‘Nothing has changed here. I remember every single thing in the room and it’s all the same,—even to the inkstains on those boards. It’s like a dream to be back here talking to you—one of those dreams of remembered places where everything is so familiar it seems ominous. I’ve often had a dream like this——’
She stopped, wishing her last words unsaid; but he took her remark to be general and nodded, and leaned forward to look at Peter, lying wan and sleepy in her lap. He was very tired; but not fretful: only silent and languid. Julian touched his cheek.
‘And is Peter part of the dream too?’ he asked softly.
‘Yes. Isn’t he?’
He was the passive, waiting core of the ominousness, the unexpected thing you shrank from yet knew you had to come back to find. In the dream, it was quite natural to sit there with Julian, holding Charlie’s child.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said musingly, ‘that this is the only proof—the only proof that Charlie ever lived? A child! Not another whisper from him.... I haven’t even a letter. I suppose she has.’ An utter misery showed for a moment in his face, and he paused before adding: ‘And no portrait. Do you remember him?’
‘Of course.’ Her throat ached with tears. ‘He was the most beautiful person——’
‘Yes he was. A spring of beauty. He didn’t care about that, you know, in spite of what people said. His physical brilliance somehow obscured his character, I think, made it difficult to judge. But he had a very simple heart.’
Was it true? Who had ever known Charlie’s heart? Was not Julian speaking as it were in epitaphs, as if his brother had become unreal to him,—a symbol for grief,—the individual ghost forgotten? Perhaps Mariella alone of all people had known his heart—strange thought!—and still had him quick within her; but she would never tell.
‘It’s not often I speak of him to anyone,’ said Julian; and his usually narrow swift-glancing eyes suddenly opened wide and held hers as if he had some unendurable thought. They were pits of misery. What was he remembering?