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Page 82
"Gnulemah!" he cried at length, "my study,--my thought,--my
purpose,--body of my hopes and prayers!" He knelt and bowed himself at
her feet, in the Oriental posture of worship, and went on with rising
passion:--"My secrets have bloomed in thy beauty,--been music in thy
voice,--darkened in thine eyes! O my flower--fascinating,
terrible!--the time is ripe for the gathering, for the smelling of the
perfume, for the kissing of the petals! I must yield thee up, O my
idol! but in thy hand are my life and my reason,--yea, Gnulemah, thou
art all I am!"
The tears, gestures, voice, with which Manetho thus delivered himself,
shocked the Northern taste of Helwyse. Through the semi-scriptural,
symbolic language, he fancied he could discern a basis of materialism
so revolting that the man of the world--the lover now!--listened with
shame and anger. Here was a professed worshipper of Gnulemah, who
ascribed to her no nobler worth than to be the incarnation of his own
desires and passions! It was abject self-idolatry, thought Balder,
masquerading as a lofty form of idealization.
The priest's mind was in a more complex condition than Balder
imagined. His absorption in Gnulemah, if only as she was the
instrument of his dominant purpose, must have been complete; the
success (as he deemed it) of his life was staked on her. But, in
addition to this, the unhappy man had, unwittingly, and with the
vehemence of his ill-ordered nature, grown to love the poison-draught
brewed for his enemy! When the enemy's lips touched the cup, did
Manetho first become aware that it brimmed with the brewer's own
life-blood!
Yet it might have been foreseen. He loved her, not because she was
identified with his aims, nor even because she was beautiful, but (and
not inconsistently with his theoretical belief in her devilishness)
because she was pure and true. Under the persuasion that he was
influencing her nature in a manner only possible, if at all, to a
moral and physical despot, he had himself been ruled by her stronger
and loftier spirit. The transcendent cunning on which he had prided
himself, as regarded his plan of educating Gnulemah, had amounted to
little more than imbecile inaction.
As Manetho prostrated himself, and even touched the hem of Gnulemah's
robe to his forehead, Balder looked to see her recoil; but she
maintained a composure which argued her not unused to such homage. So
much evil (albeit unintentionally) had the Egyptian done her, that she
could suffer, while she slighted, his worship. Yet, in the height of
her proud superiority to him, she turned with sweet submission to her
lover, and, obedient to his whisper, gathered up her purple mantle and
passed through the green conservatory to her own door, through which,
with a backward parting glance at her master, she superbly vanished.
Balder had disliked the scene throughout, yet his love was greater
than before. An awe of the woman whose innate force could command a
nature like this priest's seemed to give his passion for her a more
vigorous fibre.
The two men were now left alone to come to what understanding they
might. Manetho rose to his feet, obliquely eying Helwyse, and spoke
with the manner and tone of true humility,--
"You have seen me in my weakness. I am but a broken man, Balder
Helwyse."
"We had better speak the plain truth to each other," said Balder,
after a pause. "You can have no cause to be friendly to me. I cannot
extenuate what I did. I think I meant to kill you."
"You were not to blame!" exclaimed the other, vehemently, holding up
his hands. "You had to deal with a madman!"
"It is a strange train of chances has brought us together again; it
ought to be for some good end. I came here unawares, and, but for this
ring, should not have known that we had met before."
"I lie under your suspicion on more accounts than one," observed
Manetho, glancing in the other's face. "I have assumed your uncle's
name, and the disposal of his property; and I have concealed his
death; but you shall be satisfied on all points. The child, too,
Gnulemah!--I have kept her from sight and knowledge of the world, but
not without reason and purpose, as you shall hear. Ah! I am but a
poor broken man, liable, as you have seen, to fits of madness and
extravagance. You shall hear everything. And listen,--as a witness
that I shall speak truth, I will say my say before the face of Hiero
Glyphic yonder, and upon the steps of his altar! See, I desire neither
to palliate nor falsify. Shall we go in?"
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