She wished that Martha had asked her to spend weekends with her but the idea had apparently never crossed the latter’s mind. “Goodbye until fall,” she had said gaily, “do you know, I’m awfully glad to go home this time. I always have my old room; it’s like begining life all over again. Of course I wouldn’t give up New York but life seems so much more real and durable down there. After all it’s where my roots are.”
Her roots! Angela echoed the expression to herself on a note that was wholly envious. How marvellous to go back to parents, relatives, friends with whom one had never lost touch! The peace, the security, the companionableness of it! This was a relationship which she had forfeited with everyone, even with Jinny. And as for her other acquaintances in Philadelphia, Henson, Butler, Kate and Agnes Hallowell, so completely, so casually, without even a ripple had she dropped out of their lives that it would have been impossible for her to reestablish their old, easy footing even had she so desired.
Virginia, without making an effort, seemed overwhelmed, almost swamped by friendships, pleasant intimacies, a thousand charming interests. She and Sara Penton, another teacher, had taken an apartment together, a three room affair on the top floor of a house on 139th Street, in “Striver’s Row,” explained Jinny. Whether or not the nickname was deserved, it seemed to Angela well worth an effort to live in this beautiful block with its tree-bordered pavements, its spacious houses, its gracious neighbourliness. A doctor and his wife occupied the first two floors; they were elderly, rather lonely people, for their two children had married and gone to other cities. They had practically adopted Virginia and Sara; nursing them when they had colds, indulgently advising them as to their callers. Mrs. Bradley, the doctor’s wife, occasionally pressed a dress for them; on stormy days the doctor drove them in his car around to “Public School 89” where they both taught. Already the two girls were as full of intimacies, joyous reminiscences, common plans as though they had lived together for years. Secrets, nicknames, allusions, filled the atmosphere. Angela grew sick of the phrases: “Of course you don’t understand that; just some nonsense and it would take too long to explain it. Besides you wouldn’t know any of the people.” Even so, unwelcome as the expression was, she did not hear it very often, for Jinny did not encourage her visits to the apartment even as much as to the boarding house.
“Sara will think it strange if you come too often.”
“We might tell her,” Angela rejoined, “and ask her to keep it a secret.”
But Jinny opined coolly that that would never do; it was bad to entrust people with one’s secrets. “If you can’t keep them yourself, why should they?” she asked sagely. Her attitude showed no malice, only the complete acceptance of the stand which her sister had adopted years ago.
In her sequestered rooms in the Village lying in the summer heat unkempt and shorn of its glamour Angela pondered long and often on her present mode of living. Her life, she was pretty sure, could not go on indefinitely as it did now. Even if she herself made no effort it was unlikely that the loneliness could persist. Jinny, she shrewdly suspected, had known something of this horrible condition when she, the older sister had left her so ruthlessly to go off and play at adventure. This loneliness and her unfortunate affair with Henson had doubtless proved too much for her, and she had deliberately sought change and distraction elsewhere. There were depths upon depths of strength in Jinny and as much purpose and resource as one might require. Now here she was established in New York with friends, occupation, security, leading an utterly open life, no secrets, no subterfuges, no goals to be reached by devious ways.
Jinny had changed her life and been successful. Angela had changed hers and had found pain and unhappiness. Where did the fault lie? Not, certainly, in her determination to pass from one race to another. Her native good sense assured her that it would have been silly for her to keep on living as she had in Philadelphia, constantly, through no fault of her own, being placed in impossible positions, eternally being accused and hounded because she had failed to placard herself, forfeiting old friendships, driven fearfully to the establishing of new ones. No, the fault was not there. Perhaps it lay in her attitude toward her friends. Had she been too coldly deliberate in her use of them? Certainly she had planned to utilize her connection with Roger, but on this point she had no qualms; he had been paid in full for any advantages which she had meant to gain. She had not always been kind to Miss Powell, “but,” she murmured to herself, “I was always as kind to her as I dared be in the circumstances and far, far more attentive than any of the others.” As for Anthony, Paulette, and Martha, her slate was clear on their score. She was struck at this point to realize that during her stay of nearly three years these five were the only people to whom she could apply the term friends. Of these Roger had dropped out; Miss Powell was negative; Paulette had gone to
