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Page 88
But was not Salome left him? The only sincerely tender words he had
ever spoken to woman had been said to her: his humblest and happiest
thoughts had been born of their early acquaintance,--before he had
raised his eyes to the proud and languid mistress. Yet on her only did
the evil passions of Manetho wreak themselves in harm and wrong; her
only, on a later day, did he dastardly strike down. Poor Salome had
given him her heart. These walls had seen their meetings.
Years afterwards, Manetho had here embalmed his foster-father:
through long hours had he labored at his hateful task, with curious
zest and conscientiousness. As regarded the strange place of
sepulture, the Egyptian had perhaps imagined a symbolic fitness in
enclosing his human immortal in the empty shell of time. Over this
matter of Hiero Glyphic's death and burial, however, must ever brood a
cloud of mystery. Undoubtedly Manetho loved the man,--but death was
not always the worst of ills in Manetho's philosophy.
The clock had been affixed to the study door both as an additional
concealment, and possibly as a congenial sentry over the interior
associations. Since then the place had become the clergyman's almost
daily resort. Pacing the contracted floor, sitting moodily in the
chair,--many a brooding hour had gone over his barrenly busy head, and
written its darkening record in his book of life. Here had been
schemed that plan of revenge, whose insanity the insane schemer could
not perceive. Nor could he understand that mightier powers than he
could master worked against him, and even used his efforts to bring
forth contrary results.
But not all hours had passed so. Spaces there had been wherein evil
counsels had retired to a cloudy background, athwart which had
brightened a rainbow, intangible, whose source was hidden, but whose
colors were true before his eyes. The grace and aerial beauty of
sunshine lightened through the rain,--the pleasing loveliness of
essential life was projected on the gloom of evil imaginations. For
Manetho's actual deeds were apt to be prompted by far gentler
influences than governed his theories. The man was better than his
mind: and goodness, perhaps, bears an absolute blessing; insomuch that
the sinner, doing ignorant good, yet feels the benefit thereof; just
as the rain, however dismal, cannot prevent the sun from making
rainbows out of it.
On this particular morning Manetho sank into his deep-seated chair,
and was quite still. A great part of what had hitherto made his daily
life ended here. The activity of existence was over for him. Thought,
feeling, hope, could live hereafter only as phantoms of memory. But to
look back on evil done is not so pleasant as to plan it; the dead body
of a foe moves us in another way than his living hostile person.
When, therefore, Manetho should have hurled to its mark the
long-poised spear, he would have little to look forward to. That one
moment of triumph must repay, both for what had been and was to come.
To-day of all his days, then, must each sense and faculty be in
exquisite condition. Unseasonably enough, however, he found himself in
a perversely dull and callous state. Could Providence so cajole him as
to mar the only joyful hour of his life! Then better off than he were
savages, who could destroy their recusant idols. But nothing short of
spiritual suicide would have destroyed the idol of Manetho!
He was wearing to-day the same priestly robe which he had put on when,
for the first and last time, he performed a ministerial duty. In this
robe had he married Helen to Thor. Itself a precious relic of
antiquity, it had once dignified the shoulders of a contemporary of
Manetho's remotest ancestors. Old Hiero Glyphic had counted it amongst
his chiefest treasures; and on his sister's wedding-day had produced
it from its repository, insisting that the minister should wear it
instead of the orthodox sacerdotal costume. Since then it had lain
untouched till to-day.
Manetho brooded over the dim magnificence of its folds, sitting amidst
the cobwebbed rubbish, a narrow glint of sunshine creeping
slope-downwards from the crevice above his head. He smoothed the
fabric abstractedly with his hand, recalling the thoughts and scenes
of four-and-twenty years ago.
"I joined them in the holy bonds of matrimony,--read over them that
service, those sacred words heavy with solemn benediction. Rich,
smooth, softly modulated was my voice, missing not one just emphasis
or melodious intonation. Ah! had they seen my soul. But my eyes were
half closed like the crocodile's, yet never losing sight of the two I
was uniting in sight of God and man. The Devil too was there. He
turned the blessings my lips uttered into blighting curses, that fell
on the happy couple like pestilential rain!
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