Julian Hawthorne - Idolatry

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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!

XXVIII.

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.

XXIX.

A CHAMBER OF THE HEART.

Manetho neither sank through the granite floor, nor ascended in the
smoke of the lamp. He unlocked a door (to the panels of which the
clock was affixed, and which it concealed) and let himself into his
private study, a room scarce seven feet wide, though corresponding in
length and height with the dimensions of the outer temple. Books and
papers were kept here, and such other things of a private or valuable
nature as Manetho wished should be inaccessible to outsiders. Against
the wall opposite the door stood a heavy mahogany table; beside it, a
deep-bottomed chair, in which the priest now sat down.

The room was destitute of windows, properly so called. The walls were
full twenty feet high; and at a distance of some sixteen feet from the
floor, a series of low horizontal apertures pierced the masonry,
allowing the light of heaven to penetrate in an embarrassed manner,
and hesitatingly to reveal the interior. Viewed from without, these
narrow slits would be mistaken for mere architectural indentations. To
the inhabitant they were of more importance, contracted though they
were; and albeit one could not look out of them, they served as
ventilators, and to distinguish between fine and cloudy weather.

In his earlier and more active days, Manetho had lived and worked
throughout the whole extent of this study, and it had been kept clean
and orderly to its remotest corner. But as years passed, and the range
of his sympathies and activities narrowed, the ends of the room had
gradually fallen into dusty neglect, till at length only the small
space about the chair and table was left clear and available. The rest
was impeded by books, instruments of science, and endless chaotic
rubbish; while spiders had handed down their ever-broadening estates
from father to child, through innumerable Araneidaean generations. A
gray uniformity had thus come to overspread everything; and with the
exceptions of a cracked celestial globe, and the end of a worm-eaten
old ladder, there was nothing to catch the attention.

Here might the Egyptian indulge himself in whatever extravagances of
word or act he chose, secure from sight or hearing; and here had he
spent many an hour in such solitary exercises as no sane mind can
conceive. To him the room was thick with associations. Here had he
pursued his studies, or helped the Doctor in his erratic experiments
and research; here, with Helen in his thoughts, he had shaped out a
career,--not all of Christian humility and charity, perhaps, but at
least unstained by positive sin, and not unmindful of domestic
happiness. Here, again, had Salome visited him, bringing discord and
delight in equal parts; for at times, with the strong heat of youth,
he had vowed to love only her and to forsake ambition; and anon the
bloodless counsels of worldly power and welfare banished her with a
curse for having crossed his path. Head and heart were always at war
in Manetho. The talismanic diamond flashed or waned, and fiercely
wriggled the little fighting serpents.

At length Thor Helwyse's gauntlet was thrown into the ring; and
peace--if still present to outward seeming--abode not in the feverish
soul of the Egyptian. But it was his nature to dissemble. In this room
he had often outwatched the night, chewing the cud of his wrongs,
invoking vengeance upon the thwarter of his hopes, and swearing
through his teeth to even the balance between them. The black serpent
held the golden one helpless in his coils. The obtuse Doctor,
blundering in at morning, would find his adopted son with pallid
cheeks and glittering eyes, but ever ready with a smile and pleasant
greeting, obedience and help. Hiero Glyphic, however wayward and
cross-grained, never had cause to censure this creature of his,--to
remind him that he might have been food for crocodiles.

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