Idolatry | Page 8

by her, and now she is paler, glances anxiously
up the path for her delaying husband, and the hand that lifts her
handkerchief to her lips trembles a little. Is it at his words? or at their
tone? or at what she sees lurking behind his dusky eyes, curdling
beneath his thin, dark skin, quivering down to the tips of his long,
slender fingers?
All in a moment he bursts forth, without warning, without restraint, the
fire of the Egyptian sun boiling in his blood and blazing in his passion.
He seizes her soft white wrist,--then her waist; he presses against his,
her bosom,--what a throbbing!--her cheek to his,--how aghast! He
pours hot words in torrents into her ears,--all that his fretting heart has
hoarded up and brooded over these months and years! all,--sparing her
not a thought, not a passionate word. She tries to repel him, to escape,
to scream for help; but he looks down her eyes with his own, holds her
fast, and she gasps for breath. So the serpent coils about the dove, and
stamps his image upon her bewildered brain.
Verily, the Reverend Manetho has much forgotten himself. The issue
might have been disastrous, had not Helen, in the crisis of the affair,
lost consciousness, and fallen a dead weight in his arms. He laid her
gently on the bench, fumbled for a moment in the bosom of her dress,
and drew out the diamond ring. Just then is heard the solid step of Thor,
striding and whistling along the path. Manetho snaps the golden chain,
and vanishes with his talisman; and he is the first to appear, full of
sympathy and concern, when the distracted husband shouts for help.
Next morning, two little struggling human beings are blinking and
crying in a darkened room, and there is no mother to give them milk,
and cherish them in her bosom. There sits the father, almost as still and
cold as what was his wife. She did not speak to him, nor seem to know
him, to the last. He will never know the truth; Manetho comes and goes,

and reads the burial-service, unsuspected and unpunished. But Salome
follows him away from the grave, and some words pass between them.
The man is no longer what he was. He turns suddenly upon her and
strikes out with savage force; the diamond on his finger bites into the
flesh of the gypsy's breast; she will carry the scar of that brutal blow as
long as she lives. So he drove his only lover away, and looked upon her
bright, handsome face no more.
Here Doctor Glyphic--or whoever this sleeping man may be--turns
heavily upon his face, drawing his hand, with the blood-stained ring,
out of sight. We are glad to leave him to his bad dreams; the air
oppresses us. Come, 't is time we were off. The eastern horizon bows
before the sun, the air colors delicate pink, and the very tombstones in
the graveyard blush for sympathy. The sparrows have been awake for a
half-hour past, and, up aloft, the clouds, which wander ceaselessly over
the face of the earth, alighting only on lonely mountain-tops, are tinted
into rainbow-quarries by the glorious spectacle.

III.
A MAY MORNING.
King Arthur, in his Bohemian days, carried an adamantine shield, the
gift of some fairy relative. Not only was it impenetrable, but, so
intolerable was its lustre, it overthrew all foes before the lance's point
could reach them. Observing this, the chivalric monarch had a cover
made for it, which he never removed save in the face of superhuman
odds.
Here is an analogy. The imaginative reader may look upon our
enchanted facet-mirror as too glaringly simple and direct a source of
facts to suit the needs of a professed romance. Be there left, he would
say, some room for fancy, and even for conjecture. Let the author seem
occasionally to consult with his companion, gracefully to defer to his
judgment. Bare statement, the parade of indisputable evidence, is well
enough in law, but appears ungentle in a work of fiction.

How just is this mild censure! how gladly are its demands conceded!
Let dogmatism retire, and blossom, flowers of fancy, on your yielding
stems! Henceforward the reader is our confidential counsellor. We will
pretend that our means of information are no better than other writers'.
We will uniformly revel in speculation, and dally with imaginative
delights; and only when hard pressed for the true path will we snatch
off the veil, and let forth for a moment a redeeming ray.
In this generous mood, we pass through the partition between No. 27
and No. 29. In the matter of bedchambers--even
hotelbedchambers--there can be great diversity. That we were in just
now was close and unwholesome, and wore an