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, feelingin 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.
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, acrossthe 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, duringthe 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 knowyou!”
“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.
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:
“Good work to-day. I’ll make something big out of that sketch, that inlet seen through the mist—bully skyline,and taken just from the right spot. There’s something going on in me, the power to feel effects, not simply to transcribe them—thanks to you. You’ve done a bigger thing than just getting hold of me, Inga; you’ve given me back the power of sensations—that’s youth, that’s the artist. Well, to be an artist is to retain youth, I suppose, the ability to receive sensations. You’ve got that instinct yourself, primitive, savage, but it’s there in everything you do. And I get it from you, from watching you, from feeling through your eyes. That’s the big thing—to feed me with sensations. You see that’s what civilization has taken from us, the power of sensations, passion, love, hate, fear—all great sensations of the artist. Civilization steps in and fences us about; passion exists only when it is a destructive force; love even—blind, romantic love—civilization has turned into an economical partnership; hatred, the fierce, cleansing passion to destroy, is taken from us, even fear, the greatest of all, the fear of great unknown nature and hidden voices in the sky, the sea and the woods, the terror of the night when the other world may return—civilization has deprived us of that, too, by explaining it. Civilization is constantly at war with our elemental nature. But to the artist, the elemental, the world of the instincts and sensations is the world of creation. That’s why we break through conventions, why we seem constantly in revolt against society—the need of sensation. To convey, one must be keen to receive—Too abstruse? Well, that’s what I am living in, reveling in now—yes, for the first time in my life.”
She listened, her large eyes intent on him, her brows a little drawn, nodding when he came to an end. Yet he wondered. He had a queer, half-humorous feeling that she had understood nothing, and yet that she was industriously storing away his words, as a squirrel buries food against the winter, for some further use—for some other queer turn of her existence.
At the bottom, he was content that she should acquiesce and not discuss, that she lay before him in a languid, graceful picture looking out at him from eyes that were like the uttermost sea. With her, he felt absolutely, pleasantly alone with himself, in a stimulating self-communion, his imagination rekindled, his mind taking flame with new ideas. And this mental fertilization was due, as he himself acknowledged, to the charm of his existence with her, to the curiosity she had awakened in him with the abrupt releasing of riotous, youthful nature, even as a wild grace and glory had come into her eyes with the liberty of her released hair, which came tumbling and turning about her slender, dark face. Sometimes, when she stood on the edge of a cliff, she flung her hair completely free, her head thrown back, her throat bared, lying back on the arms of the wind.
“What a trick civilization has played on her!” he thought, at such times. “She should be a bride of a Viking rover, not of me.”
One night, in mid-August, when every leaf lay flat upon the torpid air, he awoke with a restless sense of loss. The room rose luminous in the flood of moonlight. He turned to the couch at his side. It was empty.
“Inga?” he said softly.
Then he repeated his call, and there was no answering sound. He did not feel alarm, knowing well her moods, but, being wakeful, he felt a curiosity to know where her impulse had taken her. He rose and stood a moment at the threshold in the warm night. From where he stood, the cove lay revealed, the mellow sands and the back of the cliff, inky there in the frown of the full moon which flooded the shore, the water, and the dominion of the air above him. Then he went quietly up the path, and stoleover the bank. Below, in the phosphorescent waters that rose luminously over her white body, Inga was floating over the long, slow, in-drifting swell. He moved down cautiously in the deep shadows, careful to make no sound, taking his seat on a projecting ledge. Below, the sanded strip lay glistening like an Arabian Nights’ field of jewels.
It was hot and so still that every movement in the air was arrested; even the twisted bulk of the moon and the few pallid stars which showed seemed drowsy with sleep, in an unnatural sleep, a slumber laid upon the night by witchcraft. She lay upon the back of the scarcely stirring sea, her body a confused and softened mass against the green-black depth and the ripple of the phosphorus which ran over her, glistening in swarming fiery multitudes at a movement of her feet or hands, was like a gossamer of beaded gold outlining the slender limbs. She floated, her arms outstretched, her head turned upward in the full glitter of the moon, her black hair, like sea-grasses floating about the dim oval of her face, and so immobile was her pose, so devoid of anything physical, that he felt as he sat there and watched her, that he had surprised a pagan nymph, stealing back in the silences of a hostile world, to worship in ecstasy pale Diana, goddess of the night.
He remained silent, scarcely drawing a breath for fear of being heard, in a sort of devotional ecstasy also. Before him was the mystery of timeless nature, of forbidden spaces, of the great innocent body of the world which each night returns to its maidenly solitude and waits serene the moment when the transient horde of men shall pass, and the day again shall wrap her in silence and in solitude, even as the unconquered night. Under his eyes lay the mystery of the living flesh, of the spark of life which meant Woman to him—Woman, the glowing atom which had drifted hither and thither and settled amoment into his arms, to wake all his faculties, all his emotions and all his aspirations, and at the end of all this tireless giving to remain—undivined. What did he know of her even now—of this woman whom the world called his, whence she had come or where she would end.
“If I should die this year or the next, what would be her life?” he thought, and, for a moment, he strove profoundly to tear aside the heavy fold of the future. He saw her attaching herself again to some man, of that he was certain, obeying some divine impulse to accomplish her purpose, and the thought of that other man of the future filled him with a restless melancholy.
“The truth is,” he said to himself, “love as much as we can, we remain always alone, alone in the things we do not dare to tell each other, alone by the barrier the future lays between us. After me—what?”
All at once over the surface of the water, there came a sudden dripping shower of sparks. Inga turned to the shore, her body growing out of the waters as the goddess herself once rose to beauty and to life. Before the incomparable beauty of the scene he could not restrain an exclamation. She sprang to the shore and turned, frightened.
“Inga!” he cried hastily.
Instantly she turned and fled over the jeweled beach, bounding away like a young deer, while back over her shoulder came her laugh, gay and tantalizing. He sprang up in turn, with a sudden, impetuous rage to pursue and overtake her, and then quickly checked himself and resumed his seat. Presently, after long minutes, he heard a light crunching in the sand behind him and the next moment her moist hands closed over his eyes.
“Do you think I’m an awful person?” she cried, laughing.
He turned and caught her yielding body, soft andpliant in the folds of a great bathrobe, and drew her down into his arms.
“So that’s what you do when you get Bluebeard fast asleep,” he said, with a laugh in his throat which she knew.
She nodded, and her arms stole up and around him.
“What were you thinking of?” he said, after a moment, wondering what thoughts had been in her as she lay in the contemplation of the luminous night.
“I? I was thinking how delicious it was.” She stopped, laughed a little, and added, “Must I tell—well, then—how delicious it was to bathe all alone away from every one, with no clothes on!”
“Was that all?” he said, with a sudden disillusionment. But instantly he added: “No; that wasn’t it—that’s a fib. What was behind those eyes, Inga, witch from the sea?”
She shook her head with feigned ignorance. Yet about her lips there floated a strange, wistful smile, and her eyes, as they watched him, seemed to have depths as forbidding as the night about them.
For weeks they had no news from the Arcade, except a postal from King O’Leary. It was far into September before a batch of letters, which had journeyed back and forth and had been reenclosed, arrived with news of the outer world. There were several of no importance—notices of firms soliciting patronage, and advertisements—but among them were two letters which Dangerfield pounced upon eagerly—the first from Flick, with a Southern postmark which excited their curiosity, the second from Tootles, which was deferred for a later reading.
The New Imperial Lodging House,Jiggs Rest,Georgia.Temperature, 105 in the cellar.Dear kind folks swept by ocean breezes:I’m in trouble again—awful trouble, but this time it’s desperate. I’ve lost the best pal in the world; I have forfeited the respect of the whitest white man in Manhattan; I have ruined, blighted, dynamited, sold out, and Judas-Iscarioted my best friend. I shall never face him again, never look into his reproachful eyes. I couldn’t—I couldn’t. It would break me all up; I should crumble and weep like a maiden. He has forgiven me much, but he will never,neverforgive this. I shall never return unless a scheme I am looking into here turns out big money and I can come back proudly, with my wallet cracking, ready to make amends. It’s all about the pride of Tootles’ heart, the masterpiece which was to create a new art, to dignify the advertising profession and put a dress suit into the home of every flat-climber. But first—The address may surprise you. You’re not as surprised as me; I’ve been here about five days—I think. Just how I came is also hazy, but the evidence is I came in a smoker, under a smoker, or on top of asmoker. Likewise, somewhere up or down the road is a collection of trunks, boxes, and barrels belonging to me and containing heaven knows what. I likewise annexed a coon-dog. He is with me. I admire him because he manages to get several square meals a day. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. I have named him Remorse—it’s the way he looks at me. The last city I remember is Wilmington. I likewise have some faint recollections of a milkman—a charming fellow, in West Philadelphia.At any rate, I’m here—until I make enough to get out. I could take all the money away from these rubes, only there isn’t any money to take. My best chance is selling a Wimpheimer & Goldfinch, silklined, pointed cuff, velvet collar, two-button-and-braid-down-the-trousers dress suit for one week’s board and ten dollars flat to Jiggstown’s chief of police, who’s hankering at the chance of a lifetime to wear one but’s afraid of beingREMARKED!Which brings me to the point.How did I acquire thirty-two dress suits, sizes 38 to 42, 18 white-piqué vests, three winter overcoats, and one golf suit? At least I did have them, because I’ve got a little paper that tells me so in my pocket. How it got in my pocket I don’t know. Where these are at present, I don’t know, with the exception of three dress suits and a winter ulster that seem to have stuck by me. If it would only snow I might sell the overcoats and go after the dress suits. I’ve got two checks for Chattanooga, three for Miami and one for Oscaloosa. Where I acquired all those trunks, I don’t know. I suppose the dress suits are in them. I can’t imagine where else they can be.It all began so peacefully too. I’d played Wimpheimer & Goldfinch backward and forward and three times around the corner until I had them feeding out of my hand. When everything was set, I hired an open-face dray and tucked the Well-dressed Man in it—uncovered—with a bunch of palms at the head and the foot and started down Broadway. Say, we gathered a mob about us that had to be beaten apart! I’d tipped off the reporters—a few particular friends of mine—that this was something new in publicity about to be pulled off, and when they saw us floating down the mob, they began to pull the coat off me to get the inside story. All I would give them was a bouquet of dark and mysterious hints. Picture by famous artist, identity profound secret, fabulous price, every figure supposed to be a close portrait of some of the swells higher up (whichwas true—six flights up). That started them on a fine guessing-bee. Well, when Wimpy and Goldy looked out the windows and saw what was coming, it was all off. They wanted to pin a medal on me and take me into the firm. We set the canvas up in the main showrooms, and business was over for the day. At this point, there came upon the scene a little gink by the name of Steinwilly or something close to that name.“Our purchasing agent,” says Mr. Goldfinch, with his eyes still bulging at the Well-dressed Man.“Shall we talk business over a little gentle lunch,” says Steinwilly pleasantly.’Course that’s a way they have down there; they think if they buy you a five-dollar meal you’re going to come down a thousand or two. So I nodded and we sauntered out.“Ever try a royal-smile cocktail?” says Steinwilly.I knew that game, too, but I looked him over and sized up his capacity, and I said to myself, “Two can play at that.” There’s where I was wrong—besides it was a hot day. Well, we sat down and I plumped out my terms. Twelve hundred outright and three hundred extra if it took on and they ran it another year. I was figuring on falling back to a flat thousand, you see. Steinwilly looked terribly distressed at this, but I knew that game, too, so I proposed another flock of royal smiles. He brightened up at once—reckon he must have been living on them for the past year. So we matched, and I won. Then we decided to take in a show, and we matched for the taxi, and then for the tickets.“Would you match twelve hundred or nothing for the picture,” he said smoothly.“Nothin’ doin’,” I said.He sort of sized me over and decided to wait a little longer. Now, I don’t know just exactly what happened after this. I know we stayed together for a good part of the night, for all I remember is seeing royal smiles (they’re pink, you know) blooming on every bar. Whether I left him or he left me, I don’t know. Fact there’s a good deal I don’t know, or why, or when, or where, but the awful outstanding fact is Steinwilly and I must have matched and I must have sold Tootles’ masterpiece for a bunch of dress suits. The worst of it is: Where are the dress suits? The memorandum I’ve got is signed “Steinwilly,” and there’s an awful scrawl “per special agreement” but if I got the dress suits, did I keep them? I don’t like the appearanceof Remorse on the scene. Did I swap a dress suit for this bandy-legged pup, I wonder? I’ll have to work down to Chattanooga before I’ll know.Honest, I’m all broke up—what will Tootles say? I don’t dare write him.Chattanooga (later).There’s no doubt about it—The dress suits are here, most of them. I met a conductor on the way who greeted me like a long-lost brother. Seems I paid my fare by contributing one to his beautiful appearance. I wonder how many more are roaming the sunny South? Couldn’t work the sheriff in Jiggstown, but as I was eating on tick, he concluded he’d save money by buying me a railroad ticket out. Remorse is here with me.Miami.Located more dress suits, likewise ran into a traveling man whom I swapped two dress suits with, for about half a ton of patent bottle-openers. I found half the dress suits gone and all kinds of junk in their place, folding tooth-brushes, histories of the South, etc. Guess I must have gotten into a traveling man’s convention. Am at work selling out the stock, slow business—weather against me.Wonder what I’ll find at Oscaloosa.Break the news to Tootles, won’t you? The way I’m headed now it looks as though I’d reach the Arcade via Panama and Japan. Let me know what really did happen with that body-snatcher Steinwilly. Honest, I’m sick over it. I shall never,neverforgive myself.Flick.P. S. I expect to do considerable sightseeing down here, but I’ll get a letter if you send itcare HankThe Jackson House.At the Bar.
The New Imperial Lodging House,
Jiggs Rest,
Georgia.
Temperature, 105 in the cellar.
Dear kind folks swept by ocean breezes:
I’m in trouble again—awful trouble, but this time it’s desperate. I’ve lost the best pal in the world; I have forfeited the respect of the whitest white man in Manhattan; I have ruined, blighted, dynamited, sold out, and Judas-Iscarioted my best friend. I shall never face him again, never look into his reproachful eyes. I couldn’t—I couldn’t. It would break me all up; I should crumble and weep like a maiden. He has forgiven me much, but he will never,neverforgive this. I shall never return unless a scheme I am looking into here turns out big money and I can come back proudly, with my wallet cracking, ready to make amends. It’s all about the pride of Tootles’ heart, the masterpiece which was to create a new art, to dignify the advertising profession and put a dress suit into the home of every flat-climber. But first—The address may surprise you. You’re not as surprised as me; I’ve been here about five days—I think. Just how I came is also hazy, but the evidence is I came in a smoker, under a smoker, or on top of asmoker. Likewise, somewhere up or down the road is a collection of trunks, boxes, and barrels belonging to me and containing heaven knows what. I likewise annexed a coon-dog. He is with me. I admire him because he manages to get several square meals a day. I don’t know how he does it, but he does. I have named him Remorse—it’s the way he looks at me. The last city I remember is Wilmington. I likewise have some faint recollections of a milkman—a charming fellow, in West Philadelphia.
At any rate, I’m here—until I make enough to get out. I could take all the money away from these rubes, only there isn’t any money to take. My best chance is selling a Wimpheimer & Goldfinch, silklined, pointed cuff, velvet collar, two-button-and-braid-down-the-trousers dress suit for one week’s board and ten dollars flat to Jiggstown’s chief of police, who’s hankering at the chance of a lifetime to wear one but’s afraid of beingREMARKED!Which brings me to the point.
How did I acquire thirty-two dress suits, sizes 38 to 42, 18 white-piqué vests, three winter overcoats, and one golf suit? At least I did have them, because I’ve got a little paper that tells me so in my pocket. How it got in my pocket I don’t know. Where these are at present, I don’t know, with the exception of three dress suits and a winter ulster that seem to have stuck by me. If it would only snow I might sell the overcoats and go after the dress suits. I’ve got two checks for Chattanooga, three for Miami and one for Oscaloosa. Where I acquired all those trunks, I don’t know. I suppose the dress suits are in them. I can’t imagine where else they can be.
It all began so peacefully too. I’d played Wimpheimer & Goldfinch backward and forward and three times around the corner until I had them feeding out of my hand. When everything was set, I hired an open-face dray and tucked the Well-dressed Man in it—uncovered—with a bunch of palms at the head and the foot and started down Broadway. Say, we gathered a mob about us that had to be beaten apart! I’d tipped off the reporters—a few particular friends of mine—that this was something new in publicity about to be pulled off, and when they saw us floating down the mob, they began to pull the coat off me to get the inside story. All I would give them was a bouquet of dark and mysterious hints. Picture by famous artist, identity profound secret, fabulous price, every figure supposed to be a close portrait of some of the swells higher up (whichwas true—six flights up). That started them on a fine guessing-bee. Well, when Wimpy and Goldy looked out the windows and saw what was coming, it was all off. They wanted to pin a medal on me and take me into the firm. We set the canvas up in the main showrooms, and business was over for the day. At this point, there came upon the scene a little gink by the name of Steinwilly or something close to that name.
“Our purchasing agent,” says Mr. Goldfinch, with his eyes still bulging at the Well-dressed Man.
“Shall we talk business over a little gentle lunch,” says Steinwilly pleasantly.
’Course that’s a way they have down there; they think if they buy you a five-dollar meal you’re going to come down a thousand or two. So I nodded and we sauntered out.
“Ever try a royal-smile cocktail?” says Steinwilly.
I knew that game, too, but I looked him over and sized up his capacity, and I said to myself, “Two can play at that.” There’s where I was wrong—besides it was a hot day. Well, we sat down and I plumped out my terms. Twelve hundred outright and three hundred extra if it took on and they ran it another year. I was figuring on falling back to a flat thousand, you see. Steinwilly looked terribly distressed at this, but I knew that game, too, so I proposed another flock of royal smiles. He brightened up at once—reckon he must have been living on them for the past year. So we matched, and I won. Then we decided to take in a show, and we matched for the taxi, and then for the tickets.
“Would you match twelve hundred or nothing for the picture,” he said smoothly.
“Nothin’ doin’,” I said.
He sort of sized me over and decided to wait a little longer. Now, I don’t know just exactly what happened after this. I know we stayed together for a good part of the night, for all I remember is seeing royal smiles (they’re pink, you know) blooming on every bar. Whether I left him or he left me, I don’t know. Fact there’s a good deal I don’t know, or why, or when, or where, but the awful outstanding fact is Steinwilly and I must have matched and I must have sold Tootles’ masterpiece for a bunch of dress suits. The worst of it is: Where are the dress suits? The memorandum I’ve got is signed “Steinwilly,” and there’s an awful scrawl “per special agreement” but if I got the dress suits, did I keep them? I don’t like the appearanceof Remorse on the scene. Did I swap a dress suit for this bandy-legged pup, I wonder? I’ll have to work down to Chattanooga before I’ll know.
Honest, I’m all broke up—what will Tootles say? I don’t dare write him.
Chattanooga (later).
There’s no doubt about it—The dress suits are here, most of them. I met a conductor on the way who greeted me like a long-lost brother. Seems I paid my fare by contributing one to his beautiful appearance. I wonder how many more are roaming the sunny South? Couldn’t work the sheriff in Jiggstown, but as I was eating on tick, he concluded he’d save money by buying me a railroad ticket out. Remorse is here with me.
Miami.
Located more dress suits, likewise ran into a traveling man whom I swapped two dress suits with, for about half a ton of patent bottle-openers. I found half the dress suits gone and all kinds of junk in their place, folding tooth-brushes, histories of the South, etc. Guess I must have gotten into a traveling man’s convention. Am at work selling out the stock, slow business—weather against me.
Wonder what I’ll find at Oscaloosa.
Break the news to Tootles, won’t you? The way I’m headed now it looks as though I’d reach the Arcade via Panama and Japan. Let me know what really did happen with that body-snatcher Steinwilly. Honest, I’m sick over it. I shall never,neverforgive myself.
Flick.
P. S. I expect to do considerable sightseeing down here, but I’ll get a letter if you send it
care Hank
The Jackson House.
At the Bar.
“Do you suppose that’s all he got for the picture?” said Inga, when they had ended laughing over Flick’s adventures. “Tootles will be broken-hearted.”
“Looks pretty bad,” said Dangerfield, shaking his head. “Well, let’s get to the worst.” He took up Tootles’ letter and immediately broke into a roar of laughter.
Dear folk:Lots of things have happened since you left, good, bad, and indifferent. Flick has disappeared. Where the deuce he’s landed is beyond me. He’s been gone two weeks and never sent a word. He started on a spree after selling the masterpiece to Wimpheimer & Goldfinch, for fifteen hundred dollars down and a royalty of five hundred a year. This must have been too much for him, for he started in to celebrate. Don’t blame him, do you? It almost made me take up drinking. As far as I can make out from what they tell me, the firm put one of their best little drinkers up against Flick, a fellow called Steinweld—quite a decent old sport, too. According to him, he started Flick at lunch, kept with him through the afternoon and evening, and ran him into a couple of their traveling men to take up the job. Flick not only cleaned up the contract, but matched the crowd for all their spare change and then kept on matching until he’d won about six trunks of spring styles which were waiting over in the depot to go out the next day. More than that, he ran them into some benefit ball up in Terrace Garden. You know Flick. The dance, they’re not sure it was at the garden, either, broke up with a free fight, and when they woke up the next day, they were enjoying the hospitality of the city. The last they remember of Flick he was leading the grand march with the winner of some popularity contest. They weren’t sure just where this was—they said they’d been so many places! However, Goldfinch was a sport, stuck by the bargain, said they’d been caught at their own game. But what do you think happened to Flick! The only clue I have had, was the arrival of a strange-looking pup, which Sassafras says is a coon-dog, which came here in a box, half starved and howling like mischief. Box was addressed to Flick from some point on a southern railroad line. Sounds as though he were still alive, doesn’t it?When are you coming back? It’s awfully glum up here, you can imagine, with everyone away. I’ve been working hard, all summer, drawing like mad—think you’ll say I’m getting somewhere. As far as news goes, there are some queer turns. Old Pomello died some three months after the marriage, over in Italy—pneumonia, I believe. Belle Shaler had a note from Myrtle. Queer, isn’t it? Wonder what’ll become of her now. She inherits what the old fellow had, I suppose. The news excited everyone, of course. You see Madame Probasco, thetime she had that séance, made some prophecy that fitted in with what happened. Millie Brewster is back after a visit home. Have an idea O’Leary cleared out on her account. “The baron” hasn’t been any too well, looks shaky, and then something happened that cut him up terribly. Hit me, too, for a while but now I’ve gotten hold again. Pansy went off with that old scoundrel Drinkwater. Seems they’d been seeing each other all along, and he must have got some hold over her, hypnotized her. Belle was as surprised as any of us and mad clean through and through. We don’t know just what happened—hope they’re married. That’s about all, but, Lord, it’s lonely without the crowd! Have you done great things? I’m crazy to see what you’re bringing back. My best to the missis.Tootles.
Dear folk:
Lots of things have happened since you left, good, bad, and indifferent. Flick has disappeared. Where the deuce he’s landed is beyond me. He’s been gone two weeks and never sent a word. He started on a spree after selling the masterpiece to Wimpheimer & Goldfinch, for fifteen hundred dollars down and a royalty of five hundred a year. This must have been too much for him, for he started in to celebrate. Don’t blame him, do you? It almost made me take up drinking. As far as I can make out from what they tell me, the firm put one of their best little drinkers up against Flick, a fellow called Steinweld—quite a decent old sport, too. According to him, he started Flick at lunch, kept with him through the afternoon and evening, and ran him into a couple of their traveling men to take up the job. Flick not only cleaned up the contract, but matched the crowd for all their spare change and then kept on matching until he’d won about six trunks of spring styles which were waiting over in the depot to go out the next day. More than that, he ran them into some benefit ball up in Terrace Garden. You know Flick. The dance, they’re not sure it was at the garden, either, broke up with a free fight, and when they woke up the next day, they were enjoying the hospitality of the city. The last they remember of Flick he was leading the grand march with the winner of some popularity contest. They weren’t sure just where this was—they said they’d been so many places! However, Goldfinch was a sport, stuck by the bargain, said they’d been caught at their own game. But what do you think happened to Flick! The only clue I have had, was the arrival of a strange-looking pup, which Sassafras says is a coon-dog, which came here in a box, half starved and howling like mischief. Box was addressed to Flick from some point on a southern railroad line. Sounds as though he were still alive, doesn’t it?
When are you coming back? It’s awfully glum up here, you can imagine, with everyone away. I’ve been working hard, all summer, drawing like mad—think you’ll say I’m getting somewhere. As far as news goes, there are some queer turns. Old Pomello died some three months after the marriage, over in Italy—pneumonia, I believe. Belle Shaler had a note from Myrtle. Queer, isn’t it? Wonder what’ll become of her now. She inherits what the old fellow had, I suppose. The news excited everyone, of course. You see Madame Probasco, thetime she had that séance, made some prophecy that fitted in with what happened. Millie Brewster is back after a visit home. Have an idea O’Leary cleared out on her account. “The baron” hasn’t been any too well, looks shaky, and then something happened that cut him up terribly. Hit me, too, for a while but now I’ve gotten hold again. Pansy went off with that old scoundrel Drinkwater. Seems they’d been seeing each other all along, and he must have got some hold over her, hypnotized her. Belle was as surprised as any of us and mad clean through and through. We don’t know just what happened—hope they’re married. That’s about all, but, Lord, it’s lonely without the crowd! Have you done great things? I’m crazy to see what you’re bringing back. My best to the missis.
Tootles.
The hilarity which Tootles’ elucidation of the mystery of the dress suits occasioned, died out at the news of Pansy’s elopement. Underneath the quiet of his announcement, they divined the hurt that lay near his heart. A few more letters remained among the chaff, which Dangerfield opened rapidly—announcements of fall exhibitions, which woke in him curious currents of impatience; a note from Steingall urging him to exhibit, another from Quinny with the news of the club. Then, all of a sudden his fingers struck one addressed to
Miss Inga Sonderson.
“The idea!” he exclaimed, in pretended wrath. “Never heard of such a person! What impudence!”
He tossed the letter over to her without curiosity, and took up Quinny’s letter for a more careful perusal. The echoes of the old world brought a strange fluttering to his heart. He wondered what they, the old friends, believed had happened to him all this time, and he wondered, looking out the doorway with a curious quivering smile, what they would say when they knew that he had not gone under, that he had won his fight and was coming back to his own.
He took a long breath, and there was a new light in his eyes as he turned. Inga was at the fireplace, her head resting on her hand, staring into the flames which were licking up the letter she had tossed there.
“What was your letter?” he said, noticing the immobility of her attitude.
“Nothing—a notice from a publisher, that’s all.”
He came closer with a sudden, leaping jealousy which he would have been at a loss to justify.
“Is that true?” he said slowly.
She nodded, looking at the burning, twisted mass.
“Inga, tell me the truth!” he said, in a voice he had never used before with her. She raised her head, met his burning eyes, and answered steadily:
“Why, that was all.”
In the embers, the flame died down. He knew that she had lied to save him pain. In a sudden disgust at this outer world which still had power to throw its disturbing shadow across their Eden, he went to the table and took up the whole correspondence and flung it into the coals.
“Curse them! I wish they’d leave me alone!”
Then he sat down and held his head in his hands for fear of jumping up, of seizing her and turning her to his eyes, and forcing her to admit that what lay now in ashes had been a letter from out the ashes of the past, from that other man, whom he could never see or comprehend, but who haunted his days and stood always between him and the sun of unconscious happiness.
“I hate letters!” she burst out as suddenly, and went precipitately out of the door and flying over the cliffs.
He made no move to follow, but sat there grimly, staring into the fire, and what he thought of darkly was not alone the past but of what lay ahead.
Inga had lied to him, and he had understood the reasons of her denial. Yet the fact remained that the first lie lay between them, the blade that cut ruthlessly through the veils of the summer’s illusion. Until then, he had lived in an unreal paradise. The world had been exiled, or, rather, from morning to night, in every mood of nature he had dominated where he had walked. There was a primitive directness, a savage charm about Inga that had carried him back to the healing savagery of the solitary world. Absorbed in the fulness of his artistic regeneration, falling into pleasant mental languor, an ease of the body and all the senses, he had forgotten in the quiet reveries of fire-lit evenings, that beyond the threshold there waited those irreconcilable enemies of the present—the haunted past and the inscrutable future. So completely did she blend into the roaming moods of his mind, so keenly intuitive of the moment to listen and the moment to dream that, at times, stretched indolently and gracefully before the roaring logs, she seemed to wait his pleasure with the mute loyalty of some friendly animal. Now, all at once, the spell had vanished.
He was a man alive to fierce, disturbing emotions, aware that, side by side with the blinding figure of passionate love, was that relentless, inevitable companion—primeval jealousy—exacting its ruthless toll for every narcotic moment of oblivion. She, too, was different, no longer the companion whose every word and every thought he possessed, but something that drew back from him before the clutching hunger of his soul, and veiledherself in the obscurity of the past—the eternal stranger—Woman.
He did not blame her—the crueler thing would have been to have told the truth. He felt this, and yet his whole nature rebelled against the intruder, which had crept in like weeds among the flowers. He could not speak to her; he could not meet her eyes. His own self seemed to have run away from him. He was incapable of rest or activity, and when she returned, he marveled at the calm in which she moved. The next day and the day after, something hot and red stood between his eyes and his canvas. He tried desperately to paint and remained bewildered by the void within him. He began a dozen sketches, swore, and scraped them out, and, after long, racking hours, remained with his head in his hands, staring at the terrifying white depth of his canvas that seemed to him to be something without end or beginning, a vast emptiness into which he had sunk all his hope.
The first day when she returned over the dripping rocks to join him for the long tramp home, she asked as usual:
“Good day?”
“No—nothing,” he said shortly.
The following morning when she appeared, she looked into his face once and asked no questions. They were silent during the walk, each curious of the other, keeping a little apart as though a thousand miles intervened between them. The evening had gone down in angry squalls and, across the white-lipped sea, the wind went scurrying in frantic flights. At their sides, the wakened sand-grasses writhed in fitful temper, hissing like disturbed serpents. Occasionally a whirlwind, turning along the beach, flung stinging pellets against their eyes. A great restlessness, a rebellion against indistinct things filled their breasts and made them ache, and persistently their eyes avoided the other’s.
When they had gained the shack and barred the groaning door against the assaults of the storm, she took the easel from his back, stood a moment looking solemnly into his clouded face, and turned without a smile. A moment later, as he sat sunk in a chair before the fire to which he had given fiery wings, she came with his slippers and knelt at his feet. Before he realized what she was doing, she had started to unlace his boots. He drew back angrily, crying:
“Why do you do that!”
But, without changing her pose, she remained kneeling, and suddenly, clutching his knees, she cried passionately:
“Oh, please—please let me!”
Then, with a rise of tears, he understood the longing and the misery she expressed in this instinctive submission, and, leaning suddenly, drew her up into his arms, where she lay with a catch of her breath.
“Mr. Dan, Mr. Dan, you are so unhappy!” she said at the last.
He did not answer, though his arms tightened about her as though he would have crushed the thing he loved.
“You are unhappy—and I have made you so!”
“It can’t be helped,” he said bitterly.
She did not say anything more and, after a moment, drew herself up and out of his arms. Not for a long while did they speak to each other, until the supper was over and the fire had been built for the night. Instead of stretching out on the rug in feline languor, she began to move restlessly about the room, with an indecision that was strange to her. He watched her through the sheltering clouds of tobacco smoke as she went from window to window, listening to something that cried in the soughing chorus of the tempestuous night without, and, as he watched her, he wondered if the day would close thus in this aching unease, this numbed suffering that wrapped them around and yet held them remorselessly from each other. She came to the fireplace and abruptly faced him, her hands behind her back, pain and wistfulness in the anxious searching glance she laid upon him.
“I told you a lie,” she said, all at once. He raised his eyes and looked at her. “About that letter,” she said hastily.
“Yes; I know.”
“You knew, of course,” she said thoughtfully.
“Of course.”
“Are you sure you would rather I told you?” she said earnestly. Then as he frowned and gripped his hands nervously, “It has nothing—it can have nothing to do with us now,” she said desperately, and, as he still hesitated, she added: “It will only hurt you. That is why I did what I did—not to hurt you.”
“I know that, too,” he said. “You were right. Don’t tell me.”
“But I will if you wish,” she said, her eyes growing rounder and larger in the intensity of her gaze, while her lips trembled a little.
“No, no; I don’t want you to!”
He drew a great sigh, rose, and stretched out his arms. But immediately he had refused to hear her explanation, a revulsion came to him. It seemed to him that anything were better than not to know. The mystery that enveloped them had a hundred monstrous figures of doubt and jealousy in it. The one thing he could not combat was the unknown.
“It was a man—a man who loved you?” he cried, before he had realized it.
She caught her breath, startled, collected herself angrily, and at last, looking him directly in the eyes, nodded slowly.
He came closer and stood staring in her averted face.
“And whom you once loved?”
She drew back, turned, looked into his eyes, and turned away again.
“Yes; since you would know.”
He hesitated. Should he go on or should he draw back now while it was yet time, before the self-infliction of pain, before the visualizing of a shadow which meant nothing to them now, which was of the past, as other things had been in his own memory? All at once he stopped, aghast. Tears were in her eyes, and her hands were at her throat.
“Why do you do that?” he said abruptly.
“Because it will hurt you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Yes, yes—horribly!”
“What good does it do?” she said, shaking her head.
“None, none at all—I shan’t ask to know any more,” he said firmly, and he took up his pipe from the table where he had flung it and began to fill it, humming to himself.
She came and stood beside him until he was ready for a light. Then she struck a match and held it to him.
“Very becoming,” he said, with an effort, smiling at the sudden glow that suffused her soft face and gave points of fire to the depths of her eyes.
“I wish you understood me,” she said, with a wistful arching of her brows and a sudden downward slant of her eyes away from his.
“Wish I did!”
“I am different—different from you, I suppose. I don’t let shadows make me sad.”
“No; you are never jealous,” he said bitterly. “In fact, I wonder if you are capable of such an emotion.”
She appeared to consider this question.
“I suppose not,” she said, at length.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Not even—not even if you saw another woman coming into my life—really?”
“If that happened, I should go away—quietly,” she said thoughtfully.
“And you would not suffer?”
“Oh, yes—of course—I should suffer, but I should disappear just the same, for the world would be empty to me.” She looked at him a moment, hesitated, and said: “That would be something real, not something that is ended or something that might happen. You see, it’s this. You have something in you that I haven’t got.”
“What?”
“Sentiment.”
“I believe that is so,” he said suddenly, yet he continued to look at her, mystified.
“I mean it this way,” she said pensively. “You don’t see me at all as I am. You see me as you wish to see me. It is very beautiful, but it is not always me, and so sometimes I feel that it’s not me you love and, and I wonder——”
“You’d rather I didn’t idealize you?” he said, greatly astonished.
She smiled with a smile that changed the sadness prophetic in her eyes to a glow of happiness.
“No; I want you to feel as you do just now,” she said shyly, “even——”
“Well, even what?”
“Even if you wake up after,” she said solemnly.
“Inga!” he cried, in a furious protest. But she avoided the arms which sought to sweep her down to him.
“That’s what I mean by sentiment,” she said hastily. “Do you understand?”
He paused, his curiosity returning.
“And you?”
“I? Oh, I see you and love you for what you are.”
“Even for my weaknesses?”
She looked at him, her eyes deep in his eyes.
“Above all for that,” she said, and, though her lips turned slowly into a smile, her eyes remained sad. “I wish——”
“What?” he asked as she stopped.
She shook her head.
“That I should always remain what I was—a derelict worth saving?”
She looked at him suddenly and so fiercely that he laughed, and caught her in a passionate embrace.
“Look out! If I get to behaving too well, you’ll lose interest in me, Inga,” he said, laughing.
To this she made no reply.
He was astonished at the things she had shown him she had divined. He recognized their truth. He even felt that in her eyes was some strange intuition that made them see, beyond his view, down the long lanes of the future. But, above all, he understood that in their love the first phase had ended and another begun—a phase where the bitter and the sweet, sorrow and sadness, possession and denial would forevermore go hand in hand. She knew it, too, for that night they lay wakefully in each other’s arms and though they lay clasped in the oblivion of the night they spoke no word, for what lay in their minds they could not say to each other.
Yet this knowledge that life in all its aspects could not be avoided, that the thoughts which he cried out against could not be stilled, and that, even as he loved her, the woman of the present, he must suffer fiercely and weakly for what she had been, entered into that inner consciousness of the artist and illuminated it with a new, miraculous sense of power.
When he returned to his work, the test of sorrowbrought him a deep comprehension. In the completeness of his dream he had forgotten what no artist should forget—that life is tragedy. He put before him a canvas which a week before had thrilled him with its mastery. He looked now and saw that it was only half truth, that he had done it in an ecstasy of sentimentalism. He threw it aside and began swiftly to paint in another. And as he looked upon the immemorial rocks with their head-dresses of sand-grasses turning with the first colorful touches of the autumn, he perceived beneath the surface pleasure to the eyes something grim and tragic in this spectacle of summer stifling in the arms of autumn, in these scarred and rocky sentinels, waiting the momentary flurry of the bitter time; the soul of those things which cannot die, inscrutable, contemplative and majestic, amid the poignant sadness of the green world which must die and die again, endlessly returning to its pain.
He painted breathlessly, seized by something poignant and illuminating that drove him on, and when he had ended, he covered the canvas hastily, afraid to look at it. For a week he worked in this frenzy, without pause for self-analysis, warned only by the fever of work which possessed him that what he had done was true, feeling in himself immense, clarifying changes, a detachment of vision he had never had—a new, stern independence of the intellect which he had purchased at the price of the intoxication of the senses.
At the end of this period, a certain heaviness of the spirit succeeded. He felt that he had worked beyond his capacity, aware of profound weariness and dejection. The next morning he postponed the morning’s sketching.
“No work to-day,” he said, “I feel like looking over what I’ve done. Let’s get out the canvases and sit in judgment.”
“First fall exhibition?” she said, laughing.
“Exactly.”
Together they brought out the voluminous records of the summer and ranged them about the walls. As he studied them, group by group, in their historical progress, he nodded, surprised himself at the richness of the record, its sincerity and grasp. At the end, he brought out the dozen sketches of the past fortnight, which he had put away each evening without an appraising glance, reserving them even from Inga. He placed them in a row and stood back to watch the girl. She stood before them, making no comment, but so accustomed was he to her moods, that he comprehended at once the depth of her tribute. In truth, she was overwhelmed by the revelation of a new note, something which she would not have been able to define, but which held her transfixed by a penetrating sense of mastery, as sometimes, in the moment of lightest teasing, she had felt herself breathlessly impotent in the sudden closing-about her of his compelling arms.
“So this is what you have been doing,” she said, in a reverie. Then she turned and looked at him, seeing a new self in the man. “What made you do this?”
“You.”
“I? How so?”
“Things you’ve done—things you’ve said, about sentiment, you know,” he said rather incoherently.
His glance returned to his work, and he felt a sudden thrill, even an astonishment, transcending all earthly happiness at the recognition of what had come to him.
“You said I’ve done this?” she said, frowning.
“By making me suffer,” he said quietly. “Oh, I needed it! It was right. It came, I suppose, with that letter. If it hadn’t,” he added, smiling, “I suppose I should have gone on dreaming—for the dreaming was sweet—with you, Inga.”
“Yes, I see,” she said, nodding.
“What do you see, I wonder?” he said curiously.
“You don’t need me any more,” she said, looking not at him but at the work.
“I have gotten above myself,” he said pensively. “I am not afraid of life—in its completeness now. The bitter as well as the sweet—they are both good, both vital.”
“You see in a way that makes one feel strange things—even to a sense of time.”
“It’s impersonal, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“For the first time?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if I will keep it,” he said moodily.
She turned, laying her hand on his arm, nodding her head, with conviction.
“You won’t lose it now.”
“And yet,” he said, laying his hand on her head, “there are times when I wonder if it had not been better—not to wake up.”
“You feel differently—about me, don’t you?” she said slowly.
“No.”
“Yes, yes—oh, it’s not that you love me less, I think, but—but if I went away, you would stand by yourself now! I mean it would not crush you.”
“Inga—youwillgo away some day,” he said, looking at her profoundly, speaking as one sometimes does in inspired moments—a thought which flashes across the lips before the will can check it.
For a moment they stood staring at each other, equally amazed.
“Why did you say that?” she said, at last, of the two the most visibly astounded.
“I don’t know—I hardly knew I’d said it. And yet I believe what I said is true. More, I believe you believe so, too. Isn’t that the truth?”
“Some day—yes; I’m sure,” she said, looking at him solemnly.
“When, I wonder?”
He felt as though something uncanny was in this conversation, a moment of rare and absolute truth had brought a flash of the future. Indeed, the words he had spoken astonished him as much as they had Inga. Yet he felt a sense of conviction, as though, before the verity of his work which faced them, they, too, had faced the truth.
“Are you—sorry?” she said, at length, timidly.
“That the dreaming is over?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I feel as though now we can talk to each other.”
“That is true,” she said, moving nearer, and she added, “Mr. Dan.”
“Trying to tease me?” he asked, smiling.
She shook her head. He was looking into his canvases hungrily; he did not see her eyes or comprehend the significance of her return to the old deference, but, for a moment, while they stood gazing at the victory on the canvas, she swayed against him slightly, and her hand slipped under his arm as though clinging to its protection.
An hour later, when he remembered the suddenness with which he had prophesied that the day would come when she would go her own way out of his life, he was amazed and puzzled to comprehend the impulse he had obeyed. At the bottom, he believed in no such possibility. What he had said must have been said in some sudden cruelty of love to test her, to know that, if she could quiver before such a possibility, the intensity of her devotionwas constant. A little conscience-stricken, he referred to it that evening.
“That was a crazy thing I said about your leaving,” he began lightly. “Queer mood I was in.”
“We can’t help having queer thoughts. That’s natural,” she said quietly, looking down at the floor.
He laughed a full-throated, confident laugh.
“Well, you know, Inga—I did feel that about you—at first.”
“And now?”
“Just try, little viking!”
“And yet you are very”—she stopped and slowly accentuated the word—“very different.”
“How so?” he asked, a little uneasily.
She hesitated and perhaps changed the intention of her answer. “It’s the way you look at me. I think you see me as I am now.”
“That happens always when you love,” he said pensively. “And it means something deeper, surer—something quieter. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes.”
He could not divine from her manner any special regret or that any serious consideration remained from his thoughtless remark. In fact, he felt in her a new sense of closeness, an almost Oriental solicitude of his slightest desire or comfort. When he went out now in the sharp chill of the autumn mornings, she no longer went roaming away over the rocks, or played over the sand reaches, tantalizing the waves with sudden rushes. Instead, she camped down at his side on a great rug, her hands propping up the tanned oval face, her eyes dreaming into the distance. At times, he felt their gaze turned on him for long, unvarying moments. He remembered a favorite pointer of his college days, who had adored him as no one else had worshiped him, and the strange sense of the summer’s end which had possessed the animal to lie in mute staring wonder at his side, by some canine intuition of change. The dog had died years ago. He had never replaced him.
A certain calm content came into his soul in these soaring days. A change had operated in him; a gust of divine madness had passed, and with it all the rebellion against the progress of life. He had loved as youth loves, blindly, fiercely, flinging all his self in impulsive sacrifice, longing to be convinced that with love he had found the ardent, fiery youth which he had renounced. Now, in the awakened sense of power, he faced middle age with a confident triumph. He saw ahead clear regions of light that opened immeasurable horizons of life. He had found himself, and, as he looked at her from time to time, with eyes satisfied with the charm of life and color, he said to himself that he would never again be capable of the fierce, gripping ache of jealousy which had possessed him. Yet it was good to have her close to his side, to listen to the low music of her voice, and yield to the enveloping charm of her ministering devotion. The first obsessing spell had given place to this—it was good to be so loved. She was the companion above all others he needed for what lay ahead. It was even providential. He felt a deep and tender sense of gratitude that softened the almost cruel confidence which had come to him in his new self-sufficiency.
By the middle of November, the weather had become so stormy and chill that work was only a question of haphazard moments. He began to feel a new longing—an impulse back to that world of conflict and multitudes, of strife and jealousy and competition, which he had left behind him in loathing and renunciation. When the fog and the rain hung outside, he would spend long days in contemplating his sketches, making notes of futurecompositions to be arranged. He had gone far and he knew it. Yet one thing was lacking. He wanted the tribute of others, of the old associates who had given him up in despair, written him off the ledger of life. At times, thinking of how they would stare and stand amazed before this triumphant renaissance, he felt restless impulses to go rushing back, a need of the sensations of happiness and triumph in every form, a boyish craving for applause. Inga read these signs only too clearly, and as the thought of return was to her a dread one, woman-like she went ahead to meet the inevitable.
“Well, Mr. Dan, when are you going back?” she said, one night, when she had watched him in long reverie.
“How do you know we’re going back?” he said, surprised.
“It is time,” she said seriously.
“Really?” He looked at her curiously, comprehended what lay in her mind, and said, with an accusing smile: “I’m afraid I’m still mostly a boy, I want to be patted on the back for what I’ve done.”
“That’s only right,” she said quietly. “It is what you need, too. When shall we go?”
“Say next week.”
She shook her head.
“Sooner.”
“Day after to-morrow?”
“To-morrow,” she said, with a firm little bob of her head. “When things must be done, it’s better to have them over.”
He felt a leap within him at the thought of the great city which was his again. Then he looked at her and laid his hands on her shoulders.
“We will come back—next summer,” he said, smiling.
She smiled back at him, meeting his eyes steadily.