she stared at his black outline helplessly. she was overwhelmed. what could a respectable pastor's wife say to such a speech? it had the genuine ring. she did not believe it all—not, that is, the portions of it which that back part of her mind, the part that leapt about with disconcerting agility of irrelevant questioning when it most oughtn't to, called the decorations, for how could any one like ingram really think those wonderful things of any one like her?—but she no longer suspected him of making fun. he meant some of it. what was underneath it he meant, she felt. she was scared, and at the same time caught up into rapture. was it possible that at last she was wanted, at last she could help some one? he wanted her, he, ingram, of all people in the world; and only a few weeks ago she had been going about kökensee so completely unwanted that if a dog wagged its tail at her she had been glad.
"it—it's a great responsibility," she murmured a second time, while her face was transfigured with more than just the sunset.
it was. for there was robert.
robert, she felt even at this moment in the uplifted state when everything seems easy and possible, would not understand. robert had no need of her himself, but he would not let her go for all that to venice. robert had altogether not grasped ingram's importance in the world; he could not, perhaps, be expected to, for he did not like art. robert, she was deadly certain, would not leave his work for an hour to take her anywhere for any purpose however high; and without him how could she go to venice? people didn't go to venice with somebody who wasn't their husband. they might go there with a whole trainful of indifferent persons if they were indifferent. directly you liked somebody, directly it became wonderful to be taken there, to be shown the way, looked after, prevented from getting lost, you didn't go. it simply, as with kissing, was a matter of liking. society seemed based on hate. you might kiss the people you didn't want to kiss; you might go to venice with any amount of strangers because you didn't like strangers. and in a case like this—"oh, in a case like this," she suddenly cried out aloud, flinging the paddle into the punt and twisting her hands together, overcome by the vision of the glories that were going to be missed, "when it's so important, when it so tremendously matters—to be caught by convention!"
he had got her. the swift conviction flashed through him as he jerked his feet out of the way of the paddle. got her differently from what he had first aimed at perhaps, still incredibly without sex-consciousness, but she would come to venice, she would come and sit to him, he was going to do his masterpiece, and the rest was inevitable.
"how do you mean?" he said, his eyes on her.
"to think the great picture's never going to be painted!"
"and why?"
"because of convention, because of all these mad rules—"
she was twisting her fingers about in the way she did when much stirred.
"it's doomed," she said, "doomed." and she looked at him with eyes full of amazement, of aggrievedness, of, actually, tears.
"ingeborg—" he began.
"do you know how i've longed to go just to italy?" she interrupted with just the same headlong impulsiveness that had swept her into dent's travel bureau years before. "how i've read about it and thought about it till i'm sick with longing? why, i've looked out trains. and the things i've read! i know all about its treasures—oh, not only its treasures of art and old histories, but other treasures, light and colour and scent, the things i love now, the things i know now in pale mean little visions. i know all sorts of things. i know there's a great rush of wistaria along the wall as you go up to the certosa, covering its whole length with bunch upon bunch of flowers—"
"which certosa?"
"pavia, pavia—and all the open space in front of it is drenched in april with that divinest smell. and i know about the little red monthly roses scrambling in and out of the campo santo above genoa in january—in january! red roses in january. while here.... and i know about the fireflies in the gardens round florence—that's may, early may, while here we still sit up against the stoves. and i know about the chestnut woods, real chestnuts that you eat afterwards, along the steep sides of the lakes, miles and miles of them, with deep green moss underneath, and i know about the queer black grapes that sting your tongue and fill the world with a smell of strawberries in september, and what the appian way looks like in april when it is still waving flowery grass burning in an immensity of light, and i know the honey-colour of the houses in the old parts of rome, and that the irises they sell there in the streets are like pale pink coral—and all one needs to do to see these things for oneself is to catch a train at meuk. any day one could catch that train at meuk. every day it starts and one is never there. and kökensee would roll back like a curtain, and the world be changed like a garment, like an old stiff clayey garment, like an old shroud, into all that. think of it! what a background, what a background for the painting of the greatest picture in the world!"
she stopped and took up the paddle again. "i wonder," she said, with sudden listlessness "why i say all this to you?"
"because," said ingram, in a low voice, "you're my sister and my mate."
she dipped the paddle into the water and turned the punt towards home.
"oh, well," she said, the enthusiasm gone out of her.
the water and the sky and the forests along the banks and the spire of the kökensee church at the end of the lake looked dark and sad going this way. at first she could see nothing after the blinding light of the other direction, then everything cleared into dun colour and bleakness. "how one talks," she said. "i say things—enthusiastic things, and you say things—beautiful kind things, and it's all no good."
"isn't it? not only do we say them but we're going to do them. you're coming with me to venice, my dear. haven't you read in those travel books of yours what the lagoons look like at sunset?"
she made an impatient movement.
"ingeborg, let us reason together."
"i can't reason."
"well, listen to me then doing it by myself."
and he proceeded to do it. all the way down the lake he did it, and up along the path through the rye, and afterwards in the garden pacing up and down in the gathering twilight beneath the lime-trees he did it. "wonderful," he thought in that submerged portion of the back of his mind where imps of criticism sat and scoffed, "the trouble one takes at the beginning over a woman."
she let him talk, listening quite in silence, her hands clasped behind her, her eyes observing every incident of the pale summer path, the broken twigs scattered on it, some withered sweet-peas she had worn that afternoon, a column of ants over which she stepped carefully each time. till the stars came out and the owls appeared he eagerly reasoned. he talked of the folly of conventions, of the ridiculous way people deliberately chain themselves up, padlock themselves to some bogey of a theory of right and wrong, are so deeply in their souls improper that they dare not loose their chain one inch or unlock themselves an instant to go on the simplest of adventures. such people, he explained, were in their essence profoundly and incurably immoral. they needed the straight waistcoat and padded room of principles. their only hope lay in chains. "with them," he said, "sane human beings such as you and i have nothing to do." but what about the others, the free spirits increasing daily in number, the fundamentally fine and clean, who wanted no safeguards and were engaged in demonstrating continually to the world that two friends, man and woman, could very well, say, travel together, be away seeing beautiful things together, with the simplicity of children or of a brother and sister, and return safe after the longest absence with not a memory between them that they need regret?
why, there were—he instanced names, well-known ones, of people who, he said, had gone and come back openly, frankly, determined demonstrators for the public good of the natural. and then there were—he instanced more names, names of people even ingeborg had heard of; and finding this unexpectedly impressive he went on inventing with a growing recklessness, taking any people well-known enough to have been heard of by ingeborg and sending them to venice in twos, in haphazard juxtapositions that presently began to amuse him tremendously. no doubt they had gone, or would go sooner or later, he thought, greatly tickled by the vision of some of his couples. "there was lilienkopf—you know, the african millionaire. he went to venice with lady missenden." he flung back his head and laughed. the thought of lilienkopf and lady missenden.... "they, too, came back without a regret," he said; and laughed and laughed.
she watched him gravely. she knew neither lilienkopf nor lady missenden, and was not in the mood for laughter.
"even bishops go," said ingram. "they go for walking tours."
"but not to venice?"
"no. to shrines. why, cathedral cities are honey-combed with secret pilgrims."
"but why secret? you said—"
"well, careful pilgrims. pilgrims who make careful departures. one has to depart carefully, you know. not because of oneself but because of offending those who are not imbued with the pilgrim spirit. for instance robert."
"oh—robert. i see his face if i suggested he should let me be a pilgrim."
"but of course you mustn't suggest."
"what?" she stood still and looked up at him. "just go?"
"of course. it was what you did when you ran away to lucerne. if you'd suggested you'd never have got there. and you did that for merest fun. while this—"
he looked at her, and the impishness died out of his face.
"why, this," he said, after a silence, "this is the giving back to me of my soul. i need you, my dear. i need you as a dark room needs a lamp, as a cold room needs a fire. my work will be nothing without you—how can it be with no light to see by? it will be empty, dead. it will be like the sky without the star that makes it beautiful, the hay without the flower that scents it, the cloak one is given by god to keep out the cold and wickedness of life slipped off because there was no clasp to hold it tight over one's heart."
she began to warm again. she had been a little cooled while he laughed by himself over lady missenden's unregretted journeyings. to go to italy; to go to italy at all; but to go under such conditions, wanted, indispensable to the creation of a great work of art; it was the most amazing cluster of joys surely that had ever been offered to woman.
"how long would i have to be away?" she asked. "how long is the shortest time one wants for a picture?"
he airily told her a month would be enough, and, on her exclaiming, immediately reduced it to a week.
"but getting there and coming back—"
"well, say ten days," he said. "surely you could get away for ten days? to do," he added, looking at her, "some long-delayed shopping in berlin."
"but i don't want to shop."
"oh, ingeborg, you're relapsing into your choir-boy condition again. of course you don't want to shop. of course you don't want to go to berlin. but it's what you'll say to robert."
"oh?" she said. "but isn't that—wouldn't that be rather—"
"why can't you be as simple as when you went to lucerne? you wanted to go, so you went. and you were leaving your father who tremendously needed you. you were his right hand. here you're nobody's right hand. i'm not asking you to do anything that would hurt robert. all you've got to do is to arrange so that he knows nothing beyond berlin. surely after these years he can let you go away for ten days?"
she walked with him in silence down the lilac path as far as the gate into the yard. she was exalted, but her exaltation was shot with doubt. what he said sounded so entirely right, so obviously right. she had no reasoning to put up against it. she longed intolerably to go. she was quite certain it was a high and beautiful thing to go. and yet—
herr dremmel's laboratory windows were open, for the evening was heavy and quiet, and they could see him in the lamplight, with disregarded moths fluttering round his head, bent over his work.
"good night," ingram called in at the window with the peculiar cordial voice reserved for husbands; but herr dremmel was too much engrossed to hear.
towards two o'clock there was a thunderstorm and sheets of rain, and when ingeborg got up next morning it was to find the summer gone. the house was cold and dark and mournful, and it was raining steadily. looking out of the front door at the yard that had been so bright and dusty for five weeks she thought she had never seen such a sudden desolation. the rain rained on the ivy with a drawn-out dull dripping. the pig standing solitary in the mud was the wettest pig. the puddles were all over little buttons made of raindrops. invariably after a thunderstorm the weather broke up for days, sometimes for weeks. what would she and ingram do now? she thought; what in the world would they do now? shut up in the dark little parlour, he unable to work, and no walks, and no punting—why, he'd go, of course, and the wonder-time was at an end.
"a week of this," said herr dremmel, coming out of his laboratory to stand on the doorstep and rub his hands in satisfaction, "a week of this will save the situation."
"which situation, robert?" she asked, her mind as confused and dull as the untidy grey sky. he looked at her.
"oh, yes," she said hastily, "of course—the experiment fields. yes, i suppose this is what they've been wanting all through that heavenly weather."
"it was a weather," said herr dremmel, "that had nothing to do with heaven and everything to do with hell. devils no doubt might grow in it, wax fat and big and heavy-eared, devils used to drought, but certainly not the kindly fruits of the earth."
and for an instant he gave his mind to reflection on how great might be the barrier created between two people living together by a different taste in weather.
ingram arrived at two o'clock in a state of extreme irritation. he splashed through the farmyard with the collar of his coat turned up and angrily holding an umbrella. in his wet-weather mood it seemed to him entirely absurd and unworthy to be wading through an east prussian farmyard mess in pouring rain, beneath an umbrella, in order to sit with a woman. he wanted to be at work. he was obsessed by his picture. he was in the fever to begin that seizes the artist after idleness, the fever to get away, to be off back to the real concern of life—the fierce fever of creation. he had not yet had to come into the house on his daily visits, and when he got into the passage he was immediately and deeply offended by the smell that met him of what an hour before had been a german dinner. the smell came out, as it were, weighty with welcome. it advanced en bloc. it was massive, deep, enveloping. the front door stood open, but nothing but great space of time could rid the house in the afternoons of that peculiar and all-pervading smell. he was shocked to think his white and golden one, his little image of living ivory and living gold, must needs on a day like this be swathed about in such fumes, must sit in them and breathe them, and that his communings with her were going to be conducted through a heavy curtain of what seemed to be different varieties of cabbage and all of them malignant.
the narrow gloom of the house, its unpiercedness on that north side by any but the coldest light, its abrupt ending almost at once in the kitchen and servant part, struck him as incredibly, preposterously sordid. what a place to put a woman in! what a place, having put her in it, to neglect her in! the thought of herr dremmel's neglects, those neglects that had made his own stay possible and pleasant, infuriated him. how dare he? thought ingram, angrily wiping his boots.
herr dremmel, kökensee, everything connected with the place except ingeborg, seemed in his changed mood ignoble. he forgot the weeks of sunshine there had been, the large afternoons in the garden and forest and rye-fields, the floating on great stretches of calm water, and just hated everything. kökensee was god-forsaken, distant, alien, ugly, dirty, dripping, evil-smelling. ingeborg herself when she came running out of the parlour to him into the concentrated cabbage of the corridor seemed less shining, drabber than before. and so unfortunately active was his imagination, so quick to riot, that almost he could fancy for one dreadful instant as he looked at her that there was cabbage in her very hair.
"ingeborg," he said the moment he was in the parlour, "i can't stand this. i can't endure this sort of thing, you know."
he rubbed both his hands through his hair and gnawed at a finger and fixed his eyes on hers in a kind of angry reproach.
"i was afraid you wouldn't like it," she said apologetically, feeling somehow as though the weather were her fault.
"like it! and i can't idle here any more. you can't expect me to hang on here any more—"
"oh, but i never expected—" she interrupted hastily, surprised and distressed that she should have produced any such impression.
"well, it comes to the same thing, your making difficulties about coming away, your wanting such a lot of persuading."
he stopped in his quick pacing of the little room and stared at her. "why, you're giving me trouble!" he said, in a voice of high astonishment.
and as she stood looking at him with her lips fallen apart, her eyes full of a new and anxious questioning, he began to pace about again, across and round and up and down the unworthy little room.
"god," he said, swiftly pacing, "how i do hate miss-ishness!"
and indeed it seemed to him wholly, amazingly monstrous that his great new work should be being held up a day by any scruples of any sort whatever.
"this grey headache of a sky," he said, jerking himself for a moment to the window, "this mud, this muggy chilliness—"
"but—" she began.
"the days here are lines—just length without breadth or thickness or any substance—"
"but surely—till to-day—"
"i feel in a sort of well in this place, out of sight of faith and kindliness—you shutting them out," he turned on her, "you deliberately shutting them out, putting the lid on the glory of light and life, being an extinguisher for the sake of nothing and nobody at all, just for the sake of a phantom of an idea about robert—"
"but surely—" she said.
"i'm bored and bored here. this morning was a frightful thing. i daren't in this state even make a sketch of you. i'd spoil it. it'll rain for ever. i can't stay in this room. i'd begin to rave—"
"but of course you can't stay in it. of course you must go."
"go! when i can't work without you? when you're so everything to me that during the hours i'm away from you little things you've said and done float in my mind like little shining phosphorescent things in a dark cold sea, and i creep into warm little thoughts of you like some creature that shivers and gets back into its nest? i told you i was a parasite. i told you i depend on you. i told you you make me exist for myself. how can you let me beg? how can you let me beg?"
they stood facing each other in the middle of the room, his light eyes blazing down into hers.
"you—you're sure i'd be back in ten days?" she said.
and he had the presence of mind not to catch her to his heart.
