The Pastor's Wife

CHAPTER XXVII

This was in May. By the end of the following May Ingeborg had read so much that she felt quite uncomfortable.

It had been a fine confused reading, in which Ruskin jostled Mr. Roger Fry and Shelley lingered, as it were, in the lap of Mr. Masefield. The news-agent, who must have lived chiefly a great many years before, steadily sent her mid, early, and pre-Victorian literature; and she, ordering on her own account books advertised in the weekly papers, found herself as a result one day in the placid arms of the Lake Poets, and the next being disciplined by Mr. Marinetti, one day ambling unconcernedly with Lamb, and the next caught in the exquisite intricacies of Mr. Henry James. She read books of travel, she learned poetry by heart, she grew skilful at combining her studies with her cooking; and propping up Keats on the dresser could run to him for a fresh line in the very middle of the pudding almost without the pudding minding. And since she loved to hear the beautiful words she learned aloud, and the kitchen was full of a pleasant buzzing, a murmurous sound of sonnets as well as flies, to which the servant got used in time.

But though she set about this new life with solemnity—for was she not a lopped and lonely woman whose husband had left off loving her and whose children had been taken away?—cheerfulness kept on creeping in. The chief obstacle to any sort of continued gloom was that there was a morning to every day. Also she had enthusiasms, those most uplifting and outlifting from oneself of spiritual attitudes, and developed a pretty talent for tingling. She would tingle on the least provocation, with joy over a poem, with admiration over the description of a picture, and thrilled and quivered with response to tales of Beauty—of the beauty of the cathedrals in France, miracles of coloured glass held together delicately by stone, blown together, she could only think from the descriptions, in their exquisite fragility by the breath of God rather than built up slowly by men's hands; of the beauty of places, the lagoons round Venice at sunrise, the desert toward evening; of the beauty of love, faithful, splendid, equal love; of all the beauty men made with their hands, little spuddy things running over dead stuff, blocks of stone, bits of glass and canvas, fashioning and fashioning till at last there was the vision, pulled out of a brain and caught forever into the glory of line and colour. She longed to talk about the wonderful and stirring and vivid things life outside Kökensee seemed to flash with. What must it be like to talk to people who knew and had seen? What could it be like to see for oneself, to travel, to go to France and its cathedrals, to go to Italy in the spring-time when the jewels of the world could be looked at in a setting of clear skies and generous flowers? Or in autumn, when Kökensee was grey and tortured with rainstorms, to go away there into serenity, to where the sun burned the chestnuts golden all day long and the air smelt of ripened grapes?

And she had only seen the Rigi.

Well, that was something; and it seemed somehow appropriate for a pastor's wife. She turned again to her books. What she had was very good; and she had found an old woman in the village who did not mind being comforted, so that added to everything else was now the joy of gratitude.

It seemed, indeed, that she was to have a run of joys that spring, for besides these came suddenly yet another, the joy so long dreamed of of having some one to talk to. And such a some one, thought Ingeborg, entirely dazzled by her good fortune—for it was Ingram.

She was paddling the punt as usual down the lake one afternoon, a pile of books at her feet, when, passing the end of the arm of reeds that stretched out round her hidden bay, she perceived that her little beach was not empty; and pausing astonished with her paddle arrested in the air to look, she recognized in the middle of a confusion of objects strewn round him that no doubt had to do with painting, sitting with his elbows on his drawn-up knees and his chin in his hand, Ingram.

He was doing nothing: just staring. She came from behind the arm of reeds, half drifting along noiselessly out towards the middle of the lake, straight across his line of sight.

For an instant he stared motionless, while she, holding her paddle out of the water, stared equally motionless at him. Then he seized his sketching book and began furiously to draw. She was out in the sun and had no hat on. Her hair was the strangest colour against the background of water and sky, more like a larch in autumn than anything he could think of. She seemed the vividest thing, suddenly cleaving the pallors and uncertainties of reeds and water and flecked northern sky.

"Don't move," he shouted in what he supposed was German, sketching violently.

"So it's you?" she called back in English, and her voice sang.

"Yes, it's me all right," he said, his pencil flying.

He did not recognise her. He had seen too many people in seven years to keep the foggy figure of that distant November evening in his mind.

"I'm coming in," she called, digging her paddle into the water.

"Sit still!" he shouted.

"But I want to talk."

"Sit still!"

She sat still, watching him, unable to believe her good fortune. If he were only here again for a single day and she could only talk to him for a single hour, what a refreshment, what a delight: to talk in English; to talk to some one who had painted Judith; to talk to some one so wonderful; to talk at all! She was as little shy as a person stranded on a desert island would be of anybody, kings included, who should appear after years on the solitary beach.

"Well?" she called, after sitting patiently for what she felt must be half an hour but which was five minutes.

He did not answer, absorbed in what he was doing.

She waited for what seemed another half-hour, and then turned the punt in the direction of the shore.

"I'm coming in," she called; and as he did not answer she paddled towards the bay.

He stared at her, his head a little on one side, as she came close. "What are you going to do?" he asked, seeing she was manoeuvring the punt into the corner under the oak-tree.

"Land," said Ingeborg.

He got up and caught hold of the chain fastened to the punt's nose and dragged it up the beach.

"How do you do?" she said, jumping out and holding out her hand. "Mr. Ingram," she added, looking up at him, her face quite solemn with pleasure.

"Well, now, but who on earth are you?" he asked, shaking her hand and staring. Her clothes, now that she was standing up, were the oddest things, recalling back numbers of Punch. "You're not staying at the Glambecks', and except for the Glambecks there isn't anywhere to stay."

"But I told you I was the pastor's wife."

"You did?"

"Last time. Well, and I still am."

"But when was last time?"

"Don't you remember? You were staying with the Glambecks then, too."

"But I haven't stayed with the Glambecks for an eternity. At least ten years."

"Seven," said Ingeborg. "Seven and a half. It was in November."

"But you must have been in pinafores."

"And you walked down the avenue with me. Don't you remember?"

"No," said Ingram, staring at her.

"And you scolded me because I couldn't walk as fast as you did. Don't you remember?"

"No," said Ingram.

"And you said I'd run to seed if I wasn't careful. Don't you remember?"

"No," said Ingram.

"And I had on my grey coat and skirt. Don't you remember?"

"No, no, no," said Ingram, smiting his forehead, "and I don't believe a word of it. You're just making it up. Look here," he said, clearing away his things to make room for her, "sit down and let us talk. Are you real?"

"Yes, and I live at Kökensee, just round the corner behind the reeds. But I told you that before," said Ingeborg.

"You do live?" he said, pushing his things aside. "You're not just a flame-headed little dream that will presently disappear again?"

"My name's Dremmel. Frau Dremmel. But I told you that before, too."

"The things a man forgets!" he exclaimed, spreading a silk handkerchief over the coarse grass. "There! Sit on that."

"You're laughing at me," she said, sitting down, "and I don't mind a bit. I'm much too glad to see you."

"If I laugh it's with pleasure," he said, staring at the effect of her against the pale green of the reeds—where had he seen just that before, that Scandinavian colouring, that burning sort of brightness in the hair? "It's so amusing of you to be Frau anything."

She smiled at him with the frankness of a pleased boy.

"You're very nice, you know," he said, smiling back.

"You didn't think so last time. You called me your dear lady, and asked me if I never read."

"Well, and didn't you?" he said, sitting down, too, but a little way off so that he could get her effect better.

"Yes, do sit down. Then I shan't be so dreadfully afraid you're going."

"Why, but I've only just found you."

"But last time you disappeared almost at once into the fog, and you'd only just found me then," she said, her hands clasped round her knees, her face the face of the entirely happy.

"After all I seem to have made some progress in seven years," he said. "I apparently couldn't see then."

"No, it was me. I was very invisible—"

"Invisible?"

"Oh, moth-eaten, dilapidated, dun-coloured. And I'd been crying."

"You? Look here, nobody with your kind of colouring should ever cry. It's a sin. It would be most distressing, seriously, if you were ever less white than you are at this moment."

"See how nice it is not to be a painter," said Ingeborg. "I don't mind a bit if you're white or not so long as it's you."

"But why should you like it to be me?" asked Ingram, to whom flattery, used as he was to it, was very pleasant, and feeling the comfort of the cat who is being gently tickled behind the ear.

"Because," said Ingeborg earnestly, "you're somebody wonderful."

"Oh, but you'll make me purr," he said.

"And I see your name in the papers at least once a week," she said.

"Oh, the glory!"

"And Berlin's got two of your pictures. Bought for the nation."

"Yes, it has. And haggled till it got them a dead bargain."

"And you've painted my sister."

"What?" he said quickly, staring at her again. "Why, of course. That's it. That's who you remind me of. The amazing Judith."

"Are you such friends?" she asked, surprised.

"Oh, well, then, the wife of the Master of Ananias. Let us give her her honours. She's the most entirely beautiful woman I've seen. But—"

"But what?"

"Oh, well. I did a very good portrait of her. The old boy didn't like it."

"What old boy?"

"The Master. He tried to stop my showing it. And so did the other old boy."

"What other old boy?"

"The Bishop."

"But if it was so good?"

"It was. It was exact. It was the living woman. It was a portrait of sheer, exquisite flesh."

"Well, then," said Ingeborg.

"Oh, but you know bishops—" He shrugged his shoulders. "Italy's got it now. It's at Venice. The State bought it. You must go and see it next time you're there."

"I will," she laughed, "the very next time." And her laugh was the laugh of joyful amusement itself.

Ingram was now forty three or four, and leaner than ever. His high shoulders were narrow, his thin neck came a long way out of his collar at the back and was partly hidden in front by his short red beard. His hair, darker than his beard, was plastered down neatly. He had very light, piercing eyes, and a nose that Ingeborg liked. She liked everything. She liked his tweed clothes, and his big thin hands—the wonderful hands that did the wonderful pictures—and his long thin nimble legs. She liked the way he fidgeted, and the quickness of his movements. And she glowed with pride to think she was sitting with a man who was mentioned in the papers at least once a week and whose pictures were bought by States, and she glowed with happiness because he did not this time seem anxious to go back to the Glambecks' at once; but most of all she glowed with the heavenliness, the absolute heavenliness of being talked to.

"And you're her sister," he said, staring at her. "Now that really is astonishing."

"But everybody can't be beautiful."

"A sister of hers here, tucked away in this desert. It is a desert, you know. I've come to it because I wanted a desert—one does sometimes after too much of the opposite. But I go away again, and you live in it. What have you been doing all these years, since I was here last?"

"Oh, I've—been busy."

"But not here? Not all the time here?"

"Yes, all of it."

"What, not away at all?"

"I went to Zoppot once."

"Zoppot? Where's Zoppot? I never heard of Zoppot. I don't believe Zoppot's any good. Do you mean to say you've not been to a town, to a place where people say things and hear things and rub themselves alive against each other, since last I was here?"

"Well, but pastors' wives don't rub."

"But it's incredible! It's like death. Why didn't you?"

"Because I couldn't."

"As though it weren't possible to tear oneself free at least every now and then."

"You wait till you're a pastor's wife."

"But how do you manage to be so alive? For you shine, you know. When I think of all the things I've done since I was here last—" He broke off, and looked away from her across the lake. "Oh, well. Sickening things, really, most of them," he finished.

"Wonderful pictures," said Ingeborg, leaning forward and flushing with her enthusiasm. "That's what you've done."

"Yes. One paints and paints. But in between—it's those in between the work-fits that hash one up. What do you do in between?"

"In between what?"

"Whatever it is you do in the morning and whatever it is you do in the evening."

"I enjoy myself."

"Yes. Yes. That's what I'd like to do."

"But don't you?"

"I can't."

"What—you can't?" she said. "But you live in beauty. You make it. You pour it over the world—"

She stopped abruptly, hit by a sudden thought. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I don't know anything really. Perhaps—you're in mourning?"

He looked at her. "No," he said, "I'm not in mourning."

"Or perhaps—no, you're not ill. And you can't be poor. Well, then, why in the world don't you enjoy yourself?"

"Aren't you ever bored?" he answered.

"The days aren't long enough."

He looked round at the empty landscape and shuddered.

"Here. In Kökensee," he said. "It's spring now. But what about the wet days, the howling days? What about unmanageable months like February? Why"—he turned to her—"you must be a perfect little seething vessel of independent happiness, bubbling over with just your own contentments."

"I never was called a seething vessel before," said Ingeborg, hugging her knees, her eyes dancing. "What an impression for a respectable woman to produce!"

"What a gift to possess, you mean. The greatest of all. To carry one's happiness about with one."

"But that's exactly what you do. Aren't you spilling joy at every step? Splashing it into all the galleries of the world? Leaving beauty behind you wherever you've been?"

He twisted himself round to lie at full length and look up at her. "What delightful things you say!" he said. "I wish I could think you mean them."

"Mean them?" she exclaimed, flushing again. "Do you suppose I'd waste the precious minutes saying things I don't mean? I haven't talked to any one really for years—not to any one who answered back. And now it's you! Why, it's too wonderful! As though I'd waste a second of it."

"You're the queerest, most surprising thing to find here on the edge of the world," he said, gazing up at her. "And there's the sun just got at your hair through the trees. Are you always full of molten enthusiasms for people?"

"Only for you."

"But what am I to say to these repeated pattings?" he cried.

"You got into my imagination that day I met you and you've been in it ever since. I was in the stupidest state of dull giving in. You pulled me out."

He stared at her, his chin on his hand. "Imagine me pulling anybody out of anything," he said. "Generally I pull them in."

"It's true I've had relapses," she said. "Five relapses."

"Five?"

She nodded. "Five since then. But here I am, seething as you call it, and it's you who started me, and I believe I shall go on now doing it uninterruptedly for ever."

Ingram put out his hand with a quick movement, as though he were going to touch the edge of her dress. "Teach me how to seethe," he said.

"That's rather like asking a worm to give lessons in twinkling to a star."

"Wonderful," he said softly, after a little pause, "to lie here having sweet things said to one. Why didn't I find you before? I've been being bored at the Glambecks' for a whole frightful week."

"Oh, have you been there a week already?" she asked anxiously. "Then you'll go away soon?"

"I was going to-morrow."

"That's like last time. You were just going when I met you."

"But now I'm going to stay. I'm going to stay and paint you."

She jumped. "Oh!" she exclaimed, awe-struck. "Oh—"

"Paint you, and paint you, and paint you," said Ingram, "and see if I can catch some of your happiness for myself. Get at your secret. Find out where it all comes from."

"But it comes from you—at this moment it's all you—"

"It doesn't. It's inside you. And I want to get as much of it as I can. I'm dusty and hot and sick of everything. I'll come and stay near you and paint you, and you shall make me clean and cool again."

"The stuff you talk!" she said, leaning forward, her face full of laughter. "As though I could do anything for you! You're really making fun of me the whole time. But I don't care. I don't care about anything so long as you won't go away."

"You needn't be afraid I'm going away. I'm going to have a bath of remoteness and peace. I'll chuck the Glambecks and get a room in your village. I'll come every day and paint you. You're like a little golden leaf, a beech leaf in autumn blown suddenly from God knows where across my path."

"Now it's you making me purr," she said.

"You're like everything that's clear and bright and cool and fresh."

"Oh," murmured Ingeborg, radiant, "and I haven't even got a tail to wag!"

"Already, after only ten minutes of you, I feel as if I were eating cold, fresh, very crisp lettuce."

"That's not nearly so nice. I don't think I like being lettuce."

"I don't care. You are. And I'm going to paint you. I'm going to paint your soul. Tell me some addresses for lodgings," he said, snatching up a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"There aren't any."

"Then I must stay at your vicarage."

"You'll have to sleep with Robert, then."

"What? Who is Robert?"

"My husband."

"Oh, yes. But how absurd that sounds!"

"What does?"

"Your having a husband."

"I don't see how you can help having a husband if you're a wife."

"No. It's inevitable. But it's—quaint. That you should be anybody's wife, let alone a pastor's. Here in Kökensee."

She got up impulsively. "Come and see him," she said. "You wouldn't last time. Come now. Let me make tea for you. Let me have the pride of making tea for you."

"But not this minute!" he begged, as she stood over him holding out her hand to pull him up.

"Yes, yes. He's in now. He'll be out in his fields later. He'll be frightfully pleased. We'll tell him about the picture. Oh, but you did mean it, didn't you?" she added, suddenly anxious.

He got up reluctantly and grumbling: "I don't want to see Robert. Why should I see Robert? I don't believe I'm going to like Robert," he muttered, looking down at her from what seemed an immense height. "Of course I mean it about the picture," he added in a different voice, quick and interested. "It'll be a companion portrait to your sister's."

He laughed. "That would really be very amusing," he said, stooping down and neatly putting his scattered things together.

Ingeborg flushed. "But—that's rather cruel fun, isn't it, that you're making of me now?" she murmured.

"What?" he asked, straightening himself to look at her.

The light had gone out of her face.

"What? Why—didn't I tell you my picture of you is to be the portrait of a spirit?"

He pounced on his things and gathered them up in his arms.

"Come along," he said impatiently, "and be intelligent. Let me beg you to be intelligent. Come along. I suppose I'm to go in the punt. What's in it? Books by the dozen. What's this? Eucken? Keats? Pragmatism? O Lord!"

"Why O Lord?" she asked, getting in and picking up the paddle while he gave the punt a vigorous shove off and jumped on to it as it went. She was radiant again. She was tingling with pride and joy. He really meant it about the picture. He hadn't made fun of her. On the contrary.... "Why O Lord?" she asked. "You said that, or something like it, last time because I didn't read."

"Well, now I say it because you do," he said, crouching at the opposite end watching her movements as she paddled.

"But that doesn't seem to have much consistency, does it?" she said.

"Hang consistency! I don't want you addled. And you'll get addled if you topple all these different stuffs into your little head together."

"But I'd rather be addled than empty."

"Nonsense! If I could I'd stop your doing anything that may alter you a hairbreadth from what you are at this moment."

To that she remarked, suspending her paddle in mid air, her face as sparkling as the shining drops that flashed from it, that she really was greatly enjoying herself; and they both laughed.

Ingram waited in the parlour, where he stood taking in with attentive eyes the details of that neglected, almost snubbed little room, while Ingeborg went to the laboratory, so happy and proud that she forgot she was breaking rules, to fetch, as she said, Robert.