THE UNLIT LAMP




THE UNLIT LAMP

A STUDY OF INTER-ACTIONS

BY
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING
Author of “Invincible Minnie,” “Rosaleen Among the Artists,”
“Angelica,” etc.

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE


Copyright, 1922
By E. P. Dutton & Company

_All Rights Reserved_


PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS


BOOK ONE--THE BRIDE

CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

I. A DANCE ON STATEN ISLAND IN 1890                                    3

II. A VINCELLE IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT                                 15

III. GILBERT GOES A-WOOING                                            26

IV. CLAUDINE’S PECULIAR MOTHER                                        37

V. CLAUDINE LEARNS TO ADAPT HERSELF                                   49

VI. THE KEYNOTE                                                       59

VII. THE HEDGE WHICH GREW SO FAST                                     73

VIII. A YEAR LATER                                                    88


BOOK TWO--THE BREATH OF LIFE

I. AFTER TWENTY YEARS                                                 97

II. THE FORSAKEN PROVIDER                                            110

III. THE SUITOR WITH CREDENTIALS                                     122

IV. THE UNABASHED OUTCAST                                            132

V. THE BREATH OF LIFE                                                143

VI. THE UNLAWFUL PICNIC                                              155

VII. STEPHENS EXPLAINS HIMSELF                                       170

VIII. THE THING IS ON THEM                                           181

IX. BERTIE                                                           196


BOOK THREE--THE CUP IS OFFERED

I. ANDRÉE’S RECITAL                                                  211

II. THE BITTER TRIUMPH                                               222

III. ANDRÉE’S WEDDING                                                229

IV. THE BEGINNING                                                    241

V. THE HOUSEWARMING                                                  252

VI. DISCORDS                                                         264

VII. THE PASTRY-COOK’S DAUGHTER                                      273

VIII. MUTINY                                                         284

IX. HOME AGAIN                                                       299

X. DESTINY INTERVENES                                                311

EPILOGUE                                                             322




_BOOK ONE_

THE BRIDE




THE UNLIT LAMP




CHAPTER ONE

A DANCE ON STATEN ISLAND IN 1890


“Good Lord!” said young Vincelle, turning up the the collar of his
overcoat. “I didn’t know we were going to the ends of the earth.”

“It’s worth it,” said his friend.

They sat in total darkness while the hired hack dragged them up the
hills of Staten Island; it was a bitter night, and Vincelle wasn’t
prepared for it. He shivered and pulled the rug higher over his knees.
He was taking a little more than his share of that rug, but Pendleton,
feeling himself more or less responsible for the cold, made no
complaint. It was he who had persuaded Vincelle to make the arduous trip
from Brooklyn to Staten Island, to attend a dance, and to see the
prettiest girl there was to see. And Vincelle was a fellow accustomed
only to cities, to warm, well-lighted houses and theatres and swift
transitions in street cars and hansom cabs; he was, moreover, not
adaptable and not compliant.

He looked out of the window with a sort of dismay; nothing but bare
trees against a sinister night sky; now and then a lighted house in a
big garden. The horse went steadfastly forward, with a monotonous
jerking of his head; outside on the box loomed the swathed and
shapeless figure of the coachman, who didn’t appear to be driving, but
to be waiting to get somewhere.

“Is it much farther?” asked Vincelle, in an ominous voice.

“It’s not really far from the ferry,” said his friend. “Only being
uphill all the way makes it seem longer.”

“I’m numb with cold.... Why the devil wasn’t I satisfied with the pretty
girls in Brooklyn?”

“It’s worth it, I tell you!” Pendleton assured him, earnestly. “I’ve
never had such good times in my life as I’ve had at the Masons’.
Informal, but a good tone, you know. Charming people!”

Vincelle didn’t answer at all. He made up his mind to be very critical;
he felt that the Masons needed to be almost superhumanly charming to
compensate for so much discomfort.

They began the ascent of an outrageous hill, and the cheerful Pendleton,
looking out of his window, announced that they were “practically
there--the house is at the top of this hill.” He turned down the collar
of his coat and gave his silk hat a careful rub with his sleeve; he
began to stir about under the rug. But Vincelle made no preparations
whatever; he intended to look cold and uncomfortable; it was not for him
to please, but to be pleased. The carriage entered a gravel driveway
with a sudden burst of speed, and drew up under a porte cochère. Lights
were shining from the long windows curtained in white, and the sound of
their wheels had brought a man-servant to the door.

For a moment Vincelle lingered while Pendleton made his arrangement with
the driver, and then they entered the house together. And it astonished
Vincelle. It was so extraordinarily full of light and colour; on either
side of the hall were open doors, showing big rooms brightly carpeted,
with blazing fires and flowers everywhere. From some distant region he
heard voices, laughter, footsteps. The man-servant ushered them into a
smaller room, carpeted in red, and lined with book shelves, where on a
little table before the hearth stood a huge punch bowl; he proffered and
they accepted; then he led them up the fine stairway to a bedroom which
was hospitably ready for them with a roaring fire. He returned with a
jug of hot water.

“Dinner in half an hour, gentlemen,” he said, and went away.

No use denying that Vincelle was impressed. Certainly they didn’t do
things in this way at home. Jugs of hot water, instead of a chilly and
possibly very distant bathroom, wood fires instead of hot-air registers
and gas logs, flowers in February, instead of potted palms and rubber
plants. Moreover, this idea of leaving it to a servant to welcome guests
impressed him by its casualness; his mother always received visitors
with ceremony, as soon as they crossed the threshold. He recognized here
something exotic and rather disturbing; he got up and went over to the
bureau, where he could critically regard himself, for he had decided
that, after all, he would try to please.

He was a handsome fellow, very dark; he had heavy features and a sullen
and obstinate mouth; he was not very tall, but stalwart and powerful. He
was twenty-five, and though he looked even younger, owing perhaps to
that tragic sulkiness, he had a thoroughly adult and responsible air.
He was no fop, like Pendleton; there was sobriety and decorum in the cut
of his coat; he was even then every inch the business man. Evening dress
did not become his thick-set figure, but he was naturally not aware of
that.

“Do they have a gong--or send after you when dinner’s ready?” he asked,
still intent upon his image.

“They do not! You’re supposed to know, and if you’re late, they don’t
wait for you. Come on! You’re lovely enough!” said Pendleton. He
surveyed his friend good-humouredly; it didn’t disturb him that Vincelle
was handsome and he was not, or that Vincelle had money and was almost
sure to make more. The Masons wouldn’t care about that. He was consoled
by certain advantages of his own; he was lively, cheerful, witty in a
very mild way; everyone liked him; he was, in an innocuous sense, a
“ladies’ man,” master of the utterly lost art of polite flirtation. He
was tall, slender, elegant, with a long, sharp nose and a bulging
forehead; his hair and eyebrows were so light as to look almost white;
he had wrinkles about his little blue eyes; it is of no significance to
say that he was twenty-seven, because he was ageless, and would be in no
way different ten or twenty years later.

“Come _on_!” he said, again.

In great decorum, conscious of their immaculate appearance and their
value as eligible and admirable young men, they descended the stairs and
entered the drawing-room. The subtle air of excitement which Vincelle
had felt upon entering the house was intensified here, the same
abundance of light and flowers, and a big fire. But with the addition
now of an agreeable babel of voices.

Pendleton led him forward to a stout lady in black silk, with an august,
kindly face and a very high colour.

“Mrs. Mason,” he said, “may I present----”

“This must be Mr. Vincelle,” she said, cheerfully, and held out her
hand. “You’re just in time. We’re about to have dinner.”

And she took the arm of a young man in spectacles and led the way into
the dining-room, followed by all the others, without order or ceremony.
She was not the aristocratic person the young man had expected, but she
was dignified, and that sufficed for a mother. No more introducing was
done, and he sat down between two girls who talked to him immediately
and agreeably. But he couldn’t respond; he was a little out of his
element; he was accustomed to formality, ceremony, an air of sobriety,
and it didn’t agree with him to be plunged suddenly into the midst of a
dozen strange people, without, one might say, his passport. If people
didn’t know who he was, then where was his prestige?

He looked about him. There were certainly a dozen people, all of them
young, with the exception of the hostess, and a queer, bearded man who
was unaccountably dressed in a rough grey suit and who likewise had the
effrontery to wear run-down morocco slippers. That was bad; that was odd
and eccentric, and everything he objected to most strongly. But the two
girls beside him addressed him as “Professor,” and if he were a
professor, that explained it, though without justifying it. His glance
left this unpleasant object, and sought for his friend, and found him
opposite, lost in conversation with a girl. That must be _the_ girl, of
course! He stared at her, entranced. Pendleton hadn’t exaggerated in
the least. She was charming, fascinating! Mentally he made use of the
adjective which probably four out of every five of the young lady’s
admirers used. He called her “fairylike.”

As a matter of fact, she wasn’t quite pretty, but no male person had
discovered that. She destroyed judgment. She was a little, slight thing,
rather pale, with reddish hair that stood out like an aureole of fine
copper threads. She had warm brown eyes, the kindly eyes of her mother;
small, pretty features. But her charm and her distinction lay in her
wonderful animation. One could, he thought, look at her for hours, and
never tire of her gestures, of the change of expression on her mobile
face. She was witty, too; or it seemed wit to him, her dear little
grimaces and her jolly, good-natured banter. No, he didn’t blame
Pendleton in the least; she _was_ worth the trip. Her dress satisfied
his exacting requirements too; it was white, much beruffled, cut a
little low in the neck, with short sleeves, and it had a train. It was
the dress of a young lady, for in these days there really weren’t any
girls.

She raised her eyes and met this new young man’s glance, and smiled at
him--a hostess’s smile, friendly, but a little impersonal. He was
gratified to see that she didn’t appear at all serious with Pendleton;
she was, he thought, somewhat mocking. And from that hour, he decided to
consider his friend’s well-known worship as a thing of no consequence,
simply one of Pendleton’s innumerable little loves--a sort of joke....

It was an excellent dinner; he couldn’t remember a better, and it was
surprisingly abundant. He was accustomed to frugality, and more or less
austerity. His mother had finer linen, more silver, more magnificence,
but never had she had on her table a feast like this, such honest,
unpretentious excellence in food. There was one wine served throughout
the meal, which was not according to his standard of elegance, but it
was a good wine, beyond denial.

When the meal was finished, the ladies rose and fluttered away.

“Not much time, you know!” said Mrs. Mason, warningly, as she left.
“It’s after eight!”

The professor then produced a box of cigars and a decanter and they
lingered for a time in the warm room, very content. But the sound of
carriage wheels interrupted them; they threw their cigars into the fire
and went into the big room across the hall, where Mrs. Mason was
waiting. A succession of bundled-up forms went past and up the stairs,
descending in due time as more young ladies; the room began to fill.
Pendleton was busy taking his friend about and introducing him here and
there, not leaving him until his card was quite filled and he had
secured two dances with Miss Mason herself.

What was it about this particular dance which made it different from all
the other dances he had attended? Why did he have such a surpassingly
enjoyable evening that he looked back upon it with a smile all his life?
There were pretty, lively girls, a floor like glass, good music, a
matchless supper; but there was nothing unusual in that. No, there was
some quite special quality about it; a charming festivity, a revel
wholly youthful and innocent and happy. He held the adorable Claudine in
his arms for two waltzes; he had very little to say to her, but he was
by nature taciturn; he listened instead. He was lost....

The carriages began coming back and the dance guests to take their
leave. He watched one group after another of bright faces vanish, then
at length the front door closed upon the last one, and Mrs. Mason, with
a sigh that was half laughter, sank into a chair.

“Mercy!” she said. “I’m getting too old for this, children!”

There were only the house guests left now, and the family, standing
about the big room. There were himself and Pendleton, the lovely
Claudine and her mother, and five other persons, whom he was beginning
to be able to place now; there were a daughter and her husband, there
were two bosom friends of Claudine’s, and the incomprehensible young man
in spectacles.

“It’s after two o’clock,” said Mrs. Mason. “There’s a little sort of
breakfast laid out in the dining-room for you young people, if you’re
hungry again. But don’t be long over it, and don’t disturb your father
as you come upstairs. Good-night, all of you!”

She rose heavily.

“And, Lance, you’ll put out the lights and lock up?” she added.

The young man in spectacles nodded.

“Mother,” said Claudine, “it was lovely! It’s so dear of you!”

Her mother looked at her for a moment with a faint smile.

“You’re only young once!” she said.

Trite words, certainly, and none of her hearers felt their force. Her
other daughter kissed her warmly, her son-in-law escorted her to the
foot of the stairs, and her stout, black-clad figure was seen ascending,
wearily, a little bent.

She puzzled Vincelle; she had no elegance; he felt sure that his mother
would call her “ordinary.” Yet there was about her a dignity, an
authority, he had never seen surpassed. And her way of entertaining you
had a sort of vigour and originality about it; he felt that she didn’t
care much what other people did, or what was correct, but was concerned
only with comfort, gaiety, and this unostentatious, invincible dignity
of hers.

“Come on!” said Claudine, and they all followed her across the hall.

A new mood had settled upon them; they weren’t conscious of being tired,
but they were, all of them, subdued, inclined to a pleasant seriousness.
The room was shadowy, except for a hanging gas lamp above the table, and
the glow of the fire. They sat about the table, hungry in spite of the
hearty supper they had consumed a few hours ago, and the young man in
spectacles began to talk in an unaccountable and eccentric fashion about
Pre-historic Man, and drew a picture of him, cowering and shivering on
such nights as this.

“A life of incessant fear,” he said. “Imagine that. Never to know
security. Never to see any possibility of safety. No chance of old age.”

Vincelle listened, but he felt vaguely that Pre-historic Man was rather
blasphemous and Darwinian and free-thinking. It was also displeasing to
observe that Claudine was interested.

“It’s safety that’s made us develop, isn’t it, Lance?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s safety that’s making us decline,” he said. “It’s making us soft
and weak and dull.”

“But if we weren’t secure, we couldn’t have any art,” said Claudine.

“Art!” said the young man, with a harsh laugh. “Art! The opium dreams of
drugged, idle people!”

The married sister interposed, laughing.

“Don’t be so serious, Lance! Claudine, dear, you’re not attending to
us!”

For Claudine was sitting at the head of the table, dispensing tea and
coffee. The sparkling brightness had gone from her face, she looked pale
and a little weary, but lovelier than ever. Vincelle was now disposed to
admire her more seriously; she had poise and dignity, and she could talk
in a way to startle him. She had something to say even on the topic of
Pre-historic Man; she had ideas which _he_ couldn’t have had.

“Life lost its meaning,” Lance went on, “when it ceased to be a
struggle.”

“For Heaven’s sake, when did it cease to be a struggle?” said Pendleton.
“They forgot to tell me. I thought it was still pretty hard to get a
foothold.”

Lance ignored him.

“Man waged a magnificent and heroic struggle with Nature,” he said, “but
was defeated.”

“But was it really so heroic, Lance? It was an involuntary struggle, it
hadn’t any aim. It seems to me that now, when we’re conscious, and can
really try to improve--”

“We don’t. We can’t. It’s too late. We’re in the final stage of
evolution. We went the wrong way.”

“Lance is a paleontologist,” murmured the girl next to Vincelle. “He’s
wonderful, isn’t he? But so gloomy!”

Vincelle had no idea what a paleontologist was, but he didn’t like them.
He felt horribly out of it. He couldn’t be learned, and he wouldn’t be
funny, like Pendleton. He was quite aware that he wasn’t making any sort
of impression here. Claudine must have become conscious of his
dissatisfaction--perhaps he showed it--for she suddenly addressed him.

“What do you think, Mr. Vincelle? Do you think we’re a miserable, doomed
remnant?”

He flushed.

“I’ve never given it much thought,” he said. “I’ve been busy keeping up
with business.”

His poor little remark sounded so sulky and infantile that even he was
confused.

“And politics,” he added, in an attempt to sound broader-minded.

Lance drew out his watch.

“I’m going to lock up now,” he said. “Five minutes before the lights go
out!”

There was a chorus of good-nights.

“Don’t forget that Father’s asleep!” warned the married sister, as
Claudine and her two bosom friends went chattering up the stairs.
Pendleton and Vincelle followed them and turned down the hall to their
own room. Pendleton began flinging off his clothes, but Vincelle sat
motionless in an arm-chair before the fire.

“Who is that fellow they call Lance?” he asked.

“Oh! Him? He’s a cousin. The Professor’s protégé. He lives with them,
you know. Nice chap; a little bit crazy. But then the old man is too.
Both scientists, you know. Professor’s a botanist. Come to bed, old boy,
and get that light out, will you?”

Tall and lanky in his night shirt, Pendleton stretched tremendously.

“Come to bed!” he said, again. “Come and get your beauty sleep, my boy.
Your face is your fortune, you know.”

Vincelle answered him with a sudden burst of anger.

“Oh, yes, but I’m not quite a fool, you know. A fellow can’t hold a
position in a business like mine without some trace of brains. I may not
know much about Science, but I know a damn lot about the Art of Making
Money. And I’m not a boor, either,” he added. “Hitherto I’ve always
managed to hold my own in any sort of social gathering. I’ve been
considered worthy of a word now and then....”

A loud, artificial snore from his friend cut him short. He turned out
the light and undressed in the firelight. But he felt his face burn in
the dark with a resentment he was not able to analyze.




CHAPTER TWO

A VINCELLE IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT


He waked the next morning to a marvelous peace. Pendleton was still
sleeping beside him, and there was no other sound but his quiet
breathing. Vincelle felt very wide awake; he got up instantly, and he
was glad to believe, from the silence, that it was still very early and
that he would be able to get home before eleven. He had forgotten to
wind his watch the night before and it had stopped, but he fancied that
he could sense the time. He went over to one of the windows and pulled
up the shade with a rattle; it wasn’t his nature to consider the sleep
of friends. It was a bright, frosty morning, very clear; before him lay
a neat back garden, and behind it a stable. Not a sign of life. He drew
on his socks, always the first step of his routine, and suddenly a
disturbing thought assailed him. He went over to Pendleton and shook him
and shook him until he opened his eyes. Pendleton swore at him.

“Look here!” said young Vincelle. “Where do I shave?”

“Don’t shave!” said Pendleton. “Go to sleep again like a Christian.”

“No. I told Mother I’d try to get home in time to take her to church.”

Pendleton pulled out his watch from under his pillow.

“Ah!” he shouted, exultantly. “Half past eleven already, my son!
Foiled!”

Vincelle frowned.

“I haven’t missed in years,” he said. “Poor old lady! She counts on it.”

“Now perhaps you’ll shut up and let me go to sleep again.”

“Where can I shave? Is there a bathroom?”

“Ring the bell,” said Pendleton. “And some one’ll bring you hot water.”

But when he was dressed in the clothes he had brought with him in his
bag, he hesitated to go down alone in this strange house. He strolled
about the room, smoking, until Pendleton was ready, and they descended
together. There wasn’t a soul to be seen.

“They’ve all gone to church,” said Pendleton.

This struck Vincelle as grossly inhospitable, someone should have been
there to attend to him. But a nice little servant brought them an
excellent breakfast in the dining room and after it they sat comfortably
in front of the fire, enjoying cigars from an open box on the sideboard.

“As soon as they come back, we’ll go,” said Pendleton. And they did so.
Mrs. Mason offered them the use of the family omnibus in which they had
returned from church, but Pendleton said they’d rather walk. She did not
invite them to stop for dinner, which Vincelle considered impolite. If
she didn’t want them, why couldn’t she simply invite them in a
half-hearted, unacceptable manner?

“I must thank you for a most enjoyable time,” he said ceremoniously.

She smiled and held out her hand.

“Come again!” she said.

Claudine, too, gave him her hand, but her glance and her smile were
lamentably devoid of significance. Evidently he wasn’t, for her, a
special person; he was nothing but a young man who had come down for a
dance. They set out down the hill, and he was able now to gain an idea
of the place at his leisure. It was a big wooden house with a cupola on
top; it had no pretension to beauty or architectural style, it was in
fact, quite hideous and ungainly, made of grey clapboards with a slate
roof; square, except that on one side a little greenhouse was built out
from the veranda. The garden, too, although large, was not like the
gardens of other people: there was no fountain, no nicely set out
shrubs. There was a beautiful old box hedge enclosing it, but inside it
looked irregular and untidy.

Pendleton was talking cheerfully.

“What do you think of her?” he asked.

“Very attractive,” said Vincelle.

“Did you ever see anyone like her?” he pursued.

Vincelle admitted that he hadn’t.

“I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty hard hit,” said Pendleton.

This was something his friend had very much wished not to hear.

“What about _her_?” he asked, briefly.

Pendleton groaned.

“She’s such a little flirt!” he said. “Of course, I’m not in a position
to marry now, anyway. I’m not making enough to keep myself. And by the
time I can ask her ... with all these fellows hanging round her all the
time ... Lord!”

Vincelle considered this frankness unmanly and indecorous. Never would
he have admitted a liking for a young lady until he was certain that she
returned it.

They crossed on the ferry, standing outside in the fine, cold air, on
the deck of the ark-shaped old boat. They reached New York and just
caught the Wall Street ferry and at last disembarked in the familiar air
of Brooklyn. They both lived in the august Columbia Heights district,
Pendleton in a house which was respectable, but no more, and Vincelle in
a fine one, on a corner, with a garden quite twenty feet wide. He
respected this garden, because it represented extra property and also
because it kept them aloof from all neighbors; through the high iron
fence could be seen its winter desolation, a complete and woeful
barrenness. At the best of times it was hardly an oasis, nothing grew in
it, and nothing was intended to grow in it, except a wretched ancient
wistaria, two bushes of Japanese holly and a tall shrub, dry and dead.
The common use of the garden was as a place in which the house plants
could stand, the rubber trees and palms and orange trees in tubs. Every
Spring old Mrs. Vincelle bought a number of potted geraniums and had
them planted in a certain bed where they blossomed, mangily, for a month
or two.

He bade his friend good-bye here and ran up the brown stone steps,
opened the door with his latch key, and entered into a chill vault,
dark, muffled, dismal. He hung up coat and hat on a gigantic piece of
furniture which towered up to the ceiling and which was at once a hat
rack, a pier-glass, a bureau with six drawers and a low table with a
marble top. Then he ran up the thickly carpeted stairs to a bedroom on
the floor above where he knew he would find his mother.

Sure enough, there she was, sitting in her rocking chair, with folded
hands, looking out on to the quiet street, a fragile little old lady of
sixty with a contemptuous, wizened little face and melancholy brown
eyes. She was dressed in her Sunday dress of black silk with a white
lace vest, she wore her best earrings, her diamond brooch, and a fine
wool shawl bundled about her narrow shoulders.

“Well!” she said with a smile.

Her son approached and kissed her reverently.

“I was very sorry, Mother, to miss taking you to church,” he said, “but
I didn’t wake up until eleven. It was three o’clock when we got to bed.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Did they dance on Sunday morning? Well, I dare say no one thinks of
such things any longer. However, it didn’t matter, Gilbert. I had a
touch of rheumatism, I shouldn’t have gone anyway.”

“Pshaw!” he said solicitously. “Your shoulder again, Mother?”

“It doesn’t matter. Sit down, Gilbert, and tell me all about it.”

He sat down opposite her, smoothing his sleek black head.

“Oh! The usual thing!” he said.

“Are they nice people?”

“Oh, yes, nice enough. The father’s a professor.”

“That may mean anything,” said the old lady. “I’ve known some professors
who were very nice people and some who were impossible. Did you see that
girl that Ashley is so enthusiastic about?”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“Mrs. Pendleton tells me he’s head over heels in love with her.”

“Oh, well, you know what Ashley is. He’s always in love.”

“Is she as pretty as he imagines?”

“I don’t know what he imagines,” said her son, a little peevishly.
“She’s a very attractive girl. Look here, Mother, I haven’t had any
dinner.”

“Mercy me,” cried the old lady. “And it’s nearly four o’clock! Why
didn’t you stay in Staten Island? Our dinner’s over and done with hours
ago. Ring the bell, Gilbert!”

He did so and it was promptly answered by a woman servant.

“Fetch Miss Dorothy,” she said.

She had risen in her agitation regarding her son’s shocking hunger and
began pottering about the room, frowning, lifting up little articles
from the bureau and the table with trembling old hands. It was a fine,
big room with a Turkish rug on the floor and an assemblage of solid
walnut furniture. It was crowded with knickknacks, photographs, a
hundred and one mementoes of her past life. It hadn’t the look of a
bedroom, for the bureau was hidden behind a screen and the bed was a
folding one, displaying nothing but an immense bevelled mirror set in a
broad frame of polished wood. Her son had never, even in childhood,
seen the least trace of disorder in this room.

“Pshaw!” said the old lady, “she’s asleep again, I suppose. The older
she grows the lazier she gets. She’s forever creeping upstairs and going
to sleep.... All nonsense.... Here am I so troubled with insomnia that I
don’t get five hours rest out of the night and I don’t think anyone’s
even seen me taking a nap.... Well, Dorothy!”

A woman stood smiling in the doorway, a stout, grey-haired woman with a
tousled, guilty air, a cousin, who earned her bitter bread as a
companion for various relatives. She was always spoken of as staying
with Aunt This and Cousin That; after two or three months she was sent
away, with a sort of rage engendered by her submission, her poverty and
her stupidness, and then when the memory had worn off, she was recalled.
Her usefulness was never admitted, but always exploited.

“Why, Gilbert!” she said, with an air of pleased surprise. “I didn’t
hear you come in!”

“I don’t think you’d hear a sound if the house was on fire!” said the
old lady, tartly. “It’s dangerous, the way you sleep. We could all be
murdered in our beds, and it wouldn’t disturb you.”

“Why, Cousin Selina, I wasn’t asleep! I was writing letters!”

“Well, now perhaps you’ll be able to attend to this poor boy. He hasn’t
had any dinner. And I’d calculated on his having a hearty meal there, so
I hadn’t planned for a very big supper. And Katie’s out. Run down to the
kitchen and see if you and Mary can’t fix up something nice for him.
And tell Mary supper at five instead of six.”

Miss Dorothy looked terrified. She knew so well the very meagre
resources of this household where there was never quite enough of
anything, where each egg was mentally numbered.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, doubtfully, and vanished.

“Now run upstairs and get ready!” said the old lady.

There were three big, unoccupied bedrooms on her floor, but it had
seemed to her, and to Gilbert, more fitting for a bachelor to live on
the floor above. He had a very large room there, furnished with austere
majesty, an ugly and uncomfortable room which he accepted as he accepted
everything else in the life his mother had arranged for him. There was a
black dressing-room attached, furnished with a marble wash basin and two
big clothes presses: it was supposed to belong to his room and the one
next, jointly, but as Miss Dorothy now occupied that adjoining room, the
second door was well bolted.

He sat down in a large, high-backed rocking chair with a tapestry seat,
one of the many pieces of furniture sent upstairs in disgrace after long
service. He began, absent-mindedly, to rock and to think--about
Claudine. His thoughts were all distressful and clouded; he felt himself
irresistibly attracted by that gay little creature, and he resented it.
He resented everything about that dance, the casualness, the
cheerfulness; his own home seemed to him admirably correct and
majestic. He felt quite unaccountably insulted. These people had
treated him in cavalier fashion....

He was naturally inclined to sulkiness. It was his refuge from an
incomprehensible world. And perhaps his great capacity for being
offended came from an equally pathetic source, perhaps it was a sort of
protest made by his youth and his manhood against his bondage. He wasn’t
aware of the bondage: he believed that his relations with his mother
were ideal and that he “humoured” her in a respectful way. But as a
matter of fact, he was less free, he was more under her dominion, than
even Miss Dorothy. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he
was hypnotized. He had been led to believe that he was happy; the poor,
sullen lonely creature. He never laughed: he very seldom smiled; he
hadn’t a spark of humour or gaiety in him. Pendleton privately
considered him “heavy,” and heavy he was. It hadn’t prevented him from
making a few conquests though. His handsome face, his invincible
innocence and possibly his money and his well-known ability in business
had won two or three little hearts; but though he had been flattered, he
hadn’t been much touched. He had never before in his life experienced
anything like this; this was positively uncomfortable. He was obsessed
and annoyed by the memory of Miss Mason of Staten Island. Her sparkling
face, her liquid voice, the surprising novelty of her had completely
captured him. The idea of a girl as pretty and popular and charming as
she being able to talk with a--what was it--a paleontologist in so grave
a way....

Summoned by Miss Dorothy he descended through the silent house to the
dining-room in the basement, always used when the family was alone, and
attacked the dismal feast set before him. He was silent because he was
silent by nature, having nothing to communicate, and the two women were
silent, for what in Heaven’s name had they to say to him or to each
other? Meals in that household were perfunctory and ascetic; the old
lady didn’t like to waste money on food, it needn’t be either appetizing
or nourishing so long as it was according to tradition, and decent. They
finished, and all went solemnly up-stairs again; the little old lady
first, noiseless over the thick carpet, incredibly slight and
unsubstantial, then her son, the staircase creaking under his heavy
tread, the quiet darkness reverberating with his loud, masculine cough,
and last of all Miss Dorothy.

They went into the back drawing-room and sat down in the chairs they
invariably occupied. The old lady closed her eyes, for that nap she
always took, and always denied. Miss Dorothy, owing to the fact of its
being Sunday, couldn’t take up her fancy work, which was then one of her
strongest claims to gentility and gave her at least a semblance of
elegant uselessness, and she too closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to
continue in her weary and muddled brain her intricate calculations,
“planning” she called it. She had to plan for a new black skirt. Could
she manage with that alpaca Cousin Selina had given her and if not could
she possibly spare the money to buy a new one? She hadn’t a salary;
simply, when she left to stay with the next relative, Cousin Selina
would give her something in an envelope and it might be enough or it
might be very little. She had no occupation for her thoughts but her
planning; poor soul. She hadn’t a single interest in life.

As for Gilbert, he being a man, had to read the Sunday newspapers and to
smoke. He had an arm-chair and a foot-stool and a smoking stand, placed
ready for him, in a good light. But his peace was gone. He was sunk in
black depression.




CHAPTER THREE

GILBERT GOES A-WOOING


“Well ...” said the old lady. “She’s very--_peculiar_.”

There was no word her son could have disliked more; he frowned.

“Why?” he demanded. “In what way? How is she ‘peculiar’?”

“She’s been brought up,” the old lady began, and stopped. “After all,
you’re the one to be suited, Gilbert. You’re marrying her, not I. If
you’ve got it into your head that she’s the only woman on earth to make
you happy, very well. Marry her. And I only hope you _will_ be happy.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s likely, if you’re going to quarrel with her.”

“Gilbert,” said the old lady, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my
life.”

True enough, he was obliged to admit it. He saw that he had used a wrong
word. She didn’t quarrel, she didn’t argue. But she conquered. And when
she disapproved of people, she changed them. He had never tried to
understand her methods, but he had seen the results. He supposed it was
force of character and that it must be admirable and beneficent.

“You needn’t worry about that, my boy,” she went on. “I’ve never yet had
a word of disagreement with any of my sons-or daughters-in-law.”

“I know it, Mother. But living under the same roof ... and she’s been
brought up very differently.”

“Yes; just as I said,” the old lady observed. “Very peculiar....
However, if you’ve made up your mind, my boy, there’s no use talking
about it. I’ll do my best, as I always have done and always expect to
do.”

Her son believed this; he had never doubted that she was a perfectly
noble, perfectly wise and magnificent woman and he worshipped her. There
was an inscrutable and malicious smile on her shrunken lips; the
changeless, infinitely remote smile of god-like amusement at earth’s
follies which one sees on the face of a bronze Buddha. She had a majesty
beyond the need of charm or of fashion. She belonged to an old Brooklyn
family which had become aristocratic by reason of having lived in the
same place for four generations, and she had married into a similar one.
She had always been rich and immeasurably secure, living isolated in the
big house on “The Heights” like the somewhat ferocious monarch of a
desert isle, an obscure and uncomfortable existence in which nothing was
accomplished and nothing enjoyed. She disdained society as frivolous;
and all luxury was to her abomination. She made, she said, a “proper
use” of her money.

Her chief claims to moral excellence were these: that she had borne six
children, and that she had lived for sixty years; and above all because
of her marvelous lack of sensibility, an imperviousness which no actual
image of Buddha could have surpassed. She had looked on at suffering,
anguish, despair, unmoved, and that was fortitude; she had witnessed
birth, death, without a gleam of curiosity or speculation, and that was
common sense. She had been “just” toward her little children with all
the blindness proper to that virtue.

“It makes no difference _why_ you do things,” she always said. “A
thing’s _right_, or it’s _wrong_. I don’t want to hear your reasons.”

He recognized the old familiar attitude now, the old air of
saying--“Very well; go your own way, and learn by bitter experience!”
Within herself he felt she was saying--“You’ll have to reap what you
sow. You’ll make your bed and you’ll have to lie in it.” And so on.

“You don’t approve of my marrying her then, do you?” he asked.

“You’re twenty-five years old,” said his mother, “You’re old enough to
decide for yourself.”

He felt more irritated than his ideas of filial piety allowed. He drank
his coffee slowly and reminded himself that his mother was a widow and
that all her other children had married and left her. His thoughts were
readily distracted that day, though, and good-will very easy to him. He
sat back, lighted a cigar and looked about him, at the dismal basement
dining-room, used for all the family meals, with its barred windows
through which one could see the feet of passersby, and the horrible
walnut buffet and sideboard and the massive square table, and the twelve
chairs, three invalided and permanently in corners, the faded carpet
that had once been upstairs, the immense crayon picture of a lion’s
head, the general economical hideousness of this room which proclaimed
the old lady’s genial idea that anything was good enough for the inmates
of the house, and the owner. He had never liked the room, but he fancied
it this morning as it _might be_--a Paradise, with the charm, the youth,
the mysterious strangeness of a young wife in it.

Here, without question, the young wife would have to come, because
Gilbert could not and would not consider leaving his mother alone. And
to be candid, dared not. He owed everything to his mother, he said.
Hadn’t she made sacrifices to give her children every advantage, lessons
of various sorts, and unstinted moral advice? She talked candidly of
moulding their characters, and that is just what she had done. She had
moulded them in her own image, supreme and devastating blasphemy. They
were all of them like fainter copies of her own sharply written
character. This man sitting across the breakfast table from her now was
literally made by her. By nature credulous and imitative, he had lent
himself perfectly to her manipulations; he thought exactly as she had
taught him to think; he disagreed with her in some points, because she
had taught him that a man must in certain respects disagree with women;
he knew things, he had had experiences unknown to her, but she had
caused him to believe, sadly, that a man must so conduct himself. She
had taught him that, as a man, he must disappoint his mother. She
despised him a little, but she certainly, undeniably loved him.

She looked at him, stalwart black-avised fellow, with his heavy brows
and his obstinate mouth. Wasn’t he _manly_, she thought!

“Ah, well!” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it’s all for the best,
Gilbert.”

He finished his breakfast in manly silence,--which no decent woman dare
trouble--and getting up, went round the table to his mother, dutifully
to kiss her good-bye.

“I’m sorry you didn’t--take to her, Mother,” he said, a little grieved.

“Well,” she answered. “_You’re_ marrying her, Gilbert, not _I_.”

“If she’ll have me,” he said. “I haven’t asked her yet, you know.”

He had long ago promised his mother never to propose marriage to any
woman without telling her first. And it was in loyalty to this promise
that he had lured Miss Mason from Staten Island to Brooklyn under
pretense of showing her a wonderful picture on exhibition in a
department store--a Dutch peasant sweeping her cottage, and the motes in
the sunbeam were reputed marvelously life-like. It was a quite natural
thing, after gazing at this picture for fifteen awkward minutes, to
suggest a call on his mother living so near. The old lady had heard more
than one mention from her son of this Miss Mason from Staten Island, and
she knew, and Miss Mason knew, that this was a visit of inspection.

After it was over, and the beloved young lady had left the house on his
arm, he had, of course, to take her back to Staten Island. And never had
she been so nice to him, so kind, so gracious, never had he felt so
encouraged. The next evening was her birthday, and he had been invited
to the little dance by her mother.

“Why don’t you come to supper?” Miss Mason had suggested. And they had
both turned red and become silent, a little startled and alarmed.
Because they knew, both of these, that this would be the time....

“She may refuse me,” he said, and with a glance his mother saw all the
anguish he was trying to hide.

“I don’t think she will!” said she with a most detestable smile, which
fully expressed her opinion of Miss Mason and her matrimonial hopes. “I
don’t think there’s much fear of _that_!”

But Gilbert knew better, and he spent a day of black misery in his
office. As the afternoon wore on he became _sure_ that she would refuse
him. She had such a lot of fellows hanging around--and all of them had
those qualities which he lacked, those fascinating social graces.... He
so silent, so unready, a clumsy dancer, a man interested in nothing but
business--and the Republican party. He dreaded, he shrank from asking
her, and yet he was feverishly impatient to do so before those other
fellows had a chance.

Never was there a lover more humble than he. And he liked to be humble;
he liked to think how a great, powerful fellow like himself could be
brought low by a slip of a girl. It was a wonderful example, he thought,
of the Power of Love. Well, who knows ...?

He had been seeing a great deal of Miss Mason during the past three
months. He had gone with Pendleton to make their party call in due form
and he had found her on that occasion more friendly and more intimate.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was alone with Lance. Her mother and
father, she said, had gone out for a walk in the Silver Lake
woods--which Vincelle thought a very peculiar thing for an elderly
couple to do, above all, on a Sunday afternoon, when respectable people
were best invisible. There were a good many things about this family
which he could not approve of; Lance was one of these. That thin
sunburnt young man in spectacles with his gloomy face and didactic air
jarred upon him beyond reason. He had observed too, that Lance had been
reading to his cousin, in cosy intimacy, before the fire in the library.

But Claudine had been remarkably kind to him, and gentle and friendly.
Moreover, Lance had had the decency to remove himself and his big book.
Pendleton, of course, monopolized the talk, with his flippant nonsense,
but Gilbert felt that that did him no harm. He felt that he, sitting in
silence, with only a word now and then, a sensible word, mind you,
appeared more manly, and he was right! He touched the heart of the
lively young lady; she felt suddenly rather sorry for him, and because
he was stupid she fancied him more honest than others. She quite
cordially invited him to come again.

He did, and this time alone. He didn’t even mention the fact to
Pendleton, and when Pendleton learned of it he took it amiss.

“I introduced you there,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d go behind my
back that way, Vincelle.”

“I was invited,” said Gilbert, “and I went. I didn’t know the family was
your private property. I didn’t know I had to account to you for
every--”

“Damn unfriendly, _I_ call it!” said Pendleton.

Gilbert smiled scornfully.

If their friendship had been a more genuine one, this would have caused
a serious quarrel; but it was a forced sort of friendship, simply
brought about by propinquity. They had grown up together, gone to the
same school, the same dancing school, they moved in the same set. They
had no respect for each other; Gilbert despised the other’s frivolity
and lack of money-making ability, and Pendleton looked upon Gilbert as a
surly and ungenerous young boor. After their brief disagreement about
Miss Mason they went on as usual, except that they were wary about the
Staten Island visits. They went down there at different times, never
again together, and each took what advantage he could get.

The unhappy Gilbert had suffered much, and perhaps learned a little. He
had been dreadfully humiliated. Once Claudine had asked him to ride with
her and he had been forced to admit that he didn’t ride. Her astonished
face ...! And he hadn’t read any of those books she knew so
affectionately.

He had, when younger and slimmer, played tennis, but of late years since
he had become so engrossed in business, his great recreation had been
poker. As for books, he liked reading as much as the next man, provided
they were entertaining books. And he liked music, too; not operas, but
not trashy stuff, either; he liked Schubert’s _Serenade_, and
_Traumerei_, and things like that.... He hadn’t Pendleton’s talent for
picking up information, for knowing something about everything, but when
he heard Pendleton talking so glibly, he consoled himself by remembering
that he had had an education _exactly_ like his, of precisely the same
length and the same price. So Pendleton couldn’t really know any more
than he did, no matter how he talked.

The free, careless air of that household had encouraged him. In other
families where there were marriageable daughters, he had had an
uncomfortable feeling of eligibility, he had felt that everything he did
was important and significant, and that he must be careful. Here it was
obvious that no one cared. He could come and be welcome, or he could
stay away. He had begun to bring flowers and candy, which Claudine
received with pretty appreciation. But other people brought flowers and
candy, also, and were as nicely thanked.

He made an effort to study her to learn if she really was a flirt, as
Pendleton said. But he couldn’t decide. She reigned like a queen over a
court of admirers, but without undue coquetry. She was, in spite of her
gaiety and liveliness, a serious girl. She read marvelous books. She
played astounding music; she was a great companion to her father on his
botanical walks and she collected “specimens,” dried and pressed in a
book. Weeds, they looked like to Gilbert, but he was willing to admit
their value. He had never imagined anyone, so happy as she, so
interested and delighted with life. She was a fine horsewoman, she
skated and danced beautifully; she took long, long walks in the country,
and enjoyed them wholeheartedly; she went to the opera, to concerts, she
read, she practised her music, she painted in water-colours, she had any
number of friends and all sorts of informal society, she hadn’t a dull,
or idle moment in her existence.

He saw no evidences of domesticity in her, but that didn’t trouble him.
It wasn’t an era of domesticity. A wife, in his class, was an ornament
and a diversion. Domestic science was an unknown term to both of them.
Claudine had escaped the thorough training of her two elder sisters; her
mother had conscientiously taught them to cook, to sew, and to
superintend a household, just as she herself had been taught, but with
this youngest and brightest child, she had lost heart. She was growing
older; she was tired. And moreover, it seemed to her that the time for
all that had passed. No one would ever expect Claudine to cook or to
sew.

“Let her enjoy herself while she can,” her mother said to herself.
“Youth is over so soon.”

She would make a charming hostess, let that suffice. Gilbert asked no
more. He was completely dazzled.

His feelings would be incomprehensible to a later generation. They were
such polite, respectful feelings! He never thought of Claudine and
himself as a woman and a man. She was a young lady, and he was a
gentleman, and even in his most secret soul he respected her. He wanted
to marry her and he let it go at that. He didn’t even analyze her
charms.

He was a man of invincible honesty. He wasn’t clear-sighted; he had no
self-knowledge, but neither had he any subtlety. He loved Claudine: he
longed to give her everything he had. He felt himself unworthy and
inferior beside her purity, her innocence, her lovely young spirit. He
had tried to the best of his ability to set before her whatever
advantages there might be in marrying him, but not through conceit, only
to persuade her.

He had brought with him on one occasion an old magazine, to show her an
article in it--“The Old Vincelles of Brooklyn.” It had been written by a
sort of Miss Dorothy, a humble and admiring relation, and it was a
narrative of that singularly unillustrious family, beginning with the
Huguenot who had come first to American shores, and mentioning with
solemn veneration a long line of lawyers, ministers, and business men,
all respectable, serious, and thrifty. Not a vagary, not a passion,
among them.

He showed her this not from pride--although he was proud of it--but
merely as an added inducement, in the same spirit he had talked to her
of his “business prospects,” and his remarkable progress. It was as if
he said, “Here is all I have, beloved girl, won’t it compensate for what
I am?” And now he rested his case. He had nothing further to offer. His
inarticulate and unhappy wooing was at an end. He was going to ask her,
quite simply, if she would have him.

He arrived at the house in the June twilight. The house was still
unlighted, the windows were open, the curtains fluttering gently in a
little breeze. There was a magical fragrance from the garden: it was in
all ways a magical evening. He never quite forgot it.

He dismissed the carriage at the gate and walked along the drive, the
gravel crunching under his deliberate tread, the perfumed breeze blowing
against his miserable and sullen face. Because, under his serious and
pompous demeanor, he was after all, very young; almost a boy. And his
whole heart was set on this, his whole heart! Claudine was the one woman
on earth for him.

If she only knew the power she held in her little hands, he reflected!




CHAPTER FOUR

CLAUDINE’S PECULIAR MOTHER


§ i

No one could have known this better. She was in her room, standing
before the mirror, looking with critical attention at her image. She was
at her loveliest and well she knew it. She was in white, with a pale
green sash about her twenty inch waist. Her red hair was curled over her
forehead in a low bang, below which her brown eyes were marvelously
bright and alluring. Her face was radiant with happiness, but there lay
over it a faint shadow, a sort of tenderness.

This was to be the day. She knew it. She had read his determination in
his face the day before. And it was all coming out just as she had
wished it to come. Ever since her school days that had been her
dream--to be proposed to by a dark, handsome man in evening dress, at a
dance. There had been other proposals but none of them just right; there
had been other men to whom her fancy had strayed, but never like this.
She felt for this silent and stalwart young fellow a pity, a compassion
that bordered on pain. She didn’t like to let him out of her sight. She
longed so to make him happy. He seemed so lonely, so helpless, so
neglected, so pitiably in need of a comrade. Since she had seen his
horrible home and his chilly old mother, she had loved him more, felt
more sorry for him than ever. Oh, no doubt about it, he was the man!

The sense of impending change was upon her. This room would never look
the same to her again, her own face would never have quite this look
again; after this evening everything would be _different_. She was
lively and high-spirited, but she was in no way frivolous. She wouldn’t
make a promise unless she meant to keep it. This was the most important
step in her life, and she had considered it well. She had studied her
man; she felt that she knew him. She was well aware that he wasn’t
clever, and that he wasn’t very good-natured, but she was so accustomed
to good-nature, to kindness, tolerance, that she did not know their
value. Let him be a little cross if he wished, the dear old bear! She
would wheedle away his ill-humour with her own gaiety. She would be the
light of his life, she would bring youth and happiness into his
monotonous existence. She could be more to him than to any other man.

Divine and naïve idea of a young girl, innocently conscious of her own
immeasurable value!


§ ii

It had been a beautiful day for her, a day of profound significance. She
had been waked up by her mother coming into her bedroom to kiss her and
wish her “many happy returns.” Half asleep she had watched the stout
figure moving about the room, pulling up the shades to let in the light
of the summer morning, picking up the clothes she had left carelessly
about, folding bits of ribbon, straightening the articles on her bureau
with that silent and inexhaustible kindness she counted upon as she did
upon the very sun.

“Well!” said her mother at last, with her benevolent smile, “are you
never going to look at your little presents, chickabiddy?”

Then she had sat up, her short heavy braid over one shoulder, and began
opening the packages always found on birthday mornings at one’s bedside.
The gifts had brought tears to her eyes. The love in them, the
unspeakably dear intimacy! Her mother had embroidered a dozen linen
handkerchiefs, and an exquisite sachet case for them; her father had
presented her with the bottle of Cherry Blossom perfume he had bought
every year since she was a child--and which she didn’t like--and a big
box of chocolates with a ten dollar gold piece on top. Lance gave her a
book of verse. Then there was a photograph in a silver frame of her
eldest sister with her three babies; there were six pairs of French
gloves from one brother and a beautiful edition of “Ingoldsby Legends”
from the other, and from the sister who had married only a year ago a
combing jacket, trimmed with pale green ribbons. She had so well
remembered Claudine’s tastes!

“Oh, Mother!” she had said, with a sob, “you’re all so good and dear! I
wish ...?”

“What _do_ you wish, Goosie?”

But she didn’t quite know. Perhaps she wished to clutch at Time and hold
him here forever.

She had got up and dressed and gone into the garden before breakfast to
look at the flowers, and to pick a very few. The roses were just
beginning; they were so lovely that she almost wept again. The buds
were drooping in a sort of enchanted drowsiness, some yellow, some so
faintly pink, some a dark and wonderful red; she touched with her finger
the waxy satin petals, she bent over them to inhale the fragrance of
them, that heavenly fragrance warmed with the sun. She went about from
one bed to the other, to see what new thing had come up, what was
flourishing, what was disappointing. Her father was a notable gardener;
she hadn’t his skill, but she had his love for growing things. She
enjoyed the garden perhaps more than he did, for she had not his
anxieties about it. She sauntered over the wide lawn that ran all down
the hillside, the sun warm on her bare head, her white dress trailing
over the grass, and as she went she reflected, with a little fleeting
melancholy in her happiness, Nineteen! Nineteen such wonderful years in
this garden!

But the years to come she thought, would be far more wonderful.


§ iii

The Masons were quite unabashed in their family celebrations--Mrs. Mason
had a perfectly clear conception of the value of these ceremonies in
holding together a family, and she made the most of them, in her calm
way. It was a revelation to young Vincelle; he thought it somewhat
childish and absurd and not quite the thing. The table that night was
set with unusual magnificence with a lace cloth and four silver
candelabra, and at the end a wonderful cake was brought, frosted with
pink and white and green, and bearing twenty candles, one for good luck.
He was the only guest and he felt embarrassed.

After the dinner the dance, the same sort of dance that had been on the
occasion of his first visit, but without that unique flavor. He felt a
little chilled, a little aloof, dreading unspeakably what lay before
him. Never had Claudine seemed so distant, never had she seemed so much
a stranger. He began to grow certain that he had no chance at all.
Perhaps it would be better if she did refuse him, and he could go home
again....

Young men invited to dances at Mrs. Mason’s house in those days were
expected to dance, and Gilbert had not much time for reflection. He went
dutifully waltzing about the ball-room with one young lady after the
other, and once or twice went out upon the veranda with a partner.
Actually a moonlight night; he couldn’t have devised a better
setting....

The moment came. He stood out there with Claudine, on the lawn, in the
moonlight. She had suddenly grown quiet: he could see her face plainly,
and it was grave, serious, almost sad. She looked more than ever like a
spirit, in her white dress with her slim bare neck and arms.

The breeze blew the end of her silvery scarf against his face, and
brought to his nostrils the faint scent of the perfume she used--some
innocent, old-fashioned thing of her mother’s. He took her by the arm
and led her under the shadow of a row of horse chestnuts.

Poor devil! He had no fit words. God knows what he faltered out.... But
she didn’t care. Tears came to her eyes; indeed they were both very
close to weeping. She reached out and touched his hot trembling hand,
and they clung to each other, mute, with their pitiful young love, their
hearts aching with the beauty of the matchless night and the supreme
moment, unique in their lives, never again to be recaptured.

“Don’t tell anyone to-night!” she whispered, and for these few hours it
was their secret.


§ iv

The very next day the trouble began. His mother received the news of his
acceptance with a smile of satirical amusement.

“You’re old enough to know what you’re doing,” she said. “And so is
_she_.”

“Claudine’s only nineteen,” said her son, answering her tone rather than
her words.

“_Is_ she?” said his mother. “I shouldn’t have thought so. She seems
very sophisticated.... But I suppose that’s her upbringing.”

Pursuant to Claudine’s instructions he had taken an afternoon off from
the office so that he could go down to Staten Island, and see her
father. This ordeal didn’t particularly distress him: he felt that as a
son-in-law he was faultless. He had practically no past; nothing that
could be troublesome, anyway, and financially he was ready and anxious
for the most minute investigation.

The Professor received him with kindliness. He said “Well, young man!”
offered him a cigar and said that as Claudine had made up her mind, what
were they to do? He asked him a few questions, and then sent him off to
Claudine. But, as he left the library, he met Mrs. Mason in the hall.
And her look astonished him. Her bland face wore no smile for him: on
the contrary, she gave him a glance so cold, severe and merciless that
he winced.

When he learned the truth he was still more taken aback. She objected!
Claudine was tearful and dejected. She said they’d had a dreadful time
that morning.

“Father says I’m to decide for myself, and that neither he nor Mother
ought to interfere. But Mother said--Oh, Gilbert, I can’t understand
Mother! It’s not a bit like her!... She said she’d never consent to her
dying day.”

“But why?” cried the affronted and amazed young man.

“She thinks--we’re not suited to each other.”

“Rubbish!” he said, scornfully. That was a woman’s objection for you!
Nothing against him financially, morally or physically, but some absurd
feminine notion of suitability. He was a little relieved.

“I suppose the truth of it is, she doesn’t want to lose you, Claudine. I
don’t blame her.”

“Oh, no!” said Claudine, “it can’t be that, because--” she stopped short
with a sudden blush.

“Because what?”

“Because--I know it isn’t that.... Oh, Gilbert, do try to--win her
affection!”

“I don’t see why I should!” he answered. “Upon my word I don’t see why I
should humble myself--”

“She’s my mother, Gilbert, and I love her.”

“Yes, of course, my sweet girl! But, after all, if you’re going to marry
me, I come first, don’t I? If you really love me--” She began to cry.

“You _know_ I do! Only--you can’t imagine how dear and wonderful
Mother’s always been.”

He said he could have a talk with her and he did. It was not a pleasant
talk. This benevolent matronly creature, whom he had always taken for
granted as a part of Claudine’s background, had suddenly come alive as a
woman, as a difficult and unmanageable feminine creature.

She said:

“I should prefer not to discuss this matter with you, Mr. Vincelle.”

“But why?” he protested. “If you have any objection to me, isn’t it only
fair to tell me what it is? To let me defend myself?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I couldn’t put it into words.... I am positive that you
cannot make Claudine happy.”

“Why do you think I can’t make her happy, Mrs. Mason?”

“It isn’t in you,” she said frankly. “You are not suited to each other.”

“Well, I believe a woman can adapt herself to any man, if she really
cares for him.”

“Claudine’s not adaptable. It would be necessary for _you_ to make
concessions--to be very tolerant and wise. And I don’t think you would
be.”

He smiled indulgently.

“I think I understand her,” he said. “And I’m used to feminine ways, you
know. My mother--”

She shook her head.

“It won’t do!” she said, with emphasis. “I shall never consent to it.”

This was the most outrageous affront imaginable. If she had objected to
him for any other reason, because of his morals, his religion, his
social standing, his financial position, he could have endured it,
because he could have argued and proved her absolutely wrong. But just
simply to dislike him....

Of course, he knew how perverse, unreasonable and provoking women were,
a man must take that into consideration. But that a mature woman should
be so idiotic as to insult an eligible suitor for her daughter’s hand
was a thing unheard of. He despised her; she had no common sense; she
had no regard for her child’s welfare....

He asked Claudine if she would marry him without her mother’s consent.

“As long as your father agrees, and there’s no valid objection,” he
said. “You wouldn’t jilt me because your mother’s taken some sort of--”
he checked the words on his lips and said, very moderately--“taken a
dislike to me, would you?”

But he could get nothing sensible from her; only that she really did
love him, and that her mother was so dear and wonderful, and that there
was no hurry, anyway, was there?

He refused to stay for dinner; he went home in a state of sullen rage,
and he carried his intolerable hurt to the person whom he fancied best
appreciated his worth. He got cold comfort.

“There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” said his
mother. “They’re very peculiar people. They’d never suit _you_.”

“I don’t want to marry the family,” he said sharply. “Claudine’s not
responsible for her mother.”

“Her mother’s responsible for her, though. She’s brought her up
according to her own ideas. If you take my advice, you’ll put the whole
thing out of your head.”

He went up to his own room, with a most unpleasant fancy that all these
women knew things about him which he didn’t know; that they were all,
his own mother included, ruled by motives not to be comprehended by him.
He was very unhappy. If it were only a matter of Claudine and himself!
When he had the dear little thing in his arms, she was his, she loved
him, she forgot everyone else; if they were married, it would always be
so. He did understand her; he knew he could make her happy if they were
alone.

If they had a little house somewhere, by themselves.... He began to
dream impossible rustic dreams; he saw them in a vine-covered cottage,
such as he had certainly never seen; he fancied Claudine running down
the path to meet him when he came home, flinging her arms about him, her
bright sweet face uplifted, her curly hair blowing ... oh, he was
frightfully unhappy!

He didn’t know whether he ought to go down to Staten Island again, or
not. But Claudine wrote to him, and told him to come. Her mother didn’t
in the least mind their seeing each other. So he went, sulky and
reluctant, and was very well received. Mrs. Mason was quite natural and
pleasant, and treated him just as she treated everyone else; and
Claudine was heavenly. She found a chance to slip out into the garden
with him, and as soon as they were alone, she kissed him, quite of her
own accord.

“You see,” she said. “Poor mother thinks that if we see each other often
enough, we’ll quarrel, or something of the sort. So if we just wait
long enough, and she sees that we _don’t_, she’ll realize that she’s
wrong; and it will be all right.”

“How long will it take?” he asked, gloomily. “Five years?”

“Oh, mercy, no! Only be patient.”

“I can’t be! I don’t want to wait! I love you so! I don’t want to waste
years--”

“They won’t be wasted, Gilbert. They’ll be the happiest time of our
lives. You’re happy now, aren’t you, this very moment?”

“Not so very. I want you for my own, Claudine.”

“I am your own. I love you and love you, darling Gilbert.”

Impossible to argue with her innocence; he resigned himself to get what
joy he could from these stolen moments. And he knew that no matter how
long he had to wait, no matter what humiliation and unpleasantness he
had to endure, Claudine was worth it.

Suddenly, without the slightest pretense of reason, Mrs. Mason gave in,
she no longer objected.

“Marry him if you want to, chickabiddy,” she said.

They were all astonished and a little uneasy. A change had come over
that incomprehensible woman. Her color was as ruddy, her activity as
great, she was as kind, as pleasant, as competent as ever. But an
immense moral apathy had seized her, she no longer interfered, no longer
gave advice. Let her husband smoke fifteen cigars a day, let her child
marry whom she would, she seemed indifferent. She had become strangely
and terribly remote. She seemed to have a grim secret of her own, a
knowledge of some event in comparison with which all these things were
of no importance.

No one realized what shadow had fallen upon her. They were willing to
accept her change of heart as a whim. But she who was about to be exiled
forever had come to see the futility of resistance. She saw her own
death coming toward her; she could bear to watch it. And she saw so
clearly too that when she was no longer standing in the highway, the
others would still go on, and that cry after her child as she might, no
sound would ever again reach her.

Gilbert and Claudine were married that autumn in a little church on
Staten Island. Old Mrs. Vincelle was brought there, like a Buddha
carried in a procession, and there were a certain number of Brooklyn
_haute bourgeoisie_. But it was a Mason wedding, and Mrs. Mason
dominated it. She gave a marvelous breakfast after it in the house on
the hill, and hers was the last face they saw as they drove away. She
had come out into the road, to look after them, a stout, dignified
figure in black silk waving her hand, and smiling after her youngest
child....




CHAPTER FIVE

CLAUDINE LEARNS TO ADAPT HERSELF


Before she had been in that house an hour she knew that she could never
be happy there. She wasn’t ready when the dinner gong sounded, but
Gilbert hadn’t waited. Lateness upset his mother, he said. She had tried
to hurry then, but she was an inveterate dawdler, and it was some time
before she was quite dressed. She came downstairs with the sprightly air
proper to a bride just returned from her honeymoon, but it was a forced
and desperate sprightliness. She felt all the helplessness and terror of
a deserted child among strangers as she descended the dark old
staircase, padded so thickly with carpet that it was like walking in a
bog.

On the newel post was a standing lamp in which burned a gas jet turned
very low, in a shade of red, green and blue glass. She turned along the
narrow hall, past the open door of the front parlour, feebly
illuminated, the middle parlour, the obscure and neglected back parlour,
all dark, still, and bitterly unfamiliar to her. She reached the steep
flight of stairs leading to the basement, and began going down in utter
darkness and silence. The door at the foot of the flight was closed;
she fumbled for the handle in an absurd panic and stumbled forward as it
burst open.

They were sitting at the table in there, Gilbert at the head, his mother
at the foot, and they were taking their soup, evidently determined to
begin right with the child, to show her, pleasantly but inexorably, that
she would never, never be waited for. She sat down at the place laid for
her, facing the door, and the servant brought her a plate of soup.

“_Well!_” said old Mrs. Vincelle.

Her tone was tart, but good-humoured, and she smiled at her
daughter-in-law.

“We’re old fashioned here,” she said. “Meals served on the minute.
That’s the way I was brought up. And Mr. Vincelle was very strict; if
one of the boys was late for a meal, he had to sit at one side of the
room till we’d all finished and then eat by himself.”

“I know.... I’m sorry,” said Claudine. “But I couldn’t find things, this
first evening.”

Gilbert looked at her indulgently for an instant, and then turned his
attention to the roast chickens that had been set before him. He rather
prided himself upon his carving, he felt sure that Claudine would
observe and admire his dexterity. He had had, in fact, ever since they
had arrived that afternoon, an air of showing off, as much as to
say--here you can see me in my own kingdom, at my ease, my natural self.
He had consciously tried to impress her; he had given a great many
orders to the servants, and had found fault. But he had not produced the
impression he intended; Claudine saw him suddenly as a little boy,
pampered, spoiled, but led by the nose. His mother ruled him
absolutely.

In a way she was pleased to find that in spite of his sturdiness and his
impatient masculinity he was certainly very human, but on the other
hand, it frightened her. She so greatly needed to respect him, to look
up to him, to see in him a great spiritual authority. She had left the
security and peace of her girlhood to follow him, and he _must_ lead.

Why did he look so young and sulky to-night? He caught her looking at
him and he smiled again, tenderly, but with a sort of constraint. It
never occurred to her that he too was suffering from a great
disappointment. He had believed, poor devil, that with Claudine he would
have a new life; and lo, it was nothing but the old life with a new
person in it. She was overshadowed; she had suddenly lost importance;
she had quite ceased to be that rare and precious creature he had
adored, and had become a sort of phantom.

“You’re not eating!” said the old lady, suddenly. “Don’t tell me you
don’t like chicken!”

For she too had her disappointment. She had arranged a dinner really
sumptuous according to her very frugal mind, and no one appreciated it!

“Oh, yes, I do like it, very much!” said Claudine, hastily. “Only ... I
think I must be a little tired. It was so stuffy in the train.”

“You mustn’t take notions about your food,” said the old lady. “A young
married woman owes it to other people to keep up her health and
strength. You must _eat_, whether you _feel_ like it or not.”

“Yes, I know!” said Claudine, pleasantly.

She was mortally afraid of bursting into tears. All their meals hitherto
had been eaten in hotels, or trains, or boats, where there was plenty
to divert her, to make her forget that thing which had been gnawing at
her heart all the time these last two weeks, but now in the quiet room,
with these two quiet people intent upon their food, there was nothing to
help her. It rushed upon her like a flood--that terrible
homesickness.... On this mild September night they would be sitting in
the lofty dining-room, with the windows open on the dear old garden. She
could imagine them in the light of the suspended lamp, her mother, her
father, Lance, perhaps other familiar friends’ faces, the neat and
smiling Selma waiting upon them; she could imagine their talk, casual,
cheerful, full of family jokes, with the scholarly leaven introduced by
her father and Lance.... And at every pause would be heard the sounds
from the dark garden, the trees stirring, that branch of the big
grape-vine tapping against the window....

Gilbert and his mother were talking, in a disconnected and perfunctory
way. She asked questions about the honeymoon; he gave her the names of
hotels, details of the accommodation they had secured; she had a little
gossip for him of old friends. When they stopped talking, there came to
her ears utterly unfamiliar sounds--a carriage rattling by over the
cobblestones, a footstep ringing on the pavement overhead, passing the
barred window, mournful whistles from the river.

After the roast came the pudding, a vanilla blanc mange, made in a ring,
the centre filled with strawberry jam, and cream poured over it all. And
this demolished, they all rose; Gilbert gave his arm to his mother and
they started up the stairs, followed by the disconsolate bride. She felt
more than ever like a forlorn child, following these two people so much
older and solider, so much more positive and self-assured than she. Her
life was to be nothing but a wretched struggle to please them....

They entered the austere front parlour where a flicker of gas revealed
the shrouded furniture, the huge, gold-framed pictures on the walls, the
grand piano; they passed through this to the second parlour, and in here
the dutiful son made a light and settled his mother in her favourite
chair. The younger woman sat down near her, with an uncertain smile and
her husband drew out his cigar case.

“Do you ladies object?” he asked facetiously.

“Go along with you, Gilbert!” cried the old lady, “I do declare I’ve
missed the smell of smoke since you’ve been away.”

She leaned back in her chair and regarded him with complacency as he
blew out great clouds of smoke.

“Nice to be _home_, Claudine?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” said the little liar.

He hadn’t much more to say; he was a silent fellow at all times and
to-night he was tired and a bit out of sorts. All this travelling about
had unsettled him; of course it had to be done, but he was glad it was
over. They would be much happier now, being settled down. To tell the
truth, the honeymoon had not been quite the rapture he had imagined.
Claudine had been--he reflected: well, Claudine had been too damned
polite. She had pretended to like everything; she hadn’t been quite
human. No matter what went wrong, she had kept on smiling.... With
undeniable relief he allowed his mind to drift back to Business.

The old lady dozed, her two withered hands lying on the arms of the
chair. There wasn’t a sign of life in the room. Claudine got up and
crossed the room to an immense walnut secretary and tried to read the
titles of the books on the shelves with eyes dimmed by absurd tears.
Hopeless volumes of sermons, forgotten and tedious poems. But she kept
on looking at them, with a false interest, only that she might keep her
face turned away.

Gilbert was touched by her lost young figure in that silent room.

“After all, it’s pretty dull for her here,” he thought, and he wanted
very much to make her happy, but didn’t know how. He had expected that
somehow she would light up, transform, enliven this household; he hadn’t
quite realized that he would be literally expected to do what all young
lovers so gallantly promise--to make her happy. He couldn’t help
thinking of Mrs. Mason’s words.

He wanted to get up and put his arm about her, but he was afraid of his
mother’s ridicule. And blind instinct suggested to him the one thing
that could solace her pain, that at once dried her tears and made eager
her leaden heart.

“Play something for us, won’t you, Claudine?”

“Do you really want me to?” she cried.

He got up and went into the front parlour, where he turned up the gas
and opened the piano. Then he seated himself near by, with a pleased
smile.

“Now!” said he.

She ran her strong little fingers over the keyboard in ecstasy. The
piano was out of tune and very stiff, but it was music anyway. She
hesitated a moment; she considered her audience, and fate inspired her
to play _Traumerei_. This was one of the few pieces they both knew and,
like very many others, they were delighted to hear what they knew.

“Brava!” said the old lady.

“I always did like that thing,” said Gilbert dreamily.

Her heart warmed to them, poor darlings who knew so little beauty! She
felt that in this way she could reach them, could make them understand
her. She went on, a tranquil flow of undisturbing harmony, melodies
which she believed they would recognize and like. She played to them
with profound earnestness, as anxious as a siren to charm the careless
sailors.

Gilbert sat lost in admiration. This was beyond question a proper wife,
a young, charmingly dressed creature who played the piano soothingly in
the evening. He thought she had never looked lovelier, so straight, so
slender, in her beruffled blue dress, her curly head thrown back. What
greater charm could a woman have than a lulling art like this, to dispel
the cares of the harsh masculine world? His heart swelled with proud
affection; he was passionately anxious to cherish and protect this
exquisite young creature so miraculously thrust into his dull existence.

She stopped playing; let her hands rest on the keys, and waited, perhaps
to be urged to continue. But her hearers seemed to take it for granted
that the playing was ended.

“Brava!” said the old lady again. “I hadn’t any idea you were such a
musician, Claudine. Very pretty!”

And Gilbert said:

“You have a fine touch, Claudine.”

She knew that he couldn’t have distinguished a good touch from a poor
one, but she was not annoyed. She felt very kindly toward them both,
because they had listened willingly to her music, and because she had
been able to play and to solace herself. She got up and closed the
piano, and Gilbert bent over her, to kiss her warm cheek.

“Wonderful little woman!” he said. “I’m a lucky dog!”

She was very happy. Here was a way out; she would practise her music
faithfully, perfect herself, become absorbed in it, and there would be
no tedious hours. She could become a really fine musician, the wonder
and delight of a little circle.

She followed Gilbert back into the second parlour, lost in her dream.
But to the others the music, a pleasant little interlude, was over, and
the rest of the long evening stretched before them. The old lady began
to crochet, and Gilbert took up his newspaper.

“Like to see the Woman’s Page, Claudine?” he asked.

Now Claudine had a lamentable dislike for newspapers. She never read
them; she wasn’t well-informed. No one in her house showed much interest
in current events, they envisaged human life as an immense and absorbing
history, and the present as one small day of it. Her father was a sort
of benevolent Anarchist who couldn’t endure the thought of restraint
laid upon evolution; her mother was blandly indifferent to anything
outside her own family; Lance lived in pre-historic ages. Nevertheless,
she accepted the Woman’s Page, read the fashion hints, a little article
on the care of house plants. Then she put the thing down and sat doing
nothing.

“Don’t you do fancy work?” asked the old lady.

“Yes, sometimes,” said Claudine. “But....”

She rose.

“I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

Gilbert looked up from his paper and the old lady stared at her,
affronted and amazed.

“It’s only half past nine!” she said tartly. “I should think you could
wait till eleven, like the rest of us. I dare say you’re not any more
tired than anybody else.”

“Never mind, Mother, if she’s tired ...” Gilbert began, but Claudine had
sat down again with flaming cheeks.

“No!” she said. “I’ll wait!”

This was her first rebuke and she felt it a most unmerited one. It was
the first time she had ever heard of a fixed, arbitrary bed hour for
adult people. It had occurred to her a natural thing to go to bed when
you were sleepy. Sometimes at home, the day after a dance, she had gone
to bed directly after dinner, with a book to divert the few waking
minutes, and at other times she had sat up almost till morning reading
or finishing some enthralling bit of sewing. She felt a great anger
toward Gilbert, with his half-hearted protest. There he sat reading his
silly paper, page by page, every word ... what did he expect her to
_do_?

The old lady glanced up suddenly.

“Come, child!” she said. “Don’t sit there and brood! Gilbert, get her
the ‘Pigs in Clover’!”

“She won’t like it,” he answered, deep in his paper.

“Rubbish! It’s something to pass the time and that’s all the young folks
care for in these days. Get it for her!”

So from inside the secretaire Gilbert brought out a round box with a
glass cover inside which were marbles to be rolled through certain
partitioned alleys, and finally, if one were skilful, into a sort of
little house. He kissed Claudine as he gave it to her, an apologetic,
almost a guilty kiss, but she had no smile for him. She sat with the
thing in her hands, twisting it this way and that, letting the little
balls roll as they would through the alleys, and ready at the least
word, the least gesture, to burst into outrageous and most bitter
laughter.

One of the marbles suddenly rolled into the pen, and, unaccountably,
with this feeble satisfaction, the storm within her subsided. She
remembered having read somewhere that lunatics were given games and
diversions like this to quiet them. She wished that she could tell that
to her father ... she wished that her father could see her, rolling
marbles about in a glass-covered box.

Gilbert was gently shaking her.

“Sleepy-head!” he said. “It’s after eleven! You’ve been dozing!”

Both he and the old lady were greatly entertained. Their dazed victim
went upstairs, quite well aware that now, when at last she could get
into bed, she would lie awake for hours.




CHAPTER SIX

THE KEYNOTE


She waked up in the dark, terrified by a great banging at the door. She
thought the house was on fire, that someone was ill, that thieves had
broken in. She shook Gilbert fiercely. But he didn’t stir.

Barefooted she rushed across the floor and unfastened the door.

“What is it!” she cried.

“It’s seven o’clock, ma’am,” said a meek voice.

“Seven o’clock!” she repeated.

“Yes, ma’am, I always call Mr. Gilbert at seven.”

“Oh, I see!” she said. “I didn’t know....”

She closed the door and went back to the bed where Gilbert still slept.

“Wake up!” she said, severely.

Still he didn’t move. She clutched his big shoulders and tried to shake
him, but he only groaned.

“Oh, do wake up!” she cried, in a sort of desperation.

“All right!” he murmured, but his eyes remained closed.

She was on the point of tears! She would really have liked to hurt him.
She seized his hair and pulled it vigorously, and at once he sat up,
dazed and resentful.

“Look here!” he said. “That’s no way.”

“It’s seven o’clock!” she said coldly. “I should think, if you’re so
sleepy in the mornings, you’d go to bed earlier.”

She herself was very weary and depressed. She had, as she had expected,
lain awake a long, long time, unhappy in the darkness of that unfamiliar
room, with the shutters all closed, and no sight of the sky to console
her. At home she had always kept her windows unobscured so that lying in
bed she could watch the moon, the stars, the clouds, the sky whether
clear, stormy or ominous. The very shapes of the furniture had
distressed her, she had tried to make them out in their corners, as she
had listened to the muffled, unfamiliar city noises.

She wasn’t at her best in the morning; that was a recognized fact at
home, and she was always carefully let alone. But Gilbert put her to
shame. When at last he was roused, he was marvelously cheerful; he got
up whistling, and set about dressing in leisurely fashion, talking a
great deal. He was very much pleased at occupying the majestic room on
the second floor, it gave solidity to his new importance as a married
man. He thought his mother had arranged it very tastefully, he pointed
out to Claudine the new velvet lambrequin on the mantelpiece and the
pincushion the old lady had made for them. He picked it up from the
bureau and looked at it with affectionate eyes--a tremendous long blue
sausage covered with pleated silk and lace.

“Wonderful, at her age, isn’t it?”

Claudine obliged herself to say “yes,” but unkind thoughts possessed her
as to the value of such work at any period of life. She sat listlessly
combing her hair, trying to hurry, so that she shouldn’t again be late,
but quite sick with longing for a breath of air, a glimpse of sunshine.

“I really can’t get dressed in the dark!” she said, irritably. “Couldn’t
we have one of the shutters opened, Gilbert?”

“No,” he said. “Not possibly. The people across the street could look
in.”

“Then light the gas,” she said. “I can’t do my hair in the dark.”

He was a little shocked at this extravagant idea, however he did it, and
kissed her, because she looked so pretty with her hair about her
shoulders.

They descended the stairs together and entered the basement dining-room,
where the old lady was pottering about among her rubber plants and
ferns. She took her seat at once at the foot of the table behind the
coffee urn and the process of breakfasting began, a meal astounding and
repulsive to the bride. Such coffee! And no cream, no fresh fruit;
prunes, oatmeal, ham and eggs, poorly cooked, poorly served.

“You’re moping!” said the old lady, suddenly.

Claudine looked up with a faint smile.

“I’m never very lively the first thing.”

“Nonsense! A young married woman can’t give way to all sorts of moods
and fancies. It’s her duty to be bright and smiling and start her
husband off cheerful.”

Gilbert frowned.

“Never mind, Mother!” he said. “Claudine’s got her own way of being
cheerful, and it suits me. I understand the little woman, don’t I?”

Claudine was delighted, she would have liked to jump up and rush to him
and kiss him. Their eyes met in a friendly and beautiful understanding.
This was what she loved in him, for which she had married him, this
solid loyalty, this sympathy. She was no longer unhappy.

“Now!” he said, cheerfully. “Let’s see the news!” and picked up the
newspaper. He read an item aloud now and then, not because it could by
any possibility interest the two women dutifully lingering over their
coffee, but because it interested him. He smoked a cigar leisurely, and
then it was time to go.

Claudine went upstairs with him into the front hall, she took down his
tremendous overcoat from the rack and laughingly let her arms sink with
its weight.

“Mercy!” she said. “How _can_ you bear it, Gilbert?”

“It’s nothing compared to my winter one,” he said in his schoolboy way,
and suddenly lifted her up, kissed her warmly, and set her down again.

“Good-bye, sweetheart! Be happy--and don’t quarrel with the Old Lady!”

Then he ran down the stairs again to take leave of his mother, and left
by the basement door. From the front parlour window Claudine saw him
walking off in the cool September morning, big, stalwart, determined ...
_going out_.... Envy possessed her. Oh, didn’t she wish _she_ could walk
out of the house like that, away from the old lady, and forget it all!

She didn’t quite know how to proceed; she didn’t know just what her
share in the house-keeping was to be or what diversions and duties would
fill these days. But she was already aware that she needn’t ask, that
old Mrs. Vincelle would certainly inform her as to what was expected of
her.

She went up the dark, thickly carpeted stairs to the floor above. It was
perfectly still and silent, and in order, swept and dusted, all trace of
activity vanished. She looked in at all the open doors with infantile
curiosity, all alike, thick, dark carpets on the floor, lace curtains at
the windows, shades pulled half way down, marble mantelpieces covered
with fringed velvet lambrequins, small tables on which were photographs
in silver frames, huge bureaus, huge arm chairs, huge rocking chairs,
with lace antimacassars, and inevitably a horsehair sofa furnished for
naps by a folded “Afghan” of bright coloured stripes. Her bedroom--their
bedroom, was no different from the others; there was nothing intimate or
friendly about it. Whenever she went into her own room at home, a
hundred things at once suggested themselves to her, letters to write, a
bit of sewing to be done, a book to read. Here there was nothing
whatever; she couldn’t imagine anything to do here. She very
unnecessarily “tidied” the bureau top, and looked at her own reflection
in the mirror. Mrs. Gilbert Vincelle--a young married woman.... Romantic
and interesting creature....

She wandered downstairs again; the chambermaid was dusting the second
parlour, scene of last evening’s bitter ennui, but the front parlour was
empty, and she ventured in, drawn irresistibly by the piano. She opened
it, half afraid to disturb the musty silence of the house; she ran up a
scale, and it sounded monstrous. But the touch of the keys restored her
courage; she began to play, and as usual lost herself in her playing.
She had not yet unpacked her music; she had to draw upon her memory,
fragments, entrancing bits, which she played over and over.

She was interrupted by the voice of the old lady, raised shrilly to
penetrate the music.

“I’ve ordered Willie for eleven,” she was saying.

Claudine stopped, a little dazed from the harmonies.

“Ordered Willie?” she repeated, stupidly.

“The carriage. We’ll just have nice time to get your wedding presents
put away first. Annie has them all unpacked in the back parlour.”

It was an imposing array, and it raised Claudine’s spirits. She stood
surveying all the silver, the cut glass, the fine china, the linen, the
clocks, vases, lamps. She looked at them all over again.

“Isn’t this lovely. Don’t you really think this is the prettiest?” she
kept asking her mother-in-law, and the old lady replied with grim
indulgence.

“But this isn’t going to get your things put away,” she said, at last.
“Now, let’s see.... The linen you can put up in the linen cupboard; I’ll
have a shelf cleared for you. We’ll take the cut glass down into the
dining-room. As for the silver--well, if I were you, I’d put it in the
safe deposit this day and hour, but of course you won’t. The young folks
are all for display these days. So we’ll take it into the dining-room
with the rest.”

And thus was all her glittering new wealth disposed of. It gave her an
unpleasant feeling of childishness; her things were all superfluous,
toys to be made room for among the regular, adult, useful things. No tea
would be poured from her silver pot, no dinner served with her array of
intriguing dishes, of flat and perforated and curved silver; in whatever
room her clocks went, they were unnecessary second clocks. She arranged
a great many ornaments in her bedroom, where they were quite
incongruous; she even put in there a china umbrella stand because there
was already one in the hall.

It was high time now to dress; she found some satisfaction in getting
into a new grey broadcloth costume which she felt gave her quite a new
dignity. She observed that she was rather pale and that, too, pleased
her. She looked like a woman of experience, a mysterious and perhaps
somewhat disillusioned creature. The old lady, in a black mantle and a
small jet bonnet with a widow’s veil, was waiting for her in the hall,
they descended the steps and got into the little closed carriage and
went rattling off over the streets of Brooklyn. A most uninspired city,
Claudine reflected, calm, quiet, self-sufficing, an absolutely Vincelle
place. They went first to the butcher, who came hurrying out to receive
the order, for old Mrs. Vincelle rarely set foot in a shop, then to the
fruiterer’s, then the grocer’s. She inspected nothing; the only question
she permitted herself was “Are the oranges good to-day, Frank?” and yet
she prided herself upon her old-fashioned virtue in going to market in
person every day and she believed herself a match for any tradesman.

Then, without further instruction, the old coachman turned the heads of
the two fat horses, and they went trotting off to Prospect Park, for the
invariable daily drive along the same route to the same spot. It was a
beautiful morning and Claudine was happy. From time to time the old
lady inclined her head to the occupants of other carriages and then
Claudine would feel the charm, the interest of her new position as a
young married woman. She was conscious of her youth, her slight,
delicate figure, her new tailor-made costume, all the touching dignity
of a bride.

They reached the consecrated turning point, they turned and drove home
again. The old lady talked a little, she pointed out a house now and
then, or gave a word of explanation of some regal old dowager driving
past. She was affable, she was almost kind, and in her heart she was a
little proud of this pretty young creature--an acquisition of her son’s
and therefore the property of the family. And what a blow to Brooklyn,
that Gilbert should have passed over all its maidens, and taken a wife
from Staten Island!

They reached home at one, and lunch was at half past one, the nastiest
sort of lunch, wafer-thin slices of dry cold mutton, all sorts of little
warmed-over concoctions. Claudine made up her mind to change all this as
soon as possible.

After the meal they went upstairs and the old lady lay down on the
horsehair sofa in her bedroom and drew the gay colored “Afghan” over
herself.

“You might as well rest, Claudine,” she said. “No one will be coming to
call this afternoon. They’ll give you a day or two to settle down.”

And she resolutely closed her eyes.

Claudine hesitated.

“Would it disturb you if I played the piano?” she asked.

“Yes, it would!” said the old lady, affronted. “I dare say you can
wait.”

Once again that dread feeling of despair came over Claudine. She didn’t
_know what to do_! Her clothes were all quite new and perfect, there was
nothing about them to alter or to mend. She looked in vain for something
to read, but it was a house almost destitute of books. She wandered
about, looked out of the windows, but there was nothing to see except a
quiet street, lined with brownstone houses, and one solitary nurse-maid
with a perambulator. She would have liked to go into the kitchen. She
had, in fact, expected to play the rôle of young mistress of a big
house, but she dismissed the idea. Her mother-in-law would never, never
allow that.

She unpacked her music and mapped out a course of study for herself--an
alluring course of exercises and immensely difficult pieces, which she
intended to attack with new patience and energy.

“Goodness knows I’ll have time enough!” she reflected, ruefully. “I’ll
set aside two definite hours every day, and not let anything distract
me. This afternoon I’ll run over the things I’ve picked out.”

At three o’clock she heard the old lady creaking about in her room, and
music in hand she flew downstairs. Never had her fingers been so nimble,
so sure, never had she worked with such complete satisfaction. Here was
a field for definite accomplishment, a little living stream running
beneath the stagnant lake which was to be her existence. She was
expected--she was required, to be utterly passive, she was not to do
anything, she was simply to _be_. To be a Good Wife. That was to fill
the universe, that was to comprise everything. She was very willing to
be a good wife, but she couldn’t help thinking that there could still be
a certain amount of time left impossible to fill with wifeliness.

Now Claudine was not the material of which artists of the first rank are
made. She loved music, as she loved literature, and flowers, and many
other things. She had, to a certain extent, that quality known as
temperament, a sensitive and ardent soul. But she had very little
patience, and she was neither thorough-going nor resolute. It is
possible, even probable, however, that under the pressure of her ennui
and with the spur of her enforced insignificance she might have
developed her talent into something remarkably good, for she had a
talent. But it was not to be.

She completed an hour of Czerny’s _Finger Dexterity_, then she opened
her Liszt Album and attacked a terrific piece which needed all her
intelligence. She frowned; she played over and over again a superhuman
run.

The old lady’s voice interrupted her.

“Mercy _on_ us child! How long is this going to keep up? Your husband
will be home before you know it and you haven’t changed your dress.”

Claudine looked round with a distrait smile.

“I will--in half a minute.... This piano needs tuning badly. And more
than tuning. It needs--”

“It’ll do very well as it is, I dare say!” said the old lady, briefly.

“But it isn’t good to practise on a piano--”

“Practise! What do you want with practising? You play very nicely.”

“Oh, but not nearly well enough! I’m going to keep on with my lessons.”

“What!” cried the old lady. “Lessons! A young married woman fiddling
about with piano lessons!”

Claudine was surprised at this sudden hostility.

“Yes; why not?”

“Haven’t you anything better than that to do with your time?”

“What else _should_ I do?”

“I never heard such rubbish in my life! A married woman taking lessons!
What do you think you’re going to do? Give concerts?”

Claudine was not skilled in quarreling. She had always been quite free
to follow her inclinations, and her inclinations had never been harmful
or ridiculous. She was accustomed to dignified independence, no one in
her household had the least desire to interfere with any of the others,
and she could not understand such interference. She felt herself growing
very angry with this meddlesome and tyrannical old person, but she made
a gallant effort to answer nicely.

“It’s only that I’m very fond of music,” she began.

“You’d better be fond of your husband, that’s my advice! Piano
lessons!... Very well, young woman! There’ll be no practising on _my_
piano! It’s there to be _played_ on and not fiddled on and banged on.”

Claudine actually turned pale.

“But you surely can’t mind my practising ...?” she cried.

“I do. All the neighbours’ll hear you. A married woman strumming and
jigging away like a school girl.... Piece of nonsense!”

Anger got the better of Claudine.

“I never heard of anything so unreasonable and so ridiculous!” she said.
“I don’t intend to give it up.”

“Women that can’t give up their childish nonsense have no business to
get married. Now then!”

She walked over and closed the piano and handed Czerny and Liszt to her
daughter-in-law.

“You put all this nonsense out of your head!” she said. “And run
upstairs and put on a nice fresh dress and see if you can’t tidy that
wild looking head of hair before Gilbert gets home.”

But when Gilbert got home he was not welcomed by the smiling and
charming young wife he had a right to expect. Instead he found Claudine
locked in the bedroom, her eyes red with weeping, and in a state of
terrible excitement.

“Gilbert!” she cried. “Your mother says she won’t let me practise on her
piano!”

He was astounded and a little frightened. So they were at it already!

“Well ...” he said. “I don’t know.... It’ll probably blow over, if
you’ll use tact and patience.... Anyway, it’s a small matter.”

“It’s _not_! It’s not! My music is all I have left!”

“Hold on, Claudine! That’s rather strong!”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Gilbert dear. Of course, you come first,
only you’re away most of the time.... And you don’t know what it means
to me. The idea of her being so domineering and cruel!”

“Claudine,” he said, very gravely. “I hoped this would never happen.
Especially as you’re so fond of your own people.... I thought you’d
understand how I felt about--Mother. I _know_ she’s unreasonable
sometimes--but remember that she’s old, and I’m all she has left.”

As an argument this seemed remarkably weak to Claudine, but the tone,
the very pitiful inconsequence of the poor chap, touched her to the
heart. She began to weep in his arms, bitterly, forlornly, knowing
herself defeated, pitying herself and pitying him still more.

He kissed her and smoothed her disordered hair, perplexed and unhappy.
He was very tender and kind to her; he bathed her eyes with cold water,
he took the pins out of her hair and released the complicated structure.
Her sobs ceased; she grew calm and tranquil again, and when the gong
sounded for dinner, she came downstairs on her husband’s arm, smiling,
nicely dressed, the very model of a bride.

But that night, when they were alone in the bedroom again, she returned
to the subject.

“Gilbert!” she said. “Let me get a piano of my own!”

“I couldn’t, dear. Mother would never consent to that. No, darling,
better put the idea out of your head for the time being. You’ll find
lots of new things to interest you.”

“But won’t you speak to her, Gilbert? Won’t you _help_ me? Gilbert, if
it’s something I want so very, very much, don’t you _care_?”

“Of course I care!” he protested. “I want you to be happy. But ... after
all, it’s Mother’s house, and she has to be consulted.”

“Then let’s live by ourselves, Gilbert!”

“We can’t move to-night!” he said laughing, and turning out the gas, got
into bed.

But Claudine could not sleep. She had a dreadful feeling of being
trapped, of being a captive, helpless, weak, insignificant.




CHAPTER SEVEN

THE HEDGE WHICH GREW SO FAST


§ i

In order to escape she had told the old lady a deliberate lie. She had
said she was going shopping with Mrs. Martinsburgh, because Mrs.
Martinsburgh was a highly approved of young married woman considered to
be a good influence for the peculiar young Mrs. Vincelle. Whereas she
was really going to meet Lance. She had written to him to meet her in a
certain respectable restaurant where ladies on shopping tours often went
to lunch.

It was a risk; she was quite likely to be seen there and her outrageous
escapade reported to the old lady, but she was desperate. She had to see
him. She went upstairs and secured a table, self-conscious and wretched
at being there alone. She dared not look about the room for fear of
seeing a familiar face, she dared not tell the waiter she was expecting
someone. She pretended to study the menu, taking a long time to order,
hoping and hoping that Lance would come. But he was late as he always
was. Her lunch was set before her and she felt obliged to begin eating
it. The room was full, she expected every moment that someone else
would be put at her table. She had laid her muff and hand bag on the
chair beside her as a futile protection, and sipped her chocolate with
an engrossed air.

By raising her eyes, she could see her own reflection in one of the
mirrors which lined the room; she was paler, thinner, more elegant
but--what was it that had gone from her face? She fingered her veil with
a delicate little gesture, and glanced down again to her hands, adorned
with rings. She wondered if Lance would find her changed?

And just at this moment she heard his voice, his calm, serious voice,
always so low that it was difficult for strangers to understand him.

“Hello, Claudine!” he said. “Am I late? How are you?”

He sat down beside her and looked at her seriously through his
spectacles.

“Well!” he said. “You’ve changed.... What on earth did you want to see
me for?”

The recollection of her suffering rushed over her. Her eyes filled with
tears.

“I had to--talk to someone,” she said. “And there was nobody else.”

“But--” he began, and stopped. This was a matter for caution, she who
had a husband, a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, and yet could
find no one but himself to confide in.

Five years before, when he was a boy of twenty, he had come to live with
his uncle, Doctor Mason. He was a youth of strongly scientific tendency,
too poor to study, and the doctor had offered to keep him. His mother
was a garrulous, vulgar woman, with a bitter tongue, well able to make
life a burden for her household. Her husband, the doctor’s younger
brother, endured her with English fatalism; he was an ineffectual sort
of chap, anyway, who like so many of his countrymen had turned to
farming in the hope of finding in it a refuge from competition and
struggle. He had a wretched, stony, hillside farm in Sullivan County,
which produced next to nothing; the family were kept alive only by the
exertions of his relentless wife and the boundless charity of his
brother. Lance, amazingly christened Launcelot--had lived in calm,
unceasing opposition to both parents. He _would_ be a paleontologist,
and he would _not_ devote himself to money-making. If he did make
anything through that work, his parents could have it, if he didn’t they
would have to do without.

He was the most unimpressionable, unsusceptible young man ever born.
Nothing moved him, nothing troubled him. He was a pleasant housemate,
for he was never impatient or cross, but he remained marvelously aloof.
He sat at the doctor’s feet, worshipping his scientific knowledge,
grateful to him for the opportunities he had given him, the years in
college, the quiet and peace for independent study, he was grateful to
his aunt, too, for her kindly care of him. But he would have been
delighted to go to the ends of the earth on an expedition, and it
wouldn’t have cost him a pang to bid them farewell forever.

The only soul with whom he was really human was Claudine. They had been
like brother and sister, only at once more friendly and more formal than
brothers and sisters usually are. And Claudine was quite conscious of
something not at all brotherly in Lance’s regard. She had had too many
suitors to be deceived. She had very carefully maintained a nice
balance. She knew that he thought she didn’t know, and she was artful
about it. She thoroughly respected Lance, he was the most candid,
unbiased, truly independent person she had ever known, and he was kind,
consistently and invariably kind, without effort, simply because it was
his impulse to be so.

It was upon his candour, his intelligence, his kindness, that she
counted now.

“Oh, Lance!” she said. “I’m so unhappy!”

“What’s the trouble?”

The waiter was hovering near.

“You’d better order something,” she murmured.

“I’m not hungry!”

“But you must, Lance! Please! It would look so queer.”

“A glass of milk,” he said, “and a piece of apple pie, then!”

The waiter was astounded and offended at this plebeian order; he had,
nevertheless, to go and fetch it and they were able to talk again.

“What makes you unhappy, Claudine?” he asked.

“I suppose I ought to bear it, and say nothing, but I can’t any longer.
Lance ...! I want to leave Gilbert!”

This time she had certainly shaken his scientific calm.

“What!” he said. “After three months!”

“I wish I could tell you.... But I could never make anyone understand.
It’s just--unendurable.”

“Isn’t he--decent to you?”

“It’s not altogether Gilbert’s fault. He tries to be kind. He thinks he
is. But it’s the whole life. Oh, Lance, it’s so horrible! It’s like
being buried alive....” She had to stop, to struggle with her tears.
“I’ve tried. I’ve really tried my best. But I can’t stand it. I want to
go home and live with Father and Mother. Oh, Lance, do you think it
would be wrong?”

He regarded her thoughtfully.

“Do you mean as a general principle?” he asked. “Do you mean--do I think
it’s wrong for a woman to leave her husband?”

“I suppose I do mean that.”

“It’s hard for me to say,” he went on, frowning. “I can’t say I’ve ever
thought much about the modern system of marriage. I suppose it’s the
best--or at least, the most expedient system for our present stage of
development. But I haven’t considered exactly what it is. Is marriage
popularly considered indissoluble? No, there’s divorce. No!... I suppose
it’s an arrangement for the convenience of both the parties to the
contract. In that case--”

“But I never thought about divorce!” she cried. “I only wanted to get
away. Can that possibly be wrong?”

Lance was never greatly concerned about ethical problems, certainly not
about the relations between men and women. It didn’t seem a matter of
much importance to him. He envisaged the human race as gradually
progressing, adopting now this expedient, now that; marriage he had
looked upon as a rather silly but necessary part of modern existence. As
for woman’s revolt, feminism, and so on, he merely smiled at it all. He
knew too much about Pre-Historic Woman.

He bent his mind to the problem as to whether the sanctity of marriage
was a help or a hindrance to civilization.

“I can’t see that there’s anything wrong in it, Claudine,” he said.

“Then you think--” she began. “But oh, I don’t know what Father and
Mother would say. Everyone but you would think I was wicked--and that my
life was ruined.... Just because I want to be myself!”

He glanced up in surprise at her tone, and saw her eyes fastened on him,
swimming in tears, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. It came to
him with a sort of shock that this was Claudine’s specific case, and not
a general problem; that it was not women who wished to leave their
husbands, but Claudine who wished to leave Gilbert. He saw that she was
a lovely and innocent young thing, unhappy and desperate; he saw
suddenly what this might lead to. She would be cast adrift, blamed,
gossiped about, always under a sort of cloud. Her position in her own
home would be an equivocal one, an unending embarrassment and distress.
Hers was not a strong spirit; she couldn’t go forward unsupported. A
terrible pain seized him, he turned his eyes away because he couldn’t
bear to look at her. And the most intolerable part of his pain was his
certainty that she could grow out of her pain; that what she now found
unbearable she could one day regard with indifference. She suffered
cruelly; she thought her fate was a lamentable and wretched one, and it
was really nothing; a trifle, a few moments in her history.

“What would be the sense of my going on?” she asked him. “I don’t make
Gilbert happy, and I’m--dreadfully unhappy myself.”

“It isn’t important--to be happy,” said Lance. “The question is, are you
useful?”

“No! No, I’m not!”

He pushed away his plate with a nervous gesture.

“You want to know what I think,” he said. “Well, I think you’d better go
back to your husband.”


§ ii

She went home, to dress for a euchre party which was to be given in her
honour. She felt numb and cold, ready to die of despair. Everyone was
against her. No one understood, no one cared, what she suffered. She had
appealed in vain to all the people who loved her, and they had all
said--“Continue to suffer. It is best for you.”

She had gone to her father for his support in the piano battle.

“Buy me a piano of my own, Father!” she had entreated. “Send it to me as
a present. Then the disagreeable old thing _can’t_ object.”

“But, my dear!” said her father. “When in Rome--you know! If I were you,
I should avoid conflicts. There’s no use exasperating your
mother-in-law. The wisest course is to conciliate.”

She had gone to her mother, to pour out all her misery at living under
the domination of a strange woman, at not being mistress in her
husband’s house. But her mother had no comfort to give.

“I don’t see what’s to be done, chickabiddy,” she said. “You can’t
expect Gilbert to leave his mother alone at her age. It can’t be cured,
so it must be endured.”

Gilbert was still more hopeless. When he saw her dejected, weary, full
of nervous excitement and irritability after her long day of emptiness,
his remedy was the theatre; and when even that didn’t enliven her, he
too became irritable. He was beginning to lose patience with her, he was
willing now to admit that she was peculiar. And he felt that he was
justified....

Justified in doing things which she never mentioned to anyone. They had
had quarrels, the very memory of which appalled her. She remembered
coarse words he had used, brutal expressions, sneers, gibes. He was
always very sorry, always apologized, he said he had the devil’s own
temper; but Claudine could not forget them. She was neither quick to
anger nor quick to forgive. When her temper was aroused, she was cold
and contemptuous and often childishly indignant, but she was never
fierce, never cruel. She could not understand or forgive his absolute
loss of dignity.

And she could not understand what he called his weakness! She remembered
the first time he had revealed it as one remembers a nightmare, the very
thought of it brought back the incredulous horror she had felt. He
hadn’t come home to dinner that night, he had sent a telegram, “Detained
on business. Will not be home till late,” and Claudine and the old lady
had sat down at the table alone, in that sort of hostile intimacy which
had grown upon them. After dinner they had gone up to sit in the old
lady’s room where it would be cosier for two lone women, the old lady
with a book and Claudine with the fancy-work she had taken to in
desperation.

Just before bed-time Gilbert came in, flushed, jolly, anxious to talk.
He had sat down and entertained them with a long account of the dinner
he had attended, and the speeches he had heard.

“Best thing for business,” he said. “You get to know just the men you
need to know. It was an impromptu thing, but wonderfully well done.”

And he told them everything he had had to eat.

“And by the way,” he said, “They had some oyster pâtés that were the
best things of their kind I’ve ever eaten, bar none. I spoke to the
waiter, and he packed me a couple in a box and I brought them home.
They’re downstairs with my overcoat. Will you get them, Claudine?”

She did so, and he opened the box and took the pâtés out.

“Just try this!” he said, offering one to Claudine.

“I couldn’t eat it now, thank you, Gilbert,” she said. “To-morrow I’d
enjoy--”

“No! Nonsense! Eat it now! I want you to!”

She shook her head, smiling.

“To oblige me!” said Gilbert in a grieved voice.

The idea of gracefully yielding, of doing something she _didn’t want to
do_, never occurred to Claudine.

“No, thank you!” she said, more firmly.

“I insist!” said Gilbert.

That made her laugh, she thought he was rather funny, anyway, with his
excessive garrulousness and his oyster Pâtés. She was about to answer
him with a good-humoured joke, when she saw his face suddenly change,
and grow convulsed with rage. She hardly heard what he said, she was so
startled. He jumped to his feet and addressed her in a furious trembling
voice, and suddenly took the pâtés, on their little frilled paper
plates, and threw them on the carpet and stamped on them.

His mother got up and came near to him.

“Gilbert! Gilbert!” she whispered, patting his shoulder. “You’d better
get to bed, my boy!”

He threw a savage glance at Claudine and walked unsteadily away. The old
lady bent over her cherished carpet, regarding the damage with distress.

“Dear! Dear!” she said. “_I_ don’t know....”

She never looked at Claudine, standing behind her, wringing her hands,
her teeth chattering with a sort of nervous chill.

“I don’t know!” she said again. “I suppose I’d better leave it so until
the morning. Then in the daylight, perhaps....”

As she straightened herself she met the eyes of her daughter-in-law.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Let me stay with you!” cried Claudine.

The old lady looked at her with frigid contempt.

“You go to Gilbert!” she said. “Your place is with your husband.”

“No!” cried Claudine, desperately. “I can’t!”

“You go!” said the old lady. “Quick! I’ll have none of this under my
roof.”

And she went so far as to take her by the arm and hurry her out of the
room. But there was no cause to be worried about any further scene;
Gilbert had gone to sleep, fully dressed, on the bed.


§ iii

And the next morning he regarded it all as a great joke. He complained
ruefully of a headache, but he was proud of it. He burst out laughing
when his mother mentioned her damaged carpet, and to Claudine’s
surprise, the old lady was wonderfully indulgent. He told Claudine not
to mind, it wouldn’t happen again; but it did, more than once. Only on
special occasions, though, as he pointed out to her; he was no drunkard.
He was simply a good fellow; and he felt that she ought to appreciate
his social qualities. He was sincerely aggrieved at her attitude, her
scorn, her cold aversion. He told her she was straitlaced and
puritanical; he thought she was shocked because he could not imagine
that she was disgusted. She didn’t find him devilish; she found him
repulsive. It was not a question of forgiveness; she felt for him a
profound distaste and aversion which she never again overcame. It was
not even that she had ceased to love him; she had simply discovered that
she never had loved him. She was not by nature affectionate or
indulgent; she was fastidious, always a little apart from life, never
quite human. She was a dutiful egoist.

She looked back over these three months of married life with a sort of
cold wonder. The long, long days, the tedious drives, the dull calls on
dull people, the unpleasant meals, the stuffy dismalness of the house!
She thought that the Vincelle friends were the most unspeakably tiresome
people in the world. To go with her mother-in-law and sit in their
augustly gloomy parlours for the required fifteen minutes, or to
receive them in like fashion at home, to sit at their dinner tables, or
to see them sitting at hers, was an infliction almost beyond her
endurance. Except at dinners, she saw nothing but women; they had
euchre-parties, receptions, luncheons, once in a while a matinée party.
A harem world of pampered women, interested in nothing, women whose
husbands were pleased to see them expensively dressed, wearing jewels,
who required them to be ladylike; but didn’t expect them to be
seductive. They were all good, all complacent, and they seemed to
Claudine years and years older and more mature than herself. She made no
friends. Vincelle heard that one of the young married women did china
painting, and that aroused a spark of interest in her. She approached
the alleged artist, young Mrs. Ryder.

“Oh, yes! I love it!” the artist told her. “Of course I don’t have much
time; but I positively made up my mind _not_ to drop it after I married.
It’s such a mistake, don’t you think, to get into a rut? I believe a man
thinks ever so much more of his wife if she has some interests of her
own.”

Claudine’s heart sank; then it was, after all, nothing but another harem
accomplishment, a trick to secure attention.

“Of course I don’t have much time,” the other went on. “There’s so much
to do, isn’t there?”

“What _do_ you do?” Claudine asked, with earnestness. “I wish you’d tell
me what you do all day?”

“Oh ... so _many_ things!” murmured the other, taken aback. “There’s the
house-keeping, of course--and social duties ... and with a man in the
house there are such a lot of little things....”

Now it must be admitted that Claudine was not a lover of her kind. She
had no special interest in humanity; she was not ready to see the simple
human qualities in those about her. She was an aloof, eager soul, greedy
for activity, for gaiety, and for something more than that. She wanted
food for thought; she was not very original, she needed perpetual
stimulation, a constant flow of external impressions. She did not wish
to meditate, she wished to observe.

She was baffled at every turn. She tried to discover what it was that
enabled the old lady to pass the time so tranquilly without impatience
or weariness. After a few orders to the servants and her marketing, she
had nothing to do. Other old ladies came in during the afternoons to
talk with her; often there were old ladies from the country spending a
few days with her, they talked of other old ladies known to them with a
sort of good-humoured indifference.... Perhaps that was the key to it--a
profound and cynical indifference, nothing mattered; one endured and
existed, and life consisted not in accomplishment, but in a perfectly
passive Duty.

The old lady said Claudine was excitable, and even went so far as to
call her frivolous. And yet the only part of Claudine’s life which
either she or her son took with any seriousness were these horrible
little frivolities, the euchre club, the dinner parties, the calls. Her
social duties....

“What in the world makes you so restless, child?” the old lady asked her
one afternoon. Claudine had come into her room and was wandering about
looking at the photographs, asking idle questions.

“I don’t know what to do with myself!” she answered suddenly.

“Do? Why, what under the sun do you _want_ to do?”

“I don’t know.... But it seems.... Oh, it seems such a waste of time!”

“I must say you have very queer notions for a young married woman,
Claudine. I’ve never heard of anyone else with such notions. You have
your home, and your friends. And there’s the euchre club, and Gilbert
takes you to the theatre every mortal week. What more do you want?”

This Claudine was unable to answer. The old lady regarded her severely.

“I only hope,” she went on, “that the time will never come when you’ll
look back on these days as the happiest time of your life.... I remember
when I was a young married woman--” she sighed. “I can tell you, I
hadn’t much time to worry about what to do, with my five children.”

“I wish I had five children,” said Claudine.

The old lady looked at her again.

“Humph!” she said.


§ iv

She was ready now for the euchre, she cast a last glance in the mirror
and gathered up her little possessions, handkerchiefs, gloves, cardcase,
and muff. A composed and mature figure she looked, in her grey
broadcloth dress with a trailing skirt and well-boned bodice, slender,
dignified in spite of her smallness. A lady--a young married woman, a
finished product. She was supposed to have done with adventure, romance
and excitement, she was presumed to have settled down.

She smiled frigidly.

“We’ll see!” she said. “Just wait! They’re all against me--even Lance.
But I won’t give in! If I can’t get away, then I’ll change all this! I
won’t have a life like this. I won’t! I won’t!”




CHAPTER EIGHT

A YEAR LATER


§ i

The old lady was going upstairs to the store-room on one of her
periodical rummaging excursions, conducted for mysterious purposes of
her own. She looked through trunks, bags, and boxes, and emerged from
the dark little room quite exhausted, but without bringing anything with
her. As she passed the big bedroom she looked in at the open door and
smiled to herself, with grim satisfaction. There sat Claudine by the
window, her head leaning against the back of a venerable rocking chair,
her eyes fixed dreamily on the ceiling. She had been sitting there quite
three-quarters of an hour, and perfectly content in her idleness. Not a
trace of restlessness, of mutiny, about her, the sparkle too had gone
from her glance, she had a new, half melancholy charm....

The old lady admitted that Claudine had at last “settled down.” She was
still peculiar. Perhaps more peculiar than ever, but that was a matter
beyond hope of remedy. It was her bringing up. She had queer notions
about sitting alone, and she very obviously discouraged conversation,
she read pretentious and quite immoral books, but as she never said or
did anything improper, Gilbert and his mother were agreed to overlook
these unpleasant eccentricities. Naturally, they remonstrated with her
at every opportunity, but in a despairing way.

She was conquered, and she was happy. Not one of the hopes of her
girlhood had been fulfilled; she had seen no foreign countries; she had
met no remarkable people; she was denied the active and interesting life
she had expected. But she was able to smile at these lost hopes. She was
happy.

She had lost the best and dearest friend of her life, her mother. She
was obliged to live without a confidant, without sympathy or
encouragement. In losing her mother she had irrevocably lost her
girlhood, and been cast adrift on a strange sea. But she had resigned
herself even to that bitter loss.

She was well aware that she had missed the beauty and romance of the
love between a man and a woman. She certainly didn’t love Gilbert, she
didn’t even like him; she was in fear of coming to hate him. But even
that she endured with tranquil indifference, as she endured her fettered
existence, her hostile mother-in-law, her wearisome social duties.

Because she had Andrée. She wanted nothing more. Andrée was enough to
fill heaven and earth for her. Her love for Andrée, her hope for her,
the watchful care of her, gave her utter and complete satisfaction.

It had come as an astounding revelation. She had looked forward to the
coming of a baby with despair and revolt; it would be, she thought,
another link in the chain slowly forging to bind her to slavery. She
didn’t feel old enough or wise enough for a baby. She looked upon the
whole thing as a horrible indignity put upon her by merciless Nature,
and she even hoped that she might die.

She took it for granted that it would be a son, because everyone else
required a son from her. Another Gilbert, she thought, a pompous and
obstinate creature whom she could never hope to influence, and who would
soon learn to disapprove of her. She looked forward to its birth with
dread and terror, she imagined the wretched tedium of being obliged to
carry it about, to nurse it, to be perpetually tied to it, the broken
nights, the distasteful duties.

And to think that it was Andrée who had come, after all! This son, who
was to have been named Andrew, after Gilbert’s father, had been
miraculously transformed into that wonderful little dark-haired baby,
that tiny, plaintive little creature whose first cry had almost broken
her heart.

She had lain with the little bundle beside her, and from time to time
reached out a weak hand to turn down a corner of the blanket and look at
its sleeping face. The _queer_ little thing! The pathos, the marvelous
appeal of its weakness, its aloofness, the charm of its doll-like
completeness! She never tired of looking at it, she never wanted it out
of her arms. Its fierce and despairing cries pierced her soundest sleep;
its faintest stir aroused her.

She occupied the big room on the third floor, so that the baby shouldn’t
disturb Gilbert, and after the nurse went, she was alone with the baby.
Miss Dorothy had eagerly offered to take charge of it at night, but
Claudine wouldn’t listen to that. She had a little bassinet beside her,
where the baby was supposed to sleep, but at the least sound, she would
take it into the bed, to lie close to her, while she comforted its
inexplicable little woes, whispered to it, sang to it, stroked its
downy, restless little head.

She passed hours of mystic happiness alone with it in the big silent
room, where a night-light burned dimly. They would lie looking at each
other; she would gaze into its solemn unfathomable eyes, trying to
impress her image upon it, trying to reach it. It would fall asleep
clutching her finger, and she would weep with joy and terror, afraid of
everything, haunted by spectres of croup, whooping-cough, of accidents,
of all the cruel chances of life.

Gilbert had very much objected to the name Andrée. But Claudine was so
ill and weak, and so determined, that he had submitted to it. He thought
it was a charming and wonderful baby, and that it would undoubtedly be a
comfort to him in his old age. He boasted about it to his business
friends; he said it was the greatest thing in life. But he saw only the
promise in it; he was impatient for it to develop, to become responsive
and human. But Claudine loved it at each moment; she dreaded its
changing. Every day she thought, “This is the very sweetest age! I wish
she would stay like this forever!”

It was now two months old, and on this day was taking its first airing,
in the arms of a highly recommended nurse-maid. The old lady had a
prejudice against perambulators; she thought it all nonsense anyhow to
take babies out into the street, but as Dr. Perceval was newfangled and
insistent, she made no objection to a daily outing, provided it was
carried. Perambulators were against nature; babies were meant to be
carried, she said.

Claudine took little interest in this discussion. As long as they did
nothing actually harmful, she didn’t care. Her only concern was to
protect it, to keep it near her; matters of hygiene she considered a
little unreal.

She heard the sound of heavy and deliberate footsteps ascending the
stairs, and she rushed out into the hall.

“Be careful, Katie!” she called. “Go very slowly, and be sure you don’t
catch your foot!”

She watched with frowning anxiety the progress of the nurse and the
bundle in her arms, and the instant they reached the hall, she snatched
the baby.

“She’s asleep!” said the nurse, warningly, but in vain, because the
wicked mother had kissed it until it was awake and crying and had to be
rocked. It was the first separation, it had been out of the house nearly
an hour. Who was to blame her for her rapture at getting it back alive
and well?

And it looked so queer and darling in a little lace bonnet, with muslin
strings tied under its querulous face, and a coat with capes encasing
its helpless arms.

“Oh, Andrée!” she cried. “My heart’s darling! I don’t think I can ever
let you go again!”


§ ii

A year later there was another little girl, and after that, the
requisite son. They were delightful, pretty, healthy babies, and she
loved them passionately. But they were not like Andrée. There could
never be anything in the world like Andrée. She concealed her fanatic
worship of her first-born; she was a wonderful mother to them all,
patient, gentle, wise. She took an unfailing delight in them; she gave
her life to them joyfully; she was flattered and enchanted by the solemn
loyalty of little Edna and the teasing affection of her small son. But
the look of understanding in Andrée’s eyes was immeasurably dearer to
her; the clasp of Andrée’s hand, a kiss from her, were the very
consummation of her life.




_BOOK TWO_

THE BREATH OF LIFE




CHAPTER ONE

AFTER TWENTY YEARS


§ i

“Lord! I’ll be glad when this is over!” said Andrée. “And this is
Father’s idea of a holiday! The poor thing actually said he envied us!”

Her younger sister was engaged in drawing on her stockings.

“Come on, Andrée!” she said. “We’ll be late for lunch and Mother does
hate that so.... No: I suppose this _would_ be a treat for poor Father,
after being shut up in a hot office all the time.”

“I’d like to see him stand it for _one week_!” said Andrée, grimly.
“Just for one week, that’s all!”

“And then, of course, it’s cheap,” said the sensible Edna. “I suppose he
has to think of that, poor thing, with Bertie going to college and you
and your awful Mr. MacGregor. We must be a tremendous expense.”

“I don’t want to be!” cried Andrée. “And I wouldn’t be, either, if he
wasn’t so darned obstinate. I’ve told him and told him that I could
easily earn enough to pay for my lessons by teaching. Mr. MacGregor says
I’m thoroughly qualified, and that he’d help me to get pupils. But no!
Father pretends to be so advanced, and says he wants us to be able to
earn our own livings, and then when we can, he stops it. He and Mother
are both hoping and praying I’ll get married before I have a chance to
do anything. But I won’t! I’m going to--”

“Oh, Andrée! For pity’s sake! _Not_ that! _Do_ get your shoes and
stockings on! It’s after twelve!”

They were sitting on the bank of a wide, shallow stream running its
hasty course down the mountain side; a favourite spot with them. They
liked to come there in the morning and with bare feet and skirts pinned
up, to pick their way over the stones, with the cold water lapping about
their ankles. It was like a broad and deserted highway, lined with
trees. On either side were the dark woods, of which they were both a
little afraid. They would ascend the stream, “stepping stones,” past the
sombre belt of woodland to the wide meadows basking in the sun, and then
suddenly the banks grew high and rocky, the stream went out of the
sunlight and entered a ravine, gloomy and mysterious, and was no longer
a stream but a deep and ice-cold pool, fed by a trickling waterfall.
Farther than this they had never gone, the climb up the rocks beside the
waterfall would have been a very difficult one, and moreover it was a
spot where they didn’t care to linger. City born and bred, they had a
sort of horror of this silent, imprisoned place.

The stream--the “crick,” the country people called it, had an unfailing
charm for them. They came to it every fine morning and indulged in
pursuits which they were a little ashamed of and which they justified by
their ennui--an ennui more pretended than real. They talked to each
other and to their mother a great deal about the horrible dulness of the
little Catskill Mountains summer resort, but they were really very happy
in it, and they secretly enjoyed their infantile amusements. They
whittled little boats of soft wood and sailed them; they brought tin
pails and scooped up the lazy, fat pollywogs that lay along the edges of
the shallow pools in long rows, nasty creatures with a sort of horrible
fascination about them. Andrée would watch them wriggling sluggishly in
the pail for a long time, with the sun shining through their
translucent, speckled tails, and sniff the queer primeval smell of them.

“Aren’t they horrible!” she would cry.

“Don’t look at them, idiot!” her sister would say. “You’ll be having
nightmares about them again to-night.”

Andrée was very irritating about such matters. She wouldn’t keep away
from things and people and facts that troubled and tormented her. That
pool, for instance.... She would argue Edna into going there with her
and insist upon lingering beside it, looking into the dark depths of the
water, standing in its icy shallows, laying her hands against the wet
moss-grown rocks, until she became so filled with her absurd dreads and
fancies that even the sensible Edna would become infected.

They had been there that morning; they had sat on a fallen tree and
stared at the quiet pool, the dark face of the cliff over which the puny
trickle of water ran, ran, ran, had been running, just in this way, for
God knows how many centuries. And suddenly they had seen a great black
snake, swimming rapidly and silently on its way. They had fled in a
panic, barefooted over the stones and rough ground, out to the ravine
and into the sun again.

Edna had been angry.

“Why _will_ you go there!” she cried. “You’re so morbid!”

There was nothing morbid about Edna; she was a distractingly pretty
thing of nineteen, very like her mother in her young days as far as
appearance went--small, slight, self-confident, with crisp fair hair
like a halo about a flower-like face. She was alert, independent and
unsociable; her most profound instinct was to keep silent, to stay
alone, to be untouched, undisturbed while her strong spirit grew. She
was a disappointment to her mother because she was so difficult, so
impossible to influence. She wished to take every new idea and run off
with it, to examine it alone, in peace; she never wanted to talk over
anything. Nor did she care much for reading. She observed, and she made
deductions from her observations, she formed intelligent opinions, she
judged people with sane and kindly indifference.

But she did not understand, as Andrée did. Andrée apparently never did
any thinking. She simply knew things, spontaneously. She knew what
people would do, what they were, she loved them or hated them. And she
was forced to discuss everything with everybody, to talk, to think,
until her brain was sick and frightened. She couldn’t quite believe
anything or quite doubt anything. She was a thin, tall girl of twenty,
pale, distrait, not very pretty, but with a face wonderfully mobile and
sensitive. There was a perverse charm about her, about her moods, her
immature high-mindedness, her terrible dependence upon others. She would
ask your opinion, and if it differed from hers she would begin to doubt
herself, and if you agreed with her, she was obliged to change her
mind....

They had got their shoes and stockings on and set off by a convenient
path for the little hotel.

“If only we didn’t have to eat with all those people!” said Andrée,
sighing. “It takes my appetite away. I do so _hate_ the noise they make
... and those awful babies!”

Edna laughed at her.

“Poor grandma always used to call you ‘pernicketty.’ And you are, aren’t
you? They’re not such bad people.”

“How could they be worse? They’re stupid and vulgar and horrible to look
at and horrible to listen to. We wouldn’t think of bothering with such
people when we’re at home, and I can’t see why we should here. They’re
not any better in the summer time or in the mountains, than they are in
the winter, in the city.”

“Mother hates snobbishness--”

“Ha! _Does_ she? She’s the worst sort of snob in the world. She doesn’t
like _anybody_ at all. She’s bored with everyone, just as much bored
with right people as with wrong ones.”

They had come now to the hotel grounds, and were walking across the lawn
with great decorum. And just on time, for a bell rang out with a loud
and hostile clamour, and the embroidering ladies on the porch began to
collect their work and rise.

Andrée and Edna hurried up to their room for the process of
“neatening,” which their mother considered indispensable. She was there,
in the adjoining bedroom, standing before the mirror.

“How hot you are!” she said. “Hurry, I’ll wait for you.”

She was a pleasure to the eye, as she always was. She had a
well-deserved reputation for being the best-dressed woman in her set,
and she took infinite pains to sustain it. She wasn’t by any means
beautiful, the promise of her young days had never been fulfilled; she
was pale, colourless, except for her bright hair still untouched by
grey; she was thin and angular, and her features were as tranquil and
expressionless as a statue’s. But the dignity of the small creature! She
was absolutely imposing, she had a look of melancholy and resignation,
but a melancholy without lassitude, a resignation without weakness. She
had a passion for reserve. Even in her limitless devotion to her
children she was a little formal, a little aloof. She was certainly in
no way tyrannical or severe, but she commanded unfailing respect. They
adored her like a goddess, instead of loving her like a human being. She
was a perpetual mystery to them.

Poor Claudine! Like a strayed nymph, forever astonished and affrighted
at the strange world into which she had been betrayed! She had known no
way of adapting herself, she could never feel at home, her one refuge
had been to withdraw into herself.

She was courteous and agreeable enough to all her fellow-guests, but she
fled from them. She went off every morning after breakfast, her thin
form, straight as a dart, charmingly dressed in clear summer colours, a
parasol held over her burnished head, and two or three portentous
volumes under her arm, to find a secluded spot in the woods where she
could read undisturbed. She read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and
Schopenhauer and Emerson, with ardent attention, marking passages,
meditating on them, trying to appease and fortify her desperate spirit.

The idea of her being desperate would have seemed ludicrous to anyone
who knew her. She was calm, so self-possessed, so well-poised! She had a
great social success in her own milieu, she was something of an
authority upon correctness in dress and manner. She was moreover a lady
of unblemished reputation, she was never even indiscreet or stupid. She
was quite perfect. Not even the resentful Gilbert could find a flaw in
her public demeanour.

And yet, in her own heart, she was bewildered and lost.


§ ii

They went down, all three, to the dining-room, and sat down at their
small table, accompanied by a great many glances from the other guests.
They never suspected how much they were gossiped about, how much
interest they aroused. It was the first time they had come to so small
and cheap a place for their summer holiday; heretofore they had stopped
at lively and agreeable resorts with others of their own comfortable
sort. But Gilbert had taken one of those unaccountable fancies to which
husbands are so prone. It may have been an obscure resentment at the
sight of the care-free and pampered existence of his women-folk, or one
of those sudden anxieties he often felt at the thought of the future.
However, from no matter what cause, he had suddenly required Claudine to
retrench and she had obeyed, with her usual profound and polite
indifference. Hence the “Pine View Villa,” in the Catskills, and two
small rooms without a bath.

Their attitude aroused resentment. Claudine had her own special tea,
which she made in a pot at the table, and they had extra milk and cream,
and various potted delicacies ordered from the city. The landlady took
this as a reflection upon her table and it was. And then they had made a
special arrangement whereby Andrée was to have the exclusive use of the
piano in the mornings, and on chilly or wet mornings, when some of the
ladies would have enjoyed sitting in the parlour and rocking and
chatting, they were not at all pleased by the vigorous rhythm of her
interminable exercises. She regarded them no more than so many chairs.

Edna was the most approachable, but she had a scrutinizing air, an
amused sort of interest outrageous in one so young. Altogether a
conceited, snobbish, intolerable family; that was the verdict.

“Take the tea and the anchovy paste, Andrée!” said Claudine. “And will
you bring them up to my room, please? I’d like to speak to you for a
moment. Edna’ll wait on the veranda for you.”

She closed the door of her room and sat down.

“Andrée, dear,” she said. “Was that another letter from Mr. MacGregor
this morning?”

“Yes, it was,” said Andrée, nonchalantly.

Claudine waited for a moment.

“I wish you’d show it to me!” she said, coaxingly.

“I’d _rather_ not, Mother, it’s private.”

“But Andrée, my dear, why should you have private letters from that man
which you can’t show your mother?”

She had adopted a very tranquil, reasonable tone, to conceal her own
distress and the advantage which it gave to Andrée. She was confronted
once more by the terrible _independence_ of her children, they all led
such busy, lively, entertaining lives in which there was no need at all
for her. They loved her, but they would have gone on in exactly the same
way if she were not with them. She was unessential, they needed nothing
from her. She had never been able to understand how it had happened.
When they were little, she was their universe, she consoled, protected,
she alone understood them. She had wished to give her life to them. And
then little by little they had got upon their feet and walked away,
leaving her still standing with empty arms in the nursery. She couldn’t
follow them; she didn’t know how to draw near to them, how to win them.
She was helpless, just as she was now helpless before Andrée. The very
sight of Andrée frightened her, the fragile and mysterious charm of her
beloved child wrung her heart, robbed her of worldly wisdom and common
sense. She could have knelt before Andrée and adored her, and wept for
the pity that touching youth and ignorance caused her.

“I have loved you every moment of your life, from your first breath!”
she might have cried. “There is no one in the world for me but you! I
love my other children, but oh, not like you! Not like you! I wanted to
give all my life to your service. I wanted to live for you, to wear
myself out to give you happiness. And you will not have me!”

She stole a glance at the child’s downcast face, mutinous, impatient.

“Andrée, my dear,” she said again. “Why should you have letters from
that man which you don’t wish me to see?”

For answer Andrée put her hand inside her blouse and drew out a crumpled
letter.

“Here!” she said. “Read it then, if you want!”

But it was impossible to do so, to pry into her poor little secret.

“I don’t want to read it, my darling. I only want to talk to you
about--”

To her great surprise Andrée began to cry.

“Oh, Mother!” she sobbed. “That’s just what I _knew_ you’d do! Talk it
over, and talk and talk, and spoil everything.... Why can’t you
understand? It’s nothing, just nothing at all, and you want to talk it
into something. Why can’t I be let alone? I’m so unhappy!”

“_Unhappy?_ Andrée, why? Tell me! Let me help you!”

“I don’t know why--except that I never have any peace or freedom. It’s
_disgusting_ to have to talk about every thought that comes into your
head.... How would you like it? How would you like to have to tell
exactly how you felt toward everyone and everything?”

Claudine turned away her head.

“I see how you feel,” she said. “It must be disgusting, as you say....
But you’re surely fair-minded enough to see that I must make every
possible effort to safeguard you. You are young and inexperienced.”

“When you were my age you were married and had a baby.”

Claudine smiled, one of her rare and enchanting smiles.

“That’s true. I had _you_.”

“So you see I’m not so very young. And as for experience ... well,
honestly, Mother, I don’t think you’ve had much.”

Claudine was startled. She who had suffered so much, been so cruelly
disappointed and mocked by life, who had learned so many, many bitter
lessons, to be reproached with lack of experience by this baby? She
smiled again, sadly.

“You’ve never been to Europe, or met any famous people, or anything. And
you’ve never--” Andrée flushed and hesitated. “You’ve never had any
romance. Nothing but just Father, and he’s not very thrilling.”

“My dear!”

“_Please_ don’t be shocked! It makes it so hard to talk to you. It’s no
use my pretending that I want a life like yours or that I’d marry a man
like Father. I wouldn’t for _anything_!”

“Andrée, I really--”

Andrée shook her head. She alone of the three had never been drawn to
her father, had never been influenced by him.

“No,” she said. “It’s no use talking. I want something _very_ different.
I don’t want any stuffy family life. I’d like to go away, by myself--”

“Andrée! Think what you’re saying! How can you be so cruel? What should
I do without you?”

“You’ve got Bertie and Edna. And you’re settled down and all that sort
of thing. You have lots of things to interest you, but I haven’t
anything. That’s why--” Once more she stopped, her cheeks scarlet.

“That’s why I like to hear from--Mr. MacGregor. He encourages me. He
says there’s no reason why I shouldn’t make a name for myself, giving
concerts. _He_--well, I know he exaggerates, but he says I’m a--a--sort
of--wonder.”

“Is he urging you to leave your parents?”

“Heavens, _no_! He just encourages me. He says to keep on practising and
practising. And when I get back he’s going to give me a lot of extra
time.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks I’m--promising.”

“Andrée, isn’t there anything more personal beneath this interest?”

“I don’t know,” said Andrée, curtly. “I don’t want to know.”

Claudine was still for a moment, thinking with supreme displeasure of
that man, that music teacher, who had by flattery, by chicanery, won her
child’s interest. It must be stopped! Should she ridicule him, point out
to Andrée that Mr. MacGregor was as old as her father, and a man of no
distinction, either mental or physical, a shaggy, lumbering, grey-haired
creature only too well used to the silly admiration of young girl
pupils? No, ridicule was not a weapon Claudine could handle. She thought
for a moment of appealing to her affection, but that too she rejected.
She _dared_ not....

“Andrée,” she said at last, very gravely. “I am going to ask you to
promise me something. If Mr. MacGregor--if this thing--”

“I know what you mean. You mean you want me to promise to tell you if
anything happens.”

“Yes.”

“But don’t you see that that isn’t a fair promise?”

Claudine was startled.

“Surely your mother has the right--”

“Oh, yes, you have all sorts of rights!” said Andrée, bitterly. “And I
haven’t any. But if I were you--if ever I have a daughter--I’ll never,
never ask her to promise to tell me things. I wouldn’t want to know them
if she didn’t _want_ to tell them.”

Claudine approached and put her arm about the unwilling girl.

“Very well!” she said, with a sigh. “I will leave you free to do as you
please about telling me.”

Then Andrée bent down and kissed her.

“You _are_ a darling!” she cried. “Now I’ll rush to Edna!”




CHAPTER TWO

THE FORSAKEN PROVIDER


§ i

“One of Gilbert’s bad mornings!” thought Miss Dorothy.

And she slipped into her place behind the coffee urn, a little more
ingratiating, a little more careful not to disturb him, than usual. He
sat at the head of the table, glowering behind his newspaper, and by the
very sound of the grunt with which he answered the cousinly
good-morning, she was warned of what might be expected. She sat very
still, in order not to attract the lightning.

He ate his grape-fruit, quite reasonably, and a little dish of oatmeal,
and then Delia brought in the eggs and bacon. He glanced at the plate
suspiciously.

“Are these Murray’s eggs?” he demanded.

Miss Dorothy sent the girl a warning glance.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did they come?”

“ ... Yesterday, sir.”

“Let me see the box!”

“It was thrown away, sir.”

His face became alarming.

“Dorothy!” he said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe these are
Murray’s eggs!”

He leaned across the table and sniffed at the dish.

“No!” he shouted. “They are _not_! I know it!”

He flung down his napkin and pushed back his chair. He had for a few
weeks past been importing eggs for his special use from a fellow he knew
in the country, and he knew that he was being duped, that these immoral
women, Miss Dorothy and Delia, used _his_ eggs for other purposes, for
the household, for puddings, perhaps even ate them themselves. His
appetite was extremely delicate at breakfast, no one could quite
comprehend how he felt, especially the morning after a banquet. Suddenly
his anger turned into a frightful gloom.

“Take them away!” he said, with a sigh. “Take the damned things away and
never bring me eggs again. Never!... Good Lord! I can’t trust _anyone_!”

Miss Dorothy flushed, and smiled nervously.

“Would you like ... a slice of ham, Gilbert?” she ventured.

“Nothing!... More coffee!”

He had put down his paper, and she was in the full glare of his bilious
and lowering regard. He picked the thing up again, not to read it, for
he had finished all that interested him, but as a screen to conceal from
him this scene which he so hated to contemplate, from that dining-room
where he had eaten so many hundreds of breakfasts. Claudine hadn’t
really changed it, or anything else. By the time the old lady had
departed this life, Claudine had no more ideas, no more desire to make
changes. The huge sideboard opposite him was crowded with cut glass,
silver, hand-painted china, wedding presents, Christmas presents,
birthday and anniversary presents, milestones along the road of twenty
years of married life. All very neat, comfortable and prosperous, and
yet it offended him. He couldn’t really find fault with this home or
this atmosphere, couldn’t well imagine anything much better. If he had
been compelled to furnish a dining-room according to his own taste, he
would have produced something very similar. He had even a sort of pride
in the old furniture and the curtains and the presents. And yet it hurt
and angered him so.

He looked up stealthily and saw Miss Dorothy, with such a pleased face,
just about to begin her grape-fruit.

The face of a fool he called it to himself, a half complacent, half
terrified countenance, a sallow, soul-wearying creature in gold
eyeglasses, who existed through his benefactions, one of the thankless
crew he laboured unendingly to feed and clothe.

And not one of them made the least effort to comprehend him. He was a
man, and therefore to be humoured; he was a man and therefore to be
conciliated. Like so many sun-worshippers did they all bow down before
the inscrutable source of all comforts, all security, supplicating him
to continue shedding his golden rays. Not from humility, you understand,
or because they had the least admiration for his productivity, but
because only in this way could they obtain what they wished. It was
really a worship, with rites and sacrifices, and splendid rewards to be
got if you understood how to go about it. Claudine and his two daughters
and even the unfortunate Miss Dorothy had all a dearly bought knowledge
of what topics would infuriate him, knew his good hours and his bad
ones, could read the warning symptoms of his more deadly moods. They
knew what he liked to eat and what he liked to hear. And nothing else.
His queer, gloomy soul remained mysterious and solitary. In an alien
world he groped for light, he existed like a sensitive child among
impervious and indifferent adults. Even his children seemed to him
possessed of worldly knowledge impossible to him; they were aware of
things, they discussed things, of which he was ignorant. They were
somehow freer and brighter.

To be considered cross when the spirit was writhing, crying for help
...! He was passionately convinced that his malign fate had driven him
into an utterly wrong life and that somewhere else there was an utterly
right life, beautiful and satisfying, which he ought to have been
enjoying. He had no idea of making adjustments, or of trying to modify
his environment; he wanted, most naïvely, to step into another world.

What it was he so thirsted for, he didn’t exactly know. It was not
peace, or love, or fame, or money, or any of those things a man might
legitimately demand from his destiny. He knew only that his daily bread
was ashes in his mouth, that his soul found no nourishment, and pined
and sickened, that it lived in a universe everywhere insipid and
meaningless. And that with all his heart he resented this fate, above
all, this marriage of his. Because it was his conviction, that he, as
well as every other man on earth, was entitled to an ideal marriage, and
a more or less ardent and beautiful wife. The men who got rather less
than this had been cheated, defrauded of what he called “the greatest
thing in life.” It never occurred to him that he was disappointed
because he expected too much, he believed himself disappointed because
he had received too little.

He never thought of Claudine without a savage resentment. She had
swindled him. She was to have brought light, gaiety, charm, into his
life, to have transformed it into something resembling her old Staten
Island existence, she was to have been perpetually alluring, fairylike,
sparkling. And she had failed in all of this. She was nothing more than
a decorous and virtuous wife, and she regarded him with something
criminally like aversion. She was cold. And he believed, like more than
one other man--that her coldness was a fault in her own temperament, and
not due to any lack of fascination in himself. It was certainly not a
happy marriage. He had grounds for believing that she thought herself a
martyr, and he _knew_ that he was one.


§ ii

Some occult sense warned him of the time. He glanced up at the clock on
the mantelpiece, and caught sight of his own face in the mirror behind
it. And he wondered, as he always did when he really, consciously
regarded himself, _how_ it was he looked like _that_, how it was
possible that his appearance should so little express himself. It was
another cause for resentment.

A heavy, grizzled man of forty-five with a straggling little mustache
over a brutally obstinate month. He had a surly way about him, but he
was not unattractive; on the contrary, there was something about the
gloomy and bilious gaze of his black eyes that engendered pity and
good-will.

But neither pity nor good-will dwelt in Miss Dorothy at that particular
instant. She was not resentful, because resentment didn’t belong in her
stock of feelings, but she was _miserable_. He was upsetting all her
neat little plans for the day, he was keeping back Delia. He was so
late, why on earth didn’t he get up and be off to his office, where he
belonged? Every moment of these days was so precious to her, when she
was sole and undisputed mistress in this house which she had always
regarded with awe. She could wish that the summer would last forever,
and Claudine and the children never return. Think of the joy of going to
market in the electric coupé! Think of the charm of eating her lunch
alone, benevolent chatelaine of all this domain!

At last, with his terribly rough gesture, he shoved away the plates
before him, so that they upset a milk jug, pushed back his chair in a
way that made furrows in the carpet, and got up. He went heavily
upstairs and took his straw hat from the gigantic hat-rack. He frowned,
there was something he didn’t like about that dark hall, with the rug
removed for the summer. There were certain changes from his mother’s
day, the glass top of the front door was covered with shirred green
silk, and over the open door of the front parlour hung a portière of
bamboo tubes strung together with green and blue glass beads, hung there
fifteen summers ago. On the shelf of the hat-rack was a little rubber
plant in a horrible green scalloped bowl, and a clumsy bronze statue of
a fat shepherd boy, holding out an altogether incongruous little tray
for visiting cards, a wedding anniversary present from his senior
partner. Each of these objects _per se_ he regarded with more or less
admiration, but the ensemble disgusted him. He felt that there was
something wrong here, and that it was of course his wife’s fault. He
execrated her in silence.

He set off down the tranquil street, blazing in the July sun, removing
his hat now and then to salute a familiar face. He knew so many people
in the neighbourhood, through having lived there all his life, but they
were not his friends, these people. They respected him as a man who paid
his bills promptly and provided well for his family, but they didn’t
like him, had no warm feeling for him. He was too gloomy, too
preoccupied. He had an air of misery about him which was distressing to
a hostess. Claudine was obliged to confess, and to apologize for his
reluctance to make visits. She said he was such a man’s man! He was only
happy among his business associates. But what she didn’t know, what
nobody suspected, was the positive hatred concealed beneath his
_farouche_ manner for all these respectable people. He despised them and
loathed them, and was mortally sick of them, and worst of all, he
couldn’t feel justified in such feelings. Theoretically they were what
he admired, and he couldn’t see in what way he differed from them, and,
yet he knew that he _did_. This feeling, like all his other feelings, he
kept gloomily to himself.

He jumped on a crowded car going across the bridge, very hot, very angry
at being jostled, and was carried off to New York, to make more
money....


§ iii

Not only at home were his moods known and respected, at his office it
was a recognized thing that the early morning was a bad time for him,
and that it was most unwise to disturb him. As usual he strode through
the outer office and shut himself into his own small room, without
exchanging a word or even a nod. He looked through his mail which had
been opened and neatly sorted for him, then pushed it aside, staring
after it with a distrait and wretched look. He couldn’t put his mind on
it, he hated every detail, every possibility.

“Why the devil am I slaving away here?” he asked himself. “Working day
in and day out, so that she can go flaunting in fine clothes and idling
away the whole summer up there in the mountains.”

He remembered the extensive wardrobe Claudine had taken with her. Never
did she suspect, never could she have suspected, how he resented it. The
primeval male in him would deny all luxuries to the unloved woman.

“_She!_ In her silk dresses--loafing all day long--servants to wait on
her, _never_ does a useful thing! Good God! Think of the time and
leisure she’s got, and she doesn’t even read the papers! Not even
charitable! Useless, through and through.... Where would she be if it
weren’t for me? She’s got everything she wants, without raising a finger
for it. Food, clothes, jewels, money to spend, fool women to jabber
with--”

It seemed to him quite intolerable to think of her privileges; he
couldn’t have endured it at all if he hadn’t had a certain very curious
consolation for his grievances. His delight was to picture his wife as
cast away upon a desert island, and he gloated over her utter futility
there. He could imagine how helpless she would be, how incongruous, she
with her fastidiousness, her chilly dignity. _She_ wouldn’t be able to
make herself dresses out of grass, sewing with a thorn for a needle. She
wouldn’t know how, and couldn’t learn how, to grind flour from exotic
roots, to tame birds, to construct houses. Incurably romantic Gilbert!
That was his test for any woman; how she would look and behave on his
classic desert isle. She must be lovely, strong, and young, and she must
be altogether daring and brave and unwifelike, she must be resourceful
and full of alluring wiles, she must urgently _need_ him, and yet be
entirely independent.

He glanced at the clock, took up his hat, and went out to a celebrated
café near by, had two whiskies and soda, and immediately felt much
better. He would confess to you that he was rather too dependent upon
“bracers,” but like all that army, he was merely waiting for a
propitious day to renounce the thing entirely. Some day when he wasn’t
worried or depressed. No hurry about it; it didn’t interfere with his
business, and it helped him beyond measure through his fits of awful
despondency. He was willing to admit that perhaps his health might be
better if he drank less, but he couldn’t become really interested in his
health.

He chatted with the other ten o’clock frequenters of the bar, whom he
knew very well, for they came with great regularity. He felt ready for
business now; he went back--in fact, he now entered the office
officially for the first time, in his proper character, nodded genially
to the cashier and to his stenographer, an ambitious young Cuban, and
began to pace up and down the big sample room, planning his autumn
campaign and reviewing his “line.” A very fine line this year; he looked
upon it with satisfaction as it lay spread out before him on a big
counter sloping steeply on both sides and divided into little
compartments filled with red rubber cows and white rubber horses, big,
brightly colored balls and tiny hard rubber ones, dolls in knitted
dresses, rattles, teething rings. There were among these several
novelties which he considered very promising....

“A gentleman to see you!” said the young Cuban, with his alert and
zealous air.

“Who?”

“Mr. MacGregor.”

“Don’t know him. Where’s he from?”

“Didn’t say,” replied the young Cuban, with a creditable imitation of
his chief’s brusque business-like tone.

“Bring him in!” said Gilbert.

He stood facing the door with a non-committal expression which would be
either menacing or genial, as circumstances might dictate. But the man
who entered was a type not familiar to him; he couldn’t place him; a
big, shambling, rugged man of forty or so, a bit uncouth in appearance,
but not without distinction. His face was ironic, but his smile was
genial.

“Mr. Vincelle?” he asked.

“What can I do for you, sir?” inquired Gilbert, briefly.

“My name is Alexander MacGregor,” said he. “I have had the pleasure of
instructing your elder daughter in music.”

Oh, a music teacher! Probably about a bill, or those outrageous “extra
lessons” which his children were forever in need of.

“Sit down, sir, sit down!” said Gilbert.

Mr. MacGregor did so.

“I hope I don’t find you very busy!” he said. “This is quite a personal
matter....”

“Cigar?” asked Gilbert.

Mr. MacGregor accepted one.

“It’s about Miss Andrée,” he said. “I understand that you’re going out
there this afternoon, and I thought--”

They talked for more than an hour, and Gilbert was captivated. He liked
this fellow! He liked his cool, manly air, his practical outlook. Mr.
MacGregor began his proposal by stating his financial position, which
was sound and satisfactory. He put forward his own good points with
assurance and he affirmed that his age was an asset.

“Andrée is very temperamental,” he said, “and hard to understand. A
young, inexperienced man wouldn’t be able to. She requires the greatest
tact. A rare, peculiar nature. Only men of our age can appreciate it.”

Well, thought Gilbert, after all, why not? Wouldn’t he himself be a
marvelous lover for a young girl, if she were the right sort of young
girl? There was a sort of indirect flattery in Mr. MacGregor’s idea.

Moreover, he found Andrée an intensely irritating young woman, and he
would be glad to see her safely married and gone away. She was a sort of
ally to her mother. She was antagonistic; she didn’t admire him; she
wasn’t the sort of daughter he had expected.

And he was delighted with Mr. MacGregor’s old fashioned idea of asking
his permission before speaking to Andrée. It was really the first time
he had ever been treated as a father should be treated. He took Mr.
MacGregor out to lunch, to a sedate little second floor restaurant known
only to connoisseurs. They ate largely and critically....

By two o’clock indigestion had engulfed Gilbert in black misery. He
lingered at the table, chewing a cigar, and meditating. It was Saturday;
the office was closed; he had nothing to do until train time. He ordered
more liqueurs, more coffee, and refused to be parted from Mr. MacGregor,
clung to him, in fact.

Of course, he said, it all depended upon Andrée herself. Of course it
did, Mr. MacGregor agreed.

“See here!” said Gilbert. “Come out there with me, and we’ll see. You’ll
have plenty of time to pack what you need for over Sunday. Come on!”

Naturally Mr. MacGregor went.




CHAPTER THREE

THE SUITOR WITH CREDENTIALS


§ i

It was a filial duty, as well as a wifely duty, to meet Gilbert’s train.
He wished them all to do so, he liked to see these three charmingly
dressed, feminine creatures all looking for and expecting him. But he
never showed this; he always wore the distracted and annoyed expression
of a tremendously busy man snatching a little time for his family.

He got off the train in his rather clumsy way, and they started toward
him, when the sight of Mr. MacGregor following him, bag in hand, changed
their politely eager smiles to looks of consternation.

Gilbert kissed them all perfunctorily, and then brought forward his
companion.

“I’ve brought Mr. MacGregor down with me,” he announced. “I hope the
place isn’t crowded.”

“It isn’t,” said Andrée. “I don’t see why it should be. I don’t see
anything to bring crowds of people here, I’m sure.”

“Hush, Andrée!” murmured her mother, and bestowed a gracious and
expressionless smile upon the visitor. “I’m sure there’ll be a room for
Mr. MacGregor. Hadn’t we better get into the bus now? It’s waiting, you
know!”

All the way to the hotel she was quite perfect; she told Mr. MacGregor
about Andrée’s difficulties in practising, she was gay, in a formal,
stereotyped way; when they arrived she arranged with the landlady for a
room, even went about, picking him out a nice one. Then they all sat on
the veranda for an hour or so, in the terrific heat, looking out over
the sun-scorched lawn and the dusty road, and the motionless fir trees,
and talked more. It was not an altogether successful conversation;
Andrée was perverse and wilfully tactless, Edna was frankly indifferent,
and Gilbert very garrulous. He wished to talk about the wholesale rubber
business, and he did.

Then it was time to dress for dinner and they all went upstairs. The
door into the girls’ room was locked, and Gilbert sat down, prepared for
a more confidential talk, and an accounting of Claudine’s expenditure.
But she attacked him at once, with a fiercely restrained wrath.

“Gilbert, what made you bring that man here?”

“Who? You mean Mr. MacGregor? I wanted to!” he answered, defiantly.

“It was a stupid, meddlesome thing to do!” she cried.

“See here, Claudine--!”

“You don’t realize the trouble it may cause.... Why didn’t you consult
me?”

He laughed unpleasantly.

“I don’t think I’ll start that now, after twenty years--”

“You’ve no right to bring any man, where the girls are, without
consulting me.... I particularly didn’t want this man.”

“Why?”

“I don’t care to explain.”

“It’s no use your being so high-handed with me. I’ll bring anyone I see
fit. I consider my judgment--”

“Then I shall take Andrée away.”

“Going to leave me? I’ve heard that before!”

She was quite white with anger.

“When it’s a question of _Andrée_--” she began.

“There it is again--your cursed, unfair, unwomanly favouritism. What’s
the matter with MacGregor? Not good enough for your princess?”

“Then he’s spoken to you!” she cried, in horror.

“Yes, he has, and very decently, too. I don’t see how she could do much
better, if you ask me.”

“Gilbert! Are you mad? That old man--old enough to be her father!”

This touched a sore spot.

“Even that isn’t so very ancient,” he said, with infantile resentment.
“No one but you would call a man of his age old. He’s a fine fellow. He
has a good name, and he’s well fixed, and he’s very fond of Andrée--”

“You’re--you’re positively wicked!” she cried, choking with sobs.
“Andrée--that wonderful, beautiful child--and that silly old man ...!
I’m ashamed of you! I’m disgusted with you!”

He was astonished and somewhat alarmed. How was he to explain to this
unreasonably violent woman his pretty fancies about young brides and
adoring, distinguished, grey-haired husbands?

“See here!” he began, but she wouldn’t listen to him.

“I won’t allow him to say a word to her! Not a word! I’m going to speak
to him myself and--”

Gilbert sprang to his feet.

“No, you don’t! I’m not going to be made a fool of! I told him he might
speak to Andrée--”

“And I’ll tell him he can’t. I won’t have any interference where
Andrée’s concerned.”

“I tell you I have something to say in this matter!”

She looked at him with a cold smile, and deliberately turned away from
him. It was a trick of hers, and it always infuriated him. He raged at
her in a way of which he was afterward ashamed.

She went on dressing, entirely disregarding him; then when she was
ready, she said:

“I’m going downstairs now. Perhaps you’ll dress, when you’ve finished
your bar-room tirade.”


§ ii

It was a jolly dinner. Both Claudine and Gilbert were in high spirits,
as angry people often are, and Mr. MacGregor appeared greatly
entertained. The girls were ridiculous; Claudine recognized their mood
and frowned. She knew and dreaded this high tension, when every remark
provoked a giggle, when they exchanged glances and were scarcely able to
control their lips, trembling with laughter. A thought came to her which
made her flush with shame. Could they have heard their father ...? He
had certainly talked very loudly. And unfortunately that was the sort of
thing they considered funny.

Poor woman! She was in misery, before her wretched task. She was afraid
of the inscrutable Mr. MacGregor; he was so masculine, so self-assured,
so old and sensible. But she was determined nevertheless to drive him
away, no matter how outrageous she had to be. He should not be given
the opportunity of putting ideas into Andrée’s head--silly, headstrong
Andrée! She wouldn’t leave them alone for an instant.

As they rose from the table, said Mr. MacGregor:

“Miss Andrée, shall we have a little music? We might run over that new
duet--”

“No, thanks!” said Andrée, laughing. “Not with you!”

“Nonsense! Come along!” he said, with authoritative, professorial air.
“I want to see what you’ve been doing.”

“No!” she repeated. “I don’t want to! I won’t!”

“Come, Andrée!” said Gilbert, severely. “This is no way to behave. When
Mr. MacGregor--”

“All right!” she interrupted, and led the way into the parlour where a
group of old ladies was already installed. Mr. MacGregor drew up a chair
beside the piano stool and they sat down, side by side, the big,
stoop-shouldered man with his grizzled hair, and the slight young girl.
He spoke to her for a few moments in an undertone, pointing a square
finger at the music; and she nodded petulantly.

“Now!” said he.

The four hands were poised above the keyboard in the manner made famous
by his teaching. Then they began, a majestic, crashing piece, a prelude
in tremendous chords. The group of old ladies was annoyed at first, but
some instinct warned them that it was classical music and worthy of
respect, and they all sat rocking and listening.

But Claudine could take no pleasure in the noble work. The sight of
Andrée and Mr. MacGregor side by side filled her with terror and
impatience. She thought of the man’s great prestige, the illustrious
pupils who publicly lauded him, the recitals given by his conservatory
which she had attended, and where he was a demi-god, adored by students
and parents. He had written books on technic, he was a prominent man,
respected in certain estimable circles, he was well-to-do, his
reputation was unblemished. His attention must seem such a dangerously
flattering thing for his young pupil.

Oh, damnable music! She imagined she could actually see it weave its
spell about her child. The duet finished, Mr. MacGregor consented to
play alone, and it was marvelous playing. Andrée stood beside him,
watching his hands, never raising her eyes. And he never looked at her
either; sinister fact!

“And now, you, Miss Andrée!” he said.

She consented instantly. She was fired; she wanted to play now. And Mr.
MacGregor crossed the room and sat down beside Claudine.

“She is remarkable,” he said.

Claudine looked intently at him.

“You think she would make a concert player?” she asked, briefly.

“She undoubtedly could, if she would. But her temperament is peculiar.”

Claudine smiled.

“Her temperament is more or less familiar to me,” she said.

“Oh, I wasn’t presuming to inform her mother!” he hastened to say. “It
was simply that I thought my interpretation--as a musician--might be of
interest. I don’t hesitate to say that she is one of the most promising
pupils I have ever had the pleasure of teaching.”

“Then do you think she has a fine future before her?” asked Claudine.
She would bring him to the point; he should be made to declare himself
so that she could demolish him.

“If she chooses. But I’m not sure that she has the temperament for a
public artist. She is too rebellious--”

“Then what do you think she is suited for?” asked Claudine, boldly. But
she never had Mr. MacGregor’s reply, for Andrée had suddenly stopped
playing and got up.

“Mother!” she said, “Do you mind if Edna and I pop over to the
drugstore? We want some things--”

Mr. MacGregor had risen, prepared with a gallant offer to accompany
them, but before he could say a word, she had gone, her arm about her
smaller sister. And with the cessation of the music, Gilbert intended to
be heard. Mr. MacGregor was rather interested in the stock market, in a
prudent way, and Gilbert had information to give, and prophecies.

Claudine could not endure it; she went out on the veranda to await the
return of the children, but though she lingered there for an hour and a
half, there was no sign of them. Thoroughly vexed, she went upstairs and
there they were in their own room. She heard Edna shrieking with
laughter.

Quite shamelessly she stood close to the crack of the door.

“Gosh!” said Edna. “If he married both of us, and another one thrown
in, it would just about make a wife of his own age. The conceit of men!”

“Well,” said Andrée, “the girls at the conservatory do make awful idiots
of themselves about him, you know.”

“But, oh!” cried Edna, “you don’t know how funny you looked, playing
that duet, and both--pouncing--!”

“Shut up!” said Andrée, impatiently. “I knew you were laughing. There’s
nothing really funny in it, of course not.”

There was silence for a moment, broken by giggles from Edna.

“But, honestly, Andrée,” she said, at last. “Have you encouraged him?
I’m sure he came to woo you!”

“I never dreamed he’d come.... I wish he hadn’t! He wrote such heavenly
letters. And now he’s spoiled everything.”

“Father adores him; you can see that. What do you suppose he told
Father?”

“Goodness knows! Father swallows everything.... Oh, dear! I really liked
him--when he was miles away!”

Claudine now knocked at the door; and entered.

“Children,” she said. “Where have you been? I waited and waited for
you--”

“We just came up here; we didn’t go to the drugstore after all. We
thought we’d like a nice quiet little talk,” said Edna.

“It’s very close and hot up here,” said their mother. “However I suppose
you’re not going downstairs again this evening--”

“Not unless Andrée wants to play another duet,” said Edna.

Andrée scowled at her.

“Your playing was beautiful, my dear,” said her mother. “Mr. MacGregor
must be a very competent teacher.”

She kissed them both and went back into her own room, unaccountably
relieved. She undressed and put on a thin silk dressing-gown and sat
down near the window in the dark.

She deliberately tried to banish all thought of Gilbert. He would
inevitably go to the large hotel down the road and have a number of
whiskies and soda, and come back, either contrite or quarrelsome. One
was as bad as another.... She sighed, bitterly. Better think of Andrée.

It was a hot, still night; the world outside seemed restless and
fevered, noisy with insects, not sleeping, not tranquil. She could hear
dogs barking frantically, and a strain of stupid music from the hotel,
chattering voices on the veranda, sounds from other rooms.... Oh, my
Andrée, how little life has to give you! Even the best of it is so poor!
A profound melancholy overcame her; she could not so much as imagine a
future for her child that would be happy.

The door opened softly, and Edna’s voice whispered:

“Mother!”

“Yes, dear?”

“May I come in, just for an instant?”

“Of course!”

“Andrée’s asleep.... But I was so afraid you’d be worrying, Mother
darling. I knew how you must feel when you saw Mr. MacGregor.... Oh,
Andrée’s such a chump! But he’s done for! I made her laugh at him, and
that’s spoiled everything.”

“You dear girl! How clever and sensible of you! You really do understand
Andrée wonderfully.”

Edna sighed.

“She is a worry! She’d marry anyone--she’d do anything, if she was
caught in a certain mood. I hope you’ll be able to keep that old
nuisance--”

“Really, my dear!”

“I hope you won’t let Mr. MacGregor talk to her to-morrow. It might undo
all the good I’ve done.”

Claudine put her arms about the child and kissed her fervently, the sort
of kisses she so often gave to Edna in which were all her secret
contrition for her favouritism, all her remorse at the inadequate return
she made for this honest and beautiful affection. She had a
superstitious dread of being punished some day for her wickedness; some
disaster would overtake little Edna, and then she would repent, too
late, her idolatry of Andrée.

“Good night, Edna darling!” she said. “You’re such a comfort to me!”

And how much dearer was the pain that one caused her than the comfort
the other gave!




CHAPTER FOUR

THE UNABASHED OUTCAST


§ i

Claudine waked up to the dull peace of a mountain Sunday. She could hear
the grinding of the ice-cream freezer on the back porch, and far away
the bell of the little Roman Catholic church. She rose and dressed while
Gilbert still slept, and going out into the hall, knocked on the door of
the girls’ room. Andrée was up and half dressed, combing her misty dark
hair.

“Edna’s pretending to be asleep,” she said, scornfully.

“There’s no hurry,” said Claudine. “She can wait for Father and have
breakfast with him. Finish dressing, and we’ll have time for a little
walk.”

She sat down and watched her child with tender eyes. There was an
awkward, impatient grace about her, in the hasty movements of her arms
as she arranged her hair, something so immature, so touching. She
slipped on a white frock, because her father was inordinately fond of
seeing young girls in white, and announced herself ready. But Claudine
saw untidinesses; she tucked in a stray lock of hair, straightened her
collar, tightened her belt.

“Now!” she said. “You’re nice!”

They went out, closing the door quietly on the motionless Edna.

“What on earth is that row!” said Andrée.

They paused for a moment in the hall to listen. Some outrageous person
was playing with vigour on the piano, and whistling, to accompany the
vulgar air.

“And on Sunday morning, too!” said Claudine, with a frown, “when so many
people want to sleep!”

They went on down; the dining-room was still quite empty at this early
hour, and the veranda deserted. But every corner was permeated by that
loud, shocking noise!

“Let’s see what it is!” said Andrée, and they looked cautiously in at
the open door of the parlour.

“Oh, I know him!” said Andrée. “I saw him come last night, on the train
with Father and Mr. MacGregor. Horrible, vulgar little wretch!”

Seated at the piano was a slight, fair-haired young man with a minute
yellow mustache and a cheerful, impudent face. He wore a new black suit
and white buckskin shoes and some awful sort of necktie; he had an air
of being specially got up for Sunday. The place was a cheap and obscure
one, but they had never before seen in it a guest like this. People of
his kind found nothing to please them here.

Claudine was affronted.

“We can only hope he won’t stay long,” she said, as they turned away.

They went into breakfast, alone in the room, but their peace was
destroyed by the playing and whistling; at first they frowned, and
Claudine even suggested speaking to Mrs. Dewey; but in the end they were
forced to laugh.

They went out for a walk, a carefully selected one, where no cows would
be met with to terrify Andrée and a good view might be obtained for
Claudine. They talked together in one of their few hours of perfect
accord.

“I have some influence over her!” thought Claudine, happily. “If she
ever contemplates anything foolish, I am sure I can dissuade her. She is
mine! We are bound together by a thousand ties.”

Andrée broke into her meditation.

“You’re awfully pretty, Mother!” she said, suddenly. “I love the way you
look.... There’s something--I don’t know how to describe it--something
old-fashioned about you.”

Claudine was not greatly pleased.

“Old-fashioned?” she said, thinking of her new frock, her chic and
becoming coiffure, every dainty detail of her costume.

“Yes. You haven’t the look other women have. You’re so distinguished
and--mysterious. Have you had a very sad life, Mother?”

“Mercy, no, child!” said Claudine. She shrank at once from any invasion
of her reserve; her dignity compelled her to maintain her aloofness, her
air of slightly inhuman tranquillity.

But Andrée was insistent.

“But I do wish you’d tell me one thing!” she said. “Did you really mean
to marry Cousin Lance, and were you parted by something?”

“Where did you get such a ridiculous idea?” asked her mother, frowning.
“No one ever thought of such a thing.”

“Edna said she thought so.... Mother, I wish I knew you better!”

Claudine was startled and touched.

“My dear!” she cried. “But don’t you ...?”

She stopped.

“After all,” she went on. “I think it is better just to love people, and
not to trouble about trying to know or to understand them.”

They had reached a little summer-house built out on a rock over a deep
pool in a rocky basin. It had not at all the sinister aspect of that
other pool; this was sunny, open and dark blue, with wild flowers
growing about it, and ferns. From where they sat, they could see the
line of mountains beyond. Andrée didn’t like mountains; the sombre and
majestic environment exasperated her restless soul. She sighed, but grew
quiet looking at her mother’s rapt face. She was drawing strength and
assuagement from the hills. Poor mother, with her philosophers and her
scenery! A phantom existence, Andrée reflected.

“Hope I don’t disturb you?” said a cheerful voice, and they both turned,
to see with horror the common little man, with a great bundle of Sunday
newspapers under his arm. He had politely taken off his hat and stood
smiling at them.

“They told me down at the house that this was a pretty walk,” he said.
“And it certainly is. Fine air to-day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Claudine, in her most distrait, affable way. “It’s a lovely
day.”

“Would you like to see the papers?” he asked.

“No, thank you. We’re going back at once.... We just stopped for the
view.”

He smiled.

“A tame little view!” he said. “I guess I’ll find something better than
this before I’ve finished.”

“How?” asked Andrée, abruptly.

“I’m going to climb some of these peaks. I’ve done a lot of climbing in
the Alps,” he said. “I’ve got the head for it, and the legs. Why, there
wasn’t one of those millionaire sportsmen who could beat me at it. These
peaks look like hills to me.”

His boasting was somehow ameliorated by his good-humour. And one
couldn’t help believing that he actually had defeated millionaire
sportsmen.

“I suppose you ladies don’t climb?” he asked.

“I haven’t,” said Andrée. “But perhaps I shall some time. It might be
rather fun. I’d never thought of it.”

“We must go,” said Claudine, firmly. “Your father will be wondering what
has become of us. Come, dear!”

She smiled politely at the dreadful little man, and they walked off. At
a turn of the path Andrée, looking back, saw him spreading out his
papers, his straw hat jauntily at the back of his head.

“I’m afraid he’s going to be a nuisance,” said Claudine.

“I guess you can dispose of him!” said Andrée, grimly. “Lord! How I do
hate Sundays!”

Claudine felt obliged to remonstrate, but weakly, because she was quite
in agreement with her child. They sauntered back with reluctant steps,
each lost in her own incommunicable thought.


§ ii

The great mid-day dinner had been disposed of, the chicken, the
ice-cream, and the other decent, traditional things, and the entire
party went out on to the veranda and sat down, constrained, almost
enraged with one another.

“Let’s take a walk, Father!” said Andrée, suddenly.

“Not on your life!” said Gilbert. “_I’m_ not nineteen, old girl!”

He took a bill from his pocket.

“See if you and Edna can’t find some place to buy yourselves a box of
caramels,” he said. “I want a look at the papers.”

“I shouldn’t object to a walk,” said Mr. MacGregor.

“Then I’ll show you a nice, cool, after-dinner one,” said Claudine,
brightly, “while the girls go for their candy. Run up and get me my
sunshade, please, Edna!”

Gilbert looked up with a scowl; but he met so cold and steadfast a
glance from his wife that he looked down again. Better let her alone;
she was capable of the most alarming retaliations. Anyhow, she couldn’t
do any real harm; love was not to be so easily discouraged. He pretended
to be deep in his papers, but he was none the less well aware of his
daughters going off in one direction and his wife and Mr. MacGregor in
another. He was ready to laugh at the woman’s folly.

Claudine had started with the firm intention of approaching and utterly
routing Mr. MacGregor. But, to be brief, she didn’t so much as mention
Andrée’s name. She couldn’t! Instead they chatted affably as they
strolled; Mr. MacGregor gave some information, more sentimental than
scientific, regarding Scotch wild flowers. He was really very nice and
flattering. She hadn’t for years met anyone who took so frank an
interest in her. He was by no means a botanist, but he confessed to a
love of Nature, and he admired her quite extensive knowledge. Moreover,
he too was a reader of her beloved philosophers, and they had an
interesting if somewhat superficial discussion of their theories of
life. Claudine’s idea was that one should try to deny the reality of
suffering; she had a pitiful hope that if she were to train her reason
sufficiently she would in time be able to reason away her unhappiness.
Mr. MacGregor, on the contrary, had a tinge of Calvinism in his
philosophy, he thought it better to hug one’s pain, to rejoice in its
cruel embrace, to be made strong by it.

Then they talked a little of music, Claudine’s old love. But Mr.
MacGregor was so very practical. He looked upon a masterwork as a thing
to be expressed through high technical perfection, he read no meanings,
no sentiment into music, he had none of Claudine’s mystic delight in
sound itself.

They both became mollified. Mr. MacGregor was able to forgive this
charming and interesting woman her obvious interference in his
love-making, and she was willing to admit that as a man he was strong,
sensible, and rather likeable. She couldn’t help contrasting his
ruggedness, his well-furnished mind, his varied interests, with the
bilious and tiresome Gilbert. Here was a companion, who could walk, and
who could talk.

They came leisurely home; Gilbert saw them crossing the sunny lawn, both
of them annoyingly cool in spite of the midsummer weather. He himself
was quite wretched from the heat, and irritated by the newspaper. He got
up and went to meet them.

“Tell you what!” he said. “We’ll see if we can get a motor somewhere in
the place and go for a drive in the cool of the afternoon--about five.
The children will like it.”

It was of course unimaginable either to him or to Claudine that he
should find the conveyance. He was a sort of Sultan; he never did things
of that sort. He gave orders, and he paid. So Claudine found and
despatched a fat youth belonging to Mrs. Dewey and the thing was done.
They then retired to their rooms until five o’clock; Gilbert dozed and
his wife gave her attention to her finger-nails.

“What have the children been doing?” she asked suddenly.

“Don’t know.... Haven’t seen them,” he muttered. “Good Lord! This room
is _hot_! Can’t you find some way to keep the flies out? What good are
the screens?”

Claudine didn’t answer; an alarming thought had entered her mind.
Suppose those provoking girls weren’t back when the car arrived? Gilbert
would be in a terrible rage; and there would certainly be a scene....
Where could they have gone, on this drowsy Sunday afternoon in that
little village so devoid of resources?

Her fears were confirmed; they didn’t come back. Gilbert had got into
the car, Mr. MacGregor was standing near.

“Call the girls!” said Gilbert, impatiently. “I suppose they’re making
themselves sick with their caramels.”

But they were not in the house, not in the grounds. Mr. MacGregor went
down the road to the hotel, and to the drug-store where they must have
gone for their candy, but he did not find them. They wasted half an
hour, and then went off without them.

Gilbert didn’t spare Claudine. He remonstrated all the time, in a manner
which, if he had not been a man, would certainly have been called
nagging. He said it was disgraceful; hadn’t she any control over her
children? Didn’t she take any interest in them? Was she in the habit of
neglecting them in this way? That was the way with women; they hadn’t a
damned thing to do _but_ look after their children, and they didn’t even
do that properly. And so on. Claudine endured it with a set smile; she
scarcely heard him. Mr. MacGregor, however, did hear him; it was not a
pleasant drive for him.


§ iii

They got back a little late for the meal known as Sunday night tea. She
hurried upstairs to wash and brush her hair, and there in their room
were her daughters, both stretched out on the bed.

“Edna!” she cried. “Andrée! Where have you been? Your father had a motor
to take you out ... he was so disappointed. You have no right to worry
and annoy him so.... Where have you been since dinner time?”

Edna raised herself on one elbow.

“Sorry, Mother darling! We went out with that funny little man. We ran
across him as we were coming out of the drug-store and he began to
talk. Said he was going to walk to a place called ‘The Brave’s Leap,’
and asked us if we didn’t want to go along, so we did. It was heavenly!
Miles and miles.... We’re awfully tired, but it’s a nice tiredness.”

“What an outrageous thing to do! I’m surprised at you! The man’s a
perfect stranger--and not a desirable person at all. I can’t tell you
how annoyed I am. And your father’s plans all upset--”

“But we didn’t know about Father’s plans,” said Edna.

“We didn’t miss much,” said Andrée. “I hate those silly drives. As it
was, we got a lot of splendid exercise and a lot of fun.”

“You mustn’t do such things without asking me! I thought you both knew
better than to go off that way with a stranger. It was very wrong and
inconsiderate. Naturally your father expects to see something of you in
the little time he’s here--”

“But, Mother dear,” said Edna, patiently. “We’re not children. We
couldn’t leave Mr. Stephens standing in the street while we ran home to
ask mother. He’s a very nice little beast, and there was really
absolutely no harm in taking a walk with him.”

“I have no control over them!” thought Claudine, bitterly. “Gilbert is
right!”

Aloud she said, in a tone of great displeasure:

“There is no time to argue with you now. It’s late. Please get dressed
at once for supper.”

“We don’t want any supper,” said Andrée. “The nice little beast had all
sorts of things in his knapsack. We’ve been eating all afternoon.”

“And we stopped at a funny little inn somewhere on the road and had
ginger ale and more sandwiches. Mother, I wish you’d been there! It was
the only decent time we’ve had in this place. We saw the most beautiful
waterfall, and a wonderful gorge that an Indian’s supposed to have
jumped across. And the man’s really very nice. Of course he’s common,
and all that sort of thing, but he’s the most cheerful creature!”

“He said he was ‘athaletic,’” said Andrée, “and he is! He showed off all
the time, and it was very amusing.”

But Claudine was not listening; she was thinking with dread of what she
should say to Gilbert.

And in the end she was certainly not candid.

“The girls went for a long walk in the mountains,” she told him. She
didn’t mention the “nice little beast,” and neither did they, whether
from dissimulation or carelessness she didn’t care to investigate.

On an early train the next morning Gilbert and Mr. MacGregor went back
to the city, and she drew a breath of relief. Now she had only two
adversaries to struggle against--and perhaps the common little man as
well.




CHAPTER FIVE

THE BREATH OF LIFE


§ i

“Tired?” asked Mr. Stephens.

“Not a bit,” said Andrée. “Edna and I owe you a vote of thanks for
putting a little life into one of those ghastly Sundays. I loathe
Sundays.”

“You wouldn’t if you’d ever done any work,” said he.

She looked at him in surprise. He was sitting on the rail of the veranda
where she had found him when she came out after her late and solitary
breakfast. He looked well in his white flannels; he wore his great
variety of clothes with a sort of innocent gusto, like so many fancy
dress costumes, and though so obviously not to the manner born, he had
no awkwardness; there was, on the contrary, an engaging and honest
assurance about him, and a remarkable vitality. His features were sharp
and by no means distinguished, but they were good. His blue eyes were
frank and intelligent. He was wiry, well knit, not without vanity in his
strength. The cheerful grin had vanished from his face with his last
words, leaving it quite serious.

“I have done work,” she answered. “You don’t know what hard, tiresome
work practising is.”

“It isn’t work,” he interrupted. “It’s preparation for work. You’ve
never had to go on when you were tired. In fact, you’ve never had to do
it at all. Your conscience has been your master, and I can tell you,
it’s a darn sight easier master than hunger.”

This was extraordinary talk.

“Well, I suppose I’m lucky then,” said Andrée. “I’ve never had to earn
money, and I don’t suppose I ever shall.”

“It’s not lucky to be useless,” he said.

“Useless!” she cried. “Do you think making music is useless?”

“Of course it is. Lots of people get on without music. Fine, high-minded
people, too.”

Andrée smiled scornfully.

“I dare say!” she said. “But there are some people who wouldn’t think
life was worth living without art.”

“No, there aren’t. Not one. If you gave any human being his choice
between a decent happy life without a sign of art, or death, no one but
a maniac would choose death.”

“_I_ should!”

“Then that’s because you don’t know anything about death, or life
either.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and half turned away.

“You’d better not bother to talk to such a fool, then,” she said. “I’ll
admit I can’t talk to people who despise music.”

“I don’t despise it. I’m very fond of it. I play a little myself. In
fact, I think I’ve got quite a talent for it. If I could have studied,
I’d have been a pretty good musician.”

“I don’t doubt it, judging by your performance yesterday morning,” said
Andrée.

She was glad to see his face flush as she walked away. He needed taking
down.

Still, she couldn’t help thinking of him. He was an interesting, if an
impertinent man. Her mother had said nothing further about him, but he
was obviously in the category of impossible persons. Perhaps they had
encouraged him too much....

But the beastly part of it was, that he was always doing such
interesting things, things you couldn’t help wanting to do yourself. He
lived in a sort of world of his own, quite cheerful in his ostracism.
Perhaps he didn’t even notice the scorn and disapproval of the
respectable old ladies, or the contempt of the matrons. He walked about
the corridors with his hat on, he sat on the porch whistling loudly,
late at night, when his betters wanted to sleep. Complaints poured in
upon the placid Mrs. Dewey. And still, in spite of all this, Andrée and
Edna followed his activities with envious eyes. One day a lean, worn
horse was brought round for him from some mysterious source, and he came
out and packed on it a most peculiar burden in a watercloth cover. He
was there a long time, inspecting the girths, readjusting his load,
intensely serious. Then he glanced up and saw the girls in the doorway.

“I’m off for a little camping trip,” he said. “A couple of
days--exploring the hills.”

He mounted nimbly and turned to wave at them, and trotted off, straight
and soldierly, in khaki breeches and a white shirt, and a big sombrero
on his neat head.

The next thing he did when he returned was to order a canoe from the
city and carry it on his back a long way to a suitable little river. He
was away in it for three days and came back with a fine basket of fish
which he asked Mrs. Dewey to cook for the entire house.

And that evening after dinner he frankly approached Claudine.

“They tell me you know a lot about flowers,” he said. “I don’t know
much, but I know enough to spot rare ones. I’ve brought back three or
four specimens I think you’d like to have.”

“Thank you!” said Claudine. “You’re very kind!”

She hadn’t the heart to snub the friendly creature; besides, it was very
nice of him to think of her.

“I’ll be very pleased to see them in the morning,” she said.

“Do you mind smoking?” he asked.

She was startled; did he intend to stay by her side?

“Not at all! And anyhow, I’m going in directly. I have letters to
write.”

She left him sitting on the rail in his characteristic attitude, the
attitude of a small boy, a rather humorous figure. And yet, in a way, a
singularly manly and independent one, quite indifferent to the
disapproval of the rocking old ladies, quite sufficient unto himself.
Solitary, he was not lonely, not forlorn; he no more objected to being
ignored than a cat might have objected. He somehow stood out against the
background of mountains and starry sky with a startling individuality,
like the epitome of valiant humanity defying nature. She thought of him
with great indulgence, in spite of the fact that he had driven her
indoors.


§ ii

Claudine came out the next morning, prepared for the excursion she made
every fine morning while Andrée practised and Edna sat in the room with
her, driven by her sister’s industry to the study of Italian. She had
with her two volumes of philosophers and a note book and fountain pen,
for the studying she did, copying out and commenting upon the passages
that impressed her, getting what comfort and peace of mind she could
from them.

She put up her dark green sunshade and started off across the lawn, very
trim and elegant in starched white; she looked remarkably young, her
calm and serious face hadn’t a line, a wrinkle, her coppery hair was as
bright and heavy as it had ever been, she was straight, her outlines
neat and clear. She had never been supple; there had always been a sort
of woodenness about her small body, but it had a charm all its own; it
gave her a peculiarly “ladylike” air of being not quite human.

She left the grounds and entered upon the highway, inches deep in clean
white dust, and she heard no footsteps behind her, no sound until an
anxious voice said over her shoulder:

“I’ve brought those little plants and things for you to look at. I was
afraid I wouldn’t be there when you got back. I’m leaving at noon for
two or three days and they’d be withered by the time I got back.”

It was the nice little beast, coatless, in riding breeches and puttees.
He proffered a small tin case, and she took it from him with a smile.

“Can’t I carry your books and things to wherever you’re going?” he
asked.

She hesitated a moment, and then said, “Yes, thank you!” and they went
on, side by side, Mr. Stephens gallantly holding the parasol very high
over her head.

He glanced down at the books.

“Marcus Aurelius and Nietzsche!” he said. “That’s a queer combination!”

“Do you know them?” she asked, in surprise.

“Oh, yes! I’ve read about everything you could think of. I used to read
things like this a lot. But not any more. They’re not real enough.”

“Some people have found them very real nourishment for the mind,” she
said lightly. She couldn’t take this person seriously.

“I haven’t any use for mind without body,” he answered. “That’s what I
like about Christianity. It’s so solid and material--”

“But it’s just the spirituality that is so admirable in it!” she
protested.

“Not for me, it isn’t. What appeals to me about it is the human,
natural, unspiritual part. Tells you to _do_ this and that, instead of
thinking this and that. It’s what you do, not what you feel, that counts
there. I’ve never thought Christ cared whether people believed in Him or
not. My idea is that He sort of had an idea that He’d help people by a
few practical ideas on how to make the world a decent place to live in.
If you behave in this way, He says, you can all be more or less happy.
You see,” he went on, “I’m a Socialist.”

“Oh, mercy!” said Claudine, rather shocked.

“Yes, I’m a Socialist. And the way I see it, to be a good Socialist,
you’ve got to be either an atheist or a Christian. If you’re an atheist,
and you think this world is all there’s going to be, then you feel so
d---- doggone sorry for the people who aren’t getting anything out of it,
that you’d do all you possibly could to help them. I used to be an
atheist. I was working in a factory when I was about eighteen, and when
I’d see those kids starting in--boys, children really--and knew they’d
never get even a fair living out of a whole life’s work, I guess I was a
kind of Anarchist too. I thought the best thing they could do was to
grab what they could, to try to wipe out the--hogs that kept all the
good things away from them. But then, one day, I thought I’d read the
New Testament, along with a lot of other stuff I had in hand. And,
Gosh!... it was like a--a lamp being lighted in a dark room. Right away
I felt that it was _right_. That He’d got hold of the right idea of how
to run the world. I’d always hated the idea that we were a lot of
fighting animals, all struggling to get food. Evolution didn’t suit me
altogether. It was too darned unfair to the beginners, you know, the
cave men and those fellows who just opened the way for us. Well, I
thought after I’d read about Christ, this living’s just a job, and
here’s the way to do it. And after it’s done, we’ll get a rest. We need
it. Why, hang it all! Even a baby a year old has had a hard life, trying
to get adjusted.... I don’t believe in all this stuff about a whole lot
of future lives, and keeping on developing. No, sir! This life is
enough; it’s hard enough, and we learn enough. I guess we deserve peace
after this, and I guess we’ll get it. Is this where you always stay?”

“Yes,” said Claudine. “But I wish you’d sit down and talk a little. I
like to hear you.”

“I talk too much,” he said, seriously. “Somehow I’m always so full of
stuff I want to say that I kind of spill over. And--d’ye know--somehow
it seems--valuable--the stuff I want to say. Not particularly because
it’s me, but because it’s--human nature.”

“It’s really very interesting,” said Claudine, blandly.

He laughed.

“Do you know,” he went on, “ten years ago the idea of anyone like you--a
lady--saying she liked to hear me, even agreeing to listen to me--would
have seemed like a pipe dream. I used to think that if I ever got a
chance to talk to your sort, I’d give ’em a piece of my mind. But when I
got to know more about ’em, why, I saw nothing could be done that way.
No, sir; you can’t make people understand by talking. They’ve got to
see--and feel. If _you_ ever saw or felt what life was really like, you
wouldn’t be satisfied to--”

He stopped abruptly.

“I didn’t mean to talk that way to you,” he said. “It’s rude. And you’re
so kind and nice.”

“But I want you to! I want to hear what you think! I shouldn’t be
satisfied to what?”

“Well ... to take everything and give nothing.”

“But do you imagine that I give nothing? I have three children.”

“That’s nothing. I’ll be frank, if you really want.... What I mean is,
you _don’t count_. You don’t try to help. You just try to make life
bearable for yourself. Don’t you see? Even with your children. You don’t
teach them to serve. You just tell them to live decently.”

“Even that is something--in a world like this,” she said, with a little
smile.

He shook his head.

“Not to me! Better to forget your own life--even your own decency--a
little....”

“But--since you have so clear an idea of the scheme of things--what
would you like people like me--myself for instance--to do?”

“I guess it’s too late for you to _do_ much,” he said, gravely. “All you
could do would be to learn to understand.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“You couldn’t. No one understands--really--by intuition. You’ve got to
know, through experience--either inside or outside yourself. And I guess
you--”

“Do go on! I’m not easily offended.”

“Well, I guess you’ve felt, instead of experiencing. It’s altogether
different.”

“I wonder what experience you would countenance?” she asked. “Do you
consider that the mother of three children, a woman who has lost both
her parents, who has lived nearly forty years, is still without
experience?”

He made an extraordinary answer.

“Your soul’s all right,” he said. “It’s your heart that’s undeveloped.”

“Heavens!” she thought. “Is the queer little creature trying to make
love to me?”

But he went on.

“The great thing in the world is compassion.”

Then he stopped short and pulled out of a breeches’ pocket a gold
cigarette case.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” he asked. “I paid what lots of people I know could
live on for months and months for this.”

“But--” she began, bewildered.

“I suppose you’re wondering what a fellow with views like mine is doing
with a toy like that. Well, in the first place, it isn’t a dead loss.
After I’ve used it a few years more, I’ll sell it or pawn it for quite a
lot. It’s solid gold, you know; one of the best I could buy. _Isn’t_ it
a beauty?”

“Yes, it is!” she agreed, terribly touched by his naïve pride. “It is--a
beauty!”

What an extraordinary conversation this was, she and this freckled young
man, sitting facing each other on great sun-warmed rocks in the little
glade which she had for weeks looked upon as her especial domain! She
had certainly never met anything at all like him before, no one so
absurd and so honest and so touching.

“But I was going to tell you why I had this thing,” he continued. “It’s
because I think everyone’s got a right to a few pet follies. Now, some
people think a Socialist can’t consistently have a balance in the bank.
Well, my idea is this.... I’ve been able to grab for myself my share in
the good things in the world. And that’s what I want to see every other
fellow do. Not grab, if you could get it any other way, but generally
you can’t. I want everyone to get a share. And a chance. I’ve got mine,
and I’m going to help other people to get theirs.”

“But how did you get yours?” she asked, with an irresistible curiosity.
She knew that he wouldn’t resent any sort of question.

“Fought for it. Fought for it like a devil. You see, I’d made a little
invention--an improvement for a certain type of printing press. I’ll
explain it all some other time. Well, of course, the fellows on top
wanted to take it.... I won’t go into that either just now. But, anyway,
I knew. I knew the profit it would make, and I made up my mind that a
good part of that profit was coming my way. So I grabbed my share. It’s
what everyone ought to have; a decent share in the profit of his work.
It was a good kind of grabbing.... And now I’m able to do what I’d like
to see every other fellow in the world able to do--work hard, at some
kind of useful, manual work until he’s thirty, and then play for three
or four years, before he settles down to work his brain. Brains aren’t
much good until they’ve had those two things--manual work and play.”

“What is your brain going to do?”

“Write. I’ve got it in me.... But I’ve got off the track. I was showing
you that cigarette case because I wanted to ask you if you could imagine
what it was like to be an outcast, to have money enough to buy things
like that, and to see how they’re begrudged to you. Every time I used to
go in to buy things I’d earned enough money to buy, I was made to feel
that. My money was good enough, but I wasn’t. If you could have seen the
swell English tailor I bought my clothes from! He hated me for being
able to get them. Because I’m ‘common.’ Well, as a matter of fact, I’m
really very uncommon--darned uncommon.... The point I’m making is, that
all the fine, good things in the world are put aside for a few people.
Everybody knows it. All the shop people know it. They don’t want
outsiders to get any of their choice things. They’re like
watch-dogs--fool watch-dogs, starving to death while they watch other
people’s meat.... When I was younger and doing more reading and
thinking, I used to think the best way to bring about the changes I
hoped to see was for the people on top to be awakened. They’ve got the
money, the leisure, the power, the education, I thought.... But I
learned pretty soon it would never come that way. They haven’t got
either brains or compassion enough. They’ve used all their privileges to
corrupt, not to enlighten. And not through wickedness or diplomacy, mind
you, but from stupidity.”

He pulled out his watch.

“Oh!” he said. “I’ve got to go! Are you all right?”

“Perfectly, thank you!” she answered, smiling. “Only a little confused
by all you’ve been telling me.”

It was not his words, however, that remained in her memory after he had
gone. They meant little to her. It was the curious vitality and force of
the man, his candour, his innocence, his baffling air of certainty. She
thought of his activities, his ideas, his tireless flow of talk, and the
woods, usually so full of interest and charm for her, were suddenly
blank. The mystery and wonder she had seen in the smallest plant were
suddenly nothing at all in comparison to the wonder of a human being.

She became uneasily doubtful of her philosophic attitude toward her
fellows, her great desire to escape them.

“He’s ...” she thought, with half a smile. “He’s a breath of life in all
this stagnation.... A breath of life!”




CHAPTER SIX

THE UNLAWFUL PICNIC


§ i

After lunch they all, Claudine, Andrée, and Edna, dressed themselves in
their ceremonial garments, the modish and immaculate white required by
the gold-providing Gilbert, and went down to the railway station to meet
him. There were other wives there, and other children, and a little
swarm of bucolic onlookers. And there was also the “breath of life” in
tramping outfit, with immense waterproof boots and a new Panama hat. He
came over to them immediately.

“I’m taking the next train up,” he said, with his invariable assumption
that everyone was interested in his doings. “They say there’s an old
fellow away up in the mountains who’s a regular wild man. An Italian; he
used to lead round one of those dancing bears, but it got away one night
and he went into the woods after it, and never wanted to come back. Two
or three people have told me about him. His hair’s got long, and he has
a beard down to his waist. They say he won’t speak, but I guess I can
make him. He runs away and tries to hide.”

“That sounds more like the bear,” said Edna. “Perhaps he ate the man and
they’re both merged into one.”

He laughed.

“Well, I’m ready for bears, too,” he said. “I’ve got the best kind of
rifle made, and I know how to use it.”

“Everything you have is the best there is, isn’t it?” said Andrée
scornfully.

He reddened, but he answered cheerfully:

“You bet! And I’m proud of ’em, too. I earned ’em. They weren’t given to
me by anyone else.”

Andrée turned away.

“Let’s walk up and down, Mother!” she said. “It’s so much hotter
standing still.”

Claudine very willingly assented; the last thing in the world she wanted
was for Gilbert to find them talking to that young man. He would be
angry, and not without cause, for this was certainly not the sort of
acquaintance for the mother of two young daughters to cultivate. Edna
might talk to him with impunity, her sensible ideas and her humour
legitimatized almost anything. She put her arm through Andrée’s and they
began to saunter up and down, keeping a discreet distance from Mr.
Stephens.

“He needs to be sat on!” said Andrée, with a frown.

“I don’t believe you can do it!” said her mother, smiling.

“He is a thick-skinned little beast. He’s insufferable!”

“I don’t think so. He’s polite enough, if he’s treated politely.”

“But I’m not going to treat him politely.... There’s the train!”

They halted and stood watching, while the engine roared past them and
stopped neatly at the proper spot, and the handful of passengers
alighted.

“O Lord!” groaned Andrée. “Again!”

For she had seen the gaunt, ungainly form of Mr. MacGregor coming down
the steps, bag in hand. He lifted his hat and came toward them.

“I am charged with a very unwelcome message, I’m afraid,” he said. “Mr.
Vincelle is unable to get away this week, and he asked me to come down,
and see if I could be of any service to the ladies!”

Oh, cowardly Gilbert! Claudine could have laughed at his infantile ruse.
She welcomed Mr. MacGregor with cordiality and beckoned to Edna, who
came, but who naughtily brought the little man with her.

“Look here, Mrs. Vincelle!” he said, eagerly. “I’ve been talking to Miss
Edna.... As long as your husband didn’t come out, you’re all more or
less free, aren’t you? No plans made, I mean? Well, won’t you all be my
guests on a little picnic?”

“I’m very sorry--” Claudine began, but he was not to be stopped.

“Why not?” he said. “It’s a hot afternoon, and I’ll show you a fine,
cool spot. I’ll arrange everything. I’ll see to the supper, and
everything else. All you have to do is just get your bathing suits--”

“Bathing!” said Edna. “I didn’t know there was any in this place!”

“There’s a wonderful swimming pool. And I can lend _you_ a bathing
suit,” he said, looking directly at Mr. MacGregor, to whom he had not
been, and never was to be, introduced.

“I’m afraid we’re not the same size,” said Mr. MacGregor.

“Doesn’t matter. You can get into it. We can start about four and come
home by moonlight.”

The girls were both frankly pleased with the idea; Claudine confessed to
herself that it was an attractive prospect. But impossible! They
couldn’t be the guests of this man, they couldn’t really, openly, admit
that he existed. She looked covertly at Mr. MacGregor, hoping for
support, for some grown-up, tactful remark that should help her to get
away. But he had taken it for granted that Mr. Stephens was a friend of
the family, and he wanted to go on that picnic.

“Some other time--” Claudine began, with her most condescending
affability, but Edna broke in, with a wail.

“Oh, Mother, I’m so longing for a swim! Do let’s go!”

“It’ll be very nice, I promise you!” said Mr. Stephens, solemnly. “I’ll
take all the responsibility for seeing that you all enjoy yourselves.”

“After all, Mother, why not?” murmured Andrée, in her ear. “I’d like to
eat somewhere except in that disgusting dining-room for once. And a
moonlight walk!”

“I’m afraid Mr. MacGregor wants to rest after his journey,” said
Claudine, and her tone was threatening. But Mr. MacGregor did not
understand; he thought that he was expected not to want to rest, and he
insisted that he longed for this picnic.

Claudine was miserably conscious of her lack of character; at her age
she had no business to allow herself to be entrapped into so undignified
a position. She knew she should have prevented this thing, that even now
she ought to destroy the project, but she was quite unable to do so. She
was committed....


§ ii

It was an imposing safari, observed by the people on the veranda with
excessive interest. First went Claudine under a parasol held by Mr.
MacGregor, then the two girls, arm in arm, and behind them, alone and
unheeded, the young host, carrying a number of things, and behind him
Mrs. Dewey’s fat youth, and a young man never accounted for, both
heavily laden. Like a general the little man called out his orders.

“To your right now!” And Claudine and Mr. MacGregor would lead the march
in that direction. Once they had to make a détour to avoid a field of
cows, through which Andrée refused to pass.

“Now!” he said. “Just down this hill, and you’ll see the place. It’s
beautiful! Fern Glen, I’ve named it. It’s a regular, natural swimming
pool--water cold and clear as can be. And quiet! Lots of nice little
birds, too, Mrs. Vincelle, just what you like.”

But instead of the exclamation of admiration he had expected, he heard a
tragic cry from Andrée.

“Why, it’s nothing in the world but our horrible old snakey pool!”

“I didn’t realize we were getting here,” said Edna. “We’ve always come
up the stream.”

“But what have you got against it?” asked the young man, horribly
chagrined. “It’s a beautiful spot, and it’s _not_ snakey.”

“It is!” said Andrée. “We’ve seen snakes swimming in your beautiful
natural swimming pool.”

“They weren’t poisonous snakes, then,” he assured her. “And they’ll keep
out of your way.”

“I won’t give them the trouble,” said Andrée.

“We’ll look after you, Miss Edna and I,” said Mr. MacGregor. He always
made a point of pretending that he and Edna were the firmest of allies,
perhaps because she was the only member of the family he didn’t at all
fear.

“I believe I’ll risk it!” said Edna. “It looks so lovely and cool and
I’m so terribly hot.”

The fat youth and the young man had gone away again, and Mr. MacGregor
and the host withdrew, to return very promptly in their bathing suits.
Claudine was filled with quiet amusement at them; each was so evidently
satisfied with his superiority over the other. Mr. MacGregor had an air
of saying “I don’t believe you realized what a fine, big man I am! This
poor chap’s tights are too short for me, and my chest almost bursts his
poor little jersey. I may be an artist, but what a manly one!” And young
Stephens, straighter than ever, couldn’t keep a grin from his freckled
face; he was itching with a desire to show off. He was, moreover, very
proud of the arrangements he had provided for the ladies; a little tent
to serve as their dressing-room, with a mirror fastened to one of its
sides.

It was characteristic that Andrée should be the most daring and reckless
of them all. Claudine could not swim; she waded waist deep into the pool
and stood there throwing water over her shoulders, like a little statue
in a fountain, Edna thought, full of a precise and formal grace, not one
burnished hair out of place. Mr. MacGregor swam powerfully all about the
pool once or twice, to show his strength, and Edna followed him, and
though she didn’t go nearly so fast, she wasn’t nearly so tired. He felt
a little pang of envy for her youth that tinged his admiration for her
with an almost unkindly feeling. Seen in a bathing suit, she was more
robust than one would have imagined; she was small, like her mother, but
it was not at all a fairylike smallness. She had a beautiful, a perfect
figure, well-developed, supple, and sturdy; her skin was as white as a
Dryad’s in that tree-shadowed place, and her blond hair was like
sunshine, although her dimpled face had no sort of resemblance to any
wild wood creature. Never would she pine or die for love! She was a
young woman, not a sprite, and she had all of woman’s marvelous
resources against suffering. Compared with her, Andrée was an immature
and _farouche_ school-girl.

And yet it was she they all looked at. She was a fleet swimmer, but with
little endurance. She had a well-known trick of swimming out too far and
becoming panic-stricken and needing help to get back to the shore. She
had a positive talent for alarming and distressing the others, for being
perpetually the centre of attention. It was not that she consciously
tried to “show off,” like Stephens; what she did, she did to satisfy
some requirement of her own nature. She insisted upon swimming too near
the waterfall; she _would_ dive, heedless of remonstrance. She was
wayward, taciturn, defiant. She was the only one of the women to get her
hair wet, the only one who emerged dank, shivering and dishevelled. And
when they sat down on the pebbly shore for supper, she alone was untidy,
she alone out of spirits. Her damp hair hung about her shoulders, her
lips were bluish; she had only the curtest answers, and was obviously
disinclined to speak at all.

“I’m afraid you stayed in the water too long,” said Claudine, with a
shade of anxiety.

“No,” whispered Edna to her mother. “It’s not that. She was simply
terrified every minute! That snake, you know! And yet, of course, she
would hover about the very spot where we saw it.... Don’t speak to her,
Mother darling! She’ll be all right in a few minutes.”

The supper was undeniably a triumph for Mr. Stephens. He had done
wonders. Carefully concealed, he had caused to be brought a freezer of
ice cream, great vacuum bottles of iced tea, and rum to flavour it for
those who liked it. His bearers had lighted a fire before leaving, and
in it were roasted potatoes and corn. There were also cold chicken and a
fine boiled ham and a great number of other delicacies. The guests were
hungry and complimentary.

Afterward he brought out that gold cigarette case and passed it about.

“Do you mind if I have one, Mother?” asked Andrée.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Claudine, coldly. There was nothing she
disliked more.

But Mr. MacGregor intervened.

“As long as Miss Andrée isn’t a singer,” he said, “won’t you be
indulgent, Mrs. Vincelle? I believe they’re very good for the nerves. In
my younger days, of course, such a thing would have been out of the
question. But live and learn! My own sister--”

“Mercy, what a killing look!” murmured Edna to her sister. “He wants to
show you how up-to-date and young he is!”

“Very well!” said Claudine, graciously. But it was not Mr. MacGregor’s
plea which had persuaded her; it was the peculiar look on her child’s
face. It would be unwise to cross her, she thought.

And Andrée smoked, leaning back against a tree, looking an abandoned,
reckless young creature, surrounded by a subtle and dangerous atmosphere
of adoration.

The moon came up ... what further enchantment did she need than that
light on her pale, dark face, than all that sweetness and mystery of the
midsummer night about her?

The bearers came back and took away their burdens, and a little later
the picnickers followed. Claudine walked a little in advance with Mr.
MacGregor, and whenever, with a strange uneasiness, she turned to look
behind her, she certainly saw two little points of light from two
cigarettes among the shadows.

She condemned Mr. Stephens to Limbo.


§ iii

Naturally when Gilbert came out the next week-end he wished to know all
about this picnic, and he wished to know also, although he dared not
ask, why his candidate, Mr. MacGregor, had appeared so obviously
discouraged. They had become great friends; they dined and went to the
theatre together, and maintained a delightful bachelor intimacy, coming
and going as they pleased. He had listened to MacGregor’s praise of
Claudine with a sore heart. She kept her charm, her affability, well
hidden from her husband! There she sat beside him, on the veranda, her
book politely closed on her lap, just wifely, no more.

“Who was the fellow who gave the picnic?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of
him. You haven’t mentioned his name in your letters.”

“You’ll see him in the dining-room this evening,” said Claudine. “He’s
not--not quite our own sort, you know, Gilbert, but he’s very nice and
pleasant.”

“Well, I’m no snob!” said Gilbert. He was in a wonderfully pleasant
mood, his wife noticed, and if she had felt the least assurance of its
keeping on, she would have unbent a little. But so many, many times had
she hurried to meet him half way, only to see him retreat.... His
thoughts would have astounded her.

“Why in God’s name can’t the woman be simple and friendly with me--and
not so damned suspicious!” he said to himself. “She’s always watching me
out of the corners of her eyes.... If we’re not--in love, there’s no
reason why we shouldn’t be friends.”

He was really anxious to be friendly that day, poor devil, who had never
had a friend in his life, or ever been one!

“No, I’m not a snob,” he went on. “That’s a feminine failing. But I
don’t like my family making bosom friends of people I don’t know.”

“He’s certainly not a bosom friend,” said Claudine, “and as for your
not knowing him, how could that be helped, when you weren’t here?”

“Very well! Very well!” he said, impatiently. “We won’t argue. Introduce
the fellow to me, and I’ll soon see what sort he is.”

No one could imagine Claudine’s dread and misery. She knew very well
what Gilbert would think of Mr. Stephens.

His solitary little table was near a window, and a vagrant breeze that
ruffled his light hair gave him a boyish and untidy look. He had a book
propped up before him and he was eating absent-mindedly. She pointed him
out with a smile which was the equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders,
throwing the poor young fellow to the wolves.

“There he is, Gilbert!” she said.

Gilbert stared incredulously at the cheerful young man, with sleeves
rolled up on his sunburnt arms, coatless, innocently absorbed in his
book.

“What!” he said. “That fellow!”

“I told you he wasn’t quite--”

“And that’s the sort of man you encourage--and have hanging around your
daughters, while you raise cain about a gentleman like MacGregor!”

He stared again.

“You introduce him to me,” he said, “and I’ll soon settle his hash!”

“Don’t be rude to him, Gilbert! Remember we’ve accepted his
hospitality.... You’ll put me in a very undignified position.”

“You’ve done that for yourself,” he said.

With what reluctance did she approach the unsuspecting young man, and
present him to Gilbert! He got up with alacrity and held out his hand,
but Gilbert ignored it. He glanced round, and saw that Claudine had
gone, and that he might therefore be rude without fear of interruption.
He was terribly upset; he had a dim suspicion that Claudine had set up
this man in opposition to his Mr. MacGregor, that it was altogether some
beastly feminine plot.

“I want to thank you for your hospitality to my family,” he said,
slowly. “However--”

“However?” repeated Mr. Stephens, encouragingly, but Gilbert found it
very difficult to go on. He stood with his hands behind his back, the
very image of respectability and decent prosperity, lowering at “that
grasshopper,” as he mentally named the other.

“However,” said Mr. Stephens. “It mustn’t happen again. Is that it?” He
was, it must be confessed, rather unduly sensitive to the social
disapproval of capitalists.

“Yes!” said Gilbert. “I’m very particular--in regard to the
acquaintances--about the people--about people I know nothing
about--where my family is concerned.”

“Well,” said Stephens, “you can investigate, if you like. You can find
out all about me. You can write to--”

“No! It won’t do!... No, I’ll have to ask you to--to discontinue the
intimacy.”

“There isn’t any intimacy.”

“There’s not to be any intercourse whatever.”

“I don’t see how you can stop it,” said Stephens.

“I forbid it!” said Gilbert, with a scowl.

“You can’t forbid me, you know. As for your ‘family,’ I don’t know
whether you can forbid them or not. That’s their business. If they
consider it the best policy to knuckle down, why, I shan’t think any the
worse of them. It’s the way of the world to dance when the fellow with
the money fiddles. You--”

“Look here, you damned, impudent, vulgar jackanapes--”

“Don’t begin calling names, or I might call you a damn’ vulgar bully.
But I won’t. I don’t lose my temper so easily. Fellows like me know that
when they do lose their tempers, they’ve got to back it up with their
fists. Something your sort never do, do you? You yell and curse, and
that’s the end of it.”

They were disturbed by the distressful voice of Mrs. Dewey, outraged by
these loud voices, but respectful before two such profitable persons.

“Gentlemen!” she said. “Please ...!”

Gilbert turned on his heel and strode out of the room. He went, of
course, to his wife.

“I’ve been having a talk with that gentlemanly friend of yours,” he
said, with a desperate effort to steady his voice. “And I want to tell
you, once and for all, I’ll have--I’ll have ... I’ll have.... Understand
me, both of you--and I want you to tell Andrée, too--you’re not to speak
to the fellow again. Under any circumstances.”

“I’ll have to answer him if he speaks to me,” said Edna.

Both her parents were astonished.

“No, you don’t!” said her father. “I won’t have it!”

“I can’t be rude to him,” said Edna, in her most tranquil, sensible
voice.

“I tell you!” shouted Gilbert. “I won’t have it!”

Edna said nothing, but the expression of her face was not obedient.
Gilbert didn’t know how to proceed; he hesitated a moment, then he
turned away.

“Claudine,” he said, from the doorway, “this is your business! You
brought them up, and now you can handle them. You see to it that
my--wishes are carried out. Understand, I’ll have no nonsense!”

“Oh, my dear child!” said Claudine, when the door had banged after him.
“I wish you had more--tact! Surely Mr. Stephens isn’t worth a quarrel
with your own father!”

“I don’t know, Mother. I think he’s rather wonderful. I wouldn’t be rude
to him for anything. You know Andrée and I have seen a lot of him this
week. We’ve been rowing with him, and walking, and he’s been as nice as
could be. You can’t imagine!... He’s so different from anyone else we’ve
ever known. And even if he is common, he’s not the least
bit--objectionable. Why, Mother, you can see how trustworthy and honest
he is! It’s written all over him!”

“I know, my dear. But your father--”

“Father’s not infallible. He makes mistakes. He’s not a good judge of
people at all. And I’m not going to be rude to the poor man. And I’m
_sure_ Andrée won’t, either. She loves to hear him talk. She says he
makes her ambitious.”

Claudine was in despair. How did other mothers manage to impress their
children? Was the trouble because she was singularly ineffectual or
because her children were singularly rebellious? It didn’t occur to her
that it might be because she was wrong. She decided to try another
tack.

“Edna!” she cried, fervently. “For my sake, dear, avoid any trouble with
your father! You can’t think how it distresses me!”

“Mother!” said Edna, firmly. “That’s not fair! That’s just as bad as
Father’s way. It isn’t fair to try to make me do what I don’t think is
right.”

But she melted at the sight of her mother’s face.

“Very well, darling!” she said. “I hate to do it, but if it’ll make you
any happier, I’ll be tactful. Father won’t know a thing about it. I’ll
give Mr. Stephens a little hint. He’s never offended. I’ll only talk to
him when Father isn’t here.”

And Claudine must be satisfied with this.




CHAPTER SEVEN

STEPHENS EXPLAINS HIMSELF


It was perhaps a mistake not to have told all this to Andrée. She had
been almost all the afternoon in the woodshed with two baby kittens she
adored, quite happy there in the dim light and the quiet, and determined
to avoid the possibility of a motor ride with her father. When she came
in to dress for supper, everyone was calm again, and Mr. Stephens’ name
wasn’t mentioned. After supper Gilbert had to return to the city, and
his wife and Edna went with him to the station, but Andrée said she had
a headache, and remained behind. She sat in a corner of the veranda,
still in the same vague and happy mood in which she had passed the
afternoon, glad to be alone.

Presently she saw a familiar figure in the lighted doorway, and she
called out, cheerfully--

“Hello, Mr. Stephens!”

“Hello!” he answered, but to her amazement, instead of coming to her, he
went on toward the steps.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “To the drugstore? I’ll come with
you.”

“No,” he answered. “No ... I was going for a walk.”

“Wait a minute!” she said, and jumping up, went over to him.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You’re--queer! Why don’t you sit down
and talk to me?”

He glanced uneasily at the row of dark figures rocking behind them.

“Well ... under the circumstances ...” he murmured.

“What circumstances?”

“You know what your father said--”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t care, either. Tell me!”

“Not here.”

“Then let’s walk!”

They strolled over the lawn, beyond earshot of the veranda.

“Well,” said he. “We had--words. He told me not to speak to any of you
again. I said, of course, I’d speak to you as long as you cared to speak
to me.... But--”

“How beastly!” cried Andrée. “How horrible! But please don’t pay any
attention to it. Edna and I never do.”

“At first I thought I wouldn’t. They’re free agents, I thought; it’s up
to them to say whether they want to drop me or not. I’ve never had much
respect for parental authority, in regard to adults. But when I’d
thought it over--I saw it wouldn’t do. It’s not fair to you. You’re not
free agents. It puts you in a rotten position.”

“So you’re not going to speak to us?”

“No, not that.... I’m going away to-morrow morning.”

“No! No! Don’t! I couldn’t bear to think you were driven away like that!
Please don’t go!”

“I must. I’ve told Mrs. Dewey already. I--the whole thing has made
me--sick. I’ve got to go!”

Andrée stopped short.

“Very well!” she said. “If that’s all you care....”

“It has nothing to do with--caring.”

“If you valued our friendship--as I do--”

“You don’t!” he cried. “You don’t! You can’t! You don’t know me.... I’m
just a sort of--of freak--to amuse you on your holiday.”

“Look here!” said Andrée, sternly. “What makes you think that? You’re
the last person in the world I’d have expected to be--silly and
sensitive and imagining things like that. Can’t you see that Edna and I
like you?”

“I thought you did.... But to tell you the truth, I never know, with
people like you, how much is real, and how much is politeness. I’m not
polite; I’m not used to politeness.”

“No one else ever thought that Edna and I were very polite,” she
observed, laughing.

“But I can’t make you out!” he cried. “I never realized what a
difference there was.... You’re a mystery to me.”

“Don’t think like that,” said Andrée, rather sharply. “What I admired so
much about you was your way of looking at everyone as simply _human_.”

They had turned down the road in the direction of the big hotel; in the
dusk he could see her face, and never had anything seemed to him less
simply human. She looked to him so wonderful, so strange, so troubling;
all his ideas about the frank and sensible companionship that ought to
exist between man and woman were dissolving in her spell. Never had he
felt less companionable--or less human. He was exalted and very unhappy.
Humility was not one of his virtues; he had an honest consciousness of
his own worth, and he did not feel humble now, but he was frightened. He
knew very well that he was in love with her, and in a silly,
unreasonable way, too. He saw no justification for adoring a woman, but
he adored this one.

“Well ...” he said. “Why do you like me, anyway?”

“Because you’re _real_,” answered Andrée, promptly. “And honest. And
specially because you haven’t any limits.”

“Oh--outside the pale!” he cried, very much hurt.

Andrée was surprised.

“Why do you always think things like that?” she asked. “You seem to
think that matters so much--that--that artificial difference. It doesn’t
to me.”

“It has to. I know I’m touchy. I’m ashamed of it, but I can’t help it.
I’m always looking for slights, and I generally find them.... But what
did you mean then by my not having any limits?”

“I meant a sort of feeling--that I could tell you anything. You might
not always understand, but you’d try. You’d listen. I couldn’t imagine
you ever saying ‘This is _too_ much!’ like Father. You haven’t put up
any boundaries.”

“I see,” he said, gravely. “Well ... it’s true, to some extent. I don’t
pretend to understand everyone, but I can say I’ve never seen a soul yet
that was really--well, altogether strange to me. There’s always
something in common.... Now, with women, you know. Lots of these
fellows--writers and all--they like to call woman a mystery. I know I
said you were, but now I’m speaking in a general sense. My idea is--”

He stopped and looked a little anxiously at Andrée, and was reassured by
her quiet attention. He had long ago grasped that strange quality of
comprehension in her; she was not particularly clever or original, but
she could grasp everything. She didn’t know; she saw. It was like a
seeress gazing into a crystal; she might not comprehend the significance
of what was presented, but she _saw_, so clearly and justly. Experience
in talking to feminine comrades had taught him how dangerously inclined
they were to make personal applications; this girl would never do that.
He went on, a little more easily.

“I don’t see anything mysterious in women,” he said. “I haven’t any use
for what you call ‘chivalry.’ I’d defend a woman--any woman, anywhere,
but it wouldn’t be because I--well--felt any reverence; it would be
because she was weaker. I wouldn’t try to make life easy for women--or
for anyone.... Only a fair show. I’m a man; I expect to take a man’s
part in the world. And I look to women to take their own part, and do
their own work, and shoulder their own burdens.... Here’s the
drug-store; shall we have a soda?”

Andrée assented and they went into the shop, which was filled with
couples engaged in the same pursuit. He found a stool for Andrée, but
there was none for himself; and he stood beside her, seriously consuming
an elaborate thing of nuts, marshmallow, syrup and ice-cream. He was
conscious all the time that he was enjoying a luxury; this thing was to
him no frappé, but a symbol, a part of his share of the benefits of
civilization. He would have liked to arrange for every one of the
workers of the world to have a due allowance of such confections. His
thoughts at that moment were very far from Andrée; he was, in fact,
concerned with the memory of a hokey-pokey vendor on the lower East
Side, surrounded by dirty children pitifully eager for his poisonous
wares. He might have been disappointed to know how personally Andrée had
applied his words--and then, he might not have been.

His words--“I’m a man, and I expect to take a man’s part in the world,”
had given her a curious thrill.

“He is a man!” she thought. “More so than anyone I’ve ever met.” She
glanced back over her shoulder at him, but his blue eyes were fixed upon
the bourgeoisie consuming their unearned luxuries. She thought that
among all the men there he stood forth notably as soldier, sturdier,
oddly impressive in his utter honesty. And not bad-looking. His short
blond hair showed a neat, well shaped head, the mouth beneath his absurd
little mustache was a well cut one, resolute and very kindly; he carried
himself splendidly.

“Well!” he said, at last. “Let’s be getting on!”

Andrée got up, still thoughtful. He turned in the direction of Pine
Villa, but she protested.

“I don’t want to go back now!”

“Better,” he said cheerfully. “Your mother’ll be worried.”

This did not please Andrée, for she felt that any such dutiful ideas
should have come from herself. She was about to say something a little
disagreeable, when they caught sight of Claudine coming down the road,
always an unmistakable figure by her gait and her bearing. The young man
was disconcerted; he had no way of knowing how she had regarded her
husband’s hostility, and he was very much in dread of her politeness. It
was too dark to see her face; he had to wait for her voice, and to his
great relief, it came to him tranquil and friendly. She didn’t say
anything remarkable, only “Good evening,” but it implied for him all
sorts of astounding and exquisite things. She didn’t mind his taking a
walk with the matchless Andrée....

“I hope you’re not converting Andrée,” she said, in just the light and
agreeable tone she would have used toward any of the bourgeoisie. “I
shouldn’t like her to be a Revolutionary.”

“I’m not, myself,” he answered, seriously. “Did you ever read
Dostoievsky, Mrs. Vincelle?”

“Yes,” she answered, secretly amused at his fatal responsiveness.

“Well, I think that fellow’s idea is the best philosophy I’ve ever come
across. I believe to some extent in Conscious Evolution, but not so much
through the development of a new type of humanity as through the
development of compassion. You know. The kingdom of Heaven on earth. I
think it’s compassion rather than intelligence that can save the world.
If you can learn to pity, you learn to help.”

“Presupposing a little energy,” said Claudine. He was very much aware of
her resistance; she did not wish to argue; she had a dread of being
serious; she was never, never, to be convinced. Her mind and her
opinions were unalterably formed; she was willing enough to listen, to
think, but she accepted nothing. It was altogether different from
talking to Andrée.

“I think it’s quite possible to be compassionate and selfish at the same
time,” she went on.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong in selfishness. It’s vital. It’s a force,
not a vice. As long as you want the right things.... Specially for
women. An unselfish man might be a hero, but an unselfish woman couldn’t
be anything but a victim.... Like a child.... Imagine an unselfish
child. Of course it couldn’t survive. What you’ve got to do is to learn
to feel for other people so much that it hurts your selfishness--so that
you can’t be comfortable unless the rest are too.”

Claudine found his earnestness a little wearying; she wondered how the
impatient Andrée could endure much of him. He was admirable, and he was
very touching, and not for any Gilbert on earth would she offend him,
but she wished very much that he might be somewhat less obviously there.
He had had his cue to vanish; he could have put such a nice, friendly
end to the acquaintance, and been entirely in the right, but
instead--there he was. She had no objection to Andrée’s talking to him,
but she felt that future walks were to be discouraged.

They crossed the lawn, black and spongy under the pines, and as a matter
of course, she began to mount the steps of the veranda. But Andrée
lingered.

“Come, my dear,” said Claudine. “Edna’s waiting for you.”

“Half a minute,” said Andrée, and her mother entered the house without
her. Andrée leaned against the veranda, her head thrown back, looking up
at the sky; Stephens stood before her, and characteristically, he was
looking down at the earth, very thoughtful. There was a long silence,
which neither of them noticed.

“Good night,” said Andrée, suddenly, and he was startled to see her
holding out her hand. He took it, rather reluctantly, and she gave his a
firm, strong pressure, and didn’t let go. But he drew away almost
roughly.

“Good night,” he said, and walked away.

No other man she had yet seen would have done that; she was accustomed
to having her imperious impulses treated with at least a semblance of
rapture; she went in, more thoughtful than ever.

The truth of it was, that for young Stephens there were no trifles;
everything was significant. He was a man of strong passions and dearly
bought wisdom; he knew no middle course between being indifferent or
quite otherwise. He had been brought up in a class where a friendship
between a man and a woman was unthinkable; or any sort of careless or
meaningless intercourse. If you weren’t in love with a girl, or on the
point of falling in love, you never thought of her. He had developed and
he had learnt much; he had a remarkable command over himself; he would
have been able to go on like this for ever and ever, simply talking and
talking to Andrée, and being quite impersonal, but not if she were going
to hold his hand. He really resented that. Old ideas which he fancied he
had outgrown came back to him now, with force; a venomous distrust for
women of Andrée’s sort. As a boy, when he had seen them in the streets,
exquisitely dressed, in their carriages, it had given him comfort to
believe them all wanton and worthless chaff. Later, when he had begun
to read novels, all this had been confirmed; he had made more than one
fiery and bitter speech to his comrades on that subject; on these
pampered women with their jewels, their furs, their inordinate luxuries.
He was honest enough even then to admit the existence of a leaven of
desire in his sullen resentment.

“It’s the dream of most fellows like me,” he had thought, “to possess a
superior woman. And there’s no chance of it. No matter what we do, or
become, the finest and best of them are always out of reach.”

His candid opinion of the Vincelles would have shocked them one and all.
He had studied the social conditions of his country with thoroughness,
and he knew they weren’t the best, or even the second best. They
belonged in a place he could never get to, but there were places above
to which they could never attain; he was far better aware of this than
they were. He knew that Andrée was half-educated and half-trained, that
she was not useful and not, socially speaking, ornamental. And he had
been able thus dispassionately to judge her because she had seemed so
entirely impossible to him. He knew he loved her, but he had had no
hope, and, obliged to withstand her allurement, he had been able to
analyze it. The intractable and wayward spirit of her was what he loved;
her elusiveness. Always and forever she would do what she wanted; every
breath would sway her, but not the mightiest wind from heaven would
dismay or turn her from her desire. There was no constancy, no
steadfastness in her, but she was honest. She was very largely made up
of faults, and they were faults he loved; wilfulness, recklessness, a
sort of casual and unconscious cruelty, a marvelous selfishness,
innocent, unambitious, like that of a child. She would not strive, never
fight for what she wanted, she would stretch out careless hands for what
passing things took her fancy.

Just at the moment, he took her fancy. Well, he wasn’t going to have it
that way. He was going away, to forget her, before there was any more to
forget. He wanted not to see that dark, mutinous face again, or to hear
that nervous and exquisite voice, that seemed always to have a sob in
it. Because he _was_ constant and steadfast, and he had no wish to give
so very much and to get nothing in return.




CHAPTER EIGHT

THE THING IS ON THEM


§ i

There was a very great deal that young Stephens didn’t know about
himself, some of it that was obvious to other eyes. He did not go away
the next morning; Edna met him after breakfast and entreated him not to
do so.

“We’re so dull and miserable here,” she said. “And you’re the only hope.
Do you know what Mother calls you? The Breath of Life! Now after that
you can’t go, can you?”

He smiled, a little inattentively. There she stood, so pretty and
serene, one of those women who considered it their right to make
outrageous demands upon men.... He saw suddenly how difficult it must be
to withstand their demands. He did not want to refuse Edna; he liked her
very much, because she was frank and friendly; he didn’t suspect that
her frankness held a hundred times more reserve than Andrée’s silences,
that she, so smiling and affable, was infinitely more aloof, more
mysterious, more unknowable, than her dark sister.

“The Breath of Life!” he said. “Why?”

“Because we’re all very nearly dead, and you’re so much alive,” she
said, tranquilly. “Can’t we have one more nice day together?”

“I don’t see ...” he said, doubtfully. “After--well--your father, you
know....”

He had no clear conception of Gilbert’s position; he had certainly seen
many husbands and fathers who were bullies, but in a more primitive
society this bullying carried weight and was not defied. He knew little
of the civilized expedients of women; he didn’t imagine that Claudine
would stoop to deceive. Yet he didn’t think her quite capable of
independence.

“Oh, Father!” said Edna, carelessly. “He’s just melodrama.... And we
won’t tell Mother, and she’ll pretend not to know where we’ve gone. We
can--”

“But I don’t like it!” he protested. “It’s a humiliating position for
me.”

“It really isn’t, Mr. Stephens. We’re the humiliated, deceitful ones,
and we don’t care. Do you know the country round here?”

“I was born a few miles down the river,” he answered, soberly. “In
Brownsville Landing.”

Andrée came sauntering out of the house, and caught his words.

“I’d like to hear about you,” she said, but he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That’s a mistake. What used to be me isn’t me now.
It’s--well, it’s like these books--they start off when the fellow’s a
baby, and they tell you all the things he thought and all the ways he
grew and changed, until you can’t see him at all. I’m darned glad you
never saw me or heard of me before, and you’ve got to see only what I am
now.” He smiled ingenuously. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s what
I’ve worked twenty-eight years on, anyway.”

“Come on; let’s start somewhere,” said Edna. “Or Mother’ll come out and
have to not ‘countenance’ it. Let’s take a ‘ramble’; that’s what Father
calls a walk.”

“It is a ‘ramble,’ too, with him,” said Andrée.

“Well,” said Stephens, “there’s a nice place up the road five or six
miles--nursery for all kinds of evergreens, and a little hotel. If you
think you can do it--? It’s a steep climb.”

Edna ran in to leave a message for her mother with Mrs. Dewey, and they
set off. It was a sultry, hazy morning; it seemed unaccountably
oppressive to Stephens. He felt unpleasantly like a new toy to these
greedy children; they looked to him to provide amusement; they weren’t
interested in his ideas, which were his life, and they had no faint idea
of the wonder of him. He glanced down at his white flannel legs and
buckskin shoes; he thought of his appearance in general, his immaculate
cleanliness, the comfort of fine raiment, of himself strong, confident,
carrying a cigarette case of purest gold and walking by these fabulous
girls. And he thought of a sallow youth, ten years ago, lounging outside
a pool room in Brownsville Landing, in a dirty grey flannel shirt and a
villainous cap, dazed and stupid with incessant cigarettes, engaging in
candid persiflage with the mill girls who passed. He had bridged that
gulf all alone....

The making of his money he regarded as a minor achievement. It was the
regeneration of his spirit that was so remarkable; that, he felt, was
little less than a miracle; he would have liked to tell that.

He had been in the hospital with a broken head, justifiably got in a
saloon brawl; he had lain in the ward two days, suffering and resentful
because he couldn’t smoke. No one came to see him; who was there to
come? His father, who worked in the brick yards, was always drunk when
he wasn’t busy, and he had no other relatives; he didn’t know what a
friend was. He went about in a pack, a gang of youths of his own age,
bound by no other tie than that of the pack instinct, all of them more
or less vicious, in a pitiful way. They lacked ambition, that is, at
eighteen or so, they showed a lamentable disinclination to work every
day and all day in mill or factory. They wanted something better, and
even now Stephens fancied that their sordid distractions _were_ better,
had a little more of the stuff of life in them.

In his restlessness and misery, he had turned his attention to the man
in the next bed, a portly, pallid fellow of forty-five or so, with a
black beard and a severe and dignified manner. He looked like a
physician, some sort of professional man; he was actually a mill hand,
an Englishman named Simms, a Manchester Socialist of the old school,
austere and fanatic. He sat propped up in bed reading Huxley, but he was
very willing to talk. And in five days he had expounded the world to the
sallow “corner boy.” Gesturing forcibly with his bandaged hand--he had
been badly mangled at his machine--he set forth his Quixotic and
beautiful doctrines. He had little humanity, no flexibility; he was
uncompromising and stern as a Calvinist.

They had lived together for two years. It was Simms who had shown young
Stephens the charm of cleanliness; he had a bare little room on the
outskirts of the town which he scrubbed himself; his habits were
fastidious and ascetic. He taught young Stephens sobriety and
continence and his own worth, and he taught him to read. His pupil was
not docile; he joined the Y. M. C. A., which was anathema to Simms; he
took courses in everything, he frequented the gymnasium. He made use of
what the older man disdained; his ideas were more practical and less
sublime.

He felt now that he was justified and he wished poor Simms were alive,
to be argued with. He stole a glance at Andrée, and he felt a curious
mixture of despair and defiance. He _was_ good enough--but she would
never think so.


§ ii

Claudine had watched them go from her window, with some uneasiness.
People of his sort were so hard to handle! Why hadn’t he the tact to go
away? It was so difficult to keep a middle course between offending him
and offending Gilbert; she dwelt with dismay, not for the first time, on
the uncompromising nature of men, how rudely they upset all feminine
niceties. Nothing might be implicit or vague with them. Even Bertie, her
marvelous boy, had to tell her things, and be frank about his feelings,
in a way Andrée and Edna never were.

She spent a peaceful day, reading and writing letters. The letters did
her good, put her in touch with her own little world again, restored to
her some measure of complacency. She was unhappy and her life very
futile and insignificant, but it might have been so much worse; it might
have been harmful. She re-read Lizzie Wiley’s letter, full of the
atrocious Bernardine Perceval, who had left her husband.

“I saw Bernardine,” she wrote, “on the street car with the little girl.
What she will drag the child into I don’t know. I thank God there are
still a few like yourself left.” And so on. Lizzie Wiley was a wealthy
spinster of passionate moral views and her approval was not without
weight. Claudine thought with a faint smile of her own bad moment,
twenty years before, when she had wanted to leave Gilbert; she had a
fairly definite idea that those moments occurred in most marriages; for
an instant she wondered what had made her resist it. Duty? Fear? Lance?
She didn’t much want to know, and put the thought aside. The fact
remained that she had stayed and done well, for Gilbert, for herself,
for her children.

She wrote a plaintively humorous letter to Nina Sidell, whose Violet was
just Andrée’s age. Violet was a frightful worry, in a way her daughters
would never be. Wasn’t that something else to her credit? Then there was
Connie Martinsburgh, whose four exuberant and handsome children were all
troublesome. Perhaps, although she seemed to herself so entirely
negative, she did after all exert a good influence over her family....
That absurd young Stephens had upset her, with his terrific vitality; he
had made her feel so pallid, so helpless, so useless. Poor Breath of
Life, with his gold cigarette case!


§ iii

They returned from their “ramble” early in the afternoon, and the girls
at once went upstairs to lie down. They were much more fatigued than
they cared to admit.

“Lord! What a cyclone!” said Edna, taking the pins from her crisp,
reddish hair and letting it fall about her bare shoulders. “He can do
everything and he knows everything. That lecture about coniferous trees
...! And yet he’s amusing.”

Andrée was stretched flat on her back on the bed.

“He’s more than amusing,” she said, with a frown. “He’s very fine. He’s
a man.”

“Oh, hardly that!” said Edna, slipping into her kimono. She was startled
by her sister suddenly sitting upright.

“You silly little snob!” she cried. “You make me tired! You don’t know
anything--you can’t see anything!”

“Oh, Gosh!” thought Edna, in alarm. “I _do_ see something now!”

Andrée went on, to point out to her younger sister the mental or moral
excellencies of young Stephens; all in vain. She neglected to mention
his endearing smile, that odd, tender look in his blue eyes.

Edna kept whatever she thought to herself.

“He said he was absolutely going away to-morrow,” she reflected. “And
she’ll forget.”

And by the light of this, the relations between Andrée and the Breath of
Life seemed rather funny than anything else. Edna didn’t mention her
discovery to her mother, nor did she attempt to stop them or to go with
them when they left the veranda that evening. She looked after them as
they crossed the lawn, with a benevolent smile.

“That poor man’s going to get a jolt,” she reflected. “I dare say Andrée
’ll get engaged to him this evening, just as she did to Johnnie
Martinsburgh last winter. Then she’ll get into a panic, and I’ll very
probably have to get her out of it, the same way. Well! It can’t be
helped! That’s Andrée, all over. She’s so darned sincere every time.”

“Let’s take a walk over to your Fern Glen,” Andrée was saying.

“I don’t think--” he began, doubtfully.

“Yes,” she insisted. “There’ll be a moon, won’t there, later on?”

“Your mother--”

“It’s your last evening.”

“I know,” he said. “But we can talk here--”

“I believe you’re afraid of me,” she said, laughing.

“I am,” he answered, and she suddenly stopped laughing.

“You’d better let me alone,” he went on. “I don’t understand your ways.
Things you think are funny make me miserable.”

“I don’t want a bit to make you miserable, and I certainly don’t see
anything funny in--in this thing. Do come on! Mother and Edna will be
home, and then we can’t go.”

She went on, and he reluctantly followed her white figure. They went
along the road, walking quietly on its grassy border, he always a little
behind her. It was a mild beautiful night, a night on which one could
walk forever. Behind the pine trees there was a marvelous faint
radiance, the path of the coming moon. The breeze blowing across the
apple orchard they were passing brought a wine-like perfume and an
exquisite rustling of leaves. The young man looked steadfastly down at
his white tennis shoes moving soundlessly over the grass.

They came to the pasture through which Andrée had once refused to go,
and they saw the great, dim shapes of the cows standing motionless in
there.

“I suppose you want to go around--” said he.

“No; I shan’t be afraid, if you’ll stay near me,” she answered.

He let down the bars, and carefully replaced them when they had gone
through.

“Don’t run,” he said, “and they won’t pay any attention to you.”

To his surprise she took his arm and held it lightly.

“I do hate them!” she said. “What would you do if they were to run after
us?”

“They never do,” he answered, briefly, and fell silent. But she was
amazed to feel his arm, his firm, strong arm, tremble beneath her touch.
She smiled to herself in the dark.

They came at last to the glen, and sat down on a rock. The moon had
risen just above the crags; the air was tremulous with its light.

“It’s too bad there are nothing but owls here,” she said. “I’d love to
hear a nightingale sing.”

“I’ve heard ’em, in England. I was there four years.”

“Now, you see! With all the interesting things you’ve got to tell me,
and that I want so much to hear, you talk about going away to-morrow.
You can’t!”

“I must!”

“Are you--going to write to me?”

“No. What would be the use?”

“Don’t you want to go on being friends?”

“Look here--are you going to make me say--what I don’t want to say?”

“Yes, if I can! I want everything clear and plain between us. You’re the
first real friend I’ve ever had, and I’m not going to lose you through
any stupid misunderstanding.”

“Well, then; I _couldn’t_ go on being friends. I’d ... it would have to
go on--to something else.”

She was perfectly still.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes ... I know,” she answered, in an odd, flat voice.

“And you don’t want that....”

“I don’t know,” she said, “whether I do or not.”

He was so startled that he sprang to his feet.

“What!” he cried. “I don’t believe you do understand!”

“I do! You mean you think--you might--later on--fall in love with me.”

Her sublime candour touched him almost beyond endurance. He walked a few
paces away from her, to the very edge of the pool, and tried to calm his
heart with that unutterable beauty, that fall of water, like bright
silver hair in the moonlight, like a stream from the moon itself, over
the face of the cliff, without sound, into the radiant brightness of the
pool. If there had been a nightingale to sing there, he thought, it
would have broken his heart.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, in a low voice, “I am in love with you
now. I shouldn’t have told you if you’d let me alone.”

“Why shouldn’t I know?”

“Because--I don’t feel like amusing you that way.”

“Oh, but I don’t--really I don’t look at it like that! How can you
always think so of me? I’m not trivial and shallow,” she cried, very
much wounded. “You ought to have seen that I wasn’t!”

“All right!” he said, grimly. “Now you know.”

“And you’re going away?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Suppose I don’t want you to go?”

“That would make me go all the quicker.”

“You have a--a rather funny way of being in love,” she said. “I should
think--”

“Now, see here,” he said, with a sort of desperation. “Won’t you let me
alone? I’ve told you. I didn’t want to, but you made me. You can have
all the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve--hurt me and humiliated me.
And nothing’s going to be any good any more.”

“Why?” she enquired, in a reasonable tone. “There are so many things in
your life.”

“I don’t want them. I don’t want anything but you. I’m--of course you
don’t know and you don’t care. You’ll go home and laugh at the impudence
of that vulgar--”

Andrée faced him, very angry.

“That _is_ vulgar, if you like,” she said. “To imagine my doing
that--laughing at you.”

She had come down to the edge of the water, beside him, very near him.
She was contemptuous, she was indignant and hurt. And suddenly all that
went. There, in that enchanted glen, with the moon on him, he was
transfigured, or it may be revealed. There was nothing mean about him;
his sensitiveness was no longer paltry, but tragic. He was no more and
no less than a man; forlorn in his strength and his youth; betrayed by
the world he fancied he had conquered. Tears came into her eyes; she
laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh ...! _I_--laugh at _you_!” she said.

He started away suddenly.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that!”

A fatal and overmastering curiosity possessed her; her arm went round
his neck, her fingers gently touching his cheek. She was amazed,
delighted to feel him tremble under that shadow of a caress; she was
exultant with a sense of her miraculous power, never before suspected.
In all innocence, she could comprehend his passion, in a great measure
because she herself was quite devoid of passion, was able to look on at
this. She was impressionable, terribly susceptible to the magic of love
in others, intoxicated by the emotion she could so easily inspire in
others; but within her was always a grain of something hard and cold,
never to be touched. An artist, was Andrée, always a little aloof; she
could never lose herself.

But she loved him then, humanly enough, with an immature and cruelly
exacting love. If he had said one word, made one gesture, to offend her
critical and fastidious spirit, she would have hated him. Fortunately he
didn’t know this, and was not on his guard, not wary. He was as much
concerned with his own feelings as she with hers; they were scarcely
aware of each other.

“You can’t really like me,” he said, miserably.

“I do!” she said. “I do!”

“But not--love?” he said, looking at her with profound anxiety. Her
glance fell and with eyes veiled, she was no longer so august. “You
don’t love me?” he insisted. “That couldn’t be!”

She had no answer to make, but the very droop of her shoulders was
acquiescent. He was astounded, incredulous, more appealing to her in his
humility than in any other attitude he could have taken.

“Be honest with me!” he entreated. “I don’t ask you for anything but
that.”

“I love you,” she said, quietly. It was to them both a priceless boon
conferred.

“But think what I am!” cried the pitifully honest lover. “I’m not
in--your class. I don’t know your ways. I couldn’t live like you--”

Their arms were about each other, and what did all that matter? The
strength and tenderness of his embrace, the reassurance she felt in his
unalterable sympathy and kindness, made her weep. He was not strange to
her; he was dearer and more familiar, even than her mother. There was
security in him, and her deepest instinct required security.

“Don’t cry, darling little Andrée,” he said. “Are you afraid we can’t be
happy?”

He was, very greatly.

“No!” she said, scornfully. “Of course I’m not afraid.”

They sat down, side by side, on a fallen log; he looked into her dark
eyes, glittering with tears; he didn’t know how to tell her how
precious, how adorable she was.

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Tell me just what you want, and what you
don’t like.... I can’t help making you happy, when I love you so, can I,
darling Andrée? I’ll be the best kind of friend and lover I can to you,
always. I’ll never interfere.”

“If you only won’t,” she said, eagerly. “I’ve grown to rather hate the
idea of ever marrying, because it means so much interfering. I want to
be myself.”

Stephens privately didn’t believe in marriage at all; he had even
written a brochure on the subject; he thought it an evil; he would tell
you, asked, or unasked, that he had never seen a happy marriage, or even
many endurable ones. He didn’t believe in women being dependent; he
loathed domesticity; he revolted at the idea of vows and promises. And
now, at this moment, he became completely an apostate. What else could
be done with a creature like Andrée? Of course they must be married;
more than that, he voluntarily made to her then and there all those vows
he condemned; he promised to make her happier than he possibly could, he
promised eternal love and constancy, he promised that as this moment, so
should all their lives be; he believed it, and so did she.

“We’ll be friends, Andrée, always,” he said. “We’ll each have our own
life and our own interests. We’ll make it a different sort of marriage.”

“Oh, let’s!” said Andrée.

But while he was already envisaging the next ten years, she was held in
thrall by this one minute. She listened to him for some time, but the
intolerable feeling grew on her that he was wasting precious time.

“We don’t know how it’ll come out,” she said, impatiently. “Let’s not
bother about it, but just be as happy as we can.”

He was silenced by this admirable recklessness. He took her in his arms
and kissed her, and this time she kissed him; then he rather abruptly
said it was time for them to go home.

“No; why?” she said.

But he was quite firm about it. He knew himself better than she did. He
was alarmed at his total lack of views and opinions just then; he was
not as reasonable as he wished to be. He was mortally afraid that by
some expression of his ardour he might offend his glorious Diana. They
walked home with their arms about each other, through the fields and the
woods, a walk in a dream, in moonlight and shadow.

He went up to his hot little room and sat there in the dark, heart-sick
with the ecstasy of it. He was more troubled and unhappy than he had
ever been before in his cocksure existence. This thing, made up of
moonlight and Andrée’s dark eyes, had come crashing into his life, to
break it in two. He had not wanted or imagined anything of the sort; he
with his talk about biologic necessities. He was appalled at the idea of
going on, because everything within him had stopped.

He was not easily daunted, but it was a long time before his courage was
fully restored. He lighted a cigarette, and it tranquillized him.

“All right!” he said, aloud. “I made a new man of myself once. I’ll do
it again. I’ve got to.”

That was what he thought.




CHAPTER NINE

BERTIE


§ i

Claudine had put aside her philosophers that morning, and sat in her
little glade, listless and wretched. An insufferable, intolerable
summer, a summer altogether wrong and harmful. And inevitably six weeks’
more of it.

“It isn’t right to keep the children here in idleness,” she said to
herself. “Healthy, intelligent adults, wasting months and months....
They ought to be doing something. They ought to be busy and useful.... I
suppose I got these ideas from poor little Mr. Stephens, but they’re
good ideas. There was something very admirable about him....”

She smiled at the recollection of the “nice little beast,” but the smile
vanished instantly.

“They’re both so discontented and restless--begging me to take them
away. And I can’t do anything! I haven’t any power, any authority! I
can’t do the least thing--I can’t even leave this place without
Gilbert’s consent....”

A few miserable tears started to her eyes.

“That’s the reason I have no control over them. A mother ought to be
wise and firm and--free. But I can’t do what I think ought to be done.
I’ve never been able to. I have to argue with Gilbert, or deceive him.
That’s what it really is, although I like to call it tact. They ought to
go home, and study, or work. They don’t need a holiday! But I can’t make
him see that; not possibly. He sneers about ‘a lot of idle women,’ but
he won’t let us be anything else.... And the older I get, the
more--cowardly I become. I can’t bear to argue and argue with him. I
know I can’t win. I haven’t any influence over him. I can’t--charm him,
or coax him, and I can’t convince him. He’s so obstinate.”

She clasped her hands.

“Oh!” she cried. “If I could only, only have had my darling Andrée
alone, I could have done so much for her! So much! I could have been so
wise, so gentle, so patient, that she would have loved me with all her
heart! I could have influenced her and helped her--”

She hastily wiped her eyes, ashamed of her emotion.

“How did it happen? Why did I become so helpless? Whose fault is it?
Gilbert’s? No, I can’t think that. Other women with husbands just as bad
as Gilbert don’t allow themselves to be submerged. It’s my fault; it
must be. There’s something wrong with me, some horrible moral weakness.”

Her eye fell upon Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.

“No; they’re no use--only a drug. I call it training my mind, but it’s
only trying to dull my feelings. I ought to fight and struggle. I must!
I must! I must get hold of my children. Now when Bertie’s coming, when
he hasn’t seen me for two months.... I ought to be able to do something
with him. He adores me.”

She fell into a reverie upon her incorrigible boy. No doubt that Bertie
was lazy, frivolous, and something a little worse--“wild,” her friends
called him. And yet she never worried seriously about him. He was so
obviously the sort of person who always comes out on top. It was
impossible to imagine him defeated. He was the cleverest of all her
children, alarmingly clever, and he was also in some ways the finest of
them. He had more sensibility than his sisters, more heart. That was the
reason she was so shamefully indulgent toward his follies; she was
aware, almost by instinct, that they were of no significance.

She decided upon an attitude; she would not be so fond, and full of
half-playful remonstrances. No; she would be friendly, but firm and
wise; she would show him the significance of life.


§ ii

They went, one or the other of them, to meet all the reasonable trains.

“Why not?” said Andrée. “For mercy’s sake, what else have we to do?”

But he did not come by any of them. As a sort of punishment for his
shocking lack of industry during his late year at the Polytechnic
Institute, he had been banished to a solitary camp in Maine with Lance,
selected as a tutor of the most serious possible sort. And as Lance--who
was perfectly indifferent to the boy’s moral defects--wrote
encouragingly of his mental attainments, he was allowed a two weeks’
visit to his mother and sisters.

When he didn’t come by the five o’clock train, they gave him up for that
day. They were all dressed with an eye to his acutely critical taste,
and a little crestfallen at their unregarded condition. They came down
onto the veranda to wait until the bell rang for dinner, and sat there
patiently with the old ladies.... When there came, along the mountain
road, a terrific roaring, a dense cloud of dust, and a motor-car came up
at a hair-raising speed, an eccentric, purple car, very low, with a
gigantic engine. From this affair sprang out a figure in a duster,
wearing goggles and a plaid cap put on backward.

They all started up, joyfully, and Andrée rushed to meet him.

“Where did you get that thing?” she cried.

“It’s Pendleton’s. What do you think of it? It’s a French car.”

“It’s _très chic_. Come and see Mother!”

He sprang up the steps, pulled off cap and goggles, and kissed Claudine.
And try as she would, she couldn’t help looking at him indulgently,
instead of wisely. There was something about him.... He was a very
slight boy, barely eighteen, with an unusually dark skin and sleek black
hair; he had a trick of keeping his mouth open, which showed his
brilliantly white teeth, and gave him a stupid air; he had a smooth,
oval face, narrow eyes, a rather weak chin; he looked at first glance
like a silly young ass. But after you had looked again you were more
inclined to think him a most engaging young devil. He had an odd,
sidelong glance and a grimace of gamin impudence; he was never
bad-tempered or sullen, but sometimes a little malicious.

“How did you get on with Cousin Lance, my dear?” asked his mother.

“Splendidly!” he answered. “Aren’t you pretty, Mammy! But a bit spindly.
Why don’t you drink ale?”

“I’m very well, Bertie. Why did you take Mr. Pendleton’s car? Isn’t it
rather a risk?”

“His look out. He offered it. He’s a nice little playmate. He took me
out to dinner the first night I got home, because the old man said he
was busy. _Some_ dinner! Andrée, what is there to do here?”

“Lots! You can knit and embroider and play solitaire--”

“We’ll change all that, don’t worry! Here’s the latest thing in
evolution, as old Lance would say, come to put a little pep into the
fossils. Mammy, don’t you think I’ve evoluted a whole lot further than
Father? Lance says it takes two million years to grow a new toe, or lose
one, I forget which, but it seems to me--”

“That’s the dinner bell,” said Edna. “Come in just as you are. No one
dresses here.”

“_Noblesse oblige!_” said Bertie. “I’m going to dress. Tell them to keep
the kettle on the hob--whatever that is--for a few minutes.”

He came down again very promptly, with his black head sleek as a seal,
and a new and marvelous dark suit. He disdained all the various washable
materials; they were “a mess,” he said, no one had any business to be
hot enough to want them. He was absolutely correct in every detail, a
very model of fashion and deportment; how were they not to be proud of
him and delighted with him? He was very attentive to his mother, and
even if it were a rather ostentatious courtesy, it warmed her heart.

She grew annoyed, though, when he persisted in smoking cigarettes
between courses.

“It’s very bad manners,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to me and your
sisters. And what’s more, no one smokes here in the dining-room. It
isn’t a hotel.”

“I’ll teach it to be. And it’s not disrespectful, dear creatures. It’s
simply being done now.”

“And you’re too young to smoke. It’s very harmful at your age. I can’t
bear to see you, Bertie!”

“Mammy, don’t spoil my poor little holiday! Two weeks--that’s all! Up
there with old Lance, I neither smoke, chew, drink, spit nor cuss. Let
me have my brief day!”

When they went out onto the veranda after dinner, his quick ear caught
the sound of distant music.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Dancing down at the hotel,” answered Edna.

“Free for all, and leave your guns at the door?” he asked.

And after this, nothing would do, but that they must all stroll down to
“look it over,” and Bertie, entering ostensibly to buy a magazine in the
lobby, looked in at the ball-room and said it looked “good enough.”

“You and Edna sit out here on the piazza, and I’ll take a few turns with
Andrée,” he said. “The music’s not bad and the floor looks good.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Claudine. “They’re not at all a nice sort
of people here. I don’t think it’s quite the thing--”

Bertie fell back into Edna’s arms like a log.

“Oh--h--h!” he groaned. “Why?”

“It’s not dignified--”

“You don’t have to be dignified till you get married or inherit money.
Tell you what! You come, Mammy! You can dance some nice, old-fashioned
sort of waltz. Come on!”

“I ought to!” she thought. “It’s my duty to enter into their
amusements--as long as I can’t stop them.”

But after half an hour spent there, she was more than ever determined to
influence them--all of them--in an opposite direction, away from this
unpalatable and promiscuous vulgarity.

“Don’t you think it is better to be bored than to amuse yourselves in
such a way as this?” she asked, on the way home.

“No!” said Andrée and Bertie, simultaneously.

“It seems a pity to me that young people like you--intelligent and
well-bred, should be so mad about amusement,” she said. “I can’t
understand it! If you were brainless and dull, it would be different.
But there are so many really interesting things in the world, so many
wholesome and fine recreations--”

“Never heard of them, Mammy! What are they?”

“When I was a girl, we thought it a pleasure to take a country walk with
an interesting companion--”

“You wouldn’t like the companions that we’d think were interesting,”
said Andrée.

“No,” said Bertie, sadly. “There aren’t any nice amusements left, Mammy.
Evolution has done away with ’em.”

She looked at the three faces, at that clever and devilish Bertie, at
the sensible, clear-sighted Edna, at Andrée, filled with a strange and
wayward inner light.

“But you can’t enjoy that sort of thing!” she cried. “You can’t like to
be there, in a room crowded with vulgar, noisy people whom you don’t
even know! You must see that these new dances are--to say the very
least--ill-bred!”

“I accept!” said Bertie. “Lance was telling me about some fellow that
made that his motto, and I think it’s a gol-durned good one! I
accept--anything that comes my way.”

“But it doesn’t mean that, Bertie. It means resignation.”

“I know. And we are all resigned, except you. You want to--let’s
see--put back the clock of human progress. Very wrong Mammy!”


§ iii

The next morning Bertie went again to the big hotel, and came back
innocently with a new magazine for his mother. In the afternoon he went
down to the garage and drove back in the startling purple car, and asked
his mother to come for a drive. Filled with terror, she accepted, and
spent two hours in mortal anguish, flying perilously along the edge of
precipices, breathless from the terrific speed. There was no chance then
for the serious talk she wished to have with her son, and after dinner
he disappeared again, and didn’t return until midnight.

But she was waiting for him on the veranda.

“Bertie!” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Dancing around a little, Mammy!”

“With whom?”

“Some girls at the hotel. Very respectable and humble, Mammy. I didn’t
have any trouble with them at all.”

“I don’t like it. And I’m sure your father wouldn’t like it.”

“So am I. But I’m used to that. It’s crabbed age and youth--”

“Don’t be disrespectful to your father! Bertie ...! Did you--have
anything to drink?”

“Oh, yes! A couple of seltzer lemonades.”

“I mean--anything--intoxicating?”

“Nothing that intoxicated me, Mammy!”

“Don’t be so flippant and provoking! Bertie, I really feel in despair
about you. Haven’t you any serious or--worthy thoughts or ambitions?”

“They haven’t come yet. But I’m only a child. Give me a chance!”

“What do you expect to do with your life?”

“Don’t you know,” he said, solemnly, “that that’s really a ridiculous
question, Mammy? It doesn’t lie with me. I’m a puppet in the hands of
Nature. I’m going to be used by a Blind Force--”

“Please don’t joke!”

“I don’t think I am. It seems to me it really is like that. I don’t see
much use in spending all your life squirming. I’d rather go along with
the rest of the crowd--wherever they’re going. We don’t count much.
We’re just one more generation. It’ll take about a billion years to
change us or improve us. So what care I?”

“Bertie!” she cried, quite shocked. “Where did you get such ideas?”

“Lance has corrupted me. I was a poor innocent child who wanted to be an
engineer and build bridges. But when I was taught to think a million
years at a time, I lost interest.”

“But you’ve got to pass your life in some sort of work, dear.”

“I’ll go into Father’s office and show him how to run the show. Then
I’ll take a wad and buck the stock market and clean up a few millions
and never worry again.”

“Go to bed!” she said, half-laughing. “You’re too silly to talk to! I
suppose some time you’ll grow up and be a man. And I hope with all my
heart I’ll be able to be proud of you.”

His exploits that week, however, were certainly nothing to be proud of.
He took a golden-haired maiden from the hotel out one afternoon and
quite wrecked Mr. Pendleton’s car, leaving it helpless on a mountain
road to be taken back to the garage on a truck. He ran up a startling
bill at the hotel for cigarettes, candies, and “seltzer lemonades” which
she suspected strongly, and when she confronted him with it, he said,
with chagrin:

“Pshaw! I told ’em not to send it till after I’d gone!”

She paid this herself from her own allowance, but the bill for the
garage was beyond her. It was going to cost six hundred dollars to
repair Mr. Pendleton’s car.

“But he’ll pay it himself!” Bertie protested. “He’s a good sport. He
knows I’m a young and inexperienced driver, and sure to have accidents.”

“I’m ashamed of you, Bertie, to think of such a thing. I shall have to
tell your father, and I’m afraid he’ll be very angry.”

“I don’t believe in family rows. It might give him apoplexy. I should
think you’d rather sell your jewels.”

But she did tell Gilbert, and he was furious. It was not a pleasant
week-end, but it didn’t depress Bertie.

“I’m the reed, you know, Mammy, that bows its head to the storm,” he
said. And the very next day, told her he wanted to, and was socially
obliged to, give a dinner-party to some of his friends at the hotel.

“You can’t, my dear. Mrs. Dewey wouldn’t--”

“She says she will. I hinted at it. We can have it at eight, when the
others have finished. She says she’ll do it in grand style, for my
sake.”

“It would cost a great deal. Your father--”

“Andrée and Edna will pay for it, out of their little savings, like
sisters should, for their brother’s honour. All you have to do is to
look lovely and be dignified.”

“But I don’t care to encourage those hotel people!”

“They won’t bother you when I’ve gone. Besides, you can freeze ’em
thoroughly at the dinner. I don’t care how rude you are to them.”

It was a horrible dinner, of the sort that Claudine most thoroughly
detested. Silly, over-dressed girls and, one or two of their mothers,
and a handful of boys who seemed to her prejudiced eyes nothing but
cheap travesties on her fascinating son. She was quite perfect, with the
affability and politeness she never displayed so well as when among
people she disliked.

But after he had gone away, she was very glad she had done this for
Bertie. She missed him beyond measure; of all her children he was the
one who had most of her own detached and fatalistic point of view, and
he, like herself, could find but cold comfort in his own heart. She
understood him, how futile all achievement seemed to him, how terribly
necessary was happiness. He _must_ be happy; it was that alone which he
required from life, not success, like Andrée, not self-approbation, like
Edna, but joy in the moment, like herself.

She remembered him as a little boy, a beautiful child, a gay and
cajoling little thing, his grandmother’s favourite ... certainly a very
much spoilt child. She liked to remember his passionate admiration of
her, how she had always stopped in at the nursery to let him see her,
dressed for the evening. How he had called her “pretty Mammy,” quite
unabashed by his father’s disgust for his effeminacy.

Even now, with all his weaknesses, his petty vices seemed to her very
innocent, very unimportant. It was only his way of looking for
happiness. She felt sure that when he grew older, he would find a better
way. And if he remained as he was, frivolous, reckless, pleasure-loving,
wasn’t it better, after all, than being stolid, prudent, money-loving?

“My dear, dear boy!” she thought, with tears in her eyes, but a smile on
her lips. “Poor Bertie!”


§ iv

The long, long summer wore away; wasted and arid days they seemed to
her. She found but little pleasure in her flowers and birds, no more
consolation in her philosophers.

“I suppose I’m growing old!” she thought, and she allowed herself to
dally with the idea of growing really old, when nothing would be
expected of her, but dignity, which would be no trouble at all.

“But I’m barely forty!” she reflected. “I suppose there’ll be at least
twenty years more of this!”

And her heart sank.

“It’s peace I want!” she said. “I’m not made for struggling or
achieving. I’ve been a wretched failure.... I suppose I’ve even failed
Gilbert--in some sort of way. All I can do is to go on blundering and
trying--for all that terribly long time.... If I can only see the
children on the right road!... And I don’t even know what the right road
is!”

She was happy to see her daughters so full of new interest and energy
when the time came for going home.

“I can live in them!” she said. “If they’ll let me!”




_BOOK THREE_

THE CUP IS OFFERED




CHAPTER ONE

ANDRÉE’S RECITAL


§ i

Gilbert was certainly very nervous. His nervousness took its usual form
of a great rage and distress about his shirt, which he believed was
inclined to bulge, and therefore to ruin and destroy him in the eyes of
society. Moreover, his own image in the glass filled him with
resentment, that portly and ungainly figure, his grey hair, his
unromantic aspect. Nothing but a father, that’s all he was, a
money-maker. He strode around the bedroom, swearing bitterly and
scowling, but toward this exhibition of ill-temper Claudine was neither
frigid nor superior. She felt sorry for him. She chatted as she brushed
her hair, and she succeeded in soothing him a little.

“You look very distinguished, Gilbert!” she said, and she was ready to
believe it.

“Humph!” he said, hiding his pleasure. “That tailor’s a fool. The coat
wrinkles there, over the shoulders.”

“Not when you stand up straight. I suppose you do, when you’re being
fitted, you know.”

He straightened himself and looked again. It did look better.

“I hope she won’t get into one of her freakish humours,” he said. “Get
stage fright, or anything of that sort.”

“She won’t,” Claudine assured him. “She’s not nervous in public. She’s
not the least bit upset. Listen! She’s playing over her pieces now....
Oh, Gilbert! Isn’t she wonderful?”

He went over to open the door into the hall, so that the sound might
reach him better, and the great volume of it impressed him. It must
certainly betoken a remarkable skill to do that with such sureness;
Claudine had never played so loudly and majestically.

“You’d better hurry a little, Gilbert,” said his wife. “I told Mary to
serve dinner promptly at six, to give us plenty of time. I think I’ll go
and hurry Bertie a little.”

But really the vain woman wanted her son’s approval and admiration. She
went upstairs to the room Gilbert had occupied in his bachelor days, and
knocked at the door.

“It’s I, Bertie!”

“Come in, Mammy!” he called, cheerfully, and as soon as she had entered,
he cried:

“Oh, I say! Queen of them all! You _are_ lovely! You’ll be a riot!”

She smiled happily.

“You silly boy! Is it really a nice dress?”

“I wish you were going to sit up there on the platform and play. I’d
rather hear you, and look at you, Mammy!”

“It might have been I,” she thought to herself, with a shade of
bitterness. “I might have been a mother really to be proud of--a
musician--a somebody.”

But she smiled again, and glanced at herself in the mirror. It was the
most shockingly expensive dress she had ever had, a real Paris frock of
satin in an exquisite shade of green that became her perfectly, and set
off her coppery hair and pale skin to their best advantage. She was
proud of her small waist, her little feet, in spite of the fact that
they were old-fashioned, she was pleased with her miniature neatness and
delicacy.

She turned to her son. Gilbert had angrily insisted that a boy of
eighteen had no business in evening dress; a dinner jacket was the thing
for him. But Bertie had pointed out the fact that the thing had already
been ordered and fitted, and would have to be paid for.

“I never imagined you’d kick,” he had said, plaintively. “You’re always
so generous, Father.”

He finished scrupulously tying his white tie.

“Do I look like a monkey?” he asked. “Father said I would.”

He followed his mother downstairs into the dining-room, and the others
joined them promptly. There was an air of general satisfaction at the
dinner table. They were all pleased with themselves, individually and as
a family; they were all unusually festive and spirited. Andrée, the
heroine, was blazing with excitement.

“You’d better eat,” said Lance, warningly to her. Music was no more to
him than a passing phenomenon in the course of man’s history; it served
to show something of the development of his brain and æsthetic sense,
but it would, he felt, in the course of time be regarded as nothing
more than a frivolity. It was interesting to see how seriously it was
now regarded. Still, he was fond of Andrée, and he wished her to be
successful, if only for her mother’s sake. He had an unwavering loyalty
for Claudine, never expressed, never quite comprehended by her,
something which in a less preoccupied man might have been called
devotion.

Bertie had once said that Lance had “mastered evolution”; certainly he
never seemed to grow older. With his light, rather long hair parted in
the middle, his tortoise-shell spectacles, his slender figure, he looked
like a sober and enquiring youth, a juvenile professor. He was quite
illustrious, in the not very extensive circles where paleontologists may
shine, he had been on two noteworthy government expeditions, and had
written a large book, but he hadn’t made money. The most profitable
thing he had ever done, financially, was to tutor young Bertie. But he
was able to exist in comfortable independence, and he wanted no more. He
had a calm self-assurance which impressed everyone, even Gilbert, and he
was a guest not without honour, a friend of prestige.

He took out his watch.

“Time to start!” he announced, and they all rose.


§ ii

Mr. MacGregor expected a triumph that evening. He had hired a large
hall, and had been promised the presence of several well-known musicians
and critics, to say nothing of the important “society element.” He had
been for years steadily growing in favour, until he now held a unique
position as a master who was not only able to give to débutantes a very
attractive accomplishment, but a man who trained and developed genuine
artists. There was a certain youth from the Ghetto at present creating
something of a furore as a concert player whom he had “made,” and
several lesser stars. And he had now up his sleeve two or three
surprises, to be released this evening. He had a boy--a young Pole whom
he had been teaching gratis and more or less supporting, he had a young
woman of buxom charm and amazing technic, and he had Andrée, whose chief
claim was not so much in technic--though hers was of a high order--but
the originality of her interpretations. He knew that some of the critics
would be indignant at a lack of classic reverence, but others would be
charmed, and all of them would talk.

He himself didn’t appear; he stood in the wings, watching and listening,
his attention divided between his pupils and the audience. And there
wasn’t one chagrin; everything went beautifully. His young Russian
aroused a sharp interest in the critics, the buxom young woman was at
her best, and Andrée ...! He was entranced with Andrée. She looked like
the very spirit of music, filled with an innocent wild ardour, young,
lovely, proud. His hopes, his personal hopes, that is, of ever becoming
her husband had very nearly faded away, and he was able to regard her
with a more impersonal eye. He had never summoned the courage to propose
to her; he knew it would only make him ridiculous, and he was beginning
to feel rather glad that he hadn’t committed himself.

“She’ll go a long way beyond me!” he reflected, candidly. “She has a
wonderful future before her--if she doesn’t make a fool of herself!”

Her family sat listening to her with ecstatic pride, even Gilbert, who
was constitutionally opposed to public life for women. They listened to
the enthusiastic clapping, they watched her come back onto the stage
again and take an encore, not at all the timid novice, but cool,
careless, aloof as Diana herself. They heard whispered comments upon her
all about--“a beautiful girl,” “so distinguished,” “a magnetic
personality,” and even a few remarks about her music, and when she
joined them, when it was all over, they were at a loss what to say to
her. Edna wept a little.

They got into the motor; even the chauffeur, who had been given a seat
in the balcony, was beaming. They drove home, and went into the
dining-room for a little supper, with champagne, to celebrate her
triumph.


§ iii

Claudine was nearly asleep when she heard that light tap at the door,
but any voice calling “Mother!” could have aroused her from any sleep
but death. She hastily put on her dressing-gown and opened the door. It
was Andrée.

“I want to speak to you!” she said.

All sleep or fatigue fled from Claudine at once. There was something in
that tone, something in the expression of her child’s face seen in the
dim light of the hall, that froze her heart. She followed her to her own
room, which was brilliantly illumined; it had somehow the appearance of
a stage, a place pitilessly to expose a secret tragedy; and Andrée in
her white dressing-gown and her soft black hair unbound looked a fit
figure for any drama. Claudine asked herself, with a sinking heart, what
was to be her part ...?

“Is anything wrong, darling?” she asked.

“There’s something I want to tell you.”

Claudine smiled mechanically, but her knees were weak, and she sank down
on the bed.

“What is it, dear?” she asked.

“It’s very hard,” said Andrée. “It’s going to hurt you....”

“Don’t keep me waiting,” her mother said, almost sharply. “Tell me,
Andrée!”

Andrée sat down beside her, and lifted one of her mother’s hands,
looking at it with curious abstraction. Claudine didn’t stir.

“Now it’s come,” she thought. “That horrible, nameless disaster I have
always dreaded for this creature I love too much. This will be something
I cannot endure.”

At last Andrée’s voice came, steady and low.

“You remember Mr. Stephens, don’t you, Mother?”

“Yes ...” she murmured.

“We’re going to be married to-morrow.”

“Andrée! _Andrée!_ What do you mean?”

“Just what I said, Mother.”

At first this seemed to Claudine merely preposterous, almost laughable;
one of Andrée’s freaks.

“But, my dear, you don’t know the man,” she protested.

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Andrée, calmly. “We’ve been writing to each other
since last July, and I’ve seen him quite often lately. And I’ve made up
my mind. I knew everyone would make a row; that’s why I didn’t tell you
until the last moment. Al’s going to Europe on Saturday, and I’m going
with him.”

Nothing in that speech made the slightest impression upon Claudine
except the name “Al.” That seemed to her of tremendous significance; the
vulgar name of a vulgar young man; it made the affair a fantasy. She was
not so much worried now as surprised.

“My dear Andrée--” she said. “You....” She paused, aware of the need for
caution.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” said Andrée, bitterly. “You can’t see
beneath the surface. I knew all the arguing and talking and reasoning
there’d be, but it’s not going to make one bit of difference. I’m the
one to decide, and I have decided. I want to be married quietly at the
City Hall to-morrow, without any fuss and--talking. I wasn’t even going
to tell you until afterward but--” She frowned. “Somehow I couldn’t. I
wanted to make one more attempt to get you to understand.”

“To give you your chance,” was what she meant, and what her mother
understood. This was the supreme moment to come close to her child--and
she sat spellbound, like a figure in a nightmare, unable to speak,
unable to make even a pretense at comprehension.

“He’s the finest man I’ve ever seen,” Andrée went on. “He’s honest and
kind and--rather wonderful, I think.”

“But--he’s not suitable--” faltered Claudine.

“I knew you’d say that! You’ll tell me it’s disgraceful to marry a man
‘beneath’ me. Well, I don’t think he is, in any way. You’ll say--”

“If you’re going to take my part as well as your own, Andrée, there’s
not much use in going on. I’m not so unsympathetic--or so narrow as you
think.... I shouldn’t have opposed you. I should only have asked you to
wait a little--”

“Because you think I’d change?”

“Only until I felt you were sure.”

“I am sure! I love Al! You don’t know how I feel about him. He’s so dear
and--”

“Hush, Andrée!” she interrupted, almost sternly. There was a faint flush
on her cheeks; this unrestraint, this vehemence, caused her a sort of
shame. She had suddenly a thousand things to say--“Think if there should
be children”--“Think of the personal habits of a man of his class”--And
not one of them could she utter. Her almost morbid modesty, her long
habit of restraint, forbade her. She grew desperate; she could urge
nothing but her own love.

“Andrée,” she said, “I will tell you what I have never told anyone else
in the world. I love you more than my other children! I always have.
I--I think I don’t really love anyone else. You are all my life. You are
all I care to live for. If you _knew_ ...! When you were a baby.... Oh,
Andrée! I used to sit watching you when you were asleep ... you were so
pretty--and so strange.... It--made me turn away from God--I loved you
so much more.... If you do this....”

“Oh, how cruel you are!” cried Andrée. “And how--unfair! How can you
want me to spoil all my life and give up all my happiness, if you love
me? How can you not let me alone? Don’t you see--don’t you
understand--how I love him?”

“Andrée, that love is nothing to mine--I know!”

“And you don’t try to argue, or give reasons, or convince me. Or listen
to my reasons. You only want to play on my feelings!”

“You have no feelings!” cried Claudine. “You have no heart! You don’t
care!”

“Oh, don’t I?” said Andrée, and she suddenly began to sob. “Go away! Go
away! I’ve told you--now let me alone!” she sobbed.

Claudine crossed the room to the bureau and began moving about the
little jars and bottles with trembling hands.

“I won’t--reproach you,” she said. “I won’t.... I’ll try to
understand.... I want to see--Mr. Stephens. Where does he live?”

“I shan’t tell you.”

“Yes, you must. You can trust me, Andrée. I won’t--I promise you I won’t
tell anyone else. I won’t do anything to stop you.... I only want to
hear him. I want to hear--all he has to say.

Andrée hesitated a moment.

“Very well!” she said at last. “I think I’d like you to. I’ll trust
you.... He’s at the Biltmore.... I’m not afraid of anything you can say
to him!”

“No,” said Claudine, dully. She was folding up some bits of ribbon,
quite mechanically, and putting them into the bureau drawer. The room
was very untidy; there lay Andreé’s pretty dress across a chair, and her
beribboned petticoat fallen on the floor. And her slippers on the
dressing-table.... Was it worth while to pick them up? Was it worth
while ever to draw another breath? She looked at Andrée, lying face
downward on the bed, and her heart was not moved. No; this was the last
possible sensation, the very end of everything; she was going to sink
now and be drowned. She went out of the room and closed the door.

Gilbert hadn’t stirred. She lay down beside him and closed her eyes, and
at once anguish, like a fierce beast, sprang at her throat.




CHAPTER TWO

THE BITTER TRIUMPH


“I’m going shopping early this morning,” said Claudine, at the
breakfast-table the next morning. “There are some very good bargains
advertised.... How soon do you think you could send the car back,
Gilbert?”

Now Gilbert, although he scoffed at feminine shopping and bargains,
nevertheless respected all this as one of the bulwarks of family life.
Women must and ought to go shopping. So he said:

“Take the car. I’ll go in the Subway,” in the tone of an exasperated
martyr.

Her destination, however, was the Biltmore. She was filled with a
feverish anxiety to get there; she was in terror lest Mr. Stephens
should have gone out, that he would be beyond her reach, that Andrée
might see him or hear from him before she did. She was going to the desk
to enquire for him, when she caught sight of him, standing up, reading a
newspaper, and she approached him and touched him on the arm.

“Mr. Stephens!” she said. “Have you a few moments to spare?”

He was not pleased to see her; she fancied that his face turned a little
pale; but he greeted her with a sort of subdued courtesy.

“Where can we talk?” she asked. “I have something to say....”

“I have a little sitting-room; if you don’t mind--” he said.

She followed him into the lift, still smiling brightly, a smile which he
saw reflected in the looking-glass and which alarmed him by its
expression of triumph. If he could have read her thoughts as well, his
alarm would have vanished. It was her firm resolution to look bright,
brave, self-assured; she hoped that her air would not only impress him
but herself as well.

“Oh, God!” she was praying under her breath. “Oh, just this once, make
me equal to the situation! I always fail; I’m always beaten! Oh, let me,
only this one time, win!”

He opened the door of his sitting-room, and they entered. She began at
once, the instant the door closed behind them.

“Mr. Stephens,” she said, “I have heard from Andrée what you propose to
do.”

He bowed his head, and said nothing. She realized, with surprise, that
he was not without dignity; that there was nothing in any way
contemptible either in his manner or his appearance.

“I am astonished,” she went on, “that you should have done such
an--unworthy thing. Andrée is very young and impressionable, and you
have taken advantage of this to influence her. She neither knows nor
realizes what she has undertaken.”

“Excuse me,” he said. “But I’m sure she does. I haven’t tried to
influence her. I’ve--I’ve given this a lot of thought, Mrs. Vincelle. At
first I was afraid Andrée couldn’t be happy with me ... but ... now I
do think so.”

“Why, Mr. Stephens?”

His fair face flushed.

“It’s pretty hard to explain,” he said, “but I think--well, I think I
understand her, and can get on with her. I--well--I know I’m--different,
in some ways--but I can’t see that that matters.”

“It does matter,” she said, gently. “More than you realize. It may be
quite wrong, but it is a fact, Mr. Stephens, that marriages of--of this
sort are very, very rarely successful.”

“What kind are?” he asked, with equal gentleness. “As far as I can see,
the chances are overwhelmingly against any marriage being really
successful. It’s--I see it like this: if two people love each other,
they ought to take the risk, they ought to face all the chances as--as
gallantly as they can, and do the best they can in what’s bound to be a
difficult position. Personally, I don’t believe in marriage, but I can
see that nothing else is practicable just now. All I can do is to make
it as little like an ordinary marriage as possible--leave Andrée as free
as I can--”

“Mr. Stephens--I’m sorry ... but I cannot consent to this.”

He looked full at her with a level and grave glance.

“The way I see it--it’s a personal matter between Andrée and me. No one
else has any right to interfere. And no one _can_ interfere. I--you
don’t know how much I admire you, Mrs. Vincelle, but--I didn’t think it
was necessary to consult you, or anyone else. That’s all very well in
the case of a man who wants money--any sort of favours from his wife’s
family. But I don’t. It’s only for Andrée to decide.”

“And I simply don’t count,” said Claudine, with a slight smile.

“I know a mother’s love is a very strong--” he began.

“You don’t know anything about it! You think it’s a sentiment; you think
it’s beautiful to see a mother bending over a cradle. You understand
that women love their babies. But when the babies have grown up, you
forget the mothers. Do you think they evaporate, or disappear? Or turn
into troublesome, ridiculous mothers-in-law? But we don’t! We go on! If
Andrée were a child, you’d think I was right to struggle for her. You
talk about mothers being left free to do what they think best for their
children. But because she’s older, and I still want to protect her--”

“But--don’t you see?--you don’t need to protect her from anyone--like
me--who--who worships her! Do listen just for a moment! All I want in
the world is to make her happy. I want her to have a splendid, free
life. I don’t want to tie her to me. I want her as she is now. I don’t
want to change her and--fetter her. I understand her. She’d never endure
being bound; she’s so proud and independent--”

“And so silly and unstable. That’s what you don’t understand! But it’s
no use arguing. I know what it would mean for her. I’m not talking about
convictions. I’m talking about life as it is, as she will have to live
it. Andrée’s an egoist. She’s fickle and headstrong, and so terribly
unstable.”

“Let her be,” he said, stoutly. “I’m not. I’m strong enough and--and
earnest enough to put up with anything like that.”

“Oh, don’t you see? She’ll think anything you want to suggest to her,
but she’ll always act according to her own impulses and desires.”

(“Just the contrary to me,” she reflected, irrelevantly. “People can
make me do anything, but they never change my ideas....”)

“But that’s just what I want her to do!” protested Stephens. “That’s my
idea of marriage--that we should both--”

“Don’t argue!” she cried, with sudden violence. “You cannot do this! If
you really think any of the things you once said to me--if you have any
compassion, and kind human feeling, you can’t try to make your happiness
on another person’s pain. You can’t ignore me!”

“But--” he began, “isn’t that just a little--selfish?”

She clasped her hands desperately.

“You can’t do it!” she cried. “You’re kind. You cannot hurt me so!”

He wished to point out to her the extreme unfairness of her position but
the sight of her anguish was too much for him. Even when he looked away,
he seemed still to see her tear-filled eyes, her face suddenly so worn,
so much older, its fine tranquillity, which he had so much admired, its
dignity, gone. It was like a sacrilege.

“Please don’t! Please don’t!” he entreated. “I can’t bear to see you
suffer!... If you’d only realize that I’m trying to make Andrée happy--”

“Can’t you have a little mercy on me?” she said. “Even if you think I’m
wrong? Andrée is--my whole life; I’ve let everything else go. I haven’t
any life of my own, or any hopes.... Nothing but her. Oh, I’d go on my
knees to you!”

“No, no!” he cried, shocked profoundly, both by her suffering and by her
amazing unscrupulousness. “Mrs. Vincelle! I beg you!”

“Then listen to me! Think of me! Put aside your theories and your
principles.... Isn’t it something to be kind--even to me? Isn’t it
better to be kind than--”

But she could not go on; she buried her face in her hands and wept
silently. She looked so small, so helpless, so terribly fallen from her
almost superhuman aloofness....

“Please don’t!” he entreated, again. “I’ve always had such a great
respect for you.... I--you don’t know how I’ve thought about you.... I
wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world! Look here! Really!...
Please listen! We’ll wait.”

She looked up, careless of her tear-stained face, quick to seize her
advantage.

“Give me my chance?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, a little alarmed.

“You’ve done all this--you’ve persuaded her secretly--behind my back.
Let me have a little time!”

“To turn her against me?”

“Yes, if I can.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“All right!” he said. “If she can be as easily turned as that, it had
better be done before it’s too late.... But I don’t believe you can. I’m
not afraid to have you try. I trust--Andrée.”

“How long will you give me?”

“I’m going to England and Germany on--business. I’ll be gone about two
months.”

“And will you promise not to write to her or to see her for two months?”

“I’ll have to see her once before I go, to explain. That’ll be to-day.
After that, I’ll--” He paused and smiled a little, very kindly. “You’ll
have your chance, Mrs. Vincelle!”

She rose and held out her hand, and he took it, rather timidly.

“Good-bye!” she said.

“But--if you find you can’t change her--” he said. “At the end of two
months--will you consent to our being married?”

“What difference will it make, whether I do, or not?” she asked,
bitterly.




CHAPTER THREE

ANDRÉE’S WEDDING


§ i

Gilbert was alone in his office, working in one of his characteristic
fits of great energy. A sort of inspiration would seize him, he would
map out astounding campaigns, design advertisements, write letters to
his travelling salesmen which filled them with admiration and
enthusiasm, humorous, racy letters, replete with valuable suggestions.
The greater part of his time he was cross and wretched, but he had his
glorious hours, his days of geniality and amazing penetration. The
entire office staff would be enchanted, and ready to adore him, for he
had a perverse charm about him, an elusive loveableness, a touch of the
fascination so marked in his eldest child.

He always addressed his salesmen in his own writing, a very neat and
legible one, and he was doing that now, his plump, well-kept hand
travelling deliberately over the paper, and a faint smile on his lips,
when there was a knock at the door and his young Cuban entered.

“Your daughter is outside, sir!” he announced, with all the homage of a
courtier. He was profoundly attached to “the family”; he was not without
hope of something happening similar to the things he had read of in
French romances--that, as a reward for his furious zeal, he would one
day be invited to dinner, for instance, when he could be presented to
the young ladies with due ceremony. After that, the rest would be
easy....

“Ask her to step in,” said Gilbert, and looking at his watch, decided
that he would take Edna out to lunch. He took it for granted that it was
Edna, because it always was. She was sent as an emissary by both Bertie
and Andrée when they wanted money or permission for any unapproved
enterprise, because she knew how to handle him.

He wheeled round in his chair, and was surprised to see Andrée standing
there.

“Well, well!” he said, good-humouredly. “What do _you_ want, eh?”

He thought she looked “queer,” and he stared at her more closely. She
had a sort of desperate, defiant air, an unchanging smile.

“Sit down! Sit down!” he said. “What brings you here, Andrée?”

“I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you something.... I wanted
you to hear it from me instead of from Mother, so that you--wouldn’t fly
at her.”

She knew that she was antagonizing him, but she could not help it. The
only way she felt able to tell her monstrous piece of news was rudely
and sternly, to deny even to herself the dread and shrinking she
suffered. Her father’s face changed perceptibly.

“Well!” he said, impatiently.

She laid her pocket-book on his desk, a beautiful little pocket-book,
for she had all her mother’s elegance in trifles--and stood looking down
at him.

“I’m going to marry Mr. Stephens!” she said.

“Who the devil is Mr. Stephens?” he cried.

Andrée began to laugh.

“That man you had a fight with last summer, in the mountains.”

“What!” he cried, springing up. “What! That common, worthless little
cad!”

“Yes!” she said, looking him steadfastly in the face, and smiling. “That
common, worthless little cad. Don’t begin to rave at me. You can’t stop
me. Mother’s been trying for weeks.”

“I’m not going to ‘rave,’ young woman. I have more effective means than
that to put a stop to your nonsense. You’re not so independent as you
imagine--”

“If you’ll just take it for granted that _I’m going to do it_, we can
talk,” said Andrée. “Otherwise it’s no use, and I’d better go.”

“I see your mother’s hand in this!” he said. “Some of her--peculiar
ideas--”

“No, you don’t. She doesn’t even know I’m going to tell you. She’s done
all she could to persuade me--”

“Persuade isn’t the word I’d use. Look here, Andrée, my girl, I’m not
going to argue with you. Put this idea out of your head once and for
all--”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I tell you to. You’re too young to know what you’re doing,
and you’ll have to listen to people who are older and know better.”

“But--about this--you don’t know better. You don’t know anything about
him. And anyway, it’s not a question of knowing, it’s a question of--of
feeling. I--like him. I’m older than Mother was when she married you. I
know what I’m doing. His only crime is being--what you call ‘common.’
He’s very remarkable. If you knew him, you’d soon see it.”

“You don’t know enough of the world to realize that marriages between
people of unequal social position are always unhappy.”

“They’re just as unhappy in other cases,” said Andrée. “I don’t believe
social position has anything to do with it. It’s--disposition. And Al
has a wonderful disposition.”

“Al!” her father repeated, contemptuously.

“Yes, Al! That’s what he calls himself. I like it! It’s so nice and
jolly and--common!”

“Andrée!” said her father, sternly. “This is nothing but a whim--a freak
of yours.... I think you’re only trying to torment and worry the people
who love you.”

“You’ll see if it’s a whim!” she answered.

Suddenly he was disarmed; some gesture, some intonation of hers, had
brought back to him the naughty little girl who had so perplexed and
amused him, the scowling little rebel he had so often wanted to
shake--and never had. He remembered her with surprising vividness as a
child of six, spending a Saturday morning with him, sitting in the
corner of this very office, cutting out paper dolls, while she waited
for him to wind up his business and take her out to lunch and the
circus.

“Andrée!” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you go over to Germany
with your mother to study music for a year.”

“But I’m going to study here! That’s what Al and I have arranged. I’m
going to go on just the same!” she said, triumphantly. “And he’s going
to give me a grand piano for a wedding present!”

This put an end to his softness.

“If you don’t renounce this--mad idea--at once, and finally,” he said,
“it will mean--that I wash my hands of you. That you’ll be entirely cut
off from your family, including your mother, whom you pretend to love so
much. You’ll disgrace--”

“Nonsense!” she interrupted. “It’s not true to say I’ll disgrace you,
because I want to marry someone you don’t like. It’s--”

“Enough!” he said, frowning. “I’ve said all I’m going to. If you’re not
prepared to tell me _now_ that you will--obey me in this matter ... or
at least, agree to wait a year--”

“No, I’m not prepared to do that!”

“Then you may consider that you are no longer a member of my household!”

“What does that mean?” she asked, scornfully. “Does it mean you’re
turning me out?”

“Yes!” he shouted. “If you haven’t the common decency to appreciate, or
feel any gratitude for all that’s been done for you, you can try doing
without for a while. You can go back now and talk it over with your
mother, and when I come home this evening, I’ll tell you what I’ve
decided.”

“No, thanks! I won’t go home. I’ll never go home again. It’s your home,
not mine, I see. Good-by!”

He caught her by the arm.

“I won’t allow this! I insist upon your going home at once. Do you
hear?”

“Of course I hear! Everyone in the office must. But I won’t go!”

“Yes, you will!” he said. He was furious, and very much frightened. He
had no idea what she might do. “I’m going to call a taxi and send you
home.”

“You’ll have to get a policeman to go with me!” she said, laughing
again. “I won’t go! I don’t mind a row once in a while, but I don’t like
the idea of a whole lot of them. It was hard enough to come and tell you
about this, but you’ve made things impossible now. You won’t treat me as
a woman--”

“You’re not a woman!” he cried. And certainly she had never looked less
like one. She looked like a school-girl, reckless and ignorant of the
consequences of her folly, her face alight with a defiance that was more
mischievous than resolute.

“Good-by!” she said.

“Andrée!... Confound you!... Think of your mother! Go home, and we’ll
talk the thing over thoroughly this evening!”

“All right!” she said, suddenly, and left him without another word.


§ ii

It was due to Claudine that she remained in the house until her wedding
three weeks later. The distracted woman went from one to the other of
them, seeing the breach widen every day. She implored and entreated
Andrée, she faced Gilbert with unparalleled firmness; she was able to
keep up an outward semblance of dignity in the family. But it was a
monstrous thing. Andrée and her father never spoke to each other. The
meals were a nightmare, to see them there side by side, so bitterly
hostile. She dreaded to speak herself, for fear of hurting or angering
one or the other of those inordinately sensitive creatures. Edna was
grief-stricken; she had tried to remonstrate in the old friendly fashion
with her sister, to make her realize the prodigious unfitness of Mr.
Stephens, but she had been rudely rebuffed. Bertie was gravely
displeased; he disapproved of Andrée and also of his parents for not
preventing such a marriage.

“And these are the last days I’ll ever have Andrée with me!” thought the
poor mother. “These bitter, wretched days! This is the end of her
girlhood--and what an end! What a memory to take with her!”

The day after Stephens had returned from Europe he had invited her to
tea with Andrée, without having made any attempt to see Andrée alone, or
even to write to her. He had no need to ask Claudine whether she had
succeeded in alienating Andrée from him; her face told him everything,
her smile. He had a little table reserved for them in a corner of the
tea-room, and they all sat down in silence.

But Claudine, glancing up, saw them looking at each other, and it was
horrible to her. She saw in his kindly, honest face that least kindly,
least honest of human desires, his mouth had a kind of grimness; he
looked so entirely a man.... And Andrée! Was that the way a woman should
look, who is about to decide her destiny? Her brilliant eyes were full
on him, provocative, equivocal....

They talked, very harmoniously. He told them about his trip in dutiful
fashion, because he wanted Claudine to know his position.

“You see,” he said. “I’ve put about everything I own into this English
syndicate. It pays me well, but I put the biggest part of my income back
into it again. I calculate that inside the next five years I and three
pals of mine can pretty well buy the rest out, and then we expect to
turn the thing into a co-operative enterprise, with the workers sharing
the profits. Then, of course, I won’t get so much as I’m getting now,
but I’m getting too much now. But it’ll be a good living--something more
than that--for both of us, for the rest of our lives.”

“But I’m going to work too, you know,” said Andrée. “I’m going to study
a few years more, and then I’ll give concerts. All over Europe!”

“You won’t have much of a home, will you?” asked Claudine.

“We don’t want one!” said Stephens, cheerfully. “I never could see any
reasonable connection between--well, marriage and house-keeping. Because
I--love a woman, that doesn’t mean I want her to look after my personal
needs. I’d hate to see anyone like Andrée tied up to a house and a lot
of dull, petty details. I’m not going to interfere with her life. Never!
If I can help, I will, but if I can’t, at least I won’t hinder her.”

“But--” began Claudine, and she was conscious of a slight flush which
mortified her. They didn’t mind talking of such things! “A home is
supposed--isn’t it?--to be a place for--bringing up children.”

“Sure! But that doesn’t imply that the mother and father have to spend
all their time in it. There are people specially qualified to bring up
children. Then let ’em do it!”

“That doesn’t seem--” Claudine began, but she stopped. What was the
use? Perhaps he was right; if he wasn’t, they would soon find out.

“You’ll have to live somewhere,” she said. “What will you do?”

“A suite in a nice, quiet hotel,” said Andrée, “where I can have my
piano.”

So there was nothing to prepare for this young bride, no house-linen to
mark, no silver to buy. Even her trousseau she insisted upon buying
ready-made. Her mother did sew a few little things for her, but she felt
all the time, with every stitch, how superfluous they were. There was
nothing required of her; she too was superfluous.


§ iii

They sat in the motor car, well wrapped in furs, holding each other’s
gloved hands. In the corner was Lance, who was to give Andrée away, and
facing them, Bertie and Edna. But the mother was not conscious of them;
she felt quite alone in the world with her child.

They had left Gilbert in the most painful way. He couldn’t really
believe that Andrée would so flout him; he had continued to hope that at
the last moment she would capitulate, and he longed for that moment. He
had never asked about the progress of the affair, and Claudine had said
nothing until a few days before the wedding.

“Remember, Andrée,” he had said then, “if you do this outrageous,
disgraceful thing, I’ll never see you or speak to you again.”

And the morning of that day he hadn’t gone to his office; he had
remained in the dining-room, after breakfast, smoking and reading the
newspaper. Claudine had come in to him.

“Gilbert!” she had said. “Gilbert! Please, please come to her wedding!
No matter how you feel about it, she’s your own--”

“No!” he had cried. “I won’t sanction it! It’s altogether wrong, and I
won’t countenance it! She’s marrying a vulgar, underbred cur who’s a
disgrace to the family ... the first and only time I saw the fellow he
insulted me grossly. She’s absolutely disregarded my authority. She’s
doing this against my wishes, and she knows it!”

Through the open door of the dining-room he had seen Andrée come down
the stairs, quite ready, with her hat on. He had gone out into the hall
and stood looking at her, with a terrible twinge of pain.

“Remember!” he said. “If you go out of this house--to marry that man,
you can never set foot in here again!”

“I didn’t expect to!” she answered, briefly. “Good-by, Father.”

But he would not say good-by, he went back into the dining-room and from
behind his paper he saw them all go. It was as if he were being
deserted, rebuked by his family. His hand trembled, he bit his mustache.
Andrée gone! And gone to her certain unhappiness.... She would be
married, and her father would not be standing beside her.... He couldn’t
endure it. He sprang up and hurried to his bedroom, in a blind desire to
escape his thoughts. But there was no comfort in that silent house. He
could think of no better refuge than his office. His child had gone
without him....

“And yet I’m right!” he cried to himself. “I’m right! I’ve done what I
ought to have done! I’ve refused to sanction this thing!”


§ iv

Not one of the party gave him a thought. They reached the church and
entered, and Mr. Stephens was waiting there, with two friends. No one
else had been invited. Like a woman in a dream Claudine went into the
vestry with Andrée, to take off their furs.

“Am I all right?” asked Andrée.

“Yes, darling, very nice!” she answered. She wanted to look forever and
ever at that girl in her plain dark suit, her small hat, that gallant
and heart-breaking young figure.

Suddenly Andrée crushed her in a fierce embrace.

“Mother!” she said. “Mother!”

“Don’t cry, my heart’s darling!”

“I won’t; just in a minute.... Mother, are you satisfied--now?”

“Yes, my darling!”

“Tell me, Mother--I don’t understand ... why do you care so much about
this--about this ceremony? What does it matter, if we care for each
other?”

“I think it’s this, Andrée. I think marriage is the only way to impress
upon a man what a woman is giving to him. You know--almost all women
know--how sacred and wonderful and terrible a thing it is. But I don’t
believe men quite understand. I think they would take it very
casually--if it weren’t made as solemn and impressive as--”

Andrée flushed.

“It isn’t sacred and wonderful!” she said. “I hate that sort of talk so!
I don’t want to impress poor little Al with my preciousness. He’s just
as valuable and good as I am. He gives up just as much.”

“Andrée--my baby--if you’ll--”

“Don’t give me any advice about managing him!” said Andrée, with her
sudden laugh. “I’ll never try! Hadn’t we better go in, Mother?”

Claudine took her seat in a front pew.

“Now I must sit here and watch this horrible thing!” she said to
herself. “Oh God! Oh God! Do other mothers feel like this? How can they
smile?... How can they be pleased--and try to make matches?... Am I a
morbid, perverted woman? It’s her destiny to marry someone--and he’s a
kind man.... I must be glad!”

She heard their responses, both of their voices steady and clear, both
of them making those promises.

“I must be happy!” she said, again. “It’s just the beginning of her
life. There is sure to be so much joy and accomplishment in it.... This
is only one step.... I must have fortitude. I can’t live her life for
her....”

She rose, to face the little man’s wife. She kissed her pale, sombre
face, she clasped his hand.

“Be happy!” she said.

Then she looked round in a sort of panic for Bertie.

“Bertie!” she whispered. “Take me home! Take me home!”




CHAPTER FOUR

THE BEGINNING


§ i

That day she brought an electric tea-pot. They laughed when she took it
from its box, for she always brought something, she was trying to
introduce an element of house-keeping into their business-like
existence.

“But it will be very nice,” she said. “We can make our tea up here, all
by ourselves, just as we like it. And I’ve brought a box of cakes from
Sherry’s, the sort you like.”

Andrée was sitting at the piano, weary and a little dishevelled.

“It will be nice,” she said. “Better than going down to the tea-room, or
having a tray sent up.... Gosh! I’ve been practicing over two hours!”

Al smiled.

“Doesn’t she look like a musical genius?” he asked Claudine. “With that
hair?”

“Give me a cake!” said Andrée. “Mr. MacGregor came in last evening,
Mother, and we played until someone downstairs asked us to stop.... But
this one part of ‘Thais’ is lovely, even with a piano alone, isn’t it?
We’re going to hear it again to-night.”

Claudine announced that the tea was ready and Andrée came over to sit
beside her on the sofa. Al waited on them with a clumsiness which
Claudine found very pitiful; she saw too that he was attempting an
improvement in manners, not in a shamefaced way, as another man might
have done, but carefully and frankly, watching them with earnestness.

Andrée rose.

“Come into the bedroom, won’t you, Mother?” she said.

Claudine followed her into the little room, so bare, so impersonal, and
stood for a moment by the window looking out over Central Park, bright
under a new fall of snow.

“It’s a rather nice view,” she said, politely.

“Mother, look here, darling! I want you to help me to get up something
for Christmas, will you?”

“Of course I will! What had you thought of?”

“I don’t know.... Something nice and human.... You and Edna and
Bertie.... Something like old times.... How’s Father?”

“Very well....”

“Does he ever mention my name? Lord! Isn’t it romantic? A young bride,
cut off by her father.... I wish there were someone to appreciate the
situation--and me.”

“I’m sure Alfred appreciates you, Andrée!”

“Well, he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about my music, and that’s me. He’s
awfully fond of me, I know that, but he doesn’t think I’m really any
more important than all the other young females of twenty with black
hair. My ‘group,’ he’d call it. I wish he’d think a little more about
me, and less about social justice. I’m sick of it!”

“My dear!”

“I am! Not sick of him, but just of his talking. Just imagine! When I’ve
been playing extra well, I sometimes ask if I’ve been disturbing
him--hoping he’ll say he liked it. But what do you suppose he does say?
‘Not a bit! I don’t hear it at all when my mind’s concentrated on my
work.’ He’s writing some sort of silly book, you know.”

“You shouldn’t call it ‘silly,’ Andrée. It’s not fair. He’s not silly.
He’s a very intelligent, earnest man.”

“That’s the trouble with him! He’s too earnest. When I want to talk to
him about nice little things--about us--he’s always so--oh, so _mighty_!
We’re all types, and everything we do is typical of something. Imagine!
Last night Bertie brought in Gaston Matthews and Johnnie
Martinsburgh--darling children--Bertie says it’s chic to live like this
in a hotel, without any squaw atmosphere--and Al would talk to them
about his theories. Of course, they listened to him; he’s generally
interesting enough, but it’s--I hated it! I suppose I wanted to do the
boring myself, about music. And I know so well what they’d think of him
if he weren’t rich.... They call him eccentric now, but if he were
poor!”

Andrée was lying on the bed, her arms clasped behind her head;
how--intractable she looked, thought her mother!

“I’m thoroughly sick of it all! All this busy life.... I can’t be busy.
I don’t know how. When I look back on the old days, it seems to me I
spent most of my time sitting around with you or Edna. That’s what I
want now, but there’s no one to sit round with. Even when Al isn’t
working, he wants to ‘take advantage’ of his playtime and rush around
and see instructive things and--”

“Andrée, it’s not kind or wise to dwell so much on his little
shortcomings. He has so many, many fine qualities--”

“He adores you. Mother, do you want to go and talk to him while I’m
dressing? It’s very unselfish of me, because I want you every moment....
And you’re right. He is rather wonderful. He’s not common inside of him,
a bit. I don’t believe he ever had a vulgar thought in his head.
He’s--really delicate. He’s a nice person to--to live with.... If he
only wouldn’t talk so much!”

Claudine went back into the sitting-room and found her son-in-law hard
at work with a German magazine and a dictionary.

“I’ve taught myself enough German to get the sense out of things,” he
explained. “We get out a little magazine we call ‘Comrades,’ with all
sorts of stuff in it from the European Socialist papers, as a step
toward Internationalism. I’d be satisfied if I could get just that one
idea more generally accepted in my lifetime--that all the people in the
world are just about the same, everywhere, that they all want the same
things, and suffer from the same causes.”

He stopped suddenly.

“Do you think Andrée’s well and happy?” he asked.

“Yes.... She was speaking about Christmas. She thought it would be nice
to have some sort of little celebration.”

“Sure! “We’ll invite some people, and I’ll reserve a table downstairs in
the dining-room--”

“I don’t think that’s quite what she meant. I think something
more--intimate, Alfred....”

“I see! Then how about having a supper sent up here--champagne and so
on?”

“That would be very nice, of course.... But--you know she’s very young
for her years.... I thought if you and I could arrange a little
surprise--a Christmas tree--”

“Great! I’ve never had one in my life!”

“You see, she’s always had one, since she was a baby. I suppose it seems
silly--”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s just one of those nice, pretty little ideas
that I fall short in. My one idea is to buy things. It seems so
wonderful to buy what you want. I’m not used to it yet.... Gosh! You
can’t imagine how much I learn from you! That’s what we need--my kind.
We need to learn how to live--oh--poetically, from the people like you.
We never get those ideas. We’re too darned worried about food. At first
I used to be pretty hard and vindictive, and talk about bringing the
comfortable people down to earth. But now I’d like to take the other
people a little bit _off_ the earth--a little bit up.”

She thought as she went home in a taxi, what a loveable creature he was.
He was everything that she had always imagined a husband ought to be, a
comrade, kind, loyal, never interfering, never attempting to impose his
own will. Their life was what she had often dreamed of; Andrée had
freedom combined with love.

And yet--it wasn’t satisfactory; it was so little satisfactory that it
frightened her.

“Somehow,” she thought, “all that isn’t enough.... That bond--that tie
of sex alone--isn’t enough. Even love isn’t enough.... Perhaps there
must be more obligation with it.”


§ ii

It was a charming Christmas. Claudine had her Christmas dinner
decorously at home with her husband and various members of both
families; there were all the proper presents and ceremonies, and she was
happy. Happy because she could fly to Andrée in the afternoon. Her
visits there were a secret of Polchinelle; Gilbert never mentioned them,
nor Andrée. And yet to-day, as she was putting on her hat, he entered
the bedroom and gave her a crumpled handful of bills.

“Buy something for her!” he said.

She was terribly touched, but she knew better than to show it.

“I will!” she said, brightly.

After he had gone, she smoothed out the bills and put them into an
envelope, on which she wrote--“From Father.”

She gave it to Andrée with a smile.

“Is he coming round?” asked Andrée.

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t expect him to until there was a little grandchild. That would
be the proper thing, of course, and Father does love to do the proper
thing.... I wish there was a little grandchild! That would be something
important and interesting. Something real.”

“Andrée, you’re not going to be trying to-day!”

“No, I’m not! I’m going to be lovely--the spirit of Christmas,” she
said.

And she was. She was delighted with her glittering little tree, and with
all their gifts. She was gay, loving, almost tender. She dominated
everything; they all watched her with pleasure, moving about the little
room; they listened while she played for them. At the end of the evening
she and Edna and Bertie sang a Christmas carol they had learned as
children, and it made her cry a little.

“Dear people!” she said. “Thank you all, so very much! You’ve given me
such a happy Christmas!”

No one thought of denying that it was _her_ Christmas, or that the
common object had been her happiness.

She went out to the lift with them and kissed each one with particular
ardour, her mother, her sister, her laughing brother.

“Good night!” she said, still looking after them, still smiling, as if
she could not bear to see them go.

They were always glad to look back at that Christmas, for they were
never to have another like it.


§ iii

Andrée went back into the room where the little man was sitting, under
the Christmas tree. She fancied he looked a little disconsolate and
forlorn, and her heart smote her.

“Al!” she said. “Are you happy?”

“Not so very!” he answered, candidly.

“But why? Haven’t we had a lovely, happy time?”

“I feel--a million miles away from you,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll ever
get any nearer to you.”

She sat down beside him and drew his head down on her shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t!” she cried. “It--chills me so! I want us to be so
very near to each other. I must have it so! I can’t bear it if you don’t
understand everything about me. _Why_ did you say that?”

“To-night,” he said, “with this Christmas tree and all--I don’t
know--but you--it seemed to me that you were like a child--just playing
at life.... And I can’t play! I never did, in my life. I can tell you,
that chilled _me_! You seem so very young and so pretty, and
so--heedless--that it makes me feel so very old and worn--”

“You idiot!” she cried, laughing. “It’s just the other way! You’re a
little boy; you’re always talking and thinking about such new things,
things that come and go. It makes me feel such a wise woman, a sort of
Sibyl. I think that’s why I love you--because you’re so awfully earnest
and serious about things that I know don’t matter.”

“What things don’t matter? Human wretchedness and cruelty and pain?”

“You don’t even know what makes human wretchedness. It isn’t poverty.
Why, Al, if you could make everyone perfectly comfortable this very
night, if you could take away all hunger and want and injustice, it
wouldn’t give one little bit of happiness to any of the people who had
lost someone they loved. It wouldn’t help a woman who had lost her man,
or a mother who’d lost a baby. That’s what you don’t know. Nothing can
ever, ever be done to spare people their anguish.... I always know--it
comes across me in my very happiest moments--that the day is coming
nearer and nearer when we’ll have to part--one of us to leave the other
forever.... What do you think you can do for that?”

“That’s morbid,” he said, curtly. “No healthy person thinks about death
like that.”

But he caught her close to his heart and looked down at her bent head
with troubled eyes, stroked her soft hair with an uncertain hand.

“I’ve never heard you talk like this,” he said. “I don’t like it,
darling! Don’t you believe that we’ll meet again--afterward?”

“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t do any good, even if we knew. People who
do believe that suffer just as much. More, I think, because they haven’t
as much fortitude as the ones who don’t believe. Look at you. You think
all these miserable people are going to be made happy somewhere after
they’re dead, but it doesn’t seem to give you much comfort.”

“I don’t look at it that way, Andrée. The world seems to me like a--sort
of school, and I want to see everyone get a chance to learn all there is
to know, in decency and--dignity, before it’s over.”

“Maybe your way isn’t a good way. Maybe they learn more as things are.”

“Injustice never teaches anyone anything but resentment and malice.”

“I’m going to play!” she said, suddenly. “Oh, Al! Al! Why didn’t you let
me be happy? It may be only for such a little while!”

“I didn’t mean to make you unhappy! I wouldn’t for anything in the
world. I’m sorry! Don’t play! That damned music sets you all on edge.
Stay here and talk to me!”

“I’m tired of talking.... Al, you take up too much time! I’ll never
amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice,
quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”

“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl.
I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do
take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead
with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each
other alone, and just love each other.”

“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”

“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to
me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out--three books. I
have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so
well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking
for you all my life.”

She smiled at him.

“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you!
You’re a surprise--and a nuisance!”

She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him
roughly.

“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m
determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and
satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me
and nothing else!”

“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he
said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the
greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I
thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re
strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some
sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship
I used to hate so.”

“I _am_ a friend to you!”

“Oh, no, you’re not! You don’t care a rap about my work and my plans. I
don’t exactly want you to. You haven’t anything to do with everyday
life. You’re--you’re my love.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be awfully nice,” she said, “not to spoil all
that.”

“No. It doesn’t matter what you do. You couldn’t change what I love so
in you. It’s eternal.”

“Till death do us part!” she said, with a sombre little smile.

“And after,” he added.




CHAPTER FIVE

THE HOUSEWARMING


§ i

Al didn’t say what he thought; it seemed to him a singularly
infelicitous time for that. He was beginning to learn the rudiments of a
lamentable sort of tact; he followed Andrée about the new flat and
admired all that was pointed out to him; seven rooms and two baths,
fronting on Riverside Drive, all furnished now and ready for their
installation. Claudine had so urged them to have a home that she had won
over Andrée, and according to his principle, he had yielded to Andrée.
He said to himself, in his customary struggle to square facts with
ideas, that it might be a woman’s instinct to have a home, and he was
prepared to admit that women had almost all the instincts left to the
race. He couldn’t quite classify the instinct that made her spend so
much money on the furnishings; she wasn’t ostentatious, didn’t do it to
“show off”--a thing he could have understood--she didn’t do it for him,
nor was comfort her object. It was, he decided, her artistic desire for
beauty.

Personally, he was ashamed of it. Riverside Drive itself had long been
for him a sort of symbol; many, many times he had come to sit there and
feast his eyes upon the opulent women with their pet dogs. As a fat man
in a white vest and a silk hat typified the Capitalist, so was a stout,
well-dressed woman with a Pomeranian the outward and visible sign of all
this inward corruption of private life. He saw many such from his
windows; there had been one that day in the very lift with him.

On the question of servants he had been firm. And had been diddled.

“No,” he said. “I can’t have people paid to wait on my personal wants.”

“People wait on you in hotels,” said Andrée.

“Professionally,” he said. “They serve the public, not me.”

“But if we don’t have servants, how can we be free to do our work?”

“That’s one of the reasons these private homes are so bad,” he said. “It
means nothing but an autocratic--”

“I know,” said Andrée, hastily. “Well, then, we can go out to dinner
every night, and we’ll have a visiting maid and a Jap for a few hours
every day. They can still be serving some more of the public when
they’re not with us.”

“That’s nothing but compromise. But it’s better than having anyone’s
life entirely given up to our personal service. I suppose it’s a
necessary part of--all this,” he said, looking about his domain. He was
inwardly miserable and humiliated; Andrée knew it, but she felt that he
would soon enough get used to it. She wanted beauty and luxury about
her, and she considered that several grosser souls might well be
occupied in ministering to her.

“Servants aren’t unhappy, Al,” she said, “if they’re well treated.”

“No, I dare say they’re not. Neither are kept women. Or imbeciles,” he
replied. He suppressed the rest of his thoughts, in deference to
Andrée’s instincts, both feminine and artistic. As a woman she was
apparently obliged to have a home, and as an artist, it had to be this
sort of home. He was conscious himself of a very unreasonable instinct
to give her everything she wanted; he consoled himself by the reflection
that this desire to please women was what stimulated men to supreme
effort--a condition which gave more credit to his sex than to hers, he
thought. He had by this time almost entirely discarded his idea that men
and women were not very different, were all simply human beings. He
considered it generously; which, he asked himself, was the true normal
human being, Man or Woman? Not both of them....

“Perhaps what we call feminine traits are the really human ones,” he
thought. “Woman’s compassion, her intuition, her flexibility.... Our
masculine justice and logic may be aberrations from the normal.... Women
are primarily concerned with reality--birth, love, death--”

Only Andrée was not. He felt discouraged, and went into his brand new
bedroom to dress for this party he so dreaded. He had flatly refused to
wear a dinner jacket--and not entirely from principle, either. Andrée
had been unexpectedly nice about it. She came into his room now as he
stood before the mirror in his shirt sleeves, and rumpled his wiry hair.

“That’s the way you ought to wear it,” she said, laughing. “Every inch
a Socialist! But you are a darling.”

He saw her in the mirror, and it gave him a shock. She was lovely,
radiant, in a low cut frock of silver cloth; he might have admired her
impersonally on the stage. But as Mrs. Al Stephens, as his wife and
comrade, it made his heart sink. He fastened his low collar and made a
neat little bow of his necktie.... The two clear eyed and fearless
comrades who were to face life together--to solve problems of
living--this earnest young man in a blue serge suit, and this slender,
seductive creature in silver.

“My God!” he said to himself. “The Life Urge works the wrong way--no
doubt about it. It’s _against_ progress and clear thinking.”

He was not given to facile caresses; he only looked at Andrée, with eyes
sombre and doubtful.

“Am I outrageous?” she asked, smiling, utterly sure of her power. “Would
you rather I had short hair and wore a red flannel blouse?”

“I don’t know ...” he answered, with a sigh. “I’m no better and no worse
than lots of others.... I’d be damned eternally for you.”

She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.

“That’s dear of you!” she cried. “Only I don’t want you to be. I don’t
want to be a drag on you.”

“A drag,” he repeated, thoughtfully. She appeared to him not at all a
drag, but a terrific impetus--in the wrong direction.


§ ii.

Mr. MacGregor was watching Andrée with mild amusement. He had pupils who
played better than she, who were undoubtedly more gifted, but he had
never had one of whom he expected a more brilliant future. He was
careful not to tell her that not through talent alone would she conquer,
that, on the contrary, her greatest advantage was something quite
different. It lay in her extraordinary and provocative charm. He
believed that her beauty, the ardour and grace of her playing might
atone for certain undeniable imperfections not only in technic, but in
interpretation, a certain perilous latitude, an alarming tendency to
anarchistic originality. She was standing in the centre of a group of
her guests, all men, as befitted her; she was listening with her moody,
unsmiling air, quite indifferent to any whisper of admiration. She knew
very well how to take care of herself; she had her own particular sort
of rudeness, an odd, innocent sort of bluntness; she wasn’t in the least
like a married woman. Mr. MacGregor was glad of this, because her
husband was a grave error, and it was necessary to keep him in the
background. Fortunately, he seemed willing to stay there; he appeared to
be neither jealous nor uxurious. Mr. MacGregor had told her that if she
wished to appear in public she couldn’t possibly be called Mrs.
Stephens, and he hoped that she would have sufficient tact not to look
or to behave like Mrs. Stephens either.

He was approached by Claudine, who had a secret atonement to make; he
understood how she felt; she had, in the matter of Andrée, gone farther
and fared worse. He was sorry for her, for having sent him away and
thus left the field to Stephens. He liked Claudine; she was one of those
agreeable people who took everything for granted and never said what she
meant; there was a feeling of security in talking to her. She looked
charming that evening because she was happy, bright with pride in her
marvelous children. She was enthralled by Andrée in her beautiful dress;
this was how she liked to see her; Andrée was born to be worshipped. The
somewhat scandalous Bevan Martinsburgh stood beside her, and obviously
approved. He was a fair, very tall young fellow of twenty-eight, casual,
magnificent, good-humouredly regal; he had a habit of looking down from
his great height into adoring feminine eyes uplifted--Andrée’s were not.
He approved all the more. She was the only girl present who was making
no effort to attract; she had the attitude of her father in his young
days; it was for others to please her. She was notably unresponsive, not
even critical. The conquering Bevan compared her with Vi Sidell, who was
quite as good-looking and apparently as indifferent, but Vi’s was a
false indifference which covered a smouldering readiness to be pleased.
Vi was insolent, while Andrée was only distrait. He had known Andrée
more or less all her life, but never before had he bestowed attention
upon her. It was her _cachet_; Claudine saw it as such. She couldn’t
help a little pang of regret at the sight of Al in his blue suit, off in
a corner talking to that eccentric Cyril Smith--talking so much and so
earnestly. Of course, Smith always looked blank and supercilious like
that; and never answered, but she had an unpleasant conviction that he
must be bored and indignant. He surely hadn’t come that evening for
this. It was, she reflected, like the wedding guests and the Ancient
Mariner, only that Al’s tale was frequently by no means absorbingly
interesting. No one else paid the least attention to the host; it really
wasn’t right. She smiled brightly at Mr. MacGregor, but her mind was on
the Breath of Life. She saw him run his fingers through his hair in that
familiar gesture, making himself so untidy and so touching. It was cruel
to put him here, where none of his good qualities were visible.... Her
belief, never shaken by experience or observation, that in a marriage,
one or the other of the couple would inevitably change and conform to
the other, was slightly disturbed at that moment. What if Alfred never
became less opinionated, or Andrée more amenable? If they didn’t change
...?

She was glad as a relief from this oppressive fancy to look at Edna with
that young Malloy. He was entirely right. He had been brought over by
Mr. Quillen from the English branch of the Line, and was reputed as
promising; he was altogether a gentleman, and very handsome, and there
was about him a romantic air which charmed her mother heart. When he
first arrived in the country he had been instantly smitten by the
graceless Vi Sidell, but quite of his own accord he had turned toward
the simpler charms of little Edna. They were progressing slowly; Edna
was not the sort to smite; she grew on you little by little, with her
thoughtful, gracious air, and her infantile, dimpled smile. That would
be such a good thing....

Bertie too was entirely reassuring. He was never infatuated, like those
other silly boys; he had a gallant and delightful air, but it hid a
secret indifference. He always knew what he was doing; he was no
passionate fool, that boy of hers. He could be silly enough, but never
without a certain grace; it was impossible for him to be ridiculous. He
had characteristically passed over all the younger and prettier girls
and concerned himself with poor Phyllis Jenkins, who already at
twenty-five had learned not to take anyone seriously. She was penniless;
years ago this had had a sort of romantic appeal, and she had been many
times on the point of becoming engaged, to quite nice men. But that has
its limits; it was a horrible fact, now, known to all men, that to be
engaged to Phyllis Jenkins would be a joke. She knew it herself, and was
obliged to be sprightly. She was an angular, almost pretty girl,
nervously vivacious; she had had to be grateful so much that it had
rather worn her down. She was wearing a superfluous bouquet of Edna’s
and a necklace universally recognized as a former possession of Mrs.
Arnold’s; she had come with the Sidells in their motor and someone else
would be morally obliged to take her home. Let Bertie flatter and cajole
her as much as he wished; it did him only credit and no harm.

It is probable that no one else enjoyed the evening quite so much as
Claudine. Andrée was an inexperienced hostess and by no means solicitous
for the pleasure of her guests. There was a sort of formality and
stiffness that didn’t wear off; there was dancing--Bertie saw to
that--but it was dutiful and polite. The supper, provided waiters and
all, by Santi, was good enough, but trite; Andrée lacked all hostess
alchemy. Only Claudine retained the joyous air of a proud mother at a
children’s party.

At last it was over. Bertie had taken Phyllis home, everyone had gone
but Claudine and Edna and the attentive Malloy. Andrée stood yawning by
the piano.

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said, frankly.

“It was very nice,” said her mother. “Where is Alfred?”

“I don’t know. He went out with Cyril Smith long ago,” Andrée answered,
carelessly. Claudine didn’t like that; she frowned slightly, but the
presence of Malloy restrained her from speaking further. She kissed her
beloved child and prepared to go; she took it for granted that the young
man was coming with them, but Edna, with a nice perception for the
psychologic moment for parting, thought otherwise. She and Malloy had
had a little conversation to which she desired no anticlimax.

“Good night, Mr. Malloy,” she said, with a smile there was no mistaking.
The young man looked after her, astonished and rueful. He was for the
moment forgetful of Andrée.

“That’s that,” he said aloud.

Andrée laughed, and he turned quickly; the light of a red-shaded lamp
gave a strange lustre to her silver dress; she was sitting in a big
chair, with her hands clasped behind her head, and she looked--she
looked very unlike a Vincelle, he thought.

“Sit down, if you like,” she said, “and smoke a cigarette before you
go.”

He was willing enough to do that.

“I thought I was taking them home,” he observed, “but it seems I
wasn’t.”

“Edna’s like that,” said Andrée, smiling. “Misleading.”

He considered that the privilege of pretty girls. He was a chivalrous
and rather artless young fellow, with a kind and susceptible heart; he
was a little vain and unduly anxious to please; he was what would have
been called a “flirt” in Claudine’s day, with all the innocence the word
implied. He gratified Andrée’s æsthetic eye; he was faultless, an
ornament to the room. He was supple and tall, with a punctilious grace;
he had a dark, lean face which might have been too regular in its beauty
but for the attractive defects of cheek-bones that were too high and an
upper lip a trifle too long. Andrée had long ago put him down as stupid
as an owl, and had expressed to her mother her dislike for the way he
“hovered” about Edna.

“He’s like a stage lover,” she had said.

But to-night she was tired, and his stupidity was agreeable; moreover
she was annoyed at Al and wished to keep this handsome creature sitting
here until he returned, to punish him.

He talked about her music, and very agreeably remembered all the various
times he had heard her play, and gave her ardent praise.

“Oh, but you’re not a critic,” she said.

“No,” he said, looking at her with a smile. “I’m certainly not a
critic--of you.”

It was agreeable of him, she thought, not to be serious, like Al, but to
be frankly interested, just in her. She offered him a cigarette from a
box on the table and lighted one herself.

“Al’s late,” she observed. “I suppose he’s gone to a meeting. He can’t
keep away from them.... Are you a Socialist, Mr. Malloy?”

“I don’t really know what a Socialist is. I may be one without knowing
it. But I’m afraid I’m frivolous.”

“You’re in business, though. That justifies you. I’ve heard often enough
from Father what a prodigious struggle that is!”

“I’ve dabbled in music, too.”

“What a horrible thing to say!”

“I’m not a bit ashamed of it. If you asked me, I’d sing for you.”

“I couldn’t accompany you now. I’m too tired.”

“I accompany myself.”

“Go ahead then! But don’t forget that I _am_ a critic!”

“You’d never have the heart to criticize my artless efforts.”

He sat down at the piano and began playing in a loose, execrable style
which made her frown. But when he began to sing, her frown vanished. He
had a delightful voice, true, strong, and full of touching fervour. He
emphasized his Irishness, he sang old Irish ballads, exactly as they
should be sung....

Andrée, leaning back in her chair and listening, was half amused at her
own pleasure.

“Have I ‘worked up’ this mood?” she reflected. “What a darling he is!
I’ll be glad to have him in the family.... He’ll be a nice foil for
little rumpled Al.”

With his strong and tender voice still sounding in her ears, she held
out her hand to bid him good-by. And perhaps without quite meaning it,
she gave him a glance that went to his head. She saw him kindle, and she
smiled, withdrawing her hand.

“Indeed I didn’t want to criticize!” she said. “It was very lovely!”

“You’d inspire a donkey!” he cried.

“Don’t be a donkey!” she said, laughing. “It’s late. You’d better go.”

“May I come again?”

“Of course!” she answered, and almost without meaning it, smiled again,
a little too nicely.

“You’re wonderful,” he cried, impulsively. “Like--”

“I know,” she interrupted, laughing. “Never mind! Good night!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I shouldn’t have been like that,” she reflected, when he had gone. It
had been the most insignificant little conversation in the world, and
yet it took on the aspect of a betrayal. She was really uneasy about it;
she wandered about the room, waiting for Al, in a most unpleasant frame
of mind. Certainly she hadn’t said or done anything to feel guilty
about; it must have been some secret mutiny in her heart of which she
was only half aware.

“Very silly of me,” she said, almost surprised. “It might help Edna....
He’s a dilatory suitor.... I can talk a lot about her, in an artful
way.... If I see him again....”




CHAPTER SIX

DISCORDS


§ i

“Twice in one day,” thought Al. “It won’t do! We can’t go on like this!”

He was walking up and down that bedroom he so hated, with its silly
little four post bed and the thick carpet, and the offensive, dainty
imitation masculinity of it--a woman’s idea of a man’s room. Two little
blue shaded electric lamps, a fool of a little table--he kicked at the
table as he passed it, and Andrée’s photograph on it fell down. He was
profoundly disturbed, not so much angry as dismayed. Trapped; no way of
getting out....

“Why, damn it all!” he cried. “I can’t be like this! This isn’t me! This
isn’t what I meant! We are interfering--every hour of the day, with each
other. It won’t do!”

The first thing had been his fault, he admitted; he shouldn’t have been
so vehement, or so hasty. But it had been the sort of thing hardest of
all for him to endure with patience.

He had gone into the kitchen, where he was not expected to go, because
he had been hungry at a wrong time, and there he had seen a hideous
thing. It might have looked to other people like a char-woman scrubbing
the floor, but to him it was very much more than that. She didn’t even
look up; what concern was it of hers who came and went in this house?
She was a wretched little old woman; he stood in the doorway looking
down at her, at the tiny knob of white hair on her bony skull, her
narrow shoulders working stiffly, at her clumsy hands pushing the brush
back and forth. She breathed hard from her puny effort; she tried to
appear more vigorous when she heard someone enter, being well aware that
for the char-women of the world effort is accounted of more worth than
accomplishment. He stared and stared at her, crawling slowly on her
hands and knees, doing this work in the stupidest and cruellest way....
On the kitchen table her lunch was set out for her on a newspaper by the
superior visiting maid; no one would come near her or speak to her; she
was shut up here to scrub alone.

“Here! Get up!” he said, abruptly.

She looked round with bleared and watery eyes.

“Get up!” he said, again.

“But I ain’t done,” she protested.

“Get up!” he shouted. He could not tolerate for one instant longer the
sight of this old creature at his feet; it was obscene. She clutched at
the table and pulled herself to her feet.

“I can do it, if yer give me time,” she said, with quivering
indignation. “If I take longer, I don’t charge so much.”

Al knew everything in the world about her; she was the typical “case”;
he knew where and how she lived, what she earned and how she spent it.
He cross-examined her and she answered him mendaciously, but he was
able to sift the truth from the lies.

“Now, see here,” he said. “You’re sixty-five or so.” She declared, for
working purposes, that she was fifty. “You’ve earned a rest. You’ve
worked all your life.”

“I’m able--” she began.

“You’re not. Now, see here! I want you to go home--now. I’ll see that
you get a living allowance from--from a certain source every week. It’s
not charity, d’you understand, not charity. It’s what you have a right
to demand from society. You can consider me the agent of society.”

Her education was incomplete and she did not understand the meaning of
his terms.

“The Society give me coal last winter,” she observed. “I didn’t never--”

He didn’t trouble to explain that he represented nothing more than
impartial justice.

“Take this now and go home,” he said. “And for God’s sake, don’t go
crawling round scrubbing up anyone else’s floors, ever! Get drunk, if
you want--”

“Oh, I never, never, never--”

“It’s better,” he said. “Better than this. It’ll be your money--the
allowance you’ll get. Little enough, but you can waste it any way you
like. Try to live.”

From behind the kitchen door she took down a heart-breaking fuzzy black
cape trimmed with jet, and the disreputable ghost of a hat; she tucked
the money he gave her into a tremendous hand-bag and retied the clasps
with string. She was not grateful, any more than one is grateful for
sunshine; in an inexplicable world these benefits came sometimes upon
the just and the unjust. She had had a neighbor, mother of nine
children, who had been miraculously sent off to the sea-side for two
weeks of rest out of forty years of life; she knew of other things like
that. She was only in a hurry to get away before further investigation
revealed little weaknesses that might repel the Agent of Society.

Al had gone to his wife about this, and she had been angry.

“Who’s going to finish the floor?” she demanded. “Jennie won’t do that
rough work.”

“I don’t care if it’s never finished. I won’t have that sort of thing in
my house. It’s just what I’d give my life to put an end to. It’s--”

“I suppose you’d admire me if I did it?”

“Yes, I should,” he answered. “You’re better able to do it than that
poor old skeleton.”

“I don’t care much about your admiration,” said Andrée, slowly. “This is
_your_ house, is it? Not mine? That’s just the way Father talks. ‘_My_’
house ... ‘_I_’ won’t have this and that--”

“I didn’t mean to be arbitrary,” he said, quickly contrite. “Only, don’t
you see ...?”

He went on, to explain. Andrée could, as usual, see his point of view,
but she didn’t agree.

“She’s a wretched, drunken old creature,” she said.

“But, damn it all, why shouldn’t she be?” he cried. “What’s that got to
do with it? You know plenty of people who drink, but you don’t suggest
condemning them to servitude for life, do you?”

“If you want to run the house, you can,” she said. “You can settle this
now. Jennie won’t finish that floor, and I certainly won’t.”

“Then I will,” he said, and he did. Andrée hated him for that; she was
not too aloof to be unconcerned with what Jennie would think and say of
that performance.

They had lunch in absolute silence; and yet, little by little, they were
weakening. They were neither of them quarrelsome or resentful, and they
had a marked respect for each other’s obstinacy. One hour more would
probably have seen them reconciled and laughing, if Tomlinson and Bucks
hadn’t appeared. These comrades were more than Andrée could endure; she
had in the beginning made a frigid attempt to be polite on Al’s account,
but her politeness was neither desired nor understood. Tomlinson was a
big, stout, brutal fellow with a jaw shaved blue; he didn’t hesitate to
express his opinion of Al’s mode of living, and he did it profanely.

“How the hell you expect to have any influence?” he shouted. “You preach
one thing and you practise another. You and your ---- flat and your
servants and your ---- fine clothes!”

He was a professional Socialist, a politician; he was honest enough in
his aims, but quite otherwise in his methods. He had to consult Al
frequently, because Al had a considerable personal following in various
clubs and centrals, and was quicker and more intelligent than he. He
admired Al; he told him frankly enough of his shadiest transactions,
because Al, although tiresomely honourable, knew life and was not
squeamish. He wanted him now to accept a nomination on their ticket,
which Al refused. He had a great many reasons for refusing and Tomlinson
a great many for his accepting; it was a very loud and furious
argument, although neither of them was really angry.

Bucks didn’t enter into it. He was a bald, scholarly little man with a
full brown beard, a sort of secretary and mentor to Tomlinson. He rarely
talked; he sat and smiled and watched, and was ready to give data at any
moment. Andrée would have rather liked him for his mildness and
courtesy, if his collars had been cleaner; she was not constituted to
rise above that.

She shut herself into her room while they stayed this day; every sound
of that loud discussion reached her, and filled her with rage and
disgust. And then, to cap it--

“It’s your wife!” shouted Tomlinson. “That’s what it is! Your damn
society lady with her fine airs--that’s what’s ruining you!”

“You shut up and mind your own business!” said Al, and no more than
that, no other defense or praise of her.

Perhaps she didn’t realize how tired he was, or how secretly guilty
Tomlinson’s reproaches had made him, for after the comrades had gone,
she took occasion to speak her mind, and she found him unusually
irritable. They took a long stride forward in frankness that afternoon.
She called him vulgar and coarse, and he said she was idle and selfish.

All this Al remembered now, walking up and down the room.

“It mustn’t be this way,” he thought. “It must not be. And I’m the one
to change it. I’m older--I’m responsible. I knew there’d be
difficulties--it’s my job to explain and to reason, and not to quarrel
with her. There must be some common ground....”

“And even if there isn’t,” he went on. “Even if we never think alike, it
needn’t matter. Good God! Haven’t I enough restraint and common decency
to get along with the woman I love, even if she has different opinions?
Let her be herself!”

He washed his flushed face in cold water and brushed his unruly hair; he
subdued his spirit, and went to look for Andrée. He found her in the
library, dressed for the street, drawing on her gloves.

“Going out?” he asked, unnecessarily.

She said “Yes,” curtly, and then her heart melted; he looked so neat and
subdued and good.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

They went out together into the bright Winter air; but try as they
would, no words of reconciliation came from either of them. No words at
all....

Was it some subtle reflection of her own mood that made him feel so
wretched? He was quite as tall as she, he was properly dressed, he
carried himself well, he was strong, vigorous, not bad looking. Why then
should he feel so small, and so--he had no other word for it--so
cheap--as he walked beside her that day? Of course she was beautiful,
but she always had been; of course she was proud and a little
disdainful, but that also was nothing new. She looked very lovely in her
furs; he saw people turn to look at her.... And suddenly, as plainly as
if she had spoken the words, he knew that she was ashamed of him.

He stopped short.

“I forgot....” he said. “There’s something I must finish. I’ll go
back.”

She made no attempt to dissuade him, she let him go without a word, with
a smile which he knew was one of relief. When he turned back, he saw
her, still walking down the drive, a distinguished and beautiful
creature.

“Snob!” he said to himself. “Vain, fickle, cold-hearted snob! She didn’t
want me with her. She doesn’t give a damn where I go, or what I do.”

A terrible grief assailed him, which he imagined was anger.

“I might have known it!” he told himself. “They’re all alike--her sort.
Pampered and flattered....”

He struggled desperately back to justice.

“I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.... She simply wanted to be
alone.... Nothing very bad in that!... She’s only a kid, after all....
She cared enough for me to marry me.... She does care for me!”


§ ii

If he had been able to measure the molehill, he might not have been so
sure of exaggeration. Andrée went on as if she could never walk enough,
block after block, until the sun had gone, and twilight come, and lights
began to glitter. She stopped in at the Plaza for a cup of tea.

“I’m ashamed of him! I’m ashamed of him!” she said to herself. “I’d be
ashamed to have him here, with me. I only like him when we’re alone. I
can’t bear for other people to see him. It’s like a nasty
secret--_amour_.... It degrades me.... Oh, I ought to have had more
pride than to throw myself away on a common little man like that! Oh,
why didn’t someone stop me?”


§ iii

The next afternoon, at exactly the same hour, she was walking down Fifth
Avenue with Malloy, and with him, went again into the Plaza for tea, no
doubt to vindicate her pride.

And if it was a test, it was successful, for she was not ashamed of
him.




CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PASTRY-COOK’S DAUGHTER


§ i

Claudine mounted the front steps with an unusual languor.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be ill,” she thought. “This cold hangs on
so.... I must have some hot tea and lie down.”

To tell the truth, she would not really have been sorry to be ill. It
would have been a respite from the nightmare life of the past weeks.
Nothing but worry and distress about her son, nothing but disgraceful
quarrels between him and his father, and an exasperation and
irritability on the part of Gilbert which terrified her. He blamed her
for everything, for his disappointment in the boy, for the costly folly
of the boy’s existence. Claudine was neither able to quarrel nor to keep
silent. She felt obliged to defend Bertie, to make excuses for him, she
even told lies for him, and paid his debts herself when she was able.
Gilbert frequently found this out, and said that she deceived him
treacherously, which was true. She was not at all contrite; she knew
that with Bertie threats and bluster were of no use whatever; one had
either to convince him by reasoning--which she was incapable of--or to
win him through his affection, which was what she tried to do. She knew
that he loved her perhaps more than anyone else had ever loved her.

“How can you bear to make me so unhappy, Bertie!” she had asked him.

“It isn’t me that makes you unhappy, Mammy,” he had answered. “It’s
Father. You wouldn’t worry about me, if he didn’t make you. You know I’m
all right--a heart of gold under a rough exterior. A harmless buffoon.
I’m just consciously being wild, as is proper for my years. It’s all
Father’s fault.”

She acknowledged to herself, with some surprise, that he was right. Left
to herself, she would not have worried over Bertie; there was a quality
in even his most grave follies, a grace, an innate delicacy which in her
eyes quite redeemed them. He didn’t love his vices, he played with them.

She rang the bell, and the door was opened instantly, not by the maid,
but by Bertie himself.

“Hello, Mammy!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you! Your tea’s ready!”

She followed him into the front room, and found it charmingly prepared
for her. He had lighted the gas logs, and had drawn up before the blaze
a little gilt table never before used for such a purpose, on which he
had arranged a silver tea-service always kept in state on the
dining-room sideboard, and a bowl of red carnations.

“Why, Bertie!” she cried. “How dear of you!”

“Wasn’t it? Sit down, Mammy, and try a cake!”

“My dear boy! Did you buy the flowers and cakes for me yourself?”

“I bought the flowers. The cakes were a gage of love. Mammy, lookin’
about you, don’t you feel convinced that I’d be the best husband that
ever was?”

“I dare say!” she answered, smiling.

“Mammy, don’t you smell a rat?”

“What _do_ you mean?”

“Why these preparations? Why this introduction of the topic of
husbands?”

“Do explain! what new nonsense is this?”

“I’ll tell you, Mammy! I’m going to be married!”

“Bertie!”

She frowned with displeasure.

“True!”

“I don’t like to hear you say such things, even in joke. A boy of
eighteen--”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be for five years, Mammy!”

“You mustn’t think of binding yourself to anything of that sort at your
age. Surely you’re sensible enough to know that you’re sure to change--”

“I never do. But don’t you see what a good idea it is? How it will keep
me safe in the midst of all sorts of temptations which beset a handsome
youth? I suppose I am a youth, aren’t I? Although no one ever called me
one.”

“It’s not right to expect any girl to wait five years for you. And what
makes you think you’ll be able to marry in five years, you silly boy?
You’ve never earned a penny--”

“I’ll explain all that presently. Mammy, seriously, I’ve arranged my
future in a very remarkable way.”

“And who on earth do you imagine will marry you, after waiting five
years?”

“She is beautiful, good, and rich,” said Bertie. “She’s the daughter of
the King of the Pastry-Cooks.”

“_Who?_”

“Her name is Giulia Santigiorni.”

“But who is she? An Italian?”

“Yes, her father’s Santi, the caterer.”

“Oh, Bertie!”

“I only ask you to see her. She’s altogether lovely, and she’s had one
of those marvelous _nouveau riche_ educations. You know the sort of
thing--lessons in everything from the most expensive teachers. Sings,
plays, paints, speaks all known languages, studied deportment and
household management and First Aid. She’s been for the last two years in
a convent in Paris, and they’ve made one of those regular foreign young
girls out of her. You know, modest and gentle, always on the alert to be
respectful and polite to old people.... The King of the Pastry-Cooks is
rather keen on society. He gives monster parties--you never saw anything
like them; they’re awfully pathetic. He gets paid entertainers, singers
and dancers and--oh Lord!--wizards! He loves wizards. We sit in rows in
the ball-room, while the wizard holds a show on the stage he’s had put
up. Then he serves a supper! Oh! Never in your life have you dreamed of
such suppers!... And when you’re going home, you each get a present. Not
a favour, Mammy, but a genuine present--silver cigarette case, and so
on.... Of course, he doesn’t know half the people who come. He prowls
around, a poor, fat, gloomy devil, and no one bothers with him. But he
sees a crowd in his house, and that satisfies him.”

“Where is the mother?”

“Dead, long ago. He has two daughters and two sons. They’re all very
nice and respectful.”

“But do you think it’s quite a suitable match?”

“Couldn’t be more so! My Giulia is the most well-bred thing that ever
drew breath. You’d feel quite ashamed before her. I believe she took
lessons in how to behave in all European courts, and how to entertain
royalty.”

“But, my dear boy, how do you propose to live? On the--the pastry-cook
father?”

“No; I’ll get on, Mammy. I always do. I’ll either go to Princeton next
autumn, or go into Father’s business, whichever you advise.”

“No, Bertie, you’re the one to decide. What do you want to do? What do
you want to make of your life?”

“Whatever I can,” he said. “I don’t really care very much. I want to
make a good show, that’s all--earn a living.”

“Bertie, dear boy, with your intelligence you ought to aim higher than
making a living. Isn’t there something you can put your heart into? Some
sort of work you could really--”

“Not any more, Mammy. It’s this ice-cap.”

“What do you mean?”

“You ought to know. Old Lance talks enough about it.... It’s going to
cover the earth--a new glacial period--going to destroy life on this
planet.”

He rose and began walking about the room and when he spoke again, his
voice had changed.

“I’ve always wanted to be useful. I’m so dam’ sorry for people--for
almost everyone. I welcomed Evolution like a long lost brother. I
thought I could do something to help it, perhaps.... I imagined us all
evoluting along into something magnificent. I didn’t see any end to our
possibilities. I agreed with Al that, if we got together, we could make
a heavenly world out of this.... But then Lance sprang this ice-cap on
me. And--”

He paused.

“It was something pretty much like despair.... Nothing seemed any use.
The happier we got, the less would we want to be frozen, don’t you see?”

She was terribly touched by the pain in his voice, by the suffering she
divined in his queer soul.

“But it’s millions of years away,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter, as long as it’s sure.”

“We might find a way to live in it, by the time it comes. It might even
be a mistake.”

“Lance couldn’t be mistaken. You have only to look at him to know he’s
infallible. And--have you seen their fossils, and their reconstructed
pre-historic animals? Those chaps know everything, Mammy, past, present
and future.”

“Come here!” she said. “Sit beside me, dear.”

She drew his sleek head down on her breast.

“Did this idea bring you to--to any sort of--faith?” she asked.

“No, Mammy. I simply felt that the ice-cap ought to be kept a secret.
I’d have been glad to be a martyr to humanity and kill all the
scientists who knew about it, only I knew more would crop up. I even
thought of being a fake scientist myself, and getting up something more
cheerful, but that wouldn’t get by.”

She cried over him a little, and he sat quite still, with his head
resting on her shoulder. She wished so passionately that she had
something to give him, some invincibly right word.

“I think you’ll get over this, dear boy,” she said.

“Of course I shall,” he answered promptly. “I’ll get fat and pompous in
fifteen years or so. You know that dish, Mammy--Angels on
Horseback--oysters wrapped up in bacon? I’m in a hurry to wrap my little
oyster of a soul in a lot of nice fat bacon. Then I’ll be comfortable.
Nothing better, is there, than making money and getting married?”

“Don’t be cynical,” she said, gently.

“You know I’m not. I’m only trying to do what I can. I know what’s good
for me. Little Giulia’s good for me. She’s all spirit, but it’s the
nice, old-fashioned, hopeful kind. I never could tell her anything about
the ice-cap, for instance; nothing that would hurt her; and being by
nature very candid, that’ll help me to learn not to have anything to
tell. I’ll have to grow placid, don’t you see?”

He sat up and looked at her, with his diabolic smile and his soft eyes.

“Now, then, will you tell Father in some nice mendacious way that I’ve
got serious and want to settle down to something? Is it to be college or
business?”

“I think college,” she said, smiling back at him. “You know, after all,
Bertie, there may be something left for you to learn.”

“All right!” he answered, cheerfully. “And then--come with me to see my
pastry-cook’s daughter.”

“But shouldn’t you bring her here?”

“I want you to see her in all her gorgeousness.”

“But it isn’t quite the thing. You see, you’re not--you can’t be
actually engaged to her.”

“She considers that we are. Anyway, their code of etiquette isn’t
inflexible. Please come! And--look here, Mammy, if you don’t like her,
if you don’t agree that I’ve done a masterly thing in getting her, I’ll
give her up!”

“I’ll go, Bertie,” she said. “But bear this in mind, dear boy. If you
change your mind, for any reason whatever, about either of your plans,
don’t hesitate to say so. Don’t go on in a wrong course, simply because
you’ve entered upon it.”

“You know I wouldn’t. But this time I’m righter than I’ve ever been
before.”


§ ii

She went with him the next afternoon, to the house near Prospect Park.
The door was opened by a man servant in an elaborate livery.

“My idea of a flunkey, whatever that is!” Bertie murmured.

They were ushered into a drawing-room, an immense room, furnished with
an out-of-date sort of magnificence; it gave Claudine a sudden insight
into the pathos of the household.

“Look around you!” said Bertie. “You will see a pastry-cook’s dream. But
you won’t have long to observe; Giulia would prefer death to keeping my
mother waiting.”

He was right; she entered almost at once, and came up to Claudine with a
most polite, a supplicating air, held out her hand, raised to her face
a pair of sorrowful and beautiful eyes. They sat down to talk but it was
too much of a task even for Claudine’s experience. She was as affable
and impersonal as it was possible to be, she was really well-disposed
toward this pretty little thing. But she could evoke from her nothing
but a humble sort of politeness. It was evident that she adored Bertie,
and that his mother was to her a person of superhuman augustness. She
was well-bred, she had pretty manners and a sweet little voice; she was
dressed very nicely in a dark blue crêpe de chine, which was simple, but
excessively expensive. And she herself had an innocent and spiritual
charm, like a little strayed angel. She was small and fragile, and she
hadn’t the least hint of a womanly figure--a child’s body, with flat
wrists and a tiny neck. Her dark, pallid face was broad at the brows and
very narrow at the chin, which made her childish mouth look larger; she
had a wonderful profile, a nose straight with the forehead, a short,
full upper lip, a minute and heart-breaking perfection. But it was not
her beauty which captured Claudine, it was the transparent sweetness and
fidelity of the little soul. She was stupid, she was pliable, she was a
baby, but she had a heart to appreciate Bertie, and a charm to hold him.

Tea was brought in by two men servants on a tea-waggon, and the
signorina dispensed it with deftness. There were cakes and cakes and
cakes, cheese straws, rolls, all sorts of sandwiches, and when these had
been sampled, the servants returned with ices in the form of lilies
lying on leaves of green almond paste.

Bertie didn’t say much, but from time to time Claudine caught him
looking at his Giulia with half a smile, a look tender and a trifle
amused. He wasn’t going to take her too seriously, or expect too much of
her. It was, in short, one of those loves which cause a mother very
little pain; she knows she is not supplanted, not diminished. Singular
that two of her children should “marry beneath them”!

She took leave of her future daughter-in-law with a kiss, and the man
servant in the hall opened the door for them.

“It’s pouring!” said Bertie. “Go in again, Mammy, and I’ll send a few
flunkies for a taxi.”

“I’d rather not. We’ll find one.”

“You mustn’t get wet, especially with that cold. I can’t allow it!”

But she was briskly descending the steps, and he had to hurry after her.

“How obstinate you are, Mammy! If you won’t think of your health, have
some regard for your pretty little hat!”

She shook her head, laughing. She was so happy with this son, with his
affectionate, half effeminate ways, his open admiration. She had with
him a gay and coquettish little air no one else ever saw.

“Come along! We’ll be sure to pick up a cab in a minute, Bertie! Look at
the streams of them going by!”

But all the cabs were full. It was quite fifteen minutes before they
stopped an empty one, and by that time Claudine was chilled to the bone,
and shivering in her wet shoes and dripping skirts.

“I’m sorry, Bertie!” she said. “I was very stupid!”

He looked at her in silence, and when she was home and safely in bed, he
telephoned for the doctor.


§ iii

Andrée and Al had been to the opera that evening and to supper
afterward, so that they were late in getting back to the apartment. The
desk clerk handed them a message received hours ago.

“Please ask Mrs. Stephens to go home at once. Her mother is ill.”




CHAPTER EIGHT

MUTINY


§ i

Andrée was wandering about the “second parlour” that Sunday afternoon,
in a state of joyful idleness, humming to herself. It was so blissful to
be at home again, now that the horrible shadow was lifted from her
mother. She felt a new and precious sense of lightness and
irresponsibility, a return of girlhood. She loved the old life, the
kindly servants, the jolly breakfasts with Bertie and Edna, she was even
ready to love the stuffy and decorous Sundays she had once found so
hateful. Her father was sitting by the open window, reading the paper,
and she loved him too; because he looked just as he had always looked to
her. She went over to him and kissed the top of his head. He glanced up
and smiled.

“Well!” he said.

“Well!” she answered. “Are you happy? I am!”

They were thoroughly and beautifully reconciled now. In spite of his
disappointment over the conduct of other people under the shadow of
death, Gilbert knew that he had acted properly. He had forgiven his
daughter, and he intended, in due course of time, to forgive his
son-in-law. He had been profoundly affected by Claudine’s illness; he
had wished to be with her constantly. But she had not wanted him; she
had turned always to Andrée. He had certainly expected, although they
had been more or less estranged for some years, that under the shadow of
death she would come back to him. She _should_ have said, “After all, we
have lived more than twenty years together in storm and sunshine. Let us
forget our differences!” But she had not. She had said nothing at all,
except to thank him for the profusion of flowers he sent. They hadn’t
had a single touching conversation. On that night, which he had spent at
her bedside, in agony and fear, she had not even seen him; she had lain
gasping, exhausted, bathed in perspiration, with half-open eyes, as far
away from him as if she were already dead. It was Edna who had consoled
him, and led him away, and it was Andrée who had stayed by Claudine
until the crisis was past. It was always Andrée’s name she had
murmured--“Andrée! Baby! My baby!”

He had done his best to be just and temperate about this, but it hurt.
And as she began to grow better, and the danger was over, his old
exasperation at her aloofness returned. He had really longed for a
reconciliation; he would have told her frankly that he was sorry for
many things in the past, and that he hoped with all his heart to
understand her better in the future. It was his eternal passion for
something perfect and beautiful in life; if only these twenty years
could be crowned now with love, he could have been content. It was easy
for him to forgive and forget, the sins of other people as well as his
own. But it was not easy for Claudine. He clung to her, for he had
nothing else, but she had turned away from him to her children, and she
had forgotten him.

He had made a very thoughtful provision for her convalescence. He had
learned from her lawyer that her old home in Staten Island--which her
father had left her at his death--was temporarily vacant, and he had
secured it for a year. Half of it, that is, for her father had converted
it into a double house, an improvement by which she had profited, for
she had received rent for both halves for years. With the help of Edna
he had removed from the storage warehouse as much of Mrs. Mason’s old
furniture as they thought good, and later in the spring, when Claudine
was strong enough, she was to go there with Edna, to find it all
prepared for her. This plan had touched her, she had thanked him with
tears in her eyes. He would have gone there with them, if it had been
suggested....

“What’s this?” asked Andrée.

He roused himself from his unpleasant meditation, and turned to look at
the object she held in her hand.

“That? It’s a game--‘Pigs in Clover.’ I remember your mother was very
much amused with it when she was first married.”

Andrée smiled and began to manipulate it, singing again.

Now Gilbert had been brought up to distrust happiness, especially
feminine happiness. His mother had never been happy. Claudine was never
happy; the only permissible thing in that line was the benevolent, and
possibly alcoholically stimulated, high spirits of the _pater familias_,
coming home bearing gifts. He loved Andrée, he was delighted to have the
pretty, wilful creature about him again, but still, he could not help
distrusting such gaiety.

“When do you expect to go home?” he asked.

“This is home!” said Andrée.

“Your home is with your husband, young lady!” he said, severely.

“I know! I’m going--pretty soon.”

There wasn’t the slightest need or reason for staying another hour. She
had been there for four weeks, and her mother was now well on the road
to recovery. Al telephoned every day, first he asked about Claudine,
whose illness he had taken terribly to heart, and then he always said--

“When are you coming home, old girl?”

And she always answered “In a day or so.”

“You know your old father likes nothing better than to have his girl at
home,” Gilbert went on. “But you’re a married woman, and you have to
think of your duty.”

“I do think of it. But not all the time.... I think I’ll run up and see
if Mother’s dressed.”

She had started up the stairs, when the telephone rang, and she ran back
to answer it. She was quite sure it would be Al; this was his regular
hour.

His voice responded.

“Mrs. Stephens in?”

“This is Andrée!” she answered, brightly. “How are you, Alfred?”

“Your mother doing well?”

“Yes, very!”

And then, instead of his usual query, he said--

“It’s about time you were coming home, isn’t it?”

His voice was somewhat alarming, and she answered in her very
pleasantest manner.

“Yes; I’m coming in a day or two, Al.”

“Suppose you come this evening?”

“Oh, I couldn’t! Not possibly!”

“Why not? I’ll come for you about eight.”

“No, Al, it’s not possible. My things aren’t packed.”

“Edna can pack them and send them after you to-morrow.”

“But how ridiculous! Why should I rush off like this?”

“Well,” he said slowly. “Suppose--because I particularly ask you to--?”

“You’re very unreasonable!”

“Humour me, then, for once.”

“No, Al!” she said, firmly. “I can’t come to-night. To-morrow--or the
next day--I’ll let you know--”

“Look here, Andrée; I’m coming for you to-night!”

“But I tell you I’m not going home!”

“I insist!”

She laughed.

“What in the world is the matter with you, my dear boy? Do you imagine
you can bully me?”

“I don’t want to. I’m asking you--to do me a favour.”

“It’s a ridiculous, selfish, unreasonable favour, and I shan’t do it.”

“I’m coming for you just the same, at eight o’clock!” he said.

She was going to remonstrate with him, but she found that he had left
the telephone. Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lip.

“Little beast!” she said to herself. But some secret thought made her
unusually indulgent, she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed the
thought of him.

She went on up to her mother’s room and knocked at the door.

“It’s Andrée!” she announced in her triumphal voice, as if that name
were a talisman to admit her anywhere.

Claudine was sitting at her dressing-table, brushing her hair. There was
grey in it now, on the temples, and her face was thin and drawn. She
wore a negligée with high collar and long sleeves, to conceal the
pitiful emaciation of her neck and arms. Andrée couldn’t look at her
without a twinge of pain.

“I’ll do your hair for you, darling!” she said, and Claudine willingly
relinquished the brush to her.

“I am some use to you, aren’t I, Mother?”

“I don’t know what I should have done without you, dear!”

“‘Should have done!’ Then you don’t need me now?”

“You know how dearly I love to have you with me, but--”

“But I ought to go home? I’m not useful any more, and I’m not wanted--”

“Don’t be so unreasonable, my dear! It’s only that I think it unfair to
Alfred--”

“Why?” she demanded, impatiently.

“You shouldn’t stay away from him.”

“Why not? He’s always saying he wants me to feel free. He certainly
shouldn’t object to my taking a little holiday.”

“And you ought to be at your work again.”

“I can practice here for Doctor Jaas. The Conservatory can wait.”

“You ought to go home!” her mother repeated.

Andrée frowned.

“Al’s just been telephoning, to ‘insist’ upon my coming home this
evening. I suppose you think he’s right?”

“Yes.”

“You mean you’d like me to rush off like that?”

“Yes, I should.”

“I shan’t!” said Andrée. “I don’t suppose you’ll mind my waiting until
to-morrow to pack my things?”

“If I were you, I should go with Alfred this evening--”

“I wouldn’t for anything! Just give in to his silly whim--”

“It’s not a silly whim.... Andrée.... I wrote to him.”

Andrée stared at her mother’s reflection in the glass.

“What!” she cried.

Claudine opened the drawer of the dressing-table and looked into it.

“I thought--the sooner you went home, the better,” she said, in a low
voice.

Andrée did not ask why. She understood very well.


§ ii

It was a marvel to Claudine that no one else had noticed. There was a
certain effrontery about them both, a smiling ease, but it should not
have deceived Edna. She herself had observed it the first time she had
gone downstairs and seen them together. Andrée had been at the piano,
and Malloy standing by her, to turn her music. She had looked up at him,
and met his eyes, and it was not possible for Claudine to doubt that
they understood each other too well. She could not help watching them.
Malloy was attentive to Edna--rather too much so--but it was with an air
of bravado, of displaying his versatility, his irresistible fascination.
With a sidelong glance he would follow Andrée with his idiotic
infatuation, his bedazzlement, plain in his face. The very fact that
they so seldom spoke to each other made her quite sure that there was a
great deal of which she knew nothing. She regarded Andrée’s cool triumph
with an aching heart. She was not shocked or astounded; it is a sad
truth that no perfidy or evil could shock that woman. She was willing to
believe both the best and the worst of anyone; whatever was presented to
her, she accepted. She believed that now she was seeing the very worst
of Andrée, the selfishness, the recklessness, the cruelty, which she
knew better than anyone else. She didn’t blame Malloy; not much was to
be expected from him. He was kind-hearted and manly, and so on, but wax
in hands like Andrée’s. He didn’t love Andrée; he wouldn’t have thought
of her if she hadn’t made him. He had been happy with Edna, and he would
be again--if he were let alone. And Andrée didn’t love him; she would
forget him. If it were stopped _now_.

That is the reason that Claudine had written to her son-in-law.

“I really think, Alfred, that for several reasons it would be wise to
induce Andrée to go home to you as soon as possible, and to take up her
work again,” she had written, and she had left it to his common sense to
comprehend and to follow her hint.

But she hadn’t reckoned with his unruly passions. He had put two and two
together, to make a sum considerably more than four. He had seen Malloy
once in their sitting-room at the hotel, where he had come to sing for
Andrée. He had decidedly not liked him.

“If he’s engaged to Edna--or going to be--why does he hang around here?”
he had asked.

“I suppose he hasn’t the same idea of etiquette as you,” Andrée had
answered, with an unpleasant smile. “However, if you don’t like him,
I’ll tell him not to come. He’ll understand.”

She had intended to wound and anger him, and she had succeeded. But she
had done something more; she had awakened in him that old and buried
suspicion for women of Andrée’s class.

Years before he had met Andrée that idea had been superseded. He had
made his money, and had begun to know at least a little of that other
world. And he saw that the women there were no more or less than human
beings, very much hampered and hurt by their idleness. He had tried to
see in Andrée not only the beloved woman, but a human being entitled to
as many faults and weaknesses as he had himself, entitled to the same
moderation of judgment that he himself required. He had deliberately put
aside his suspicion of Malloy, he had conquered Andrée’s irritability
with his patient good-humour, and they had been getting along very
nicely the week before Claudine’s illness.

And now, by the words of Claudine’s letter, all the fruits of his
reason were destroyed, and the old distrust and envy and utter
misunderstanding came rushing back. He saw Andrée as a stranger of whom
he knew really nothing, an unaccountable, alien creature. He knew at
once that Claudine’s letter referred to Malloy. No doubt the fellow was
hanging about the house there all the time, singing to her....

It was on Saturday night that he got it; he had reflected upon it all
that night, and the next morning, and by the afternoon he was in a
humour which would have caused Andrée no little astonishment. He hated
the Vincelles and all their entourage; he believed that they were
laughing at him, that he had been played with all these weeks, that now
they fancied they had got well rid of him. All except Claudine; she
wasn’t like the others, of course. He wished that he could see her and
talk to her, but that couldn’t be. She had at least indicated to him
what should be done.


§ iii

At eight o’clock he rang the door bell.

“I want to see Mrs. Stephens!” he said, curtly, to the servant.

“She’s at supper, sir. Will you wait?”

“No; just ask her to step here and speak to me!”

“What name, please, sir?”

“Her husband,” he said, grimly.

They were all in the dining-room, enjoying the “Sunday night tea” of
their tradition. Gilbert sat at the head of the table and made jokes,
like a patriarch; opposite him was Claudine, on one side Edna and
Malloy; on the other, Bertie and Andrée. They lingered; they had not
yet thought of rising from the table when the maid entered with her
message.

“Mr. Stephens is upstairs, ma’am!” she whispered to Andrée.

“Who is it?” asked Gilbert, in the tone of a man who is master in his
own house.

“Mr. Stephens, sir,” answered the girl.

He turned red; he was sorry he had asked; he was very much at a loss.
And so was everyone else. This proscribed man actually under this roof!
Gilbert was torn between his anger at the fellow’s audacity and the
respect due him as a husband. Propriety conquered.

“Ask Mr. Stephens to come down here and join us,” he said. “Bertie,
bring up another chair to the table!”

But the girl returned almost immediately.

“Mr. Stephens is sorry, sir, but he is in a hurry, and he would be
obliged if Mrs. Stephens would come upstairs.”

Andrée rose. But her expression alarmed her mother.

“Andrée!” she murmured, but her warning was unheeded. Andrée went slowly
upstairs, and into the hall where her husband stood waiting. He had not
removed his felt hat, but he had thrown open the fur-lined overcoat of
which he was so absurdly proud. Never had his appearance so profoundly
displeased her.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Her tone excited him to instant hostility.

“I told you I was coming,” he said.

“And I told you not to come.”

She looked at him.

“I didn’t think even you would do a thing like this--coming
here--waiting in the hall--like a servant with a message--”

“That’s enough,” he said. “I only want to know whether you’re coming
back, or not.”

“When I’m ready, I’ll come.”

“I’m ready now. I’ve waited as long as I’m going to wait.”

“Are you trying to threaten me?” she asked with cold surprise.

“No, I’m simply giving you your choice--to come with me, or to stay.”

“I’ll stay, thank you,” she said.

She had a sudden impulse of pity for him, he looked so desolate and
lost. She thought it would be nice to have her cake and also to eat it.

“Let’s not quarrel!” she said. “Come downstairs and have supper with
us!”

“No!” he said. “I’m going.... The servant’s delivered his message.”

He opened the door and went out, slamming it after him with a crash.

Andrée struggled against a great desire to cry, or to shout after him,
she didn’t know which.

“Little beast!” she said, aloud. “Vulgar little bully!”

“What’s the meaning of this?” said a severe voice behind her, and she
turned to see her father.

“There’s no meaning in it at all,” she answered. “Al’s gone home, that’s
all.”

“Did you quarrel, Andrée?”

She was surprised; she had forgotten that fathers were supposedly
authorized to ask such impertinent questions.

“No,” she said. “He thought I would come home this evening, but I wasn’t
ready.”

Gilbert saw some feminine mutiny in this.

“Did you refuse to accompany him?” he asked, in a portentous voice.

“Yes,” she answered. “Of course I did. Is that a crime? Am I supposed to
humour every caprice?”

Gilbert stopped her with a gesture. He put himself in Alfred’s place; he
knew how he would have felt under the circumstances, how humiliated and
furious.

“No doubt he had very good reasons. You’ve already remained away for
over five weeks--”

“Four weeks.”

“Four weeks, then. You have--in my opinion--you have neglected him.”

Andrée made no defense, but her air was not acquiescent. Gilbert became
more fatherly.

“Now, I’ll tell you what you’ll do, Andrée. Telephone your husband, and
tell him you’ll be home in an hour or so. And I’ll take you myself, and
make the young man’s acquaintance, eh?”

“No, thank you, Father. I’m not ready to go.”

“Get ready then! Get ready! Bertie will telephone for you. Bertie!” he
called. “Bertie! Just a moment, please!”

Bertie came running upstairs.

“Your sister’s going home--”

“I’m not!” said Andrée.

Gilbert was astounded.

“This is a serious matter,” he said. “I can’t permit it. It’s your duty
to go home to your husband.”

“I’ll just postpone the duty for a few days,” said Andrée.

“I say no! He came for you this evening and--”

“What is the matter?” asked Claudine’s low voice. She had come up after
Bertie, and was standing in the shadow, outside the circle of light cast
by the lamp on the newel post.

“I am telling Andrée that she must go home to-night. It seems her
husband came to fetch her and she refused to go with him.”

“She’ll go to-morrow,” said Claudine. “It’s rather late now.”

“Father,” said Andrée, “I don’t want to be rude--but it’s my own affair.
I can’t let anyone tell me what I shall do. I’ll go home when I think
best.”

“This is outrageous!” shouted Gilbert. “You can’t adopt that tone toward
me, young woman! You’ve been spoilt and indulged long enough! Bertie, go
down to the garage and bring the car!”

“No!” cried Claudine.

“Do as I tell you! Now, Andrée, I’ll give you fifteen minutes to pack
what you need, and then you’ll go, ready or not. This is my house, and
what I say shall be done. Do you understand?”

“I believe I do!” she answered, carelessly. “You’re putting me out,
aren’t you? Very well, I’ll go!”

She turned and ran up the stairs.

Claudine turned upon Gilbert with desperation.

“Gilbert! Go after her! Tell her she can wait! Tell her--”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort!” he answered. “I won’t be defied in my own
house--”

She seized his arms with her weak hands and actually tried to shake him.

“Stop her!” she cried. “Stop her! You don’t realize what you’re doing!”

He looked down at his wife with stupefaction.

“Stop her!” she cried, again. “Go after her and tell her to wait!”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said, severely, “to suggest--”

But she didn’t wait for him to finish.

“Then I’m going with her,” she said.

With trembling knees she ascended the stairs, entered her room and began
dressing. She hastily put into a little bag a few necessary clothes, her
jewel case and her bank books, and came out again, just as Andrée had
gone downstairs.

“Gilbert!” she whispered to her husband. “I must stay with her until
they are reconciled. It’s a matter of vital importance!”

He was touched; she was so ill, so weak, so terribly upset.

“Very well!” he said. “Bertie will take you to their house. Take care of
yourself! You’re not fit to go out.”

She gave him a hasty kiss, and taking Bertie’s arm, left the house.
Andrée was already in the street, standing beside the car.

“I’ll have to drive you,” said Bertie. “Donald was out.”

“But you won’t drive me home, my child!” said Andrée. “You can take me
to some other hotel.”

“Take her wherever she wants, Bertie!” said Claudine, with a sob.




CHAPTER NINE

HOME AGAIN


§ i

Claudine sat down to answer her distressing correspondence. She took a
long time to arrange her writing materials, to adjust the light, for her
heart failed her, courage and hope were nearly gone. She sat before the
same little rosewood desk she had used in her girlhood, in that little
bedroom she had passed so many happy years in, she was at home again, in
the house in which she had been born, and she had at this moment no
better wish than that she might die there.

She had brought Andrée here the day after their flight, nearly a month
ago. She had felt a presumptuous and sublime joy; for the first time in
her life she was going to have Andrée alone, alone there in that house
of gentle memories. She would take her for walks, show her the places
she had so loved in her own young days, she would soften her heart and
win her utterly. She would teach her to see the worth of her husband,
the sacredness of their bond, with all her love, all her sad wisdom she
would lead her back from this morass into which she had strayed. She
had felt sure that she could do this, now that they were alone. Andrée
was susceptible, she could be persuaded. She had shown a passionate
affection for her mother; she had wept in her arms that night, she had
accused herself of selfishness and ingratitude.

There had been just two days of Paradise, two long days spent together
in exquisite companionship. The granddaughter of Selma, Mrs. Mason’s
most devoted old servant, had come to wait on them, and she made them
entirely comfortable. There was nothing to worry or disturb them. They
had had their meals together alone, and quiet evenings in the
drawing-room before a fine log fire. They hadn’t mentioned Andrée’s
affair; Claudine was content to wait for that, filled with hope by her
child’s new softness.

And then on the third evening Malloy came. Evidently Andrée had sent for
him, for she greeted him without surprise. He was troubled, anxious,
very ill at ease; he had the unmistakable air of a man tormented by an
unwelcome passion. He was afraid of Claudine, he was ashamed of his
treachery to Edna, he was ashamed of his terrible bondage. But he could
not escape. Andrée’s mocking smile turned his heart to water. He adored
her; he was unable to hide his madness.

Andrée didn’t attempt to see him alone. She brought him into the room
where her mother sat before the fire, and kept him there. She asked him
to sing, and he did so, his fervent and touching voice sounded through
the fire-lit room and moved the wretched mother to tears. What was she
to do? She could see him with Andrée’s eyes, she could so easily
understand what it was that had captured that reckless and beauty-loving
heart. He was so handsome, so ardent, so entirely a lover. He had none
of Alfred’s preoccupations; he hadn’t, she thought, any thoughts at all,
nothing but sentiments and traditions. But a gallant gentleman--

He left early. It certainly had not been a pleasant evening for him. He
had scarcely been able to speak, with Claudine present. But when he was
going, and had said good-night to Andrée, who hadn’t risen, she followed
him out to the front door.

“Mr. Malloy!” she said. “Have you told--Edna?”

“No ...” he said. “I’m ashamed to say I haven’t.... But of course I
shall....”

“Don’t!” she entreated. “Please don’t! Not just yet! If you can--won’t
you go to see her as usual?”

“But--do you think that’s--honourable?” he asked, shocked.

“It’s kind, Mr. Malloy!”

“But--isn’t it--only putting it off, you know?”

“Sometimes it’s better to do that,” she said. “Please, Mr. Malloy, if
you are able to--?”

“I’ll try!” he said, quite miserably. “I suppose you don’t want--me to
say anything--until you’re home again?”

“Yes,” she answered.

The door closed behind him.

“Because I’m going to stop this!” she said to herself. “It can’t be! I’m
going to stop it!”

That was her one object--that nothing irreparable should be said or
done. She was absolutely certain that the infatuation would not last,
there was not one element in it to make it permanent. She was certain
that if no monstrous irrevocable folly were committed, Malloy would
thankfully return to Edna, who really suited him, and that Andrée would
go back to her husband.

But she was filled with terror at the possibility of that evil chance.
She lay awake all that night, trying to plan how she could prevent it.

No enlightenment came. Malloy came again and again. She dreaded to speak
to Andrée, for she knew how speech solidifies and strengthens the
vaguest thoughts, but it could no longer be avoided. She could no longer
be complaisant. She waited until Andrée was in bed one night and then
she went into her room and sat beside her in the dark, at the foot of
her bed.

“Andrée!” she said. “I must know!”

“I want you to, Mother. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me....” She sat
up and flung her arms round her mother.

“Oh, my darling!” she said. “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry! I know
I’ve made you suffer. I know it’s a dreadful thing to do to dear little
Edna! But I can’t help it! I thought at first it would only be a lark. I
didn’t mean any harm. I never imagined _this_ would come! But now it’s
too late! I love him so, Mother! I never knew what love was before. I
never, never felt like this about Al.... Oh, Mother! I’d stop if I
could! I don’t want to hurt you or Edna. But I can’t help it!”

“You can, Andrée! It’s not necessary to do what you want.”

“You’re so cold and so--good, you can’t understand! I love Francis so
that I can’t give him up. No matter what harm it does, to me, or anyone
else.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“I’ve written to Al, to ask him to--for a divorce.”

“Oh!” cried her mother. “_Why_ did you do that?”

“What else could I do? You didn’t think I wanted a nasty underhand
intrigue, did you, Mother? I wouldn’t--I wouldn’t even kiss Francis
until I was free from Al. I’m not that sort.”

“What did Alfred say?”

“Nothing. He didn’t answer. But I know he’ll do it. He’s always said
he’d never try to hold me if I wanted to be free.”

“I think you ought to see him, my child.”

“Why?”

Claudine had no intention of telling her true reason.

“It’s the best and frankest way to do,” she said. “If you like, I will
write to him and ask him to come here. I wish you would see him--for my
sake, Andrée.”

Andrée sighed.

“I will, then, if you like, Mother. But it’ll be horrible. We’ll be
horrible. We’ll quarrel. All his commonness comes out when he’s angry.”

“You needn’t quarrel. Then it’s agreed that I’m to write?”

“Yes,” said Andrée. “But it’s not a bit of use to try your diplomacy,
Mother dear! I see through you!”

       *       *       *       *       *

And this very evening she was trying to write that letter. Andrée and
Malloy were sitting on the porch, almost under her window, now and then
she could hear the murmur of their voices.

“I’ll write the other letters first!” she decided, in despair.

She wrote to Gilbert, the same sort of thing she had been writing all
the month.

     “I think it is very necessary to stay with Andrée until she and her
     husband are reconciled. It is a critical time. I hope and believe
     that all will turn out well.”

He, of course, knew nothing at all of the Malloy complication; he
believed it to be a simple quarrel.

Then she wrote to Edna:

     My dear little girl:

     It is always a pleasure to receive one of your cheerful letters. I
     can’t thank you enough for taking such good care of Father, Bertie,
     and Cousin Lance. I am very glad you like Bertie’s Giulia; she is a
     charming little creature, and very devoted to him. Your description
     of their ball was amusing, and, I thought, rather touching. Bertie
     had told me of Mr. Santi’s predilection for wizards; I think I
     should enjoy them myself. Your dress must have been lovely. I am
     sorry your father thought it too short! Personally I think that
     style suits you; you don’t look any older than when you were a
     little girl going to dancing school.

     Write to me often, my dear little Edna. And don’t expect any news
     from me, because there is none. I am very much better; you are
     _not_ to worry. As soon as this most unfortunate affair is settled,
     I shall be at home again.

                                          Very lovingly and gratefully,
                                                           YOUR MOTHER.

     P. S. Be sure to send the furs to cold storage _this week_!

She looked again at the little pile of letters she had had from Edna,
gay, pleasant, commonplace. And yet alarming. There was not a single
mention of Malloy. Edna was not one to wear her heart on her sleeve;
she had no ability and no desire for expressing her emotions. Her mother
blessed her for her seemly reticence; how easy it was to deal with
people who didn’t talk, who took so much for granted! She was quite
certain that the poor little thing was very unhappy, but she was also
certain that she was not desperate. She had no doubt noticed the change
in her handsome lover, but she wished no consoling for it; she would
console herself, she would endure with dignity and common sense.

And now for Alfred.

She hesitated for a long time, then began to write, in her careful and
delicate hand:

   My dear Alfred:

     I have just learned of Andrée’s decision, and I think I need not
     tell you how it grieved me. Not only on your account, but on hers,
     I believe that a divorce would be a terrible mistake, and I beg you
     to oppose it resolutely. I beg of you, Alfred, not to consent to
     it. No one understands Andrée as I do, and I know that this would
     be the very worst thing possible for her.

     She has consented to see you and I entreat you to come and talk it
     over with her. I trust to your deep affection for her, and to your
     humanity. I know that she can never be happy and _safe_ with any
     one but you.

     Will you come on Sunday, if convenient for you?

                                                    Always your friend,
                                                     CLAUDINE VINCELLE.

She stamped and sealed it, and lay down on the bed, to read, to try to
read and to forget her bitter anxiety.


§ ii

Sunday came, and no word from him. And on Sunday evening Mr. Malloy
appeared. Claudine was very much taken aback; he had never before come
on Sunday, and she had very humanly taken it for granted that he never
would. She hadn’t told Andrée that she expected Alfred; she had planned
to take her by surprise, before she could adopt a difficult and
dangerous mood. If he should come now! She sat upstairs in her room, in
a state of tremulous agitation, looking out of her window, trying in
vain to see the street through the fog that had risen, listening for his
footfall, though what she could do to forestall him she didn’t know.

Outside on the porch Andrée and Malloy were sitting, well-wrapped, coat
collars turned up against the thick, chill mist of that April night.
Their hands were clasped, but they spoke very little. They were in a
mood of sombre depression, not unknown to lovers. Now and then Claudine
heard the sound of their voices, forlorn and detached; if it had been
Alfred, she thought, how different it would have been! A continuous flow
of talk, and retorts from Andrée, irritated perhaps, but certainly
interested....

She fancied she heard a footstep on the hilly street; she opened her
window softly and leaned out. The trees were dripping on the gravel
drive; hoarse whistles sounded from the bay, and--yes, undoubtedly, that
was the garden gate! A step on the porch, and Andrée’s voice--

“I want to see Mrs. Vincelle!”

She flew down the stairs and opened the front door.

“Come in, Alfred!” she said.

He followed her into the sitting-room and stood before her, still in his
overcoat and cap.

“So she’s out there with him?” he said. “Do you think that’s a fair way
to treat me?”

“I’m sorry, Alfred. Very sorry. I had no idea he would come this
evening. I wouldn’t for worlds have--”

“He does come to see her then? In your house? And you don’t mind?”

“Please sit down!” she said, gently. “I am so glad you came. I wanted so
to talk to you--to explain--”

He took off his overcoat and cap and threw them on a chair. He was
thinner; his face had lost its boyish and alert expression, it was set
in an expression of bitterness and misery.

“I didn’t want to come,” he said. “It can’t do any good. I knew what you
thought would happen. You thought if we saw each other we’d--melt. That
she’d change her mind. Well, I don’t want that. We’ve had enough
emotion. I don’t want any--love that comes from caprice. No more moods
and impulses. I--it wasn’t that way with me. It was--real.”

“Alfred, you mustn’t be hard! It’s not like you. If you love her, you
must forgive her a hundred times. She’s silly and--”

“It’s not a question of forgiving. I don’t see it that way. She’s free
to do as she pleases. It’s simply that now I know she’s not capable of
loyalty.”

“Alfred, I give you my word there’s been nothing wrong--”

“Oh, I believe it! She’s _respectable_!” he said, bitterly. “I’m not
afraid of her being too generous with--anyone. She’ll be like some of
those singers and geniuses I’ve read of. She’ll have half a dozen
husbands, but she’ll never do anything wrong.”

“That’s very cruel and unjust! Surely you’ve seen enough of the world to
understand these--infatuations.... He’s a very handsome and attractive
man, and she has lost her head. That’s all it is! It won’t last!”

“I know it won’t. But it will happen again. It isn’t the infatuation
that hits me so hard. I can understand that. It could happen to almost
anyone. But it’s the--the rank, beastly cruelty of it! To walk off and
leave me without a word. I--you don’t know--leaving all her little
things there--all her little things--telling me all the time she’d come
back in a few days.... It’s....”

He got up and walked over to the fire.

“No,” he said. “She can have her divorce. I always told her I’d never
try to keep her against her will. But--I wish to God we’d never got
married.... If we could only part now with some sort of decency ... if
she could just say, ‘It’s over. Good-by!’ But now--I guess you don’t
realize--I’ll have to be caught in a compromising situation--all the
dirty, filthy business will have to be written down and talked about by
a lot of lawyers.... The sort of thing I hate worse than death. It’s
what they call acting honourably for me to do that.”

“Don’t do it, Alfred! Don’t do it, I beg you! I am sure she loves you!”

“She has a damn peculiar way of loving, then.”

“I know she has. There are horrible things in her nature. But I am sure
that you know the good in her too. She is honest and--”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Can’t you see, Alfred? She needs you so! No one else can help. No one
else can help her to grow into something better.”

“Please don’t cry!” he said, in great distress. “I’d do anything for
you. You’re an angel!”

“I’m not! I’m not! I once--long ago--thought I’d leave _my_ husband. But
thank God I didn’t!”

“But it might have been better for you if you had,” he said, frankly.

She looked up in surprise.

“No!” she said. “It would have been--I am sure that self-sacrifice is
the best way in life.”

“That depends on the object. If you sacrifice yourself for--well,
humanity, it’s fine and good. But for one other human being, no!”

She had no intention of permitting an argument to begin. She pulled the
conversation away from reason back to emotion, where it belonged.

“I don’t ask you to sacrifice yourself, Alfred. It would make you both
happy.”

“I can’t do it!” he said, quietly. “She wants to leave me, and I must
let her.”

“But you’ll see her?”

“No. Please don’t ask me any more. It’s settled. I’m sorry--on your
account. I should be glad to do it for you--if I could. But I can’t.”

He went toward the chair where his coat lay and was about to put it on,
when the door opened and Andrée entered. He turned and faced her. Her
cheeks were rosy from the damp air, her black hair curled about her
forehead; her mother looked at her loveliness with a beating heart.
Surely he could not resist her!

But he picked up his cap and threw his coat over his arm.

“Good-night!” he said.

The front door closed after him.


§ iii

Not fifteen minutes ahead of him Malloy was making his way to the ferry.

“My God, what a mess!” he was saying over and over to himself. He had
never in his life felt so shabby, so shamefaced, as he had felt that
evening. There was no triumph in this love; he was a thief. He had
mortally stricken that poor little chap. He had humiliated and hurt
Edna. He had involved himself and Andrée in a disgusting scandal.

“We never can be happy,” he said. “Not on such a foundation.... But I
don’t care! I’d rather have her and be miserable all my life!”




CHAPTER TEN

DESTINY INTERVENES


§ i

Andrée was very late that evening. She had gone to the city to do some
shopping, and at eight o’clock she had not yet returned. Claudine sat
down to supper alone, but she could not eat. She was filled with
apprehension. She couldn’t imagine what was keeping Andrée.

The weather had suddenly turned mild, the dining-room windows were open
and a sweet damp breeze was blowing in from the garden. Rose had
prepared an especially appetizing supper; she hovered about the silent
woman, very anxious that she should eat it. The shaded lamp threw a warm
light on the table, set out with Mrs. Mason’s glowing old Crown Derby;
there was the same order and quiet all about her that had so delighted
her a few weeks ago. But now it frightened her. It was death-like....

“There’s no use trying to go on,” she thought. “This must end! I’ll have
to tell Gilbert--and poor little Edna. I’ll have to go back.... I’ve
done all I can.”

It was nearly a week since Alfred had come, and in the meantime Andrée
had begun her divorce proceedings. No miracle had happened; heaven had
not intervened. This disaster, this ruin was approaching with a sure
step.

“I really don’t believe I can eat, Rose!” she said, apologetically. “I’m
sorry; your little supper was so nice. Be sure to put something aside
for Mrs. Stephens.”

“I think I hear a taxi coming now, ma’am,” said Rose.

They both listened. Rose was right, a taxi was stopping outside the
house; a man’s voice said “Thank you, Miss!” and there was a step on the
veranda. Rose hurried to open the door, and in an instant Andrée entered
the room.

Claudine sprang up.

“What is the matter?” she cried, alarmed at her child’s face.

Andrée at once began to cry hysterically.

“Stop, child!” said her mother. “What is it? What has happened?”

Andrée sank into a chair by the table and leaned her head on her arms,
shaking with sobs.

“It’s too much!” she cried.

“Go away, Rose!” said Claudine. “Go into the kitchen and make Mrs.
Stephens a nice hot cup of tea!”

Rose vanished.

“What is it, Andrée?” she asked again. “Don’t torture me so! What has
happened?”

Andrée sat up suddenly and began to laugh through her sobs.

“I went to see Doctor Lawrence!” she cried. “I was afraid--It’s true!...
There’s going to be a baby!”

She began to shriek with laughter. Claudine seized her by the shoulders,
and shook her.

“Be quiet! Be quiet, Andrée! Come upstairs!”

Andrée shook her head.

“No!” she cried. “No! I’m expecting company! Francis is coming! Oh,
Lord! Oh, Lord! Isn’t it funny! Won’t he be pleased!”

“Hush! Come upstairs!” Claudine repeated, and half dragged her to her
feet. She put her arm about her and supported her up the stairs to her
own room.

“Lie down!” she said. “I’ll bathe your face in cold water. Try to
control yourself, Andrée!”

But Andrée could do nothing but weep and laugh. Claudine sat by her,
patting her cold hands and stroking her hair, silent, waiting for her to
become tranquil.

The doorbell rang, and Andrée sprang up, suddenly sobered.

“Mother!... It’s Francis! You’ll have to see him!”

“We’ll tell Rose to say you’re not at home.”

“No! I want you to see him! Listen, Mother!”

“Yes?”

Andrée looked at her with a stern glance.

“You’ll have to send him away,” she said. “Tell him it’s all over. I’ll
never see him again.”

“Do you mean that, Andrée?”

“It would hardly do to introduce a little Stephens into our household,”
said Andrée, with a frigid smile.

“But what shall I say?”

“I don’t care. Anything! Only, Mother, if you ever let him guess the
truth, I’ll never, never forgive you! My life is ruined. I’ve got to
give him up. But--it’s so ridiculous and humiliating. No one must ever
know!”

“But they can’t help knowing!”

“Francis won’t. He’s stupid. He won’t put two and two together. Tell
him--anything. Say I’ve repented on account of Edna. Only get rid of
him, for God’s sake!”

“Hush, Andrée!”

“Oh, I’m so ashamed and wretched! Why did this horrible thing happen! I
wouldn’t believe it at first! It was too ridiculous and shameful! I
won’t have Francis know. I’ll go away somewhere.”

Claudine rose.

“You’ll lie here quietly, won’t you?” she asked.

Andrée assured her that she would, and closing the door after her,
Claudine descended the stairs.

Of all the painful and awkward tasks she had yet had to do for her
child, this was the worst. She couldn’t suppress a wry little smile. She
who so loved peace and dignity, who was so constitutionally averse to
plain speaking!

Mr. Malloy was in the drawing-room, walking about. He stared a little at
the sight of Claudine.

“Good-evening!” he said.

“Good-evening!” Claudine answered, brightly.

How was she to begin? She stood quite still, and her silence warned him
of something unpleasant to come.

“It’s very difficult--” she said. “Please sit down, Mr. Malloy!”

He did so, and she seated herself opposite him.

“I must be very firm!” she thought. “Oh, if I only can get rid of him!”

He waited for some time.

“I hope there’s nothing wrong, Mrs. Vincelle,” he said, at last.

“No ... I should not call it wrong.... Indeed, I think ... I won’t try
to conceal from you, Mr. Malloy, that all this has been very painful for
me. I have always had the greatest respect for Andrée’s husband and I
thought it a great--a terrible mistake for her to leave him.”

He flushed.

“I’m sorry ...” he said.

“Naturally I think first of her. I knew that this was not for her good.
I knew--please forgive me--I knew she wouldn’t be happy with you. But I
couldn’t stop her. She is very wilful.”

“But--”

“But she has--changed, Mr. Malloy! She sees now that she was wrong. She
has asked me to tell you so!”

He rose.

“No!” he cried. “No! It’s impossible!”

“She asked me to tell you. She could not bear to do so herself. She--and
I too, Mr. Malloy--we both rely upon your--fine feeling to understand.
And to go away.”

“But I can’t believe it! Why, only three days ago--”

“I know. But you must believe me. She--it’s so hard to tell you--she
doesn’t wish to see you again.”

“Please let me see her!”

“She doesn’t want to see you. I am sure you will understand that it is
best so.”

“What has happened? What has made her change?”

“It is impossible to say. A--a change of heart.... But I beg you to
accept this as--final--and to go!”

“Very well!” he said. “I’ll go!”

She held out her hand to him.

“Mr. Malloy!” she said. “Can’t all this be as if it had never happened?”

“I don’t see how,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t forget so easily.”

“But--some day I hope you will marry happily and--”

He shook his head.

“You will!” she assured him. “You are too much of a man to let this
really hurt you! If you cannot have--exactly what you want, you must--”

She stopped, in confusion, and suddenly, in some inexplicable way, he
guessed her meaning. He was astounded.

“You don’t mean--” he began. “ ... Edna?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“But--after I’ve deceived her so?”

“The only question is--if you--care for her?”

“I do! I always have! Not as I did for--Andrée.... But she’s the finest
and truest girl in the world.... I can’t tell how unutterably ashamed
I’ve been of the way I’ve behaved toward her--”

“Repair it!”

“Don’t you see that I can’t!”

“She doesn’t know, does she?”

“No.... But she’s suspected that--there’s something wrong--”

“It’s not too late. If you really care for her, if you’re really sorry
for what you’ve done--”

“I do care for her. Too much to make a--second best of her.”

“Oh, stupid! Stupid!” she cried to herself. “What does it matter!”

He went on, in a horrified voice.

“You surely wouldn’t recommend a marriage founded on a deception?”

A cynical thought occurred to her.

“They’re all founded on deceptions,” she reflected. “On lies that people
believe about each other.”

“I’m not recommending anything,” she said, aloud. “I only want to say
again that I’m very sorry for all this, Mr. Malloy.”

He went away, down the little garden walk for the last time.

“She’s not the high-minded woman I thought her!” he reflected.
“She’s--her ideas are absolutely--sordid.”

And then he forgot her in his profound sorrow.

Claudine remained for a moment in the drawing-room.

“He’ll go back to Edna,” she said to herself. “I’m glad.... He’ll do as
well as anyone else. He’s kind. And rather attractive.... She won’t
expect too much.”


§ ii

She was just falling asleep that night, after having seen Andrée
comfortably settled. She was mortally weary, unable even to think. She
had a light burning low, as was her reprehensible custom, and she had a
book beside her, in case she could not sleep. But, in spite of her
trouble, the murmur of the night wind soothed her, and the air blowing
across her face. She had closed her eyes, and a blissful numbness was
stealing over her, when she was startled by Andrée’s voice.

“Mother!” she cried. “Mother!”

She was instantly wide awake. Andrée stood beside her, like a spectre in
the dim light, in her night dress and her dark hair about her shoulders.

“I want Alfred!” she said. “Oh, Mother ...! I began to think--”

Claudine took her dressing-gown from the foot of the bed and laid it
about her child’s shoulders.

“I’ve been so wicked!” she went on. “It frightens me! I want Al back! I
want to see his kind face.... He’s so kind and so good! I want to go
home to him! I want just him--and this baby. Please, please send for
him!”

“I will, pet, as soon as it’s morning!”

“I can’t wait! I’m so unhappy! I want to hear his dear, kind voice!”

“Come in here and lie down beside me, darling. Talk to me!”

With that beloved head on her shoulder, Claudine grew calm and strong
again. She would have listened to her all night. What did it matter if
this were only a new caprice? It was a good one, a safe one.

She thought of her own life, of how her child had assuaged her
bitterness and given her peace. She thought of the hopes she had
relinquished--such little hopes compared with Andrée’s inordinate
ambitions, and she believed that all that was to happen again. Andrée
would be saved, if she would love her child better than herself. And she
believed that this would happen. She looked very earnestly into her
face; it was imperious, even cruel, but it was the cruelty of blindness,
of one who inflicts suffering without knowing what suffering is.

She didn’t care in the least that Andrée’s brilliant future was
endangered. She didn’t care how fettered and narrow her life might
become. Better narrow and deep, she thought, than broad and shallow.

She listened quite unmoved to her child’s tears and sobs. It didn’t
matter. She kissed her with a sublime sort of indifference. She had won;
God had helped her, and she had won.


§ iii

Alfred came, promptly, the next morning, and Andrée received him alone.

“Al,” she said. “Can we make a new start?”

He didn’t look at her. When Claudine had telephoned so urgently for him
to come, he had expected something of this sort.

“I suppose we could make any number of them,” he said. “The question is,
would there be any use in it?”

“You said--”

“I know all that I said. I said you could be free whenever you wanted.
And that implied the same thing for me, Andrée.”

“I don’t want to be free.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because--I want--”

She held out her arms, her eyes filled with tears. But he did not move
toward her.

“Al!” she cried. “Do please come here!”

“No,” he said. “Let’s not complicate the thing with--_that_. Just tell
me what’s changed you. I’m here to listen.”

“Suppose--it was only that I’d found out I was wrong--and that I missed
you, and wanted you back? “Wouldn’t that be enough? Haven’t you missed
me?”

In spite of himself he was touched.

“I won’t pretend I haven’t.... It was a bit of a shock to me, you know.
I’d never expected anything like that. I thought that you--that we were
so--close--nothing could come between us.”

“Couldn’t you forget it? Al, it’s hard for me to--to beg like this! I
can’t say anything more. I only ask you if you’re willing to start
again.”

That was a voice which he found it hard indeed to withstand, a face that
moved him beyond measure. Yet he was passionately anxious that no new
mistake should be made.

“But what guarantee would we have that we’d do any better?” he cried.

“I think--” she began. “I think it would be different--now.”

“But why, Andrée? Do you see things differently? I mean--”

She had begun to cry a little.

“You see, Al ... there’s going to be a baby....”

“What!” he cried. His face had turned quite pale. “What! My God!
Really?”

“Very really!” she answered, with a faint smile.

He sprang up and caught her in his arms, in a sort of desperation.

“Oh, Andrée! I’m so sorry! My lovely, beautiful girl! I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t!” she cried. “You make it worse! Be glad, can’t you? I thought
you would be. I thought everyone would be--simply beaming.... I wanted
you to be!”

“I’m not!” he said, doggedly. “I love you too much!”

“_Do_ you?” she said, triumphantly.

“Now you’ve got it out of me,” he said. “I knew you would! Yes, I do
love you--too much, I guess. I don’t want anyone but you, ever.”

“Oh, Al! Al! It’s so heavenly to have you back again, and hear you
again, and see you--with your dear old rumpled hair. There’s no one like
you!”

“I wish to God you didn’t have this before you!” he said, sombrely.

“But I’m glad, Al!” she told him. “It’s life!”




EPILOGUE


§ i

It struck Claudine with the force of a blow. She put down the book and
the night wind at once fluttered over the pages, as if by command of
nature trying to divert her. But she turned back to the place again, all
her heart fixed on the words like the eyes of a frightened child fixed
upon an approaching light; she did not all at once grasp the meaning,
but the significance was coming to her, illuminating and dispelling a
familiar dusk, revealing to her what had always been there, but what she
had not seen.

She had been turning over the pages of an old copy of Browning’s poems,
given her by Lance years ago, because he had fancied that so small and
delicate and pretty a creature must necessarily feed on poetry. As a
matter of fact, she had never been poetic, not even very romantic; she
had always had a love for indigestible ideas, which had, in the main,
done her very little harm. She might read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer;
she remained none the less the Claudine who could wander gay and happy
in a garden.

And now suddenly stood up this robust dead poet to look into her soul
and accuse her, to judge and condemn her. The thing had all the solemn
horror of what her ancestors would have called the voice of an awakened
conscience; it was the handwriting on the wall.

    The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
    Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
    Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

That was for her! That was an arrow for her heart.

She was quite alone in the house; Rose had gone out to a lodge meeting
of the Lady Pioneers. Claudine was always glad to let her go; she was
never so happy as when alone with her ghosts. When the stairs creaked,
that was the stout figure of her mother in dull black silk, going about
her benevolent household affairs; there was a rustle of paper; that was
the boy Lance studying in his room upstairs; a faint tapping; that was
her father emptying his pipe. The wind blowing across the garden brought
back to her unblemished the old emotions, the sheltered security, that
careless and formless hope that had filled her girlhood; she would
forget, alone in her room, the reality she had found so bitter.

But to be a ghost among these other ghosts! That frightened her. She
looked about the quiet lamp-lit room; in the bookcase her old books, on
the walls her old pictures, on the bureau the photographs of her father
and mother, and a pitiful little bottle of that Cherry Blossom perfume;
only the old things; it was as if twenty years had been a dream. She was
aware that she had tried to make them so, that she had tried with
desperation not to live. Blasphemous effort, rewarded now by this numb
anguish!

“A frustrate ghost!” she cried aloud, and her voice seemed to have no
sound. She had a preposterous idea that she was invisible and inaudible,
that there was nothing in this room but the memory of her. She was only
her own dream. She sprang up to look in the mirror, and saw there a
white face and wide eyes; an apparition.... The wind blowing on her was
suddenly chill, like a cold breath.

“No, no!” she said. “Oh, no! I want to be alive!”

There was for once no solace for her in that dear garden; she closed the
window and pulled down the blind, to shut away the dark and the
troubling sounds; she sat down and clasped her trembling hands; she
tried to see herself once more in the stream of life, let it be never so
cold and violent. She thought of Andrée; nothing but pain in that
thought. Poor young Andrée and her poor little baby! Poor Al! She
thought of Edna, hiding under her tranquillity an unforgettable
humiliation, of Bertie, with his gallant despair; of Gilbert,
unaccountably forlorn. There was a thin veil hung between her and these
living, struggling creatures; she could see them but not reach them; she
fancied them being swept past her and calling to her and needing her,
while she looked on, standing apart.

“Oh, why haven’t I done something? Why haven’t I helped?” she demanded
of her shrinking heart. And the inexorable response was “Begin now!”

But remorse came easier than effort. She passionately condemned herself.
She saw herself an egoist; in her young days she had been gay and
gracious because she had had what she wanted. And when that had been
withdrawn from her, she had grown cold, aloof, finding peace in
indifference. She thought of all she might have done, of the influence
she might have exerted. Not that she believed herself stronger or wiser
than these four adult human beings for whom she felt responsible; it was
a mystic belief in the power of a woman and a mother. She was convinced
that she could give more than was in her, more than she had; she loathed
herself for not having done so. She believed, as was natural, that if
she had tried she must have succeeded. She knew that in her garden
everything grew only according to its type; she believed nevertheless
that human creatures might be so warmed by her love, so nourished by her
tears, that they would grow not according to any laws, but according to
her own desires.

She felt that this was the turning point in her life; she had wasted
twenty years, dreamed them away; only God knew how few or how many
remained to her. She was making the most painful effort of her life; it
was not a struggle, she wished it were; it was an attempt to struggle.
The lamp must be lit, the loin girded; she must no longer pass among the
living as a gentle phantom. She must help all these people who belonged
to her; she must by her valour and devotion compensate for what they
were denied; she must inspire and fortify. But what was to breathe life
into her? Love--even such love as she had for Andrée--had not done it.
She was not religious; she could not turn to prayer. And her
philosophers had nothing at all to give her. She sat up almost all that
night, trying to fan her shrinking and mutinous spirit into a blaze....
Her life should be service; she clung to that idea.

It was the inevitable moment, due to everyone whose work is finished, to
women whose children have grown; it was a little death. But she did not
recognize it as that; she felt it to be a spiritual re-birth. The world
was empty and she was obliged to fill it with herself. And she was by no
means large enough.


§ ii

She telephoned to Gilbert in his office the next morning; she was so
affable that he was upset. She should have been home long ago, anyhow,
instead of staying down there alone on Staten Island in that peculiar
way. He felt that she was trying to be ingratiating, and this of course
aroused his hostility and distrust. Her quiet, clear voice reaching him
in the midst of his morning mail caused him all the usual feelings of
annoyance induced by any thought of home life. She asked him about his
health, and he knew she didn’t care; she even asked that supremely
irritating question “How is business?” Well did he know why his family
asked that.

Then, amazingly, she said:

“If you’re not too tired, Gilbert, won’t you come down here for dinner?
The garden is so lovely.”

“Suppose you come home,” he said, surlily, but it was only an
instinctive reaction; the bear hitting out with his paw.

“Do come,” she said, pleasantly. “It would be nice to be by ourselves.
And the garden--”

“Very well! Very well!” he said. “I’ll come. I can’t spend the morning
at the telephone. I’ll come, Claudine. Good-by.”

Now this disturbed him. He was inclined to suspect, with reason, all
advances made by his family, and yet he liked these advances. He felt
fairly sure that his wife had some favour to ask, some feminine
chicanery to execute, but he was like a king with his courtiers; he was
grimly contemptuous of all this beguilement, but he relished the homage.

The idea of going back to that house on the hill to see Claudine stirred
in him old and unpleasant memories. He felt himself no phantom; he was
poignantly aware of the passing of twenty years and youth with them; he
didn’t feel that he had not tried, but that he had not succeeded. He had
made money, just as he had intended, but the rewards of his activity had
been unjustly withheld. He had the wrong sort of wife, the wrong sort of
children, the wrong sort of life altogether. Still he would do the right
thing, as he had always done. He stopped on his way to the ferry and
bought Claudine a five-pound box of chocolates, the kinds she hated most
and which he had bought for years and years, never being undeceived.


§ iii

But long before he got there, all Claudine’s plans had been upset. She
had gone about all the morning, seriously intent upon her scheme to win
back her husband. This, she felt, was the first step along her new road;
once he was won back, she would make him into something different, as it
was her womanly duty to do; she would take him to concerts and persuade
him to read. She had that idea common to good and inexperienced women,
of the fascination she might wield if she chose, an idea in no way
related to vanity, but a conception necessary to existence. She had
never yet consciously tried to be fascinating, but at the back of her
mind had always been the thought of how powerful she might be, if she
weren’t so nice. She was obliged to believe this. If Gilbert, by
analogy, had realized when he went out to lunch, that perhaps seven out
of ten men that he passed could have knocked him flat on his back, he
couldn’t have endured life; he had to believe that he could hold his
own, if he wanted. And she, too, must have her belief in her mystic
power.

She had been sitting down to a delightful, solitary lunch; the
dining-room with its shining waxed floor and well-polished mahogany
furniture, the yellow roses in a great Delft bowl, the dim, cool peace
all about her, filled her with serenity and courage. Certainly she would
change Gilbert and everything else in her life; she intended to ask him
to stop here with her for the rest of the summer; a real sacrifice, for
it meant the end of this delicate and immaterial existence, and a
hateful preoccupation with roasts and wines and laundry. Edna had gone
to Easthampton with the Ryders, Bertie was away with Lance; Miss Dorothy
could have the Brooklyn house to herself. This transplanting would make
her work easier, but she realized that she would have to be notably
charming in order to win his consent. She thought a good deal about what
she should wear; she was engaged in this when Al came in. He was very
hot and crumpled and cheerful.

“Oh ... Alfred!” she cried. “Andrée ...?”

“Fine!” he told her. “But I had a free afternoon--she had some friends
there, and I thought I’d like to see _you_.”

“There’s nothing at all wrong?”

“Not a thing! Only--I don’t know--I’ve been wanting to have a talk with
you for a good while.... I know I talk too much, but just the same, it
seems to me the best way to get anywhere.”

“Sit down,” she said, smiling. “I think you’re very fortunate to be able
to talk, Alfred. I can’t think of anything nicer than to be able to
express what you feel.”

He did sit down opposite her, and at once assumed his serious,
conversational look.

“It’s a lot more than that,” he said. “I have an idea that you can’t
really feel a thing until you do express it. That’s the value of
talking; not that it conveys your ideas to someone else, because
generally it doesn’t, but that it wakes up your own brain.... But this
was going to be about Andrée.... There’s something I want to get from
you--something I can’t get hold of.”

“If you mean how best to get on with her--” she began, but he
interrupted.

“No; it’s not that. That’s all a mistake--this ‘getting on’ with people.
It means either humouring her, like a spoiled child, or trying to
dominate her. Well, what I want is, to _let her alone_. And that’s what
I can’t do. I’m always trying to make her see things my way.”

“But you can’t help doing that when you know you’re right.”

“I don’t know; I only think. I’m only an experimenter. I may be wrong
about lots of things. Anyway, she’s experimenting, too, and she’s
altogether too fine to be bothered. I’ve spent the best part of my life
shouting people down, and now it’s hard to stop. It isn’t that I’ve
tried to cram my ideas down anyone’s throat,” he assured her,
earnestly. “All I ever wanted to do was to start people thinking. I’ve
always tried to keep hold of that idea that I was an experimenter, but
I’m too darned sure. I’m--well, I’m not humble enough, d’you see? I
interfere.... Now, that’s what I’ve always admired so in you. That’s
what makes you so wonderful. You _don’t_ interfere.”

“But--Alfred!” said the frustrate ghost, with something like a gasp.

“I wish you’d explain to me--give me some idea how you do it.... How
your mind works,” he went on. “I mean, how can you watch, the way you
do, without interfering?”

Many reasons prevented her from telling him that she had very often
tried to interfere, and had invariably failed. She was silent for some
time, while he waited anxiously for her words.

“I’d been thinking, only last night, that I didn’t
help--interfere--nearly enough,” she said, at last. She raised her eyes
to his face with a look he had never seen before, a glance troubled and
appealing; she was making a heroic struggle for candour with her
reticent and uncandid soul. No other living creature had seemed to her
so human, so impersonal, so secure, as this young man; she felt that she
could say to him as much as her heart would ever permit her to utter.
She quite forgot that he was waiting for wisdom from her; she grew pale
with the intensity of her desire to hold communion with her kind, to
hear the truth without entirely telling it.

“Alfred....” she said. “It seemed to me--I’d wasted my life.”

“But how?” he demanded.

“By not helping.”

“Well ...” he said, honestly. “Of course there’s a lot that needs doing
in the world, and the people with money and leisure--”

“I don’t mean _doing_ anything,” she said, with an impatient little
frown. “I mean--influencing. I haven’t tried to influence the people
about me.”

He uttered a mild oath of himself. It was startling, to say the least,
that she should talk like this, as if she hadn’t heard a word he had
spoken--when he had been waiting for the secret of her non-intervention.

“I should have tried to help my children--to influence them,” she went
on, with increasing agitation. “I’ve stood aside--”

“But don’t you see?” he cried. “That’s what’s so wonderful! That’s the
fine thing about you--you’ve let them alone. Even if you haven’t
accomplished much yourself, you’ve given other people a chance.”

He was distressed to see tears in her eyes.

“My children aren’t happy,” she said.

“They’re living,” he said. “They’re growing. They’re learning their own
lessons in their own way. If you’d done what you call influence them, it
would only mean that they saw things through your eyes.”

“I’ve accomplished nothing. I’ve only passed through life like--”

His glance fell on the Delft bowl.

“Like a flower,” he said, thoughtfully. “You’ve just existed, in a very
sweet, gentle way. I think that’s a mighty fine thing.... I don’t
believe there are many people who have done so little harm.”

He got up; he took her outstretched hand, and went off, without the sage
advice he had come for, but consoled for lack of it by a variety of new
ideas. And he left Claudine strangely assuaged.


§ iv

She went walking along, gravely inspecting her sweet peas, bending over
them to inhale their perfume, to touch with a delicate finger their
exquisite petals. They had done very well; she was proud of them. People
passing along the street stopped to look at them in their incredible
variety; a great bloom of colour against the high board fence, faint
pink, pale yellow, lavender, rose, a strange, deep purple brown; they
looked like little winged things, alighting for the moment on the
fragile vines.

She came to the end of the row and turned the corner to the bed where
the verbenas stood, and beside them a turbulent little sea of petunias,
closely massed. The smell of the moist earth, of the grass freshly cut,
of all the little flowers she had planted and tended, came to her on a
tiny breeze, and a limitless joy filled her. Never before in her life
had she felt so happy, so tranquil, so strong. Her glance embraced the
smooth lawn stretching to the gravel drive that encircled the house, and
the flower beds against the walls, filled with nasturtiums, thickly
bordered with sweet alyssum, drenched in the sun, hot, fragrant, valiant
little things. She was one with all of this, with no more purpose than
they had.

Alfred’s words had filled her with actual bliss. She might be a ghost,
but she was no more frustrate than that sweet pea that had swung loose
from the string upon which it should have climbed, and swayed in the
breeze, holding by nothing. She was an unlit lamp, but by the blaze of
the sun, who needed her little flame? The world wanted nothing from her,
and she had nothing to give. The turmoil of the night before was gone,
her little effort ended.

She saw Gilbert coming up the hill; he looked hot and cross, with his
straw hat pushed back on his head, and the box of chocolates under his
arm. But now his crossness didn’t seem to her alien and alarming; he was
nothing but Gilbert, a familiar mystery. There was no need to understand
him, no need for any excessive interest in him. She wasn’t required to
explain herself to him, or him to herself. She believed that she could
never again be repelled by any strangeness in him, or disturbed by what
he did. Her soul felt relieved of all its burdens, light, almost gay. He
was one person, and she was another; they couldn’t gravely affect each
other, they were not inter-dependent; they were allied, but it was an
alliance only for their interest, not to hurt or to hamper them. She
went out to meet him, with a friendly smile she led him up on the
veranda and left him there while she made an artful mint julep. Her
friendliness didn’t depend upon his being friendly; it was her own
independent emotion. But it provoked an instant response from him.

“What’s come over you?” he asked, curiously. “You haven’t been like this
for I don’t know how long.”

“Perhaps it’s this dear garden,” she answered, vaguely.

“You’d better stay in it, then,” he said, with, a sulky smile. “It
agrees with you.”

“That’s what I’d like to do. Won’t you come down here for the rest of
the summer, Gilbert? It’s very cool and quiet.”

“I might,” he answered, to her surprise.

The sun had gone down and a cheerful dusk had fallen, lively with the
chirping of insects. They talked carelessly, of the small things that
interested them; he too grew affable, almost tranquil. Astonishing how
little he wanted! Not to be charmed, not to be comprehended, only to be
accepted, casually and kindly, just as he was.

An absurd idea came to her of their two souls, sitting side by side, in
rocking chairs, absorbed in the contemplation of life; she saw these
souls as pliable white things, like half-melted candles, with great
black eyes. It made her laugh aloud.

“What’s the joke?” asked Gilbert.

“Only the silliest sort of fancy,” she said, in a comfortable tone that
didn’t irritate him. He didn’t ask again, because he didn’t care. His
desire had been always to be understood, never to understand others. And
any woman who could sit in the dusk by him while he smoked, who talked
so little, who made a julep like that, undoubtedly understood him. He
was content.