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 excellence9 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 condemns10 it and disheartens you.
However, had Carriston cared to do so, I think he might have fearlessly submitted his productions to any conscientious11 critic. His drawings were immeasurably more artistic12 and powerful than mine. He had undoubtedly13 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 entirely14 to the higher branch of the art. I have now before me a series of outline faces drawn15 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 peculiarities16 of his character were revealed to me, my interest grew deeper and deeper. I flatter myself that I am a keen observer and skilful17 analyst18 of personal character, and until now fancied that to write a description of its component19 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, afflicted20 by a peculiarly sensitive nature. Although strong[205] and apparently21 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 disposition22 always was, the tone of his mind, his spirits, his conversation, varied23, as it were, with the atmosphere. He was full of imagination, and that imagination, always rich, was at times weird24, even grotesquely25 weird. Not for one moment did he seem to doubt the stability of the wild theories he started, or the possibility of the poetical27 dreams he dreamed being realized. He had his faults, of course; he was hasty and impulsive28; indeed to me one of the greatest charms about the boy was that, right or wrong, each word he spoke29 came straight from his heart.
So far as I could judge, the whole organization of his mind was too highly strung, too finely wrought30 for every-day use. A note of joy, of sorrow, even of pity vibrated through it too strongly for his comfort or well-being31. 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 mania32 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 bent33 of his disposition was sad, even despondent34 and morbid35. 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 longing36 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 nucleus37 of that West End practice which it is the dream of every doctor to establish.”
I have already alluded38 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 fixed39 upon something, yet upon something beyond the range of one’s own vision. During the first two or three days of our new-born intimacy40, I found this eccentricity41 of Carriston’s positively42 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 divest43 one’s self of the belief that something should be there to justify44 so fixed a gaze. However, as the rapid growth of our friendly intercourse45 soon showed me that he was a boy of most ardent46 poetic26 temperament—perhaps even more a poet than an artist—I laid at the door of the Muse47 these absent looks and recurring48 flights into vacancy49.
We were at the Fairy Glen one morning, sketching, to the best of our ability, the swirling50 stream, the gray rocks, and the overhanging trees, the last just growing brilliant with autumnal tints51. So beautiful was everything around that for a long time I worked, idled, or dreamed in contented52 silence. Carriston had set up his easel at some little distance from mine. At last I turned to see how his sketch7 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 riveted53 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 oblivious54 to things mundane55. A party of laughing, chattering56, terrible tourist girls scrambled57 down the rugged58 steps, and one by one passed in front of him. Neither their presence nor the inquisitive59 glances they cast on his statuesque face roused him from his fit of abstraction. For a moment I wondered if the boy took opium60 or some other narcotic61 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 congregate62, 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 pettishness63, and we spent the remainder of the day as pleasantly as usual.
“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 presumption67. 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 hesitation68, “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, ridicule69 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 laymen70 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 crestfallen71 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 plied72 him, Carriston revealed an amount of superstition73 which seemed utterly74 childish and out of place beside the intellectual faculties75 which he undoubtedly possessed76. 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 eccentricities77 which I have mentioned, I reckoned Carriston the pleasantest friend I had ever made. His amiable78 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 lookout79 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 psychology80 as you did three thousand years ago.”
When the time came for me to fold up my easel and return to the drudgery81 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.
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1
ripen
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| vt.使成熟；vi.成熟 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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precursor
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| n.先驱者；前辈；前任；预兆；先兆 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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sketching
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| n.草图 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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analyst
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| n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家 | |
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component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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grotesquely
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| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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impulsive
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| adj.冲动的，刺激的；有推动力的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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despondent
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| adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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eccentricity
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| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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divest
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| v.脱去，剥除 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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muse
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| n.缪斯（希腊神话中的女神），创作灵感 | |
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recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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51
tints
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| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
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52
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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53
riveted
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| 铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意 | |
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oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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56
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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57
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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narcotic
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| n.麻醉药，镇静剂；adj.麻醉的，催眠的 | |
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congregate
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pettishness
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trudged
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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penitent
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| adj.后悔的；n.后悔者；忏悔者 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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laymen
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| 门外汉，外行人( layman的名词复数 )； 普通教徒（有别于神职人员） | |
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crestfallen
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| adj. 挫败的，失望的，沮丧的 | |
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plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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79
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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80
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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81
drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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