Part 31

“Perhaps I can make you,” she began. Then she drew in her under lip, pressing her sharp little teeth against it till the blood surged around them.

“Mr. Dan, I do care for you, and if you ever needed me, as you did once, I would have to come to you, no matter where I was or what else was in my life. I mean it. But I have never really belonged to your life. There’s all the difference in the world between us, you know it and I know it. That’s why I didn’t want to marry you. And you know it now, too, you feel it the moment I come here into this room. Only you are very loyal, very kind and very generous, but it is so.”

“It wasn’t always so,” he cried impulsively, and then suddenly stopped, realizing what the admission had been.

“I belonged to you but I don’t belong to your life. I can’t. I don’t want to, Mr. Dan, it bores me. You don’t know how completely lonely I have been.”

“Inga,” he said, interrupting her, “it isn’t entirely that. You, too, are not telling the whole truth. Perhaps I understand you in this better than you do yourself. Frankly, you are not interested in me any more.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are not interested,” he said, quietly, as though for the first time he were capable of standing apart and judging themselves impartially, “because you’ve finished your task, because there’s nothing more for you to do.”

“Yes, Mr. Dan, there is nothing more for me to do,” she said, sadly. “I can’t give you anything more. I don’t count. And the truth is, we’re just good friends. I suppose other marriages are happy like that. It is killing me.”

“It seems strange,” he continued, staring at her, “that there should be so little vanity in you. Other women would feel a sense of pride, of possession, of parading what they had accomplished, but not you. You were happiest, you only really loved me when I was trembling on the edge of the gutter, when you were the last hold which held me back, and now you miss that, you miss the dramatic side of it, the struggle, the tremendous tax on every nerve of your body, on every shred of your will. You’ve won out, you’ve made me and now I no longer interest you. You miss the struggle.”

“Oh, it is not simply that I miss it,” she cried, passionately; “it’s that I must have it. I’m that way, it’s my happiness. I should stifle if there was nothing in life for me to do.”

“I do not say it in bitterness,” said Dangerfield, “I am not bitter. I know now that you must follow your instinct and between the other man and myself you must go to the one who needs you now, as I used to need you, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, he needs me,” she said. She rose and unconsciously a little light, a fierce maternal craving came into her face and touched her eyes, a light that hurt him. “I have waited until I was sure. He doesn’t know that I will come.”

“I only hope he is worth the giving,” said Dangerfield, abruptly. Of all the other emotions, jealousy, passion, gratitude, loyalty, only one remained, a feeling of great tenderness, of almost paternal solicitude.

“He has wonderful things in him, too,” she said, “that must be saved, that I’m going to fight for.”

Then a silence fell between them as they stood facing each other, knowing that all had been said between them, each suddenly shy and embarrassed.

“You have been very kind to me, Mr. Dan. There are things I can never forget.” She stopped, put out her hand to his and said, “and I am glad now that you had your way, that you made me marry you.”

“I can’t say anything,” he said. He took her in his arms gently, as though she had been a fragile flower, her head against his head while the tears from their eyes ran together on their cheeks, trembling against each other as those who have loved passionately, love again at the final parting.

AFTERWORD

The little fraternity in the Arcade broke up gradually, after one more dramatic interruption. The baron, whose health had faded rapidly in the last months, was gradually confined to his room, where Pansy came each day to watch over him with the tenderness of a daughter. Twice Drinkwater attempted to follow his wife into the intimacy of the room but each time the intrusion roused such a tempest of fury in Mr. Cornelius that he actually drew a pistol and threatened to shoot him, and the lawyer retreated precipitately. Of Drinkwater’s assiduous curiosity and the plan of blackmail which had long matured in his crafty mind, Pansy had not the slightest suspicion, as was afterwards evident. Of all who had wondered at the lawyer’s impulsive marriage with the girl who had won Mr. Cornelius’ confidence, the baron alone divined the reasons for his action. His hatred for Drinkwater was something uncontrollable and terrifying in its rage. The resemblance of Pansy to the baron, so marked in the upward lift of the right eyebrow, the lustrous black of the eyes and the faint similarity of the profile, coupled with the affection the old man had shown to her alone, had suggested a scheme of blackmail to Drinkwater’s fertile imagination. At the death of Mr. Cornelius he had planned to claim that Pansy was his true daughter, and through threats of scandal to force a settlement from the estate. For this purpose he had even insinuated the belief into the imagination of the girl--who however was quite guiltless in the attempt that followed.

To bolster up his scheme, it became necessary for Drinkwater to procure first the knowledge of the baron’s real name and second some intimate relics which would carry conviction. To this end he had sought vainly an opportunity to force the lock of the great chest, which he rightly guessed held the secrets he coveted. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that desiring what he did so ardently, Drinkwater had actually been able to convince himself that Pansy was in truth what he intended to claim. The declining health of Mr. Cornelius and his own failure to gain admittance as a friend, undoubtedly impelled him to the rash act which brought so fatal a termination. By some means or other he had procured a key to the door and one evening when the inhabitants of the floor were gathered in O’Leary’s studio fêting Tootles’ birthday, he succeeded in making his entrance into the baron’s room. Some abiding suspicion must have crossed Mr. Cornelius’ mind for without explanation he was seen to leave in the middle of the party. A minute later a sudden outcry and the sound of a pistol shot sent them rushing down the hall. In the center of the room Mr. Cornelius was standing, pistol in hand, swaying against the back of a chair which had caught his weight and by the chest, which had been pried open, still grasping a locket, was the body of Drinkwater, quite dead.

The baron did not long survive him. The shock and the memory sent him into a raging fever, and the end came a week later. Every clue to his past was carefully removed by Dangerfield, acting under instructions, who transferred the chest to the control of the lawyers. Only a few personal effects, a few books and the portrait of the woman who had meant the whole of life--heaven and hell--in his romantic tragic career, remained at the end. The few reporters who came in avidly scenting a story drew fanciful pictures of this inexplicable ending, stories that had a remembered touch of Alexander Dumas--though one or two guesses came near the truth. The death of Drinkwater seemed to affect Pansy but little, strong as had been his almost hypnotic control over her during his lifetime. She went back into the old partnership with Belle Shaler, neither richer nor poorer, a little dazed but incapable of deeper emotions.

After this tragic interruption, the floor seemed to disintegrate all at once. Tootles went off to Paris for further study, thanks to Dangerfield, who sent him as a sort of tribute to the past, the one touch of generosity permitted him. King O’Leary ended by marrying Millie Brewster and went with her roving down into Central America, where, thanks to her practical ambitions, he found opportunities and began to make his way. Flick remained of the fraternity of Bohemia, never at loss to turn a quick dollar, incapable of saving one, wandering through many trades, always on the point of discovering the sudden road to fortune, always awaking in a garret, nor being greatly depressed by the failure.

Schneibel and Miss Quirley drew back into their respective shells. Other tenants succeeded to the sixth floor but the association which had been begun with the arrival of King O’Leary and Dangerfield was never resumed.

And what of Inga? Despite her explanations, she remained as great a mystery to Dangerfield as on the first wild night when he had opened his eyes to find her in his studio in self-assumed command of his destiny. Despite his pleadings and remonstrances she had refused to take from him the slightest assistance. Free she had always been and free she remained to come and go.

That she had loved him and still loved him he knew, for on the rare occasions when they passed each other in the crowd, her eyes showed that she still remembered. Yet was this love as deep and encompassing as her impulse towards the other man? And what part had he played in her life, in both their lives?

Luigi Champeno he met once, two years after her marriage to him, at the opening of the fall academy, where two groups by the young sculptor were the eyes of the exhibition, for their uncanny originality, a daring representation of the squalor of a crowded tenement stoop in which, curiously enough, it seemed to him that he found traits of his own way of looking at things.

The meeting had been accidental, the introduction unavoidable. He had given his hand with a feeling of deepest kindness, strongly stirred, at the sight of Inga, at the somberness and poverty of her dress, divining all the struggle and the happiness that it revealed.

Only a few words were said and those quite inconsequential. In the eyes of the young man he had seen the sudden leap of hatred and animal jealousy which once, he remembered, had torn his soul in shreds in the days of his own infatuation. That Champeno adored her with a clinging idolatrous faith was evident. Dangerfield had looked eagerly at Inga, into the sea-blue eyes, seeking some clue there of regret, of complaint, of renewed triumph or of restlessness, but her eyes as always retained their veil. He could divine nothing.

Yet of the man himself he retained a singularly illuminating memory, an impression of a morose and tortured child, of violent moods and moral weakness,--a precocious child tortured by a spark of genius, utterly undisciplined and untamed, incapable of standing alone.

“The battle there will never be won,” he thought, with a sudden comprehension, and he added with a little touch of poignant regret, “and he will adore her fiercely, tyrannically as I never could.”

The answer to many perplexities seemed to be there. Inga had adored him and by the other she had been adored. With him her reason for existing had been accomplished, with the other it could never end. With him she had never quite been herself, conscious of intangible social demarcations, while with Champeno she went arm in arm, child of the people to the last.

He moved over to where De Gollyer was standing in critical admiration before the exhibit of the young sculptor which had attracted general enthusiasm. It was a group of immigrants, mother and babe, with children clutching at her skirts, marooned on a flight of stairs, looking hopelessly out on the sea of New York; powerfully repulsive, startling in its fidelity, revolutionary but convincing.

“What puzzles you?” he asked.

“My boy, it has a suggestion of you,” said De Gollyer, with his head on one side. “Fact--reminds me of things you’ve done.”

“You think so?” he said, surprised that his friend had noticed what he had felt at the first glance.

“It’s strong--best thing in years. The boy’s got it fairly,” said De Gollyer, “came out of the slums himself; the iron and the gall are there. There’s a story he started in an East Side gang and was railroaded up to the reformatory for a year. Probably fiction. But he’s felt what he’s crying out to us. No mistake about that. And yet, Dan, if you’d signed it I shouldn’t have been surprised.”

Dangerfield didn’t reply. He was staring at the strangely revealing group, wondering what else she had taken out of his life to give to the other.

He never remarried. He did big things. It is true he just missed the final enduring touch of genius, but it is doubtful if he himself realized it, nor what he might have been if Inga had not left him and the world made him its hero and its slave. For his own day, he was master and leader. For whatever the judgment of posterity may be, as De Gollyer was wont to remark: “It is better to die as Sheridan than to die as Shakespeare, for Shakespeare never knew.”

The world naturally completely misjudged Dangerfield. In his career they saw nothing but the oft repeated story of devouring genius; the man growing beyond the woman who had regenerated him and sacrificing her once he has arrived. Dangerfield himself was aware of this hostile attitude but he never sought to explain it away. De Gollyer, it is true, told his version of the romance in strictest confidence to a multitude of friends, but De Gollyer’s reputation as a raconteur was against him. His listeners were amused, grateful and stubbornly incredulous, knowing full well from their own experience that women like Inga Sonderson do not exist.

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Transcriber's note:

The spelling, punctuation, hyphenation and word usage of the original text have been retained, except that obvious punctuation omissions were corrected. Consistent with the usage of the time, several words are hyphenated in one instance and not in another. Paragraphs often end in a comma when introducing dialog that begins in the following paragraph. These differences were retained.