This seemed to Graham a most remarkable circumstance; and when he remembered that Cheyne never spoke of his father and mother except when he could not help it, and that he was now about thirty-four years of age, and that this marriage took place thirty-five years ago, he was more than surprised--he was interested. He made up his mind to keep the story by him until he got back to London, and then work gradually round Cheyne until he got him to tell all he knew of his own history. Then, if there seemed to be any likelihood of this story fitting to the real history of Cheyne, he would give him the manuscript; and if not, he would destroy it.
He went to bed, and slept soundly, so soundly he never heard the gale that tore across the land from the north-east, and smote the fore front of the forest, and beat back the unavailing trees, and thrust the corn flat upon the earth, and winnowed the weakly leaves out of the roaring woods, and hauled great curtains of cloud swiftly across the distracted heavens, and held back the current of the persistent river, and defied the wings of the strongest birds, and beat a level pathway where the young saplings stood.
He slept unusually long that morning. It was six when he awoke. As soon as he knew of the storm, he dressed himself hastily, and walked as quickly as the wind would let him to the bridge.
Here his worst fears were realised. The archway had acted as a funnel, and focussed the wind coming down the glen. The canvas was not to be seen; the easel had been flung halfway through the bridge and smashed. The colour-box, with all the colours out, had been blown out of the vault, and lay in the foreground below.
He swore at the wind and at himself for his folly in leaving the canvas there. Then he started in pursuit of the fugitive picture.
He found it, face down, in a shallow pool, just under the church. He pulled it out of the water, and placed it flat upon the ground. He then stood back from it a few feet, saw it was all cut and torn; jumped on it half-a-dozen times; rolled it up carefully; carried it back to the bridge; and, having emptied the bottle of turpentine over it, succeeded, after many efforts, in lighting a match and setting it on fire.
Then he sat down on his camp-stool--the storm had spared that--and watched the unlucky canvas blaze in the sheltered place he had thrown it.
"If I had only a fiddle now, and could play it, I'd be a kind of Modern Nero. But I haven't a fiddle, and if I had I couldn't play it; so, upon the whole, I think I had better get out of this place."
He rose and went back to the inn. All that day nothing was thought of or talked of but the storm. By night the wind died away. Next morning arose bright and serene. He had made up his mind to stay at Anerly no longer. He would not paint that landscape. He would not try to recover the wreck of that easel. He would not gather up the scattered contents of his colour-box. The place had served him a scurvy trick, and he would leave it without any other recognition of its existence than that of paying what he owed at The Beagle. He would get back to Town at once. Be it ever so humble, there was no place like Town.
At breakfast he called for his bill and paid it.