Mrs. Denver tapped lightly, opened the door, came in closing it mysteriously behind her.
“I’ve a great surprise for you.” She went on with an old childish formula: “Will you have it now, or wait till you get it?”
Angela’s features twisted into a wan smile. “I believe I’d better have it now. I’m beginning to think I don’t care for surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.” She went to the door and ushered in Rachel Salting.
“I know you two want to talk,” Mrs. Denver called over her shoulder. “Cheer her up, Rachel, and I’ll bring you both a fine spread in an hour or so.” She closed the door carefully behind her.
Angela said, “What’s the matter, Rachel?” She almost added, “I hardly knew you.” For her friend’s face was white and wan with grief and hopelessness; gone was all her dainty freshness, her pretty colour; indeed her eyes, dark, sunken, set in great pools of blackness, were the only note—a terrible note—of relief against that awful whiteness.
Angela felt her strength leaving her; she rose and tottered back to the grateful security of her bed, lay down with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for the asylum afforded her sudden faintness. In a moment, partly recovered, she motioned to Rachel to sit beside her.
“Oh,” said Rachel, “you’ve been ill—Mrs. Denver told me. I ought not to come bothering you with my worries. Oh, Angèle, I’m so wretched! Whatever shall I do?”
Her friend, watching her, was very gentle. “There’re lots of awful things that can happen. I know that, Rachel. Maybe your trouble isn’t so bad that it can’t be helped. Have you told John about it?” But even as she spoke she sensed that the difficulty in some way concerned John. Her heart contracted at the thought of the pain and suffering to be endured.
“Yes, John knows—it’s about him. Angèle, we can’t marry.”
“Can’t marry. Why, is he—it can’t be that he’s—involved with someone else!”
A momentary indignation flashed into Rachel’s face bringing back life and colour. For a small space she was the Rachel Salting of the old happy days. “Involved with someone else!” The indignation was replaced by utter despair. “How I wish he were! That at least could be arranged. But this can never be altered. He—I, our parents are dead set against it. Hadn’t you ever noticed, Angèle? He’s a Gentile and I’m a Jew.”
“But lots of Jews and Gentiles marry.”
“Yes, I know. Only—he’s a Catholic. But my parents are orthodox—they will never consent to my marriage. My father says he’d rather see me dead and my mother just sits and moans. I kept it from her as long as I could—I used to pray about it, I thought God must let it turn out all right, John and I love each other so. But I went up to Utica the other day, John went with me, and we told them. My father drove him out of the house; he said if I married him he’d curse me. I am afraid of that curse. I can’t go against them. Oh, Angèle, I wish I’d never been born.”
It was a delicate situation; Angela had to feel her way; she could think of nothing but the trite and obvious. “After all, Rachel, your parents have lived their lives; they have no business trying to live yours. Personally I think all this pother about race and creed and colour, tommyrot. In your place I should certainly follow my own wishes; John seems to be the man for you.”
But Rachel weeping, imbued with the spirit of filial piety, thought it would be selfish.
“Certainly no more selfish than their attempt to regulate your life for you.”
“But I’m afraid,” said Rachel shivering, “of my father’s curse.” It was difficult for Angela to sympathize with an attitude so archaic; she was surprised to find it lurking at the bottom of her friend’s well-trained intelligence.
“Love,” she said musing to herself rather than to her friend, “is supposed to be the greatest thing in the world but look how we smother and confine it. Jews mustn’t marry Catholics; white people mustn’t marry coloured—”
“Oh well, of course not,” Rachel interrupted in innocent surprise. “I wouldn’t marry a nigger in any circumstances. Why, would you?”
But Angela’s only answer was to turn and, burying her head in her pillow, to burst into unrestrained and bitter laughter. Rachel went flying to call Mrs. Denver.
“Oh come quick, come quick! Angèle’s in hyterics. I haven’t the ghost of an idea what to do for her!”
Once more the period of readjustment. Once more the determination to take life as she found it; bitter dose after sweet, bitter after sweet. But it seemed to her now that both sweetness and bitterness together with her high spirit for adventure lay behind her. How now was she to pass through the tepid, tasteless days of her future? She was not quite twenty-seven, and she found herself wondering what life would be like in ten, five, even one year’s time. Changes did flow in upon one, she knew, but in her own case she had been so used herself to give the impetus to these changes. Now she could not envisage herself as making a move in any direction. With the new sullenness
