“No, I steal up into the theatre garret sometimes and hear a little of this world’s music yet, as old as I am. Though it doesn’t give me sleepless nights any more, you see. A man sleeps well when he has a big organ to turn to.”
Leonard smiled more broadly and sat quiet, struck by the old man’s repose. This contented frog’s-eye view of the drama of life spread out into a wider perspective than he had supposed at the start.
The old man pointed to a paper sticking out of the artist’s pocket.
“Should you perhaps care to look what they’re giving up there tonight? ‘Tristan and Isolde.’ Indeed! that’s a fine thing. Then I’ll go up a while. You see I’ve been with them and set scenes for that opera, so it’s an old acquaintance. Well, and so I’ll thank you for your help. It’s past eight and that will have to be enough of the breams till tonight.”
It was in fact drawing on towards evening. Heaven’s great voyaging clouds had ceased to move, saturated with the newly-won warmth of the light, and had sunk nearer to earth. In the stealthy silence of the early twilight the roaring of the river grew suddenly stronger, and its whirlpools more suckingly mysterious. It was evident that the spring day had determined to show the last and most dangerous phase of its power.
But Lundstrom cast loose from the ring unconcernedly. His craft was slung some fifty yards down with the surge but glided neatly into the smooth water under the River Terrace, where it was moored at its usual place.
It did not occur to Leonard to say good-bye. And yet as he went up the granite steps he felt that now he was passing out of the worthy Lundstrom’s perspective. Here ashore the fisherman’s power of giving certitude was no longer the same.
No, for up on the bridge went Woman. Nothing could save one from her. Ah, this delicate shiver in the air, this trembling in the nerves of the invisible which sent its waves through coat and Sunday paper straight into one’s heart! The restlessness of the day had deepened to a livelier and more dangerous poison. That which in the morning was a sick longing for distant horizons—what was it towards evening but the erotic urge?
Under the low rosy clouds too went Woman, she who grows with the shades so as with night to overshadow the world.
A poor artist’s situation was again near to desperation.