The unlit lamp

§ 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

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 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

“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.