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With Adam, the fig-leaf succeeded innocence as a garment; for Helwyse, artificial address must do duty as a fig-leaf. The day of guiltless sincerity was past; gone likewise the day of open acknowledgment of guilt. Now dawned the day of counterfeiting, not always the shortest of our mortal year. On the whole, Helwyse's new face pleased him not. He felt self-estranged and self-distrustful.
A misgiving haunted him, moreover, that he had babbled something in the false security of darkness, which might give Helwyse a clew to his secret. But here Manetho asked himself a question that might have suggested itself before. Was it really his enemy, Thor Helwyse, whose face he had seen? or only some likeness of him?
As Helwyse gained the corner, his weary eyes took in the smiling hair-dresser, the little room beyond cheerful with sunshine and colored paper-hangings, and the padded chair for customers to recline in. Here might he rest awhile, and rise up a new man, a stranger to himself and to all who had known him.
"Who was that insolent fellow?" was asked of Dr. Clarke, the governor's physician. "Gervase Helwyse," replied the doctor; "a youth of no fortune, but of good mind until he met this lady in London, when he fell in love with her, and her pride and scorn have crazed him." A few nights after a ball was given in honor of the governor's ward, and Province House was filled with the elect of the city.
Helwyse, sir, winter following your and your respected father's departure for foreign parts," stated Mr. Dyke, straightening his mouth, and planting his fist on his hip. "Hm hm!" murmured the President, standing thin and bent before the empty fireplace, a coat-tail over each arm. "You have heard nothing of him since then?" "Nothing, Mr. Helwyse, sir!
Balder Helwyse, dumfounded before the revelation of the clock, might have stared himself into imbecility, had not he heard his name spoken in sweet human music, and, turning, beheld Gnulemah peeping through the doorway down the hall. There was no great distance between them, yet she seemed immeasurable spaces away.
Its owner was probably some poor lunatic, subject to fits of madness. But Helwyse was full of scorn and anger, born of that bitterest disappointment which admits not even the poor consolation of having worthily aspired. He had been duped, and by the cobwebs of a madman's brain! He broke into a short laugh, harsh to the ear, and answering to no mirthful impulse.
Why, then, had not his present gloom impended also, and warned him beforehand? Because, while parleying with the Devil, he looks angelic; but having given our soft-spoken interlocutor house-room, he makes up for lost time by becoming direfully sincere! On first facing the world in his new guise, Helwyse felt an embarrassment which he fancied everybody must remark.
I was just coming to beg you My fault, my fault, Mr. MacGentle, sir! No, no!" Thus incoherently ended the quarrel between these two old friends, the dispute being left undecided. But the important point was established that Balder Helwyse was insured a practice in Boston, in case his uncle Glyphic's fortune failed to enrich him.
"Well, what is the secret?" What, indeed! Why, there is no such secret; it is a bugbear! But the moral perversion of the person who could soberly ask the question that Helwyse asked is not so easily disposed of. It met, indeed, with full recognition.
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