They stood there for what seemed to the beadle at the bottom an
intolerable time, the lady, evidently nobody certificated, with her
cheek on the gentleman's hand, and he himself, as honest a man as ever
wanted to get his tip and be done with it, kept waiting with nothing to
do but curse and rattle his keys; and though it was summer the crypt was
cold, and so would his feet be soon; and what could the world be coming
to when people carried their caressings even into crypts? Becoming
maddened by these delays the beadle cursed them both, their present,
past, and future, roundly and thoroughly and also profanely--for by the
accident of his calling he was very perfect in profanity--beneath his
breath.
"I'm so sorry, so sorry," Ingeborg was murmuring, who did nothing by
halves, neither penitence, nor humility, nor gratitude.
"My worshipped child," whispered Ingram, immensely moved by this swift
change in her, and changed as swiftly himself by the softness of her
cheek against his hand.
"Oughtn't we to go to Venice to-night?" she asked, still standing in
that oddly touching attitude of apology.
"Not to-night."
"But how can a picture get painted in just that little time?"
"Ah, but you know I'm good at pictures."
"But I can't stay a minute longer than Thursday. I have to be back on
Saturday at the very latest."
"You'll see. It will all be quite easy."
"But to think that I _forgot_ the picture!" she said, looking up at him
shocked, while the ancient humility in which the Bishop had so carefully
trained her descended on her once more, only four-fold this time, like a
garment grown voluminous since last it was put on.
They had for some reason been talking in murmurs, and the embittered
beadle, losing his self-control, began to say things audibly. Strong in
the knowledge of tourist ignorance when it came to real language in
Italian, he said exactly what he thought; and what he thought was so
monstrous, so inappropriate to beadles and to the atmosphere of a crypt,
besides being so extremely and personally rude, that it roused Ingram,
who knew Italian almost better than the beadle--for his included
scholarly by-ways in vituperation, strange and curious twists beyond the
reach of the uneducated--to pour a sudden great burning blast of red-hot
contumely down on to his head; and having done this he turned, and
holding Ingeborg's hand led her up the steps again, leaving the beadle
at the bottom, solitary, shrivelled, and singed.
They thought no more of crypts and beadles. They looked neither to the
right nor to the left. Ingram held her by the hand all the way down the
Cathedral, and the piazza when they came out on to it with its crowds of
vociferating men and bell-ringing tramcars and sellers of souvenirs
seemed to Ingeborg nothing now but a noisy irrelevance. Whole strips of
postcards were thrust unnoticed into her face. The purpose of her
journey was the picture. Marvellous that she should have lost sight of
it and of the wonder and pride of being needed for it--needed at last
for anything, she who so profoundly had longed to be needed, but needed
for this, as a collaborator actually, even though passive and humble, in
the creation of something splendid.
He put her into a cab and drove with her away from the fuss and din. She
was exquisite again to him, adorable altogether. The memory of the fret
and hot irritation of the day was wiped out as though it had never been
by that other memory of her sweet apology on the steps of the crypt. He
told the driver, for it was towards evening, to take them to those
gardens described by the guide-book as probably the finest public park
in Italy; and presently, as they walked together in the remoter parts,
the dusk dropped down like a curtain between them and the Sunday night
crowd collecting round the fountains. Tall trees, and clumps of box, and
rose-bushes shut out everything except mystery; and she in that quiet
place of trickling water and dim flowers began again to talk to him as
she had talked at Kökensee, softly, deliciously, about nothing except
himself. It was like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land; it
was infinite refreshment and relief.
She talked about the picture, with reverence, adoringly. She told him
how in the rush of new impressions she had been forgetting everything
that really mattered, not only that greatest of them all, but the other
things she had to thank him for besides--Italy, her unexpected holiday,
due so entirely to him. She said, her husky voice softer than ever with
gratitude, "You have been giving me happiness and happiness. You've
heaped happiness on me with both your hands." She said, searching only
for words that should be sweet enough, "Do you know I could cry to think
of it all--of all you've been to me since you came to Kökensee. When I'm
back there again, this time with you will be like a hidden precious
stone, and when I'm stupid and thinking that life is dull I'll get it
out and look at it, and it will flash colour and light at me."
"When you talk like that," said Ingram, greatly stirred, "it is as
though a little soul had come back into a deserted and forgotten body."
"Is it?" she murmured, so glad that she could please him, perfectly
melted into the one desire to make up.
"When you talk like that," he said, "life becomes a thing so happy that
it shines golden inside. You have the soul I have always sought, the
thing that comes through me like light through a stained-glass window,
so that I am lit, so that my heart is all sweet fire."
"And you," said Ingeborg, picking up his image as she so often
irritatingly did, only now it did not irritate him, and flinging it back
with a fresh adornment, "the thought of you, the memory of you when I've
gone back to my everyday life, will be like a perfect rose-window in a
grey wall."
"As though we could be separated again. As though being in love with
somebody miles away isn't just intolerable ache. Oh, my dear, why do you
look at me?" he asked with a large simplicity of manner that made her
ashamed of her surprise; "because I talk of being in love? Why shouldn't
two people simply love each other and say so? And if I love you it isn't
with the greedy possessive love I've had for women before, but as though
the feeling one has for the light on crystals or for clear shining after
rain, the feeling of beauty in deep and delicate things, has become
personified and exalted."
She made a little deprecating gesture. He was almost too kind to her;
too kind. But nobody could reasonably object to being loved like
crystals and clearness after rain. Robert couldn't possibly mind that.
She cast about for things to say back, shining things to match his, but
he found them all first; it was impossible to keep up with him.
"You are delicate and fine, like translucent gold," he said. "And you
are brave, and various, and alive. And you are full of sweet little
fancies, little swirls of mood, kind eager things. Never in my life is
there the remotest chance that I shall meet so good and deep a happiness
as you again, and I put my heart once and for all between your dear cool
little hands."
She felt bent beneath this generosity, she who had been so tiresome; and
not only tiresome, but she who had had doubts, unworthy ones she now
saw, round about breakfast time, for instance, piercing through her
silly delight in Italy, as to whether she were giving even any
satisfaction.
"I perceive," he went on, "I've never really loved before. I've played
with dolls, and expressed myself to dummies--like a boy with a ball he
_must_ play with, and failing a playfellow he bumps it against a wall
and catches it again. But you play back, my living dear heart--"
More and more was she invaded by a happy surprise. The _things_ she had
been doing without knowing it! All the right ones, apparently, the whole
time--playing back, coming up to his expectations; and moments such as
those at the Borromean Islands, and when there were picture postcards,
and just recently in the tea-room, had not in the least been what she
supposed. She had not understood. She glowed to think she had not
understood.
"I've been so wearied and distressed with life," he went on, talking in
a low, moved voice. "It has seemed at last such an old hairy thing of
jealousies and shame and disillusionments, and work falling short of its
best, and endless coming and going of people, and me for ever left with
a blunted edge. And now you come, you, and are like a great sweet wind
blowing across it, and like clear skies, and a moon rising before
sunset. It is as though you had taken up a brush and painted out the old
ugly tangles and made a new picture of me in luminous, clear
watercolour."
Her surprise grew and grew, and her gladness that she had been mistaken.
"Those streaks," she thought. "He didn't really _mean_ what he said
about those streaks--"
"Somehow, though quite intelligent all along," continued Ingram, "I've
been shallow and hard in my feelings about everything. Now I feel love
like a deep soft river flowing through my heart. I love every one
because I love you. I can set out to make people happy, I can do and say
fine and generous things because of the love of you shining in my
heart--"
"That beadle," she thought, "he didn't really _mean_ what he said to
that beadle--"
"You're what I've been looking for in women all my life," he went on.
"You're the dream come true. I've only tried to love before. And now
you've come, and made me love, which we all dream of doing, and given me
love, which we all dream of getting--"
Her pleasure became tinged with a faint uneasiness, for she wouldn't
have thought, left to herself, that she had been giving him love.
Pastors' wives didn't give love except to their pastors. Friendship,
yes; she had given him warm friendship, and an abject admiration
of his gifts, and pride, and gratefulness--oh, such pride and
gratefulness--that he should like being with her and saying lovely
things to her; but love? She had supposed love was reserved for lovers.
Well, if he liked to call it love ... one must not be miss-ish it was
very kind of him.... It was, also, more and more wonderful to her that
she had been doing and being and giving all these things without knowing
it. Her suddenly discovered accomplishments staggered her. "Is it
possible," she thought with amazement, "that I'm _clever_?"
And as if he had heard the word lovers in her mind he said it.
"Other lovers," he said, "are engaged perpetually in sycophantic
adaptations--"
"In what?"
She thought he had been going to say engaged to be married, for though
she had known even at Redchester, in spite of the care taken to shut
such knowledge out, that the world included wicked persons who loved
without engagements or marriages, sometimes indeed even without having
been properly introduced, persons who were afterwards punished by the
correctly plighted by not being asked to tea, they were, the Bishop
informed an anxious inquirer once when he had supposed her out of the
room, in God's infinite mercy numerically negligible.
But Ingram did not heed her. "Except us," he went on.
"Us?" she echoed. Well, if one took the word in its widest sense.
"We fit," he said. "We fit, and reflect each other. I in your heart, you
in my heart, like two mirrors that hang opposite one another for ever."
A doubt as to the expediency of so much talk of hearts and love crept
into her mind, but she quieted it by remembering how much worse the Song
of Solomon was--"And yet so respectable really," she said, continuing
her thought aloud, "and all only about the Church."
"What is so respectable? Come and sit on that seat by the bush covered
with roses," he said. "Look--in this faint light they are as white and
delicate as you."
"The Song of Solomon. It--just happened to come into my head. Things
do," she added, beginning to lay hold of the first words that occurred
to her, no longer at her ease.
She sat down on the edge of the seat where he put her.
"It's stone," she said nervously, looking up at him, for he had taken a
step back and was considering her, his head on one side. "Do you think
it's good for us?"
"You beautiful little thing," he murmured, considering her. "You
exquisite little lover."
Her hands gripped the edge of the seat more tightly. A sudden very
definite longing for Robert seized her.
"Oh, but--" she began, and faltered.
She tried again. "It's so _kind_ of you, but--you know--but I don't
think--"
"What don't you think, my dear, my discoverer, my creator, my
restorer--"
"Oh, I know there was Solomon," she faltered, holding on to the seat,
"saying things, too, and they meant something else, but--but isn't this
different? Different because--well, I suppose through my not being the
Church? I'm very _sorry_," she added apologetically, "that I'm not the
Church--because then I suppose nothing would really matter?"
"You mean you don't want me to call you lover?"
"Well, I am _married_," she said, in the voice of one who apologised for
drawing his attention to it. "There _is_ no getting away from that."
"But we have got away from it," said Ingram, sitting down beside her and
loosening the hand nearest him from its tight hold on the seat and
kissing it, while she watched him in an uneasiness and dismay that now
were extreme. "That's exactly what we have done. Oh," he went on,
kissing her hand with what seemed to her a quite extraordinary emotion,
"you brave, beautiful little thing, you must know--you can't not
know--how completely and gloriously you have burned your ships!"
"Ships?" she echoed.
She stared at him a moment, then added with a catch in her breath:
"Which--ships?"
"Ingeborg, Ingeborg, my fastness, my safety, my darling, my reality, my
courage--" said Ingram, kissing her hand between each word.
"Yes," she said, brushing that aside, "but which ships?"
"My strength, my helper, friend, sister, lover, unmerited mate--"
"Yes, but won't you leave off a minute? It--it would be _convenient_ if
you'd leave off a minute and tell me which ships?"
He did leave off, to look into her eyes in the dusk, eyes fixed on him
in a concentration of questioning that left his epithets on one side as
so much irrelevant lumber.
"Little worshipful thing," he said, still gripping her hand, "did you
really think you could go back? Did you really think you could?"
"Go back where?"
"To that unworthy rubbish heap, Kökensee?"
She stared at him. Their faces, close together, were white in the dusk,
and their eyes looking into each other's were like glowing dark patches.
"Why should I not think so?" she said.
"Because, you little artist in recklessness, you've burned your ships."
She made an impatient movement, and he tightened his hold on her hand.
"Please," she said, "do you mind _telling_ me about the ships?"
"One of them was this."
"Was what?"
"Coming to Italy with me."
"You said heaps of people--"
"Oh, yes, I know--a man has to say things. And the other was writing
that letter to Robert. If you'd left it at boots and Berlin!"
He laughed triumphantly and kissed her hand again.
"But that wouldn't have helped, either, really," he went on, "because
directly the ten days were up and you hadn't come back he'd have
known--"
"Hadn't come back?"
"Oh, Ingeborg--little love, little Parsifal among women, dear divine
ignorance and obtuseness--I adore you for believing the picture could be
done in a week!"
"But you _said_--"
"Oh, yes, yes, I know--a man has to say things at the beginning--"
"What beginning?"
"Of this--of love, happiness, all the wonders of joy we're going to
have--"
"Please, do you mind not talking about those other things for a minute?
Why do you tell me I can't go back, I can't go home?"
"They wouldn't have you. Isn't it ridiculous--isn't it glorious?"
"What, not have me _home_? They wouldn't _have_ me? Who wouldn't? There
isn't a they. I've only got Robert--"
"_He_ wouldn't. After that letter he couldn't. And Kökensee wouldn't and
couldn't. And Glambeck wouldn't and couldn't. And Germany, if you like,
wouldn't and couldn't. The whole world gives you to me. You're my mate
now for ever."
She watched him kissing her hand as though it did not belong to her. She
was adjusting a new thought that was pushing its way like a frozen spear
into her mind, trying to let it in, seeing, she could not keep it out,
among all those happy thoughts so warmly there already about Ingram and
her holiday and the kindness and beauty of life, without its too cruelly
killing too many of them too quickly. "Do you mean--" she began; then
she stopped, because what was the use of asking him what he meant? Quite
suddenly she knew.
An immense slow coldness, an icy fog, seemed to settle down on her and
blot out happiness. All the dear accustomed things of life, the small
warm things of quietness and security, the everyday things one nestled
up to and knew, were sliding away from her. "So that," she heard herself
saying in a funny clear voice, "there's only God?"
"How, only God?" he asked, looking up at her.
"Only God left who wouldn't call it adultery?"
The word in her mouth shocked him.