Chapter THREE: I

Angelica was ready by nine o’clock the next morning, with a bag in which was packed every decent thing she owned. The people in the flat above had been astounded by the sound of Mrs. Kennedy’s sewing-machine at two o’clock in the morning, for she and her child had sat up nearly all night, making ready. It was a melancholy, a heart-breaking work for the poor mother. _She_ wasn’t going away. She had no adventure to excite her, no ambition, no hope, nothing but the bitter certainty of loneliness and poverty. She tried to be--not cheerful, for that she never was, but calm and reasonable, while all the time she had before her the spectre of the evening when she would come home to empty rooms, to eat her supper alone. A groan escaped her, which she tried to turn into a sigh.

"It’s the very, very worst that can happen to any one in this wide world," she thought; "to be left all alone, and getting old!"

She hadn’t been able to keep her eyes from Angelica, sitting bent over a blouse she was finishing, with her hair, just washed, hanging down her back, wet, straight, and heavy, drying about her face in a sort of mist of feathery tendrils.

Angelica was glad, she was delighted to go. She certainly loved her mother, but a separation of a week, a month, a year, didn’t trouble her, didn’t cause her a pang. She knew in theory that life is terribly uncertain, but she didn’t really believe it. She felt sure that no matter where she went, or how long she stayed, her mother would be there at home, absolutely unchanged.

She was the child who has never been burnt, sitting before the glowing fire. Having as yet never lost anything, she didn’t value anything. In that enticing future toward which she looked, she expected to live once more with her mother. In the meantime it didn’t matter.

"Well!" said Mrs. Kennedy. "I’ll have no one to go to the movies with now."

"You wait!" said Angelica. "One of these days I’ll take you to a _real_ show, mommer!"

Already she saw herself the benefactor. She had forgotten, or perhaps didn’t even know, how limitlessly she had received.

They went to bed in the early morning, and Angelica slept, while her weary mother lay awake at her side in the narrow bed they shared. The room was too dark for her to see anything, but she could hear the breathing of her dear child, and with a furtive hand feel that soft, slippery hair, still fresh and redolent of white soap.

"I’ve got to expect it!" she told herself over and over. "I’ve got to expect it! They all go, for one reason or another. We’ve got to make up our minds to lose everything in this world."

She got up again at six, and set to work cleaning her little flat from end to end, so that it should be ready for Mrs. Russell’s inspection. Angelica insisted upon helping her.

"Oh, mommer, for Gawd’s sake! I won’t get tired, and I won’t get dirty. She won’t come before ten, anyway--prob’ly later. I bet she has her breakfast in bed!"

"She must be a queer one," said Mrs. Kennedy, "from what you tell me."

"A freak! I wish you could have seen her--with pants on and her hair coming down her back. And there’s something mean about her, too. I don’t like her--telling them all they’d get their turns, and then putting them out, that way. And look at what she’s paying me!"

"Angie, if you’re going to work for her," said Mrs. Kennedy gravely, "you’d better hold your tongue about her. If you can take her money----”

"I only wish I had a chance to take a little more of it! I don’t see how you’ll get along, mommer."

"Oh, I’ll manage," said her mother.

She might have mentioned that she had supported her child for many, many years, and that even after Angelica had become a wage-earner she had taken very little of the girl’s money--only what had to be used to conform to Angie’s ever more and more exacting standards.

II

At ten o’clock Mrs. Russell hadn’t come yet, and Mrs. Kennedy couldn’t wait any longer. She was obliged to go out and scrub the halls. She had her best black silk blouse on, too, and she was dreadfully nervous about splashing. Every half-hour or so she ran down-stairs to her child, to see if the lady hadn’t come yet, and found Angelica scornfully waiting, reading a magazine.

At one o’clock they sat down in the kitchen to a hurried meal of tea and bread, ready to hide all traces of it at the first sound of the door-bell.

"I promised Mrs. Schell I’d do her kitchen floor this afternoon," said Mrs. Kennedy, with an anxious frown. "What do you want me to do about it, Angie?"

"Go ahead! If she comes, I’ll run up and get you."

She spent a miserable afternoon. She scrubbed with conscientious vigour, but with an absent mind. She thought the same thoughts over and over--first, how disappointed Angie would be if the lady never came; then that perhaps, after all, she wasn’t going to lose her.

"Maybe we’ll have supper together again this very night!" she would think hopefully.

Upon the heels of her hope came the certainty that if Angelica didn’t go away now, she would later. It was sure to come; no chance whatever that such a girl would stop there, underground, with her.

When she came down again for the last time, at six o’clock, Angelica was in the little parlour, now black as the pit, and she was so very still that her mother felt disturbed. She was afraid that the poor, proud thing was grieving, and she went in to her, noiseless in her thin old shoes; but when she had lighted the lamp, she saw that Angelica was sleeping, stretched out limp and childish in the big rocking-chair.

Mrs. Kennedy hurried away breathlessly to the grocer’s, to buy a little treat; for weren’t they going to have supper together again after all?

III

It was eight o’clock when Mrs. Russell came. Finding the door unlocked, she walked in without permission, as one is surely privileged to do in so mean a home. They were in the kitchen, with the water running in the sink, and they didn’t hear her come down the hall, didn’t know that she was standing in the door, watching them.

"Well, are you ready?" she demanded.

They both turned and regarded her with just the same look--a fine indignation, a stern surprise--Mrs. Kennedy with both hands plunged in the dish-pan, Angelica holding a dish which she was wiping. They resented the intrusion, and they showed it.

"Yes, I’m ready," said Angelica slowly.

She stood regarding Mrs. Russell with a steady, level gaze, not devoid of insolence, for she knew no other way to meet the careless condescension of that lady.

Although she was young and lovely, and in spite of Mrs. Russell’s slovenliness and egotism, Angelica felt her own inferiority. She hadn’t what Mrs. Russell had--Mrs. Russell standing there in a dreadful green tweed suit, with a mannish sort of felt hat on her wild red hair, with her great flat feet and her mechanical smile. That manner, and above all, that voice, clear, cool, soft! Quite unconsciously, Angelica had a profound Latin admiration for _sangfroid_. She couldn’t be coolly self-possessed; couldn’t be anything more or less than rude.

"Get your things on, then, won’t you please?" said Mrs. Russell.

Angelica was on the point of saying that she would first finish the task in hand, but her mother pushed her gently away.

"Go along!" she said.

There was but one course open to a proud soul. It was essential to keep Mrs. Russell waiting as long as possible, and that Angelica did. She could hear voices from the parlour--her mother’s, subdued and monotonous, and Mrs. Russell’s, light, gay, and sweet. While she dawdled before the mirror there came a new voice, shouting reproachfully through the open front door:

"Now then, Mrs. Russell! It’s late!"

Angelica looked out and saw in their little hall a chauffeur in livery. Mrs. Russell was also looking out.

"Very well, Courtland," she said soothingly. "Come in and get the young lady’s luggage. Where is it, please?"

"Here!" said Angelica, pointing to a little pasteboard suitcase, painted to look like leather.

The chauffeur regarded it in silence for a minute; then he picked it up disdainfully, swung it in the air to emphasize its lightness, and went out.

"Don’t be all night!" he called back.

His effrontery was amazing to Mrs. Kennedy. She couldn’t help but feel suspicious of a lady whose servants spoke to her so disrespectfully.

Mrs. Russell, instead of being angry, seemed alarmed.

"Make haste, please!" she said. "It’s late."

She beckoned to Angelica, who followed at her heels. They went out, and the front door closed after them.

Mrs. Kennedy sank into the rocking-chair and put her head down on her folded arms, on the table. She had an odd and horrible sensation, such as a fast-walking man might feel at coming suddenly up against a high wall. She was at the end--the end of something. She was like a tired, mercilessly driven horse whose rider has jumped off. Those twenty years of drudgery, the struggle to "keep up a home," the debts so painfully met, the persecutions and indignities endured, all for that girl who had gone off with only a smile over her shoulder! She groaned--a sound which startled even herself. It was all so wasted, so utterly done with now!

Then like a whirlwind came Angelica back again, seized the little woman in her arms, and strained her against her thin body.

"Mommer!" she cried with a sob. "Dear, dear darling old mommer! I had to come--just to say good-by alone. Don’t be sad, deary mommer, please! It’s only for a little while, you know!"

"No!" said her mother’s heart. "You will never come back. I have lost you!"