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Page 87
In his earlier and more active days, Manetho had lived and worked
throughout the whole extent of this study, and it had been kept clean
and orderly to its remotest corner. But as years passed, and the range
of his sympathies and activities narrowed, the ends of the room had
gradually fallen into dusty neglect, till at length only the small
space about the chair and table was left clear and available. The rest
was impeded by books, instruments of science, and endless chaotic
rubbish; while spiders had handed down their ever-broadening estates
from father to child, through innumerable Araneid�an generations. A
gray uniformity had thus come to overspread everything; and with the
exceptions of a cracked celestial globe, and the end of a worm-eaten
old ladder, there was nothing to catch the attention.
Here might the Egyptian indulge himself in whatever extravagances of
word or act he chose, secure from sight or hearing; and here had he
spent many an hour in such solitary exercises as no sane mind can
conceive. To him the room was thick with associations. Here had he
pursued his studies, or helped the Doctor in his erratic experiments
and research; here, with Helen in his thoughts, he had shaped out a
career,--not all of Christian humility and charity, perhaps, but at
least unstained by positive sin, and not unmindful of domestic
happiness. Here, again, had Salome visited him, bringing discord and
delight in equal parts; for at times, with the strong heat of youth,
he had vowed to love only her and to forsake ambition; and anon the
bloodless counsels of worldly power and welfare banished her with a
curse for having crossed his path. Head and heart were always at war
in Manetho. The talismanic diamond flashed or waned, and fiercely
wriggled the little fighting serpents.
At length Thor Helwyse's gauntlet was thrown into the ring; and
peace--if still present to outward seeming--abode not in the feverish
soul of the Egyptian. But it was his nature to dissemble. In this room
he had often outwatched the night, chewing the cud of his wrongs,
invoking vengeance upon the thwarter of his hopes, and swearing
through his teeth to even the balance between them. The black serpent
held the golden one helpless in his coils. The obtuse Doctor,
blundering in at morning, would find his adopted son with pallid
cheeks and glittering eyes, but ever ready with a smile and pleasant
greeting, obedience and help. Hiero Glyphic, however wayward and
cross-grained, never had cause to censure this creature of his,--to
remind him that he might have been food for crocodiles.
Manetho's dissimulation was almost without flaw. Even Helen, whose
fancy had played with him at first, but who in time had indolently
yielded to the fascination exerted over her, and even gone so far as
to permit his adulation, and accept in the ring the mystic pledge
thereof (during all the countless ages of its experience it had never
touched woman's hand before),--even she, when her lazy heart and
overbearing spirit were at length aroused and quelled by the voice
rather of a master than suitor, was deceived by forsaken Manetho's
unruffled face, gentle voice, and downcast eyes. She told herself that
his love had never dared be warmer than a kind of worship, like that
of a pagan for his idol, apart from human passion; such, at all
events, had been her understanding of his attentions. As to the ring,
it had been tendered as an offering at the shrine of abstract
womanhood; to return it too soon would imply a supposition of more
personal sentiment. Neither must Thor see it, however; his rough sense
would fail to appreciate her fine-drawn distinction. So she concealed
it in her bosom, and Manetho's serpents were ever between Thor and his
wife's heart. She was false both to husband and lover.
Great Thor, meanwhile, pitied the slender Egyptian, and in a kindly
way despised him, with his supple manners, quiet words, and religious
studies. To the young priest's timid yet earnest request for
permission to pronounce the marriage-service of him and his bride,
Thor assented with gruff heartiness.
"Marry us? Of course! marry us as fast as you can, if it gives you any
pleasure, my friend of the crocodile. A good beginning for your
ministerial career,--marrying a couple who love each other as much as
Nell and I do. Eh, Nellie?"
The ceremony over, Manetho had retired to his study, and there passed
the night,--their marriage-night! What words and tones, what twistings
of face and body, did those passionless walls see and hear? How the
smooth, studious, submissive priest yearned for power to work his will
for one day! And as the cool, still morning sheared the lustre from
his lamp-flame, how desolate he felt, with his hatred and despair and
blaspheming rage! Evil passions are but poor company, in the early
morning.
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