“What a question to explode on me! Why?”
“No matter why. Answer my question.”
“I think you always control yourself admirably.”
“You mean when I am angry?”
“Yes.”
“But, putting my selfcontrol out of the question, do you think I get angry often — too often, even though I do not let my anger get the better of me?”
“Not too often, certainly.”
“But often?”
“Well, no. That is, not absolutely angry. I think you are quick to perceive and repel an attack, even when it is only thoughtlessly implied. But now we must drop introspection for the present, Mary. If our sketches are to be finished before luncheon, I must work hard; and so must you. No more conversation until a quarter past one.”
“So be it,” said Mary, taking her seat on the campstool. They painted silently for two hours, interrupted occasionally by strollers, who stopped to look on, much to Herbert’s annoyance, and somewhat to Mary’s gratification. Meanwhile the day grew warmer and warmer; and the birds and insects sang and shrilled incessantly.
“Finished,” said Mary at last, putting down her palette “And not in the least like nature. I ventured a little Prussian blue in that corner of the sky, with disastrous results.”
“I will look presently,” said Herbert, without turning from his canvas, “It will take at least another day to finish mine.”
“You are too conscientious, Adrian. I feel sure your sketches have too much work in them.”
“I have seen many pictures without enough work in them: never with too much. I suppose I must stop now for the present. It is time to return.”
“Yes,” said Mary, packing her sketching furniture. “Oh, dear!” As Faulconbridge says, ‘Now, by my life, the day grows wondrous hot.’ Falonbridge, by the bye, would have thought us a pair of fools. Nevertheless I like him.”
“I am sorry to hear it. Most women like men who are arrogant bullies. Let me see your sketch.”
“It is not a masterpiece, as you may perceive.”
“No. You are impatient, Mary, and draw with a stiff, heavy hand. Look before you into the haze. There is no such thing as an outline in the landscape.”
“I cannot help it. I try to soften everything as much as possible; but it only makes the colors look sodden. It is all nonsense my trying to paint. I shall give it up.”
Must I pay you compliments to keep up your courage. You are unusually diffident today. You have done the cottage and the potato field better than I.”
“Very likely. My touch suits potato fields. I think I had better make a specialty of them. Since I can paint neither sky nor sea nor golden grain, I shall devote myself to potato fields in wet weather.”
Herbert, glancing up at her as he stooped to shoulder his easel, did not answer. A little later, when they were on their way home, he said, “Are you conscious of any change in yourself since you came down here, Mary?”
“No. What kind of change?” She had been striding along beside him, looking boldly ahead in her usual alert manner; but now she slackened her pace, and turned her eyes uneasily downward.
“I have noticed a certain falling off in the steady seriousness that used to be your chief characteristic. You are becoming a little inconsiderate and even frivolous about things that you formerly treated with unvarying sympathy and reverence. This makes me anxious. Our engagement is likely to be such a long one, that the least change in you alarms me. Mary: is it that you are getting tired of Art, or only of me?”
“Oh, absurd! nonsense, Adrian!”
“There is nothing of your old seriousness in that answer, Mary.”
“It is not so much a question as a reproach that you put to me. You should have more confidence in yourself; and then you would not fear my getting tired of you. As to Art, I am not exactly getting tired of it; but I find that I cannot live on Art alone; and I am beginning to doubt whether I might not spend my time better than in painting, at which I am sure I shall never do much good. If Art were a game of pure skill, I should persevere; but it is like whist, chance and skill mixed. Nature may have given you her ace of trumps — genius; but she has not given me any trumps at all — not even court cards.”
“If we all threw up our cards merely because we had not the ace of trumps in our hand, I fear there would be no more whist played in the world. But, to drop your metaphor, which I do not like, I can assure you that Nature has been kinder to you than to me. I had to paint harder and longer than you have before I could paint as well as you can.”
“That sort of encouragement kept up my ardor for a long time, Adrian; but its power is exhausted now. In future I may sketch to amuse myself and to keep mementos with which I have pleasant associations, but not to elevate my tastes and perfect my morals. Perhaps it is that change of intention which makes me frivolous, as you say I have suddenly become.
“And since when,” said Herbert gravely, “have you meditated this very important change?”
“I never meditated it at all. It came upon me unawares. I did not even know what it was until your question forced me to give an account of it. What an infidel I am! But let me tell you this, Adrian. If you suddenly found yourself a Turner, Titian, Michael Angelo and Holbein all rolled into one, would you be a bit happier?”
“I cannot conceive how r you can doubt it.”
“I know you would paint better” (Herbert winced), “but it is not at all obvious to me that you would be happier. However, I am in a silly humor to-day; for I can see nothing in a proper way. We had better talk about something else.”
“The humor has lasted for some days, already, Mary. And it must be talked about, and seriously too, if you have concluded, like my mother, that I am wasting my life in pursuit of a chimera. Has she been speaking to you about me?”
“Oh, Adrian, you are accusing me of treachery. You must not think, because I have lost faith in my own artistic destiny, that I have lost faith in yours also.”
“I fear, if you have lost your respect for Art, you have lost your respect for me. If so, you know that you may consider yourself free as far as I am concerned. You must not hold yourself in bondage to a dreamer, as people consider me.”
“I do not exactly understand. Are you offering me my liberty, or claiming your own?”
“I am offering you yours. I think you might have guessed that.”
“I don’t think I might. It is not pleasant to be invited to consider oneself free. If you really wish it, I shall consider myself so.”
“The question is, do you wish it?”
“Excuse me, Adrian: the question is, do you wish it?”
“My feelings towards you are quite unchanged.”
“And so are mine towards you.”
After this they walked for a little time in silence. Then Mary said, “Adrian: do you remember our congratulating ourselves last June on our immunity from the lovers’ quarrels which occur in the vulgar world? I think — perhaps it is due to my sudden secession from the worship of Art — I think we made a sort of first attempt at one that time.”
“Ha! ha! Yes. But we failed, did we not, Mary?”
“Thanks to our inexperience, we did. But not very disgracefully. We shall do better the next time, most likely.”