After that fevered night Lennan went to his studio at the usual hour and
naturally did not do a stroke of work. He was even obliged to send away
his model. The fellow had been his hairdresser, but, getting ill, and
falling on dark days, one morning had come to the studio, to ask with
manifest shame if his head were any good. After having tested his
capacity for standing still, and giving him some introductions, Lennan
had noted him down: “Five feet nine, good hair, lean face, something
tortured and pathetic. Give him a turn if possible.” The turn had come,
and the poor man was posing in a painful attitude, talking, whenever
permitted, of the way things had treated him, and the delights of
cutting hair. This morning he took his departure with the simple
pleasure of one fully paid for services not rendered.
And so, walking up and down, up and down, the sculptor waited for Nell's
knock. What would happen now? Thinking had made nothing clear. Here was
offered what every warm-blooded man whose Spring is past desires—youth
and beauty, and in that youth a renewal of his own; what all men save
hypocrites and Englishmen would even admit that they desired. And it was
offered to one who had neither religious nor moral scruples, as they are
commonly understood. In theory he could accept. In practice he did not
as yet know what he could do. One thing only he had discovered during
the night's reflections: That those who scouted belief in the principle
of Liberty made no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was
dangerous because it made a man a libertine. To those with any decency,
the creed of Freedom was—of all—the most enchaining. Easy enough to
break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over the windmill, and cry
for the moment at least: I am unfettered, free! Hard, indeed, to say
the same to his own unfettered Self! Yes, his own Self was in the
judgment-seat; by his own verdict and decision he must abide. And though
he ached for the sight of her, and his will seemed paralyzed—many times
already he had thought: It won't do! God help me!
Then twelve o'clock had come, and she had not. Would 'The Girl on the
Magpie Horse' be all he would see of her to-day—that unsatisfying work,
so cold, and devoid of witchery? Better have tried to paint her—with
a red flower in her hair, a pout on her lips, and her eyes fey, or
languorous. Goya could have painted her!
And then, just as he had given her up, she came.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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