Perched on its four stone mushrooms, the little granary stood two or
three feet above the grass of the green close. Beneath it there was a
perpetual shade and a damp growth of long, luxuriant grasses. Here, in
the shadow, in the green dampness, a family of white ducks had sought
shelter from the afternoon sun. Some stood, preening themselves, some
reposed with their long bellies pressed to the ground, as though the
cool grass were water. Little social noises burst fitfully forth, and
from time to time some pointed tail would execute a brilliant Lisztian
tremolo. Suddenly their jovial repose was shattered. A prodigious thump
shook the wooden flooring above their heads; the whole granary trembled,
little fragments of dirt and crumbled wood rained down among them.
With a loud, continuous quacking the ducks rushed out from beneath this
nameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely in
the farmyard.
“Don’t lose your temper,” Anne was saying. “Listen! You’ve frightened
the ducks. Poor dears! no wonder.” She was sitting sideways in a low,
wooden chair. Her right elbow rested on the back of the chair and she
supported her cheek on her hand. Her long, slender body drooped into
curves of a lazy grace. She was smiling, and she looked at Gombauld
through half-closed eyes.
“Damn you!” Gombauld repeated, and stamped his foot again. He glared at
her round the half-finished portrait on the easel.
“Poor ducks!” Anne repeated. The sound of their quacking was faint in
the distance; it was inaudible.
“Can’t you see you make me lose my time?” he asked. “I can’t work with
you dangling about distractingly like this.”
“You’d lose less time if you stopped talking and stamping your feet and
did a little painting for a change. After all, what am I dangling about
for, except to be painted?”
Gombauld made a noise like a growl. “You’re awful,” he said, with
conviction. “Why do you ask me to come and stay here? Why do you tell me
you’d like me to paint your portrait?”
“For the simple reasons that I like you--at least, when you’re in a good
temper--and that I think you’re a good painter.”
“For the simple reason”--Gombauld mimicked her voice--“that you want
me to make love to you and, when I do, to have the amusement of running
away.”
Anne threw back her head and laughed. “So you think it amuses me to have
to evade your advances! So like a man! If you only knew how gross and
awful and boring men are when they try to make love and you don’t want
them to make love! If you could only see yourselves through our eyes!”
Gombauld picked up his palette and brushes and attacked his canvas with
the ardour of irritation. “I suppose you’ll be saying next that you
didn’t start the game, that it was I who made the first advances, and
that you were the innocent victim who sat still and never did anything
that could invite or allure me on.”
“So like a man again!” said Anne. “It’s always the same old story about
the woman tempting the man. The woman lures, fascinates, invites; and
man--noble man, innocent man--falls a victim. My poor Gombauld! Surely
you’re not going to sing that old song again. It’s so unintelligent, and
I always thought you were a man of sense.”
“Thanks,” said Gombauld.
“Be a little objective,” Anne went on. “Can’t you see that you’re simply
externalising your own emotions? That’s what you men are always doing;
it’s so barbarously naive. You feel one of your loose desires for some
woman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse her
of luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire. You
have the mentality of savages. You might just as well say that a plate
of strawberries and cream deliberately lures you on to feel greedy. In
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred women are as passive and innocent as
the strawberries and cream.”
“Well, all I can say is that this must be the hundredth case,” said
Gombauld, without looking up.
Anne shrugged her shoulders and gave vent to a sigh. “I’m at a loss to
know whether you’re more silly or more rude.”
After painting for a little time in silence Gombauld began to speak
again. “And then there’s Denis,” he said, renewing the conversation as
though it had only just been broken off. “You’re playing the same game
with him. Why can’t you leave that wretched young man in peace?”
Anne flushed with a sudden and uncontrollable anger. “It’s perfectly
untrue about Denis,” she said indignantly. “I never dreamt of playing
what you beautifully call the same game with him.” Recovering her calm,
she added in her ordinary cooing voice and with her exacerbating smile,
“You’ve become very protective towards poor Denis all of a sudden.”
“I have,” Gombauld replied, with a gravity that was somehow a little too
solemn. “I don’t like to see a young man...”
“...being whirled along the road to ruin,” said Anne, continuing his
sentence for him. “I admire your sentiments and, believe me, I share
them.”
She was curiously irritated at what Gombauld had said about Denis. It
happened to be so completely untrue. Gombauld might have some slight
ground for his reproaches. But Denis--no, she had never flirted with
Denis. Poor boy! He was very sweet. She became somewhat pensive.
Gombauld painted on with fury. The restlessness of an unsatisfied
desire, which, before, had distracted his mind, making work impossible,
seemed now to have converted itself into a kind of feverish energy. When
it was finished, he told himself, the portrait would be diabolic. He was
painting her in the pose she had naturally adopted at the first sitting.
Seated sideways, her elbow on the back of the chair, her head and
shoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards the
front, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment. He had
emphasised the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossed
the canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting into
a kind of soft decay. The hand that lay along the knee was as limp as
a glove. He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on the
canvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness. It was Anne’s
face--but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inward
lights of thought and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless mask
which was sometimes her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at the
same time it was the most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolic
when it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think
of it.