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Page 77
MUSIC AND MADNESS.
Before leaving Balder to his repose, Manetho paused to regain his
breath, and to throw a glance round the room. It was a place he seldom
visited. He had seen Helen's dead body lie on that bed, and the sight
had bred in him an animosity against the chamber and everything it
contained. After Doctor Glyphic's death he had gratified this feeling
in a characteristic manner. Possessing a genius for drawing second
only to that for music, he had exercised it on the walls of the room,
originally modelled and tinted to represent a robin's egg. He mixed
his colors with the bitter distillations of his heart, and created the
beautiful but ill-omened vision which long afterwards so disquieted
Balder.--
From the chamber he now repaired to the kitchen, which was in some
respects the most attractive place in the house. The smoky ceiling;
the cavernous cupboards opening into the walls; the stanch dressers,
polished by use and mottled with many an ancient stain; the great
black range, which would have cooked a meal for a troop of
men-at-arms,--all spoke of homely comfort. Nurse had Manetho's meal
ready for him, and, having set it out on the table, she retired to her
position in the chimney-corner. The Egyptian's spare body was
ordinarily nourished with little more than goes to the support of an
Arab, and Nurse's monotonous life must have been unfavorable to large
appetite. As for Gnulemah,--although young women are said to thrive
and grow beautiful on a diet of morning dew, noonday sunshine, and
evening mist,--it seems quite likely that she ate no less than the
health and activity of a Diana might naturally require.
Manetho made a gleeful repast, and Nurse looked on from her corner,
externally as unattractive-looking a woman as one would wish to see.
Nevertheless, had she been made as some clocks are, with a plate of
glass over her inner movements, she would have monopolized the
clergyman's attention and impaired his appetite. He did not sit down
to the table, but took up one viand after another, and ate as he
walked to and fro the floor. Supper over, he crowned it with an
unheard-of excess,--for Manetho was commonly a very temperate man. He
brought from a cupboard a dusty bottle of priceless wine, which had
once enriched the cellar of a king of Spain. Drawing the cork, he
poured some of the golden liquor into a slender glass, while the
spiritual aroma flowed invisible along the air, visiting every
darksome nook, and even saluting Nurse, who had long been a stranger
to any such delicate attention.
Manetho filled two glasses, and then beckoned Nurse to come from her
corner, and drink with him. Forth she hobbled accordingly, looking
more than usually ugly by reason of her surprise and embarrassment at
the unexpected summons. Manetho, on the other hand, seemed to have
cast aside his years, and to be once more the graceful, sinuous,
courteous youth, whose long black eyes had, long ago, seen Salome's
heart. With an elegant gesture he handed her the brimming wineglass,
accompanying it with a smile which well-nigh shook it from between her
fingers. He took up his own glass, and said,--
"I seldom drink wine, Nurse,--never, unless a lady, joins me! Once I
drank with her whose chamber our guest now occupies; and once with
another--" Manetho paused. "I never speak her name, Nurse; but we
loved each other. I did not treat her well!" He murmured with a sigh,
tears in his eyes. "Were she here to-night, at her feet would I sue
for pardon,--the renewal of our love. By my soul!" he cried, suddenly,
"I had thought to drink a far different toast; but let this glass be
drained to the memory of the sweet moments she and I have known
together! Drink!"
He tossed off the wine. But poor Nurse, strangely agitated, dropped
hers on the floor; the precious liquor was spilled, and the glass
shivered. She gazed beseechingly at Manetho. Could he not penetrate
that mask to the face behind it? Is flesh so miserably opaque that no
spark of the inwardly burning soul can make itself felt or seen
without? Manetho saw only the broken glass and its wasted contents!
"You are as clumsy as you are ugly!" said he, "Go back to your corner.
I must converse with my violin."
She returned heavily to her place, feeling the darker and colder
because that wine had been spilled before she could raise it to her
lips. One taste, she fancied, might have begun a transformation in her
life! But we know not the weight of the chains we lay upon our limbs.
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