I am filled with awe of what I have to write.The sun is shining golden above me;the sea lies blue beneath his gaze;the same world sends its growing things up to the sun,and its flying things into the air which I have breathed from my infancy;but I know the outspread splendour a passing show,and that at any moment it may,like the drop-scene of a stage,be lifted to reveal more wonderful things.
Shortly after my father's death,I was seated one morning in the library.I had been,somewhat listlessly,regarding the portrait that hangs among the books,which I knew only as that of a distant ancestor,and wishing I could learn something of its original.Then I had taken a book from the shelves and begun to read.
Glancing up from it,I saw coming toward me--not between me and the door,but between me and the portrait--a thin pale man in rusty black.He looked sharp and eager,and had a notable nose,at once reminding me of a certain jug my sisters used to call Mr.Crow.
"Finding myself in your vicinity,Mr.Vane,I have given myself the pleasure of calling,"he said,in a peculiar but not disagreeable voice."Your honoured grandfather treated me--I may say it without presumption--as a friend,having known me from childhood as his father's librarian."It did not strike me at the time how old the man must be.
"May I ask where you live now,Mr.Crow?"I said.
He smiled an amused smile.
"You nearly hit my name,"he rejoined,"which shows the family insight.You have seen me before,but only once,and could not then have heard it!""Where was that?"
"In this very room.You were quite a child,however!"I could not be sure that I remembered him,but for a moment Ifancied I did,and I begged him to set me right as to his name.
"There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory in it,"he remarked."For my name--which you have near enough--it used to be Raven."I had heard the name,for marvellous tales had brought it me.
"It is very kind of you to come and see me,"I said."Will you not sit down?"He seated himself at once.
"You knew my father,then,I presume?"
"I knew him,"he answered with a curious smile,"but he did not care about my acquaintance,and we never met.--That gentleman,however,"he added,pointing to the portrait,--"old Sir Up'ard,his people called him,--was in his day a friend of mine yet more intimate than ever your grandfather became."Then at length I began to think the interview a strange one.But in truth it was hardly stranger that my visitor should remember Sir Upward,than that he should have been my great-grandfather's librarian!
"I owe him much,"he continued;"for,although I had read many more books than he,yet,through the special direction of his studies,he was able to inform me of a certain relation of modes which I should never have discovered of myself,and could hardly have learned from any one else.""Would you mind telling me all about that?"I said.
"By no means--as much at least as I am able:there are not such things as wilful secrets,"he answered--and went on.
"That closet held his library--a hundred manuscripts or so,for printing was not then invented.One morning I sat there,working at a catalogue of them,when he looked in at the door,and said,`Come.'I laid down my pen and followed him--across the great hall,down a steep rough descent,and along an underground passage to a tower he had lately built,consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it.The door of this room had a tremendous lock,which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw.I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him,when,to my eyes,he began to dwindle,and grew less and less.All at once my vision seemed to come right,and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me.In a minute more he was the merest speck in the distance,with the tops of blue mountains beyond him,clear against a sky of paler blue.I recognised the country,for I had gone there and come again many a time,although I had never known this way to it.
"Many years after,when the tower had long disappeared,I taught one of his descendants what Sir Upward had taught me;and now and then to this day I use your house when I want to go the nearest way home.I must indeed--without your leave,for which I ask your pardon--have by this time well established a right of way through it--not from front to back,but from bottom to top!""You would have me then understand,Mr.Raven,"I said,"that you go through my house into another world,heedless of disparting space?""That I go through it is an incontrovertible acknowledgement of space,"returned the old librarian.