"Men crushed down, like worms under a heavy foot,Half stamped into the mud, but the other halfStill squirming. Writhing corpsesWith writhing wounds,From which the blood squirts violently;And over it all, in a cloud of mist, rose and gold,Rides God.God! God! God, the father of all these mutilated animals!God Almighty, whose will it is to kill his sons in these hideous ways!He sees everything. He hears everything. He hears their yells,Their howls for pity and for death. He could stamp the wormQuite out of existence;Smear it into the ground so that it should be obliterated andAt peace;But for His own good purposes, He lets it squirm!"
"Men crushed down, like worms under a heavy foot,Half stamped into the mud, but the other halfStill squirming. Writhing corpsesWith writhing wounds,From which the blood squirts violently;And over it all, in a cloud of mist, rose and gold,Rides God.God! God! God, the father of all these mutilated animals!God Almighty, whose will it is to kill his sons in these hideous ways!He sees everything. He hears everything. He hears their yells,Their howls for pity and for death. He could stamp the wormQuite out of existence;Smear it into the ground so that it should be obliterated andAt peace;But for His own good purposes, He lets it squirm!"
"Men crushed down, like worms under a heavy foot,Half stamped into the mud, but the other halfStill squirming. Writhing corpsesWith writhing wounds,From which the blood squirts violently;And over it all, in a cloud of mist, rose and gold,Rides God.God! God! God, the father of all these mutilated animals!God Almighty, whose will it is to kill his sons in these hideous ways!He sees everything. He hears everything. He hears their yells,Their howls for pity and for death. He could stamp the wormQuite out of existence;Smear it into the ground so that it should be obliterated andAt peace;But for His own good purposes, He lets it squirm!"
Angelica was quite stupefied; she had no clue, no dimmest idea what to say. She didn’t even know whether this weird stuff was meant to be funny. She thought it was and yet——
"You see," he went on, "it’s meant to be horrible. It is horrible, isn’t it?"
"Sure!" said Angelica. "It is."
"Now wait!" he said peremptorily, and swung round again on the stool, to continue his writing.
"Wait!" he muttered again. "Don’t go! I want you to hear this!"
She sat perfectly still for a long time. Then, suddenly, he groaned, looked round at her with a sort of glare, and tore up his paper with an oath.
"No!" he cried. "No! I can’tgetit! Lord, it’s such torment!"
He buried his head in his hands.
"Angelica!" he said in a muffled voice. "Please come here!"
"What is it, Vincent?" she asked gently.
"Angelica! What’s going to become of me?" he asked huskily, his face still hidden.
The question startled her.
"Why, I don’t know," she said. "I suppose you——”
"But I’m all alone!" he said in a sort of bewilderment. "They’ve all left me, and you’re going, too!"
She didn’t dare to touch him, but her voice was a caress.
"Vincent, I’m sorry!"
He looked up and seized her hand.
"Oh, my love!" he said. "Aren’t wefools? Even to thinkof such a thing as parting! You and I, Angelica, to part! It couldn’t be!"
"It’s got to be, Vincent," she answered, trying to withdraw her hand.
"No, it’s not. No, Angelica, you shan’t leave me!"
"Vincent!" she said. "Don’t! You’ve made enough trouble. Don’t make any more."
"It’s you who are making the trouble. You’re breaking my heart, and your own too—yes, yours! You can’t deny it! Every drop of blood in your body tells you the same thing. You need me and you long for me as I need and long for you."
"Please!" she said, beginning to cry. "You know I’m going to marry Eddie."
"There’s no one else in the world but you and me. All other people, all other things, are shadows—lies—folly! You are a woman and I am a man, and we love each other. We cannot part!"
"I must!" she said desperately. "You know I must!"
"No! No! Only love me, Angelica, and care for nothing else. Oh, you could not be so base and cowardly as to leave me!"
"Oh, Vincent!" she sobbed. "You talk like a fool! You know I can’t stay here!"
"Look here!" he said. "Eddie gave me a hundred dollars. Come away with me—now—this instant! Anywhere—it doesn’t matter. Just as we are, friendless, homeless, penniless—just you and I, to make our way together in the world."
She shook her head, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Oh, why didn’t you let me alone?" she cried, forlornly.
"My girl, how could I? I couldn’t lose you," he said, surprised. "I couldn’t let you go."
"But you must!"
"But I won’t!"
"If you do really love me, you won’t make me so miserable——”
"Angelica, I don’t love like that. I don’t care whether you’re unhappy or not. I want you! I am mad for you! Even if it means your damnation and ruin, on earth and in hell! I don’t care for anything but you—not for God Himself!"
"Don’t talk like that!"
"It’s true. I know well what I’m doing. For you I’ve lost my immortal soul. I haven’t a soul now. I love you as Satan loves. I want to drag you down to hell with me!"
Angelica, however, was by no means so concerned with hell as she was with this world.
"But think what would become of me!" she cried.
"Who cares?"
This viewpoint startled her.
"Well," she said, "Icare."
"No, you don’t," he answered. "You only care for me."
She wished to argue, to defend herself; but it was too late. She was lost. His words so appealed to the recklessness in her own nature, to her devil-may-care heart, that she could not counter them. She loved this man; her whole heart urged her blindly to follow him, to do what he asked, to hurry gloriously to destruction.
She made a half-hearted effort to get away from him, but he only held her closer. He looked down at her and laughed.
"No use!" he said. "You don’twantto go!"
Suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, and clung to him, looking up into his bold eyes.
"All right!" she cried. "Idon’t care!"
Mrs. Kennedy was very tired that afternoon. She had just finished scrubbing a kitchen for a tenant, crawling laboriously across the greasy soft-wood boards with her brush and her pail and her cloth. There had been some foreign sort of fish stew cooking on the stove all the time, and the smell had turned her sick. She had got splinters into her water-softened hands, and her back ached with a ferocious, burning ache. She came down the basement stairs carrying the empty pail, slowly—far more slowly than she used to come.
"There’s not a thing in for my supper," she thought. "Well, I shan’t bother to go out and get anything. I’ll just lay me down and rest. I’m tired—tiredout!"
The front door was unlatched. She pushed it open with her foot, and went along to the kitchen. She wanted a cup of tea, but she couldn’t make the effort to get it ready. She couldn’t even lie down. She sat on the step-ladder chair, straightening her aching back and supporting it with one hand while her eyes roved about her neat and dismal little domain, hoping to discover what she very well knew wasn’t there—something to eat, prepared and ready.
She was beginning to be dulled and blunted by solitude. Her life’s incentive was gone; she had no reason for working and living other than an animal reason—to feed herself. Her spirit had no food, and it was perishing.
She had a vague distaste for death, which was just sufficiently stronger than her apathy to preserve her existence. She slept in her underground cave, cooked and ate what was essential, kept it and herself respectable and clean, and went dully on working, working, going wherever she was bidden, doing whatever she was told.
She had decided to go out to the corner, to buy two bananas for her supper, when the door opened and Angelica came in.
She was just the same—jaunty, swaggering. It might have been one of those long-past evenings when she came back from work, tired, but restless and hungry. She had the same shabby suit and ungloved hands.
"Hello, mommer!" she said.
Amazing to see the change in that worn face!
"Angie!For goodness’ sake! I never looked foryou! Why ever didn’t you write, deary, so’s I’d have something in for your supper?"
"It don’t matter, mommer. I’ll go out and get something."
"I’ll get my purse——”
"No—I got some money. Listen, mommer, I’m going to stay home with you a while. Mr. Eddie’s gone to the war and Mrs. Geraldine’s gone away. Now, for Gawd’s sake, don’t begin to ask a lot of questions! I’m dead tired. I’ll go out and get something for us to eat, and we’ll go to the movies after. You put on the water for tea now, while I run to the corner."
But even after the front door had slammed, it was some time before Mrs. Kennedy got up to put on the kettle.
"What ever is she doing home now, all of a sudden, like this?" she asked herself. "I don’t see. Oh, I do hope there’s nothing wrong! She’s so hasty!"
Angelica came in again with a great paper bag.
"I got a regular treat," she said. "Sardines, rolls, cheese, and a nice big can of cherries!"
"You mustn’t waste your money, deary," said her mother mechanically.
They both set to work to open the tins, brew the tea, and lay out the supper.
"It does taste good," Mrs. Kennedy admitted. "Somehow, when I’m alone, I haven’t got the heart to buy things and cook them. It’s nice to see you again, Angie!"
"I dare say you’ll soon be sick of me," said Angelica. "Now, come along, mommer, put on your hat and coat!"
They went out together, the tall, swaggering daughter, the small, decorous mother, along the swarming streets to their favourite moving-picture "palace." It was exactly the sort of picture Mrs. Kennedy liked, a "society" one, and in addition her daughter bought her a box of caramels. In every way a treat, a notable evening!
And yet, all the time, her vague anxiety persisted. She had questions which she felt she must ask. They went home, and to bed, without her having summoned courage to put them. Then, at last:
"Angie!" she said softly in the dark. "Angie!"
Not a sound. Angelica must have fallen asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
Mrs. Kennedy was very much surprised to see Angelica spring out of bed the next morning at six o’clock, for she had always liked to lie in bed till the last possible instant. Her mother was still more surprised to hear her say:
"I’ll get the breakfast, mommer!"
"You needn’t to, deary. I guess you want a little rest."
"Rest, nothing! I’m going out to hunt for a job this morning."
"But aren’t you ever going back there—to Mrs. Russell’s?"
"Not much! I’m going back to the factory again."
"Oh, Angie! I’m sorry!"
"Why? You made enough row about my going to Mrs. Russell’s."
"Only because I didn’t think you could get the place; but now that you did, I’d hate to see you go back. I’d like to see you better yourself."
"Oh, for Gawd’s sake! That stuff again! No! Let me tell you, mommer, I’m through with all that. I’m all right the way I am. I’m good enough—as good as any ofthem, anyway."
She put on her hat and went out, without a kiss, without a good-by, and Mrs. Kennedy saw no more of her till six o’clock, when she came in, pale and scowling.
"What’s the matter with the supper?" she said, roughly. "Why ain’t it ready?"
"I just got in myself," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I had a hard day."
"Well, you’re not the only one," said Angelica. "What you got?"
"I’ll have to run to the corner."
"Now, see here!" said her child. "I won’t stand this! I’m not going to wait this way. If you can’t have my supper ready when I get home, I won’t come home—d’ye understand?"
This was but the first indication of a change, a profound change, in Angelica. Her mother saw it with anguish. She was rougher, coarser, more cruel. She was brusque with her mother in a way quite different from her old, careless fashion. She was cold, critical, scornful.
She had got back her job in the factory where she had worked before, but she didn’t bring her money home now. Her mother was obliged to ask for some when she had nothing left to buy what her child demanded; and then, fiercely reluctant, Angelica would throw down on the table a crumpled dollar bill.
Her habits were altogether changed. She spent no more evenings with her mother at home or at the movies. She went about with other factory girls, to dance-halls and cabarets of the cheapest sort. She bought herself daring blouses, thin as a veil, through which her lean brown shoulders shone; she wore short skirts, and had gauzy silk stockings on her long legs; she painted her face with exaggeration.
"Angie!" her mother remonstrated. "You don’t lookdecent!"
"I don’t want to," she replied.
Night after night she stopped out until one o’clock. Then her mother would be awakened by voices in the courtyard—a kiss, very likely, a scuffle, a slap. That was Angelica and her escort, saying good night.
Then she would come in, jaded, irritable, the paint very brilliant on her pale face, and begin undressing—not in the dark, as she had done formerly, to avoid disturbing her mother. She would come into the room with no effort to be quiet, light the gas, and dawdle about, while the poor anxious woman in bed lay watching her, sometimes asking questions, but timidly, dreading a rebuff.
"Bah! I’m so sick of it!" Angelica told her one night. "Those cheap dances—those smart Johnnies mauling you round with their sweaty hands—and then a glass of beer and a whole lot of their cheap talk.Cheap, all of it! I’m sick of—everything!"
She had flung herself down fully dressed on her cot, her soiled white shoes on the clean spread.
"Justsick!" she repeated, with a break in her voice.
Her mother was moved.
"Maybe it’s because you got used to better sort of people out where you were," she said.
Angelica raised herself and looked at her.
"Better!Well, maybe they were. I don’t know. Only—I don’t know—I did get to like having things nice, and hearing nice voices. All this is kind of a sudden change. And the bunch I go out with—Lord, what a bunch!"
"Then why do you go out so much, deary? Why don’t you stay home?"
"Oh, for Gawd’s sake, mommer! After working all day, a girl my age can’t sit home alone all evening."
Alone! The poor woman winced.
"You could read magazines, or get books out of the library."
"I don’t want to read. There’s nothing in books. I want to live. I want to find out if there’s anything—anywhere."
"What do you mean, deary? If there’s anything anywhere?"
"Oh, it don’t matter! I’m going to bed. Good night!"
They went on in this way for weeks. What misery for the mother! She was nothing to her child; she could not even serve her. Angelica had become completely independent. She didn’t want to talk to Mrs. Kennedy, to go out with her, to stay at home with her.
Moreover, she had grown indifferent to the little niceties about which she had once been so fastidious. Sometimes she would get in earlier than her mother. Then, without waiting, she would get some sort of meal for herself, eaten off the tub tops, from the saucepan in which it was cooked. She would spend a long time dressing herself in her vivid finery, leaving the dirty pots for her mother to wash. Then again she wouldn’t appear until late, long after Mrs. Kennedy had disposed of her meal.
"We met some of the fellers," she would say; "and we hung around a while and ate a lot of candy. I don’t want any dinner."
One evening her mother weakly reproached her for her lateness.
"There I had a nice bit of chopped meat fried and ready for you," she said. "You ought to let me know when you’renot coming in. It’s a trouble to me and a waste of money to buy things and you not to touch them."
"Forget it!" said her child. "I’m never in any hurry to get home, I can tell you. To this hole! Why should I?"
"To see me!" cried her mother in desperation.
"Been seeing you every day for nineteen years. No, mommer, you can’t keep me hanging round you any more. I got to be free."
"That don’t mean you’re not to be kind and loving to——”
"Well, I’mnotkind and loving. Gawd didn’t make me that way."
Her mother grew more and more certain that Angelica had met with some disaster in her past situation. She thought over it at night when she lay in bed, in the day while she worked—thought of it with anguish and terror. Her peasant soul forgot its acquired American sophistication, and craved that age-old solace nowhere to be found in her present mode of life—a priest, a pastor, some one in authority to reassure her.
She hadn’t even neighbours to gossip with, as people had in the "old country." There was no one who had seen her child grow up, who knew all about her, and could and would discuss her with kindly penetration. A stranger in a strange land, but—how wretchedly!—a stranger to whom no country was home. Certainly America was not her heart’s land; certainly Scotland, the home of her parents, would have seemed wholly alien; while her husband’s birthplace, to her, was little more than a fantastic dream-land.
Unto the third generation does this strangeness persist. Angelica herself had that peculiar lack of ease, that exotic quality; she was an outsider. Her factory friends, too—they were of every race, and they had all become alike. Bohemian, Irish, Russian, Italian—they had all the same air; but it was a foreign air. Their adopted country had undeniably changed them into something different, but it had not made them American. It had made them only strangers.
One morning Angelica didn’t get up. Her mother, in great anxiety, came over to her, to make enquiries, but Angelica drove her away with fierceness, swearing at her, abusing her.
"Let me alone!" she cried. "Shut your mouth and mind your own business!"
"Oh, Angie, Angie!" said the poor soul. "If you’d only talk to me! If you only had the sense to know how I could help you!"
"Shut up!" screamed Angelica, hysterically. "And get out! Don’t speak to me again!"
Mrs. Kennedy took up her pail and went out; but half-way up the stairs she collapsed. She sat down on one of the steps and tried to pray; but she didn’t know quite what to ask of God.
Because sheknew; she couldn’t doubt any longer. She knew what was wrong with Angelica!
She didn’t really want to pray. She wanted God to do the talking. She wanted to listen to Him, not to talk to Him; to discuss it, to ask questions, to have an explanation, to hear the voice of authority.
What was the use of sitting there telling Him what He surely knew? Or to beg for mercy or pity, when what she wanted was advice? Not that vague sort of "guidance" which one prayed for, and which really meant puzzling things out alone as best one could. There was one thing, though——
"Oh, Lord!" she prayed. "Soften Thou her heart and let her turn to me!"
She remembered afterward how miraculously this prayer was answered.
She was scrubbing the vestibule—a task of peculiar hopelessness, because people always came in to walk over it allthe time she was trying to clean it. She heard a voice say "Mommer!" and, looking up, saw her child, huddled in an old wrapper, standing before her. Angelica was struggling with a deadly nausea. She was frightened and desperate, her face a sickly white, her hair in dank disorder.
"Mommer!" she said again. "Come down-stairs! I feel awful sick!"
Her mother got up, leaving pail and brush where they were, and put an arm around this beloved child, so much taller and stronger than she, and yet, in her youth and her ignorance, so much weaker. She helped her down-stairs and into bed again.
"Lie still!" she said. "That’s the best you can do, my deary. It’ll pass away."
"Can’t you get me some sort of medicine, mommer?"
"Nothing that would help you, my deary," Mrs. Kennedy told her. "You’ve just got to bear it, Angelica."
The girl looked up with somber eyes.
"Mommer," she said, "listen! What do you guess is the matter with me?"
"Angelica, my deary, Iknow!"
"Then, mommer, I’m going to kill myself!"
Her mother said nothing at all, but to herself she thought:
"Why not? It would be the best and the quickest for both of us. If you don’t—oh, what’s ahead of us, and how ever can we go through with it?"
Angelica searched her mother’s face, but in vain; it was impassive.
"What elsecanI do?" she cried.
"There’s always something that can be done," said her mother. "We’ll try and think, deary."
"Mommer!"
"Yes, my deary?"
"Do you feel—different to me?"
"No, Angelica, nor ever shall!"
But she did. Strong in the simple soul was the old worship of the virgin. Angelica had been before a mystic and holy thing. She was now no more than a woman, like herself; and a woman is no fit object for worship.
Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t shocked, in a moral sense. She didn’t dwell much upon that side of the case. Her great concern was with practical problems—above all, how they were to get the money which she knew would be needed. She always spoke of girls in similar situations as "unfortunate," and that is just the way she saw it.
She sat at the bedside, trying her best to make some sort of plan.
But Angelica herself! Thatsheshould be undergoing this horror, this nightmare, this incredible thing she had heard of and read of!
"Oh, mommer!" she cried. "Oh,mommer! It’s the worst thing I ever heard of! I’m the worst——”
"Hush, deary! Don’t talk so wild. It’s bad, I must admit, but you’re young, and I dare say you loved the man and trusted in him, to your sorrow."
Angelica turned her face to the wall. That was the very worst of it. She hadn’t really trusted Vincent at all. She had simply followed an instinct of which she understood nothing. She had been dazzled by his words, been deluded through compassion, through recklessness, through desire, into throwing herself away upon a man who cared nothing for her, who had no affection, no human kindness. He didn’t care what happened to her. If she had been willing to stay with him a little longer, he would have been willing to "love" her a little longer; but when she had decided to leave him, he offered no resistance. He would quite easily forget her, she knew.
Useless to tell herself that the conventional code of morality meant nothing to her. It did! She had fancied herself superior to all that, but that was because she hadn’t known or imagined what such a surrender meant. Just to run into his arms, without ceremony, without any promise, any covenant, without regard for any other human creature, reckless of her own future, flinging away her pride, her freedom, her decency. That wasn’t beautiful. That wasn’t love. What in God’s name was it?
She had not even happy memories. It was shame to remember her past joy. She loathed herself for her past ecstasy. A perfect terror of her own infamy swept over her.
"No!" she cried. "I can’t stand it! Mommer, it’s too awful! You don’t know how awful! You don’t know what I did!"
"Why don’t you tell me, deary?"
"I can’t! I don’t know how. I’ll try." She sat up in bed and caught her mother’s hand. "The worst is the way I treated Eddie. He was so good to me! He asked me to marry him, and I said I would; and then, the very day he left, I went away—with his own brother!"
"Oh, Angie!" cried her mother, in horror.
"Oh, mommer, if you knew Eddie, you’d see what an awful thing I’ve done! He’s such agoodman, and so—kind of noble, and all that! I don’t know how he’ll ever stand it. He trusted me."
"But what ever made you do such a thing, Angelica? Are you so terrible fond of this other one?"
"No—not now. No—that’s what I can’t explain. I don’t know why I did. I—I just seemed to forget everything. I—just thought—I loved him."
"And you don’t? You love the other one—the good one?"
Angelica began to weep.
"No," she said. "That’s the worst. I don’t love either of ’em. What’s the matter with me, do you suppose? I don’t seem to have any heart!" She struggled painfully to get her thought into words. "I hate Vincent, and I like Eddie, a lot; but love—I’ve never felt it at all, mommer, for any one," she sobbed. "Not that love they have in books. It makes me feel dreadful. If I loved Vincent, I wouldn’t feel so mean and low and bad. It would be—sort of splendid; but this! Mommer!"
"Well, deary?"
"Maybe there’s no such a thing."
"No such a thing as what?"
"As love."
Mrs. Kennedy had never experienced it; had never seen or heard of any authentic case of this beautiful tenderness, this undying devotion, this heavenly thing. Yet she firmly believed that it existed—this love which was not desire, not infatuation, not madness, not sentimentality, not friendship—this ecstasy which endured forever. Not experience, not common sense, nothing at all could have convinced her, for it was instinct that made her believe—nature’s most cruel and most necessary deception. For life to continue, it is necessary that women shall cling to two lies—that men are capable of truly loving them, and that their children will love them in their old age.
"Deary," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I think you’d better write to him and tell him, and see what he will do for you. Perhaps he’ll marry you."
"He is married," said Angelica indifferently. "Yes, mommer, I will write to him; but it’s an even chance if he’ll come or not. He’s queer. You can’t ever tell, with him. I’ll try, anyway, and see if I can’t get some money out of him."
To her mother the tragedy was somewhat lessened by the fact that Angelica didn’t love Vincent. She fancied that the girl would consequently get over it better, not suffer so cruelly; but for Angelica there lay the worst of it, the most intolerable part to bear. It was that that made her frantic with shame and remorse. She looked in vain; she could find no trace of magnificence in her downfall. It wasn’t a splendid sin, done for reckless love. It was a damnable folly, committed through reckless ignorance.
She wrote to Vincent with a sort of naïve art. She wished to hide the least sign of anxiety or reproach; she wished him merely to think that she missed him.
Why don’t you come? I have been looking for you for ever so long. Come in some evening soon.Angelica.
Why don’t you come? I have been looking for you for ever so long. Come in some evening soon.
Angelica.
The evening after the letter was mailed, she got up and dressed herself, trembling with weakness, hardly able to stand, but quite self-possessed. She didn’t feel the slightest emotion at the prospect of seeing Vincent again—nothing but a dogged resolution to make him give her money.
She attempted no attitude, made no plan of what she would say to him, because she knew now how helpless she was in his hands.Hewould direct the interview;hewould give the key-note; it would all depend upon his mood. She couldn’t influence him. She didn’t even take pains with her appearance, for she knew that it didn’t lie with her to move him. It depended upon the condition of his own mysterious soul.
She had hardly expected him so soon. He came that same evening, but, from the very sound of his footsteps as he followed her along the hall to the tiny parlour, she could feel that he was sullen and reluctant, and her heart sank.
"Oh, if only I didn’t have to bother with him!" she thought. "If only I didn’t have to see him ever again! And I’ve got to be nice to him and ask him for money!"
They entered the parlour, and sat down in silence.
"Angelica!" he said abruptly, with a frown. "Why did you leave me?"
"I wanted to——”
"I was amazed. I wasshocked. You behaved——” He hesitated for a moment, then went on severely: "You behaved like a light woman. I thought you were faithful and constant and sincere; and then, afterone week——”
"But what kind of a week was it?" cried Angelica.
"I’m not a rich man, but I did the best I could for you."
"You know what I mean! In that awful little road-house, with you shutting yourself up in the bedroom all the time and leaving me there alone for all those men to laugh at!"
"I had to write."
"You hadn’t any business to write. You might have thought a little bit how I’d feel. If you couldn’t pay any attention to me, you shouldn’t——”
"Did you bring me here to reproach me?" he demanded. "Because if you did, I’ve had enough."
"No, I didn’t mean to scold you," she answered, hurriedly, recalled to the necessity for placating him. "No—I just wanted to see you."
Her face, which had become so pinched, so colourless, was covered with a vivid flush. The conciliatory words almost stuck in her throat; but apparently Vincent didn’t observe her emotion.
"I’m not disposed to endure much more from you—upon my word, I’m not!" he went on. "The way you went off, simply leaving me a note to say that you thought you’d go home—making a fool of me! I was naïve enough to imagine we were to spend our lives together. I thought we’d stay for a month or so in that beautiful little mountain inn, fishing, tramping, reading, talking——”
"You hardly spoke to me all day long. I had to sit down-stairs in the dining-room with those fishermen."
"How was I to know that you had no resources? Besides, it was rainy, and we couldn’t have gone out, anyway; but the very day you left the weather cleared. I was really disgusted with you, Angelica. You behaved abominably!"
"Well, Vincent," she said, "you’ll have to excuse that, and be a good friend to me, because I need some money."
He jumped to his feet.
"You’re shameless!" he said. "I’m shocked!"
"No—listen! There’s going to be a baby!" she cried, in desperation.
He was a little taken aback for a moment. He gave a hasty glance at her poor desperate young face, and then looked away.
"There!" he said, taking a leather wallet out of his pocketand throwing it on the table. "Take it! It’s all I’ve got. My God, you can’t get the better of a woman! They have it all their own way in this world. They make us pay, and pay dear, for their follies!"
Angelica stared at him, astounded.
"I’msupposed to be the guilty one," he went on. "I’mthe one who’s held responsible—why, the good Lord only knows.I’mthe one to pay!"
"As forme," said Angelica, "it’s just a picnic, isn’t it?"
"You’re fulfilling your natural destiny—at my expense."
"Oh!" she cried. "I wish to God I could throw the money back in your face, Vincent!"
"But you won’t. And now that you’ve got all that you can out of me, I suppose I can go?"
But Angelica was weak; she couldn’t endure it.
"Do you mean that you’re not even sorry?" she cried. "Can’t you think what this means to me—what’s going to become of me? Oh, Vincent, justthinkwhat’s before me!"
"Just what always was before you. You’re bad, my girl, through and through. You couldn’t have ended any other way. No decency, no self-restraint. I don’t suppose I was the first man——”
"Oh, don’t!" she cried. "Don’t! You can’t realize—oh, Vincent!"
"And as forthis, it isn’t the first time such a thing has happened in the world. Even a young girl brought up in sheltered luxury, like you, must have heard of such things. In fact, my dear, you must have known quite as well as I what the consequences of our adventure might be. If you say you didn’t, you’re lying."
She put out one hand in a sort of mute and feeble protest.
"But I didn’t think—you’d change——” Her voice faltered; she found it almost impossible to go on. "I thought—that you—felt like I did."
"So I did," he answered. "So I do—just the same as you. Our impulses, our reasons for going off together, wereexactly the same, only I’m honest about it and you’re not. You pretend to be heart-broken because I don’t care for you any longer, when, as a matter of fact, you don’t care a bit more for me. You’re an utter hypocrite!"
She was confused and crushed by his words. He was taking away from her her very last support—her conviction that she had been misled, wronged, sinned against. Somehow he was putting her in the wrong. She couldn’t deny that she had gone away with him of her own free will; and yet she knew that ithadn’tbeen her own free will. She didn’t deny her own guilt, but she knew that his was far greater.
"I’m not a hypocrite," she said.
"Then you’re a fool. No—we’ve done with each other, Angelica. It’s over for both of us."
"But it isn’t over for me!" she cried. Her heart was flaming with resentment against the hellish injustice of it—that she should have all the suffering, all the punishment. "Justthinkof it!" she cried. "Can’t you realize, Vincent, how dreadful it is for me?"
"No, I can’t realize. I’m not a woman, and I don’t pretend to understand them and their fine feelings. I can’t understand or sympathize with this cowardly whining over physical effects which are known to every one. Did you want anything else from me, except money, Angelica?"
"Yes, I do!" she answered. "I do want something else, and I’ll get it, too. I want to make you suffer, and I will, too!"
"Oh, I see—the wronged woman with the baby in her arms! Well, Angelica, go ahead! Do your worst. I don’t think you can hurt me very much."
He looked down at her with a gay, mocking smile, he put on his hat, and was gone.
Angelica went back to her mother with the wallet.
"Well!" she began. "Here’s——” But she broke down and began to cry wildly.
"Oh, mommer! Mommer! I can’t bear this! Ican’tbe treated like this! Oh, mommer, notme! Notme! It can’t be true!"
Her mother was glad when she wept. She stroked Angelica’s head in silence, pleased to see her softened, even humbled, happy to see that ferocious hardness gone; not suspecting that that ferocity and that hardness were the very best of Angelica, the very spirit of her. When she wept like this, she was submerged, perishing,going under. With a frightful effort she saved herself and rose above these bitter waters.
"He’llpay, all right!" she said, looking up with an odd, horrible grin. "You watch!"
"Don’t talk so, my deary!"
"Here—take it! Let’s see how much we’ve got to go on with," she interrupted, pushing the wallet across the table. "He’s always saying he hasn’t got a cent, but I notice he always finds plenty for anything he wants. God knows where he gets it, but he does."
Her mother counted what was in the purse, and turned to Angelica with a look of amazement.
"Why, Angie! There’s only four dollars here!"
Angelica laughed.
"It’s all we’ll get, anyway, mommer," she said. "It’ll have to do."
Behold Mrs. Kennedy answering an advertisement for a janitress, far over on the lower West Side, in the Chelsea district.
"I have the best of references," she told Mr. Steinberg, the landlord. "I’ve been where I am now for twelve years, and no complaints."
"Den vy do you leaf?"
"I don’t like living ’way up there," she answered calmly. "I’ve got more friends down around here. And my married daughter’s coming to live with me, and she’d rather be down here. She’s real lonely, now her husband’s gone to the war."
This was her ruse to preserve that respectability which no one valued or even observed.
She got the place, because of her decency and her references. There was nothing to be said against her in any quarter. What is more, Mr. Steinberg felt from the look of her that she was a hard worker. Like her other place, it was a "cold water" flat; there was a man to look after the furnace, but everything else was to be done by her, for her rent and an incredibly small stipend. She agreed. Her sole asset was her readiness to undertake hard and unremitting labour. There was not a thing which she could do better than the average woman, so that her boast, her credit, must be that she didmore.
"My married daughter’s thinking of taking in sewing," she said. "Maybe you could put a little work in her way."
"Ve’ll see," said Mr. Steinberg, "later on, maybe."
Now that she had secured a refuge, where Angelica might assume respectability among complete strangers, the poor woman’s next preoccupation was to find some way of having her pitiful furniture moved. She went about for days, trying to drive bargains with any one who possessed a cart; but war-time prices and conditions prevailed, and no one cared to accept so unprofitable a task.
In the end she found an Italian who sold ice, coal, and wood in a near-by cellar, and who agreed to do what she wished. She paid him at least six visits, trying to persuade him to take less money, or to promise great care with her scanty belongings, or to reassure herself that he really understood the new address. In order to pay him and to settle her few little bills, she was obliged to sell her parlour furniture, blue lamp and all.
Winter was beginning to set in when they moved. It was a raw and bitter day, blankly gray overhead. Mrs. Kennedy lingered in the old flat where she had lived for twelve years, watching the Italian carry out her things, her heart sick with shame to be leaving the place in this fashion, her parlour furniture sold, her daughter "in trouble." There was nothing left now but the barest essentials—things to sleep on, to be covered with, to cook with, and a chair or two.
Angelica had gone by surface-car to the new home, to await the arrival of the cart. For the moment each of them was alone in a dismal bare flat, hopelessly similar. It was a day of gloom. The removal had brought home to them most forcibly their desperate position, their helplessness, their desolation. They had only each other—no other friend, no other resource.
They set to work at once, in the dusk, to arrange their furniture; and when a barren sort of order had been achieved, Mrs. Kennedy went out in search of the usual little shop where she might buy a bite for Angelica’s supper. She tried her best to be calm, resolute, strong; but her heartwas like lead as she hurried through the unfamiliar streets, chilled by a cold wind from the river, and by a far colder and bleaker apprehension.
She caught sight of a brightly lighted little grocery-store, and she went in. Another pang! Here she was no one; simply a poorly dressed stranger with a paltry handful of change. She remembered her own cheerful young grocer with positive anguish. It was almost the last straw.
She came back, half running, with her little bag under her arm, entered the strange doorway, rang the strange bell. Her daughter admitted her.
"I didn’t do much," Angelica said. "I started to scrub the shelves, but I felt tired. Anyway, what does it matter?"
She had been sitting in a dreadful apathy in the forlorn kitchen; she sank down again on the old step-ladder chair.
"If only I had a bit of linoleum for the floor!" began Mrs. Kennedy, looking down at the filthy boards. "A nice check pattern, like Mrs. Stone had——”
Angelica stopped her.
"I prayed," she said.
"Oh, my deary! I’m so glad. God’ll hear you and——”
"I prayed it would die."
"Angie!"
"You didn’t think I wanted it, did you?"
"You’ll feel different when it’s here."
"I sha’n’t. Lots of people don’t. It’s a curse to me, acurse! A baby—me with a living to earn the rest of my life! No—I’ll hate it. I do now. I’d have to hate any child withhisblood in it. I hope it’ll die!"
"That’s a wicked, wicked thing to say, Angie."
"Maybe you’d be surprised to know how wicked I feel. My Gawd, what I’ve done! The chance I’ve thrown away!"
"That’s not like you, my deary."
"I’mnot like me—not like the me I thought I was. I thought I was—oh, I don’t know—kind of a wonder; andafter all, I’m nothing but—this. Going to have a baby—pretending to be married—not a cent! It’s a grand end, all right!"
"End, Angie?"
"Yes, end. I’m done—finished!"
Not her suffering, though. That had just begun. All that winter and through the spring she lived in a misery without relief or solace. She could think of nothing in all the universe but her own torment. She was ashamed to go out, in spite of her mother’s account of her as a married daughter with a husband gone to war, in spite of the wedding-ring the poor embarrassed woman had bought for her at the ten-cent store. She felt that she had in no way the appearance of a young wife. She felt herself to be obviously and flagrantly an outcast.
She was ill, too, and so hopeless, so profoundly dejected, that she saw no sense in getting up. She lay on her cot in the bedroom, dark as the former one, day after day. Now and then a bit of sewing was brought to her to do, and then she would drag herself into the kitchen and sit by the window, where there was a little more light, until the work was done. Otherwise she simply lay there, her black hair uncombed, an old shawl about her shoulders, in fathomless despair.
Life was too ghastly to contemplate. She could see nothing before her worth living for. Vincent was gone, and with him love and youth; Eddie was gone, and with him security and hope. Whether the baby lived or died, she was disgraced. She could never, never forget that she had been cast aside.
They were bitterly poor, and seldom had enough to eat. There was nothing to relieve their monotonous pain and anxiety; not a neighbour to exchange a word with, not a bitof gossip to amuse them—nothing, nothing, nothing, from morning till night but their own sad faces, their own listless voices, their own leaden hearts, their own undying apprehension.
"It’ll all seem different, deary, when you’re well again," Mrs. Kennedy told her child. "Then you’ll go to work again, and we won’t be so pinched. You’ll go back to the factory and see your friends, and go out, like you used to, to the movies, and dances."
"I won’t. There’ll be a child to look after and feed. Just to work in a factory till I’m too old, and then—I don’t know—die in the poorhouse, I guess!"
"There’s lots of things might happen, Angie. Maybe you’ll marry. There’s men that would be willing to over-look——”
"Well, I don’t want ’em. I’m through with men."
"Then maybe you’ll get on fine in some kind of business."
"No chance of that! I haven’t any education. I’m too ignorant. Don’t try to make up things to comfort me; I know how it’ll be."
But still she didn’t, she couldn’t, want to die. No matter how terrible her future looked, her strong spirit clung to life, even the most repulsive life. It wasn’t that she feared death, but she resented it. It was the complete defeat, the final outrage.
As her time drew near, she began greatly to dread dying. She would lie by the hour, thinking of death, in a sort of silent fury.
At last it came upon her, one July morning, that most shocking and insensate of nature’s cruelties. Her mother sat by her in fatalistic patience, knowing well that there was no escape, no alleviation. There was a doctor whom Mrs.Kennedy had summoned—not the noble and kindly physician of Angelica’s romance, but an indifferent and callous one accustomed to the poor and their profitless agonies. He was very cheerful. He was able to look down upon that young face distorted in brutal anguish, and smile.
"Nothing to be done now," he said. "I’ll look in again in an hour or so."
He returned too late. The protesting little spirit had entered the world without him, and lay crying, wrapped in an old flannel night-dress, in Mrs. Kennedy’s lap, while the young mother watched it with unfathomable eyes.
Angelica sat at the kitchen table, her blouse torn rudely open at the neck, wet through with perspiration, haggard and worn almost beyond recognition.
"My Gawd!" she said, pushing back her hair. "It’s hot as hell, mommer!"
Mrs. Kennedy sighed, without speaking or interrupting her work. She was standing at the ironing-board, finishing a big week’s washing. It was a night of intolerable and sultry heat, and the kitchen, with the stove lighted for the irons, and the gas blazing for light, was a place of torment. The two women were curiously pallid, curiously alert, with the terrible activity of exhaustion. They had reached so high a point of suffering, both physical and mental, on that night, that they were no longer aware of their pain.
"Listen, mommer!" said Angelica. "Here’s what I’ve written."
She picked up the sheet of soft paper with blue lines, on which the ink blurred and the pen dug and scratched, and on which she had written: