"There may certainly be something in that," I agreed. "And I will admit this much—that I don't think this superstition applies completely to people who don't believe in it. But unluckily I do believe in it. Still, your not being a professional artist may make a difference. If you'll promise to do the thing very badly, so that fate may not know it's meant for me, I'll let you do it."
I don't think there was any particular reason why fate should have known that the picture was meant for me. Indeed, one of our friends, a well-known novelist, cried out directly he caught sight of the first sketch and before he knew whom it was meant to be, that it was the best portrait he'd ever seen of his dear and lifelong companion the late Henry Irving. Anyhow, as the painting progressed, I did what was for me an extraordinary thing—I caught influenza. And, as the picture grew and grew, I got worse and worse, until I very nearly died of œdema of the lungs.
Little Yeogh Wough was written to and told all about it. His reply was a telegram to his father in the following words:
"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.—Roland."
"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.—Roland!"
He has never forgotten that telegram from that day to this. He has prayed to forget it, and has never been able to.
It did me more good than twenty doctors could have done. I sat up in bed and threw a dressing-gown round my shoulders and surveyed the blank faces of the other occupants of the room.
"Well, Miss Torry, I should like to know what you think of that?"
"What I think?" answered Miss Torry, shaking her head hopelessly. "What I think is—well, he must be mad."
"I'll tell you what I think," ventured Old Nurse, not looking at me but hurling her words like bombs at my secretary. "And that is that he've forgot for once to play his part and 'e's showing the selfishness that's all through and through him. When you come to think of all that his mother have done for 'im—and 'ow she've made a god of him and knelt down and worshipped 'im, as m'say, and put everything and everybody else to one side for 'im—well, if I was 'er I'd never take the trouble to turn my head to look at him again. No, that I wouldn't. I'm only glad as she can see him in 'is true light at last."