Part 21

“To my mind,” said the painter, “this world has sufficient beauty and mystery to satisfy the most ardent inquirer.”

“But,” said the Englishman, “is not this world a phantom and a dream as insubstantial as the visions of the ardent mind?”

“Men and women are the only study fit for a man,” interrupted Guido, “and as for the philosopher’s stone I have found it. I found it some months ago in a garden at Sorrento. It is a pearl radiant with all the hues of the rainbow.”

“With regard to that matter,” said the Doctor, “we will have some talk later. The wench’s brother has returned from the war. We must find her a husband.”

“You misunderstand me,” said Guido. “You do not think I am going to throw my precious pearl to the swine? I have sworn to wed Margherita, and wed her I shall, and that swiftly.”

“Such an act of folly would only lead,” said the Doctor, “to your unhappiness and to hers. It is the selfish act of a fool. You must not think of it.”

“Ah!” said Guido, “you are young at seventy, Doctor, but you were old at twenty-five, and you cannot know what these things mean.”

“I was young in my day,” said the Doctor, “and I found many such pearls; believe me, they are all very well in their native shell. To move them is to destroy their beauty.”

“You do not understand,” said Guido. “I have loved countless times; but she is different. You never felt the revelation of the real, true thing that is different from all the rest and transforms a man’s life.”

“No,” said the Doctor, “I confess that to me it was always the same thing.” And for the second time that day the Doctor shivered, he knew not why.

Soon after the meal was over the guests departed, and although the Doctor detained Guido and endeavoured to persuade him to listen to the voice of reason and commonsense, his efforts were in vain. Guido had determined to wed Margherita.

“Besides which, if I left her now, I should bring shame and ruin on her,” he said.

The Doctor started--a familiar voice seemed to whisper in his ear: “She is not the first one.” A strange shudder passed through him, and he distinctly heard a mocking voice laughing. “Go your way,” he said, “but do not come and complain to me if you bring unhappiness on yourself and her.”

Guido departed and the Doctor retired to enjoy his siesta.

For the first time during all the years he had lived at Naples the Doctor was not able to sleep. “This and the hallucinations I have suffered from to-day come from drinking that Cyprus wine,” he said to himself.

He lay in the darkened room tossing uneasily on his bed and sleep would not come to him. Stranger still, before his eyes fiery letters seemed to dance before him in the air. At seven o’clock he went out into the garden. Never had he beheld a more glorious evening. He strolled down towards the seashore and watched the sunset. Mount Vesuvius seemed to have dissolved into a rosy haze; the waves of the sea were phosphorescent. A fisherman was singing in his boat. The sky was an apocalypse of glory and peace.

The Doctor sighed and watched the pageant of light until it faded and the stars lit up the magical blue darkness. Then out of the night came another song--a song which seemed familiar to the Doctor, although for the moment he could not place it, about a King in the Northern Country who was faithful to the grave and to whom his dying mistress a golden beaker gave.

“Strange,” thought the Doctor, “it must come from some Northern fishing smack,” and he went home.

He sat reading in his study until midnight, and for the first time in thirty years he could not fix his mind on his book. For the vision of the sunset and the song of the Northern fisherman, which in some unaccountable way brought back to him the days of his youth, kept on surging up in his mind.

Twelve o’clock struck. He rose to go to bed, and as he did so he heard a loud knock at the door.

“Come in,” said the Doctor, but his voice faltered (“the Cyprus wine again!” he thought), and his heart beat loudly.

The door opened and an icy draught blew into the room. The visitor beckoned, but spoke no word, and Doctor Faust rose and followed him into the outer darkness.

THE FLUTE-PLAYER’S STORY

There is a village in the South of England not far from the sea, which possesses a curious inn called “The Green Tower.” Why it is called thus, nobody knows. This inn must in days gone by have been the dwelling of some well-to-do squire, but nothing now remains of its former prosperity, except the square grey tower, partially covered with ivy, from which it takes its name. The inn stands on the roadside, on the brow of a hill, and at the top of the tower there is a room with four large windows, whence you can see all over the wooded country. The ex-Prime Minister of a foreign state, who had been driven from office and home by a revolution, happening to pass the night in the inn and being of an eccentric disposition, was so much struck with this room that he secured it, together with two bedrooms, permanently for himself. He determined to spend the rest of his life here, and as he was within certain limits not unsociable, he invited his friends to come and stay with him on any Saturday they pleased, without giving him notice.

Thus it happened that of a Saturday and Sunday there was nearly always a mixed gathering of men at “The Green Tower”, and after they had dined they would sit in the tower room and drink old Southern wines from the ex-Prime Minister’s country, and talk, or tell each other stories. But the ex-Prime Minister made it a stringent rule that at least one guest should tell one story during his stay, for while he had been Prime Minister a Court official had been in his service whose only duty it was to tell him a story every evening, and this was the only thing he regretted of all his former privileges.

On this particular Sunday, besides myself, the clerk, the flute-player, the wine merchant (the friends of the ex-Prime Minister were exceedingly various), and the scholar were present. They were smoking in the tower room. It was summer, and the windows were wide open. Every inch of wall which was not occupied by the windows was crowded with books. The clerk was turning over the leaves of the ex-Prime Minister’s stamp collection (which was magnificent), the flute-player was reading the score of Handel’s flute sonatas (which was rare), the scholar was reading a translation in Latin hexameters of the “Ring and the Book” (which the ex-Prime Minister has written in his spare moments), and the wine merchant was drinking generously of a curious red wine, which was very old.

“I think,” said the ex-Prime Minister, “that the flute-player has never yet told us a story.”

The guests knew that this hint was imperative, and so putting away the score, the flute-player said: “My story is called, ‘The Fiddler.’” And he began:--