Part 24

“It’s better to remember it so--a memory without a regret.”

* * * * *

He was profoundly in love, even to the point of being amazed at the completeness of his emotion. Everything about her surprised him. In the first moments he had said to himself that his days would be glorified by the great love of his life, but that he would not be able to work. He found, on the contrary, that, by some sure instinct, she did not obsess his thoughts, or, rather, that she blended into a new eagerness of his imagination which brought feverish awakening of all his mental faculties. Instead of intruding, she seemed to evade him. He loved her with an increasing desire, for the very reason that, after weeks of marriage, she remained a greater mystery than ever. In the disillusionizing intimacy of daily life, ordinarily so fatal to the fragile garments of romance, she still kept herself aloof and veiled from him. From what instinct, he did not know--perhaps from a certain unconquerable maiden revolt against the possessing instinct of marriage, a rebellion of the imagination, a lawlessness of the soul. Whatever the reason--instinct, premeditation, or rebellion--he was grateful, and did not seek other answer.

She had strange moods of delicacy that amazed him. In the daytime, or, rather, in the high beat of the sun, she seemed always on guard, watching him with alert eyes that remained closed in mystery to his gaze, seldom showing emotion, instantly checking it if a rare moment carried her away. Yet, at the turn of the day, in the transforming touch of twilight, she came closer to him; he felt her deep eyes fixed in glowing intensity, and her hand, without hesitation, came stealing into his, while through her whole body, something soft and clinging seemed to compel her to the contact of his strength. By night, in the secret hours of rustling leaves and murmur of stirring waters washing the broken shore, with note of far-off hoot-owl and slanted silver shower of moonbeam across the boarded walls, she was a creature all fire and tenderness; of startled passion and languorous nestling--and each morning, when he awoke, the place at his side was vacant. At his call, she came flitting in from the porch, radiant and ready for the day. Gradually, he comprehended that she never wished him to see her off her guard, disheveled, heavy-lidded, or otherwise than pleasing to his eye.

Once he questioned her, accusing himself from motives of curiosity.

“It’s not quite fair. If you’re going to steal away like that, I should forbid your returning to gaze on me.” He shuddered with mock emotion. “Heavens, what a sight a man asleep must be, gaping, unshaven and tousled!”

She shook her head.

“That’s a different thing.”

“How so?”

“It makes no difference how you look; you would be the same to me in rags and mud. I love you for your strength.”

“And I?”

“You love me for what you see,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“That’s not true,” he said, catching her shoulders.

“Not entirely,” she admitted, smiling. She studied him a moment, with a far-away anxiety and then added: “I want you to love me as an artist. I suppose I have queer ideas. Am I right?”

He caught her roughly to him with a laugh, well content.

“You are a profound philosopher, young lady,” he said; “you have analyzed the psychology of marriage admirably--though, at the bottom, I don’t believe you realize at all what makes you do what you do.”

“I want you to see me always at my best,” she said, smiling.

“The queer thing is I can never paint you,” he said, releasing her and frowning. “I have a feeling I never shall succeed. Heaven knows I’ve tried enough----”

In fact, he had tried not once but a score of times, always starting eagerly, always turning away, impatient at an expression which eluded him.

“That will come.”

“No; I don’t believe it will.”

At the bottom, undoubtedly, it was because she herself still eluded him. He sought in vain to discover what lay in her hidden thoughts. Sometimes, he believed her a woman who had read deeply, listened, and considered much; again, he returned eagerly to the idea that she was only a child of nature, primitive and finely intuitive. Yet there were moments when she seemed to comprehend in ways that astonished him. When he discussed with her, she seemed to absorb his ideas, through the channels of her sentiments, and often, by a phrase, illuminated a thought which was struggling for clarity. But if he came up against an opinion of her own and sought to change it by argument, she became confused at once, incapable of logically perceiving the truth or falsity of a contention. Often, too, it seemed to him that he caught an echo of a far-away personality in a thought which he could not associate with her. Then he would turn away with an uncontrollable jealousy of the past, of the thing of which he could never make her speak.

His curiosity as to Champeno increased as he felt the unfailing charm which she drew about him night and day. Who had given her the comprehension of the insatiable curiosity of a man’s soul which must be met with constant evasion, of the perilous disillusionment of intimacy which must never be permitted to seize the last veil? What kind of a man had been this other man in her life, and to what extent had he captured her imagination?

The questions on his lips were forbidden by their compact and yet his curiosity never died out--and for that, in the happiest moments, he suffered much.

In the first weeks, with the rimming ice on the sparkling blue waters and the snow patches against the smoky blue of the mountains, brilliant with reflected pinks and violets of the dawn and the sunset, he had plunged into open-air sketching with the avidity of a glutton. He wanted impressions, instantaneous, striking, and unified. He steeped himself in the melting, drifting moods of the sky and the mirrored waters, longing for color as a musician craves feasts of harmonious sounds. He worked rapidly, seizing an impression in an hour, in thirty minutes, ignoring the triviality of details, consumed only by the desire to imprison a secret of nature’s improvisation, a flaming orange subduing and modulating a world of grays and barbaric blues as a race spreads its culture over history, the yielding of a tone, the tragedy of a fairy maze of shimmering gold, fading into the melancholy of the dusk--all these and a hundred other vibrant, vital impulses he set down with rapid brush, without consciousness or criticism, buoyed up by the joy of working and the confidence of a flowing stroke.

At first, he had insisted on Inga’s working at his side, but she quickly perceived that the suggestions he turned to give her were distracting him and resolutely refused to continue. Rainy days, when he was forced to stay indoors, he was like a trapped panther, and then, with the coming of the night, the old thirst which lurked still unconquered in his flesh awoke fiercely and gripped him in its wide-eyed fatigue. Sometimes the craving in him was so imperious that he would call her in a frenzy of restlessness, and together, clad in boots and slickers, lit by a swinging lantern that sent long, scouting rays through the crowded woods where slender birches flashed in ghostly silhouettes, they would go tramping through the night, scaring up woodland marauders that flung off with a scurry of leaves at their approach.

Or other nights, when the sky was friendly, he would place Inga in the bottom of the canoe, well cushioned and balanced at the stern, and would send the black waters foaming behind them for long, vigorous hours, while he tired the physical rebellion that lay in his aching appetite. They spoke rarely, each of a taciturn temperament, well content to be absorbed into the expanding night with its solitary sounds. Sometimes they would return for a few hours’ sleep snatched before the coming of the day, and sometimes they would linger for a glorious moment of sketching in the fugitive maiden hour of the dawn. Then he would come back to camp, worn with weariness and the inner struggle, to fall into a heavy slumber, drifting into insensibility with Inga’s hand clasped in his. When he awoke beyond high noon, she would be sitting on the steps, her chin in her hand, gazing out at Catamount, where the storms came rolling down to whip the lake. By some strange instinct, the moment his eyes opened she seemed to feel his gaze on her and sprang up immediately, coming lightly to his side, her skirts and silken blouse all aflutter with the freshness of the morning breeze. In those long reaches of the night, when he threw all his weight on her slender strength, she seemed the happiest and the closest to him. What weariness she herself felt she hid from him, ready for a foray into the night at any moment, tender, gentle, and healing in her touch, which at times knew, in a sudden gust of emotion, how to still the beating restlessness that held him. He loved her profoundly and yet he seldom showed it in a spoken word--the reticence of her own nature laying its spell of silence over his.

XXXVII

Once possessed with the thought of change, Dangerfield wished to be off at once. He had lived so keenly in the region of sensations these last months, that only sensations new and unmastered could answer the craving of the artist, which had found a rebirth in the new life of the senses. The green unanimity of the July woods and the brazen expanse of the heated sky tormented his eye. He felt a longing for the region of the sea, whose moods have alone infinite variety, ever stirring, changing and changeless.

The next night, prepared for departure with the morning, they sat on the steps of their camp, hand in hand.

“When I’ve made up my mind to go, I can’t bear to wait,” he said, all at once. “Are you like that?”

She shook her head.

“I love to stick to the things I know,” she said softly.

The day had gone down in stillness and lassitude; the night hung over them from the hollow bowl of the sky. Above the sharpened silhouette of Catamount, crouching against the horizon, the sinking bulb of the moon, like some molten mass, seemed burning sullenly. By some odd effect of rising mists, the red reflection fell on the glassed lake in a single glowing tongue of flame. But, even as they watched, a stirring in the air brought a rippling, spreading dance of moonbeams across the waters to their feet. A few leaves whispered above their heads.

“Hot to-morrow,” he said.

“Yes.”

Neither heard the inconsequential words with which they veiled their thoughts. He was profoundly penetrated by the weirdness of the spectacle before him, feeling in himself, too, a consuming heat to burn up places and experiences, a need of emotion and progress. She looked in awe, sensing something ominous in the witchcraft of the sky, something personal to her and the coming months.

“It makes you sad to leave here,” he said presently.

“Yes; I’m that way,” she said apologetically. “Every tree here is a friend.”

“We have been happy--rarely happy.” She took his hand and laid it against her cheek. “Whatever I do, you will have done it, Inga,” he said, with a note of emotion. “And there were moments--yes, even at the time we were pledging ourselves to each other, even in the train afterward when we could not talk to each other, you remember--when I wondered how it would turn out--if, at first, it would not be a struggle between us. Curious what thoughts come to you at the queerest times! I suppose you were thinking something like that too.”

“I was wondering,” she said evasively.

“You have never seen the sea?” he said irrelevantly.

“Never, never, except as a small child, and I can’t remember well.”

“You will be swept away by it,” he said, his imagination on what was coming.

“I have loved it here,” she said, in a low voice; “I could stay here forever.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I--I have been happy--happier than in all my life--and yet I’m impatient to be away, as though I had taken everything out of it that was to be taken.”

“Yes; you are like that,” she said slowly, and she nodded to herself. “It is right you should be.”

“I feel that’s what’s going to send me ahead.”

“Yes; it will do that.”

“Look, there’s the moon going down behind Catamount!” he said. She drew closer to him, her head on his shoulder. He laughed a teasing laugh. “Soon it’ll be black, and then a little dryad of the night will no longer be afraid to show what she feels.”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, closing her arms about him suddenly, and as his lips met hers, he found her all trembling, and warm and agitated.

XXXVIII

They arrived at their new home after a sail of three hours down the winding shores of the Maine inlets. The day was hot and clear, the breeze hardly sufficient to belly the sails, and at times long calms surrounded them as they drifted on the tide. This new home was a fishing-outpost, in the lee of a rocky point, against which the vast waters lay in troubled slumber. During the hot voyage, while Dangerfield swapped stories with Captain Slocum, Inga had crept forward to the bow and stood leaning against the mast, her gaze eagerly set down the shifting shores to the approaching solemnity of the great sea, which every ledge seemed ready to reveal. In her excitement, she was impatient as a child, turning toward Dangerfield from time to time with eyes that danced with expectancy. As soon as they had made their dock, she sprang out and went bounding up the ledges until he could see her figure outlined against the sky, transfixed in gazing wonder.

When the baggage and provisions had been finally transferred and the house inspected, Dangerfield climbed to the crest. Inga had hardly moved from her first struck attitude of wonder. He came quietly to her side, interested in her surprise, feeling again old sensations through the discovery in her eyes, as though watching a child in a playhouse. From where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, the rocky, tumbling coast twisted to the horizon, undefiled by sight of human habitation. At its stone feet, the sea, like a cloth of peacock blue, lay in flat complacency with faint rim of winding lace. At times, across the placid expanse a foray of rippling zephyrs went wandering aimlessly and spent itself until once more the smooth spaces stretched out in quiet somnambulance. On the horizon, a fishing-boat or two lay becalmed; a steamer moved sluggishly, with heavy trail of impending smoke.

“It’s asleep now,” she said.

“It will wake.”

“It’s so smooth, so silky----”

“Are you disappointed?”

“No; no; it’s so vast. It’s asleep, but you don’t trust it, do you?”

“What do you feel?” he asked, watching her curiously.

“I feel cities, nations, over there, crowding down the horizon.”

“Not loneliness?”

“No, no; I feel so many human things in it--things that are gone and things that are coming.”

“As though you were watching history pass by,” he said gravely.

She looked up quickly and nodded.

“Funny, that’s not how it affects me,” he said. “It makes me feel little--insignificant. It crushes me at times, and at others, even in crushing me, it compensates by the feeling of the futility of what we strive for.”

She drew her brows together in a contemplative frown.

“I don’t believe I could feel that,” she said, in wonder. “I feel freer and lighter, as though there were more air to breathe, as though I could run for hours, as though there were no fences and no gates to stop you from doing anything you wanted to do.”

He laughed, feeling a communicative thrill.

“Sure you won’t feel too lonely?”

“The idea! With this?” Suddenly, to his surprise, she flung her arms about him and her lips sought his rapturously.

“Why, I believe you are some old sea-pirate’s daughter, after all!” he said, astounded by the unaccustomed display of emotion. “You’re like another being, Inga--even your eyes seem to have cleared away the mists.”

“Yes, yes; I feel it!” she cried joyfully. “Oh, Mr. Dan, promise to stay here forever and never, never go away!”

“Promised,” he said, in mock solemnity. “We stay here forever and give up all thought of cities and professions--and even of luncheons and suppers.”

“Oh, dear, I forgot!” she cried in contrition, and, laughing, she sprang away from him and went flying down the path to their new house.

* * * * *

With each succeeding day which went slipping by, he felt a pervading sense of heart’s ease. Inga was indeed a transformed being, a soul abruptly awakened. In the city, and even in their first camp by the lakeside, he had always felt in her a deference and a timidity toward him, as though, despite her love, she worshiped at a distance, a reticence which brought her confusion when his eyes were too strongly on her in the white of the day, which clung even to her lighter moods when she persisted with teasing eyes in calling him “Mr. Dan.” Now, all at once, all barriers vanished between them. Whether it was the mysterious current of the sea, or the completeness of their isolation, she came to him with a new independence, the pride of a wild animal, monarch of its wilderness.

Instead of waiting on his moods, there were times when, to his surprise, she sprang into the lead, carrying him after her for a wild beat along the shore against a growing gale, or a journey into the night, and when, during the day, he painted the curling water and the advancing cliffs, she would often leave him for long hours of exploration, returning with the news of some felicitous discovery. In such matters, her instinct was seldom at fault. She seemed to absorb his own intuitions, to sense what he sought in arrangements of masses and colors, so much so that, at times, he seemed to hear his own thoughts speaking through her voice.

Nothing pleased her more than to work for him, and the only quarrels they had were when he sought to divide her labors.

“Look out, Inga,” he would say, in mock sternness, “you will spoil me, you little heathen squaw!”

“Just make up your mind,” she said defiantly, “that you exist here only to paint--all the rest is mine. Stretch out in that hammock instantly, and if you dare to move, I’ll upset everything, and then there’ll be no dinner!”

His resistance never lasted long. He would sprawl back gratefully, pipe in mouth, and watch in Oriental luxury, while she flitted from the fireplace to the table, in the mellowness of the summer evenings, busying herself with the roasting of the potatoes and the broiling of the ham. The long day’s work done, and well done, satisfied in his ambitions, he followed the grace of her light movements, his eyes filled with never failing delight in her youth and supple strength. Once he said, half in earnest, half in fun:

“I suppose you think you’re fooling me with all this domestic pretence.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, her head on one side, the broiler in the air.

“I suppose you think you are going to make me believe that you are really married to me, whereas I know that you are not at all.”

“Oh, you do know that, do you?” she said, laughing.

“I do,” he said solemnly. “The old justice of the peace who married us thinks he’s bound you to me hard and fast; but I know better.”

She set the broiler back over the coals and came over to his side, vastly amused and yet with a telltale look in her eyes, as one suddenly surprised.

“You are a terribly wise Mr. Dan, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he said nodding. “You’ve made up your mind to fool me, that’s all. I don’t feel married to you in the least, and that’s the truth. Shouldn’t be surprised to wake up any day, young lady, and find you’ve disappeared--swum out to sea or taken to the woods.”

“I believe you’re half serious?” she said with a smile.

“I am--Pagan!”

“Well, don’t you like my way the best?” she said, looking down at him, thoroughly delighted.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On the end,” he said abruptly.

This answer brought a swift change in mood to her. The archness fled from her smile, and her eyes grew pensive and far-seeing.

“Isn’t it enough to be as happy as we are to-day?” she said, with a touch of sadness.

“I suppose so,” he said, with an uncontrollable burst of jealousy; “particularly when you can’t know what’s in the future or in the past.” He rose up quickly and caught her in her arms with a wild revolt against the measure of herself she allotted him, crying roughly: “Inga, you love one way, I another, and sometimes it drives me mad to think of what’s passed. I love you as a man loves; I want you all, completely, to know everything you have done, everything that’s behind your eyes now, everything you’re thinking.”

In his outburst of feeling, he brought her violently to him until his arms must have hurt her, and yet she made no protest except for a sudden struggle for the breath which he had crushed out of her body; but her face was radiant with the fury she had roused in him. Her eyes faced his steadily, baffling and amused.

“Yes; I want you all, completely--you, all your thoughts--everything that is you,” he repeated hungrily.

“No, you don’t,” she said, smiling, and then, as he wavered under the searching frankness of her look, she added, “now honest--do you?”

He laughed, drew her quickly to his lips, and released her.

“You’re right.”

She nodded her head victoriously and went back to the fireplace. Then she turned solemnly.

“I shall take care you never know,” she said looking back, “for, you see, I know _you_!”

“She is right--extraordinarily right,” he confessed to himself. Then he wondered how she could divine such things, and next if it were all intuition or if it were not the product of another experience, another man. And this thought tortured him.

XXXIX

What she had the power to do was to awake in him sensations, sensations of mystery and of charm, sensations of the rare moods of nature and of the night, sensations that brought the youth of the artist thronging back to him. Of this he spoke to her frankly, trying to make her understand. It was one evening, when a sudden squall was whistling under the doors, and the rain pellets, wind-driven, were rattling against the windows. They were before the fire-place, the dishes cleaned for the night, watching the glow of charring logs, Inga stretched full-length on the rug, her elbows on the floor, chin in her hands, Dangerfield rocking back, drawing long clouds of fragrant smoke from his pipe. He watched her (he never tired of studying her instinctive poses) with a sense of eye-delight. There was something feline and pliant in her contemplation of the fire, the wonder one sees in a graceful animal fascinated by a burning flame which lies beyond the world of its comprehension. Inga, to him, was a constant source of pleasant sensations and unfathomed surprises. He rose and laid a stick on the red ruins, cities and palaces in miniature, and returned to his seat, as the stick caught fire and sent its fluttering shadows into the room.

“Feels good to be here, wind and rain outside, fire and shelter, inside--that’s home,” he said. She nodded without turning, divining that he felt like talking to himself. Presently he said, as though appreciative of her intuition: