Chapter TWELVE: I

"Then why _did_ you come here?" asked Vincent.

"Because your mother asked me," said Angelica.

Vincent shook his head.

"I don’t believe you," he said. "You’ve got something up your sleeve. I know you! All your moves are calculated."

He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning.

"No!" he insisted. "It’s something to do with me. One of your damned Italian schemes!"

"It’s nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all. I don’t bother myself about you any more."

He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white linen frock and her trim hair.

It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force her to abandon this calmness, this superiority.

"You’d better bother about me!" he said. "You’d better remember that it’s only through my pity for you that you’re here. With half a word I could have you turned out of the house!"

She was imperturbable.

"I don’t think so," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about this, anyway, and it might as well be now. I don’t think Eddie would believe you, if you told him."

He laughed.

"My dearest girl, there’s a living proof!"

"No," she said, looking steadily at him. "There isn’t."

"What have you done? Murdered your baby, or sold it? That would suit your thrifty soul better. You do love money, don’t you, Angelica, better than an inconvenient baby!"

"What baby?" she inquired.

"My God!" he cried, staring at her. "The impudence of the hussy! So that’s the tack! You’re going to lie out of it? Going to deny you ever had a child?"

"And how do you know I did? You never saw it, did you? How do you know it wasn’t just a trick to get money out of you?"

That astounded him.

"Do you mean you dared to try that game on me? You little gutter-bred liar!" Suddenly he began to laugh. "But you didn’t get much, did you?" he said.

Angelica smiled grimly.

"Now then!" she said. "Let’s have it out! I’ll own up that I don’t want you to tell--that--to any one, and especially to Eddie. It would give me a lot of trouble; but it wouldn’t spoil things. I have two good reasons for not worrying about being found out. In the first place, I’d deny it all, and I’m just as likely to be believed as you. You haven’t got a name for being so awfully truthful, you know. I’d say you were making it up out of spite, because I wouldn’t have you. And then I don’t think you’d run the risk of telling Eddie. You’re too fond of yourself. You know what would happen if he didn’t believe you. He’d kick you out for telling such lies about me; and if he did believe you, he’d never forgive you. You’d never get anything more from him. No; it wouldn’t suit you a bit to get Eddie down on you!"

"So you think you’re going to manage me like a marionette? You think you can make any sort of fool out of me?"

"You’ve made a fool of yourself," she said. She wanted to stop there, but she could not resist the terrible temptation to hurt, in her turn, this man who had hurt her so brutally. She didn’t care if it were vulgar or if it were imprudent; she wanted only to hurt. "You made a regular fool of yourself," she went on. "You acted like a monkey--going down on your knees to me and raving the way you did. Do you remember?"

She was smiling a little--the subtle and cruel shadow of a smile.

"Don’t you think you were a fool? So weak--first in one of your childish rages, and then crying and whining about your sins? And then beginning----”

"Never mind the means I used," he said. "I got what I wanted. I knew how to get you, and I knew how to get rid of you when I was tired of you."

No! It was too unequal a battle; she suffered too much. Every memory of that dead love was too bitter, too shameful, too full of a strange, heart-rending pain. He had all the advantage; she couldn’t wound him as he could wound her. She was mortally stricken; but she wouldn’t give up.

"You’ll pay for all this!" she said. "I’ll be the mistress here, and if you don’t act as I please, out you’ll go! I’ll see that you’re kept in order. You won’t be able to fool Eddie when I’m here!"

He cursed her savagely.

"Go on!" she said, smiling. "I like it! I’m glad I’ve made you feel like this."

Vincent pulled himself up with a strong effort.

"Well," he said, "with all your melodramatic threats of revenge, you’ll never be able to do me much harm--not a hundredth part of the harm I’ve done you. You’re ruined, no good!"

"Bah!" she cried. "You and your talk about ruining me! _Am_ I ruined? Do I _look_ any worse? Am I worse in any way at all?"

"Yes!" he said. "You are, and you know it."

He gave her one bright, fierce, scornful look, and, vaulting over the piazza railing, walked off across the lawn.

Angelica sank back in her chair.

"Oh, Lord!" she murmured, with a sob. "That was so awful! Oh, I do wish I could go home now, without having to see him again--ever!"

She got up and went irresolutely to the door. What was she to do with herself to forget, to overcome her terrible emotion? She knew she needn’t expect to see either Mrs. Russell or the doctor before lunch-time on Sunday, and it was now only ten o’clock. She didn’t know what to do; she wanted only to be active and to be for a little time alone.

She was not at all fond of walking as a pastime, but she set out resolutely enough now, along the quiet country road, trying to fix her thoughts upon Sillon and Devery and all that frank and bright existence, and to forget this world, this house with its intolerable memories, this man, whose very existence was an outrage to her.

"I shouldn’t have come!" she told herself. "I was a fool! I guess it can’t be done. I guess you can’t--get over a--thing like that."

And in spite of herself came the unwelcome and terrible thought:

"How will it be, then, when you are married to Eddie and living in that house and seeing Vincent every day?"

She tried to escape from it. She walked faster, farther; but the walk did her no good. There was nothing in the country landscape to divert her thoughts, nothing to interest her. She had the purposeful gait of the city dweller; she wanted to get somewhere, and she wanted to be startled into attention with fascinating shop-windows, blazing signs, things and people always passing her. The quiet, all about, made the sound of her own firm step on the macadam road annoyingly loud and regular. The bright, clear sky overhead, the leaves somberly brilliant in their glorious death, filled her with impatience and loneliness. She turned back.

And the first living creature she saw on the road was Vincent, coming to meet her.

She didn’t falter. They went on, nearer and nearer to each other, steadily, rapidly; but her heart began to beat with suffocating violence.

"Maybe he’ll try to kill me," she thought. "It’s so lonely here--and he hates me so! Well, I guess that’s the best thing that could happen to me!"

But as he drew near, he held out his hand.

"Angelica!" he cried. "Oh, Angelica, _why_ did I speak that way to you? When I’ve been longing and longing----”

"Better stop!" she said. "I’d rather have you talk that way than any other."

He had turned and was walking by her side.

"Don’t you see?" he said. "All this bitterness and wrangling--it’s all part of the same thing--part of our love for each other. It’s the exasperation, the rage, of frustration. When we’re apart we suffer so, and in our suffering we blindly try to hurt each other."

"Do you mean to say you’re trying to pretend that we _love_ each other?" she cried.

"Yes," he said. "We do. We can’t stop. We’re mates. We complete each other. We’re made for each other. Even when I’m hating you so that I could wring your neck, I know in my soul it’s only a phase of love."

"Well," she said, "it’s not, with me."

But she was trembling with a mysterious and unfathomable emotion--a wicked and irresistible feeling of kinship with this man. Not love, not tenderness, not any feeling that she could name; only this conviction that they were bound up together, that they could never be strangers, that it was against nature that they should part.

"Marry Eddie, if you like," he went on. "I don’t care. You’re mine. You can be his wife; it won’t matter. You won’t love him. You’ll love _me_. I’ll be your lover!"

Her face flamed.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh! You’re the wickedest man that ever lived!"

"I’m not wicked!" he protested with earnestness. "The wickedness lies in your going to Eddie after you’ve loved me--in your faithlessness."

"My faithlessness!" she cried.

"It was you who left me," he reminded her.

She was amazed at this very characteristic turn which he had given to their talk. That he should pose as the injured one! But her pride forbade her to mention her wrongs.

"It’s no use talking," she said. "It’s all over now. The less we see of each other, the better satisfied I’ll be."

They had reached the gates of Buena Vista, and Vincent appeared unwilling to be seen with Angelica.

"I’m going farther," he said. "But, Angelica, I won’t let you go!"

II

The visit was altogether a disappointment. Angelica had imagined that it would be a sort of triumph for her, that she could at least a little exult over these "rich people"; but, after all, it was nothing but an obvious condescension on their part. She hadn’t conquered them; they had accepted her voluntarily--not reluctantly, but rather graciously.

It was a tiresome day. Mrs. Russell’s cordiality had evaporated overnight, and she was bored and yawning. She lay in a deck chair on the piazza, rustling through the Sunday papers, and talking to Angelica now and then with outrageously forced politeness. She had an air which Angelica knew of old; when one of her fits of ennui came on her, she all but pushed her bewildered guests out of the door.

But Angelica stayed until after supper. That was what she had planned to do, and what she was determined to do. She too sat on the piazza, with a Sunday paper, concealing her sullenness.

There wasn’t any supper, properly speaking. Annie was out, and Mrs. Russell said that their new custom was to help themselves from the ice-chest--a plan which might have been jolly if the people had been a little less hostile. They stood about in the immaculate kitchen with plates in their hands, Mrs. Russell yawning, the doctor subdued, Angelica severe, and Courtland embarrassed and aggrieved. Vincent wasn’t there. There was beer and cold chicken and ham and salad and tarts.

"And coffee if you want to make it," Mrs. Russell said; but no one did.

After this, Angelica took her leave. Courtland was suddenly deprived of his secretarial dignity and ordered peremptorily to drive her to the station, which he did in complete silence. He never ceased to resent this seesawing, by which he was one moment the promising young man being trained as a secretary and treated with immense, if not maternal, indulgence, and the next minute was a servant and a rather rudely treated one. He endured it with wonder and disgust.

Angelica was able now to gratify a long-cherished desire--she was traveling in the style which she had so much admired in suburban ladies. It was, of course, out of the question to expect Courtland to help her on the train. Nothing in the world could have induced him to do so; but at least she was able to alight from a motor, to buy three or four magazines and a box of sweets, and enter the train, thus burdened, with the proper air. She sat down near a window and opened a magazine.

A hand covered the page.

"Angie!" said a voice, and she looked up into Vincent’s laughing face.

She couldn’t repress a smile herself--a sudden throb of joy; that exquisite feeling of comradeship again.

"Are you glad to see me?" he asked.

"No. Why should I be?"

"You can spare this one little evening for me," he said, "no matter what wonderfully upright sort of future you’re planning. It won’t hurt any one. I’ll be irreproachable. I won’t make any demands, any requests. I won’t evoke old memories. Before we say good-by, let me have a few hours with the old Angelica--my beloved, reckless, adorable Angelica. Just to make a memory!"

"No; we better not!" she said.

It might well, she thought, make a memory which would last far, far too long.

"Why not, Angelica?"

"I don’t want to, Vincent, that’s all."

He didn’t urge her; he sat quietly beside her, suddenly dejected. The train ran on past dark woods, wide fields, lighted houses; stopped at lively little stations with their lines of motors--that world of bourgeois smartness which Angelica so admired. It turned her thoughts again to Eddie, and to all that she would gain through Eddie. _She_ would be coming home to one of these little stations, met by her own motor, to be whirled off to her own lovely home, with servants to wait on her, with dignity, security, peace!

And a sudden disarming pity for Vincent rushed over her--poor Vincent who had nothing to give. She glanced cautiously at his face, gloomy, perplexed, his eyes clouded with a sort of hungry dissatisfaction. He couldn’t help but look bold all the time, but even that boldness was pitiful to her who knew his weakness, his faults, his vices, his follies. She had never felt so sorry for any one else.

"Walk home with me, if you like," she said.

They came out into the bewildering brilliance of Forty-Second Street side by side, and began walking east, slowly, in that astonishing hurly-burly of crowds, of glittering signs winking, flashing, pouring out into the night sky a flood of radiance, of hurrying taxis, immense motor-cars, trolleys, strings of fiercely lighted little shops, the windows filled with inane and shamelessly overpriced trinkets and souvenirs; noise, blinding light, crowds and crowds of people.

"Let’s turn down Madison Avenue," suggested Vincent.

"That’s out of my way."

"But you’re in no hurry. Please!"

She consented; she had no particular reason for not doing so. He took her arm as they turned into the darker, quieter street, and went on with her so, like a young lover, his head turned toward her, listening eagerly, watching her face.

"Now tell me about it," he said. "Tell me what it is that’s made you change so."

She didn’t answer.

"It was you, and all the dreadful pain you caused me," she thought, but without bitterness; with only immeasurable sadness and regret that it should have been so.

"I’ve been working with two very nice girls," she said aloud. "They’ve helped me, and I’ve learned a lot from them."

He asked her a great many questions. He was really interested in it all, and in the effect of this commercial adventure upon her crude soul. It was the first time any one had shown a real interest in her heart and her mind. He didn’t care so much about what she _did_, as what she _felt_. She could not help talking freely, with a sense of great relief. All the observation of her shrewd and intelligent mind, so friendless and so little understood, came to her lips now--not the naïve egoism of a young girl in love, but the wit, the vigour, the soundness of a woman of character.

They turned into Fifth Avenue at Twenty-Third Street, and went on down-town, for Angelica had promised to show Vincent her millinery shop.

"There!" she said with pride.

They stood in the silent and deserted square, looking at the house, at the peacock, at the windows where in the light of the street-lamp the purple letters of "Angélique" might be deciphered.

A clock struck eleven.

"I’ll have to hurry home," said Angelica. "Mother’ll worry."

She was reluctant, for she had been happy in her fool’s paradise. Of course it couldn’t last, this friendly communion with the man she found above all other people in the world supremely interesting, supremely attractive. She knew all about him, she didn’t trust him; but it was something just to be with him, so happily, for this one last time.

All the old magic came flowing back into her heart, there in the tiny park, with the dead leaves blowing down the paths, and a sharp white moon to be seen now and then as the wispy clouds drew across it. That yearning for his sympathy, for his love, positively tormented her. She longed and longed to draw near to him, to feel his arm about her.

As always, his instinct warned him of his moment. His hold on her arm tightened.

"Don’t go!" he said. "Let’s have just this hour! Angelica, imagine--if we had a little room here, some little place all to ourselves! And I’d wait at home for you, and write and dream about you, and long for you all day, while you sat there in your shop, bending your dear, dark head over your work. You’d work for me, until I grew famous--and then I’d make a queen--an empress of you, my beloved woman!"

"Don’t begin that!" she entreated. "We’ve had such a nice time!"

"But think of it! Think of sitting together in the dark, in our poor little room, our arms about each other, weary, harassed, finding our joy and consolation only in those hours together--living just for that! Oh, Angelica! Angelica! Hasn’t this long, weary parting been just an interlude? Can’t we begin again? Take me back! Forgive me and love me and make me over. Make me what you wish. Come back to me! Come back to me! I need you so terribly!"

"Don’t!" she begged again, profoundly troubled. "I don’t know how to tell you--how to make you see how useless it is. I can’t--I don’t feel as I used to. All that is dead. I’ll never care that way for any one again."

"For me you can!"

She shook her head dumbly.

"Vincent, you’ve done me enough harm. For God’s sake, let me alone! Now, just when I’m struggling up out of the mud, you come and try to pull me down. Right here, before this very house----”

She stopped, unable to explain, even to suggest to him all that Fine Feathers meant to her, how it was her honour, her dignity, friendship, self-respect, ambition.

"You see how I’ve changed," she said, "and how I’ve improved. Why don’t you try to help me?"

"Changed?" he said, stooping to look into her face. "Not a bit of it, Angelica! You’re nothing but my Angelica, my beloved girl, the mother of my child!"

"Oh, stop!" she cried. "Oh, it’s too horrible!"

"It’s too horrible that you should repudiate me. Angelica, let us take back our child and start again, a decent, honest life. You talk of improving yourself; why don’t you think of improving me--of helping your poor little child? Let’s help each other!"

"You wouldn’t do it! You know you wouldn’t!" she cried. The tears were rolling down her cheeks unnoticed. "You’ve never even seen the poor little thing, or asked about him."

"But I’ve thought of him! I’ve been haunted by that little son--yours and mine. Oh, Angelica, don’t, don’t for God’s sake, turn away from me! Polly will set me free, and I’ll marry you and we will have our child again."

She felt as if she were sinking in a whirlpool. An intolerable pity for this man confused her, overwhelmed her.

Her troubled glance, leaving his beloved face, fell upon the ridiculous peacock with its jaunty little paper hat--fit image for her nightmare; and a little trickle of cold, sane daylight began to filter into her darkened and suffering mind.

"Angelica! Let us begin again, you and I and our little son----”

"No!" she cried in a ringing voice. "No!"

His face fell. He looked at her, startled.

"No!" she said again. "I’d never believe you--not a word you said. I won’t forget! I’ll _never_ forget, and I’ll never forgive what you’ve done. You’re a liar! You’re a beast! I hate you!"