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Idolatry - A Romance, a novel by Julian Hawthorne |
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Chapter 21. We Pick Up Another Thread |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. Darkness and silence reigned in the conservatory; the group of the sleeping man and attendant woman was lost in the warm gloom, and scarcely a motion--the low drawing of a breath--told of their presence. A great gray owl, which had passed the daylight in some obscure corner, launched darkling forth on the air and winged hither and thither,--once or twice fanning the sleeper's face with silent pinions. The crocodile lazily edged off the stone, plumped quietly into the water, and clambered up the hither margin of the pool, there coming to another long pause. A snail, making a night-journey across the floor, found in its path a diamond, sparkling with a light of its own. The snail extended a cool cautious tentacle,--recoiled it fastidiously and shaped a new course. A broad petal from a tall flowering-shrub dropped wavering down, and seemed about to light on Balder's forehead; but, swerving at the last moment, came to rest on the scaly head of the crocodile. The night waited and listened, as though for something to happen,--for some one to appear! Salome, too, was waiting for some one;--was it for the dead? Meantime, pictures from the past glimmered through her memory. When, in our magic mirror, we saw her struck down by the hand of her lover, she was far from being the repulsive object she is now. Indeed, but for that chance word let fall yesterday, about her having been badly burnt, we might be at a loss to justify our recognition of her. After Manetho's rude dismissal of her, she fled--not knowing whither better--to Thor Helwyse, who was living widowed in his Brooklyn house, with his infant son and daughter. Because she had been Helen's attendant, she besought Helen's husband to give her a home. She was in sore trouble, but said no more than this; and Thor, suspecting nothing of her connection with Manetho, gladly received her as nurse to his children. But past sins and imprudences would find out Salome no less than others. At the critical moment for herself and her fortunes, the house took fire. She risked her life to save Thor's daughter, was herself burned past recognition, and (one misfortune treading on another's heels) balanced on death's verge for a month or two. She got well, in part; but the faculty of speech had left her, and beauty of face and figure was forever gone. In her manifold wretchedness, and after such devotion shown, it was not in Thor's warm heart to part with her; so, losing much, she gained something. She remained with her benefactor, whose manly courtesy ever forbore to probe the secret of her woman's heart, over which as over her face she always wore a veil. The world saw Salome no more. She sat in the nursery, watching year by year the dark-eyed little maiden playing with the fair-haired boy. Broad-shouldered Thor would come in, with his grand, kindly face and royal beard; would kiss the little girl and tussle with the boy, mightily laughing the while at the former's solicitude for her playmate; would throw himself on the groaning sofa, and exclaim in his deep voice,-- "God bless their dear little souls! Why, Nurse! when did a brother and sister ever love each other like that,--eh?" Salome probably was not unhappy then; indeed,--whether she knew it or not,--she was at her happiest. But new events were at hand; Thor, growing yearly more restless, at length resolved to sell his house and go to Europe, taking with him Salome and both the children. Everything was ready, down to the packing of Salome's box. A day or two before the sailing, Thor went to New Jersey, to bid farewell to his eccentric brother-in-law. It was a warm summer day, and the children played from morning till night in the front yard, while Nurse sat in the window and kept her eye on them. Her thoughts, perhaps, travelled elsewhere. Since her misfortune she had, no doubt, had more opportunity than most women for reflection: silence breeds thought. What she thought about, no one knew; but she could hardly have forgotten Manetho. On this last evening, when at the point of leaving America forever, it would have been strange had no memory of him passed through her mind. She had not heard his name in the last four years, and she knew that he suspected nothing of her whereabouts. Had he ever wished to see her? she wondered and thought, "He would not know me if he did see me!" With that came a tumultuous longing once more to look upon him. Too late! Why had she not thought of this before? Now must her last memory of him be still as when, disfigured by sudden rage, he turned upon her and struck her on the bosom. There was the scar yet; the fire had spared it! It was a keepsake which, as time passed, Salome strangely learned to love! It was growing dusk,--time for the children to come in. They were sitting deep in the abundant grass, weaving necklaces out of dandelion-stems. Nurse leaned out of window and beckoned to attract their attention. But either they were too much absorbed to notice her, or they were wilfully blind; so Nurse rose to go out and fetch them. Before reaching the open front door, she stopped short and her heart seemed to turn over. A tall dark man was leaning over the fence, talking with the little girl. Nurse shrank within the shadow of the door, and thence peeped and listened,--as well as her beating pulses would let her. "I know where fairy-land is," says the man, in the soft, engaging tone that the listener so well remembers. "Come! shall we go together and visit it?" "He come too?" asks the little maiden, nodding towards the boy, who is portentously busy over his dandelions. "He may if he likes," the man answers with a smile. "But we must make haste, or fairy-land will be shut up!" It flashes into Salome's head what this portends. She had heard this man vow revenge on Thor long ago, and she now sees how he means to keep his oath. He has shrewdly improved the opportunity of Thor's absence, and has come intending to carry off either his son or his daughter. Fortune, it seems, had chosen for him the dark-eyed little girl. See! he stoops and lifts her gently over the wall, and they are off for fairy-land! Rush out, Salome! alarm the neighborhood and force the kidnapper to give up his booty! After Thor's kindness to you, will you be false to him? Besides, what motive have you for unfaithfulness? Grant that you love Manetho,--what harm, save to his revengeful passion, could result from thwarting him? Salome acted oddly on this occasion,--it would seem, irrationally. But that which appears to the spectator but a trivial modification may have vital weight with the actor. Had Manetho taken Balder, for example, Salome might have pursued another and more intelligible course than the one she actually took. She hurried out of the door and caught Manetho by the arm before he was twenty paces on his way. He turned, savage but frightened, setting down the little girl but not letting go her hand. She was in her happiest humor, and informed Nurse that she was to be queen of fairy-land! Nurse lifted the veil from her face and looked steadfastly at Manetho with her one eye. It was enough,--he saw in her but a hideous object,--would never know her for the bright girl he had once professed to love. Salome gave one sob, containing more of womanly emotion than could be written down in many words, and then was quiet and self-possessed. Manetho did not offer to escape, but stood on his guard; half prepared, however,--from something in the woman's manner,--to find her a confederate. "S'e come too?" chirped the unconscious little maiden. But Manetho's attention was turned to some words that Salome was writing in a little blank-book which she always carried in her pocket She offered to help him carry off the child, on condition of being herself one of the party! He looked narrowly at the woman, but could make nothing by his scrutiny. Was it love for the child that prompted her behavior? No; for she could easily have raised the neighborhood against him. She completely puzzled him, and she would give no explanations. What if he should accept her offer? She would be an advantage as well as an inconvenience. The child would have the care to which it had been accustomed, and Manetho would thus be spared much embarrassment. When the woman's help became superfluous, it would not be difficult to give her the slip. There was small leisure for reflection. An agreement was made,--on Salome's part, with a secret sense of intense triumph, not unmixed with fear and pain. She caught up Master Balder and his dandelions, kissed and hugged him violently, and locked him into the nursery; where he was found some hours afterwards by his father, in a state of great hunger and indignation. But the little dark-haired maiden was no more. She was gone to her kingdom of fairy-land, and Nurse with her. Long mourned Balder for his vanished playmate! Salome has kept her secret well. And now, there she sits, her long-lost baby's head in her lap, thinking of old times; and the longer she thinks, the more she softens and expands. Has she done a great wrong in her life? Surely she has suffered greatly, and in a manner that might well wither her to the core. But there must still have been a germ of life in the shrivelled seed, which this night--memorable in her existence--has begun to quicken. By and by come a few tears, with a struggle at first, then more easily. Kind darkness lets us think of Salome bright and comely as in the old days, with the added grace of inward beauty wrought by sad experience. But, in truth, she is marred past earthly recovery. Nothing removes a soul so far from human sympathy as self-repression,--especially for any merely human end! The night creeps reluctantly westward; the gray owl wings back to his shady corner; the adventurous snail, half-way up the palm-tree, glues himself to the bark and turns in for a nap. The crocodile has resumed his old position on the rock in the pool, and the flower petal floats on the water. Here comes the brilliant hoopoe with his smart crest and clear chirrup, impatient to bid Gnulemah good morning! All is as before, save that the group beneath the palm-trees has disappeared! Balder slept late, yet, on awakening, he thought he must be dreaming still. He could not distinguish imagination from reality. His mind had temporarily lost its grasp, his will its authority. Where was he? Was it years or hours since he had entered Boston harbor? Suddenly rose before him the vision of the deadly struggle on the midnight sea. Round this central point the rest crystallized in order. His heart sank, and he sighed most heavily. But presently he rose to his elbow and stared about in bewilderment. Had he ever seen this room before? How came he here? He was lying on a carved bedstead, furnished with sheets of fine linen and a counterpane of blue embroidered satin; but all bearing an appearance of great age. The room was oval, like a bird's-egg halved lengthwise; the smoothly vaulted ceiling being frescoed with a crowd of figures. The rich and costly furniture harmonized with the bedstead, and bore the same marks of age. The chairs and lounge were satin-covered; the sumptuous toilet-table was fitted with a mirror of true crystal; the arched window was curtained with azure satin and lace. It was a chamber fit for a princess of the old _regime_, unaltered since its fair occupant last abode in it. Balder now examined the frescos which covered wall and ceiling. The subject seemed at the first glance to be a Last Judgment, or something of that nature. A mingled rush of forms mounted on one side to the bright zenith, and thence lapsed confusedly down the opposite descent. The dark end of the room presented a cloud of gloomily fantastic shapes, swerved from the main stream, and becoming darker and more formless the farther they receded, till at the last they were lost in a murky shadow. Not entirely lost, however; for as Balder gazed awfully thitherward, the shadow seemed to resolve itself into a mass of intertwined and struggling beings, neither animal nor human, but combining the more unholy traits of both. But from the centre of the upward stream shone forms and faces of angelic beauty; yet, on looking more narrowly, Balder discerned in each one some ghastly peculiarity, revealing itself just when enjoyment of the beauty was on the point of becoming complete. Such was the effect that the most angelic forms were translated into mocking demons, and where the light seemed brightest there was the spiritual darkness most profound. In the zenith was a white lustre which obliterated distinction of form as much as did the cloudy obscurity at the end of the room. Now the design seemed about to unfold itself; then again it eluded the gazer's grasp. Suddenly at length it stood revealed. A gigantic face, with wide-floating hair and beard, looked down into Balder's own. Its expression was of infinite malignity and despair. The impersonation of all that is wicked and miserable, its place was at the top of Heaven; it was moulded of those aspiring forms of light, and was the goal which the brightest attained. Moreover, either by some ugly coincidence or how otherwise he could not conceive, this countenance of supreme evil was the very reflex of Balder's,--a portrait minutely true, and, despite its satanic expression, growing every moment more unmistakable. Was this accident, or the contrivance of an unknown and unfathomable malice? Balder, Lord of Heaven, instinct with the essence of Hell! A grim satire on his religious speculations! But what satirist had been bitter enough so to forestall the years?--for the painting must have been designed while Balder was still an infant. He threw himself off the bed and stepped to the window, and saw the blue sky and the river rhyming it. The breath of the orchard visited him, and he was greeted by the green grass and trees, He sighed with relief. There had been three mornings since his return to America. For the first he had blessed his own senses; the second had looked him out of countenance but the third came with a benediction, serene and mighty, such as Balder's soul had not hitherto been open to. "This is more than a plaster heaven," said he, looking up; "but I fear, Balder Helwyse, your only heaven, thus far, has been of plaster. You have seen this morning how the God of such a heaven looks. How about the God of this larger Heaven, think you?" Presently he turned away from the window; but he had quaffed so deeply of the morning glory, that the sinister frescos no longer depressed him. They were ridiculously unimportant,--nothing more than stains on the wall, in fact. Balder could not tell why he felt light-hearted. It was solemn light-heartedness,--not the gayety of sensuous spirits, such as he had experienced heretofore. It had little to do with physical well-being, for the young man was still faint and dizzy, and weak from hunger. Behold, then, at the foot of the bed, a carved table covered with a damask cloth and crowned with an abundant breakfast; not an ordinary breakfast of coffee, rolls, omelette, and beefsteak, but a pastoral breakfast,--fresh milk, bread and honey and fruit and mellow cheese,--such food as Adam might have begun the day with. In face of the yet unsolved mystery of his own presence in the room, this new surprise caused Balder no special wonder. Beyond the apparition of the ugly dumb woman, he recollected nothing of the previous evening's experience. Could she have transported him hither? Well, he would not let himself be disturbed by apparent miracles. "No doubt the explanation is simple," thought he; and with that he began his toilet. The dressing-table displayed a variety of dainty articles such as a lady might be supposed to use,--pearl-handled brushes, enamelled powder-boxes, slender vases of Meissen porcelain, a fanciful ring-stand; from the half-open drawer a rich glimpse of an Indian fan; a pair of delicate kid gloves, which only a woman's hands could have worn, were thrown carelessly on the table. There were still the little wrinkles in the fingers, but time had changed the pristine white to dingy yellow. "Whose hands could have worn them? whose chamber was this?" mused Balder. "Not Gnulemah's; she knows nothing of kid gloves and powder! and these things were in use before she was born. Whose face was reflected in this glass, when those gloves were thrown down here? Was that her marriage-bed? Were children born in it?" His seizure of the night before must have dulled the edge of his wit, else he had scarce asked questions which chance now answered for him. A scratch on one corner of the polished mirror-surface showed, on closer inspection, a name and a date written with a diamond. Shading off the light with his hand, Balder read, "Helen, 1831." "My mother's name; the year I was born. My mother!" he repeated softly, taking up the old yellow gloves. "And this room was my birthplace,--and my little sister's! My mother's things, as she left them; for father once told me that he never entered her room after she was buried. She died here; and here my little sister and I began to live. And here I am, again,--really the same little helpless innocent baby who cried on that bed so long ago. Only not innocent now! Perhaps, not helpless, either! "How happy that barber was yesterday! prattled about being born again. Cannot I be born again,--to-day,--in this room? Here I first began, and have come round the world to my starting-point. I will begin afresh this morning." And heavily as he was weighted in the new race, he would not be disheartened. Unuttered resolves brightened his eyes and made his courage high. Before beginning breakfast, he returned to the window and drank again of the divine blue and green. From the branch of a near tree the hoopoe startled him and made him color. Was the bird an emissary from Gnulemah? Balder's mouth drew back, and his chin and eyes strengthened, as though some part of his unuttered resolves were recalled by the thought of her. When he was ready to go, he turned at the door, and threw a parting glance round the dainty old-fashioned chamber, trying to gather into one all the thoughts, memories, and resolves connected with it. He had nearly forgotten the frescos; the victorious sunshine had reduced the figures, satanic or beautiful, to a meaningless agglomeration of wandering lines and faded colors. As for his own portrait, it was no longer distinguishable. _ |
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