"Sit there," he almost commanded, and pointed to an arm-chair at some
distance from him.
"You may shun me. It is what I wanted--deserved. To that end I confessed
it, 'The Soul of Me.'"
Then on a sudden his meaning dawned.
"The body," he went on, "was painted before I learnt what colour the
soul was. I will tell you."
"No, no!" I remonstrated, perceiving the tension of his set jaws. "It
will pain you, and do no good."
"Pain?" he said. "There is no pain that eats into the heart like
silence. The knowledge of guilt hidden corrodes like an acid. It must
have been that which taught the Catholic Church the value of
confession."
"Possibly," I said, moving from my distant chair to his side, and
grasping his hand. "But remember I am not a priest; I am only, and
always, a friend."
"I know, I know," he said, hurriedly, staring out across the room at the
humming, busy road. "My confession is not to you. All that humanity can
do the priests have done. You stare? Yes, I've turned myself inside out
for them; but all their altar flowers cannot scent a foul soul, nor can
their sanctuary lights illumine its crooked corners. I'm no historian,
but I've heard of cases where private penance, remorse, and religious
absolution have totally failed to wipe clean the hearts of intellectual
men--they of the world, sinners, needing absolution of the world. Such
men, who live in the open, and trumpet their triumphs there, need, too,
to howl their confessions from the housetop, carve their contrition,
like the wisdom of Asoka, on the immemorial rocks as an outcry to the
generations."
He started up, and began to stride about the room. His face was full of
passionate grief, and his wandering eyes passed beyond me as though
watching a sunset.
I thought of the loganstone, and of the frail woman, the stalk of
asphodel, who had unhinged it. The great painter, sensitive ever to
colour and beauty and flattery and happiness, to pin-pricks and to
sneers, had dropped in pieces before a real strain--sin for which he
held himself responsible, remorse that found no outlet wide enough for
his great transcendent heart.
Presently he stood still before his picture, threw back the curtain, and
surveyed it with folded arms.
"She was pure," he muttered, half to himself; "sweet, sweet as new milk
from warm udders in cowslip time, and I--I brought her to my cobwebbed
life without so much as a preliminary sweep of the broom. She thought me
like herself, and I dared not undeceive her; but others--curse
them!--they taught her. She was pure as milk, I said--ay, for milk
absorbs poison quicker than things less pure. She breathed the taint
from the loathly atmosphere of my world--of the world that had been
mine.... But I loved her ... would have won her back--cringed to her.
She spurned me, spited me through herself, evaded me, till"--a
shuddering horror stifled his voice--"till, by chance, I came on
_that_."
I followed him to the easel, and placed an affectionate arm on his
shoulder.
"Well, old man, you must clear out of this. Come along with me back to
the Bush, and drop this nightmare."
"Drop it?" he flouted; "why, the world reeks of it!"
"Not now. You say that even the priests absolve you."
"Cheap contrition! cheap absolution! how one cuddles them at first--at
first! But in time we feel our canker--it grows under the clean Church
wrappings--in time we learn that where our sanctuary is, there, alone,
can our penance be. Hence this picture. It accompanies the portrait, a
gift to the nation. You can't think what a going down on the marrow
bones it was--down on the stones for every rascal to gaze and prod at,
an attitude for eternity."
"You'll come to Australia?" I repeated, adhering obstinately to my
matter-of-fact bent.
"As you please. I feel clean enough for your company now, for I have
committed suicide--not vulgarly, by murdering myself, but suicide
spiritually. I have given up the ghost by working out the pitch through
the point of my brush, and the carcass is yours to bury where or how you
will."
In a Cornfield (Dialogue).
(_The field is divided by a stile and a hedge from some
pastures._)
HE (_bent double in the act of gathering poppies_). And what would you
vote about?
SHE (_with hand extended to receive them_). Oh, anything--everything!
HE. And the candidate who paid most compliments would get most votes,
eh?
SHE. It would depend on how he paid them.
HE (_looking up and laughing_). Then it's the quality, and not the
quantity, which tells?
SHE. Nothing would "tell," as you call it, if we did not approve his
principles.
HE. Not even the offer of a new bonnet?
SHE. That would be bribery and corruption!
HE. But some _bonbonnieres_ at Christmas time?
SHE. Oh, everyone accepts them.
HE. Then the vote would depend on the excellence of the confectioner?
SHE. Do not chaff on serious subjects.
HE. I was never more serious in my life!
SHE (_pouting_). Then you are horribly rude and unkind! Don't pick any
more poppies; the bunch is too large already.
HE. Let me take it for you.
SHE (_with warmth_). I don't want you to do anything for me. It is time
you learnt that woman can be independent if she choose.
HE (_with a merry twinkle in his eye_). You will permit me to carry your
sunshade?
SHE (_simmering_). No; I don't want services from people who laugh at
one.
HE (_drawing his moustache carefully over his lips_). I am not laughing.
SHE. Then you ought to be. There is no excuse for a man arguing
seriously against woman's emancipation.
HE. I thought you wished me to be serious.
SHE (_tossing her head_). You know very well what I wish.
(_They reach the stile._)
HE. Let me help you over.
SHE. I don't need any help. Women can climb stiles as well as men.
HE (_turning away_).Of course.
SHE (_amazed because he does not insist_). I wish you hadn't come. I
wouldn't have asked you to pick poppies for me if----
HE (_interrupting_). I came as your escort--nothing more.
SHE. I don't require any escort. You can go home by the road.
(_His face falls. The roads are hot and dusty, and the fields
green and fragrant. Besides this, he has curved his spine flower
gathering for two hours in the hope of gratifying her._)
HE. You will not send me off like this? Lilla, darling, don't let us
quarrel about trifles.
SHE. Woman's independence is not a trifle.
HE (_laughing_). Of course not.
(_The laugh is fatal._)
SHE (_indignantly_). Good-bye!
HE. What do you mean? I am coming with you.
SHE. Never!
He (_looking at her askance_). Lilla!
SHE. I mean it.