Such was the sad reply given by his landlady, to my enquiries regarding my old schoolfellow, when I called at his lodging in London. I had been absent on the Continent for six weeks in the long vacation. A painful malady in his knee had prevented Percival's being, as we had both hoped, my travelling companion; and it was no small disappointment to us both when he had to be left behind.
How we had looked forward to a visit to Italy, to luxuriate amongst the treasures of art; which Percival's cultivated taste and knowledge of painting, would enable him so thoroughly to appreciate! I had however felt no serious anxiety regarding my friend; his letters had been cheerful, and contained little allusion to the state of his health. It was therefore with a shock of surprise that I heard that Percival was now a hopeless invalid, unable to rise from the couch on which he had suffered so long.
I held no long parley with the landlady, but hurried up the long narrow staircase to the attic-room, in which Percival expected to pass the remainder of his days under constant medical care. A lonely life his must be, for he had lost every near relative in the world; and, at the season when London is comparatively empty, few acquaintances were likely to find their way to a dull lodging in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.
Slender means; solitude and sickness; confinement to one small room, when others were enjoying fresh breezes on the ocean or the heathery moor—what a combination of trials for one still in the flower of his youth! I had known Percival as the cleverest, handsomest boy in our school; the hero of the cricket-ground; the first in the race; the winner of numerous prizes: I could hardly realize the possibility of such a deep shadow falling on a life so bright.
From early childhood, Percival had had a remarkable talent for drawing, which had occasionally led him into trouble. Before the boy's small fingers could write one word, they had begun to use a pencil; and quaint grotesque figures were scrawled on the nursery door.
At school Percival fell into many a scrape from scribbling faces over the margins of books—not always his own; and from making curious illustrations in dictionaries and grammars. We saw our own likenesses, unmistakable ones, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed walls. Every Panel of the door served as a canvas: and the young artist was sometimes rewarded for his skill by long impositions of Latin verses, which he learned with the book in one hand and the pencil in the other.
On reaching the landing-place, I did not stop to knock at the door before me; but at once entered the attic-room where Percival lay on his couch, an easel beside him, and a palette bedaubed with many colours, a box of oil-paints, and brushes, on a small table placed within easy reach of his arm. Unframed paintings hanging on the dingy wall somewhat relieved the dull effect of scanty third-rate furniture, and of an old carpet with the pattern well-nigh worn-out of it, which looked as if it had never been new.
Percival's pale face flushed with sudden pleasure as he caught sight of mine. He dropped the brush with which he had been painting, and holding out his thin hand, grasped mine with the joyous exclamation, "Seyton, old boy! who thought of seeing you here!"
Then he added, smiling, "Take a chair—no, not that with the broken back—sit down, and tell me about your travels. I want to see all that you have seen, hear all that you have heard, and enjoy a trip to Italy by proxy."
I seated myself by my suffering friend, and did what I could to divert his mind from his affliction, by describing whatever I thought most likely to interest him. Percival showed keen pleasure in hearing about the works of art which I had seen in foreign galleries: of the principal ones he had already gathered a fair knowledge from books.