‘Oh, it’s a delightful room,’ said Trueberry dreamily, with the look of a visionary. ‘I’m so glad I had that accident, and was carried in here. Visions seem to start out of half-forgotten romances, and everything is suggestive. It’s so dark and quaint and big. Just the room to be ill in, and not mope. I like my condition, too, now that pain is on the wane. Fact and fancy are so deliciously inextricable. I never know what is really happening and what I am imagining. Last night I saw a picture that seemed to be real, and was in perfect harmony with the antique air of the room. A sort of Saint Elizabeth in a mediæval frame. You know one’s ideal of St Elizabeth?’ he added, looking at me with a little quizzical stir in his languid glance. ‘Sweet, serious, and lovely, carrying roses from heaven, and smiling softly on children and the sick. She smiled at me when she saw me staring.’
‘Your hostess?’ I asked, chill with apprehension.
‘I suppose so, if it wasn’t a dream. There’s fever in my blood still, and at night the imagination is a terrible agent. Yet the picture remains so distinct upon memory: the voice was so real, so musical, I can hear it still.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said, curious and alarmed.
‘I was trying to make out my surroundings in the dull lamplight, and wondering where you were, when a curtain was lifted by the whitest hand I have ever seen, and framed in the folds was a beautiful pale woman in grey. She held a lamp high up, and the light caught and played over her brilliant hair till it shone like living gold. I feared to wink lest the vision should vanish. The light revealed the bust, while the folds of the skirt fell into heavy shadow. It was the crimped white about neck and wrists and the long queer sleeves that made me imagine fever had evoked some recollection of Italian galleries—half Giotto, half Botticelli: but she actually moved, and the unfathomable gravity of her gaze held mine, and when she smiled, I ceased to feel pain.’
He spoke almost to himself, as if he had forgotten my presence, and as I looked down at him, so drowsily contented, I saw the old tragic monster lifting its terrible head between us. For the first time I was conscious of a jealous pang in contemplation of his favour of person. Grands dieux! and I so fatally ugly! And if Trueberry had possessed nothing but good looks, I had my brains and my reputation to balance that advantage. But he was no mere hero of sentimental girlhood—he was a handsome, high-bred gentleman, with all the finest qualities to repay a noble woman’s love, with all the personal charm to captivate a fastidious woman’s fancy. What had won my admiring friendship might be trusted to win Brases’ responsive love:—his sincerity, a certain picturesque dash that always made me think of Buckingham as described by Dumas—Anne of Austria’s Buckingham. It breathed so essentially the high air of romance, the chivalry, the ennobling sentimentality of vigorous manhood. He was no troubadour, but as I have said, Buckingham to the heels in modern raiment, unflinching before peril, of delightful manners, faithful to friend, implacable to foe, brilliant, generous, and full of romantic spirit. Such a woman as Brases I deemed above susceptibility to a mere facile charm of manner, averse from so vulgar a quality as fascination. But Trueberry did not fascinate: he captivated. He carried sunshine with him to appeal to the austerest temperament, and in some subtle way, without an effort, became a need. A more attractive manliness was nowhere to be met, and if in friendship I found him indispensable, what would he not be to the woman whose heart he won?
Should I repeat the peasant’s talk? Better not. Silence between us was best until speech could not be avoided. So I took an aching heart back to the cottage, with a promise to return in the afternoon.
II
That afternoon, passing through the hall on my way to Trueberry’s room, I was arrested upon no direct effort of will by the face of the pale blonde girl, looking at me so vividly out of canvas through the dear glance my own ached with longing to behold. Standing thus, my ear detected with a thrill of recognition the light footfall behind me. I turned, and the sight was water to a man fevered with thirst. All morning I had wondered if a transient state of nerves might not be accountable for an effect perhaps over-excited imagination had exaggerated. But this second meeting was full confirmation of the agonising power of Brases over me. I rejoiced in this added proof of my servitude. Because of her presence, life revealed deeper meaning, earth fresher hues. My heart fluttered on the topmost crest of emotion, and tossed on a violent wave of joy. The awful quietude of our full long gaze held me tranced in silence.
‘You found your friend better,’ she said, and her voice in that tense moment was like the bursting of the surges upon their swell. My eyes must have told it with fatal illumination, had hers not absently fallen on a portrait. ‘I should gladly press you to stay here with him, but I fear you would find it dull. The house, I know, is gloomy, and I see no one. But if you can face the dulness for your friend’s sake, if it would lessen your anxiety——’