The artist gave him a quick, friendly glance.
“I have played the fool,” said he. “I envy Orange. He will know things that I can never know—now. I haven't lived up to my thoughts. I am not remorseful—I don't believe in remorse. It is a thing for the half-hearted. But if I am not sad, I am not especially gay. The middle course between sentimentality and gallantry seems to me intimately immoral and ridiculous into the bargain. So I am an idealist with senses. There are times when I hate life. And why? Because life is evil? By no means; but because we tell lies about it, and write lies about it, from morning till night.”
“You seem a bit depressed,” said Lord Reckage. “But, by the by, how is the portrait going? My brother Hercy, who paints a little, always declared that Agnes was unpaintable. Do you find her unpaintable?”
CHAPTER VII
When Reckage asked Rennes whether he found Miss Carillon “unpaintable,” the artist was conscious of a swift, piercing emotion, which passed, indeed, but left an ache. And as the day advanced the smart of the wound grew more intense. A visit to the National Gallery, a call at his tailor's, an inspection of maps at his club, afforded little relief to the indefinable misery. He was tortured by the disingenuousness of his own mind. He had done so much, and thought so much, and read so much; he could give so many scientific reasons for each idea and each movement of his mental and physical being, that the joy of life had been cut up in its machinery. He had lost the power of being natural either in his pains or his pleasures. He knew all the answers, but not one of the questions which trouble youth. He had never wondered at anything. Wonder—the lovely mistress of wisdom—had taught him none of her secrets. Dead certainty had dogged his steps from his first appearance on this unknowable world. Once, when a very little boy, he admired a vase full of pink roses. “They will keep twice as long,” said his nurse, “in dirty water. It is such a waste to put fresh water on roses!” This remark—slight in itself—remained in his memory as the first truth—the Logos, in fact—from which all other truths generated. He was now nine-and-thirty: he had executed an abnormal amount of work, and he had a just reputation as a portrait-painter. His technical skill was considered unique. The something lacking was that mysteriousness which belongs to all great art, and is, essentially, in life.
“Rennes,” said one of his friends, “can work for sixteen hours a day. It is all taken from without. He gives nothing except his undivided attention.” The saying was not true; he gave himself absolutely—soul, brain, and heart—to his task, but the gift was too premeditated, too accurately weighed. There was no self-abandonment, nor self-forgetfulness. His admiration for Miss Carillon had been of this kind. Having added up her attractions, her figure, her face, her youth, her intelligence, her grace, he decided that she was exceptional in many ways. He found real happiness in her society—she was so sane, so clear, so unaffected. His attitude toward her had remained for some time one of fraternal affection, partly by force of will, chiefly because his relations with other women were not so restrained. But the position was changing. Certain forces in life were assuming for him a complicated and threatening aspect. What if, after all, there was an incalculable element in man?
“Now to be practical,” he said to himself. He had not seen his mother for a fortnight. She lived in Kensington Square. “I must really go and see my mother!” The cab drove quickly; the little grey house was soon reached. David opened the door with his latch-key and rushed upstairs into the small drawing-room, furnished in white and green, with fresh flowers on the mantelpiece, and many shelves of vellum-bound books. A bronze lamp hung from the ceiling, and its globe, covered in violet silk, cast a light like that of the early dawn in hilly regions. A faint odour of lavender filled the air. In one corner of the room there was a chess-table with its chessmen showing an interrupted game. A velvet footstool, much indented by the pressure of a firm foot, stood in front of the carved armchair in which Mrs. Rennes usually sat. Her work-basket, lined with blue satin and shining with steel fittings, stood in its customary place on a gipsy stool near the fireplace. A few old English prints hung on the walls, and between the windows there was a Chippendale cabinet filled with Worcester and Crown Derby china. The aspect of all things was restful, emotionless, and some of its calm seemed to overtake and soothe David's agitated spirit. He sat down at the piano and played, with much passion, bits from Wagner's “Tristan,” the first performance of which he had seen at Munich. “Good Heavens!” he thought. “What a genius! What a soul! What a phrase!” Suddenly the door opened and Agnes Carillon was ushered in. She hesitated a second, and then recognised Rennes, who had his back to the light. Her first instinct was to retreat; her first feeling was a strange sensation of pleasure and fear. His usually cold and wearied face took an expression of controlled but unmistakable delight. She blushed, though not with resentment, yet she avoided, by appearing to have some difficulty with her muff, his outstretched hand.