Idolatry

A DEAD WEIGHT.

Was it not well done? Tempted to covet imaginary wickedness, Helwyse was ripe for real crime,--and who so worthy to suffer as the tempter?

He leaned panting against taffrail. His predominant feeling was that he had been ensnared. His judgment had been drugged, and he had been lured on to evil. An infamous conspiracy!

His breath regained, he stood upright and in a mechanical manner arranged his disordered dress. His haversack was gone,--had been torn from his shoulders and carried overboard. An awkward loss! for it contained, among other things, valuable letters and papers given him by his father; not to mention a note-book of his own, and Uncle Glyphic"s miniature. His dead enemy had carried off the proofs of his murderer"s ident.i.ty!

Not till now did Helwyse become aware of an unusual tumult on the steamer. Had they seen the deed?--He stood with set teeth, one hand on the taffrail. Rather than be taken alive, he would leap over!

But it soon became evident that the nucleus of excitement was elsewhere. The "Empire State" was at a stand-still. Captain and mates were shouting to one another and at the sailors. By the flying light of the lanterns Helwyse caught glimpses of the sails and tall masts of a schooner. He began to comprehend what had happened.

"Thank G.o.d! that saves me," he said with a sense of relaxation. Then he turned and peered fearfully into the black abyss beyond the stern.

Nothing there! nothing save the heavy breathing of remorseless waves.

The statistics of things G.o.d has been thanked for,--what piquant instances would such a collection afford! Any unusual stir of emotion seems to impel a reference to something higher than the world. Only a bloodless calm appears to be secure from G.o.d"s interference. It is worthy of remark that this was the first time in Helwyse"s career--at least since his arrival at years of discretion--that he had thanked G.o.d for anything. This was not owing to his being of a specially ungrateful disposition, but to peculiar ideas upon the subject of a Supreme Being. G.o.d, he believed, was no more than the highest phase of man; and in any man of sufficient natural endowment, he saw a possible G.o.d; just as every American citizen is a possible President! What is of moment at present, however, is the fact that the young man"s first inconsistency of word with creed dates at the time his self-control forsook him on board the midnight steamer.

In that thanksgiving prayer his pa.s.sion pa.s.sed away. After unnaturally distending every sense and faculty, it suddenly ebbed, leaving the consciousness of an irritating vacuum. Something must be done to fill it. One drawback to crime seems to be its insufficiency to itself. It creates a craving which needs must be fed. The demon returns, demanding a fresh task; and he returns again forever!

Helwyse, therefore, plunged into the midst of the uproar consequent on the collision, and tried to absorb the common excitement,--to identify himself with other men; no longer to be apart from them and above them. But he did not succeed. It seemed as though he would never feel excitement or warmth in the blood again! His deed was a dead weight that steadied him spite of his best efforts. His aim has. .h.i.therto been, not to forget himself;--let him forget himself now if he can!

The uproar was over all too soon, and the steamer once more under way.

"No serious harm done, sir!--no harm done!" observed a spruce steward.

"No; no harm."

"By the way, sir,--thought I heard some one sing out aft just afore we struck. You heard it, sir? Thought some fellow"d gone overboard, may be!"

"I saw no one," answered Helwyse; nor had he. But he turned away, fearing that the brisk steward might read prevarication in his face.

No, he had seen no one; but he had heard a plunge! He revolted from the memory of it, but it would not be banished. Had there been a soul in the body before it made that dive? even for a few minutes afterwards? He would have given much to know! In theorizing about crime, he had always maintained the motive to be all in all. But now, though unable to controvert the logic of his a.s.sertion, he felt it told less than the whole truth. He recognised a divine conservative virtue in straws, and grasped at the smallest! Through the long torture of self-questioning and indecision, let us not follow him.

Uncertainty is a ghastly element in such a matter.

He groped his way back to the taffrail. Why, he knew not; but there he was at last. He might safely soliloquize now; there was no listener.

He might light a cigar and smoke; no one would see him. Yet, no; for, on second thoughts, his cigars had gone with the haversack!

He bent over the slender iron railing. Where was--it now? Miles away by this time, swinging, swaying down--down--down to the bottom of the Sound! Slowly turning over as it sinks, its arms now thrown out, now doubled underneath; the legs sprawling helplessly; the head wagging loosely on the dead neck. Down--down, pitching slowly head forwards; righting, and going down standing, the hair floating straight on end.

Down! O, would it never be done sinking--sinking--sinking? Was the sea deep as h.e.l.l?

But when it reached the bottom, would it rest there? No, not even there. It would drift uneasily about for a while on the dark sand, the green gloom of the water above it. Every hour it would grow less and less heavy; by and by it would begin slowly to rise--rise! Horrible it looked now; not like itself, that had been horrible enough before.

Rising,--rising. O fearful thing! why come to tell dead men"s tales here? You are done with the world. What wants mankind with you?

Begone! sink, and rise no more! It will not sink; still it rises, and the green gloom lightens as it slowly buoys upwards. The light rests shrinkingly on it, revealing the dreadful features. The limbs are no longer pliant, but stiff,--terribly stiff and unyielding. Still it rises, nearer and nearer to the surface. See where the throat was gripped! Up it comes at last in the morning sun, among the sparkling, laughing, pure blue waves,--the swollen, dead thing!--dead in the midst of the world"s life, hideous amidst the world"s beauty. It bobs and floats, and will sink no more; would rise to heaven if it could!

No need for that. The tide takes it and creeps stealthily with it towards the sh.o.r.e, and casts it, with shudder and recoil, upon the beach. There it lies.

Such visions haunted Helwyse as he leaned over the taffrail. He had not suspected, at starting, upon how long a voyage he was bound. How many hours might it be since he and the cook had so merrily dined together? Was such a contrast possible? Surely no more monstrous delusion than this of Time ever imposed upon mankind! For months and years he jogs on with us, a dull and sober-paced pedestrian. Then comes a sudden eternity! But Time thrusts a clock in our faces, and shows us that the hands have marked a minute only. Shall we put faith in him?

Helwyse suffered from a vivid imagination. He went not to his room that night. He kept the deck, and tried to talk with the men, following them about and asking aimless questions, until they began to give him short answers. Where were his pride and his serene superiority to the friendship or enmity of his race? where his philosophic self-criticism and fanciful badinage? his resolute, conquering eyes? his bearing of graceful, careless authority? Had all these attributes been packed in his haversack, and cast with that upon the waters? and would they, no more than he to whose care they had been intrusted, ever return?

With each new hour, morning seemed farther off. In his objectless wanderings, Helwyse came to the well of the engine-room and hung over it, gazing at the bright, swift-sliding machinery, studying the parts, tracing the subtle transmission of force from piece to piece. Here at last was companionship for him! The engine was a beautiful combination,--so polished, effective, and logical; like the minds of some philosophers, moving with superhuman regularity and power, but lifeless!

Helwyse watched it long, till finally its monotony wearied him. It was doing admirable work, but it never swerved from its course at the call of sentiment or emotion. Its travesty of life was repulsive. Machinery is the most admirable invention of man, but is modelled after no heavenly prototype, and will have no part in the millennium. It seems to annul s.p.a.ce and time, yet gives us no taste of eternity. Man lives quicker by it, but not more. With another kind of weapon must the true victory over matter be achieved!

XII.

MORE VAGARIES.

Most benign and beautiful was the morning. The "Empire State" emerged from the fog and left it, a rosy cloud, astern. The chasing waves sparkled and danced for joy. The sun was up, fresh and unstained as yesterday. Night, that had changed so much, had left the sun undimmed.

With the same power and brightness as for innumerable past centuries, his glorious glance colored the gray sky blue. Helwyse--he was at the stern taffrail again--looked at the marvellous sphere with unwinking eyes, until it blurred and swam before him, and danced in colored rings. It warmed his face, but penetrated no deeper. Looking away, black suns moved everywhere before his eyes, and the earth looked dim and shabby, as though blighted by a curse.

Helwyse had not slept, partly from disinclination to the solitude of his berth, partly because the thought of awakening dismayed him.

Nevertheless, he could scarcely believe in what had happened, now. He stood upon the very spot; here was the semicircle of railing, the camp-stools, the white cabin-wall against which he had leaned. But the blackness of night had so utterly past away that it seemed as though the deed done in it must in some manner have vanished likewise. What is fact at one time looks unreal at another. It must be a.s.sociated with all times and moods before it can be fully comprehended and accepted.

Glancing down at the deck, Helwyse saw there the cigar he had been smoking the night before, flattened out by the tread of a foot, and lying close beside it a sparkling ring. He picked it up; it was a diamond of purest water, curiously caught between the mouths of two little serpents, whose golden and black bodies, twisted round each other, formed the hoop. Realizing, after a moment, from whose finger it must have fallen, he had an impulse to fling it far into the sea; but his second thought was not to part from it. The idea of its former owner must indeed always be hateful to his murderer; but the bond between their souls was closer and more indissoluble than that between man and wife; and of so unnatural a union this ring was a fair emblem.

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. When the sun had made himself thoroughly at home on earth and in heaven, Helwyse went to his state-room, feeling unclean from the soul outwards. While making his toilet, he took care to leave the window-blind up, that he might at any time see the blue sky and water, and the bright sh.o.r.e, with its foliage and occasional houses. He shrank from severing, even for an instant, his communication with the beneficent spirit of nature. And yet Nature could not comfort him,--in his extremest need he found her most barren. He had been wont to rejoice in her as the creature of his own senses; but when he asked her to sympathize with his pain, she laughed at him,--the magnificent coquette!--and bade him, since she was only the reflection of himself, be content with his own sympathy. Truly, if man and Nature be thus allied, and G.o.d be but man developed, then is self-sufficiency the only virtue worth cultivating, and idolatry must begin at home!

His efforts to improve his appearance were not satisfactory; the loss of his toilet articles embarra.s.sed him not a little; and he, moreover, lacked zest to enter into the business with his customary care. And what he did was done not merely for his own satisfaction, as heretofore, but with an eye to the criticisms of other people. His naively unconscious independence had got a blow. After doing his best he went out, pale and heavy-eyed, the diamond ring on his finger.

The pa.s.sengers had begun to a.s.semble in the cabin. 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. He had been accustomed to look at himself as at a third person, in whose faults or successes he was alike interested; but although his present mental att.i.tude might have moved him to smile, he, in fact, felt no such impulse. The hue of his deed had permeated all possible forms of himself, thus barring him from any standpoint whence to see its humorous aspect. The sun would not shine on it!

As time pa.s.sed on, however, and no one offered to denounce him, Helwyse began to be more at ease. Seeing the steward with whom he had spoken the night before, he asked him whereabouts he supposed the schooner was.

"O, she"ll be in by night, sir, safe enough. Wind"s freshened up a good bit since; wouldn"t take her long to rig a new bowsprit. Beg pardon, sir, did you happen to know the party next door to you?"

"I know no one. What about him?"

"Can"t find him nowhere, sir. Door locked this morning; hadn"t used his bed; must have come aboard, for there was a violin lying on the bed in a black box, for all the world like a coffin, sir. Queer, ain"t it?"

The steward was called away, but Helwyse"s uneasiness had returned.

Did this fellow suspect nothing? The student of men could not read his face; the power of insight seemed to have left him. Reason could tell him that it was impossible he should be suspected, but reason no longer satisfied him.

He left the cabin and once more sought the deck, harried and anxious.

Why could not he be stolid and indifferent, as were many worse criminals than he? Or was his disquiet a gauge of his moral accountability? By as much as he was more finely gifted than other men, was the stain of sin upon his soul more ineffaceable? Last night, ignorance was the only evil; but had he been satisfied with less wisdom, might he not have sinned with more impunity? 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 pa.s.sengers, Helwyse descended the gangplank. The official who took his ticket eyed him so closely that there was the beginning of an impulse in his weary brain to knock the fellow down. Finding himself not interfered with, however, he pa.s.sed on to the rattling street, beginning to understand that the attention he excited was not owing to a visible brand of Cain, but to his beard and hair which were at variance with the fashion of that day. He was neither more nor less a cynosure than at other times. But he was more sensitive to notice, and it now occurred to him that his unique appearance was unsafe as well as irksome. Were a certain body found, in connection with evidence more or less circ.u.mstantial, how readily might he be pointed out! He fancied himself reading the description in a newspaper, and realized how many and how easily noted were his peculiarities. His carelessness of public remark had been folly. The sooner his peculiarities were amended, the better!

At the corner of the street stood a couple of policemen,--ponderous, powerful men, able between them to carry to jail the most refractory criminal. One path was open to Helwyse, whereby to recover his self-respect, and regain his true footing with the world; and that led into the hands of those policemen! With a revulsion of feeling perhaps less strange than it seems, he walked up to them, resolved to surrender himself on a charge of murder. It was the simplest issue to his embarra.s.sments.

"Policemen!" he began, with a return of his a.s.sured voice and bearing. They stared at him, and one said, "How?"

"Direct me to the best hotel near here!" said Helwyse.