“How could they be worse? They’re stupid and vulgar and horrible to look at and horrible to listen to. We wouldn’t think of bothering with such people when we’re at home, and I can’t see why we should here. They’re not any better in the summer time or in the mountains, than they are in the winter, in the city.”
“Mother hates snobbishness—”
“Ha! Does she? She’s the worst sort of snob in the world. She doesn’t like anybody at all. She’s bored with everyone, just as much bored with right people as with wrong ones.”
They had come now to the hotel grounds, and were walking across the lawn with great decorum. And just on time, for a bell rang out with a loud and hostile clamour, and the embroidering ladies on the porch began to collect their work and rise.
Andrée and Edna hurried up to their room for the process of “neatening,” which their mother considered indispensable. She was there, in the adjoining bedroom, standing before the mirror.
“How hot you are!” she said. “Hurry, I’ll wait for you.”
She was a pleasure to the eye, as she always was. She had a well-deserved reputation for being the best-dressed woman in her set, and she took infinite pains to sustain it. She wasn’t by any means beautiful, the promise of her young days had never been fulfilled; she was pale, colourless, except for her bright hair still untouched by grey; she was thin and angular, and her features were as tranquil and expressionless as a statue’s. But the dignity of the small creature! She was absolutely imposing, she had a look of melancholy and resignation, but a melancholy without lassitude, a resignation without weakness. She had a passion for reserve. Even in her limitless devotion to her children she was a little formal, a little aloof. She was certainly in no way tyrannical or severe, but she commanded unfailing respect. They adored her like a goddess, instead of loving her like a human being. She was a perpetual mystery to them.
Poor Claudine! Like a strayed nymph, forever astonished and affrighted at the strange world into which she had been betrayed! She had known no way of adapting herself, she could never feel at home, her one refuge had been to withdraw into herself.
She was courteous and agreeable enough to all her fellow-guests, but she fled from them. She went off every morning after breakfast, her thin form, straight as a dart, charmingly dressed in clear summer colours, a parasol held over her burnished head, and two or three portentous volumes under her arm, to find a secluded spot in the woods where she could read undisturbed. She read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and Schopenhauer and Emerson, with ardent attention, marking passages, meditating on them, trying to appease and fortify her desperate spirit.
The idea of her being desperate would have seemed ludicrous to anyone who knew her. She was calm, so self-possessed, so well-poised! She had a great social success in her own milieu, she was something of an authority upon correctness in dress and manner. She was moreover a lady of unblemished reputation, she was never even indiscreet or stupid. She was quite perfect. Not even the resentful Gilbert could find a flaw in her public demeanour.