Hypatia by Charles Kingsley (phonics story books txt) 📖

arose before him the vision of the God-man, as He lay at meat in the Pharisee’s house; and of her who washed His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head …. And from the depths of his agonised heart arose the prayer, ‘Blessed Magdalene, intercede for her?’

So high he could rise, but not beyond. For the notion of that God- man was receding fast to more and more awful abysmal heights, in the minds of a generation who were forgetting His love in His power, and practically losing sight of His humanity in their eager doctrinal assertion of His Divinity. And Philammon’s heart re-echoed the spirit of his age, when he felt that for an apostate like himself it were presumptuous to entreat for any light or help from the fountain-head itself. He who had denied his Lord, he who had voluntarily cut himself off from the communion of the Catholic Church—how could he restore himself? How could he appease the wrath of Him who died on the cross, save by years of bitter supplication and self-punishment? ....

‘Fool! Vain and ambitious fool that I have been! For this I threw away the faith of my childhood! For this I listened to words at which I shuddered; crushed down my own doubts and disgusts; tried to persuade myself that I could reconcile them with Christianity—that I could make a lie fit into the truth! For this I puffed myself up in the vain hope of becoming not as other men are—superior, forsooth, to my kind! It was not enough for me to be a man made in the image of God: but I must needs become a god myself, knowing good and evil.—And here is the end! I call upon my fine philosophy to help me once, in one real practical human struggle, and it folds its arms and sits serene and silent, smiling upon my misery! Oh! fool, fool, thou art filled with the fruit of thy own devices! Back to the old faith! Home again, then wanderer! And yet how home? Are not the gates shut against me? Perhaps against her too …. What if she, like me, were a baptized Christian?’

Terrible and all but hopeless that thought flashed across him, as in the first revulsion of his conscience he plunged utterly and implicitly back again into the faith of his childhood, and all the dark and cruel theories popular in his day rose up before him in all their terrors. In the innocent simplicity of the Laura he had never felt their force; but he felt them now. If Pelagia were a baptized woman, what was before her but unceasing penance? Before her, as before him, a life of cold and hunger, groans and tears, loneliness and hideous soul-sickening uncertainty. Life was a dungeon for them both henceforth. Be it so! There was nothing else to believe in. No other rock of hope in earth or heaven. That at least promised a possibility of forgiveness, of amendment, of virtue, of reward—ay, of everlasting bliss and glory; and even if she missed of that, better for her the cell in the desert than a life of self-contented impurity! If that latter were her destiny, as Hypatia said, she should at least die fighting against it, defying it, cursing it! Better virtue with hell, than sin with heaven! And Hypatia had not even promised her a heaven. The resurrection of the flesh was too carnal a notion for her refined and lofty creed. And so, his four months’ dream swept away in a moment, he hurried back to his chamber, with one fixed thought before him—the desert; a cell for Pelagia; another for himself. There they would repent, and pray, and mourn out life side by side, if perhaps God would have mercy upon their souls. Yet—perhaps, she might not have been baptized after all. And then she was safe. Like other converts from Paganism, she might become a catechumen, and go on to baptism, where the mystic water would wash away in a moment all the past, and she would begin life afresh, in the spotless robes of innocence. Yet he had been baptized, he knew from Arsenius, before he left Athens; and she was older than he. It was all but impossible yet he would hope; and breathless with anxiety and excitement, he ran up the narrow stairs and found Miriam standing outside, her hand uponthe bolt, apparently inclined to dispute his passage.

‘Is she still within?’

‘What if she be?’

‘Let me pass into my own room.’

‘Yours? Who has been paying the rent for you, these four months past? You! What can you say to her? What can you do for her? Young pedant, you must be in love yourself before you can help poor creatures who are in love!’

But Philammon pushed past her so fiercely, that the old woman was forced to give way, and with a sinister smile she followed him into the chamber.

Pelagia sprang towards her brother.

‘Will she?—will she see me?’

‘Let us talk no more of her, my beloved,’ said Philammon, laying his hands gently on her trembling shoulders, and looking earnestly into her eyes …. ‘Better that we two should work out our deliverance for ourselves, without the help of strangers. You can trust me?’

‘You? And can you help me? Will you teach me?’

‘Yes, but not here …. We must escape—Nay, hear me, one moment! dearest sister, hear me! Are you so happy here that you can conceive of no better place? And—and, oh, God! that it may not be true after all!—but is there not a hell hereafter?’

Pelagia covered her face with her hands—‘The old monk warned me of it!’

‘Oh, take his warning….’ And Philammon was bursting forth with some such words about the lake of fire and brimstone as he had been accustomed to hear from Pambo and Arsenius, when Pelagia interrupted him-

‘Oh, Miriam! Is it true? Is it possible? What will become of me?’ almost shrieked the poor child.

‘What if it were true?—Let him tell you how he will save you from it,’ answered Miriam quietly.

‘Will not the Gospel save her from it—unbelieving Jew? Do not contradict me! I can save her.’

‘If she does what?’

‘Can she not repent? Can she not mortify these base affections? Can she not be forgiven? Oh, my Pelagia! forgive me for having dreamed one moment that I could make you a philosopher, when you may be a saint of God, a—’

He stopped short suddenly, as the thought about baptism flashed across him, and in a faltering voice asked, ‘Are you baptized?’

‘Baptized?’ asked she, hardly understanding the term.

‘Yes—by the bishop—in the church.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I remember now …. When I was four or five years odd …. A tank, and women undressing …. And I was bathed too, and an old man dipped my head under the water three times …. I have forgotten what it all meant—it was so long ago. I wore a white dress, I know, afterwards.’

Philammon recoiled with a groan.

‘Unhappy child! May God have mercy on you!’

‘Will He not forgive me, then? You have forgiven me. He?—He must be more good even than you.—Why not?’

‘He forgave you then, freely, when you were baptized: and there is no second pardon unless—

‘Unless I leave my love!’ shrieked Pelagia.

‘When the Lord forgave the blessed Magdalene freely, and told her that her faith had saved her—did she live on in sin, or even in the pleasures of this world? No! though God had forgiven her, she could not forgive herself. She fled forth into the desert, and there, naked and barefoot, clothed only with her hair, and feeding on the herb of the field, she stayed fasting and praying till her dying day, never seeing the face of man, but visited and comforted by angels and archangels. And if she, she who never fell again, needed that long penance to work out her own salvation—oh, Pelagia, what will not God require of you, who have broken your baptismal vows, and defiled the white robes, which the tears of penance only can wash clean once more?’

‘But I did not know! I did not ask to be baptized! Cruel, cruel parents, to bring me to it! And God! Oh, why did He forgive me so soon? And to go into the deserts! I dare not! I cannot! See me, how dedicate and tender I am! I should die of hunger and cold! I should go mad with fear and loneliness! Oh! brother, brother, is this the Gospel of the Christians? I came to you to be taught how to be wise, and good, and respected, and you tell me that all I can do is to live this horrible life of torture here, on the chance of escaping torture forever! And how do I know that I shall escape it? How do I know that I shall make myself miserable enough? How do I know that He will forgive me after all? Is this true, Miriam? Tell me, or I shall go mad!’

‘Yes,’ said Miriam, with a quiet sneer. ‘This is the gospel and good news of salvation, according to the doctrine of the Nazarenes.’

‘I will go with you!’ cried Philammon. ‘I will go! I will never leave you! I have my own sins to wash away!—Happy for me if I ever do it!—And I will build you a cell near mine, and kind men will teach us, and the will pray together night and morning, for ourselves and for each other, and weep out our weary lives together—’

‘Better end them here, at once!’ said Pelagia, with a gesture of despair, and dashed herself down on the floor.

Philammon was about to lift her up, when Miriam caught him by the arm, and in a hurried whisper—‘Are you mad? Will you ruin your own purpose? Why did you tell her this? Why did you not wait—give her hope—time to collect herself—time to wean herself from her lover, instead of terrifying and disgusting her at the outset, as you have done? Have you a man’s heart in you? No word of comfort for that poor creature, nothing but hell, hell, hell—See to your own chance of hell first! It is greater than you fancy!’

‘It cannot be greater than I fancy!’

‘Then see to it. For her, poor darling!—why, even we Jews, who know that all you Gentiles are doomed to Gehenna alike, have some sort of hope for such a poor untaught creature as that.’

‘And why is she untaught? Wretch that you are. You have had the training of her! You brought her up to sin and shame! You drove from her recollection the faith in which she was baptized!’

‘So much the better for her, if the recollection of it is to make her no happier than it does already. Better to wake unexpectedly in Gehenna when you die, than to endure over and above the dread of it here. And as for leaving her untaught, on your own showing she has been taught too much already. Wiser it would be in you to curse your parents for having had her baptized, than me for giving her ten years’ pleasure before she goes to the pit of Tophet. Come