III

Among her steamer-letters was a brief note from Anthony:

“Angela, my angel, my dear girl, goodbye. These last few weeks have been heaven and hell. I couldn’t bear to see you go⁠—so I’ve taken myself off for a few hours⁠ ⁠… don’t think I’ll neglect Jinny. I’ll never do that. Am I right in supposing that you still care a little? Oh Angela, try to forget me⁠—but don’t do it! I shall never forget you!”

There were letters and flowers from the Burdens, gifts of all sorts from Ashley and Mrs. Denver, a set of notes for each day out from Virginia. She read letters, examined her gifts and laid them aside. But all day long Anthony’s note reposed on her heart; it lay at night beneath her head.

Paris at first charmed and wooed her. For a while it seemed to her that her old sense of joy in living for living’s sake had returned to her. It was like those first few days which she had spent in exploring New York. She rode delightedly in the motorbuses on and on to the unknown, unpredictable terminus; she followed the winding Seine; crossing and re-crossing the bridges each with its distinctive characteristics. Back of the Panthéon, near the church of St. Geneviève she discovered a Russian restaurant where strange, exotic dishes were served by tall blond waiters in white, stiff Russian blouses. One day, wandering up the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, she found at its juncture with the Boulevard Raspail the Café Dome, a student restaurant of which many returned students had spoken in the Art School in New York. On entering she was recognized almost immediately by Edith Martin, a girl who had studied with her in Philadelphia.

Miss Martin had lived in Paris two years; knew all the gossip and the characters of the Quarter; could give Angela points on pensions, cafés, tips and the Gallic disposition. On all these topics she poured out perpetually a flood of information, presented her friends, summoned the newcomer constantly to her studio or camped uninvited in the other girl’s tiny quarters at the Pension Franciana. There was no chance for actual physical loneliness, yet Angela thought after a few weeks of persistent comradeship that she had never felt so lonely in her life. For the first time in her adventuresome existence she was caught up in a tide of homesickness.

Then this passed too with the summer, and she found herself by the end of September engrossed in her work. She went to the Academy twice a day, immersed herself in the atmosphere of the Louvre and the gallery of the Luxembourg. It was hard work, but gradually she schooled herself to remember that this was her life, and that her aim, her one ambition, was to become an acknowledged, a significant painter of portraits. The instructor, renowned son of a still more renowned father, almost invariably praised her efforts.

With the coming of the fall the sense of adventure left her. Paris, so beautiful in the summer, so gay with its thronging thousands, its hosts bent on pleasure, took on another garb in the sullen greyness of late autumn. The tourists disappeared and the hard steady grind of labour, the intent application to the business of living, so noticeable in the French, took the place of a transient, careless freedom. Angela felt herself falling into line; but it was good discipline as she herself realized. Once or twice, in periods of utter loneliness or boredom, she let her mind dwell on her curiously thwarted and twisted life. But the ability for self-pity had vanished. She had known too many others whose lives lay equally remote from goals which had at first seemed so certain. For a period she had watched feverishly for the incoming of foreign mail, sure that some word must come from Virginia about Matthew, but the months crept sullenly by and Jinny’s letters remained the same artless missives prattling of schoolwork, Anthony, Sara Penton, the movies and visits to Maude the inimitable.

“Of course not everything can come right,” she told herself. Matthew evidently had, on second thought, deemed it wisest to consult the evidence of his own senses rather than be guided by the hints which in the nature of things she could offer only vaguely.

Within those six months she lost forever the blind optimism of youth. She did not write Anthony nor did she hear from him.

Christmas Eve day dawned or rather drifted greyly into the beholder’s perception out of the black mistiness of the murky night. In spite of herself her spirits sank steadily. Virginia had promised her a present⁠—“I’ve looked all over this whole town,” she wrote, “to find you something good enough, something absolutely perfect. Anthony’s been helping me. And at last I’ve found it. We’ve taken every possible precaution against the interference of wind or rain or weather, and unless something absolutely unpredictable intervenes, it will be there for you Christmas Eve or possibly the day before. But remember, don’t open until Christmas.”

But it was now six o’clock on Christmas Eve and no present had come, no letter, no remembrance of any kind. “Oh,” she said to herself “what a fool I was to come so far away from home!” For a moment she envisaged the possibility of throwing herself on the bed and sobbing her heart out. Instead she remembered Edith Martin’s invitation to make a night of it over at her place, a night which was to include dancing and chaffing, a trip just before midnight to hear Mass at St. Sulpice, and a return to the studio for doubtless more dancing and jesting and laughter, and possibly drunkenness on the part of the American male.

At ten o’clock as she stood in her tiny room rather sullenly putting the last touches to her costume, the maid, Héloise, brought her a cable. It was a long message from Ashley wishing her health, happiness and offering to come over at a week’s notice. Somehow the bit of blue paper cheered her, easing her taut nerves. “Of course they’re thinking about me. I’ll hear from Jinny any moment; it’s not her fault that the delivery is late. I wonder what she sent me.”

Returning at three o’clock Christmas morning from the party she put her hand cautiously in the door to switch on the light for fear that a package lay near the threshold, but there was no package there. “Well, even if it were there I couldn’t open it,” she murmured, “for I’m too sleepy.” And indeed she had drugged herself with dancing and gaiety into an overwhelming drowsiness. Barely able to toss aside her pretty dress, she tumbled luxuriously into bed, grateful in the midst of her somnolence for the fatigue which would make her forget.⁠ ⁠… In what seemed to her less than an hour, she heard a tremendous knocking at the door.

“Entrez,” she called sleepily and relapsed immediately into slumber. The door, as it happened, was unlocked; she had been too fatigued to think of it the night before. Héloise stuck in a tousled head. “My God,” she told the cook afterwards, “such a time as I had to wake her! There she was asleep on both ears and the gentleman downstairs waiting!”

Angela finally opened bewildered eyes. “A gentleman,” reiterated Héloise in her staccato tongue. “He awaits you below. He says he has a present which he must put into your own hands. Will Mademoiselle then descend or shall I tell him to come back?”

“Tell him to come back,” she murmured, then opened her heavy eyes. “Is it really Christmas, Héloise? Where is the gentleman?”

“As though I had him there in my pocket,” said Héloise later in her faithful report to the cook.

But finally the message penetrated. Grasping a robe and slippers, she half leaped, half fell down the little staircase and plunged into the five foot square drawing-room. Anthony sitting on the tremendously disproportionate tan and maroon sofa rose to meet her.

His eyes on her astonished countenance, he began searching about in his pockets, slapping his vest, pulling out keys and handkerchiefs. “There ought to be a tag on me somewhere,” he remarked apologetically, “but anyhow Virginia and Matthew sent me with their love.”