up, Helwyse found that the doorway led in through a pair of green
folding-doors to some place unseen. The house had an air of villanous
respectability,--a gambling-house air, or worse. Did the musician live
there? Helwyse paused but a moment, and then walked on; and thus,
sagacious reader, the meeting was for the second time put off.
When he reached his hotel, he had only half an hour to dress for
dinner in; but he prepared himself faultlessly, chanting a sort of
hymn to Appetite the while. "Hunger," quoth he, "is mightiest of
magicians; breeds hope, energy, brains; prompts to love and
friendship. Hunger gives day and night their meaning, and makes the
pulse of time beat; creates society, industry, and rank. Hunger moves
man to join in the work of creation,--to harmonize himself with the
music of the universe,--to feel ambition, joy, and sorrow. Hunger
unites man to nature in the ever-recurring inspiration to food,
followed by the ever-alternating ecstasy of digestion. Morning tunes
his heart to joy, for the benison of breakfast awaits him. The sun
scales heaven to light him to his noonday meal. Evening wooes him
supperwards, and night brings timeless sleep, to waft him to another
dawn. Eating is earth's first law, and heaven itself could not subsist
without it!"
So Balder Helwyse and the cook feasted gloriously that afternoon, in
the back pantry, and they solemnly installed the partridges among the
constellations!
VII.
A QUARREL.
That same afternoon Mr. MacGentle put his head into the outer office
and said, "Mr. Dyke, could I speak with you a moment?"
Mr. Dyke scraped back his chair and went in, with his polished bald
head, and square face and figure,--a block of common-sense. He was
more common-sensible than usual, that afternoon, because he had so
strangely forgotten himself in the morning. Mr. MacGentle was in his
usual position for talking with his confidential clerk,--standing up
with his back to the fireplace, and his coat-tails over his arms.
Experience had taught him that this attitude was better adapted than
any other to sustain the crushing weight of Mr. Dyke's sense. To have
conversed with him in a sitting position would have been to lose
breath and vitality before the end of five minutes.
"Mr. Helwyse has thoughts of settling in Boston to practise his
profession," began the President, gently. "I told him you would be
likely to know what the chances are."
"Profession is--what?" demanded Mr. Dyke, settling his fist on his
hip.
"O--doctor--physician; eye-doctor, he said, I think."
"Eye-doctor? Well, Dr. Schlemm won't last the winter; may drop any
day. Just the thing for Mr. Helwyse,--Dr. Helwyse." And the subject,
being discussed at some length between the two gentlemen, took on a
promising aspect. His house was picked out for the new incumbent, his
earnings calculated, his success foretold. Two characters so diverse
as were the President and his clerk united, it seems, in liking the
young physician.
"Married?" asked Mr. Dyke, after a pause.
"Why, no,--no; and he doesn't seem inclined to marry. But he is quite
young; perhaps he may, later on in life, Mr. Dyke."
The elderly clerk straightened his mouth. "Matter of taste--and
policy. Gives solidity,--position;--and is an expense and a
responsibility." Mr. Dyke himself was well known to be the husband of
an idolized wife, and the father of a despotic family.
"He never had the advantage of woman's influence in his childhood, you
know. His poor mother died in giving him and his sister birth; and the
sister was lost,--stolen away, two or three years later. He does not
appreciate woman at her true value," murmured MacGentle.
"Stolen away? His sister died in infancy,--so I understood, sir,"
said the clerk, whose versions of past events were apt to differ from
the President's.
But the President--perhaps because he was conscious that his memory
regarding things of recent occurrence was treacherous--was abnormally
sensitive as to the correctness of his more distant reminiscences.
"O no, she was stolen,--stolen by her nurse, just before Thor Helwyse
went to Europe, I think," said he.
"Beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Dyke, with an iron smile;
"died,--burnt to death in her first year,--yes, sir!"
"Mr. Dyke," rejoined MacGentle, dignifiedly, lifting his chin high
above his stock, "I have myself seen the little girl, then in her
third year, pulling her brother's hair on the nursery floor. She was
dark-eyed,--a very lovely child. As to the burning, I now recollect
that when the house in Brooklyn took fire, the child was in danger,
but was rescued by her nurse, who herself received very severe
injuries."
Mr. Dyke heaved a long, deliberate sigh, and allowed his eyes to
wander slowly round the room, before replying.
"You are not a family man, Mr. MacGentle, sir! Don't blame you, sir!
Your memory, perhaps--But no matter! The nurse who stole the child
was, I presume, the same who rescued her from the fire?"
Mr. Dyke perhaps intended to give a delicately ironical emphasis to
this question, but his irony was apt to be a rather unwieldy and
unmistakable affair. The truth was, he was a little staggered by the
President's circumstantial statement; whence his deliberation, and his
not entirely pertinent rejoinder about "a family man."
"And why not the same, sir? I ask you, why not the same?" demanded Mr.
MacGentle, with slender imperiousness.
But, by this time, Mr. Dyke had thought of a new argument.
"The little girl, I understood you to say, was dark? Since she was the
twin-sister of one of Mr. Balder Helwyse's complexion, that is odd,
Mr. MacGentle,--odd, sir." And the solid family man fixed his sharp
brown eyes full upon the unsubstantial bachelor. The latter's delicate
nostrils expanded, and a pink flush rose to his faded cheeks. He was
now as haughty and superb as a paladin.
"I will discuss business subjects with my subordinates, Mr. Dyke; not
other subjects, if you please! This dispute was not begun by me. Let
it be carried no further, sir! Twins are not necessarily, nor
invariably, of the same complexion. Let nothing more be said, Mr.
Dyke. I trust the little girl may yet be found and restored to her
family--to--to her brother! I trust she may yet be found, sir!" And he
glared at Mr. Dyke aggressively.
"I trust you may live to see it, Mr. MacGentle, sir!" said the
confidential clerk, shifting his ground in a truly masterly manner;
and before the President could recover, he had bowed and gone out. Ten
minutes afterwards MacGentle opened the door, and lo! Dyke himself on
the threshold.
"Mr. Dyke!"
"Mr. MacGentle!" in the same breath.
"I--Mr. Dyke, let me apologize for my asperity,--for my rudeness,"
says MacGentle, stepping forward and holding out his thin white hand,
his eyebrows more raised than ever, the corners of his mouth more
depressed. "I am sincerely sorry that--that--"
"O sir!" cries the square clerk, grasping the thin hand in both his
square palms; "O sir! O sir! No, no!--no, no! I was just coming to beg
you--My fault,--my fault, Mr. MacGentle, sir! No, no!"
Thus incoherently ended the quarrel between these two old friends, the
dispute being left undecided. But the important point was established
that Balder Helwyse was insured a practice in Boston, in case his
uncle Glyphic's fortune failed to enrich him.
VIII.
A COLLISION IMMINENT.
A large, handsome steamer was the "Empire State," of the line which
ran between Newport and New York. She was painted white, had
walking-beam engines, and ornamented paddle-boxes, and had been known
to run nearly twenty knots in an hour. On the evening of the
twenty-seventh of May, in the year of which we write, she left her
Newport dock as usual, with a full list of passengers. On getting out
of the harbor, she steamed into a bank of solid fog, and only got out
of it the next morning, just before passing Hellgate, at the head of
East River, New York. On the passage down Long Island Sound she met
with an accident. She ran into the schooner Resurrection, which was
lying becalmed across her course, carrying away most of the schooner's
bowsprit, but doing no serious damage. This, however, was not the
worst. On arriving in New York, it was found that one of the
passengers was missing! He had fallen overboard during the night,
possibly at the time of the collision.
Balder Halwyse was on board. After dining with the cook, and smoking
a real Havana cigar (probably the first real one that he had ever been
blessed with), he put a package of the same brand in his
travelling-bag, bade his entertainer,--who had solemnly engaged to
remain in Boston for Mr. Helwyse's sole sake,--bade his
fellow-convivialist good by, and took the train to Newport, and from
there the "Empire State" for New York.
The darkness was the most impenetrable that the young man had ever
seen; Long Island Sound was like a pocket. The passengers--those who
did not go to their state-rooms at once--sat in the cabin reading, or
dozing on the chairs and sofas. A few men stayed out on deck for an
hour or two, smoking; but at last they too went in. The darkness was
appalling. The officer on the bridge blew his steam fog-whistle every
few minutes, and kept his lanterns hung out; but they must have been
invisible at sixty yards.
Helwyse kept the deck alone. Apparently he meant to smoke his whole
bundle of cigars before turning in. He paced up and down,
Napoleon-like in his high boots, until finally he was brought to a
stand by the blind night-wall, which no man can either scale or
circumvent. Then he leaned on the railing and looked against the
darkness. Not a light to be seen in heaven or on earth! The water
below whispered and swirled past, torn to soft fragments by the
gigantic paddle-wheel. Helwyse's beard was wet and his hands sticky
with the salt mist.
Ever and anon sounded the fog-whistle, hoarsely, as though the fog had
got in its throat; and the pale glare of a lantern, fastened aloft
somewhere, lighted up the white issuing steam for a moment. There was
no wind; one was conscious of motion, but all sense of direction and
position--save to the steersman--was lost. Helwyse could see the red
end of his cigar, and very cosey and friendly it looked; but he could
see nothing else.
It is said that staid and respectable people, when thoroughly steeped
in night, will sometimes break out in wild grimaces and outlandish
gesticulations. It is certainly the time when unlawful thoughts and
words come to men most readily and naturally. Night brings forth many
things that daylight starts from. The real power of darkness lies not
in merely baffling the eyesight, but in creating the feeling of
darkness in the soul. The chains of light are broken, and we can
almost believe our internal night to be as impenetrable to God's eyes
as that external, to our own!
By and by Helwyse thought he would find some snug place and sit down.
The cabin of the "Empire State" was built on the main deck, abaft the
funnel, like a long, low house. Between the stern end of this house
and the taffrail was a small space, thickly grown with camp-stools.
Helwyse groped his way thither, got hold of a couple of the
camp-stools, and arranged himself comfortably with his back against
the cabin wall. The waves bubbled invisibly in the wake beneath. After
sitting for a while in the dense blackness, Helwyse began to feel as
though his whole physical self were shrivelled into a single atom,
careering blindly through infinite space!
After all, and really, was he anything more? If he chose to think not,
what logic could convince him of the contrary? Visible creation, as
any child could tell him, was an illusion,--was not what it seemed to
be. But this darkness was no illusion! Why, then, was it not the only
reality? and he but an atom, charged with a vital power of so-called
senses, that generally deceived him, but sometimes--as now--let him
glimpse the truth? The fancy, absurd as it was, had its attraction for
the time being. This great living, staring world of men and things is
a terrible weight to lug upon one's back. But if man be an invisible
atom, what a vast, wild, boundless freedom is his! Infinite space is
wide enough to cut any caper in, and no one the wiser.
One would like to converse with a man who had been born and had lived
in solitude and darkness. What original views he would have about
himself and life! Would he think himself an abstract intelligence,
out of space and time? What a riddle his physical sensations would be
to him! Or, suppose him to meet with another being brought up in the
same way; how they would mystify each other! Would they learn to feel
shame, love, hate? or do the passions only grow in sunshine? Would
they ever laugh? Would they hatch plots against each other, lie,
deceive? Would they have secrets from each other?
But, fancy aside, take a supposable case. Suppose two sinners of our
daylight world to meet for the first time, mutually unknown, on a
night like this. Invisible, only audible, how might they plunge
profound into most naked intimacy,--read aloud to each other the
secrets of their deepest hearts! Would the confession lighten their
souls, or make them twice as heavy as before? Then, the next morning,
they might meet and pass, unrecognizing and unrecognized. But would
the knot binding them to each other be any the less real, because
neither knew to whom he was tied? Some day, in the midst of friends,
in the brightest glare of the sunshine, the tone of a voice would
strike them pale and cold.
Somewhat after this fashion, perhaps, did Helwyse commune with
himself. He liked to follow the whim of the moment, whither it would
lead him. He was romantic; it was one of his agreeablest traits,
because spontaneous; and he indulged it the more, as being confident
that he had too much solid ballast in the hold to be in danger of
upsetting. To-night, at this point of his mental ramble, he found that
his cigar had gone out. Had he been thinking aloud? He believed not,
and yet there was no telling; he often did so, unconsciously. Were it
so, and were any one listening, that person had him decidedly at
advantage!
What put it into his head that some one might be listening? It may
have come by pure accident,--if there be such a thing. The idea
returned, stealing over his mind like a chilling breath. What if some
one had all along been close beside him, with eyes fixed upon him!
Helwyse found himself sitting perfectly still, holding his breath to
listen. There was no disguising it,--he felt uneasy. He wished his
cigar had not gone out. On second thoughts, he wished there had not
been any cigar at all, because, if any one were near, the cigar must
have pointed out the smoker's precise position. The uneasiness did not
lessen, but grew more defined.
It was like the sensation felt when pointed at by a human finger, or
stared at persistently. Was there indeed any one near? No sound or
movement gave answer, but the odd sensation continued. Helwyse fancied
he could now tell whence it came;--from the left, and not far away. He
peered earnestly thitherward, but his eyes only swallowed blackness.
Was not this carrying a whim to a foolish length? If he thought he
had a companion, why not speak, and end the doubt? But the dense
silence, darkness, uncertainty, made common-sense seem out of place.
The whole black fog, the sea, the earth itself, seemed to be pressing
down his will! The longer he delayed, the weaker he grew.
A slight shifting of his position caused him all at once to encounter
the eyes of the unseen presence with his own! The stout-nerved young
fellow was startled to the very heart. Was the unseen presence
startled also? At all events, the shock found Balder Helwyse his
tongue, seldom before tied up without his consent.
"I hope I'm not disturbing your solitude. You are not a noisy
neighbor, sir."
So flat fell the words on the blank darkness, it seemed as if there
could never be a reply. Nevertheless, a reply came.
"You must come much nearer me than you are, to disturb my solitude. It
does not consist in being without a companion."
The quality of this voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old,
yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the
invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the
elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft,
fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a
slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The
utterance, though somewhat rapid, was carefully distinct.
Helwyse had the gift of familiarity,--of that rare kind of familiarity
which does not degenerate into contempt. But there was an incongruity
about this person, hard to assimilate. In a couple of not very
original sentences, he had wrought upon his listener an effect of
depraved intellectual power, strangely combined with artless
simplicity,--an unspeakably distasteful conjunction! Imagination,
freed from the check of the senses, easily becomes grotesque; and
Helwyse, unable to see his companion, had no difficulty in picturing
him as a grisly monster, having a satanic head set upon the ingenuous
shoulders of a child. And what was Helwyse himself? No longer, surely,
the gravely humorous moralizer? The laws of harmony forbid! He is a
monster likewise; say--since grotesqueness is in vogue--the heart of
Lucifer burning beneath the cool brain of a Grecian sage. The
symbolism is not inapt, since Helwyse, while afflicted with pride and
ambition as abstract as boundless, had, at the same time, a logical,
fearless brain, and keen delight in beauty.
"I was just thinking," remarked the latter monster, "that this was a
good place for confidential conversation."
"You believe, then, that talking relieves the mind?" rejoined the
former, softly.
"I believe a thief or a murderer would be glad of an hour--such as now
passes--to impart the story of what is dragging him to Hell. And even
the best houses are better for an airing!"
"A pregnant idea! There are certainly some topics one would like to
discuss, free from the restraint that responsibility imposes. Have you
ever reflected on the subject of omnipotence?"
Somewhat confounded at this bold question, Helwyse hesitated a moment.
"I can't see you, remember, any more than you can see me," insinuated
the voice, demurely.
"I believe I have sometimes asked myself whether it were
obtainable,--how it might best be approximated," admitted Helwyse,
cautiously; for he began to feel that even darkness might be too
transparent for the utterance of some thoughts.
"But you never got a satisfactory answer, and are not therefore
omnipotent? Well, the reason probably is, that you started wrongly.
Did it ever occur to you to try the method of sin?"
"To obtain omnipotence? No!"
"It wouldn't be right,--eh?" chuckled the voice. "But then one must
lay aside prejudice if one wants to be all-powerful! Now, sin denotes
separation; the very etymology of the word should have attracted the
attention of an ambitious man, such as you seem to be. It is a path
separate from all other paths, and therefore worth exploring."
"It leads to weakness, not to power!"
"If followed in the wrong spirit, very true. But the wise man sins and
is strong! See how frank I am!--But don't let me monopolize the
conversation."
"I should like to hear your argument, if you have one. You are a
prophet of new things."
"Sin is an old force, though it may be applied in new ways. Well, you
will admit that the true sinner is the only true reformer and
philosopher among men? No? I will explain, then. The world is full of
discordances, for which man is not to blame. His endeavor to meet and
harmonize this discordance is called sin. His indignation at disorder,
rebellion against it, attempts to right it, are crimes! That is the
vulgar argument which wise men smile at."
"I may be very dull; but I think your explanations need explaining."
"We'll take some examples. What is the liar, but one who sees the
false relations of things, and seeks to put them in the true? The
mission of the thief, again, is to equalize the notoriously unjust
distribution of wealth. A fundamental defect in the principles of
human association gave birth to the murderer; and as for the
adulterer, he is an immortal protest against the absurd laws which
interfere between the sexes. Are not these men, and others of similar
stamp, the bulwarks of true society,--our leaders towards justice and
freedom?"
Whether this were satire, madness, or earnest, Helwyse could not
determine. The night-fog had got into his brain. He made shift,
however, to say that the criminal class were not, as a mere matter of
fact, the most powerful.
"Again you misapprehend me," rejoined the voice, with perfect suavity.
"No doubt there are many weak and foolish persons who commit
crimes,--nay, I will admit that the vast majority of criminals are
weak and foolish; but that does not affect the dignity of the true
sinner,--he who sins from exalted motives. Ignorance is the only real
crime, polluting deeds that, wisely done, are sublime. Sin is
culture!"
"Were I, then, from motives of self-culture, to kill you, I should be
taking a long step towards rising in your estimation?" put in Helwyse.
"Admirable!" softly exclaimed the voice, in a tone as of an approving
pat on the back. "Certainly, I should be the last to deny it! But
would it not be more for the general good, were I, who have long been
a student of these things, to kill a seeming novice like you? It
would assure me of having had one sincere disciple."
"I wonder whether he's really mad?" mused Balder Helwyse, shuddering a
little in the dampness.
"But, badinage aside," resumed this loquacious voice, "although there
is so much talk and dispute about evil, very few people know what evil
essentially is. Now, there are some things, the mere doing of which by
the most involuntary agent would at once stamp his soul with the
conviction of ineffable sin. He would have touched the essence of
evil. And if a wise man has done that, he has had in his hand the key
to omnipotence!"
"It is easily had, then. A man need but take his Leviticus and
Deuteronomy, and run through the catalogue of crimes. He would be sure
of finding the key hidden beneath some of them."
"No; you do Moses scant justice. He--shrewd soul!--was too cunning to
fall into such an error as that. He forbade a few insignificant and
harmless acts, which every one is liable to commit. His policy was no
less simple than sagacious. By amusing mankind with such trumpery, he
lured them off the scent of true sin. Believe me, the artifice was no
idle one. Should mankind learn the secret, a generation would not pass
before the world would be turned upside down, and its present Ruler
buried in the ruins!"
At this point, surely, Helwyse got up and went to his state-room
without listening to another word?--Not so. The Lucifer in him was
getting the better of the sage. He wanted to hear all that the voice
of darkness had to say. There might be something new, something
instructive in it. He might hear a word that would unbar the door he
had striven so long to open. He aimed at knowledge and power beyond
recognized human reach. He had taken thought with himself keenly and
deeply, but was still uncertain and unsatisfied. Here opened a new
avenue, so untried as to transcend common criticism. The temptation to
omnipotence is a grand thing, and may have shaken greater men than
Helwyse; and he had trained himself to regard it--not exactly as a
temptation. As for good or bad methods,--at a certain intellectual
height such distinctions vanish. Vulgar immorality he would turn from
as from anything vulgar; but refined, philosophic immorality, as a
weapon of power,--there was fascination in it.
--Folly and delusion!--
But Helwyse was only Helwyse, careering through pitchy darkness, on a
viewless sea, with a plausible voice at his ear insinuating villanous
thoughts with an air of devilish good-fellowship!