Angela's Business Part 18

"Why, of course I didn't _mean_ it, Cousin Mary! I thought you knew I was angry when I spoke."

The two cousins regarded each other, in the dark little hall by the hatstand. Angela felt her position to be annoying. But she explained with that complete lack of embarra.s.sment characteristic only of women conscious of rect.i.tude:--

"I can't tell you _all_ about it, even now. But what happened was that Mr. Garrott and I had a terrible misunderstanding, and at first I put all the blame on him, and was awfully mad with him, I admit. But since then, the more I've thought of it, the more I've seen that I was very unjust to him--in what I thought and said, too. He really has much more cause to be mad with me--now--than I have with him."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it. Don't quarrel--that's my motto," said the stormy Miss Wing. "And Mr. Garrott thinks you are charming!--I know, for he told me so. Well--"

"Yes--that's what has changed my feeling about it all, you see. Cousin Mary--when you see him again, you might just say--"

"My dear, I never see Mr. Garrott!" said Mary, rather hastily.

"Why, you've just seen him!"

"The first time for a week, and probably the last time for a month. He's going down to his mother's in the country on Sat.u.r.day, to stay over Christmas and New Year's. Angela, I must _run_!"

Left alone, Angela remained standing in the hall for a moment, gazing into s.p.a.ce, of which the hall really afforded little. Her despondency now had a certain edge; it did seem hard that, while her friends and relatives--and Cousin Mary, of all people--were going to jolly lunches of the younger set, _her_ invitations should be only to New-Woman _lectures_. And still, the girl's feeling had no bitterness, even now.

Of course she understood that she would have been at Mr. Garrott's luncheon, too, but for the misunderstanding....

As she went upstairs, her mother called out to her, and Angela pursued her way to the front bedroom, as she had meant to do anyway. Here, her mother was discovered p.r.o.ne upon a pillowless lounge, dangerously facing a gaslight and reading a magazine which had no covers. Having laid the magazine, broken open, on her lap, Mrs. Flower listened attentively to her daughter's report of Mary's call, and at the end said:--

"I must say I think it's very kind of Mr. Garrott to stand by her in that way. Men secretly can never admire that sort of woman, whatever their theories may be. And that's just it--that explains Mary's whole lurid course. If she had ever had a ray of attention, of course she would never have dreamed of these wild goings on."

Angela's mother was still a pretty woman, and long habit, it seemed, had impressed her voice with a permanent plaintiveness. She had kicked off her slippers for comfort; her high-bred feet were clad in faded cotton stockings; she herself looked high-bred and faded. Her air and tone were those of one to whom life had brought rude shocks--such as, that lovely woman's portion was sacrifice ever, and that men cared only for the first bloom of girlish beauty--and who found her only consolations in her religion, and in the n.o.ble words, My Duty.

"You must see her when she calls, I suppose, but that is all. Until she completely changes her ideas on all subjects, I cannot allow any intimacy. I cannot."

"She means to be nice to me, mother. And besides--that's the sort of connections you and father have given us, you know."

Mrs. Flower denied any responsibility whatever for the advanced Mary.

She continued her remarks with interest, the theme being one of her favorites. Angela, having moved restlessly about the room for a time, had halted at the window. Hence, she gazed out at a board fence billed all over with advertis.e.m.e.nts of a celebrated spring tonic. A trolley-car went rumbling by, its wheels throwing off jets of icy rain-water. It had been a long, long day.

"The things women will do when they discover they're not attractive to men! They simply get defiant. They get all reckless and bitter!"

Into the narrow walkway below turned a very tall man, under a small greenish umbrella. In the silence of the house, the front door was heard to open and shut. Then there were footsteps along the hall below, and another door shut quietly, toward the back.

"Anything, anything to distract their minds!"

"Mother!--where on earth do you suppose father _goes_! His lecture was over at half-past three. If only, _only_, he'd try to get some patients!

But he's not even in for his office hour half the time!"

"I'm sure I do not know," replied her mother, generally, and picked up her coverless magazine.

Angela fidgeted at the window, drumming on the dripping pane. Presently she said:--

"Oh, mother! Why _couldn't_ you or father have some relations that would help us! We're the only family I ever heard of that hasn't a _single_ rich relation!"

Her mother, not looking up, mentioned complainingly the branch of her family to which she always referred in such discussions.

"Much good the Ashburtons have done us!" said Angela truly, and also as usual. "When they think we're not good enough to speak to. I have n.o.body to help me but myself."

It was as if the girl was herself struck with the truth of her own observation. Her gaze out the window became thoughtful, and then intent.

Suddenly, without more speech, she left the window and the room.

In the hall there came an interruption. An untutored voice bawled up, without the slightest preamble:--

"_Sugar hasn't came!_"

"All right," responded the young housekeeper, after a short annoyed pause.

And then, returning to her own room, she thought: "If I telephone from Mrs. Doremus's now, it'll be too late for supper. I'll have to ask Wallie--just to step around ..."

Angela shut the door behind her and lighted a flaring gasjet. Then she stood still, knitting her brows slightly, glancing about. She wanted writing-paper, and didn't know where to put her hands on any, exactly.

In the sharp light of the gas it was now seen that Angela's little bedroom lacked Beauty, of the purely objective sort: Beauty of that kind depending, as all know, on fathers being good providers, which was not the case here, alas. Everything in Angela's room was cheap when it was new, and everything was far from new now. A very large old walnut wardrobe occupied all one side of the room, awkwardly subst.i.tuting for a clothes-closet. The bed was of yellow imitation-oak, and sagged considerably in the middle from worn-out springs. The bureau was to match; its somewhat wavy mirror was the nearest Angela came to a dressing-table; its three drawers would never quite shut, and frequently wouldn't quite open. There were also two chairs in the bedroom, one straight, one a re-seated rocker, and a small walnut work-table, which trembled dangerously if you brushed against it.

Nor was the room specially spruce, at the moment at least, people's tastes differing in these matters, even in the same family. Angela's young brother, for example, kept his small room s.h.i.+ning like a new pin, and let himself personally go till he was a disgrace to the family.

Angela, on the other hand, whose exquisite personal neatness had attracted the notice of Charles Garrott himself, was more or less indifferent about a room which n.o.body but the family ever saw. The door of the wardrobe stood open now, with one of the yellow bureau-drawers; a pair of shoes rested on the straight chair, with a pair of stockings curled on the rag-carpet below. On the sway-backed bed were strewn various things--a towel, two old summer dresses that she had been trying on a little earlier in the afternoon, a pair of soiled white gloves, a paper of pins and two new dress-s.h.i.+elds.

In the drawer of the wardrobe, Angela presently found several sheets of note-paper, and, after a longer search, a single envelope. The envelope was not what it had been once. It had knocked about the world a bit in its time; its bright youth was gone. Upon its face was a dusky smudge, souvenir of some forgotten encounter, and, near the smudge, some hand had once written the word "Mrs.," and then lost heart and abandoned the whole enterprise. Still, it was possibly the only envelope in the house.

Angela found, after due trial, that the smudge yielded, quite satisfactorily, to the eraser on the end of a pencil. As for the reminiscent "Mrs.," that was easily enough worked over into a "Mr.,"

though not, to be sure, without a slight blot.

Angela sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the rickety work-table into position before her. Having addressed the remainder of the envelope, after the "Mr.," she sat biting the penholder for a s.p.a.ce. But when the business end of the pen was put into action, it went ahead quite steadily:--

DEAR MR. GARROTT [wrote Angela from the bedside]:--

When you left here the other night, I did not think it would be so long before I would see you again!

I have been very sorry about our misunderstanding--and I have felt that I should not have said what I did. I have thought it all over, and I understand better now.

When you are not so busy, you must come in to see me--and I will explain just what I mean. I couldn't that night.

Yours most cordially,

ANGELA FLOWER.

She had hardly written the final letter of her pretty name when the front door was heard to open again, this time with a bang. Having hastily tucked the note into the experienced envelope, Angela got downstairs before her little brother, Wallie, had finished taking off his dripping overcoat.

Wallie was quite the queerest, gravest boy Angela had ever known. In her whole life, she had never seen him laugh but once. That was one summer day in Mitch.e.l.lton, when she, having undertaken to paper the walls of her room, had fallen backward off the stepladder into a bucket of paste.

Wallie was an eccentric, undoubtedly. Still, he was admitted to be obliging enough about little things. Now he made no special objections to going for the sugar; and when Angela then asked him please to step by at the same time, and give the note to Mr. Garrott, he only said, with one of his absent stares: "Step by? That's six blocks further."

"Well, I haven't anybody else to take it for me, Wallie," said Angela, in a voice rather like her mother's.

"And, Wallie," she added, presently, "I'm not sure whether there'll be an answer or not. You'd better just ask him, that's the best way. Just say, after he's read it, 'Is there any answer?'"