"When you first told me your story, I thought this thing weighed upon
you unnecessarily. Now I see more and more clearly that your unnatural
misery over a very natural act springs from ill-health. It is your body
which you confuse with your conscience. Your remorse is a disease
removable by medicine, by a particular kind of air or scene, by waters
even it may be, or by hard exercise, or by a voyage."
"A voyage!" cried Sir Graham bitterly.
"Well, well--by such means, I would say, as come to a doctor's mind. You
labour under the yoke of the body."
"Do you think that whenever your conscience says, 'You have done wrong'?
Tell me!"
Uniacke, who had got up in his excitement, recoiled at these words which
struck him hard.
"I--I!" he almost stammered. "What have I got to do with it?"
"I ask you to judge yourself, to put yourself in my place. That is all.
Do you tell me that all workings of conscience are due to obscure bodily
causes?"
"How could I? No, but yours--"
"Are not. They hurt my body. They do not come from my body's hurt. And
they increase upon me in this place, yes, they increase upon me."
"I knew it," cried Uniacke.
"Why is that?" said Sir Graham, with a melancholy accent. "I feel, I
begin to feel that there must be some powerful reason--yes, in this
island."
"There cannot be. Leave it! Leave it!"
"I am held here."
"By what?"
"Something intangible, invisible--"
"Nothing, then."
"All-powerful. I cannot go. If I would go, I cannot. Perhaps--perhaps
Jack is coming here."
The painter's eyes were blazing. Uniacke felt himself turn cold.
"Jack coming here!" he said harshly. "Nonsense, Sir Graham. Nobody ever
comes here."
"Dead bodies come on the breast of the sea."
The painter looked towards the window, putting himself into an attitude
of horrible expectation.
"Is it not so?" he asked, in a voice that quivered slightly as if with
an agitation he was trying to suppress.
Uniacke made no reply. He was seized with a horror he had not known
before. He recognised that the island influence mysteriously held his
guest. After an interval he said abruptly:
"What is your doctor's name, did you say?"
"Did I ever say whom I had consulted?" said Sir Graham, almost with an
invalid's ready suspicion, and peering at the clergyman under his thick
eyebrows.
"Surely. But I forget things so easily," said Uniacke calmly.
"Braybrooke is the man--Cavendish Square. An interesting fellow. You may
have heard of his book on the use of colour as a sort of physic in
certain forms of illness."
"I have. What sort of man is he?"
"Very small, very grey, very indecisive in manner."
"Indecisive?"
"In manner. In reality a man of infinite conviction."
"May I ask if you told him your story?"
"The story of my body--naturally. One goes to a doctor to do that."
"And did that narrative satisfy him?"
"Not at all. Not a bit."
"Well--and so?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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