Part 18 (1/2)
”And what will be my place in the Rational State?” Denis drowsily inquired from under his shading hand.
Mr. Scogan looked at him for a moment in silence. ”It's difficult to see where you would fit in,” he said at last. ”You couldn't do manual work; you're too independent and unsuggestible to belong to the larger Herd; you have none of the characteristics required in a Man of Faith. As for the Directing Intelligences, they will have to be marvellously clear and merciless and penetrating.” He paused and shook his head. ”No, I can see no place for you; only the lethal chamber.”
Deeply hurt, Denis emitted the imitation of a loud Homeric laugh. ”I'm getting sunstroke here,” he said, and got up.
Mr. Scogan followed his example, and they walked slowly away down the narrow path, brus.h.i.+ng the blue lavender flowers in their pa.s.sage. Denis pulled a sprig of lavender and sniffed at it; then some dark leaves of rosemary that smelt like incense in a cavernous church. They pa.s.sed a bed of opium poppies, dispetaled now; the round, ripe seedheads were brown and dry--like Polynesian trophies, Denis thought; severed heads stuck on poles. He liked the fancy enough to impart it to Mr. Scogan.
”Like Polynesian trophies...” Uttered aloud, the fancy seemed less charming and significant than it did when it first occurred to him.
There was a silence, and in a growing wave of sound the whir of the reaping machines swelled up from the fields beyond the garden and then receded into a remoter hum.
”It is satisfactory to think,” said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowly onward, ”that a mult.i.tude of people are toiling in the harvest fields in order that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be duly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful,” he repeated, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
Denis was not listening. He had suddenly remembered Anne. She was with Gombauld--alone with him in his studio. It was an intolerable thought.
”Shall we go and pay a call on Gombauld?” he suggested carelessly. ”It would be amusing to see what he's doing now.”
He laughed inwardly to think how furious Gombauld would be when he saw them arriving.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Gombauld was by no means so furious at their apparition as Denis had hoped and expected he would be. Indeed, he was rather pleased than annoyed when the two faces, one brown and pointed, the other round and pale, appeared in the frame of the open door. The energy born of his restless irritation was dying within him, returning to its emotional elements. A moment more and he would have been losing his temper again--and Anne would be keeping hers, infuriatingly. Yes, he was positively glad to see them.
”Come in, come in,” he called out hospitably.
Followed by Mr. Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped over the threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, and could learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that they both seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or were they cunningly simulating gladness? He wondered.
Mr. Scogan, meanwhile, was looking at the portrait.
”Excellent,” he said approvingly, ”excellent. Almost too true to character, if that is possible; yes, positively too true. But I'm surprised to find you putting in all this psychology business.” He pointed to the face, and with his extended finger followed the slack curves of the painted figure. ”I thought you were one of the fellows who went in exclusively for balanced ma.s.ses and impinging planes.”
Gombauld laughed. ”This is a little infidelity,” he said.
”I'm sorry,” said Mr. Scogan. ”I for one, without ever having had the slightest appreciation of painting, have always taken particular pleasure in Cubismus. I like to see pictures from which nature has been completely banished, pictures which are exclusively the product of the human mind. They give me the same pleasure as I derive from a good piece of reasoning or a mathematical problem or an achievement of engineering.
Nature, or anything that reminds me of nature, disturbs me; it is too large, too complicated, above all too utterly pointless and incomprehensible. I am at home with the works of man; if I choose to set my mind to it, I can understand anything that any man has made or thought. That is why I always travel by Tube, never by bus if I can possibly help it. For, travelling by bus, one can't avoid seeing, even in London, a few stray works of G.o.d--the sky, for example, an occasional tree, the flowers in the window-boxes. But travel by Tube and you see nothing but the works of man--iron riveted into geometrical forms, straight lines of concrete, patterned expanses of tiles. All is human and the product of friendly and comprehensible minds. All philosophies and all religions--what are they but spiritual Tubes bored through the universe! Through these narrow tunnels, where all is recognisably human, one travels comfortable and secure, contriving to forget that all round and below and above them stretches the blind ma.s.s of earth, endless and unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give me ideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me from nature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated and obscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time to start wandering in that labyrinth.”
While Mr. Scogan was discoursing, Denis had crossed over to the farther side of the little square chamber, where Anne was sitting, still in her graceful, lazy pose, on the low chair.
”Well?” he demanded, looking at her almost fiercely. What was he asking of her? He hardly knew himself.
Anne looked up at him, and for answer echoed his ”Well?” in another, a laughing key.
Denis had nothing more, at the moment, to say. Two or three canvases stood in the corner behind Anne's chair, their faces turned to the wall.
He pulled them out and began to look at the paintings.
”May I see too?” Anne requested.
He stood them in a row against the wall. Anne had to turn round in her chair to look at them. There was the big canvas of the man fallen from the horse, there was a painting of flowers, there was a small landscape.
His hands on the back of the chair, Denis leaned over her. From behind the easel at the other side of the room Mr. Scogan was talking away.