Strange Music by Laura Fish Page A

tried water-colours before, & I shall praise him for it up to the tops of the hills. In the meantime I am to tell you about our late visitors . . .
    Seeing Mr. Weale gave to me tremendous pleasure. He entered my bedroom. My heart leapt up. Could he not have stood nearer? Or, better still, sat upon the bed itself instead of the armchair opposite? There are two sides to my bed: the company side and the private side. This I will not explain to Mr. Weale should he return to Torquay, but instead beg that he take the private side, for it never shall be tainted with the memory of anyone else’s presence. Mr. Weale is a noble and handsome naval doctor from Plymouth. His strong Irish accent is potent music to my ears. His sepia paintings fill me with fire. My desire to touch him was overwhelming, to reach out and . . . If our lips should meet I would not faint but would draw him closer by warm tides of hope.
    Mr. Weale’s visit also brought certain discomforts – I longed so much for him not to leave my bedside.
    When Bro said, ‘Mr. Weale is half mad,’ I could have thrown my arms around Bro. I adore the wild spontaneity in Mr. Weale’s nature. I did implore him to examine me. And this he did twice for an hour and a half at a time. I felt then, as I do now, that I was purring . It was extraordinary. ‘The cough is spinal ,’ he finally said. When we were next alone Mr. Weale said it was a ‘ nervous cough ’. He then made me talk of poetry, and gave me Coleridge’s works – though I was nervous, I did not cough. I remember one sentence he said when last examining me word for word: ‘ There may be disease upon the lungs, but it is not beyond the reach of remedies, or you could scarcely have that countenance which buoys me up with hope every time I look at you .’ He asked, ‘ Has the stethoscope been used? ’ I replied, ‘Yes,’ thinking he would examine me with his. He did not. Yet I know he took a great fancy to me, and I to him. More of his exact words come to me; not words he said to me but to others of me : ‘ As long as Miss Barrett is in the drawing-room I certainly will not think of going out of the house. She is a sensitive person, and whilst I was conversing with Miss Barrett, it was only by the strongest effort that I could keep myself from bursting into tears .’ How I would have wept too! Wept to share such deep emotion with him as he with me. Bro says Mr. Weale has confided to him his tendencies to fall in love, and his predilection to wanting to commit suicide, which still constantly recurs. He confided to Bro that, like me, he sometimes hates to be alive.
    And yet all joy turns to sadness – there is his wife, Mrs. Weale, to consider. I despise creatures such as she for their unwomanliness . Is despise too strong a word? I think not. I had to force my hand to shake hers. Simply touching her skin caused my insides to shiver. But she is of little – no – no importance to me. Mrs. Weale shed many tears and Bro tells me she said she was ‘ very sure she was insane ’. I could hardly keep from going downstairs to Mr. Weale and would have stayed there until dawn had Bro not carried me, bodily, protesting and gesticulating otherwise, from the drawing-room.
    I blame my frailness on this weather, and on gathering dust in bed for so long. I Believe I Am Better . Everyone was on the beach today but Bro laid me down and shut the door. He threatened to lock me into my room. I have persuaded Dr. Barry to let me go out. But ‘in the chair’! Staying ‘in the chair’ he insists upon. I shall show him I can do more. Papa has allowed Bro to purchase for me a small yacht, Bella Donna . I wish my yacht to be brought to the front door because the chairs are liable to irregular outbreaks of tremors and convulsions and give me palpitations.
    Dr. Barry has lent me Wanderings in Search of Health by Dr. Cummings,