Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face Part 55

'My daughter! And have you given up all hope? So soon disheartened! What! Is this paltry accident to sweep away the purposes of years? Orestes remains still faithful. His guards have orders to garrison the house for as long as we shall require them.'

'Send them away, then. I have done no wrong, and I fear no punishment.'

'You do not know the madness of the mob; they are shouting your name in the streets already, in company with Pelagia's.'

Hypatia shuddered. Her name in company with Pelagia's! And to this she had brought herself!

'I have deserved it! I have sold myself to a lie and a disgrace! I have stooped to truckle, to intrigue! I have bound myself to a sordid trickster! Father! never mention his name to me again! I have leagued myself with the impure and the bloodthirsty, and I have my reward! No more politics for Hypatia from henceforth, my father; no more orations and lectures; no more pearls of Divine wisdom cast before swine. I have sinned in divulging the secrets of the Immortals to the mob. Let them follow their natures! Fool that I was, to fancy that my speech, my plots, could raise them above that which the G.o.ds had made them!'

'Then you give up our lectures? Worse and worse! We shall be ruined utterly!'

'We are ruined utterly already. Orestes? There is no help in him. I know the man too well, my father, not to know that he would give us up to-morrow to the fury of the Christians were his own base life-even his own baser office-in danger.'

'Too true-too true! I fear,' said the poor old man, wringing his hands in perplexity. 'What will become of us,-of you, rather? What matter what happens to the useless old star-gazer? Let him die! To-day or next year is alike to him. But you, you! Let us escape by the ca.n.a.l. We may gather up enough, even without these jewels, which you refuse, to pay our voyage to Athens, and there we shall be safe with Plutarch; he will welcome you-all Athens will welcome you-we will collect a fresh school-and you shall be Queen of Athens, as you have been Queen of Alexandria!'

'No, father. What I know, henceforth I will know for myself only. Hypatia will be from this day alone with the Immortal G.o.ds!'

'You will not leave me?' cried the old man, terrified.

'Never on earth!' answered she, bursting into real human tears, and throwing herself on his bosom. 'Never-never! father of my spirit as well as of my fles.h.!.+-the parent who has trained me, taught me, educated my soul from the cradle to use her wings!-the only human being who never misunderstood me-never thwarted me-never deceived me!'

'My priceless child! And I have been the cause of your ruin!'

'Not you!-a thousand times not you! I only am to blame! I tampered with worldly politics. I tempted you on to fancy that I could effect what I so rashly undertook. Do not accuse yourself unless you wish to break my heart! We can be happy together yet.-A palm-leaf hut in the desert, dates from the grove, and water from the spring-the monk dares be miserable alone in such a dwelling, and cannot we dare to be happy together in it?'

'Then you will escape?'

'Not to-day. It were base to flee before danger comes. We must hold out at our post to the last moment, even if we dare not die at it like heroes. And to-morrow I go to the lecture-room,-to the beloved Museum, for the last time, to take farewell of my pupils. Unworthy as they are, I owe it to myself and to philosophy to tell them why I leave them.'

'It will be too dangerous-indeed it will!'

'I could take the guards with me, then. And yet-no.... They shall never have occasion to impute fear to the philosopher. Let them see her go forth as usual on her errand, strong in the courage of innocence, secure in the protection of the G.o.ds. So, perhaps, some sacred awe, some suspicion of her divineness, may fall on them at last.'

'I must go with you.'

'No, I go alone. You might incur danger where I am safe. After all, I am a woman.... And, fierce as they are, they will not dare to harm me.'

The old man shook his head.

'Look now,' she said smilingly, laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking into his face.... 'You tell me that I am beautiful, you know; and beauty will tame the lion. Do you not think that this face might disarm even a monk?'

And she laughed and blushed so sweetly, that the old man forgot his fears, as she intended that he should, and kissed her and went his way for the time being, to command all manner of hospitalities to the soldiers, whom he prudently determined to keep in his house as long as he could make them stay there; in pursuance of which wise purpose he contrived not to see a great deal of pleasant flirtation between his valiant defenders and Hypatia's maids, who, by no means so prudish as their mistress, welcomed as a rare boon from heaven an afternoon's chat with twenty tall men of war.

So they jested and laughed below, while old Theon, having brought out the very best old wine, and actually proposed in person, by way of mending matters, the health of the Emperor of Africa, locked himself into the library, and comforted his troubled soul with a tough problem of astronomy, which had been haunting him the whole day, even in the theatre itself. But Hypatia sat still in her chamber, her face buried in her hands, her heart full of many thoughts; her eyes of tears. She had smiled away her father's fears; she could not smile away her own.

She felt, she hardly knew why, but she felt as clearly as if a G.o.d had proclaimed it to her bodily ears, that the crisis of her life was come: that her political and active career was over, and that she must now be content to be for herself, and in herself alone, all that she was, or might become. The world might be regenerated: but not in her day;-the G.o.ds restored; but not by her. It was a fearful discovery, and yet hardly a discovery. Her heart had told her for years that she was hoping against hope,-that she was struggling against a stream too mighty for her. And now the moment had come when she must either be swept helpless down the current, or, by one desperate effort, win firm land, and let the tide roll on its own way henceforth.... Its own way?.... Not the way of the G.o.ds, at least; for it was sweeping their names from off the earth. What if they did not care to be known? What if they were weary of wors.h.i.+p and reverence from mortal men, and, self-sufficing in their own perfect bliss, recked nothing for the weal or woe of earth? Must it not be so? Had she not proof of it in everything which she beheld? What did Isis care for her Alexandria? What did Athens care for her Athens?.... And yet Homer and Hesiod, and those old Orphic singers, were of another mind.... Whence got they that strange fancy of G.o.ds counselling, warring, intermarrying, with mankind, as with some kindred tribe?

'Zeus, father of G.o.ds and men.'.... Those were words of hope and comfort.... But were they true? Father of men? Impossible!-not father of Pelagia, surely. Not father of the base, the foul, the ignorant.... Father of heroic souls, only, the poets must have meant.... But where were the heroic souls now? Was she one? If so, why was she deserted by the upper powers in her utter need? Was the heroic race indeed extinct? Was she merely a.s.suming, in her self-conceit, an honour to which she had no claim? Or was it all a dream of these old singers? Had they, as some bold philosophers had said, invented G.o.ds in their own likeness, and palmed off on the awe and admiration of men their own fair phantoms?.... It must be so. If there were G.o.ds, to know them was the highest bliss of man. Then would they not teach men of themselves, unveil their own loveliness to a chosen few, even for the sake of their own honour, if not, as she had dreamed once, from love to those who bore a kindred flame to theirs?....What if there were no G.o.ds? What if the stream of fate, which was sweeping away their names; were the only real power? What if that old Pyrrhonic notion were the true solution of the problem of the Universe? What if there were no centre, no order, no rest, no goal-but only a perpetual flux, a down-rus.h.i.+ng change? And before her dizzying brain and heart arose that awful vision of Lucretius, of the homeless Universe falling, falling, falling, for ever from nowhence toward nowhither through the unending ages, by causeless and unceasing gravitation, while the changes and efforts of all mortal things were but the jostling of the dust-atoms amid the everlasting storm....

It could not be! There was a truth, a virtue, a beauty, a n.o.bleness, which could never change, but which were absolute, the same for ever. The G.o.d-given instinct of her woman's heart rebelled against her intellect, and, in the name of G.o.d, denied its lie.... Yes,-there was virtue, beauty.... And yet-might not they, too, be accidents of that enchantment, which man calls mortal life; temporary and mutable accidents of consciousness; brilliant sparks, struck out by the clas.h.i.+ng of the dust-atoms? Who could tell?

There were those once who could tell. Did not Plotinus speak of a direct mystic intuition of the Deity, an enthusiasm without pa.s.sion, a still intoxication of the soul, in which she rose above life, thought, reason, herself, to that which she contemplated, the absolute and first One, and united herself with that One, or, rather, became aware of that union which had existed from the first moment in which she emanated from the One? Six times in a life of sixty years had Plotinus risen to that height of mystic union, and known himself to be a part of G.o.d. Once had Porphyry attained the same glory. Hypatia, though often attempting, had never yet succeeded in attaining to any distinct vision of a being external to herself; though practice, a firm will, and a powerful imagination, had long since made her an adept in producing, almost at will, that mysterious trance, which was the preliminary step to supernatural vision. But her delight in the brilliant, and, as she held, divine imaginations, in which at such times she revelled, had been always checked and chilled by the knowledge that, in such matters, hundreds inferior to her in intellect and in learning,-ay, saddest of all, Christian monks and nuns, boasted themselves her equals,-indeed, if their own account of their visions was to be believed, her superiors-by the same methods which she employed. For by celibacy, rigorous fasts, perfect bodily quiescence, and intense contemplation of one thought, they, too, pretended to be able to rise above the body into the heavenly regions, and to behold things unspeakable, which nevertheless, like most other unspeakable things, contrived to be most carefully detailed and noised abroad.... And it was with a half feeling of shame that she prepared herself that afternoon for one more, perhaps one last attempt, to scale the heavens, as she recollected how many an illiterate monk and nun, from Constantinople to the Thebaid, was probably employed at that moment exactly as she was. Still, the attempt must be made. In that terrible abyss of doubt, she must have something palpable, real; something beyond her own thoughts, and hopes, and speculations, whereon to rest her weary faith, her weary heart.... Perhaps this time, at least, in her extremest need, a G.o.d might vouchsafe some glimpse of his own beauty .... Athene might pity at last.... Or, if not Athene, some archetype, angel, demon.... And then she shuddered at the thought of those evil and deceiving spirits, whose delight it was to delude and tempt the votaries of the G.o.ds, in the forms of angels of light. But even in the face of that danger, she must make the trial once again. Was she not pure and spotless as Athene's self? Would not her innate purity enable her to discern, by an instinctive antipathy, those foul beings beneath the fairest mask? At least, she must make the trial....

And so, with a look of intense humility, she began to lay aside her jewels and her upper robes. Then, baring her bosom and her feet, and shaking her golden tresses loose, she laid herself down upon the conch, crossed her hands upon her breast, and, with upturned ecstatic eyes, waited for that which might befall.

There she lay, hour after hour, as her eye gradually kindled, her bosom heaved, her breath came fast: but there was no more sign of life in those straight still limbs, and listless feet and hands, than in Pygmalion's ivory bride, before she bloomed into human flesh and blood. The sun sank towards his rest; the roar of the city grew louder and louder without; the soldiers revelled and laughed below: but every sound pa.s.sed through unconscious ears, and went its way unheeded. Faith, hope, reason itself, were staked upon the result of that daring effort to scale the highest heaven. And, by one continuous effort of her practised will, which reached its highest virtue, as mystics hold, in its own suicide, she chained down her senses from every sight and sound, and even her mind from every thought, and lay utterly self-resigned, self-emptied, till consciousness of time and place had vanished, and she seemed to herself alone in the abyss.

She dared not reflect, she dared not hope, she dared not rejoice, lest she should break the spell.... Again and again had she broken it at this very point, by some sudden and tumultuous yielding to her own joy or awe; but now her will held firm.... She did not feel her own limbs, hear her own breath.... A light bright mist, an endless network of glittering films, coming, going, uniting, resolving themselves, was above her and around her.... Was she in the body or out of the body?.... ...............

The network faded into an abyss of still clear light.... A still warm atmosphere was around her, thrilling through and through her .... She breathed the light, and floated in it, as a mote in the mid-day beam.... And still her will held firm. ...............

Far away, miles, and aeons, and abysses away, through the interminable depths of glory, a dark and shadowy spot. It neared and grew.... A dark globe, ringed with rainbows.... What might it be? She dared not hope.... It came nearer, nearer, nearer, touched her.... The centre quivered, flickered, took form-a face. A G.o.d's? No-Pelagia's.

Beautiful, sad, craving, reproachful, indignant, awful.... Hypatia could bear no more: and sprang to her feet with a shriek, to experience in its full bitterness the fearful revulsion of the mystic, when the human reason and will which he has spurned rea.s.sert their G.o.d-given rights; and after the intoxication of the imagination, come its prostration and collapse.

And this, then, was the answer of the G.o.ds! The phantom of her whom she had despised, exposed, spurned from her! 'No, not their answer-the answer of my own soul! Fool that I have been! I have been exerting my will most while I pretended to resign it most! I have been the slave of every mental desire, while I tried to trample on them! What if that network of light, that blaze, that globe of darkness, have been, like the face of Pelagia, the phantoms of my own imagination-ay, even of my own senses? What if I have mistaken for Deity my own self? What if I have been my own light, my own abyss?.... Am I not my own abyss, my own light-my own darkness?' And she smiled bitterly as she said it, and throwing herself again upon the couch, buried her head in her hands, exhausted equally in body and in mind.

At last she rose, and sat, careless of her dishevelled locks, gazing out into vacancy. 'Oh for a sign, for a token! Oh for the golden days of which the poets sang, when G.o.ds walked among men, fought by their side as friends! And yet.... are these old stories credible, pious, even modest? Does not my heart revolt from them? Who has shared more than I in Plato's contempt for the foul deeds, the degrading transformations, which Homer imputes to the G.o.ds of Greece? Must I believe them now? Must I stoop to think that G.o.ds, who live in a region above all sense, will deign to make themselves palpable to those senses of ours which are whole aeons of existence below them? Degrade themselves to the base accidents of matter? Yes! That, rather than nothing!.... Be it even so. Better, better, better, to believe that Ares fled shrieking and wounded from a mortal man-better to believe in Zeus's adulteries and Hermes's thefts-than to believe that G.o.ds have never spoken face to face with men! Let me think, lest I go mad, that beings from that unseen world for which I hunger have appeared, and held communion with mankind, such as no reason or sense could doubt-even though those beings were more capricious and baser than ourselves! Is there, after all, an unseen world? Oh for a sign, a sign!'

Haggard and dizzy, she wandered into her 'chamber of the G.o.ds'; a collection of antiquities, which she kept there rather as matters of taste than of wors.h.i.+p. All around her they looked out into vacancy with their white soulless eyeb.a.l.l.s, their dead motionless beauty, those cold dreams of the buried generations. Oh that they could speak, and set her heart at rest! At the lower end of the room stood a Pallas, completely armed with aegis, spear, and helmet; a gem of Athenian sculpture, which she had bought from some merchants after the sack of Athens by the Goths. There it stood severely fair; but the right hand, alas! was gone; and there the maimed arm remained extended, as if in sad mockery of the faith of which the body remained, while the power was dead and vanished.

She gazed long and pa.s.sionately on the image of her favourite G.o.ddess, the ideal to which she had longed for years to a.s.similate herself; till-was it a dream? was it a frolic of the dying sunlight? or did those lips really bend themselves into a smile?

Impossible! No, not impossible. Had not, only a few years before, the image of Hecate smiled on a philosopher? Were there not stories of moving images, and winking pictures, and all the material miracles by which a dying faith strives desperately-not to deceive others-but to persuade itself of its own sanity? It had been-it might be-it was-!

No! there the lips were, as they had been from the beginning, closed upon each other in that stony self-collected calm, which was only not a sneer. The wonder, if it was one, had pa.s.sed: and now-did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes round that Medusa's head upon the s.h.i.+eld all writhing, grinning, glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with terror into their own likeness?

No! that, too, pa.s.sed. Would that even it had stayed, for it would have been a sign of life! She looked up at the face once more: but in vain-the stone was stone; and ere she was aware, she found herself clasping pa.s.sionately the knees of the marble.

'Athene! Pallas! Adored! Ever Virgin! Absolute reason, springing unbegotten from the nameless One! Hear me! Athene! Have mercy on me! Speak, if it be to curse me! Thou who alone wieldest the lightnings of thy father, wield them to strike me dead, if thou wilt; only do something!-something to prove thine own existence-something to make me sure that anything exists beside this gross miserable matter, and my miserable soul. I stand alone in the centre of the universe! I fall and sicken down the abyss of ignorance, and doubt, and boundless blank and darkness! Oh, have mercy! I know that thou art not this! Thou art everywhere and in all things! But I know that this is a form which pleases thee, which symbolises thy n.o.bleness! T know that thou hast deigned to speak to those who-Oh! what do I know? Nothing! nothing! nothing!

And she clung there, bedewing with scalding tears the cold feet of the image, while there was neither sign, nor voice, nor any that answered.

On a sudden she was startled by a rustling near; and, looking round, saw close behind her the old Jewess.

'Cry aloud!' hissed the hag, in a tone of bitter scorn; 'cry aloud, for she is a G.o.ddess. Either she is talking, or pursuing, or she is on a journey; or perhaps she has grown old, as we all shall do some day, my pretty lady, and is too cross and lazy to stir. What! her naughty doll will not speak to her, will it not? or even open its eyes, because the wires are grown rusty? Well, we will find a new doll for her, if she chooses.'

'Begone, hag! What do you mean by intruding here?' said Hypatia, springing up; but the old woman went on coolly-

'Why not try the fair young gentleman over there?' pointing to a copy of the Apollo which we call Belvedere-'What is his name? Old maids are always cross and jealous, you know. But he-he could not be cruel to such a sweet face as that. Try the fair young lad! Or, perhaps, if you are bashful, the old Jewess might try him for you?'

These last words were spoken with so marked a significance, that Hypatia, in spite of her disgust, found herself asking the hag what she meant. She made no answer for a few seconds, but remained looking steadily into her eyes with a glance of fire, before which even the proud Hypatia, as she had done once before, quailed utterly, so deep was the understanding, so dogged the purpose, so fearless the power, which burned within those withered and shrunken sockets.

'Shall the old witch call him up, the fair young Apollo, with the beauty-bloom upon his chin? He shall come! He shall come! I warrant him he must come, civilly enough, when old Miriam's finger is once held up.'

'To you? Apollo, the G.o.d of light, obey a Jewess?'

'A Jewess? And you a Greek?' almost yelled the old woman. 'And who are you who ask? And who are your G.o.ds, your heroes, your devils, you children of yesterday, compared with us? You, who were a set of half-naked savages squabbling about the siege of Troy, when our Solomon, amid splendours such as Rome and Constantinople never saw, was controlling demons and ghosts, angels and archangels, princ.i.p.alities and powers, by the ineffable name? What science have you that you have not stolen from the Egyptians and Chaldees? And what had the Egyptians which Moses did not teach them? And what have the Chaldees which Daniel did not teach them? What does the world know but from us, the fathers and the masters of magic-us, the lords of the inner secrets of the universe! Come, you Greek baby-as the priests in Egypt said of your forefathers, always children, craving for a new toy, and throwing it away next day-come to the fountainhead of all your paltry wisdom! Name what you will see, and you shall see it!'