CHAPTER XXI

 

Perched on its four stone mushrooms, the little granary stood two or three feet above the grass of the green close.  Beneath it there was a perpetual shade and a damp growth of long, luxuriant grasses.  Here, in the shadow, in the green dampness, a family of white ducks had sought shelter from the afternoon sun.  Some stood, preening themselves, some reposed with their long bellies pressed to the ground, as though the cool grass were water.  Little social noises burst fitfully forth, and from time to time some pointed tail would execute a brilliant Lisztian tremolo.  Suddenly their jovial repose was shattered.  A prodigious thump shook the wooden flooring above their heads; the whole granary trembled, little fragments of dirt and crumbled wood rained down among them.  With a loud, continuous quacking the ducks rushed out from beneath this nameless menace, and did not stay their flight till they were safely in the farmyard.

      'Don't lose your temper,' Anne was saying.  'Listen! You've frightened the ducks.  Poor dears! no wonder.'  She was sitting sideways in a low, wooden chair.  Her right elbow rested on the back of the chair and she supported her cheek on her hand.  Her long, slender body drooped into curves of a lazy grace.  She was smiling, and she looked at Gombauld through half-closed eyes.

      'Damn you!' Gombauld repeated, and stamped his foot again.  He glared at her round the half-finished portrait on the easel.

      'Poor ducks!' Anne repeated.  The sound of their quacking was faint in the distance; it was inaudible.

      'Can't you see you make me lose my time?' he asked.  'I can't work with you dangling about distractingly like this.'

      'You'd lose less time if you stopped talking and stamping your feet and did a little painting for a change.  After all, what am I dangling about for, except to be painted?'

      Gombauld made a noise like a growl.  'You're awful,' he said, with conviction.  'Why do you ask me to come and stay here?  Why do you tell me you'd like me to paint your portrait?'

      'For the simple reasons that I like you - at least, when you're in a good temper - and that I think you're a good painter.'

      'For the simple reason' - Gombauld mimicked her voice - 'that you want me to make love to you and, when I do, to have the amusement of running away.'

      Anne threw back her head and laughed.  'So you think it amuses me to have to evade your advances!  So like a man!  If only you knew how gross and awful and boring men are when they try to make love and you don't want them to make love!  If you could only see yourselves through our eyes!'

      Gombauld picked up his palette and brushes and attacked his canvas with the ardour of irritation.  'I suppose you'll be saying next that you didn't start the game, that it was I who made the first advances, and that you were the innocent victim who sat still and never did anything that could invite or allure me on.'

      'So like a man again!' said Anne.  'It's always the same old story about the woman tempting the man.  The woman lures, fascinates, invites; and man - noble man, innocent man - falls a victim.  Mr poor Gombauld!  Surely you're not going to sing that old song again.  It's so unintelligent, and I always thought you were a man of sense.'

      'Thanks,' said Gombauld.

      'Be a little objective,' Anne went on.  'Can't you see that you're simply externalizing your own emotions?  That's what you men are always doing; it's so barbarously naïve.  You feel one of your loose desires for some woman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse her of luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire.  You have the mentality of savages.  You must just as well say that a plate of strawberries and cream deliberately lures you on to feel greedy.  In nine-nine cases out of a hundred women are as passive and innocent as the strawberries and cream.'

      'Well, all I can say is that this must be the hundredth case,' said Gombauld, without looking up.

      Anne shrugged her shoulders and gave vent to a sigh.  'I'm at a loss to know whether you're more silly or more rude.'

      After painting for a little time in silence Gombauld began to speak again.  'And then there's Denis,' he said, renewing the conversation as though it had only just been broken off.  'You're playing the same game with him.  Why can't you leave that wretched young man in peace?'

      Anne flushed with a sudden and uncontrollable anger.  'It's perfectly untrue about Denis,' she said indignantly.  'I never dreamt of playing what you beautifully call the same game with him.'  Recovering her calm, she added in her ordinary cooing voice and with her exacerbating smile, 'You've become very protective towards poor Denis all of a sudden.'

      'I have,' Gombauld replied, with a gravity that was somehow a little too solemn.  'I don't like to see a young man ...'

      '... being whirled along the road to ruin,' said Anne, continuing his sentence for him.  'I admire your sentiments and, believe me, I share them.'

      She was curiously irritated at what Gombauld had said about Denis.  It happened to be so completely untrue.  Gombauld might have some slight ground for his reproaches.  But Denis - no, she had never flirted with Denis.  Poor boy!  He was very sweet.  She became somewhat pensive.

      Gombauld painted on with fury.  The restlessness of an unsatisfied desire, which, before, had distracted his mind, making work impossible, seemed now to have converted itself into a kind of feverish energy.  When it was finished, he told himself, the portrait would be diabolic.  He was painting her in the pose she had naturally adopted at the first sitting.  Seated sideways, her elbow on the back of the chair, her head and shoulders turned at an angle from the rest of her body, towards the front, she had fallen into an attitude of indolent abandonment.  He had emphasized the lazy curves of her body; the lines sagged as they crossed the canvas, the grace of the painted figure seemed to be melting into a kind of soft decay.  The hand that lay along the knee was as limp as a glove.  He was at work on the face now; it had begun to emerge on the canvas, doll-like in its regularity and listlessness.  It was Anne's face - but her face as it would be, utterly unillumined by the inward lights of thought and emotion.  It was the lazy, expressionless mask which was sometimes her face.  The portrait was terribly like; and at the same time it was the most malicious of lies.  Yes, it would be diabolic when it was finished, Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think of it.