§ 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.