"Do you know how long I've been here?"
Those who know how inconsequent daily familiarity makes blood relations who live together, will see nothing odd in Miss Priscilla's reply: "My dear niece, listen to me, and do not interrupt. What was the expression I used when you first announced your engagement to Reginald? ... No—I did not say it was a come-down...."
"Yes, you did."
"Afterwards perhaps, butat first, Euphemia? Be candid. Did I, or did I not, use the expression, 'Artists are all alike?' ... I did? Very well! And I said too—and you cannot deny it—that any woman who married them did it with her eyes open, and had only herself to thank for it. They are all alike, and Reginald is no exception to the rule." At this point Miss Priscilla may have had misgivings about sustaining the performance, for she ended abruptly on the dominant, "And then you ask me if I know how long you have been here!"
"Because it's six months, Aunty—over six months! Is it any wonder that I should ask? Besides, when I first came I nevermeantto stay. I was going back when Reginald wrote that letter. Fancy his daring to say there was no—what was that he called it?—you know—'casus belli!' An odious girl like that! And then to say if I really believed it I ought to go into Court and swear to things! HowcouldI, with that Sairah? Oh dear—if it had only been a lady!—or even a decent woman! Anything one could produce! But—Sairah!"
This young lady—mind you!—was only trying to express a very common feeling, which, if you happen to be a young married woman you will probably recognize and sympathize with. Suppose you were obliged to seek legal ratification of your case against a faithless spouse, think how much more cheerfully you would appear in court if the opposition charmer was a Countess! Think how grateful you would be if the culprits had made themselves indictable in terms you could use, and still know which way to look; if, for instance, they had had the decency to reside at fashionable hotels and pass themselves off as the Spenser Smyths, or the Poole Browns. These are only suggestions, to help your imagination. The present writer knows no such persons. In fact, he made these names out of his own head.
But—Sairah! Just fancy reading in theTelegraphthat the petitioner complained of her husband's misconduct with ... Oh—it would be too disgusting for words! After all, she, the petitioner, had a right to be considered a—she detested the expression, but what on earth were you to say?—LADY! What had she done that she should be dragged down and degraded like that?
It had been Miss Priscilla's misfortune—as has been hinted already—to contribute to the prolongation of her niece's residence with her by the lines on which she herself seemed to be seeking to bring it to an end. Nothing irritated this injured wife more than to be reminded of feminine subordination to man as seen from an hierarchical standpoint. So when her Aunt quoted St. Paul—under the impression that extraordinary man's correspondence so frequently produces, that she was quoting His Master—her natural irritation at his oriental views of the woman question only confirmed her in her obduracy, and left her more determined than ever in her resentment against a husband who had read St. Paul very carelessly if at all, and who took no interest in churches apart from their Music and Architecture.
Therefore, when Aunt Priscilla responded to her niece's exclamation, which has been waiting so long for an answer, with her usual homily, it produced its usual result. "I can only urge you, my dear Euphemia, to turn your thoughts to the Words of One who is Wiser than ourselves. It is no use your saying it's only Colossians. Besides, it's Ephesians too. The place where it occurs is absolutely unimportant. 'Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.' Those are The Words." Miss Priscilla handled her capitals impressively. The music stopped on a majestic chord, and her rebellious niece was cowed for the moment. Not to disturb the effect, the old lady, having lighted her own bedroom candle, kissed her benedictionally, with a sense of doing it in Jacobean English—or should we say Jacobean silence?—corresponding thereto, and left her, accepting as valid a promise to follow shortly.
But there was a comfortable armchair still making, before a substantial amount of fire, its mute appeal, "Sit down in me." The fire added, "Do, and I'll roast you for twenty minutes more at least." It said nothing about chilblains, but it must have known. Mrs. Aiken acted on its advice, and sat looking at it, and listening to an intermittent volcano in one of its corners.
The volcano was flagging, subject to recrudescence—for a certain latitude has to be given to Derby Brights and Wombwell Main—before Mrs. Aiken released her underlip, bitten as a counter-irritant to Scripture precepts. Aunt Prisceywastrying! But, then, how good she was! Where on earth would she, Euphemia Aiken, have gone to look for an anchorage, if it hadn't been for Aunt Priscey? She calmed down slowly, and Colossians died away in the soothing ripple of the volcano.
But the fire was hot still, and she wanted a screen. She took the first thing her hand lighted on. It was the photograph. It would do. But she hated the sight of it when the volcano made a spurt, and set the shadows dancing over the whole room. She turned it away from her towards the fire, to see the blank back only, and calm down in the stillness, unexasperated.
Presently, for some reason, it became irksome to hold it up. But it must be kept between her face and the fire. She let it fall forward on her face, still half holding it, and listened to the volcano. She could sit and think about things, and not go to sleep. Of course she could. It would never do to spoil her night's rest.
Was it really six whole months since she quarrelled with Reginald? She recited the months to make herself believe them actual, and failed. It did not really matter, though, how long it was. If Reginald had been ill, she could have gone back any time, and without any sacrifice of pride. Aunt Priscey would have found out a text, proving it a Christian duty more than ever. A little seductive drama crept through her mind, in which Reginald, smitten with some disorder of a good practicable sort for the piece—not a dangerous or nasty one, you know!—had put all his pride in his pocket, and written a letter humbly begging her forgiveness; acknowledging his weakness, his evil behaviour, and acquitting her of the smallest trace of unreasonable punctilio. It was signed, "Your lonely husband, Reginald Hay," that being a form domestic pleasantry in the past had sanctioned. Something choked in her throat over this touching episode of her own creation.
But it dispersed obsequiously when at a moment's notice—in her dream, you understand; dreamt as in the middle of dinner, to establish self-sacrifice as her portion—she started and arrived in time to save Reginald from a sinister nurse, whose elimination made an important passage in the drama. She got as far as the commencement of a letter to her Aunt, describing this achievement. At this point drowsiness got the better of her, presumably. For her imaginary pen became tangible, and her paper was beautiful, only it was stamped "At Aunt's," which seemed absurd. And she could only write the words "My pride," which seemed more so.
Then she woke, or seemed to wake, with a start, saying aloud, to no one, "This will never do; I shall spoil my night's rest." But on the very edge of her waking someone had said, in her dream, in a sort of sharp whisper, "Perhaps it is." And it was this voice that had waked her. She found it hard to believe that an outside voice had not spoken into her dream. But no one was there, and had the room been full of folk, none of them could have read the words on her dream-paper. And to her half-awake mind it seemed that "Perhaps it is" could only apply to what she had succeeded in writing. However, there can be no doubt that, at this moment, she believed herself fully awake.
Later she had reason to doubt it. Or rather, she became convinced of the contrary by the subsequent course of events, which need not be anticipated now. During what followed, one would say that she must have had misgivings that she was dreaming. But she seems not to have had many or strong ones; although she may have made use of the expression, "I could hardly believe I was awake," as a mere phrase of wonderment—just as you or I have used it before now. For when next day she described this experience to her cousin Volumnia, who had been much in her confidence during these last months, who said to her, "Of course, youwereasleep, because that is the only way of accounting for it reasonably," her reply was, "Then we shall have to account for itunreasonably, because Iwasawake."
"Well—go on, and tell," was the reply. This cousin Volumnia, the elder sister of that little monkey Jessie, was of course the grim big Miss Bax Miss Upwell had met at Lady Presteign's; and, as we have seen, she was a very determined person, one who would stand no nonsense. "Start from where the voice woke you, Cousin Euphemia," said she. She shut her eyes, and frowned, so as to listen judicially.
"Ilaidthephotographonthetable," said Mrs. Aiken, with circumflex accents over every other syllable, which is how to tell things clearly. But Miss Volumnia said, "You needn't pounce. I can hear." So she became normal. "I was absolutely certain there was no one else in the room. And everything seemed as usual; not the least like a dream. But for all that ... you won't believe me, Volumnia..."
"Very likely. Go on!"
"For all that I heard a voice—the same voice that waked me up...."
"Of course! You were still asleep.Iknow. Go on! What did the voice say?"
"No, I won't go on at all, Volumnia, if you're going to be nasty."
"Oh yes, do go on. I'm greatly interested. But you must remember that we hear thousands of these things every week at the Psychomorphic. We had a very interesting case only the other day. A man heard a dog barking.... However, go on."
"Very well, only you mustn't interrupt. What was I saying? ... Oh yes—the voice! I heard it quite distinctly, only very small.... Nonsense!—you know quite well what I mean.... What did it say? What Iheardwas, 'Hold me up, and let me look at you.' Now I know, my dear Volumnia, you will say I am making it improbable on purpose...."
"Not at all, my dear Euphemia! The case is commoner than you suppose, even when the subject is wide awake. Please tell itexactlyas you recollect it. Soften nothing." The implication was that Psychomorphism would know how much to take, and how much to reject.
"I am telling it exactly as it happened. It said..."
"What said?"
"The picture said."
"The picture! Oh, we hadn't come to that. Now what does that mean? The picture said!"
"Volumnia!—IF you interrupt I can't tell it at all. Do let me go on my own way."
"Yes—perhaps thatwillbe better. I can analyse afterwards."
"Well—the voice seemed to come from the picture—the photo, I mean. It said quite unmistakably, but in a tiny voice, 'Pick me up, and let me look at you.'..."
"You said 'hold' before. Now it's 'pick.'"
"Really, Cousin Volumnia, I declare I won't go on unless...."
"All right—all right! I'll be good." A little pause came here owing to Mrs. Aiken stipulating for guarantees. Amodus vivendiwas found, and she continued,
"I did as the voice said, and held the picture up, looking at it. I can't imagine how I came to take it so coolly. But you know, Volumnia, how it is when a perfect stranger speaks to you in an omnibus, and evidently takes you for somebody else, how civil you are? ... Well—of course, I mean a lady! How can you be so absurd? I said to it that I had never heard a photograph speak before. The voice replied, 'That is because you never listen. Mr. Perry hears me because he listens.' I asked who this was, and the voice replied, 'The little old gentleman who comes here.' I said, 'No little old gentleman comes here. Do you know where you are?' And do you know, Volumnia, the voice said, 'In the Library at Surley Stakes, over the stoofer.' What could that mean?"
"Can't imagine. But I'm not to speak, you know. That's the bargain. Go on."
"Well—I told the woman in the photograph where she was, and the voice said, 'I suppose you know,' and then asked if this was the place where she saw me before. I said no—that was my husband's Studio. 'But,' I said, 'you were not made.' She seemed not to understand, and persisted that she remembered seeing me there."
"Do excuse my interrupting just this once," said Miss Volumnia. "I won't do it again. I only wish to point out how clearly this shows the dream-character of the phenomenon. Is it credible that, admitting for the sake of hypothesis an independent intelligence, that intelligence would recollect occurrences before it came into existence. It seems to me that the picture-woman's claim to identity carries its own condemnation. How could ideas existing in the mind of the original picture reappear in the mind of a photograph, however carefully made?"
"It was the same woman, Volumnia," said Mrs. Aiken, beginning to stand on the rights of her Phenomenon, as people do. "I do think, dear, you are only cavilling and making difficulties."
"I think my objection holds good. When we consider the nature of photography..."
"Why is it more impossible than the original picture seeing me and recollecting?"
"The demand on my power of belief is greater in the case of a copy, however accurate. And it would become greater still in the case of a copy of a copy. And so on." This was not original. A paper read at her Society was responsible for most of it. "However," she added, "we needn't discuss this now. Go on."
"Then don't prose. You really are straining at gnats and swallowing camels, Volumnia. Well—where was I? ... Oh yes, the Studio! The voice went on—and now thisdoesshow that it didn't come out of my own head—'I remember the Studio, and I remember a misunderstanding between yourself and your husband that might easily have led to serious consequences.' Now you know, Volumnia, that couldnothave come out of my own—my own inner consciousness.... Is that right?—Nowcouldit?"
Miss Volumnia shook an unbiassed head, on its guard against rash conclusions. "The same is true," she said, "of so many dream-impressions. Did you make the photograph acquainted with the actual position of things?"
Mrs. Aiken seemed to hesitate a moment. "Was I bound to take it into my confidence?" she said. "Anyhow it seemed to me at the time most uncalled for."
"What did you say?"
"I said—because as it was only a photograph I thought it didn't matter—I said that fortunately no such result had come about. I then pressed it to say more explicitly what it was referring to.... What?"
"Nothing—go on.... Well, I was only going to say that in my opinion you were playing with edged tools. The slightest departure from the principle of speaking the Truth is fraught with danger to the speaker.... Yes—and then?"
"Well—didit matter? Anyhow, let me get on. I asked what it meant—what misunderstanding it referred to. And do you know, Volumnia, the voice began and gave amost accurateaccount of Miss What's-her-name—Pupsley Wupsley's—visit to the Studio, and described that poor young Captain Thingumbobmost accurately. All I can say is that it did not make a single mistake...."
"Of course not!"
"Why 'of course not'?"
"Because it was merely your own Memory unconsciously at work; doing the job on its own, as my young nephew would say. It may have been wrong, but would seem to you right."
"Then why doesn't what followed after I left the Studio seem to me right too?"
Miss Volumnia said, as from the seat of Judgment, "Let's hear it." Thereupon her friend gave, with conscientious effort to report truly, the photograph's version of what passed in the Studio between her husband and the odious Sairah. It corresponded closely with that already given in this story.
As Miss Volumnia's interruptions became frequent towards the close of this narrative, it may be best to summarise it, as near as may be, in the words of the photograph, which had said, or seemed to say: "I did indeed tremble to think what misconstruction might be put on half-heard words of this interview of this young English maiden with your husband. For I could remember well how at the little Castello in the Apennines Icilia Ciaranfi, a girl of great spirit, finding her new-made husband enacting some such pleasantry as this—but quite blamelessly—with Donnina Magliabecchi, stabbed both to death there and then; and her great grief when Donnina's lover Beppe made it clear to her that this was but a foolish jest to which he himself was privy. And thinking of this painful matter I rejoiced that you, Signora, yourself should have been guided by counsels of moderation, at most withdrawing for a term—so I understood—to the house of a relation as to a haven, when no doubt all asperity of feeling would soon give place to forgiveness. I could see that in your case, had you yielded to the mistaken impulse of Icilia, no such consolation as she found could have been yours. For I understood this—though I was young at the time—that so deeply was Beppe touched by Icilia's remorse for her rash action, and she so ready to give her love in compensation for what he had lost, that each flew as it were to the embrace of the other, and the two of them fled then and there, and thence Icilia escaped the officers of Justice. Now this surely would have been an impossible resource to yourself and the lover ofla Sera, who, unless I am mistaken in thinking that those who 'keep company' are lovers in your land, was the person I heard spoken of as 'The Dust.' Which is in our tongue 'La Mondezza.' But I understood that while he was a man, and in that sense competent for Love, although called by a name fitter for a woman, yet was he socially on a level with those whom we others in Italy callspazzini, and no fit mate for a Signora of gentle birth and breeding.
"So that although I heard afar that the Signore and yourself came to high words on this subject, and gathered that you had departed in wrath to seek shelter with an aunt, I thought of this dissension as one that would soon be forgotten, and a matter of the past. The more so that your Signore's own words to his friends reassured me; to whom he said more than once that you would be the best woman in the world but for a defect I did not understand from his description, that when you flew into a blooming rage you could not keep your hair on, but that it wouldn't last and you would be back in a week, because you knew he couldn't do without you. He set my mind at rest by treating the idea of any lasting breach between you as something too absurd for speech. But I tell you this for certain, that I saw all that passed between him andla Sera, and that if you are keeping your resentment alive with the thought that he was guilty of anything but an ill-judged joke, you are doing grievous injustice to him as well as yourself. Return to him, Signora, forthwith; and beware henceforward of foolish jealousy and needless quarrels!"
The foregoing is a much more complete version of what the photograph seemed to say than Mrs. Aiken's fragmentary report to her cousin. She had not Mr. Pelly's extraordinary memory, and, moreover, she had to omit phrases and even sentences that were given in Italian. Miss Volumnia Bax, when not interrupting, checked off the narrative with nods at intervals, each nod seeming to be fraught with confirmed foresight of the preceding instalment. When it ended, she launched at once, without a moment's pause, into a well-considered judgment, or rather abstract of a Report of the Case, which her mind was already scheming, to read at the next meeting of the Psychomorphic. This Report, printed recently by the Society, containing all that Miss Volumnia said to her cousin on first hearing the tale, as well as many valuable remarks, commences as follows:
"Case 54103A. Dream or Pseudodream, reported by Miss Volumnia Bax. The subject of this experience, whom we will call Mrs. A., is reluctant to admit that she was not awake when it happened, however frequently the absurdity of this view is pointed out to her. So strong is this impression that if other members of her family had been subject to hallucination or insanity, or even victims of alcoholism, we should incline to place this case in some corresponding class. As it is, we have nothing but the word of the narrator to warrant our assigning it a place outside ordinary Somnistic Phenomena."
This story is not answerable for the technical phrases of what is, after all, merely a suburban Research Society. The Report goes on to give, very fairly, the incident as already narrated, and concludes thus:
"It will be observed that nothing that the dreamer put into the mouth of the photographic speaker was beyond her imaginative powers, subconscious or superconscious. It may be urged that the absurdly romantic Italian story implies a knowledge of Italian matters which the dreamer did not possess, or at least emphatically disclaims. But nothing but the verification of the story can prove that the names, for instance, were not due to subconscious activity of the dreamer's brain. On the other hand—and this shows how closely the investigator of Psychic Phenomena has to follow their intricacies—inquiry has elicited the fact that Mrs. A.'s husband once spent a week in Florence at a Pension in the Piazza Indipendenza and no doubt became familiar with the habits of Italians. What is more likely than that she should unconsciously remember passages of her husband's Italian experience, as narrated by himself? We are certainly warranted in assuming this as a working hypothesis, while admitting our obligation to sift Italian History for some confirmation of the dramatic (but not necessarily improbable) incident of Icilia Ciaranfi and Donnina Magliabecchi—both, by the way, suspiciously Florentine names! We repeat that, failing further evidence, we are justified in placing this story in section M103, as a Pseudo-real Hyper-mnemonism."
The Report, of course, said nothing of the advice its writer had felt warranted in giving Mrs. A., as a corollary to her summary of the views she afterwards embodied in it. "If you want my opinion, Cousin Euphemia," she said, "it is that the sooner you make it up with your husband the better! It's quite clear from the dream that you want to do so."
"How do you make that out?" asked Mrs. Aiken.
"Clearly! Your subconscious self constituted this nonsensical photograph the exponent of its automatically cryptic Idea, while you were in a state of Self-Induced Hypnosis...."
"Does that mean while I was asleep?"
"By no means. It is a condition brought about by fixing the attention. You had, by your own admission, been looking at the fire."
"No—I held up the photograph."
"Then you had been looking at the photograph."
"Only the back."
"It's the same thing. I am distinctly of opinion that it was Self-Induced Hypnosis. In this condition the subconscious self may as it were take the bit in its teeth, and energize whatever bias towards common sense the subject may happen to possess. In your case the photograph's speech and its grotesque fictions were merely pegs, so to speak, on which to hang an exposition of your own subconscious cryptic Idea. Does not the fact that you are at this moment prepared to deny the existence of this Idea prove the truth of what I say?"
"I dare say it's very clever and very wise. But I can't understand a word of it, and you can't expect me to. All I know is, that if it's to be submission and Colossians and Ephesians and stuff, back to Reginald I don't go. And as far as I can see, Science only makes it ten times worse.... So there!"
"Your attitude of mind, my dear Euphemia," said Miss Volumnia, "furnishes the strongest confirmation possible of the truth of my interpretation of the Phenomenon. But I must go or I shall lose my train."
"How I do hate patronizing people!" said Mrs. Aiken, going back into the drawing-room after seeing her cousin off.
How Mrs. Euphemia Aiken found Madeline at home, who consequently did not go to a Bun-Worry. But she had met Miss Bax. How these ladies each confessed to Bogyism, of a sort, and Madeline said make it up. How Mr. Aiken took Mr. Tick's advice about Diana, but could not find his Transparent Oxide of Chromium. Man at his loneliest. No Tea. And what a Juggins he had been! Of Mrs. Gapp's dipsomania. The Boys. How Mr. Aiken lit the gas, and heard a cab. How he nearly kissed Madeline, who had brought his wife home, but it was only a mistake, glory be! Was there soap in the house?
Mrs. Aiken tortured her speculating powers for awhile with endeavours to put this curious event on an intelligible footing, and was before long in a position to "dismiss it from her mind"; or, if not quite that, to give it a month's notice. It certainly seemed much less true on the second day after it happened than on the first; and, at that rate, in a twelvemonth it would never have happened at all. But her passive acceptance of a thing intrinsically impossible and ridiculous—because, of course, we know, etc., etc.—was destined to undergo a rude shock. After taking her Aunt's advice about the duration of the usual pause—not to seem to have too violent a "Sehnsucht" for your card-leavers—the lady paid her visit to Miss Upwell at her parents' stuck-up, pretentious abode in Eaton Square. We do not give the number, as to do so would be to bring down a storm of inquiries from investigators of phenomena.
She gave her card to the overfed menial, who read it—and it was no business of his! He then put it upside down—hisupside down—on a salver, for easy perusal by bloated oligarchs. The voice of an oligarch rang out from the room he disappeared into, quite deliciously, and filled the empty house.
Madeline was delighted to see Mrs. Aiken; had been going to a Bun-Worry.Nowshe should do nothing of the sort; she would much rather have tea at home, and a long talk with Mrs. Aiken. She confirmed this by cancelling her out-of-door costume, possibly to set the visitor at her ease. Anyhow, it had that effect. In fact, if either showed a trace of uneasiness, it was Madeline. She more than once began to say something she did not finish, and once said "Never mind," to excuse her deficit. Of course Mrs. Aiken had not the slightest idea of what was passing in her mind; or rather, imputed it to a hesitation on the threshold of sympathetic speech about her own domestic unhappiness.
Now the portion of this conversation that the story is concerned with came somewhere near the middle of it, and was as follows:
"I think you said you had met my cousin, Volumnia Bax?"
"At Lady Presteign's—yes, of course I did! With a splendid head of auburn hair, and a—strongly characteristic manner. We had a most amusing talk."
"She has a red head and freckles, and is interested in Psychœopathy." An analogue of homœopathy, which would have stuck in the gizzard of the Clarendon Press, and even the Daily This and the Evening That would have looked at a dictionary about.
"Oh," said Miss Upwell dubiously. "Ithought her a fine-looking woman—a—a Lifeguardswoman, don't you know! And her nose carries herpince-nezwithout her having topincerhernez, which makes all the difference. She talked about you."
"Oh, did she? I was going to ask if she did. What did she say about me?"
"You mustn't be angry with her, you know! It was all very nice."
"Oh yes, of course! It always is very nice. But—a—whatwasit? Youwilltell me, won't you?"
"Certainly—every word! But I may have mistaken what she said, because there was music—Katchakoffsky, I think; and thecelloonly found he'd got the wrong Op., half-way through."
"I suppose she was telling you all about me and Reginald. I wish she would mind her own ... well, I wish she would Psychœopathize and leavemealone."
"Dear Mrs. Aiken!—you said you wouldn't be angry. And it was only becauseImentioned you and talked of that delightful visit—of—of ours to the Studio.... Oh no, no!—there's no more news. Not a word!" This came in answer to a look. Madeline went on quickly, glad to say no more of her own grief. "It was not till I myself mentioned you that she said, 'I suppose you know they've split?'"
"That was a nice way to put it. Split!"
"Yes—it looked as if it was sea-anemones, and each of you had split, making four." Miss Upwell then gave a very truthful report of what Miss Bax had told her, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance of her narrative.
When she had finished, Mrs. Aiken began to say, "I suppose——" and underwent a restless pause. Then, as her hostess waited wistfully for more, she went on, "I suppose she said I ought to go back and be a dutiful wife. I'm quite sick and tired of the way people talk."
"She said"—thus Madeline, a little timidly—"that she thought you had acted under a grievous misapprehension. That was what she said—'A grievous misapprehension.'"
"Oh yes!—and I'm to go back and beg pardon.Iknow.... But that reminds me...." She reined up.
"Reminds you...?" Madeline paused, for her to start again.
"Reminds me that I've never thanked you for the photograph."
"I thought you might like it. I can't tell you how fond I am of the picture, myself. I wanted to get you to be more lenient to the poor girl. It is the loveliest face!"
"Oh, I dare say. But anyhow, it was most kind of you to give it me. Let me see!—whatwasit reminded me of the photograph? Oh, of course,—Volumnia Bax."
"I was wondering why you said 'reminded.'"
Now Mrs. Aiken had two or three or four or five faults, but secretiveness was not among them. In fact she said of herself that she "always outed with everything." This time, she outed with, or externalised—but we much prefer the lady's own expression—what proved of some importance in the evolution of events. "Oh, of course, it was because of the ... but it was such nonsense!" So she spoke, and was silent. The cat was still in the bag, but one paw was out, at least.
Miss Upwell had her own share of inquisitiveness, and a little of someone else's. "Never mind! Do tellme," she said, open-eyed and receptive. The slight accent on "me" was irresistible.
"It was silliness—sheer silliness!" said Mrs. Aiken. "An absurd dream I had, which made Volumnia say it was evident I was only being obstinate about Reginald, because of Science and stuff. And so going back and begging pardon reminded me. That was all."
"But what had the picture to do with the dream? That's whatIwant to know," said Madeline.
"The picture wasinthe dream," said Mrs. Aiken. "But it was suchfrightfulnonsense."
"Oh, nevermindwhat nonsense it was! Do—do tell me all about it. I can't tell you what an intense interest I take in dreams. I do indeed!"
"If I do, you won't repeat it to anybody. Now will you? Promise!"
"Upon my word, I won't. Honour bright!" Thereon, as Mrs. Aiken really wanted to tell, but was dreadfully afraid of being thought credulous, she told the whole story of the dream, with every particular, just as she had told it to Miss Volumnia Bax.
Her hearer contrived to hold in, with a great effort, until the story reached "Well—that's all! At least, all I can tell you. Wasn't it absurd?" Then her pent-up impatience found vent. "Nowlisten tomystory!" she cried, so loud that her hearer gave a big start, exclaiming, "What—haveyougot a story? Oh, do tell it! I've told you mine, you know!"
Then Madeline made no more ado, but told the whole story of Mr. Pelly's dream, omitting all but a bare sketch of the Italian narrative—just enough to give local truth.
"Then," said Mrs. Aiken, when she had finished, "I supposeyoumean that I ought to go back and beg Reginald's pardon, too."
"Ido," said Madeline, with overwhelming emphasis. "Now, directly!"
"But you'll promise not to tellanyoneabout the dream—my dream," said Mrs. Aiken.
That same afternoon Mr. Reginald Aiken had been giving careful consideration to Diana and Actæon, unfinished; because, you see, he had a few days before him of peace and quiet, and rest from beastly restoration and picture-cleaning. One—himself, for instance—couldn't be expected to slave at that rot for ever. It was too sickening. But of course you had to consider the dibs. There was no getting over that.
However, apart from cash-needs, there were advantages about these interruptions. You came with a fresh eye. Mr. Aiken had got Diana and Actæon back from its retirement into the Studio's picked light, to do justice to his fresh eye. Two friends, one of whom we have not before seen in his company, were with him, to confirm or contradict its impressions.
This friend, a sound judge you could always rely upon, but—mind you!—a much better Critic than an Artist, was seated before the picture with a short briar-root in his mouth, and his thumbs in the armholes of a waistcoat with two buttons off. The other, with a calabash straining his facial muscles, and his hands—thumbs and all—in his trouser-pockets, was a bit of a duffer and a stoopid feller, but not half a bad chap if you came to that. Mr. Aiken called them respectively Tick and Dobbles. And they called him Crocky.
So there were five fresh eyes fixed upon the picture, two in the heads of each of these gentlemen, and the one Mr. Aiken himself had come with.
Mr. Tick's verdict was being awaited, in considerate silence. His sense of responsibility for its soundness was gripping his visage to a scowl; and a steadfast glare at the picture, helped by glasses, spoke volumes about the thoroughness of its source's qualifications as a Critic.
Mr. Aiken became a little impatient. "Wonder if you think the same as me, Tick?" said he.
"Wonder if you think the same as 'im!" said Dobbles.
But Criticism—of pictorial Art at least—isn't a thing to hurry over, and Mr. Tick ignored these attempts at stimulus. However, he spoke with decision when the time seemed ripe. Only, he first threw an outstretched palm towards the principal figure, and turned his glare round to his companions, fixing them. And they found time, before judgment came, to murmur, respectively, "Wonder if he'll say my idea!" and "Wonder if he'll say your idear?"
"Wants puttin' down!" shouted Mr. Tick, leaving his outstretched fingers between himself and Diana.
And thereupon the Artist turned to Mr. Dobbles and murmured, "What did I tell you?" And Mr. Dobbles murmured back, "Ah!—what did you tell me?" not as a question, but as a confirmation.
"What I've been thinking all along!" said Mr. Aiken. Then all three gave confirmatory nods, and said that was it, you might rely on it. Diana was too forward. Had Actæon been able to talk, he might have protested against this. For see what a difference the absence of the opposite characteristic would have made to Actæon!
Conversation then turned on the steps to be taken to get this forward Goddess into her place again, Mr. Tick, who appeared to be an authority, dwelt almost passionately on the minuteness of the change required. "When I talk of puttin' down," said he, "you mustn't imagine I'm referrin' to anyperceptiblealteration. You change the tone of that flesh, and you'll ruin the picture!"
His hearers chorused their approbation, in such terms as "Right you are, Tick, my boy!"—"That's the way to put it!"—"Bully for you, old cocky-wax!" and so on.
Mr. Tick seemed pleased, and elaborated his position. "Strictly speakin'," said he, "what is needed is an absolutely imperceptible lowerin' of the tone. Don't you run away with the idea that you can paint on a bit of work like that, to do it any good. You try it on, and you'll come a cropper." This was agreed to with acclamations, and a running commentary of "Caution's the thing!"—"You stick to Caution!"—and so on. The orator proceeded, "Now, I never give advice, on principle. But if I was to do so in this case, and you were to do as I told you, you would just take thesmallest possiblequantity—the least,least, LEAST touch—no more!—of..." But Mr. Tick had all but curled up over the intensity of his superlatives, and he had to come uncurled.
"What of?" said Mr. Aiken. And said Mr. Dobbles, not to be quite out of it, "Ah!—what of?" Because a good deal turned on that.
Mr. Tick had a paroxysm of decision. He seized Mr. Aiken's velveteen sleeve, and held him at arm's length. "Look here, Crocky!" said he. "Got any Transparent Oxide of Chromium?"
"Yes—somewhere!"
"Well, now—just you do as I tell you. Got a clean number twelve sable? ... No?—well, number eleven, then ... That'll do!—dip it in Benzine Collas and give it a rinse out. See? Then you give it a rub in your Transparent Oxide, and wipe it clean with a rag. What's left will go all over Diana, and a little to spare..."
"Won't she look green?" Mr. Aiken seemed reluctant.
"Rather! But you do as I say, young feller, and ask no questions.... 'What are you to do next?'—why, take an absoli-yootly white bit of old rag and wipe her quite clean from head to foot." His audience suggesting here that no change would be visible, he added, "That's the idear. Don't you change the colour on any account. But you'll see! Diana—she'll have gone back!"
"There's somethin' in what old Tick says," said Mr. Dobbles, trying to come out of the cold. He nodded mysteriously. Mr. Aiken said he'd think about it.
Mr. Tick said, "I ain't advisin'. I never advise. But if I was to—there's the advice I should give!" Then he and Mr. Dobbles went their ways, leaving Mr. Aiken searching for his tube of Transparent Oxide of Chromium.
Now, Mr. Reginald Aiken always knew where everything was in his Studio, and could lay his hand on it at once. Provided always that you hadn't meddled and shifted the things about! And he knew this tube of colour was in his old japanned tin box, with the folding palette with the hinge broke. It might be difficult to get out by now, because he knew a bottle of Siccatif had broken all over it. But he was keen to make Diana go back, and if he went out to get another tube he would lose all the daylight.
So he sat down to think where the dooce that box had got put. He lit a cigarette to think with. One has to do things methodically, or one soon gets into confusion.
He passed before his mind the epoch-makingbouleversementsof the past few years; notably the regular good clean-up when he married Euphemia four years since, and took the second floor as well as the Studio floor he had occupied as a bachelor.
He finished that cigarette gloomily. Presently he decided that what had happened on that occasion had probably occurred again. History repeats itself. That box had got shoved back into the recess behind thecassettone. He would have up Mrs. Gapp, who came in by the day, in the place of Mrs. Parples, who had outstayed her welcome, to help him to shift that great beastly useless piece of lumber. Mrs. Gapp was, however, easier to call over the stairs to than to have up. The number of times you called for Mrs. Gapp was according; it varied with your own tenacity of purpose and your readiness to believe that she wasn't there. Mr. Aiken seemed easily convinced that she was at the William the Fourth, up the street. That was the substance of his reason for not shouting himself hoarse; that is to say, it worked out thus as soliloquy. He went back and tried for the japanned tin colour-box, single-handed.
He had much better have gone out to buy a new tube of this useful colour, as in five minutes he was one mass of filth. Only getting the things off the top of that box was enough!—why, you never see anything to come near the state they was in. And if he had only rang again, sharp, Mrs. Gapp would have heard the wire; only, of course, no one could say the bell wasn't broke, and maintain a reputation for truthfulness. We are incorporating in our text some verbal testimony of Mrs. Gapp's, given later.
But Mrs. Gapp could not have testified—for she was but a recent char, at the best—to the desolation of her unhappy employer's inner soul when, too late for the waning light of a London day, he opened with leverage of a screwdriver the lid of that japanned tin-box, and excavated from a bed of thickened resin which he knew could never be detached from the human hand, or anything else it touched, an abject half-tube of colour which he had to treat with a lucifer-match before he could get its cap off. And then only to find that it had gone leathery, and wouldn't squeeze out.
If we had to answer an Examination question, "When is Man at his loneliest? Give instances," we should reply—unless we had been otherwise coached—"When he is striving, companionless, to get some sort of order into things; working on a basis of Chaos, feeling that he is the first that ever burst into a dusty sea, choked with its metaphorical equivalent of foam. Instance Mr. Reginald Aiken, at the end of last century, in his Studio at Chelsea." Anyhow, if this question had been then asked of anyone and received this answer, and the Examiners had referred back to Mr. Aiken, before giving a decision, he would certainly have sanctioned full marks.
But he gave himself unnecessary trouble. One always does, in contact with disinterred lumber, in which a special brood of spooks lies hid, tempting him to the belief that this flower-stand only wants a leg to be of some use, and that that fashionable armchair only wants a serpentine segment of an arm and new straps under the seat to be quite a handsome piece of furniture. Yes, and new American leather, of course! Mr. Aiken had not to deal with these particular articles, but the principle was the same. He foolishly tampered with a sketching umbrella, to see if it would open: it certainly did, under pressure, but it wouldn't keep up nor come down, and could only be set right at the shop, and a new one would be cheaper in the end. Pending decision, a large black beetle, who had hoped to end his days undisturbed, fell off the underside as its owner opened it, and very nearly succeeded in getting down his back.
The things that came out of that cavern behind thecassettone!—you never would have thought it! A large can of genuine Amber Varnish that had had its cork left out, and wouldn't pour; the Skeleton's missing right scapula, only it wouldn't hold now; and, besides, one never wanted the Skeleton; a great lump of modelling-wax and apparently infinite tools—no use to Mr. Aiken now, because he never did any modelling, but they might be a godsend to some art-student; folio volumes of anatomical steel-plates, that the engravers had hoped would last for ever—a hope the mice may have shared, but they had done pretty well already; Mr. Aiken's old ivory foot-rule, which was the only accurate one in the British Empire, and what the dooce had become of it he never could tell; plaster heads without noses, and fingers without hands, and discarded fig-foliage, like a pawnshop in Eden; things, too, for which no assignable purpose appeared on the closest examination—things that must have been the lifework of insane artisans, skilful and thorough outside the powers of language to express, but stark mad beyond a doubt. And a Dutch clock that must have been saying it was a quarter-past twelve, unrebuked, for four years or so past.
Mr. Aiken need not have tried to pour out the Amber Varnish; where was the sense of standing waiting, hoping against hope for liquidation? He need not have hunted up a pair of pliers to raise vain hopes in the scapula's breast—or its equivalent—of a new lease of life. He need not have tried to soften the heart of that wax. Nor have turned over the plates to see if any were left perfect. Nor need he have reconsidered the Inexplicables, to find some plausibleraison d'êtrefor them, nor tried to wind up the Dutch clock with sporadic keys, found among marine stores in a nail-box. But he was excusable for sitting and gloating over his ivory foot-rule, his sole prize from a wrestling-match with intolerable filth—or only tolerable by a Londoner. He was weary, and the daylight had vanished. And even if he had got a squeeze out of that tube, he couldn't have used it. It was much too ticklish a job to do in the dark.
He sat and brooded over his loneliness in the twilight. How in Heaven's name had this odious quarrel come about? Nonsense about Sairah! That absurd businessbeganit, of course. Serious quarrels grow out of the most contemptible nonsense, sometimes. Oh no—there was something behind; some underlying cause. But he sought in vain to imagine one. They had always been such capital friends, he and Euphemia! It was true they wrangled a great deal, often enough. But come, I say! If a man wasn't to be at liberty to wrangle with his own wife, whatwerewe coming to?
He believed it was all the doing of that blessed old Aunt of hers. If she hadn't had Athabasca Villa to run away to,—why, she wouldn't have run away at all! She would have snapped and grizzled at him for a time, and then made it up. And then they would have had an outing, to Folkestone or Littlehampton, and it would all have been jolly.
Instead of which, here they were, living apart and writing each other letters at intervals—for they kept to correspondence—and, so far as he could see, letters only made matters worse. He knew that the moment he took up his pen to write a regular sit-down letter he put his foot in it. He had always done that from a boy.
Probably, throughout all the long summer that had passed since his quarrel with his wife, he had not once missed saying, as a morning resolution to begin the day with, that he wouldn't stand this any longer. He would go straight away, after breakfast, to Athabasca Villa, and beard Aunt Priscilla in her den, his mind seeming satisfied with the resolution in this form. But every day he put it off, his real underlying objection to going being that he would have to confess to having made himself such an unmitigated and unconscionable Juggins. His Jugginshood clung to him like that Siccatif to his fingers. It was too late to mitigate himself now. And six months of discomfort had contrived to slip away, of which every day was to be the last. And here he was still!
If he had understood self-examination—people don't, mostly—he might have detected in himself a corner of thought of a Juggins-mitigating character. However angry he felt with his wife, he could not, would not, admit the possibility that she believed real ill of him. His loyalty to her went further than Geraint's to Enid, for he imputed to her acquittal of himself, from sheer ignorance of the sort of thing anybody else's wife might impute to anybody else's husband. Because, you see, he had at heart such a very exalted view of her character. Perhaps she would not have thanked him for fixing such a standard for her to act up to.
He sat on—on—in the falling darkness; the little cheerfulness of his friends' visit had quite vanished. The lumber he had wallowed in had grimed his heart as well as his garments. He would have liked Tea—a great stand-by when pain and anguish wring the brow. But when you are too proud to admit that your brow is being wrung, and you know it is no use ringing the bell, because Mrs. Gapp, or her equivalent, is at the William the Fourth, why, then you probably collapse and submit to Fate, as Mr. Reginald Aiken did. It didn't much matter now if he had no Tea. No ministering Angel was there to make it.
He sat, collapsed, dirty and defeated, in the Austrian bent-wood rocking-chair. What was that irruption of evening newsboys shouting? Repulse of some General, English or Dutch, at some berg or drift; surrender of some other, Dutch or English, at some drift or berg. He was even too collapsed to go out and buy a halfpenny paper. He didn't care about anything. Besides, it was the same every evening. Damn the Boers! Damn Cecil Rhodes!
The shouters had passed—aprestissimomovement in the Street Symphony—selling rapidly, before he had changed his mind, and wished he had bought aStar. Never mind!—there would be another edition out by the time he went to dinner at Machiavelli's. He sat on meditating in the gloom, and wondering how long it would be before it was all jolly again. Of course itwouldbe—but when?
A sound like a nervous burglar making an attempt on a Chubb lock caught his ear and interested him. He appeared to identify it as Mrs. Gapp trying to use a latchkey, but unsuccessfully. He seemed maliciously amused, but not to have any intention of helping. Presently the sound abdicated, in favour of a subterranean bell of a furtive and irresolute character. Said Mr. Aiken, then, to Space, "Mrs. Verity won't hear that, you may bet your Sunday garters," and then went by easy stages to the front-door, to see—so further soliloquy declared—how sober his housekeeper was after so long an absence. A glance at the good woman convinced him that her register of sobriety would stand at zero on any maker's sobriometer.
She said that a vaguely defined community, called The Boys, had been tampering with the lock. Mr. Aiken, from long experience of her class at this stage, was able to infer this from what sounded like "Boysh been 'tlocksh—keylocksh—inchfearunsh." This pronounced exactly phonetically will be clear to the student of Alcoholism; be so good as to read it absolutely literally.
"Lock's all right enough!" said Mr. Aiken, after turning it freely both ways. "Nobody's been interfering with it. You're drunk, Mrs. Gapp."
Mrs. Gapp stood steady, visibly. Now, you can't stand steady, visibly, without a suspicion of a lurch to show how splendidly you are maintaining your balance. Without it your immobility might be mere passionless inertia. Mrs. Gapp's eyes seemed as little under her control as her voice, and each had a strange, inherent power of convincing the observer that the other was looking the wrong way.
"Me?" said Mrs. Gapp.
"Yes—you!" said Mr. Aiken.
Mrs. Gapp collected herself, which—if we include in it her burden, consisting of some bundles of firewood and one pound four ounces of beefsteak wrapped in a serial—seemed in some danger of redistributing itself when collected. She then spoke, with a mien as indignant as if she were Boadicea seeking counsel of her country's gods, and said, "Mer-r-runk!Shober!"—the last word expressing heartfelt conviction. Some remarks that followed, scarcely articulate enough to warrant transcribing, were interpreted by Mr. Aiken to the effect that he was doing a cruel injustice to a widow-woman who had had fourteen, and had lived a pure and blameless life, and had buried three husbands. Much stress was laid on her own habitual abstention from stimulants, and the example she had striven to set in her own humble circle. Her third had never touched anything but water—a curlew's life, as it were—owing to the force of this example. Let persons who accused her of drunkenness look at home, and first be sure of their own sobriety. Her conscience acquitted her. For her part she thought intoxication a beastly, degrading habit—that is to say, if Mr. Aiken interpreted rightly something that sounded, phonetically, like "Bishley grey rabbit." At this point one of the wood-bundles became undone, owing to the disgraceful quality of the string now in use. Mrs. Gapp was dissuaded with difficulty from returning to the shop to exchange it, but in the end descended the kitchen-stairs, lamenting commercial dishonesty, and shedding sticks.
The Artist seemed to regard this as normal charing, nothing uncommon. He returned to the Austrian bent-wood chair, and sat down to think whether he should light the gas. He began to suspect himself of going imbecile with disheartenment and depression. He was at his lowest ebb. "I tell you what," said he—it was Space he was addressing—"I shall just go straight away to-morrow after breakfast to Coombe, and tell Mrs. Hay that if she doesn't come back I shall let the Studio and go to Japan."
But Space didn't seem interested. It had three dimensions, and was content.
He might as well light the gas as not; so he did it, and it sang, and burned blue. Then it stopped singing, and becametransigeant, and you could turn it down or up. Mr. Aiken turned it down, but not too much, and listened to a cab coming down the street. "That's not for here," said he. He had no earthly reason for saying this. He was only making conversation; or rather, soliloquy. But he was wrong; at least so far as that the cab was really stopping, here or next door. And in the quadrupedations, door-slammings, backings, reproofs to the horse, interchange of ideas between the Captain and the passengers of a hansom cab of spirit, a sound reached Mr. Aiken's ear which arrested him as he stood, with his finger on the gas-tap. "Hullo!" said he, and listened as a musical Critic listens to a new performance.
When towards the end of such a symphony, the fare seeks the exact sum he is named after, and weighs nice differences, some bars may elapse before the conductor—or rather the driver, else we get mixed with omnibuses—sanctions a start. But a reckless spendthrift has generally discharged his liability, and is knocking at the door or using his latchkey, before his late driver has done pretending to consider the justice of his award. It happened so in this case, for before Mr. Aiken saw anything to confirm or contradict the need for his close attention, eight demisemiquavers, a pause, and a concussion, made a good wind-up to the symphony aforesaid, and the cab was free to begin the next movement on its own account.
He discarded the gas-tap abruptly, and pounced upon his velveteen, nearly pulling over the screen he had hung it on. "That drunken jade mustnotgo to the door," he gasped, as he bolted from the room and down the stairs. He need not have been uneasy. The jade was singing in the kitchen—either the Grandfather's Clock or the Lost Chord—and was keeping her accompanist waiting, with an intense feeling of pathos. Mr. Aiken swung down the stairs, got his collar right in the passage, and nearly embraced the wrong lady on the doorstep, so great was his hurry to get at the right one.
"Never mind!" said Madeline; and her laugh was like nightingales by the Arno in May. "Don't apologize, Mr. Aiken. Look here!—I've brought you your wife home. Now kissher!"
"You're not fit to kiss anybody, Reginald; but I suppose there's soap in the house." So said Mrs. Aiken. And then, after qualifying for a liberal use of soap, she added, "Whatisthat hideous noise in the kitchen?"
"Oh, that?" said her husband. "That'sMrs. Gapp."
Madeline's report, next morning. Charles Mathews and Madame Vestria. How well Madeline held her tongue to keep her promise. An anticipation of post-story time. How a Deputation waited on Mrs. Aiken from the Psychomorphic. Mr. MacAnimus and Mr. Vacaw. Gevartius much more correct for Miss Jessie to listen to than the Laughing Cavalier. Of Self-hypnosis and Ghosts, their respective categories. The mad cat's nose outside the blanket. Singular Autophrenetic experience of Mr. Aiken. Stenography. A case in point. Not a Phenomenon at all. How Miss Volumnia's penetration penetrated, and got at something. Suggestion traced home. Enough to explain any Phenomenon.
"I'm afraid youdidget mixed up, darling, this time. But I dare say they're all right." This was Lady Upwell's comment at breakfast next morning, when her daughter had completed a narrative of her previous evening's adventure, which had assumed, between the close of last chapter and the ensuing midnight, all the character of a reckless escapade. Indeed, it had been long past that hour when the young lady, who had wired early in the evening that she was "dining with Aikens shall be late," returned home in better spirits than she had shown for months—so her mother said to sympathetic friends afterwards—to find her Pupsey getting uneasy about her, and fidgetting. Because that was Pupsey's way.
Madeline's parents at this time would probably have welcomed any diversion or excitement for the girl; anything to take her mind away from her troubles. They were not at all sure about these Aiken people; but there!—they would have welcomed worse, to see this little daughter of theirs in such spirits as hers last night. Touching the cause of which they were a little puzzled, as she had stuck loyally to her promise to tell nothing of Mrs. Aiken's dream and the share the Italian picture had in her reconciliation with her husband. All she said was that she had persuaded Euphemia to go back to Reginald; she having, as it were, borrowed from each the name each called the other—in a certain sense, quoting it.
"Euphemia, I suppose, is Mrs. Aiken?" said her ladyship temperately—with a touch of graciousness, like Queens on the stage to their handmaidens Cicely or Elspeth.
"Euphemia 's Mrs. Aiken, but he calls her Mrs. Hay as often as not." Perplexity of both parents here required a short explanation of middle-class jocularity turning on neglect or excess of aspirates. After which Madeline said, "That's all!" and they said, "We see," but with hesitation. Then she continued her story. "It was such fun!Iknocked at the door, and Reginald came rushing out because he heard Euphemia outside, and clasped me in his arms ... Oh, well—it's quite true! You see, he was in such a hurry he didn't stop to look, and he took me for Euphemia." For the Baronet had laid down his knife and fork and remained transfixed. But a telegraphic lip-movement of her ladyship reassured him. "This," it said, "is exaggeration. Expect more of the same sort." However, his daughter softened the statement. "It wasn't exactly negotiated, you know. And I don't think it would have been any satisfaction either, because he was so horribly dirty, Reginald was."
The Baronet completed a contract he had on hand with some kippered salmon, and said, before accepting a new one, "Well—you'rea nice young woman!" But he added forgivingly, "Go on—gee-up!"
The nice young woman went on. "And do you know, I don't believe that a more filthy condition than that house was in—why, Mrs. Aiken had been away ten months! And there was a drunken cook singing in the kitchen all the while."
"You are an inconsecutive puss," said the Baronet, very happy about the puss nevertheless. "You didn't finish your sentence. 'Filthy condition that house was in'—go on!"
"Bother my sentence! Finish it yourself, Pupsey. Well—Reginald and Euphemia made it up like a shot. Couple of idiots! Then the question was—dinner. I said come home here, but they said clothes. There was some truth in what they had on, so I said hadn't we better all go and dine where Mr. Aiken had been going. Because I didn't call him Reginald to his face, you know!"
"And you went, I suppose?"
"I should think so. We dined at Mezzofanti's in Great Compton Street, Soho—no, it wasn't; it was Magliabecchi's—no!—Machiavelli's. And I talked such good Italian to the waiter. Itwasfun! And what do you think we did next? ... Give it up?" Her father nodded. "Why—we went to the Adelphi Theatre—there! And we saw 'Charley's Aunt,' and we parted intimate bosom friends. Only Euphemia is rather fussy and distant, compared to Us, and I had to stick out to make her kiss me." A slight illustration served to show how the speaker had driven a coach-and-six through the bosom-friend's shyness.
"Well," said the Baronet. "All I can say is—I wish I had been there with you. If I go to the play now—there I am, dressed in toggery and sittin' in the stalls! Lord, I remember when I was a young fellow, there was Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris ... you can't remember them...."
"Of course I can't. I was only born nineteen years ago." The Baronet, however, added more recent theatrical experiences, but only brought on himself corrections from his liege lady.
"My dear, you're quite at sea. Fancy the child recollecting Lord Dundreary and Buckstone! Why, she wasn't born or thought of!"
But when this Baronet got on the subject of his early plays and operas, he developed reminiscence in its most aggravated form. He easily outclassed Aunt Priscey on the subject of her ancestors. Her ladyship abandoned him as incorrigible, without an apology, but his daughter indulged him and sat and listened.
All things come to an end sooner or later, and reminiscence did, later. Then poor Madeline ran down in her spirits, and sat brooding over the war news. It was only a temporary sprint. Reginald and Euphemia vanished, and Jack came back.
Madeline kept all this story of the talking photograph to herself. To talk of it she would have had to tell her friend's dream, and that she had promised not to do.
She was so loyal that when a day or two later she met the formidable Miss Charlotte Bax, she kept a strict lock on her tongue, even when that lady plunged into a resumé of the dream-story as she had received it, and an abstract of her commentary on it, still waiting delivery at the Psychomorphic.
"I hoped we should meet at Mrs. Ludersdorff Priestley's," said she, "because I wanted to talk about it. Their teas are so stupid. Ethel Ludersdorff Priestley said you were coming."
"Oh yes—that was the Unfulfilled Bun-Worry. Mrs. Aiken came in to see me, and I stayed." Then, as an afterthought, "I suppose you know they've made it up?"
Admission that there was something unknown to her did not form part of Miss Charlotte's scheme of life. She left the question open, saying merely, "In consequence of the advice I gave my cousin, no doubt!" Madeline said nothing to contradict this—all the more readily perhaps that she was not prepared to supply the real reason. She, however, could and did supply rough particulars of the reconciliation, giving Miss Charlotte more than her due of credit as itsvera causa.
That lady then proceeded to give details of her scientific conclusions about the phenomenon. A portion of this may be repeated, as it had a good deal of effect in confirming her hearer's growing faith in its genuineness. "What I rest my argument on," said Miss Charlotte, touching one forefinger with the other, like Sir Macklin in the "Bab Ballads," "is the isolated character of this phenomenon. Let the smallest confirmation of it be produced by proof of the existence of analogous phenomena elsewhere, and then, although that argument may not fall to the ground, it may be necessary to place it on an entirely new footing. I would suggest that, in order to sift the matter to the bottom, a sub-committee should be appointed, charged with the duty of listening to authentic portraits to determine, if possible, whether any other picture possesses this really almost incredible faculty of speech. The slightest whisper from another picture, well authenticated by a scientific authority, would change the whole venue of the discussion. Pending such a confirmation, we are forced to the conclusion that the subjectivity of the phenomenon is indisputable."
At this point, Miss Upwell, who was really getting anxious aboutsecondly—which she was certain the speaker would forget, while it was impossible for her, without loss of dignity, to draw one forefinger from the other—was greatly relieved when the withdrawal was made compulsory by the offer of a sally-lunn, and the resumption of it became unnecessary, and even difficult. For this entertainment was not merely a bun-worry, but—choosing a name at random—a sally-lunn sedative, or a tea-cake lullaby.
It only enters for a moment into this story to show how powerfully Miss Upwell's belief in the picture's personality had been reinforced before the time came for Mr. Pelly to read Professor Schrudengesser's Florentine manuscript.
Perhaps if Miss Volumnia had then been in a position to lay before her friend the results of a subsequent interview with her cousin, in which she elicited some most important facts, this belief might at least have been suspended, and Miss Upwell's attitude towards the pardonable scepticisms of her father and Mr. Pelly might have been less disrespectful. But as a matter of fact Miss Volumnia only came to the knowledge of these facts months later, when she called upon Mrs. Reginald Aiken with the Secretary, Mr. MacAnimus, and Mr. Vacaw, the Chairman of the Psychomorphic; the three constituting a Deputation from the Society, which was anxious for repetition and confirmation of the story before appointing a sub-committee to listen to well-painted pictures. This interview may be given here, for the sake of those curious in Psychological study, but its place in the succession of events should be borne in mind. It is really a piece of inartistic anticipation.
"We shouldn't come pestering you like this, Cousin Euphemia," said Miss Volumnia, after introducing the Deputation, "if it had not been that we have so much trouble in getting volunteers to guarantee the amount of listening which we consider has to be gone through before the negative conclusion, that pictures cannot talk, is accepted as practically established. My sister Jessie has undertaken to listen to any picture at the National Gallery the sub-committee may select, provided that either Mr. Duodecimus Groob or Charley Galsworthy accompanies her, and listens too. I can see no objection to this, but I prefer that they should listen to Gevartius. I think it perhaps better that so young a girl should not hear what the Laughing Cavalier, Franz Hals, is likely to say. Or Charley Galsworthy either, for that matter. Mr. Duodecimus Groob is a graduate of the University of London...."
Mr. Reginald Aiken, who was present at this interview, looked up from his easel, at which he was retouching a sketch of no importance, to say that he knew this Mr. Groob, who was an awful ass; but his brother Dolly was quite another pair of shoes, of whom the World would soon hear more. The interruption was rude and discourteous, and Mrs. Aiken was obliged to explain to the Deputation that it was quite unnecessary to pay any attention to it. Her husband was always like that. His manners were atrocious, but his heart was good. As for Mr. Adolphus Groob, he was insufferable.
"Shall we proceed to business?" said Mr. MacAnimus, a piercing man, who let nobody off. "I will, with your permission, run through Mrs. Reginald Aiken's deposition...."
"I never made any deposition," said that lady.
"My dear Euphemia," said her cousin. "If you wish to withdraw from the statement you made to me..."
"Rubbish, Volumnia! I certainly don't withdraw from anything whatever. Still less have I any intention of making any depositions. If we are to be beset with depositions in everyday life, I think we ought at least to be consulted in the matter. Depositions, indeed!"
Mr. Vacaw interposed to make peace. "We need not," he said, "quarrel about terms." He for his part would be perfectly content that the particulars so kindly furnished by Mrs. Aiken should be referred to in whatever way was most satisfactory to that lady herself. He appeared to address Mr. MacAnimus with diffidence, almost amounting to humility, approaching him with somewhat of the caution which might be shown by a person who had undertaken to encumber a mad cat with a blanket so as to neutralise its powers of tooth and claw. Mr. MacAnimus conceded the point under protest; and Mrs. Aiken then, who was not disobliging, consented to repeat her dream experience, each point being checked off against the formulated report of her first statement, transmitted to the Society by Miss Volumnia. It is creditable to that lady's accuracy that very few corrections were necessary, especially as the first narrator seemed in a certain sense handicapped by doubts as to what the exact words used were, though always sure of their meaning. Had Mrs. Aiken understood any Italian, mixed speech on the picture's part might have accounted for this. As it was, an undeniable vagueness helped Miss Volumnia's classification of the incident as a case of Self-hypnosis. That the Deputation was unanimous on this point was soon evident.
It was then that an incident came to light that, at least in the opinion of Miss Volumnia, went far to establish this classification beyond a shadow of doubt.
Mr. Reginald, who had been at no pains to conceal his derision of the whole proceeding, allowed this spirit of ridicule, so hostile to the prosecution of Scientific Investigation, to master him so completely that he quite forgot the respect he owed to his visitors, and indeed to his wife, for she at least deserved the credit which is due to sincerity, even if mistaken. He shouted with laughter, saying did anyone ever hear such glorious Rot? A talking picture—only fancy! Why, you might as well put down anything you heard in your ears to any picture on the walls. One the same as another. Of course everyone knew that Euphemia was as full of fancies as an egg is full of meat. Just you leave her alone for a few minutes in a dark room, or a burying-ground, and see if she didn't see a ghost!
"That'squiteanother thing," said Miss Volumnia and Mr. MacAnimus simultaneously. And Mr. Vacaw added, as pacific confirmation, "Surely—surely! Ghosts belong to an entirely different category." A feeling that Ghosts could not be coped with so near lunch may have caused an impulse towards peroration. It was not, however, to fructify yet, for Mr. MacAnimus appealed for a moment's hearing.
"With your leave, sir," said he, addressing Mr. Vacaw as if he was The Speaker, "I should like to put a question to this gentleman," meaning Mr. Aiken. Mr. Vacaw may be considered to have allowed the mad cat's nose outside the blanket, on sufferance.
Then Mr. MacAnimus, producing a memorandum-book to take down the witness's words, asked this question: "What did Mr. Aiken mean by the expression, 'anything heard in your ears'?"
But the witness was one of those people who become diffuse the moment they are expected to answer a question. His testimony ran as follows, tumbling down and picking itself up again as it did so. "Oh, don't you know the sort of thing I mean; a sort of tickle—nothing you can exactly lay hold of—not what you think you hear when it's there—comes out after—p'r'aps your sort don't—it goes with the party—there's parties and parties—if you don't make it out without a description, it's not in your line—you're not in the swim."