Chapter 17

Great Thor, meanwhile, pitied the slender Egyptian, and in a kindly way despised him, with his supple manners, quiet words, and religious studies. To the young priest's timid yet earnest request for permission to pronounce the marriage-service of him and his bride, Thor assented with gruff heartiness.

"Marry us? Of course! marry us as fast as you can, if it gives you any pleasure, my friend of the crocodile. A good beginning for your ministerial career,--marrying a couple who love each other as much as Nell and I do. Eh, Nellie?"

The ceremony over, Manetho had retired to his study, and there passed the night,--their marriage-night! What words and tones, what twistings of face and body, did those passionless walls see and hear? How the smooth, studious, submissive priest yearned for power to work his will for one day! And as the cool, still morning sheared the lustre from his lamp-flame, how desolate he felt, with his hatred and despair and blaspheming rage! Evil passions are but poor company, in the early morning.

But was not Salome left him? The only sincerely tender words he had ever spoken to woman had been said to her: his humblest and happiest thoughts had been born of their early acquaintance,--before he had raised his eyes to the proud and languid mistress. Yet on her only did the evil passions of Manetho wreak themselves in harm and wrong; her only, on a later day, did he dastardly strike down. Poor Salome had given him her heart. These walls had seen their meetings.

Years afterwards, Manetho had here embalmed his foster-father: through long hours had he labored at his hateful task, with curious zest and conscientiousness. As regarded the strange place of sepulture, the Egyptian had perhaps imagined a symbolic fitness in enclosing his human immortal in the empty shell of time. Over this matter of Hiero Glyphic's death and burial, however, must ever brood a cloud of mystery. Undoubtedly Manetho loved the man,--but death was not always the worst of ills in Manetho's philosophy.

The clock had been affixed to the study door both as an additional concealment, and possibly as a congenial sentry over the interior associations. Since then the place had become the clergyman's almost daily resort. Pacing the contracted floor, sitting moodily in the chair,--many a brooding hour had gone over his barrenly busy head, and written its darkening record in his book of life. Here had been schemed that plan of revenge, whose insanity the insane schemer could not perceive. Nor could he understand that mightier powers than he could master worked against him, and even used his efforts to bring forth contrary results.

But not all hours had passed so. Spaces there had been wherein evil counsels had retired to a cloudy background, athwart which had brightened a rainbow, intangible, whose source was hidden, but whose colors were true before his eyes. The grace and aerial beauty of sunshine lightened through the rain,--the pleasing loveliness of essential life was projected on the gloom of evil imaginations. For Manetho's actual deeds were apt to be prompted by far gentler influences than governed his theories. The man was better than his mind: and goodness, perhaps, bears an absolute blessing; insomuch that the sinner, doing ignorant good, yet feels the benefit thereof; just as the rain, however dismal, cannot prevent the sun from making rainbows out of it.

On this particular morning Manetho sank into his deep-seated chair, and was quite still. A great part of what had hitherto made his daily life ended here. The activity of existence was over for him. Thought, feeling, hope, could live hereafter only as phantoms of memory. But to look back on evil done is not so pleasant as to plan it; the dead body of a foe moves us in another way than his living hostile person.

When, therefore, Manetho should have hurled to its mark the long-poised spear, he would have little to look forward to. That one moment of triumph must repay, both for what had been and was to come. To-day of all his days, then, must each sense and faculty be in exquisite condition. Unseasonably enough, however, he found himself in a perversely dull and callous state. Could Providence so cajole him as to mar the only joyful hour of his life! Then better off than he were savages, who could destroy their recusant idols. But nothing short of spiritual suicide would have destroyed the idol of Manetho!

He was wearing to-day the same priestly robe which he had put on when, for the first and last time, he performed a ministerial duty. In this robe had he married Helen to Thor. Itself a precious relic of antiquity, it had once dignified the shoulders of a contemporary of Manetho's remotest ancestors. Old Hiero Glyphic had counted it amongst his chiefest treasures; and on his sister's wedding-day had produced it from its repository, insisting that the minister should wear it instead of the orthodox sacerdotal costume. Since then it had lain untouched till to-day.

Manetho brooded over the dim magnificence of its folds, sitting amidst the cobwebbed rubbish, a narrow glint of sunshine creeping slope-downwards from the crevice above his head. He smoothed the fabric abstractedly with his hand, recalling the thoughts and scenes of four-and-twenty years ago.

"I joined them in the holy bonds of matrimony,--read over them that service, those sacred words heavy with solemn benediction. Rich, smooth, softly modulated was my voice, missing not one just emphasis or melodious intonation. Ah! had they seen my soul. But my eyes were half closed like the crocodile's, yet never losing sight of the two I was uniting in sight of God and man. The Devil too was there. He turned the blessings my lips uttered into blighting curses, that fell on the happy couple like pestilential rain!

"Laughable! Covered head to foot with curses, and felt them not! All was smiles, blushes, happiness, forward-looking to a long, joyful future. They knelt before me; I uplifted my hands and invoked the last blessing,--the final curse! My heart burned, and the smoke of its fire enveloped bride and groom, fouling his yellow beard, and smirching her silvery veil; shutting out heaven from their prayers, and blackening their path before them. They neither felt nor knew. They kissed,--I saw their lips meet,--as Balder and Gnulemah to-day. Then I covered my face and seemed to be in prayer!

"Gnulemah,--I hate her!--yes, but hatred sometimes touches the heart like love. I love her!--to marry her? Woe to him who becomes her husband! As a daughter?--no daughter is she of mine!--I hate her, then.

"Why am I childless?--how would I have loved a child! I would have left all else to love my child! I would have been the one father in the world! My life should have been full of love as it has been of hate. Why did not God send me a wife and a daughter?"

Men's ears have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles. But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen. One may object that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the question, "Whence your ignorance and deafness?" what shall be the answer?

In Manetho's case it appears to have been the venerable robe that took on itself the task of remonstrance.

"You are unreasonable, friend," it interposed with a gentle rustle. "Gnulemah, if not your daughter, might, however, have stood you in place of one; and she would have done you just as much good, in the way of softening and elevating your nature, as though she had been the issue of your own loins. You have turned the milk and honey of your life into gall and wormwood; and I wish I could feel sure that only you would get the benefit of it!"

The reproof had as well been spared; it is doubtful whether the culprit heard so much as a word of it. His reverie rambled on.

"Keen,--that Balder! he half suspects me. Had I not so hurried him to a conclusion, he would have questioned me too closely. He shall know all presently, even as I promised him!--shall hear a sounder guess at Gnulemah's genealogy than was made to-day.

"Do I love her?--only as the means to my end! The end once gained, I shall hate her as I do him. But not yet,--and therefore must I love him as well as her. They shall be, to-day, my beloved children! To-morrow,--how shall I endure till to-morrow,--all the night through? O Gnulemah!--

"They love each other well,--seem made to make each other happy; yet have they come together from the ends of the earth to be each other's curse! Only if I keep silence might it be otherwise, for love might tame the devil that I have bred in Gnulemah. Even now she seems more angel than devil!--Am I mad?"

He straightened himself in his chair, and glanced up towards the crevice whence slanted the dusty sunshine. The old robe took the opportunity to deliver its final warning.

"Not yet mad beyond remedy, Manetho; but you look up too seldom at the sunshine, and brood too often over your own dusty depths. You have had no consciously unselfish thought during the last quarter of a century. You eat, drink, and breathe only Manetho! This room is yours, because it is fullest of rubbish, and least looks out upon the glorious universe. Break down your walls! take broom in hand without delay! Proclaim at once the crime you meditate. Go! there is still sunshine in this dust-hole of yours, and more of heaven in every man than he himself dreams of. The sun is passing to the other side. Go while it shines!"

But Manetho's dull ears heard not; and the aged garment of truth spoke no more.

XXX.

DANDELIONS.

It seems a pity that, with all imagination at our service, we should have to confine our excursions within so narrow a domain as this of Hiero Glyphic's. One tires of the best society, uncondimented with an occasional foreign relish, even of doubtful digestibility. Barring this, it only remains to relieve somewhat the monotony of our food, by variety in the modes of dishing it up.

Balder had been no whit disconcerted at the priest's abrupt evanishment. The divine sphere of Gnulemah had touched him with its sweet magnetism, and he was sensible of little beyond it. Their hands greeted like life-long friends. Drawing hers within his arm, he still kept hold of it, and her rounded shoulder softly pressed his, as they loitered out between the impenetrable sphinxes. The conservatory, however beautiful in itself and by association, was too small to hold their hearts at this moment. They passed on, and through the columns of the Moorish portico, into the fervent noon sunshine.

Grasshoppers chirped; fine buzzing flies darted swift circles and lit again; birds giggled and gossiped, bobbing and swinging among swaying boughs. Battalions of vast green trees stood grand in shadow-lakes of cooler green, their myriad leaves twinkling light and dark. Tender gleams of river topped the enamelled bank,--the further shore a slumbering El Dorado. The trees in the distant orchard wore bridal veils, and even Gnulemah's breath was not much sweeter than theirs!

Emerging arm in arm on the enchanted lawn the lovers turned southwards up the winding avenue. The fragrance, the light and warmth, the bird and insect voices, imperfectly expressed their own heart-happiness. The living turf softly pressed up their feet. This was the fortunate hour that comes not twice. Happy those to whom it comes at all! To live was such full bliss, every new movement overflowed the cup. Joy was it to look on earth and sky; but to behold each other was heaven! More life in a moment such as this, than in twenty years of scheming more successful than Manetho's.

They followed the same path Helen had walked the eve of her death; and presently arrived at the old bench. Shadow and sunshine wrestled playfully over it, while the green blood of the leaves overhead glowed vividly against the blue. Around the bench the grass grew taller, as on a grave; and crisp lichens, gray and brown, overspread its surface. Man had neglected it so long that Nature, overcoming her diffidence towards his handiwork, had at length claimed it for her own.

The glade was full of great golden dandelions, whose soft yellow crowns were almost too heavy for the slender necks. The prince and princess of the fairy-tale paused here, recognizing the spot as the most beautiful on earth,--albeit only since their love's arrival. They seated themselves not on the bench, but on the yet more primitive grass beside it. They had not spoken as yet. Balder plucked some dandelions, and proceeded to twist them into a chain; and Gnulemah, after watching him for a while followed his example.

"You and I have sat on the grass and woven such chains before," asserted she at length. "When was it?"

"I haven't done such a thing since I was a child not much taller than a dandelion," returned Balder. He was not ethereal enough to follow Gnulemah in her apparently fanciful flight, else might he have lighted on a discovery to which all the good sense and logic in the world would not have brought him.

"Yes; we have made these chains before!" reiterated Gnulemah, looking at her companion in a preoccupied manner. "They were to have chained us together forever."

"We should have made them of stronger stuff then. But which of us broke the chain?"

"They took us away from each other, and it was never finished. Do you remember nothing?"

"The present is enough for me," said her lover; and he finished his necklace with a handsome clasp of blossoms, and threw it over her neck. She gave a low sigh of satisfaction.

"I have been waiting for it ever since that time! And here is mine for you."

Thus adorned by each other's hands, their love seemed greater than before, and they laughed from pure delight. Their bonds looked fragile; yet it would need a stronger wrench to part them than had they been cables of iron or gold, unsustained by the subtile might of love.

"Let us link them together," proposed Balder; and, loosening a link of his chain, he reunited it inside Gnulemah's. "We must keep together," he continued with a smile, "or the marriage-bonds will break."

"Is this marriage, Balder? to be tied together with flowers?"

"One part of marriage. It shows the world that we belong only to each other."

"How could they help knowing that,--for to whom else could we belong? besides, why should they know?"

"Because," answered Balder after some consideration, "the world is made in such a way, that unless we record all we do by some visible symbol, everything would get into confusion."

"No no," protested Gnulemah, earnestly. "Only God should know how we love. Must the world know our words and thoughts, and how we have sat beneath these trees?--Then let us not be married!"

They were leaning side to side against the bench, along whose edge Balder had stretched an arm to cushion Gnulemah's head. As he turned to look at her, a dash of sunlight was quivering on her clear smooth cheek, and another ventured to nestle warmly below the head of the guardian serpent on her bosom, for Gnulemah and the sun had been lovers long before Balder's appearance. Where breathed such another woman? From the low turban that pressed her hair to the bright sandals on her fine bronze feet, there was no fault, save her very uniqueness. She belonged not to this era, but to the Golden Age, past or to come. Could she ever be conformed to the world of to-day? Dared her lover assume the responsibility of revealing to this noble soul all the meanness, sophistries, little pleasures, and low aims of this imperfect age? Could he change the world to suit her needs? or endure to see her change to suit the world? Moreover, changing so much, might she not change towards him? The Balder she loved was a grander man than any Balder knew. Might she not learn to abhor the hand which should unveil to her the Gorgon features of fallen humanity?--Much has man lost in losing Paradise!

Contemplating Gnulemah's entrance into the outer world, Manetho had anticipated her ruin from the flowering of the evil seed which he believed himself to have planted in her. Might not the same result issue from a precisely opposite cause? The Arcadian fashion in which the lovers' passion had ripened must soon change forever. It was perilous to advance, but to retreat was impossible. Balder was at bay; had he loved Gnulemah less, he would have regretted Charon's ferry-boat. But his love was greater for the danger and difficulty wherewith it was fraught. He could not summon the millennium; well, he might improve himself.

"If I could but shut her glorious eyes to all the shabby littleness they will have to see, we might hazard the rest," he sighed to himself. "If the pure visions of her maiden years might veil from her those gross realities of every-day life! With what face shall I meet her glance after it has suffered the first shock?"

Meanwhile her last objection remained unanswered, and Balder, distrustful of his capacity, was inspired to seek inspiration from her he would instruct.

"Tell me how you love me, Gnulemah," said he.

She roused herself, and bending her face to his, breathlessly kissed his lips. Then she drooped her warm cheek on his shoulder, and whispered the rest:--

"My love is to be near you, and to breathe when breathe; it is love to become you, as water becomes wave. And love would make me sweet to you, as honey and music and flowers. I love to be needed by you, as you need food and drink and sleep; and my love will be loved, as God loves the world."

To the lover these sentences were tender and sublime poetry. The tears came to his eyes, hearing her speak out her loving soul so simply. He had travelled through the world, while she had lived her life between a wall and a precipice. But not the noisy, gaudy, gloomy crust which is fresh to-day, and to-morrow hardens, and the next day crumbles, is the world; but the fire-globe within: and Gnulemah was nearer that fire than Balder. There was puissance in her simplicity,--in her ignorance of that crust which he had so widely studied. Her knowledge was more profound than his, for she had never learned to stultify it with reasons.

"It is true,--God only can know our love," said Balder, and, having said it, he felt his mind clear and strengthen. For it is the acknowledgment of God that lends the deepest seeing to the eye, and tunes the universe to man; and Balder, at this moment of mingled love, humility, and fear, made and confessed that supreme discovery.--"Only He knows what our love is, but the marriage-rite informs the world that He knows it."

"But why must the world know?" persisted Gnulemah, still seeming to shrink at the idea.

"Because it is wholesome for all men to know that we have made God party to our union. That our love may be pure and immortal, we must look through each other to Him; the acknowledgment will keep others as well as ourselves from misusing love's happiness."

"Then, after we have knelt together before Him, we shall be no longer two, but one!" Gnulemah spoke, after some pause, in a full tone of joy; yet her voice shrank at the last, from the feeling that she had penetrated all at once to a holy place. A delicious fear seized her, and she clung to her lover so that he could perceive the tremor that agitated her.

No more was said. Their confidence was in each other; with Balder at her side, Gnulemah was fearful of the world no longer. But her visions were all spiritual; even the kisses on her lips were to her a sacred miracle! Love makes children of men and women,--shows them the wisdom of unreason and the value of soap-bubbles. These lovers must meet the world, but the light and freshness of the Golden Age should accompany them. The man held the maiden's hand, and so faced the future with a smile.

Few as were the hours since they first had seen each other, it seemed as though they could hardly know each other better; then why put off the consummation a single hour? Manetho had been right, and Balder marvelled at having required the spur. He knew of no material hindrances; unlimited resources would be his, and these would render easier Gnulemah's introduction to society. Perhaps (for doubtless Manetho would desire it) they might begin housekeeping in this very house, and thus, by gradual approaches, make their way to life's realities,--vulgarly so called!

At this moment, Balder's respect for wealth was many fold greater than ever it had been before. It should be the sword and shield wherewith he would protect the woman of his heart. Gnulemah was not of the kind who need the discipline of poverty; her beauty and goodness would be best nurtured beneath an affluent sun. Wants and inconveniences would rather pain and mystify than educate her. How good was that God who had vouchsafed not only the blessing, but the means of enjoying it!

God gave Balder Helwyse opportunity to prove the soundness of his faith. Labor and poverty awaited him; what else and worse let time show. In anguish, fear, and humiliation had his love been born, but the birth-pangs had been as brief as they were intense. A brave soul's metal is more severely tried by crawling years of monotonous effort, discord of must with wish, and secret self-suppression and misgiving. Happily life is so ordered that no blow can crush unless dealt from within, nor is any sunshine worth having that shines only from without.

Balder's eyes were softer than their wont, and there was a tender and sweet expression about his mouth. Never had life been so inestimable a blessing,--never had nature looked so divinely alive. He could imagine nothing gloomy or forbidding; in darkness's self he would have found germs of light. His love was a panoply against ill of mind or body. He thought he perceived, once for all, the insanity of selfishness and sin.

Suddenly he was conscious through Gnulemah of the same shiver that had visited her in the conservatory that morning. Looking round, he was startled to see, beyond the near benison of her sumptuous face, the tall form of the Egyptian priest. He was not a dozen yards away, advancing slowly towards them. Balder sprang up.

"Our chain,--you have broken it!" exclaimed Gnulemah. It was only a flower chain, but flowers are the bloom and luxury of life.

Manetho came up with a smile.

"Come, my children!" said he. "This chain would soon have faded and fallen apart of itself, but the chain I will forge you is stronger than time and weightier than dandelions. Come!"

Gnulemah picked up the broken links, and they followed him to the house.

XXXI.

MARRIED.

The significant part of most life histories is the record of a few detached hours, the rest being consequence and preparation. Helwyse had lived in constant mental and physical activity from childhood up; but though he had speculated much, and ever sought to prove the truth by practice, yet he had failed to create adequate emergencies, and was like an untried sword, polished and keen, but lacking still the one stern proof of use.

Thus, although a man of the world, in a deeper sense he was untouched by it. He had been the sentimental spectator of a drama wherein some shadow of himself seemed to act. The mimic scenes had sometimes moved him to laughter or to tears, but he had never quite lost the suspicion of an unreality under all. The best end had been--in a large sense--beauty. Beauty of love, of goodness, of strength, of wisdom,--beauty of every kind and degree, but nothing better! Beauty was the end rather than the trait of all desirable things. To have power was beautiful, and beautiful was the death that opened the way to freer and wider power. Most beautiful was Almightiness; yet, lapsing thence, it was beautiful to begin the round again in fresh, new forms.