Forrest Reid

“ Did the painter intend to show that these were the things she was fondest of—music and flowers? Poor Prudence Carroll had been dust these hundred years, the notes of her spinet were either cracked or dumb, and her tardy lover had arrived a century too late, for she had died unmarried, and but a year after this portrait was painted! Why had no one cared for her? Perhaps someday, between twilight and dusk, she would slip into my room and sing to me, "Rose softly Blooming," or "Voi che sapete! " ”

“ Back farther than anything else there reach two impressions—one, of being set to dance naked on a table, amid the laughter of women, and the rhythmic clapping of their hands; the other, probably later in date, of what must have been a house-cleaning, stamped on my mind by an inexplicable fear of those flakey collections of dust which gather under furniture that has not been moved for a long time. ”

“ The only people I can imagine it pleasant to write for are quite young people. They might lend your work a sort of charm by reading their own youth and enthusiasm into it. But it is not easy to arouse enthusiasm by describing how Bernardino de' Conti paints ears, or how Pontormo models hands. For one thing, nobody wants to know. All that it leads to is that presently you find yourself approaching the most innocent work of art with the mind of a detective, revelling in clues and the æsthetically unimportant. Nine-tenths of your enjoyment comes from the gratified sense of your own ingenuity. ”

“ It is as if one's memories floated in a kind of haze, appearing and disappearing, melting into one another. But there is a definite point from which my story becomes consecutive, and I can carry it back as far as that cold, clear January morning, the morning of Mr. Carroll's funeral, when I stood beside my father, at some distance from the grave, among a group of people I did not know, and whom I should never see again. ”

“ As I write it now, in this quiet, gray, autumn morning, it appears to me that the thought then hovering at the back of my mind was, after all, not so very foolish. Death, coming without disease, without weakness, before life has grown stale, before illusions have been shattered and innocence marred;—simply upon the bright, fresh comedy of life, the dropping of a dark, rapid curtain. ”

“ Miss McWaters was a thin and angular person, no longer young, endowed by nature with a high-pitched voice, prominent teeth, and a red nose, and by art with a yellow, fuzzy fringe. All these qualities now loomed particularly large in my vision of her, though at other times I knew she was a kind and friendly person. Her red nose and her fringe haunted me, her whole face seemed to undergo extraordinary, kaleidoscopic changes; she became a sort of fantastic witch who was exercising horrible spells on these small children standing in a circle round her chair ”

“ A rustle of muslin, a ghostly scent of ghostly flowers, the twangling notes of the spinet, and a voice singing a song that would sound thin and far off, like the sound of wind—that is how it would happen. ”

“ With Prudence Carroll I had been in love all my life, and sometimes, in the dusk, when I struck very softly one of the cracked treble notes of the spinet, I would imagine her spirit stealing on tip-toe up behind me to listen. ”

“ He was a very different Jim from the one who had climbed a ladder to see my skin peeling off, though he had the same round rosy candid face, like a ripe russet apple, and though he still played doleful tunes on his flute. But he had developed amazingly: he had grown into a strapping big fellow, with limbs like a youthful Hercules. ”

“ The romance surrounding the picture of Prudence Carroll, that peculiar, brooding quality of mind by which I could give to such things a kind of spiritual life that had for me an absolute reality, was, perhaps, only too characteristic of a mental condition which might unsympathetically be called that of perpetual wool-gathering. Though I played cricket and football, and bathed and knocked about generally with the other boys in the village, I had no close friends, and I dreamed of an imaginary playmate. For this playmate and myself I invented appropriate adventures. ”

“ This time I thought it came from the top of the picture, and glancing up I saw, sure enough, a black imp, like a small, naked, negro boy, perched cross-legged, on the top of the frame, from which he grinned down at me impudently, raising his fingers to his snub nose, and spreading them out in a derisive and very familiar grimace. I began to talk about the picture, about school, and about Miss McWaters. Then a cloud waved back from my brain; the portrait slid into its place, the imp disappeared, and everything was once more as it should be. ”

“ I awoke in broad sunlight. The room was full of it, and the scent of flowers floated in through the open windows and mingled with the faint smell of drugs. For some time I lay there quietly, too languid to make a movement or to speak. Then the door softly opened, and I saw Mrs. Carroll come in and stand beside my bed. "Is he asleep?" I heard her ask, for I had closed my eyes. I opened them and looked up at her.
"No," I answered, smiling.
She smiled, too. "It's time for you to take your medicine," and the nurse came forward to give it to me. ”

“ I went on to the summer-house and lay down among the bracken close by. I had been there fully two hours before I saw Katherine coming. She smiled brightly as I rose from my ferny bed to greet her.
"Why did I come without an umbrella?"she exclaimed gaily. "It's just going to pour!" And she turned to look at the heavy clouds that were gliding up rapidly against the wind.
"You can shelter in the summer-house," I said, laconically.
"I loathe summer-houses, especially when they're like this old thing, crammed with earwigs and spiders." ”

“ The trousers would look black but for the darker shade of the long boots, and this darker note is carried through to the trees behind, sombre and heavy against a yellow sky. Both man and dog are obviously posing for their portraits—the whole thing is a work of art, that is to say, it is something utterly beyond nature. The highest light is in the face, but there is no white anywhere, and, with the exception of the faint red of the lips, no colour save the browns and blacks, the creamy flesh-tints. Over all, the mellow tone of time has cast a kind of golden softness. ”

“ Leonardo would have made a drawing of him, would have delighted in the superb limbs and wide deep chest, the big, broad, heavy, wrinkled head, with its massive, low-hanging jaw, its upturned, flat, black nose, its silky ears, like the petals of a rose, and those dark, lovely eyes, in which, when he was at rest, a profound melancholy floated. ”

“ Shadowless in the strong sun, the road wound on ahead, white with dust, like a pale ribbon on the green and russet landscape. We had gone about a mile when Gerald suddenly announced, "I'm not going any further; it's too hot." ”

“ And late that night, when, thoroughly wearied out, I went to bed, and from sheer exhaustion would be dropping off to sleep, from time to time it would pierce through my numbing senses, and waken me sharply, as if some one had violently pulled me, so that I would start up, yet for a moment not realize what it was that had wakened me. ”

“ God strike me blind! God strike me blind!" I waited with a mingled trepidation and incredulity, as if I had thrown some mysterious bomb into the unknown. A sea-gull flew past the window, white against the dark autumn sky: the leaves of the Virginian creeper trembled and grew still. ”

“ It had grown rapidly dark, and now a heavy rain began, cold and sad, sweeping through the trees, very soon making it plain that the summer-house was in need of repair. From the distance there came the crying of a sea-gull, a mournful, solitary note.
"Don't be angry with me, Peter," said Katherine, coming to the door and looking out. "I know it was stupid of me to write, but I never dreamt of mamma coming over like this. . . . . Why has it got so dark?" ”

“ The curiously long, oval face, with its high forehead and narrow, pointed chin, has much distinction, though little beauty, and its pallor contrasts oddly with the faded red of the full sensuous lips, completely revealed beneath the light, curled moustache. The eyes are dark, the hair light brown. ”

“ It was a portrait of a lady with dark hair and dark blue eyes, and it was partly this peculiar contrast, I think, this contrast of blue eyes and black hair, that had originally pleased me. She was young and she had a strange quaint name—Prudence Carroll. The artist had painted her as if she were just come in from the garden, for she held still a bunch of flowers in her hand. She was standing by a queer little piano—or was it a spinet? the spinet I had now in my room? ”

“ At the head of the staircase, full in the light, hangs the celebrated portrait people come from far to admire. I sat down on the wide couch before it, not because I wanted to look at what I had already seen thousands of times, but because my head swam. I leaned against the back of the couch and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the portrait being in front of me, I could not help staring at it, in a dull way. It represents a young man standing bare-headed on a hill-side, holding a gun in his hand, and with an elderly dog seated sedately by him. ”

“ To be dressed in a new suit of clothes gave me a curious physical pleasure—a feeling purely sensual, and that must, I imagine, have been connected with the dawn of obscure sex instincts. Such things can be of little interest save to the student of psychology, and it would be tedious to catalogue them in full, but I have no doubt myself that if they, and others, had been intelligently observed, the whole of my future could have been cast from them. ”

“ It was broken by my father who seemed now deeply offended. "Did you make any arrangements about going back?"
"I promised to go to-morrow, after breakfast."
"What for?"
"I was asked to take the Dales somewhere."
"Can't they find their own way? It isn't very difficult."
"Does that mean I'm not to go?"
"You can't be always going there. You seem to me to live there."
"It's easier than living at home," I muttered.
"It is pleasanter, I daresay; but I don't want you to make yourself a nuisance to strangers."
"Aren't they the best judges of whether I'm a nuisance or not?" ”

“ I have developed, but what I was then I am now, what I cared for then I care for now. In other words, like everybody else, I came into this world a mere bundle of inherited instincts, for the activity of which I was no more responsible than for the falling of last night's rain. ”

“ To me, I confess, they throw a disquieting light upon all human affairs, reviving that sombre figure of destiny which overshadowed the antique world.
Another and happier instinct which I brought with me from the unknown was an intense sympathy with animals. There was not a cat or dog or goat or donkey in the village that I had not struck up a friendship with. I even carried this sympathy so far as to insist on feeding daily the ridiculous stone lions which flanked the doorsteps at Derryaghy House. ”

“ Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire, and vapour of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. ”

“ Miss Dick, who seemed determined, cost what it might, to keep the conversation on the subject of music, mentioned that her mother had heard Patti in "La Sonnambula," and how, when that great prima donna had paused in the middle of the opera to sing "Home Sweet Home," the entire house had risen to its feet with enthusiasm. "It has always seemed to me that music is the most perfect of the arts," she added, fixing her lace collar.
"Painting is the most perfect of the arts," I contradicted. ”

“ I went on to prove that it was not my fault, that my father had refused to allow me to join the club, but at that point I caught Gerald's eyes watching me with an expression of interest, and I suddenly blushed. "Do you play!" I asked him aggressively.
He seemed surprised. His glance just brushed mine and rested on a picture above my head. "No." he answered quietly.
"Gerald is studying music abroad," said Mrs. Carroll, "at Vienna, where I don’t suppose they have ever heard of golf, He is going to be a musician,"
"How interesting!" exclaimed Miss Dick. "Fancy, Vienna!" ”

“ The next moment Jim's face, brown and ruddy and grinning, popped in, and I gasped with relief. Jim was a boy who worked in the garden, and was about the same age as I was. He smiled broadly, and his bright, brown eyes gazed at me with evident pleasure. " How are you. Master Peter? "he grinned. " They're nobody about, so I thought I'd look in."
"Oh, I'm all right," I answered, " but you mustn't stay there, or you'll be catching the infection." ”

“ Carroll took me to be examined by a specialist. I was examined, sounded, tapped, a sample of my blood taken, and other odious things done to me, before it was finally decided that I must go abroad. I listened to the discussion that followed, taking no part in it myself, but simply sitting on the sofa in the consulting-room.
"For the winter, I suppose?"
"For the winter certainly."
"And afterwards?"
"Afterwards? I'm afraid it is impossible to say. There is no use making promises which may never be fulfilled. ”

“ What is there for a boy of eighteen, with no taste for society, and left to wander about Europe alone, to do? Fortunately, I had always cared for pictures, and early Italian art appealed to me particularly. ”

“ Yet when he did commence to play, after many preliminaries, it was in a broken fragmentary fashion, beginning things and suddenly dropping them after a few bars. I was prepared not to like him, but he had not struck more than a note or two when I knew I had never heard the piano really played before. ”