They did not return immediately to New York. Halfway, an unaccountable timidity seized him—the shrinking of a schoolboy before entering a public assemblage—and with a sudden impulse they turned back for a week of Indian summer in the bungalow by the lake where they had gone first. He himself did not in the least comprehend the motives which had made him suddenly delay the test of the return to the old life. Sometimes he thought it was a lack of confidence, a fear of having lived in illusions, that would dissipate before the rude shock of reality. At other times it seemed to him a clinging to the world of solitude in which he had found his happiness, in distrust of what compensation lay ahead. So deep was this indecision of the soul that their days were spent in aimless pleasure. His easel remained unpacked. No desire for work came to him. Now and then, he felt an irresistible longing to plunge back into the world of men, and again, a revolt against himself—a restless shrinking-back, a longing to return deeper into the unquestioning loyalty of the great world of forests and still ranges. At such times, he would gaze for long spaces at Inga, filling his eyes with the healing vision of her youth and charm—wondering.
“Why do you stay?” she asked him, one evening, when they had sat silently, looking across at Catamount, blue and luminous under the scattering sunset clouds which swam like radiant goldfish above its sharp outline.
“I wonder.” After a moment he said, a certaingentleness in his voice which seemed attuned to the gentleness in the skies, “I think it’s because it’s the ending of a phase. I want the other—the big things—and yet I want to hold on to this, to what this has been to us, a little longer and still a little longer. Do you understand?”
She nodded, and her fingers turned gently in his fingers.
“This is personal,” he said slowly, “the other will be different. It will be a sort of renunciation of many things. This is the romance, the great romance of my life, and, well, I want it to go on a little longer.”
Her head went slowly down to his shoulder; he drew his arm about her.
“It is unbelievable, providential—and it is all you,” he said reverentially. “You are as strange to me, Inga, as the first day. I do not know you—no, not at all. Yet, in what you have made me feel and in what you have made me suffer too, you have done everything.”
A certain charm of the twilight, of the quiet spot, and of the youthful ecstasy he had known momentarily swept aside the man that had been built up victoriously and logically. For the instant he was in love with love without reason or reserve with the memory of other moments felt in the passionate moods of the fading day and the poignant floods of moonlight.
“Shall we never go back, Inga?” he said breathlessly. “Shall we stay here all winter, just you and I?”
In his arms he felt her tremble and then fill with a great sigh.
“Oh, I’m so glad you said that!” she cried abruptly, and for a moment something shook in her voice.
“Shall we stay?” he said eagerly, confused by thronging sensations, even as the earth and the sky grew confused in the fall of the night.
She laughed, lightly and happily from the heart, andthough she was not deceived by the intoxication of the moment, she yielded with every sense.
The next morning she was an inconscient child, without a brooding thought, romping about the bungalow, doing a dozen crazy things, singing and laughing until her mood caught him in its playfulness. For the day they were as foolishly happy as a pair of growing puppies, playing a dozen tricks on each other, laughing for the pure joy of being together, pursuing or pursued.
“Upon my soul, Inga, I believe you are actually flirting with me!” he cried, from across the table.
She eluded his sudden grasp and went scurrying out of doors and up into the sheltering branches of a broken pine. He stood at the foot laughing, one hand on her ankle which he had caught just as she was hurrying out of reach. Thus arrested, she turned and settled herself on the swaying branch.
“Actually flirting with me,” he said sternly.
She shook her head indignantly, her eyes sparkling.
“What is the meaning of this, I’d like to know?” he continued, scowling.
“Would you, Mr. Dan?” she said, with her head on one side, her lips tantalizingly set.
“I certainly do! Why are you so happy, all at once?”
“Because,” she cried, “because I want to crowd a whole lifetime into a day! Look out!”
Before he could reply, she had sprung down into his arms, almost upsetting him with the shock of her descent. She lay her face close to his, panting and flushed.
“Because I want to be happy for a whole lifetime!” she said and flung her arms about him. The next moment, she had slipped from him and taken refuge along the shore, leaping lightly from rock to rock.
A little later, as he waited her return, she came back quite sober and demure.
“When you make up your mind to go,” she said, looking at him intently, “do it quite suddenly, and don’t—don’t tell me until just before—just a few hours before.”
His mood, too, had turned to seriousness. He drew her to a seat beside him.
“It’s queer how your mind changes,” he said earnestly. “I thought, once, I wanted to shake the dust of the city forever—run off, be a hermit up in the top of a mountain, on an island. I hated men and their ways, their jealousies, and their estimates—and, now, I feel as though I’d like to go back, astound them just for once, and then come back here forever.” He stopped, looked at her, and saw the smile on her lips. “What’s that mean—you don’t believe me?”
“I believe all but the last.”
“Well, that’s the way I feel now,” he admitted. “I suppose I should stay away. It’s only vanity.”
“No; you want to feel your strength,” she said slowly. “What you get from others will give you confidence.”
“Yes; I suppose I’m like the rest,” he said frankly. “There is something cruel about it. I want to go back and feel how I’ve gone ahead of the others—even my friends, my best friends. It’s something savage, almost as though you flung them down bodily and climbed over them. And they’ll feel that, too, no matter how much they praise what I’ve done—at the bottom in their secret hearts it’ll hurt. Wonder why it must be so!”
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully; “if you feel that way, it’s because you need just that feeling, I suppose.”
He hesitated, rather surprised at her understanding before he went on.
“I know it’s trivial, guess the big ones are beyond that—if they are; and yet—” He brought his hands together in an eager clasp over his knee, and his face lit up.“And yet it would be something to go back and feel how you’ve astonished them all, to make good, to have everyone talking about you again—the feeling of the footlights. If you’ve once known that, it’s hard to get away from it.” He smiled at himself. “What an ass I am! Do you think I’m hopelessly ridiculous?” She was standing, her back to a tree. As he looked up guiltily, she was smiling down at him, with a proprietary, maternal pride. “Inga,” he said grinning, “sometimes you remind me of a mother cat, purring away contentedly and watching her favorite kitten tumbling about the rug.”
She burst out laughing.
“Perhaps!”
He took her hand and said abruptly:
“And you—do you want to go back?”
“I want what you need, Mr. Dan,” she said, looking at him steadily.
“Will you be proud of me, Inga, when we have an exhibition all our own?”
“I’m proud now——”
“But won’t you be prouder when the crowds come and you feel what you’ve done?”
She shook her head.
“No; not more than I am now.”
“I don’t see why you say that,” he said, perplexed and frowning.
“I shan’t like to share you with crowds,” she said abruptly, and then, as though she were afraid to have shown too much feeling, she said hastily, “Mr. Dan, don’t think of exhibiting too soon.”
“Why, Inga?”
She studied him carefully, as though calculating in him all his capacity of suffering and all his need of praise.
“You’re too sensitive—you’ll be changed too easily by what people tell you.”
“You mean, criticism will hurt me?”
“No, no; their praise.”
“Flattery.”
“Yes.”
“So you think I’ll give in to flattery, do you?” he said, with the exaggerated gruffness he used when he pretended to be angry.
She nodded without yielding an inch.
“Yes; it means so much to you—oh, I’m serious. There are so many things, new ideas in you. Work them out yourself; don’t let any one else know what you’re thinking—not even me—until you get where you want.”
“What a wise head!” he said, smiling.
“I’m right; I know I’m right.”
“Yes, you are,” he said solemnly. “I don’t know how you guess my failings, but you guess them remarkably well. All right; I’ll appoint you my guardian, and I’ll promise to obey.”
“Then don’t show your sketches to any one—oh, Tootles and King, if you want, but not to the others—the ones you want to—to throw down and climb over.”
“Why, I believe you’re just as savage as I am!” he said, laughing at her conclusion.
“I am; I am!” she cried, in high excitement, and the point lay settled. She was back in her mood of riotous gaiety.
For the rest of the day he watched her, puzzled and fascinated, drawn to her by all his senses, finding her a hundred times more tantalizing, perplexing, and desirable than ever before, astounded at the whirl of spirits into which she drove without a pause. The next day, while he was still waiting what mood would dominateher, she announced abruptly that the time had come to depart. Then he understood.
It was far into November when they returned to the Arcade, and the city was the city of the approaching winter, vibrant, stirring, and electric. He felt a new eagerness of the imagination, a confidence buoyed up on waves of energy that seemed to urge him joyfully back into the arena of conflict.
When they had taken a taxi and were caught in the full crush of thronged avenues, he drew forward on his seat, leaning eagerly toward the window. The city was there, waiting for him, with its variegated flashes of life, its movements of skyscrapers and clouds, its streaming multitudes and, in the shifting current, faces, fragments of human light and shade. These scattered details, which once had been meaningless and confusion on confusion, had a new significance, brought together and made comprehensible by deep, underlying impulses, moving and massed according to the same immutable laws, that flung giant rocks, inscrutable and calm amid the shifting seasons that overran them only to die away. In this opposition of fashioned cliffs and drifting tides of men he felt a kinship with the sea-swept reaches he had known, a unity in significance which surprised him, where he had expected disillusionment, and, drinking in greedily thus the richness of the thronged world which called to him, he realized, with a sudden joy, that his true work lay ahead of him.
Inga, by his side, sat like a statue of contemplation. In her, a profound transformation was taking place. From the moment when, far-off, she had divined the approach of the metropolis, by its far-flung, hideous stragglers, until the moment when they had burst into the sudden upleap of serried life, crowded windows, flight onflight in mute straining toward the freedom of the upper air, something had closed about her, a rigidity of the soul, and from her eyes something childlike and inconscient had fled away. She continued to stare ahead calmly and without flinching, but the look on her clear forehead was brooding and prophetic.
They had hardly drawn up at the Arcade amid a gathering of small urchins, when a great limousine came superbly up and a familiar voice cried in great excitement:
“Inga! Inga!”
The next moment, the Myrtle Popper, which had been, came flying rapturously toward them, in the figure of a stylishly dressed woman in half mourning. From the limousine, more slowly, King O’Leary descended, somewhat embarrassed at being thus surprised.
“Mr. Dangerfield, how well you look! Inga, how pretty you’ve grown!” cried Myrtle, embracing her. “My, what a surprise; we thought you never was coming! The boys’ll be tickled to death. You must all dine with me to-night—sure you must! It’d just break my heart if you didn’t. We’ll have some party!”
O’Leary shook hands, a little red under the sharp, amused look Inga gave them and, after a promise to allow themselves to be fêted by Myrtle, they went in to Sassafras, whose white eyes rolled so rapidly in astonishment that they threatened to fly loose. The elevator was as dusky as ever, jolting and balking on its resentful way up. The corridors were vast—ill lighted and creaking under their tread, but at the door where the studio of the Three Arts had been, they stopped aghast before a strange sign which announced,
McTweeder and FlahertyCanadian-American Buster Pie Co.Business Office.
Myrtle, laughing, explained that the ruse was for defensive purposes only around the first of the month, and at the noise they made, Tootles and Flick came bounding out. In another five minutes they were the center of an excited gathering—Miss Quirley all aquiver; Belle Shaler; Millie Brewster, a little drawn and nervous; “the baron,” who seemed strangely feeble and old, even to Schneibel, who came plunging in, crying volubly to see the masterpieces of the summer—at once—while a patient waited below in the torture-chair. One look at Dangerfield told them the story of the summer. O’Leary shook hands with Inga, blurting out:
“Well, you’ve done it—say, my hat’s off to you!”
And a little later, “the baron,” profiting by a moment’s isolation, leaned over and patted her arm, saying with his courtly smile:
“You wonderful child—when you are in heaven will you ask thebon Dieuto squeeze me through—a little?”
Months of even tenor succeeded, of unremitting industry, when nothing else seemed comprehensible to Dangerfield but the rage of work. So absorbed was he by the richness of the vision which opened before him in the exploration of the city, that even at nights in the hundred and one restaurants through which they flitted—beer garden, water-front quick lunch, oyster-parlor or café in upper Italy—his eyes were always eager and his pencil busy. Of that narrow carpet from Twenty-third Street to the Park which is called New York, they saw nothing. They had plunged back into the healing flood of humanity that swirls and eddies along its upward striving voyage beyond the social boundaries of the elevated, feeling the sincerity of its joy and sorrows, noting its sane and colorful vulgarity, relishing its vitality, its capacity for progress, and its God-given will to enjoy and to enthuse.
For these months of intimacy with the simple and direct life of the massed nations of the cosmopolis, Dangerfield lived and worked in unconscious fervor. No weakening pause at self-analysis, no intimidating calculation of what foreign criticism might declare ever entered his day. He experienced the greatest delight of which an artist is capable, a joy which is like first love and must be surrendered with the consciousness of success—the pure and unreasoning love of the work itself. He had followed Inga’s intuition and resisted the impulse in him to try the effect of what he had done on those whose admiration would have been precious to him. Herenounced this temptation of the vanity the more easily in that he perceived, to his own surprise, that the summer had been but preparatory to the big things before him.
Meanwhile, many things had happened in the Arcade. About six weeks after Dangerfield’s return, to the amazement of every one, Drinkwater and Pansy reappeared. That he had married her, contrary to the fears of Belle Shaler, was fortunately true, though, beyond that mere announcement, the girl had nothing to say, maintaining an obstinate silence to all questions. They took an apartment in the building next door which was reached by a bridge from the lower floor, though Drinkwater still maintained his old room in the form of an office. That he held a strong fascination over his wife was apparent, for though she was much changed and quite tamed, no word of complaint or criticism passed her lips. The only evidence of unhappiness, if any did exist, might perhaps have been noticed in the assiduity of her attendance on Mr. Cornelius and the thousand and one attentions with which she surrounded him. “The baron,” who had been broken in health for some time, seemed to cling to this affection, though he would never reconcile himself to receiving the husband.
Tootles, who was of a dramatic temperament, had braced himself heroically to withstand the tragedy of his life. For several days his appetite noticeably diminished, but the recovery was rapid and visibly abetted by the providential meeting with a blonde student at the art school, who engaged his affections instantly and tyrannized over him as successfully as the brunette of the past. The windfall which had come to him from “The Apotheosis of the Well-dressed Man” had departed in the fashion of all winds, in an attempt to rival the careers of sudden millionaires, who are believed to soar from such humble foundations. One-third had gone in gilt-edgedmining stocks from a sleek and confidential promoter whom Flick had annexed down South; another slice had been sacrificed to acquire fifty-one per cent of the stock of a combination corkscrew and coat-hanger to be called the Corkaroo, which had been sacrificed to them by an inventor in distress, while the last hundred dollars had been placed in desperation on a ten-to-one shot, about which a friend of a friend of Flick’s had private information.
Meanwhile, the Arcade was watching with undiminishing interest the comedy which was transpiring daily and which had as its principal actors Mrs. Pomello, King O’Leary, and Millie Brewster. That Myrtle had come back determined to carry off King O’Leary was evident to all. In fact, in the frankness of her nature, she made no disguise of her intention. By one of the caprices of fortune, which the fickle goddess delights in showering over the metropolis, the dashing girl, whisked from a manicure-parlor to sudden opulence as though on some miraculous wishing-carpet of the “Arabian nights,” found herself a widow within a short three months and sole heiress to a property which developed beyond her expectations.
Mr. Pomello had died suddenly at Nice, where in an indulgent cosmopolitan society, appraising by the eyes, they had found easy acquaintance. Myrtle as a young widow, heiress to fifteen thousand a year, undeniably stunning if inclined to liberties with the King’s English, found a number of sufficiently titled adventurers ready to assist her upward progress into society. Before she left, she had the exquisite sensation of actually refusing to be a countess—an internal satisfaction which Providence accorded her as a reward for constancy.
But, in the directness of her nature, she cared little for these infirm personalities. She remembered the manwho had stirred her from the first impudent kiss, and, after a certain period of retirement in memory of the strange, gentle old man who had transformed her horizon, she came back to America and established herself in a resplendent suite at a neighboring hotel. Prosperity had as yet worked no arrogance in the naturalness of her nature, and though her former friends instinctively drew back in defensive attitudes at the spectacle of the limousine, the liveried chauffeur, the exquisite costumes of half mourning and the large and brilliant jewelry, they soon relaxed their suspicions before the unaffected generosity and gay moods of the ex-manicure-girl. The one exception was, of course, Millie Brewster, whose weakness for King O’Leary had long been evident. The gorgeous arrival of Mrs. Pomello reduced Millie to a state of melancholic desperation, which even drove her to the extent of half confidence in Tootles, who, having had his heart exploded a number of times, felt qualified for the rôle of a sympathetic consoler.
As a matter of fact, neither Flick nor Tootles were in the least doubt that Myrtle had made up her mind to carry off O’Leary with a high hand and marry him, after the easy matter of a divorce had been settled, nor for that matter had Millie Brewster, who daily grew more silent and more pathetic, flitting into the studio at all hours for a glimpse of her idol or at least the opportunity to converse about him. What O’Leary himself was thinking remained the mystery, nor could his comrades in the arts, either by sly traps or direct accusations, procure a clue. In truth, O’Leary himself was as thoroughly perplexed as the next man. He was human, and he deeply relished the public rôle he had suddenly found himself thrown into, by the battle for his possession between the two charmers, either of whom enchanted when the other was away.
Now, it happened that Tootles, though the sentimental adviser of Millie, was convinced of the hopelessness of the odds against which she struggled, while Flick insisted that Myrtle was riding to a disaster, and for this he had shrewd reasons of his own.
“She’s making mistakes,” he said wisely, on one of the many occasions when he discussed the absorbing subject with Tootles. “Some girl, some action, fine eyes and all that, but she’s on the wrong track! I could put her wise, but I won’t.”
“What mistakes?” said Tootles.
“Introducing society and King to each other. You can’t tame King—he’ll kick over the traces some day—then good-by.”
“Oh, I don’t know. He doesn’t show any signs yet. He’s driving out, lunching out, theaters and all that sort of stuff. I do believe she’s even gotten him worked up to taking tea. Do you mean to say that’s not serious?”
“Serious for her—she’s rushing the game,” said Flick obstinately. “Mark my words, she’ll go too far! She’ll start dressing him up.”
“He had on a new tie yesterday,” said Tootles suddenly.
“Sure he did. She’ll try to make a dude out of him—see if she don’t; and one thing O’Leary isn’t, and that’s a Charlie boy. I tell you he won’t stand for it. He’ll go cold all of a sudden.”
“My word,” said Tootles doubtfully, “it is a chance though! Remember the solid-cash basis. That does count for something, Literature.”
“With you or me, Art,” said Flick crushingly. “I am quite ready to console the lady and so would you be. I’m wild, but I’m not a wild Indian like O’Leary. If Myrtle was wise, instead of blowing in on a circus-wagon with diamond attachments, she’d hang around here in asweater and a sunbonnet, and do the joy-riding on a surface-car. O’Leary will never stand for the fancy stuff, never in the world!”
Even as they were thus debating, King O’Leary came into the studio. Under one arm he carried a couple of packages, while in the other hand hung what was unmistakably a hat-box.
“Hello!” said O’Leary, with brazen effrontery, and, whistling, he moved over to the corner which had been specially allotted to him as his private dressing-room.
“Hello!” said Flick, who stared first at the hat-box and then at Tootles.
O’Leary continued to whistle loudly, removing his coat and vest while he undid the first of the packages. Tootles, in his amazement, reached out his hand and clung to Flick’s. From the package, O’Leary drew forth a pink-and-white shirt with cuffs attached, and slowly and deliberately, without abating his nonchalant whistling, struggled into it.
“If he puts on a collar, you lose,” said Tootles to Flick, who was too completely flabbergasted to retort. Even as the words were spoken, King O’Leary produced a standing collar and attached it to the shirt with the clumsiness of a first effort. Flick and Tootles went over backward still holding hands and, thus supinely on their back, their feet in the air, continued to stare at the apparition.
King O’Leary, having surveyed the effect of the white badge of servitude in the mirror, flung into his vest and coat and ripping off the cover of the box produced a derby which he adjusted with nicety on his head, giving it a rakish tilt. Then he produced a pair of gloves, shook them carefully in the air, raised his arms, yawned, and departed whistling. Tootles looked at Flick; Flick looked at Tootles.
“Poor Millie!” said Tootles, still on his back. “Are you convinced now?”
“I am,” said Flick. “I give up. I know nothing about human nature.”
For three days, King O’Leary vouchsafed no explanation. He rose, clamped into stiff shirt and stiff collar, crushed down over his free brow the unspeakable derby hat, and departed into society. Flick and Tootles arranged the old flannel shirt, flowing tie, and venerable sombrero upon a roughly constructed wooden cross in the corner and placed upon it the following inscription:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
King O’Leary
Requiscat in Pace
But on the evening of the third day, while they were sitting glumly in the easiest chairs, reflecting upon the frailties of human nature, shortly after ten o’clock the door opened and King O’Leary came in. While they gazed upon him in amazement, with the utmost solemnity he placed the derby hat in the center of the floor, added the stiff collar, and, going to the corner, took from the commemorative cross the loose shirt, his old friend, the sombrero, and the limp tie. In another moment, he stood before them the King O’Leary of old.
“What about the plug hat?” said Flick faintly.
O’Leary’s answer was to advance with deliberation and to plant one foot firmly upon the degrading object of social servitude. The next moment there was a slight report and beneath his foot nothing but a crumpled mass. So ended the romance.
The next week, Mrs. Pomello sailed for Europe. Of what had taken place between them, O’Leary never dropped a hint. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary. Thebadges of servitude which had failed to imprison O’Leary’s rebellious spirit were appropriately preserved as mementoes of the past. Millie Brewster used to dust them off with a certain quiet satisfaction on the days in which she continued to clean up the room.
During these long and fruitful months, perhaps due to their loyalty to the unaccustomed haunts of the city, Inga and Dangerfield had failed so far to meet a single acquaintance of his old life.
All at once, this unconscious isolation was rudely interrupted. They were returning from a visit to a Yiddish theater, in the heart of the East Side, when the whim seized Dangerfield, who was an inveterate night-owl, to turn aside for a last pleasant hour in one of the least popular restaurants of lower Second Avenue, the showplace of the exploited East Side.
They had hardly installed themselves at a quiet table before Dangerfield, looking across the room, was aware of a group of three men absorbed in his contemplation. He recognized Lupkin, the great Russian basso, and Fallon, the author, both old acquaintances, and De Gollyer, the critic, of all the friends of the past perhaps the closest to his confidence. He bowed abruptly with a certain confused shyness which was beyond his control and, seeing their hesitation before Inga’s presence, gave a little sign of invitation. The next moment De Gollyer crossed over and had him by the hand. He was a little man, of the world to the finger-tips,flaneurand connoisseur of all that life yields of the curious, dramatic, and hidden. Their friendship had been of boyhood origin, of the strength that never weakens.
“My dear boy,” he exclaimed, still gripping the hand that Dangerfield had extended him,“is it you or your ghost? I thought—we thought——”
“You thought,” said Dangerfield interrupting, “that I had gone off into some corner to pass away like a sick dog. Well, here I am.”
De Gollyer was looking into his eyes, at the strength and the health in his face, estimating the confident ring in the tones of his voice, the new energy that seemed to fall from him as from invisible electric batteries. Then, from his friend, he looked swiftly at the woman at his side, seeking the explanation.
“My wife,” said Dangerfield, who knew him too well not to comprehend instinctively the progress of his thoughts. “And—you are quite right.”
“My dear lady,” said De Gollyer, staring at her a little too insistently, “I have only been completely astounded twice before in my life. This is the third time. Will you allow me to sit down and recover myself?”
“You look astounded,” said Dangerfield, laughing.
“My dear boy, I never saw anything so amazing in my life. But you look younger and more beautiful than I do. Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why didn’t you let me know? By Jove, Dan, I am glad to see you like this!”
The exclamation burst forth so impulsively that Inga, who had retired into her shell the instant she had fallen under the shrewd, delving glance of the man of the world, felt a sudden warming of her heart toward him. Dangerfield put out his hand with a nervous laugh and laid it on De Gollyer’s arm.
“I know you are, Bob,” he said. “Well, I’m coming back.”
“And the work?”
Dangerfield looked at Inga, a sudden longing in his eyes. She comprehended and smiled back her acquiescence.
“Come and see—you’ll be the first.”
De Gollyer had not missed the question and the answer which had flashed between them. Plainly Inga intrigued his imagination the more. She was the key to the mystery and, at times, while he sat listening to Dangerfield, his eyes fixed themselves on hers with an intensity that left her hotly conscious and at times she felt this glance wandering down to the fingers of her left hand.
Dangerfield was not in the mood for general conversation, and, beyond amicable greetings, avoided joining De Gollyer’s party. She herself suggested that they should leave, uncomfortable at the encounter, keenly aware of the covert looks the three acquaintances were sending in her direction, divining the manner of their astonishment, of which she was the object. When they were on the sidewalk, in the cool of the luminous night, she drew closer to Dangerfield and slipped her hand under his arm, a little possessive gesture she seldom used. He looked down at her wondering, a little perplexed, and patted her hand affectionately.
“Lord, that was a surprise!” he said, thinking of De Gollyer. “It’s like the wind, banging open the front door. I just had to ask him up. Did you mind?”
She shook her head.
“It had to come.”
They had taken rendezvous with De Gollyer for noon of the next day. By eleven Inga had the studio in order, arranging it with solicitous eye, hastening out to add the pleasant touch of a few clusters of gold and red poppies with the instinct of the woman who felt that she too, and her work, were on trial. When she returned she found Dangerfield in a fever of restlessness tramping the room. She came in quietly, arranging the brilliant notes of fragile petals so as to lighten up the somberness of the great renaissance table, watching meanwhile the furrowed moods which fell rapidly over the face of the artist. For the moment he was the Dangerfield of the first days, creature of wavering temperament and undisciplined impulses. The meeting with De Gollyer had come to him as a cry in the wilderness. The old life, the old traditions, the old habits, deep as the deepest instincts, came thronging back to him, reclaiming him in this dark continent of the sixth floor back of Teagan’s Arcade. Passions little and great pass away but the comradeship of man to man abides through failure and disaster. One word from De Gollyer had loosened a thousand voices calling him back.
Beyond all this social atavism was an impending test. De Gollyer was not simply a facile-lipped critic but one who knew. A profound discouragement seized him, a weakening sense of despair. He turned suddenly and his hand trembled a little.
“Wish I’d never met him; wish I’d never told him to come,” he blurted out.
Inga, watching him, understood him better.
“You have nothing to fear,” she said with a touch of pride.
Dangerfield did not seem to have heard her for he whipped about the room a score of times, before stopping suddenly.
“Inga,” he said nervously, “what would you show him? Just the things I did lately, that bit of Grand Street and the Italian wedding? They’re the best, I think. Or would you show the sketches at the seashore also? Or what would you do?”
Womanlike, she resented this sudden timidity before the judgment of another, resenting that the masculine authority which she had herself built up should yield, if only momentarily, before the personality of another man.
“Begin with the beginning. Show him all just as you did it. It’s that that’s wonderful; to follow each step, to realize how you have grown to what you are doing now.”
“You think so?” he said doubtfully.
“Why do you care so much what one man thinks?” she said with a flash of anger. “It’s you who have done the big thing. I am not afraid.”
“It’s not entirely what he will say,” he answered slowly. “It’s the criticism I shall pass on myself when I look at them through his eyes. So you would begin with the beginning. Yes, I think you’re right.”
He gave a sigh of relief, as though this were a difficult point settled, and began to rummage among the records of the year, sorting the canvases as he wished to have them presented.
She moved over to the open window and waited, her arm on the sill, looking out, listening for a footstep in the hall with a little frightened tremulous leap of the heart, feeling the imminence of a new phase in the life of this man whose every hour she had shared, a phase that held something ominous for her, the rushing in of the outer world, the return of old friends, the thronging in of admiring acquaintances, the multitude pouring in to separate them and claim its right in the life which had been wholly hers.
De Gollyer arrived even before the hour set, an eagerness in his eyes, an expectancy in the rapid prying glances which scoured the studio, delving into the darkest corner, divining what lay behind each concealing screen. He was surprised—plainly surprised—at the exquisite harmony of the studio. Man of the world, connoisseur of the human drama strongly blended with the militant honesty of the genuine critic, he had a sure instinct of the right word and the right action. He felt in Inga a strong antagonism and a certain unease before his intruding attitude.
“My dear Mrs. Dangerfield,” he said, going to her instantly. “I congratulate the wife. Everything is perfect, absolutely,—just so, even to that little touch of red poppies against the carved wood—beautiful, beautiful—just in its place, adds just the note, just the right value. Mr. John Sargent couldn’t have done better. Dan, if you’ve painted anything half as good as this room I shall be satisfied.”
Despite herself, Inga began to laugh. There was something about the little man in his twinkling eyes and shooting eyebrows, his easy adaptability and winning friendliness which could not be resisted.
“The place is in good tone,” said Dangerfield, pleased.
“Yes, my boy,” said De Gollyer, moving from right to left, nodding his head in appreciative contemplation, “and I’ve known you long enough to know that you don’t deserve the slightest credit for it. Charming, absolutely charming. Mrs. Dangerfield, may I count onyou to decorate the new apartment which I am taking this winter?”
“Indeed, Mr. De Gollyer,” said Inga, laughing, “you’re quite wrong. I had very little to do with it.”
“And that note of red poppies?” said De Gollyer triumphantly. “Ah, what about that? No, no, I refuse to believe anything but what I want to believe.” And as Dangerfield had turned from the easel and was searching among the stacked canvases making his choice, De Gollyer, holding out his hand to Inga, looked her steadily in the eyes and added: “Mrs. Dangerfield, you are a wonderful woman. Allow me to thank you in the name of American art.”
She understood him beneath his jest and smiled back her serious smile—yet a little uneasy, feeling a new and strange world which had come in with his entrance.
“I’m so glad you have come to see what he has done,” she said shyly. She looked covertly at her husband and added with a glance of subtle warning, almost imploring: “You’re the first he has shown anything to. Your opinion will mean everything to him.”
“Madame, I am a friend before I am a critic.”
He gave her a reassuring nod and this moment of friendly treachery seemed to bring them into an intimate alliance.
He had indeed made up his mind to adjust his criticism to the evident exigencies of his friend’s situation, but this benevolent attitude disappeared with his first inspection. De Gollyer, as Dangerfield had said, had more than erudition and the compilation of technique at his finger tips. His instinct was keen and his judgment seldom erred. He had expected to witness a measure of growth along the lines of the polite and rather dramatic talent which his friend had shown in the past. He wasquite unprepared for the revolution which had been wrought.
“Going to show you what I have been at from month to month,” said Dangerfield nervously. “I think it will interest you. At any rate that is Inga’s advice and I am going to follow it.”
De Gollyer immediately bowed to Inga and said in a sharp staccato which marked the passage of the man of the world and the arrival of the critic: “Quite so, quite so, and now, my boy, let’s go to it. I want to see everything, good, bad and indifferent. We’ll go through everything once—without any phrases, sans phrases, sans phrases! The eagle’s point of view first—le coup d’œil!”
“That suits me,” said Dangerfield, by the easel. “Well, here are some of the first things, a few sketches I made last Spring when this young lady was getting hold of me.”
He brought out a half dozen of the rapid, powerful, incisive sketches which had marked even to his own surprise the complete and unpremeditated revolution in his art.
“Eh, what?” said De Gollyer with an exclamation of astonishment, “one moment, one moment.” He took a few quick steps forward, pursed his lips, drew his eyebrows together and stared at the canvases. Then he looked up suddenly at Dangerfield with an astonishment so complete that a great wave of happiness came into the soul of the artist. “Um-um, is it so? Well, well, indeed?—Suppose we go a little slow. Last Spring, hey? You did that last Spring? My boy, my boy, you should have warned me. Well, well, is it possible?”
A sudden excitement caught him. On that instant, he divined what was ahead and with it came a certain possessive joy of discovery, that he, De Gollyer, would haveit within his power to announce a new phenomenon to an interested world. He became transformed into a veritable dynamo of human curiosity, excited as a connoisseur who in a casual rummaging suddenly stumbles upon a treasure of the past. He wished to see everything, even the hurried fragments, details of arms and shoulders, suggestions of profiles and figures blocked in with a few rapid fertile lines. In his excitement he seemed to forget their presence, or rather to have suddenly assumed command of the situation by right of a superior authority, giving his orders in quick, nervous staccato, insisting on recalling canvases which had pleased him, discarding a few with peremptory directness.
“Not bad, not bad for last year but no place here, my boy. You’ve gone beyond that. Burn them up or, better still, send them to that ass Carvallo; that’s just what he would understand. He could sell a dozen of those to his moving-picture aristocracy. Put it aside, Dan, it doesn’t belong. No American sentimentalism, no Hudson River school! We’ve gone beyond Queen Victoria!”
The rejections which the little Czar of criticism ordered into the scrap heap with intolerant finger were few and, to tell the truth, quite merited. Dangerfield himself admitted their justice with a curt nod of his head while the canvas went shying across the floor, like a discarded rag.
They came to the first impressionistic water colors of the summer, rapid notes of vagrant flitting moods of nature seized in unconscious rapture of the moment. De Gollyer was plainly puzzled.
“It’s the same and yet not the same,” he said, staring at them. “It’s more personal. Beautiful, brilliant,—you waste nothing; right to the mark; you’re after the essential thing and you’ve got it, but it’s personal. It’s your mood. Mind you, I don’t say they’re not astonishing;they are. Don’t know any one else who could have done it just the same way. We must exhibit them all together—a riot of sensations. By Jove, yes, sensations, that’s just the word,” he said, delighted to have found the exact term. “But we’re looking for bigger things, Dan—le coup d’œil, the big vision. Um-um, very fine, very fine, bewildering but sensations. My boy, they’reyourmoods. If I must pass a criticism, pass a very captious criticism, you were too much in love, that’s it, too much in love. Mrs. Dangerfield, as a man of the world I am altogether charming; as a critic I am merciless. Dan was too much in love with you when he did these. A captious criticism, a very captious criticism—but go on, go on—I feel something coming.”
De Gollyer’s remarks spread a certain embarrassment which he was too keen not to notice and too clever to seem to observe. Inga sat down, clasping her hands over her knee, staring at the speaker with a sudden alarmed perception that beneath the apparent lightness of his phrases, there was a man who saw with a clarity which left her with a sudden sense of impending danger. Dangerfield, to cover his confusion, for he himself recognized instantly the subtlety of his friend’s criticism, hastened across the studio to return with a new batch, the record of their sojourn along the broken coasts of the sea. Then he stepped back, moved over to the chair where Inga sat staring ahead and laid his hand on her shoulder with a premonition of what must lie in her mind before this inspection of De Gollyer’s which divined those things beneath the surface of the paint—which they themselves had never faced in complete honesty to themselves.
When De Gollyer had reached that period which had been the crisis of Dangerfield’s internal conflict, those weeks in which he had won a final dispassionate independence,the little man sprang forward eagerly as a falcon sighting its prey.
“At last! I knew it, my boy, I knew it,” he cried in a fever of excitement. “I’ve hunches—prophetic hunches and I knew this was coming. I knew it from the moment you showed me that first sketch. My boy, thisisit! By Jove, this is fine! You’ve gone far, you’ve gone beyond yourself. By Jove, this is a smasher!” He turned and held out his hand, aglow with enthusiasm. “Dan, your hand; criticism ends here, you amaze me. I didn’t think you could do it. By Jove, no, I didn’t!”
Inga forgot all her alarmed resentment at one sight of Dangerfield’s face.
“It is good,” said Dangerfield reverently, staring beyond the canvas.
“Let’s go on, let’s go on,” said De Gollyer, impatiently.
As canvas succeeded canvas his amazement and delight increased. When they came to the record of the winter; to those clear, powerful revelations of the hidden treasures of the great metropolis which later furnished New York with the artistic sensation of years, De Gollyer suddenly sat down as though weakened under the powerful stress of discovery, absorbed in a mood of complete silence which might have deceived any one but the friend who knew the value of this rare tribute of profound amazement. At the end, instead of a new outburst of enthusiasm which Inga had expected, he got up, walked over to the table, picked up a cigarette absent-mindedly and went to the window, looking out without bothering himself to phrase a compliment. She felt a sudden sinking of the heart, a brief transitory emotion which took flight on the instant that Dangerfield turned towards her with a glow in his eyes such as she had never seen. She went to him, raised his hand to her lips, turned aside to hide a sudden rush of tears to her eyes,and feeling the need of the two friends to be alone in their emotion, nodded and went out.
When De Gollyer turned at last and came back down the room, Dangerfield, catching his eye, said quietly:
“Yes, I know what I’ve done but I wondered if you—others would see it.”
“My boy, it will be a riot,” said De Gollyer solemnly. “You’ve given me a thrill, you have, and that’s a fact. How the devil did it happen?”
Dangerfield silently extended his hand toward the door through which Inga had passed.
“It was sink or swim. Kismet, that’s the answer.”
“We gave you six months down at the club,” said De Gollyer. “Remember the last night you were there?”
“I remember.”
“We expected anything then—any moment.”
“And you were right.”
“We lost track of you. We heard you’d dropped out. How in thunder did she ever do it?”
“There are some women, very few, in this world,” said Dangerfield slowly, “who were put here to do just such things, who are only happy when they are giving everything, pulling some poor devil out of the gutter and putting him on his feet again,—some one of course worth the saving.”
“My boy,” said De Gollyer, “I know you’ll understand my curiosity. You and I have gone shoulder and shoulder through too many things to beat about the bush. Tell me about your wife. I confess to you that I cannot make her out. As you know, I rather pride myself on reading human nature.”
Dangerfield was silent a moment, then he installed himself in the chair opposite his friend, drew out his pipe and began to smoke.
Between the two had been one of those rare intimacies only privileged to men of the world who have early reached that stage in their intellectual development when they have rejected shams and take a mutual delight in the recognition of life as it is in its profound varieties and inexplicable turns of fate. When they spoke to each other it was always in absolute confidence and without attempt at masking their thoughts.
“Bob,” said Dangerfield, “I will be quite frank with you. My wife is as great a mystery to me to-day as the first time she came into my life. I know nothing of her past or what she may do in the future. And I don’t want to know. She came into my life by chance, if you wish to call it so. She saw me as you remember me, down and out! That was enough for her. She had to attach herself to me, to cling to me, to fight for the spark that was still left flickering. She is of a different race, different instincts, than we are. There is something of the strange forbidding reticence of the north countries about her. I’ve tried in the moments when I loved her most to force myself beyond this barrier. I have never succeeded. Now I don’t want to. Sometimes I try to understand her and I think, in a way, that the time when I was wildest, the most helpless, I brought her the keenest happiness. It’s a curious thing to say, and you are perhaps the only man who will understand it, but sometimes I think she misses that. Now that the battle has been won, you may not believe it, but I think the rest will count for very little,—the success and the public and all that. When that comes she will be very lonely, poor child.”
He drew a long puff, gazed dreamily into the recesses of the studio and said:
“Did you ever, when you were a boy, catch a bird, imprison it in a cage, feed it and make a friend of it till it would sing whenever you came near and then feel an irresistible impulse to throw open the bars and give it liberty?” He stopped, looked down at the floor and added: “Understand?”
“Yes, by Jove, I do understand,” said De Gollyer. “The Slav women are like that. I’ve seen them. There is something imprisoned about her, something unfinished. I think that is what struck me, what puzzled me. Dan, she won’t like what’s ahead, the going back, the following you into your world. For of course you will go back now, you can’t help it.”
“I am very proud of her,” said Dangerfield loyally. “Will I go back? I don’t know. It depends on many things—on her happiness principally. I have loved her passionately and I have suffered, as I never thought I could suffer, out of the blindest jealousy, at the very thought that another man could have meant anything to her in her past. I suffered and that is perhaps what I needed the most.”
De Gollyer smiled and with a quick movement of his hand indicated the canvases arranged against the wall.
“I saw all that, I saw what you had been through. I shouldn’t have said what I did about your being too much in love, my boy, but I didn’t say what I saw afterward.”
“Understand me,” said Dangerfield loyally; “I love her.”
“I understand the distinction.”
“What I mean is that the great madness has passed. If it had not I should have been consumed by it. The feeling that has succeeded, the feeling that has given me the power to look out of myself—the thing you feel there in my work, is the feeling of absolute tranquillity with all the world. I have made the harbor. As for Inga, she has a right to everything in my life, nothing could ever make me give her up. I am bound to her by gratitude which nothing can ever shake and at the bottom, Bob, I know that the best thing for me would be to live her life, to stay out of all the old life, keep out of the society rigmarole and the parade.”
“My boy, you are quite right,” said De Gollyer with a smile. “But will you do it? You’ve been a man of the world and when you once get that point of view it’s in the blood. It calls you whether you’re in Timbuctoo or buried in a shanty in Harlem. Things like that are in the blood, Dan, and then it’s something to come back, to feel the joy of the fight and, damn it, it’s your right to feel that.”
The door opened and Inga came in, hesitating a moment on the threshold with an inquiring glance at the two men who were relaxed in their moment of intimacy.
“We’ve been talking over plans for the exhibition,” said De Gollyer glibly. “It must be a smasher, the biggest thing of the season. I’m going to bring up a couple of men to-morrow, Mrs. Dangerfield. We are going to make Dan the sensation of the town.”
“I am very glad,” she said, with a nod of her head. She looked at them a moment and then took a seat quietly. She knew that they had not been discussing what he had said.
Dangerfield arose and coming over to her put his hand lightly over her head. She looked up quickly and smiled, but into her heart again there crept a sense of something undecipherable and threatening, the end of something, the beginning of a new confusing phase, a new world which came crowding against her.
De Gollyer’s coming changed everything. Each day other men returned out of the past, fragments of the life which had gone before; brother artists arriving prepared to praise and staying to contemplate in amazement the rise of a master talent. Under De Gollyer’s expert guidance other types arrived, dealers with keen business instincts, vying for the honor of the first exhibition; men about town, celebrities of the hour, of that lighter complex cosmopolitan world of amusement which New York recruits from the four quarters of the globe, on curiosity bent, fulsome in their eulogies, studying Inga with undisguised curiosity, with that look which she now understood so well, that calculating glance which De Gollyer had sent her on the night of their first encounter, the look of trying to appraise her, to decide just what the situation called for. They came, welcome or unwelcome, as formerly the summer hordes had invaded the privacy of their life by the lake and driven them into flight—only this time there was no retreat possible.
Day and night were crowded with the business of art. Rarely now were they able to slip away for a quiet meal by themselves. The door was always open to the arrival of some new enthusiast and until midnight and after, the studio was alive with eager voluble groups rallying around the restored leader. In this new pervading excitement of the return there was no time for work. Occasionally Dangerfield made an attempt to paint but the mood was not on him. Something else obsessed his imagination, the exhilaration that came to him in thisflocking back of brilliant acquaintances; in this eager preparation for the exhibition which would bring him the one great moment apart from all other hours of triumph, which would remain supreme in the memory of the artist. This exhibition, carefully prepared for by a brilliant article of De Gollyer’s, caught the fancy of the New York public with the shock of a dramatic surprise in which the personal history of Dangerfield himself, his strange ups and downs, counted for much. The newspapers, grateful for this surprising climax in the drama of a life which they had so faithfully recorded, devoted columns to the purely personal side of this astonishing renaissance, retelling old anecdotes, detailing intimacies of his stormy and picturesque career. Fortunately the danger of a too theatric success was averted by an immediate conflict among the super-critics. Dangerfield had the inestimable fortune of being viciously and scathingly attacked by the intrenched conservatives and as violently defended by the young and the radicals. Overnight he found himself at the head of a party, claimed as a pioneer who had revealed the significance and vitality of the neglected fields of American art.
He exhibited in the Spring exhibitions and everywhere was honored with gold medals and special prizes. A month after his first appearance before the public his prices had trebled and even at these figures his canvases were eagerly snatched up.
In all this flurry of success Inga remained a little bewildered. She had gone to the private view and to the opening day but from then on she had returned into her shell and slowly eliminated herself. Before these brilliant crowds of an alien world she found herself ill at ease, keenly sensitive of the storm of whispered comments of which she felt herself the center, embarrassed by the curious glances which played over her as she moved silently,a little frightened, by the shoulder of her husband. Invitations poured in upon him from those eager to exploit a new personality. He refused them all, ready to meet those who came with their enthusiasms to his studio, declining to venture forth. She thought she understood the reasons of these refusals in his loyalty to her. She watched him covertly, with the perplexity of a mother bird who sees its nestling take wing and soar away. In the discussions which raged over the supper table and in the quiet of the studio nights she remained always in the distance. They spoke of things which she did not understand but she did understand how eagerly the mind of Dangerfield craved this exhilaration of the imagination and as she had learned to read his innermost thoughts, the passing expression in his eyes, she comprehended that despite his determined exile there were cravings in him, even necessities, for the stimulus of the more public triumphs which he refused. She felt the happiness which would come to him in a complete return to the world of celebrities, among those favored few whose presence is greeted by a stir in the crowd.
De Gollyer, Quinny, and Steingall had urged him to return to the club as a sort of first step back into the world which eagerly awaited him. Despite his persistent refusal, in which lay perhaps a temperamental shrinking before the publicity of the test, Inga comprehended how deeply inlaid was this new longing. To her there was a sort of finality about the decision, a final surrender of the last hold which she had over his life. Yet as always this very realization drove her to urge the thing she feared. When her mind was made up she met the situation without equivocation, with characteristic frankness.
“There is one thing you really ought to do,” she said to him one night when the last late guests had departed and they remained alone in the studio.
“What’s that?” he asked without particular attention to her remark. He was still keyed up by the excitement of the discussion which had ended, a discussion in which he had dominated by a boldness and justness of opinion.
“Go back.”
“Go back?” he said, startled, and looking at her with a puzzled frown.
She nodded. “Yes, it is time.”
“Why do you say that? It’s very strange that you should say that,” he said evasively and turning from her he flung down in an easy chair outside the circle of light, so that his face was concealed in the shadow.
“Because it is time,” she said quietly, “and—because you want to go.”
“The idea!” he said laughing nervously. “Haven’t I refused again and again?”
“Yes, that’s so.” She hesitated a moment, then added: “Mr. Dan, won’t you tell me, honestly, just why you have refused?”
He began instantly, a little too hurriedly.
“Why, Inga, it’s very simple. I should think you’d understand. It’s just the very thing I shouldn’t do. I should think you of all people would realize—you’ve heard me say it often enough, that the one thing an artist should do is to keep to himself. Why should I go out to amuse them? They’ve only a curiosity to see a new animal. Heavens, you don’t mean to say thatyouwant to take up society! Inga, that would be amazing!”
“No, that’s not what I want but it’s no reason why you shouldn’t go.”
“Here, I say,” he said angrily “none of that! Let’s understand each other once for all. I’m not that kind. Wherever I go you go.”
“I wish you would go back to your club,” she saidafter a moment without answering his last remark. “That is different, that would mean a lot to you. Oh yes, it would mean a lot, I know it.”
“Just why do you say that?”
“Because such things mean a lot to you.”
“What things?”
“Why, the feeling of being admired and petted after you’ve done something big,” she said, smiling a little. “You’re very much of a boy. Then you need to be with men who wake you up. It’s good for you. I can see that—you need a little play.”
“Well, I’m not going,” he said abruptly and with a sudden gesture of irritation he cut her short and refused to discuss the matter further.
But despite his protestations he longed to do the very thing he had refused. Yet he hesitated. It seemed disloyalty to her. Just why he should feel so he could not quite explain to himself, yet he felt despite all that she had said it would send her further from him than she was now, with the feeling of encompassing loneliness.
It was not until a week after, late in the afternoon, after a renewed urging by De Gollyer that he yielded far enough to glance undecidedly at Inga.
“Come now, Mrs. Dangerfield,” said De Gollyer, “Dan always was an unsociable brute. He ought to drop in, you know, he really ought to. Every one at the club is waiting to see him—can’t understand why he doesn’t come around.”
Inga sprang up lightly and taking up Dangerfield’s coat brought it over to him with a determined air.
“Of course he must go—besides, he’s just dying to,” she said laughing.
Dangerfield hesitated, resisting a little, still looking down at her.
“Are you sure you want me to go?”
“Very sure.”
He looked into her eyes, a little guilty weakening in his heart. Yet he was unable to detect any modifying seriousness beneath the lightness of her expression. He allowed her to slip his arms into the coat.
“There,” she cried; “you know you’re just crazy to do it.”
He couldn’t repress a telltale smile.
“Well, yes,” he said, feeling a sudden excitement in his voice. “It will mean a lot to go back to see the boys once more.” De Gollyer had gone ahead down the hall. He turned again, still uneasy, still a little conscience smitten. “I’ll just run in for a look around. Back by seven.” Then he caught her in his arms and held her close to him in one of the old impulsive moods. “How do you know so well what I want to do, young lady?”
“I do,” she said defiantly.
She began to laugh as though the triumph were all hers and she continued laughing until he had gone out and closed the door.