"I’m not wicked!" he protested with earnestness. "The wickedness lies in your going to Eddie after you’ve loved me—in your faithlessness."
"My faithlessness!" she cried.
"It was you who left me," he reminded her.
She was amazed at this very characteristic turn which he had given to their talk. That he should pose as the injured one! But her pride forbade her to mention her wrongs.
"It’s no use talking," she said. "It’s all over now. The less we see of each other, the better satisfied I’ll be."
They had reached the gates of Buena Vista, and Vincent appeared unwilling to be seen with Angelica.
"I’m going farther," he said. "But, Angelica, I won’t let you go!"
The visit was altogether a disappointment. Angelica had imagined that it would be a sort of triumph for her, that she could at least a little exult over these "rich people"; but, after all, it was nothing but an obvious condescension on their part. She hadn’t conquered them; they had accepted her voluntarily—not reluctantly, but rather graciously.
It was a tiresome day. Mrs. Russell’s cordiality had evaporated overnight, and she was bored and yawning. Shelay in a deck chair on the piazza, rustling through the Sunday papers, and talking to Angelica now and then with outrageously forced politeness. She had an air which Angelica knew of old; when one of her fits of ennui came on her, she all but pushed her bewildered guests out of the door.
But Angelica stayed until after supper. That was what she had planned to do, and what she was determined to do. She too sat on the piazza, with a Sunday paper, concealing her sullenness.
There wasn’t any supper, properly speaking. Annie was out, and Mrs. Russell said that their new custom was to help themselves from the ice-chest—a plan which might have been jolly if the people had been a little less hostile. They stood about in the immaculate kitchen with plates in their hands, Mrs. Russell yawning, the doctor subdued, Angelica severe, and Courtland embarrassed and aggrieved. Vincent wasn’t there. There was beer and cold chicken and ham and salad and tarts.
"And coffee if you want to make it," Mrs. Russell said; but no one did.
After this, Angelica took her leave. Courtland was suddenly deprived of his secretarial dignity and ordered peremptorily to drive her to the station, which he did in complete silence. He never ceased to resent this seesawing, by which he was one moment the promising young man being trained as a secretary and treated with immense, if not maternal, indulgence, and the next minute was a servant and a rather rudely treated one. He endured it with wonder and disgust.
Angelica was able now to gratify a long-cherished desire—she was traveling in the style which she had so much admired in suburban ladies. It was, of course, out of the question to expect Courtland to help her on the train. Nothing in the world could have induced him to do so; but at least she was able to alight from a motor, to buy three or four magazines and a box of sweets, and enter the train,thus burdened, with the proper air. She sat down near a window and opened a magazine.
A hand covered the page.
"Angie!" said a voice, and she looked up into Vincent’s laughing face.
She couldn’t repress a smile herself—a sudden throb of joy; that exquisite feeling of comradeship again.
"Are you glad to see me?" he asked.
"No. Why should I be?"
"You can spare this one little evening for me," he said, "no matter what wonderfully upright sort of future you’re planning. It won’t hurt any one. I’ll be irreproachable. I won’t make any demands, any requests. I won’t evoke old memories. Before we say good-by, let me have a few hours with the old Angelica—my beloved, reckless, adorable Angelica. Just to make a memory!"
"No; we better not!" she said.
It might well, she thought, make a memory which would last far, far too long.
"Why not, Angelica?"
"I don’t want to, Vincent, that’s all."
He didn’t urge her; he sat quietly beside her, suddenly dejected. The train ran on past dark woods, wide fields, lighted houses; stopped at lively little stations with their lines of motors—that world of bourgeois smartness which Angelica so admired. It turned her thoughts again to Eddie, and to all that she would gain through Eddie.Shewould be coming home to one of these little stations, met by her own motor, to be whirled off to her own lovely home, with servants to wait on her, with dignity, security, peace!
And a sudden disarming pity for Vincent rushed over her—poor Vincent who had nothing to give. She glanced cautiously at his face, gloomy, perplexed, his eyes clouded with a sort of hungry dissatisfaction. He couldn’t help but look bold all the time, but even that boldness was pitiful toher who knew his weakness, his faults, his vices, his follies. She had never felt so sorry for any one else.
"Walk home with me, if you like," she said.
They came out into the bewildering brilliance of Forty-Second Street side by side, and began walking east, slowly, in that astonishing hurly-burly of crowds, of glittering signs winking, flashing, pouring out into the night sky a flood of radiance, of hurrying taxis, immense motor-cars, trolleys, strings of fiercely lighted little shops, the windows filled with inane and shamelessly overpriced trinkets and souvenirs; noise, blinding light, crowds and crowds of people.
"Let’s turn down Madison Avenue," suggested Vincent.
"That’s out of my way."
"But you’re in no hurry. Please!"
She consented; she had no particular reason for not doing so. He took her arm as they turned into the darker, quieter street, and went on with her so, like a young lover, his head turned toward her, listening eagerly, watching her face.
"Now tell me about it," he said. "Tell me what it is that’s made you change so."
She didn’t answer.
"It was you, and all the dreadful pain you caused me," she thought, but without bitterness; with only immeasurable sadness and regret that it should have been so.
"I’ve been working with two very nice girls," she said aloud. "They’ve helped me, and I’ve learned a lot from them."
He asked her a great many questions. He was really interested in it all, and in the effect of this commercial adventure upon her crude soul. It was the first time any one had shown a real interest in her heart and her mind. He didn’t care so much about what shedid, as what shefelt. She could not help talking freely, with a sense of great relief. All the observation of her shrewd and intelligent mind, so friendless and so little understood, came to her lips now—not the naïve egoism of a young girl in love, but the wit, the vigour, the soundness of a woman of character.
They turned into Fifth Avenue at Twenty-Third Street, and went on down-town, for Angelica had promised to show Vincent her millinery shop.
"There!" she said with pride.
They stood in the silent and deserted square, looking at the house, at the peacock, at the windows where in the light of the street-lamp the purple letters of "Angélique" might be deciphered.
A clock struck eleven.
"I’ll have to hurry home," said Angelica. "Mother’ll worry."
She was reluctant, for she had been happy in her fool’s paradise. Of course it couldn’t last, this friendly communion with the man she found above all other people in the world supremely interesting, supremely attractive. She knew all about him, she didn’t trust him; but it was something just to be with him, so happily, for this one last time.
All the old magic came flowing back into her heart, there in the tiny park, with the dead leaves blowing down the paths, and a sharp white moon to be seen now and then as the wispy clouds drew across it. That yearning for his sympathy, for his love, positively tormented her. She longed and longed to draw near to him, to feel his arm about her.
As always, his instinct warned him of his moment. His hold on her arm tightened.
"Don’t go!" he said. "Let’s have just this hour! Angelica, imagine—if we had a little room here, some little place all to ourselves! And I’d wait at home for you, and write and dream about you, and long for you all day, while you sat there in your shop, bending your dear, dark head over your work. You’d work for me, until I grew famous—and then I’d make a queen—an empress of you, my beloved woman!"
"Don’t begin that!" she entreated. "We’ve had such a nice time!"
"But think of it! Think of sitting together in the dark, in our poor little room, our arms about each other, weary, harassed, finding our joy and consolation only in those hours together—living just for that! Oh, Angelica! Angelica! Hasn’t this long, weary parting been just an interlude? Can’t we begin again? Take me back! Forgive me and love me and make me over. Make me what you wish. Come back to me! Come back to me! I need you so terribly!"
"Don’t!" she begged again, profoundly troubled. "I don’t know how to tell you—how to make you see how useless it is. I can’t—I don’t feel as I used to. All that is dead. I’ll never care that way for any one again."
"For me you can!"
She shook her head dumbly.
"Vincent, you’ve done me enough harm. For God’s sake, let me alone! Now, just when I’m struggling up out of the mud, you come and try to pull me down. Right here, before this very house——”
She stopped, unable to explain, even to suggest to him all that Fine Feathers meant to her, how it was her honour, her dignity, friendship, self-respect, ambition.
"You see how I’ve changed," she said, "and how I’ve improved. Why don’t you try to help me?"
"Changed?" he said, stooping to look into her face. "Not a bit of it, Angelica! You’re nothing but my Angelica, my beloved girl, the mother of my child!"
"Oh, stop!" she cried. "Oh, it’s too horrible!"
"It’s too horrible that you should repudiate me. Angelica, let us take back our child and start again, a decent, honest life. You talk of improving yourself; why don’t you think of improving me—of helping your poor little child? Let’s help each other!"
"You wouldn’t do it! You know you wouldn’t!" shecried. The tears were rolling down her cheeks unnoticed. "You’ve never even seen the poor little thing, or asked about him."
"But I’ve thought of him! I’ve been haunted by that little son—yours and mine. Oh, Angelica, don’t, don’t for God’s sake, turn away from me! Polly will set me free, and I’ll marry you and we will have our child again."
She felt as if she were sinking in a whirlpool. An intolerable pity for this man confused her, overwhelmed her.
Her troubled glance, leaving his beloved face, fell upon the ridiculous peacock with its jaunty little paper hat—fit image for her nightmare; and a little trickle of cold, sane daylight began to filter into her darkened and suffering mind.
"Angelica! Let us begin again, you and I and our little son——”
"No!" she cried in a ringing voice. "No!"
His face fell. He looked at her, startled.
"No!" she said again. "I’d never believe you—not a word you said. I won’t forget! I’llneverforget, and I’ll never forgive what you’ve done. You’re a liar! You’re a beast! I hate you!"
Angelica was working in the back parlour the next afternoon with Sillon when Devery brought her in a letter. She smiled ironically and tucked it into her blouse, for she knew the writing.
"I wonder how he’ll be this time!" she reflected. "You can never tell. Maybe in an awful rage, or sad, or making love. Well, it doesn’t matter to me now. I’ve finished with him! But I was really nearly gone last night."
She had stopped short in her work and sat looking vacantly before her.
"I don’t know why I’m such a fool about that man. I don’t know what it is about him!"
She didn’t trouble to open his letter until she was ready to go home. Then, alone for a minute, she pulled it out and opened it, half sadly.
"No!" she cried suddenly. "No! I don’t believe it."
"What is it?" Devery called out from the next room.
"Nothing!" said Angelica, with stiff lips.
She hid the letter in her blouse in terror at the idea of its being seen. Then she was forced to bring it out again, to read it, to make sure.
Wanton, without a heart! You thing from the gutter, willing to give your body to any man, while you keep your cold and poisonous heart to yourself, for your own sordid aims! I swear to you I will never let you destroy Eddie as you have me. It would be an outrage to call you sister, to permit you to bear our name. I would rather die. And I shall die. I have enlisted in the army. I shall soon be sent to France, and I shall find Eddie there and tell him your little history. Then I shall die. Nothing on earth can stop me. It will be the supreme moment of my life when I tell Eddie, when I see his face, and know that your shameless ends are frustrated—when I know that you are really ruined.
Wanton, without a heart! You thing from the gutter, willing to give your body to any man, while you keep your cold and poisonous heart to yourself, for your own sordid aims! I swear to you I will never let you destroy Eddie as you have me. It would be an outrage to call you sister, to permit you to bear our name. I would rather die. And I shall die. I have enlisted in the army. I shall soon be sent to France, and I shall find Eddie there and tell him your little history. Then I shall die. Nothing on earth can stop me. It will be the supreme moment of my life when I tell Eddie, when I see his face, and know that your shameless ends are frustrated—when I know that you are really ruined.
"He won’t do it!" she tried to reassure herself. "He’s always making threats. He wouldn’t really do anything that might harm himself."
But she knew that Vincent didn’t always act from self-interest. His passions were very apt to overwhelm him, and malice was one of the strongest of his passions. He would enjoy exquisitely telling the wretched tale to Eddie.
For three months she didn’t draw a free breath. She tried to dismiss her terror from her mind. She said to herself, resolutely: "Don’t borrow trouble!" "Don’t worry about what may never happen!" "Don’t cross your bridges before you come to them," and all sorts of tags from her mother’s store. She faced Devery and Sillon every morning with the same hardy good-humour. She was dutiful and severe at home, as had become her custom, and to no living soul did she give the smallest hint of what she was enduring.
Every time a letter came from Eddie, or if a mail were missed, she expected the blow to fall, all her laboriously made plans to be destroyed, her pride and dignity trampled underfoot, all her life wrecked. She was utterly in the dark. She had no idea what was going on, or what had already happened, and she could take no steps to gain information. She could do nothing but wait.
Then came another letter from Vincent:
I am home on leave. That means that we shall very soon be going over. Good-by, Angelica! I have a hard, bitterly hard task before me. I must hurt Eddie and I must hurt you. As for me, there is nothing before me but death. Deserted and ruined as I am, I long for death. Your love was all that pleased me in life. With that gone, there is nothing but a waste, bleak beyond endurance. I shall only beg Eddie to forgive my vile treachery, as I beg you to forgive my sins against you. Forget your presumptuous and wicked dream of marrying that good man. That can never be. He will forgive you, as he will forgive me, but he will never forget.Good-by, Angelica. I give you to God!Vincent.
I am home on leave. That means that we shall very soon be going over. Good-by, Angelica! I have a hard, bitterly hard task before me. I must hurt Eddie and I must hurt you. As for me, there is nothing before me but death. Deserted and ruined as I am, I long for death. Your love was all that pleased me in life. With that gone, there is nothing but a waste, bleak beyond endurance. I shall only beg Eddie to forgive my vile treachery, as I beg you to forgive my sins against you. Forget your presumptuous and wicked dream of marrying that good man. That can never be. He will forgive you, as he will forgive me, but he will never forget.
Good-by, Angelica. I give you to God!
Vincent.
Asleep and awake that picture haunted her—a vision of Eddie, mud-stained, horribly pale, sitting on a box, with a candle flickering on the ground beside him, in a dugout with mud walls and great puddles of filthy water—the sort of thing she had seen in the cinema, ghastly, desolate, with an incessant play of rockets and bursting shells overhead; and Vincent standing before him in one of his fine attitudes, so handsome, so strong, so noble, telling him. She knew how he would dwell upon the details, with what colour he would describe her caresses, her kisses, heightening the temptation just as he would heighten his remorse.
It didn’t occur to her that Vincent might encounter some obstacles to a prompt meeting with his brother, with all the different services and all the vast battlefield to be considered. She fancied him being at once directed to Eddie’s dugout like a stranger in a village.
She lived in a long nightmare. She didn’t know how the blow would fall—whether she would come home to find a letter from Eddie, casting her off; whether Mrs. Russell would be there to tell her; whether she would have a letter from some stranger, a friend of Eddie’s—a lawyer, perhaps. But what she most feared was the idea of coming to Fine Feathers some morning and seeing Sillon and Devery suddenly turned hostile. She felt that she could not bear that. It would do for her.
But weeks went by, and nothing at all happened. Oneday, while she was in the back parlour, she heard Mrs. Russell’s voice in the front room; but the very tone of it reassured her. She wanted to buy a hat, and she wanted Angelica to let her have it cheap; so she was extraordinarily agreeable. She had, moreover, some sort of idea that it would help Angelica in the eyes of her partners to be seen in friendly converse with a lady like herself.
"I wish you’d come and see me!" she said. "I’m so lonely! They’ve all gone—Vincent, you know, and now poor Courtland’s been drafted. Dear me! It does seem as if they ought to be able to make up a big enough army out of those who wanted to fight, without dragging in the unwilling ones. Poor Courtland will make a very bad soldier; he hates it so. He’s too independent. Vincent was really marvelous. If you could have seen him in his uniform! And he told me to be sure, if I saw you, to tell you not to forget him. He even went to Polly and begged her to be reconciled to him before he left, perhaps never to return. I went to see her, too, to see if I could influence her; but what do you think? She’s adopted a baby, and she’s wrapped up in it. She says it fills her life, and she doesn’t want any one else. She’s very hard on Vincent. Those frightfully maternal women always are dreadfully hard on men, don’t you think? I’m not surprised at her adopting a child; she was so absorbed in the one she lost. I couldn’t do a thing with her. She said she had done with Vincent. Poor boy! She’s narrow—provincial. Awfully selfish, don’t you think?"
"I don’t know," said Angelica. "I suppose she can’t help how she feels."
"Well, I thought it was horrible to see her there, so happy with that baby, and so callous about her husband. Not even her own baby—some little waif she’s picked up. It’s a wretched, puny little thing, too; she has to give it the most unceasing care. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear any daythat she’s lost it. Oh, my dear! What’s that heavenly mass of purple?"
"That’s a negligée I’m making," said Devery, thus addressed.
"Could I possibly wear purple?" inquired Mrs. Russell earnestly. "Do please let me see it! Oh, howmarvelous! Could Ipossiblyslip it on?
"Am Ihideous?" she asked Angelica anxiously, when she had got the purple garment on and stood before the long mirror.
"It’s not quite your style," said Angelica, with great seriousness. "I think—but Miss Devery will give you suggestions."
"A dark green," said Devery, "with dull, blackish blue overtones—not a floating thing like this, Mrs. Russell. You’re slender enough to stand a straight, narrow garment. Not exactly a negligée; I never advise them, there’s so little use in them; but what I call a boudoir gown."
"How much would it cost?" asked Mrs. Russell.
"One hundred dollars," said Devery.
Mrs. Russell looked at her, then at Angelica. They both had their professional manners, polite, deeply interested, but firm. There was no mercy to be had from them. She ordered the gown; then she bought a "sports hat" of Angelica for a staggering sum, and prepared to take her leave.
But now Miss Sillon came in, pleasant and businesslike.
"I’d be very pleased to make you a ten per cent discount, madam," she said; "or for any one personally introduced by our Miss Kennedy."
"Oh, Sillon!" said Angelica, when she had gone. "Wasn’t that nice of you? You can’t imagine how anything like that pleases her."
"Angélique, my child, we’d do more than that for you," said Sillon.
"Telephone, Mlle. Angélique!" cried Devery.
"Would you mind asking who? I’ve just got this thing pinned."
"It’s Mrs. Geraldine," Devery called. "Can’t you come?"
Angelica’s heart stood still.
"Thisis it!" she thought. "Now it’s come!"
She went with leaden feet to the telephone in the back room, and sat down before it. She stared at the instrument for an instant in horror. What was it about to reveal?
She took up the receiver.
"Yes!" she said. "Is this you, Mrs. Geraldine?"
"Can you come to see me?" said that well-known voice. "There’s something——”
"Why?" she cried. "What is it? Is anything wrong?"
"The baby’s quite well; but there’s a piece of news you ought to know."
"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh, tell me! What?"
"Don’t lose your head, Angelica; but come when you can. I’ll be in all the afternoon. And don’t worry. It’s only that I think you ought to know before all the others."
She didn’t wait to hear the rest. She left the telephone and turned to her friends a distracted and blanched face.
"I’ve got to go!" she said.
"Is anything wrong?" asked Sillon kindly, alarmed by her look.
"Yes! I’ve got to go!"
"Can’t I go with you?"
"No, no, no!"
Angelica was pinning on her hat, without even a glance in the mirror, and was starting out when Devery stopped her.
"Your bag!" she said. "Or are you coming back to-day?"
"Never!" she cried. "Never!"
They stood together watching her go.
"Poor kid!" said Devery. "It must be somethingverywrong!"
Angelica was out of sight, hurrying along the street, trembling with eagerness to embrace this anguish, to get it over, to be done with her torment.
She rang Polly’s bell, and Polly herself admitted her visitor. She looked ill and haggard, with eyes heavy and dull, and reddened with sleeplessness—or was it with tears?
"Come in," she said pleasantly. "Sit down, Angelica. Will you have a cup of tea?"
"Oh,no!" she cried. "Hurry up and tell me! They all know it? Eddie’s written! Oh, Mrs. Geraldine, I knew right away! Eddie’s written to say that Vincent’s told him. Oh, my God! He said he would, and he has! That’s what he went for. Oh, my God! All my life ruined! Oh, Mrs. Geraldine!"
"My dear, try to calm yourself," said Polly. "There—sit down. You’re making yourself ill. Vincent hasn’t told any one. He never will, Angelica."
"He said he would!"
"He never will. He’s dead."
Her voice broke in a faint sob.
"Dead?" cried Angelica. "Vincent? In the war?"
"The transport he was on, struck a mine."
"Then he never got there? He never told Eddie?"
"No."
"Oh, Mrs. Geraldine!" she cried. "Then I’msafe!"
Polly turned away.
"Don’t you feelsorry?" she asked. "He was very young to die."
Angelica shook her head.
"No, I can’t," she said; "not just now. I can’t feel anything but glad."
She stopped on her way home to tell Sillon and Devery that "it was all right." She let them know, modestly, that there was a certain person now in France in whom she was profoundly interested, and that she had feared some bad news in regard to him. Then she went to a quiet little restaurant and ate a delicious little dinner all alone, and in the chilly, cloudy evening walked home—a long walk.
She was enjoying a feeling of exquisite and complete triumph. She had won! She was safe now, her troubles over. Certainly God had helped her. She was young, beautiful, beloved; she was about to be rich. She had made a gallant fight against great odds, and she had conquered.
She greeted her mother with unusual affection and was willing to talk with her for quite a time, about her business, about the shortcomings of the tenants, about everything in the world except what had happened. That she didn’t mention.
She began slowly to undress while her mother was still in the kitchen, ironing a collar for her to wear the next day. She looked at herself in the mirror, in her dainty camisole—a beautiful woman, with her delicate bare arms, her slender shoulders, her curious, glowing black eyes in her pale and lovely face——
And suddenly, almost as if she saw it in the glass beside her own, another face, fierce, hawk-like, rigid and white, with bright hair spread out and floating as if in the sea. Her dead lover!
The parlour now rejoiced in a new and pretty little "set," put in there only the week before in order to receive the visits of Eddie. On one of the chairs sat Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in silk, her hair skilfully fluffed by her daughter, her hands manicured, her feet in soft new boots. She was well aware that she had never looked so common, so perfectly the janitress and scrubwoman. Her strained, haggard face, her faded eyes, her blunted and withered hands belied her fine attire. They could have belonged only to a woman who had worked brutally and hopelessly. She was years younger than Mrs. Russell, but she might have passed for her mother.
Her patient hands were folded in her silken lap; she had nothing to do, and very little to think about. The blasphemous triumph was accomplished; she was about to see Sin crowned and rewarded, Innocence betrayed and abandoned—in other words, Angelica married to Eddie. She was disgusted with life, thoroughly disappointed with her God. She took no pleasure in these preparations, or in any of the comforts and enjoyments before her. Nothing sustained her but a vague sort of hope that her just God would retrieve Himself by stopping this wedding in some way—with thunderbolts, or the flaming swords of archangels. And she was well aware that one couldn’t really count upon anything of that sort.
Out in the kitchen she could hear the servant—she, the charwoman, servant of servants, sitting in the parlour while another woman drudged for her! In half an hour an automobile was coming to take them to the church, and then theywere going off to Buena Vista, going to leave all this poverty and humiliation behind forever. She had been given to understand that she wasn’t tolivewith her child, only to visit until a suitable home could be found for her. She was to have an apartment and a servant all of her own; she was to furnish the place as she wished, and she was to be provided with a new wardrobe.
"And start a new life," Angelica told her.
"I’ll need to!" said Mrs. Kennedy. "This one is about done."
And although a great deal of this was paid for by Angie herself, out of the money she had saved, her mother had never expressed gratitude. She didn’t feel any. She had never at any moment of her life been so utterly dissatisfied.
She glanced at the new clock.
"Angie!" she called. "What are you doing?"
"Dressing!" called back a gay, a too gay voice.
"He’ll be here in half an hour."
"I’ll be ready!"
She was standing before the mirror in the bedroom, adjusting her hat, very delicately touching her hair under its net, tilting her head from side to side, frowning thoughtfully, trying to foresee the effect she would produce upon Sillon and Devery, Mrs. Russell and Polly, who would be in the church. She pictured herself and Eddie walking up the aisle—Eddie still in uniform, tall, severe, impressive, and beside him his beautiful young bride. She was wearing a plain dark brown broadcloth suit, a big black hat, and a magnificent set of silver fox furs Eddie had given her. She looked like a princess. They couldn’t, any of them, find a flaw in her—in her appearance or in her bearing. None of those born ladies could approach her. She looked whatshe was determined actually to be, the equal of any one of them. There was a position ready for her, and she was competent to fill it.
Eddie had been so delighted with the change in her. She hadn’t seen much of him since his return at the end of the war, but all his hours with her had been a perpetual service of praise. He had hurried to her his first free minute; he had wanted to give her anything, everything—extravagantly and ridiculously. He had been tactful and kindly with the rather contemptuous Mrs. Kennedy. He had been to see Devery and Sillon, and had won their hearts. He had been quite perfect.
And all these thoughts were merely flitting across her mind like birds flying above a frozen pond. Under the ice were horrors beyond naming. She did her utmost to ignore them, to think of those things as dead and buried and forever gone from her world; but she could not.
All that night she had been dreaming of her drowned lover, floating, horribly, in the sea; and with him, directly beside him, her baby—theirbaby—its little body extended like his, its tiny white face upturned. And she and Eddie sat on the deck of a ship, she facing these two corpses which came smoothly along behind them, and she was using all her wit, all her charm, to keep Eddie from turning his head and seeing them.
The dream haunted her and mingled with her wretched thoughts. For now that she was within a stone’s throw of her goal, now that the cup was in her hand, to be raised to her lips, she was filled with a desperate impatience, a terrible fever of haste and fear. Her hands were burning, her knees weak and trembling.
"Oh, just this one more hour!" she murmured. "If only, only,onlynothing will happen!"
She looked past the moment, to the haven of happy years beyond, as a man sailing a perilous channel might look ahead to the wide and quiet sea beyond.
"Something will happen!" she told herself. "At the last minute some one will tell him—scream it out in the church—stop the wedding. Oh, God! Just help me now! Let me get safely married to Eddie, and I’ll try my best to be good!"
She was conscious of being a little too pallid, too worn, and she rubbed on her smooth cheeks a little rouge. It looked horrible, and she wiped it off frantically.
"No! It must be my eyes that look so queer. I wonder if Eddie’ll notice, and think I look queer! It might make him suspicious."
She forced herself to smile.
"Of course I’m nervous," she said. "Every one is. It’s nothing—nothing at all!"
She suppressed a scream when the door-bell rang. She listened, behind her half-closed door, until she heard Eddie’s voice talking quite in his usual tone to her mother. No one called her. Nothing had happened.
She stood still, in a sort of daze, getting no further forward in her dressing, until her mother entered the room.
"He’s going to take me down and put me in the auto," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Then he’s coming back after you. You’d better hurry. It’s late, and I don’t see any use for you to be keeping all those people waiting. That’s not a very good way to begin."
"All right!" said her daughter hurriedly. "Go on, mother!"
She set to work in haste to add the finishing touches to her dress, fastening the little bar pin with diamonds given her by Mrs. Russell, drawing on her white kid gloves.
She heard him coming. She heard him stop at the kitchen door, and tell the woman working in the kitchen that she might go. Then he came and knocked at her door.
"Ready, Angelica?" he called out.
She gave one glance in the mirror; then she opened the door with a forced, polite smile. There stood the poorsoldier who wished to give her all he had—poor, ardent Eddie, longing so to take her back to his beloved home, and give it into her keeping. He stood in the doorway of her little room, looking at her, and he too was smiling—a smile as strained, as artificial as her own.
"Angelica!" he said softly.
He had grown quite pallid, as he did when deeply moved, and his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. His face, his expression, had changed. He was struggling his utmost to look, and to be, tender and respectful; but his heart was beating with an emotion neither tender nor respectful. He wiped his damp forehead, and came a step nearer, always smiling, but with eyes strangely brilliant and fixed.
"No!" said Angelica sharply. She knew how he felt—she knew too well how he felt. It sickened and shamed her.
"My darling girl!" said Eddie. "MyAngelica!"
"Don’t!" she said. "Don’tsay that! I’m not!"
"But you will be, very soon! I——”
"We ought to go, Eddie. It’s late!"
"Then kiss me, just once!"
She shook her head with a ghastly affectation of coquetry.
"No," she said. "You’ll have to wait!"
"Just as you like, Angelica," said the poor fellow. "You know, don’t you, dear girl, that my chief wish in life is to make you happy? I wouldn’t for——”
"Then do come on, or I’ll think you don’t want to marry me at all!"
He turned instantly, and she followed him—just to the door of her room; but no farther. He looked back.
"Aren’t you ready?" he asked.
"Eddie!" she cried in a high, dreadful voice. "Eddie!I can’t do it!"
"Can’t do what?" he asked, startled.
"I can’t do it! I can’t marry you! Not unless I tell you!"
He stared at her for an instant, his quick and clear mind at work upon this.
"What is there to tell me?" he asked. "Let’s have it!" He was alert and suspicious now. "Come on! Let’s have it!" he repeated.
"Eddie!" she began, but a great horror at her own folly assailed her.
She felt impelled toward this abyss, while she struggled madly to turn aside, aghast at the destruction before her. Perhaps even now it wasn’t too late; perhaps she could disarm the suspicion that she had aroused, could stop, and not tell him any more.
Thank God, it wasn’t too late! Shehadn’ttold him. She felt like a person cutting his own throat—the knife had only pricked—he is still alive, and in a mad exultation of thankfulness.
She smiled.
"I—I got engaged to another fellow," she said; "but it’s all over now."
"When? Who was it?"
"Last year."
"Who was it, I say?"
"He was—a—a factory superintendent," said Angelica. "But it’s all over now. I’m awfully, awfully sorry, Eddie."
"You mean you—engaged yourself to this fellow while I was in France? After you’d promised to marry me?"
"I know it was—wrong; but I hope you’ll forgive me, Eddie!"
"Yes," he said, "I forgive you, Angelica; but oh, howcouldyou? I’m so disappointed in you! It was so dishonourable! It was—low."
"I know! I know! I know!" she cried, with an uncontrollable impatience. "But—forgive me and forget all about it. I’m so sorry. What more can I say?"
"Did he—did you let him—kiss you?"
"Yes!" she murmured.
"Angelica!"
"Oh, but I’msorry!" she cried desperately.
Eddie stood looking at the floor for an instant; then, with fierce suddenness, he caught her by the arm and pulled her forward, so that he could look into her face.
"Look here!" he shouted. "How far did this thing go?"
"It was nothing!" she cried.
"You said he kissed you. You said you were engaged to him. Some coarse, common brute of a workman mauling you—I know those people—I know their love-making. God, Angelica! You make mesick! You’ve no fineness, no—decency!" he cried.
He searched her face with eyes that terrified her.
"I don’t believe you," he said suddenly.
"But, Eddie——” she stammered.
"I don’t believe you!" he said again. "You’re lying. This fellow was your lover!"
"Oh, don’t!" she cried.
"Answer me! Tell me the truth!"
"No! I did! I did tell you the truth. There was nothing—like that."
"Swear it! Say, ‘I swear to God I was absolutely faithful to you all the time you were away.’"
His eyes never left her face; but she repeated, firmly:
"I swear to God I was absolutely faithful to you all the time you were away."
He looked puzzled. He sat down heavily in a chair and covered his eyes with his hand.
"I’m sorry," he said. "I didn’t mean to be so rough. Only—it’s a terrible disappointment to me, Angelica. I never imagined such a thing. I almost wish you hadn’t told me. I keep seeing you and some hulking fellow in overalls——”
She was sobbing bitterly, standing before him like a forlorn and penitent child.
"Don’t cry!" he said more kindly. "Don’t cry, my dear. I’ll try to forget it. I’ll try!"
"Will it—not make any difference?" she sobbed.
"I’ll try not to let it. Only, Angelica—it was often so hard—over there—not to—so hard to be true to you—not even to think of any one else; and when I think of it, and how I hated myself, even for my thoughts—I feel like afool. I don’t believe you’d have caredwhatI did. You don’t feel as I do. You don’t value loyalty as I do."
She seized this opening.
"No!" she cried. "I shouldn’t have cared, one bit, whatever you did, if only we love each other now!"
"No, don’t! I don’t like to hear you say that. I want you to care, as I do. I want you to be fine and—high-minded."
"Eddie, I’m not. There’s no use pretending that I am."
"I don’t want you to pretend to be. I want you to try to be."
"I will!"
He was silent for a time.
"Now, then!" he said. "It won’t do to keep them all waiting any longer. Are you quite ready?"
"Do you mean for us to get married just the same?"
"Of course!" he said. "I couldn’t be such a prig. I’ve simply got to forget what you’ve told me, and thank Heaven that I’ve got you after all. You might have married the fellow!"
He was his own kind self again, but she could see that his great pride in her, his great joy, were gone.
"Come!" he said again. "We shall be very late."
But she prevented him from leaving. She caught him by the arm and stood before him, looking up into his face.
"Eddie!" she cried, with a gasp that seemed to tear her heart out. "I’vegotto! I can’t deceive you. Oh,God! It’s so awful!"
He didn’t move or speak.
"Eddie," she said, "itwasthat!"
"Ah, it was!" he said, in a tone of polite surprise.
"I had a baby."
A shudder ran through him, and he closed his eyes in mortal pain.
"You can’t ever know what I suffered! Oh, Eddie, Eddie, I’ve been punished enough for what I did! And the poor little baby——”
"Never mind!" he said, in a voice so low that she could hardly hear him. "Don’t tell me any more. I don’t want to know." He undid her fingers from his arm. "I want to get away," he said. "Good-by!"
But she stopped him again.
"And the man wasVincent!" she screamed. "Now! Now!Nowyou know!"
The next morning, just at the usual hour, Angelica entered the back parlour, where Sillon and Devery were working side by side. They both looked up in a sort of stern surprise, and waited for her to speak first.
She stood before them, a quivering smile on her lips. She seemed on the verge of tears; but after a silent moment she raised her eyes to look at them with a sublime and touching bravery.
"Can I come back?" she asked.
They were both speechless.
"I don’t want to explain," she said, in a trembling voice. "Not ever! But if I can come back, I’ll—go on—just the same."
Miss Sillon got up.
"Certainly!" she said pleasantly. "If you like, we’ll go on—in the old way. We’ll forget all this. Don’t you think so, Devery?"
"Of course!" said Devery.
But no matter how they tried, their cordiality was strained, their looks averted. They knew, all three of them, that it would be a long time before this thing could be forgotten. Half of the letters of "Angélique" had gone from the windows—and how much more had gone as well?
But at least their friendship endured. They neither questioned her nor blamed her; they simply took her back, as whole-heartedly as was possible to them. Whatever incredible and discreditable occurrence may have interrupted that dazzling wedding, they would not repudiate her.
She went to her cupboard, took out the box in which she had kept her odds and ends, and, sitting down at her old table, spread out the glittering, gay scraps before her.
"I’m going to stick to business now!" she said, with a sob.
THE END