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Page 89
"Laughable! Covered head to foot with curses, and felt them not! All
was smiles, blushes, happiness, forward-looking to a long, joyful
future. They knelt before me; I uplifted my hands and invoked the last
blessing,--the final curse! My heart burned, and the smoke of its fire
enveloped bride and groom, fouling his yellow beard, and smirching her
silvery veil; shutting out heaven from their prayers, and blackening
their path before them. They neither felt nor knew. They kissed,--I
saw their lips meet,--as Balder and Gnulemah to-day. Then I covered my
face and seemed to be in prayer!
"Gnulemah,--I hate her!--yes, but hatred sometimes touches the heart
like love. I love her!--to marry her? Woe to him who becomes her
husband! As a daughter?--no daughter is she of mine!--I hate her,
then.
"Why am I childless?--how would I have loved a child! I would have
left all else to love my child! I would have been the one father in
the world! My life should have been full of love as it has been of
hate. Why did not God send me a wife and a daughter?"
Men's ears have grown deaf to any save the most commonplace oracles.
But there is ever a warning voice for who will listen. One may object
that its language is unknown, or its whisper inaudible; but to the
question, "Whence your ignorance and deafness?" what shall be the
answer?
In Manetho's case it appears to have been the venerable robe that took
on itself the task of remonstrance.
"You are unreasonable, friend," it interposed with a gentle rustle.
"Gnulemah, if not your daughter, might, however, have stood you in
place of one; and she would have done you just as much good, in the
way of softening and elevating your nature, as though she had been the
issue of your own loins. You have turned the milk and honey of your
life into gall and wormwood; and I wish I could feel sure that only
you would get the benefit of it!"
The reproof had as well been spared; it is doubtful whether the
culprit heard so much as a word of it. His reverie rambled on.
"Keen,--that Balder! he half suspects me. Had I not so hurried him to
a conclusion, he would have questioned me too closely. He shall know
all presently, even as I promised him!--shall hear a sounder guess at
Gnulemah's genealogy than was made to-day.
"Do I love her?--only as the means to my end! The end once gained, I
shall hate her as I do him. But not yet,--and therefore must I love
him as well as her. They shall be, to-day, my beloved children!
To-morrow,--how shall I endure till to-morrow,--all the night
through? O Gnulemah!--
"They love each other well,--seem made to make each other happy; yet
have they come together from the ends of the earth to be each other's
curse! Only if I keep silence might it be otherwise, for love might
tame the devil that I have bred in Gnulemah. Even now she seems more
angel than devil!--Am I mad?"
He straightened himself in his chair, and glanced up towards the
crevice whence slanted the dusty sunshine. The old robe took the
opportunity to deliver its final warning.
"Not yet mad beyond remedy, Manetho; but you look up too seldom at the
sunshine, and brood too often over your own dusty depths. You have had
no consciously unselfish thought during the last quarter of a century.
You eat, drink, and breathe only Manetho! This room is yours, because
it is fullest of rubbish, and least looks out upon the glorious
universe. Break down your walls! take broom in hand without delay!
Proclaim at once the crime you meditate. Go! there is still sunshine
in this dust-hole of yours, and more of heaven in every man than he
himself dreams of. The sun is passing to the other side. Go while it
shines!"
But Manetho's dull ears heard not; and the aged garment of truth spoke
no more.
XXX.
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