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Page 93
Gnulemah picked up the broken links, and they followed him to the
house.
XXXI.
MARRIED.
The significant part of most life histories is the record of a few
detached hours, the rest being consequence and preparation. Helwyse
had lived in constant mental and physical activity from childhood up;
but though he had speculated much, and ever sought to prove the truth
by practice, yet he had failed to create adequate emergencies, and was
like an untried sword, polished and keen, but lacking still the one
stern proof of use.
Thus, although a man of the world, in a deeper sense he was untouched
by it. He had been the sentimental spectator of a drama wherein some
shadow of himself seemed to act. The mimic scenes had sometimes moved
him to laughter or to tears, but he had never quite lost the suspicion
of an unreality under all. The best end had been--in a large
sense--beauty. Beauty of love, of goodness, of strength, of
wisdom,--beauty of every kind and degree, but nothing better! Beauty
was the end rather than the trait of all desirable things. To have
power was beautiful, and beautiful was the death that opened the way
to freer and wider power. Most beautiful was Almightiness; yet,
lapsing thence, it was beautiful to begin the round again in fresh,
new forms.
This kind of spider-webs cannot outlast the suns and snows. Personal
passion disgusts one with brain-spun systems of the universe, and may
even lead to a mistrust of mathematics! One feels the overwhelming
power of other than intellectual interests; and discovers in himself a
hitherto unsuspected universe, profound as the mystery of God, where
the cockle-shell of mental attainments is lost like an asteroid in the
abyss of space.
What is the mind?--A little window, through which to gaze out upon the
vast heart-world: a window whose crooked and clouded pane we may
diligently clean and enlarge day by day; but, too often, the deep view
beyond is mistaken for a picture painted on the glass and limited by
its sash! Let the window by all means expand till the darksome house
be transformed to a crystal palace! but shall homage be paid the
crystal? Of what value were its transparency, had God not built the
heavens and the earth?--
Though Helwyse had failed to touch the core of life, and to recognize
the awful truth of its mysteries, he had not been conscious of
failure. On the contrary he had become disposed to the belief that he
was a being apart from the mass of men and above them: one who could
see round and through human plans and passions; could even be separate
from himself, and yield to folly with one hand, while the other jotted
down the moral of the spectacle. He was calm in the conviction that he
could measure and calculate the universe, and draw its plan in his
commonplace book. God was his elder brother,--himself in some distant
but attainable condition. He matched finity against the Infinite, and
thereby cast away man's dearest hope,--that of eternal progress
towards the image of Divine perfection.
Once, however, the bow had smitten his heart-strings with a new result
of sound, awakening fresh ideas of harmony. When Thor was swept to
death by that Baltic wave, Balder leapt after him, hopeless to save,
but without demur! The sea hurled him back alone. For many a month
thereafter, strange lights and shadows flashed or gloomed across his
sky, and sounds from unknown abysses disquieted him. But all was not
quite enough; perhaps he was hewn from too stanch materials lightly to
change. Yet the sudden shock of his loss left its mark: the props of
self-confidence were a little unsettled; and the events whose course
we have traced were therefore able to shake them down.
For Destiny rained her sharpest blows on Balder Helwyse all at once,
and the attack marks the turning-point of his life. She chose her
weapons wisely. He was beaten by tactics which a coarser and shallower
nature would have slighted. He sustained the onslaught for the most
part with outward composure,--but bleeding inwardly.
His had been a vast egoism, rooted in his nature and trained by his
philosophy. It must die, if at all, violently, painfully, and--in
silence. The truer and more constant the soul, the more complete the
destruction of its idol. Character is not always the slow growth of
years: often do the elements mingle long in formless solution; some
sudden jar causes them to spring at once to the definite crystal.
There had, hitherto, been a kind of impersonality about Balder, having
its ultimate ground in his blindness to the immutable unity of God.
But so soon as his eye became single, he stood pronounced in his
individuality, less broadly indifferent than of yore, but organized
and firm.
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