Part 1 (1/2)
Murder in Any Degree.
by Owen Johnson.
I
One Sunday in March they had been marooned at the club, Steingall the painter and Quinny the ill.u.s.trator, and, having lunched late, had bored themselves separately to their limits over the periodicals until, preferring to bore each other, they had gravitated together in easy arm-chairs before the big Renaissance fireplace.
Steingall, sunk in his collar, from behind the black-rimmed spectacles, which, with their trailing ribbon of black, gave a touch of Continental elegance to his cropped beard and colonel's mustaches, watched without enthusiasm the three mammoth logs, where occasional tiny flames gave forth an illusion of heat.
Quinny, as gaunt as a militant friar of the Middle Ages, aware of Steingall's protective reverie, spoke in desultory periods, addressing himself questions and supplying the answers, reserving his epigrams for a larger audience.
At three o'clock De Gollyer entered from a heavy social performance, raising his eyebrows in salute as others raise their hats, and slightly dragging one leg behind. He was an American critic who was busily engaged in discovering the talents of unrecognized geniuses of the European provinces. When reproached with his migratory enthusiasm, he would reply, with that quick, stiffening military click with which he always delivered his _bons mots_:
”My boy, I never criticize American art. I can't afford to. I have too many charming friends.”
At four o'clock, which is the hour for the entree of those who escape from their homes to fling themselves on the sanctuary of the club, Rankin, the architect, arrived with Stibo, the fas.h.i.+onable painter of fas.h.i.+onable women, who brought with him the atmosphere of pleasant soap and an exclusive, smiling languor. A moment later a voice was heard from the anteroom, saying:
”If any one telephones, I'm not in the club--any one at all. Do you hear?”
Then Towsey, the decorator, appeared at the letterboxes in spats, militant checks, high collar and a choker tie, which, yearning toward his ears, gave him the appearance of one who had floundered up out of his clothes for the third and last time. He came forward, frowned at the group, scowled at the negative distractions of the reading-room, and finally dragged over his chair just as Quinny was saying:
”Queer thing--ever notice it?--two artists sit down together, each begins talking of what he's doing--to avoid complimenting the other, naturally. As soon as the third arrives they begin carving up another; only thing they can agree on, see? Soon as you get four or more of the species together, conversation always comes around to marriage. Ever notice that, eh?”
”My dear fellow,” said De Gollyer, from the intolerant point of view of a bachelor, ”that is because marriage is your one common affliction.
Artists, musicians, all the lower order of the intellect, marry. They must. They can't help it. It's the one thing you can't resist. You begin it when you're poor to save the expense of a servant, and you keep it up when you succeed to have some one over you to make you work. You belong psychologically to the intellectually dependent cla.s.ses, the clinging-vine family, the masculine parasites; and as you can't help being married, you are always d.a.m.ning it, holding it responsible for all your failures.”
At this characteristic speech, the five artists s.h.i.+fted slightly, and looked at De Gollyer over their mustaches with a lingering appet.i.te, much as a group of terriers respect the family cat.
”My dear chaps, speaking as a critic,” continued De Gollyer, pleasantly aware of the antagonism he had exploded, ”you remain children afraid of the dark--afraid of being alone. Solitude frightens you. You lack the quality of self-sufficiency that is the characteristic of the higher critical faculties. You marry because you need a nurse.”
He ceased, thoroughly satisfied with the prospect of having brought on a quarrel, raised thumb and first finger in a gingerly loop, ordered a dash of sherry and winked across the group to Tommers, who was listening around his paper from the reading-room.
”De Gollyer, you are only a 'who's who' of art,” said Quinny, with, however, a hungry grat.i.tude for a topic of such possibilities. ”You understand nothing of psychology. An artist is a multiple personality; with each picture he paints he seeks a new inspiration. What is inspiration?”
”Ah, that's the point--inspiration,” said Steingall, waking up.
”Inspiration,” said Quinny, eliminating Steingall from his preserves with the gesture of brus.h.i.+ng away a fly--”inspiration is only a form of hypnosis, under the spell of which a man is capable of rising outside of and beyond himself, as a horse, under extraordinary stress, exerts a muscular force far beyond his accredited strength. The race of geniuses, little and big, are constantly seeking this outward force to hypnotize them into a supreme intellectual effort. Talent does not understand such a process; it is mechanical, unvarying, chop-chop, day in and day out.
Now, what you call inspiration may be communicated in many ways--by the spectacle of a mob, by a panorama of nature, by sudden and violent contrasts of points of view; but, above all, as a continual stimulus, it comes from that state of mental madness which is produced by love.”
”Huh?” said Stibo.
”Anything that produces a mental obsession, _une idee fixe_, is a form of madness,” said Quinny, rapidly. ”A person in love sees only one face, hears only one voice; at the base of the brain only one thought is constantly drumming. Physically such a condition is a narcotic; mentally it is a form of madness that in the beneficent state is powerfully hypnotic.”
At this deft disentanglement of a complicated idea, Rankin, who, like the professional juryman, wagged his head in agreement with each speaker and was convinced by the most violent, gazed upon Quinny with absolute adoration.
”We were speaking of woman,” said Towsey, gruffly, who p.r.o.nounced the s.e.x with a peculiar staccato sound.
”This little ABC introduction,” said Quinny, pleasantly, ”is necessary to understand the relation a woman plays to the artist. It is not the woman he seeks, but the hypnotic influence which the woman can exert on his faculties if she is able to inspire him with a pa.s.sion.”
”Precisely why he marries,” said De Gollyer.