University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
DREEME, ASLEEP.

A current of wintry wind flowed in as Locksley
lifted the sash.

“Fresh air is prime for the inside,” said he.
“But warm air for the outside is the next best
thing. Shall I light a fire in the stove?”

“Do; but first hand me that plaid.”

I wrapped my unresisting patient in the shawl.
He was a mere dead weight in my hands. I
shuddered to think that his life might be drifting
away, just out of my reach.

“I hope we are not too late,” I said.

“Shall I fetch a doctor?” asked Locksley.

“Fire first. Then doctor — if he does not revive.”

“There 's no kindling-wood,” says Locksley,
from the closet. “I 'll run down to your place,
Mr. Byng, and get some.”

“Pray do!”

He hurried off. I was left alone with the
tranced man. I repeated the little dose of brandy,
and stood aside to let the light of the candle
fall upon his face.

“Stop!” said Delicacy. “Respect the young
man's resolute incognito.”

“Too late!” I thought in reply. “Incognito
has nearly murdered him. I shall knock it in
the head without ceremony. Besides, Fate has
appointed me his physician; how can I doctor
him intelligently without feeling the pulse of his
soul by studying his face?”

The first question I asked the pale, voiceless
countenance was, whether I was not committing
the impertinence of trying to force a man to live
who had wished to kill himself. Suicide? No;
I don't see any blood. I smell no laudanum.
Here has been unhappiness, but no despair, no
self-disgust. A pure life and a clear intellect, —
so the face publishes. Such a youth might wear
out with work or a wound; he would never
abdicate his birthright to live and learn, to suffer
and be strong. Clearly no suicide.

“No,” my thought continued rapidly, “Locksley
has supplied the theory of Mr. Dreeme's case.
His face illustrates and confirms it. A man of
genius, ardent, poor, and nursing a wound. The
wound may be merely a scratch, he may merely
have had the poet's quarrel with vulgar life; but,
great or small, the hurt has consigned him to
this unwholesome solitude, and here he has lavished
his mind and body on his art. No, Cecil
Dreeme, you are dying because you have ignorantly

lived too intensely. But the world does not
willingly let such faces die. I myself feel the
need of you. Even with your eyes closed, the
light gone, your countenance tells me of the presence
of a character and an experience riper and
deeper than my own. What have you been
taught by suffering, what have you divined by
genius, that you wear maturity so patiently upon
your sad young face?”

I took the candle and held it to his lips. Did
he breathe? The flame flickered. But the air
flowing in from without might have caused that;
and I would not close the window until the keen
northern blast had scourged out every breath of
languor from the stifling room.

I withdrew the candle. Curiosity urged me
to study the face more in detail. But that
seemed disloyal to the sleeper. I had made up
my mind that my patient was worthy of all my
care. He was not dead, that I should dissect
him. While a face can protect itself by the eye,
— which is shield to ward, blade to parry, and
point to assail, — one feels not much scruple in
staring. But what right had I to profit by this
chance lifting of the visor of a disarmed man,
who wished to do his battle of life unknown?

I therefore stopped intentionally short of a
thorough analysis of his countenance. Fair play
and my anxiety both made me content with my

general impressions. It is error to waste the first
look and the first few moments, if one wishes to
comprehend a face, — to see into it. No after
observations are so sharp and so unprejudiced.

Roughly then, — Cecil Dreeme's face was refined
and sensitive, the face of a born artist.
Separately, the features were all good, well cut
and strong. Their union did not produce beauty.
It was a face not harmonized by its construction,
but by expression, — by the impression it gave of
a vigorous mind, controlling varied and perhaps
discordant elements of character into unison.
There was force, energy, passion, and no lack of
sweetness. Short, thick, black hair grew rather
low over a square forehead. The eyebrows were
heavy and square. The hollow cheeks were all
burnt away by the poor fellow's hermit life. He
wore no beard, so that he was as far from the
frowzy Düsseldorfer of my fancy as from the
pretty, poetic young Raphael. This was a man
of another order, not easy to classify. His countenance
seemed to interpret his strange circumstances.
The face and the facts were consistent,
and both faithful to their mystery.

All this while I was chafing his hands, and
watching intently for some tremor of revival.

Presently the silence and the lifeless touch
grew so appalling, that I was moved to call
aloud: “Dreeme! Cecil Dreeme!”

I half fancied that he stirred at this.

Yes! No!

Trance was master still. Life must be patient.
If it wrestled too soon, it might get a fatal fall.
I dreaded the thought of my invalid giving one
gasp, shuddering with one final spasm, and then
drooping into my arms — dead.

Locksley now came clattering into the lobby,
dropping billets from an over-load of kindling-wood.

He shot down his armful by the stove, and approached
the figure in the arm-chair.

“Any pulse?” said he, taking the cold hand
in his.

“Is there any?” I asked, eagerly.

“I should n't wonder,” he replied, “if the
blood was starting, just a little, like water under
ice in the early spring.” Locksley repeated the
experiment with the candle.

“He breathes,” he whispered.

There was for a moment no draught, and
the flame certainly trembled before Dreeme's
lips.

“He can't be said to be coming to,” again
whispered the janitor. “That 's too far ahead.
But he 's out of the woods, and struck the cart-track
leadin' to the turnpike.”

“Thank God!”

“Ay! that always!” said Locksley, gravely.

“Now here goes at the fire! You 'll hear a
rumblin' in this stove before many minutes
that would boost a chimney-sweep.”

He heaped in his kindling-stuff, and lighted
it. The pleasant noise of fire began. Locksley
left the stove, intoning hollow music, like an
automaton bassoon, and turned to me: “Looks
pretty gritty, — Mr. Dreeme, — don't he? And
pretty mild too?”

“Both,” said I.

“Not many would have stood it out alone
in such a bare barn as this.”

For the first time I gave myself an instant to
glance about the studio.

A bare barn indeed! Half-carpeted, furnished
with a table, a chest of drawers, and two or three
chairs. The three doors, corresponding to my
bath-room, bedroom, and lumber-room, were the
only objects to break the monotony of the unadorned
walls. After the lavish confusion of
Rubbish Palace, this place looked doubly bleak
and forlorn. To paint here, without one single
attractive bit of color or form to relieve the eye
and subsidize the fancy, was a tour de force, like
a blind man's writing a Paradise Lost, or a deaf
man's composing a symphony.

“He 's had to wind his whole picture out of
his head,” said Locksley, following my glance.
“and it ain't so bad either, if you could see it

fair by daylight. Look at it there! It 's one
of those pictures that make a man feel savage
and sorry all at once.”

Lear and his Daughters, — that was the picture
on Dreeme's easel. I glanced at it, as I
continued my offices about him.

The faint light of one candle gave it a certain
mysterious reality. The background retired, the
figures projected. They stirred almost, almost
spoke. It seemed that I ought to know them,
but that, if I did not catch the likeness at the
first look, I could never see it. “That large and
imposing figure, the King! — wipe out the hate
from his face, and I have surely seen the face.
The Regan is in shadow; but the Goneril, —
what features do I half remember that scorn
might so despoil of beauty? Ah! that is the
power of a great artist. His creations become
facts. This is not imagination, it is history. At
last here is my vague conception of Lear realized.”

The Cordelia I recognized at once. “Cecil
Dreeme himself. He needed, it seems, but little
womanizing. A very noble figure, even as I
see it faintly. Tenderness, pity, undying love
for the harsh father, for the false sisters, all these
Dreeme's Cordelia — Dreeme's self idealized —
expresses fully.”

These observations, made in the dim light,

were interrupted by a little stir and gasp of our
patient.

We watched anxiously and in silence. Fresh
air, warm wrappings, brandy, and the magnetism
of human touch and human presence, were prevailing.
Yes; there could be no doubt; he
breathed faintly.

The fire in the stove was now roaring loud.
That lusty sound and the dismal wind without
could not overpower the low, feeble gasps of the
unconscious man.

“We 've got him, hooray!” said Locksley, in
an excited whisper.

We shook hands, like victors after a charge.
I could have seized the bristly janitor, and whirled
him into a Pyrrhic breakdown, without respect to
my ceiling below.

“Air he 's got,” says Locksley, “and fire he 's
got, and a friend he 's got; now for some food
for him! If you say so, I 'll just jiff round to
Bagpypes, first block in Broadway, and get some
oysters. He has n't touched a mouthful to-day,
unless he can eat anthracite out of the coal-bin.
Starvation 's half the trouble. An oyster is all
the world in one bite. Let 's get some oysters
into him, and we 'll build him up higher than a
shot-tower in an hour's time!”

“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.