Part 22

Outside, Dangerfield suggested the subway, only to be met with a scornful denial. For one night a month, at least, the illusion must be revived in its completeness. They hailed a taxi and arrived thus at Delmonico’s. In the crowded room, their table was reserved and at each plate a gardenia was laid. Gustave, the head waiter, was at the chairs bowing recognition, visibly intrigued at the unprecedented spectacle of Mr. Cornelius arriving with a companion, nor was his surprise diminished by perceiving Dangerfield, whom he knew of old. Their entrance occasioned quite a stir among the diners, where the strangely distinctive figure of Dangerfield, with his one splash of gray amid the tangled black hair, was quickly recognized. Until this moment, he had felt no unease, too keenly interested in the unfolding mystery of his companion. But this entrance into the restaurant, this return into the old life affected him like a dash of cold water flung against his face. He felt the sudden turning of curious eyes, divined the excited flurry of whispered comments, and strode on, nervously recoiling, dimly aware that Gustave was addressing his companion as “_Monsieur le Comte_,” and that Mr. Cornelius, radiant as a collegian, was explaining that Gustave had served him in the old days when dining was an art and chefs like Joseph and Frédéric created masterpieces. He went to his seat, avoiding recognition of a dozen ready greetings, feeling all the old stubborn moroseness rising, angry at himself that he should have so thoughtlessly ventured back into the past which he had resolved to banish. All at once he was aware that Gustave was speaking to him with hasty caution,--Gustave on whose sphinxlike features was a look of dismay.

“_Pardon_, Monsieur Garford, one moment--excuse me--it will be better if I change your place.”

“This is all right,” he said, without much attention.

“I think you would prefer--that is--Mr. Garford--forgive me--there is some one quite near----”

Dangerfield looked up. Two tables away, directly facing him, in a party of ten or a dozen, his former wife was sitting.

“No; this will do,” he said coldly and sat down.

The test had brought back the _sang-froid_ of the man of the world. He took his seat in a most natural manner, aware of what eyes must be watching his every expression, and, slipping his gardenia in his buttonhole, said, with a smile for the public, as he studied the menu which Mr. Cornelius had commanded:

“Really, de Retz, you are a connoisseur--the choice is perfection, just right--perfectly balanced. Excuse my moment’s distraction. It happens that my divorced wife is sitting at the table opposite.”

Mr. Cornelius hastily suggested changing seats.

“No; not for anything in the world,” said Dangerfield, with a grim smile. “Go on talking--Oysters from Ostend, _petite marmité, filet de sole Café Riche_--Bravo!”

Mr. Cornelius, thus encouraged, broke into an enthusiastic discussion of each dish, explaining that he had chosen _filet de sole Café Riche_, rather than _Marguery_, as the latter was a _pièce de résistance_ in itself, rather than the appropriate stepping-stone to the dish of the evening, which was a _caneton Joseph_ cooked with gooseberries and _fine champagne_, with a bottle of Chambertin genuine _cuvée de 1872_ from the Marquis de Severin’s special reserve. While the old gourmet discoursed thus eloquently on the art of the immortal Vatel, Dangerfield looked at the woman who had been his wife, to whom he had yielded the period of his fullest youth. He did not shift his glance, he stared at her steadily, wondering, not taking pains to mask his curiosity, though he was aware that she flinched under the estimate. How was it possible that this woman, whom he saw now in the nakedness of her cold calculating, could have given him a moment’s torture!

“Really,” he thought to himself, “it must have been something in me, a need of an outward inspiration that blinded me and cloaked her with illusions,--I myself in love with what I profoundly longed for and created in my need!”

But if Louise had no longer power to wound him on his own account, she brought back to him, with overwhelming sadness, the memory of Inga, and the ceaseless, burning need that all the deeper sources of his nature had of her sustaining presence. Of those who were at the table, he knew almost all, men and women of a fashionable set, several defiant of social censure, others too firmly entrenched to be judged by their companions. Every one at the table must have known what Louise Bowden was, what she had done and would dare to do. This then was respectability--of an extreme cast, yet social respectability! Almost was he inclined toward Inga’s scorn of convention and defiance of society, of complete denial of the world to judge them with the same standards with which it accepted those who bent towards its outward forms.

“A little glass of Amontillado with the oysters,” said “the baron,” “just to flavor them!”

He looked down, his fingers closed over the slender neck of his glass that held the first golden stream back to forgetfulness. He hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, and drank.

* * * * *

When he had groped his way down the hall and found with difficulty his door, one thing was clear to him even in the swirling, happy numbness of his brain. He knew now the secret of “the baron’s” strange existence, of his brilliant monthly recrudescence and the long days of subsequent denial. He knew now what the sheets of paper covered with ordered figures meant, and the explanation or the curious, whirring noises which often at the dead of night came from behind the door of Mr. Cornelius. “The baron” was still, as he had always been, a blind, insensate gambler, passionately absorbed in the quest of that touchstone of gamblers, the pursuit of the infallible system which once attained held the alchemy of success. From Delmonico’s they had gone to a select gambling-house in the Forties, where the Comte de Retz was as punctual as the calendar, and where he returned, night after night, until the quick and inevitable night when ill luck overwhelmed his meager capital--a meager moment of dramatic sensations, and then the inevitable return to the bleak existence in the lone studio lit by the flare of an arc-light.

Dangerfield came into his room, threw on the single gold-shaded table-lamp and sat down beyond the circle of light that cut the shadows of the studio. He felt painfully, treacherously awake, and he knew that, for the black balance of the night, sleep would not come until he fell over with physical fatigue at the mingling of the dawn. His surroundings, which lately had come into his intimacy, rousing the pleasant sense of the harmonious, now were empty and hostile. The living touch was absent, in the absence of Inga, just as, in the early days of his apprenticeship, he had felt in his muddy attempts at painting, the absence of the illuminating sense of atmosphere.

How a human touch colors the inanimate world with the communicated warmth of its enchantment! Yes; her absence had changed all. It was no longer the spot for dreams he had called it--each tapestry chair and table no longer wrapped around with the memory of her, of returning hope and struggling ambition--but a cold and deserted thing, which claimed him, too, cold and deserted. He loved her beyond what he had thought possible, beyond what he had believed lay in him to love, not simply as a part, though the vital element in his life, but as the whole world, the window through which all sensations must come to him. He had felt this realization in the tricked-out gaiety of the restaurant, in the sudden lightening of his heart as he had stood behind Mr. Cornelius, looking up at the ghost of the fatal romance which had sent him into exile, comprehending the man who, over the flight of years, could still pronounce that the past had been worth all that had been and was to come. He had felt it in his revolt against all he had been born to, struggled against, and lived with in compromise. He felt it now in his isolation and exile, so overwhelmingly that he sprang up and flung on all the lights, terrified at the reality of his utter loneliness, staring at his reflection in the mirror as though at some uncomprehended stranger. The need in him now was as fierce as the horror of the isolation he had imposed on himself--which he could break with a word, which depended only on him.

After all, why not? What she had pronounced as her theory of life and love he had himself a hundred times acclaimed in conversation, heard dozens of others maintain. His brain was soaring on fiery wings with the divine frenzy of genius, which lifts itself up with pinions which consume themselves. He was drunk with the intoxication of the old world and with other days. There was something superb in it, something heroically mad--not the sordid drunkenness of small beer. He felt among the privileged of the earth. He had a cruel sense of power, the right to thrust aside petty plebeian scruples, to take what he needed. He was filled with the rage of living, desiring, conquering, to make an end of depression and weakness. Why should he stand on a scruple--that was hardly a scruple, a sentimental yielding to the conventions of right and wrong of a society of surface morality against which he had himself rebelled. He had but to cross the hall and knock, to swim back into the stream of youth and ambition. He pressed his hands to his hot temples, took a short fierce breath and said to himself:

“Will I do it? Now?”

At this moment, a knock sounded at the door. His heart stood still. Was it Inga--Inga who herself in her wretchedness had come to him, knowing his need? He went to it hastily, fearing, hoping. To his surprise, instead of the girl, it was Mr. Cornelius who stood at the door, beckoning and mysterious.

“Some one has entered my room, while we were away. Come; I show you.”

XXXIV

Following Mr. Cornelius, Dangerfield went down the hall for an examination. At the bottom, he remained skeptical, despite “the baron’s” assurance that the window had been locked and that the catch was now sprung. There were scratches on the surface of the iron lock of the chest and a spot of oil on the floor beside it. “The baron” was in a high state of excitement. The window-latch, he insisted, could have been sprung by an ordinary knife.

“But there are only two other rooms which give on the roof,” said Dangerfield; “Miss Quirley’s----”

“No; not that.”

“And Drinkwater’s, which has been empty for weeks.”

“Perhaps.”

“That is certain.”

“If so--why, then, don’t they put it in rent again?” said Mr. Cornelius, shaking his head. Nothing could convince him that an attempted burglary had not taken place. In fact, he confided the fact that he had several times had a suspicion that attempts had taken place before.

To Dangerfield, the proof seemed slight--what was there in the denuded room to entice a thief? But, in order to humor the old fellow, he nodded wisely and promised to aid him with a careful search on the morrow.

He left him and went back to his room, but the tyranny of insomnia still holding him, he changed into slippers, opened the door and, in an effort at physical fatigue, began to walk the long murky corridor. Alone, in his mechanical journey, back and forth, along the creaky way, wheeling at the same points so mechanically that he fell to counting his steps, he saw all at once, under the door of Inga’s room, a tiny ray of light come out. She was there, awake; she had heard him--was waiting, perhaps, wrung by the same torture which dominated him, feeling the same ache of separation. She was there--waiting!

His imagination began to whirl again. He had an impulse to break through things, to fling obstacles aside, to hurl down all that intervened; and yet he hesitated. A dozen times he approached the door in an angry revulsion against his self-imposed test, and a dozen times passed on. Once he stopped, leaning against the wall, staring at the knob, which seemed to turn under his eyes. She was there, she must be there, waiting miserably. The sensation was so acute that he felt her living, breathing presence on the other side of the door, her hand waiting on the knob that seemed to turn under his eyes! And yet he went away and continued up and down the hall, staring at the same points, counting the steps--up and down--until the sickly dawn flowed in like an inundation, and still the crack under her door shone like the blazing edge of a sword blade....

* * * * *

The next afternoon, his model dismissed in despair, Dangerfield sat, head in his hands, staring at the meaningless canvas. He could not work. He had not worked since the day he had sent Inga out of his life.

The drag of sleepless hours lay on him, and the profound void of the victory he had won in the long marches of the night. Sitting there, in graven silence, he asked himself:

“Why didn’t I go in?”

And when he had put the question to himself again and again, he understood. He had not yielded, because the need of the inspiration of a great love in his life was deeper than his need of love itself, because in the fulness of his maturity he comprehended that, in his artist’s ideality, only a love that meant aspiration and veneration could restore life to him, and that this love he must protect and hold sacred even against itself.

It was not that he did not comprehend the essential innocence of the girl’s offer, or the nobility of her courage, but that, deeper than his intellectual comprehension, he knew that in him a moral fire existed which he had not suspected until the love which had impelled him with longing to the charming figure of the girl had illuminated its depths. Despite all his reasons, despite a mental defiance of conventions, he knew that what called to him from a hidden consciousness was unselfishness, and by that token he knew, too, how much his whole being, his day, and his hope of the future loved and clung to her.

What had she felt these miserable days? He knew that she, too, had suffered. He had seen it in the stricken tensity of her silent, deep eyes, when they had passed in the hall, or when they had met in Tootles’ studio, where she went often now, to be near him silently, no doubt. And between them what a ridiculous barrier intervened--a distorted conception of liberty, born in the intimate tragedy of the past, fed by the ill-considered doctrines of the day--Yet at times he wondered if that were all, if there were not, below her avowed reasons, causes he could not divine. What did he know about her? The longer he had known her, the deeper into the mists her figure had receded. A few hints she had dropped--of her home, of her father; a few scraps of gossip about the young sculptor who had been here before him; a few indications; Costello’s recognition in the dance-hall; the haunting feeling, which had come to him in his days of distress, that there was something in all his exactions and struggles which was not new to her; the strange feeling that had possessed him at times that some one else was present at their side; her own calm insistence that what had passed before did not touch them now--all these confusing memories closed behind her, forbidding the return toward the past as though with impenetrable velvet folds of oblivion. Yet the strangeness of it all fascinated him--the audacity that had borne her where she was, the untamed pride which lingered in the slow-breaking, confident smile that suffused the room and his being with happiness; the echoes of hidden waters which sounded in her low, modulated voice, that had power to dispel hot fevers and bring him the cool of tranquillity, as though gentle fingers had passed across his forehead; the steady depths of the sea-blue eyes, which had looked gravely out upon the storm and the sunshine of life--all this had him in its cruel-sweet spell. His ears heard nothing but remembered echoes, and his eyes were clouded with the obsession of one figure, slender and supple, with the grace of an untamed animal, whose motions were like the rhythm of sweet sounds. He suffered so keenly the torture of these eluding charms that he sprang up with a groan, crying her name, and, all at once, he saw her there in the room, like a shadow, gazing down at him.

He did not dare to speak. He stood silently, his glance fastened on hers, across the little lapse of golden carpet which lay between them like stretches and stretches of space. He did not dare to speak; he was afraid of what her first words would bring, and this nameless terror was so overwhelming that at last he fell back in his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Then he was faintly aware that she was speaking, that her body was swaying toward him, like a perfume spreading through the room.

“Mr. Dan, I can’t--I can’t bear it!”

The next moment he had sprung up; she was in his arms, her head pressed against his shoulder, trembling like a child, crying:

“Oh, no, I can’t bear it; I can’t bear to see you suffer.”

“Yes; that is true,” he said solemnly--waiting.

“I was there last night behind the door,” she said, in a whisper. “Oh, why didn’t you call me?”

“Why didn’t you come?” he said, with a quick breath.

Her lips moved as though she were about to speak, and then stopped.

“You were not serious, that was not the true reason--what you said about marriage,” he said tumultuously.

She disengaged herself from his arms and raised her eyes to his face, furrowed with the sleepless pain which she had drawn across it. She looked at him thus, a long wait, her lip wavering. Then she said, without averting her eyes:

“Must it be so? You still insist?”

His answer was a cry, inarticulate, wrung from him despite his effort at control, at finding her still unreconciled.

“Wait,” she said hastily. She looked away from him and then down and about her forehead and the slender lips the lines drew in hardness. “I can’t; I cannot see you suffer. I know that--that is all I know!” she said desperately, and she flung back her head as though flinging sudden tears from her eyes.

“Inga!” he burst out, but she stopped him quietly, her fingers over his lips.

“I will do as you wish,” she said firmly, “on one condition.” She seemed to be thinking a moment, and all at once she continued rapidly. “You are an honorable man--I know that--I knew that last night--you will do what you say you will do. Look at me, Mr. Dan; promise me on your honor, that whenever I come to you and ask you--you will give me back my liberty, that you will set me free.”

“Whenever?” he said slowly, staring at her.

She hesitated, and her eyes seemed searching into his with faraway questioning.

“_If_ I come to you, then,” she said carefully.

“If you ever come to me with such a demand,” he said slowly, “I shall do everything to give you back your freedom. That is a promise. I would have done so, anyhow.”

She nodded as though satisfied. Then with a dignity that held him breathless, she placed her hand on his and said as though to her the words constituted a ceremony,

“Mr. Dan, your life will be my life. I will have no other thought but you in my heart--and no other desire but to give you what is in me to give.”

“Then--you will marry me,” he said slowly.

“Whenever you wish.”

“This is final, Inga? You will not change?”

“You did not understand,” she said quietly. “Nothing a stranger can say can make me more yours than I am now.”

“And you love me?” he cried tempestuously. “Inga, that is what I want to hear you say. You love me so that you can’t think of anything else, so that you can’t keep from me, so that to be out of my sight is torture?”

She caught her breath at the frenzy in his voice.

“Would I be here if I didn’t?” she said.

He stood away from her a moment, scanning her tense face greedily, satisfied at last. Yes; she loved him, beyond her pride, beyond her stubborn beliefs, beyond her fears even! She loved him so that nothing stood against his need that cried out for her!

He put out his arms, swept away by a confusing intoxication. She seemed to sink into his embrace, the moist, warm lips, half parted, which met his, were almost lifeless in their sudden frailty, but the hands against his throat were like ice. He hung on this first kiss as though in it lay his salvation; a strange, terrifying contact in which he seemed to be drawing her up to him, taking from her not only all her love but all her strength, all her youth, all the pulsing vigor of her body, its softness and its freshness to quicken his tired veins. He had taken everything, and yet it seemed to him that she had given nothing. He lifted her face to his, gazing into it with a hunger that had awakened never to be satisfied. Her lips were smiling, but in her eyes was the sadness of renunciation, the melancholy of the gray sea when the heavy winter weighs upon the land, and the bitter mists creep across the face of the day--the sadness of the sea that holds the secrets of time.

“Ah, Inga,” he cried, with sudden divination, “don’t look like that! Believe me, it’ll be you, only you--all my life!”

She looked into his eyes and smiled, and while she smiled, the tears rose and fell.

XXXV

The whole Arcade seemed to change under the magic of Dangerfield’s radiating happiness. Though neither he nor Inga ever referred to what had been settled between them, every one seemed to understand with the first glimpse of his glowing face. The singing in his heart seemed to spread its note of joy insensibly among his neighbors. Perhaps he had not comprehended before how they had watched breathlessly, waiting the outcome in fear and wonder.

As though a tension had relaxed, the hall seemed to sparkle with life; doors stood open in friendly invitation, and a constant running-in and -out filled the floor with excited whispers and young laughter. O’Leary, at the piano, pounded away for dear life, rolling out infectious marches, which had Tootles wheeling and counter-marching in imitation of his favorite Amazon parade. “The baron” trotted about, singing to himself snatches of Boulevard songs of other days, mumbling over certain portions which might be understood. Miss Quirley was so sentimentally aroused that she clung to Inga’s hand at the first opportunity. Indeed, she would have liked to give away to the consoling pleasure of tears, but there was something about Inga’s profound and grave attitude which forbade such demonstrations, and she was forced to spend her emotional reserves upon Myrtle, whose wedding-day was fixed for the middle of the week.

The marriage was to be at high noon, the wedding-party was to return to the Arcade, where Dangerfield was to give the breakfast. Mr. Pomello had contemplated an impressive banquet in a private salon of the neighboring hotel, with arbors of flowers, scattered flunkeys, and set pieces of horticultural dishes, which represented to his mind splendor in the shape of plateaus of lobster salad with Cupids and hearts entwined in crustacean decorations, frozen sculpture in colored ices, with fish and game entrées from culinary taxidermists. The proposal was met with indignation and peremptorily vetoed by the lady most involved.