i am disposed to think that never before did a sincere friendship, one which was fated to last unbroken for years, ripen so quickly as that between carriston and myself. as i now look back i find it hard to associate him with any, even a brief, period of time subsequent to our meeting, during which he was not my bosom friend. i forget whether our meeting at the same picturesque spot on the morning which followed our self-introduction was the result of accident or arrangement. anyway, we spent the day together, and that day was the precursor of many passed in each other’s society. morning after morning we sallied forth to do our best to transfer the same bits of scenery to our sketching-blocks. evening after evening we returned to dine side by side, and afterward to talk and smoke together, indoors or outdoors as the temperature advised or our wishes inclined.
great friends we soon became—inseparable as long as my short holiday lasted. it was, perhaps, pleasant for each to work in company with an amateur like himself. each could ask the other’s opinion of the merits of the work done, and feel happy at the approval duly given. an artist’s standard of excellence is too high for a non-professional. when he praises your work he praises it but as the work of an outsider. you feel that such commendation condemns it and disheartens you.
however, had carriston cared to do so, i think he might have fearlessly submitted his productions to any conscientious critic. his drawings were immeasurably more artistic and powerful than mine. he had undoubtedly great talent, and i was much surprised to find that good as he was at landscape, he was even better at the figure. he could, with a firm, bold hand draw rapidly the most marvellous likenesses. so spirited and true were some of the studies he showed me, that i could without flattery advise him, provided he could finish as he began, to keep entirely to the higher branch of the art. i have now before me a series of outline faces drawn by him—many of them from memory; and as i look at them the original of each comes at once before my eyes.
from the very first i had been much interested in the young man, and as day by day went by, and the peculiarities of his character were revealed to me, my interest grew deeper and deeper. i flatter myself that i am a keen observer and skilful analyst of personal character, and until now fancied that to write a description of its component parts was an easy matter. yet when i am put to the proof i find it no simple task to convey in words a proper idea of charles carriston’s mental organization.
i soon discovered that he was, i may say, afflicted by a peculiarly sensitive nature. although strong[205] and apparently in good health, the very changes of the weather seemed to affect him almost to the same extent as they affect a flower. sweet as his disposition always was, the tone of his mind, his spirits, his conversation, varied, as it were, with the atmosphere. he was full of imagination, and that imagination, always rich, was at times weird, even grotesquely weird. not for one moment did he seem to doubt the stability of the wild theories he started, or the possibility of the poetical dreams he dreamed being realized. he had his faults, of course; he was hasty and impulsive; indeed to me one of the greatest charms about the boy was that, right or wrong, each word he spoke came straight from his heart.
so far as i could judge, the whole organization of his mind was too highly strung, too finely wrought for every-day use. a note of joy, of sorrow, even of pity vibrated through it too strongly for his comfort or well-being. as yet it had not been called upon to bear the test of love, and fortunately—i use the word advisedly—fortunately he was not, according to the usual significance of the word, a religious man, or i should have thought it not unlikely that some day he would fall a victim to that religious mania so well known to my professional brethren, and have developed hysteria or melancholia. he might even have fancied himself a messenger sent from heaven for the regeneration of mankind. from natures like carriston’s are prophets made.
in short, i may say that my exhaustive study of my new friend’s character resulted in a certain amount of uneasiness as to his future—an uneasiness not entirely free from professional curiosity.
although the smile came readily and frequently to his lips, the general bent of his disposition was sad, even despondent and morbid. and yet few young men’s lives promised to be so pleasant as charles carriston’s.
i was rallying him one day on his future rank and its responsibilities.
“you will, of course, be disgustingly rich?” i said.
carriston sighed. “yes, if i live long enough; but i don’t suppose i shall.”
“why in the world shouldn’t you? you look pale and thin, but are in capital health. twelve long miles we have walked to-day—you never turned a hair.”
carriston made no reply. he seemed in deep thought.
“your friends ought to look after you and get you a wife,” i said.
“i have no friends,” he said sadly. “no nearer relation than a cousin a good deal older than i am, who looks upon me as one who was born to rob him of what should be his.”
“but by the law of primogeniture, so sacred to the upper ten thousand, he must know you are entitled to it.”
“yes; but for years and years i was always going to die. my life was not thought worth six months’ purchase. all of a sudden i got well. ever since then i have seemed, even to myself, a kind of interloper.”
“it must be unpleasant to have a man longing for one’s death. all the more reason you should marry, and put other lives between him and the title.”
“i fancy i shall never marry,” said carriston, looking at me with his soft dark eyes. “you see, a boy[207] who has waited for years expecting to die, doesn’t grow up with exactly the same feelings as other people. i don’t think i shall ever meet a woman i can care for enough to make my wife. no, i expect my cousin will be sir ralph yet.”
i tried to laugh him out of his morbid ideas. “those who live will see,” i said. “only promise to ask me to your wedding, and better still, if you live in town, appoint me your family doctor. it may prove the nucleus of that west end practice which it is the dream of every doctor to establish.”
i have already alluded to the strange beauty of carriston’s dark eyes. as soon as companionship commenced between us those eyes became to me, from scientific reasons, objects of curiosity on account of the mysterious expression which at times i detected in them. often and often they wore a look the like to which, i imagine, is found only in the eyes of a somnambulist—a look which one feels certain is intently fixed upon something, yet upon something beyond the range of one’s own vision. during the first two or three days of our new-born intimacy, i found this eccentricity of carriston’s positively startling. when now and then i turned to him, and found him staring with all his might at nothing, my eyes were compelled to follow the direction in which his own were bent. it was at first impossible to divest one’s self of the belief that something should be there to justify so fixed a gaze. however, as the rapid growth of our friendly intercourse soon showed me that he was a boy of most ardent poetic temperament—perhaps even more a poet than an artist—i laid at the door of the muse these absent looks and recurring flights into vacancy.
we were at the fairy glen one morning, sketching, to the best of our ability, the swirling stream, the gray rocks, and the overhanging trees, the last just growing brilliant with autumnal tints. so beautiful was everything around that for a long time i worked, idled, or dreamed in contented silence. carriston had set up his easel at some little distance from mine. at last i turned to see how his sketch was progressing. he had evidently fallen into one of his brown studies, and, apparently, a harder one than usual. his brush had fallen from his fingers, his features were immovable, and his strange dark eyes were absolutely riveted upon a large rock in front of him, at which he gazed as intently as if his hope of heaven depended upon seeing through it.
he seemed for the while oblivious to things mundane. a party of laughing, chattering, terrible tourist girls scrambled down the rugged steps, and one by one passed in front of him. neither their presence nor the inquisitive glances they cast on his statuesque face roused him from his fit of abstraction. for a moment i wondered if the boy took opium or some other narcotic on the sly. full of the thought i rose, crossed over to him, and laid my hand upon his shoulder. as he felt my touch he came to himself, and looked up at me in a dazed, inquiring way.
“really, carriston,” i said, laughingly, “you must reserve your dreaming fits until we are in places where tourists do not congregate, or you will be thought a madman, or at least a poet.”
he made no reply. he turned away from me impatiently, even rudely; then, picking up his brush, went on with his sketch. after awhile he seemed to[209] recover from his pettishness, and we spent the remainder of the day as pleasantly as usual.
as we trudged home in the twilight, he said to me in an apologetic, almost penitent way,
“i hope i was not rude to you just now.”
“when do you mean?” i asked, having almost forgotten the trivial incident.
“when you woke me from what you called my dreaming.”
“oh dear, no. you were not at all rude. if you had been, it was but the penalty due to my presumption. the flight of genius should be respected, not checked by a material hand.”
“that is nonsense; i am not a genius, and you must forgive me for my rudeness,” said carriston simply.
after walking some distance in silence he spoke again. “i wish when you are with me you would try and stop me from getting into that state. it does me no good.”
seeing he was in earnest i promised to do my best, and was curious enough to ask him whither his thoughts wandered during those abstracted moments.
“i can scarcely tell you,” he said. presently he asked, speaking with hesitation, “i suppose you never feel that under certain circumstances—circumstances which you cannot explain—you might be able to see things which are invisible to others?”
“to see things. what things?”
“things, as i said, which no one else can see. you must know there are people who possess this power.”
“i know that certain people have asserted they possess what they call second-sight; but the assertion is too absurd to waste time in refuting.”
“yet,” said carriston dreamily, “i know that if i did not strive to avoid it some such power would come to me.”
“you are too ridiculous, carriston,” i said. “some people see what others don’t because they have longer sight. you may, of course, imagine anything. but your eyes—handsome eyes they are, too—contain certain properties, known as humors and lenses, therefore in order to see—”
“yes, yes,” interrupted carriston; “i know exactly all you are going to say. you, a man of science, ridicule everything which breaks what you are pleased to call the law of nature. yet take all the unaccountable tales told. nine hundred and ninety-nine you expose to scorn or throw grave doubt upon, yet the thousandth rests on evidence which cannot be upset or disputed. the possibility of that one proves the possibility of all.”
“not at all; but enough for your argument,” i said, amused at the boy’s wild talk.
“you doctors,” he continued with that delicious air of superiority so often assumed by laymen when they are in good health, “put too much to the credit of diseased imagination.”
“no doubt; it’s a convenient shelf on which to put a difficulty. but go on.”
“the body is your province, yet you can’t explain why a cataleptic patient should hear a watch tick when it is placed against his foot.”
“nor you; nor any one. but perhaps it may aid you to get rid of your rubbishing theories if i tell you that catalepsy, as you understand it, is a disease not known to us; in fact, it does not exist.”
he seemed crestfallen at hearing this. “but what do you want to prove?” i asked. “what have you yourself seen?”
“nothing, i tell you. and i pray i may never see anything.”
after this he seemed inclined to shirk the subject, but i pinned him to it. i was really anxious to get at the true state of his mind. in answer to the leading questions with which i plied him, carriston revealed an amount of superstition which seemed utterly childish and out of place beside the intellectual faculties which he undoubtedly possessed. so much so, that at last i felt more inclined to laugh at than to argue with him.
yet i was not altogether amused by his talk. his wild arguments and wilder beliefs made me fancy there must be a weak spot somewhere in his brain—even made me fear lest his end might be madness. the thought made me sad; for, with the exception of the eccentricities which i have mentioned, i reckoned carriston the pleasantest friend i had ever made. his amiable nature, his good looks, and perfect breeding had endeared the young man to me; so much so, that i resolved, during the remainder of the time we should spend together, to do all i could toward talking the nonsense out of him.
my efforts were unavailing. i kept a sharp lookout upon him, and let him fall into no more mysterious reveries; but the curious idea that he possessed, or could possess, some gift above human nature, was too firmly rooted to be displaced. on all other subjects he argued fairly and was open to reason. on this one[212] point he was immovable. when i could get him to notice my attacks at all, his answer was:
“you doctors, clever as you are with the body, know as little of psychology as you did three thousand years ago.”
when the time came for me to fold up my easel and return to the drudgery of life, i parted from carriston with much regret. one of those solemn, but often broken, promises to join together next year in another sketching tour passed between us. then i went back to london, and during the subsequent months, although i saw nothing of him, i often thought of my friend of the autumn.
