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.
Angelica becomes greatly interested in her new associates, particularly in the young master of the household, Mr. Eddie.
VI
Angelica was very nervous about having dinner with Eddie. He was obviously fastidious and hard to please, and she hadn't the vaguest idea what his standards might be. She did what she could with her appearance; she washed her hands and face and brushed her hair, and then, having no watch or clock to advise her, went down-stairs.
She hadn't been in the dining-room before, and she stopped, profoundly impressed, in the doorway. It was so exactly the dining-room she had expected—the grand, stately dining-room of the cinema drama, with paneled walls and sideboard loaded with plate, the opulently set table, the high-backed chairs, the flowers all about, the very air of dignity and richness.
There was the essential butler, too. She felt sure that the man bending over the sideboard was a butler; busy, no doubt, with work about which she was quite ignorant. She drew near to ask him the time, and was surprised to see him stuffing cigars into his pocket from three or four boxes that lay in a drawer. She didn't know whether this was proper, whether it was part of a butler's proper functions; but when she saw the man's face, and observed his stealthy and hurried manner, she grew certain that he was stealing. One of those society thieves of whom she had read!
He was in evening dress, and he had some sort of perfume about him. He was a slender little man with neat, snow-white hair and a dapper white mustache. His face was bland, with a long upper lip that gave it a humorous look, and intelligent blue eyes.
He turned suddenly and saw her.
"Well!" he cried. "Upon my word! And who are you?"
"That's my business," said Angelica.
This was her idea of a non-committal answer. She could not decide whether he was a servant, a member of the family, or merely an outside thief who had dropped in, and she was anxious to make no avoidable mistakes.
"Of course it is!" he replied cheerfully. "No doubt I'll learn in the course of time. But perhaps you'll enlighten me as to your status?"
She didn't understand him, and she scowled.
"Perhaps you'll tell me what you're doing here?" he inquired.
"Well, what are you doing here?" she returned.
"Waiting," he answered imperturbably. "Waiting for dinner and Mr. Eddie."
"Oh, him! Well, he's in. I saw him up-stairs."
"But do, for pity's sake, tell me who you are! We don't take pretty girls wandering about this house as a matter of course. You're quite a startling vision, you know."
She didn't like his airy gallantry; but she was sure now that he wasn't an outside thief or a servant, and that he must therefore be a member of the family, entitled to answers for questions.
"I'm her companion," she said.
"Aha! And what is your name, if you please?"
"It's Kennedy."
"Oh! Scotch, are you? You don't look Scotch. You look like a French girl, I should say—one of these dark, passionate creatures."
"All right!" she interrupted, scowling more heavily. "That 'll do about me. What's the time?"
He pulled out his watch.
"Six thirty. Do you dine with us, Miss Kennedy? I hope so. I feel—"
Just then Eddie came in, also in a dinner-jacket and incredibly neat—the very model of a correct young man. He bowed ceremoniously, if somewhat severely, to Angelica.
"Good evening, doctor!" he said to the white-haired man.
He touched an electric bell with his foot. The parlor maid came hastening in.
"I said half past six!" said Mr. Eddie. "Yes, sir, I know; but cook—"
"No excuses! You can certainly get some sort of dinner ready for me when I ask for it. Now hurry up! Never mind about what's ready and what isn't; just bring me something at once."
He pulled out a chair for Angelica, and they all sat down in silence.
"Good Lord!" said Eddie suddenly. "What a life! I'm tired as a dog, and I've got to work all evening."
"Too bad!" said the doctor. "Anything I could do, my boy?"
"No, thanks."
There was silence again. The soup had come in, and Mr. Eddie gave it his undivided attention. He ate with amazing rapidity, one course after the other, and he expected to be served without an instant's delay. Neither the doctor nor Angelica had ever finished when he had, and their plates were always whisked away with choice and coveted morsels on them. There was no sort of conversation—nothing more than Mr. Eddie muttering, with his mouth full, "All right, Annie!" and having one plate replaced by another.
But this was as Angelica liked it. She didn't wish to talk or to be talked to; she wanted to sit at that table, with two men in evening dress, to contemplate the silver and china and linen, and to reflect with amazed delight upon her situation. A dream fulfilled!
Cautiously she surveyed her two companions—Mr. Eddie, looking rather harassed, and as oblivious of her as if she were invisible to him, and the dapper little white-haired man, whose eye often met hers with a glance stealthy and curious. She decided that he must be Polly's physician, and a man who must be given no leeway. She had seen his kind, standing outside stage entrances, or on corners where working girls passed on their way home, with walking-stick and boutonnière and a smirk.
Instantly he had finished, Mr. Eddie got up and went over to the sideboard, from the drawer of which he took the three rifled boxes. He didn't seem to notice that they had been tampered with, but passed two to the doctor.
"Help yourself," he said. "I got these from a chap who imports them for private consumption. Put a couple in your pocket. They're good."
The doctor helped himself modestly from both boxes, and sniffed at them.
"Ah!" he said. "I can tell! My boy, you can afford to indulge yourself; you're one of the lucky ones."
"Yes," said Eddie. "Nothing but luck, of course!"
"I didn't mean to disparage you," cried the doctor. "No one appreciates what you've done, and how hard you've worked, better than I. Just a little joke, Eddie!" He pushed back his chair and rose. "I'll have to run out and fetch your mother home from the club," he said. "Au revoir!"
Mr. Eddie followed him so quickly that before she knew it Angelica found herself left alone at the table. She, too, hastened out of the room and up-stairs, and in a sort of panic knocked at Polly's door.
"Who is it?" inquired Polly's voice, languidly.
"Angelica!" she answered, forgetting, and hastily added: "Kennedy."
"I don't need anything this evening, thank you. Good night!"
She turned away, completely at a loss. It was only half past seven, hours before bedtime. What was she to do?
She went into her room. It was as charming and comfortable as she had remembered it, but it offered no prospect of amusement. She didn't know whether she ought to go into the library or any of the rooms down-stairs. She wanted to, but she had a dread of being spoken to by a servant.
"Well, I'll take a walk, then," she said. "No one can say a word against that!"
She put on her jacket and her rakish big black hat, and went sauntering down the hall. She had to pass the open door of a room, and in it she saw Mr. Eddie, writing. He saw her, too.
"Hello!" he cried. "Where are you going?"
"Out for a walk."
"Better not. It's dark and lonely around here."
Angelica had paused.
"I've got to do something," she said.
WHEN SHE OBSERVED THE MAN'S STEALTHY AND HURRIED MANNER, ANGELICA GREW QUITE CERTAIN THAT HE WAS STEALING
"Sit down and read," he said rather impatiently.
"I don't like to read."
"Nonsense! Here, come in! Sit down! I'll give you something you'll like."
But she hesitated. His bedroom! Surely he didn't expect her to go in there?
He did, though.
"Come in! Come in!" he cried, and she obeyed.
She couldn't really believe that there was anything evil or dangerous about this worried young man sitting before a desk covered with papers. He tapped the back of a big armchair.
"Better take off your hat," he said. "It keeps off all the light."
She turned over the pages of the book, pleased to see that it had a great many pictures, and began dutifully to read. In spite of herself she became interested.
It was the third volume of a series, "Magnificent Women of the Past," and it contained sketches of the lives of the Empress Josephine, Mme. du Barry, Mme. de Montespan, Mary Stuart, Lady Hamilton, and many others. It was sensational, impossible stuff; but Angelica was neither a well-informed nor a discriminating reader. She was enthralled by this description of courts, of gallantry, of balls, fêtes, and levees, of kings, emperors, and princes; above all, by the radiant women who ruled over this amazing world.
She went on, page after page, stopping only to study the portraits of the dazzling beauties. She had never imagined anything like this. Of course, she had studied what was called history in the public school, but that was entirely concerned with battles and treaties; not a word of woman, except, very rarely, an entirely respectable heroine. She had thought of kings and queens as rather dull and solemn persons, also concerned with battles and treaties. She had never conceived of such a passionate and colorful and exciting life as was revealed in this book. It was a life unfortunately impossible in this actual world.
She came to the end of the life of Mme. de Montespan as imagined by the author, and closed the book, the better to reflect upon it. She sighed; she was disturbed by dim longings for an existence of this sort. She was full of dissatisfaction and preposterous ambitions. She was so immersed in the scenes of court life and in the pictures her imagination created that it was almost a shock to see Mr. Eddie sitting there in front of her, still working.
She stared at him thoughtfully. A nice-looking boy—perhaps something more than that. His face was boyish, but in no way weak; the features were all good, fine, firm, regular. She fancied—still dreaming of what she had been reading—that he looked like a young prince, that there was something in his brow, in his presence, that was noble.
Her glance wandered round his room. It was austere, handsome, immaculately neat. She liked it; it was manly.
Her roving attention had distracted Mr. Eddie. He looked up, frowned, and leaned back in his chair.
"Well?" he asked.
"It's a nice book. I like it."
"That's right. I'm very glad. Take it with you and finish it. It 'll do you good."
"How can it?"
He ran his fingers through his hair and surveyed her thoughtfully.
"In the first place," he said, "it's a very good thing to read history. I read a great deal of it—lives of famous men, and so on. In the second place, it 'll give you some idea of what a woman can do."
"Yes, I know; only they're all bad women," said Angelica, with simplicity.
Eddie flushed.
"Yes, but—everything was different in those days. They didn't have our opportunities. Anyway, in some of the other volumes there are plenty of women who weren't bad—Romans, and so on. What I meant is that it shows you what an influence a woman can have if she tries."
"I guess they didn't have to try."
"Of course they did. They wanted to be powerful. They wanted to be magnificent. There aren't any women like that now—no more magnificent women."
He fell silent, to think for a time of his mother, of Polly, of the clerks in his office, of girls he had danced with, of girls on the stage, of all his limited feminine acquaintance. Not a vestige of magnificence!
He was a queer chap, was Eddie. Born of a selfish and frivolous mother and a morosely indifferent father, neglected, left in the care of servants of the sort that always collect about an extravagant and careless mistress, he had never acquired as a matter of course those ideals which the average boy of his class takes for granted. He had a perfectly natural inclination toward truth, honor, and justice, and toward clean living, but he had had to discover these virtues laboriously, all alone. In consequence, he gave them a sort of perverted importance. He became somewhat of a prig.
And having with such difficulty discovered his truths, he was inclined to be a bit domineering and intolerant about them. He was angry and disappointed at finding any one imperfect.
What is more, he was for the first time in his life finding himself a person of some importance. Always before he had been under a disadvantage, always conscious of his "queerness," of having a mother who was a laughing-stock and a father who was a scandal. He was priggish and unsociable, but he wasn't a scholar. He had done very badly in all the various schools to which he had been sent by fits and starts; and when at last he had been somehow got into college, he had done still worse. He had hated his failure there; he had so longed to be popular and friendly, and had been so markedly neither.
"HISTORY WILL GIVE YOU SOME IDEA OF WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO"
So he had gone into business at nineteen, and he had found himself at once. He did amazingly well. He had a clever, sympathetic, imaginative brain, he had good judgment, he knew how to handle his people, how to deal with men; but at the same time he had not very much common sense.
He was like one of those musical infant prodigies, so shamelessly exploited by their families. He had this amazing talent for making money, and the people about him, well aware of his virtue and his innocence, had known perfectly how to make use of his ability. He was a cruelly driven slave to his exalted idea of family obligations.
Eddie wasn't aware of it, however. He was willing to spend all his youth in acquiring money for other people to spend. He took a sort of pride in exhausting himself. He was young enough and strong enough to enjoy affronting his health. It seemed to him a noble thing to support one's family. This was one of his pet ideas—ideas which he had got from books or from other people's talk, none of which had developed quietly and wholesomely from childhood, or from experience. His instincts were sound and admirable. He practically never had a base impulse; but his ideas were grotesque. He was, in some respects, a fool, and he was treated as fools must always be treated by the self-seeking.
There was truth in Angelica's fancy. There was something in this boy that was what men chose to call kingly—a generosity, a fine force, a self-forgetfulness, a profound sense of his obligations, even toward this waif, so recently brought to his attention. He believed it his duty to help her.
"Why don't you go into business?" he asked her abruptly.
"Why?"
"I think you'd do well. You seem level-headed. And there'd be some sort of future in it, instead of pottering about here like an old woman."
"But I don't like business. I like to be here, with nice people, where I can learn something."
"That's quite right, of course; but what will you do—later?"
"Well—I don't know, exactly. I just I think that if I can—sort of improve myself—some sort of chance will come some day."
She reflected a moment.
"All these magnificent women," she said. "They just kind of waited round for something to turn up, didn't they? I mean, they didn't plan what they were going to do. I haven't thought it all out; but I mean to—oh, to go up all the time, to get to be somebody!"
Eddie, unconscious of his own infantile innocence, smiled at her naiveness, but admired her.
"I'll see that you get a chance," he said. "And I'll help you to learn, if you like. If you'll study, I'll give you what spare time I can."
"All right," said Angelica. "That 'll be fine! Only," she added, "what I want isn't exactly things you study out of books. It's—good manners, and the right way of talking."
"You'll pick up all that from Mrs. Geraldine," returned Eddie. "You couldn't find a better model. By the way, how did you get on with her to-day?"
"I guess she liked me. She said she wanted me to stay."
"That's good!" he cried, very much pleased. "If Polly 'll take an interest in you, you'll be absolutely all right. She's a splendid woman."
"But she's so much older than you!" thought Angelica. "It's so queer!"
"Yes," he went on, "Polly's one of the best. Of course she's not herself now, losing the little chap. He was nearly two years old, and a fine little fellow. Poor girl! She was wrapped up in him. We all were, for that matter."
Angelica was puzzled.
"But," she said, "don't you—"
"Don't I what?"
"I mean—it must be nearly as bad for you as for her."
"What? Why, there's no comparison between a son and a nephew."
"For Gawd's sake! Wasn't he your son?"
"Of course not! My dear girl, you didn't think I was Polly's husband, did you?"
"Yes, I did," she faltered.
"I'm her brother-in-law. She's my brother's wife."
"Oh! She's a widow, then?"
"No, no, no! He's alive. He's here, in this house; but he's a poet, you know, and when he's working he shuts himself up for days at a time. He's a queer chap—a regular genius."
"That's pretty hard on his wife, I should say."
"That's what the wife of a fellow like Vincent must expect. He is a bit trying, but you have to make allowances. He's very remarkable—writes beautiful stuff."
"I don't like po'try," said Angelica, who had already taken a dislike to this brother.
"I'm not very fond of it, either, but I admire it."
"I don't," she persisted.
"You shouldn't say that. It's childish. Every one admires poetry."
She maintained an obstinate silence. Eddie was rather at a loss. He believed that every one ought to admire poets; he faithfully endeavored to do so, and had made himself believe that he had succeeded. He felt that his brother was a genius, accountable to no one, and not to be blamed for faults which seemed to Eddie peculiarly disgusting and unmanly; but he didn't know how to make Angelica admire his brother. Even the fact of Vincent's genius was by no means established, and could not be demonstrated to an outsider, for he had never published anything yet, nor attempted to do so.
"He's a very interesting chap," Eddie said. "Very!"
"Well, I'm glad he's not my husband," said Angelica. "Shutting himself up like that—wouldn't suit me!"
Eddie frowned.
"I should think it was a privilege to be the wife of—of a genius."
Again Angelica was silent.
"Of course," said Eddie, "I don't pretend to understand him. We've never seen much of each other. He lived with my father and I lived with my mother. He was brought up differently—a Roman Catholic, for one thing; then he went to an English university for a year or two, and he's traveled. Very well-educated chap; altogether different from me. A scholar, and very artistic."
"What does he do for a living?" Angelica asked.
"He's just beginning his career," said Eddie. "It is very hard to get started with that sort of thing."
Angelica's silence was eloquent.
"Then who's this feller you call 'doctor'?" she asked abruptly. "Does he live here?"
"That's Dr. Russell, my mother's second husband."
"Oh, I see! I had you all mixed up. But whose house is this—his?"
"No. It's mine."
"Yours? Do they all live here with you?"
"Certainly," he said, reddening and frowning. "I want them to. I don't want to live alone—no social life."
Poor devil! He was conscious of something ridiculous in his position, and yet he was proud of it. There weren't many fellows of his age who could have done this. It had meant taking fearful risks, of course, and working without rest, but the worst of it was over now. He was really prominent in his world; he was a sort of financial prodigy, admired and watched. He called himself, on his office door, a stock-broker. He was on the road to becoming a millionaire; he had made up his mind to do it, and there was nothing to stop him.
"Well," said Angelica, "you're awful good to them."
Again he frowned. They had both grown suddenly ill at ease, at a loss for words. Angelica got up.
"Good night!" she said abruptly. It was her way of terminating an awkward moment.
"Good night!" Eddie answered, rather absent-mindedly.
With her volume of "Magnificent Women" tucked under her arm, Angelica went back into her own room.
"He's a fool," she said to herself, "keeping all those people; but there is something about him. I don't know—I guess he's kind of magnificent himself."
VII
Sharp at ten o'clock the next morning Angelica knocked at Polly's door. Her eyes were dancing, she was filled with an exhilarating sense of mischief, for she had been having breakfast with the doctor, and a regular rowdy breakfast it had been—the old delightful badinage of the street and the factory.
When she had come down the dining-room was deserted, and she had lingered about waiting for any one who might come. Presently, in had come the dapper little doctor. His face had lighted up marvelously when he saw her there alone; and he had told her archly that she was welcome as the flowers in the spring.
"That's all right!" Angelica had retorted, belligerently. "Never you mind about me!"
And so the conversation had proceeded, flowery compliments on his side and a continuous show of resentment on hers—all as it should be.
"You're a regular old devil!" she had told him. "You'd ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
"You're a devil yourself!" he had answered. "A young devil, and a dangerous one, too. You could teach me a trick or two, I dare say!"
Then she had thrown a piece of bread at him, and he had sprung up and smothered her in a napkin, almost upsetting her chair backward, and she had given his necktie a terrific pull. She did so like this sort of thing!
She had a familiar and delightful feeling now toward Polly, such as she had so often felt toward teachers at school and foremen in factories—that she had something up her sleeve, that she was slyly outraging authority.
"Come in!" said Polly.
She was still in bed, her breakfast, untouched, on a tray beside her. She looked stale, broken, weary in body and in spirit, miserably inferior to the sparkling girl who stood waiting for her orders.
WITH HER VOLUME OF "MAGNIFICENT WOMEN" UNDER HER ARM, ANGELICA WENT BACK INTO HER OWN ROOM
"Good- morning! Sit down," she said, politely enough.
She could say nothing further. Weary from a sleepless night, sick with grief and longing, lonely as a traveler stranded on a desolate shore, it seemed to her impossible to communicate with any one about her. She could think of no words that they would comprehend, no answer from them that would give her any possible solace.
She seemed to Angelica a sallow, listless woman of forty, who persisted very selfishly in staring out of the window and preserving a tedious silence. She had no faintest idea of that anguish of a fine and strong soul.
"Would you mind—" said Polly suddenly. "There's a little leather book in my desk, and a fountain pen. I'd like to write a little."
Angelica jumped up and brought them to her with alacrity. She felt very obliging this morning.
"Anything else I can do?" she asked cheerfully.
"No, thanks. It's my diary. It's just seven weeks ago that my child died."
She spoke quietly, but her face had assumed an odd, drawn look.
"Oh, Lord!" thought Angelica. "Now I suppose there'll be a scene. And me feeling so happy!"
But there was no "scene," not even a tear. Polly had long ago got past that consolation. She put down her little book.
"Will you go and ask Mrs. Russell, please, when she wants to use the car? I think I'll go out this afternoon."
Angelica sped off, glad to be released from this terrible ennui, and knocked upon Mrs. Russell's door. She found her engaged in a surprising occupation. She was carefully rouging her cheeks—that tough, weather-beaten, brown skin!
Her hair was carefully dressed, and she wore a handsome embroidered white linen frock. She was tall and straight, with good shoulders and a fine, free play of limb. From the back she wasn't bad; she looked like a muscular and athletic young woman until she turned and one saw her face. With the rouge and the blackened eyebrows, it had an indescribably repulsive look of dissipation; it was as if a man had rouged and bedecked himself.
"Well!" she said. "How do I look?"
"All right," said Angelica dubiously.
"Tell me frankly if there's the least thing. I must be very nice to-day. We're giving a lunch to a young English woman, a tennis champion, and I'm on the reception committee. Do I really look nice?"
"Yes," said Angelica, in a still more doubtful tone.
"You don't think so!" cried Mrs. Russell. "I can see that! But, my dear, I don't suppose a woman of my age ever can look very nice."
However, the glance she gave to her reflection in the mirror was quite a complacent one. She began covering her face with pink powder, while she talked; and grimacing as she carefully avoided the blackened eyebrows.
"How did you get on with Mrs. Geraldine?" she asked.
"All right; she's not so bad," said Angelica. "Only sort of dopey."
"'Dopey'? What's that?"
Angelica flushed.
"Oh, like people that take dope—morphin and opium and all like that."
"But, my dear girl, Polly doesn't—"
"I know. I only said she acted like people that do. It's just a word people use about any one that's quiet and—"
"Mrs. Geraldine's very reserved—quite different from me. I'm obliged to say everything that comes into my head. But I dare say her life has made her like that."
"Why has it? What kind of life has she had?" asked Angelica, with naked curiosity.
"My dear, you see, she was married before to a perfectly dreadful sort of man. He drank, and I don't know what else—absolutely no good at all. You see, she used to be a concert singer when she was young. It's very interesting to hear her tell about her days in Germany, when she studied there. And then she came back to New York and got an engagement to sing in one of the first-class restaurants. She really comes from a nice family—Ohio people—not in society at all, but nice. They weren't at all well off, so I suppose they were glad to have her earning her own living. Anyway, they were away off in Ohio, so they couldn't have stopped her very well, could they?"
"No," said Angelica, astounded at the very idea of the melancholy Mrs. Geraldine singing in a restaurant.
"She must have been quite a pretty girl," Mrs. Russell went on. "I've seen pictures of her. She says she had the most distressing experiences with men, following her, and so on. She says she was really just about to give up the restaurant singing when one night this tremendously handsome man was waiting for her when she came out. She says he was so different from the usual sort—so gentlemanly, and so on; and he'd been so impressed with her. My dear, have I too much powder on?"
"Yes, on your forehead. Who was this feller—the handsome one?"
Mrs. Russell stared at her in perplexity. Then she suddenly recollected the subject of their talk.
"Oh, yes, of course! He told her afterward that he was so much impressed with her refinement and distinction. I suppose she did look well, standing up on the platform in a white dress. And her voice is charming. He walked home with her that night and they were married three weeks later. Of course, as she says, she didn't really know him at all; and he turned out to be perfectly dreadful. She went through the greatest misery with him. He was killed in an accident; he was in a taxi with some chorus-girl. I don't really know much about him; she doesn't like to talk about him, but I've seen a picture of him. He was handsome, but coarse, I think. He was quite successful in his business, whatever it was, but he spent all he made, and only left her a tiny little income. She made it do, though, she lived so quietly."
Angelica was delighted to get all this information. She leaned against the doorway in one of her careless, beautiful gamin attitudes, her dark eyes on Mrs. Russell's face with an attention that pleased that veteran gossip.
"She's a charming woman. Still, I was amazed at Vincent, of all people! She's so much older than he—seven years, and she shows it. Of course, when they were first married three years ago, she was quite different—much nicer-looking. Poor soul! She really had a wretched time with Vincent. He's frightfully trying. I really think she's been wonderfully patient with him. I'll never forget the day he came into my room and told me he was married. I couldn't believe it; he's so fickle and erratic. I never expected him to settle down. I don't suppose he really has. And when I saw her—simply a plainly dressed woman of thirty-five! Of course, she has a certain sort of charm about her; she's restful. I like being with her—but not all the time. I can't understand why she clings to me so. She's so self-reliant."
How was Angelica to understand all this? She with her thistledown heart, her life of infantile amusement-seeking, to understand the solitude of this woman from a small town, accustomed to the friendly faces of neighbors, of people who had known her all her life and were interested in all that concerned her; this woman who had twice given her love with simplicity and generosity, to have it twice despised, a wife without a husband, a mother bereft of her child? Polly hadn't a soul near her who took the least interest in her, no one to talk to. That was what made her so silent. She didn't, she couldn't utter flippancies; she longed for one of her own good, earnest, kindly small-town women, who would wish to listen and know how to console.
And in default of this, then she must have Mrs. Russell, who could at least talk about her lost child. She could say to her, "Do you remember this day and that day, this that he said, and how he looked?"
She had loved her child with a passion tiresome to all those about her. She had been absorbed in him; she had seen in this little boy not alone her only child, but her only friend, a fellow countryman in a hostile land. And now he was gone.
"She's charming," Mrs. Russell repeated; "but I should never have picked her out for Vincent. She's not the sort of woman to hold him. He's so odd, you know. He always used to say that he'd never marry, and that he was looking for the perfect woman, whatever he fancied a perfect woman was. I don't know what it was he saw in Polly. She's not beautiful, or fascinating, as far as I can see. Of course, there's her voice. It's lovely, but still— He met her at some sort of tea, he told me, and he said that he was enchanted by the sight of her, sitting there in her plain dark blue suit, with her hands folded, so quiet and clever, you know, in comparison with all the other women. I must admit I was disappointed."
She paused for a few minutes, to rub her big square nails with pink paste. When she began to talk again, she had unaccountably changed her point of view. Instead of her bland contempt for Polly, she had, somehow, within her queer soul developed a great indignation against her son.
"He has behaved abominably," she said, with a frown. "I can't understand him. For days at a time he doesn't speak to her; doesn't even see her. And all for nothing! He took her up in a caprice, and he's dropped her in another caprice. Do you know, my dear, all the time their child was so ill, he wouldn't see it? He said he could do nothing to help it, and he couldn't bear to look at suffering. And at last, when it died, the thing became so scandalous that Eddie had to go and actually force him to come into its room. So he came sauntering in, and what do you think he said? 'Thank God I really hadn't had time to grow attached to it yet.'"
"That was pretty bad," said Angelica. But she was more curious than shocked; she was eager to hear more about this atrocious Vincent.
"And now," went on Mrs. Russell, "whenever the poor soul begins to practise, he comes stamping out of his room and shouts down the stairs, 'Stop! Stop! For God's sake, stop!'"
"He must be pretty selfish!"
"Selfish! That's not the word. He squeezes every one dry. He bothered me a while ago until I sold one of my rings to get money for him; and as soon as I'd handed him the money he walked out of the room without even saying, 'Thank you.' And when I tried to speak to him, he didn't even stop; just called back to me, 'I'm not in the mood for your conversation to-day. I couldn't endure it.' He's a devil!"
"A devil!" thought Angelica. "I wish I could get at him! I bet I could handle him! I'd like to see him, anyway. I'd devil him! And maybe if he had a wife with more fight in her, more spirit, he'd be different. He'd be different to me!" her secret heart cried. "No man could ever neglect or hurt me. No man could ever really win me. I shall be loved, adored, obeyed, but I shall not give much. I am Angelica, the beautiful, the proud, the free!"
She was very ready to hear more, but that was not to be. The aggrieved voice of Courtland, the chauffeur, was heard in the hall.
"Now, then, do you want to be late?" he called. That reminded Angelica of her errand.
"Oh! Mrs. Geraldine said to ask you when did you want to use the car. She thought she'd go out."
Mrs. Russell stared at her in distress.
"Oh, pshaw! I never imagined she'd want it. Tell her, please, I'll send Courtland back with it in an hour."
"I don't think!" said Courtland. "She better not hold her breath waiting."
Even Angelica was aware that this was not the proper way for a chauffeur to address his lady. She was surprised that he wasn't rebuked. She looked at him with an indignant glance, which he returned with one of the greatest scorn.
"Wait in the car, Courtland," was all that Mrs. Russell said. "I'll be down directly."
"He's a nice boy," she told Angelica, after he had gone. "I think a great deal of him. I'm sorry for him. He's very bright and intelligent, but he hasn't had any opportunities."
"He's mighty fresh," said Angelica.
"You mean disrespectful? I know it; but it seems to me that in this country, you know—a republic—we shouldn't expect that sort of thing. We're all more or less equals, I suppose, aren't we?"
Angelica said yes; but she didn't think so, and she knew that Mrs. Russell didn't think so. A game of exploitation, simply, but in a country where every one had the pleasing possibility of becoming one of the exploiters.
Angelica went back to Polly with the message.
"She says she'll send back the car in an hour."
"Then I think I'll get up and dress," said Polly. "We'll run into the city for lunch. Do you know, I feel better! I think you're doing me good."
She really believed so; it seemed to her that the fierce and careless vitality of this girl charged all the atmosphere, penetrated and invigorated even her jaded and sorrowful heart. It was not the sort of vitality that fatigues and irritates, like the ceaseless activities of a little child. Angelica was quiet, for the most part; she didn't speak much, she sat quietly in her chair, with the sort of cool steadiness that one notices in cats. When you spoke to her, it required no effort for her to attend, to concentrate her thought on you; at once her dark face was alert, her ready mind in action.
With Polly—although she wasn't aware of it—her manner was exactly what was needed. She was generally quite indifferent, thinking her own thoughts, absorbed in her own affairs; but she was instantly willing to perform any service, or to talk, or to listen.
"Mr. Eddie spoke to me about you," Polly went on. "I have a very high opinion of his judgment, and he seems to think you're just the person for me."
Angelica was delighted.
"Well," she said, in her pitifully ungracious way, "it's kind o' hard, not knowing your ways or anything; but I guess I'll be useful.".
Polly smiled.
"Help me to get ready, won't you? I haven't been out for such a long time; and the doctor seems to think I should."
"This doctor, is it? Her husband?"
"Oh, no! He's not exactly a doctor. He invented a patent medicine, called Dr. Russell's Old-Time Rejuvenator. That's why they call him doctor."
"I see! But those things are mostly fakes, aren't they?"
Polly didn't answer.
Angelica enjoyed helping her to dress. She liked to open the bureau drawers and wardrobes and see the well-ordered and dainty things, all faintly fragrant. She liked fetching the silk stockings, the fine little handkerchiefs, the gloves, all the accessories of a woman of excellent taste and a decent income. Very plain, Polly's things were, but with a most refined and fastidious plainness. Angelica, seeing and handling them, gained quite a new idea of a lady's requirements.
"And there we sat," she told her mother later, "all the morning, like a couple of fools, waiting for the car. It got to be lunch-time, and still it hadn't showed up. I couldn't help feeling sorry for her, waiting there with her hat on and all. 'I guess she's decided to keep her automobile for herself to-day,' I said. 'It isn't hers,' she said. 'It's Mr. Eddie's, for us both to use.' He's a generous feller, I think."
The excursion was given up. They had lunch down-stairs together, and in the afternoon they went out for a little walk—a tiresome walk for them both. Polly said scarcely a word. Angelica believed her to be angry, and at five o'clock, when at length the motor came back, with Mrs. Russell in it, she looked forward to a row.
She received another lesson, for Polly said nothing. She had tea in the library with her mother-in-law, and she was as agreeable and polite as if nothing at all had occurred to vex her.
At first this conduct appeared to Angelica cowardly and shockingly hypocritical; but as she watched Polly, she changed her opinion. No, it wasn't hypocrisy; she didn't pretend to be pleased and friendly. Her attitude said to Mrs. Russell, in effect:
"Do as you please. You can't annoy me. I remain absolutely undisturbed."
And as Angelica observed them, first to see how tea was to be drunk, and later to ponder, a new idea struggled to life in her mind. It began to dawn upon her that there were grades among ladies, and varieties. Mrs. Russell was a lady, and Mrs. Geraldine was a lady; but they were of quite different sorts, and Polly's sort was the better.
So there wasn't simply a set of rules to follow, or a definite standard to attain. There wasn't even one absolutely correct manner. How was one to learn? How was one to imitate?
"WHICH DOOR?" EDDIE ASKED. "THIS? ALL RIGHT! NOW, THEN, ALL TOGETHER! ONE—"
"My Gawd!" she reflected. "There's more to this than I thought!"
VIII
Perhaps, if Polly had imagined that she was serving as a model, or even that she was being shrewdly observed by Angelica, she would not have done what she did. She would have maintained the aristocratic imperturbability that had so impressed her companion, and she would have concealed her malice. For Polly had malice—that agreeable feminine malice, so much more attractive than a forgiving heart. She had a quiet relish for vengeance, and a long, long memory for affronts.
For three years there had been war between herself and her mother-in-law, in which Polly had had to struggle desperately to avoid extermination. The ruthless selfishness of Mrs. Russell would have destroyed her, would have made her an instrument to serve her in her pleasure-hunt. She was not to be reasoned with, she was too heedless and indifferent to weigh consequences, too insolent to be hurt by defeat, too slippery for any sort of compromise. Polly had adopted a policy of implacability toward her. She let nothing slip, forgave nothing, forgot nothing.
They were all at the dinner-table that evening—Eddie in evening dress, and the doctor also, in order to please his punctilious and severe son-in-law. Polly was an altogether pleasant object for contemplation in a brown voile frock, while Mrs. Russell had come forth in an astounding thing of orange and blue. It was shockingly expensive, very unbecoming, and badly put on. Taken with her straggling hair and a pair of dusty and shapeless black velvet slippers, it formed an exterior not likely to enlist her son's support in the coming encounter.
"Eddie!" said Polly. "What was that man's name—the one we had for the day when the car was broken? Do you remember? He was such a good, careful driver, and his car was so nice and clean!"
"Why do you want to know?" asked Eddie suspiciously.
"I thought to-day I should have liked to get him."
"What's the matter with Courtland and your own car?" Eddie persisted sharply.
"But it's not my own car, Eddie."
"Where was it?"
"It was in use. I can't expect to have it all the time," she said sweetly.
"NO!" CRIED MRS.RUSSELL. "NO, EDDIE. WAIT A MINUTE!"
"You haven't been out for seven or eight weeks, have you?" he demanded.
"No; but still—"
"That's not exactly 'all the time'!" His face had flushed. "Did you have the car, mother?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered with perfect indifference.
"Now, look here!" he said. "Can't you arrange better? Can't you talk with Polly in the morning and find out what she intends to do?"
"Oh, Eddie, it doesn't matter!" cried Polly in distress.
Eddie saw the distress and grew more angry. Angelica saw it also, and understood it.
"It seems to me," he said, "that when Polly goes out so seldom, she might have the benefit of her own car. She's not well—you must remember that."
Mrs. Russell was smiling her mechanical smile.
"She shall have the car," she said, "whenever she wants it. If I'd known to-day, I shouldn't have taken it."
"I meant to ask Angelica to ask you," said Polly.
"I did ask her, too," said Angelica.
"No," said Mrs. Russell, still smiling. "You didn't. You forgot, I suppose."
"Were you out in it all day, then?" demanded Eddie.
"My dear boy, I was. And now, if you please, we won't have any more of this. You can do your scolding in private. Polly shall have the car all the time. Tommy!" she said, turning to her husband. "Who do you think I had lunch with at the Country Club but Horace and Julie Naylor? Poor Horace! She is such a dreadful, vulgar little minx! And yet she's so amusing. I must have her down here again."
"Not when I'm home," said Eddie. "I think she's disgusting."
"Pretty little woman, though," said the doctor.
"Plenty of them!" said Eddie.
Mrs. Russell had got away from the subject of the motor-car, and rested satisfied. It was a question with Angelica whether, after all, she hadn't triumphed. It was a drawn battle, at the best.
But before the evening was over the combatants were obliged to forget their hostility and to ally themselves against their common tyrant. All very well for them to quarrel together, but they didn't forget that Eddie was the source of all good, and that, to placate him, all private feuds must be ignored.
They were still sitting at the table when a telegram arrived, which Eddie opened and read with a frown.
"Confound it!" he said. "Here's a nice row! Vincent's getting a bit too bad. This really puts me in a very awkward position. I gave him a letter to give to a man, and apparently he never did. I'll have to get hold of him now, and find out what he did do with it."
He rose from the table, and so did Polly and Mrs. Russell.
"What's the matter?" cried Polly, with an anxiety that seemed to Angelica extreme. "What has Vincent done?"
"I gave him a letter to deliver to a man who was leaving for San Francisco—an important letter; and now the fellow telegraphs that he's reached there, and that the letter hasn't reached him yet. He should have got it a week ago, before he left."
"But don't bother Vincent to-night!" implored his mother. "You can't do anything now. Wait till morning!"
"Why shouldn't I bother him? He's bothered me enough! I'm not going to humor him in this damn fool idea of shutting himself up like a— He'll have to behave like a human being!"
Polly laid a soothing hand on his arm.
"Do wait till the morning, Eddie," she said. "You know it's at night that he does his best work, and it seems a pity to disturb him."
"What about it's being a pity to disturb me while I'm eating my dinner, to try and rectify one of his beastly, inexcusable blunders? No, by Jove, I'm entitled to some consideration! He's got to come out and tell me what he did."
"Do wait!" cried Polly.
He looked at her in anger and distress.
"Don't you understand?" he demanded. "It's important. I've got to find out what he's done with my letter. I've got to know at once—even," he added with irony, "at the risk of disturbing Vincent. I haven't seen him for three days."
"Oh, do wait!" cried Mrs. Russell.
"I won't!" he answered.
Striding out of the room, he began to run up-stairs. To Angelica's great amusement, the two women followed him. She followed, too, of course.
"Oh, Eddie!" implored Mrs. Russell. "Don't be so headstrong! Wait! I'm sure he's asleep."
"He can wake up, then. It's only eight o'clock."
"Or maybe he's working, and if you interrupt him he'll be so vexed!"
"He vexed!" cried Eddie, outraged. "It seems to me that I'm the one to be vexed!"
Proceeding at once to his brother's room, he knocked at the door, waited, and then knocked again.
"Vincent!" he called. "Open the door! I want to speak to you!"
He knocked louder and louder. Polly again touched his arm.
"Eddie!" she said, in a low voice. "You're making a dreadful noise. Why don't you wait? To please me!"
"It can't really matter," said Mrs. Russell. "You couldn't really do much at this time of night."
"No," said Eddie. "I could have waited, but now I won't. There's something damned queer about it. He can't help hearing this row."
"But you know how peculiar he is," said Mrs. Russell. "He wouldn't answer if he didn't feel like it."
"I'll make him. I won't put up with this!"
He had turned away and was starting down-stairs.
"Where are you going?" called his mother.
"I'm going to get Courtland, to help me break in the door!"
Mrs. Russell drew near Polly.
"What do you think we'd better do?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Polly answered in distress. "Even if he would wait till the morning, I don't see just what we could do. Perhaps we'd better—"
Mrs. Russell nodded.
Eddie returned promptly, bringing with him the blond young chauffeur, pleased and alert.
"Which door?" he asked. "This? All right! Now, then, all together! One—"
"No!" cried Mrs. Russell. "No, Eddie. Wait a minute!"
He did wait, but impatiently, while she hesitated. Finally she said to him in a half whisper:
"Eddie, he's not there!"
"Not there?" he shouted.
"Do hush! No; he's been away for three days."
"Why the devil didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't want to upset you."
"Did Polly know?"
"Yes; she—"
"And you both stood there and let me make a fool of myself?"
"I couldn't bear to upset you, Eddie, and neither could Polly."
"And you let me knock and call and bring up Courtland. Oh, by Jove, it's too much!"
"I'm very sorry," said Polly gently.
Eddie didn't even look at her.
"I'm sick of this!" he cried. "Sick of being made a fool of like this. It's always the way in this house; every hand's against me. Nothing but deceit and trickery!"
"Eddie!" said Polly firmly. "You forget yourself!"
The poor chap, recalled by her tone to his standard of propriety—the very fount of his exploitation—became a little quieter.
"No," he said, "I don't. Where did he go?"
"To New York," said Mrs. Russell. "He had a bag with him. Courtland drove him in."
Eddie turned suddenly upon Courtland.
"Why didn't you tell me he wasn't there?" he demanded.
"How did I know he hadn't come back?" retorted Courtland smartly.
"Where did you leave him?"
"Corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street," said Courtland, and, with his unquenchable impudence, he added: "But you won't find him there now!"
"That 'll do," said Eddie. "You can go. And don't gossip about this."
Courtland wheeled about briskly and began, quite leisurely, to descend the stairs, whistling cheerfully and loudly before he was well out of sight. Eddie did not even appear irritated. He had turned toward the two ladies of his household with an ominous look in his blue eyes.
Eddie was incredibly generous, he was kind-hearted and more or less sympathetic, but he had in him, all the same, the making of a first-class domestic tyrant. He desired, almost morbidly, to be respected, and he was ready to force respect by bullying, if necessary. He knew what every one else knows, moral precepts to the contrary notwithstanding—that the bully is almost universally respected.
Like all domestic tyrants, he was shamelessly deceived and "managed" by the women of his establishment. They managed him clumsily. Neither of them had learned what the doctor had learned at once—that Eddie could be manipulated with ridiculous ease by the employment of either of two means. One was to appeal to his sense of justice; the other was deferentially to ask his advice.
He liked to argue, to discuss, to weigh, to do finally, not without pompousness, whatever he saw to be right; but the women never addressed this vulnerable side. They treated him still as if he were a primitive man, to be coaxed, hoodwinked, pampered, in spite of the fact that he was not primitive in any way. He got along splendidly in his office, because there it was acknowledged unanimously that he was not to be diddled, that he was no fool; but at home he was always treated as if he were a fool, and a slightly dangerous one. That is, of course, the accepted attitude toward any master of any house, but it is not always the most effective.
His anger began to ebb away as he looked at them, and a profound dejection to take its place.
"It's no use," he said. "No earthly use! I do the best I can—for the entire family—to keep things as decent as possible; but I can't. I get no help. I can't do it alone!"
"But Eddie, my dear boy!" said Polly. "It was only to spare your feelings."
He shook his head.
"It wasn't. You have some reason which I'll never know. I'm not blaming you, Polly. I know you do what you think is best; but if you'd only be honest, regardless of what might happen!"
He stopped, for he had caught Angelica's eye. He stopped, and his startled and arrested look said, almost as plainly as words:
"I believe you to be honest!"
He was as much surprised as if she had but that instant appeared. Indeed, one might quite truly say that he had never before seen her. She looked so hardy, so bold, so independent, in all ways so different from the two other women who had just humiliated him. He felt a new and sudden interest in her.
IX
Angelica was consumed, devoured, by curiosity. She felt obliged to know more of this family—of Vincent, above all. So the next morning she got up very early, went down into the kitchen regions, and sought out a snub-nosed maid who had seemed disposed to be friendly when they had passed each other in the hall.
The girl wasn't busy. She was sitting on the back steps, enjoying the fresh morning; and as soon as she saw Angelica she moved over, hospitably, to make a place for her.
"Sit down," she said. "It's a nice day, isn't it?"
Angelica did sit down, and for a time was silent, looking before her across lawns as smooth and empty as those at the front of the house. Nothing at all back-doorish about the outlook; the same air of prosperous peace; in the distance other houses among their lawns, and well-trimmed trees, and overhead a lovely May morning sky.
"Yes," she said, "it's certainly a nice day."
She fell silent again, trying to arrange an opening for her questions; but the snub-nosed maid spared her the trouble.
"Well!" she said. "How do you like it up-stairs?"
Angelica at once perceived that the other girl was curious.
"Oh-h-h!" she said slowly. "I suppose it's all right."
Another silence, during which they appraised each other according to their tradition. A mutual confidence was born.
"They're a queer bunch," said the girl. "I never saw the like; and I've been with seven families, too."
Here she courteously gave Angelica a brief history of her life and condition. Her name was Annie McCall, born in Scotland but brought up in America, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, twenty-seven, and engaged to be married. She was extremely severe in her views, which were often similar to Angelica's, especially in regard to the immoralities of the rich. There was this difference, though—Annie was confident that she knew everything, and was infallibly right, while Angelica was anxious to learn.
"If it wasn't that I was going to be married," said Annie, "and saving every penny, I'd leave. The way they carry on! I never saw the like!"
"Do they carry on?" inquired Angelica, delighted.
Hadn't she always known that rich people carried on? Wasn't she just in a paradise of the romantic, where the rich were bad, and the poor, represented by herself and the terribly respectable Annie McCall, were good?
"IF IT WASN'T THAT I'M SAVING EVERY PENNY," SAID ANNIE, "I'D LEAVE. THE WAY THEY CARRY ON! I NEVER SAW THE LIKE!
"That Mrs. Russell's the worst of them all," said Annie. "The bold, brazen thing she is, with her breeches and her smoking and her cursing. You'd ought to hear her curse!"
"She's queer," said Angelica reflectively.
"Queer!" cried Annie. "Well, I'd call it more than queer! She's—" She stopped a moment. "She's bad," she said.
"Oh! Bad! How?"
"I don't like to be spreading scandal," said Annie, who always believed the worst. "It's not my nature, only that you'll be working up-stairs right with her, and you being so young, it's only right you should be told. As soon as ever I set eyes on you, I said to myself you'd ought to be warned. I could see you weren't used to such people. You never worked out before, did you?"
"No," Angelica answered.
It was of no use to resent the "working out," or to tell Annie she was a "companion." because Annie knew very well what her place was. Angelica's eating with the family couldn't deceive her. They were both servants, and Annie was the better-paid and more respected of the two. Angelica could not honestly consider herself in any way superior, except in appearance. Annie spoke rather better than she did, and had had more schooling; she admitted to money in two savings-banks, and she was engaged to be married. So Angelica submitted to a temporary equality, feeling mortally sure, however, that the future would see her elevated immeasurably above Annie.
"How is she bad?" she inquired eagerly.
"She's a divorced woman," said Annie. "She divorced her first husband, Mr. Geraldine, and I've heard he was a very nice man—much better than Dr. Russell, I dare say; too good for her, very likely. Anyway, I never heard any good of a divorced woman."
"But what does she do?" Angelica demanded, rather impatiently.
"You wouldn't believe it, but she's carrying on with that chauffeur."
"My Gawd!" said Angelica. "Is she really?"
"It's the worst I've ever heard of. Would you believe it? She's teaching him to play golf. They go out in the country somewhere, where they're not known. She's bought him a bag of clubs, and he goes around showing it to all the chauffeurs, and telling them I don't know what. He's a liar, and I wouldn't believe a word he said, but still—well, when you hear a thing right and left—and there's those clubs and all, and they cost a terrible lot—you can't help but think she's a regular bad woman."
But Angelica did help thinking so. She didn't believe that Mrs. Russell was that sort of bad woman, and the longer she knew her the more convinced she became of her perfect goodness in this one respect. Capable of the most outrageous follies, selfish, hard as flint, quite without scruples in the pursuit of her own liberty and pleasure, she was, however, not interested in men. Angelica said nothing, though, for she had no proofs or surmises to bring forward, nothing but her own instinct.
Annie continued.
"No, I can't help thinking so. I'm no fool. I've seen a lot—you do, working out. It's a pity, too, on account of Mr. Eddie. He's a nice young man, and he works himself sick for the lot of them. No one doing a stroke of work but him!"
"Don't that doctor work?"
"Dr. Russell? He's a regular old grafter, that's what he is."
"I saw him putting cigars in his pocket," said Angelica.
"I've seen worse than that. I've seen him going through her bureau drawers, and taking anything he has a fancy for. He'll come down with a flask, fill it with anything that's left in the decanters, and take it up-stairs and drink until he falls asleep on the floor. They say it's terrible bad to drink things all mixed together like that."
"Does he know about her carrying on?"
"He don't care, so long as he's got a good home and a little money to spend. I never saw such people in all my life! And they never have any decent company. Mrs. Geraldine—"
"Why do they call her Mrs. Geraldine?"
"Because that's her name," said Annie, surprised. "That used to be Mrs. Russell's name. It's Mr. Eddie's and Mr. Vincent's name. Didn't you know?"
"It's a queer name," Angelica remarked thoughtfully. "I thought it was her first name."
Nothing in the universe seemed specially queer to Annie.
"Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Geraldine, she hasn't got any friends, except out West, and Mr. Eddie, he hasn't got any time to make any, and there's no one ever comes here but her lot from that country club—a lot of swearing, drinking, smoking men and women. She fills the house with them, and then Mr. Eddie 'll make a great row and say he won't put up with them, and then she'll smile, that superior way, and say, 'Very well, Eddie, it's your house!' Then, when she thinks he's kind of forgotten, she'll have them in again."
"But what's the other feller like?" asked Angelica.
"Him!" cried Annie. "Why!" She was at a loss for words to express what she felt. "He's—" She hesitated. "He's crazy, and downright wicked. They call him religious. Sacrilegious, I call it. Every once in a while he'll get a fit of feeling sorry for his wickedness, and he'll be moaning and groaning about his soul, and working himself up to write his religious poems. Why," she cried, "it's as different from the real repentance of a sinner, such as I've seen many and many a time in our meeting, as can be. He's never seen the light, and he never will. He's lost!"
"What does he do that's wicked?" asked Angelica, avid for details for rich people's sins.
"Everything—drink and women and blasphemy. Why, right now he's gone off with a girl. Courtland saw him meet her."
But no further questions on the part of Angelica could elicit any more details. Annie didn't want to talk about him; he was what she called a hardened sinner, and she considered him best ignored. She began to talk of Polly.
"She's the best of the lot," she said. "She's a real lady. She's reasonable. She'll never ask you for all sorts of outlandish things, all hours of the day and night, like the other one. She's stingy, I must confess; she never gives you a penny, nor even an old dress or a hat; but at least she's nice and polite. I'm sorry for her, too, losing that little boy. He was a sweet little thing, even if—"
The cook appeared on the porch—an untidy, bedraggled old Irishwoman.
"Come in, the two of ye!" she said. "Let your friend come in and eat a bite with us, Annie, if she's not too proud."
"You might as well," said Annie. "They won't be eating for another half an hour, and we've got just as good as they have."
"Better," said the cook. "You can trust me for that, Annie McCall!"
They went, not into the kitchen, as Angelica had expected, but into a nice little dining-room, to a meal served and eaten with decorum and propriety, a table daintily laid, and a breakfast beyond cavil—coffee with cream, beefsteak, cold ham, new-laid eggs, hot rolls, corn-bread, jams and marmalades, and a fine bowl of fruit.
The cook sat down behind the coffeepot, with Angelica beside her. Presently in came the chambermaid, the German laundress, and a mild little thing known as the "second girl"; and, at last, swaggering, in his shirt-sleeves, Courtland the chauffeur.
His eye fell at once upon Angelica.
"Hello!" he said. "What's the matter? Did they kick you out up-stairs?"
"They sent me down to see how you behaved yourself," she answered promptly.
She was quite able to hold her own with this young bully, and though her manner was too free and easy to suit Annie, the others were delighted—especially the cook.
"Now will ye be good?" she would cry to the worsted Courtland. "Now you've met your match, me lad!"
Angelica enjoyed all this beyond measure. This homely simplicity, combined with the greatest comfort, this atmosphere in which she lost her painful consciousness of inferiority, in which she was among equals and able to breathe freely, invigorated and satisfied her. She grew more and more assured, her sallies more and more outrageous, in a violent badinage that continued until the bell rang and Annie ran off up-stairs. She returned to tell Courtland that he was wanted in fifteen minutes.
"Oh, Gawd!" he groaned. "It's a tennis tournament to-day. Me sitting out in a blame country road in the hot sun all the afternoon. My Lawd! Don't I wish that old fool 'd learn enough to stay home, or go to the city, to the theyaters and stores!"
"And giff you de chance to see your schweetheart?" asked the laundress coyly.
"Which one?" he demanded boldly.
"Ye'll need a lot of thim," said the cook. "For there's no one girl could put up with ye long. Why are ye not playing your golf to-day, me lord?"
"She makes me sick!" he answered angrily. "There she goes and gets me interested in the game and all, and then she drops it. Why, you know, she promised me at the start she'd train me good and I could go in a tournament. She said she'd introduce me as a friend of hers. She said I was built to be a first-class player, and maybe I'd get to be a perfessional."
"Don't believe everything she'll be telling you!" said the cook.
"Damn old fool!" he muttered.
Annie reproved him.
"You've got no right to speak like that about a lady," she said.
"Shut up!" he said briefly.
"Go along with you!" cried the cook. "She'll be waiting."
"Leave her wait! She makes me wait enough. If she don't like waiting for me, leave her say so. I can get plenty of jobs—better than this one, too. I don't have to put up with nothing from her!"
It was only half past eight, and Angelica didn't know what to do with herself. She was in a rebellious and malicious mood; she had been fired by Courtland's attitude, and she, too, wished to keep some rich person waiting. It was the attitude which is the despair of employers—the spirit in which the young workman comes sauntering in, insolently late, not because he wishes to lose his job or because he is, as they put it, looking for trouble, but because, for this one day, this one hour, he must assert himself, must be a man, must delude himself that he is not inferior, not helpless, not driven.
So Angelica, this morning, was ready to assert that servants were in all ways better than those they served, that poor people were all good and rich ones all bad. She felt a warm glow of friendliness toward the subordinate class, and a profound hostility toward their oppressors. She wanted to swagger about it, to tell Mrs. Russell, loudly, that those jolly, comprehensible people in the kitchen were vastly superior to her in every respect.
She went defiantly about the lower floor, into the library, into the breakfast-room, where the remains of Mr. Eddie's meal still stood, into the music-room, even into the august drawing-room, where she had never before set foot.
"I don't care!"* she said. "If they don't like it, they can tell me!"
But she met no one. Thwarted of a victim, she went out upon the veranda and sat down in a rocking-chair, facing the prospect already so monotonous to her—the neat smooth lawns, the orderly trees, the dignified houses.
"Makes me sick!" she said, aloud. "Nothing to look at—nothing to do!"
Suddenly her chair was tilted back and a hand laid over her eyes—a soft, cool hand. She pushed at it roughly, and it was lifted, and she saw bending over her the bland, smiling face of the doctor. He was in flannels, well cut, quite correct, but with an air obnoxiously dapper. His white head was bare, and he wore a flower in his coat.
ANGELICA GAVE THE DOCTOR A PUSH WITH HER FOOT THAT SENT HIM ROLLING OVER BACKWARD
"You let me alone!" said Angelica.
"I can't!"
"I guess you can!" she observed grimly.
"But you're so pretty! You've no business to be so pretty."
"I dare say I'll get over that in the course of time."
"Seriously," he said, "don't think I've ever seen finer eyes. Have you ever thought of going on the stage? And as far as I can judge, you have a beautiful figure. Of course I don't know—"
"None of that now!" she cried, flushing angrily. "Get away from the back of my chair. I don't want you hanging around me anyway."
"You're very hard," he said. "Very! Don't you like me, Miss Angelica?"
"Not much."
"But why?"
"Go and look in the glass, grandpa," she answered.
He reddened.
"I suppose I do seem old—in your eyes," he said; "but after all, it's only a question of how you feel; and I feel as young as you do. It takes a man of experience and maturity to appreciate a woman. Boys can't understand a woman; but a man of my age has learned how a woman likes to be treated."
"Well, he's learned too late, then," said Angelica, "They'll never give him a chance to show off what he knows."
"Oh, yes, they do," he retorted, preening himself. "I could tell you of more than one little girl who doesn't think I'm too old. You, too, when you know me better, you'll find me just as—"
"Now, look here, grandpa," said Angelica. "What are you leading up to? Because if you think you can get fresh with me, you've made a big mistake. Guess again, grandpa!"
"Don't call me that!" he protested. "It's vulgar."
She looked at him scornfully, then turned her back upon him and once more regarded the tiresome view. The doctor, after a glance at her severe profile, gave up his attempt and changed his attitude. He sat down jauntily astride of a chair and began joking. She never tired of that, and although he did, although he grew painfully weary of this rough and silly jesting, he was compensated by the sight of her brilliant face.
But inevitably he began to grow bolder again.
"My dear, your shoe's untied!" he said suddenly.
"IT DON'T MATTER," ANGELICA SAID. "I CAN TAKE CARE OF MYSELF ALL RIGHT"
� He threw himself on his knees before her and clasped her ankle in his hand. She gave him a vigorous push with her foot that sent him rolling over backward, knocking his white head against a chair. She laughed immoderately, with abandon, all the more because he was so furious, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.
And it was just at this minute that Eddie came out, to see his father-in-law struggling to his feet, while Angelica shrieked with laughter.
"What's this?" he demanded severely.
No one answered, but Angelica's mirth was checked.
"What has happened?" he asked again, with still greater displeasure.
"I slipped," said the doctor. "Where's your mother, my boy?"
This was an attempt to disarm Eddie by reminding him that the doctor was his mother's husband, and therefore venerable; but it was not successful. He received no reply, and went sauntering off with exaggerated jauntiness, watched by Eddie till he was out of sight.
Then Eddie turned to Angelica.
"I'm sorry," he said gravely.
"Oh, it don't matter!" she answered. "I can take care of myself all right."
"I wasn't apologizing for my father-in-law's conduct. I meant I was sorry that you—"
"Me?" she cried indignantly. "I didn't do anything!"
"I hate to think of you stooping to this sort of thing—this silly vulgarity. It isn't like you. It isn't worthy of you!"
The former factory girl, with her long memory of scenes so much more vulgar and silly than this—of faces slapped and insults replied to with most forcible language—stared, astounded, at Eddie, at his displeased and disappointed face.
"You ought to be more dignified," he said. "You say you want to improve yourself. Then, in that case, this sort of thing—"
She really had seen nothing reprehensible in her conduct, nothing to be censured. She knew, of course, that a girl in her situation mustn't spend her time in "fooling" with the men of the household; but to disapprove it on high moral grounds.
However, the word "dignified" gave her a clue. It was those magnificent women he had in mind! She was falling short of their standard, and therefore disappointing Eddie. She wasn't being magnificent.
She looked up at him.
"I see!" she said thoughtfully. "All right! I'll try!"
"That's right," he said. "I knew—if it were pointed out to you—that that sort of thing is so out of keeping with your character—"
"With your face," he meant. He meant, without being aware of it, that any sort of coarseness in a girl so lovely and desirable was a shocking offense to him.
Angelica left him, inspired by the loftiest thoughts. She was resolved to redeem this day begun so inauspiciously, breakfasting with the servants, knocking over the white-haired doctor. She pictured a new Angelica, stately and aloof.
"He does me good—that feller!" she reflected.
(To be continued in the July number of Munsey's Magazine)