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"Were I, then, from motives of self-culture, to kill you, I should be taking a long step towards rising in your estimation?" put in Helwyse. "Admirable!" softly exclaimed the voice, in a tone as of an approving pat on the back. "Certainly, I should be the last to deny it!
On the other hand, to palm himself off on his uncle for a true man was adding hypocrisy to his other crime. Such an objection, however, could hardly have turned the scale. Great crimes are magnets of smaller ones. It was necessary for Helwyse to alter the whole scheme of his life-voyage; and since he had failed in beating up against the wind, why not make all sail before it?
Open those dim eyes of yours, good sir! stir those thin old legs! inflate that sunken chest! Ha! is that cough imaginary? those trembling muscles, are they a delusion is that misty glance only a momentary weakness There is no youth left in you, Mr. MacGentle; not so much as would keep a rose in bloom for an hour. "Have you seen Doctor Glyphic lately?" inquired Helwyse, after a pause.
At all events, the latter laughed, too, and they both shook hands very heartily. "Beg pardon again, Mr. Helwyse, I'll speak to the President," said Mr. Dyke, and stepped into the sanctuary of sanctuaries. Mr. MacGentle was taking a nap. He was seventy years old, and could drop asleep easily.
"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.
Dyke was too much excited to remark the President's condition. He put his mouth close to the old gentleman's ear, and said, in an emphatic and penetrating undertone, "Here's your old friend Helwyse, who died in Europe two years ago, come back again, younger than ever!" If the confidential clerk expected his superior to echo his own bewilderment, he was disappointed. Mr.
Nevertheless, Balder Helwyse would hardly have been willing to purchase greater ease at the price of being less a man. The steamer descended the narrow and swift current of East River, rounded Castle Garden, and reached her pier before eight o'clock. Shoulder to shoulder with the other passengers, Helwyse descended the gangplank.
The temptation to omnipotence is a grand thing, and may have shaken greater men than Helwyse; and he had trained himself to regard it not exactly as a temptation. As for good or bad methods, at a certain intellectual height such distinctions vanish. Vulgar immorality he would turn from as from anything vulgar; but refined, philosophic immorality, as a weapon of power, there was fascination in it.
Here the rhetorical phantom was interrupted by the sound of a very good violin, touched with unusual skill, in the next room. The phantom vanished, but Mr. Helwyse seated himself softly upon the bed, listening with full enjoyment to every note; his very toes seeming to partake of his appreciation. Music is the mysterious power which makes body and soul master and man thrill as one string.
"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.
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