Chapter ELEVEN

So behold Angelica returning to Buena Vista in this quite new rôle, coming up from the station in a taxi, if you please. She was thinking all the way of her last visit, of that bedraggled and desperate creature that had been herself.

"I’ve won!" she said. "I’ve won! All alone--everything against me--and still I’ve won!"

She stepped out, and paid the driver with perfect assurance. She wasn’t really poor now, and she could, with perfect propriety, afford a cab now and then.

She knew that she was late, but she was conscious of blamelessness. There had been a difficult customer who couldn’t be left, and who, properly handled, had bought two outrageously dear hats. She was, in fact, very proud of being a business woman who couldn’t help being late.

She had expected that the family would be at dinner, for she couldn’t quite believe that they would wait for her. She didn’t expect anything more than decent tolerance; she didn’t in the least resent the trace of condescension in Mrs. Russell’s manner. She couldn’t fool Mrs. Russell with conservative Scottish grandparents or an old-fashioned mother. Mrs. Russell _knew_.

There was no light in the dining-room, so she went up on to the piazza, and looked into the library window, for there was a blaze of light coming from there.

And there they all were, sitting about a table, playing cards. Unconsciously, involuntarily, her eyes sought and rested upon Vincent first of all. He sat in profile toward her, just the same as ever, handsome, bold, with his look of vigour and zest. All that had happened was nothing but an episode to him; hadn’t even ruffled him. She couldn’t bear to look at him any more.

Opposite him sat the doctor; facing the window, Mrs. Russell, and, with his back to Angelica, a strange young man in a tweed suit very much too big for him. Wasn’t it a suit Vincent used to wear?

"Now who’s that?" she wondered.

Suddenly Mrs. Russell flung down her cards with a slap.

"Oh, you chump!" she cried. "It’s no use. You’ll never be any good!"

An aggrieved voice, which Angelica recognized at once, answered:

"Well, what of it? I never said I wanted to play, did I? You said I had to learn, to make it four. Well, then, I can’t, and that’s all there is to it!"

"Courtland in there, playing cards with them!" thought Angelica. "What would Eddie say?"

The doctor got up and stretched.

"What of dinner, Marian?" he asked his wife airily.

"I’ll see," she said, and went briskly out of the room.

Angelica rang the bell, and Courtland came to admit her.

"Hello!" he said. "What do _you_ want?"

She repressed the too ready answer that was at the tip of her tongue, and said, with dignity:

"Mrs. Russell expects me."

"Well, she’s in the kitchen," said Courtland, in conversational tone. "She helps Annie now while----”

"All right!" said Angelica. "I’ll go down."

She had reached the dark passage at the foot of the kitchen stairs when a hand on her shoulder arrested her.

"Angelica!" said Vincent’s voice. "What are you doing here? Go away! I’ll send you money--I swear I will! Only go away! You won’t get anything out of me by hounding me this way."

"I didn’t come here to get money out of you. I don’t expect anything more from you."

He couldn’t see her face, but her voice was steady and quiet. He grew yet more alarmed.

"What did you come here for? What do you want?"

"It’s none of your business," she said slowly.

She was struggling with a terrible fury against him--this careless young man who was living so well without her. She longed to let herself go, to turn on him with a torrent of abuse, to swear at him, shriek at him; but she must not. She dared not antagonize him. He, too, had a temper, and, if he lost it, God only knew what irreparable harm he might do her. She had now, and always, either to propitiate him or to frighten him; by some means to make him hold his tongue.

Vincent’s arm tightened on Angelica’s shoulder.

"You’ve got to tell me!" he said. "I’ll have no more of your damned nonsense. What do you want here?"

She made no answer, but stood motionless in the dark.

"Tell me!" he said fiercely. "What do you expect to get here?"

Still she was silent.

"You answer me," he hissed, "or I’ll----”

She laughed.

"You’ll _what_?" she asked contemptuously. "Throw me down the stairs? Choke me?"

He released her.

"You damnable woman!" he said. "You’ve some outrageous scheme, I know; but you’ll get nothing out of me. Nothing! Not a penny!"

"I don’t suppose I will!" she said, half to herself, as she turned away and went on into the kitchen.

There, on a high stool before the table, sat Mrs. Russell, wearing an apron and, unaccountably, a little housemaid’s cap. Her great feet were twisted about the stool, and she was bent forward intently over the salad she was mixing. Annie was at the stove, stirring, tasting, lifting covers, peering into the oven, and listening, with an air of complete incredulity, to her mistress.

"My _dear_!" cried Mrs. Russell, catching sight of Angelica. "How nice!"

She had, to tell the truth, quite forgotten that she had invited her.

"I’m sorry I’m late----” Angelica began.

"It doesn’t matter. We’re late too," she answered. "I help Annie every evening now. We haven’t any cook--only Annie and that nice little Molly, and a woman who comes in by the day. War economy! But I really rather like it, and Annie has taught me so much!"

She looked at Annie with an ingratiating smile--of which Annie took not the slightest notice.

"After all," she went on, "I suppose we really ought to know how to cook--all of us women, shouldn’t we? The men do their part, so nobly, going off to fight and----” She stopped, suddenly bored with her subject. "So you see!" she said inanely, smiling again.

Angelica looked about the enormous kitchen, so spotless, so brightly lit, so marvelously equipped.

"It’s a nice place to work in," she said. "See here! Won’t you teach me? I’d like to learn."

Annie stood looking at her with a highly displeased expression. She didn’t understand this return of Angelica, and Mrs. Russell’s great friendliness toward her; and no one explained anything.

"Of course we will, my dear! You ought to learn! Let’s see. What can she do, Annie?"

"Nothing, ma’am," said Annie firmly. "It’s all done and ready to serve."

"Nonsense! It isn’t. I know it isn’t. Let’s see. My dear, I’ll show you how to do a spinach _purée_. It’s delicious, and frightfully good for the blood. We’re all eating spinach almost every night now. Watch me!"

Angelica was hungry and weary, but she profited to the full by this novel lesson in her great course of preparation. She watched, she questioned, she tried her own hand at it.

Mrs. Russell praised her.

"You’re very quick!" she said. "Now we’ll help Annie to put the dishes on the dumb-waiter; then we’ve just half a minute to wash and brush up."

She led the way to her room, lively, cheerful, almost affectionate; and although Angelica knew how very uncertain and shallow this good-humour was, nevertheless it helped her.

She had decided upon a step which dismayed her. She had decided to talk to Vincent--to reason with him, to threaten or to cajole him. He was the one danger, the one person she had to dread. No matter how carefully she went, he could in an instant destroy all that she had built up; he could really ruin her. She had been trying for a long time to devise some method for ensuring his silence, for gaining a little security. She had begun and torn up more than one letter. Now that they were once more under the same roof, she felt it a unique opportunity which she was too brave to shirk. She couldn’t go on, never feeling sure, never knowing what he would do, what he had done.

She was startled to find Courtland sitting at the dinner-table; but as the others took him as a matter of course, she showed no surprise, although she was not at all pleased to be seated next to him.

The doctor had an evening paper.

"The news," he said, "isn’t good--not in Eddie’s section. He’s going to be just in the center of the line to oppose the next big drive."

"Fiddlesticks!" said his wife. "You don’t know where he is, or where the next drive is coming. Only the _stuff_ you read in the papers!"

"I use my brains, and I put two and two together----”

"He doesn’t know himself where he is," said Vincent. "Most of the chaps don’t. They’re like driven sheep."

"Of course they know!" said Mrs. Russell. "You don’t suppose they’re blindfolded, do you?"

A loud and violent discussion followed, all three of them talking at once, under cover of which Angelica addressed her neighbour.

"What are you doing up here?"

"Just what you’re doin’," replied Courtland. "Eatin’ my dinner."

She had no opportunity to say more to him, for Mrs. Russell peremptorily ordered him to fetch the car, and, after gulping down his pudding in sullen resentment, he left the table.

"I’ve got to take Vincent to the Country Club," she said. "He’s going to sing ‘Sambre et Meuse’ at an entertainment there. My dear, you should hear him. Of course we’re all supposed to be strictly neutral, and all that, but up there, at the club, the pretense is frightfully thin. All really decent people, you know. We have a dear little wounded Belgian officer who’s going to speak; but I’ve heard him simply hundreds of times, so I won’t wait. I’ll be home in half an hour. Make yourself at home, won’t you?"

Angelica reassured her light-hearted hostess that she would be altogether happy and comfortable until her return, and, after the motor-car had gone, wandered back into the library, looking for a book.

But she couldn’t read. She began to contemplate her coming interview with Vincent.

She could not trust him for an instant. She never knew when he would be moved to tell the entire story to Eddie, or to his mother, or to any one else. If he were attacked by one of his fits of remorse, he would be almost certain to do so. She held him only by a threat made in a mood of supreme passion, which she could never recapture.

Despair crept over her. This step along her stony path seemed too difficult. She had no violent emotion to carry her forward now; no impetus remained from her former terrific onslaughts. She had simply to state a request--a request of the utmost importance to all her future life; and she felt quite sure it would be refused.

Her very unpleasant reverie was broken into by the entrance of the doctor. He came, he said, to apologize on behalf of Mrs. Russell for her lateness. She wouldn’t be able, after all, to escape the entertainment. He had brought Angelica a large, marvelous box of sweets, which he offered with a sort of subdued gallantry. She accepted it carelessly, and for a while listened to his talk.

He had quite changed his tune now. He couldn’t keep an irrepressible jauntiness, or a sort of airy flattery, from his conversation with so pretty a girl; but he was deferential and decorous. He and his wife were both entirely resigned to the idea of Angelica as Eddie’s wife. If Eddie had to be married, one woman was as good as another, and Angelica was perhaps a little better than a possible alternative. At least they knew her, and they had, in a way, a sort of advantage with her.

"I guess I’ll go to bed," said Angelica, who had been politely waiting for a pause in the doctor’s war talk. "I’m tired!"

She went up to the room she had occupied before, prepared to go to bed at once; but she found the room just as she had left it, all that long, long time ago--bare, dismal, the bed covered with a sheet, the rugs taken up, leaving the floor bare, the curtains gone, dark shades pulled down.

An angry flush spread over her face. At first she believed that she saw here a deliberate insult; but with reflection she became satisfied that it was not intentional. It was simply another evidence of Mrs. Russell’s magnificent indifference. She sat down in that same little chair by the window, where she used to sit a year ago. A year ago!

She had plenty to think of, there, until Mrs. Russell came back.

Mrs. Russell at once began to blame Annie for having forgotten to attend to the room, but in a subdued voice, because she didn’t dare to let Annie hear this wickedly unjust censure. The maid hadn’t forgotten to get the room ready; it hadn’t been mentioned to her.

She was summoned.

"Annie," said Mrs. Russell, as if to share the blame, "here’s Miss Kennedy’s room not ready! I’ll help you with it."

All she really contributed was her curious ability to create an atmosphere of bustle and cheerful confusion--the quality which had won her so much praise for her war work. When at last the room was ready, she had become frightfully bored with it and with Angelica, and was in a reckless hurry to be off.

"Good night!" she cried cheerfully. "Ring, if we’ve forgotten anything!"

And she vanished, leaving Angelica alone with Annie, who was just shaking a final pillow into its embroidered linen case. She set it straight on the bed, and turned, grim as death.

"Well!" she said. "I never expected to see _you_ back here, that I didn’t!"

She couldn’t resist saying that, although she knew it to be improper. She was too deeply affronted by the presence of this creature here, and by the necessity for waiting upon her.

Angelica wasn’t offended.

"No," she said, "I dare say you didn’t; but you’ll be still more surprised when I tell you I’m going to marry Mr. Eddie."

"Oh, are you!" said Annie politely, with raised eyebrows.

"And coming back here to live," Angelica went on, with a rather pitiful effort to win some sort of friendly interest.

"I sha’n’t be here long myself. I’m going to be married, too."

"That’s nice! When? Tell me about it."

"It wouldn’t interest _you_."

"Yes, it would. Is he the same one?"

"Of course he is! I’m not one to be chopping and changing. Once I’ve given my word, I stand by it."

This, very obscurely, was intended as a reproach to Angelica, and Angelica, though not conscious of any breach of faith in such a connection, felt none the less guilty before the righteous Annie.

"I know," she said. "Well, I hope you’ll be happy, Annie."

"I dare say I will. It can’t be too soon for me. The way things have changed here--I never saw the like!"

"How have they changed?" Angelica inquired.

"There’s that Courtland sitting up-stairs at the table with them, and me expected to wait on him. Her ‘war secretary,’ she calls him. He’s no more a secretary than I am. Secretaries write your letters for you, but Courtland--_he_ couldn’t write letters for any one. He’s _ignorant_. And him to be set up above me, like this! And my young man’s a sergeant already. Why isn’t Courtland in the army, like his betters? Well!" she added piously. "They may be exalted above me now, but the time will come when they’ll all be cast down so far below me I can’t even so much as see them!"

And this meant Angelica, too. She was among the black sheep, the unworthy and the wicked, temporarily set above the righteous, only to be hurled down and utterly destroyed. Annie bade her good night with dour relish, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious triumph. She knew how it would be with this Angelica!