Part 68 (1/2)

'Until five o'clock I was quite alone, and wandered about the house and garden trying my memory as to whether I could recall something, but in vain. At any other time than this I should no doubt have found the old house a very fascinating one; but not for two minutes together could my mind dwell upon anything but the amazing situation in which I found myself. The house was, I saw, built of grey stone, and as it had seven gables it suggested to me Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous story, of which my aunt was so fond. Inside I found every room to be more or less interesting. But what attracted me most, I think, was a series of large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams supporting the antique roof. With the sunlight pouring through the windows and illuminating almost every corner, the place seemed cheerful enough, but I could not help thinking how ghostly it must look on a moonlight night.

'While the thought was in my mind, a strangle sensation came upon me.

I seemed to hear a moan; it came through the door of the large attic adjoining the one in which I stood, and then I heard a voice that seemed familiar to me, and yet I could not recall it. It was repeating in a loud, agonised tone the words of that curse written on the parchment scroll which I picked up on Raxton sands. I was so astonished that for a long time I could think of nothing else.

IX

'At five o'clock I was going towards the studio to keep my appointment when I met Mr. D'Arcy in his broad-brimmed felt hat, ready and waiting for me to take the proposed walk with him.

'Oh, what a lovely afternoon it was! A Welsh afternoon could not have been lovelier. In fact, it carried my mind back here. The sun, s.h.i.+ning on the b.u.t.tercups and the grey-tufted standing gra.s.s, made the meadows look as though covered with a tapestry that s.h.i.+fted from grey to lavender, and then from lavender to gold, as the soft breeze moved over it. And many of the birds were still in full song; and brilliant as was the music of the skylarks, the blackbirds and thrushes were so numerous that the music falling from the sky seemed caught and swallowed up by the music rising from the hedgerows and trees.

'I lingered at one of the gates through which we pa.s.sed to enjoy the beauty undisturbed by the motion of my own body.

'”I have often wished,” Mr. D'Arcy said, ”that I had a t.i.the of your pa.s.sion for Nature, and all your knowledge of Nature. To have been born in London and to have pa.s.sed one's youth there is a great loss.

Nature has to be learnt, as art has to be learnt, in earliest youth.”

'”What makes you know that my chief pa.s.sion is love of Nature?” I asked.

'”It was,” he said, ”the one thing you showed during your illness--during your unconscious condition.”

'”And yet I remember nothing of that time,” I said. ”This gives me an opportunity of asking you something--an opportunity which I had determined to make for myself before another day went by.”

'”And what is that?” he said, in a tone that betrayed some uneasiness.

'”You have told me how I came here. I now want you to tell me, too, what was my condition when I came and what was my course of life during all this long period. How did the time pa.s.s? What did I do? I remember nothing.”

'”I am glad you are asking me these questions,” he said, ”for I believe that the more fully and more exactly I answer them, the better for you and the better for me. Victor Hugo, in one of his romances, speaks of the pensive somnambulism of the animals.

'Somnambulism,' sometimes pensive and sometimes playful, is the very phrase I should use in characterising your condition when you first came here and down to your recovery from that strange illness.

But this somnambulism would every now and then change and pa.s.s into a consciousness which I can only compare with that of a child. But no child that I have ever seen was so bewitchingly child-like as you were. It was this that made your presence such a priceless boon to me.”

'”Priceless boon, Mr. D'Arcy!” I said. ”How could such a being as you describe be a priceless boon to any one?”

'”I will tell you,” he replied. ”Even before that great sorrow which has made me the loneliest man upon the earth--even in the days when my animal spirits were considered at times almost boisterous, I was always at intervals subject to periods of great depression, or rather, I should say, to periods of _ennui_. I must either be painting or reading or writing. I had not the precious faculty of being able on occasions to sit and let the rich waters of life flow over me. I would yearn for amus.e.m.e.nt, and search in vain for some object to amuse me. When you first came I was deeply interested in so extraordinary a case as yours; and after a while, when the acuteness of my curiosity and the poignancy of my sympathy for you had abated, you became to me a joy, as a child is a joy in the eyes of its parents.”

'”Then your interest in me,” I said, with a smile, ”was that which you would feel towards a puppy or a kitten.”

'”I perceive that you have a turn for satire,” he said, laughing.

”I will not deny that I have an extraordinarily strong pa.s.sion for watching the movements of animals. I have, to the sorrow of my neighbours, filled my garden in London with all kinds of purchases from Jamrach's. But from the moment that I knew you, who combined the fascination of a fawn and a child with that of a sylph or a fairy, my poor little menagerie was neglected, and what became of its members I scarcely know. I suppose I am very uncomplimentary to you, but you would have the truth. The moment that I felt myself threatened by the fiend _Ennui_ I used to tell Mrs. t.i.twing, who was in the habit of calling you her baby, to bring you into the studio, and at once the fiend fled. At last I grew so attached to you that your presence was a positive necessity of my life. Unless I knew that you were in the studio I could not paint. It was necessary for me at intervals to look across the room at that divan and see you there amusing yourself--playing with yourself, so to speak, sometimes like a kitten, sometimes like a child. I would not have parted with you for the world.”

'He did not say he would not now part with me for the world, Henry, and I thought I understood the meaning of that expression of disappointment which I had observed in his eyes when I first saw them looking into mine. I thought I understood this extraordinary man--so unlike all others; I thought I knew why my eyes lost the charm he was now so eloquently describing to me the moment that they became lighted with what he called self-consciousness.

'After a while I said, ”But as I was in such an unconscious state as you describe, how could you possibly know that a speciality of mine is a love of Nature?”

'”It was only when you were out in the open air that the condition which I have compared to somnambulism seemed at times to disappear.

Then your consciousness seemed to spring up for a moment and to take heed of what was pa.s.sing around you. You would sometimes scamper through the meadows, pluck the wild-flowers and weave them into wreaths round your head, or stand listening to the birds, or hold out your hands as if to embrace the sunny wind. One day when a friend of mine, an enthusiastic angler, who comes here, was going down to the river to fish, you showed the greatest interest in what was going on.

The fis.h.i.+ng tackle seemed so familiar to you that my friend put a fis.h.i.+ng rod into your hand and you went with him to the river. I do not myself care for angling, and I was at the time very busy with a picture, but I could not resist the temptation to follow you. You skipped into the punt with the greatest glee, baited your hook, adjusted your float on the line, cast it into the water and fished with such skill that you caught two fish to my friend's one.