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Page 49
Hereupon was heard within a quick rustling movement; the curtain was
thrust aside, and a youthful woman issued forth amongst the warm
plants. She was within a few feet of Balder Helwyse before seeming to
realize his presence. She caught herself motionless in an instant. The
sparkle of laughter in her eyes sank in a black depth of wonder. Her
eyes filled themselves with Balder as a lake is filled with sunshine;
and he, the man of the Wilie and philosopher, could only return her
gaze in voiceless admiration.
Were a face and form of primal perfection to appear among men, might
not its divine originality repel an ordinary observer, used to
consider beautiful such abortions of the Creator's design as sin and
degeneration have produced? Not easily can one imagine what a real man
or woman would look like. Painting nor sculpture can teach us; we must
learn, if at all, from living, electric flesh and blood.
This young woman was tall and erect with youthful majesty. She stood
like the rejoicing upgush of a living fountain. Her contour was
subtile with womanly power,--suggesting the spring of the panther, the
glide of the serpent. Warm she seemed from the bosom of nature. One
felt from her the influence of trees, the calm of meadows, the high
freedom of the blue air, the happiness of hills. She might have been
the sister of the sun.
The moulding finger of God seemed freshly to have touched her face. It
was simple and harmonious as a chord of music, yet inexhaustible in
its variety. It recalled no other face, yet might be seen in it the
germs of a mighty nation, that should begin from her and among a
myriad resemblances evolve no perfect duplicate. No angel's
countenance, but warmest human clay, which must undergo some change
before reaching heaven. The sphinx, before the gloom of her riddle had
dimmed her primal joy,--before men vexed themselves to unravel God's
webs from without instead of from within,--might have looked thus; or
such perhaps was Isis in the first flush of her divinity,--fresh from
Him who made her immortally young and fair.
Her black hair was crowned with a low, compact turban,--a purple and
white twist of some fine cottony substance, striped with gold. Round
her wide, low brow fitted a band of jewelled gold, three fingers'
breadth, from which at each temple depended a broad, flat chain of
woven coral, following the margin of the cheeks and falling loose on
the shoulders. A golden serpent coiled round her smooth throat and
drooped its head low down in her bosom. Her elastic feet, arched like
a dolphin's back, were sandalled; the bright-colored straps, crossing
one another half-way to the knee, set dazzlingly off the clear, dusky
whiteness of the skin.
From her shoulders fell a long full robe of purple byssus, over an
underdress of white which readied the knee. This tunic was confined at
the waist by a hundred-fold girdle, embroidered with rainbow flowers
and fastened in a broad knot below the bosom, the low-hanging ends
heavy with fringe. The outer robe, with its long drooping sleeves
falling open at the elbow, was ample enough wholly to envelop the
figure, but was now girded up and one fold brought round and thrust
beneath the girdle in front, to give freedom of motion. A rare perfume
emanated from her like the evening breath of orange-blossoms.
Balder was no unworthy balance to this picture, though his else
stately features showed too much the stimulus of modern thought. He
was eminent by culture; she by nature only. But Balder's culture had
not greatened him. Greatness is not of the brain, save as allied to
the deep, pure chords which thrill at the base of the human symphony.
He might have stood for our age; she, for that more primitive but
profounder era which is at once man's beginning and his goal.
Balder's eyes could not frankly hold their own against her gaze of
awful simplicity. All he had ever done amiss arose and put him to the
blush. Nevertheless, he would not admit his inferiority; instead of
dropping his eyes he closed the soul behind them, and sharpened them
with a shallow, out-striking light. Without understanding the change,
she felt it and was troubled. Loftily majestic as were her form and
features, she was feminine to the core,--tender and finely perceptive.
The incisive masculine gaze abashed her. She raised one hand
deprecatingly, and her lips moved, though without sound.
He relented at this, and straightway her expression again shifted, and
she smiled so radiantly that Balder almost looked to see whence came
the light! The wondrous lines of her face curved and softened; all
that was grave vanished. A tree standing in the sober beauty of
shadow, when suddenly lit by the sun, changes as she changed; for
sunshine is the laughter of the world.
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