Your
ANGELICA.
The telephone rang--that hateful telephone in the dark outer hall, under
the stairs. This was one of the "modern conveniences" of the
apartment-house, and it was her mother’s duty to attend it, and by
screaming, by ringing the down-stairs bells, or, when they were broken,
by toiling up the stairs, to apprise the tenant whom it summoned. They
both hated the thing. When it rang, they would sigh, "Oh, that
telephone!" and go wearily to serve it.
It was a surprise and a great relief to hear Eddie’s voice on the
telephone, for Angelica had been half afraid that the etiquette
prevailing among rich people would prevent any further communication.
She wasn’t even sure as to whether or not she was expected to go back to
Buena Vista. But Eddie wasn’t that sort. His voice was just as it had
always been--official, but quite kindly.
"Hello!" he said. "How’s your mother?"
"Much better."
"That’s good! Then have you any idea when you’ll come back to us,
Angelica?"
"In a week. Next Saturday, the doctor says."
"Good! I’ll call for you next Saturday afternoon, when I leave the
office. And I say, Angelica, don’t you want Courtland to bring you some
of the things you left at our place?"
"I _would_ like a few of them," she answered, gratefully.
And the busy, harassed Eddie, sitting in his office, with impatient men
waiting to see him, with his stenographer pen in hand beside him, with a
telegraph-boy behind him who required a reply, in the midst of the
rattle of typewriters, the ringing of telephone-bells, the clicking of
the ticker, hoarse, excited voices, all this frenzied life which he had
caused to exist and directed and sustained--he took time to write down
at Angelica’s dictation a list of things she had left behind her in his
house.
It touched him, that list, it was so obviously the list of a poor
person--things that he, or any one he knew, would have bought duplicates
of without a second thought; things one would hardly bother to pack. He
got them together himself when he reached home that evening--a
tooth-brush, a cake of perfumed soap, a half-empty box of cheap
writing-paper, hairpins, a nail-brush.
Courtland brought them that evening, much against his will. Who was she
to have her wretched little belongings sent down to her in a motor-car?
He was obliged to assert himself, to proclaim his independence and his
superiority. He stood outside the door with his finger on the bell so
that it rang in one long, maddening clamour, and he kicked at the door.
He made an outrageous noise.
Angelica came flying down the hall in a fury, and flung open the door.
"What do you mean?" she cried. "Where do you think you are, anyway?"
Courtland stared at her for a minute. Then, making an imaginary
lorgnette of his thumb and forefinger, he peered through it, bending
forward from the waist in a preposterous and unseemly attitude.
"Aeoh!" he exclaimed, in a simpering voice. "I beg your pawdon, I’m
suah! I forgot myself, really, don’tcher know! If you will kindly permit
me to enter this mansion, I will deliver to you this package of jools
sent by the dook!"
"Give it to me and shut your mouth," said Angelica.
"What’s all this?" called Mrs. Kennedy from her bed. "Who is it, Angie?"
"Only the chauffeur. He brought some of my things," her daughter
answered in a contemptuous tone.
There was something about her child’s words and tone that jarred upon
Mrs. Kennedy. She came out of the bedroom in her new flannel wrapper,
and addressed Courtland with ceremonious politeness.
"I’m sure we’re very much obliged to you," she said. "Won’t you step in?
Maybe you’d take a cup of tea, and rest a few minutes?"
"Rest!" said Angelica. "He never does anything else!"
Courtland ignored her.
"I don’t care if I do," he said to Mrs. Kennedy, and followed her into
the kitchen, where he sat down heavily on the step-ladder chair. "I’m as
tired as a dawg," he said, with his invariable air of grievance. "It’s
enough to make you sick--driving that woman all over the country. No
more consideration, she’s got, than a--than a dawg!"
"Well," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I suppose that’s what you’re paid for."
"I know it!" he agreed, plaintively. "That’s all right; but then what
does she want to be telling me I’m too good to be a chauffeur for? She
says there’s lots of fellows in college hasn’t got my brains. And this
golf! There she’s got me the bag of clubs that cost Gawd knows what, and
she just started showing me the way to use them. She said I was doing
fine, and then, all of a sudden, she dropped it, and never said another
word about it. I waited. After a while I began putting the bag of clubs
in the car, to remind her. No, not a word! So I says to her to-day,
‘What about this here golf?’ And she says, with that grin of hers, ‘Oh,
I hawdly think it’s worth while going on. I’m afraid it was a
mistake’--and tells me I can sell the clubs!"
"What of it?" inquired Mrs. Kennedy. "They’re no good to you. I can’t
see any sense in your learning to play golf. I can’t see what you have
to complain of."
"Oh, it’s the way them rich people pick you up and then drop you that
makes me sick! Who is _she_, anyway? An old----”
"You shouldn’t say that!" said Mrs. Kennedy, severely.
She was well enough used to bad language not to be shocked, but she was
displeased.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Angelica, "after all she’s
done for you."
"I don’t want her to do nothing for me. I want her to let me alone.
Listen here--you wouldn’t stand up for her if you knew the way she talks
about you. I had the two of them out the other day, and they were
fighting about you all the time. _She_ said you was no good, and she
guessed you’d stole things off her; but Mrs. G., she says no, you’re all
right. Then _she_ says you’d make trouble in the house, and Mrs. G.
says, ‘Well, ain’t there enough trouble there anyway? What do we care if
we get a little more? _I_ want her back,’ she says. ‘All right,’ says
the old lady, ‘have her, if you want her, but don’t kick if you find
your hus----’”
Angelica had grown scarlet.
"My Gawd, what a lot you talk!" she said. "You better be starting home."
He eyed her with resentment.
"I’ll go!" he said. "Don’t you worry!"
After Courtland had gone, Mrs. Kennedy attempted to reprove her daughter
for her bad manners, but Angelica insisted autocratically that she must
go to bed at once.
"You shouldn’t get up at all," she told her mother.
"The doctor said it wouldn’t hurt me--just around the flat."
"Not at night! You’d ought to know better. You ought to be asleep by
this time. Now, listen here, mommer!" she added firmly, as she saw signs
of rebellion. "If you don’t do what I say, I’m not going to stay and
take care of you. The doctor said _rest_. Well, this isn’t rest. You got
to go to bed this instant!"
So did she rid herself of the necessity for talking, for listening, for
recognizing the external world. She was irritable at the very least
disturbance; her joy had gone, and left a bitter impatience. Five days
before she could go back to that enchanted house where Vincent lived,
to be again under the same roof, sitting at the same table! Five days
lost out of life, out of her best years!
She was a little surprised and rather pleased at her own lack of
morality. She really didn’t care a bit, didn’t feel in the least shocked
or distressed, at loving a married man; nor did she hesitate for an
instant at the prospect of going off with him. She believed that was
what he meant; very well, she was ready!
She would leave her poor little mother desolate, she would humiliate and
affront the kindly Polly, she would leave Eddie overwhelmed by disgrace
and grief, and still she didn’t care. She was deceiving her mother,
deceiving Polly, shamefully deceiving Eddie, and she didn’t care. On the
contrary, she was rather proud of it. She felt that such insolent
wickedness had in it more than a little magnificence of the sort
possessed by the magnificent women of the past.
Oh, the world was well lost for Vincent, her poet lover! She read his
letter again and cried over it--she who had shed so few tears in her
life.