‘Very agreeable,’ said Marden. ‘But I am interrupting you——’
‘And,’ said the doctor, almost sternly, as though resolved to fulfil the very letter of civility, ‘you have enjoyed good health, you and your household?’
‘Alas, no,’ answered the young man. ‘For myself I have nothing to complain of. But my man Dewdney——’
‘Excellent!’ The doctor turned back to his bench. ‘Now this little experiment, my friend, is . . .’ His voice trailed away.
‘My man Dewdney,’ repeated Marden, ‘who had been of my household longer than I can remember . . .’
‘Ah yes,’ agreed the doctor. ‘Faithful fellow. . . . This little experiment, Marden, is one that may have very far-reaching results. But you were telling about your servant?’
Marden thought it best to come to the point quickly and have done. ‘We buried him last week.’
‘Yes?’ said the doctor, smiling pleasantly. ‘Very far-reaching results indeed. So you buried him, did you?’ Seeing his guest’s grave look, he tried to recall his wandering thoughts. ‘What was that! Did you say you had buried him? Buried, did you say?’
Marden nodded.
‘Poor fellow! God rest his soul. Now this is what I propose to do. Here is a basin of common water. Very sad indeed, Marden. Upon my word it is. Common well water, d’ye see? And here is the allantois of a calf, which I’ve had specially prepared for me at the Faculty. Now from this common water I am going to extract a vapour, and with that vapour I am going to fill the allantois. And then—che sera sera, signor, as my old master, Salvemini, used to say.’ He contemplated this prospect in silence for a moment. Marden was forgotten, and knew it.
‘I think, if you don’t mind, sir——’
‘Eh? Yes, certainly, my boy. You’ll find Celia in the music-room, or the library, or perhaps the . . . music-room. We shall meet later.’
‘Doctor,’ said Marden, speaking stiffly to hide his embarrassment, ‘I propose, with your permission, to ask Miss Humphrey’s hand in marriage.’
‘Quite so. Quite so,’ returned Miss Humphrey’s father. And he spoke in the rather loud cheerful tone of one who has not heard a word of what was said to him and will resort to any subterfuge rather than have it repeated. ‘She will be delighted to see you. The music-room, I think. Delighted.’
Whether she were indeed delighted was more than the young man dared ask himself when presently, as her father had foretold, he found her in the music-room, sitting by the fire. She sat as though spiritually folded into herself, her hands resting in her lap, her glance held by the glowing logs; and something in her posture, some small quietness, some hint of a serenity at once childlike and mature, touched in her lover a chord so intimate and dear, stirred so ancient and compelling a music, that for a moment he forgot himself, his hopes and his timidity, and stood in a trance as if listening. Under this sudden assault of beauty his heart took refuge in admiration of detaiclass="underline" the long lashes, the russet-brown ringlets, the candid boyish mouth, the small straight nose that was somehow both proud and mischievous. Not in any one of these features, nor in their sum, lay the secret of his enthralment. These were but the outward signs of a mystery. Not his sight alone, his ear, too, was enchanted: her voice greeting him made the spell more binding. But so soon as he himself spoke, the world of habit closed in on him, and remembering his errand he felt courage ebbing away. Now surely was the time, he told himself. But no: it must be later: if I am precipitate I ruin all. If I speak now it will astonish and alarm her and she will think me a boor. And to distract himself, while he stammered his replies, he fell to praising in his mind her simple elegance and to comparing her appearance, greatly to its advantage, with that of the fine urban ladies with their vast hoops and enormous head-dresses. In her exquisite person were combined, he thought, the wholesome natural beauty of a Theocritan shepherdess and the charm of refined sensibility. Even so, with all his newly returned selfconciousness, he found courage to beg her for a song; and though at first she quietly evaded the request, at its repetition she moved without protest to the instrument, and touched the keys, and with the first warm tingling response of the plucked strings became blissfully enclosed in the world her music made. And this is her world, he thought in his rapture: this eternity, this perfection, this radiant and all-sufficing harmony of delights: this is hers, and this she is. It was a love song she sang, in her cool clear voice, and a song centuries old; but the dew was still fresh upon it, and that the sentiment was perhaps more manly than womanly made her rendering of it the more serenely impersonaclass="underline"
Yes, this, he swore, was her world and her dominion: of this paradise, this shining universe wrought of spun silk and melting harmonies, this pattern of sweet sound, these rhyming silences, this art that could distil intoxication from the very dregs of human melancholy: of this she was queen. As he listened, and in the pause that followed his listening, he dreamed himself to be sharing that dominion with her, all the heartache of the world forgotten, or remembered only that it might enhance their joy by contrast, as on summer days we sharpen our delight in birds and flowers and grass and golden sky by recollections of winter. And still, as he half-knew, he was weaving—of her looks, her graces, her accomplishments—a fantasy that should screen him, till he had courage enough to face it, from the loveliness, dimly surmised, of the real Celia, the living and secret heart. He was not new to gallantry, but he was new to love; his occasional amours had brought no ease to the hidden hunger that lived in him, had brought indeed nothing but a half-despised pleasure and a dull disillusionment. He had never knowingly desired, as now he desired, an intimate communion of the spirit; or at least had never been drawn, as now he was being drawn, into the persuasion that this glory was perhaps imminent. It was this hope, and the fear shadowing it, that made him tremble and falter; made him, at the supper table, first garrulous, talking much of his interest in Dr Humphrey’s researches, and then tongue-tied, so that Celia was moved to tease him into speech again. He became stern with himself, and formed an inflexible resolve; yet when, an hour later, in the music-room, the old doctor rose from his chair and with a mumbled apology went off to the studies he could no longer resist, leaving the two young people alone together, Celia’s lover fell a-trembling again, telling himself, with desperate resolution: Before we leave this room I shall have asked her to marry me. And she will have said—what? Conjecture bereaved him of breath and made his heart gallop. If he won her, the world would burst into flower and flame; if he failed, there were no words that could describe the desolation that would engulf him.