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Idolatry - A Romance, a novel by Julian Hawthorne |
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Chapter 18. The Hoopoe And The Crocodile |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. "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! But the first step towards fixing the relations between them was already taken. The young man's abrupt movement of his hand to his face (probably with purpose to stroke the beard no longer growing there) had not only scared away the hoopoe, but had flashed on Gnulemah a ray from the diamond ring. She rose to her feet suddenly, yet easily as a startled serpent rears erect its body. Vivid emotion lightened in her face. Balder knew not what to make of the look she gleamed at him. "What are you?" she asked, her voice sunk to almost a whisper. "Hiero?--are you Hiero?" Balder stared confounded,--partly inclined to smile! "Come back,--transfigured!" she went on, her eyes deepening with awe. What did it mean? Somewhat disturbed, Balder got also on his feet. As he did so, Gnulemah crouched before him, holding out her hands like a suppliant. An on-looker might have fancied that the would-be God had found his worshipper at last! "My name is Balder," his Deityship managed to say. As he spoke, the sun rounded the corner of the house, and the light fell brightly on him, Gnulemah kneeling in shadow. The glory of his splendid youth seemed to have shone out from within him in sudden effulgence. "Balder!" she slowly repeated, still gazing up at him. "There is a relationship between us," said he, a vague uneasiness urging him to take refuge behind the quaint fantasy, "You are the daughter of fire, and I the descendant of the sun!" He spoke the unpremeditated notion which the sunburst had created in his brain,--spoke not seriously nor yet lightly. He had as much right to his genealogy as she to hers. But what a strange effect his words wrought on her! She clasped her hands together quickly in a kind of ecstasy. "The sun,--Balder! I have prayed to him,--he as come to me,--Balder, my God!" With how divine an accent did her full low voice give him the name to which he had dared aspire! He was God--and her God! He perhaps divined one part of the process through which her mind must have gone; but he could not find a word to answer, whether of acceptance or disclaimer. He turned pale,--his heart sick. Had the recognition of his Godhood been too tardy? Gnulemah fancied he repulsed her, and her passion kindled,--only religious passion, but it seared him! "Do not be cold to me, Balder!"--his name as she uttered it moved him as a blasphemy. "In my lonely kneelings I have felt you! my eyes close, my hands grow together, my breath flutters, every breath is joy and fear! I think 'He is with me,--the Being I adore!' but when I opened my eyes, He was gone,--Balder!" Still motionless and seeming-deaf stood the Divinity, bathed in mocking sunlight. He was powerless to stop her from unveiling to him, as to a visible God the sacred places of her maiden heart. That sublime office whose reversion he had boldly courted, in the possession shrivelled his soul to nothing and left him dead. It was not easy to be God,--even over one human being! But Gnulemah, in her mighty earnestness, knelt nearer, so that the edge of Balder's sunlight smote the golden ornaments that clung round her outstretched arms. She almost touched him, but though his spirit recoiled, the doltish flesh would not be moved. "It was not to be always so," she continued, an appealing vehemence quivering through her tones. "Some day I was to see Him and know Him more clearly. Shine on me, Balder! am not I your priestess? in the morning do not I worship you, and at noon, and in the evening? At night do not I kneel at your altar and pray you to care for me while I sleep? Hear me, Balder! I see you in all things,--they are your thoughts and meet again in you! The sun himself is but your shadow! Do not I know you, my Balder? Be not clouded from your servant! Leave me not,--take me with you where you go!" It was at this moment that the young man's mind, stumbling stupidly hither and thither, chanced to encounter that picture of the courtesan, leaning from the open window in the city street, beckoning him to come. She took Gnulemah's place, beckoning, making a hateful parody of Gnulemah's expression and gestures. Could a devil take the consecrated place of angels? or was the angel a worse devil in disguise? In the same day, to him the same man, could two such voices speak,--such faces look? And could the germ of Godhead abide in a soul liable to the irony of such vicarious solicitation? Speech or motion was still denied him. His priestess, strengthened by religious passion, was bold to touch with hers his divine hand, on the finger of which demoniacally glittered the murder-token. The hand was so cold and lax that even the smooth warmth of her soft fingers failed to put life in it. "You have taken Hiero to yourself,--take me also! be my God as well as his, for I shall be alone now he is gone. This ring which he always wore--" Balder roughly snatched back his hand. "Hiero's ring?" "Why do you look so?--is it not a sign to me from him?" "Hiero's ring?--tell me, Gnulemah, is this Hiero's ring?--Stop--stand up! No--call me Satan!--Hiero's ring!" "Where is Hiero, then?" demanded Gnulemah, rising and dilating. "You wear his ring,--what have you done with him?--Is there no God?" The words came riding on the waves of deep-drawn breaths, for her soul was in a tumult. Her life had thus far been like a quiet sequestered pool, reflecting only the sky, and the ferns and flowers that bent above its margin; ignorant, moreover, of its own depth and nature. Now, invaded by storm, God and nature seemed swept away and lost, and a terror of loneliness darkened over it. "Is there no Balder?" reiterated Gnulemah. But all at once the fierceness in her eyes melted, as lightning is followed by summer rain. She came so near,--he standing dulled with horror of his discovery,--came so near that her breath touched him, and he could hear the faint rustling of the white byssus on her bosom, and the soft tinkle of the broad pendants that glowed against her black hair; and could see how profoundly real her beauty was. Mighty and beneficent must be the force or the law which could combine the rude elements into such a form of life as this! "Let me live for you and serve you! Though the world has no Balder, may not I have mine? You shall be everything to me! Without you I cannot be; but I want no other God if I have my Balder!" This was another matter! Nevertheless,--so subtle is the boundary between love human and divine,--Gnulemah in these first passionate moments may easily have deemed the one no less sublime than the other. But there was no danger of Balder's falling into such an error. The distinction was clear to him. Yet with remorse and abasement strove the defiant impulse to pluck and eat--forgetful of this world and the next the royal fruit so fairly held to his lips! For herein fails the divinity of nature,--she can minister as well to man's depravity as to his exaltation; which could not happen were she one with God. Nay, man had need be strong with Divine inspiration, before communing unharmed with nature's dangerous loveliness. His hand in Gnulemah's was now neither cold nor lax. She raised it in impetuous homage to her forehead. The diamond left a mark there; first white, then red. For a breath or two, their eyes saw depths in each other beyond words' fathoming.... A door was closed above; and the echo stole down stairs and crept with a hollow whisper into the conservatory. The little lord chamberlain fluttered down from his lofty perch and hovered between the two faces, his penetrating note sounding like a warning, Gnulemah drew back, and a swift blush let fall its rosy veil from the golden gleam of her jewelled forehead-band to below the head of the serpent which twisted round her neck. One parting look she gave Balder, pregnant of new wonder, fear, and joy. Then she turned and glided with quick ophidian grace to the doorway from which she had first appeared, and was eclipsed by the curtain. The inner door shut; she was gone. Dull, dull and colorless was the conservatory. The hoopoe had flown out through the hall to the open air. Only the crocodile continued to keep Balder company. After standing a few moments, he once more threw himself down on the moss couch beneath the palm-trees. There he reclined as before, supported on his elbow, and turned the diamond ring this way and that on his finger in moody preoccupation. Was the crocodile asleep, or stealthily watching him? _ |
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