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!”
“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.