Chapter 10

At the left of the conservatory was a door, the entrance to the Egyptian temple. It was square and heavy-browed, flanked by short thick columns rising from a base of sculptured papyrus-leaves, and flowering in lotus capitals. Three marble steps led to the threshold, while on either side reclined a sphinx in polished granite, softened, however, by a delicate flowering vine, which had been trained to cling round their necks. On the deep panels of the door were mystic emblems carved in relief. A line of hieroglyphics inscribed the lintel in deep blue, red, and black,--to what purport Balder could not divine.

At the opposite side of the conservatory was a corresponding door, veiled by an ample fold of silken tapestry, cunningly hand-worked in representation of a moon half veiled in clouds, shining athwart a stormy sea. By her light a laboring ship was warned off the rocks to leeward. The room (one of the later additions) by its external promise might have been the bower of some fashionable beauty thousands of years ago.

Balder looked from one of these doors to the other, doubting at which to apply. The tapestry curtain was swept aside at the base, leaving a small passage clear to the room beyond. In this opening now appeared the bright-crested head and eyes of the hoopoe, peeping mischievously at the intruder, who forthwith stepped down into the conservatory, holding forth to the little bird a friendly finger. The bird eyed him critically, then launched itself on the air, and, alighting on a spray above his head, warbled out a brilliant call.

Hereupon was heard within a quick rustling movement; the curtain was thrust aside, and a youthful woman issued forth amongst the warm plants. She was within a few feet of Balder Helwyse before seeming to realize his presence. She caught herself motionless in an instant. The sparkle of laughter in her eyes sank in a black depth of wonder. Her eyes filled themselves with Balder as a lake is filled with sunshine; and he, the man of the Wilie and philosopher, could only return her gaze in voiceless admiration.

Were a face and form of primal perfection to appear among men, might not its divine originality repel an ordinary observer, used to consider beautiful such abortions of the Creator's design as sin and degeneration have produced? Not easily can one imagine what a real man or woman would look like. Painting nor sculpture can teach us; we must learn, if at all, from living, electric flesh and blood.

This young woman was tall and erect with youthful majesty. She stood like the rejoicing upgush of a living fountain. Her contour was subtile with womanly power,--suggesting the spring of the panther, the glide of the serpent. Warm she seemed from the bosom of nature. One felt from her the influence of trees, the calm of meadows, the high freedom of the blue air, the happiness of hills. She might have been the sister of the sun.

The moulding finger of God seemed freshly to have touched her face. It was simple and harmonious as a chord of music, yet inexhaustible in its variety. It recalled no other face, yet might be seen in it the germs of a mighty nation, that should begin from her and among a myriad resemblances evolve no perfect duplicate. No angel's countenance, but warmest human clay, which must undergo some change before reaching heaven. The sphinx, before the gloom of her riddle had dimmed her primal joy,--before men vexed themselves to unravel God's webs from without instead of from within,--might have looked thus; or such perhaps was Isis in the first flush of her divinity,--fresh from Him who made her immortally young and fair.

Her black hair was crowned with a low, compact turban,--a purple and white twist of some fine cottony substance, striped with gold. Round her wide, low brow fitted a band of jewelled gold, three fingers' breadth, from which at each temple depended a broad, flat chain of woven coral, following the margin of the cheeks and falling loose on the shoulders. A golden serpent coiled round her smooth throat and drooped its head low down in her bosom. Her elastic feet, arched like a dolphin's back, were sandalled; the bright-colored straps, crossing one another half-way to the knee, set dazzlingly off the clear, dusky whiteness of the skin.

From her shoulders fell a long full robe of purple byssus, over an underdress of white which readied the knee. This tunic was confined at the waist by a hundred-fold girdle, embroidered with rainbow flowers and fastened in a broad knot below the bosom, the low-hanging ends heavy with fringe. The outer robe, with its long drooping sleeves falling open at the elbow, was ample enough wholly to envelop the figure, but was now girded up and one fold brought round and thrust beneath the girdle in front, to give freedom of motion. A rare perfume emanated from her like the evening breath of orange-blossoms.

Balder was no unworthy balance to this picture, though his else stately features showed too much the stimulus of modern thought. He was eminent by culture; she by nature only. But Balder's culture had not greatened him. Greatness is not of the brain, save as allied to the deep, pure chords which thrill at the base of the human symphony. He might have stood for our age; she, for that more primitive but profounder era which is at once man's beginning and his goal.

Balder's eyes could not frankly hold their own against her gaze of awful simplicity. All he had ever done amiss arose and put him to the blush. Nevertheless, he would not admit his inferiority; instead of dropping his eyes he closed the soul behind them, and sharpened them with a shallow, out-striking light. Without understanding the change, she felt it and was troubled. Loftily majestic as were her form and features, she was feminine to the core,--tender and finely perceptive. The incisive masculine gaze abashed her. She raised one hand deprecatingly, and her lips moved, though without sound.

He relented at this, and straightway her expression again shifted, and she smiled so radiantly that Balder almost looked to see whence came the light! The wondrous lines of her face curved and softened; all that was grave vanished. A tree standing in the sober beauty of shadow, when suddenly lit by the sun, changes as she changed; for sunshine is the laughter of the world.

The smile refreshed her courage, for she came nearer and made a sideways movement with her arm, apparently with the expectation that it would pass through the stalwart young man as readily as through the air. On encountering solid substance, she drew startled back, half in alarm and wholly in surprise. Balder had felt her touch, first as a benediction; then it chilled him, through remembrance of a deed forever debarring him from aught so pure and innocent as she. The subtleties of his philosophy might have cajoled him anywhere save in her presence. There, he felt unmistakably guilty; yet from irrational dread that she, whose intuitions seemed so swift and deep, might grasp the cause of his discomposure, he strove to hide it. Last of all the world should she know his crime!

Scarce two minutes since their meeting, yet perhaps a large proportion of their lives had meanwhile been charmed away. No word had been spoken,--eyes had superseded tongues. Nay, was ordinary conversation possible with a young goddess such as this? So perfect seemed her mastery over those profounder elements of intercourse underlying speech, which are higher and more direct than the mechanism of articulate words, that perhaps the latter method was unknown to her.

Nevertheless, one must say something. But what?--with what sentence of supreme significance should he begin? Moreover, what language should he use? for she, whose look and bearing were so alien to the land and age, might likewise be a stranger to modern dialects. But Aryan or Semitic was not precisely at the tip of Balder's tongue!

In the midst of his embarrassment, the startling note of the hoopoe pierced his ear, and precipitated him into asking that great elemental question which all created things are forever putting to one another,--

"What is your name?"

XVIII.

THE HOOPOE AND THE CROCODILE.

"Gnulemah!" she answered, laying a finger on the head of her golden serpent, and uttering the name as though it were of the only woman in the world.

But the next moment she found time to realize that something unprecedented had occurred, and her wonder trembled on the brink of dismay.

"Speaks in my language!" she exclaimed below her breath; "but is not Hiero."

Until Balder's arrival, then, Hiero would seem to have been the only talking animal she had known. The singularity of this did not at first strike the young man. Gnulemah was the arch-wonder; yet she so fully justified herself as to seem very nature; and by dint of her magic reality, what else had been wonderful seemed natural. Balder was in fairy-land.

He fell easily into the fairy-land humor.

"I am a being like yourself," said he, with a smile; "and not dumb like your plants and animals."

"Understood!--answered!" exclaimed Gnulemah again, in a tremor. As morning spreads up the sky, did the sweet blood flow outward to warm her face and neck. As the blush deepened, her eyelids fell, and she shielded her beautiful embarrassment with her raised hands. A pathos in the simple grace of this action drew tears unawares to Balder's eyes.

What was in her mind? what might she be? Had she lived always in this enchanted spot, companionless (for poor old Hiero could scarcely serve her turn) and ignorant perhaps that the world held other beings endowed like herself with human gifts? Had she vainly sought throughout nature for some kinship more intimate than nature could yield her, and thus at length fancied herself a unique, independently created soul, imperial over all things? Since her whole world was comprised between the wall and the river, no doubt she believed the reality of things extended no further.

In Balder she had found a creature like, yet pleasingly unlike herself, palpable to feeling as to sight, and gifted with that articulate utterance which till now she had accounted her almost peculiar faculty. Delightful might be the discovery, but awesome too, frightening her back by its very tendency to draw her forward.

Whether or not this were the solution of Gnulemah's mystery, Balder recognized quiet to be his cue towards her. Probably he could not do better than to get the ear of Doctor Hiero, and establish himself upon a footing more conventional than the present one. His next step accordingly was to ask after him by name.

She peeped at the questioner between her fingers, but ventured not quite to emerge from behind them, as she answered,--her primary attempt at description,--

"Hiero is--Hiero!"

"And how long have you been here?" inquired Balder with a smile.

Gnulemah forgot her embarrassment in wondering how so remarkable a creature happened to ask questions whose answers her whole world knew!

"We are always here!" she exclaimed; and added, after a moment's doubtful scrutiny, "Are you a spirit?"

"An embodied spirit,--yes!" answered he, smiling again.

"One of those I see beyond,"--she pointed towards the cliff,--"that move and seem to live, but are only shadows in the great picture? No! for I cannot touch them nor speak with them; they never answer me; they are shadows." She paused and seemed to struggle with her bewilderment.

"They are shadows!" repeated Helwyse to himself.

Though no Hermetic philosopher, he was aware of a symbolic truth in the fanciful dogma. Outside his immediate circle, the world is a shadow to every man; his fellow-beings are no more than apparitions, till he grasps them by the hand. So to Gnulemah the cliff and the garden wall were her limits of real existence. The great picture outside could be true for her only after she had gone forth and felt as well as seen it.

Fancy aside, however, was not hers a condition morally and mentally deplorable? Exquisitely developed in body, must not her mind have grown rank with weeds,--beautiful perhaps, but poisonous? Herein Balder fancied he could trace the one-sided influence of his crack-brained uncle.--Whether his daughter or not, Gnulemah was evidently a victim of his experimental mania. What particular crotchet could he have been humoring in this case? Was it an attempt to get back to the early sense of the human race?

The materials for such an evolution were certainly of tempting excellence. In point of beauty and apparent natural capacity, Gnulemah might claim equality with the noblest daughter of the Pharaohs. The grand primary problem of how to isolate her from all contact with the outside world was, under the existing circumstances, easy of solution. Beyond this there needed little positive treatment. Her creed must arise from her own instinctive and intuitive impressions. Of all beyond the reach of her hands, she trust to her eyes alone for information; no marvel, therefore, if her conclusions concerning the great intangible phenomena of the universe were fantastic as the veriest heathen myths. The self-evolved feelings and impulses of a black-eyed nymph like Gnulemah were not likely to be orthodox. She was probably no better than a worshipper of vain delusions and idols of the imagination.

Her attire--a style of costume such as might have been the fashion in the days of Cheops or Tuthmosis--showed a carrying out of the Doctor's whim,--a matching of the external to the internal conditions of the age he aimed to reproduce. The project seemed, on the whole, to have been well conceived and consistently prosecuted. It was seldom that Uncle Hiero achieved so harmonious a piece of work; but the idea showed greater moral obliquity than Balder would have looked for in the old gentleman.

But there was no deep sincerity in the young man's strictures. There before him stood the woman Gnulemah,--purple, white, and gold; a vivid, breathing, warm-hued life; a soul and body rich with Oriental splendor. There she stood, her hair flowing dark and silky from beneath her twisted turban, her eyes,--black melted loadstones; the broad Egyptian pendants gleaming and glowing from temple to shoulder. The golden serpent seemed to writhe on her bosom, informed from its wearer with a subtile vitality. Through all dominated a grand repose, like the calm of nature, which storms may prove but not disthrone!

There she stood,--enchanted princess, witch, goddess,--woman at all events, palpable and undeniable. She must be accepted for what she was, civilized or uncivilized, heathen or Christian. She was a perfected achievement,--vain to argue how she might have been made better. Who says that an evening cloud, gorgeous in purple and heavenly gold, were more usefully employed fertilizing a garden-patch?

Balder Helwyse, moreover, was not a simple utilitarian; he was almost ready to make a religion of beauty. If he blamed his uncle for shutting up this superb creature within herself, he failed not to admire the result of the imprisonment. He knew he was beholding as rare a spectacle as ever man's eyes were blessed withal; nor was he slow to perceive the psychological interest of the situation. To a student of mankind, if to no one else, Gnulemah was beyond estimation precious. But had Balder forgotten what fruit his tree of philosophy had already yielded him?

At all events, he forbore to press his question as to the whereabouts of Uncle Hiero, who would turn up sooner or later. It was enough for the present to know that he still existed. Meanwhile he would sound the depths of this fresh nature, undisturbed.

The hoopoe (who had played an important part in promoting the acquaintance thus far) forsook his perch above Balder's head, and after hovering for a moment in mid-air, as if to select the best spot, he alighted on the mossy cushion at the foot of the twin palm-trees. Such a couch might Adam and Eve have rejoiced to find in Paradise. Balder took the hint, and without more ado threw himself down there, while Gnulemah half knelt, half sat beside him, propped on her arm, her warm fingers buried in the cool moss. The little master-of-ceremonies remained, with a fine sense of propriety, between the two, preening and fluttering his brilliant feathers and casting diamond glances sidelong.

"You remember nothing before coming to this place, Gnulemah?"

"Only dream-memories, that grow dimmer. Before this, I was a spirit in the great picture, and when my lamp goes out I shall return thither."

"Your lamp, Gnulemah?--what lamp?"

"How can you understand me and yet not know what I know? My lamp is the light of my life; it burns always in the temple yonder; when it goes out my life will become a darkness, for I am Gnulemah, the daughter of fire!"

"I knew not that my uncle was a poet," muttered Balder to himself. "A daughter of fire,--yes, there is lightning in her eyes!" Aloud he said, secretly alluding to the manner of his descent into the garden,--

"I dropped from the sky into your world, Gnulemah. Though we can talk together, whatever we tell each other will be new."

She caught the idea of a lifetime spent instructing this delightful being, and receiving in return instruction from him. She entered at once the charming vista.

"Tell me," she began, bending towards him in her earnestness, "are there others like you?--are they bright and beautiful as you are?--or do they look like Hiero?"

Balder laughed, and flushed, and his heart warmed pleasurably. Here was a compliment from the very soul of nature. And albeit the lovely flatterer's experience of men was avowedly most limited, yet her taste was unvitiated as her sincerity, and her judgment may therefore have been more valuable than that of the most practised belle of fashion. But he answered modestly,--

"Hiero and I are both men, and there are as many men as stars in heaven, and as many women as men, myriads of men and women, Gnulemah!"

She lifted her face and hand in eloquent astonishment.

"O, what a world!" she exclaimed in her low-toned way. "But are the women all like me?"

"There is not one like you," answered Balder, with the quiet emphasis of conviction. How refreshing was it thus to set aside conventionalism! Her ingenuousness brought forth the like from him.

"Have you never wished to go beyond the wall?" he asked her.

"Yes, often!" she said, fingering the golden serpent thoughtfully. "But that could not be unless I put out the lamp. Sometimes I get tired of this world,--it has changed since I first came to it."

"Is it less beautiful?"

"It is smaller than it used to be," said Gnulemah, pensively. "Once the house was so high, it seemed to touch heaven;--see how it has dwindled since then! And so with other things that are on earth. The stars and the sun and clouds, they have not changed!"

"That is a consolation, is it not?" observed Balder, between a smile and a sigh. Gnulemah was not the first to charge upon the world the alterations in the individual; nor the first, either, to find comfort in the constancy of Heaven.

She went on, won to further confidence by her listener's sympathy,--

"I used to hope the wall would one day become so low that I might pass over it. But it has ceased to change, and is still too high. Shall I ever see the other side?"

"It can be broken down if need be. But you might go far before finding a world so fair as this. Perhaps it would be better to stand on the cliff, and only look forth across the river."

"I cannot stay always here," returned Gnulemah, shaking her turbaned head, with its gleaming bandeau and rattling pendants. "But no wall is between me and the sky; the flame of my lamp goes upward, and why should not Gnulemah?"

"A friend is the only world one does not tire of," he replied after a pause. "You have lacked companions."

Gnulemah glanced down at the hoopoe, who forthwith warbled aloud and fluttered up to her shoulder. The bird was her companion, and so, likewise, were the plants and flowers. Gnulemah could converse with them in their own language. Nature was her friend and confidant, and intimately communed with her.

All this was conveyed to Balder's apprehension, not by words, but by some subtile expressiveness of eye and gesture. Gnulemah could give voiceless utterances in a manner pregnant and felicitous almost beyond belief.

"I meet also a beautiful maiden in the looking-glass," she added; "her face and motion are always the same as my own. But though she seems to speak, her voice never reaches me; and she smiles, but only when I smile; and mourns only when I mourn. We can never reach each other; but there is more in her than in my birds and flowers."

"She is the shadow of yourself; no reality, Gnulemah."

"Are we shadows of each other, then? is she weary of her world, as I of mine? shall we both escape to some other,--or only pass each into the other's, and be separated as before?"

Balder, like wise men before him, was at some loss how to bring his wisdom to bear here. He could not in one sentence explain the complicated phenomena in question. Fortunately, however, Gnulemah (who had apparently not yet learned to appeal from her own to another's judgment) seemed hardly to expect a solution to problems upon which she had expended much private thought.

"I have come to look on her as though she were myself, and she tells me secrets which no one else can know. Some things she tells me that I do not care to hear, but they are always true. I can see changes in; her face that I feel in my own heart."

"Does she teach you that you grow every day more beautiful?" He was willing to prove whether Gnulemah could thus be disconcerted. Many a woman had he known, surprisingly innocent until a chance word or glance betrayed profoundest depths.

"Our beauty is like the garden, which is beautiful every day, though no day is just like another. But the changes I mean are in the spirit that looks back at me from her eyes, when I enter deeply into them."

What connection could, after all, subsist between beauty and vanity in one who neither had rivals nor aught to rival for? Doubtless she enjoyed her beauty,--the more, as her taste was pure of conventional falsities. How much of worldly experience would it take to vitiate that integrity in her? Would it not be better to leave her to end her life, restricted to the same innocent and lovely companionship which had been hers thus far? Here the hoopoe, startled at some movement that Balder made, abandoned his perch on his mistress's shoulder, and flew to the top of the palm-tree. Had the day when such friends would suffice her needs gone by?

Yes, it was now too late. No one who has beheld the sun can thenceforth dispense with it. Balder had shone across the beautiful recluse's path, and linked her to outside realities by a chain which, whether he went or stayed, would never break. Flowers, birds, shadows in the mirror,--less than nothing would these things be to her from this hour on.

Heretofore the intercourse between the two had been tentative and incoherent,--a doubtful, aimless grappling with strange conditions which seemed delightful, but might mask unknown dangers. No solid basis of mutual acquaintanceship had been even approached. Balder, accustomed though he was to woman's society, knew not how to apply his experience here; while Gnulemah had not yet perhaps decided whether her visitor were natural or supernatural. The man was probably the less at ease of the two, finding himself in a pass through which tradition nor culture could pilot him. Gnulemah, being used to daily communion with things mysterious to her understanding, would scarcely have altered her demeanor had Balder turned out to be a genie!