by George Moore
No, not quite, but the light has changed. I cannot go on any more to-day. One can’t work in the sunlight above an hour.
You’ve been working longer than that.
But haven’t touched the effect. I’ve been painting in some figures, two peasant women picking sticks. Come and look.
X
Morton had finished his picture, and now lunch was over and they lay on the rug under the oak-tree talking eagerly. Corot never married, Morton remarked. He doesn’t seem to have ever cared for any woman. They say he never had a mistress.
I hear that you have not followed his example.
Not more than I could help.
His candour amused her so that she laughed outright; and she watched the stolid, childish stare that she liked, until a longing to take him in her arms and kiss him came upon her, and she asked him if he had ever been in love.
Yes, I think I was.
How long did it last?
About five years.
And then?
A lot of rot about scruples of conscience. I said: I give you a week to think it over, and if I don’t hear from you in that time I’m off to Italy.
Did she write?
Not until I had left Paris. Then she spent five-and-twenty pounds in telegrams trying to get me back.
But you wouldn’t go back?
Not I; with me, when an affair of that sort is over, it is really over. Don’t you think I’m right?
Perhaps so... But I’m afraid we’ve learnt love in different schools.
Then the sooner you relearn it in my school the better.
At that moment a light breeze came up the sandy path carrying some dust on to the picture. Morton stamped and swore. For three minutes it was: Damn! damn! damn! Do you always swear like that in the presence of ladies? she asked. Well, what’s a fellow to do when a blasted wind comes up smothering his picture in sand?
Etta could only laugh at him, and while he packed up his canvases, paint box and easel, she thought that she understood him, and fancied that she would be able to manage him. And convinced of her power she said aloud, as they plunged into the forest: I always think it is a pity that it is considered vulgar to walk arm-in-arm. I like to take an arm. I suppose we can do what we like in the forest of Fontainebleau. But you’re too heavily laden ——
No, not a bit. I should like it.
She took his arm with a caressing movement and walked by his side, and they talked until they reached the motive of his second picture.
What I’ve got on the canvas isn’t very much like the view in front of you, is it?
No, not much. I don’t like it as well as the other picture.
I began it late one evening. I’ve never been able to get the same effect again. Now it looks like a Puvis de Chavannes — not my picture, but that hillside, that large space of blue sky and the woodmen.
It does a little. Are you going on with it?
Why?
Because there is no shade for me to sit in. I shall be roasted if we remain here.
What shall we do? Lie down in some shady place?
We might do that.... I know what I should like.
What?
A long drive in the forest.
We can do that. We shall meet somebody going to Barbizon and we’ll ask them to send us a fly.
And they wandered on through a pine wood where the heat was stifling, the dry trees like firewood, scorched and ready to break into flame; their feet dragged through the loose sand till they came to a place where the trees had all been felled, and a green undergrowth of pines, two or three feet high, had sprung up. It was difficult to force their way through; the prickly branches were disagreeable to touch, and underneath the ground was spongy with layers of fallen needles hardly covered with coarse grass. Morton missed the way, and his paintbox and canvases had begun to weigh heavily when they came upon the road they were seeking. But where they came upon it there was only a little burnt grass, and Morton proposed that they should toil on until they came to a pleasanter place. The road ascended along the verge of a steep hill, at the top of which they met a bicyclist, who promised to deliver Morton’s note. It was pleasant to rest — they were tired, and it was pleasant to listen, for the forest murmured like a shell. But absorbed though they were by this vast Nature, each was thinking intensely of the other. Etta knew she was near the moment when Morton would take her hand and tell her that he loved her. She wondered what he would say. She did not think he would say he loved her; he would say; You’re a damned pretty woman. She could see he was thinking of something, and suspected him of thinking out a phrase or an oath appropriate to the occasion. And she was nearly right. Morton was thinking how he should act. Etta was not the common Barbizon art student whose one idea is to become the mistress of a painter so that she may learn to paint. She had encouraged him, but she had kept her little dignity. Moreover, he did not feel sure of her. So the minutes went by in awkward expectancy, and Morton had not kissed her before the carriage arrived. But the kiss would come; she was sure of that, and lay back in the fly smiling, Morton thought, superciliously. It seemed to him stupid to put his arm round her waist and try to kiss her. But, sooner or later, he would have to do this. Once this Rubicon was past, he would know where he was. As he debated, the trunks rose branchless for thirty or forty feet, and he asked her if the tall, thin, almost branchless beeches were not like lances bent in the shock of the encounter.
The forest now extended like a great temple, hushed in the ritual of the sunset. The light that suffused the green leaves overhead glossed the brown leaves underfoot, marking the smooth ground as with a pattern. Like chapels every dell seemed in the tranquil light, and Etta’s eyes wandered from the colonnades to the underwoods, and were raised to the scraps of blue that appeared through the thick leafage, till she longed for a break in the trees, a vista, and at the end of it a plain or a pine-plumed hill-top. We are nearly there now, Morton said; and leaving the carriage, which was to wait for them, Etta followed him through rocks and furze bushes, taking his arm, and once accidentally, or nearly accidentally, she sprang from a rock into his arms. She was surprised that he did not take advantage of the occasion to kiss her. Standing on this flat rock we’re like figures in a landscape by Wilson, she said. So we are, replied Morton, who was struck by the truth of the comparison. But there is too much colour in the scene for Wilson — he would have reduced it all to a beautiful blue, with only a yellow flush to tell where the sun had gone.
It would be very nice if you would make me a sketch of the lake. I’ll lend you a lead pencil; the back of an envelope will do.
I’ve a water-colour box in my pocket and a block. Sit down there and I’ll do you a sketch.
And while you are accomplishing a work of genius, I’ll supply the levity; and don’t you think I’m just the sort of person to supply the necessary leaven of lightness? Look at my frock and my sunshade. Morton laughed, and she continued: What did you think of me the first time you saw me? What impression did I produce on you?
Do you want me to tell you, to tell you exactly?
Yes, indeed I do.
I don’t think I can.
What was is? Etta asked in a low, murmurous tone, and when she leaned towards him the movement was intimate, affectionate, and false.
Well — you struck me as being a little dowdy.
Dowdy! I had a nice new frock on. I don’t think I could have looked dowdy, and among the dreadful old rags that the girls wear here.
It had nothing to do with the clothes you wore. It is the quiet, sedate air that you wear sometimes.
I wasn’t in good spirits when I came down here.
No, you weren’t. I thought you might be a bore.
But I haven’t been that, have I?
No, I’m damned if you’re that.
But what a charming sketch you’re making. You take that ordinary common grey from the palette, and it becomes beautiful. If I were to take the very same tint and put it on the paper, it would be m
ud. Morton placed his sketch against-a rock and surveyed it from a little distance, saying: I don’t call it bad, do you? I think I’ve got the sensation of the lonely lake. But the effect changes so rapidly. Those clouds are quite different from what they were just now. I never saw a finer sky; it is wonderful; it is splendid as a battle.
Write underneath it: That night the sky was like a battle.
Morton did not answer, and Etta continued: You think the suggestion would overpower the reality? But it is a charming sketch and will remind me of a charming day, of a very happy day. She raised her eyes. The moment had come. He threw one arm round her, and raised her face with the other hand. She gave her lips easily, and during the drive home she lay upon his shoulder, allowing his arm to lie round her.
Elsie said you’d get round me.
What did she mean?
Well, said Etta, nestling a little closer and laughing low, haven’t you got round me? Her playfulness enchanted her lover, but her tenderness in speaking of Ralph quickened his jealousy.
My violets lay under his hand; he must have died thinking of me.
But the woman who wrote to you, his mistress, she must have known all about his love for you. What did she say?
She said very little. She was very nice to me. She could see that I was a good woman.
But that made no difference so far as she was concerned. You took her lover away from her.
She knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that we were merely friends. The conversation paused a moment, then Morton said: It seems to have been a mysterious kind of death. What did he die of?
Ah, no one ever knew. The doctors could make nothing of his case. He had been complaining a long time. They spoke of overwork, but —
But what?
I believe he died of slow poisoning.
Slow poisoning! Who could have poisoned him?
Ellen Gibbs.
What an awful thing to say.... I suppose you have some reason for suspecting her?
His death was very mysterious. The doctors could not account for it. There ought to have been a post-mortem examination. In the silence that fell upon this avowal Etta remembered that Ralph had held socialistic theories and was a member of a sect of socialists, and she continued: Ralph was a member of a secret society.... He was an anarchist — no one suspected it; but he told me everything, and it was I who persuaded him to leave the Brotherhood.
I do not see what that has to do with his death by slow poisoning.
Those who retire from these societies usually die.
But why Ellen Gibbs?
She was a member of the same society; it was she who got him to join. When he resigned, it was her duty to —
Kill him! What a terrible story. I wonder if you’re right.
I know I’m right. At the end of the pause Morton said: I wonder if you like me as much as you liked Ralph.
It is quite different. He was very good to me.
And do you think that I shall not be good to you?
Yes, I think you will, she said, looking up and taking the hand which pressed against her waist.
You say he was a very clever artist. Do you like his work better than mine?
It was as different as you yourselves are.
I wonder if I should like it.
He would have liked that; and she pointed with her parasol towards an oak glade, golden-hearted and hushed.
A sort of Diaz, then?
No, not in the least like that. No; his wasn’t the Rousseau palette.
How the motive could be treated except as Rousseau or Diaz would have treated it, I cannot imagine. And it does not matter. What matters now is that I can kiss you. If you loved me you would not kiss me drily.
I don’t know how to kiss otherwise. This is the first time we have been out together. I have never been out so late with a man before. It is almost night under these trees. You cannot love me. The other day you saw me for the first time.
But I am going to love you. Let me kiss you; there is no other way.
I’d like a man to love me before I kiss him Then you will never be loved, for it is through the lips that love steals into the blood, and you keep them closed.
But can I complete the conquest with my lips?
Not with the lips alone.
And for how long shall I have to wait for your love, sir?
It is a poor compliment to a woman to love her at first sight, or at second or third. In six months a man’s love is at height. Is it not the same with you?
I know nothing of love, but I can see that you have made love a great deal.
How can you tell that?
Etta did not answer, and Morton, fearing his question to be a stupid one, began to struggle with her. I will kiss you, Morton, but you must take your hand from my knee. I do not like to be kissed like that and will not go out driving with you again. I see that I cannot trust you. Morton pleaded, but it was a long time before he could woo her out of a silence that seemed to him sullen. At last she said, as if she had come to a sudden resolve: No, I will not do what you ask me. But I’ll marry you.
Let it be so, then. But marriage is far away.
You will have to go to England, and ——
If you loved me you could wait a little. We have known each other only a few days. In a month I may be a different woman in your eyes. I beg of you to desist, else I shall not be able to keep my promise to you. A month, two, three, is not long to wait and during that time respect your betrothed. You will not regret the waiting. Love has come to - you in the past too easily. A change is good for us all.
XI
Every day a carriage came from Melun or Fontainebleau, and Morton and Etta drove away from Lunions through Barbizon, to the general admiration of the village, returning at evening with recommendations of the inns they had visited and the routes they had passed through, everybody thinking how much more interesting a narrative would be of what they said and did rather than what their eyes saw. In the forest, among its rocks and glades, when the painters visited each other’s easels, Etta as a protagonist of unamiable virtue was much discussed, different views being held regarding Morton’s chances of success, some holding that Etta held him fawning in a leash of hope, whilst others, speaking out of the pride of sex, shook their heads, saying that such a leash could not hold a man from his art; only the leash of the flesh could do that, they averred, without, however, much conviction.
In September Elsie and Cissy were painting on a steep hillside overlooking the high road, Elsie’s subject almost a sinister one; rocks with great clefts — a den a passer-by might think it to be of some wild animal, wolf or boar. And feeling that it would not be wise to touch again the overhanging branches, having gotten as much effect as her means allowed and not certain whether she could persuade Cissy to come up the hillside to criticise the lair on the easel, Elsie descended the hillside with the picture in her hand and set it before Cissy. Cissy liked it, but did not think that rocks made so interesting a subject as three yellowing birch-trees bending across a lustral autumn sky. It is strange, Elsie said, how people always disagree about pictures. Etta thought mine the better subject, and the only fault she found was that I hadn’t introduced a wild boar. My rocks, she said, were suitable for a sow to have her litter among. Sow isn’t the word she used; what did she say? Une laie! She liked your rocks, Elsie, so that she might bring that word into her talk. No doubt she had just learnt it from the Comte de Malmédy. What a copycat she is; none was ever slyer. How she has turned Morton to her purpose. It was he who introduced her to the Comte. And the girls began to talk about the beautiful Renaissance house that Henri quatre had built for la belle Gabrielle. Who was la belle Gabrielle? Cissy asked, and Elsie answered that she thought la belle Gabrielle was the mistress of Henry the fourth — she was sure her lover was one of the Henrys. Cissy asked if the King had wearied of her and put her in prison, or if he had ordered her head to be struck off, as Henry the eighth treated his wives on more than one occasion. Elsie co
uld not call to mind that any great disaster had befallen la belle Gabrielle, for whom Henry the fourth had built a palace in view of the Seine, a palace now held on lease from the State by the Comte, who, they heard at Lunions that night, had been appointed to the Governorship of Algeria, an appointment that might oblige him to ask the State to relieve him of the lease, for, although he was a rich man, it was hardly possible that he could bear the expense of the Government House in Algiers and a palace at Fontainebleau. It was not thought, however, that the State would relieve him of his lease, and in that case the Comte might decline to accept the appointment, great an honour as it was, for few men care to ruin themselves for a vanity, though the vanity be a beautiful one, as the house in view of the Seine was certainly.
The words: in view of the Seine, called forth the story of the great injustice that had been committed by the railway company, who had built an embankment thirty feet high (over which twenty or twenty-five trains passed daily) between the house and the river. The only concession the railway company had made was the building of a bridge, an archway through which the Comte could find his way to his yacht. He had offered the company five hundred thousand francs to bore a tunnel under the hill, but they would not accept this offer, and the Comte had gone to law; and the Court had only allowed him sixty thousand francs for damages done to his grounds. That is how things are managed in France! somebody said, and the remark provoked an answer: that it was by disregarding the aesthetic value of gardens and points of view that France possessed the advantage of cheap railways. In England railway companies had had to pay ten times the value of the grounds they appropriated, and that was why the cost of living was higher in England than in France, despite the advantages of free trade. Whereupon a tedious discussion began, free trade versus tariffs, which set Cissy and Elsie whispering together. If the Comtesse cannot accompany her husband to Algiers, Elsie said, I am afraid Etta will be cut out of her visit. You think, asked Cissy, that she was not lying when she told us that the Comtesse had invited her to the Government House at Algiers? She would hardly dare to tell us that if it were not true, Elsie answered. Besides, there’s nothing unlikely in it. She is now one of the house party. And maybe Morton will be asked too. I wonder! said Cissy, looking up, for the talk showed signs of returning from economics to the Comte and his household. But somebody intervened with a new argument in favour of tariffs, and the girls listened wearily till it was mooted that the Comte de Malmédy might let the palace. But to whom? France could not supply a tenant, that was certain, and it was difficult to suppose that an Englishman or an American would pay a large rent for a house, a historic monument, that would have to be preserved intact by the tenant, no additions or alterations being allowed.
