Dear Eddie:I guess you think it is very queer not hearing from me for nearly a year. I did not think I would write to you, because when I thought it over I thought I better not marry you. I thought maybe we could not get on, on account of being so different, but I have changed my mind, and now I will if you still want. Let me know if you feel the same about it, and then I will write again and tell you all about how I am getting along. I have not got any letters from you, because we moved away from the old place, and I was sick a long time, and did not go up there to see if there were any letters, and then when I got well and did go the woman there was very cranky and said she gave them all back to the postman because I did not leave any address behind.Well, let me hear how you feel about this.Angelica.
Dear Eddie:
I guess you think it is very queer not hearing from me for nearly a year. I did not think I would write to you, because when I thought it over I thought I better not marry you. I thought maybe we could not get on, on account of being so different, but I have changed my mind, and now I will if you still want. Let me know if you feel the same about it, and then I will write again and tell you all about how I am getting along. I have not got any letters from you, because we moved away from the old place, and I was sick a long time, and did not go up there to see if there were any letters, and then when I got well and did go the woman there was very cranky and said she gave them all back to the postman because I did not leave any address behind.
Well, let me hear how you feel about this.
Angelica.
"Now!" she said as she dropped it into the box. "Now, if only,onlyI can have my chance!"
One might imagine that her mother would be pleased with the new and complete change that came over Angelica—her third phase, so to speak; but she wasn’t. This cool, quiet resolution seemed to Mrs. Kennedy more profoundly immoral than all her daughter’s past wildness. It would be a horrible thing, it would upset all her universe, if she were forced to see such guilt as Angelica’s going undiscovered and forgotten.
Even a sinful life would have seemed to her more hopeful, for it would have presupposed a girl driven to desperation by shame and remorse; but Angelica going off to her work in the morning, neat and alert, her old-time swagger supplanted by a steely self-assurance, was an outrage. She was actually ambitious, too; she didn’t seem to know that her life was ruined and ended. She studied in the evening, writing exercises, learning things by heart, going at the English tongue, spelling, composition, and literature as the books decreed, fiercely concentrated upon her work. She wouldn’t go to the movies, or to take a walk; she wouldn’t even talk; she just sat there, with her books.
Her efforts at self-improvement were not touching, had nothing of stumbling pathos about them. She was too clever, too careful. She learned to dress with quiet precision, without paint, without flamboyant allure. She learned to speak better, she stopped swearing, except under great provocation; she even learned to control her temper to a degree that alarmed her mother. The hot, sudden anger was there—it came as readily as ever; but it was still now. She didn’t "fly out." And all this disturbed and exasperated Mrs. Kennedy. She had no sympathy for any of it.
"Whatever in the world do you expect todo?" she asked irritably, one evening, while Angelica sat reading a paper book on etiquette.
"I’m going to be as good as the best of them," said Angelica. "Why shouldn’t I be?"
"Plenty of reason why you shouldn’t!" said her mother tartly.
But the wicked continued to prosper, until Mrs. Kennedy almost believed that God gave no justice.
One day a letter came for Angelica. This startled her mother, for they never got letters.
"It’s from him," she thought. "Bad news, maybe!"
But it was postmarked New York; it couldn’t be from Eddie.
"Now, whoever in the world can be writing to Angie!" she thought, alarmed and uneasy, as she always was over the girl’s mysterious activities. However she might regard Angelica’s moral shortcomings, she loved her only child. She knew that she deserved punishment, but she would have given her own life to save her from it.
Directly Angie came in from work she handed her the letter.
"Oh, Gawd!" she muttered. "Mommer! It’s from her—the one that’s got the baby."
Her face was ghastly. Perhaps, after all, she hadn’t escaped so easily as her mother imagined. Perhaps, after all, she longed for her child and missed it with immeasurable bitterness, like any human mother.
Angelica couldn’t bear to open the letter. For what other reason would Polly write to her but to tell her of the baby’s illness or death? She had warmly urged Angelica to come whenever she wished to see the child, but Angelica had refused. She didn’t want to see him there with Polly. She wished to—she must—look upon him as utterly lost to her. Once in a while she was overcome with longing, and would telephone simply to ask after him, and, reassured, would resolutely turn her mind away. But if he were really gone, no longer in the world!
She opened the letter at last, and the very sight of it, before her brain had grasped its meaning, comforted her—the neatly formed letters, the friendly look of the page:
Dear Angelica:Dress yourself in your very nicest and go to see Miss Sillon in her shop, "Fine Feathers," on the south side of Washington Square. I spoke to her about you, and I believe there is a very good opportunity there for you. They want a milliner—some one to take a small salary and a share in the profits. They are nice girls, and you’ll enjoy being with them. I really think it is just what you want. Anyway, try it, won’t you? And let me know if it suits.Your friend, as always,Polly Geraldine.P. S.—He is doing splendidly.
Dear Angelica:
Dress yourself in your very nicest and go to see Miss Sillon in her shop, "Fine Feathers," on the south side of Washington Square. I spoke to her about you, and I believe there is a very good opportunity there for you. They want a milliner—some one to take a small salary and a share in the profits. They are nice girls, and you’ll enjoy being with them. I really think it is just what you want. Anyway, try it, won’t you? And let me know if it suits.
Your friend, as always,Polly Geraldine.
P. S.—He is doing splendidly.
Angelica read the letter to her mother, all but the signature, and ate her supper in silence.
"Sit down, mommer," she said. "I’ll wash the dishes. I guess I’ll lay off for a while to-morrow and go and see about this thing."
It was Angelica at her newest and best who walked across Fourth Street the next morning. She had for a long time sternly withheld most of her wages from her mother, who needed the money for vital necessities, and had bought herself a decent outfit, to go with her new soul. She was plainly dressed, but no longer with a trace of shabbiness. She wore a neat dark suit, a black sailor hat, good boots and gloves. Her swagger was gone, and so was her provocative and insolent glance; she had a sobriety and decorum quite beyond reproach.
She saw the shop, and entered. It was a small private house, dilapidated and moribund, fitted out with purple and white striped curtains at the windows and a great sign-board over the front gate—a wooden peacock, brilliantly colored, with ‘Fine Feathers’ painted in bold black letters across it. The shop was what had once been a front parlour—a long, narrow room with a marble mantelpiece and an ornate ceiling. It was furnished now, with great audacity, solely by four kitchen chairs painted white, with round purple cushions on them, a table on which were strewn original designs for wraps and dresses done in crayons, and a fine pair of black velvet portières concealing the back room. Four long mirrors were set into the walls.
The owners were both poor and clever. They knew well that this childish brightness would be thought artistic, original, and distinguished by the greatly desirable bourgeoisie, and that the more sophisticated would be amused. As for Angelica, she was impressed.
A tall young girl with fluffy red hair hastened in from the back room.
"Yes?" she asked, with non-committal amiability.
"Mrs. Geraldine sent me," said Angelica, "I’d like to see Miss Sillon, please."
"Oh! I’m Miss Devery, but I’ll do. I’m the partner. I’ve heard about you. Millinery, isn’t it?"
"Yes," said Angelica, confidently.
"Sit down, won’t you? We can talk it over a bit. Miss Sillon will be in presently. You see, Miss Sillon and I just started this place six months ago, but we’re doing so well that we feel justified in branching out a bit. So we thought of a millinery department. We were speaking of it to Mrs. Geraldine—she’s one of our oldest customers, you know—and she said she knew just the person. She said you were a wonder at hats."
Angelica smiled a little. She was surprised and delighted by this pretty red-haired girl with her naïve air and babyish voice—a lady, if ever there was one, and yet so simple and friendly with Angelica. She wanted greatly to work in that purple and white room with her.
"Now," said Miss Devery, "I’ll tell you what we can do. We’d let you have both the windows, to display your hats; and that’s worth something. Then we’d give you ten per cent of all the sales you make, and provide the materials as well. We have lots of scraps and odds and ends; so you’d be under no expense at all."
"But I’d have to have a salary to start with."
Miss Devery bit her lip doubtfully.
"Well, you see," she said candidly, "we’re rather short of cash. We’ve made quite a bit, but after we’ve paid our living expenses we turn it all back into the business. We’re growing fast, and if you come in with us now you’ll really have a splendid chance. We have a perfectly fine connection, you know—some of the very nicest people."
"But——” began Angelica, and stopped short. "I’d like to think it over," she said. "How long can I take?"
"Why, a week, if you wish; but I hope you’ll come. You’re just the sort of girl we want. We don’t commercialize the thing. We want to keep itnice."
Angelica smiled again with a dreary sort of triumph. So she had fooled one of the nice ones, anyway!
"Of course," went on Miss Devery, "if you’d rather, you could provide a little capital and your own materials, and we’d let you right in with us. Miss Sillon would show you the books and so on."
Angelica had risen. She could see her own reflection in one of the long mirrors, and she could not help feeling that she really looked more of a lady than the girl who actually was one.
"I’ll let you know," she said, carefully. She was fearfully tempted to try, just for once, to talk as they did. "It’s awfully attractive," she said. "I’d love to go into it with you; but I want to talk it over with mother."
It succeeded! Miss Devery noticed nothing at all strange in her tone or her words.
"Telephone just as soon as you decide, won’t you?" she said.
Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t in the flat when Angelica got home. She was up-stairs, cleaning a vacant flat, and thither Angelica followed her. She was scrubbing the pan of a gas-stove—a vilely dirty thing, heavily incrusted with grease and slime, in which were embedded dead matches and bits of food.
"Mother!"
The unaccustomed word surprised her. She turned to look into Angelica’s face smiling down at her.
"Mother, will you support me for a while?"
"Why, child, of course! I’ll do whatever I can for you. Have you lost your job?"
"No, but I’m going to try something new. It may not bring in anything much for quite a while, but I think after a time it’ll be a regular gold-mine. And it’s verynice. I know Eddie would like me to do it!"
She hadn’t allowed herself to think about Eddie’s reply. She insisted to herself that it would be, must be, favourable; but when the letter came, when at last she held it in her hand, she was panic-stricken. She reverted.
"Oh, Gawd!" she murmured. "What if he’s changed his mind?"
This is what she read:
MY dearest Girl:You can’t possibly imagine how I felt when I got your letter. I was still in the hospital where I had been for five months with a bad foot, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t care much whether I ever went out of it again. I can’t explain it very well, but there is something about the war and this filthy, brutal way of living that makes it unbearable to lose any pleasures or joys out of life. You get to believe that nothing matters except being happy. And youaremy happiness. When I thought I’d lost you, I didn’t care about going on. Of course, there’s your country, and your family, and your ambition, and so on, but somehow they don’t seemreal. I thought of you all the time. I wrote and wrote, and didn’t get any answer. Then I asked Vincent to look you up, but he wrote that you’d moved and he couldn’t trace you. I don’t quite see how I could have gone back on the firing-line again if you hadn’t written. It’s bad enough anyway, but it wouldn’t be bearable without some sort of guiding star. Don’t think I’m getting sentimental, Angelica, but you are that, you know, to me.I hope this will soon be over. It’s worse than I thought it would be; but I’m glad I came. I wouldn’t like other fellows to be doing this job for me. But when I get home! It seems like a vision of Paradise—you waiting for me, and my home, and good food and a nice, clean bed, and hot water!I don’t want you to think that I’ve deteriorated, that I’m always thinking of physical things, because I’m not. When you’re always uncomfortable, you can’t help thinking too much about comfort; butI think much more about other things. I think a lot about what is the best way to use a life. I can see lots of things I’ve done wrong. I look forward awfully to making a fresh start. It will all seem so new, like being born again. Everything will seem remarkable and interesting—all sort of things I didn’t use to notice.And to think that there was a time when I used to think quite calmly about being married to you! Of course, my dear, I always did look forward to it as the greatest possible happiness, but I more or less took it for granted—the sort of happiness a fellow always expects. But now, Angelica, it seems as wonderful and beautiful and far off as heaven. I can’t even really believe that I’ll see you ever again. I’ve got so used to being a lousy, muddy, hunted animal that I can’t believe it will ever end. I don’t even long for the end; it seems so impossible. I have a damnable conviction—an obsession, I suppose they’d call it—that every one gets killed in the war. So many of the chaps I knew have gone, often killed beside me—and in the hospital, dying so sickeningly! I can’t help imagining that every one in the world is dying. So that the idea of coming home and marrying you is—I can’t describe what it is. Really and literally a dream of heaven.Angelica, darling, don’t disappoint me again! I couldn’t bear it. Write to me faithfully, as often as possible—even every day. It wouldn’t be much to do, for you who are at home and safe and comfortable.With all my heart,Eddie.
MY dearest Girl:
You can’t possibly imagine how I felt when I got your letter. I was still in the hospital where I had been for five months with a bad foot, and, to tell you the truth, I didn’t care much whether I ever went out of it again. I can’t explain it very well, but there is something about the war and this filthy, brutal way of living that makes it unbearable to lose any pleasures or joys out of life. You get to believe that nothing matters except being happy. And youaremy happiness. When I thought I’d lost you, I didn’t care about going on. Of course, there’s your country, and your family, and your ambition, and so on, but somehow they don’t seemreal. I thought of you all the time. I wrote and wrote, and didn’t get any answer. Then I asked Vincent to look you up, but he wrote that you’d moved and he couldn’t trace you. I don’t quite see how I could have gone back on the firing-line again if you hadn’t written. It’s bad enough anyway, but it wouldn’t be bearable without some sort of guiding star. Don’t think I’m getting sentimental, Angelica, but you are that, you know, to me.
I hope this will soon be over. It’s worse than I thought it would be; but I’m glad I came. I wouldn’t like other fellows to be doing this job for me. But when I get home! It seems like a vision of Paradise—you waiting for me, and my home, and good food and a nice, clean bed, and hot water!
I don’t want you to think that I’ve deteriorated, that I’m always thinking of physical things, because I’m not. When you’re always uncomfortable, you can’t help thinking too much about comfort; butI think much more about other things. I think a lot about what is the best way to use a life. I can see lots of things I’ve done wrong. I look forward awfully to making a fresh start. It will all seem so new, like being born again. Everything will seem remarkable and interesting—all sort of things I didn’t use to notice.
And to think that there was a time when I used to think quite calmly about being married to you! Of course, my dear, I always did look forward to it as the greatest possible happiness, but I more or less took it for granted—the sort of happiness a fellow always expects. But now, Angelica, it seems as wonderful and beautiful and far off as heaven. I can’t even really believe that I’ll see you ever again. I’ve got so used to being a lousy, muddy, hunted animal that I can’t believe it will ever end. I don’t even long for the end; it seems so impossible. I have a damnable conviction—an obsession, I suppose they’d call it—that every one gets killed in the war. So many of the chaps I knew have gone, often killed beside me—and in the hospital, dying so sickeningly! I can’t help imagining that every one in the world is dying. So that the idea of coming home and marrying you is—I can’t describe what it is. Really and literally a dream of heaven.
Angelica, darling, don’t disappoint me again! I couldn’t bear it. Write to me faithfully, as often as possible—even every day. It wouldn’t be much to do, for you who are at home and safe and comfortable.
With all my heart,Eddie.
Now this letter might have disappointed another girl, but not Angelica. She didn’t at all mind its being so little lover-like, so much concerned with Eddie and his feelings, and so little concerned with herself. She was, in fact, very proud that such a learned and serious young man as Eddie should write to her at all. She was overjoyed, exultant, to see that he still wanted her—with a sort of humility in her joy quite unusual in her.
"I won’t disappoint him ever again!" she cried. "I’ll do my very best. I’ll justlivefor him! And if it’s like a dream of heaven to him," she reflected, "so it is to me. I’ve suffered, too. It couldn’t have been much worse for any one, anywhere. Oh, won’t it be heaven to besafe—to be his wife, and settled there at Buena Vista, and rich, and every one looking up to me? A motor-car of my own, and lovelyclothes, and a beautiful room! I’ll have Miss Sillon and Miss Devery out to see me."
She looked at herself in the mirror.
"I’m getting to look refined," she thought; "not factory any more. When I can have real grand clothes, I’ll bebeautiful! Vincent said I lost heaven when I stopped loving him," she reflected. "Well, I’ll get it back again, with Eddie!"
In spite of his entreaty, she waited for more than a week before she replied to Eddie’s letter, for she wished to have something to tell him. She spent two entire evenings over her letter, and when it was done there was hardly a mistake in it, in spelling, in grammar, or in sentiment; for Angelica was fast learning the correct way to feel.
Dear Eddie:Your letter was wonderful, and I could not write one nearly so good, or so interesting. I understand how you feel, but I do not know how to say anything. I feel like that, too, afraid to expect any happiness, but I want to fight for it. I want to tell God that I will not be cheated, and that it has all got to come out right.I go to the movies with mother whenever there is a war picture, to try and get some idea what it is like over there, but I guess no one can. That is another thing I don’t dare to think about—all that you must be suffering. But, Eddie dear, I will try my best to make it up to you when you get back.I don’t go to the factory any more, but I have a very nice place as a milliner with two girls who have a shop in Washington Square. I am doing nicely. I design the hats myself and make them, and Miss Sillon says it will not be long before my hats are recognized everywhere in New York. "Angélique," I call myself on the label I sew in the hats. She says they are almost too daring, but very original.
Dear Eddie:
Your letter was wonderful, and I could not write one nearly so good, or so interesting. I understand how you feel, but I do not know how to say anything. I feel like that, too, afraid to expect any happiness, but I want to fight for it. I want to tell God that I will not be cheated, and that it has all got to come out right.
I go to the movies with mother whenever there is a war picture, to try and get some idea what it is like over there, but I guess no one can. That is another thing I don’t dare to think about—all that you must be suffering. But, Eddie dear, I will try my best to make it up to you when you get back.
I don’t go to the factory any more, but I have a very nice place as a milliner with two girls who have a shop in Washington Square. I am doing nicely. I design the hats myself and make them, and Miss Sillon says it will not be long before my hats are recognized everywhere in New York. "Angélique," I call myself on the label I sew in the hats. She says they are almost too daring, but very original.
She wanted to write more—much more—about her hats, but she knew it wouldn’t do. She was required to fill up the letter with general observations and with her interest in Eddie, and she did so.
She was pleased with this letter, and yet it troubled her. She felt both mean and cruel. She knew that she had nothing to give Eddie; she knew that in every way she was defrauding and injuring him. To stifle her distress she had only her profound faith in herself, her conviction that she had obliterated the past and could and would make a glorious future. She couldn’t help contrasting her laboured and prudent letter with his careless candour. Evidently he didn’t care what he said. He just wrote her what came to his mind. He felt so sure of her!
"I haven’t really done him any harm," she protested, lying awake in the dark. "If he never knows, it’s just exactly the same—for him—as if it had never happened."
And still she knew that she was forcing him to play the part he would have hated and rejected beyond any other—that of the poor dishonoured fool. She didn’t even love him.
"I’ll learn to love him!" she cried. "I love him a little bit already."
And still she knew how much she disliked even the memory of his kisses.
Sometimes a wave of sheer terror overcame her.
"No one’s ever done such a thing," she thought, remembering all the stories she had read. "It can’t be done. Somehow—some day—it would be found out. It always is!"
But this she could combat.
"I don’t care if it’s never been done!" she would cry. "I’lldo it! I’ll marry Eddie, and he’llnever know, and it’ll all end happily. I’ll make it! Iwon’tbe found out!"
Angelica’s new business suited her exactly. It absorbed her mind, and it trained and shaped and educated her to an extraordinary degree. Her bravado vanished when she no longer felt herself inferior; now that she was openly acknowledged to be a clever and rising young woman, she had no need of her old-time self-assertion. She throve in an atmosphere of praise. Miss Sillon and Miss Devery loved her and her brilliant hats. They lauded her, petted her, and took all possible means to advance her interests, because they liked her, and because her interests and theirs were inseperable.
Miss Devery, who was the artistic member of the firm, went outside in a purple linen smock one morning and put a crêpe paper hat on the peacock. As often as the rain soaked it, or the wind tore or carried it off, she fastened on another. It was very odd and whimsical, and it suited the unique character of their shop.
This unique character was their chief stock in trade, and they both knew very well how to use it to advantage.
"The awfully chic, exclusive thing has really been overdone," Miss Sillon told Angelica. "All the people with money are crazy now for anything they imagine is artistic and quaint. They think it shows that they’re artistic to like such things; and just now, of course, it’sthething to be artistic."
She was a complete contrast to the dimpled, red-haired Miss Devery, with her air of polite amusement. She wasa short, energetic, very dark little body, lively, talkative, and witty.
"I’m a perfect dressmaker," she told Angelica. "God made me so. Just to look at me makes people turn red with shame and make up their minds on the spot to have something nice and new and trim."
Angelica acknowledged that never had she seen a better-dressed woman, or a neater one.
"I dye my hair and lace as tight as I dare," Miss Sillon continued, "but I do it with pride and vainglory. I boldly call it a duty. I tell these silly women it’s the most important thing in life to keep oneself looking one’s best, and they always agree. Not one of them ever had the sense to inquire what it’s done forme. Here I’ve been looking my best for forty years, and look at me, still digging away for a living, while these wretched, slovenly little chits with holes in their stockings and all their buttons off are settled down with fine husbands and babies and everything else they want! Look at Devery—sloppy kid! She’s never without a man hanging about after her."
Devery smiled.
"They’re mostly bad ones," she said. "Dishonourable intentions, sometimes, but generallynointentions at all. I don’t get no ‘forrader,’ Sillon. But this Angélique—she’s the one! She’s just made for a millionaire’s bride."
Miss Sillon turned to stare at her.
"Devery," she said suddenly, "she’s not quaint enough. Get to work and make her quaint!"
"That I can’t do. She’s not built along quaint lines; but I’ll make her bizarre."
So Miss Devery set to work. She designed and made for Angelica an extraordinary dress of dark red jersey cloth that fitted her like a snake-skin, as she said. It was entirely plain and severe, with long sleeves and a skirt reaching to her ankles. It made her look lean, tall, and savage. Then she parted her hair in the middle and knotted it low on herneck, hung big gold earrings in her ears, and around her neck a string of cloudy pale-green beads reaching to her knees. When all this was done, she called in Miss Sillon.
"Now!" she said. "What, eh?"
"Barbaric," said Miss Sillon; "but Lord, how attractive the creature is! Seriously, though," she added, "do you think she fits in with our nice little quaintness? She’s positively terrible!"
"A new thing in milliners," said Miss Devery. "Sillon, I’m proud! She’s my masterpiece."
"Very well," said Miss Sillon. "We won’t touch her. She shall stand as you have made her; but, Angélique, my child,howyou will have to design to keep up with your appearance!"
"I can do it," said Angelica firmly. "I’ve got some fine ideas."
For what had she been doing of late but visiting the Public Library and studying the lives of all of Eddie’s magnificent women whom she could remember, and, from their portraits, gleaning the suggestions upon which she later worked?
She was supremely happy at her work. To sit sewing with Miss Devery and Miss Sillon all the morning, listening to their bright and jolly talk, and entering into it, was unfailing delight. They quite frankly admired her brains and her beauty, and treated her exactly as one of themselves. If they saw any difference, anything inferior in her, they concealed it.
Angelica felt that they didn’t know, that they imagined her to be of the same class as themselves. It didn’t occur to her that they didn’t care; that so long as she behaved herself with amiability and good sense, and was of value in their business, they were in no way concerned about her grammar or her table manners. She imagined that they were always looking for signs of good breeding, signs of bad breeding, little tricks she hadn’t learned yet. She usedto read all that sort of thing in the women’s magazines, and she often discovered, to her deep distress, that she had been doing horrible things, even in the presence of Devery and Sillon. She had, for instance, put on her gloves in the street; she had said "phone" and "auto," and still they remained friendly.
They were a type entirely novel to her; she had not even read of their sort. Well-born and well-educated English-women, they had knocked about the world to an amazing extent. There was very little they didn’t know, although there was a very great deal they chose to ignore in life.
Miss Devery was the youngest in a family of nine—children of a poor clergyman in the south of England. She had begun her career as a governess in a French family. Leaving that, she had drifted about in Paris, studied drawing a little, and given English lessons, always charming and gay and perfectly at home. Then she had gone to a married brother in Australia, and after a few years of that, helping his wife with her babies on their sheep-farm, she had followed the commands of her own sweet and careless heart and gone to America. And here she was, at twenty-six, quite alone in the world, half-forgotten by her people at home, who were rather fond of her, but couldn’t keep her in mind.
Miss Sillon was different. Her father was a doctor who had ruined himself with drink, and she had had monstrous responsibilities and cares upon her shoulders ever since childhood, when her mother had died. God knows what she hadn’t tried, to earn her honest bread. She had been a children’s nurse in London, stewardess on a South American ship, librarian in a Canadian city; she had worked in a newspaper office and in a bakery, she had taught music in a suburban school. She was also entirely alone on earth, but it didn’t trouble her.
Both she and Miss Devery would have been able to pickup a living in any part of the civilized world. They were attached to each other, without being quite aware of their affection. They had met one day at a cheap lunch-room, and had rushed together like two morsels of quicksilver. Why not? They were more than harmonious; they were in essence identical.
How bitterly Mrs. Kennedy missed her wayward and troublesome child, who had ordered her about and sworn at her, and so vehemently kissed her! This neat young woman, busy at her books in the kitchen every evening, always up and dressed at the right time in the morning, was a stranger, was in no way hers. She would sit in the rocking-chair—after the kitchen was clean and tidy—and take up the newspaper Angelica had brought in, or perhaps a magazine, and pretend to read; but she never could. She had no habit of reading. Her great need was to talk.
She would look at her daughter, and rock and sigh. A weary world, where even rest had lost its beauty!
There were sometimes evenings when Miss Sillon and Miss Devery invited Angelica to go with them to one of the little Italian restaurants in the neighbourhood. In this case Angelica was always punctilious to telephone to her mother, and she was never out later than ten, so that it didn’t occur to her to pity the wretched woman.
She didn’t imagine how terrible those evenings were to Mrs. Kennedy, how she groped about the kitchen, blinded by tears, setting out her tiny meal, finding relief in loud sobs like hiccoughs. She saw that something was the matter with her mother, but she fancied that it was age, ill health, poverty, years of hardship.
It was none of these pains which so grievously afflictedMrs. Kennedy. It was because she was being left behind. She who had all her life feared and foreseen that she would be obliged to die and leave her beloved child, now saw this child—as she had known her—quite dead and gone, and herself left desolate.
There was one particular day—a sort of seventh wave in her steady tide of success—that Angelica always remembered. To begin with, when she reached Fine Feathers, there was what Miss Devery had promised her should be there—‘ANGÉLIQUE,’ in purple letters across the two front windows. She stopped in the street to admire it, in delight, almost in awe. So far had she come, with such celerity—she, the one-time factory worker! It hardly seemed possible!
She lingered to think of her present magic life, so full of delights and satisfactions; her days filled with this work that she loved, handling the silks, the satins, the velvets, the plumes, the rhinestones, all the rich and vivid things she so adored; the chatter of Devery and Sillon, which never failed to entertain her; the very feeling of being an independent and promising young business woman, with an account well started in a savings-bank. She thought of the charmed evenings she sometimes spent with her partners—dinner at a near-by table d’hôte, and then a seat in the second balcony, to see some play which they had selected. She thought of those long, quiet evenings of study at home, in the tidy kitchen, with the clock that ticked so loudly on the tin tubs.
She was able now to give her mother a respectable sum every week. She was, in fact, rapidly becoming the most important member of the ‘Fine Feathers’ establishment, and she had some time ago entered into a new and far more advantageous arrangement with Miss Sillon. Devery andSillon were clever and good workwomen, and they had built up a nice little business for themselves; but Angelica was something beyond that—she was the one person especially adapted at that instant of time to design hats which would superlatively please the women of that particular city.
She catered to women with money, of course. She raised her prices fantastically; and when women came in, shamefaced and apologetic because of the fierce denunciations of the war posters they saw outside, she knew just what to say.
"Yes, madam," she agreed. "A hundred and fifty dollarsisa large price for a simple little hat. Of course you can get some sort of thing for ten." She who not so long ago had been used to buy one for a dollar and trim it with all sorts of little scraps! "But it’s much more economical to getonereallygoodone, that will keep its style until it’s worn out, than half a dozen cheaper ones."
None of her customers had yet pointed out that one could buy fifteen cheaper hats for this price, which, allowing three months for the season, would require of each hat less than a week’s endurance. Every one who came to her really wished to pay too much for a hat. They all knew, of course, that the bit of fur and lace and satin she gave them didn’t cost one-fifth of the price, but they paid the surplus for the style—that Angélique style.
She went into the back parlour, where Sillon and Devery were draping a collapsible form in a green tulle.
"Hello!" they both said, cheerfully.
"Wouldn’t you know this dress was for a fat woman—or should I say, a well-rounded figure?" said Devery. "They’re all wild about green, the big ones. I wonder why?"
"Congratulate her!" said Sillon. "Angelica, tell her how nice your name looks out there. There she was, all Sunday afternoon, painting it and talking about your greatness and your coming rise to fame and fortune."
Angelica sat down.
"It’s lovely," she said. "It makes me as happy as can be to see it there, like that; but I’ve been thinking—isn’t it all queer, and silly?—about their saying my hats are so becoming, and all that. Why, they could get lots of things that really suited them better for almost nothing! Do you know what I think it is? I think it’s because when I make ’em pay so much they take more pains in putting the things on, and that’s why they look better. They dress their hair so carefully, and try to have everything—harmonious."
"That’s a trade secret," said Sillon. "It isn’t at all the thing to say. Our line is, ‘Of course, if you want anything really good, you’ve got to pay for it.’ Stick to that, Angélique!"
"Down with the rich!" said Devery. "Bleed them white and drain them dry!"
"My father was a Socialist," said Angelica, with calm assurance. She had no need to add, and they had no need to know, that he had been a Socialist barber; nor was she yet advanced enough not to avoid, with ridiculous shame, her Italian blood. "Mother says he was specially furious at women who spent a lot on clothes."
This was another block in the edifice she was painfully erecting. She was creating for herself a past and an environment which, without being extravagantly false, should yet be in keeping with what she intended to become—a foundation for her coming greatness. She often mentioned, casually, her father and her mother and her Scotch grandparents. She admitted that she and her mother were poor, but she suggested an admirable and distinguished poorness. She had actually got so far as to indicate, with rare delicacy, that her being in business was a distress to her old-fashioned mother.
All through that day there was the same elating and intoxicating success. All the customers who came in were satisfied, praised her, and paid her money. Nothing went wrong.
At lunch-time Sillon made cocoa on the gas-stove in the pantry off the back parlour, and Devery cooked spaghetti. And for the first time they took her up into the little bedroom they had on the floor above, and showed her some of their belongings—photographs of uncles, brothers, cousins. Sillon had a stuffed cobra and a thrilling tale about it, and Devery some studies she had made in her Paris days.
Then they all went into the street, to look again at the "ANGÉLIQUE"; lingering in the October brightness, the wind blowing their skirts, their hair, making them frolicsome and gay.
"Ihatework!" said Devery, stretching up her thin arms, while her purple smock whipped about her lean, straight torso in classic folds.
"What would you like to do?" asked Angelica.
"Just live—like cats, without any aim. I’d never accomplish anything. Just as soon as you do accomplish anything, you see that it wasn’t worth doing. Whatis?"
"Devery, you’re morbid and hypocritical," said Sillon. "You don’t mean that. Besides, cats don’t feel like that, my child. When they’ve caught a mouse, they feel that it was very much worth doing."
"Oh, well, so do I! I think it’s worth while to catch my meals, somehow. Angelica, what an industrious soul you are! I don’t believe you’d enjoy being idle."
"I’d be miserable if I didn’t think I was getting forward."
"How did we get such a paragon?" asked Sillon.
"Suppose we go out to dinner?" suggested Devery suddenly. "Early, and then to the movies?"
"I’ll telephone to mother first," said Angelica, "to see if it will be all right if I don’t go home."
A punctilious and Eddie-like form, and nothing more.
"Mother!" she began. "I won’t be home for dinner."
"Angie!" came the very tremulous voice of Mrs. Kennedy, always distressed at the telephone. "Better come homeas early as you can. There’s a lady here to see you—Mrs. Russell."
Angelica was shocked, terrified.
"Something’s happened to Eddie!" she thought at first. And then came an idea that turned her cold with fright. "They’ve found out! She knows! She’s come to tell me what she thinks of me!"
Nothing of the sort, however. Mrs. Russell sat there, waiting, all smiles and affability, for the sole purpose of inviting Angelica to visit Buena Vista. She had had a letter from Eddie, in which he had rather severely requested her to show all due civility to his future wife.
"He really means it!" she had said to her husband. "I hoped he’d forgotten. I really thought the thing had blown over. Beastly, isn’t it? Imagine her here!"
"It doesn’t frighten me," Dr. Russell said jauntily.
"Satyr!" she said. "You can’t be trusted out of my sight!"
And both he and she were pleased and proud of his senile impudence.
Mrs. Russell had been chatting with—or perhaps to—Mrs. Kennedy for a long time, about God knows what—the war, for one thing. Their views were very dissimilar; Mrs. Kennedy hadn’t a trace of patriotism. She maintained that it was a bad thing to kill so many young men, no matter why it was done. She wasn’t interested in German perfidy. She only hoped it would soon be over, no matter how. It wouldn’t make any difference who won, she said.
"Would you like to live under German rule," demanded Mrs. Russell, "and have some brutal Prussian officer swearing at you and ill-treating you?"
"I don’t believe officers would ever bother about me,American or German," she replied. "What would they be doing, hanging around where I was working? No, ma’am. Poor people haven’t got anything to lose. They don’t feel the same about their country; I dare say because they don’t own any of it. Of course, if those Germans were to come here, they’d very likely take away your house and your jewelry and so on; but they wouldn’t be likely to troubleme."
"But your daughter? She’s a very beautiful girl, you know. How would you like some unspeakable Hun to insult her—or worse?"
Mrs. Kennedy was silent. She felt in her heart that nothing much worse than what had happened could ever happen to her child. She simply listened to her visitor’s accounts of outrages with decent, womanly interest.
She was included in Mrs. Russell’s invitation to Angelica to spend a week-end at Buena Vista, but she refused, as she was obviously intended to do.
"Thank you kindly," she said. "I haven’t the time."
"Why don’t you go, mother?" Angelica asked her, out of curiosity, when they were alone again. "I should think you’d like to make a visit in a fine house like that. And it’s going to be mine some day!"
"I don’t think so," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I don’t believe the Almighty would allow such a thing. No, Angelica, there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip."
"Not when your hand’s steady."
Mrs. Kennedy was a little bewildered at having her time-honoured maxim treated imaginatively.
"Even then," she said, after an instant, "some one can come behind and give you a shove; or the Almighty can interfere."
Angelica, at the zenith of her triumph, invited guest of Mrs. Russell, publicly acknowledged as Eddie’s betrothed, smiled.
"He won’t!" she said. "He’s on my side!"
So behold Angelica returning to Buena Vista in this quite new rôle, coming up from the station in a taxi, if you please. She was thinking all the way of her last visit, of that bedraggled and desperate creature that had been herself.
"I’ve won!" she said. "I’ve won! All alone—everything against me—and still I’ve won!"
She stepped out, and paid the driver with perfect assurance. She wasn’t really poor now, and she could, with perfect propriety, afford a cab now and then.
She knew that she was late, but she was conscious of blamelessness. There had been a difficult customer who couldn’t be left, and who, properly handled, had bought two outrageously dear hats. She was, in fact, very proud of being a business woman who couldn’t help being late.
She had expected that the family would be at dinner, for she couldn’t quite believe that they would wait for her. She didn’t expect anything more than decent tolerance; she didn’t in the least resent the trace of condescension in Mrs. Russell’s manner. She couldn’t fool Mrs. Russell with conservative Scottish grandparents or an old-fashioned mother. Mrs. Russellknew.
There was no light in the dining-room, so she went up on to the piazza, and looked into the library window, for there was a blaze of light coming from there.
And there they all were, sitting about a table, playing cards. Unconsciously, involuntarily, her eyes sought and rested upon Vincent first of all. He sat in profile toward her, just the same as ever, handsome, bold, with his look of vigour and zest. All that had happened was nothing but anepisode to him; hadn’t even ruffled him. She couldn’t bear to look at him any more.
Opposite him sat the doctor; facing the window, Mrs. Russell, and, with his back to Angelica, a strange young man in a tweed suit very much too big for him. Wasn’t it a suit Vincent used to wear?
"Now who’s that?" she wondered.
Suddenly Mrs. Russell flung down her cards with a slap.
"Oh, you chump!" she cried. "It’s no use. You’ll never be any good!"
An aggrieved voice, which Angelica recognized at once, answered:
"Well, what of it? I never said I wanted to play, did I? You said I had to learn, to make it four. Well, then, I can’t, and that’s all there is to it!"
"Courtland in there, playing cards with them!" thought Angelica. "What would Eddie say?"
The doctor got up and stretched.
"What of dinner, Marian?" he asked his wife airily.
"I’ll see," she said, and went briskly out of the room.
Angelica rang the bell, and Courtland came to admit her.
"Hello!" he said. "What doyouwant?"
She repressed the too ready answer that was at the tip of her tongue, and said, with dignity:
"Mrs. Russell expects me."
"Well, she’s in the kitchen," said Courtland, in conversational tone. "She helps Annie now while——”
"All right!" said Angelica. "I’ll go down."
She had reached the dark passage at the foot of the kitchen stairs when a hand on her shoulder arrested her.
"Angelica!" said Vincent’s voice. "What are you doing here? Go away! I’ll send you money—I swear I will! Only go away! You won’t get anything out of me by hounding me this way."
"I didn’t come here to get money out of you. I don’t expect anything more from you."
He couldn’t see her face, but her voice was steady and quiet. He grew yet more alarmed.
"What did you come here for? What do you want?"
"It’s none of your business," she said slowly.
She was struggling with a terrible fury against him—this careless young man who was living so well without her. She longed to let herself go, to turn on him with a torrent of abuse, to swear at him, shriek at him; but she must not. She dared not antagonize him. He, too, had a temper, and, if he lost it, God only knew what irreparable harm he might do her. She had now, and always, either to propitiate him or to frighten him; by some means to make him hold his tongue.
Vincent’s arm tightened on Angelica’s shoulder.
"You’ve got to tell me!" he said. "I’ll have no more of your damned nonsense. What do you want here?"
She made no answer, but stood motionless in the dark.
"Tell me!" he said fiercely. "What do you expect to get here?"
Still she was silent.
"You answer me," he hissed, "or I’ll——”
She laughed.
"You’llwhat?" she asked contemptuously. "Throw me down the stairs? Choke me?"
He released her.
"You damnable woman!" he said. "You’ve some outrageous scheme, I know; but you’ll get nothing out of me. Nothing! Not a penny!"
"I don’t suppose I will!" she said, half to herself, as she turned away and went on into the kitchen.
There, on a high stool before the table, sat Mrs. Russell, wearing an apron and, unaccountably, a little housemaid’s cap. Her great feet were twisted about the stool, and she was bent forward intently over the salad she was mixing. Annie was at the stove, stirring, tasting, lifting covers,peering into the oven, and listening, with an air of complete incredulity, to her mistress.
"Mydear!" cried Mrs. Russell, catching sight of Angelica. "How nice!"
She had, to tell the truth, quite forgotten that she had invited her.
"I’m sorry I’m late——” Angelica began.
"It doesn’t matter. We’re late too," she answered. "I help Annie every evening now. We haven’t any cook—only Annie and that nice little Molly, and a woman who comes in by the day. War economy! But I really rather like it, and Annie has taught me so much!"
She looked at Annie with an ingratiating smile—of which Annie took not the slightest notice.
"After all," she went on, "I suppose we really ought to know how to cook—all of us women, shouldn’t we? The men do their part, so nobly, going off to fight and——” She stopped, suddenly bored with her subject. "So you see!" she said inanely, smiling again.
Angelica looked about the enormous kitchen, so spotless, so brightly lit, so marvelously equipped.
"It’s a nice place to work in," she said. "See here! Won’t you teach me? I’d like to learn."
Annie stood looking at her with a highly displeased expression. She didn’t understand this return of Angelica, and Mrs. Russell’s great friendliness toward her; and no one explained anything.
"Of course we will, my dear! You ought to learn! Let’s see. What can she do, Annie?"
"Nothing, ma’am," said Annie firmly. "It’s all done and ready to serve."
"Nonsense! It isn’t. I know it isn’t. Let’s see. My dear, I’ll show you how to do a spinachpurée. It’s delicious, and frightfully good for the blood. We’re all eating spinach almost every night now. Watch me!"
Angelica was hungry and weary, but she profited to thefull by this novel lesson in her great course of preparation. She watched, she questioned, she tried her own hand at it.
Mrs. Russell praised her.
"You’re very quick!" she said. "Now we’ll help Annie to put the dishes on the dumb-waiter; then we’ve just half a minute to wash and brush up."
She led the way to her room, lively, cheerful, almost affectionate; and although Angelica knew how very uncertain and shallow this good-humour was, nevertheless it helped her.
She had decided upon a step which dismayed her. She had decided to talk to Vincent—to reason with him, to threaten or to cajole him. He was the one danger, the one person she had to dread. No matter how carefully she went, he could in an instant destroy all that she had built up; he could really ruin her. She had been trying for a long time to devise some method for ensuring his silence, for gaining a little security. She had begun and torn up more than one letter. Now that they were once more under the same roof, she felt it a unique opportunity which she was too brave to shirk. She couldn’t go on, never feeling sure, never knowing what he would do, what he had done.
She was startled to find Courtland sitting at the dinner-table; but as the others took him as a matter of course, she showed no surprise, although she was not at all pleased to be seated next to him.
The doctor had an evening paper.
"The news," he said, "isn’t good—not in Eddie’s section. He’s going to be just in the center of the line to oppose the next big drive."
"Fiddlesticks!" said his wife. "You don’t know where he is, or where the next drive is coming. Only thestuffyou read in the papers!"
"I use my brains, and I put two and two together——”
"He doesn’t know himself where he is," said Vincent. "Most of the chaps don’t. They’re like driven sheep."
"Of course they know!" said Mrs. Russell. "You don’t suppose they’re blindfolded, do you?"
A loud and violent discussion followed, all three of them talking at once, under cover of which Angelica addressed her neighbour.
"What are you doing up here?"
"Just what you’re doin’," replied Courtland. "Eatin’ my dinner."
She had no opportunity to say more to him, for Mrs. Russell peremptorily ordered him to fetch the car, and, after gulping down his pudding in sullen resentment, he left the table.
"I’ve got to take Vincent to the Country Club," she said. "He’s going to sing ‘Sambre et Meuse’ at an entertainment there. My dear, you should hear him. Of course we’re all supposed to be strictly neutral, and all that, but up there, at the club, the pretense is frightfully thin. All really decent people, you know. We have a dear little wounded Belgian officer who’s going to speak; but I’ve heard him simply hundreds of times, so I won’t wait. I’ll be home in half an hour. Make yourself at home, won’t you?"
Angelica reassured her light-hearted hostess that she would be altogether happy and comfortable until her return, and, after the motor-car had gone, wandered back into the library, looking for a book.
But she couldn’t read. She began to contemplate her coming interview with Vincent.
She could not trust him for an instant. She never knew when he would be moved to tell the entire story to Eddie, or to his mother, or to any one else. If he were attacked by one of his fits of remorse, he would be almost certain to do so. She held him only by a threat made in a mood of supreme passion, which she could never recapture.
Despair crept over her. This step along her stony path seemed too difficult. She had no violent emotion to carry her forward now; no impetus remained from her formerterrific onslaughts. She had simply to state a request—a request of the utmost importance to all her future life; and she felt quite sure it would be refused.
Her very unpleasant reverie was broken into by the entrance of the doctor. He came, he said, to apologize on behalf of Mrs. Russell for her lateness. She wouldn’t be able, after all, to escape the entertainment. He had brought Angelica a large, marvelous box of sweets, which he offered with a sort of subdued gallantry. She accepted it carelessly, and for a while listened to his talk.
He had quite changed his tune now. He couldn’t keep an irrepressible jauntiness, or a sort of airy flattery, from his conversation with so pretty a girl; but he was deferential and decorous. He and his wife were both entirely resigned to the idea of Angelica as Eddie’s wife. If Eddie had to be married, one woman was as good as another, and Angelica was perhaps a little better than a possible alternative. At least they knew her, and they had, in a way, a sort of advantage with her.
"I guess I’ll go to bed," said Angelica, who had been politely waiting for a pause in the doctor’s war talk. "I’m tired!"
She went up to the room she had occupied before, prepared to go to bed at once; but she found the room just as she had left it, all that long, long time ago—bare, dismal, the bed covered with a sheet, the rugs taken up, leaving the floor bare, the curtains gone, dark shades pulled down.
An angry flush spread over her face. At first she believed that she saw here a deliberate insult; but with reflection she became satisfied that it was not intentional. It was simply another evidence of Mrs. Russell’s magnificent indifference. She sat down in that same little chair by the window, where she used to sit a year ago. A year ago!
She had plenty to think of, there, until Mrs. Russell came back.
Mrs. Russell at once began to blame Annie for havingforgotten to attend to the room, but in a subdued voice, because she didn’t dare to let Annie hear this wickedly unjust censure. The maid hadn’t forgotten to get the room ready; it hadn’t been mentioned to her.
She was summoned.
"Annie," said Mrs. Russell, as if to share the blame, "here’s Miss Kennedy’s room not ready! I’ll help you with it."
All she really contributed was her curious ability to create an atmosphere of bustle and cheerful confusion—the quality which had won her so much praise for her war work. When at last the room was ready, she had become frightfully bored with it and with Angelica, and was in a reckless hurry to be off.
"Good night!" she cried cheerfully. "Ring, if we’ve forgotten anything!"
And she vanished, leaving Angelica alone with Annie, who was just shaking a final pillow into its embroidered linen case. She set it straight on the bed, and turned, grim as death.
"Well!" she said. "I never expected to seeyouback here, that I didn’t!"
She couldn’t resist saying that, although she knew it to be improper. She was too deeply affronted by the presence of this creature here, and by the necessity for waiting upon her.
Angelica wasn’t offended.
"No," she said, "I dare say you didn’t; but you’ll be still more surprised when I tell you I’m going to marry Mr. Eddie."
"Oh, are you!" said Annie politely, with raised eyebrows.
"And coming back here to live," Angelica went on, with a rather pitiful effort to win some sort of friendly interest.
"I sha’n’t be here long myself. I’m going to be married, too."
"That’s nice! When? Tell me about it."
"It wouldn’t interestyou."
"Yes, it would. Is he the same one?"
"Of course he is! I’m not one to be chopping and changing. Once I’ve given my word, I stand by it."
This, very obscurely, was intended as a reproach to Angelica, and Angelica, though not conscious of any breach of faith in such a connection, felt none the less guilty before the righteous Annie.
"I know," she said. "Well, I hope you’ll be happy, Annie."
"I dare say I will. It can’t be too soon for me. The way things have changed here—I never saw the like!"
"How have they changed?" Angelica inquired.
"There’s that Courtland sitting up-stairs at the table with them, and me expected to wait on him. Her ‘war secretary,’ she calls him. He’s no more a secretary than I am. Secretaries write your letters for you, but Courtland—hecouldn’t write letters for any one. He’signorant. And him to be set up above me, like this! And my young man’s a sergeant already. Why isn’t Courtland in the army, like his betters? Well!" she added piously. "They may be exalted above me now, but the time will come when they’ll all be cast down so far below me I can’t even so much as see them!"
And this meant Angelica, too. She was among the black sheep, the unworthy and the wicked, temporarily set above the righteous, only to be hurled down and utterly destroyed. Annie bade her good night with dour relish, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious triumph. She knew how it would be with this Angelica!
"Then whydidyou come here?" asked Vincent.
"Because your mother asked me," said Angelica.
Vincent shook his head.
"I don’t believe you," he said. "You’ve got something up your sleeve. I know you! All your moves are calculated."
He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning.
"No!" he insisted. "It’s something to do with me. One of your damned Italian schemes!"
"It’s nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all. I don’t bother myself about you any more."
He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white linen frock and her trim hair.
It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force her to abandon this calmness, this superiority.
"You’d better bother about me!" he said. "You’d better remember that it’s only through my pity for you that you’re here. With half a word I could have you turned out of the house!"
She was imperturbable.
"I don’t think so," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about this, anyway, and it might as well be now. I don’t think Eddie would believe you, if you told him."
He laughed.
"My dearest girl, there’s a living proof!"
"No," she said, looking steadily at him. "There isn’t."
"What have you done? Murdered your baby, or sold it? That would suit your thrifty soul better. You do love money, don’t you, Angelica, better than an inconvenient baby!"
"What baby?" she inquired.
"My God!" he cried, staring at her. "The impudence of the hussy! So that’s the tack! You’re going to lie out of it? Going to deny you ever had a child?"
"And how do you know I did? You never saw it, did you? How do you know it wasn’t just a trick to get money out of you?"
That astounded him.
"Do you mean you dared to try that game on me? You little gutter-bred liar!" Suddenly he began to laugh. "But you didn’t get much, did you?" he said.
Angelica smiled grimly.
"Now then!" she said. "Let’s have it out! I’ll own up that I don’t want you to tell—that—to any one, and especially to Eddie. It would give me a lot of trouble; but it wouldn’t spoil things. I have two good reasons for not worrying about being found out. In the first place, I’d deny it all, and I’m just as likely to be believed as you. You haven’t got a name for being so awfully truthful, you know. I’d say you were making it up out of spite, because I wouldn’t have you. And then I don’t think you’d run the risk of telling Eddie. You’re too fond of yourself. You know what would happen if he didn’t believe you. He’d kick you out for telling such lies about me; and if he did believe you, he’d never forgive you. You’d never get anything more from him. No; it wouldn’t suit you a bit to get Eddie down on you!"
"So you think you’re going to manage me like a marionette? You think you can make any sort of fool out of me?"
"You’ve made a fool of yourself," she said. She wanted to stop there, but she could not resist the terrible temptation to hurt, in her turn, this man who had hurt her so brutally. She didn’t care if it were vulgar or if it were imprudent; she wanted only to hurt. "You made a regular fool of yourself," she went on. "You acted like a monkey—going down on your knees to me and raving the way you did. Do you remember?"
She was smiling a little—the subtle and cruel shadow of a smile.
"Don’t you think you were a fool? So weak—first in one of your childish rages, and then crying and whining about your sins? And then beginning——”
"Never mind the means I used," he said. "I got what I wanted. I knew how to get you, and I knew how to get rid of you when I was tired of you."
No! It was too unequal a battle; she suffered too much. Every memory of that dead love was too bitter, too shameful, too full of a strange, heart-rending pain. He had all the advantage; she couldn’t wound him as he could wound her. She was mortally stricken; but she wouldn’t give up.
"You’ll pay for all this!" she said. "I’ll be the mistress here, and if you don’t act as I please, out you’ll go! I’ll see that you’re kept in order. You won’t be able to fool Eddie when I’m here!"
He cursed her savagely.
"Go on!" she said, smiling. "I like it! I’m glad I’ve made you feel like this."
Vincent pulled himself up with a strong effort.
"Well," he said, "with all your melodramatic threats of revenge, you’ll never be able to do me much harm—not ahundredth part of the harm I’ve done you. You’re ruined, no good!"
"Bah!" she cried. "You and your talk about ruining me!AmI ruined? Do Ilookany worse? Am I worse in any way at all?"
"Yes!" he said. "You are, and you know it."
He gave her one bright, fierce, scornful look, and, vaulting over the piazza railing, walked off across the lawn.
Angelica sank back in her chair.
"Oh, Lord!" she murmured, with a sob. "That was so awful! Oh, I do wish I could go home now, without having to see him again—ever!"
She got up and went irresolutely to the door. What was she to do with herself to forget, to overcome her terrible emotion? She knew she needn’t expect to see either Mrs. Russell or the doctor before lunch-time on Sunday, and it was now only ten o’clock. She didn’t know what to do; she wanted only to be active and to be for a little time alone.
She was not at all fond of walking as a pastime, but she set out resolutely enough now, along the quiet country road, trying to fix her thoughts upon Sillon and Devery and all that frank and bright existence, and to forget this world, this house with its intolerable memories, this man, whose very existence was an outrage to her.
"I shouldn’t have come!" she told herself. "I was a fool! I guess it can’t be done. I guess you can’t—get over a—thing like that."
And in spite of herself came the unwelcome and terrible thought:
"How will it be, then, when you are married to Eddie and living in that house and seeing Vincent every day?"
She tried to escape from it. She walked faster, farther; but the walk did her no good. There was nothing in the country landscape to divert her thoughts, nothing to interest her. She had the purposeful gait of the city dweller; she wanted to get somewhere, and she wanted to be startledinto attention with fascinating shop-windows, blazing signs, things and people always passing her. The quiet, all about, made the sound of her own firm step on the macadam road annoyingly loud and regular. The bright, clear sky overhead, the leaves somberly brilliant in their glorious death, filled her with impatience and loneliness. She turned back.
And the first living creature she saw on the road was Vincent, coming to meet her.
She didn’t falter. They went on, nearer and nearer to each other, steadily, rapidly; but her heart began to beat with suffocating violence.
"Maybe he’ll try to kill me," she thought. "It’s so lonely here—and he hates me so! Well, I guess that’s the best thing that could happen to me!"
But as he drew near, he held out his hand.
"Angelica!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica,whydid I speak that way to you? When I’ve been longing and longing——”
"Better stop!" she said. "I’d rather have you talk that way than any other."
He had turned and was walking by her side.
"Don’t you see?" he said. "All this bitterness and wrangling—it’s all part of the same thing—part of our love for each other. It’s the exasperation, the rage, of frustration. When we’re apart we suffer so, and in our suffering we blindly try to hurt each other."
"Do you mean to say you’re trying to pretend that weloveeach other?" she cried.
"Yes," he said. "We do. We can’t stop. We’re mates. We complete each other. We’re made for each other. Even when I’m hating you so that I could wring your neck, I know in my soul it’s only a phase of love."
"Well," she said, "it’s not, with me."
But she was trembling with a mysterious and unfathomable emotion—a wicked and irresistible feeling of kinship with this man. Not love, not tenderness, not any feelingthat she could name; only this conviction that they were bound up together, that they could never be strangers, that it was against nature that they should part.
"Marry Eddie, if you like," he went on. "I don’t care. You’re mine. You can be his wife; it won’t matter. You won’t love him. You’ll loveme. I’ll be your lover!"
Her face flamed.
"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! You’re the wickedest man that ever lived!"