Hypatia - Charles Kingsley (best books to read for students txt) 📗

class="calibre1">The person at whom she pointed, a delicate-featured old man, with a venerable white beard, seemed to hear her; for he turned with a sudden start, and then, to Pelagia’s astonishment, put his hands before his face, and burst convulsively into tears.

‘What does he mean by behaving in that way? Bring him here to me this moment! I will know!’ cried she, petulantly catching at the new object, in order to escape from her own thoughts.

In a moment a Goth had led up the weeper, who came without demur to the side of Pelagia’s mule.

‘Why were you so rude as to burst out crying in my face?’ asked she petulantly.

The old man looked up sadly and tenderly, and answered in a low voice, meant only for her ear—

‘And how can I help weeping, when I see anything as beautiful as you are destined to the flames of hell for ever?’

‘The flames of hell?’ said Pelagia, with a shudder. ‘What for?’

‘Do you not know?’ asked the old man, with a look of sad surprise. ‘Have you forgotten what you are?’

‘I? I never hurt a fly!’

‘Why do you look so terrified, my darling? What have you been saying to her, you old villain?’ and the Amal raised his whip.

‘Oh! do not strike him. Come, come to-morrow, and tell me what you mean.’

‘No, we will have no monks within our doors, frightening silly women. Off, sirrah! and thank the lady that you have escaped with a whole skin.’ And the Amal caught the bridle of Pelagia’s mule, and pushed forward, leaving the old man gazing sadly after them.

But the beautiful sinner was evidently not the object which had brought the old monk of the desert into a neighbourhood so strange and ungenial to his habits; for, recovering himself in a few moments, he hurried on to the door of the Museum, and there planted himself, scanning earnestly the faces of the passers-out, and meeting, of course, with his due share of student ribaldry.

‘Well, old cat, and what mouse are you on the watch for, at the hole’s mouth here?’

‘Just come inside, and see whether the mice will not singe your whiskers for you….’

‘Here is my mouse, gentlemen,’ answered the old monk, with a bow and a smile, as he laid his hand on Philammon’s arm, and presented to his astonished eyes the delicate features and high retreating forehead of Arsenius.

‘My father,’ cried the boy, in the first impulse of affectionate recognition; and then—he had expected some such meeting all along, but now that it was come at last, he turned pale as death. The students saw his emotion.

‘Hands off, old Heautontimoroumenos! He belongs to our guild now! Monks have no more business with sons than with wives. Shall we hustle him for you, Philammon?’

‘Take care how you show off, gentlemen: the Goths are not yet out of hearing!’ answered Philammon, who was learning fast how to give a smart answer; and then, fearing the temper of the young dandies, and shrinking from the notion of any insult to one so reverend and so beloved as Arsenius, he drew the old man gently away, and walked up the street with him in silence, dreading what was coming.

‘And are these your friends?’

‘Heaven forbid! I have nothing in common with such animals but flesh and blood, and a seat in the lecture-room!’

‘Of the heathen woman?’

Philammon, after the fashion of young men in fear, rushed desperately into the subject himself, just because he dreaded Arsenius’s entering on it quietly.

‘Yes, of the heathen woman. Of course you have seen Cyril before you came hither?’

‘I have, and—’

‘And,’ went on Philammon, interrupting him, ‘you have been told every lie which prurience, stupidity, and revenge can invent. That I have trampled on the cross—sacrificed to all the deities in the pantheon-and probably’—(and he blushed scarlet)—‘that that purest and holiest of beings—who, if she were not what people call a pagan, would be, and deserves to be, worshipped as the queen of saints—that she—and I—’ and he stopped.

‘Have I said that I believed what I may have heard?’

‘No—and therefore, as they are all simple and sheer falsehoods, there is no more to be said on the subject. Not that I shall not be delighted to answer any questions of yours, my dearest father—’

‘Have I asked any, my child?’

‘No. So we may as well change the subject for the present,’—and he began overwhelming the old man with inquiries about himself, Pambo, and each and all of the inhabitants of the Laura to which Arsenius, to the boy’s infinite relief, answered cordially and minutely, and even vouchsafed a smile at some jest of Philammon’s on the contrast between the monks of Nitria and those of Scetis.

Arsenius was too wise not to see well enough what all this flippancy meant; and too wise, also, not to know that Philammon’s version was probably quite as near the truth as Peter’s and Cyril’s; but for reasons of his own, merely replied by an affectionate look, and a compliment to Philammon’s growth.

And yet you seem thin and pale, my boy.’

‘Study,’ said Philammon, ‘study. One cannot burn the midnight oil without paying some penalty for it …. However, I am richly repaid already; I shall be more so hereafter.’

‘Let us hope so. But who are those Goths whom I passed in the streets just now?’

‘Ah! my father,’ said Philammon, glad in his heart of any excuse to turn the conversation, and yet half uneasy and suspicious at Arsenius’s evident determination to avoid the very object of his visit. ‘It must have been you, then, whom I saw stop and speak to Pelagia at the farther end of the street. What words could you possibly have had wherewith to honour such a creature?’

‘God knows. Some secret sympathy touched my heart …. Alas! poor child! But how came you to know her?’

‘All Alexandria knows the shameless abomination,’ interrupted a voice at their elbow—none other than that of the little porter, who had been dodging and watching the pair the whole way, and could no longer restrain his longing to meddle. ‘And well it had been for many a rich young man had odd Miriam never brought her over, in an evil day, from Athens hither.’

‘Miriam?’

‘Yes, monk; a name not unknown, I am told, in palaces as well as in slave-markets.’

‘An evil-eyed old Jewess?’

‘A Jewess she is, as her name might have informed you; and as for her eyes, I consider them, or used to do so, of course—for her injured nation have been long expelled from Alexandria by your fanatic tribe—as altogether divine and demoniac, let the base imagination of monks call them what it likes.’

‘But how did you know this Pelagia, my son? She is no fit company for such as you.’

Philammon told, honestly enough, the story of his Nile journey, and Pelagia’s invitation to him.

‘You did not surely accept it?’

‘Heaven forbid that Hypatia’s scholar should so degrade himself!’

Arsenius shook his head sadly.

‘You would not have had me go?’

‘No, boy. But how long hast thou learned to call thyself Hypatia’s scholar, or to call it a degradation to visit the most sinful, if thou mightest thereby bring back a lost lamb to the Good Shepherd? Nevertheless, thou art too young for such employment—and she meant to tempt thee doubtless.’

‘I do not think it. She seemed struck by my talking Athenian Greek, and having come from Athens.’

‘And how long since she came from Athens?’ said Arsenius, after a pause. ‘Who knows?’

‘Just after it was sacked by the barbarians,’ said the little porter, who, beginning to suspect a mystery, was peaking and peering like an excited parrot. ‘The old dame brought her hither among a cargo of captive boys and girls.’

‘The time agrees …. Can this Miriam be found?’

‘A sapient and courteous question for a monk to ask! Do you not know that Cyril has expelled all Jews four months ago?’

‘True, true …. Alas!’ said the old man to himself, ‘how little the rulers of this world guess their own power! They move a finger carelessly, and forget that that finger may crush to death hundreds whose names they never heard—and every soul of them as precious in God’s sight as Cyril’s own.’

‘What is the matter, my father?’ asked Philammon. ‘You seem deeply moved about this woman….’

‘And she is Miriam’s slave?’

‘Her freedwoman this four years past,’ said the porter. ‘The good lady—for reasons doubtless excellent in themselves, though not altogether patent to the philosophic mind—thought good to turn her loose on the Alexandrian republic, to seek what she might devour.’

‘God help her! And you are certain that Miriam is not in Alexandria?’

The little porter turned very red, and Philammon did so likewise; but he remembered his promise, and kept it.

‘You both know something of her, I can see. You cannot deceive an old statesman, sir!’—turning to the little porter with a look of authority—‘poor monk though he be now. If you think fitting to tell me what you know, I promise you that neither she nor you shall be losers by your confidence in me. If not, I shall find means to discover.’

Both stood silent.

‘Philammon, my son! and art thou too in league against—no, not against me; against thyself, poor misguided boy?’

‘Against myself?’

‘Yes—I have said it. But unless you will trust me, I cannot trust you.’

‘I have promised.’

‘And I, sir statesman, or monk, or both, or neither, have sworn by the immortal gods!’ said the porter, looking very big.

Arsenius paused.

‘There are those who hold that an oath by an idol, being nothing, is of itself void. I do not agree with them. If thou thinkest it sin to break thine oath, to thee it is sin. And for thee, my poor child, thy promise is sacred, were it made to Iscariot himself. But hear me. Can either of you, by asking this woman, be so far absolved as to give me speech of her? Tell her—that is, if she be in Alexandria, which God grant—all that has passed between us here, and tell her, on the solemn oath of a Christian, that Arsenius, whose name she knows well, will neither injure nor betray her. Will you do this?’

‘Arsenius?’ said the little porter, with a look of mingled awe and pity.

The old man smiled. ‘Arsenius, who was once called the Father of the Emperors. Even she will trust that name.’

‘I will go this moment’ sir; I will fly!’ and off rushed the little porter.

‘The little fellow forgets,’ said Arsenius, with a smile, ‘to how much he has confessed already, and how easy it were now to trace him to the old hag’s lair …. Philammon, my son …. I have many tears to weep over thee—but they must wait a while, I have thee safe now,’ and the old man clutched his arm. ‘Thou wilt not leave thy poor old father? Thou wilt not desert me for the heathen woman?’

‘I will stay with you, I promise you, indeed! if—if you will not say unjust things of her.’

‘I will speak evil of no one, accuse no one, but myself. I will not say one harsh word to thee, my poor boy. But listen now! Thou knowest that thou camest from Athens. Knowest thou that it was I who brought thee hither?’

‘You?’

‘I, my son: but when I brought thee to