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Page 63
"S'e come too?" chirped the unconscious little maiden.
But Manetho's attention was turned to some words that Salome was
writing in a little blank-book which she always carried in her pocket
She offered to help him carry off the child, on condition of being
herself one of the party!
He looked narrowly at the woman, but could make nothing by his
scrutiny. Was it love for the child that prompted her behavior? No;
for she could easily have raised the neighborhood against him. She
completely puzzled him, and she would give no explanations. What if he
should accept her offer? She would be an advantage as well as an
inconvenience. The child would have the care to which it had been
accustomed, and Manetho would thus be spared much embarrassment. When
the woman's help became superfluous, it would not be difficult to give
her the slip.
There was small leisure for reflection. An agreement was made,--on
Salome's part, with a secret sense of intense triumph, not unmixed
with fear and pain. She caught up Master Balder and his dandelions,
kissed and hugged him violently, and locked him into the nursery;
where he was found some hours afterwards by his father, in a state of
great hunger and indignation. But the little dark-haired maiden was no
more. She was gone to her kingdom of fairy-land, and Nurse with her.
Long mourned Balder for his vanished playmate!
Salome has kept her secret well. And now, there she sits, her
long-lost baby's head in her lap, thinking of old times; and the
longer she thinks, the more she softens and expands. Has she done a
great wrong in her life? Surely she has suffered greatly, and in a
manner that might well wither her to the core. But there must still
have been a germ of life in the shrivelled seed, which this
night--memorable in her existence--has begun to quicken.
By and by come a few tears, with a struggle at first, then more
easily. Kind darkness lets us think of Salome bright and comely as in
the old days, with the added grace of inward beauty wrought by sad
experience. But, in truth, she is marred past earthly recovery.
Nothing removes a soul so far from human sympathy as
self-repression,--especially for any merely human end!
The night creeps reluctantly westward; the gray owl wings back to his
shady corner; the adventurous snail, half-way up the palm-tree, glues
himself to the bark and turns in for a nap. The crocodile has resumed
his old position on the rock in the pool, and the flower petal floats
on the water. Here comes the brilliant hoopoe with his smart crest and
clear chirrup, impatient to bid Gnulemah good morning! All is as
before, save that the group beneath the palm-trees has disappeared!
Balder slept late, yet, on awakening, he thought he must be dreaming
still. He could not distinguish imagination from reality. His mind had
temporarily lost its grasp, his will its authority. Where was he? Was
it years or hours since he had entered Boston harbor?
Suddenly rose before him the vision of the deadly struggle on the
midnight sea. Round this central point the rest crystallized in order.
His heart sank, and he sighed most heavily. But presently he rose to
his elbow and stared about in bewilderment. Had he ever seen this room
before? How came he here?
He was lying on a carved bedstead, furnished with sheets of fine linen
and a counterpane of blue embroidered satin; but all bearing an
appearance of great age. The room was oval, like a bird's-egg halved
lengthwise; the smoothly vaulted ceiling being frescoed with a crowd
of figures. The rich and costly furniture harmonized with the
bedstead, and bore the same marks of age. The chairs and lounge were
satin-covered; the sumptuous toilet-table was fitted with a mirror of
true crystal; the arched window was curtained with azure satin and
lace. It was a chamber fit for a princess of the old _r�gime_,
unaltered since its fair occupant last abode in it.
Balder now examined the frescos which covered wall and ceiling. The
subject seemed at the first glance to be a Last Judgment, or something
of that nature. A mingled rush of forms mounted on one side to the
bright zenith, and thence lapsed confusedly down the opposite descent.
The dark end of the room presented a cloud of gloomily fantastic
shapes, swerved from the main stream, and becoming darker and more
formless the farther they receded, till at the last they were lost in
a murky shadow. Not entirely lost, however; for as Balder gazed
awfully thitherward, the shadow seemed to resolve itself into a mass
of intertwined and struggling beings, neither animal nor human, but
combining the more unholy traits of both.
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