Chapter ELEVEN: I

Vincent, of course, had to go out of the room at once after that declaration, leaving the three women astounded.

Mrs. Russell was the first to bestir herself. Perhaps because she was conscious that her emotions were so feeble, she always strained to emphasize, to exaggerate them. She at once affected a great excitement. She began rushing about, under the pretense of "getting Vincent’s room ready," and telling the servants that Mr. Vincent was home.

"And he’s going to the war, Annie!" she cried. "Isn’t that _dreadful_?"

Polly took no part in this movement. She went back into her own room and sat down before her dressing-table.

"I’ll do my own hair, Angelica," she said, with a new frigidity in her manner that surprised her companion.

"All right!" Angelica answered, with a trace of sulkiness.

"You can go if you like," Polly went on. "I won’t need you any more to-night. I think, Angelica, you’d better have your dinner in your room. Mr. Geraldine might not like a stranger at the table the first evening he’s home."

"All right!" said Angelica again, turning obediently to the door.

But she did not attempt to conceal a most provoking smile--to show Polly that she knew the cause of all this.

She went trailing back to her own room in the yellow negligée, and shut herself in, happy enough to be alone and unobserved. After all, what did it matter if she couldn’t come down to dinner, couldn’t see him at all that evening? She could think about him; she could recall his face and his voice; rejoice again in that unaccountable thrill.

She leaned back in her chair, her arms clasped behind her head, a strange and divinely stupid smile on her lips. Just at the threshold of love she was lingering, in that little moment before there is desire or pain, when love is without substance, without thought, a dim ecstasy, with no more motive, no more basis for its joy, than the dream of an opium-smoker.

"Gawd!" she said to herself, with a grin. "I guess I’m hit _this_ time, all right!"

II

There was a knock at the door. She went leisurely to open it, with the expectation of seeing her dinner served on a tray; but it was Eddie, the loyal Eddie, come to fetch her. He was rather pale and quite unsmiling.

"If you’ll get dressed," he said. "We’re waiting for you to come to dinner."

"Mrs. Geraldine said----”

"It doesn’t matter. You must come. I wouldn’t sit down without you."

He looked at her, and his face twitched. She looked so strange, so terribly aloof! He was unstrung, anyhow. He had had a beastly interview with his brother, and a somewhat unpleasant five minutes with Polly, whom he so much admired. He had really annoyed her, for the sake of this devilish girl. He was filled with dread and distress, with a wretched sense of impending calamity--what people call a presentiment. Perhaps it was because his mind unconsciously recognized all the elements here for a hellish conflagration.

"Hurry, won’t you?" he said. "We’re waiting."

She did hurry, and her dressing took only ten minutes; but she was very much surprised to find Eddie still waiting for her, and still more surprised when he took her by the arm and for the first time used her name.

"Angelica!" he said in a low voice.

"What?" she asked, startled.

"Don’t!"

"Don’t what, Mr. Eddie?"

He didn’t answer, but he squeezed her arm, and when she looked up into his face it was desperately anxious.

"All right!" she said, half understanding what he wished her to understand.

For she, too, was vaguely aware of danger; she, too, could dimly perceive whither her eager feet were leading her; but she ran to it, flew to it. She, too, had an odd and terrible feeling of approaching ill fortune. She felt disaster drawing near, yet was not able even to wish to avoid it.

She sat down at the table, next to Vincent; and she hadn’t been there for fifteen minutes before she was lost. His bold eyes rested on her face, and all her own boldness turned to surrender, her own fierceness melted. She couldn’t turn away from him; she sat very still, enthralled, listening to his voice, watching his mobile face, the fine, straight brows moving so expressively, his supple hands.

He was still in his rough sport clothes, and his bright brown hair was ruffled. He had an air about him of fine, arrogant carelessness that she could worship. He had none of Eddie’s punctilio, no sort of nice manners; he had only an indifferent ease, a most complete disregard for any other living soul.

He interrupted without compunction, he made no pretense of listening; he wanted to do all the talking, and he wanted to be listened to with respect. Well, why not? Angelica wished nothing better than to look at him and listen to him forever; she couldn’t bear the idea of having to leave his presence.

Every time she looked at him, he was looking at her--at those curious eyes not quite alike. She was bewitched; she scarcely knew what she was doing. She felt that she shouldn’t look at him so much, but that was quite beyond her control. The other people seemed dim and far away, hardly audible. He was filling up the world.

He talked of the war, and his words were glorious. Oh, he was a poet, truly! His talk of blood and battles fired her imagination. Eddie’s studious dissertations upon the rights and wrongs of the conflict seemed to her contemptible. A man mustn’t go to war because it is his duty, but because he loves it; because he is a hero, like Vincent.

"I’m going!" he said. "I long for it. It’s the completion of a man’s life. Until he has fought and killed, a man has not lived. That is his manhood, his glory. Think of all Europe rushing, blood-mad, to the Flanders battlefields, all the young and the fine and the strong herded there, to kill or to die! My God! The very pinnacle of life!"

"Or the lowest depth," said Eddie.

Vincent laughed.

"You’re no warrior, my dear boy," he said. "Well, we don’t expect it of you."

Eddie grew red.

"I dare say I’m as much of a warrior as the next man," he said. "I dare say I’d like it--this fighting and killing; but I don’t see anything fine about it. I don’t glorify it. I think it’s beastly. There are plenty of things that I’d enjoy that I don’t by any means admire. This fighting is a filthy relic of our old barbarous days."

"Then so are all our splendid passions, my boy. God keep us barbarous, and men! You chilly, cowering little pen-drivers----”

"That’s enough!" said Eddie. "You’re talking rot--pure rot!"

He was making a desperate effort to control a furious anger; for the sake of his own dignity he didn’t dare to quarrel with Vincent. He knew his brother and his unholy resources too well.

"All those chaps in offices and so on," he continued. "You don’t know anything about them. If it comes to the test----”

"Oh, you’ll all do your duty, all you little money-grubbers!" said Vincent. "I don’t doubt that; but what we need--what the world is sick for, _dying_ for--is men who are inspired."

"They might be inspired by something better than drunken enthusiasm," said Eddie.

Vincent laughed again, and looked around the table at his worshipping women; but his glance rested upon Angelica. She caught her breath, stared up at him; and then, for the first time, smiled at him, a smile quite strange to her, trembling and uncertain.

III

Eddie pushed back his chair and got up.

"Miss Kennedy," he said, "I’ve some more books for you--if you’ll come and get them."

"All right!" she answered carelessly.

He hesitated a moment, as if he were about to speak; then he went on up-stairs into his room, leaving the door open so that he could watch the lighted hall. He saw his mother go by, into her own room; then he heard the sound of the piano down-stairs--Polly’s familiar touch.

"I suppose she’ll stay down there--jabbering!" he said to himself, jealous, hurt beyond measure. "When _he_ comes, with his damned swagger, of course she has no further use for--for study and improvement. She’ll forget all about coming!"

He couldn’t read, himself. He sat facing the door, restless, miserable. There came to his mind so many stories he had read, operas he had heard, with the tragic rivalry of brothers for their theme. And wasn’t he the very prototype of the good brother; the one who is always wronged by the reckless, handsome one--by Vincent? He thrust the thought away. Damned nonsense! No one was in love with any one else in this house!

He recognized an old and most unworthy adversary in this jealousy, something which he had tried for years to combat. It was the most convincing proof of Eddie’s greatness of soul that he did so struggle with this envy, and that he did not hate his brother. He had every possible reason for doing so. He had the memory of years and years of injuries and injustices; he had seen this brother always exalted above him, always held up to him as an example of all the social virtues.

"If you’d only try to be more like Vincent!" his mother used to sigh.

Eddie couldn’t dance, couldn’t sing, couldn’t in any sort of way ingratiate himself. He wasn’t liked. His goodness itself was perhaps the chief thing against him.

"I never worry about Eddie," Mrs. Russell had often said in his hearing. "He’s perfectly safe." And he knew that this was a most unattractive thing to be.

He had never got on with Vincent. There was only two years’ difference between them, and Eddie had never been able to make even this apparent. He was smaller, he developed much more slowly, he never could obtain any of the prestige due to him as the elder. Eddie, at nineteen, had been nothing but a somewhat priggish and very shy school-boy, while Vincent, at seventeen, was a young man.

It must not be imagined, however, that Eddie was in any way subservient to his brother. For the most part, they were quite indifferent to each other. They very rarely met; they went to different schools, and Eddie spent his holidays with his mother and Vincent with his father. When their father died, and they were once more under one roof, with their mother, they had separate friends, separate interests.

When anything did bring them together, they fought. Eddie had more than once been sent rolling in the dirt by his bigger brother; and in spite of the tradition that the normal boy loves the fellow who pummels him most heartily, this didn’t breed affection in Eddie’s heart. He resented it. He was fiendishly proud and sensitive, and he couldn’t forget such outrages.

He had fleeting visions of certain miserable moments--visions of the triumphant and exuberant Vincent, of being taken to see Vincent graduated with honours, to hear him read a valedictory poem he had written, to see him surrounded, overwhelmed with admiration, of watching him win races, play in tennis tournaments and amateur theatricals, of hearing him sing. It seemed to him that he had spent a great part of his youth sitting beside his mother and watching Vincent show off.

There were facets to Vincent’s nature which he never regarded or attempted to comprehend. This poetic stuff, for instance. He had heard Vincent recite from his work, but he hadn’t seen much in it for admiration. He had simply taken for granted what every one told him, that his brother was a poet. It had never occurred to him that there were grades of poets.

There was something mysterious at which he merely guessed, a side to his brother too amazing and unpleasant to contemplate. Eddie, with his rigid self-discipline, his ceaseless struggle to perfect himself, could in no way comprehend the laxity, the facile debauchery, the equally facile repentance, of an ill-balanced and self-indulgent soul. He had more than once fancied he heard his brother weeping and groaning, sometimes shut in with his mother, sometimes with Polly; but when he actually saw him--big, strong, insolent, forever bragging of his manhood--he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t reconcile the idea of hysterical weakness with this conquering creature. He imagined it must be merely some expression of the poetic temperament.

No, this victorious brother was without blemish; he had become in Eddie’s eyes a rival of quite fantastic perfection. He was handsome, he was strong, he was fascinating, he was a poet; he had every accomplishment, every charm. He was not to be withstood.

And, just as he was reflecting, he saw Angelica go by the door, absolutely oblivious of him, without so much as turning her head. He heard her door close; he waited, but he knew it was of no use. She had forgotten him!

IV

Polly, too, was thinking of Vincent. With that pitiful stupidity of women, who can never quite believe themselves without attraction, she had seated herself at the piano and begun to play. She knew he loved music; she hoped to interest him with a curious new piece.

She wasn’t in love with him any longer. She didn’t even wish him, exactly, to love her; but she was passionately anxious to secure his attention. She had that hunger which all really fine women have--the hunger for being appreciated, recognized. She deluded herself with the idea that after an episode with some worthless little hussy, he couldn’t help but contrast such a creature with Polly, and be filled with remorse and respect.

As a matter of fact, he felt nothing in the world but irritation. He did contrast Polly with the girl whom he had left the day before, but it was to the disadvantage of his wife. He saw her to be sallow, weary, faded. She had, he thought, only one good point--she didn’t nag; didn’t even ask where he’d been.

He came and listened to her music. She saw him sitting close to her, with a look of pleasure on his face, and she put all her art, all her skill, into her playing; but when she glanced up from a difficult passage, he had gone.

She went on playing, but it was mournful, dispirited music; the improvisings of a forlorn heart.

Mrs. Russell alone never gave a thought to Vincent. She had gone to bed very early, as she liked to do, and lay reading a French detective story. Her eyes were bright with interest; she was delighted.

V

Angelica had not turned on the light. She sat by the open window of her room, near which a big lime-tree was rustling in the dark. The grass, the bushes, the clouds, were all moving, and she fancied that moths and bats and other little night creatures fluttered by. The breeze was going past her; she felt none of it on her face. She had an impression of being spectator of a mighty procession, forever passing her window in dim, dark shapes.

She was excited and exultant; in the dark her lips were smiling. She wasn’t thinking; she was drifting, lost in an endless reverie, upon the strength and beauty of this man. She was like poor Polly, playing uncounted variations on one sole theme.

"I never felt this way before!" she reflected, with wonder. "I never thought I _could_!"

But then she had never expected to meet a man like this, so entirely the hero of her dreams. With her sad, worldly wisdom, she had expected so little of love or of men. She had expected to be satisfied with some one who would love her; she had never, in her pride, imagined a man whom she could love. This noble and poetic soul was a shock to her, an amazement. Her fancy dwelt upon his splendid figure, his bold face. She smiled again, and then grew suddenly uneasy.

"No!" she said. "I don’t like it. I wish I didn’t. Him being married, and all!"

For a moment she had an inchoate perception of life going by like that wind outside, only not passing her, but bearing her with it. She knew that this thing could not be stopped.

"Maybe I’d better go home," she thought. "I don’t want to get mixed up in anything queer. Maybe I’ll go."

But that wasn’t genuine; retreat wasn’t in her soul. Her vague uneasiness increased; she began thinking of Eddie and his books, and those magnificent women.

"But all of them," she thought, "just went for the man they wanted, I guess, and didn’t give a darn for anything else. Maybe that’s the best way."

She dallied with the idea of reckless, overwhelming passion, but she could not wholly accept it. There was something humiliating in caring so much for a man.

There was a quiet little knock at the door. Angelica’s hand flew to her heart; she didn’t stir. There was another knock, and still she didn’t answer. Then, fancying she heard a footstep departing, she was seized with an unreasonable panic, and flew across the dark room and stood close beside the door.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It’s I," said the voice she had longed for and dreaded.

"Well, what do _you_ want?" she asked, flippantly.

"I thought you’d like to take a walk in the garden," he said.

"Why? It’s too late!" she cried.

"Can’t we have a little talk?" he asked, plaintively. "Can’t I come in?"

She hesitated.

"I guess--you’d better not. I’ll see you in the morning. It’s so late now."

"I didn’t think you’d care about such things," he said.

She saw that he was disappointed; that he found her tame, cowardly. She unlocked the door and flung it open.

"But what on earth is there to talk about?" she asked, laughing nervously.

And then and there and forever she lost her advantage over Vincent. For that moment she was triumphant, indulgently amused by his eagerness, mistress of the situation and of him, elated by the knowledge that she was beloved and desired; but no sooner had Vincent really entered than he dominated the situation. His big hand closed over hers. He bent over her and whispered in the darkness:

"I couldn’t sleep till I’d seen you again!"

"Well!" she said, with the same forced little laugh. "Here I am!"

He seemed in the dark to tower above her; his bigness, the resonance of his deep voice, confused her.

"I couldn’t sleep without seeing you," he said again. "I had to know that you were real. After you had gone, I thought I must have dreamed you. You were so lovely, so wonderful, you came upon me so suddenly! You _are_ real, aren’t you?"

Again she gave a stupid laugh.

"Tell me!" he said. "Are you the girl that I saw at the dinner-table--the houri in yellow that I saw in my mother’s room?"

"Yes."

"And only to think!" he said. "I’ve been looking for you all my life long, all over the world, and I find you here, under my own roof, when I come home! Were you waiting for me?"

"I didn’t know there was any you," she said, simply.

"I knew there was you, though! I knew I should find you!" he cried. "Oh, I’ve hungered for you and thirsted for you! I’ve been so restless and unsatisfied! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve found you, dear, beloved girl!"

"But you don’t know me!" she protested, with an almost painful anxiety. "Perhaps I’m not--as nice--as you think."

"I do know you! I know all your soul. I was born to know you and to comprehend you. You are my sovereign, my most beautiful and adored lady. I am your knight and your servant forever. I think I could faint with joy for a touch of your dear hand!"

Tears sprang to her eyes, she was so moved by his words, by his ardent and touching voice. She stood motionless, still with her hand in his; but some tremor, some sign which his agile heart at once detected, must have told him that his moment had come. He drew her close to him and clasped her in a strong and tender embrace, her heart beating close to his, while he stroked her soft hair.

"My little one!" he whispered. "My beloved little one! Madonna! Dear, glorious angel!"

His voice broke in a sort of sob, and the hand smoothing her hair trembled. He bent and kissed her cheek, kissed her again; then, suddenly, his embrace tightened, and he pressed his lips against hers with something quite different, something quite devoid of tenderness. She struggled, pushed him roughly away.

"Don’t!" she said, sharply.

For she wanted it to stop there. She wanted this to be love, this half-sad ecstasy, these stirring, heart-breaking words. She wished to go no further. Perhaps the ghosts of dead mothers for ages back come to beseech young girls, to entreat them in silent voices:

"Oh, do not, my daughter, for the love of God, do not become a woman! Stop here! Let this suffice! For whatever little you may gain, you will lose a hundred times as much. Draw back from this bitter, bitter draught!"

"Kiss me!" he entreated, following her further into the room.

"No!" she said harshly. "Go away! Go out and close the door! Go away, or I’ll call!"

He stopped at once.

"I thought you loved me!" he cried.

"I do," she said, with sublime honesty. "Only--I want you to go. Good night!"