Chapter FOUR: I

Angelica sat at the kitchen table, her blouse torn rudely open at the neck, wet through with perspiration, haggard and worn almost beyond recognition.

"My Gawd!" she said, pushing back her hair. "It’s hot as hell, mommer!"

Mrs. Kennedy sighed, without speaking or interrupting her work. She was standing at the ironing-board, finishing a big week’s washing. It was a night of intolerable and sultry heat, and the kitchen, with the stove lighted for the irons, and the gas blazing for light, was a place of torment. The two women were curiously pallid, curiously alert, with the terrible activity of exhaustion. They had reached so high a point of suffering, both physical and mental, on that night, that they were no longer aware of their pain.

"Listen, mommer!" said Angelica. "Here’s what I’ve written."

She picked up the sheet of soft paper with blue lines, on which the ink blurred and the pen dug and scratched, and on which she had written:

VINCENT:

The baby has been sick all the time, and now he is worse. You got
to send some money for him. You got to find it somewhere if you
have not got it. He is in a terrible bad state. He only weighs six
pounds, and he is going on for six weeks.

ANGELICA.

She read it in her hoarse, thrilling voice, and it sounded so vehement, so passionate, so touching, that they both believed the letter to be so in itself.

"Now I’ll run out and mail it," she said.

Just as she was, with disheveled hair and unfastened blouse, she hurried out into the street. A man spoke to her, and she swore at him.

She was back within a few minutes, panting, but her mother was no longer in the kitchen; she had gone into the dark bedroom to quiet the poor little baby.

"I’ll hold him, Angie," she said. "You can go on ironing."

But Angelica flung herself on her knees before the child on her mother’s lap.

"Gawd! Little feller! Little love! Gawd, I wish he’d die and be out of this!"

Her mother could not rebuke her. Worn out by unending worry, by lack of sleep, by the heat, by intolerable toil for the tiny thing, she, too, could only wish it dead. It suffered so; it was so weak, so pitiful.

Night after night they had held it in their arms, close to the window, where it might get what air there was. They sang to it, rocked it, bathed its wasted little body to cool it, and all the while it wailed in its feeble voice--a weak, monotonous, heart-rending sound. They tended it by day and by night. From time to time it slept, but fitfully, the beating of its little heart shaking its emaciated body.

Angelica would sit beside it, her eyes fixed upon it, scarcely daring to breathe in her terror that it might die as it slept; for though she said and she meant that she wished it to die and be free of its misery, for her own sake she longed for it to live to the utmost limit, no matter if every day and every night were a pain to her, and her whole life went by in its service. She wanted to be holding it in her arms every waking hour; she could not sleep unless it lay within the reach of her hand. Even if she went to the corner on an errand for her mother, she was filled with panic until she had got back to it, and had seen it and touched it again.

She cared for nothing else whatever. She didn’t trouble to dress herself decently; she no longer helped her mother about the flat. Barefooted, her heavy hair pinned in a great slovenly coil, her blouse unfastened, with a ragged skirt hanging about her lean hips, she would sit for hours with the little wailing thing in her arms, pressed against her bosom, while she sang to it in her hoarse, touching voice.

She learned all she could from the doctor and the visiting nurse, and did just as they had told her. She bathed the child, fed it, tended it, in the most careful and professional way; but she would not let it alone. The doctor told her to leave it in the clothes-basket which was its bed, and the nurse assured her it would be cooler and more comfortable there; but she could not restrain herself from snatching it up. She could not help feeling that the passion of her love, the generous warmth of her body, must invigorate and vitalize it. Most cruel of all delusions--that love can save!

II

"He’s got to get into the country," said Angelica. "That’s all there is to it. I’d send him to one of these fresh-air places, only I know he’d die without me. He’s got to have me. No one else would know his ways."

"Well, if Mr. Geraldine sends----”

"If! If! If he don’t, I’ll---- He’s got to, that’s all. I’ll give him just one day more, and then----”

"Maybe he’s not there. Maybe he’s gone to the war."

"Not a chance! Well, if he’s not there, I’ll have to find him, and I will."

There was no letter the next day.

"You got to telephone," said Angelica to her mother, "and find out if he still lives there at Buena Vista. If he does, I’ll write once more."

Her mother came in late that afternoon.

"He’s there," she said. "Somebody--one of the servants, I dare say--came to the telephone, and I just said, ‘Is Mr. Vincent Geraldine there?’ And she said, ‘Who is it wants to speak to him?’ And I said, ‘I only wanted to know was he at home.’ ‘Oh, yes!’ she says. ‘He’s at home!’"

Poor woman, lugging her eternal bucket! She looked as if she were being pressed down by giant hands which were forcing her exhausted and gallant body to its knees. There was nothing ready for her now, at the end of her bitter day--nothing in the house which she could cook for supper. Her bed was still unmade, there wasn’t even a decent place for her to sit down, for Angelica occupied the only rocking-chair, drawn up close to the window, where the baby could get what air there was.

Mrs. Kennedy looked at them, and for an instant she hated them both--Angelica who so savagely demanded this unceasing, inhuman toil of her, who took everything and gave nothing, not so much as a loving word, and this wailing, wretched little creature who didn’t even know her.

"It’s _too much_!" she thought. "I’m getting old."

"Take the baby," said Angelica, "while I write another letter."

"I’ll get some supper first."

"No! I’ve got to write now."

"Then put the kettle on, so’s we can have a cup of tea before long," said her mother, and sat down with the wretched, hot little baby in her arms.

VINCENT:

This child is going to die. You got to help it. If you do not send
me some money for him right away, I will go out after you and get
it. I don’t care if you are hard up. You can get it somewhere, and
you got to. This child will die if you don’t.

ANGELICA.

"Deary," said her mother, "I don’t think it’s any good."

"It is!" Angelica assured her. "He’s got to pay!"

III

An answer came quickly enough. Angelica smiled grimly as she saw the envelope. She and her mother were sitting together over their supper of tinned pork and beans, Mrs. Kennedy eating with one hand while she held the fitfully sleeping baby.

"Now we’ll see," said Angelica. "It’s always a guess with that feller. You never know what he’ll say."

Vincent wrote thus:

ANGELICA:

I would if I could. I am not altogether a brute, a monster. I am
not callous to the sufferings of my own child; but I have
absolutely nothing. Ever since I had your first letter I have been
thinking, trying my utmost to discover some way to help you.

And the only way I can do so is to appeal to Eddie, to tell him the
whole story, and to throw ourselves on his mercy. It will be a
bitter blow to him, and it is a terrible penance for me to tell
him; but, for your sake, I must bear the pain of telling and he of
hearing. He will help us, Angelica. He is a generous and noble
soul. He has never yet failed me.

She remained stupefied.

"D’ye mean Eddie doesn’t know?" she cried, addressing an invisible Vincent.

It was such an amazing idea to her. She had always imagined Eddie as possessed of all the details. She had often thought of him, sitting in his trench in the moonlight, reflecting with grief and bitterness over her infamy. She had looked upon him as utterly lost, beyond her reach. She had believed, as a matter of course, that all those people knew, and despised and hated her--Polly, Mrs. Russell, all the servants.

"Why, mommer!" she cried. "He----”

"Whatever is it, child?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, surprised at the strange look on her daughter’s face. Angelica had risen slowly to her feet, and was staring at her mother. A new, a terrible hope was dawning upon her.

"Quick, mommer!" she cried suddenly. "I got to stop him!"

She rushed into the bedroom, put on a hat over her disordered hair, pinned together the open bosom of her blouse, and ran down the hall.

"Angie! Angie!" cried her mother. "Where are you going?"

The door banged. She was gone.

Mrs. Kennedy laid the baby on the bed.

"Cry, if you must," she said. "I can’t hold you any more till I’ve had a cup of tea."

IV

Angelica had gone running up the street to a drug-store on Sixth Avenue, where she knew there was a telephone booth. It was a place of doubtful repute. There was always a group there of young Italian-Americans, flashily dressed youths of immense assurance, who were interested in every woman that entered the store; but they didn’t care for Angelica in her slatternly dress, with her fierce and haggard face.

One of them made a coarse jest about her, which she answered with an oath; then she went into the booth and pulled the door to behind her. Her heart was beating frantically; she was scarcely able to speak, her hoarse voice came out with an unfamiliar sound.

"I want to speak to Mr. Vincent!" she said.

"Who is it?"

"Call him quick! It’s a message from his brother." A silly ruse, but she was capable of nothing better. Then, after a long pause, she heard his voice.

"What is it?"

"It’s me--Angelica. Vincent, don’t you _dare_ to write to Eddie! Don’t you dare ever to let him know!"

"My dear child, I’ve already done so. I’ve just put the letter in the box, not ten minutes ago."

"No!" she cried. "No! You must get it back!"

He laughed.

"When once a letter is posted----”

She gave a sort of wail. He was still speaking, but she didn’t care what he said. She hung up the receiver and went out into the street again. Somehow this seemed to her the very worst blow that had fallen on her, the greatest cruelty of her destiny. To have got, in the blackness of her despair, this glorious hope, and to have it destroyed almost before it had breathed!

It occurred to her that there was one more desperate chance. She went hurrying home again.

"Mommer!" she said. "Where’s your money?"

"I haven’t any money, Angie, as well you know."

"You have!"

"Only just the bit that’s to last us through the week."

"Give it to me, quick!"

She snatched up the flat little purse and rushed out again, pushing her hair up under her hat as she ran. She didn’t quite know where to look. She sought in vain along Sixth Avenue, then crossed to Fifth, and found there what she wanted--an empty taxicab, cruising along Madison Square.

"Say!" she called. "Taxi!"

The man stopped and looked at her suspiciously. A queer-looking thing she was to hail a cab!

"I want to go out to Baycliff," she said.

"You better walk, then," he said. "It’s cheaper."

"Oh, you’ll get paid, all right!" said Angelica. "The people out there’ll pay you good and give you a tip."

He shook his head.

"I guess not," he said doubtfully. "You better find some one else. I’m married. I can’t afford to take no chances. Where’d I be, if I wasn’t to get paid? A long run like that, and got to come back empty!"

Angelica recalled something which had been mentioned in one of Mrs. Russell’s long stories.

"Look here!" she said. "It’s the law. You got to take passengers."

"Not outside the city limits I haven’t," said the man.

They were both a little uneasy, as neither of them felt at all sure as to what laws there might or might not be; but Angelica in her desperation was resourceful.

"You let me in," she said, "and I’ll fix it up with the people out there. See, I’ll give you two dollars now, but I won’t tell them I gave you anything, and they’ll pay you and give you a tip, too. I’m the waitress out there, and they’ll be darned glad to see me back. You didn’t ought to worry. You’d ought to know I wouldn’t risk getting locked up just for the sake of a ride. No one would take a chance like that."

"Well, they do, all the same," said the driver. "It wouldn’t do me no good to get you locked up--not if you didn’t have no money."

"It’s only people out on a joy ride that do that," said she. "Where’d be the sense in me doing that--taking a ride all alone and then getting locked up?"

He wavered, and she hurriedly got out the two dollars--earned by long hours of scrubbing by Mrs. Kennedy--and gave them to the chauffeur. He was now practically won; her insistence overcame his weak will, her two dollars charmed him. Moreover, he liked her, she was so frank and so much in earnest.

"All right," he said. "Get in! Now mind you treat me fair--I’m taking a big risk for you!"

She was a strange enough figure, sitting there in her dusty clothes, her battered old hat, while the cab sped on, through and out of the city, along dark country roads lined with trees, past fields, past marshes, past desolate buildings, past friendly lighted houses. She was consumed with a fever of haste, burning with anxiety, looking over the driver’s shoulders at the road before her, which seemed so endless.

Now they were going up the hill to the house--the very house.

"You wait a while," she said. "The longer you wait the more you’ll get paid."

The front door stood open, with only a screen door across the aperture, and a faint light from the hall shone out on the roadway. There didn’t seem to be any one about. She stood outside, peering through the screen into the hall, listening. Not a sound!

She was obliged to ring the bell; and who should open the door but the doctor? He didn’t see who it was until he had let her in; then he was frightened at the unexpectedness of her coming, at the wild disorder of her appearance.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I want to speak to Vincent," she answered. "Where is he?"

"He may be busy. I’d better----”

"_Where is he?_" she demanded.

When the doctor didn’t answer, she pushed by him and ran up-stairs.

Vincent was lying back in an armchair, in a bath-robe, his slender bare feet on a second chair. He was eating biscuits and cheese from a plate balanced on his knees, and reading a magazine, in the greatest possible comfort, physical and mental, when without an instant’s warning Angelica entered, wild, savage, relentless as a Fury.

He sat up, drawing the bath-robe tightly about him, and tried to frown at her; but he felt, and he appeared, at a horrible disadvantage.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

She couldn’t speak for a moment. She only looked at him with her fierce black eyes, pressing a hand against her breast, as if to stifle by force the tumult there. He was alarmed, really, although he tried so desperately to look scornful.

"Well?" he asked again. "What did you come here for?"

"That letter!" she said. "That letter to Eddie! You shan’t send it!"

"I have," he answered.

"No!" she cried. "No! You haven’t."

"I tell you I have!" he answered definitely. "I told you so over the telephone."

She stood motionless, staring past him, oblivious of his uneasy bewilderment. Thoughts were running through her brain like fire through parched grass. She remembered things she had heard--of the English suffragettes pouring acid into mail-boxes to destroy their contents. But what did they use, and where to get it?

Her vigorous and subtle brain was never quite without resource. She thought and thought, with passionate intensity, and at last, suddenly, an idea came to her. She went out of the room abruptly, so swiftly and silently that Vincent was astonished and more than ever alarmed. What in Heaven’s name was that damnable girl up to now? He knew she wouldn’t stop at anything.

He went on tiptoe to the door and peered cautiously out into the hall. She wasn’t there. Where was she? He was certain that she hadn’t given up and gone away. She was after that letter, and she wouldn’t go without it.

"She’s ill, though," he muttered. "Beastly--savage! Forcing her way in like this! My God, I’ll _never_ be rid of her! What the devil was the matter with me, to get mixed up with a girl like that? I wish she’d break her neck. I wish I had the courage to wring it!"

He stopped suddenly and turned pale; for there on the mantelpiece, before his eyes, was the letter. Courtland had forgotten to mail it!

He flew at it and tore it into bits, like a criminal concealing some trace of his guilt. He was actually capable of imagining that, by this, he had got the better of Angelica.

V

Angelica ran down-stairs to the kitchen, which was deserted, but quite brightly lighted. There, on the back of the coal range, stood what she had expected to see--the teakettle, gently steaming.

She lifted it, and went to the back door. There was a couple--probably Annie and her young man--sitting in the dark on the steps. She turned back, went through the laundry and out of a side door; down the hill, through the grass, where she wouldn’t make a sound. Once she stumbled, and a few drops of scalding water spilled upon her instep. She smothered a shriek of pain, and hurried on.

There wasn’t a soul in sight; the road was quite empty even of passing motors. She crossed to the other side, where the post-box stood, and, raising herself on tiptoe, she poured into it the entire contents of the kettle.

Then she ran into the woods behind the box, and hid the kettle in a clump of thick bushes. She was satisfied that the letter must be destroyed, together with anything else the box may have contained. Her conscience did not reproach her in the least for this possible injury to others.

"There couldn’t be any one," she reflected, "who could want any one else to get a letter as much as I _don’t_ want Eddie to get that one!"

VI

She rang the front door-bell again, but this time the doctor didn’t let her in. He looked at her through the screen door and shook his head.

"No!" he said softly. "Better go away. Don’t make any disturbance, for your own sake."

"I only want to speak to Vincent," she said, plaintively.

"Better not. Go away now. Nobody’s seen you. Vincent and I are alone in the house. I’ll never mention it. I’m your friend, you know; and you must be my friend if I need one, won’t you?"

He had heard rumours, which he didn’t quite believe, that Eddie was to marry this remarkable young woman. He knew that Eddie was capable of extraordinarily quixotic deeds, and he thought it just as well to have a friend at court, in case---- Moreover, he liked Angelica, and was well disposed toward her. The rebuffs he had received, rude as they had been, hadn’t either hurt or discouraged him. The Lord who had made him so vulnerable to the charms of the fair sex had likewise provided him with a sort of protective armour.

"Of course I’ll be your friend," said Angelica; "but I just must speak to Vincent."

"I thought you had seen him," said the doctor. "You went up-stairs."

"I forgot to tell him something very important. If you don’t want me to come, just make him come down here--please!"

She knew how to be meek enough to serve her ends.

"Please!" she said again, with all her cajolery. "Please, doctor! Just get him to come down and speak to me through the door--just for an instant!"

He hesitated.

"I want to do anything I can for you----”

"And wouldn’t you please just pay that cab?" she said. "I’m afraid he’ll wait till you do."

He had a little money on hand, as it happened, and he was proud to be able to play so gallant a rôle.

"With pleasure!" he said. "But then won’t you agree to postpone your talk with Vincent?"

"I can’t!" she cried, piteously. "Oh, do please get him down!"

"Very well," he said, with a sigh and a smile.

She waited patiently, close to the screen. Everything was quiet. The waiting chauffeur had shut off his engine and sat on the step of his cab, smoking. Far away, from some other house, came the thumping rhythm of a piano-player, and quite close to her the busy chirping of little nocturnal insects.

Before very long, Vincent’s heavy tread sounded on the stairs. His big body loomed up in the dim light of the hall, and drew near to her; but he did not unlock the door. She suppressed a smile. He was afraid of her--that big, masterful poet, forever proclaiming himself a _man_!

"Well!" he demanded, sternly, of the girl outside.

"I spoiled your letter," she said. "Eddie’ll never get it."

"What? I’ll write another----”

"You’d better not do that, Vincent. He wouldn’t be pleased with the way you’ve acted."

"Perhaps not; but it’s my duty----”

"Don’t any of them know? Not your mother or any one?"

"Of course not. I’m not the sort to tell such a thing. If it wasn’t my duty now, I wouldn’t."

"I thought it was to get money to help me out."

"Well--yes, partly; but he really ought to know, in case he still thinks of marrying you."

"No," she said quietly. "He mustn’t know. Look here, Vincent! I’ve done this one bad thing in my life. I never did anything bad before, and I never will again; but if it was known, I’d never be forgiven. I’d never get another chance--from any one; and I mean to have another chance. It’s never going to be known. I’m not going to be ruined and wasted, just for one--badness. It’s going to be wiped out, I tell you!"

"It will never be wiped out. You’ll never forget, Angelica--you’ll never, never forget me. You can’t love again. You’ve lost heaven, my girl."

She was still for a moment.

"Maybe I have," she said. "Maybe I have lost heaven. But," she went on, "I’ll get what I can, anyway. I’m going to have my chance. Vincent!"

Her voice was so low that he had to press against the screen to hear her; and her words came in an incredibly ferocious whisper, that turned his blood cold:

"If ever you tell him, Vincent, I swear to Gawd I’ll kill you!"