drank with her whose chamber our guest now occupies; and once with
another--" Manetho paused. "I never speak her name, Nurse; but we
loved each other. I did not treat her well!" He murmured with a sigh,
tears in his eyes. "Were she here to-night, at her feet would I sue
for pardon,--the renewal of our love. By my soul!" he cried, suddenly,
"I had thought to drink a far different toast; but let this glass be
drained to the memory of the sweet moments she and I have known
together! Drink!"
He tossed off the wine. But poor Nurse, strangely agitated, dropped
hers on the floor; the precious liquor was spilled, and the glass
shivered. She gazed beseechingly at Manetho. Could he not penetrate
that mask to the face behind it? Is flesh so miserably opaque that no
spark of the inwardly burning soul can make itself felt or seen
without? Manetho saw only the broken glass and its wasted contents!
"You are as clumsy as you are ugly!" said he, "Go back to your corner.
I must converse with my violin."
She returned heavily to her place, feeling the darker and colder
because that wine had been spilled before she could raise it to her
lips. One taste, she fancied, might have begun a transformation in her
life! But we know not the weight of the chains we lay upon our limbs.
The Egyptian's buoyant humor had dismissed the whole matter in another
moment. He opened his violin-case, lovingly caressing the instrument
as he took it out. Then he tucked it fondly under his chin, and
resumed his walking. The delicately potent wine warbled through his
nerves, and tinted memory with imagination.
The bow, traversing the strings, drew forth from them a sweet and
plaintive note, like the tender remonstrance of a neglected friend. No
language says so much in so short space as music, nor will, till we
banish those dead bones, consonants, and adopt the pure vowel speech
of infants and angels.
"Ay, long have we been apart, my beloved one, and much have I needed
thee!" murmured Manetho. "I yearned for thy soothing and refreshing
voice; yea, death walked near me, because thou, my preserver, wast not
by to guard me. But, rejoice! all is again well with us,--the hour of
our triumph is near!"
The fine instrument responded, carolling forth an exquisite pæan,--an
ascending scale, mounting to a breathless ecstasy, and falling in
slower melody along gliding waves of fortunate sound. The player drank
each perfect note, till his pulses beat in unison with the rhythm. His
violin and he were wedded lovers since his youth, nor had discord ever
come between them.
"Two little children weaving flower-chains for each other in the
grass. I said, 'The one that first comes to me shall be mine!' And the
little maiden arose, leaving her brother among the flowers. So one was
taken and the other left. But, behold! the brother has come to play
with his sister once more!"
Again the music--a divine philosopher's stone--touched the theme into
fine-spun golden harmony. The dusky kitchen, with its one dull lamp
glimmering on the table, broadened with marble floors, and sprang
aloft in airy arches! Twinkling stars hung between the columns,
burning with a fragrance like flowers. It was a summer morning, just
before sunrise. The clear faces of children peeped from violet-strewn
recesses where they had passed the night; and, as their sweet eyes
met, they shouted for joy, and ran to embrace one another.
"Oh! my beloved," softly burst forth the Egyptian, "how blessed are we
to-night!" He touched the strings to a measured tune, following with a
minuet-step up and down the floor. A fantastic spectacle! for as he
passed and repassed the lamp, an elastic shadow crept noiselessly
behind him, dodged beneath his feet, and anon outstretched itself like
a sudden pit yawning before him. "This night repays the dreary years
that lie behind. How have I outlasted them! What had I fallen on the
very threshold of requital?--all I had hoped and labored for, a
failure!"
Here paused the tune and the dance, and arose a weird dirge of
compassion over what might have been! So moving was it, the player
himself was melted. His dark nature showed its fairest side,--sensitive
refinement, grace of expression, flowing ease of manner. Quick was he in
fancy, emotional, soft and strong, gentle and fiery. In this hour he
bloomed, like some night-flowering plant, of perfume sweet but
poisonous. This was Manetho's apogee!
Again his humor changed, and he became playful and frivolous. Had old
Nurse in the corner been little more personable, he might have caught
her round the waist, and forced her to tread a wild measure with him.
But this unfolding of his faculties in the shower of good fortune had
refined his æsthetic susceptibility. The withered, disfigured woman
was no partner for him!
She sat, following, with the intentness of her single eye, his every
motion, her head swaying in unconscious sympathy. Although her body
sat so stiff and awkward in the chimney-seat, her spirit, inspired
with the grace of love, was dancing with Manetho's. But the body kept
its place, knowing that erelong he too must come to rest. In the light
of a vivid recollection, the long tract between fades and
foreshortens, till only the Then and the Now are notable. However, the
light will pale, the dusty miles outstretch their length once more,
and the pilgrim find himself wearier than ever.
But meanwhile the clergyman floats hither and thither like a wreath of
black smoke blown about by a draught of air. One might have expected
to see him all at once vanish up the wide-mouthed chimney. The music
seems to emanate less from the instrument than from the player; it
interprets and colors every motion and expression. His chanting and
his playing answer and supplement each other, like strophe and
antistrophe.
"Let me tell thee why I rejoice, that thy sympathy may increase my
joy!
"A beautiful woman, young, a fountain of fresh life, an ivory vase
filled with earthly flowers. The eye that gazes on her form is taken
captive; yea, her face intoxicates the senses. But she is poisonous, a
queen of death, and her feet walk towards destruction!
"Supple and strong is she as the serpent, quick and graceful as the
panther. Food has she for nourishment, for the warming of the blood;
exercises for the body, to keep her healthful and fair. Her triumph is
in the flesh,--she finds it perfect. The flesh she deems divine,--the
earth, a heaven!
"Books, the world of men,--she knows not: sees in herself Creation's
cause and centre; in God, but the myriad reflex of her beauty. Self is
her God, whom she worships in thunder and lightning, in sun and stars,
in fire and water. Dreaming and waking are alike real to her: she
knows not to divide truth from falsehood.
"Whom should she thank for health, for life and birth? She is born of
the fire that burns in her own bosom. To her is nothing lawful nor
unlawful. No tie binds her soul to salvation. A fair ship is she, but
rudderless, and the wind blows on the rocks. Let God save her if He
will--and can!"
The inspiration of the Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame
beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of
the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness.
From this point, however, his rapture somewhat abated, and he began to
descend towards prose, his music clothing him downwards.
"As for me, I have bowed down before her, pampering her insolent
majesty, preserving her poison to rancor first in her father's heart.
Of him, death robbed me; but the son,--the brother is left. Even death
spared brother and sister to each other!
"A handsome man! worthy to stand by her. Never fairer couple sprang
from one stem. They love each other,--and shall love!--more than ever
brother and sister loved before. But they shall be bound by a tie so
close that the mere tie of blood hangs loose beside it! Then shall
night come down on them,--a night no rising sun shall ever chase away.
In that; darkness will I speak--"
This devilish monologue ended abruptly here. The faithful instrument,
whose responsive sympathy had failed him, jarringly snapped a string!
A sting of anguish pricked through Manetho's every nerve. His
fictitious buoyancy evaporated like steam,--he barely made shift to
totter to a chair. Laying the violin with tremling hands on the table,
his head dropped on his arms beside it; and there was a long, feverish
silence.
At length he raised his haggard face, and, supporting it upon his
hands, he gazed at the figure in the chimney-corner; and began, in a
tone sullen and devoid of animation as November rain,--
"Why did you force yourself upon me?--not for Gnulemah's sake, I
think. Not for money,--you had none. Not for love of me either, I
fancy,--grisly harpy!
"Once I suspected you of being a spy. You walked among pitfalls then!
But what spy would sit for eighteen years without speech or movement?
You have been useful too. No one could have filled your place,--with
your one eye and dumb mouth!
"Did you hate Thor? were you my secret ally against him? But how could
you fathom my purposes enough even to help me? And what wrong has he
done you terrible enough for such revenge as mine? What human being,
except Manetho, could hold an unwavering purpose so many years? Have
you never pitied or relented? Sometimes I have almost wavered myself!
"What name and history have you buried, and never shown me? Why have
you spent your dumb life in this seclusion? You are a mystery,--yet a
mystery of my own making! I might as wisely dissect my violin to find
where lurks the music. A mass of wood and strings,--the music is from
me!
"Have you a thought of preventing the scheme I spoke of to-night?" The
Egyptian leaned far across the table, the better to scrutinize the
unanswering woman's face. Her eye met his with a steady intelligence
that disconcerted him.
"Are you a woman?" he muttered, drawing back, "and have you no pity on
the children whom you nursed in their infancy?--not any pity! as
implacable--almost more implacable than I? But think of her beauty and
innocence,--for is she not innocent as yet? Would you see her forever
ruined,--and stretch forth no saving hand?" Nurse moved her head up
and down, as in slow, deliberate assent. Manetho, beholding the
reflection in her of his own moral deformity, was filled with
abhorrence!
"More hideous within than without,--you demon! come to haunt me and
make me wicked as yourself. It was you snapped the chord of my
music,--that better spirit which had till then saved me from your
spells! My evil genius! I know you now, though never until this
moment."
This madman was not the first sinner who, happening to catch an
outside glimpse of his interior grime, has tried to cheat his scared
conscience by an outcry of "Devil!--devil!" Is there not a touch of
pathos in the vanity of the situation? For the cry is in part sincere;
no man can be so wholly evil, while in this world, as quite to divorce
the better angel from his soul. But alas! for the poor righteous
indignation.
XXVII.
PEACE AND GOOD-WILL.
Balder Helwyse, dumfounded before the revelation of the clock, might
have stared himself into imbecility, had not he heard his name spoken
in sweet human music, and, turning, beheld Gnulemah peeping through
the doorway down the hall.
There was no great distance between them, yet she seemed immeasurable
spaces away. Against the bright background of the conservatory her
form stood dark, the outlines softened by semi-transparent edges of
drapery. But the dull red lamplight lit duskily up the folds of her
robe, her golden ornaments, and the black tarns, her eyes. She
appeared to waver between the light of heaven and the lurid gloom of
heaven's opposite.
Balder came hastily towards her, waving her back. He was
superstitiously anxious that she should return unshadowed to the clear
outer sunshine, instead of joining him in this tomb of dead bones and
darkness. Darkness might indeed befriend his own imperfections; but
should Gnulemah be dimmed to soothe his vanity?
Such emblematic fancies are common to lovers, whose ideal passion
tends always to symbolism. But to those who have never loved, it will
be enough to say that the young man felt an instinctive desire to
spare Gnulemah the ugly spectacle in the clock, and was perhaps not
unwilling to escape from it himself!
She awaited him, in the bright doorway, like an angel come to lead him
to a better world. "Do not leave me any more!" she said, putting her
hand in his. "You did not do the thing you thought. Let us be
together, and dream no more such sadness!"
"Is her innocence strong enough to protect her against that sinful
deluge of confession I poured out upon her?" thought Helwyse, glancing
at her face. "Has it fallen from her harmless, like water from a
bird's breast? And am I after all no murderer?"
Doubt nor accusation was in her eyes, but soft feminine faith. Her
eyes,--rather than have lost the deep intelligence of their dark
light, Balder would have consented to blotting from heaven its host of
stars! Through them shone on him,--not justice, but the divine
injustice of woman's love. That wondrous bond, more subtile than
light, and more enduring than adamant, had leagued her to him.
Consecrated by the blessing of her trust, he must not dare distrust
himself. If the past were blindly wrong, she was the God-given clew to
guide him right.
An unspeakable tenderness melted them both,--him for what he
received, her for what she gave. The rich bud of their love bloomed at
once in full, fragrant stateliness. Their hearts, left unprotected by
their out-opened arms, demanded shelter, and found it in nestling on
each other. Heaven touched earth in the tremulous, fiery calm of their
meeting lips,--magnets whose currents flowed from the mysterious poles
of humanity.
At such moments--the happiest life counts but few--angels draw near,
but veil their happy eyes. Spirits of evil grind their teeth and
frown; and, for one awful instant, perceive their own deformity!
Before yet that dear embrace had lasted an eternity, the man felt the
woman shiver in his arms. The celestial heights and spaces dwindled,
the angelic music fainted. Heaven rolled back and left them alone on
earth. Manetho stood on the threshold between the sphinxes, wearing
such a smile as God has never doomed us to see on a child's face!
To few men comes the opportunity of facing in this life those whom
they believed they had put out of it. One might expect the palpable
assurance of the victim's survival would electrify the fancied
murderer. But to Balder's mind, his personal responsibility could not
be thus lightened; and any emotion of selfish relief was therefore
denied him. On the other hand, such inferences as he had been able to
draw from things seen and heard were not to Manetho's advantage. While
he could not but rejoice to have been spared actually hurrying a soul
from the life of free will to an unchangeable eternity, yet his
dominant instinct was to man himself for the hostile issues still to
arise. He looked at the being through whom his own life had received
so dark a stain with stern, keen eyes.
Gnulemah remained within the circle of her lover's arm. She seemed but
little interested in Manetho's appearance, save in so far as he
invaded the sanctity of her new immortal privilege. She had never
known anxiety on his account; he had never appealed to her feeling for
himself. If she loved him, it was with an affection unconscious
because untried. She had shivered in Balder's embrace at the moment of
the Egyptian's presence, but before having set eyes on him. Had the
nearness of his discordant spirit--his familiar face unseen--made her
conscious of an evil emanation from him, else unperceived?
Manetho, to do him justice, assumed anything but a hostile attitude.
His pleasure at seeing the pair so well affected towards each other
was plainly manifested. He clasped his hands together, then extended
them with a gesture of benediction and greeting, and came forward. His
swarthy face, narrowing from brow to chin, if it could not be frank
and hearty, at least expressed a friendliness which it had been
ungracious to mistrust.
"Yes, son of Thor, I live! God has been merciful to both of us. Let
one who knew your father take your hand. Believe that whatever I have
felt for him, I now feel for you,--and more!"
The speaker had cast aside the fashionable clothes which he was in the
habit of wearing during his journeys abroad, probably with a view to
guard against being conspicuous, and was clad in antique priestly
costume. A curiously figured and embroidered robe fell to his feet,
and was confined at the waist by a long girdle, which also passed
round his shoulders, after the manner of a Jewish ephod. It invested
him with a dignity of presence such as ordinary garments would not
have suggested. This, combined with the unexpectedly pacific tone of
his address (its somewhat fantastic formality suiting well with that
of his appearance), was not without effect on Balder. He gave his hand
with some cordiality.
"Yours, also?" continued the other, addressing Gnulemah with an
involuntary deference that surprised her lover. She complied, as a
princess to her subject. This incident seemed to indicate their
position relatively to each other. Had the wily Egyptian played the
slave so well, as finally in good earnest to have become one?
The three stood for a moment joined in a circle, through which what
incongruous passions were circulating! But Gnulemah soon withdrew the
hand held by Manetho, and sent it to seek the one clasped by Balder.
The priest turned cold, and stepped back; and, after an appearance of
mental struggle, said huskily,--
"Hiero is forgotten; you are all for the stranger!"
"You never told me who lived beyond the wall," returned Gnulemah, with
simple dignity; and added, "You are no less to me than before, but
Balder is--my love!" The last words came shyly from her lips, and she
swayed gently, like a noble tree, towards him she named.
Manetho's lips worked against each other, and his body twitched. He
was learning the difference between theory and practice,--dream and
fact. His subtle schemes had been dramas enacted by variations of
himself. No allowance had been made for the working of spirit on
spirit; even his special part had been designed too narrowly, with but
a single governing emotion, whereas he already found himself assailed
by an anarchic host of them.
"Gnulemah!" he cried at length, "my study,--my thought,--my
purpose,--body of my hopes and prayers!" He knelt and bowed himself at
her feet, in the Oriental posture of worship, and went on with rising
passion:--"My secrets have bloomed in thy beauty,--been music in thy
voice,--darkened in thine eyes! O my flower--fascinating,
terrible!--the time is ripe for the gathering, for the smelling of the
perfume, for the kissing of the petals! I must yield thee up, O my
idol! but in thy hand are my life and my reason,--yea, Gnulemah, thou
art all I am!"
The tears, gestures, voice, with which Manetho thus delivered himself,
shocked the Northern taste of Helwyse. Through the semi-scriptural,
symbolic language, he fancied he could discern a basis of materialism
so revolting that the man of the world--the lover now!--listened with
shame and anger. Here was a professed worshipper of Gnulemah, who
ascribed to her no nobler worth than to be the incarnation of his own
desires and passions! It was abject self-idolatry, thought Balder,
masquerading as a lofty form of idealization.
The priest's mind was in a more complex condition than Balder
imagined. His absorption in Gnulemah, if only as she was the
instrument of his dominant purpose, must have been complete; the
success (as he deemed it) of his life was staked on her. But, in
addition to this, the unhappy man had, unwittingly, and with the
vehemence of his ill-ordered nature, grown to love the poison-draught
brewed for his enemy! When the enemy's lips touched the cup, did
Manetho first become aware that it brimmed with the brewer's own
life-blood!
Yet it might have been foreseen. He loved her, not because she was
identified with his aims, nor even because she was beautiful, but (and
not inconsistently with his theoretical belief in her devilishness)
because she was pure and true. Under the persuasion that he was
influencing her nature in a manner only possible, if at all, to a
moral and physical despot, he had himself been ruled by her stronger
and loftier spirit. The transcendent cunning on which he had prided
himself, as regarded his plan of educating Gnulemah, had amounted to
little more than imbecile inaction.
As Manetho prostrated himself, and even touched the hem of Gnulemah's
robe to his forehead, Balder looked to see her recoil; but she
maintained a composure which argued her not unused to such homage. So
much evil (albeit unintentionally) had the Egyptian done her, that she
could suffer, while she slighted, his worship. Yet, in the height of
her proud superiority to him, she turned with sweet submission to her
lover, and, obedient to his whisper, gathered up her purple mantle and
passed through the green conservatory to her own door, through which,
with a backward parting glance at her master, she superbly vanished.
Balder had disliked the scene throughout, yet his love was greater
than before. An awe of the woman whose innate force could command a
nature like this priest's seemed to give his passion for her a more
vigorous fibre.
The two men were now left alone to come to what understanding they
might. Manetho rose to his feet, obliquely eying Helwyse, and spoke
with the manner and tone of true humility,--
"You have seen me in my weakness. I am but a broken man, Balder
Helwyse."
"We had better speak the plain truth to each other," said Balder,
after a pause. "You can have no cause to be friendly to me. I cannot
extenuate what I did. I think I meant to kill you."
"You were not to blame!" exclaimed the other, vehemently, holding up
his hands. "You had to deal with a madman!"
"It is a strange train of chances has brought us together again; it
ought to be for some good end. I came here unawares, and, but for this
ring, should not have known that we had met before."
"I lie under your suspicion on more accounts than one," observed
Manetho, glancing in the other's face. "I have assumed your uncle's
name, and the disposal of his property; and I have concealed his
death; but you shall be satisfied on all points. The child, too,
Gnulemah!--I have kept her from sight and knowledge of the world, but
not without reason and purpose, as you shall hear. Ah! I am but a
poor broken man, liable, as you have seen, to fits of madness and
extravagance. You shall hear everything. And listen,--as a witness
that I shall speak truth, I will say my say before the face of Hiero
Glyphic yonder, and upon the steps of his altar! See, I desire neither
to palliate nor falsify. Shall we go in?"
With some repugnance Helwyse followed the priestly figure through the
low-browed door, He had seen too much of men to allow any instinctive
aversion to influence him, in the absence of logical evidence. And
this man's words sounded fair; his frank admission of occasional
insanity accounted for many anomalies. Nevertheless, and apart from
any question of personal danger, Balder felt ill at ease, like animals
before a thunder-storm. As he sat down beside his companion on the
steps of the black altar, and glanced up at the yellow visage that
presided over it, he tried to quiet his mind in vain; even the thought
of Gnulemah yielded a vague anxiety!
XXVIII.
BETROTHAL.
The ring, which Balder had taken off with the intention of returning
it to its owner, still remained between his thumb and finger; and as
he sat under the gloom of the altar, its excellent brilliancy caught
his eye. He had never examined it minutely. It was pure as virtue, and
possessed similar power to charm the dusky air into seven-hued beauty.
A fountain of lustre continually welled up from its interior, like an
exhaustless spring of wisdom. From amidst the strife of the little
serpents it shone serenely forth, with, divine assurance of
good,--eternal before the battle began, and immortal after it should
cease. The light refreshed the somewhat jaded Helwyse, and during the
ensuing interview he ever and anon renewed the draught.