Then she deliberately tore it into pieces.Page 276.
Then she deliberately tore it into pieces.Page 276.
Then she deliberately tore it into pieces.Page 276.
“Especially nights when it’s hard,” she said, in her low, musical voice.
He laughed.
“There’ll be a lot of those!”
“I know there must be,” she said, laying her hand on his arm as though to calm him. “Perhaps it’s best that you should let go sometimes—at first.”
“What!” he said loudly. Then he laughed again; but already under the controlling pressure of her hand, the laugh had a softer note. “So you’re not going to reform me?”
She shook her head.
“No, no!” She thought a moment, “I’m just here to help—when you need me.”
He was so surprised at this unexpected attitude that he walked up and down, deliberating. Finally, he turned and stared at her.
“I understand you less than ever.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“I’m not so difficult.”
“Well, what do you want me to do now?”
“I want to get you away from here.”
He took up his things and followed her moodily. He was thinking of the head-lines which had startled him, of the mockery of the truth which had been published. Whenever they passed a news-stand, his glance went furtively to the papers displayed, dreading to see his name in the black, leaded spreads. She guessed this shrinking within him, and changed her position to shield him. Curiously enough, his mood led him toward the river-front, over the route past the gas-towers, where they had gone in the silences of the night. If he rememberedanything of that fantastic journey, he gave no sign.
They wandered by the docks amid a confusion of trucks, greeted by strong, pungent smells, lingering lazily on a packing-case to watch the cranes, sweeping up their cargoes for foreign ports. Late in the afternoon they stopped in a sanded-floored restaurant for a bite of luncheon. A few loitering groups were at the tables, sailors in jerseys, with down-turned pipes and ruddy faces worked by sea and wind, queer types of briny adventurers.
Inga drew his attention to the men.
“Sometime you must paint a group like that. Wish I could,” she said, her eyes dwelling on the strong masses and deep colors. “There’s so much in New York—isn’t there?—if you’ll only look.”
He looked up, and, being in a momentary mood of tolerant amusement, smiled at her artifice.
“Want me to be a painter of the slums?”
“Why not?” she said defiantly. “Isn’t it realer than painting pretty pictures—simpering, sugary women—the same old thing again and again? Oh, if I were a man who could—who really could do what I wanted—I’d love it—to get down into the people themselves, to reflect what’s going on below, the color and the soul of the people! It’s only in places like this, where life is natural, that you feel one thing is different from another!”
“What a long speech!” he said, with an amused look. Then he turned serious and thoughtful. “Good sense—you don’t talk much, but when you do——”
He nodded to himself, put out his hand, patted hers, and, though he said no more, he began whistling to himself, his head aslant, his eyes narrowing as he studied the group across the sanded floor.
Then there were the dark moments, feverish days ofaimlessness and regret, of heavy forgetfulness, long periods of taciturnity, with sudden, irrelevant speech—speech that came without warning, which seemed rather the man in the mists of his groping, taking counsel with himself. Sometimes what he said was only querulous, thrown out in anger or bitter self-hatred. At other times he seemed to be standing off and looking at himself, viewing his past dispassionately, analyzing his career without prejudice. Once he said to her, as they sat waiting for the dusk to enter the studio:
“Some people like life, like it for the sake of living—at least, I suppose it’s that—to find your rut and run on it smoothly, the same thing to-day as yesterday—routine.”
“Most are like that,” she said, not yet seeing where he wished to come.
“Most—yes. But if you’re not satisfied with that—if you want something—want to create something, to get somewhere—to some fixed object, then you’ve got to face the thing in the end.”
“What thing?”
“The fact that you’ve got to recognize to yourself, whatever you’re hoping for, that you’ve gone as far as you can go.” He thought a moment. “If you could only fool yourself! Some do—that’s where conceit comes in—a mighty saving quality that, to be wrapped up in vanity, not to know when you’ve stopped.”
She was so puzzled by this and the tense introspection which she felt in him that she ventured a question.
“Whatareyou talking about, Mr. Dan?”
He turned and said:
“Remember once I told you how I used to climb up Montmartre and look down on Paris, and believe the day would come when I’d set them all talking about me—when IbelievedI was going to be a great man?”
She came and settled on the ground beside him as he sat in the great armchair, looking gravely into his face.
“Remember?”
She nodded.
“Well, it’s great to believe that, even for a year, to be working passionately, hungrily, sure of where you’re going,” he said, smiling back into the past. “It’s worth—even what comes after. But you pay for it—Lord, but you pay for it!—when you look at yourself in the end, and know the time’s to come when you’ve got to stand still and watch others go on.”
“But you are going on—you are!”
He took her head in his hands, as she sat there close to him, and said:
“If you could only make me believe that, child—if you could evenfoolme into believing that—you might get hold of me. You see, that’s what you’re up against. There’s nothing to get to. Oh, the rest doesn’t count! I’ve had notoriety, what some people call fame. Do you think it means anything to me to paint what I have been painting, do it over again and again?” He shook his head. “It’s not the knocks that’s the trouble. No; I’ll be honest. If this—this thing that’s ended had come ten years—five years ago, it might have done me good.”
She nodded her head eagerly.
“It will now—I know it!”
“No; not now. It wasn’t what others did to me; it was what I did to myself. Five years ago, I should have run away; I should have been cruel. I didn’t. I was a sentimentalist. I didn’t want to do another harm. I stayed and sacrificed the other thing—the thing that can’t be shared. I made my choice then; now it is too late.”
“But why? You can work now as you want.”
“Yes; but the power to dream isn’t there, and that’s the whole of it. And that doesn’t come—it just doesn’t seem to come,” he said nervously, his hands twisting, and a blank look coming across his eyes.
She understood now the depth of the task before her, as she understood, too, how much he wanted to disbelieve the things he announced. And there rose before her clearly that the only way to reclaim him was to put a purpose into his aimless life.
“Mr. Dan,” she said softly.
His eyes came back to hers.
“Pretty hard task you’ve got, Inga.”
“Please be patient—just a while longer. I know it’ll all come back.”
“Wish you were right.”
“It will; it will. I’ve even seen it in your eyes, the way you look at things, that group in the restaurant, the old woman with the newspapers.”
“Seeing is one thing; doing is another.”
“But why don’t you try?” she said hesitatingly. At this, he turned and glanced longingly at the easel in the corner.
“Oh, if you only would! I’d pose for you all day long!” she cried eagerly.
But at this he shrank back, a tortured, doubting look passed over his face, and he sprang up angrily, crying,
“No, no, no!”
At other times, he would fix his dull glance on her and say, without kindness:
“See what you’ve dragged me back to!”
These were the secret black hours, when he lay in stupor after periods of heavy, obstinate drinking. For something had come which frightened him. He had boasted, in the wild days when he was new to the Arcade, that he did what he did because he wanted to do it, proclaiming scornfully that he could stop it whenever he chose. And,in his pride, he believed this. Now he came to the frightened realization that this was no longer true, and that there lay before him a struggle against a dark and shapeless enemy which filled the day with its crushing shadow.
At first, he deluded himself with the thought that he was seeking relief, a numbed forgetfulness out of the vacant world—that it was his right to escape the depression in his soul, and that this seeking was deliberate. This delusion was the stronger in that he believed he was testing the girl, challenging her right to reclaim him by a last obstinate rebellion. But Inga, neither by word nor expression, made the slightest criticism. This patient acquiescence, this mute devotion that followed where he went and watched the inevitable moment when he called her in his weakness, at first surprised him and then awoke his latent chivalry.
The day came when, in remorse, he turned to take up the fight himself. Then he found that the dark companion that he had called upon so often to shut out the aching reality could no longer be thrown aside, that, instead of a servant, he had found a master. He found himself gripped in with a hunger he had not realized. At times, frightened, he recoiled and sought to struggle, as though his body were sinking into a lurking quicksand that drew him down, down, and ever down.
There was yet a darker thing which hung shapelessly in this gradually settling obscurity, a thing of dread that waited beside the other shadowy comforter. For, at times, he came struggling back to life with a feeling of blurred, vacant spaces behind, where something had slipped from him, when he had been but a shell inhabited by muddled desires and gropings.
These were days of rough going, of tense straining on every nerve of the girl who watched him. Strange, opposite flashes, the sublime and the ridiculous of the man’s soul, shifted and whirled before her. At times, from long periods of inner torment, there came a sudden pitch of exaltation, wild, colorful moments of eloquence, when he discoursed on life and art, justice and morality, when he analyzed mercilessly established prejudices and beat through to a clearer verity—when she listened breathlessly, enthralled at his dramatic tossings. Then, when the prophetic rage had passed in its fine fury, the reaction would come, and for hours he would lie clinging to her hand, shuddering in the dark at terrors he did not dare to phrase. These moments of groping weakness, of intermingled bombast, wisdom, and cringing brought her always to the sameimpasse—either she must instil some object into this denial of life, or see him slowly crumble, morally and physically, before her eyes.
How did she manage to reclaim him? In part by the unquestioning service which she yielded him, without weariness or discouragement, until, out of pity for her, he began to fight with himself, and, in a minor degree, through unforeseen influences, trivial in themselves, yet working together to restore his interest in those who lived about him. Tootles and the difficulties of his masterpiece drew from him a wild outburst of laughter, but he stayed to criticize and suggest, until gradually he came to the moment when, in his amused enthusiasm, he took up the brush himself. He had come to the point now where he could not bear to be alone, never content unless Inga were at his side. She transported her easel into his studio for the morning’s work, with Belle Shaler serving as model for the magazine covers which she drew with a certain deftness and charm.
During the first mornings, Dangerfield paid them scant attention beyond an occasional glance. The third day, he criticized a pose of Belle Shaler’s, and rose to superintend the readjustment. Then he glanced at Inga’s work and nodded.
“Pretty and delicate.”
The second week, Belle being engaged elsewhere, Inga had recourse to a model she sometimes used, an Italian mother, heavy and a bit dowdy, but picturesque and vital. He noticed the substitution with surprise and a long, contemplative stare. All at once he sprang up, brought out his easel, took a canvas, and began to draw. Inga, afraid to notice this unhoped-for development even by a word,continued a simulation of work while watching him from the corners of her eyes. He worked rapidly, humming to himself, frowning occasionally and stepping back to study the result with dissatisfied glances. In the end, he stood back, his head on one side, scowling.
“Atrocious!” he said abruptly. Then he laughed, returned, replaced the canvas by a fresh one, and started again.
“Come and behold!” he said grimly, when he had completed the second study. “Let’s see how good an artist you are. Which?”
He placed the two sketches together and stood back as Inga came eagerly up. They were done in a manner so opposite that they might have been by different hands—the last graceful, charming, inclining to the sentimental; the first trenchant, direct, almost cruel in its reality.
“Which?” he said, watching her gloomily.
But almost before the words were on his lips, her answer had come. She went past the thing of grace and charm to the first drawing he had made.
“That’s wonderful!” she said, with outstretched finger.
“What! You prefer that?” he said savagely. She faced his look and nodded.
“Any one can do the other; but this, this shocks you—it’s so savage and yet so convincing!”
He came to her side and viewed the canvases, trying to see them with her eyes, to feel a glimmer of her enthusiasm. So pathetic was the effort she saw writ on his clouded face that she longed, in a rush of maternal pity, to take him in her arms and cry.
“But it is good; it is!”
At the end, he said curtly:
“You don’t know—if, indeed, you really meant it.”
“But, Mr. Dan, I do; I do,” she said, seizing his arm. “You’ve done something unusual—something different from the way others do.”
“My dear child,” he said impatiently, “they are both hopeless. One is a pretty fake, and the other is as hard as rocks! Don’t argue; I know.”
He lifted the canvases and set them down with a crash against the wall, while she watched him, with a sinking heart, go and stand by the window in a brooding revulsion. The test had come which she had striven for, prayed for, waited for, and it had failed. She had a moment of intense, hopeless despair.
That night, matters were even worse. Dangerfield relapsed into his wildest mood, as though he, too, had felt the finality of the test and knew that nothing was left to hope for. He managed to slip away without her noticing it, and when he staggered back, late in the night, he was in such a frenzy of remorse, depression, and weakness that she did not dare to leave his side an instant.
Yet, by noon of the next day, when he had recovered his poise, by one of the miracles of which his extraordinary constitution was capable, curiously enough he did a thing for which she would never have dared to hope. He went over to the canvases which he had discarded so fiercely, chose the one Inga had preferred, and placed it on the easel.
At this moment Mr. Cornelius, coming in, expecting to find Dangerfield prostrate after the night’s debauch and perceiving him actually standing before his easel, burst into an exclamation of delight.
“Monsieur Cornelius,” said Dangerfield (he, of all the floor, never called him “baron”), “tell me what you think of this?”
“The baron” went lightly across the floor, picking up his feet and glancing in wonder at Inga, until he reachedthe easel, and adjusted his glasses with nicety. Then he looked up suddenly.
“You did this—you, my friend?”
“Yes; yesterday. What do you think of it?”
Mr. Cornelius examined it with care, nodding, raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips.
“I did not think you so strong,” he said slowly, and the look of wonder with which he examined Dangerfield had more flattery in it than his words. “C’est fort; c’est plus que fort—c’est du vrai!”
“Yes; there is something in it—something odd,” said Dangerfield slowly, to Inga’s amazement.
“You did not see things like that in Paris,” said “the baron,” still nodding. “Cristi—but it’s astonishing what you make a line do; what modeling!”
“Yes, yes,” said Dangerfield breathlessly, “it’s bold; it has audacity; it is not trivial, at any rate. Curious thing—last night—I thought it insufferably bad. I even preferred this!”
He held up the other sketch with a guilty laugh. Mr. Cornelius did exactly the right thing. He put his foot through it.
“Mon ami, you are one colossal ass! Now, isn’t that a nice damn thing? A man who can do what you can to behave so badly. If I could do that, the whole damn family could go cut their throats;je m’en ficherais complètement! That means,mademoiselle, the rest of them too can go right to the devil!” He turned on Dangerfield and shook his fist in his face in Gallic enthusiasm.
“You stop being thebigfool; you get to work! You draw; you paint! Where is the model?”
The model, in truth, had been postponed as a result of the previous night’s dissipation. Inga started up, seeing the eager look in Dangerfield’s eyes.
“I’ll run out; I’ll get one right away.”
“Pooh!” said “the baron,” and, to the surprise of them both, he strode to the model-stand, his violet dressing-gown floating behind him, and installed himself in a chair. “Paint me—no compliments—just as I am—Don Juan in old age—Beau Brummel in poverty—le vieux boulevardier. Paint me, and I don’t see nothing till you be satisfied. Now, paint like ze devil!”
In truth, he made a striking figure in his black-felt slippers and white socks, his loose, yellowish trousers, a flash of white at the throat above the faded violet of the dressing-robe, which set forth strongly the aristocratic features; the eyes still alert and compelling above the crinkled sacks which had formed about the hollowed cheeks; the defiant rise of the Gallic mustache, as saucy, as obstinate, and as proud in adversity as in the halls of revelry. Dangerfield exchanged the chairs, giving him one of barer outline, arranged a cold gray background over the screen, and added a faded red footstool. In another ten minutes he was feverishly at work, while Inga, at her pad, strove in vain to catch the spirit of the pose—yet thoroughly content.
The incident sank deep into her understanding. Dangerfield had rejected her sure instinct, and yet, a day later, had been convinced at the first word from Mr. Cornelius. She comprehended, not without a pang, all that lay in the feeling of caste, what power Mr. Cornelius, of Dangerfield’s own world, might have over him where she might strive in vain. At once she began to reach out for his assistance, to study the reticent, kind old man, to flatter him subtly, to please him by a dozen little attentions, and draw him into the intimacy of the studio.
What pleased her most was that Mr. Cornelius had the power to make Dangerfield talk. Often now, in the dark, after the day’s work was done, the easel put away, and the rug rolled back, the two men would stretch back,puffing on their pipes, and discuss art and life and the thousand and one affairs of the world which may always be better regulated in conversation. Dangerfield was still far from being tamed, as O’Leary had put it, but something had come now to aid her in the struggle, a new curiosity still unsatisfied, a wonder whether the months of disappointment had not left a compensating gift in a clearer vision. There were bad moments, when he found that old habits had set their yoke over his will and aroused a thirst of the flesh that rose up at times and overwhelmed him in dazed nights of defeat. But the dawn had broken at last through the clouds, and, little by little, hoping, doubting, he had begun to believe in himself.
The Arcade dwellers, under Inga’s deft guidance, flocked in to the studio, surrounding Dangerfield with youth, movement, and bubbling spirits, and if there were times when he sat apart listlessly, he was always grateful to the spirit of comradeship which they flung about him as a protecting mantle. He made frequent visits to the adjoining studio, emerging uproariously after a delighted contemplation of Tootles’ work of art. He even visited Schneibel’s home galleries, and stood in awe before the rainbows descending into the valleys, the showers draping Roman temples, and the mechanical cows which seemed to be skating over slippery green meadows. So salutary were these visits, that, at times, when his own work lagged or a fit of moroseness was impending, he would look up grimly and say:
“The blue devils are around, Inga. Let’s go down to Schneibel’s and cheer up.”
Meanwhile, Millie Brewster had made her début at the Gloria, frantically applauded by the assembled Arcadians. The affair had verged perilously close to a disaster, for the girl, suddenly brought before the footlightswith the many-headed monster stirring beyond, had faltered and sung false. Already there were titters and murmurs in the audience when O’Leary saved the day by plumping out savagely:
“Millie, you can do better than that! Now do it!”
In her astonishment, the girl forgot herself. She looked down at O’Leary and beheld his face, that had always looked upon her with kindness, so set in fierce disapproval that straight away, all else forgot, she began to sing like an angel, with the result that the audience, always sensitive to dramatic changes, burst into applause. But the work ended, no further engagements resulted, the truth being that, though she had a certain girlish charm and a pleasant though thin voice, she was completely lost in front of the footlights.
On top of this came the announcement of Myrtle Popper’s engagement to Mr. Pomello, which sent the floor into a fever of excitement. To the surprise of every one, Dangerfield offered his studio for the ceremony and asked the privilege of providing the supper. Schneibel, not to be outdone, assumed the responsibility of Mr. Pomello’s farewell to bachelordom, which was to be conducted on certain original lines of his own. Dangerfield threw himself into the spirit of the celebration with such zest that his good spirits reflected themselves throughout the hall, and everything seemed now to be fair sailing when a new complication arose.
For the last weeks, Inga had been aware of a change in Dangerfield. His moments of abstraction, of inner brooding, grew less frequent. Instead, she found him with his eyes set profoundly on her, until she became uncomfortably conscious of this increasing curiosity. At times in his work, he would begin singing to himself snatches of old French songs, and occasionally, when he was pleased with what he was doing, he would break out full-voiced into the marching-chant of his student days.
C’est les quatz’ arts,C’est les quatz’ arts,C’est les quatz’ arts qui passent;C’est les quatz’ arts passés.
C’est les quatz’ arts,C’est les quatz’ arts,C’est les quatz’ arts qui passent;C’est les quatz’ arts passés.
By the wall were the first two drawings he had made, and at the end of the afternoon’s sketching, he would take each new canvas and compare it with the two that now represented to him the parting of the ways. If it passed the inspection, he would nod contentedly, trill out a gay refrain, and replace it on the easel for further study. But occasionally, when old habits tricked him back to the easy, graceful, superficial method, he would burst into a roar of anger and bring the offending canvas to Inga, crying:
“Nom d’un pipe; here I go again! Inga—quick; execute justice!”
And Inga, laughing, with a flash of green stockings, would send her pointed slipper through the canvas. Sometimes she would protest at the judgment, but he would remain obdurate.
“Not half bad, perhaps—but that’s not what I want. No more mawkishness, no more sentimentality. I know now what I want. Come on; one, two, three!” Then, as the little foot reluctantly tore through the canvas, he would glance down admiringly and say, “And that’s a better fate than it deserves!”
Two and three days in succession this execution would take place and then there would be sure to be long periods of restless depression, sometimes ending in a wild spree with the consequent grim reaction. But gradually these backslidings grew less frequent, as his feverish love of work increased with his growing confidence. The mornings were spent in rigorous drawing, Madame Probasco, Sassafras, Schneibel, uncle Paul of the pawn shop, every model of strong and unusual picturesqueness being impressed into service, again and again, until the canvas yielded to his satisfaction the quality of penetrating analysis he sought. Tootles’ easel made the third in these mornings of merciless criticism, and, under Dangerfield’s stern guidance, the young fellow began to reflect some of the enthusiasm of the master and to make genuine progress. In the afternoon, Dangerfield returned to the portrait of Mr. Cornelius, always grumbling, always dissatisfied.
With Inga came a more docile mood. In fact, it seemed to amuse him to say:
“Well, young lady, what are your commands for the day?”
He began to talk to her, to discuss seriously as he did with “the baron.” In truth, he was now alertly curious. What did she understand; what had she read, seen, and experienced? He recalled certain criticisms which had come unexpectedly from her lips, and wondered from what source she had acquired such views. Between them, it was agreed that there should be no recalling ofthe past, but the very embargo whetted his appetite. He remembered darkly the sequences of his midnight wandering through the city with Inga; yet enough remained to suggest sides of her life that seemed incongruous with the present calm routine. He knew, also, from the gossip of the Arcade that there had been another, Champeno, his predecessor in the studio, who had dropped out in disaster; but to what extent he had come into her life, whether profoundly or only as an agreeable acquaintance, he could not divine. He recalled the strange feeling which had come to him in the first days that there was a third in the studio, a figment of the memory which seemed to rise before the girl’s eyes when she came to him in his hours of weakness; and, remembering this, often as he studied her, he wondered, yes, even with a sense of irritation, a restless beginning of jealousy. So marked was his contemplation, that Inga said to him one afternoon:
“Why do you look at me so?”
“I’m thinking, wondering many things about you, Inga,” he said.
She looked into his eyes swiftly a moment and then turned hurriedly away, busying herself with the stowing of her easel, for the light had died out in the overcast sky of April showers, and the afternoon’s work was over.
“Suppose we wander up into Harlem, where the new Jewish quarter might give us some types, and try our luck for dinner,” he said, watching the lightness of her movements, the grace of her pliant back as she stooped, the flitting note of the green stockings.
“It’s showery,” she said doubtfully.
“All the better fun, tramping in the rain.”
“Want me to get ready?”
“Not yet—come here!”
He came back, drying his hands, still in his loose working-costume, a serious light in his eyes.
“Do you know that was a good idea you gave me over in that water-front restaurant that day—about getting down to realities, expressing the world of the masses,” he said gravely. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it.”
“Oh, I do mean it!” she said, her face lighting up with the rare enthusiasm that gave it the touch of animation it needed to make it bewildering to his eyes. “No one seems to paint New York—to look for what he can find here. They’re all painting and sculpturing as others used to do hundreds of years ago.”
“Inventing and not interpreting,” he said, nodding.
“Yes; that’s it—you express it better than I can. But that’s what I mean—an artist ought to interpret all he sees around him, express his time, its manners, its customs, the joy and the misery of the streets. It’s not only that, but when he does that, when he lives with the people, he can’t lose his enthusiasm.”
“And if he does the other thing, gets into society, society only comes to prey upon him, to exhaust him, to waste his energies and corrupt his imagination—that’s what you mean?”
She nodded.
“Just that!”
“Inga, you’re right,” he said abruptly. “That’s the trouble with us all over here. We don’t keep to ourselves; we aren’t savage enough. Our aim, after all, is the same as the businessparvenu; we want to do the things others do at the top—what we call the top! No; it’s wrong, all wrong. Art was not produced like that in the great days. Artists should live to themselves—yes, be savage about it. The two things can’t mingle—don’tI know it!”
“Mr. Dan,” she said, her face aglow, “don’t you see that you have got rid of all that?”
He was silent, moody. Then he placed his hand on her shoulders with a smile.
“Inga, I believe you’re going to win,” he said slowly. She smiled and, looking at him, nodded confidently.
“Lucky you got hold of me when you did,” he said, in a burst of confidence. “Something else was getting a pretty tight grip on me—might have been too late soon.” How completely the longing still awoke in him at times, he did not tell her. His mind went back to the thoughts she had just expressed, and he said, “You know, your ideas surprise me.”
“How so?”
“Wonder where you got them. After all, though, that’s human nature, woman nature,” he said, with a reflective smile, “to take knowledge from one man to help another.”
“What do you mean?” she said, drawing back.
“You’ve heard others say those things, I suppose,” he said. “What’s his name, the young fellow who was here before? Champeno, that’s it. I suppose when you straighten me out, you’ll go on to the next with what I’ve taught you.”
The question, which came with the swiftness of a sword-thrust, and the quick concentration of his glance visibly upset her, so much so that he hastened to say:
“Why, there’s nothing wrong in my saying that, is there?”
She frowned and finally said: “But I don’t see what reason you have for thinking such things.”
“I’m frankly curious about you, Inga,” he said abruptly.
She turned away, plainly disconcerted. “I don’t like to talk about myself.”
“You don’t remember some of the things you said to me that night.”
“What?” she asked steadily.
“The time we passed the child leading the drunkard, and you said it brought back memories.”
“I didn’t think you remembered,” she said slowly.
“And at Costello’s—Costello’s greeting you.”
“What is there in that?” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Why, nothing, of course, except—well, I don’t like to think of your being out with other men—I suppose that’s it.” She opened her eyes in such astonishment that he added point blank: “No; I don’t like the thought—just jealousy, that’s all.”
She drew back and her face flushed red, but before he could go further, Tootles came down the hall.
The next afternoon Mr. Cornelius was unable to come for a sitting and Dangerfield was in high dudgeon, for Madame Probasco and O’Leary were away and Sassafras fixed to the elevator.
“You wanted to sketch the oyster-man behind his bar,” said Inga, referring to a picturesque bit of human nature which had caught his fancy the night before. “Why not take this afternoon?”
“I wanted to paint,” he said, like a spoiled child.
“Am I ugly enough to suit you?” she said, with a bit of malice.
He laughed at her rejoinder and the prospect of a busy morning, and in a moment had her posed and fell to work. Presently he looked up scowling.
“Something’s wrong—don’t look natural; let’s try something easier.”
Twice he changed the pose, and, finally, in a fit of temper, broke the brush and threw it on the floor.
“Darned if I know what’s wrong! It’s not you—that’s all.” He stood with folded arms, studying her angrily. “You don’t lookyou!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Sounds idiotic, but it’s true. I believe it’s the hair—something wrong there. It’s stiff—constrained, and you’re not conventional. Yes, by Jove, that’s it! Take it down and try it some other way.”
She hesitated, her fingers to her lips, and reluctantly unwound the braids that she wore about her forehead in a Swedish coil. Then, with deft fingers, she shook them loose while the man came suddenly close to her, his eyes studying her face in surprise. The long black hair, released, fell about her shoulders and softened the marble coldness of her features, fell in black rippling waves like the mysterious depths of the sea on a summer’s night. She seemed like a released soul, something soaring and on the wing, far-distant as the wild fjords of her native Scandinavia.
“Is this better?” she asked, smiling with a new archness as though within her too a spirit had been released.
He was too startled by her sudden loveliness, to answer. All at once he came to her and held her head between his hands, gazing into the dark face where the blue-gray eyes shone forth with an easy light.
“Inga,” he said tempestuously, looking at her so intensely that, for the first time, she dropped her glance, “What are you? Where do you come from? What is behind those eyes of yours? Do you really care for me, or is it just an instinct in you to help? Sometimes I think that’s all, that if I were not in such need of you, you would disappear in the night like the elfin thing you are.”
“You are wrong,” she said, shaking her head.
He laughed and turned away.
“Put up your hair. I’ll paint you like that—but some other day.”
When she had braided and coiled her hair about her forehead and come to his side, he took her hand and raised it to his lips, in more genuine emotion than he had shown.
“Inga, you’re much too good for me with my cranky ways, my bad temper and worse. If I’m rough—I’m always sorry for it.”
“I know that, Mr. Dan,” she said softly.
“Child, you must be starving here,” he said gently. “You weren’t meant for this; you were meant for the woods and rocks, the rocks that run into the sea—something tempestuous and free.”
“I should like the sea,” she said eagerly, and her eyes lit up as though touched with phosphorus.
He took a long breath and glanced out of the open window, drinking in the mild air laden with the stirring perfumes of the spring.
“We must get away,” he said joyfully, “from men and machines! You’ve given me back life and ambition, child. Now I want to get away to my own thoughts, back to the things that are eternal, the things that heal.” They stood by the window. He raised her hand again to his lips. “I’ve waited long enough to be fair to you—now I’m going to carry you off!” he said, with a suddenness that took away her breath.
The next moment his arms had snatched her up and she was looking up into his steady domineering eyes. And, seeing his look, she understood.
“To carry me off?” she said faintly.
“Yes, Mrs. Dangerfield.”
“You want me to marry you!” she said, staring at him.
He laughed out of the fulness of the joy in his heart.
“So quick it’ll take your breath—and then to get away!”
“Wait—no, no—wait!” she said breathlessly, as she felt him drawing her up to him.
Something in the tone caused him to look at her suddenly and then to release her. She stood, the picture of distress, her lips parted, her eyes filling with tears, looking at him, one hand at her throat as though to press back the sorrow that was there.
“Oh, I was so afraid you’d say that,” she said at last. “Why did you, Mr. Dan—why did you—why couldn’t it go on just as it has!”
“Why?” he cried, in amazement, but before he could break into a torrent of passion, she had turned and fled from the room.
“What in the world did I say that was wrong?” he thought, and he began to search in bewilderment. At the end of a long, puzzled self-examination, a light flashed over him. “What an idiot I am! Of course! She’s made up her mind I asked her only out of gratitude! Poor little child!”
He hastened to her room to repair his fancied blunder, but though he knocked long and loud, no answer came. The next day, a slip of paper lay on the floor under the crack of his door, where she had thrust it.
Dear Mr. Dan:
I’ve gone away for the day. When I come back I’ll explain and youmustunderstand—and it isn’t because I don’t care.
Inga.
The day was interminable and wasted. He spent the morning fidgeting at his easel and lecturing Tootles with such severity that all the smiles fled from that young reprobate’s countenance and he sat gloomily on his stool, his head sinking into his collar, turtle-fashion, for one glance of displeasure from Dangerfield could plunge him into the caverns of despair. In the present case, the unexampled duplicity of Pansy, whom he had seen with his own eyes on the arm of the unthinkable Drinkwater, combined to send his thoughts wandering among such appropriate subjects as suicide and graveyards.
“What the deuce has he been up to?” he said to himself, watching Dangerfield, who was switching up and down in front of his easel like a circus leopard. “Drinking his head off last night, I suppose.”
“Hold the pose,” said Dangerfield spitefully.
“I ain’t doin’ nothin’,” said Sassafras, startled.
“You shifted that left leg! Throw it forward! More, so! Now hold it.”
“Hold it; hold it,” muttered Sassafras to himself.
“Mighty easy to say ‘Hold it; hold it!’ Like to see some one else stand on one leg a whole mawnin’ and ‘hold it, hold it!’”
Sassafras glanced over indignantly, but Tootles shook his head in mute warning.
“What the devil’s got into the charcoal!” said Dangerfield presently. He flung aside the piece he was using and selected another, but a few minutes later he broke out into an exclamation, and taking the canvas, broughtit down savagely across his knee and flung it across the floor, after which he broke into a short, nervous laugh.
“There—I feel better—can’t work this morning—not in the mood—you go ahead—I’m through!”
He hesitated, picked up his hat, and went out. His mind had run away from him. Try as he might, he had not been able to fix it on the work before him. He felt upset, disorganized, restless, and immeasurably irritated that he should have lost control of his impulse at the very moment when he had been confident of a new birth of inspiration.
He wandered restlessly through ways which he had gone with Inga, ending up for luncheon at the little restaurant with the oyster-bar, where he had sketched with such avidity. Only, nothing interested him. The curious types of pedler and hybrid politician, the melancholy of the old régime, and the audacity of the new generation, which he had seen and studied with avid eye and awakened imagination, to-day bored him immeasurably. He saw neither color, character nor life. They were dirty, cheap, and commonplace. The waiter, a young student from the University of Moscow, a year over, with whom Inga and he had had long interested conversations, came up eagerly, only to be greeted with glum monosyllables.
To some men, Inga’s evasion would have aroused eager senses of pursuit and possession. Not so, Dangerfield. All his instincts rebelled at this sudden disquieting and disorganizing intrusion across the slow ascent toward reclamation which had lain so clearly before him. Whatever her reason for her abrupt flight, he resented the loss of the morning’s work, the interruption of the happy impulse which had reordered the universe for him. He was angry not simply at the incident and the memories of past discouragement it awoke, but for what layahead—the fear of the future, the wonder whether he had not reached that period in his relations with Inga when his equanimity and the precious poise of an artist were to be constantly upset by the necessity of following vagrant moods. For he realized now how necessary the girl had become to him, to his restless mind that took fright at a moment’s solitude, to his awakening ambition, ready at a moment to sink back in discouragement, and to something deeper than mind or temperament—to the spark in him that still clung to his youth through the glorious youth in her.
“Why were women sent into the world, anyway?” he thought savagely, spearing a loaf of bread as though he were demolishing the whole sex. “Why have men been given a hidden spring of sentiment that makes a woman’s sympathy a necessity? And why must woman always come into man’s life to divert him from his object?”
What most irritated him was that he had thought Inga of different mold, and now she had suddenly been revealed to him as profoundly disquieting as her frailest sister. This feeling of resentment increased as the lack of her presence in his day made itself felt. He resented that she should have fastened him to herself. He resented that she should have shown a feminine capriciousness, and, most of all, he resented the fact that he should feel such resentment.
He was in this gloomy, destructive state of antagonism, amounting almost to revulsion against Inga, when he looked up and saw her entering the restaurant. She perceived him instantly, stopped, and made as though to withdraw. The movement roused a fury in him. His face grew stern and his glance remained coldly fixed.
“If she thinks I am going after, she’s mistaken,” he thought bitterly.
Perceiving that he had seen her, she checked her movement of flight and presently came over to his table, nodded, and sat down. He saw the furrowed pain on her face and the torment in her eyes, and divined the day of suffering through which she had passed. A sudden lightening of the spirit flashed through him, scattering the bitter clouds of dejection. He felt an uncontrollable gaiety, a leaping of the pulses, a need of laughter, of singing out loud, of music, and of sunlight. All his doubts vanished in a pervading sense of peace and serenity. For he knew that she loved him.
Yet they did not speak a word of what lay nearest to their hearts. Gregory, the young student, served them, and tarried to discuss political developments in Russia. Dangerfield, in fine feather, disputed eloquently, opposing his Tolstoyan theories of non-resistance. The transition from moroseness to ecstatic gaiety was so swift that he felt an impulse to work.
“What a pity I haven’t a sketching pad!” he said ruefully.
Gregory hastened to supply him paper and pencil. He laughed and began a series of rapid sketches of the oyster-openers; Mother Trekanova at the counter; a silhouette of a young Jewish girl in tinsel finery with an old rabbi watching in critical disapprobation. Inga, her hands clasped in front of her, continued to stare at the table-cloth, scarcely raising her glance.
Dangerfield completed a dozen sketches and sprang up lightly and satisfied, his mind busy with projects for paintings. Everything attracted him; the whole world was rich with points of interest—a black-haired woman leaning out of the window drying her hair, two young mothers with babies at their shoulders chatting before a kosher shop, a public school pouring out its color-flecked stream of alien races—all these notes of humanity seemedto him vibrant with the teeming will to live, to enjoy, and to drink in sensations to the fullest. He began to talk in long, loquacious periods, as he seldom talked in his sober moods—of the things that lay about him to paint, of the new quarters which they should explore, planning what they would do in the spring and the summer months, eager to be off. For, of course, he took it for granted that her opposition had ended. His enthusiasm was so obvious that she could not fail to comprehend the cause. Several times she glanced at his radiant face, wistfully and seriously, then looked away over the house tops or deep into the city crowds. When they came to the Arcade, she stopped him, and looked him full in the face.
“Mr. Dan, you don’t understand.”
His face clouded abruptly.
“Understand? What do you mean by that? And why—” he glanced impatiently at the tenanted Arcade—“why say this to me here?”
“Go up, I’ll come in an hour. I want to think,” she said gently. “Please don’t, don’t look at me like that.”
“Very well,” he said curtly, “You’ll be up in an hour?”
She nodded and stood while he went away, angry and in his blackest mood.
True to her word, at the appointed time she came knocking at his door. He was walking up and down—he had not ceased from this nervous pacing since she had left him and, at the first glance, she saw how taut every nerve was strung. She went to him directly, and taking his hand, pressed it to her heart. At her action, so full of gentleness and poignant feeling, he felt a longing to catch her up in his arms and surrender weakly each last shred of resentment.
“Inga—dear girl,” he said with difficulty, “you don’t know how you torture me and the worst is I can’t understand—no; I can’t understand at all!”
“Mr. Dan, why can’t it go on just as it has?” she said suddenly, lifting her pleading eyes to his.
“It can’t,” he said roughly. “You know that as well as I do. It’s gone too far. You’ve made yourself necessary to me. I must have you near me, by my side, every moment of the day. I don’t believe in myself; I believe in you, and that’s what I cling to. Good God, Inga, I don’t understand you! Do you think you have the right to do this now, and for what reason?” He stopped, looked at her, and said angrily: “You are not so idiotic to think I care what may have been your past. It isn’t any such thing as that, is it?”
She shook her head disdainfully.
“That has nothing to do with us,” she said coldly.
“Well, then what?” he said frantically. “At first, I thought you believed it was only out of gratitude.” He caught a look in her face and checked himself. “Inga, youdobelieve that. Good Heavens, don’t you know,don’t you understand how I have felt all these weeks, that if I have held myself in it was because I wouldn’t bind you, until—until I knew there was something to offer you in exchange—something more than a derelict, a derelict that was going under? But, child, don’t you know what I am, and don’t you know what you are—how I long for you and need you? Don’t you realize what you mean to me, to have you here close at my side, so young, so gentle, so strong! Haven’t you seen my eyes following you, craving your young loveliness? Haven’t you felt how my arms have longed to go out to you, to hold you to me? You mean everything to me—the end of a nightmare, the birth of a new day! And you could think that I’ve asked you to marry me out of gratitude! Inga, Inga; any man would be mad in love with you!”
He had ended turbulently, his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him long and penetratingly, as though plunging through the barriers that blocked the way to the truth that lay in his heart, the truth of the moment and the truth of to-morrow. This scrutiny lasted so long that he was on the point of breaking out again when she checked him with her hand.
“Yes; I believe that you love me,” she said gently, almost as though she were reassuring herself. She added with the same low, soothing melody in her voice that his ear had learned to crave, “And I, too—I love you.”
She pronounced this so solemnly that it sounded to him not like a surrender but as a farewell.
“And yet you won’t marry me,” he said, divining what lay behind.
“That is not necessary,” she said deliberately, “that is, marriage—your form of marriage.”
He turned like a flash and stood looking at her, his hands on his hips, open-mouthed.
“This is what I want you to understand,” she said quite naturally. “What you must understand. Will you hear me and try to see my point? I have sworn that I would never marry. I can’t—everything in me is against it. I can’t, I won’t acknowledge that any one or any system can force me to give myself to any man unless I love him, unless it is my wish to remain with him. How do I know whether you will always love me, always need me in your life? How do I know that I shall always want to be with you?”
“You!” he said, thunderstruck, for, at heart, like most artists, his nature was not a complex one and his religion was of the day and the moment. The idea that she could ever cease to love him struck him as more extraordinary than that he should ever change. “You can say that!”
“Yes; I can see that that might happen,” she said resolutely. “Even now, and I do care for you, Mr. Dan—believe me, I do love you,” she said, clasping her hands and half extending them toward him in a gesture of entreaty, “I only think of you; I only care what becomes of you, and I am so happy in that, and yet——”
“And yet,” he said sharply.
“And yet—now—even now,” she said, nodding to herself, as though the veil of the future had been lifted before her eyes, “I know that, if the time came when I couldn’t mean anything more, if I couldn’t follow you where you’d want to go——”
“But you are crazy!” he broke in roughly.
“No, no,” she said sympathetically; “I’m not so crazy—I am right! For, Mr. Dan, I’m not of your kind—I know it. If you were strong—if you were yourself, I would never have been in your life; don’t you see, don’t you understand? I won’t fasten myself to you! I won’t marry you!”
“That’s it, then,” he exclaimed; “now we have the real reason!”
“No, no,” she said hastily; “you mustn’t think that. That’s a reason, but not the real one. What I said to you is the truth. I can’t believe there is any higher right than my own to say when and how long I shall surrender my liberty——”
By this time, Dangerfield was in a towering rage. Despite her protestation, he was convinced that the real cause was one of pride.
“In other words, you prefer to be my mistress!” he cried with that intemperance which only comes when the longing for possession is so keen that love and hate tremble in the balance.
“No,” she said, with such dignity that he could not meet her glance; “I am willing to go to you, to live with you, to do everything I can to help you, so long as we are as we are to-day. That, to me, is marriage. To stay as your wife when nothing is left but ashes—no; that is too horrible. If I say this, it’s because I’ve thought about it and have the courage to believe it, because I want to keep my self-respect and my freedom.”
“Oh, your freedom!”
“Yes, my freedom, because like that I always will be free, to come, to go, to give, to think honestly,” she said gently. “Oh, I know you won’t understand. I know you’re thinking terrible thoughts about me. And yet—isn’t my way more honest than—than women who marry and divorce two and three times? Is that respectability to you?”
“What have you been reading?” he said curtly.
“It’s not what I’ve been reading; it’s what I’ve seen,” she said slowly. “It’s other women—it’s my mother’s life.” She covered her face suddenly, and her body shivered. “No, no; don’t ask me to give up my belief!Don’t ask me to be different than I am! I am wild and free as you say; please don’t change me.”
“I only understand one thing,” he said angrily, “and that is you don’t love me. If you did, it would not be a question of discussion.”
“No, no; you’re wrong, Mr. Dan.” She shook her head and held out her arms to him. “Mr. Dan, oh, why won’t you see?”
He turned from her, though in her eyes was a yearning toward him, and her outstretched arms and swaying body drew him to her. He went away and stood apart, his back turned, shaken by the longing which beat in his veins and yet resolved not to yield an inch. He did not believe in her proclaimed theories—they were only excuses. The real reason lay in her distrust of the future. But, this seemed to him so monstrous, at the very moment when he was only conscious of the utter obsession which she had awakened in him, that he raged at the unreasonableness of the barrier which had been thrown across the promise of the future. Her very resistance seemed disloyalty to him, as though another shared her with him and strove against him. All at once a thought awoke him violently. After all, had she ever mentioned the real, the true reason?
He wheeled and went back swiftly.
“Inga, is there any one else—is that it?” he blurted out.
The suddenness of the question staggered her. She drew back, but recovered herself almost immediately.
“I have told you my true reason,” she said, in a low voice.
“You have not answered. I have a right to know the truth. There is some one else,” he insisted.
“You see, this is just it,” she said solemnly, “you think you have the right to know everything about me.That’s what I don’t admit—any such right, either over what has passed or what is coming.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said nervously. “I don’t care what has been. Good Lord, I’m not asking more of you than I do of myself, but——”
“But you must know,” she said, looking at him with her sea-blue eyes, that in moments of tense emotion seemed to widen and darken.
“Yes; I must know,” he said, exasperated. “I must know something about you!”
“You mean everything—everything I have done,” she said, shaking her head, “every thought, all that surrounds me and makes me feel that something is hidden from the rest of the world. Oh, Mr. Dan, if I changed like that, if I were like every one else, you wouldn’t care for me—I know it, I know it! Mr. Dan, isn’t it enough what I’m willing to give you? Let me be as I am.”
He did by instinct, at last, the thing he should have done at first. He turned with a smothered exclamation and caught her in his arms, crying hotly:
“I don’t care for reasons and explanations—words, words! Whether it’s right or wrong, as you see it or as I see it, whether you want to or not, I love you, and you’re going to marry me!”
She closed her eyes; her body yielded in his arms and hung there inertly. Intoxicated, he believed, in this physical surrender, and with his lips close to her cheek, he poured out his heart to her, swayed by blinding tempestuous madness that found its answer in this unreason. Her eyes remained closed, her lips buried against his shoulder, where her head was pressed in a last instinctive defense. Suddenly she felt herself growing faint, threw back her head, avoided his lips, and flung herself loose, giddy and swaying, her hands to her temples, crying:
“No, no, Mr. Dan; don’t carry me away! It’s not fair!”
“What! You can be calm now?” he said, following her.
“I am not calm—I am not!” she cried. “Don’t you know that I love you? Oh, it isn’t fair to sweep me off my feet like this; it isn’t fair!”
A shiver went through her body; she covered her face with her hands and went to the window and threw it open. A long moment later he came to her side and laid his hand lightly on her arm.
“I’m sorry, I lost my head, Inga; I couldn’t help it.”
She turned, quite calm again, and looked at him with a smile.
“I’m glad you did,” she said frankly. “It’s something, something to remember—and it makes me believe.”
“I’m going to ask you once more,” he said solemnly.
The evening was about them, and they stood in the obscurity, their faces but faintly visible to each other, and when their hands touched, they trembled.
“I cannot,” she said, turning away. “Wait! You remember that night when we met the child leading the drunkard? You remember what I said—about memories? Well, that was my life; I was that child. My father was that and more—more than you can imagine, more than I can tell. And my mother lived with him, suffering every insult, every horror you can imagine. She lived with him, because she hadn’t the courage to break away—because they had brought her up to believe that when she married she belonged to her husband, body and soul. I saw what marriage was then, and I saw my sister, too, bound and sold to a man she couldn’t care for—a man who had a little money—a good bargain—and I know what marriage was, to her. She toldme—when she hoped she was going to die. I hate marriage! I hate a thing that can enslave and degrade women as though they were brutes and convicts. Now, don’t you see what it means to me to remain a free human being, just as free in the giving as before?”
He was silent, seeking to evoke out of the past the figure of the child that her words had thrown before his imagination, amazed at this revelation of a thinking woman. She, too, was silent a moment. Then she turned.
“Give me your hand,” she said proudly. “Listen, Mr. Dan: If I take you and you take me—just you and I, the only ones who count—can anything be more reverent, more sacred than as we are now?”
Still he did not answer, though he raised his eyes and looked at her profoundly. There was no confusion in her eyes, no hesitancy in the softness of her voice as she continued.
“I will go with you, I will never fail you, I will be happy to give whatever you ask of me. I will do this as long as you love me and need me. Won’t this mean anything to you, Mr. Dan—won’t this satisfy you?”
He shook his head. His face in the dusk was stern and gray, for he realized at last the gravity of the obstacle that lay between them. The very gentleness in his voice showed her how resolute he, too, was in his conviction.
“You may think one way, Inga dear,” he said gently; “I think another. I couldn’t love you if I did you this wrong. I couldn’t, for wrong it would be to me. If I can’t have you as my wife, I won’t have you at all.” He waited a moment, and then added slowly as though weighing each word: “Now I’m not going to be a coward and threaten to go to the dogs to play on your sympathies. You have given me more than I had a right to take, andI’m going to try and hold what we’ve won together. Only—I’ve got to fight it out alone.”
“What do you mean?” she said, putting out her hand as though to ward off a blow.
For a moment, he lost control of himself—they were close together, and the dark had obliterated the room.
“I mean I can’t stand it! Flesh and blood can’t stand it!” he broke out. “Inga, I can’t have you near me—that I can’t do! It’s got to be one way or the other—all or nothing!”
“You mean I can’t—can’t come here any more?” she said, with a catch in her voice. “You mean I must go?”
“Yes; you must go,” he said, with a long breath. His hands flashed up and caught her shoulders and then fell limply again. He turned with an inarticulate cry and went hurriedly over to the switch and flung on the lights. At a gesture he gave of mute entreaty she went to the door, slowly and heavily, with dragging step. With her hand on the knob she turned.
“I can’t,” she said hopelessly. “There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t give you, Mr. Dan—except that. I can’t—it’s my belief; it’s—it’s me!”