UNCHARTERED FREEDOM
On the morning after the dinner with which he bade farewell to Messrs.
Lingard and Fields, Henry awoke at his usual hour to a very unusual
feeling. For the first time in his life he could stay in bed as long as
he pleased.
On the other side of the room Ned Hazell lay sleeping the deep sleep of
the unpunctual clerk; and Henry, when he had for a moment or two dwelt
upon his own happiness, took a malicious joy in arousing him.
"Ned," he shouted, "get up! You'll be late for the office."
Ned gave out a deep sound, something between a snore, a moan, and an
imprecation.
"Ned!" his tormentor persisted, drawing the clothes warmly round him, in
a luxury of indifference to the time of day.
Ned presently began rubbing his head vigorously, which was one of his
preliminaries of awakening, and then mournfully raised himself in bed, a
pillar of somnolence.
"You might let a fellow have his sleep out," he said; "why don't you get
up yourself?--oh, I remember, you're a literary gentleman from to-day.
That's why you're so mighty ready to root me out," and he aimed a pillow
at Henry's bed in derision.
Yes, Henry was free, an independent gentleman of time and space. The
clock might strike itself hoarse, yet, if he wished, he might go on
staying in bed. He was free! His late task-masters had no jurisdiction
here. It would even be in his power here to order Mr. Fields out of the
room, and, if he refused, forcibly to eject him into the street. Why
didn't Mr. Fields appear to gratify him in this matter?
So he indulged his imagination, while Ned dressed in haste, with the
fear of the tyrant evident upon him. Poor fellow, he would have to
choose between two cups of coffee and two eggs and five minutes late!
Probably he would split the difference, bolt one cup of coffee and one
egg, and arrive two and a half minutes late. Henry watched him with
compassion; and when he had gone his ways, himself rose languidly and
dressed indolently, as with the aid of an invisible valet. At length he
sauntered down to breakfast, and sent out for a morning paper, which he
on no account ever read. He could imagine no more insulting waste of
time. He looked it through, but found no reference to the real
significance of the day.
Breakfast over, he wondered what he should do with himself, how he
should spend the day. His clear duty was to begin being a great man on
the spot, and work at being a great man every day punctually from nine
till six. But where should he begin? Should he sit down in a
business-like way and begin his long romantic poem, or should he write
an essay, or again should he make a start on his novel?
Romantic poems, he felt, however, are only well begun on special days
not easy to define; essays are only written on days when we have
determined to be idle,--and this, after the opening flirtation with
indolence, must be a busy day,--and it is not every day that one can
begin a novel. He might arrange his books, but really they were very
well arranged already. Or suppose he went out for a walk. Walking
quickened the brain. He might go and look in at the Art Gallery, where
he hadn't been for a long while, and see the new picture the morning
paper was talking about. It was by a painter whose poems he already knew
and loved. That might inspire him. So, by an accident of idleness, he
presently found himself standing rapt before the most wonderful picture
he had ever seen,--a picture to see which, he said to himself, men would
make pilgrimages to Tyre, when Tyre was a moss-grown, ruinous seaport,
from which the traffic of the world had long since passed away.
Henry at this time had visited none of the great galleries and, except
in a few reproductions, knew nothing of the great Italian masters.
Therefore to him this picture was Italy, the Renaissance, and
Catholicism, all concentrated into one enthralling canvas. But it was
something greater than that. It was the terrible meeting of Youth and
Love and Death in one tremendous moment of infinite loss. Infinite
passion and infinite loss were here pictured, in a medium which
combined all that was spiritual and all that was sensual in a harmony
of beauty that was in the same moment delirium and peace. The
irresistible cry of the colour to the senses, the spheral call of the
theme and its agony to the soul. Beatrice dead, and Dante taken in a
dream across the strewn poppies of her death-chamber, to look his last
on the sleeping face, yet a little smiling in the after-glow of life;
her soul already carried by angels far over the curved and fluted roofs
of the Florentine houses, on its way to Paradise. Little Beatrice! Not
till they meet again in Paradise shall he see again that holy face. In a
dream of loss he gazes upon her, as the angels lift up the
flower-garnished sheet; and not only her face, but every detail of that
room of death is etched in tears upon his eyes,--the distant winding
stair, the pallid death-lamps, the intruding light of day. All Passion
and all Loss, all Youth, all Love, and all Death met together in an
everlasting requiem of tragic colour.
Henry sat long before this picture, enveloped, as it were, in its rich
gloom, as the painted profundity of a church absorbs one in its depths.
And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing awe
of the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such a
masterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas so
enduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating a
reflection of his visions. What a passionate energy of beauty must have
been in this man's soul; what a constant fury of meditation upon
things divine!
When Henry came back to himself, his first thought was to share it with
Angel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremble
with the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities of
appreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in the
motive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painful
to see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intense
or prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of the
elements,--the fierce life of streaming fire, water in gliding or
tumultuous masses, the vivid gold of crocus and daffodil spouting up
through the earth in spring, the exquisite liquidity of a bird
singing,--these, as with all elemental poetic natures, gave her the
same keen joy which we fable for those who, in the intense morning of
the world, first heard them; fable, indeed, for why should we suppose
that because ears deaf a thousand years heard the nightingale too, it
should therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for the
first time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memories
transmitted in our blood from all the generations who before have
listened and gone their way.
So Henry sought out Angel, and they both stood in front of the great
picture for a long while without a word. Presently Angel put the feeling
of both of them into a single phrase,--
"Henry, dear, we have found our church."
And indeed for many months henceforth this picture was to be their
altar, their place of prayer. Often hereafter when their hopes were
overcast, or life grew mean with little cares, they would slip, singly,
or together, into that gallery, and--
"let the beauty of Eternity
Smooth from their brows the little frets of time."
Thus Henry's first day of freedom had begun auspiciously with the
unexpected discovery of an inalienable possession of beauty. Yet the
little cares were not far off, waiting their time; and that night, Henry
lay long awake asking himself what he was going to do? Whence was to
come the material gold and silver by which this impetuous spirit was to
be sustained? A sum not exceeding five pounds represented his
accumulated resources, and they would not last longer than--five pounds.
He needed little, but that little he needed emphatically. Soon a new
book and other literary projects would keep him going, but--meanwhile!
How were the next two or three months to be bridged? Return to his
father's house, he neither would, nor perhaps, indeed, could.
So he lay awake a long while, fruitlessly thinking; but, just before he
slept, a thought that made him laugh himself awake suggested itself:
"Why not go and ask Aunt Tipping to take pity on you?"
So he went to sleep, resolved, if only for the fun of it, to pay a visit
to Aunt Tipping on the morrow.