§ 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.