Sue found little paths over the hills and wondered about them, not knowing that they were sheep tracks, age-old. Here and there she came across the ruins of a hut—a mere rubble of stones—and wondered who could have built it and why it had been built with such labor in that deserted spot. Small streams ran down from the tops toward the river below, small cheerful burns prattling busily in their stony beds, and in the creases that they had carved out of the hills, there were clusters of hazels and rowans, and an occasional oak, stunted and twisted by the wind’s force.
On the slopes of the hills were small farms, nestling in hollows and screened by trees, surrounded by patches of fields like colored handkerchiefs spread upon the ground to dry—brown fields of plow, green fields of pasture for the cows. The farther hills, higher than those of Beil, were clad with pine and fir but bald at the summit where the naked rock cropped out, and farther still was a distant line of mountains that changed from blue to gray or violet as the clouds moved past.
One afternoon Sue found herself near a little farm—a small whitewashed cottage surrounded by chicken coops and beehives. It was so well kept and tidy that she paused at the gate and at that moment the door opened and a girl came out, a girl about Sue’s own age with a merry face and crisp brown hair. They stared at each other for a moment with interest, for the place was so deserted that human beings were at a premium there.
“It’s a fine day,” said Sue at last.
“It’s grand,” agreed the girl. “Are you going far?”
“I’m just taking a walk,” Sue told her.
They fell into conversation, and Sue learned that the girl’s name was May Grainger and that she and her brother had started the poultry farm and were running bees as a sideline. “They pay well here,” the girl told her, “for it’s heather honey, of course, but Alec looks after the bees. I’m rather scared of them.”
Sue was scared of bees too, for she had been stung when she was a child and had never forgotten the incident, but fowls were harmless as well as useful, and these white leghorns were attractive too. She had time to spare so she went around the coops with May Grainger and helped her to feed her charges, and she asked all sorts of pertinent questions and marveled at the cleanliness of it all.
“They lay better if you keep them clean,” May declared. “At least Alec says so—and anyway, it’s nicer to have eggs from clean hens, don’t you think so?”
Sue agreed with that. “Could I buy eggs here,” she inquired, somewhat diffidently, “or are you sending them into town?”
“You could have three or four dozen a week, but you’d have to fetch them,” replied the girl.
It was the beginning of a very pleasant friendship, for they had much in common. They had both been bred in town and were now discovering the delights of the country and discovering its sorrows also. The Graingers’ cottage was every bit as antiquated and inconvenient as Tog’s Mill, and it was even farther from the shops so the two housekeepers could commiserate with each other on the difficulties of laying in supplies. They discussed ways and means of alleviating their lot, and Sue picked up some useful hints from her new friend. An electric torch, for instance, was an invaluable adjunct to an early riser, and a small dab of luminous paint on a box of matches saved a good deal of time and trouble when you wanted to find them in the dark.
“Good-bye,” said May. “I wish you could stay to tea and see my brother. Come back soon, and come as often as you can.”
“I’ll come every Wednesday afternoon for the eggs,” Sue promised, “and maybe oftener if I can manage it.”
Sue stopped to wave at the turn in the track, and May waved back to her in a friendly manner. It had been a pleasant adventure, Sue decided, the kind of adventure you could never have in a town.
The way home to the mill lay along the path by the edge of the river and past the willow tree where Darnay was painting. He had been painting that same old tree for a whole week now—a stunted, misshapen tree it was—and Sue wondered why he did not paint something else for a change. He looked up as she passed and waved to her to come, and taking her by the shoulders he stood her in front of his canvas and held her there.
Sue had never really looked at any of his pictures before. She was shy of looking, for it was no business of hers. She was aware that if she had been painting she would not have wanted anybody to look at what she was doing; it would be “sort of sacred.” Today Darnay was in what Sue called his “wild mood” (she had noticed that the “wild mood” always followed periods of intense concentration), and when he was like this, you never knew what he would do or say.
It was quite impossible not to look at the picture now, so Sue looked at it, and her heart sank. She had been so sure that what he was doing was wonderful, for he himself was wonderful and he worked at it with all his might.
“Oh!” said Sue, so dismayed by the strange sight before her eyes that she could not hide her consternation.
“Well, Miss Bun, you’ve said it!” he declared, and there was a quiver of laughter in his voice. “A whole column of criticism in one word, eh?”
“Of course it’s not finished,” she said, trying to find excuses for what she saw. “Maybe it will be quite different when you’ve finished it.”
“But it is finished,” he told her. He took up a brush and signed it with a few quick strokes and flung himself down on the grass. “You don’t like it, Miss Bun,” he said, smiling at her happily. “I didn’t think you would, somehow. Perhaps nobody will like it—”
“I don’t know much about pictures.”
“But you know what you like,” he suggested with twinkling eyes. “Dear Miss Bun, you run so true to type, and yet there’s a flavor about you that never palls, so you don’t like my Willow Tree in November.”
She looked at it again, hoping that she would like it better this time. In the foreground was the willow tree, and looking up through the bare brown whips you saw the sky, gray with flying clouds. The whole thing was done in a cold tone of gray and thickly plastered with whorls and streaks of paint.
“You’re too near,” he said, watching her face with amusement. He had lit his pipe, and now he pointed with the stem of it in a gesture she had learned to know. “Go sit down on that rock,” he added.
“There’s tea to get,” Sue objected. “And the butcher—”
“Never mind tea and the butcher.”
She went to sit down on the rock and looked at the picture again; it was certainly much nicer from here, but even now, Sue did not think it was pretty.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” he inquired.
“I don’t know anything about pictures, so what’s the good?”
“It’s interesting—the impact of my experiment upon an uneducated eye.”
Sue bristled. Uneducated indeed! She had had a perfectly good education.
“Well, you are, from my point of view,” said Darnay, laughing at her disgusted expression. “From my point of view, you are a savage, Miss Bun. An intelligent savage, of course, a sort of Woman Friday, cast up upon my desert island. Yes, that’s exactly what you are. Come along now. Forget about the advent of the butcher, and tell me what you see.”
Thus adjured, Sue tried to forget about the butcher (it was somewhat difficult, for there was nothing in the house for tomorrow’s dinner), and fixing her eyes upon the picture, she gave it her full attention.
“Yes,” she said, “I see it a lot better from here. Yes, it’s very real looking—the branches of the tree look so near, and the sky seems very far away. How did you make it look like that?”
“Go on,” said Darnay, sitting up and looking very alert. “Go on, Miss Bun.”
“The clouds look awful soft and sort of puffy,” Sue declared, “and you could almost think they were moving along with the wind, and that wee hole in the clouds with the blue sky showing through looks terribly far away.”
“Thank you,” he said softly.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Go on,” he adjured her, “and please be absolutely honest. This is interesting.”
“It’s queer,” Sue continued, “but somehow the picture makes me rather…frightened. There’s something sort of fierce about it, sort of cruel. It’s like a tiger, Mr. Darnay.”
There was a little silence when Sue had finished speaking and she felt more frightened than before (it was a dreadful thing to say about his picture, and foolish too—how could a willow tree be fierce like a tiger?), but he had asked for the truth and something stronger than herself had prompted her to give it to him.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said Mr. Darnay at last.
“You’re not angry?”
“No, only humbled to the dust. You’re dead right, Miss Bun. I was in a tearing rage when I painted that picture. I thought I had sublimated my rage, but I hadn’t.”
Sue understood now. “Why, of course,” she cried. “You painted your feelings into it.”
“But I shouldn’t have,” he told her. “You seem to think that makes it right, but it’s all wrong. What are my feelings worth? I must be no more than a seeing eye, a crafty hand. I must allow the tree or the flower I paint to exhibit its own nature—that is art. I thought I was painting the soul of the willow, but it was my own black soul I was painting—that’s no good. An artist must paint as though he were God. Supposing a man sat down at the piano in a tearing rage and played one of Beethoven’s Sonatas, putting his own feelings straight into the music. Would that be right? No, but if he were able to sublimate his rage, it would sharpen his perception and enable him to understand and express the emotion of the composer. We must use emotion to strengthen our souls, not allow emotion to use us.”
These were difficult words, and Sue was wise enough not to reply. She understood vaguely what he meant, but she could not see the importance of it. Of course he was angry and hurt—who would not have been—and it seemed to her that if he were able to paint his rage into the bare whips of a willow tree and a clouded sky it was a good thing and a clever thing to do. She had been surprised at the quiet way in which he had taken his wife’s departure—many a man would have shouted and raged over it or moped about the place like a sick jackdaw (thought Sue), but Mr. Darnay had gone on with his work as if he didn’t care. She saw now that he had gotten it all off his chest by making a picture of it—an excellent plan. It was good for him to get rid of it and good for other people that he should get rid of it in such a nice quiet way. When Mr. Waugh’s wife had run away with a commercial traveler he had played his fiddle night and day for a week until the people in the next house had been obliged to send in a message asking him to stop. And when Jamie Duguid ran away to sea his father had threatened to go after him with a gun, and, when forcibly restrained by his friends, he had drunk himself silly and run around Beilford in his nightshirt. It was a little different in Mr. Darnay’s case (Sue was forced to admit) because Mrs. Darnay had not gone off with another man, but all the same, she had treated him badly and Mr. Darnay had just cause for wrath. Now that he had relieved his feelings he would paint something prettier and more comfortable to look at—Sue was sure of it.
They were walking back to the house by this time, Mr. Darnay striding ahead of her along the narrow path, burdened by his easel and all the other equipment that was necessary to his art. She had wanted to carry some of it for him but had not been allowed—whether for politeness’ sake or because he was afraid she would drop it into the river, she could not tell. The river was very winding here, and all at once he stopped and looked back at her.
“D’you know that poem by Burns about the Doon?” he asked.
“Yes, I know it,” Sue replied.
“Say it then, Miss Bun. Let me hear the real thing.”
“Is this the bit you mean?
“Amang the bonnie winding banks
Where Doon rins, wimplin’ clear.”
“That’s the bit,” he declared. “It’s lovely. The Beil rins wimplin’ clear too, doesn’t it? Say it all to me, Miss Bun.”
For a moment Sue hesitated—it was a daft sort of thing, to stand on the riverbank and say poetry—but Mr. Darnay was waiting, and she wanted to please him and comfort him for her hard words about his picture, so she threw back her head and said the poem all through rather slowly. Her soft, deep voice mingled with the prattle of the river and the song of the birds.
Darnay listened intently, and when she had finished he said, “Thank you. That was perfect; I shan’t forget it as long as I live.”
She saw that he was happy again, his vexation past and forgotten, and she was glad. As they rounded the last bend the old mill came into sight; the sun was setting behind them and the whole building was illuminated with a pinkish glow. It had grown old well and the queer rough-hewn stones of which it was built had weathered with the landscape so that it was now actually part of the trees and rocks. The old wooden wheel still remained, and a gentle stream of water trickled over it and fell into the pool below. There were long strands of green weed hanging from the wheel and a few small ferns had taken root in the crevices. The whole building was now mirrored on the smooth dark surface of the intake pool so that the house belonged to the water as much as to the earth and sky. Sue looked at it and liked it. She liked it in the same way as you like a person, and she realized that you could never be fond of a modern house in quite the same way. She would probably be annoyed with it again, when she rose in gray dark and groped for the matches to light those smelly lamps, and to struggle with the evil spirit that dwelt in the old-fashioned kitchen range, but at the moment, Sue felt a very real affection for the place and a sensation of homecoming such as she had never experienced before.
Chapter Eight
In spite of Sue’s preoccupation with her new life, she had not forgotten Sandy’s problem but had thought about it quite often as she went about her work or lay in bed at night, and at last she decided to speak to Mr. Darnay about it. She chose a time when he was “awake”—it happened to be breakfast time, and a thin drizzle had started to fall that made painting out of doors impracticable.
“How long will this last, Miss Bun?” inquired Darnay as she brought in his bacon.
“It might go on all day,” replied his housekeeper pessimistically, and then, as she saw his face fall, she added, “or it might clear up quite soon.”
Darnay laughed.
“Well, you never know,” Sue told him. “If the wind got up, it would blow the clouds away.”
“We must whistle for a wind,” he replied.
He was looking through his letters as he spoke, and now he pushed them aside distastefully.
“Don’t you like getting letters?” Sue inquired.
“I hate it,” he replied. “Put them into my desk, Miss Bun; they just upset me. Why on earth can’t people leave me alone to get on with my work!”
“But you haven’t opened them—”
“Take them away,” Darnay said. “I know what’s in them. They want me to go back to London and paint pictures that will sell.”
Sue took the letters in her hand—they wanted him to go back to London, did they?
“Put them in my desk,” he said. “Put them all there. I’m fed up with letters. I want to get on with my work. I’m fed up with the weather too,” he added ruefully.
Darnay sat down to his breakfast, but his housekeeper still lingered.
“Would it bother you to hear about my brother?” she inquired somewhat diffidently.
“No, it wouldn’t,” he replied at once. “What’s the matter with your brother, Miss Bun?”
Sue launched out into her story and, seeing that Mr. Darnay was interested, she told him the whole thing. He listened patiently and asked several questions, and at last he said, “Has your brother got a definite career in
view, or does he just want to go to the university and escape from Beilford?”
“It’s animals,” Sue declared. “Sandy’s mad for animals. He wants to be a vet, and of course he would have to take his degree—he wants to escape from Beilford too, of course. But you see, Mr. Darnay, the real difficulty is Sandy himself. He’d do anything for peace.”
“Tell him to come out here and speak to me,” Darnay said.
Sue accomplished this quite easily. She sent a note to Sandy by way of Mr. Farquharson, who was now her faithful slave, and the next evening Sandy arrived at Tog’s Mill looking very smart and clean in his best Sunday suit.
“Grace asked me where I was going,” he declared as he came into the kitchen and looked around him with interest. “So I just said I was going to supper at the Andersons’.”
“There was no need to lie, surely,” said Sue a trifle sternly. “Grace couldn’t have prevented you coming here.”
“She’d have wanted to know why I was coming and all about it,” Sandy explained.
Sue sighed. “It’ll maybe mean more trouble for you before you’ve done,” she pointed out. “Grace may find out you weren’t at the Andersons’, and then where will you be? But never mind that now. Mr. Darnay’s waiting for you.”
She led him into the studio and left him there, for she thought that the interview might bear better fruit if it took place in private. What kind of fruit it would bear she could not imagine, but she had great faith in Darnay. She took up her sewing and sat down by the kitchen fire and waited patiently, wondering what was happening and what was being said. She hoped Sandy was making a good impression, but he would, she was almost sure of that, for Sandy had nice manners and took pains to make people like him. It was this desire that people should like him that was really the base of all the trouble, for Sandy would rather tell a lie and make a good impression than tell the truth and make a bad one.
The Baker’s Daughter Page 5