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.