"Gnulemah, if not your daughter, might, however, have stood you in
place of one; and she would have done you just as much good, in the
way of softening and elevating your nature, as though she had been the
issue of your own loins. You have turned the milk and honey of your
life into gall and wormwood; and I wish I could feel sure that only
you would get the benefit of it!"
The reproof had as well been spared; it is doubtful whether the
culprit heard so much as a word of it. His reverie rambled on.
"Keen,--that Balder! he half suspects me. Had I not so hurried him to
a conclusion, he would have questioned me too closely. He shall know
all presently, even as I promised him!--shall hear a sounder guess at
Gnulemah's genealogy than was made to-day.
"Do I love her?--only as the means to my end! The end once gained, I
shall hate her as I do him. But not yet,--and therefore must I love
him as well as her. They shall be, to-day, my beloved children!
To-morrow,--how shall I endure till to-morrow,--all the night
through? O Gnulemah!--
"They love each other well,--seem made to make each other happy; yet
have they come together from the ends of the earth to be each other's
curse! Only if I keep silence might it be otherwise, for love might
tame the devil that I have bred in Gnulemah. Even now she seems more
angel than devil!--Am I mad?"
He straightened himself in his chair, and glanced up towards the
crevice whence slanted the dusty sunshine. The old robe took the
opportunity to deliver its final warning.
"Not yet mad beyond remedy, Manetho; but you look up too seldom at the
sunshine, and brood too often over your own dusty depths. You have had
no consciously unselfish thought during the last quarter of a century.
You eat, drink, and breathe only Manetho! This room is yours, because
it is fullest of rubbish, and least looks out upon the glorious
universe. Break down your walls! take broom in hand without delay!
Proclaim at once the crime you meditate. Go! there is still sunshine
in this dust-hole of yours, and more of heaven in every man than he
himself dreams of. The sun is passing to the other side. Go while it
shines!"
But Manetho's dull ears heard not; and the aged garment of truth spoke
no more.
XXX.
DANDELIONS.
It seems a pity that, with all imagination at our service, we should
have to confine our excursions within so narrow a domain as this of
Hiero Glyphic's. One tires of the best society, uncondimented with an
occasional foreign relish, even of doubtful digestibility. Barring
this, it only remains to relieve somewhat the monotony of our food, by
variety in the modes of dishing it up.
Balder had been no whit disconcerted at the priest's abrupt
evanishment. The divine sphere of Gnulemah had touched him with its
sweet magnetism, and he was sensible of little beyond it. Their hands
greeted like life-long friends. Drawing hers within his arm, he still
kept hold of it, and her rounded shoulder softly pressed his, as they
loitered out between the impenetrable sphinxes. The conservatory,
however beautiful in itself and by association, was too small to hold
their hearts at this moment. They passed on, and through the columns
of the Moorish portico, into the fervent noon sunshine.
Grasshoppers chirped; fine buzzing flies darted swift circles and lit
again; birds giggled and gossiped, bobbing and swinging among swaying
boughs. Battalions of vast green trees stood grand in shadow-lakes of
cooler green, their myriad leaves twinkling light and dark. Tender
gleams of river topped the enamelled bank,--the further shore a
slumbering El Dorado. The trees in the distant orchard wore bridal
veils, and even Gnulemah's breath was not much sweeter than theirs!
Emerging arm in arm on the enchanted lawn the lovers turned southwards
up the winding avenue. The fragrance, the light and warmth, the bird
and insect voices, imperfectly expressed their own heart-happiness.
The living turf softly pressed up their feet. This was the fortunate
hour that comes not twice. Happy those to whom it comes at all! To
live was such full bliss, every new movement overflowed the cup. Joy
was it to look on earth and sky; but to behold each other was heaven!
More life in a moment such as this, than in twenty years of scheming
more successful than Manetho's.
They followed the same path Helen had walked the eve of her death; and
presently arrived at the old bench. Shadow and sunshine wrestled
playfully over it, while the green blood of the leaves overhead glowed
vividly against the blue. Around the bench the grass grew taller, as
on a grave; and crisp lichens, gray and brown, overspread its surface.
Man had neglected it so long that Nature, overcoming her diffidence
towards his handiwork, had at length claimed it for her own.
The glade was full of great golden dandelions, whose soft yellow
crowns were almost too heavy for the slender necks. The prince and
princess of the fairy-tale paused here, recognizing the spot as the
most beautiful on earth,--albeit only since their love's arrival. They
seated themselves not on the bench, but on the yet more primitive
grass beside it. They had not spoken as yet. Balder plucked some
dandelions, and proceeded to twist them into a chain; and Gnulemah,
after watching him for a while followed his example.
"You and I have sat on the grass and woven such chains before,"
asserted she at length. "When was it?"
"I haven't done such a thing since I was a child not much taller than
a dandelion," returned Balder. He was not ethereal enough to follow
Gnulemah in her apparently fanciful flight, else might he have lighted
on a discovery to which all the good sense and logic in the world
would not have brought him.
"Yes; we have made these chains before!" reiterated Gnulemah, looking
at her companion in a preoccupied manner. "They were to have chained
us together forever."
"We should have made them of stronger stuff then. But which of us
broke the chain?"
"They took us away from each other, and it was never finished. Do you
remember nothing?"
"The present is enough for me," said her lover; and he finished his
necklace with a handsome clasp of blossoms, and threw it over her
neck. She gave a low sigh of satisfaction.
"I have been waiting for it ever since that time! And here is mine for
you."
Thus adorned by each other's hands, their love seemed greater than
before, and they laughed from pure delight. Their bonds looked
fragile; yet it would need a stronger wrench to part them than had
they been cables of iron or gold, unsustained by the subtile might of
love.
"Let us link them together," proposed Balder; and, loosening a link of
his chain, he reunited it inside Gnulemah's. "We must keep together,"
he continued with a smile, "or the marriage-bonds will break."
"Is this marriage, Balder? to be tied together with flowers?"
"One part of marriage. It shows the world that we belong only to each
other."
"How could they help knowing that,--for to whom else could we
belong? besides, why should they know?"
"Because," answered Balder after some consideration, "the world is
made in such a way, that unless we record all we do by some visible
symbol, everything would get into confusion."
"No no," protested Gnulemah, earnestly. "Only God should know how we
love. Must the world know our words and thoughts, and how we have sat
beneath these trees?--Then let us not be married!"
They were leaning side to side against the bench, along whose edge
Balder had stretched an arm to cushion Gnulemah's head. As he turned
to look at her, a dash of sunlight was quivering on her clear smooth
cheek, and another ventured to nestle warmly below the head of the
guardian serpent on her bosom, for Gnulemah and the sun had been
lovers long before Balder's appearance. Where breathed such another
woman? From the low turban that pressed her hair to the bright sandals
on her fine bronze feet, there was no fault, save her very uniqueness.
She belonged not to this era, but to the Golden Age, past or to come.
Could she ever be conformed to the world of to-day? Dared her lover
assume the responsibility of revealing to this noble soul all the
meanness, sophistries, little pleasures, and low aims of this
imperfect age? Could he change the world to suit her needs? or endure
to see her change to suit the world? Moreover, changing so much, might
she not change towards him? The Balder she loved was a grander man
than any Balder knew. Might she not learn to abhor the hand which
should unveil to her the Gorgon features of fallen humanity?--Much has
man lost in losing Paradise!
Contemplating Gnulemah's entrance into the outer world, Manetho had
anticipated her ruin from the flowering of the evil seed which he
believed himself to have planted in her. Might not the same result
issue from a precisely opposite cause? The Arcadian fashion in which
the lovers' passion had ripened must soon change forever. It was
perilous to advance, but to retreat was impossible. Balder was at bay;
had he loved Gnulemah less, he would have regretted Charon's
ferry-boat. But his love was greater for the danger and difficulty
wherewith it was fraught. He could not summon the millennium; well, he
might improve himself.
"If I could but shut her glorious eyes to all the shabby littleness
they will have to see, we might hazard the rest," he sighed to
himself. "If the pure visions of her maiden years might veil from her
those gross realities of every-day life! With what face shall I meet
her glance after it has suffered the first shock?"
Meanwhile her last objection remained unanswered, and Balder,
distrustful of his capacity, was inspired to seek inspiration from her
he would instruct.
"Tell me how you love me, Gnulemah," said he.
She roused herself, and bending her face to his, breathlessly kissed
his lips. Then she drooped her warm cheek on his shoulder, and
whispered the rest:--
"My love is to be near you, and to breathe when breathe; it is love to
become you, as water becomes wave. And love would make me sweet to
you, as honey and music and flowers. I love to be needed by you, as
you need food and drink and sleep; and my love will be loved, as God
loves the world."
To the lover these sentences were tender and sublime poetry. The tears
came to his eyes, hearing her speak out her loving soul so simply. He
had travelled through the world, while she had lived her life between
a wall and a precipice. But not the noisy, gaudy, gloomy crust which
is fresh to-day, and to-morrow hardens, and the next day crumbles, is
the world; but the fire-globe within: and Gnulemah was nearer that
fire than Balder. There was puissance in her simplicity,--in her
ignorance of that crust which he had so widely studied. Her knowledge
was more profound than his, for she had never learned to stultify it
with reasons.
"It is true,--God only can know our love," said Balder, and, having
said it, he felt his mind clear and strengthen. For it is the
acknowledgment of God that lends the deepest seeing to the eye, and
tunes the universe to man; and Balder, at this moment of mingled love,
humility, and fear, made and confessed that supreme discovery.--"Only
He knows what our love is, but the marriage-rite informs the world
that He knows it."
"But why must the world know?" persisted Gnulemah, still seeming to
shrink at the idea.
"Because it is wholesome for all men to know that we have made God
party to our union. That our love may be pure and immortal, we must
look through each other to Him; the acknowledgment will keep others as
well as ourselves from misusing love's happiness."
"Then, after we have knelt together before Him, we shall be no longer
two, but one!" Gnulemah spoke, after some pause, in a full tone of
joy; yet her voice shrank at the last, from the feeling that she had
penetrated all at once to a holy place. A delicious fear seized her,
and she clung to her lover so that he could perceive the tremor that
agitated her.
No more was said. Their confidence was in each other; with Balder at
her side, Gnulemah was fearful of the world no longer. But her visions
were all spiritual; even the kisses on her lips were to her a sacred
miracle! Love makes children of men and women,--shows them the wisdom
of unreason and the value of soap-bubbles. These lovers must meet the
world, but the light and freshness of the Golden Age should accompany
them. The man held the maiden's hand, and so faced the future with a
smile.
Few as were the hours since they first had seen each other, it seemed
as though they could hardly know each other better; then why put off
the consummation a single hour? Manetho had been right, and Balder
marvelled at having required the spur. He knew of no material
hindrances; unlimited resources would be his, and these would render
easier Gnulemah's introduction to society. Perhaps (for doubtless
Manetho would desire it) they might begin housekeeping in this very
house, and thus, by gradual approaches, make their way to life's
realities,--vulgarly so called!
At this moment, Balder's respect for wealth was many fold greater than
ever it had been before. It should be the sword and shield wherewith
he would protect the woman of his heart. Gnulemah was not of the kind
who need the discipline of poverty; her beauty and goodness would be
best nurtured beneath an affluent sun. Wants and inconveniences would
rather pain and mystify than educate her. How good was that God who
had vouchsafed not only the blessing, but the means of enjoying it!
God gave Balder Helwyse opportunity to prove the soundness of his
faith. Labor and poverty awaited him; what else and worse let time
show. In anguish, fear, and humiliation had his love been born, but
the birth-pangs had been as brief as they were intense. A brave soul's
metal is more severely tried by crawling years of monotonous effort,
discord of must with wish, and secret self-suppression and misgiving.
Happily life is so ordered that no blow can crush unless dealt from
within, nor is any sunshine worth having that shines only from
without.
Balder's eyes were softer than their wont, and there was a tender and
sweet expression about his mouth. Never had life been so inestimable a
blessing,--never had nature looked so divinely alive. He could imagine
nothing gloomy or forbidding; in darkness's self he would have found
germs of light. His love was a panoply against ill of mind or body. He
thought he perceived, once for all, the insanity of selfishness and
sin.
Suddenly he was conscious through Gnulemah of the same shiver that had
visited her in the conservatory that morning. Looking round, he was
startled to see, beyond the near benison of her sumptuous face, the
tall form of the Egyptian priest. He was not a dozen yards away,
advancing slowly towards them. Balder sprang up.
"Our chain,--you have broken it!" exclaimed Gnulemah. It was only a
flower chain, but flowers are the bloom and luxury of life.
Manetho came up with a smile.
"Come, my children!" said he. "This chain would soon have faded and
fallen apart of itself, but the chain I will forge you is stronger
than time and weightier than dandelions. Come!"
Gnulemah picked up the broken links, and they followed him to the
house.
XXXI.
MARRIED.
The significant part of most life histories is the record of a few
detached hours, the rest being consequence and preparation. Helwyse
had lived in constant mental and physical activity from childhood up;
but though he had speculated much, and ever sought to prove the truth
by practice, yet he had failed to create adequate emergencies, and was
like an untried sword, polished and keen, but lacking still the one
stern proof of use.
Thus, although a man of the world, in a deeper sense he was untouched
by it. He had been the sentimental spectator of a drama wherein some
shadow of himself seemed to act. The mimic scenes had sometimes moved
him to laughter or to tears, but he had never quite lost the suspicion
of an unreality under all. The best end had been--in a large
sense--beauty. Beauty of love, of goodness, of strength, of
wisdom,--beauty of every kind and degree, but nothing better! Beauty
was the end rather than the trait of all desirable things. To have
power was beautiful, and beautiful was the death that opened the way
to freer and wider power. Most beautiful was Almightiness; yet,
lapsing thence, it was beautiful to begin the round again in fresh,
new forms.
This kind of spider-webs cannot outlast the suns and snows. Personal
passion disgusts one with brain-spun systems of the universe, and may
even lead to a mistrust of mathematics! One feels the overwhelming
power of other than intellectual interests; and discovers in himself a
hitherto unsuspected universe, profound as the mystery of God, where
the cockle-shell of mental attainments is lost like an asteroid in the
abyss of space.
What is the mind?--A little window, through which to gaze out upon the
vast heart-world: a window whose crooked and clouded pane we may
diligently clean and enlarge day by day; but, too often, the deep view
beyond is mistaken for a picture painted on the glass and limited by
its sash! Let the window by all means expand till the darksome house
be transformed to a crystal palace! but shall homage be paid the
crystal? Of what value were its transparency, had God not built the
heavens and the earth?--
Though Helwyse had failed to touch the core of life, and to recognize
the awful truth of its mysteries, he had not been conscious of
failure. On the contrary he had become disposed to the belief that he
was a being apart from the mass of men and above them: one who could
see round and through human plans and passions; could even be separate
from himself, and yield to folly with one hand, while the other jotted
down the moral of the spectacle. He was calm in the conviction that he
could measure and calculate the universe, and draw its plan in his
commonplace book. God was his elder brother,--himself in some distant
but attainable condition. He matched finity against the Infinite, and
thereby cast away man's dearest hope,--that of eternal progress
towards the image of Divine perfection.
Once, however, the bow had smitten his heart-strings with a new result
of sound, awakening fresh ideas of harmony. When Thor was swept to
death by that Baltic wave, Balder leapt after him, hopeless to save,
but without demur! The sea hurled him back alone. For many a month
thereafter, strange lights and shadows flashed or gloomed across his
sky, and sounds from unknown abysses disquieted him. But all was not
quite enough; perhaps he was hewn from too stanch materials lightly to
change. Yet the sudden shock of his loss left its mark: the props of
self-confidence were a little unsettled; and the events whose course
we have traced were therefore able to shake them down.
For Destiny rained her sharpest blows on Balder Helwyse all at once,
and the attack marks the turning-point of his life. She chose her
weapons wisely. He was beaten by tactics which a coarser and shallower
nature would have slighted. He sustained the onslaught for the most
part with outward composure,--but bleeding inwardly.
His had been a vast egoism, rooted in his nature and trained by his
philosophy. It must die, if at all, violently, painfully, and--in
silence. The truer and more constant the soul, the more complete the
destruction of its idol. Character is not always the slow growth of
years: often do the elements mingle long in formless solution; some
sudden jar causes them to spring at once to the definite crystal.
There had, hitherto, been a kind of impersonality about Balder, having
its ultimate ground in his blindness to the immutable unity of God.
But so soon as his eye became single, he stood pronounced in his
individuality, less broadly indifferent than of yore, but organized
and firm.
In this inert world the body pursues but imperfectly the processes of
the soul. These three days had made small change in Helwyse's face.
His expression was less serene than of yore, but pithier as well as
more joyful. The humorous indifference had given place to a kindlier
humanity. Gone was the glance half satiric, half sympathetic; but in
its stead was something warmer and more earnest. For the charity of
scepticism was substituted a sentiment less broad, but deeper and
truer. It would need an insight supernaturally keen to detect thus
early these alterations in the page of Balder's countenance; but their
germs are there, to develop afterwards.
During this pause in our narrative, Helwyse was sitting at his chamber
window, awaiting the summons to the ceremony. The afternoon was far
advanced, and the landscape lay breathless beneath the golden burden
of the lavish sun. The bridegroom rose to his feet; surely the bride
must be ready! Was that strange old Nurse delaying her? Did she
herself procrastinate? Balder was waxing impatient!
The clear outcry of the hoopoe startled the calm air, and that good
little messenger came fluttering in haste to the window. Bound its
neck was twined a golden dandelion,--Gnulemah's love-token! With a
knowing upturn of its bright little eye, the bird submitted to being
robbed of its decoration; then warbled a keen good-by, and flew away.
The lover behaved as foolishly towards the dandelion as a lover
should. At last he drew the stem through the button-hole of his
velveteen jacket, and was ready to answer in person the shy invitation
it conveyed. The bride waited!
His hand was on the latch, when some one knocked. He threw open the
door,--and had to look twice before recognizing Nurse. Her dingy
anomalous drapery had been exchanged for another sort of costume. Her
scars strove to be hidden beneath the yellow lace and crumpled
feathers of an antique head-dress. She wore a satin gown of an old
fashion, whose pristine whiteness was much impaired by time. An aged
fan, ragged, but of tasteful pattern, dangled at her wrist. She
resembled some forgotten Ginevra, reappearing after an age's seclusion
in the oaken chest. Her aspect was painfully repellent, the more for
this pathetic attempt at good looks. The former unlovely garb had a
sort of fitness to the blasted features; but so soon as she forsook
that uncanny harmony and tried to be like other women, she became
undesirably conspicuous.
"The bridesmaid!" came to Balder's lips,--but did not pass them. He
would not hurt the poor creature's feelings by the betrayal of
surprise or amusement. She was a woman,--and Gnulemah was no more.
According to his love for his wife, must he be tender and gentle
towards her sex.
When, therefore, Nurse gave him to understand that she was to marshal
him to the altar, Balder, never more heroic than at that moment,
offered her his arm, which she accepted with an air of scarecrow
gentility. Either the change of costume had struck in, or it was the
symbol of inward change. She seemed struggling against her torpor, her
dimness and deadness. She tried, perhaps, to recall the day when that
dress was first put on,--the day of Helen's marriage, when Salome had
attended her mistress to the altar,--when she hoped before many weeks
to stand at an altar on her own account.--Not yet, Salome, nor in this
world. Perchance not in another; for they who maim their earthly lives
may not enjoy in heaven the happiness whose seed was not planted here.
The injury is justly irreparable; else had angels been immediately
created.
But Salome was practising deception on herself. Airs and graces which
might have suited a coquettish lady's-maid, but were in her a ghastly
absurdity, did she revive and perpetrate. Struggling to repress the
ugly truth, she was in continual dread of exposure. Fain would she
dream for an hour of youth and beauty, knowing, yet veiling the
knowledge, that it was a dream. Divining her desire, Balder helped out
the masquerade as best he might. She was thankfully aware of his
kindness, yet shunned acknowledgment, as a too bare betrayal of the
cause of thanks.