A Likely Story. William De Morgan

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CHAPTER II

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      How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently. How he woke up from a dream, which went on. The loquacity of a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality. The Artist's name. There was plenty of time to hear more. The exact date of Antiquity. The Rational way of accounting for it.

      Old Mr. Pelly is the little grey-headed wrinkled man with gold spectacles whom you have seen in London bookshops and curio-stores in late August and early September, when all the world has been away; the little old man who has seemed to you to have walked out of the last century but one. You may not have observed him closely enough at the moment to have a clear recollection of details, but you will have retained an image of knee-breeches and silk stockings; of something peculiar in the way of a low-crowned hat; of a watch and real seals; of a gold snuff-box you would have liked to sell for your own benefit; and of an ebony walking-stick with a silver head and a little silk tassel. On thinking this old gentleman over you will probably feel sorry you did not ask him a question about Mazarine Bibles or Aldus Manutius, so certain were you he would not have been rude.

      But you did not do so, and very likely he went back to Grewceham, in Worcestershire, where he lives by himself, and you lost your opportunity that time. However that may be, it is old Mr. Pelly our story has to do with now, and he is sitting before a wood-fire out of all proportion to the little dry old thing it was lighted to warm, and listening to the roaring of the wind in the big chimney of the library he sits in.

      But it is not his own library. That is at Grewceham, two miles off. This library is the fine old library at Surley Stakes, the country-seat of Sir Stopleigh Upwell, M.P., whose father was at school with Mr. Pelly, over sixty years ago.

      Mr. Pelly is stopping at "The Stakes," as it is called, to avoid the noise and fuss of the little market-town during an election. And for that same reason has not accompanied Sir Stopleigh and his wife and daughter to a festivity consequent on the return of that very old Bart, for the County. They will be late back; so Mr. Pelly can do no better than sit in the firelight, rejecting lamps and candles, and thinking over the translation of an Italian manuscript, in fragments, that his friend Professor Schrudengesser has sent him from Florence. It has been supposed to have some connection with the cinque-cento portrait by an unknown Italian artist that hangs above the fire-blaze. And this portrait is the one the story saw, a little over six months since, in the atelier of that picture-cleaner, Mr. Reginald Aiken, who managed to brew a quarrel with his wife by his own silliness and bad taste.

      It is only dimly visible in the half-light, but Mr. Pelly knows it is there; knows, too, that its eyes can see him, if a picture's eyes can see, and that its laugh is there on the parted lips, and that its jewelled hand is wound into the great tress of gold that falls on its bosom. For it is a portrait of a young and beautiful woman, such as Galuppi Baldassare wrote music about—you know, of course! And Mr. Pelly, as he thinks what it will look like when Stebbings, the butler, or his myrmidons, bring in lights, feels chilly and grown old.

      But Stebbings' instructions were distinctly not to bring in lights till Mr. Pelly rang, and Mr. Pelly didn't ring. He drank the cup of coffee Stebbings had provided, without putting any cognac in it, and then fell into a doze. When he awoke, with a start and a sudden conviction that he indignantly fought against that he had been asleep, it was to find that the log-flare had worn itself out, and the log it fed on was in its decrepitude. Just a wavering irresolute flame on its saw-cut end, and a red glow, and that was all it had left behind.

      "Who spoke?" It was Mr. Pelly who asked the question. But no one had spoken, apparently. Yet he would have sworn that he heard a woman's voice speaking in Italian. How funny that the associations of an Italian manuscript should creep into his dream!—that was all Mr. Pelly thought about it. For the manuscript was almost entirely English rendering, and no one in it, so far as he could recollect, had said as this voice did, "Good-evening, Signore!" It was a dream! He polished his spectacles and watched the glowing log that bridged an incandescent valley, and wondered what the sudden births of little intense white light could be that came and lived on nothing and vanished, unaccounted for. He knew Science knew, and would ask her, next time they met. But, for now, he would be content to sit still, and keep watch on that log. It must break across the middle soon, and collapse into the valley in a blaze of sparks.

      Watching a fire, without other light in the room, is fraught with sleep to one who has lately dined, even if he has a pipe or cigar in his mouth to burn him awake when he drops it. Much more so to a secure non-smoker, like Mr. Pelly. Probably he did go to sleep again—but who can say? He really believed himself wide-awake, though, when the same voice came again; not loud, to be sure, but unmistakable. And the way it startled him helped to convince him he was awake. Because one is never surprised at anything in a dream. When one finds oneself at Church in a stocking, and nothing more, one is vexed and embarrassed, certainly, but not surprised. It dawns on one gradually. If this was a dream, it was a very solid one, to survive Mr. Pelly's start of amazement. It brought him out of his chair, and set him looking about in the half-lighted room for a speaker, somewhere.

      "Who СКАЧАТЬ