The Baker’s Daughter (5 page)

“You mustn't try,” he declared. “Honestly, Miss Bun, I couldn't bear it. Your talk is just right for your country. It's as right as the heather on the hills. You have just enough of the ‘Scots' to add salt to your conversation—I love to hear you talk—and remember this,” added Darnay seriously. “The old Scots language is a grand language, hoary with tradition. They spoke it at King James's Court and at the Scottish Bar; poets used it and made it live forever. It was just the one word I was carping at—ungrateful prig that I am.”

“Plain for plainly,” said Sue, nodding, for every word of the conversation was indelibly printed on her mind.

“Plain for plainly,” he agreed, “and slow for slowly. That isn't Scots, Miss Bun; it's just slovenly down-at-heel English, and somehow or other it always makes me angry. It's a sort of complex, I suppose,” he added, smiling. “But that's a poor excuse for my rudeness, I'm afraid.”

Sue flushed, for an apology always made her feel uncomfortable. “Your omelet's spoiling,” she said and fled for her life.

Up till now Sue had always lived in a town (not a very big town, of course, for Beilford is a small, compact place, scarcely straggling outside its sixteenth-century walls). Her life had been in the town, and all her interests, and she knew little more of the country than a city-born urchin. Now, however, on her afternoon walks she began to enjoy the country. She saw it all the better because her walks were solitary, and because her mind was jolted out of the groove in which it had run for so long. This life—busy, useful, independent was so different from her old life that she felt like a different person. In fact, her old life seemed like a dream, and all her problems were shelved to make room for her new interests.

It was beautiful country, even in its winter bareness. The silver river wound between great rocks, or slipped along silently between green banks, or gurgled over shallow beds of gravel. She saw trout leaping in the pools below the rocks and the silver glint of a salmon as it passed up the river to spawn, and she saw all kinds of birds (some standing by the river's edge and others flying low over the moving water) and wondered about them and wished she knew their names and how they lived. Down here in the valley by the stream there were little rounded hills, green and friendly, and tall stately trees, graceful in their tracery of bare boughs, but when she climbed onto the moors, she found bigger hills covered with brown withered heather and coarse yellow grass. Jagged rocks stuck out through the thin skin of earth, and drystone dykes flung themselves in sweeping curves over the shoulders of the hills. There were sheep here, small mountain sheep with black faces and black legs, seeking their food among the coarse herbage and scattering in all directions when Sue approached, and there were different kinds of birds—larks and grouse and others that she had never seen before. Here the wind blew cold and clear, and big clouds, white and billowy or dark and threatening, sped before its chill blast trailing their skirts over the far-off tops. In these high places the whole feel of the day could change in a moment from warm friendliness to cold hostility. A cloud moved up and hid the sun, and the very same hills, which had seemed so kind, were suddenly gray and lonely and formidable, and the wind was suddenly chill.

Sue found little paths over the hills and wondered about them, not knowing that they were sheep tracks, age-old. Here and there she came across the ruins of a hut—a mere rubble of stones—and wondered who could have built it and why it had been built with such labor in that deserted spot. Small streams ran down from the tops toward the river below, small cheerful burns prattling busily in their stony beds, and in the creases that they had carved out of the hills, there were clusters of hazels and rowans, and an occasional oak, stunted and twisted by the wind's force.

On the slopes of the hills were small farms, nestling in hollows and screened by trees, surrounded by patches of fields like colored handkerchiefs spread upon the ground to dry—brown fields of plow, green fields of pasture for the cows. The farther hills, higher than those of Beil, were clad with pine and fir but bald at the summit where the naked rock cropped out, and farther still was a distant line of mountains that changed from blue to gray or violet as the clouds moved past.

One afternoon Sue found herself near a little farm—a small whitewashed cottage surrounded by chicken coops and beehives. It was so well kept and tidy that she paused at the gate and at that moment the door opened and a girl came out, a girl about Sue's own age with a merry face and crisp brown hair. They stared at each other for a moment with interest, for the place was so deserted that human beings were at a premium there.

“It's a fine day,” said Sue at last.

“It's grand,” agreed the girl. “Are you going far?”

“I'm just taking a walk,” Sue told her.

They fell into conversation, and Sue learned that the girl's name was May Grainger and that she and her brother had started the poultry farm and were running bees as a sideline. “They pay well here,” the girl told her, “for it's heather honey, of course, but Alec looks after the bees. I'm rather scared of them.”

Sue was scared of bees too, for she had been stung when she was a child and had never forgotten the incident, but fowls were harmless as well as useful, and these white leghorns were attractive too. She had time to spare so she went around the coops with May Grainger and helped her to feed her charges, and she asked all sorts of pertinent questions and marveled at the cleanliness of it all.

“They lay better if you keep them clean,” May declared. “At least Alec says so—and anyway, it's nicer to have eggs from clean hens, don't you think so?”

Sue agreed with that. “Could I buy eggs here,” she inquired, somewhat diffidently, “or are you sending them into town?”

“You could have three or four dozen a week, but you'd have to fetch them,” replied the girl.

It was the beginning of a very pleasant friendship, for they had much in common. They had both been bred in town and were now discovering the delights of the country and discovering its sorrows also. The Graingers' cottage was every bit as antiquated and inconvenient as Tog's Mill, and it was even farther from the shops so the two housekeepers could commiserate with each other on the difficulties of laying in supplies. They discussed ways and means of alleviating their lot, and Sue picked up some useful hints from her new friend. An electric torch, for instance, was an invaluable adjunct to an early riser, and a small dab of luminous paint on a box of matches saved a good deal of time and trouble when you wanted to find them in the dark.

“Good-bye,” said May. “I wish you could stay to tea and see my brother. Come back soon, and come as often as you can.”

“I'll come every Wednesday afternoon for the eggs,” Sue promised, “and maybe oftener if I can manage it.”

Sue stopped to wave at the turn in the track, and May waved back to her in a friendly manner. It had been a pleasant adventure, Sue decided, the kind of adventure you could never have in a town.

The way home to the mill lay along the path by the edge of the river and past the willow tree where Darnay was painting. He had been painting that same old tree for a whole week now—a stunted, misshapen tree it was—and Sue wondered why he did not paint something else for a change. He looked up as she passed and waved to her to come, and taking her by the shoulders he stood her in front of his canvas and held her there.

Sue had never really looked at any of his pictures before. She was shy of looking, for it was no business of hers. She was aware that if she had been painting she would not have wanted anybody to look at what she was doing; it would be “sort of sacred.” Today Darnay was in what Sue called his “wild mood” (she had noticed that the “wild mood” always followed periods of intense concentration), and when he was like this, you never knew what he would do or say.

It was quite impossible not to look at the picture now, so Sue looked at it, and her heart sank. She had been so sure that what he was doing was wonderful, for he himself was wonderful and he worked at it with all his might.

“Oh!” said Sue, so dismayed by the strange sight before her eyes that she could not hide her consternation.

“Well, Miss Bun, you've said it!” he declared, and there was a quiver of laughter in his voice. “A whole column of criticism in one word, eh?”

“Of course it's not finished,” she said, trying to find excuses for what she saw. “Maybe it will be quite different when you've finished it.”

“But it is finished,” he told her. He took up a brush and signed it with a few quick strokes and flung himself down on the grass. “You don't like it, Miss Bun,” he said, smiling at her happily. “I didn't think you would, somehow. Perhaps nobody will like it—”

“I don't know much about pictures.”

“But you know what you like,” he suggested with twinkling eyes. “Dear Miss Bun, you run so true to type, and yet there's a flavor about you that never palls, so you don't like my Willow Tree in November.”

She looked at it again, hoping that she would like it better this time. In the foreground was the willow tree, and looking up through the bare brown whips you saw the sky, gray with flying clouds. The whole thing was done in a cold tone of gray and thickly plastered with whorls and streaks of paint.

“You're too near,” he said, watching her face with amusement. He had lit his pipe, and now he pointed with the stem of it in a gesture she had learned to know. “Go sit down on that rock,” he added.

“There's tea to get,” Sue objected. “And the butcher—”

“Never mind tea and the butcher.”

She went to sit down on the rock and looked at the picture again; it was certainly much nicer from here, but even now, Sue did not think it was pretty.

“Well, what's the verdict?” he inquired.

“I don't know anything about pictures, so what's the good?”

“It's interesting—the impact of my experiment upon an uneducated eye.”

Sue bristled. Uneducated indeed! She had had a perfectly good education.

“Well, you are, from my point of view,” said Darnay, laughing at her disgusted expression. “From my point of view, you are a savage, Miss Bun. An intelligent savage, of course, a sort of Woman Friday, cast up upon my desert island. Yes, that's exactly what you are. Come along now. Forget about the advent of the butcher, and tell me what you see.”

Thus adjured, Sue tried to forget about the butcher (it was somewhat difficult, for there was nothing in the house for tomorrow's dinner), and fixing her eyes upon the picture, she gave it her full attention.

“Yes,” she said, “I see it a lot better from here. Yes, it's very real looking—the branches of the tree look so near, and the sky seems very far away. How did you make it look like that?”

“Go on,” said Darnay, sitting up and looking very alert. “Go on, Miss Bun.”

“The clouds look awful soft and sort of puffy,” Sue declared, “and you could almost think they were moving along with the wind, and that wee hole in the clouds with the blue sky showing through looks terribly far away.”

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She looked at him in surprise.

“Go on,” he adjured her, “and please be absolutely honest. This is interesting.”

“It's queer,” Sue continued, “but somehow the picture makes me rather…frightened. There's something sort of fierce about it, sort of cruel. It's like a tiger, Mr. Darnay.”

There was a little silence when Sue had finished speaking and she felt more frightened than before (it was a dreadful thing to say about his picture, and foolish too—how could a willow tree be fierce like a tiger?), but he had asked for the truth and something stronger than herself had prompted her to give it to him.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said Mr. Darnay at last.

“You're not angry?”

“No, only humbled to the dust. You're dead right, Miss Bun. I was in a tearing rage when I painted that picture. I thought I had sublimated my rage, but I hadn't.”

Sue understood now. “Why, of course,” she cried. “You painted your feelings into it.”

“But I shouldn't have,” he told her. “You seem to think that makes it right, but it's all wrong. What are my feelings worth? I must be no more than a seeing eye, a crafty hand. I must allow the tree or the flower I paint to exhibit its own nature—that is art. I thought I was painting the soul of the willow, but it was my own black soul I was painting—that's no good. An artist must paint as though he were God. Supposing a man sat down at the piano in a tearing rage and played one of Beethoven's Sonatas, putting his own feelings straight into the music. Would that be right? No, but if he were able to sublimate his rage, it would sharpen his perception and enable him to understand and express the emotion of the composer. We must use emotion to strengthen our souls, not allow emotion to use us.”

These were difficult words, and Sue was wise enough not to reply. She understood vaguely what he meant, but she could not see the importance of it. Of course he was angry and hurt—who would not have been—and it seemed to her that if he were able to paint his rage into the bare whips of a willow tree and a clouded sky it was a good thing and a clever thing to do. She had been surprised at the quiet way in which he had taken his wife's departure—many a man would have shouted and raged over it or moped about the place like a sick jackdaw (thought Sue), but Mr. Darnay had gone on with his work as if he didn't care. She saw now that he had gotten it all off his chest by making a picture of it—an excellent plan. It was good for him to get rid of it and good for other people that he should get rid of it in such a nice quiet way. When Mr. Waugh's wife had run away with a commercial traveler he had played his fiddle night and day for a week until the people in the next house had been obliged to send in a message asking him to stop. And when Jamie Duguid ran away to sea his father had threatened to go after him with a gun, and, when forcibly restrained by his friends, he had drunk himself silly and run around Beilford in his nightshirt. It was a little different in Mr. Darnay's case (Sue was forced to admit) because Mrs. Darnay had not gone off with another man, but all the same, she had treated him badly and Mr. Darnay had just cause for wrath. Now that he had relieved his feelings he would paint something prettier and more comfortable to look at—Sue was sure of it.

They were walking back to the house by this time, Mr. Darnay striding ahead of her along the narrow path, burdened by his easel and all the other equipment that was necessary to his art. She had wanted to carry some of it for him but had not been allowed—whether for politeness' sake or because he was afraid she would drop it into the river, she could not tell. The river was very winding here, and all at once he stopped and looked back at her.