'What tune?' he said, 'blowed if I know.'
'Where did you hear it?' I asked.
'Well, there used to be a gal, a kind of a beggar gal, as lived not
far from 'ere for a little while, but she's gone away now, and she
used to sing that tune. I allas remember tunes, but I never could
make out anything of the words.'
D'Arcy laughed at my eccentricity in running after the boy to learn
where he had got a tune. But I did not tell him why.
After we had passed some way down Ratcliffe Highway, D'Arcy said,
'Here we are then,' and pointed to a shop, or rather two shops, on
the opposite side of the street. One window was filled with caged
birds; the other with specimens of beautiful Oriental pottery and
grotesque curiosities in the shape of Chinese and Japanese statues
and carvings.
My brain still rang with the air I had heard the river-boy whistling,
but I felt that I must talk about something.
'It is here that you buy your wonderful curiosities and porcelain!' I
said.
'Partly; but there is not a curiosity shop in London that I have not
ransacked in my time.'
The shop we now entered reminded me of that Raxton Fair which was so
much associated with Winnie. Its chief attraction was the advent of
Wombwell's menagerie. From the first moment that the couriers of that
august establishment came to paste their enormous placards on the
walls, down to the sad morning when the caravans left the
market-place, Winnie and I and Rhona Boswell had talked 'Wombwell.'
It was not merely that the large pictures of the wild animals in
action, the more than brassy sound of the cracked brass band,
delighted our eyes and ears. Our olfactories also were charmed. The
mousy scent of the animals mixed with the scent of sawdust, which to
adults was so objectionable, was characterised by us as delicious.
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 passed 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
passed 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
amusement 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 passionately 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?'