Idolatry Part 5

When he reached his hotel, he had only half an hour to dress for dinner in; but he prepared himself faultlessly, chanting a sort of hymn to Appet.i.te the while. "Hunger," quoth he, "is mightiest of magicians; breeds hope, energy, brains; prompts to love and friendship. Hunger gives day and night their meaning, and makes the pulse of time beat; creates society, industry, and rank. Hunger moves man to join in the work of creation,--to harmonize himself with the music of the universe,--to feel ambition, joy, and sorrow. Hunger unites man to nature in the ever-recurring inspiration to food, followed by the ever-alternating ecstasy of digestion. Morning tunes his heart to joy, for the benison of breakfast awaits him. The sun scales heaven to light him to his noonday meal. Evening wooes him supperwards, and night brings timeless sleep, to waft him to another dawn. Eating is earth's first law, and heaven itself could not subsist without it!"

So Balder Helwyse and the cook feasted gloriously that afternoon, in the back pantry, and they solemnly installed the partridges among the constellations!

VII.

A QUARREL.

That same afternoon Mr. MacGentle put his head into the outer office and said, "Mr. d.y.k.e, could I speak with you a moment?"

Mr. d.y.k.e sc.r.a.ped back his chair and went in, with his polished bald head, and square face and figure,--a block of common-sense. He was more common-sensible than usual, that afternoon, because he had so strangely forgotten himself in the morning. Mr. MacGentle was in his usual position for talking with his confidential clerk,--standing up with his back to the fireplace, and his coat-tails over his arms.

Experience had taught him that this att.i.tude was better adapted than any other to sustain the crushing weight of Mr. d.y.k.e's sense. To have conversed with him in a sitting position would have been to lose breath and vitality before the end of five minutes.

"Mr. Helwyse has thoughts of settling in Boston to practise his profession," began the President, gently. "I told him you would be likely to know what the chances are."

"Profession is--what?" demanded Mr. d.y.k.e, settling his fist on his hip.

"O--doctor--physician; eye-doctor, he said, I think."

"Eye-doctor? Well, Dr. Schlemm won't last the winter; may drop any day. Just the thing for Mr. Helwyse,--Dr. Helwyse." And the subject, being discussed at some length between the two gentlemen, took on a promising aspect. His house was picked out for the new inc.u.mbent, his earnings calculated, his success foretold. Two characters so diverse as were the President and his clerk united, it seems, in liking the young physician.

"Married?" asked Mr. d.y.k.e, after a pause.

"Why, no,--no; and he doesn't seem inclined to marry. But he is quite young; perhaps he may, later on in life, Mr. d.y.k.e."

The elderly clerk straightened his mouth. "Matter of taste--and policy. Gives solidity,--position;--and is an expense and a responsibility." Mr. d.y.k.e himself was well known to be the husband of an idolized wife, and the father of a despotic family.

"He never had the advantage of woman's influence in his childhood, you know. His poor mother died in giving him and his sister birth; and the sister was lost,--stolen away, two or three years later. He does not appreciate woman at her true value," murmured MacGentle.

"Stolen away? His sister died in infancy,--so I understood, sir,"

said the clerk, whose versions of past events were apt to differ from the President's.

But the President--perhaps because he was conscious that his memory regarding things of recent occurrence was treacherous--was abnormally sensitive as to the correctness of his more distant reminiscences.

"O no, she was stolen,--stolen by her nurse, just before Thor Helwyse went to Europe, I think," said he.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. d.y.k.e, with an iron smile; "died,--burnt to death in her first year,--yes, sir!"

"Mr. d.y.k.e," rejoined MacGentle, dignifiedly, lifting his chin high above his stock, "I have myself seen the little girl, then in her third year, pulling her brother's hair on the nursery floor. She was dark-eyed,--a very lovely child. As to the burning, I now recollect that when the house in Brooklyn took fire, the child was in danger, but was rescued by her nurse, who herself received very severe injuries."

Mr. d.y.k.e heaved a long, deliberate sigh, and allowed his eyes to wander slowly round the room, before replying.

"You are not a family man, Mr. MacGentle, sir! Don't blame you, sir!

Your memory, perhaps--But no matter! The nurse who stole the child was, I presume, the same who rescued her from the fire?"

Mr. d.y.k.e perhaps intended to give a delicately ironical emphasis to this question, but his irony was apt to be a rather unwieldy and unmistakable affair. The truth was, he was a little staggered by the President's circ.u.mstantial statement; whence his deliberation, and his not entirely pertinent rejoinder about "a family man."

"And why not the same, sir? I ask you, why not the same?" demanded Mr.

MacGentle, with slender imperiousness.

But, by this time, Mr. d.y.k.e had thought of a new argument.

"The little girl, I understood you to say, was dark? Since she was the twin-sister of one of Mr. Balder Helwyse's complexion, that is odd, Mr. MacGentle,--odd, sir." And the solid family man fixed his sharp brown eyes full upon the unsubstantial bachelor. The latter's delicate nostrils expanded, and a pink flush rose to his faded cheeks. He was now as haughty and superb as a paladin.

"I will discuss business subjects with my subordinates, Mr. d.y.k.e; not other subjects, if you please! This dispute was not begun by me. Let it be carried no further, sir! Twins are not necessarily, nor invariably, of the same complexion. Let nothing more be said, Mr.

d.y.k.e. I trust the little girl may yet be found and restored to her family--to--to her brother! I trust she may yet be found, sir!" And he glared at Mr. d.y.k.e aggressively.

"I trust you may live to see it, Mr. MacGentle, sir!" said the confidential clerk, shifting his ground in a truly masterly manner; and before the President could recover, he had bowed and gone out. Ten minutes afterwards MacGentle opened the door, and lo! d.y.k.e himself on the threshold.

"Mr. d.y.k.e!"

"Mr. MacGentle!" in the same breath.

"I--Mr. d.y.k.e, let me apologize for my asperity,--for my rudeness,"

says MacGentle, stepping forward and holding out his thin white hand, his eyebrows more raised than ever, the corners of his mouth more depressed. "I am sincerely sorry that--that--"

"O sir!" cries the square clerk, grasping the thin hand in both his square palms; "O sir! O sir! No, no!--no, no! I was just coming to beg you--My fault,--my fault, Mr. MacGentle, sir! No, no!"

Thus incoherently ended the quarrel between these two old friends, the dispute being left undecided. But the important point was established that Balder Helwyse was insured a practice in Boston, in case his uncle Glyphic's fortune failed to enrich him.

VIII.

A COLLISION IMMINENT.

A large, handsome steamer was the "Empire State," of the line which ran between Newport and New York. She was painted white, had walking-beam engines, and ornamented paddle-boxes, and had been known to run nearly twenty knots in an hour. On the evening of the twenty-seventh of May, in the year of which we write, she left her Newport dock as usual, with a full list of pa.s.sengers. On getting out of the harbor, she steamed into a bank of solid fog, and only got out of it the next morning, just before pa.s.sing h.e.l.lgate, at the head of East River, New York. On the pa.s.sage down Long Island Sound she met with an accident. She ran into the schooner Resurrection, which was lying becalmed across her course, carrying away most of the schooner's bowsprit, but doing no serious damage. This, however, was not the worst. On arriving in New York, it was found that one of the pa.s.sengers was missing! He had fallen overboard during the night, possibly at the time of the collision.

Balder Halwyse was on board. After dining with the cook, and smoking a real Havana cigar (probably the first real one that he had ever been blessed with), he put a package of the same brand in his travelling-bag, bade his entertainer,--who had solemnly engaged to remain in Boston for Mr. Helwyse's sole sake,--bade his fellow-convivialist good by, and took the train to Newport, and from there the "Empire State" for New York.

The darkness was the most impenetrable that the young man had ever seen; Long Island Sound was like a pocket. The pa.s.sengers--those who did not go to their state-rooms at once--sat in the cabin reading, or dozing on the chairs and sofas. A few men stayed out on deck for an hour or two, smoking; but at last they too went in. The darkness was appalling. The officer on the bridge blew his steam fog-whistle every few minutes, and kept his lanterns hung out; but they must have been invisible at sixty yards.

Helwyse kept the deck alone. Apparently he meant to smoke his whole bundle of cigars before turning in. He paced up and down, Napoleon-like in his high boots, until finally he was brought to a stand by the blind night-wall, which no man can either scale or circ.u.mvent. Then he leaned on the railing and looked against the darkness. Not a light to be seen in heaven or on earth! The water below whispered and swirled past, torn to soft fragments by the gigantic paddle-wheel. Helwyse's beard was wet and his hands sticky with the salt mist.

Ever and anon sounded the fog-whistle, hoa.r.s.ely, as though the fog had got in its throat; and the pale glare of a lantern, fastened aloft somewhere, lighted up the white issuing steam for a moment. There was no wind; one was conscious of motion, but all sense of direction and position--save to the steersman--was lost. Helwyse could see the red end of his cigar, and very cosey and friendly it looked; but he could see nothing else.

It is said that staid and respectable people, when thoroughly steeped in night, will sometimes break out in wild grimaces and outlandish gesticulations. It is certainly the time when unlawful thoughts and words come to men most readily and naturally. Night brings forth many things that daylight starts from. The real power of darkness lies not in merely baffling the eyesight, but in creating the feeling of darkness in the soul. The chains of light are broken, and we can almost believe our internal night to be as impenetrable to G.o.d's eyes as that external, to our own!

By and by Helwyse thought he would find some snug place and sit down.

The cabin of the "Empire State" was built on the main deck, abaft the funnel, like a long, low house. Between the stern end of this house and the taffrail was a small s.p.a.ce, thickly grown with camp-stools.

Helwyse groped his way thither, got hold of a couple of the camp-stools, and arranged himself comfortably with his back against the cabin wall. The waves bubbled invisibly in the wake beneath. After sitting for a while in the dense blackness, Helwyse began to feel as though his whole physical self were shrivelled into a single atom, careering blindly through infinite s.p.a.ce!

After all, and really, was he anything more? If he chose to think not, what logic could convince him of the contrary? Visible creation, as any child could tell him, was an illusion,--was not what it seemed to be. But this darkness was no illusion! Why, then, was it not the only reality? and he but an atom, charged with a vital power of so-called senses, that generally deceived him, but sometimes--as now--let him glimpse the truth? The fancy, absurd as it was, had its attraction for the time being. This great living, staring world of men and things is a terrible weight to lug upon one's back. But if man be an invisible atom, what a vast, wild, boundless freedom is his! Infinite s.p.a.ce is wide enough to cut any caper in, and no one the wiser.