The unlit lamp

She condemned Mr. Stephens to Limbo.

§ iii

Naturally when Gilbert came out the next week-end he wished to know all about this picnic, and he wished to know also, although he dared not ask, why his candidate, Mr. MacGregor, had appeared so obviously discouraged. They had become great friends; they dined and went to the theatre together, and maintained a delightful bachelor intimacy, coming and going as they pleased. He had listened to MacGregor’s praise of Claudine with a sore heart. She kept her charm, her affability, well hidden from her husband! There she sat beside him, on the veranda, her book politely closed on her lap, just wifely, no more.

“Who was the fellow who gave the picnic?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of him. You haven’t mentioned his name in your letters.”

“You’ll see him in the dining-room this evening,” said Claudine. “He’s not—not quite our own sort, you know, Gilbert, but he’s very nice and pleasant.”

“Well, I’m no snob!” said Gilbert. He was in a wonderfully pleasant mood, his wife noticed, and if she had felt the least assurance of its keeping on, she would have unbent a little. But so many, many times had she hurried to meet him half way, only to see him retreat.... His thoughts would have astounded her.

“Why in God’s name can’t the woman be simple and friendly with me—and not so damned suspicious!” he said to himself. “She’s always watching me out of the corners of her eyes.... If we’re not—in love, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends.”

He was really anxious to be friendly that day, poor devil, who had never had a friend in his life, or ever been one!

“No, I’m not a snob,” he went on. “That’s a feminine failing. But I don’t like my family making bosom friends of people I don’t know.”

“He’s certainly not a bosom friend,” said Claudine, “and as for your not knowing him, how could that be helped, when you weren’t here?”

“Very well! Very well!” he said, impatiently. “We won’t argue. Introduce the fellow to me, and I’ll soon see what sort he is.”

No one could imagine Claudine’s dread and misery. She knew very well what Gilbert would think of Mr. Stephens.

His solitary little table was near a window, and a vagrant breeze that ruffled his light hair gave him a boyish and untidy look. He had a book propped up before him and he was eating absent-mindedly. She pointed him out with a smile which was the equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders, throwing the poor young fellow to the wolves.

“There he is, Gilbert!” she said.

Gilbert stared incredulously at the cheerful young man, with sleeves rolled up on his sunburnt arms, coatless, innocently absorbed in his book.

“What!” he said. “That fellow!”

“I told you he wasn’t quite—”

“And that’s the sort of man you encourage—and have hanging around your daughters, while you raise cain about a gentleman like MacGregor!”

He stared again.

“You introduce him to me,” he said, “and I’ll soon settle his hash!”

“Don’t be rude to him, Gilbert! Remember we’ve accepted his hospitality.... You’ll put me in a very undignified position.”

“You’ve done that for yourself,” he said.

With what reluctance did she approach the unsuspecting young man, and present him to Gilbert! He got up with alacrity and held out his hand, but Gilbert ignored it. He glanced round, and saw that Claudine had gone, and that he might therefore be rude without fear of interruption. He was terribly upset; he had a dim suspicion that Claudine had set up this man in opposition to his Mr. MacGregor, that it was altogether some beastly feminine plot.

“I want to thank you for your hospitality to my family,” he said, slowly. “However—”

“However?” repeated Mr. Stephens, encouragingly, but Gilbert found it very difficult to go on. He stood with his hands behind his back, the very image of respectability and decent prosperity, lowering at “that grasshopper,” as he mentally named the other.

“However,” said Mr. Stephens. “It mustn’t happen again. Is that it?” He was, it must be confessed, rather unduly sensitive to the social disapproval of capitalists.

“Yes!” said Gilbert. “I’m very particular—in regard to the acquaintances—about the people—about people I know nothing about—where my family is concerned.”

“Well,” said Stephens, “you can investigate, if you like. You can find out all about me. You can write to—”

“No! It won’t do!... No, I’ll have to ask you to—to discontinue the intimacy.”

“There isn’t any intimacy.”

“There’s not to be any intercourse whatever.”

“I don’t see how you can stop it,” said Stephens.

“I forbid it!” said Gilbert, with a scowl.

“You can’t forbid me, you know. As for your ‘family,’ I don’t know whether you can forbid them or not. That’s their business. If they consider it the best policy to knuckle down, why, I shan’t think any the worse of them. It’s the way of the world to dance when the fellow with the money fiddles. You—”

“Look here, you damned, impudent, vulgar jackanapes—”

“Don’t begin calling names, or I might call you a damn’ vulgar bully. But I won’t. I don’t lose my temper so easily. Fellows like me know that when they do lose their tempers, they’ve got to back it up with their fists. Something your sort never do, do you? You yell and curse, and that’s the end of it.”

They were disturbed by the distressful voice of Mrs. Dewey, outraged by these loud voices, but respectful before two such profitable persons.

“Gentlemen!” she said. “Please ...!”

Gilbert turned on his heel and strode out of the room. He went, of course, to his wife.

“I’ve been having a talk with that gentlemanly friend of yours,” he said, with a desperate effort to steady his voice. “And I want to tell you, once and for all, I’ll have—I’ll have ... I’ll have.... Understand me, both of you—and I want you to tell Andrée, too—you’re not to speak to the fellow again. Under any circumstances.”

“I’ll have to answer him if he speaks to me,” said Edna.

Both her parents were astonished.

“No, you don’t!” said her father. “I won’t have it!”

“I can’t be rude to him,” said Edna, in her most tranquil, sensible voice.

“I tell you!” shouted Gilbert. “I won’t have it!”

Edna said nothing, but the expression of her face was not obedient. Gilbert didn’t know how to proceed; he hesitated a moment, then he turned away.

“Claudine,” he said, from the doorway, “this is your business! You brought them up, and now you can handle them. You see to it that my—wishes are carried out. Understand, I’ll have no nonsense!”

“Oh, my dear child!” said Claudine, when the door had banged after him. “I wish you had more—tact! Surely Mr. Stephens isn’t worth a quarrel with your own father!”

“I don’t know, Mother. I think he’s rather wonderful. I wouldn’t be rude to him for anything. You know Andrée and I have seen a lot of him this week. We’ve been rowing with him, and walking, and he’s been as nice as could be. You can’t imagine!... He’s so different from anyone else we’ve ever known. And even if he is common, he’s not the least bit—objectionable. Why, Mother, you can see how trustworthy and honest he is! It’s written all over him!”

“I know, my dear. But your father—”

“Father’s not infallible. He makes mistakes. He’s not a good judge of people at all. And I’m not going to be rude to the poor man. And I’m sure Andrée won’t, either. She loves to hear him talk. She says he makes her ambitious.”

Claudine was in despair. How did other mothers manage to impress their children? Was the trouble because she was singularly ineffectual or because her children were singularly rebellious? It didn’t occur to her that it might be because she was wrong. She decided to try another tack.

“Edna!” she cried, fervently. “For my sake, dear, avoid any trouble with your father! You can’t think how it distresses me!”

“Mother!” said Edna, firmly. “That’s not fair! That’s just as bad as Father’s way. It isn’t fair to try to make me do what I don’t think is right.”

But she melted at the sight of her mother’s face.

“Very well, darling!” she said. “I hate to do it, but if it’ll make you any happier, I’ll be tactful. Father won’t know a thing about it. I’ll give Mr. Stephens a little hint. He’s never offended. I’ll only talk to him when Father isn’t here.”

And Claudine must be satisfied with this.

CHAPTER SEVEN

STEPHENS EXPLAINS HIMSELF

“Where are you going?” she asked. “To the drugstore? I’ll come with you.”

“No,” he answered. “No ... I was going for a walk.”

“Wait a minute!” she said, and jumping up, went over to him.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You’re—queer! Why don’t you sit down and talk to me?”

He glanced uneasily at the row of dark figures rocking behind them.

“Well ... under the circumstances ...” he murmured.

“What circumstances?”

“You know what your father said—”

“No, I don’t, and I don’t care, either. Tell me!”

“Not here.”

“Then let’s walk!”

They strolled over the lawn, beyond earshot of the veranda.

“Well,” said he. “We had—words. He told me not to speak to any of you again. I said, of course, I’d speak to you as long as you cared to speak to me.... But—”

“How beastly!” cried Andrée. “How horrible! But please don’t pay any attention to it. Edna and I never do.”

“At first I thought I wouldn’t. They’re free agents, I thought; it’s up to them to say whether they want to drop me or not. I’ve never had much respect for parental authority, in regard to adults. But when I’d thought it over—I saw it wouldn’t do. It’s not fair to you. You’re not free agents. It puts you in a rotten position.”

“So you’re not going to speak to us?”

“No, not that.... I’m going away to-morrow morning.”

“No! No! Don’t! I couldn’t bear to think you were driven away like that! Please don’t go!”

“I must. I’ve told Mrs. Dewey already. I—the whole thing has made me—sick. I’ve got to go!”

Andrée stopped short.

“Very well!” she said. “If that’s all you care....”

“It has nothing to do with—caring.”

“If you valued our friendship—as I do—”

“You don’t!” he cried. “You don’t! You can’t! You don’t know me.... I’m just a sort of—of freak—to amuse you on your holiday.”

“Look here!” said Andrée, sternly. “What makes you think that? You’re the last person in the world I’d have expected to be—silly and sensitive and imagining things like that. Can’t you see that Edna and I like you?”

“I thought you did.... But to tell you the truth, I never know, with people like you, how much is real, and how much is politeness. I’m not polite; I’m not used to politeness.”

“No one else ever thought that Edna and I were very polite,” she observed, laughing.

“But I can’t make you out!” he cried. “I never realized what a difference there was.... You’re a mystery to me.”

“Don’t think like that,” said Andrée, rather sharply. “What I admired so much about you was your way of looking at everyone as simply human.”

They had turned down the road in the direction of the big hotel; in the dusk he could see her face, and never had anything seemed to him less simply human. She looked to him so wonderful, so strange, so troubling; all his ideas about the frank and sensible companionship that ought to exist between man and woman were dissolving in her spell. Never had he felt less companionable—or less human. He was exalted and very unhappy. Humility was not one of his virtues; he had an honest consciousness of his own worth, and he did not feel humble now, but he was frightened. He knew very well that he was in love with her, and in a silly, unreasonable way, too. He saw no justification for adoring a woman, but he adored this one.

“Well ...” he said. “Why do you like me, anyway?”

“Because you’re real,” answered Andrée, promptly. “And honest. And specially because you haven’t any limits.”

“Oh—outside the pale!” he cried, very much hurt.

Andrée was surprised.

“Why do you always think things like that?” she asked. “You seem to think that matters so much—that—that artificial difference. It doesn’t to me.”

“It has to. I know I’m touchy. I’m ashamed of it, but I can’t help it. I’m always looking for slights, and I generally find them.... But what did you mean then by my not having any limits?”

“I meant a sort of feeling—that I could tell you anything. You might not always understand, but you’d try. You’d listen. I couldn’t imagine you ever saying ‘This is too much!’ like Father. You haven’t put up any boundaries.”

“I see,” he said, gravely. “Well ... it’s true, to some extent. I don’t pretend to understand everyone, but I can say I’ve never seen a soul yet that was really—well, altogether strange to me. There’s always something in common.... Now, with women, you know. Lots of these fellows—writers and all—they like to call woman a mystery. I know I said you were, but now I’m speaking in a general sense. My idea is—”

He stopped and looked a little anxiously at Andrée, and was reassured by her quiet attention. He had long ago grasped that strange quality of comprehension in her; she was not particularly clever or original, but she could grasp everything. She didn’t know; she saw. It was like a seeress gazing into a crystal; she might not comprehend the significance of what was presented, but she saw, so clearly and justly. Experience in talking to feminine comrades had taught him how dangerously inclined they were to make personal applications; this girl would never do that. He went on, a little more easily.

“I don’t see anything mysterious in women,” he said. “I haven’t any use for what you call ‘chivalry.’ I’d defend a woman—any woman, anywhere, but it wouldn’t be because I—well—felt any reverence; it would be because she was weaker. I wouldn’t try to make life easy for women—or for anyone.... Only a fair show. I’m a man; I expect to take a man’s part in the world. And I look to women to take their own part, and do their own work, and shoulder their own burdens.... Here’s the drug-store; shall we have a soda?”

Andrée assented and they went into the shop, which was filled with couples engaged in the same pursuit. He found a stool for Andrée, but there was none for himself; and he stood beside her, seriously consuming an elaborate thing of nuts, marshmallow, syrup and ice-cream. He was conscious all the time that he was enjoying a luxury; this thing was to him no frappé, but a symbol, a part of his share of the benefits of civilization. He would have liked to arrange for every one of the workers of the world to have a due allowance of such confections. His thoughts at that moment were very far from Andrée; he was, in fact, concerned with the memory of a hokey-pokey vendor on the lower East Side, surrounded by dirty children pitifully eager for his poisonous wares. He might have been disappointed to know how personally Andrée had applied his words—and then, he might not have been.

His words—“I’m a man, and I expect to take a man’s part in the world,” had given her a curious thrill.

“He is a man!” she thought. “More so than anyone I’ve ever met.” She glanced back over her shoulder at him, but his blue eyes were fixed upon the bourgeoisie consuming their unearned luxuries. She thought that among all the men there he stood forth notably as soldier, sturdier, oddly impressive in his utter honesty. And not bad-looking. His short blond hair showed a neat, well shaped head, the mouth beneath his absurd little mustache was a well cut one, resolute and very kindly; he carried himself splendidly.

“Well!” he said, at last. “Let’s be getting on!”

Andrée got up, still thoughtful. He turned in the direction of Pine Villa, but she protested.

“I don’t want to go back now!”

“Better,” he said cheerfully. “Your mother’ll be worried.”

This did not please Andrée, for she felt that any such dutiful ideas should have come from herself. She was about to say something a little disagreeable, when they caught sight of Claudine coming down the road, always an unmistakable figure by her gait and her bearing. The young man was disconcerted; he had no way of knowing how she had regarded her husband’s hostility, and he was very much in dread of her politeness. It was too dark to see her face; he had to wait for her voice, and to his great relief, it came to him tranquil and friendly. She didn’t say anything remarkable, only “Good evening,” but it implied for him all sorts of astounding and exquisite things. She didn’t mind his taking a walk with the matchless Andrée....

“I hope you’re not converting Andrée,” she said, in just the light and agreeable tone she would have used toward any of the bourgeoisie. “I shouldn’t like her to be a Revolutionary.”

“I’m not, myself,” he answered, seriously. “Did you ever read Dostoievsky, Mrs. Vincelle?”

“Yes,” she answered, secretly amused at his fatal responsiveness.

“Well, I think that fellow’s idea is the best philosophy I’ve ever come across. I believe to some extent in Conscious Evolution, but not so much through the development of a new type of humanity as through the development of compassion. You know. The kingdom of Heaven on earth. I think it’s compassion rather than intelligence that can save the world. If you can learn to pity, you learn to help.”

“Presupposing a little energy,” said Claudine. He was very much aware of her resistance; she did not wish to argue; she had a dread of being serious; she was never, never, to be convinced. Her mind and her opinions were unalterably formed; she was willing enough to listen, to think, but she accepted nothing. It was altogether different from talking to Andrée.

“I think it’s quite possible to be compassionate and selfish at the same time,” she went on.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong in selfishness. It’s vital. It’s a force, not a vice. As long as you want the right things.... Specially for women. An unselfish man might be a hero, but an unselfish woman couldn’t be anything but a victim.... Like a child.... Imagine an unselfish child. Of course it couldn’t survive. What you’ve got to do is to learn to feel for other people so much that it hurts your selfishness—so that you can’t be comfortable unless the rest are too.”

Claudine found his earnestness a little wearying; she wondered how the impatient Andrée could endure much of him. He was admirable, and he was very touching, and not for any Gilbert on earth would she offend him, but she wished very much that he might be somewhat less obviously there. He had had his cue to vanish; he could have put such a nice, friendly end to the acquaintance, and been entirely in the right, but instead—there he was. She had no objection to Andrée’s talking to him, but she felt that future walks were to be discouraged.

They crossed the lawn, black and spongy under the pines, and as a matter of course, she began to mount the steps of the veranda. But Andrée lingered.

“Come, my dear,” said Claudine. “Edna’s waiting for you.”

“Half a minute,” said Andrée, and her mother entered the house without her. Andrée leaned against the veranda, her head thrown back, looking up at the sky; Stephens stood before her, and characteristically, he was looking down at the earth, very thoughtful. There was a long silence, which neither of them noticed.

“Good night,” said Andrée, suddenly, and he was startled to see her holding out her hand. He took it, rather reluctantly, and she gave his a firm, strong pressure, and didn’t let go. But he drew away almost roughly.

“Good night,” he said, and walked away.

No other man she had yet seen would have done that; she was accustomed to having her imperious impulses treated with at least a semblance of rapture; she went in, more thoughtful than ever.

The truth of it was, that for young Stephens there were no trifles; everything was significant. He was a man of strong passions and dearly bought wisdom; he knew no middle course between being indifferent or quite otherwise. He had been brought up in a class where a friendship between a man and a woman was unthinkable; or any sort of careless or meaningless intercourse. If you weren’t in love with a girl, or on the point of falling in love, you never thought of her. He had developed and he had learnt much; he had a remarkable command over himself; he would have been able to go on like this for ever and ever, simply talking and talking to Andrée, and being quite impersonal, but not if she were going to hold his hand. He really resented that. Old ideas which he fancied he had outgrown came back to him now, with force; a venomous distrust for women of Andrée’s sort. As a boy, when he had seen them in the streets, exquisitely dressed, in their carriages, it had given him comfort to believe them all wanton and worthless chaff. Later, when he had begun to read novels, all this had been confirmed; he had made more than one fiery and bitter speech to his comrades on that subject; on these pampered women with their jewels, their furs, their inordinate luxuries. He was honest enough even then to admit the existence of a leaven of desire in his sullen resentment.

“It’s the dream of most fellows like me,” he had thought, “to possess a superior woman. And there’s no chance of it. No matter what we do, or become, the finest and best of them are always out of reach.”

His candid opinion of the Vincelles would have shocked them one and all. He had studied the social conditions of his country with thoroughness, and he knew they weren’t the best, or even the second best. They belonged in a place he could never get to, but there were places above to which they could never attain; he was far better aware of this than they were. He knew that Andrée was half-educated and half-trained, that she was not useful and not, socially speaking, ornamental. And he had been able thus dispassionately to judge her because she had seemed so entirely impossible to him. He knew he loved her, but he had had no hope, and, obliged to withstand her allurement, he had been able to analyze it. The intractable and wayward spirit of her was what he loved; her elusiveness. Always and forever she would do what she wanted; every breath would sway her, but not the mightiest wind from heaven would dismay or turn her from her desire. There was no constancy, no steadfastness in her, but she was honest. She was very largely made up of faults, and they were faults he loved; wilfulness, recklessness, a sort of casual and unconscious cruelty, a marvelous selfishness, innocent, unambitious, like that of a child. She would not strive, never fight for what she wanted, she would stretch out careless hands for what passing things took her fancy.

Just at the moment, he took her fancy. Well, he wasn’t going to have it that way. He was going away, to forget her, before there was any more to forget. He wanted not to see that dark, mutinous face again, or to hear that nervous and exquisite voice, that seemed always to have a sob in it. Because he was constant and steadfast, and he had no wish to give so very much and to get nothing in return.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE THING IS ON THEM

“Because we’re all very nearly dead, and you’re so much alive,” she said, tranquilly. “Can’t we have one more nice day together?”

“I don’t see ...” he said, doubtfully. “After—well—your father, you know....”

He had no clear conception of Gilbert’s position; he had certainly seen many husbands and fathers who were bullies, but in a more primitive society this bullying carried weight and was not defied. He knew little of the civilized expedients of women; he didn’t imagine that Claudine would stoop to deceive. Yet he didn’t think her quite capable of independence.

“Oh, Father!” said Edna, carelessly. “He’s just melodrama.... And we won’t tell Mother, and she’ll pretend not to know where we’ve gone. We can—”

“But I don’t like it!” he protested. “It’s a humiliating position for me.”

“It really isn’t, Mr. Stephens. We’re the humiliated, deceitful ones, and we don’t care. Do you know the country round here?”

“I was born a few miles down the river,” he answered, soberly. “In Brownsville Landing.”

Andrée came sauntering out of the house, and caught his words.

“I’d like to hear about you,” she said, but he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That’s a mistake. What used to be me isn’t me now. It’s—well, it’s like these books—they start off when the fellow’s a baby, and they tell you all the things he thought and all the ways he grew and changed, until you can’t see him at all. I’m darned glad you never saw me or heard of me before, and you’ve got to see only what I am now.” He smiled ingenuously. “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s what I’ve worked twenty-eight years on, anyway.”

“Come on; let’s start somewhere,” said Edna. “Or Mother’ll come out and have to not ‘countenance’ it. Let’s take a ‘ramble’; that’s what Father calls a walk.”

“It is a ‘ramble,’ too, with him,” said Andrée.

“Well,” said Stephens, “there’s a nice place up the road five or six miles—nursery for all kinds of evergreens, and a little hotel. If you think you can do it—? It’s a steep climb.”

Edna ran in to leave a message for her mother with Mrs. Dewey, and they set off. It was a sultry, hazy morning; it seemed unaccountably oppressive to Stephens. He felt unpleasantly like a new toy to these greedy children; they looked to him to provide amusement; they weren’t interested in his ideas, which were his life, and they had no faint idea of the wonder of him. He glanced down at his white flannel legs and buckskin shoes; he thought of his appearance in general, his immaculate cleanliness, the comfort of fine raiment, of himself strong, confident, carrying a cigarette case of purest gold and walking by these fabulous girls. And he thought of a sallow youth, ten years ago, lounging outside a pool room in Brownsville Landing, in a dirty grey flannel shirt and a villainous cap, dazed and stupid with incessant cigarettes, engaging in candid persiflage with the mill girls who passed. He had bridged that gulf all alone....

The making of his money he regarded as a minor achievement. It was the regeneration of his spirit that was so remarkable; that, he felt, was little less than a miracle; he would have liked to tell that.

He had been in the hospital with a broken head, justifiably got in a saloon brawl; he had lain in the ward two days, suffering and resentful because he couldn’t smoke. No one came to see him; who was there to come? His father, who worked in the brick yards, was always drunk when he wasn’t busy, and he had no other relatives; he didn’t know what a friend was. He went about in a pack, a gang of youths of his own age, bound by no other tie than that of the pack instinct, all of them more or less vicious, in a pitiful way. They lacked ambition, that is, at eighteen or so, they showed a lamentable disinclination to work every day and all day in mill or factory. They wanted something better, and even now Stephens fancied that their sordid distractions were better, had a little more of the stuff of life in them.

In his restlessness and misery, he had turned his attention to the man in the next bed, a portly, pallid fellow of forty-five or so, with a black beard and a severe and dignified manner. He looked like a physician, some sort of professional man; he was actually a mill hand, an Englishman named Simms, a Manchester Socialist of the old school, austere and fanatic. He sat propped up in bed reading Huxley, but he was very willing to talk. And in five days he had expounded the world to the sallow “corner boy.” Gesturing forcibly with his bandaged hand—he had been badly mangled at his machine—he set forth his Quixotic and beautiful doctrines. He had little humanity, no flexibility; he was uncompromising and stern as a Calvinist.

They had lived together for two years. It was Simms who had shown young Stephens the charm of cleanliness; he had a bare little room on the outskirts of the town which he scrubbed himself; his habits were fastidious and ascetic. He taught young Stephens sobriety and continence and his own worth, and he taught him to read. His pupil was not docile; he joined the Y. M. C. A., which was anathema to Simms; he took courses in everything, he frequented the gymnasium. He made use of what the older man disdained; his ideas were more practical and less sublime.

He felt now that he was justified and he wished poor Simms were alive, to be argued with. He stole a glance at Andrée, and he felt a curious mixture of despair and defiance. He was good enough—but she would never think so.

§ ii

Claudine had watched them go from her window, with some uneasiness. People of his sort were so hard to handle! Why hadn’t he the tact to go away? It was so difficult to keep a middle course between offending him and offending Gilbert; she dwelt with dismay, not for the first time, on the uncompromising nature of men, how rudely they upset all feminine niceties. Nothing might be implicit or vague with them. Even Bertie, her marvelous boy, had to tell her things, and be frank about his feelings, in a way Andrée and Edna never were.

She spent a peaceful day, reading and writing letters. The letters did her good, put her in touch with her own little world again, restored to her some measure of complacency. She was unhappy and her life very futile and insignificant, but it might have been so much worse; it might have been harmful. She re-read Lizzie Wiley’s letter, full of the atrocious Bernardine Perceval, who had left her husband.

“I saw Bernardine,” she wrote, “on the street car with the little girl. What she will drag the child into I don’t know. I thank God there are still a few like yourself left.” And so on. Lizzie Wiley was a wealthy spinster of passionate moral views and her approval was not without weight. Claudine thought with a faint smile of her own bad moment, twenty years before, when she had wanted to leave Gilbert; she had a fairly definite idea that those moments occurred in most marriages; for an instant she wondered what had made her resist it. Duty? Fear? Lance? She didn’t much want to know, and put the thought aside. The fact remained that she had stayed and done well, for Gilbert, for herself, for her children.

She wrote a plaintively humorous letter to Nina Sidell, whose Violet was just Andrée’s age. Violet was a frightful worry, in a way her daughters would never be. Wasn’t that something else to her credit? Then there was Connie Martinsburgh, whose four exuberant and handsome children were all troublesome. Perhaps, although she seemed to herself so entirely negative, she did after all exert a good influence over her family.... That absurd young Stephens had upset her, with his terrific vitality; he had made her feel so pallid, so helpless, so useless. Poor Breath of Life, with his gold cigarette case!

§ iii

They returned from their “ramble” early in the afternoon, and the girls at once went upstairs to lie down. They were much more fatigued than they cared to admit.

“Lord! What a cyclone!” said Edna, taking the pins from her crisp, reddish hair and letting it fall about her bare shoulders. “He can do everything and he knows everything. That lecture about coniferous trees ...! And yet he’s amusing.”

Andrée was stretched flat on her back on the bed.

“He’s more than amusing,” she said, with a frown. “He’s very fine. He’s a man.”

“Oh, hardly that!” said Edna, slipping into her kimono. She was startled by her sister suddenly sitting upright.

“You silly little snob!” she cried. “You make me tired! You don’t know anything—you can’t see anything!”

“Oh, Gosh!” thought Edna, in alarm. “I do see something now!”

Andrée went on, to point out to her younger sister the mental or moral excellencies of young Stephens; all in vain. She neglected to mention his endearing smile, that odd, tender look in his blue eyes.

Edna kept whatever she thought to herself.

“He said he was absolutely going away to-morrow,” she reflected. “And she’ll forget.”

And by the light of this, the relations between Andrée and the Breath of Life seemed rather funny than anything else. Edna didn’t mention her discovery to her mother, nor did she attempt to stop them or to go with them when they left the veranda that evening. She looked after them as they crossed the lawn, with a benevolent smile.

“That poor man’s going to get a jolt,” she reflected. “I dare say Andrée ’ll get engaged to him this evening, just as she did to Johnnie Martinsburgh last winter. Then she’ll get into a panic, and I’ll very probably have to get her out of it, the same way. Well! It can’t be helped! That’s Andrée, all over. She’s so darned sincere every time.”

“Let’s take a walk over to your Fern Glen,” Andrée was saying.

“I don’t think—” he began, doubtfully.

“Yes,” she insisted. “There’ll be a moon, won’t there, later on?”

“Your mother—”

“It’s your last evening.”

“I know,” he said. “But we can talk here—”

“I believe you’re afraid of me,” she said, laughing.

“I am,” he answered, and she suddenly stopped laughing.

“You’d better let me alone,” he went on. “I don’t understand your ways. Things you think are funny make me miserable.”

“I don’t want a bit to make you miserable, and I certainly don’t see anything funny in—in this thing. Do come on! Mother and Edna will be home, and then we can’t go.”

She went on, and he reluctantly followed her white figure. They went along the road, walking quietly on its grassy border, he always a little behind her. It was a mild beautiful night, a night on which one could walk forever. Behind the pine trees there was a marvelous faint radiance, the path of the coming moon. The breeze blowing across the apple orchard they were passing brought a wine-like perfume and an exquisite rustling of leaves. The young man looked steadfastly down at his white tennis shoes moving soundlessly over the grass.

They came to the pasture through which Andrée had once refused to go, and they saw the great, dim shapes of the cows standing motionless in there.

“I suppose you want to go around—” said he.

“No; I shan’t be afraid, if you’ll stay near me,” she answered.

He let down the bars, and carefully replaced them when they had gone through.

“Don’t run,” he said, “and they won’t pay any attention to you.”

To his surprise she took his arm and held it lightly.

“I do hate them!” she said. “What would you do if they were to run after us?”

“They never do,” he answered, briefly, and fell silent. But she was amazed to feel his arm, his firm, strong arm, tremble beneath her touch. She smiled to herself in the dark.

They came at last to the glen, and sat down on a rock. The moon had risen just above the crags; the air was tremulous with its light.

“It’s too bad there are nothing but owls here,” she said. “I’d love to hear a nightingale sing.”

“I’ve heard ’em, in England. I was there four years.”

“Now, you see! With all the interesting things you’ve got to tell me, and that I want so much to hear, you talk about going away to-morrow. You can’t!”

“I must!”

“Are you—going to write to me?”

“No. What would be the use?”

“Don’t you want to go on being friends?”

“Look here—are you going to make me say—what I don’t want to say?”

“Yes, if I can! I want everything clear and plain between us. You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had, and I’m not going to lose you through any stupid misunderstanding.”

“Well, then; I couldn’t go on being friends. I’d ... it would have to go on—to something else.”

She was perfectly still.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes ... I know,” she answered, in an odd, flat voice.

“And you don’t want that....”

“I don’t know,” she said, “whether I do or not.”

He was so startled that he sprang to his feet.

“What!” he cried. “I don’t believe you do understand!”

“I do! You mean you think—you might—later on—fall in love with me.”

Her sublime candour touched him almost beyond endurance. He walked a few paces away from her, to the very edge of the pool, and tried to calm his heart with that unutterable beauty, that fall of water, like bright silver hair in the moonlight, like a stream from the moon itself, over the face of the cliff, without sound, into the radiant brightness of the pool. If there had been a nightingale to sing there, he thought, it would have broken his heart.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, in a low voice, “I am in love with you now. I shouldn’t have told you if you’d let me alone.”

“Why shouldn’t I know?”

“Because—I don’t feel like amusing you that way.”

“Oh, but I don’t—really I don’t look at it like that! How can you always think so of me? I’m not trivial and shallow,” she cried, very much wounded. “You ought to have seen that I wasn’t!”

“All right!” he said, grimly. “Now you know.”

“And you’re going away?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Suppose I don’t want you to go?”

“That would make me go all the quicker.”

“You have a—a rather funny way of being in love,” she said. “I should think—”

“Now, see here,” he said, with a sort of desperation. “Won’t you let me alone? I’ve told you. I didn’t want to, but you made me. You can have all the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve—hurt me and humiliated me. And nothing’s going to be any good any more.”

“Why?” she enquired, in a reasonable tone. “There are so many things in your life.”

“I don’t want them. I don’t want anything but you. I’m—of course you don’t know and you don’t care. You’ll go home and laugh at the impudence of that vulgar—”

Andrée faced him, very angry.

“That is vulgar, if you like,” she said. “To imagine my doing that—laughing at you.”

She had come down to the edge of the water, beside him, very near him. She was contemptuous, she was indignant and hurt. And suddenly all that went. There, in that enchanted glen, with the moon on him, he was transfigured, or it may be revealed. There was nothing mean about him; his sensitiveness was no longer paltry, but tragic. He was no more and no less than a man; forlorn in his strength and his youth; betrayed by the world he fancied he had conquered. Tears came into her eyes; she laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Oh ...! I—laugh at you!” she said.

He started away suddenly.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that!”

A fatal and overmastering curiosity possessed her; her arm went round his neck, her fingers gently touching his cheek. She was amazed, delighted to feel him tremble under that shadow of a caress; she was exultant with a sense of her miraculous power, never before suspected. In all innocence, she could comprehend his passion, in a great measure because she herself was quite devoid of passion, was able to look on at this. She was impressionable, terribly susceptible to the magic of love in others, intoxicated by the emotion she could so easily inspire in others; but within her was always a grain of something hard and cold, never to be touched. An artist, was Andrée, always a little aloof; she could never lose herself.

But she loved him then, humanly enough, with an immature and cruelly exacting love. If he had said one word, made one gesture, to offend her critical and fastidious spirit, she would have hated him. Fortunately he didn’t know this, and was not on his guard, not wary. He was as much concerned with his own feelings as she with hers; they were scarcely aware of each other.

“You can’t really like me,” he said, miserably.

“I do!” she said. “I do!”

“But not—love?” he said, looking at her with profound anxiety. Her glance fell and with eyes veiled, she was no longer so august. “You don’t love me?” he insisted. “That couldn’t be!”

She had no answer to make, but the very droop of her shoulders was acquiescent. He was astounded, incredulous, more appealing to her in his humility than in any other attitude he could have taken.

“Be honest with me!” he entreated. “I don’t ask you for anything but that.”

“I love you,” she said, quietly. It was to them both a priceless boon conferred.

“But think what I am!” cried the pitifully honest lover. “I’m not in—your class. I don’t know your ways. I couldn’t live like you—”

Their arms were about each other, and what did all that matter? The strength and tenderness of his embrace, the reassurance she felt in his unalterable sympathy and kindness, made her weep. He was not strange to her; he was dearer and more familiar, even than her mother. There was security in him, and her deepest instinct required security.

“Don’t cry, darling little Andrée,” he said. “Are you afraid we can’t be happy?”

He was, very greatly.

“No!” she said, scornfully. “Of course I’m not afraid.”

They sat down, side by side, on a fallen log; he looked into her dark eyes, glittering with tears; he didn’t know how to tell her how precious, how adorable she was.

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Tell me just what you want, and what you don’t like.... I can’t help making you happy, when I love you so, can I, darling Andrée? I’ll be the best kind of friend and lover I can to you, always. I’ll never interfere.”

“If you only won’t,” she said, eagerly. “I’ve grown to rather hate the idea of ever marrying, because it means so much interfering. I want to be myself.”

Stephens privately didn’t believe in marriage at all; he had even written a brochure on the subject; he thought it an evil; he would tell you, asked, or unasked, that he had never seen a happy marriage, or even many endurable ones. He didn’t believe in women being dependent; he loathed domesticity; he revolted at the idea of vows and promises. And now, at this moment, he became completely an apostate. What else could be done with a creature like Andrée? Of course they must be married; more than that, he voluntarily made to her then and there all those vows he condemned; he promised to make her happier than he possibly could, he promised eternal love and constancy, he promised that as this moment, so should all their lives be; he believed it, and so did she.

“We’ll be friends, Andrée, always,” he said. “We’ll each have our own life and our own interests. We’ll make it a different sort of marriage.”

“Oh, let’s!” said Andrée.

But while he was already envisaging the next ten years, she was held in thrall by this one minute. She listened to him for some time, but the intolerable feeling grew on her that he was wasting precious time.

“We don’t know how it’ll come out,” she said, impatiently. “Let’s not bother about it, but just be as happy as we can.”

He was silenced by this admirable recklessness. He took her in his arms and kissed her, and this time she kissed him; then he rather abruptly said it was time for them to go home.

“No; why?” she said.

But he was quite firm about it. He knew himself better than she did. He was alarmed at his total lack of views and opinions just then; he was not as reasonable as he wished to be. He was mortally afraid that by some expression of his ardour he might offend his glorious Diana. They walked home with their arms about each other, through the fields and the woods, a walk in a dream, in moonlight and shadow.

He went up to his hot little room and sat there in the dark, heart-sick with the ecstasy of it. He was more troubled and unhappy than he had ever been before in his cocksure existence. This thing, made up of moonlight and Andrée’s dark eyes, had come crashing into his life, to break it in two. He had not wanted or imagined anything of the sort; he with his talk about biologic necessities. He was appalled at the idea of going on, because everything within him had stopped.

He was not easily daunted, but it was a long time before his courage was fully restored. He lighted a cigarette, and it tranquillized him.

“All right!” he said, aloud. “I made a new man of myself once. I’ll do it again. I’ve got to.”

That was what he thought.

CHAPTER NINE

BERTIE

“That’s the reason I have no control over them. A mother ought to be wise and firm and—free. But I can’t do what I think ought to be done. I’ve never been able to. I have to argue with Gilbert, or deceive him. That’s what it really is, although I like to call it tact. They ought to go home, and study, or work. They don’t need a holiday! But I can’t make him see that; not possibly. He sneers about ‘a lot of idle women,’ but he won’t let us be anything else.... And the older I get, the more—cowardly I become. I can’t bear to argue and argue with him. I know I can’t win. I haven’t any influence over him. I can’t—charm him, or coax him, and I can’t convince him. He’s so obstinate.”

She clasped her hands.

“Oh!” she cried. “If I could only, only have had my darling Andrée alone, I could have done so much for her! So much! I could have been so wise, so gentle, so patient, that she would have loved me with all her heart! I could have influenced her and helped her—”

She hastily wiped her eyes, ashamed of her emotion.

“How did it happen? Why did I become so helpless? Whose fault is it? Gilbert’s? No, I can’t think that. Other women with husbands just as bad as Gilbert don’t allow themselves to be submerged. It’s my fault; it must be. There’s something wrong with me, some horrible moral weakness.”

Her eye fell upon Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.

“No; they’re no use—only a drug. I call it training my mind, but it’s only trying to dull my feelings. I ought to fight and struggle. I must! I must! I must get hold of my children. Now when Bertie’s coming, when he hasn’t seen me for two months.... I ought to be able to do something with him. He adores me.”

She fell into a reverie upon her incorrigible boy. No doubt that Bertie was lazy, frivolous, and something a little worse—“wild,” her friends called him. And yet she never worried seriously about him. He was so obviously the sort of person who always comes out on top. It was impossible to imagine him defeated. He was the cleverest of all her children, alarmingly clever, and he was also in some ways the finest of them. He had more sensibility than his sisters, more heart. That was the reason she was so shamefully indulgent toward his follies; she was aware, almost by instinct, that they were of no significance.

She decided upon an attitude; she would not be so fond, and full of half-playful remonstrances. No; she would be friendly, but firm and wise; she would show him the significance of life.

§ ii

They went, one or the other of them, to meet all the reasonable trains.

“Why not?” said Andrée. “For mercy’s sake, what else have we to do?”

But he did not come by any of them. As a sort of punishment for his shocking lack of industry during his late year at the Polytechnic Institute, he had been banished to a solitary camp in Maine with Lance, selected as a tutor of the most serious possible sort. And as Lance—who was perfectly indifferent to the boy’s moral defects—wrote encouragingly of his mental attainments, he was allowed a two weeks’ visit to his mother and sisters.

When he didn’t come by the five o’clock train, they gave him up for that day. They were all dressed with an eye to his acutely critical taste, and a little crestfallen at their unregarded condition. They came down onto the veranda to wait until the bell rang for dinner, and sat there patiently with the old ladies.... When there came, along the mountain road, a terrific roaring, a dense cloud of dust, and a motor-car came up at a hair-raising speed, an eccentric, purple car, very low, with a gigantic engine. From this affair sprang out a figure in a duster, wearing goggles and a plaid cap put on backward.

They all started up, joyfully, and Andrée rushed to meet him.

“Where did you get that thing?” she cried.

“It’s Pendleton’s. What do you think of it? It’s a French car.”

“It’s très chic. Come and see Mother!”

He sprang up the steps, pulled off cap and goggles, and kissed Claudine. And try as she would, she couldn’t help looking at him indulgently, instead of wisely. There was something about him.... He was a very slight boy, barely eighteen, with an unusually dark skin and sleek black hair; he had a trick of keeping his mouth open, which showed his brilliantly white teeth, and gave him a stupid air; he had a smooth, oval face, narrow eyes, a rather weak chin; he looked at first glance like a silly young ass. But after you had looked again you were more inclined to think him a most engaging young devil. He had an odd, sidelong glance and a grimace of gamin impudence; he was never bad-tempered or sullen, but sometimes a little malicious.

“How did you get on with Cousin Lance, my dear?” asked his mother.

“Splendidly!” he answered. “Aren’t you pretty, Mammy! But a bit spindly. Why don’t you drink ale?”

“I’m very well, Bertie. Why did you take Mr. Pendleton’s car? Isn’t it rather a risk?”

“His look out. He offered it. He’s a nice little playmate. He took me out to dinner the first night I got home, because the old man said he was busy. Some dinner! Andrée, what is there to do here?”

“Lots! You can knit and embroider and play solitaire—”

“We’ll change all that, don’t worry! Here’s the latest thing in evolution, as old Lance would say, come to put a little pep into the fossils. Mammy, don’t you think I’ve evoluted a whole lot further than Father? Lance says it takes two million years to grow a new toe, or lose one, I forget which, but it seems to me—”

“That’s the dinner bell,” said Edna. “Come in just as you are. No one dresses here.”

“Noblesse oblige!” said Bertie. “I’m going to dress. Tell them to keep the kettle on the hob—whatever that is—for a few minutes.”

He came down again very promptly, with his black head sleek as a seal, and a new and marvelous dark suit. He disdained all the various washable materials; they were “a mess,” he said, no one had any business to be hot enough to want them. He was absolutely correct in every detail, a very model of fashion and deportment; how were they not to be proud of him and delighted with him? He was very attentive to his mother, and even if it were a rather ostentatious courtesy, it warmed her heart.

She grew annoyed, though, when he persisted in smoking cigarettes between courses.

“It’s very bad manners,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to me and your sisters. And what’s more, no one smokes here in the dining-room. It isn’t a hotel.”

“I’ll teach it to be. And it’s not disrespectful, dear creatures. It’s simply being done now.”

“And you’re too young to smoke. It’s very harmful at your age. I can’t bear to see you, Bertie!”

“Mammy, don’t spoil my poor little holiday! Two weeks—that’s all! Up there with old Lance, I neither smoke, chew, drink, spit nor cuss. Let me have my brief day!”

When they went out onto the veranda after dinner, his quick ear caught the sound of distant music.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Dancing down at the hotel,” answered Edna.

“Free for all, and leave your guns at the door?” he asked.

And after this, nothing would do, but that they must all stroll down to “look it over,” and Bertie, entering ostensibly to buy a magazine in the lobby, looked in at the ball-room and said it looked “good enough.”

“You and Edna sit out here on the piazza, and I’ll take a few turns with Andrée,” he said. “The music’s not bad and the floor looks good.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Claudine. “They’re not at all a nice sort of people here. I don’t think it’s quite the thing—”

Bertie fell back into Edna’s arms like a log.

“Oh—h—h!” he groaned. “Why?”

“It’s not dignified—”

“You don’t have to be dignified till you get married or inherit money. Tell you what! You come, Mammy! You can dance some nice, old-fashioned sort of waltz. Come on!”

“I ought to!” she thought. “It’s my duty to enter into their amusements—as long as I can’t stop them.”

But after half an hour spent there, she was more than ever determined to influence them—all of them—in an opposite direction, away from this unpalatable and promiscuous vulgarity.

“Don’t you think it is better to be bored than to amuse yourselves in such a way as this?” she asked, on the way home.

“No!” said Andrée and Bertie, simultaneously.

“It seems a pity to me that young people like you—intelligent and well-bred, should be so mad about amusement,” she said. “I can’t understand it! If you were brainless and dull, it would be different. But there are so many really interesting things in the world, so many wholesome and fine recreations—”

“Never heard of them, Mammy! What are they?”

“When I was a girl, we thought it a pleasure to take a country walk with an interesting companion—”

“You wouldn’t like the companions that we’d think were interesting,” said Andrée.

“No,” said Bertie, sadly. “There aren’t any nice amusements left, Mammy. Evolution has done away with ’em.”

She looked at the three faces, at that clever and devilish Bertie, at the sensible, clear-sighted Edna, at Andrée, filled with a strange and wayward inner light.

“But you can’t enjoy that sort of thing!” she cried. “You can’t like to be there, in a room crowded with vulgar, noisy people whom you don’t even know! You must see that these new dances are—to say the very least—ill-bred!”

“I accept!” said Bertie. “Lance was telling me about some fellow that made that his motto, and I think it’s a gol-durned good one! I accept—anything that comes my way.”

“But it doesn’t mean that, Bertie. It means resignation.”

“I know. And we are all resigned, except you. You want to—let’s see—put back the clock of human progress. Very wrong Mammy!”