The Pastor's Wife Part 41

"And you scolded me because I couldn't walk as fast as you did. Don't you remember?"

"No," said Ingram.

"And you said I'd run to seed if I wasn't careful. Don't you remember?"

"No," said Ingram.

"And I had on my grey coat and skirt. Don't you remember?"

"No, no, no," said Ingram, smiting his forehead, "and I don't believe a word of it. You're just making it up. Look here," he said, clearing away his things to make room for her, "sit down and let us talk. Are you real?"

"Yes, and I live at Kokensee, just round the corner behind the reeds.

But I told you that before," said Ingeborg.

"You do live?" he said, pus.h.i.+ng his things aside. "You're not just a flame-headed little dream that will presently disappear again?"

"My name's Dremmel. Frau Dremmel. But I told you that before, too."

"The things a man forgets!" he exclaimed, spreading a silk handkerchief over the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. "There! Sit on that."

"You're laughing at me," she said, sitting down, "and I don't mind a bit. I'm much too glad to see you."

"If I laugh it's with pleasure," he said, staring at the effect of her against the pale green of the reeds--where had he seen just that before, that Scandinavian colouring, that burning sort of brightness in the hair? "It's so amusing of you to be Frau anything."

She smiled at him with the frankness of a pleased boy.

"You're very _nice_, you know," he said, smiling back.

"You didn't think so last time. You called me your dear lady, and asked me if I never read."

"Well, and didn't you?" he said, sitting down, too, but a little way off so that he could get her effect better.

"Yes, do sit down. Then I shan't be so dreadfully afraid you're going."

"Why, but I've only just found you."

"But last time you disappeared almost at once into the fog, and you'd only just found me then," she said, her hands clasped round her knees, her face the face of the entirely happy.

"After all I seem to have made some progress in seven years," he said.

"I apparently couldn't see then."

"No, it was me. I was very invisible--"

"Invisible?"

"Oh, moth-eaten, dilapidated, dun-coloured. And I'd been crying."

"You? Look here, n.o.body with your kind of colouring should ever cry.

It's a sin. It would be most distressing, seriously, if you were ever less white than you are at this moment."

"See how nice it is not to be a painter," said Ingeborg. "I don't mind a bit if you're white or not so long as it's you."

"But why should you like it to be me?" asked Ingram, to whom flattery, used as he was to it, was very pleasant, and feeling the comfort of the cat who is being gently tickled behind the ear.

"Because," said Ingeborg earnestly, "you're somebody wonderful."

"Oh, but you'll make me purr," he said.

"And I see your name in the papers at least once a week," she said.

"Oh, the glory!"

"And Berlin's got two of your pictures. Bought for the nation."

"Yes, it has. And haggled till it got them a dead bargain."

"And you've painted my sister."

"What?" he said quickly, staring at her again. "Why, of course. That's it. That's who you remind me of. The amazing Judith."

"Are you such friends?" she asked, surprised.

"Oh, well, then, the wife of the Master of Ananias. Let us give her her honours. She's the most entirely beautiful woman I've seen. But--"

"But what?"

"Oh, well. I did a very good portrait of her. The old boy didn't like it."

"What old boy?"

"The Master. He tried to stop my showing it. And so did the other old boy."

"What other old boy?"

"The Bishop."

"But if it was so good?"

"It was. It was exact. It was the living woman. It was a portrait of sheer, exquisite flesh."

"Well, then," said Ingeborg.

"Oh, but you know bishops--" He shrugged his shoulders. "Italy's got it now. It's at Venice. The State bought it. You must go and see it next time you're there."

"I will," she laughed, "the very next time." And her laugh was the laugh of joyful amus.e.m.e.nt itself.

Ingram was now forty three or four, and leaner than ever. His high shoulders were narrow, his thin neck came a long way out of his collar at the back and was partly hidden in front by his short red beard. His hair, darker than his beard, was plastered down neatly. He had very light, piercing eyes, and a nose that Ingeborg liked. She liked everything. She liked his tweed clothes, and his big thin hands--the wonderful hands that did the wonderful pictures--and his long thin nimble legs. She liked the way he fidgeted, and the quickness of his movements. And she glowed with pride to think she was sitting with a man who was mentioned in the papers at least once a week and whose pictures were bought by States, and she glowed with happiness because he did not this time seem anxious to go back to the Glambecks' at once; but most of all she glowed with the heavenliness, the absolute heavenliness of being talked to.

"And you're her sister," he said, staring at her. "Now that really is astonis.h.i.+ng."