“If you lived where I do,” said Mendel, “you would know better than to interfere.”
“Oh! I enjoyed it,” said Logan. “I couldn’t stand by and see it done.”
They ran down the grassy slope to the cottage, where they found Oliver entertaining Thompson and her critic. She had a slight bruise over her right eye, and Mendel thought:—
“Why does he lie? Why should he lie to me? I should think no worse of him for beating her. If I could not shake her off I should kill her.”
He was filled with a sudden disgust at the household, which in his eyes had become an obscene profanation.
The talk was excited, and formerly he would have found it interesting. Thompson was full of the triumph of the exhibition and its success in forcing art upon the public. He spoke glibly of abstraction and cubing, and it was clear that they only delighted him as new tricks.
Oliver took part in the conversation. She had picked up the jargon of painters and made great play with the names of the new masters. To hear her talking glibly of Cézanne and saying how he had shown the object of pictorial art to be pattern filled Mendel’s soul with loathing. He could not protest. What was the good of protesting to such people? . . . If only Logan had not been among them! He wanted to talk to Logan, to tell him what this new thing meant, to make him see that he must give up all thought of turning art back upon life, because life did not matter so very much. It could look after itself, while the integrity of art must at all costs be maintained.
However, when Thompson said that the artist was now free to make up a picture out of any shapes he liked, Mendel could not contain himself, and said:—
“The artist is no more free than ever he was. He does not become free by burking representation. He is not free merely to work by caprice and fantasy. He is rather more strictly bound than ever, because he is working through his imagination and cannot get out of it merely by using his eyes and imitating charming things. If he tries to get out of it by impudent invention, then pictures will be just as dull and degraded as before.”
“‘I am Sir Oracle,’” said the critic, “‘and when I ope my lips let no dog bark.’”