The porch of the bungalow was filled with trunks and packing-boxes.
Across the settee, piles of clothes, outing-shirts, corduroy
skirts, and sweaters were balanced in perilous pyramids.
Dangerfield, pipe in mouth, bareheaded, sleeves rolled up over his
tanned, muscular forearms, came out of the camp and stood a moment
in frowning disapproval of an intruding motor-boat, venturing near
the rocky line of the shore, evidently on curiosity bent. The
bungalow stood on a projecting point, impending over the lapping
waters that ran in whitening distances into broken vistas of wooded
islands, while beyond, like crouching leopards, the deep blue of a
mountain range bound the horizon. It was mid-July by the dryness in
the air, by every leaf at rest, by the smoky haze which hung over
the heated lake.
The long razor-bow of the white racer furrowed through the dull
waters that rolled up angrily and snapped together in a hissing
serpentine defiance.
“The third this morning!” said Dangerfield irritably. “Why can’t
they stay at their own end of the lake?”
The speeding boat, with its flash of white waists and colored
parasols, swung around in a wide, foaming loop while the racing
throb of the engine suddenly ceased. Across the water came women’s
voices:
“Oh, there he is now!”
“What a romantic spot!”
“She’s quite pretty.”
“Do you suppose they’re married?”
“Hush--he may hear you!”
Then the engine took up its rhythmic hammering and the boat shot
away. Dangerfield breathed a curse at all humanity in general and
those obnoxious members in particular who roamed in motor-boats.
He went back into the living-room, drew out a map, and spread it
on the table. For the last two weeks, with the influx of summer
visitors, even the distant seclusion of their camp had been invaded
by these human pests. Each day the feeling of restlessness had been
growing over him and the longing for flight. The pervading green
monotony of the American summer had come, and with it the end of
the long day’s sketching in the open air. Yet he had lingered,
loath to end the dream. The two months had drifted away like the
lazy mists of the dawn rolling on the mountainsides. They had been
rich in the living, in the tranquillity, and in the achievement.
The great living-room, with its wide windows and deep fireplace,
was covered with sketches, rapid water-colors of transient moods
of the day, the hazy purples of the dawn, the ruddy glow of early
sunset on the distant mountain-tops, white patches of late snow
against the young, green meadows, sketches without other thought
than the joy of the impulse--penetrating, daring, and keenly lived.
He searched the map, studied it without result, and finally pushed
it away in indecision, glanced at his watch, and lounged out onto
the steps, scanning the lake impatiently. Resolved to break up camp
and plunge into a remoter solitude, he felt the unease of change.
He had been happy, completely happy. It had been to him home. He
took out his watch and consulted it nervously again, restless and
dissatisfied the moment he was forced to fall back upon his own
company. Presently, across the lake, there came a patient chug-chug
of a motor which he had learned to distinguish from every other
engine, and around the long point which shut out the village a
dory appeared. Insensibly, the fretting lines about his forehead
cleared and a feeling of content seemed to permeate his body. He
rose, and went swinging down to the dock.
Inga stood erect in the lumbering flat-bottomed dory, her slender
figure outlined against the shining lake, clad in white, her head
hidden under a wide-brimmed straw hat, her hair (which she had
thrown loose the minute she had left the village), floating lazily
out in the breeze of the passage. He watched her eagerly, hungrily,
as she came sweeping over the glassy waters like some Rhine maiden
out of fairy fastnesses.
The boat slipped swiftly on, made a quick, sweeping curve, and
rushed at the dock. Inga bent forward just in time, reversed the
engines, and brought up snugly to the side, crying:
“Don’t touch. See how well I can do it!”
He laughed, standing away, well content with the spectacle of her
confident youth as she shut off the engine, leaped out, and made
fast. Then she sprang lightly back, and, picking up a package,
flung it to him.
“Catch. Steak for dinner. Another coming. Look out! Bread!”
He caught the deftly tossed bundles and came forward, but,
disdaining assistance, she leaped lightly to the dock, holding out
a pair of smudgy hands.
“Don’t touch me; I’m covered with grease. Had an awful time making
her go. Take my hat.”
He removed the wide Panama, bending down to the lips which were
offered to him. She ran to the end of the dock and kneeling
splashed her hands in the water; daintiness itself in the bending
slenderness of her lines, the thin skirt clinging to the willowy
hips, the curved line of the leg unconsciously revealed, the
spilling masses of her hair which, though caught at the back, came
tumbling about her cheeks, now pouting in disdain at the soiling
smudges.
All at once she straightened up, shaking the brilliant drops from
her fingers, and glanced up into his face, her intuition feeling
immediately the change.
“What is the matter?”
“They’ve been around again--three of them!”
Her face clouded; she nodded gloomily.
“The beasts! Don’t mind them.”
“You were away a dreadfully long time,” he said restlessly.
She came to his side, passing her arm through his, smiling with the
pleasure of knowing how much she had been desired.
“All the fault of the poky engine.” Then she perceived the porch
and the trunks which he had dragged out in his fitful impatience,
and stopped with an involuntary exclamation of dismay.
“Time to break up camp,” he said fretfully. “It’s impossible here!”
“Yes; I suppose so,” she said slowly.
“I can’t stand being spied on--being watched. I can’t paint.”
“But it’s midsummer----”
“I know that, and yet it annoys me. I can’t bear to be idle.
There’s so much to be done! It isn’t that--it’s--it’s I want to get
away--to be alone. You understand?”
“Of course.”
She nodded, trying to conceal her disappointment, though, for a
moment, the horror of change, of the venture into an unknown land
was so keen, that she burst out suddenly:
“I hate to go!”
“I also--I hate to go,” he said gloomily.
“It’s not what it is now,” she said wistfully, with a little
gesture toward the wooded shelter which had been the first note of
home to her; “it’s all it has been.”
“But we’ll find another spot just as this was--away from the
world.” She turned away, but he caught her arm. “Inga, dear--why,
you are crying!”
“No, no--I am not,” she said, her lips quivering and her deep
gray-blue eyes swimming with the film of tears she could not
control. Then, all at once, she broke from him and ran away,
disappearing in the woods with an imploring wave of her hand. In
five minutes she was back, as though nothing had happened, smiling
bravely.
“Mr. Dan, I’m ashamed of myself!”
Whenever she wished to tease him out of a contrary mood by arousing
his ire, she addressed him as she had done in the old days of the
Arcade. This time, he understood that she was struggling with her
own moods, and smiled indulgently.
“If you behave that way, we’ll bundle right back to New York!”
“Oh, no; you won’t do that--not yet!” she cried, frightened by
the suggestion. She approached, looked at him curiously and said,
“Where shall we go?”
“You’ve forgotten what I promised you,” he said smiling.
“The sea!” she cried rapturously.
He nodded.
“But where? Won’t everything be crowded with people?”
“Not the place I’m thinking of,” he said. “A little island up off
the Maine coast, fifty miles from a railroad, where no human being
thinks of going--by ‘human being,’ you know what I mean--inhuman
beings. There are lots of fishermen and farmers and rocks and
curious old inlets, filled with pirates and sea-serpents.”
“Really--and the sea--the sea itself!”
“The sea that comes sweeping in with great, long, sleek combers.
Only, I have written to an old skipper of mine and don’t know why I
haven’t got an answer,” he added, frowning.
“Oh, in Maine--I forgot!”
She dove into her waist and brought out a letter in contrite
embarrassment. “Came to-day. I’d quite forgotten!”
He glanced at the postmark eagerly, nodded, and read the letter
rapidly.
“It’s all right,” he said, glancing up brightly. “Inga, there’s a
little shack waiting for us, in the wildest, rockiest cove you ever
imagined, and the sea goes thundering around the point!”
She was so excited that she could not believe it until he had shown
her the letter and she had devoured it herself with her own eyes.
Then she sprang into his arms, closing her hands about his neck,
glowing and tremulous, frantic with joy and happiness, in one of
those rare moments, seldom in the day, when she showed him the
tumultuous depths of her emotions. After a while they grew quieter,
and she said:
“All the same--I hate to go--it’s been so simple--so natural here,
hasn’t it?”
He nodded gravely.
“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.