The Pastor's Wife Part 53

The splendid June morning, the last morning of June, shone golden through the long, continuous windows of the car. The fields of the Mark lay bathed in light. It was early still, but it had already begun to be hot, and haymakers straightening themselves to watch the train go by wiped their faces, and the prudent cows were gathered in the shade of trees, and in the ear the ventilator twirled and hummed, and the waiter in his white linen jacket who brought her strawberries, each one of which had been examined and pa.s.sed as fit and sound by the proper authorities suitably housed in Berlin in buildings erected for the purpose, was a credit to the Prussian State Railway by-law which decrees, briefly and implacably, that waiters shall be cool.

She pulled out one of the blue German hundred mark notes from her blouse when he brought the bill, and more of them came out with it.

"What on earth is all that for?" Ingram asked.

"To pay with. And you must tell me how much my ticket was to--wasn't it Locarno you said we got out at?"

"You can't go about with money loose like that. Give it to me. I'll take care of it for you."

She gave it to him, nine blue notes out of her blouse and the change of the tenth out of a little bag she had brought and was finding great difficulty, so much unused was she to little bags, in remembering.

"I hope it's enough," she said. "Don't forget I've got to get back again."

He laughed, tucking the notes away into his pocket-book. "Enough? It's a fortune. You can go to the end of the world with this," he said.

"Isn't it all glorious, isn't it all too wonderful to be true?" she said, her face radiant.

"Yes. And the most glorious part of it is that you can't go anywhere now," he said, putting the pocket-book in his breast pocket and patting it and looking at her and laughing, "without me."

"But I don't want to. I'd much _rather_ go with you. It's so extraordinarily sweet that you want me to. You know, I never can quite believe it."

He bent across the table. "Little glory of my heart," he murmured.

The waiter came back with the change.

"I wish Robert were here," said Ingeborg, gazing round her out of the windows with immense contentment. "If only he could have got away I believe he'd have loved it."

Ingram pushed back his chair with a jerk. "I don't think he'd have loved it at all," he said; and going back through the length of the train to their compartment though he helped her at the difficult places, it was by putting out his hand behind him for her to clutch, he did not this time turn round and look into her eyes and laugh.

It grew very hot as the day wore on, and extremely dusty. The thunderstorm that had deluged East Prussia had not come that way, and there had been no rain from the look of things for a long while. The dust came in in clouds, and they were obliged to shut the windows, but it still came in through c.h.i.n.ks and settled all over them and choked them, and even lay in the delicate details of Ingeborg's nose. He had made her take off her hat and veil, so she had nothing to protect her, and he watched her with a singular annoyance turning gradually drab-coloured. He wanted to lean forward and dust her, he hated to see her whiteness being soiled, it fidgeted him intolerably. He himself stood long train journeys badly; but though it was so hot, so insufferably hot, she was as active and restless as a child, continually jumping up and running out into the dreadful blazing corridor to see what there was to see that side.

They pa.s.sed Weimar; and she was of an intemperate zeal on the subject of Goethe, putting down the window and craning out to look and quoting _Kennst Du das Land wo die Citrone bluht_--quoting to him, who loathed quotations even in cool weather. They pa.s.sed Eisenach; and again she displayed zeal, talking eagerly of Luther and the Wartburg and the inkpot and the devil--and of St. Elizabeth, of course: he knew she would get to St. Elizabeth. She told him the legends--told him who knew all legends, told him who had a headache and could only keep alive by going into the lavatory and plunging his head every few minutes into cold water, and she did not in the least mind when she craned out of the window to look at things that she should come back into the carriage again with her hair in every sort of direction and her face not only dusty but with s.m.u.ts.

At the hottest moment of the day he felt for a lurid instant as if it were not one choir-boy he was with but the entire choir having its summer treat and being taken by him single-handed for a long dog-day to the Crystal Palace; but that was after luncheon in the restaurant car, a luncheon that seemed to his fevered imagination to consist of bits of live cinder served in sulphur and eaten in a heaving, swaying lake of brimstone. Even the waiter who attended to their table was, in the teeth of regulations, a melted man; and when the inspector pa.s.sed through, looking about him with the eye of a Prussian eagle to see that all was in order and the standard set by law was being reached of cool waiters and hot food and tepid pa.s.sengers, he instantly pounced on the manifestly melted waiter who, unable to deny the obvious fact that he was beaded, put his heels together and endeavoured to escape a fine by anxious explanation that he knew he was in a perspiration but that it was a cold one.

They were having tea when they pa.s.sed Frankfurt, and dinner when they pa.s.sed Heidelberg. A great full moon was rising behind the castle at Heidelberg, and the Neckar was a streak of light. The summer day was coming to an end in perfect calm. The quiet roads leading away into woods and through orchards were starred on either side with white flowers. In the dusk it was only the white flowers that still shone, the st.i.tchworts, the cl.u.s.ters of Star of Bethlehem, the spikes of white h.e.l.leborine; and all the colours of the day, the blue of the chickory and delicate lilac of dwarf mallows, the bright yellow of wood loosestrife and rose-colour of campions, were already put out for the night.

Ingeborg gazed through the window with the face of a happy goblin. Her eyes looked brighter than ever out of their surrounding s.m.u.ts, and her hair was all ends, little upright ends that stirred in the draught. The dreadful day, the hours and hours of heat and choking airlessness, had made no impression on her apparently, except to turn her from clean to dirty, while Ingram lay back in his corner a thing hardly human, wanting nothing now in the world but cold water poured over him and he to lie while it was poured on a slab of iced marble. But the sun was down at last, dew was falling and quieting the dust, and the final journey to the restaurant car had been made, a journey on which it was Ingeborg who opened the doors and n.o.body helped anybody at the crossings. He had walked behind her, and had fretfully observed her dress and how odd it was, like old back numbers of ill.u.s.trated papers, the sleeves wrong, the skirt wrong, too much of it in places, too little in others, but mostly there was too much, for it was the year when women were skimpy.

"You'll have to get some clothes in Italy," he said to her at dinner.

"What for?" she asked, surprised.

"What for? To put on," he said with a limp acerbity.

But now at last between Stra.s.sburg and Bale, when all glare had finally departed and the lamp in their compartment was m.u.f.fled into grateful gloom by the shade he drew across it, and the windows were wide open to the great dusky starry night, and a thousand dewy scents were stirred in the fields as the train pa.s.sed through them, he began to feel better.

At his suggestion she had gone out and washed her face, so that he could look at it again, delicately fair in the dusk, with satisfaction. And presently because of some curves the rails took the moon shone in on her while he still sat in shadow, and her face, turned upwards to the stars with the wonder on it of her happiness, once more seemed to him the most spiritual thing he had yet found in a woman--unconscious spirit, exquisitely independent and aloof. He watched her out of the shadow of his corner for a long time, taking in every curve and line, trying to fix her look of serenity and clear content on his memory, the expression of an inner tranquillity, of happy giving oneself up to the moment that he had not seen before except in children. To watch her like that soothed him gradually quite out of the fever and fret of the day. As his habit was, he forgot his other mood as if he had never had it. Growing cool and comfortable with the growing coolness of the night, his irritations, and impatiences, and desire--it had for several hours in the afternoon been paramount with him--for personal absence from her, were things wiped out of recollection. He forgot, in the quiet of her att.i.tude, that she had ever been restless, and in her expressive and beautiful silence that she had ever quoted, and, watching her whiteness, that she had ever been drab. She was, he thought considering her, his head very comfortable now on the cushions and a most blessed draught deliciously lifting his hair, like the soft breast of a white bird. She was like diamonds, only that she was kind and gentle. She was like spring water on a thirsty day. She was like a very clear, delicate white wine. Yes; but what was it she was most like?

He searched about for it in his mind, his eyes on her face; and presently he found it, and leaned forward out of the shadow to tell her.

"Ingeborg," he said, and at the moment he entirely meant it, "you are like the peace of G.o.d."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

At Bale there was hurry and bustle, the half hour they ought to have had there wasted away by some unaccountable loosening of the bandages of discipline on the German side to four minutes--the conductor when questioned said the engine had gone wrong, and explained, with a shrug that was to help hide his shame in this failure of the infallible, that engines were but human--and again there was an undignified scamper down steps and up steps and along platforms, and they arrived panting, pushed in by porters, only just in time into a compartment studded round with sleeping Swiss.

Ingram left Ingeborg sitting temporarily on the edge of the seat clasping her umbrella and coat and little bag, while he walked through the train in search of more s.p.a.ce, refusing to believe such a repulsive thing could happen to him as that he should be obliged to travel to Bellinzona with four sleeping Swiss; but the train seemed to be a popular one, else a national festival was preparing or some other upheaval that caused people to move about that night in numbers, and all the compartments were full.

He went back to Ingeborg in a condition of resentful gloom. The four Swiss were sleeping in the four corners, and the carriage smelt of crumbs. He opened the window, and there was an immediate simultaneous resurrection of the four Swiss into angry life. Ingram, fluent in French, met them with an equal volubility, standing with his back to the open window protecting it from their a.s.saults, while Ingeborg looked on in alarm; but the conductor when he came p.r.o.nounced in favour of the four Swiss. Pacified, they instantly fell asleep again; and Ingram, at least not taking care of their legs, strode out into the corridor, where he stood staring through the open window at midnight nature and cursing himself for not having broken the journey at Bale, while Ingeborg peeped anxiously at his back round her coat and her umbrella.

From Bale to Lucerne he was as unaware of her as if he had never met her, so very angry was he and so very tired. Then at Lucerne two of the Swiss got out, and turning round he saw her asleep in the compartment, tumbled over a little to one side, still holding her things, and once again she filled his heart. She was utterly asleep, in the most uncomfortable position, dropped away in the middle of how she happened to be sitting like a child does or a puppy; and he went in and sat down beside her and lifted her head very cautiously and gently on to his arm.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him along his sleeve without moving, in a sort of surprise.

"This is Lucerne," he whispered, bending down; how soft she was, and how little!

"Is it? Why, that's where Robert and I--"

But she was asleep again.

She slept till he woke her up before Bellinzona, and so she never knew the moment she had thrilled to think of when they would in the dawn of the summer morning come out on the other side of the St. Gothard into what, in spite of anything the Swiss might say, was Italy; and still half asleep, mechanically putting on her hat and pausing to rub her eyes while he urged her to be quick, she did not realise where she was. When she did, and looked eagerly at the window, it was to turn to him immediately in consternation.

"_Oh!_" she said.

"Yes," said Ingram, pa.s.sing his hand quickly over his hair, a gesture of his when annoyed.

It was raining.

They got out on to what seemed the most melancholy platform in the world, a grey wet junction with a grey level sky low down over it and over all the country round it. The Locarno train was waiting, and they went to it in silence. It was a quarter to six, a difficult time of day.

The train, almost empty, jogged slowly through the valley of the Ticino.

Down the windows raindrops chased each other. On the road alongside the railway, a road bound also for Locarno and dreary with brown puddles, an occasional high cart crawled drawn by a mule and driven by a huddled human being beneath a vast umbrella. The lake when they came in sight of it was a yawn of mist.

Ingeborg stared out at these things in silence. It was incredible that this should be Italy--again in spite of anything the Swiss might say--while on the other side of the Alps all Germany, including Kokensee, lay shimmering in light and colour. Ingram sat in the farthest corner of the carriage, his hands thrust in his pockets, his hat pulled over his eyes, looking straight in front of him. He was a ma.s.s of varied and profound exasperations. Everything exasperated him, even to the long trickle slowly creeping towards him down the floor from Ingeborg's wet umbrella. There was nothing she could have said or done at that moment that would not have rubbed his exasperation into a flame of swift and devastating speech. Luckily she said and did nothing, but sat quite silent with her face turned away towards the blurred window panes. But if she did not speak or do she yet was; and he was acutely conscious, though he never took his eyes off the cushions opposite, of every detail of her in that grey and horrible light, of her crumpled clothes, her drooping smudgedness, her hat grown careless, and her hair in wisps. He had wanted to show her Italy, he had extraordinarily wanted to show her Italy in its summer magnificence, and there was--this. As a result what he now extraordinarily wanted was to upbraid her. He did not stop to a.n.a.lyse why.

At the hotel in Locarno where they went for baths and breakfast--he had planned originally to show her the beautiful walk from there along the side of the lake to Cann.o.bio, but now beyond baths and breakfast he had no plan--a person in shirt sleeves and a green ap.r.o.n who inadequately represented the hall-porter, for it was not yet seven and the hall-porter was still in bed, unintelligently and unfortunately spoke to Ingeborg of Ingram in his hearing as _Monsieur votre pere_.

This strangely annoyed Ingram. "It's your short skirt," he said, with suppressed sulphur. "You positively must get some clothes. Dressed like that you suggest perambulators."

"But this is my _best_ dress," she protested. "It's quite new. I mean, I've never had it on before since it was made."

And with the easy tactlessness of one who has not yet learned to be afraid, she looked at him and laughed.

"Why," she said, "this morning I'm perambulators and only last night, quite late last night, I was the peace of G.o.d."