CHAPTER XII.
"Blight, Mildew, and Smut..." Mary was puzzled and distressed. Perhapsher ears had played her false. Perhaps what he had really said was,"Squire, Binyon, and Shanks," or "Childe, Blunden, and Earp," or even"Abercrombie, Drinkwater, and Rabindranath Tagore." Perhaps. But thenher ears never did play her false. "Blight, Mildew, and Smut." Theimpression was distinct and ineffaceable. "Blight, Mildew..." she wasforced to the conclusion, reluctantly, that Denis had indeed pronouncedthose improbable words. He had deliberately repelled her attempts toopen a serious discussion. That was horrible. A man who would not talkseriously to a woman just because she was a woman--oh, impossible!Egeria or nothing. Perhaps Gombauld would be more satisfactory. True,his meridional heredity was a little disquieting; but at least he wasa serious worker, and it was with his work that she would associateherself. And Denis? After all, what WAS Denis? A dilettante, anamateur...
Gombauld had annexed for his painting-room a little disused granary thatstood by itself in a green close beyond the farm-yard. It was a squarebrick building with a peaked roof and little windows set high up in eachof its walls. A ladder of four rungs led up to the door; for the granarywas perched above the ground, and out of reach of the rats, on fourmassive toadstools of grey stone. Within, there lingered a faint smellof dust and cobwebs; and the narrow shaft of sunlight that came slantingin at every hour of the day through one of the little windows wasalways alive with silvery motes. Here Gombauld worked, with a kind ofconcentrated ferocity, during six or seven hours of each day. He waspursuing something new, something terrific, if only he could catch it.
During the last eight years, nearly half of which had been spent in theprocess of winning the war, he had worked his way industriously throughcubism. Now he had come out on the other side. He had begun by paintinga formalised nature; then, little by little, he had risen from natureinto the world of pure form, till in the end he was painting nothing buthis own thoughts, externalised in the abstract geometrical forms ofthe mind's devising. He found the process arduous and exhilarating. Andthen, quite suddenly, he grew dissatisfied; he felt himself cramped andconfined within intolerably narrow limitations. He was humiliated tofind how few and crude and uninteresting were the forms he could invent;the inventions of nature were without number, inconceivably subtle andelaborate. He had done with cubism. He was out on the other side. Butthe cubist discipline preserved him from falling into excesses of natureworship. He took from nature its rich, subtle, elaborate forms, but hisaim was always to work them into a whole that should have the thrillingsimplicity and formality of an idea; to combine prodigious realismwith prodigious simplification. Memories of Caravaggio's portentousachievements haunted him. Forms of a breathing, living reality emergedfrom darkness, built themselves up into compositions as luminouslysimple and single as a mathematical idea. He thought of the "Call ofMatthew," of "Peter Crucified," of the "Lute players," of "Magdalen."He had the secret, that astonishing ruffian, he had the secret! Andnow Gombauld was after it, in hot pursuit. Yes, it would be somethingterrific, if only he could catch it.
For a long time an idea had been stirring and spreading, yeastily,in his mind. He had made a portfolio full of studies, he had drawn acartoon; and now the idea was taking shape on canvas. A man fallen froma horse. The huge animal, a gaunt white cart-horse, filled the upperhalf of the picture with its great body. Its head, lowered towards theground, was in shadow; the immense bony body was what arrested the eye,the body and the legs, which came down on either side of the picturelike the pillars of an arch. On the ground, between the legs of thetowering beast, lay the foreshortened figure of a man, the head in theextreme foreground, the arms flung wide to right and left. A white,relentless light poured down from a point in the right foreground. Thebeast, the fallen man, were sharply illuminated; round them, beyond andbehind them, was the night. They were alone in the darkness, a universein themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture;the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of theirtrampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man,his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his armsoutstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of thehorse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intensedarkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrateman. A central gulf of darkness surrounded by luminous forms...
The picture was more than half finished. Gombauld had been at work allthe morning on the figure of the man, and now he was taking a rest--thetime to smoke a cigarette. Tilting back his chair till it touched thewall, he looked thoughtfully at his canvas. He was pleased, and at thesame time he was desolated. In itself, the thing was good; he knewit. But that something he was after, that something that would be soterrific if only he could catch it--had he caught it? Would he evercatch it?
Three little taps--rat, tat, tat! Surprised, Gombauld turned his eyestowards the door. Nobody ever disturbed him while he was at work; itwas one of the unwritten laws. "Come in!" he called. The door, which wasajar, swung open, revealing, from the waist upwards, the form of Mary.She had only dared to mount half-way up the ladder. If he didn't wanther, retreat would be easier and more dignified than if she climbed tothe top.
"May I come in?" she asked.
"Certainly."
She skipped up the remaining two rungs and was over the threshold inan instant. "A letter came for you by the second post," she said. "Ithought it might be important, so I brought it out to you." Her eyes,her childish face were luminously candid as she handed him the letter.There had never been a flimsier pretext.
Gombauld looked at the envelope and put it in his pocket unopened."Luckily," he said, "it isn't at all important. Thanks very much all thesame."
There was a silence; Mary felt a little uncomfortable. "May I have alook at what you've been painting?" she had the courage to say at last.
Gombauld had only half smoked his cigarette; in any case he wouldn'tbegin work again till he had finished. He would give her the fiveminutes that separated him from the bitter end. "This is the best placeto see it from," he said.
Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything.Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at aloss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of aman and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressivelyin drawing. Trompe-l'oeil--there was no other word to describe thedelineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of thehorse. What was she to think, what was she to say? Her orientationswere gone. One could admire representationalism in the Old Masters.Obviously. But in a modern...? At eighteen she might have done so.But now, after five years of schooling among the best judges, herinstinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation wascontempt--an outburst of laughing disparagement. What could Gombauld beup to? She had felt so safe in admiring his work before. But now--shedidn't know what to think. It was very difficult, very difficult.
"There's rather a lot of chiaroscuro, isn't there?" she ventured atlast, and inwardly congratulated herself on having found a criticalformula so gentle and at the same time so penetrating.
"There is," Gombauld agreed.
Mary was pleased; he accepted her criticism; it was a seriousdiscussion. She put her head on one side and screwed up her eyes."I think it's awfully fine," she said. "But of course it's a littletoo...too...trompe-l'oeil for my taste." She looked at Gombauld, whomade no response, but continued to smoke, gazing meditatively all thetime at his picture. Mary went on gaspingly. "When I was in Paris thisspring I saw a lot of Tschuplitski. I admire his work so tremendously.Of course, it's frightfully abstract now--frightfully abstract andfrightfully intellectual. He just throws a few oblongs on to hiscanvas--quite flat, you know, and painted in pure primary colours. Buthis design is wonderful. He's getting more and more abstract every day.He'd given up the third dimension when I was there and was just thinkingof giving up the second. Soon, he says, there'll be just the blankcanvas. That's the log
ical conclusion. Complete abstraction. Painting'sfinished; he's finishing it. When he's reached pure abstraction he'sgoing to take up architecture. He says it's more intellectual thanpainting. Do you agree?" she asked, with a final gasp.
Gombauld dropped his cigarette end and trod on it. "Tschuplitski'sfinished painting," he said. "I've finished my cigarette. But I'm goingon painting." And, advancing towards her, he put his arm round hershoulders and turned her round, away from the picture.
Mary looked up at him; her hair swung back, a soundless bell of gold.Her eyes were serene; she smiled. So the moment had come. His arm wasround her. He moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, and she moved withhim. It was a peripatetic embracement. "Do you agree with him?" sherepeated. The moment might have come, but she would not cease to beintellectual, serious.
"I don't know. I shall have to think about it." Gombauld loosened hisembrace, his hand dropped from her shoulder. "Be careful going down theladder," he added solicitously.
Mary looked round, startled. They were in front of the open door. Sheremained standing there for a moment in bewilderment. The hand thathad rested on her shoulder made itself felt lower down her back; itadministered three or four kindly little smacks. Replying automaticallyto its stimulus, she moved forward.
"Be careful going down the ladder," said Gombauld once more.
She was careful. The door closed behind her and she was alone in thelittle green close. She walked slowly back through the farmyard; she waspensive.