Scenery! I need but to look into the Egyptian corner of my chamber, and, if I took any interest in the life of the Pharaohs, there it was in a pictured slab from the Memnonium; or in the dead Pharaoh, there himself was grinning in a mummy-case, — a very lively corpse, — unpleasantly lively, indeed, when nights were dark, and matches flashed brimstone and refused to burn.
Scenery! Greece and Rome, Dark Ages, Crusades, Middle Ages, Moorish Conquest, ’88 in England, Renaissance, ’89 in France, every old era and the last new era, — all were so thoroughly represented here, by model of temple, cast of statue, vase, picture, tapestry, suit of armor, Moslem scymitar, bundle of pikes, rusty cross-bow or arquebuse, model of guillotine, — by some object that showed what the age had most admired, most used, or most desired, — that there, restored before me, rose and spread the age itself, and called its heroes and its caitiffs forward in review.
If I preferred to live in the Past, I had only to shut myself up at home, and forget that eager Present about me, — that stirring life of America, urged on by the spirit of the Past, and unburdened by its matter.
Romance, too! Romance had come to me, whether I would or no. Without any permission of mine, asked or granted, I was become an actor, with my special part to play, perforce, among mysteries.
Cecil Dreeme.
Emma Denman.
Densdeth.
My connection with these three characters grew daily closer. I do not love mystery. Ignorance I do not hate; for ignorance is the first condition of knowledge. Mystery I recoil from. It generally implies the concealment of something that should not be concealed, for the sake of delusion or deception; or if not for these, because tragedy will follow its revelation.
Cecil Dreeme continued to me a profound mystery. He kept himself utterly secluded by day, working hard at his art. He knew no one but myself. No one ever saw him except myself and Locksley, or Locksley’s children. Only at night, wrapped in his cloak, did he emerge from his seclusion, and wander over the dim city.
I became his companion in these walks whenever my engagements allowed; but such night wandering seemed unhealthy for him in his delicate state.
“Are you wise, Dreeme,” said I to him, one morning, in his studio, after we had become intimate, “to live this nocturnal life? Sunshine and broad daylight are just as indispensable to man as they are to flower or plant. I might give you good chemical reasons for my statement.”
“There are night-blooming flowers, — the Cereus, and others,” said he, avoiding my question.
“Yes, but they owe their blossom to the day’s accumulation of sunshine. Botany refuses to protect you.”
“Plants grow by night.”
“In night that follows sunny day.”
“I accept the analogy. I have accumulated sunshine enough, I hope, for growth, and perhaps for a pallid kind of bloom, in my past sunny days. My rank growth went on vigorously enough in the daylight. I am conscious of a finer development in the dark.”
“But I do not like this voluntary prison.”
“Few escape a forced imprisonment, longer or shorter, in their lives. Illness or sorrow shut us in away from the world’s glare, that we may see colors as they are, and know gold from pinchbeck. Why should I not go to prison, of my own accord, for such teaching, and other reasons?”
“And other reasons? Tell me, Dreeme, before our friendship goes further, — before 1 utterly and irrecoverably give you my confidence.”
“Go on.”
“No! I cannot go on.”
“I understand, and am not insulted. You mean to ask whether I am hiding here because I have picked a pocket, or pillaged a till, or basely broken a heart, or perhaps because I have a blood-stain to wear out.”
“My imagination had not put its suspicion, if any existed, into any such crude charges.”
“So I saw, and stated the question blankly. You could not connect me with vulgar or devilish crime. At the same time, you had a certain uneasiness about me, undefined and misty, but real. You will not deny it,” and he smiled as he spoke.
“No. Since you affront the fact with such cheerful confidence, I will not deny the vague dread.”
“Be at rest, then! There is not a man or a woman in the world, whom I cannot look in the eyes without blenching. You need not be ashamed of me. You may trust me, without any fear of that harshest of all the shocks our life can feel, loss of faith in a friend’s honor.”
“Well, we will never speak of this again. Live by your own laws, in the dark or the light! I demand unquestioned freedom for myself. I am the last man to refuse it to another.”
“Really,” said Dreeme, “since your projection into my orbit, I no longer need personal contact with the outer world.”
“You find me a good enough newsman.”
“The artistic temperament does not love to bustle about in the crowd, to shoulder and hustle for its facts. You give me the cream of what the world says and does. But, by and by, when you tire of the novelty of a tyro-artist’s society, you will drop me.”
“Never! so long as you consent to be my in-door man. I often feel, now, as I stir about among men, collecting my budget of daily facts, that I only get them for the pleasure of hearing your remarks when I unpack in the evening.”
“I must try to be a wiser and wittier critic.”
“You return me far more than I bring. I train my mental muscle with other people. You give me lessons in the gymnastics of finer forces. My worldling nature shrivels, the immortal Me expands under your artistic touch.”
“I am happy to be accused of such a power,” Dreeme said, with his sweet, melancholy smile. “It is the noblest one being can exercise over another, and needed much in this low world of ours.”
“Yes, Dreeme, your fresh, brave, earnest character I begin to regard as my guardian influence. With you I escape from the mean ambitions, the disloyal rivalries, the mercenary friendships of men, — from the coarseness, baseness, and foulness of the world. You neutralize to me all the evil powers.”
“That Mr. Densdeth, of whom you have once or twice spoken, — is he one of them?”
“Perhaps so.”
“Are you still intimate with him?”
“Intimate? Hardly. Intimacy implies friendship.”
“Familiar, then?”
“Familiar, yes. He seeks my society. We are thrown together by circumstances. He interests me greatly. I know no man of such wide scope of information, such knowledge, such wit, such brilliancy, — no one at all to compare with him, now that my friend Churm is absent.”
“Those two fraternize, I suppose.”
“Churm and Densdeth?”
“Yes; you seem to make one a substitute for the other.”
“‘How happy could I be with either!’ O no! You strangely misapprehend Mr. Churm. The two are as much asunder in heart as in looks.”
“Ah!” said Dreeme.
“You seem incredulous. But let me tell you that Churm’s knowledge of Densdeth gives the same result as these clairvoyant intuitions of yours. I suppose