Dangerfield kept his promise to Inga. Breeding and training in him were too finely aristocratic for him to surrender weakly under the girl’s eyes. He went to his easel each morning with the early hours, sometimes in the company of Tootles, sometimes alone. Each day he passed Inga in the hall and exchanged cheery greetings with forced gaiety, but beyond this they did not meet. He laid before himself the task of finding himself if it could be done, now that his whole day had to be reorganized and the figure of the young girl banished from it. At the bottom he knew the task was beyond him. He knew himself and the child in the artist that cried out for comradeship and love.
If the change was noticed in the Arcade, no one spoke to him of it. Tootles had looked surprised when Inga had not appeared the first mornings, but kept his own counsel. Mr. Cornelius, too, after a first inquiry, made no further reference to Inga’s absence, though he made a point of dropping in more frequently.
The crisis brought the two men together in a closer companionship, in a subtle instinct of class loyalty. To cap it all, Mr. Cornelius, in his most formal manner, invited Dangerfield to dine with him on the occasion of his monthly pilgrimage to Delmonico’s.
At half-past seven, Dangerfield, who had been fidgeting in his studio, doing a dozen things by fits and starts, dressed and started down the hall. Two things had induced him to accept an invitation which threw himmomentarily back into the world he shunned. He realized how strong must be the sense of comradeship in Mr. Cornelius to break through his habits of tenacious secrecy. Moreover, his curiosity was strongly excited by the mystery of “the baron’s” monthly departureen prince, which had taxed the imagination of the Arcadians. Since the morning after his first arrival on the sixth floor, Dangerfield had never set foot in the old man’s den, for with the exception of Pansy Hartmann, for whom he showed a noticeable affection, Mr. Cornelius had never exchanged an intimacy.
When Dangerfield reached the end of the hall, he found the door open and Pansy, who had been hastily summoned, busy with the final touches of Mr. Cornelius’ tie, over which he was as particular as an old beau.
“All ready?” said Dangerfield, stopping at the threshold by discretion.
“Entrez, entrez, mon vieux!Come in—I am with you in one little moment!” cried Mr. Cornelius, who was in such a pitch of excitement that he was springing about like a débutante on the eve of her first ball. “Aha, we will make a night of it, a dinner like that at the Café Anglais and a bottle of wine to make you dream!Faisons la noce!two oldboulevardiers, deux vieux moustaches—hein? Panzee,ma mignonne, what are you doing there with that tie?”
“Why, Mr. Cornelius,” exclaimed Pansy, laughing, “how can I do anything when you’re prancing around like that? Stand still and put your chin up!”
“That is so—that is so. There, I’m frozen to the ground. What a night!”
Pansy thrust an imperious finger toward the ceiling, and he obeyed by elevating his chin, not without grumbling, while the operation was completed with nicety.
“There, you’re handsome as Chauncey Olcott!” saidPansy, smiling at his excitement. “You’ll have all the ladies twisting their heads after you.”
“My hat and my cane!” exclaimed “the baron,” as gayly as though he had cried, “My helmet and my sword!”
Pansy disappeared in the closet and emerged polishing a hat that might have come from a museum. Dangerfield, meanwhile, gave a last careful survey of the room. In one corner was a four-poster bed with the faded peacock-blue dressing-gown pendent below a tousled nightcap of gray silk. What furniture there was, and it consisted of a table, a chest of drawers, a bookcase, three chairs, and a massive Breton chest heavily reinforced with iron clasps, was mostly reminiscent of the First Empire which was “the baron’s” hobby, for the walls were covered with engravings of the great Conqueror. Between the windows was the full-length portrait of an actress of the last generation—a striking figure in the costume of Adrienne Lecouvreur, slender and towering, a magnetic brow, ethereal eyes, and, below, the smile of a pagan.
Dangerfield stood before the portrait in long and profound study. Mr. Cornelius, turning from a search through the confusion of his wardrobe for the newest pair of gloves, looked up and saw the reverie into which his friend had fallen.
“Elle était bien belle,” said Dangerfield, catching his eye.
“N’est ce pas?” The aristocratic little figure drew up in a sort of military attention. He glanced at the woman in the frame and then at the room in which they stood. “It was worth it,” he said smiling, with that loyalty unto sentiment that never dies in the soul of a Frenchman.
“What are you two talking about?” said Pansy, pouting.
“My hat and my cane!” claimed “the baron.”Page 316.
“My hat and my cane!” claimed “the baron.”Page 316.
“My hat and my cane!” claimed “the baron.”Page 316.
“I don’t think it’s at all decent of you to talk French before me.”
“There, there,ma petite amie!” said Mr. Cornelius, patting the pink cheeks. “Don’t scold! Monsieur Dangerfield was saying only what he could say of you—that the lady was very beautiful.”
“Did you know her?” said Pansy, opening her eyes.
“I had the great privilege of seeing her act,” said Dangerfield carefully, at which Mr. Cornelius sent him a pleased glance.
Pansy mollified, placed the odd hat upon “the baron’s” head, tilting it a little to one side, so as to give him a rakish look, and snuggled him into his overcoat, which likewise had a decided reminiscent note. Dangerfield felt a sudden pang in watching this affectionate solicitude—a feeling of an emptiness in his own life—of something that had been and had been taken away. The thought of Inga, of the close companionship, of the strange, elusive girl, who had watched over him and fought his struggles, threw him into such a swift dejection that Mr. Cornelius, noticing it, cried out:
“No blue devils to-night!En avant, mon vieux, and to the charge! Panzee, an old fellow kisses your cheek with respect and gratitude—merci!”
But as he started out, he stopped, mumbled something to himself, and going back to the chest, unlocked it with a key that hung from his watch-chain, and, holding the lid cautiously open, began to seek among rustling papers.
“He must have diamonds there,” said Pansy, laughing; “he makes such a time over that box!”
Mr. Cornelius took out several sheets of paper covered with figures, examined them carefully, thrust them in his pocket, and, after carefully locking the chest, led the way out, locking the door behind him.
Dangerfield forgot himself in a momentary absorption.He knew that his companion must receive an allowance on the first of the month, and that generally by the fifteenth it had melted away. What he knew of his past was indistinct. He had met the Comte de Retz (for Mr. Cornelius had more right to a title than the Arcadians suspected) in the first days of his own prodigal progress at Paris, where De Retz’s intemperance of play at the gaming-table was public property. Dangerfield remembered vaguely the story that had run of his infatuation for the beautiful Suzanne Danesco, and the wreck of his fortune at the gaming-table, which had been the gossip of Paris for a month and then forgotten; but he recalled these things indistinctly with the feeling that there had been some arrangement by which the Comte had effaced himself to preserve the future of his son, and undertaken the gradual discharge of his debts of honor. He had never referred to these memories to Mr. Cornelius, just as he himself knew that, of all his neighbors, the keen eyes of the man of the world had seen below the surface and comprehended the crisis through which he was passing.
Outside, Dangerfield suggested the subway, only to be met with a scornful denial. For one night a month, at least, the illusion must be revived in its completeness. They hailed a taxi and arrived thus at Delmonico’s. In the crowded room, their table was reserved and at each plate a gardenia was laid. Gustave, the head waiter, was at the chairs bowing recognition, visibly intrigued at the unprecedented spectacle of Mr. Cornelius arriving with a companion, nor was his surprise diminished by perceiving Dangerfield, whom he knew of old. Their entrance occasioned quite a stir among the diners, where the strangely distinctive figure of Dangerfield, with his one splash of gray amid the tangled black hair, was quickly recognized. Until this moment, he had felt no unease,too keenly interested in the unfolding mystery of his companion. But this entrance into the restaurant, this return into the old life affected him like a dash of cold water flung against his face. He felt the sudden turning of curious eyes, divined the excited flurry of whispered comments, and strode on, nervously recoiling, dimly aware that Gustave was addressing his companion as “Monsieur le Comte,” and that Mr. Cornelius, radiant as a collegian, was explaining that Gustave had served him in the old days when dining was an art and chefs like Joseph and Frédéric created masterpieces. He went to his seat, avoiding recognition of a dozen ready greetings, feeling all the old stubborn moroseness rising, angry at himself that he should have so thoughtlessly ventured back into the past which he had resolved to banish. All at once he was aware that Gustave was speaking to him with hasty caution,—Gustave on whose sphinxlike features was a look of dismay.
“Pardon, Monsieur Garford, one moment—excuse me—it will be better if I change your place.”
“This is all right,” he said, without much attention.
“I think you would prefer—that is—Mr. Garford—forgive me—there is some one quite near——”
Dangerfield looked up. Two tables away, directly facing him, in a party of ten or a dozen, his former wife was sitting.
“No; this will do,” he said coldly and sat down.
The test had brought back thesang-froidof the man of the world. He took his seat in a most natural manner, aware of what eyes must be watching his every expression, and, slipping his gardenia in his buttonhole, said, with a smile for the public, as he studied the menu which Mr. Cornelius had commanded:
“Really, de Retz, you are a connoisseur—the choice is perfection, just right—perfectly balanced. Excusemy moment’s distraction. It happens that my divorced wife is sitting at the table opposite.”
Mr. Cornelius hastily suggested changing seats.
“No; not for anything in the world,” said Dangerfield, with a grim smile. “Go on talking—Oysters from Ostend,petite marmité, filet de sole Café Riche—Bravo!”
Mr. Cornelius, thus encouraged, broke into an enthusiastic discussion of each dish, explaining that he had chosenfilet de sole Café Riche, rather thanMarguery, as the latter was apièce de résistancein itself, rather than the appropriate stepping-stone to the dish of the evening, which was acaneton Josephcooked with gooseberries andfine champagne, with a bottle of Chambertin genuinecuvée de 1872from the Marquis de Severin’s special reserve. While the old gourmet discoursed thus eloquently on the art of the immortal Vatel, Dangerfield looked at the woman who had been his wife, to whom he had yielded the period of his fullest youth. He did not shift his glance, he stared at her steadily, wondering, not taking pains to mask his curiosity, though he was aware that she flinched under the estimate. How was it possible that this woman, whom he saw now in the nakedness of her cold calculating, could have given him a moment’s torture!
“Really,” he thought to himself, “it must have been something in me, a need of an outward inspiration that blinded me and cloaked her with illusions,—I myself in love with what I profoundly longed for and created in my need!”
But if Louise had no longer power to wound him on his own account, she brought back to him, with overwhelming sadness, the memory of Inga, and the ceaseless, burning need that all the deeper sources of his nature had of her sustaining presence. Of those who were at the table, heknew almost all, men and women of a fashionable set, several defiant of social censure, others too firmly entrenched to be judged by their companions. Every one at the table must have known what Louise Bowden was, what she had done and would dare to do. This then was respectability—of an extreme cast, yet social respectability! Almost was he inclined toward Inga’s scorn of convention and defiance of society, of complete denial of the world to judge them with the same standards with which it accepted those who bent towards its outward forms.
“A little glass of Amontillado with the oysters,” said “the baron,” “just to flavor them!”
He looked down, his fingers closed over the slender neck of his glass that held the first golden stream back to forgetfulness. He hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and drank.
When he had groped his way down the hall and found with difficulty his door, one thing was clear to him even in the swirling, happy numbness of his brain. He knew now the secret of “the baron’s” strange existence, of his brilliant monthly recrudescence and the long days of subsequent denial. He knew now what the sheets of paper covered with ordered figures meant, and the explanation or the curious, whirring noises which often at the dead of night came from behind the door of Mr. Cornelius. “The baron” was still, as he had always been, a blind, insensate gambler, passionately absorbed in the quest of that touchstone of gamblers, the pursuit of the infallible system which once attained held the alchemy of success. From Delmonico’s they had gone to a select gambling-house in the Forties, where the Comte de Retz was as punctual as the calendar, and where he returned, night after night, until the quick and inevitable night when illluck overwhelmed his meager capital—a meager moment of dramatic sensations, and then the inevitable return to the bleak existence in the lone studio lit by the flare of an arc-light.
Dangerfield came into his room, threw on the single gold-shaded table-lamp and sat down beyond the circle of light that cut the shadows of the studio. He felt painfully, treacherously awake, and he knew that, for the black balance of the night, sleep would not come until he fell over with physical fatigue at the mingling of the dawn. His surroundings, which lately had come into his intimacy, rousing the pleasant sense of the harmonious, now were empty and hostile. The living touch was absent, in the absence of Inga, just as, in the early days of his apprenticeship, he had felt in his muddy attempts at painting, the absence of the illuminating sense of atmosphere.
How a human touch colors the inanimate world with the communicated warmth of its enchantment! Yes; her absence had changed all. It was no longer the spot for dreams he had called it—each tapestry chair and table no longer wrapped around with the memory of her, of returning hope and struggling ambition—but a cold and deserted thing, which claimed him, too, cold and deserted. He loved her beyond what he had thought possible, beyond what he had believed lay in him to love, not simply as a part, though the vital element in his life, but as the whole world, the window through which all sensations must come to him. He had felt this realization in the tricked-out gaiety of the restaurant, in the sudden lightening of his heart as he had stood behind Mr. Cornelius, looking up at the ghost of the fatal romance which had sent him into exile, comprehending the man who, over the flight of years, could still pronounce that the past had been worth all that had been and was to come.He had felt it in his revolt against all he had been born to, struggled against, and lived with in compromise. He felt it now in his isolation and exile, so overwhelmingly that he sprang up and flung on all the lights, terrified at the reality of his utter loneliness, staring at his reflection in the mirror as though at some uncomprehended stranger. The need in him now was as fierce as the horror of the isolation he had imposed on himself—which he could break with a word, which depended only on him.
After all, why not? What she had pronounced as her theory of life and love he had himself a hundred times acclaimed in conversation, heard dozens of others maintain. His brain was soaring on fiery wings with the divine frenzy of genius, which lifts itself up with pinions which consume themselves. He was drunk with the intoxication of the old world and with other days. There was something superb in it, something heroically mad—not the sordid drunkenness of small beer. He felt among the privileged of the earth. He had a cruel sense of power, the right to thrust aside petty plebeian scruples, to take what he needed. He was filled with the rage of living, desiring, conquering, to make an end of depression and weakness. Why should he stand on a scruple—that was hardly a scruple, a sentimental yielding to the conventions of right and wrong of a society of surface morality against which he had himself rebelled. He had but to cross the hall and knock, to swim back into the stream of youth and ambition. He pressed his hands to his hot temples, took a short fierce breath and said to himself:
“Will I do it? Now?”
At this moment, a knock sounded at the door. His heart stood still. Was it Inga—Inga who herself in her wretchedness had come to him, knowing his need? Hewent to it hastily, fearing, hoping. To his surprise, instead of the girl, it was Mr. Cornelius who stood at the door, beckoning and mysterious.
“Some one has entered my room, while we were away. Come; I show you.”
Following Mr. Cornelius, Dangerfield went down the hall for an examination. At the bottom, he remained skeptical, despite “the baron’s” assurance that the window had been locked and that the catch was now sprung. There were scratches on the surface of the iron lock of the chest and a spot of oil on the floor beside it. “The baron” was in a high state of excitement. The window-latch, he insisted, could have been sprung by an ordinary knife.
“But there are only two other rooms which give on the roof,” said Dangerfield; “Miss Quirley’s——”
“No; not that.”
“And Drinkwater’s, which has been empty for weeks.”
“Perhaps.”
“That is certain.”
“If so—why, then, don’t they put it in rent again?” said Mr. Cornelius, shaking his head. Nothing could convince him that an attempted burglary had not taken place. In fact, he confided the fact that he had several times had a suspicion that attempts had taken place before.
To Dangerfield, the proof seemed slight—what was there in the denuded room to entice a thief? But, in order to humor the old fellow, he nodded wisely and promised to aid him with a careful search on the morrow.
He left him and went back to his room, but the tyranny of insomnia still holding him, he changed into slippers, opened the door and, in an effort at physical fatigue, began to walk the long murky corridor. Alone, in hismechanical journey, back and forth, along the creaky way, wheeling at the same points so mechanically that he fell to counting his steps, he saw all at once, under the door of Inga’s room, a tiny ray of light come out. She was there, awake; she had heard him—was waiting, perhaps, wrung by the same torture which dominated him, feeling the same ache of separation. She was there—waiting!
His imagination began to whirl again. He had an impulse to break through things, to fling obstacles aside, to hurl down all that intervened; and yet he hesitated. A dozen times he approached the door in an angry revulsion against his self-imposed test, and a dozen times passed on. Once he stopped, leaning against the wall, staring at the knob, which seemed to turn under his eyes. She was there, she must be there, waiting miserably. The sensation was so acute that he felt her living, breathing presence on the other side of the door, her hand waiting on the knob that seemed to turn under his eyes! And yet he went away and continued up and down the hall, staring at the same points, counting the steps—up and down—until the sickly dawn flowed in like an inundation, and still the crack under her door shone like the blazing edge of a sword blade....
The next afternoon, his model dismissed in despair, Dangerfield sat, head in his hands, staring at the meaningless canvas. He could not work. He had not worked since the day he had sent Inga out of his life.
The drag of sleepless hours lay on him, and the profound void of the victory he had won in the long marches of the night. Sitting there, in graven silence, he asked himself:
“Why didn’t I go in?”
And when he had put the question to himself againand again, he understood. He had not yielded, because the need of the inspiration of a great love in his life was deeper than his need of love itself, because in the fulness of his maturity he comprehended that, in his artist’s ideality, only a love that meant aspiration and veneration could restore life to him, and that this love he must protect and hold sacred even against itself.
It was not that he did not comprehend the essential innocence of the girl’s offer, or the nobility of her courage, but that, deeper than his intellectual comprehension, he knew that in him a moral fire existed which he had not suspected until the love which had impelled him with longing to the charming figure of the girl had illuminated its depths. Despite all his reasons, despite a mental defiance of conventions, he knew that what called to him from a hidden consciousness was unselfishness, and by that token he knew, too, how much his whole being, his day, and his hope of the future loved and clung to her.
What had she felt these miserable days? He knew that she, too, had suffered. He had seen it in the stricken tensity of her silent, deep eyes, when they had passed in the hall, or when they had met in Tootles’ studio, where she went often now, to be near him silently, no doubt. And between them what a ridiculous barrier intervened—a distorted conception of liberty, born in the intimate tragedy of the past, fed by the ill-considered doctrines of the day—Yet at times he wondered if that were all, if there were not, below her avowed reasons, causes he could not divine. What did he know about her? The longer he had known her, the deeper into the mists her figure had receded. A few hints she had dropped—of her home, of her father; a few scraps of gossip about the young sculptor who had been here before him; a few indications; Costello’s recognition in the dance-hall; the haunting feeling, which had come to him in his days of distress, thatthere was something in all his exactions and struggles which was not new to her; the strange feeling that had possessed him at times that some one else was present at their side; her own calm insistence that what had passed before did not touch them now—all these confusing memories closed behind her, forbidding the return toward the past as though with impenetrable velvet folds of oblivion. Yet the strangeness of it all fascinated him—the audacity that had borne her where she was, the untamed pride which lingered in the slow-breaking, confident smile that suffused the room and his being with happiness; the echoes of hidden waters which sounded in her low, modulated voice, that had power to dispel hot fevers and bring him the cool of tranquillity, as though gentle fingers had passed across his forehead; the steady depths of the sea-blue eyes, which had looked gravely out upon the storm and the sunshine of life—all this had him in its cruel-sweet spell. His ears heard nothing but remembered echoes, and his eyes were clouded with the obsession of one figure, slender and supple, with the grace of an untamed animal, whose motions were like the rhythm of sweet sounds. He suffered so keenly the torture of these eluding charms that he sprang up with a groan, crying her name, and, all at once, he saw her there in the room, like a shadow, gazing down at him.
He did not dare to speak. He stood silently, his glance fastened on hers, across the little lapse of golden carpet which lay between them like stretches and stretches of space. He did not dare to speak; he was afraid of what her first words would bring, and this nameless terror was so overwhelming that at last he fell back in his chair and covered his face with his hands.
Then he was faintly aware that she was speaking, that her body was swaying toward him, like a perfume spreading through the room.
“Mr. Dan, I can’t—I can’t bear it!”
The next moment he had sprung up; she was in his arms, her head pressed against his shoulder, trembling like a child, crying:
“Oh, no, I can’t bear it; I can’t bear to see you suffer.”
“Yes; that is true,” he said solemnly—waiting.
“I was there last night behind the door,” she said, in a whisper. “Oh, why didn’t you call me?”
“Why didn’t you come?” he said, with a quick breath.
Her lips moved as though she were about to speak, and then stopped.
“You were not serious, that was not the true reason—what you said about marriage,” he said tumultuously.
She disengaged herself from his arms and raised her eyes to his face, furrowed with the sleepless pain which she had drawn across it. She looked at him thus, a long wait, her lip wavering. Then she said, without averting her eyes:
“Must it be so? You still insist?”
His answer was a cry, inarticulate, wrung from him despite his effort at control, at finding her still unreconciled.
“Wait,” she said hastily. She looked away from him and then down and about her forehead and the slender lips the lines drew in hardness. “I can’t; I cannot see you suffer. I know that—that is all I know!” she said desperately, and she flung back her head as though flinging sudden tears from her eyes.
“Inga!” he burst out, but she stopped him quietly, her fingers over his lips.
“I will do as you wish,” she said firmly, “on one condition.” She seemed to be thinking a moment, and all at once she continued rapidly.“You are an honorable man—I know that—I knew that last night—you will do what you say you will do. Look at me, Mr. Dan; promise me on your honor, that whenever I come to you and ask you—you will give me back my liberty, that you will set me free.”
“Whenever?” he said slowly, staring at her.
She hesitated, and her eyes seemed searching into his with faraway questioning.
“IfI come to you, then,” she said carefully.
“If you ever come to me with such a demand,” he said slowly, “I shall do everything to give you back your freedom. That is a promise. I would have done so, anyhow.”
She nodded as though satisfied. Then with a dignity that held him breathless, she placed her hand on his and said as though to her the words constituted a ceremony,
“Mr. Dan, your life will be my life. I will have no other thought but you in my heart—and no other desire but to give you what is in me to give.”
“Then—you will marry me,” he said slowly.
“Whenever you wish.”
“This is final, Inga? You will not change?”
“You did not understand,” she said quietly. “Nothing a stranger can say can make me more yours than I am now.”
“And you love me?” he cried tempestuously. “Inga, that is what I want to hear you say. You love me so that you can’t think of anything else, so that you can’t keep from me, so that to be out of my sight is torture?”
She caught her breath at the frenzy in his voice.
“Would I be here if I didn’t?” she said.
He stood away from her a moment, scanning her tense face greedily, satisfied at last. Yes; she loved him, beyond her pride, beyond her stubborn beliefs, beyond her fears even! She loved him so that nothing stood against his need that cried out for her!
He put out his arms, swept away by a confusing intoxication. She seemed to sink into his embrace, the moist, warm lips, half parted, which met his, were almost lifeless in their sudden frailty, but the hands against his throat were like ice. He hung on this first kiss as though in it lay his salvation; a strange, terrifying contact in which he seemed to be drawing her up to him, taking from her not only all her love but all her strength, all her youth, all the pulsing vigor of her body, its softness and its freshness to quicken his tired veins. He had taken everything, and yet it seemed to him that she had given nothing. He lifted her face to his, gazing into it with a hunger that had awakened never to be satisfied. Her lips were smiling, but in her eyes was the sadness of renunciation, the melancholy of the gray sea when the heavy winter weighs upon the land, and the bitter mists creep across the face of the day—the sadness of the sea that holds the secrets of time.
“Ah, Inga,” he cried, with sudden divination, “don’t look like that! Believe me, it’ll be you, only you—all my life!”
She looked into his eyes and smiled, and while she smiled, the tears rose and fell.
The whole Arcade seemed to change under the magic of Dangerfield’s radiating happiness. Though neither he nor Inga ever referred to what had been settled between them, every one seemed to understand with the first glimpse of his glowing face. The singing in his heart seemed to spread its note of joy insensibly among his neighbors. Perhaps he had not comprehended before how they had watched breathlessly, waiting the outcome in fear and wonder.
As though a tension had relaxed, the hall seemed to sparkle with life; doors stood open in friendly invitation, and a constant running-in and -out filled the floor with excited whispers and young laughter. O’Leary, at the piano, pounded away for dear life, rolling out infectious marches, which had Tootles wheeling and counter-marching in imitation of his favorite Amazon parade. “The baron” trotted about, singing to himself snatches of Boulevard songs of other days, mumbling over certain portions which might be understood. Miss Quirley was so sentimentally aroused that she clung to Inga’s hand at the first opportunity. Indeed, she would have liked to give away to the consoling pleasure of tears, but there was something about Inga’s profound and grave attitude which forbade such demonstrations, and she was forced to spend her emotional reserves upon Myrtle, whose wedding-day was fixed for the middle of the week.
The marriage was to be at high noon, the wedding-party was to return to the Arcade, where Dangerfield was to give the breakfast. Mr. Pomello had contemplated animpressive banquet in a private salon of the neighboring hotel, with arbors of flowers, scattered flunkeys, and set pieces of horticultural dishes, which represented to his mind splendor in the shape of plateaus of lobster salad with Cupids and hearts entwined in crustacean decorations, frozen sculpture in colored ices, with fish and game entrées from culinary taxidermists. The proposal was met with indignation and peremptorily vetoed by the lady most involved.
The slightest suggestion of being displayed, of being put on parade, sent her into gusts of temper. Mr. Pomello, who could not understand the reasons of her impatience, acceded hastily. In fact, during the last week he had been on tenterhooks, so fearful that she would change her mind and throw him over at the last moment that his stress of mind was patent to all. In truth, there was reason for his apprehension. Myrtle Popper, as the day approached, grew more restless and unsettled. For a word, she would flare up into a sudden anger, nor try as he would, could he divine what action of his would displease her. With the others, particularly toward Millie Brewster, who appeared to avoid her, she was haughty, abrupt, and suspicious of a whisper or a low-pitched tone, as though she felt she were being made the subject of ridicule. King O’Leary, during this time, was noticeably absent, seldom appearing in the studio and then only in the company of others.
The afternoon before the ceremony arrived, and the hours were spent in excited preparation for the morrow. Dangerfield, camped on a step-ladder and bombarded with copious and futile suggestions from Tootles below, was endeavoring to hang a symbolic Cupid, with arrows of mistletoe, in the center of radiating garlands of smilax, which ran to every point of vantage in the room. Flick, stretched on the sofa, his hands under his head, wasadding his yawning suggestions to the general confusion of the girls, who were passing and repassing, their arms heaped with trailing greens. Mr. Pomello, by the step-ladder, had been draped with vines until he disappeared under them like a stone satyr overgrown with ivy.
O’Leary, who had finished the moving of great pieces of furniture, had gone to the open window to cool off, when Myrtle Popper came abruptly over to his side. He looked up, measured the distance which separated them from the laughing group about the submerged Mr. Pomello, noticed the look in the girl’s eyes, and realized that the interview he had persistently avoided had come.
“Hot work,” he said, smiling to hide his confusion.
“Take me out to dinner to-night,” she said directly.
“To-night?” he said, amazed.
“Yes; I’ve got to talk to you!”
He shook his head, and his face grew grave.
“No; can’t do it, Myrtle—sorry.”
“You mean, you won’t?”
He nodded.
“Put it that way.”
Her hand closed tensely over his arm.
“King, for heaven’s sake let me see you; let me talk to you! You’ve avoided me all the week. I’m desperate!”
“Look out!” he said hastily, drawing his arm away.
“I don’t care,” she said defiantly. “Listen: Go down the hall, down to the third floor—there’s no one there—and I’ll come after you.”
“No, I won’t,” he said angrily.
“You won’t? King, you must, you must—if you don’t—I—I shall scream—go mad. I can’t keep up!”
“Look here,” he said roughly; “you’ve got no right to act this way—you’re about to be married, too—it ain’t right, Myrtle. You’ve chosen—play square!”
“How do you know I’m going through with it?” she said, with a catch in her voice.
“Here, steady now—none of that!” he said, with an apprehensive glance backward.
“Lean out the window; they won’t pay no attention to us,” she said, under her breath. “King, you’ve got to listen to me! If you don’t—I’ll—I’ll throw my arms about you—I’ll do something dreadful!”
“You won’t do anything of the kind.”
“Yes, I will,” she said obstinately. She spoke under her breath, her shoulders close to his, her lips drawn, and her gaze set in sternness over the dusty roofs and sooty chimneys. Suddenly she drew off the engagement ring Mr. Pomello had given her, a magnificent solitaire.
“Pretty fine—isn’t it?—cost over a thousand, King—some diamond!”
“There’ll be more of those, too,” said O’Leary cunningly.
She held it gingerly in her fingers and extended her arm over the sheer dark descent into the thronged street.
“You say the word, and it’s down it goes.”
“And what’d Pomello say?”
“Pomello and all his rocks can go”—she laughed gaily at him, defiantly—“well, you know where—if you say the word.”
“I’ve told you my advice,” he said, looking away from her. “It’s your life, not mine. What have I got to do with it?”
“Shall I marry him?” she said obstinately.
“You’d be a fool if you didn’t!”
“Won’t you ever understand?” she said, in a low voice.
“You ask my advice—I’ve told you it.”
“You’ve told me nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you understand—won’t you understand that I’m throwing myself at you, King? Have I got to make myself plain?”
“Don’t,” he said hastily.
“What do I care? It’s my last chance. Listen, King: Say the word, and I’m yours. It’s you I want—it’syou. You’ve made me say it—I don’t care. Think of me what you want, but if you’ll as much as wave your little finger at me, King, I’ll follow—and that’s flat!”
She stopped breathlessly and waited the answer which was forming in his mind.
“Well?” she said, at last, and her hand stole out and lay over his.
“You should not have said it,” he mumbled, “you ain’t in your right mind.”
“That’s not the answer I want,” she said abruptly. “King, give it to me straight. Is it to be me and you—or——”
“You’re right, Myrtle,” he said, frowning; “I’ve got to hand it out straight. Well, I’m sorry. It can’t be.”
“You’re saying that because you’re only thinking of the money, because you think it’s too big an opportunity for me, that you oughtn’t to stand in my way. Don’t you think I’m flesh and blood? You don’t think I can forget that—that time you took me in your arms——”
“I shouldn’t have done it!”
She laughed, a laugh that made Inga turn and glance in their direction.
“Look out!” he said hastily.
“I don’t care; let them all hear! Well?”
“Well, kid, I’m sorry—sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I had no right to do what I did, because——”
“Because you don’t love me,” she said quickly.
“Not in that way,” he said lamely, looking away fromher, across the chimneys, to the river with its floating steam clouds.
“Any one else?” she said finally.
He shook his head.
“And what you said’s the truth?”
“The whole truth.”
“Yes; I guess it is,” she said quietly.
They stood a moment longer at the window, gazing aimlessly. Then she slipped the ring back on her finger and returned to the crowd.
The wedding-breakfast was a great success. The bride went through the day with complete equanimity, without a trace of the irritation of the past week, and came back to the Arcade a vision of youth and gaiety under the gossamer veil. She was in the liveliest spirits and danced so repeatedly with King O’Leary that all marveled, with the exception of Mr. Pomello, who moved about quite bewildered, as though he could not comprehend that this thing of beauty and joy was actually his. At the supper, every one made a speech of congratulation, with prophecies of future bliss to the bride and groom, in a wave of optimism which spread from Mr. Teagan’s simple, romantic soul to Tootles, who forgave Pansy Hartmann and surreptitiously clung to her fingers under the table-cloth. Then King O’Leary rose to his toast. What made him reveal what he did no one could quite understand—perhaps it was the treacherous sentimental currents of such affairs; perhaps the explanation lay in the cunning of the punch; perhaps the real reason was understood by only Myrtle herself.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, beginning awkwardly enough, “you’ve all heard about what Mr. Teagan had to say about wedded bliss—”
“Thirty years, and we’ve yet to have our first growl!” said Teagan joyfully, with his glass upraised to his better half.
“Thirty years and never a growl,” said O’Leary solemnly, and those near him saw that he hesitated and shifted nervously. “Well, all I’ve got to say is, I hope—” He waved one hand awkwardly toward the bride and groom—“I hope you get off better than I did.” At this, every one drew back with a scraping of chairs and looked at him in amazement. O’Leary breathed hard and went on obstinately: “Yes; I wish you never get what I got! I haven’t said anything about it—a man’s own affairs are his own affairs, I guess. But ten years ago, I sat down just as you’re sitting down and just as proud and happy. And for a year and a half I was just that—the happiest and proudest man in North Ameriky or any other Ameriky. Then something went wrong—I never knew; I wasn’t given the benefit of knowing even that. Perhaps the going was too hard—perhaps—well, anyhow, it was out in Seattle and luck was against us. We were stranded for sure—seventeenth of April—that was the day. I came back to the rooms and found them empty, everything gone, cleaned out, even to the tooth-brush on the wall and not a word of why or where for. That was eight years ago. I never knew what was wrong or why she did it. I’ve never heard of her since. I don’t know as I ought to have chucked my tale of woe into this sort of an affair. Well, perhaps, it may be worth while to remember there are other sides—sides it’s better to keep away from. I hope you’ll get a better deal than I did, Mr. and Mrs. Pomello!”
He sat down abruptly and every one began talking in excited tones. Dangerfield, who was watching the blurred, staring gaze of Myrtle Pomello, formed his own opinions of why O’Leary had done what he had done,and possibly Mr. Cornelius also understood with his shrewd, kindly glance. As for the others, they were so frightened at the revelation that they flung themselves nervously into a revulsion of momentary gaiety—all except Millie Brewster. She sat quite still, looking down, and never said a word until they all rose from the table. Then she disappeared without any one’s remembering just when she had left.
A week later, with only King O’Leary present, Dangerfield and Inga were married before a justice of the peace, and departed quietly for the lakes of New Hampshire, where Dangerfield had gone as a boy, and where, in the unfashionable month of May, he sought the seclusion and solitude of awakening nature, which his own reawakening soul had begun to crave. It had been her wish that there should be as little ceremony as possible, and from the court-room they drove directly to the station.
“I can’t bear to think of other people watching us at such a time,” she had said. “I want to feel alone.”
He had nodded assent, grateful for the depth of delicacy which he divined in her. Now, in the carriage, O’Leary left behind on the curb with still uplifted hat, he had a feeling of being indeed alone, alone with strange thoughts which surprised him, alone with the sudden stranger who sat silently by his side, whose thoughts he could not divine, alone and yet violently and abruptly apart. She had passed through the ceremony as one steeled to an ordeal, gravely calm, without useless words, neither showing joy, nor elation, nor trace of shyness or excitement. When he had put the ring on her finger and the words had been pronounced which made them man and wife, she turned and looked at him—a long, searching glance that moved him so that he forgot hissurroundings gazing into the profound eyes that seemed to open to him the road to tears. The judge joked him for a laggard; he caught himself, glanced down at her, and kissed her hurriedly.
“Best man’s privilege!” said the judge, chuckling, while the attendants grinned.
She gravely offered her cheek to O’Leary, who hesitated and then raised her hand to his lips.
When they were at last alone, Dangerfield said abruptly:
“You can take it off now; you don’t need to wear it—the ring.”
She took off her glove and held up the little hand with the golden circle shining among the slender fingers. Then she drew the glove on again.
“No; I shall wear it.”
He felt a strangeness in this intimacy, almost a diffidence. He wondered why he could not speak to her, but he remained silent—he could not mention trivial things, and what lay next to their hearts seemed forbidden. For the thoughts that had come to him now seemed to be the beginning of the barrier which would grow between them day by day, month by month, the prohibition that every one instinctively erects to solitudes of the soul from the encroachment of complete possession.
He had taken the final step, and he felt its finality; he had burned his bridges behind him—there was now no retreat back into the life from which he had come, into that kingdom of caste that, despite the devastation it had worked on him, still held him with remembered instinct.
“It’s ended. This will be my life from now on—a life of work. The other, the old associations, the old friends are gone,” he said to himself. “I have cut myself off from all that—whatever happens. I have done the right thing. I can never leave her now—no matter what happens. This is final; this is what I wanted.”
It was done, and he had wished it done. Yet he was surprised at the stir in him which the realization had brought, and, though he was angry at himself, he was conscious of a certain unreasoning rebellion, not so much at the fact that his marriage meant to him the seeking of another world but that his freedom of choice had ended. The feeling seemed to him almost disloyalty. He hated himself for entertaining it, and then he glanced at Inga, sitting so straight and grave by his side, and wondered curiously if such secret thoughts could live behind the brooding of her eyes.
“What a rabble, what an insanity of noise and ugliness!” he said, at last, glancing out the window at the torpid, living masses in the street, and the ugly, vacant masses above, which shut out the sky. “Thank God, we’re getting away to something clean and real!”
She nodded.
“I’m glad.”
And this was all they said to each other—until they had gone through the flurry of the station and found their compartment. The porter stowed their bags, glanced at them with a smile, and went out, closing the door. Presently the train began to move, and something black and stifling closed about them. The same gravity still lay upon her, the same faraway brooding in her eyes. All at once, at the compelling touch of his hand, her glance met his, and then her lips smiled bravely.
“Doesn’t it seem strange to you?” he said quietly.
“Very.”
“I feel as if I have done the last thing I wanted to do—brought sorrow into your life,” he said, in despair. “I don’t know; I can’t understand—you seem to have gone further from me than ever before.”
She looked at him again, with the same intense, propheticscrutiny she had given him after the ceremony. Then she put out her hand and drew his into the warm shelter of hers.
“Don’t try to say anything—we can’t—not now,” she said. They continued to sit thus side by side silently, while the train ran on into the fading day.
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 doryappeared. 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 sureinstinct, 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.