XVI.

Three days after Morton finished his picture. Mildred had been with

him most of the time. And now lunch was over, and they lay on the rug

under the oak tree talking eagerly.

'Corot never married,' Morton remarked, as he shaded his eyes with his

hand, and asked himself if any paint appeared in his sky. There was a

corner on the left that troubled him. 'He doesn't seem to have ever

cared for any woman. They say he never had a mistress.'

'I hear that you have not followed his example.'

'Not more than I could help.'

His childish candour amused her so that she laughed outright, and she

watched the stolid childish stare that she liked, until a longing to

take him in her arms and kiss him came upon her. Her voice softened,

and she asked him if he had ever been in love?

'Yes, I think I was.'

'How long did it last?'

'About five years.'

'And then?'

'A lot of rot about scruples of conscience. I said, I give you a week

to think it over, and if I don't hear from you in that time I'm off to

Italy.'

'Did she write?'

'Not until I had left Paris. Then she spent five-and-twenty pounds in

telegrams trying to get me back.'

'But you wouldn't go back.'

'Not I; with me, when an affair of that sort is over, it is really

over. Don't you think I'm right?'

'Perhaps so.... But I'm afraid we've learnt love in different

schools.'

'Then the sooner you relearn it in my school the better.'

At that moment a light breeze came up the sandy path, carrying some

dust on to the picture. Morton stamped and swore. For three minutes it

was damn, damn, damn.

'Do you always swear like that in the presence of ladies?'

'What's a fellow to do when a blasted wind comes up smothering his

picture in sand?'

Mildred could only laugh at him; and, while he packed up his canvases,

paint-box, and easel, she thought about him. She thought that she

understood him, and fancied that she would be able to manage him. And

convinced of her power she said aloud, as they plunged into the

forest:

'I always think it is a pity that it is considered vulgar to walk arm

in arm. I like to take an arm.... I suppose we can do what we like in

the forest of Fontainebleau. But you're too heavily laden--'

'No, not a bit. I should like it.'

She took his arm and walked by his side with a sweet caressing

movement, and they talked eagerly until they reached the motive of his

second picture.

'What I've got on the canvas isn't very much like the view in front of

you, is it?'

'No, not much, I don't like it as well as the other picture.'

'I began it late one evening. I've never been able to get the same

effect again. Now it looks like a Puvis de Chavannes--not my picture,

but that hillside, that large space of blue sky and the wood-cutters.'

'It does a little. Are you going on with it?'

'Why?'

'Because there is no shade for me to sit in. I shall be roasted if we

remain here.'

'What shall we do? Lie down in some shady place?'

'We might do that.... I know what I should like.'

'What?'

'A long drive in the forest.'

'A capital idea. We can do that. We shall meet some one going to

Barbizon. We'll ask them to send us a fly.'

Their way lay through a pine wood where the heat was stifling; the dry

trees were like firewood scorched and ready to break into flame; and

their steps dragged through the loose sand. And, when they had passed

this wood, they came to a place where the trees had all been felled,

and a green undergrowth of pines, two or three feet high, had sprung

up. It was difficult to force their way through; the prickly branches

were disagreeable to touch, and underneath the ground was spongy, with

layers of fallen needles hardly covered with coarse grass.

Morton missed the way, and his paint-box and canvases had begun to

weigh heavy when they came upon the road they were seeking. But where

they came upon it, there was only a little burnt grass, and Morton

proposed that they should toil on until they came to a pleasanter

place.

The road ascended along the verge of a steep hill, at the top of which

they met a bicyclist who promised to deliver Morton's note. There was

an opening in the trees, and below them the dark green forest waved

for miles. It was pleasant to rest--they were tired. The forest

murmured like a shell. They could distinguish here and there a tree,

and their thoughts went to that tree. But, absorbed though they were

by this vast nature, each was thinking intensely of the other. Mildred

knew she was near the moment when Morton would take her hand and tell

her that he loved her. She wondered what he would say. She did not

think he would say he loved her, he would say: 'You're a damned pretty

woman.' She could see he was thinking of something, and suspected him

of thinking out a phrase or an oath appropriate to the occasion. She

was nearly right. Morton was thinking how he should act. Mildred was

not the common Barbizon art student whose one idea is to become the

mistress of a painter so that she may learn to paint. She had

encouraged him, but she had kept her little dignity. Moreover, he did

not feel sure of her. So the minutes went by in awkward expectancy,

and Morton had not kissed her before the carriage arrived.

She lay back in the fly smiling, Morton thought, superciliously. It

seemed to him stupid to put his arm round her waist and try to kiss

her. But, sooner or later, he would have to do this. Once this Rubicon

was passed he would know where he was.... As he debated, the tall

trunks rose branchless for thirty or forty feet; and Mildred said that

they were like plumed lances.

'So they are,' he said, 'like plumed lances. And how beautifully that

beech bends, what an exquisite curve, like a lance bent in the shock

of the encounter.'

The underwood seemed to promise endless peace, happy life amid leaves

and birds; and Mildred thought of a duel under the tall trees. She saw

two men fighting to the death for her. A romantic story begun in a

ball-room, she was not quite certain how. Morton remembered a drawing

of fauns and nymphs. But there was hardly cover for a nymph to hide

her whiteness. The ground was too open, the faun would soon overtake

her. She could better elude his pursuit in the opposite wood. There

the long branches of the beeches swept the heads of the ferns, and, in

mysterious hollows, ferns made mysterious shade, places where nymphs

and fauns might make noonday festival.

'What are you thinking of?' said Mildred.

'Of fauns and nymphs,' he answered. 'These woods seem to breathe

antiquity.'

'But you never paint antiquity.'

'I try to. Millet got its spirit. Do you know the peasant girl who has

taken off her clothes to bathe in a forest pool, her sheep wandering

through the wood? By God! I should like you to see that picture.'

At the corner of the _carrefour_, the serpent catcher showed them two

vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the

wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag,

curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning him they

learnt that the snakes were on their way to the laboratory of a

vivisectionist. This dissipated the mystery which they had suggested,

and the carriage drove in silence down the long forest road.

'We might have bought those snakes from him, and set them at liberty.'

'We might have, but we didn't.'

'Why didn't we?'

'What would be the good? ... If we had, he would have caught others.'

'I suppose so. But I don't like the idea of that beautiful snake,

which you compared to me, being vivisected.'

The forest now extended like a great temple, hushed in the beautiful

ritual of the sunset. The light that suffused the green leaves

overhead glossed the brown leaves underfoot, marking the smooth

grosund as with a pattern. And, like chapels, every dell seemed in the

tranquil light, and leading from them a labyrinthine architecture

without design or end. Mildred's eyes wandered from the colonnades to

the underwoods. She thought of the forest as of a great green prison;

and then her soul fled to the scraps of blue that appeared through the

thick leafage, and she longed for large spaces of sky, for a view of a

plain, for a pine-plumed hill-top. Once more she admired, once more

she wearied of the forest aisles, and was about to suggest returning

to Barbizon when Morton said:

'We are nearly there now; I'm going to show you our lake.'

'A lake! Is there a lake?'

'Yes, there's a lake--not a very large one, it is true, but still a

lake--on the top of a hill where you can see the forest. Under a

sunset sky the view is magnificent.'

The carriage was to wait for them, and, a little excited by the

adventure, Mildred followed Morton through rocks and furze bushes.

When it was possible she took his arm, and once accidentally, or

nearly accidentally, she sprang from a rock into his arms. She was

surprised that he did not take advantage of the occasion to kiss her.

'Standing on this flat rock we're like figures in a landscape, by

Wilson,' Mildred said.

'So we are,' said Morton, who was struck by the truth of the

comparison. 'But there is too much colour in the scene for Wilson--he

would have reduced it all to a beautiful blue, with only a yellow

flush to tell where the sun had gone.'

'It would be very nice if you would make me a sketch of the lake. I'll

lend you a lead pencil, the back of an envelope will do.'

'I've a water-colour box in my pocket and a block. Sit down there and

I'll do you a sketch.'

'And, while you are accomplishing a work of genius, I'll supply the

levity, and don't you think I'm just the person to supply the

necessary leaven of lightness? Look at my frock and my sunshade.'

Morton laughed, the conversation paused, and the water-colour

progressed. Suddenly Mildred said:

'What did you think of me the first time you saw me? What impression

did I produce on you?'

'Do you want me to tell you, to tell you exactly?'

'Yes, indeed I do.'

'I don't think I can.'

'What was it?' Mildred asked in a low affectionate tone, and she

leaned towards him in an intimate affectionate way.

'Well--you struck me as being a little dowdy.'

'Dowdy! I had a nice new frock on. I don't think I could have looked

dowdy, and among the dreadful old rags that the girls wear here.'

'It had nothing to do with the clothes you wore. It was a little

quiet, sedate air.'

'I wasn't in good spirits when I came down here.'

'No, you weren't. I thought you might be a bore.'

'But I haven't been that, have I?'

'No, I'm damned if you're that.'

'But what a charming sketch you're making. You take that ordinary

common grey from the palette, and it becomes beautiful. If I were to

take the very same tint, and put it on the paper, it would be mud.'

Morton placed his sketch against a rock, and surveyed it from a little

distance. 'I don't call it bad, do you? I think I've got the sensation

of the lonely lake. But the effect changes so rapidly. Those clouds

are quite different from what they were just now. I never saw a finer

sky, it is wonderful. It is splendid as a battle'...

'Write underneath it, "That night the sky was like a battle."'

'No, it would do for my sketch.'

'You think the suggestion would overpower the reality.... But it is a

charming sketch. It will remind me of a charming day, of a very happy

day.'

She raised her eyes. The moment had come.

He threw one arm round her, and raised her face with the other hand.

She gave her lips easily, with a naturalness that surprised and

deceived him. He might marry her, or she might be his mistress, he

didn't know which, but he was quite sure that he liked her better than

any woman he had seen for a long time. He had not known her a week,

and she already absorbed his thoughts. And, during the drive home, he

hardly saw the forest. Once a birch, whose faint leaves and branches

dissolved in a glittering light, drew his thoughts away from Mildred.

She lay upon his shoulder, his arm was affectionately around her, and,

looking at him out of eyes whose brown seemed to soften in affection,

she said:

'Elsie said you'd get round me.'

'What did she mean?'

'Well,' said Mildred, nestling a little closer, and laughing low,

'haven't you got round me?'

Her playfulness enchanted her lover, and, when she discreetly sought

his hand, he felt that he understood her account of Alfred's

brutality. But her tenderness, in speaking of Ralph, quickened his

jealousy.

'My violets lay under his hand, he must have died thinking of me.'

'But the woman who wrote to you, his mistress, she must have known all

about his love for you. What did she say?'

'She said very little. She was very nice to me. She could see that I

was a good woman....'

'But that made no difference so far as she was concerned. You took her

lover away from her.'

'She knew that I hadn't done anything wrong, that we were merely

friends.'

The conversation paused a moment, then Morton said: 'It seems to have

been a mysterious kind of death. What did he die of?'

'Ah, no one ever knew. The doctors could make nothing of his case. He

had been complaining a long time. They spoke of overwork, but--'

'But, what?'

'I believe he died of slow poisoning.'

'Slow poisoning! Who could have poisoned him?'

'Ellen Gibbs.'

'What an awful thing to say.... I suppose you have some reason for

suspecting her?'

'His death was very mysterious. The doctors could not account for it.

There ought to have been a _post-mortem_ examination.' Feeling that

this was not sufficient reason, and remembering suddenly that Ralph

held socialistic theories and was a member of a sect of socialists,

she said: 'Ralph was a member of a secret society.... He was an

anarchist--no one suspected it, but he told me everything, and it was

I who persuaded him to leave the Brotherhood.'

'I do not see what that has to do with his death by slow poisoning.'

'Those who retire from these societies usually die.'

'But why Ellen Gibbs?'

'She was a member of the same society, it was she who got him to join.

When he resigned it was her duty to--'

'Kill him! What a terrible story. I wonder if you're right.'

'I know I am right.'

At the end of a long silence, Morton said:

'I wonder if you like me as much as you liked Ralph.'

'It is very different. He was very good to me.'

'And do you think that I shall not be good to you?'

'Yes, I think you will,' she said looking up and taking the hand which

pressed against her waist.

'You say he was a very clever artist. Do you like his work better than

mine?'

'It was as different as you yourselves are.'

'I wonder if I should like it?'

'He would have liked that,' and she pointed with her parasol towards

an oak glade, golden hearted and hushed.

'A sort of Diaz, then?'

'No, not the least like that. No, it wasn't the Rousseau palette.'

'That's a regular Diaz motive. It would be difficult to treat it

differently.'

The carriage rolled through a tender summer twilight, through a

whispering forest.