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

‘Do not sneer at me!’ cried she, in her turn, looking up at him with shame and horror, which made him repent of uttering the words. ‘If you do not know—you will soon, too soon! Never mention that hateful dream to me, if you wish to have speech of me more!’

A pang of remorse shot through Raphael’s heart. Who but he himself had plotted that evil marriage? But she gave him no opportunity of answering her, and went on hurriedly—

‘Speak to me rather about yourself. What is this strange and sudden betrothal? What has it to do with Christianity? I had thought that it was rather by the glories of celibacy—gross and superstitious as their notions of it are—that the Galileans tempted their converts.’

‘So had I, my dearest lady,’ answered he, as, glad to turn the subject for a moment, and perhaps a little nettled by her contemptuous tone, he resumed something of his old arch and careless manner. ‘But—there is no accounting for man’s agreeable inconsistencies—one morning I found myself, to my astonishment, seized by two bishops, and betrothed, whether I chose or not, to a young lady who but a few days before had been destined for a nunnery.’

‘Two bishops?’

‘I speak simple truth. The one was Synesius of course;—that most incoherent and most benevolent of busybodies chose to betray me behind my back:-but I will not trouble you with that part of my story. The real wonder is that the other episcopal match-maker was Augustine of Hippo himself!’

‘Anything to bribe a convert,’ said Hypatia contemptuously.

‘I assure you, no. He informed me, and her also, openly and uncivilly enough, that he thought us very much to be pitied for so great a fall.... But as we neither of us seemed to have any call for the higher life of celibacy, he could not press it on us.... We should have trouble in the flesh. But if we married we had not sinned. To which I answered that my humility was quite content to sit in the very lowest ranks, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.... He replied by an encomium on virginity, in which I seemed to hear again the voice of Hypatia herself.’

‘And sneered at it inwardly, as you used to sneer at me.’

‘Really I was in no sneering mood at that moment; and whatsoever I may have felt inclined to reply, he was kind enough to say for me and himself the next minute.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He went on, to my utter astonishment, by such a eulogium on wedlock as I never heard from Jew or heathen, and ended by advice to young married folk so thoroughly excellent and to the point, that I could not help telling him, when he stopped; what a pity I thought it that he had not himself married, and made some good woman happy by putting his own recipes into practice.... And at that, Hypatia, I saw an expression on his face which made me wish for the moment that I had bitten out this impudent tongue of mine, before I so rashly touched some deep old wound.... That man has wept bitter tears ere now, be sure of it.... But he turned the conversation instantly, like a well-bred gentleman as he is, by saying, with the sweetest smile, that though he had made it a solemn rule never to be a party to making up any marriage, yet in our case Heaven had so plainly pointed us out for each other, etc. etc., that he could not refuse himself the pleasure.... and ended by a blessing as kindly as ever came from the lips of man.’

‘You seem wonderfully taken with the sophist of Hippo,’ said Hypatia impatiently; ‘and forget, perhaps, that his opinions, especially when, as you confess, they are utterly inconsistent with themselves, are not quite as important to me as they seem to have become to you.’

‘Whether he be consistent or not about marriage,’ said Raphael, somewhat proudly, ‘I care little. I went to him to tell me, not about the relation of the sexes, on which point I am probably as good a judge as he—but about God and on that subject he told me enough to bring me back to Alexandria, that I might undo, if possible, somewhat of the wrong which I have done to Hypatia.’

‘What wrong have you done me?.... You are silent? Be sure, at least, that whatsoever it may be, you will not wipe it out by trying to make a proselyte of me!’

‘Be not too sure of that. I have found too great a treasure not to wish to share it with Theon’s daughter.’

‘A treasure?’ said she, half scornfully.

‘Yes, indeed. You recollect my last words, when we parted there below a few months ago?’

Hypatia was silent. One terrible possibility at which he had hinted flashed across her memory for the first time since;.... but she spurned proudly from her the heaven-sent warning.

‘I told you that, like Diogenes, I went forth to seek a man. Did I not promise you, that when I had found one you should be the first to hear of him? And I have found a man.’

Hypatia waved her beautiful hand. ‘I know whom you would say.... that crucified one. Be it so. I want not a man, but a god.’

‘What sort of a god, Hypatia? A god made up of our own intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them—of infinity and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility—and why not of immortality, too, Hypatia? For I recollect we used to agree that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate of Him so merely human a thing as virtue.’

Hypatia was silent.

‘Now I have always had a sort of fancy that what we wanted, as the first predicate of our Absolute One, was that He was to be not merely an infinite God—whatever that meant, which I suspect we did not always see quite clearly—or an eternal one—or an omnipotent one—or even merely a one God at all; none of which predicates, I fear, did we understand more clearly than the first: but that he must be a righteous God:—or rather, as we used sometimes to say that He was to have no predicate—Righteousness itself. And all along, I could not help remembering that my old sacred Hebrew books told me of such a one; and feeling that they might have something to tell me which—’

‘Which I did not tell you! And this, then, caused your air of reserve, and of sly superiority over the woman whom you mocked by calling her your pupil! I little suspected you of so truly Jewish a jealousy! Why, oh why, did you not tell me this?’

‘Because I was a beast, Hypatia; and had all but forgotten what this righteousness was like; and was afraid to find out lest it should condemn me. Because I was a devil, Hypatia; and hated righteousness, and neither wished to see you righteous, nor God righteous either, because then you would both have been unlike myself. God be merciful to me a sinner!’

She looked up in his face. The man was changed as if by miracle—and yet not changed. There was the same gallant consciousness of power, the