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Page 15
Perhaps the incongruity alluded to had not altogether escaped his own
notice, and since discord of any kind pained him, he had mended the
matter--as best he could--by surrendering himself entirely to his
mournful voice; allowing it to master his gestures, choice of
language, almost his thoughts. The result was a colorlessness of
manner which did great injustice to the gentle and delicate soul
behind.
This conjecture might explain why Mr. MacGentle, instead of falling
upon his friend's neck and shedding tears of welcome there, only
uttered a few commonplace sentences, and then drooped back into his
chair. But it throws no light upon his remark that he had been
expecting the arrival of a friend who, it would appear, had been dead
two years. Helwyse himself may have been puzzled by this; or, being a
quick-witted young man, he may have divined its explanation. He looked
at his entertainer with critical sympathy not untinged with humor.
"I hope you are as well as I am," said he.
"A little tired this morning, I believe; I never was so strong a man
as you, Helwyse. I think I must have passed a bad night. I remember
dreaming I was an old man,--an old man with white hair, Helwyse."
"Were you glad to wake up again?" asked the young man, meeting the
elder's faded eyes.
"I hardly know whether I'm quite awake yet. And, after all, Thor, I'm
not sure that I don't wish the dream might have been true. If I were
really an old man, what a long, lonely future I should escape! but as
it is--as it is--"
He relapsed into reverie. Ah! Mr. MacGentle, are you again the tall
and graceful youth, full of romance and fire, who roamed abroad in
quest of adventures with your trusty friend Thor Helwyse, the
yellow-bearded Scandinavian? Do you fancy this fresh, unwrinkled face
a mate to your own? and is it but the vision of a restless
night,--this long-drawn life of dull routine and gradual
disappointment and decay? Open those dim eyes of yours, good sir! stir
those thin old legs! inflate that sunken chest!--Ha! is that cough
imaginary? those trembling muscles,--are they a delusion is that misty
glance only a momentary weakness There is no youth left in you, Mr.
MacGentle; not so much as would keep a rose in bloom for an hour.
"Have you seen Doctor Glyphic lately?" inquired Helwyse, after a
pause.
"Glyphic?--do you know, I was thinking of him just now,--of our first
meeting with him in the African desert. You remember!--a couple of
Bedouins were carrying him off,--they had captured him on his way to
some apocryphal ruin among the sand-heaps. What a grand moment was
that when you caught the Sheik round the throat with your
umbrella-handle, and pulled him off his horse! and then we mounted
poor Glyphic upon it,--mummied cat and all,--and away over the hot
sand! What a day was that! what a day was that!"
The speaker's eyes had kindled; for a moment one saw the far flat
desert, the struggling knot of men and horses, the stampede of the
three across the plain, and the high sun flaming inextinguishable
laughter-over all!--and it had happened nigh forty years ago.
"He never forgot that service," resumed Mr. MacGentle, his customary
plaintive manner returning. "To that, and to your saving the Egyptian
lad,--. Manetho,--you owe your wife Helen: ah! forgive me,--I had
forgotten; she is dead,--she is dead."
"I never could understand," remarked Helwyse, aiming to lead the
conversation away from gloomy topics, "why the Doctor made so much of
Manetho." "That was only a part of the Egyptian mania that possessed
him, and began, you know, with his changing his name from Henry to
Hiero; and has gone on, until now, I suppose, he actually believes
himself to be some old inscription, containing precious secrets, not
to be found elsewhere. Before the adventure with the boy, I remember,
he had formed the idea of building a miniature Egypt in New Jersey;
and Manetho served well as the living human element in it. 'Though I
take him to America,' you know he said, 'he shall live in Egypt still.
He shall have a temple, and an altar, and Isis and Osiris, and papyri
and palm-trees and a crocodile; and when he dies I will embalm him
like a Pharaoh.' 'But suppose you die first?' said one of us. 'Then he
shall embalm me!' cried Hiero, and I will be the first American
mummy.'"
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