Such, on Balder's perhaps abnormally excited apprehension, was the impression the nurse produced. She, on her part, was perhaps more disconcerted than he. Her single eye settled upon him in a panic of surprise. The dressing of the scene gave Balder a grisly reminder of the first moments of Gnulemah's eloquent astonishment. There was as great an apparent difference between the superb Egyptian and this poor creature, as between good and evil; but there was also the disagreeable suggestion of a similar kind of relationship. Gnulemah, withered, stifled, and degraded by some unmentionable curse, might have become a thing not unlike this woman.
"Have we met before, madam?" asked Helwyse, impelled to the question by what he took for a bewildered recognition in her eye.
She moved her lips, but made no audible answer.
"I am Balder Helwyse," he added; for he had made up his mind that all concealments (save one) were unnecessary.
A grotesque quake of emotion travelled through the woman's body, and she gave utterance to a harsh inarticulate sound. She came confusedly forwards, groping with hands outstretched. Balder, though not wont to fail in courtesy to the sorriest hag, could scarce forbear recoiling; especially because he fancied that an expression of affectionate interest was struggling to get through the scarred incrustation of the woman's nature.
Perhaps she marked his inward shrinking, for she checked herself, and, slowly turning her lifeless screen, hid behind it. It was impotent deprecation translated into flesh,--at once ludicrous and painful. The young man found so much difficulty in restraining the manifestation of his distaste, that he blushed in the twilight at his own rudeness. He would do his best to redeem himself.
"Doctor Hiero Glyphic is my uncle," said he, moving to get on Nurse's right side, and speaking in his pleasantest tone. "Is he at home? I have come a long way to see him."
Preoccupied by his amiable purpose to reassure the woman, Helwyse had got to the end of this speech before realizing the ghastly mockery involved in it. Nevertheless, it was well. Even thus falsely and boldly must he henceforth speak and act. By a happy accident he had opened the path, and must see to it that his further steps did not retrograde.
Still Nurse answered not a word, which was the less surprising, inasmuch as she had been dumb for a quarter of a century past. But Balder, supposing her silence to proceed from stupidity or deafness, repeated more loudly and peremptorily,-"Doctor Glyphic,--is he here? is he alive?"
He felt a morbid curiosity to hear what reply would be made to the question whose answer only he could know. But he was puzzled to observe that it appeared to throw Nurse into a state of agitation as great as though she had herself been the perpetrator of Balder's crime! She stood quaking and irresolute, now peeping for a moment from behind her screen, then dodging back with an increase of panic.