Part 36 (2/2)

All these Wombwell delights came back to me as we entered Jamrach's, and for a time the picture of Winifred prevented my seeing the famous shop. When this pa.s.sed I saw that the walls of the large room were covered from top to bottom with cages, some of them full of wonderful or beautiful birds, and others full of evil-faced, screeching monkeys.

While D'Arcy was amusing himself with a blue-faced rib-nosed baboon, I asked Mr. Jamrach, an extremely intelligent man, about the singing girl and the Welsh air. But he could tell me nothing, and evidently thought I had been hoaxed.

In a small case by itself was a beautiful jewelled cross, which attracted D'Arcy's attention very much.

'This is not much in your line,' he said to Jamrach.'This is European.'

'It came to me from Morocco,' said Jamrach, 'and it was no doubt taken by a Morocco pirate from some Venetian captive.'

'It is a diamond and ruby cross,' said D'Arcy, 'but mixed with the rubies there are beryls. I am at this moment describing a beryl in some verses. The setting of the stones is surely quite peculiar.'

'Yes,' said Jamrach. 'It is the curiosity of the setting more than the value of the gems which caused it to be sent to me. I have offered it to the London jewellers, but they will only give me the market-price of the stones and the gold.'

While he was talking I pulled out of my breast pocket the cross, which had remained there since I received it from my mother the evening before.

'They are very much alike,' said Jamrach; 'but the setting of these stones is more extraordinary than in mine. And of course they are more than fifty times as valuable.'

D'Arcy turned round to see what we were talking about, when he saw the cross in my hand, and an expression of something like awe came over his face.

'The Moonlight Cross of the Gnostics!' he exclaimed. 'You carry this about in your breast pocket? Put it away, put it away! The thing seems to be alive.'

In a second, however, and before I could answer him, the expression pa.s.sed from his face, and he took the cross from my hands and examined it.

'This is the most beautiful piece of jewel work I ever saw in my life. I have heard of such things. The Gnostic art of arranging jewels so that they will catch the moon-rays and answer them as though the light were that of the sun, is quite lost.'

We then went and examined Jamrach's menagerie. I found that one source of the interest D'Arcy took in animals was that he was a believer in Baptista Porta's whimsical theory that every human creature resembles one of the lower animals, and he found a perennial amus.e.m.e.nt in seeing in the faces of animals caricatures of his friends.

With a fund of humour that was exhaustless, he went from cage to cage, giving to each animal the name of some member of the Royal Academy, or of one of his own intimate friends.

On leaving Jamrach's he said to me, 'Suppose we make a day of it and go to the Zoo?'

I agreed, and we took a hansom as soon as we could get one and drove across London towards Regent's Park.

Here the pleasure that he took in watching the movements of the animals was so great that it seemed impossible but that he was visiting the Zoo for the first time. I remembered, however, that he had told me in the morning how frequently he went to these gardens.

But his interest in the animals was unlike my own, and I should suppose unlike the interest of any other man. He had no knowledge whatever of zoology, and appeared to wish for none. His pleasure consisted in watching the curious expressions and movements of the animals and in dramatising them.

On leaving the Zoo, I said, 'The cross you were just now looking at is as remarkable for its history as for its beauty. It was stolen from the tomb of a near relative of mine. I was under a solemn promise to the person upon whose breast it lay to see that it should never be disturbed. But, now that it has been disturbed, to replace it in the tomb would, I fear, be to insure another sacrilege. I wonder what you would do in such a case?'

He looked at me and said, 'As it is evident that we are going to be intimate friends, I may as well confess to you at once that I am a mystic.'

'When did you become so?'

'When? Ask any man who has pa.s.sionately loved a woman and lost her; ask him at what moment mysticism was forced upon him--at what moment he felt that he must either accept a spiritualistic theory of the universe or go mad; ask him this, and he will tell you that it was at that moment when he first looked upon her as she lay dead, with Corruption's foul fingers waiting to soil and stain. What are you going to do with the cross?'

'Lock it up as safely as I can,' I said; 'what else is there to do with it?'

He looked into my face and said, 'You are a rationalist.'

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