The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (69 page)

In his dining room, the Louis sixteenth sofa had met bad trouble, and yielded up its springs, much tapestry and the ghost, all at once. The writing table had its top lifted off, and another table had evidently seen trouble. The heavy pile carpet here was divorced both from itself and the floor, and lay in heaps, literally cut to pieces.

In the bathroom, some of the tiles had been forced out, as if the human cyclone had meant to make sure of what lay below; and in the dressing-room, things had equally not been neglected.

I sat down on the wreckage of Mr. Black’s bed, and roared. He just stood and stared.

“You sure see the funny side of a thing, Cap’n!” he said at last.

“This’ll pay you for cutting me out with my lady friends!” I told him, when I could breathe again. “I suppose you been up, spooning on the boat-deck, instead of coming down and turning-in at a reasonable hour, like a Christian.”

He looked sheepish enough to please me.

“Providence, Mr. Black,” I told him, “is always careful to leave the dustpan on the stairs, when it sees we’re getting too ’aughty.” Then I got serious. “Missed anything?” I asked him.

“Not a thing yet,” he said; “but it’ll take a bit of straightening out.”

I rang for his servant, and sent a message to the chief steward.

Fortunately the next suite was empty, and we moved Mr. Black’s gear into it. Just the three of us; for I want no talk among the passengers until the trip is finished. That sort of thing is better kept quiet.

The chief steward locked up the whole suite, and we knew then there could be no talk; for Black’s servant had not been allowed in to see the place, since the trouble.

“Now, Mr. Black,” I said, “come along up to my place for a talk.”

When we reached my cabin, Mr. Black had a whisky to pick him up; and we talked the thing over; though I saw he didn’t see as far into it as I had done already.

“Anyway,” I told him, “you’ve lost nothing; and now they’ll leave you alone. They’ve proved the thing isn’t in your possession. If it had been, they’d sure have had it—eh?”

“Sure!” he said, soberly. “Are you mighty certain it’s safe where you’ve put it?”

“Safe till the old ship falls to pieces!” I told him. “All the same, they must be a pretty determined lot, whoever they are; and I expect they’ll be paying my quarters a visit if they get the half of a show. By the Lord! I’d like ’em to try it on!”

April 11th. Afternoon.

Mr. Black and Miss Lanny spent the morning up with me in my chart-room. The talk turned on a water-colour I was making of the distant wind-on-spray effects, and I hit out once or twice at Miss Lanny’s critical remarks.

“That’s pretty good, Cap’n Charity,” she said, looking over my shoulder; “but I like your copy of the Gioconda better; though you haven’t got the da Vinci ability to peep underneath, and see the abysmal deeps of human nature.”

“Dear lady,” I said, “may I light a cigarette in your presence, and likewise offer you one?”

She accepted, and Mr. Black also.

“Da Vinci was a great painter!” I said.

“I’m sure,” she answered.

“But he wasn’t a great artist. . . . Understand, I’m judging him just on the Mona, which is the only thing of his I’ve seen; but which is supposed to be his greatest work.”

“That’s a wicked thing to say, Cap’n!” she interrupted. “The whole world acclaims him great!”

“He’s one more proof,” I said, “of the truth of my contention that a man may be a ‘great painter’ or a ‘great sculptor’ without being a great artist; in other words a man of great feeling, and intellectuality combined—that is to say, a Compleat Personality.

“I admit that a great artist does occasionally happen to be a ‘great painter’ or a ‘great sculptor’; and as a result his sculpture or painting, as the case may be, is vastly more complete, perfect, great, (call it which you like) than the work of the other sort; but, so far, the ‘other sort’ seems able to dispense with the greatness of personality, which is the ‘bricks’ of the great artist. . . . This quality doesn’t appear to be necessary to their ‘greatness,’ any more than greatness of Personality is necessary to the making of a great singer. A great singer may be (and sometimes is) a human pig, into whose larynx has been inserted the throstle of an angel; but he’s still what he’d be if you took the tune-pipe out of his throat—and that’s plain unadulterated, unintellectual, unfeeling p-i-g. I don’t mean to say they’re unemotional. They’re generally emotional enough, the Lord knows! So’s a congenital idiot, a drunken man, a woman of easy virtue, or a certain type of actor when he’s just been told he’s outtopped old Garrick!”

She was gasping now in her attempts for words suitable to my eternal quenching. She got some of them out; but they cut no ice! Finally, she demanded fiercely, in so many words:—“What do you mean?”

That was a plain question; and I answered it plainly:—

“The da Vinci johnny was too busy looking out for his abysmal deeps of human nature, to remember the heights!” I told her. “He was like a painter, with his eye glued into a sewer, painting and sweating himself into eternal fame—that is in the eyes of other Perverts like himself; and in the eyes of the big blind, indiscriminative, unmeaning crowd that follows the shouting of the Perverts, because they don’t know enough to shout tosh frankly.

“Now, the value of the Mona must be put at a high figure, maybe ten million dollars in the open market.” (I grinned cheerfully at the back of my mind.) “But if it’s worth that, it’s worth it as a painting—not as a compleat work of art!”

“You’re mad, Cap’n; either mad or ignorant, or both!” she slammed out at me, and I could see that Mr. Black wanted to say much the same thing.

“St. Paul is my brother, dear lady,” I said; “only he was accused of achieving his through much learning!

“Meanwhile, I assert that our friend da Vinci was not a great artist—not if you judge him on the merits of the Mona as a compleat work of art. (Fine word compleat. Means just what I want it to mean!)”

“Why? Why? Why?” she broke out again, reduced once more to blank questioning.

“Yes,” joined in Mr. Black, beginning to show warmth, “I’d just like to know, Cap’n, how you make out da Vinci’s not a great or compleat, or whatever you like to call it, artist?”

“Because,” I said, “Art is personality expressed in and through the ‘artist’s’ subject. If the artist’s personality is a great personality and a balanced one, it will express itself in and through his subject in a great and balanced way. And the greater and more balanced the personality, the more the artist’s work will approximate to perfect art—Great Art; always supposing that the man is a master craftsman, which, of course, is understood.

“The Great Art is the great, wise, compleat human personality, vital and therefore creative, expressing itself through some medium; inevitably a ‘handicraft.’ I’m using the word widely.

“If, however, the artist has a twisted personality, the twist will express itself in and through his work, and the work will be as much out of perspective in its deviation from compleat sanity and truth, as it would be technically, were the artist an indifferent craftsman.

“You see, sound art is a true, personal expression of anything, in its general relationship to human nature. If a man’s art produces results which are not coupled up with human nature, it becomes non-intelligible to the human; as much so, as are the X rays to the human retina!

“And it is because of all these things that I condemn the Mona as a work of the highest art. It is the product of a twisted art and a very great handicraft.”

“It is a perfect work of great and wondrous art!” said Miss Lanny. “I like to see how piffly little amateurs, try to teach the Master!”

I laughed at her bad temper.

“Dear lady,” I said, “you admit my copy of the Gioconda is not so bad,” and I beckoned to where I had pinned the picture on the bulkshead, under the skylight.

“By the side of the original,” she smiled at me, “it is as a ginger-pop bottle beside a Venetian glass wonder. You sure got a healthy conceit of yourself, Cap’n!”

“Mea culpa, dear lady!” I murmured, holding out my case of gold-tips. “I suppose you’ll deny next the truth of my contention that all art must say something, or it’s nothing?”

“Art needn’t say a thing, and you know it, Cap’n!” she said.

“Just so,” agreed Mr. Black. “It’s sufficient to be just what it is! A picture isn’t meant to be a book!”

“Quite so!” I told him. “It takes a certain amount of brains and mental energy, that is, personality, to write even a moderately good book! And a book is great or not, in so far as it says much or little, and says it truly or askewly, completely or incompletely. And that simple little test is the test for all art—painting, sculpture, prose, poetry, music—all of it; for if a ‘work of art’ says nothing, it is nothing.

“The matter with the Mona is that it says only part of what it should say; and the part that it does say is no more a compleat measure of a woman, than a pint-measure approximates to a furlong, in any sense. He has seen only the female in the woman, and painted it in the ‘moment of gratification.’ It no more approximates to a normal or compleat human woman, than a male, portrayed in a moment of murderous fight, approximates to a normal or compleat human man. It is simply an abnormality—showing nothing beyond what is painted! As abnormal as if the artist had drawn, shall we say, one enlarged nostril of an ape-man, and handed that down to posterity as a compleat work of art. But it is wonderful handicraft; and does not forget the shaven eyebrows—”

“Why, Cap’n, you’ve painted your copy with eyebrows!” interrupted Miss Lanny.

“Yes,” I said. “I like the effect better. I’ve no use for those abnormal effects. Besides, it’s more decent!”

“Lord!” muttered Mr. Black, “you sure are cracked to-day, Cap’n.”

“The Mona,” I asserted once more, “is a twisted fragment of a woman—the produce of a twisted nature. As opposed to this inadequacy, the Greatest Art is complete, in the sense that it shows a Man or a Woman or a Moment in such a way that you see, with the great and particular insight of the artist who created the work, the thing you are shown, plus all the rest, which it makes or aids you to comprehend also. It portrays the Man, the Woman, or the Moment, in such a way that you realise, as you look, all the potentialities of the Man, the Woman, the Moment—The greatness and absurd weakness of the Man; the infinite tenderness and incredible meanness of the Woman; and the æons of Eternity that lie in wait behind the Moment.

“The Gioconda is, as I’ve said, a small Art and a very great Handicraft; that is, if it is anything at all! It’s abnormal—a fine handicraft and a cute brain used to give out to the world the twisted freakishness of the biassed soul, that could not see the woman as a complete whole! I understand, I guess, because I’m a bit twisted myself; it’s only in odd moments that I can fight down the twist in me, which makes me see every woman worse even than she is.

“There, you see! I can’t stop slamming at ’em; not even when I’m out to explain!”

I had to laugh at myself; and the tension eased out of the two of them. I had watched the softer look of capable feminine interest, supersede the incapable critical light in Miss Lanny’s eyes, as I had explained my own short-comings.

“Cap’n Charity’s sure running amock, every time a woman’s on the carpet!” said Mr. Black. “I guess, Miss Lanny, he’s like a number of men, he’s gone and got fond of a bad ’un, some time or other, and she’s scorched the youngness out of his soul. I know!”

He wagged his head at me.

“The only reason he’ll talk about the Mona, is because she’s a woman, bless her,” he said. “But, you know, Cap’n, you’ll sure have to quit going on the rampage like that, or it’ll be getting a habit. I once got a bit like that myself, and I guess I know! It was some fight I had to break from it.”

Miss Lanny reached out her hand for another cigarette, and then bent towards me, for a light.

“Was she a very bad woman, Captain Charity?” she said, under her breath. “She must have been!” She looked up into my eyes, through the smoke of her cigarette. “I’m sorry you’ve had that sort of experience of women,” she went on, still in an undertone, and still looking up into my eyes. “You ought sure to know a really nice woman; she would heal you up.”

“Why?” I asked. And then:—“Do you reckon you’re qualified to act the part of kind healer, dear lady?”

“I’d not mind trying,” she said, still in a low tone.

“Why,” I said, out loud, so that Mr. Black could hear, where he sat, over by the open doorway, “in your way, you’re just as bad! You say a thing like that, in a tone to make me think you’re a stainless Angel of Pity and Compassionate Womanhood; and at bottom you’re just another of them! You may be virtuous, I don’t say you aren’t. I believe you are; but you’re up to all the eternal meanness and everlasting deceit of the woman! You come here, posing as my friend; as the friend of Mr. Black, chummy and friendly with us, even to the point of losing your temper; and all the time you’re one of a gang of thieves aboard this ship, trying to diddle Mr. Black or me out of a picture you and your pals think is aboard!”

As I spoke, she had whitened slowly, until I thought she must surely faint. And she sat there, without saying a word, the smoke curling up from her cigarette, between her finger-tips, and her eyes looking at me dumbly, and big and dark through the thin smoke.