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Page 70
"How can that be?" said the unwilling Gnulemah. "What can make men so
happy on earth as other men?"
"Each wants all power for himself," rejoined Balder, his voice growing
stern as he pursued his theme. "They want to hurl their fellows out of
the world, even to annihilation. Every moment this hatred is let grow
in the heart's garden, it spreads and strengthens, till it gains
dominion and makes men slaves, and madder than before. Each will be
above his rival,--his enemy! he will be absolute master over him. And
from that resolve is born murder!"
"Why do you tell Gnulemah this?" she asked, lifting her head like a
majestic serpent. But she could not stop him now. His voice, measured
at first, was now driven by emotion.
"Murder comes next; and many a man, had fear or impotence not withheld
him, would have done murder a thousand times. But sometimes the demon
leaps up and masters impotence and fear. The man is drunk with
immeasurable selfishness,--greater than the universe can satisfy;
which would fain make one victim after another, till all the human
race should be destroyed; and then would it turn against Heaven and
God. Save for man's mortal frailty, the population of the world would
ever and anon be swept away by some giant murderer.
"Wickedness grows faster, the wickeder it is; he who has been wicked
once will easily be so again,--the more easily as his crime was great.
Even though through all his mortal life he sin no more, yet his drift
is thitherward! Only the air of Heaven breathing through his soul
after death can make him pure."
Balder was speaking out all the gloom and terror which had been
silently gathering within him since his fatal night. As he spoke, his
mind expanded, and perceived things before unknown. As the reasons for
condemnation multiplied, he did but push on the harder, striking at
each tender spot in his own armor. And as the day turned fatally
against him, his face looked great and heroic, and his voice sounded
almost triumphant.
Thus far, he had only generalized; now, he was come to his own plight.
On several points he had been painfully in doubt: whether he had done
the deed in self-defence; whether he had meant to do it; whether it
had not been a blind, mad accident, since swollen by fevered
imagination into the likeness of wilful crime. But against such doubts
arrayed itself the ineffaceable memory of that wild joy which had
filled his soul, when he had felt his enemy in his power! Had the man
survived, Balder might still have doubted; being dead, doubts were but
cowardly sophistry.
But during the brief pause he made, came a backward recoil of that
impulse which had swept him on. All at once he was cold, and wavered.
Gnulemah was sitting with her elbow on her knee, her strange eyes
fixed upon him. Had he duly considered what effect all this might have
on her? In aiming at his own life, might not the sword pass also
through hers? Abruptly to behold sin,--to find in the first man she
had learnt to know, the sinner,--to be left this burden on her untried
soul,--might this not ruin more than her earthly happiness? Did she
still love him, such love could end only in misery; should she hate
him who of all men was bound to protect her defencelessness,--that
were misery indeed!
This misgiving, arresting his hand at the instant of delivering the
final blow, almost discouraged the much-tried man. He glanced sullenly
toward the edge of the cliff, only a few yards off. A new thought
jarred through his nerves! He got up and walked to the brink. Full
sixty feet to the bottom.
Gnulemah also rose slowly, and stretched herself like a tired child,
sending a lazy tension through every noble limb and polished muscle.
She sighed with a deep breathing in and out, and pressed her hands
against her temples.
"I was not made to understand such things. Tell me of what you have
done or seen--I shall understand that. The things my love does not
enter only trouble me and make me sad."
As she spoke, she turned away towards the house. She saw, or thought
she saw, a man's figure stealing cautiously behind a clump of bushes
near the north-eastern corner. Her listlessness fell from, her like a
mantle, and she watched, motionless!
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