THE UNLIT LAMP

THE UNLIT LAMP

A STUDY OF INTER-ACTIONS
BY
ELISABETH SANXAY HOLDING
Author of “Invincible Minnie,” “Rosaleen Among the Artists,”
“Angelica,” etc.

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue

Copyright, 1922
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE
THE BRIDE

THE UNLIT LAMP

CHAPTER ONE
A DANCE ON STATEN ISLAND IN 1890

“GOOD LORD!” said young Vincelle, turning up the the collar of his overcoat. “I didn’t know we were going to the ends of the earth.”

“It’s worth it,” said his friend.

They sat in total darkness while the hired hack dragged them up the hills of Staten Island; it was a bitter night, and Vincelle wasn’t prepared for it. He shivered and pulled the rug higher over his knees. He was taking a little more than his share of that rug, but Pendleton, feeling himself more or less responsible for the cold, made no complaint. It was he who had persuaded Vincelle to make the arduous trip from Brooklyn to Staten Island, to attend a dance, and to see the prettiest girl there was to see. And Vincelle was a fellow accustomed only to cities, to warm, well-lighted houses and theatres and swift transitions in street cars and hansom cabs; he was, moreover, not adaptable and not compliant.

He looked out of the window with a sort of dismay; nothing but bare trees against a sinister night sky; now and then a lighted house in a big garden. The horse went steadfastly forward, with a monotonous jerking of his head; outside on the box loomed the swathed and shapeless figure of the coachman, who didn’t appear to be driving, but to be waiting to get somewhere.

“Is it much farther?” asked Vincelle, in an ominous voice.

“It’s not really far from the ferry,” said his friend. “Only being uphill all the way makes it seem longer.”

“I’m numb with cold.... Why the devil wasn’t I satisfied with the pretty girls in Brooklyn?”

“It’s worth it, I tell you!” Pendleton assured him, earnestly. “I’ve never had such good times in my life as I’ve had at the Masons’. Informal, but a good tone, you know. Charming people!”

Vincelle didn’t answer at all. He made up his mind to be very critical; he felt that the Masons needed to be almost superhumanly charming to compensate for so much discomfort.

They began the ascent of an outrageous hill, and the cheerful Pendleton, looking out of his window, announced that they were “practically there—the house is at the top of this hill.” He turned down the collar of his coat and gave his silk hat a careful rub with his sleeve; he began to stir about under the rug. But Vincelle made no preparations whatever; he intended to look cold and uncomfortable; it was not for him to please, but to be pleased. The carriage entered a gravel driveway with a sudden burst of speed, and drew up under a porte cochère. Lights were shining from the long windows curtained in white, and the sound of their wheels had brought a man-servant to the door.

For a moment Vincelle lingered while Pendleton made his arrangement with the driver, and then they entered the house together. And it astonished Vincelle. It was so extraordinarily full of light and colour; on either side of the hall were open doors, showing big rooms brightly carpeted, with blazing fires and flowers everywhere. From some distant region he heard voices, laughter, footsteps. The man-servant ushered them into a smaller room, carpeted in red, and lined with book shelves, where on a little table before the hearth stood a huge punch bowl; he proffered and they accepted; then he led them up the fine stairway to a bedroom which was hospitably ready for them with a roaring fire. He returned with a jug of hot water.

“Dinner in half an hour, gentlemen,” he said, and went away.

No use denying that Vincelle was impressed. Certainly they didn’t do things in this way at home. Jugs of hot water, instead of a chilly and possibly very distant bathroom, wood fires instead of hot-air registers and gas logs, flowers in February, instead of potted palms and rubber plants. Moreover, this idea of leaving it to a servant to welcome guests impressed him by its casualness; his mother always received visitors with ceremony, as soon as they crossed the threshold. He recognized here something exotic and rather disturbing; he got up and went over to the bureau, where he could critically regard himself, for he had decided that, after all, he would try to please.

He was a handsome fellow, very dark; he had heavy features and a sullen and obstinate mouth; he was not very tall, but stalwart and powerful. He was twenty-five, and though he looked even younger, owing perhaps to that tragic sulkiness, he had a thoroughly adult and responsible air. He was no fop, like Pendleton; there was sobriety and decorum in the cut of his coat; he was even then every inch the business man. Evening dress did not become his thick-set figure, but he was naturally not aware of that.

“Do they have a gong—or send after you when dinner’s ready?” he asked, still intent upon his image.

“They do not! You’re supposed to know, and if you’re late, they don’t wait for you. Come on! You’re lovely enough!” said Pendleton. He surveyed his friend good-humouredly; it didn’t disturb him that Vincelle was handsome and he was not, or that Vincelle had money and was almost sure to make more. The Masons wouldn’t care about that. He was consoled by certain advantages of his own; he was lively, cheerful, witty in a very mild way; everyone liked him; he was, in an innocuous sense, a “ladies’ man,” master of the utterly lost art of polite flirtation. He was tall, slender, elegant, with a long, sharp nose and a bulging forehead; his hair and eyebrows were so light as to look almost white; he had wrinkles about his little blue eyes; it is of no significance to say that he was twenty-seven, because he was ageless, and would be in no way different ten or twenty years later.

“Come on!” he said, again.

In great decorum, conscious of their immaculate appearance and their value as eligible and admirable young men, they descended the stairs and entered the drawing-room. The subtle air of excitement which Vincelle had felt upon entering the house was intensified here, the same abundance of light and flowers, and a big fire. But with the addition now of an agreeable babel of voices.

Pendleton led him forward to a stout lady in black silk, with an august, kindly face and a very high colour.

“Mrs. Mason,” he said, “may I present——”

“This must be Mr. Vincelle,” she said, cheerfully, and held out her hand. “You’re just in time. We’re about to have dinner.”

And she took the arm of a young man in spectacles and led the way into the dining-room, followed by all the others, without order or ceremony. She was not the aristocratic person the young man had expected, but she was dignified, and that sufficed for a mother. No more introducing was done, and he sat down between two girls who talked to him immediately and agreeably. But he couldn’t respond; he was a little out of his element; he was accustomed to formality, ceremony, an air of sobriety, and it didn’t agree with him to be plunged suddenly into the midst of a dozen strange people, without, one might say, his passport. If people didn’t know who he was, then where was his prestige?

He looked about him. There were certainly a dozen people, all of them young, with the exception of the hostess, and a queer, bearded man who was unaccountably dressed in a rough grey suit and who likewise had the effrontery to wear run-down morocco slippers. That was bad; that was odd and eccentric, and everything he objected to most strongly. But the two girls beside him addressed him as “Professor,” and if he were a professor, that explained it, though without justifying it. His glance left this unpleasant object, and sought for his friend, and found him opposite, lost in conversation with a girl. That must be the girl, of course! He stared at her, entranced. Pendleton hadn’t exaggerated in the least. She was charming, fascinating! Mentally he made use of the adjective which probably four out of every five of the young lady’s admirers used. He called her “fairylike.”

As a matter of fact, she wasn’t quite pretty, but no male person had discovered that. She destroyed judgment. She was a little, slight thing, rather pale, with reddish hair that stood out like an aureole of fine copper threads. She had warm brown eyes, the kindly eyes of her mother; small, pretty features. But her charm and her distinction lay in her wonderful animation. One could, he thought, look at her for hours, and never tire of her gestures, of the change of expression on her mobile face. She was witty, too; or it seemed wit to him, her dear little grimaces and her jolly, good-natured banter. No, he didn’t blame Pendleton in the least; she was worth the trip. Her dress satisfied his exacting requirements too; it was white, much beruffled, cut a little low in the neck, with short sleeves, and it had a train. It was the dress of a young lady, for in these days there really weren’t any girls.

She raised her eyes and met this new young man’s glance, and smiled at him—a hostess’s smile, friendly, but a little impersonal. He was gratified to see that she didn’t appear at all serious with Pendleton; she was, he thought, somewhat mocking. And from that hour, he decided to consider his friend’s well-known worship as a thing of no consequence, simply one of Pendleton’s innumerable little loves—a sort of joke....

It was an excellent dinner; he couldn’t remember a better, and it was surprisingly abundant. He was accustomed to frugality, and more or less austerity. His mother had finer linen, more silver, more magnificence, but never had she had on her table a feast like this, such honest, unpretentious excellence in food. There was one wine served throughout the meal, which was not according to his standard of elegance, but it was a good wine, beyond denial.

When the meal was finished, the ladies rose and fluttered away.

“Not much time, you know!” said Mrs. Mason, warningly, as she left. “It’s after eight!”

The professor then produced a box of cigars and a decanter and they lingered for a time in the warm room, very content. But the sound of carriage wheels interrupted them; they threw their cigars into the fire and went into the big room across the hall, where Mrs. Mason was waiting. A succession of bundled-up forms went past and up the stairs, descending in due time as more young ladies; the room began to fill. Pendleton was busy taking his friend about and introducing him here and there, not leaving him until his card was quite filled and he had secured two dances with Miss Mason herself.

What was it about this particular dance which made it different from all the other dances he had attended? Why did he have such a surpassingly enjoyable evening that he looked back upon it with a smile all his life? There were pretty, lively girls, a floor like glass, good music, a matchless supper; but there was nothing unusual in that. No, there was some quite special quality about it; a charming festivity, a revel wholly youthful and innocent and happy. He held the adorable Claudine in his arms for two waltzes; he had very little to say to her, but he was by nature taciturn; he listened instead. He was lost....

The carriages began coming back and the dance guests to take their leave. He watched one group after another of bright faces vanish, then at length the front door closed upon the last one, and Mrs. Mason, with a sigh that was half laughter, sank into a chair.

“Mercy!” she said. “I’m getting too old for this, children!”

There were only the house guests left now, and the family, standing about the big room. There were himself and Pendleton, the lovely Claudine and her mother, and five other persons, whom he was beginning to be able to place now; there were a daughter and her husband, there were two bosom friends of Claudine’s, and the incomprehensible young man in spectacles.

“It’s after two o’clock,” said Mrs. Mason. “There’s a little sort of breakfast laid out in the dining-room for you young people, if you’re hungry again. But don’t be long over it, and don’t disturb your father as you come upstairs. Good-night, all of you!”

She rose heavily.

“And, Lance, you’ll put out the lights and lock up?” she added.

The young man in spectacles nodded.

“Mother,” said Claudine, “it was lovely! It’s so dear of you!”

Her mother looked at her for a moment with a faint smile.

“You’re only young once!” she said.

Trite words, certainly, and none of her hearers felt their force. Her other daughter kissed her warmly, her son-in-law escorted her to the foot of the stairs, and her stout, black-clad figure was seen ascending, wearily, a little bent.

She puzzled Vincelle; she had no elegance; he felt sure that his mother would call her “ordinary.” Yet there was about her a dignity, an authority, he had never seen surpassed. And her way of entertaining you had a sort of vigour and originality about it; he felt that she didn’t care much what other people did, or what was correct, but was concerned only with comfort, gaiety, and this unostentatious, invincible dignity of hers.

“Come on!” said Claudine, and they all followed her across the hall.

A new mood had settled upon them; they weren’t conscious of being tired, but they were, all of them, subdued, inclined to a pleasant seriousness. The room was shadowy, except for a hanging gas lamp above the table, and the glow of the fire. They sat about the table, hungry in spite of the hearty supper they had consumed a few hours ago, and the young man in spectacles began to talk in an unaccountable and eccentric fashion about Pre-historic Man, and drew a picture of him, cowering and shivering on such nights as this.

“A life of incessant fear,” he said. “Imagine that. Never to know security. Never to see any possibility of safety. No chance of old age.”

Vincelle listened, but he felt vaguely that Pre-historic Man was rather blasphemous and Darwinian and free-thinking. It was also displeasing to observe that Claudine was interested.

“It’s safety that’s made us develop, isn’t it, Lance?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s safety that’s making us decline,” he said. “It’s making us soft and weak and dull.”

“But if we weren’t secure, we couldn’t have any art,” said Claudine.

“Art!” said the young man, with a harsh laugh. “Art! The opium dreams of drugged, idle people!”

The married sister interposed, laughing.

“Don’t be so serious, Lance! Claudine, dear, you’re not attending to us!”

For Claudine was sitting at the head of the table, dispensing tea and coffee. The sparkling brightness had gone from her face, she looked pale and a little weary, but lovelier than ever. Vincelle was now disposed to admire her more seriously; she had poise and dignity, and she could talk in a way to startle him. She had something to say even on the topic of Pre-historic Man; she had ideas which he couldn’t have had.

“Life lost its meaning,” Lance went on, “when it ceased to be a struggle.”

“For Heaven’s sake, when did it cease to be a struggle?” said Pendleton. “They forgot to tell me. I thought it was still pretty hard to get a foothold.”

Lance ignored him.

“Man waged a magnificent and heroic struggle with Nature,” he said, “but was defeated.”

“But was it really so heroic, Lance? It was an involuntary struggle, it hadn’t any aim. It seems to me that now, when we’re conscious, and can really try to improve—”

“We don’t. We can’t. It’s too late. We’re in the final stage of evolution. We went the wrong way.”

“Lance is a paleontologist,” murmured the girl next to Vincelle. “He’s wonderful, isn’t he? But so gloomy!”

Vincelle had no idea what a paleontologist was, but he didn’t like them. He felt horribly out of it. He couldn’t be learned, and he wouldn’t be funny, like Pendleton. He was quite aware that he wasn’t making any sort of impression here. Claudine must have become conscious of his dissatisfaction—perhaps he showed it—for she suddenly addressed him.

“What do you think, Mr. Vincelle? Do you think we’re a miserable, doomed remnant?”

He flushed.

“I’ve never given it much thought,” he said. “I’ve been busy keeping up with business.”

His poor little remark sounded so sulky and infantile that even he was confused.

“And politics,” he added, in an attempt to sound broader-minded.

Lance drew out his watch.

“I’m going to lock up now,” he said. “Five minutes before the lights go out!”

There was a chorus of good-nights.

“Don’t forget that Father’s asleep!” warned the married sister, as Claudine and her two bosom friends went chattering up the stairs. Pendleton and Vincelle followed them and turned down the hall to their own room. Pendleton began flinging off his clothes, but Vincelle sat motionless in an arm-chair before the fire.

“Who is that fellow they call Lance?” he asked.

“Oh! Him? He’s a cousin. The Professor’s protégé. He lives with them, you know. Nice chap; a little bit crazy. But then the old man is too. Both scientists, you know. Professor’s a botanist. Come to bed, old boy, and get that light out, will you?”

Tall and lanky in his night shirt, Pendleton stretched tremendously.

“Come to bed!” he said, again. “Come and get your beauty sleep, my boy. Your face is your fortune, you know.”

Vincelle answered him with a sudden burst of anger.

“Oh, yes, but I’m not quite a fool, you know. A fellow can’t hold a position in a business like mine without some trace of brains. I may not know much about Science, but I know a damn lot about the Art of Making Money. And I’m not a boor, either,” he added. “Hitherto I’ve always managed to hold my own in any sort of social gathering. I’ve been considered worthy of a word now and then....”

A loud, artificial snore from his friend cut him short. He turned out the light and undressed in the firelight. But he felt his face burn in the dark with a resentment he was not able to analyze.

CHAPTER TWO
A VINCELLE IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT

HE waked the next morning to a marvelous peace. Pendleton was still sleeping beside him, and there was no other sound but his quiet breathing. Vincelle felt very wide awake; he got up instantly, and he was glad to believe, from the silence, that it was still very early and that he would be able to get home before eleven. He had forgotten to wind his watch the night before and it had stopped, but he fancied that he could sense the time. He went over to one of the windows and pulled up the shade with a rattle; it wasn’t his nature to consider the sleep of friends. It was a bright, frosty morning, very clear; before him lay a neat back garden, and behind it a stable. Not a sign of life. He drew on his socks, always the first step of his routine, and suddenly a disturbing thought assailed him. He went over to Pendleton and shook him and shook him until he opened his eyes. Pendleton swore at him.

“Look here!” said young Vincelle. “Where do I shave?”

“Don’t shave!” said Pendleton. “Go to sleep again like a Christian.”

“No. I told Mother I’d try to get home in time to take her to church.”

Pendleton pulled out his watch from under his pillow.

“Ah!” he shouted, exultantly. “Half past eleven already, my son! Foiled!”

Vincelle frowned.

“I haven’t missed in years,” he said. “Poor old lady! She counts on it.”

“Now perhaps you’ll shut up and let me go to sleep again.”

“Where can I shave? Is there a bathroom?”

“Ring the bell,” said Pendleton. “And some one’ll bring you hot water.”

But when he was dressed in the clothes he had brought with him in his bag, he hesitated to go down alone in this strange house. He strolled about the room, smoking, until Pendleton was ready, and they descended together. There wasn’t a soul to be seen.

“They’ve all gone to church,” said Pendleton.

This struck Vincelle as grossly inhospitable, someone should have been there to attend to him. But a nice little servant brought them an excellent breakfast in the dining room and after it they sat comfortably in front of the fire, enjoying cigars from an open box on the sideboard.

“As soon as they come back, we’ll go,” said Pendleton. And they did so. Mrs. Mason offered them the use of the family omnibus in which they had returned from church, but Pendleton said they’d rather walk. She did not invite them to stop for dinner, which Vincelle considered impolite. If she didn’t want them, why couldn’t she simply invite them in a half-hearted, unacceptable manner?

“I must thank you for a most enjoyable time,” he said ceremoniously.

She smiled and held out her hand.

“Come again!” she said.

Claudine, too, gave him her hand, but her glance and her smile were lamentably devoid of significance. Evidently he wasn’t, for her, a special person; he was nothing but a young man who had come down for a dance. They set out down the hill, and he was able now to gain an idea of the place at his leisure. It was a big wooden house with a cupola on top; it had no pretension to beauty or architectural style, it was in fact, quite hideous and ungainly, made of grey clapboards with a slate roof; square, except that on one side a little greenhouse was built out from the veranda. The garden, too, although large, was not like the gardens of other people: there was no fountain, no nicely set out shrubs. There was a beautiful old box hedge enclosing it, but inside it looked irregular and untidy.

Pendleton was talking cheerfully.

“What do you think of her?” he asked.

“Very attractive,” said Vincelle.

“Did you ever see anyone like her?” he pursued.

Vincelle admitted that he hadn’t.

“I don’t mind telling you I’m pretty hard hit,” said Pendleton.

This was something his friend had very much wished not to hear.

“What about her?” he asked, briefly.

Pendleton groaned.

“She’s such a little flirt!” he said. “Of course, I’m not in a position to marry now, anyway. I’m not making enough to keep myself. And by the time I can ask her ... with all these fellows hanging round her all the time ... Lord!”

Vincelle considered this frankness unmanly and indecorous. Never would he have admitted a liking for a young lady until he was certain that she returned it.

They crossed on the ferry, standing outside in the fine, cold air, on the deck of the ark-shaped old boat. They reached New York and just caught the Wall Street ferry and at last disembarked in the familiar air of Brooklyn. They both lived in the august Columbia Heights district, Pendleton in a house which was respectable, but no more, and Vincelle in a fine one, on a corner, with a garden quite twenty feet wide. He respected this garden, because it represented extra property and also because it kept them aloof from all neighbors; through the high iron fence could be seen its winter desolation, a complete and woeful barrenness. At the best of times it was hardly an oasis, nothing grew in it, and nothing was intended to grow in it, except a wretched ancient wistaria, two bushes of Japanese holly and a tall shrub, dry and dead. The common use of the garden was as a place in which the house plants could stand, the rubber trees and palms and orange trees in tubs. Every Spring old Mrs. Vincelle bought a number of potted geraniums and had them planted in a certain bed where they blossomed, mangily, for a month or two.

He bade his friend good-bye here and ran up the brown stone steps, opened the door with his latch key, and entered into a chill vault, dark, muffled, dismal. He hung up coat and hat on a gigantic piece of furniture which towered up to the ceiling and which was at once a hat rack, a pier-glass, a bureau with six drawers and a low table with a marble top. Then he ran up the thickly carpeted stairs to a bedroom on the floor above where he knew he would find his mother.

Sure enough, there she was, sitting in her rocking chair, with folded hands, looking out on to the quiet street, a fragile little old lady of sixty with a contemptuous, wizened little face and melancholy brown eyes. She was dressed in her Sunday dress of black silk with a white lace vest, she wore her best earrings, her diamond brooch, and a fine wool shawl bundled about her narrow shoulders.

“Well!” she said with a smile.

Her son approached and kissed her reverently.

“I was very sorry, Mother, to miss taking you to church,” he said, “but I didn’t wake up until eleven. It was three o’clock when we got to bed.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Did they dance on Sunday morning? Well, I dare say no one thinks of such things any longer. However, it didn’t matter, Gilbert. I had a touch of rheumatism, I shouldn’t have gone anyway.”

“Pshaw!” he said solicitously. “Your shoulder again, Mother?”

“It doesn’t matter. Sit down, Gilbert, and tell me all about it.”

He sat down opposite her, smoothing his sleek black head.

“Oh! The usual thing!” he said.

“Are they nice people?”

“Oh, yes, nice enough. The father’s a professor.”

“That may mean anything,” said the old lady. “I’ve known some professors who were very nice people and some who were impossible. Did you see that girl that Ashley is so enthusiastic about?”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“Mrs. Pendleton tells me he’s head over heels in love with her.”

“Oh, well, you know what Ashley is. He’s always in love.”

“Is she as pretty as he imagines?”

“I don’t know what he imagines,” said her son, a little peevishly. “She’s a very attractive girl. Look here, Mother, I haven’t had any dinner.”

“Mercy me,” cried the old lady. “And it’s nearly four o’clock! Why didn’t you stay in Staten Island? Our dinner’s over and done with hours ago. Ring the bell, Gilbert!”

He did so and it was promptly answered by a woman servant.

“Fetch Miss Dorothy,” she said.

She had risen in her agitation regarding her son’s shocking hunger and began pottering about the room, frowning, lifting up little articles from the bureau and the table with trembling old hands. It was a fine, big room with a Turkish rug on the floor and an assemblage of solid walnut furniture. It was crowded with knickknacks, photographs, a hundred and one mementoes of her past life. It hadn’t the look of a bedroom, for the bureau was hidden behind a screen and the bed was a folding one, displaying nothing but an immense bevelled mirror set in a broad frame of polished wood. Her son had never, even in childhood, seen the least trace of disorder in this room.

“Pshaw!” said the old lady, “she’s asleep again, I suppose. The older she grows the lazier she gets. She’s forever creeping upstairs and going to sleep.... All nonsense.... Here am I so troubled with insomnia that I don’t get five hours rest out of the night and I don’t think anyone’s even seen me taking a nap.... Well, Dorothy!”

A woman stood smiling in the doorway, a stout, grey-haired woman with a tousled, guilty air, a cousin, who earned her bitter bread as a companion for various relatives. She was always spoken of as staying with Aunt This and Cousin That; after two or three months she was sent away, with a sort of rage engendered by her submission, her poverty and her stupidness, and then when the memory had worn off, she was recalled. Her usefulness was never admitted, but always exploited.

“Why, Gilbert!” she said, with an air of pleased surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in!”

“I don’t think you’d hear a sound if the house was on fire!” said the old lady, tartly. “It’s dangerous, the way you sleep. We could all be murdered in our beds, and it wouldn’t disturb you.”

“Why, Cousin Selina, I wasn’t asleep! I was writing letters!”

“Well, now perhaps you’ll be able to attend to this poor boy. He hasn’t had any dinner. And I’d calculated on his having a hearty meal there, so I hadn’t planned for a very big supper. And Katie’s out. Run down to the kitchen and see if you and Mary can’t fix up something nice for him. And tell Mary supper at five instead of six.”

Miss Dorothy looked terrified. She knew so well the very meagre resources of this household where there was never quite enough of anything, where each egg was mentally numbered.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, doubtfully, and vanished.

“Now run upstairs and get ready!” said the old lady.

There were three big, unoccupied bedrooms on her floor, but it had seemed to her, and to Gilbert, more fitting for a bachelor to live on the floor above. He had a very large room there, furnished with austere majesty, an ugly and uncomfortable room which he accepted as he accepted everything else in the life his mother had arranged for him. There was a black dressing-room attached, furnished with a marble wash basin and two big clothes presses: it was supposed to belong to his room and the one next, jointly, but as Miss Dorothy now occupied that adjoining room, the second door was well bolted.

He sat down in a large, high-backed rocking chair with a tapestry seat, one of the many pieces of furniture sent upstairs in disgrace after long service. He began, absent-mindedly, to rock and to think—about Claudine. His thoughts were all distressful and clouded; he felt himself irresistibly attracted by that gay little creature, and he resented it. He resented everything about that dance, the casualness, the cheerfulness; his own home seemed to him admirably correct and majestic. He felt quite unaccountably insulted. These people had treated him in cavalier fashion....

He was naturally inclined to sulkiness. It was his refuge from an incomprehensible world. And perhaps his great capacity for being offended came from an equally pathetic source, perhaps it was a sort of protest made by his youth and his manhood against his bondage. He wasn’t aware of the bondage: he believed that his relations with his mother were ideal and that he “humoured” her in a respectful way. But as a matter of fact, he was less free, he was more under her dominion, than even Miss Dorothy. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he was hypnotized. He had been led to believe that he was happy; the poor, sullen lonely creature. He never laughed: he very seldom smiled; he hadn’t a spark of humour or gaiety in him. Pendleton privately considered him “heavy,” and heavy he was. It hadn’t prevented him from making a few conquests though. His handsome face, his invincible innocence and possibly his money and his well-known ability in business had won two or three little hearts; but though he had been flattered, he hadn’t been much touched. He had never before in his life experienced anything like this; this was positively uncomfortable. He was obsessed and annoyed by the memory of Miss Mason of Staten Island. Her sparkling face, her liquid voice, the surprising novelty of her had completely captured him. The idea of a girl as pretty and popular and charming as she being able to talk with a—what was it—a paleontologist in so grave a way....

Summoned by Miss Dorothy he descended through the silent house to the dining-room in the basement, always used when the family was alone, and attacked the dismal feast set before him. He was silent because he was silent by nature, having nothing to communicate, and the two women were silent, for what in Heaven’s name had they to say to him or to each other? Meals in that household were perfunctory and ascetic; the old lady didn’t like to waste money on food, it needn’t be either appetizing or nourishing so long as it was according to tradition, and decent. They finished, and all went solemnly up-stairs again; the little old lady first, noiseless over the thick carpet, incredibly slight and unsubstantial, then her son, the staircase creaking under his heavy tread, the quiet darkness reverberating with his loud, masculine cough, and last of all Miss Dorothy.

They went into the back drawing-room and sat down in the chairs they invariably occupied. The old lady closed her eyes, for that nap she always took, and always denied. Miss Dorothy, owing to the fact of its being Sunday, couldn’t take up her fancy work, which was then one of her strongest claims to gentility and gave her at least a semblance of elegant uselessness, and she too closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to continue in her weary and muddled brain her intricate calculations, “planning” she called it. She had to plan for a new black skirt. Could she manage with that alpaca Cousin Selina had given her and if not could she possibly spare the money to buy a new one? She hadn’t a salary; simply, when she left to stay with the next relative, Cousin Selina would give her something in an envelope and it might be enough or it might be very little. She had no occupation for her thoughts but her planning; poor soul. She hadn’t a single interest in life.

As for Gilbert, he being a man, had to read the Sunday newspapers and to smoke. He had an arm-chair and a foot-stool and a smoking stand, placed ready for him, in a good light. But his peace was gone. He was sunk in black depression.

CHAPTER THREE
GILBERT GOES A-WOOING

“WELL ...” said the old lady. “She’s very—peculiar.”

There was no word her son could have disliked more; he frowned.

“Why?” he demanded. “In what way? How is she ‘peculiar’?”

“She’s been brought up,” the old lady began, and stopped. “After all, you’re the one to be suited, Gilbert. You’re marrying her, not I. If you’ve got it into your head that she’s the only woman on earth to make you happy, very well. Marry her. And I only hope you will be happy.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s likely, if you’re going to quarrel with her.”

“Gilbert,” said the old lady, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my life.”

True enough, he was obliged to admit it. He saw that he had used a wrong word. She didn’t quarrel, she didn’t argue. But she conquered. And when she disapproved of people, she changed them. He had never tried to understand her methods, but he had seen the results. He supposed it was force of character and that it must be admirable and beneficent.

“You needn’t worry about that, my boy,” she went on. “I’ve never yet had a word of disagreement with any of my sons-or daughters-in-law.”

“I know it, Mother. But living under the same roof ... and she’s been brought up very differently.”

“Yes; just as I said,” the old lady observed. “Very peculiar.... However, if you’ve made up your mind, my boy, there’s no use talking about it. I’ll do my best, as I always have done and always expect to do.”

Her son believed this; he had never doubted that she was a perfectly noble, perfectly wise and magnificent woman and he worshipped her. There was an inscrutable and malicious smile on her shrunken lips; the changeless, infinitely remote smile of god-like amusement at earth’s follies which one sees on the face of a bronze Buddha. She had a majesty beyond the need of charm or of fashion. She belonged to an old Brooklyn family which had become aristocratic by reason of having lived in the same place for four generations, and she had married into a similar one. She had always been rich and immeasurably secure, living isolated in the big house on “The Heights” like the somewhat ferocious monarch of a desert isle, an obscure and uncomfortable existence in which nothing was accomplished and nothing enjoyed. She disdained society as frivolous; and all luxury was to her abomination. She made, she said, a “proper use” of her money.

Her chief claims to moral excellence were these: that she had borne six children, and that she had lived for sixty years; and above all because of her marvelous lack of sensibility, an imperviousness which no actual image of Buddha could have surpassed. She had looked on at suffering, anguish, despair, unmoved, and that was fortitude; she had witnessed birth, death, without a gleam of curiosity or speculation, and that was common sense. She had been “just” toward her little children with all the blindness proper to that virtue.

“It makes no difference why you do things,” she always said. “A thing’s right, or it’s wrong. I don’t want to hear your reasons.”

He recognized the old familiar attitude now, the old air of saying—“Very well; go your own way, and learn by bitter experience!” Within herself he felt she was saying—“You’ll have to reap what you sow. You’ll make your bed and you’ll have to lie in it.” And so on.

“You don’t approve of my marrying her then, do you?” he asked.

“You’re twenty-five years old,” said his mother, “You’re old enough to decide for yourself.”

He felt more irritated than his ideas of filial piety allowed. He drank his coffee slowly and reminded himself that his mother was a widow and that all her other children had married and left her. His thoughts were readily distracted that day, though, and good-will very easy to him. He sat back, lighted a cigar and looked about him, at the dismal basement dining-room, used for all the family meals, with its barred windows through which one could see the feet of passersby, and the horrible walnut buffet and sideboard and the massive square table, and the twelve chairs, three invalided and permanently in corners, the faded carpet that had once been upstairs, the immense crayon picture of a lion’s head, the general economical hideousness of this room which proclaimed the old lady’s genial idea that anything was good enough for the inmates of the house, and the owner. He had never liked the room, but he fancied it this morning as it might be—a Paradise, with the charm, the youth, the mysterious strangeness of a young wife in it.

Here, without question, the young wife would have to come, because Gilbert could not and would not consider leaving his mother alone. And to be candid, dared not. He owed everything to his mother, he said. Hadn’t she made sacrifices to give her children every advantage, lessons of various sorts, and unstinted moral advice? She talked candidly of moulding their characters, and that is just what she had done. She had moulded them in her own image, supreme and devastating blasphemy. They were all of them like fainter copies of her own sharply written character. This man sitting across the breakfast table from her now was literally made by her. By nature credulous and imitative, he had lent himself perfectly to her manipulations; he thought exactly as she had taught him to think; he disagreed with her in some points, because she had taught him that a man must in certain respects disagree with women; he knew things, he had had experiences unknown to her, but she had caused him to believe, sadly, that a man must so conduct himself. She had taught him that, as a man, he must disappoint his mother. She despised him a little, but she certainly, undeniably loved him.

She looked at him, stalwart black-avised fellow, with his heavy brows and his obstinate mouth. Wasn’t he manly, she thought!

“Ah, well!” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it’s all for the best, Gilbert.”

He finished his breakfast in manly silence,—which no decent woman dare trouble—and getting up, went round the table to his mother, dutifully to kiss her good-bye.

“I’m sorry you didn’t—take to her, Mother,” he said, a little grieved.

“Well,” she answered. “You’re marrying her, Gilbert, not I.”

“If she’ll have me,” he said. “I haven’t asked her yet, you know.”

He had long ago promised his mother never to propose marriage to any woman without telling her first. And it was in loyalty to this promise that he had lured Miss Mason from Staten Island to Brooklyn under pretense of showing her a wonderful picture on exhibition in a department store—a Dutch peasant sweeping her cottage, and the motes in the sunbeam were reputed marvelously life-like. It was a quite natural thing, after gazing at this picture for fifteen awkward minutes, to suggest a call on his mother living so near. The old lady had heard more than one mention from her son of this Miss Mason from Staten Island, and she knew, and Miss Mason knew, that this was a visit of inspection.

After it was over, and the beloved young lady had left the house on his arm, he had, of course, to take her back to Staten Island. And never had she been so nice to him, so kind, so gracious, never had he felt so encouraged. The next evening was her birthday, and he had been invited to the little dance by her mother.

“Why don’t you come to supper?” Miss Mason had suggested. And they had both turned red and become silent, a little startled and alarmed. Because they knew, both of these, that this would be the time....

“She may refuse me,” he said, and with a glance his mother saw all the anguish he was trying to hide.

“I don’t think she will!” said she with a most detestable smile, which fully expressed her opinion of Miss Mason and her matrimonial hopes. “I don’t think there’s much fear of that!”

But Gilbert knew better, and he spent a day of black misery in his office. As the afternoon wore on he became sure that she would refuse him. She had such a lot of fellows hanging around—and all of them had those qualities which he lacked, those fascinating social graces.... He so silent, so unready, a clumsy dancer, a man interested in nothing but business—and the Republican party. He dreaded, he shrank from asking her, and yet he was feverishly impatient to do so before those other fellows had a chance.

Never was there a lover more humble than he. And he liked to be humble; he liked to think how a great, powerful fellow like himself could be brought low by a slip of a girl. It was a wonderful example, he thought, of the Power of Love. Well, who knows ...?

He had been seeing a great deal of Miss Mason during the past three months. He had gone with Pendleton to make their party call in due form and he had found her on that occasion more friendly and more intimate. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was alone with Lance. Her mother and father, she said, had gone out for a walk in the Silver Lake woods—which Vincelle thought a very peculiar thing for an elderly couple to do, above all, on a Sunday afternoon, when respectable people were best invisible. There were a good many things about this family which he could not approve of; Lance was one of these. That thin sunburnt young man in spectacles with his gloomy face and didactic air jarred upon him beyond reason. He had observed too, that Lance had been reading to his cousin, in cosy intimacy, before the fire in the library.

But Claudine had been remarkably kind to him, and gentle and friendly. Moreover, Lance had had the decency to remove himself and his big book. Pendleton, of course, monopolized the talk, with his flippant nonsense, but Gilbert felt that that did him no harm. He felt that he, sitting in silence, with only a word now and then, a sensible word, mind you, appeared more manly, and he was right! He touched the heart of the lively young lady; she felt suddenly rather sorry for him, and because he was stupid she fancied him more honest than others. She quite cordially invited him to come again.

He did, and this time alone. He didn’t even mention the fact to Pendleton, and when Pendleton learned of it he took it amiss.

“I introduced you there,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d go behind my back that way, Vincelle.”

“I was invited,” said Gilbert, “and I went. I didn’t know the family was your private property. I didn’t know I had to account to you for every—”

“Damn unfriendly, I call it!” said Pendleton.

Gilbert smiled scornfully.

If their friendship had been a more genuine one, this would have caused a serious quarrel; but it was a forced sort of friendship, simply brought about by propinquity. They had grown up together, gone to the same school, the same dancing school, they moved in the same set. They had no respect for each other; Gilbert despised the other’s frivolity and lack of money-making ability, and Pendleton looked upon Gilbert as a surly and ungenerous young boor. After their brief disagreement about Miss Mason they went on as usual, except that they were wary about the Staten Island visits. They went down there at different times, never again together, and each took what advantage he could get.

The unhappy Gilbert had suffered much, and perhaps learned a little. He had been dreadfully humiliated. Once Claudine had asked him to ride with her and he had been forced to admit that he didn’t ride. Her astonished face ...! And he hadn’t read any of those books she knew so affectionately.

He had, when younger and slimmer, played tennis, but of late years since he had become so engrossed in business, his great recreation had been poker. As for books, he liked reading as much as the next man, provided they were entertaining books. And he liked music, too; not operas, but not trashy stuff, either; he liked Schubert’s Serenade, and Traumerei, and things like that.... He hadn’t Pendleton’s talent for picking up information, for knowing something about everything, but when he heard Pendleton talking so glibly, he consoled himself by remembering that he had had an education exactly like his, of precisely the same length and the same price. So Pendleton couldn’t really know any more than he did, no matter how he talked.

The free, careless air of that household had encouraged him. In other families where there were marriageable daughters, he had had an uncomfortable feeling of eligibility, he had felt that everything he did was important and significant, and that he must be careful. Here it was obvious that no one cared. He could come and be welcome, or he could stay away. He had begun to bring flowers and candy, which Claudine received with pretty appreciation. But other people brought flowers and candy, also, and were as nicely thanked.

He made an effort to study her to learn if she really was a flirt, as Pendleton said. But he couldn’t decide. She reigned like a queen over a court of admirers, but without undue coquetry. She was, in spite of her gaiety and liveliness, a serious girl. She read marvelous books. She played astounding music; she was a great companion to her father on his botanical walks and she collected “specimens,” dried and pressed in a book. Weeds, they looked like to Gilbert, but he was willing to admit their value. He had never imagined anyone, so happy as she, so interested and delighted with life. She was a fine horsewoman, she skated and danced beautifully; she took long, long walks in the country, and enjoyed them wholeheartedly; she went to the opera, to concerts, she read, she practised her music, she painted in water-colours, she had any number of friends and all sorts of informal society, she hadn’t a dull, or idle moment in her existence.

He saw no evidences of domesticity in her, but that didn’t trouble him. It wasn’t an era of domesticity. A wife, in his class, was an ornament and a diversion. Domestic science was an unknown term to both of them. Claudine had escaped the thorough training of her two elder sisters; her mother had conscientiously taught them to cook, to sew, and to superintend a household, just as she herself had been taught, but with this youngest and brightest child, she had lost heart. She was growing older; she was tired. And moreover, it seemed to her that the time for all that had passed. No one would ever expect Claudine to cook or to sew.

“Let her enjoy herself while she can,” her mother said to herself. “Youth is over so soon.”

She would make a charming hostess, let that suffice. Gilbert asked no more. He was completely dazzled.

His feelings would be incomprehensible to a later generation. They were such polite, respectful feelings! He never thought of Claudine and himself as a woman and a man. She was a young lady, and he was a gentleman, and even in his most secret soul he respected her. He wanted to marry her and he let it go at that. He didn’t even analyze her charms.

He was a man of invincible honesty. He wasn’t clear-sighted; he had no self-knowledge, but neither had he any subtlety. He loved Claudine: he longed to give her everything he had. He felt himself unworthy and inferior beside her purity, her innocence, her lovely young spirit. He had tried to the best of his ability to set before her whatever advantages there might be in marrying him, but not through conceit, only to persuade her.

He had brought with him on one occasion an old magazine, to show her an article in it—“The Old Vincelles of Brooklyn.” It had been written by a sort of Miss Dorothy, a humble and admiring relation, and it was a narrative of that singularly unillustrious family, beginning with the Huguenot who had come first to American shores, and mentioning with solemn veneration a long line of lawyers, ministers, and business men, all respectable, serious, and thrifty. Not a vagary, not a passion, among them.

He showed her this not from pride—although he was proud of it—but merely as an added inducement, in the same spirit he had talked to her of his “business prospects,” and his remarkable progress. It was as if he said, “Here is all I have, beloved girl, won’t it compensate for what I am?” And now he rested his case. He had nothing further to offer. His inarticulate and unhappy wooing was at an end. He was going to ask her, quite simply, if she would have him.

He arrived at the house in the June twilight. The house was still unlighted, the windows were open, the curtains fluttering gently in a little breeze. There was a magical fragrance from the garden: it was in all ways a magical evening. He never quite forgot it.

He dismissed the carriage at the gate and walked along the drive, the gravel crunching under his deliberate tread, the perfumed breeze blowing against his miserable and sullen face. Because, under his serious and pompous demeanor, he was after all, very young; almost a boy. And his whole heart was set on this, his whole heart! Claudine was the one woman on earth for him.

If she only knew the power she held in her little hands, he reflected!

CHAPTER FOUR
CLAUDINE’S PECULIAR MOTHER

§ i

NO one could have known this better. She was in her room, standing before the mirror, looking with critical attention at her image. She was at her loveliest and well she knew it. She was in white, with a pale green sash about her twenty inch waist. Her red hair was curled over her forehead in a low bang, below which her brown eyes were marvelously bright and alluring. Her face was radiant with happiness, but there lay over it a faint shadow, a sort of tenderness.

This was to be the day. She knew it. She had read his determination in his face the day before. And it was all coming out just as she had wished it to come. Ever since her school days that had been her dream—to be proposed to by a dark, handsome man in evening dress, at a dance. There had been other proposals but none of them just right; there had been other men to whom her fancy had strayed, but never like this. She felt for this silent and stalwart young fellow a pity, a compassion that bordered on pain. She didn’t like to let him out of her sight. She longed so to make him happy. He seemed so lonely, so helpless, so neglected, so pitiably in need of a comrade. Since she had seen his horrible home and his chilly old mother, she had loved him more, felt more sorry for him than ever. Oh, no doubt about it, he was the man!

The sense of impending change was upon her. This room would never look the same to her again, her own face would never have quite this look again; after this evening everything would be different. She was lively and high-spirited, but she was in no way frivolous. She wouldn’t make a promise unless she meant to keep it. This was the most important step in her life, and she had considered it well. She had studied her man; she felt that she knew him. She was well aware that he wasn’t clever, and that he wasn’t very good-natured, but she was so accustomed to good-nature, to kindness, tolerance, that she did not know their value. Let him be a little cross if he wished, the dear old bear! She would wheedle away his ill-humour with her own gaiety. She would be the light of his life, she would bring youth and happiness into his monotonous existence. She could be more to him than to any other man.

Divine and naïve idea of a young girl, innocently conscious of her own immeasurable value!

§ ii

It had been a beautiful day for her, a day of profound significance. She had been waked up by her mother coming into her bedroom to kiss her and wish her “many happy returns.” Half asleep she had watched the stout figure moving about the room, pulling up the shades to let in the light of the summer morning, picking up the clothes she had left carelessly about, folding bits of ribbon, straightening the articles on her bureau with that silent and inexhaustible kindness she counted upon as she did upon the very sun.

“Well!” said her mother at last, with her benevolent smile, “are you never going to look at your little presents, chickabiddy?”

Then she had sat up, her short heavy braid over one shoulder, and began opening the packages always found on birthday mornings at one’s bedside. The gifts had brought tears to her eyes. The love in them, the unspeakably dear intimacy! Her mother had embroidered a dozen linen handkerchiefs, and an exquisite sachet case for them; her father had presented her with the bottle of Cherry Blossom perfume he had bought every year since she was a child—and which she didn’t like—and a big box of chocolates with a ten dollar gold piece on top. Lance gave her a book of verse. Then there was a photograph in a silver frame of her eldest sister with her three babies; there were six pairs of French gloves from one brother and a beautiful edition of “Ingoldsby Legends” from the other, and from the sister who had married only a year ago a combing jacket, trimmed with pale green ribbons. She had so well remembered Claudine’s tastes!

“Oh, Mother!” she had said, with a sob, “you’re all so good and dear! I wish ...?”

“What do you wish, Goosie?”

But she didn’t quite know. Perhaps she wished to clutch at Time and hold him here forever.

She had got up and dressed and gone into the garden before breakfast to look at the flowers, and to pick a very few. The roses were just beginning; they were so lovely that she almost wept again. The buds were drooping in a sort of enchanted drowsiness, some yellow, some so faintly pink, some a dark and wonderful red; she touched with her finger the waxy satin petals, she bent over them to inhale the fragrance of them, that heavenly fragrance warmed with the sun. She went about from one bed to the other, to see what new thing had come up, what was flourishing, what was disappointing. Her father was a notable gardener; she hadn’t his skill, but she had his love for growing things. She enjoyed the garden perhaps more than he did, for she had not his anxieties about it. She sauntered over the wide lawn that ran all down the hillside, the sun warm on her bare head, her white dress trailing over the grass, and as she went she reflected, with a little fleeting melancholy in her happiness, Nineteen! Nineteen such wonderful years in this garden!

But the years to come she thought, would be far more wonderful.

§ iii

The Masons were quite unabashed in their family celebrations—Mrs. Mason had a perfectly clear conception of the value of these ceremonies in holding together a family, and she made the most of them, in her calm way. It was a revelation to young Vincelle; he thought it somewhat childish and absurd and not quite the thing. The table that night was set with unusual magnificence with a lace cloth and four silver candelabra, and at the end a wonderful cake was brought, frosted with pink and white and green, and bearing twenty candles, one for good luck. He was the only guest and he felt embarrassed.

After the dinner the dance, the same sort of dance that had been on the occasion of his first visit, but without that unique flavor. He felt a little chilled, a little aloof, dreading unspeakably what lay before him. Never had Claudine seemed so distant, never had she seemed so much a stranger. He began to grow certain that he had no chance at all. Perhaps it would be better if she did refuse him, and he could go home again....

Young men invited to dances at Mrs. Mason’s house in those days were expected to dance, and Gilbert had not much time for reflection. He went dutifully waltzing about the ball-room with one young lady after the other, and once or twice went out upon the veranda with a partner. Actually a moonlight night; he couldn’t have devised a better setting....

The moment came. He stood out there with Claudine, on the lawn, in the moonlight. She had suddenly grown quiet: he could see her face plainly, and it was grave, serious, almost sad. She looked more than ever like a spirit, in her white dress with her slim bare neck and arms.

The breeze blew the end of her silvery scarf against his face, and brought to his nostrils the faint scent of the perfume she used—some innocent, old-fashioned thing of her mother’s. He took her by the arm and led her under the shadow of a row of horse chestnuts.

Poor devil! He had no fit words. God knows what he faltered out.... But she didn’t care. Tears came to her eyes; indeed they were both very close to weeping. She reached out and touched his hot trembling hand, and they clung to each other, mute, with their pitiful young love, their hearts aching with the beauty of the matchless night and the supreme moment, unique in their lives, never again to be recaptured.

“Don’t tell anyone to-night!” she whispered, and for these few hours it was their secret.

§ iv

The very next day the trouble began. His mother received the news of his acceptance with a smile of satirical amusement.

“You’re old enough to know what you’re doing,” she said. “And so is she.”

“Claudine’s only nineteen,” said her son, answering her tone rather than her words.

“Is she?” said his mother. “I shouldn’t have thought so. She seems very sophisticated.... But I suppose that’s her upbringing.”

Pursuant to Claudine’s instructions he had taken an afternoon off from the office so that he could go down to Staten Island, and see her father. This ordeal didn’t particularly distress him: he felt that as a son-in-law he was faultless. He had practically no past; nothing that could be troublesome, anyway, and financially he was ready and anxious for the most minute investigation.

The Professor received him with kindliness. He said “Well, young man!” offered him a cigar and said that as Claudine had made up her mind, what were they to do? He asked him a few questions, and then sent him off to Claudine. But, as he left the library, he met Mrs. Mason in the hall. And her look astonished him. Her bland face wore no smile for him: on the contrary, she gave him a glance so cold, severe and merciless that he winced.

When he learned the truth he was still more taken aback. She objected! Claudine was tearful and dejected. She said they’d had a dreadful time that morning.

“Father says I’m to decide for myself, and that neither he nor Mother ought to interfere. But Mother said—Oh, Gilbert, I can’t understand Mother! It’s not a bit like her!... She said she’d never consent to her dying day.”

“But why?” cried the affronted and amazed young man.

“She thinks—we’re not suited to each other.”

“Rubbish!” he said, scornfully. That was a woman’s objection for you! Nothing against him financially, morally or physically, but some absurd feminine notion of suitability. He was a little relieved.

“I suppose the truth of it is, she doesn’t want to lose you, Claudine. I don’t blame her.”

“Oh, no!” said Claudine, “it can’t be that, because—” she stopped short with a sudden blush.

“Because what?”

“Because—I know it isn’t that.... Oh, Gilbert, do try to—win her affection!”

“I don’t see why I should!” he answered. “Upon my word I don’t see why I should humble myself—”

“She’s my mother, Gilbert, and I love her.”

“Yes, of course, my sweet girl! But, after all, if you’re going to marry me, I come first, don’t I? If you really love me—” She began to cry.

“You know I do! Only—you can’t imagine how dear and wonderful Mother’s always been.”

He said he could have a talk with her and he did. It was not a pleasant talk. This benevolent matronly creature, whom he had always taken for granted as a part of Claudine’s background, had suddenly come alive as a woman, as a difficult and unmanageable feminine creature.

She said:

“I should prefer not to discuss this matter with you, Mr. Vincelle.”

“But why?” he protested. “If you have any objection to me, isn’t it only fair to tell me what it is? To let me defend myself?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I couldn’t put it into words.... I am positive that you cannot make Claudine happy.”

“Why do you think I can’t make her happy, Mrs. Mason?”

“It isn’t in you,” she said frankly. “You are not suited to each other.”

“Well, I believe a woman can adapt herself to any man, if she really cares for him.”

“Claudine’s not adaptable. It would be necessary for you to make concessions—to be very tolerant and wise. And I don’t think you would be.”

He smiled indulgently.

“I think I understand her,” he said. “And I’m used to feminine ways, you know. My mother—”

She shook her head.

“It won’t do!” she said, with emphasis. “I shall never consent to it.”

This was the most outrageous affront imaginable. If she had objected to him for any other reason, because of his morals, his religion, his social standing, his financial position, he could have endured it, because he could have argued and proved her absolutely wrong. But just simply to dislike him....

Of course, he knew how perverse, unreasonable and provoking women were, a man must take that into consideration. But that a mature woman should be so idiotic as to insult an eligible suitor for her daughter’s hand was a thing unheard of. He despised her; she had no common sense; she had no regard for her child’s welfare....

He asked Claudine if she would marry him without her mother’s consent.

“As long as your father agrees, and there’s no valid objection,” he said. “You wouldn’t jilt me because your mother’s taken some sort of—” he checked the words on his lips and said, very moderately—“taken a dislike to me, would you?”

But he could get nothing sensible from her; only that she really did love him, and that her mother was so dear and wonderful, and that there was no hurry, anyway, was there?

He refused to stay for dinner; he went home in a state of sullen rage, and he carried his intolerable hurt to the person whom he fancied best appreciated his worth. He got cold comfort.

“There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” said his mother. “They’re very peculiar people. They’d never suit you.”

“I don’t want to marry the family,” he said sharply. “Claudine’s not responsible for her mother.”

“Her mother’s responsible for her, though. She’s brought her up according to her own ideas. If you take my advice, you’ll put the whole thing out of your head.”

He went up to his own room, with a most unpleasant fancy that all these women knew things about him which he didn’t know; that they were all, his own mother included, ruled by motives not to be comprehended by him. He was very unhappy. If it were only a matter of Claudine and himself! When he had the dear little thing in his arms, she was his, she loved him, she forgot everyone else; if they were married, it would always be so. He did understand her; he knew he could make her happy if they were alone.

If they had a little house somewhere, by themselves.... He began to dream impossible rustic dreams; he saw them in a vine-covered cottage, such as he had certainly never seen; he fancied Claudine running down the path to meet him when he came home, flinging her arms about him, her bright sweet face uplifted, her curly hair blowing ... oh, he was frightfully unhappy!

He didn’t know whether he ought to go down to Staten Island again, or not. But Claudine wrote to him, and told him to come. Her mother didn’t in the least mind their seeing each other. So he went, sulky and reluctant, and was very well received. Mrs. Mason was quite natural and pleasant, and treated him just as she treated everyone else; and Claudine was heavenly. She found a chance to slip out into the garden with him, and as soon as they were alone, she kissed him, quite of her own accord.

“You see,” she said. “Poor mother thinks that if we see each other often enough, we’ll quarrel, or something of the sort. So if we just wait long enough, and she sees that we don’t, she’ll realize that she’s wrong; and it will be all right.”

“How long will it take?” he asked, gloomily. “Five years?”

“Oh, mercy, no! Only be patient.”

“I can’t be! I don’t want to wait! I love you so! I don’t want to waste years—”

“They won’t be wasted, Gilbert. They’ll be the happiest time of our lives. You’re happy now, aren’t you, this very moment?”

“Not so very. I want you for my own, Claudine.”

“I am your own. I love you and love you, darling Gilbert.”

Impossible to argue with her innocence; he resigned himself to get what joy he could from these stolen moments. And he knew that no matter how long he had to wait, no matter what humiliation and unpleasantness he had to endure, Claudine was worth it.

Suddenly, without the slightest pretense of reason, Mrs. Mason gave in, she no longer objected.

“Marry him if you want to, chickabiddy,” she said.

They were all astonished and a little uneasy. A change had come over that incomprehensible woman. Her color was as ruddy, her activity as great, she was as kind, as pleasant, as competent as ever. But an immense moral apathy had seized her, she no longer interfered, no longer gave advice. Let her husband smoke fifteen cigars a day, let her child marry whom she would, she seemed indifferent. She had become strangely and terribly remote. She seemed to have a grim secret of her own, a knowledge of some event in comparison with which all these things were of no importance.

No one realized what shadow had fallen upon her. They were willing to accept her change of heart as a whim. But she who was about to be exiled forever had come to see the futility of resistance. She saw her own death coming toward her; she could bear to watch it. And she saw so clearly too that when she was no longer standing in the highway, the others would still go on, and that cry after her child as she might, no sound would ever again reach her.

Gilbert and Claudine were married that autumn in a little church on Staten Island. Old Mrs. Vincelle was brought there, like a Buddha carried in a procession, and there were a certain number of Brooklyn haute bourgeoisie. But it was a Mason wedding, and Mrs. Mason dominated it. She gave a marvelous breakfast after it in the house on the hill, and hers was the last face they saw as they drove away. She had come out into the road, to look after them, a stout, dignified figure in black silk waving her hand, and smiling after her youngest child....

CHAPTER FIVE
CLAUDINE LEARNS TO ADAPT HERSELF

BEFORE she had been in that house an hour she knew that she could never be happy there. She wasn’t ready when the dinner gong sounded, but Gilbert hadn’t waited. Lateness upset his mother, he said. She had tried to hurry then, but she was an inveterate dawdler, and it was some time before she was quite dressed. She came downstairs with the sprightly air proper to a bride just returned from her honeymoon, but it was a forced and desperate sprightliness. She felt all the helplessness and terror of a deserted child among strangers as she descended the dark old staircase, padded so thickly with carpet that it was like walking in a bog.

On the newel post was a standing lamp in which burned a gas jet turned very low, in a shade of red, green and blue glass. She turned along the narrow hall, past the open door of the front parlour, feebly illuminated, the middle parlour, the obscure and neglected back parlour, all dark, still, and bitterly unfamiliar to her. She reached the steep flight of stairs leading to the basement, and began going down in utter darkness and silence. The door at the foot of the flight was closed; she fumbled for the handle in an absurd panic and stumbled forward as it burst open.

They were sitting at the table in there, Gilbert at the head, his mother at the foot, and they were taking their soup, evidently determined to begin right with the child, to show her, pleasantly but inexorably, that she would never, never be waited for. She sat down at the place laid for her, facing the door, and the servant brought her a plate of soup.

“Well!” said old Mrs. Vincelle.

Her tone was tart, but good-humoured, and she smiled at her daughter-in-law.

“We’re old fashioned here,” she said. “Meals served on the minute. That’s the way I was brought up. And Mr. Vincelle was very strict; if one of the boys was late for a meal, he had to sit at one side of the room till we’d all finished and then eat by himself.”

“I know.... I’m sorry,” said Claudine. “But I couldn’t find things, this first evening.”

Gilbert looked at her indulgently for an instant, and then turned his attention to the roast chickens that had been set before him. He rather prided himself upon his carving, he felt sure that Claudine would observe and admire his dexterity. He had had, in fact, ever since they had arrived that afternoon, an air of showing off, as much as to say—here you can see me in my own kingdom, at my ease, my natural self. He had consciously tried to impress her; he had given a great many orders to the servants, and had found fault. But he had not produced the impression he intended; Claudine saw him suddenly as a little boy, pampered, spoiled, but led by the nose. His mother ruled him absolutely.

In a way she was pleased to find that in spite of his sturdiness and his impatient masculinity he was certainly very human, but on the other hand, it frightened her. She so greatly needed to respect him, to look up to him, to see in him a great spiritual authority. She had left the security and peace of her girlhood to follow him, and he must lead.

Why did he look so young and sulky to-night? He caught her looking at him and he smiled again, tenderly, but with a sort of constraint. It never occurred to her that he too was suffering from a great disappointment. He had believed, poor devil, that with Claudine he would have a new life; and lo, it was nothing but the old life with a new person in it. She was overshadowed; she had suddenly lost importance; she had quite ceased to be that rare and precious creature he had adored, and had become a sort of phantom.

“You’re not eating!” said the old lady, suddenly. “Don’t tell me you don’t like chicken!”

For she too had her disappointment. She had arranged a dinner really sumptuous according to her very frugal mind, and no one appreciated it!

“Oh, yes, I do like it, very much!” said Claudine, hastily. “Only ... I think I must be a little tired. It was so stuffy in the train.”

“You mustn’t take notions about your food,” said the old lady. “A young married woman owes it to other people to keep up her health and strength. You must eat, whether you feel like it or not.”

“Yes, I know!” said Claudine, pleasantly.

She was mortally afraid of bursting into tears. All their meals hitherto had been eaten in hotels, or trains, or boats, where there was plenty to divert her, to make her forget that thing which had been gnawing at her heart all the time these last two weeks, but now in the quiet room, with these two quiet people intent upon their food, there was nothing to help her. It rushed upon her like a flood—that terrible homesickness.... On this mild September night they would be sitting in the lofty dining-room, with the windows open on the dear old garden. She could imagine them in the light of the suspended lamp, her mother, her father, Lance, perhaps other familiar friends’ faces, the neat and smiling Selma waiting upon them; she could imagine their talk, casual, cheerful, full of family jokes, with the scholarly leaven introduced by her father and Lance.... And at every pause would be heard the sounds from the dark garden, the trees stirring, that branch of the big grape-vine tapping against the window....

Gilbert and his mother were talking, in a disconnected and perfunctory way. She asked questions about the honeymoon; he gave her the names of hotels, details of the accommodation they had secured; she had a little gossip for him of old friends. When they stopped talking, there came to her ears utterly unfamiliar sounds—a carriage rattling by over the cobblestones, a footstep ringing on the pavement overhead, passing the barred window, mournful whistles from the river.

After the roast came the pudding, a vanilla blanc mange, made in a ring, the centre filled with strawberry jam, and cream poured over it all. And this demolished, they all rose; Gilbert gave his arm to his mother and they started up the stairs, followed by the disconsolate bride. She felt more than ever like a forlorn child, following these two people so much older and solider, so much more positive and self-assured than she. Her life was to be nothing but a wretched struggle to please them....

They entered the austere front parlour where a flicker of gas revealed the shrouded furniture, the huge, gold-framed pictures on the walls, the grand piano; they passed through this to the second parlour, and in here the dutiful son made a light and settled his mother in her favourite chair. The younger woman sat down near her, with an uncertain smile and her husband drew out his cigar case.

“Do you ladies object?” he asked facetiously.

“Go along with you, Gilbert!” cried the old lady, “I do declare I’ve missed the smell of smoke since you’ve been away.”

She leaned back in her chair and regarded him with complacency as he blew out great clouds of smoke.

“Nice to be home, Claudine?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” said the little liar.

He hadn’t much more to say; he was a silent fellow at all times and to-night he was tired and a bit out of sorts. All this travelling about had unsettled him; of course it had to be done, but he was glad it was over. They would be much happier now, being settled down. To tell the truth, the honeymoon had not been quite the rapture he had imagined. Claudine had been—he reflected: well, Claudine had been too damned polite. She had pretended to like everything; she hadn’t been quite human. No matter what went wrong, she had kept on smiling.... With undeniable relief he allowed his mind to drift back to Business.

The old lady dozed, her two withered hands lying on the arms of the chair. There wasn’t a sign of life in the room. Claudine got up and crossed the room to an immense walnut secretary and tried to read the titles of the books on the shelves with eyes dimmed by absurd tears. Hopeless volumes of sermons, forgotten and tedious poems. But she kept on looking at them, with a false interest, only that she might keep her face turned away.

Gilbert was touched by her lost young figure in that silent room.

“After all, it’s pretty dull for her here,” he thought, and he wanted very much to make her happy, but didn’t know how. He had expected that somehow she would light up, transform, enliven this household; he hadn’t quite realized that he would be literally expected to do what all young lovers so gallantly promise—to make her happy. He couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Mason’s words.

He wanted to get up and put his arm about her, but he was afraid of his mother’s ridicule. And blind instinct suggested to him the one thing that could solace her pain, that at once dried her tears and made eager her leaden heart.

“Play something for us, won’t you, Claudine?”

“Do you really want me to?” she cried.

He got up and went into the front parlour, where he turned up the gas and opened the piano. Then he seated himself near by, with a pleased smile.

“Now!” said he.

She ran her strong little fingers over the keyboard in ecstasy. The piano was out of tune and very stiff, but it was music anyway. She hesitated a moment; she considered her audience, and fate inspired her to play Traumerei. This was one of the few pieces they both knew and, like very many others, they were delighted to hear what they knew.

“Brava!” said the old lady.

“I always did like that thing,” said Gilbert dreamily.

Her heart warmed to them, poor darlings who knew so little beauty! She felt that in this way she could reach them, could make them understand her. She went on, a tranquil flow of undisturbing harmony, melodies which she believed they would recognize and like. She played to them with profound earnestness, as anxious as a siren to charm the careless sailors.

Gilbert sat lost in admiration. This was beyond question a proper wife, a young, charmingly dressed creature who played the piano soothingly in the evening. He thought she had never looked lovelier, so straight, so slender, in her beruffled blue dress, her curly head thrown back. What greater charm could a woman have than a lulling art like this, to dispel the cares of the harsh masculine world? His heart swelled with proud affection; he was passionately anxious to cherish and protect this exquisite young creature so miraculously thrust into his dull existence.

She stopped playing; let her hands rest on the keys, and waited, perhaps to be urged to continue. But her hearers seemed to take it for granted that the playing was ended.

“Brava!” said the old lady again. “I hadn’t any idea you were such a musician, Claudine. Very pretty!”

And Gilbert said:

“You have a fine touch, Claudine.”

She knew that he couldn’t have distinguished a good touch from a poor one, but she was not annoyed. She felt very kindly toward them both, because they had listened willingly to her music, and because she had been able to play and to solace herself. She got up and closed the piano, and Gilbert bent over her, to kiss her warm cheek.

“Wonderful little woman!” he said. “I’m a lucky dog!”

She was very happy. Here was a way out; she would practise her music faithfully, perfect herself, become absorbed in it, and there would be no tedious hours. She could become a really fine musician, the wonder and delight of a little circle.

She followed Gilbert back into the second parlour, lost in her dream. But to the others the music, a pleasant little interlude, was over, and the rest of the long evening stretched before them. The old lady began to crochet, and Gilbert took up his newspaper.

“Like to see the Woman’s Page, Claudine?” he asked.

Now Claudine had a lamentable dislike for newspapers. She never read them; she wasn’t well-informed. No one in her house showed much interest in current events, they envisaged human life as an immense and absorbing history, and the present as one small day of it. Her father was a sort of benevolent Anarchist who couldn’t endure the thought of restraint laid upon evolution; her mother was blandly indifferent to anything outside her own family; Lance lived in pre-historic ages. Nevertheless, she accepted the Woman’s Page, read the fashion hints, a little article on the care of house plants. Then she put the thing down and sat doing nothing.

“Don’t you do fancy work?” asked the old lady.

“Yes, sometimes,” said Claudine. “But....”

She rose.

“I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

Gilbert looked up from his paper and the old lady stared at her, affronted and amazed.

“It’s only half past nine!” she said tartly. “I should think you could wait till eleven, like the rest of us. I dare say you’re not any more tired than anybody else.”

“Never mind, Mother, if she’s tired ...” Gilbert began, but Claudine had sat down again with flaming cheeks.

“No!” she said. “I’ll wait!”

This was her first rebuke and she felt it a most unmerited one. It was the first time she had ever heard of a fixed, arbitrary bed hour for adult people. It had occurred to her a natural thing to go to bed when you were sleepy. Sometimes at home, the day after a dance, she had gone to bed directly after dinner, with a book to divert the few waking minutes, and at other times she had sat up almost till morning reading or finishing some enthralling bit of sewing. She felt a great anger toward Gilbert, with his half-hearted protest. There he sat reading his silly paper, page by page, every word ... what did he expect her to do?

The old lady glanced up suddenly.

“Come, child!” she said. “Don’t sit there and brood! Gilbert, get her the ‘Pigs in Clover’!”

“She won’t like it,” he answered, deep in his paper.

“Rubbish! It’s something to pass the time and that’s all the young folks care for in these days. Get it for her!”

So from inside the secretaire Gilbert brought out a round box with a glass cover inside which were marbles to be rolled through certain partitioned alleys, and finally, if one were skilful, into a sort of little house. He kissed Claudine as he gave it to her, an apologetic, almost a guilty kiss, but she had no smile for him. She sat with the thing in her hands, twisting it this way and that, letting the little balls roll as they would through the alleys, and ready at the least word, the least gesture, to burst into outrageous and most bitter laughter.

One of the marbles suddenly rolled into the pen, and, unaccountably, with this feeble satisfaction, the storm within her subsided. She remembered having read somewhere that lunatics were given games and diversions like this to quiet them. She wished that she could tell that to her father ... she wished that her father could see her, rolling marbles about in a glass-covered box.

Gilbert was gently shaking her.

“Sleepy-head!” he said. “It’s after eleven! You’ve been dozing!”

Both he and the old lady were greatly entertained. Their dazed victim went upstairs, quite well aware that now, when at last she could get into bed, she would lie awake for hours.

CHAPTER SIX
THE KEYNOTE

SHE waked up in the dark, terrified by a great banging at the door. She thought the house was on fire, that someone was ill, that thieves had broken in. She shook Gilbert fiercely. But he didn’t stir.

Barefooted she rushed across the floor and unfastened the door.

“What is it!” she cried.

“It’s seven o’clock, ma’am,” said a meek voice.

“Seven o’clock!” she repeated.

“Yes, ma’am, I always call Mr. Gilbert at seven.”

“Oh, I see!” she said. “I didn’t know....”

She closed the door and went back to the bed where Gilbert still slept.

“Wake up!” she said, severely.

Still he didn’t move. She clutched his big shoulders and tried to shake him, but he only groaned.

“Oh, do wake up!” she cried, in a sort of desperation.

“All right!” he murmured, but his eyes remained closed.

She was on the point of tears! She would really have liked to hurt him. She seized his hair and pulled it vigorously, and at once he sat up, dazed and resentful.

“Look here!” he said. “That’s no way.”

“It’s seven o’clock!” she said coldly. “I should think, if you’re so sleepy in the mornings, you’d go to bed earlier.”

She herself was very weary and depressed. She had, as she had expected, lain awake a long, long time, unhappy in the darkness of that unfamiliar room, with the shutters all closed, and no sight of the sky to console her. At home she had always kept her windows unobscured so that lying in bed she could watch the moon, the stars, the clouds, the sky whether clear, stormy or ominous. The very shapes of the furniture had distressed her, she had tried to make them out in their corners, as she had listened to the muffled, unfamiliar city noises.

She wasn’t at her best in the morning; that was a recognized fact at home, and she was always carefully let alone. But Gilbert put her to shame. When at last he was roused, he was marvelously cheerful; he got up whistling, and set about dressing in leisurely fashion, talking a great deal. He was very much pleased at occupying the majestic room on the second floor, it gave solidity to his new importance as a married man. He thought his mother had arranged it very tastefully, he pointed out to Claudine the new velvet lambrequin on the mantelpiece and the pincushion the old lady had made for them. He picked it up from the bureau and looked at it with affectionate eyes—a tremendous long blue sausage covered with pleated silk and lace.

“Wonderful, at her age, isn’t it?”

Claudine obliged herself to say “yes,” but unkind thoughts possessed her as to the value of such work at any period of life. She sat listlessly combing her hair, trying to hurry, so that she shouldn’t again be late, but quite sick with longing for a breath of air, a glimpse of sunshine.

“I really can’t get dressed in the dark!” she said, irritably. “Couldn’t we have one of the shutters opened, Gilbert?”

“No,” he said. “Not possibly. The people across the street could look in.”

“Then light the gas,” she said. “I can’t do my hair in the dark.”

He was a little shocked at this extravagant idea, however he did it, and kissed her, because she looked so pretty with her hair about her shoulders.

They descended the stairs together and entered the basement dining-room, where the old lady was pottering about among her rubber plants and ferns. She took her seat at once at the foot of the table behind the coffee urn and the process of breakfasting began, a meal astounding and repulsive to the bride. Such coffee! And no cream, no fresh fruit; prunes, oatmeal, ham and eggs, poorly cooked, poorly served.

“You’re moping!” said the old lady, suddenly.

Claudine looked up with a faint smile.

“I’m never very lively the first thing.”

“Nonsense! A young married woman can’t give way to all sorts of moods and fancies. It’s her duty to be bright and smiling and start her husband off cheerful.”

Gilbert frowned.

“Never mind, Mother!” he said. “Claudine’s got her own way of being cheerful, and it suits me. I understand the little woman, don’t I?”

Claudine was delighted, she would have liked to jump up and rush to him and kiss him. Their eyes met in a friendly and beautiful understanding. This was what she loved in him, for which she had married him, this solid loyalty, this sympathy. She was no longer unhappy.

“Now!” he said, cheerfully. “Let’s see the news!” and picked up the newspaper. He read an item aloud now and then, not because it could by any possibility interest the two women dutifully lingering over their coffee, but because it interested him. He smoked a cigar leisurely, and then it was time to go.

Claudine went upstairs with him into the front hall, she took down his tremendous overcoat from the rack and laughingly let her arms sink with its weight.

“Mercy!” she said. “How can you bear it, Gilbert?”

“It’s nothing compared to my winter one,” he said in his schoolboy way, and suddenly lifted her up, kissed her warmly, and set her down again.

“Good-bye, sweetheart! Be happy—and don’t quarrel with the Old Lady!”

Then he ran down the stairs again to take leave of his mother, and left by the basement door. From the front parlour window Claudine saw him walking off in the cool September morning, big, stalwart, determined ... going out.... Envy possessed her. Oh, didn’t she wish she could walk out of the house like that, away from the old lady, and forget it all!

She didn’t quite know how to proceed; she didn’t know just what her share in the house-keeping was to be or what diversions and duties would fill these days. But she was already aware that she needn’t ask, that old Mrs. Vincelle would certainly inform her as to what was expected of her.

She went up the dark, thickly carpeted stairs to the floor above. It was perfectly still and silent, and in order, swept and dusted, all trace of activity vanished. She looked in at all the open doors with infantile curiosity, all alike, thick, dark carpets on the floor, lace curtains at the windows, shades pulled half way down, marble mantelpieces covered with fringed velvet lambrequins, small tables on which were photographs in silver frames, huge bureaus, huge arm chairs, huge rocking chairs, with lace antimacassars, and inevitably a horsehair sofa furnished for naps by a folded “Afghan” of bright coloured stripes. Her bedroom—their bedroom, was no different from the others; there was nothing intimate or friendly about it. Whenever she went into her own room at home, a hundred things at once suggested themselves to her, letters to write, a bit of sewing to be done, a book to read. Here there was nothing whatever; she couldn’t imagine anything to do here. She very unnecessarily “tidied” the bureau top, and looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Mrs. Gilbert Vincelle—a young married woman.... Romantic and interesting creature....

She wandered downstairs again; the chambermaid was dusting the second parlour, scene of last evening’s bitter ennui, but the front parlour was empty, and she ventured in, drawn irresistibly by the piano. She opened it, half afraid to disturb the musty silence of the house; she ran up a scale, and it sounded monstrous. But the touch of the keys restored her courage; she began to play, and as usual lost herself in her playing. She had not yet unpacked her music; she had to draw upon her memory, fragments, entrancing bits, which she played over and over.

She was interrupted by the voice of the old lady, raised shrilly to penetrate the music.

“I’ve ordered Willie for eleven,” she was saying.

Claudine stopped, a little dazed from the harmonies.

“Ordered Willie?” she repeated, stupidly.

“The carriage. We’ll just have nice time to get your wedding presents put away first. Annie has them all unpacked in the back parlour.”

It was an imposing array, and it raised Claudine’s spirits. She stood surveying all the silver, the cut glass, the fine china, the linen, the clocks, vases, lamps. She looked at them all over again.

“Isn’t this lovely. Don’t you really think this is the prettiest?” she kept asking her mother-in-law, and the old lady replied with grim indulgence.

“But this isn’t going to get your things put away,” she said, at last. “Now, let’s see.... The linen you can put up in the linen cupboard; I’ll have a shelf cleared for you. We’ll take the cut glass down into the dining-room. As for the silver—well, if I were you, I’d put it in the safe deposit this day and hour, but of course you won’t. The young folks are all for display these days. So we’ll take it into the dining-room with the rest.”

And thus was all her glittering new wealth disposed of. It gave her an unpleasant feeling of childishness; her things were all superfluous, toys to be made room for among the regular, adult, useful things. No tea would be poured from her silver pot, no dinner served with her array of intriguing dishes, of flat and perforated and curved silver; in whatever room her clocks went, they were unnecessary second clocks. She arranged a great many ornaments in her bedroom, where they were quite incongruous; she even put in there a china umbrella stand because there was already one in the hall.

It was high time now to dress; she found some satisfaction in getting into a new grey broadcloth costume which she felt gave her quite a new dignity. She observed that she was rather pale and that, too, pleased her. She looked like a woman of experience, a mysterious and perhaps somewhat disillusioned creature. The old lady, in a black mantle and a small jet bonnet with a widow’s veil, was waiting for her in the hall, they descended the steps and got into the little closed carriage and went rattling off over the streets of Brooklyn. A most uninspired city, Claudine reflected, calm, quiet, self-sufficing, an absolutely Vincelle place. They went first to the butcher, who came hurrying out to receive the order, for old Mrs. Vincelle rarely set foot in a shop, then to the fruiterer’s, then the grocer’s. She inspected nothing; the only question she permitted herself was “Are the oranges good to-day, Frank?” and yet she prided herself upon her old-fashioned virtue in going to market in person every day and she believed herself a match for any tradesman.

Then, without further instruction, the old coachman turned the heads of the two fat horses, and they went trotting off to Prospect Park, for the invariable daily drive along the same route to the same spot. It was a beautiful morning and Claudine was happy. From time to time the old lady inclined her head to the occupants of other carriages and then Claudine would feel the charm, the interest of her new position as a young married woman. She was conscious of her youth, her slight, delicate figure, her new tailor-made costume, all the touching dignity of a bride.

They reached the consecrated turning point, they turned and drove home again. The old lady talked a little, she pointed out a house now and then, or gave a word of explanation of some regal old dowager driving past. She was affable, she was almost kind, and in her heart she was a little proud of this pretty young creature—an acquisition of her son’s and therefore the property of the family. And what a blow to Brooklyn, that Gilbert should have passed over all its maidens, and taken a wife from Staten Island!

They reached home at one, and lunch was at half past one, the nastiest sort of lunch, wafer-thin slices of dry cold mutton, all sorts of little warmed-over concoctions. Claudine made up her mind to change all this as soon as possible.

After the meal they went upstairs and the old lady lay down on the horsehair sofa in her bedroom and drew the gay colored “Afghan” over herself.

“You might as well rest, Claudine,” she said. “No one will be coming to call this afternoon. They’ll give you a day or two to settle down.”

And she resolutely closed her eyes.

Claudine hesitated.

“Would it disturb you if I played the piano?” she asked.

“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.

“I will—in half a minute.... This piano needs tuning badly. And more than tuning. It needs—”

“It’ll do very well as it is, I dare say!” said the old lady, briefly.

“But it isn’t good to practise on a piano—”

“Practise! What do you want with practising? You play very nicely.”

“Oh, but not nearly well enough! I’m going to keep on with my lessons.”

“What!” cried the old lady. “Lessons! A young married woman fiddling about with piano lessons!”

Claudine was surprised at this sudden hostility.

“Yes; why not?”

“Haven’t you anything better than that to do with your time?”

“What else should I do?”

“I never heard such rubbish in my life! A married woman taking lessons! What do you think you’re going to do? Give concerts?”

Claudine was not skilled in quarreling. She had always been quite free to follow her inclinations, and her inclinations had never been harmful or ridiculous. She was accustomed to dignified independence, no one in her household had the least desire to interfere with any of the others, and she could not understand such interference. She felt herself growing very angry with this meddlesome and tyrannical old person, but she made a gallant effort to answer nicely.

“It’s only that I’m very fond of music,” she began.

“You’d better be fond of your husband, that’s my advice! Piano lessons!... Very well, young woman! There’ll be no practising on my piano! It’s there to be played on and not fiddled on and banged on.”

Claudine actually turned pale.

“But you surely can’t mind my practising ...?” she cried.

“I do. All the neighbours’ll hear you. A married woman strumming and jigging away like a school girl.... Piece of nonsense!”

Anger got the better of Claudine.

“I never heard of anything so unreasonable and so ridiculous!” she said. “I don’t intend to give it up.”

“Women that can’t give up their childish nonsense have no business to get married. Now then!”

She walked over and closed the piano and handed Czerny and Liszt to her daughter-in-law.

“You put all this nonsense out of your head!” she said. “And run upstairs and put on a nice fresh dress and see if you can’t tidy that wild looking head of hair before Gilbert gets home.”

But when Gilbert got home he was not welcomed by the smiling and charming young wife he had a right to expect. Instead he found Claudine locked in the bedroom, her eyes red with weeping, and in a state of terrible excitement.

“Gilbert!” she cried. “Your mother says she won’t let me practise on her piano!”

He was astounded and a little frightened. So they were at it already!

“Well ...” he said. “I don’t know.... It’ll probably blow over, if you’ll use tact and patience.... Anyway, it’s a small matter.”

“It’s not! It’s not! My music is all I have left!”

“Hold on, Claudine! That’s rather strong!”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Gilbert dear. Of course, you come first, only you’re away most of the time.... And you don’t know what it means to me. The idea of her being so domineering and cruel!”

“Claudine,” he said, very gravely. “I hoped this would never happen. Especially as you’re so fond of your own people.... I thought you’d understand how I felt about—Mother. I know she’s unreasonable sometimes—but remember that she’s old, and I’m all she has left.”

As an argument this seemed remarkably weak to Claudine, but the tone, the very pitiful inconsequence of the poor chap, touched her to the heart. She began to weep in his arms, bitterly, forlornly, knowing herself defeated, pitying herself and pitying him still more.

He kissed her and smoothed her disordered hair, perplexed and unhappy. He was very tender and kind to her; he bathed her eyes with cold water, he took the pins out of her hair and released the complicated structure. Her sobs ceased; she grew calm and tranquil again, and when the gong sounded for dinner, she came downstairs on her husband’s arm, smiling, nicely dressed, the very model of a bride.

But that night, when they were alone in the bedroom again, she returned to the subject.

“Gilbert!” she said. “Let me get a piano of my own!”

“I couldn’t, dear. Mother would never consent to that. No, darling, better put the idea out of your head for the time being. You’ll find lots of new things to interest you.”

“But won’t you speak to her, Gilbert? Won’t you help me? Gilbert, if it’s something I want so very, very much, don’t you care?”

“Of course I care!” he protested. “I want you to be happy. But ... after all, it’s Mother’s house, and she has to be consulted.”

“Then let’s live by ourselves, Gilbert!”

“We can’t move to-night!” he said laughing, and turning out the gas, got into bed.

But Claudine could not sleep. She had a dreadful feeling of being trapped, of being a captive, helpless, weak, insignificant.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HEDGE WHICH GREW SO FAST

§ i

IN order to escape she had told the old lady a deliberate lie. She had said she was going shopping with Mrs. Martinsburgh, because Mrs. Martinsburgh was a highly approved of young married woman considered to be a good influence for the peculiar young Mrs. Vincelle. Whereas she was really going to meet Lance. She had written to him to meet her in a certain respectable restaurant where ladies on shopping tours often went to lunch.

It was a risk; she was quite likely to be seen there and her outrageous escapade reported to the old lady, but she was desperate. She had to see him. She went upstairs and secured a table, self-conscious and wretched at being there alone. She dared not look about the room for fear of seeing a familiar face, she dared not tell the waiter she was expecting someone. She pretended to study the menu, taking a long time to order, hoping and hoping that Lance would come. But he was late as he always was. Her lunch was set before her and she felt obliged to begin eating it. The room was full, she expected every moment that someone else would be put at her table. She had laid her muff and hand bag on the chair beside her as a futile protection, and sipped her chocolate with an engrossed air.

By raising her eyes, she could see her own reflection in one of the mirrors which lined the room; she was paler, thinner, more elegant but—what was it that had gone from her face? She fingered her veil with a delicate little gesture, and glanced down again to her hands, adorned with rings. She wondered if Lance would find her changed?

And just at this moment she heard his voice, his calm, serious voice, always so low that it was difficult for strangers to understand him.

“Hello, Claudine!” he said. “Am I late? How are you?”

He sat down beside her and looked at her seriously through his spectacles.

“Well!” he said. “You’ve changed.... What on earth did you want to see me for?”

The recollection of her suffering rushed over her. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I had to—talk to someone,” she said. “And there was nobody else.”

“But—” he began, and stopped. This was a matter for caution, she who had a husband, a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, and yet could find no one but himself to confide in.

Five years before, when he was a boy of twenty, he had come to live with his uncle, Doctor Mason. He was a youth of strongly scientific tendency, too poor to study, and the doctor had offered to keep him. His mother was a garrulous, vulgar woman, with a bitter tongue, well able to make life a burden for her household. Her husband, the doctor’s younger brother, endured her with English fatalism; he was an ineffectual sort of chap, anyway, who like so many of his countrymen had turned to farming in the hope of finding in it a refuge from competition and struggle. He had a wretched, stony, hillside farm in Sullivan County, which produced next to nothing; the family were kept alive only by the exertions of his relentless wife and the boundless charity of his brother. Lance, amazingly christened Launcelot—had lived in calm, unceasing opposition to both parents. He would be a paleontologist, and he would not devote himself to money-making. If he did make anything through that work, his parents could have it, if he didn’t they would have to do without.

He was the most unimpressionable, unsusceptible young man ever born. Nothing moved him, nothing troubled him. He was a pleasant housemate, for he was never impatient or cross, but he remained marvelously aloof. He sat at the doctor’s feet, worshipping his scientific knowledge, grateful to him for the opportunities he had given him, the years in college, the quiet and peace for independent study, he was grateful to his aunt, too, for her kindly care of him. But he would have been delighted to go to the ends of the earth on an expedition, and it wouldn’t have cost him a pang to bid them farewell forever.

The only soul with whom he was really human was Claudine. They had been like brother and sister, only at once more friendly and more formal than brothers and sisters usually are. And Claudine was quite conscious of something not at all brotherly in Lance’s regard. She had had too many suitors to be deceived. She had very carefully maintained a nice balance. She knew that he thought she didn’t know, and she was artful about it. She thoroughly respected Lance, he was the most candid, unbiased, truly independent person she had ever known, and he was kind, consistently and invariably kind, without effort, simply because it was his impulse to be so.

It was upon his candour, his intelligence, his kindness, that she counted now.

“Oh, Lance!” she said. “I’m so unhappy!”

“What’s the trouble?”

The waiter was hovering near.

“You’d better order something,” she murmured.

“I’m not hungry!”

“But you must, Lance! Please! It would look so queer.”

“A glass of milk,” he said, “and a piece of apple pie, then!”

The waiter was astounded and offended at this plebeian order; he had, nevertheless, to go and fetch it and they were able to talk again.

“What makes you unhappy, Claudine?” he asked.

“I suppose I ought to bear it, and say nothing, but I can’t any longer. Lance ...! I want to leave Gilbert!”

This time she had certainly shaken his scientific calm.

“What!” he said. “After three months!”

“I wish I could tell you.... But I could never make anyone understand. It’s just—unendurable.”

“Isn’t he—decent to you?”

“It’s not altogether Gilbert’s fault. He tries to be kind. He thinks he is. But it’s the whole life. Oh, Lance, it’s so horrible! It’s like being buried alive....” She had to stop, to struggle with her tears. “I’ve tried. I’ve really tried my best. But I can’t stand it. I want to go home and live with Father and Mother. Oh, Lance, do you think it would be wrong?”

He regarded her thoughtfully.

“Do you mean as a general principle?” he asked. “Do you mean—do I think it’s wrong for a woman to leave her husband?”

“I suppose I do mean that.”

“It’s hard for me to say,” he went on, frowning. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought much about the modern system of marriage. I suppose it’s the best—or at least, the most expedient system for our present stage of development. But I haven’t considered exactly what it is. Is marriage popularly considered indissoluble? No, there’s divorce. No!... I suppose it’s an arrangement for the convenience of both the parties to the contract. In that case—”

“But I never thought about divorce!” she cried. “I only wanted to get away. Can that possibly be wrong?”

Lance was never greatly concerned about ethical problems, certainly not about the relations between men and women. It didn’t seem a matter of much importance to him. He envisaged the human race as gradually progressing, adopting now this expedient, now that; marriage he had looked upon as a rather silly but necessary part of modern existence. As for woman’s revolt, feminism, and so on, he merely smiled at it all. He knew too much about Pre-Historic Woman.

He bent his mind to the problem as to whether the sanctity of marriage was a help or a hindrance to civilization.

“I can’t see that there’s anything wrong in it, Claudine,” he said.

“Then you think—” she began. “But oh, I don’t know what Father and Mother would say. Everyone but you would think I was wicked—and that my life was ruined.... Just because I want to be myself!”

He glanced up in surprise at her tone, and saw her eyes fastened on him, swimming in tears, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. It came to him with a sort of shock that this was Claudine’s specific case, and not a general problem; that it was not women who wished to leave their husbands, but Claudine who wished to leave Gilbert. He saw that she was a lovely and innocent young thing, unhappy and desperate; he saw suddenly what this might lead to. She would be cast adrift, blamed, gossiped about, always under a sort of cloud. Her position in her own home would be an equivocal one, an unending embarrassment and distress. Hers was not a strong spirit; she couldn’t go forward unsupported. A terrible pain seized him, he turned his eyes away because he couldn’t bear to look at her. And the most intolerable part of his pain was his certainty that she could grow out of her pain; that what she now found unbearable she could one day regard with indifference. She suffered cruelly; she thought her fate was a lamentable and wretched one, and it was really nothing; a trifle, a few moments in her history.

“What would be the sense of my going on?” she asked him. “I don’t make Gilbert happy, and I’m—dreadfully unhappy myself.”

“It isn’t important—to be happy,” said Lance. “The question is, are you useful?”

“No! No, I’m not!”

He pushed away his plate with a nervous gesture.

“You want to know what I think,” he said. “Well, I think you’d better go back to your husband.”

§ ii

She went home, to dress for a euchre party which was to be given in her honour. She felt numb and cold, ready to die of despair. Everyone was against her. No one understood, no one cared, what she suffered. She had appealed in vain to all the people who loved her, and they had all said—“Continue to suffer. It is best for you.”

She had gone to her father for his support in the piano battle.

“Buy me a piano of my own, Father!” she had entreated. “Send it to me as a present. Then the disagreeable old thing can’t object.”

“But, my dear!” said her father. “When in Rome—you know! If I were you, I should avoid conflicts. There’s no use exasperating your mother-in-law. The wisest course is to conciliate.”

She had gone to her mother, to pour out all her misery at living under the domination of a strange woman, at not being mistress in her husband’s house. But her mother had no comfort to give.

“I don’t see what’s to be done, chickabiddy,” she said. “You can’t expect Gilbert to leave his mother alone at her age. It can’t be cured, so it must be endured.”

Gilbert was still more hopeless. When he saw her dejected, weary, full of nervous excitement and irritability after her long day of emptiness, his remedy was the theatre; and when even that didn’t enliven her, he too became irritable. He was beginning to lose patience with her, he was willing now to admit that she was peculiar. And he felt that he was justified....

Justified in doing things which she never mentioned to anyone. They had had quarrels, the very memory of which appalled her. She remembered coarse words he had used, brutal expressions, sneers, gibes. He was always very sorry, always apologized, he said he had the devil’s own temper; but Claudine could not forget them. She was neither quick to anger nor quick to forgive. When her temper was aroused, she was cold and contemptuous and often childishly indignant, but she was never fierce, never cruel. She could not understand or forgive his absolute loss of dignity.

And she could not understand what he called his weakness! She remembered the first time he had revealed it as one remembers a nightmare, the very thought of it brought back the incredulous horror she had felt. He hadn’t come home to dinner that night, he had sent a telegram, “Detained on business. Will not be home till late,” and Claudine and the old lady had sat down at the table alone, in that sort of hostile intimacy which had grown upon them. After dinner they had gone up to sit in the old lady’s room where it would be cosier for two lone women, the old lady with a book and Claudine with the fancy-work she had taken to in desperation.

Just before bed-time Gilbert came in, flushed, jolly, anxious to talk. He had sat down and entertained them with a long account of the dinner he had attended, and the speeches he had heard.

“Best thing for business,” he said. “You get to know just the men you need to know. It was an impromptu thing, but wonderfully well done.”

And he told them everything he had had to eat.

“And by the way,” he said, “They had some oyster pâtés that were the best things of their kind I’ve ever eaten, bar none. I spoke to the waiter, and he packed me a couple in a box and I brought them home. They’re downstairs with my overcoat. Will you get them, Claudine?”

She did so, and he opened the box and took the pâtés out.

“Just try this!” he said, offering one to Claudine.

“I couldn’t eat it now, thank you, Gilbert,” she said. “To-morrow I’d enjoy—”

“No! Nonsense! Eat it now! I want you to!”

She shook her head, smiling.

“To oblige me!” said Gilbert in a grieved voice.

The idea of gracefully yielding, of doing something she didn’t want to do, never occurred to Claudine.

“No, thank you!” she said, more firmly.

“I insist!” said Gilbert.

That made her laugh, she thought he was rather funny, anyway, with his excessive garrulousness and his oyster Pâtés. She was about to answer him with a good-humoured joke, when she saw his face suddenly change, and grow convulsed with rage. She hardly heard what he said, she was so startled. He jumped to his feet and addressed her in a furious trembling voice, and suddenly took the pâtés, on their little frilled paper plates, and threw them on the carpet and stamped on them.

His mother got up and came near to him.

“Gilbert! Gilbert!” she whispered, patting his shoulder. “You’d better get to bed, my boy!”

He threw a savage glance at Claudine and walked unsteadily away. The old lady bent over her cherished carpet, regarding the damage with distress.

“Dear! Dear!” she said. “I don’t know....”

She never looked at Claudine, standing behind her, wringing her hands, her teeth chattering with a sort of nervous chill.

“I don’t know!” she said again. “I suppose I’d better leave it so until the morning. Then in the daylight, perhaps....”

As she straightened herself she met the eyes of her daughter-in-law.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Let me stay with you!” cried Claudine.

The old lady looked at her with frigid contempt.

“You go to Gilbert!” she said. “Your place is with your husband.”

“No!” cried Claudine, desperately. “I can’t!”

“You go!” said the old lady. “Quick! I’ll have none of this under my roof.”

And she went so far as to take her by the arm and hurry her out of the room. But there was no cause to be worried about any further scene; Gilbert had gone to sleep, fully dressed, on the bed.

§ iii

And the next morning he regarded it all as a great joke. He complained ruefully of a headache, but he was proud of it. He burst out laughing when his mother mentioned her damaged carpet, and to Claudine’s surprise, the old lady was wonderfully indulgent. He told Claudine not to mind, it wouldn’t happen again; but it did, more than once. Only on special occasions, though, as he pointed out to her; he was no drunkard. He was simply a good fellow; and he felt that she ought to appreciate his social qualities. He was sincerely aggrieved at her attitude, her scorn, her cold aversion. He told her she was straitlaced and puritanical; he thought she was shocked because he could not imagine that she was disgusted. She didn’t find him devilish; she found him repulsive. It was not a question of forgiveness; she felt for him a profound distaste and aversion which she never again overcame. It was not even that she had ceased to love him; she had simply discovered that she never had loved him. She was not by nature affectionate or indulgent; she was fastidious, always a little apart from life, never quite human. She was a dutiful egoist.

She looked back over these three months of married life with a sort of cold wonder. The long, long days, the tedious drives, the dull calls on dull people, the unpleasant meals, the stuffy dismalness of the house! She thought that the Vincelle friends were the most unspeakably tiresome people in the world. To go with her mother-in-law and sit in their augustly gloomy parlours for the required fifteen minutes, or to receive them in like fashion at home, to sit at their dinner tables, or to see them sitting at hers, was an infliction almost beyond her endurance. Except at dinners, she saw nothing but women; they had euchre-parties, receptions, luncheons, once in a while a matinée party. A harem world of pampered women, interested in nothing, women whose husbands were pleased to see them expensively dressed, wearing jewels, who required them to be ladylike; but didn’t expect them to be seductive. They were all good, all complacent, and they seemed to Claudine years and years older and more mature than herself. She made no friends. Vincelle heard that one of the young married women did china painting, and that aroused a spark of interest in her. She approached the alleged artist, young Mrs. Ryder.

“Oh, yes! I love it!” the artist told her. “Of course I don’t have much time; but I positively made up my mind not to drop it after I married. It’s such a mistake, don’t you think, to get into a rut? I believe a man thinks ever so much more of his wife if she has some interests of her own.”

Claudine’s heart sank; then it was, after all, nothing but another harem accomplishment, a trick to secure attention.

“Of course I don’t have much time,” the other went on. “There’s so much to do, isn’t there?”

“What do you do?” Claudine asked, with earnestness. “I wish you’d tell me what you do all day?”

“Oh ... so many things!” murmured the other, taken aback. “There’s the house-keeping, of course—and social duties ... and with a man in the house there are such a lot of little things....”

Now it must be admitted that Claudine was not a lover of her kind. She had no special interest in humanity; she was not ready to see the simple human qualities in those about her. She was an aloof, eager soul, greedy for activity, for gaiety, and for something more than that. She wanted food for thought; she was not very original, she needed perpetual stimulation, a constant flow of external impressions. She did not wish to meditate, she wished to observe.

She was baffled at every turn. She tried to discover what it was that enabled the old lady to pass the time so tranquilly without impatience or weariness. After a few orders to the servants and her marketing, she had nothing to do. Other old ladies came in during the afternoons to talk with her; often there were old ladies from the country spending a few days with her, they talked of other old ladies known to them with a sort of good-humoured indifference.... Perhaps that was the key to it—a profound and cynical indifference, nothing mattered; one endured and existed, and life consisted not in accomplishment, but in a perfectly passive Duty.

The old lady said Claudine was excitable, and even went so far as to call her frivolous. And yet the only part of Claudine’s life which either she or her son took with any seriousness were these horrible little frivolities, the euchre club, the dinner parties, the calls. Her social duties....

“What in the world makes you so restless, child?” the old lady asked her one afternoon. Claudine had come into her room and was wandering about looking at the photographs, asking idle questions.

“I don’t know what to do with myself!” she answered suddenly.

“Do? Why, what under the sun do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.... But it seems.... Oh, it seems such a waste of time!”

“I must say you have very queer notions for a young married woman, Claudine. I’ve never heard of anyone else with such notions. You have your home, and your friends. And there’s the euchre club, and Gilbert takes you to the theatre every mortal week. What more do you want?”

This Claudine was unable to answer. The old lady regarded her severely.

“I only hope,” she went on, “that the time will never come when you’ll look back on these days as the happiest time of your life.... I remember when I was a young married woman—” she sighed. “I can tell you, I hadn’t much time to worry about what to do, with my five children.”

“I wish I had five children,” said Claudine.

The old lady looked at her again.

“Humph!” she said.

§ iv

She was ready now for the euchre, she cast a last glance in the mirror and gathered up her little possessions, handkerchiefs, gloves, cardcase, and muff. A composed and mature figure she looked, in her grey broadcloth dress with a trailing skirt and well-boned bodice, slender, dignified in spite of her smallness. A lady—a young married woman, a finished product. She was supposed to have done with adventure, romance and excitement, she was presumed to have settled down.

She smiled frigidly.

“We’ll see!” she said. “Just wait! They’re all against me—even Lance. But I won’t give in! If I can’t get away, then I’ll change all this! I won’t have a life like this. I won’t! I won’t!”

CHAPTER EIGHT
A YEAR LATER

§ 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.

She had lain with the little bundle beside her, and from time to time reached out a weak hand to turn down a corner of the blanket and look at its sleeping face. The queer little thing! The pathos, the marvelous appeal of its weakness, its aloofness, the charm of its doll-like completeness! She never tired of looking at it, she never wanted it out of her arms. Its fierce and despairing cries pierced her soundest sleep; its faintest stir aroused her.

She occupied the big room on the third floor, so that the baby shouldn’t disturb Gilbert, and after the nurse went, she was alone with the baby. Miss Dorothy had eagerly offered to take charge of it at night, but Claudine wouldn’t listen to that. She had a little bassinet beside her, where the baby was supposed to sleep, but at the least sound, she would take it into the bed, to lie close to her, while she comforted its inexplicable little woes, whispered to it, sang to it, stroked its downy, restless little head.

She passed hours of mystic happiness alone with it in the big silent room, where a night-light burned dimly. They would lie looking at each other; she would gaze into its solemn unfathomable eyes, trying to impress her image upon it, trying to reach it. It would fall asleep clutching her finger, and she would weep with joy and terror, afraid of everything, haunted by spectres of croup, whooping-cough, of accidents, of all the cruel chances of life.

Gilbert had very much objected to the name Andrée. But Claudine was so ill and weak, and so determined, that he had submitted to it. He thought it was a charming and wonderful baby, and that it would undoubtedly be a comfort to him in his old age. He boasted about it to his business friends; he said it was the greatest thing in life. But he saw only the promise in it; he was impatient for it to develop, to become responsive and human. But Claudine loved it at each moment; she dreaded its changing. Every day she thought, “This is the very sweetest age! I wish she would stay like this forever!”

It was now two months old, and on this day was taking its first airing, in the arms of a highly recommended nurse-maid. The old lady had a prejudice against perambulators; she thought it all nonsense anyhow to take babies out into the street, but as Dr. Perceval was newfangled and insistent, she made no objection to a daily outing, provided it was carried. Perambulators were against nature; babies were meant to be carried, she said.

Claudine took little interest in this discussion. As long as they did nothing actually harmful, she didn’t care. Her only concern was to protect it, to keep it near her; matters of hygiene she considered a little unreal.

She heard the sound of heavy and deliberate footsteps ascending the stairs, and she rushed out into the hall.

“Be careful, Katie!” she called. “Go very slowly, and be sure you don’t catch your foot!”

She watched with frowning anxiety the progress of the nurse and the bundle in her arms, and the instant they reached the hall, she snatched the baby.

“She’s asleep!” said the nurse, warningly, but in vain, because the wicked mother had kissed it until it was awake and crying and had to be rocked. It was the first separation, it had been out of the house nearly an hour. Who was to blame her for her rapture at getting it back alive and well?

And it looked so queer and darling in a little lace bonnet, with muslin strings tied under its querulous face, and a coat with capes encasing its helpless arms.

“Oh, Andrée!” she cried. “My heart’s darling! I don’t think I can ever let you go again!”

§ ii

A year later there was another little girl, and after that, the requisite son. They were delightful, pretty, healthy babies, and she loved them passionately. But they were not like Andrée. There could never be anything in the world like Andrée. She concealed her fanatic worship of her first-born; she was a wonderful mother to them all, patient, gentle, wise. She took an unfailing delight in them; she gave her life to them joyfully; she was flattered and enchanted by the solemn loyalty of little Edna and the teasing affection of her small son. But the look of understanding in Andrée’s eyes was immeasurably dearer to her; the clasp of Andrée’s hand, a kiss from her, were the very consummation of her life.

BOOK TWO
THE BREATH OF LIFE

CHAPTER ONE
AFTER TWENTY YEARS

§ i

“LORD! I’ll be glad when this is over!” said Andrée. “And this is Father’s idea of a holiday! The poor thing actually said he envied us!”

Her younger sister was engaged in drawing on her stockings.

“Come on, Andrée!” she said. “We’ll be late for lunch and Mother does hate that so.... No: I suppose this would be a treat for poor Father, after being shut up in a hot office all the time.”

“I’d like to see him stand it for one week!” said Andrée, grimly. “Just for one week, that’s all!”

“And then, of course, it’s cheap,” said the sensible Edna. “I suppose he has to think of that, poor thing, with Bertie going to college and you and your awful Mr. MacGregor. We must be a tremendous expense.”

“I don’t want to be!” cried Andrée. “And I wouldn’t be, either, if he wasn’t so darned obstinate. I’ve told him and told him that I could easily earn enough to pay for my lessons by teaching. Mr. MacGregor says I’m thoroughly qualified, and that he’d help me to get pupils. But no! Father pretends to be so advanced, and says he wants us to be able to earn our own livings, and then when we can, he stops it. He and Mother are both hoping and praying I’ll get married before I have a chance to do anything. But I won’t! I’m going to—”

“Oh, Andrée! For pity’s sake! Not that! Do get your shoes and stockings on! It’s after twelve!”

They were sitting on the bank of a wide, shallow stream running its hasty course down the mountain side; a favourite spot with them. They liked to come there in the morning and with bare feet and skirts pinned up, to pick their way over the stones, with the cold water lapping about their ankles. It was like a broad and deserted highway, lined with trees. On either side were the dark woods, of which they were both a little afraid. They would ascend the stream, “stepping stones,” past the sombre belt of woodland to the wide meadows basking in the sun, and then suddenly the banks grew high and rocky, the stream went out of the sunlight and entered a ravine, gloomy and mysterious, and was no longer a stream but a deep and ice-cold pool, fed by a trickling waterfall. Farther than this they had never gone, the climb up the rocks beside the waterfall would have been a very difficult one, and moreover it was a spot where they didn’t care to linger. City born and bred, they had a sort of horror of this silent, imprisoned place.

The stream—the “crick,” the country people called it, had an unfailing charm for them. They came to it every fine morning and indulged in pursuits which they were a little ashamed of and which they justified by their ennui—an ennui more pretended than real. They talked to each other and to their mother a great deal about the horrible dulness of the little Catskill Mountains summer resort, but they were really very happy in it, and they secretly enjoyed their infantile amusements. They whittled little boats of soft wood and sailed them; they brought tin pails and scooped up the lazy, fat pollywogs that lay along the edges of the shallow pools in long rows, nasty creatures with a sort of horrible fascination about them. Andrée would watch them wriggling sluggishly in the pail for a long time, with the sun shining through their translucent, speckled tails, and sniff the queer primeval smell of them.

“Aren’t they horrible!” she would cry.

“Don’t look at them, idiot!” her sister would say. “You’ll be having nightmares about them again to-night.”

Andrée was very irritating about such matters. She wouldn’t keep away from things and people and facts that troubled and tormented her. That pool, for instance.... She would argue Edna into going there with her and insist upon lingering beside it, looking into the dark depths of the water, standing in its icy shallows, laying her hands against the wet moss-grown rocks, until she became so filled with her absurd dreads and fancies that even the sensible Edna would become infected.

They had been there that morning; they had sat on a fallen tree and stared at the quiet pool, the dark face of the cliff over which the puny trickle of water ran, ran, ran, had been running, just in this way, for God knows how many centuries. And suddenly they had seen a great black snake, swimming rapidly and silently on its way. They had fled in a panic, barefooted over the stones and rough ground, out to the ravine and into the sun again.

Edna had been angry.

“Why will you go there!” she cried. “You’re so morbid!”

There was nothing morbid about Edna; she was a distractingly pretty thing of nineteen, very like her mother in her young days as far as appearance went—small, slight, self-confident, with crisp fair hair like a halo about a flower-like face. She was alert, independent and unsociable; her most profound instinct was to keep silent, to stay alone, to be untouched, undisturbed while her strong spirit grew. She was a disappointment to her mother because she was so difficult, so impossible to influence. She wished to take every new idea and run off with it, to examine it alone, in peace; she never wanted to talk over anything. Nor did she care much for reading. She observed, and she made deductions from her observations, she formed intelligent opinions, she judged people with sane and kindly indifference.

But she did not understand, as Andrée did. Andrée apparently never did any thinking. She simply knew things, spontaneously. She knew what people would do, what they were, she loved them or hated them. And she was forced to discuss everything with everybody, to talk, to think, until her brain was sick and frightened. She couldn’t quite believe anything or quite doubt anything. She was a thin, tall girl of twenty, pale, distrait, not very pretty, but with a face wonderfully mobile and sensitive. There was a perverse charm about her, about her moods, her immature high-mindedness, her terrible dependence upon others. She would ask your opinion, and if it differed from hers she would begin to doubt herself, and if you agreed with her, she was obliged to change her mind....

They had got their shoes and stockings on and set off by a convenient path for the little hotel.

“If only we didn’t have to eat with all those people!” said Andrée, sighing. “It takes my appetite away. I do so hate the noise they make ... and those awful babies!”

Edna laughed at her.

“Poor grandma always used to call you ‘pernicketty.’ And you are, aren’t you? They’re not such bad people.”

“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.

And yet, in her own heart, she was bewildered and lost.

§ ii

They went down, all three, to the dining-room, and sat down at their small table, accompanied by a great many glances from the other guests. They never suspected how much they were gossiped about, how much interest they aroused. It was the first time they had come to so small and cheap a place for their summer holiday; heretofore they had stopped at lively and agreeable resorts with others of their own comfortable sort. But Gilbert had taken one of those unaccountable fancies to which husbands are so prone. It may have been an obscure resentment at the sight of the care-free and pampered existence of his women-folk, or one of those sudden anxieties he often felt at the thought of the future. However, from no matter what cause, he had suddenly required Claudine to retrench and she had obeyed, with her usual profound and polite indifference. Hence the “Pine View Villa,” in the Catskills, and two small rooms without a bath.

Their attitude aroused resentment. Claudine had her own special tea, which she made in a pot at the table, and they had extra milk and cream, and various potted delicacies ordered from the city. The landlady took this as a reflection upon her table and it was. And then they had made a special arrangement whereby Andrée was to have the exclusive use of the piano in the mornings, and on chilly or wet mornings, when some of the ladies would have enjoyed sitting in the parlour and rocking and chatting, they were not at all pleased by the vigorous rhythm of her interminable exercises. She regarded them no more than so many chairs.

Edna was the most approachable, but she had a scrutinizing air, an amused sort of interest outrageous in one so young. Altogether a conceited, snobbish, intolerable family; that was the verdict.

“Take the tea and the anchovy paste, Andrée!” said Claudine. “And will you bring them up to my room, please? I’d like to speak to you for a moment. Edna’ll wait on the veranda for you.”

She closed the door of her room and sat down.

“Andrée, dear,” she said. “Was that another letter from Mr. MacGregor this morning?”

“Yes, it was,” said Andrée, nonchalantly.

Claudine waited for a moment.

“I wish you’d show it to me!” she said, coaxingly.

“I’d rather not, Mother, it’s private.”

“But Andrée, my dear, why should you have private letters from that man which you can’t show your mother?”

She had adopted a very tranquil, reasonable tone, to conceal her own distress and the advantage which it gave to Andrée. She was confronted once more by the terrible independence of her children, they all led such busy, lively, entertaining lives in which there was no need at all for her. They loved her, but they would have gone on in exactly the same way if she were not with them. She was unessential, they needed nothing from her. She had never been able to understand how it had happened. When they were little, she was their universe, she consoled, protected, she alone understood them. She had wished to give her life to them. And then little by little they had got upon their feet and walked away, leaving her still standing with empty arms in the nursery. She couldn’t follow them; she didn’t know how to draw near to them, how to win them. She was helpless, just as she was now helpless before Andrée. The very sight of Andrée frightened her, the fragile and mysterious charm of her beloved child wrung her heart, robbed her of worldly wisdom and common sense. She could have knelt before Andrée and adored her, and wept for the pity that touching youth and ignorance caused her.

“I have loved you every moment of your life, from your first breath!” she might have cried. “There is no one in the world for me but you! I love my other children, but oh, not like you! Not like you! I wanted to give all my life to your service. I wanted to live for you, to wear myself out to give you happiness. And you will not have me!”

She stole a glance at the child’s downcast face, mutinous, impatient.

“Andrée, my dear,” she said again. “Why should you have letters from that man which you don’t wish me to see?”

For answer Andrée put her hand inside her blouse and drew out a crumpled letter.

“Here!” she said. “Read it then, if you want!”

But it was impossible to do so, to pry into her poor little secret.

“I don’t want to read it, my darling. I only want to talk to you about—”

To her great surprise Andrée began to cry.

“Oh, Mother!” she sobbed. “That’s just what I knew you’d do! Talk it over, and talk and talk, and spoil everything.... Why can’t you understand? It’s nothing, just nothing at all, and you want to talk it into something. Why can’t I be let alone? I’m so unhappy!”

“Unhappy? Andrée, why? Tell me! Let me help you!”

“I don’t know why—except that I never have any peace or freedom. It’s disgusting to have to talk about every thought that comes into your head.... How would you like it? How would you like to have to tell exactly how you felt toward everyone and everything?”

Claudine turned away her head.

“I see how you feel,” she said. “It must be disgusting, as you say.... But you’re surely fair-minded enough to see that I must make every possible effort to safeguard you. You are young and inexperienced.”

“When you were my age you were married and had a baby.”

Claudine smiled, one of her rare and enchanting smiles.

“That’s true. I had you.”

“So you see I’m not so very young. And as for experience ... well, honestly, Mother, I don’t think you’ve had much.”

Claudine was startled. She who had suffered so much, been so cruelly disappointed and mocked by life, who had learned so many, many bitter lessons, to be reproached with lack of experience by this baby? She smiled again, sadly.

“You’ve never been to Europe, or met any famous people, or anything. And you’ve never—” Andrée flushed and hesitated. “You’ve never had any romance. Nothing but just Father, and he’s not very thrilling.”

“My dear!”

“Please don’t be shocked! It makes it so hard to talk to you. It’s no use my pretending that I want a life like yours or that I’d marry a man like Father. I wouldn’t for anything!”

“Andrée, I really—”

Andrée shook her head. She alone of the three had never been drawn to her father, had never been influenced by him.

“No,” she said. “It’s no use talking. I want something very different. I don’t want any stuffy family life. I’d like to go away, by myself—”

“Andrée! Think what you’re saying! How can you be so cruel? What should I do without you?”

“You’ve got Bertie and Edna. And you’re settled down and all that sort of thing. You have lots of things to interest you, but I haven’t anything. That’s why—” Once more she stopped, her cheeks scarlet.

“That’s why I like to hear from—Mr. MacGregor. He encourages me. He says there’s no reason why I shouldn’t make a name for myself, giving concerts. He—well, I know he exaggerates, but he says I’m a—a—sort of—wonder.”

“Is he urging you to leave your parents?”

“Heavens, no! He just encourages me. He says to keep on practising and practising. And when I get back he’s going to give me a lot of extra time.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks I’m—promising.”

“Andrée, isn’t there anything more personal beneath this interest?”

“I don’t know,” said Andrée, curtly. “I don’t want to know.”

Claudine was still for a moment, thinking with supreme displeasure of that man, that music teacher, who had by flattery, by chicanery, won her child’s interest. It must be stopped! Should she ridicule him, point out to Andrée that Mr. MacGregor was as old as her father, and a man of no distinction, either mental or physical, a shaggy, lumbering, grey-haired creature only too well used to the silly admiration of young girl pupils? No, ridicule was not a weapon Claudine could handle. She thought for a moment of appealing to her affection, but that too she rejected. She dared not....

“Andrée,” she said at last, very gravely. “I am going to ask you to promise me something. If Mr. MacGregor—if this thing—”

“I know what you mean. You mean you want me to promise to tell you if anything happens.”

“Yes.”

“But don’t you see that that isn’t a fair promise?”

Claudine was startled.

“Surely your mother has the right—”

“Oh, yes, you have all sorts of rights!” said Andrée, bitterly. “And I haven’t any. But if I were you—if ever I have a daughter—I’ll never, never ask her to promise to tell me things. I wouldn’t want to know them if she didn’t want to tell them.”

Claudine approached and put her arm about the unwilling girl.

“Very well!” she said, with a sigh. “I will leave you free to do as you please about telling me.”

Then Andrée bent down and kissed her.

“You are a darling!” she cried. “Now I’ll rush to Edna!”

CHAPTER TWO
THE FORSAKEN PROVIDER

§ i

“ONE of Gilbert’s bad mornings!” thought Miss Dorothy.

And she slipped into her place behind the coffee urn, a little more ingratiating, a little more careful not to disturb him, than usual. He sat at the head of the table, glowering behind his newspaper, and by the very sound of the grunt with which he answered the cousinly good-morning, she was warned of what might be expected. She sat very still, in order not to attract the lightning.

He ate his grape-fruit, quite reasonably, and a little dish of oatmeal, and then Delia brought in the eggs and bacon. He glanced at the plate suspiciously.

“Are these Murray’s eggs?” he demanded.

Miss Dorothy sent the girl a warning glance.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did they come?”

“ ... Yesterday, sir.”

“Let me see the box!”

“It was thrown away, sir.”

His face became alarming.

“Dorothy!” he said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe these are Murray’s eggs!”

He leaned across the table and sniffed at the dish.

“No!” he shouted. “They are not! I know it!”

He flung down his napkin and pushed back his chair. He had for a few weeks past been importing eggs for his special use from a fellow he knew in the country, and he knew that he was being duped, that these immoral women, Miss Dorothy and Delia, used his eggs for other purposes, for the household, for puddings, perhaps even ate them themselves. His appetite was extremely delicate at breakfast, no one could quite comprehend how he felt, especially the morning after a banquet. Suddenly his anger turned into a frightful gloom.

“Take them away!” he said, with a sigh. “Take the damned things away and never bring me eggs again. Never!... Good Lord! I can’t trust anyone!”

Miss Dorothy flushed, and smiled nervously.

“Would you like ... a slice of ham, Gilbert?” she ventured.

“Nothing!... More coffee!”

He had put down his paper, and she was in the full glare of his bilious and lowering regard. He picked the thing up again, not to read it, for he had finished all that interested him, but as a screen to conceal from him this scene which he so hated to contemplate, from that dining-room where he had eaten so many hundreds of breakfasts. Claudine hadn’t really changed it, or anything else. By the time the old lady had departed this life, Claudine had no more ideas, no more desire to make changes. The huge sideboard opposite him was crowded with cut glass, silver, hand-painted china, wedding presents, Christmas presents, birthday and anniversary presents, milestones along the road of twenty years of married life. All very neat, comfortable and prosperous, and yet it offended him. He couldn’t really find fault with this home or this atmosphere, couldn’t well imagine anything much better. If he had been compelled to furnish a dining-room according to his own taste, he would have produced something very similar. He had even a sort of pride in the old furniture and the curtains and the presents. And yet it hurt and angered him so.

He looked up stealthily and saw Miss Dorothy, with such a pleased face, just about to begin her grape-fruit.

The face of a fool he called it to himself, a half complacent, half terrified countenance, a sallow, soul-wearying creature in gold eyeglasses, who existed through his benefactions, one of the thankless crew he laboured unendingly to feed and clothe.

And not one of them made the least effort to comprehend him. He was a man, and therefore to be humoured; he was a man and therefore to be conciliated. Like so many sun-worshippers did they all bow down before the inscrutable source of all comforts, all security, supplicating him to continue shedding his golden rays. Not from humility, you understand, or because they had the least admiration for his productivity, but because only in this way could they obtain what they wished. It was really a worship, with rites and sacrifices, and splendid rewards to be got if you understood how to go about it. Claudine and his two daughters and even the unfortunate Miss Dorothy had all a dearly bought knowledge of what topics would infuriate him, knew his good hours and his bad ones, could read the warning symptoms of his more deadly moods. They knew what he liked to eat and what he liked to hear. And nothing else. His queer, gloomy soul remained mysterious and solitary. In an alien world he groped for light, he existed like a sensitive child among impervious and indifferent adults. Even his children seemed to him possessed of worldly knowledge impossible to him; they were aware of things, they discussed things, of which he was ignorant. They were somehow freer and brighter.

To be considered cross when the spirit was writhing, crying for help ...! He was passionately convinced that his malign fate had driven him into an utterly wrong life and that somewhere else there was an utterly right life, beautiful and satisfying, which he ought to have been enjoying. He had no idea of making adjustments, or of trying to modify his environment; he wanted, most naïvely, to step into another world.

What it was he so thirsted for, he didn’t exactly know. It was not peace, or love, or fame, or money, or any of those things a man might legitimately demand from his destiny. He knew only that his daily bread was ashes in his mouth, that his soul found no nourishment, and pined and sickened, that it lived in a universe everywhere insipid and meaningless. And that with all his heart he resented this fate, above all, this marriage of his. Because it was his conviction, that he, as well as every other man on earth, was entitled to an ideal marriage, and a more or less ardent and beautiful wife. The men who got rather less than this had been cheated, defrauded of what he called “the greatest thing in life.” It never occurred to him that he was disappointed because he expected too much, he believed himself disappointed because he had received too little.

He never thought of Claudine without a savage resentment. She had swindled him. She was to have brought light, gaiety, charm, into his life, to have transformed it into something resembling her old Staten Island existence, she was to have been perpetually alluring, fairylike, sparkling. And she had failed in all of this. She was nothing more than a decorous and virtuous wife, and she regarded him with something criminally like aversion. She was cold. And he believed, like more than one other man—that her coldness was a fault in her own temperament, and not due to any lack of fascination in himself. It was certainly not a happy marriage. He had grounds for believing that she thought herself a martyr, and he knew that he was one.

§ ii

Some occult sense warned him of the time. He glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece, and caught sight of his own face in the mirror behind it. And he wondered, as he always did when he really, consciously regarded himself, how it was he looked like that, how it was possible that his appearance should so little express himself. It was another cause for resentment.

A heavy, grizzled man of forty-five with a straggling little mustache over a brutally obstinate month. He had a surly way about him, but he was not unattractive; on the contrary, there was something about the gloomy and bilious gaze of his black eyes that engendered pity and good-will.

But neither pity nor good-will dwelt in Miss Dorothy at that particular instant. She was not resentful, because resentment didn’t belong in her stock of feelings, but she was miserable. He was upsetting all her neat little plans for the day, he was keeping back Delia. He was so late, why on earth didn’t he get up and be off to his office, where he belonged? Every moment of these days was so precious to her, when she was sole and undisputed mistress in this house which she had always regarded with awe. She could wish that the summer would last forever, and Claudine and the children never return. Think of the joy of going to market in the electric coupé! Think of the charm of eating her lunch alone, benevolent chatelaine of all this domain!

At last, with his terribly rough gesture, he shoved away the plates before him, so that they upset a milk jug, pushed back his chair in a way that made furrows in the carpet, and got up. He went heavily upstairs and took his straw hat from the gigantic hat-rack. He frowned, there was something he didn’t like about that dark hall, with the rug removed for the summer. There were certain changes from his mother’s day, the glass top of the front door was covered with shirred green silk, and over the open door of the front parlour hung a portière of bamboo tubes strung together with green and blue glass beads, hung there fifteen summers ago. On the shelf of the hat-rack was a little rubber plant in a horrible green scalloped bowl, and a clumsy bronze statue of a fat shepherd boy, holding out an altogether incongruous little tray for visiting cards, a wedding anniversary present from his senior partner. Each of these objects per se he regarded with more or less admiration, but the ensemble disgusted him. He felt that there was something wrong here, and that it was of course his wife’s fault. He execrated her in silence.

He set off down the tranquil street, blazing in the July sun, removing his hat now and then to salute a familiar face. He knew so many people in the neighbourhood, through having lived there all his life, but they were not his friends, these people. They respected him as a man who paid his bills promptly and provided well for his family, but they didn’t like him, had no warm feeling for him. He was too gloomy, too preoccupied. He had an air of misery about him which was distressing to a hostess. Claudine was obliged to confess, and to apologize for his reluctance to make visits. She said he was such a man’s man! He was only happy among his business associates. But what she didn’t know, what nobody suspected, was the positive hatred concealed beneath his farouche manner for all these respectable people. He despised them and loathed them, and was mortally sick of them, and worst of all, he couldn’t feel justified in such feelings. Theoretically they were what he admired, and he couldn’t see in what way he differed from them, and, yet he knew that he did. This feeling, like all his other feelings, he kept gloomily to himself.

He jumped on a crowded car going across the bridge, very hot, very angry at being jostled, and was carried off to New York, to make more money....

§ iii

Not only at home were his moods known and respected, at his office it was a recognized thing that the early morning was a bad time for him, and that it was most unwise to disturb him. As usual he strode through the outer office and shut himself into his own small room, without exchanging a word or even a nod. He looked through his mail which had been opened and neatly sorted for him, then pushed it aside, staring after it with a distrait and wretched look. He couldn’t put his mind on it, he hated every detail, every possibility.

“Why the devil am I slaving away here?” he asked himself. “Working day in and day out, so that she can go flaunting in fine clothes and idling away the whole summer up there in the mountains.”

He remembered the extensive wardrobe Claudine had taken with her. Never did she suspect, never could she have suspected, how he resented it. The primeval male in him would deny all luxuries to the unloved woman.

“She! In her silk dresses—loafing all day long—servants to wait on her, never does a useful thing! Good God! Think of the time and leisure she’s got, and she doesn’t even read the papers! Not even charitable! Useless, through and through.... Where would she be if it weren’t for me? She’s got everything she wants, without raising a finger for it. Food, clothes, jewels, money to spend, fool women to jabber with—”

It seemed to him quite intolerable to think of her privileges; he couldn’t have endured it at all if he hadn’t had a certain very curious consolation for his grievances. His delight was to picture his wife as cast away upon a desert island, and he gloated over her utter futility there. He could imagine how helpless she would be, how incongruous, she with her fastidiousness, her chilly dignity. She wouldn’t be able to make herself dresses out of grass, sewing with a thorn for a needle. She wouldn’t know how, and couldn’t learn how, to grind flour from exotic roots, to tame birds, to construct houses. Incurably romantic Gilbert! That was his test for any woman; how she would look and behave on his classic desert isle. She must be lovely, strong, and young, and she must be altogether daring and brave and unwifelike, she must be resourceful and full of alluring wiles, she must urgently need him, and yet be entirely independent.

He glanced at the clock, took up his hat, and went out to a celebrated café near by, had two whiskies and soda, and immediately felt much better. He would confess to you that he was rather too dependent upon “bracers,” but like all that army, he was merely waiting for a propitious day to renounce the thing entirely. Some day when he wasn’t worried or depressed. No hurry about it; it didn’t interfere with his business, and it helped him beyond measure through his fits of awful despondency. He was willing to admit that perhaps his health might be better if he drank less, but he couldn’t become really interested in his health.

He chatted with the other ten o’clock frequenters of the bar, whom he knew very well, for they came with great regularity. He felt ready for business now; he went back—in fact, he now entered the office officially for the first time, in his proper character, nodded genially to the cashier and to his stenographer, an ambitious young Cuban, and began to pace up and down the big sample room, planning his autumn campaign and reviewing his “line.” A very fine line this year; he looked upon it with satisfaction as it lay spread out before him on a big counter sloping steeply on both sides and divided into little compartments filled with red rubber cows and white rubber horses, big, brightly colored balls and tiny hard rubber ones, dolls in knitted dresses, rattles, teething rings. There were among these several novelties which he considered very promising....

“A gentleman to see you!” said the young Cuban, with his alert and zealous air.

“Who?”

“Mr. MacGregor.”

“Don’t know him. Where’s he from?”

“Didn’t say,” replied the young Cuban, with a creditable imitation of his chief’s brusque business-like tone.

“Bring him in!” said Gilbert.

He stood facing the door with a non-committal expression which would be either menacing or genial, as circumstances might dictate. But the man who entered was a type not familiar to him; he couldn’t place him; a big, shambling, rugged man of forty or so, a bit uncouth in appearance, but not without distinction. His face was ironic, but his smile was genial.

“Mr. Vincelle?” he asked.

“What can I do for you, sir?” inquired Gilbert, briefly.

“My name is Alexander MacGregor,” said he. “I have had the pleasure of instructing your elder daughter in music.”

Oh, a music teacher! Probably about a bill, or those outrageous “extra lessons” which his children were forever in need of.

“Sit down, sir, sit down!” said Gilbert.

Mr. MacGregor did so.

“I hope I don’t find you very busy!” he said. “This is quite a personal matter....”

“Cigar?” asked Gilbert.

Mr. MacGregor accepted one.

“It’s about Miss Andrée,” he said. “I understand that you’re going out there this afternoon, and I thought—”

They talked for more than an hour, and Gilbert was captivated. He liked this fellow! He liked his cool, manly air, his practical outlook. Mr. MacGregor began his proposal by stating his financial position, which was sound and satisfactory. He put forward his own good points with assurance and he affirmed that his age was an asset.

“Andrée is very temperamental,” he said, “and hard to understand. A young, inexperienced man wouldn’t be able to. She requires the greatest tact. A rare, peculiar nature. Only men of our age can appreciate it.”

Well, thought Gilbert, after all, why not? Wouldn’t he himself be a marvelous lover for a young girl, if she were the right sort of young girl? There was a sort of indirect flattery in Mr. MacGregor’s idea.

Moreover, he found Andrée an intensely irritating young woman, and he would be glad to see her safely married and gone away. She was a sort of ally to her mother. She was antagonistic; she didn’t admire him; she wasn’t the sort of daughter he had expected.

And he was delighted with Mr. MacGregor’s old fashioned idea of asking his permission before speaking to Andrée. It was really the first time he had ever been treated as a father should be treated. He took Mr. MacGregor out to lunch, to a sedate little second floor restaurant known only to connoisseurs. They ate largely and critically....

By two o’clock indigestion had engulfed Gilbert in black misery. He lingered at the table, chewing a cigar, and meditating. It was Saturday; the office was closed; he had nothing to do until train time. He ordered more liqueurs, more coffee, and refused to be parted from Mr. MacGregor, clung to him, in fact.

Of course, he said, it all depended upon Andrée herself. Of course it did, Mr. MacGregor agreed.

“See here!” said Gilbert. “Come out there with me, and we’ll see. You’ll have plenty of time to pack what you need for over Sunday. Come on!”

Naturally Mr. MacGregor went.

CHAPTER THREE
THE SUITOR WITH CREDENTIALS

§ i

IT was a filial duty, as well as a wifely duty, to meet Gilbert’s train. He wished them all to do so, he liked to see these three charmingly dressed, feminine creatures all looking for and expecting him. But he never showed this; he always wore the distracted and annoyed expression of a tremendously busy man snatching a little time for his family.

He got off the train in his rather clumsy way, and they started toward him, when the sight of Mr. MacGregor following him, bag in hand, changed their politely eager smiles to looks of consternation.

Gilbert kissed them all perfunctorily, and then brought forward his companion.

“I’ve brought Mr. MacGregor down with me,” he announced. “I hope the place isn’t crowded.”

“It isn’t,” said Andrée. “I don’t see why it should be. I don’t see anything to bring crowds of people here, I’m sure.”

“Hush, Andrée!” murmured her mother, and bestowed a gracious and expressionless smile upon the visitor. “I’m sure there’ll be a room for Mr. MacGregor. Hadn’t we better get into the bus now? It’s waiting, you know!”

All the way to the hotel she was quite perfect; she told Mr. MacGregor about Andrée’s difficulties in practising, she was gay, in a formal, stereotyped way; when they arrived she arranged with the landlady for a room, even went about, picking him out a nice one. Then they all sat on the veranda for an hour or so, in the terrific heat, looking out over the sun-scorched lawn and the dusty road, and the motionless fir trees, and talked more. It was not an altogether successful conversation; Andrée was perverse and wilfully tactless, Edna was frankly indifferent, and Gilbert very garrulous. He wished to talk about the wholesale rubber business, and he did.

Then it was time to dress for dinner and they all went upstairs. The door into the girls’ room was locked, and Gilbert sat down, prepared for a more confidential talk, and an accounting of Claudine’s expenditure. But she attacked him at once, with a fiercely restrained wrath.

“Gilbert, what made you bring that man here?”

“Who? You mean Mr. MacGregor? I wanted to!” he answered, defiantly.

“It was a stupid, meddlesome thing to do!” she cried.

“See here, Claudine—!”

“You don’t realize the trouble it may cause.... Why didn’t you consult me?”

He laughed unpleasantly.

“I don’t think I’ll start that now, after twenty years—”

“You’ve no right to bring any man, where the girls are, without consulting me.... I particularly didn’t want this man.”

“Why?”

“I don’t care to explain.”

“It’s no use your being so high-handed with me. I’ll bring anyone I see fit. I consider my judgment—”

“Then I shall take Andrée away.”

“Going to leave me? I’ve heard that before!”

She was quite white with anger.

“When it’s a question of Andrée—” she began.

“There it is again—your cursed, unfair, unwomanly favouritism. What’s the matter with MacGregor? Not good enough for your princess?”

“Then he’s spoken to you!” she cried, in horror.

“Yes, he has, and very decently, too. I don’t see how she could do much better, if you ask me.”

“Gilbert! Are you mad? That old man—old enough to be her father!”

This touched a sore spot.

“Even that isn’t so very ancient,” he said, with infantile resentment. “No one but you would call a man of his age old. He’s a fine fellow. He has a good name, and he’s well fixed, and he’s very fond of Andrée—”

“You’re—you’re positively wicked!” she cried, choking with sobs. “Andrée—that wonderful, beautiful child—and that silly old man ...! I’m ashamed of you! I’m disgusted with you!”

He was astonished and somewhat alarmed. How was he to explain to this unreasonably violent woman his pretty fancies about young brides and adoring, distinguished, grey-haired husbands?

“See here!” he began, but she wouldn’t listen to him.

“I won’t allow him to say a word to her! Not a word! I’m going to speak to him myself and—”

Gilbert sprang to his feet.

“No, you don’t! I’m not going to be made a fool of! I told him he might speak to Andrée—”

“And I’ll tell him he can’t. I won’t have any interference where Andrée’s concerned.”

“I tell you I have something to say in this matter!”

She looked at him with a cold smile, and deliberately turned away from him. It was a trick of hers, and it always infuriated him. He raged at her in a way of which he was afterward ashamed.

She went on dressing, entirely disregarding him; then when she was ready, she said:

“I’m going downstairs now. Perhaps you’ll dress, when you’ve finished your bar-room tirade.”

§ ii

It was a jolly dinner. Both Claudine and Gilbert were in high spirits, as angry people often are, and Mr. MacGregor appeared greatly entertained. The girls were ridiculous; Claudine recognized their mood and frowned. She knew and dreaded this high tension, when every remark provoked a giggle, when they exchanged glances and were scarcely able to control their lips, trembling with laughter. A thought came to her which made her flush with shame. Could they have heard their father ...? He had certainly talked very loudly. And unfortunately that was the sort of thing they considered funny.

Poor woman! She was in misery, before her wretched task. She was afraid of the inscrutable Mr. MacGregor; he was so masculine, so self-assured, so old and sensible. But she was determined nevertheless to drive him away, no matter how outrageous she had to be. He should not be given the opportunity of putting ideas into Andrée’s head—silly, headstrong Andrée! She wouldn’t leave them alone for an instant.

As they rose from the table, said Mr. MacGregor:

“Miss Andrée, shall we have a little music? We might run over that new duet—”

“No, thanks!” said Andrée, laughing. “Not with you!”

“Nonsense! Come along!” he said, with authoritative, professorial air. “I want to see what you’ve been doing.”

“No!” she repeated. “I don’t want to! I won’t!”

“Come, Andrée!” said Gilbert, severely. “This is no way to behave. When Mr. MacGregor—”

“All right!” she interrupted, and led the way into the parlour where a group of old ladies was already installed. Mr. MacGregor drew up a chair beside the piano stool and they sat down, side by side, the big, stoop-shouldered man with his grizzled hair, and the slight young girl. He spoke to her for a few moments in an undertone, pointing a square finger at the music; and she nodded petulantly.

“Now!” said he.

The four hands were poised above the keyboard in the manner made famous by his teaching. Then they began, a majestic, crashing piece, a prelude in tremendous chords. The group of old ladies was annoyed at first, but some instinct warned them that it was classical music and worthy of respect, and they all sat rocking and listening.

But Claudine could take no pleasure in the noble work. The sight of Andrée and Mr. MacGregor side by side filled her with terror and impatience. She thought of the man’s great prestige, the illustrious pupils who publicly lauded him, the recitals given by his conservatory which she had attended, and where he was a demi-god, adored by students and parents. He had written books on technic, he was a prominent man, respected in certain estimable circles, he was well-to-do, his reputation was unblemished. His attention must seem such a dangerously flattering thing for his young pupil.

Oh, damnable music! She imagined she could actually see it weave its spell about her child. The duet finished, Mr. MacGregor consented to play alone, and it was marvelous playing. Andrée stood beside him, watching his hands, never raising her eyes. And he never looked at her either; sinister fact!

“And now, you, Miss Andrée!” he said.

She consented instantly. She was fired; she wanted to play now. And Mr. MacGregor crossed the room and sat down beside Claudine.

“She is remarkable,” he said.

Claudine looked intently at him.

“You think she would make a concert player?” she asked, briefly.

“She undoubtedly could, if she would. But her temperament is peculiar.”

Claudine smiled.

“Her temperament is more or less familiar to me,” she said.

“Oh, I wasn’t presuming to inform her mother!” he hastened to say. “It was simply that I thought my interpretation—as a musician—might be of interest. I don’t hesitate to say that she is one of the most promising pupils I have ever had the pleasure of teaching.”

“Then do you think she has a fine future before her?” asked Claudine. She would bring him to the point; he should be made to declare himself so that she could demolish him.

“If she chooses. But I’m not sure that she has the temperament for a public artist. She is too rebellious—”

“Then what do you think she is suited for?” asked Claudine, boldly. But she never had Mr. MacGregor’s reply, for Andrée had suddenly stopped playing and got up.

“Mother!” she said, “Do you mind if Edna and I pop over to the drugstore? We want some things—”

Mr. MacGregor had risen, prepared with a gallant offer to accompany them, but before he could say a word, she had gone, her arm about her smaller sister. And with the cessation of the music, Gilbert intended to be heard. Mr. MacGregor was rather interested in the stock market, in a prudent way, and Gilbert had information to give, and prophecies.

Claudine could not endure it; she went out on the veranda to await the return of the children, but though she lingered there for an hour and a half, there was no sign of them. Thoroughly vexed, she went upstairs and there they were in their own room. She heard Edna shrieking with laughter.

Quite shamelessly she stood close to the crack of the door.

“Gosh!” said Edna. “If he married both of us, and another one thrown in, it would just about make a wife of his own age. The conceit of men!”

“Well,” said Andrée, “the girls at the conservatory do make awful idiots of themselves about him, you know.”

“But, oh!” cried Edna, “you don’t know how funny you looked, playing that duet, and both—pouncing—!”

“Shut up!” said Andrée, impatiently. “I knew you were laughing. There’s nothing really funny in it, of course not.”

There was silence for a moment, broken by giggles from Edna.

“But, honestly, Andrée,” she said, at last. “Have you encouraged him? I’m sure he came to woo you!”

“I never dreamed he’d come.... I wish he hadn’t! He wrote such heavenly letters. And now he’s spoiled everything.”

“Father adores him; you can see that. What do you suppose he told Father?”

“Goodness knows! Father swallows everything.... Oh, dear! I really liked him—when he was miles away!”

Claudine now knocked at the door; and entered.

“Children,” she said. “Where have you been? I waited and waited for you—”

“We just came up here; we didn’t go to the drugstore after all. We thought we’d like a nice quiet little talk,” said Edna.

“It’s very close and hot up here,” said their mother. “However I suppose you’re not going downstairs again this evening—”

“Not unless Andrée wants to play another duet,” said Edna.

Andrée scowled at her.

“Your playing was beautiful, my dear,” said her mother. “Mr. MacGregor must be a very competent teacher.”

She kissed them both and went back into her own room, unaccountably relieved. She undressed and put on a thin silk dressing-gown and sat down near the window in the dark.

She deliberately tried to banish all thought of Gilbert. He would inevitably go to the large hotel down the road and have a number of whiskies and soda, and come back, either contrite or quarrelsome. One was as bad as another.... She sighed, bitterly. Better think of Andrée.

It was a hot, still night; the world outside seemed restless and fevered, noisy with insects, not sleeping, not tranquil. She could hear dogs barking frantically, and a strain of stupid music from the hotel, chattering voices on the veranda, sounds from other rooms.... Oh, my Andrée, how little life has to give you! Even the best of it is so poor! A profound melancholy overcame her; she could not so much as imagine a future for her child that would be happy.

The door opened softly, and Edna’s voice whispered:

“Mother!”

“Yes, dear?”

“May I come in, just for an instant?”

“Of course!”

“Andrée’s asleep.... But I was so afraid you’d be worrying, Mother darling. I knew how you must feel when you saw Mr. MacGregor.... Oh, Andrée’s such a chump! But he’s done for! I made her laugh at him, and that’s spoiled everything.”

“You dear girl! How clever and sensible of you! You really do understand Andrée wonderfully.”

Edna sighed.

“She is a worry! She’d marry anyone—she’d do anything, if she was caught in a certain mood. I hope you’ll be able to keep that old nuisance—”

“Really, my dear!”

“I hope you won’t let Mr. MacGregor talk to her to-morrow. It might undo all the good I’ve done.”

Claudine put her arms about the child and kissed her fervently, the sort of kisses she so often gave to Edna in which were all her secret contrition for her favouritism, all her remorse at the inadequate return she made for this honest and beautiful affection. She had a superstitious dread of being punished some day for her wickedness; some disaster would overtake little Edna, and then she would repent, too late, her idolatry of Andrée.

“Good night, Edna darling!” she said. “You’re such a comfort to me!”

And how much dearer was the pain that one caused her than the comfort the other gave!

CHAPTER FOUR
THE UNABASHED OUTCAST

§ i

CLAUDINE waked up to the dull peace of a mountain Sunday. She could hear the grinding of the ice-cream freezer on the back porch, and far away the bell of the little Roman Catholic church. She rose and dressed while Gilbert still slept, and going out into the hall, knocked on the door of the girls’ room. Andrée was up and half dressed, combing her misty dark hair.

“Edna’s pretending to be asleep,” she said, scornfully.

“There’s no hurry,” said Claudine. “She can wait for Father and have breakfast with him. Finish dressing, and we’ll have time for a little walk.”

She sat down and watched her child with tender eyes. There was an awkward, impatient grace about her, in the hasty movements of her arms as she arranged her hair, something so immature, so touching. She slipped on a white frock, because her father was inordinately fond of seeing young girls in white, and announced herself ready. But Claudine saw untidinesses; she tucked in a stray lock of hair, straightened her collar, tightened her belt.

“Now!” she said. “You’re nice!”

They went out, closing the door quietly on the motionless Edna.

“What on earth is that row!” said Andrée.

They paused for a moment in the hall to listen. Some outrageous person was playing with vigour on the piano, and whistling, to accompany the vulgar air.

“And on Sunday morning, too!” said Claudine, with a frown, “when so many people want to sleep!”

They went on down; the dining-room was still quite empty at this early hour, and the veranda deserted. But every corner was permeated by that loud, shocking noise!

“Let’s see what it is!” said Andrée, and they looked cautiously in at the open door of the parlour.

“Oh, I know him!” said Andrée. “I saw him come last night, on the train with Father and Mr. MacGregor. Horrible, vulgar little wretch!”

Seated at the piano was a slight, fair-haired young man with a minute yellow mustache and a cheerful, impudent face. He wore a new black suit and white buckskin shoes and some awful sort of necktie; he had an air of being specially got up for Sunday. The place was a cheap and obscure one, but they had never before seen in it a guest like this. People of his kind found nothing to please them here.

Claudine was affronted.

“We can only hope he won’t stay long,” she said, as they turned away.

They went into breakfast, alone in the room, but their peace was destroyed by the playing and whistling; at first they frowned, and Claudine even suggested speaking to Mrs. Dewey; but in the end they were forced to laugh.

They went out for a walk, a carefully selected one, where no cows would be met with to terrify Andrée and a good view might be obtained for Claudine. They talked together in one of their few hours of perfect accord.

“I have some influence over her!” thought Claudine, happily. “If she ever contemplates anything foolish, I am sure I can dissuade her. She is mine! We are bound together by a thousand ties.”

Andrée broke into her meditation.

“You’re awfully pretty, Mother!” she said, suddenly. “I love the way you look.... There’s something—I don’t know how to describe it—something old-fashioned about you.”

Claudine was not greatly pleased.

“Old-fashioned?” she said, thinking of her new frock, her chic and becoming coiffure, every dainty detail of her costume.

“Yes. You haven’t the look other women have. You’re so distinguished and—mysterious. Have you had a very sad life, Mother?”

“Mercy, no, child!” said Claudine. She shrank at once from any invasion of her reserve; her dignity compelled her to maintain her aloofness, her air of slightly inhuman tranquillity.

But Andrée was insistent.

“But I do wish you’d tell me one thing!” she said. “Did you really mean to marry Cousin Lance, and were you parted by something?”

“Where did you get such a ridiculous idea?” asked her mother, frowning. “No one ever thought of such a thing.”

“Edna said she thought so.... Mother, I wish I knew you better!”

Claudine was startled and touched.

“My dear!” she cried. “But don’t you ...?”

She stopped.

“After all,” she went on. “I think it is better just to love people, and not to trouble about trying to know or to understand them.”

They had reached a little summer-house built out on a rock over a deep pool in a rocky basin. It had not at all the sinister aspect of that other pool; this was sunny, open and dark blue, with wild flowers growing about it, and ferns. From where they sat, they could see the line of mountains beyond. Andrée didn’t like mountains; the sombre and majestic environment exasperated her restless soul. She sighed, but grew quiet looking at her mother’s rapt face. She was drawing strength and assuagement from the hills. Poor mother, with her philosophers and her scenery! A phantom existence, Andrée reflected.

“Hope I don’t disturb you?” said a cheerful voice, and they both turned, to see with horror the common little man, with a great bundle of Sunday newspapers under his arm. He had politely taken off his hat and stood smiling at them.

“They told me down at the house that this was a pretty walk,” he said. “And it certainly is. Fine air to-day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Claudine, in her most distrait, affable way. “It’s a lovely day.”

“Would you like to see the papers?” he asked.

“No, thank you. We’re going back at once.... We just stopped for the view.”

He smiled.

“A tame little view!” he said. “I guess I’ll find something better than this before I’ve finished.”

“How?” asked Andrée, abruptly.

“I’m going to climb some of these peaks. I’ve done a lot of climbing in the Alps,” he said. “I’ve got the head for it, and the legs. Why, there wasn’t one of those millionaire sportsmen who could beat me at it. These peaks look like hills to me.”

His boasting was somehow ameliorated by his good-humour. And one couldn’t help believing that he actually had defeated millionaire sportsmen.

“I suppose you ladies don’t climb?” he asked.

“I haven’t,” said Andrée. “But perhaps I shall some time. It might be rather fun. I’d never thought of it.”

“We must go,” said Claudine, firmly. “Your father will be wondering what has become of us. Come, dear!”

She smiled politely at the dreadful little man, and they walked off. At a turn of the path Andrée, looking back, saw him spreading out his papers, his straw hat jauntily at the back of his head.

“I’m afraid he’s going to be a nuisance,” said Claudine.

“I guess you can dispose of him!” said Andrée, grimly. “Lord! How I do hate Sundays!”

Claudine felt obliged to remonstrate, but weakly, because she was quite in agreement with her child. They sauntered back with reluctant steps, each lost in her own incommunicable thought.

§ ii

The great mid-day dinner had been disposed of, the chicken, the ice-cream, and the other decent, traditional things, and the entire party went out on to the veranda and sat down, constrained, almost enraged with one another.

“Let’s take a walk, Father!” said Andrée, suddenly.

“Not on your life!” said Gilbert. “I’m not nineteen, old girl!”

He took a bill from his pocket.

“See if you and Edna can’t find some place to buy yourselves a box of caramels,” he said. “I want a look at the papers.”

“I shouldn’t object to a walk,” said Mr. MacGregor.

“Then I’ll show you a nice, cool, after-dinner one,” said Claudine, brightly, “while the girls go for their candy. Run up and get me my sunshade, please, Edna!”

Gilbert looked up with a scowl; but he met so cold and steadfast a glance from his wife that he looked down again. Better let her alone; she was capable of the most alarming retaliations. Anyhow, she couldn’t do any real harm; love was not to be so easily discouraged. He pretended to be deep in his papers, but he was none the less well aware of his daughters going off in one direction and his wife and Mr. MacGregor in another. He was ready to laugh at the woman’s folly.

Claudine had started with the firm intention of approaching and utterly routing Mr. MacGregor. But, to be brief, she didn’t so much as mention Andrée’s name. She couldn’t! Instead they chatted affably as they strolled; Mr. MacGregor gave some information, more sentimental than scientific, regarding Scotch wild flowers. He was really very nice and flattering. She hadn’t for years met anyone who took so frank an interest in her. He was by no means a botanist, but he confessed to a love of Nature, and he admired her quite extensive knowledge. Moreover, he too was a reader of her beloved philosophers, and they had an interesting if somewhat superficial discussion of their theories of life. Claudine’s idea was that one should try to deny the reality of suffering; she had a pitiful hope that if she were to train her reason sufficiently she would in time be able to reason away her unhappiness. Mr. MacGregor, on the contrary, had a tinge of Calvinism in his philosophy, he thought it better to hug one’s pain, to rejoice in its cruel embrace, to be made strong by it.

Then they talked a little of music, Claudine’s old love. But Mr. MacGregor was so very practical. He looked upon a masterwork as a thing to be expressed through high technical perfection, he read no meanings, no sentiment into music, he had none of Claudine’s mystic delight in sound itself.

They both became mollified. Mr. MacGregor was able to forgive this charming and interesting woman her obvious interference in his love-making, and she was willing to admit that as a man he was strong, sensible, and rather likeable. She couldn’t help contrasting his ruggedness, his well-furnished mind, his varied interests, with the bilious and tiresome Gilbert. Here was a companion, who could walk, and who could talk.

They came leisurely home; Gilbert saw them crossing the sunny lawn, both of them annoyingly cool in spite of the midsummer weather. He himself was quite wretched from the heat, and irritated by the newspaper. He got up and went to meet them.

“Tell you what!” he said. “We’ll see if we can get a motor somewhere in the place and go for a drive in the cool of the afternoon—about five. The children will like it.”

It was of course unimaginable either to him or to Claudine that he should find the conveyance. He was a sort of Sultan; he never did things of that sort. He gave orders, and he paid. So Claudine found and despatched a fat youth belonging to Mrs. Dewey and the thing was done. They then retired to their rooms until five o’clock; Gilbert dozed and his wife gave her attention to her finger-nails.

“What have the children been doing?” she asked suddenly.

“Don’t know.... Haven’t seen them,” he muttered. “Good Lord! This room is hot! Can’t you find some way to keep the flies out? What good are the screens?”

Claudine didn’t answer; an alarming thought had entered her mind. Suppose those provoking girls weren’t back when the car arrived? Gilbert would be in a terrible rage; and there would certainly be a scene.... Where could they have gone, on this drowsy Sunday afternoon in that little village so devoid of resources?

Her fears were confirmed; they didn’t come back. Gilbert had got into the car, Mr. MacGregor was standing near.

“Call the girls!” said Gilbert, impatiently. “I suppose they’re making themselves sick with their caramels.”

But they were not in the house, not in the grounds. Mr. MacGregor went down the road to the hotel, and to the drug-store where they must have gone for their candy, but he did not find them. They wasted half an hour, and then went off without them.

Gilbert didn’t spare Claudine. He remonstrated all the time, in a manner which, if he had not been a man, would certainly have been called nagging. He said it was disgraceful; hadn’t she any control over her children? Didn’t she take any interest in them? Was she in the habit of neglecting them in this way? That was the way with women; they hadn’t a damned thing to do but look after their children, and they didn’t even do that properly. And so on. Claudine endured it with a set smile; she scarcely heard him. Mr. MacGregor, however, did hear him; it was not a pleasant drive for him.

§ iii

They got back a little late for the meal known as Sunday night tea. She hurried upstairs to wash and brush her hair, and there in their room were her daughters, both stretched out on the bed.

“Edna!” she cried. “Andrée! Where have you been? Your father had a motor to take you out ... he was so disappointed. You have no right to worry and annoy him so.... Where have you been since dinner time?”

Edna raised herself on one elbow.

“Sorry, Mother darling! We went out with that funny little man. We ran across him as we were coming out of the drug-store and he began to talk. Said he was going to walk to a place called ‘The Brave’s Leap,’ and asked us if we didn’t want to go along, so we did. It was heavenly! Miles and miles.... We’re awfully tired, but it’s a nice tiredness.”

“What an outrageous thing to do! I’m surprised at you! The man’s a perfect stranger—and not a desirable person at all. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am. And your father’s plans all upset—”

“But we didn’t know about Father’s plans,” said Edna.

“We didn’t miss much,” said Andrée. “I hate those silly drives. As it was, we got a lot of splendid exercise and a lot of fun.”

“You mustn’t do such things without asking me! I thought you both knew better than to go off that way with a stranger. It was very wrong and inconsiderate. Naturally your father expects to see something of you in the little time he’s here—”

“But, Mother dear,” said Edna, patiently. “We’re not children. We couldn’t leave Mr. Stephens standing in the street while we ran home to ask mother. He’s a very nice little beast, and there was really absolutely no harm in taking a walk with him.”

“I have no control over them!” thought Claudine, bitterly. “Gilbert is right!”

Aloud she said, in a tone of great displeasure:

“There is no time to argue with you now. It’s late. Please get dressed at once for supper.”

“We don’t want any supper,” said Andrée. “The nice little beast had all sorts of things in his knapsack. We’ve been eating all afternoon.”

“And we stopped at a funny little inn somewhere on the road and had ginger ale and more sandwiches. Mother, I wish you’d been there! It was the only decent time we’ve had in this place. We saw the most beautiful waterfall, and a wonderful gorge that an Indian’s supposed to have jumped across. And the man’s really very nice. Of course he’s common, and all that sort of thing, but he’s the most cheerful creature!”

“He said he was ‘athaletic,’” said Andrée, “and he is! He showed off all the time, and it was very amusing.”

But Claudine was not listening; she was thinking with dread of what she should say to Gilbert.

And in the end she was certainly not candid.

“The girls went for a long walk in the mountains,” she told him. She didn’t mention the “nice little beast,” and neither did they, whether from dissimulation or carelessness she didn’t care to investigate.

On an early train the next morning Gilbert and Mr. MacGregor went back to the city, and she drew a breath of relief. Now she had only two adversaries to struggle against—and perhaps the common little man as well.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE BREATH OF LIFE

§ i

“TIRED?” asked Mr. Stephens.

“Not a bit,” said Andrée. “Edna and I owe you a vote of thanks for putting a little life into one of those ghastly Sundays. I loathe Sundays.”

“You wouldn’t if you’d ever done any work,” said he.

She looked at him in surprise. He was sitting on the rail of the veranda where she had found him when she came out after her late and solitary breakfast. He looked well in his white flannels; he wore his great variety of clothes with a sort of innocent gusto, like so many fancy dress costumes, and though so obviously not to the manner born, he had no awkwardness; there was, on the contrary, an engaging and honest assurance about him, and a remarkable vitality. His features were sharp and by no means distinguished, but they were good. His blue eyes were frank and intelligent. He was wiry, well knit, not without vanity in his strength. The cheerful grin had vanished from his face with his last words, leaving it quite serious.

“I have done work,” she answered. “You don’t know what hard, tiresome work practising is.”

“It isn’t work,” he interrupted. “It’s preparation for work. You’ve never had to go on when you were tired. In fact, you’ve never had to do it at all. Your conscience has been your master, and I can tell you, it’s a darn sight easier master than hunger.”

This was extraordinary talk.

“Well, I suppose I’m lucky then,” said Andrée. “I’ve never had to earn money, and I don’t suppose I ever shall.”

“It’s not lucky to be useless,” he said.

“Useless!” she cried. “Do you think making music is useless?”

“Of course it is. Lots of people get on without music. Fine, high-minded people, too.”

Andrée smiled scornfully.

“I dare say!” she said. “But there are some people who wouldn’t think life was worth living without art.”

“No, there aren’t. Not one. If you gave any human being his choice between a decent happy life without a sign of art, or death, no one but a maniac would choose death.”

“I should!”

“Then that’s because you don’t know anything about death, or life either.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and half turned away.

“You’d better not bother to talk to such a fool, then,” she said. “I’ll admit I can’t talk to people who despise music.”

“I don’t despise it. I’m very fond of it. I play a little myself. In fact, I think I’ve got quite a talent for it. If I could have studied, I’d have been a pretty good musician.”