“A frustrate ghost!” she cried aloud, and her voice seemed to have no sound. She had a preposterous idea that she was invisible and inaudible, that there was nothing in this room but the memory of her. She was only her own dream. She sprang up to look in the mirror, and saw there a white face and wide eyes; an apparition.... The wind blowing on her was suddenly chill, like a cold breath.
“No, no!” she said. “Oh, no! I want to be alive!”
There was for once no solace for her in that dear garden; she closed the window and pulled down the blind, to shut away the dark and the troubling sounds; she sat down and clasped her trembling hands; she tried to see herself once more in the stream of life, let it be never so cold and violent. She thought of Andrée; nothing but pain in that thought. Poor young Andrée and her poor little baby! Poor Al! She thought of Edna, hiding under her tranquillity an unforgettable humiliation, of Bertie, with his gallant despair; of Gilbert, unaccountably forlorn. There was a thin veil hung between her and these living, struggling creatures; she could see them but not reach them; she fancied them being swept past her and calling to her and needing her, while she looked on, standing apart.
“Oh, why haven’t I done something? Why haven’t I helped?” she demanded of her shrinking heart. And the inexorable response was “Begin now!”
But remorse came easier than effort. She passionately condemned herself. She saw herself an egoist; in her young days she had been gay and gracious because she had had what she wanted. And when that had been withdrawn from her, she had grown cold, aloof, finding peace in indifference. She thought of all she might have done, of the influence she might have exerted. Not that she believed herself stronger or wiser than these four adult human beings for whom she felt responsible; it was a mystic belief in the power of a woman and a mother. She was convinced that she could give more than was in her, more than she had; she loathed herself for not having done so. She believed, as was natural, that if she had tried she must have succeeded. She knew that in her garden everything grew only according to its type; she believed nevertheless that human creatures might be so warmed by her love, so nourished by her tears, that they would grow not according to any laws, but according to her own desires.
She felt that this was the turning point in her life; she had wasted twenty years, dreamed them away; only God knew how few or how many remained to her. She was making the most painful effort of her life; it was not a struggle, she wished it were; it was an attempt to struggle. The lamp must be lit, the loin girded; she must no longer pass among the living as a gentle phantom. She must help all these people who belonged to her; she must by her valour and devotion compensate for what they were denied; she must inspire and fortify. But what was to breathe life into her? Love—even such love as she had for Andrée—had not done it. She was not religious; she could not turn to prayer. And her philosophers had nothing at all to give her. She sat up almost all that night, trying to fan her shrinking and mutinous spirit into a blaze.... Her life should be service; she clung to that idea.
It was the inevitable moment, due to everyone whose work is finished, to women whose children have grown; it was a little death. But she did not recognize it as that; she felt it to be a spiritual re-birth. The world was empty and she was obliged to fill it with herself. And she was by no means large enough.
§ ii
She telephoned to Gilbert in his office the next morning; she was so affable that he was upset. She should have been home long ago, anyhow, instead of staying down there alone on Staten Island in that peculiar way. He felt that she was trying to be ingratiating, and this of course aroused his hostility and distrust. Her quiet, clear voice reaching him in the midst of his morning mail caused him all the usual feelings of annoyance induced by any thought of home life. She asked him about his health, and he knew she didn’t care; she even asked that supremely irritating question “How is business?” Well did he know why his family asked that.
Then, amazingly, she said: