University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
DREEME, AWAKE.

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
Café Doné, 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 over-hung,
or the shattered lights of innumerable
ripples, stirred when the western winds came
slinging themselves along the level sunbeams
of evening. O Harry Stillfleet! why did n'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.”

He seemed to make a feeble attempt at a
smile, as I proffered the dose. “Your health!”
his lips rather framed than uttered.

I put the glass to his mouth.

An unexpected picture for mid-nineteenth century,
and a corner of rusty Chrysalis! a strange
picture! — this dark-haired, wasted youth, robed
like a sick prince, and taking his posset from a
goblet fashioned, perhaps, in a shop that paid
rent to Shylock.

Dreeme closed his eyes, and seemed to let
the wholesome fever of his draught revivify
him. By this time the room was warm and
comfortable. The stove might be ugly as a

cylindrical fetish of the blackest Africa; but it
radiated heat with Phœbus-like benignity.

“How cheerful!” murmured the painter,
looking up again, his forlorn expression departed.
“Fire! Light! I am a new being!”

“Not a spirit, then!” said I. There was still
something remote and ghost-like in the bewildered
look of his hollow eyes.

“No spirit! This is real flesh and blood.”

I smiled. “Not much of either.”

“Have I to thank you that I am not indeed
a spirit?” asked he slowly, but seeming to gain
strength as he spoke.

“Locksley, the janitor, first, and me, second,
you may thank, if life is a boon to you.”

“I thank both devoutly. Life is precious,
while its work remains undone.”

Here he closed his eyes, as if facing labor and
duty again was too much for his feebleness.
When he glanced up at me anew, I fancied I
saw an evanescent look of recognition drift
across his face.

This set me a second time turning over the
filmy leaves of the book of portraits in my brain.
Was his semblance among those legions of faces
packed close and set away in order there? No.
I could not identify him. The likeness drifted
away from me, and vanished, like a perplexing
strain of music, once just trembling at the lips,

but now gone with the breath, refusing to be
sung.

I thought it not best to worry him with inquiries;
so I waited quietly, and in a moment he
began.

“Will you tell me what has happened? How
came I under your kind care? Yours is a new
face in Chrysalis.”

“I must give the face a name,” said I. “Let
me present myself. Mr. Robert Byng.”

“In return, know me as Mr. Cecil Dreeme.
Will you shake hands with your grateful patient,
Mr. Byng.”

He weakly lifted an attenuated hand. Poor
fellow! I could hardly keep my vigorous fist
from crushing up that meagre, chilly handful, so
elated was I at his recovery and his gratitude.

“I owe you an explanation, of course,” said I.
“I am a new-comer, arrived from Europe only
last night. Mr. Stillfleet, an old comrade, ceded
his chambers below to me this afternoon. Locksley
came to my door at twelve o'clock, looking
for my friend Mr. Churm, who had been sitting
with me. Churm had gone. Locksley was in
great alarm. I volunteered my advice. He took
me into his confidence, so far as this: he said
that you were a young painter, living in the closest
retirement, for reasons satisfactory to yourself,
and that he feared you were dying from

overwork, confinement, solitude, and perhaps
mental trouble. I said you must be helped at
once. We came up, and banged at your door
heartily. No answer. We took the liberty to
pick your lock and break into your castle. Then
we took the greater liberty to put life into you,
in the form of air, warmth, and alcohol.”

“Pardonable liberties, surely.”

“Yes; since it seems you did not mean to
die.”

“Suicide!” said Dreeme, reproachfully. “No,
thank God! You did not accuse me of that, Mr.
Byng!”

“When we were knocking at your door, and
hearing only a deathly silence, I dreaded that
you had let toil and trouble drive you to despair.”

“Overwork and anxiety were killing me, without
my knowledge.”

“And solitude?” said I.

“And that solitude of the heart which is the
brother of death. Yes, Mr. Byng, I have been
extravagant of my life. But innocently. Believe
it!”

There was such eager protest in his look and
tone, that I hastened to reassure him.

“When I saw your face, Mr. Dreeme, I read
there too much mental life and too much moral
life for suicide. I see brave patience in your
countenance. Besides, you have too much sense

to rush out and tap Death on the cold shoulder,
and beg to be let out of life into Paradise before
you have earned your entrance fee. You know,
as well as I do, that Death keeps suicides shivering
in Chaos, without even a stick and a knife to
notch off the measureless days, until the allotted
dying hour they vainly tried to anticipate comes
round.”

Dreeme's attention refused to be averted from
his own case by such speculations.

“I have been struggling with dark waters, —
dark waters, Mr. Byng,” said he.

“Churm's very phrase to describe his sorrow,”
I thought. “Who knows but Dreeme's grief is
the same?”

“Struggling like a raw swimmer,” he continued.
“And when I was drowning, I find you
sent to give me a friendly hand. It is written
that I shall not die with all my work undone.
No, no. I shall live to finish.”

He spoke with strange energy, and turned
toward his easel as he closed.

“You refer to your picture,” said I, pleased
to see his artist enthusiasm kindle so soon.

“My picture!” he rejoined, a little carelessly,
as if it were of graver work he had thought.
“How does it promise? I have put my whole
heart into it. But hand cannot always speak
loud enough or clear enough to interpret heart.”

“Hand has not stammered or mumbled here,”
I replied. “My first glance showed me that.
But I must have daylight to study it as it deserves.
Am I right in recognizing you as the
Cordelia of the piece?”

“For lack of a better model, I remodelled myself,
and intruded there in womanly guise. My
work is unfinished, as you see; but if you had
not interposed to-night, I should have painted
no more.” He shuddered, and seemed to grow
faint again at the thought of that desolate death
he had hardly escaped.

“Let me cheer you with a fresh dose of vitality,”
said I. “A little more Lusitanian sun in
crystal of Venice.”

This time he was strong enough himself to
raise the cup to his lips. He sipped, and smiled
gratefully; — and really a patient owes some
thanks to a doctor who restores him with nectar
smooth and fragrant, instead of rasping his throat
and flaying his whole interior with the bitters
sucked by sour-tempered roots from vixenish
soils.

“It was a happy fate, a kind Providence,”
said Dreeme, “that sent to me in my extremity
a gentleman whose touch to mind and body is
fine and gentle as a woman's.”

“Thank you,” rejoined I. “But remember
that I am only acting as Mr. Churm's substitute.

I hope you will let me bring him to you in the
morning.”

“No,” said he, almost with rude emphasis.

I looked at him in some surprise. “You seem
to have a prejudice against the name,” I remarked.

“Why should I? I merely do not wish to add
to my list of friends.”

“But Mr. Churm is the very ideal friend, —
stanch as oak, true as steel, warm and cheery as
sunshine, eager as fresh air, tender as midsummer
rain. Do let me interest him in you. He
is just the man to befriend a lonely fellow.”

Dreeme shook his head, resolutely and sadly.

“You seem to mistrust my enthusiasm,” I said.

“It is tragic to me,” he returned, “to hear a
generous nature talk so ardently of its friendships.
Have you had no disappointments? Has no one
you loved changed and become abased?”

“One would almost say you were trying to
shake my faith in my friend.”

“Why should I? I speak generally.”

Here the partition door of the lobby without
opened, and we heard footsteps.

“Friend Locksley, with some supper for you,”
said I, half annoyed at the interruption of our
tête-à-tête.

“How kind! how thoughtful of you both!”
and tears started in Dreeme's eyes as he spoke.