And as it won’t drown I think perhaps----”
He shook it off his shoe on to the gravel path and trod on it.
* * * * *
All afternoon the air got heavier and heavier with the Sirocco that was
without doubt coming up from the south, and that night again I went up
to bed feeling very sleepy; but below my drowsiness, so to speak, there
was the consciousness, stronger than before, that there was something
wrong in the house, that something dangerous was close at hand. But I
fell asleep at once, and--how long after I do not know--either woke or
dreamed I awoke, feeling that I must get up at once, _or I should be too
late_. Then (dreaming or awake) I lay and fought this fear, telling
myself that I was but the prey of my own nerves disordered by Sirocco or
what not, and at the same time quite clearly knowing in another part of
my mind, so to speak, that every moment’s delay added to the danger. At
last this second feeling became irresistible, and I put on coat and
trousers and went out of my room on to the landing. And then I saw that
I had already delayed too long, and that I was now too late.
The whole of the landing of the first floor below was invisible under
the swarm of caterpillars that crawled there. The folding doors into the
sitting-room from which opened the bedroom where I had seen them last
night, were shut, but they were squeezing through the cracks of it, and
dropping one by one through the keyhole, elongating themselves into mere
string as they passed, and growing fat and lumpy again on emerging.
Some, as if exploring, were nosing about the steps into the passage at
the end of which were Inglis’ rooms, others were crawling on the lowest
steps of the staircase that led up to where I stood. The landing,
however, was completely covered with them: I was cut off. And of the
frozen horror that seized me when I saw that, I can give no idea in
words.
* * * * *
Then at last a general movement began to take place, and they grew
thicker on the steps that led to Inglis’ room. Gradually, like some
hideous tide of flesh, they advanced along the passage, and I saw the
foremost, visible by the pale grey luminousness that came from them,
reach his door. Again and again I tried to shout and warn him, in terror
all the time that they would turn at the sound of my voice and mount my
stair instead, but for all my efforts I felt that no sound came from my
throat. They crawled along the hinge-crack of his door, passing through
as they had done before, and still I stood there making impotent efforts
to shout to him, to bid him escape while there was time.
* * * * *
At last the passage was completely empty: they had all gone, and at that
moment I was conscious for the first time of the cold of the marble
landing on which I stood barefooted. The dawn was just beginning to
break in the Eastern sky.
* * * * *
Six months later I met Mrs Stanley in a country house in England. We
talked on many subjects and at last she said:
“I don’t think I have seen you since I got that dreadful news about
Arthur Inglis a month ago.”
“I haven’t heard,” said I.
“No? He has got cancer. They don’t even advise an operation, for there
is no hope of a cure: he is riddled with it, the doctors say.”
Now during all these six months I do not think a day had passed on which
I had not had in my mind the dreams (or whatever you like to call them)
which I had seen in the Villa Cascana.
“It is awful, is it not?” she continued, “and I feel, I can’t help
feeling, that he may have----”
“Caught it at the villa?” I asked.
She looked at me in blank surprise.
“Why did you say that?” she asked. “How did you know?”
Then she told me. In the unoccupied bedroom a year before there had been
a fatal case of cancer. She had, of course, taken the best advice and
had been told that the utmost dictates of prudence would be obeyed so
long as she did not put anybody to sleep in the room, which had also
been thoroughly disinfected and newly white-washed and painted. But----
THE CAT
Many people will, doubtless, remember that exhibition at the Royal
Academy, not so many seasons ago, which came to be known as Alingham’s
year, when Dick Alingham vaulted, with one bound, as it were, out of the
crowd of strugglers and seated himself with admirably certain poise on
the very topmost pinnacle of contemporary fame. He exhibited three
portraits, each a master-piece, which killed every picture within range.
But since that year nobody cared anything for pictures whether in or out
of range except those three, it did not signify so greatly. The
phenomenon of his appearance was as sudden as that of the meteor, coming
from nowhere and sliding large and luminous across the remote and
star-sown sky, as inexplicable as the bursting of a spring on some
dust-ridden rocky hillside. Some fairy godmother, one might conjecture,
had bethought herself of her forgotten godson, and with a wave of her
wand bestowed on him this transcendant gift. But, as the Irish say, she
held her wand in her left hand, for her gift had another side to it. Or
perhaps, again, Jim Merwick is right, and the theory he propounds in his
monograph, “On certain obscure lesions of the nerve centres,” says the
final word on the subject.
Dick Alingham himself, as was indeed natural, was delighted with his
fairy godmother or his obscure lesion (whichever was responsible), and
(the monograph spoken of above was written after Dick’s death) confessed
frankly to his friend Merwick, who was still struggling through the
crowd of rising young medical practitioners, that it was all quite as
inexplicable to himself as it was to anyone else.
“All I know about it,” he said, “is that last autumn I went through two
months of mental depression so hideous that I thought again and again
that I must go off my head. For hours daily, I sat here, waiting for
something to crack, which as far as I am concerned would end everything.
Yes, there was a cause; you know it.”
He paused a moment and poured into his glass a fairly liberal allowance
of whisky, filled it half up from a syphon, and lit a cigarette. The
cause, indeed, had no need to be enlarged on, for Merwick quite well
remembered how the girl Dick had been engaged to, threw him over with an
abruptness that was almost superb, when a more eligible suitor made his
appearance. The latter was certainly very eligible indeed with his
good looks, his title, and his million of money, and Lady
Madingley--ex-future Mrs Alingham--was perfectly content with what she
had done. She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls who, happily
for the peace of men’s minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of
some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat.
“I needn’t speak of the cause,” Dick continued, “but, as I say, for
those two months I soberly thought that the only end to it would be
madness. Then one evening when I was sitting here alone--I was always
sitting alone--something did snap in my head. I know I wondered, without
caring at all, whether this was the madness which I had been expecting,
or whether (which would be preferable) some more fatal breakage had
happened. And even while I wondered, I was aware that I was not
depressed or unhappy any longer.”
He paused for so long in a smiling retrospect that Merwick indicated to
him that he had a listener.
“Well?” he said.
“It was well indeed. I haven’t been unhappy since. I have been riotously
happy instead. Some divine doctor, I suppose, just wiped off that stain
on my brain that hurt so. Heavens, how it hurt! Have a drink, by the
way?”
“No, thanks,” said Merwick. “But what has all this got to do with your
painting?”
“Why, everything. For I had hardly realised the fact that I was happy
again, when I was aware that everything looked different. The colours of
all I saw were twice as vivid as they had been, shape and outline were
intensified too. The whole visible world had been dusty and blurred
before, and seen in a half light. But now the lights were turned up, and
there was a new heaven and a new earth. And in the same flash, I knew
that I could paint things as I saw them. Which,” he concluded, “I have
done.”
There was something rather sublime about this, and Merwick laughed.
“I wish something would snap in my brain, if it kindles the perceptions
in that way,” said he, “but it is just possible that the snapping of
things in one’s brain does not always produce just that effect.”
“That is possible. Also, as I gather, things don’t snap unless you have
gone through some such hideous period as I have been through. And I tell
you frankly that I wouldn’t go through that again even to ensure a snap
that would make me see things like Titian.”
“What did the snapping feel like?” asked Merwick.
Dick considered a moment.
“Do you know when a parcel comes, tied up with string, and you can’t
find a knife,” he said, “and therefore you burn the string through,
holding it taut? Well, it was like that: quite painless, only something
got weaker and weaker, and then parted, softly without effort. Not very
lucid, I’m afraid, but it was just like that. It had been burning a
couple of months, you see.”
He turned away and hunted among the letters and papers which littered
his writing-table till he found an envelope with a coronet on it. He
chuckled to himself as he took it up.
“Commend me to Lady Madingley,” he said, “for a brazen impudence in
comparison with which brass is softer than putty. She wrote to me
yesterday, asking me if I would finish the portrait I had begun of her
last year, and let her have it at my own price.”
“Then I think you have had a lucky escape,” remarked Merwick, “I suppose
you didn’t even answer her.”
“Oh, yes, I did: why not? I said the price would be two thousand pounds,
and I was ready to go on at once. She has agreed, and sent me a cheque
for a thousand this evening.”
Merwick stared at him in blank astonishment. “Are you mad?” he asked.
“I hope not, though one can never be sure about little points like that.
Even doctors like you don’t know exactly what constitutes madness.”
Merwick got up.
“But is it possible that you don’t see what a terrible risk you run?” he
asked. “To see her again, to be with her like that, having to look at
her--I saw her this afternoon by the way, hardly human--may not that so
easily revive again all that you felt before? It is too dangerous: much
too dangerous.”
Dick shook his head.
“There is not the slightest risk,” he said, “everything within me is
utterly and absolutely indifferent to her. I don’t even hate her: if I
hated her there might be a possibility of my again loving her. As it is,
the thought of her does not arouse in me any emotion of any kind. And
really such stupendous calmness deserves to be rewarded. I respect
colossal things like that.”
He finished his whisky as he spoke, and instantly poured himself out
another glass.
“That’s the fourth,” said his friend.
“Is it? I never count. It shows a sordid attention to uninteresting
detail. Funnily enough too, alcohol does not have the smallest effect on
me now.”
“Why drink then?”
“Because if I give it up this entrancing vividness of colour and clarity
of outline is a little diminished.”
“Can’t be good for you,” said the doctor.
Dick laughed.
“My dear fellow, look at me carefully,” he said, “and then if you can
conscientiously declare that I show any signs of indulging in
stimulants, I’ll give them up altogether.”
Certainly it would have been hard to find a point in which Dick did not
present the appearance of perfect health. He had paused, and stood still
a moment, his glass in one hand, the whisky-bottle in the other, black
against the front of his shirt, and not a tremor of unsteadiness was
there. His face of wholesome sun-burnt hue was neither puffy nor
emaciated, but firm of flesh and of a wonderful clearness of skin. Clear
too was his eye, with eyelids neither baggy nor puckered; he looked
indeed a model of condition, hard and fit, as if he was in training for
some athletic event. Lithe and active too was his figure, his movements
were quick and precise, and even Merwick, with his doctor’s eye, trained
to detect any symptom, however slight, in which the drinker must betray
himself, was bound to confess that no such was here present. His
appearance contradicted it authoritatively, so also did his manner; he
met the eye of the man he was talking to without sideway glances; he
showed no signs however small, of any disorder of the nerves. Yet Dick
was altogether an abnormal fellow; the history he had just been
recounting was abnormal, those weeks of depression, followed by the
sudden snap in his brain which had apparently removed, as a wet cloth
removes a stain, all the memory of his love, and of the cruel bitterness
that resulted from it. Abnormal too was his sudden leap into high
artistic achievement from a past of very mediocre performance. Why
should there then not be a similar abnormality here?
“Yes, I confess you show no sign of taking excessive stimulant,” said
Merwick, “but if I attended you professionally--ah, I’m not touting--I
should make you give up all stimulant, and go to bed for a month.”
“Why in the name of goodness?” asked Dick.
“Because, theoretically, it must be the best thing you could do. You had
a shock, how severe, the misery of those weeks of depression tells you.
Well, common-sense says, ‘Go slow after a shock; recoup.’ Instead of
which you go very fast indeed and produce. I grant it seems to suit you;
you also became suddenly capable of feats which--oh, it’s sheer
nonsense, man.”
“What’s sheer nonsense?”
“You are. Professionally, I detest you, because you appear to be an
exception to a theory that I am sure must be right. Therefore I have got
to explain you away, and at present I can’t.”
“What’s the theory?” asked Dick.
“Well, the treatment of shock first of all. And secondly, that in order
to do good work, one ought to eat and drink very little and sleep a lot.
How long do you sleep by the way?”
Dick considered.
“Oh, I go to bed about three usually,” he said; “I suppose I sleep for
about four hours.”
“And live on whisky, and eat like a Strasburg goose, and are prepared to
run a race to-morrow. Go away, or at least I will. Perhaps you’ll break
down, though. That would satisfy me. But even if you don’t, it still
remains quite interesting.”
Merwick found it more than quite interesting in fact, and when he got
home that night he searched in his shelves for a certain dusky volume in
which he turned up a chapter called “Shock.” The book was a treatise on
obscure diseases and abnormal conditions of the nervous system. He had
often read it before, for in his profession he was a special student of
the rare and curious. And the following paragraph which had interested
him much before, interested him more than ever this evening.
“The nervous system also can act in a way that must always even to the
most advanced student be totally unexpected. Cases are known, and
well-authenticated ones, when a paralytic person has jumped out of bed
on the cry of ‘Fire.’ Cases too are known when a great shock, which
produces depression so profound as to amount to lethargy, is followed by
abnormal activity, and the calling into use of powers which were
previously unknown to exist, or at any rate existed in a quite ordinary
degree. Such a hyper-sensitised state, especially since the desire for
sleep or rest is very often much diminished, demands much stimulant in
the way of food and alcohol. It would appear also that the patient
suffering from this rare form of the after-consequences of shock has
sooner or later some sudden and complete break-down. It is impossible,
however, to conjecture what form this will take. The digestion, however,
may become suddenly atrophied, delirium tremens may, without warning,
supervene, or he may go completely off his head....”
* * * * *
But the weeks passed on, the July suns made London reel in a haze of
heat, and yet Alingham remained busy, brilliant and altogether
exceptional. Merwick, unknown to him, was watching him closely, and at
present was completely puzzled. He held Dick to his word that if he
could detect the slightest sign of over-indulgence in stimulant, he
would cut it off altogether, but he could see absolutely none. Lady
Madingley meantime had given him several sittings, and in this
connection again Merwick was utterly mistaken in the view he had
expressed to Dick as to the risks he ran. For, strangely enough, the two
had become great friends. Yet Dick was quite right, all emotion with
regard to her on his part was dead, it might have been a piece of
still-life that he was painting, instead of a woman he had wildly
worshipped.
One morning in mid-July she had been sitting to him in his studio, and
contrary to custom he had been rather silent, biting the ends of his
brushes, frowning at his canvas, frowning too at her. Suddenly he gave a
little impatient exclamation.
“It’s so like you,” he said, “but it just isn’t you. There’s a lot of
difference! I can’t help making you look as if you were listening to a
hymn, one of those in four sharps, don’t you know, written by an
organist, probably after eating muffins. And that’s not characteristic
of you!”
She laughed.
“You must be rather ingenious to put all that in,” she said.
“I am.”
“Where do I show it all?”
Dick sighed.
“Oh, in your eyes of course,” he said. “You show everything by your
eyes, you know. It is entirely characteristic of you. You are a
throw-back; don’t you remember we settled that ever so long ago, to the
brute creation, who likewise show everything by their eyes.”
“Oh-h. I should have thought that dogs growled at you, and cats
scratched.”
“Those are practical measures, but short of that you and animals use
their eyes only, whereas people use their mouths and foreheads and other
things. A pleased dog, an expectant dog, a hungry dog, a jealous dog, a
disappointed dog--one gathers all that from a dog’s eyes. Their mouths
are comparatively immobile, and a cat’s is even more so.”
“You have often told me that I belong to the genus cat,” said Lady
Madingley, with complete composure.
“By Jove, yes,” said he. “Perhaps looking at the eyes of a cat would
help me to see what I miss. Many thanks for the hint.”
He put down his palette and went to a side table on which stood bottles
and ice and syphons.
“No drink of any kind on this Sahara of a morning?” he asked.
“No, thanks. Now when will you give me the final sitting? You said you
only wanted one more.”
Dick helped himself.
“Well, I go down to the country with this,” he said, “to put in the
background I told you of. With luck it will take me three days hard
painting, without luck a week or more. Oh, my mouth waters at the
thought of the background. So shall we say to-morrow week?”
Lady Madingley made a note of this in a minute gold and jewelled
memorandum book.
“And I am to be prepared to see cat’s eyes painted there instead of my
own when I see it next?” she asked, passing by the canvas.
Dick laughed.
“Oh, you will hardly notice the difference,” he said. “How odd it is
that I always have detested cats so--they make me feel actually faint,
although you always reminded me of a cat.”
“You must ask your friend Mr Merwick about these metaphysical
mysteries,” said she.
* * * * *
The background to the picture was at present only indicated by a few
vague splashes close to the side of the head of brilliant purple and
brilliant green, and the artist’s mouth might well water at the thought
of the few days painting that lay before him. For behind the figure in
the long panel-shaped canvas was to be painted a green trellis, over
which, almost hiding the woodwork, there was to sprawl a great purple
clematis in full flaunting glory of varnished leaf and starry flower. At
the top would be just a strip of pale summer sky, at her feet just a
strip of grey-green grass, but all the rest of the background, greatly
daring, would be this diaper of green and purple. For the purpose of
putting this in, he was going down to a small cottage of his near
Godalming, where he had built in the garden a sort of outdoor studio, an
erection betwixt a room and a mere shelter, with the side to the north
entirely open, and flanked by this green trellis which was now one
immense constellation of purple stars. Framed in this, he well knew how
the strange pale beauty of his sitter would glow on the canvas, how she
would start out of the background, she and her huge grey hat, and
shining grey dress, and yellow hair and ivory white skin and pale eyes,
now blue, now grey, now green. This was indeed a thing to look forward
to, for there is probably no such unadulterated rapture known to men as
creation, and it was small wonder that Dick’s mood, as he travelled down
to Godalming, was buoyant and effervescent. For he was going, so to
speak, to realise his creation: every purple star of clematis, every
green leaf and piece of trellis-work that he put in, would cause what he
had painted to live and shine, just as it is the layers of dusk that
fall over the sky at evening which make the stars to sparkle there,
jewel-like. His scheme was assured, he had hung his constellation--the
figure of Lady Madingley--in the sky: and now he had to surround it with
the green and purple night, so that it might shine.
His garden was but a circumscribed plot, but walls of old brick
circumscribed it, and he had dealt with the space at his command with a
certain originality. At no time had his grass plot (you could scarcely
call it “lawn”) been spacious; now the outdoor studio, twenty-five feet
by thirty, took up the greater part of it. He had a solid wooden wall on
one side and two trellis walls to the south and east, which creepers
were beginning to clothe and which were faced internally by hangings of
Syrian and Oriental work. Here in the summer he passed the greater part
of the day, painting or idling, and living an outdoor existence. The
floor, which had once been grass, which had withered completely under
the roof, was covered with Persian rugs; a writing-table, and a
dining-table were there, a bookcase full of familiar friends and a
half-dozen of basket chairs. One corner, too, was frankly given up to
the affairs of the garden, and a mowing machine, a hose for watering,
shears, and spade stood there. For like many excitable persons, Dick
found that in gardening, that incessant process of plannings and
designings to suit the likings of plants, and make them gorgeous in
colour and high of growth, there was a wonderful calm haven of refuge
for the brain that had been tossing on emotional seas. Plants, too, were
receptive, so responsive to kindness; thought given to them was never
thought wasted, and to come back now after a month’s absence in London
was to be assured of fresh surprise and pleasure in each foot of
garden-bed. And here, with how regal a generosity was the purple
clematis to repay him for the care lavished on it. Every flower would
show its practical gratitude by standing model for the background of his
picture.
The evening was very warm, warm not with any sultry premonition of
thunder, but with the clear, clean heat of summer, and he dined alone in
his shelter, with the after-flames of the sunset for his lamp. These
slowly faded into a sky of velvet blue, but he lingered long over his
coffee looking northwards across the garden towards the row of trees
that screened him from the house beyond. These were acacias, most
graceful and feminine of all green things that grow, summer-plumaged
now, yet still fresh of leaf. Below them ran a little raised terrace of
turf and nearer the beds of the beloved garden; clumps of sweet peas
made an inimitable fragrance, and the rose-beds were pink with _Baroness
Rothschild_ and _La France_, and copper-coloured with _Beauté
inconstante_, and the _Richardson_ rose. Then, nearer at hand, was the
green trellis foaming with purple.