Owen Johnson

“ King O’Leary strode into the room over the grateful softness underneath.
“Rugs!” he said ecstatically, and he put his head back as though to inhale the welcome odor of a home. “Lord, I can just smell it!” he said. “It just warms you up—makes you feel real.”
He stood, hat in hand, his face glowing, surveying the blending shades of gray and green, the subdued glow of the table-lights, the grateful touches of warm colors here and there, and the easel covered with a cloak of mellow golden velvet that was in itself calming to look at.
“You’re an artist?” he said. ”

“ As a matter of fact, neither Flick nor Tootles were in the least doubt that Myrtle had made up her mind to carry off O’Leary with a high hand and marry him, after the easy matter of a divorce had been settled, nor for that matter had Millie Brewster, who daily grew more silent and more pathetic, flitting into the studio at all hours for a glimpse of her idol or at least the opportunity to converse about him. What O’Leary himself was thinking remained the mystery, nor could his comrades in the arts, either by sly traps or direct accusations, procure a clue. ”

“ When the baggage and provisions had been finally transferred and the house inspected, Dangerfield climbed to the crest. Inga had hardly moved from her first struck attitude of wonder. He came quietly to her side, interested in her surprise, feeling again old sensations through the discovery in her eyes, as though watching a child in a playhouse. From where they stood, shoulder to shoulder, the rocky, tumbling coast twisted to the horizon, undefiled by sight of human habitation. At its stone feet, the sea, like a cloth of peacock blue, lay in flat complacency with faint rim of winding lace. ”

“ Matters were thus when, on New Year’s eve, Inga Sonderson returned to the Arcade after a solitary supper at the Childs restaurant on the avenue. She had no sooner turned the hall than down the somber stretch she noticed with surprise a brilliant swath of light. She went on, wondering what this could portend, for since their chance meeting, she had not laid eyes on her neighbor. Through the opening of his studio door she could see boxes, furniture and bric-à-brac piled toward the ceiling like wreckage washed against the shore. ”

“ Then he turned to Dangerfield’s easel with renewed curiosity. Against the white canvas, a figure stood out in glaring boldness, done in flowing, powerful lines, a figure all human flesh and greedy life, defiant, common, vital, astonishing in the power of its ugliness, which no longer had the quality of ugliness, so alive and instantaneous was the unifying spark of the actual which held it together. ”

“ They were before the fire-place, the dishes cleaned for the night, watching the glow of charring logs, Inga stretched full-length on the rug, her elbows on the floor, chin in her hands, Dangerfield rocking back, drawing long clouds of fragrant smoke from his pipe. He watched her (he never tired of studying her instinctive poses) with a sense of eye-delight. There was something feline and pliant in her contemplation of the fire, the wonder one sees in a graceful animal fascinated by a burning flame which lies beyond the world of its comprehension. ”

“ For these months of intimacy with the simple and direct life of the massed nations of the cosmopolis, Dangerfield lived and worked in unconscious fervor. No weakening pause at self-analysis, no intimidating calculation of what foreign criticism might declare ever entered his day. He experienced the greatest delight of which an artist is capable, a joy which is like first love and must be surrendered with the consciousness of success—the pure and unreasoning love of the work itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ De Gollyer arrived even before the hour set, an eagerness in his eyes, an expectancy in the rapid prying glances which scoured the studio, delving into the darkest corner, divining what lay behind each concealing screen. He was surprised—plainly surprised—at the exquisite harmony of the studio. Man of the world, connoisseur of the human drama strongly blended with the militant honesty of the genuine critic, he had a sure instinct of the right word and the right action. He felt in Inga a strong antagonism and a certain unease before his intruding attitude. ”

“ Louise Fortier, with the instinctive sense of defense of the woman even toward the undivined dangers of the future, had assumed toward this blunt and simple nature an attitude of grateful comradeship. She consulted him on trivial decisions; she assumed the frank intimacy of a privileged confidant, and she confided in him the burden of her imaginary woes. He had the self-made man’s contempt for conventionalities. When he fell in love with her, he thought of only one thing: carrying her off, breaking the chain that bound her, of a divorce that would make her free for him. ”

“ The skylight was open in deference to the first warmth of the spring, as March went out like a lamb. Tootles, in overalls, so splashed with variegated tints that they might have passed for an impressionistic landscape, was giving the last tender touches to the completed canvas of the Well-dressed Man Contemplated By The Ages. Schneibel, who had stolen up between appointments, in his white dentist’s coat, was dividing his admiration between the contemplation of Tootles’ masterpiece and that critical attention which one great singer bestows upon the performance of another. ”

“ King O’Leary lay with his head on an outstretched arm, which showed the green tracings of a tattoo, the shock of hair well off the clear and friendly forehead, the face flushed and contracted in a painful frown, as though still under the fever of tormenting recollections.
“Not the sort that bats for nothing,” thought Tootles. “The kind that drinks to forget. Wonder what the deuce is back of it all, old boy. Well, you wouldn’t make a bad Santa Claus at that!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the moment he was the Dangerfield of the first days, creature of wavering temperament and undisciplined impulses. The meeting with De Gollyer had come to him as a cry in the wilderness. The old life, the old traditions, the old habits, deep as the deepest instincts, came thronging back to him, reclaiming him in this dark continent of the sixth floor back of Teagan’s Arcade. Passions little and great pass away but the comradeship of man to man abides through failure and disaster. ”

“ Lonely, each in his own struggling beginning, they found a divine measure of comradeship in their exuberant youth, dreaming away at night under the stars that came down to them through the open skylight; Tootles of fame and masterpieces; Flick of more worldly ambitions, of rolling down the avenue, not on camels but in glaring limousines, of being saluted obsequiously by precipitate head waiters conducting him through luxurious restaurants where beautiful women with diamonds in their hair sent him imploring glances. ”

“ Once possessed with the thought of change, Dangerfield wished to be off at once. He had lived so keenly in the region of sensations these last months, that only sensations new and unmastered could answer the craving of the artist, which had found a rebirth in the new life of the senses. The green unanimity of the July woods and the brazen expanse of the heated sky tormented his eye. He felt a longing for the region of the sea, whose moods have alone infinite variety, ever stirring, changing and changeless. ”

“ To-night you have assisted at our farewell appearance as gilded dispensers of ill-gotten wealth.”
“Amen!” said Flick and O’Leary, in sepulchral chorus.
“Despite your sneers, your abuse, your cruel misunderstandings,” continued Tootles, charmed with the sound of his own voice, “we have shown you how artists dispense their wealth. While gold flowed from our pockets, we planned only how to give you pleasure. Now that we face a cold, hard dawn, without a cent, without a friend, but proudly, with the inspiration of our art, we do not wait to be abandoned by you—we say farewell!” ”

“ Tootles, who was left in charge of the studio as the Committee on Decorations, beheld in successive stages of amazement the arrival of a Christmas tree, followed by two urchins staggering under wreaths with trailing red ribbons and green garlands sufficient to decorate a theater, an immense clump of mistletoe, which he immediately suspended to the snout of the Chinese dragon; and while he was yet in the throes of apprehension that King O’Leary’s thousand dollars had been dissipated, a brigade of waiters arrived, who built up, as though by magic, a table capable of seating a score. ”

“ Dangerfield felt a sudden pang in watching this affectionate solicitude—a feeling of an emptiness in his own life—of something that had been and had been taken away. The thought of Inga, of the close companionship, of the strange, elusive girl, who had watched over him and fought his struggles, threw him into such a swift dejection that Mr. Cornelius, noticing it, cried out:
“No blue devils to-night! En avant, mon vieux, and to the charge! Panzee, an old fellow kisses your cheek with respect and gratitude—merci!” ”

“ Their coming to New York was her suggestion. The return home was a triumph for him. For the first time, he tasted the completeness of personal success. His friends of the quarter who had returned before him hailed him as a leader. He became a personality; his eccentricities of speech and thought, the dramatic wildness, even, of his past life were now registered in his favor. He took a studio and began to work, and success continued his. Yet, at the bottom, he became conscious of a growing restlessness, of an inability to enjoy what he had won. ”

“ He wandered restlessly through ways which he had gone with Inga, ending up for luncheon at the little restaurant with the oyster-bar, where he had sketched with such avidity. Only, nothing interested him. The curious types of pedler and hybrid politician, the melancholy of the old régime, and the audacity of the new generation, which he had seen and studied with avid eye and awakened imagination, to-day bored him immeasurably. ”

“ The evil passion of revenge momentarily possessed him, at the thought that this woman who had so often mocked him in her heart as an easy dupe, had, at last, come here to taste the bitterness of humiliation herself, in order to escape the fate he had commanded. He wished to enjoy this reversal of the rôles, and, in an ugly mood, turned his back on her, walked over to the couch, and flung himself into a sweater. She watched him, without moving, until he had returned and faced her, and, from the cruelty in his eyes and the smile over his lips, she comprehended how hopeless was her mission. ”

“ Miss Pansy, from a grateful young lady with her heart at her finger-tips, became overnight a delighted and outrageous little flirt, maliciously bent on tormenting him to the limit of his endurance. Tootles, not having sense enough to stop and run in the opposite direction, continued with wrath and fury to pursue the tantalizing eyes which danced at him over her fleeing shoulder, until he was ready to believe that the love and likewise the tragedy of his life had descended upon him. ”