Vincent:The baby has been sick all the time, and now he is worse. You got to send some money for him. You got to find it somewhere if you have not got it. He is in a terrible bad state. He only weighs six pounds, and he is going on for six weeks.Angelica.
Vincent:
The baby has been sick all the time, and now he is worse. You got to send some money for him. You got to find it somewhere if you have not got it. He is in a terrible bad state. He only weighs six pounds, and he is going on for six weeks.
Angelica.
She read it in her hoarse, thrilling voice, and it sounded so vehement, so passionate, so touching, that they both believed the letter to be so in itself.
"Now I’ll run out and mail it," she said.
Just as she was, with disheveled hair and unfastened blouse, she hurried out into the street. A man spoke to her, and she swore at him.
She was back within a few minutes, panting, but her mother was no longer in the kitchen; she had gone into the dark bedroom to quiet the poor little baby.
"I’ll hold him, Angie," she said. "You can go on ironing."
But Angelica flung herself on her knees before the child on her mother’s lap.
"Gawd! Little feller! Little love! Gawd, I wish he’d die and be out of this!"
Her mother could not rebuke her. Worn out by unending worry, by lack of sleep, by the heat, by intolerable toil for the tiny thing, she, too, could only wish it dead. It suffered so; it was so weak, so pitiful.
Night after night they had held it in their arms, close to the window, where it might get what air there was. They sang to it, rocked it, bathed its wasted little body to cool it, and all the while it wailed in its feeble voice—a weak, monotonous, heart-rending sound. They tended it by day and by night. From time to time it slept, but fitfully, the beating of its little heart shaking its emaciated body.
Angelica would sit beside it, her eyes fixed upon it, scarcely daring to breathe in her terror that it might die as it slept; for though she said and she meant that she wished it to die and be free of its misery, for her own sake she longed for it to live to the utmost limit, no matter if every day and every night were a pain to her, and her whole life went by in its service. She wanted to be holding it in her arms every waking hour; she could not sleep unless it lay within the reach of her hand. Even if she went to the corner on an errand for her mother, she was filled with panic until she had got back to it, and had seen it and touched it again.
She cared for nothing else whatever. She didn’t troubleto dress herself decently; she no longer helped her mother about the flat. Barefooted, her heavy hair pinned in a great slovenly coil, her blouse unfastened, with a ragged skirt hanging about her lean hips, she would sit for hours with the little wailing thing in her arms, pressed against her bosom, while she sang to it in her hoarse, touching voice.
She learned all she could from the doctor and the visiting nurse, and did just as they had told her. She bathed the child, fed it, tended it, in the most careful and professional way; but she would not let it alone. The doctor told her to leave it in the clothes-basket which was its bed, and the nurse assured her it would be cooler and more comfortable there; but she could not restrain herself from snatching it up. She could not help feeling that the passion of her love, the generous warmth of her body, must invigorate and vitalize it. Most cruel of all delusions—that love can save!
"He’s got to get into the country," said Angelica. "That’s all there is to it. I’d send him to one of these fresh-air places, only I know he’d die without me. He’s got to have me. No one else would know his ways."
"Well, if Mr. Geraldine sends——”
"If! If! If he don’t, I’ll—— He’s got to, that’s all. I’ll give him just one day more, and then——”
"Maybe he’s not there. Maybe he’s gone to the war."
"Not a chance! Well, if he’s not there, I’ll have to find him, and I will."
There was no letter the next day.
"You got to telephone," said Angelica to her mother, "and find out if he still lives there at Buena Vista. If he does, I’ll write once more."
Her mother came in late that afternoon.
"He’s there," she said. "Somebody—one of the servants, I dare say—came to the telephone, and I just said, ‘Is Mr. Vincent Geraldine there?’ And she said, ‘Who is it wants to speak to him?’ And I said, ‘I only wanted to know was he at home.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she says. ‘He’s at home!’"
Poor woman, lugging her eternal bucket! She looked as if she were being pressed down by giant hands which were forcing her exhausted and gallant body to its knees. There was nothing ready for her now, at the end of her bitter day—nothing in the house which she could cook for supper. Her bed was still unmade, there wasn’t even a decent place for her to sit down, for Angelica occupied the only rocking-chair, drawn up close to the window, where the baby could get what air there was.
Mrs. Kennedy looked at them, and for an instant she hated them both—Angelica who so savagely demanded this unceasing, inhuman toil of her, who took everything and gave nothing, not so much as a loving word, and this wailing, wretched little creature who didn’t even know her.
"It’stoo much!" she thought. "I’m getting old."
"Take the baby," said Angelica, "while I write another letter."
"I’ll get some supper first."
"No! I’ve got to write now."
"Then put the kettle on, so’s we can have a cup of tea before long," said her mother, and sat down with the wretched, hot little baby in her arms.
Vincent:This child is going to die. You got to help it. If you do not send me some money for him right away, I will go out after you and get it. I don’t care if you are hard up. You can get it somewhere, and you got to. This child will die if you don’t.Angelica.
Vincent:
This child is going to die. You got to help it. If you do not send me some money for him right away, I will go out after you and get it. I don’t care if you are hard up. You can get it somewhere, and you got to. This child will die if you don’t.
Angelica.
"Deary," said her mother, "I don’t think it’s any good."
"It is!" Angelica assured her. "He’s got to pay!"
An answer came quickly enough. Angelica smiled grimly as she saw the envelope. She and her mother were sitting together over their supper of tinned pork and beans, Mrs. Kennedy eating with one hand while she held the fitfully sleeping baby.
"Now we’ll see," said Angelica. "It’s always a guess with that feller. You never know what he’ll say."
Vincent wrote thus:
Angelica:I would if I could. I am not altogether a brute, a monster. I am not callous to the sufferings of my own child; but I have absolutely nothing. Ever since I had your first letter I have been thinking, trying my utmost to discover some way to help you.And the only way I can do so is to appeal to Eddie, to tell him the whole story, and to throw ourselves on his mercy. It will be a bitter blow to him, and it is a terrible penance for me to tell him; but, for your sake, I must bear the pain of telling and he of hearing. He will help us, Angelica. He is a generous and noble soul. He has never yet failed me.
Angelica:
I would if I could. I am not altogether a brute, a monster. I am not callous to the sufferings of my own child; but I have absolutely nothing. Ever since I had your first letter I have been thinking, trying my utmost to discover some way to help you.
And the only way I can do so is to appeal to Eddie, to tell him the whole story, and to throw ourselves on his mercy. It will be a bitter blow to him, and it is a terrible penance for me to tell him; but, for your sake, I must bear the pain of telling and he of hearing. He will help us, Angelica. He is a generous and noble soul. He has never yet failed me.
She remained stupefied.
"D’ye mean Eddie doesn’t know?" she cried, addressing an invisible Vincent.
It was such an amazing idea to her. She had always imagined Eddie as possessed of all the details. She had often thought of him, sitting in his trench in the moonlight, reflecting with grief and bitterness over her infamy. She had looked upon him as utterly lost, beyond her reach. She had believed, as a matter of course, that all those people knew, and despised and hated her—Polly, Mrs. Russell, all the servants.
"Why, mommer!" she cried. "He——”
"Whatever is it, child?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, surprised at the strange look on her daughter’s face. Angelica had risen slowly to her feet, and was staring at her mother. A new, a terrible hope was dawning upon her.
"Quick, mommer!" she cried suddenly. "I got to stop him!"
She rushed into the bedroom, put on a hat over her disordered hair, pinned together the open bosom of her blouse, and ran down the hall.
"Angie! Angie!" cried her mother. "Where are you going?"
The door banged. She was gone.
Mrs. Kennedy laid the baby on the bed.
"Cry, if you must," she said. "I can’t hold you any more till I’ve had a cup of tea."
Angelica had gone running up the street to a drug-store on Sixth Avenue, where she knew there was a telephone booth. It was a place of doubtful repute. There was always a group there of young Italian-Americans, flashily dressed youths of immense assurance, who were interested in every woman that entered the store; but they didn’t care for Angelica in her slatternly dress, with her fierce and haggard face.
One of them made a coarse jest about her, which she answered with an oath; then she went into the booth and pulled the door to behind her. Her heart was beating frantically; she was scarcely able to speak, her hoarse voice came out with an unfamiliar sound.
"I want to speak to Mr. Vincent!" she said.
"Who is it?"
"Call him quick! It’s a message from his brother." A silly ruse, but she was capable of nothing better. Then, after a long pause, she heard his voice.
"What is it?"
"It’s me—Angelica. Vincent, don’t youdareto write to Eddie! Don’t you dare ever to let him know!"
"My dear child, I’ve already done so. I’ve just put the letter in the box, not ten minutes ago."
"No!" she cried. "No! You must get it back!"
He laughed.
"When once a letter is posted——”
She gave a sort of wail. He was still speaking, but she didn’t care what he said. She hung up the receiver and went out into the street again. Somehow this seemed to her the very worst blow that had fallen on her, the greatest cruelty of her destiny. To have got, in the blackness of her despair, this glorious hope, and to have it destroyed almost before it had breathed!
It occurred to her that there was one more desperate chance. She went hurrying home again.
"Mommer!" she said. "Where’s your money?"
"I haven’t any money, Angie, as well you know."
"You have!"
"Only just the bit that’s to last us through the week."
"Give it to me, quick!"
She snatched up the flat little purse and rushed out again, pushing her hair up under her hat as she ran. She didn’t quite know where to look. She sought in vain along Sixth Avenue, then crossed to Fifth, and found there what she wanted—an empty taxicab, cruising along Madison Square.
"Say!" she called. "Taxi!"
The man stopped and looked at her suspiciously. A queer-looking thing she was to hail a cab!
"I want to go out to Baycliff," she said.
"You better walk, then," he said. "It’s cheaper."
"Oh, you’ll get paid, all right!" said Angelica. "The people out there’ll pay you good and give you a tip."
He shook his head.
"I guess not," he said doubtfully. "You better find some one else. I’m married. I can’t afford to take no chances. Where’d I be, if I wasn’t to get paid? A long run like that, and got to come back empty!"
Angelica recalled something which had been mentioned in one of Mrs. Russell’s long stories.
"Look here!" she said. "It’s the law. You got to take passengers."
"Not outside the city limits I haven’t," said the man.
They were both a little uneasy, as neither of them felt at all sure as to what laws there might or might not be; but Angelica in her desperation was resourceful.
"You let me in," she said, "and I’ll fix it up with the people out there. See, I’ll give you two dollars now, but I won’t tell them I gave you anything, and they’ll pay you and give you a tip, too. I’m the waitress out there, and they’ll be darned glad to see me back. You didn’t ought to worry. You’d ought to know I wouldn’t risk getting locked up just for the sake of a ride. No one would take a chance like that."
"Well, they do, all the same," said the driver. "It wouldn’t do me no good to get you locked up—not if you didn’t have no money."
"It’s only people out on a joy ride that do that," said she. "Where’d be the sense in me doing that—taking a ride all alone and then getting locked up?"
He wavered, and she hurriedly got out the two dollars—earned by long hours of scrubbing by Mrs. Kennedy—and gave them to the chauffeur. He was now practically won; her insistence overcame his weak will, her two dollars charmed him. Moreover, he liked her, she was so frank and so much in earnest.
"All right," he said. "Get in! Now mind you treat me fair—I’m taking a big risk for you!"
She was a strange enough figure, sitting there in her dusty clothes, her battered old hat, while the cab sped on, through and out of the city, along dark country roads lined with trees, past fields, past marshes, past desolate buildings, past friendly lighted houses. She was consumed with a fever of haste, burning with anxiety, looking over the driver’s shoulders at the road before her, which seemed so endless.
Now they were going up the hill to the house—the very house.
"You wait a while," she said. "The longer you wait the more you’ll get paid."
The front door stood open, with only a screen door across the aperture, and a faint light from the hall shone out on the roadway. There didn’t seem to be any one about. She stood outside, peering through the screen into the hall, listening. Not a sound!
She was obliged to ring the bell; and who should open the door but the doctor? He didn’t see who it was until he had let her in; then he was frightened at the unexpectedness of her coming, at the wild disorder of her appearance.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want to speak to Vincent," she answered. "Where is he?"
"He may be busy. I’d better——”
"Where is he?" she demanded.
When the doctor didn’t answer, she pushed by him and ran up-stairs.
Vincent was lying back in an armchair, in a bath-robe, his slender bare feet on a second chair. He was eating biscuits and cheese from a plate balanced on his knees, and reading a magazine, in the greatest possible comfort, physical and mental, when without an instant’s warning Angelica entered, wild, savage, relentless as a Fury.
He sat up, drawing the bath-robe tightly about him, and tried to frown at her; but he felt, and he appeared, at a horrible disadvantage.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
She couldn’t speak for a moment. She only looked at him with her fierce black eyes, pressing a hand against her breast, as if to stifle by force the tumult there. He was alarmed, really, although he tried so desperately to look scornful.
"Well?" he asked again. "What did you come here for?"
"That letter!" she said. "That letter to Eddie! You shan’t send it!"
"I have," he answered.
"No!" she cried. "No! You haven’t."
"I tell you I have!" he answered definitely. "I told you so over the telephone."
She stood motionless, staring past him, oblivious of his uneasy bewilderment. Thoughts were running through her brain like fire through parched grass. She remembered things she had heard—of the English suffragettes pouring acid into mail-boxes to destroy their contents. But what did they use, and where to get it?
Her vigorous and subtle brain was never quite without resource. She thought and thought, with passionate intensity, and at last, suddenly, an idea came to her. She went out of the room abruptly, so swiftly and silently that Vincent was astonished and more than ever alarmed. What in Heaven’s name was that damnable girl up to now? He knew she wouldn’t stop at anything.
He went on tiptoe to the door and peered cautiously out into the hall. She wasn’t there. Where was she? He was certain that she hadn’t given up and gone away. She was after that letter, and she wouldn’t go without it.
"She’s ill, though," he muttered. "Beastly—savage! Forcing her way in like this! My God, I’llneverbe rid of her! What the devil was the matter with me, to get mixed up with a girl like that? I wish she’d break her neck. I wish I had the courage to wring it!"
He stopped suddenly and turned pale; for there on the mantelpiece, before his eyes, was the letter. Courtland had forgotten to mail it!
He flew at it and tore it into bits, like a criminal concealing some trace of his guilt. He was actually capable of imagining that, by this, he had got the better of Angelica.
Angelica ran down-stairs to the kitchen, which was deserted, but quite brightly lighted. There, on the back of the coal range, stood what she had expected to see—the teakettle, gently steaming.
She lifted it, and went to the back door. There was a couple—probably Annie and her young man—sitting in the dark on the steps. She turned back, went through the laundry and out of a side door; down the hill, through the grass, where she wouldn’t make a sound. Once she stumbled, and a few drops of scalding water spilled upon her instep. She smothered a shriek of pain, and hurried on.
There wasn’t a soul in sight; the road was quite empty even of passing motors. She crossed to the other side, where the post-box stood, and, raising herself on tiptoe, she poured into it the entire contents of the kettle.
Then she ran into the woods behind the box, and hid the kettle in a clump of thick bushes. She was satisfied that the letter must be destroyed, together with anything else the box may have contained. Her conscience did not reproach her in the least for this possible injury to others.
"There couldn’t be any one," she reflected, "who could want any one else to get a letter as much as Idon’twant Eddie to get that one!"
She rang the front door-bell again, but this time the doctor didn’t let her in. He looked at her through the screen door and shook his head.
"No!" he said softly. "Better go away. Don’t make any disturbance, for your own sake."
"I only want to speak to Vincent," she said, plaintively.
"Better not. Go away now. Nobody’s seen you. Vincent and I are alone in the house. I’ll never mention it. I’m your friend, you know; and you must be my friend if I need one, won’t you?"
He had heard rumours, which he didn’t quite believe, that Eddie was to marry this remarkable young woman. He knew that Eddie was capable of extraordinarily quixotic deeds, and he thought it just as well to have a friend at court, in case—— Moreover, he liked Angelica, and was well disposed toward her. The rebuffs he had received, rude as they had been, hadn’t either hurt or discouraged him. The Lord who had made him so vulnerable to the charms of the fair sex had likewise provided him with a sort of protective armour.
"Of course I’ll be your friend," said Angelica; "but I just must speak to Vincent."
"I thought you had seen him," said the doctor. "You went up-stairs."
"I forgot to tell him something very important. If you don’t want me to come, just make him come down here—please!"
She knew how to be meek enough to serve her ends.
"Please!" she said again, with all her cajolery. "Please, doctor! Just get him to come down and speak to me through the door—just for an instant!"
He hesitated.
"I want to do anything I can for you——”
"And wouldn’t you please just pay that cab?" she said. "I’m afraid he’ll wait till you do."
He had a little money on hand, as it happened, and he was proud to be able to play so gallant a rôle.
"With pleasure!" he said. "But then won’t you agree to postpone your talk with Vincent?"
"I can’t!" she cried, piteously. "Oh, do please get him down!"
"Very well," he said, with a sigh and a smile.
She waited patiently, close to the screen. Everything wasquiet. The waiting chauffeur had shut off his engine and sat on the step of his cab, smoking. Far away, from some other house, came the thumping rhythm of a piano-player, and quite close to her the busy chirping of little nocturnal insects.
Before very long, Vincent’s heavy tread sounded on the stairs. His big body loomed up in the dim light of the hall, and drew near to her; but he did not unlock the door. She suppressed a smile. He was afraid of her—that big, masterful poet, forever proclaiming himself aman!
"Well!" he demanded, sternly, of the girl outside.
"I spoiled your letter," she said. "Eddie’ll never get it."
"What? I’ll write another——”
"You’d better not do that, Vincent. He wouldn’t be pleased with the way you’ve acted."
"Perhaps not; but it’s my duty——”
"Don’t any of them know? Not your mother or any one?"
"Of course not. I’m not the sort to tell such a thing. If it wasn’t my duty now, I wouldn’t."
"I thought it was to get money to help me out."
"Well—yes, partly; but he really ought to know, in case he still thinks of marrying you."
"No," she said quietly. "He mustn’t know. Look here, Vincent! I’ve done this one bad thing in my life. I never did anything bad before, and I never will again; but if it was known, I’d never be forgiven. I’d never get another chance—from any one; and I mean to have another chance. It’s never going to be known. I’m not going to be ruined and wasted, just for one—badness. It’s going to be wiped out, I tell you!"
"It will never be wiped out. You’ll never forget, Angelica—you’ll never, never forget me. You can’t love again. You’ve lost heaven, my girl."
She was still for a moment.
"Maybe I have," she said. "Maybe I have lost heaven. But," she went on, "I’ll get what I can, anyway. I’m going to have my chance. Vincent!"
Her voice was so low that he had to press against the screen to hear her; and her words came in an incredibly ferocious whisper, that turned his blood cold:
"If ever you tell him, Vincent, I swear to Gawd I’ll kill you!"
Through the front basement window Mrs. Kennedy saw Angelica returning, a shockingly disheveled figure in the sweltering midday heat. She hurried to the door, with the baby in her arms.
"Oh, Angie!" she cried. "You cruel, cruel, bad girl! Where have you been? I’ve been near crazy, left alone here all night and morning with the baby, and not a penny in the house. Of course I couldn’t do my work——”
"Hush!" said Angelica, sternly. "Don’t bother me. I’m too tired. I had to walk all the way back. Make me some tea!"
She took the child in her arms and sat down in the rocking-chair, holding it pressed against her breast and staring over its head, indifferent to its crying, and the feeble beating of its little hands.
She had her tea and bread with it; then she lay down on her cot, always with the child in her arms, and fell asleep. Mrs. Kennedy looked in upon them, saw them both quiet, the little, downy head resting against Angelica’s shoulder, and she devoutly hoped that this period of rest might solace her daughter after whatever demoniacal adventure she had undergone that night. She picked up her pail and went out to work.
When she came in again at five o’clock, they were both gone.
Polly was reading, stretched out on the sofa of her charming little room, near the window which gave her a fine viewof the Hudson and a cool breeze. Her maid had gone out, and she was quite alone in her little flat, content and languid, rejoicing in her dignified solitude.
Here she was living as she liked to live, with her music, her books, her very few and very casual friends, and long, long hours of delicate idleness. She enjoyed the blissful serenity of a convalescent, or a freed prisoner. After her two heart-breaking experiences of married life, after the anguish of her dear child’s death, she was happy now to be quite alone, to love no one, and to be hurt by no one. She wished to spend the rest of her life alone.
Eddie had arranged her affairs so that she once more received her decent little income. She didn’t enquire as to how he had done this. She suspected that for the present it must be coming direct from his pocket, but she preferred not to know.
She had a vague intention of some day divorcing Vincent, but she was never capable of action without some spur. There wasn’t any cause now. She was rid of him, and she had her money again. Her deepest instinct—the instinct of a woman by temperament unfitted to make her own way in the world—caused her to value her money above anything. It meant all that was desirable in life—ease, dignity, and freedom.
How happy she was in her loose, fresh white wrapper, looking so much younger, so much more charming—smoking her thin little cigarettes and reading some book which entirely engaged her attention—agreeably conscious, none the less, of a nice little supper left by her devoted servant in the ice-box! It was only half-past five, but she was growing hungry, and she was dallying with this idea of supper, when the door-bell rang.
This was startling, for the boy in the hall down-stairs was supposed to stop intruders and to telephone up to her before admitting them. And so loud a ring!
Again! She got up and opened the door.
She gasped at the spectacle of Angelica with a baby in her arms.
"MydearAngelica!" she cried. "I never——”
"Let me sit down," said Angelica. "I’m dead tired."
So she came into Polly’s tranquil sitting-room, as out of place there as a wild animal—the fierce, rough Angelica with her wailing baby. She sat down on the sofa and held the child up—a wretched, frail little creature, with a wizen, troubled face.
"See him? Two months old."
"He’s sweet. But, my dear, I didn’t know you were married."
"I’m not married. Listen, Mrs. Geraldine! I got to have a talk with you."
"Of course! But, my dear, isn’t there something you could do for your baby? He seems so——”
"He’s sick. He’s sick all the time; but the doctor says if he gets good care, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t grow up strong and all right. It does make him kind of an extra trouble now, but after you’ve had him here a few months, Mrs. Geraldine——”
"I’vehad himhere!"
"Listen!" cried Angelica, in anguish. "Please, please, Mrs. Geraldine, don’t say no! Wait till you hear. Wait till you think. Think about that baby you lost. Oh, do, for Gawd’s sake, Mrs. Geraldine, take this baby!"
"My dear girl!" cried Polly. "You must be mad! What in the world are you talking about?"
"Oh, please, please, please, for Gawd’s sake! Just think of the poor little feller you lost. Take this one instead. Ican’tkeep him, Mrs. Geraldine. He’ll only die. You’re too good and kind to let a little baby die. Yougotto take him. You’ll never have a moment’s peace, night or day, if you don’t!"
"But, Angelica, it’s outrageous!"
"I don’t know the words to use. I don’t know how tomake you. Oh, Mrs. Geraldine, I can only just beg and pray to you to take him!"
"My dear, I’ll help you, if I can. I’ll be glad to lend you money, or help you in any other way."
"No—I can’t keep him. You see, Mrs. Geraldine, I’m going to marry Eddie, and I can’t ever let him know about this."
"Angelica!" cried Polly, aghast. "I certainly won’t help you to deceive Eddie."
"I know; but it would be much, much worse to tell him. He’s crazy about me, and I can make him happy. This is the only wrong thing I’ve ever done,ever, and I’m never going to do another. I’m going to be good as gold, Mrs. Geraldine. If Eddie knew, he’d never forgive me. I’d never get a chance to be good. That’s why I came to you. On account of Eddie, won’t you do it to make him happy?"
"I couldnotdeceive Eddie."
"Oh,whynot? Why, for Gawd’s sake, tell the truth and spoil Eddie’s life, and be the death of this poor little feller and the ruin of me? Oh, just take him! Take him!" she cried, tears running down her cheeks. "You’ll love him. You’ll be awful glad to feel him next to you in bed, first thing in the morning. You’ll love him so. You’re the only one I know in the world that I wouldn’t mind leaving him with. I know he cries an awful lot, but that’s because he’s sick; and if you take him, and he has the best of everything, he’ll soon be fat and well, and you’ll be proud of him. Oh, say you will!"
Tears stood in Polly’s eyes.
"My dear, you mustn’t give up your child. I’ll help you, so that you can keep him."
"No, no! I can’t! I’m going to marry Eddie."
"Give up the idea. Go off somewhere and live quietly with your dear little baby."
"No! You can’t support me and him both. It would just be me and mommer over again—me going out by the day tokeep him alive, and the two of us having nothing—no chances, no nothing. That’s if he’d even live. No; the only, only thing is for you to take him."
"But, Angelica, what in the world would I do with him?"
"Get a good nurse. I’ll find one, if you want, from a hospital."
"But what would people say?"
"Say he’s yours. No one would know the difference. Tell Eddie he’s yours. Tell Vincent, too."
"Vincent wouldn’t believe it."
"Well, he could say so, anyway. My Gawd, that’s little enough to do for the poor little feller!"
"It’s not a little thing, Angelica—it’s a great deal, to expect Vincent to say he is your child’s father."
"Well, he is!" said Angelica. "I forgot to tell you that."
"It seems to be my fate," said Polly to herself, "to be always forgiving and benefiting those that despitefully use me. Imagine me taking this child—Vincent’s child—and not feeling the least resentment toward Angelica. I’m only sorry for her."
She was watching the baby lying on the lap of a lively and capable young nurse, whom she had got by telephone.
"I’m going to adopt this child," she had explained to the young woman. "His mother can’t keep him."
"It’s a risk," said the nurse. "You never know how they’ll turn out; but he’s a pretty little fellow—big gray eyes and all. He’s been badly fed, but I guess we can build him up."
Polly lapsed into a strange, an inexpressible mood. Vincent’s baby! Wasn’t it really sent to her to take the place of the one she had so cruelly lost? She certainly didn’t intend to pass the child off as her own, but she would adopt it and bring it up. She would love it. The starved and thwarted love which no one else wanted welled up in her heart.
"He’ll be a lot of trouble to you," said the nurse, looking about the orderly, pretty little place. "You certainly are good to take such a burden on yourself."
"I lost a little child of my own," said Polly.
And a dreadful pity for herself, and for Angelica, came over her.
She might well be sorry for Angelica, going out of the house without that little burden in her arms.
This was the supreme hour of Angelica’s punishment—the inhuman struggle between her heart and her brain. She did not look upon it as a punishment, however; she looked upon this horrible renunciation of her child as a part of the price she was obliged to pay for a magnificent future. She was bent, resolute, with all the savage resolution of her lawless soul, to marry Eddie and to obtain all that she so desired. If she must sacrifice her child, then she would do so, though it left a wound never to be healed.
She didn’t seek for happiness; if it had been that she wanted, she would have kept her little baby. She was ready and willing to give up happiness for success. She wished to vindicate herself, to give proof to the world of the power which she knew to be within herself.
Oh, to be going home alone, with empty arms! It was too cruel! She longed for the feel of that little body, for the sound of its feeble voice, for its eyes looking up at her in pain and innocence. She walked through the streets with streaming eyes, running against people, indifferent to abuse or remonstrance.
"Ican’tgo home without him!" she gasped. "Oh, my little feller! I can’t go home and see his little clothes—and his empty basket!"
She stopped short.
"No!" she said. "I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I can’t. I got to have him back. I’d rather he died home with me. Oh, I wish weweredead, the two of us, dead and buried—him and me in one grave!"
She turned and retraced her long road to Polly’s house, as far as the door; but she did not go in.
"No! Him in there with a trained nurse—no! I’ll give him his chance, my poor little feller; and I’ll give myself a chance, too," she added. She started down-town again; but the nearer she got to home, the more unbearable was the idea of entering there, alone.
"If only I was over this first night!" she moaned. "If I could only just forget him till to-morrow!"
Mrs. Kennedy kept on working. She didn’t dare to stop, to give herself a moment to think.
They were both gone. Very well! She would simply expect them back, resolutely refusing to think where they had gone, what they might be doing. At five o’clock in the afternoon she began to clean her flat. Then she cooked a nice little supper and set it in the oven to keep warm. She mixed condensed milk and water in a bottle for the baby. She boiled its dirty clothes. Then, in a desperate search for work to do, she found an old pair of white shoes of Angelica’s, and began to clean them, singing all the while in a weird, cracked voice:
"Af-ter the ball iso-ver, af-terthe ball is done."
She was trying with all her might to keep out of her head a terrible vision of a young mother standing on a bridge at night, with her baby in her arms.
Still humming, she went into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed, in a waking nightmare, half hypnotizing herself with her monotonous little song. She was too far gone even to feel relieved when at last she heard Angelica’s footsteps in the hall, heard her go into the kitchen and light the gas. Then silence. She lay listening for the baby’s cry; there wasn’t a sound.
"What can she be doing in there?" she thought. "And what makes the baby so quiet?"
Fear struggled against the lethargy that engulfed her. She got up, went to the kitchen, and stood in the doorway in her long, old-fashioned nightgown, regarding her child. Angelica sat beside the table, with a small box in her lap.
"Angie! Where’s the baby?" cried her mother.
"Gone," said Angelica. "I got a lady to take him."
"Your own child?" screamed her mother. "Your own little baby? Oh, shame on you!"
"Shut up! You don’t understand. Do you think I liked to give him away?"
"Then get him back! Get him back, Angie! I’ll work for him till I drop. Don’t give him up!"
"He’s gone, I tell you. Let me alone! Can’t you see how I feel?"
"Then why, why, why did you do it, Angie?"
Angelica stared at her somberly.
"I don’t know," she said. "I had to. I thought it would be the best thing for him. She—the woman that’s taken him—she can do a lot for him. She’s kind and good. You’d like her."
"Who is she?"
Angelica did not intend to tell. She was too well aware of the preposterousness of having taken Vincent’s child to his wife.
"No one you know," she said.
Her mother was completely softened by this new idea, that Angelica had given up her dearly loved child for its own good.
"You poor girl!" she said. "I suppose you meant to do what was best for him. But——”
"I thought it would help me, too," said Angelica. "I couldn’t keep him."
Mrs. Kennedy was shocked. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Angelica stopped her with a quick gesture.
"No more!" she said. "I’ve had enough. Now you better go back to bed."
"I don’t want to leave you," said her mother. She could imagine how hideous would be Angelica’s loneliness.
"You better!"
"Why? What are you going to do?"
Angelica held up her tiny box.
"Heroin," she said. "I got it off a feller I know. I don’t want to think about anything to-night."
For an instant the small figure in the long night-dresswavered; then, with a pitiful scream, she ran out of the room and cast herself on her bed.
"It’s too much, God!" she cried. "I can’t bear any more. Take me to-night, oh, merciful God!"
Mrs. Kennedy listened in vain all through the night. From time to time she dozed, to wake with a start of fright. She had no knowledge of drugs, only horrible superstitions. She expected Angelica to be changed in some way beyond recognition. Would she be violent—fight and struggle with her? Would she kill herself—set the house on fire?
At dawn she waked from a brief nap, resentful to find herself still alive. Sick with apprehension, weary beyond all measure, she went into the kitchen, to see what had become of her child.
Angelica was asleep, with her head on the table. Beside her lay her tiny package, unopened.
She raised her head and looked at her mother with dark and heavy eyes.
"All right, mommer!" she said. "It’s over!"
"What? What’s over?"
"All of—of that. I’m going to start all over again."
"You can’t, Angie. You can’t undo what’s done."
"I have," she said solemnly. "I’ve just wiped it out. I haven’t done any harm to any one but myself, and I’m going to forget that. All the traces of it are gone. Eddie’ll never know; and so he’ll be happy! I have undone it, mommer; it’s just the same now as ifthathad never happened."
Her mother, shivering, racked by her night’s anguish, looked sternly at her.
"That’s because you don’t know," she said. "You don’t know yet what you’ve done!"
Mrs. Kennedy made no preparation for going to work that day. She suffered from a strange, an inexplicable malady. She didn’t want to go to bed. She sat upright in a rocking-chair, still in her night-dress, staring at the kitchen wall before her with a faint little frown.
Angelica washed and dressed herself neatly, and got ready some breakfast—not very quickly, for she wasn’t accustomed to cooking, but with the care and deftness that were so natural to her. It was, when done, a daintier and better meal than her mother had ever served.
"Now, mommer!" she said. "Come on! Sit down!"
"I can’t eat, Angelica."
"You can drink some coffee, anyway."
And she took her mother by the hand and led her to the table—a poor, frail, barefooted little thing, with her gray hair hanging about her haggard face.
"Sit down," said Angelica again. "Now, then!"
Her mother drank a cup of coffee greedily, and gave her familiar little sigh.
"Thatwasnice!" she said.
Her daughter succeeded in making her eat a little as well.
"Now you got to lie down," she said.
"I can’t. I’ve got to clean the halls."
"I’ll do it, mommer."
"Nonsense, Angelica! You don’t know a thing about it."
"I guess I can learn. Go on, mommer, lie down!"
She straightened the bed and patted the thin little pillow.
"Now, mommer, tell me! How do you do it? Where do you start?"
"Angie, I can’t let you. You’re tired to death, child. I’m more used to it."
But Angelica would not listen to her. She went out, resolutely, with the pail and the cloth and the scrubbing-brush, to do for her mother for one day what her mother had done for her for nineteen years.
It was not Angelica’s disposition to enjoy martyrdom. She never felt sorry for herself; she didn’t now. It was work which must be done, and she was anxious to do it properly. She was in that state of intense fatigue when one craves more and more physical activity. She scrubbed all the stone stairs, mopped the corridor, went on working and working and thinking and thinking.
She came down-stairs at one o’clock and went out to buy something for lunch.
"What is there to do this afternoon?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I haven’t got half the work to do in this place that I had in the old one—only three washings."
"I know. Well, mommer, I suppose we’ll have to get some more money from somewhere. I’ll go out and look for a job, I guess."
She found one without much trouble. Her sort of job—unskilled, transitory, ill-paid—was plentiful.
"I’m starting in to-morrow morning," she told her mother, when she came home. "Now, if there’s any ink, I guess I’ll write to Eddie."
"Why?" asked her mother.
"Well, it seems he don’t know anything about—what happened, and I guess we’ll be married after all."
"You mean to say you’re still set on that, Angie?" cried her mother. "It’s wicked—downrightwicked—to deceive a good man so."
"I don’t think so," Angelica replied. "What I did was bad enough, but I don’t think it’s wicked not to tell about it.If you’d been in prison you wouldn’t go around telling every one about it, would you?"
"That isn’t the same at all, Angie. I don’t want you to tell ‘every one’; only the man you’re going to marry."
"He wouldn’t be the man I’m going to marry very long, if I tell him. He’d never speak to me again. I know Eddie! And he’s too good to lose," she added. "Of course, something may go wrong, but I don’t think so. I think I’ve got him!"
So she wrote: