Part 13 (1/2)
”Oh,” said Tim, ”that's exactly what she said. Blasphemy! Do you really think so too? I wouldn't go on with my experiments if I thought that.
But I don't believe you can be right. I--I went round to see Father Bourke. That was after Mrs. Ascher said it was blasphemy and I really wanted to know. Father Bourke is one of the priests at St. Gabriel's. I consulted him.”
”Well,” I said, ”what did he tell you?”
”He said it was all right and that I needn't bother about what Protestants said was blasphemy. They don't know. At least Father Bourke seemed to think they couldn't know.”
”You go by what Father Bourke says and you'll be safe.”
I should particularly like to hear Father Bourke and Mrs. Ascher arguing out the subject of blasphemy together. They might go on for years and years before either of them began to understand what the other meant by the word. But it would be little less than a crime to involve the simple soul of Tim Gorman in the maze of two separate kinds of casuistry.
”In any case,” I said, ”I don't take Mrs. Ascher's view of the matter. I don't agree with her.”
”I don't see,” said Tim, ”how cinematographs can be blasphemies so long as there aren't any pictures of religious things. I'm sure it must be all right and I can go on with what I want to do. If I can succeed in making the figures stand out from one another, as if they were really there----”
”You'll add a new terror to life,” I said. ”But that needn't stop you doing it if you can.”
”I think I can,” he said eagerly. ”You see it's the next thing to be done. The cinematograph is perfect up to that point It must make a new start if it's to go any further. I should like to be the man who makes the next step possible. What's wanted now is--is----”
”The illusion of distance.”
”That's it. That's what I mean. It's a matter of optics. Just making a few adjustments, and I think I see the way to manage it.”
”If you do,” I said, ”you'll make an immense fortune. The world will pay anything, absolutely anything to the man who provides it with a new torture. It's an odd twist in human nature--though I don't know why I should say that. Oddness is really the normal thing in human nature.”
”But I want a thousand dollars,” said Tim, ”or five hundred dollars at the very least. I must try experiments.”
”If you ask your brother----” I said.
”Michael isn't nice to me about it,” said Tim. ”He isn't nice at all.
When I asked him for a thousand dollars he said he'd get it for me on condition that I allowed him to manage my cash register in his own way.
But I won't do that. I know what he wants to do.”
”His idea,” he said, ”is to let your invention lapse.”
”I know. The machine will never be made. But I want it to be made. I want to see it working everywhere all over the world. You see I'm always travelling about with the circus, sometimes in America, sometimes in England. We go to a lot of different towns. We go to all the big towns there are. I want to be able to go into shops everywhere, in every town in the world and see my machine there. Don't you understand?”
”Perfectly,” I said. ”Mrs. Ascher explained the whole position to me thoroughly. It's the artist's soul in you.”
A look of puzzled annoyance came over the boy's face. His forehead wrinkled and his fine eyes took an expression of painful doubt as they met mine.
”Mrs. Ascher says things like that,” he said, ”and I don't know what she means. I am not an artist. I never learned to draw, even; at least not pictures. I can do geometrical drawing, of course, and make plans of machines; but that's not being an artist. I can't paint. Why does she say I am an artist?”
”That,” I said, ”is one of her little mannerisms. You will have to put up with it.”
Tim uses the word artist in a simple old-fas.h.i.+oned way, very much as Father Bourke uses ”blasphemy.” There is a good deal to be said for their practice. People like Mrs. Ascher ought to invent new terms when they want to express uncommon thoughts. They have no right to borrow words like ”artist” and ”blasphemy” from common speech in order to set them parading about the world with novel meanings attached to them. It is not fair to people like Tim Gorman and his Father Bourke. It is not fair to the words themselves. I should not like to be treated in that way if I were a word. I cannot imagine anything more annoying to a respectable, steady-going word than to be called upon suddenly to undertake work to which it is not accustomed. The domestic housemaid is perfectly right in resisting any effort to make her do new kinds of work. Her formula, ”It's not my place,” used when she is asked to make a slice of toast, is unanswerable. Why should words be worse treated than housemaids? It is the business of ”artist” to stand for the man who paints pictures in oils. ”Blasphemy” describes aggravated breaches of the third commandment. What right had Mrs. Ascher or any one else to press them into new services? There ought to be a strong trade union among words.
”And now,” said Tim, ”she says I'm not an artist after all because I want to make movies more real. And she's angry with me. She turned me out of her studio because I wouldn't promise not to. Of course, I wouldn't promise such a thing. I think I see how it can be done. The great difficulty is to secure an exact adjustment of the mirrors. There are other difficulties. There's the awkwardness of transparent figures crossing in front of each other. Also----”
”My dear boy,” I said, ”don't explain the thing to me. I am totally incapable of understanding anything connected with mechanics, optics or hydrostatics.”
I can make as good an attempt as most men at replying intelligently to Mrs. Ascher even when she talks of ”values,” atmospheres, feeling and sympathy, though her use of these familiar words conveys only the vaguest ideas to my mind. I can, after a period of intense mental effort, understand what Ascher means by exchanges, premiums, discounts and bills, though he uses these words in unfamiliar ways. But I am defeated utterly by the man who talks about escapements, compensating balances and clutches. I suspected that Tim Gorman would pelt me with even more recondite scientific terms if I let things go on.