Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 52

Pelagia looked up, with something of a tender smile. 'Poor darling! Little do you know of love!'

Philammon, utterly bewildered by this newest and strangest phase of human pa.s.sion, could only gasp out-

'But do you not love me, too, my sister?'

'Do I not love you? But not as I love him! Oh, hush, hush!-, you cannot understand yet!' And Pelagia hid her face in her hands, while convulsive shudderings ran through every limb....

'I must do it! I must! I will dare every thing, stoop to everything for love's sake! Go to her!-to the wise woman!-to Hypatia! She loves you! I know that she loves you! She will hear you, though she will not me!'

'Hypatia? Do you know that she was sitting there unmoved at-in the theatre?'

'She was forced! Orestes compelled her! Miriam told me so. And I saw it in her face. As I pa.s.sed beneath her, I looked up; and she was as pale as ivory, trembling in every limb. There was a dark hollow round her eyes-she had been weeping, I saw. And I sneered in my mad self-conceit, and said, "She looks as if she was going to be crucified, not married!". But now, now!-Oh, go to her! Tell her that I will give her all I have-jewels, money, dresses, house! Tell her that I-I-entreat her pardon, that I will crawl to her feet myself and ask it, if she requires!-Only let her teach me-teach me to be wise and good, and honoured, and respected, as she is! Ask her to tell a poor broken-hearted woman her secret. She can make old Wulf, and him, and Orestes even, and the magistrates, respect her.... Ask her to teach me how to be like her, and to make him respect me again, and I will give her all-all!'

Philammon hesitated. Something within warned him, as the Daemon used to warn Socrates, that his errand would be bootless. He thought of the theatre, and of that firm, compressed lip; and forgot the hollow eye of misery which accompanied it, in his wrath against his lately-worshipped idol.

'Oh, go! go! I tell you it was against her will. She felt for me-I saw it-Oh, G.o.d! when I did not feel for myself! And I hated her, because she seemed to despise me in my fool's triumph! She cannot despise me now in my misery.... Go! Go! or you will drive me to the agony of going myself.'

There was but one thing to be done.

'You will wait, then, here? You will not leave me again?'

'Yes. But you must be quick! If he finds out that I am away, he may fancy.... Ah, heaven! let him kill me, but never let him be jealous of me! Go now! this moment! Take this as an earnest-the cestus which I wore there. Horrid thing! I hate the sight of it! But I brought it with me on purpose, or I would have thrown it into the ca.n.a.l. There; say it is an earnest-only an earnest-of what I will give her!'

In ten minutes more Philammon was in Hypatia's hall. The household seemed full of terror and disturbance; the hall was full of soldiers. At last Hypatia's favourite maid pa.s.sed, and knew him. Her mistress could not speak with any one. Where was Theon, then? He, too, had shut himself up. Never mind. Philammon must, would speak with him. And he pleaded so pa.s.sionately and so sweetly, that the soft-hearted damsel, unable to resist so handsome a suppliant, undertook his errand, and led him up to the library, where Theon, pale as death, was pacing to and fro, apparently half beside himself with terror.

Philammon's breathless message fell at first upon unheeding ears.

'A new pupil, sir! Is this a time for pupils; when my house, my daughter's life, is not safe? Wretch that I am! And have I led her into the snare? I, with my vain ambition and covetousness! Oh, my child! my child! my one treasure! Oh, the double curse which will light upon me, if-'

'She asks for but one interview.'

'With my daughter, sir? Pelagia! Will you insult me? Do you suppose, even if her own pity should so far tempt her to degrade herself, that I could allow her so to contaminate her purity?'

'Your terror, sir, excuses your rudeness.'

'Rudeness, sir? the rudeness lies in your intruding on us at such a moment!'

'Then this, perhaps, may, in your eyes at least, excuse me in my turn.' And Philammon held out the cestus. 'You are a better judge of its value than I. But I am commissioned to say, that it is only an earnest of what she will give willingly and at once, even to the half of her wealth, for the honour of becoming your daughter's pupil.' And he laid the jewelled girdle on the table.

The old man halted in his walk. The emeralds and pearls shone like the galaxy. He looked at them; and walked on again more slowly.... What might be their value? What might it not be? At least, they would pay all his debts.... And after hovering to and fro for another minute before the bait, he turned to Philammon.

'If you would promise to mention the thing to no one-'

'I will promise.'

'And in case my daughter, as I have a right to expect, shall refuse-'

'Let her keep the jewels. Their owner has learnt, thank G.o.d, to despise and hate them! Let her keep the jewels-and my curse! For G.o.d do so to me, and more also, if I ever see her face again!'

The old man had not heard the latter part of Philammon's speech. He had seized his bait as greedily as a crocodile, and hurried off with it into Hypatia's chamber, while Philammon stood expectant; possessed with a new and fearful doubt. 'Degrade herself!' 'Contaminate her purity!' If that notion were to be the fruit of all her philosophy? If selfishness, pride, Pharisaism, were all its outcome? Why-had they not been its outcome already? When had he seen her helping, even pitying, the poor, the outcast? When had he heard from her one word of real sympathy for the sorrowing; for the sinful?.... He was still lost in thought when Theon re-entered, bringing a letter.

'From Hypatia to her well-beloved pupil.

'I pity you-how should I not? And more. I thank you for this your request, for it shows me that my unwilling presence at the hideous pageant of to-day has not alienated from me a soul of which I had cherished the n.o.blest hopes, for which I had sketched out the loftiest destiny. But how shall I say it? Ask yourself whether a change-apparently impossible-must not take place in her for whom you plead, before she and I can meet. I am not so inhuman as to blame you for having asked me; I do not even blame her for being what she is. She does but follow her nature; who can be angry with her, if destiny have informed so fair an animal with a too gross and earthly spirit? Why weep over her? Dust she is, and unto dust she will return: while you, to whom a more divine spark was allotted at your birth, must rise, and unrepining, leave below you one only connected with you by the unreal and fleeting bonds of fleshly kin.'

Philammon crushed the letter together in his hand, and strode from the house without a word. The philosopher had no gospel, then, for the harlot! No word for the sinner, the degraded! Destiny forsooth! She was to follow her destiny, and be base, miserable, self-condemned. She was to crush the voice of conscience and reason, as often as it awoke within her, and compel herself to believe that she was bound to be that which she knew herself bound not to be. She was to shut her eyes to that present palpable misery which was preaching to her, with the voice of G.o.d Himself, that the wages of sin are death. Dust she was, and unto dust she will return! Oh, glorious hope for her, for him, who felt as if an eternity of bliss would be worthless, if it parted him from his new-found treasure! Dust she was, and unto dust she must return!

Hapless Hypatia! If she must needs misapply, after the fashion of her school, a text or two here and there from the Hebrew Scriptures, what suicidal fantasy set her on quoting that one? For now, upon Philammon's memory flashed up in letters of light, old words forgotten for months-and ere he was aware, he found himself repeating aloud and pa.s.sionately, 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting,'.... and then clear and fair arose before him the vision of the G.o.d-man, as He lay at meat in the Pharisee's house; and of her who washed His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.... And from the depths of his agonised heart arose the prayer, 'Blessed Magdalene, intercede for her?'

So high he could rise, but not beyond. For the notion of that G.o.d-man was receding fast to more and more awful abysmal heights, in the minds of a generation who were forgetting His love in His power, and practically losing sight of His humanity in their eager doctrinal a.s.sertion of His Divinity. And Philammon's heart re-echoed the spirit of his age, when he felt that for an apostate like himself it were presumptuous to entreat for any light or help from the fountain-head itself. He who had denied his Lord, he who had voluntarily cut himself off from the communion of the Catholic Church-how could he restore himself? How could he appease the wrath of Him who died on the cross, save by years of bitter supplication and self-punishment?....

'Fool! Vain and ambitious fool that I have been! For this I threw away the faith of my childhood! For this I listened to words at which I shuddered; crushed down my own doubts and disgusts; tried to persuade myself that I could reconcile them with Christianity-that I could make a lie fit into the truth! For this I puffed myself up in the vain hope of becoming not as other men are-superior, forsooth, to my kind! It was not enough for me to be a man made in the image of G.o.d: but I must needs become a G.o.d myself, knowing good and evil.-And here is the end! I call upon my fine philosophy to help me once, in one real practical human struggle, and it folds its arms and sits serene and silent, smiling upon my misery! Oh! fool, fool, thou art filled with the fruit of thy own devices! Back to the old faith! Home again, then wanderer! And yet how home? Are not the gates shut against me? Perhaps against her too.... What if she, like me, were a baptized Christian?'

Terrible and all but hopeless that thought flashed across him, as in the first revulsion of his conscience he plunged utterly and implicitly back again into the faith of his childhood, and all the dark and cruel theories popular in his day rose up before him in all their terrors. In the innocent simplicity of the Laura he had never felt their force; but he felt them now. If Pelagia were a baptized woman, what was before her but unceasing penance? Before her, as before him, a life of cold and hunger, groans and tears, loneliness and hideous soul-sickening uncertainty. Life was a dungeon for them both henceforth. Be it so! There was nothing else to believe in. No other rock of hope in earth or heaven. That at least promised a possibility of forgiveness, of amendment, of virtue, of reward-ay, of everlasting bliss and glory; and even if she missed of that, better for her the cell in the desert than a life of self-contented impurity! If that latter were her destiny, as Hypatia said, she should at least die fighting against it, defying it, cursing it! Better virtue with h.e.l.l, than sin with heaven! And Hypatia had not even promised her a heaven. The resurrection of the flesh was too carnal a notion for her refined and lofty creed. And so, his four months' dream swept away in a moment, he hurried back to his chamber, with one fixed thought before him-the desert; a cell for Pelagia; another for himself. There they would repent, and pray, and mourn out life side by side, if perhaps G.o.d would have mercy upon their souls. Yet-perhaps, she might not have been baptized after all. And then she was safe. Like other converts from Paganism, she might become a catechumen, and go on to baptism, where the mystic water would wash away in a moment all the past, and she would begin life afresh, in the spotless robes of innocence. Yet he had been baptized, he knew from a.r.s.enius, before he left Athens; and she was older than he. It was all but impossible yet he would hope; and breathless with anxiety and excitement, he ran up the narrow stairs and found Miriam standing outside, her hand upon the bolt, apparently inclined to dispute his pa.s.sage.

'Is she still within?'

'What if she be?'

'Let me pa.s.s into my own room.'

'Yours? Who has been paying the rent for you, these four months past? You! What can you say to her? What can you do for her? Young pedant, you must be in love yourself before you can help poor creatures who are in love!'

But Philammon pushed past her so fiercely, that the old woman was forced to give way, and with a sinister smile she followed him into the chamber.

Pelagia sprang towards her brother.

'Will she?-will she see me?'

'Let us talk no more of her, my beloved,' said Philammon, laying his hands gently on her trembling shoulders, and looking earnestly into her eyes.... 'Better that we two should work out our deliverance for ourselves, without the help of strangers. You can trust me?'

'You? And can you help me? Will you teach me?'

'Yes, but not here.... We must escape-Nay, hear me, one moment! dearest sister, hear me! Are you so happy here that you can conceive of no better place? And-and, oh, G.o.d! that it may not be true after all!-but is there not a h.e.l.l hereafter?'

Pelagia covered her face with her hands-'The old monk warned me of it!'

'Oh, take his warning....' And Philammon was bursting forth with some such words about the lake of fire and brimstone as he had been accustomed to hear from Pambo and a.r.s.enius, when Pelagia interrupted him- 'Oh, Miriam! Is it true? Is it possible? What will become of me?' almost shrieked the poor child.

'What if it were true?-Let him tell you how he will save you from it,' answered Miriam quietly.

'Will not the Gospel save her from it-unbelieving Jew? Do not contradict me! I can save her.'

'If she does what?'

'Can she not repent? Can she not mortify these base affections? Can she not be forgiven? Oh, my Pelagia! forgive me for having dreamed one moment that I could make you a philosopher, when you may be a saint of G.o.d, a-'

He stopped short suddenly, as the thought about baptism flashed across him, and in a faltering voice asked, 'Are you baptized?'