Part 14

Dangerfield nodded, and something like a triumphant sneer, brutal and vindictive, quite foreign to his usual moods, appeared about his mouth.

“This afternoon, as I said!”

“You’re not going alone?”

“No, no; O’Leary’s with me.”

The alarm which had seized her from the first seemed suddenly translated into another terror as she caught him by the arm, saying,

“One word--just one word first.”

While O’Leary and Sassafras stood waiting, ill at ease, she drew him over the hooded bridge which connected the two wings of the Arcade.

“Mr. Dan,” she said breathlessly, clasping her hands, “you’ll come back?”

“Why, of course, of course,” he said nervously, not meeting her eyes.

“You’ll come back--you promised,” she said, and as she put her head down and swayed against him, he felt her body trembling. They were hidden by the bend of the hooded passage, alone in the filtered light that struggled up the gloomy halls.

“Inga--Inga--don’t make it harder for me,” he said bitterly.

“You’ll come back,” she repeated, desperately clinging to him, her face upraised, her eyes searching his in terror. “Say it; promise it!”

“I--perhaps--” His hand closed over her fingers with the nervous tension that these last days of abstinence had brought him.

“Mr. Dan, you must not think you’re alone--you mustn’t say no one cares!” She slipped her arms about his neck, and he felt her breast shaken with the heave of agitated breaths. “If anything--anything--happened--” She shook her head and stopped, unable to finish.

“Happen--what do you think--why is that idea in your head?” he said, holding her from him.

She put her handkerchief hastily to her eyes and threw her head back suddenly, so that her look seemed to penetrate through his mask and search into his soul.

He repeated his question, but this time uneasily, conscious of the scrutiny under which she held him.

“Nothing,” she said abruptly. In a moment she was back into the restraint of her usual self. “Then you will come back here--to me,” she said slowly, “to-night. It makes no difference to me--understand that--in what condition you are. I’ll be waiting.”

He looked at her, rather startled by this, then profoundly touched, and his face showed the emotion she had aroused in him for he turned hastily away, saying:

“As you wish, then--and it’s a promise.”

They came back to the elevator hurriedly, each plainly upset, and separated with a brief nod. The mood into which Inga had thrown him possessed him long after they had taken a taxi and started across the park, for he leaned forward, seemingly oblivious to the presence of company, and frowned down on the strongly clasped hands which, from time to time, were pressed against his teeth in strained, convulsive gestures. O’Leary, who watched him in growing perplexity, decided to break the silence.

“If there’s anything you want of me particularly, Dangerfield, you’d better tell me.”

“What? Oh, yes!” Dangerfield came back to his seat with a start, ran his hand over his forehead, and said apologetically,

“O’Leary, I owe you my apologies!”

“Oh, that’s all right!”

“I owe you more than that,” he said, with one of his sudden smiles which had the effect of charming away all resentment. “I know it; I’m deeply grateful. If I don’t tell you all details won’t you understand that it’s because the subject is too painful?”

“Don’t say a word, then,” said O’Leary.

“Besides--to-morrow--when the papers get hold of it--” He shrugged his shoulders. “Will it suffice you to know that I have asked you to assist at a wedding, a wedding for which I am peculiarly responsible?” The tones became cold and implacable. “In fact, you have met the lady before--as you perhaps have guessed, she is my former wife. There are circumstances which make it desirable for all parties to avoid as much publicity as possible. That’s why it’s being solemnized at the place we are going.” He leaned forward and rapped on the window, signaling the driver to stop. “We’ll get out here.”

The taxi drew up in a side street at his orders. Up the avenue in that thronged district of the slums of the upper city which lies on the beginnings of Harlem, O’Leary perceived the tower of a church.

Dangerfield’s moodiness had closed over him again. At a gesture of his, O’Leary followed him into the vestibule. Knowing what he had been able to patch together, he could faintly divine the storm of emotion which swept his companion as the door closed behind them and they entered the dimness of the chapel. There were a bare half-dozen persons--the minister, the couple standing before him by the pulpit, the whole far enough away to be unrecognizable; yet at the sudden letting-in of the noises of the street, each turned with a start. It was as though each had divined who the new arrival must be.

Dangerfield acknowledged the recognition with a short forward bending of his head, but, instead of taking a seat, he remained standing by a pillar, arms folded, immovable; nor in the obscurity was it possible for his companion to judge what emotion predominated. The sounds of the minister’s voice came to them in regular cadences until the decisive words, “I therefore pronounce you man and wife.”

At this, O’Leary, with his eyes still on Dangerfield, saw the arms relax and the head thrown back as though a weight had slipped from the shoulders. The next moment his companion had touched him on the arm and gone out, saying:

“That’s all--come!”

On the sidewalk, Dangerfield seemed to be moving blindly, for he stumbled once and had started off in a direction quite different from the corner where their taxi was waiting, when O’Leary checked him on the arm, saying:

“That’s not the way, man, to your taxi.”

At his touch Dangerfield turned, without seeming realization of where he was.

“What--what taxi?”

“The taxi we came in that’s waiting,” said O’Leary impatiently, “or shall I let it go?”

“No, no.”

They retraced their steps, but, to do so, they were forced to pass by the entrance of the church just as the wedding-party was emerging. Dangerfield stopped with an exclamation and drew himself up stiffly, while the press of the crowd brought them momentarily face to face with the bride and groom, as they came through the fringe of spectators. A curious pair they made for two who had just come from the altar. Each face seemed dominated by a sullen fury, and O’Leary, looking at them, mumbled to himself:

“’Deed they look more like they were waiting to knife each other than dreaming of wedded bliss!”

When they perceived Dangerfield, the man started back with something akin to fear in his eyes, while the woman, warned by his movement, looked up and, meeting the look of her former husband, caught her breath. For a moment the black rage which convulsed her face shook her so that she seemed on the point of breaking all restraint and turning on them. But at this dangerous moment, some one spoke to her in sharp command, seized her arm and hurried her into a carriage. O’Leary recognized Doctor Fortier.

A moment later, the whole party had disappeared down the avenue, leaving Dangerfield and O’Leary standing in the midst of a group of urchins, grocer-boys and nursery-maids, who, sensing the approach of a tragic coincident, were staring open-mouthed at the shaggy, bearlike man who continued lost in his reveries. It wasn’t until O’Leary felt impelled to recall him by a touch on his arm that Dangerfield (to keep to the name which he had voluntarily assumed) came to himself, perceived the growing curiosity of the throng with a start, brushed them aside with an angry sweep of his arms. Half an hour later, without having uttered a word, he deposited O’Leary at the Arcade, dismissed the car, and strode away down the avenue, before his companion, taken off his guard, had thought to remind him of his promise to Inga.

* * * * *

At eleven o’clock, Dangerfield, led by some dramatic impulse, returned to his club, from which he had exiled himself for months. From the moment that the old tugging, feverish thirst for oblivion had swept him from O’Leary into the solitude of crowds and the electric heart of the city, he had been drinking blindly, impatiently, with a need of quieting the throbbing nerves which were rapping an insistent tattoo against his brain. A dozen men were in the lounge up-stairs, old friends, who started up with exclamations of surprise at seeing the familiar tousled head with the gray lock appearing above the stairs. Quite a crowd came thronging about the prodigal returned, the more enthusiastic in that they had never expected to lay eyes on him again. He stood among them outwardly calm and smiling, his brain fighting off the numbing, confused riot that raged within it. Several, divining his condition, stole wondering, apprehensive glances at him.

He was installed in a great armchair before the blazing logs in the fireplace in the light and warmth of familiar friendly regions, and, as he put out his hands gratefully against the heat, feeling himself surrounded by friends, it seemed to him that he was a prey to some tantalizing hallucinations of happiness that must vanish at a waking start. He remained deep into the night, drinking steadily, striving to beat down the iron control of his head, which still held him cruelly to the realization of the actual. One by one the old friends were forced to leave, going silently, ominously impressed by the deliberate intensity of the man, the wildness in his eyes and the sudden fits of moody wandering. At two o’clock, all sounds had grown dulled and pleasant in his ears. He rose, walked into the office without faltering, exchanged a courteous handshake with a friend from the pool-table and asked for his account, discharged it in full, wrote out his resignation, and posted it to the board of directors. As he started to leave he found himself before the board on which was posted the list of members suspended for house-charges or non-payment of dues. All at once, a sentimental idea came to him. He examined the list carefully, found in it the names of four men, old friends in straightened circumstances, and carefully wrote down the sums of their indebtedness.

“I think I should like to attend to these,” he said politely, drawing his check-book.

Then he thanked the clerk, pocketed the receipts, insisted on buying a last round of drinks for the few late stragglers at the pool-tables, who, amazed, watched him depart without a single misstep. When he had received his coat and hat, he slipped a bill in the hand of Pedro, the Argus of the club.

“’Gainst the rules,” he said, in a whisper, “but not ordinary case. Wish you luck, Pedro!”

* * * * *

On the long, bleak way to the Arcade, he stopped at a drug store on Seventh Avenue, whispered a moment to a clerk in the shadows of the back counter, received a small bottle, and as he examined it nodded with satisfaction, and went out. He entered the Arcade and stood a moment in its deserted, oppressive silence, staring at the dim interiors of shops that showed like pale catacombs on either side, and all at once broke out into a short, bitter laugh, as though this end of all had struck him as the most incongruous thing in his fantastic life. He did not wake up Sassafras, but went up the long six flights slowly, sitting down from time to time and talking to himself, his head in his hands. The corridor was deathly quiet and dim, and the one struggling, bending blue flame in the gas-jet before his room seemed to him a beacon in far-off regions as he groped his way to it. The door was unlocked--the room faintly reflecting outlines in queer distorted shadows. He sat down and stared solemnly about him. Then he rose, fumbled a moment, and found the button. The lights flashed across the room. At the table, asleep, her body sunk into weariness of long vigilance, was Inga Sonderson. At the same moment she moved, saw him, and started up with a cry of relief, which she checked with a clutching of her hand at her throat. The next moment she came swiftly over to him, all surprise banished from her face, quick and matter of fact, saying:

“Slip out of your coat. I’ll take it.”

He backed away, rebelling at her presence and the will which was there to oppose his. All at once he remembered his promise, and a cunning loophole dawned in his foggy brain.

“Came back as I promised,” he said solemnly, folding his arms in antagonism. “All right now, going out again.”

Instinctively he comprehended the persistent opposition that lay in the slender body facing him, and sought to escape it. To his surprise, she did not object, but after a moment’s thought nodded and went toward her room.

“What are you going to do?” he said roughly.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

He laughed incredulously. The next moment she was back, enveloped in coat and muffler.

“You’re going,” he said frowning, “now?”

“Whenever you wish,” she said, her dark eyes steadily on him, without reproach or criticism.

“We’ll see,” he said, resentfully, and he started down the hall. Without a word she followed at his side.

XXI

The name of Daniel Garford had figured on many occasions in the scare-heads of the Metropolitan press, not only on account of the eccentricities of genius and the wildness of his youth, but from the fact that the name of Garford had been a social beacon for generations. Even before the Mexican War there had been a Garford who had sat in the Cabinet as Secretary of State, and from that time on, the family had progressed in power and wealth, a proud, intensely ambitious, self-willed, and dominating line of men, who, whatever their faults, were never accused of idleness. There was a restless, mental energy about these men which had driven them to the front, while the strength of the old Garford strain continued to show in their impatience of forms and traditions, their ability to originate and discover, and especially in their distinguishing trait of never being satisfied with success.

The Honorable Benjamin Garford, Daniel’s uncle, whom he resembled, according to the incomprehensible vagaries of heredity in form and temperament, had been a clear example of this boundless craze for real achievement. Though possessed of an ample fortune, he had, from his youth, devoted himself to scientific research and discussion. One of the most distinguished scholars of his day, honored by numerous European scientific bodies for discoveries in the field of electrical energy, his text-books accepted as standards, twice minister to St. Petersburg, and once to Paris, he summed up his life in one little phrase: “I die a disappointed man.” This remark, incomprehensible to the multitude, should be retained as the key to Daniel’s character--the passionate pursuit of an ideal linked to an inevitable moment of self-appraisement and disillusion.

His life had been enveloped in storm, a whirling, breathless existence, with strange reversals of fortune, never quiet, nor long continuing along obvious lines. The quality of genius had always been in him from the lonely, tragic days of his boyhood, but a disordered, tormented genius which had made him the sport of accidental influences. Dudley Garford, his father, in a moment of intense infatuation in his early twenties, had eloped with and married a beautiful Italian girl of distinguished parentage whom he had met in his travels, and this mixture of the virility of the Garfords with the warmth and color of the South had made a genius of the boy. To this fortuitous mingling of rich strains was added the awakening touch of early sorrow and a precocious comprehension of tragedy. What father and mother had consummated in a burst of wildness, they lived to destroy in bitterness. From the earliest years of their marriage, violent quarrels had broken out, due at first to the unreasoning espionage of passionate jealousy to which the wife subjected the husband, and, later, inevitably to a succession of rapid, volatile attachments into which the husband had been driven, first, by her intolerance, and second, by the brilliant pleasure-loving qualities of his own forceful personality.

Daniel and his sister Theresa grew up in this unruly household, wide-eyed, wondering spectators of daily storms, culminating in one tragic evening when the mother, face to face at last with the acknowledged proofs of her husband’s infidelity, had abandoned herself to such a tempest of blind rage that the two children, cowering against the wall, too frightened to do aught but to cling to each other, were forced to witness the frantic struggle of their father with the mother who, in her hysteria, was bent on self-destruction. The scene (it had taken place in the nursery) remained in the boy’s mind with the startling horror of a nightmare--the childish toys scattered on the floor, the words of hatred and anger which struck them cold, the frightful distortion on the face of their mother, the struggle for the possession of the knife, and then her exhaustion, the low moaning broken by hysterical gasps for breath. Then, weeks later had come the parting which he did not understand in the least, for which he could find no childish reason. The little sister and the stately, resplendent mother had gone out of his life, and loneliness and silence had crept through the great house.

The boy grew up in this abandonment, brooding over memories, his imagination precociously awakened, forced into a searching of himself; self-sufficient, wandering into long explorations of the realms of the fantastic, telling himself stories at night, the despair and terror of a succession of tutors. What he saw and dimly comprehended during this period was a curious awakening to the conflict of the greed and passions of the later world. Many a night, unsuspected, he had stolen from his bed and secreted himself in the little balcony that looked down on the great drawing-room, gazing down with a puzzled wonder on the tempestuous scenes of revel and license which hid the darker side of Dudley Garford’s mercurial, triumphant public career. He saw his father with critical eyes, with an unhealthy knowledge beyond the weight of his years, and this hidden critical spectatorship made life seem to him like some whirling theatric _danse macabre_ of riotous emotions and vibrant colors.

Already, the exotic multiplied sensations had become translated into the bent of his imagination. He had begun to model in clay, untaught, following queer fancies; struggling to the use of childish paints, understanding nothing of mediums but delighting his eyes with odd blending and contrasts of colors, violent and barbaric in his instincts.

One night, in the weariness of his watching, he fell asleep in the balcony, was discovered, and the next week was bundled off to boarding school.

His career at school was cut abruptly at the age of sixteen by the discovery of his infatuation for the daughter of one of his teachers, a woman many years his senior with whom he had fallen violently, desperately in love, with all the unreason and blind adoration of a first passion. Brilliant, unruly, proud, delicate in health, and too absorbed in reading and the pursuit of his beloved painting, he had still about him a certain illuminating magnetism, a faith in his future, a trick of saying things others would never have said, of thinking strange thoughts that had even reached to the heart of the woman. To do her justice, she had never thought for a moment of taking advantage of the boy’s infatuation; yet the parting was difficult, and she herself suffered more than she showed.

For two years he was consigned to a ranch, to live in the open air, to harden to the weather and grow in muscle and sturdiness, roaming the great stretches, sleeping in the open, discovering that beyond the stone walls of the city, such miracles exist as the turning of the dawn, the riotous coming of the sun, the trackless map of stars, the restless stealing-in of the spring and the haunting majesty of the turning leaves. All these sensations sunk deep into his fertile imagination. An artist exiled in the fight for health gave him the first lessons, and put him through the hard grind of mechanical preparation. From the first he showed qualities which were to persist in his later work, an impatience with deliberate building and an impulse toward the dramatic interpretation of the instincts. His sketches were full of technical faults, and yet almost all held a certain charm, something quite out of the ordinary.

From this serene calm of the open plain and a life of simple moods, he was suddenly transplanted to college in the midst of a fast New York set, with possession of an allowance which was quite sufficient to send him headlong to his own destruction. The tendency to violent extremes which was instinctive in his character made him speedily the ring-leader in the company of those who burned the midnight oil--but not in the pursuit of knowledge. In six months Daniel had been twice warned by the faculty and had managed to run through the year’s allowance. He applied for further funds to his father, who laughed and acceded, rather pleased, in his worldly way, that his son was sowing his wild oats in princely fashion. In his second year, his disordered existence had become so notorious that, after a certain episode which had figured prominently in the newspapers, wherein he had driven a coach over the front lawns of suburban Boston in the wee hours of the morning, he was summarily called before the faculty and given an opportunity to resign. On top of which came a telegram from New York summoning him to his father’s death-bed.

A certain mystery surrounded the death of Dudley Garford, which was officially given out as the result of an aggravated case of appendicitis. It was whispered that he had come by a violent death, having been shot through the lungs by an outraged husband. Certainly the habits of his later life would not have made such a result an improbability.

Daniel had never known his father, conscious always in the rare moments of their intercourse of an insuperable barrier which lay between them in the memories of his boyhood. In the last months, they had even come to the verge of an open quarrel, when the father had discovered the strength of the son’s artistic inclinations and had violently forbidden him a career which he looked upon with contempt.

Daniel now found himself his own master, with every avenue opened to his wish. He went to Paris. His mother, after the early death of his sister, had remarried and become the Duchesse de Senbach. Into this curious intermingling of international society which flaunts its vanities and worn passions, he entered with all the ardor of a healthy body and a lively imagination, still genuinely blinded with illusions. The artist in him, which divides life into sensations, again brought him into notoriety. He gave dinners as a grand duke might give; he lived in apartments with a retinue of servants, the cost of which was faithfully chronicled in the colored Sunday editions of his home papers with printed references to the rake’s progress. He was surrounded by a crowd of sycophants, shoddy race-track majors, princes down at the heels, and Balkan aristocrats of the gaming-tables, who fattened on his prodigality and led him into fresh excesses. He fell violently in love with a favorite of the _Café Chantants_, Nina de Mauban, believed in her devotion to him, conceived the quixotic idea of lifting her out of the muddied existence she led and even announced their engagement.

* * * * *