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 Buena Vista, 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 deep sorrow over the recent death of her only child.
Angelica finds herself a member of a rather strange 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 though he has never had anything published, and who dramatically announces that he is going to the war, but makes no attempt to enlist. Mrs. Russell, herself a most eccentric woman, has a second husband, who is known as Dr. Russell, a curious little elderly man who purloins Eddie's cigars and flirts barefacedly with Angelica.
All the men, indeed, are attracted by the girl's beauty, though in different ways. Eddie shows her every kindness, takes a deep interest in her ambition for self-improvement, and finally asks her to marry him—an offer which she refuses. The selfish and unscrupulous Vincent pursues her hotly, and his domineering masculinity exercises a strange command over her. A creature of moods; he tells her at one moment that his deeply religious nature compels him to give her up, and then—while she is visiting her mother, in the city—he writes her a letter of glowing passion.
When Eddie calls for Angelica to take her back to Buena Vista, she again refuses to marry him, and he tells her that he is going to the front in France.
XIV
Angelica saw no one that night; but when she passed by the library, the door was half open and she heard voices in there—an unusual thing for that unsociable family.
Eddie went with her to the door of her room and wished her a good night, but she did not have one. She slept fitfully, and she had heart-breaking dreams. She felt confused and unhappy, awake or asleep. She couldn't shake off that dull remorse, or a certain sense of great loss which haunted her.
She got up early, hoping that she might find Vincent and talk to him, and arrange with him to put an end to this wretched, intolerable situation. She couldn't go on like this, in Eddie's house, meeting him every day. She knew that Vincent must feel this as she did, or perhaps still more bitterly. She looked forward to it as an exquisite relief, to pour out her heart to him, sure of his apprehension; sure, too, that he would admire her fine feeling.
She was surprised, when she reached the breakfast-room, to see them all at the table together—Polly and Mrs. Russell up and dressed hours before their usual time; the doctor serious; Vincent in a neat dark suit and a new air of decorum. He glanced up as Angelica entered, and smiled, casually, the meaningless smile of his mother; then his eyes turned away. It wasn't a ruse; he wasn't pretending to be indifferent; she could see that he really was so.
Polly made polite inquiries about Angelica's mother, and then they had finished with her, and returned to their own absorbing preoccupation—the war.
In this one short week they had plunged into the war with fervor, led by Vincent. They cared for nothing else. Mrs. Russell had organized a tennis tournament for Stricken Belgium; her specialty was getting up entertainments and recounting atrocities of a certain sort. Ordinarily there were all sorts of fascinating subjects which one couldn't discuss, all sorts of the most interesting semi-medical details which were unhappily tabu; but now, provided one told of it as done by a German, one might say anything. Nothing was too degenerate, too shocking.
Polly spent much of her time in the Red Cross work-rooms, rolling bandages. She could do this with all her heart, without betraying a secret pity she felt for Germany. She had lived there so long, and had been so happy in her student days. She was convinced that the Germans were very wicked, and that it was necessary to conquer them, but all the same she was sorry for them; and she persisted in her firm hope that her own country would never enter the war.
"Yes," she said, "I do sympathize with the Allies. I hope they'll win. I'm glad and willing to help them; but I'd rather see them lose than to see any of our own boys killed!"
She kept to herself the horror she felt at the idea of some nice American boy killing one of those magnificent, insolent German officers she had always so admired.
Moreover, she didn't like the English. She had all the resentment, all the prejudices, of her little Ohio town against that lordly race. It wasn't Vincent's fantastic Irish hate; it wasn't really hate at all, simply a stubborn dislike. She found a compromise, as he did, by a preposterous worship of all things French. They were, apparently, fighting the war alone against overwhelming numbers of Germans, somewhat hindered by a small and very stupid British army.
Vincent gave a sort of inspired dissertation upon the French, which deeply moved his family but failed to move Angelica. She was too stunned by this change of atmosphere. She was of no significance now; she wasn't useful, she wasn't interesting. No one—not even Vincent—gave her another glance; and Eddie, her steadfast friend, wasn't there.
But the greatest blow of all was Vincent's attitude toward Polly, his friendly deference, their air of complete harmony. She watched them, saw them exchange smiles and glances, listened to their familiar talk.
He left directly the meal was finished, and Polly went up-stairs to put on her hat.
"I'm going to work all morning," she said. "You can come with me and roll bandages, or, if you'd rather, you can stay at home and trim that hat for me."
"I'll stay home," said Angelica.
But Polly lingered, inexcusably, to talk about Vincent—how Vincent and she went to this meeting, how Vincent and she said this, how Vincent and she thought that. They both knew that this was nothing more or less than crowing. Polly had vanquished Angelica. She had got him back!
Of course she had no actual information as to his philandering with her companion, but she had observed, she had put two and two together. She had never suspected actual wrongdoing; she didn't imagine, somehow, that there was anything in Angelica's conduct to blame. She simply thought that Vincent had too much admired this lovely young thing, and that Angelica had had her head turned by the flattery of his attention. She felt justified in pressing her advantage.
Angelica endured it stoically. She wouldn't show even any interest. She listened to this talk of Vincent with rude inattention, and even went so far as to yawn.
"He is wonderful," said Polly. "He's organized a sort of club—the Friends of France—men that can't go themselves, but pledge themselves to get recruits. He says the war has stirred his faith. I'm very glad. He's doing wonderful work!"
"Why don't he enlist, like Mr. Eddie?"
"My dear, he'd never serve under the British flag. Eddie's in the Canadian service. Vincent's Irish, you see."
"Well, isn't Mr. Eddie the same as he?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so; but he's a different sort of Irishman."
"Well, why don't he serve under the French flag, then, if he's so fond of it?"
"He can do more good as he is. There are plenty of men who can fight, but there are very few who have Vincent's wonderful eloquence."
"He said he was crazy to go," said Angelica; "but I notice he doesn't."
"He's married, too, you must remember," said Polly. "That makes a difference. Married men aren't supposed to go till the very last."
Their eyes met.
"Take him!" said Angelica's glance. "I don't care!" But after Polly had gone, she took out Vincent's letter and read it again. She couldn't understand it! She felt bruised, and weary, and sick at heart, and baffled. A letter like that, entreating her to come back to him, and, when she came, to find him on the best of terms with his wife and quite indifferent to her!
"But perhaps later, when we're alone," she thought, "he'll say something."
But all that day, and that evening, not a word, and the next day, too, until it grew plain to her that he didn't intend to see her alone, that he was avoiding her.
So the next morning she wrote a note and slipped it under his door:
I want to see you.
He made no sort of answer; he went on all day as if she didn't exist; he wouldn't even meet her eye. When he wasn't going out in the motor to make speeches for the Friends of France, he was sitting in Polly's room, telling her what he had said at die last meeting and what he was going to say at the next one.
But Angelica was not to be disposed of so simply. She made up her mind that he would have to speak, he would have to tell her outright that he didn't love her.
"He won't find it hard to get rid of me!" she thought bitterly. "But he's got to say. I want to understand. What does he write me a letter like that for, and then be this way?"
She had a feeble little hope that perhaps it was only his feeling of duty that kept him from her, that he loved her and didn't dare to see her. She felt that if he would just say that he loved her, but that they must give up all thought of each other, she would be satisfied. She could go on living, if she had that knowledge. Something, however, he must say.
On the third evening she lay in wait for him. Polly and Mrs. Russell had gone to bed, and he hadn't returned yet from a lecture he was giving in the village; so she turned out the light in her room and sat in the dark, with the door open, waiting.
It was a melancholy October night. The leaves from the linden rustled against her window as they were blown from the branches, and a constant, monotonous, low wind blew, with a sound like rain. She sat as still as a spider in a web, grim, unhappy, filled with apprehension.
In the course of time he came in. She saw him hurry down the hall in his wet ulster and cap, and go into his own room. She was after him before he had time to close the door.
"I want to speak to you!" she said. "Why didn't you let me? Don't you want to see me?"
"No," he said. "No, Angelica, I don't." He hadn't even removed his cap. He put his hand on the knob of the door. "You shouldn't have come here," he said. "Some one might see you."
"I don't care! I want to know. What's the matter? What's happened?"
"I hoped," he said quietly, "that you'd let it drop without an explanation which is bound to be painful for both of us."
"I want to know where I stand. I want you to say."
"Sit down," he said. "I suppose we'll have to have it out."
She did sit down, and waited while he took off his wet things, brushed his hair, and put on a smoking-jacket. She was interested by his room; for a few moments it distracted her unhappy heart. It was a curious room splendidly furnished in black and gold enamel. There was a sort of Chinese idea about it, shockingly adulterated by European luxury; long mirrors, armchairs upholstered in purple, great bookcases, a black and gray velvet rug on the polished floor, a marvelous lacker screen concealing the bed, a little stand on which was a tea-set of pale gray porcelain with an odd black design. There were pictures on the wall—shocking, startling things, obscene subjects in brilliant colors; and in the corner a great ebony crucifix.
This exotic and voluptuous setting dismayed her. It proclaimed a Vincent of whom she knew nothing, and whom she could never comprehend. How in Heaven's name was she to understand the poetic side of the man, she so unpoetic, so crude? A man with tea-sets and crucifixes and such pictures!
He sat down opposite to her in a low, cushioned chair, his head bent, his hands clasped between his knees. Her foolish eyes could see, with tears, that rough, bright hair, those fine, strong hands.
"Angelica," he began, not looking at her, "I've been a coward with you. I've shirked this, because it is so intolerably hard to do."
She waited in anguish, with no idea of what she was to hear.
"You see, Angelica, the war has opened my eyes. I was—just going on, lost in your beauty and loveliness, not thinking—drifting, drifting to hell, and taking you with me. And then came this thing, this deafening, colossal call to self-sacrifice, this monstrous revealment of the glory and holiness of duty. I'm not callous. I couldn't help but heed it. I couldn't go on in my old gross self-indulgence. Angelica!" he said, looking up and meeting her eyes. "This war has brought me back to God!"
"But," she faltered, "what does—"
"It means that I must give you up. My love for you is a sin. For me, a poet, slave and servant of beauty, you are temptation incarnate. You can't understand that. You are as cold, as pure, as an angel. You don't realize what love like mine is."
"I'm not!" she cried pitifully. "I do understand! I'm not cold!"
"Compared to me you are. My love for you was madness. I couldn't think of anything else. It wasn't the gentle affection you felt."
"I didn't feel a gentle affection!" she cried, in tears. "You couldn't love me more than I love you!"
"Do you?" he asked, in a sort of stealthy triumph.
She didn't see that. She was utterly sincere; and her beautiful sincerity, her tears, suddenly moved him to one of those tempests of remorse to which he was so prone.
"Oh, God!" he cried. "What a brute I am! I talk about giving you up, and all the time I'm watching your face for signs of love. How can I find the strength to let you go?"
"Don't!" said Angelica, with streaming eyes. "Don't let me go, Vincent darling! Oh, if only we have each other!"
"We can't have each other. It's a sin!" he said. "Don't you see? Oh, Angelica! Beautiful Angelica! Why don't you help me? Why do you try to drag me down, and ruin me, and destroy me?" He sprang up, his fine face distorted with grief and passion. "You don't know!" he cried. "Oh, my God! I have sinned! I have sinned! You don't know after what sufferings, what weary wanderings, I have come back to God! You cannot imagine! There is nothing I have not done; no infamy I have not committed!"
And then he began his awful catalogue. He told her of his sins, his vices—vile enough in reality, but exaggerated by his hysteria. He had no medium between ingenious self-excuse and the wildest self-accusation. He took a monstrous sort of joy in his horrible recital. He remembered incidents from his boyhood, of cruelty, bestiality, lust, drunkenness, theft, every sort of dishonor.
"I've been in prison," he said. "No one knows. They thought I was in Canada that year. I've stolen from my own wife and spent the money on vile women. I've been kicked out of disreputable hotels."
It went on and on, a nightmare, things that Angelica had never imagined, all told in his coarse and vivid language which impressed his images upon her mind forever.
"Good God!" he cried. "I'm appalled! How can even the God of mercy forgive such things? Angelica! I am lost!"
He threw himself on his knees before her and buried his head in her lap.
"I have been in hell!" he cried. "What am I to do? God, who sees my heart, knows that I repent; but is it enough?"
A feeling new to Angelica came over her, a divine kindliness and pity. She stroked his ruffled hair, and tried, in her blindness, her bewilderment, to find words to comfort him.
"Of course!" she said. "If you're sorry, it 'll be all right. You can start all over again."
With his head still buried, he flung his arms about her waist and began to sob, hoarse, terrible sobs. She couldn't bear it.
"Oh, don't! Don't, darling!" she cried. He raised his head.
"I must be mad!" he said. "I'm so tortured. I long so, I yearn so, after God. I want to be alone with Him, to contemplate Him forever, in solitude—in a desert—to pray to Him—to make my songs to Him. Almost all my verses are of God, Angelica. And then I see a lovely face—I drink another glass of wine—I read a line of voluptuous beauty—and I am lost again. How will it end? Oh, my merciful God, how will it end?"
She spent almost all the night trying to quiet and console Vincent. She drew his head against her breast and kissed his forehead while she talked to him. She found, almost miraculously, words and ideas which gave him comfort, but with an effort which was torment for her. She had a sensation of fishing in the depths of her mind, and painfully hauling out some thought which she had not been conscious of having there. Her love lent her insight; she discerned the grain of terror that lay beneath the chaff of his theatrical eloquence. She was able to talk to him with piety—she who had no religion, and had never given a thought to such matters. She assured him that his repentance would wipe out his sins.
"Why, Vincent!" she said. "I could forgive anything you did; and you know God must be more forgiving than me."
Steadfast, gentle, patient as an angel, she sat with him, listened to his confessions, his self-accusations, and absolved him in her love. Who could hold the man to blame for those faults which were his essence? Not God—not she!
The clock had struck four. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, both exhausted, pale, quite calm now. Vincent began to talk again, more in his usual voice.
"Angelica," he said, "Eddie told me that he asked you to marry him, and that you refused him."
"Of course I did, Vincent."
"It was a mistake, my dear. It's the very best thing you could do—both for yourself and for me."
"Oh, Vincent!" she cried. "I couldn't! You know I couldn't!"
"Angelica," he said, solemnly, "do it for my sake. Be my sister. I swear to you that all base and sensual feelings have left my heart. I am purged of all my lust."
Well, so he was, for the moment; but by weariness, not by religion. He had talked himself into exhaustion.
"You couldn't do better," he went on. "I'm not selfish, not jealous. My wish is to see you happy, and you would be happy with Eddie. He's a good man."
He was, in fact, so worn out after his outburst that he felt compelled to get rid of Angelica, not only for the present, but forever. He didn't recognize the feeling. He was conscious only of a great desire to dispose of her, which he fancied was concern for her welfare.
"I want to see your life happy and blessed," he said. "I want to see you with your children about you, you with your beautiful Madonna face. I want always to be near you, but only to worship you. I will be your brother, your friend. I long to see this, Angelica!"
"No," she said, "I don't want to. It wouldn't suit me. I'm not so crazy about getting married, anyway."
"For me, Angelica! I beg you!"
"No, not even for you. I don't want to, and that's enough. I'm young, Vincent. I have all my life before me. You needn't worry about me." A mortal weariness assailed her. "I guess I'll go now," she said. "I'm pretty tired. Good night, Vincent!"
He kissed her solemnly on the brow and opened the door for her. She shut herself into her own room.
"Oh, Gawd!" she sighed. "Now what? This is getting too much for me. Can't even think any more. I don't know—"
She undressed and got into bed, though the sky had grown gray in the east. She felt obliged to sleep, even if it were only for an hour; but before she closed her eyes—
"One thing's certain," she said. "I'm going away from here, right away. I can't stand any more of this!"
XV
This one idea remained with her when she got up from her brief sleep—this determination to get away. Except for this, she was drained quite dry of all ideas, all feelings. She was not poetic; she hadn't the astounding variations of a poetic soul such as Vincent's. She was not at all easy to move, and when she was thoroughly aroused—to pity, to love, to grief, to whatever it might be—it took a very long time for the tempest to calm. She wanted now simply to get away alone, where she might examine this turmoil in her heart.
She packed her bag, put on her hat and coat, and went to Polly's room.
Polly was dressing in her very leisurely fashion, going to and fro in the room, and stopping now and then before the table where her coffee and rolls were laid. She was in petticoat and under-bodice, with her thin, sallow arms and neck bare and her black hair hanging about her face. She had a forlorn and jaded look—for which, however, Angelica had no eyes.
"Mrs. Geraldine," she said, "I got to go. I want to go right away—to-day. I don't feel well."
"I'm very sorry, my dear! What's the trouble?"
"I'm just tired. I've just got to get away. I want to go home."
"But if you're not very well, wouldn't you be more comfortable here?"
"No. I want to go home. I—you know how it is, Mrs. Geraldine, when you feel you just got to go home!"
Indeed Polly knew!
"For how long?" she asked. "You don't think you're really seriously ill, do you? You think a little rest at home will set you up in a very short time?"
Angelica hesitated a moment.
"I don't think—" she began. "I don't guess I'll come back."
"Never?"
"No."
"But aren't you happy here? Aren't you comfortable? Tell me what's wrong, and perhaps we can arrange it."
"You couldn't. I'm sorry, but I can't stay—not for anything."
There was no mistaking Angelica's tone. Polly saw that the girl was absolutely determined and not to be turned—not without a long argument, anyway, and that she had no desire to undertake. What is more, she had too much sense to ask questions. She had a suspicion that her husband was somehow concerned in Angelica's going; there was probably a great deal in this thing of which she decidedly preferred to remain ignorant.
She wasn't jealous; that had worn off on that first evening of Vincent's home-coming. It had hurt her dreadfully, then, to see his glance turn always away from her and toward this younger and lovelier face; but now she didn't care whether he was infatuated with Angelica or any one else. She was pleased simply to be on friendly terms with him, to have him agreeable instead of contemptuous, and she knew that was the best she could expect.
She had not the slightest hope of winning him back; she didn't even want to very much. She was so tired; she dreaded the necessity which love brings for effort—for keeping up, in appearances, in spirits. She preferred that Vincent should never look at her at all, rather than to have to endure his old critical glance. She was only too conscious of her sad decline.
So there was nothing in her heart but real regret that Angelica was going. She liked her very much, and was used to her.
"I'm very sorry to lose you," she said. "I'd hoped you were quite settled here. I'll miss you more than I can say."
"You've been very nice to me," said Angelica.
"And you must always remember me as a friend. If there is ever anything that I can do for you, come to me. I mean it!"
She held out her hand, and Angelica gripped it.
"Good-by!" said Polly again. "And good luck! I hope you'll let me know how you get on."
"Yes, I will. But listen, Mrs. Geraldine—can I have my money?"
"Certainly! You'll have to get it from Mr. Geraldine, though. He's in the library, writing."
Angelica was dismayed.
"No," she faltered. "I don't want to bother him. If you'll just give me my train fare, you could send me the rest."
"My dear, I don't think I have even enough for your fare. Mr. Geraldine handles all my money for me."
She was a little ashamed of this arrangement, to which she had eagerly agreed when she and Vincent were first married. It humiliated her to be thus, without a penny.
"You needn't mind disturbing him," she said. "He expects to do such things for me. Come up and say good-by to me the last thing before you go, won't you?"
Angelica said "Yes," quite absently. She was thinking how this interview, with Vincent might be avoided. It was the thing above all others she most desired to avoid. She had meant to go off quickly, to get home, where she could think in peace, where she could try a little to remember and to comprehend what had happened. She didn't attempt to decide whether or not she would ever see Vincent again; she knew only that she did not want to see him now. But she was too well-trained in poverty, and had too much common sense, to go off penniless, without even her train fare, when there was honestly earned money due to her.
"Shall I wait for Eddie to come home?" she reflected.
No, that wouldn't do at all. She wouldn't know what to say to Eddie, how to explain her leaving. She felt absolutely afraid to see him.
"I'll just have to go to Vincent," she decided. "But I'm going! He can't stop me—I don't care what he says!"
It took all her courage. She went down-stairs and into the library. There he sat, writing, as Polly had said. He didn't look up. She stood in the doorway, waiting, for a few minutes; then she said:
"Mr. Geraldine!"
"Yes?" he asked, not looking up from his writing.
"Mrs. Geraldine told me to come to you and get my money."
"I can't be bothered now!" he said irritably. "I'm busy. Can't you see?"
"I'm sorry, but I've got to have it. I'm going."
"Going, Angelica?" he said, looking up at last.
"Yes. I want to catch the ten forty. So if you'll just give me my money, I'll go right away."
He resumed his writing.
"Too bad!" he said. "I really haven't got it."
"Please don't be so mean!" she cried. "For Gawd's sake, give it to me, and let me go!" Her fatigue and her distress at his callousness were unnerving her. She felt ready to burst into tears. "Just give it to me and let me go!" she said again.
"I haven't it," said Vincent.
"You haven't got any money?"
"Not a sou."
"But you can get it for me?"
He shook his head.
"No, my dear, dear girl. You'll have to wait."
"How long—an hour?"
"I can't say."
"But what do you mean?"
"I mean that I haven't any money. I said so before."
"But Mrs. Geraldine said you had all her money."
"Then Mrs. Geraldine will have to be informed, very kindly, that her income is mortgaged for the next two years. I had to do it. You see, she has a little annuity, which she lets me collect. Well, I was embarrassed. I had to borrow money against it. So, you see, that's that! She hasn't anything; and I—I'm penniless as a gipsy. Now you comprehend, I hope."
And to her amazement he began to write again.
"Say!" she cried. "This won't do!"
"Don't bother me, my dear girl. I'm at work," he said, frowning. "On a poem."
"But you can't put me off like this!"
"I'm writing!" he cried, in a sudden rage. "I don't care about you and your money. Let me alone!"
"You've got to stop writing, then. I don't care about you and your writing. You've got to pay me!"
He sprang to his feet.
"Get out!" he shouted. "How dare you trouble me about your dirty money? Good God! Lines such as I had, ready to put down, and to have them ruined by a greedy, good-for-nothing little servant girl! I have no money. If I had, I wouldn't give it to you. You don't deserve it. Idling away your time, aping your betters, draggling about in their cast-off finery! If they weren't both of them lazy and worthless themselves, they'd have turned you out long ago. Get out!"
And he caught her by the arm and thrust her into the hall, slamming the door behind her.
Angelica rushed up-stairs like a whirlwind and into Polly's room, panting, quite beside herself with fury.
"Him!" she cried. "He turned me out! Took me by the arm and shoved me out into the hall! He—"
Polly had been putting on her hat before the mirror, but she threw it down in haste, to give all her attention to this frantic young thing.
"What were you saying to him?" she asked mildly.
"Nothing! Not a blame thing! Only just asking him for my money, like you told me. Ah, he's a fine feller, he is! The names he called me—and just last night crying and saying he couldn't live away from me!"
And she told all the story to Polly—even showed her Vincent's letter.
"Now!" she said. "Give me my carfare, and I'll go."
"I have nothing. Perhaps Mrs. Russell—"
But Mrs. Russell was out. Polly was in misery. There was this terrible girl, demanding her money, implacably waiting for it, this girl whom her husband had treated so shockingly. Her own wish in life was to be rid of her.
"Take my ring," she said. "It's worth ten times what you want."
"I can't buy a ticket with it. I don't believe you have any money, the lot of you!"
Paradise was lost, her hopes destroyed, her pride mortally wounded; so, having nothing to lose, she let herself go. She threw off all restraint; she was as coarse, as fierce, as she wished to be.
Polly was wonderfully patient with the girl.
"You shall be paid," she said. "I'll go down with you to Mr. Geraldine. If he hasn't any ready money, he'll write you a check."
He still sat there writing. He paid no attention to them as they opened the door and went in.
"Vincent!" said Polly. "Will you please write a check for Angelica at once?'"
Then he laid down his pen and looked at them for a long time in contemptuous silence.
"I told her," he said, "just what I will tell you. I have no money."
"But, Vincent, a check—"
He smiled, pulled a check-book out of his pocket, and wrote. Tearing out a leaf, he handed it to Angelica. She stared at it.
"What do you mean?" she cried.
Polly looked over her shoulder.
"Please don't joke, Vincent," she said. "Please give her what is due her."
For he had drawn a check for ten thousand dollars.
"My dear Polly, any check I wrote would be equally ridiculous. There's nothing in the bank."
"Then where is it, Vincent?"
"I've told you. My investments—"
"But my income? Surely that—"
He began to show irritability.
"I tell you," he said, "that it's all gone. Now, for God's sake, my dear soul, go away! Can't you see I'm trying to write?"
"But my income—"
"Oh, you and your damned income!" he shouted. "You women and your beastly greed! Haven't you any soul? Can't you think of anything but money?"
"No, I can't, Vincent, just now. It's a very serious matter," said Polly gravely.
He jumped up with an oath.
"It's disposed of for the next two years," he cried. "You left it to my judgment. I've used my judgment. And now you come whining and sniveling about your handful of pennies. By God, I'm entitled to it! The whole thing doesn't amount to what you cost me in a month—your clothes and your—"
"Never mind that, please. Do you mean that we can't pay Angelica?"
"Good God! Is your head made of wood? Or are you getting senile?"
Polly went on, as unheeding of his gross rudeness as a rock is of the spray that dashes over it. Quiet and resolute, she pursued her investigations. Her money was her life, her peace, her freedom, her dignity; she knew that she could not earn any more, and that there was no other man to give it to her. She must have it!
Angelica observed her with profound admiration. Even to further her own best interests, even, she fancied, to save her own life, she couldn't have remained so calm, so self-controlled.
"Do you mean," she went on, "that we have nothing?"
"Certainly not! We have all sorts of things—paintings, books, your jewelry. Simply we have no money. Now let me alone!"
"But what do you propose doing?" she asked. "We can't go on, like this, without a penny. How do you propose to pay Angelica?"
He raised his upper lip in a brutal sort of sneer.
"Oh, you don't know, do you? Of course not! You're perfectly innocent, aren't you? You never suspected, did you, who it was paid for the clothes on your back? It 'll be such a shock to you, dear soul! In our need we shall have to turn to Eddie! He'll pay Angelica, he'll pay me, and he'll pay you. God bless Eddie!"
That blow told. Polly winced under it. She turned away slowly and went out of the room. Angelica followed her, and, looking back from the doorway, she saw Vincent writing again.
Angelica had started an avalanche. She was deeply impressed and interested. She had no desire to go now; she wished to see the tremendous end.
Events moved with satisfactory speed. Polly went at once to Mrs. Russell's room, to find her just arrived at home from a Stricken Belgium card-party. They closed the door; they were shut in there a long time together. They must, of course, have summoned by telephone the two unhappy and disturbed gentlemen who came in a motor-car later in the afternoon.
When these came, they all went into the library, where Vincent still sat. There was a dreadful scene. The newcomers were Polly's lawyer and the trustee of her first husband's estate, and they at once attacked Vincent. The trustee was non-legal and devoid of wise caution; he shouted threats at Vincent, and Vincent cursed him in the voice of a bull. He was beside himself with fury. The lawyer tried to frighten them both into silence, but he was himself so appalled and outraged by their ignorance of what was and what wasn't libelous that his arguments were weak.
Polly was distressed, but resolute.
"No!" she implored the raging trustee. "No, Frank, don't, please! Only find out just what has happened and see what you can save for me. Don't trouble to quarrel with him."
Vincent turned on her.
"Yes!" he screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "Yes! You'll fight to defend your money, at least! You don't care about anything else. It never pierced your damned self-satisfaction when I was off with other women—"
"Vincent!" said his mother in a low, shocked voice.
"Very well! Very well!" he cried. "I don't mind them knowing. I did take her miserable, little income and spend it on other women. For God's sake, who wouldn't? Look at her! Do you think she—"
"Just tell him, please," said Polly to the lawyer, "that I intend to leave him immediately and to obtain a divorce, and that he must give up any authority he ever got from me."
"That will be arranged, Mrs. Geraldine," said the lawyer.
Suddenly Mrs. Russell began to cry.
"Oh, Polly!" she said. "Don't give the poor boy up! Give him another chance! Oh, do, do, do!"
She stopped suddenly. Vincent, too, stopped his violence and his curses. Eddie had come in.
Eddie's peculiar power had never before been so unmistakably demonstrated. He had never before had such an opportunity for showing how much of a man he was. He was master of the situation, master of every one. He brushed aside the clamor, the furious arguments; he wished only for information, and he knew how to get it.
He addressed himself chiefly to the lawyer, with now and then a question to Polly. He listened carefully, and one could almost read in his face the functioning of his just and clear mind.
Angelica watched him through the keyhole. This wasn't her Eddie, who stammered in her presence, who could be roused by a single look from her black eyes. Here was a man quite beyond her influence, immeasurably superior to her, a man undeniably fine.
She listened to him speaking. He addressed Vincent with a quiet, dispassionate sort of contempt; he told him that he would return to Polly what Vincent had stolen from her.
"And I will apologize to you, too," he said to Angelica, when he came out of the library, "for ail this that you've had to go through here in my house. I think you're quite right to leave. If you'll go up-stairs now, I'll talk the matter over with these gentlemen. You and I can discuss it later."
So it was over. The house was quiet again, and they were all shut in their several rooms. Angelica went to Polly's door and knocked.
"It's Angelica," she said. "Anything I can do for you?"
Polly's voice came, after a long interval, faint and mournful:
"No, thank you!"
So then where should she turn but, naturally, to Eddie? She was very unhappy. She felt ashamed of herself now, terribly lonely, banished, and disgraced. Of course Polly would tell Eddie—perhaps already had told him—all that Angelica had told her, all about that disgraceful affair with Vincent, and she would lose, or perhaps already had lost, Eddie's regard. Just when she needed it so, when she had been so cruelly repudiated by Vincent!
"Well, anyway, I want to see him," she said to herself. "Anyway, he won't fly out at me, even if he thinks I've been awful!"
She couldn't find him for a long time. She wandered about the house like a lost soul; and then at last she came across him on the piazza, sitting there smoking, in the chilly October evening.
"Mr. Eddie!" she said softly, from the doorway.
"Oh! Yes?" he answered pleasantly. "Is it you, Angelica? Do you want anything?"
"I just wanted to speak to you—"
"Shall I come in?"
"I'll come out," she suggested, glad of the chance to talk in the dark, and groped her way to the corner where she saw the light of his cigar.
"It's a dark night," he said.
"It's—sad out here," said Angelica. "So—damp, and all."
"There's a big storm coming. I wanted to speak to you, Angelica. I'm very glad you came. I wanted—I've some money that's due you. You see, I'm going away to-morrow."
"Going where?"
"To a training-camp—before I go to France, you know."
"Oh, dear!" she cried, with quite genuine dismay. "Oh, Mr. Eddie, I am sorry! I hate to have you gone!"
"I don't like to go," he admitted simply. "And especially I don't like to leave you like this. I wish that it could have been different."
She waited a moment.
"I suppose I better be going to-morrow, too," she said.
"I suppose so. There's nothing more for you here, Angelica. Polly's going away, you know, and—"
"Mr. Eddie!" she cried. "Tell me! Tell me, honestly, do you think I—it was my fault? If you'd only please tell me everything they told you—Mrs. Geraldine, and all! What did she say about me—and—that?"
"Polly?" he asked. "She didn't say anything about you at all, except that she liked you very much, and that she thought Vincent had behaved very badly toward you."
"My Gawd!" said Angelica under her breath. "She never told him! He don't know a thing!"
"I don't blame you at all," he said. "Not in any way. You lost your temper—perhaps you lost your bead a little—but you had great provocation. You see, Angelica, Vincent came to me and explained the whole thing. I must say he was very candid and—and fine about it. He told me frankly that he had tried to—mislead you, and that you refused to listen to him; and that that was the reason he behaved so badly to you. Of course, he has behaved badly, all around—shamefully; but still—he has good points. I thought it was a—a plucky sort of thing to do, you know, especially when we were on such bad terms. He said he couldn't bear to think of your being blamed in any sort of way."
Angelica was amazed and delighted that she had been made into a persecuted heroine. She was filled with admiration for Vincent's nobility; and yet she could dimly perceive that there was something behind it, that he gained something he wanted by this false confession. It seemed a miracle that Eddie had been spared, both by him and by Polly, those very facts which Angelica was so anxious for him not to know.
"He said he was sorry for the whole thing," Eddie went on. "He begged me to try to influence Polly to give him another chance. I couldn't do that. I simply said I'd tell her exactly what he had said, and what he'd done. I did. I had a long talk with her; but she's finished with him. She didn't say a word against him, but—she's finished with him."
"But is it that—about me? Is that the reason she's leaving him?" Angelica asked, with anxiety.
"No! As far as that goes, there are plenty of things far worse—in that line, you know. No! I think it's chiefly about the money. She says she couldn't trust him again. She says it's impossible to live with him under such conditions. I suppose it is. Anyway, she's absolutely determined to leave him."
Angelica sat in silence, more utterly wretched than ever. Had Vincent just sacrificed himself for her? Did he really love her? And for his love was he to be utterly cast out?
"No!" she said suddenly, aloud.
"No what?" asked Eddie.
"Nothing. I was just thinking. There comes the rain!" she cried. "Gosh, what a storm!"
They both got up, to push back their chairs against the wall of the house, but even there it reached them—the spray from the rain falling in straight, heavy lines, dashing against the earth with a fierce drumming noise that filled the air and confused the senses. The smell of the soil, the dead leaves, the grass, came to them with its own invigorating freshness; and in spite of the chilly sprinkle in their faces they lingered, fascinated by the noise, the wet odors, the great black, uproarious void before them. They stood close together, their shoulders touching, their backs against the wall.
"Angelica!" said Eddie's voice in her ear, curiously flat and faint in the surrounding din. "Angelica, can't you? Just think—if I could only know—while I'm away—that you—that you were waiting for me!"
"Eddie," she replied, "I couldn't. Not now, anyway. Perhaps—later. I don't know."
"You mean—you think some day—it's not impossible? You could, then? I mean—I'm not repulsive to you?"
"Deary boy!" she protested. "Of course you're not."
"Do you think you could—kiss me?" he asked. "I'm going away to-morrow."
She turned, put a hand upon his shoulder, and kissed him on the cheek.
"There!" she said. "Now you see!"
He didn't move; stood there like a statue.
"I guess we'd better go in," she said. "We're getting wet; and I've got to pack up my things."
To go home! She began for the first time to imagine her homecoming, to think of her future. This was all over; she would never get another such job, never again be in a house like this, never again have a chance like this!
She began to think of the kitchen, of the factory, of their suppers of tea and bread and margarine, of her mother, listless and hopeless—all of it hopeless—even Vincent. What could he ever do for her, even if he had the inclination? Who was there on earth who cared to do anything for her, who could give her in any way the things she craved? Panic overwhelmed her.
"Eddie!" she cried. "I—could!"
He was suddenly galvanized into life.
"Could?" he cried. "Could what?"
"If you want—I'll marry you!"
His arms went around her, pressing her tightly against his coat. A smell of damp tweed and cigar-smoke filled her nostrils; she couldn't see or move at all, her head was so buried in his clumsy embrace.
"Oh, my darling!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica, to think that I have to go now!"
"But I'll be waiting for you," she said.
XVI
She stood on the front steps long after he was out of sight, lost in a painful reverie. The rain was still falling steadily and violently, without wind, from a pale gray sky. She watched it, absently, churning the gravel walk, splashing up again from the puddles. What a desolate and tremendous world that morning!
Eddie was really gone. She had said good-by to that generous and loyal friend, had pressed his hand and tried to smile brightly after him. He hadn't wanted her to go to the railway-station with him.
"No," he had said. "Let's say good-by here, in the place that's going to be our home."
He was in a bad state. He did all he knew to conceal it, but it was none the less apparent to her that he was deeply troubled by the thought of what lay before him, that he was most reluctant to go, unhappy, alarmed, and a little puzzled. He was ashamed of all this, he wished to be a man, like Vincent, and he naively believed that a man was practically devoid of any emotion except love.
Nevertheless, disturbed as he was, he didn't for a moment neglect his beloved Angelica's interests. He wished to know how she was to get on.
"I'll find another job," she said.
He didn't object; he really considered that it would be best for her to remain sturdily independent, under no obligation to him.
"I've made a will," he said hurriedly, "so that if I don't come back, you'll be all right. In the mean time, if you do need anything, here's my lawyer's address. I've told him to give you anything you ask for without question."
Mrs. Russell, too, had gone. She had felt so upset by Eddie's departure and Polly's cruel behavior that she was obliged to take a ten-day motor-trip with the doctor and Courtland. She hadn't remembered to bid Angelica good-by.
Polly, however, had been very, very kind. She had given Angelica several little presents, which wasn't her way, and she had spoken to her with a sincere kindliness.
"My dear girl," she had said, "this has been a wretched thing for you. I only hope it won't really harm you. You mustn't let it. Try to forget it. Just now, perhaps, there's a sort of glamour—but after you've been gone for a while, I think you'll see it all more clearly"—meaning Vincent all the time, of course. "If only you could find some work that you could put your heart into, Angelica—something you are suited to! What do you think you'd like?"
"Well, I guess I'm going to marry Eddie—"
"Yes," said Polly, who didn't think that would ever come to pass. "But he may be gone for a long time; and meanwhile you'd like to show him, wouldn't you, what you can do?"
"I guess I'd like dressmaking and millinery," said Angelica.
"Very likely I can find some sort of opening for you. I know quite a number of self-supporting girls. Keep in touch with me, be sure!"
The house was very quiet. There was nothing to distract her, and Angelica was able to meditate at her leisure. She thought first of herself and her return to her mother, of that "going back" which was so difficult to this ardent spirit always eager to go forward.
She suffered under a terrible discontent and restlessness. She was ashamed of the past, disgusted with the future. She felt that life, real life, was ended; the adventure finished, the mysterious charm lost.
Try as she would, she could not keep her mind from straying to Vincent. He was adventure and charm, life itself, for her. She told herself that she was going to forget him. He had treated her very badly, and she was done with him. She was going to marry Eddie and be done with Vincent forever.
But she knew that she could not. Wouldn't she see forever in her dreams that big, arrogant man with his hawk-like face and his bright hair? He had hurt her, but he had made her happy, too. He had come upon her with violence. Everything about his brief love-making had been startling and disturbing. She had often hated him, but she had always loved him—always, from that moment when she had seen him standing in the doorway of Mrs. Russell's room.
Then she gave her attention to Eddie, with a queer soreness of heart. She felt that she was taking advantage of Eddie; that he was too good for her. She was so sorry for him, so full of affection and respect for him—and so disinclined to think about him!
She fancied she saw coming the taxi which was to take her to the station, and she ran up-stairs to fetch her bag. Her familiar room was neat and desolate, with the green blinds pulled half-way down, the bureau and dressing-table stripped bare, the bed covered over with a sheet. All trace of her was obliterated. It saddened her; she took a last glance at herself in the darkened mirror and went out, closing the door behind her.
She almost ran into Annie, who had been on the point of knocking on her door.
"Mr. Vincent says he'd like to see you in the music-room for a few minutes," the maid said curtly.
"No!" said Angelica, and then, almost immediately: "Yes!"
After all, she ought to see him, after what he had done. She ought to thank him. Even if she were going to marry Eddie, there was no harm in that. In fact, Eddie would doubtless have approved of it.
"He won't eat me," she said. "Let's see what he's got to say!"
She tried to prepare herself for anything, whether she found him pleading, passionate, brutal, or depressed. She felt herself quite strong enough to withstand any of his moods—stronger than he was.
She entered again that little music-room where Mrs. Russell had interviewed her so long ago; but to-day it had taken on quite a new character. He had pulled the shades up to the top of the windows, so that the cold light of the rainy day came in to destroy the charm and romance of the armor, the harp, and the orange-shaded lamp that had so delighted her.
Vincent sat on the piano-stool, writing on the closed piano. He was without a coat, in a gray flannel shirt and old blue trousers. His hair was all on end, in wildest disorder, and his face, when he turned to Angelica, was troubled and ecstatic. He looked boyish, very touching, and his manner was altogether unstudied.
"Angelica!" he said. "Please listen to this! Just tell me—these few lines—do you get a picture at all? I mean—just tell me exactly how it makes you feel—not what you think of it, you know, but how you feel. Sit down, please, and keep quiet. Now, you know, this is almost the end of the thing—the chap's losing his faith—before he has the vision. It's free verse, of course—an impression:
"Men crushed down, like worms under a heavy foot,
Half stamped into the mud, but the other half
Still squirming. Writhing corpses
With writhing wounds,
From which the blood squirts violently;
And over it all, in a cloud of mist, rose and gold,
Rides God.
God! God! God, the father of all these mutilated animals!
God Almighty, whose will it is to kill his sons in these hideous ways!
He sees everything. He hears everything. He hears their yells.
Their howls for pity and for death. He could stamp the worm
Quite out of existence;
Smear it into the ground so that it should be obliterated and
At peace;
But for His own good purposes, He lets it squirm!"
Angelica was quite stupefied; she had no clue, no dimmest idea what to say. She didn't even know whether this weird stuff was meant to be funny. She thought it was and yet—
"You see," he went on, "it's meant to be horrible. It is horrible, isn't it?"
"Sure!" said Angelica. "It is."
"Now wait!" he said peremptorily, and swung round again on the stool, to continue his writing.
"Wait!" he muttered again. "Don't go! I want you to hear this!"
She sat perfectly still for a long time. Then, suddenly, he groaned, looked round at her with a sort of glare, and tore up his paper with an oath.
"No!" he cried. "No! I can't get it! Lord, it's such torment!"
He buried his head in his hands.
"Angelica!" he said in a muffled voice. "Please come here!"
"What is it, Vincent?" she asked gently.
"Angelica! What's going to become of me?" he asked huskily, his face still hidden.
The question startled her.
"Why, I don't know," she said. "I suppose you—"
"But I'm all alone!" he said in a sort of bewilderment. "They've all left me, and you're going too!"
She didn't dare to touch him, but her voice was a caress.
"Vincent, I'm sorry!"
He looked up and seized her hand.
"Oh, my love!" he said. "Aren't we fools? Even to think of such a thing as parting! You and I, Angelica, to part! It couldn't be!"
"It's got to be, Vincent," she answered, trying to withdraw her hand.
"No, it's not. No, Angelica, you sha'n't leave me!"
"Vincent!" she said. "Don't! You've made enough trouble. Don't make any more."
"It's you who are making the trouble. You're breaking my heart, and your own too—yes, yours! You can't deny it! Every drop of blood in your body tells you the same thing. You need me and you long for me as I need and long for you."
"Please!" she said, beginning to cry. "You know I'm going to marry Eddie."
"There's no one else in the world but you and me. All other people, all other things, are shadows—lies—folly! You are a woman and I am a man, and we love each other. We cannot part!"
"I must!" she said desperately. "You know I must!"
"No! No! Only love me, Angelica, and care for nothing else. Oh, you could not be so base and cowardly as to leave me!"
"Oh, Vincent!" she sobbed. "You talk like a fool! You know I can't stay here!"
"Look here!" he said. "Eddie gave me a hundred dollars. Come away with me—now—this instant! Anywhere—it doesn't matter. Just as we are, friendless, homeless, penniless—just you and I, to make our way together in the world."
She shook her head, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Oh, why didn't you let me alone?" she cried forlornly.
"My girl, how could I? I couldn't lose you," he said, surprised. "I couldn't let you go."
"But you must!"
"But I won't!"
"If you do really love me, you won't make me so miserable—"
"Angelica, I don't love like that. I don't care whether you're unhappy or not. I want you! I am mad for you! Even if it means your damnation and ruin, on earth and in hell I I don't care for anything but you—not for God Himself!"
"Don't talk like that!"
"It's true. I know well what I'm doing. For you I've lost my immortal soul. I haven't a soul now. I love you as Satan loves. I want to drag you down to hell with me!"
Angelica, however, was by no means so concerned with hell as she was with this world.
"But think what would become of me!" she cried.
"Who cares?"
This view-point startled her.
"Well," she said, "I care."
"No, you don't," he answered. "You only care for me."
She wished to argue, to defend herself; but it was too late. She was lost. His words so appealed to the recklessness in her own nature, to her devil-may-care heart, that she could not counter them. She loved this man; her whole heart urged her blindly to follow him, to do what he asked, to hurry gloriously to destruction.
She made a half-hearted effort to get away from him, but he only held her closer. He looked down at her and laughed.
"No use!" he said. "You don't want to go!"
Suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, and clung to him, looking up into his bold eyes.
"All right!" she cried. "I don't care!"
XVII
Mrs. Kennedy was very tired that afternoon. She had just finished scrubbing a kitchen for a tenant, crawling laboriously across the greasy soft-wood boards with her brush and her pail and her cloth. There had been some foreign sort of fish stew cooking on the stove all the time, and the smell had turned her sick. She had got splinters into her water-softened hands, and her back ached with a ferocious, burning ache. She came down the basement stairs carrying the empty pail, slowly—far more slowly tfian she used to come.
"There's not a thing in for my supper," she thought. "Well, I sha'n't bother to go out and get anything. I'll just lay me down and rest. I'm tired—tired out!"
The front door was unlatched. She pushed it open with her foot, and went along to the kitchen. She wanted a cup of tea, but she couldn't make the effort to get it ready. She couldn't even lie down. She sat on the step-ladder chair, straightening her aching back and supporting it with one hand while her eyes roved about her neat and dismal little domain, hoping to discover what she very well knew wasn't there—something to eat, prepared and ready.
She was beginning to be dulled and blunted by solitude. Her life's incentive was gone; she had no reason for working and living other than an animal reason—to feed herself. Her spirit had no food, and at was perishing.
She had a vague distaste for death, which was just sufficiently stronger than her apathy to preserve her existence. She slept in her underground cave, cooked and ate what was essential, kept it and herself respectable and clean, and went dully on working, working, going wherever she was bidden, doing whatever she was told.
She had decided to go out to the corner, to buy two bananas for her supper, when the door opened and Angelica came in.
She was just the same—jaunty, swaggering. It might have been one of those long-past evenings when she came back from work, tired, but restless and hungry. She had the same shabby suit and ungloved hands.
"Hello, mommer!" she said.
Amazing to see the change in that worn face!
"Angie! For goodness' sake! I never looked for you! Why ever didn't you write, deary, so's I'd have something in for your supper?"
"It don't matter, mommer. I'll go out and get something."
"I'll get my purse—"
"No—I got some money. Listen, mommer, I'm going to stay home with you a while. Mr. Eddie's gone to the war and Mrs. Geraldine's gone away. Now, for Gawd's sake, don't begin to ask a lot of questions! I'm dead tired. I'll go out and get something for us to eat, and we'll go to the movies after. You put on the water for tea now, while I run to the corner."
But even after the front door had slammed, it was some time before Mrs. Kennedy got up to put on the kettle.
"What ever is she doing home now, all of a sudden, like this?" she asked herself. "I don't see. Oh, I do hope there's nothing wrong! She's so hasty!"
Angelica came in again with a great paper bag.
"I got a regular treat," she said. "Sardines, rolls, cheese, and a nice big can of cherries!"
"You mustn't waste your money, deary," said her mother mechanically.
They both set to work to open the tins, brew the tea, and lay out the supper.
"It does taste good," Mrs. Kennedy admitted. "Somehow, when I'm alone, I haven't got the heart to buy things and cook them. It's nice to see you again, Angie!"
"I dare say you'll soon be sick of me," said Angelica. "Now, come along, mommer, put on your hat and coat!"
They went out together, the tall, swaggering daughter, the small, decorous mother, along the swarming streets to their favorite moving-picture "palace." It was exactly the sort of picture Mrs. Kennedy liked, a "society" one, and in addition her daughter bought her a box of caramels. In every way a treat, a notable evening!
And yet, all the time, her vague anxiety persisted. She had questions which she felt she must ask. They went home, and to bed, without her having summoned courage to put them. Then, at last:
"Angie!" she said softly in the dark. "Angie!"
Not a sound. Angelica must have fallen asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
Mrs. Kennedy was very much surprised to see Angelica spring out of bed the next morning at six o'clock, for she had always liked to lie in bed till the last possible instant. Her mother was still more surprised to hear her say:
"I'll get the breakfast, mommer!"
"You needn't to, deary. I guess you want a little rest."
"Rest, nothing! I'm going out to hunt for a job this morning."
"But aren't you ever going back there—to Mrs. Russell's?"
"Not much! I'm going back to the factory again."
"Oh, Angie! I'm sorry!"
"Why? You made enough row about my going to Mrs. Russell's."
"Only because I didn't think you could get the place; but now that you did, I'd hate to see you go back. I'd like to see you better yourself."
"Oh, for Gawd's sake! That stuff again! No! Let me tell you, mommer, I'm through with all that. I'm all right the way I am. I'm good enough—as good as any of them, anyway."
She put on her hat and went out, without a kiss, without a good-by, and Mrs. Kennedy saw no more of her till six o'clock, when she came in, pale and scowling.
"What's the matter with the supper?" she said roughly. "Why ain't it ready?"
"I just got in myself," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I had a hard day."
"Well, you're not the only one," said Angelica. "What you got?"
"I'll have to run to the corner."
"Now, see here!" said her child. "I won't stand this! I'm not going to wait this way. If you can't have my supper ready when I get home, I won't come home—d'ye understand?"
This was but the first indication of a change, a profound change, in Angelica. Her mother saw it with anguish. She was rougher, coarser, more cruel. She was brusk with her mother in a way quite different from her old, careless fashion. She was cold, critical, scornful.
She had got her old job back in the factory where she had worked before, but she didn't bring her money home now. Her mother was obliged to ask for some, when she had nothing left to buy what her child demanded; and then, fiercely reluctant, Angelica would throw down on the table a crumpled dollar bill.
Her habits were altogether changed. She spent no more evenings with her mother at home or at the movies. She went about with other factory girls, to dance-halls and cabarets of the cheapest sort. She bought herself daring blouses, thin as a veil, through which her lean brown shoulders shone; she wore short skirts, and had gauzy silk stockings on her long legs; she painted her face with exaggeration.
"Angie!" her mother remonstrated. "You don't look decent!"
"I don't want to," she replied.
Night after night she stopped out until one o'clock. Then her mother would be awakened by voices in the courtyard—a kiss, very likely, a scuffle, a slap. That was Angelica and her escort, saying good night.
Then she would come in, jaded, irritable, the paint very brilliant on her pale face, and begin undressing—not in the dark, as she had done formerly, to avoid disturbing her mother. She would come into the room with no effort to be quiet, light the gas, and dawdle about, while the poor anxious woman in bed lay watching her, sometimes asking questions, but timidly, dreading a rebuff.
"Bah! I'm so sick of it!" Angelica told her one night. "Those cheap dances—those smart Johnnies mauling you round with their sweaty hands—and then a glass of beer and a whole lot of their cheap talk. Cheap, all of it! I'm sick of—everything!"
She had flung herself down fully dressed on her cot, her soiled white shoes on the clean spread.
"Just sick!" she repeated, with a break in her voice.
Her mother was moved.
"Maybe it's because you got used to better sort of people out where you were," she said.
Angelica raised herself and looked at her.
"Better! Well, maybe they were. I don't know. Only—I don't know—I did get to like having things nice, and hearing nice voices. All this is kind of a sudden change. And the bunch I go out with— Lord, what a bunch!"
"Then why do you go out so much, deary? Why don't you stay home?"
"Oh, for Gawd's sake, mommer! After working all day, a girl my age can't sit home alone all evening."
Alone! The poor woman winced.
"You could read magazines, or get books out of the library."
"I don't want to read. There's nothing in books. I want to live. I want to find out if there's anything—anywhere."
"What do you mean, deary? If there's anything anywhere?"
"Oh, it don't matter! I'm going to bed. Good night!"
They went on in this way for weeks. What misery for the mother! She was nothing to her child; she could not even serve her. Angelica had become completely independent. She didn't want to talk to Mrs. Kennedy, to go out with her, to stay at home with her.
Moreover, she had grown indifferent to the little niceties about which she had once been so fastidious. Sometimes she would get in earlier than her mother. Then, without waiting, she would get some sort of meal for herself, eaten off the tub tops, from the saucepan in which it was cooked. She would spend a long time dressing herself in her vivid finery, leaving the dirty pots for her mother to wash. Then again she wouldn't appear until late, long after Mrs. Kennedy had disposed of her meal.
"We met some of the fellers," she would say; "and we hung around a while and ate a lot of candy. I don't want any dinner."
One evening her mother weakly reproached her for her lateness.
"There I had a nice bit of chopped meat fried and ready for you," she said. "You ought to let me know when you're not coming in. It's a trouble to me and a waste of money to buy things and you not to touch them."
"Forget it!" said her child. "I'm never in any hurry to get home, I can tell you. To this hole! Why should I?"
"To see me!" cried her mother in desperation.
"Been seeing you every day for nineteen years. No, mommer, you can't keep me hanging round you any more. I got to be free."
"That don't mean you're not to be kind and loving to—"
"Well, I'm not kind and loving. Gawd didn't make me that way."
Her mother grew more and more certain that Angelica had met with some disaster in her past situation. She thought over it at night when she lay in bed, in the day while she worked—thought of it with anguish and terror. Her peasant soul forgot its acquired American sophistication, and craved that age-old solace nowhere to be found in her present mode of life—a priest, a pastor, some one in authority to reassure her.
She hadn't even neighbors to gossip with, as people had in the "old country." There was no one who had seen her child grow up, who knew all about her, and could and would discuss her with kindly penetration. A stranger in a strange land, but—how wretchedly!—a stranger to whom no country was home. Certainly America was not her heart's land; certainly Scotland, the home of her parents, would have seemed wholly alien; while her husband's birthplace, to her, was little more than a fantastic dreamland.
Unto the third generation does this strangeness persist. Angelica herself had that peculiar lack of ease, that exotic quality; she was an outsider. Her factory friends, too—they were of every race, and they had all become alike. Bohemian, Irish, Russian, Italian—they had all the same air; but it was a foreign air. Their adopted country had undeniably changed them into something different, but it had not made them American. It had made them only strangers. It took away so much and gave so little.
One morning Angelica didn't get up. Her mother, in great anxiety, came over to her, to make inquiries, but Angelica drove her away with fierceness, swearing at her, abusing her.
"Let me alone!" she cried. "Shut your mouth and mind your own business!"
"Oh, Angie, Angie!" said the poor soul. "If you'd only talk to me! If you only had the sense to know how I could help you!"
"Shut up!" screamed Angelica hysterically. "And get out! Don't speak to me again!"
Mrs. Kennedy took up her mail and went out; but half-way up the stairs she collapsed. She sat down on one of the steps and tried to pray; but she didn't know quite what to ask of God.
Because she knew; she couldn't doubt any longer. She knew what was wrong with Angelica!
She didn't really want to pray. She wanted God to do the talking. She wanted to listen to Him, not to talk to Him; to discuss it, to ask questions, to have an explanation, to hear the voice of authority.
What was the use of sitting there telling Him what He surely knew? Or to beg for mercy or pity, when what she wanted was advice? Not that vague sort of "guidance" which one prayed for, and which really meant puzzling things out alone as best one could. There was one thing, though—
"Oh, Lord!" she prayed. "Soften Thou her heart and let her turn to me!"
She remembered afterward how miraculously this prayer was answered.
She was scrubbing the vestibule—a task of peculiar hopelessness, because people always came in to walk over it all the time she was trying to clean it. She heard a voice say "Mommer!" and, looking up, saw her child, huddled in an old wrapper, standing before her. Angelica was struggling with a deadly nausea. She was frightened and desperate, her face a sickly white, her hair in dank disorder.
"Mommer!" she said again. "Come down-stairs! I feel awful sick!"
Her mother got up, leaving pail and brush where they were, and put an arm around this beloved child, so much taller and stronger than she, and yet, in her youth and her ignorance, so much weaker. She helped her down-stairs and into bed again.
"Lie still!" she said, "That's the best you can do, my deary. It 'll pass away."
"Can't you get me some sort of medicine, mommer?"
"Nothing that would help you, my deary," Mrs. Kennedy told her. "You've just got to bear it, Angelica."
The girl looked up with somber eyes.
"Mommer," she said, "listen! What do you guess is the matter with me?"
"Angelica, my deary, I know!"
"Then, mommer, I'm going to kill myself!" Angelica wailed.
Her mother said nothing at all, but to herself she said:
"Why not? It would be the best and the quickest for both of us. If you don't—oh, what's ahead of us, and how ever can we go through with it?"
Angelica searched her mother's face, but in vain; it was impassive.
"What else can I do?" she cried.
"There's always something that can be done," said her mother. "We'll try and think, deary."
"Mommer!"
"Yes, my deary?"
"Do you feel—different to me?"
"No, Angelica, nor ever shall!"
But she did. Strong in the simple soul was the old worship of the virgin. Angelica had been before a mystic and holy thing. She was now no more than a woman, like herself; and a woman is no fit object for worship.
Mrs. Kennedy wasn't shocked, in a moral sense. She didn't dwell much upon that side of the case. Her great concern was with practical problems—above all, how they were to get the money which she knew would be needed. She always spoke of girls in similar situations as "unfortunate," and that is just the way she saw it.
She sat at the bedside, trying her best to make some sort of plan.
{To be continued in the September number of Munsey's Magazine)