The Lifted Veil | Page 8

recurrence of my new gift. I sent my thoughts ranging over my world
of knowledge, in the hope that they would find some object which
would send a reawakening vibration through my slumbering genius.
But no; my world remained as dim as ever, and that flash of strange
light refused to come again, though I watched for it with palpitating
eagerness.
My father accompanied me every day in a drive, and a gradually
lengthening walk as my powers of walking increased; and one evening
he had agreed to come and fetch me at twelve the next day, that we
might go together to select a musical box, and other purchases
rigorously demanded of a rich Englishman visiting Geneva. He was
one of the most punctual of men and bankers, and I was always
nervously anxious to be quite ready for him at the appointed time. But,
to my surprise, at a quarter past twelve he had not appeared. I felt all
the impatience of a convalescent who has nothing particular to do, and
who has just taken a tonic in the prospect of immediate exercise that
would carry off the stimulus.
Unable to sit still and reserve my strength, I walked up and down the
room, looking out on the current of the Rhone, just where it leaves the
dark-blue lake; but thinking all the while of the possible causes that
could detain my father.
Suddenly I was conscious that my father was in the room, but not alone:
there were two persons with him. Strange! I had heard no footstep, I
had not seen the door open; but I saw my father, and at his right hand
our neighbour Mrs. Filmore, whom I remembered very well, though I
had not seen her for five years. She was a commonplace middle-aged
woman, in silk and cashmere; but the lady on the left of my father was
not more than twenty, a tall, slim, willowy figure, with luxuriant blond
hair, arranged in cunning braids and folds that looked almost too
massive for the slight figure and the small-featured, thin-lipped face
they crowned. But the face had not a girlish expression: the features
were sharp, the pale grey eyes at once acute, restless, and sarcastic.
They were fixed on me in half-smiling curiosity, and I felt a painful

sensation as if a sharp wind were cutting me. The pale-green dress, and
the green leaves that seemed to form a border about her pale blond hair,
made me think of a Water-Nixie--for my mind was full of German
lyrics, and this pale, fatal-eyed woman, with the green weeds, looked
like a birth from some cold sedgy stream, the daughter of an aged river.
"Well, Latimer, you thought me long," my father said . . .
But while the last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished, and
there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed folding- screen
that stood before the door. I was cold and trembling; I could only totter
forward and throw myself on the sofa. This strange new power had
manifested itself again . . . But WAS it a power? Might it not rather be
a disease--a sort of intermittent delirium, concentrating my energy of
brain into moments of unhealthy activity, and leaving my saner hours
all the more barren? I felt a dizzy sense of unreality in what my eye
rested on; I grasped the bell convulsively, like one trying to free
himself from nightmare, and rang it twice. Pierre came with a look of
alarm in his face.
"Monsieur ne se trouve pas bien?" he said anxiously.
"I'm tired of waiting, Pierre," I said, as distinctly and emphatically as I
could, like a man determined to be sober in spite of wine; "I'm afraid
something has happened to my father--he's usually so punctual. Run to
the Hotel des Bergues and see if he is there."
Pierre left the room at once, with a soothing "Bien, Monsieur"; and I
felt the better for this scene of simple, waking prose. Seeking to calm
myself still further, I went into my bedroom, adjoining the salon, and
opened a case of eau-de-Cologne; took out a bottle; went through the
process of taking out the cork very neatly, and then rubbed the reviving
spirit over my hands and forehead, and under my nostrils, drawing a
new delight from the scent because I had procured it by slow details of
labour, and by no strange sudden madness. Already I had begun to taste
something of the horror that belongs to the lot of a human being whose
nature is not adjusted to simple human conditions.

Still enjoying the scent, I returned to the salon, but it was not
unoccupied, as it had been before I left it. In front of the Chinese