Julian Hawthorne - Idolatry

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"Policemen!" he began, with a return of his assured voice and
bearing. They stared at him, and one said, "How?"

"Direct me to the best hotel near here!" said Helwyse.

They stared, and told him the way to the Astor House.

There had been but the briefest hesitation in Helwyse's mind, but
during that pause he had reconsidered his resolve and said No to it.
Remembering some episodes of his past history, he cannot hastily be
accused of vulgar fear of death. In his case, indeed, it may have
required more courage to close his mouth than to open it. Be that as
it might, the question as to the degree and nature of his guilt was
still unsettled in his mind. Moreover, had he been clear on this
point, he yet distrusted the competence of human laws to do him
justice. He shrank from surrender, less as affecting his person than
as superseding his judgment. But, failing himself and mankind, to what
other court can he appeal? Should the fitting tribunal appear, will he
have the nerve to face it?

He did not go to the Astor House, notwithstanding the trouble he had
taken to ask his way thither. He coasted along the more obscure
thoroughfares, seeming to find something congenial in them. Here were
people, many of whom had also committed crimes, whose eyes he need
not shun to meet, who were his brethren. To be sure, they gave him no
friendly glances, taking him for some dainty aristocrat, whom idle
curiosity had led to their domains. But Helwyse knew the secret of his
kinship; and he perhaps indulged a wild momentary dream of proclaiming
himself to them, entering into their life, and vanishing from that
world that had known him heretofore. It is a shorter step than is
generally supposed, from human height to human degradation.

A pale girl with handsome features, careless expression, and somewhat
disordered hair, leant out of a low window, her loose dress falling
partly open from her bosom as she did so.

"Where are you going, my love?" inquired she, with a professionally
attractive smile. "Aren't you going to give me a lock of that sweet
yellow hair?--there's a duck!"

It so happened that Helwyse had never before been openly accosted by a
member of this class of the community. Was this infringement of the
rule the result of his own fall, or of the girl's exceptional
effrontery? He had an indignant glance ready poised, but forbore to
hurl it! The worst crime of the young woman was that she disposed of
herself at a rate of remuneration exactly corresponding to the value
of the commodity; whereas he, less economical and orderly, had
mortgaged his own soul by disposing of some one else's body, and was,
if anything, out of pocket by the transaction! Undoubtedly the young
woman had the best of it; very likely, had she been aware of the
circumstances, she would not have deigned him so much as a smile. He
therefore neither yielded to her solicitations nor rebuked them, but
passed on. The adventure rectified his fraternizing impulse. Albeit
standing accountant for so great a sin, the mire was as yet alien to
him.

But there was pertinence in the young woman's question; where was he
going, indeed? Since the catastrophe on board the steamer, he had
forgotten Doctor Glyphic. He felt small inclination to meet his
relative now; but certain considerations of personal interest no
longer wore the same color as yesterday. Robbed of his self-respect,
he could ill afford to surrender worldly wealth into the bargain. On
the other hand, to palm himself off on his uncle for a true man was
adding hypocrisy to his other crime.

Such an objection, however, could hardly have turned the scale. Great
crimes are magnets of smaller ones. It was necessary for Helwyse to
alter the whole scheme of his life-voyage; and since he had failed in
beating up against the wind, why not make all sail before it?
Meanwhile, it was easier to call on Doctor Glyphic than to devise a
new course of action; and thus, had matters been allowed to take their
natural turn, mere inertia might have brought about their meeting.

But the irony of events turns our sternest resolves to ridicule. On
the next street-corner was a hair-dresser's shop, its genial little
proprietor, plump and smug, rubbing his hands and smiling in the
doorway. Beholding the commanding figure of the yellow-bearded young
aristocrat, afar off, his professional mouth watered over him. What a
harvest for shears and razor was here! Dare he hope that to him would
be intrusted the glorious task of reaping it?

As Helwyse gained the corner, his weary eyes took in the smiling
hair-dresser, the little room beyond cheerful with sunshine and
colored paper-hangings, and the padded chair for customers to recline
in. Here might he rest awhile, and rise up a new man,--a stranger to
himself and to all who had known him. It was fitting that the inward
change should take effect without; not to mention that the wearing of
so conspicuous a mane was as unsafe as it was unsuitable.

He entered the shop, therefore,--the proprietor backing and bowing
before him,--and sat down with a sigh in the padded chair. Immediately
he was enveloped in a light linen robe, a towel was tucked in round
his neck by deft caressing fingers, the soothing murmur of a voice was
in his ear, and presently sounded the click-click of shears. The
descendant of the Vikings closed his eyes and felt comfortable.

The peculiar color and luxuriance of Balder's hair and beard were
marked attributes of the Helwyse line. In these days of ponderous
genealogies, who would be surprised to learn that the family sprang
from that Balder, surnamed the Beautiful, who was the sun-god of
Scandinavian mythology? Certain of his distinctive characteristics,
both physical and mental, would appear to have been perpetuated with
marvellous distinctness throughout the descent; above all, the golden
locks, the blue eyes, and the sunny disposition.

For the rest, so far as sober history can trace them back, they seem
to have been a noble and adventurous race of men, loving the sea, but
often taking a high part in the political affairs of the nation. The
sons were uniformly fair, but the daughters dark,--owing, it was said,
to the first mother of the line having been a dark-eyed woman. But the
advent of a dark-eyed heir had been foretold from the earliest times,
not without ominous (albeit obscure) hints as to the part he would
play in the family history. The precise wording of none of these old
prophecies has come down to us; but they seem in general to have
intimated that the dark-eyed Helwyse would bring the race to a ruinous
and disgraceful end, saving on the accomplishment of conditions too
improbable to deserve recording. The dead must return to life, the
living forsake their identity, love unite the blood of the victim to
that of the destroyer,--and other yet stranger things must happen
before the danger could be averted.

The superstitious reverence paid to enigmatical utterances of this
kind has long ago passed away; and, if any meaning ever attaches to
them, it is apt to be sadly commonplace. Nevertheless, when Balder was
born, and the hereditary blue eyes were found wanting, the
circumstance was doubtless the occasion of much half-serious banter
among those to whom the ominous prophecies were familiar. Certainly
the young man had already made one grave mistake; and he could hardly
have followed it up by a more disgraceful retreat than this to the
hair-dresser's saloon. The ghosts of his heroic forefathers in
Valhalla would disown his shorn head with indignant scorn; for their
golden locks had ever been sacred to them as their honor. When the
Roman Empire was invaded by the Goths and Vandals, a Helwyse--so runs
the tale--was taken prisoner and brought before the Roman General. The
latter summoned a barber and a headsman, and informed the captive that
he might choose between forfeiting his head, and that which grew upon
it. As to the precise words in which the Northern warrior couched his
reply, historians vary; but they are agreed on the important point
that his head was chopped off without delay!

Did the memory of these things bring no blush to Balder's cheeks?
There he sat, as indifferent, to all outward seeming, as though he
were asleep. But this may have been the apathy consequent on the
abandonment of lofty pretensions and sublime ambitions; betraying
proud sensitiveness rather than base lack of feeling. Balder Helwyse
was not the first man of parts to appear in an undignified and
unheroic light. The foremost man of all this world once whined like a
sick girl for his physic, and preposterously overestimated his
swimming powers; yet his greatness found him out!

In sober earnest, however, what real importance attaches to Helwyse's
doings at this juncture? Physically and mentally weary, he may have
acted from the most ordinary motives. As to his entertaining any
superstitious crotchets about having his hair cut,--the spirit of the
age forbid it!

XIII.

THROUGH A GLASS.

The hair-dresser had the quality--now rare among his class--of
unlimited and self-enjoying loquacity; soothing, because its little
waves lapsed in objectless prattle on the beach of the apprehension,
to be attended to or not at pleasure. The sentences were without
regular head or tail, and were connected by a friendly arrangement
between themselves, rather than by any logical sequence; while the
recurring pauses at interesting epochs of work wrought a recognition
of how caressing had been the easy voice, and accumulated a lazy
disposition to hear it continue.

After decking Helwyse for the sacrifice, he had murmured
confidentially in his ear, "Hair, sir?--or beard, sir?--or
both?--little of both, sir? Just so. Hair first, please, sir. Love-ly
morning!"

And thereupon began to clip and coo and whisk softly about, in the
highest state of barberic joy. As he worked, inspired by the curly,
flowing glossy locks which, to his eye, called inarticulately for the
tools of his trade, his undulating monologue welled forth until
Coleridge might have envied him. Helwyse heard the sound, but let the
words go by to that unknown limbo whither all sounds, good or bad,
have been flying since time began.

By and by the hair was done; there ensued a plying of brushes, a
blowing down the neck, and a shaking out of the linen apron.

"Will you cast your eyes on the mirror now, sir, please?"

"No,--go on and finish, first," replied Helwyse; and forthwith a
cushion was insinuated beneath his head, and his feet were elevated
upon a rest. He heard the preparation of the warm lather, and anon the
knowing strapping of a razor. He put up his hand and stroked his beard
for the last time, wondering how he would look without it.

"Never saw the like before, sir; must have annoyed you dreadful!"
remarked the commiserating barber, as he passed the preparatory
scissors round his customer's jaw, mowing the great golden sheaf at
one sweep. He spoke of it as though it were a cancer or other painful
excrescence, the removal of which would be to the sufferer a boon
unspeakable.

Helwyse's face expressed neither anguish nor relief; he presently lost
himself in thoughts of his own, only returning to the perception of
outside things when the barber asked him whether he, also, had ever
attended camp-meeting; the subject being evidently one which had been
held forth upon for some time past.

"No?" continued the little man who by long practice had acquired a
wonderful power of interpreting silence. "Well, it's a great thing,
sir; and a right curious thing is experiencing religion, too! A great
blessing I've found it, sir; there's a peace dwells with me, as the
minister says, right along all the time now. Does the razor please
you, sir? Ah! I was a wild and godless being once, although always
reckoned a smart hand with the razor;--Satan never took my cunning
hand, as the poet says, away from me. Yes, there was a time when I was
how-d' y'-do with all the bloods around the place, and a good business
I used to do out of them, too, sir; but religion is a peace there's no
understanding, as the Good Book says; and if I don't make all I used
to, I save twice as much,--and that's the good of it, sir. Beau-ti-ful
chin is yours, sir, I declare!"

"Do you believe in the orthodox faith?" demanded Helwyse; "in
miracles, and the Trinity, and so forth?"

"Everything we're told to believe in I believe, I hope, sir; and as
quick as I hear anything more, why, I'm ready to believe that also,
provided only it comes through orthodox channels, as the saying is.
Ah, sir, it's the unquestioning belief that brings the happiness. I
wouldn't have anything explained to me, not if I could! and my faith
is such, that what goes against it I never would believe, not if you
proved it to me black and white, sir! Love-ly skin you've got,
sir,--it's just like a woman's. The intellect is a snare, that's what
it is,--ah, yes! You think with me, sir, don't you?"

But Helwyse had relapsed into silence. The little hair-dresser was
happy, was he?--happy, and hopeful, and conscious of spiritual
progress?--had no misgivings and feared no danger,--because he had
eliminated reason from his scheme of religion! Divine reason,--could
man live without it? A snare?--Well, had not Balder found it so?

True, that was not reason's fault, but his who misused reason. True,
also, that he who believed on others' authority believed not ideas but
men, and was destitute of self-reliance or dignity. Yet the
hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best
happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the
very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's,
yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and more successful.

This plump, superficial, smiling little hair-dresser was a person of
no importance, yet it happened to him to modify not only Helwyse's
external aspect, but the aspect of his mind as well,--by the
presentation of a new idea; for strange to say, Helwyse had never
chanced to doubt that seraphim were higher than cherubim, or that
independence was the only ladder to heaven. To be taught by one
avowedly without intellect is humiliating; but the experience of many
will furnish examples of a singular disregard of this kind of
proprieties.

When the shaving was done to the artist's satisfaction, he held the
mirror before his customer's face. Helwyse looked narrowly at his
reflection, as was natural in making the acquaintance of one who was
to be his near and intimate companion. He beheld a set of features
strongly yet gracefully built, but shorn of a certain warm, manly
attractiveness. The immediate visibility of mouth and chin--index of
so large a part of man's nature--startled him. He was dismayed at the
ease wherewith the working of emotion might now be traced. Man wholly
unveiled to himself is indeed an awful spectacle, be the
dissection-room that of the surgeon or of the psychologist. Hardly
might angels themselves endure it. A measure of ignorance of ourselves
is wise, because consciousness of a weakness may lead us to give it
rein. Perfect strength can coexist only with perfect knowledge, but
neither is attainable by man. Man should pay to be screened from
himself, lest his sword fail,--lest the Gorgon's head on his breast
change him to stone.

The gracious, outflowering veil of Balder Helwyse's life had vanished,
leaving nakedness. Henceforth he must depend on fence, feint and
guard, not on the downright sword-stroke. With Adam, the fig-leaf
succeeded innocence as a garment; for Helwyse, artificial address must
do duty as a fig-leaf. The day of guiltless sincerity was past; gone
likewise the day of open acknowledgment of guilt. Now dawned the day
of counterfeiting,--not always the shortest of our mortal year.

On the whole, Helwyse's new face pleased him not. He felt
self-estranged and self-distrustful. Standing on the borders of a
darker land, the thoughts and deeds of his past life swarmed in review
before his eyes. Many a seeming trifling event now showed as the
forewarning of harm to come. The day's journey once over, we see its
issue prophesied in each trumpery raven and cloud that we have met
since morning. However, the omens would have read as well another way;
for nature, like man, is twofold, and can be as glibly quoted to
Satan's advantage as to God's.

"Very well done!" said Helwyse to the barber, passing a hand over the
close-cropped head and polished chin. "The only trouble is, it cannot
be done once for all."

As the little man smilingly remarked, however, the charge was but ten
cents. His customer paid it and went out, and was seen by the
hair-dresser to walk listlessly up the street. The improvement in his
personal appearance had not mended his spirits. Indeed, it cannot be
disguised that his trouble was more serious than lay within a barber's
skill altogether to set right.

Were man potentially omniscient, then might Balder's late deed be no
crime, but a simple exercise of prerogative. But is knowledge of evil
real knowledge? God is goodness and man is evil. God knows both good
and evil. Man knows evil--knows himself--only; knows God only in so
far as he ceases to be man and admits God. But this simple truth
becomes confused if we fancy a possible God in man.

This was Balder's difficulty. Possessed of a strong, comprehensive
mind, he had made a providence of himself; confounded intelligence
with integrity; used the moral principle not as a law of action but as
a means of insight. The temptation so to do is strong in proportion as
the mind is greatly gifted. But experience shows no good results from
yielding to it. Blind moral instinct, if not safer, is more
comfortable!

Not the deed alone, but the revelation it brought, preyed on the young
man's peace. If he were a criminal to-day, then was the whole argument
of his past life criminal likewise. Yesterday's deed was the logical
outcome of a course of thought extending over many yesterdays. Why,
then, had not his present gloom impended also, and warned him
beforehand? Because, while parleying with the Devil, he looks angelic;
but having given our soft-spoken interlocutor house-room, he makes up
for lost time by becoming direfully sincere!

On first facing the world in his new guise, Helwyse felt an
embarrassment which he fancied everybody must remark. But, in fact (as
he was not long discovering), he was no longer remarkable; the barber
had wiped out his individuality. It was what he had wished, and yet
his insignificance annoyed him. The stare of the world had put him out
of countenance; yet when it stopped staring he was still unsatisfied.
What can be the solution of this paradox?

It perhaps was the occasion of his seeking the upper part of the city,
where houses were more scarce and there were fewer people to be
unconcerned! In country solitudes he could still be the chief figure.
He entered Broadway at the point where Grace Church stands, and passed
on through the sparsely inhabited region now known as Union Square.
The streets hereabouts were but roughly marked out, and were left in
many places to the imagination. On the corner of Twenty-third Street
was a low whitewashed inn, whose spreading roof overshadowed the
girdling balcony. Farmers' wagons were housed beneath the adjoining
shed, and one was drawn up before the door, its driver conversing with
a personage in shirt-sleeves and straw hat, answering to the name of
Corporal Thompson.

Helwyse perhaps stopped at the Corporal's hospitable little
establishment to rest himself and get some breakfast; but whether or
not, his walk did not end here, but continued up Broadway, and after
passing a large kitchen-garden (whose owner, a stout Dutchman, was
pacing its central path, smoking a long clay pipe which he took from
his lips only to growl guttural orders to the gardeners who were
stooping here and there over the beds), emerged into open country,
where only an occasional Irish shanty broke the solitude.

How long the young man walked he never knew; but at length, from the
summit of a low hill, he looked northwest and saw the gleam of Hudson
River. Leaving the road he struck across rocky fields which finally
brought him to the river-bank. A stony promontory jutted into the
water, and on this (having clambered to its outer extremity) Helwyse
sat down, his feet overhanging the swirling current. The tide was just
past the flood.

About two hundred yards up stream, to the northward, stood a small
wooden house, on the beach in front of which a shabby old mariner was
bailing out his boat. Southwards, some miles away, curved the
shadowed edge of the city, a spire mounting here and there, a
pencilled mist of smoke from chimneys, a fringe of thready masts
around the farthest point. In front slid ceaselessly away the vast
sweep of levelled water, and still it came undiminished on. The
opposing shore was a mile distant, its rocky front gradually gaining
abruptness and height until lost round the northern curve. But
directly opposite Helwyse's promontory, the stony wall was for some
way especially precipitous and high, its lofty brink serried with a
thick phalanx of trees.

This spot finally monopolized the adventurer's attention; had he been
in Germany, he would have looked for gray castle-towers rising behind
the foliage. The place looked inaccessible and romantic, and was
undeniably picturesque. New York was far enough away to be mistaken
for--say--Alexandria; while the broad river certainly took its rise in
as prehistoric an age as the Nile itself. Perhaps in the early morning
of the world some chieftain built his stronghold there, and fought
notable battles and gave mighty feasts; and later married, and begat
stalwart sons, or a daughter beautiful as earth and sky! Where to-day
were her youth and beauty, her loving noble heart, her warm melodious
voice, her eyes full of dark light? Why were there no such women
now?--not warped, imperfect, only half alive in body and spirit; but
charged from the heart outwards with pure divine vitality,--natures
vivid as fire, yet by strength serene!

"Why did not I live when she lived, to marry her?" muttered Helwyse in
a dream. "A woman whose infinite variety age could not alter nor
custom stale! A true wife would have kept me from error. What man can
comprehend the world, if he puts half the world away? Now it is too
late; she might have helped me rise to greatness, but not to bear
disgrace. Ah, Balder Helwyse, poor fool! you babble as if she stood
before you to take or leave. _You_ rise to greatness? You never had
the germs of greatness in you! You are so little that not the goddess
Freya herself could have made you tall! Through what delusion did you
fancy yourself better than any other worm?"

There was an interval, not more than a rod or two in width, in the
tree-hedge which lined the opposite cliff. Through this one might get
a narrow glimpse of what lay beyond. A strip of grassy lawn extended
in front of what seemed to be the stone corner of a house. The
distance obscured detail, but it looked massively built, though not
after the modern style. As Helwise gazed, sharpening his eyes to
discern more clearly, he saw a figure moving across the lawn directly
towards him. Advancing to the brink of the cliff, it there paused and
seemed to return his glance. Helwyse could not tell whether it were
man or woman. Had the river only been narrower!

The next moment he remembered his telescope, and, taking it from its
case, he was at a bound within one hundred yards of the western shore.
Man or woman? he steadied the glass on his knee and looked again. A
woman, surely,--but how strangely dressed! Such a costume had not
been in vogue since Damascus was a new name in men's mouths. Balder
gazed and gazed. Accurately to distinguish the features was
impossible,--tantalizingly so; for the gazer was convinced that she
was both young and beautiful. Her motions, her bearing, the graceful
peculiarity of her garb,--a hundred nameless evidences made it sure.
How delightful to watch her in her unconsciousness! yet Helwyse felt a
delicacy in thus stealing on her without her knowledge or consent. But
the misgiving was not strong enough to shut up his telescope; perhaps
it added a zest to the enjoyment.

"The very princess you were just now dreaming of! the most beautiful
and complete woman! Would I were the prince to win thee!"

This aspiration was whispered, as though its object were within
conversable distance. Balder could be imaginative enough when the
humor took him.

Hardly had the whisper passed his lips when he saw the princess
majestically turn her lovely head, slowly and heedfully, until her
glance seemed directly to meet his own. His cheeks burned; it was as
if she had actually overheard him. Was she gracious or offended? He
saw her stretch towards him her arms, and then, with a gesture of
beautiful power, clasp her hands and draw them in to her bosom.

Prince Balder's hand trembled, the telescope slipped; the quick effort
to regain it lent it an impetus that shot it far into the water. It
had done its work and was gone forever. The beautiful princess was
once more a vague speck across a mile of rapid river; now, even the
speck had moved beyond the trees and was out of sight!

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