“On the whole I don’t think all this modern stuff can be good for anything but decoration.”
And he began to think of his own picture, which was full of life. Wherever he picked up the design he could follow it all round the picture, and through and through it, beyond it into the mystery of art, and out of it back into life. It was poised, a wonderful, lovely created thing, with a complete, unaccountable, serene life of its own. The harsh, gloomy background of London fell away, and in its place shone green hills and a clear blue sky, fleecy with mauve-grey clouds. . . .
Following the clouds, he came easily back to life again, to the two girls sitting in this wonderful snug cottage, and he was overwhelmed by a feeling that he was sharing their comfortable happiness on false pretences. It was not to him the perfectly satisfying wonder they so obviously wished it to be for him, and at last he could not contain himself, and burst out:—
“You must not expect me to be happy. I cannot be happy. I will swing up to it as high as ever you like, but I must swing back again. Happiness is not life, love is not life, any more than misery is life. If I stay in happiness I die as surely as if I stay in misery. I must be like a pendulum. I must swing to and fro or the clock will stop. . . . I can’t make it clear to you, but it is so. What matters is that the clock should go. Jews understand, but they forget that they are the pendulum and they do not live at all. Jews are wonderful people. They know that what matters is the impulse of the soul. It matters so much to them that they have forgotten everything else. And those who are not Jews think of everything else and forget the impulse of the soul. But I know that when I swing from happiness to unhappiness, from good to bad, from light to dark, then a force comes into my soul and it can move up to art, and beyond art, into that place where it can be free. . . . Don’t, please, misunderstand me.” He addressed himself frankly to Morrison, who dropped her head a little lower. “In love I can no more be free than I can in misery. I will swing as high on one side as I will on the other, and then I can be free.”
Morrison folded her hands in her lap and her hair fell over her face. Mendel got up, said good-night, and went over to the farm.
“Well,” said Clowes uneasily, “I really think he must be a genius.”
Morrison made no reply, and presently Clowes went upstairs to bed, leaving her with her hair drooping over her face, staring into the glowing fire.
“I must learn my lesson,” said Morrison to herself. “I must learn my lesson.”
She was so little trained for misery, but this was misery enough. But she sat and brooded over it, and summoned up all her strength for the supreme effort of her will, not to be broken and cast down in the swing back from love. She had taught him to surrender himself to love; she must learn to surrender herself to misery, to swing as high on one side as on the other.
For many, many hours she wrestled with herself and broke down fear after fear, weakness after weakness, until she was utterly exposed to the enemies of love and knew that she could be with Mendel through everything. She took out from her paint-box his letter describing the scene in the hospital, which had shocked and horrified her before, and now read and re-read it until she had lived through all the story and could understand both Logan and Oliver.