I
"Then why _did_ you come here?" asked Vincent.
"Because your mother asked me," said Angelica.
Vincent shook his head.
"I don’t believe you," he said. "You’ve got something up your sleeve. I
know you! All your moves are calculated."
He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where
they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning.
"No!" he insisted. "It’s something to do with me. One of your damned
Italian schemes!"
"It’s nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all.
I don’t bother myself about you any more."
He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the
vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her
not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a
troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white
linen frock and her trim hair.
It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an
uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force
her to abandon this calmness, this superiority.
"You’d better bother about me!" he said. "You’d better remember that
it’s only through my pity for you that you’re here. With half a word I
could have you turned out of the house!"
She was imperturbable.
"I don’t think so," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about this,
anyway, and it might as well be now. I don’t think Eddie would believe
you, if you told him."
He laughed.
"My dearest girl, there’s a living proof!"
"No," she said, looking steadily at him. "There isn’t."
"What have you done? Murdered your baby, or sold it? That would suit
your thrifty soul better. You do love money, don’t you, Angelica, better
than an inconvenient baby!"
"What baby?" she inquired.
"My God!" he cried, staring at her. "The impudence of the hussy! So
that’s the tack! You’re going to lie out of it? Going to deny you ever
had a child?"
"And how do you know I did? You never saw it, did you? How do you know
it wasn’t just a trick to get money out of you?"
That astounded him.
"Do you mean you dared to try that game on me? You little gutter-bred
liar!" Suddenly he began to laugh. "But you didn’t get much, did you?"
he said.
Angelica smiled grimly.
"Now then!" she said. "Let’s have it out! I’ll own up that I don’t want
you to tell--that--to any one, and especially to Eddie. It would give me
a lot of trouble; but it wouldn’t spoil things. I have two good reasons
for not worrying about being found out. In the first place, I’d deny it
all, and I’m just as likely to be believed as you. You haven’t got a
name for being so awfully truthful, you know. I’d say you were making it
up out of spite, because I wouldn’t have you. And then I don’t think
you’d run the risk of telling Eddie. You’re too fond of yourself. You
know what would happen if he didn’t believe you. He’d kick you out for
telling such lies about me; and if he did believe you, he’d never
forgive you. You’d never get anything more from him. No; it wouldn’t
suit you a bit to get Eddie down on you!"
"So you think you’re going to manage me like a marionette? You think you
can make any sort of fool out of me?"
"You’ve made a fool of yourself," she said. She wanted to stop there,
but she could not resist the terrible temptation to hurt, in her turn,
this man who had hurt her so brutally. She didn’t care if it were vulgar
or if it were imprudent; she wanted only to hurt. "You made a regular
fool of yourself," she went on. "You acted like a monkey--going down on
your knees to me and raving the way you did. Do you remember?"
She was smiling a little--the subtle and cruel shadow of a smile.
"Don’t you think you were a fool? So weak--first in one of your childish
rages, and then crying and whining about your sins? And then
beginning----”
"Never mind the means I used," he said. "I got what I wanted. I knew how
to get you, and I knew how to get rid of you when I was tired of you."
No! It was too unequal a battle; she suffered too much. Every memory of
that dead love was too bitter, too shameful, too full of a strange,
heart-rending pain. He had all the advantage; she couldn’t wound him as
he could wound her. She was mortally stricken; but she wouldn’t give up.
"You’ll pay for all this!" she said. "I’ll be the mistress here, and if
you don’t act as I please, out you’ll go! I’ll see that you’re kept in
order. You won’t be able to fool Eddie when I’m here!"
He cursed her savagely.
"Go on!" she said, smiling. "I like it! I’m glad I’ve made you feel like
this."
Vincent pulled himself up with a strong effort.
"Well," he said, "with all your melodramatic threats of revenge, you’ll
never be able to do me much harm--not a hundredth part of the harm I’ve
done you. You’re ruined, no good!"
"Bah!" she cried. "You and your talk about ruining me! _Am_ I ruined? Do
I _look_ any worse? Am I worse in any way at all?"
"Yes!" he said. "You are, and you know it."
He gave her one bright, fierce, scornful look, and, vaulting over the
piazza railing, walked off across the lawn.
Angelica sank back in her chair.
"Oh, Lord!" she murmured, with a sob. "That was so awful! Oh, I do wish
I could go home now, without having to see him again--ever!"
She got up and went irresolutely to the door. What was she to do with
herself to forget, to overcome her terrible emotion? She knew she
needn’t expect to see either Mrs. Russell or the doctor before
lunch-time on Sunday, and it was now only ten o’clock. She didn’t know
what to do; she wanted only to be active and to be for a little time
alone.
She was not at all fond of walking as a pastime, but she set out
resolutely enough now, along the quiet country road, trying to fix her
thoughts upon Sillon and Devery and all that frank and bright existence,
and to forget this world, this house with its intolerable memories, this
man, whose very existence was an outrage to her.
"I shouldn’t have come!" she told herself. "I was a fool! I guess it
can’t be done. I guess you can’t--get over a--thing like that."
And in spite of herself came the unwelcome and terrible thought:
"How will it be, then, when you are married to Eddie and living in that
house and seeing Vincent every day?"
She tried to escape from it. She walked faster, farther; but the walk
did her no good. There was nothing in the country landscape to divert
her thoughts, nothing to interest her. She had the purposeful gait of
the city dweller; she wanted to get somewhere, and she wanted to be
startled into attention with fascinating shop-windows, blazing signs,
things and people always passing her. The quiet, all about, made the
sound of her own firm step on the macadam road annoyingly loud and
regular. The bright, clear sky overhead, the leaves somberly brilliant
in their glorious death, filled her with impatience and loneliness. She
turned back.
And the first living creature she saw on the road was Vincent, coming to
meet her.
She didn’t falter. They went on, nearer and nearer to each other,
steadily, rapidly; but her heart began to beat with suffocating
violence.
"Maybe he’ll try to kill me," she thought. "It’s so lonely here--and he
hates me so! Well, I guess that’s the best thing that could happen to
me!"
But as he drew near, he held out his hand.
"Angelica!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica, _why_ did I speak that way to you?
When I’ve been longing and longing----”
"Better stop!" she said. "I’d rather have you talk that way than any
other."
He had turned and was walking by her side.
"Don’t you see?" he said. "All this bitterness and wrangling--it’s all
part of the same thing--part of our love for each other. It’s the
exasperation, the rage, of frustration. When we’re apart we suffer so,
and in our suffering we blindly try to hurt each other."
"Do you mean to say you’re trying to pretend that we _love_ each other?"
she cried.
"Yes," he said. "We do. We can’t stop. We’re mates. We complete each
other. We’re made for each other. Even when I’m hating you so that I
could wring your neck, I know in my soul it’s only a phase of love."
"Well," she said, "it’s not, with me."
But she was trembling with a mysterious and unfathomable emotion--a
wicked and irresistible feeling of kinship with this man. Not love, not
tenderness, not any feeling that she could name; only this conviction
that they were bound up together, that they could never be strangers,
that it was against nature that they should part.
"Marry Eddie, if you like," he went on. "I don’t care. You’re mine. You
can be his wife; it won’t matter. You won’t love him. You’ll love _me_.
I’ll be your lover!"
Her face flamed.
"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! You’re the wickedest man that ever lived!"
"I’m not wicked!" he protested with earnestness. "The wickedness lies in
your going to Eddie after you’ve loved me--in your faithlessness."
"My faithlessness!" she cried.
"It was you who left me," he reminded her.
She was amazed at this very characteristic turn which he had given to
their talk. That he should pose as the injured one! But her pride
forbade her to mention her wrongs.
"It’s no use talking," she said. "It’s all over now. The less we see of
each other, the better satisfied I’ll be."
They had reached the gates of Buena Vista, and Vincent appeared
unwilling to be seen with Angelica.
"I’m going farther," he said. "But, Angelica, I won’t let you go!"