The Ruling Passion [50]
the painting over the chimney-piece in the room
called the study (because it was consecrated to idleness), and sat
there far into the night, talking of the few times we had met
Falconer at the club, and of his reticent manner, which was broken
by curious flashes of impersonal confidence when he spoke not of
himself but of his art. From this we drifted into memories of good
comrades who had walked beside us but a few days in the path of
life, and then disappeared, yet left us feeling as if we cared more
for them than for the men whom we see every day; and of young
geniuses who had never reached the goal; and of many other glimpses
of "the light that failed," until the lamp was low and it was time
to say good-night.
II
For several months I continued to advance in intimacy with my
picture. It grew more familiar, more suggestive; the truth and
beauty of it came home to me constantly. Yet there was something in
it not quite apprehended; a sense of strangeness; a reserve which I
had not yet penetrated.
One night in August I found myself practically alone, so far as
human intercourse was concerned, in the populous, weary city. A
couple of hours of writing had produced nothing that would bear the
test of sunlight, so I anticipated judgment by tearing up the
spoiled sheets of paper, and threw myself upon the couch before the
empty fireplace. It was a dense, sultry night, with electricity
thickening the air, and a trouble of distant thunder rolling far
away on the rim of the cloudy sky--one of those nights of restless
dulness, when you wait and long for something to happen, and yet
feel despondently that nothing ever will happen again. I passed
through a region of aimless thoughts into one of migratory and
unfinished dreams, and dropped from that into an empty gulf of
sleep.
How late it was when I drifted back toward the shore of
consciousness, I cannot tell. But the student-lamp on the table had
burned out, and the light of the gibbous moon was creeping in
through the open windows. Slowly the pale illumination crept up the
eastern wall, like a tide rising as the moon declined. Now it
reached the mantel-shelf and overflowed the bronze heads of Homer
and the Indian Bacchus and the Egyptian image of Isis with the
infant Horus. Now it touched the frame of the picture and lapped
over the edge. Now it rose to the shadowy house and the dim garden,
in the midst of which I saw the white blot more distinctly than ever
before.
It seemed now to have taken a new shape, like the slender form of a
woman, robed in flowing white. And as I watched it through half-
closed eyes, the figure appeared to move and tremble and wave to and
fro, as if it were a ghost.
A haunted picture! Why should it not be so? A haunted ruin, a
haunted forest, a haunted ship,--all these have been seen, or
imagined, and reported, and there are learned societies for
investigating such things. Why should not a picture have a ghost in
it?
My mind, in that curiously vivid state which lies between waking and
sleeping, went through the form of careful reasoning over the
question. If there may be some subtle connection between a house
and the spirits of the people who have once lived in it,--and wise
men have believed this,--why should there be any impassable gulf
between a picture and the vanished lives out of which it has grown?
All the human thought and feeling which have passed into it through
the patient toil of art, remain forever embodied there. A picture
is the most living and personal thing that a man can leave behind
him. When we look at it we see what he saw, hour after hour, day
after day, and we see it through his mood and impression, coloured
by his emotion, tinged with his personality. Surely, if the spirits
of the dead are not extinguished, but only veiled and hidden, and
called the study (because it was consecrated to idleness), and sat
there far into the night, talking of the few times we had met
Falconer at the club, and of his reticent manner, which was broken
by curious flashes of impersonal confidence when he spoke not of
himself but of his art. From this we drifted into memories of good
comrades who had walked beside us but a few days in the path of
life, and then disappeared, yet left us feeling as if we cared more
for them than for the men whom we see every day; and of young
geniuses who had never reached the goal; and of many other glimpses
of "the light that failed," until the lamp was low and it was time
to say good-night.
II
For several months I continued to advance in intimacy with my
picture. It grew more familiar, more suggestive; the truth and
beauty of it came home to me constantly. Yet there was something in
it not quite apprehended; a sense of strangeness; a reserve which I
had not yet penetrated.
One night in August I found myself practically alone, so far as
human intercourse was concerned, in the populous, weary city. A
couple of hours of writing had produced nothing that would bear the
test of sunlight, so I anticipated judgment by tearing up the
spoiled sheets of paper, and threw myself upon the couch before the
empty fireplace. It was a dense, sultry night, with electricity
thickening the air, and a trouble of distant thunder rolling far
away on the rim of the cloudy sky--one of those nights of restless
dulness, when you wait and long for something to happen, and yet
feel despondently that nothing ever will happen again. I passed
through a region of aimless thoughts into one of migratory and
unfinished dreams, and dropped from that into an empty gulf of
sleep.
How late it was when I drifted back toward the shore of
consciousness, I cannot tell. But the student-lamp on the table had
burned out, and the light of the gibbous moon was creeping in
through the open windows. Slowly the pale illumination crept up the
eastern wall, like a tide rising as the moon declined. Now it
reached the mantel-shelf and overflowed the bronze heads of Homer
and the Indian Bacchus and the Egyptian image of Isis with the
infant Horus. Now it touched the frame of the picture and lapped
over the edge. Now it rose to the shadowy house and the dim garden,
in the midst of which I saw the white blot more distinctly than ever
before.
It seemed now to have taken a new shape, like the slender form of a
woman, robed in flowing white. And as I watched it through half-
closed eyes, the figure appeared to move and tremble and wave to and
fro, as if it were a ghost.
A haunted picture! Why should it not be so? A haunted ruin, a
haunted forest, a haunted ship,--all these have been seen, or
imagined, and reported, and there are learned societies for
investigating such things. Why should not a picture have a ghost in
it?
My mind, in that curiously vivid state which lies between waking and
sleeping, went through the form of careful reasoning over the
question. If there may be some subtle connection between a house
and the spirits of the people who have once lived in it,--and wise
men have believed this,--why should there be any impassable gulf
between a picture and the vanished lives out of which it has grown?
All the human thought and feeling which have passed into it through
the patient toil of art, remain forever embodied there. A picture
is the most living and personal thing that a man can leave behind
him. When we look at it we see what he saw, hour after hour, day
after day, and we see it through his mood and impression, coloured
by his emotion, tinged with his personality. Surely, if the spirits
of the dead are not extinguished, but only veiled and hidden, and