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Updated: June 2, 2025
Imagination, freed from the check of the senses, easily becomes grotesque; and Helwyse, unable to see his companion, had no difficulty in picturing him as a grisly monster, having a satanic head set upon the ingenuous shoulders of a child. And what was Helwyse himself? No longer, surely, the gravely humorous moralizer? The laws of harmony forbid!
It seemed to Helwyse, as he entered, that one and all turned and stared at him with suspicious curiosity. He half expected to see an accuser rise up and point a dreadful finger at him. But in truth the sensation he created was no more than common; it was his morbid sensitiveness, which for the first time took note of it.
While Mr. Helwyse is still lingering over his toilet, his neighbor the fiddler, whom he had meant to ask to breakfast, comes out of his room, violin-box in hand, walks along the passage-way, and is off down stairs. An odd-looking figure; those stylish clothes become him as little as they would a long-limbed, angular Egyptian statue.
If Balder Helwyse had been in a vein for self-criticism at this juncture, the review might probably have dissatisfied him. He possessed qualities which make men great. He could have discharged august offices, for he saw things in large relations and yet minutely. His mind and courage could rise to any enterprise, and carry it with ease and cheerfully.
As it was, he thought only of getting inside, feeling sure that, explainably or not, Manetho must be there. In the oaken hall he met Nurse, who had also heard the cry, but knew not whence it proceeded. "In the temple, I think," said Helwyse, answering her agitated gesture. The clew was sufficient; she sped along towards the door whence she had so lately fled panic-stricken, Helwyse following.
The lover looked up questioningly, a deep throb in his heart. "Soon soon!" reiterated Manetho. "Love is a thing of moments more than of years. I know it! Do you stand idle while Gnulemah awaits you? We may die to-morrow!" "I have no right to hurry her," said Helwyse in a low voice. "She knows nothing of the world. I would marry her to-morrow " "To-morrow! why not to-day?
Unnatural though the union were, to Helwyse it seemed at the time better than total solitude. He felt heavy and inelastic, averse to himself, but still more to society. He wished to see men and women, yet not to be seen of them. He had used to be ready in speech, and willing to listen; now, no subject interested him save one, on which his lips must be forever closed.
O my flower fascinating, terrible! the time is ripe for the gathering, for the smelling of the perfume, for the kissing of the petals! I must yield thee up, O my idol! but in thy hand are my life and my reason, yea, Gnulemah, thou art all I am!" The tears, gestures, voice, with which Manetho thus delivered himself, shocked the Northern taste of Helwyse.
See, I desire neither to palliate nor falsify. Shall we go in?" With some repugnance Helwyse followed the priestly figure through the low-browed door, He had seen too much of men to allow any instinctive aversion to influence him, in the absence of logical evidence. And this man's words sounded fair; his frank admission of occasional insanity accounted for many anomalies.
The ghosts of his heroic forefathers in Valhalla would disown his shorn head with indignant scorn; for their golden locks had ever been sacred to them as their honor. When the Roman Empire was invaded by the Goths and Vandals, a Helwyse so runs the tale was taken prisoner and brought before the Roman General.
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