Part 39 (2/2)

VIII

ISIS AS HUMOURIST

I

On reaching London I resumed my wanderings through the London streets. Bitter as these wanderings were, my real misery now did not begin until I got to bed. Then began the terrible struggle of the soul that wrestles with its ancestral fleshly prison--that prison whose warders are the superst.i.tions of bygone ages. 'Have you not seen the curse literally fulfilled?' ancestral voices of the blood--voices Romany and Gorgio--seemed whispering in my ears. 'Have you not heard the voice of his daughter upon whose head the curse of your dead father has fallen a beggar in the street, while not all your love can succour her or reach her?'

And then my soul would cry out in its agony, 'Most true, Fenella Stanley--most true, Philip Aylwin; but before I will succ.u.mb to such a theory of the universe as yours, a theory which reason laughs at and which laughs at reason, I will die--die by this hand of mine: this flesh that imprisons me in a world of mocking delusion shall be destroyed, but first the symbol itself of your wicked, cruel old folly shall go.'

I would then leap from my bed, light a candle, unlock my cabinet, take out the cross, and holding it aloft prepare to dash it against the wall, when my hand would be arrested by the same ancestral voices, Romany and Gorgio, whispering in my ears and at my heart,

'If you break that amulet, how shall you ever be able to see what would be the effect upon Winnie's fate of its restoration to your father's tomb?'

And then I would laugh aloud and mock the voices of Fenella Stanley and Philip Aylwin and millions of other voices that echoed or murmured or bellowed through half a million years, echoed or murmured or bellowed from European halls and castles, from Gypsy tents, from caves of palaeolithic man.

'How shall you stay the curse from working in the blood of the accursed one?' the voices would say. And then I would laugh again till I feared the people in the hotel would hear me and take me for a maniac.

But then my aunt's picture of a beggar-girl standing in the rain would fill my eyes and the whispers would grow louder than the voice of the North Sea in the March wind: 'Look at _that_. How dare you leave undone anything, howsoever wild, which might seem to any one--even to an illiterate Gypsy, even to a crazy mystic--a means of finding Winifred? What is the meaning of the great instinct which has always conquered the soul in its direst need--which has always driven man when in the grip of unbearable calamity to believe in powers that are unseen? What though that scientific reason of yours tells you that Winifred's misfortunes have nothing to do with any curse? what though your reason tells you that all these calamities may be read as being the perfectly natural results of perfectly natural causes? Is the voice of man's puny reason clothed with such authority that it dares to answer his heart, which knows nothing but that it bleeds?

The terrible facts of the case may be read in two ways. With an inscrutable symmetry these facts may and do fit in with the universal theory of the power of the spirit-world to execute a curse from the grave. Look at that beggar in the street! How dare you ignore the theory of the sorrowing soul, the logic of the lacerated heart, even though your reason laughs it to scorn?'

And then at last my laughter would turn to moans, and, replacing the cross in the cabinet, I would creep hack to my bed ashamed, like a guilty thing--ashamed before myself.

But the more I felt at my throat the claws of the ancestral ogre Superst.i.tion, the more enraged I became with myself for feeling them there. And the auger against my ancestors' mysticism grew with the growing consciousness that I was rapidly yielding to the very same mysticism myself. And then I would get up again and take from my escritoire the sheaf of Fenella Stanley's letters which I had brought from Raxton, and read again those stories about curses, such as that about the withering of a Romany family under a dead man's curse which Winnie had described to me that night on the sands.

II

I was delighted to be told by Sleaford, whom I met one afternoon in Piccadilly, that Cyril had returned to London within the last few days. 'He is appointed artist-in-chief of the new comic paper, _The Caricaturist,_ said Sleaford, 'and is in great feather. I have just been calling upon him.'

'The very man I want to see,' I replied. Sleaford thereupon directed me to Cyril's studio 'You'll find him at work,' said he, 'doin' a caricature of Wilderspin's great picture, ”Faith and Love.” Mother Gudgeon is sittin' as his model. He does everything from models, you know.'

'Mother Gudgeon?'

'A female costermonger that he picked up some where in the slums, the funniest woman in London: haw! haw! I promise you she'll make you laugh when Cyril draws her out.'

He then began to talk upon the subject which interested him above all others, the smartness and swiftness of his yacht. 'I am trying to persuade your mother and aunt to go for a cruise with me, and I think I shall succeed.'

He directed me to the studio, and we parted.

I found Cyril in a large and lofty studio in Chelsea, filled with the curiously carved black furniture of Bombay, mixed, for contrast, with a few Indian cabinets of carved and fretted ivory exquisitely wrought. He greeted me cordially. The walls were covered with j.a.panese drawings. I began by asking him about The Caricaturist.

'Well,' said he, 'now that the House of Commons has become a bear-garden, and t'other House a waxwork show, and the intellect and culture of the country are leaving politics to dummies and cads, how can the artistic mind condescend to caricature the political world--a world that has not only ceased to be intelligent, but has even ceased to be funny? The quarry of _The Caricaturist_ will be literature, science, and art. Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys, Whistler, Wilderspin: our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game worth flying at, my boy! The art-world is in a dire funk, I can tell you, for the artistic epidermis has latterly grown genteel and thin.'

Already I was beginning to ask myself whether it was possible to make a confidant of this inscrutable cynic. 'You are fond of Oriental things?' I said, wis.h.i.+ng to turn the subject. I looked round at the Chinese, Indian, and j.a.panese monstrosities scattered about the room.

'That,' said he, pointing to a picture of a woman (apparently drunk) who was amusing herself by chasing b.u.t.terflies, while a number of broad-faced, mischievous-looking children were teasing her--'that is the masterpiece of Hokusai. The legend in the corner is ”Kiyo-jo cho ni tawamureru,” which, according to the lying j.a.panese scholars, means nothing more than ”A cracked woman chasing b.u.t.terflies.” It was left for me to discover that it represents Yoka, the G.o.ddess of Fun, sportively chasing the b.u.t.terfly souls of men, while the urchins, the little Yokas, are crying, ”Ma! you're screwed.”'

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