To so mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a
nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances,
imply incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the
circumstances in Miss Carew's case were not ordinary; for the man
was clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his
bare arms shone like those of a gladiator. His broad pectoral
muscles, in their white covering, were like slabs of marble. Even
his hair, short, crisp, and curly, seemed like burnished bronze in
the evening light. It came into Lydia's mind that she had disturbed
an antique god in his sylvan haunt. The fancy was only momentary;
for she perceived that there was a third person present; a man
impossible to associate with classic divinity. He looked like a well
to do groom, and was contemplating his companion much as a groom
might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the first to
see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that he
regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following
his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his
lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised
admiration and wonder. Lydia's first impulse was to turn and fly;
her next, to apologize for her presence. Finally she went away
quietly through the trees.
The moment she was out of their sight she increased her pace almost
to a run. The day was too warm for rapid movement, and she soon
stopped and listened. There were the usual woodland sounds; leaves
rustling, grasshoppers chirping, and birds singing; but not a human
voice or footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was
only the Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe's
classical Sabbat, and changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a
living reality. The groom must have been one of those incongruities
characteristic of dreams--probably a reminiscence of Lucian's
statement that the tenant of the Warren Lodge had a single male
attendant. It was impossible that this glorious vision of manly
strength and beauty could be substantially a student broken down by
excessive study. That irrational glow of delight, too, was one of
the absurdities of dreamland; otherwise she should have been ashamed
of it.
Lydia made her way back to the castle in some alarm as to the state
of her nerves, but dwelling on her vision with a pleasure that she
would not have ventured to indulge had it concerned a creature of
flesh and blood. Once or twice it recurred to her so vividly that
she asked herself whether it could have been real. But a little
reasoning convinced her that it must have been an hallucination.