I
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 inseperable.
Miss Devery, who was the artistic member of the firm, went outside in a
purple linen smock one morning and put a crêpe 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. "Dishonourable intentions,
sometimes, but generally _no_ intentions at all. I don’t get no
‘forrader,’ 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
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, gleaning 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 English-women, 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.