Just before the close of the argument two other young men had come in, but Angela never learned their vocation. Furthermore she was interested in observing the young teacher of defective children. She was coloured; small and well-built, exquisitely dressed, and of a beautiful tint, all bronze and soft red, “like Jinny” thought Angela, a little astonished to observe how the warmth of her appearance overshadowed or rather overshone everyone else in the room. The tawniness even of Miss Burden’s hair went dead beside her. The only thing to cope with her richness was the classical beauty of the Russian poet’s features. He seemed unable to keep his eyes away from her; was punctiliously attentive to her wants and leaned forward several times during the long political discussion to whisper low spoken and apparently amusing comments. The young woman, perfectly at ease in her deep chair, received his attentions with a slightly detached, amused objectivity; an objectivity which she had for everyone in the room including Angela at whom she had glanced once rather sharply. But the detachment of her manner was totally different from Miss Powell’s sensitive dignity. Totally without self-consciousness she let her warm dark eyes travel from one face to another. She might have been saying: “How far you are away from the things that really matter, birth and death and hard, hard work!” The Russian poet must have realized this, for once Angela heard him say, leaning forward, “You think all this is futile, don’t you?”
Martha motioned for her to wait a moment until most of the other guests had gone, then she came forward with one of the two young men who had come in without introduction. “This is Roger Fielding, he’ll see you home.”
He was tall and blond with deeply blue eyes which smiled on her as he said: “Would you like to walk or ride? It’s raining a little.”
Angela said she preferred to walk.
“All right then. Here, Starr, come across with that umbrella I lent you.”
They went out into the thin, tingling rain of late Autumn. “I was surprised,” said Roger, “to see you there with the high-brows. I didn’t think you looked that way when I met you at Paulette’s.”
“We’ve met before? I’m—I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to remember you.”
“No I don’t suppose you would. Well, we didn’t exactly meet; I saw you one day at Paulette’s. That’s why I came this evening, because I heard you’d be here and I’d get a chance to see you again; but I was surprised because you didn’t seem like that mouthy bunch. They make me tired taking life so plaguey seriously. Martha and her old high-brows!” he ended ungratefully.
Angela, a little taken back with the frankness of his desire to meet her, said she hadn’t thought they were serious.
“Not think them serious? Great Scott! what kind of talk are you used to? You look as though you’d just come out of a Sunday-school! Do you prefer bible texts?”
But she could not explain to him the picture which she saw in her mind of men and women at her father’s home in Opal Street,—the men talking painfully of rents, of lynchings, of building and loan associations; the women of child-bearing and the sacrifices which must be made to put Gertie through school, to educate Howard. “I don’t mean for any of my children to go through what I did.” And in later years in her own first maturity, young Henson and Sawyer and the others in the tiny parlour talking of ideals and inevitable sacrifices for the race; the burnt-offering of individualism for some dimly glimpsed racial whole. This was seriousness, even sombreness, with a great sickening vital upthrust of reality. But these other topics, peaks of civilization superimposed upon peaks, she found, even though interesting, utterly futile.
They had reached the little hall now. “We must talk loud,” she whispered.
“Why?” he asked, speaking obediently very loud indeed.
“Wait a minute; no, she’s not there. The girl above me meets her young man here at night and just as sure as I forget her and come in quietly there they are in the midst of a kiss. I suspect she hates me.”
In his young male sophistication he thought at first that this was a lead, but her air was so gay and so childishly guileless that he changed his opinion. “Though no girl in this day and time could be as simple and innocent as she looks.”
But aloud he said, “Of course she doesn’t hate you, nobody could do that. I assure you I don’t.”
She thought his gallantries very amusing. “Well, it relieves me to hear you say so; that’ll keep me from worrying for one night at least.” And withdrawing her hand from his retaining grasp, she ran upstairs.
A letter from Virginia lay inside the door. Getting ready for bed she read it in bits.
“Angela darling, wouldn’t it be fun if I were to come to New York too? Of course you’d keep on living in your Village and I’d live in famous Harlem, but we’d both be in the same city, which is where two only sisters ought to be,—dumb I calls it to live apart the way we do. The man out at the U. of P. is crazy to have me take an exam. in music; it would be easy enough and much better pay than I get here. So there are two perfectly good reasons why I should come. He thinks I’ll do him credit and I want to get away from this town.”
Then between the lines the real reason betrayed itself:
“I do have such awful luck. Edna Brown had a party out in Merion not long ago and Matthew took me. And you know what riding in a train can do for me,—well that night of all nights I had to become car-sick. Matthew had been so nice. He came to see me the next morning, but, child, he’s never been near me from that day to this. I suppose a man can’t get over a girl’s being such a sight as I was that night. Can’t things be too hateful!”
Angela couldn’t help murmuring: “Imagine anyone wanting old Matthew so badly that she’s willing to break up her home to get over him. Now why couldn’t he have liked her instead of me?”
And pondering on such mysteries she crept into bed. But she fell to thinking again about the evening she had spent with Martha and the people whom she had met. And again it seemed to her that they represented an almost alarmingly unnecessary class. If any great social cataclysm were to happen they would surely be the first to be swept out of the running. Only the real people could survive. Even Paulette’s mode of living, it seemed to her, had something more forthright and vital.
Chapter IV
IN the morning she was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. The instrument was an extravagance, for, save for Anthony’s, she received few calls and made practically none. But the woman from whom she had taken the apartment had persuaded her into keeping it. Still, as she had never indicated the change in ownership, its value was small. She lay there for a moment blinking drowsily in the thin but intensely gold sunshine of December thinking that her ears were deceiving her.
Finally she reached out a rosy arm, curled it about the edge of the door jamb and, reaching the little table that stood in the other room just on the other side of the door, set the instrument up in her bed. The apartment was so small that almost everything was within arm’s reach.
“Hello,” she murmured sleepily.
“Oh, I thought you must be there; I said to myself: ‘She couldn’t have left home this early’. What time do you go to that famous drawing class of yours anyway?”
“I beg your pardon! Who is this speaking, please?”
“Why, Roger, of course,—Roger Fielding. Don’t say you’ve forgotten me already. This is Angèle, isn’t it?”
“Yes this is Angèle Mory speaking, Mr. Fielding.”
“Did I offend your Highness, Miss Mory? Will you have lunch with me to-day and let me tell you how sorry I am?”
But she was lunching with Anthony. “I have an engagement.”
“Of course you have. Well, will you have tea, dinner, supper to-day,—breakfast and all the other meals to-morrow and so on for a week? You might just as well say ‘yes’ because I’ll pester you till you do.”
“I’m engaged for tea, too, but I’m not really as popular as I sound. That’s my last engagement for this week; I’ll be glad to have dinner with yo
u.”
“Right-oh! Now don’t go back and finish up that beauty sleep, for if you’re any more charming than you were last night I won’t answer for myself. I’ll be there at eight.”
Inexperienced as she was, she was still able to recognize his method as a bit florid; she preferred, on the whole, Anthony’s manner at lunch when he leaned forward and touching her hand very lightly said: “Isn’t it great for us to be here! I’m so content, Angèle. Promise me you’ll have lunch with me every day this week. I’ve had a streak of luck with my drawings.”
She promised him, a little thrilled herself with his evident sincerity and with the niceness of the smile which so transfigured his dark, thin face, robbing it of its tenseness and strain.
Still something, some vanity, some vague premonition of adventure, led her to linger over her dressing for the dinner with Roger. There was never very much colour in her cheeks, but her skin was warm and white; there was vitality beneath her pallor; her hair was warm, too, long and thick and yet so fine that it gave her little head the effect of being surrounded by a nimbus of light; rather wayward, glancing, shifting light for there were little tendrils and wisps and curls in front and about the temples which no amount of coaxing could subdue. She touched up her mouth a little, not so much to redden it as to give a hint of the mondaine to her appearance. Her dress was flame-colour—Paulette had induced her to buy it,—of a plain, rather heavy beautiful glowing silk. The neck was high in back and girlishly modest in front. She had a string of good artificial pearls and two heavy silver bracelets. Thus she gave the effect of a flame herself; intense and opaque at the heart where her dress gleamed and shone, transparent and fragile where her white warm neck and face rose into the tenuous shadow of her hair. Her appearance excited herself.
Roger found her delightful. As to women he considered himself a connoisseur. This girl pleased him in many respects. She was young; she was, when lighted from within by some indescribable mechanism, even beautiful; she had charm and, what was for him even more important, she was puzzling. In repose, he noticed, studying her closely, her quiet look took on the resemblance of an arrested movement, a composure on tip-toe so to speak, as though she had been stopped in the swift transition from one mood to another. And back of that momentary cessation of action one could see a mind darting, quick, restless, indefatigable, observing, tabulating, perhaps even mocking. She had for him the quality of the foreigner, but she gave this quality an objectivity as though he were the stranger and she the well-known established personage taking note of his peculiarities and apparently boundlessly diverted by them.
But of all this Angela was absolutely unaware. No wonder she was puzzling to Roger, for, in addition to the excitement which she—a young woman in the high tide of her youth, her health, and her beauty—would be feeling at receiving in the proper setting the devotion and attention which all women crave, she was swimming in the flood of excitement created by her unique position. Stolen waters are the sweetest. And Angela never forgot that they were stolen. She thought: “Here I am having everything that a girl ought to have just because I had sense enough to suit my actions to my appearance.” The realization, the secret fun bubbling back in some hidden recess of her heart, brought colour to her cheeks, a certain temerity to her manner. Roger pondered on this quality. If she were reckless!
The dinner was perfect; it was served with elegance and beauty. Indeed she was surprised at the surroundings, the grandeur even of the hotel to which he had brought her. She had no idea of his means, but had supposed that his circumstances were about those of her other new friends; probably he was better off than Anthony, whose poverty she instinctively sensed, and she judged that his income, whatever it might be, was not so perilous as Paulette’s. But she would have put him on the same footing as the Starrs. This sort of expenditure, however, meant money, “unless he really does like me and is splurging this time just for me”. The idea appealed to her vanity and gave her a sense of power; she looked at Roger with a warm smile. At once his intent, considering gaze filmed; he was already leaning toward her but he bent even farther across the perfect little table and asked in a low, eager tone: “Shall we stay here and dance or go to your house and talk and smoke a bit?”
“Oh we’ll stay and dance; it would be so late by the time we get home that we’d only have a few minutes.”
Presently the golden evening was over and they were in the vestibule at Jayne Street. Roger said very loudly: “Where’s that push button?” Then lower: “Well, your young lovers aren’t here to-night either. I’m beginning to think you made that story up, Angèle.”
She assured him, laughing, that she had told the truth. “You come here some time and you’ll see them for yourself.” But she wished she could think of something more ordinary to say. His hands held hers very tightly; they were very strong and for the first time she noticed that the veins stood up on them like cords. She tried to pull her own away and he released them and, taking her key, turned the lock in the inner door, then stood looking down at her.
“Well I’m glad they’re not here to-night to take their revenge.” And as he handed her back the key he kissed her on the lips. His knowledge of women based on many, many such experiences, told him that her swift retreat was absolutely unfeigned.
As on a former occasion she stood, after she had gained her room, considering herself in the glass. She had been kissed only once before, by Matthew Henson, and that kiss had been neither as casual nor as disturbing as this. She was thrilled, excited, and vaguely displeased. “He is fresh, I’ll say that for him.” And subsiding into the easy chair she thought for a long time of Anthony Cross and his deep respectful ardour.
In the morning there were flowers.
From the class-room she went with Paulette to deliver the latter’s sketches. “Have tea to-day with me; we’ll blow ourselves at the Ritz. This is the only time in the month that I have any money, so we’ll make the best of it.”
Angela looked about the warm, luxurious room at the serene, luxurious women, the super-groomed, super-deferential, tremendously confident men. She sighed. “I love all this, love it.”
Paulette, busy blowing smoke-rings, nodded. “I blew sixteen that time. Watch me do it again. There’s nothing really to this kind of life, you know.”
“Oh don’t blow smoke-rings! It’s the only thing in the world that can spoil your looks. What do you mean there’s nothing to it?”
“Well for a day-in-and-day-out existence, it just doesn’t do. It’s too boring. It’s fun for you and me to drift in here twice a year when we’ve just had a nice, fat cheque which we’ve got to spend. But there’s nothing to it for every day; it’s too much like reaching the harbour where you would be. The tumult and the shouting are all over. I’d rather live just above the danger line down on little old Bank Street, and think up a way to make five hundred dollars so I could go to the French Riviera second class and bum around those little towns, Villefranche, Beaulieu, Cagnes,—you must see them, Angèle—and have a spanking affair with a real man with honest to God blood in his veins than to sit here and drink tea and listen to the nothings of all these tame tigers, trying you out, seeing how much it will take to buy you.”
Angela was bewildered by this outburst. “I thought you said you didn’t like affairs unless you could conduct them in your own pied à terre.”
“Did I? Well that was another time—not to-day. By the way, what would you say if I were to tell you that I’m going to Russia?”
She glanced at her friend with the bright shamelessness of a child, for she knew that Angela had heard of Jack Hudson’s acceptance as newspaper correspondent in Moscow.
“I wouldn’t say anything except that I’d much rather be here in the warmth and cleanliness of the Ritz than be in Moscow where I’m sure it will be cold and dirty.”
“That’s because you’ve never wanted anyone.” Her face for a moment was all desire. Beautiful but terrible too. “She actually looks like Hetty Daniels,” thoug
ht Angela in astonishment. Only, alas, there was no longer any beauty in Hetty’s face.
“When you’ve set your heart on anybody or on anything there’ll be no telling what you’ll do, Angèle. For all your innocence you’re as deep, you’ll be as desperate as Martha Burden once you’re started. I know your kind. Well, if you must play around in the Ritz, etcet., etcet., I’ll tell Roger Fielding. He’s a good squire and he can afford it.”
“Why? Is he so rich?”
“Rich! If all the wealth that he—no, not he, but his father—if all the wealth that old man Fielding possesses were to be converted into silver dollars there wouldn’t be space enough in this room, big as it is, to hold it.”
Angela tried to envisage it. “And Roger, what does he do?”
“Spend it. What is there for him to do? Nothing except have a good time and keep in his father’s good graces. His father’s some kind of a personage and all that, you know, crazy about his name and his posterity. Roger doesn’t dare get drunk and lie in the gutter and he mustn’t make a misalliance. Outside of that the world’s his oyster and he eats it every day. There’s a boy who gets everything he wants.”
“What do you mean by a misalliance? He’s not royalty.”
“Spoken like a good American. No, he’s not. But he mustn’t marry outside certain limits. No chorus girl romances for his father. The old man wouldn’t care a rap about money but he would insist on blue blood and the Mayflower. The funny thing is that Roger, for all his appearing so democratic, is that way too. But of course he’s been so run after the marvel is that he’s as unspoiled as he is. But it’s the one thing I can’t stick in him. I don’t mind a man’s not marrying me; but I can’t forgive him if he thinks I’m not good enough to marry him. Any woman is better than the best of men.” Her face took on its intense, burning expression; one would have said she was consumed with excitement.
Angela nodded, only half-listening. Roger a multi-millionaire! Roger who only two nights ago had kissed and mumbled her fingers, his eyes avid and yet so humble and beseeching!
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