Idolatry Part 11

"Hullo! skipper, take me across?"

The skipper, without replying, steered sh.o.r.ewards, the other clambering down the rock to meet him. After a brief parley, during which the old fellow closely scrutinized his intending pa.s.senger from head to foot, a bargain was struck, and they put forth, tacking diagonally across stream. For Balder, having charged his imagination with castles, warlike chieftains, and beautiful princesses, had finally arrived at the conclusion that the stone house was an enchanter's castle; the figure he had seen, an imprisoned lady; himself, a knight-errant bound to rescue her and give the wicked enchanter his deserts. This idea possessed his brain for the moment more vividly than do realities most men. The plumed helmet was on his head, he glittered with s.h.i.+ning arms and sword, his heart warmed and throbbed with visions of conflict and bold emprise. The commonplace a.s.sumed an aspect of grandeur and magnificence in harmony with his chivalric mania. The leaky craft in which he sat became a majestic barge; the skipper, some wrinkled Charon who doubtless had ferried many a brave knight to his death beneath yonder castle's walls. That seeming birch-stump on the farther sh.o.r.e was the castle champion, armed cap-a-pie in silver harness and ready with drawn sword to do battle against all comers. Trim the sail, ferryman, and steer thy skilfullest!

The kind of insanity which sees in outward manifestation the fantasies of the mind is an affection incident at times to every one. An artist sees beauties in a landscape, an artisan in pulleys and levers, and either may be so far insane in the eyes of the other. Nature discovers grandeur, beauty, or truth according as the quality abides in the seer. In this view Balder or Don Quixote was no more insane than other people. Their eyes bore true witness to what was in their minds, and the sanest eyes can do no more. Their minds were, perhaps, out of focus; but who can cast the first stone?

The skipper, when not masquerading as Charon, was a lean, brown, and wrinkled old salt, neither complete nor clean of garb, and bulging as to one lank cheek with a quid of tobacco. At first he sat silent, dividing his attention between the conduct of his boat and his pa.s.senger.

"Whereabouts will yer land, Captain?" he asked when they were fairly under way.

"Wherever there is a path upwards. Who is the owner of the castle?"

"The castle? Well, there ain't many rightly knows just what his name is," answered Charon, c.o.c.king his gray eye rather quizzically. "Some says one thing, some another. I have heard tell he was Davy Jones himself!"

"Have you ever seen him?"

"Well, I don't know; I've seen something that might have been him; but there's no telling! he can fix himself up to look like pretty much anything, they say. There ain't many calls up to the castle, anyway."

"Why not?"

"Well, there's a big wall all around the place, for one thing, and never a gate in it; so without yer dives under ground and up again, there don't seem no easy way of getting in."

"Does the owner never come out, then?"

"Well, he can get out, I expect, when he wants to," replied the wrinkled humorist, with a weather-beaten grin. "They do say he whips off on a broomstick about once a month and steers for Bos-ton!" His fas.h.i.+on of utterance was a leisurely sing-song, like the roll of a vessel anch.o.r.ed in a ground-swell.

"Why does he go there?" demanded Prince Balder, with the air of finding nothing extravagant or improbable in the sailor's yarn. The latter (a little doubting whether his interlocutor were a simpleton or a "deep one") answered, after a moment's pause,--to replenish his imagination perhaps,--

"Well, in course, I knows nothing what he does; but they do say he coasts around to all the ho-tels and overhauls the log. He's been laying for some one this twenty year. My idea, it's about time he hailed him!"

"What does he want with him?"

"Well, yer see, what folks say is, this chap had played some game or other off on Davy; so Davy he puts a rod in pickle and vows he'd be even with the chap, yet.

"Yer see,--I'll tell yer," continued Charon, leaning forward on his knee and speaking confidentially; "just as this chap was putting off,--with some of Davy's belongings, likely,--Davy up and cuts a slice of flesh and blood off him. Well, he takes this slice and fixes it up one way or another, and makes a witch out of it,--handsome as she can be,--enough to draw a chap's heart right out through his jacket. Now, being as she's his own flesh and blood, d' yer see, this chap I'm telling yer on's bound to come back after her afore he dies.

Well, soon as Davy gets hold on him, he ups with him to the place yonder and outs with the witch. 'Here yer are, my dear friend!' says he (as civil as may be), 'here's yer own flesh and blood a-waiting for yer!' Well, the chap grabs for her, and once he touches her there ain't no letting go no more. Off she starts on her broomstick, he along behind, till they gets over h.e.l.l gate--" Charon checked himself, made an ominous downward gesture with his right forefinger, and emphasized it by spitting solemnly to leeward.

"Did you ever meet him,--this man?" asked Helwyse, rousing himself from a brown study and looking Charon in the eyes.

"Well, now, I couldn't tell for certain as I ever met him," replied the other, returning the look with an odd wrinkling of the features.

"But it's nigh on twenty year that I fetched a man across this very spot, and back again in the evening, that might have been him.

Leastways, he was the last caller ever I took over to that house."

"I am the first since he--eh?"

"Well, yer are; and, Captain,--no offence to you,--but allowing for a lot of hair he had, he was like enough to you to be yer twin brother!"

"Or even myself! So Davy Jones goes by the name of Doctor Glyphic in these parts, does he?" said Balder, with a sudden, incisive smile, which almost cut through the old ferryman's self-possession. The boat at the same moment glided into a little cove, and the pa.s.senger jumped ash.o.r.e. Charon stood deferentially touching his weather-stained hat, too much mystified to speak. But the fare which Helwyse handed him restored his voice.

"Thank yer, Captain,--thank yer kindly!--hope no offence, Captain,--a chap picks up a deal of gossip in twenty year, and--"

"No offence in the world!" cried Helwyse; "I take you for a powerful enchanter, who seems to steer one way, when he is in fact taking his pa.s.senger in another. Where are you bound?"

"Well, I was dropping down a bit to see if the schooner ain't around yet. She'd ought to be in by now, if nothing ain't runned into her in the fog."

Helwyse paused a moment, eying Charon sharply. "The schooner 'Resurrection,'" he began, and, seeing he had hit the mark, continued, "was run into last night on Long Island Sound, and had her bowsprit carried away. But no serious damage was done, and she'll be in by night, if the wind holds."

With this he bade the awe-stricken old yarn-spinner farewell, and, with secret laughter at his bewilderment, turned to the narrow zigzag path that climbed the bank, pa.s.sing the birch-stump champion without a glance of recognition. A few vigorous minutes brought him to the summit, whence, facing round, he saw the broad river crawl beneath him; the little boat, with Charon in the stern, drift downwards; and beyond, the whole rough length of Manhattan Island.

A few days before Thor Helwyse's departure for Europe (some four years after his wife's death) he had left a certain little boy and girl in charge of the nurse,--a woman in whose faithfulness he placed the utmost confidence,--and had crossed from Brooklyn to New Jersey, to say good by to Brother Hiero. Returning at night he found one of the children--his son Balder--locked up in the nursery; the nurse and the little girl had disappeared, nor did Thor again set eyes on either of them.

Balder, as he grew up, often questioned his father concerning various events which had happened beyond the reach of his childish memory; and among other stories, no doubt this of the farewell visit to Uncle Glyphic had been often told with all the details. By no miracle, therefore, but simply by an acute mental process, a.s.sociating together time, place, and description, was Balder enabled so to dumfounder old Charon.

Embarking on a phantom quest, his brain full of whimsical visions, Balder had thus unexpectedly stepped into the path of his legitimate affair. The accident (for no better reason than that it was such) inspired him with a superficial cheerfulness. He had landed some distance below his uncle Glyphic's house,--for such indeed it was,--and he now took his way towards it through trees and underbrush.

It was so situated, and so thickly surrounded with foliage, as to be visible from no point in the vicinity. Had the site been chosen with a view to concealment, the builder could not have succeeded better.

Remembering the eccentricity of his uncle's character, as portrayed in many an anecdote, Balder would not have been surprised to find him living under ground, or in a pyramid.

On arriving at the wall whereof the ferryman had told him, he found it a truly formidable affair, some twelve feet high and built of brick.

To scale it without a ladder was impossible; but Balder, never doubting that there was a gate somewhere, set out in search of it.

It was tiresome walking over the uneven ground and through obstructing bushes, branches, and stumps. The tall brick barrier seemed as interminable as unbroken. How many houses, thought Balder, might have been built from the material thus wasted! If ever he came into possession of the place, he resolved to present the brick to his friend Charon, that he might replace his wooden shanty with something more durable and convenient, and perhaps build a dock for the schooner "Resurrection" to lie in. It must have taken a fortune to put up such a wall; were the enclosure proportionally valuable, it was worth while crossing the ocean to see it. Still more wall! fully a mile of it already, and yet further it rambled on through leafy thickets. But no signs of a gate!

"I believe the Devil really does live here!" exclaimed Balder, in impatient heat; "and the only way in or out is on a broomstick,--or by diving under ground, as Charon said!"

Stumbling onwards awhile farther, he suddenly came again upon the river-bank, having skirted the whole length of the wall. There was actually no getting in! The castle was impregnable.

Helwyse sat down at the foot of a birch-tree which grew a few yards from the wall.

"How does my uncle manage about his butcher and baker, I wonder! He might at least have provided a derrick for victualling his stronghold.

Perhaps he hauls up provisions by ropes over the face of the cliff. No doubt, Charon knew about it. Shall I go down and look?"

It was provoking--having come so far to call on a relative--to be put off with a mile or two of brick wall. The gate must have been walled up since his father's time, for Thor had never mentioned any deficiency in that respect. But Balder's determination was piqued,--not to mention his curiosity. Had the path from Mr.

MacGentle's office to Doctor Glyphic's door been straight and un.o.bstructed, the young man might have wandered aside and never reached the end. As it was, he was goaded into the resolution to see his uncle at all hazards. An additional spur was the thought of the gracious apparition which he had seen--or dreamt he saw--from the farther bank. Was she indeed but an apparition?--or the single reality amidst the throng of fantasies evoked by his overwrought mind?--beaconing him through misty errors to a fate better than he knew! In all seriousness, who could she be? Had Doctor Glyphic crowned his eccentricities by marrying, and begetting a daughter?

These speculations were interrupted by the clear, joyous note of a bird, just above Balder's head. It was such a note as might have been uttered by a paradisical cuckoo with the breath of a brighter world in his throat. Looking up, he saw a beautiful little fowl perched on the topmost twig of the birch-tree. It had a slender bill, and on its head a crest of splendid feathers, which it set up at Balder in a most coquettish manner. The next moment it flew over the wall, and from the farther side warbled an invitation to follow.

Although he could not fly, Balder reflected that he could climb, and that the top of the tree would show him more than he could see now.

The birch looked tolerably climbable and was amply high; as to toughness, he thought not about it. Beneath what frivolous disguises does destiny mask her approach! Discretion is a virtue; yet, had Balder been discreet enough to examine the tree before getting into it, the ultimate consequences are incalculable!

As it was (and marvelling why he had not thought of doing it before) he set stoutly to work, and, despite his jack-boots, was soon among the upper branches. The birch trembled and groaned unheeded. The bird (an Egyptian bird,--a hoopoe,--descendant of a pair brought by Doctor Glyphic from the Nile a quarter of a century ago),--the hoopoe was fluttering and warbling and setting its brilliant cap at the young man more captivatingly than ever. A glance over the enclosure showed a beautifully fertile and luxurious expanse, damasked with soft green gra.s.s and studded with flowers and trees. A few hundred yards away billowed the white tops of an apple-orchard in full bloom. Southward, half seen through boughs and leaves, rose an anomalous structure of brick, gla.s.s, and stone, which could only be the famous house on whose design and decoration old Hiero Glyphic had spent years and fortunes.

The tract was like an oasis in a forbidding land. The soil had none of the sandy and clayey consistency peculiar to New Jersey, but was deep and rich as an English valley. The suns.h.i.+ne rested more warmly and mellowly here than elsewhere. The southern breeze acquired a tropical flavor in loitering across it. The hoopoe had seemed out of place on the hither side the wall, but now looked as much at home as though the Hudson had been the Nile indeed.

"My uncle," said Balder to himself, as he swayed among the branches of his birch-tree, "has really succeeded very well in transporting a piece of Egypt to America. Were I on the other side of the wall, no doubt I might appreciate it also!"

The hoopoe responded encouragingly, the tree cracked, and Balder felt with dismay that it was tottering beneath him. There was no time to climb down again. With a dismal croak, the faithless birch leaned slowly through the air. There was nothing to be done but to go with it; and Balder, even as he descended, was able to imagine how absurd he must appear. The tree fell, but was intercepted at half its height by the top of the wall. The upper half of the stem, with its human fruit still attached to it, bent bow-like towards the earth, the trunk not being quite separated from the root.

Helwyse had thus far managed to keep his presence of mind, and now, glancing downwards, he saw the ground not eight feet below. He loosed his hold, and the next instant stood in the soft gra.s.s. The birch had been his broomstick. Meanwhile the hoopoe, with a triumphant note, flew off towards the house to tell the news.