Part 98

"You see," he continued, "you go plodding on with your work for months and never think about it; and then you realize that it's gone, and there's the terror--the most awful terror there is--of never getting back to it again. Then there'll be months of holding on to the fringe of it without seeing it--seeing nothing but horrors, hearing them, handling them. Then perhaps, when you've flung yourself down, tired out, where you are, on the chance of sleeping, it's there. And nothing else matters. Nothing else is."

She knew now, though but vaguely and imperfectly, what he meant.

"And the next day one part of you goes about among the horrors, and the other part remains where it got to."

"I see."

Obscurely and with difficulty she saw, she made it out. The thing he spoke of was so inconceivable, so tremendous that at times he was afraid of having it, at times afraid of never having it again. And because, as he had said, the fear of not having it was worse than any fear, he had to be sure of it, he had to put it to the test. So he went down into life, into the thick of it, among all the horrors and the terrors. He knew that if he could do that and carry his vision through it, if it wasn't wiped out, if he only saw it once, for a moment afterwards, he would be sure of it. He wasn't really sure of it until then, not a bit surer than she was now.

No; he was always sure of it. It was himself he was not sure of; himself that he put to the test.

And it was himself that he had carried through it. He had lived face to face with all the corporeal horrors; he had handled them, tasted them, he, the man without a skin, with every sense, every nerve in him exposed, exquisitely susceptible to torture. And he had come through it all as through a thing insubstantial, a thing that gave way before his soul and its exultant, processional vision of God.

"The absurd thing is that after all I haven't grown a skin. I'm still afraid of the sight of blood."

"So I suppose I shall go on being afraid."

"Probably. But you won't turn tail any more than I should. You never ran away."

"There are worse things than running away. All the things that go on inside you, the cruel, dreadful things; the cowardices and treacheries. Things that come of never being alone. I have to sit up at night to be alone."

"My child, you mustn't. It's simply criminal."

"If I didn't," she said, "I should never get it in."

He understood her to be alluding thus vaguely to her gift.

"I know it's criminal, with Papa depending on me, and yet I do it. Sometimes I'm up half the night, hammering and hammering at my own things; things, I mean, that won't sell, just to gratify my vanity in having done them."

"To satisfy your instinct for perfection. God made you an artist."

She sighed. "He's made me so many things besides. That's where the misery comes in."

"And a precious poor artist you'd be if he hadn't, and if the misery didn't come in."

She shook her head, superior in her sad wisdom. "Misery's all very well for the big, tragic people like Nina, who can make something out of it. Why throw it away on a wretched, clever little imp like me?"

"And if you're being hammered at to satisfy an instinct for perfection that you're not aware of----?"

She shook her head again.

"I'm certainly not aware of it. Still, I can understand that. I mean I can understand an instinct for perfection making shots in the dark and trying things too big for it and their not coming off. But--look at Papa."

She held her hands out helplessly. The gesture smote his heart.

"If Papa had been one of its experiments--but he wasn't. It had got him all right at first. You've no idea how nice Papa was. You've only to look at him now to see how nice he is. But he was clever. Not very clever," (she wasn't going to claim too much for him), "but just clever enough. He used to say such funny, queer, delicious things. And he can't say them any more."

She paused and went on gathering vehemence as she went.

"And to go and spoil a thing like that, the thing you'd made as fine as it could be, to tear it to bits and throw the finest bits away--it doesn't look like an Instinct for Perfection, does it?"

"The finest bits aren't thrown away. It's what you still have with you, what you see, that's being thrown away--broken up by some impatient, impetuous spiritual energy, as a medium that no longer serves its instinct for perfection. Do you see?"

"I see that you're trying to make me happier about Papa. It's awfully nice of you."