§ 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.”
“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.