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

him with all her strength. ‘Where are your fellow-kidnappers? Where are your band of monks?’

Philammon started back. How had she discovered his plan?

‘Ay—where are they? Besotted boy! Have you not seen enough of monkery this afternoon, that you must try still to make that poor girl even such a one as yourselves? Ay, you may root out your own human natures if you will, and make yourselves devils in trying to become angels: but woman she is, and woman she shall live or die!’

‘Let me pass!’ cried Philammon furiously.

‘Raise your voice—and I raise mine: and then your life is not worth a moment’s purchase. Fool, do you think I speak as a Jewess? I speak as a woman—as a nun! I was a nun once, madman—the iron entered into my soul!—God do so to me, and more also, if it ever enter into another soul while I can prevent it! You shall not have her! I will strangle her with my own hand first!’ And turning from him, she darted up the winding stair.

He followed: but the intense passion of the old hag hurled her onward with the strength and speed of a young Maenad. Once Philammon was near passing her. But he recollected that he did not know his way, and contented himself with keeping close behind, and making the fugitive his guide.

Stair after stair, he fled upward, till she turned suddenly into a chamber door. Philammon paused. A few feet above him the open sky showed at the stair-head. They were close then to the roof! One moment more, and the hag darted out of the room again, and turned to flee upward still. Philammon caught her by the arm, hurled her back into the empty chamber, shut the door upon her; and with a few bounds gained the roof, and met Pelagia face to face.

‘Come!’ gasped he breathlessly. ‘Now is the moment! Come, while they are all below!’ and he seized her hand.

But Pelagia only recoiled.

‘No, no,’ whispered she in answer, ‘I cannot, cannot—he has forgiven me all, all! and I am his for ever! And now, just as he is in danger, when he may be wounded—ah, heaven! would you have me do anything so base as to desert him?’

‘Pelagia, Pelagia, darling sister!’ cried Philammon, in an agonised voice, ‘think of the doom of sin! Think of the pains of hell!’

‘I have thought of them this day: and I do not believe you! No—I do not! God is not so cruel as you say! And if He were:—to lose my love, that is hell! Let me burn hereafter, if I do but keep him now!’

Philammon stood stupefied and shuddering. All his own early doubts flashed across him like a thunderbolt, when in the temple-cave he had seen those painted ladies at their revels, and shuddered, and asked himself, were they burning for ever and ever?

‘Come!’ gasped he once again; and throwing himself on his knees before her, covered her hands with kisses, wildly entreating: but in vain.

‘What is this?’ thundered a voice; not Miriam’s, but the Amal’s. He was unarmed but he rushed straight upon Philammon.

‘Do not harm him!’ shrieked Pelagia; ‘he is my brother—my brother of whom I told you!’

‘What does he here?’ cried the Amal, who instantly divined the truth.

Pelagia was silent.

‘I wish to deliver my sister, a Christian, from the sinful embraces of an Arian heretic; and deliver her I will, or die!’

‘An Arian?’ laughed the Amal. ‘Say a heathen at once, and tell the truth, young fool! Will you go with him, Pelagia, and turn nun in the sand-heaps?’

Pelagia sprang towards her lover: Philammon caught her by the arm for one last despairing appeal: and in a moment, neither knew how, the Goth and the Greek were locked in deadly struggle, while Pelagia stood in silent horror, knowing that a call for help would bring instant death to her brother.

It was over in a few seconds. The Goth lifted Philammon like a baby in his arms, and bearing him to the parapet, attempted to hurl him into the canal below. But the active Greek had wound himself like a snake around him, and held him by the throat with the strength of despair. Twice they rolled and tottered on the parapet; and twice recoiled. A third fearful lunge—the earthen wall gave way; and down to the dark depths, locked in each other’s arms, fell Goth and Greek.

Pelagia rushed to the brink, and gazed downward into the gloom, dumb and dry-eyed with horror. Twice they turned over together in mid-air.... The foot of the tower, as was usual in Egypt, sloped outwards towards the water. They must strike upon that—and then! ....It seemed an eternity ere they touched the masonry.... The Amal was undermost.... She saw his fair floating locks dash against the cruel stone. His grasp suddenly loosened, his limbs collapsed; two distinct plunges broke the dark sullen water; and then all was still but the awakened ripple, lapping angrily against the wall.

Pelagia gazed down one moment more, and then, with a shriek which rang along roof and river, she turned, and fled down the stairs and out into the night.

Five minutes afterwards, Philammon, dripping, bruised, and bleeding, was crawling up the water-steps at the lower end of the lane. A woman rushed from the postern door, and stood on the quay edge, gazing with clasped hands into the canal. The moon fell full on her face. It was Pelagia. She saw him, knew him, and recoiled.

‘Sister!—my sister! Forgive me!’

‘Murderer!’ she shrieked, and dashing aside his outspread hands, fled wildly up the passage.

The way was blocked with bales of merchandise: but the dancer bounded over them like a deer; while Philammon, half stunned by his fall, and blinded by his dripping locks, stumbled, fell, and lay, unable to rise. She held on for a few yards towards the torch-lit mob, which was surging and roaring in the main street above, then turned suddenly into a side alley, and vanished; while Philammon lay groaning upon the pavement, without a purpose or a hope upon earth.

Five minutes more, and Wulf was gazing over the broken parapet, at the head of twenty terrified spectators, male and female, whom Pelagia’s shriek had summoned.

He alone suspected that Philammon had been there; and shuddering at the thought of what might have happened, he kept his secret.

But all knew that Pelagia had been on the tower; all had seen the Amal go up thither. Where were they now? And why was the little postern gate found open, and shut only just in time to prevent the entrance of the mob?

Wulf stood, revolving in a brain but too well practised in such cases, all possible contingencies of death and horror. At last—

‘A rope and a light, Smid!’ he almost whispered.

They were brought, and Wulf, resisting all the entreaties of the younger men to allow them to go on the perilous search, lowered himself through