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- <title>Simplicity-1</title>
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- <body>
- <p>
- Title: Where do we go when we sleep?
- <br />Subtitle: A short article on dreamtime.
- <br />Date: 2019-06-17
- <br />Author: Ryan Fleck
- <br />Tags: [sleep, waking, dreams]
- <br />Links: [<a href="#">home</a>, <a href="#">catalogue</a>]
- <br />===========================================================
- </p>
- <p>
- "What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled
- hands. "I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person.
- I have just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old
- Florentine. Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a
- religious subject, Mr. Gray."
- </p>
- <p>
- "I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, Mr.
- Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame--though I don't
- go in much at present for religious art--but to-day I only want a picture
- carried to the top of the house for me. It is rather heavy, so I thought I
- would ask you to lend me a couple of your men."
- </p>
- <p>
- "No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you.
- Which is the work of art, sir?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it, covering
- and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched going upstairs."
- </p>
- <p>
- "There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial frame-maker,
- beginning, with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the
- long brass chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we
- carry it to, Mr. Gray?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. Or
- perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at the top of
- the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it is wider."
- </p>
- <p>
- He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and
- began the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the
- picture extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious
- protests of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of
- seeing a gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as
- to help them.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they
- reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door
- that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of
- his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had not entered the place for more than four years--not, indeed, since
- he had used it first as a play-room when he was a child, and then as a
- study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, well-proportioned room,
- which had been specially built by the last Lord Kelso for the use of the
- little grandson whom, for his strange likeness to his mother, and also for
- other reasons, he had always hated and desired to keep at a distance. It
- appeared to Dorian to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian
- cassone, with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished gilt
- mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. There the
- satinwood book-case filled with his dog-eared schoolbooks. On the wall
- behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry where a faded king
- and queen were playing chess in a garden, while a company of hawkers rode
- by, carrying hooded birds on their gauntleted wrists. How well he
- remembered it all! Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him
- as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life,
- and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to
- be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that
- was in store for him!
- </p>
- <p>
- But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as
- this. He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple
- pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and
- unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see
- it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his
- youth--that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer,
- after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame.
- Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from
- those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in
- flesh--those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their
- subtlety and their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have
- passed away from the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the
- world Basil Hallward's masterpiece.
- </p>
- <p>
- No; that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon
- the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but
- the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow
- or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet would creep round the fading eyes and make
- them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or
- droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There
- would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted
- body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him
- in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- "Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. "I am
- sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else."
- </p>
- <p>
- "Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the frame-maker, who was
- still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?"
- </p>
- <p>
- "Oh, anywhere. Here: this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. Just
- lean it against the wall. Thanks."
- </p>
- </body>
- </html>
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