Part 30

With the first exodus of the summer travelers from the city a new spirit of work possessed Dangerfield. With the clearing of the horizon of all that was glittering and superficial, the city with its great sanity and moving vital currents returned to him. He put off his departure for the country from month to month, fascinated by the summer moods of the metropolis, the brilliance on the Avenues, the extravagance in the lighted air, the teeming boisterous sweltering hordes on the beaches. He felt himself possessed with new enthusiasms. It was a new city he discovered, the city of the outer air, swept together in a friendlier fraternity by the mutual necessity for crowded pleasure after the long day.

In these ardent excursions he gathered around him other men, younger men, ardent disciples who wished to see what he saw, men interested in his new exposition of the treasures of beauty near at hand.

He found that success had brought him this--that isolation was no longer possible. The world paid him its full tribute but claimed him for its own, absorbing him into the rank and file of its groping masses, delegating to him his servitude of leadership. Yet he felt a certain content in fitting into the procession. The believers who surrounded him, communicated to him a certain strength which surprised him. Perhaps at bottom they convinced him of his power, the last and most fleeting sensation of the true artist. Then, too, he found that in expounding his views and seeking to open their eyes and inspire them, he taught himself, translating what at one time had been pure instinct into the intellectual possession of conscious knowledge.

Tootles was usually of these pilgrimages. The young fellow had steadied amazingly with the opportunity of entering the privileged gatherings. He had begun to perceive that beyond all the fine fervor of inspiration and enthusiasm, is the long hard routine which alone can bring self-satisfaction in the knowledge that the building is rising on a firm foundation. He had a quick eye and a gift of absorbing with almost the imitativeness of a monkey, conceptions which were still logically beyond him. Yet there was no doubt of his earnestness. As a sort of announcement to the world that he had put behind youthful follies he even allowed his face to be disfigured by a scrubby mustache,--the sort of sacrifice a young doctor feels called upon to make on assuming the dignity of a practice.

In the beginning Inga had been of the party--Dangerfield was always eager to have her with him--but gradually, almost imperceptibly, she had dropped out, giving as an excuse the need of her own work. On his return to the Arcade he found her installed in her old studio. The first afternoon on which he made this discovery he had gone angrily to her door, so profoundly hurt by her action that for the first time he was in a mood for reproaches. He found her busy at her easel, model on the stand. He stopped, hesitated, and said with enforced restraint:

“I don’t want to interrupt you. When you are through come in, there’s something I want to see you about.”

“Shall I come now?” she said instantly, observing and perhaps divining the reason of his agitation.

“No, no,” he said hastily, respecting the mood. “After working hours, not before.”

He crossed to his own studio, rebelling bitterly at the persistence of her self-sacrifice. But providentially, the model he had engaged was already waiting for him, an old toper, scavenger of small beers and wine drippings from the fragrant hogsheads of West Franklin Street, who had caught his fancy the day before. He was placidly asleep in a sort of musty drowsiness and he did not stir at Dangerfield’s entrance. Something grotesquely humorous in the gourd-like head, sunk in childish slumber, caught his imagination immediately. He tiptoed over to his easel, brought out a canvas and stealthily prepared for a rapid sketch. At the noise of a falling tube the blissful Falstaff slowly opened one eye and prepared to awake.

“Don’t move!” said Dangerfield hastily.

“Eh? What you mean?”

“Go to sleep immediately,” said Dangerfield sternly, too interested to perceive the humor of the situation.

“Sleep? That all you want?” said the amateur without astonishment.

“Go to sleep at once,--just as you are,” said Dangerfield, with the voice of a drill master.

His sitter, nothing loth, nodded drowsily, the heavy lids slowly settled against the bloated cheek, and in a moment a kettle-like breathing announced that he had obeyed to the letter.

When, an hour later, Inga came in, Dangerfield sent her a warning sign. She tiptoed over and took her seat by his side, waiting quietly until another half hour had brought the end of the afternoon’s painting.

The model gone, Dangerfield, all else forgotten, stood eagerly contemplating the little masterpiece which a fortunate hazard had thrown in his way.

“What luck!” he said joyfully, his knuckles pressed against his teeth in that intimate gesture of excitement which she had come to know so well. “The beggar was fast asleep dreaming of running spigots and seas of beer when I came in. What luck! I never would have gotten this in the world.”

“It is you at your best,” she said, nodding with a pleased smile. “By the way, what was it you wanted to see me about?”

He looked at her, suddenly remembering, surprised at how quickly his irritation had passed.

“Oh, yes, and it’s very serious, too,” he said hastily, and then in order to reassemble all the resentment he had felt he took a turn or two about the room, drew off his blouse and flung it viciously across the room. “You know, Inga, I’m very angry with you.”

“Why?” she said with just the trace of a smile.

“What the deuce do you mean by going back to your studio? I don’t like it. This is as much yours as it is mine. If you are going to work, work here with me. You always used to.”

“Yes, I used to, but that was different.”

“Why?”

“I can tell you now,” she said. “When I worked here, it was to help you, quiet you, because you needed to have me near you, always near you,--all the time.”

“And now you’ve made up your mind you’d be in my way,” he said irritably; “that’s it, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I wasn’t thinking of you; I was thinking of myself.”

He believed this an evasion, and the way his eyebrows came together in the old bear-like stare plainly showed it.

“Inga, is that the truth?”

“Yes, it is,” she said in her low musical voice. “What we do is so different. If I should work here with you I should be overpowered by you. I must get by myself, do the little things I can do. Don’t you understand?”

“Is that the effect I have on you now?” he said slowly.

“If I tried to work here with you I should only sit and watch what you are doing, and I want to work--I must work, for myself!”

“I misunderstood you then,” he said, his voice returning to gentleness. “Thought you were thinking of me and I can’t bear to feel that you are always making the sacrifice.”

“No, no, Mr. Dan,” she said hastily, fingers clutching the covering of the table against which she stood, “I must think of myself, too, don’t you see?”

“Yes, yes, of course, dear,” he said hastily. He looked at her, hesitated and once more they retreated before the issue which lay implacably ahead.

* * * * *

Afterward he wondered if she had told him all the truth, if his own needs had not been in question as well as her own, for he needed the privacy of his own room as every artist beyond the intimacy of friendship and love must retain a certain sanctuary of isolation where he can close out the distracting, intruding world and reign as absolute lord over a dominion where his every mood is a law.

His sense of loyalty to her never wavered. The world in which he moved was a world of workers. The rest he persistently shut away, resolutely declining all invitations to wander back along pleasant paths that opened to him at every point. Where she could not go, or rather, where she would not wish to follow him he refused to enter. In fact he did not even refer to the multiplicity of invitations which he continuously declined. He would have been very much surprised indeed had he suspected how intuitively she had divined his sacrifice. A great gentleness encompassed them, a deference toward each other that had about it the tenderness of their happiest days, but it was the deference of strangers towards each other. He never put a question to her, he never asked her for an account of her days, he made no reference to the man who had written to her in his need nor sought to learn what her decision had been. Once when she started to open the subject he stopped her, saying gently:

“You don’t need to give me any explanations, Inga. You must feel this. I don’t want you to change your life in the slightest on account of me. For the rest, I have absolute faith in you.”

But from day to day he watched her--wondering.

* * * * *

Meanwhile in the ordinary routine of the Arcade an event had happened which threw the inhabitants of the sixth floor into a flurry of astonishment.

Without the slightest warning, out of a clear sky, King O’Leary’s wife turned up. She was a frail, rather tired, rather bored little woman who vouchsafed not the slightest explanation but came back weak and discouraged to be taken care of. Which was exactly the thing King O’Leary did, with a shrug of his shoulders, despite the protestations of all his friends.

“I’m down and out, King,” she said, by way of excuse. “You’re the only real man I know. I haven’t no right, but--if you don’t take care of me, it’s all over.”

He looked at her and the illusion which had lived in his heart through all the years suddenly snapped. She meant nothing to him now, could mean nothing, but she had been a part of his youth.

“Well, I guess you’re still Mrs. O’Leary,” he said slowly, “and if there’s no one else to see you’ve got a roof over your head, I guess it’s up to me. That’s law and that’s religion.”

She broke down and wept at this, which annoyed him more than her return. But in a day she recovered her spirits and seemed to be thoroughly content to be lounging about the studios, smoking endless cigarettes, slumbering through the day time and waking to laughter and boisterousness at night. He installed her in the room that had been Myrtle Popper’s, and probably gave her generously of his savings for she appeared in several new dresses of a rather Oriental suggestion.

During these weeks a cloud hung over the face of King O’Leary and all his usual good humor fled. He was irritable, resented the slightest expression of friendliness of his old associates to such an extent that they hardly dared note his coming and going. For this the cause was evident. The attitude of his wife had become that of a petty tyrant. Knowing the extent of his pride and the depth of his chivalry, she seemed to take a malicious pleasure in tormenting him before others, snapping him up at the slightest opportunity, lecturing him, seizing every chance to turn him into ridicule with such persistent vindictiveness that his friends wondered how he managed to hold himself in.

Then one day, as suddenly as she had come, she disappeared, taking with her all of her belongings and in addition one or two other small objects which had pleased her fancy, leaving behind her the following note scrawled on a stray leaf of paper, pinned to O’Leary’s pillow:

KING:

I’m a thorough little beast and you are as fine as they make them. I won’t bother you any more, I promise you that. You’ve been so decent I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m no more your wife than Belle Shaler. I got a divorce three years ago down in California. When I get hold of my papers I’ll send you the decree. I thought at first you knew and then I made up my mind to work you for a good thing but you’re too damned decent for that. I’m not making apologies--it’s not my way. You’re one of the best, King, and the only good thing I ever did for you was to leave you. Good luck and good-by.

LULU.

XLVIII

The first boisterous winds of Autumn had come to end the stagnation of summer when one day in the full midst of the afternoon’s work Inga came into the studio where Dangerfield was singing gorgeously to himself in the boyish zest of his work.

“Hello,” he said, looking up, surprised at this early entrance. “Nothing doing this afternoon?”

“I finished sooner than I expected,” she said evasively, “and it was very bad. I want to watch you.”

“All righty, I’ll try to perform.”

But something in the gravity of her look made him turn abruptly and study her with a sudden presentiment. She seemed unconscious of his scrutiny even when from time to time he turned in her direction with rising wonder. She sat just behind him so as to command both the model and the canvas, her chin on the back of her hands, her body sunk in the depths of an armchair, her glance set in revery before her.

A vague sense of uneasiness crept over him, something which sent to flight all the playfulness and the joy which had been in his heart. He could not quite account for this sudden shadow which seemed to obsess the room. He had seen her often in such profound moods and yet there was something indefinable in the solemnity of her pose, in the set purpose of her eyes which warned him.

He started to whistle and stopped. He tried to return into the flowing impulse of the moment before, and felt a sudden unutterable distaste, a resentment against himself and the thing he was creating. The brushes in his hand were heavy, his arm itself weighted down by some unseen load. Something began to race in his heart and to quicken every nerve.

“That will do for to-day,” he said, dropping his brushes suddenly. “I’ll let you know when I want you. Take your things and go.”

The moments until they were alone seemed interminably long and cruel. He jerked the canvas from its easel and set it in the corner without a second look, stripped off his blouse and went hurriedly to the wash-stand to plunge into soap and water. When he came back, drying his arms, the little model, a waif from the West side, was ready, waiting for the day’s pay. He paid him twice over, with that instinct of weakness before destiny which is inherent in the superstition of man, silenced his thanks and sent him out.

Then he came and stood in front of her chair. She did not appear to notice him, sitting in the same rigid pose, the same unseeing stare in her eyes. He watched her, baffled as always by the veiled depths of those eyes into which he had searched so often, only to lose himself in confusion.

“Inga.”

Her glance came back slowly--was it from the future or from out the past? She saw him, rose slowly and laid her hand upon his arm almost as though swaying against him for support.

“Just a moment,” she said, with a long breath.

While he waited, she went past him to the window where she stood half turned from him, a free and slender line against the white of the outer day. He followed until he stood just behind her, waiting for her to speak.

“You know what it is, don’t you?” she said at last but without turning towards him.

“No,” he said, and yet at the first sound of her voice he knew. The moment has come, which he had known for months must arrive.

“Do you remember what we said to each other here once?” she began, but with much hesitation, “the promise you gave me.”

“What promise?” he said mechanically.

“You said--” She stopped, turned towards him and tried to lift her eyes to his.

“Come, Inga,” he said, “what’s got to be said must be said. You’ve known that all along and so have I.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, but her eyes dropped down and her hands came together in a straining nervous clasp.

“You mean, then,” he said, “the time has come when you want to go out of my life. Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Inga?”

She raised her eyes again and again, her glance fled from his, but she nodded her head twice in silent acquiescence.

“Oh, Inga!”

He had known it for weeks and yet now that it lay between them immutably written, forever fixed by the nod of her head, he felt dazed by the suddenness of the blow. He caught her up to him, crushing her in his arms and what he said to her in the wild unreasoning phrases that came pouring from his lips he did not know, only that for the moment, faced with the sudden ache of parting, it seemed to him that he loved her completely, absolutely, deliriously, as he had never loved her before.

She neither tried to check nor to answer him. Her head lay weakly on his shoulder, powerless against his strength, and when again he regained his calm he saw the tracks of tears across her face.

“Inga,” he said angrily, catching hold of her wrists, clutching them until they must have hurt her, “you’re not going to do this, you understand? It’s not going to end this way. I won’t have it!”

“I want to talk to you,” she said, shrinking back.

He stopped, walked away from her, buried his head in his hands, and gradually fought his way back to self-control again.

“I want to talk to you,” she repeated, helplessly.

“Yes, yes,” he said, with a sudden feeling of contrition for the intemperance of the emotion which had carried him away. “I am sorry, I couldn’t help it. Let’s talk to each other, then, but facing things as they are, as we should have talked to each other long ago.”

“Oh, yes--please.”

All at once a presentiment of the finality of her decision came over him and with it a longing to preserve this one spot so garnished with the memories of what they had been to each other, free from the memory of what might come between them.

“Very well,” he said, “but not here. I don’t want--you understand--not here, Inga.”

“I understand,” she said, and without looking at him moved over to the door.

He joined her and because they did not wish any one to see their faces at that moment they did not call the elevator, but went slowly and darkly down the stone descent. In the street he held out his arm to her with a longing to feel again the intimate clinging pressure of her body.

“Take my arm,” he said.

She hesitated and then slipped her hand into its protection and thus they returned to their apartment.

When they had come into these outer surroundings which represented all that was recent in their existence together, he felt that not only outwardly but inwardly, they had passed from one life into another. He saw all at once what he had refused to see--how utterly out of place she was against the formal correctness of his new home, this gilded cage into which he had imprisoned her, and perceiving this, all at once he felt, too, how helpless he would be before the logic of her plea.

A moment before, under the spell of the old haunts, he had been for the moment the Dangerfield of the past, the man who had come into her life as life was natural and instinctive to her. Now he was suddenly aware of all the difference that lay between them, of the far poles of society from which they had started on their groping journeys for one moment of which destiny had brought them together. He took her things from her as deferentially as though it had been for the first time, and going into the hall rang for the butler and sent him away. Even this action, instinctive in his training, showed him the division between them. She would never have thought of this.

He came back to her and with a sudden wave of gentleness laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Inga, I know that this is hard for you,” he said, “I won’t lose control of myself again. Now let’s understand each other. When man and woman have been to each other what we have been, something remains which can never completely pass away. You feel that, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“We could never do anything to hurt each other--consciously do it. I am ready to do anything that you feel you need. Now that the air is clear, let’s say what we think. We have tried so often and failed. It is my fault, for I have known for a long while that you have been unhappy.”

“No, Mr. Dan,” she said, gently, “not unhappy. I have been, well--just lost.”

“I don’t quite understand that,” he said, sitting down beside her, so close that their knees brushed one another’s, their heads almost touching. He took her hands in his.

“Yet it isn’t anything that I have done, is it? I haven’t hurt you?”

She shook her head slowly and tried to smile.

“Oh, no, you couldn’t. You’ve done more than you should. I have known that.”

“That isn’t true,” he said, firmly. “I haven’t made one sacrifice or given up a single thing I wanted on your account.”

“Please, Mr. Dan--oh, please. You said it. We must tell each other the truth!” she said, with a sudden intensity. From this moment all indecision passed from her, as though she had finally dried the one rebellious tear which had come uncontrollably to her eyes.

“This is the truth,” he said, with an attempt at openness. “If it were not for you--not because I should be afraid for you, but because I know you would hate the life, I might drift back into a certain purely formal society that once made up my life. But what would that mean to me? Absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it might represent a danger. It is hard to seek out the world without being in the end a slave to it so that, don’t you see--and I’ve been absolutely honest--what you might think I’ve done for you, is really the thing I should do for myself.”

She did not answer, but sat considering what he had said, turning it over from every angle as women do, seeking the chain of motives and the reasons which it might reveal.

Seeing her indecision he believed that he had found the reason of her renunciation.

“Inga, why always sacrifice yourself, always think of me?” he burst out. “For that at the bottom is what it is. There’s something rigid and cold about it which is like the country you come from. You want to go out of my life because you think that that act will set me free. You rebel because you think I am held to you by a sense of loyalty and gratitude. Now listen. You may think that another woman may come into my life, a woman brought up in the superficial life which I have known. You’re utterly and absolutely wrong and the trouble is you undervalue yourself. There’s no other woman--there can be no other woman in my life. What you are to me is absolutely what I need, the companionship above all others.”

She turned and looked at him with an expression so inscrutable that he felt uncomfortable beneath this challenge as though he were guilty of some evasion and had been caught in the act.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he said, uneasily.

“Mr. Dan,” she said, impulsively, “don’t you see the truth--it’s not you I am thinking of! It’s myself, my life.”

“What!” he said, completely thrown off his guard. “But Inga, doesn’t it mean something to be my wife, to share in my success, to feel that you have done it all? Isn’t that a triumph for you? Isn’t that sufficient? Doesn’t that thrill you?”

“No,” she said quietly; “all that means nothing.”

He looked at her helplessly, feeling as though he had offered everything he had to offer and had finally lost.

“It’s strange that you don’t understand,” she said, pensively, “for you understand so many things, you have such a big way of looking at life.”

He rose and sat down again abruptly.

“We are beating about the bush, we are coming to nowhere, Inga,” he said desperately. “There’s another man come into your life who means more to you than I do. You want to go to him, isn’t that it?”

“Yes.”

“I gave you my promise to free you, I shall keep it,” he said, though the words were hard to bring forth.

“And you--you understand?” she asked, gently.

“I shall try to understand.” Then despite himself he broke into a laugh, a bitter echo of the mocking laughter of the past. “Understand? No, no, I shall never understand you!”