Then, straightening up, she looked anxiously at her child.
"Well, deary! If you’ve made up your mind--good luck to you!"
Angelica smiled faintly. When the door had closed after her mother, she
rose herself and went into the black little bedroom, where a small jet
of gas showed her a shadowy face in a broken mirror. She put on her hat,
very carefully, and her jacket, but lingered still; until ringing across
the cement floor of the cellar came a heavy and familiar step--Oscar,
the furnace man, going out for his morning beer. That meant nine
o’clock; she _had_ to go!
Once in the street, her self-confidence returned. She was always best in
a crowd, in any position where she had to fight her way. The glances
that followed her warmed her heart, assured her of her alluring and
devilish charm. She liked it all--liked to turn with terrible scorn upon
any one who ventured to jostle her, liked to disconcert with a long,
insolent stare any man who might presume to look too long at her.
She was a child of the streets; she loved them as an Arab loves the
desert, or a sailor the sea. She had been brought up in the streets.
There, in rough games, she had learned to hold her own; there, running
the gauntlet of a mob of jeering boys, she had learned to endure
valiantly, without longing for sympathy. Her mother had always tried her
best to keep the child off the streets, but could not. On her way home
from school, whenever she was sent on an errand, Angelica would seize
the chance to linger in that violent and exciting life. And then, later,
when she was a young girl, came those curious sidewalk flirtations, so
hostile in mood, so brutally chaste. She wouldn’t stand any nonsense!
After all, her life within the house with her mother was nothing, only
interludes of rest in her vehement existence. It was out there, in the
streets, that she had become Angelica.
She had never yet traveled by railway, though she had often enough gone
to the Grand Central Terminal with girl friends and pretended, rather
pitifully, to be going on a journey. They would stand near the gateway
of a train, and say good-by, and perhaps walk forward a few steps with
the crowd. She was tremendously proud really to be going off now.
In the tunnel she took the opportunity to study her reflection in the
darkened window, and it pleased and encouraged her--the great, shadowy
eyes, the pallor of her face, the big hat framing it. It seemed to her
that she looked romantic, and not at all what she was. She began to
imagine that she might hoodwink this Mrs. Russell, that she might pass
muster even among ladies.