Idolatry: Chapter 28

Chapter 28

BETROTHAL.

The ring, which Balder had taken off with the intention of returning
it to its owner, still remained between his thumb and finger; and as
he sat under the gloom of the altar, its excellent brilliancy caught
his eye. He had never examined it minutely. It was pure as virtue, and
possessed similar power to charm the dusky air into seven-hued beauty.
A fountain of lustre continually welled up from its interior, like an
exhaustless spring of wisdom. From amidst the strife of the little
serpents it shone serenely forth, with, divine assurance of
good,--eternal before the battle began, and immortal after it should
cease. The light refreshed the somewhat jaded Helwyse, and during the
ensuing interview he ever and anon renewed the draught.

But the Egyptian seemed to address a silent invocation to the mummy.
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.

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