§ 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!”
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.