Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📖

‘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.’