In Redchester nobody talked of kisses. They were things not mentioned.
They were things allowable only under strictly defined conditions--if
you did not want to kiss, for instance, and the other person did not
like it--and confined in their application to the related. Like pews in
a parish church, they were reserved for families. Aunts might kiss:
freely. Especially if they were bearded--Ingeborg had an aunt with a
beard. Mothers might kiss; she had seen her calm mother kiss a new-born
baby with a sort of devouring, a cannibalism. Bishops might kiss, within
a certain restricted area. As for husbands, they did kiss, and nothing
stopped them till the day when they suddenly didn't. But no one, aunts,
mothers, bishops, or husbands, regarded the practice as a suitable basis
for conversation.
How refreshing, therefore, and how altogether delightful it was that
Ingram should be so natural, and how she loved to know that, though of
course he was pretending about the little kisses in her eyes, he thought
it worth while to pretend! With glee and pride and amusement she
wondered what Redchester would say if it could hear the great man it,
too, honoured being so simple and at the same time so very kind. For the
first time she did not answer back; she was silent, thinking amused and
pleasant thoughts. And Ingram walking beside her with his hands in his
pockets and a gayness about his heels felt triumphant, for he had, he
thought, got through to her self-consciousness, he had got her quiet at
last.
Not that he did not enjoy the incense she burned before him, the
unabashed expression of her admiration, but a man wants room for his
lovemaking, and once he is embarked on that pleasant exercise he does
not want the words taken out of his mouth. Ingeborg was always taking
the words out of his mouth and then flinging them back at him again
with, as it were, a flower stuck behind their ear. He had known that if
once he could pierce through to her self-consciousness she would leave
off doing this, she would become aware that he was a man and she was a
woman. She would become passive. She would let go of persisting that he
was a demi-god and she a sort of humble pew-opener or its equivalent in
his temple. Now apparently he had pierced through, and her silence as
she walked beside him with her eyes on the ground was more sweet to him
than anything she had ever said.
Before, however, they had reached the gap in the lilac hedge that formed
the simple entrance on that side to the Dremmel garden there she was
beginning again.
"In Redchester--" she began.
"Oh," he interrupted, "are you going to give me a description of the
town and its environs so as to keep me from giving you a description of
yourself?"
"No," she laughed. "You know I could listen to you for ever."
The same frankness; the same shining look. Ingram wanted to kick.
"I was thinking," she went on, "how nobody in Redchester ever talked
about kisses. Even little ones."
"So you are shocked?"
"No. What a word! I'm full of wonder at the miracle of you--_you_--being
so kind to me--_me!_ Saying such beautiful things, thinking such
beautiful things."
This trick of gratitude was really maddening.
"Tell me about Redchester," he said shortly. "Don't they kiss each other
there?"
"Oh, yes. But they don't have them in their eyes."
He shuddered.
"And people don't mention them, unless it's aunts. And then not like
that. No aunt could ever possibly be of the pregnant parts needful for
the invention of a phrase like that. And if she were I don't suppose I'd
want to listen."
"You do at least then want to listen?"
"Want to? Aren't I listening always to every word you say with both my
ears? What a mercy," she added with thankfulness, "what a real mercy,
what an escape, that you're _not_ an aunt!"
"You can't call it exactly a hairbreadth escape," he said moodily. "I
don't feel even the rough beginnings of an aunt anywhere about me."
He walked with her through the darkness of the lime-tree avenue,
refusing to stay to supper. Why could he not then and there in that
solitary dark place catch her in his arms and force her to wake up, to
leave off being a choir-boy, a pew-opener? Or shake her. One or the
other. At that moment he did not much care which. But he could not. He
told himself that why he could not was because she would be so
limitlessly surprised, and that for all her surprise he would be no
nearer, not an inch nearer to whatever it was in her he was now so eager
to reach. She might even--indeed he felt certain she would--thank him
profusely for such a further mark of esteem, for being, as she would
say, so very kind.
"Are you tired?" she asked, peering up at his face in the scented gloom,
for it was the time of the flowering of the lime-trees, on his suddenly
stopping and saying good night.
"No."
"You're feeling quite well?"
"Perfectly."
"Then," she said, "why go away?"
"I'm in slack water. I have no talk. I'd bore you. Good night."
The next day, having found the morning quite intolerably long, he
approached her directly they were alone on the difficult subject of
husbands.
"It's no good, Ingeborg," he said, "yes, I'm going to call you
Ingeborg--we're fellow pilgrims you and I along this rocky
ridiculousness called life, and we'll soon be dead, and so, my dear, let
us be friends for just this little while--"
"Oh, but of course, of course--"
"It's no good, you know, barring certain very obvious subjects because
of that idiotic prepossession one has for what is known as good taste.
The only really living thing is bad taste. All the preliminaries to real
union, union of any sort, mind or body, consist in the chucking away of
reticences and cautions and proprieties, and each single preliminary is
in bad taste. If we're going to be friends we'll have to go in for that.
Bad taste. Execrable taste. Now--"
He stopped.
"Well?"
She was looking at him in a kind of alarm. This was the longest speech
by far he had made, and she could not imagine what was coming at the
end. He was busy as usual flinging her on to paper--the number of his
studies of her was by this time something monstrous--and was glancing at
her swiftly and professionally at every sentence.
"About husbands. Tell me what you think about husbands."
"About husbands? But _they're_ not bad taste," she said.
"Tell me what you think about them."
"Well, they're people one is very fond of," she said, with her hands
clasped round her knees.
"Oh. You find that?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"I never had one."
"The advantages of being a woman! They're people one is fond of once and
for all. They rescue one from Redchester. They're good and kind. They
help one roll up great balls of common memories, and all the memories
grow somehow into tender things at last. And they're patient. Even when
they've found out how tiresome one is they still go on being patient.
And--one loves them."
"And--they love you?"
She flushed. "Of course," she said.
"You're amusing with your of courses and once for alls. Really you know
there are no such things. Nothing necessarily follows. I mean, not when
you get to human beings."
Ingeborg fidgeted. Too well did she know the dishonesty of her Of
course; too well did she remember the sudden switching off, after
Zoppot, of Robert's love. But the rest was strictly true anyhow, she
thought. She did love him--dear Robert. The difference between him and
an amazing friend like Ingram was, she explained to herself, that she
was interested in Ingram, profoundly interested, and she was not
interested in Robert. That, she supposed, was because she loved Robert.
Perfect love, she said to herself, watching with careful attention the
approach of a hairy and rather awful caterpillar across the path towards
her shoes, perfect love cast out a lot of things besides fear. It cast
out, for instance, conversation. And interest, which one couldn't very
well have without conversation. Interest, of course, was an altogether
second-rate feeling compared to love, and because it was second-rate it
was noisier, expressing itself with a copiousness unnecessary when one
got to the higher stages of feeling. One loved one's Robert, and one
kept quiet. Far the highest thing was to love; but--she drew her feet up
quickly under her--how very interesting it was being interested!
"Well?" he said, looking at her, "go on."
"Well, but I can't go on because I've finished. There isn't any more."
"It's a soon exhausted subject."
"That's because it's so simple and so--so dear. You know where you are
with husbands."
"You mean you know you're not anywhere."
"Oh," she said, throwing back her head and facing him courageously, "how
you don't _realise_! And anyhow," she added, "if that were true it would
be a very placid and restful state to be in."
"Negation. Death. Do you find it placid and restful with me?"
"No," she said quickly.
He put down his brushes and stared at her. "What a mercy!" he said.
"What a mercy! I was beginning to be afraid you did."
By the end of the third week an odd thing had happened. He was no nearer
piercing through her outer husk to any emotions she might possess than
before, but she, astonishingly, had pierced through his.
The outer husk of Ingram at this time and for some years previously was
a desire at all costs to dodge boredom, to get tight hold of anything
that promised to excite him, squeeze it with diligence till the last
drop of entertainment had been extracted, and then let it go again
considerably crumpled. It was the kind of husk that causes divergences
of opinion with one's wife. And behind it sat, wrapped in flame, the
thing that was with him untouchably first, his work. He did not know how
or why, but in that third week Ingeborg got through this husk and became
mixed up in a curious inextricable way with the flaming holy thing
inside.
High above, immeasurably above, any interest he had ever felt in women
was his work. The divers love-makings with which his past bristled as an
ancient churchyard bristles with battered tombstones, had all been
conducted as it were on his doorstep. He came out to the lady, the lady
destined so soon to be a tombstone, often with passion, sometimes with
illusions, and always with immense goodwill to believe that here was the
real thing at last, but she never came in. She might and did catch cold
there for anything he cared, she should never cross the threshold and
start interfering, delaying, coming between. In the end she got left out
there alone, along with the scraper, feeling chilly.
And here was Ingeborg through the door, and not interfering, not
delaying, but positively furthering.
The increasing beauty of his studies of her first made him suspect it.
Their beauty began to surprise him, to take him unawares, as though it
were a thing outside and apart from his own will. He had found so few
things in humanity that seemed beautiful, and his pictures had been
pictures of resentments--impish and wonderful exposures by a master of
the littleness at the back of brave shows. For a fortnight now he had
sketched and sketched and splashed about with colour just as an excuse
for staying on, in the desire to make love to Ingeborg, to refresh
himself for a space at this unexpectedly limpid little spring. He had
been attracted, irritated, increasingly attracted, greatly exasperated,
greatly attracted. He had grown eager, determined, almost anxious at
last. But these various emotions had been felt by him strictly on his
doorstep. She was merely a substitute, and at that only a temporary
substitute, for the Caucasus.
Then in the third week he perceived that she had left off being that.
She was no longer just an odd little thing, an attractive, delicious
little thing to him, of the colouring he best loved, the fairness, the
whiteness, a thing that offered up incense before him with unflagging
zeal, a thing full of contentments and generous ready friendship; she
still was all that, but she was more. Like Adam when God breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, she had become a living soul, and that
of which she was the living soul was his work. Not only her soul but his
had begun to get into his studies of her. Each successive study unveiled
more of an inner beauty. Each fixed into form and colour qualities in
her and qualities in him who apprehended them that he had not known were
there. It was as if he watched, while his hand was held and guided sure
swift touch by sure swift touch by some one else, some one altogether
greater, some splendid master from some splendid other world, who laid
hold of him as one lays hold of a learner and showed him these things
and said at each fresh stroke, "Look--this is what she is like, the
essence of her, the spirit ... and see, it is what you are like, too,
for you recognise it."
In that third week late one afternoon they went on the lake. Ingeborg
paddled slowly along the middle of the quiet water towards the sunset,
and Ingram sat at the other end with his back to it and watched her
becoming more and more transfigured as the sun got lower.
Very early in their acquaintance he had conveyed to her that she ought
always to wear white and that hats were foolish and unnecessary;
therefore she did wear white, and sat hatless in the punt. The light
blinded her. She could see nothing of him but a dark hunch against a
blaze of sky. But when she wanted to turn the punt towards the relief of
the shadows along the shore he instantly stopped her, and told her to
keep on straight into the eye of the sun.
"But I can't see," she said.
"But I can. It's for my picture. It's going to be a study of light."
"Shall you be able to do it from the sketches?"
"No. From you."
"Why, you said you couldn't anywhere here because there wasn't a proper
place."
"There isn't. I'm going to do it in Venice. In my studio there."
"But can you from memory?"
"No. From you."
She laughed. "How I wish I could!" she said. "I ache and ache to see
things, to go to Italy--"
She sighed. The vision of it was unendurably beautiful.
"Well, you'll have to. Not only because it's monstrous you shouldn't,
monstrous and shocking and unbelievable that you should be stuck in
Kökensee for years on end and never see or hear or know any of the big
things of life, but because you can't spoil my great picture--the
greatest I shall ever have done."
"Robert could never leave his work."
"I don't want Robert to leave anything. It's you I'm going to paint. And
I can't do without you."
"How very awkward," she smiled, "because Robert can't do without me,
either."
He plunged his arm into the water with sudden extreme violence, scooped
a handful of it high into the air, and dashed it back again.
It had seemed to him obvious throughout his life that when it came to
the supremest things not only did one give up everything oneself for
them but other people were bound to give up everything, too. The world
and the centuries were to be enriched--he had a magnificent private
faith in his position as a creator--and it was the duty of those
persons who were needful to the process to deliver themselves, their
souls and bodies, up to him in what he was convinced was an entirely
reasonable sacrifice. If any one were necessary to his work, even only
indirectly by keeping him content while he did it so that he could
produce his best, it was that person's duty to come to his help. A
paramount duty; passing the love of home or family. He would do as much,
he was convinced, for some one else who should instead of him possess
the gift. Here had he been in a state of dissatisfaction and
restlessness for years, and his work, though his reputation leapt along,
was, he very well knew, not what it could have been. Boredom had seized
him; a great disgust of humanity. There had been harassing private
complications; his wife had turned tiresome, refusing to understand. And
now he had found this--this thing, he thought, looking at her in the
kind of fury that seized him at the merest approach to any thwarting
that touched his work, of light and fire and cleanness, this little
hidden precious stone, hidden for him, waiting for him to come and make
of her a supreme work of art, and she was putting forward middle-class
obstacles, Philistine difficulties, ludicrous trivialities--Robert, in
short--to the achievement of it.
"Do you realise," he said, leaning forward and staring at her with his
strange pale eyes, "what it means to be painted by me?"
"My utter glorification," she answered, "my utter pride."
He waved his hand impatiently. "It means," he said, "and in this case it
would supremely mean, another one added to the great possessions of the
world."
"Oh," said Ingeborg; and then, after a slight holding of her breath,
again "Oh."
She was awe-struck. His voice came out of the black shadow of him at her
through clenched teeth, which gave it a strange awe-striking quality.
She felt, with the sunset blinding her and that black figure in front of
her and the intense clenchedness of the voice issuing from it, in the
presence of immensities. She wondered whether it would have been any
worse--instantly she corrected the word (it had been the merest slip of
her brain) to more glorious--to be sitting in a punt with,
simultaneously, Shakespeare, Sophocles. Homer, and the entire
Renaissance. Weak a thing though her paddle was she pressed it tightly
in her arms.
"It's--a great responsibility," she said lamely.
"Of course it is," he said, still in that clenched voice. "And it has to
be met greatly."
"But what have _I_--"
"Here's this picture--I feel it in me, I tell you I feel it and know
it--going to be the crowning work of my life, going to be a thing of
living beauty throughout the generations, going to be the Portrait of a
Lady that draws the world to look at it during all the ages after we are
dead--"
He broke off. He left off hurling the sentences at her. He began to beg.
"Ingeborg," he said, "you've cleaned me up and glorified me like the
sunshine during this stay here, without meaning to clean or bothering to
clean a bit. You've become the eyes of the universe to me, and if it
weren't for you now the whole thing would be an eyeless monster and a
mask and a horror. Without you--why, even during the mornings here when
I mayn't come to you I'm like a ship laid up in an out-of-the-way port,
an aeroplane without an engine, a book with the first and last pages
lost. The mornings are like a realistic novel of Gissing's after a fairy
tale. The afternoons are like a bright vision in a crystal, like a
dream, like one of the drops into fairyland quite common people
sometimes take. You're the littlest thing, and you leave the most
enormous blank. It's extraordinary the _goneness_ of things directly I'm
away from you. I did poor work before I found you, poor I mean compared
to what I know it might be, and I'll do none at all or mere ruins if I
have to work without you now. Work is everything to me, and I'm not
going to be able to do it if you're not there. Jeer at me if you like.
Jeer at me for a parasite. I've been an empty thing without you all
these years. You can't let me go again. You can't let me drop back into
the old angers, into the old falling short of the highest. You're the
spirit of my inmost. You're my response, my reality, my glorification,
my transmuter into a god. And the picture I'm going to do of you will be
the Portrait of a Lady who gave him back his Soul."