Widdershins Part 37

"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?

Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades; _you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do you think? He'll sc.r.a.pe up a few pounds out of the stew where I find thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish your 'Life.'..."

I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.

IV

The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"

came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's att.i.tude towards "professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create, usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.

It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my hand had been seized and pinned down in its pa.s.sage across the paper. I can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly known only in nightmare.

I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had planned a moment before.

I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.

It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment; then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.

But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought.

It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts, I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my business transactions.

I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered "R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.

The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.

The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense.

I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my memory might haply be refreshed.

I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the same as on the previous night.

It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.

At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.

With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.

It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.

And, as the circ.u.mstances of my learning this were in a high degree unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.

I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that were to ill.u.s.trate the book having been made (the drawings for which my own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He, Maschka, and I pa.s.sed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring--a possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own share of the book.

That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory hand of mine.

Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by comparison with that _mental image_ which I saw (if I may so use a term of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by confining it to any portion of the s.p.a.ce within the four walls of my library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, _was me_, invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown had seated itself on that ma.s.sive pylon of his forehead; and then suddenly his countenance changed entirely.... A wave of horror broke over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the Hampstead "Home"--sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I was.... _"Harrison--ha ha!... You shall very soon know that I know you, if ..."_

It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no language save that essential communication of which languages are but the inessential husk and medium--words that told me that though I took the Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea, though I made my bed in h.e.l.l, I could not escape him....

He had kept his word. I _did_ know that he knew who and what I was....

I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in that moment burst from me.

"But Form--and Forms? It _is_ then true that all things are but aspects of One thing?..."

"Yes--in death," the voice seemed to reply.

My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.

"Then tell me--tell me--_do you not wish me to write it?"_

Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice _had_ spoken....

"Of course we wish you to write it...."

For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke; then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's, and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard nothing of it.

"Were you thinking of _not_ writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield scowled at me.

"No--no--," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.

Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow I could not meet them.

"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds about it. That's what we've called about--to know definitely what it is you propose to do."

I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to recover a little.

"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did, you--misinterpreted me."

In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to Maschka.

"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might write and publish one myself," he said.

"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever _you_ did I should not go on with mine."

"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have _you_ in my brother's 'Life'?"

I quickly told her.

"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I replied.

"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be _two_ 'Lives'!..."

"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is, that I can get mine published, and you can't."

Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly--but again to Maschka, not to me.

"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small, but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."

Think of it!... I almost laughed.