East Angels: A Novel

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."