JOE

Like everything else.

MR. WENTWORTH

But you put art on the same plane as invention. An improved motor car scraps the old model. But you can't improve art!

JOE

No, certainly not. We don't try to. We just do our best. We recover art.

MR. WENTWORTH

Recover it?

SILVIA

Yes—discover it all over again. It gets lost, lost in hard and fast rules or sentimentality, then a genius comes along and digs down to the buried city—creation. Art isn't like invention. It's more like religion.

MR. WENTWORTH

There you are!

JOE

There we are! Isn't there a struggle going on all the time to free religion, the spirit of religion, from hard and fast rules and from false emotions? It's exactly the same thing.

MR. WENTWORTH

Ah, but rules are necessary to maintain order. That's what I insist about art. We must have rules!

SILVIA

I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Wentworth. You mean that if fanatics tore down all the churches on the street corners, and there weren't any more Sunday morning sermons, everybody would run wild. But there again it's the same thing as with art: the man who has the spirit of the thing in him feels that the spirit itself is a far better control than heaps of stones and sermons. It's all a matter of living. Imagine asking one of the Apostles which church he went to!

MR. WENTWORTH

Wait! We are getting art mixed up with too much else. Didn't you say, Mr. Carson, that pictures died when they no longer gave out impulses of beauty?

JOE

Yes.

MR. WENTWORTH

Well! I admit there are dead pictures, too many of them, but they are the canvasses that were still-born. The masterpieces in the Louvre still give out impulses—beautiful impulses—to many of us, thank heaven!

SILVIA

But that's just it! The impulses you mean aren't those of art at all. They—

JOE

Those pictures don't give out impulses to the artist. The impulses they do give out are only the emotions that satisfy the student who has learned some rules and then sees the rules worked out. The artist produced the rules as a side issue, but you are trying to make the rules produce the artist. That's the difficulty when people as a whole lose the creative sense. They are satisfied with things at second-hand. Second-hand expressions of life, and second-hand philosophies to justify the expressions. It's a kind of conspiracy in which everybody works against everybody else. Only the few real artists in any generation break through it into the light.

SILVIA

The light of the sun!

MR. WENTWORTH

I fear we are hopelessly at odds in this question. Well, as the Romans said, there's no disputing about tastes. Every one to his own taste.

JOE

No!

MR. WENTWORTH

What do you mean?

JOE

I mean that it's a disgrace that Americans only study and only buy old masters. It's a burning shame that all they know about art is what they have been taught in books. They let their own artists starve—they make them come over here—while they bid up a Raphael like a block of shares. What good does it do Raphael? He had his day. And look how it holds back our own possible Raphaels!

MR. WENTWORTH

Raphael? Ah, you are still very young. You don't understand the attitude of the majority, Mr. Carson. Raphael is one of our great inspirers of beauty.

JOE

You mean culture!

SILVIA

Oh, it's getting quite dark. Joe, light the light.

MR. WENTWORTH

Dear me, so it is! What time is it? It must be getting late—Good gracious! I have an engagement.

SILVIA

You can't stay for a little dinner with us in the Quarter, Mr. Wentworth? Afterward we could go to one of the cafes.

MR. WENTWORTH

I'm afraid I can't, Silvia. It's been a great pleasure to meet you both, I assure you. These little differences of opinion....

SILVIA

Oh, that's all right. We argue art and religion every day, don't we, Joe? Of course, though, we do feel strongly about the young artists—the young American artists. They come over here, and then they have to burn their bridges ... and we see how wonderful America could be if they were given things to do instead of being neglected....

JOE

Here's your coat, Mr. Wentworth.

MR. WENTWORTH

Thank you. Thank you for the delicious tea, Silvia. If I weren't leaving town so soon.... Good night.

SYLVIA

Good night. The stairs are rather dark.... (He goes out)

JOE

Damn!

SYLVIA

Yes, I know, Joe. It's discouraging....

JOE

Discouraging? It's immoral! Oh, these smug people who have been taught what to admire! These unborn souls who want to shut us all up in the dark! I suppose he went away thinking I put myself up higher than Raphael. Who are we painting for? They don't want it—wouldn't take it for a gift. And here we are, a poor little group, standing amazed before the glory of the sun, and painting it—for the blind!

SILVIA

Some day, Joe....

JOE

Some day—yes, when the life has oozed out of all our bright canvasses, when only the "rules" are left. And we won't be able to rise from our graves and curse them!

SILVIA

Now, Joe!

JOE

I guess I let you in for a hard time, Silvia. I wish sometimes I could really paint the kind of thing that goes with stupid people's dining rooms. They with their Long Island Louvres!

SILVIA

If you did, Joe, I'd put it in the stove. Don't think you are having all the fun of being a pioneer. It's exciting to be within a mile of it!

JOE

Good girl. Ugh! Let's go to Boudet's and have dinner. I want to get the bad taste out of my mouth!



HIS LUCK

The living room in a small flat in Beekman Place. Two women, one of them in mourning, sit beside the remains of tea.

VERA

But Jean, where are you going, when you pack up here?

JEAN

I'm not leaving here. I'm staying on.

VERA

Oh. But I thought that now ... you were talking about being free for your own work at last....

JEAN

If I have any work to do, I can do it here. You don't understand, quite. All these years I have been living from whirlpool to whirlpool, never settled, always deracine—the thought of getting accustomed to another place makes me shudder.

VERA

I can imagine, now, how it has been, Jean. But can you find any peace here? With all these things about? You are so sensitive—lamps, and pictures, and rugs—these aren't just furniture to you, they are images of the past. Won't they be, too—real? Too personal? Won't you feel more at liberty with yourself if you create your own atmosphere?

JEAN

Ah, they are real enough! That table is a winter in Munich; the samovar is Warsaw one night in May; the lucerna is Rome ... and all that those places mean to me. I never realized how things could be alive—be personal—until I was left all alone in the midst of these.

VERA

There, don't you see? They're so dominating. I knew you before all this.... I wish you would get away—be yourself.

JEAN

No. I shall stay here. As close as possible.

VERA

But really, Jean! I'm thinking of your work. Perhaps you don't appreciate what an insidious drug memory can be. Especially the memory of unhappiness. Let's be frank, Jean, for the sake of your future. You have been unhappy.

JEAN

Unhappy? Yes, I have been outrageously unhappy! Years of it! Sharp arrows and poisoned wine. I wanted to die....

VERA

Jean!

JEAN

You read a play by Strindberg, and you say it's very strong, very artistic, but all the while you believe it is only the nightmare of a diseased mind. It's just a play—you shut the book and return to "real" life, thankfully. Well, the Strindberg play has been my real life, and real life my play, my impossible dream. You can't imagine how terrifying it is to feel the situation develop around you. Two bodies caught naked in an endless wilderness of thorns. Every movement one makes to free the other only wounds him the more. Two souls, each innocent and aspiring, bound together by serpents, like the Laocoon.... It is one of those things that are absolutely impossible ... and yet true.

VERA

I'll help you pack. Now. You must!

JEAN

We had the deepest respect and admiration for one another, but somehow we never walked in step. His emotion repressed mine, my emotion repressed his. Sometimes one was the slave, sometimes the other. We couldn't both be free at the same time. There was always something to hide, to be afraid of.... Not words nor acts, but moods. It passed over from one soul to the other like invisible rays. And we couldn't separate. That was part of it. We just went on and on....

VERA

People wondered. The first time I met Paul—

JEAN

What do you feel?

VERA

I wondered, afterward, what it really was. He seemed to impress me like a powerful motor car stalled in a muddy road.

JEAN

Ah. I know!

VERA

Poor child.

JEAN

No. You don't understand, I was unhappy, in the ordinary sense, unbelievably so. But that wasn't all. I was alive! I lived as the man lives who faints in the dark mine underground, and I lived as the aviator lives, thrilling against the sun, and as the believer in a world of infidels. That was what he did for me. And slowly, as I learned how deeply the very pain was making me live, I put my unhappiness by. It was there, but it no longer seemed important. It was the lingering complaint of my old commonplace soul standing fearfully on the brink of greater things and hating the situation that led it there.

VERA

You are a big woman, Jean.

JEAN

No, I am a small woman in front of a big thing. One of the biggest, genius. And the force of it, relentless as nature, made me what I am. Paul. Oh, Vera, when I think of his music, tempestuous as the sea, healing as spring.... And now where is it? He had what all the world wants most, flight, and the world stalled him in its own mud. You saw it.... That's why I shall stay here. It's the only place with his atmosphere. All these things are he. I face them here in silence, and I bare my breast to the arrow. Here I am, the only one who knows Paul's music in its possibility. To the rest, it is a heap of stones by the roadside. The architect is dead.

VERA

But didn't he ever ... why didn't he...?

JEAN

You ask it, of course. You have the right. Sometimes I ask it, too, why Paul never succeeded. While we were struggling along, the things that held him back seemed only details. Only now do I see them as a whole.

In the first place, Paul never aimed directly at success. He was all-round. If it had been merely a question of exploiting his talent, sticking to the one idea day in, day out, never letting an opportunity slip by of meeting the right people and getting to the right places ... that would have been easy. He had tremendous energy. I used to grudge his interest in other things. I hated to see him lose the chances and let them be snapped up by littler men. He seemed to waste himself, right and left, prodigally. But it wasn't that, it wasn't waste. It was all as much a part of him as his music. He detested the stupidity of wealth and poverty, he rebelled against laws that aren't laws, but only interests enforced by authority, he fought against the sheer deadness of prejudice. How he hated all that! And why not? You see, Vera, he was sensitive to it not only as a thinker, but as a musician, too. It was all a part of the discord, and what I used to think his wasting himself was really an effort to create a larger harmony. He used to say that the beauty of music is only the image of beauty in life, and that life must come first. He couldn't endure discords anywhere. Paul despised the musicians who scream at a flatted f but hunger for the flesh pots after the performance. No, he was never that. And people resented it. The very people who ought to have understood.

VERA

But he didn't neglect his music, that is...?

JEAN

No. He made enormous efforts to get his violin before the public. And several times he was "discovered" by men who could have made him famous overnight. We all believe that genius will out, despite anything, but it doesn't always. Musicians respected him, but they were afraid of him, too. He criticized them for their shortcomings in other things, just as he criticized others for their shortcomings in art. He wouldn't accept any talent, no matter how fine, if it went with anything small or destructive. You can imagine the china shops he left in fragments! Just think! Once in Berlin it was all arranged for him to have a recital—he was working furiously on his program and I was dancing on air—when just at the last moment he heard the director make some light remark or other about women. Paul was raging! He threw the words back in the fellow's teeth, and made him apologize, but there we were. They called off the recital, naturally. And I couldn't blame Paul. I was just beginning to understand. Another time ... no, he never had luck. Paul had bad luck. I often think of the Greek tragedies.

VERA

Another time?

JEAN

Another time—it was in Warsaw—we had gone with a letter of introduction to Sbarovitch—

VERA The Sbarovitch?

JEAN

Yes. It was a chance in ten thousand. We pawned stuff to get there. Well, Paul played like a god. Sbarovitch was quite overcome. He swore he would compose something especially for Paul. We had visions of playing before the Czar.

VERA

But what happened?

JEAN

What happened? One night a woman called on Paul at the hotel. He went down, not knowing who it was or anything about her. He said afterward that she started in flattering him and asking him to play for her some time.... Then Sbarovitch rushed in, seizing the woman and cursing Paul with mouthfuls of Slavic hate. So that dream ended!

VERA

But why? Was it Sbarovitch's wife?

JEAN

No, worse luck—it was his mistress. Ah, you can't imagine the re-action from such disappointments! The long, slow warming to the full possibility of the occasion, until the artist's mind and body become one leaping flame—and then the sudden fall into icy water. It takes months to work up to the same pitch again.... And then Rome.

VERA

What, again?

JEAN

Oh, yes. Again. This time—for a wonder everything went smoothly. I had watched over him like a cat, to save him from others' stupidity and his own impetuousness. It came the very moment when he had to go to the theatre. He asked me if I were ready, I wasn't. I didn't want to go.

VERA

You didn't want to go?

JEAN

No. It's difficult to explain, but somehow by then I had grown aware that the long series of little obstacles, each one accidental and temporary, seemed to express something unseen, something impersonal, a kind of fate ... as if the verdict had gone forth from the lords of things that Paul was not to succeed. And everything seemed to hang in the balance that night. I thought that the fact I was aware of Paul's bad luck made me all the likelier instrument for it to work through. So I told him I had a headache.... He must have felt something in my voice. He dropped his violin and demanded I tell him why I didn't want to go. His intuition told him it was a matter of will with me. I hadn't thought to have a story ready. Besides, I was so worn out that I was on the verge of hysteria. He stormed, and I sat staring at him without a word, wondering only why he didn't forget poor insignificant me and go forth to his glory. I despised him for considering me at such a moment. I didn't understand. My opinion, my feeling, was more important to Paul than the rest of the world. So, after all, I was the instrument.

VERA

But why didn't you just get up and go?

JEAN

As soon as I saw how much it meant to Paul, I tried to. But it was too late.... We sat there arguing until three in the morning. An orgy of tears and self-immolation for us both.... I suppose he might have explained to the director afterward and arranged another concert, but those things are never the same the second time. Well, I forced myself to get rid of that feeling about his bad luck. How I ever succeeded I don't know, for Paul caught my mood and began to believe it himself. But somehow I did. And then I made him give up his violin and begin composing. Of course we had to have money for that. I wrote a relative and demanded, point blank, shamelessly, two thousand dollars. I felt it was my restitution to Paul. I received the money. What the relative thought, I don't know. I suppose he paid it to avoid getting another such letter from me. I don't blame him.

So we came over here and Paul started at work. I was fighting for him and with him every moment. How he worked! Six months, like a coal heaver. Then he finished and played it over. He tore it all up. Every note.

VERA

Why?

JEAN

He said it was written in an old-fashioned style. It was curious—in his playing he appreciated the most advanced technic, but when be came to compose he found himself imitating the things he had admired when he was eighteen. It had to be worked out of his mind. Well, he did it all through again. This time he said he was only about two years behind. Tore it up again. But now he was convinced he could succeed. And he was magnificent! I would have shared him with the world gladly, but I knew it was best for him to do this work. The hours this room has seen! Well, he made a few notes, stopped a few days to take breath, and then caught the cold that wore him out. Over there, in that drawer, are the notes, a few scraps of paper. The rest of it—the experience of a strong life, a visioning life, are with the mind that is dumb. Sometimes when I sit here I hear it all played, an orchestra ... new harmonies, pure emotion.... The wonder and then the pain of it are almost unbearable.

VERA

Ah, Jean, I begin to understand.

JEAN

Over in London there are half a dozen men and women who caught a glimpse of Paul as he really was. In Munich there are half a dozen more. He was at his best in a studio among friends with a congenial atmosphere. They knew... but what is that?

I tell you, Vera, the only way I can explain it all is by seeing two forces, two moralities; the morality of God and the morality of nature. Perhaps in some people they both work together for the same end, but they don't always.... In the sight of heaven, Paul was an apostle of harmony. In the sight of nature, he was the seed too many on the tree, the bird wrongly colored in the forest. I sit among these things, the fast-ebbing beats of his memory, thinking of what he might have been for others as he was to me, and my heart breaks. Our unhappiness? A cloud passing before the sun—nothing more. And during this past year I have come to love him all over again, not as mate but as mother.

VERA

Ah, Jean, with all his bad luck, he had you! Who knows what might have happened if you had not been there?

JEAN

He had me? No, he never had me—he made me.... And that's why I sit all alone with the things that are Paul,—Paul, the flame that was never lit on the altar, the sword that was never drawn from the scabbard.... We talk together, Vera. Paul and I. We talk together, and I wait for him to tell me what to do.

THE END