The anti-spiritual kind of immortality belonging to mummies may have
been congenial to Manetho's soul. Awful is that loneliness which even
the prospect of death has deserted, and which must prolong itself
throughout a lifeless and hopeless Forever! If Manetho could imagine
any bond of relationship between this perennial death's-head and
himself, no marvel that he cherished it jealously.
"You shall hear first about myself," said the priest; "yet, truly, I
know not how to begin! No mind can know another, nor even its own
essential secrets. My time has been full of visions and unrealities. I
am the victim of a thing which, for lack of a better name, I call
myself!"
"Not a rare sickness," remarked Balder.
"A ghost no spell can lay! It grasps the rudder, and steers towards
gulfs the will abhors. A crew of unholy, mutinous impulses fling
abroad words and thoughts unrecognizable. Not Manetho talked in the
blackness of that night; but a devil, to whom I listened shuddering,
unable to control him!"
"The Reverend Manetho Glyphie, my cousin by adoption,--and sometimes a
devil!" muttered Balder, musingly. "I had forgotten him."
People are more prone to err in fancying themselves righteous, than
the reverse; nevertheless, the course and limits of self-deception are
indefinite. It is within possibility for a man to believe himself
wicked, while his actual conduct is ridiculously blameless, even
praiseworthy! Although intending to mislead Balder, Manetho's
utterances were true to a degree unsuspected by himself. He was more
true than had he tried to be so, because truth lay too profound for
his recognition!
"A shallower man," he resumed, "would bear a grudge against the hand
that clutched his throat; but I own no relationship to the madman you
chastised. And there are deep reasons why I must set your father's son
above all other men in my regard."
"My father seldom spoke of you, and never as of an especial friend,"
interposed the ingenuous Balder.
"He knew not my feeling towards him, nor would he have comprehended
it. It is a thing I myself can scarce understand. To the outward eye
there is juster cause for hatred than for love.
"I will speak openly to you what has hitherto lain between my heart
and God. Before Thor saw your mother, I had loved her. My life's hope
was to marry her. Thor came,--and my hope lingered and died. For it,
was no resurrection." Here Manetho broke all at once into sobs,
covering his face with his hands; and when he continued, his voice was
softened with tears.
"Thor called her to him, and she gladly went. He stormed and carried
with ease the fortress which, at best, I could hope only slowly to
undermine. She loved him as women love a conqueror; she might have
yielded me, at most, the grace of a condescending queen. I kept
silence: to whom could I speak? I had felt great ambitions,--to become
honored and famous,--to preach the gospel as it had not yet been
preached,--all ambitions that a lover may feel. But the tree died for
lack of nourishment. See what is left!"
He opened out his arms with a gesture wanting neither in pathos nor
dignity. Balder could not but sympathize with what he felt to be a
genuine emotion.
"Amidst the ruins of my Memphis, I kept silence. I hated--myself! for
my powerlessness to keep her. In my hours of madness I hated her too,
and him; but that was madness indeed! Deeper down was a sanity that
loved him. Since he had made my love his, I must love him. So only
might I still love her. The only beauty left my ruins was that!
"She died; and with her would have died all sanity,--all love, but
that her children kept me back from worse ruin than was mine already.
They were a link to bind me to the good. Now Thor is dead, but still
his son--her son--survives. Hence is it that you are more to me than
other men."
"Did Doctor Glyphic know nothing of this?"
"I never told him of either my hope or my despair. My beloved master!
he lived and died without suspicion that I had striven to be a brother
as well as son to him."
"When did he die?"
"Eighteen years ago," said Manetho, solemnly. "You are the first to
whom his death has been revealed. Beloved master! have I not obeyed
thy will?" And he looked up to his master's parchment visage.
"I discovered his death for myself, you know," observed Helwyse. "But
it could not have been more than eighteen years since my father, then
on the point of departure for Europe, saw Hiero Glyphic alive!"
"Yes, yes! Did he ever tell you what passed in that interview?"
demanded Manetho, eagerly.
"Little more than a farewell, I think. There was some talk about the
estate. At my uncle's death, the house was to come to you, the
property to my father or his heirs. But neither expected at that time
that it was to be their last meeting."
"Was no one mentioned beside Thor's children and myself?" asked the
priest, looking askant at Balder as he spoke.
"No my uncle neither had nor expected children, as far as I know!"
"Thor did not see her,--Gnulemah?"
"Gnulemah?--how should he have seen her?" exclaimed Balder, in
surprise.
"Then her mystery remains!" said Manetho, looking up.
He had perhaps doubted whether any suspicion of who Gnulemah really
was had found its way to the young man's mind. The latter's reception
of his question reassured him. There could be no risk in catering to
his aroused curiosity. The account Manetho now gave was true, though
falsehood lurked in the pauses.
"That day Thor came, I left the house early in the morning. It was
night when I returned; and Thor was gone. The house was dark, and at
first there was no sound. But presently I heard the voice of a child,
murmuring and babbling baby words. I passed through the outer hall and
the conservatory, and came to where we now are. The lamp was burning
as it has burned ever since.
"I saw him lying on the altar steps,--lying so!" Marrying act to word,
the Egyptian slid down and lay prostrate at the altar's foot. "He was
dead and cold!" he added; and gave way to a shuddering outburst of
grief.
Balder's nerves were a little staggered at this tale with its
heightening of dramatic action and morbid circumstance; and he was
silent until the actor (if such he were) was in some degree
repossessed of himself. Then he asked,--
"What of the child?"
"I have named her Gnulemah. She played about the dead body, bright and
careless as the flame of the lamp. Whence she came she could not
tell, nor had I seen her before that day. It seemed that, at the
moment my master's life burned out, hers flamed up; and since that day
it has lighted and warmed my solitude."
"And Doctor Glyphic--"
"I embalmed him!" cried Manetho, clasping his hands in grotesque
enthusiasm. "It was my privilege and my consolation to render his body
immortal. In my grief I rejoiced at the opportunity of manifesting my
devotion. Not the proudest of the Pharaohs was more sumptuously
preserved than he! In that labor of love there was no cunning secret
of the art that I did not employ. Night and day I worked alone; and
while he lay in the long nitre bath, I watched or slept beside him.
Then I enwound him thousand-fold in finest linen smeared with fragrant
gum, and hid his beloved form in the coffin he had chosen long
before."
"Did my uncle choose this form of burial?"
"He lived in hopes of it! It was his wish that his body might be
disposed as became his name, and the passion that had ruled his life.
Me only did he deem worthy of the task, and equal to it. Had I died
before him, his fairest hope would have been blighted, his life a
failure!"
"A dead failure, truly!" muttered Balder, impelled by the very
grewsomeness of the subject to jest about it. "Was his loftiest
aspiration to mummy and be mummied?--But yours was a dangerous office
to fulfil, Cousin Manetho. Had the death got abroad, you might have
been suspected of foul play!"
"The cause was worth the risk," replied the other, sententiously.
Helwyse shot a keen look at his companion, but could discern in him
none of the common symptoms of guilt. The priest, however, was a mine
of sunless riddles, one lode connecting with another; it was idle
attempting to explore them all at once. So the young man recurred to
that vein which was of most immediate interest to himself.
"Have you no knowledge concerns Gnulemah's origin?" he inquired.
Manetho laid his long brown hand on Balder's arm.
"If she be not Gnulemah, daughter of fire, it must rest with you to
give her another name," said he.
"I care not who was her father or her mother," rejoined the lover,
after a short silence; "Gnulemah is herself!"
The lithe fingers on his arm clutched it hard for a moment, and
Manetho averted his face. When he turned again, his features seemed to
express exultation, mingled with a sinister flavor of some darker
emotion.
"Son of Thor, you have your father's frankness. Do you love her?"
"You saw that I loved her," returned Balder, his black eyes kindling
somewhat intolerantly.
"If I can hasten by one hour the consummation of that love, my life
will have been worth the living!"
"That's kindly spoken!" exclaimed Helwyse, heartily; and, opening his
strong white hand, he took the narrow brown one into its grasp. He had
not been prepared for so friendly a profession.
"When I have seen your soul tied to hers in a knot that even death may
not loosen,--and if it be permitted me to tie the knot, I shall have
drained the cup of earthly happiness!" He spoke with a deliberate
intensity not altogether pleasant to the ear. He would not relinquish
Balder's hand, as he continued in his high-strung vein,--
"I know at last for whom my flower has bloomed. Through the world,
across seas, by strange accidents has Providence brought you safe to
this spot; and has made you what you are, and her incomparable among
women.--You love her with heart and soul, Balder Helwyse?"
"So that the world seems frail; and I--except for my
love--insignificant!"
In the sudden emphasis of his question, Manetho had risen to his
feet; and Balder likewise had started up, before giving his reply. As
he spoke the words strongly forth, his swarthy companion seemed to
catch them in the air, and breathe them in. Slowly an expression of
joy, that could hardly be called a smile, welled forth from his long
eyes, and forced its way, with dark persistency of glee, through all
his face.
"By you only in the world would I have her loved!" he said; and
repeated it more than once.
He remained a full minute leaning with one arm on the altar, his eyes
abstracted. Then he said abruptly,--
"Why not be married soon?"
The lover looked up questioningly, a deep throb in his heart.
"Soon--soon!" reiterated Manetho. "Love is a thing of moments more
than of years. I know it! Do you stand idle while Gnulemah awaits you?
We may die to-morrow!"
"I have no right to hurry her," said Helwyse in a low voice. "She
knows nothing of the world. I would marry her to-morrow--"
"To-morrow! why not to-day? Why wait? that she may learn the
falsehoods of society,--to flirt, dress, gossip, crave flattery? Why
do you hesitate? Speak out, son of Thor!"
"I have spoken. Do you doubt me? Were it possible, she should be my
wife this hour!"
"Oh!" murmured Manetho, the incisiveness of his manner melting away
as suddenly as it came; "now have you proved your love. You shall be
made one,--one!--to-day. Four-and-twenty years ago this day, I married
your parents on this very spot. The anniversary shall become a double
one!"
The black eye-sockets of the mummy stared Balder in the face. But at a
touch from Manetho, he turned, and saw Gnulemah, bright with beautiful
enchantment, in the doorway.
"Yes, to-day!" he said impetuously.
"You shall wed her with that ring!" whispered the victorious tempter
in his ear. "Go to her; tell her what marriage is! I will call you
soon."
The lover went, and the woman, coming forward, sweetly met him
half-way. But glancing back again before passing out, Balder saw that
the priest had vanished; and the lamp, flickering above the mummy's
dry features, wrought them into a shadowy semblance of emotion.
XXIX.
A CHAMBER OF THE HEART.
Manetho neither sank through the granite floor, nor ascended in the
smoke of the lamp. He unlocked a door (to the panels of which the
clock was affixed, and which it concealed) and let himself into his
private study, a room scarce seven feet wide, though corresponding in
length and height with the dimensions of the outer temple. Books and
papers were kept here, and such other things of a private or valuable
nature as Manetho wished should be inaccessible to outsiders. Against
the wall opposite the door stood a heavy mahogany table; beside it, a
deep-bottomed chair, in which the priest now sat down.
The room was destitute of windows, properly so called. The walls were
full twenty feet high; and at a distance of some sixteen feet from the
floor, a series of low horizontal apertures pierced the masonry,
allowing the light of heaven to penetrate in an embarrassed manner,
and hesitatingly to reveal the interior. Viewed from without, these
narrow slits would be mistaken for mere architectural indentations. To
the inhabitant they were of more importance, contracted though they
were; and albeit one could not look out of them, they served as
ventilators, and to distinguish between fine and cloudy weather.
In his earlier and more active days, Manetho had lived and worked
throughout the whole extent of this study, and it had been kept clean
and orderly to its remotest corner. But as years passed, and the range
of his sympathies and activities narrowed, the ends of the room had
gradually fallen into dusty neglect, till at length only the small
space about the chair and table was left clear and available. The rest
was impeded by books, instruments of science, and endless chaotic
rubbish; while spiders had handed down their ever-broadening estates
from father to child, through innumerable Araneidæan generations. A
gray uniformity had thus come to overspread everything; and with the
exceptions of a cracked celestial globe, and the end of a worm-eaten
old ladder, there was nothing to catch the attention.
Here might the Egyptian indulge himself in whatever extravagances of
word or act he chose, secure from sight or hearing; and here had he
spent many an hour in such solitary exercises as no sane mind can
conceive. To him the room was thick with associations. Here had he
pursued his studies, or helped the Doctor in his erratic experiments
and research; here, with Helen in his thoughts, he had shaped out a
career,--not all of Christian humility and charity, perhaps, but at
least unstained by positive sin, and not unmindful of domestic
happiness. Here, again, had Salome visited him, bringing discord and
delight in equal parts; for at times, with the strong heat of youth,
he had vowed to love only her and to forsake ambition; and anon the
bloodless counsels of worldly power and welfare banished her with a
curse for having crossed his path. Head and heart were always at war
in Manetho. The talismanic diamond flashed or waned, and fiercely
wriggled the little fighting serpents.
At length Thor Helwyse's gauntlet was thrown into the ring; and
peace--if still present to outward seeming--abode not in the feverish
soul of the Egyptian. But it was his nature to dissemble. In this room
he had often outwatched the night, chewing the cud of his wrongs,
invoking vengeance upon the thwarter of his hopes, and swearing
through his teeth to even the balance between them. The black serpent
held the golden one helpless in his coils. The obtuse Doctor,
blundering in at morning, would find his adopted son with pallid
cheeks and glittering eyes, but ever ready with a smile and pleasant
greeting, obedience and help. Hiero Glyphic, however wayward and
cross-grained, never had cause to censure this creature of his,--to
remind him that he might have been food for crocodiles.
Manetho's dissimulation was almost without flaw. Even Helen, whose
fancy had played with him at first, but who in time had indolently
yielded to the fascination exerted over her, and even gone so far as
to permit his adulation, and accept in the ring the mystic pledge
thereof (during all the countless ages of its experience it had never
touched woman's hand before),--even she, when her lazy heart and
overbearing spirit were at length aroused and quelled by the voice
rather of a master than suitor, was deceived by forsaken Manetho's
unruffled face, gentle voice, and downcast eyes. She told herself that
his love had never dared be warmer than a kind of worship, like that
of a pagan for his idol, apart from human passion; such, at all
events, had been her understanding of his attentions. As to the ring,
it had been tendered as an offering at the shrine of abstract
womanhood; to return it too soon would imply a supposition of more
personal sentiment. Neither must Thor see it, however; his rough sense
would fail to appreciate her fine-drawn distinction. So she concealed
it in her bosom, and Manetho's serpents were ever between Thor and his
wife's heart. She was false both to husband and lover.
Great Thor, meanwhile, pitied the slender Egyptian, and in a kindly
way despised him, with his supple manners, quiet words, and religious
studies. To the young priest's timid yet earnest request for
permission to pronounce the marriage-service of him and his bride,
Thor assented with gruff heartiness.
"Marry us? Of course! marry us as fast as you can, if it gives you any
pleasure, my friend of the crocodile. A good beginning for your
ministerial career,--marrying a couple who love each other as much as
Nell and I do. Eh, Nellie?"
The ceremony over, Manetho had retired to his study, and there passed
the night,--their marriage-night! What words and tones, what twistings
of face and body, did those passionless walls see and hear? How the
smooth, studious, submissive priest yearned for power to work his will
for one day! And as the cool, still morning sheared the lustre from
his lamp-flame, how desolate he felt, with his hatred and despair and
blaspheming rage! Evil passions are but poor company, in the early
morning.
But was not Salome left him? The only sincerely tender words he had
ever spoken to woman had been said to her: his humblest and happiest
thoughts had been born of their early acquaintance,--before he had
raised his eyes to the proud and languid mistress. Yet on her only did
the evil passions of Manetho wreak themselves in harm and wrong; her
only, on a later day, did he dastardly strike down. Poor Salome had
given him her heart. These walls had seen their meetings.
Years afterwards, Manetho had here embalmed his foster-father:
through long hours had he labored at his hateful task, with curious
zest and conscientiousness. As regarded the strange place of
sepulture, the Egyptian had perhaps imagined a symbolic fitness in
enclosing his human immortal in the empty shell of time. Over this
matter of Hiero Glyphic's death and burial, however, must ever brood a
cloud of mystery. Undoubtedly Manetho loved the man,--but death was
not always the worst of ills in Manetho's philosophy.
The clock had been affixed to the study door both as an additional
concealment, and possibly as a congenial sentry over the interior
associations. Since then the place had become the clergyman's almost
daily resort. Pacing the contracted floor, sitting moodily in the
chair,--many a brooding hour had gone over his barrenly busy head, and
written its darkening record in his book of life. Here had been
schemed that plan of revenge, whose insanity the insane schemer could
not perceive. Nor could he understand that mightier powers than he
could master worked against him, and even used his efforts to bring
forth contrary results.
But not all hours had passed so. Spaces there had been wherein evil
counsels had retired to a cloudy background, athwart which had
brightened a rainbow, intangible, whose source was hidden, but whose
colors were true before his eyes. The grace and aerial beauty of
sunshine lightened through the rain,--the pleasing loveliness of
essential life was projected on the gloom of evil imaginations. For
Manetho's actual deeds were apt to be prompted by far gentler
influences than governed his theories. The man was better than his
mind: and goodness, perhaps, bears an absolute blessing; insomuch that
the sinner, doing ignorant good, yet feels the benefit thereof; just
as the rain, however dismal, cannot prevent the sun from making
rainbows out of it.
On this particular morning Manetho sank into his deep-seated chair,
and was quite still. A great part of what had hitherto made his daily
life ended here. The activity of existence was over for him. Thought,
feeling, hope, could live hereafter only as phantoms of memory. But to
look back on evil done is not so pleasant as to plan it; the dead body
of a foe moves us in another way than his living hostile person.
When, therefore, Manetho should have hurled to its mark the
long-poised spear, he would have little to look forward to. That one
moment of triumph must repay, both for what had been and was to come.
To-day of all his days, then, must each sense and faculty be in
exquisite condition. Unseasonably enough, however, he found himself in
a perversely dull and callous state. Could Providence so cajole him as
to mar the only joyful hour of his life! Then better off than he were
savages, who could destroy their recusant idols. But nothing short of
spiritual suicide would have destroyed the idol of Manetho!
He was wearing to-day the same priestly robe which he had put on when,
for the first and last time, he performed a ministerial duty. In this
robe had he married Helen to Thor. Itself a precious relic of
antiquity, it had once dignified the shoulders of a contemporary of
Manetho's remotest ancestors. Old Hiero Glyphic had counted it amongst
his chiefest treasures; and on his sister's wedding-day had produced
it from its repository, insisting that the minister should wear it
instead of the orthodox sacerdotal costume. Since then it had lain
untouched till to-day.
Manetho brooded over the dim magnificence of its folds, sitting amidst
the cobwebbed rubbish, a narrow glint of sunshine creeping
slope-downwards from the crevice above his head. He smoothed the
fabric abstractedly with his hand, recalling the thoughts and scenes
of four-and-twenty years ago.
"I joined them in the holy bonds of matrimony,--read over them that
service, those sacred words heavy with solemn benediction. Rich,
smooth, softly modulated was my voice, missing not one just emphasis
or melodious intonation. Ah! had they seen my soul. But my eyes were
half closed like the crocodile's, yet never losing sight of the two I
was uniting in sight of God and man. The Devil too was there. He
turned the blessings my lips uttered into blighting curses, that fell
on the happy couple like pestilential rain!
"Laughable! Covered head to foot with curses, and felt them not! All
was smiles, blushes, happiness, forward-looking to a long, joyful
future. They knelt before me; I uplifted my hands and invoked the last
blessing,--the final curse! My heart burned, and the smoke of its fire
enveloped bride and groom, fouling his yellow beard, and smirching her
silvery veil; shutting out heaven from their prayers, and blackening
their path before them. They neither felt nor knew. They kissed,--I
saw their lips meet,--as Balder and Gnulemah to-day. Then I covered my
face and seemed to be in prayer!
"Gnulemah,--I hate her!--yes, but hatred sometimes touches the heart
like love. I love her!--to marry her? Woe to him who becomes her
husband! As a daughter?--no daughter is she of mine!--I hate her,
then.
"Why am I childless?--how would I have loved a child! I would have
left all else to love my child! I would have been the one father in
the world! My life should have been full of love as it has been of
hate. Why did not God send me a wife and a daughter?"
Men's ears have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles.
But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen. One may object
that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the
question, "Whence your ignorance and deafness?" what shall be the
answer?
In Manetho's case it appears to have been the venerable robe that took
on itself the task of remonstrance.