Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  Ingeborg sat listening with half an ear and eyes bright with longing to be out in the streets again. She was fidgeting to get away from the shop, and was sorry he should choose just that moment to smoke so great a number of cigarettes. Even the young lady who guarded the cakes appeared to think the visit for one based only on tea and rusks had lasted long enough, and came and cleared away and inquired in English, it being her native tongue, whether she could not, now, get them anything else.

  “The curious admixture in you,” said Ingram, starting out with the intention of comparing her to light in the darkness and immediately getting off the rails, “the curious admixture in you of streaks of childishness and spasmodic maturity! You are at one moment so entirely impulsive and irresponsible, and a moment before you were quite intelligent and reasonable, and a moment afterwards you are splendid in courage and recklessness.”

  “When was I splendid in courage and recklessness?” she asked, bringing more attention to bear on him.

  “When you left your home to come to me. The start off was splendid. Who could dream it would fizzle out into — well, into this?”

  “But has it fizzled out? You’re not” — she leaned across the table a little anxiously— “you’re not scolding me?”

  “On the contrary, I’m trying to tell you all you are to me.”

  “Oh,” said Ingeborg.

  “I intend somehow to isolate my consciousness of your streaks—”

  “Streaks?”

  “As bees wax up a dead invader.”

  “Oh — a dead invader?”

  “I don’t, you see, believe in the damning effect of one specific outbreak, nor of one or two—”

  “You’re not — you’re not really scolding me?” she asked, again a little anxiously.

  “On the contrary, I’m believing in and clinging to your dear innermost.”

  “Oh,” said Ingeborg.

  “I believe these streaks and patches and spots your superficial self has may be good in their ultimate effect, may save us, by interrupting, from those too serene spells that dogs’-ear love with usage and carelessness.”

  She gazed at him, her mouth a little open. He lit yet another cigarette.

  “But it’s rather like,” he said, flinging the match away into a corner whither the young lady followed it and with a pursed reproachfulness trod it out, “it’s rather like finding a crock of gold in one’s garden and only being able to peep at it sometimes, and having to go away and work very hard for eleven shillings a week.”

  She went on gazing at him in silence.

  “And not even for eleven shillings,” said Ingram, reflecting on all he had already endured. “Work very hard for nothing.”

  She leant across the table again. “I never mean to be tiresome,” she said.

  “Little star,” he said stoutly.

  “It’s always involuntary, my tiresomeness,” she said, addressing him earnestly. “Oh, but it’s so involuntary — and the dull surfaces I know I have, and the scaly imperfections—”

  He knocked the ashes off his cigarette with unnecessary vigour, almost as though they were bits of an annoying relative’s body.

  “I’m warped, and encrusted, and blundering,” went on Ingeborg, who was always thorough when it came to adjectives.

  In his irritable state, to have her abjectly cheapening herself vexed him as much as everything else she had done that day had vexed him. He might, under provocation, point out her weaknesses, but she must not point them out to him. He wanted to worship her, and she persisted in preventing him. Distressing to have a god who refuses to sit quiet on its pedestal, who insists on skipping off it to show you its shortcomings and beg your pardon. How could he make love to her if she talked like this? It would be like trying to make love to a Prayer-book.

  “Is it because it is Sunday,” he said, “that you are impelled to acknowledge and confess your faults? You make me feel as if a verger had passed by and pushed me into a pew.”

  “Well, but I am warped and encrusted and blundering,” she persisted.

  “You are not!” he said irritably. “Haven’t I told you you are my star and my miracle?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I tell you,” he said, determined to believe it, “that you are the very bath of my tired spirit.”

  “How kind you are!” she said. “You’re as kind to me as if you were my brother. Sometimes I think you are rather like my brother. I never had a brother, but you’re very like, I think, the one I would have had if I had had one.” She warmed to the idea. “I feel as if my brother—” she said, preparing to launch into enthusiasm; but he interrupted her by getting up.

  “It seems waste,” he said, reaching for his hat, “to talk about your brother, as you’ve never had him. Shall we go?”

  She jumped up at once with the air of one released. He himself could not any longer endure the tea-room or he would have stayed in it. Gloomily he went out with her into the streets again and noted that if anything she seemed more active and eager than before — thoroughly, indeed, rested and refreshed. Gloomily he realised during the next hour or two that she had an eye for buildings, and that they were always the wrong ones. Gloomily he discovered an odd liking in her for anything, however bad, that was wrought in iron. He could not get her past some of the iron gates of the palaces. He hated bad gates. Without experience she could not compare and did not select, and her interest was all-embracing, indiscriminating as a child’s. He took pains to avoid the Piazza del Duomo, but by some accident of a twisting street and a momentary inattentiveness he did find himself at last, after much walking as he had thought away from it, all of a sudden facing it. Urging her on by her elbow he hurried her nervously across it, hoping she would not see the Cathedral; but the Cathedral being difficult not to see she did see it, and remained, as he had feared she would, rooted.

  “Ingeborg,” he exclaimed, “if you tell me you like that—”

  “Oh, let me look, let me look,” she cried, holding his sleeve while he tried to get her away. “It’s so funny — it’s so different—”

  “Ingeborg—” he almost begged; but from its outside to its inside was an inevitable step, and that she should gasp on first getting in seemed also, after she had done it, inevitable.

  Ingram found himself sight-seeing; looking at windows; following her down vaults; towed by beadles. He rubbed his hand violently over his hair.

  “But this is intolerable!” he cried aloud to himself. “I shall go mad—”

  And he strode after her and caught her arm just as she was disappearing over the brim of the crypt.

  “Ingeborg,” he said, his eyes blazing at her in a bright astonishment, “do you mean to tell me that I shall not reach you, that I’m not going to get ever at you till I paint you?”

  She turned in the gloom and looked up at him.

  “Oh, I know I’ll get you then,” he went on excitedly, while the interrupted beadle impatiently rattled his keys. “Nothing can hide you away from me then. I don’t paint, you see, by myself—”

  She stared up at him.

  “And all this you’re doing, all this waste of running about — have you then forgotten the picture?”

  It was as though he had shaken her suddenly awake. She stared at him in a shock of recollection. Why, of course — the picture. Why — incredible, but she had forgotten it. Actually forgotten it in the wild excitement of travelling; actually she had been wanting to linger at each new place, she who had only ten days altogether, she who had come only after all because of the picture, the great picture, the first really great thing that had touched her life. And here she was with him, its waiting creator, dragging him about who held future beauty in his cunning guided hand among all the mixed stuff left as a burden on the generations by the past, curious about the stuff with an uneducated stupid curiosity, wasting time, ridiculously blocking the way to something great, to the greatest of the achievements of a great artist.

  She was sobered. She was o
vercome by the vivid recognition of her cheap enthusiasm.

  “Oh,” she said, staring up at him, wide awake, entirely ashamed, “how patient you’ve been with me!”

  And as he still held her by the arm, his eyes blazing down at her from the top step of the crypt, she could find no way of expressing her shame and contrition except by bending her head and laying her cheek on his hand.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  They stood there for what seemed to the beadle at the bottom an intolerable time, the lady, evidently nobody certificated, with her cheek on the gentleman’s hand, and he himself, as honest a man as ever wanted to get his tip and be done with it, kept waiting with nothing to do but curse and rattle his keys; and though it was summer the crypt was cold, and so would his feet be soon; and what could the world be coming to when people carried their caressings even into crypts? Becoming maddened by these delays the beadle cursed them both, their present, past, and future, roundly and thoroughly and also profanely — for by the accident of his calling he was very perfect in profanity — beneath his breath.

  “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Ingeborg was murmuring, who did nothing by halves, neither penitence, nor humility, nor gratitude.

  “My worshipped child,” whispered Ingram, immensely moved by this swift change in her, and changed as swiftly himself by the softness of her cheek against his hand.

  “Oughtn’t we to go to Venice to-night?” she asked, still standing in that oddly touching attitude of apology.

  “Not to-night.”

  “But how can a picture get painted in just that little time?”

  “Ah, but you know I’m good at pictures.”

  “But I can’t stay a minute longer than Thursday. I have to be back on Saturday at the very latest.”

  “You’ll see. It will all be quite easy.”

  “But to think that I forgot the picture!” she said, looking up at him shocked, while the ancient humility in which the Bishop had so carefully trained her descended on her once more, only four-fold this time, like a garment grown voluminous since last it was put on.

  They had for some reason been talking in murmurs, and the embittered beadle, losing his self-control, began to say things audibly. Strong in the knowledge of tourist ignorance when it came to real language in Italian, he said exactly what he thought; and what he thought was so monstrous, so inappropriate to beadles and to the atmosphere of a crypt, besides being so extremely and personally rude, that it roused Ingram, who knew Italian almost better than the beadle — for his included scholarly by-ways in vituperation, strange and curious twists beyond the reach of the uneducated — to pour a sudden great burning blast of red-hot contumely down on to his head; and having done this he turned, and holding Ingeborg’s hand led her up the steps again, leaving the beadle at the bottom, solitary, shrivelled, and singed.

  They thought no more of crypts and beadles. They looked neither to the right nor to the left. Ingram held her by the hand all the way down the Cathedral, and the piazza when they came out on to it with its crowds of vociferating men and bell-ringing tramcars and sellers of souvenirs seemed to Ingeborg nothing now but a noisy irrelevance. Whole strips of postcards were thrust unnoticed into her face. The purpose of her journey was the picture. Marvellous that she should have lost sight of it and of the wonder and pride of being needed for it — needed at last for anything, she who so profoundly had longed to be needed, but needed for this, as a collaborator actually, even though passive and humble, in the creation of something splendid.

  He put her into a cab and drove with her away from the fuss and din. She was exquisite again to him, adorable altogether. The memory of the fret and hot irritation of the day was wiped out as though it had never been by that other memory of her sweet apology on the steps of the crypt. He told the driver, for it was towards evening, to take them to those gardens described by the guide-book as probably the finest public park in Italy; and presently, as they walked together in the remoter parts, the dusk dropped down like a curtain between them and the Sunday night crowd collecting round the fountains. Tall trees, and clumps of box, and rose-bushes shut out everything except mystery; and she in that quiet place of trickling water and dim flowers began again to talk to him as she had talked at Kökensee, softly, deliciously, about nothing except himself. It was like the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land; it was infinite refreshment and relief.

  She talked about the picture, with reverence, adoringly. She told him how in the rush of new impressions she had been forgetting everything that really mattered, not only that greatest of them all, but the other things she had to thank him for besides — Italy, her unexpected holiday, due so entirely to him. She said, her husky voice softer than ever with gratitude, “You have been giving me happiness and happiness. You’ve heaped happiness on me with both your hands.” She said, searching only for words that should be sweet enough, “Do you know I could cry to think of it all — of all you’ve been to me since you came to Kökensee. When I’m back there again, this time with you will be like a hidden precious stone, and when I’m stupid and thinking that life is dull I’ll get it out and look at it, and it will flash colour and light at me.”

  “When you talk like that,” said Ingram, greatly stirred, “it is as though a little soul had come back into a deserted and forgotten body.”

  “Is it?” she murmured, so glad that she could please him, perfectly melted into the one desire to make up.

  “When you talk like that,” he said, “life becomes a thing so happy that it shines golden inside. You have the soul I have always sought, the thing that comes through me like light through a stained-glass window, so that I am lit, so that my heart is all sweet fire.”

  “And you,” said Ingeborg, picking up his image as she so often irritatingly did, only now it did not irritate him, and flinging it back with a fresh adornment, “the thought of you, the memory of you when I’ve gone back to my everyday life, will be like a perfect rose-window in a grey wall.”

  “As though we could be separated again. As though being in love with somebody miles away isn’t just intolerable ache. Oh, my dear, why do you look at me?” he asked with a large simplicity of manner that made her ashamed of her surprise; “because I talk of being in love? Why shouldn’t two people simply love each other and say so? And if I love you it isn’t with the greedy possessive love I’ve had for women before, but as though the feeling one has for the light on crystals or for clear shining after rain, the feeling of beauty in deep and delicate things, has become personified and exalted.”

  She made a little deprecating gesture. He was almost too kind to her; too kind. But nobody could reasonably object to being loved like crystals and clearness after rain. Robert couldn’t possibly mind that.

  She cast about for things to say back, shining things to match his, but he found them all first; it was impossible to keep up with him.

  “You are delicate and fine, like translucent gold,” he said. “And you are brave, and various, and alive. And you are full of sweet little fancies, little swirls of mood, kind eager things. Never in my life is there the remotest chance that I shall meet so good and deep a happiness as you again, and I put my heart once and for all between your dear cool little hands.”

  She felt bent beneath this generosity, she who had been so tiresome; and not only tiresome, but she who had had doubts, unworthy ones she now saw, round about breakfast time, for instance, piercing through her silly delight in Italy, as to whether she were giving even any satisfaction.

  “I perceive,” he went on, “I’ve never really loved before. I’ve played with dolls, and expressed myself to dummies — like a boy with a ball he must play with, and failing a playfellow he bumps it against a wall and catches it again. But you play back, my living dear heart—”

  More and more was she invaded by a happy surprise. The things she had been doing without knowing it! All the right ones, apparently, the whole time — playing back, coming up to his expectations; and moments such as those at the
Borromean Islands, and when there were picture postcards, and just recently in the tea-room, had not in the least been what she supposed. She had not understood. She glowed to think she had not understood.

  “I’ve been so wearied and distressed with life,” he went on, talking in a low, moved voice. “It has seemed at last such an old hairy thing of jealousies and shame and disillusionments, and work falling short of its best, and endless coming and going of people, and me for ever left with a blunted edge. And now you come, you, and are like a great sweet wind blowing across it, and like clear skies, and a moon rising before sunset. It is as though you had taken up a brush and painted out the old ugly tangles and made a new picture of me in luminous, clear watercolour.”

  Her surprise grew and grew, and her gladness that she had been mistaken.

  “Those streaks,” she thought. “He didn’t really mean what he said about those streaks—”

  “Somehow, though quite intelligent all along,” continued Ingram, “I’ve been shallow and hard in my feelings about everything. Now I feel love like a deep soft river flowing through my heart. I love every one because I love you. I can set out to make people happy, I can do and say fine and generous things because of the love of you shining in my heart—”

  “That beadle,” she thought, “he didn’t really mean what he said to that beadle—”

  “You’re what I’ve been looking for in women all my life,” he went on. “You’re the dream come true. I’ve only tried to love before. And now you’ve come, and made me love, which we all dream of doing, and given me love, which we all dream of getting—”

  Her pleasure became tinged with a faint uneasiness, for she wouldn’t have thought, left to herself, that she had been giving him love. Pastors’ wives didn’t give love except to their pastors. Friendship, yes; she had given him warm friendship, and an abject admiration of his gifts, and pride, and gratefulness — oh, such pride and gratefulness — that he should like being with her and saying lovely things to her; but love? She had supposed love was reserved for lovers. Well, if he liked to call it love ... one must not be miss-ish it was very kind of him.... It was, also, more and more wonderful to her that she had been doing and being and giving all these things without knowing it. Her suddenly discovered accomplishments staggered her. “Is it possible,” she thought with amazement, “that I’m clever?”