ANGELICA

BY ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY {6} COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA {7}

TO G. RESTLESS SEEKER FOR ROMANCE IS DEDICATED THIS STORY OF THE END OF A ROMANCE

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CHAPTER ONE

Mrs. Kennedy got up from her knees, wrung out the filthy and dripping cloth in her hands, and looked back with a sigh over the stairs she had just cleaned.

"It’ll have to do," she said, "until to-morrow."

Then, pail in hand, she descended to the basement and pushed open with her foot the door of her flat—three black little rooms with barred windows on a lugubrious air-shaft, where great ash-cans stood and cats prowled and tradesmen went whistling by with bags and bottles. A tiny jet of gas flickered in the passage to light her as she staggered along to the kitchen, there to set down the heavy pail with a jerk that sent a flood of dirty water over her feet.

"Oh, Lord!" she sighed again, patiently.

She lit the gas and looked about her. There in the sink were the dishes from breakfast; and across the tin covers of the wash-tubs scurried a multitude of roaches, disturbed as they feasted on the crumbs there. All this deeply disturbed her, for she was a good housewife, and a neat little body altogether; but she knew herself to be blameless. It couldn’t be helped.

As janitress of this Harlem apartment-house, she was permitted to live rent free in exchange for certain services, and her honour was engaged. She had to keep up the ap{10}pearance of the place. She had to scrub the stairs, the corridors, the vestibule, to clean the windows on the five landings. She had also to sweep the vacant flats and display them to any one who came to look at them.

After this was done, there was still her living to make. She did "charing" by the day and half-day; she took home washing to be done at night; she did all those dirty and unpleasant tasks which even the shabby tenants of this shabby house couldn’t endure to do for themselves. There were many days when she left her dismal little place early in the morning and wasn’t able to re-enter it until after dark. It gave her a feeling of terrible discouragement to come home to it like this, all in disorder and sordid confusion. The thought of it would haunt her all day as she worked.

It was late, as she saw by the clock, but she felt obliged to rest, just for a minute. She sat down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t really rest until fatigue was gone and she was refreshed; the best she might expect was some little respite from her labour.

She was a thin little woman of limitless endurance; she could suffer everything; but her drawn, hollow-cheeked face, her faded eyes, gave testimony to the cost of her dreadful and heroic struggle. She was forty, but she looked sixty. She had a blurred look, like a partially erased drawing. She seemed literally worn out, rubbed thin, part of her vanished.

The clock struck six, and she jumped up.

"Oh, Lord!" she sighed again. "Well, I’ll make myself a cup of tea first thing; then I’ll run out to the corner and get a bite of something for Angelica’s supper."

The tea did her good. She felt warmed and comforted, and a little less reluctant to undertake more work. Then, with a shawl over her head, she hurried out into the windy March street, to the little grocer’s on the corner.

It was a sore temptation to linger there, where it was warm and brightly lighted, and there were people to talk with, and the young man was so agreeable to her. She was a favourite{11} of his, in spite of her buying so little, for she was a civil little woman who gave no trouble and always had her mind made up before coming into the shop. But, with her usual little sigh, she tore herself away, bade the young man good night, and hurried home again.

To her eyes even Eighth Avenue, with the tawdry little shops crowded with the very poor, or the very careless, buying their dinners at the last instant, looked festive, looked enticing. She didn’t get out much; she hadn’t even a window through which she could see the street. She thought to herself that it would be nice to take a walk after supper with Angelica, to look in the windows to see what the fruit-seller had to offer, to view the absorbing display in the five-and-ten-cent store; but she was quite sure that Angelica couldn’t be induced to do any such thing. She required something better than that!

It was the spur of Angelica’s requirements that drove forward the weary Mrs. Kennedy. If she didn’t have things nice, Angelica would rearrange and do over until she was suited. She didn’t complain much, but wasn’t she exacting! Like a man, her mother used to say. She’d never be satisfied with a cup of tea and some little thing you’d maybe have left from the day before. Plenty of variety there must be, and a clean cloth, too.

She was brisk and deft about her preparations when she got home; but she wasn’t quite prepared when the bell rang three times, by way of announcement only, as the door was always unlatched, and into the kitchen came her daughter Angelica—her only child.

Angelica was not regarded by her peers as beautiful, for the quality of her beauty was not obvious. She was looked at, stared at, fiercely desired; she was often enough followed in the street; and yet not one of these admirers would have called her beautiful. There was "something about her," that was all—something not to be resisted. She herself was only dimly aware of it. She knew well enough that she was{12} alluring, that she possessed some enchantment to enthrall men. She knew by some instinct how to use her charm, but she didn’t comprehend it or appreciate it. She regarded herself with a pleased and wondering interest. A pale, narrow face with strange black eyes, not quite alike; a rich, scornfully curling mouth; the mysterious, adorable languor of an old Italian Madonna—an exciting languor, like that of a drowsy panther; and with this curious and touching beauty went a swaggering impudence, the speech, the gestures of a thorough gamine. Then there was her walk, the exaggerated suppleness of her thin young body, the rakish tilt of

her broad-brimmed hat, the movement of her skirts, and a naïve wickedness that seemed shocking, almost blasphemous, in conjunction with that wonderful face.

And it was this air of bravado, this gamine swagger, which she fancied was her charm. The poetry of her, the exquisite subtleness of her face, she didn’t recognize. Her mother alone had some inexpressible and formless idea of this. She saw something rare and heart-breaking in her child, something that robbed her of any pretense of authority.

"Tired?" she asked her now.

"No!" said Angelica scornfully. "Bacon? That’s nice. Have it good and crisp, mommer. No, I’m not tired—only sort of sick of things."

She sat down before the table and waited, her chin on her hand, somber, frowning, in a mood which her mother knew well and dreaded. She put the plates on the table and stood, waiting, too nervous to eat. She could see that Angelica had something on her mind, and there would be no peace till she had got rid of it.

"Hurry up and eat, mommer," she said impatiently; "so we can go to the movies after."

"I haven’t any money, deary."

"I’ll pay."{13}

Her mother was startled. How could Angelica have money to spare on a Thursday?

"I got paid off," said Angelica.

"Discharged, Angie? I thought you were doing so well——”

"Discharged nothing! I quit."

"But what in the world—— It was a good job, wasn’t it? You said it was."

A sudden and vivid expression of disgust lit up her child’s face.

"My Gawd, mommer! I got so sick of it! Sitting at that machine, all day and every day. Those girls—and the fellers! So blame sick of it, mommer! I don’t know—I got thinking. It seems to me maybe I could do better somewhere else."

"They’re all about the same, I guess—those factories. I can’t see what good it’ll do you to be changing so often, Angelica. The girls are all the same; unless maybe you could get into one of the big stores, and they don’t pay near as much."

"What’s the good of that? Just as bad. No, mommer, I want—something different. Oh, mommer, I want to get something out of life!"

Her mother looked at her in silence. She comprehended her perfectly. Hadn’t she been like that herself long, long ago—restless, hungry for life, forever seeking something new? Not, of course, in this foreign and vehement way. She had never been capable of speaking so crudely, so violently, as her child; but though they hadn’t a feature, a gesture, an intonation alike, they partook of the same indomitable spirit.

"I know!" she said. "It’s hard—terrible hard; but it’s only worse if you’re always fighting against it. There’s no chance for people like us, and we’ve got to put up with it. We can’t get what we want. Whatever kind of work you choose, it’ll be just as hard."{14}

Angelica, her head in her hands, was looking straight before her.

"I don’t see," she began, "why I shouldn’t try, anyway, to go up instead of down."

"There’s no call to go down," said her mother; "but you’ll find it hard enough just to keep the same. You’ve got to be—well, Angelica, as my mother used to say she’d been taught in the old country—you’ve got to be contented to stay in the station where it has pleased God to put you."

"God made a mistake, then. He’s put me in the wrong station, and I won’t stay in it. And anyway, mommer, haven’t you ever thought? We’re not staying—we’re going down, down, all the time. You’re not where your mother was, and I’m not where you used to be."

"You’ve got more brains than me, and——”

"I’m not talking about brains. You’re better than me; you talk better, and you’ve got nicer ways. You’re——” She flushed a little. "You’re more like a—lady than me."

Mrs. Kennedy flushed, too, but couldn’t deny it. She had before her mind’s eye the descent of her family—how she had sunk below her parents’ level, just as Angelica had grown up coarser and more ignorant than herself. Unaccountably there came to her the memory of another afternoon when she had been scrubbing stairs, like to-day, but in the home of her girlhood; a summer afternoon, long, long ago. She remembered that she had complained of being tired out, and her mother had bidden her go up-stairs and lie down. And she remembered—how well!—stretching herself out on the bed in the neat, darkened room, and her stout, kindly mother bringing her up a cup of tea.

Her thoughts lingered with her mother, a sober Scotch-woman, living out her life in the shelter of her own home. A nice home, too; a little frame house in Brooklyn, comfortably furnished, modest, but not without dignity. The suppers there, her mother, her sandy-haired, anxious little father—assistant to a grocer—and herself, sitting at the{15} little round table covered with a red checked cloth, with the bland light of the lamp on their faces—she saw it painfully, bitterly well; and her father asking who was that young chap who had walked home from the chapel with her, and her mother pretending to frown. They were so proud and pleased with her prettiness and briskness, so hopeful for her!

For just a moment she passionately resented her rôle of parent, forever giving and giving. She wanted to have one person on earth concerned with her fatigue, her sorrow. She sat quite still before her little supper, lost in her thought. Then some slight movement of her child’s brought her back to life, and she looked up with her little sigh.

Poor, poor Angelica! Poor lovely, unhappy thing, working in a factory! Wouldn’t that have shocked her grandparents? Wouldn’t they have been shocked at Angelica, anyway—her swagger, her language, her point of view! Her heart melted with pity for her child.

"I don’t blame you, Angelica," she said. "I know how hard it is to get on with that sort; but, deary, what better can you do? One job’s as bad as another. The thing is to do your best and trust in Providence. I’ll do the best I can to make things happy for you here at home. We’ll have our little treats. We’ve always been happy together, haven’t we? It’s our lot in life to have to work hard and get very little. We’ve got to put up with it, and just be as happy as we can."

"No, I’m not like that. I’m—no, I won’t!"

She wasn’t able to express her rebellion, her vehement longings, but her mother understood her very well.

"I was just like you," she said mournfully; "restless—always after something new—anything for a change. I wanted—the Lord knows what I wanted!"

She poured out another cup of tea.

"Eat a bit more," she said. "You’re tired and worked up like. Yes!" she added. "I was like you, Angelica; and you can see what it did for me. I was a nice-looking girl{16} in those days. There was more than one young fellow who wanted to marry me; but I wouldn’t have any of them. I thought they weren’t good enough. I was a great one for reading books, and my head was full of nonsense.

"Then I met your father. He was a fine-looking man, Angelica. You can’t remember him when he was well. He was a big, handsome man, a barber. My folks were terrible set against it, and I don’t wonder. There he was, an I-talian, and twenty years older than me, and nothing in the world but a barber, and a kind of a Socialist. He was always talking about killing the rich people. I think he’d have been willing enough to do something like that with his own hands, he used to get so worked up. He was a queer man, Angelica. And yet, for all his talk about killing, and the awful things he’d say against religion and churches, why, he wasn’t a bad man. He was generous. He’d share his last penny with a friend. He often did; we’d have to go without ourselves if one of his precious ‘comrades’ was in a tight corner. He was a smart man, too. He spent all his spare time in the free library, reading; but that never gets you anywhere, Angelica. He had no knack for earning money, and he never could save. What’s more, he wasn’t fond of work. He’d rather read or

talk. He could talk all night, I do believe.

"It nearly broke my mother’s heart when I went off with Angelo. My father, he said he’d never speak to me again, nor have my name spoken in the house, on account of my marrying an atheist, you see. But I didn’t seem to care. There was something about him——”

She was silent for a time, recalling her startling foreign lover, with his caressing voice, his mandolin-playing, his anti-clerical passions, and the brisk, pretty young girl who had been herself.

"I was terrible headstrong. I wouldn’t listen to any one. I would have him, and I did. Well, I was punished for my folly and wickedness, I can tell you. It’s always{17} the way when you won’t listen to your own dear parents and those that are wiser than yourself. We never got on. From the very day we were married—you don’t know what it’s like, Angelica. We were always owing money. He wouldn’t hand what he made over to me, for me to manage. I never knew where we stood. All of a sudden he’d say, ‘No more money!’ and there we’d be, without a penny. We had to live in such a mean, poor way that I lost my health. One time we were turned out of our rooms, out into the street, bag and baggage, with all the neighbors looking on.

"When you were born, I’d hardly so much as a blanket to wrap you in. I never had a bow of ribbon or a thing to dress you up pretty, like the other little babies. And when your father took sick, there wasn’t even a fresh sheet for him. ‘Take him off to the hospital,’ says the doctor. ‘He can’t be looked after in a place like this. He’ll die.’ ‘Very good, I die!’ says he. ‘But I die home!’ Poor man! There he lay, so hot and wretched, and you in a clothes-basket beside him fretting all day and all night, so he couldn’t get any rest and peace. We’d only the one room.

"Well, when he was taken sick, of course there was no money at all coming in. His precious ‘comrades’ never came near him, least of all the ones that owed him money; so I began going out by the day, and I left an old I-talian woman to take care of you and him. Every morning, when I’d go out, I’d feel sure and certain neither of you’d be alive and safe when I got back. Both of you sick, and no good food or proper care! And I’d think of her setting the place on fire, or leaving the gas turned on. Then I’d come home, tired as a dog, and not a soul to speak to: you a tiny little baby crying in your basket, and your poor father moaning in his bed; everything dirty and upset. You can’t think what it was like.

"I’m not blaming your poor father, Angelica. I’m only telling you this to show you how those high-flown notions{18}—where they’ll lead you. In this world, you’ve got to be sensible, and not follow your own notions."

Not follow romance was what she meant, and what Angelica understood; for wasn’t that what she had done? And had won it, to see it perish in a long agony, as romance must always perish, whether won or lost. She wanted so passionately to make it all clear to her child, to tell her how she had seen the hard, the dull, the greedy, attain their heart’s desire; but the romantic, the generous, never. She wanted to tell her how hideous is the death of illusion, how merciless is the world. How her splendid hero, black-eyed Angelo with the flashing smile, had fallen from splendour—had, so to speak, dwindled into a miserable invalid, duped by his friends, and deprived of all courage by the knowledge of their treachery. 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. Well, what of it? You’ve—anyway you’ve got a memory of him, to look back at, haven’t you?"

And her mother hadn’t the heart to tell her the truth—that even in memory the ardent, enchanting lover was supplanted by the querulous and unshaven sufferer who lay dying for months and months of some disease which they didn’t understand, and which the busy doctor didn’t trouble to explain to them.

"I hope you’ll be sensible, Angelica," she said.{19}

She saw well enough that her story had made no sort of impression upon her child. Angelica was still so young that what happened to other people and what happened to her had no connection in her mind. She fancied that all her experiences, as well as all her ideas, were unique. Her mother could read in her face that she was thinking now, not of her mother’s past, but of her own future.

"I hope you’ll be sensible," she said again. "Try to learn to be satisfied with your lot in life. That’s how all my troubles began—being discontented. Try to be satisfied."

"No, I shan’t," said her rebellious child. "Listen, mommer!"

"Well?"

"I was thinking. I don’t know—but I thought—maybe there’s something in this."

She handed her mother a scrap torn from a newspaper.

CHEERFUL young lady wanted as companion for invalid; experience unnecessary. Apply Thursday morning to Mrs. Russell, Buena Vista, Baycliff, Westchester.

"But, deary, don’t you see?" cried her mother, startled. "You don’t mean that you’d try for that?"

"Why not, mother?" demanded Angelica, flushing.

"But, deary, don’t you see? It’s—they’ll—they wouldn’t want a girl like you."