Munsey's Magazine/Angelica/Part 5

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

 

XVIII

But Angelica herself! That she should be undergoing this horror, this nightmare, this incredible thing she had heard of and read of!

"Oh, mommer!" she cried. "Oh, mommer! It's the worst thing I ever heard of! I'm the worst—"

"Hush, deary! Don't talk so wild. It's bad, I must admit, but you're young, and I dare say you loved the man and trusted in him, to your sorrow."

Angelica turned her face to the wall. That was the very worst of it. She hadn't really trusted Vincent at all. She had simply followed an instinct of Which she understood nothing. She had been dazzled by his words, been deluded through compassion, through recklessness, through desire, into throwing herself away upon a man who cared nothing for her, who had no affection, no human kindness. He didn't care what happened to her. If she had been willing to stay with him a little longer, he would have been willing to "love" her a little longer; but when she had decided to leave him, he offered no resistance. He would quite easily forget her, she knew.

Useless to tell herself that the conventional code of morality meant nothing to her. It did! She had fancied herself superior to all that, but that was because she hadn't known or imagined what such a surrender meant. Just to run into his arms, without ceremony, without any promise, any covenant, without regard for any other human creature, reckless of her own future, flinging away her pride, her freedom, her decency. That wasn't beautiful. That wasn't love. What in God's name was it?

She had not even happy memories. It was shame to remember her past joy. She loathed herself for her past ecstasy. A perfect terror of her own infamy swept over her.

"No!" she cried. "I can't stand it! Mommer, it's too awful! You don't know how awful! You don't know what I did!"

"Why don't you tell me, deary?"

"I can't! I don't know how. I'll try." She sat up in bed and caught her mother's hand. "The worst is the way I treated Eddie. He was so good to me! He asked me to marry him, and I said I would; and then, the very day he left, I went away—with his own brother!"

"Oh, Angie!" cried her mother, in horror.

"Oh, mommer, if you knew Eddie, you'd see what an awful thing I've done! He's such a good man, and so—kind of noble, and all that! I don't know how he'll ever stand it. He trusted me."

"But what ever made you do such a thing, Angelica? Are you so terrible fond of this other one?"

"No—not now. No—that's what I can't explain. I don't know why I did. I—I just seemed to forget everything. I—just thought—I loved him."

"And you don't? You love the other one—the good one?"

Angelica began to weep.

"No," she said. "That's the worst. I don't love either of 'em. What's the matter with me, do you suppose? I don't seem to have any heart!" She struggled painfully to get her thought into words. "I hate Vincent, and I like Eddie, a lot; but love—I've never felt it at all, mommer, for any one," she sobbed. "Not that love they have in books. It makes me feel dreadful. If I loved Vincent, I wouldn't feel so mean and low and bad. It would be—sort of splendid; but this! Mommer!"

"Well, deary?"

"Maybe there's no such a thing."

"No such a thing as what?"

"As love."

Mrs. Kennedy had never experienced it; had never seen or heard of any authentic case of this beautiful tenderness, this undying devotion, this heavenly thing. Yet she firmly believed that it existed—this love which was not desire, not infatuation, not madness, not sentimentality, not friendship—this ecstasy which endured forever. Not experience, not common sense, nothing at all could have convinced her, for it was instinct that made her believe—nature's most cruel and most necessary deception. For life to continue, it is necessary that women shall cling to two lies—that men are capable of truly loving them, and that their children will love them in their old age. Upon these two delusions civilization rests.

"Deary," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I think you'd better write to him and tell him, and see what he will do for you. Perhaps he'll marry you."

"He is married," said Angelica indifferently. "Yes, mommer, I will write to him; but it's an even chance if he'll come or not. He's queer. You can't ever tell, with him. I'll try, anyway, and see if I can't get some money out of him."

To her mother the tragedy was somewhat lessened by the fact that Angelica didn't love Vincent. She fancied that the girl would consequently get over it better, not suffer so cruelly; but for Angelica there lay the worst of it, the most intolerable part to bear. It was that that made her frantic with shame and remorse. She looked in vain; she could find no trace of magnificence in her downfall. It wasn't a splendid sin, done for reckless love. It was a damnable folly, committed through reckless ignorance.

 

She wrote to Vincent with a sort of native art. She wished to hide the least sign of anxiety or reproach; she wished him merely to think that she missed him.

Why don't you come? I have been looking for you for ever so long. Come in some evening soon.

Angelica.

The evening after the letter was mailed, she got up and dressed herself, trembling with weakness, hardly able to stand, but quite self-possessed. She didn't feel the slightest emotion at the prospect of seeing Vincent again—nothing but a dogged resolution to make him give her money.

She attempted no attitude, made no plan of what she would say to him, because she knew now how helpless she was in his hands. He would direct the interview; he would give the key-note; it would all depend upon his mood. She couldn't influence him. She didn't even take pains with her appearance, for she knew that it didn't lie with her to move him. It depended upon the condition of his own mysterious soul.

She had hardly expected him so soon. He came that same evening, but, from the very sound of his footstep as he followed her along the hall to the tiny parlor, she could feel that he was sullen and reluctant, and her heart sank.

"Oh, if only I didn't have to bother with him!" she thought. "If only I didn't have to see him ever again! And I've got to be nice to him and ask him for money!"

They entered the parlor, and sat down in silence.

"Angelica!" he said abruptly, with a frown. "Why did you leave me?"

"I wanted to—"

"I was amazed. I was shocked. You behaved—" He hesitated for a moment, then went on severely: "You behaved like a light woman. I thought you were faithful and constant and sincere; and then, after one week—"

"But what kind of a week was it?" cried Angelica.

"I'm not a rich man, but I did the best I could for you."

"You know what I mean! In that awful little road-house, with you shutting yourself up in the bedroom all the time and leaving me there alone for all those men to laugh at!"

"I had to write."

"You hadn't any business to write. You might have thought a little bit how I'd feel. If you couldn't pay any attention to me, you shouldn't—"

"Did you bring me here to reproach me?" he demanded. "Because if you did, I've had enough."

"No, I didn't mean to scold you," she answered hurriedly, recalled to the necessity for placating him. "No—I just wanted to see you."

Her face, which bad become so pinched, so colorless, was covered with a vivid flush. The conciliatory words almost stuck in her throat; but apparently Vincent didn't observe her trouble.

"I'm not disposed to endure much more from you—upon my word, I'm not!" he went on. "The way you went off, simply leaving me a note to say that you thought you'd go home—making a fool of me! I was naive enough to imagine we were to spend our lives together. I thought we'd stay for a month or so in that beautiful little mountain inn, fishing, tramping, reading, talking—"

"You hardly spoke to me all day long. I had to sit down-stairs in the dining-room with those fishermen."

"How was I to know that you had no resources? Besides, it was rainy, and we couldn't have gone out, anyway; but the very day you left, the weather cleared. I was really disgusted with you, Angelica. You behaved abominably!"

"Well, Vincent," she said, "you'll have to excuse that, and be a good friend to me, because I need some money."

He jumped to his feet.

"You're shameless!" he said. "I'm shocked!"

"No—listen! There's going to be a baby!" she cried, in desperation.

He was a little taken aback for a moment. He gave a hasty glance at her poor desperate young face, and then looked away.

"There!" he said, taking a leather wallet out of his pocket and throwing it on the table. "Take it! It's all I've got. My God, you can't get the better of a woman! They have it all their own way in this world. They make us pay, and pay dear, for their follies!"

Angelica stared at him, astounded.

"I'm supposed to be the guilty one," he went on. "I'm the one who's held responsible—why, the good Lord only knows. I'm the one to pay!"

"As for me," said Angelica, "it's just a picnic, isn't it?"

"You're fulfilling your natural destiny—at my expense."

"Oh!" she cried. "I wish to God I could throw the money back in your face, Vincent!"

"But you won't. And now that you've got all that you can out of me, I suppose I can go?"

But Angelica was weak; she couldn't endure it.

"Do you mean that you're not even sorry?" she cried. "Can't you think what this means to me—what's going to become of me? Oh, Vincent, just think what's before me!"

"Just what always was before you. You're bad, my girl, through and through. You couldn't have ended any other way. No decency, no self-restraint. I don't suppose I was the first man—"

"Oh, don't!" she cried. "Don't! You can't realize—oh, Vincent!"

"And as for this, it isn't the first time such a thing has happened in the world. Even a young girl brought up in sheltered luxury, like you, must have heard of such things. In fact, my dear, you must have known quite as well as I what the consequences of our adventure might be. If you say you didn't, you're lying."

She put out one hand in a sort of mute and feeble protest.

"But I didn't think—you'd change—" Her voice faltered; she found it almost impossible to go on. "I thought—that you—felt like I did."

"So I did," he answered. "So I do—just the same as you. Our impulses, our reasons for going off together, were exactly the same, only I'm honest about it and you're not. You pretend to be heart-broken because I don't care for you any longer, when, as a matter of fact, you don't care a bit more for me. You're an utter hypocrite!"

She was confused and crushed by his words. He was taking away from her her very last support—her conviction that she had been misled, wronged, sinned against. Somehow he was putting her in the wrong. She couldn't deny that she had gone away with him of her own free will; and yet she knew that it hadn't been her own free will. She didn't deny her own guilt, but she knew that his was far greater.

"I'm not a hypocrite," she said.

"Then you're a fool. No—we've done with each other, Angelica. It's over for both of us."

"But it isn't over for me!" she cried. Her heart was flaming with resentment against the hellish injustice of it—that she should have all the suffering, all the punishment. "Just think of it!" she cried. "Can't you realize, Vincent, how dreadful it is for me?"

"No, I can't realize. I'm not a woman, and I don't pretend to understand them and their fine feelings. I can't understand or sympathize with this cowardly whining over physical effects which are known to every one. Did you want anything else from me, except money, Angelica?"

"Yes, I do!" she answered. "I do want something else, and I'll get it, too. I want to make you suffer, and I will, too!"

"Oh, I see—the wronged woman with the baby in her arms! Well, Angelica, go ahead! Do your worst. I don't think you can hurt me very much."

He looked down at her with a gay, mocking smile, he put on his hat, and was gone.

Angelica went back to her mother with the wallet.

"Well!" she began. "Here's—" But she broke down and began to cry wildly.

"Oh, mommer! Mommer! I can't bear this! I can't be treated like this! Oh, mommer, not me! Not me! It can't be true!"

Her mother was glad when she wept. She stroked Angelica's head in silence, pleased to see her softened, even humbled, happy to see that ferocious hardness gone; not suspecting that that ferocity and that hardness were the very best of Angelica, the very spirit of her. When she wept like this, she was submerged, perishing, going under. With a frightful effort she saved herself and rose above these bitter waters.

"He'll pay, all right!" she said, looking up with an odd, horrible grin. "You watch!"

"Don't talk so, my deary!"

"Here—take it! Let's see how much we've got to go on with," she interrupted, pushing the wallet across the table. "He's always saying he hasn't got a cent, but I notice he always finds plenty for anything he wants. God knows where he gets it, but he does."

Her mother counted what was in the purse, and turned to Angelica with a look of amazement.

"Why, Angie! There's only four dollars here!"

Angelica laughed.

"It's all we'll get, anyway, mommer," she said. "It 'll have to do."

XIX

Behold Mrs. Kennedy answering an advertisement for a janitress, far over on the lower West Side, in the Chelsea district.

"I have the best of references," she told Mr. Steinberg, the landlord. "I've been where I am now for twelve years, and no complaints."

"Den vy do you leaf?"

"I don't like living 'way up there," she answered calmly. "I've got more friends down around here. And my married daughter's coming to live with me, and she'd rather be down here. She's real lonely, now her husband's gone to the war."

This was her ruse to preserve that respectability which no one valued or even observed.

She got the place, because of her decency and her references. There was nothing to be said against her in any quarter. What was more, Mr. Steinberg felt from the look of her that she was a hard worker. Like her other place, it was a "cold water" flat; there was a man to look after the furnace, but everything else was to be done by her, for her rent and an incredibly small stipend. She agreed. Her sole asset was her readiness to undertake hard and unremitting labor. There was not a thing which she could do better than the average woman, so that her boast, her credit, must be that she did more.

"My married daughter's thinking of taking in sewing," she said. "Maybe you could put a little work in her way."

"We'll see," said Mr. Steinberg, "later on, maybe."

Now that she had secured a refuge, where Angelica might assume respectability among complete strangers, the poor woman's next preoccupation was to find some way of having her pitiful furniture moved. She went about for days, trying to drive bargains with any one who possessed a cart; but war-time prices and conditions prevailed, and no one cared to accept so unprofitable a task.

In the end she found an Italian who sold ice, coal, and wood in a near-by cellar, and who agreed to do what she wished. She paid him at least six visits, trying to persuade him to take less money, or to promise great care with her scanty belongings, or to reassure herself that he really understood the new address. In order to pay him and to settle her few little bills, she was obliged to sell her parlor furniture, blue lamp and all.

Winter was beginning to set in when they moved. It was a raw and bitter day, blankly gray overhead. Mrs. Kennedy lingered in the old flat where she had lived for twelve years, watching the Italian carry out her things, her heart sick with shame to be leaving the place in this fashion, her parlor furniture sold, her daughter "in trouble." There was nothing left now but the barest essentials—things to sleep on, to be covered with, to cook with, and a chair or two.

Angelica had gone by surface-car to the new home, to await the arrival of the cart. For the moment each of them was alone in a dismal bare flat, hopelessly similar. It was a day of gloom. The removal had brought home to them most forcibly their desperate position, their helplessness, their desolation. They had only each other—no other friend, no other resource.

They set to work at once, in the dusk, to arrange their furniture; and when a barren sort of order had been achieved, Mrs. Kennedy went out in search of the usual little shop where she might buy a bite for Angelica's supper. She tried her best to be calm, resolute, strong; but her heart was like lead as she hurried through the unfamiliar streets, chilled by a cold wind from the river, and by a far colder and bleaker apprehension.

She caught sight of a brightly lighted little grocery-store, and she went in. Another pang! Here she was no one; simply a poorly dressed stranger with a paltry handful of change. She remembered her own cheerful young grocer with positive anguish. It was almost the last straw.

She came back, half running, with her little bag under her arm, entered the strange doorway, rang the strange bell. Her daughter admitted her.

"I didn't do much," Angelica said. "I started to scrub the shelves, but I felt tired. Anyway, what does it matter?"

She had been sitting in a dreadful apathy in the forlorn kitchen; she sank down again on the old step-ladder chair.

"If only I had a bit of linoleum for the floor!" began Mrs. Kennedy, looking down at the filthy boards. "A nice check pattern, like Mrs. Stone had—"

Angelica stopped her.

"I prayed," she said.

"Oh, my deary! I'm so glad. God 'll hear you and—"

"I prayed it would die."

"Angie!"

"You didn't think I wanted it, did you?"

"You'll feel different when it's here."

"I sha'n't. Lots of people don't. It's a curse to me, a curse! A baby—me with a living to earn the rest of my life! No—I'll hate it. I do now. I'd have to hate any child with his blood in it. I hope it 'll die!"

"That's a wicked, wicked thing to say, Angie."

"Maybe you'd be surprised to know how wicked I feel. My Gawd, what I've done! The chance I've thrown away!"

"That's not like you, my deary."

"I'm not like me—not like the me I thought I was. I thought I was—oh, I don't know—kind of a wonder; and after all, I'm nothing but—this. Going to have a baby—pretending to be married—not a cent! It's a grand end, all right!"

"End, Angie?"

"Yes, end. I'm done—finished!"

 

Not her suffering, though. That had just begun. All that winter and through the spring she lived in a misery without relief or solace. She could think of nothing in all the universe but her own torment. She was ashamed to go out, in spite of her mother's account of her as a married daughter with a husband gone to war, in spite of the wedding-ring the poor embarrassed woman had bought for her at the ten-cent store. She felt that she had in no way the appearance of a young wife. She felt herself to be obviously and flagrantly an outcast.

She was ill, too, and so hopeless, so profoundly dejected, that she saw no sense in getting up. She lay on her cot in the bedroom, dark as the former one, day after day. Now and then a bit of sewing was brought to her to do, and then she would drag herself into the kitchen and sit by the window, where there was a little more light, until the work was done. Otherwise she simply lay there, her black hair uncombed, an old shawl about her shoulders, in fathomless despair.

Life was too ghastly to contemplate. She could see nothing before her worth living for. Vincent was gone, and with him love and youth; Eddie was gone, and with him security and hope. Whether the baby lived or died, she was disgraced. She could never, never forget that she had been cast aside.

They were bitterly poor, and seldom had enough to eat. There was nothing to relieve their monotonous pain and anxiety; not a neighbor to exchange a word with, not a bit of gossip to amuse them—nothing, nothing, nothing, from morning till night but their own sad faces, their own listless voices, their own leaden hearts, their own undying apprehension.

"It 'll all seem different, deary, when you're well again," Mrs. Kennedy told her child. "Then you'll go to work again, and we won't be so pinched. You'll go back to the factory and see your friends, and go out, like you used to, to the movies, and dances."

"I won't. There'll be a child to look after and feed. Just to work in a factory till I'm too old, and then—I don't know—die in the poorhouse, I guess!"

"There's lots of things might happen, Angie. Maybe you'll marry. There's men that would be willing to overlook—"

"Well, I don't want 'em. I'm through with men."

"Then maybe you'll get on fine in some kind of business."

"No chance of that! I haven't any education. I'm too ignorant. Don't try to make up things to comfort me; I know how it 'll be."

But still she didn't, she couldn't, want to die. No matter how terrible her future looked, her strong spirit clung to life, even the most repulsive life. It wasn't that she feared death, but she resented it. It was the complete defeat, the final outrage.

As her time drew near, she began greatly to dread dying. She would lie by the hour, thinking of death, in a sort of silent fury.

 

At last it came upon her, one July morning, that most shocking and insensate of all nature's cruelties. Her mother sat by her in fatalistic patience, knowing well that there was no escape, no alleviation. There was a doctor whom Mrs. Kennedy had summoned—not the noble and kindly physician of Angelica's romance, but an indifferent and callous one accustomed to the poor and their profitless agonies. He was very cheerful. He was able to look down upon that young face distorted in brutal anguish, and smile.

"Nothing to be done now," he said. "I'll look in again in an hour or so."

He returned too late. The protesting little spirit had entered the world without him, and lay crying, wrapped in an old flannel night-dress, in Mrs. Kennedy's lap, while the young mother watched it with unfathomable eyes.

XX

Angelica sat at the kitchen table, her blouse torn rudely open at the neck, wet through with perspiration, haggard and worn almost beyond recognition.

"My Gawd!" she said, pushing back her hair. "It's hot as hell, mommer!"

Mrs. Kennedy sighed, without speaking or interrupting her work. She was standing at the ironing-board, finishing a big week's washing. It was a night of intolerable and sultry heat, and the kitchen, with the stove lighted for the irons, and the gas blazing for light, was a place of torment. The two women were curiously pallid, curiously alert, with the terrible activity of exhaustion. They had reached so high a point of suffering, both physical and mental, on that night, that they were no longer aware of their pain.

"Listen, mommer!" said Angelica. "Here's what I've written."

She picked up the sheet of soft paper with blue lines, on which the ink blurred and the pen dug and scratched, and on which she had written:

Vincent:

The baby has been sick all the time, and now he is worse. You got to send some money for him. You got to find it somewhere if you have not got it. He is in a terrible bad state. He only weighs six pounds, and he is going on for six weeks.

Angelica.

She read it in her hoarse, thrilling voice, and it sounded so vehement, so passionate, so touching, that they both believed the letter to be so in itself.

"Now I'll run out and mail it," she said.

Just as she was, with disheveled hair and unfastened blouse, she hurried out into the street. A man spoke to her, and she swore at him.

She was back within a few minutes, panting, but her mother was no longer in the kitchen; she had gone into the dark bedroom to quiet the poor little baby.

"I'll hold him, Angie," she said. "You can go on ironing."

But Angelica flung herself on her knees before the child on her mother's lap.

"Gawd! Little feller! Little love! Gawd, I wish he'd die and be out of this!"

Her mother could not rebuke her. Worn out by unending worry, by lack of sleep, by the heat, by intolerable toil for the tiny thing, she, too, could only wish it dead. It suffered so; it was so weak, so pitiful.

Night after night they had held it in their arms, close to the window, where it might get what air there was. They sang to it, rocked it, bathed its wasted little body to cool it, and all the while it wailed in its feeble voice—a weak, monotonous, heart-rending sound. They tended it by day and by night. From time to time it slept, but fitfully, the beating of its little heart shaking its emaciated body.

Angelica would sit beside it, her eyes fixed upon it, scarcely daring to breathe in her terror that it might die as it slept; for though she said and she meant that she wished it to die and be free of its misery, for her own sake she longed for it to live to the utmost limit, no matter if every day and every night were a pain to her, and her whole life went by in its service. She wanted to be holding it in her arms every waking hour; she could not sleep unless it lay within the reach of her hand. Even if she went to the corner on an errand for her mother, she was filled with panic until she had got back to it, and had seen it and touched it again.

She cared for nothing else whatever. She didn't trouble to dress herself decently; she no longer helped her mother about the flat. Barefooted, her heavy hair pinned in a great slovenly coil, her blouse unfastened, with a ragged skirt hanging about her lean hips, she would sit for hours with the little wailing thing in her arms, pressed against her bosom, while she sang to it in her hoarse, touching voice.

She learned all she could from the doctor and the visiting nurse, and did just as they had told her. She bathed the child, fed it, tended it, in the most careful and professional way; but she would not let it alone. The doctor told her to leave it in the clothes-basket which was its bed, and the nurse assured her it would be cooler and more comfortable there; but she could not restrain herself from snatching it up. She could not help feeling that the passion of her love, the generous warmth of her body, must invigorate and vitalize it. Most cruel of all delusions—that love can save!

 

"He's got to get into the country," said Angelica. "That's all there is to it. I'd send him to one of these fresh-air places, only I know he'd die without me. He's got to have me. No one else would know his ways."

"Well, if Mr. Geraldine sends—"

"If! If! If he don't, I'll— He's got to, that's all. I'll give him just one day more, and then—"

"Maybe he's not there. Maybe he's gone to the war."

"Not a chance! Well, if he's not there, I'll have to find him, and I will."

There was no letter the next day.

"You got to telephone," said Angelica to her mother, "and find out if he still lives there at Buena Vista. If he does, I'll write once more."

Her mother came in late that afternoon.

"He's there," she said. "Somebody—one of the servants, I dare say—came to the telephone, and I just said, 'Is Mr. Vincent Geraldine there?' And she said,' Who is it wants to speak to him?' And I said, 'I only wanted to know was he at home.' 'Oh, yes!' she says. 'He's at home!'"

Poor woman, lugging her eternal bucket! She looked as if she were being pressed down by giant hands which were forcing her exhausted and gallant body to its knees. There was nothing ready for her now, at the end of her bitter day—nothing in the house which she could cook for supper. Her bed was still unmade, there wasn't even a decent place for her to sit down, for Angelica occupied the only rocking-chair, drawn up close to the window, where the baby could get what air there was.

Mrs. Kennedy looked at them, and for an instant she hated them both—Angelica who so savagely demanded this unceasing, inhuman toil of her, who took everything and gave nothing, not so much as a loving word, and this wailing, wretched little creature who didn't even know her.

"It's too much!" she thought. "I'm getting old."

"Take the baby," said Angelica, "while I write another letter."

"I'll get some supper first."

"No! I've got to write now."

"Then put the kettle on, so's we can have a cup of tea before long," said her mother, and sat down with the wretched, hot little baby in her arms.

Vincent:

This child is going to die. You got to help it. If you do not send me some money for him right away, I will go out after you and get it. I don't care if you are hard up. You can get it somewhere, and you got to. This child will die if you don't.

Angelica.

"Deary," said her mother, "I don't think it's any good."

"It is!" Angelica assured her. "He's got to pay!"

 

An answer came quickly enough. Angelica smiled grimly as she saw the envelope. She and her mother were sitting together over their supper of tinned pork and beans, Mrs. Kennedy eating with one hand while she held the fitfully sleeping baby.

"Now we'll see," said Angelica. "It's always a guess with that feller. You never know what he'll say."

Vincent wrote thus:

Angelica:

I would if I could. I am not altogether a brute, a monster. I am not callous to the sufferings of my own child; but I have absolutely nothing. Ever since I had your first letter I have been thinking, trying my utmost to discover some way to help you.

And the only way I can do so is to appeal to Eddie, to tell him the whole story, and to throw ourselves on his mercy. It will be a bitter blow to him, and it is a terrible penance for me to tell him; but, for your sake, I must bear the pain of telling and he of hearing. He will help us, Angelica. He is a generous and noble soul. He has never yet failed me.

She remained stupefied.

"D'ye mean Eddie doesn't know?" she cried, addressing an invisible Vincent.

It was such an amazing idea to her. She had always imagined Eddie as possessed of all the details. She had often thought of him, sitting in his trench in the moonlight, reflecting with grief and bitterness over her infamy. She had looked upon him as utterly lost, beyond her reach. She had believed, as a matter of course, that all those people knew, and despised and hated her—Polly, Mrs. Russell, all the servants.

"Why, mommer!" she cried. "He—"

"Whatever is it, child?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, surprised at the strange look on her daughter's face. Angelica had risen slowly to her feet, and was staring at her mother. A new, a terrible hope was dawning upon her.

"Quick, mommer!" she cried suddenly. "I got to stop him!"

She rushed into the bedroom, put on a hat over her disordered hair, pinned together the open bosom of her blouse, and ran down the hall.

"Angie! Angie!" cried her mother. "Where are you going?"

The door banged. She was gone.

Mrs. Kennedy laid the baby on the bed.

"Cry, if you must," she said. "I can't hold you any more till I've had a cup of tea."

 

Angelica had gone running up the street to a drug-store on Sixth Avenue, where she knew there was a telephone booth. It was a place of doubtful repute. There was always a group there of young Italian-Americans, flashily dressed youths of immense assurance, who were interested in every woman that entered the store; but they didn't care for Angelica in her slatternly dress, with her fierce and haggard face.

One of them made a coarse jest about her, which she answered with an oath; then she went into the booth and pulled the door to behind her. Her heart was beating frantically; she was scarcely able to speak, her hoarse voice came out with an unfamiliar sound.

"I want to speak to Mr. Vincent!" she said.

"Who is it?"

"Call him quick! It's a message from his brother." A silly ruse, but she was capable of nothing better. Then, after a long pause, she heard his voice.

"What is it?"

"It's me—Angelica. Vincent, don't you dare to write to Eddie! Don't you dare ever to let him know!"

"My dear child, I've already done so. I've just put the letter in the box, not ten minutes ago."

"No!" she cried. "No! You must get it back!"

He laughed.

"When once a letter is posted—"

She gave a sort of wail. He was still speaking, but she didn't care what he said. She hung up the receiver and went out into the street again. Somehow this seemed to her the very worst blow that had fallen on her, the greatest cruelty of her destiny. To have got, in the blackness of her despair, this glorious hope, and to have it destroyed almost before it had breathed!

It occurred to her that there was one more desperate chance. She went hurrying home again.

"Mommer!" she said. "Where's your money?"

"I haven't any money, Angie, as well you know."

"You have!"

"Only just the bit that's to last us through the week."

"Give it to me, quick!"

She snatched up the flat little purse and rushed out again, pushing her hair up under her hat as she ran. She didn't quite know where to look. She sought in vain along Sixth Avenue, then crossed to Fifth, and found there what she wanted—an empty taxicab, cruising along Madison Square.

"Say!" she called. "Taxi!"

The man stopped and looked at her suspiciously. A queer-looking thing she was to hail a cab!

"I want to go out to Baycliff," she said.

"You better walk, then," he said. "It's cheaper."

"Oh, you'll get paid, all right!" said Angelica. "The people out there'll pay you good and give you a tip."

He shook his head.

"I guess not," he said doubtfully. "You better find some one else. I'm married. I can't afford to take no chances. Where'd I be, if I wasn't to get paid? A long run like that, and got to come back empty!"

Angelica recalled something which had been mentioned in one of Mrs. Russell's long stories.

"Look here!" she said. "It's the law. You got to take passengers."

"Not outside the city limits I haven't," said the man.

They were both a little uneasy, as neither of them felt at all sure as to what laws there might or might not be; but Angelica in her desperation was resourceful.

"You let me in," she said, "and I'll fix it up with the people out there. See, I'll give you two dollars now, but I won't tell them I gave you anything, and they'll pay you and give you a tip, too. I'm the waitress out there, and they'll be darned glad to see me back. You didn't ought to worry. You'd ought to know I wouldn't risk getting locked up just for the sake of a ride. No one would take a chance like that."

"Well, they do, all the same," said the driver. "It wouldn't do me no good to get you locked up— not if you didn't have no money."

"It's only people out on a joy ride that do that," said she. "Where'd be the sense in me doing that—taking a ride all alone and then getting locked up?"

He wavered, and she hurriedly got out the two dollars—earned by long hours of scrubbing by Mrs. Kennedy— and gave them to the chauffeur. He was now practically won; her insistence overcame his weak will, her two dollars charmed him. Moreover, he liked her, she was so frank and so much in earnest.

"All right," he said. "Get in! Now mind you treat me fair—I'm taking a big risk for you!"

She was a strange enough figure, sitting there in her dusty clothes, her battered old hat, while the cab sped on, through and out of the city, along dark country roads lined with trees, past fields, past marshes, past desolate buildings, past friendly lighted houses. She was consumed with a fever of haste, burning with anxiety, looking over the driver's shoulders at the road before her, which seemed so endless.

Now they were going up the hill to the house—the very house.

"You wait a while," she said. "The longer you wait the more you'll get paid."

The front door stood open, with only a screen door across the aperture, and a faint light from the hall shone out on the roadway. There didn't seem to be any one about. She stood outside, peering through the screen into the hall, listening. Not a sound!

She was obliged to ring the bell; and who should open the door but the doctor? He didn't see who it was until he had let her in; then he was frightened at the unexpectedness of her coming, at the wild disorder of her appearance.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I want to speak to Vincent," she answered.

"Where is he?"

"He may be busy. I'd better—"

"Where is he?" she demanded.

When the doctor didn't answer, she pushed by him and ran up-stairs.

Vincent was lying back in an armchair, in a bath-robe, his slender bare feet on a second chair. He was eating biscuits and cheese from a plate balanced on his knees, and reading a magazine, in the greatest possible comfort, physical and mental, when without an instant's warning Angelica entered, wild, savage, relentless as a Fury.

He sat up, drawing the bath-robe tightly about him, and tried to frown at her; but he felt, and he appeared, at a horrible disadvantage.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

She couldn't speak for a moment. She only looked at him with her fierce black eyes, pressing a hand against her breast, as if to stifle by force the tumult there. He was alarmed, really, although he tried so desperately to look scornful.

"Well?" he asked again. "What did you come here for?"

"That letter!" she said. "That letter to Eddie! You sha'n't send it!"

"I have," he answered.

"No! "she cried. "No! You haven't."

"I tell you I have!" he answered defiantly. "I told you so over the telephone."

She stood motionless, staring past him, oblivious of his uneasy bewilderment. Thoughts were running through her brain like fire through parched grass. She remembered things she had heard—of the English suffragettes pouring acid into mailboxes to destroy their contents. But what did they use, and where to get it?

Her vigorous and subtle brain was never quite without resource. She thought and thought, with passionate intensity, and at last, suddenly, an idea came to her. She went out of the room abruptly, so swiftly and silently that Vincent was astonished and more than ever alarmed. What in Heaven's name was that damnable girl up to now? He knew she wouldn't stop at anything.

He went on tiptoe to the door and peered cautiously out into the hall. She wasn't there. Where was she? He was certain that she hadn't given up and gone away. She was after that letter, and she wouldn't go without it.

"She's ill, though," he muttered. "Beastly—savage! Forcing her way in like this! My God, I'll never be rid of her! What the devil was the matter with me, to get mixed up with a girl like that? I wish she'd break her neck. I wish I had the courage to wring it!"

He stopped suddenly and turned pale; for there on the mantelpiece, before his eyes, was the letter. Courtland had forgotten to mail it!

He flew at it and tore it into bits, like a criminal concealing some trace of his guilt. He was actually capable of imagining that, by this, he had got the better of Angelica.

 

Angelica ran down-stairs to the kitchen, which was deserted, but quite brightly lighted. There, on the back of the coal range, stood what she had expected to see—the teakettle, gently steaming.

She lifted it, and went to the back door. There was a couple—probably Annie and her young man—sitting in the dark on the steps. She turned back, went through the laundry and out of a side door; down the hill, through the grass, where she wouldn't make a sound. Once she stumbled, and a few drops of scalding water spilled upon her instep. She smothered a shriek of pain, and hurried on.

There wasn't a soul in sight; the road was quite empty even of passing motors. She crossed to the other side, where the post-box stood, and, raising herself on tiptoe, she poured into it the entire contents of the kettle.

Then she ran into the woods behind the box, and hid the kettle in a clump of thick bushes. She was satisfied that the letter must be destroyed, together with anything else the box may have contained. Her conscience did not reproach her in the least for this possible injury to others.

"There couldn't be any one," she reflected, "who could want any one else to get a letter as much as I don't want Eddie to get that one!"

 

She rang the front door-bell again, but this time the doctor didn't let her in. He looked at her through the screen door and shook his head.

"No!" he said softly. "Better go away. Don't make any disturbance, for your own sake."

"I only want to speak to Vincent," she said plaintively.

"Better not. Go away now. Nobody's seen you. Vincent and I are alone in the house. I'll never mention it. I'm your friend, you know; and you must be my friend if I need one, won't you?"

He had heard rumors, which he didn't quite believe, that Eddie was to marry this remarkable young woman. He knew that Eddie was capable of extraordinarily quixotic deeds, and he thought it just as well to have a friend at court, in case— Moreover, he liked Angelica, and was well disposed toward her. The rebuffs he had received, rude as they had been, hadn't either hurt or discouraged him. The Lord who had made him so vulnerable to the charms of the fair sex had likewise provided him with a sort of protective armor.

"Of course I'll be your friend," said Angelica; "but I just must speak to Vincent."

"I thought you had seen him," said the doctor. "You went up-stairs."

"I forgot to tell him something very important. If you don't want me to come, just make him come down here—please!"

She knew how to be meek enough to serve her ends.

"Please!" she said again, with all her cajolery. "Please, doctor! Just get him to come down and speak to me through the door—just for an instant!"

He hesitated.

"I want to do anything I can for you—"

"And wouldn't you please just pay that cab?" she said. "I'm afraid he'll wait till you do."

He had a little money on hand, as it happened, and he was proud to be able to play so gallant a rôle.

"With pleasure!" he said. "But then won't you agree to postpone your talk with Vincent?"

"I can't!" she cried piteously. "Oh, do please get him down!"

"Very well," he said, with a sigh land a smile.

She waited patiently, close to the screen. Everything was quiet. The waiting chauffeur had shut off his engine and sat on the step of his cab, smoking. Far away, from some other house, came the thumping rhythm of a piano-player, and quite close to her the busy chirping of little nocturnal insects.

Before very long, Vincent's heavy tread sounded on the stairs. His big body loomed up in the dim light of the hall, and drew near to her; but he did not unlock the door. She suppressed a smile. He was afraid of her—that big, masterful poet, forever proclaiming himself a man!

"Well!" he demanded sternly of the girl outside.

"I spoiled your letter," she said. "Eddie 'll never get it."

"What? I'll write another—"

"You'd better not do that, Vincent. He wouldn't be pleased with the way you've acted."

"Perhaps not; but it's my duty—"

"Don't any of them know? Not your mother or any one?"

"Of course not. I'm not the sort to tell such a thing. If it wasn't my duty now, I wouldn't."

"I thought it was to get money to help me out."

"Well—yes, partly; but he really ought to know, in case he still thinks of marrying you "

"No," she said quietly. "He mustn't know. Look here, Vincent! I've done this one bad thing in my life. I never did anything bad before, and I never will again; but if it was known, I'd never be forgiven. I'd never get another chance—from any one; and I mean to have another chance. It's never going to be known. I'm not going to be ruined and wasted, just for one—badness. It's going to be wiped out, I tell you!"

"It will never be wiped out. You'll never forget, Angelica—you'll never, never forget me. You can't love again. You've lost heaven, my girl."

She was still for a moment.

"Maybe I have," she said. "Maybe I have lost heaven. But," she went on, "I'll get what I can, anyway. I'm going to have my chance, Vincent!"

Her voice was so low that he had to press against the screen to hear her; and her words came in an incredibly ferocious whisper, that turned his blood cold:

"If ever you tell him, Vincent, I swear to Gawd I'll kill you!"

XXI

Through the front basement window Mrs. Kennedy saw Angelica returning, a shockingly disheveled figure in the sweltering midday heat. She hurried to the door, with the baby in her arms.

"Oh, Angie!" she cried. "You cruel, cruel, bad girl! Where have you been? I've been near crazy, left alone here all night and morning with the baby, and not a penny in the house. Of course I couldn't do my work—"

"Hush!" said Angelica sternly. "Don't bother me. I'm too tired. I had to walk all the way back. Make me some tea!"

She took the child in her arms and sat down in the rocking-chair, holding it pressed against her breast and staring over its head, indifferent to its crying, and the feeble beating of its little hands.

She had her tea and bread with it; then she lay down on her cot, always with the child in her arms, and fell asleep. Mrs. Kennedy looked in upon them, saw them both quiet, the little, downy head resting against Angelica's shoulder, and she devoutly hoped that this period of rest might solace her daughter after whatever demoniacal adventure she had undergone that night. She picked up her pail and went out to work.

When she came in again at five o'clock, they were both gone.

 

Polly was reading, stretched out on the sofa of her charming little room, near the window which gave her a fine view of the Hudson and a cool breeze. Her maid had gone out, and she was quite alone in her little flat, content and languid, rejoicing in her dignified solitude.

Here she was living as she liked to live, with her music, her books, her very few and very casual friends, and long, long hours of delicate idleness. She enjoyed the blissful serenity of a convalescent, or a freed prisoner. After her two heart-breaking experiences of married life, after the anguish of her dear child's death, she was happy now to be quite alone, to love no one, and to be hurt by no one. She wished to spend the rest of her life alone.

Eddie had arranged her affairs so that she once more received her decent little income. She didn't inquire as to how he had done this. She suspected that for the present it must be coming direct from his pocket, but she preferred not to know.

She had a vague intention of some day divorcing Vincent, but she was never capable of action without some spur. There wasn't any cause now. She was rid of him, and she had her money again. Her deepest instinct—the instinct of a woman by temperament unfitted to make her own way in the world—caused her to value her money above anything. It meant all that was desirable in life—ease, dignity, and freedom.

How happy she was in her loose, fresh white wrapper, looking so much younger, so much more charming—smoking her thin little cigarettes and reading some book which entirely engaged her attention—agreeably conscious, none the less, of a nice little supper left by her devoted servant in the ice-box! It was only half past five, but she was growing hungry, and she was dallying with this idea of supper, when the door-bell rang.

This was startling, for the boy in the hall down-stairs was supposed to stop intruders and to telephone up to her before admitting them. And so loud a ring!

Again! She got up and opened the door.

She gasped at the spectacle of Angelica with a baby in her arms.

"My dear Angelica!" she cried. "I never—"

"Let me sit down," said Angelica. "I'm dead tired."

So she came into Polly's tranquil sitting-room, as out of place there as a wild animal—the fierce, rough Angelica with her wailing baby. She sat down on the sofa and held the child up—a wretched, frail little creature, with a wizen, troubled face.

"See him? Two months old."

"He's sweet. But, my dear, I didn't know you were married."

"I'm not married. Listen, Mrs. Geraldine! I got to have a talk with you."

"Of course! But, my dear, isn't there something you could do for your baby? He seems so—"

"He's sick. He's sick all the time; but the doctor says if he gets good care, there's no reason why he shouldn't grow up strong and all right. It does make him kind of an extra trouble now, but after you've had him here a few months, Mrs. Geraldine—"

"I've had him here!"

"Listen!" cried Angelica, in anguish. "Please, please, Mrs. Geraldine, don't say no! Wait till you hear. Wait till you think. Think about that baby you lost. Oh, do, for Gawd's sake, Mrs. Geraldine, take this baby!"

"My dear girl!" cried Polly. "You must be mad! What in the world are you talking about?"

"Oh, please, please, please, for Gawd's sake! Just think of the poor little feller you lost. Take this one instead. I can't keep him, Mrs. Geraldine. He'll only die. You're too good and kind to let a little baby die. You got to take him. You'll never have a moment's peace, night or day, if you don't!"

"But, Angelica, it's outrageous!"

"I don't know the words to use. I don't know how to make you. Oh, Mrs. Geraldine, I can only just beg and pray to you to take him!"

"My dear, I'll help you, if I can. I'll be glad to lend you money, or help you in any other way."

"No—I can't keep him. You see, Mrs. Geraldine, I'm going to marry Eddie, and I can't ever let him know about this."

"Angelica!" cried Polly, aghast. "I certainly won't help you to deceive Eddie."

"I know; but it would be much, much worse to tell him. He's crazy about me, and I can make him happy. This is the only wrong thing I've ever done, ever, and I'm never going to do another. I'm going to be good as gold, Mrs. Geraldine. If Eddie knew, he'd never forgive me. I'd never get a chance to be good. That's why I came to you. On account of Eddie, won't you do it to make him happy?"

"I could not deceive Eddie."

"Oh, why not? Why, for Gawd's sake, tell the truth and spoil Eddie's life, and be the death of this poor little feller and the ruin of me? Oh, just take him! Take him!" she cried, tears running down her cheeks. "You'll love him. You'll be awful glad to feel him next to you in bed, first thing in the morning. You'll love him so. You're the only one I know in the world that I wouldn't mind leaving him with. I know he cries an awful lot, but that's because he's sick; and if you take him, and he has the best of everything, he'll soon be fat and well, and you'll be proud of him. Oh, say you will!"

Tears stood in Polly's eyes.

"My dear, you mustn't give up your child. I'll help you, so that you can keep him."

"No, no! I can't! I'm going to marry Eddie."

"Give up the idea. Go off somewhere and live quietly with your dear little baby."

"No! You can't support me and him both. It would just be me and mommer over again—me going out by the day to keep him alive, and the two of us having nothing—no chances, no nothing. That's if he'd even live. No; the only, only thing is for you to take him."

"But, Angelica, what in the world would I do with him?"

"Get a good nurse. I'll find one, if you want, from a hospital."

"But what would people say?"

"Say he's yours. No one would know the difference. Tell Eddie he's yours. Tell Vincent, too."

"Vincent wouldn't believe it."

"Well, he could say so, anyway. My Gawd, that's little enough to do for the poor little feller!"

"It's not a little thing, Angelica—it's a great deal, to expect Vincent to say he is your child's father."

"Well, he is!" said Angelica. "I forgot to tell you that."

XXII

"It seems to be my fate," said Polly to herself, "to be always forgiving and benefiting those that despitefully use me. Imagine me taking this child—Vincent's child—and not feeling the least resentment toward Angelica. I'm only sorry for her."

She was watching the baby lying on the lap of a lively and capable young nurse, whom she had got by telephone.

"I'm going to adopt this child," she had explained to the young woman. "His mother can't keep him."

"It's a risk," said the nurse. "You never know how they'll turn out; but he's a pretty little fellow—big gray eyes and all. He's been badly fed, but I guess we can build him up."

Polly lapsed into a strange, an inexpressible mood. Vincent's baby! Wasn't it really sent to her to take the place of the one she had so cruelly lost? She certainly didn't intend to pass the child off as her own, but she would adopt it and bring it up. She would love it. The starved and thwarted love which no one else wanted welled up in her heart.

"He'll be a lot of trouble to you," said the nurse, looking about the orderly, pretty little place. "You certainly are good to take such a burden on yourself."

"I lost a little child of my own," said Polly.

And a dreadful pity for herself, and for Angelica, came over her.

She might well be sorry for Angelica, going out of the house without that little burden in her arms.

This was the supreme hour of Angelica's punishment—the inhuman struggle between her heart and her brain. She did not look upon it as a punishment, however; she looked upon this horrible renunciation of her child as a part of the price she was obliged to pay for a magnificent future. She was bent, resolute, with all the savage resolution of her lawless soul, to marry Eddie and to obtain all that she so desired. If she must sacrifice her child, then she would do so, though it left a wound never to be healed.

She didn't seek for happiness; if it had been that she wanted, she would have kept her little baby. She was ready and willing to give up happiness for success. She wished to vindicate herself, to give proof to the world of the power which she knew to be within herself.

Oh, to be going home alone, with empty arms! It was too cruel! She longed for the feel of that little body, for the sound of its feeble voice, for its eyes looking up at her in pain and innocence. She walked through the streets with streaming eyes, running against people, indifferent to abuse or remonstrance.

"I can't go home without him!" she gasped. "Oh, my little feller! I can't go home and see his little clothes—and his empty basket!"

She stopped short.

"No!" she said. "I can't do this. I thought I could, but I can't. I got to have him back. I'd rather he died home with me. Oh, I wish we were dead, the two of us, dead and buried—him and me in one grave!"

She turned and retraced her long road to Polly's house, as far as the door; but she did not go in.

"No! Him in there with a trained nurse—no! I'll give him his chance, my poor little feller; and I'll give myself a chance, too," she added.

She started down-town again; but the nearer she got to home, the more unbearable was the idea of entering there, alone.

"If only I was over this first night!" she moaned. "If I could only just forget him till to-morrow!"

 

Mrs. Kennedy kept on working. She didn't dare to stop, to give herself a moment to think.

They were both gone. Very well! She would simply expect them back, resolutely refusing to think where they had gone, what they might be doing. At five o'clock in the afternoon she began to clean her flat. Then she cooked a nice little supper and set it in the oven to keep warm. She mixed condensed milk and water in a bottle for the baby. She boiled its dirty clothes. Then, in a desperate search for work to do, she found an old pair of white shoes of Angelica's, and began to clean them, singing all the while in a weird, cracked voice:

"Af-ter the ball is o-ver, af-ter the ball is done."

She was trying with all her might to keep out of her head a terrible vision of a young mother standing on a bridge at night, with her baby in her arms.

Still humming, she went into the bedroom, undressed, and got into bed, in a waking nightmare, half hypnotizing herself with her monotonous little song. She was too far gone even to feel relieved when at last she heard Angelica's footsteps in the hall, heard her go into the kitchen and light the gas. Then silence. She lay listening for the baby's cry; there wasn't a sound.

"What can she be doing in there?" she thought. "And what makes the baby so quiet?"

Fear struggled against the lethargy that engulfed her. She got up, went to the kitchen, and stood in the doorway in her long, old-fashioned nightgown, regarding her child. Angelica sat beside the table, with a package in her lap.

"Angie! Where's the baby?" cried her mother.

"Gone," said Angelica. "I got a lady to take him."

"Your own child?" screamed her mother. "Your own little baby? Oh, shame on you!"

"Shut up! You don't understand. Do you think I liked to give it away?"

"Then get him back! Get him back, Angie! I'll work for him till I drop. Don't give him up!"

"He's gone, I tell you. Let me alone! Can't you see how I feel?"

"Then why, why, why did you do it, Angie?"

Angelica stared at her somberly.

"I don't know," she said. "I had to. I thought it would be the best thing for him. She—the woman that's taken him—she can do a lot for him. She's kind and good. You'd like her."

"Who is she?"

Angelica did not intend to tell. She was too well aware of the preposterousness of having taken Vincent's child to his wife.

"No one you know," she said.

Her mother was completely softened by this new idea, that Angelica had given up her dearly loved child for its own good.

"You poor girl!" she said. "I suppose you meant to do what was best for him. But—"

"I thought it would help me, too," said Angelica. "I couldn't keep him."

Mrs. Kennedy was shocked. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Angelica stopped her with a quick gesture.

"No more!" she said. "I've had enough. Now you better go back to bed."

"I don't want to leave you," said her mother. She could imagine how hideous would be Angelica's loneliness.

"You better!"

"Why? What are you going to do?"

Angelica held up her tiny package.

"Heroin," she said. "I got it off a feller I know. I don't want to think about anything to-night."

For an instant the small figure in the long night-dress wavered; then, with a pitiful scream, she ran out of the room and cast herself on her bed.

"It's too much, God!" she cried. "I can't bear any more. Take me to-night, oh, merciful God!"

 

Mrs. Kennedy listened in vain all through the night. From time to time she dozed, to wake with a start of fright. She had no knowledge of drugs, only horrible superstitions. She expected Angelica to be changed in some way beyond recognition. Would she be violent—fight and struggle with her? Would she kill herself—set the house on fire?

At dawn she waked from a brief nap, resentful to find herself still alive. Sick with apprehension, weary beyond all measure, she went into the kitchen, to see what had become of her child.

Angelica was asleep, with her head on the table. Beside her lay her tiny package, unopened.

She raised her head and looked at her mother with dark and heavy eyes.

"All right, mommer!" she said. "It's over!"

"What? What's over?"

"All of—of that. I'm going to start all over again."

"You can't, Angie. You can't undo what's done."

"I have," she said solemnly. "I've just wiped it out. I haven't done any harm to any one but myself, and I'm going to forget that. All the traces of it are gone. Eddie 'll never know; and so he'll be happy! I have undone it, mommer; it's just the same now as if that had never happened."

Her mother, shivering, racked by her night's anguish, looked sternly at her.

"That's because you don't know," she said. "You don't know yet what you've done!"

XXIII

Mrs. Kennedy made no preparation for going to work that day. She suffered from a strange, an inexplicable malady. She didn't want to go to bed. She sat upright in a rocking-chair, still in her night-dress, staring at the kitchen wall before her with a faint little frown.

Angelica washed and dressed herself neatly, and got ready some breakfast—not very quickly, for she wasn't accustomed to cooking, but with the care and deftness that were so natural to her. It was, when done, a daintier and better meal than her mother had ever served.

"Now, mommer!" she said. "Come on! Sit down!"

"I can't eat, Angelica."

"You can drink some coffee, anyway."

And she took her mother by the hand and led her to the table—a poor, frail, barefooted little thing, with her gray hair hanging about her haggard face.

"Sit down," said Angelica again. "Now, then!"

Her mother drank a cup of coffee greedily, and gave her familiar little sigh.

"That was nice!" she said.

Her daughter succeeded in making her eat a little as well.

"Now you got to lie down," she said.

"I can't. I've got to clean the halls."

"I'll do it, mommer."

"Nonsense, Angelica! You don't know a thing about it."

"I guess I can learn. Go on, mommer, lie down!"

She straightened the bed and patted the thin little pillow.

"Now, mommer, tell me! How do you do it? Where do you start?"

"Angie, I can't let you. You're tired to death, child. I'm more used to it."

But Angelica would not listen to her. She went out, resolutely, with the pail and the cloth and the scrubbing-brush, to do for her mother for one day what her mother had done for her for nineteen years.

It was Angelica's disposition to enjoy martyrdom. She never felt sorry for herself; she didn't now. It was work which must be done, and she was anxious to do it properly. She was in that state of intense fatigue when one craves more and more physical activity. She scrubbed all the stone stairs, mopped the corridor, went on working and working and thinking and thinking.

She came down-stairs at one o'clock and went out to buy something for lunch.

"What is there to do this afternoon?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I haven't got half the work to do in this place that I had in the old one—only three washings."

"I know. Well, mommer, I suppose we'll have to get some more money from somewhere. I'll go out and look for a job, I guess."

She found one without much trouble. Her sort of job—unskilled, transitory, ill-paid—was plentiful.

"I'm starting in to-morrow morning," she told her mother, when she came home. "Now, if there's any ink, I guess I'll write to Eddie."

"Why?" asked her mother.

"Well, it seems he don't know anything about— what happened, and I guess we'll be married after all."

"You mean to say you're still set on that, Angie?" cried her mother. " It's wicked—downright wicked—to deceive a good man so."

"I don't think so," Angelica replied. "What I did was bad enough, but I don't think it's wicked not to tell about it. If you'd been in prison you wouldn't go around telling every one about it, would you?"

"That isn't the same at all, Angie. I don't want you to tell 'every one'; only the man you're going to marry."

"He wouldn't be the man I'm going to marry very long, if I did tell him. He'd never speak to me again. I know Eddie! And he's too good to lose," she added. "Of course, something may go wrong, but I don't think so. I think I've got him!"

So she wrote:

Dear Eddie:

I guess you think it is very queer not hearing from me for nearly a year. I did not think I would write to you, because when I thought it over I thought I better not marry you. I thought maybe we could not get on, on account of being so different, but I have changed my mind, and now I will if you still want. Let me know if you feel the same about it, and then I will write again and tell you all about how I am getting along. I have not got any letters from you, because we moved away from the old place, and I was sick a long time, and did not go up there to see if there were any letters, and then when I got well and did go the woman there was very cranky and said she gave them all back to the postman because I did not leave any address behind.

Well, let me hear how you feel about this.

Angelica.

"Now!" she said as she dropped it into the box. "Now, if only, only I can have my chance!"

 

One might imagine that her mother would be pleased with the new and complete change that came over Angelica—her third phase, so to speak; but she wasn't. This cool, quiet resolution seemed to Mrs. Kennedy more profoundly immoral than all her daughter's past wildness. It would be a horrible thing, it would upset all her universe, if she were forced to see such guilt as Angelica's going undiscovered and forgotten.

Even a sinful life would have seemed to her more hopeful, for it would have presupposed a girl driven to desperation by shame and remorse; but Angelica going off to her work in the morning, neat and alert, her old-time swagger supplanted by a steely self-assurance, was an outrage. She was actually ambitious, too; she didn't seem to know that her life was ruined and ended. She studied in the evening, writing exercises, learning things by heart, going at the English tongue, spelling, composition, and literature as the books decreed, fiercely concentrated upon her work. She wouldn't go to the movies, or to take a walk; she wouldn't even talk; she just sat there, with her books.

Her efforts at self-improvement were not touching, had nothing of stumbling pathos about them. She was too clever, too careful. She learned to dress with quiet precision, without paint, without flamboyant allure. She learned to speak better, she stopped swearing, except under great provocation; she even learned to control her temper to a degree that alarmed her mother. The hot, sudden anger was there—it came as readily as ever; but it was still now. She didn't "fly out."

And all this disturbed and exasperated Mrs. Kennedy. She had no sympathy for any of it.

"Whatever in the world do you expect to do?" she asked irritably, one evening, while Angelica sat reading a paper book on etiquette.

"I'm going to be as good as the best of them," said Angelica. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Plenty of reason why you shouldn't!" said her mother tartly.

But the wicked continued to prosper, until Mrs. Kennedy almost believed that God gave no justice.

One day a letter came for Angelica. This startled her mother, for they never got letters.

"It's from him," she thought. "Bad news, maybe!"

But it was postmarked "New York"; it couldn't be from Eddie.

"Now, whoever in the world can be writing to Angie!" she thought, alarmed and uneasy, as she always was over the girl's mysterious activities. However she might regard Angelica's moral shortcomings, she loved her only child. She knew that she deserved punishment, but she would have given her own life to save her from it.

Directly Angie came in from work she handed her the letter.

"Oh, Gawd!" she muttered. "Mommer! It's from her—the one that's got the baby."

Her face was ghastly. Perhaps, after all, she hadn't escaped so easily as her mother imagined. Perhaps, after all, she longed for her child and missed it with immeasurable bitterness, like any human mother.

Angelica couldn't bear to open the letter. For what other reason would Polly write to her but to tell her of the baby's illness or death? She had warmly urged Angelica to come whenever she wished to see the child, but Angelica had refused. She didn't want to see him there with Polly. She wished to—she must—look upon him as utterly lost to her. Once in a while she was overcome with longing, and would telephone simply to ask after him, and, reassured, would resolutely turn her mind away. But if he were really gone, no longer in the world!

She opened the letter at last, and the very sight of it, before her brain had grasped its meaning, comforted her—the neatly formed letters, the friendly look of the page:

Dear Angelica:

Dress yourself in your very nicest and go to see Miss Sillon in her shop, "Fine Feathers," on the south side of Washington Square. I spoke to her about you, and I believe there is a very good opportunity there for you. They want a milliner—some one to take a small salary and a share in the profits. They are nice girls, and you'll enjoy being with them. I really think it is just what you want. Anyway, try it, won't you? And let me know if it suits.

Your friend, as always,
Polly Geraldine.

P. S.—He is doing splendidly.

Angelica read the letter to her mother, all but the signature, and ate her supper in silence.

"Sit down, mommer," she said. "I'll wash the dishes. I guess I'll lay off for a while to-morrow and go and see about this thing."

It was Angelica at her newest and best who walked across Fourth Street the next morning. She had for a long time sternly withheld most of her wages from her mother, who needed the money for vital necessities, and had bought herself a decent outfit, to go with her new soul. She was plainly dressed, but no longer with a trace of shabbiness. She wore a neat dark suit, a black sailor hat, good boots and gloves. Her swagger was gone, and so was her provocative and insolent glance; she had a sobriety and decorum quite beyond reproach.

She saw the shop, and entered. It was a small private house, dilapidated and moribund, fitted out with purple and white striped curtains at the windows and a great sign-board over the front gate—a wooden peacock, brilliantly colored, with "Fine Feathers" painted in bold black letters across it. The shop was what had once been a front parlor—a long, narrow room with a marble mantelpiece and an ornate ceiling. It was furnished now, with great audacity, solely by four kitchen chairs painted white, with round purple cushions on them, a table on which were strewn original designs for wraps and dresses done in crayons, and a fine pair of black velvet portières concealing the back room. Four long mirrors were set into the walls.

The owners were both poor and clever. They knew well that this childish brightness would be thought artistic, original, and distinguished by the greatly desirable bourgeoisie, and that the more sophisticated would be amused. As for Angelica, she was impressed.

A tall young girl with fluffy red hair hastened in from the back room.

"Yes?" she asked with non-committal amiability.

"Mrs. Geraldine sent me," said Angelica. "I'd like to see Miss Sillon, please."

"Oh! I'm Miss Devery, but I'll do. I'm the partner. I've heard about you. Millinery, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Angelica confidently.

"Sit down, won't you? We can talk it over a bit. Miss Sillon will be in presently. You see, Miss Sillon and I just started this place six months ago, but we're doing so well that we feel justified in branching out a bit. So we thought of a millinery department. We were speaking of it to Mrs. Geraldine—she's one of our oldest customers, you know—and she said she knew just the person. She said you were a wonder at hats."

Angelica smiled a little. She was surprised and delighted by this pretty red-haired girl with her naive air and babyish voice—a lady, if ever there was one, and yet so simple and friendly with Angelica. She wanted greatly to work in that purple and white room with her.

"Now," said Miss Devery, "I'll tell you what we can do. We'd let you have both the windows, to display your hats; and that's worth something. Then we'd give you ten per cent of all the sales you make, and provide the materials as well. We have lots of scraps and odds and ends; so you'd be under no expense at all."

"But I'd have to have a salary to start with."

Miss Devery bit her lip doubtfully.

"Well, you see," she said candidly, "we're rather short of cash. We've made quite a bit, but after we've paid our living expenses we turn it all back into the business. We're growing fast, and if you come in with us now you'll really have a splendid chance. We have a perfectly fine connection, you know—some of the very nicest people."

"But—" began Angelica, and stopped short. "I'd like to think it over," she said. "How long can I take?"

"Why, a week, if you wish; but I hope you'll come. You're just the sort of girl we want. We don't commercialize the thing. We want to keep it nice."

Angelica smiled again with a dreary sort of triumph. So she had fooled one of the nice ones, anyway!

"Of course," went on Miss Devery, "if you'd rather, you could provide a little capital and your own materials, and we'd let you right in with us. Miss Sillon would show you the books and so on."

Angelica had risen. She could see her own reflection in one of the long mirrors, and she could not help feeling that she really looked more of a lady than the girl who actually was one.

"I'll let you know," she said carefully. She was fearfully tempted to try, just for once, to talk as they did. "It's awfully attractive," she said. "I'd love to go into it with you; but I want to talk it over with mother."

It succeeded! Miss Devery noticed nothing at all strange in her tone or her words.

"Telephone just as soon as you decide, won't you?" she said.

 

Mrs. Kennedy wasn't in the flat when Angelica got home. She was up-stairs, cleaning a vacant flat, and thither Angelica followed her. She was scrubbing the pan of a gas-stove—a vilely dirty thing, heavily incrusted with grease and slime, in which were embedded dead matches and bits of food.

"Mother!"

The unaccustomed word surprised her. She turned to look into Angelica's face smiling down at her.

"Mother, will you support me for a while?"

"Why, child, of course! I'll do whatever I can for you. Have you lost your job?"

"No, but I'm going to try something new. It may not bring in anything much for quite a while, but I think after a time it 'll be a regular gold-mine. And it's—it's very nice. I know Eddie would like me to do it!"

XXIV

She hadn't allowed herself to think about Eddie's reply. She insisted to herself that it would be, must be, favorable; but when the letter came, when at last she held it in her hand, she was panic-stricken. She reverted.

"Oh, Gawd!" she murmured. "What if he's changed his mind?"

This is what she read:

My Dearest Girl:

You can't possibly imagine how I felt when I got your letter. I was still in the hospital where I had been for five months with a bad foot, and, to tell you the truth, I didn't care much whether I ever went out of it again. I can't explain it very well, but there is something about the war and this filthy, brutal way of living that makes it unbearable to lose any pleasures or joys out of life. You get to believe that nothing matters except being happy. And you are my happiness. When I thought I'd lost you, I didn't care about going on. Of course, there's your country, and your family, and your ambition, and so on, but somehow they don't seem real. I thought of you all the time. I wrote and wrote, and didn't get any answer. Then I asked Vincent to look you up, but he wrote that you'd moved and he couldn't trace you. I don't quite see how I could have gone back on the firing-line again if you hadn't written. It's bad enough anyway, but it wouldn't be bearable without some sort of guiding star. Don't think I'm getting sentimental, Angelica, but you are that, you know, to me.

I hope this will soon be over. It's worse than I thought it would be; but I'm glad I came. I wouldn't like other fellows to be doing this job for me. But when I get home! It seems like a vision of Paradise—you waiting for me, and my home, and good food and a nice, clean bed, and hot water!

I don't want you to think that I've deteriorated, that I'm always thinking of physical things, because I'm not. When you're always uncomfortable, you can't help thinking too much about comfort; but I think much more about other things. I think a lot about what is the best way to use your life. I can see lots of things I've done wrong. I look forward awfully to making a fresh start. It will all seem so new, like being born again. Everything will seem remarkable and interesting—all sort of things I didn't use to notice.

And to think that there was a time when I used to think quite calmly about being married to you! Of course, my dear, I always did look forward to it as the greatest possible happiness, but I more or less took it for granted—the sort of happiness a fellow always expects. But now, Angelica, it seems as wonderful and beautiful and far off as heaven. I can't even really believe that I'll see you ever again. I've got so used to being a lousy, muddy, hunted animal that I can't believe it will ever end. I don't even long for the end; it seems so impossible. I have a damnable conviction—an obsession, I suppose they'd call it—that every one gets killed in the war. So many of the chaps I knew have gone, often killed beside me—and in the hospital, dying so sickeningly! I can't help imagining that every one in the world is dying. So that the idea of coming home and marrying you is—I can't describe what it is. Really and literally a dream of heaven.

Angelica, darling, don't disappoint me again! I couldn't bear it. Write to me faithfully, as often as possible—even every day. It wouldn't be much to do, for you who are at home and safe and comfortable.

With all my heart,
Eddie.

Now this letter might have disappointed another girl, but not Angelica. She didn't at all mind its being so little lover-like, so much concerned with Eddie and his feelings, and so little concerned with herself. She was, in fact, very proud that such a learned and serious young man as Eddie should write to her at all. She was overjoyed, exultant, to see that he still wanted her—with a sort of humility in her joy quite unusual in her.

"I won't disappoint him ever again!" she cried. "I'll do my very best. I'll just live for him! And if it's like a dream of heaven to him," she reflected, "so it is to me. I've suffered, too. It couldn't have been much worse for any one, anywhere. Oh, won't it be heaven to be safe—to be his wife, and settled there at Buena Vista, and rich, and every one looking up to me? A motor-car of my own, and lovely clothes, and a beautiful room! I'll have Miss Sillon and Miss Devery out to see me."

She looked at herself in the mirror.

"I'm getting to look refined," she thought; "not factory any more. When I can have real grand clothes, I'll be beautiful! Vincent said I lost heaven when I stopped loving him," she reflected. "Well, I'll get it back again, with Eddie!"

 

In spite of his entreaty, she waited for more than a week before she replied to Eddie's letter, for she wished to have something to tell him. She spent two entire evenings over her letter, and when it was done there wasn't a mistake in it, in spelling, in grammar, or in sentiment; for Angelica was fast learning the correct way to feel.

Dear Eddie:

Your letter was wonderful, and I could not write one nearly so good, or so interesting. I understand how you feel, but I do not know how to say anything. I feel like that, too, afraid to expect any happiness, but I want to fight for it. I want to tell God that I will not be cheated, and that it has all got to come out right.

I go to the movies with mother whenever there is a war picture, to try and get some idea what it is like over there, but I guess no one can. That is another thing I don't dare to think about—all that you must be suffering. But, Eddie dear, I will try my best to make it up to you when you get back.

I don't go to the factory any more, but I have a very nice place as a milliner with two girls who have a shop in Washington Square. I am doing nicely. I design the hats myself and make them, and Miss Sillon says it will not be long before my hats are recognized everywhere in New York. "Angelique," I call myself on the label I sew in the hats. She says they are almost too daring, but very original.

She wanted to write more—much more—about her hats, but she knew it wouldn't do. She was required to fill up the letter with general observations and with her interest in Eddie, and she did so.

She was pleased with this letter, and yet it troubled her. She felt both mean and cruel. She knew that she had nothing to give Eddie; she knew that in every way she was defrauding and injuring him. To stifle her distress she had only her profound faith in herself, her conviction that she had obliterated the past and could and would make a glorious future. She couldn't help contrasting her labored and prudent letter with his careless candor. Evidently he didn't care what he said. He just wrote her what came to his mind. He felt so sure of her!

"I haven't really done him any harm," she protested, lying awake in the dark. "If he never knows, it's just exactly the same—for him—as if it had never happened."

And still she knew that she was forcing him to play the part he would have hated and rejected beyond any other—that of the poor dishonored fool. She didn't even love him.

"I'll learn to love him!" she cried. "I love him a little bit already."

And still she knew how much she disliked even the memory of his kisses.

Sometimes a wave of sheer terror overcame her.

"No one's ever done such a thing," she thought, remembering all the stories she had read. "It can't be done. Somehow—some day—it would be found out. It always is!"

But this she could combat.

"I don't care if it's never been done!" she would cry. "I'll do it! I'll marry Eddie, and he'll never know, and it 'll all end happily. I'll make it! I won't be found out!"

{To be concluded in the October number of Munsey's Magazine)