II

A curious period of duelling ensued. Roger was young, rich and idle. Nearly every wish he had ever known had been born within him only to be satisfied. He could not believe that he would fail in the pursuit of this baffling creature who had awakened within him an ardour and sincerity of feeling which surprised himself. The thought occurred to him more than once that it would have been a fine thing if this girl had been endowed with the name and standing and comparative wealth of⁠—say Carlotta Parks⁠—but it never occurred to him to thwart in this matter the wishes of his father who would, he knew, insist immediately on a certified account of the pedigree, training and general fitness of any strange aspirant for his son’s hand. Angela had had the good sense to be frank; she did not want to become immeshed in a tissue of lies whose relationship, whose sequence and interdependence she would be likely to forget. To Roger’s few questions she had said quite truly that she was the daughter of “poor but proud parents”;⁠—they had laughed at the hackneyed phrase⁠—that her father had been a boss carpenter and that she had been educated in the ordinary public schools and for a time had been a schoolteacher. No one would ever try to substantiate these statements, for clearly the person to whom they applied would not be falsifying such a simple account. There would be no point in so doing. Her little deceits had all been negative, she had merely neglected to say that she had a brown sister and that her father had been black.

Roger found her unfathomable. His was the careless, unreasoned cynicism of the modern, worldly young man. He had truly, as he acknowledged, been attracted to Angela because of a certain incurious innocence of hers apparent in her observations and in her manner. He saw no reason why he should cherish that innocence. If questioned he would have answered: “She’s got to learn about the world in which she lives sometime; she might just as well learn of it through me. And I’d always look out for her.” In the back of his mind, for all his unassuming even simple attitude toward his wealth and power, lurked the conviction that that same wealth and power could heal any wound, atone for any loss. Still there were times when even he experienced a faint, inner qualm, when Angela would ask him: “But afterwards, what would become of me, Roger?” It was the only question he could not meet. Out of all his hosts of precedents from historical Antony and Cleopatra down to notorious affinities discovered through blatant newspaper “stories” he could find for this only a stammered “There’s no need to worry about an afterwards, Angèle, for you and I would always be friends.”

Their frequent meetings now were little more than a trial of strength. Young will and determination were pitted against young will and determination. On both the excitement of the chase was strong, but each was pursuing a different quarry. To all his protestations, arguments and demands, Angela returned an insistent: “What you are asking is impossible.” Yet she either could not or would not drive him away, and gradually, though she had no intention of yielding to his wishes, her first attitude of shocked horror began to change.

For three months the conflict persisted. Roger interposed the discussion into every talk, on every occasion. Gradually it came to be the raison d’être of their constant comradeship. His arguments were varied and specious. “My dearest girl, think of a friendship in which two people would have every claim in the world upon each other and yet no claim. Think of giving all, not because you say to a minister ‘I will,’ but from the generosity of a powerful affection. That is the very essence of free love. I give you my word that the happiest couples in the world are those who love without visible bonds. Such people are bound by the most durable ties. Theirs is a state of the closest because the freest, most elastic union in the world.”

A singularly sweet and curious intimacy was growing up between them. Roger told Angela many anecdotes about his father and about his dead mother, whom he still loved, and for whom he even grieved in a pathetically boyish way. “She was so sweet to me, she loved me so. I’ll never forget her. It’s for her sake that I try to please my father, though Dad’s some pumpkins on his own account.” In turn she was falling into the habit of relating to him the little happenings of her everyday life, a life which she was beginning to realize must, in his eyes, mean the last word in the humdrum and the monotonous. And yet how full of adventure, of promise, even of mystery did it seem compared with Jinny’s!

Roger had much intimate knowledge of people and told her many and dangerous secrets. “See how I trust you, Angèle; you might trust me a little!”

If his stories were true, certainly she might just as well trust him a great deal, for all her little world, judging it by the standards by which she was used to measuring people, was tumbling in ruins at her feet. If this were the way people lived then what availed any ideals? The world was made to take pleasure in; one gained nothing by exercising simple virtue, it was after all an extension of the old formula which she had thought out for herself many years ago. Roger spent most of his time with her, it seemed. Anything which she undertook to do delighted him. She would accept no money, no valuable presents. “And I can’t keep going out with you to dinners and luncheons forever, Roger. It would be different if⁠—if we really meant anything to each other.” He deliberately misunderstood her, “But nothing would give me more pleasure than for us to mean the world to one another.” He sent her large hampers of fruit and even the more ordinary edibles; then he would tease her about being selfish. In order to get rid of the food she had asked him to lunch, to dinner, since nothing that she could say would make him desist from sending it.

Nothing gave her greater joy really than this playful housekeeping. She was very lonely; Jinny had her own happy interests; Anthony never came near her nor did she invite him to come; Martha Burden seemed engrossed in her own affairs, she was undergoing some secret strain that made her appear more remote, more strongly self-sufficient, more mysterious than ever. Paulette, making overt preparations to go to Russia with Hudson, was impossibly, hurtingly happy. Miss Powell⁠—but she could not get near her; the young coloured girl showed her the finest kind of courtesy, but it had about it a remote and frozen quality, unbreakable. However, Angela for the moment did not desire to break it; she must run no more risks with Roger, still she put Miss Powell on the list of those people whom she would some day aid⁠—when everything had turned out all right.

The result of this feeling of loneliness was, of course, to turn her more closely to Roger. He paid her the subtle compliment of appearing absolutely at home in her little apartment; he grew to like her plain, good cooking and the experiments which sometimes she made frankly for him. And afterwards as the fall closed in there were long, pleasant evenings before an open fire, or two or three last hours after a brisk spin in the park in the blue car. And gradually she had grown to accept and even inwardly to welcome his caresses. She perched with an air of great unconsciousness on the arm of the big chair in which he was sitting but the transition became constantly easier from the arm of the chair to his knee, to the steely embrace of his arm, to the sound of the hard beating of his heart, to his murmured: “This is where you belong, Angèle, Angèle.” He seemed an anchor for her frail insecure bark of life.

It was at moments like these that he told her amazing things about their few common acquaintances. There was not much to say about Paulette. “I think,” said Roger judicially, “that temperamentally she is a romantic adventurer. Something in her is constantly seeking a change but she will never be satisfied. She’s a good sport, she takes as she gives, asking nothing permanent and promising nothing permanent.” Angela thought it rather sad. But Roger dismissed the theme with the rather airy comment that there were women as there were men “like that.” She wondered if he might not be a trifle callous.

More than once they had spoken of Martha Burden; Angela confessed herself tremendously intrigued by the latter, by that tense, brooding personality. She learned that Martha, made of the stuff which dies for causes, was constantly being torn between theory and practice.

“She’s full,” said Roger, “of the most highfalutin, advanced ideas. Oh I’ve known old Martha all my life, we were brought up together, it’s through her really that I began to know the people in this part of town. She’s always been a sort of sister. More than once I’ve had to yank her by the shoulders out of difficulties which she herself created. I made her marry Starr.”

“Made her marry him⁠—didn’t she want him?”

“Yes, she wanted him all right, but she doesn’t believe in marriage. She’s got the courage of her convictions, that girl. Why actually she lived with Starr two years while I was away doing Europe. When I came back and found out what had happened I told Starr I’d beat him into pulp if he didn’t turn around and make good.”

“But why the violence? Didn’t he want to?”

“Yes, only,” he remembered suddenly his own hopes, “not every man is capable of appreciating a woman who breaks through the conventions for him. Some men mistake it for cheapness but others see it for what it is and love more deeply and gratefully.” Softly, lingeringly he touched the soft hair shadowing her averted cheek. “I’m one of those others, Angèle.”

She wanted to say: “But why shouldn’t we marry? Why not make me safe as well as Martha?” But again her pride intervened. Instead she remarked that Martha did not seem always happy.

“No, well that’s because she’s got this fool idea of hers that now that they are bound the spontaneity is lacking. She wants to give without being obliged to give; to take because she chooses and not because she’s supposed to. Oh she’s as true as steel and the best fighter in a cause, but I’ve no doubt but that she leads old Starr a life with her temperament.”

Angela thought that there were probably two sides to this possibility. A little breathlessly she asked Roger if he knew Anthony Cross.

“Cross, Cross! A sallow, rather thin fellow? I think I saw him once or twice at Paulette’s. No, I don’t really know him. A sullen, brooding sort of chap I should say. Frightfully self-absorbed and all that.”

For some reason a little resentment sprang up in her. Anthony might brood, but his life had been lived on dark, troublesome lines that invited brooding; he had never known the broad, golden highway of Roger’s existence. And anyway she did not believe, if Martha Burden had been Anthony’s lifelong friend, almost his sister, that he would have told his sweetheart or his wife either of those difficult passages in her life. Well, she would have to teach Roger many things. Aloud she spoke of Carlotta Parks.

“She’s an interesting type. Tell me about her.”

But Roger said rather shortly that there was nothing to tell. “Just a good-hearted, high-spirited kid, that’s all, who lets the whole world know her feelings.”

According to Paulette there was more than this to be told about Miss Parks. “I don’t know her myself, not being a member of that crowd. But I’ve always heard that she and Roger were childhood sweethearts, only they’ve just not pulled it off. Carlotta’s family is as old as his. Her people have always been statesmen, her father’s in the Senate. I don’t think they have much money now. But the main thing is she pleases old man Fielding. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to see Carlotta Roger’s wife. I may be mistaken, but I think nothing would give Carlotta more pleasure either.”

“Doesn’t he care for her?” Queer how her heart tightened, listening for the answer.

“Yes, but she likes him too much and shows it. So he thinks he doesn’t want her. Roger will never want any woman who comes at his first call. Don’t you hate that sort of man? They are really the easiest to catch; all you’ve got to do provided they’re attracted at all, is to give one inviting glance and then keep steadily retreating. And they’ll come⁠—like Bo Peep’s sheep. But I don’t want a man like that; he’d cramp my style. His impudence, expecting a woman to repress or evoke her emotions just as he wants them! Hasn’t a woman as much right to feel as a man and to feel first? Never mind, some woman is going to ‘get’ Roger yet. He doesn’t think it possible because he has wealth and position. He’ll be glad to come running to Carlotta then. I don’t care very much for her⁠—she’s a little too loud for me,” objected the demure and conservative Miss Lister, “but I do think she likes Roger for himself and not for what he can give her!”

Undoubtedly this bit of knowledge lent a new aspect; the adventure began to take on fresh interest. Everything seemed to be playing into her hands. Roger’s interest and longing were certainly undiminished. Martha Burden’s advice, confirmed by Paulette’s disclosure, was bound to bring results. She had only to “keep retreating.”

But there was one enemy with whom she had never thought to reckon, she had never counted on the treachery of the forces of nature; she had never dreamed of the unaccountable weakening of those forces within. Her weapons were those furnished by the conventions but her fight was against conditions; impulses, yearnings which antedated both those weapons and the conventions which furnished them. Insensibly she began to see in Roger something more than a golden way out of her material difficulties; he was becoming more than a means through which she should be admitted to the elect of the world for whom all things are made. Before her eyes he was changing to the one individual who was kindest, most thoughtful of her, the one whose presence brought warmth and assurance. Furthermore, his constant attention, flatteries and caresses were producing their inevitable effect. She was naturally cold; unlike Paulette, she was a woman who would experience the grand passion only once, perhaps twice, in her life and she would always have to be kindled from without; in the last analysis her purity was a matter not of morals, nor of religion, nor of racial pride; it was a matter of fastidiousness. Bit by bit Roger had forced his way closer and closer into the affairs of her life, and his proximity had not offended that fastidiousness. Gradually his demands seemed to her to represent a very natural and beautiful impulse; his arguments and illustrations began to bear fruit; the conventions instead of showing in her eyes as the codified wisdom based on the experiences of countless generations of men and women, seemed to her prudish and unnecessary. Finally her attitude reduced itself to this: she would have none of the relationship which Roger urged so insistently, not because according to all the training which she had ever received, it was unlawful, but because viewed in the light of the great battle which she was waging for pleasure, protection and power, it was inexpedient.

The summer and the early fall had passed. A cold, rainy autumn was closing in; the disagreeable weather made motoring almost impossible. There were always the theatres and the cabarets, but Roger professed himself as happy nowhere else but at her fireside. And she loved to have him there, tall and strong and beautiful, sometimes radiant with hope, at others sulking with the assurance of defeat. He came in one day ostensibly to have tea with her; he had an important engagement for the evening but he could not let the day pass without seeing her. Angela was tired and a little dispirited. Jinny had sold the house and had sent her twelve hundred dollars as her share, but the original three thousand was almost dissipated. She must not touch this new gift from heaven; her goal was no nearer; the unwelcome possibility of teaching, on the contrary, was constantly before her. Moreover, she was at last realising the danger of this constant proximity, she was appalled by her thoughts and longings. Upon her a great fear was creeping not only of Roger but of herself.

Always watchful, he quickly divined her distrait mood, resolved to try its possibilities for himself. In a tense silence they drank their tea and sat gazing at the leaping, golden flames. The sullen night closed in. Angela reminded him presently that he must go but on he sat and on. At eight o’clock she reminded him again; he took out his watch and looked at it indifferently. “It’s too late for me to keep it now, besides I don’t want to go. Angèle be kind, don’t send me away.”

“But you’ve had no dinner.”

“Nor you either. I’m like the beasts of the field keeping you like this. Shall we go out somewhere?” But she was languid; she did not want to stir from the warm hearth out into the chilly night.

“No, I don’t want to go. But you go, Roger. I can find something here in the house for myself, but there’s not a thing for you. I hate to be so inhospitable.”

“Tell you what, suppose I go around to one of these delicatessens and get something. Too tired to fix up a picnic lunch?”

In half an hour he returned, soaked. “It’s raining in torrents! Why I never saw such a night!” He shook himself, spattering raindrops all over the tiny apartment.

“Roger! You’ll have to take off your coat!”

He sat in his shirtsleeves before the fire, his hair curling and damp, his head on his hand. He looked so like a little boy that her heart shook within her. Turning he caught the expression in her eyes, sprang towards her. “Angèle you know, you know you like me a little!”

“I like you a very great deal.” He put his arm about her, kissed her; her very bones turned to water. She freed herself, finding an excuse to go into the kitchenette. But he came and stood towering over her in the doorway, his eyes on her every motion. They ate the meal, a good one, almost as silently as they had drunk the tea; a terrible awareness of each other’s presence was upon them, the air was charged with passion. Outside the rain and wind beat and screamed.

“It’s a terrible night,” she said, but he made no reply. She said again, “Roger, it’s getting late, you must go home.” Very reluctantly then, his eyes still on hers, he rose to his feet, got into his overcoat and, hat in hand, stooped to kiss her good night. His arm stole about her, holding her close against him. She could feel him trembling, she was trembling herself. Another second and the door had closed behind him.

Alone, she sat looking at the fire and thinking: “This is awful. I don’t believe anything is going to come of this. I believe I’ll send him a note tomorrow and tell him not to come any more.”

Someone tapped on the door; astonished that a caller should appear at such an hour, but not afraid, she opened it. It was Roger. He came striding into the room, flinging off his wet coat, and yet almost simultaneously catching her up in his arms. “It’s such a terrible night, Angèle; you can’t send me out in it. Why should I go when the fire is here and you, so warm and soft and sweet!”

All her strength left her; she could not even struggle, could not speak. He swept her up in his arms, cradling her in them like a baby with her face beneath his own. “You know that we were meant for each other, that we belong to each other!”

A terrible lassitude enveloped her out of which she heard herself panting: “Roger, Roger let me go! Oh, Roger, must it be like this? Can’t it be any other way?”

And from a great distance she heard his voice breaking, pleading, promising: “Everything will be all right, darling, darling. I swear it. Only trust me, trust me!”

Life rushed by on a great, surging tide. She could not tell whether she was utterly happy or utterly miserable. All that she could do was to feel; feel that she was Roger’s totally. Her whole being turned toward him as a flower to the sun. Without him life meant nothing; with him it was everything. For the time being she was nothing but emotion; he was amazed himself at the depth of feeling which he had aroused in her.

Now for the first time she felt possessive; she found herself deeply interested in Roger’s welfare because, she thought, he was hers and she could not endure having a possession whose qualities were unknown. She was not curious about his money nor his business affairs but she thirsted to know how his time away from her was spent, whom he saw, what other places he frequented. Not that she begrudged him a moment away from her side, but she must be able to account for that moment.

Yet if she felt possessive of him her feeling also recognized his complete absorption of her, so completely, so exhaustively did his life seem to envelop hers. For a while his wishes, his pleasure were the end and aim of her existence; she told herself with a slight tendency toward self-mockery that this was the explanation of being, of her being; that men had other aims, other uses but that the sole excuse for being a woman was to be just that⁠—a woman. Forgotten were her ideals about her Art; her ambition to hold a salon; her desire to help other people; even her intention of marrying in order to secure her future. Only something quite outside herself, something watchful, proud, remote from the passion and rapture which flamed within her, kept her free and independent. She would not accept money, she would not move to the apartment on Seventy-second Street; she still refused gifts so ornate that they were practically bribes. She made no explanations to Roger, but he knew and she knew too that her surrender was made out of the lavish fullness and generosity of her heart; there was no calculation back of it; if this were free love the freedom was the quality to be stressed rather than the emotion.

Sometimes, in her inchoate, wordless intensity of feeling which she took for happiness, she paused to take stock of that other life, those other lives which once she had known; that life which had been hers when she had first come to New York before she had gone to Cooper Union, in those days when she had patrolled Fourteenth Street and had sauntered through Union Square. And that other life which she knew in Opal Street⁠—aeons ago, almost in another existence. She passed easily over those first few months in New York because even then she had been approaching a threshold, getting ready to enter on a new, undreamed of phase of being. But sometimes at night she lay for hours thinking over her restless, yearning childhood, her fruitless days at the Academy, the abortive wooing of Matthew Henson. The Hensons, the Hallowells, Hetty Daniels⁠—Jinny! How far now she was beyond their pale! Before her rose the eager, starved face of Hetty Daniels; now she herself was cognizant of phases of life for which Hetty longed but so contemned. Angela could imagine the envy back of the tone in which Hetty, had she but known it, would have expressed her disapproval of her former charge’s manner of living. “Mattie Murray’s girl, Angela, has gone straight to the bad; she’s living a life of sin with some man in New York.” And then the final, blasting indictment. “He’s a white man, too. Can you beat that?”