the consoling, saving answer,

for which her whole being yearned, and her eager eyes, shining through

tears, did not cease to entreat him so pathetically, so passionately!

How bewitching an image of helpless, love-sick, beseeching youth and

grace.

“As you love that other,--on your oath.”--The words still rang in the

young man’s ear. All that was soft in his soul urged him to make good

the evil he had brought upon this fair, hapless young creature; but

those very words gave him strength to remain steadfast; and though

he felt himself appealed to for comfort and compassion, he could only

stretch out imploring hands, as though praying for help, and say:

“Ah Katharina, and you are as lovely, as charming now, as you were then;

but--much as you attracted me, the great love that fills a life can come

but once.... Forget what happened afterwards.... Put your question in

another form, alter it a little, and ask me again--or let me assure

you.”

But he had no time to say more; for, before he could atop her, she had

slipped past him and flown away like some swift wild thing into the road

and down to the fishing cove.

CHAPTER IV.

Orion stood alone gazing sadly after her. Was this his father’s

curse--that all who loved him must reap pain and grief in return?

He shivered; still, his youthful energy and powers of resistance

were strong enough to give him speedy mastery over these torturing

reflections. What opportunities lay before him of proving his prowess!

Even while Katharina was telling her story, the brave and strenuous

youth had set himself the problem of rescuing the cloistered sisters.

The greater the danger its solution might involve him in, the more

impossible it seemed at first sight, the more gladly, in his present

mood, would he undertake it. He stepped out into the road and closed the

door behind him with a feeling of combative energy.

It was growing dusk. Philippus must now be with Mary and, with the

leech’s aid, he was resolved to get the child away from his mother’s

house. Not till he felt that she was safe with Paula in Rufinus’ house,

could he be free to attempt the enterprise which floated before his

eyes. On the stairs he shouted to a slave:

“My chariot with the Persian trotting horse!” and a few minutes after

he entered the little girl’s room at the same time with a slave girl who

carried in a lamp. Neither Mary nor the physician observed him at first,

and he heard her say to Philippus, who sat holding her wrist between his

fingers.