A few minutes later Basil Valentine had exchanged his black pumps for a pair of equally narrow black shoes, the dressing gown for a blue suit, and he returned pulling at the foundations under his trousers. Among the books at the back of his desk, he pushed aside La nuit des Rois and quickly found the copy of Thoreau. He pulled on his coat, and on his way out opened a panel closet and took out a large flat envelope. He paused in the doorway to look the room over quickly, and then locked the door with two keys, leaving the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola open on the desk, where the fly had already alighted before the second key turned in the lock.
In the street door below, he paused to look in all directions. A slight drizzle had commenced. He came forth damning the wind, the hand with the gold seal ring holding his hat on as he hailed a cab with the other.
The wind from the river was quite strong. It was, in fact, strong enough to support a man; and this, at a corner on Gansevoort Street, is exactly what it was doing. The man himself, on the other hand, did not seem grateful. He was talking to the wind; and, as occasional words took shape from the jumble of sounds he poured forth, it became evident that he was calling it foul names. At this, the wind became even more zealous in its attentions to him. He hit at the skirt of his tattered coat as it flew up around him, addressing it somewhat like this, — Gway gwayg. . yccksckr. . until, its caprice satisfied, the wind flung him round a corner and went on east. Abandoned, he swayed, and fortunately found a wall with the first throw of- his hand, instead of the face of the man who approached, for he had struck out at just about that level.
— Here, my good man. Could you tell me whereabouts Horatio Street. . good heavens.
Thus called upon, he took courage: the sursum corda of an extravagant belch straightened him upright, and he answered, — Whfffck? Whether this was an approach to discussion he had devised himself, or a subtle adaptation of the Socratic method of questioning perfected in the local athenaeums which he attended until closing time, was not to be known; for the answer was,
— Stand aside.
— Here, don't goway. Here, how do youfffk. . He licked a lip and commenced again, putting out a hand. — My name Boyma. . he managed, summoning himself for the challenge of recognition. — And you must be Gro… go… raggly!
He seemed to have struggled up on that word from behind; and he finished with the triumph of having knocked it over the head. He did in fact look down, as though it might be lying there at his feet. It was such a successful combat that he decided to renew it. — Go. . gro. . gorag… His hand found a wrist, and closed thereon. Bells sounded, from a church somewhere near. — Go. . ro. . grag. . But the sharp heel of a hand delivered to the side of his head stopped him, and he dropped against the wall with no exclamation of surprise whatever.
The door was opened to the length of a finger.
— You… 1
— I…
— How. . how did you find me?
— It hasn't been easy. You might put Rouge Cloltre out here on your bell, at least.
— Rouge. . put what?
— The name of the convent that took van der Goes in, you know. May I come in?
— Oh, why. . yes, yes come in.
— I'm not disturbing you? Basil Valentine asked, entering the room. — Coming at such an odd hour?
— Yes it is, but no, not if… you don't need the sleep?
— Unfortunately I do, I need it badly, Valentine answered with a smile. — Here, I brought down these van Eyck details. And your Thoreau. I went off with that quite by mistake.
— That, thank you for that. And you. . your. .
— My coat? Yes, it's wet. I'll take it off in a moment. First I'd like to wash my hands, Valentine went on, turning toward a door, — I had a rather disagreeable encounter on my way here. The room was the kitchen; and with one look at the sink, he returned to say, — Are you aware that there's something growing in here? A delicate plant, growing right up out of the drain?
— Oh no, but that, it must be a melon then. Some melon seeds washed down. . here, here's the bathroom here.
A minute later, Valentine's voice came from there. — A towel?
— Yes, here, use this.
Valentine came out, drying his hands on a wad of cotton waste. — It's pretty stuff, isn't it, he said smiling again, and threw it into the fireplace. — And tell me, it's your habit to cover up mirrors? as they do in a house where someone's died?
— The one in the bathroom? it's only., something drying. But you, he asked Valentine suddenly, — don't you get tired of the image you dodge in mirrors?
— I don't dodge. Valentine had not lost his smile. He took off his coat, and put it with his hat on the bed, where he sat on the unmade edge and leaned back against the rumpled covers, hands clasped round one knee. — So, you're working, are you? he said agreeably. — You've been at it all night?
— All night, I've been working all night. I just finished it.
— What? could I see it?
— It's this one, this big one here.
Valentine got up to help him move it out from the wall, and stand it face out against the inside of the door. He offered his cigarette case, lit their cigarettes, and studied the painting for some time before he said, — Brown won't like this, you know. The face there, how badly you've damaged it.
— But the damage? It isn't as though I'd done that. A hand was flung up before him. — The painting itself, the composition took its own form, when it was painted. And then the damage, the damage is indifferent to the composition, isn't it. The damage, you know, is… happens.
Valentine shrugged. — I know, of course, he said. — But I doubt that Brown will. It will cut the price down badly.
— The price! What's that to do with. .
— Good heavens, I don't care about it. But your employer is rather sensitive about those things, you know. After another pause, without taking his eyes from the painting, Valentine stepped back, and the figure behind him moved as quickly as his own shadow in the glare of the bare light above them. -It's magnificent, isn't it, Valentine said quietly. He stood entirely absorbed in it, and when he spoke murmured as he might have talking to himself. — The simplicity. . it's the way I would paint…
There was no sound after his voice, and nothing moved to move him; until his eyes lowered to the shadow streaking the floor beside him: at that Basil Valentine turned abruptly and cleared his throat. — Yes, a splendid sense of death there isn't there, he went on in the tone usual to him, more forceful and more casual at once. — Death before it became vulgar, he went on, walking down the room away from the painting, — when a certain few died with dignity. And the others, the people who went to earth quietly like dung. Eh? he added, turning. He threw his cigarette into the fireplace, lit another without offering one, and blew the thin smoke out compulsively in a steady stream. — Yes, there is what you wanted there, isn't there, in this painting? — Almost…
— Almost? Valentine repeated. He brought up the rold brilliance of his own eyes, to drive the feverish stare fixed upon him down to the floor between them. — Almost what?
— The. . strength, the delicacy, the tenderness without. . — Weakness, yes. Valentine kicked a book on the floor at his feet. — Pliny? what, for his discourse on colors? Yes thanks, I wouldn't mind a little of that myself, cognac is it? He held out the unwashed glass he was given while the bottle-neck clinked against it, but still looking at the damaged painting. — You do work fast, don't you. Yes, van der Goes was a fast painter himself, but one, the Portinari triptych I think it was, took him a good three years. But after all this is rather different isn't it, you know where you're going all the time. None of that feeling of, what was Valéry's line, that one can never finish a work of art? one only abandons it? But here there's none of that problem, is there. Eh? What's the matter.