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Page 59
A considerable time had passed since Gnulemah's departure, when Balder
became aware that he was not alone in the conservatory. His thoughts
were all of Gnulemah, and he looked quickly round in expectation of
seeing her. The apparition of a widely different object startled him
to his feet.
A female figure stood before him, wrapped in sad-colored garments of
anomalous description, her head tied up in dark turban-like folds of
cloth. A lock of rusty black hair escaped from beneath this head-dress
and hung down beside her face. She might once have been tall and
erect, but her form now sagged to the left, losing both height and
dignity. Her visage, seamed and furrowed by the scar of some terrible
calamity, had lost its natural contour. The left eye was extinguished,
but the right remained,--the only feature in its original state. It
was dark and bright, and possessed, by very virtue of its disfigured
environment, a repulsive kind of beauty. Its influence was peculiar.
In itself, it postulated an owner in the prime of life, handsome and
graceful. But, one's attention wandering, the woman's actual ugliness
impressed itself with an intensity enhanced by the imaginary contrast.
A grotesque analogy was thus brought to light. The woman was dual. Her
right side lived; the left--blind, inert, and soulless--was dragged
about a dead weight. It was an unnatural emphasizing of the
spiritual-material composition of mankind. Observable, moreover, was
her strange method of disguising emotion. There was no muscular
constraint; she simply turned her blank left side to the spectator,
with an effect like the interposition of a dead wall!
Such, on Balder's perhaps abnormally excited apprehension, was the
impression the nurse produced. She, on her part, was perhaps more
disconcerted than he. Her single eye settled upon him in a panic of
surprise. The dressing of the scene gave Balder a grisly reminder of
the first moments of Gnulemah's eloquent astonishment. There was as
great an apparent difference between the superb Egyptian and this poor
creature, as between good and evil; but there was also the
disagreeable suggestion of a similar kind of relationship. Gnulemah,
withered, stifled, and degraded by some unmentionable curse, might
have become a thing not unlike this woman.
"Have we met before, madam?" asked Helwyse, impelled to the question
by what he took for a bewildered recognition in her eye.
She moved her lips, but made no audible answer.
"I am Balder Helwyse," he added; for he had made up his mind that all
concealments (save one) were unnecessary.
A grotesque quake of emotion travelled through the woman's body, and
she gave utterance to a harsh inarticulate sound. She came confusedly
forwards, groping with hands outstretched. Balder, though not wont to
fail in courtesy to the sorriest hag, could scarce forbear recoiling;
especially because he fancied that an expression of affectionate
interest was struggling to get through the scarred incrustation of the
woman's nature.
Perhaps she marked his inward shrinking, for she checked herself, and,
slowly turning her lifeless screen, hid behind it. It was impotent
deprecation translated into flesh,--at once ludicrous and painful. The
young man found so much difficulty in restraining the manifestation
of his distaste, that he blushed in the twilight at his own rudeness.
He would do his best to redeem himself.
"Doctor Hiero Glyphic is my uncle," said he, moving to get on Nurse's
right side, and speaking in his pleasantest tone. "Is he at home? I
have come a long way to see him."
Preoccupied by his amiable purpose to reassure the woman, Helwyse had
got to the end of this speech before realizing the ghastly mockery
involved in it. Nevertheless, it was well. Even thus falsely and
boldly must he henceforth speak and act. By a happy accident he had
opened the path, and must see to it that his further steps did not
retrograde.
Still Nurse answered not a word, which was the less surprising,
inasmuch as she had been dumb for a quarter of a century past. But
Balder, supposing her silence to proceed from stupidity or deafness,
repeated more loudly and peremptorily,--
"Doctor Glyphic,--is he here? is he alive?"
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