Chapter TEN: I

It now became the aim of Angelica’s life to satisfy Eddie. She felt that his standard was the right one, however painfully high it might be, and that he was genuinely concerned with helping her to attain it. And she felt that, in spite of his youthfulness and his somewhat grandiloquent air, he was a remarkable and an admirable man.

The more she saw of him, the more she admired him. She was a shrewd enough observer, yet she never detected in him a single lapse from his own rigid principles. What he set out to do, he did; what he determined to be, he was. She had not knowledge or experience enough to see that he was ignorant, crude, and childlike; she could see only his force, his strength of will, the earnestness of his ambition, and his complete ingenuousness.

He went directly to Polly. He told her that Angelica was ambitious, and that he wished to help her.

"So any evenings that you don’t need her," he said, "she can come to me and study. I’ll look out some books for her."

Polly smiled and agreed.

"It’s another of poor Eddie’s Utopian schemes," she said to her mother-in-law. "I don’t know what he expects to accomplish with the girl."

"I only hope _she_ won’t accomplish anything!" said Mrs. Russell. "She’s very pretty, and Eddie’s so susceptible. Of course, he thinks it’s a sin to think of a girl as a girl, but still----”

They didn’t at all like this educational project, but Mrs. Russell was too careless and Polly too sensible to interfere. Besides which, it didn’t look really alarming. Eddie was not the sort--it would have been impossible to Eddie--to contemplate illicit relations with Angelica, and with his extreme propriety he was certainly not likely to consider marrying her. It was simply an annoyance to have her thus exalted. They were irritated and somewhat contemptuous, but they said nothing. They took care never to discuss Eddie in her presence.

It was a recognized fact that she and Eddie were allies. They were oddly alike in many ways. They had the same sort of careless austerity; neither of them cared whether a chair were comfortable or not, the soup hot or cold, the weather propitious; they disdained fatigue, were ready to work all day and all night to achieve an object, and had a fierce and driving ambition for power and distinction. But Angelica was coarser and stronger, while Eddie was more sensitive and very much more scrupulous. He was ruled by ideas, she was ruled by her vigorous impulses.

Polly very rarely wanted Angelica in the evening, and Mrs. Russell dared not summon her, so that it became quite a usual thing for her to go up-stairs with Eddie directly after dinner and settle down with some valuable book of his selection. He didn’t make any attempt really to teach her; she could as well have sat in her own room to read, but that would have entirely destroyed the character of the thing for Eddie. She must be sitting there, under his eye, docile, earnest, his pupil.

Sometimes he worked, sometimes he was himself engaged with one of his instructive books, which he bought in sets; but whatever it was, he very rarely spoke to her. He maintained his pose of imperturbability, which she knew well enough to be only a pose.

It didn’t take her long to see how it was with him. She understood that sort of thing so well! She saw how drawn he was to her, how she stirred his ardent blood; and she rejoiced and brought out all her tricks to torment him. When she wanted something explained, she would bring her book to him and stand beside him, leaning against him, bending over so that her hair brushed his cheek. She had attitudes that were poems of allurement; there were certain tones in her voice, certain little gestures, which she saw enthralled and disturbed and shocked him.

"She doesn’t know what she’s doing!" he would think.

Well, she didn’t exactly. She was well enough aware of the effect of her naughty wiles upon him, and upon other men; but she had never experienced the thing herself, never yet been transfixed by a dart such as she delighted to shoot. At first she was proud and gleeful; but after she had seen his painful effort to retain his dignity--his majesty, one might say--undisturbed, she felt a sort of respectful pity for him, and desisted.

She had no illusions; she didn’t fancy that his inclination toward her was love; she never dreamed of marrying him, and she understood him and herself too well even to contemplate any other sort of alliance. She ceased her tricks, became honest and sober with him, and sat at his feet to learn what she could. The knowledge that she was desirable in his eyes did good to Angelica, for it gave her more confidence, more hope of attaining ultimate magnificence. She showed him her natural self, inquisitive, eager, strong, ready for any sacrifice, any denial, that might help her in her progress, a nature at once ardent and calculating, a cool, shrewd, subtle Italian mind.

As for herself, she wasn’t in the slightest degree attracted by Eddie. She admired him and respected him, she felt a warm friendliness toward him, but no smallest trace of love or desire. It wasn’t possible; he wasn’t the man for her; he wasn’t her sort.

In contrast, and running parallel with this life of effort and progress under Eddie’s direction, ran the other existence, the lazy, soft life of the harem. One-half of her time she was studying, reflecting, earnestly considering her manners and deportment; the other half she spent with Mrs. Russell and Polly, in a thoroughly demoralizing uselessness.

Laziness was Polly’s darling vice. She had long passed the stage of struggling against it; now she hugged it, enjoyed it without shame. She lay in bed, in a chaise-longue, or on a sofa, hour after hour, smoking cigarettes, lost in her sorrowful reveries. Where on earth was she to find an incentive to activity? There was no one whom she might love and serve; no effort was necessary to obtain all the luxuries possible. Her old love of her art lay buried beneath her grief; she felt that she had all that she could ever expect in life.

She had got quite used to Angelica now, and more or less fond of her. She liked to have the girl near, sitting with one of Eddie’s books; absorbed in it, yet instantly ready for any service required.

"Do you know, Angelica," Polly said to her one day, "the very nicest thing about you is that you never fidget!"

Angelica considered that.

"No," she said. "I know I don’t. I see other people squirming and wriggling all the time, and I wonder--I don’t know--I _am_ quiet; but I’ve got lots of life in me."

"I should say you had! Just my antithesis, aren’t you? I’m quiet, too, but it’s because I haven’t any life in me at all."

"Well," said Angelica, displaying no interest in Polly’s state of mind, and reverting, as she generally did, to herself, "I’m always kind of expecting something to happen. So I just--wait."

Her naïve egoism never affronted Polly. Disillusioned, she would have been rendered uneasy by affection or great interest; she liked it this way, with no pretense on either side, nothing to keep up. She never affected any interest in Angelica, although she couldn’t attain her companion’s supreme self-absorption. She was obliged, now and then, to ask a question; in fact, she couldn’t help being curious about Angelica, who was not at all curious about her.

She was sometimes a little piqued by the young creature’s cool assumption that she was of no interest. She knew, as all other people know, what lay within herself, how different she was from every one else who had ever lived, how interesting she was, both in her qualities and her experiences, a thing true of every one; and yet how impossible it is to make others see it!

Polly was a woman of curious temperament--intense, sensitive, flexible, and yet protected and perhaps isolated by a certain cool good sense. She was an artist, a musician, a woman who had twice loved and twice been most cruelly deceived and rebuffed, who had suffered and thought very much and very bitterly, if not very profoundly; but she was also the simple daughter of a small town, a woman who liked a long and leisurely gossip, who had sane and healthy blood flowing beneath her idle hypochondria. Woman of the world, smoker of cigarettes, reader of the most astounding books, seasoned as she was, disillusioned, heart-sick, a bit theatrical, perhaps, in her utter indifference, she was nevertheless the same Polly who would have heartily enjoyed a day spent in jelly-making, or nut-gathering, or sewing with a friendly and talkative group of her own Ohio women.

She had very little in common with Mrs. Russell. They didn’t really like each other, but being unoccupied, and in somewhat similar circumstances, they got on well enough together. The whole household got on together, in fact. There were intrigues, incredibly petty and subtle struggles and plots, but nothing overt.

The other two women accepted this new favourite of Eddie’s with resigned tolerance; they made use of her, but they were quite kind. They, too, had an influence on Angelica; they taught her something, a little of the compromise that must be made with life. You didn’t have to love people or to hate them--you had only to get on with them. She could not but admire their charming good-humour, their complete lack of the aggressiveness which the people she had known before had been obliged to cultivate. They were all three so _comfortable_ together!

II

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.