Part 21

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 seemed to 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.

XXXII

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, you _do_ believe 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 told me--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, and I’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!”

XXXIII

Dangerfield kept his promise to Inga. Breeding and training in him were too finely aristocratic for him to surrender weakly under the girl’s eyes. He went to his easel each morning with the early hours, sometimes in the company of Tootles, sometimes alone. Each day he passed Inga in the hall and exchanged cheery greetings with forced gaiety, but beyond this they did not meet. He laid before himself the task of finding himself if it could be done, now that his whole day had to be reorganized and the figure of the young girl banished from it. At the bottom he knew the task was beyond him. He knew himself and the child in the artist that cried out for comradeship and love.

If the change was noticed in the Arcade, no one spoke to him of it. Tootles had looked surprised when Inga had not appeared the first mornings, but kept his own counsel. Mr. Cornelius, too, after a first inquiry, made no further reference to Inga’s absence, though he made a point of dropping in more frequently.

The crisis brought the two men together in a closer companionship, in a subtle instinct of class loyalty. To cap it all, Mr. Cornelius, in his most formal manner, invited Dangerfield to dine with him on the occasion of his monthly pilgrimage to Delmonico’s.

At half-past seven, Dangerfield, who had been fidgeting in his studio, doing a dozen things by fits and starts, dressed and started down the hall. Two things had induced him to accept an invitation which threw him momentarily back into the world he shunned. He realized how strong must be the sense of comradeship in Mr. Cornelius to break through his habits of tenacious secrecy. Moreover, his curiosity was strongly excited by the mystery of “the baron’s” monthly departure _en prince_, which had taxed the imagination of the Arcadians. Since the morning after his first arrival on the sixth floor, Dangerfield had never set foot in the old man’s den, for with the exception of Pansy Hartmann, for whom he showed a noticeable affection, Mr. Cornelius had never exchanged an intimacy.

When Dangerfield reached the end of the hall, he found the door open and Pansy, who had been hastily summoned, busy with the final touches of Mr. Cornelius’ tie, over which he was as particular as an old beau.

“All ready?” said Dangerfield, stopping at the threshold by discretion.

“_Entrez, entrez, mon vieux!_ Come in--I am with you in one little moment!” cried Mr. Cornelius, who was in such a pitch of excitement that he was springing about like a débutante on the eve of her first ball. “Aha, we will make a night of it, a dinner like that at the Café Anglais and a bottle of wine to make you dream! _Faisons la noce!_ two old _boulevardiers, deux vieux moustaches--hein_? Panzee, _ma mignonne_, what are you doing there with that tie?”

“Why, Mr. Cornelius,” exclaimed Pansy, laughing, “how can I do anything when you’re prancing around like that? Stand still and put your chin up!”

“That is so--that is so. There, I’m frozen to the ground. What a night!”

Pansy thrust an imperious finger toward the ceiling, and he obeyed by elevating his chin, not without grumbling, while the operation was completed with nicety.

“There, you’re handsome as Chauncey Olcott!” said Pansy, smiling at his excitement. “You’ll have all the ladies twisting their heads after you.”

“My hat and my cane!” exclaimed “the baron,” as gayly as though he had cried, “My helmet and my sword!”

Pansy disappeared in the closet and emerged polishing a hat that might have come from a museum. Dangerfield, meanwhile, gave a last careful survey of the room. In one corner was a four-poster bed with the faded peacock-blue dressing-gown pendent below a tousled nightcap of gray silk. What furniture there was, and it consisted of a table, a chest of drawers, a bookcase, three chairs, and a massive Breton chest heavily reinforced with iron clasps, was mostly reminiscent of the First Empire which was “the baron’s” hobby, for the walls were covered with engravings of the great Conqueror. Between the windows was the full-length portrait of an actress of the last generation--a striking figure in the costume of Adrienne Lecouvreur, slender and towering, a magnetic brow, ethereal eyes, and, below, the smile of a pagan.

Dangerfield stood before the portrait in long and profound study. Mr. Cornelius, turning from a search through the confusion of his wardrobe for the newest pair of gloves, looked up and saw the reverie into which his friend had fallen.

“_Elle était bien belle_,” said Dangerfield, catching his eye.

“_N’est ce pas?_” The aristocratic little figure drew up in a sort of military attention. He glanced at the woman in the frame and then at the room in which they stood. “It was worth it,” he said smiling, with that loyalty unto sentiment that never dies in the soul of a Frenchman.

“What are you two talking about?” said Pansy, pouting.

“I don’t think it’s at all decent of you to talk French before me.”

“There, there, _ma petite amie_!” said Mr. Cornelius, patting the pink cheeks. “Don’t scold! Monsieur Dangerfield was saying only what he could say of you--that the lady was very beautiful.”

“Did you know her?” said Pansy, opening her eyes.

“I had the great privilege of seeing her act,” said Dangerfield carefully, at which Mr. Cornelius sent him a pleased glance.

Pansy mollified, placed the odd hat upon “the baron’s” head, tilting it a little to one side, so as to give him a rakish look, and snuggled him into his overcoat, which likewise had a decided reminiscent note. Dangerfield felt a sudden pang in watching this affectionate solicitude--a feeling of an emptiness in his own life--of something that had been and had been taken away. The thought of Inga, of the close companionship, of the strange, elusive girl, who had watched over him and fought his struggles, threw him into such a swift dejection that Mr. Cornelius, noticing it, cried out:

“No blue devils to-night! _En avant, mon vieux_, and to the charge! Panzee, an old fellow kisses your cheek with respect and gratitude--_merci_!”

But as he started out, he stopped, mumbled something to himself, and going back to the chest, unlocked it with a key that hung from his watch-chain, and, holding the lid cautiously open, began to seek among rustling papers.

“He must have diamonds there,” said Pansy, laughing; “he makes such a time over that box!”

Mr. Cornelius took out several sheets of paper covered with figures, examined them carefully, thrust them in his pocket, and, after carefully locking the chest, led the way out, locking the door behind him.

Dangerfield forgot himself in a momentary absorption. He knew that his companion must receive an allowance on the first of the month, and that generally by the fifteenth it had melted away. What he knew of his past was indistinct. He had met the Comte de Retz (for Mr. Cornelius had more right to a title than the Arcadians suspected) in the first days of his own prodigal progress at Paris, where De Retz’s intemperance of play at the gaming-table was public property. Dangerfield remembered vaguely the story that had run of his infatuation for the beautiful Suzanne Danesco, and the wreck of his fortune at the gaming-table, which had been the gossip of Paris for a month and then forgotten; but he recalled these things indistinctly with the feeling that there had been some arrangement by which the Comte had effaced himself to preserve the future of his son, and undertaken the gradual discharge of his debts of honor. He had never referred to these memories to Mr. Cornelius, just as he himself knew that, of all his neighbors, the keen eyes of the man of the world had seen below the surface and comprehended the crisis through which he was passing.