Part 17

In his present numbed sense of outlines and of jumbled conceptions Dangerfield had obeyed a sullen instinct of revolt when he had drawn Inga from the studio to plunge again into the heavy slumber of the city. He had a confused idea that, in this groping flight through deserted midnight regions, he would find some way to discourage her, to shake off this uncomplaining obstacle to his liberty of decision. The long flights of stone steps down which they groped their way, put forth hollow, echoing protests which mounted behind them as they sank deeper into the cavernous descent, until they emerged into the arcade, wan and still with its faint, watery glass sides and dipping vines, and ahead, Broadway yawning at the entrance.

Dangerfield strode on, seeing neither to the right nor to the left, and, following the whim of the moment, turned westward toward the river. A late car roared down the long vista and fled, retreating in softening rumbles. The street was empty and the acute sound of their steps struck in fantastic distortion against the city of silence. A policeman from the shadow of a doorway studied them with suspicion. Above them, mysterious leviathans--swollen gas-towers--spread black bulks against the sprinkled night. He stopped and turned on her, seeing her white face dimly in the flickering street.

“So you are following me?” he said angrily.

“Please.”

She moved a little closer, her hands clasped and at her throat, in her voice that low almost guttural note of soothing appeal which she knew had the charm of quieting him. He stared at her blankly, confusing her with other voices and other memories, and, in the end, with a nervous shake of his head, strode away, apparently oblivious of her presence.

The tenements closed in over them, putting forth their heavy, crowded smells. A random fruit-stand glowed at their sides, its drowsy guardian snoring behind glass partitions; beyond him, a senseless body, wrapped in rags huddled in the warmth of a “family entrance”; shouts, curses, laughter rolled out from a blinded back parlor, and, all at once, a stream of yellow shot across the oozing black of the street. They stopped abruptly; from the doorway an old man reeled forth, and by his side, guiding his hand, a child--an unearthly child with an aureole of golden hair. He came opposite, lurched almost on them, touched them with a groping hand and passed, grumbling. He was blind. Dangerfield began to laugh with that short, blood-freezing laughter of his, which was the cry of all the bitterness within his soul. She shuddered and momentarily clung to his arm, turning to watch the child and the drunkard fading into the gloom.

“Afraid?” he said triumphantly.

“No, no--memories,” she said involuntarily.

“You?” he said, staring at her.

She nodded, her grip on his arm tightening.

“I remember,” she said, in a whisper.

“She remembers,” he repeated to himself, incapable of ordering his ideas, vastly impressed by an emotion he could not have defined, for he added, “She, too--leading me.” And as though the figure of the child had become merged into the hundred and one shifting memories which walked, dissolved, and returned to his side, he stalked on, his hand on the girl’s shoulder, heavy with his weight. Everything became confused in his mind, Paris, Rome, Florence, London, New York, the crowded boulevards, the Thames Embankment, and the outer fortifications. The blurred uprise of the gas-works settled into the age-worn outline of the Forum, and the next moment, with the wet breath of the river on his face and the vigilant lights of the Palisades bright in the air, he was skirting the Arno, with Fiesole mingling with the stars.

The cold touch of the river wind momentarily revived him. Slowly the Arno faded from his vision. He stood, in puzzled, dawning comprehension, on the long water-front, with its sleeping docks and nodding mastheads. Beyond lay the tragic depths of the river, rolling away like the tears of multitudes, luminous insects crawling back and forth. At his feet, straggling trucks were rumbling heavily; a few all-night cafés, far-spaced, streaked the broad avenue with their gleaming fingers. He shrank back into the city, into the phantasmagoria which closed over his eyes and roared on his senses, back on Broadway once more, with its occasional taxi, bright with late revelers.

At Sixty-first Street he halted before the revolving facets of the entrance to Costello’s. The footman without saluted him and called him by name. A few parties, with sudden bursts of white satin and colored brilliance, were leaving the noisy salons. Others returning from earlier rounds of gaiety were pressing through, like fluttering, many-tinted butterflies.

“I’m going in,” he said sullenly.

“If you want to,” she answered.

He had expected resistance. Compliance irritated him. The next moment, they were in the anteroom, dazed by their abrupt transition from the bleakness of the slums into this fragrant warm nest of indolence and luxury, aware of perfumed currents, glowing bodies, and the seduction of rioting rhythms. They mounted in an elevator to a privileged room, where all sensations seemed mingled in the confusion of the awakening senses, where, for a moment, she was uncomfortably conscious of the dark, incongruous blot her sober attire made against the swarming flood of color. A waiter, unimpressed, was preparing a hostile answer when Costello himself came up with hand outstretched at the sight of Dangerfield. He turned to the girl, greeting her cordially.

“Glad to see you here again; haven’t seen you for a long time.”

“A table, Costello.”

“Get you one right away, Mr. Garford.”

At his magic touch, they found themselves advantageously placed by the open floor where the dancers crowded and swept against them. Dangerfield ordered a bottle of champagne and turned to her.

“Funny mistake Costello made.”

“What?”

“Acted as though he knew you.”

“Yes; I used to come here--it amused me occasionally.”

“You, Inga?”

“Why not?” she said, opening her eyes.

“After all, why not? Queer though,” he said stupidly but he continued to stare at her, as though this were a manifestation stranger than the riot of cities and visions through which he had come.

She did not refuse the glass of champagne he poured her, but, after raising it to her lips, put it down and did not touch it again. Among this incredible crowd made up of the extremes of society--women of the world seeking refuge from boredom, and courtesans, giving themselves the dignity and manners which, in their covetous ignorance, they associated with conventional society, there were many who knew Dangerfield, who stared in impudent amazement or discussed him in whispers, with sidelong glances. A number of men came up and greeted him boisterously.

“Want to dance with them?” he asked, nodding to her.

She shook her head.

“Not to-night.”

The spectacle began to bore him. He complained of the champagne and changed his order. She gave no word of suggestion, watching him with occasional stolen glances, wondering at his control. Her elbows on the table, her little curved chin on the backs of her hands, rather Egyptian in the immobility of her pose and the baffling quality of her expression, she followed the dance without distinguishing the dancers, quite unconscious of the curiosity she awoke, serious and on her guard. When friends of his sought her as a partner or tried to engage her in conversation, she answered in a few quiet words without looking at them. They soon understood from a glance at her companion what her rôle must be, and importuned her no further.

When she least expected it, Dangerfield rose impatiently and departed.

“How futile that all is!” he said angrily, when they were again on the sidewalk. “Think they’re having a good time--bah!” He swayed for the first time and caught her shoulder, drawing his fingers tightly over his temples. “My brain is rocking,” he said.

“The air will do you good. Walk a little.”

He made an effort, took a long breath, and opened his eyes.

“You still here?” he said, frowning.

She nodded.

“Why do you follow me like this?” he said peevishly.

“Because I care what happens to you.”

“That is ridiculous!” he said loudly.

He stared a moment at her with his wild-animal stare, and, all at once, as though he had found a way to get rid of her, started down Eighth Avenue. They arrived at Columbus Circle with the first muddied grays of the dawn creeping in above the whitening electric signs, then passed under the elevated as a train shrieked and roared above them in its burning flight. A touring car went whirring past them, defiant of speed-laws, skidded dangerously, righting itself, and disappeared.

Scavengers were already turning over the refuse in waiting ash-cans, as they struck into a side street and stopped before an iron grill under the colored electric sign, “Mantell’s.” A little man with ratty eyes and black wisps of hair streaking the bald dome of his head, shuffled to the gate and squinted at them cautiously before slipping the chain.

The low rooms were swept with drifting gray-blue smoke clouds, upholstered benches were against the walls, where oldish women, worn with the fatigue of the night, were smiling their red smiles at fatuous youngsters. Three or four foreign-looking groups, swarthy men with enormous women, were in corners placidly engaged in their own affairs as though this were the most respectable of family resorts. A mechanical piano in a further room drummed out hideous dance-music to swirling groups in frank abandon. Dangerfield was no longer conscious of anything but an angry determination to revolt, to be free of all encumbrance. It seemed to his fuddled imagination that it was no longer Inga at his side but something strangely akin to his conscience, defiantly pursuing him out of the past of his youth and illusions, malignantly and maliciously clinging to him. Somehow, somewhere, he must rid himself of this impossible burden, crush it down, and cast it aside.

The more Inga continued silent and without remonstrance, the wilder his resentment mounted. He continued to drink of the poisonous rank beverages served at extortionate prices. Many stared at them and discussed them openly, but no interference was offered. There was something so combustible and wild in his attitude, that, there, at least no one was under illusions as to the danger. In half an hour the spirit of restlessness in him drove him out into the streets again. He was so befuddled now, that he could not remember her name, calling her Pepita, imagining that she was the little Spanish model of the Latin Quarter who had tried to kill herself.

All at once a horror of the city, of its sham brilliance paling against the graying sky, of its oppressive stone prisons, possessed him with a longing for flight. He strode down into the subway and took a West Farms express. In the car which they entered a score of persons were wearily grouped, half of them asleep, a few heavy-eyed laborers, two men in evening dress, a girl with a heavy coat buttoned over a ball dress, arms folded, and gazing stolidly ahead. Dangerfield seated himself in a corner, nodded, and went to sleep. When they reached the end of the line Inga awoke him with the help of the guard, and asked him what he wanted to do.

He got up suddenly and walked down the long steps to the street. They were in the open spaces of the upper city; a few milk-wagons were passing at rare intervals, about them was the feeling of the rediscovered earth in long, empty, grass-grown lots. He had not spoken a word. Suddenly he stopped and turned, with a new menace in his voice.

“Well--had enough?”

“I’m not tired,” she said, shaking her head and meeting his look steadily.

“We’ll see,” he said, and started off so furiously that, for a time, she was put to it to keep up with him. At the end, from the need of taking breath himself, he stopped and wheeled on her.

“What--you’re still here!”

“Yes.”

She forced a smile, and this smile completed his exasperation.

“Why won’t you let me go?” he cried, in an outburst of rage. “You let me go, do you hear? Dogging and sneaking about me! What right you got--what business is it what I do! No one shall stop me--no one, do you hear?” He advanced threateningly on her. “Had enough of interference--d’you understand? You let me go now--let me go, or I’ll--”

Midway in a gesture as he raised his hand to seize her, his legs shook under him, his voice stopped in his throat, he heaved forward, backward, then down on his face, and lay still in a crumpled mass.

She bent down swiftly, examined him, perceived that he was completely drunk and rose to look for help. It was nearing six o’clock but the houses were still closed against the night. Near her at a corner saloon, a studded glass sign announced:

BOSTWEILER’S PRIVATE HOTEL

She hesitated a moment before the squalor and sordidness of the hotel entrance, divining the hideousness into which she had chanced, shuddered and rang the night bell. A colored doorman, sleeping somewhere in the green-lit hallway, called sleepily:

“Come right in!”

She knocked again and again with insistent, angry knocks, until he came stumbling and rubbing his eyes to the door. He smelt horribly of cheap whisky. With his aid she got Dangerfield in and up-stairs. The watcher grinned knowingly and, rather than enter into explanations, she hastily thrust a bill into his hand and dismissed him. Dangerfield on the bed was still unconscious. The room was tawdry, the carpet in shreds, the gas-fixture bent, and the blistered furniture covered with cheap, soiled imitation lace. She locked the door and drew a sofa before it, opened the windows, and sat down in a rocking-chair, her head racked with weary pains, watching the drabs and grays as they scurried before the gorgeous cavalcade of the victorious sun.

All at once Inga awoke with a sense of danger. Dangerfield was standing at the foot of her chair, or rather the specter of Dangerfield looked down at her with drawn lips and pasty face, with twitching nerves. It was late afternoon.

XXV

For a moment, startled out of a confused succession of restless dreams, Inga could not realize where she was. Then the squalor of the room, the haggard, tortured face of Dangerfield looking down in remorse, the memory of the long night of struggle came back in a flash. She sprang up hastily.

“I went off to sleep--heavens, how late is it?”

“It’s after three--I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, in a low voice.

“Oh, why didn’t you call me?” she said hastily, struck by the new note of pain and contrition.

He brushed her question aside, staring at her.

“How was it possible--Good God, how could I have brought you here?” He stopped, shuddered, and glanced around at the room.

“You didn’t. I brought you,” she said quickly. “You had--had collapsed.”

“Sit down,” he said.

He drew a chair opposite her, took both her hands in his, and looked at her so long that she began to be embarrassed. Then, all at once, his lips twisted, his eyes filled with tears, and he buried his head in his hands.

“Don’t mind me, Mr. Dan!” she cried in her distress, bending over him. “Don’t think of me!” And, as he continued to dig his hands into his cheeks against the long pent-up emotion, she added: “I’m only happy to have helped you. Really I am.”

He rose suddenly, fighting down a sob, overcome by remorse.

“Good God, where have I dragged you?”

She came to him swiftly and seized his hands with an imperious gesture.

“What do you think I care about that?” she said, with such anger that it shocked him into attention. “To make a man out of you, I’d go through anything--anything, do you hear!”

He searched in his pockets at a sudden remembrance, found the bottle he had bought at the druggist’s the night before, and looked up at her.

“Then why didn’t you take this?” he said curtly.

“What good would that have done?” she said impatiently.

He stared at her a moment and, with a gesture of contempt, flung the bottle against the floor, where it crashed to pieces.

She swayed with a cry of joy and clung to him, her head pressed against his shoulder, as though a sea of perils had returned him safely.

“Why the devil should you care what happens to an old derelict, you queer little creature?” he said slowly, surprised at the trembling in her body.

“Care! Why, if anything had happened--” She broke off, caught her breath just at the moment when she could no longer control herself, and dug her nails into the palms of her hands in an effort to regain her self-control.

“Don’t move--stay where you are--near me,” he said gently, and he drew one arm about her shoulder.

Through the leaden, racking burdens of the night, a flood of cleansing light entered his soul, a passionate thirst for life once more. The world outside was good, full of vibrant, joyful sounds--children’s voices, laughing as they danced to the music of a hurdy-gurdy, the long chatter of scolding sparrows, tiny sounds and yet teeming with life, its curiosity, its health, its response to sensations, pleasant, intense, and intoxicating. The arm he had drawn about her tightened as though clinging to its salvage in the storm of his mind. Warned by some subtle intuition of the heart, she did not attempt to move away. Instead, one hand crept up until it lay against the rough cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dan,” she said, in a whisper. “Why, you never could have harmed any one--I know it! I know it isn’t your fault--it couldn’t be!”

“No; it isn’t my fault,” he said mechanically, but his thoughts were of the outer world with its insistent call back to life, to the life which rose in him from the perfumed contact of her straight, young body, the scent of her hair, the softness of her protecting arms, and the warm notes of her whispering voice. All at once he held her from him so that he could look into her flushed face and said solemnly, sadly:

“Inga, have you the right to do this? Don’t you know it’s a grave responsibility you have taken--to force me to go on living, hating everything, hoping nothing--for that’s what you’re doing?”

“You must--you must!” she said tremulously.

His eyes were on her every expression now, and in them was a longing to question and to be answered.

“Why did you come to me--why do you stick to me now?” he said eagerly.

“It’s just so,” she said nervously. “I can’t help it. I couldn’t have let you go out alone--Why, if you saw a child drowning you’d have to save it, wouldn’t you?” He nodded gravely. “Well, that’s the way with me. I just couldn’t be otherwise.”

“I have taken heavily from you,” he said slowly, “long, long, racking hours, and you’ve never complained. You have given me so much and I have had no right.”

She smiled.

“Those were the happiest moments.”

“And after all that,” he said, “you still want to go on--giving to me?”

Her hands came together eagerly as she raised her eyes in supplication.

“Please--oh, you wouldn’t take this from me now!”

“You don’t know, child; you don’t know what you are undertaking,” he said bitterly.

“I want it!”

“And you do all this because----”

“I believe in you.”

He turned away, not quite satisfied, and yet the feeling of what he had contemplated the day before was so coldly insistent that the revulsion urged him to cling to what she offered.

“It’s too much to ask,” he said, hesitating.

“You say that because you do not understand!” she cried, coming to him eagerly, her hand on his shoulder, standing behind him. “You don’t know all it means in my life to have the feeling of really counting.” She stopped as he turned, wondering if, at last, she was going to speak of herself. She wavered and then continued resolutely, “It’s all so useless--being alone--so starved! If you knew what it meant to me, to count, to give to some one, to fight for something, you wouldn’t talk of its being hard on me.”

He looked at her and wondered. He had known women like her before, women of the Northlands and the Old World who never complained, whose joy lay in sacrifice and redeeming. He thought of Pepita, the little Spanish model whose adoration he had not suspected until too late, and, thinking of Pepita, he wondered about Inga. What was the true feeling in her--as much as he would ever understand her? Did the girl love him? He wanted to believe it so keenly, in the weak reaction from the dread decision of the night, longing for something to cling to, that he hesitated, afraid to dissipate a fragile illusion by too brusque a question. Yet, if she did love him? At the very possibility, a new belief in himself awoke, bringing to him that sensation of life at its fullest in the power of inspiring love.

She saw the thronging, tumultuous thoughts which came crowding to his eyes, and nervously turned away. Her retreat frightened him, as such trivial symptoms can instill terror in moments of intense hope. He put his hands over his eyes to repress the too frank questioning in them, and walked to the window to regain his calm.

When he came back to her, determined to discuss matters rationally, he was conscious only of a longing to believe in her, to go forth into life and the sun once more. Yet he strove to be honest.

“This is all very well for now,” he said hurriedly, hardly trusting his voice, “but after--when we are calm, when we can see things as they are, when I face what is ahead, when you realize what you have bound your life to--a derelict--”

“And if I can make you what you were before,” she said, in simple faith.

“You can’t--men like me don’t come back,” he said bitterly, sinking into a chair. “It isn’t simply to live--that’s what you must understand. It’s--it’s to have the power to do what I used to do, and to do that, one must believe in oneself; only that is so hard--once you’ve lost it!”

“That is what I want, Mr. Dan,” she said impulsively. “I feel what there is in you. It comes to me just by your being in the room. I felt it that first night, even before you opened your eyes. I couldn’t help myself. I had to come to you to do what you wanted, to serve you. Do you think I’d have done that if you weren’t something big, something really worth while?”

He looked at her, only too impatient to be convinced, forgetting all his mental whys and wherefores in the instincts toward faith and joy which came to him in the spell of her intimacy.

“I wanted to end it,” he said wistfully, yet already the thing was far away, incredible. “I’d made up my mind.”

“Won’t you let me try?” she cried passionately. “Mr. Dan, let me try--it would be such a big--big thing in my life!”

“Try,” he said impulsively, with a glad leap of his senses, and, even at this moment, it struck him how incongruous, in this sordid interior, was this sudden release toward the beauty and the faith of things.

“And now,” she said hurriedly, “let’s get out of here--out of this awful place!”

He sprang up hastily, cursing himself for his obtuseness, and came face to face with the worn image of himself in the murky mirror. A sudden loathing seized him.

“Good Lord, do I look like that?” he cried.

“Come,” she said smilingly. She stood in the doorway, her hand on the knob, opening the way to him until he came and stood beside her, looking back in revulsion at the tawdry room. “That’s the past--we’ll shut it out forever,” she said softly, and closed the door. “Now give me your hand.”

The hallway was dark. She took his hand and guided him through the musty, oppressive darkness down the creaking, uncertain stairs, never releasing her hold until she had found the door and led him, dazzled, into the mellowness of the day.