I
There was one particular day--a sort of seventh wave in her steady tide
of success--that Angelica always remembered. To begin with, when she
reached Fine Feathers, there was what Miss Devery had promised her
should be there--‘ANGÉLIQUE,’ in purple letters across the two front
windows. She stopped in the street to admire it, in delight, almost in
awe. So far had she come, with such celerity--she, the one-time factory
worker! It hardly seemed possible!
She lingered to think of her present magic life, so full of delights and
satisfactions; her days filled with this work that she loved, handling
the silks, the satins, the velvets, the plumes, the rhinestones, all the
rich and vivid things she so adored; the chatter of Devery and Sillon,
which never failed to entertain her; the very feeling of being an
independent and promising young business woman, with an account well
started in a savings-bank. She thought of the charmed evenings she
sometimes spent with her partners--dinner at a near-by table d’hôte, and
then a seat in the second balcony, to see some play which they had
selected. She thought of those long, quiet evenings of study at home, in
the tidy kitchen, with the clock that ticked so loudly on the tin tubs.
She was able now to give her mother a respectable sum every week. She
was, in fact, rapidly becoming the most important member of the ‘Fine
Feathers’ establishment, and she had some time ago entered into a new
and far more advantageous arrangement with Miss Sillon. Devery and
Sillon were clever and good workwomen, and they had built up a nice
little business for themselves; but Angelica was something beyond
that--she was the one person especially adapted at that instant of time
to design hats which would superlatively please the women of that
particular city.
She catered to women with money, of course. She raised her prices
fantastically; and when women came in, shamefaced and apologetic because
of the fierce denunciations of the war posters they saw outside, she
knew just what to say.
"Yes, madam," she agreed. "A hundred and fifty dollars _is_ a large
price for a simple little hat. Of course you can get some sort of thing
for ten." She who not so long ago had been used to buy one for a dollar
and trim it with all sorts of little scraps! "But it’s much more
economical to get _one_ really _good_ one, that will keep its style
until it’s worn out, than half a dozen cheaper ones."
None of her customers had yet pointed out that one could buy fifteen
cheaper hats for this price, which, allowing three months for the
season, would require of each hat less than a week’s endurance. Every
one who came to her really wished to pay too much for a hat. They all
knew, of course, that the bit of fur and lace and satin she gave them
didn’t cost one-fifth of the price, but they paid the surplus for the
style--that Angélique style.
She went into the back parlour, where Sillon and Devery were draping a
collapsible form in a green tulle.
"Hello!" they both said, cheerfully.
"Wouldn’t you know this dress was for a fat woman--or should I say, a
well-rounded figure?" said Devery. "They’re all wild about green, the
big ones. I wonder why?"
"Congratulate her!" said Sillon. "Angelica, tell her how nice your name
looks out there. There she was, all Sunday afternoon, painting it and
talking about your greatness and your coming rise to fame and fortune."
Angelica sat down.
"It’s lovely," she said. "It makes me as happy as can be to see it
there, like that; but I’ve been thinking--isn’t it all queer, and
silly?--about their saying my hats are so becoming, and all that. Why,
they could get lots of things that really suited them better for almost
nothing! Do you know what I think it is? I think it’s because when I
make ’em pay so much they take more pains in putting the things on, and
that’s why they look better. They dress their hair so carefully, and try
to have everything--harmonious."
"That’s a trade secret," said Sillon. "It isn’t at all the thing to say.
Our line is, ‘Of course, if you want anything really good, you’ve got to
pay for it.’ Stick to that, Angélique!"
"Down with the rich!" said Devery. "Bleed them white and drain them
dry!"
"My father was a Socialist," said Angelica, with calm assurance. She had
no need to add, and they had no need to know, that he had been a
Socialist barber; nor was she yet advanced enough not to avoid, with
ridiculous shame, her Italian blood. "Mother says he was specially
furious at women who spent a lot on clothes."
This was another block in the edifice she was painfully erecting. She
was creating for herself a past and an environment which, without being
extravagantly false, should yet be in keeping with what she intended to
become--a foundation for her coming greatness. She often mentioned,
casually, her father and her mother and her Scotch grandparents. She
admitted that she and her mother were poor, but she suggested an
admirable and distinguished poorness. She had actually got so far as to
indicate, with rare delicacy, that her being in business was a distress
to her old-fashioned mother.
All through that day there was the same elating and intoxicating
success. All the customers who came in were satisfied, praised her, and
paid her money. Nothing went wrong.
At lunch-time Sillon made cocoa on the gas-stove in the pantry off the
back parlour, and Devery cooked spaghetti. And for the first time they
took her up into the little bedroom they had on the floor above, and
showed her some of their belongings--photographs of uncles, brothers,
cousins. Sillon had a stuffed cobra and a thrilling tale about it, and
Devery some studies she had made in her Paris days.
Then they all went into the street, to look again at the "ANGÉLIQUE";
lingering in the October brightness, the wind blowing their skirts,
their hair, making them frolicsome and gay.
"I _hate_ work!" said Devery, stretching up her thin arms, while her
purple smock whipped about her lean, straight torso in classic folds.
"What would you like to do?" asked Angelica.
"Just live--like cats, without any aim. I’d never accomplish anything.
Just as soon as you do accomplish anything, you see that it wasn’t worth
doing. What _is_?"
"Devery, you’re morbid and hypocritical," said Sillon. "You don’t mean
that. Besides, cats don’t feel like that, my child. When they’ve caught
a mouse, they feel that it was very much worth doing."
"Oh, well, so do I! I think it’s worth while to catch my meals, somehow.
Angelica, what an industrious soul you are! I don’t believe you’d enjoy
being idle."
"I’d be miserable if I didn’t think I was getting forward."
"How did we get such a paragon?" asked Sillon.
"Suppose we go out to dinner?" suggested Devery suddenly. "Early, and
then to the movies?"
"I’ll telephone to mother first," said Angelica, "to see if it will be
all right if I don’t go home."
A punctilious and Eddie-like form, and nothing more.
"Mother!" she began. "I won’t be home for dinner."
"Angie!" came the very tremulous voice of Mrs. Kennedy, always
distressed at the telephone. "Better come home as early as you can.
There’s a lady here to see you--Mrs. Russell."
Angelica was shocked, terrified.
"Something’s happened to Eddie!" she thought at first. And then came an
idea that turned her cold with fright. "They’ve found out! She knows!
She’s come to tell me what she thinks of me!"