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 today 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 today⁠—breakfast and all the other meals tomorrow 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 you.”

“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 tiptoe 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 tonight 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 tonight 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 classroom she went with Paulette to deliver the latter’s sketches. “Have tea today 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 today. 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,” thought 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 multimillionaire! Roger who only two nights ago had kissed and mumbled her fingers, his eyes avid and yet so humble and beseeching!

“One thing, if you do start playing around with Roger be careful. He’s a good bit of a rotter, and he doesn’t care what he says or spends to gain his ends.” She laughed at the inquiry in her friend’s eyes. “No, I’ve never given Roger five minutes’ thought. But I know his kind. They’re dangerous. It’s wrong for men to have both money and power; they’re bound to make some woman suffer. Come on up the Avenue with me and I’ll buy a hat. I can’t wear this whang any longer. It’s too small, looks like a peanut on a barrel.”

Angela was visual minded. She saw the days of the week, the months of the year in little narrow divisions of space. She saw the past years of her life falling into separate, uneven compartments whose ensemble made up her existence. Whenever she looked back on this period from Christmas to Easter she saw a bluish haze beginning in a white mist and flaming into something red and terrible; and across the bluish haze stretched the name: Roger.

Roger! She had never seen anyone like him: so gay, so beautiful, like a blond, glorious god, so overwhelming, so persistent. She had not liked him so much at first except as one likes the sun or the sky or a singing bird, anything jolly and free. There had been no touching points for their minds. He knew nothing of life except what was pleasurable; it is true his idea of the pleasurable did not always coincide with hers. He had no fears, no restraints, no worries. Yes, he had one; he did not want to offend his father. He wanted ardently and unswervingly his father’s money. He did not begrudge his senior a day, an hour, a moment of life; about this he had a queer, unselfish sincerity. The old financial warhorse had made his fortune by hard labour and pitiless fighting. He had given Roger his being, the entrée into a wonderful existence. Already he bestowed upon him an annual sum which would have kept several families in comfort. If Roger had cared to save for two years he need never have asked his father for another cent. With any kind of luck he could have built up for himself a second colossal fortune. But he did not care to do this. He did not wish his father one instant’s loss of life or of its enjoyment. But he did want final possession of those millions.

Angela liked him best when he talked about “my dad”; he never mentioned the vastness of his wealth, but by now she could not have helped guessing even without Paulette’s aid that he was a wealthy man. She would not take jewellery from him, but there was a steady stream of flowers, fruit, candy, books, fine copies of the old masters. She was afraid and ashamed to express a longing in his presence. And with all this his steady, constant attendance. And an odd watchfulness which she felt but could not explain.

“He must love me,” she said to herself, thinking of his caresses. She had been unable to keep him from kissing her. Her uneasiness had amused and charmed him: he laughed at her Puritanism, succeeded in shaming her out of it. “Child, where have you lived? Why there’s nothing in a kiss. If I didn’t kiss you I couldn’t come to see you. And I have to see you, Angèle!” His voice grew deep; the expression in his eyes made her own falter.

Yet he did not ask her to marry him. “But I suppose it’s because he can see I don’t love him yet.” And she wondered what it would be like to love. Even Jinny knew more about this than she, for she had felt, perhaps still did feel, a strong affection for Matthew Henson. Well, anyway, if they married she would probably come to love him; most women learned to love their husbands. At first after her conversation with Paulette about Roger she had rather expected a diminution at any time of his attentions, for after all she was unknown; from Roger’s angle she would be more than outside the pale. But she was sure now that he loved and would want to marry her, for it never occurred to her that men bestowed attentions such as these on a passing fancy. She saw her life rounding out like a fairy tale. Poor, coloured⁠—coloured in America; unknown, a nobody! And here at her hand was the forward thrust shadow of love and of great wealth. She would do lots of good among coloured people; she would see that Miss Powell, for instance, had her scholarship. Oh she would hunt out girls and men like Seymour Porter⁠—she had almost forgotten his name⁠—or was it Arthur Sawyer?⁠—and give them a taste of life in its fullness and beauty such as they had never dreamed of.

Tonight she was to go out with Roger. She wore her flame-coloured dress again; a pretty green one was also hanging up in her closet, but she wore the flame one because it lighted her up from within⁠—lighted not only her lovely, fine body but her mind too. Her satisfaction with her appearance let loose some inexplicable spring of gaiety and merriment and simplicity so that she seemed almost daring.

Roger, sitting opposite, tried to probe her mood, tried to gauge the invitation of her manner and its possibilities. She touched him once or twice, familiarly; he thought almost possessively. She seemed to be within reach now if along with that accessibility she had recklessness. It was this attribute which for the first time tonight he thought to divine within her. If in addition to her insatiable interest in life⁠—for she was always asking him about people and places⁠—she possessed this recklessness, then indeed he might put to her a proposal which had been hanging on his lips for weeks and months. Something innocent, pathetically untouched about her had hitherto kept him back. But if she had the requisite daring! They were dining in East Tenth Street in a small café⁠—small contrasted with the Park Avenue Hotel to which he had first taken her. But about them stretched the glitter and perfection of crystal and silver, of marvellous napery and of obsequious service. Everything, Angela thought, looking about her, was translated. The slight odour of food was, she told Fielding, really an aroma: the mineral water which he was drinking because he could not help it and she because she could not learn to like wine, was nectar; the bread, the fish, the courses were ambrosia. The food, too, in general was to be spoken of as viands.

“Vittles, translated,” she said laughing.

“And you, you, too, are translated. Angèle, you are wonderful, you are charming,” his lips answered but his senses beat and hammered. Intoxicated with the magic of the moment and the surroundings, she turned her smiling countenance a little nearer, and saw his face change, darken. A cloud over the sun.

“Excuse me,” he said and walked hastily across the room back of her. In astonishment she turned and looked after him. At a table behind her three coloured people (under the direction of a puzzled and troubled waiter,) were about to take a table. Roger went up and spoke to the headwaiter authoritatively, even angrily. The latter glanced about the room, nodded obsequiously and crossing, addressed the little group. There was a hasty, slightly acrid discussion. Then the three filed out, past Angela’s table this time, their heads high.

She turned back to her plate, her heart sick. For her the evening was ended. Roger came back, his face flushed, triumphant, “Well I put a spoke in the wheel of those ‘coons’! They forget themselves so quickly, coming in here spoiling white people’s appetites. I told the manager if they brought one of their damned suits I’d be responsible. I wasn’t going to have them here with you, Angèle. I could tell that night at Martha Burden’s by the way you looked at that girl that you had no time for darkies. I’ll bet you’d never been that near to one before in your life, had you? Wonder where Martha picked that one up.”

She was silent, lifeless. He went on recounting instances of how effectively he had “spoked the wheel” of various coloured people. He had blackballed Negroes in Harvard, aspirants for small literary or honour societies. “I’d send ’em all back to Africa if I could. There’s been a darkey up in Harlem’s got the right idea, I understand; though he must be a low brute to cave in on his race that way; of course it’s merely a matter of money with him. He’d betray them all for a few thousands. Gosh, if he could really pull it through I don’t know but what I’d be willing to finance it.”

To this tirade there were economic reasons to oppose, tenets of justice, high ideals of humanity. But she could think of none of them. Speechless, she listened to him, her appetite fled.

“What’s the matter, Angèle? Did it make you sick to see them?”

“No, no not that. I⁠—I don’t mind them; you’re mistaken about me and that girl at Martha Burden’s. It’s you, you’re so violent. I didn’t know you were that way!”

“And I’ve made you afraid of me? Oh, I don’t want to do that.” But he was flattered to think that he had affected her. “See here, let’s get some air. I’ll take you for a spin around the Park and then run you home.”

But she did not want to go to the Park; she wanted to go home immediately. His little blue car was outside; in fifteen minutes they were at Jayne Street. She would not permit him to come inside, not even in the vestibule; she barely gave him her hand.

“But Angèle, you can’t leave me like this; why what have I done? Did it frighten you because I swore a little? But I’d never swear at you. Don’t go like this.”

She was gone, leaving him staring and nonplussed on the sidewalk. Lighting a cigarette, he climbed back in his car. “Now what the devil!” He shifted his gears. “But she likes me. I’d have sworn she liked me tonight. Those damn niggers! I bet she’s thinking about me this minute.”

He would have lost his bet. She was thinking about the coloured people.

She could visualize them all so plainly; she could interpret their changing expressions as completely as though those changes lay before her in a book. There were a girl and two men, one young, the other the father perhaps of either of the other two. The fatherly-looking person, for so her mind docketed him, bore an expression of readiness for any outcome whatever. She knew and understood the type. His experiences of surprises engendered by this thing called prejudice had been too vast for them to appear to him as surprises. If they were served this was a lucky day; if not he would refuse to let the incident shake his stout spirit.

It was to the young man and the girl that her interest went winging. In the mirror behind Roger she had seen them entering the room and she had thought: “Oh, here are some of them fighting it out again. O God! please let them be served, please don’t let their evening be spoiled.” She was so happy herself and she knew that the reception of fifty other maîtres d’hotel could not atone for a rebuff at the beginning of the game. The young fellow was nervous, his face tense⁠—thus might he have looked going to meet the enemy’s charge in the recent Great War; but there the odds were even; here the cards were already stacked against him. Presently his expression would change for one of grimness, determination and despair. Talk of a lawsuit would follow; apparently did follow; still a lawsuit at best is a poor substitute for an evening’s fun.

But the girl, the girl in whose shoes she herself might so easily have been! She was so clearly a nice girl, with all that the phrase implies. To Angela watching her intently and yet with the indifference of safety she recalled Virginia, so slender, so appealing she was and so brave. So very brave! Ah, that courage! It affected at first a gay hardihood: “Oh I know it isn’t customary for people like us to come into this café, but everything is going to be all right.” It met Angela’s gaze with a steadiness before which her own quailed, for she thought: “Oh, poor thing! perhaps she thinks that I don’t want her either.” And when the blow had fallen the courage had had to be translated anew into a comforting assurance. “Don’t worry about me, Jimmy,” the watching guest could just hear her. “Indeed, indeed it won’t spoil the evening, I should say not; there’re plenty of places where they’d be all right. We just happened to pick a lemon.”

The three had filed out, their heads high, their gaze poised and level. But the net result of the evening’s adventure would be an increased cynicism in the elderly man, a growing bitterness for the young fellow, and a new timidity in the girl, who, even after they had passed into the street, could not relieve her feelings, for she must comfort her baffled and goaded escort.

Angela wondered if she had been half as consoling to Matthew Henson⁠—was it just a short year ago? And suddenly, sitting immobile in her armchair, her evening cloak slipping unnoticed to the floor, triumph began to mount in her. Life could never cheat her as it had cheated that coloured girl this evening, as it had once cheated her in Philadephia with Matthew. She was free, free to taste life in all its fullness and sweetness, in all its minutest details. By exercising sufficient courage to employ the unique weapon which an accident of heredity had placed in her grasp she was able to master life. How she blessed her mother for showing her the way! In a country where colour or the lack of it meant the difference between freedom and fetters how lucky she was!

But, she told herself, she was through with Roger Fielding.