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Page 103
"Come forward here, Salome!" cried he; "let him look on the face that
his sins have given you. As there is a God in Heaven, your wrongs
shall be set right!"
Salome moved to obey; but Gnulemah glided swiftly up and held her
back. Balder stepped imperiously forward to enforce his will. Had he
but answered his wife's eyes even then!--He came forward one step.
Then burst a thunder-clap like the crashing together of heaven and
earth! At the same instant a blinding, hot glare shut out all sight.
Balder was hurled back against the wall, a shock like the touch of
death in every nerve.
He staggered up, all unstrung, his teeth chattering. He saw,--not the
lamp, flickering in the draught from the broken window,--not Manetho,
lying motionless with the smile frozen on his lips,--not Salome,
prostrate across the body of him she had worshipped.
He saw Gnulemah--his wife whom he loved--rise from the altar's step
against which she had been thrown; stand with outstretched arms and
blank, wide-open eyes; grope forwards with outstretched arms and
uncertain feet; grope blindly this way and that, moaning,--
"Balder,--Balder,--where are you?"
Shivering and desperate,--not yet daring for his life to
understand,--he came and stood before her, almost within reach of
those groping hands.
"I am here,--look at me, Gnulemah!--I am here--your husband!"
There was a pause. The storm, having spent itself in that last burst,
was rolling heavily away. There was silence in the nuptial chamber,
infringed only by the breathing of the newly married lovers.
"I hear you, Balder," said Gnulemah at length, tremulously, while her
blank eyes rested on his face, "but I cannot see you. My lamp must
have gone out. Will not you light it for me?"--
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I will repay!
* * * * *
The storm-cloud moved eastward and was dispersed. Black though had
been its shadow, it endured but for a moment; the echo of its fury
passed away, and its deadly thunderbolt left behind a purer
atmosphere. So sweeps and rages over men's heads the storm of
calamity; and so dissolves, though seeming for the time indissoluble.
But the distant planet comes forth serene from its brief eclipse, and
as night deepens, bears its steady fire yet more aloft. Like God's
love, its radiance embraces the world, yet forgets not the smallest
flower nor grain of sand. From its high station it beholds the
infinite day surround the night, and knows the good before and beyond
the ill. Great is its hope, for causes are not hidden from its quiet
eternal eye.
No journal of a life has been our tale; rather a glimpse of a
beginning! We have traversed an alpine pass between the illimitable
lands of Past and Future. We have felt the rock rugged beneath our
feet; have seen the avalanche and mused beside the precipice, and have
taken what relief we might in the scanty greensward, the few flowers,
and the brief sunshine. Now, standing on the farewell promontory, let
us question the magic mirror concerning the further road,--as, before,
of that from the backward horizon hitherwards.
Mr. MacGentle's quiet little office: himself--more venerable by a year
than when we saw him last--in his chair: opposite him, Dr. Balder
Helwyse. The latter wears a thick yellow beard about six inches in
length, is subdued in dress and manner, and his smile, though genial,
has something of the sadness of autumn sunshine. The two have been
conversing earnestly, and now there is a short silence.
"We must give up hoping it, then," says Mr. MacGentle at last, in a
more than usually plaintive murmur. "It is hard,--very hard, dear
Balder."
"Now that I know there is no hope, I can acknowledge the good even
while I feel the hardship. Her dreams have been of a world such as no
real existence could show; to have been awakened would permanently
have saddened her, if no worse. But she is great enough to believe
without seeing; and in the deepest sense, her belief is true. She
still remains in that ideal fairy-land in which I found her; and no
doubt, as time goes on, her visions grow more beautiful!"
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