She glanced at the clock. Half-past four. The longing seized her to go and look at Anne for the last time; but the next moment she felt that hardly a sight in the world would be less bearable.
She turned back into her room, wrapped herself in her dressing-gown, and went and sat in the window.
What did Fifth Avenue look like nowadays at half-past four o’clock of a winter morning? Much as it had when she had kept the same vigil nearly twenty years earlier, on the morning of her flight with Hylton Davies. That night too she had not slept, and for the same reason: the thought of Anne. On that other day she had deserted her daughter for the first time—and now it seemed as though she were deserting her again. One betrayal of trust had led inexorably to the other.
Fifth Avenue was much more brilliantly lit than on that other far-off morning. Long streamers of radiance floated on the glittering asphalt like tropical sea-weeds on a leaden sea. But overhead the canopy of darkness was as dense, except for the tall lights hanging it here and there with a planetary glory.
The street itself was empty. In old times one would have heard the desolate nocturnal sound of a lame hoof-beat as a market-gardener’s cart went by: they always brought out in the small hours the horses that were too bad to be seen by day. But all that was changed. The last lame horse had probably long since gone to the knacker’s yard, and no link of sound was left between the Niagara-roar of the day and the hush before dawn.
On that other morning a hansom-cab had been waiting around the corner for young Mrs. Clephane. It had all been very well arranged—Hylton Davies had a gift for arranging. His yacht was a marvel of luxury: food, service, appointments. He was the kind of man who would lean across the table to say confidentially: “I particularly recommend that sauce.” He had the soul of a club steward. It was curious to be thinking of him now....
She remembered that, as she jumped into the hansom on that fateful morning, she had thought to herself: “Now I shall never again hear my mother-in-law say: ‘I do think, my dear, you make a mistake not to humour John’s prejudices a little more’.” She had fixed her mind with intensity on the things she most detested in the life she was leaving; it struck her now that she had thought hardly at all of the life she was going to. Above all, that day, she had crammed into her head every possible thought that might crowd out the image of little Anne: John Clephane’s bad temper, his pettiness about money, his obstinacy, his obtuseness, the detested sound of his latch-key when he came home, flown with self-importance, from his club. “Thank God,” she remembered thinking, “there can’t possibly be a latch-key on a yacht!”
Now she suddenly reminded herself that before long she would have to get used to the click of another key. Dear Fred Landers! That click would symbolize all the securities and placidities: all the thick layers of affection enfolding her from loneliness, from regret, from remorse. It comforted her already to know that, after tomorrow, there would always be some one between herself and her thoughts. In that mild warmth she would bask like one of those late bunches of grapes that have just time, before they drop, to turn from sourness to insipidity.
Now again she was at the old game of packing into her mind every thought that might crowd out the thought of Anne; but her mind was like a vast echoing vault, and the thoughts she had to put into it would not have filled the palm of her hand.
Where would she and Landers live? A few months of travel, no doubt; and then—New York. Could she picture him anywhere else? Would it be materially possible for him to give up his profession—renounce “the office”? Her mind refused to see him in any other setting. And yet—and yet.... But no; it was useless to linger on that. Nothing, nothing that she could invent would crowd out the thought of Anne.