Upon one Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, Jocelyn made an expedition
with Nielsen to Watts’s Studio in the Melbury Road. It was one of the
last days of April. There was a soft grey sky, lit every now and then
with watery gleams of sun. They walked across Kensington Gardens, where
the trees were full of young, green foliage, and the earth damp with the
last of April showers. The birds were calling all round them.
Jocelyn was in one of her most vivid moods. As was usual with her when
in high spirits, words rippled from her lips in a way quite
irresponsible and very charming. She walked briskly with a springing
step, as straight as a dart, her small head thrown slightly back between
her shoulders, her eyes dancing and a smile on her lips. She always
dressed in a manner peculiar to her own desires, yet she never seemed
behind the times--a problem for analytical dressmakers. To-day she had
had the whim to put on a black dress, with some creamy lace round the
neck and in the front of the bodice. Thus attired and with a black hat,
she appealed irresistibly to Nielsen’s sense of the fitness of things.
Her small face seemed to gleam out of its black and white setting like a
jewel. He squared his figure as he walked, and held his head up with a
feeling of pride.
In the Studio groups of people stood, in a subdued light, discussing the
pictures in low tones. The spirit of allegory stared out upon them from
the walls. Imagination laid a spell upon the eye, and upon the tongue.
Jocelyn’s face had become suddenly grave and earnest. The brilliancy
went out of her brown eyes, they grew profound, dark, and reverent; her
impressionable, artistic nature was at once under the master’s
influence. She did not, indeed, lose her sense of criticism, her
discrimination, but she seemed to have become in immediate sympathy with
the painter’s views and aims, judging him, as it were, from his own
standpoint. Nielsen, on the other hand, though by no means unimpressed,
retained his own point of view. With his head a little upon one side,
and his hand caressing his moustache, he appeared to discuss with
himself the merits of each picture in an adjusted see-saw of _pro_ and
_con_. For a few minutes they became separated, and when Nielsen came
back to her side, he found her standing before the wonderful picture of
Paolo and Francesca. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her face
was very still, and there were tears in her eyes.
Nielsen said nothing, but stood and looked at the picture too.
He had never seen it before. The tragedy in it arrested him--the
measureless tragedy of that man and woman whirled through space in the
resistless rush of a linked unrest--the unspeakable, compassionate
anguish on the man’s lips, the undying love in his shadowed eyes, the
suffering, and the eternal, wistful faith of the woman’s face. If ever
the truth of life has been revealed in art, surely it is in that
picture. There, is all the joy of life, and all its suffering, endless
motion, and triumphant love.
Nielsen experienced a kind of indignation--it was unpleasantly
disturbing. He swallowed a lump in his throat and turned away abruptly,
he did not care to look at it too long. It was a relief to hear a man
behind him remark to a woman that the “glass” was going down. After all,
those were the things that mattered, luckily, more than a hundred dismal
pictures. The “glass” was going down! That was infinitely satisfactory.
He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and worked them
gently up and down. He felt much better. Then he wiped his eyeglass, and
looked at Jocelyn.
She was still standing in front of the picture, looking as if she were
going to faint. All his indignation returned. He went and got her a
chair, put it down with its back to the picture, and made her sit in it.
His eyes glowed angrily, and he twisted his moustache fiercely. Then he
expressed his feelings--
“I should like to get that Monsieur Watts, and hang him on the walls of
his own studio as a--a--pr-recept.” When he had caught the word, he
hissed it from under his moustache.
“I consider it is quite indecent, don’t you know--the--the--confounded
picture has made you ill.”
A rush of colour had come into Jocelyn’s cheeks, and, as she got up from
her chair, she said--
“It’s very stupid of me! Don’t abuse the picture, please, I love it.
It’s only coming into this hot room after the walk. I’m all right now.”
She insisted on going round the studio again, and even upon discussing
the merits of the various pictures, but they both avoided the “Paolo and
Francesca,” and Nielsen knew by the tone of her voice that she was not
herself.
On the way home in a cab, she hardly spoke at all, and leant back gazing
straight in front of her. Nielsen became garrulous; he did not in the
least understand what was the matter, but he considerately wished by
chatter to divert her thoughts.
“Prrogress, civilisation!” he said, spreading his fingers out of the cab
into an inattentive space, and bending forward with puckered eyes, “Ah!
The ‘artist!’ He is nowhere. It is all ‘the man of action,’ don’t you
know. He leads the way--he is the cause. The other fellow is only the
effect, you see; he exists because there is somebody there already to
hold him out his brread and butter. Look at the Romans! Ah! There you
have the rreal Philistine. But look at his civilisation; look at his
rroads, look at his baths, he--wăshed! They were men of action, and they
held the brread and butter in their hands, don’t you know, for the other
fellows to come and eat. Look at this country! Here you have more
frreedom, more comfort, more justice than anywhere else that I have
been; and yet you are barbarous men of action, don’t you know. Not one
in a hundred of you has any sense of form or colour, but you manage to
have as much art and as much music and literature, on the whole, as any
other country. It is all a case of brread and butter, you see. You can
pay the--how do you say it--the piper, so you call the tune.”
Jocelyn shook her head gently and said, “There are two sides to that.”
“Certainly, my dear young lady, there are two sides to every
question. I am quite willing to hear the other side--but to me
music--pictures--books, they are all frrills, charrming frrills. They
don’t begin till the garment is completed. They rrise out of leisure,
and there is _not_ any leisure, don’t you see, until there is alrready a
civilisation. After all, a man must eat--that comes first.” He nodded
his head mournfully, as if the fact were painful to him.
But all his efforts to draw her into argument were of no avail; the
drive ended silently, and he left her at the door of the Mansions. He
walked away slowly eastwards, looking absently at the grey water running
through the dark arches of the bridge, and every now and then shaking
his head gravely.
Jocelyn climbed the two flights of stairs to the flat, and let herself
in with her key. She went straight to her bedroom, the thought of her
aunt’s society at that moment was intolerable to her, and she muffled
her footsteps as she passed the drawing-room.
She took off her hat and gloves, and flung herself into a chair in front
of the empty fireplace. She sat there for some minutes, rocking herself
to and fro, with her hands crossed in her lap.
She was haunted by that picture, its endless whirlwind of motion, its
anguish. In the face of Paolo something reminded her of Giles. It seemed
to her that she read in the picture, for herself and for him, the cruel
denial of rest, the resistless decree of an eternal punishment through
immeasurable space.
She sprang to her feet, and paced to and fro the length of her room,
pressing her hands to her throbbing temples. After a time, the soft
monotony of her own footsteps on the carpet soothed her; she paused in
front of the window, and flung it open. The air was sweet and warm, and
there was a faint sound of raindrops plashing gently on the young leaves
of the trees. The church clock was striking “five.” She shut her eyes
and listened--another and another echoed the refrain, till the world
seemed full of a wistful chiming. It ceased. She reached her hand out
along the window, leaning against the half-opened casement. Some drops
of rain fell upon her face.
The paroxysm of her pain had passed away, she only felt alone--very
tired, and alone.
Presently she bathed her face with cold water, changed her dress, and
went to the drawing-room pale and quite calm.
Mrs. Travis, upright in her chair, with watchful green eyes and a
silver-grey dress, was playing “Patience.” Jocelyn shivered a little.