In his present numbed sense of outlines and of jumbled conceptions
Dangerfield had obeyed a sullen instinct of revolt when he had
drawn Inga from the studio to plunge again into the heavy slumber
of the city. He had a confused idea that, in this groping flight
through deserted midnight regions, he would find some way to
discourage her, to shake off this uncomplaining obstacle to his
liberty of decision. The long flights of stone steps down which
they groped their way, put forth hollow, echoing protests which
mounted behind them as they sank deeper into the cavernous descent,
until they emerged into the arcade, wan and still with its faint,
watery glass sides and dipping vines, and ahead, Broadway yawning
at the entrance.
Dangerfield strode on, seeing neither to the right nor to the left,
and, following the whim of the moment, turned westward toward the
river. A late car roared down the long vista and fled, retreating
in softening rumbles. The street was empty and the acute sound
of their steps struck in fantastic distortion against the city
of silence. A policeman from the shadow of a doorway studied
them with suspicion. Above them, mysterious leviathans--swollen
gas-towers--spread black bulks against the sprinkled night. He
stopped and turned on her, seeing her white face dimly in the
flickering street.
“So you are following me?” he said angrily.
“Please.”
She moved a little closer, her hands clasped and at her throat, in
her voice that low almost guttural note of soothing appeal which
she knew had the charm of quieting him. He stared at her blankly,
confusing her with other voices and other memories, and, in the
end, with a nervous shake of his head, strode away, apparently
oblivious of her presence.
The tenements closed in over them, putting forth their heavy,
crowded smells. A random fruit-stand glowed at their sides, its
drowsy guardian snoring behind glass partitions; beyond him, a
senseless body, wrapped in rags huddled in the warmth of a “family
entrance”; shouts, curses, laughter rolled out from a blinded back
parlor, and, all at once, a stream of yellow shot across the oozing
black of the street. They stopped abruptly; from the doorway an old
man reeled forth, and by his side, guiding his hand, a child--an
unearthly child with an aureole of golden hair. He came opposite,
lurched almost on them, touched them with a groping hand and
passed, grumbling. He was blind. Dangerfield began to laugh with
that short, blood-freezing laughter of his, which was the cry of
all the bitterness within his soul. She shuddered and momentarily
clung to his arm, turning to watch the child and the drunkard
fading into the gloom.
“Afraid?” he said triumphantly.
“No, no--memories,” she said involuntarily.
“You?” he said, staring at her.
She nodded, her grip on his arm tightening.
“I remember,” she said, in a whisper.
“She remembers,” he repeated to himself, incapable of ordering
his ideas, vastly impressed by an emotion he could not have
defined, for he added, “She, too--leading me.” And as though the
figure of the child had become merged into the hundred and one
shifting memories which walked, dissolved, and returned to his
side, he stalked on, his hand on the girl’s shoulder, heavy with
his weight. Everything became confused in his mind, Paris, Rome,
Florence, London, New York, the crowded boulevards, the Thames
Embankment, and the outer fortifications. The blurred uprise of the
gas-works settled into the age-worn outline of the Forum, and the
next moment, with the wet breath of the river on his face and the
vigilant lights of the Palisades bright in the air, he was skirting
the Arno, with Fiesole mingling with the stars.
The cold touch of the river wind momentarily revived him. Slowly
the Arno faded from his vision. He stood, in puzzled, dawning
comprehension, on the long water-front, with its sleeping docks
and nodding mastheads. Beyond lay the tragic depths of the river,
rolling away like the tears of multitudes, luminous insects
crawling back and forth. At his feet, straggling trucks were
rumbling heavily; a few all-night cafés, far-spaced, streaked the
broad avenue with their gleaming fingers. He shrank back into the
city, into the phantasmagoria which closed over his eyes and roared
on his senses, back on Broadway once more, with its occasional
taxi, bright with late revelers.
At Sixty-first Street he halted before the revolving facets of
the entrance to Costello’s. The footman without saluted him and
called him by name. A few parties, with sudden bursts of white
satin and colored brilliance, were leaving the noisy salons. Others
returning from earlier rounds of gaiety were pressing through, like
fluttering, many-tinted butterflies.
“I’m going in,” he said sullenly.
“If you want to,” she answered.
He had expected resistance. Compliance irritated him. The next
moment, they were in the anteroom, dazed by their abrupt transition
from the bleakness of the slums into this fragrant warm nest of
indolence and luxury, aware of perfumed currents, glowing bodies,
and the seduction of rioting rhythms. They mounted in an elevator
to a privileged room, where all sensations seemed mingled in
the confusion of the awakening senses, where, for a moment, she
was uncomfortably conscious of the dark, incongruous blot her
sober attire made against the swarming flood of color. A waiter,
unimpressed, was preparing a hostile answer when Costello himself
came up with hand outstretched at the sight of Dangerfield. He
turned to the girl, greeting her cordially.
“Glad to see you here again; haven’t seen you for a long time.”
“A table, Costello.”
“Get you one right away, Mr. Garford.”
At his magic touch, they found themselves advantageously placed by
the open floor where the dancers crowded and swept against them.
Dangerfield ordered a bottle of champagne and turned to her.
“Funny mistake Costello made.”
“What?”
“Acted as though he knew you.”
“Yes; I used to come here--it amused me occasionally.”
“You, Inga?”
“Why not?” she said, opening her eyes.
“After all, why not? Queer though,” he said stupidly but he
continued to stare at her, as though this were a manifestation
stranger than the riot of cities and visions through which he had
come.
She did not refuse the glass of champagne he poured her, but,
after raising it to her lips, put it down and did not touch it
again. Among this incredible crowd made up of the extremes of
society--women of the world seeking refuge from boredom, and
courtesans, giving themselves the dignity and manners which,
in their covetous ignorance, they associated with conventional
society, there were many who knew Dangerfield, who stared in
impudent amazement or discussed him in whispers, with sidelong
glances. A number of men came up and greeted him boisterously.
“Want to dance with them?” he asked, nodding to her.
She shook her head.
“Not to-night.”
The spectacle began to bore him. He complained of the champagne
and changed his order. She gave no word of suggestion, watching
him with occasional stolen glances, wondering at his control.
Her elbows on the table, her little curved chin on the backs of
her hands, rather Egyptian in the immobility of her pose and the
baffling quality of her expression, she followed the dance without
distinguishing the dancers, quite unconscious of the curiosity she
awoke, serious and on her guard. When friends of his sought her as
a partner or tried to engage her in conversation, she answered in a
few quiet words without looking at them. They soon understood from
a glance at her companion what her rôle must be, and importuned her
no further.
When she least expected it, Dangerfield rose impatiently and
departed.
“How futile that all is!” he said angrily, when they were again on
the sidewalk. “Think they’re having a good time--bah!” He swayed
for the first time and caught her shoulder, drawing his fingers
tightly over his temples. “My brain is rocking,” he said.
“The air will do you good. Walk a little.”
He made an effort, took a long breath, and opened his eyes.
“You still here?” he said, frowning.
She nodded.
“Why do you follow me like this?” he said peevishly.
“Because I care what happens to you.”
“That is ridiculous!” he said loudly.
He stared a moment at her with his wild-animal stare, and, all
at once, as though he had found a way to get rid of her, started
down Eighth Avenue. They arrived at Columbus Circle with the
first muddied grays of the dawn creeping in above the whitening
electric signs, then passed under the elevated as a train shrieked
and roared above them in its burning flight. A touring car went
whirring past them, defiant of speed-laws, skidded dangerously,
righting itself, and disappeared.
Scavengers were already turning over the refuse in waiting
ash-cans, as they struck into a side street and stopped before an
iron grill under the colored electric sign, “Mantell’s.” A little
man with ratty eyes and black wisps of hair streaking the bald dome
of his head, shuffled to the gate and squinted at them cautiously
before slipping the chain.
The low rooms were swept with drifting gray-blue smoke clouds,
upholstered benches were against the walls, where oldish women,
worn with the fatigue of the night, were smiling their red smiles
at fatuous youngsters. Three or four foreign-looking groups,
swarthy men with enormous women, were in corners placidly engaged
in their own affairs as though this were the most respectable
of family resorts. A mechanical piano in a further room drummed
out hideous dance-music to swirling groups in frank abandon.
Dangerfield was no longer conscious of anything but an angry
determination to revolt, to be free of all encumbrance. It seemed
to his fuddled imagination that it was no longer Inga at his side
but something strangely akin to his conscience, defiantly pursuing
him out of the past of his youth and illusions, malignantly and
maliciously clinging to him. Somehow, somewhere, he must rid
himself of this impossible burden, crush it down, and cast it aside.
The more Inga continued silent and without remonstrance, the
wilder his resentment mounted. He continued to drink of the
poisonous rank beverages served at extortionate prices. Many stared
at them and discussed them openly, but no interference was offered.
There was something so combustible and wild in his attitude, that,
there, at least no one was under illusions as to the danger. In
half an hour the spirit of restlessness in him drove him out into
the streets again. He was so befuddled now, that he could not
remember her name, calling her Pepita, imagining that she was the
little Spanish model of the Latin Quarter who had tried to kill
herself.
All at once a horror of the city, of its sham brilliance paling
against the graying sky, of its oppressive stone prisons, possessed
him with a longing for flight. He strode down into the subway and
took a West Farms express. In the car which they entered a score of
persons were wearily grouped, half of them asleep, a few heavy-eyed
laborers, two men in evening dress, a girl with a heavy coat
buttoned over a ball dress, arms folded, and gazing stolidly ahead.
Dangerfield seated himself in a corner, nodded, and went to sleep.
When they reached the end of the line Inga awoke him with the help
of the guard, and asked him what he wanted to do.
He got up suddenly and walked down the long steps to the street.
They were in the open spaces of the upper city; a few milk-wagons
were passing at rare intervals, about them was the feeling of the
rediscovered earth in long, empty, grass-grown lots. He had not
spoken a word. Suddenly he stopped and turned, with a new menace in
his voice.
“Well--had enough?”
“I’m not tired,” she said, shaking her head and meeting his look
steadily.
“We’ll see,” he said, and started off so furiously that, for a
time, she was put to it to keep up with him. At the end, from the
need of taking breath himself, he stopped and wheeled on her.
“What--you’re still here!”
“Yes.”
She forced a smile, and this smile completed his exasperation.
“Why won’t you let me go?” he cried, in an outburst of rage. “You
let me go, do you hear? Dogging and sneaking about me! What right
you got--what business is it what I do! No one shall stop me--no
one, do you hear?” He advanced threateningly on her. “Had enough of
interference--d’you understand? You let me go now--let me go, or
I’ll--”
Midway in a gesture as he raised his hand to seize her, his legs
shook under him, his voice stopped in his throat, he heaved
forward, backward, then down on his face, and lay still in a
crumpled mass.
She bent down swiftly, examined him, perceived that he was
completely drunk and rose to look for help. It was nearing six
o’clock but the houses were still closed against the night. Near
her at a corner saloon, a studded glass sign announced: