A considerable time had passed since Gnulemah's departure, when Balder became aware that he was not alone in the conservatory. His thoughts were all of Gnulemah, and he looked quickly round in expectation of seeing her. The apparition of a widely different object startled him to his feet.
A female figure stood before him, wrapped in sad-colored garments of anomalous description, her head tied up in dark turban-like folds of cloth. A lock of rusty black hair escaped from beneath this head-dress and hung down beside her face. She might once have been tall and erect, but her form now sagged to the left, losing both height and dignity. Her visage, seamed and furrowed by the scar of some terrible calamity, had lost its natural contour. The left eye was extinguished, but the right remained,—the only feature in its original state. It was dark and bright, and possessed, by very virtue of its disfigured environment, a repulsive kind of beauty. Its influence was peculiar. In itself, it postulated an owner in the prime of life, handsome and graceful. But, one's attention wandering, the woman's actual ugliness impressed itself with an intensity enhanced by the imaginary contrast.
A grotesque analogy was thus brought to light. The woman was dual. Her right side lived; the left—blind, inert, and soulless—was dragged about a dead weight. It was an unnatural emphasizing of the spiritual-material composition of mankind. Observable, moreover, was her strange method of disguising emotion. There was no muscular constraint; she simply turned her blank left side to the spectator, with an effect like the interposition of a dead wall!
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."