§ 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.