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.
Robert, however, would not be fetched. He looked up at her with a great
reproach on her entrance, for as invariably happened on the rare
occasions when the tremendousness of what she had to say seemed to her
to justify interrupting, he thought he had just arrived within reach,
after an infinite patient stalking, of the coy, illusive heart of the
problem.
"Mr. Ingram's here," she said breathlessly.
He gazed at her over his spectacles.
"In the parlour," said Ingeborg. "He's come to tea. Isn't it wonderful?
He's going to paint--"
"Who is here, Ingeborg?"
"Mr. Ingram. Edward Ingram. Come and talk to him while I get tea."
She had even forgotten to shut the door in her excitement, and a puff of
wind from the open window picked up Herr Dremmel's papers and blew them
into confusion.
He endeavoured to catch them, and requested her in a tone of controlled
irritation to shut the door.
"Oh, how dreadful of me!" she said, hastily doing it, but with gaiety.
"I do not know," then said Herr Dremmel, mastering his annoyance, "Mr.
Ingram."
"Rut, Robert, it's _the_ Mr. Ingram. Edward Ingram. The greatest artist
there is now. The great portrait painter. Berlin has--"
"Is he a connection of your family's, Ingeborg?"
"No, but he painted Ju--"
"Then it is not necessary for me to interrupt my afternoon on his
behalf."
And Herr Dremmel bent his head over his papers again.
"But, Robert, he's _great_--he's _very_ great--"
Herr Dremmel, with a wetted thumb, diligently rearranged his pages.
"But--why, I told him you'd love to see him. What am I to say to him if
you don't come?"
Herr Dremmel, his eye caught by a sentence he had written, was reading
with a deep enormous appetite.
"Tea," said Ingeborg desperately. "There's tea. You always _do_ come to
tea. It'll be ready in a minute."
He looked up at her, gathering her into his consciousness again. "Tea?"
he said.
But even as he said it his thoughts fell off to his problem, and without
removing his eyes from hers he began carefully to consider a new aspect
of it that in that instant had occurred to him.
There was nothing for it but to go away. So she went.