Celibates Part 20

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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.kly branches were disagreeable to touch, and underneath the ground was spongy, with layers of fallen needles hardly covered with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s.

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 gra.s.s, 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d! 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 sc.r.a.ps of blue that appeared through the thick leaf.a.ge, and she longed for large s.p.a.ces 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.'