Dangerfield

“ 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. ”

“ Dangerfield having parted with Irons, entered the little garden or shrubbery, which skirted on either side the short gravel walk, which expanded to a miniature court-yard before the door of the Brass Castle. He flung the little iron gate to with a bitter clang; so violent that the latch sprang from its hold, and the screaking iron swung quivering open again behind him.
Like other men who have little religion, Mr. Paul Dangerfield had a sort of vague superstition. ”

“ A week later, with only King O’Leary present, Dangerfield and Inga were married before a justice of the peace, and departed quietly for the lakes of New Hampshire, where Dangerfield had gone as a boy, and where, in the unfashionable month of May, he sought the seclusion and solitude of awakening nature, which his own reawakening soul had begun to crave. ”

“ His answer naturally served to increase the curiosity of the Arcadians, already exceedingly intrigued—an effect which was further heightened by the subsequent actions of Dangerfield himself.
Hardly had the surprise of his visit to the baron in incongruous attire died down, when he came out of his room shaved and properly dressed, and went down the hall and out. Sassafras, who took him down, vowed he looked just as natural as any one. At five o’clock the same afternoon, as the three friends were discussing the one topic, Dangerfield entered unexpectedly, and a curious thing happened. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dangerfield made a low bow, with a smirk, to his lordship, and a nod, with the same, to his counsel; and he turned, and the turnkey and darkness received him.
Mr. Dangerfield, or shall we say the villain, Charles Archer, with characteristic promptitude and coolness, availed himself of the interval to try every influence he could once have set in motion, and as it were to gather his strength for a mighty tussle with the king of terrors, when his pale fingers should tap at his cell door. ”

“ Tootles gazed at Dangerfield as the pickets of the Grand Army used to come to startled salute at the sudden apparition of the Little Corporal.
“You must sign it, too,” he said, in a burst of fairness.
“It’ll be a riot,” said Flick, seeing visions of a golden shower. “We’ll work it up until we have the whole clothes-aristocracy fighting each other for it.”
“That’s a beginning,” said Dangerfield, who enjoyed the satire more than he dared show. “Beau Brummel can be about left center, examining him through a lorgnon, or better, indicating him to a belle in a powdered wig.” ”

“ Dangerfield, who was in great force, and, indeed, in particularly pleasant spirits, except when unfortunate Nutter was actually under discussion—when he grew grave and properly saddened—told, in his clear, biting way, a curious rosary of Newgate stories—of highwaymen's disguises—of clever constables—of circumstantial evidence, marvellously elicited, and exquisitely put together—of monsters, long concealed, drawn from the deep by the finest tackle, into upper light, and dropped deftly into the landing-net of Justice. ”

“ Dangerfield."
"To Mrs. Dangerfield?"
"That woman you were always sitting with; she told you not to speak to me. I have seen her in New York; she speaks to me now herself. She recommended you to have nothing to do with me." ”

“ Dangerfield completed a dozen sketches and sprang up lightly and satisfied, his mind busy with projects for paintings. Everything attracted him; the whole world was rich with points of interest—a black-haired woman leaning out of the window drying her hair, two young mothers with babies at their shoulders chatting before a kosher shop, a public school pouring out its color-flecked stream of alien races—all these notes of humanity seemed [304] to him vibrant with the teeming will to live, to enjoy, and to drink in sensations to the fullest. ”

“ Outside, Dangerfield suggested the subway, only to be met with a scornful denial. For one night a month, at least, the illusion must be revived in its completeness. They hailed a taxi and arrived thus at Delmonico’s. In the crowded room, their table was reserved and at each plate a gardenia was laid. Gustave, the head waiter, was at the chairs bowing recognition, visibly intrigued at the unprecedented spectacle of Mr. Cornelius arriving with a companion, nor was his surprise diminished by perceiving Dangerfield, whom he knew of old. ”

“ Cornelius had the power to make Dangerfield talk. Often now, in the dark, after the day’s work was done, the easel put away, and the rug rolled back, the two men would stretch back, [289] puffing on their pipes, and discuss art and life and the thousand and one affairs of the world which may always be better regulated in conversation. Dangerfield was still far from being tamed, as O’Leary had put it, but something had come now to aid her in the struggle, a new curiosity still unsatisfied, a wonder whether the months of disappointment had not left a compensating gift in a clearer vision. ”

“ Paul Dangerfield, who was not troubled either with vapours or superstitions, as he lay in his green-curtained bed in the Brass Castle, had as many dreams flitting over his brain and voices humming and buzzing in his ears, as if he had been a poet or a pythoness.
He had not become, like poor Sturk before his catastrophe, a dreamer of dreams habitually. I suppose he did dream. The beasts do. ”

“ The consequences of Dangerfield's incarceration upon these awful charges, were not confined altogether to the Tiled House and the inhabitants of Belmont.
No sooner was our friend Cluffe well assured that Dangerfield was in custody of the gaoler, and that his old theory of a certain double plot carried on by that intriguing personage, with the object of possessing the hand and thousands of Aunt Rebecca, was now and for ever untenable, than he wrote to London forthwith to countermand the pelican. ”

“ Of course, Dangerfield knew pretty well how matters stood; he was not a man to live in a dream; facts were his daily bread. He knew to a month how old he was, and pretty exactly how time had dealt with his personal charms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dangerfield, the young diplomatist was doubly careful as to the relations he might form at the beginning of his sojourn in the United States. That lady reminded him, and he had himself made the observation in other capitals, that the first year, and even the second, is the time for prudence. One was ignorant of proportions and values; one was exposed to mistakes and thankful for attention, and one might give one’s self away to people who would afterwards be as a millstone round one’s neck: Mrs. Dangerfield struck and sustained that note, which resounded in the young man’s imagination. ”

“ I’ll hear it,” said Dangerfield, bending his brows down and playing with a paper-weight that happened to be near by. The whole attitude held so much threat that the lawyer’s eyes calculated the proportions of the table that served him as a barricade.
[187]
“But”—he glanced a second time toward Inga with a raising of his eyebrows—“do you wish any one to be a third to our conversation? It is, of course——”
“Inga, wait! I wish you to stay,” said Dangerfield, as he heard in the shadows the slight rustle of her dress. “There is nothing to show that he has anything of importance.” ”

“ Cornelius examined it with care, nodding, raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips.
“I did not think you so strong,” he said slowly, and the look of wonder with which he examined Dangerfield had more flattery in it than his words. “C’est fort; c’est plus que fort—c’est du vrai!”
“Yes; there is something in it—something odd,” said Dangerfield slowly, to Inga’s amazement.
“You did not see things like that in Paris,” said “the baron,” still nodding. “Cristi—but it’s astonishing what you make a line do; what modeling!”
“Yes, yes,” said Dangerfield breathlessly, “it’s bold; it has audacity ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cluffe's little bit of information respecting the instrument he had seen the prisoner lay up in his drawer on the night of the murder, and which corresponded in description with the wounds traced upon Sturk's skull, seemed to have failed. The handle of Dangerfield's harmless horsewhip, his mind misgave him, was all that would come of that piece of evidence; and it was impossible to say there might not be something in all that Dangerfield had uttered. Is it a magnetic force, or a high histrionic vein in some men, that makes them so persuasive and overpowering, and their passion so formidable? ”

“ Look for yourself,” said King O’Leary with some irritation.
Dangerfield gave him a second glance, and then went slowly to Inga Sonderson’s door and bent over the card carefully.
“Yes; that’s right,” he said, nodding, and went into his room, as though that were, the only point to be settled.
“Well, you certainly are a queer rooster,” said King O’Leary to himself, so perplexed that he remained scratching his head. The door opened, and Dangerfield reappeared, coming toward him with extended hand. ”

“ And fat Captain Cluffe's gall rose and nearly choked him, and; he cursed Dangerfield in the bottom of his corpulent, greedy soul, and wondered what fiend had sent that scheming old land-agent three hundred miles out of his way, on purpose to interfere with his little interests, as if there were not plenty of—of—well!—rich old women—in London. ”

“ He must be either brained in a row, or drunk under a table. So Mr. Dangerfield took leave of good Mrs. Sturk, having told her in case the doctor should come, to make him wait for his arrival before taking any measures, and directing that he should be sent for immediately.
So Mr. Dangerfield got into his white surtout silently in the hall, and shut the door quickly after him, and waited, a grim sentry, under the tree, with his face towards Dublin. ”

“ Old Dangerfield came out of his brown study with a start, made a gesture of acquiescence, and threw open the window to its full extent. Through the embrasure a faint breath of air wandered in from the outer twilight, laden with the smell of parched soil and the heavy perfume of flowers; but it brought no coolness with it.
“I suppose this doesn’t affect you, Mr. Wraxall?” Mrs. Brent turned to the American beside her. “You’re a New Yorker, aren’t you? Heat waves won’t trouble you as much as they do me. You’re acclimatised, no doubt.”
“It’s warm to-night. It’s certainly not what one calls cool. ”

“ Down the hall they heard Flick calling:
“Every one this way! Greatest social function of the year!”
Then the sound of knocking, an imperative personal summons. She passed swiftly to the button and extinguished the light. Through the window a pale shadow made Dangerfield just discernible. She felt her way back and sat down near him, with a whispered caution to silence. Tootles’ and Schneibel’s voices could be heard outside in consultation. ”

“ DANGERFIELD’S PLOT.
The fourth Parliament of Charles II. met in October, 1679, and, after repeated prorogation, assembled for the despatch of business in October, 1680. Another informer [21] just at that time rose to notoriety, whose name deserves to be coupled with that of Oates. Dangerfield is represented as a handsome young man, whom profligacy and debt brought within the walls of Newgate, where he was visited by a Roman Catholic woman named Cellier, one “who had a great share of wit, and was abandoned to lewdness.” ”