I
Angelica was consumed, devoured, by curiosity. She felt obliged to know
more of this family--of Vincent, above all. So the next morning she got
up very early, went down into the kitchen regions, and sought out a
snub-nosed maid who had seemed disposed to be friendly when they had
passed each other in the hall.
The girl wasn’t busy. She was sitting on the back steps, enjoying the
fresh morning; and as soon as she saw Angelica she moved over,
hospitably, to make a place for her.
"Sit down," she said. "It’s a nice day, isn’t it?"
Angelica did sit down, and for a time was silent, looking before her
across lawns as smooth and empty as those at the front of the house.
Nothing at all back-doorish about the outlook; the same air of
prosperous peace; in the distance other houses among their lawns, and
well-trimmed trees, and overhead a lovely May morning sky.
"Yes," she said, "it’s certainly a nice day."
She fell silent again, trying to arrange an opening for her questions;
but the snub-nosed maid spared her the trouble.
"Well!" she said. "How do you like it up-stairs?"
Angelica at once perceived that the other girl was curious.
"Oh-h-h!" she said slowly. "I suppose it’s all right."
Another silence, during which they appraised each other according to
their tradition. A mutual confidence was born.
"They’re a queer bunch," said the girl. "I never saw the like; and I’ve
been with seven families, too."
Here she courteously gave Angelica a brief history of her life and
condition. Her name was Annie McCall, born in Scotland, but brought up
in America, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, twenty-seven, and engaged
to be married. She was extremely severe in her views, which were often
similar to Angelica’s, especially in regard to the immoralities of the
rich. There was this difference, though--Annie was confident that she
knew everything, and was infallibly right, while Angelica was anxious to
learn.
"If it wasn’t that I was going to be married," said Annie, "and saving
every penny, I’d leave. The way they carry on! I never saw the like!"
"Do they carry on?" inquired Angelica, delighted.
Hadn’t she always known that rich people carried on? Wasn’t she just in
a paradise of the romantic, where the rich were bad, and the poor,
represented by herself and the terribly respectable Annie McCall, were
good?
"That Mrs. Russell’s the worst of them all," said Annie. "The bold,
brazen thing she is, with her breeches and her smoking, and her cursing.
You’d ought to hear her curse!"
"She’s queer," said Angelica reflectively.
"Queer!" cried Annie. "Well, _I’d_ call it more than queer! She’s----”
She stopped a moment. "She’s bad," she said.
"Oh! Bad! How?"
"I don’t like to be spreading scandal," said Annie, who always believed
the worst. "It’s not my nature, only that you’ll be working up-stairs
right with her, and you being so young, it’s only right you should be
told. As soon as ever I set eyes on you, I said to myself you’d ought to
be warned. I could see you weren’t used to such people. You never worked
out before, did you?"
"No," Angelica answered.
It was of no use to resent the ‘working out,’ or to tell Annie that she
was a ‘companion,’ because Annie knew very well what her place was.
Angelica’s eating with the family couldn’t deceive her. They were both
servants, and Annie was the better-paid and more respected of the two.
Angelica could not honestly consider herself in any way superior, except
in appearance. Annie spoke rather better than she did, and had had more
schooling; she admitted to money in two savings-banks, and she was
engaged to be married. So Angelica submitted to a temporary equality,
feeling morally sure, however, that the future would see her elevated
immeasurably above Annie.
"How is she bad?" she inquired eagerly.
"She’s a divorced woman," said Annie. "She divorced her first husband,
Mr. Geraldine, and I’ve heard that he was a very nice man--much better
than Dr. Russell, I dare say; too good for her, very likely. Anyway, I
never heard any good of a divorced woman."
"But what does she _do_?" Angelica demanded, rather impatiently.
"You wouldn’t believe it, but she’s carrying on with that chauffeur."
"My Gawd!" said Angelica. "Is she really?"
"It’s the worst I’ve ever heard of. Would you believe it? She’s teaching
him to play golf. They go out in the country somewhere, where they’re
not known. She’s bought him a bag of clubs, and he goes around showing
it to all the chauffeurs, and telling them I don’t know what. He’s a
liar, and I wouldn’t believe a word he said, but still--well, when you
hear a thing right and left--and there’s those clubs and all, and they
cost a terrible lot--you can’t help but think she’s a regular bad
woman."
But Angelica did help thinking so. She didn’t believe that Mrs. Russell
was that sort of bad woman, and the longer she knew her the more
convinced she became of her perfect goodness in this one respect.
Capable of the most outrageous follies, selfish, hard as flint, quite
without scruples in the pursuit of her own liberty and pleasure, she
was, however, not interested in men. Angelica said nothing, though, for
she had no proofs or surmises to bring forward, nothing but her own
instinct.
Annie continued.
"No, I can’t help thinking so. I’m no fool. I’ve seen a lot--you do,
working out. It’s a pity, too, on account of Mr. Eddie. He’s a nice
young man, and he works himself sick for the lot of them. No one doing a
stroke of work but him!"
"Don’t that doctor work?"
"Dr. Russell? He’s a regular old grafter, that’s what _he_ is."
"I saw him putting cigars in his pocket," said Angelica.
"I’ve seen worse than that. I’ve seen him going through _her_ bureau
drawers, and taking anything he has a fancy for. He’ll come down with a
flask, fill it with anything that’s left in the decanters, and take it
up-stairs and drink until he falls asleep on the floor. They say it’s
terrible bad to drink things all mixed together like that."
"Does he know about her carrying on?"
"He don’t care, so long as he’s got a good home and a little money to
spend. I never saw such people in all my life! And they never have any
decent company. Mrs. Geraldine----”
"Why do they call her Mrs. Geraldine?"
"Because that’s her name," said Annie, surprised. "That used to be Mrs.
Russell’s name. It’s Mr. Eddie’s and Mr. Vincent’s name. Didn’t you
know?"
"It’s a queer name," Angelica remarked thoughtfully. "I thought it was
her first name."
Nothing in the universe seemed specially queer to Annie.
"Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Geraldine, she hasn’t any friends, except
out West, and Mr. Eddie, he hasn’t got any time to make any, and there’s
no one ever comes here but _her_ lot from that country club--a lot of
swearing, drinking, smoking men and women. She fills the house with
them, and then Mr. Eddie’ll make a great row and say he won’t put up
with them, and then she’ll smile, that superior way, and say, ‘Very
well, Eddie, it’s your house!’ Then, when she thinks he’s kind of
forgotten, she’ll have them in again."
"But what’s the other feller like?" asked Angelica.
"Him!" cried Annie. "Why!" she was at a loss for words to express what
she felt. "He’s----” She hesitated. "He’s _crazy_, and downright wicked.
They call him religious. Sacrilegious, I call it. Every once in a while
he’ll get a fit of feeling sorry for his wickedness, and he’ll be
moaning and groaning about his soul, and working himself up to write his
religious poems. Why," she cried, "it’s as different from the real
repentance of a sinner, such as I’ve seen many and many a time in our
meetings, as can be. He’s never seen the light, and he never will. He’s
lost!"
"What does he do that’s wicked?" asked Angelica, avid for details of
rich people’s sins.
"Everything--drink and women and blasphemy. Why, right now he’s gone off
with a girl. Courtland saw him meet her."
But no further questions on the part of Angelica could elicit any more
details. Annie didn’t want to talk about him; he was what she called a
hardened sinner, and she considered him best ignored. She began to talk
of Polly.
"She’s the best of the lot," she said. "She’s a real lady. She’s
reasonable. She’ll never ask you for all sorts of outlandish things, all
hours of the day and night, like the other one. She’s stingy, I must
confess; she never gives you a penny, nor even an old dress or a hat;
but at least she’s nice and polite. I’m sorry for her, too, losing that
little boy. He was a sweet little thing, even if----”
The cook appeared on the porch--an untidy, bedraggled old Irishwoman.
"Come in, the two of ye!" she said. "Let your friend come in and eat a
bite with us, Annie, if she’s not too proud."
"You might as well," said Annie. "They won’t be eating for another half
an hour, and we’ve got just as good as they have."
"Better," said the cook. "You can trust me for that, Annie McCall!"
They went, not into the kitchen, as Angelica had expected, but into a
nice little dining-room, to a meal served and eaten with decorum and
propriety, a table daintily laid, and a breakfast beyond cavil--coffee
with cream, beefsteak, cold ham, new-laid eggs, hot rolls, corn-bread,
jams and marmalades, and a fine bowl of fruit.
The cook sat down behind the coffee-pot, with Angelica beside her.
Presently in came the chambermaid, the German laundress, and a mild
little thing known as the "second girl"; and, at last, swaggering, in
his shirt-sleeves, Courtland the chauffeur.
His eye fell at once upon Angelica.
"Hello!" he said. "What’s the matter? Did they kick you out up-stairs?"
"They sent me down to see how you behaved yourself," she answered,
promptly.
She was quite able to hold her own with this young bully, and though her
manner was too free and easy to suit Annie, the others were
delighted--especially the cook.
"_Now_ will ye be good?" she would cry to the worsted Courtland. "Now
you’ve met your match, me lad!"
Angelica enjoyed all this beyond measure. This homely simplicity,
combined with the greatest comfort, this atmosphere in which she lost
her painful consciousness of inferiority, in which she was among equals
and able to breathe freely, invigorated and satisfied her. She grew more
and more assured, her sallies more and more outrageous, in a violent
badinage that continued until the bell rang and Annie ran off up-stairs.
She returned to tell Courtland that he was wanted in fifteen minutes.
"Oh, Gawd!" he groaned. "It’s a tennis tournament to-day. Me sitting out
in a blame country road in the hot sun all the afternoon. My Lawd! Don’t
I wish that old fool’d learn enough to stay home, or go to the city, to
the theayters and stores!"
"And giff you de chance to see your schweetheart?" asked the laundress,
coyly.
"Which one?" he demanded, boldly.
"Ye’ll need a lot of thim," said the cook. "For there’s no one girl
could put up with ye long. Why are ye not playing your golf to-day, me
lord?"
"She makes me sick!" he answered, angrily. "There she goes and gets me
interested in the game and all, and then she drops it. Why, you know,
she promised me at the start she’d train me good and I could go in a
tournament. She said she’d introduce me as a friend of hers. She said I
was built to be a first-class player, and maybe I’d get to be a
perfessional."
"Don’t believe everything _she’ll_ be telling you!" said the cook.
"Damn old fool!" he muttered.
Annie reproved him.
"You’ve got no right to speak like that about a lady," she said.
"Shut up!" he said briefly.
"Go along with you!" cried the cook. "She’ll be waiting."
"Leave her wait! She makes me wait enough. If she don’t like waiting for
me, leave her say so. I can get plenty of jobs--better than this one,
too. I don’t have to put up with nothing from her!"