The next morning the sixth floor was treated to two surprises.
Before the home of the Arts a placard in red ink announced:
WE ARE WORKING.
NO WOMEN ADMITTED BEFORE TEA-TIME.
P. S. Bring the Tea.
Down the hall was the sound of wrenching planks, and those who
ventured curiously beheld Dangerfield, assisted by Sassafras, busy
at the task of unpacking, while Inga, from her point of vantage,
surveyed the operations.
Since New Year’s, Dangerfield had made no attempt to mingle
with the others, though several times he had stopped for a word
of greeting, as though in self-excuse; but he never passed the
threshold, and, after a moment’s fidgeting and a few gracious
words, he departed.
“Sometimes I think he’d like to chum in, but is afraid to,” said
Flick, who was puzzled by this lack of sociability--not being
affected in the same way.
“Let him alone; he’ll come around in his way,” said O’Leary, “if
there’s anything left of him.”
At this period, though he would not have admitted it, he felt a
growing antagonism, and the cause was Inga. The girl had a drawing
force of which he was always aware. It was not that he felt
sentimentally moved, for there was an ingrained common sense about
him that warned him of the folly of such a hope. She perplexed him;
she held him; she aroused a certain sense of combat in him, like
a spirited horse. It was not that he would ever be in love with
her, but that, rating her high in his experience, it rankled in his
vanity, not that she was indifferent to him but that she should
have gone so directly to another, who had not even sought her. Yet
he had gone twice in the fortnight at her call to help her through
stormy nights with the derelict.
Inga, alone of the floor, knew the full extent of the turbulent
voyage through which Dangerfield was passing. Since the night on
which she had committed the error of attempting to restrain him,
she had refrained from putting any brake upon his actions, holding
herself in readiness to come to him in the limp hours of succeeding
weakness and despair. This attitude awakened his curiosity, as it
gained his confidence. Once he even asked to see her room. She
refused.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, “but I had rather you
wouldn’t.”
“It’s not--” Then he stopped. It could not have been on account of
prudery. “No; it’s not that you care what the others say.”
“No; it’s not that,” she said, amused at the thought.
“Well, then?”
“It’s a feeling--I don’t know. It’s something I want to keep to
myself--part of me. You don’t understand.”
He shook his head, and, struck with the peculiar intensity of her
eyes, revery mixed almost with a touch of fear, he said impulsively,
“Inga, I can’t make you out.”
“Don’t.”
This reply dissatisfied him. His eyes began to follow her more
intently when they were alone, and several times unsuccessfully he
returned to the attack.
During this time, the visitors, men of his own world, who flitted
in for a brief duty-visit, began to fall away. He saw them go with
a scorn and bitterness at first, and then with a sort of relief.
Sassafras received orders to announce that he was out, except to
two men, lawyers evidently, who came from time to time. Curiously
enough, even after the wildest nights, he never showed any remorse.
When Inga was there he often fell into profound fits of moroseness,
in which he would sit with his fists clutched to his mouth, gnawing
at his nails, staring at a medallion, a Della Robbia, or a Perseus
of Benvenuto Cellini, which he had brought forth out of the
disorder.
She never relinquished her intention of getting him into an
atmosphere of calm and order, and occasionally tried by devious
ways to suggest the subject of unpacking. But the moment the man
felt a compelling hand, some malicious and refractory devil seemed
to rise up in him, and he would say:
“I know what you’re after. Well, I won’t do it.”
Then, one morning, to her surprise, he called her and said abruptly:
“Well, I’m going to fix up the studio. There now--will you be
satisfied?”
“Thank you,” she said, with a bright nod.
“Oh, you needn’t thank me,” he said grimly. “Wait and see. You may
regret it.”
They set to work with a vim, and once launched on a new idea, he
threw himself into it with the enthusiasm of a child. Sassafras was
pressed into service (having surreptitiously jammed the elevator),
rolling his eyes at the magnificence he uncovered. They spent a
gay morning transforming the boarded bareness of the studio with
the warm, green background of great tapestries, restful in harmony
and dreamy verdure. The man had a love of beauty as intense as all
his desires, and if she did not always understand the value of the
really fine bits of Louis XV furniture, spreading _fauteuils_ and
the great flat-top desk with bulging curves which reminded one of a
pompous burgomaster, or the shadowy massiveness of the carved-oak
sideboard, she had an instinctive eye for proportion and delicacy.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to stop for lunch,” he said at last.
“Send Sam for sandwiches, and let’s go on,” she said eagerly.
“Do you want to?”
“Indeed I do!”
They lunched on a great Florentine table of carved oak, ample
enough to seat a dozen, discussing where the sideboard should stand
and the old Roman chest with beaten brass clasps. Underneath them,
a great rug in the center transformed the floor with the heavy
faded yellows and greens of its rich softness.
“We’ll draw a curtain of China silk, a warm gray, over the
skylight,” he said, studying the harmonies that had come into the
room. “Hello! What are you doing?” he added, smiling.
She had stolen from her slippers, and was moving lightly over the
deep Oriental rug, reveling in its velvety voluptuousness.
“I love the very feel of it,” she said, her face flushing in the
first emotion she had shown him.
“Go back into the tapestry,” he said, with mock sternness, and half
closing his eyes, he nodded approvingly, his glance following the
flowing line of the deep-green silk skirt which turned from the
graceful hip, the firm, dark neck rising above the youthful breast,
and the forestlike wildness of the oval face.
She slipped her green-silk feet back into the slippers and said
impulsively:
“It’s all just as I thought you would have it.”
“Oh, it is?” he said, enjoying her enthusiasm.
“Things you live with tell so much,” she said, moving curiously
toward the chest.
“You’ve got some strange ideas about me,” he said grimly.
“I have the right one,” she said calmly. She laid her hand on the
chest. “What’s hidden here?”
“So you can have curiosity, too?” he said, smiling, caught by the
rare mood of enthusiasm, which seemed to waken sudden delicate
flushes and sensitive emotions across the blue veil of her eyes and
the finely turned upper lip.
He opened the chest and drew forth an armful of old silks and
velvets, rare satins and brocades, spilling a riot of color into
her arms--leaping, flashing swirls of sapphire, gold, and faded
amethyst. She put them aside, and, with a cry of delight, seized
something lying in the chest--a rose velvet with the faintest
silver sheen, which brought back the pageantry of the Middle Ages.
“How wonderful!”
“You have a good instinct,” he said, nodding. “That’s Italian,
thirteenth century, the rarest of all. What color, eh?”
She wrapped her arms in it and drew her cheek across the glorious
velvet, which might have lain against the cheek of a storied
princess, and as her breath drew deep, across the dark face there
spread such a blush of pleasure that she seemed to absorb the
rare tint into her own body. He took it from her and gazed at it
hungrily, as though he were plunging his look into some gorgeous
autumnal pool, drinking in its ecstasy with the mingled pain and
pleasure of a lost love remembered.
“Color--color!” he said, held by it. “It thrills you like the first
sight of your own country.”
All at once, with a smothered cry--the longing of his soul for the
lost days of inspiration, perhaps--he struck the chest with the
full force of his fist and turned away in rebellion.
“God!”
“Don’t.” She laid her hands quickly on his shoulders, straight and
slim, as she stood gazing earnestly into his tormented eyes. “Mr.
Dangerfield, that’ll come again.”
“Never; no, never,” he said gloomily, and his lips twitched as he
glanced away.
Sassafras returned at this moment. Then they set to work again,
but she had lost him for the day. The exuberance had departed. He
gave his assent in monosyllables, and seemed to have so completely
lost interest that she hastened the work, fearing that the whim
would seize him to countermand it. The worst of it was that in
such moods there was no arguing with him, as he seemed to go so
completely from her as to have no sense of what he heard. With the
coming of the night and the blazing-out of the lights, he began to
get restless, wandering about the room as though each thing in it
were raising a haunting memory before him. Once he objected, when
Sassafras had started to unpack the easel and the paint-boxes.
“Not that!” he said angrily.
“Unpack them; you can put them away afterward,” she said casually.
He looked at her so furiously that, for a moment, she half expected
an angry answer. Then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“I know your idea--little good it will do!” he said, with a
stubborn look, and went to the window, gazing out without further
notice of what she did.
There was yet much to be done, but the essential had been
accomplished. The studio had been rid of boxes and wrappings,
and though frames and bric-à-brac, porcelains, bronzes, terra
cottas, stood against the walls, mingled with the dull gray of
rapiers, green masks and brown boxing gloves, with glowing pools of
burnished copper, the room was humanized.
“That’s enough for to-night,” she said, after she had sent
Sassafras away.
He turned, and the first thing he saw was the easel.
“You seem to know where to place it,” he said abruptly.
“I am glad that’s right,” she said quietly.
“Well, now that you’ve gotten me to do it,” he said, staring dully
about the room, his nails at his mouth, “we’ll see what will come
of it.”
She started to leave.
“Wait! I don’t mean to be rude,” he said nervously, “only----”
“Why, Mr. Dangerfield, don’t say that!” she said quietly. “I
understand.”
He nodded, and rather absent-mindedly patted her shoulder. Then,
apparently irrelevantly, he said:
“Afraid I’m going off on a wild night, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t thinking of it.”
“See here,” he said abruptly; “I want you to understand one
thing--that isn’t the trouble--I can stop that any time I want”--he
added almost viciously--“but I don’t want to.” Then he said,
seemingly without reason, as though his mind were vacillating from
one extreme to the other: “How long is it to the twentieth?”
“Why, twelve days.”
“Still twelve? The twentieth--that’s a date to remember,” he said,
as though to himself.
She saw him frown and stare past her, as that other self came into
his eyes, bristling, savage, rebelling against some inner torture.
He started at the sound of her voice, looked at her a moment as
though trying to account for her presence, and ended by saying:
“Well, it was curious.”
“What?”
“How you knew where to place that easel.”
“I don’t think so,” she said quietly.
He waited a moment, evidently turning something over in his mind,
before saying with the same abruptness:
“Do I remind you of any one?”
She glanced at him quickly, and then shook her head twice
energetically.
“That’s strange--well, you made me think so,” he said, and without
explaining his meaning, he went off.
* * * * *
Having permitted her to influence him so far, out of pure deviltry,
he seemed determined to make her regret it. To the surprise of
every one, he became exceedingly sociable, dropping in at all
hours, with the exception of tea-time, when the girls came back
at the end of the day. He was always polite to them; but it was
plain to see that they did not interest him in the least. This new
phase of Dangerfield’s had unfortunately an upsetting influence,
just as virtue had set in strongly, with Tootles composing the
figure-scheme of his monumental work which would represent the
ages in admiration before the apotheosis of the well-dressed
man; Flick beginning new duties as the press-agent for a folding
tooth-brush which could be carried in the vest pocket; and King
O’Leary installed at the piano at Campeau’s restaurant. If Tootles
and O’Leary maintained some semblance of concentration, Flick,
who never refused an invitation to patrol the city or to usher in
the sun, abandoned the folding tooth-brush on the second day of
sightseeing in Dangerfield’s company. Sometimes the night ended in
the studio with boxing or fencing or a group about the card-table,
and Sassafras promoted to the station and perquisites of a butler.
It was not so much the drinking that went on, though there was
enough of that, but the waste of energy that was appalling.
Though Dangerfield drank heavily and continuously, he had a knack
of concealing it, of always remaining within the limits of his
dignity. It was rather his consuming of vitality and lack of sleep
that seemed to be wearing him down before their eyes.
“I am a classy, two-handed little champion myself,” said Flick,
shaking his head; “but I’ve got to sleep once in three days to get
the kinks out of my hair. I’ve seen some tough ones in my day, but
my hat’s off to this one!”
“He can’t go on this way forever,” said Tootles, seriously.
“Right! There’s a smash-up coming soon,” said O’Leary laconically.
“I know the signs.”
And then a curious interruption occurred.
They were all in Dangerfield’s studio, about eleven o’clock one
night--a mixed group, for Dangerfield and Flick, in the wanderings
of the night before, had been seized with the idea of giving a
boxing carnival and had annexed two ornaments of the profession,
Spike Feeley and Gumbo Rickey, who knew Flick of old. In order to
impress Tootles, Flick had plotted a dramatic finale, in which,
after the professionals had disposed of the amateurs, they were
to go down before the might of his thin arms. Unfortunately,
the imminence of this conclusion and the slight floating doubt
which always accompanies trafficking with men of lower ethical
standards had so weighed upon Flick that he had resorted to much
artificial encouragement, until by the time Spike Feeley had
floored Drinkwater (which was part of the program) and King O’Leary
and Gumbo Rickey had slugged each other to their hearts’ content,
Flick, the coming champion, was heard to whisper to his antagonist:
“First time--down--you down; make sure--see!”
Spike, to the honor of the profession, carried out his part of the
contract to the extent of going down under the first assault, with
a realistic imitation of unconsciousness. Unfortunately, Flick went
down also, and, going down, stayed there; so that a new record was
established in the annals of the fistic art by the spectacle of
both men knocked out by one blow. When the laughter and confusion
had subsided, Dangerfield made up his mind suddenly to put on
the gloves. Until now, though he had fenced several bouts with
Mr. Cornelius, who wielded the rapier with surprising dexterity,
Dangerfield had never boxed; but something in the joyful fury of
O’Leary’s bout had sent the fighting blood coursing in him. He
stripped to the waist, and, in the glare of the top light which cut
its brilliant circle through the obscurity of the farther room, his
body came out impressively, muscled and knitted, despite the loose
coating of flesh that lay over it.
“Look out for yourself, Spike!” he said suddenly, as Feeley
slouched into a lazy, receptive attitude; and the joy with which
his voice rang warned them that he could box.
Feeley came forward languidly with an orthodox feint. Dangerfield
walked into him and drove a hard left straight to the face that
sent the professional back with a rude jar and a quick flash of
temper.
“All right, if that’s the way ye’s fightin’,” he said, and he came
back crouching, with chin thrust out.
“I told you to look out,” said Dangerfield, laughing, and the next
moment they were at it, back and forth, hammer and tongs, fast and
heavy.
In the long run, condition must, of course, have told, though, to
be fair, the professional, too, had been in the cups that night;
but at a quick, mixing scrap, Dangerfield had him at his mercy.
There was something ferocious in the way he plunged in, as though
reveling in the opportunity of throwing off the tension under which
he had struggled--a certain wild delight in the clash of bodies
which caused the on-lookers to watch him a little apprehensively.
He caught hard smashes with a reckless laugh, giving in kind. Once
he went reeling against the old Roman chest and almost over, but he
steadied himself and fought back, rocking the other man under the
impact of his blows. It was no tame boxing exhibition but a fight
for blood by now, and the spectators were on their feet, shouting
in excitement, Drinkwater quite beside himself with curiosity
and satisfaction at his host’s exhibition. A blow caught Feeley
full on the head; he staggered, and Dangerfield stepped in with a
mighty drive at the body which lifted him off the floor and flung
him crashing into a pile of copper plaques that went clanging in
every direction.... And at that precise moment the door opened and
a woman stood looking in. Feeley, bounding up, came rushing in
furiously, but Dangerfield stopped him with a quick oath, and he
turned, gazing, too, at the tall figure, purposely concealed in
furs and heavy veils.
There was a silence as flat as a calm in a gale. Each recognized at
once that it was a woman of the world and that she had the right to
be there, and drew back so as to leave the room to the two figures:
the woman drawn up scornfully against the door, and Dangerfield,
with his lips twitching and his curious bearlike stare, facing her,
with the white lights running over his glistening neck and torso.
It was a hard moment for him, and those who knew the man wondered
into what paroxysm of anger he might go. In the end the breeding
in him won out, and though his rage flashed up at the position
into which she had put him, he held himself in fairly well.
Fortunately, as he was standing there, seeking an excuse, King
O’Leary came to his assistance.
“Better clear out, you fellows,” he sang out; and with that, like
a herd of huddling sheep, awkwardly and nervously, they crowded
out of the room, suddenly quieted and sobered. King O’Leary, who
came last, closed the door, leaving Dangerfield alone with the
woman, who, by the possessive assurance of her attitude, they
instinctively divined must be his wife.