Hypatia. or New Foes with an Old Face

They never met again. But Philammon knew that he had been in the presence of a stronger man than himself, and of one who hated even more bitterly than he himself that deed at which the very sun, it seemed, ought to have veiled his face. And his words, ‘Arise, and flee for thy life,’ uttered as they were with the stern self-command and writhing lip of compressed agony, rang through his ears like the trump of doom. Yes, he would flee. He had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it. Arsenius was in the right after all. Home to the desert! But first he would go himself, alone, to Pelagia, and implore her once more to flee with him. Beast, fool, that he had been to try to win her by force—by the help of such as these! God’s kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts. If he could not win her heart, her will, he would go alone, and die praying for her.

He sprang from the steps of the Caesareum, and turned up the street of the Museum. Alas! it was one roaring sea of heads! They were sacking Theon’s house—the house of so many memories! Perhaps the poor old man too had perished! Still—his sister! He must save her and flee. And he turned up a side street and tried to make his way onward.

Alas again! the whole of the dock-quarter was up and out. Every street poured its tide of furious fanatics into the main river; and ere he could reach Pelagia’s house the sun was set, and close behind him, echoed by ten thousand voices, was the cry of ‘Down with all heathens! Root out all Arian Goths! Down with idolatrous wantons! Down with Pelagia Aphrodite!’

He hurried down the alley, to the tower door, where Wulf had promised to meet him. It was half open, and in the dusk he could see a figure standing in the doorway. He sprang up the steps, and found, not Wulf, but Miriam.

‘Let me pass!’

‘Wherefore?’

He made no answer, and tried to push past her.

‘Fool, fool, fool!’ whispered the hag, holding the door against 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 the breach.

He was about two-thirds down, when he shook the rope, and called in a stifled voice, to those above—

‘Haul up. I have seen enough.’

Breathless with curiosity and fear, they hauled him up. He stood among them for a few moments, silent, as if stunned by the weight of some enormous woe.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Odin has taken his son home, wolves of the Goths!’ And he held out his right hand to the awe-struck ring, and burst into an agony of weeping.... A clotted tress of long fair hair lay in his palm.

It was snatched; handed from man to man.... One after another recognised the beloved golden locks. And then, to the utter astonishment of the girls who stood round, the great simple hearts, too brave to be ashamed of tears, broke out and wailed like children .... Their Amal! Their heavenly man! Odin’s own son, their joy and pride, and glory! Their ‘Kingdom of heaven,’ as his name declared him, who was all that each wished to be, and more, and yet belonged to them, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh! Ah, it is bitter to all true human hearts to be robbed of their ideal, even though that ideal be that of a mere wild bull, and soulless gladiator....

At last Smid spoke—

‘Heroes, this is Odin’s doom; and the All-father is just. Had we listened to Prince Wulf four months ago, this had never been. We have been cowards and sluggards, and Odin is angry with his children. Let us swear to be Prince Wulf’s men and follow him to-morrow where he will!’

Wulf grasped his outstretched hand lovingly— ‘No, Smid, son of Troll! These words are not yours to speak. Agilmund son of Cniva, Goderic son of Ermenric, you are Balts, and to you the succession appertains. Draw lots here, which of you shall be our chieftain.’

‘No! no! Wulf!’ cried both the youths at once. ‘You are the hero! you are the Sagaman! We are not worthy; we have been cowards and sluggards, like the rest. Wolves of the Goths, follow the Wolf, even though he lead you to the land of the giants!’

A roar of applause followed.

‘Lift him on the shield,’ cried Goderic, tearing off his buckler. ‘Lift him on the shield! Hail, Wulf king! Wulf, king of Egypt!’

And the rest of the Goths, attracted by the noise, rushed up the tower-stairs in time to join in the mighty shout of ‘Wulf, king of Egypt!’—as careless of the vast multitude which yelled and surged without, as boys are of the snow against the window-pane.

‘No!’ said Wulf solemnly, as he stood on the uplifted shield. ‘If I be indeed your king, and ye my men, wolves of the Goths, to-morrow we will go forth of this place, hated of Odin, rank with the innocent blood of the Alruna maid. Back to Adolf; back to our own people! Will you go?’

‘Back to Adolf!’ shouted the men.

‘You will not leave us to be murdered?’ cried one of the girls. ‘The mob are breaking the gates already!’

‘Silence, silly one! Men—we have one thing to do. The Amal must not go to the Valhalla without fair attendance.’

‘Not the poor girls?’ said Agilmund, who took for granted that Wulf would wish to celebrate the Amal’s funeral in true Gothic fashion by a slaughter of slaves.

‘No.... One of them I saw behave this very afternoon worthy of a Vala. And they, too—they may make heroes’ wives after all, yet .... Women are better than I fancied, even the worst of them. No. Go down, heroes, and throw the gates open; and call in the Greek hounds to the funeral supper of a son of Odin.’

‘Throw the gates open?’

‘Yes. Goderic, take a dozen men, and be ready in the east hall. Agilmund, go with a dozen to the west side of the court—there in the kitchen; and wait till you hear my war-cry. Smid and the rest of you, come with me through the stables close to the gate—as silent as Hela.’

And they went down—to meet, full on the stairs below, old Miriam.

Breathless and exhausted by her exertion, she had fallen heavily before Philammon’s strong arm; and lying half stunned for a while, recovered just in time to meet her doom.

She knew that it was come, and faced it like herself.

‘Take the witch!’ said Wulf slowly—‘Take the corrupter of heroes—the cause of all our sorrows!’

Miriam looked at him with a quiet smile.

‘The witch is accustomed long ago to hear fools lay on her the consequences of their own lust and laziness.’

‘Hew her down, Smid, son of Troll, that she may pass the Amal’s soul and gladden it on her way to Niflheim.’

Smid did it: but so terrible were the eyes which glared upon him from those sunken sockets, that his sight was dazzled. The axe turned aside, and struck her shoulder. She reeled, but did not fall.

‘It is enough,’ she said quietly.

‘The accursed Grendel’s daughter numbed my arm!’ said Smid. ‘Let her go! No man shall say that I struck a woman twice.’

‘Nidhogg waits for her, soon or late,’ answered Wulf.

And Miriam, coolly folding her shawl around her, turned and walked steadily down the stair; while all men breathed more freely, as if delivered from some accursed and supernatural spell.

‘And now,’ said Wulf, ‘to your posts, and vengeance!’

The mob had weltered and howled ineffectually around the house for some half-hour. But the lofty walls, opening on the street only by a few narrow windows in the higher stories, rendered it an impregnable fortress. Suddenly, the iron gates were drawn back, disclosing to the front rank the court, glaring empty and silent and ghastly in the moonlight. For an instant they recoiled, with a vague horror, and dread of treachery: but the mass behind pressed them onward, and in swept the murderers of Hypatia, till the court was full of choking wretches, surging against the walls and pillars in aimless fury. And then, from under the archway on each side, rushed a body of tall armed men, driving back all incomers more; the gates slid together again upon their grooves and the wild beasts of Alexandria were trapped at last.

And then began a murder grim and great. From three different doors issued a line of Goths, whose helmets and mail-shirts made them invulnerable to the clumsy weapons of the mob, and began hewing their way right through the living mass, helpless from their close-packed array. True, they were but as one to ten; but what are ten curs before one lion?.... And the moon rose higher and higher, staring down ghastly and unmoved upon that doomed court of the furies, and still the bills and swords hewed on and on, and the Goths drew the corpses, as they found room, towards a dark pile in the midst, where old Wulf sat upon a heap of slain, singing the praises of the Amal and the glories of Valhalla, while the shrieks of his lute rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the wounded, and its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on swifter and swifter as the old singer maddened, in awful mockery of the terror and agony around.

And so, by men and purposes which recked not of her, as is the wont of Providence, was the blood of Hypatia avenged in part that night. In part only. For Peter the Reader, and his especial associates, were safe in sanctuary at the Caesareum, clinging to the altar. Terrified at the storm which they had raised, and fearing the consequences of an attack upon the palace, they had left the mob to run riot at its will; and escaped the swords of the Goths to be reserved for the more awful punishment of impunity.

CHAPTER XXX: EVERY MAN TO HIS OWN PLACE

It was near midnight. Raphael had been sitting some three hours in Miriam’s inner chamber, waiting in vain for her return. To recover, if possible, his ancestral wealth; to convey it, without a day’s delay, to Cyrene; and, if possible, to persuade the poor old Jewess to accompany him, and there to soothe, to guide, perhaps to convert her, was his next purpose:—at all events, with or without his wealth, to flee from that accursed city. And he counted impatiently the slow hours and minutes which detained him in an atmosphere which seemed reeking with innocent blood, black with the lowering curse of an avenging God. More than once, unable to bear the thought, he rose to depart, and leave his wealth behind: but he was checked again by the thought of his own past life. How had he added his own sin to the great heap of Alexandrian wickedness! How had he tempted others, pampered others in evil! Good God! how had he not only done evil with all his might, but had pleasure in those who did the same! And now, now he was reaping the fruit of his own devices. For years past, merely to please his lust of power, his misanthropic scorn, he had been malting that wicked Orestes wickeder than he was even by his own base will and nature; and his puppet had avenged itself upon him! He, he had prompted him to ask Hypatia’s hand.... He had laid, half in sport, half in envy of her excellence, that foul plot against the only human being whom he loved.... and he had destroyed her! He, and not Peter, was the murderer of Hypatia! True, he had never meant her death.... No; but had he not meant for her worse than death? He had never foreseen.... No; but only because he did not choose to foresee. He had chosen to be a god; to kill and to make alive by his own will and law; and behold, he had become a devil by that very act. Who can—and who dare, even if he could—withdraw the sacred veil from those bitter agonies of inward shame and self-reproach, made all the more intense by his clear and undoubting knowledge that he was forgiven? What dread of punishment, what blank despair, could have pierced that great heart so deeply as did the thought that the God whom he had hated and defied had returned him good for evil, and rewarded him not according to his iniquities? That discovery, as Ezekiel of old had warned his forefathers, filled up the cup of his self-loathing.... To have found at last the hated and dreaded name of God: and found that it was Love!.... To possess Victoria, a living, human likeness, however imperfect, of that God; and to possess in her a home, a duty, a purpose, a fresh clear life of righteous labour, perhaps of final victory.... That was his punishment; that was the brand of Cain upon his forehead; and he felt it greater than he could bear.

But at least there was one thing to be done. Where he had sinned, there he must make amends; not as a propitiation, not even as a restitution; but simply as a confession of the truth which he had found. And as his purpose shaped itself, he longed and prayed that Miriam might return, and make it possible.

And Miriam did return. He heard her pass slowly through the outer room, learn from the girls who was within, order them out of the apartments, close the outer door upon them; at last she entered, and said quietly—

‘Welcome! I have expected you. You could not surprise old Miriam. The teraph told me last night that you would be here....’

Did she see the smile of incredulity upon Raphael’s face, or was it some sudden pang of conscience which made her cry out—

‘.... No! I did not! I never expected you! I am a liar, a miserable old liar, who cannot speak the truth, even if I try! Only look kind! Smile at me, Raphael!—Raphael come back at last to his poor, miserable, villainous old mother! Smile on me but once, my beautiful, my son! my son!’

And springing to him, she clasped him in her arms.

‘Your son?’

‘Yes, my son! Safe at last! Mine at last! I can prove it now! The son of my womb, though not the son of my vows!’ And she laughed hysterically. ‘My child, my heir, for whom I have toiled and hoarded for three-and-thirty years! Quick! here are my keys. In that cabinet are all my papers—all I have is yours. Your jewels are safe—buried with mine. The negro-woman, Eudaimon’s wife, knows where. I made her swear secrecy upon her little wooden idol, and, Christian as she is, she has been honest. Make her rich for life. She hid your poor old mother, and kept her safe to see her boy come home. But give nothing to her little husband: he is a bad fellow, and beats her.—Go, quick! take your riches, and away!.... No; stay one moment just one little moment—that the poor old wretch may feast her eyes with the sight of her darling once more before she dies!’

‘Before you die? Your son? God of my fathers, what is the meaning of all this, Miriam? This morning I was the son of Ezra the merchant of Antioch!’

‘His son and heir, his son and heir! He knew all at last. We told him on his death-bed! I swear that we told him, and he adopted you!’

‘We! Who?’

‘His wife and I. He craved for a child, the old miser, and we gave him one—a better one than ever came of his family. But he loved you, accepted you, though he did know all. He was afraid of being laughed at after he was dead—afraid of having it known that he was childless, the old dotard! No—he was right—true Jew in that, after all!’

‘Who was my father, then?’ interrupted Raphael, in utter bewilderment.

The old woman laughed a laugh so long and wild, that Raphael shuddered.

‘Sit down at your mother’s feet. Sit down.... just to please the poor old thing! Even if you do not believe her, just play at being her child, her darling, for a minute before she dies; and she will tell you all.... perhaps there is time yet!’

And he sat down.... ‘What if this incarnation of all wickedness were really my mother?.... And yet—why should I shrink thus proudly from the notion? Am I so pure myself as to deserve a purer source?’.... And the old woman laid her hand fondly on his head, and her skinny fingers played with his soft locks, as she spoke hurriedly and thick.

‘Of the house of Jesse, of the seed of Solomon; not a rabbi from Babylon to Rome dare deny that! A king’s daughter I am, and a king’s heart I had, and have, like Solomon’s own, my son!.... A kingly heart.... It made me dread and scorn to be a slave, a plaything, a soul-less doll, such as Jewish women are condemned to be by their tyrants, the men. I craved for wisdom, renown, power—power—power! and my nation refused them to me; because, forsooth, I was a woman! So I left them. I went to the Christian priests.... They gave me what I asked.... They gave me more.... They pampered my woman’s vanity, my pride, my self-will, my scorn of wedded bondage, and bade me be a saint, the judge of angels and archangels, the bride of God! Liars! liars! And so—if you laugh, you kill me, Raphael—and so Miriam, the daughter of Jonathan—Miriam, of the house of David—Miriam, the descendant of Ruth and Rachab, of Rachel and Sara, became a Christian nun, and shut herself up to see visions, and dream dreams, and fattened her own mad self-conceit upon the impious fancy that she was the spouse of the Nazarene, Joshua Bar-Joseph, whom she called Jehovah Ishi—Silence! If you stop me a moment, it may be too late. I hear them calling me already; and I made them promise not to take me before I had told all to my son—the son of my shame!’

‘Who calls you?’ asked Raphael; but after one strong shudder she ran on, unheeding—

‘But they lied, lied, lied! I found them out that day.... Do not look up at me, and I will tell you all. There was a riot—a fight between the Christian devils and the Heathen devils—and the convent was sacked, Raphael, my son!—Sacked!.... Then I found out their blasphemy.... Oh God! I shrieked to Him, Raphael! I called on Him to rend His heavens and come down—to pour out His thunderbolts upon them—to cleave the earth and devour them—to save the wretched helpless girl who adored Him, who had given up father, mother, kinsfolk, wealth, the light of heaven, womanhood itself, for Him—who worshipped, meditated over Him, dreamed of Him night and day .... And, Raphael, He did not hear me.... He did not hear me! .... did not hear the!.... And then I knew it all for a lie! a lie!’

‘And you knew it for what it is!’ cried Raphael through his sobs, as he thought of Victoria, and felt every vein burning with righteous wrath.

–‘There was no mistaking that test, was there?.... For nine months I was mad. And then your voice, my baby, my joy, my pride that brought me to myself once more! And I shook off the dust of my feet against those Galilean priests, and went back to my own nation, where God had set me from the beginning. I made them—the Rabbis, my father, my kin—I made them all receive me. They could not stand before my eye. I can stake people do what I will, Raphael! I could—I could make you emperor now, if I had but time left! I went back. I palmed you off on Ezra as his son, I and his wife, and made him believe that you had been born to him while he was in Byzantium .... And then—to live for you! And I did live for you. For you I travelled from India to Britain, seeking wealth. For you I toiled, hoarded, lied, intrigued, won money by every means, no matter how base—for was it not for you? And I have conquered! You are the richest Jew south of the Mediterranean, you, my son! And you deserve your wealth. You have your mother’s soul in you, my boy! I watched you, gloried in you—in your cunning, your daring, your learning, your contempt for these Gentile hounds. You felt the royal blood of Solomon within you! You felt that you were a young lion of Judah, and they the jackals who followed to feed upon your leavings! And now, now! Your only danger is past! The cunning woman is gone—the sorceress who tried to take my young lion in her pitfall, and has fallen into the midst of it herself; and he is safe, and returned to take the nations for a prey, and grind their bones to powder, as it is written, “He couched like a lion, he lay down like a lioness’s whelp, and who dare rouse him up?”’