Idolatry Part 15

"Let me live for you and serve you! Though the world has no Balder, may not I have mine? You shall be everything to me! Without you I cannot be; but I want no other G.o.d if I have my Balder!"

This was another matter! Nevertheless,--so subtle is the boundary between love human and divine,--Gnulemah in these first pa.s.sionate moments may easily have deemed the one no less sublime than the other.

But there was no danger of Balder's falling into such an error. The distinction was clear to him. Yet with remorse and abas.e.m.e.nt strove the defiant impulse to pluck and eat--forgetful of this world and the next the royal fruit so fairly held to his lips! For herein fails the divinity of nature,--she can minister as well to man's depravity as to his exaltation; which could not happen were she one with G.o.d. Nay, man had need be strong with Divine inspiration, before communing unharmed with nature's dangerous loveliness.

His hand in Gnulemah's was now neither cold nor lax. She raised it in impetuous homage to her forehead. The diamond left a mark there; first white, then red. For a breath or two, their eyes saw depths in each other beyond words' fathoming....

A door was closed above; and the echo stole down stairs and crept with a hollow whisper into the conservatory. The little lord chamberlain fluttered down from his lofty perch and hovered between the two faces, his penetrating note sounding like a warning, Gnulemah drew back, and a swift blush let fall its rosy veil from the golden gleam of her jewelled forehead-band to below the head of the serpent which twisted round her neck.

One parting look she gave Balder, pregnant of new wonder, fear, and joy. Then she turned and glided with quick ophidian grace to the doorway from which she had first appeared, and was eclipsed by the curtain. The inner door shut; she was gone. Dull, dull and colorless was the conservatory. The hoopoe had flown out through the hall to the open air. Only the crocodile continued to keep Balder company.

After standing a few moments, he once more threw himself down on the moss couch beneath the palm-trees. There he reclined as before, supported on his elbow, and turned the diamond ring this way and that on his finger in moody preoccupation.

Was the crocodile asleep, or stealthily watching him?

XIX.

BEFORE SUNDOWN.

If Balder Helwyse had been in a vein for self-criticism at this juncture, the review might probably have dissatisfied him. He possessed qualities which make men great. He could have discharged august offices, for he saw things in large relations and yet minutely.

His mind and courage could rise to any enterprise, and carry it with ease and cheerfully. His nature was even more receptive than active.

He had force of thought to electrify nations.

But his was the old story of the star-gazer walking into the well, who might have studied the stars in the well, but could not be warned of the well by the stars. He had whistled grand chances down the wind, reaching after what was superhuman. His hunger had been vast, but the food wherewith he had filled himself nourished him not, and suddenly he had collapsed. His first actual step towards realizing his lofty aspirations had landed him low amongst earth's common criminals,--nor had the harm stopped there. That defiant impulse to which he had just now been on the point of yielding had not dared so much as to have shown its face before his unvitiated will. He was disorganized and at the mercy of events, because without law sufficient to keep and guide himself.

Though fallen, there was in him somewhat giant-like, perhaps easier to see now than before,--as the ruin seems vaster than the perfect building. The travail of a soul like Balder's must issue greatly, whether for good or ill. He could not remain long inchoate, but the elements would combine to make something either darker or fairer than had been before. Meanwhile, in the uncrystallized solution the curious a.n.a.lyst might detect traits bright or sinister, ordinarily invisible.

Here were softness, impetuosity, romantic imagination, and tender fire, enough to set up half a dozen poets. Again, there was a fund of malignity, coldness, and subtlety adequate to the making an Iago.

Here, too, were the clear sceptical intellect, the fertility and versatile power of brain, which only the loftier minds of the world have shown.

Such seemingly incongruous qualities are, in the human crucible, so mingled, proportioned, and refined, as to form a seeming simple and transparent whole. We may feel the presence of a spirit weighty, strong, deep, without understanding the how and why of impression.

Only at critical moments, such as this in Balder's life, can we point out the joining lines.

Balder's present att.i.tude, viewed from whatever side, was no less irksome than ign.o.ble. One misfortune was with diabolic ingenuity dovetailed into another. It was bad enough to have killed a man; but the victim was his own uncle, and the father--at least the foster-father--of Gnulemah. And she, forsooth, must idolize the murderer; and, finally, his heart must leap forth in pa.s.sionate response to hers at the moment--partly perhaps for the reason--that every honest motive forbade it. That look and touch, at the molten point of various emotions, had welded their spirits together at once and lastingly.

What next? For Gnulemah and for himself what course was least disastrous?--the heroic line,--to leave her without a word?--or, concealing what he was, should he stay and be happy in her arms? Was there a third alternative?

"To part would be yet worse for her than for me. She would think I had deceived her. And, love apart, how can I leave her whose only protector I have killed? That deed puts me in his place; so love and duty are at one for once. Her Balder,--her G.o.d,--she calls me. She is my universe; the depth and limit of my knowledge and power are gauged by her. Such is the issue of my aspirations!"

He breathed out a half-laugh, ending in a sigh. "But loving her is sweeter than to inform creation!" he added, aloud.

The crocodile made no reply. Balder went on, fingering the telltale ring and talking with himself; the earth, meanwhile, slowly turning her warm shoulder to the western sun. A still half-light filled the conservatory as with a clear mellow liquor, and the rich leaves, and blossoms stood breathless with delight. The painfully rigid contraction of Balder's features was softening away; he was coming into harmony with the sensuous beauty of the scene, or its refined voluptuousness--serene, unambitious, content with time and careless of eternity--interpreted his altered temper.

Be happy in the sunlight, O men and women! Love and kiss,--bow down and worship each the other! Who can tell of another joy like this?

Everlasting knows it not, for only the flavor of death can give it perfection! Save for the foreshadow of midnight, noonday were not beautiful. But when night comes, sink ye in one another's arms, and sleep! Heaven on earth is a richer, stronger draught than Heaven; but pray that in vouchsafing death, it cheat ye not of annihilation!

He had forgotten that there was anything ugly in the world, or that the blindest cannot always escape the Gorgon. He recked not the risk of bringing a being such as Gnulemah face to face with modern life, nor bethought him that the secret in his heart would still be nearer it than love could come. Neither, during this fortunate moment, did fear of discovery hara.s.s him.

Oddly, too, it was not to domestic comforts,--the love of wife, children, and friends,--nor yet to the absorbing duties of a profession, that Balder looked for a shield against inward trouble.

Hope held him no more than fear; his happiness must consist in freedom from both. He thought only of the Gnulemah of to-day,--unique, beautiful, untamed, divinely ignorant; but whose heart walked before, leading the giddy mind by paths the wisest dared not tempt. The sounds of her voice, the shiftings of her expression, her look, her touch,--he recalled them all. He centred time and s.p.a.ce in her.

Change, new conditions, succession of events,--these came not near her. Their life should know neither past nor future, but abide a constant Now,--until the end!

His lips followed his thought with soundless movement. Handsome lips they were,--the under, full, but sharply defined from the bulwark-chin; the upper, slender, boldly curved, firm, yet sensitive;--the mouth was a compendium of the man's physical nature.

His eyes, large and almost as dark as Gnulemah's, albeit far different in effect,--were now in-looking; the pupils, always extraordinarily large and brilliant, almost filled the s.p.a.ce between the eyelids. His hair clung round his head in yellow curls; the dark dense eyebrows arched at ease. With velvet doublet and well-moulded limbs, in the enchanted evening-glow, he looked the ideal fairy prince,--n.o.ble, wise, and valiant; conquering fate for love's sake. They were brave princes,--they of old time. But one wonders whether the giants and enchanters, nowadays, are not stronger and subtler than they used to be!

XX.

BETWEEN WAKING AND SLEEPING.

There was an old woman in the house who went by the name of Nurse; her duties being to cook the meals and preserve a sort of order in such of the rooms as were occupied by the family. Since the greater part of the house was uninhabited, and there were only two mouths to feed beside her own, Nurse was not without leisure moments. How were they employed?

Not in gossiping, for she had no cronies. Not in millinery and dressmaking, for there were no admiring eyes to reward such labors.

Not in gadding, for she might not pa.s.s the imprisoning wall. Not even in reading, perhaps because she was not much of a proficient in that art.

The truth is that--to the outward eye at least--she was uniformly idle. For years past she had spent many hours of each night in the corner of the kitchen fireplace, which was as large, roomy, and smoke-seasoned as any in story-books or mediaeval halls. Here sat she, winter and summer, her body bent forward over her knees, her disfigured face supported on one hand, while the other lay across her breast. This was her common position, and she seldom moved to change it. She hummed tunes to herself sometimes,--not hymn tunes,--but never was heard to utter an articulate word. Often you might have thought her asleep,--but no! when you least expected it a shining black eye was fixed oh you; an eye which, two hundred years ago, would have convicted its owner of witchcraft. It was the only bright thing about the poor woman.

Whenever the master of the house came to the kitchen, Nurse's witch-eye followed him animal-like; no movement of his, no expression, seemed to escape it. A curious observer might sometimes have remarked in her, during the few moments after the man's entrance, a m.u.f.fled agitation, an irregularity of the breath, an obscure anxiety and suspense. This, however, would soon subside, and rarely recur during his stay. The phenomenon had been observable daily for nearly a score of years, yet nothing had meantime happened to explain or justify it.

Had an original dread--groundless or not--prolonged its phantom existence precisely because it had never met with justification?

Often for weeks at a time, complete silence would obtain between master and Nurse. He would enter and ramble hither and thither the ample kitchen; eat what had been prepared for him, and be off again without a word or glance of acknowledgment. Or, again, pacing irregularly to and fro before the fireplace, he would pour forth long disjointed rhapsodies, wild speculations, hopes, and misgivings; his mood changing from solemn to gay, and round through gusty pa.s.sion to morbid gloom. But never did he address his words to Nurse so much as to himself or to some imaginary interlocutor; and she for her part never answered him a syllable, but sat in silence through it all. Yet was she ever alert to listen, and sometimes the subdued trembling would come on and the obstruction of breath. But when the talker, in mid-excitement of speech, s.n.a.t.c.hed his violin and drew from it melodies weirdly exquisite, soothing his diseased thoughts and harmonizing them, Nurse would become once more composed; the phantom danger was again put off, and the violinist would presently fall into silence,--sometimes into sleep. But still, while he slept, the witch-eye watched him; though with an expression of yearning, uncouth intensity which seldom ventured forth while he was awake.

With Gnulemah, Nurse's intercourse became yearly more and more infrequent. As the child arose to womanhood, she grew apart from the voiceless creature who had cared for her infancy. It was not Gnulemah's fault, whose heart was never barren of loving impulses.

But mother, father, were words whose meaning she had never been taught; and had Nurse comprehended the unconscious thirst and hunger of the girl's soul,--unconscious, but not therefore harmless,--she might have tried, by dint of affectionate observances and companionship, to represent the motherly office which she had filled in the beginning. But this was not to be. Some hidden agency had forced the two ever farther asunder. Moreover, Gnulemah developed rapidly, while Nurse underwent a process of gradual congealment,--her wits and emotions became torpid. Besides this, she was the victim of disfigurement, physical as well as spiritual; while Gnulemah, both naturally and by training, was sensitive to beauty and ugliness. Other surface causes no doubt there were, in addition to the hidden one, which was perhaps the most potent of all.

A considerable time had pa.s.sed since Gnulemah's departure, when Balder became aware that he was not alone in the conservatory. His thoughts were all of Gnulemah, and he looked quickly round in expectation of seeing her. The apparition of a widely different object startled him to his feet.

A female figure stood before him, wrapped in sad-colored garments of anomalous description, her head tied up in dark turban-like folds of cloth. A lock of rusty black hair escaped from beneath this head-dress and hung down beside her face. She might once have been tall and erect, but her form now sagged to the left, losing both height and dignity. Her visage, seamed and furrowed by the scar of some terrible calamity, had lost its natural contour. The left eye was extinguished, but the right remained,--the only feature in its original state. It was dark and bright, and possessed, by very virtue of its disfigured environment, a repulsive kind of beauty. Its influence was peculiar.

In itself, it postulated an owner in the prime of life, handsome and graceful. But, one's attention wandering, the woman's actual ugliness impressed itself with an intensity enhanced by the imaginary contrast.

A grotesque a.n.a.logy was thus brought to light. The woman was dual. Her right side lived; the left--blind, inert, and soulless--was dragged about a dead weight. It was an unnatural emphasizing of the spiritual-material composition of mankind. Observable, moreover, was her strange method of disguising emotion. There was no muscular constraint; she simply turned her blank left side to the spectator, with an effect like the interposition of a dead wall!

Such, on Balder's perhaps abnormally excited apprehension, was the impression the nurse produced. She, on her part, was perhaps more disconcerted than he. Her single eye settled upon him in a panic of surprise. The dressing of the scene gave Balder a grisly reminder of the first moments of Gnulemah's eloquent astonishment. There was as great an apparent difference between the superb Egyptian and this poor creature, as between good and evil; but there was also the disagreeable suggestion of a similar kind of relationship. Gnulemah, withered, stifled, and degraded by some unmentionable curse, might have become a thing not unlike this woman.

"Have we met before, madam?" asked Helwyse, impelled to the question by what he took for a bewildered recognition in her eye.

She moved her lips, but made no audible answer.

"I am Balder Helwyse," he added; for he had made up his mind that all concealments (save one) were unnecessary.

A grotesque quake of emotion travelled through the woman's body, and she gave utterance to a harsh inarticulate sound. She came confusedly forwards, groping with hands outstretched. Balder, though not wont to fail in courtesy to the sorriest hag, could scarce forbear recoiling; especially because he fancied that an expression of affectionate interest was struggling to get through the scarred incrustation of the woman's nature.

Perhaps she marked his inward shrinking, for she checked herself, and, slowly turning her lifeless screen, hid behind it. It was impotent deprecation translated into flesh,--at once ludicrous and painful. The young man found so much difficulty in restraining the manifestation of his distaste, that he blushed in the twilight at his own rudeness.