He finished his cake and filled his pipe.
"Did you know," he went on, "that everything has a sound, just as it hasa shape and colour of its own? Well, it has; and presently I seemed tobe living in a strange new world, all full of music. Of course it wasn'treally new. It was the same old world. Only, like most people, I hadbeen almost deaf to it; and when I first heard it, up in that littletemple, I nearly went mad with joy. Day after day and night after nightI went out by myself and listened, and gradually I began to distinguishthe separate sounds of things, like the notes of instruments in anorchestra."
He stopped for a moment.
"Just behind us, for instance, there's a clump of anemones singing nextto some primroses."
Marian turned and saw them, just as he had said.
"Oh, I wish," she cried, "that I could hear them too."
The painter smiled.
"Wait for a moment," he said. "Well, then once more I began to growmiserable. For I was an artist, you see, and every artist wants to makeother people see what he sees. That was why I had painted my pictures.But how could I make people hear what I heard? So I told the old priestabout it, and he said that, if I were a real artist, the power wouldcome back to me somehow. 'Wait a little,' he said, 'Stay a littlelonger. You've hardly begun yet to hear for yourself.'"
He paused again and lit his pipe.
"And at last it came to me," he said. "Hold my hand."
Marian slipped her hand into his.
"Now close your eyes," he told her, "and listen."
For a moment she could hear nothing but a ploughman shouting to hishorses and the tap-tapping of a woodpecker; but slowly as she listenedsounds began to come to her, as of a hidden band far in the distance.Presently they drew nearer, and at first they were confused, likehundreds of people gently humming through closed lips; but at last shebegan to recognize different notes, like tiny drums and flutes andfifes. All the time, too, close at hand, there was a faint persistentringing of bells; and these were the anemones swaying on their stems;and the little trumpet-sounds came from the primroses. Then there was arough sort of scraping sound; and that was a mole, he said, burrowing inthe earth two or three yards away. And there was a sound like a chant onone full note from a big field of grass just in front of the wood. Thosewere the distincter notes; but there was a continuous sharp undertone,like millions of finger-tips tapping on stretched parchment; and thosewere the buds opening all along the hedges and upon the leaf-twigs upabove them. But deeper than all, deeper and softer than the softestorgan, there was a great sound; and that was the sap, he told her,rising like a flood in all things living for miles around them.
Then she opened her eyes and dropped his hand, and it was as if she hadsuddenly become almost deaf. She lifted her fingers and put them in herears.
"It's as if they were stopped up," she said. "Hold my hand again."
But he turned and smiled at her.
"Are you still unhappy?" he asked.
Marian shook her head.
"No, not now," she answered.
"That's right," he said. "The world's much too good a place for a littlegirl like you to be unhappy in."
Then he held her hand again, and as the sounds of the world came back toher there happened the oddest thing of all. For now there came othersounds, clearer and nearer, lighter than breath and closer than herheart. They said "Marian" to her, "Marian, Marian"; and the strangething was that she seemed to remember them--just as if their names wereon the tip of her tongue, like the names of old friends, stupidlyforgotten.
"That's what they are," he said. "They're the voices of the friends thatwe left behind us when we were born. Whenever we go back, and wheneverwe have a birthday, they come flocking down to greet us."
He stood up and stretched himself, and Marian rose to her feet.
"So you've had a party," he said, "after all."
Could we, down the road to school, Run but with undeafened ears, Then what joy in this sweet spring Just to hear the gardens sing,
Scilla with her drooping bells Playing her enchanted peal, Primrose with his golden throat Shouting his triumphant note.
THE SORROWFUL PICTURE
Porto Blanco]
XII
THE SORROWFUL PICTURE
Marian never told anybody, not even Gwendolen, about that strange partyof hers under the elm-tree; and the blind painter faithfully promisedthat he would keep it a secret too. But a fortnight later, when thedoctor said that it was quite safe, she introduced him to Gwendolen; andGwendolen was rather excited, because he was the very man who hadpainted her favourite picture.
This was a picture, only half finished, that her aunt had bought whenGwendolen was quite little and when she used to play games all byherself in the big house in Bellington Square. One of these games was aqueer sort of game, in which she would shut herself up in a room, andimagine herself climbing into the pictures on the wall and havingadventures with the people inside them. If the picture had a tower init, she would climb up the tower and peep down over the other side; orif there were ships in it she would go on board and talk to the sailorsdown below. But her favourite picture she called the "sorrowfulpicture," because though she loved it, it made her feel sad.
It was really little more than a sketch, rapidly painted in a fewstrokes, and Gwendolen's aunt had only bought it because she had beentold that the artist was famous. But it was full of sunlight, of a hot,foreign sunlight, through which an old house had stared at the painter,a yellow-walled house with latticed windows and violet shadows under itsbroken roof. In a crooked pot near the front door a dead palm stretchedits withered fingers; and the front door itself was a cave of darkness,with a jutting eave above it like a frowning eyebrow.
But what made it so sorrowful, at any rate to Gwendolen, was a littlewindow up in the right-hand corner--an unlatticed window, as dark as thefront door, but with a different sort of darkness. For the darkness ofthe front door was an angry darkness. When Gwendolen was little, it hadmade her feel frightened. But the darkness of the window was like awound. She wanted to kiss it and make it well. After she had played withthe other pictures, and climbed the mountains in them, and gone paddlingin the streams, she always came to this one and stood on its thresholdand wondered why it was so different from the others. She never playedwith it. It seemed too real. "I believe there's something sad," shesaid, "that the window wants to tell me."
But she loved it too, better than all the other pictures, because nobodyelse seemed to understand it; and when her aunt had married CaptainJeremy, and they had left Bellington Square, and most of the otherpictures had been sold, her aunt had allowed her to take this one withher and hang it in her bedroom in the old farmhouse. So she was ratherexcited when Marian introduced her to the blind painter; and when hecame to tea with them in the middle of April she took him upstairs andtold him all about it, because, of course, he could no longer see it.
But he couldn't remember it, or even where he had painted it, thoughthere was a date on it which showed that it was six years old, becausethat was a year, he said, in which he was travelling all over the worldand making little sketches almost every day. But he didn't laugh at heras her nurse had done, because pictures, he said, were queer things; andnothing was more likely than that there should be something in this onethat only Gwendolen could feel.
"You see, a picture," he said, "if you look at it properly, is just likea conversation painted on canvas; and you can see what the artist saidto his subject as well as what his subject said to him. Of course, inmost pictures, just as in most conversations, all that happened issomething like this: 'Good morning,' said the artist, 'fine weatherwe're having,' and whatever he was painting just nodded its head. That'sbecause he was really thinking about something else--his indigestion orthe money that he hoped to make; and nobody ever tells their inmostthoughts to people who talk to them like that. But if he has tried to bea real artist, loving and understanding, and not thinking about himselfat all, the hills and the tree
s, or whatever he was painting, have begunto tell him all about themselves. They've swopped secrets with him justlike old friends; and there they are for you to see. Sometimes they haveeven told him things that he didn't understand himself. But he haspainted them so faithfully that other people have; and that's the mostwonderful thing that can happen to an artist--better than finding ahundred pounds."
He lit a cigarette.
"And I shouldn't be surprised," he said, "if that little window wasn'tgiving me a message. Only it was a message that I never understood; andperhaps Gwendolen does."
But Gwendolen shook her head.
"Not very well," she said. "I only know that it makes me feel sad."
And then Gwendolen's aunt came to tell them that tea was ready, and in acouple of minutes they had forgotten all about the picture; and aquarter of an hour later they forgot it still more, for in came CaptainJeremy and Lancelot, the bosun's mate. They were both in high spirits,because they had had an order to put to sea again for Porto Blanco, tofetch a cargo of fruit from the Gulf of Oranges, on the shores of whichPorto Blanco was the principal town.
"A matter of three months," said Captain Jeremy, "out and home." He gaveMarian a kiss and pulled Gwendolen's pigtail. "You'd better come withus. What do you say, Lancelot? Or do you think they'd bring us badluck?"
But Lancelot only grinned and made a husky noise--not because he wasnaturally shy, but because he was always afraid of having tea in thedrawing-room, in case he should spill something on the carpet. He wouldmuch have preferred, in fact, to have tea in the kitchen with MrsRobertson, the housekeeper, because he was very fond of Mrs Robertson,and wanted to marry her, and had told her so several times. But MrsRobertson couldn't make up her mind. Her first husband had been rather anuisance; and though he had been dead for nine and a half years, she wasstill a little doubtful about taking a second one. But Marian andGwendolen couldn't help jumping up and down, and the blind painter saidthat they ought to go, and Captain Jeremy promised to go round to PeterStreet and see what Marian's mother had to say about it.
"But you'll have to talk to her," said Marian, "through the window,because she's still nursing Cuthbert."
"Then that's all the more reason," said Captain Jeremy, "why she'll beglad to let you go."
Then he asked the blind painter if he would like to come as well, but heshook his head and said that he would be unable to, though he hadseveral times visited the Gulf of Oranges, and would much have liked togo there once more. But after a little persuasion Marian's mother saidthat Marian could go if Gwendolen went; and a week later they wereclimbing on board the schooner as she lay at anchor in Lullington Bay.
That was the first time that Marian had been aboard her, and everythingseemed strange to her, smelling so fresh and salt. But of courseGwendolen knew all about the ship, and soon she was busy taking Marianround. She showed her the big hold, dark and empty, in which they wouldbring back the cases of fruit, and the cook's galley, and the sailors'bunks, and Captain Jeremy's neat little cabin. And then, just aftertea, the anchor was pulled up, and the sails were shaken out, and thewind began to fill them; and presently there were little waves slappingagainst the bow, and the land was fading into the dusk behind them.
Both of them were sea-sick during the night, and felt rather queer mostof the next day. But the day after that they were as hungry as theycould be, and were soon on deck talking to the sailors. Most of thesewere the same sailors that had been to Monkey Island, and so Gwendolenknew them already; and she introduced Marian to them, who very soon feltas if they had been friends of hers all her life. But Lancelot was herfavourite, just as he was Gwendolen's, and when he was off duty andsmoking his pipe, they would sit on either side of him and listen to hisstories as the deck beneath them rose and fell. As for Porto Blanco andthe Gulf of Oranges, he had been there more times, he said, than hecould remember; and once he had been stranded there for such a long timethat he had learned to talk the language as well as any of theinhabitants.
"But it's a queer place," he said, "and they're queer people, sort ofhalf-way between black and white, and the sun's in the bones of them,and half the time they're fighting, and the other half they're snoozingin the shadders." But for the most part, he said, they were kindlypeople and very indulgent to each other's faults; and the women all wentbarefooted and smoked cigarettes, and the men sang love-songs togetherwhen they weren't quarrelling.
"And up in the hills," said Lancelot, "back of the town, you can seesuch flowers as you never saw anywhere, and great big oranges hangingoff of the trees, and corn-cobs taller than your head. And back of theorange-trees there's great big forests, full of little Injuns with longbeards, and nasty yeller snakes, and birds of paradise, and parrots andmonkeys and inji-rubber trees," and sometimes he would go on talkingtill they forgot all about supper-time, and the stars would open abovetheir heads, and far away, perhaps, like a little chain of beads, theywould see the port-lights of some great liner.
The wind held so fair that by the end of a month they were nearly fourthousand miles from home, and a week later when they came on deck theyfound the sea dotted with little islands. So lovely were they in theirwet colours that they might have been enamelled there during the night,and Marian and Gwendolen almost gasped with joy as the ship slid pastthem in the early morning. For a long time now the weather had been sohot that awnings had been stretched over the deck; and Marian andGwendolen wore as little as they could--the thinnest of white jerseysand the shortest of skirts. For nearly three weeks they had worn noshoes or stockings, and their feet and legs were the colour of copper;and for two or three hours in the middle of the day Captain Jeremy hadmade them go to sleep.
But to-day they were much too excited to stay in their hammocks; andpresently, as they hung over the schooner's bow, they could see thehorizon beginning to creep closer, and the hill-tops and forests of themainland. The wind had dropped now, and the sea was like glass, andsometimes the ship scarcely seemed to move, but early in the afternoonthey began to see the roofs of the town and the tower of the cathedraland the white-walled quay. Slowly they drew nearer until they could seethe people on the shore or lounging in the other ships at anchor in theharbour; and just before sunset they had come to their moorings and werelying securely against the quay.
Down in the cabin, Captain Jeremy was talking business with two of thefruit-merchants--dark-skinned men in white linen suits, smokingpale-coloured long cigars. But Marian and Gwendolen stayed up on deck,watching the night coming down like a shutter, and the lamps beginningto shine in the crooked streets and behind the windows of the houses.Now that it was cooler the people were taking the air, and gaily-dressedwomen sauntered up and down; and in front of a cafe, where there were alot of little tables, some men were singing and playing guitars. It wasall so strange, it was like being in a theatre, and the air was full ofspice-scents and the scent of oranges; and it was hard to believe thatthey were even in the same world with school and Peter Street andFairbarrow Down.
But next morning it all seemed more real again, and Captain Jeremy tookthem round the town; and they had lunch with one of the fruit-merchantsin a low-walled house built round a courtyard. After lunch they slept inlong armchairs, and when they woke up queer sorts of drinks were broughtto them; and then it was time to go back to the ship again and watchthe cases of fruit being packed in the hold. After a day or two, whenthey had learned their way about, Captain Jeremy let them go ashorealone; and by the end of the week they had explored every corner of thetown, and even gone for walks along the country roads. Some of thesewere broad roads leading to other towns, but most of them becamemule-tracks after a mile or two; and they seldom went very far up thesebecause of the heat, which was greater then even the inhabitants hadever known.
Day after day, through the still air, the great sun emptied itself intothe town; and the streets cracked, and the barometer fell, and CaptainJeremy looked anxiously at the weather; and it was upon the hottest dayof all--the day before they were leaving--that Gwendolen
suddenlygripped Marian's arm.
It was early in the morning, before the sun was at its steepest, andthey had wandered past the cathedral into the outskirts of the town,where a little track between two high garden walls had tempted them toexplore it. It had led them into a sort of garden, untidy and deserted,and on the other side of this there stood a house--a yellow-walled housewith latticed windows and violet shadows under its broken roof. Besidethe front door stood a crooked pot, and the front door itself was a caveof darkness, and up in the right-hand corner, under the roof, was alittle window standing open. Gwendolen found herself shaking all over.
"Why, it's the very house," she said, "of the sorrowful picture."
And so it was, and as they stood looking up at it, it seemed moresorrowful to Gwendolen than ever. For there was the little window almostbeseeching her in actual words to go and comfort it; and she even had afeeling that for all these years it had been crying in vain to heracross half the world. But there was the front door too, dark withanger, and before they could move a man came out of it. He was a big manwith a fat face, and he stood blinking for a moment in the sunshine; andthen they saw him frown as he caught sight of them; and he shouted wordsat them that they didn't understand.
But it was evident that he wanted them to go away, and they saw himtouch a knife that he wore in his belt; and so they ran back again upthe little track, and there in the street they met Lancelot. He wasgrinning as usual, and he looked so big and strong that they couldalmost have hugged him on the spot; but his face grew serious when theytold him what had happened, and he stroked his chin and becamethoughtful.
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