The Pastor's Wife Part 43

"But now I'm going to stay. I'm going to stay and paint you."

She jumped. "_Oh!_" she exclaimed, awe-struck. "_Oh_--"

"Paint you, and paint you, and paint you," said Ingram, "and see if I can catch some of your happiness for myself. Get at your secret. Find out where it all comes from."

"But it comes from you--at this moment it's all you--"

"It doesn't. It's inside you. And I want to get as much of it as I can.

I'm dusty and hot and sick of everything. I'll come and stay near you and paint you, and you shall make me clean and cool again."

"The stuff you talk!" she said, leaning forward, her face full of laughter. "As though I could do anything for _you_! You're really making fun of me the whole time. But I don't care. I don't care about anything so long as you won't go away."

"You needn't be afraid I'm going away. I'm going to have a bath of remoteness and peace. I'll chuck the Glambecks and get a room in your village. I'll come every day and paint you. You're like a little golden leaf, a beech leaf in autumn blown suddenly from G.o.d knows where across my path."

"Now it's you making _me_ purr," she said.

"You're like everything that's clear and bright and cool and fresh."

"Oh," murmured Ingeborg, radiant, "and I haven't even got a tail to wag!"

"Already, after only ten minutes of you, I feel as if I were eating cold, fresh, very crisp lettuce."

"That's not nearly so nice. I don't think I like being lettuce."

"I don't care. You are. And I'm going to paint you. I'm going to paint your soul. Tell me some addresses for lodgings," he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"There aren't any."

"Then I must stay at your vicarage."

"You'll have to sleep with Robert, then."

"What? Who is Robert?"

"My husband."

"Oh, yes. But how absurd that sounds!"

"What does?"

"Your having a husband."

"I don't see how you can help having a husband if you're a wife."

"No. It's inevitable. But it's--quaint. That you should be anybody's wife, let alone a pastor's. Here in Kokensee."

She got up impulsively. "Come and see him," she said. "You wouldn't last time. Come now. Let me make tea for you. Let me have the pride of making tea for you."

"But not this minute!" he begged, as she stood over him holding out her hand to pull him up.

"Yes, yes. He's in now. He'll be out in his fields later. He'll be frightfully pleased. We'll tell him about the picture. Oh, but you did _mean_ it, didn't you?" she added, suddenly anxious.

He got up reluctantly and grumbling: "I don't want to see Robert. Why should I see Robert? I don't believe I'm going to like Robert," he muttered, looking down at her from what seemed an immense height. "Of course I mean it about the picture," he added in a different voice, quick and interested. "It'll be a companion portrait to your sister's."

He laughed. "That would really be very amusing," he said, stooping down and neatly putting his scattered things together.

Ingeborg flushed. "But--that's rather cruel fun, isn't it, that you're making of me now?" she murmured.

"What?" he asked, straightening himself to look at her.

The light had gone out of her face.

"What? Why--didn't I tell you my picture of you is to be the portrait of a spirit?"

He pounced on his things and gathered them up in his arms.

"Come along," he said impatiently, "and be intelligent. Let me beg you to be intelligent. Come along. I suppose I'm to go in the punt. What's in it? Books by the dozen. What's this? Eucken? Keats? Pragmatism? O Lord!"

"Why O Lord?" she asked, getting in and picking up the paddle while he gave the punt a vigorous shove off and jumped on to it as it went. She was radiant again. She was tingling with pride and joy. He really meant it about the picture. He hadn't made fun of her. On the contrary....

"Why O Lord?" she asked. "You said that, or something like it, last time because I _didn't_ read."

"Well, now I say it because you do," he said, crouching at the opposite end watching her movements as she paddled.

"But that doesn't seem to have much consistency, does it?" she said.

"Hang consistency! I don't want you addled. And you'll get addled if you topple all these different stuffs into your little head together."

"But I'd rather be addled than empty."

"Nonsense! If I could I'd stop your doing anything that may alter you a hairbreadth from what you are at this moment."

To that she remarked, suspending her paddle in mid air, her face as sparkling as the shining drops that flashed from it, that she really was greatly enjoying herself; and they both laughed.

Ingram waited in the parlour, where he stood taking in with attentive eyes the details of that neglected, almost snubbed little room, while Ingeborg went to the laboratory, so happy and proud that she forgot she was breaking rules, to fetch, as she said, Robert.

Robert, however, would not be fetched. He looked up at her with a great reproach on her entrance, for as invariably happened on the rare occasions when the tremendousness of what she had to say seemed to her to justify interrupting, he thought he had just arrived within reach, after an infinite patient stalking, of the coy, illusive heart of the problem.

"Mr. Ingram's here," she said breathlessly.

He gazed at her over his spectacles.

"In the parlour," said Ingeborg. "He's come to tea. Isn't it wonderful?

He's going to paint--"

"Who is here, Ingeborg?"

"Mr. Ingram. Edward Ingram. Come and talk to him while I get tea."