Idolatry: Chapter 16

Chapter 16

LEGEND AND CHRONICLE.

Hiero Glyphic's house came not into the world complete at a birth, but
was the result of an irregular growth, progressing through many years.
Originally a single-gabled edifice, its only peculiarity had been that
it was brick instead of wooden. Here, red and unornamented as the
house itself, the future Egyptologist was born. The parallel between
him and his dwelling was maintained more or less closely to the end.

He was the first pledge of affection between his mother and father,
and the last also; for shortly after his advent the latter parent, a
retired undertaker by profession, failed from this world. The widow
was much younger than her husband, and handsome to boot. Nevertheless,
several years passed before she married again. Her second lord was
likewise elderly, but differed from the first in being enormously
wealthy. The issue of this union was a daughter, the Helen of our
story, a pretty, dark-eyed little thing, petted and indulged by all
the family, and reigning undisputed over all.

Meanwhile the old brick house had been deserted, Mrs. Glyphic having
accompanied her second husband to his sumptuous residence in Brooklyn.
But in process of time Hiero (or, as he was then called, Henry) took
it into his head to return to the original family mansion and live
there. No objection was made; in truth, Henry's oddities,
awkwardnesses, and propensity to dabble in queer branches of research
and experiment may have allayed the parting pangs. Back he blundered,
therefore, to the banks of the Hudson, and established himself in his
birthplace. What he did there during the next few years will never be
known. Grisly stories about the man in the brick house were current
among the country people. A devil was said to be his familiar friend;
nay, it was whispered that he himself was the arch-fiend! But nothing
positively supernatural, or even unholy, was ever proved to have taken
place. The recluse had the command of as much money as he could spend,
and no doubt he wrought with it miracles beyond the vulgar
comprehension. His mind had no more real depth than a looking-glass
with a crack in it, and its images were disjointed and confused. There
are many such men, but few possess unlimited means of carrying their
crack-brained fancies into fact.

During this--which may be called the second--period of Glyphic's
career, he made several anomalous additions to the brick house, all
after designs of his own. He moreover furnished it anew throughout, in
a manner that made the upholsterers stare. Each room--so reads the
legend--was fitted up in the style of a different country, according
to Glyphic's notion of it! He was said to live in one apartment or
another according as it was his whim to be Spaniard, Turk, Russian,
Hindoo, or Chinaman. He also applied himself to gardening, and
enclosed seven hundred acres of ground adjoining the house with a
picket-fence, forerunner of the famous brick wall. The whole tract was
dug out and manured to the depth of many feet, till it was by far the
most fertile spot in the State. The larger trees were not disturbed,
but the lesser were forced to give place to new and rare importations
from foreign countries. Gorgeous were the hosts of flowers, like banks
of sunset clouds; the lawns showed the finest turf out of England;
there was a kitchen-garden rich and big enough to feed an army of
epicures all their lives. In short, the place was a concentrated
extract of the world at large, where one might at the same moment be a
recluse and a cosmopolitan. Here might one live independent of the
world, yet sipping the cream thereof; and might persuade himself that
all beyond these seven hundred enchanted acres was but a diffused
reflection of the concrete existence between the cliff and the fence.

But to this second period succeeded finally the third,--that which
witnessed the birth and growth of the Egyptian mania. Its natal moment
has not been precisely determined; perhaps it was a gradual accretion.
Mr. Glyphic's relatives in Brooklyn were one day electrified by the
news that the quondam Henry--now Hiero--purposed instant departure for
Europe and Egypt. Before starting, however, he built the brick wall
round his estate, shutting it out forever from human eyes. Then he
vanished, and for nine years was seen no more.

His return was heralded by the arrival at the port of New York of a
mountain of freight, described in the invoice as the property of
Doctor Hiero Glyphic of New Jersey. The boxes, as they stood piled
together on the wharf, might have furnished timber sufficient to build
a town. They contained the fruits of Doctor Glyphic's antiquarian
researches.

The Doctor himself--where he picked up his learned title is
unknown--was accompanied by a slender, swarthy young factotum who
answered to the name of Manetho. He was introduced to the Brooklyn
relatives as the pupil, assistant, and adopted son of Hiero Glyphic.
The latter, physically broadened, browned, and thickened by his
travels, was intellectually the same good-natured, fussy, flighty
original as ever; shallow, enthusiastic, incoherent, energetic.

He and his adopted son shut themselves up behind the brick wall; but
it soon transpired that extensive additions were making to the old
house. Beyond this elementary fact conjecture had the field to itself.
Both architects and builders were imported from another State and
sworn to secrecy, while the high wall and the hedge of trees baffled
prying eyes. Quantities of red granite and many blocks of precious
marbles were understood to be using in the work. The opinion gained
that such an Oriental palace was building as never had been seen
outside an Arabian fairy-tale.

By and by the work was done, the workmen disappeared. But whoever
hoped that now the mystery would be revealed, and the Oriental palace
be made the scene of a gorgeous house-warming, was disappointed. The
dwellers behind the wall emerged not from their seclusion, nor were
others invited to relieve it. In due course of time Doctor Glyphic's
worthy step-father died. The widow and her daughter continued to live
in Brooklyn until the former's death, which took place a few years
afterwards. Then Helen came to her brother, and the Brooklyn house was
put under lock and key, and so remained till Helen's marriage, when it
was set in order for the bridal pair. But Thor's wife died as they
were on the point of moving thither, and he sold it four years later
and left America forever.

After his departure less was known, than before of how things went on
behind the brick wall. The gateway was filled in with masonry. No one
was ever seen entering the enclosure or leaving it; though it was
supposed that, somehow or other, communication was occasionally had
with the outside world. As knowledge dwindled, legend grew, and wild
were the tales told of the invisible Doctor and his foster-son. In his
youth, the former had been suspected of simple witchcraft, but he was
not let off so easily now. Manetho was first dubbed a genie whom the
Doctor had brought out of Egypt. Afterwards it was hinted that these
two worthies were in fact one and the same demon, who by some infernal
jugglery was able to appear twain during the daytime, but resumed his
proper shape at night, and cut up all manner of unholy capers.

By another version, Doctor Glyphic died in Egypt, not before
bargaining with the Prince of Darkness that his body should return
home in charge of a condemned soul under the guise of Manetho. During
the day, affirmed these theorists, the body was inspired by the soul
with phantom life; but became a mummy at night, when the condemned
soul suffered torments till morning. With sunrise the ghastly drama
began anew. This state of things must continue until the sun shone all
night long within the brick wall enclosure.

A third, more moderate account is that to which we have already
listened from Charon's lips. And he perhaps built on a broader basis
of truth than did the other yarn-spinners. But under whatever form the
legend appeared, there was always mingled with it a vaguely mysterious
whisper relating to the alleged presence in the Doctor's Den (so the
enclosure was nicknamed) of an apparition in female form. What or
whence she was no one pretended soberly to conjecture. Even her
personal aspect was the subject of vehement dispute; some maintaining
her to be of more than human beauty, while others swore by their heads
that she was so hideous fire would not burn her! These damned her for
a malignant witch; those upheld her as a heavenly angel, urged by love
divine to expiate, through voluntary suffering, the nameless crimes of
the demoniac Doctor. But unless the redemption were effected within a
certain time, she must be swallowed up with him in common destruction.
Were the how and wherefore of these alternatives called in question,
the answer was a wise shake of the head!

The gentle reader will believe no one of the fantastic legends here
recorded; possibly they were not believed by their very fabricators.
They are useful only as tending to show the moral atmosphere of the
house and its occupants. There is sometimes a subtile symbolic element
inwoven with such tales, which--though not the truth--helps us to
apprehend the truth when we come to know it. Moreover, the fanciful
parts of history are to the facts as clouds to a landscape; a picture
is incomplete without them; they aid in bringing out the distances,
and cast lights and shadows over tracts else harsh and bare.

Beyond what he had gathered from the ancient mariner, Balder Helwyse
knew nothing of these fearful fables. This perhaps accounted for the
boldness wherewith he pursued his way towards the mysterious house,
following in the airy wake of the clear-throated little hoopoe.

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