When he saw around the green and tranquil park the familiar outlines of his club, he had a feeling as though he were seeing the first welcome lights of civilization after long wandering in a wilderness. His entrance made quite a stir. Old Joseph at the door came up beaming to take his hat and coat. A group of men lounging on the stairs turned with exclamations of surprise. In a twinkling the rumor of his return spread from floor to floor. Men came crowding about him, old friends who greeted him uproariously, concealing under the boisterousness of their greeting the deep emotion which each felt. He had been a leader here and the sudden thronging of those whose names he could scarcely recall showed him the extent to which he had been missed. Every one had a word of congratulation, every one was talking of his exhibition. He found himself quite a hero, the center of loyal adherents. Nothing seemed to have changed. There were the same groups about the billiard tables, the same evening gatherings at the bar; he felt even a tolerant affection for the bores and the dead-beats who never change either. He was back among his own, gloriously, triumphantly returned. These were of the old guard, who loved him, who understood what he had accomplished, who would never judge him, would ask no questions, would be his until the end, no matter whether that end be victory or emptiness, in the loyal fraternity of men. The long months which had been so poignantly, vitally alive were now like the delirious passage of a fever.
It was almost seven o’clock before he realized the hour.He would have liked to stay for dinner in the old dining room, packed with relics and to have enjoyed gluttonously this richness of affection, to have felt again and again the strange tingling delight as each new figure recognized him with a start of surprise and came joyfully up to claim him.
On his way to the Arcade he began to plan many things. There was no reason now why he should continue the meagerness of their present life. He had always had in him luxurious desires, the need of beautiful surroundings and a disdain of petty economies. Now that he had emerged from the wilderness, that success was his, he would take an apartment with a great double studio which he could fit out with all the luxury of detail which his pagan temperament craved. Then, they could readily afford a Japanese servant—a good cook who would preside over the little dinners for which he had once been famous. The thought of a butler made him smile a little bit at himself and at his own vanity. He admitted to himself that he was, as De Gollyer had said, of the world and that the little niceties of life meant much to him. But he smiled at himself tolerantly, for he was aglow with triumph and happiness. If he wanted a thing he wanted it immediately and it rather annoyed him that it would be impossible for him to start to work on his quest until another day should have arrived.
When he came up eagerly to his studio he found Inga waiting. He hesitated and then deferred the question of their moving until another day. He had a sudden feeling that she would oppose the suggestion or if she did not oppose it, behind the baffling calm of her eyes there would be a deep revolt. Yet when a few days later he made up his mind after much hesitation to approach the subject, he found to his surprise that she made no objection. She asked only if he meant to abandon the studio in the Arcade.This had, in fact, been his idea but something in the directness and suddenness of this, her only comment, made him change his mind.
“No, no,” he said hastily, “we’ll keep this for the work, for the serious business—a place to run away from people. The other will be just the showcase.”
“I am glad you are not going to give this up,” she said quietly.
“You’ll have to get used to a servant, young lady,” he said laughing, “and a Jap butler at that.”
“I’ll try. Have you found a place?”
He nodded, a little embarrassed thus to admit that he had kept the information from her so long.
“You’ll like it and perhaps you will even get used to the butler.”
She seemed to accept the change as a matter of course, as though it was something she had foreseen for a long while. Her attitude rather surprised him. He had not expected such easy compliance. Inga as the head of the house was a new idea to him, something that amused and perplexed him.
Once the installation completed she seemed to enter into the new atmosphere quite naturally. It is true that she became more reticent than ever, seldom joining in the general conversation except when addressed, but in the company of others—and their rooms were seldom quiet now—she held herself with grace and dignity. If she offered no advances she showed no antagonism. The men who came to his dinners admired her tremendously though their wives were plainly puzzled by her, never quite at ease in her presence. Of all the new acquaintances perhaps only one, De Gollyer, suspected the truth, that she was absolutely out of her element, quite at loss how to reconstruct her days.
In the middle of the second month she said to Dangerfield quite suddenly one day:
“Would you mind if I did something?”
“What?” he asked wondering.
“I’ve decided to take up my work again.”
Since their marriage she had abandoned the modest little field of magazine covers and posters which had formerly been her means of existence.
“Is this a request or an ultimatum?” he said grimly.
She frowned and for a moment, he saw a look of rebellion in her eyes, but almost immediately she looked down at the floor.
“I should like to very much,” she said. “I am rather—rather restless.”
“Then do it by all means,” he said after a moment’s reflection. He would have liked to seek further the reasons of this sudden resolve, yet he hesitated, feeling a certain unease before the answer which might be critical. “Besides, Inga, it isn’t for me to say what you should or shouldn’t do.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, “but I wanted to tell you.”
He caught her hand as she turned to depart.
“Are you unhappy, Inga?” he said abruptly.
She shook her head.
“There’s nothing I have done, at any time, to hurt you, is there?”
“No, no, Mr. Dan, nothing.”
“You’d tell me?”
“Why, of course.”
The change did not affect the ordinary routine of their lives much except that as he spent more of his time in the apartment, the working fit being still absent, while Inga was busy at the Arcade, their days became more divided. After a little while he ceased to notice this.
One afternoon she came home later than usual, and atthe first glance at her face he perceived that something out of the ordinary had transpired. He helped her out of her coat with a vague feeling of uneasiness. In her hand was a letter, which she had been clutching so tightly that it had become twisted and wrinkled.
“Well, what has happened?” he said when they had gone into the studio and were standing by the great window that gave on to the low spread of park beneath. She looked into his eyes and saw them go down to the crumpled envelope still in her hand.
“You remember that letter?” she said slowly, “that letter last summer?”
He nodded.
“And this is another one?”
“Yes.”
“From him?”
“Yes, from him.”
He looked at her, seeing the agitation which had her in its grip, surprised at the curious calm in himself, a calm which had in it a sudden sense of pity.
“Inga,” he said gently, “we haven’t said one thing to each other we really thought for months. Don’t you think it is better to talk it out?”
She looked at him; then without quite realizing the sense of what she was doing laid the letter on the shelf of the window and absent-mindedly began to smooth it out, but her eyes were far away.
“I wonder if we can,” she said doubtfully; “some things are so hard to understand.”
He took her by the wrist and led her before the great Florentine fireplace, installed her in one of the big armchairs as though she were a little girl. Then he sat down himself.
“Inga,” he said presently, “whatever we do let’s feel we can say to each other just what we think. It’s theconcealing and evasion that does harm. Now understand me. I claim no rights over your life and your actions. Yes, I did once, but that was a time of tempests and jealousies—a wild moment,—very wonderful perhaps to have known but which could only have brought unhappiness to both of us. I look at things differently now. I don’t want you for my slave. I want you as a free companion. You must be that, as free as the day I met you.”
She drew her hands up before her lips and her little teeth closed over her fingers as she stared into the shadows of the fireplace.
“You are unhappy?” he said slowly.
“No.”
“Is that the truth, I wonder?”
“I am restless,” she said after a moment.
He knew to insist on the avenue she thus opened to him meant the approach to a perilous understanding. Like all who have loved and have reached that point where they perceive life must be readjusted, he began by recoiling. Something seemed to close cruelly about his heart strings. He had a sudden horror of what might come, the dread of the very change he knew was inevitable. He rose, moving aimlessly, sought out his pipe, but without filling it. Then he returned to his seat, looked at Inga still staring ahead and said:
“What do you want to say to me? You can talk out freely. I shall understand now.”
“He has written me again,” she said slowly.
“And the first time,—did you answer?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“I don’t know why I said that, Inga,” he corrected himself hastily, “forgive me. I know you better.”
She raised her eyes, looked at him and smiled faintly.
“He has written me again,” she repeated as though she had forgotten that she had announced it before. “It is very pitiful. He is in a bad way, he has no one and it is all my fault.”
“Yours, Inga?” he said, astonished.
“Yes, it is my fault,” she said, her glance in the distance. “I failed. He was weak—very weak—but I failed to do what I should.”
She looked down and drew the letter from its envelope and extended it towards him.
“Mr. Dan—I would like to answer it—very much.”
He looked hungrily at the crumpled paper she thus offered him. He knew it was the key to many things which had mystified him in the past, the chart to that shadowy personality which had been in the background of her life, whom often he had detected in her eyes intruding when most they were alone, whose words and thoughts had come to him on her lips. Then a wave of pity came to him for the woman whom he had absorbed so covetously in his need and in a moment of generosity he refused to part the veil.
“No, I do not want to see it, that is not necessary,” he said gently. “Do what you wish. If you can help him, do so.”
“He wants to see me. He is very down. He needs—” she stopped, “he needs help so.”
She again extended the letter to him.
“I think if you read it—it would be better. You’d understand.”
“I understand,” he said quietly, “I am at a point in life when one can understand such things. I understand that a person one has cared for cannot possibly pass completely out of your life. If you can help him now, do so. I think that will make you happier, won’t it?”
She raised her eyes suddenly in startled inquiry.
“You mean that?” she said after a full moment of intense absorption.
“I mean there must be perfect faith between us,” he said with kindness.
“Thank you,” she said, but so low that it was almost a whisper. She rose very straight and slender, looking down at him. “I shall never break that faith, Mr. Dan.”
The ending of the interview left them with a feeling of emptiness. They had tried to face the issue and each had instinctively avoided it by the memory of the old tenderness which lay in their eyes and lingered still in the echo of their voices.
“Live your life, Inga,” he said impulsively, “in whatever way it must be lived to bring you happiness. That is the least I can do for you, but remember one thing—what you’ve done for me no one can ever undo. No one can take this place from you—it’s yours.”
And as they were both conscious of how much had been left unsaid, how much still waited to be faced, they swayed towards each other, tears in their eyes, and clung to each other passionately, as though with a sudden unquenchable loneliness.
With the first exodus of the summer travelers from the city a new spirit of work possessed Dangerfield. With the clearing of the horizon of all that was glittering and superficial, the city with its great sanity and moving vital currents returned to him. He put off his departure for the country from month to month, fascinated by the summer moods of the metropolis, the brilliance on the Avenues, the extravagance in the lighted air, the teeming boisterous sweltering hordes on the beaches. He felt himself possessed with new enthusiasms. It was a new city he discovered, the city of the outer air, swept together in a friendlier fraternity by the mutual necessity for crowded pleasure after the long day.
In these ardent excursions he gathered around him other men, younger men, ardent disciples who wished to see what he saw, men interested in his new exposition of the treasures of beauty near at hand.
He found that success had brought him this—that isolation was no longer possible. The world paid him its full tribute but claimed him for its own, absorbing him into the rank and file of its groping masses, delegating to him his servitude of leadership. Yet he felt a certain content in fitting into the procession. The believers who surrounded him, communicated to him a certain strength which surprised him. Perhaps at bottom they convinced him of his power, the last and most fleeting sensation of the true artist. Then, too, he found that in expounding his views and seeking to open their eyes and inspire them, he taught himself, translating what at one time had beenpure instinct into the intellectual possession of conscious knowledge.
Tootles was usually of these pilgrimages. The young fellow had steadied amazingly with the opportunity of entering the privileged gatherings. He had begun to perceive that beyond all the fine fervor of inspiration and enthusiasm, is the long hard routine which alone can bring self-satisfaction in the knowledge that the building is rising on a firm foundation. He had a quick eye and a gift of absorbing with almost the imitativeness of a monkey, conceptions which were still logically beyond him. Yet there was no doubt of his earnestness. As a sort of announcement to the world that he had put behind youthful follies he even allowed his face to be disfigured by a scrubby mustache,—the sort of sacrifice a young doctor feels called upon to make on assuming the dignity of a practice.
In the beginning Inga had been of the party—Dangerfield was always eager to have her with him—but gradually, almost imperceptibly, she had dropped out, giving as an excuse the need of her own work. On his return to the Arcade he found her installed in her old studio. The first afternoon on which he made this discovery he had gone angrily to her door, so profoundly hurt by her action that for the first time he was in a mood for reproaches. He found her busy at her easel, model on the stand. He stopped, hesitated, and said with enforced restraint:
“I don’t want to interrupt you. When you are through come in, there’s something I want to see you about.”
“Shall I come now?” she said instantly, observing and perhaps divining the reason of his agitation.
“No, no,” he said hastily, respecting the mood.“After working hours, not before.”
He crossed to his own studio, rebelling bitterly at the persistence of her self-sacrifice. But providentially, the model he had engaged was already waiting for him, an old toper, scavenger of small beers and wine drippings from the fragrant hogsheads of West Franklin Street, who had caught his fancy the day before. He was placidly asleep in a sort of musty drowsiness and he did not stir at Dangerfield’s entrance. Something grotesquely humorous in the gourd-like head, sunk in childish slumber, caught his imagination immediately. He tiptoed over to his easel, brought out a canvas and stealthily prepared for a rapid sketch. At the noise of a falling tube the blissful Falstaff slowly opened one eye and prepared to awake.
“Don’t move!” said Dangerfield hastily.
“Eh? What you mean?”
“Go to sleep immediately,” said Dangerfield sternly, too interested to perceive the humor of the situation.
“Sleep? That all you want?” said the amateur without astonishment.
“Go to sleep at once,—just as you are,” said Dangerfield, with the voice of a drill master.
His sitter, nothing loth, nodded drowsily, the heavy lids slowly settled against the bloated cheek, and in a moment a kettle-like breathing announced that he had obeyed to the letter.
When, an hour later, Inga came in, Dangerfield sent her a warning sign. She tiptoed over and took her seat by his side, waiting quietly until another half hour had brought the end of the afternoon’s painting.
The model gone, Dangerfield, all else forgotten, stood eagerly contemplating the little masterpiece which a fortunate hazard had thrown in his way.
“What luck!” he said joyfully, his knuckles pressed against his teeth in that intimate gesture of excitementwhich she had come to know so well. “The beggar was fast asleep dreaming of running spigots and seas of beer when I came in. What luck! I never would have gotten this in the world.”
“It is you at your best,” she said, nodding with a pleased smile. “By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?”
He looked at her, suddenly remembering, surprised at how quickly his irritation had passed.
“Oh, yes, and it’s very serious, too,” he said hastily, and then in order to reassemble all the resentment he had felt he took a turn or two about the room, drew off his blouse and flung it viciously across the room. “You know, Inga, I’m very angry with you.”
“Why?” she said with just the trace of a smile.
“What the deuce do you mean by going back to your studio? I don’t like it. This is as much yours as it is mine. If you are going to work, work here with me. You always used to.”
“Yes, I used to, but that was different.”
“Why?”
“I can tell you now,” she said. “When I worked here, it was to help you, quiet you, because you needed to have me near you, always near you,—all the time.”
“And now you’ve made up your mind you’d be in my way,” he said irritably; “that’s it, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I wasn’t thinking of you; I was thinking of myself.”
He believed this an evasion, and the way his eyebrows came together in the old bear-like stare plainly showed it.
“Inga, is that the truth?”
“Yes, it is,” she said in her low musical voice. “What we do is so different. If I should work here with you I should be overpowered by you. I must getby myself, do the little things I can do. Don’t you understand?”
“Is that the effect I have on you now?” he said slowly.
“If I tried to work here with you I should only sit and watch what you are doing, and I want to work—I must work, for myself!”
“I misunderstood you then,” he said, his voice returning to gentleness. “Thought you were thinking of me and I can’t bear to feel that you are always making the sacrifice.”
“No, no, Mr. Dan,” she said hastily, fingers clutching the covering of the table against which she stood, “I must think of myself, too, don’t you see?”
“Yes, yes, of course, dear,” he said hastily. He looked at her, hesitated and once more they retreated before the issue which lay implacably ahead.
Afterward he wondered if she had told him all the truth, if his own needs had not been in question as well as her own, for he needed the privacy of his own room as every artist beyond the intimacy of friendship and love must retain a certain sanctuary of isolation where he can close out the distracting, intruding world and reign as absolute lord over a dominion where his every mood is a law.
His sense of loyalty to her never wavered. The world in which he moved was a world of workers. The rest he persistently shut away, resolutely declining all invitations to wander back along pleasant paths that opened to him at every point. Where she could not go, or rather, where she would not wish to follow him he refused to enter. In fact he did not even refer to the multiplicity of invitations which he continuously declined. He would have been very much surprised indeed had he suspected how intuitively she had divined his sacrifice. A great gentlenessencompassed them, a deference toward each other that had about it the tenderness of their happiest days, but it was the deference of strangers towards each other. He never put a question to her, he never asked her for an account of her days, he made no reference to the man who had written to her in his need nor sought to learn what her decision had been. Once when she started to open the subject he stopped her, saying gently:
“You don’t need to give me any explanations, Inga. You must feel this. I don’t want you to change your life in the slightest on account of me. For the rest, I have absolute faith in you.”
But from day to day he watched her—wondering.
Meanwhile in the ordinary routine of the Arcade an event had happened which threw the inhabitants of the sixth floor into a flurry of astonishment.
Without the slightest warning, out of a clear sky, King O’Leary’s wife turned up. She was a frail, rather tired, rather bored little woman who vouchsafed not the slightest explanation but came back weak and discouraged to be taken care of. Which was exactly the thing King O’Leary did, with a shrug of his shoulders, despite the protestations of all his friends.
“I’m down and out, King,” she said, by way of excuse. “You’re the only real man I know. I haven’t no right, but—if you don’t take care of me, it’s all over.”
He looked at her and the illusion which had lived in his heart through all the years suddenly snapped. She meant nothing to him now, could mean nothing, but she had been a part of his youth.
“Well, I guess you’re still Mrs. O’Leary,” he said slowly, “and if there’s no one else to see you’ve got a roof over your head, I guess it’s up to me. That’s law and that’s religion.”
She broke down and wept at this, which annoyed him more than her return. But in a day she recovered her spirits and seemed to be thoroughly content to be lounging about the studios, smoking endless cigarettes, slumbering through the day time and waking to laughter and boisterousness at night. He installed her in the room that had been Myrtle Popper’s, and probably gave her generously of his savings for she appeared in several new dresses of a rather Oriental suggestion.
During these weeks a cloud hung over the face of King O’Leary and all his usual good humor fled. He was irritable, resented the slightest expression of friendliness of his old associates to such an extent that they hardly dared note his coming and going. For this the cause was evident. The attitude of his wife had become that of a petty tyrant. Knowing the extent of his pride and the depth of his chivalry, she seemed to take a malicious pleasure in tormenting him before others, snapping him up at the slightest opportunity, lecturing him, seizing every chance to turn him into ridicule with such persistent vindictiveness that his friends wondered how he managed to hold himself in.
Then one day, as suddenly as she had come, she disappeared, taking with her all of her belongings and in addition one or two other small objects which had pleased her fancy, leaving behind her the following note scrawled on a stray leaf of paper, pinned to O’Leary’s pillow:
King:I’m a thorough little beast and you are as fine as they make them. I won’t bother you any more, I promise you that. You’ve been so decent I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m no more your wife than Belle Shaler. I got a divorce three years ago down in California. When I get hold of my papers I’ll send you the decree. I thought at first you knew and then I made up my mind to work you for a good thing but you’re too damned decent for that. I’m not making apologies—it’s not my way. You’re one of the best, King, and the only good thing I ever did for you was to leave you. Good luck and good-by.Lulu.
King:
I’m a thorough little beast and you are as fine as they make them. I won’t bother you any more, I promise you that. You’ve been so decent I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m no more your wife than Belle Shaler. I got a divorce three years ago down in California. When I get hold of my papers I’ll send you the decree. I thought at first you knew and then I made up my mind to work you for a good thing but you’re too damned decent for that. I’m not making apologies—it’s not my way. You’re one of the best, King, and the only good thing I ever did for you was to leave you. Good luck and good-by.
Lulu.
The first boisterous winds of Autumn had come to end the stagnation of summer when one day in the full midst of the afternoon’s work Inga came into the studio where Dangerfield was singing gorgeously to himself in the boyish zest of his work.
“Hello,” he said, looking up, surprised at this early entrance. “Nothing doing this afternoon?”
“I finished sooner than I expected,” she said evasively, “and it was very bad. I want to watch you.”
“All righty, I’ll try to perform.”
But something in the gravity of her look made him turn abruptly and study her with a sudden presentiment. She seemed unconscious of his scrutiny even when from time to time he turned in her direction with rising wonder. She sat just behind him so as to command both the model and the canvas, her chin on the back of her hands, her body sunk in the depths of an armchair, her glance set in revery before her.
A vague sense of uneasiness crept over him, something which sent to flight all the playfulness and the joy which had been in his heart. He could not quite account for this sudden shadow which seemed to obsess the room. He had seen her often in such profound moods and yet there was something indefinable in the solemnity of her pose, in the set purpose of her eyes which warned him.
He started to whistle and stopped. He tried to return into the flowing impulse of the moment before, and felt a sudden unutterable distaste, a resentment against himself and the thing he was creating. The brushes in his hand were heavy, his arm itself weighted down by some unseen load. Something began to race in his heart and to quicken every nerve.
“That will do for to-day,” he said, dropping his brushes suddenly. “I’ll let you know when I want you. Take your things and go.”
The moments until they were alone seemed interminably long and cruel. He jerked the canvas from its easel and set it in the corner without a second look, stripped off his blouse and went hurriedly to the wash-stand to plunge into soap and water. When he came back, drying his arms, the little model, a waif from the West side, was ready, waiting for the day’s pay. He paid him twice over, with that instinct of weakness before destiny which is inherent in the superstition of man, silenced his thanks and sent him out.
Then he came and stood in front of her chair. She did not appear to notice him, sitting in the same rigid pose, the same unseeing stare in her eyes. He watched her, baffled as always by the veiled depths of those eyes into which he had searched so often, only to lose himself in confusion.
“Inga.”
Her glance came back slowly—was it from the future or from out the past? She saw him, rose slowly and laid her hand upon his arm almost as though swaying against him for support.
“Just a moment,” she said, with a long breath.
While he waited, she went past him to the window where she stood half turned from him, a free and slender line against the white of the outer day. He followed until he stood just behind her, waiting for her to speak.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” she said at last but without turning towards him.
“No,” he said, and yet at the first sound of her voicehe knew. The moment has come, which he had known for months must arrive.
“Do you remember what we said to each other here once?” she began, but with much hesitation, “the promise you gave me.”
“What promise?” he said mechanically.
“You said—” She stopped, turned towards him and tried to lift her eyes to his.
“Come, Inga,” he said, “what’s got to be said must be said. You’ve known that all along and so have I.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, but her eyes dropped down and her hands came together in a straining nervous clasp.
“You mean, then,” he said, “the time has come when you want to go out of my life. Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Inga?”
She raised her eyes again and again, her glance fled from his, but she nodded her head twice in silent acquiescence.
“Oh, Inga!”
He had known it for weeks and yet now that it lay between them immutably written, forever fixed by the nod of her head, he felt dazed by the suddenness of the blow. He caught her up to him, crushing her in his arms and what he said to her in the wild unreasoning phrases that came pouring from his lips he did not know, only that for the moment, faced with the sudden ache of parting, it seemed to him that he loved her completely, absolutely, deliriously, as he had never loved her before.
She neither tried to check nor to answer him. Her head lay weakly on his shoulder, powerless against his strength, and when again he regained his calm he saw the tracks of tears across her face.
“Inga,” he said angrily, catching hold of her wrists, clutching them until they must have hurt her, “you’renot going to do this, you understand? It’s not going to end this way. I won’t have it!”
“I want to talk to you,” she said, shrinking back.
He stopped, walked away from her, buried his head in his hands, and gradually fought his way back to self-control again.
“I want to talk to you,” she repeated, helplessly.
“Yes, yes,” he said, with a sudden feeling of contrition for the intemperance of the emotion which had carried him away. “I am sorry, I couldn’t help it. Let’s talk to each other, then, but facing things as they are, as we should have talked to each other long ago.”
“Oh, yes—please.”
All at once a presentiment of the finality of her decision came over him and with it a longing to preserve this one spot so garnished with the memories of what they had been to each other, free from the memory of what might come between them.
“Very well,” he said, “but not here. I don’t want—you understand—not here, Inga.”
“I understand,” she said, and without looking at him moved over to the door.
He joined her and because they did not wish any one to see their faces at that moment they did not call the elevator, but went slowly and darkly down the stone descent. In the street he held out his arm to her with a longing to feel again the intimate clinging pressure of her body.
“Take my arm,” he said.
She hesitated and then slipped her hand into its protection and thus they returned to their apartment.
When they had come into these outer surroundings which represented all that was recent in their existence together, he felt that not only outwardly but inwardly, they had passed from one life into another. He saw allat once what he had refused to see—how utterly out of place she was against the formal correctness of his new home, this gilded cage into which he had imprisoned her, and perceiving this, all at once he felt, too, how helpless he would be before the logic of her plea.
A moment before, under the spell of the old haunts, he had been for the moment the Dangerfield of the past, the man who had come into her life as life was natural and instinctive to her. Now he was suddenly aware of all the difference that lay between them, of the far poles of society from which they had started on their groping journeys for one moment of which destiny had brought them together. He took her things from her as deferentially as though it had been for the first time, and going into the hall rang for the butler and sent him away. Even this action, instinctive in his training, showed him the division between them. She would never have thought of this.
He came back to her and with a sudden wave of gentleness laid his hand on her shoulder.
“Inga, I know that this is hard for you,” he said, “I won’t lose control of myself again. Now let’s understand each other. When man and woman have been to each other what we have been, something remains which can never completely pass away. You feel that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“We could never do anything to hurt each other—consciously do it. I am ready to do anything that you feel you need. Now that the air is clear, let’s say what we think. We have tried so often and failed. It is my fault, for I have known for a long while that you have been unhappy.”
“No, Mr. Dan,” she said, gently,“not unhappy. I have been, well—just lost.”
“I don’t quite understand that,” he said, sitting down beside her, so close that their knees brushed one another’s, their heads almost touching. He took her hands in his.
“Yet it isn’t anything that I have done, is it? I haven’t hurt you?”
She shook her head slowly and tried to smile.
“Oh, no, you couldn’t. You’ve done more than you should. I have known that.”
“That isn’t true,” he said, firmly. “I haven’t made one sacrifice or given up a single thing I wanted on your account.”
“Please, Mr. Dan—oh, please. You said it. We must tell each other the truth!” she said, with a sudden intensity. From this moment all indecision passed from her, as though she had finally dried the one rebellious tear which had come uncontrollably to her eyes.
“This is the truth,” he said, with an attempt at openness. “If it were not for you—not because I should be afraid for you, but because I know you would hate the life, I might drift back into a certain purely formal society that once made up my life. But what would that mean to me? Absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it might represent a danger. It is hard to seek out the world without being in the end a slave to it so that, don’t you see—and I’ve been absolutely honest—what you might think I’ve done for you, is really the thing I should do for myself.”
She did not answer, but sat considering what he had said, turning it over from every angle as women do, seeking the chain of motives and the reasons which it might reveal.
Seeing her indecision he believed that he had found the reason of her renunciation.
“Inga, why always sacrifice yourself, always think of me?” he burst out. “For that at the bottom is what it is. There’s something rigid and cold about it which is like the country you come from. You want to go out of my life because you think that that act will set me free. You rebel because you think I am held to you by a sense of loyalty and gratitude. Now listen. You may think that another woman may come into my life, a woman brought up in the superficial life which I have known. You’re utterly and absolutely wrong and the trouble is you undervalue yourself. There’s no other woman—there can be no other woman in my life. What you are to me is absolutely what I need, the companionship above all others.”
She turned and looked at him with an expression so inscrutable that he felt uncomfortable beneath this challenge as though he were guilty of some evasion and had been caught in the act.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he said, uneasily.
“Mr. Dan,” she said, impulsively, “don’t you see the truth—it’s not you I am thinking of! It’s myself, my life.”
“What!” he said, completely thrown off his guard. “But Inga, doesn’t it mean something to be my wife, to share in my success, to feel that you have done it all? Isn’t that a triumph for you? Isn’t that sufficient? Doesn’t that thrill you?”
“No,” she said quietly; “all that means nothing.”
He looked at her helplessly, feeling as though he had offered everything he had to offer and had finally lost.
“It’s strange that you don’t understand,” she said, pensively, “for you understand so many things, you have such a big way of looking at life.”
He rose and sat down again abruptly.
“We are beating about the bush, we are coming to nowhere, Inga,” he said desperately. “There’s anotherman come into your life who means more to you than I do. You want to go to him, isn’t that it?”
“Yes.”
“I gave you my promise to free you, I shall keep it,” he said, though the words were hard to bring forth.
“And you—you understand?” she asked, gently.
“I shall try to understand.” Then despite himself he broke into a laugh, a bitter echo of the mocking laughter of the past. “Understand? No, no, I shall never understand you!”
“Perhaps I can make you,” she began. Then she drew in her under lip, pressing her sharp little teeth against it till the blood surged around them.
“Mr. Dan, I do care for you, and if you ever needed me, as you did once, I would have to come to you, no matter where I was or what else was in my life. I mean it. But I have never really belonged to your life. There’s all the difference in the world between us, you know it and I know it. That’s why I didn’t want to marry you. And you know it now, too, you feel it the moment I come here into this room. Only you are very loyal, very kind and very generous, but it is so.”
“It wasn’t always so,” he cried impulsively, and then suddenly stopped, realizing what the admission had been.
“I belonged to you but I don’t belong to your life. I can’t. I don’t want to, Mr. Dan, it bores me. You don’t know how completely lonely I have been.”
“Inga,” he said, interrupting her, “it isn’t entirely that. You, too, are not telling the whole truth. Perhaps I understand you in this better than you do yourself. Frankly, you are not interested in me any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are not interested,” he said, quietly, as though for the first time he were capable of standing apart and judging themselves impartially, “because you’ve finishedyour task, because there’s nothing more for you to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Dan, there is nothing more for me to do,” she said, sadly. “I can’t give you anything more. I don’t count. And the truth is, we’re just good friends. I suppose other marriages are happy like that. It is killing me.”
“It seems strange,” he continued, staring at her, “that there should be so little vanity in you. Other women would feel a sense of pride, of possession, of parading what they had accomplished, but not you. You were happiest, you only really loved me when I was trembling on the edge of the gutter, when you were the last hold which held me back, and now you miss that, you miss the dramatic side of it, the struggle, the tremendous tax on every nerve of your body, on every shred of your will. You’ve won out, you’ve made me and now I no longer interest you. You miss the struggle.”
“Oh, it is not simply that I miss it,” she cried, passionately; “it’s that I must have it. I’m that way, it’s my happiness. I should stifle if there was nothing in life for me to do.”
“I do not say it in bitterness,” said Dangerfield, “I am not bitter. I know now that you must follow your instinct and between the other man and myself you must go to the one who needs you now, as I used to need you, isn’t that so?”
“Yes, he needs me,” she said. She rose and unconsciously a little light, a fierce maternal craving came into her face and touched her eyes, a light that hurt him. “I have waited until I was sure. He doesn’t know that I will come.”
“I only hope he is worth the giving,” said Dangerfield, abruptly. Of all the other emotions, jealousy, passion, gratitude, loyalty, only one remained, a feeling of great tenderness, of almost paternal solicitude.
“He has wonderful things in him, too,” she said, “that must be saved, that I’m going to fight for.”
Then a silence fell between them as they stood facing each other, knowing that all had been said between them, each suddenly shy and embarrassed.
“You have been very kind to me, Mr. Dan. There are things I can never forget.” She stopped, put out her hand to his and said, “and I am glad now that you had your way, that you made me marry you.”
“I can’t say anything,” he said. He took her in his arms gently, as though she had been a fragile flower, her head against his head while the tears from their eyes ran together on their cheeks, trembling against each other as those who have loved passionately, love again at the final parting.
The little fraternity in the Arcade broke up gradually, after one more dramatic interruption. The baron, whose health had faded rapidly in the last months, was gradually confined to his room, where Pansy came each day to watch over him with the tenderness of a daughter. Twice Drinkwater attempted to follow his wife into the intimacy of the room but each time the intrusion roused such a tempest of fury in Mr. Cornelius that he actually drew a pistol and threatened to shoot him, and the lawyer retreated precipitately. Of Drinkwater’s assiduous curiosity and the plan of blackmail which had long matured in his crafty mind, Pansy had not the slightest suspicion, as was afterwards evident. Of all who had wondered at the lawyer’s impulsive marriage with the girl who had won Mr. Cornelius’ confidence, the baron alone divined the reasons for his action. His hatred for Drinkwater was something uncontrollable and terrifying in its rage. The resemblance of Pansy to the baron, so marked in the upward lift of the right eyebrow, the lustrous black of the eyes and the faint similarity of the profile, coupled with the affection the old man had shown to her alone, had suggested a scheme of blackmail to Drinkwater’s fertile imagination. At the death of Mr. Cornelius he had planned to claim that Pansy was his true daughter, and through threats of scandal to force a settlement from the estate. For this purpose he had even insinuated the belief into the imagination of the girl—who however was quite guiltless in the attempt that followed.
To bolster up his scheme, it became necessary for Drinkwater to procure first the knowledge of the baron’s real name and second some intimate relics which would carry conviction. To this end he had sought vainly an opportunity to force the lock of the great chest, which he rightly guessed held the secrets he coveted. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that desiring what he did so ardently, Drinkwater had actually been able to convince himself that Pansy was in truth what he intended to claim. The declining health of Mr. Cornelius and his own failure to gain admittance as a friend, undoubtedly impelled him to the rash act which brought so fatal a termination. By some means or other he had procured a key to the door and one evening when the inhabitants of the floor were gathered in O’Leary’s studio fêting Tootles’ birthday, he succeeded in making his entrance into the baron’s room. Some abiding suspicion must have crossed Mr. Cornelius’ mind for without explanation he was seen to leave in the middle of the party. A minute later a sudden outcry and the sound of a pistol shot sent them rushing down the hall. In the center of the room Mr. Cornelius was standing, pistol in hand, swaying against the back of a chair which had caught his weight and by the chest, which had been pried open, still grasping a locket, was the body of Drinkwater, quite dead.
The baron did not long survive him. The shock and the memory sent him into a raging fever, and the end came a week later. Every clue to his past was carefully removed by Dangerfield, acting under instructions, who transferred the chest to the control of the lawyers. Only a few personal effects, a few books and the portrait of the woman who had meant the whole of life—heaven and hell—in his romantic tragic career, remained at the end. The few reporters who came in avidly scenting astory drew fanciful pictures of this inexplicable ending, stories that had a remembered touch of Alexander Dumas—though one or two guesses came near the truth. The death of Drinkwater seemed to affect Pansy but little, strong as had been his almost hypnotic control over her during his lifetime. She went back into the old partnership with Belle Shaler, neither richer nor poorer, a little dazed but incapable of deeper emotions.
After this tragic interruption, the floor seemed to disintegrate all at once. Tootles went off to Paris for further study, thanks to Dangerfield, who sent him as a sort of tribute to the past, the one touch of generosity permitted him. King O’Leary ended by marrying Millie Brewster and went with her roving down into Central America, where, thanks to her practical ambitions, he found opportunities and began to make his way. Flick remained of the fraternity of Bohemia, never at loss to turn a quick dollar, incapable of saving one, wandering through many trades, always on the point of discovering the sudden road to fortune, always awaking in a garret, nor being greatly depressed by the failure.
Schneibel and Miss Quirley drew back into their respective shells. Other tenants succeeded to the sixth floor but the association which had been begun with the arrival of King O’Leary and Dangerfield was never resumed.
And what of Inga? Despite her explanations, she remained as great a mystery to Dangerfield as on the first wild night when he had opened his eyes to find her in his studio in self-assumed command of his destiny. Despite his pleadings and remonstrances she had refused to take from him the slightest assistance. Free she had always been and free she remained to come and go.
That she had loved him and still loved him he knew, for on the rare occasions when they passed each other inthe crowd, her eyes showed that she still remembered. Yet was this love as deep and encompassing as her impulse towards the other man? And what part had he played in her life, in both their lives?
Luigi Champeno he met once, two years after her marriage to him, at the opening of the fall academy, where two groups by the young sculptor were the eyes of the exhibition, for their uncanny originality, a daring representation of the squalor of a crowded tenement stoop in which, curiously enough, it seemed to him that he found traits of his own way of looking at things.
The meeting had been accidental, the introduction unavoidable. He had given his hand with a feeling of deepest kindness, strongly stirred, at the sight of Inga, at the somberness and poverty of her dress, divining all the struggle and the happiness that it revealed.
Only a few words were said and those quite inconsequential. In the eyes of the young man he had seen the sudden leap of hatred and animal jealousy which once, he remembered, had torn his soul in shreds in the days of his own infatuation. That Champeno adored her with a clinging idolatrous faith was evident. Dangerfield had looked eagerly at Inga, into the sea-blue eyes, seeking some clue there of regret, of complaint, of renewed triumph or of restlessness, but her eyes as always retained their veil. He could divine nothing.
Yet of the man himself he retained a singularly illuminating memory, an impression of a morose and tortured child, of violent moods and moral weakness,—a precocious child tortured by a spark of genius, utterly undisciplined and untamed, incapable of standing alone.
“The battle there will never be won,” he thought, with a sudden comprehension, and he added with a little touch of poignant regret,“and he will adore her fiercely, tyrannically as I never could.”
The answer to many perplexities seemed to be there. Inga had adored him and by the other she had been adored. With him her reason for existing had been accomplished, with the other it could never end. With him she had never quite been herself, conscious of intangible social demarcations, while with Champeno she went arm in arm, child of the people to the last.
He moved over to where De Gollyer was standing in critical admiration before the exhibit of the young sculptor which had attracted general enthusiasm. It was a group of immigrants, mother and babe, with children clutching at her skirts, marooned on a flight of stairs, looking hopelessly out on the sea of New York; powerfully repulsive, startling in its fidelity, revolutionary but convincing.
“What puzzles you?” he asked.
“My boy, it has a suggestion of you,” said De Gollyer, with his head on one side. “Fact—reminds me of things you’ve done.”
“You think so?” he said, surprised that his friend had noticed what he had felt at the first glance.
“It’s strong—best thing in years. The boy’s got it fairly,” said De Gollyer, “came out of the slums himself; the iron and the gall are there. There’s a story he started in an East Side gang and was railroaded up to the reformatory for a year. Probably fiction. But he’s felt what he’s crying out to us. No mistake about that. And yet, Dan, if you’d signed it I shouldn’t have been surprised.”
Dangerfield didn’t reply. He was staring at the strangely revealing group, wondering what else she had taken out of his life to give to the other.
He never remarried. He did big things. It is true he just missed the final enduring touch of genius, but it is doubtful if he himself realized it, nor what he mighthave been if Inga had not left him and the world made him its hero and its slave. For his own day, he was master and leader. For whatever the judgment of posterity may be, as De Gollyer was wont to remark: “It is better to die as Sheridan than to die as Shakespeare, for Shakespeare never knew.”
The world naturally completely misjudged Dangerfield. In his career they saw nothing but the oft repeated story of devouring genius; the man growing beyond the woman who had regenerated him and sacrificing her once he has arrived. Dangerfield himself was aware of this hostile attitude but he never sought to explain it away. De Gollyer, it is true, told his version of the romance in strictest confidence to a multitude of friends, but De Gollyer’s reputation as a raconteur was against him. His listeners were amused, grateful and stubbornly incredulous, knowing full well from their own experience that women like Inga Sonderson do not exist.