East Angels: A Novel

"Yes, I do, I wish I might never think of him on earth again," said Garda, fiercely, giving a stamp with her foot as one does in extremity of physical pain. "Why should I suffer so? it's not right. If you don't help me more than you've done (and I relied upon you so), I shall certainly go to him – go to Lucian. He'll be glad to see me, he thinks more of me than you do – you who haven't helped me at all! But it will be easy to end it, you will see; I've got something I shall take. I relied upon you so – I relied upon you so!"

Margaret took her hands. "Give me another day, Garda," she said.

"Only one," answered Garda.

CHAPTER XXXVII

One afternoon, six months later, Margaret, under her white umbrella, opened the gate of the rose garden at East Angels. She came through the crape-myrtle avenue, at the end of its long vista, on the bench under the great rose-tree, she saw Garda; the crane, outlined in profile against the camellia bushes, kept watch over his mistress stiffly; another companion, in bearing scarcely less rigid, stood beside her – Adolfo Torres.

His Cuban slips had served their destiny after all, Garda's lap was full of roses. Crimson and pink, they lay on her black dress a mass of color, contrasting with the creamy hue of the paler roses above her head.

There was always the same interest in Margaret; as soon as Garda saw her friend, she left the bench and came to meet her. The roses tumbled to the ground; Adolfo did not glance at his fallen blossoms, but Carlos, stalking forward, pecked at the finest ones.

"Oh, have you got through at last – that everlasting reading aloud and fish-nets?" Garda inquired. "To think that I should have to give way to fish-nets?"

"I was to tell you – Lanse hopes that you will come in before long," Margaret answered.

"Hopes are good. But I shall not come in." And Garda linked her arm in her friend's. "Or rather, if I do, I shall go and sit in your room with you – may I? Good-by, Adolfo; you are not vexed with me for going?" she added. And, leaving Margaret, she went back to him, extending her hand.

He bowed over it. "Whatever pleases you – "

"You please me," answered Garda, promptly. "After they have carried off Mr. Harold to bed, those terrible men of his – about ten o'clock generally – then I never have very much to do for an hour. From ten to eleven, that is the time when I am in want of society."

"But you don't expect poor Mr. Torres to go stumbling home through the woods at midnight, just for the sake of giving you that?" Margaret suggested.

"Yes, I do. Mr. Torres never stumbled in his life. And I don't think he is at all poor," Garda answered, smiling.

He had kept her hand, he bowed over it; he did not appear to think he was, himself.

"Yes – from ten to eleven, that is much the best time. Couldn't you come then, and only then?" Garda went on. "Margaret doesn't mind, she's always late."

"Yes, I've a wretched habit of sitting up," that lady acknowledged.

"It is impossible that any habit of Mrs. Harold's should be wretched," announced the Cuban, with gravity. "She may not always explain her reasons. They are sure to be excellent."

"Come, Margaret, we can go after that," said Garda. "If you should tell him that you had a little habit of scalping – small negroes, for instance – he would be sure that your reasons were perfect. And gather up the scalps." Smiling a good-by to Torres, she drew her friend away with her, going down the myrtle avenue. "What are you going to do?" she asked. "May I come and sit with you till dinner?"

"I have accounts to look over; I shouldn't be much of a companion."

"Always something."

"Yes, always something."

"Well, I shall come, all the same."

An hour later she entered Margaret's room, selected a low chair which she liked, and seated herself. This apartment of Margaret's, which was called her dressing-room, though in reality she never dressed there, contained her own small library, her writing-table, the rows of account-books (with which she was at present engaged), and sewing materials – all articles which Garda declared she detested. "It looks like an industrial school," she said; "you only need shoe-brushes."

"Why shoe-brushes?" Mrs. Harold had inquired.

"They always make them – in industrial schools," Garda had responded, imaginatively.

The mistress of the house had not lifted her head when Garda entered, she went on with her accounts. Garda had apparently lost nothing of her old capacity for motionless serenity; leaning back in her chair, she swayed a feather fan slowly to and fro, looking at the top of a palmetto, which she could see through the open window, shooting up against the blue; her beauty was greater than ever, her eyes were sweeter in expression, her girlish figure was now more womanly. After musing in this contented silence for half an hour, she fell asleep.

Some minutes later, Margaret, missing the soft motion of the fan, looked up; she smiled when she saw the sleeping figure. It was a warm day, Garda had changed her thin black dress for a white one; through the lace, of which it was principally composed, her round arms gleamed. She had dropped her fan; her head, with the thick braids of hair wound closely about it, drooped to one side like a flower.

Margaret had smiled to see how easily, as a child does, she had glided into unconsciousness. But the next moment the smile was followed by a heavy sigh. It was a sigh of envy, the page of figures grew dim, then faded from before her eyes, she dropped her head upon her clasped hands in the abandonment of the fresh, the ever-fresh realization of her own dreariness. This realization was never long absent; she might hope that she had forgotten it, or that it had forgotten her; but it always came back.

It happened that at this instant Garda woke; and saw the movement. She came swiftly across to her friend. "Oh, I knew you were unhappy, though you never, never say so! But now I have caught you, I have seen it. And oh, Margaret, you are so changed! – you are the loveliest woman in the world still, – but you have grown so thin; look at your hands." And she held up one of Margaret's hands against the light to show its transparency.

But Margaret drew her hand away. "If I'm thin, I am only following out my privilege as an American woman," she answered, lightly. "Don't you know that we pride ourselves upon remaining slender?"

"Slender – yes; that is what you were. Your arms were always slender, and yet round. But now – " She pushed up Margaret's sleeve. "See your poor wrists. Oh, Margaret, I do believe that before long even hollows in your pretty neck will begin to show!"

"How can they, if I always wear high dresses?" said Margaret, smiling.

She rose as she spoke. But if her motive was to escape from further scrutiny, she was not successful; Garda took hold of her and made her sit down on a couch near one of the windows, and standing in front of her to keep her there, she continued her inspection. "Yes, you are thinner. There are little fine lines going down your face. And your face itself has grown narrow. That makes your eyes too large, I don't like your eyes now; they are too big and blue."

"They were always blue, weren't they?"

"Now they are the kind of blue that you see in the eyes of golden-haired children that have got to die," pursued Garda, making one of her curiously accurate comparisons.

Suddenly she held Margaret's hands down with her own left hand, and with her right pushed back swiftly the dark hair; it was the hair that lay low over the forehead; for Lanse's taste was still consulted, his wife's dusky locks rippled softly above her blue eyes, having now certainly nothing of the plain appearance to which he had objected.

The forehead thus suddenly exposed betrayed at the temples a wasted look, with the blue veins conspicuous on the white. "I knew it!" said Garda. She sat down beside her friend, and kissed her with angry tenderness. "What is the matter with you?" she demanded, putting her arms round her and giving her a little shake. "You shall tell me. What is the matter?"

"A very natural thing; I am growing old, that is all." And Margaret tried to rearrange the disordered hair.

"Leave it as it is, I am determined to see the worst of you this time. You – with all that pretty hair and your pretty dresses – you have managed to conceal it." And again with searching eyes she examined her friend. "You don't care at all!" she announced.

"Oh yes, I do," said Margaret.

"You don't care in the least. But I care; and something shall be done. They have worn you out between them —two invalids; I shall speak to Mr. Harold."

Margaret's face altered. "No, Garda, you must not do that."

"But he likes me," said Garda, insistently; "he will say yes to anything I ask – you will see if he doesn't."

And Margaret felt, like a wave, the conviction that he would; more than this, that he would always have said yes if Garda had been the wife instead of herself. Garda would never have been submissive, Garda would never have yielded. But to Garda he would always have said yes.

"I shall certainly speak to him," Garda persisted. "Why shouldn't I not mind what you say, if it is for your good?'

"It would not be for my good."

"But he is kind to you, I know it, because I see it with my own eyes. He thinks you are lovely, he has told me so; he says you are a very rare type. And he himself – he is so agreeable; he says unusual things; he never tires anybody; his very fish-nets are amusing. I like him ever so much; and though he is crippled, he is very handsome – there is such a golden light in his brown eyes."

"He is all that you say," Margaret answered, smiling at this enumeration.

She could talk about her husband readily enough now. As Garda had noticed, he was always kind, his manner had been steadily kind (though not without many a glimpse of inward entertainment gleaming through it) ever since he entered East Angels' doors; he appeared to have taken his wife under his protection, he told Aunt Katrina once for all, and authoritatively (to that lady's amazement), that she must hereafter, in his presence at least, be "less catty" to Margaret. During the one visit which Evert Winthrop had paid to Florida in the same period, Lanse announced to him (in the tone of the old Roman inscription) – "I'm as steady as a church, old lad. I make nets for the poor. I talk to Aunt K. I'm good to the little people about here. I'm a seraph to Margaret."

Garda's present visit at East Angels had begun but two days before. She had been spending some time in New York with Lish-er and Trude. These ladies having written once a week since their first parting with her, to say that they were sure that she must by this time be needing "a drier air," Garda had at length accepted the suggestion; and tried the air. It proved to be that of Ninth Street; and was indeed remarkably dry. This visit to Margaret was her second one; six months before she had made a long stay at East Angels – so long that Aunt Katrina began to fear that she would never go away. The violence of the grief that had accompanied her first return to Gracias had subsided with singular suddenness; she said to Margaret, in an apathetic tone, "I had to kill it, you know, or else kill myself. I came very near killing myself."

"I was much alarmed about you," Margaret answered, hesitating as to whether or not to say more.

Garda divined her thoughts. "Did you think I was out of my mind? I wasn't at all; it was only that I couldn't bear the pain. Let us never speak of that time again – never! never!" She got up, and for a moment stood trembling and quivering. Then, with the same rapidity and completeness, she resumed her calm.

Margaret never did speak of it again. "But how was it that she killed it – how?" was her dreary thought.

During that first visit, Lanse and Mrs. Spenser had become fast friends; every evening she played checkers with him, and she was the only person with whom he did not bluster over the game; she contradicted him; she made sport of his fish-nets; she used his Fielding for her footstool; she put forward the proposition that her own face was prettier than his Mino outlines.

Lanse denied this. "My Mino outlines are not in the least pretty. But then you are not in the least pretty yourself."

"Not pretty!" said Garda, with a protesting cry. "Why, even a little pussy cat can be pretty."

"I have not been able to discover a trace of prettiness in you." He paused. "You are simply superb," he said, looking at her with his deep bold eyes. "What makes you stay on here?" he added in another tone, surveying her curiously.

Garda turned; but Margaret had by chance left the room. "I was going to point to Margaret," she answered; "I stay because I love her – love to be with her."

"Well, you'll have a career," Lanse announced, briefly.

The next day he said to Aunt Katrina, "I should like to have seen that girl before she was married; there's such an extraordinary richness in her beauty that I don't believe she ever had an awkward age; she was probably graceful at sixteen."

"She was designing at sixteen."

"No! For whom could she have been designing down here?"

"Evert."

"And the idiot let her slip through his fingers?"

"Deliver us!" said the lady. "If I've got to hear you admire her too!"

Late in the evening of the day when she had threatened to speak to Lanse about his wife's health, Garda came and knocked at Margaret's door. "I wanted to see you," she said, entering.

Adolfo had gone an hour before, and she had been in her own room meanwhile; but she had not taken off her white lace attire, or loosened the braids of her hair. Margaret too was fully dressed.

"What have you been doing?" Garda demanded, suspiciously, as she looked at her. "Not crying?"

"I think I have forgotten how to cry."

"Well, your eyes are dry," Garda admitted. She closed the door, then went to one of the windows and looked out. There had been a heavy rain during the evening, and the air was much cooler; it was very dark. She closed the shutters of all the three windows and fastened them. "It's so gloomy out there! Pine cones? What luck! we'll have a fire."

"Garda – we shall melt!"

"No, the room is too large." She piled the cones on the hearth and set fire to them; in an instant the blaze flared out and lighted up all the dusky corners. "That's better. Only one poor miserable little candle?" And she proceeded to light four others that stood about here and there.

"Are you preparing for a ball?"

"I am preparing for a talk. I'm lonely to-night, Margaret, and I can't bear to feel lonely; how long may I stay? Are you sure you haven't got to go and do something? – say good-night to Mr. Harold, for instance?"

"He has been asleep these two hours. He always has one of his men in the room with him."

"Yes, I know. But why haven't you undressed, then, all this time?" Garda went on, with returning suspicion.

"Why haven't you? But have you no conscience, thinking of poor Adolfo banging into all the trees and falling into all the ditches on his way home?"

"No, Adolfo and I are not troubled about conscience, – Adolfo and I understand each other perfectly. It's in the blood, I suppose; we belong to the same race," said the daughter of the Dueros.

She had been standing watching her fire; now she drew up a chair before it and sat down. "I did not say anything to Mr. Harold about you, after all," she said.

"I thought you wouldn't when I told you I did not wish it."

"I shall do it to-morrow; you are to come north with me the next time I go."

"I shall not leave East Angels."

"I saw Evert in New York," Garda began again, after a short silence. "I wrote a note asking him to come. He came – he came three times. But three times isn't much?" And she glanced towards Margaret.

Margaret had kept her place on the sofa where she was sitting when Garda entered; but she had drawn forward on its casters a tall screen to shield herself from the fire, and this threw her face into shadow. "No, not much," she answered from her dark nook.

"I love to tell you things," Garda resumed, gazing at the blaze. "Well – he wouldn't like me – what would you say to that? I had thought that perhaps he might; but no, he wouldn't."

This time there was no answer from the shadow.

"I used to think – long ago – that it was because he couldn't," Garda went on; "I mean, couldn't care for any one very much; care as I care. But I was mistaken. Completely. He can care. But not for me."

She got up and went to the long mirror, in the bright light her face and figure were clearly reflected; here she stood looking at herself for some time in silence, as if touched by a new curiosity. She moved nearer the glass, so that she could see her face; then back to get a view of the image as a whole; she turned half round, with her head over her shoulder, in order to see herself in profile. She adjusted the ribbon round her supple waist, and gave a touch, musingly, to her hair; she lifted her white hands and looked at them; dropping them, she clasped them behind her, and indulged in another general survey. "Such as I am, he cares nothing for me," she said at last, speaking not in surprise, but simply, as one who states a fact.

She looked at herself again. "I don't say he's not a fool!" And she gave a good-humored laugh.

She left the glass and came towards Margaret. "I've got to tell you something," she said. "Do you know, I tried. Yes, I tried; for I like him so much! You remember I thought everything of him once, when we were first engaged, long ago? I appreciate him better now. And I like him so much!" While she was saying these last words she came and knelt down beside the sofa in her old caressing fashion, her clasped hands on Margaret's knees. But her movement had pushed the screen, and it rolled back, letting the fire-light shine suddenly across Margaret's face.

"Merciful Heaven!" cried Garda, springing to her feet as she saw the expression there; "do you care for him? – is that it? The cause of all – the change in you, and in him too? Oh, how blind I have been! – how blind! But I never once suspected it. Don't think of a word I have said, he didn't look at me; I tried, but he wouldn't; he despises me, I know. I like him better than any one in the world, now that Lucian is gone," she went on, with her bare frankness. "But he will never care for me; and a very good reason, too, when it is you he cares for!"

Margaret had bowed her head upon her arm, which rested upon the sofa's back. Garda sat down beside her. "How many times have you comforted me!" she said. "If I could only be of the smallest comfort to you, Margaret!"

Margaret did not answer.

"And it has been so all these long years," Garda murmured, after sitting still and thinking of it. "You are better than I am!"

"Better!"

"There isn't an angel in heaven at this moment better than you are," Garda responded, vehemently. "But you mustn't keep on in this way, you know," she added, after a moment.

"I can't talk, Garda."

"That is it, Evert has talked! He has tired you out. I can imagine that when once he is in earnest – Margaret, let me tell you this one thing: you can't live under all this, you'll die."

"It's not so easy to die," answered Lansing Harold's wife.

"You think I don't know about Mr. Harold. But I do. Lucian heard the whole in Rome; I even saw her myself – in a carriage on the Pincio. I know that he left you twice to go to her – twice; what claim has he, then, upon you? But what is the use of my talking, if Evert has been able to do nothing!"

Margaret sat up. "Go now, Garda. I would rather be alone."

But Garda would not go. "I could never be like you," she went on. "And this is a case where you had better be more like me. Margaret! Margaret!" and she clung to her, suddenly. "Such a love as his would be!" she whispered – "how can you refuse it? I think it's wicked, too, because it's his whole life, he isn't Lansing Harold! And you love him so; you needn't deny it; I can feel your heart beating now."

"Go," said Margaret, drawing herself free, and rising. "You only hurt me, Garda. And you cannot change me."

But Garda followed her. "You adore him. And he – And you give all that up? Why – it's the dearest thing there is, the dearest thing we have; what are you made of?" She kept up with her, walking by her side.

Margaret was pacing the room aimlessly; she put out her arm as if to keep Garda off.

The girl accepted this, moving to that distance; but still she walked by her side. "And don't you ever think of the life he's leading? – the life you're making him lead?" she went on. "He's unhappy – of course he didn't tell me why. He's growing hard and bitter, he's ever so much changed; remember that I have just seen him, only a few days ago. It's dreadful to have to say that he has changed for the worse, because I like him so much; but I am afraid he has, – yes, he has. You see he needs some one – I like him so much."

"Marry him yourself, then, and be the some one," answered Margaret, sharply. And by a sudden turn in her quick walk she seemed to be again trying to get rid of her.

"I would, if he would marry me," Garda answered; "yes, even if he should keep on caring for you just the same, for that doesn't hurt him in my eyes. I should be content to come after you; and if I could have just a little edge of his love – But he wouldn't look at me, I tell you – though I tried. He is like you, with him it is once. But you are the one I am thinking of most, Margaret. For you are fading away, and it's this stifled love that's killing you; now I understand it. Women do die of such feelings, you are one of them. Do you think you'll have any praise when you get to the next world " – here she came closer – "after killing yourself, and breaking down all the courage of a man like Evert, like Evert– two whole lives wasted – and all for the sake of an idea?"

Margaret's face had been averted. But now she looked at her. "An idea which you cannot comprehend," she said. And she turned away again.

"Yes, I know you think me your inferior," Garda answered; "and I acknowledge that I am your inferior; I am nothing compared with you, I never was. But I don't care what you say to me, I only want you to be happier." She waited an instant, then came up behind Margaret, whose back was towards her, and with a touch that was full of humility, took hold of a little fold of her skirt. "Listen a moment," she said, holding it closely, as if that would make Margaret listen more; "I don't believe Mr. Harold would oppose a suit at all. He couldn't succeed, of course, no matter what he should do, for it's all against him, but I don't believe he would even try; he isn't that sort of a man at least, malicious and petty. If he could be made comfortable here, as he is now? It's very far away – Gracias-á-Dios; that is, people think so, I find; they thought so in New York; so he could stay on here as quietly as he pleased, and it would make no difference to anybody. He could have everything he liked; why, I would undertake to stay for a while at first, stay and amuse him, play checkers and all that. It's a pity Mrs. Rutherford dislikes me so," Garda concluded, in a tone of regret.

"Perhaps you would undertake to marry him, by way of a change?" said Margaret, leaving her again, with another sharp movement that pulled the dress from the touch of the humble little hand.

"There are some things, Margaret, that even you must not say to me," Garda answered, smiling bravely and brightly, though the tears were just behind.

And then Margaret's cruel coldness broke; she came to her, took her hands, and held them across her hot eyes. "Forgive me, Garda, I don't know what I am saying. You don't mean it, but you keep turning the knife in the wound. I shall never do any of the things you talk of, I shall go on staying here. I must bear my life – the life I made for myself, with my eyes open; no one made it for me, I made it for myself, and I must bear it as well as I can. I have said cruel things, but it was because – " She dropped the girl's hands. "I have always thought you so – so beautiful; and if you care for him, as you now tell me you do, what more natural than that he – " But she could not finish, her face contracted with a quiver, and took on suddenly and strangely the tints of age.