Cecil Dreeme

by Theodore Winthrop

  All this while I was chafing his hands, and watching intently for some tremor of revival.

  Presently the silence and the lifeless touch grew so appalling, that I was moved to call aloud: “Dreeme! Cecil Dreeme!”

  I half fancied that he stirred at this.

  Yes! No!

  Trance was master still. Life must be patient. If it wrestled too soon, it might get a fatal fall. I dreaded the thought of my invalid giving one gasp, shuddering with one final spasm, and then drooping into my arms—dead.

  Locksley now came clattering into the lobby, dropping billets from an over-load of kindling-wood.

  He shot down his armful by the stove, and approached the figure in the arm-chair.

  “Any pulse?” said he, taking the cold hand in his.

  “Is there any?” I asked, eagerly.

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” he replied, “if the blood was starting, just a little, like water under ice in the early spring.” Locksley repeated the experiment with the candle.

  “He breathes,” he whispered.

  There was for a moment no draught, and the flame certainly trembled before Dreeme’s lips.

  “He can’t be said to be coming to,” again whispered the janitor. “That’s too far ahead. But he’s out of the woods, and struck the cart-track leadin’ to the turnpike.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Ay! that always!” said Locksley, gravely. “Now here goes at the fire! You’ll hear a rumblin’ in this stove before many minutes that would boost a chimney-sweep.”

  He heaped in his kindling-stuff, and lighted it. The pleasant noise of fire began. Locksley left the stove, intoning hollow music, like an automaton bassoon, and turned to me: “Looks pretty gritty,—Mr. Dreeme,—don’t he? And pretty mild too?”

  “Both,” said I.

  “Not many would have stood it out alone in such a bare barn as this.”

  For the first time I gave myself an instant to glance about the studio.

  A bare barn indeed! Half-carpeted, furnished with a table, a chest of drawers, and two or three chairs. The three doors, corresponding to my bath-room, bedroom, and lumber-room, were the only objects to break the monotony of the unadorned walls. After the lavish confusion of Rubbish Palace, this place looked doubly bleak and forlorn. To paint here, without one single attractive bit of color or form to relieve the eye and subsidize the fancy, was a tour de force, like a blind man’s writing a Paradise Lost, or a deaf man’s composing a symphony.

  “He’s had to wind his whole picture out of his head,” said Locksley, following my glance, “and it ain’t so bad either, if you could see it fair by daylight. Look at it there! It’s one of those pictures that make a man feel savage and sorry all at once.”

  Lear and his Daughters,—that was the picture on Dreeme’s easel. I glanced at it, as I continued my offices about him.

  The faint light of one candle gave it a certain mysterious reality. The background retired, the figures projected. They stirred almost, almost spoke. It seemed that I ought to know them, but that, if I did not catch the likeness at the first look, I could never see it. “That large and imposing figure, the King!—wipe out the hate from his face, and I have surely seen the face. The Regan is in shadow; but the Goneril,—what features do I half remember that scorn might so despoil of beauty? Ah! that is the power of a great artist. His creations become facts. This is not imagination, it is history. At last here is my vague conception of Lear realized.”

  The Cordelia I recognized at once. “Cecil Dreeme himself. He needed, it seems, but little womanizing. A very noble figure, even as I see it faintly. Tenderness, pity, undying love for the harsh father, for the false sisters, all these Dreeme’s Cordelia—Dreeme’s self idealized—expresses fully.”

  These observations, made in the dim light, were interrupted by a little stir and gasp of our patient.

  We watched anxiously and in silence. Fresh air, warm wrappings, brandy, and the magnetism of human touch and human presence, were prevailing. Yes; there could be no doubt; he breathed faintly.

  The fire in the stove was now roaring loud. That lusty sound and the dismal wind without could not overpower the low, feeble gasps of the unconscious man.

  “We’ve got him, hooray!” said Locksley, in an excited whisper.

  We shook hands, like victors after a charge. I could have seized the bristly janitor, and whirled him into a Pyrrhic breakdown, without respect to my ceiling below.

  “Air he’s got,” says Locksley, “and fire he’s got, and a friend he’s got; now for some food for him! If you say so, I’ll just jiff round to Bagpypes, first block in Broadway, and get some oysters. He hasn’t touched a mouthful to-day, unless he can eat anthracite out of the coal-bin. Starvation’s half the trouble. An oyster is all the world in one bite. Let’s get some oysters into him, and we’ll build him up higher than a shot-tower in an hour’s time!”

  “Just the thing!” said I. “But here, take some money!”

  “You may go your halves,” says the honest fellow. “But, Mr. Byng,”—he hesitated, and looked at me doubtfully,—“suppose he wakes up while I’m gone, and finds a stranger here?”

  “I’ll justify you. I will show him that I’m a friend before he’s made me out a stranger.”

  “That’s right, sir. I think you’ve got a call here, a loud call. See how things has worked round. You come home, with nobody to look after, you come into Chrysalis, and the very first night a scare is sent to me. I go after Mr. Churm, as is ordered by my wife and the prickles of the scare. I don’t find him; I do find you. You don’t say, ‘Janitor, this is none of my business. Apply at the sign of the Good Samaritan, across the way!’ No; you know it’s a call. You take hold; and here we are, and the boy a coming to on the slow train. When he gets to the depot, Mr. Byng, I hope you’ll stand by him and stick to him.”

  “I will be a brother to him, Locksley, if he will let me.”

  “Let or no let, Mr. Byng. You’ve got a call to pad to him like a soldier-coat to a Governor’s Guard. But here I go talkin’ off, and where’s the oysters?”

  He hurried away. I was left alone with Cecil Dreeme.

  Locksley’s urgent plea was hardly needed. I felt every moment more brotherly to this desolate being, consigned to me by Fate.

  “Poor fellow!” I thought. “He, I am sure, will not requite me with harm for saving him, as old proverbs too truly say the baser spirits may.”

  I wheeled him close to the stove. The room still seemed a dark and cheerless place to come back to life in. I tried to light the gas. It was chilled. There was a little ineffectual sputter as I touched the tube; a few sparks sprang up, but no flame backed them.

  “It must be compelled to look a shade more cheerful, this hermitage!” I thought. So I ran down in the dark to my own quarters for more light.

  Rubbish Palace was generous as Fortunatus’s purse. Whatever one wanted came to hand. More light was my present demand. I found it in a rich old bronze candelabrum, bristling with candles. More wrappings, too, I thought my patient might require. I flung across my arm a blanket from my bed, and that gorgeous yellow satin coverlet, once Louis Philippe’s.

  Perhaps, also, Dreeme might fancy some other drink than brandy when the oysters came. There was Ginevra’s coffer, again presenting a plenteous choice. I snatched up another old flask, beaming with something vinous and purple, pocketed another Venetian goblet, and, thus reinforced, hastened up-stairs.

  Now that the deadly distress of my alarm for the painter was reduced to a healthy anxiety, I could think what a picture I presented marching along, with my antique branch of six lighted candles in one hand, the mass of shining drapery on my arm, and in the other hand the glass, flashing with the red glimmers of its wine. But this walking tableau met no critics on the stairs; and when I pushed open Dreeme’s door, he did not turn, as I half hoped he might, and survey the night-scene with a painter’s eye.

  I deposited my illumination on the table. Then I began to envelop my
tranced man in that soft satin covering, whose color alone ought to warm him.

  All at once, as, kneeling, I was arranging this robe of state about Dreeme’s feet, I became conscious, by I know not what magnetism, that he had opened his eyes, and was earnestly looking at me.

  I would not glance up immediately. Better that he should recognize me as a friend, at a friend’s work, before I as a person challenged him, eye to eye.

  I kept my head bent down, and let him examine me, as I felt that he was doing, with hollow, melancholy eyes.

  13

  Dreeme, Awake

  I felt that the pale face of Cecil Dreeme was regarding me with its hollow, sad eyes, as I arrayed him in the splendid spoil of the Tuileries.

  Saying to himself, perhaps, I thought, “What does this impertinent intruder want? Am I to be compelled to live against my will? I excluded air, rejected food and fire,—must self-appointed friends thrust themselves upon me, and jar my calm accord with Death?”

  I might be in a false position after all. My services and my apparatus might be merely officious.

  I evaded Dreeme’s look, and, moving to the table behind him, I occupied myself in pouring out a sip from the flask I had just brought. The purple wine sparkled in the goblet. In such a glass Bassanio might have pledged Portia.

  No sooner had I stepped aside, than Dreeme stirred, and there came to me a voice, like the echo of a whisper: “Do not go.”

  “No,” said I, “I am here.”

  Thus invited, I came forward and looked at him, eye to eye.

  Wonderful eyes of his! None ever shone truer, braver, steadier. These large dark orbs, now studying me with such sad earnestness, completed, without defining, my first impressions of the man. Here was finer vision for beauty than the vision of creatures of common clay. Here was keener insight into truth; here were the deeper faith, the larger love, that make Genius. A priceless spirit! so I fully discerned, now that the face had supplied its own illumination. A priceless spirit! and so nearly lost to the world, which has persons enough, but no spirits to waste.

  As we regarded each other earnestly, I perceived the question flit across my mind: “Had I not had a glimpse of that inspired face before?”

  “Why not?” my thought replied. “I may have seen him copying in the Louvre, sketching in the Oberland, dejected in the Coliseum, elated in St. Peter’s, taking his coffee and violets in the Café Doné, whisking by at the Pitti Palace ball. Artists start up everywhere in Europe, like butterflies among flowers. He may have flashed across my sight, and imprinted an image on my brain to which his presence applies the stereoscopic counterpart.

  This image, if it existed, was too faint to hold its own with the reality. It vanished, or only remained a slight blur in my mind. I satisfied myself that I was comparing Dreeme with his idealized self in the picture.

  “You are better,” said I.

  There came a feeble, flutter-like “Yes,” in reply.

  He still continued looking at me in a vague, bewildered way, his great, sad eyes staring from his pale face, as if he had not strength to close them.

  “I have been giving you brandy,” I said; “let me offer a gentler medicine.”

  I held out the cup. Then, as he made no sign of assent, I felt that he might have a reasonable hesitation in taking an unknown draught from a stranger hand. I sipped a little of the wine. It was fragrant Port with plenty of body and a large proportion of soul. Magnificent Mafra at its royalist banquet never poured out richer juices to enlarge a Portuguese king into manhood. It had two flavors. One would say that the grapes which once held it bottled within the dewy transparency of their rind had hung along the terraces beside the sea, drinking two kinds of sunshine all the long afternoons of ripe midsummer. Every grape had felt the round sun gazing straight and steadily at it, and enjoying his countenance within, as a lover loves to see his own image reflected in his lady’s eye. And every grape besides had taken in the broad glow of sunshine shining back from the glassy bay its vineyard over-hung, or the shattered lights of innumerable ripples, stirred when the western winds came slinging themselves along the level sunbeams of evening. O Harry Stillfleet! why didn’t you have a pipe, instead of a quart, of the stuff? Why not an ocean, instead of a sample?

  I sipped a little, like a king’s wine-taster.

  “Port, not poison, Mr. Dreeme,” said I. “This Venice glass would shiver with poison, and crack with scorn at any dishonest beverage.”

  He seemed to make a feeble attempt at a smile, as I proffered the dose. “Your health!” his lips rather framed than uttered.

  I put the glass to his mouth. An unexpected picture for mid-nineteenth century, and a corner of rusty Chrysalis! a strange picture!—this dark-haired, wasted youth, robed like a sick prince, and taking his posset from a goblet fashioned, perhaps, in a shop that paid rent to Shylock.

  Dreeme closed his eyes, and seemed to let the wholesome fever of his draught revivify him. By this time the room was warm and comfortable. The stove might be ugly as a cylindrical fetish of the blackest Africa; but it radiated heat with Phœbus-like benignity.

  “How cheerful!” murmured the painter, looking up again, his forlorn expression departed. “Fire! Light! I am a new being!”

  “Not a spirit, then!” said I. There was still something remote and ghost-like in the bewildered look of his hollow eyes.

  “No spirit! This is real flesh and blood.”

  I smiled. “Not much of either.”

  “Have I to thank you that I am not indeed a spirit?” asked he slowly, but seeming to gain strength as he spoke.

  “Locksley, the janitor, first, and me, second, you may thank, if life is a boon to you.”

  “I thank both devoutly. Life is precious, while its work remains undone.”

  Here he closed his eyes, as if facing labor and duty again was too much for his feebleness. When he glanced up at me anew, I fancied I saw an evanescent look of recognition drift across his face.

  This set me a second time turning over the filmy leaves of the book of portraits in my brain. Was his semblance among those legions of faces packed close and set away in order there? No. I could not identify him. The likeness drifted away from me, and vanished, like a perplexing strain of music, once just trembling at the lips, but now gone with the breath, refusing to be sung.

  I thought it not best to worry him with inquiries; so I waited quietly, and in a moment he began.

  “Will you tell me what has happened? How came I under your kind care? Yours is a new face in Chrysalis.”

  “I must give the face a name,” said I. “Let me present myself. Mr. Robert Byng.”

  “In return, know me as Mr. Cecil Dreeme. Will you shake hands with your grateful patient, Mr. Byng?”

  He weakly lifted an attenuated hand. Poor fellow! I could hardly keep my vigorous fist from crushing up that meagre, chilly handful, so elated was I at his recovery and his gratitude.

  “I owe you an explanation, of course,” said I. “I am a new-comer, arrived from Europe only last night. Mr. Stillfleet, an old comrade, ceded his chambers below to me this afternoon. Locksley came to my door at twelve o’clock, looking for my friend Mr. Churm, who had been sitting with me. Churm had gone. Locksley was in great alarm. I volunteered my advice. He took me into his confidence, so far as this: he said that you were a young painter, living in the closest retirement, for reasons satisfactory to yourself, and that he feared you were dying from overwork, confinement, solitude, and perhaps mental trouble. I said you must be helped at once. We came up, and banged at your door heartily. No answer. We took the liberty to pick your lock and break into your castle. Then we took the greater liberty to put life into you, in the form of air, warmth, and alcohol.”

  “Pardonable liberties, surely.”

  “Yes; since it seems you did not mean to die.”

  “Suicide!” said Dreeme, reproachfully. “No, thank God! you did not accuse me of that, Mr. Byng!”

  “When we were knocking at you
r door, and hearing only a deathly silence, I dreaded that you had let toil and trouble drive you to despair.”

  “Overwork and anxiety were killing me, without my knowledge.”

  “And solitude?” said I.

  “And that solitude of the heart which is the brother of death. Yes, Mr. Byng, I have been extravagant of my life. But innocently. Believe it!”

  There was such eager protest in his look and tone, that I hastened to reassure him.

  “When I saw your face, Mr. Dreeme, I read there too much mental life and too much moral life for suicide. I see brave patience in your countenance. Besides, you have too much sense to rush out and tap Death on the cold shoulder, and beg to be let out of life into Paradise before you have earned your entrance fee. You know, as well as I do, that Death keeps suicides shivering in Chaos, without even a stick and a knife to notch off the measureless days, until the allotted dying hour they vainly tried to anticipate comes round.”

  Dreeme’s attention refused to be averted from his own case by such speculations.

  “I have been struggling with dark waters,—dark waters, Mr. Byng,” said he.

  “Churm’s very phrase to describe his sorrow,” I thought. “Who knows but Dreeme’s grief is the same?”

  “Struggling like a raw swimmer,” he continued. “And when I was drowning, I find you sent to give me a friendly hand. It is written that I shall not die with all my work undone. No, no. I shall live to finish.”