Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

“ 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. ”

“ 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 utterly sincere; and her beautiful sincerity, her tears, suddenly moved him to one of those tempests of remorse to which he was so prone.
"Oh, God!" he cried. "What a brute I am! I talk about giving you up, and all the time I’m watching your face for signs of love. How can I find the strength to let you go?"
"Don’t!" said Angelica, with streaming eyes. "Don’t let me go, Vincent darling! Oh, if only we have each other!"
"We can’t have each other. It’s a sin!" he said. "Don’t you see? Oh, Angelica! Beautiful Angelica! ”

“ The life of a rich person, as seen by Angelica, was a very fantasy of gaiety. It might be gaiety covering a broken heart, if you wished, but always gaiety. The proper course for such as Polly would be to plunge into a whirlpool of excitement, and just reveal, from time to time, by a shadow stealing over her face, that her heart was broken. No, decidedly she could not comprehend this woman lying there with closed eyes, brooding over her immeasurable loss.
Polly, however, through her greater sophistication and experience, and through her native shrewdness, found Angelica no puzzle. ”

“ Then I shall die. Nothing on earth can stop me. It will be the supreme moment of my life when I tell Eddie, when I see his face, and know that your shameless ends are frustrated—when I know that you are really ruined.
"He won’t do it!" she tried to reassure herself. "He’s always making threats. He wouldn’t really do anything that might harm himself."
But she knew that Vincent didn’t always act from self-interest. His passions were very apt to overwhelm him, and malice was one of the strongest of his passions. He would enjoy exquisitely telling the wretched tale to Eddie. ”

“ He had fleeting visions of certain miserable moments—visions of the triumphant and exuberant Vincent, of being taken to see Vincent graduated with honours, to hear him read a valedictory poem he had written, to see him surrounded, overwhelmed with admiration, of watching him win races, play in tennis tournaments and amateur theatricals, of hearing him sing. It seemed to him that he had spent a great part of his youth sitting beside his mother and watching Vincent show off. ”

“ I have a hard, bitterly hard task before me. I must hurt Eddie and I must hurt you. As for me, there is nothing before me but death. Deserted and ruined as I am, I long for death. Your love was all that pleased me in life. With that gone, there is nothing but a waste, bleak beyond endurance. I shall only beg Eddie to forgive my vile treachery, as I beg you to forgive my sins against you. Forget your presumptuous and wicked dream of marrying that good man. That can never be. He will forgive you, as he will forgive me, but he will never forget.
Good-by, Angelica. I give you to God!
Vincent. ”

“ Then they all went into the street, to look again at the "ANGÉLIQUE"; lingering in the October brightness, the wind blowing their skirts, their hair, making them frolicsome and gay.
"I hate work!" said Devery, stretching up her thin arms, while her purple smock whipped about her lean, straight torso in classic folds.
"What would you like to do?" asked Angelica.
"Just live—like cats, without any aim. I’d never accomplish anything. Just as soon as you do accomplish anything, you see that it wasn’t worth doing. What is?"
"Devery, you’re morbid and hypocritical," said Sillon. ”

“ I’ll just live for him! And if it’s like a dream of heaven to him," she reflected, "so it is to me. I’ve suffered, too. It couldn’t have been much worse for any one, anywhere. Oh, won’t it be heaven to be safe—to be his wife, and settled there at Buena Vista, and rich, and every one looking up to me? A motor-car of my own, and lovely{236} clothes, and a beautiful room! I’ll have Miss Sillon and Miss Devery out to see me."
She looked at herself in the mirror.
"I’m getting to look refined," she thought; "not factory any more. When I can have real grand clothes, I’ll be beautiful! ”

“ How she had seen her youth go by unnoticed, unappreciated, in that struggle for bread; of the loneliness and the frightful indignities of poverty.
"It was a mistake," she said. "The whole thing was a big mistake!"
"I don’t know," said Angelica. "Maybe you wouldn’t have been any happier with a different man."
"I’d certainly have been happier with enough to eat. If I’d listened to my parents, I’d taken a sober, hard-working——”
"Bah!" cried Angelica, with the sudden fierceness that always startled her mother. "You married the man you wanted, didn’t you? He didn’t make any money, so you were poor. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Only Angelica saw her thin fingers clench, and then open listlessly. She didn’t open her eyes or speak.
"Where?" asked his mother.
"You ask me?" he demanded. "I am a man. Pray, where should I go?"
No one was able to answer, and he frowned again.
"There’s only one destination possible," he said; "one spot on earth that draws toward it all of us who are men—a place of blood and destruction, of utter loneliness and frightful agony, where we rush to embrace that most maddening and most tender of mistresses——”
"Oh, Vincent!" cried Mrs. Russell, distressed. "Don’t talk that way before Polly!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Of course, my dear, I always did look forward to it as the greatest possible happiness, but I more or less took it for granted—the sort of happiness a fellow always expects. But now, Angelica, it seems as wonderful and beautiful and far off as heaven. I can’t even really believe that I’ll see you ever again. I’ve got so used to being a lousy, muddy, hunted animal that I can’t believe it will ever end. I don’t even long for the end; it seems so impossible. I have a damnable conviction—an obsession, I suppose they’d call it—that every one gets killed in the war. ”

“ Eddie’s studious dissertations upon the rights and wrongs of the conflict seemed to her contemptible. A man mustn’t go to war because it is his duty, but because he loves it; because he is a hero, like Vincent.
"I’m going!" he said. "I long for it. It’s the completion of a man’s life. Until he has fought and killed, a man has not lived. ”

“ No, Angelica, you shan’t leave me!"
"Vincent!" she said. "Don’t! You’ve made enough trouble. Don’t make any more."
"It’s you who are making the trouble. You’re breaking my heart, and your own too—yes, yours! You can’t deny it! Every drop of blood in your body tells you the same thing. You need me and you long for me as I need and long for you."
"Please!" she said, beginning to cry. "You know I’m going to marry Eddie."
"There’s no one else in the world but you and me. All other people, all other things, are shadows—lies—folly! You are a woman and I am a man, and we love each other. ”

“ That was the first thought that crossed her mind—how much better it would be if Eddie were away!
Mrs. Kennedy shook her head.
"It’s too bad!" she said. "Think of your poor mother!"
Eddie could find nothing to say to that.
"Suppose you should be killed?" Mrs. Kennedy went on, with a sort of severity, as if she were speaking to a person who persistently sat in a draft.
"It wouldn’t matter very much," said Eddie, with a faint smile. "Good night, Mrs. Kennedy! Be sure to take care of yourself!"
Angelica followed him out and climbed into the car beside him. ”

“ Only love me, Angelica, and care for nothing else. Oh, you could not be so base and cowardly as to leave me!"
"Oh, Vincent!" she sobbed. "You talk like a fool! You know I can’t stay here!"
"Look here!" he said. "Eddie gave me a hundred dollars. Come away with me—now—this instant! Anywhere—it doesn’t matter. Just as we are, friendless, homeless, penniless—just you and I, to make our way together in the world." ”

“ For herself she expected nothing. She knew—none better—what there is of gratitude in this world. She trusted her child, knew that she would never forget or neglect her, but she knew also that Angelica was likely to rise where she never could follow. There would be a pension, no doubt, but no real share in any future grandeur for Mrs. Kennedy, scrubwoman, janitress, and martyr. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ So Angelica, this morning, was ready to assert that servants were in all ways better than those they served, that poor people were all good and rich ones all bad. She felt a warm glow of friendliness toward the subordinate class, and a profound hostility toward their oppressors. She wanted to swagger about it, to tell Mrs. Russell, loudly, that those jolly, comprehensible people in the kitchen were vastly superior to her in every respect. ”

“ They went, not into the kitchen, as Angelica had expected, but into a nice little dining-room, to a meal served and eaten with decorum and propriety, a table daintily laid, and a breakfast beyond cavil—coffee with cream, beefsteak, cold ham, new-laid eggs, hot rolls, corn-bread, jams and marmalades, and a fine bowl of fruit.
The cook sat down behind the coffee-pot, with Angelica beside her. Presently in came the chambermaid, the German laundress, and a mild little thing known as the "second girl"; and, at last, swaggering, in his shirt-sleeves, Courtland the chauffeur. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Russell imagine I shouldn’t know the difference? Or perhaps she thought any one was good enough for me!"
Angelica was a hardy young devil, but this was too much even for her.
"I’m not—just any one," she muttered, with a quivering lip. "I’m not—dirt. I’m——”
"My dear child!" cried Polly, in sudden compunction. "Of course not! I didn’t mean to offend you in any way. I’ve nothing against you personally; it’s simply that I don’t want a companion at all. I—I can’t endure the idea of a person who is paid to amuse me—a stranger, who doesn’t know anything about me or the child I lost!" ”

“ He reddened.
"I suppose I do seem old—in your eyes," he said; "but after all, it’s only a question of how you feel; and I feel as young as you do. It takes a man of experience and maturity to appreciate a woman. Boys can’t understand, but a man of my age has learned how a woman likes to be treated."
"Well, he’s learned too late, then," said Angelica. "They’ll never give him a chance to show off what he knows." ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”