All Hallows' Eve Read Online Free PDF Page B

when they said that Jonathan Drayton’s paintings “were shrill” or “shrieked,” but he saw also that what prevented this was a certain massiveness. The usual slight distinction between shape and hue seemed wholly to have vanished. Color was more intensely image than it can usually manage to be, even in that art. A beam of wood painted amber was more than that; it was light which had become amber in order to become wood. All that massiveness of color was led, by delicate gradations almost like the vibrations of light itself, towards the hidden sun; the eye encountered the gradations in their outward passage and moved inwards towards their source. It was then that the style of the painting came fully into its own. The spectator became convinced that the source of that light was not only in that hidden sun; as, localized, it certainly was. “Here lies the east; does not the day break here?” The day did, but the light did not. The eye, nearing that particular day, realized that it was leaving the whole fullness of the light behind. It was everywhere in the painting—concealed in houses and in their projected shadows, lying in ambush in the cathedral, opening in the rubble, vivid in the vividness of the sky. It would everywhere have burst through, had it not chosen rather to be shaped into forms, and to restrain and change its greatness in the colors of those lesser limits. It was universal, and lived.
    Richard said at last, “I wish you could have shown the sun.”
    â€œYes?” said Jonathan. “Why?”
    â€œBecause then I might have known whether the light’s in the sun or the sun’s in the light. For the life of me, I can’t be certain. It rather looks as though, if one could see the sun, it would be a kind of container … no, as if it would be made of the light as well as everything else.”
    â€œAnd very agreeable criticism,” Jonathan said. “I admit you imply a whole lot of what I only hope are correct comments on the rest of it. You approve?”
    â€œIt’s far and away the best thing you’ve done,” Richard answered. “It’s almost the only thing you’ve done—now you’ve done it. It’s like a modern Creation of the World, or at least a Creation of London. How did you come to do it?”
    â€œSir Joshua Reynolds,” said Jonathan, “once alluded to ‘common observation and a plain understanding’ as the source of all art. I should like to think I agreed with Sir Joshua here.”
    Richard still contemplated the painting. He said slowly, “You’ve always been good at light. I remember how you did the moon in that other thing— Doves on a Roof , and there was something of it in the Planes and the Submarine . Of course one rather expects light effects in the sea and the air, and perhaps one’s more startled when the earth becomes like the sea or the air. But I don’t think that counts much. The odd thing is that you don’t at any time lose weight. No one can say your mass isn’t massive.”
    â€œI should hope they couldn’t,” said Jonathan. “I’ve no notion of losing one thing because I’ve put in another. Now to paint the massiveness of light——”
    â€œWhat do you call this?” Richard asked.
    â€œA compromise, I fear,” Jonathan answered. “A necessary momentary compromise, I allow. Richard, you really are a blasted nuisance. I do wish you wouldn’t always be telling me what I ought to do next before I’ve been let enjoy what I’ve done. This, I now see, is compromising with light by turning it into things. Remains to leave out the things and get into the light.”
    Richard smiled. “What about the immediate future?” he asked. “Do you propose to turn Churchill into a series of vibrations in pure light?”
    Jonathan hummed a little. “At that——” he