“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.