No One Had Been Following Emily

No One Had Been Following Emily

       by Careful-When-It Comes-To-His-Reputation, Ph.D.

       "Don't Paint in that dismal forest! You must return to the dazzle of the sunlit shore!" Olsen brooked no disagreement. Pupils either listened or obeyed him or they left the school. He preferred to instruct younger students in their mid twenties and especially males. At twenty-nine Emily received indifferent instruction from him at best and in fact found her painting unattended to, though not her behaviour. If she suffered a headache from the snapping light Olsen reminded her that pain inspires. If nausea overcame her from too long a sitting under the sun, he rebuked her for her timid constitution. He saw to it that when Mrs. Osternakinick dined with the "best of the students" Emily counted among the uninvited.

       The forest at Tagenau with its high solemn oaks and elms, quaint in their leaflessness in the lower reaches and snug with birdsong, relaxed Emily, calling upon her best spirit. Her hands felt the freedom from the sun here. Pine scent found its way into the very forms on the canvas. Birds sang from the unpainted edges of the work, mushroom spore tickled the lip and nose from the quiet painted density of carpeted moss and peat that darkly stood ground and guard beneath the arboretum. She painted herself as a small and hardly noticed beech treeling in the work she later entitled "Self Portrait in the Tagenou Forest." She drove a Nostrom Pine needle, renowned for sharpness and strength, through one of her earlobes and hung a marigold from a small golden ring in it each day. Evening saw her lay down her brushes, light her pipe, smoke, drink a glass or two of Barberini White (a product of the South Whales wineries), and lose the debate about returning the two miles to her sea-wall stone rooms. Her stays felt much too tight for her in this place and she loosened them gradually more each day until she removed them entirely and threw them into the gorse off to one side. A vision of Macknic birds with sharp blue eyes came to her one night as she slept and commanded her to begin to paint tall, tall trees without branches except for at their very tops.

       A fellow student, a pretty, roundish thing weighing eight stone, a bit of a coquet, but remarkable for her sunny yellows reflected in dark blues of the sea, without a ship or figure in the whole piece, called on her in her bower and stayed with her one whole night. She had felt afraid to return alone in the gathering dark, Emily declining to accompany her. Before she left in the morning she informed Emily that Olsen intended to pay her a surprise visit in the forest that very day and he was in no mood to compromise. As she turned to leave the clearing, and after hugging Emily goodbye and good luck, the unfortunate woman tripped on a root and fell into the moss. Her shins and her nose were scraped and bled. Crying briefly, she wailed out a second adieu and disappeared down the trail.

       Olsen did appear soon afterwards. He greeted Emily's friendly "hello" with a stern silence and simply looked about him and then at her canvases in the alcove where she stored them. They were excellent works Emily knew but the maestro failed to see their quality. He sniffed and even rolled his eyes as he passed his gaze quickly from one to the other.

       "Not good enough, Emily. This will never do, dear. When will you learn that sun alone makes a work worthwhile? This one here for instance is so dreary I wish to throw it into the shrubbery there." At each painting he offered only the most damaging criticism. A great tree that had been sighing in the high winds for all the days that Emily had worked here made a sudden and angry outburst as if it had reached some sort of personal decision. Olsen paid it no mind as he never paid the forest any mind. The tree swayed with rigor and lively intent, a branch of great proportions came tumbling down among the two of them but did not touch them. Yet Olsen kept his eyes on the paintings, speaking only the fault of them and not the fairness. Emily walked to the edge of the clearing and turned for a moment to look at this uncouth man and then strode down the path. She would not return either here or to her seaside rooms. From a distance she heard a windy sweep and roar of branch and trunk falling. A cry rose against the leafy world and lost itself in the darkness of conifer and shrub. Then another massive and terrified scream penetrated the wood and echoed round the retreating woman and the silent cliffs. No other sounds came. No footsteps followed Emily. She did not waver in her walking but soon her light steps brought her to the very crossroad that took travellers either to the town or to the quay where ships waited to ferry passengers to British ports of call.