It was one of those summer afternoons which had such an indescribable
charm for Angelica. She wasn’t used to idleness, and it delighted her,
this sitting about, with a long stretch of empty hours ahead, to fill as
one pleased. They were all in Mrs. Russell’s big, airy room, with the
green blinds drawn down and flapping in a steady little breeze. It was
very hot, and, as was their custom when Eddie was not home, they were in
undress. Polly hated the hot weather, and didn’t care to move; she lay
on a rattan couch, smoking, with her eyes closed, and with an electric
fan blowing across her.
Mrs. Russell was stretched out in a deck chair; beside her stood a small
table with a bottle of whiskey and a siphon of soda, of which she
partook from time to time--very small drinks, but tolerably frequent.
Her face was crimson; her hair, for greater coolness, was pulled back
into a tight knot; she wore very little but a lace combing-jacket and a
short silk petticoat, which, as she sat with her long legs crossed,
showed a great expanse of gray silk stocking. She was a freak, a fright,
whatever you like, but she had a certain ineffaceable distinction. Her
voice, her gestures--Angelica watched her with interest. She was telling
jokes, outrageous stories that convulsed the other two with laughter.
"My _dear_! _Where_ do you hear such things?" Polly protested after each
one, and lay waiting for more.
Angelica rejoiced in a lovely cast-off garment of Mrs. Russell’s, light
as gossamer, pale yellow, with taffeta bows. Its coquetry was
incongruous with her dark and somber face, but it was bewitching,
nevertheless. She sat in a low rocking-chair opposite a mirror, content
to look now and then and to speculate endlessly upon the destiny of that
thin, languorous figure, dressed like a rich person, lounging like one,
beautiful, mysterious, alluring. Her bare arms were clasped behind her
head, in that attitude which so well reveals the line of neck and bust.
Seen from the door, in profile, she would have been an exquisite
picture.
And she was seen from the door. Mrs. Russell, facing in that direction,
gave a start of surprise, so that Angelica turned and saw a man standing
there.
He was a big, heavy, swaggering fellow, in baggy knickerbockers and an
old shooting-jacket hanging loosely from his powerful shoulders, with a
fierce, hawk-like face and bright gray eyes. He looked at them with a
sort of contemptuous amusement.
"_Vincent!_" cried Mrs. Russell.
"Well?" he asked, smiling.
"Eddie’s been so----”
"Eddie be damned! How are you, Polly?"
"Quite well, thank you, Vincent," she answered with simplicity.
"You’re looking better," he assured her in friendly manner. "And mamma?"
"Don’t be so provoking!" she cried, trying to be angry, but at heart, as
one could plainly see, filled with idiotic admiration for this big,
impudent son. "Don’t pretend to be so calm and cool! What are you going
to tell Eddie?"
Angelica jumped up from her chair, and then sat down again. Vincent took
no notice of her.
"Let’s have a drink," he said, and sat down beside his mother. "Ah! And
now another!"
He was certainly theatrical, playing to his little audience the part of
the idolized conqueror, the man to whom everything is permitted; but he
did it well. He could carry it off; it was evident that he had them both
in his pocket.
He talked to them with conscious mastery. His mother was silly and
adoring; Polly, in spite of all her reserve and her deep and hidden
resentment against him, couldn’t hide a sort of charmed interest. They
listened to him and looked at him, while he, sprawled out in his chair,
smoked a pipe and stared at the ceiling.
And then, suddenly, just for an instant, his falcon glance rested upon
Angelica, upon the swarthy face that turned pale beneath it. Her heart
stood still; she stared at his bold, careless face with a feeling that
was almost like terror. She had never seen his like before, never seen
so free and strong a spirit in any human creature.
She had met her match, and she knew it. She could never conquer him! It
was a sensation unique in her life; never imagined before, never to be
experienced again. She forgot herself completely, didn’t give a thought
to the impression she might be making upon this man. She thought only of
him, watched him, listened to him, in a sort of stupour.
He didn’t look at her again, but she knew that he was conscious of her,
and that he included her among his audience. He went on, always like an
adored actor secure of rapt attention, telling them things, painting
vivid pictures for them. In the midst of his finest phrases, he would
use the coarsest and bluntest of old words, abruptly, like a gross
insult in a love sonnet. He aimed deliberately to startle and amaze, and
he succeeded. The three women listened spell-bound; Angelica above all,
quite caught in his net.
He told them about a play he had seen the night before, and an actress
in it who had caught his fancy.
"That woman!" he said. "Good God! A fair, thin virgin--inviting with her
troubled eyes the fiercest lusts--still innocent, still trembling on the
threshold of her life. What an actress! Polly, you would have enjoyed
her work."
"I don’t doubt it, Vincent."
"I’ll take you some evening soon. But no, I forgot. I’m going away."
"Oh, Vincent, _again_?" cried his mother.
He looked at her with a strange smile.
"Yes," he said, "and for a long time."
Polly, so many times hurt, so long ignored, remained quite still and
indifferent. Only Angelica saw her thin fingers clench, and then open
listlessly. She didn’t open her eyes or speak.
"Where?" asked his mother.
"You ask me?" he demanded. "I am a man. Pray, where should I go?"
No one was able to answer, and he frowned again.
"There’s only one destination possible," he said; "one spot on earth
that draws toward it all of us who are men--a place of blood and
destruction, of utter loneliness and frightful agony, where we rush to
embrace that most maddening and most tender of mistresses----”
"Oh, Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell, distressed. "Don’t talk that way
before Polly!"
He threw back his head and laughed.
"A mistress who breaks all hearts--of whom all loving souls are mad with
jealousy--a mistress to whom no man is unfaithful--beautiful Death!" he
cried.
His mother gave a sort of shriek.
"Vincent! You’re not going to kill yourself?"
"No!" he cried. "No! To kill my brother!"
"_Kill Eddie?_"
"Don’t be such a damned fool!" he said, irritably, annoyed that she had
misunderstood and cheapened his climax. "I’m going to the war."
Until that moment they had, to tell the truth, taken very little notice
of this war. It had been going on for some weeks, with great head-lines
in the papers, but in their isolated group it had very little
significance. Their routine was in no way interrupted. Eddie worried
over it, but then he worried over everything. He said it was disastrous
for the market. However, they were quite sure that he would bring home
money for them, if not in one way, then in another, and they weren’t
really disturbed.
And now suddenly the war and Vincent came bursting in upon them with
violence.