Part 2 (2/2)
”Yes; it was a striking thing and impressed me very much, though I cannot recall it at the moment.”
”Well, it was a commission. An eccentric young millionaire had offered me eight thousand dollars for it. I had an absolutely original conception. But I cannot execute it. It's as if a breeze had carried it away.”
”That is very regrettable.”
”Well, I should say so,” replied the sculptor.
Ernest smiled. For everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having twice figured in the divorce court, he was at present defraying the expenses of three households.
The sculptor had meanwhile seated himself at Reginald's writing-table, unintentionally scanning a typewritten page that was lying before him.
Like all artists, something of a madman and something of a child, he at first glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety of his action.
”By Jove!” he cried. ”What is this?”
”It's an epic of the French Revolution,” Reginald replied, not without surprise.
”But, man, do you know that I have discovered my motive in it?”
”What do you mean?” asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at Walkham, whose sanity he began to doubt.
”Listen!”
And the sculptor read, trembling with emotion, a long pa.s.sage whose measured cadence delighted Ernest's ear, without, however, enlightening his mind as to the purport of Walkham's cryptic remark.
Reginald said nothing, but the gleam in his eye showed that this time, at least, his interest was alert.
Walkham saw the hopelessness of making clear his meaning without an explanation.
”I forget you haven't a sculptor's mind. I am so const.i.tuted that, with me, all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form. I do not hear music; I see it rise with domes and spires, with painted windows and Arabesques. The scent of the rose is to me tangible. I can almost feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to me, by its rhythmic flow, something which, at first indefinite, crystallised finally into my lost conception of Narcissus.”
”It is extraordinary,” murmured Reginald. ”I had not dreamed of it.”
”So you do not think it rather fantastic?” remarked Ernest, circ.u.mscribing his true meaning.
”No, it is quite possible. Perhaps his Narcissus was engaging the sub-conscious strata of my mind while I was writing this pa.s.sage. And surely it would be strange if the undercurrents of our mind were not reflected in our style.”
”Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist ought to be able to read beneath and between our lines, not only what we express, but also what we leave unexpressed?”
”Undoubtedly.”
”Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of our state of mind?
That would open a new field to psychology.”
”Only to those that have the key, that can read the hidden symbols. It is to me a matter-of-course that every mind-movement below or above the threshold of consciousness must, of a necessity, leave its imprint faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities.”
”This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to the majority, delight the hearts of the few,” Ernest interjected.
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