Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 13

'Not like that first one! Then we went forth with cymbals and songs to the Red Sea triumph! Then we borrowed, every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment.'

'And now we pay them back again;.. it is but fair, after all. We ought to have listened to Jeremiah a thousand years ago, and never gone back again, like fools, into a country to which we were so deeply in debt.'

'Accursed land!' cried Miriam. 'In an evil hour our forefathers disobeyed the prophet; and now we reap the harvest of our sins!-Our sons have forgotten the faith of their forefathers for the philosophy of the Gentiles, and fill their chambers' (with a contemptuous look round) 'with heathen imagery; and our daughters are-Look there!'

As she spoke, a beautiful girl rushed shrieking out of an adjoining house, followed by some half-drunk ruffian, who was clutching at the gold chains and trinkets with which she was profusely bedecked, after the fas.h.i.+on of Jewish women. The rascal had just seized with one hand her streaming black tresses, and with the other a heavy collar of gold, which was wound round her throat, when a priest, stepping up, laid a quiet hand upon his shoulder. The fellow, too maddened to obey, turned, and struck back the restraining arm...and in an instant was felled to the earth by a young monk..

'Touchest thou the Lord's anointed, sacrilegious wretch?' cried the man of the desert, as the fellow dropped on the pavement, with his booty in his hand.

The monk tore the gold necklace from his grasp, looked at it for a moment with childish wonder, as a savage might at some incomprehensible product of civilised industry, and then, spitting on it in contempt, dashed it on the ground, and trampled it into the mud.

'Follow the golden wedge of Achan, and the silver of Iscariot, thou root of all evil!' And he rushed on, yelling, 'Down with the circ.u.mcision! Down with the blasphemers!'-while the poor girl vanished among the crowd.

Raphael watched him with a quaint thoughtful smile, while Miriam shrieked aloud at the destruction of the precious trumpery.

'The monk is right, mother. If those Christians go on upon that method, they must beat us. It has been our ruin from the first, our fancy for loading ourselves with the thick clay.'

'What will you do?' cried Miriam, clutching him by the arm.

'What will you do?'

'I am safe. I have a boat waiting for me on the ca.n.a.l at the garden gate, and in Alexandria I stay; no Christian hound shall make old Miriam move afoot against her will. My jewels are all buried-my girls are sold; save what you can, and come with me!'

'My sweet mother, why so peculiarly solicitous about my welfare, above that of all the sons of Judah?'

'Because-because-No, I'll tell you that another time. But I loved your mother, and she loved me. Come!'

Raphael relapsed into silence for a few minutes, and watched the tumult below.

'How those Christian priests keep their men in order! There is no use resisting destiny. They are the strong men of the time, after all, and the little Exodus must needs have its course. Miriam, daughter of Jonathan-'

'I am no man's daughter! I have neither father nor mother, husband nor-Call me mother again!'

'Whatsoever I am to call you, there are jewels enough in that closet to buy half Alexandria. Take them. I am going.'

'With me!'

'Out into the wide world, my dear lady. I am bored with riches. That young savage of a monk understood them better than we Jews do. I shall just make a virtue of necessity, and turn beggar.'

'Beggar?'

'Why not? Don't argue. These scoundrels will make me one, whether I like or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This brute of a dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her, because she has the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate Maccabee spirit in her-of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no little Exodus; eh, Bran, my beauty?'

'You can escape with me to the prefect's, and save the ma.s.s of your wealth.'

'Exactly what I don't want to do. I hate that prefect as I hate a dead camel, or the vulture who eats him. And to tell the truth, I am growing a great deal too fond of that heathen woman there-'

'What?' shrieked the old woman-'Hypatia?'

'If you choose. At all events, the easiest way to cut the knot is to expatriate. I shall beg my pa.s.sage on board the first s.h.i.+p to Cyrene, and go and study life in Italy with Heraclian's expedition. Quick-take the jewels, and breed fresh troubles for yourself with them. I am going. My liberators are battering the outer door already.'

Miriam greedily tore out of the closet diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, and concealed them among her ample robes-'Go! go! Escape from her! I will hide your jewels!'

'Ay, hide them, as mother earth does all things, in that all-embracing bosom. You will have doubled them before we meet again, no doubt. Farewell, mother!'

'But not for ever, Raphael! not for ever! Promise me, in the name of the four archangels, that if you are in trouble or danger, you will write to me, at the house of Eudaimon.'

'The little porter philosopher, who hangs about Hypatia's lecture-room?'

'The same, the same. He will give me your letter, and I swear to you, I will cross the mountains of Kaf, to deliver you!-I will pay you all back. By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I swear! May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not account to you for the last penny!'

'Don't commit yourself to rash promises, my dear lady. If I am bored with poverty, I can but borrow a few gold pieces of a rabbi, and turn pedler. I really do not trust you to pay me back, so I shall not be disappointed if you do not. Why should I?'

'Because-because-O G.o.d! No-never mind! You shall have all back. Spirit of Elias! where is the black agate? Why is it not among these?-The broken half of the black agate talisman!'

Raphael turned pale. 'How did you know that I have a black agate?'

'How did I? How did I not?' cried she, clutching him by the arm. 'Where is it? All depends on that! Fool!' she went on, throwing him off from her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her-'you have not given it to the heathen woman?'

'By the soul of my fathers, then, you mysterious old witch, who seem to know everything, that is exactly what I have done.'

Miriam clapped her hands together wildly. 'Lost! lost! lost! Not I will have it, if I tear it out of her heart! I will be avenged of her-the strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the simple go in, and know not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of h.e.l.l! G.o.d do so to me, and more also, if she and her sorceries be on earth a twelvemonth hence!'

'Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight! I only gave it her because she fancied the talisman upon it.'

'To enchant you with it, to your ruin!'

'Brute of a slave-dealer! you fancy every one as base as the poor wretches whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as much the children of h.e.l.l, if that be possible, as yourself!'

Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling. For an instant she felt for her poniard-and then burst into an agony of tears, hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from the room, as a crash and shout below announced the bursting of the door.

'There she goes with my jewels. And here come my guests, with the young monk at their head.-One rising when the other sets. A worthy pair of Dioscuri! Come, Bran!...Boys! Slaves! Where are you? Steal every one what he can lay his hands on, and run for your lives through the back gate.'

The slaves had obeyed him already. He walked smiling downstairs through utter solitude, and in the front pa.s.sage met face to face the mob of monks, costermongers and dock-workers, fishwives and beggars, who were thronging up the narrow entry, and bursting into the doors right and left; and at their head, alas! the young monk who had just trampled the necklace into the mud...no other, in fact, than Philammon.

'Welcome, my worthy guests! Enter, I beseech you, and fulfil, in your own peculiar way, the precepts which bid you not be over anxious for the good things of this life..For eating and drinking, my kitchen and cellar are at your service. For clothing, if any ill.u.s.trious personage will do me the honour to change his holy rags with me, here are an Indian shawl-pelisse and a pair of silk trousers at his service. Perhaps you will accommodate me, my handsome young captain, choragus of this new school of the prophets?'

Philammon, who was the person addressed, tried to push by him contemptuously.

'Allow me, sir. I lead the way. This dagger is poisoned,-a scratch and you are dead. This dog is of the true British breed; if she seizes you, red-hot iron will not loose her, till she hears the bone crack. If any one will change clothes with me, all I have is at your service. If not, the first that stirs is a dead man.'

There was no mistaking the quiet, high-bred determination of the speaker. Had he raged and bl.u.s.tered, Philammon could have met him on his own ground: but there was an easy self-possessed disdain about him, which utterly abashed the young monk, and abashed, too, the whole crowd of rascals at his heels.

'I'll change clothes with you, you Jewish dog!' roared a dirty fellow out of the mob.

'I am your eternal debtor. Let us step into this side room. Walk upstairs, my friends. Take care there, sir!-That porcelain, whole, is worth three thousand gold pieces: broken, it is not worth three pence. I leave it to your good sense to treat it accordingly. Now then, my friend!' And in the midst of the raging vortex of plunderers, who were s.n.a.t.c.hing up everything which they could carry away, and breaking everything which they could not, lie quietly divested himself of his finery, and put on the ragged cotton tunic, and battered straw hat, which the fellow handed over to him.

Philammon, who had had from the first no mind to plunder, stood watching Raphael with dumb wonder; and a shudder of regret, he knew not why, pa.s.sed through him, as he Saw the mob tearing down pictures, and das.h.i.+ng statues to the ground. Heathen they were, doubtless; but still, the Nymphs and Venuses looked too lovely to be so brutally destroyed... There was something almost humanly pitiful in their poor broken arms and legs, as they lay about upon the pavement.... He laughed at himself for the notion; but he could not laugh it away.