How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front
of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently. How he
woke up from a dream, which went on. The loquacity of
a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality. The
Artist's name. There was plenty of time to hear more.
The exact date of Antiquity. The Rational way of
accounting for it.
Old Mr. Pelly is the little grey-headed wrinkled man
with gold spectacles whom you have seen in London
bookshops and curio-stores in late August and early
September, when all the world has been away; the
little old man who has seemed to you to have walked
out of the last century but one. You may not have
observed him closely enough at the moment to have
a clear recollection of details, but you will have
retained an image of knee-breeches and silk
stockings; of something peculiar in the way of a
low-crowned hat; of a watch and real seals; of a gold
snuff-box you would have liked to sell for your own
benefit; and of an ebony walking-stick with a silver
head and a little silk tassel. On thinking this old
gentleman over you will probably feel sorry you did
not ask him a question about Mazarine Bibles or
Aldus Manutius, so certain were you he would not
have been rude.
But you did not do so, and very likely he went
back to Grewceham, in Worcestershire, where he
lives by himself, and you lost your opportunity that
time. However that may be, it is old Mr. Pelly our
story has to do with now, and he is sitting before a
wood-fire out of all proportion to the little dry old
thing it was lighted to warm, and listening to the
roaring of the wind in the big chimney of the library
he sits in.
But it is not his own library. That is at Grewceham,
two miles off. This library is the fine old
library at Surley Stakes, the country-seat of Sir
Stopleigh Upwell, M.P., whose father was at school
with Mr. Pelly, over sixty years ago.
Mr. Pelly is stopping at "The Stakes," as it is
called, to avoid the noise and fuss of the little
market-town during an election. And for that same reason
has not accompanied Sir Stopleigh and his wife and
daughter to a festivity consequent on the return of
that very old Bart, for the County. They will be
late back; so Mr. Pelly can do no better than sit in
the firelight, rejecting lamps and candles, and
thinking over the translation of an Italian manuscript, in
fragments, that his friend Professor Schrudengesser
has sent him from Florence. It has been supposed
to have some connection with the cinque-cento
portrait by an unknown Italian artist that hangs above
the fire-blaze. And this portrait is the one the story
saw, a little over six months since, in the atelier
of that picture-cleaner, Mr. Reginald Aiken, who
managed to brew a quarrel with his wife by his
own silliness and bad taste.
It is only dimly visible in the half-light, but
Mr. Pelly knows it is there; knows, too, that its eyes
can see him, if a picture's eyes can see, and that its
laugh is there on the parted lips, and that its
jewelled hand is wound into the great tress of gold
that falls on its bosom. For it is a portrait of a
young and beautiful woman, such as Galuppi
Baldassare wrote music about--you know, of course!
And Mr. Pelly, as he thinks what it will look like
when Stebbings, the butler, or his myrmidons, bring
in lights, feels chilly and grown old.
But Stebbings' instructions were distinctly not to
bring in lights till Mr. Pelly rang, and Mr. Pelly
didn't ring. He drank the cup of coffee Stebbings
had provided, without putting any cognac in it, and
then fell into a doze. When he awoke, with a start
and a sudden conviction that he indignantly fought
against that he had been asleep, it was to find that
the log-flare had worn itself out, and the log it fed
on was in its decrepitude. Just a wavering irresolute
flame on its saw-cut end, and a red glow, and
that was all it had left behind.
"Who spoke?" It was Mr. Pelly who asked the
question. But no one had spoken, apparently.
Yet he would have sworn that he heard a woman's
voice speaking in Italian. How funny that the
associations of an Italian manuscript should creep
into his dream!--that was all Mr. Pelly thought
about it. For the manuscript was almost entirely
English rendering, and no one in it, so far as he
could recollect, had said as this voice did,
"Good-evening, Signore!" It was a dream! He polished
his spectacles and watched the glowing log that
bridged an incandescent valley, and wondered what
the sudden births of little intense white light could
be that came and lived on nothing and vanished,
unaccounted for. He knew Science knew, and
would ask her, next time they met. But, for now,
he would be content to sit still, and keep watch
on that log. It must break across the middle
soon, and collapse into the valley in a blaze of
sparks.
Watching a fire, without other light in the room,
is fraught with sleep to one who has lately dined,
even if he has a pipe or cigar in his mouth to burn
him awake when he drops it. Much more so to a
secure non-smoker, like Mr. Pelly. Probably he did
go to sleep again--but who can say? He really
believed himself wide-awake, though, when the same
voice came again; not loud, to be sure, but
unmistakable. And the way it startled him helped to
convince him he was awake. Because one is never
surprised at anything in a dream. When one finds
oneself at Church in a stocking, and nothing more,
one is vexed and embarrassed, certainly, but not
surprised. It dawns on one gradually. If this was
a dream, it was a very solid one, to survive
Mr. Pelly's start of amazement. It brought him out of
his chair, and set him looking about in the
half-lighted room for a speaker, somewhere.
"Who are you, and _where_ are you?" said he.
For there was no one to be seen. The firelight
flickered on the portraits of Sir Stephen Upwell, the
Cavalier, who was killed at Naseby, and Marjory,
his wife, who was a Parliamentarian fanatic; and a
phenomenal trout in a glass case, with a picture
behind it showing the late Baronet in the distance
striving to catch it; but the door was shut, and
Mr. Pelly was alone in the library. He was rather
frightened at his own voice in the stillness; it
sounded like delirium. So it made him happier
that an answer should come, and justify it.
"I am here, before you. Look at me! I am
La Risvegliata--that is what you call me, at
least." This was spoken in Italian, but it must be
translated in the story. Very likely you understand
Italian, but remember how many English do not.
Mr. Pelly spoke Italian fluently--he spoke many
languages--but _he_ must be turned into English,
too, for the same reason.
"But _you_ are a picture," said he. "You cannot
speak." For he understood then that his
hallucination--as he thought it, believing himself
awake--was that the picture-woman over the mantelpiece
had spoken to him. He felt indignant with himself
for so easily falling a victim to a delusion; and
transferred his indignation, naturally, to the
blameless phantom of his own creation. Of course, he
had _imagined_ that the picture had spoken to him.
For "La Risvegliata"--the awakened one--was the
name that had been written on the frame at the
wish of the Baronet's daughter, when a few months
back he brought this picture, by an unknown Artist,
from Italy.
"I can speak"--so it replied to Mr. Pelly--"and
you can hear me, as I have heard you all speaking
about me, ever since I came to this strange
land. Any picture can hear that is well enough
painted."
"_Why_ have you never spoken before?" Mr. Pelly
was dumbfounded at the unreasonableness of
the position. A speaking picture was bad enough;
but, at least, it might be rational. He fell in his
own good opinion, at this inconsistency of his
distempered fancy.
"Why have you never listened? I have spoken
many a time. How do I know why you have not
heard?" Mr. Pelly could not answer, and the voice
continued, "Oh, how I have longed and waited for
one of you to catch my voice! How I have cried
out to the wooden _Marchese_ whose _Marchesa_ will
not allow him to speak, and to that beautiful Signora
herself, and to that sweet daughter most of all.
Oh, why--why--have they not heard me?" But
still Mr. Pelly was slow to answer. He found
something to say, though, in the end.
"I can entertain no reasonable doubt that your
voice is a fiction of my imagination. But you will
confer a substantial favour on me if you will take
advantage of it, while my hallucination lasts, to tell
me the name of your author--of the artist who
painted you."
"_Lo Spazzolone_ painted me."
"_Lo_ ... who?"
"_Lo Spazzolone_. Surely, all men have heard of
him. But it is his nickname--the big brush--from
his great bush of black hair. Ah me!--how
beautiful it was!"
"Could you give me his real name, and tell me
something about him?" Mr. Pelly took from his
pocket a notebook and pencil.
"Giacinto Boldrini, of course!"
"Ought I to know him? I have never heard his name."
"How strange! And it is but the other day that
he was murdered--oh, so foully murdered! But
no!--I am wrong, and I forget. It is near four
hundred years ago."
Mr. Pelly was deeply interested. The question
of whether this was a dream, a hallucination, or a
vision, or the result of exceeding by two ounces his
usual allowance of glasses of Madeira, he could not
answer offhand. Besides, there would be plenty of
time for that after. His present object should be
to let nothing slip, however much he felt convinced
of its illusory character. It could be sifted later.
He would be passive, and not allow an ill-timed
incredulity to mar a good delusion in the middle.
He switched off scepticism for the time being, and
spoke sympathetically.
"Is it possible? Did you know him? But of
course you must have known him, or he could
scarcely have painted you. Dear me!" Mr. Pelly
checked a disposition to gasp; that would never
do--he might wake himself up, and spoil all. The
sweet voice of the picture--it was like a voice, mind
you, not like a gramophone--was prompt with its
reply:
"I knew him well. But, oh, so long ago! One
gets to doubt everything--all that was most real
once, that made the very core of our lives.
Sometimes I think it was a dream--a sweet dream with
terror at the end--a nectar-cup a basilisk was
watching, all the while. Four hundred years!
Can I be sure it was true? Yet I remember it
all--could tell it now and miss nothing."
Mr. Pelly was silent a moment before answering.
He reflected that if his reply led to a
circumstantial narrative of events four hundred years old,
it would be a bitter disappointment to be waked
by the return of the family, and to have it all
spoiled. However, it was only ten o'clock, and
they might be three hours yet. Besides, it was
well known that dreams have no real duration--are
in fact compressed into a second or so of waking.
He would risk it.
"I have a keen interest, Signora," said he, "in
the forgotten traditions of antiquity. It would
indeed be a source of satisfaction to me if you would
consider me worthy of your confidence, and entrust
to me some portion at least of your family history,
and that of your painter. I can assure you that
no portion of what you tell me shall be published
without your express permission. No one can
detest more keenly than myself the modern
American practice of intrusion into private life...." He
stopped. Surely that sound was a sigh, if not
a sob. In a moment the voice of the picture came
again, but with even more of sadness in it than
before:
"Was it Antiquity, then, in those days? We
did not know it then. We woke to the day that
was to come--that had not been, before--even as
you do now; and the voices of yesterday were not
forgotten in our ears. We flung aside the thing of
the hour; as you do now, with little thought of
what we lost, and lived alone for hope, and the
things that were to be. I cannot tell you how
young we were then. And remember! I am
twenty now; as I was then, and have been, ever
since.
"I see," said Mr. Pelly. "Your original was
twenty when you were painted. And you naturally
remained twenty." He felt rather prosaic and dry,
and to soften matters added, "Tell me of your
first painting, and what is earliest in your
recollection."
"Then you will not interrupt me?" Mr. Pelly
gave a promise the voice seemed to wait for, and
then it continued, and, as it seemed to the listener,
told the tale that follows, which is printed as
continuous. The only omissions are a few interruptions
of Mr. Pelly's, which, so far as they were
inquiries or points he had not understood, are made
up for by very slight variations in the text, which
he himself has sanctioned, as useful and explanatory.
Whether he was awake or dreaming, he never
rightly knew. But his extraordinary memory--he
is quite a celebrity on this score--enabled him
to write the whole down in the course of the next day
or two, noting his own interruptions, now omitted.
The most rational way of accounting for the
occurrence undoubtedly is that the old gentleman
had a very vivid dream, suggested by his having
read several pages--this he admits--of the manuscript
translation, in which a too ready credulity has
detected a sequel to the story itself. None knows
better than the student of alleged supernatural
phenomena how frequent is this confusion of cause
and effect.