Balm of Gilead

“ She sighed, a very little sigh, and they entered the lift together. He never had a doubt of the solace he was bringing to the poor little life above with its broken wings; and, indeed, the instant the child saw Vera enter, she rose, and standing breathless a little, with her face like a white wet flower, threw herself suddenly into the warm generous arms, and abandoned herself and her cause to that lovely refuge.
Gilead turned away, and, while he stood thus, he heard the first words of understanding uttered, and of reassurance, and of mastering control. ”

“ The apparition’s was the reassuring one of the two.
Suddenly, as he looked, the rower resumed his sculls; but he paddled slowly, his eyes on the figure on the bridge all the while. Not until the boat had vanished round a bend were they, Gilead felt, withdrawn, releasing him to his own thoughts.
Those were strange enough in all conscience—compact of wonder and perplexity. It was a certain comfort to him to find his theory vindicated; that he had run his quarry actually to earth—or water. ”

“ Miss Halifax at the same moment rose hurriedly to hers. Her face was white; her beautiful eyes seemed to have gathered in an instant dark shadows about them.
“Our marriage!” she whispered; and then her breath caught.
Gilead laughed, half protestingly, half melancholy.
“Is it such an appalling prospect?” he said. “You must not allow yourselves to doubt that, for my poor practical part, I will soften its acerbities to you by the best means in my power. Our intimacy, my long debt to you both, will rob that assurance of any suggestion of impertinence or ostentation. ”

“ The emotion was essentially feminine, and Gilead had surely despised himself for even succumbing to it. He could not be such a woman as to pet a grievance before it was justified. There was no grievance at all to justify itself; with his eyes set to the truth he told himself so, and he had the will to believe it. Suspicion was a germ that once admitted destroyed the reason; only that strong will had power to keep it out. ”

“ WINSOM WYLLIE! Those who have followed the career of our young philanthropist will not have forgotten the name of that detestable scoundrel, the persecutor of the beautiful amanuensis. It was peculiar, one must admit—a name not likely to be borne by more than a single person in the world. So thought Gilead, as, with a deep sigh, he struggled out of his stupefaction and reread the lines. ”

“ He was a meaty youth of some twelve summers, with an imbecile self-satisfied face and porky eyes; but his stylish white flannels and little Oxford-blue blazer with the yellow badge on its pocket spoke him quite the riverside dandy.
Gilead fell into pace with the two, and the little girl kept peeping up at him from the other side of her cavalier. She was the dearest charmer of nine, dressed in a sort of sweet Directory frock with heliotrope sprays; and the shepherd’s straw hat on her head had its mauve ribbon poked full of real daisies. ”

“ Again she stopped. “Reason, I hope,” said Gilead gently. “I try to practise it. Sympathy and help, unless given in reason, are likely to defeat their own objects, are they not?”
“Yes,” said the visitor forlornly; and she seemed to droop a little.
“Does that discourage you?” asked the young man.
She raised her head.
“Is it in reason,” she said, “to expect one, however merciful, however pitiful, to save another from the just consequences of his own misdeeds?”
“That depends,” said Gilead, “whether or not mercy to the sinner entails a wrong to the sinned against.” ”

“ This would make Goliath’s height about eleven feet three inches.
277. What is the balm of Gilead?
The balm of Gilead, also called balsam of Mecca and Opobalsam, is obtained from a low tree or shrub, the balsamodendron Gileadense, which grows in several parts of Arabia and Abyssinia. To obtain the juice, the bark of the tree is cut at the time when the sap is in its strongest period of circulation. As the juices ooze through the wound they are received into small earthen bottles, every day’s produce being poured into large bottles and corked. ”

“ The momentary shock of which Gilead was conscious did not escape her observation. She laughed musically.
“O!” she said; “it was only a try, but a pretty forlorn one. You are satisfied with virtue for its own sake, aren’t you? The worse for the girls, for you are a jolly good-looking fellow.” ”

“ Gilead smiled.
“It is very possible you are right,” he said. “But, as there is no morality in art, you can hardly expect it in its dealers. Did Miss Snowe inform you of the name of the sculptor of this statuette?”
“Yes; it was Pigalle, or something of that sort.”
“Pigalle? Indeed. And Mr Globestein bought it of her—?”
“For ten pounds.”
Gilead winced—in his lips, and frowned and nodded.
“O!” cried Miss Halifax. “If it was, as I suppose, a wicked fraud, that was only the beginning of his villainy. ”

“ But I don’t mind. It takes all sorts to make a world.”
She settled herself comfortably, putting out her little feet and crossing her ankles.
“Tell me,” she said, “what sort of a woman do you admire? That lady-clerk of yours?”
“I will answer again,” said Gilead, “negatively. I don’t admire you.”
“Why not? I’m pretty.”
Gilead shrugged his shoulders.
“O!” she said, “I’ve mental gifts too—don’t you ever doubt it”—and then she added, seemingly irrelevantly: “I hate that lady-clerk.” ”

“ She ran out—a slight anæmic girl, a sempstress by her pallor, soberly dressed, but elaborate as to her head and low as to her neck—and, with a wondering stare at Gilead, sped on her way towards the tram terminus hard by. Regarding her retreat an instant, Gilead turned to see the figure of a man standing conning him from the shop-door. ”

“ But when I tell you, sir, in the sole attempt at self-justification which exists to me, and in response to the noble candour which has made me acquainted with your real name, that mine is Gilead Balm—”
“What! Of Lamb’s Agency?” exclaimed the stranger.
“I entreat you, sir,” continued Gilead, “to believe that I am actuated by no spirit of empty vaunting, but, on the contrary, by one of humiliation that the business of my office should have been committed to so unintelligent a representative as myself. I can plead, sir, nothing but the excuse of good intentions. ”

“ Mist and water blended in that luminous haze which seems to obliterate the boundaries between death and existence, and to drug the soul in Lethe. Swimming within that neutral commingling of elements, air melting into liquid and liquid into air, the boat drifted like a bubble; all sense of gravity appeared lost. The world was a remote thing; the town they had left a mirage; all sounds coming from it were subdued to a soft humming and tinkling like noises in a dream. They only jarring note, to Gilead at least, was supplied by Miss Limner. ”

“ If the public likes to pay toll to a lovely face, a sweet voice, why should we disappoint it and starve? We have no other alternative, believe me?”
“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly—“is that hers?”
“No,” answered the woman; “she hires it. We have neither of us been married, and children as children are hateful to us. I do not think any man could be got to marry my sister Emile. The face behind her veil is ravaged—unsightly. She owes no debt of gratitude to man or God; we neither of us do; they are our enemies. Is that a fraud—the mystery of her veil? ”

“ She chaffed the shipping clerk demurely, and plied him with her eyes in a way which dreadfully embarrassed that susceptible youth, who was obviously torn between his admiration for so much beauty and liveliness and an almost irresistible desire to respond in kind, and his respectful awe of the young plutocrat whose steps he attended. Gilead, in short, was glad when the journey had come to an end, and they stepped out upon the platform at Sheerness. ”

“ But there was another, and even more attractive side to the picture; and that was the mysteries his quest would penetrate, and of which the Agony Column of the Daily Post afforded some potential examples. How might not one gratify here one’s loving-kindness and one’s romanticism in a breath! The imaginative prospect was quite captivating to Gilead. ”

“ It was Mr Desmund who spoke, art expert and valuer to a well-known firm of print and book sellers. He had accompanied Gilead round the room, booking his bids—an unwearying resourceful man, with a drooping light moustache, a bright complexion, and pale blue eyes, tired but interested. He wore a loose blue serge suit with a bright tie; his shoulders were bent a trifle beneath their load of specialised knowledge; he was a busy soul, but never too busy for enthusiasm in the right directions or to the right people. ”

“ She appeared to listen; but no power was yet hers to answer.
“I know,” said Gilead, “I know. Some misery; someone’s wickedness—we have many such cases, and I know. I am going to take you where you will find rest, and sympathy, and strong wills to back you. You must just believe me, and not speak a word.”
He had his intention formed, and drove straight to the luxurious little flat, situated in the neighbourhood of Victoria Street, which his princely liberality had enabled Miss Halifax to take and furnish. ”

“ Is there no balm in Gilead, Sir Charleroy? If thou and she have been great sinners, He’s a great Savior, and more, a patient one. Hast thou thought how He lingered near His followers in an overplus of love, lured from the triumphs of heaven, to personally deal, all comfortingly, all encouragingly, peculiarly with individuals? For thirty-three years in the flesh he wandered about, doing good, healing all those oppressed of the devil; but the finest hours of all His life lay in those forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. ”

“ Behind, he bore a much greater resemblance to an exhausted elephant than to any sinister figure of melodrama. Nor was his obverse prepossessing. A lugubrious, ponderous man, who took his fleshiness badly; a man who might have figured for an over-blown clown, seeing how his grizzled hair stood up from his scalp and his whiskers out from his jaws; a man with a ridiculous lachrymose mouth, a man whose voice had suety tears in it, a man who seemed to pity himself profoundly—such was the general impression conveyed to Gilead. The creature’s adiposity, he was no less convinced, was no local rising. ”

“ He held the girl by the elbow, and Gilead saw her face for the first time. It was youth stricken into instant age, white, stunned, breathless. She made no effort to speak or escape—indeed she could not. The strung nerves had snapped at a touch, and she was paralyzed.
“I’ll make myself responsible for her,” said Gilead. “Quick, we mustn’t let a crowd gather.”
The constable, prompt man, bent down to the half blind, half deaf young face.
“You’re took bad, Missy,” he said; “you aren’t yourself. Now you just go with this gentleman, who’ll do you more good than all the doctors in the world.” ”

“ He had enjoyed his incredible possessions long enough to evolve that sixth sense of omnipotence which is peculiar to plutocracy. All risks appeared easily negotiable to him, endowed with that Fortunatus’s purse. Luckily for the world, as it happened, the chances that tempted him were all on the side of chivalry and justice.
“Will you come?” said Mr Judex.
He went before, treading softly, and holding his lamp high overhead. Gilead followed as quietly, through the empty hall, to the head of the basement stairs, and down them into a vortex of reeling night. ”

“ Gilead bit his lip, considering awhile. “Why don’t you like her looks?” he asked suddenly.
The man paused in his rowing to squeeze his mouth together.
“Why?” he said vacantly. “I shouldn’t fancy her for a mate, that’s all. Mostly temper in a face makes a man hot to look at it, but hers turns one cold. It’s my opinion he’s hooked a fish this time that’s one too many for him. He looks as if he’d like to shake her off, and can’t, and is mortal afeard of being pulled in himself. ”

“ Gilead saw that he had to conciliate a perversity, and he lent himself to the task with all the humour and tact of which he was capable. One could regard life from Flushing, he perceived, with as much worldly acumen as from London. ”

“ Neither did the figure of the girl, now with its back to Gilead, make the least movement. The boat, with the way on it, continued to float up-stream; the face of the staring man grew smaller and less distinct; but it was always to Gilead a stiff blotch of yellow, like the face of a rigid corpse. ”

“ One day, weeks later, Gilead had occasion to motor with a friend to the city. It was a dusty morning, and the two wore goggles. At the Bank of England the car drew up by the kerb while the friend entered the building. He was gone so long that Gilead had ample time to study the endless types of humanity that drifted beside him. They were all intent on business and money-making, and he wondered if there was one in all the confused throng capable of properly appreciating his feelings over his lost Haronobu. ”

“ He rose, frowning, in the sternness of his anger, and the dealer, in the very effort at a protest, cowered and shrunk silent before him.
“Perhaps, sir,” said Gilead, “it may have occurred to you by now that the nature of the task I have set myself brings me acquainted with the secrets of many underhand dealings. This morning was fortunate in revealing to me the destined victim of a piece of quite unexampled cupidity and baseness—your own. ”