Chapter NINE: I

Angelica was consumed, devoured, by curiosity. She felt obliged to know more of this family--of Vincent, above all. So the next morning she got up very early, went down into the kitchen regions, and sought out a snub-nosed maid who had seemed disposed to be friendly when they had passed each other in the hall.

The girl wasn’t busy. She was sitting on the back steps, enjoying the fresh morning; and as soon as she saw Angelica she moved over, hospitably, to make a place for her.

"Sit down," she said. "It’s a nice day, isn’t it?"

Angelica did sit down, and for a time was silent, looking before her across lawns as smooth and empty as those at the front of the house. Nothing at all back-doorish about the outlook; the same air of prosperous peace; in the distance other houses among their lawns, and well-trimmed trees, and overhead a lovely May morning sky.

"Yes," she said, "it’s certainly a nice day."

She fell silent again, trying to arrange an opening for her questions; but the snub-nosed maid spared her the trouble.

"Well!" she said. "How do you like it up-stairs?"

Angelica at once perceived that the other girl was curious.

"Oh-h-h!" she said slowly. "I suppose it’s all right."

Another silence, during which they appraised each other according to their tradition. A mutual confidence was born.

"They’re a queer bunch," said the girl. "I never saw the like; and I’ve been with seven families, too."

Here she courteously gave Angelica a brief history of her life and condition. Her name was Annie McCall, born in Scotland, but brought up in America, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, twenty-seven, and engaged to be married. She was extremely severe in her views, which were often similar to Angelica’s, especially in regard to the immoralities of the rich. There was this difference, though--Annie was confident that she knew everything, and was infallibly right, while Angelica was anxious to learn.

"If it wasn’t that I was going to be married," said Annie, "and saving every penny, I’d leave. The way they carry on! I never saw the like!"

"Do they carry on?" inquired Angelica, delighted.

Hadn’t she always known that rich people carried on? Wasn’t she just in a paradise of the romantic, where the rich were bad, and the poor, represented by herself and the terribly respectable Annie McCall, were good?

"That Mrs. Russell’s the worst of them all," said Annie. "The bold, brazen thing she is, with her breeches and her smoking, and her cursing. You’d ought to hear her curse!"

"She’s queer," said Angelica reflectively.

"Queer!" cried Annie. "Well, _I’d_ call it more than queer! She’s----” She stopped a moment. "She’s bad," she said.

"Oh! Bad! How?"

"I don’t like to be spreading scandal," said Annie, who always believed the worst. "It’s not my nature, only that you’ll be working up-stairs right with her, and you being so young, it’s only right you should be told. As soon as ever I set eyes on you, I said to myself you’d ought to be warned. I could see you weren’t used to such people. You never worked out before, did you?"

"No," Angelica answered.

It was of no use to resent the ‘working out,’ or to tell Annie that she was a ‘companion,’ because Annie knew very well what her place was. Angelica’s eating with the family couldn’t deceive her. They were both servants, and Annie was the better-paid and more respected of the two. Angelica could not honestly consider herself in any way superior, except in appearance. Annie spoke rather better than she did, and had had more schooling; she admitted to money in two savings-banks, and she was engaged to be married. So Angelica submitted to a temporary equality, feeling morally sure, however, that the future would see her elevated immeasurably above Annie.

"How is she bad?" she inquired eagerly.

"She’s a divorced woman," said Annie. "She divorced her first husband, Mr. Geraldine, and I’ve heard that he was a very nice man--much better than Dr. Russell, I dare say; too good for her, very likely. Anyway, I never heard any good of a divorced woman."

"But what does she _do_?" Angelica demanded, rather impatiently.

"You wouldn’t believe it, but she’s carrying on with that chauffeur."

"My Gawd!" said Angelica. "Is she really?"

"It’s the worst I’ve ever heard of. Would you believe it? She’s teaching him to play golf. They go out in the country somewhere, where they’re not known. She’s bought him a bag of clubs, and he goes around showing it to all the chauffeurs, and telling them I don’t know what. He’s a liar, and I wouldn’t believe a word he said, but still--well, when you hear a thing right and left--and there’s those clubs and all, and they cost a terrible lot--you can’t help but think she’s a regular bad woman."

But Angelica did help thinking so. She didn’t believe that Mrs. Russell was that sort of bad woman, and the longer she knew her the more convinced she became of her perfect goodness in this one respect. Capable of the most outrageous follies, selfish, hard as flint, quite without scruples in the pursuit of her own liberty and pleasure, she was, however, not interested in men. Angelica said nothing, though, for she had no proofs or surmises to bring forward, nothing but her own instinct.

Annie continued.

"No, I can’t help thinking so. I’m no fool. I’ve seen a lot--you do, working out. It’s a pity, too, on account of Mr. Eddie. He’s a nice young man, and he works himself sick for the lot of them. No one doing a stroke of work but him!"

"Don’t that doctor work?"

"Dr. Russell? He’s a regular old grafter, that’s what _he_ is."

"I saw him putting cigars in his pocket," said Angelica.

"I’ve seen worse than that. I’ve seen him going through _her_ bureau drawers, and taking anything he has a fancy for. He’ll come down with a flask, fill it with anything that’s left in the decanters, and take it up-stairs and drink until he falls asleep on the floor. They say it’s terrible bad to drink things all mixed together like that."

"Does he know about her carrying on?"

"He don’t care, so long as he’s got a good home and a little money to spend. I never saw such people in all my life! And they never have any decent company. Mrs. Geraldine----”

"Why do they call her Mrs. Geraldine?"

"Because that’s her name," said Annie, surprised. "That used to be Mrs. Russell’s name. It’s Mr. Eddie’s and Mr. Vincent’s name. Didn’t you know?"

"It’s a queer name," Angelica remarked thoughtfully. "I thought it was her first name."

Nothing in the universe seemed specially queer to Annie.

"Well, as I was saying, Mrs. Geraldine, she hasn’t any friends, except out West, and Mr. Eddie, he hasn’t got any time to make any, and there’s no one ever comes here but _her_ lot from that country club--a lot of swearing, drinking, smoking men and women. She fills the house with them, and then Mr. Eddie’ll make a great row and say he won’t put up with them, and then she’ll smile, that superior way, and say, ‘Very well, Eddie, it’s your house!’ Then, when she thinks he’s kind of forgotten, she’ll have them in again."

"But what’s the other feller like?" asked Angelica.

"Him!" cried Annie. "Why!" she was at a loss for words to express what she felt. "He’s----” She hesitated. "He’s _crazy_, and downright wicked. They call him religious. Sacrilegious, I call it. Every once in a while he’ll get a fit of feeling sorry for his wickedness, and he’ll be moaning and groaning about his soul, and working himself up to write his religious poems. Why," she cried, "it’s as different from the real repentance of a sinner, such as I’ve seen many and many a time in our meetings, as can be. He’s never seen the light, and he never will. He’s lost!"

"What does he do that’s wicked?" asked Angelica, avid for details of rich people’s sins.

"Everything--drink and women and blasphemy. Why, right now he’s gone off with a girl. Courtland saw him meet her."

But no further questions on the part of Angelica could elicit any more details. Annie didn’t want to talk about him; he was what she called a hardened sinner, and she considered him best ignored. She began to talk of Polly.

"She’s the best of the lot," she said. "She’s a real lady. She’s reasonable. She’ll never ask you for all sorts of outlandish things, all hours of the day and night, like the other one. She’s stingy, I must confess; she never gives you a penny, nor even an old dress or a hat; but at least she’s nice and polite. I’m sorry for her, too, losing that little boy. He was a sweet little thing, even if----”

The cook appeared on the porch--an untidy, bedraggled old Irishwoman.

"Come in, the two of ye!" she said. "Let your friend come in and eat a bite with us, Annie, if she’s not too proud."

"You might as well," said Annie. "They won’t be eating for another half an hour, and we’ve got just as good as they have."

"Better," said the cook. "You can trust me for that, Annie McCall!"

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.

His eye fell at once upon Angelica.

"Hello!" he said. "What’s the matter? Did they kick you out up-stairs?"

"They sent me down to see how you behaved yourself," she answered, promptly.

She was quite able to hold her own with this young bully, and though her manner was too free and easy to suit Annie, the others were delighted--especially the cook.

"_Now_ will ye be good?" she would cry to the worsted Courtland. "Now you’ve met your match, me lad!"

Angelica enjoyed all this beyond measure. This homely simplicity, combined with the greatest comfort, this atmosphere in which she lost her painful consciousness of inferiority, in which she was among equals and able to breathe freely, invigorated and satisfied her. She grew more and more assured, her sallies more and more outrageous, in a violent badinage that continued until the bell rang and Annie ran off up-stairs. She returned to tell Courtland that he was wanted in fifteen minutes.

"Oh, Gawd!" he groaned. "It’s a tennis tournament to-day. Me sitting out in a blame country road in the hot sun all the afternoon. My Lawd! Don’t I wish that old fool’d learn enough to stay home, or go to the city, to the theayters and stores!"

"And giff you de chance to see your schweetheart?" asked the laundress, coyly.

"Which one?" he demanded, boldly.

"Ye’ll need a lot of thim," said the cook. "For there’s no one girl could put up with ye long. Why are ye not playing your golf to-day, me lord?"

"She makes me sick!" he answered, angrily. "There she goes and gets me interested in the game and all, and then she drops it. Why, you know, she promised me at the start she’d train me good and I could go in a tournament. She said she’d introduce me as a friend of hers. She said I was built to be a first-class player, and maybe I’d get to be a perfessional."

"Don’t believe everything _she’ll_ be telling you!" said the cook.

"Damn old fool!" he muttered.

Annie reproved him.

"You’ve got no right to speak like that about a lady," she said.

"Shut up!" he said briefly.

"Go along with you!" cried the cook. "She’ll be waiting."

"Leave her wait! She makes me wait enough. If she don’t like waiting for me, leave her say so. I can get plenty of jobs--better than this one, too. I don’t have to put up with nothing from her!"

II

It was only half-past eight, and Angelica didn’t know what to do with herself. She was in a rebellious and malicious mood; she had been fired by Courtland’s attitude, and she, too, wished to keep some rich person waiting. It was the attitude which is the despair of employers--the spirit in which the young workman comes sauntering in, insolently late, not because he wishes to lose his job or because he is, as they put it, looking for trouble, but because, for this one day, this one hour, he must assert himself, must be a man, must delude himself that he is not inferior, not helpless, not driven.

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.

She went defiantly about the lower floor, into the library, into the breakfast-room, where the remains of Mr. Eddie’s meal still stood, into the music-room, even into the august drawing-room, where she had never before set foot.

"_I_ don’t care!" she said. "If they don’t like it, they can tell me!"

But she met no one. Thwarted of a victim, she went out upon the veranda and sat down in a rocking-chair, facing the prospect already so monotonous to her--the neat, smooth lawns, the orderly trees, the dignified houses.

"Makes me sick!" she said, aloud. "Nothing to look at--nothing to do!"

Suddenly her chair was tilted back and a hand laid over her eyes--a soft, cool hand. She pushed at it, roughly, and it was lifted, and she saw bending over her the bland, smiling face of the doctor. He was in flannels, well cut, quite correct, but with an air obnoxiously dapper. His white head was bare, and he wore a flower in his coat.

"You let me alone!" said Angelica.

"I can’t!"

"I guess you can!" she observed grimly.

"But you’re so pretty! You’ve no business to be so pretty."

"I dare say I’ll get over that in the course of time."

"Seriously," he said, "I don’t think I’ve ever seen finer eyes. Have you ever thought of going on the stage? And as far as I can judge, you have a beautiful figure. Of course I don’t _know_----”

"None of that now!" she cried, flushing angrily. "Get away from the back of my chair. I don’t want you hanging around me, anyway."

"You’re very hard," he said. "Very! Don’t you like me, Miss Angelica?"

"Not much."

"But why?"

"Go and look in the glass, grandpa," she answered.

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."

"Oh, yes, they do," he retorted, preening himself. "I could tell you of more than one little girl who doesn’t think I’m too old. You, too, when you know me better, you’ll find me just as----”

"Now, look here, grandpa," said Angelica. "What are you leading up to? Because if you think you can get fresh with me, you’ve made a big mistake. Guess again, grandpa!"

"Don’t call me that!" he protested. "It’s vulgar."

She looked at him scornfully, then turned her back upon him and once more regarded the tiresome view. The doctor, after a glance at her severe profile, gave up his attempt and changed his attitude. He sat down jauntily astride of a chair and began joking. She never tired of that, and although he did, although he grew painfully weary of this rough and silly jesting, he was compensated by the sight of her brilliant face.

But inevitably he began to grow bolder again.

"My dear, your shoe’s untied!" he said suddenly.

He threw himself on his knees before her and clasped her ankle in his hand. She gave him a vigorous push with her foot that sent him rolling over backward, knocking his white head against a chair. She laughed immoderately, with abandon, all the more because he was so furious, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.

And it was just at this minute that Eddie came out, to see his father-in-law struggling to his feet, while Angelica shrieked with laughter.

"What’s this?" he demanded severely.

No one answered, but Angelica’s mirth was checked.

"What has happened?" he asked again, with still greater displeasure.

"I slipped," said the doctor. "Where’s your mother, my boy?"

This was an attempt to disarm Eddie by reminding him that the doctor was his mother’s husband, and therefore venerable; but it was not successful. He received no reply, and went sauntering off with exaggerated jauntiness, watched by Eddie till he was out of sight.

Then Eddie turned to Angelica.

"I’m sorry," he said gravely.

"Oh, it don’t matter!" she answered. "I can take care of myself all right."

"I wasn’t apologizing for my father-in-law’s conduct. I meant I was sorry that _you_----”

"Me?" she cried, indignantly. "I didn’t do anything!"

"I hate to think of you stooping to this sort of thing--this silly vulgarity. It isn’t like you. It isn’t worthy of you!"

The former factory girl, with her long memory of scenes so much more vulgar and silly than this--of faces slapped and insults replied to with most forcible language--stared, astounded, at Eddie, at his displeased and disappointed face.

"You ought to be more dignified," he said. "You say you want to improve yourself. Then, in that case, this sort of thing----”

She really had seen nothing reprehensible in her conduct, nothing to be censured. She knew, of course, that a girl in her situation mustn’t spend her time in "fooling" with the men of the household; but to disapprove it on high moral grounds ...!

However, the word "dignified" gave her a clue. It was those magnificent women he had in mind! She was falling short of their standard, and therefore disappointing Eddie. She wasn’t being magnificent.

She looked up at him.

"I see!" she said thoughtfully. "All right! I’ll try!"

"That’s right," he said. "I knew--if it were pointed out to you--that that sort of thing is so out of keeping with your character----”

"With your face," he meant. He meant, without being aware of it, that any sort of coarseness in a girl so lovely and desirable was a shocking offense to him.

Angelica left him, inspired by the loftiest thoughts. She was resolved to redeem this day begun so inauspiciously, breakfasting with the servants, knocking over the white-haired doctor. She pictured a new Angelica, stately and aloof.

"He does me good--that feller!" she reflected.