Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (e book reader TXT) 📗

cloak. So! You have on the white tunic I gave you? And now you look as a human being should. And you have been to the baths to-day? Well—you have the comfort of feeling now like other people, and having that alabaster skin as white as it was created, instead of being tanned like a brute’s hide. Drink, I say! Ay—what was that face, that figure, made for? Bring a mirror here, hussy! There, look in that and judge for yourself? Were those lips rounded for nothing? Why were those eyes set in your head, and made to sparkle bright as jewels, sweet as mountain honey? Why were those curls laid ready for soft fingers to twine themselves among them, and look all the whiter among the glossy black knots? Judge for yourself!’

Alas! poor Philammon!

‘And after all,’ thought he, ‘is it not true, as well as pleasant?’

‘Sing to the poor boy, girls!—sing to him! and teach him for the first time in his little ignorant life, the old road to inspiration!’

One of the slave-girls sat down on the divan, and took up a double flute; while the other rose, and accompanying the plaintive dreamy air with a slow dance, and delicate twinklings of her silver armlets and anklets, and the sistrum which she held aloft, she floated gracefully round and round the floor and sang—

Why were we born but for bliss? Why are we ripe, but to fall? Dream not that duty can bar thee from beauty, Like water and sunshine, the heirloom of all.

Lips were made only to kiss; Hands were made only to toy; Eyes were made only to lure on the lonely, The longing, the loving, and drown them in joy!

Alas, for poor Philammon! And yet no! The very poison brought with it its own anti-dote; and, shaking off by one strong effort of will the spell of the music and the wine, he sprang to his feet....

‘Never! If love means no more than that—if it is to be a mere delicate self-indulgence, worse than the brute’s, because it requires the prostration of nobler faculties, and a selfishness the more huge in proportion to the greatness of the soul which is crushed inward by it—then I will have none of it! I have had my dream—yes! but it was of one who should be at once my teacher and my pupil, my debtor and my queen—who should lean on me, and yet support me—supply my defects, although with lesser light, as the old moon fills up the circle of the new—labour with me side by side in some great work—rising with me for ever as I rose: and this is the base substitute! Never!’

Whether or not this was unconsciously forced into words by the vehemence of his passion, or whether the old Jewess heard, or pretended to hear, a footstep coming up the stair, she at all events sprang instantly to her feet.

‘Hist! Silence, girls! I hear a visitor. What mad maiden has come to beg a love-charm of the poor old witch at this time of night? Or have the Christian bloodhounds tracked the old lioness of Judah to her den at last? We’ll see!’

And she drew a dagger from her girdle, and stepped boldly to the door. As she went out she turned—

‘So! my brave young Apollo! You do not admire simple woman? You must have something more learned and intellectual and spiritual, and so forth. I wonder whether Eve, when she came to Adam in the garden, brought with her a certificate of proficiency in the seven sciences? Well, well—like must after like. Perhaps we shall be able to suit you after all. Vanish, daughters of Midian!’

The girls vanished accordingly, whispering and laughing; and Philammon found himself alone. Although he was somewhat soothed by the old woman’s last speech, yet a sense of terror, of danger, of coming temptation, kept him standing sternly on his feet, looking warily round the chamber, lest a fresh siren should emerge from behind some curtain or heap of pillows.

On one side of the room he perceived a doorway, filled by a curtain of gauze, from behind which came the sound of whispering voices. His fear, growing with the general excitement of his mind, rose into anger as he began to suspect some snare; and he faced round towards the curtain, and stood like a wild beast at bay, ready, with uplifted arm, for all evil spirits, male or female.

‘And he will show himself? How shall I accost him?’ whispered a well-known voice—could it be Hypatia’s? And then the guttural Hebrew accent of the old woman answered— ‘As you spoke of him this morning—’

‘Oh! I will tell him all, and he must—he must have mercy! But he?—so awful, so glorious!—’

What the answer was, he could not hear but the next moment a sweet heavy scent, as of narcotic gums, filled the room—mutterings of incantations—and then a blaze of light, in which the curtain vanished, and disclosed to his astonished eyes, enveloped in a glory of luminous smoke, the hag standing by a tripod, and, kneeling by her, Hypatia herself, robed in pure white, glittering with diamonds and gold, her lips parted, her head thrown back, her arms stretched out in an agony of expectation.

In an instant, before he had time to stir, she had sprung through the blaze, and was kneeling at his feet.

‘Phoebus! beautiful, glorious, ever young! Hear me! only a moment! only this once!’

Her drapery had caught fire from the tripod, but she did not heed it. Philammon instinctively clasped her in his arms, and crushed it out, as she cried—

‘Have mercy on me! Tell me the secret! I will obey thee! I have no self—I am thy slave! Kill me, if thou wilt: but speak!’

The blaze sank into a soft, warm, mellow gleam, and beyond it what appeared?

The negro-woman, with one finger upon her lips, as with an imploring, all but despairing look, she held up to him her little crucifix.

He saw it. What thoughts flashed through him, like the lightning bolt, at that blessed sign of infinite self-sacrifice, I say not; let those who know it judge for themselves. But in another instant he had spurned from him the poor deluded maiden, whose idolatrous ecstasies he saw instantly were not meant for himself, and rushed desperately across the room, looking for an outlet.

He found a door in the darkness—a room-a window—and in another moment he had leapt twenty feet into the street, rolled over, bruised and bleeding, rose again like an Antaeus, with new strength, and darted off towards the archbishop’s house.

And poor Hypatia lay half senseless on the floor, with the Jewess watching her bitter tears—not merely of disappointment, but of utter shame. For as Philammon fled she had recognised those well-known features; and the veil was lifted from her eyes, and the hope and the self-respect of Theon’s daughter were gone for ever.

Her righteous wrath was too deep for upbraidings. Slowly she rose; returned into the inner room; wrapped her cloak deliberately around her; and went silently away, with one look at the Jewess of solemn scorn and defiance.