The flatness of her forehead, her eyebrows, the setting of her eyes, the turn of her temples, the shape of her ears and the twist they took where they joined her head, her nose as narrow as the dull edge of a knife, her nostrils, the oldish-looking nasolabial line, the depressions at the corners of her mouth, her beautiful yet brutal chin, her unbeautiful throat, with the washer-woman's pit in it—all these traits had a very sobering effect upon Frederick, sapping from his imagination every bit of its strength to beautify or palliate. Perhaps Miss Burns knew what results from such strenuous, such persistently logical observation of an object. In some ways it has the same effect as blood-letting. That is why the artist must bleed to death unless new sources of illusion always open up to him.
Moreover, in the long sittings, to which Ingigerd submitted from vanity, she betrayed the narrowness, the attenuation, the barrenness of her mind. In contrast with Miss Burns, Frederick perceived in Ingigerd with fearful clearness that incompleteness which is eternally rudimentary. Once she brought a letter from her mother in Paris and read it aloud. For about a quarter of an hour, it actually seemed to torture her. It was serious, severe, full of concern, and not unloving. Her mother referred sorrowfully to Hahlström's death, and asked Ingigerd to come and live with her in Paris. She told her of a woman in New York, the wife of a German barber, with whom it would be eminently suitable for her to remain until she returned to Europe. She even mentioned the steamer she should take.
"I am not wealthy," she wrote. "You will have to help me with my work, Ingigerd, but I will try to be a mother to you in every respect,"—here came the apodosis—"if you make up your mind to change your mode of life."
There was hard, stupid, even savage hatred in Ingigerd's commentaries on this and other parts of her mother's letter.
"I am to go to her and repent," she mimicked, "because the Lord has so miraculously saved me. Mamma should be the first to repent. I am not going to be such a fool as to turn myself into a dressmaker. Always to receive orders and listen to sermons from mamma! I am not bothered about myself so long as I am not under somebody's thumb."
And so she went on, without the least hesitancy retailing the ugliest intimacies in the life of her parents.
XVIII
The Mayor of New York appointed the twenty-fifth of February for a hearing in the City Hall, at which Lilienfeld and his attorneys, Brown and Samuelson, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children were to present their arguments for and against the injunction restraining Ingigerd Hahlström from dancing in public. Mrs. Lilienfeld dressed Ingigerd up in "smart" clothes, put her in a cab, and in the capacity of chaperone drove down to the City Hall with her. Frederick, upon whose presence Ingigerd had insisted, had gone ahead in another cab with Lilienfeld.
"This is the situation," Lilienfeld explained as they drove through the length of the cold, grey, dreary city. "At present New York is in the control of Tammany. At the last elections the Republicans were defeated. Ilroy, the Mayor, is a Tammany man. The word Tammany is derived from an Indian sachem, Tamenund, who figures in Cooper's Leather-stocking novels. The party leaders have silly Indian names and titles. But don't be deceived by all that romantic Indian nonsense. The members of Tammany Hall are mighty practical. The Tammany tiger is an animal not to be trifled with in the great New York sheepfold. I think we may feel pretty sure, though not absolutely certain, of having the Tammany tiger, and therefore the Mayor, with us in this matter. Mr. Garry is a Republican, a deadly enemy of Tammany Hall, and it would give Ilroy the greatest satisfaction to deal a neat little blow at him and that idiotic institution, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. But his term is nearly expired, and as he would like to be elected again, it is politic for him to make a few concessions to the Republicans. Well, we'll see. We have to wait and see."