The Lost Stradivarius | Page 8

which the first consciousness of
a deep passion causes in imaginative minds. He had never played the
suite with more power; and the airs, even without the piano part,
seemed fraught with a meaning hitherto unrealised. As he began the
Gagliarda he heard the wicker chair creak; but he had his back towards
it, and the sound was now too familiar to him to cause him even to look
round. It was not till he was playing the repeat that he became aware of
a new and overpowering sensation. At first it was a vague feeling, so
often experienced by us all, of not being alone. He did not stop playing,
and in a few seconds the impression of a presence in the room other
than his own became so strong that he was actually afraid to look round.
But in another moment he felt that at all hazards he must see what or
who this presence was. Without stopping he partly turned and partly
looked over his shoulder. The silver light of early morning was filling
the room, making the various objects appear of less bright colour than
usual, and giving to everything a pearl-grey neutral tint. In this cold but
clear light he saw seated in the wicker chair the figure of a man.
In the first violent shock of so terrifying a discovery, he could not
appreciate such details as those of features, dress, or appearance. He
was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he
knew himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which
bore a human form. He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he
felt to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited
imagination, but still it sat there. Then my brother put down his violin,

and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an intensity
which he had previously believed impossible. Whether the image
which he saw was subjective or objective, I cannot pretend to say: you
will be in a position to judge for yourself when you have finished this
narrative. Our limited experience would lead us to believe that it was a
phantom conjured up by some unusual condition of his own brain; but
we are fain to confess that there certainly do exist in nature phenomena
such as baffle human reason; and it is possible that, for some hidden
purposes of Providence, permission may occasionally be granted to
those who have passed from this life to assume again for a time the
form of their earthly tabernacle. We must, I say, be content to suspend
our judgment on such matters; but in this instance the subsequent
course of events is very difficult to explain, except on the supposition
that there was then presented to my brother's view the actual bodily
form of one long deceased. The dread which took possession of him
was due, he has more than once told me when analysing his feelings
long afterwards, to two predominant causes. Firstly, he felt that mental
dislocation which accompanies the sudden subversion of preconceived
theories, the sudden alteration of long habit, or even the occurrence of
any circumstance beyond the walk of our daily experience. This I have
observed myself in the perturbing effect which a sudden death, a
grievous accident, or in recent years the declaration of war, has
exercised upon all except the most lethargic or the most determined
minds. Secondly, he experienced the profound self-abasement or
mental annihilation caused by the near conception of a being of a
superior order. In the presence of an existence wearing, indeed, the
human form, but of attributes widely different from and superior to his
own, he felt the combined reverence and revulsion which even the
noblest wild animals exhibit when brought for the first time face to face
with man. The shock was so great that I feel persuaded it exerted an
effect on him from which he never wholly recovered.
After an interval which seemed to him interminable, though it was only
of a second's duration, he turned his eyes again to the occupant of the
wicker chair. His faculties had so far recovered from the first shock as
to enable him to see that the figure was that of a man perhaps
thirty-five years of age and still youthful in appearance. The face was

long and oval, the hair brown, and brushed straight off an exceptionally
high forehead. His complexion was very pale or bloodless. He was
clean shaven, and his finely cut mouth, with compressed lips, wore
something of a sneering smile. His general expression was unpleasing,
and from the first my brother felt as by intuition that there was present
some malign and wicked influence. His eyes