Idolatry Part 18

This kind of language would be blank to one used rather to hear words than to feel them; but Balder, in, his present exalted mood, delighted in it. Was there any enjoyment more refined than to see his thought, before he had given it breath, lighten in the eyes of this daughter of fire? and with his own eyes to catch the first pure glimmer of her yet unborn fancies? A language genial of intimacy, for the talkers must feel in order to utterance,--must meet each other, from the heart outward, at every point. The human form is made of meanings. It is the full thought of its Creator, comprising all other thoughts. Is it blind chance or lifeless expediency that moulds the curves of woman's bosom, builds up man's forehead like a citadel, and sets his head on his shoulders? Is beauty beautiful, or are we cozened by congenial ugliness? But Balder's philosophic scepticism should never have braved a test like Gnulemah!

Except music, painting, sculpture,--all the arts and inspiration of them,--waited on the nib of the pen, such talk as pa.s.sed between these two could not be written. Some things--and those not the least profound and admirable of life--transcend the cunning of man to interpret them, unless to an apprehension as fine as they! We are fain to content ourselves with the husks.

"It must be happy there!" said Gnulemah, looking cityward. "So many Balders and Gnulemahs!"

"Why happy?" asked the man of the world, with a faint smile.

"We are only two, and have known each other to-day and yesterday. But they, you said, are as many as the stars, and have been together many yesterdays."

Such was the woman's unclinched argument, leaving her listener to draw the inference. He would not forestall her enlightenment from the grim page of his own experience. But do not many pure and loving souls pa.s.s through the world without once noticing how bad most of the roads are, and how vexed the climates? So might not the earthly heaven of Gnulemah's imagination tenderly blind her to the unheavenly earth of Balder's knowledge?

Through his abstraction Balder felt on his hand a touch soft as the flowing of a breath, yet pregnant of indefinite apprehension. When two clouds meet, there is a hush and calm; but the first seeming-trifling lightning-flash brings on the storm whereby earth's face is altered.

So Balder, full-charged as the thunder-cloud, awaited fearfully the first vivid word which should light the way for those he had resolved to speak.

"I see you with my open eyes, Balder, and touch you and hear you. Is this the end I thought would come? Balder, are you greatest?" With full trust she appealed to him to testify concerning himself. This was the seriousness he had marked beneath the smile.

"Are you content it should be so?"

She plucked a blade of gra.s.s and tied it in a knot, and began, drawing a trembling breath between each few words,--

"O Balder,--if I must kneel to you as to the last and greatest of all,--if there is nothing too holy to be seen and touched,--if there is no Presence too sublime for me to comprehend--"

"What then?" asked he, meeting her troubled look with a strong, cheerful glance.

"Then the world is less beautiful than I thought it; the sun is less bright, and I am no more pleasing to myself." Tears began to flow down her n.o.ble cheeks; but Balder's eyes grew brighter, seeing which, Gnulemah was encouraged to continue.

"How could I be happy? for either must I draw myself apart from you--O Balder!--or else live as your equal, and so degrade you; for I am not a G.o.ddess!"

"Then there are no G.o.ddesses on earth, nor G.o.ds! Gnulemah, you need not shrink from me for that."

The beautiful woman smiled through her sparkling eyelashes. She could love and reverence the man who, as a deity, bewildered and disappointed her. But was the intuition therefore false which had revealed to her the grand conception of a supreme, eternal G.o.d?

They sat silent for a while, and neither looked in the other's face.

They had struck a sacred chord, and the sweet, powerful sound thrilled Balder no less than Gnulemah. But presently he looked up; his cheeks warmed, and his heart swelled out. He was about to put in jeopardy his most immediate jewel, and the very greatness of the risk gave him courage. Not to the world, that could not judge him righteously, would he confess his crime,--but to the woman he loved and who loved him.

Her verdict could not fail to be just and true.

Could a woman's judgment of her lover be impartial? Yes, if her instincts be pure and harmonious, and her worldly knowledge that of a child. Her discrimination between right and wrong would be at once accurate and involuntary, like the test of poison. Love for the criminal would but sharpen her intuition. The sentence would not be spoken, but would be readable in eyes untainted alike by prejudice or sophistry.

Gnulemah was thus made the touchstone of Balder's morality. He stood ready to abide by her decision. Her understanding of the case should first be made full; then, if condemned by her look, he would publish his crime to the world, and suffer its penalty. But should her eyes absolve him, then was crime an illusion, evil but undeveloped good, the stain of blood a prejudice, and Cain no outcast, but the venerable forefather of true freedom.

Unsearchable is the heart of man. Balder had looked forward to condemnation with a wholesome solemnity which cheered while it chastened him. But the thought of acquittal, and at Gnulemah's hands, appalled him. The implicit consequences to humanity seemed more formidable than the worst which condemnation could bring upon himself.

So much had he lately changed his point of view, that only the fear of seeing his former creed confirmed could have now availed to stifle his confession.

But that fear did not much disquiet him; he trusted too deeply in his judge to believe that she would justify it. In short, Gnulemah was in his opinion right-minded, exactly in proportion as she should convict him of being in the wrong. Balder resigned the helm of his vessel, laden as she was with the fruits of years of thought and speculation, at the critical moment of her voyage,--resigned her to the guidance of a woman's unreasoning intuition. He might almost as well have averred that the highest reach of intellect is to a perception of the better worth and wisdom of an unlearned heart.

XXIII.

BALDER TELLS AN UNTRUTH.

By way of enheartening himself for what he was to do, Balder kissed the posy of Gnulemah's fragrant footsteps. He kept his eyes down, lest she should see something in them to distract her attention from his story. He must go artfully to work,--gain her a.s.sent to the abstract principles before marshalling them against himself.

Meanwhile Gnulemah had picked up a gold beetle, and was examining it with a certain grave interest.

"I never told you how I came by this ring of Hiero's. It was the night before I first saw you, Gnulemah."

"The ring guided you to me!" said she, glancing at his downcast visage.

"Perhaps it did!" he muttered, struck by the ingenious superst.i.tion; and he eyed the keen diamond half suspiciously. How fiercely the little serpents were struggling for it! "But Hiero--he has lost it, and you will see him no more!"

"You are with me!" returns she, s.h.i.+ning out at him from beneath her level brows. What should she know of death and parting?

Balder still forbore to raise his face. Gnulemah was in a frolicsome humor, the reaction of her foregoing solemnity. But Balder, who deemed this hour the gravest of his life, was taken aback by her unseasonable gayety. Casting about for means to sober her,--an ungracious thing for a lover to do!--he hit upon the gold beetle.

"Dead; the poor little beetle! Do you know what death is, Gnulemah?"

"It is what makes life. The sun dies every night, to get life for the morning. And trees die when cold comes, so as to smile out in green leaves again,--greener than if there had been no death. So it is with all things."

"Not with everything," said Balder, taking her light-heartedness very gravely. "That gold beetle in your hand is dead, and will never live or move again."

But at that Gnulemah smiled; and bringing her hand, with the beetle in it, near her perfect lips, she lent it a full warm breath,--enough to have enlivened an Egyptian scarabaeus,--and behold! the beetle spread its wings and whizzed away. Before Balder could recover from this unexpected refutation, the lovely witch followed up her advantage.

"You thought, perhaps, that Hiero was as dead as the little beetle; but he lives more beautifully in you!"

He looked startled up, his large eyes glittering blackly in the paleness of his face. Gnulemah, with the serenity of a victorious disputant willing to make allowances, continued,--

"It may be different in the outside world from which you come; but here death ends nothing, but makes life new and strong."

After a silence of some duration, poor Balder renewed his attack from another quarter.

"What would you think of one who put to death a creature you loved?"

She smiled, and shook her glowing pendants.

"Only G.o.d puts to death; and no one would hurt a thing I love!"

"What should you think of one who put to death a man?"

Gnulemah looked for a moment perplexed and indignant. Then, to Balder's great discomfiture, she laughed like a bird-chorus.

"Why do you imagine what cannot be? Would you and Hiero kill each other? The gray owl kills little mice, but that is to eat them. Would you eat Hiero--"

"Don't laugh, Gnulemah!" besought he. "I should kill him, not as animals kill one another, but from rage and hatred."

"Hatred!" repeated Gnulemah, dislikingly; "hatred,--what is it?"