Idolatry: Chapter 27

Chapter 27

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!

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