Chapter 26

MUSIC AND MADNESS.

Before leaving Balder to his repose, Manetho paused to regain his
breath, and to throw a glance round the room. It was a place he seldom
visited. He had seen Helen's dead body lie on that bed, and the sight
had bred in him an animosity against the chamber and everything it
contained. After Doctor Glyphic's death he had gratified this feeling
in a characteristic manner. Possessing a genius for drawing second
only to that for music, he had exercised it on the walls of the room,
originally modelled and tinted to represent a robin's egg. He mixed
his colors with the bitter distillations of his heart, and created the
beautiful but ill-omened vision which long afterwards so disquieted
Balder.--

From the chamber he now repaired to the kitchen, which was in some
respects the most attractive place in the house. The smoky ceiling;
the cavernous cupboards opening into the walls; the stanch dressers,
polished by use and mottled with many an ancient stain; the great
black range, which would have cooked a meal for a troop of
men-at-arms,--all spoke of homely comfort. Nurse had Manetho's meal
ready for him, and, having set it out on the table, she retired to her
position in the chimney-corner. The Egyptian's spare body was
ordinarily nourished with little more than goes to the support of an
Arab, and Nurse's monotonous life must have been unfavorable to large
appetite. As for Gnulemah,--although young women are said to thrive
and grow beautiful on a diet of morning dew, noonday sunshine, and
evening mist,--it seems quite likely that she ate no less than the
health and activity of a Diana might naturally require.

Manetho made a gleeful repast, and Nurse looked on from her corner,
externally as unattractive-looking a woman as one would wish to see.
Nevertheless, had she been made as some clocks are, with a plate of
glass over her inner movements, she would have monopolized the
clergyman's attention and impaired his appetite. He did not sit down
to the table, but took up one viand after another, and ate as he
walked to and fro the floor. Supper over, he crowned it with an
unheard-of excess,--for Manetho was commonly a very temperate man. He
brought from a cupboard a dusty bottle of priceless wine, which had
once enriched the cellar of a king of Spain. Drawing the cork, he
poured some of the golden liquor into a slender glass, while the
spiritual aroma flowed invisible along the air, visiting every
darksome nook, and even saluting Nurse, who had long been a stranger
to any such delicate attention.

Manetho filled two glasses, and then beckoned Nurse to come from her
corner, and drink with him. Forth she hobbled accordingly, looking
more than usually ugly by reason of her surprise and embarrassment at
the unexpected summons. Manetho, on the other hand, seemed to have
cast aside his years, and to be once more the graceful, sinuous,
courteous youth, whose long black eyes had, long ago, seen Salome's
heart. With an elegant gesture he handed her the brimming wineglass,
accompanying it with a smile which well-nigh shook it from between her
fingers. He took up his own glass, and said,--

"I seldom drink wine, Nurse,--never, unless a lady, joins me! Once I
drank with her whose chamber our guest now occupies; and once with
another--" Manetho paused. "I never speak her name, Nurse; but we
loved each other. I did not treat her well!" He murmured with a sigh,
tears in his eyes. "Were she here to-night, at her feet would I sue
for pardon,--the renewal of our love. By my soul!" he cried, suddenly,
"I had thought to drink a far different toast; but let this glass be
drained to the memory of the sweet moments she and I have known
together! Drink!"

He tossed off the wine. But poor Nurse, strangely agitated, dropped
hers on the floor; the precious liquor was spilled, and the glass
shivered. She gazed beseechingly at Manetho. Could he not penetrate
that mask to the face behind it? Is flesh so miserably opaque that no
spark of the inwardly burning soul can make itself felt or seen
without? Manetho saw only the broken glass and its wasted contents!

"You are as clumsy as you are ugly!" said he, "Go back to your corner.
I must converse with my violin."

She returned heavily to her place, feeling the darker and colder
because that wine had been spilled before she could raise it to her
lips. One taste, she fancied, might have begun a transformation in her
life! But we know not the weight of the chains we lay upon our limbs.

The Egyptian's buoyant humor had dismissed the whole matter in another
moment. He opened his violin-case, lovingly caressing the instrument
as he took it out. Then he tucked it fondly under his chin, and
resumed his walking. The delicately potent wine warbled through his
nerves, and tinted memory with imagination.

The bow, traversing the strings, drew forth from them a sweet and
plaintive note, like the tender remonstrance of a neglected friend. No
language says so much in so short space as music, nor will, till we
banish those dead bones, consonants, and adopt the pure vowel speech
of infants and angels.

"Ay, long have we been apart, my beloved one, and much have I needed
thee!" murmured Manetho. "I yearned for thy soothing and refreshing
voice; yea, death walked near me, because thou, my preserver, wast not
by to guard me. But, rejoice! all is again well with us,--the hour of
our triumph is near!"

The fine instrument responded, carolling forth an exquisite p�an,--an
ascending scale, mounting to a breathless ecstasy, and falling in
slower melody along gliding waves of fortunate sound. The player drank
each perfect note, till his pulses beat in unison with the rhythm. His
violin and he were wedded lovers since his youth, nor had discord ever
come between them.

"Two little children weaving flower-chains for each other in the
grass. I said, 'The one that first comes to me shall be mine!' And the
little maiden arose, leaving her brother among the flowers. So one was
taken and the other left. But, behold! the brother has come to play
with his sister once more!"

Again the music--a divine philosopher's stone--touched the theme into
fine-spun golden harmony. The dusky kitchen, with its one dull lamp
glimmering on the table, broadened with marble floors, and sprang
aloft in airy arches! Twinkling stars hung between the columns,
burning with a fragrance like flowers. It was a summer morning, just
before sunrise. The clear faces of children peeped from violet-strewn
recesses where they had passed the night; and, as their sweet eyes
met, they shouted for joy, and ran to embrace one another.

"Oh! my beloved," softly burst forth the Egyptian, "how blessed are we
to-night!" He touched the strings to a measured tune, following with a
minuet-step up and down the floor. A fantastic spectacle! for as he
passed and repassed the lamp, an elastic shadow crept noiselessly
behind him, dodged beneath his feet, and anon outstretched itself like
a sudden pit yawning before him. "This night repays the dreary years
that lie behind. How have I outlasted them! What had I fallen on the
very threshold of requital?--all I had hoped and labored for, a
failure!"

Here paused the tune and the dance, and arose a weird dirge of
compassion over what might have been! So moving was it, the player
himself was melted. His dark nature showed its fairest side,--sensitive
refinement, grace of expression, flowing ease of manner. Quick was he in
fancy, emotional, soft and strong, gentle and fiery. In this hour he
bloomed, like some night-flowering plant, of perfume sweet but
poisonous. This was Manetho's apogee!

Again his humor changed, and he became playful and frivolous. Had old
Nurse in the corner been little more personable, he might have caught
her round the waist, and forced her to tread a wild measure with him.
But this unfolding of his faculties in the shower of good fortune had
refined his �sthetic susceptibility. The withered, disfigured woman
was no partner for him!

She sat, following, with the intentness of her single eye, his every
motion, her head swaying in unconscious sympathy. Although her body
sat so stiff and awkward in the chimney-seat, her spirit, inspired
with the grace of love, was dancing with Manetho's. But the body kept
its place, knowing that erelong he too must come to rest. In the light
of a vivid recollection, the long tract between fades and
foreshortens, till only the Then and the Now are notable. However, the
light will pale, the dusty miles outstretch their length once more,
and the pilgrim find himself wearier than ever.

But meanwhile the clergyman floats hither and thither like a wreath of
black smoke blown about by a draught of air. One might have expected
to see him all at once vanish up the wide-mouthed chimney. The music
seems to emanate less from the instrument than from the player; it
interprets and colors every motion and expression. His chanting and
his playing answer and supplement each other, like strophe and
antistrophe.

"Let me tell thee why I rejoice, that thy sympathy may increase my
joy!

"A beautiful woman, young, a fountain of fresh life, an ivory vase
filled with earthly flowers. The eye that gazes on her form is taken
captive; yea, her face intoxicates the senses. But she is poisonous, a
queen of death, and her feet walk towards destruction!

"Supple and strong is she as the serpent, quick and graceful as the
panther. Food has she for nourishment, for the warming of the blood;
exercises for the body, to keep her healthful and fair. Her triumph is
in the flesh,--she finds it perfect. The flesh she deems divine,--the
earth, a heaven!

"Books, the world of men,--she knows not: sees in herself Creation's
cause and centre; in God, but the myriad reflex of her beauty. Self is
her God, whom she worships in thunder and lightning, in sun and stars,
in fire and water. Dreaming and waking are alike real to her: she
knows not to divide truth from falsehood.

"Whom should she thank for health, for life and birth? She is born of
the fire that burns in her own bosom. To her is nothing lawful nor
unlawful. No tie binds her soul to salvation. A fair ship is she, but
rudderless, and the wind blows on the rocks. Let God save her if He
will--and can!"

The inspiration of the Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame
beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of
the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness.
From this point, however, his rapture somewhat abated, and he began to
descend towards prose, his music clothing him downwards.

"As for me, I have bowed down before her, pampering her insolent
majesty, preserving her poison to rancor first in her father's heart.
Of him, death robbed me; but the son,--the brother is left. Even death
spared brother and sister to each other!

"A handsome man! worthy to stand by her. Never fairer couple sprang
from one stem. They love each other,--and shall love!--more than ever
brother and sister loved before. But they shall be bound by a tie so
close that the mere tie of blood hangs loose beside it! Then shall
night come down on them,--a night no rising sun shall ever chase away.
In that; darkness will I speak--"

This devilish monologue ended abruptly here. The faithful instrument,
whose responsive sympathy had failed him, jarringly snapped a string!
A sting of anguish pricked through Manetho's every nerve. His
fictitious buoyancy evaporated like steam,--he barely made shift to
totter to a chair. Laying the violin with tremling hands on the table,
his head dropped on his arms beside it; and there was a long, feverish
silence.

At length he raised his haggard face, and, supporting it upon his
hands, he gazed at the figure in the chimney-corner; and began, in a
tone sullen and devoid of animation as November rain,--

"Why did you force yourself upon me?--not for Gnulemah's sake, I
think. Not for money,--you had none. Not for love of me either, I
fancy,--grisly harpy!

"Once I suspected you of being a spy. You walked among pitfalls then!
But what spy would sit for eighteen years without speech or movement?
You have been useful too. No one could have filled your place,--with
your one eye and dumb mouth!

"Did you hate Thor? were you my secret ally against him? But how could
you fathom my purposes enough even to help me? And what wrong has he
done you terrible enough for such revenge as mine? What human being,
except Manetho, could hold an unwavering purpose so many years? Have
you never pitied or relented? Sometimes I have almost wavered myself!

"What name and history have you buried, and never shown me? Why have
you spent your dumb life in this seclusion? You are a mystery,--yet a
mystery of my own making! I might as wisely dissect my violin to find
where lurks the music. A mass of wood and strings,--the music is from
me!

"Have you a thought of preventing the scheme I spoke of to-night?" The
Egyptian leaned far across the table, the better to scrutinize the
unanswering woman's face. Her eye met his with a steady intelligence
that disconcerted him.

"Are you a woman?" he muttered, drawing back, "and have you no pity on
the children whom you nursed in their infancy?--not any pity! as
implacable--almost more implacable than I? But think of her beauty and
innocence,--for is she not innocent as yet? Would you see her forever
ruined,--and stretch forth no saving hand?" Nurse moved her head up
and down, as in slow, deliberate assent. Manetho, beholding the
reflection in her of his own moral deformity, was filled with
abhorrence!

"More hideous within than without,--you demon! come to haunt me and
make me wicked as yourself. It was you snapped the chord of my
music,--that better spirit which had till then saved me from your
spells! My evil genius! I know you now, though never until this
moment."

This madman was not the first sinner who, happening to catch an
outside glimpse of his interior grime, has tried to cheat his scared
conscience by an outcry of "Devil!--devil!" Is there not a touch of
pathos in the vanity of the situation? For the cry is in part sincere;
no man can be so wholly evil, while in this world, as quite to divorce
the better angel from his soul. But alas! for the poor righteous
indignation.