I then spoke to her of painting, as I would have done to a fellow
artist, using the technical terms common among the devotees of the
profession. She listened attentively to me, eagerly seeking to define
the sense of the obscure words, so as to penetrate my thoughts. From
time to time, she would exclaim: "Oh! I understand, I understand. This
has been very interesting."
We returned home.
The next day, on seeing me, she approached me eagerly, holding out her
hand; and we became firm friends immediately.
She was a brave creature who had a kind of elastic soul, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium, like all women who are
spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be pickled in vinegar
innocence, though her heart still retained something of youth and of
girlish effervescence. She loved both nature and animals with a fervent
ardor, a love like old wine, fermented through age, with a sensual love
that she had never bestowed on men.
One thing is certain, that a bitch in pup, a mare roaming in a meadow
with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking,
with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the most
violent emotion.
Poor solitary beings! Tristias and wanderers from table d'hôte to table
d'hôte, poor beings, ridiculous and lamentable. I love you ever since I
became acquainted with Miss Harriet!
I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but
she dare not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in
the morning with my box on my back, she accompanied me as far as the end
of the village, silent, but evidently struggling inwardly to find words
with which to begin a conversation. Then she left me abruptly, and, with
a jaunty step, walked away quickly.
One day, however, she plucked up courage:
"I would like to see how you paint pictures? Will you? I have been very
curious."[3]
And she colored up as though she had given utterance to words extremely
audacious.
I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had commenced a
large picture.
She remained standing near me, following all my gestures with
concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing, perhaps, that she was
disturbing me she said to me: "Thank you," and walked away.
But in a short time she became more familiar, and accompanied me every
day, her countenance exhibiting visible pleasure. She carried her
folding stool under her arm, and would not consent to my carrying it,
and she sat always by my side. She would remain there for hours,
immovable and mute, following with her eye the point of my brush, in its
every movement. When I would obtain, by a large splatch of color spread
on with a knife, a striking and unexpected effect, she would, in spite
of herself, give vent to a half-suppressed "Ah!" of astonishment, of
joy, of admiration. She had the most tender respect for my canvases, an
almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a part of
nature's work divine. My studies appeared to her as a kind of pictures
of sanctity, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of
converting me.
Oh! He was a queer good-natured being, this God of hers. He was a sort
of village philosopher without any great resources, and without great
power; for she always figured him to herself as a being quivering over
injustices committed under his eyes, and as though he was helpless to
prevent them.
She was, however, on excellent terms with him, affecting even to be the
confidant of his secrets and of his contrarieties. She said:
"God wills, or God does not will," just like a sergeant announcing to a
recruit: "The colonel has commanded."
At the bottom of her heart, she deplored my ignorance of the intentions
of the Eternal, which she strove, and felt herself compelled to impart
to me.
Almost every day, I found in my pockets, in my hat when I lifted it from
the ground, in my box of colors, in my polished shoes, standing in the
mornings in front of my door, those little pious brochures, which she,
no doubt, received directly from Paradise.
I treated her as one would an old friend, with unaffected cordiality.
But I soon perceived that she had changed somewhat in her manner; but,
for a while, I paid little attention to it.
When I walked about, whether to the bottom of the valley, or through
some country lanes, I would see her suddenly appear, as though she were
returning from a rapid walk. She would then sit down abruptly, out of
breath, as though she had been running, or overcome by some profound
emotion. Her face would be red, that English red which is denied to the
people of all other countries; then, without any reason, she would grow
pale, become the color of the ground and seem ready to faint away.
Gradually, however, I would see her regain her ordinary color, whereupon
she would begin to speak.
Then, without warning, she would break off in the middle of a sentence,
spring up from her seat, and march off so rapidly and so strangely, that
it would, sometimes, put me to my wits ends to try and discover whether
I had done or said anything to displease or offend her.
I finally came to the conclusion that this arose from her early habits
and training, somewhat modified, no doubt, in honor of me, since the
first days of our acquaintanceship.
When she returned to the farm, after walking for hours on the
wind-beaten coast, her long curled hair would be shaken out and hanging
loose, as though it had broken away from its bearings. It was seldom
that this gave her any concern; looking sometimes as though she had just
returned from dining _sans cèremonie_; her locks having become
dishevelled by the breezes.
She would then go up to her room in order to adjust what I called her
glass lamps; and when I would say to her, in the familiar gallantry,
which, however, always offended her:
"You are as beautiful as a planet to-day, Miss Harriet," a little blood
would immediately mount into her cheeks, the blood of a young maiden,
the blood of sweet fifteen.
Then she would become abruptly savage and cease coming to watch me
paint. I thought thus:
"This is only a fit of temper she is passing through."
But it did not always pass away. When I spoke to her sometimes, she
would answer me, either with an air of affected indifference, or in
sullen anger; and became by turns rude, impatient, and nervous. For a
time I never saw her except at meals, and we spoke but little. I
concluded, at length, that I must have offended her in something: and,
accordingly, I said to her one evening:
"Miss Harriet, why is it that you do not act towards me as formerly?
What have I done to displease you? You are causing me much pain!"
She responded, in an angry tone, in a manner altogether _sui generis_:
"I be always with you the same as formerly.[4] It is not true, not
true," and she ran upstairs and shut herself up in her room.
At times she would look upon me with strange eyes. Since that time I
have often said to myself that those who are condemned to death must
look thus when they are informed that their last day has come. In her
eye there lurked a species of folly, a folly at once mysterious and
violent; and even more; a fever, an exasperated desire, impatient, and
at once incapable of being realized and unrealizable!
Nay, it seemed to me that there was also going on within her a combat,
in which her heart struggled against an unknown force that she wished to
overcome, and even, perhaps, something else. But what could I know? What
could I know?