CHAPTER NINE
BERTIE
§ i
CLAUDINE had put aside her philosophers that morning, and sat in her little glade, listless and wretched. An insufferable, intolerable summer, a summer altogether wrong and harmful. And inevitably six weeks’ more of it.
“It isn’t right to keep the children here in idleness,” she said to herself. “Healthy, intelligent adults, wasting months and months.... They ought to be doing something. They ought to be busy and useful.... I suppose I got these ideas from poor little Mr. Stephens, but they’re good ideas. There was something very admirable about him....”
She smiled at the recollection of the “nice little beast,” but the smile vanished instantly.
“They’re both so discontented and restless—begging me to take them away. And I can’t do anything! I haven’t any power, any authority! I can’t do the least thing—I can’t even leave this place without Gilbert’s consent....”
A few miserable tears started to her eyes.
“That’s the reason I have no control over them. A mother ought to be wise and firm and—free. But I can’t do what I think ought to be done. I’ve never been able to. I have to argue with Gilbert, or deceive him. That’s what it really is, although I like to call it tact. They ought to go home, and study, or work. They don’t need a holiday! But I can’t make him see that; not possibly. He sneers about ‘a lot of idle women,’ but he won’t let us be anything else.... And the older I get, the more—cowardly I become. I can’t bear to argue and argue with him. I know I can’t win. I haven’t any influence over him. I can’t—charm him, or coax him, and I can’t convince him. He’s so obstinate.”
She clasped her hands.
“Oh!” she cried. “If I could only, only have had my darling Andrée alone, I could have done so much for her! So much! I could have been so wise, so gentle, so patient, that she would have loved me with all her heart! I could have influenced her and helped her—”