Chapter TWO: I

But Angelica herself! That _she_ should be undergoing this horror, this nightmare, this incredible thing she had heard of and read of!

"Oh, mommer!" she cried. "Oh, _mommer_! It’s the worst thing I ever heard of! I’m the worst----”

"Hush, deary! Don’t talk so wild. It’s bad, I must admit, but you’re young, and I dare say you loved the man and trusted in him, to your sorrow."

Angelica turned her face to the wall. That was the very worst of it. She hadn’t really trusted Vincent at all. She had simply followed an instinct of which she understood nothing. She had been dazzled by his words, been deluded through compassion, through recklessness, through desire, into throwing herself away upon a man who cared nothing for her, who had no affection, no human kindness. He didn’t care what happened to her. If she had been willing to stay with him a little longer, he would have been willing to "love" her a little longer; but when she had decided to leave him, he offered no resistance. He would quite easily forget her, she knew.

Useless to tell herself that the conventional code of morality meant nothing to her. It did! She had fancied herself superior to all that, but that was because she hadn’t known or imagined what such a surrender meant. Just to run into his arms, without ceremony, without any promise, any covenant, without regard for any other human creature, reckless of her own future, flinging away her pride, her freedom, her decency. That wasn’t beautiful. That wasn’t love. What in God’s name was it?

She had not even happy memories. It was shame to remember her past joy. She loathed herself for her past ecstasy. A perfect terror of her own infamy swept over her.

"No!" she cried. "I can’t stand it! Mommer, it’s too awful! You don’t know how awful! You don’t know what I did!"

"Why don’t you tell me, deary?"

"I can’t! I don’t know how. I’ll try." She sat up in bed and caught her mother’s hand. "The worst is the way I treated Eddie. He was so good to me! He asked me to marry him, and I said I would; and then, the very day he left, I went away--with his own brother!"

"Oh, Angie!" cried her mother, in horror.

"Oh, mommer, if you knew Eddie, you’d see what an awful thing I’ve done! He’s such a _good_ man, and so--kind of noble, and all that! I don’t know how he’ll ever stand it. He trusted me."

"But what ever made you do such a thing, Angelica? Are you so terrible fond of this other one?"

"No--not now. No--that’s what I can’t explain. I don’t know why I did. I--I just seemed to forget everything. I--just thought--I loved him."

"And you don’t? You love the other one--the good one?"

Angelica began to weep.

"No," she said. "That’s the worst. I don’t love either of ’em. What’s the matter with me, do you suppose? I don’t seem to have any heart!" She struggled painfully to get her thought into words. "I hate Vincent, and I like Eddie, a lot; but love--I’ve never felt it at all, mommer, for any one," she sobbed. "Not that love they have in books. It makes me feel dreadful. If I loved Vincent, I wouldn’t feel so mean and low and bad. It would be--sort of splendid; but this! Mommer!"

"Well, deary?"

"Maybe there’s no such a thing."

"No such a thing as what?"

"As love."

Mrs. Kennedy had never experienced it; had never seen or heard of any authentic case of this beautiful tenderness, this undying devotion, this heavenly thing. Yet she firmly believed that it existed--this love which was not desire, not infatuation, not madness, not sentimentality, not friendship--this ecstasy which endured forever. Not experience, not common sense, nothing at all could have convinced her, for it was instinct that made her believe--nature’s most cruel and most necessary deception. For life to continue, it is necessary that women shall cling to two lies--that men are capable of truly loving them, and that their children will love them in their old age.

"Deary," said Mrs. Kennedy, "I think you’d better write to him and tell him, and see what he will do for you. Perhaps he’ll marry you."

"He is married," said Angelica indifferently. "Yes, mommer, I will write to him; but it’s an even chance if he’ll come or not. He’s queer. You can’t ever tell, with him. I’ll try, anyway, and see if I can’t get some money out of him."

To her mother the tragedy was somewhat lessened by the fact that Angelica didn’t love Vincent. She fancied that the girl would consequently get over it better, not suffer so cruelly; but for Angelica there lay the worst of it, the most intolerable part to bear. It was that that made her frantic with shame and remorse. She looked in vain; she could find no trace of magnificence in her downfall. It wasn’t a splendid sin, done for reckless love. It was a damnable folly, committed through reckless ignorance.

II

She wrote to Vincent with a sort of naïve art. She wished to hide the least sign of anxiety or reproach; she wished him merely to think that she missed him.

Why don’t you come? I have been looking for you for ever so long.
Come in some evening soon.

ANGELICA.

The evening after the letter was mailed, she got up and dressed herself, trembling with weakness, hardly able to stand, but quite self-possessed. She didn’t feel the slightest emotion at the prospect of seeing Vincent again--nothing but a dogged resolution to make him give her money.

She attempted no attitude, made no plan of what she would say to him, because she knew now how helpless she was in his hands. _He_ would direct the interview; _he_ would give the key-note; it would all depend upon his mood. She couldn’t influence him. She didn’t even take pains with her appearance, for she knew that it didn’t lie with her to move him. It depended upon the condition of his own mysterious soul.

She had hardly expected him so soon. He came that same evening, but, from the very sound of his footsteps as he followed her along the hall to the tiny parlour, she could feel that he was sullen and reluctant, and her heart sank.

"Oh, if only I didn’t have to bother with him!" she thought. "If only I didn’t have to see him ever again! And I’ve got to be nice to him and ask him for money!"

They entered the parlour, and sat down in silence.

"Angelica!" he said abruptly, with a frown. "Why did you leave me?"

"I wanted to----”

"I was amazed. I was _shocked_. You behaved----” He hesitated for a moment, then went on severely: "You behaved like a light woman. I thought you were faithful and constant and sincere; and then, after _one week_----”

"But what kind of a week was it?" cried Angelica.

"I’m not a rich man, but I did the best I could for you."

"You know what I mean! In that awful little road-house, with you shutting yourself up in the bedroom all the time and leaving me there alone for all those men to laugh at!"

"I had to write."

"You hadn’t any business to write. You might have thought a little bit how I’d feel. If you couldn’t pay any attention to me, you shouldn’t----”

"Did you bring me here to reproach me?" he demanded. "Because if you did, I’ve had enough."

"No, I didn’t mean to scold you," she answered, hurriedly, recalled to the necessity for placating him. "No--I just wanted to see you."

Her face, which had become so pinched, so colourless, was covered with a vivid flush. The conciliatory words almost stuck in her throat; but apparently Vincent didn’t observe her emotion.

"I’m not disposed to endure much more from you--upon my word, I’m not!" he went on. "The way you went off, simply leaving me a note to say that you thought you’d go home--making a fool of me! I was naïve enough to imagine we were to spend our lives together. I thought we’d stay for a month or so in that beautiful little mountain inn, fishing, tramping, reading, talking----”

"You hardly spoke to me all day long. I had to sit down-stairs in the dining-room with those fishermen."

"How was I to know that you had no resources? Besides, it was rainy, and we couldn’t have gone out, anyway; but the very day you left the weather cleared. I was really disgusted with you, Angelica. You behaved abominably!"

"Well, Vincent," she said, "you’ll have to excuse that, and be a good friend to me, because I need some money."

He jumped to his feet.

"You’re shameless!" he said. "I’m shocked!"

"No--listen! There’s going to be a baby!" she cried, in desperation.

He was a little taken aback for a moment. He gave a hasty glance at her poor desperate young face, and then looked away.

"There!" he said, taking a leather wallet out of his pocket and throwing it on the table. "Take it! It’s all I’ve got. My God, you can’t get the better of a woman! They have it all their own way in this world. They make us pay, and pay dear, for their follies!"

Angelica stared at him, astounded.

"_I’m_ supposed to be the guilty one," he went on. "_I’m_ the one who’s held responsible--why, the good Lord only knows. _I’m_ the one to pay!"

"As for _me_," said Angelica, "it’s just a picnic, isn’t it?"

"You’re fulfilling your natural destiny--at my expense."

"Oh!" she cried. "I wish to God I could throw the money back in your face, Vincent!"

"But you won’t. And now that you’ve got all that you can out of me, I suppose I can go?"

But Angelica was weak; she couldn’t endure it.

"Do you mean that you’re not even sorry?" she cried. "Can’t you think what this means to me--what’s going to become of me? Oh, Vincent, just _think_ what’s before me!"

"Just what always was before you. You’re bad, my girl, through and through. You couldn’t have ended any other way. No decency, no self-restraint. I don’t suppose I was the first man----”

"Oh, don’t!" she cried. "Don’t! You can’t realize--oh, Vincent!"

"And as for _this_, it isn’t the first time such a thing has happened in the world. Even a young girl brought up in sheltered luxury, like you, must have heard of such things. In fact, my dear, you must have known quite as well as I what the consequences of our adventure might be. If you say you didn’t, you’re lying."

She put out one hand in a sort of mute and feeble protest.

"But I didn’t think--you’d change----” Her voice faltered; she found it almost impossible to go on. "I thought--that you--felt like I did."

"So I did," he answered. "So I do--just the same as you. Our impulses, our reasons for going off together, were exactly the same, only I’m honest about it and you’re not. You pretend to be heart-broken because I don’t care for you any longer, when, as a matter of fact, you don’t care a bit more for me. You’re an utter hypocrite!"

She was confused and crushed by his words. He was taking away from her her very last support--her conviction that she had been misled, wronged, sinned against. Somehow he was putting her in the wrong. She couldn’t deny that she had gone away with him of her own free will; and yet she knew that it _hadn’t_ been her own free will. She didn’t deny her own guilt, but she knew that his was far greater.

"I’m not a hypocrite," she said.

"Then you’re a fool. No--we’ve done with each other, Angelica. It’s over for both of us."

"But it isn’t over for me!" she cried. Her heart was flaming with resentment against the hellish injustice of it--that she should have all the suffering, all the punishment. "Just _think_ of it!" she cried. "Can’t you realize, Vincent, how dreadful it is for me?"

"No, I can’t realize. I’m not a woman, and I don’t pretend to understand them and their fine feelings. I can’t understand or sympathize with this cowardly whining over physical effects which are known to every one. Did you want anything else from me, except money, Angelica?"

"Yes, I do!" she answered. "I do want something else, and I’ll get it, too. I want to make you suffer, and I will, too!"

"Oh, I see--the wronged woman with the baby in her arms! Well, Angelica, go ahead! Do your worst. I don’t think you can hurt me very much."

He looked down at her with a gay, mocking smile, he put on his hat, and was gone.

Angelica went back to her mother with the wallet.

"Well!" she began. "Here’s----” But she broke down and began to cry wildly.

"Oh, mommer! Mommer! I can’t bear this! I _can’t_ be treated like this! Oh, mommer, not _me_! Not _me_! It can’t be true!"

Her mother was glad when she wept. She stroked Angelica’s head in silence, pleased to see her softened, even humbled, happy to see that ferocious hardness gone; not suspecting that that ferocity and that hardness were the very best of Angelica, the very spirit of her. When she wept like this, she was submerged, perishing, _going under_. With a frightful effort she saved herself and rose above these bitter waters.

"He’ll _pay_, all right!" she said, looking up with an odd, horrible grin. "You watch!"

"Don’t talk so, my deary!"

"Here--take it! Let’s see how much we’ve got to go on with," she interrupted, pushing the wallet across the table. "He’s always saying he hasn’t got a cent, but I notice he always finds plenty for anything he wants. God knows where he gets it, but he does."

Her mother counted what was in the purse, and turned to Angelica with a look of amazement.

"Why, Angie! There’s only four dollars here!"

Angelica laughed.

"It’s all we’ll get, anyway, mommer," she said. "It’ll have to do."