Following Darkness/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Scarlatina broke out in the village in the spring of that year, a week or two before my sixteenth birthday. There were not many cases, and all were mild, but there was much talk of closing the school. My father, for I know not what reason, was against this, and in the end got his own way, but about a month later he had the satisfaction of seeing me catch the infection just when everybody else was getting better. I can remember quite distinctly the day I took ill. I had not been feeling well the day before, but had said nothing about it, and that morning I went to school as usual. I might as well have stayed at home for all the work I did. I sat there with a book before me, my head aching, my throat dry and painful. The noise of the classes saying their lessons at the tops of their voices, especially the junior class, to whom Miss McWaters was repeating a stanza of poetry, line by line, while they screamed it after her, irritated, even while it amused, me. Miss McWaters was a thin and angular person, no longer young, endowed by nature with a high-pitched voice, prominent teeth, and a red nose, and by art with a yellow, fuzzy fringe. All these qualities now loomed particularly large in my vision of her, though at other times I knew she was a kind and friendly person. Her red nose and her fringe haunted me, her whole face seemed to undergo extraordinary, kaleidoscopic changes; she became a sort of fantastic witch who was exercising horrible spells on these small children standing in a circle round her chair; her mouth grew larger, her big white teeth seemed thirsting to bury themselves in their soft little throats. This impression grew suddenly so sharp that I had to shake myself and sit back in my seat to get rid of it. Then once more she was only Miss McWaters, to whom years ago I had repeated this same verse of poetry in that same shrill sing-song tone which now was going through and through my head. . . . .
I looked about the room with heavy eyes—at the white walls, the torn, ink-stained maps, the scored desks and forms, the wooden floor—and the whole place seemed to move round and round like a wheel. I saw my father, with a pointer in his hand, indicating differently shaped areas on a large blank map of England, and asking a row of youngsters what counties they represented. That was the kind of lesson I had always detested myself and had never even attempted to learn. I knew from my father's angry, "Next—next—next," that nobody in the class was giving satisfaction. And then they all seemed to shrink and float back, while the room shot out like a telescope, and I watched them from somewhere miles and miles away. And the high, clear voice of Miss McWaters proclaimed:
"Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
And a dozen shrill voices replied:
"Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
The words seemed mere nonsense in my ears, and I had a sort of delirious vision of a big star, with a red nose and a fringe and large white teeth, pointing out the time on a huge clock, while a lot of little stars stood round in a ring and pulled watches out of their waistcoat pockets and set them to the time told by the big clock. This seemed funny to me, and I began to laugh; and then, next moment, I wanted to lie down somewhere and be quiet. My head was throbbing like a steamboat with a too powerful engine, and there was a dull aching at the back of my eyeballs. I got up and tip-toed across the room, but my foot caught the end of a form, and I nearly pitched through the door, head first.
I had intended going home, but with my hand on the latch of the gate I decided to go up to Derryaghy instead. Singularly enough, the thought that I might be sickening for scarlatina never occurred to me. The distance to Derryaghy was not more than a quarter of a mile, yet it seemed to me long, and before I arrived I regretted having started. The hall-door being open when I reached the house, I went in without ringing. I knew they would be at lunch, but I had no appetite, and as I did not want to answer questions or talk, I went straight on up the broad, low stairs, with the intention of going to my own room. At the head of the staircase, full in the light, hangs the celebrated portrait people come from far to admire. I sat down on the wide couch before it, not because I wanted to look at what I had already seen thousands of times, but because my head swam. I leaned against the back of the couch and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the portrait being in front of me, I could not help staring at it, in a dull way. It represents a young man standing bare-headed on a hill-side, holding a gun in his hand, and with an elderly dog seated sedately by him. The curiously long, oval face, with its high forehead and narrow, pointed chin, has much distinction, though little beauty, and its pallor contrasts oddly with the faded red of the full sensuous lips, completely revealed beneath the light, curled moustache. The eyes are dark, the hair light brown. The hands are hidden by brown gauntlet gloves, and over the dark brown doublet falls a lace collar. The trousers would look black but for the darker shade of the long boots, and this darker note is carried through to the trees behind, sombre and heavy against a yellow sky. Both man and dog are obviously posing for their portraits—the whole thing is a work of art, that is to say, it is something utterly beyond nature. The highest light is in the face, but there is no white anywhere, and, with the exception of the faint red of the lips, no colour save the browns and blacks, the creamy flesh-tints. Over all, the mellow tone of time has cast a kind of golden softness. I had been told that it was by a great Spanish artist called Velasquez—his name, indeed, was there, in large black letters on the dull gilt frame—and that it was a very valuable painting, worth fabulous sums. I can affirm to-day that it is really a fine work; but it is not by Velasquez. It is by Mazo, and is, in fact, only a slightly modified copy of Velasquez's famous portrait of Philip in the Louvre.
This picture had always had an odd fascination for me, though there was something about the face I did not like, something cold and proud, which I knew I should have detested in actual life. I gazed at it now stupidly enough, and then I had a nervous thrill, for it seemed to me to have come all at once to life. One part of my brain knew this to be nonsense, and that I had been seeing queer things all day, but the other part of my brain continued to watch it, with a half expectation of seeing it descend out of its frame. The eyes had begun to move, and the lips trembled; the mouth opened slowly in a yawn which the brown gloved hand was raised languidly to conceal; and then from behind the picture I heard a little mocking laugh. These things bewildered me, but did not startle me; and through them I became conscious that Mrs. Carroll was coming up the stair and that she was speaking to me. I answered her in words which I knew were perfectly idiotic, and which moreover sounded husky and strange, as if some other voice than my own were speaking through my lips. Again I heard the little mocking laugh. This time I thought it came from the top of the picture, and glancing up I saw, sure enough, a black imp, like a small, naked, negro boy, perched cross-legged, on the top of the frame, from which he grinned down at me impudently, raising his fingers to his snub nose, and spreading them out in a derisive and very familiar grimace. I began to talk about the picture, about school, and about Miss McWaters. Then a cloud waved back from my brain; the portrait slid into its place, the imp disappeared, and everything was once more as it should be. But I felt a burning thirst, and when Mrs. Carroll opened the door of a large, bright, sunny room, I was glato fling myself down on the bed. Almost immediately I was seized by a deadly sickness. I managed to get off the bed in time to avoid making a mess, but the vomiting returned again and again, till I collapsed into a state of exhaustion. Heavy clouds waved across my brain, obscuring my thoughts, and again clearing, leaving consciousness to flicker up, like the flame in a dying lamp, so that I knew I had been undressed and was safe in bed. And all the time I wanted to drink—to drink. . . . . More than one person was in the room with me; Mrs. Carroll was there, and old Doctor O'Brian. In the open doorway Miss Dick hovered. And then suddenly I was alone. I could hear a fire crackling in the grate, and it had grown darker. A lamp was burning on a table somewhere over beside the fireplace. I listened to the fire, and presently it seemed to me I could hear the lamp burning too. It burned with a soft low continuous sound that was like the note of a flute, and it occurred to me that everything in the world was only sound—the bed I was lying on, the shadows flickering across the ceiling, the dancing firelight—all were but notes of a tune. This appeared so strikingly obvious that I could not understand why I had never noticed it before. I tried to make out what the tune was, but it eluded me, flickering away from me like a butterfly. I turned round in my bed, for I had heard a slight noise at the door. All seemed now to have grown silent. I could not hear the lamp burning, nor even the fire. This silence was surely unusual, abnormal; it filled me with a vague disquietude. It grew deeper and deeper till I could not hear, even when I strained my ears, the faintest murmur either without or within the house. The silence was like a liquid, luminous atmosphere, through which strange things were floating nearer. It was like a sea, and gradually it darkened into colour—there was a broad, dark, blue sea before me, in a strange, rich light, as if I were watching it through old stained glass. I saw sirens swimming about in the warm, swelling waves, appearing and disappearing. They followed a high-pooped, fantastic ship, just as I had often seen porpoises following a boat out in the bay. The ship moved along slowly, and its broad, coloured sails were embroidered with green dragons that shone like fire, and at its bow was a green, jewelled serpent's head. Then once more there was nothing but the room, and I heard a faint noise as of someone moving in a chair. Another sound immediately followed, and I started, for it was curiously different; it was the sound one hears before something happens. I watched the handle of the door turn, and the door itself open and close quickly yet stealthily. Three figures had entered. One was a tall figure in brown, with a gun in his gloved hand, and he was followed by a great dark brown dog, who at once leaped on to the bed and sat at the foot, watching me with sombre, burning eyes. The third figure was Miss McWaters. Her nose was longer and redder than I had ever seen it before, and it kept twitching from side to side in a curious way; her big teeth flashed in an unpleasant grin, and her fringe waved and curled about as if it were alive. For the third time I heard the strange little mocking laugh that had come from behind the picture, but I could not discover who had uttered it. Perhaps it was Miss McWaters, for I knew she was waiting for me to say something—a verse of poetry—yes, I remembered:
"Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."
Then a dense, heavy darkness swept up, blotting out everything.