Fiercely rebellious against a life of drudgery in a factory, Angelica Kennedy, daughter of a New York janitress, seeks more promising employment. Answering an advertisement, she applies at a large country house near the city, and is engaged by Mrs. Russell as companion to an invalid daughter-in-law, Polly Geraldine, who is in delicate health, and in deep sorrow over the recent death of her only child.
Angelica finds herself a member of a rather curious household. Its head is Mr. Eddie, Mrs. Russell's son by a former marriage, a high-minded and generous young fellow who is also a successful business man. His brother Vincent, Polly's husband, is of quite a different, type—a highly temperamental person who poses as a literary-genius, but who has never published anything. Just now he has disappeared from the house, and is understood to be amusing himself, probably none too reputably, in New York. Mrs. Russell, herself a decidedly eccentric and independent woman, has a second husband. Dr. Russell, who flirts barefacedly with Angelica.
X
It now became the aim of Angelica's life to satisfy Eddie. She felt that his standard was the right one, however painfully high it might be, and that he was genuinely concerned with helping her to attain it. And she felt that, in spite of his youthfulness and his somewhat grandiloquent air, he was a remarkable and an admirable man.
The more she saw of him, the more she admired him. She was a shrewd enough observer, yet she never detected in him a single lapse from his own rigid principles. What he set out to do, he did; what he determined to be, he was. She had not knowledge or experience enough to see that he was ignorant, crude, and childlike; she could see only his force, his strength of will, the earnestness and intelligence of his ambition, and his complete ingenuousness.
He went directly to Polly. He told her that Angelica was ambitious, and that he wished to help her.
"So any evenings that you don't need her," he said, "she can come to me and study. I'll look out some books for her."
Polly smiled and agreed.
"It's another of poor Eddie's Utopian schemes," she said to her mother-in-law. "I don't know what he expects to accomplish with the girl."
"I only hope she won't accomplish anything!" said Mrs. Russell. "She's very pretty, and Eddie's so susceptible. Of course, he thinks it's a sin to think of a girl as a girl, but still—"
They didn't at all like this educational project, but Mrs. Russell was too careless and Polly too sensible to interfere. Besides which, it didn't look really alarming. Eddie was not the sort—it would have been impossible to Eddie—to contemplate illicit relations with Angelica, and with his extreme propriety he was certainly not likely to consider marrying her. It was simply an annoyance to have her thus exalted. They were irritated and somewhat contemptuous, but they said nothing. They took care never to discuss Eddie in her presence.
It was a recognized fact that she and Eddie were allies. They were oddly alike in many ways. They had the same sort of careless austerity; neither of them cared whether a chair were comfortable or not, the soup hot or cold, the weather propitious; they disdained fatigue, were ready to work all day and all night to achieve an object, and had a fierce and driving ambition for power and distinction. But Angelica was coarser and stronger, while Eddie was more sensitive and very much more scrupulous. He was ruled by ideas, she was ruled by her vigorous impulses.
Polly very rarely wanted Angelica in the evening, and Mrs. Russell dared not summon her, so that it became quite a usual thing for her to go up-stairs with Eddie directly after dinner and settle down with some valuable book of his selection. He didn't make any attempt really to teach her; she could as well have sat in her own room to read, but that would have entirely destroyed the character of the thing for Eddie. She must be sitting there, under his eye, docile, earnest, his pupil.
Sometimes he worked, sometimes he was himself engaged with one of his instructive books, which he bought in sets; but whatever it was, he very rarely spoke to her. He maintained his pose of imperturbability, which she knew well enough to be only a pose.
It didn't take her long to see how it was with him. She understood that sort of thing so well! She saw how drawn he was to her, how she stirred his ardent blood; and she rejoiced and brought out all her tricks to torment him. When she wanted something explained, she would bring her book to him and stand beside him, leaning against him, bending over so that her hair brushed his cheek. She had attitudes that were poems of allurement; there were certain tones in her voice, certain little gestures, which she saw enthralled and disturbed and shocked him.
"She doesn't know what she's doing!" he would think.
Well, she didn't exactly. She was well enough aware of the effect of her naughty wiles upon him, and upon other men; but she had never experienced the thing herself, never yet been transfixed by a dart such as she delighted to shoot. At first she was proud and gleeful; but after she had seen his painful effort to retain his dignity—his majesty, one might say—undisturbed, she felt a sort of respectful pity for him, and desisted.
She had no illusions; she didn't fancy that his inclination toward her was love; she never dreamed of marrying him, and she understood him and herself too well even to contemplate any other sort of alliance. She ceased her tricks, became honest and sober with him, and sat at his feet to learn what she could. The knowledge that she was desirable in his eyes did good to Angelica, for it gave her more confidence, more hope of attaining ultimate magnificence. She showed him her natural self, inquisitive, eager, strong, ready for any sacrifice, any denial, that might help her in her progress, a nature at once ardent and calculating, a cool, shrewd, subtle Italian mind.
As for herself, she wasn't in the slightest degree attracted by Eddie. She admired him and respected him, she felt a warm friendliness toward him, but no smallest trace of love or desire. It wasn't possible; he wasn't the man for her; he wasn't her sort.
In contrast, and running parallel with this life of effort and progress under Eddie's direction, ran the other existence, the lazy, soft life of the harem. One-half of her time she was studying, reflecting, earnestly considering her manners and deportment; the other half she spent with Mrs. Russell and Polly, in a thoroughly demoralizing uselessness.
Laziness was Polly's darling vice. She had long passed the stage of struggling against it; now she hugged it, enjoyed it without shame. She lay in bed, in a chaise longue, or on a sofa, hour after hour, smoking cigarettes, lost in her sorrowful reveries. Where on earth was she to find an incentive to activity? There was no one whom she might love and serve; no effort was necessary to obtain all the luxuries possible. Her old love for her art lay buried beneath her grief; she felt that she had all that she could ever expect in life.
She had got quite used to Angelica now, and more or less fond of her. She liked to have the girl near, sitting with one of Eddie's books, absorbed in it, yet instantly ready for any service required.
"Do you know, Angelica," Polly said to her one day, "the very nicest thing about you is that you never fidget!"
Angelica considered that.
"No," she said. "I know I don't. I see other people squirming and wriggling all the time, and I wonder—I don't know—I am quiet; but I've got lots of life in me."
"I should say you had! Just my antithesis, aren't you? I'm quiet, too, but it's because I haven't any life in me at all."
"Well," said Angelica, displaying no interest in Polly's state of mind, and reverting, as she generally did, to herself, "I'm always kind of expecting something to happen. So I just—wait."
Her naive egoism never affronted Polly. Disillusioned, she would have been rendered uneasy by affection or great interest; she liked it this way, with no pretense on either side, nothing to keep up. She never affected any interest in Angelica, although she couldn't attain her companions' supreme self-absorption. She was obliged, now and then, to ask a question; in fact, she couldn't help being curious about Angelica, who was not at all curious about her.
She was sometimes a little piqued by the young creature's cool assumption that she was of no interest. She knew what lay within herself, how different she was from every one else who had ever lived, how interesting she was, both in her qualities and her experiences. Don't we all know that of ourselves? And isn't it, after all, entirely true of each of us? And yet how impossible it is to make others see it!
Polly was a woman of curious temperament—intense, sensitive, flexible, and yet protected and perhaps isolated by a certain cool good sense. She was an artist, a musician, a woman who had twice loved and twice been most cruelly deceived and rebuffed, who had suffered and thought very much and very bitterly, if not very profoundly; but she was also the simple daughter of a small town, a woman who liked a long and leisurely gossip, who had sane and healthy blood flowing beneath her idle hypochondria. Woman of the world, smoker of cigarettes, reader of the most astounding books, seasoned as she was, disillusioned, heart-sick, a bit theatrical, perhaps, in her utter indifference, she was nevertheless the same Polly who would have heartily enjoyed a day spent in jelly-making, or nut-gathering, or sewing with a friendly and talkative group of her own Ohio women.
She had very little in common with Mrs. Russell. They didn't really like each other, but being unoccupied, and in somewhat similar circumstances, they got on well enough together. The whole household got on together, in fact. There were intrigues, incredibly petty and subtle struggles and plots, but nothing overt.
The other two women accepted this new favorite of Eddie's with resigned tolerance; they made use of her, but they were quite kind. They, too, had an influence on Angelica; they taught her something, a little of the compromise that must be made with life. You didn't have to love people or to hate them—you had only to get on with them. She could not but admire their charming good-humor, their complete lack of the aggressiveness which the people she had known before had been obliged to cultivate. They were all three so comfortable together!
It was one of those summer afternoons which had such an indescribable charm for Angelica. She wasn't used to idleness, and it delighted her, this sitting about, with a long stretch of empty hours ahead, to fill as one pleased. They were all in Mrs. Russell's immense, airy room, with the green blinds drawn down and flapping in a steady little breeze. It was very hot, and, as was their custom when Eddie was not home, they were all in undress. Polly hated the hot weather, and didn't care to move; she lay on a rattan couch, smoking, with her eyes closed, and with an electric fan blowing across her.
Mrs. Russell was stretched out in a deck chair; beside her stood a small table with a bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda, of which she partook from time to time—very small drinks, but tolerably frequent. Her face was crimson; her hair, for greater coolness, was pulled back into a tight knot; she wore very little but a lace combing-jacket and a short silk petticoat, which, as she sat with her long legs crossed, showed a great expanse of gray silk stocking. She was a freak, a fright, whatever you like, but she had a certain ineffaceable distinction. Her voice, her gestures—Angelica watched her with interest. She was telling jokes, outrageous stories that convulsed the other two with laughter.
"My dear! Where do you hear such things?" Polly weakly protested after each one, and lay waiting for more.
Angelica rejoiced in a lovely cast-off garment of Mrs. Russell's, light as gossamer, pale yellow, with taffeta bows. Its coquetry was incongruous with her dark and somber face, but it was bewitching, nevertheless. She sat in a low rocking-chair opposite a mirror, content to look now and then and to speculate endlessly upon the destiny of that thin, languorous figure, dressed like a rich person, lounging like one, beautiful, mysterious, alluring. Her bare arms were clasped behind her head, in that attitude which so well reveals the line of neck' and bust. Seen from the door, in profile, she would have been an exquisite picture.
ANGELICA SAT AT EDDIE'S FEET TO LEARN WHAT SHE COULD
And she was seen from the door. Mrs. Russell, facing in that direction, gave a start of surprise, so that Angelica turned and saw a man standing there.
He was a big, heavy, swaggering fellow, in baggy knickerbockers and an old shooting-jacket hanging loosely from his powerful shoulders, with a fierce, hawk-like face and bright gray eyes. He looked at them with a sort of contemptuous amusement.
"Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell.
"Well?" he asked, smiling.
"Eddie's been so—"
"Eddie be damned! How are you, Polly?"
"Quite well, thank you, Vincent," she answered with simplicity.
"You're looking better," he assured her in friendly manner. "And mama?"
"Don't be so provoking!" she cried, trying to be angry, but at heart, as one could plainly see, filled with idiotic admiration for this big, impudent son. "Don't pretend to be so calm and cool! What are you going to tell Eddie?"
Angelica jumped up from her chair, and then sat down again. Vincent took no notice of her.
"Let's have a drink," he said, and sat down beside his mother. "Ah! And now another!"
He was certainly theatrical, playing to his little audience the part of the idolized conqueror, the man to whom everything is permitted; but he did it well. He could carry it off; it was evident that he had them both in his pocket.
He talked to them with conscious mastery. His mother was silly and adoring; Polly, in spite of all her reserve and her deep and hidden resentment against him, couldn't hide a sort of charmed interest. They listened to him and looked at him, while he, sprawled out in his chair, smoked a pipe and stared at the ceiling.
And then, suddenly, just for an instant, his falcon glance rested upon Angelica, upon the swarthy face that turned pale beneath it. Her heart stood still; she stared at his bold, careless face with a feeling that was almost like terror. She had never seen his like before, never seen so free and strong a spirit in any human creature.
She had met her match, and she knew it. She could never conquer him! It was a sensation unique in her life; never imagined before, never to be experienced again. She forgot herself completely, didn't give a thought to the impression she might be making upon this man. She thought only of him, watched him, listened to him, in a sort of stupor.
He didn't look at her again, but she knew that he was conscious of her, and that he included her among his audience. He went on, always like an adored actor secure of rapt attention, telling them things, painting vivid pictures for them. In the midst of his finest phrases, he would use the coarsest and bluntest of old words, abruptly, like a gross insult in a love sonnet. He aimed deliberately to startle and amaze, and he succeeded. The three women listened spellbound; Angelica above all, quite caught in his net.
He told them about a play he had seen the night before, and an actress in it who had caught his fancy.
"That woman!" he said. "Good God! A fair, thin virgin—inviting with her troubled eyes the fiercest lusts—still innocent, still trembling on the threshold of her life. What an actress! Polly, you would have enjoyed her work."
"I don't doubt it, Vincent."
"I'll take you some evening soon. But no, I forgot. I'm going away."
"Oh, Vincent, again?" cried his mother.
He looked at her with a strange smile.
"Yes," he said, "and for a long time."
Polly, so many times hurt, so long ignored, remained quite still and indifferent. Only Angelica saw her thin fingers clench, and then open listlessly. She didn't open her eyes or speak.
"Where?" asked his mother.
"You ask me?" he demanded. "I am a man. Pray where should I go?"
No one was able to answer, and he frowned again.
"There's only one destination possible," he said; "one spot on earth that draws toward it all of us who are men—a place of blood and destruction, of utter loneliness and frightful agony, where we rush to embrace that most maddening and most tender of mistresses—"
"Oh, Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell, distressed. "Don't talk that way before Polly!"
He threw back his head and laughed.
"A mistress who breaks all hearts—of whom all loving souls are mad with jealousy—a mistress to whom no man is unfaithful—beautiful Death!" he cried.
His mother gave a sort of shriek.
"Vincent! You're not going to kill yourself?"
"No!" he cried. "No! To kill my brother!"
"Kill Eddie?"
"Don't be such a damned fool!" he said irritably, annoyed that she had misunderstood and cheapened his climax. "I'm going to the war."
Until that moment they had, to tell the truth, taken very little notice of this war. It had been going on for some weeks, with great head-lines in the papers, but in their isolated group it had very little significance. Their routine was in no way interrupted. Eddie worried over it, but then he worried over everything. He said it was disastrous for the market. However, they were quite sure that he would bring home money for them, if not in one way, then in another, and they weren't really disturbed.
And now suddenly the war and Vincent came bursting in upon them with violence.
XI
Vincent, of course, had to go out of the room at once after that declaration, leaving the three women astounded.
Mrs. Russell was the first to bestir herself. Perhaps because she was conscious that her emotions were so feeble, she always strained to emphasize, to exaggerate them. She at once affected a great excitement. She began rushing about, under the pretense of "getting Vincent's room ready," and telling the servants that Mr. Vincent was home.
"And he's going to the war, Annie!" she cried. "Isn't that dreadful?"
Polly took no part in this movement. She went back, into her own room and sat down before her dressing-table.
"I'll do my own hair, Angelica," she said, with a new frigidity in her manner that surprised her companion.
"All right!" Angelica answered, with a trace of sulkiness.
"You can go if you like," Polly went on. "I won't need you any more to-night. I think, Angelica, you'd better have your dinner in your room. Mr. Geraldine might not like a stranger at the table the first evening he's home."
"All right!" said Angelica again, turning obediently to the door.
But she did not attempt to conceal a most provoking smile—to show Polly that she knew the cause of all this.
She went trailing back to her own room in the yellow negligee, and shut herself in, happy enough to be alone and unobserved. After all, what did it matter if she couldn't come down to dinner, couldn't see him at all that evening? She could think about him; she could recall his face and his voice, and thrill again to the strange charm of him.
She leaned back in her chair, her arms clasped behind her head, a strange and divinely stupid smile on her lips. Just at the threshold of love she was lingering, in that little moment before there is desire or pain, when love is without substance, without thought, a, dim ecstasy, with no more motive, no more basis for its joy, than the dream of an opium-smoker.
"Gawd!" she said to herself, with a grin. "I guess I'm hit this time, all right!"
There was a knock at the door. She went leisurely to open it, with the expectation of seeing her dinner served on a tray; but it was Eddie, the loyal Eddie, come to fetch her. He was rather pale and quite unsmiling.
"If you'll get dressed," he said. "We're waiting for you to come to dinner."
"Mrs. Geraldine said—"
"It doesn't matter. You must come. I wouldn't sit down without you."
He looked at her, and his face twitched. She looked so strange, so terribly aloof! He was unstrung, anyhow. He had had a beastly interview with his brother, and a somewhat unpleasant five minutes with Polly, whom he so much admired. He had really annoyed her, for the sake of this devilish girl. He was filled with dread and distress, with a wretched sense of impending calamity—what people call a presentiment. Perhaps it was because his mind unconsciously recognized all the elements here for a hellish conflagration.
"Hurry, won't you?" he said. "We're waiting."
She did hurry, and her dressing took only ten minutes; but she was very much surprised to find Eddie still waiting for her, and still more surprised when he took her by the arm and for the first time used her name.
"Angelica!" he said in a low voice.
"What?" she asked, startled.
"Don't!"
"Don't what, Mr. Eddie?"
He didn't answer, but he squeezed her arm, and when she looked up into his face it was desperately anxious.
"All right!" she said, half understanding what he wished her to understand.
For she, too, was vaguely aware of danger; she, too, could dimly perceive whither her eager feet were leading her; but she ran to it, flew to it. She, too, had an odd and terrible feeling of approaching ill fortune. She felt disaster drawing near, yet was not able even to wish to avoid it.
She sat down at the table, next to Vincent; and she hadn't been there for fifteen minutes before she was lost. His bold eyes rested on her face, and all her own boldness turned to surrender, her own fierceness melted. She couldn't turn away from him; she sat very still, enthralled, listening to his voice, watching his mobile face, the fine, straight brows moving so expressively, his supple hands.
He was still in his rough sport clothes, and his bright brown hair was ruffled. He had an air about him of fine, arrogant carelessness that she could worship. He had none of Eddie's punctilio, no sort of nice manners; he had only an indifferent ease, a most complete disregard for any other living soul.
He interrupted without compunction, he made no pretense of listening; he wanted to do all the talking, and he wanted to be listened to with respect. Well, why not? Angelica wished nothing better than to look at him and listen to him forever; she couldn't bear the idea of having to leave his presence.
Every time he looked at her, she was looking at him—at those curious eyes not quite alike. She was bewitched, really lost; she scarcely knew what she was doing. She felt that she shouldn't look at him so much, but that was quite beyond her control. The other people seemed dim and far away, hardly audible. He was filling up the world.
He talked of the war, and his words were glorious. Oh, he was a poet, truly! His talk of blood and battles fired her imagination. Eddie's studious dissertations upon the rights and wrongs of the conflict seemed to her contemptible. A man mustn't go to war because it is his duty, but because he loves it; because he is a hero, like Vincent.
"I'm going!" he said. "I long for it. It's the completion of a man's life. Until he has fought and killed, a man has not lived. That is his manhood, his glory. Think of all Europe rushing, blood-mad, to the Flanders battle-fields, all the young and the fine and the strong herded there, to kill or to die! My God! The very pinnacle of life!"
"Or the lowest depth," said Eddie.
Vincent laughed.
"You're no warrior, my dear boy," he said. "Well, we don't expect it of you."
Eddie grew red.
"VINCENT!" CRIED MRS. RUSSELL. "EDDIE'S BEEN SO—"
"I dare say I'm as much of a warrior as the next man," he said. "I dare say I'd like it—this fighting and killing; but I don't see anything fine about it. I don't glorify it. I think it's beastly. There are plenty of things that I'd enjoy that I don't by any means admire. This fighting is a filthy relic of our old barbarous days."
"Then so are all our splendid passions, my boy. God keep us barbarous, and men! You chilly, cowering little pen-drivers—"
"That's enough!" said Eddie. "You're talking rot—pure rot!"
He was making a desperate effort to control a furious anger; for the sake of his own dignity he didn't dare to quarrel with Vincent. He knew his brother and his unholy resources too well.
"All those chaps in offices and so on," he continued. "You don't know anything about them. If it comes to the test—"
"Oh, you'll all do your duty, all you little money-grubbers!" said Vincent. "I don't doubt that; but what we need—what the world is sick for, dying for—is men who are inspired."
"EDDIE BE DAMNED! HOW ARE YOU, POLLY?"
"They might be inspired by something better than drunken enthusiasm," said Eddie.
Vincent laughed again, and looked around the table at his worshiping women; but his glance rested upon Angelica. She caught her breath, stared up at him; and then, for the first time, smiled at him, a smile quite strange to her, trembling and uncertain.
Eddie pushed back his chair and got up. "Miss Kennedy," he said, "I've some more books for you—if you'll come and get them."
"All right!" she answered carelessly.
He hesitated a moment, as if he were about to speak; then he went on up-stairs into his room, leaving the door open so that he could watch the lighted hall. He saw his mother go by, into her own room; then he heard the sound of the piano down-stairs—Polly's familiar touch.
"I suppose she'll stay down there—jabbering!" he said to himself, jealous, hurt beyond measure. "When he comes, with his damned swagger, of course she has no further use for—for study and improvement. She'll forget all about coming!"
He couldn't read himself. He sat facing the door, restless, miserable. There came to his mind so many stories he had read, operas he had heard, with the tragic rivalry of brothers for their theme. And wasn't he the very prototype of the good brother, the husband, the one who is always wronged by the reckless, handsome one—by Vincent? He thrust the thought away. Damned nonsense! No one was in love with any one else in this house!
He recognized an old and most unworthy adversary in this jealousy, something which he had tried for years to combat. It was the most convincing proof of Eddie's greatness of soul that he did so struggle with this envy, and that he did not hate his brother. He had every possible reason for doing so. He had the memory of years and years of injuries and injustices; he had seen this brother always exalted above him, always held up to him as an example of all the social virtues.
"If you'd only try to be more like Vincent!" his mother used to sigh.
Eddie couldn't dance, couldn't sing, couldn't in any sort of way ingratiate himself. He wasn't liked. His goodness itself was perhaps the chief thing against him.
"I never worry about Eddie," Mrs. Russell had often said in his hearing. "He's perfectly safe." And he knew that this was a most unattractive thing to be.
He had never got on with Vincent. There was only two years' difference between them, and Eddie had never been able to make even this apparent. He was smaller, he developed much more slowly, he never could obtain any of the prestige due to him as the elder. Eddie, at nineteen, was nothing but a somewhat priggish and very shy schoolboy, while Vincent, at seventeen, was a young man.
It must not be imagined, however, that Eddie was in any way subservient to his brother. For the most part, they were quite indifferent to each other. They very rarely met; they went to different schools, and Eddie spent his holidays with his mother and Vincent with his father. When their father died, and they were once more under one roof, with their mother, they had separate friends, separate interests.
When anything did bring them together, they fought. Eddie had more than once been sent rolling in the dirt by his bigger brother; and in spite of the tradition that the normal boy loves the fellow who pummels him most heartily, this didn't breed affection in Eddie's heart. He resented it. He was fiendishly proud and sensitive, and he couldn't forget such outrages.
He had fleeting visions of certain miserable moments—visions of the triumphant and exuberant Vincent, of being taken to see Vincent graduated with honors, to hear him read a valedictory poem he had written, to see him surrounded, overwhelmed with admiration, of watching him win races, play in tennis tournaments and amateur theatricals, of hearing him sing. It seemed to him that he had spent a great part of his youth sitting beside his mother and watching Vincent show off.
There were facets to Vincent's nature which he never regarded or attempted to comprehend. This poetic stuff, for instance. He had heard Vincent recite from his work, but he hadn't seen much in it for admiration. He had simply taken for granted what every one told him, that his brother was a poet. It had never occurred to him that there were grades of poets.
There was something mysterious at which he merely guessed, a side to his brother too amazing and unpleasant to contemplate. Eddie, with his rigid self-discipline, his ceaseless struggle to perfect himself, could in no way comprehend the laxity, the facile debauchery, the equally facile repentance, of an ill-balanced and self-indulgent soul. He had more than once fancied he heard his brother weeping and groaning, sometimes shut in with his mother, sometimes with Polly; but when be actually saw him—big, strong, insolent, forever bragging of his manhood—he couldn't believe it. He couldn't reconcile the idea of hysterical weakness with this conquering creature. He imagined it must be merely some expression of the poetic temperament.
No, this victorious brother was without blemish; he had become in Eddie's eyes a rival of quite fantastic perfection. He was handsome, he was strong, he was fascinating, he was a poet; he had every accomplishment, every charm. He was not to be withstood.
And, just as he was reflecting, he saw Angelica go by the door, absolutely oblivious of him, without so much as turning her head. He heard her door close; he waited, but he knew it was of no use. She had forgotten him!
Polly, too, was thinking of Vincent. With that pitiful stupidity of women, who can never quite believe themselves without attraction, she had seated herself at the piano and begun to play. She knew he loved music; she hoped to interest him with a curious new piece.
She wasn't in love with him any longer. She didn't even wish him, exactly, to love her; but she was passionately anxious to secure his attention. She had that hunger which all really fine women have—the hunger for being appreciated, recognized. She deluded herself with the idea that after an episode with some worthless little hussy, he couldn't help but contrast such a creature with Polly, and be filled with remorse and respect.
As a matter of fact, he felt nothing in the world but irritation. He did contrast Polly with the girl whom he had left the day before, but it was to the disadvantage of his wife. He saw her to be sallow, weary, faded. She had, he thought, only one good point—she didn't nag; didn't even ask where he'd been.
He came and listened to her music. She saw him sitting close to her, with a look of pleasure on his face, and she put all her art, all her skill, into her playing; but when she glanced up from a difficult passage, he had gone.
She went on playing, but it was mournful, dispirited music; the improvisings of a forlorn heart.
Mrs. Russell alone never gave a thought to Vincent. She had gone to bed very early, as she liked to do, and lay reading a French detective story. Her eyes were bright with interest; she was delighted.
Angelica had not turned on the light. She sat by the open window of her room, near which a big lime-tree was rustling in the dark. The grass, the bushes, the clouds, were all moving, and she fancied that moths and bats and other little night creatures fluttered by. The breeze was going past her; she felt none of it on her face. She had an impression of being spectator of a mighty procession, forever passing her window in dim, dark shapes.
She was excited and exultant; in the dark her lips were smiling. She wasn't thinking; she was drifting, lost in an endless reverie, upon the strength and beauty of this man. She was like poor Polly, playing uncounted variations on one sole theme.
"I never felt this way before!" she reflected with wonder. "I never thought I could!"
But then she had never expected to meet a man like this, so entirely the hero of her dreams. With her sad, worldly wisdom, she had expected so little of love or of men. She had expected to be satisfied with some one who would love her; she had never, in her pride, imagined a man whom she could love. This noble and poetic soul was a shock to her, an amazement. Her fancy dwelt upon his splendid figure, his bold face. She smiled again, and then grew suddenly uneasy.
"No!" she said. "I don't like it. I wish I didn't. Him being married, and all!"
For a moment she had an inchoate perception of life going by like that wind outside, only not passing her, but bearing her with it. She knew that this thing could not be stopped.
"Maybe I'd better go home," she thought. "I don't want to get mixed up in anything queer. Maybe I'll go."
But that wasn't genuine; retreat wasn't in her soul. Her vague uneasiness increased; she began thinking of Eddie and his books, and those magnificent women.
"But all of them," she thought, "just went for the man they wanted, I guess, and didn't give a darn for anything else. Maybe that's the best way."
She dallied with the idea of reckless, overwhelming passion, but she could not whoHy accept it. There was something humiliating in caring so much for a man.
There was a quiet little knock at the door. Angelica's hand flew to her heart; she didn't stir. There was another knock, and still she didn't answer. Then, fancying she heard a footstep departing, she was seized with an unreasonable panic, and flew across the dark room and stood close beside the door.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"It's I," said the voice she had longed for and dreaded.
"Well, what do you want?" she asked flippantly.
"I thought you'd like to take a walk in the garden," he said.
"Why? It's too late!" she cried.
"Can't we have a little talk?" he asked plaintively. "Can't I come in?"
She hesitated.
"I guess—you'd better not. I'll see you in the morning. It's so late now."
"I didn't think you'd care about such things," he said.
She saw that he was disappointed; that he found her tame, cowardly. She unlocked the door and flung it open.
"But what on earth is there to talk about?" she asked, laughing nervously.
And then and there and forever she lost her advantage over Vincent. For that moment she was triumphant, indulgently amused by his eagerness, mistress of the situation and of him, elated by the knowledge that she was beloved and desired; but no sooner had Vincent really entered than he dominated the situation. His big hand closed over hers. He bent over her and whispered in the darkness:
"I couldn't sleep till I'd seen you again!"
"Well!" she said, with the same forced little laugh. "Here I am!"
He seemed in the dark to tower above her; his bigness, the resonance of his deep voice, confused her.
"I couldn't sleep without seeing you," he said again. "I had to know that you were real. After you had gone, I thought I must have dreamed you. You were so lovely, so wonderful, you came upon me so suddenly! You are real, aren't you?"
Again she gave a stupid laugh.
"Tell me!" he said. "Are you the girl that I saw at the dinner-table—the houri in yellow that I saw in my mother's room?"
"Yes."
"And only to think!" he said. "I've been looking for you all my life long, all over the world, and I find you here, under my own roof, when I come home! Were you waiting for me?"
"I didn't know there was any you," she said simply.
"I knew there was you, though! I knew I should find you!" he cried. "Oh, I've hungered for you and thirsted for you! I've been so restless and unsatisfied! I couldn't believe my eyes. I've found you, dear, beloved girl!"
"But you don't know me!" she protested, with an almost painful anxiety. "Perhaps I'm not—as nice—as you think."
"I do know you! I know all your soul. I was born to know you and to comprehend you. You are my sovereign, my most beautiful and adored lady. I am your knight and your servant forever. I think I could faint with joy for a touch of your dear hand!"
Tears sprang to her eyes, she was so moved by his words, by his ardent and touching voice. She stood motionless, still with her hand in his; but some tremor, some sign which his agile heart at once detected, must have told him that his moment had come. He drew her close to him and clasped her in a strong and tender embrace, her heart beating close to his, while he stroked her soft hair.
"My little one!" he whispered. "My beloved little one! Madonna! Dear, glorious angel!"
His voice broke in a sort of sob, and the hand smoothing her hair trembled. He bent and kissed her cheek, kissed her again; then, suddenly, his embrace tightened, and he pressed his lips against hers with something quite different, something quite devoid of tenderness. She struggled, pushed him roughly away.
"Don't!" she said sharply.
For she wanted it to stop there. She wanted this to be love, this half-sad ecstasy, these stirring, heart-breaking words. She wished to go no further. Perhaps the ghosts of dead mothers for ages back come to beseech young girls, to entreat them in silent voices:
"Oh, do not, my daughter, for the love of God, do not become a woman! Stop here! Let this suffice! For whatever little you may gain, you will lose a hundred times as much. Draw back from this bitter, bitter draft!"
"Kiss me!" he entreated, following her further into the room.
"No!" she said harshly. "Go away! Go out and close the door! Go away, or I'll call!"
He stopped at once.
"I thought you loved me!" he cried.
"I do," she said, with sublime honesty. "Only—I want you to go. Good night!"
XII
And here was Angelica, the very next afternoon, sitting once more in her mother's underground kitchen, with the teapot handy beside her on the stove and a familiar blue and white cup and saucer before her; but the kitchen was not as in the old days. Now it was all disorder and dirt, the clock had stopped, the floor was unswept, the bright blackness of the stove was lost in a grayish fuzz. The mistress—or, one might better say, the servant—of this little domain, who had worked so valiantly to preserve its decency, was lying ill in the adjoining bedroom.
Angelica had got a brief note from her that morning at the breakfast-table:
Dear Angelica:
I am taken ill, and do not know how ever I shall manage. If you can spare the time, I wish you would come.
Angelica had shown this to Eddie, and he had at once ordered the motor for her and given her twenty-five dollars for any urgent expenses.
"Get everything that's necessary," he told her. "If she's very ill, be sure to get a nurse. Don't overtax yourself. And here's my office telephone number; I'll expect to hear from you this afternoon."
Angelica had got a doctor from the neighborhood. He had declared her mother's illness to be a sort of indigestion, and had ordered a cessation of boiled tea, a strengthening diet, a number of medicines, and a week's complete rest; and now Mrs. Kennedy was enjoying the rest.
Angelica had set to work with terrific energy; had gone flying in and out of the flat, using Eddie's money to great advantage. She bought her mother two new night-dresses, a bag of oranges, a drinking-glass—they had had nothing but cups for a long time—and two new saucepans for cooking the food she was to enjoy. Her last purchases had included extension screens for the windows and a wire "flyswatter," with which she had pursued and deftly crushed every fly in the flat.
After lunch she intended to clean the rooms properly, to scrub, to sweep, to dust, to wash. She rather looked forward to it. Her mother wasn't seriously ill, and she had had the extreme satisfaction of making her happy and comfortable.
She had left her lying neat and peaceful in her dark little cell, with her hair brushed and braided and her mind at peace.
Mrs. Kennedy had said that it was better than medicine to see her child again, and it was—above all, to see her child so triumphantly happy. Letters had told her very little, for Angelica was not good at writing, and her brief notes had given her mother plenty of scope for anxiety. She hadn't thought it possible that her child had actually held her own there among the rich people. She wanted to ask innumerable questions, to talk at great length; but Angelica made use of the doctor's recommendation.
"He said for you to be very quiet and not talk much," she stated.
"You talk and I'll listen," said her mother.
"No, that 'll excite you," Angelica replied. "You just keep quiet, mommer, till you're better."
She could not talk to Mrs. Kennedy; she felt absolutely obliged to go off alone where she could think of Vincent. All the morning, even through her great anxiety before she had got to her mother, all the while she was working to make her patient comfortable, that delight had glowed in her heart. She had scarcely closed her eyes the night before, but she was not in any way tired. She was in a sort of continuous rapture; she was filled with energy, vigor, an immeasurable good-will.
She rocked back and forth in the creaking old chair of which her mother was so fond, and drank her tea, as it, had been their custom to drink it, black and bitter, with a parsimonious teaspoonful of condensed milk in it. She smiled to think of the contrast between this sort of tea-drinking and that at Buena Vista—the fine and delicate china, the pale amber liquid, served with cream, crystal sugar, thin slices of lemon, all sorts of biscuits and cakes, all the ceremony of the thing. She felt that, after a11, there was a tranquil sort of comfort in her present state quite lacking in the other; not realizing that it was the happiness in her heart which gilded all her surroundings.
She pictured Vincent and herself in a place like this, blessed outcasts who had renounced everything, and had only each other. She imagined his coming home to her, weary and pallid; she saw herself welcoming him, smiling, proud, brave through any suffering, her ambitions all renounced, all her hope in him. She fetched a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush and a cake of horrible yellow soap, and while she worked bemused herself with a fancy that this was Vincent's home, and that she was working for him.
Because she so longed to see him, she felt sure that he would come. When the doorbell rang, she sprang up from the floor she was scrubbing, and ran just as she was, disheveled, in her wet apron, to let him in.
She met the troubled regard of Eddie.
"How is your mother?" he inquired, staring and staring at this joyous, untidy creature.
VINCENT CAME AND LISTENED TO POLLY'S MUSIC. SHE SAW HIM SITTING CLOSE TO HER
"Better," said Angelica.
She was friendly, very well-disposed toward Eddie, and yet, at this moment, irritated by him because he wasn't Vincent. Really she didn't want to see him. She remained holding the door half open, and hoping that he would go; but he stood there for some time, frowning a little and biting his little yellow mustache in silence.
"Do you mind if I come in?" he asked at last.
"No, of course not! Come on in, if you want; only mommer's in bed—"
"I wanted to see you alone," he said, his frown deepening to a scowl. "May I?"
Her heart sank. It was surely something about Vincent—a reproof, an accusation, perhaps dismissal. She led the way into the tiny parlor, black as a dungeon, and with barred windows, too; took off her apron and threw it, a sodden bundle, out into the hall. Then she sat down defiantly before him.
"Well?" she demanded.
Eddie waited for a moment.
"I've been thinking," he said at last. "About you. A lot. Especially last night. If you've got time to spare, and if you'll listen—"
"Go ahead! I'm listening."
She was still defiant, because she expected a rebuke, and she was well aware that there was quite enough cause in her conduct to merit severe reproofs. He was so serious, so disturbed, that she believed him to be disappointed in her, and she resented that.
"Well?" she said again.
"It's this," he said. "I—I wish I could make you believe that I'm not selfish in this. I wish I had some way of making you believe that I'm really thinking of you, first of all. You seem so—solitary, so—unprotected. Of course, I know you're very self-reliant, and all that, but still, you're only a young girl, after all."
POLLY PUT ALL HER ART, ALL HER SKILL, INTO HER PLAYING
"I can take care of myself," she said sullenly. "I suppose you mean you don't like the way I've been acting. Well, I—"
"No!" he cried impatiently. "What nonsense! No! What I mean is—I think you'd better marry me."
"Oh, Gawd!" cried Angelica, astounded.
Eddie's face grew scarlet.
"Why shouldn't you?" he said.
"But—"
"I've—I can offer you—I have a good income," he went on, angry and embarrassed. "I own Buena Vista, with a small mortgage on it. I have something invested, and I'm earning plenty. I'm doing well. I'll be a rich man before long."
"Yes, I know; but—"
"And—I think I'd make a good husband. I admire you so much—I can't tell you how much! I think you're—wonderful. You haven't a penny, you haven't any family, any position—"
"Now, look here!" she interrupted threateningly.
He hastened to repair his lack of tact.
"I'm only mentioning that to show you that I think that you—just yourself—are worth more than any other woman on earth. It seems to me you have all the qualities I've always admired—pride, and spirit, and ambition, and strength—and then you're so beautiful. I—really, Angelica, if you would marry me, I could do anything. I'm only twenty-seven, you know."
"Oh, I thought you were much older!" said Angelica, glad of any distraction from this awful topic.
To her amazement, Eddie sprang to his feet and looked down at her, quite pale with anger.
"No doubt!" he cried. "No doubt you looked on me as a dull, tiresome, middle-aged man. You're like all women—you must have a handsome man—any fool with a handsome face, who'll make you fine speeches! If I'd go down on my knees and rant and rave like a damned actor—but I won't! I'm not that sort. I tell you, in a straightforward way, that I—I ask you to marry me. I'm—I've got nothing to be ashamed of—nothing! One or two little things in the past—but nothing serious. I mean, no one can reproach me. I've never harmed any one."
"Oh, I know it!" she cried. "It's not that. I know you're good—too good for me. I think an awful lot of you, Mr. Eddie. Only—"
"Only what?"
"I couldn't!"
"Now, see here, Angelica, I haven't much time. I've come away in the very middle of my office hours to—settle this. I can't work, I can't do anything until this is off my mind. It's—don't be unreasonable, please, Angelica!"
"I'm not, Mr. Eddie; but—I just can't!"
"Do you mean," he said, "that I'm distasteful to you?"
That was his weak point, his sorest spot, this sense of his own unattractiveness, his unpopularity. He had labored too long under disadvantages too crushing; he couldn't acquire the self-respect to which his qualities entitled him. He had never been loved, not even by his own mother, and he could not destroy a conviction, persisting from childhood, that he was in some mysterious way unlovable and repulsive.
He turned away abruptly.
"Very well!" he said. "I understand. I'll go. Good-by!"
"No! Don't! It's not that. You're not distasteful!" she cried. "Honestly, you're not—not a bit! I think an awful lot of you. I think you're—grand. I do, really; but I'm just not in love with you. I can't help it. It isn't that you're not handsome, or anything like that."
She was moved by his wretched, pallid face. She wanted very much to reassure him as to his desirability and attractiveness. She wanted him to know of her admiration and her great good-will; but she knew no way of saying all this. She caught his hand and squeezed it; and when he turned, she looked up at him with those wonderful black eyes, troubled, filled with tears.
"But can't we keep on being good friends?" she asked.
He forced himself to smile down at her in his old kindly way—or as nearly that as his drawn face would allow.
"I'll try," he said. "Good day!"
Mrs. Kennedy wished to have all this explained to her.
"Who was it, Angle?" she asked.
"It was Mr. Eddie—him that owns the house," said Angelica.
"What did he want?"
"Oh, nothing!"
"Angle, tell your mother, deary. What made you cry?"
"I don't know. I was nervous, I guess."
Her mother sighed.
"If you've made up your mind not to tell me— You know your own business best, I dare say; only, Angelica, I hope there's nothing wrong about it-nothing that's what it shouldn't be?"
"No! If you really want to know, he wants to marry me."
She couldn't conceal a sort of pride. After all, it was something!
Her mother was not garrulous, but this she couldn't stop talking of; she couldn't have enough of Eddie, no detail was too trivial. She wanted to have' a complete description of his person and of his life.
But Angelica's reception of his proposal she didn't mention. She saw that there was something a bit strained in that quarter, something which talking might make worse, so she held her tongue, confident that it would end right enough. A girl's whim! She knew her daughter; Angelica was far too sensible and shrewd not to take advantage of such an opportunity. She permitted herself to dream of a future for her child glorious beyond all her former hopes.
For herself she expected nothing. She knew—none better—what there is of gratitude in this world. She trusted her child, knew that she would never forget or neglect her, but she knew also that Angelica was likely to rise where she never could follow. There would be a pension, no doubt, but no real share in any future grandeur for Mrs. Kennedy, scrubwoman, janitress, and martyr.
Her dreaming was disturbed, however, and her happiness turned to uneasiness by the arrival of a second man that night. She heard the bell ring and her daughter hasten to the door, and then come back again.
"Mommer, do you mind if I go out for a little while?" she asked.
"Who with, Angle?"
"A feller," said Angelica. "I'll be back inside of an hour, sure. Will you be all right?"
"What fellow?"
"A new beau," Angelica told her, laughing. "By-by, mommer! Back soon!"
So joyous, so excited! It didn't look well for Eddie.
"Now what in the world is that child up to?" Mrs. Kennedy thought.
In the mean time Angelica had reached the street with Vincent, and they stood on the corner, irresolute. It was a sultry night; the street was swarming with wretched and vicious life, evil smells, a pandemonium of noise. Angelica, however, might have been standing in the golden streets of paradise, or in the desolation of hell, for all she cared. She didn't notice, she didn't really know, where she was.
Ever since she had opened the door and seen Vincent standing outside, she had been quite beside herself. She waited on that malodorous corner, looking up into his face with hungry eyes, waiting for his words, for the sound of his voice. So much had she thought about that enchanted love scene in the dark, so long had she dwelt upon Vincent's words, his appearance, that in this brief interlude she had been able to accomplish that amazing and essential transformation of lovers—she had changed the real man into the man she wished him to be.
She was dazed, stupid with the splendor of her own creation, of the god whom she had made to worship. She was almost afraid of him. After all her preposterously exaggerated day-dreams, it was necessary that she should see in him a marvel, and of course she did see a marvel.
He wore a dark suit that fitted closely to his shoulders, and molded for the delighted eye his splendid figure, his perfectly proportioned height. He was powerful and at the same time graceful, and he carried himself regally. In his rôle of poet, he wore a white shirt with a low, open collar and a soft black tie, and he went with his hat in his hand, the better to show his keen, vigorous profile, his fine head with its rough, bright hair. Angelica felt that she would never grow tired of looking at him, and yet in less than five minutes she grew restless because he didn't look at her.
At last he did, and smiled.
"Well?" he said. "What shall we do, eh?"
"Whatever you like."
"God forbid!"
"Why?" she demanded impudently. "What would you like?"
"I'd like to kiss you, for one thing; but I won't. Don't be provoking, naughty Angelica—I won't make love to you!"
His tone was light and careless, and the smile he gave her she neither understood nor liked. She was puzzled and hurt. What made him so different? What was the matter?
"Suppose we walk?" he suggested. "This isn't a very appetizing corner to stand on. How is your mother?"
"Better," said Angelica in a surly tone.
"And you?"
"All right."
"I don't know who else there is in your household, but I hope they're all quite well. Brothers and sisters—"
"Don't be silly!" she said roughly.
"Angelica," he replied, "I'm not silly. I'm only trying to be decent. You're very young, very inexperienced. It's hard to talk to you. I hoped you'd understand without an explanation, but I don't believe now that you can."
She could have wept with chagrin and utter bewilderment. She saw that she was being very stupid, and that she was disappointing her idol in some way, but she couldn't in the least comprehend how.
"You see," he went on, with an air of extreme patience and gentleness, "all that—last night—it was very wrong. I blame myself severely. My ideas about such things aren't the usual sort, by any means. I don't parade it, but I'm a deeply religious man; and when I find myself giving way to temptation as I did last night, I'm ashamed."
They went along in silence, down Seventh Avenue, to the entrance of the park at One Hundred and Tenth Street. They entered here, and proceeded, at the easy pace he had set, side by side, both looking ahead. All about them in the warm dark were lovers, sitting close together on the benches, walking hand in hand. There was a very atmosphere of love. And Angelica must go on beside this man, who didn't even turn his head to look at her, who had nothing to say to her. He only quoted some poetry which she neither liked nor understood, for it had nothing to do with love; it was about the foreign people in the city and the hot weather.
WHEN THE DOOR-BELL RANG, ANGELICA SPRANG UP FROM THE FLOOR SHE WAS SCRUBBING
She tried to lean upon her pride. Very well, if he didn't mind wasting this precious and beautiful hour together, then neither would she; but she couldn't restrain a hoarse little sob that flew suddenly into her throat.
Vincent stopped.
"Now, my dear child!" he remonstrated. "Don't! You make it so hard for me. It's not kind."
She tried to stop weeping, but couldn't at once. He laid a hand on her shoulder and gently patted her.
"You mustn't take it like this, my dear; or else I sha'n't be strong enough. Do you know why I came to-night?"
"I suppose—you wanted to see me."
"No, I didn't. It's only pain for me to see you. I can't have you. I mustn't even think of you. I've got to give you up. I've got to stop loving you."
"Can you?" she asked with quivering lips.
"I must. I came to tell you so. You must forget all I said last night. I shouldn't be fit to live if I were to harm you. Angelica, what do you think I am? Do you think I could harm you? Do you think it's in me to do so brutal a thing, Angelica?"
She was effectually checked, her ardor destroyed. Nettled by his assumption that only his nobility saved her, her pride came to the aid. He needn't talk of giving her up when he hadn't got her!
And, ignorant as Angelica was, a novice in love, she was able to perceive a certain falseness in his attitude. This was not the renunciation of a man who loved her better than himself. It was something different, which she didn't understand, and which displeased her.
She had such a feminine longing to be captured and compromised that she couldn't even imagine the motive which just then ruled Vincent—that powerful instinct of the male to escape entanglements; but her fresh and fervent spirit was able by instinct to perceive his staleness. Mystery as he was to her, she nevertheless felt, with perfect justness, that at that moment he cared nothing at all for her.
"Let's turn back!" she said. "I told mommer I wouldn't be gone long."
He made no objection. He took her back to her own door and stood hat in hand to wish her a good night.
"Angelica," he said, "I think you will thank me some day."
She didn't reply, only turned and left him, and went into the flat.
Her mother was asleep, and everything was quiet. She sat down in the dark kitchen near the barred window, where a beam of light from a flat overhead, across the court, fell upon her.
"Well!" she said. "That's over, I guess!"
An awful sense of frustration swept over her. That all this should stop before it had fairly begun; that this beautiful love should be stamped out—intolerable! It was not in her nature to submit; there was no resignation in her. She could not bear to be thwarted here, at the threshold of her life, at the very beginning of the adventure to which she had always looked forward.
She cried fiercely to God that she didn't love this man, that he wasn't the one for whom she had longed. She wouldn't weep! If she could, she would have torn out of her body that treacherous heart which so belied her pride.
"All right, my lad!" she said. "All right! You won't find it very hard to give me up!"
She lighted the gas and sauntered about the kitchen, eating whatever she saw—bread and biscuits, with a little cold tea that was in the teapot. She even whistled softly to herself.
Mrs. Kennedy waked up, and Angelica went in to see what her mother wanted. She strictly discouraged conversation, however, and questions.
"Don't talk, mommer. It's too late. Go to sleep now. I'm coming to bed myself right away. I'll put out the light and get undressed in the dark, so you can get to sleep."
Which she did. Her mother heard her moving adroitly about, heard her brushing her hair, and, at last, the wild shriek of a spring cot, bought second-hand the day before.
For half an hour Angelica lay quite still; then suddenly she sat up.
"You!" she whispered, with a sob. "You! You go to hell! I don't care!"
XIII
Angelica was surprised at getting a letter the next morning, for she never got letters. The writing was necessarily unfamiliar, as there was none that would not have been. She opened it.
"Angelica, beloved girl!" it began. "I can't do it!"
"Why, my Gawd!" she whispered. "It's from him!"
I can't give you up! I tried—God knows I did, but I can't! I can't think of consequences, of honor, of anything but this heavenly madness that is destroying me. Even if I lose my soul, even if it brings ruin and misery upon you whom I worship, I must have you, Angelica! Oh, come back to me! Come back to me! The farce is over. I have played my rôle of prudent, honorable man of the world. Here I am now, without reserve, without the smallest shred of worldly wisdom, without conscience, without civilization; nothing, my Angelica, but a man!
Vincent.
She was wild with joy. She set to work with terrific energy, the letter crushed inside her blouse. She insisted upon finishing the ironing which Mrs. Kennedy had tried to do for a tenant before she became ill. She stood over the ironing-board singing in her rather husky voice.
Nothing but a misunderstanding, after all! He did love her, he had only tried to do what was right. She felt a profound pity for him, her poor poet, who had done his very best to protect her, until love overwhelmed him.
"You bet I'll go back to him!" she said to herself.
Her mother was alarmed. She saw—who could help it?—the exaltation of her child, and she wished to know the cause. Poor woman! She feared joy with all her soul.
"Who was that other man you went out with last night. Angle?" she asked.
"Oh! The brother of the other feller."
Her mother reflected.
"You seem to like him better," she said at last.
"Yes, I do."
"Is he nice?"
"Yes, he is."
"But you're not—"
"I don't know, mommer!" she answered, laughing.
"YOU OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF," SAID ANGELICA, "AFTER ALL SHE'S DONE FOR YOU"
"Deary! I wish you'd tell me!"
"There's nothing tell."
"But, my deary, don't be foolish. Don't be hasty! Try to find out if he's—a good man, before you let yourself think about him. Is he a good man, Angle?"
"He's a good-looking one, anyway," Angelica answered flippantly. "Now, mommer dear, please don't worry about me. I'm not a fool!"
"But you're young. Angle, and you're very hasty. I do worry about you. You never tell me anything. You won't listen to me."
Angelica, with that letter next her heart, was patient.
"I do listen to you, mommer. Now, do you want a glass of milk?"
She was patient, because she was indifferent, because for the first time in her life she didn't care about her mother, didn't care what Mrs. Kennedy thought or how she felt. She wanted, in fact, to get away from her, to be quite free and not bothered by questions.
"Shall I go back to him now?" she thought. "This instant? Just like I am?"
But that, though splendid, wouldn't do, and couldn't be arranged; so she sat down to write him a letter. It took her no more than a minute to finish it, for this was all that she wrote:
I will come back to you. I love you, too.
Angelica.
The telephone rang—that hateful telephone in the dark outer hall, under the stairs. This was one of the "modern conveniences" of the apartment-house, and it was her mother's duty to attend it, and by screaming, by ringing the down-stairs bells, or, when they were broken, by toiling up the stairs, to apprize the tenant whom it summoned. They both hated the thing. When it rang, they would sigh, "Oh, that telephone!" and go wearily to serve it.
It was a surprise and a great relief to hear Eddie's voice on the telephone, for Angelica had been half afraid that the etiquette prevailing among rich people would prevent any further communication. She wasn't even sure as to whether or not she was expected to go back to Buena Vista. But Eddie wasn't that sort. His voice was just as it had always been—official, but quite kindly.
"Hello!" he said. "How's your mother?"
"LISTEN HERE—YOU WOULDN'T STAND UP FOR HER IF YOU KNEW THE WAY SHE TALKS ABOUT YOU"
"Much better."
"That's good! Then have you any idea when you'll come back to us, Angelica?"
"In a week. Next Saturday, the doctor says."
"Good! I'll call for you next Saturday afternoon, when I leave the office. And I say, Angelica, don't you want Courtland to bring you some of the things you left at our place?"
"I would like a few of them," she answered gratefully.
And the busy, harassed Eddie, sitting in his office, with impatient men waiting to see him, with his stenographer pen in hand beside him, with a telegraph-boy behind him who required a reply, in the midst of the rattle of typewriters, the ringing of telephone-bells, the clicking of the ticker, hoarse, excited voices, all this frenzied life which he had caused to exist and directed and sustained—he took time to write down at Angelica's dictation a list of things she had left behind her in his house.
It touched him, that list, it was so obviously the list of a poor person—things that he, or any one he-knew, would have bought duplicates of without a second thought; things one would hardly bother to pack. He got them together himself when he reached home that evening—a tooth-brush, a cake of perfumed soap, a half-empty box of cheap writing-paper, hairpins, a nail-brush.
Courtland brought them that evening, much against his will. Who was she to have her wretched little belongings sent down to her in a motor-car? He was obliged to assert himself, to proclaim his independence and his superiority. He stood outside the door with his finger on the bell so that it rang in one long, maddening clamor, and he kicked at the door. He made an outrageous noise.
Angelica came flying down the hall in a fury, and flung open the door.
"What do you mean?" she cried. "Where do you think you are, anyway?"
Courtland stared at her for a minute. Then, making an imaginary lorgnette of his thumb and forefinger, he peered through it, bending forward from the waist in a preposterous and unseemly attitude.
"Aeoh!" he exclaimed in a simpering voice. "I beg your pawdon, I'm suah! I forgot myself, really, don'tcher know! If you will kindly permit me to enter this mansion, I will deliver to you this package of jools sent by the dook!"
"Give it to me and shut your mouth," said Angelica.
"What's all this?" called Mrs. Kennedy from her bed. "Who is it, Angle?"
"Only the chauffeur. He brought some of my things," her daughter answered in a contemptuous tone.
There was something about her daughter's words and tone that jarred upon Mrs. Kennedy. She came out of the bedroom in her new flannel wrapper, and addressed Courtland with ceremonious politeness.
"I'm sure we're very much obliged to you," she said. "Won't you step in? Maybe you'd take a cup of tea, and rest a few minutes?"
"Rest!" said Angelica. "He never does anything else!"
Courtland ignored her.
"I don't care if I do," he said to Mrs. Kennedy, and followed her into the kitchen, where he sat down heavily on the stepladder chair. "I'm as tired as a dawg," he said, with his invariable air of grievance. "It's enough to make you sick—driving that woman all over the country. No more consideration, she's got, than a—than a dawg!"
"Well," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I suppose that's what you're paid for."
"I know it!" he agreed plaintively. "That's all right; but then what does she want to be telling me I'm too good to be a chauffeur for? She says there's lots of fellows in college hasn't got my brains. And this golf! There she's got me the bag of clubs that cost Gawd knows what, and she just started showing me the way to use them. She said I was doing fine, and then, all of a sudden, she dropped it, and never said another word about it. I waited. After a while I began putting the bag of clubs in the car, to remind her. No, not a word! So I says to her to-day, 'What about this here golf?' And she says, with that grin of hers, 'Oh, I hawdly think it's worth while going on. I'm afraid it was a mistake'—and tells me I can sell the clubs!"
"What of it?" inquired Mrs. Kennedy. "They're no good to you. I can't see any sense in your learning to play golf. I can't see what you have to complain of."
"Oh, it's the way them rich people pick you up and then drop you that makes me sick! Who is she, anyway? An old—"
"You shouldn't say that!" said Mrs. Kennedy severely.
She was well enough used to bad language not to be shocked, but she was displeased.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Angelica, "after all she's done for you."
"I don't want her to do nothing for me. I want her to let me alone. Listen here—you wouldn't stand up for her if you knew the way she talks about you. I had the two of them out the other day, and they were fighting about you all the time. She said you was no good, and she guessed you'd stole things off her; but Mrs. G., she says no, you're all right. Then she says you'd make trouble in the house, and Mrs. G. says, 'Well, ain't there enough trouble there anyway? What do we care if we get a little more? I want her back,' she says. 'All right,' says the old lady, 'have her, if you want her, but don't kick if you find your hus—'"
Angelica had grown scarlet.
"My Gawd, what a lot you talk!" she said. "You better be starting home."
He eyed her with resentment.
"I'll go!" he said. "Don't you worry!"
After Courtland had gone, Mrs. Kennedy attempted to reprove her daughter for her bad manners, but Angelica insisted autocratically that she must go to bed at once.
"You shouldn't get up at all," she told her mother.
"The doctor said it wouldn't hurt me—just around the flat."
"Not at night! You'd ought to know better. You ought to be asleep by this time. Now, listen here, mommer!" she added firmly, as she saw signs of rebellion. "If you don't do what I say, I'm not going to stay and take care of you. The doctor said rest. Well, this isn't rest. You got to go to bed this instant!"
So did she rid herself of the necessity for talking, for listening, for recognizing the external world. She was irritable at the very least disturbance; her joy had gone, and left a bitter impatience. Five days before she could go back to that enchanted house where Vincent lived, to be again under the same roof, sitting at the same table! Five days lost out of life, out of her best years!
She was a little surprised and rather pleased at her own lack of morality. She really didn't care a bit, didn't feel in the least shocked or distressed, at loving a married man; nor did she hesitate for an instant at the prospect of going off with him. She believed that was what he meant; very well, she was ready!
She would leave her poor little mother desolate, she would humiliate and affront the kindly Polly, she would leave Eddie overwhelmed by disgrace and grief, and still she didn't care. She was deceiving her mother, deceiving Polly, shamefully deceiving Eddie, and she didn't care. On the contrary, she was rather proud of it. She felt that such insolent wickedness had in it more than a little magnificence of the sort possessed by the magnificent women of the past.
Oh, the world was well lost for Vincent, her poet lover! She read his letter again and cried over it—she who had shed so few tears in her life.
But in spite of all her hardihood, her pride in her love, she couldn't help feeling a great dread of Eddie. She didn't like to face him. She had a silly idea that by merely looking at her he might know all that her heart contained; and although he so much admired magnificence, she had no delusion as to his admiring this!
She got ready on Saturday afternoon in a state of great nervousness that subdued even her eagerness to be with Vincent again. She hadn't seen either of the brothers for the past five days; Eddie had telephoned every day, but there had been no word at all from Vincent.
That didn't trouble her, however. She felt that she and Vincent understood each other absolutely, no matter how long or how far apart they were. Just as she thought of him, he thought of her, longed for her. Her only trouble was this dread; if only it were not Eddie who were taking her to him! It seemed to cast a shadow upon the boldness and beauty of their love to dupe a creature so blameless and so generous as Eddie.
He was late. It had grown dark, and the lamp in the parlor was lighted, and she and her mother sat in there, talking—a word now and then, and long, long silences. They had nothing to say to each other. Angelica's heart had flown forward to meet her lover, while her mother's brain struggled wearily with the problems of the minute, of the next week, of some one's ironing, some one else's scrubbing, of whether she were going to earn enough to keep herself from getting ill again. They were effectually separated now.
Came a brisk ring at the bell, and Mrs. Kennedy went to open the door.
"Come in, sir!" Angelica heard her say.
"Mrs. Kennedy?" replied Eddie's voice. "I hope you're better?"
"Thank you, sir, I'm quite well again. Won't you step in?"
Angelica greeted him with an uncertain smile; she didn't know what his attitude would be. But he was certainly not vexed, or cold, or suspicious; he was simply excited, not himself.
"Well!" he said. "I've done it!"
"Done what?" she asked.
"I've enlisted."
"You're going to the war?"
"Yes."
"But I thought you didn't approve of it. You said it was beastly, and everything."
"Yes, I do think so; but—"
He hesitated, frowning. He didn't know how to explain; didn't, as a matter of fact, honestly wish to explain. His motive in going was purely selfish; he hoped in battle to make more of a man of himself, to glorify himself. It was the same impulse which sent him to historical books and to tremendous days of work—his earnest, priggish, sublime desire to perfect himself. He believed—like how many others!—that he would come back from the war a new man.
"I think I ought to go," he said, and was immediately ashamed of this self-righteous phrase.
Angelica, to tell the truth, was not much impressed by the war. It never stirred or moved her much at any time. She felt neither belligerent nor pacifist. She simply took it for granted. She was one of those peasant natures for whom it is quite impossible to feel either love or hate in the abstract. She could have hated with royal hatred a German who molested her, but she had no ill-will toward a German who invaded Belgium. And as for fine phrases about it, her rough and vigorous mind rejected them all. Ought to go? Why ought he to go? Just what did he expect to accomplish?
However, she didn't say this, any more than she allowed the least hint of her great relief to show. That was the first thought that crossed her mind—how much better it would be if Eddie were away!
Mrs. Kennedy shook her head.
"It's too bad!" she said. "Think of your poor mother!"
Eddie could find nothing to say to that.
"Suppose you should be killed?" Mrs. Kennedy went on, with a sort of severity, as if she were speaking to a person who persistently sat in a draft.
"It wouldn't matter very much," said Eddie, with a faint smile. "Good night, Mrs. Kennedy! Be sure to take care of yourself!"
Angelica followed him out and climbed into the car beside him. Those last words of his had hurt her, had brought to her mind the thought of his loneliness, and memories of his kindnesses and of his little, oddly touching traits. She was pursued by a great remorse and a great regret.
"I'm sorry you're going!" she said, with a break in her voice.
"I know you are; but don't be sentimental about it. I couldn't stand that. Be cheerful!"
"I'm not sentimental," she said, forcing her voice to be steady. "Only—I think a lot of you. Every one 'll miss you."
"No!" replied Eddie. "No one will miss me, except perhaps you. No one else at all, Angelica."
They were spinning along dark country roads now, and he could not see her stealthy tears. She was thinking—wasn't she perhaps a fool to let him go?
"Oh, I am sorry!" she said again. "I wish I could have—"
"I know!" he said. "You can't help it. I—don't blame you. I'm not lovable."
"You are!"
"No, I'm not. There's nothing about me that a girl like you could fall in love with. I know that with women that's the chief thing—love; but men are made of coarser stuff. Even if you didn't love me, Angelica, I—I wish you would marry me. I'm not boasting, but I could do a great deal for you. If you could only hear how other men speak of me! I'm doing bigger things in business—all the time. I—I know I seem like a fool. Maybe I am, at home; but I'm not a fool in finance. I'll be one of the richest men in the country some day, Angelica."
"I never thought you were a fool. Indeed, I think you're wonderful. I think you're—I'm sure you'll do whatever you set out to do."
"But wouldn't you like to help me? Things are so muddled and wasteful at home now. If I had a wife like you, Angelica, to manage there for me, while I'm away! I need you so much!"
"Oh, deary!" she cried. "Please don't! I'm so sorry, but I just can't!"
He drove silently for a long time, until the lights of that home of his—named with such Eddie-like pomposity—came into view. Then he said, quite serenely and kindly:
"I'll be your friend, anyway, Angelica—always!"
(To be continued in the August number of Munsey's Magazine)