The Pastor's Wife Part 42

"But everybody can't be beautiful."

"A sister of hers here, tucked away in this desert. It _is_ a desert, you know. I've come to it because I wanted a desert--one does sometimes after too much of the opposite. But I go away again, and you live in it.

What have you been doing all these years, since I was here last?"

"Oh, I've--been busy."

"But not here? Not all the time here?"

"Yes, all of it."

"What, not away at all?"

"I went to Zoppot once."

"Zoppot? Where's Zoppot? I never heard of Zoppot. I don't believe Zoppot's any good. Do you mean to say you've not been to a town, to a place where people say things and hear things and rub themselves alive against each other, since last I was here?"

"Well, but pastors' wives don't rub."

"But it's incredible! It's like death. Why didn't you?"

"Because I couldn't."

"As though it weren't possible to tear oneself free at least every now and then."

"You wait till you're a pastor's wife."

"But how do you manage to be so alive? For you s.h.i.+ne, you know. When I think of all the things _I've_ done since I was here last--" He broke off, and looked away from her across the lake. "Oh, well. Sickening things, really, most of them," he finished.

"Wonderful pictures," said Ingeborg, leaning forward and flus.h.i.+ng with her enthusiasm. "That's what you've done."

"Yes. One paints and paints. But in between--it's those in between the work-fits that hash one up. What do _you_ do in between?"

"In between what?"

"Whatever it is you do in the morning and whatever it is you do in the evening."

"I enjoy myself."

"Yes. Yes. That's what _I'd_ like to do."

"But don't you?"

"I can't."

"What--_you_ can't?" she said. "But you live in beauty. You make it. You pour it over the world--"

She stopped abruptly, hit by a sudden thought. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I don't know anything really. Perhaps--you're in mourning?"

He looked at her. "No," he said, "I'm not in mourning."

"Or perhaps--no, you're not ill. And you can't be poor. Well, then, why in the world don't you enjoy yourself?"

"Aren't you ever bored?" he answered.

"The days aren't long enough."

He looked round at the empty landscape and shuddered.

"Here. In Kokensee," he said. "It's spring now. But what about the wet days, the howling days? What about unmanageable months like February?

Why"--he turned to her--"you must be a perfect little seething vessel of independent happiness, bubbling over with just your own contentments."

"I never was called a seething vessel before," said Ingeborg, hugging her knees, her eyes dancing. "What an impression for a respectable woman to produce!"

"What a gift to possess, you mean. The greatest of all. To carry one's happiness about with one."

"But that's exactly what _you_ do. Aren't you spilling joy at every step? Splas.h.i.+ng it into all the galleries of the world? Leaving beauty behind you wherever you've been?"

He twisted himself round to lie at full length and look up at her. "What delightful things you say!" he said. "I wish I could think you mean them."

"Mean them?" she exclaimed, flus.h.i.+ng again. "Do you suppose I'd waste the precious minutes saying things I don't mean? I haven't talked to any one really for years--not to any one who answered back. And now it's _you_! Why, it's too wonderful! As though I'd waste a second of it."

"You're the queerest, most surprising thing to find here on the edge of the world," he said, gazing up at her. "And there's the sun just got at your hair through the trees. Are you always full of molten enthusiasms for people?"

"Only for you."

"But what am I to say to these repeated pattings?" he cried.

"You got into my imagination that day I met you and you've been in it ever since. I was in the stupidest state of dull giving in. You pulled me out."

He stared at her, his chin on his hand. "Imagine me pulling anybody out of anything," he said. "Generally I pull them in."

"It's true I've had relapses," she said. "Five relapses."

"Five?"

She nodded. "Five since then. But here I am, seething as you call it, and it's you who started me, and I believe I shall go on now doing it uninterruptedly for ever."

Ingram put out his hand with a quick movement, as though he were going to touch the edge of her dress. "Teach me how to seethe," he said.

"That's rather like asking a worm to give lessons in twinkling to a star."

"Wonderful," he said softly, after a little pause, "to lie here having sweet things said to one. Why didn't I find you before? I've been being bored at the Glambecks' for a whole frightful week."

"Oh, have you been there a week already?" she asked anxiously. "Then you'll go away soon?"

"I was going to-morrow."

"That's like last time. You were just going when I met you."