Radclyffe Hall - The Oldest Gay Novels

“Just the thing!” said I. “But here, take some money!”

“You may go your halves,” says the honest fellow. “But, Mr. Byng,” — he hesitated, and looked at me doubtfully, —“suppose he wakes up while I’m gone, and finds a stranger here?”

“I’ll justify you. I will show him that I’m a friend before he’s made me out a stranger.”

“That’s right, sir. I think you’ve got a call here, a loud call. See how things has worked round. You come home, with nobody to look after, you come into Chrysalis, and the very first night a scare is sent to me. I go after Mr. Churm, as is ordered by my wife and the prickles of the scare. I don’t find him; I do find you. You don’t say, ‘Janitor, this is none of my business. Apply at the sign of the Good Samaritan, across the way!’ No; you know it’s a call. You take hold; and here we are, and the boy a coming to on the slow train. When he gets to the depot, Mr. Byng, I hope you’ll stand by him and stick to him.”

“I will be a brother to him, Locksley, if he will let me.”

“Let or no let, Mr. Byng. You’ve got a call to pad to him like a soldier-coat to a Governor’s Guard. But here I go talkin’ off, and where’s the oysters?”

He hurried away. I was left alone with Cecil Dreeme.

Locksley’s urgent plea was hardly needed. I felt every moment more brotherly to this desolate being, consigned to me by Fate.

“Poor fellow!” I thought. “He, I am sure, will not requite me with harm for saving him, as old proverbs too truly say the baser spirits may.”

I wheeled him close to the stove. The room still seemed a dark and cheerless place to come back to life in. I tried to light the gas. It was chilled. There was a little ineffectual sputter as I touched the tube; a few sparks sprang up, but no flame backed them.

“It must be compelled to look a shade more cheerful, this hermitage!” I thought. So I ran down in the dark to my own quarters for more light.

Rubbish Palace was generous as Fortunatus’s purse. Whatever one wanted came to hand. More light was my present demand. I found it in a rich old bronze candelabrum, bristling with candles. More wrappings, too, I thought my patient might require. I flung across my arm a blanket from my bed, and that gorgeous yellow satin coverlet, once Louis Philippe’s.

Perhaps, also, Dreeme might fancy some other drink than brandy when the oysters came. There was Ginevra’s coffer, again presenting a plenteous choice. I snatched up another old flask, beaming with something vinous and purple, pocketed another Venetian goblet, and, thus reinforced, hastened up-stairs.

Now that the deadly distress of my alarm for the painter was reduced to a healthy anxiety, I could think what a picture I presented marching along, with my antique branch of six lighted candles in one hand, the mass of shining drapery on my arm, and in the other hand the glass, flashing with the red glimmers of its wine. But this walking tableau met no critics on the stairs; and when I pushed open Dreeme’s door, he did not turn, as I half hoped he might, and survey the night-scene with a painter’s eye.

I deposited my illumination on the table. Then I began to envelop my tranced man in that soft satin covering, whose color alone ought to warm him.

All at once, as, kneeling, I was arranging this robe of state about Dreeme’s feet, I became conscious, by I know not what magnetism, that he had opened his eyes, and was earnestly looking at me.

I would not glance up immediately. Better that he should recognize me as a friend, at a friend’s work, before I as a person challenged him, eye to eye.

I kept my head bent down, and let him examine me, as I felt that he was doing, with hollow, melancholy eyes.

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I felt that the pale face of Cecil Dreeme was regarding me with its hollow, sad eyes, as I arrayed him in the splendid spoil of the Tuileries.

Saying to himself, perhaps, I thought, “What does this impertinent intruder want? Am I to be compelled to live against my will? I excluded air, rejected food and fire, — must self-appointed friends thrust themselves upon me, and jar my calm accord with Death?”

I might be in a false position after all. My services and my apparatus might be merely officious.

I evaded Dreeme’s look, and, moving to the table behind him, I occupied myself in pouring out a sip from the flask I had just brought. The purple wine sparkled in the goblet. In such a glass Bassanio might have pledged Portia.

No sooner had I stepped aside, than Dreeme stirred, and there came to me a voice, like the echo of a whisper: “Do not go.”

“No,” said I, “I am here.”

Thus invited, I came forward and looked at him, eye to eye.

Wonderful eyes of his! None ever shone truer, braver, steadier. These large dark orbs, now studying me with such sad earnestness, completed, without defining, my first impressions of the man. Here was finer vision for beauty than the vision of creatures of common clay. Here was keener insight into truth; here were the deeper faith, the larger love, that make Genius. A priceless spirit! so I fully discerned, now that the face had supplied its own illumination. A priceless spirit! and so nearly lost to the world, which has persons enough, but no spirits to waste.

As we regarded each other earnestly, I perceived the question flit across my mind: “Had I not had a glimpse of that inspired face before?”

“Why not?” my thought replied. “I may have seen him copying in the Louvre, sketching in the Oberland, dejected in the Coliseum, elated in St. Peter’s, taking his coffee and violets in the Cafe Bond, whisking by at the Pitti Palace ball. Artists start up everywhere in Europe, like butterflies among flowers. He may have flashed across my sight, and imprinted an image on my brain to which his presence applies the stereoscopic counterpart.

This image, if it existed, was too faint to hold its own with the reality. It vanished, or only remained a slight blur in my mind. I satisfied myself that I was comparing Dreeme with his idealized self in the picture.

“You are better,” said I.

There came a feeble, flutter-like “Yes,” in reply.

He still continued looking at me in a vague, bewildered way, his great, sad eyes staring from his pale face, as if he had not strength to close them.

“I have been giving you brandy,” I said; “let me offer a gentler medicine.”

I held out the cup. Then, as he made no sign of assent, I felt that he might have a reasonable hesitation in taking an unknown draught from a stranger hand. I sipped a little of the wine. It was fragrant Port with plenty of body and a large proportion of soul. Magnificent Mafra at its royalist banquet never poured out richer juices to enlarge a Portuguese king into manhood. It had two flavors. One would say that the grapes which once held it bottled within the dewy transparency of their rind had hung along the terraces beside the sea, drinking two kinds of sunshine all the long afternoons of ripe midsummer. Every grape had felt the round sun gazing straight and steadily at it, and enjoying his countenance within, as a lover loves to see his own image reflected in his lady’s eye. And every grape besides had taken in the broad glow of sunshine shining back from the glassy bay its vineyard overhung, or the shattered lights of innumerable ripples, stirred when the western winds came slinging themselves along the level sunbeams of evening. Harry Stillfleet! why didn’t you have a pipe, instead of a quart, of the stuff? Why not an ocean, instead of a sample?

I sipped a little, like a king’s wine-taster.

“Port, not poison, Mr. Dreeme,” said I. “This Venice glass would shiver with poison, and crack with scorn at any dishonest beverage.”