The Scheme

The monotonous protension of the hour, renders me weary, and I find it unlikely, that any avenue of leisure, shall be the present subject of occupation. It is in the transient recoupment of indelible memory, by some unrequited whisper of forsaken lore, that I find, the tale which has at desultory occasions, arrested my thought into unredeemable lethargy. My purport is insufficient without any account of my appellation, and in these pages, I must unfurl the nouns, Fredrick Jefferson, not in mere address of the acquainted person, but a rudimentary conduit to the necessities of rapport. I was young when this, condition of my affair became, a necessary benefit of experience beyond the vague duality of past and present. The spirit of happy days, is what I remember more intensely, in the advent of these noetic scenes, but even in that abundant portion of unsullied felicity, the impending condition of ordained futurity, remained but a shadow. I was nurtured in the strain of peculiar characters, those of a largely endowed genius, succeptible within their untethered novelty, to pursuits of the philosophical and artistic. At times, it made me weary, that in my father and mother, I could not register for any earthly benefit, the natural coincidence of leisurely rapport, and slowly I began to despise the brooding conceit, of what would be their alchemical practice. Still, I enjoyed the methods at which they displayed a mutual propensity, in the adequate intervals of our intercourse, and I derived a prejudice of my own welfare, in their counsel. My own boyhood strangeness, had become a conversant counterpart, to their rhapsodies and salient illustrations of knowledge, and as I advanced in age, I had become a precocious connoisseur of multiform tomes, from the translated Germanic to the Latin. Our pecuniary altitude, had informed a sustainable privilege, and I would pursue the formal conventions of education, in academies of esteem. The semblance of these residencies, had always been, a passage of fascination for me, with the spires of edifices, piercing the elusive cirrus of the heavens, the grotesque deficiency of contemporary appeal upon each portion of the dreary fabric, something of the sensually Gothic I imagine. The tutors here, had taken a particular liking to me, but the reason, for this convenience, was not solely the prolific vigor of my adolescent brilliance, it was rather the supposed reputation that my father had, in the realm of the arts.

I had not known, sufficiently before that my father was an acquainted specimen of the academic caliber, for he spoke with little enthusiasm about his former years, and betrayed little of even their existence. Mrs. Jameson, my History tutor had funded my comprehension of this grapevine, and I imagine that she expected negation on my part when she spoke,

"Your father Norman was a dynamic genius, with a rather pessimistic withdrawal of temperament. He spent his younger years in this very city, and attended many lessons under his scholarship. Perhaps it was inevitable that without the homologous signature of character, he became somewhat wayward and autodidactically adamant. He learnt greatly by himself, for himself and he was quite the poet and painter. His work was subject to speculation, that he was..." Here the speaker arrested by ellipsis, surrendered to her chair and let her eyes wander, as her visage became unusually pale,

"He was mental yes, his philosophy was a juxtaposition of personal sophistication, and demonic fascination. Some were excited, to here him rhapsodize aggressively about medieval obscurities, or men and women of an undocumented prestige. When he began to completely eschew our curriculum, he surrendered his work, and left the city altogether, without a word, to neither his mother, nor the academy" Here the woman, caressing her raven hair, sauntered to a portion of the room, and withdrew a vertically rectangular canvas and discovered it to me. It was a painting, a scheme of unusual minimalism and darkly imagery.

"This is what remained among the other fragments of his work, and supplements. The principal called it one of the most poignant paintings, that too by a youth" she said handing me the canvas. It was ultimately a macabre depiction of a portrait, which was a woman, with only empty cavities for eyes, and a knitted mouth. In her hand she held a crimson apple and her garment was a luxurious white. In the corner of the piece was the painted text "INNOCENCE". I gasped in its abandon and requested to be excused, for the nonce. I did not understand, why he suggested I procure education in this academy, and I thought perhaps they had been mistaken until an old photograph, in one of the corridors, depicted the person of my father, with a much younger gravity to his saturnine countenance, but very familiar. He stood at an obstinate distance from other scholars and lecturers, and I fancy that this was his usual rejection of the masses. My mother had always said he was, since the day she met him, a relatively peculiar introvert, with stubborn inclinations and bizarre interests, perhaps beyond what we could fathom from his art.

In the ensuing days since the revelation, I perceived a change in Mrs. Jameson's character, among other common attributes. She was unusually high strung, assigning many pretentious interviews to our discussions, something suggestive of malignant imposture. Her intrusive conduct was insufferable, and the duality of artifice, and unrest, seemed to ferment her mind. In the hours of quiet emancipation, I usually returned to that photograph on the corridor walls, and upon perfunctory albeit decent inspection, I found an eerie coincidence. There was a girl in the photograph who had uncanny similarities, to the girl in my father's painting. She stood with refined posture, and yet she gazed askance, from the second row upon the figure of the oblivious Mrs. Jameson. My father whom, I had fancied deliberately segregated from the scholars, by a conspicuous margin, also seemed to gaze at Mrs. Jameson, with similar distaste. But who was the girl? And for what reason did she look upon Mrs. Jameson, with adamant contempt. As I wearily fermented my mind, in contemplation a youth from the academy I suppose joined me, at this moment it was only footfalls and an intrusive voice, that impeded my ruminations.

"I remember this very well, it was when Mrs. Jameson and I had a tiff in her office yes, and I told Norman about my suspicions, that she wanted to off me, because her husband had committed infidelity with my mother" and then with these words, as they dawned upon me, as of a dream, I gasped to discover the girl beside me, for in the rendering obscurity of shadow, a slanting light fell upon a pallid visage, with needle punctured lips and empty eye sockets. I shrieked and tumbled upon my bottom, receding with vigor, until my sinew allowed me reacquaintance with my feet. I hurried to my dorm, and settled there, my heart pitchforked with malice, and dread.

In the ensuing day, I remember, I wrote a letter to my father, and the words ran thus,

"I do not know why you have purchased such an obscene volition, given the circumstances of your past, and acted on it, at the expense of my own welfare, but I shudder to think that you are governed by that peculiar caprice of undiagnosed insanity, which I cannot presently call philosophical duty. Even mother has not spoken of this for reasons beyond comprehension or credence. I shall return soon, and we shall speak of this in due time,

Your son,

Fredrick"

After the postal submission, I found my way to Mrs. Jefferson's vacant office, for I had some revelation that she was in a class. I sought to retrieve the painting, and other registered documents, relative to the academy, but in the course of my enterprise, I heard Mrs. Jefferson's footfalls, and I confined myself in a larger than usual cupboard, clandestinely hearkening to her audible rambling,

"No no no! Mr. Anderson, that Fredrick boy will be the death of me I tell you, I should have never told him about his father, he knows too much...and the painting? Why did I not kill myself instead! It will be a nightmare for us if he proves to be just like his father, and he finds out about the girl we murdered! Here take this painting and get rid of it, I fear he will see more to it, than I have tried to hide!" This made me weak in the knees, and I tumbled from the threshold of the cupboard, unveiling myself to the despair ridden mien of Mrs. Jameson and a leviathan, albeit stately man.