A chill crept through my bones. I had accepted Lady Pollacke’s invitation, thinking my mere presence would be entertainment enough, and because I knew it was important to see life, and immensely important to see Mr. Crimble. In actual fact it seemed I had hopped for a moment not out of my cage, but merely, as Fanny had said, into another compartment of it.
“But Mr. Crimble and I were only talking,” I managed to utter.
“Oh, now, but do! Delicious!” pleaded a trio of voices.
Their faces had suddenly become a little strained and unnatural. The threat of further persuasion lifted me almost automatically to my feet. With hunted eyes fixed at last on a small marble bust with stooping head and winged brow that stood on a narrow table under the window, I recited the first thing that sprang to remembrance—an old poem my mother had taught me, “Tom o’ Bedlam.”
“The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake,
And the night-crow, make
Me music to my sorrow.I know more than Apollo;
For oft when he lies sleeping,
I behold the stars
At mortal wars,
And the rounded welkin weeping.The moon embraces her shepherd,
And the Queen of Love her warrior;
While the first does horn
The stars of the morn,
And the next the heavenly farrier. …”
Throughout these first three stanzas all went well. So rapt was my audience that I seemed to be breaking the silence of the seas beyond their furthest Hebrides. But at the first line of the fourth—at “With a heart”—my glance unfortunately wandered off from the unheeding face of the image and swam through the air, to be caught, as it were, like fly by spider, by Miss Bullace’s dark, fixed gaze, that lay on me from under her flat hat.
“ ‘With a heart,’ ” I began; and failed. Some ghost within had risen in rebellion, sealed my tongue. It seemed to my irrational heart that I had—how shall I say it?—betrayed my “stars,” betrayed Fanny, that she and they and I could never be of the same far, quiet company again. So the “furious fancies” were never shared. The blood ran out of my cheek; I stuck fast; and shook my head.
At which quite a little tempest of applause spent itself against the walls of Lady Pollacke’s drawing-room, an applause reinforced by that of a little round old gentleman, who, unnoticed, had entered the room by a farther door, and was now advancing to greet his guest. He was promptly presented to me on the beast-skin, and with the gentlest courtesy begged me to continue.
“ ‘With a heart,’ now; ‘with a heart …’ ” he prompted me, “a most important organ, though less in use nowadays than when I was a boy.”
But it was in vain. Even if he had asked me only to whisper the rest of the poem into his long, pink ear, for his sake alone, I could not have done so. Moreover, Mr. Crimble was still nodding his head at his mother in confirmation of his applause; and Miss Bullace was assuring me that mine was a poem entirely unknown to her, that, “with a few little excisions,” it should be instantly enshrined in her repertory—“though perhaps a little bizarre!” and that if I made trial of Lady Bovill Porter’s Bowershee method, my memory would never again play me false.
“The enunciation—am I not right, Sir Walter?—as distinct from the elocution—was flawless. And really, quite remarkable vocal power!”
Amidst these smiles and delights, and what with the brassy heat of the fire and the scent of the skin, I thought I should presently faint, and caught, as if at a straw, at the bust in the window.
“How lovely!” I cried, with pointing finger. …
At that, silence fell, but only for a moment. Lady Pollacke managed to follow the unexpected allusion, and led me off for a closer inspection. In the hushed course of our progress thither I caught out of the distance two quavering words uttered as if in expostulation, “apparent intelligence.” It was Mrs. Crimble addressing Sir Walter Pollacke.
“Classical, you know,” Lady Pollacke was sonorously informing me, as we stood together before the marble head. “Charming pose, don’t you think? Though, as we see, only a fragment—one of Sir Walter’s little hobbies.”
I looked up at the serene, winged, sightless face, and a whisper sounded on and on in my mind in its mute presence, “I know more than Apollo; I know more than Apollo.” How strange that this mere deaf-and-dumbness should seem more real, more human even, than anything or anyone else in Lady Pollacke’s elegant drawing-room. But self-possession was creeping back. “Who,” I asked, “is he? And who sculped him?”
“Scalped him?” cried Lady Pollacke, poring down on me in dismay.
“Cut him out?”
“Ah, my dear young lady,” said a quiet voice, “that I cannot tell you. It is the head of Hypnos, Sleep, you know, the son of Night and brother of Death. One wing, as you see, has been broken away in preparation for this more active age, and yet … only a replica, of course”; the voice trembled into richness, “but an exceedingly pleasant example. It gives me rare pleasure, rare pleasure,” he stood softly rocking, hands under coattails, eyes drinking me in, “to—to have your companionship.”
What pleasure his words gave me, I could not—can never—express. Then and there I was his slave forever.
“Walter,” murmured Lady Pollacke, as if fondly, smiling down on the rotund old gentleman, “you are a positive peacock over your little toys; is he not, Mr. Crimble? Did you ever hear of a woman wasting her affections on the inanimate? Even a doll, I am told, is an infant in disguise.”
But Mr. Crimble had approached us not to discuss infants or woman, but to tell Lady Pollacke that her carriage was awaiting me.
“Then pity ’tis, ’tis true,” cried she, as if in Miss Bullace’s words. “But please, Miss M., it must be the briefest of adieus. There are
