Angie

“ And alas, Angie, in her excitement—she had hardly known what excitemeant before—had sprung the trap, and behold, she now found herself firmly held by the left ear at the end of a long silver chain. Struggle as she might or might not, she could not escape. She couldn’t even get away. The room was filled with wails and peanuts. ”

“ At sight of his pale blue necktie, in Angie’s heart mortification had already set in. But Angie was brave, and the blood twinkled in her veins. After all, a husband was always a husband, even when he lisped. ”

“ Angie was born to be a rector's wife; to have a kind word and a smile and a good deed for everybody, to love everybody dearly, and keep everybody bright and in good spirits. It is amazing to see the change she has wrought in St. John. He was fast getting into a sort of stringent, morbid asceticism; now he is so gracious, so genial, and so entertaining,—he is like a rock, in June, all bursting out with anemones and columbines in every rift.
As to Jim and Alice, you ought to see how happy they are in consulting me about the arrangements of their future home in the Vanderheyden house. ”

“ Silence.
"You care if I wear yours to-night, Angie?"
Silence.
"Aw, Angie, if you're sick why don't you say so and not go spoilin' my evening? Gee! If a girl would listen to you she'd have a swell time of it—she would! A girl's gotta have life."
She fastened a slender gold chain with a dangling blue-enamel heart round her neck.
"Aw, I guess I'll stay home. There ain't no fun in anything, with you poutin' round like this."
Tillie appeared in the doorway, gloves in hand. Angie was still at the uncleared table; her cheek lay on the red-and-white table-cloth, and her face was turned away. ”

“ Lonely? Angie yearned and yawned for male society with the ravenous appetite of a man-eating shark. But men were shy of Angie; very shy, for men. They got rid of her quickly, as if she were a lead quarter. ”

“ Finding, however, that she could ride the harp safely, he set Angie right to work jazzing with his orchestra of Manicured Mozambique Monkeys. Angie’s luck at last had turned. But don’t get excited about it—that’s not always a good sign. Milk often turns, too, and nobody gives three cheers about it.
But it was wonderful, when she began to play, how sure-footed she was! Her harp seemed half human, half divine. As for Angie, she seemed half human, half monkey. How merrily she leaped from string to string! How her toes twinkled, as she ran from chord to chord, and vice versâ. ”

“ John as he spoke looked at Angie, and that Angie blushed a little, and that Jim Fellows twinkled a wicked glance across at Alice. Such accidents are all the while happening, just as flowers are all the while springing up by the wayside. Wherever man and woman walk hand in hand, the earth is sown thick with them. ”

“ Now lightning may seldom strike twice in the same place, but workmen often do. And Mr. Frimp was working Angie to a finish. He struck hard next day. So hard that Angie was as tender as a rump steak after treatment with a mallet. But then Angie had always been soft. By this time she was practically liquid.
Came days of divine delight to Angela Bish, in a world of almost Coney Island beauty, with a man she could paw as much as she pleased. Came magic hours when for days her lips were not removed from his. Came Love, in all its transcontinental grandeur! ”

“ Frimp, holding Angie off with one hand, “there is not another woman in the world with a face like that. Even one is improbable. Two were quite impossible. Then you must be, indeed you are, aren’t you, Miss Angela Bish?” ”

“ That embrace was a revelation of rapture to Angie, who still had an amateur rating. How beardy his beard was!—and his hands were soft and cold and moist. At first she thought they were raw oysters. She had always loved oysters, always would. She was happier than she had been since she ate her first hair sandwich. Nevertheless, we must not leave her too long in the embrace of an imperfect stranger.
“I have found you at last!” With difficulty the words came through the thick brown beard. It was he who spoke. Angie had no beard. She was far too young. ”

“ John's secret looked out of his eager eyes; and, in fact, he was asking for Angie's whole heart, while his words said only, "love me as a brother." A man, unfortunately, cannot look into his own eyes, and does not always know what they say. But a woman may look into them; and Angie, though little in person and childlike in figure, had in her the concentrated, condensed essence of womanhood—all its rapid foresight ”

“ That leadeth me,’ I wonder what the ‘cross’ will be that will lead Angie to think less of her own will and more of Christ. She is so strong-willed, so passionate, and has such a way of giving vent to the thoughts that come into her mind at the moment, without stopping to realize how they will sound. ”

“ Have you got the face to say you are not a monkey—and with that face?”
With a pitiful slob the proprietor of the Side Show of Freaks rushed out of the tent, leaving it there with Angie and the fly. For a moment the Fat Woman stopped eating, and even the fly turned pale. . . .
And Angie, poor Angie, so thusly duped, gazing sadly at her finger nails, so rich in real estate, realized too late that the way to a man’s heart is through the Beauty Parlor.
For no man could make a monkey of Angie; she hadn’t enough brains. And besides, monkeys, like poets, are born, not made. ”

“ Here’s a little pathetic bit about Angie, now we’re on the subject. Timidly, in private, ofttimes she would take down a photograph of Fairas Dougblanks, and lick it lovingly. Did he respond? Nay, he did but laugh at her—that same old lithographic grin. How cruel life can be, at times, to the working girl!
Don’t you already feel, dear reader, that you know Angela Bish? Can’t you almost see her lack of any real womanliness? ”

“ They were superlatively safe, for, having water on the knees, Angie always wore rubber boots to bed.
In the twinkling of an ear she had disguised her true self in an inveterate green kimono, and she was ready to explore the fastnesses of the hall bedroom. But Angela was proud, though practical. Would she stoop to coax him forth? Not she. She lay flat on her tum. The poor girl who had had few opportunities in her life to pull a man’s leg now eagerly embraced the opportunity and a pair of brilliant trousers. ”

“ The fact is, Miss Angie," added St. John after a silent pause, "I feel more and more what a misfortune it has been to me that I never had a sister. There are so many things where a woman's mind sees so much more clearly than a man's. I never had any intimate female friend." Here Mr. St. John began assiduously tying up little bunches of the ground-pine in the form which Angie needed for her cross, and laying them for her.
Now, if Angie had been a sophisticated young lady, familiar with the tactics of flirtation, she might have had precisely the proper thing at hand to answer this remark ”

“ Kennedy, looking down at the filthy boards. "A nice check pattern, like Mrs. Stone had——”
Angelica stopped her.
"I prayed," she said.
"Oh, my deary! I’m so glad. God’ll hear you and——”
"I prayed it would die."
"Angie!"
"You didn’t think I wanted it, did you?"
"You’ll feel different when it’s here."
"I sha’n’t. Lots of people don’t. It’s a curse to me, a curse! A baby—me with a living to earn the rest of my life! No—I’ll hate it. I do now. I’d have to hate any child with his blood in it. I hope it’ll die!"
"That’s a wicked, wicked thing to say, Angie." ”

“ She was all covered with geese flesh; but then, Angela Bish always was a goose. Anyone is who barks in her sleep.
Nineteen is a terrible age; and the longer you’re nineteen the worse it is; neither girlitude nor yet womanability. Angie hated to think about it. To think about anything at all, in fact, was apt to produce vertigo. She had but one idea—it lived in her head alone, like a cow in a tree. Its name was Get Married.
For to Angie all men were holy. Some had money and some had mastoiditis, but she felt sure she could fit right into any man’s arms and take root. ”

“ So now you know why Angela Bish, gazing so violently at the demised fireplace in her small apartment, this cold ten o’clock, felt so gizzardless and unfastened in the small of the back. The temperature was far below par, and already Angie’s hair was frozen. Only 5,000 in six weeks! Why, it would have been cheaper she thought to buy new matches and burn them herself! More fun, too; especially on a day like the aforesaid. And wouldn’t they make just as good spaghetti as the real ones growing on the sidewalk and in the gutters? No one need ever know. ”

“ CHAPTER X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE TEMPORARY HUSBAND MAN’S age is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence.” Thus saith the poet and thus saith I. The three years that Angela Bish was twenty-three were the happiest in her life. But as this didn’t happen till she was twenty-nine we can’t tell about it now. For Angie was now much younger than she was at twenty-three. She was only twenty-four.
And still Angie was unwed. She didn’t, in fact, have a single husband. But who wants one that is single, anyway? Other girls had married again and again and again. ”

“ Men, to virtuous Angela, were just a queer kind of women who wore pants and mustaches and hard hats, who smoked cigars, and, if they saw fit, married one. And yet Angie, pure as was her heart, longed wildly to be wild. Every girl does ”

“ Angelica replied. "What I did was bad enough, but I don’t think it’s wicked not to tell about it.{227} If you’d been in prison you wouldn’t go around telling every one about it, would you?"
"That isn’t the same at all, Angie. I don’t want you to tell ‘every one’; only the man you’re going to marry."
"He wouldn’t be the man I’m going to marry very long, if I tell him. He’d never speak to me again. I know Eddie! And he’s too good to lose," she added. ”

“ Angie had never thought of anything less important than marriage, if anything can be less important. But marriage had never taken Angie seriously. It had never taken her at all. It had only winked at her, like a blueheaded fireman on a hose cart, as it hurtled past.
And yet Angie wasn’t bad looking, really. Why should she be? She wasn’t really bad. Her black eyes curled naturally, and her hair was heavily plated with gold. Why then did men shun her as if she were taking
IT WAS AN UNEASY SEASICK FEELING THAT THERE WAS SOMEBODY UNDER THE BED ”

“ The trouble was that nobody seemed to like that sort of girl. They wanted one with fewer elbows, and more eyelashes—one who didn’t boil over with frenzied yearning whenever a man passed her way. No one had ever made love to Angie, no one had ever even proposed. Angie always managed to propose first. ”

“ When he returned his limousine, with a stolid Jap at the wheel, was waiting. He helped Angie into it. “Let's go, Haku,” he said.
They rolled along through the bright morning in the direction of Los Angeles. Angie put her hand on one of his, which lay idly in his lap.
“Dad, Mother was right—you're not happy.”
“Oh, now, Angie, I'm all right. Only something has happened—something I don't like. I mean—I'm an old man.”
“Nonsense! Sixty isn't old.” ”

“ The interview between Miss Phinney and the captain must have been interesting, judging by the lady's account of it.
“I never see such a man in my born days,” declared Angie disgustedly. “You couldn't get nothin' out of him. Not that he wan't pleasant and sociable; land sakes! he acted as glad to see me as if I was his rich aunt come on a visit. And he was willin' to talk, too. That's the trouble; he done ALL the talkin'. ”

“ There was also some color for this ill repute, for Angie had concealed nothing, and Chip, foolishly perhaps, had asserted her belief when it would have been better to conceal it.
The parson also, chagrined at his failure to make a convert of the girl, referred to her as “rebellious, obstinate in her ideas, and one who needed chastening.”
Her teacher, however, was her stanch friend. Aunt Comfort beamed upon her morning and night, while Angie, having provided her with home, raiment, opportunity for schooling, escort to church, and much good advice, felt that she had fulfilled her duty. ”

“ Such rich food might disagree with him, thought Angie; but she didn’t really care. One gets so used to gluttony in a large city that one takes it quite easily. And strangely, too, she felt no vertigo such as usually overcame her when she found herself in the same block with a live man. ”

“ Ill as she could afford the luxury she would have given eight dollars any day for a husband, dead or alive. If wealthy, she would have preferred him dead. But all the matrimonial agencies had given her up as too wonderfully willing. Men, they said, kindly, liked to pursue an elusive woman, like a cake of soap in a wet bathtub—even men did who hated baths. But poor Angie began to smile when a man was blocks away, and kept it up till the cops asked her if she were looking for the Home for the Feeble Minded. ”

“ They both set to work to open the tins, brew the tea, and lay out the supper.
"It does taste good," Mrs. Kennedy admitted. "Somehow, when I’m alone, I haven’t got the heart to buy things and cook them. It’s nice to see you again, Angie!"
"I dare say you’ll soon be sick of me," said Angelica. "Now, come along, mommer, put on your hat and coat!" ”

“ Jim Alden, his wife and Angie sat together in the drawing-room. When he heard the bell ring Alden stood up.
“It's poor Bill,” he said. “I'll go into the library. Hustle him right in, Angie. Don't prolong his agony.”
He had scarcely seated himself behind his massive desk when the door opened and Angie smilingly entered, followed by Bill Merrick. The younger partner in the San Marco garage wore evening clothes, and his face was as white as his hard-boiled front.
“Dad,” said Angie, “here's Bill Merrick. He wants to marry me.” ”