THE UNLIT LAMP
A STUDY OF INTER-ACTIONS
BY
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING
Author of “Invincible Minnie,” “Rosaleen Among the Artists,”
“Angelica,” etc.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1922
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
| BOOK ONE—THE BRIDE | ||
|---|---|---|
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| [I.] | A Dance on Staten Island in 1890 | [3] |
| [II.] | A Vincelle in His Natural Habitat | [15] |
| [III.] | Gilbert Goes A-wooing | [26] |
| [IV.] | Claudine’s Peculiar Mother | [37] |
| [V.] | Claudine Learns to Adapt Herself | [49] |
| [VI.] | The Keynote | [59] |
| [VII.] | The Hedge Which Grew So Fast | [73] |
| [VIII.] | A Year Later | [88] |
| BOOK TWO—THE BREATH OF LIFE | ||
| [I.] | After Twenty Years | [97] |
| [II.] | The Forsaken Provider | [110] |
| [III.] | The Suitor with Credentials | [122] |
| [IV.] | The Unabashed Outcast | [132] |
| [V.] | The Breath of Life | [143] |
| [VI.] | The Unlawful Picnic | [155] |
| [VII.] | Stephens Explains Himself | [170] |
| [VIII.] | The Thing is on Them | [181] |
| [IX.] | Bertie | [196] |
| BOOK THREE—THE CUP IS OFFERED | ||
| [I.] | Andrée’s Recital | [211] |
| [II.] | The Bitter Triumph | [222] |
| [III.] | Andrée’s Wedding | [229] |
| [IV.] | The Beginning | [241] |
| [V.] | The Housewarming | [252] |
| [VI.] | Discords | [264] |
| [VII.] | The Pastry-Cook’s Daughter | [273] |
| [VIII.] | Mutiny | [284] |
| [IX.] | Home Again | [299] |
| [X.] | Destiny Intervenes | [311] |
| Epilogue | [322] | |
BOOK ONE
THE BRIDE
THE UNLIT LAMP
CHAPTER ONE
A DANCE ON STATEN ISLAND IN 1890
“GOOD LORD!” said young Vincelle, turning up the the collar of his overcoat. “I didn’t know we were going to the ends of the earth.”
“It’s worth it,” said his friend.
They sat in total darkness while the hired hack dragged them up the hills of Staten Island; it was a bitter night, and Vincelle wasn’t prepared for it. He shivered and pulled the rug higher over his knees. He was taking a little more than his share of that rug, but Pendleton, feeling himself more or less responsible for the cold, made no complaint. It was he who had persuaded Vincelle to make the arduous trip from Brooklyn to Staten Island, to attend a dance, and to see the prettiest girl there was to see. And Vincelle was a fellow accustomed only to cities, to warm, well-lighted houses and theatres and swift transitions in street cars and hansom cabs; he was, moreover, not adaptable and not compliant.
He looked out of the window with a sort of dismay; nothing but bare trees against a sinister night sky; now and then a lighted house in a big garden. The horse went steadfastly forward, with a monotonous jerking of his head; outside on the box loomed the swathed and shapeless figure of the coachman, who didn’t appear to be driving, but to be waiting to get somewhere.
“Is it much farther?” asked Vincelle, in an ominous voice.
“It’s not really far from the ferry,” said his friend. “Only being uphill all the way makes it seem longer.”
“I’m numb with cold.... Why the devil wasn’t I satisfied with the pretty girls in Brooklyn?”
“It’s worth it, I tell you!” Pendleton assured him, earnestly. “I’ve never had such good times in my life as I’ve had at the Masons’. Informal, but a good tone, you know. Charming people!”
Vincelle didn’t answer at all. He made up his mind to be very critical; he felt that the Masons needed to be almost superhumanly charming to compensate for so much discomfort.
They began the ascent of an outrageous hill, and the cheerful Pendleton, looking out of his window, announced that they were “practically there—the house is at the top of this hill.” He turned down the collar of his coat and gave his silk hat a careful rub with his sleeve; he began to stir about under the rug. But Vincelle made no preparations whatever; he intended to look cold and uncomfortable; it was not for him to please, but to be pleased. The carriage entered a gravel driveway with a sudden burst of speed, and drew up under a porte cochère. Lights were shining from the long windows curtained in white, and the sound of their wheels had brought a man-servant to the door.
For a moment Vincelle lingered while Pendleton made his arrangement with the driver, and then they entered the house together. And it astonished Vincelle. It was so extraordinarily full of light and colour; on either side of the hall were open doors, showing big rooms brightly carpeted, with blazing fires and flowers everywhere. From some distant region he heard voices, laughter, footsteps. The man-servant ushered them into a smaller room, carpeted in red, and lined with book shelves, where on a little table before the hearth stood a huge punch bowl; he proffered and they accepted; then he led them up the fine stairway to a bedroom which was hospitably ready for them with a roaring fire. He returned with a jug of hot water.
“Dinner in half an hour, gentlemen,” he said, and went away.
No use denying that Vincelle was impressed. Certainly they didn’t do things in this way at home. Jugs of hot water, instead of a chilly and possibly very distant bathroom, wood fires instead of hot-air registers and gas logs, flowers in February, instead of potted palms and rubber plants. Moreover, this idea of leaving it to a servant to welcome guests impressed him by its casualness; his mother always received visitors with ceremony, as soon as they crossed the threshold. He recognized here something exotic and rather disturbing; he got up and went over to the bureau, where he could critically regard himself, for he had decided that, after all, he would try to please.
He was a handsome fellow, very dark; he had heavy features and a sullen and obstinate mouth; he was not very tall, but stalwart and powerful. He was twenty-five, and though he looked even younger, owing perhaps to that tragic sulkiness, he had a thoroughly adult and responsible air. He was no fop, like Pendleton; there was sobriety and decorum in the cut of his coat; he was even then every inch the business man. Evening dress did not become his thick-set figure, but he was naturally not aware of that.
“Do they have a gong—or send after you when dinner’s ready?” he asked, still intent upon his image.
“They do not! You’re supposed to know, and if you’re late, they don’t wait for you. Come on! You’re lovely enough!” said Pendleton. He surveyed his friend good-humouredly; it didn’t disturb him that Vincelle was handsome and he was not, or that Vincelle had money and was almost sure to make more. The Masons wouldn’t care about that. He was consoled by certain advantages of his own; he was lively, cheerful, witty in a very mild way; everyone liked him; he was, in an innocuous sense, a “ladies’ man,” master of the utterly lost art of polite flirtation. He was tall, slender, elegant, with a long, sharp nose and a bulging forehead; his hair and eyebrows were so light as to look almost white; he had wrinkles about his little blue eyes; it is of no significance to say that he was twenty-seven, because he was ageless, and would be in no way different ten or twenty years later.
“Come on!” he said, again.
In great decorum, conscious of their immaculate appearance and their value as eligible and admirable young men, they descended the stairs and entered the drawing-room. The subtle air of excitement which Vincelle had felt upon entering the house was intensified here, the same abundance of light and flowers, and a big fire. But with the addition now of an agreeable babel of voices.
Pendleton led him forward to a stout lady in black silk, with an august, kindly face and a very high colour.
“Mrs. Mason,” he said, “may I present——”
“This must be Mr. Vincelle,” she said, cheerfully, and held out her hand. “You’re just in time. We’re about to have dinner.”
And she took the arm of a young man in spectacles and led the way into the dining-room, followed by all the others, without order or ceremony. She was not the aristocratic person the young man had expected, but she was dignified, and that sufficed for a mother. No more introducing was done, and he sat down between two girls who talked to him immediately and agreeably. But he couldn’t respond; he was a little out of his element; he was accustomed to formality, ceremony, an air of sobriety, and it didn’t agree with him to be plunged suddenly into the midst of a dozen strange people, without, one might say, his passport. If people didn’t know who he was, then where was his prestige?
He looked about him. There were certainly a dozen people, all of them young, with the exception of the hostess, and a queer, bearded man who was unaccountably dressed in a rough grey suit and who likewise had the effrontery to wear run-down morocco slippers. That was bad; that was odd and eccentric, and everything he objected to most strongly. But the two girls beside him addressed him as “Professor,” and if he were a professor, that explained it, though without justifying it. His glance left this unpleasant object, and sought for his friend, and found him opposite, lost in conversation with a girl. That must be the girl, of course! He stared at her, entranced. Pendleton hadn’t exaggerated in the least. She was charming, fascinating! Mentally he made use of the adjective which probably four out of every five of the young lady’s admirers used. He called her “fairylike.”
As a matter of fact, she wasn’t quite pretty, but no male person had discovered that. She destroyed judgment. She was a little, slight thing, rather pale, with reddish hair that stood out like an aureole of fine copper threads. She had warm brown eyes, the kindly eyes of her mother; small, pretty features. But her charm and her distinction lay in her wonderful animation. One could, he thought, look at her for hours, and never tire of her gestures, of the change of expression on her mobile face. She was witty, too; or it seemed wit to him, her dear little grimaces and her jolly, good-natured banter. No, he didn’t blame Pendleton in the least; she was worth the trip. Her dress satisfied his exacting requirements too; it was white, much beruffled, cut a little low in the neck, with short sleeves, and it had a train. It was the dress of a young lady, for in these days there really weren’t any girls.
She raised her eyes and met this new young man’s glance, and smiled at him—a hostess’s smile, friendly, but a little impersonal. He was gratified to see that she didn’t appear at all serious with Pendleton; she was, he thought, somewhat mocking. And from that hour, he decided to consider his friend’s well-known worship as a thing of no consequence, simply one of Pendleton’s innumerable little loves—a sort of joke....
It was an excellent dinner; he couldn’t remember a better, and it was surprisingly abundant. He was accustomed to frugality, and more or less austerity. His mother had finer linen, more silver, more magnificence, but never had she had on her table a feast like this, such honest, unpretentious excellence in food. There was one wine served throughout the meal, which was not according to his standard of elegance, but it was a good wine, beyond denial.
When the meal was finished, the ladies rose and fluttered away.
“Not much time, you know!” said Mrs. Mason, warningly, as she left. “It’s after eight!”
The professor then produced a box of cigars and a decanter and they lingered for a time in the warm room, very content. But the sound of carriage wheels interrupted them; they threw their cigars into the fire and went into the big room across the hall, where Mrs. Mason was waiting. A succession of bundled-up forms went past and up the stairs, descending in due time as more young ladies; the room began to fill. Pendleton was busy taking his friend about and introducing him here and there, not leaving him until his card was quite filled and he had secured two dances with Miss Mason herself.
What was it about this particular dance which made it different from all the other dances he had attended? Why did he have such a surpassingly enjoyable evening that he looked back upon it with a smile all his life? There were pretty, lively girls, a floor like glass, good music, a matchless supper; but there was nothing unusual in that. No, there was some quite special quality about it; a charming festivity, a revel wholly youthful and innocent and happy. He held the adorable Claudine in his arms for two waltzes; he had very little to say to her, but he was by nature taciturn; he listened instead. He was lost....
The carriages began coming back and the dance guests to take their leave. He watched one group after another of bright faces vanish, then at length the front door closed upon the last one, and Mrs. Mason, with a sigh that was half laughter, sank into a chair.
“Mercy!” she said. “I’m getting too old for this, children!”
There were only the house guests left now, and the family, standing about the big room. There were himself and Pendleton, the lovely Claudine and her mother, and five other persons, whom he was beginning to be able to place now; there were a daughter and her husband, there were two bosom friends of Claudine’s, and the incomprehensible young man in spectacles.
“It’s after two o’clock,” said Mrs. Mason. “There’s a little sort of breakfast laid out in the dining-room for you young people, if you’re hungry again. But don’t be long over it, and don’t disturb your father as you come upstairs. Good-night, all of you!”
She rose heavily.
“And, Lance, you’ll put out the lights and lock up?” she added.
The young man in spectacles nodded.
“Mother,” said Claudine, “it was lovely! It’s so dear of you!”
Her mother looked at her for a moment with a faint smile.
“You’re only young once!” she said.
Trite words, certainly, and none of her hearers felt their force. Her other daughter kissed her warmly, her son-in-law escorted her to the foot of the stairs, and her stout, black-clad figure was seen ascending, wearily, a little bent.
She puzzled Vincelle; she had no elegance; he felt sure that his mother would call her “ordinary.” Yet there was about her a dignity, an authority, he had never seen surpassed. And her way of entertaining you had a sort of vigour and originality about it; he felt that she didn’t care much what other people did, or what was correct, but was concerned only with comfort, gaiety, and this unostentatious, invincible dignity of hers.
“Come on!” said Claudine, and they all followed her across the hall.
A new mood had settled upon them; they weren’t conscious of being tired, but they were, all of them, subdued, inclined to a pleasant seriousness. The room was shadowy, except for a hanging gas lamp above the table, and the glow of the fire. They sat about the table, hungry in spite of the hearty supper they had consumed a few hours ago, and the young man in spectacles began to talk in an unaccountable and eccentric fashion about Pre-historic Man, and drew a picture of him, cowering and shivering on such nights as this.
“A life of incessant fear,” he said. “Imagine that. Never to know security. Never to see any possibility of safety. No chance of old age.”
Vincelle listened, but he felt vaguely that Pre-historic Man was rather blasphemous and Darwinian and free-thinking. It was also displeasing to observe that Claudine was interested.
“It’s safety that’s made us develop, isn’t it, Lance?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“It’s safety that’s making us decline,” he said. “It’s making us soft and weak and dull.”
“But if we weren’t secure, we couldn’t have any art,” said Claudine.
“Art!” said the young man, with a harsh laugh. “Art! The opium dreams of drugged, idle people!”
The married sister interposed, laughing.
“Don’t be so serious, Lance! Claudine, dear, you’re not attending to us!”
For Claudine was sitting at the head of the table, dispensing tea and coffee. The sparkling brightness had gone from her face, she looked pale and a little weary, but lovelier than ever. Vincelle was now disposed to admire her more seriously; she had poise and dignity, and she could talk in a way to startle him. She had something to say even on the topic of Pre-historic Man; she had ideas which he couldn’t have had.
“Life lost its meaning,” Lance went on, “when it ceased to be a struggle.”
“For Heaven’s sake, when did it cease to be a struggle?” said Pendleton. “They forgot to tell me. I thought it was still pretty hard to get a foothold.”
Lance ignored him.
“Man waged a magnificent and heroic struggle with Nature,” he said, “but was defeated.”
“But was it really so heroic, Lance? It was an involuntary struggle, it hadn’t any aim. It seems to me that now, when we’re conscious, and can really try to improve—”
“We don’t. We can’t. It’s too late. We’re in the final stage of evolution. We went the wrong way.”
“Lance is a paleontologist,” murmured the girl next to Vincelle. “He’s wonderful, isn’t he? But so gloomy!”
Vincelle had no idea what a paleontologist was, but he didn’t like them. He felt horribly out of it. He couldn’t be learned, and he wouldn’t be funny, like Pendleton. He was quite aware that he wasn’t making any sort of impression here. Claudine must have become conscious of his dissatisfaction—perhaps he showed it—for she suddenly addressed him.
“What do you think, Mr. Vincelle? Do you think we’re a miserable, doomed remnant?”
He flushed.
“I’ve never given it much thought,” he said. “I’ve been busy keeping up with business.”
His poor little remark sounded so sulky and infantile that even he was confused.
“And politics,” he added, in an attempt to sound broader-minded.
Lance drew out his watch.
“I’m going to lock up now,” he said. “Five minutes before the lights go out!”
There was a chorus of good-nights.
“Don’t forget that Father’s asleep!” warned the married sister, as Claudine and her two bosom friends went chattering up the stairs. Pendleton and Vincelle followed them and turned down the hall to their own room. Pendleton began flinging off his clothes, but Vincelle sat motionless in an arm-chair before the fire.
“Who is that fellow they call Lance?” he asked.
“Oh! Him? He’s a cousin. The Professor’s protégé. He lives with them, you know. Nice chap; a little bit crazy. But then the old man is too. Both scientists, you know. Professor’s a botanist. Come to bed, old boy, and get that light out, will you?”
Tall and lanky in his night shirt, Pendleton stretched tremendously.
“Come to bed!” he said, again. “Come and get your beauty sleep, my boy. Your face is your fortune, you know.”
Vincelle answered him with a sudden burst of anger.
“Oh, yes, but I’m not quite a fool, you know. A fellow can’t hold a position in a business like mine without some trace of brains. I may not know much about Science, but I know a damn lot about the Art of Making Money. And I’m not a boor, either,” he added. “Hitherto I’ve always managed to hold my own in any sort of social gathering. I’ve been considered worthy of a word now and then....”
A loud, artificial snore from his friend cut him short. He turned out the light and undressed in the firelight. But he felt his face burn in the dark with a resentment he was not able to analyze.
CHAPTER TWO
A VINCELLE IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT
HE waked the next morning to a marvelous peace. Pendleton was still sleeping beside him, and there was no other sound but his quiet breathing. Vincelle felt very wide awake; he got up instantly, and he was glad to believe, from the silence, that it was still very early and that he would be able to get home before eleven. He had forgotten to wind his watch the night before and it had stopped, but he fancied that he could sense the time. He went over to one of the windows and pulled up the shade with a rattle; it wasn’t his nature to consider the sleep of friends. It was a bright, frosty morning, very clear; before him lay a neat back garden, and behind it a stable. Not a sign of life. He drew on his socks, always the first step of his routine, and suddenly a disturbing thought assailed him. He went over to Pendleton and shook him and shook him until he opened his eyes. Pendleton swore at him.
“Look here!” said young Vincelle. “Where do I shave?”
“Don’t shave!” said Pendleton. “Go to sleep again like a Christian.”
“No. I told Mother I’d try to get home in time to take her to church.”
Pendleton pulled out his watch from under his pillow.
“Ah!” he shouted, exultantly. “Half past eleven already, my son! Foiled!”
Vincelle frowned.
“I haven’t missed in years,” he said. “Poor old lady! She counts on it.”
“Now perhaps you’ll shut up and let me go to sleep again.”
“Where can I shave? Is there a bathroom?”
“Ring the bell,” said Pendleton. “And some one’ll bring you hot water.”
But when he was dressed in the clothes he had brought with him in his bag, he hesitated to go down alone in this strange house. He strolled about the room, smoking, until Pendleton was ready, and they descended together. There wasn’t a soul to be seen.
“They’ve all gone to church,” said Pendleton.
This struck Vincelle as grossly inhospitable, someone should have been there to attend to him. But a nice little servant brought them an excellent breakfast in the dining room and after it they sat comfortably in front of the fire, enjoying cigars from an open box on the sideboard.
“As soon as they come back, we’ll go,” said Pendleton. And they did so. Mrs. Mason offered them the use of the family omnibus in which they had returned from church, but Pendleton said they’d rather walk. She did not invite them to stop for dinner, which Vincelle considered impolite. If she didn’t want them, why couldn’t she simply invite them in a half-hearted, unacceptable manner?
“I must thank you for a most enjoyable time,” he said ceremoniously.
She smiled and held out her hand.
“Come again!” she said.
Claudine, too, gave him her hand, but her glance and her smile were lamentably devoid of significance. Evidently he wasn’t, for her, a special person; he was nothing but a young man who had come down for a dance. They set out down the hill, and he was able now to gain an idea of the place at his leisure. It was a big wooden house with a cupola on top; it had no pretension to beauty or architectural style, it was in fact, quite hideous and ungainly, made of grey clapboards with a slate roof; square, except that on one side a little greenhouse was built out from the veranda. The garden, too, although large, was not like the gardens of other people: there was no fountain, no nicely set out shrubs. There was a beautiful old box hedge enclosing it, but inside it looked irregular and untidy.
Pendleton was talking cheerfully.
“What do you think of her?” he asked.
“Very attractive,” said Vincelle.
“Did you ever see anyone like her?” he pursued.
Vincelle admitted that he hadn’t.
“I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty hard hit,” said Pendleton.
This was something his friend had very much wished not to hear.
“What about her?” he asked, briefly.
Pendleton groaned.
“She’s such a little flirt!” he said. “Of course, I’m not in a position to marry now, anyway. I’m not making enough to keep myself. And by the time I can ask her ... with all these fellows hanging round her all the time ... Lord!”
Vincelle considered this frankness unmanly and indecorous. Never would he have admitted a liking for a young lady until he was certain that she returned it.
They crossed on the ferry, standing outside in the fine, cold air, on the deck of the ark-shaped old boat. They reached New York and just caught the Wall Street ferry and at last disembarked in the familiar air of Brooklyn. They both lived in the august Columbia Heights district, Pendleton in a house which was respectable, but no more, and Vincelle in a fine one, on a corner, with a garden quite twenty feet wide. He respected this garden, because it represented extra property and also because it kept them aloof from all neighbors; through the high iron fence could be seen its winter desolation, a complete and woeful barrenness. At the best of times it was hardly an oasis, nothing grew in it, and nothing was intended to grow in it, except a wretched ancient wistaria, two bushes of Japanese holly and a tall shrub, dry and dead. The common use of the garden was as a place in which the house plants could stand, the rubber trees and palms and orange trees in tubs. Every Spring old Mrs. Vincelle bought a number of potted geraniums and had them planted in a certain bed where they blossomed, mangily, for a month or two.
He bade his friend good-bye here and ran up the brown stone steps, opened the door with his latch key, and entered into a chill vault, dark, muffled, dismal. He hung up coat and hat on a gigantic piece of furniture which towered up to the ceiling and which was at once a hat rack, a pier-glass, a bureau with six drawers and a low table with a marble top. Then he ran up the thickly carpeted stairs to a bedroom on the floor above where he knew he would find his mother.
Sure enough, there she was, sitting in her rocking chair, with folded hands, looking out on to the quiet street, a fragile little old lady of sixty with a contemptuous, wizened little face and melancholy brown eyes. She was dressed in her Sunday dress of black silk with a white lace vest, she wore her best earrings, her diamond brooch, and a fine wool shawl bundled about her narrow shoulders.
“Well!” she said with a smile.
Her son approached and kissed her reverently.
“I was very sorry, Mother, to miss taking you to church,” he said, “but I didn’t wake up until eleven. It was three o’clock when we got to bed.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Did they dance on Sunday morning? Well, I dare say no one thinks of such things any longer. However, it didn’t matter, Gilbert. I had a touch of rheumatism, I shouldn’t have gone anyway.”
“Pshaw!” he said solicitously. “Your shoulder again, Mother?”
“It doesn’t matter. Sit down, Gilbert, and tell me all about it.”
He sat down opposite her, smoothing his sleek black head.
“Oh! The usual thing!” he said.
“Are they nice people?”
“Oh, yes, nice enough. The father’s a professor.”
“That may mean anything,” said the old lady. “I’ve known some professors who were very nice people and some who were impossible. Did you see that girl that Ashley is so enthusiastic about?”
“Yes, I saw her.”
“Mrs. Pendleton tells me he’s head over heels in love with her.”
“Oh, well, you know what Ashley is. He’s always in love.”
“Is she as pretty as he imagines?”
“I don’t know what he imagines,” said her son, a little peevishly. “She’s a very attractive girl. Look here, Mother, I haven’t had any dinner.”
“Mercy me,” cried the old lady. “And it’s nearly four o’clock! Why didn’t you stay in Staten Island? Our dinner’s over and done with hours ago. Ring the bell, Gilbert!”
He did so and it was promptly answered by a woman servant.
“Fetch Miss Dorothy,” she said.
She had risen in her agitation regarding her son’s shocking hunger and began pottering about the room, frowning, lifting up little articles from the bureau and the table with trembling old hands. It was a fine, big room with a Turkish rug on the floor and an assemblage of solid walnut furniture. It was crowded with knickknacks, photographs, a hundred and one mementoes of her past life. It hadn’t the look of a bedroom, for the bureau was hidden behind a screen and the bed was a folding one, displaying nothing but an immense bevelled mirror set in a broad frame of polished wood. Her son had never, even in childhood, seen the least trace of disorder in this room.
“Pshaw!” said the old lady, “she’s asleep again, I suppose. The older she grows the lazier she gets. She’s forever creeping upstairs and going to sleep.... All nonsense.... Here am I so troubled with insomnia that I don’t get five hours rest out of the night and I don’t think anyone’s even seen me taking a nap.... Well, Dorothy!”
A woman stood smiling in the doorway, a stout, grey-haired woman with a tousled, guilty air, a cousin, who earned her bitter bread as a companion for various relatives. She was always spoken of as staying with Aunt This and Cousin That; after two or three months she was sent away, with a sort of rage engendered by her submission, her poverty and her stupidness, and then when the memory had worn off, she was recalled. Her usefulness was never admitted, but always exploited.
“Why, Gilbert!” she said, with an air of pleased surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in!”
“I don’t think you’d hear a sound if the house was on fire!” said the old lady, tartly. “It’s dangerous, the way you sleep. We could all be murdered in our beds, and it wouldn’t disturb you.”
“Why, Cousin Selina, I wasn’t asleep! I was writing letters!”
“Well, now perhaps you’ll be able to attend to this poor boy. He hasn’t had any dinner. And I’d calculated on his having a hearty meal there, so I hadn’t planned for a very big supper. And Katie’s out. Run down to the kitchen and see if you and Mary can’t fix up something nice for him. And tell Mary supper at five instead of six.”
Miss Dorothy looked terrified. She knew so well the very meagre resources of this household where there was never quite enough of anything, where each egg was mentally numbered.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, doubtfully, and vanished.
“Now run upstairs and get ready!” said the old lady.
There were three big, unoccupied bedrooms on her floor, but it had seemed to her, and to Gilbert, more fitting for a bachelor to live on the floor above. He had a very large room there, furnished with austere majesty, an ugly and uncomfortable room which he accepted as he accepted everything else in the life his mother had arranged for him. There was a black dressing-room attached, furnished with a marble wash basin and two big clothes presses: it was supposed to belong to his room and the one next, jointly, but as Miss Dorothy now occupied that adjoining room, the second door was well bolted.
He sat down in a large, high-backed rocking chair with a tapestry seat, one of the many pieces of furniture sent upstairs in disgrace after long service. He began, absent-mindedly, to rock and to think—about Claudine. His thoughts were all distressful and clouded; he felt himself irresistibly attracted by that gay little creature, and he resented it. He resented everything about that dance, the casualness, the cheerfulness; his own home seemed to him admirably correct and majestic. He felt quite unaccountably insulted. These people had treated him in cavalier fashion....
He was naturally inclined to sulkiness. It was his refuge from an incomprehensible world. And perhaps his great capacity for being offended came from an equally pathetic source, perhaps it was a sort of protest made by his youth and his manhood against his bondage. He wasn’t aware of the bondage: he believed that his relations with his mother were ideal and that he “humoured” her in a respectful way. But as a matter of fact, he was less free, he was more under her dominion, than even Miss Dorothy. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he was hypnotized. He had been led to believe that he was happy; the poor, sullen lonely creature. He never laughed: he very seldom smiled; he hadn’t a spark of humour or gaiety in him. Pendleton privately considered him “heavy,” and heavy he was. It hadn’t prevented him from making a few conquests though. His handsome face, his invincible innocence and possibly his money and his well-known ability in business had won two or three little hearts; but though he had been flattered, he hadn’t been much touched. He had never before in his life experienced anything like this; this was positively uncomfortable. He was obsessed and annoyed by the memory of Miss Mason of Staten Island. Her sparkling face, her liquid voice, the surprising novelty of her had completely captured him. The idea of a girl as pretty and popular and charming as she being able to talk with a—what was it—a paleontologist in so grave a way....
Summoned by Miss Dorothy he descended through the silent house to the dining-room in the basement, always used when the family was alone, and attacked the dismal feast set before him. He was silent because he was silent by nature, having nothing to communicate, and the two women were silent, for what in Heaven’s name had they to say to him or to each other? Meals in that household were perfunctory and ascetic; the old lady didn’t like to waste money on food, it needn’t be either appetizing or nourishing so long as it was according to tradition, and decent. They finished, and all went solemnly up-stairs again; the little old lady first, noiseless over the thick carpet, incredibly slight and unsubstantial, then her son, the staircase creaking under his heavy tread, the quiet darkness reverberating with his loud, masculine cough, and last of all Miss Dorothy.
They went into the back drawing-room and sat down in the chairs they invariably occupied. The old lady closed her eyes, for that nap she always took, and always denied. Miss Dorothy, owing to the fact of its being Sunday, couldn’t take up her fancy work, which was then one of her strongest claims to gentility and gave her at least a semblance of elegant uselessness, and she too closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to continue in her weary and muddled brain her intricate calculations, “planning” she called it. She had to plan for a new black skirt. Could she manage with that alpaca Cousin Selina had given her and if not could she possibly spare the money to buy a new one? She hadn’t a salary; simply, when she left to stay with the next relative, Cousin Selina would give her something in an envelope and it might be enough or it might be very little. She had no occupation for her thoughts but her planning; poor soul. She hadn’t a single interest in life.
As for Gilbert, he being a man, had to read the Sunday newspapers and to smoke. He had an arm-chair and a foot-stool and a smoking stand, placed ready for him, in a good light. But his peace was gone. He was sunk in black depression.
CHAPTER THREE
GILBERT GOES A-WOOING
“WELL ...” said the old lady. “She’s very—peculiar.”
There was no word her son could have disliked more; he frowned.
“Why?” he demanded. “In what way? How is she ‘peculiar’?”
“She’s been brought up,” the old lady began, and stopped. “After all, you’re the one to be suited, Gilbert. You’re marrying her, not I. If you’ve got it into your head that she’s the only woman on earth to make you happy, very well. Marry her. And I only hope you will be happy.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s likely, if you’re going to quarrel with her.”
“Gilbert,” said the old lady, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my life.”
True enough, he was obliged to admit it. He saw that he had used a wrong word. She didn’t quarrel, she didn’t argue. But she conquered. And when she disapproved of people, she changed them. He had never tried to understand her methods, but he had seen the results. He supposed it was force of character and that it must be admirable and beneficent.
“You needn’t worry about that, my boy,” she went on. “I’ve never yet had a word of disagreement with any of my sons-or daughters-in-law.”
“I know it, Mother. But living under the same roof ... and she’s been brought up very differently.”
“Yes; just as I said,” the old lady observed. “Very peculiar.... However, if you’ve made up your mind, my boy, there’s no use talking about it. I’ll do my best, as I always have done and always expect to do.”
Her son believed this; he had never doubted that she was a perfectly noble, perfectly wise and magnificent woman and he worshipped her. There was an inscrutable and malicious smile on her shrunken lips; the changeless, infinitely remote smile of god-like amusement at earth’s follies which one sees on the face of a bronze Buddha. She had a majesty beyond the need of charm or of fashion. She belonged to an old Brooklyn family which had become aristocratic by reason of having lived in the same place for four generations, and she had married into a similar one. She had always been rich and immeasurably secure, living isolated in the big house on “The Heights” like the somewhat ferocious monarch of a desert isle, an obscure and uncomfortable existence in which nothing was accomplished and nothing enjoyed. She disdained society as frivolous; and all luxury was to her abomination. She made, she said, a “proper use” of her money.
Her chief claims to moral excellence were these: that she had borne six children, and that she had lived for sixty years; and above all because of her marvelous lack of sensibility, an imperviousness which no actual image of Buddha could have surpassed. She had looked on at suffering, anguish, despair, unmoved, and that was fortitude; she had witnessed birth, death, without a gleam of curiosity or speculation, and that was common sense. She had been “just” toward her little children with all the blindness proper to that virtue.
“It makes no difference why you do things,” she always said. “A thing’s right, or it’s wrong. I don’t want to hear your reasons.”
He recognized the old familiar attitude now, the old air of saying—“Very well; go your own way, and learn by bitter experience!” Within herself he felt she was saying—“You’ll have to reap what you sow. You’ll make your bed and you’ll have to lie in it.” And so on.
“You don’t approve of my marrying her then, do you?” he asked.
“You’re twenty-five years old,” said his mother, “You’re old enough to decide for yourself.”
He felt more irritated than his ideas of filial piety allowed. He drank his coffee slowly and reminded himself that his mother was a widow and that all her other children had married and left her. His thoughts were readily distracted that day, though, and good-will very easy to him. He sat back, lighted a cigar and looked about him, at the dismal basement dining-room, used for all the family meals, with its barred windows through which one could see the feet of passersby, and the horrible walnut buffet and sideboard and the massive square table, and the twelve chairs, three invalided and permanently in corners, the faded carpet that had once been upstairs, the immense crayon picture of a lion’s head, the general economical hideousness of this room which proclaimed the old lady’s genial idea that anything was good enough for the inmates of the house, and the owner. He had never liked the room, but he fancied it this morning as it might be—a Paradise, with the charm, the youth, the mysterious strangeness of a young wife in it.
Here, without question, the young wife would have to come, because Gilbert could not and would not consider leaving his mother alone. And to be candid, dared not. He owed everything to his mother, he said. Hadn’t she made sacrifices to give her children every advantage, lessons of various sorts, and unstinted moral advice? She talked candidly of moulding their characters, and that is just what she had done. She had moulded them in her own image, supreme and devastating blasphemy. They were all of them like fainter copies of her own sharply written character. This man sitting across the breakfast table from her now was literally made by her. By nature credulous and imitative, he had lent himself perfectly to her manipulations; he thought exactly as she had taught him to think; he disagreed with her in some points, because she had taught him that a man must in certain respects disagree with women; he knew things, he had had experiences unknown to her, but she had caused him to believe, sadly, that a man must so conduct himself. She had taught him that, as a man, he must disappoint his mother. She despised him a little, but she certainly, undeniably loved him.
She looked at him, stalwart black-avised fellow, with his heavy brows and his obstinate mouth. Wasn’t he manly, she thought!
“Ah, well!” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it’s all for the best, Gilbert.”
He finished his breakfast in manly silence,—which no decent woman dare trouble—and getting up, went round the table to his mother, dutifully to kiss her good-bye.
“I’m sorry you didn’t—take to her, Mother,” he said, a little grieved.
“Well,” she answered. “You’re marrying her, Gilbert, not I.”
“If she’ll have me,” he said. “I haven’t asked her yet, you know.”
He had long ago promised his mother never to propose marriage to any woman without telling her first. And it was in loyalty to this promise that he had lured Miss Mason from Staten Island to Brooklyn under pretense of showing her a wonderful picture on exhibition in a department store—a Dutch peasant sweeping her cottage, and the motes in the sunbeam were reputed marvelously life-like. It was a quite natural thing, after gazing at this picture for fifteen awkward minutes, to suggest a call on his mother living so near. The old lady had heard more than one mention from her son of this Miss Mason from Staten Island, and she knew, and Miss Mason knew, that this was a visit of inspection.
After it was over, and the beloved young lady had left the house on his arm, he had, of course, to take her back to Staten Island. And never had she been so nice to him, so kind, so gracious, never had he felt so encouraged. The next evening was her birthday, and he had been invited to the little dance by her mother.
“Why don’t you come to supper?” Miss Mason had suggested. And they had both turned red and become silent, a little startled and alarmed. Because they knew, both of these, that this would be the time....
“She may refuse me,” he said, and with a glance his mother saw all the anguish he was trying to hide.
“I don’t think she will!” said she with a most detestable smile, which fully expressed her opinion of Miss Mason and her matrimonial hopes. “I don’t think there’s much fear of that!”
But Gilbert knew better, and he spent a day of black misery in his office. As the afternoon wore on he became sure that she would refuse him. She had such a lot of fellows hanging around—and all of them had those qualities which he lacked, those fascinating social graces.... He so silent, so unready, a clumsy dancer, a man interested in nothing but business—and the Republican party. He dreaded, he shrank from asking her, and yet he was feverishly impatient to do so before those other fellows had a chance.
Never was there a lover more humble than he. And he liked to be humble; he liked to think how a great, powerful fellow like himself could be brought low by a slip of a girl. It was a wonderful example, he thought, of the Power of Love. Well, who knows ...?
He had been seeing a great deal of Miss Mason during the past three months. He had gone with Pendleton to make their party call in due form and he had found her on that occasion more friendly and more intimate. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was alone with Lance. Her mother and father, she said, had gone out for a walk in the Silver Lake woods—which Vincelle thought a very peculiar thing for an elderly couple to do, above all, on a Sunday afternoon, when respectable people were best invisible. There were a good many things about this family which he could not approve of; Lance was one of these. That thin sunburnt young man in spectacles with his gloomy face and didactic air jarred upon him beyond reason. He had observed too, that Lance had been reading to his cousin, in cosy intimacy, before the fire in the library.
But Claudine had been remarkably kind to him, and gentle and friendly. Moreover, Lance had had the decency to remove himself and his big book. Pendleton, of course, monopolized the talk, with his flippant nonsense, but Gilbert felt that that did him no harm. He felt that he, sitting in silence, with only a word now and then, a sensible word, mind you, appeared more manly, and he was right! He touched the heart of the lively young lady; she felt suddenly rather sorry for him, and because he was stupid she fancied him more honest than others. She quite cordially invited him to come again.
He did, and this time alone. He didn’t even mention the fact to Pendleton, and when Pendleton learned of it he took it amiss.
“I introduced you there,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d go behind my back that way, Vincelle.”
“I was invited,” said Gilbert, “and I went. I didn’t know the family was your private property. I didn’t know I had to account to you for every—”
“Damn unfriendly, I call it!” said Pendleton.
Gilbert smiled scornfully.
If their friendship had been a more genuine one, this would have caused a serious quarrel; but it was a forced sort of friendship, simply brought about by propinquity. They had grown up together, gone to the same school, the same dancing school, they moved in the same set. They had no respect for each other; Gilbert despised the other’s frivolity and lack of money-making ability, and Pendleton looked upon Gilbert as a surly and ungenerous young boor. After their brief disagreement about Miss Mason they went on as usual, except that they were wary about the Staten Island visits. They went down there at different times, never again together, and each took what advantage he could get.
The unhappy Gilbert had suffered much, and perhaps learned a little. He had been dreadfully humiliated. Once Claudine had asked him to ride with her and he had been forced to admit that he didn’t ride. Her astonished face ...! And he hadn’t read any of those books she knew so affectionately.
He had, when younger and slimmer, played tennis, but of late years since he had become so engrossed in business, his great recreation had been poker. As for books, he liked reading as much as the next man, provided they were entertaining books. And he liked music, too; not operas, but not trashy stuff, either; he liked Schubert’s Serenade, and Traumerei, and things like that.... He hadn’t Pendleton’s talent for picking up information, for knowing something about everything, but when he heard Pendleton talking so glibly, he consoled himself by remembering that he had had an education exactly like his, of precisely the same length and the same price. So Pendleton couldn’t really know any more than he did, no matter how he talked.
The free, careless air of that household had encouraged him. In other families where there were marriageable daughters, he had had an uncomfortable feeling of eligibility, he had felt that everything he did was important and significant, and that he must be careful. Here it was obvious that no one cared. He could come and be welcome, or he could stay away. He had begun to bring flowers and candy, which Claudine received with pretty appreciation. But other people brought flowers and candy, also, and were as nicely thanked.
He made an effort to study her to learn if she really was a flirt, as Pendleton said. But he couldn’t decide. She reigned like a queen over a court of admirers, but without undue coquetry. She was, in spite of her gaiety and liveliness, a serious girl. She read marvelous books. She played astounding music; she was a great companion to her father on his botanical walks and she collected “specimens,” dried and pressed in a book. Weeds, they looked like to Gilbert, but he was willing to admit their value. He had never imagined anyone, so happy as she, so interested and delighted with life. She was a fine horsewoman, she skated and danced beautifully; she took long, long walks in the country, and enjoyed them wholeheartedly; she went to the opera, to concerts, she read, she practised her music, she painted in water-colours, she had any number of friends and all sorts of informal society, she hadn’t a dull, or idle moment in her existence.
He saw no evidences of domesticity in her, but that didn’t trouble him. It wasn’t an era of domesticity. A wife, in his class, was an ornament and a diversion. Domestic science was an unknown term to both of them. Claudine had escaped the thorough training of her two elder sisters; her mother had conscientiously taught them to cook, to sew, and to superintend a household, just as she herself had been taught, but with this youngest and brightest child, she had lost heart. She was growing older; she was tired. And moreover, it seemed to her that the time for all that had passed. No one would ever expect Claudine to cook or to sew.
“Let her enjoy herself while she can,” her mother said to herself. “Youth is over so soon.”
She would make a charming hostess, let that suffice. Gilbert asked no more. He was completely dazzled.
His feelings would be incomprehensible to a later generation. They were such polite, respectful feelings! He never thought of Claudine and himself as a woman and a man. She was a young lady, and he was a gentleman, and even in his most secret soul he respected her. He wanted to marry her and he let it go at that. He didn’t even analyze her charms.
He was a man of invincible honesty. He wasn’t clear-sighted; he had no self-knowledge, but neither had he any subtlety. He loved Claudine: he longed to give her everything he had. He felt himself unworthy and inferior beside her purity, her innocence, her lovely young spirit. He had tried to the best of his ability to set before her whatever advantages there might be in marrying him, but not through conceit, only to persuade her.
He had brought with him on one occasion an old magazine, to show her an article in it—“The Old Vincelles of Brooklyn.” It had been written by a sort of Miss Dorothy, a humble and admiring relation, and it was a narrative of that singularly unillustrious family, beginning with the Huguenot who had come first to American shores, and mentioning with solemn veneration a long line of lawyers, ministers, and business men, all respectable, serious, and thrifty. Not a vagary, not a passion, among them.
He showed her this not from pride—although he was proud of it—but merely as an added inducement, in the same spirit he had talked to her of his “business prospects,” and his remarkable progress. It was as if he said, “Here is all I have, beloved girl, won’t it compensate for what I am?” And now he rested his case. He had nothing further to offer. His inarticulate and unhappy wooing was at an end. He was going to ask her, quite simply, if she would have him.
He arrived at the house in the June twilight. The house was still unlighted, the windows were open, the curtains fluttering gently in a little breeze. There was a magical fragrance from the garden: it was in all ways a magical evening. He never quite forgot it.
He dismissed the carriage at the gate and walked along the drive, the gravel crunching under his deliberate tread, the perfumed breeze blowing against his miserable and sullen face. Because, under his serious and pompous demeanor, he was after all, very young; almost a boy. And his whole heart was set on this, his whole heart! Claudine was the one woman on earth for him.
If she only knew the power she held in her little hands, he reflected!