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Page 38
On the whole, Helwyse's new face pleased him not. He felt
self-estranged and self-distrustful. Standing on the borders of a
darker land, the thoughts and deeds of his past life swarmed in review
before his eyes. Many a seeming trifling event now showed as the
forewarning of harm to come. The day's journey once over, we see its
issue prophesied in each trumpery raven and cloud that we have met
since morning. However, the omens would have read as well another way;
for nature, like man, is twofold, and can be as glibly quoted to
Satan's advantage as to God's.
"Very well done!" said Helwyse to the barber, passing a hand over the
close-cropped head and polished chin. "The only trouble is, it cannot
be done once for all."
As the little man smilingly remarked, however, the charge was but ten
cents. His customer paid it and went out, and was seen by the
hair-dresser to walk listlessly up the street. The improvement in his
personal appearance had not mended his spirits. Indeed, it cannot be
disguised that his trouble was more serious than lay within a barber's
skill altogether to set right.
Were man potentially omniscient, then might Balder's late deed be no
crime, but a simple exercise of prerogative. But is knowledge of evil
real knowledge? God is goodness and man is evil. God knows both good
and evil. Man knows evil--knows himself--only; knows God only in so
far as he ceases to be man and admits God. But this simple truth
becomes confused if we fancy a possible God in man.
This was Balder's difficulty. Possessed of a strong, comprehensive
mind, he had made a providence of himself; confounded intelligence
with integrity; used the moral principle not as a law of action but as
a means of insight. The temptation so to do is strong in proportion as
the mind is greatly gifted. But experience shows no good results from
yielding to it. Blind moral instinct, if not safer, is more
comfortable!
Not the deed alone, but the revelation it brought, preyed on the young
man's peace. If he were a criminal to-day, then was the whole argument
of his past life criminal likewise. Yesterday's deed was the logical
outcome of a course of thought extending over many yesterdays. Why,
then, had not his present gloom impended also, and warned him
beforehand? Because, while parleying with the Devil, he looks angelic;
but having given our soft-spoken interlocutor house-room, he makes up
for lost time by becoming direfully sincere!
On first facing the world in his new guise, Helwyse felt an
embarrassment which he fancied everybody must remark. But, in fact (as
he was not long discovering), he was no longer remarkable; the barber
had wiped out his individuality. It was what he had wished, and yet
his insignificance annoyed him. The stare of the world had put him out
of countenance; yet when it stopped staring he was still unsatisfied.
What can be the solution of this paradox?
It perhaps was the occasion of his seeking the upper part of the city,
where houses were more scarce and there were fewer people to be
unconcerned! In country solitudes he could still be the chief figure.
He entered Broadway at the point where Grace Church stands, and passed
on through the sparsely inhabited region now known as Union Square.
The streets hereabouts were but roughly marked out, and were left in
many places to the imagination. On the corner of Twenty-third Street
was a low whitewashed inn, whose spreading roof overshadowed the
girdling balcony. Farmers' wagons were housed beneath the adjoining
shed, and one was drawn up before the door, its driver conversing with
a personage in shirt-sleeves and straw hat, answering to the name of
Corporal Thompson.
Helwyse perhaps stopped at the Corporal's hospitable little
establishment to rest himself and get some breakfast; but whether or
not, his walk did not end here, but continued up Broadway, and after
passing a large kitchen-garden (whose owner, a stout Dutchman, was
pacing its central path, smoking a long clay pipe which he took from
his lips only to growl guttural orders to the gardeners who were
stooping here and there over the beds), emerged into open country,
where only an occasional Irish shanty broke the solitude.
How long the young man walked he never knew; but at length, from the
summit of a low hill, he looked northwest and saw the gleam of Hudson
River. Leaving the road he struck across rocky fields which finally
brought him to the river-bank. A stony promontory jutted into the
water, and on this (having clambered to its outer extremity) Helwyse
sat down, his feet overhanging the swirling current. The tide was just
past the flood.
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