§ i
THE old lady was going upstairs to the store-room on one of her periodical rummaging excursions, conducted for mysterious purposes of her own. She looked through trunks, bags, and boxes, and emerged from the dark little room quite exhausted, but without bringing anything with her. As she passed the big bedroom she looked in at the open door and smiled to herself, with grim satisfaction. There sat Claudine by the window, her head leaning against the back of a venerable rocking chair, her eyes fixed dreamily on the ceiling. She had been sitting there quite three-quarters of an hour, and perfectly content in her idleness. Not a trace of restlessness, of mutiny, about her, the sparkle too had gone from her glance, she had a new, half melancholy charm....
The old lady admitted that Claudine had at last “settled down.” She was still peculiar. Perhaps more peculiar than ever, but that was a matter beyond hope of remedy. It was her bringing up. She had queer notions about sitting alone, and she very obviously discouraged conversation, she read pretentious and quite immoral books, but as she never said or did anything improper, Gilbert and his mother were agreed to overlook these unpleasant eccentricities. Naturally, they remonstrated with her at every opportunity, but in a despairing way.
She was conquered, and she was happy. Not one of the hopes of her girlhood had been fulfilled; she had seen no foreign countries; she had met no remarkable people; she was denied the active and interesting life she had expected. But she was able to smile at these lost hopes. She was happy.
She had lost the best and dearest friend of her life, her mother. She was obliged to live without a confidant, without sympathy or encouragement. In losing her mother she had irrevocably lost her girlhood, and been cast adrift on a strange sea. But she had resigned herself even to that bitter loss.
She was well aware that she had missed the beauty and romance of the love between a man and a woman. She certainly didn’t love Gilbert, she didn’t even like him; she was in fear of coming to hate him. But even that she endured with tranquil indifference, as she endured her fettered existence, her hostile mother-in-law, her wearisome social duties.
Because she had Andrée. She wanted nothing more. Andrée was enough to fill heaven and earth for her. Her love for Andrée, her hope for her, the watchful care of her, gave her utter and complete satisfaction.
It had come as an astounding revelation. She had looked forward to the coming of a baby with despair and revolt; it would be, she thought, another link in the chain slowly forging to bind her to slavery. She didn’t feel old enough or wise enough for a baby. She looked upon the whole thing as a horrible indignity put upon her by merciless Nature, and she even hoped that she might die.
She took it for granted that it would be a son, because everyone else required a son from her. Another Gilbert, she thought, a pompous and obstinate creature whom she could never hope to influence, and who would soon learn to disapprove of her. She looked forward to its birth with dread and terror, she imagined the wretched tedium of being obliged to carry it about, to nurse it, to be perpetually tied to it, the broken nights, the distasteful duties.
And to think that it was Andrée who had come, after all! This son, who was to have been named Andrew, after Gilbert’s father, had been miraculously transformed into that wonderful little dark-haired baby, that tiny, plaintive little creature whose first cry had almost broken her heart.