"Now, then, do you want to be late?" he called. That reminded Angelica of her errand.
"Oh! Mrs. Geraldine said to ask you when did you want to use the car. She thought she’d go out."
Mrs. Russell stared at her in distress.
"Oh, pshaw! I never imagined she’d want it. Tell her, please, I’ll send Courtland back with it in an hour."
"I don’t think!" said Courtland. "She better not hold her breath waiting."
Even Angelica was aware that this was not the proper way for a chauffeur to address his lady. She was surprised that he wasn’t rebuked. She looked at him with an indignant glance, which he returned with one of the greatest scorn.
"Wait in the car, Courtland," was all that Mrs. Russell said. "I’ll be down directly."
"He’s a nice boy," she told Angelica, after he had gone. "I think a great deal of him. I’m sorry for him. He’s very bright and intelligent, but he hasn’t had any opportunities."
"He’s mighty fresh," said Angelica.
"You mean disrespectful? I know it; but it seems to me that in this country, you know—a republic—we should expect that sort of thing. We’re all more or less equals, I suppose, aren’t we?"
Angelica said yes; but she didn’t think so, and she knew that Mrs. Russell didn’t think so. A game of exploitation, simply but in a country where every one had the pleasing possibility of becoming one of the exploiters.
Angelica went back to Polly with the message.
"She says she’ll send back the car in an hour."
"Then I think I’ll get up and dress," said Polly. "We’ll run into the city for lunch. Do you know, I feel better! I think you’re doing me good."
She really believed so; it seemed to her that the fierce and careless vitality of this girl charged all the atmosphere, penetrated and invigorated even her jaded and sorrowful heart. It was not the sort of vitality that fatigues and irritates, like the ceaseless activities of a little child. Angelica was quiet, for the most part; she didn’t speak much, she sat quietly in her chair, with the sort of cool steadiness that one notices in cats. When you spoke to her, it required no effort for her to attend, to concentrate her thought on you; at once her dark face was alert, her ready mind in action.
With Polly—although she wasn’t aware of it—her manner was exactly what was needed. She was generally quite indifferent, thinking her own thoughts, absorbed in her own affairs; but she was instantly willing to perform any service, or to talk, or to listen.
"Mr. Eddie spoke to me about you," Polly went on. "I have a very high opinion of his judgment, and he seems to think you’re just the person for me."
Angelica was delighted.
"Well," she said, in her pitifully ungracious way, "it’s kind o’ hard, not knowing your ways or anything; but I guess I’ll be useful."
Polly smiled.
"Help me to get ready, won’t you? I haven’t been out for such a long time; and the doctor seems to think I should."
"This doctor, is it?Herhusband?"
"Oh, no! He’s not exactly a doctor. He invented a patent medicine, called Dr. Russell’s Old-Time Rejuvenator. That’s why they call him doctor."
"I see! But those things are mostly fakes, aren’t they?"
Polly didn’t answer.
Angelica enjoyed helping her to dress. She liked to open bureau drawers and wardrobes and see the well-ordered and dainty things, all faintly fragrant. She liked fetching the silk stockings, the fine little handkerchiefs, the gloves,all the accessories of a woman of excellent taste and a decent income. Very plain, Polly’s things were, but with a most refined and fastidious plainness. Angelica, seeing and handling them, gained a quite new idea of a lady’s requirements.
"And there we sat," she told her mother later, "all the morning, like a couple of fools, waiting for the car. It got to be lunch-time, and still it hadn’t showed up. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, waiting there with her hat on and all. ‘I guess she’s decided to keep her automobile for herself to-day,’ I said. ‘It isn’t hers,’ she said. ‘It’s Mr. Eddie’s, for us both to use.’ He’s a generous feller, I think."
The excursion was given up. They had lunch down-stairs together, and in the afternoon they went out for a little walk—a tiresome walk for them both. Polly said scarcely a word. Angelica believed her to be angry, and at five o’clock, when at length the motor came back, with Mrs. Russell in it, she looked forward to a row.
She received another lesson, for Polly said nothing. She had tea in the library with her mother-in-law, and she was as agreeable and polite as if nothing at all had occurred to vex her.
At first this conduct appeared to Angelica cowardly and shockingly hypocritical; but as she watched Polly, she changed her opinion. No, it wasn’t hypocrisy; she didn’t pretend to be pleased and friendly. Her attitude said to Mrs. Russell, in effect:
"Do as you please. You can’t annoy me. I remain absolutely undisturbed."
And as Angelica observed them, first to see how tea was to be drunk, and later to ponder, a new idea struggled to life in her mind. It began to dawn upon her that there weregrades among ladies, and varieties. Mrs. Russell was a lady, and Mrs. Geraldine was a lady; but they were of quite different sorts, and Polly’s sort was the better.
So there wasn’t simply a set of rules to follow, or a definite standard to attain. There wasn’t even one absolutely correct manner. How was one to learn? How was one to imitate?
"My Gawd!" she reflected. "There’s more to this than I thought!"
Perhaps, if Polly had imagined that she was serving as a model, or even that she was being shrewdly observed by Angelica, she would not have done what she did. She would have maintained the aristocratic imperturbability that had so impressed her companion, and she would have concealed her malice. For Polly had malice—that agreeable feminine malice, so much more attractive than a forgiving heart. She had a quiet relish for vengeance, and a long, long memory for affronts.
For three years there had been war between herself and her mother-in-law, in which Polly had had to struggle desperately to avoid extermination. The ruthless selfishness of Mrs. Russell would have destroyed her, would have made her an instrument to serve her in her pleasure-hunt. She was not to be reasoned with, she was too heedless and indifferent to weigh consequences, too insolent to be hurt by defeat, too slippery for any sort of compromise. Polly had adopted a policy of implacability toward her. She let nothing slip, forgave nothing, forgot nothing.
They were all at the dinner-table that evening—Eddie in evening dress, and the doctor also, in order to please his punctilious and severe son-in-law. Polly was an altogether pleasant object for contemplation in a brown voile frock, while Mrs. Russell had come forth in an astounding thing of orange and blue. It was shockingly expensive, very unbecoming, and badly put on. Taken with her straggling hair and a pair of dusty and shapeless black velvet slippers, it formed an exterior not likely to enlist her son’s support in the coming encounter.
"Eddie!" said Polly. "What was that man’s name—the one we had for the day when the car was broken? Do you remember? He was such a good, careful driver, and his car was so nice and clean!"
"Why do you want to know?" asked Eddie suspiciously.
"I thought to-day I should have liked to get him."
"What’s the matter with Courtland and your own car?" Eddie persisted sharply.
"But it’s not my own car, Eddie."
"Where was it?"
"It was in use. I can’t expect to have itallthe time," she said sweetly.
"You haven’t been out for seven or eight weeks, have you?" he demanded.
"No; but still——”
"That’s not exactly ‘all the time’!" His face had flushed. "Did you have the car, mother?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered with perfect indifference.
"Now look here!" he said. "Can’t you arrange better? Can’t you talk with Polly in the morning and find out what she intends to do?"
"Oh, Eddie, it doesn’t matter!" cried Polly in distress.
Eddie saw the distress and grew more angry. Angelica saw it also, and understood it.
"It seems to me," he said, "that when Polly goes out so seldom, she might have the benefit of her own car. She’s not well—you must remember that."
Mrs. Russell was smiling her mechanical smile.
"She shall have the car," she said, "whenever she wants it. If I’d known to-day, I shouldn’t have taken it."
"I meant to ask Angelica to ask you," said Polly.
"I did ask her, too," said Angelica.
"No," said Mrs. Russell, still smiling. "You didn’t. You forgot, I suppose."
"Were you out in it all day, then?" demanded Eddie.
"My dear boy, I was. And now, if you please, we won’t have any more of this. You can do your scolding in private.Polly shall have the car all the time. Tommy!" she said, turning to her husband. "Who do you think I had lunch with at the Country Club but Horace and Julie Naylor? Poor Horace! She is such a dreadful, vulgar little minx! And yet she’s so amusing. I must have her down here again."
"Not when I’m home," said Eddie. "I think she’s disgusting."
"Pretty little woman, though," said the doctor.
"Plenty ofthem!" said Eddie.
Mrs. Russell had got away from the subject of the motor-car, and rested satisfied. It was a question with Angelica whether, after all, she hadn’t triumphed. It was a drawn battle, at the best.
But before the evening was over the combatants were obliged to forget their hostility and to ally themselves against their common tyrant. All very well for them to quarrel together, but they didn’t forget that Eddie was the source of all good, and that, to placate him, all private feuds must be ignored.
They were still sitting at the table when a telegram arrived, which Eddie opened and read with a frown.
"Confound it!" he said. "Here’s a nice row! Vincent’s getting a bittoobad. This really puts me in a very awkward position. I gave him a letter to give to a man, and apparently he never did. I’ll have to get hold of him now, and find out what he did do with it."
He rose from the table, and so did Polly and Mrs. Russell.
"What’s the matter?" cried Polly, with an anxiety that seemed to Angelica extreme. "What has Vincent done?"
"I gave him a letter to deliver to a man who was leaving for San Francisco—an important letter; and now the fellow telegraphs that he’s reached there, and that the letter hasn’t reached him yet. He should have got it a week ago, before he left.
"But don’t bother Vincent to-night!" implored his mother. "You can’t do anything now. Wait till morning!"
"Why shouldn’t I bother him? He’s bothered me enough! I’m not going to humour him in this damn fool idea of shutting himself up like a—— He’ll have to behave like a human being!"
Polly laid a soothing hand on his arm.
"Do wait till the morning, Eddie," she said. "You know it’s at night that he does his best work, and it seems a pity to disturb him."
"What about it’s being a pity to disturb me while I’m eating my dinner, to try and rectify one of his beastly, inexcusable blunders? No, by Jove, I’m entitled tosomeconsideration! He’s got to come out and tell me what he did."
"Do wait!" cried Polly.
He looked at her in anger and distress.
"Don’t youunderstand?" he demanded. "It’s important. I’ve got to find out what he’s done with my letter. I’ve got to know at once—even," he added with irony, "at the risk of disturbing Vincent. I haven’t seen him for three days."
"Oh, do wait!" cried Mrs. Russell.
"I won’t!" he answered.
Striding out of the room, he began to run up-stairs. To Angelica’s great amusement, the two women followed him. She followed, too, of course.
"Oh, Eddie!" implored Mrs. Russell. "Don’t be so headstrong! Wait! I’m sure he’s asleep."
"He can wake up, then. It’s only eight o’clock."
"Or maybe he’s working, and if you interrupt him he’ll be so vexed!"
"Hevexed!" cried Eddie, outraged. "It seems to me that I’m the one to be vexed!"
Proceeding at once to his brother’s room, he knocked at the door, waited, and then knocked again.
"Vincent!" he called. "Open the door! I want to speak to you!"
He knocked louder and louder. Polly again touched his arm.
"Eddie!" she said, in a low voice. "You’re making a dreadful noise. Whydon’tyou wait? To please me!"
"It can’t really matter," said Mrs. Russell. "You couldn’t really do much at this time of night."
"No," said Eddie. "I could have waited, but now I won’t. There’s something damned queer about it. He can’t help hearing this row."
"But you know how peculiar he is," said Mrs. Russell. "He wouldn’t answer if he didn’t feel like it."
"I’ll make him. I won’t put up with this!"
He had turned away and was starting down-stairs.
"Where are you going?" called his mother.
"I’m going to get Courtland, to help me break in the door!"
Mrs. Russell drew near Polly.
"What do you think we’d better do?" she whispered.
"I don’t know," Polly answered in distress. "Even if he would wait till the morning, I don’t see just what we could do. Perhaps we’d better——”
Mrs. Russell nodded.
Eddie returned promptly, bringing with him the blond young chauffeur, pleased and alert.
"Which door?" he asked. "This? All right! Now, then, all together! One——”
"No!" cried Mrs. Russell. "No, Eddie. Wait a minute!"
He did wait, but impatiently, while she hesitated. Finally she said to him in a half whisper:
"Eddie,he’s not there!"
"Not there?" he shouted.
"Do hush! No; he’s been away for three days."
"Why the devil didn’t you tell me?"
"Because I didn’t want to upset you."
"Did Polly know?"
"Yes; she——”
"And you both stood there and let me make a fool of myself?"
"I couldn’t bear to upset you, Eddie, and neither could Polly."
"And you let me knock and call and bring up Courtland. Oh, by Jove, it’stoomuch!"
"I’m very sorry," said Polly gently.
Eddie didn’t even look at her.
"I’m sick of this!" he cried. "Sick of being made a fool of like this. It’s always the way in this house; every hand’s against me. Nothing but deceit and trickery!"
"Eddie!" said Polly firmly. "You forget yourself!"
The poor chap, recalled by her tone to his standard of propriety—the very fount of his exploitation—became a little quieter.
"No," he said, "I don’t. Where did he go?"
"To New York," said Mrs. Russell. "He had a bag with him. Courtland drove him in."
Eddie turned suddenly upon Courtland.
"Why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t there?" he demanded.
"How did I know he hadn’t come back?" retorted Courtland, smartly.
"Where did you leave him?"
"Corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street," said Courtland, and, with his unquenchable impudence, he added: "But you won’t find him there now!"
"That’ll do," said Eddie. "You can go. And don’t gossip about this."
Courtland wheeled about briskly and began, quite leisurely to descend the stairs, whistling cheerfully and loudly before he was well out of sight. Eddie did not even appear irritated. He had turned toward the two ladies of his household with an ominous look in his blue eyes.
Eddie was incredibly generous, he was kind-hearted andmore or less sympathetic, but he had in him, all the same, the making of a first-class domestic tyrant. He desired, almost morbidly, to be respected, and he was ready to force respect by bullying, if necessary. He knew what every one else knows, moral precepts to the contrary notwithstanding—that the bully is almost universally respected.
Like all domestic tyrants, he was shamelessly deceived and "managed" by the women of his establishment. They managed him clumsily. Neither of them had learned what the doctor had learned at once—that Eddie could be manipulated with ridiculous ease by the employment of either of two means. One was to appeal to his sense of justice; the other was deferentially to ask his advice.
He liked to argue, to discuss, to weigh, to do finally, not without pompousness, whatever he saw to be right; but the women never addressed this vulnerable side. They treated him still as if he were a primitive man, to be coaxed, hoodwinked, pampered, in spite of the fact that he was not primitive in any way. He got along splendidly in his office, because there it was acknowledged unanimously that he was not to be diddled, that he was no fool; but at home he was always treated as if he were a fool, and a slightly dangerous one. That is, of course, the accepted attitude toward any master of any house, but it is not always the most effective.
His anger began to ebb away as he looked at them, and a profound dejection to take its place.
"It’s no use," he said. "No earthly use! I do the best I can—for the entire family—to keep things as decent as possible; but I can’t. I get no help. I can’t do it alone!"
"But Eddie, my dear boy!" said Polly. "It was only to spare your feelings."
He shook his head.
"It wasn’t. You have some reason which I’ll never know. I’m not blaming you, Polly. I know you do what you think is best; but if you’d only behonest, regardless of what might happen!"
He stopped, for he had caught Angelica’s eye. He stopped, and his startled and arrested look said, almost as plainly as words:
"I believeyouto be honest!"
He was as much surprised as if she had but that instant appeared. Indeed, one might quite truly say that he had never before seen her. She looked so hardy, so bold, so independent, in all ways so different from the two other women who had just humiliated him. He felt a new and sudden interest in her.
Angelica was consumed, devoured, by curiosity. She felt obliged to know more of this family—of Vincent, above all. So the next morning she got up very early, went down into the kitchen regions, and sought out a snub-nosed maid who had seemed disposed to be friendly when they had passed each other in the hall.
The girl wasn’t busy. She was sitting on the back steps, enjoying the fresh morning; and as soon as she saw Angelica she moved over, hospitably, to make a place for her.
"Sit down," she said. "It’s a nice day, isn’t it?"
Angelica did sit down, and for a time was silent, looking before her across lawns as smooth and empty as those at the front of the house. Nothing at all back-doorish about the outlook; the same air of prosperous peace; in the distance other houses among their lawns, and well-trimmed trees, and overhead a lovely May morning sky.
"Yes," she said, "it’s certainly a nice day."
She fell silent again, trying to arrange an opening for her questions; but the snub-nosed maid spared her the trouble.
"Well!" she said. "How do you like it up-stairs?"
Angelica at once perceived that the other girl was curious.
"Oh-h-h!" she said slowly. "I suppose it’s all right."
Another silence, during which they appraised each other according to their tradition. A mutual confidence was born.
"They’re a queer bunch," said the girl. "I never saw the like; and I’ve been with seven families, too."
Here she courteously gave Angelica a brief history ofher life and condition. Her name was Annie McCall, born in Scotland, but brought up in America, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, twenty-seven, and engaged to be married. She was extremely severe in her views, which were often similar to Angelica’s, especially in regard to the immoralities of the rich. There was this difference, though—Annie was confident that she knew everything, and was infallibly right, while Angelica was anxious to learn.
"If it wasn’t that I was going to be married," said Annie, "and saving every penny, I’d leave. The way they carry on! I never saw the like!"
"Do they carry on?" inquired Angelica, delighted.
Hadn’t she always known that rich people carried on? Wasn’t she just in a paradise of the romantic, where the rich were bad, and the poor, represented by herself and the terribly respectable Annie McCall, were good?
"That Mrs. Russell’s the worst of them all," said Annie. "The bold, brazen thing she is, with her breeches and her smoking, and her cursing. You’d ought to hear her curse!"
"She’s queer," said Angelica reflectively.
"Queer!" cried Annie. "Well,I’dcall it more than queer! She’s——” She stopped a moment. "She’s bad," she said.
"Oh! Bad! How?"
"I don’t like to be spreading scandal," said Annie, who always believed the worst. "It’s not my nature, only that you’ll be working up-stairs right with her, and you being so young, it’s only right you should be told. As soon as ever I set eyes on you, I said to myself you’d ought to be warned. I could see you weren’t used to such people. You never worked out before, did you?"
"No," Angelica answered.
It was of no use to resent the ‘working out,’ or to tell Annie that she was a ‘companion,’ because Annie knew very well what her place was. Angelica’s eating with the family couldn’t deceive her. They were both servants, and Annie was the better-paid and more respected of thetwo. Angelica could not honestly consider herself in any way superior, except in appearance. Annie spoke rather better than she did, and had had more schooling; she admitted to money in two savings-banks, and she was engaged to be married. So Angelica submitted to a temporary equality, feeling morally sure, however, that the future would see her elevated immeasurably above Annie.
"How is she bad?" she inquired eagerly.
"She’s a divorced woman," said Annie. "She divorced her first husband, Mr. Geraldine, and I’ve heard that he was a very nice man—much better than Dr. Russell, I dare say; too good for her, very likely. Anyway, I never heard any good of a divorced woman."
"But what does shedo?" Angelica demanded, rather impatiently.
"You wouldn’t believe it, but she’s carrying on with that chauffeur."
"My Gawd!" said Angelica. "Is she really?"
"It’s the worst I’ve ever heard of. Would you believe it? She’s teaching him to play golf. They go out in the country somewhere, where they’re not known. She’s bought him a bag of clubs, and he goes around showing it to all the chauffeurs, and telling them I don’t know what. He’s a liar, and I wouldn’t believe a word he said, but still—well, when you hear a thing right and left—and there’s those clubs and all, and they cost a terrible lot—you can’t help but think she’s a regular bad woman."
But Angelica did help thinking so. She didn’t believe that Mrs. Russell was that sort of bad woman, and the longer she knew her the more convinced she became of her perfect goodness in this one respect. Capable of the most outrageous follies, selfish, hard as flint, quite without scruples in the pursuit of her own liberty and pleasure, she was, however, not interested in men. Angelica said nothing, though, for she had no proofs or surmises to bring forward, nothing but her own instinct.
Annie continued.
"No, I can’t help thinking so. I’m no fool. I’ve seen a lot—you do, working out. It’s a pity, too, on account of Mr. Eddie. He’s a nice young man, and he works himself sick for the lot of them. No one doing a stroke of work but him!"
"Don’t that doctor work?"
"Dr. Russell? He’s a regular old grafter, that’s whatheis."
"I saw him putting cigars in his pocket," said Angelica.
"I’ve seen worse than that. I’ve seen him going throughherbureau drawers, and taking anything he has a fancy for. He’ll come down with a flask, fill it with anything that’s left in the decanters, and take it up-stairs and drink until he falls asleep on the floor. They say it’s terrible bad to drink things all mixed together like that."
"Does he know about her carrying on?"
"He don’t care, so long as he’s got a good home and a little money to spend. I never saw such people in all my life! And they never have any decent company. Mrs. Geraldine——”
"Why do they call her Mrs. Geraldine?"
"Because that’s her name," said Annie, surprised. "That used to be Mrs. Russell’s name. It’s Mr. Eddie’s and Mr. Vincent’s name. Didn’t you know?"
"It’s a queer name," Angelica remarked thoughtfully. "I thought it was her first name."
Nothing in the universe seemed specially queer to Annie.
"Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Geraldine, she hasn’t any friends, except out West, and Mr. Eddie, he hasn’t got any time to make any, and there’s no one ever comes here butherlot from that country club—a lot of swearing, drinking, smoking men and women. She fills the house with them, and then Mr. Eddie’ll make a great row and say he won’t put up with them, and then she’ll smile, that superior way, andsay, ‘Very well, Eddie, it’s your house!’ Then, when she thinks he’s kind of forgotten, she’ll have them in again."
"But what’s the other feller like?" asked Angelica.
"Him!" cried Annie. "Why!" she was at a loss for words to express what she felt. "He’s——” She hesitated. "He’scrazy, and downright wicked. They call him religious. Sacrilegious, I call it. Every once in a while he’ll get a fit of feeling sorry for his wickedness, and he’ll be moaning and groaning about his soul, and working himself up to write his religious poems. Why," she cried, "it’s as different from the real repentance of a sinner, such as I’ve seen many and many a time in our meetings, as can be. He’s never seen the light, and he never will. He’s lost!"
"What does he do that’s wicked?" asked Angelica, avid for details of rich people’s sins.
"Everything—drink and women and blasphemy. Why, right now he’s gone off with a girl. Courtland saw him meet her."
But no further questions on the part of Angelica could elicit any more details. Annie didn’t want to talk about him; he was what she called a hardened sinner, and she considered him best ignored. She began to talk of Polly.
"She’s the best of the lot," she said. "She’s a real lady. She’s reasonable. She’ll never ask you for all sorts of outlandish things, all hours of the day and night, like the other one. She’s stingy, I must confess; she never gives you a penny, nor even an old dress or a hat; but at least she’s nice and polite. I’m sorry for her, too, losing that little boy. He was a sweet little thing, even if——”
The cook appeared on the porch—an untidy, bedraggled old Irishwoman.
"Come in, the two of ye!" she said. "Let your friend come in and eat a bite with us, Annie, if she’s not too proud."
"You might as well," said Annie. "They won’t be eating for another half an hour, and we’ve got just as good as they have."
"Better," said the cook. "You can trust me for that, Annie McCall!"
They went, not into the kitchen, as Angelica had expected, but into a nice little dining-room, to a meal served and eaten with decorum and propriety, a table daintily laid, and a breakfast beyond cavil—coffee with cream, beefsteak, cold ham, new-laid eggs, hot rolls, corn-bread, jams and marmalades, and a fine bowl of fruit.
The cook sat down behind the coffee-pot, with Angelica beside her. Presently in came the chambermaid, the German laundress, and a mild little thing known as the "second girl"; and, at last, swaggering, in his shirt-sleeves, Courtland the chauffeur.
His eye fell at once upon Angelica.
"Hello!" he said. "What’s the matter? Did they kick you out up-stairs?"
"They sent me down to see how you behaved yourself," she answered, promptly.
She was quite able to hold her own with this young bully, and though her manner was too free and easy to suit Annie, the others were delighted—especially the cook.
"Nowwill ye be good?" she would cry to the worsted Courtland. "Now you’ve met your match, me lad!"
Angelica enjoyed all this beyond measure. This homely simplicity, combined with the greatest comfort, this atmosphere in which she lost her painful consciousness of inferiority, in which she was among equals and able to breathe freely, invigorated and satisfied her. She grew more and more assured, her sallies more and more outrageous, in a violent badinage that continued until the bell rang and Annie ran off up-stairs. She returned to tell Courtland that he was wanted in fifteen minutes.
"Oh, Gawd!" he groaned. "It’s a tennis tournament to-day. Me sitting out in a blame country road in the hot sun all the afternoon. My Lawd! Don’t I wish that oldfool’d learn enough to stay home, or go to the city, to the theayters and stores!"
"And giff you de chance to see your schweetheart?" asked the laundress, coyly.
"Which one?" he demanded, boldly.
"Ye’ll need a lot of thim," said the cook. "For there’s no one girl could put up with ye long. Why are ye not playing your golf to-day, me lord?"
"She makes me sick!" he answered, angrily. "There she goes and gets me interested in the game and all, and then she drops it. Why, you know, she promised me at the start she’d train me good and I could go in a tournament. She said she’d introduce me as a friend of hers. She said I was built to be a first-class player, and maybe I’d get to be a perfessional."
"Don’t believe everythingshe’llbe telling you!" said the cook.
"Damn old fool!" he muttered.
Annie reproved him.
"You’ve got no right to speak like that about a lady," she said.
"Shut up!" he said briefly.
"Go along with you!" cried the cook. "She’ll be waiting."
"Leave her wait! She makes me wait enough. If she don’t like waiting for me, leave her say so. I can get plenty of jobs—better than this one, too. I don’t have to put up with nothing from her!"
It was only half-past eight, and Angelica didn’t know what to do with herself. She was in a rebellious and malicious mood; she had been fired by Courtland’s attitude, and she, too, wished to keep some rich person waiting. It was the attitude which is the despair of employers—the spiritin which the young workman comes sauntering in, insolently late, not because he wishes to lose his job or because he is, as they put it, looking for trouble, but because, for this one day, this one hour, he must assert himself, must be a man, must delude himself that he is not inferior, not helpless, not driven.
So Angelica, this morning, was ready to assert that servants were in all ways better than those they served, that poor people were all good and rich ones all bad. She felt a warm glow of friendliness toward the subordinate class, and a profound hostility toward their oppressors. She wanted to swagger about it, to tell Mrs. Russell, loudly, that those jolly, comprehensible people in the kitchen were vastly superior to her in every respect.
She went defiantly about the lower floor, into the library, into the breakfast-room, where the remains of Mr. Eddie’s meal still stood, into the music-room, even into the august drawing-room, where she had never before set foot.
"Idon’t care!" she said. "If they don’t like it, they can tell me!"
But she met no one. Thwarted of a victim, she went out upon the veranda and sat down in a rocking-chair, facing the prospect already so monotonous to her—the neat, smooth lawns, the orderly trees, the dignified houses.
"Makes me sick!" she said, aloud. "Nothing to look at—nothing to do!"
Suddenly her chair was tilted back and a hand laid over her eyes—a soft, cool hand. She pushed at it, roughly, and it was lifted, and she saw bending over her the bland, smiling face of the doctor. He was in flannels, well cut, quite correct, but with an air obnoxiously dapper. His white head was bare, and he wore a flower in his coat.
"You let me alone!" said Angelica.
"I can’t!"
"I guess you can!" she observed grimly.
"But you’re so pretty! You’ve no business to be so pretty."
"I dare say I’ll get over that in the course of time."
"Seriously," he said, "I don’t think I’ve ever seen finer eyes. Have you ever thought of going on the stage? And as far as I can judge, you have a beautiful figure. Of course I don’tknow——”
"None of that now!" she cried, flushing angrily. "Get away from the back of my chair. I don’t want you hanging around me, anyway."
"You’re very hard," he said. "Very! Don’t you like me, Miss Angelica?"
"Not much."
"But why?"
"Go and look in the glass, grandpa," she answered.
He reddened.
"I suppose I do seem old—in your eyes," he said; "but after all, it’s only a question of how youfeel; and I feel as young as you do. It takes a man of experience and maturity to appreciate a woman. Boys can’t understand, but a man of my age has learned how a woman likes to be treated."
"Well, he’s learned too late, then," said Angelica. "They’ll never give him a chance to show off what he knows."
"Oh, yes, they do," he retorted, preening himself. "I could tell you of more than one little girl who doesn’t think I’m too old. You, too, when you know me better, you’ll find me just as——”
"Now, look here, grandpa," said Angelica. "What are you leading up to? Because if you think you can get fresh with me, you’ve made a big mistake. Guess again, grandpa!"
"Don’t call me that!" he protested. "It’s vulgar."
She looked at him scornfully, then turned her back upon him and once more regarded the tiresome view. The doctor, after a glance at her severe profile, gave up his attemptand changed his attitude. He sat down jauntily astride of a chair and began joking. She never tired of that, and although he did, although he grew painfully weary of this rough and silly jesting, he was compensated by the sight of her brilliant face.
But inevitably he began to grow bolder again.
"My dear, your shoe’s untied!" he said suddenly.
He threw himself on his knees before her and clasped her ankle in his hand. She gave him a vigorous push with her foot that sent him rolling over backward, knocking his white head against a chair. She laughed immoderately, with abandon, all the more because he was so furious, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.
And it was just at this minute that Eddie came out, to see his father-in-law struggling to his feet, while Angelica shrieked with laughter.
"What’s this?" he demanded severely.
No one answered, but Angelica’s mirth was checked.
"What has happened?" he asked again, with still greater displeasure.
"I slipped," said the doctor. "Where’s your mother, my boy?"
This was an attempt to disarm Eddie by reminding him that the doctor was his mother’s husband, and therefore venerable; but it was not successful. He received no reply, and went sauntering off with exaggerated jauntiness, watched by Eddie till he was out of sight.
Then Eddie turned to Angelica.
"I’m sorry," he said gravely.
"Oh, it don’t matter!" she answered. "I can take care of myself all right."
"I wasn’t apologizing for my father-in-law’s conduct. I meant I was sorry thatyou——”
"Me?" she cried, indignantly. "I didn’t do anything!"
"I hate to think of you stooping to this sort of thing—this silly vulgarity. It isn’t like you. It isn’t worthy of you!"
The former factory girl, with her long memory of scenes so much more vulgar and silly than this—of faces slapped and insults replied to with most forcible language—stared, astounded, at Eddie, at his displeased and disappointed face.
"You ought to be more dignified," he said. "You say you want to improve yourself. Then, in that case, this sort of thing——”
She really had seen nothing reprehensible in her conduct, nothing to be censured. She knew, of course, that a girl in her situation mustn’t spend her time in "fooling" with the men of the household; but to disapprove it on high moral grounds ...!
However, the word "dignified" gave her a clue. It was those magnificent women he had in mind! She was falling short of their standard, and therefore disappointing Eddie. She wasn’t being magnificent.
She looked up at him.
"I see!" she said thoughtfully. "All right! I’ll try!"
"That’s right," he said. "I knew—if it were pointed out to you—that that sort of thing is so out of keeping with your character——”
"With your face," he meant. He meant, without being aware of it, that any sort of coarseness in a girl so lovely and desirable was a shocking offense to him.
Angelica left him, inspired by the loftiest thoughts. She was resolved to redeem this day begun so inauspiciously, breakfasting with the servants, knocking over the white-haired doctor. She pictured a new Angelica, stately and aloof.
"He does me good—that feller!" she reflected.
It now became the aim of Angelica’s life to satisfy Eddie. She felt that his standard was the right one, however painfully high it might be, and that he was genuinely concerned with helping her to attain it. And she felt that, in spite of his youthfulness and his somewhat grandiloquent air, he was a remarkable and an admirable man.
The more she saw of him, the more she admired him. She was a shrewd enough observer, yet she never detected in him a single lapse from his own rigid principles. What he set out to do, he did; what he determined to be, he was. She had not knowledge or experience enough to see that he was ignorant, crude, and childlike; she could see only his force, his strength of will, the earnestness of his ambition, and his complete ingenuousness.
He went directly to Polly. He told her that Angelica was ambitious, and that he wished to help her.
"So any evenings that you don’t need her," he said, "she can come to me and study. I’ll look out some books for her."
Polly smiled and agreed.
"It’s another of poor Eddie’s Utopian schemes," she said to her mother-in-law. "I don’t know what he expects to accomplish with the girl."
"I only hopeshewon’t accomplish anything!" said Mrs. Russell. "She’s very pretty, and Eddie’s so susceptible. Of course, he thinks it’s a sin to think of a girl as a girl, but still——”
They didn’t at all like this educational project, but Mrs.Russell was too careless and Polly too sensible to interfere. Besides which, it didn’t look really alarming. Eddie was not the sort—it would have been impossible to Eddie—to contemplate illicit relations with Angelica, and with his extreme propriety he was certainly not likely to consider marrying her. It was simply an annoyance to have her thus exalted. They were irritated and somewhat contemptuous, but they said nothing. They took care never to discuss Eddie in her presence.
It was a recognized fact that she and Eddie were allies. They were oddly alike in many ways. They had the same sort of careless austerity; neither of them cared whether a chair were comfortable or not, the soup hot or cold, the weather propitious; they disdained fatigue, were ready to work all day and all night to achieve an object, and had a fierce and driving ambition for power and distinction. But Angelica was coarser and stronger, while Eddie was more sensitive and very much more scrupulous. He was ruled by ideas, she was ruled by her vigorous impulses.
Polly very rarely wanted Angelica in the evening, and Mrs. Russell dared not summon her, so that it became quite a usual thing for her to go up-stairs with Eddie directly after dinner and settle down with some valuable book of his selection. He didn’t make any attempt really to teach her; she could as well have sat in her own room to read, but that would have entirely destroyed the character of the thing for Eddie. She must be sitting there, under his eye, docile, earnest, his pupil.
Sometimes he worked, sometimes he was himself engaged with one of his instructive books, which he bought in sets; but whatever it was, he very rarely spoke to her. He maintained his pose of imperturbability, which she knew well enough to be only a pose.
It didn’t take her long to see how it was with him. She understood that sort of thing so well! She saw how drawn he was to her, how she stirred his ardent blood; and sherejoiced and brought out all her tricks to torment him. When she wanted something explained, she would bring her book to him and stand beside him, leaning against him, bending over so that her hair brushed his cheek. She had attitudes that were poems of allurement; there were certain tones in her voice, certain little gestures, which she saw enthralled and disturbed and shocked him.
"She doesn’t know what she’s doing!" he would think.
Well, she didn’t exactly. She was well enough aware of the effect of her naughty wiles upon him, and upon other men; but she had never experienced the thing herself, never yet been transfixed by a dart such as she delighted to shoot. At first she was proud and gleeful; but after she had seen his painful effort to retain his dignity—his majesty, one might say—undisturbed, she felt a sort of respectful pity for him, and desisted.
She had no illusions; she didn’t fancy that his inclination toward her was love; she never dreamed of marrying him, and she understood him and herself too well even to contemplate any other sort of alliance. She ceased her tricks, became honest and sober with him, and sat at his feet to learn what she could. The knowledge that she was desirable in his eyes did good to Angelica, for it gave her more confidence, more hope of attaining ultimate magnificence. She showed him her natural self, inquisitive, eager, strong, ready for any sacrifice, any denial, that might help her in her progress, a nature at once ardent and calculating, a cool, shrewd, subtle Italian mind.
As for herself, she wasn’t in the slightest degree attracted by Eddie. She admired him and respected him, she felt a warm friendliness toward him, but no smallest trace of love or desire. It wasn’t possible; he wasn’t the man for her; he wasn’t her sort.
In contrast, and running parallel with this life of effort and progress under Eddie’s direction, ran the other existence, the lazy, soft life of the harem. One-half of her time shewas studying, reflecting, earnestly considering her manners and deportment; the other half she spent with Mrs. Russell and Polly, in a thoroughly demoralizing uselessness.
Laziness was Polly’s darling vice. She had long passed the stage of struggling against it; now she hugged it, enjoyed it without shame. She lay in bed, in a chaise-longue, or on a sofa, hour after hour, smoking cigarettes, lost in her sorrowful reveries. Where on earth was she to find an incentive to activity? There was no one whom she might love and serve; no effort was necessary to obtain all the luxuries possible. Her old love of her art lay buried beneath her grief; she felt that she had all that she could ever expect in life.
She had got quite used to Angelica now, and more or less fond of her. She liked to have the girl near, sitting with one of Eddie’s books; absorbed in it, yet instantly ready for any service required.
"Do you know, Angelica," Polly said to her one day, "the very nicest thing about you is that you never fidget!"
Angelica considered that.
"No," she said. "I know I don’t. I see other people squirming and wriggling all the time, and I wonder—I don’t know—Iamquiet; but I’ve got lots of life in me."
"I should say you had! Just my antithesis, aren’t you? I’m quiet, too, but it’s because I haven’t any life in me at all."
"Well," said Angelica, displaying no interest in Polly’s state of mind, and reverting, as she generally did, to herself, "I’m always kind of expecting something to happen. So I just—wait."
Her naïve egoism never affronted Polly. Disillusioned, she would have been rendered uneasy by affection or great interest; she liked it this way, with no pretense on either side, nothing to keep up. She never affected any interest in Angelica, although she couldn’t attain her companion’s supreme self-absorption. She was obliged, now and then,to ask a question; in fact, she couldn’t help being curious about Angelica, who was not at all curious about her.
She was sometimes a little piqued by the young creature’s cool assumption that she was of no interest. She knew, as all other people know, what lay within herself, how different she was from every one else who had ever lived, how interesting she was, both in her qualities and her experiences, a thing true of every one; and yet how impossible it is to make others see it!
Polly was a woman of curious temperament—intense, sensitive, flexible, and yet protected and perhaps isolated by a certain cool good sense. She was an artist, a musician, a woman who had twice loved and twice been most cruelly deceived and rebuffed, who had suffered and thought very much and very bitterly, if not very profoundly; but she was also the simple daughter of a small town, a woman who liked a long and leisurely gossip, who had sane and healthy blood flowing beneath her idle hypochondria. Woman of the world, smoker of cigarettes, reader of the most astounding books, seasoned as she was, disillusioned, heart-sick, a bit theatrical, perhaps, in her utter indifference, she was nevertheless the same Polly who would have heartily enjoyed a day spent in jelly-making, or nut-gathering, or sewing with a friendly and talkative group of her own Ohio women.
She had very little in common with Mrs. Russell. They didn’t really like each other, but being unoccupied, and in somewhat similar circumstances, they got on well enough together. The whole household got on together, in fact. There were intrigues, incredibly petty and subtle struggles and plots, but nothing overt.
The other two women accepted this new favourite of Eddie’s with resigned tolerance; they made use of her, but they were quite kind. They, too, had an influence on Angelica; they taught her something, a little of the compromise that must be made with life. You didn’t have to love people or to hate them—you had only to get on with them. Shecould not but admire their charming good-humour, their complete lack of the aggressiveness which the people she had known before had been obliged to cultivate. They were all three socomfortabletogether!
It was one of those summer afternoons which had such an indescribable charm for Angelica. She wasn’t used to idleness, and it delighted her, this sitting about, with a long stretch of empty hours ahead, to fill as one pleased. They were all in Mrs. Russell’s big, airy room, with the green blinds drawn down and flapping in a steady little breeze. It was very hot, and, as was their custom when Eddie was not home, they were in undress. Polly hated the hot weather, and didn’t care to move; she lay on a rattan couch, smoking, with her eyes closed, and with an electric fan blowing across her.
Mrs. Russell was stretched out in a deck chair; beside her stood a small table with a bottle of whiskey and a siphon of soda, of which she partook from time to time—very small drinks, but tolerably frequent. Her face was crimson; her hair, for greater coolness, was pulled back into a tight knot; she wore very little but a lace combing-jacket and a short silk petticoat, which, as she sat with her long legs crossed, showed a great expanse of gray silk stocking. She was a freak, a fright, whatever you like, but she had a certain ineffaceable distinction. Her voice, her gestures—Angelica watched her with interest. She was telling jokes, outrageous stories that convulsed the other two with laughter.
"Mydear!Wheredo you hear such things?" Polly protested after each one, and lay waiting for more.
Angelica rejoiced in a lovely cast-off garment of Mrs. Russell’s, light as gossamer, pale yellow, with taffeta bows.Its coquetry was incongruous with her dark and somber face, but it was bewitching, nevertheless. She sat in a low rocking-chair opposite a mirror, content to look now and then and to speculate endlessly upon the destiny of that thin, languorous figure, dressed like a rich person, lounging like one, beautiful, mysterious, alluring. Her bare arms were clasped behind her head, in that attitude which so well reveals the line of neck and bust. Seen from the door, in profile, she would have been an exquisite picture.
And she was seen from the door. Mrs. Russell, facing in that direction, gave a start of surprise, so that Angelica turned and saw a man standing there.
He was a big, heavy, swaggering fellow, in baggy knickerbockers and an old shooting-jacket hanging loosely from his powerful shoulders, with a fierce, hawk-like face and bright gray eyes. He looked at them with a sort of contemptuous amusement.
"Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell.
"Well?" he asked, smiling.
"Eddie’s been so——”
"Eddie be damned! How are you, Polly?"
"Quite well, thank you, Vincent," she answered with simplicity.
"You’re looking better," he assured her in friendly manner. "And mamma?"
"Don’t be so provoking!" she cried, trying to be angry, but at heart, as one could plainly see, filled with idiotic admiration for this big, impudent son. "Don’t pretend to be so calm and cool! What are you going to tell Eddie?"
Angelica jumped up from her chair, and then sat down again. Vincent took no notice of her.
"Let’s have a drink," he said, and sat down beside his mother. "Ah! And now another!"
He was certainly theatrical, playing to his little audience the part of the idolized conqueror, the man to whomeverything is permitted; but he did it well. He could carry it off; it was evident that he had them both in his pocket.
He talked to them with conscious mastery. His mother was silly and adoring; Polly, in spite of all her reserve and her deep and hidden resentment against him, couldn’t hide a sort of charmed interest. They listened to him and looked at him, while he, sprawled out in his chair, smoked a pipe and stared at the ceiling.
And then, suddenly, just for an instant, his falcon glance rested upon Angelica, upon the swarthy face that turned pale beneath it. Her heart stood still; she stared at his bold, careless face with a feeling that was almost like terror. She had never seen his like before, never seen so free and strong a spirit in any human creature.
She had met her match, and she knew it. She could never conquer him! It was a sensation unique in her life; never imagined before, never to be experienced again. She forgot herself completely, didn’t give a thought to the impression she might be making upon this man. She thought only of him, watched him, listened to him, in a sort of stupour.
He didn’t look at her again, but she knew that he was conscious of her, and that he included her among his audience. He went on, always like an adored actor secure of rapt attention, telling them things, painting vivid pictures for them. In the midst of his finest phrases, he would use the coarsest and bluntest of old words, abruptly, like a gross insult in a love sonnet. He aimed deliberately to startle and amaze, and he succeeded. The three women listened spell-bound; Angelica above all, quite caught in his net.
He told them about a play he had seen the night before, and an actress in it who had caught his fancy.
"That woman!" he said. "Good God! A fair, thin virgin—inviting with her troubled eyes the fiercest lusts—still innocent, still trembling on the threshold of her life. What an actress! Polly, you would have enjoyed her work."
"I don’t doubt it, Vincent."
"I’ll take you some evening soon. But no, I forgot. I’m going away."
"Oh, Vincent,again?" cried his mother.
He looked at her with a strange smile.
"Yes," he said, "and for a long time."
Polly, so many times hurt, so long ignored, remained quite still and indifferent. Only Angelica saw her thin fingers clench, and then open listlessly. She didn’t open her eyes or speak.
"Where?" asked his mother.
"You ask me?" he demanded. "I am a man. Pray, where should I go?"
No one was able to answer, and he frowned again.
"There’s only one destination possible," he said; "one spot on earth that draws toward it all of us who are men—a place of blood and destruction, of utter loneliness and frightful agony, where we rush to embrace that most maddening and most tender of mistresses——”
"Oh, Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell, distressed. "Don’t talk that way before Polly!"
He threw back his head and laughed.
"A mistress who breaks all hearts—of whom all loving souls are mad with jealousy—a mistress to whom no man is unfaithful—beautiful Death!" he cried.
His mother gave a sort of shriek.
"Vincent! You’re not going to kill yourself?"
"No!" he cried. "No! To kill my brother!"
"Kill Eddie?"
"Don’t be such a damned fool!" he said, irritably, annoyed that she had misunderstood and cheapened his climax. "I’m going to the war."
Until that moment they had, to tell the truth, taken very little notice of this war. It had been going on for some weeks, with great head-lines in the papers, but in their isolated group it had very little significance. Their routinewas in no way interrupted. Eddie worried over it, but then he worried over everything. He said it was disastrous for the market. However, they were quite sure that he would bring home money for them, if not in one way, then in another, and they weren’t really disturbed.
And now suddenly the war and Vincent came bursting in upon them with violence.
Vincent, of course, had to go out of the room at once after that declaration, leaving the three women astounded.
Mrs. Russell was the first to bestir herself. Perhaps because she was conscious that her emotions were so feeble, she always strained to emphasize, to exaggerate them. She at once affected a great excitement. She began rushing about, under the pretense of "getting Vincent’s room ready," and telling the servants that Mr. Vincent was home.
"And he’s going to the war, Annie!" she cried. "Isn’t thatdreadful?"
Polly took no part in this movement. She went back into her own room and sat down before her dressing-table.
"I’ll do my own hair, Angelica," she said, with a new frigidity in her manner that surprised her companion.
"All right!" Angelica answered, with a trace of sulkiness.
"You can go if you like," Polly went on. "I won’t need you any more to-night. I think, Angelica, you’d better have your dinner in your room. Mr. Geraldine might not like a stranger at the table the first evening he’s home."
"All right!" said Angelica again, turning obediently to the door.
But she did not attempt to conceal a most provoking smile—to show Polly that she knew the cause of all this.
She went trailing back to her own room in the yellow negligée, and shut herself in, happy enough to be alone and unobserved. After all, what did it matter if she couldn’t come down to dinner, couldn’t see him at all that evening? She could think about him; she could recall hisface and his voice; rejoice again in that unaccountable thrill.
She leaned back in her chair, her arms clasped behind her head, a strange and divinely stupid smile on her lips. Just at the threshold of love she was lingering, in that little moment before there is desire or pain, when love is without substance, without thought, a dim ecstasy, with no more motive, no more basis for its joy, than the dream of an opium-smoker.
"Gawd!" she said to herself, with a grin. "I guess I’m hitthistime, all right!"
There was a knock at the door. She went leisurely to open it, with the expectation of seeing her dinner served on a tray; but it was Eddie, the loyal Eddie, come to fetch her. He was rather pale and quite unsmiling.
"If you’ll get dressed," he said. "We’re waiting for you to come to dinner."
"Mrs. Geraldine said——”
"It doesn’t matter. You must come. I wouldn’t sit down without you."
He looked at her, and his face twitched. She looked so strange, so terribly aloof! He was unstrung, anyhow. He had had a beastly interview with his brother, and a somewhat unpleasant five minutes with Polly, whom he so much admired. He had really annoyed her, for the sake of this devilish girl. He was filled with dread and distress, with a wretched sense of impending calamity—what people call a presentiment. Perhaps it was because his mind unconsciously recognized all the elements here for a hellish conflagration.
"Hurry, won’t you?" he said. "We’re waiting."
She did hurry, and her dressing took only ten minutes; but she was very much surprised to find Eddie still waiting forher, and still more surprised when he took her by the arm and for the first time used her name.
"Angelica!" he said in a low voice.
"What?" she asked, startled.
"Don’t!"
"Don’t what, Mr. Eddie?"
He didn’t answer, but he squeezed her arm, and when she looked up into his face it was desperately anxious.
"All right!" she said, half understanding what he wished her to understand.
For she, too, was vaguely aware of danger; she, too, could dimly perceive whither her eager feet were leading her; but she ran to it, flew to it. She, too, had an odd and terrible feeling of approaching ill fortune. She felt disaster drawing near, yet was not able even to wish to avoid it.
She sat down at the table, next to Vincent; and she hadn’t been there for fifteen minutes before she was lost. His bold eyes rested on her face, and all her own boldness turned to surrender, her own fierceness melted. She couldn’t turn away from him; she sat very still, enthralled, listening to his voice, watching his mobile face, the fine, straight brows moving so expressively, his supple hands.
He was still in his rough sport clothes, and his bright brown hair was ruffled. He had an air about him of fine, arrogant carelessness that she could worship. He had none of Eddie’s punctilio, no sort of nice manners; he had only an indifferent ease, a most complete disregard for any other living soul.
He interrupted without compunction, he made no pretense of listening; he wanted to do all the talking, and he wanted to be listened to with respect. Well, why not? Angelica wished nothing better than to look at him and listen to him forever; she couldn’t bear the idea of having to leave his presence.
Every time she looked at him, he was looking at her—at those curious eyes not quite alike. She was bewitched; shescarcely knew what she was doing. She felt that she shouldn’t look at him so much, but that was quite beyond her control. The other people seemed dim and far away, hardly audible. He was filling up the world.
He talked of the war, and his words were glorious. Oh, he was a poet, truly! His talk of blood and battles fired her imagination. Eddie’s studious dissertations upon the rights and wrongs of the conflict seemed to her contemptible. A man mustn’t go to war because it is his duty, but because he loves it; because he is a hero, like Vincent.
"I’m going!" he said. "I long for it. It’s the completion of a man’s life. Until he has fought and killed, a man has not lived. That is his manhood, his glory. Think of all Europe rushing, blood-mad, to the Flanders battlefields, all the young and the fine and the strong herded there, to kill or to die! My God! The very pinnacle of life!"
"Or the lowest depth," said Eddie.
Vincent laughed.
"You’re no warrior, my dear boy," he said. "Well, we don’t expect it of you."
Eddie grew red.
"I dare say I’m as much of a warrior as the next man," he said. "I dare say I’d like it—this fighting and killing; but I don’t see anything fine about it. I don’t glorify it. I think it’s beastly. There are plenty of things that I’d enjoy that I don’t by any means admire. This fighting is a filthy relic of our old barbarous days."
"Then so are all our splendid passions, my boy. God keep us barbarous, and men! You chilly, cowering little pen-drivers——”
"That’s enough!" said Eddie. "You’re talking rot—pure rot!"
He was making a desperate effort to control a furious anger; for the sake of his own dignity he didn’t dare to quarrel with Vincent. He knew his brother and his unholy resources too well.
"All those chaps in offices and so on," he continued. "You don’t know anything about them. If it comes to the test——”
"Oh, you’ll all do your duty, all you little money-grubbers!" said Vincent. "I don’t doubt that; but what we need—what the world is sick for,dyingfor—is men who are inspired."
"They might be inspired by something better than drunken enthusiasm," said Eddie.
Vincent laughed again, and looked around the table at his worshipping women; but his glance rested upon Angelica. She caught her breath, stared up at him; and then, for the first time, smiled at him, a smile quite strange to her, trembling and uncertain.