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Page 8
All in a moment he bursts forth, without warning, without restraint,
the fire of the Egyptian sun boiling in his blood and blazing in his
passion. He seizes her soft white wrist,--then her waist; he presses
against his, her bosom,--what a throbbing!--her cheek to his,--how
aghast! He pours hot words in torrents into her ears,--all that his
fretting heart has hoarded up and brooded over these months and years!
all,--sparing her not a thought, not a passionate word. She tries to
repel him, to escape, to scream for help; but he looks down her eyes
with his own, holds her fast, and she gasps for breath. So the serpent
coils about the dove, and stamps his image upon her bewildered brain.
Verily, the Reverend Manetho has much forgotten himself. The issue
might have been disastrous, had not Helen, in the crisis of the
affair, lost consciousness, and fallen a dead weight in his arms. He
laid her gently on the bench, fumbled for a moment in the bosom of her
dress, and drew out the diamond ring. Just then is heard the solid
step of Thor, striding and whistling along the path. Manetho snaps the
golden chain, and vanishes with his talisman; and he is the first to
appear, full of sympathy and concern, when the distracted husband
shouts for help.
Next morning, two little struggling human beings are blinking and
crying in a darkened room, and there is no mother to give them milk,
and cherish them in her bosom. There sits the father, almost as still
and cold as what was his wife. She did not speak to him, nor seem to
know him, to the last. He will never know the truth; Manetho comes and
goes, and reads the burial-service, unsuspected and unpunished. But
Salome follows him away from the grave, and some words pass between
them. The man is no longer what he was. He turns suddenly upon her and
strikes out with savage force; the diamond on his finger bites into
the flesh of the gypsy's breast; she will carry the scar of that
brutal blow as long as she lives. So he drove his only lover away, and
looked upon her bright, handsome face no more.
Here Doctor Glyphic--or whoever this sleeping man may be--turns
heavily upon his face, drawing his hand, with the blood-stained ring,
out of sight. We are glad to leave him to his bad dreams; the air
oppresses us. Come, 't is time we were off. The eastern horizon bows
before the sun, the air colors delicate pink, and the very tombstones
in the graveyard blush for sympathy. The sparrows have been awake for
a half-hour past, and, up aloft, the clouds, which wander ceaselessly
over the face of the earth, alighting only on lonely mountain-tops,
are tinted into rainbow-quarries by the glorious spectacle.
III.
A MAY MORNING.
King Arthur, in his Bohemian days, carried an adamantine shield, the
gift of some fairy relative. Not only was it impenetrable, but, so
intolerable was its lustre, it overthrew all foes before the lance's
point could reach them. Observing this, the chivalric monarch had a
cover made for it, which he never removed save in the face of
superhuman odds.
Here is an analogy. The imaginative reader may look upon our enchanted
facet-mirror as too glaringly simple and direct a source of facts to
suit the needs of a professed romance. Be there left, he would say,
some room for fancy, and even for conjecture. Let the author seem
occasionally to consult with his companion, gracefully to defer to his
judgment. Bare statement, the parade of indisputable evidence, is well
enough in law, but appears ungentle in a work of fiction.
How just is this mild censure! how gladly are its demands conceded!
Let dogmatism retire, and blossom, flowers of fancy, on your yielding
stems! Henceforward the reader is our confidential counsellor. We
will pretend that our means of information are no better than other
writers'. We will uniformly revel in speculation, and dally with
imaginative delights; and only when hard pressed for the true path
will we snatch off the veil, and let forth for a moment a redeeming
ray.
In this generous mood, we pass through the partition between No. 27
and No. 29. In the matter of bedchambers--even hotelbedchambers--there
can be great diversity. That we were in just now was close and
unwholesome, and wore an air of feverishness and disorder. Here, on
the contrary, the air is fresh and brisk, for the breeze from Boston
harbor--slightly flavored, it is true, by its journey across the
northern part of the city--has been blowing into the room all night
long. Here are some trunks and carpet-bags, well bepasted with the
names of foreign towns and countries, famous and infamous. One of the
trunks is a bathing-tub, fitted with a cover--an agreeable promise of
refreshment amidst the dust and weariness of travel. A Russia-leather
travelling-bag lies open on the table, disgorging an abundant armament
of brushes and combs and various toilet niceties. Mr. Helwyse must be
a dandy.
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