Idolatry: Chapter 24

Chapter 24

UNCLE HIERO AT LAST.

In a couple of minutes Balder was at the house, breathless: the figure
was nowhere to be seen. He sprang across the broad portico, and
hurried with sounding feet through the oaken hall. Should he go up
stairs, or on to the conservatory? The sound of a softly shutting door
from the latter direction decided him. The place looked as when he
left it a half-hour before. Gnulemah's curtain had not been moved. The
other door was closed; he ran up the steps between the granite
sphinxes, and found it locked. Butting his shoulder against the panel
with impatient force, the hinges broke from their rotten fastenings,
and the door gave inwards. Balder stepped past it, and found himself
in the sombre lamp-lit interior of the temple.

He could discern but little; the place seemed vast; the corners were
veiled in profound shadow. At the farther end a huge lamp was
suspended, by a chain from the roof, over a triangular altar of black
marble. The architecture of the room was strange and massive as of
Egyptian temples. Strong, dark colors met the eye on all sides; in the
panels of the walls and distant ceiling fantastic devices showed
obscurely forth. Nine mighty columns, of design like those in the
doorway, were ranged along the walls, their capitals buried in the
upward gloom.

Becoming used to the dusk, Balder now marked an array of colossal
upright forms, alternating between the pillars. Their rough
resemblance to human figures drew him towards one of them: it was an
Egyptian sarcophagus covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and
probably holding an immemorial mass of spiced flesh and rags. These
silent relics of a prehistoric past seemed to be the only company
present. In view of his uncle's well-known tastes, the nephew was not
unprepared to meet these gentry.

But he was come to seek the living, not the dead. The figure that he
had seen outside must be within these four walls, there being no other
visible outlet besides the door through which Balder had entered. Was
old Hiero Glyphic lurking in one of these darksome corners, or behind
some thick-set column? The young man looked about him as sharply as he
could, but nothing moved except the shadows thrown by the lamp, which
was vibrating pendulum-like on its long chain.

He approached this lamp, his steps echoing on the floor of polished
granite. What had set the thing swinging? It had a leisurely
elliptical motion, as from a moderate push sideways. The lamp was
wrought in bronze, antique of fashion and ornament. It had capacity
for gallons of oil, and would burn for weeks without refilling. The
altar beneath was a plain black marble prism, highly polished, resting
upon a round base of alabaster. A handful of ashes crowned its top.
Between the altar and the wall intervened a space of about seven feet.

The glare of the lamp had blinded Balder to what was beyond it; but,
on stepping round it, he was confronted by an old-fashioned upright
clock, such as were in vogue upon staircase-landings and in
entrance-halls a hundred years ago. With its broad, white, dial-plate,
high shoulders, and dark mahogany case, it looked not unlike a tall,
flat-featured man, holding himself stiffly erect. But whether man or
clock, it was lifeless; the hands were motionless,--there was no sound
of human or mechanical heart-beat within though Balder held his yet
panting breath to listen. Was it Time's coffin, wherein his corpse had
lain still many a silent year,--only that years must stand still
without Time to drive them on! But this still had had no part in the
moving world,--knew naught of life and change, day and night. Here
dwelt a moveless present,--a present at once past and to come, yet
never here! No wonder the mummies felt at home! though even they could
only partially appreciate the situation.

The clock was fastened against the wall. The longer Balder gazed at
it, the more human-like did it appear. Its face was ornamented with
colored pictures of astronomical processes, sufficiently resembling a
set of shadowy features, of a depressed and insignificant type. The
mahogany case served for a close-fitting brown surtout, buttoned to
the chin. The slow vibration of the lamp produced on the countenance
the similitude of a periodically recurring grimace.

Not only did the clock look human, but--or so Balder fancied--it bore
a grotesque and extravagant likeness to a certain elderly relative of
his, whose portrait he had carried in an inner pocket of his
haversack,--now in Long Island Sound. It reminded him, in a word, of
poor old Uncle Hiero, whom he had--no, no!--who was alive and well,
and was perhaps even now observing his dear nephew's perplexity, and
maliciously chuckling over it!

The young man glanced uneasily over his shoulder, but all beyond the
lamp was a gloomy blank, The same moment he trod upon some tough,
thick substance, which yielded beneath his foot! Thoroughly startled,
he jumped back. It lay near the foot of the clock. He stooped, picked
it up, and held in his hands the well-known haversack, from which he
had parted on board the "Empire State." How his heart beat as he
examined it! It was stained and whitened with salt water, and the
strap was broken in two. Opening it, there were his toilet articles
and all his other treasures,--even the cherished miniature,--not much
the worse for their wetting. So there could no longer be any doubt
that his uncle had come back. Where was he?

That queer fancy about the clock stuck in Balder's head! Somehow or
other it must be connected with Doctor Glyphic. The haversack, dropped
at its foot, was direct evidence. Yet, did ever wise man harbor notion
so irrational! Its manifest absurdity only excuse for thinking it.

With no declared object in view, Balder grasped the clock by its high
shoulders and shook it, but with no result. He next struck the smartly
with clenched fist: the blow sounded,--not hollow, but close and
muffled! The case either solid, or filled with something that deadened
the echo. Filled with what? who would think of putting anything in a
clock? It was big enough to be sure, to hold a man, if he could find a
way to get in!

The sequence of thoughts is often obscure, but Balder's next idea,
wild as it was, could hardly be called incoherent. A man might be
conceived to be in the clock; perhaps a man was in it; but if so, the
man could be none other than Doctor Hiero Glyphic!

This conclusion once imagined, suspense was unendurable. The logician
tried to open the front of the case, but it was riveted fast. With
impetuous fingers he then wrenched at the disc. With a sound like a
rusty screech, it came off in his hands. The lamp so flickered that
Balder feared it was going out, and even at this epoch had to look
round to reassure himself. Meanwhile, a pungent, but not unpleasant
odor saluted his nostrils: he turned back to the clock,--a clock no
longer!--and beheld the unmistakable lineaments of his worthy uncle
peeping forth with half-shut eyes from the place where the dial-plate
had been.

The nephew dropped the dial-plate, and it was shattered on the granite
floor. He was badly frightened. There was no delusion about the
face,--it was a sufficiently peculiar one; and the miniature portrait,
though doing the Doctor's beauty at least justice, was accurate enough
to identify him by. This was no unsubstantial apparition,--no brain
phantom, to waver and vanish, leaving only an uncomfortable doubt
whether it had been at all. Stolid, undeniable matter was, peering
phlegmatically between its wrinkled eyelids.

But admitting that now, at last, we have lighted upon the genuine and
authentic Doctor Glyphic, why should the sight of him so oddly affect
Balder Helwyse, whose avowed object in pulling off the dial-plate had
been to justify a suspicion that Uncle Hiero was behind it? Why,
moreover, did the young man not address his relative, congratulating
himself upon their meeting, and rallying the old gentleman on his
attempt to escape his nephew's affectionate solicitude? There had,
indeed, been a misunderstanding at their last encounter, and Balder
had so far forgotten himself as to throw Hiero into the sea; but it
was the part of good-breeding, as well as of Christianity, to forget
such errors, and heal the bruise with an extra application of balsamic
verbiage.

Why so speechless, Balder? Do you wait for your host to speak first?
Nay, never stand on ceremony. He is an eccentric recluse, unused to
the ways of society, while a man of the world like you has at his
tongue's tip a score of phrases just suited to the occasion. Speak up,
therefore, in your most genial tone, and tell the Doctor how glad you
are to find him in such wonderful preservation! Put him at his ease by
feigning that his position appears to you the most natural in the
world,--just what befits a gentleman of his years and honors! Flatter
him, if only from self-interest, for he has a deep pocket, and may be
induced to let you put a hand in it.

Not a word in response to all this eloquence, Balder? Positively your
behavior appears rather curmudgeonly than heroic! You stand gazing at
your relative with almost as much fixedness as he returns your stare
withal. There is something odd about this.

What is that pungent odor? Is the Doctor a dandy, that he should use
perfumes? And where did he get so peculiar a scent as this? It is
commonly in vogue only at that particular toilet which no man ever
performed for himself, but which never needs to be done twice,--a kind
of toilet, by the way, especially prevalent amongst the ancient
Egyptians. Since, then, Doctor Glyphic is so ardent an Egyptologist,
perhaps we have hit upon the secret of his remarkable odoriferousness.
But to shut one's self up in a box that looks so uncommonly like a
coffin,--is not that carrying the antiquarian whim a trifle too far?

This face of his,--one fancies there is a curiously dry look about it!
The unnaturally yellow skin resembles a piece of good-for-nothing
wrinkled parchment. The lips partake of the prevailing sallow tint,
and the mouth hangs a little awry. From the cloth in which the head is
so elaborately bandaged up strays forth, here and there, an arid lock
of hair. The lack of united expression in his features produces an
effect seldom observable in a living face. The eyes are lustreless,
and densely black; or possibly (the suspicion is a startling one) we
are looking into empty eye-sockets! No eyes, no expression, parchment
skin, swathed head, odor of myrrh and cassia, and, dominating all,
this ghastly immobility! Has Doctor Glyphic even now escaped, leaving
us to waste time and sentiment over some worn-out disguise of his?
Nay, if he be not here, we need not seek him further. Having forsaken
this, he can attain no other earthly hiding-place. We must pause here,
and believe either that this dry time-husk is the very last of poor
Hiero, or that a living being which once bore his name has vanished
inward from our reach, and now treads a more real earth than any that
time and space are sovereign over.

Balder (whose perceptions were unlimited by artistic requirements)
probably needed no second glance to assure him that his uncle was a
mummy of many years' standing. But no effort of mental gymnastics
could explain him the fact. Were this real, then was his steamboat
adventure a dream, the revelation of the ring a delusion, and his
water-stained haversack a phantom. He wandered clewless in a maze of
mystery. Nor was this the first paradox he had encountered since
overleaping the brick wall. He began to question whether
supernaturalism had not teen too hastily dismissed by lovers of
wisdom!

Thus do the actors in the play of life plod from one to another
scene, nor once rise to a height whence a glance might survey past and
future. Memory and prophecy are twin sisters,--nay, they are
essentially one muse, whom mankind worships on this side and slights
on that. This is well, for had she but one aspect, the world would be
either too confident or too helpless. But in reviewing a life, one is
apt to make less than due allowance for the helplessness. Thus it is
no prejudice to Balder's intellectual acumen that he failed for a
moment to penetrate the thin disguises of events, and to perceive
relations obvious to the comprehensive view of history. We will take
advantage of his bewildered pause to draw attention to some matters
heretofore neglected.

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