II

It was through the merest accident that I saw these two men again.

One evening I had been dining with my mother and aunt. I think I may

say that I had now become entirely reconciled to my mother. I used to

call upon her often, and at every call I could not but observe how

dire was the struggle going on within her breast between pride and

remorse. She felt, and rightly felt, that the loss of Winifred among

the Welsh hills had been due to her harshness in sending the stricken

girl away from Raxton, to say nothing of her breaking her word with

me after having promised to take my place and watch for the exposure

of the cross by the wash of the tides until the danger was certainly

past.

But against my aunt I cherished a stronger resentment every day. She

it was, with her inferior intellect and insect soul, who had in my

childhood prejudiced my mother against me and in favour of Frank,

because I showed signs of my descent from Fenella Stanley while Frank

did not. She it was who first planted in my mother's mind the seeds

of prejudice against Winnie as being the daughter of Tom Wynne.

The influence of such a paltry nature upon a woman of my mother's

strength and endowments had always astonished as much as it had

irritated me.

I had not learnt then what I fully learnt afterwards, that in this

life it is mostly the dull and stupid people who dominate the clever

ones--that it is, in short, the fools who govern the world.

I should, of course, never have gone to Belgrave Square at all had it

not been to see my mother. Such a commonplace slave of convention was

my aunt, that, on the evening I am now mentioning, she had scarcely

spoken to me during dinner, because, having been detained at the

solicitor's, I had found it quite impossible to go to my hotel to

dress for her ridiculous seven o'clock dinner.

When I found that my mother had actually taken this inferior woman

into her confidence in regard to my affairs and told her all about

Winnie and the cross, my dislike of her became intensified, and on

this evening my mother very much vexed me in the drawing-room by

taking the cross from a cabinet and saying to me,

'What is now to be done with this? All along the coast there are such

notions about its value that to replace it in the tomb would be

simple madness.' I made no reply. 'Indeed,' she continued, looking at

the amulet as she might have looked at a cobra uprearing its head to

spring at her, 'it must really be priceless. And to think that all

this was to be buried in the coffin of--! It is your charge,

however, and not mine.'

'Yes, mother,' I said, 'it is my charge;' and taking up the cross I

wrapped it in my handkerchief.

'Take the amulet and guard it well,' she said, as I placed it

carefully in the breast pocket of my coat.

'And remember,' said my aunt, breaking into the conversation, 'that

the true curses of the Aylwins are and always have been superstition

and love-madness.'

'I should have added a third curse,--pride, aunt,' I could not help

replying.

'Henry,' said she, pursing her thin lips, 'you have the obstinacy and

the courage of your race, that is to say, you have the obstinacy and

the courage of ten ordinary men, and yet a man you are not--a man you

will never be, if strength of character, and self-mastery and power

to withstand the inevitable trials of life, go to the making of a

man.'

'Pardon me, aunt; but such trials as mine are beyond your

comprehension.'

'Are they, boy?' said she. 'This fancy of yours for an insignificant

girl--this boyish infatuation which with any other young man of your

rank would have long ago exhausted itself and been forgotten--is a

passion that absorbs your life. And I tremble for you: I tremble for

the house you represent.'

But I saw by the expression on my mother's face that my aunt had now

gone too far. 'Prue,' she said, 'your tremblings concerning my son

and my family are, I assure you, gratuitous. Such trembling as the

case demands you had better leave to me. My heart tells me I have

been very wrong to that poor child, and I would give much to know

that she was found and that she was well.'

I set out to walk to my hotel, wondering how I was to while away the

long night until sleep should come to relieve me. Suddenly I

remembered D'Arcy, and my promise to call upon him. I changed my

course, and hailing a hansom drove to the address he had given me.

When I reached the door I found, upon looking at my watch, that it

was late--so late that I was dubious whether I should ring the bell.

I remembered, however, that he told me how very late his hours were,

and I rang.

On sending in my card I was shown at once into the studio, and after

threading my way between some pieces of massive furniture and

pictures upon easels, I found D'Arcy lolling lazily upon a huge sofa.

Seeing that he was not alone, I was about to withdraw, for I was in

no mood to meet strangers. However, he sprang up and introduced me to

his guest, whom he called Symonds, an elegant-looking man in a

peculiar kind of evening dress, who, as I afterwards learned, was one

of Mr. D'Arcy's chief buyers. This gentleman bowed stiffly to me.

He did not stay long; indeed, it was evident that the appearance of a

stranger somewhat disconcerted him.

After he was gone D'Arcy said, 'A good fellow! One of my most

important buyers. I should like you to know him, for you and I are

going to be friends. I hope.'

He seems very fond of pictures,' I said. A man of great taste, with a

real love of art and music.'

In a little while after this gentleman's departure in came De Castro,

who had driven up in a hansom. I certainly saw a flash of anger in

his eyes as he recognised me, but it vanished like lightning, and his

manner became cordiality itself. Late as it was (it was nearly

twelve), he pulled out his cigarette case, and evidently intended to

begin the evening. As soon as he was told that Mr. Symonds had been,

he began to talk about him in a disparaging manner. Evidently his

metier was, as I had surmised, that of a professional talker. Talk

was his stock-in-trade.

The night wore on, and De Castro in the intervals of his talk kept

pulling out his watch. It was evident that he wanted to be going, but

was reluctant to leave me there. For my part, I frequently rose to

go, but on getting a sign from D'Arcy that he wished me to stay I sat

down again. At last D'Arcy said,

'You had better go now, De Castro, you have kept that hansom outside

for more than an hour and a half; and besides, if you stay till

daylight our friend here will stay longer, for I want to talk with

him alone.'

De Castro got up with a laugh that seemed genuine enough, and left

us.

D'Arcy, who was still on the sofa, then lapsed into a silence that

became after a while rather awkward. He lay there, gazing

abstractedly at the fireplace.

'Some of my friends call me, as you heard De Castro say the other

night, Haroun-al-Raschid, and I suppose I am like him in some things.

I am a bad sleeper, and to be amused by De Castro when I can't sleep

is the chief of blessings. De Castro, however, is not so bad as he

seems. A man may be a scandal-monger without being really malignant.

I have known him go out of his way to do a struggling man a service.'

'You are a bad sleeper?' I said, in a tone that proclaimed at once

that I was a bad sleeper also.

'Yes,' said he, 'and so are you, as I noticed the other night. I can

always tell. There is something in the eyes when a man is a bad

sleeper that proclaims it to me.'

Then springing up from the divan and laying his hand upon my

shoulder, he said, 'And you have a great trouble at the heart. You

have had some great loss the effect of which is sapping the very

fountains of your life. We should be friends. We must be friends. I

asked you to call upon me because we must be friends.'

His voice was so tender that I was almost unmanned.

I will not dwell upon this part of my narrative; I will only say that

I told him something of my story, and he told me his.

I told him that a terrible trouble had unhinged the mind of a young

lady whom I deeply loved, and that she had been lost on the Welsh

hills. I felt that it was only right that I should know more of him

before giving him the more intimate details connected with Winnie,

myself, and the secrets of my family. He listened to every word with

the deepest attention and sympathy. After a while he said,

'You must not go to your hotel to-night. A friend of mine who

occupies two rooms is not sleeping here to-night, and I particularly

wish for you to take his bed, so that I can see you in the morning.

We shall not breakfast together. My breakfast is a peculiarly

irregular meal. But when you wake ring your bedroom bell and order

your own breakfast; afterwards we shall meet in the studio.'

I did not in the least object to this arrangement, for I found his

society a great relief.

Next morning, after I had finished my solitary breakfast, I asked the

servant if Mr. D'Arcy had yet risen. On being told that he had not, I

went downstairs into the studio where I had spent the previous

evening. After examining the pictures on the walls and the easels, I

walked to the window and looked out at the garden. It was large, and

so neglected and untrimmed as to be a veritable wilderness. While I

was marvelling why it should have been left in this state, I saw the

eyes of some animal staring at me from the distance, and was soon

astonished to see that they belonged to a little Indian bull. My

curiosity induced me to go into the garden and look at the creature.

He seemed rather threatening at first, but after a while allowed me

to go up to him and stroke him. Then I left the Indian bull and

explored this extraordinary domain. It was full of unkempt trees,

including two fine mulberries, and surrounded by a very high wall.

Soon I came across an object which, at first, seemed a little mass of

black and white oats moving along, but I presently discovered it to

be a hedgehog. It was so tame that it did not curl up as I approached

it, but allowed me, though with some show of nervousness, to stroke

its pretty little black snout. As I walked about the garden, I found

it was populated with several kinds of animals such as are never seen

except in menageries or in the Zoological Gardens. Wombats,

kangaroos, and the like, formed a kind of happy family.

My love of animals led me to linger in the garden. When I returned to

the house I found D'Arcy in the green dining-room, where we talked,

and he read aloud some verses to me. We then went to the studio. He

said,

'No doubt you are surprised at my menagerie. Every man has one side

of his character where the child remains. I have a love of animals

which, I suppose, I may call a passion. The kind of amusement they

can afford me is like none other. It is the self-consciousness of men

and women that makes them, in a general way, intensely unamusing. I

turn from them to the unconscious brutes, and often get a world of

enjoyment. To watch a kitten or a puppy play, or the funny antics of

a parrot or a cockatoo, or the wise movements of a wombat, will keep

me for hours from being bored.'

'And children,' I said--'do you like children?'

'Yes, so long as they remain like the young animals--until they

become self-conscious, I mean, and that is very soon. Then their

charm goes. Has it ever occurred to you how fascinating a beautiful

young girl would be if she were as unconscious as a young animal?

What makes you sigh?'

My thoughts had flown to Winifred breakfasting with her 'Prince of

the Mist' on Snowdon. And I said to myself, 'How he would have been

fascinated by a sight like that!'

My experience of men at that time was so slight that the opinion I

then formed of D'Arcy as a talker was not of much account. But since

then I have seen very much of men, and I find that I was right in the

view I then took of his conversational powers. When his spirits were

at their highest he was without an equal as a wit, without an equal

as a humourist. He had more than even Cyril Aylwin's quickness of

repartee, and it was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it

would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic

fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid

movements--so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be

merely fancy, in him became wit. Beneath the coruscations of this wit

a rare and deep intellect was always perceptible.

His humour was also so fanciful that it seemed poetry at play, but

here was the remarkable thing: although he was not unconscious of his

other gifts, he did not seem to be in the least aware that he was a

humourist of the first order; every _jeu d'esprit_ seemed to leap

from him involuntarily, like the spray from a fountain. A dull man

like myself must not attempt to reproduce these qualities here.

While he was talking he kept on painting, and I said to him, 'I can't

understand how you can keep up a conversation while you are at work.'