Munsey's Magazine/Angelica/Part 6

by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

 

XXV

Angelica's new business suited her exactly. It absorbed her mind, and it trained and shaped and educated her to an extraordinary degree. Her bravado vanished when she no longer felt herself inferior; now that she was openly acknowledged to be a clever and rising young woman, she had no need of her old-time self-assertion. She throve in an atmosphere of praise. Miss Sillon and Miss Devery loved her and her brilliant hats. They lauded her, petted her, and took all possible means to advance her interests, because they liked her, and because her interests and theirs were inseparable.

Miss Devery, who was the artistic member of the firm, went outside in a purple linen smock one morning and put a crape paper hat on the peacock. As often as the rain soaked it, or the wind tore or carried it off, she fastened on another. It was very odd and whimsical, and it suited the unique character of their shop.

This unique character was their chief stock in trade, and they both knew very well how to use it to advantage.

"The awfully chic, exclusive thing has really been overdone," Miss Sillon told Angelica. "All the people with money are crazy now for anything they imagine is artistic and quaint. They think it shows that they're artistic to like such things; and just now, of course, it's the thing to be artistic."

She was a complete contrast to the dimpled, red-haired Miss Devery, with her air of polite amusement. She was a short, energetic, very dark little body, lively, talkative, and witty.

"I'm a perfect dressmaker," she told Angelica. "God made me so. Just to look at me makes people turn red with shame and make up their minds on the spot to have something nice and new and trim."

Angelica acknowledged that never had she seen a better-dressed woman, or a neater one.

"I dye my hair and lace as tight as I dare," Miss Sillon continued, "but I do it with pride and vainglory. I boldly call it a duty. I tell these silly women it's the most important thing in life to keep oneself looking one's best, and they always agree. Not one of them ever had the sense to inquire what it's done for me. Here I've been looking my best for forty years, and look at me, still digging away for a living, while these wretched, slovenly little chits with holes in their stockings and all their buttons off are settled down with fine husbands and babies and everything else they want! Look at Devery—sloppy kid! She's never without a man hanging about after her."

Devery smiled.

"They're mostly bad ones," she said. "Dishonorable intentions, sometimes, but generally no intentions at all. I don't get no 'forrarder,' Sillon. But this Angélique—she's the one! She's just made for a millionaire's bride."

Miss Sillon turned to stare at her.

"Devery," she said suddenly, "she's not quaint enough. Get to work and make her quaint!"

"That I can't do. She's not built along quaint lines; but I'll make her bizarre."

So Miss Devery set to work. She designed and made for Angelica an extraordinary dress of dark red jersey cloth that fitted her like a snake-skin, as she said. It was entirely plain and severe, with long sleeves and a skirt reaching to her ankles. It made her look lean, tall, and savage. Then she parted her hair in the middle and knotted it low on her neck, hung big gold earrings in her ears, and around her neck a great string of cloudy pale-green beads reaching to her knees. When all this was done, she called in Miss Sillon.

"Now!" she said. "What, eh?"

"Barbaric," said Miss Sillon; "but Lord, how attractive the creature is! Seriously, though," she added, "do you think she fits in with our nice little quaintness? She's positively terrible!"

"A new thing in milliners," said Miss Devery. "Sillon, I'm proud! She's my masterpiece."

"Very well," said Miss Sillon. "We won't touch her. She shall stand as you have made her; but, Angélique, my child, how you will have to design to keep up with your appearance!"

"I can do it," said Angelica firmly. "I've got some fine ideas."

For what had she been doing of late but visiting the Public Library and studying the lives of all of Eddie's magnificent women whom she could remember, and, from their portraits, gleaming the suggestions upon which she later worked?

She was supremely happy at her work. To sit sewing with Miss Devery and Miss Sillon all the morning, listening to their bright and jolly talk, and entering into it, was unfailing delight. They quite frankly admired her brains and her beauty, and treated her exactly as one of themselves. If they saw any difference, anything inferior in her, they concealed it.

Angelica felt that they didn't know, that they imagined her to be of the same class as themselves. It didn't occur to her that they didn't care; that so long as she behaved herself with amiability and good sense, and was of value in their business, they were in no way concerned about her grammar or her table manners. She imagined that they were always looking for signs of good breeding, signs of bad breeding, little tricks she hadn't learned yet. She used to read all that sort of thing in the women's magazines, and she often discovered, to her deep distress, that she had been doing horrible things, even in the presence of Devery and Sillon. She had, for instance, put on her gloves in the street; she had said "phone" and "auto," and still they remained friendly.

They were a type entirely novel to her; she had not even read of their sort. Well-born and well-educated Englishwomen, they had knocked about the world to an amazing extent. There was very little they didn't know, although there was a very great deal they chose to ignore in life.

Miss Devery was the youngest in a family of nine—children of a poor clergyman in the south of England. She had begun her career as a governess in a French family. Leaving that, she had drifted about in Paris, studied drawing a little, and given English lessons, always charming and gay and perfectly at home. Then she had gone to a married brother in Australia, and after a few years of that, helping his wife with her babies on their sheep-farm, she had followed the commands of her own sweet and careless heart and gone to America. And here she was, at twenty-six, quite alone in the world, half-forgotten by her people at home, who were rather fond of her, but couldn't keep her in mind.

Miss Sillon was different. Her father was a doctor who had ruined himself with drink, and she had had monstrous responsibilities and cares upon her shoulders ever since childhood, when her mother had died. God knows what she hadn't tried, to earn her honest bread. She had been a children's nurse in London, stewardess on a South American ship, librarian in a Canadian city; she had worked in a newspaper office and in a bakery, she had taught music in a suburban school. She was also entirely alone on earth, but it didn't trouble her.

Both she and Miss Devery would have been able to pick up a living in any part of the civilized world. They were attached to each other, without being quite aware of their affection. They had met one day at a cheap lunch-room, and had rushed together like two morsels of quicksilver. Why not? They were more than harmonious; they were in essence identical.

 

How bitterly Mrs. Kennedy missed her wayward and troublesome child, who had ordered her about and sworn at her, and so vehemently kissed her! This neat young woman, busy at her books in the kitchen every evening, always up and dressed at the right time in the morning, was a stranger, was in no way hers. She would sit in the rocking-chair—after the kitchen was clean and tidy—and take up the newspaper Angelica had brought in, or perhaps a magazine, and pretend to read; but she never could. She had no habit of reading. Her great need was to talk.

She would look at her daughter, and rock and sigh. A weary world, where even rest had lost its beauty!

There were sometimes evenings when Miss Sillon and Miss Devery invited Angelica to go with them to one of the little Italian restaurants in the neighborhood. In this case Angelica was always punctilious to telephone to her mother, and she was never out later than ten, so that it didn't occur to her to pity the wretched woman.

She didn't imagine how terrible those evenings were to Mrs. Kennedy, how she groped about the kitchen, blinded by tears, setting out her tiny meal, finding relief in loud sobs like hiccups. She saw that something was the matter with her mother, but she fancied that it was age, ill health, poverty, years of hardship.

It was none of these pains which so grievously afflicted Mrs. Kennedy. It was because she was being left behind. She who had all her life feared and foreseen that she would be obliged to die and leave her beloved child, now saw this child—as she had known her—quite dead and gone, and herself left desolate.

XXVI

There was one particular day—a sort of seventh wave in her steady tide of success—that Angelica always remembered. To begin with, when she reached Fine Feathers, there was what Miss Devery had promised her should be there—"ANGÉLIQUE," in purple letters across the two front windows. She stopped in the street to admire it, in delight, almost in awe. So far had she come, with such celerity—she, the one-time factory worker! It hardly seemed possible!

She lingered to think of her present magic life, so full of delights and satisfactions; her days filled with this work that she loved, handling the silks, the satins, the velvets, the plumes, the rhinestones, all the rich and vivid things she so adored; the chatter of Devery and Sillon, which never failed to entertain her; the very feeling of being an independent and promising young business woman, with an account well started in a savings-bank. She thought of the charmed evenings she sometimes spent with her partners—dinner at a near-by table d'hôte, and then a seat in the second balcony, to see some play which they had selected. She thought of those long, quiet evenings of study at home, in the tidy kitchen, with the clock that ticked so loudly on the tin tubs.

She was able now to give her mother a respectable sum every week. She was, in fact, rapidly becoming the most important member of the Fine Feathers establishment, and she had some time ago entered into a new and far more advantageous arrangement with Miss Sillon. Devery and Sillon were clever and good workwomen, and they had built up a nice little business for themselves; but Angelica was something beyond that—she was the one person especially adapted at that instant of time to design hats which would superlatively please the women of that particular city.

She catered to women with money, of course. She raised her prices fantastically; and when women came in, shamefaced and apologetic because of the fierce denunciations of the war posters they saw outside, she knew just what to say.

"Yes, madam," she agreed. "A hundred and fifty dollars is a large price for a simple little hat. Of course you can get some sort of thing for ten." She who not so long ago had been used to buy one for a dollar and trim it with all sorts of little scraps! "But it's much more economical to get one really good one, that will keep its style until it's worn out, than half a dozen cheaper ones."

None of her customers had yet pointed out that one could buy fifteen cheaper hats for this price, which, allowing three months for the season, would require of each hat less than a week's endurance. Every one who came to her really wished to pay too much for a hat. They all knew, of course, that the bit of fur and lace and satin she gave them didn't cost one-fifth of the price, but they paid the surplus for the style—that Angélique style.

She went into the back parlor, where Sillon and Devery were draping a collapsible form in green tulle.

"Hello!" they both said cheerfully.

"Wouldn't you know this dress was for a fat woman—or should I say, a well-rounded figure?" said Devery. "They're all wild about green, the big ones. I wonder why?"

"Congratulate her!" said Sillon. "Angelica, tell her how nice your name looks out there. There she was, all Sunday afternoon, painting it and talking about your greatness and your coming rise to fame and fortune."

Angelica sat down.

"It's lovely," she said. "It makes me as happy as can be to see it there, like that; but I've been thinking—isn't it all queer, and silly?—about their saying my hats are so becoming, and all that. Why, they could get lots of things that really suited them better for almost nothing! Do you know what I think it is? I think it's because when I make 'em pay so much they take more pains in putting the things on, and that's why they look better. They dress their hair so carefully, and try to have everything—harmonious."

"That's a trade secret," said Sillon, "It isn't at all the thing to say. Our line is, 'Of course, if you want anything really good, you've got to pay for it.' Stick to that, Angélique!"

"Down with the rich!" said Devery. "Bleed them white and drain them dry!"

"My father was a socialist," said Angelica, with calm assurance. She had no need to add, and they had no need to know, that he had been a socialist barber; nor was she yet advanced enough not to avoid, with ridiculous shame, her Italian blood. "Mother says he was specially furious at women who spent a lot on clothes."

This was another block in the edifice she was painfully erecting. She was creating for herself a past and an environment which, without being extravagantly false, should yet be in keeping with what she intended to become—a foundation for her coming greatness. She often mentioned, casually, her father and her mother and her Scottish grandparents. She admitted that she and her mother were poor, but she suggested an admirable and distinguished poorness. She had actually got so far as to indicate, with rare delicacy, that her being in business was a distress to her old-fashioned mother.

All through that day there was the same elating and intoxicating success. All the customers who came in were satisfied, praised her, and paid her money. Nothing went wrong.

At lunch-time Sillon made cocoa on the gas-stove in the pantry off the back parlor, and Devery cooked spaghetti. And for the first time they took her up into the little bedroom they had on the floor above, and showed her some of their belongings—photographs of uncles, brothers, cousins. Sillon had a stuffed cobra and a thrilling tale about it, and Devery some studies she had made in her Paris days.

Then they all went into the street, to look again at the "ANGÉLIQUE"; lingering in the October brightness, the wind blowing their skirts, their hair, making them frolicsome and gay.

"I hate work!" said Devery, stretching up her thin arms, while her purple smock whipped about her lean, straight torso in classic folds.

"What would you like to do?" asked Angelica.

"Just live—like cats, without any aim. I'd never accomplish anything. Just as soon as you do accomplish anything, you see that it wasn't worth doing. What is?"

"Devery, you're morbid and hypocritical," said Sillon. "You don't mean that. Besides, cats don't feel like that, my child. When they've caught a mouse, they feel that it was very much worth doing."

"Oh, well, so do I! I think it's worth while to catch my meals, somehow. Angelica, what an industrious soul you are! I don't believe you'd enjoy being idle."

"I'd be miserable if I didn't think I was getting forward."

"How did we get such a paragon?" asked Sillon.

"Suppose we go out to dinner?" suggested Devery suddenly, "Early, and then to the movies?"

"I'll telephone to mother first," said Angelica, "to see if it will be all right if I don't go home."

A punctilious and Eddie-like form, and nothing more.

"Mother!" she began. "I won't be home for dinner."

"Angie!" came the very tremulous voice of Mrs. Kennedy, always distressed at the telephone. "Better come home as early as you can. There's a lady here to see you—Mrs. Russell."

Angelica was shocked, terrified.

"Something's happened to Eddie!" she thought at first. And then came an idea that turned her cold with fright. "They've found out! She knows! She's come to tell me what she thinks of me!"

 

Nothing of the sort, however. Mrs. Russell sat there, waiting, all smiles and affability, for the sole purpose of inviting Angelica to visit Buena Vista. She had had a letter from Eddie, in which he had rather severely requested her to show all due civility to his future wife.

"He really means it!" she had said to her husband. "I hoped he'd forgotten. I really thought the thing had blown over. Beastly, isn't it? Imagine her here!"

"It doesn't frighten me," Dr. Russell said jauntily.

"Satyr!" she said. "You can't be trusted out of my sight!"

And both he and she were pleased and proud of his senile impudence.

Mrs. Russell had been chatting with—or perhaps to—Mrs. Kennedy for a long time, about God knows what—the war, for one thing. Their views were very dissimilar; Mrs. Kennedy hadn't a trace of patriotism. She maintained that it was a bad thing to kill so many young men, no matter why it was done. She wasn't interested in German perfidy. She only hoped it would soon be over, no matter how. It wouldn't make any difference who won, she said.

"Would you like to live under German rule," demanded Mrs. Russell, "and have some brutal Prussian officer swearing at you and ill-treating you?"

"I don't believe officers would ever bother about me, American or German," she replied. "What would they be doing, hanging around where I was working? No, ma'am. Poor people haven't got anything to lose. They don't feel the same about their country; I dare say because they don't own any of it. Of course, if those Germans were to come here, they'd very likely take away your house and your jewelry and so on; but they wouldn't be likely to trouble me."

"But your daughter? She's a very beautiful girl, you know. How would you like some unspeakable Hun to insult her—or worse?"

Mrs. Kennedy was silent. She felt in her heart that nothing much worse than what had happened could ever happen to her child. She simply listened to her visitor's accounts of outrages with decent, womanly interest.

She was included in Mrs. Russell's invitation to Angelica to spend a week-end at Buena Vista, but she refused, as she was obviously intended to do.

"Thank you kindly," she said. "I haven't the time."

"Why don't you go, mother?" Angelica asked her, out of curiosity, when they were alone again. "I should think you'd like to make a visit in a fine house like that. And it's going to be mine some day!"

"I don't think so," said Mrs. Kennedy. "I don't believe the Almighty would allow such a thing. No, Angelica, there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

"Not when your hand's steady."

Mrs. Kennedy was a little bewildered at having her time-honored maxim treated imaginatively.

"Even then," she said, after an instant, "some one can come behind and give you a shove; or the Almighty can interfere."

Angelica, at the zenith of her triumph, invited guest of Mrs. Russell, publicly acknowledged as Eddie's betrothed, smiled.

"He won't!" she said. "He's on my side!"

XXVII

So behold Angelica returning to Buena Vista in this quite new rôle, coming up from the station in a taxi, if you please. She was thinking all the way of her last visit, of that bedraggled and desperate creature that had been herself.

"I've won!" she said. "I've won! All alone—everything against me—and still I've won!"

She stepped out, and paid the driver with perfect assurance. She wasn't really poor now, and she could, with perfect propriety, afford a cab now and then.

She knew that she was late, but she was conscious of blamelessness. There had been a difficult customer who couldn't be left, and who, properly handled, had bought two outrageously dear hats. She was, in fact, very proud of being a business woman who couldn't help being late.

She had expected that the family would be at dinner, for she couldn't quite believe that they would wait for her. She didn't expect anything more than decent tolerance; she didn't in the least resent the trace of condescension in Mrs. Russell's manner. She couldn't fool Mrs. Russell with conservative Scottish grandparents or an old-fashioned mother. Mrs. Russell knew.

There was no light in the dining-room, so she went up on to the piazza and looked into the library window, for there was a blaze of light coming from there.

And there they all were, sitting about a table, playing cards. Unconsciously, involuntarily, her eyes sought and rested upon Vincent first of all. He sat in profile toward her, just the same as ever, handsome, bold, with his look of vigor and zest. All that had happened was nothing but an episode to him; hadn't even ruffled him. She couldn't bear to look at him any more.

Opposite him sat the doctor, facing the window, Mrs. Russell, and, with his back to Angelica, a strange young man in a tweed suit very much too big for him. Wasn't it a suit Vincent used to wear?

"Now who's that?" she wondered.

Suddenly Mrs. Russell flung down her cards with a slap.

"Oh, you chump!" she cried. "It's no use. You'll never be any good!"

An aggrieved voice, which Angelica recognized at once, answered:

"Well, what of it? I never said I wanted to play, did I? You said I had to learn, to make it four. Well, then, I can't, and that's all there is to it!"

"Courtland in there, playing cards with them!" thought Angelica. "What would Eddie say?"

The doctor got up and stretched.

"What of dinner, Marian?" he asked his wife airily.

"I'll see," she said, and went briskly out of the room.

Angelica rang the bell, and Courtland came to admit her.

"Hello!" he said. "What do you want?"

She repressed the too ready answer that was at the tip of her tongue, and said, with dignity:

"Mrs. Russell expects me."

"Well, she's in the kitchen," said Courtland, in conversational tone. "She helps Annie now while—"

"All right!" said Angelica. "I'll go down."

She had reached the dark passage at the foot of the kitchen stairs when a hand on her shoulder arrested her.

"Angelica!" said Vincent's voice. "What are you doing here? Go away! I'll send you money—I swear I will! Only go away! You won't get anything out of me by hounding me this way."

"I didn't come here to get money out of you. I don't expect anything more from you."

He couldn't see her face, but her voice was steady and quiet. He grew yet more alarmed.

"What did you come here for? What do you want?"

"It's none of your business," she said slowly.

She was struggling with a terrible fury against him—this careless young man who was living so well without her. She longed to let herself go, to turn on him with a torrent of abuse, to swear at him, shriek at him; but she must not. She dared not antagonize him. He, too, had a temper, and, if he lost it, God only knew what irreparable harm he might do her. She had now and always either to propitiate him or to frighten him; by some means to make him hold his tongue.

Vincent's arm tightened on Angelica's shoulder.

"You've got to tell me!" he said. "I'll have no more of your damned nonsense. What do you want here?"

She made no answer, but stood motionless in the dark.

"Tell me!" he said fiercely, "What do you expect to get here?"

Still she was silent.

"You answer me," he hissed, "or I'll—"

She laughed.

"You'll what?" she asked contemptuously. "Throw me down the stairs? Choke me?"

He released her.

"You damnable woman!" he said. "You've some outrageous scheme, I know; but you'll get nothing out of me. Nothing! Not a penny!"

"I don't suppose I will!" she said, half to herself, as she turned away and went on into the kitchen.

There, on a high stool before the table, sat Mrs. Russell, wearing an apron and, unaccountably, a little housemaid's cap. Her great feet were twisted about the stool, and she was bent forward intently over the salad she was mixing. Annie was at the stove, stirring, tasting, lifting covers, peering into the oven, and listening, with an air of complete incredulity, to her mistress.

"My dear!" cried Mrs. Russell, catching sight of Angelica. "How nice!"

She had, to tell the truth, quite forgotten that she had invited her.

"I'm sorry I'm late—" Angelica began.

"It doesn't matter. We're late too," she answered. "I help Annie every evening now. We haven't any cook—only Annie and that nice little Molly, and a woman who comes in by the day. War economy! But I really rather like it, and Annie has taught me so much!"

She looked at Annie with an ingratiating smile—of which Annie took not the slightest notice.

"After all," she went on, "I suppose we really ought to know how to cook—all of us women, shouldn't we? The men do their part, so nobly, going off to fight and—" She stopped, suddenly bored with her subject. "So you see!" she said inanely, smiling again.

Angelica looked about the enormous kitchen, so spotless, so brightly lit, so marvelously equipped.

"It's a nice place to work in," she said. "See here! Won't you teach me? I'd like to learn."

Annie stood looking at her with a highly displeased expression. She didn't understand this return of Angelica, and Mrs. Russell's great friendliness toward her; and no one explained anything.

"Of course we will, my dear! You ought to learn! Let's see. What can she do, Annie?"

"Nothing, ma'am," said Annie firmly. "It's all done and ready to serve."

"Nonsense! It isn't. I know it isn't. Let's see. My dear, I'll show you how to do a spinach puree. It's delicious, and frightfully good for the blood. We're all eating spinach almost every night now. Watch me!"

Angelica was hungry and weary, but she profited to the full by this novel lesson in her great course of preparation. She watched, she questioned, she tried her own hand at it.

Mrs. Russell praised her.

"You're very quick!" she said. "Now we'll help Annie to put the dishes on the dumb-waiter; then we've just half a minute to wash and brush up."

She led the way to her room, lively, cheerful, almost affectionate; and although Angelica knew how very uncertain and shallow this good-humor was, nevertheless it helped her.

She had decided upon a step which dismayed her. She had decided to talk to Vincent—to reason with him, to threaten or to cajole him. He was the one danger, the one person she had to dread. No matter how carefully she went, he could in an instant destroy all that she had built up; he could really ruin her. She had been trying for a long time to devise some method for insuring his silence, for gaining a little security. She had begun and torn up more than one letter. Now that they were once more under the same roof, she felt it a unique opportunity which she was too brave to shirk. She couldn't go on, never feeling sure, never knowing what he would do, what he had done.

She was startled to find Courtland sitting at the dinner-table; but as the others took him as a matter of course, she showed no surprise, although she was not at all pleased to be seated next to him.

The doctor had an evening paper.

"The news," he said, "isn't good—not in Eddie's section. He's going to be just in the center of the line to oppose the next big drive."

"Fiddlesticks!" said his wife. "You don't know where he is, or where the next drive is coming. Only the stuff you read in the papers!"

"I use my brains, and I put two and two together—"

"He doesn't know himself where he is," said Vincent. "Most of the chaps don't. They're like driven sheep."

"Of course they know!" said Mrs. Russell. "You don't suppose they're blindfolded, do you?"

A loud and violent discussion followed, all three of them talking at once, under cover of which Angelica addressed her neighbor.

"What are you doing up here?"

"Just what you're doin'," replied Courtland. "Eatin' my dinner."

She had no opportunity to say more to him, for Mrs. Russell peremptorily ordered him to fetch the car, and, after gulping down his pudding in sullen resentment, he left the table.

"I've got to take Vincent to the Country Club," she said. "He's going to sing 'Sambre et Meuse' at an entertainment there. My dear, you should hear him. Of course we're all supposed to be strictly neutral, and all that, but up there, at the club, the pretense is frightfully thin. All really decent people, you know. We have a dear little wounded Belgian officer who's going to speak; but I've heard him simply hundreds of times, so I won't wait. I'll be home in half an hour. Make yourself at home, won't you?"

Angelica reassured her light-hearted hosttess that she would be altogether happy and comfortable until her return, and, after the motor-car had gone, wandered back into the library, looking for a book.

But she couldn't read. She began to contemplate her coming interview with Vincent.

She could not trust him for an instant. She never knew when he would be moved to tell the entire story to Eddie, or to his mother, or to any one else. If he were attacked by one of his fits of remorse, he would be almost certain to do so. She held him only by a threat made in a mood of supreme passion, which she could never recapture.

Despair crept over her. This step along her stony path seemed too difficult. She had no violent emotion to carry her forward now; no impetus remained from her former terrific onslaughts. She had simply to state a request—a request of the utmost importance to all her future life; and she felt quite sure it would be refused.

Her very unpleasant reverie was broken into by the entrance of the doctor. He came, he said, to apologize on behalf of Mrs. Russell for her lateness. She wouldn't be able, after all, to escape the entertainment. He had brought Angelica a large, marvelous box of sweets, which he offered with a sort of subdued gallantry. She accepted it carelessly, and for a while listened to his talk.

He had quite changed his tune now. He couldn't keep an irrepressible jauntiness, or a sort of airy flattery, from his conversation with so pretty a girl; but he was deferential and decorous. He and his wife were both entirely resigned to the idea of Angelica as Eddie's wife. If Eddie had to be married, one woman was as good as another, and Angelica was perhaps a little better than a possible alternative. At least they knew her, and they had, in a way, a sort of advantage with her.

"I guess I'll go to bed," said Angelica, who had been politely waiting for a pause in the doctor's war talk. "I'm tired!"

She went up to the room she had occupied before, prepared to go to bed at once; but she found the room just as she had left it, all that long, long time ago—bare, dismal, the bed covered with a sheet, the rugs taken up, leaving the floor bare, the curtains gone, dark shades pulled down.

An angry flush spread over her face. At first she believed that she saw here a deliberate insult; but with reflection she became satisfied that it was not intentional. It was simply another evidence of Mrs. Russell's magnificent indifference. She sat down in that same little chair by the window, where she used to sit a year ago. A year ago!

She had plenty to think of, there, until Mrs. Russell came back.

Mrs. Russell at once began to blame Annie for having forgotten to attend to the room, but in a subdued voice, because she didn't dare to let Annie hear this wickedly unjust censure. The maid hadn't forgotten to get the room ready, it hadn't been mentioned to her.

She was summoned.

"Annie," said Mrs. Russell, as if to share the blame, "here's Miss Kennedy's room not ready! I'll help you with it."

All she really contributed was her curious ability to create an atmosphere of bustle and cheerful confusion—the quality which had won her so much praise for her war work. When at last the room was ready, she had become frightfully bored with it and with Angelica, and was in a reckless hurry to be off.

"Good night!" she cried cheerfully. "Ring if we've forgotten anything!"

And she vanished, leaving Angelica alone with Annie, who was just shaking a final pillow into its embroidered linen case. She set it straight on the bed, and turned, grim as death.

"Well!" she said. "I never expected to see you back here, that I didn't!"

She couldn't resist saying that, although she knew it to be improper. She was too deeply affronted by the presence of this creature here, and by the necessity for waiting upon her.

Angelica wasn't offended.

"No," she said, "I dare say you didn't; but you'll be still more surprised when I tell you I'm going to marry Mr. Eddie."

"Oh, are you!" said Annie politely, with raised eyebrows.

"And coming back here to live," Angelica went on, with a rather pitiful effort to win some sort of friendly interest.

"I sha'n't be here long myself. I'm going to be married, too."

"That's nice! When is it to be? Tell me about it."

"It wouldn't interest you."

"Yes, it would. Is he the same one?"

"Of course he is! I'm not one to be chopping and changing. Once I've given my word, I stand by it."

This, very obscurely, was intended as a reproach to Angelica, and Angelica, though not conscious of any breach of faith in such a connection, felt none the less guilty before the righteous Annie.

"I know," she said. "Well, I hope you'll be happy, Annie."

"I dare say I will. It can't be too soon for me. The way things have changed here—I never saw the like!"

"How have they changed?" Angelica inquired.

"There's that Courtland sitting up-stairs at the table with them, and me expected to wait on him. Her 'war secretary,' she calls him. He's no more a secretary than I am. Secretaries write your letters for you, but Courtland—he couldn't write letters for any one. He's ignorant. And him to be set up above me, like this! And my young man's a sergeant already. Why isn't Courtland in the army, like his betters? Well!" she added piously. "They may be exalted above me now, but the time will come when they'll all be cast down so far below me I can't even so much as see them!"

And this meant Angelica, too. She was among the black sheep, the unworthy and the wicked temporarily set above the righteous, only to be hurled down and utterly destroyed. Annie bade her good night with dour relish, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious triumph. She knew how it would be with this Angelica!

XXVIII

"Then why did you come here?" asked Vincent.

"Because your mother asked me," said Angelica.

Vincent shook his head.

"I don't believe you," he said. "You've got something up your sleeve. I know you! AH your moves are calculated."

He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning.

"No!" he insisted. "It's something to do with me. One of your damned Italian schemes!"

"It's nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all. I don't bother myself about you any more."

He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white linen frock and her trim hair.

It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force her to abandon this calmness, this superiority.

"You'd better bother about me!" he said. "You'd better remember that it's only through my pity for you that you're here. With half a word I could have you turned out of the house!"

She was imperturbable.

"I don't think so," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about this, anyway, and it might as well be now. I don't think Eddie would believe you, if you told him."

He laughed.

"My dearest girl, there's a living proof!"

"No," she said, looking steadily at him. "There isn't."

"What have you done? Murdered your baby, or sold it? That would suit your thrifty soul better. You do love money, don't you, Angelica, better than an inconvenient baby!"

"What baby?" she inquired.

"My God!" he cried, staring at her. "The impudence of the hussy! So that's the tack! You're going to lie out of it? Going to deny you ever had a child?"

"And how do you know I did? You never saw it, did you? How do you know it wasn't just a trick to get money out of you?"

That astounded him.

"Do you mean you dared to try that game on me? You little gutter-bred liar!" Suddenly he began to laugh. "But you didn't get much, did you?" he said.

Angelica smiled grimly.

"Now then!" she said. "Let's have it out! I'll own up that I don't want you to tell—that—to any one, and especially to Eddie. It would give me a lot of trouble; but it wouldn't spoil things. I have two good reasons for not worrying about being found out. In the first place, I'd deny it all, and I'm just as likely to be believed as you. You haven't got a name for being so awfully truthful, you know. I'd say you were making it up out of spite, because I wouldn't have you. And then I don't think you'd run the risk of telling Eddie. You're too fond of yourself. You know what would happen if he didn't believe you. He'd kick you out for telling such lies about me; and if he did believe you, he'd never forgive you. You'd never get anything more from him. No; it wouldn't suit you a bit to get Eddie down on you!"

"So you think you're going to manage me like a marionette? You think you can make any sort of fool out of me?"

"You've made a fool of yourself," she said. She wanted to stop there, but she could not resist the terrible temptation to hurt in her turn this man who had hurt her so brutally. She didn't care if it were vulgar or if it were imprudent; she wanted only to hurt. "You made a regular fool of yourself," she went on. "You acted like a monkey—going down on your knees to me and raving the way you did. Do you remember?"

She was smiling a little—the subtle and cruel shadow of a smile.

"Don't you think you were a fool? So weak—first in one of your childish rages, and then crying and whining about your sins? And then beginning—"

"Never mind the means I used," he said. "I got what I wanted. I knew how to get you, and I knew how to get rid of you when I was tired of you."

No! It was too unequal a battle; she suffered too much. Every memory of that dead love was too bitter, too shameful, too full of a strange, heart-rending pain. He had all the advantage; she couldn't wound him as he could wound her. She was mortally stricken; but she wouldn't give up.

"You'll pay for all this!" she said. "I'll be the mistress here, and if you don't act as I please, out you'll go! I'll see that you're kept in order. You won't be able to fool Eddie when I'm here!"

He cursed her savagely.

"Go on!" she said, smiling. "I like it! I'm glad I've made you feel like this."

Vincent pulled himself up with a strong effort.

"Well," he said, "with all your melodramatic threats of revenge, you'll never be able to do me much harm—not a hundredth part of the harm I've done you. You're ruined, no good!"

"Bah!" she cried. "You and your talk about ruining me! Am I ruined? Do I look any worse? Am I worse in any way at all?"

"Yes!" he said. "You are, and you know it."

He gave her one bright, fierce, scornful look, and, vaulting over the piazza railing, walked off across the lawn.

Angelica sank back in her chair.

"Oh, Lord!" she murmured, with a sob. "That was so awful! Oh, I do wish I could go home now, without having to see him again—ever!"

She got up and went irresolutely to the door. What was she to do with herself to forget, to overcome her terrible emotion? She knew she needn't expect to see either Mrs. Russell or the doctor before lunchtime on Sunday, and it was now only ten o'clock. She didn't know what to do; she wanted only to be active and to be for a little time alone.

She was not at all fond of walking as a pastime, but she set out resolutely enough now, along the quiet country road, trying to fix her thoughts upon Sillon and Devery and all that frank and bright existence, and to forget this world, this house with its intolerable memories, this man, whose very existence was an outrage to her.

"I shouldn't have come!" she told herself. "I was a fool! I guess it can't be done. I guess you can't—get over a—thing like that."

And in spite of herself came the unwelcome and terrible thought:

"How will it be, then, when you are married to Eddie and living in that house and seeing Vincent every day?"

She tried to escape from it. She walked faster, farther; but the walk did her no good. There was nothing in the country landscape to divert her thoughts, nothing to interest her. She had the purposeful gait of the city dweller; she wanted to get somewhere; and she wanted to be startled into attention with fascinating shop-windows, blazing signs, things and people always passing her. The quiet all about made the sound of her own firm step on the macadam road annoyingly loud and regular. The bright, clear sky overhead, the leaves somberly brilliant in their glorious death, filled her with impatience and loneliness. She turned back.

And the first living creature she saw on the road was Vincent, coming to meet her.

She didn't falter. They went on, nearer and nearer to each other, steadily, rapidly; but her heart began to beat with suffocating violence.

"Maybe he'll try to kill me," she thought. "It's so lonely here—and he hates me so! Well, I guess that's the best thing that could happen to me!"

But as he drew near, he held out his hand.

"Angelica!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica, why did I speak that way to you? When I've been longing and longing—"

"Better stop!" she said. "I'd rather have you talk that way than any other."

He had turned and was walking by her side.

"Don't you see?" he said. "All this bitterness and wrangling—it's all part of the same thing—part of our love for each other. It's the exasperation, the rage, of frustration. When we're apart we suffer so, and in our suffering we blindly try to hurt each other."

"Do you mean to say you're trying to pretend that we love each other?" she cried.

"Yes," he said. "We do. We can't stop. We're mates. We complete each other. We're made for each other. Even when I'm hating you so that I could wring your neck, I know in my soul it's only a phase of love."

"Well," she said, "it's not, with me."

But she was trembling with a mysterious and unfathomable emotion—a wicked and irresistible feeling of kinship with this man. Not love, not tenderness, not any feeling that she could name; only this conviction that they were bound up together, that they could never be strangers, that it was against nature that they should part.

"Marry Eddie, if you like," he went on. "I don't care. You're mine. You can be his wife; it won't matter. You won't love him. You'll love me. I'll be your lover!"

Her face flamed.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! You're the wickedest man that ever lived!"

"I'm not wicked!" he protested with earnestness. "The wickedness lies in your going to Eddie after you've loved me—in your faithlessness."

"My faithlessness!" she cried.

"It was you who left me," he reminded her.

She was amazed at this very characteristic turn which he had given to their talk. That he should pose as the injured one! But her pride forbade her to mention her wrongs.

"It's no use talking," she said. "It's all over now. The less we see of each other, the better satisfied I'll be."

They had reached the gates of Buena Vista, and Vincent appeared unwilling to be seen with Angelica.

"I'm going farther," he said. "But, Angelica, I won't let you go!"

 

The visit was altogether a disappointment. Angelica had imagined that it would be a sort of triumph for her, that she could at least a little exult over these "rich people"; but, after all, it was nothing but an obvious condescension on their part. She hadn't conquered them; they had accepted her voluntarily—not reluctantly, but rather graciously.

It was a tiresome day. Mrs. Russell's cordiality had evaporated overnight, and she was bored and yawning. She lay in a deck chair on the piazza, rustling through the Sunday papers, and talking to Angelica now and then with outrageously forced politeness. She had an air which Angelica knew of old; when one of her fits of ennui came on her, she all but pushed her bewildered guests out of the door.

But Angelica stayed until after supper. That was what she had planned to do, and what she was determined to do. She too sat on the piazza with a Sunday paper, concealing her sullenness.

There wasn't any supper, properly speaking. Annie was out, and Mrs. Russell said that their new custom was to help themselves from the ice-chest—a plan which might have been jolly if the people had been a little less hostile. They stood about in the immaculate kitchen with plates in their hands, Mrs. Russell yawning, the doctor subdued, Angelica severe, and Courtland embarrassed and aggrieved. Vincent wasn't there. There was beer and cold chicken and ham and salad and tarts.

"And coffee if you want to make it," Mrs. Russell said; but no one did.

After this, Angelica took her leave. Courtland was suddenly deprived of his secretarial dignity and ordered peremptorily to drive her to the station, which he did in complete silence. He never ceased to resent this seesawing, by which he was one moment the promising young man being trained as a secretary and treated with immense, if not maternal, indulgence, and the next minute was a servant and a rather rudely treated one. He endured it with wonder and disgust.

Angelica was able now to gratify a long-cherished desire—she was traveling in the style which she had so much admired in suburban ladies. It was, of course, out of the question to expect Courtland to help her on the train. Nothing in the world could have induced him to do so; but at least she was able to alight from a motor, to buy three or four magazines and a box of sweets, and enter the train, thus burdened, with the proper air. She sat down near a window and opened a magazine.

A hand covered the page.

"Angie!" said a voice, and she looked up into Vincent's laughing face.

She couldn't repress a smile herself—a sudden throb of joy; that exquisite feeling of comradeship again.

"Are you glad to see me?" he asked.

"No. Why should I be?"

"You can spare this one little evening for me," he said, "no matter what wonderfully upright sort of future you're planning. It won't hurt any one. I'll be irreproachable. I won't make any demands, any requests. I won't evoke old memories. Before we say good-by, let me have a few hours with the old Angelica—my beloved, reckless, adorable Angelica. Just to make a memory!"

"No; better not!" she said.

It might well, she thought, make a memory which would last far, far too long.

"Why not, Angelica?"

"I don't want to, Vincent, that's all."

He didn't urge her; he sat quietly beside her, suddenly dejected. The train ran on past dark woods, wide fields, lighted houses; stopped at lively little stations with their lines of motors—that, world of bourgeois smartness which Angelica so admired. It turned her thoughts again to Eddie, and to all that she would gain through Eddie. She would be coming home to one of these little stations, met by her own motor, to be whirled off to her own lovely home, with servants to wait on her, with dignity, security, peace!

And a sudden disarming pity for Vincent rushed over her—poor Vincent who had nothing to give. She glanced cautiously at his face, gloomy, perplexed, his eyes clouded with a sort of hungry dissatisfaction. He couldn't help but look bold all the time, but even that boldness was pitiful to her who knew his weakness, his faults, his vices, his follies. She had never felt so sorry for any one else.

"Walk home with me, if you like," she said.

They came out into the bewildering brilliance of Forty-Second Street side by side, and began walking east, slowly, in that astonishing hurly-burly of crowds, of glittering signs winking, flashing, pouring out into the night sky a flood of radiance, of hurrying taxis, immense motor-cars, trolleys, strings of fiercely lighted little shops, the windows filled with inane and shamelessly overpriced trinkets and souvenirs; noise, blinding light, crowds and crowds of people.

"Let's turn down Madison Avenue," suggested Vincent.

"That's out of my way."

"But you're in no hurry. Please!"

She consented; she had no particular reason for not doing so. He took her arm as they turned into the darker, quieter street, and went on with her so, like a young lover, his head turned toward her, listening eagerly, watching her face.

"Now tell me about it," he said. "Tell me what it is that's made you change so."

She didn't answer.

"It was you, and all the dreadful pain you caused me," she thought, but without bitterness; with only immeasurable sadness and regret that it should have been so.

"I've been working with two very nice girls," she said aloud. "They've helped me, and I've learned a lot from them."

He asked her a great many questions. He was really interested in it all, and in the effect of this commercial adventure upon her crude soul. It was the first time any one had shown a real interest in her heart and her mind. He didn't care so much about what she did, as what she felt. She could not help talking freely, with a sense of great relief. All the observation of her shrewd and intelligent mind, so friendless and so little understood, came to her lips now—not the naive egoism of a young girl in love, but the wit, the vigor, the soundness of a woman of character.

They turned into Fifth Avenue at Twenty-Third Street, and went on downtown, for Angelica had promised to show Vincent her millinery shop.

"There!" she said with pride.

They stood in the silent and deserted square, looking at the house, at the peacock, at the windows where in the light of the street-lamp the purple letters of "Angélique" might be deciphered.

A clock struck eleven.

"I'll have to hurry home," said Angelica. "Mother 'll worry."

She was reluctant, for she had been happy in her fool's paradise. Of course it couldn't last, this friendly communion with the man she found above all other people in the world supremely interesting, supremely attractive. She knew all about him, she didn't trust him; but it was something just to be with him, so happily, for this one last time.

All the old magic came flowing back into her heart, there in the tiny park, with the dead leaves blowing down the paths, and a sharp white moon to be seen now and then as the wispy clouds drew across it. That yearning for his sympathy, for his love, positively tormented her. She longed and longed to draw near to him, to feel his arm about her.

As always, his instinct warned him of his moment. His hold on her arm tightened.

"Don't go!" he said. "Let's have just this hour! Angelica, imagine—if we had a little room here, some little place all to ourselves! And I'd wait at home for you, and write and dream about you, and long for you all day, while you sat there in your shop, bending your dear, dark head over your work. You'd work for me, until I grew famous—and then I'd make a queen—an empress of you, my beloved woman!"

"Don't begin that!" she entreated. "We've had such a nice time!"

"But think of it! Think of sitting together in the dark, in our poor little room, our arms about each other, weary, harassed, finding our joy and consolation only in those hours together—living just for that! Oh, Angelica! Angelica! Hasn't this long, weary parting been just an interlude? Can't we begin again? Take me back! Forgive me and love me and make me over. Make me what you wish. Come back to me! Come back to me! I need you so terribly!"

"Don't!" she begged again, profoundly troubled. "I don't know how to tell you—how to make you see how useless it is. I can't—I don't feel as I used to. All that is dead. I'll never care that way for any one again."

"For me you can!"

She shook her head dumbly.

"Vincent, you've done me enough harm. For God's sake, let me alone! Now, just when I'm struggling up out of the mud, you come and try to pull me down. Right here, before this very house—"

She stopped, unable to explain, even to suggest to him all that Fine Feathers meant to her, how it was her honor, her dignity, friendship, self-respect, ambition.

"You see how I've changed," she said, "and how I've improved. Why don't you try to help me?"

"Changed?" he said, stooping to look into her face. "Not a bit of it, Angelica! You're nothing but my Angelica, my beloved girl, the mother of my child!"

"Oh, stop!" she cried. "Oh, it's too horrible!"

"It's too horrible that you should repudiate me. Angelica, let us take back our child and start again, a decent, honest life. You talk of improving yourself; why don't you think of improving me—of helping your poor little child? Let's help each other!"

"You wouldn't do it! You know you wouldn't!" she cried. The tears were rolling down her cheeks unnoticed. "You've never even seen the poor little thing, or asked about him."

"But I've thought of him! I've been haunted by that little son—yours and mine. Oh, Angelica, don't, don't for God's sake, turn away from me! Polly will set me free, and I'll marry you and we will have our child again."

She felt as if she were sinking in a whirlpool. An intolerable pity for this man confused her, overwhelmed her.

Her troubled glance, leaving his beloved face, fell upon the ridiculous peacock with its jaunty little paper hat—fit image for her nightmare; and a little trickle of cold, sane daylight began to filter into her darkened and suffering mind.

"Angelica! Let us begin again, you and I and our little son—"

"No!" she cried in a ringing voice. "No!"

His face fell. He looked at her, startled.

"No!" she said again. "I'd never believe you—not a word you said. I won't forget! I'll never forget, and I'll never forgive what you've done. You're a liar! You're a beast! I hate you!"

XXIX

Angelica was working in the back parlor the next afternoon with Sillon when Devery brought her in a letter. She smiled ironically and tucked it into her blouse, for she knew the writing.

"I wonder how he'll be this time!" she reflected. "You can never tell. Maybe in an awful rage, or sad, or making love. Well, it doesn't matter to me now. I've finished with him! But I was really nearly gone last night."

She had stopped short in her work and sat looking vacantly before her.

"I don't know why I'm such a fool about that man. I don't know what it is about him!"

 

She didn't trouble to open his letter until she was ready to go home. Then, alone for a minute, she pulled it out and opened it, half sadly.

"No!" she cried suddenly. "No! I don't believe it."

"What is it?" Devery called out from the next room.

"Nothing!" said Angelica, with stiff lips.

She hid the letter in her blouse in terror at the idea of its being seen. Then she was forced to bring it out again, to read it, to make sure.

Wanton, without a heart! You thing from the gutter, willing to give your body to any man, while you keep your cold and poisonous heart to yourself, for your own sordid aims! I swear to you I will never let you destroy Eddie as you have me. It would be an outrage to call you sister, to permit you to bear our name. I would rather die. And I shall die. I have enlisted in the army. I shall soon be sent to France, and I shall find Eddie there and tell him your little history. Then I shall die. Nothing on earth can stop me. It will be the supreme moment of my life when I tell Eddie, when I see his face, and know that your shameless ends are frustrated—when I know that you are really ruined.

"He won't do it!" she tried to reassure herself. "He's always making threats. He wouldn't really do anything that might harm himself."

But she knew that Vincent didn't always act from self-interest. His passions were very apt to overwhelm him, and malice was one of the strongest of his passions. He would enjoy exquisitely telling the wretched tale to Eddie.

For three months she didn't draw a free breath. She tried to dismiss her terror from her mind. She said to herself, resolutely: "Don't borrow trouble!" "Don't worry about what may never happen!" "Don't cross your bridges before you come to them," and all sorts of tags from her mother's store. She faced Devery and Sillon every morning with the same hardy good-humor. She was dutiful and severe at home, as had become her custom, and to no living soul did she give the smallest hint of what she was enduring.

Every time a letter came from Eddie, or if a mail were missed, she expected the blow to fall, all her laboriously made plans to be destroyed, her pride and dignity trampled underfoot, all her life wrecked. She was utterly in the dark. She had no idea what was going on, or what had already happened, and she could take no steps to gain information. She could do nothing but wait.

Then there came another letter from Vincent:

I am home on leave. That means that we shall very soon be going over. Good-by, Angelica! I have a hard, a bitterly hard task before me. I must hurt Eddie and I must hurt you. As for me, there is nothing before me but death. Deserted and ruined as I am, I long for death. Your love was all that pleased me in life. With that gone, there is nothing but a waste bleak beyond endurance. I shall only beg Eddie to forgive my vile treachery, as I beg you to forgive my sins against you. Forget your presumptuous and wicked dream of marrying that good man. That can never be. He will forgive you, as he will forgive me, but he will never forget.

Good-by, Angelica. I give you to God!

Vincent.

Asleep and awake that picture haunted her—a vision of Eddie, mud-stained, horribly pale, sitting on a box, with a candle flickering on the ground beside him, in a dugout with mud walls and great puddles of filthy water—the sort of thing she had seen in the cinema, ghastly, desolate, silent, with an incessant play of rockets and bursting shells overhead; and Vincent standing before him in one of his fine attitudes, so handsome, so strong, so noble, telling him. She knew how he would dwell upon the details, with what color he would describe her caresses, her kisses, heightening the temptation just as he would heighten his remorse.

It didn't occur to her that Vincent might encounter some obstacles to a prompt meeting with his brother, with all the different services and all the vast battle-field to be considered.

She lived in a long nightmare. She didn't know how the blow would fall—whether she would come home to find a letter from Eddie, casting her off; whether Mrs. Russell would be there to tell her; whether she would have a letter from some stranger, a friend of Eddie's—a lawyer, perhaps. But what she most feared was the idea of coming to Fine Feathers some morning and seeing Sillon and Devery suddenly turned hostile. She felt that she could not bear that. It would do for her.

But weeks went by, and nothing at all happened. One day, while she was in the back parlor, she heard Mrs. Russell's voice in the front room; but the very tone of it reassured her. She wanted to buy a hat, and she wanted Angelica to let her have it cheap; so she was extraordinarily agreeable. She had, moreover, some sort of idea that it would help Angelica in the eyes of her partners to be seen in friendly converse with a lady like herself.

"I wish you'd come and see me!" she said. "I'm so lonely! They've all gone—Vincent, you know, and now poor Courtland's been drafted. Dear me! It does seem as if they ought to be able to make up a big enough army out of those who wanted to fight, without dragging in the unwilling ones. Poor Courtland will make a very bad soldier; he hates it so. He's too independent. Vincent was really marvelous. If you could have seen him in his uniform! And he told me to be sure, if I saw you, to tell you not to forget him. He even went to Polly and begged her to be reconciled to him before he left, perhaps never to return. I went to see her, too, to see if I could influence her; but what do you think? She's adopted a baby, and she's wrapped up in it. She says it fills her life, and she doesn't want any one else. She's very hard on Vincent. Those frightfully maternal women always are dreadfully hard on men, don't you think? I'm not surprised at her adopting a child; she was so absorbed in the one she lost. I couldn't do a thing with her. She said she had done with Vincent. Poor boy! She's narrow—provincial. Awfully selfish, don't you think?"

"I don't know," said Angelica. "I suppose she can't help how she feels."

"Well, I thought it was horrible to see her there, so happy with that baby, and so callous about her husband. Not even her own baby—some little waif she's picked up. It's a wretched, puny little thing, too; she has to give it the most unceasing care. I shouldn't be surprised to hear any day that she's lost it. Oh, my dear! What's that heavenly mass of purple?"

"That's a negligee I'm making," said Devery, thus addressed.

"Could I possibly wear purple?" inquired Mrs. Russell earnestly. "Do please let me see it! Oh, how marvelous! Could I possibly slip it on?

"Am I hideous?" she asked Angelica anxiously, when she had got the purple garment on and stood before the long mirror.

"It's not quite your style," said Angelica, with great seriousness. "I think—but Miss Devery will give you suggestions."

"A dark green," said Devery, "with dull, blackish blue overtones—not a floating thing like this, Mrs. Russell. You're slender enough to stand a straight, narrow garment. Not exactly a negligee; I never advise them, there's so little use in them; but what I call a boudoir gown."

"How much would it cost?" asked Mrs. Russell.

"One hundred dollars," said Devery.

Mrs. Russell looked at her, then at Angelica. They both had their professional manners, polite, deeply interested, but firm. There was no mercy to be had from them. She ordered the gown; then she bought a "sports hat" of Angelica for a staggering sum, and prepared to take her leave.

But now Miss Sillon came in, pleasant and businesslike.

"I'd be very pleased to make you a ten per cent discount, madam," she said; "or for any one personally introduced by our Miss Kennedy."

"Oh, Sillon!" said Angelica, when she had gone. "Wasn't that nice of you? You can't imagine how anything like that pleases her."

"Angélique, my child, we'd do more than that for you," said Sillon.

 

"Telephone, Mlle. Angélique!" cried Devery.

"Would you mind asking who? I've just got this thing pinned."

"It's Mrs. Geraldine," Devery called. "Can't you come?"

Angelica's heart stood still.

"This is it!" she thought. "Now it's come!"

She went with leaden feet to the telephone in the back room, and sat down before it. She stared at the instrument for an instant in horror. What was it about to reveal?

She took up the receiver.

"Yes!" she said. "Is this you, Mrs. Geraldine?"

"Can you come to see me?" said that well-known voice. "There's something—"

"Why?" she cried. "What is it? Is anything wrong?"

"The baby's quite well; but there's a piece of news you ought to know."

"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh, tell me! What?"

"Don't lose your head, Angelica; but come when you can. I'll be in all the afternoon. And don't worry. It's only that I think you ought to know before all the others."

She didn't wait to hear the rest. She left the telephone and turned to her friends a distracted and blanched face.

"I've got to go!" she said.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Sillon kindly, alarmed by her look.

"Yes! I've got to go!"

"Can't I go with you?"

"No, no, no!"

Angelica was pinning on her hat, without even a glance in the mirror, and was starting out when Devery stopped her.

"Your bag!" she said. "Or are you coming back to-day?"

"Never!" she cried. "Never!"

They stood together watching her go.

"Poor kid!" said Devery. "It must be something very wrong!"

Angelica was out of sight, hurrying along the street, trembling with eagerness to embrace this anguish, to get it over, to be done with her torment.

She rang Polly's bell, and Polly herself admitted her visitor. She looked ill and haggard, with eyes heavy and dull, and reddened with sleeplessness—or was it with tears?

"Come in," she said pleasantly. "Sit down, Angelica. Will you have a cup of tea?"

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Hurry up and tell me! They all know it? Eddie's written! Oh, Mrs. Geraldine, I knew right away! Eddie's written to say that Vincent's told him. Oh, my God! He said he would, and he has! That's what he went for. Oh, my God! All my life ruined! Oh, Mrs. Geraldine!"

"My dear, try to calm yourself," said Polly. "There—sit down. You're making yourself ill. Vincent hasn't told any one. He never will, Angelica."

"He said he would!"

"He never will. He's dead."

Her voice broke in a faint sob.

"Dead?" cried Angelica. "Vincent? In the war?"

"The transport he was on struck a mine."

"Then he never got there? He never told Eddie?"

"No."

"Oh, Mrs. Geraldine!" she cried. "Then I'm safe!"

Polly turned away.

"Don't you feel sorry?" she asked. "He was very young to die."

Angelica shook her head.

"No, I can't," she said; "not just now. I can't feel anything but glad."

 

She stopped on her way home to tell Sillon and Devery that "it was all right." She let them know, modestly, that there was a certain person now in France in whom she was profoundly interested, and that she had feared some bad news in regard to him. Then she went to a quiet little restaurant and ate a delicious little dinner all alone, and in the chilly, cloudy evening walked home—a long walk.

She was enjoying a feeling of exquisite and complete triumph. She had won! She was safe now, her troubles over. Certainly God had helped her. She was young, beautiful, beloved; she was about to be rich. She had made a gallant fight against great odds, and she had conquered.

She greeted her mother with unusual affection and was willing to talk with her for quite a time, about her business, about the shortcomings of the tenants, about everything in the world except what had happened. That she didn't mention.

She began slowly to undress while her mother was still in the kitchen, ironing a collar for her to wear the next day. She looked at herself in the mirror, in her dainty camisole—a beautiful woman, with her delicate bare arms, her slender shoulders, her curious, glowing black eyes in her pale and lovely face—

And suddenly, almost as if she saw it in the glass beside her own, another face, fierce, hawk-like, rigid and white, with bright hair spread out and floating as if in the sea. Her dead lover!

XXX

The parlor now rejoiced in a new and pretty little "set," put in there only the week before in order to receive the visits of Eddie. On one of the chairs sat Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in silk, her hair skilfully fluffed by her daughter, her hands manicured, her feet in soft new boots. She was well aware that she had never looked so common, so perfectly the janitress and scrubwoman. Her strained, haggard face, her faded eyes, her blunted and withered hands belied her fine attire. They could have belonged only to a woman who had worked brutally and hopelessly. She was years younger than Mrs. Russell, but she might have passed for her mother.

Her patient hands were folded in her silken lap; she had nothing to do, and very little to think about. The blasphemous triumph was accomplished; she was about to see Sin crowned and rewarded, Innocence betrayed and abandoned—in other words, Angelica married to Eddie. She was disgusted with life, thoroughly disappointed with her God. She took no pleasure in these preparations, or in any of the comforts and enjoyments before her. Nothing sustained her but a vague sort of hope that her just God would retrieve Himself by stopping this wedding in some way—with thunderbolts, or the flaming swords of archangels. And she was well aware that one couldn't really count upon anything of that sort.

Out in the kitchen she could hear the servant—she, the charwoman, servant of servants, sitting in the parlor while another woman drudged for her! In half an hour an automobile was coming to take them to the church, and then they were going off to Buena Vista, going to leave all this poverty and janitress work behind forever. She had been given to understand that she wasn't to live with her child, only to visit until a suitable home could be found for her. She was to have an apartment and a servant all of her own; she was to furnish the place as she wished, and she was to be provided with a new wardrobe.

"And start a new life," Angelica told her.

"I'll need to!" said Mrs. Kennedy. "This one is about done."

And although a great deal of this was paid for by Angie herself, out of the money she had saved, her mother had never expressed gratitude. She didn't feel any. She had never at any moment of her life been so utterly dissatisfied.

She glanced at the new clock.

"Angie!" she called. "What are you doing?"

"Dressing!" called back a gay, a too gay voice.

"He'll be here in half an hour."

"I'll be ready!"

 

She was standing before the mirror in the bedroom, adjusting her hat, very delicately touching her hair under its net, tilting her head from side to side, frowning thoughtfully, trying to foresee the effect she would produce upon Sillon and Devery, Mrs. Russell and Polly, who would be in the church. She pictured herself and Eddie walking up the aisle—Eddie still in uniform, tall, severe, impressive, and beside him his beautiful young bride. She was wearing a plain dark brown broadcloth suit, a big black hat, and a magnificent set of silver fox furs Eddie had given her. She looked like a princess. They couldn't, any of them, find a flaw in her—in her appearance or in her bearing. None of those born ladies could approach her. She looked what she was determined actually to be, the equal of any one of them. There was a position ready for her, and she was competent to fill it.

Eddie had been so delighted with the change in her. She hadn't seen much of him since his return at the end of the war, but all his hours with her had been a perpetual service of praise. He had hurried to her his first free minute; he had wanted to give her anything, everything—extravagantly and ridiculously. He had been tactful and kindly with the rather contemptuous Mrs. Kennedy. He had been to see Devery and Sillon, and had won their hearts. He had been quite perfect.

And all these thoughts were merely flitting across her mind like birds flying above a frozen pond. Under the ice were horrors beyond naming. She did her utmost to ignore them, to think of those things as dead and buried and forever gone from her world; but she could not.

All that night she had been dreaming of her drowned lover, floating, horribly, in the sea; and with him, directly beside him, her baby—their baby—its little body extended like his, its tiny white face upturned. And she and Eddie sat on the deck of a ship, she facing these two corpses which came smoothly along behind them, and she was using all her wit, all her charm, to keep Eddie from turning his head and seeing them.

The dream haunted her and mingled with her wretched thoughts. For now that she was within a stone's throw of her goal, now that the cup was in her hand, to be raised to her lips, she was filled with a desperate impatience, a terrible fever of haste and fear. Her hands were burning, her knees weak and trembling.

"Oh, just this one more hour!" she murmured. "If only, only, only nothing will happen!"

She looked past the moment to the haven of happy years beyond, as a man sailing a perilous channel might look ahead to the wide and quiet sea beyond.

"Something will happen!" she told herself. "At the last minute some one will tell him—scream it out in the church—stop the wedding. Oh, God! Just help me now! Let me get safely married to Eddie, and I'll try my best to be good!"

She was conscious of being a little too pallid, too worn, and she rubbed on her smooth cheeks a little rouge. It looked horrible, and she wiped it off frantically.

"No! It must be my eyes that look so queer. I wonder if Eddie 'll notice, and think I look queer! It might make him suspicious."

She forced herself to smile.

"Of course I'm nervous," she said. "Every one is. It's nothing—nothing at all!"

She suppressed a scream when the doorbell rang. She listened, behind her half-closed door, until she heard Eddie's voice talking quite in his usual tone to her mother. No one called her. Nothing had happened.

She stood still, in a sort of daze, getting no further forward in her dressing, until her mother entered the room.

"He's going to take me down and put me in the auto," said Mrs. Kennedy. "Then he's coming back after you. You'd better hurry. It's late, and I don't see any use for you to be keeping all those people waiting. That's not a very good way to begin."

"All right!" said her daughter hurriedly. "Go on, mother!"

She set to work in haste to add the finishing touches to her dress, fastening the little bar pin with diamonds given her by Mrs. Russell, drawing on her white kid gloves.

She heard him coming. She heard him stop at the kitchen door, and tell the woman working in the kitchen that she might go. Then he came and knocked at her door.

"Ready, Angelica?" he called out.

She gave one glance in the mirror; then she opened the door with a forced, polite smile. There stood the poor soldier who wished to give her all he had—poor, ardent Eddie, longing so to take her back to his beloved home, and give it into her keeping. He stood in the doorway of her little room, looking at her, and he too was smiling—a smile as strained, as artificial as her own.

"Angelica!" he said softly.

He had grown quite pallid, as he did when deeply moved, and his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. His face, his expression, had changed. He was struggling his utmost to look, and to be, tender and respectful; but his heart was beating furiously with that least tender and respectful of all emotions. He wiped his damp forehead, and came a step nearer, always smiling, but with eyes strangely brilliant and fixed.

"No!" said Angelica sharply. She knew how he felt—she knew too well how he felt. It sickened and shamed her.

"My darling girl!" said Eddie. "My Angelica!"

"Don't!" she said. "Don't say that! I'm not!"

"But you will be, very soon! I—"

"We ought to go, Eddie. It's late!"

"Then kiss me, just once!"

She shook her head with a ghastly affectation of coquetry.

"No," she said. "You'll have to wait!"

"Just as you like, Angelica," said the poor fellow. "You know, don't you, dear girl, that my chief wish in life is to make you happy? I wouldn't for—"

"Then do come on, or I'll think you don't want to marry me at all!"

He turned instantly, and she followed him—just to the door of her room; but no farther. He looked back.

"Aren't you ready?" he asked.

"Eddie!" she cried in a high, dreadful voice. "Eddie! I can't do it!"

"Can't do what?" he asked, startled.

"I can't do it! I can't marry you! Not unless I tell you!"

He stared at her for an instant, his quick and clear mind at work upon this.

"What is there to tell me?" he asked. "Let's have it!" He was alert and suspicious now. "Come on! Let's have it!" he repeated.

"Eddie!" she began, but a great horror at her own folly assailed her.

She felt impelled toward this abyss, while she struggled madly to turn aside, aghast at the destruction before her. Perhaps even now it wasn't too late; perhaps she could disarm the suspicion that she had aroused, could stop, and not tell him any more.

Thank God, it wasn't too late! She hadn't told him. She felt like a person cutting his own throat—the knife had only pricked—he is still alive, and in a mad exultation of thankfulness.

She smiled.

"I—I got engaged to another fellow," she said; "but it's all over now."

"When? Who was it?"

"Last year."

"Who was it, I say?"

"He was—a—a factory superintendent," said Angelica. "But it's all over now. I'm awfully, awfully sorry, Eddie."

"You mean you—engaged yourself to this fellow while I was in France? After you'd promised to marry me?"

"I know it was—wrong; but I hope you'll forgive me, Eddie!"

"Yes," he said, "I forgive you, Angelica; but oh, how could you? I'm so disappointed in you! It was so dishonorable! It was—low."

"I know! I know! I know!" she cried, with an uncontrollable impatience. "But—forgive me and forget all about it. I'm so sorry. What more can I say?"

"Did he—did you let him—kiss you?"

"Yes!" she murmured.

"Angelica!"

"Oh, but I'm sorry!" she cried desperately.

Eddie stood looking at the floor for an instant; then, with fierce suddenness, he caught her by the arm and pulled her forward, so that he could look into her face.

"Look here!" he shouted. "How far did this thing go?"

"It was nothing!" she cried.

"You said he kissed you. You said you were engaged to him. Some coarse, common brute of a workman mauling you—I know those people—I know their love-making. God, Angelica! You make me sick! You've no fineness, no—no decency!" he cried.

He searched her face with eyes that terrified her.

"I don't believe you," he said suddenly.

"But, Eddie—" she stammered.

"I don't believe you!" he said again. "You're lying. This fellow was your lover!"

"Oh, don't!" she cried.

"Answer me! Tell me the truth!"

"No! I did! I did tell you the truth. There was nothing—like that."

"Swear it! Say, 'I swear to God I was absolutely faithful to you all the time you were away.'"

His eyes never left her face; but she repeated, firmly:

"I swear to God I was absolutely faithful to you all the time you were away."

He looked puzzled. He sat down heavily in a chair and covered his eyes with his hand.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be so rough. Only—it's a terrible disappointment to me, Angelica. I never imagined such a thing. I almost wish you hadn't told me. I keep seeing you and some hulking fellow in overalls—"

She was sobbing bitterly, standing before him like a forlorn and penitent child.

"Don't cry!" he said more kindly. "Don't cry, my dear. I'll try to forget it. I'll try!"

"Will it—not make any difference?" she sobbed.

"I'll try not to let it. Only, Angelica—it was often so hard—over there—not to—so hard to be true to you—not even to think of any one else; and when I think of it, and how I hated myself, even for my thoughts—I feel like a fool. I don't believe you'd have cared what I did. You don't feel as I do. You don't value loyalty as I do."

She seized this opening.

"No!" she cried. "I shouldn't have cared, one bit, whatever you did, if only we love each other now!"

"No, don't! I don't like to hear you say that. I want you to care, as I do. I want you to be fine and—high-minded."

"Eddie, I'm not. There's no use pretending that I am."

"I don't want you to pretend to be. I want you to try to be."

"I will!"

He was silent for a time.

"Now, then!" he said. "It won't do to keep them all waiting any longer. Are you quite ready?"

"Do you mean for us to get married just the same?"

"Of course!" he said. "I couldn't be such a prig. I've simply got to forget what you've told me, and thank Heaven that I've got you after all. You might have married the fellow!"

He was his own kind self again, but she could see that his great pride in her, his great joy, were gone.

"Come!" he said again. "We shall be very late."

But she prevented him from leaving. She caught him by the arm and stood before him, looking up into his face.

"Eddie!" she cried, with a gasp that seemed to tear her heart out. "I've got to! I can't deceive you! Oh, God! It's so awful!"

He didn't move or speak.

"Eddie," she said, "it was that!"

"Ah, it was!" he said, in a tone of polite surprise.

"I had a baby."

A shudder ran through him, and he closed his eyes in mortal pain.

"You can't ever know what I suffered! Oh, Eddie, Eddie, I've been punished enough for what I did! And the poor little baby—"

"Never mind!" he said, in a voice so low that she could hardly hear him. "Don't tell me any more. I don't want to know." He undid her fingers from his arm. "I want to get away," he said. "Good-by!"

But she stopped him again.

"And the man was Vincent!" she screamed. "Now! Now! Now you know!"

XXXI

The next morning, just at the usual hour, Angelica entered the back parlor, where Sillon and Devery were working side by side. They both looked up in a sort of stern surprise, and waited for her to speak first.

She stood before them, a quivering smile on her lips. She seemed on the verge of tears; but after a silent moment she raised her eyes to look at them with a sublime and touching bravery.

"Can I come back?" she asked.

They were both speechless.

"I don't want to explain," she said, in a trembling voice. "Not ever! But if I can come back, I'll—go on—just the same."

Miss Sillon got up.

"Certainly!" she said pleasantly. "If you like, we'll go on—in the old way. We'll forget all this. Don't you think so, Devery?"

"Of course!" said Devery.

But no matter how they tried, their cordiality was strained, their looks averted. They knew, all three of them, that it would be a long time before this thing could be forgotten. Half of the letters of "Angélique" had gone from the windows—and how much more had gone as well?

But at least their friendship endured. They neither questioned her nor blamed her; they simply took her back, as wholeheartedly as was possible to them. Whatever incredible and discreditable occurrence may have interrupted that dazzling wedding, they would not repudiate her.

She went to her cupboard, took out the box in which she had kept her odds and ends, and, sitting down at her old table, spread out the glittering, gay scraps before her.

"I'm going to stick to business now!" she said, with a sob.

 

Came lunch-time, and Angelica said she was obliged to go out, although the only obligation upon her was to avoid a meal in bitter imitation of that beloved old-time intimacy. They both asked her to stay, but they didn't want her; how could they? They were still recovering from a severe shock. They had struggled to adjust themselves to the idea of their Angelica marrying a rich young man, and now they had to grasp and assimilate this astounding catastrophe, mysterious, absolutely unexplained, and strongly suggestive of something disgraceful.

She left them to their cocoa and their talk in the back parlor, while she put on her hat and coat, to seek some quiet and clean place to lunch. She wasn't used to lunching alone, and she didn't know where to go. She felt, as she had felt once before, that her disgrace was written on her face. She shrank from the idea of being seen.

She was startled and distressed beyond measure at the sight of a familiar figure, evidently waiting for her, in the street outside the shop. Superlatively dapper in a new gray overcoat and pale gray spats, bought for the wedding, with a flower in his buttonhole and a little stick in his hand, stood Dr. Russell.

He uncovered his white head and came forward with an air of great gallantry.

"Ah!" he said. "And how is Mlle. Modiste this fine morning?"

This absurd little man was as tragic and terrible as a ghost to Angelica. He brought back all that she wished to forget.

"What is it?" she asked in a sort of desperation.

"Nothing! Nothing!" he assured her. "I—I should like to propose a little lunch together."

"No!" said Angelica, shaking her head.

He fell into step beside her, swinging his stick and whistling under his breath; but at the corner she stopped.

"What is it?" she asked again, frowning.

"Nothing," he said again, airily and carelessly. The real purpose of his visit was half obscured even from himself; and he certainly couldn't explain to Angelica what he himself did not comprehend. "I just wanted to see you," he said—which was very nearly true.

"Well, now you have seen me!" said Angelica, in her old style.

"Yes," he said, "and it's always a pleasure to see such a pretty little lady."

Angelica frowned.

"You're not going to start that, are you?" she demanded. "Because I don't feel like listening to any of that sort of rot, I can tell you. I feel—" She paused. "I feel—" she began again, and tears filled her eyes with the pain of what she did feel.

The doctor's sympathy—his very ready sympathy—was roused. He wanted to comfort her; and he would have liked, while speaking his consoling words, to hold her hand and stroke her hair. However, he saw that he couldn't.

"I'm sorry!" he said.

She looked at him, surprised. She saw the honest regret in his eyes, and it was balm to her. So he didn't see her through Eddie's eyes; he didn't value her when Eddie did and reject her when she was rejected by Eddie! He saw her as an individual, with an existence quite independent of Eddie; and undoubtedly he admired her.

Useless to deny that even Dr. Russell's admiration was welcome to her sore heart. It was as if he had come, a heavenly messenger, to assure her that though a hundred Eddies scorned her, a thousand other males would adore her; that she was young and beautiful and still journeying on the road that led to God alone knows what tragic or glorious adventures.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "When—you don't mind my speaking of it?—when Eddie came to the church, and told us you'd changed your mind—"

He stopped, hoping perhaps that she would explain a little; but she said nothing. Of course, he was fairly certain that it wasn't she who had changed her mind, but still—

"I'm sorry," he said once again.

"Why?" asked Angelica. "You didn't want me to marry Eddie."

"No," he admitted; "but I wanted—well, my dear little woman, I wanted to see you get what you wanted. It seems to me a girl like you ought to get what she wants."

"Perhaps I'll know better what to want, another time," said Angelica.

The doctor twisted his white mustache.

"I don't know what I want," he said; " but I'm quite sure I haven't got it!"

He was mentally reviewing his own far from satisfactory existence, without love, without friendship, without prestige—a very lonely male butterfly, willing and even anxious to do his utmost to brighten the life of any passably fair feminine creature, but unhappily, through lack of money and lack of charm, denied this happiness.

"They're a hard family," he said, with a sigh. "There's something inhuman about them."

He was thinking at that minute of his wife, but Angelica applied the words to Eddie.

"No!" she said. "I don't think Eddie's inhuman or hard. He's only—it's only that he expects a lot."

She saw from the doctor's terribly interested face that she had gone a little too far; but it didn't matter much. She had nothing to lose.

"I gave him up," she said, "of my own free will. I needn't have. If I had wanted, we'd have got married. But—"

"I never thought you really loved Eddie," said the doctor.

"It wasn't anything to do with love. I—I thought it wasn't right. I just—at the last minute I couldn't. I don't know. I guess there's just a little, little bit more good than bad in me."

"By George!" cried the little man. "If that isn't just the formula for a woman! You've hit it, Angelica—just a little, little bit more good than bad in her!"

THE END