The unlit lamp

§ iii

The next morning Bertie went again to the big hotel, and came back innocently with a new magazine for his mother. In the afternoon he went down to the garage and drove back in the startling purple car, and asked his mother to come for a drive. Filled with terror, she accepted, and spent two hours in mortal anguish, flying perilously along the edge of precipices, breathless from the terrific speed. There was no chance then for the serious talk she wished to have with her son, and after dinner he disappeared again, and didn’t return until midnight.

But she was waiting for him on the veranda.

“Bertie!” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Dancing around a little, Mammy!”

“With whom?”

“Some girls at the hotel. Very respectable and humble, Mammy. I didn’t have any trouble with them at all.”

“I don’t like it. And I’m sure your father wouldn’t like it.”

“So am I. But I’m used to that. It’s crabbed age and youth—”

“Don’t be disrespectful to your father! Bertie ...! Did you—have anything to drink?”

“Oh, yes! A couple of seltzer lemonades.”

“I mean—anything—intoxicating?”

“Nothing that intoxicated me, Mammy!”

“Don’t be so flippant and provoking! Bertie, I really feel in despair about you. Haven’t you any serious or—worthy thoughts or ambitions?”

“They haven’t come yet. But I’m only a child. Give me a chance!”

“What do you expect to do with your life?”

“Don’t you know,” he said, solemnly, “that that’s really a ridiculous question, Mammy? It doesn’t lie with me. I’m a puppet in the hands of Nature. I’m going to be used by a Blind Force—”

“Please don’t joke!”

“I don’t think I am. It seems to me it really is like that. I don’t see much use in spending all your life squirming. I’d rather go along with the rest of the crowd—wherever they’re going. We don’t count much. We’re just one more generation. It’ll take about a billion years to change us or improve us. So what care I?”

“Bertie!” she cried, quite shocked. “Where did you get such ideas?”

“Lance has corrupted me. I was a poor innocent child who wanted to be an engineer and build bridges. But when I was taught to think a million years at a time, I lost interest.”

“But you’ve got to pass your life in some sort of work, dear.”

“I’ll go into Father’s office and show him how to run the show. Then I’ll take a wad and buck the stock market and clean up a few millions and never worry again.”

“Go to bed!” she said, half-laughing. “You’re too silly to talk to! I suppose some time you’ll grow up and be a man. And I hope with all my heart I’ll be able to be proud of you.”

His exploits that week, however, were certainly nothing to be proud of. He took a golden-haired maiden from the hotel out one afternoon and quite wrecked Mr. Pendleton’s car, leaving it helpless on a mountain road to be taken back to the garage on a truck. He ran up a startling bill at the hotel for cigarettes, candies, and “seltzer lemonades” which she suspected strongly, and when she confronted him with it, he said, with chagrin:

“Pshaw! I told ’em not to send it till after I’d gone!”

She paid this herself from her own allowance, but the bill for the garage was beyond her. It was going to cost six hundred dollars to repair Mr. Pendleton’s car.

“But he’ll pay it himself!” Bertie protested. “He’s a good sport. He knows I’m a young and inexperienced driver, and sure to have accidents.”

“I’m ashamed of you, Bertie, to think of such a thing. I shall have to tell your father, and I’m afraid he’ll be very angry.”

“I don’t believe in family rows. It might give him apoplexy. I should think you’d rather sell your jewels.”

But she did tell Gilbert, and he was furious. It was not a pleasant week-end, but it didn’t depress Bertie.

“I’m the reed, you know, Mammy, that bows its head to the storm,” he said. And the very next day, told her he wanted to, and was socially obliged to, give a dinner-party to some of his friends at the hotel.

“You can’t, my dear. Mrs. Dewey wouldn’t—”

“She says she will. I hinted at it. We can have it at eight, when the others have finished. She says she’ll do it in grand style, for my sake.”

“It would cost a great deal. Your father—”

“Andrée and Edna will pay for it, out of their little savings, like sisters should, for their brother’s honour. All you have to do is to look lovely and be dignified.”

“But I don’t care to encourage those hotel people!”

“They won’t bother you when I’ve gone. Besides, you can freeze ’em thoroughly at the dinner. I don’t care how rude you are to them.”

It was a horrible dinner, of the sort that Claudine most thoroughly detested. Silly, over-dressed girls and, one or two of their mothers, and a handful of boys who seemed to her prejudiced eyes nothing but cheap travesties on her fascinating son. She was quite perfect, with the affability and politeness she never displayed so well as when among people she disliked.

But after he had gone away, she was very glad she had done this for Bertie. She missed him beyond measure; of all her children he was the one who had most of her own detached and fatalistic point of view, and he, like herself, could find but cold comfort in his own heart. She understood him, how futile all achievement seemed to him, how terribly necessary was happiness. He must be happy; it was that alone which he required from life, not success, like Andrée, not self-approbation, like Edna, but joy in the moment, like herself.

She remembered him as a little boy, a beautiful child, a gay and cajoling little thing, his grandmother’s favourite ... certainly a very much spoilt child. She liked to remember his passionate admiration of her, how she had always stopped in at the nursery to let him see her, dressed for the evening. How he had called her “pretty Mammy,” quite unabashed by his father’s disgust for his effeminacy.

Even now, with all his weaknesses, his petty vices seemed to her very innocent, very unimportant. It was only his way of looking for happiness. She felt sure that when he grew older, he would find a better way. And if he remained as he was, frivolous, reckless, pleasure-loving, wasn’t it better, after all, than being stolid, prudent, money-loving?

“My dear, dear boy!” she thought, with tears in her eyes, but a smile on her lips. “Poor Bertie!”

§ iv

The long, long summer wore away; wasted and arid days they seemed to her. She found but little pleasure in her flowers and birds, no more consolation in her philosophers.

“I suppose I’m growing old!” she thought, and she allowed herself to dally with the idea of growing really old, when nothing would be expected of her, but dignity, which would be no trouble at all.

“But I’m barely forty!” she reflected. “I suppose there’ll be at least twenty years more of this!”

And her heart sank.

“It’s peace I want!” she said. “I’m not made for struggling or achieving. I’ve been a wretched failure.... I suppose I’ve even failed Gilbert—in some sort of way. All I can do is to go on blundering and trying—for all that terribly long time.... If I can only see the children on the right road!... And I don’t even know what the right road is!”

She was happy to see her daughters so full of new interest and energy when the time came for going home.

“I can live in them!” she said. “If they’ll let me!”

BOOK THREE

THE CUP IS OFFERED

CHAPTER ONE

ANDRÉE’S RECITAL

He straightened himself and looked again. It did look better.

“I hope she won’t get into one of her freakish humours,” he said. “Get stage fright, or anything of that sort.”

“She won’t,” Claudine assured him. “She’s not nervous in public. She’s not the least bit upset. Listen! She’s playing over her pieces now.... Oh, Gilbert! Isn’t she wonderful?”

He went over to open the door into the hall, so that the sound might reach him better, and the great volume of it impressed him. It must certainly betoken a remarkable skill to do that with such sureness; Claudine had never played so loudly and majestically.

“You’d better hurry a little, Gilbert,” said his wife. “I told Mary to serve dinner promptly at six, to give us plenty of time. I think I’ll go and hurry Bertie a little.”

But really the vain woman wanted her son’s approval and admiration. She went upstairs to the room Gilbert had occupied in his bachelor days, and knocked at the door.

“It’s I, Bertie!”

“Come in, Mammy!” he called, cheerfully, and as soon as she had entered, he cried:

“Oh, I say! Queen of them all! You are lovely! You’ll be a riot!”

She smiled happily.

“You silly boy! Is it really a nice dress?”

“I wish you were going to sit up there on the platform and play. I’d rather hear you, and look at you, Mammy!”

“It might have been I,” she thought to herself, with a shade of bitterness. “I might have been a mother really to be proud of—a musician—a somebody.”

But she smiled again, and glanced at herself in the mirror. It was the most shockingly expensive dress she had ever had, a real Paris frock of satin in an exquisite shade of green that became her perfectly, and set off her coppery hair and pale skin to their best advantage. She was proud of her small waist, her little feet, in spite of the fact that they were old-fashioned, she was pleased with her miniature neatness and delicacy.

She turned to her son. Gilbert had angrily insisted that a boy of eighteen had no business in evening dress; a dinner jacket was the thing for him. But Bertie had pointed out the fact that the thing had already been ordered and fitted, and would have to be paid for.

“I never imagined you’d kick,” he had said, plaintively. “You’re always so generous, Father.”

He finished scrupulously tying his white tie.

“Do I look like a monkey?” he asked. “Father said I would.”

He followed his mother downstairs into the dining-room, and the others joined them promptly. There was an air of general satisfaction at the dinner table. They were all pleased with themselves, individually and as a family; they were all unusually festive and spirited. Andrée, the heroine, was blazing with excitement.

“You’d better eat,” said Lance, warningly to her. Music was no more to him than a passing phenomenon in the course of man’s history; it served to show something of the development of his brain and æsthetic sense, but it would, he felt, in the course of time be regarded as nothing more than a frivolity. It was interesting to see how seriously it was now regarded. Still, he was fond of Andrée, and he wished her to be successful, if only for her mother’s sake. He had an unwavering loyalty for Claudine, never expressed, never quite comprehended by her, something which in a less preoccupied man might have been called devotion.

Bertie had once said that Lance had “mastered evolution”; certainly he never seemed to grow older. With his light, rather long hair parted in the middle, his tortoise-shell spectacles, his slender figure, he looked like a sober and enquiring youth, a juvenile professor. He was quite illustrious, in the not very extensive circles where paleontologists may shine, he had been on two noteworthy government expeditions, and had written a large book, but he hadn’t made money. The most profitable thing he had ever done, financially, was to tutor young Bertie. But he was able to exist in comfortable independence, and he wanted no more. He had a calm self-assurance which impressed everyone, even Gilbert, and he was a guest not without honour, a friend of prestige.

He took out his watch.

“Time to start!” he announced, and they all rose.

§ ii

Mr. MacGregor expected a triumph that evening. He had hired a large hall, and had been promised the presence of several well-known musicians and critics, to say nothing of the important “society element.” He had been for years steadily growing in favour, until he now held a unique position as a master who was not only able to give to débutantes a very attractive accomplishment, but a man who trained and developed genuine artists. There was a certain youth from the Ghetto at present creating something of a furore as a concert player whom he had “made,” and several lesser stars. And he had now up his sleeve two or three surprises, to be released this evening. He had a boy—a young Pole whom he had been teaching gratis and more or less supporting, he had a young woman of buxom charm and amazing technic, and he had Andrée, whose chief claim was not so much in technic—though hers was of a high order—but the originality of her interpretations. He knew that some of the critics would be indignant at a lack of classic reverence, but others would be charmed, and all of them would talk.

He himself didn’t appear; he stood in the wings, watching and listening, his attention divided between his pupils and the audience. And there wasn’t one chagrin; everything went beautifully. His young Russian aroused a sharp interest in the critics, the buxom young woman was at her best, and Andrée ...! He was entranced with Andrée. She looked like the very spirit of music, filled with an innocent wild ardour, young, lovely, proud. His hopes, his personal hopes, that is, of ever becoming her husband had very nearly faded away, and he was able to regard her with a more impersonal eye. He had never summoned the courage to propose to her; he knew it would only make him ridiculous, and he was beginning to feel rather glad that he hadn’t committed himself.

“She’ll go a long way beyond me!” he reflected, candidly. “She has a wonderful future before her—if she doesn’t make a fool of herself!”

Her family sat listening to her with ecstatic pride, even Gilbert, who was constitutionally opposed to public life for women. They listened to the enthusiastic clapping, they watched her come back onto the stage again and take an encore, not at all the timid novice, but cool, careless, aloof as Diana herself. They heard whispered comments upon her all about—“a beautiful girl,” “so distinguished,” “a magnetic personality,” and even a few remarks about her music, and when she joined them, when it was all over, they were at a loss what to say to her. Edna wept a little.

They got into the motor; even the chauffeur, who had been given a seat in the balcony, was beaming. They drove home, and went into the dining-room for a little supper, with champagne, to celebrate her triumph.

§ iii

Claudine was nearly asleep when she heard that light tap at the door, but any voice calling “Mother!” could have aroused her from any sleep but death. She hastily put on her dressing-gown and opened the door. It was Andrée.

“I want to speak to you!” she said.

All sleep or fatigue fled from Claudine at once. There was something in that tone, something in the expression of her child’s face seen in the dim light of the hall, that froze her heart. She followed her to her own room, which was brilliantly illumined; it had somehow the appearance of a stage, a place pitilessly to expose a secret tragedy; and Andrée in her white dressing-gown and her soft black hair unbound looked a fit figure for any drama. Claudine asked herself, with a sinking heart, what was to be her part ...?

“Is anything wrong, darling?” she asked.

“There’s something I want to tell you.”

Claudine smiled mechanically, but her knees were weak, and she sank down on the bed.

“What is it, dear?” she asked.

“It’s very hard,” said Andrée. “It’s going to hurt you....”

“Don’t keep me waiting,” her mother said, almost sharply. “Tell me, Andrée!”

Andrée sat down beside her, and lifted one of her mother’s hands, looking at it with curious abstraction. Claudine didn’t stir.

“Now it’s come,” she thought. “That horrible, nameless disaster I have always dreaded for this creature I love too much. This will be something I cannot endure.”

At last Andrée’s voice came, steady and low.

“You remember Mr. Stephens, don’t you, Mother?”

“Yes ...” she murmured.

“We’re going to be married to-morrow.”

“Andrée! Andrée! What do you mean?”

“Just what I said, Mother.”

At first this seemed to Claudine merely preposterous, almost laughable; one of Andrée’s freaks.

“But, my dear, you don’t know the man,” she protested.

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Andrée, calmly. “We’ve been writing to each other since last July, and I’ve seen him quite often lately. And I’ve made up my mind. I knew everyone would make a row; that’s why I didn’t tell you until the last moment. Al’s going to Europe on Saturday, and I’m going with him.”

Nothing in that speech made the slightest impression upon Claudine except the name “Al.” That seemed to her of tremendous significance; the vulgar name of a vulgar young man; it made the affair a fantasy. She was not so much worried now as surprised.

“My dear Andrée—” she said. “You....” She paused, aware of the need for caution.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” said Andrée, bitterly. “You can’t see beneath the surface. I knew all the arguing and talking and reasoning there’d be, but it’s not going to make one bit of difference. I’m the one to decide, and I have decided. I want to be married quietly at the City Hall to-morrow, without any fuss and—talking. I wasn’t even going to tell you until afterward but—” She frowned. “Somehow I couldn’t. I wanted to make one more attempt to get you to understand.”

“To give you your chance,” was what she meant, and what her mother understood. This was the supreme moment to come close to her child—and she sat spellbound, like a figure in a nightmare, unable to speak, unable to make even a pretense at comprehension.

“He’s the finest man I’ve ever seen,” Andrée went on. “He’s honest and kind and—rather wonderful, I think.”

“But—he’s not suitable—” faltered Claudine.

“I knew you’d say that! You’ll tell me it’s disgraceful to marry a man ‘beneath’ me. Well, I don’t think he is, in any way. You’ll say—”

“If you’re going to take my part as well as your own, Andrée, there’s not much use in going on. I’m not so unsympathetic—or so narrow as you think.... I shouldn’t have opposed you. I should only have asked you to wait a little—”

“Because you think I’d change?”

“Only until I felt you were sure.”

“I am sure! I love Al! You don’t know how I feel about him. He’s so dear and—”

“Hush, Andrée!” she interrupted, almost sternly. There was a faint flush on her cheeks; this unrestraint, this vehemence, caused her a sort of shame. She had suddenly a thousand things to say—“Think if there should be children”—“Think of the personal habits of a man of his class”—And not one of them could she utter. Her almost morbid modesty, her long habit of restraint, forbade her. She grew desperate; she could urge nothing but her own love.

“Andrée,” she said, “I will tell you what I have never told anyone else in the world. I love you more than my other children! I always have. I—I think I don’t really love anyone else. You are all my life. You are all I care to live for. If you knew ...! When you were a baby.... Oh, Andrée! I used to sit watching you when you were asleep ... you were so pretty—and so strange.... It—made me turn away from God—I loved you so much more.... If you do this....”

“Oh, how cruel you are!” cried Andrée. “And how—unfair! How can you want me to spoil all my life and give up all my happiness, if you love me? How can you not let me alone? Don’t you see—don’t you understand—how I love him?”

“Andrée, that love is nothing to mine—I know!”

“And you don’t try to argue, or give reasons, or convince me. Or listen to my reasons. You only want to play on my feelings!”

“You have no feelings!” cried Claudine. “You have no heart! You don’t care!”

“Oh, don’t I?” said Andrée, and she suddenly began to sob. “Go away! Go away! I’ve told you—now let me alone!” she sobbed.

Claudine crossed the room to the bureau and began moving about the little jars and bottles with trembling hands.

“I won’t—reproach you,” she said. “I won’t.... I’ll try to understand.... I want to see—Mr. Stephens. Where does he live?”

“I shan’t tell you.”

“Yes, you must. You can trust me, Andrée. I won’t—I promise you I won’t tell anyone else. I won’t do anything to stop you.... I only want to hear him. I want to hear—all he has to say.

Andrée hesitated a moment.

“Very well!” she said at last. “I think I’d like you to. I’ll trust you.... He’s at the Biltmore.... I’m not afraid of anything you can say to him!”

“No,” said Claudine, dully. She was folding up some bits of ribbon, quite mechanically, and putting them into the bureau drawer. The room was very untidy; there lay Andreé’s pretty dress across a chair, and her beribboned petticoat fallen on the floor. And her slippers on the dressing-table.... Was it worth while to pick them up? Was it worth while ever to draw another breath? She looked at Andrée, lying face downward on the bed, and her heart was not moved. No; this was the last possible sensation, the very end of everything; she was going to sink now and be drowned. She went out of the room and closed the door.

Gilbert hadn’t stirred. She lay down beside him and closed her eyes, and at once anguish, like a fierce beast, sprang at her throat.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BITTER TRIUMPH

He was not pleased to see her; she fancied that his face turned a little pale; but he greeted her with a sort of subdued courtesy.

“Where can we talk?” she asked. “I have something to say....”

“I have a little sitting-room; if you don’t mind—” he said.

She followed him into the lift, still smiling brightly, a smile which he saw reflected in the looking-glass and which alarmed him by its expression of triumph. If he could have read her thoughts as well, his alarm would have vanished. It was her firm resolution to look bright, brave, self-assured; she hoped that her air would not only impress him but herself as well.

“Oh, God!” she was praying under her breath. “Oh, just this once, make me equal to the situation! I always fail; I’m always beaten! Oh, let me, only this one time, win!”

He opened the door of his sitting-room, and they entered. She began at once, the instant the door closed behind them.

“Mr. Stephens,” she said, “I have heard from Andrée what you propose to do.”

He bowed his head, and said nothing. She realized, with surprise, that he was not without dignity; that there was nothing in any way contemptible either in his manner or his appearance.

“I am astonished,” she went on, “that you should have done such an—unworthy thing. Andrée is very young and impressionable, and you have taken advantage of this to influence her. She neither knows nor realizes what she has undertaken.”

“Excuse me,” he said. “But I’m sure she does. I haven’t tried to influence her. I’ve—I’ve given this a lot of thought, Mrs. Vincelle. At first I was afraid Andrée couldn’t be happy with me ... but ... now I do think so.”

“Why, Mr. Stephens?”

His fair face flushed.

“It’s pretty hard to explain,” he said, “but I think—well, I think I understand her, and can get on with her. I—well—I know I’m—different, in some ways—but I can’t see that that matters.”

“It does matter,” she said, gently. “More than you realize. It may be quite wrong, but it is a fact, Mr. Stephens, that marriages of—of this sort are very, very rarely successful.”

“What kind are?” he asked, with equal gentleness. “As far as I can see, the chances are overwhelmingly against any marriage being really successful. It’s—I see it like this: if two people love each other, they ought to take the risk, they ought to face all the chances as—as gallantly as they can, and do the best they can in what’s bound to be a difficult position. Personally, I don’t believe in marriage, but I can see that nothing else is practicable just now. All I can do is to make it as little like an ordinary marriage as possible—leave Andrée as free as I can—”

“Mr. Stephens—I’m sorry ... but I cannot consent to this.”

He looked full at her with a level and grave glance.

“The way I see it—it’s a personal matter between Andrée and me. No one else has any right to interfere. And no one can interfere. I—you don’t know how much I admire you, Mrs. Vincelle, but—I didn’t think it was necessary to consult you, or anyone else. That’s all very well in the case of a man who wants money—any sort of favours from his wife’s family. But I don’t. It’s only for Andrée to decide.”

“And I simply don’t count,” said Claudine, with a slight smile.

“I know a mother’s love is a very strong—” he began.

“You don’t know anything about it! You think it’s a sentiment; you think it’s beautiful to see a mother bending over a cradle. You understand that women love their babies. But when the babies have grown up, you forget the mothers. Do you think they evaporate, or disappear? Or turn into troublesome, ridiculous mothers-in-law? But we don’t! We go on! If Andrée were a child, you’d think I was right to struggle for her. You talk about mothers being left free to do what they think best for their children. But because she’s older, and I still want to protect her—”

“But—don’t you see?—you don’t need to protect her from anyone—like me—who—who worships her! Do listen just for a moment! All I want in the world is to make her happy. I want her to have a splendid, free life. I don’t want to tie her to me. I want her as she is now. I don’t want to change her and—fetter her. I understand her. She’d never endure being bound; she’s so proud and independent—”

“And so silly and unstable. That’s what you don’t understand! But it’s no use arguing. I know what it would mean for her. I’m not talking about convictions. I’m talking about life as it is, as she will have to live it. Andrée’s an egoist. She’s fickle and headstrong, and so terribly unstable.”

“Let her be,” he said, stoutly. “I’m not. I’m strong enough and—and earnest enough to put up with anything like that.”

“Oh, don’t you see? She’ll think anything you want to suggest to her, but she’ll always act according to her own impulses and desires.”

(“Just the contrary to me,” she reflected, irrelevantly. “People can make me do anything, but they never change my ideas....”)

“But that’s just what I want her to do!” protested Stephens. “That’s my idea of marriage—that we should both—”

“Don’t argue!” she cried, with sudden violence. “You cannot do this! If you really think any of the things you once said to me—if you have any compassion, and kind human feeling, you can’t try to make your happiness on another person’s pain. You can’t ignore me!”

“But—” he began, “isn’t that just a little—selfish?”

She clasped her hands desperately.

“You can’t do it!” she cried. “You’re kind. You cannot hurt me so!”

He wished to point out to her the extreme unfairness of her position but the sight of her anguish was too much for him. Even when he looked away, he seemed still to see her tear-filled eyes, her face suddenly so worn, so much older, its fine tranquillity, which he had so much admired, its dignity, gone. It was like a sacrilege.

“Please don’t! Please don’t!” he entreated. “I can’t bear to see you suffer!... If you’d only realize that I’m trying to make Andrée happy—”

“Can’t you have a little mercy on me?” she said. “Even if you think I’m wrong? Andrée is—my whole life; I’ve let everything else go. I haven’t any life of my own, or any hopes.... Nothing but her. Oh, I’d go on my knees to you!”

“No, no!” he cried, shocked profoundly, both by her suffering and by her amazing unscrupulousness. “Mrs. Vincelle! I beg you!”

“Then listen to me! Think of me! Put aside your theories and your principles.... Isn’t it something to be kind—even to me? Isn’t it better to be kind than—”

But she could not go on; she buried her face in her hands and wept silently. She looked so small, so helpless, so terribly fallen from her almost superhuman aloofness....

“Please don’t!” he entreated, again. “I’ve always had such a great respect for you.... I—you don’t know how I’ve thought about you.... I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world! Look here! Really!... Please listen! We’ll wait.”

She looked up, careless of her tear-stained face, quick to seize her advantage.

“Give me my chance?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, a little alarmed.

“You’ve done all this—you’ve persuaded her secretly—behind my back. Let me have a little time!”

“To turn her against me?”

“Yes, if I can.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“All right!” he said. “If she can be as easily turned as that, it had better be done before it’s too late.... But I don’t believe you can. I’m not afraid to have you try. I trust—Andrée.”

“How long will you give me?”

“I’m going to England and Germany on—business. I’ll be gone about two months.”

“And will you promise not to write to her or to see her for two months?”

“I’ll have to see her once before I go, to explain. That’ll be to-day. After that, I’ll—” He paused and smiled a little, very kindly. “You’ll have your chance, Mrs. Vincelle!”

She rose and held out her hand, and he took it, rather timidly.

“Good-bye!” she said.

“But—if you find you can’t change her—” he said. “At the end of two months—will you consent to our being married?”

“What difference will it make, whether I do, or not?” she asked, bitterly.

CHAPTER THREE

ANDRÉE’S WEDDING

“Your daughter is outside, sir!” he announced, with all the homage of a courtier. He was profoundly attached to “the family”; he was not without hope of something happening similar to the things he had read of in French romances—that, as a reward for his furious zeal, he would one day be invited to dinner, for instance, when he could be presented to the young ladies with due ceremony. After that, the rest would be easy....

“Ask her to step in,” said Gilbert, and looking at his watch, decided that he would take Edna out to lunch. He took it for granted that it was Edna, because it always was. She was sent as an emissary by both Bertie and Andrée when they wanted money or permission for any unapproved enterprise, because she knew how to handle him.

He wheeled round in his chair, and was surprised to see Andrée standing there.

“Well, well!” he said, good-humouredly. “What do you want, eh?”

He thought she looked “queer,” and he stared at her more closely. She had a sort of desperate, defiant air, an unchanging smile.

“Sit down! Sit down!” he said. “What brings you here, Andrée?”

“I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you something.... I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from Mother, so that you—wouldn’t fly at her.”

She knew that she was antagonizing him, but she could not help it. The only way she felt able to tell her monstrous piece of news was rudely and sternly, to deny even to herself the dread and shrinking she suffered. Her father’s face changed perceptibly.

“Well!” he said, impatiently.

She laid her pocket-book on his desk, a beautiful little pocket-book, for she had all her mother’s elegance in trifles—and stood looking down at him.

“I’m going to marry Mr. Stephens!” she said.

“Who the devil is Mr. Stephens?” he cried.

Andrée began to laugh.

“That man you had a fight with last summer, in the mountains.”

“What!” he cried, springing up. “What! That common, worthless little cad!”

“Yes!” she said, looking him steadfastly in the face, and smiling. “That common, worthless little cad. Don’t begin to rave at me. You can’t stop me. Mother’s been trying for weeks.”

“I’m not going to ‘rave,’ young woman. I have more effective means than that to put a stop to your nonsense. You’re not so independent as you imagine—”

“If you’ll just take it for granted that I’m going to do it, we can talk,” said Andrée. “Otherwise it’s no use, and I’d better go.”

“I see your mother’s hand in this!” he said. “Some of her—peculiar ideas—”

“No, you don’t. She doesn’t even know I’m going to tell you. She’s done all she could to persuade me—”

“Persuade isn’t the word I’d use. Look here, Andrée, my girl, I’m not going to argue with you. Put this idea out of your head once and for all—”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I tell you to. You’re too young to know what you’re doing, and you’ll have to listen to people who are older and know better.”

“But—about this—you don’t know better. You don’t know anything about him. And anyway, it’s not a question of knowing, it’s a question of—of feeling. I—like him. I’m older than Mother was when she married you. I know what I’m doing. His only crime is being—what you call ‘common.’ He’s very remarkable. If you knew him, you’d soon see it.”

“You don’t know enough of the world to realize that marriages between people of unequal social position are always unhappy.”

“They’re just as unhappy in other cases,” said Andrée. “I don’t believe social position has anything to do with it. It’s—disposition. And Al has a wonderful disposition.”

“Al!” her father repeated, contemptuously.

“Yes, Al! That’s what he calls himself. I like it! It’s so nice and jolly and—common!”

“Andrée!” said her father, sternly. “This is nothing but a whim—a freak of yours.... I think you’re only trying to torment and worry the people who love you.”

“You’ll see if it’s a whim!” she answered.

Suddenly he was disarmed; some gesture, some intonation of hers, had brought back to him the naughty little girl who had so perplexed and amused him, the scowling little rebel he had so often wanted to shake—and never had. He remembered her with surprising vividness as a child of six, spending a Saturday morning with him, sitting in the corner of this very office, cutting out paper dolls, while she waited for him to wind up his business and take her out to lunch and the circus.

“Andrée!” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you go over to Germany with your mother to study music for a year.”

“But I’m going to study here! That’s what Al and I have arranged. I’m going to go on just the same!” she said, triumphantly. “And he’s going to give me a grand piano for a wedding present!”

This put an end to his softness.

“If you don’t renounce this—mad idea—at once, and finally,” he said, “it will mean—that I wash my hands of you. That you’ll be entirely cut off from your family, including your mother, whom you pretend to love so much. You’ll disgrace—”

“Nonsense!” she interrupted. “It’s not true to say I’ll disgrace you, because I want to marry someone you don’t like. It’s—”

“Enough!” he said, frowning. “I’ve said all I’m going to. If you’re not prepared to tell me now that you will—obey me in this matter ... or at least, agree to wait a year—”

“No, I’m not prepared to do that!”

“Then you may consider that you are no longer a member of my household!”

“What does that mean?” she asked, scornfully. “Does it mean you’re turning me out?”

“Yes!” he shouted. “If you haven’t the common decency to appreciate, or feel any gratitude for all that’s been done for you, you can try doing without for a while. You can go back now and talk it over with your mother, and when I come home this evening, I’ll tell you what I’ve decided.”

“No, thanks! I won’t go home. I’ll never go home again. It’s your home, not mine, I see. Good-by!”

He caught her by the arm.

“I won’t allow this! I insist upon your going home at once. Do you hear?”

“Of course I hear! Everyone in the office must. But I won’t go!”

“Yes, you will!” he said. He was furious, and very much frightened. He had no idea what she might do. “I’m going to call a taxi and send you home.”

“You’ll have to get a policeman to go with me!” she said, laughing again. “I won’t go! I don’t mind a row once in a while, but I don’t like the idea of a whole lot of them. It was hard enough to come and tell you about this, but you’ve made things impossible now. You won’t treat me as a woman—”

“You’re not a woman!” he cried. And certainly she had never looked less like one. She looked like a school-girl, reckless and ignorant of the consequences of her folly, her face alight with a defiance that was more mischievous than resolute.

“Good-by!” she said.

“Andrée!... Confound you!... Think of your mother! Go home, and we’ll talk the thing over thoroughly this evening!”

“All right!” she said, suddenly, and left him without another word.

§ ii

It was due to Claudine that she remained in the house until her wedding three weeks later. The distracted woman went from one to the other of them, seeing the breach widen every day. She implored and entreated Andrée, she faced Gilbert with unparalleled firmness; she was able to keep up an outward semblance of dignity in the family. But it was a monstrous thing. Andrée and her father never spoke to each other. The meals were a nightmare, to see them there side by side, so bitterly hostile. She dreaded to speak herself, for fear of hurting or angering one or the other of those inordinately sensitive creatures. Edna was grief-stricken; she had tried to remonstrate in the old friendly fashion with her sister, to make her realize the prodigious unfitness of Mr. Stephens, but she had been rudely rebuffed. Bertie was gravely displeased; he disapproved of Andrée and also of his parents for not preventing such a marriage.

“And these are the last days I’ll ever have Andrée with me!” thought the poor mother. “These bitter, wretched days! This is the end of her girlhood—and what an end! What a memory to take with her!”

The day after Stephens had returned from Europe he had invited her to tea with Andrée, without having made any attempt to see Andrée alone, or even to write to her. He had no need to ask Claudine whether she had succeeded in alienating Andrée from him; her face told him everything, her smile. He had a little table reserved for them in a corner of the tea-room, and they all sat down in silence.

But Claudine, glancing up, saw them looking at each other, and it was horrible to her. She saw in his kindly, honest face that least kindly, least honest of human desires, his mouth had a kind of grimness; he looked so entirely a man.... And Andrée! Was that the way a woman should look, who is about to decide her destiny? Her brilliant eyes were full on him, provocative, equivocal....

They talked, very harmoniously. He told them about his trip in dutiful fashion, because he wanted Claudine to know his position.

“You see,” he said. “I’ve put about everything I own into this English syndicate. It pays me well, but I put the biggest part of my income back into it again. I calculate that inside the next five years I and three pals of mine can pretty well buy the rest out, and then we expect to turn the thing into a co-operative enterprise, with the workers sharing the profits. Then, of course, I won’t get so much as I’m getting now, but I’m getting too much now. But it’ll be a good living—something more than that—for both of us, for the rest of our lives.”

“But I’m going to work too, you know,” said Andrée. “I’m going to study a few years more, and then I’ll give concerts. All over Europe!”

“You won’t have much of a home, will you?” asked Claudine.

“We don’t want one!” said Stephens, cheerfully. “I never could see any reasonable connection between—well, marriage and house-keeping. Because I—love a woman, that doesn’t mean I want her to look after my personal needs. I’d hate to see anyone like Andrée tied up to a house and a lot of dull, petty details. I’m not going to interfere with her life. Never! If I can help, I will, but if I can’t, at least I won’t hinder her.”

“But—” began Claudine, and she was conscious of a slight flush which mortified her. They didn’t mind talking of such things! “A home is supposed—isn’t it?—to be a place for—bringing up children.”

“Sure! But that doesn’t imply that the mother and father have to spend all their time in it. There are people specially qualified to bring up children. Then let ’em do it!”

“That doesn’t seem—” Claudine began, but she stopped. What was the use? Perhaps he was right; if he wasn’t, they would soon find out.

“You’ll have to live somewhere,” she said. “What will you do?”

“A suite in a nice, quiet hotel,” said Andrée, “where I can have my piano.”

So there was nothing to prepare for this young bride, no house-linen to mark, no silver to buy. Even her trousseau she insisted upon buying ready-made. Her mother did sew a few little things for her, but she felt all the time, with every stitch, how superfluous they were. There was nothing required of her; she too was superfluous.

§ iii

They sat in the motor car, well wrapped in furs, holding each other’s gloved hands. In the corner was Lance, who was to give Andrée away, and facing them, Bertie and Edna. But the mother was not conscious of them; she felt quite alone in the world with her child.

They had left Gilbert in the most painful way. He couldn’t really believe that Andrée would so flout him; he had continued to hope that at the last moment she would capitulate, and he longed for that moment. He had never asked about the progress of the affair, and Claudine had said nothing until a few days before the wedding.

“Remember, Andrée,” he had said then, “if you do this outrageous, disgraceful thing, I’ll never see you or speak to you again.”

And the morning of that day he hadn’t gone to his office; he had remained in the dining-room, after breakfast, smoking and reading the newspaper. Claudine had come in to him.

“Gilbert!” she had said. “Gilbert! Please, please come to her wedding! No matter how you feel about it, she’s your own—”

“No!” he had cried. “I won’t sanction it! It’s altogether wrong, and I won’t countenance it! She’s marrying a vulgar, underbred cur who’s a disgrace to the family ... the first and only time I saw the fellow he insulted me grossly. She’s absolutely disregarded my authority. She’s doing this against my wishes, and she knows it!”

Through the open door of the dining-room he had seen Andrée come down the stairs, quite ready, with her hat on. He had gone out into the hall and stood looking at her, with a terrible twinge of pain.

“Remember!” he said. “If you go out of this house—to marry that man, you can never set foot in here again!”

“I didn’t expect to!” she answered, briefly. “Good-by, Father.”

But he would not say good-by, he went back into the dining-room and from behind his paper he saw them all go. It was as if he were being deserted, rebuked by his family. His hand trembled, he bit his mustache. Andrée gone! And gone to her certain unhappiness.... She would be married, and her father would not be standing beside her.... He couldn’t endure it. He sprang up and hurried to his bedroom, in a blind desire to escape his thoughts. But there was no comfort in that silent house. He could think of no better refuge than his office. His child had gone without him....

“And yet I’m right!” he cried to himself. “I’m right! I’ve done what I ought to have done! I’ve refused to sanction this thing!”

§ iv

Not one of the party gave him a thought. They reached the church and entered, and Mr. Stephens was waiting there, with two friends. No one else had been invited. Like a woman in a dream Claudine went into the vestry with Andrée, to take off their furs.

“Am I all right?” asked Andrée.

“Yes, darling, very nice!” she answered. She wanted to look forever and ever at that girl in her plain dark suit, her small hat, that gallant and heart-breaking young figure.

Suddenly Andrée crushed her in a fierce embrace.

“Mother!” she said. “Mother!”

“Don’t cry, my heart’s darling!”

“I won’t; just in a minute.... Mother, are you satisfied—now?”

“Yes, my darling!”

“Tell me, Mother—I don’t understand ... why do you care so much about this—about this ceremony? What does it matter, if we care for each other?”

“I think it’s this, Andrée. I think marriage is the only way to impress upon a man what a woman is giving to him. You know—almost all women know—how sacred and wonderful and terrible a thing it is. But I don’t believe men quite understand. I think they would take it very casually—if it weren’t made as solemn and impressive as—”

Andrée flushed.

“It isn’t sacred and wonderful!” she said. “I hate that sort of talk so! I don’t want to impress poor little Al with my preciousness. He’s just as valuable and good as I am. He gives up just as much.”

“Andrée—my baby—if you’ll—”

“Don’t give me any advice about managing him!” said Andrée, with her sudden laugh. “I’ll never try! Hadn’t we better go in, Mother?”

Claudine took her seat in a front pew.

“Now I must sit here and watch this horrible thing!” she said to herself. “Oh God! Oh God! Do other mothers feel like this? How can they smile?... How can they be pleased—and try to make matches?... Am I a morbid, perverted woman? It’s her destiny to marry someone—and he’s a kind man.... I must be glad!”

She heard their responses, both of their voices steady and clear, both of them making those promises.

“I must be happy!” she said, again. “It’s just the beginning of her life. There is sure to be so much joy and accomplishment in it.... This is only one step.... I must have fortitude. I can’t live her life for her....”

She rose, to face the little man’s wife. She kissed her pale, sombre face, she clasped his hand.

“Be happy!” she said.

Then she looked round in a sort of panic for Bertie.

“Bertie!” she whispered. “Take me home! Take me home!”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BEGINNING

“Give me a cake!” said Andrée. “Mr. MacGregor came in last evening, Mother, and we played until someone downstairs asked us to stop.... But this one part of ‘Thais’ is lovely, even with a piano alone, isn’t it? We’re going to hear it again to-night.”

Claudine announced that the tea was ready and Andrée came over to sit beside her on the sofa. Al waited on them with a clumsiness which Claudine found very pitiful; she saw too that he was attempting an improvement in manners, not in a shamefaced way, as another man might have done, but carefully and frankly, watching them with earnestness.

Andrée rose.

“Come into the bedroom, won’t you, Mother?” she said.

Claudine followed her into the little room, so bare, so impersonal, and stood for a moment by the window looking out over Central Park, bright under a new fall of snow.

“It’s a rather nice view,” she said, politely.

“Mother, look here, darling! I want you to help me to get up something for Christmas, will you?”

“Of course I will! What had you thought of?”

“I don’t know.... Something nice and human.... You and Edna and Bertie.... Something like old times.... How’s Father?”

“Very well....”

“Does he ever mention my name? Lord! Isn’t it romantic? A young bride, cut off by her father.... I wish there were someone to appreciate the situation—and me.”

“I’m sure Alfred appreciates you, Andrée!”

“Well, he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about my music, and that’s me. He’s awfully fond of me, I know that, but he doesn’t think I’m really any more important than all the other young females of twenty with black hair. My ‘group,’ he’d call it. I wish he’d think a little more about me, and less about social justice. I’m sick of it!”

“My dear!”

“I am! Not sick of him, but just of his talking. Just imagine! When I’ve been playing extra well, I sometimes ask if I’ve been disturbing him—hoping he’ll say he liked it. But what do you suppose he does say? ‘Not a bit! I don’t hear it at all when my mind’s concentrated on my work.’ He’s writing some sort of silly book, you know.”

“You shouldn’t call it ‘silly,’ Andrée. It’s not fair. He’s not silly. He’s a very intelligent, earnest man.”

“That’s the trouble with him! He’s too earnest. When I want to talk to him about nice little things—about us—he’s always so—oh, so mighty! We’re all types, and everything we do is typical of something. Imagine! Last night Bertie brought in Gaston Matthews and Johnnie Martinsburgh—darling children—Bertie says it’s chic to live like this in a hotel, without any squaw atmosphere—and Al would talk to them about his theories. Of course, they listened to him; he’s generally interesting enough, but it’s—I hated it! I suppose I wanted to do the boring myself, about music. And I know so well what they’d think of him if he weren’t rich.... They call him eccentric now, but if he were poor!”

Andrée was lying on the bed, her arms clasped behind her head; how—intractable she looked, thought her mother!

“I’m thoroughly sick of it all! All this busy life.... I can’t be busy. I don’t know how. When I look back on the old days, it seems to me I spent most of my time sitting around with you or Edna. That’s what I want now, but there’s no one to sit round with. Even when Al isn’t working, he wants to ‘take advantage’ of his playtime and rush around and see instructive things and—”

“Andrée, it’s not kind or wise to dwell so much on his little shortcomings. He has so many, many fine qualities—”

“He adores you. Mother, do you want to go and talk to him while I’m dressing? It’s very unselfish of me, because I want you every moment.... And you’re right. He is rather wonderful. He’s not common inside of him, a bit. I don’t believe he ever had a vulgar thought in his head. He’s—really delicate. He’s a nice person to—to live with.... If he only wouldn’t talk so much!”

Claudine went back into the sitting-room and found her son-in-law hard at work with a German magazine and a dictionary.

“I’ve taught myself enough German to get the sense out of things,” he explained. “We get out a little magazine we call ‘Comrades,’ with all sorts of stuff in it from the European Socialist papers, as a step toward Internationalism. I’d be satisfied if I could get just that one idea more generally accepted in my lifetime—that all the people in the world are just about the same, everywhere, that they all want the same things, and suffer from the same causes.”

He stopped suddenly.

“Do you think Andrée’s well and happy?” he asked.

“Yes.... She was speaking about Christmas. She thought it would be nice to have some sort of little celebration.”

“Sure! “We’ll invite some people, and I’ll reserve a table downstairs in the dining-room—”

“I don’t think that’s quite what she meant. I think something more—intimate, Alfred....”

“I see! Then how about having a supper sent up here—champagne and so on?”

“That would be very nice, of course.... But—you know she’s very young for her years.... I thought if you and I could arrange a little surprise—a Christmas tree—”

“Great! I’ve never had one in my life!”

“You see, she’s always had one, since she was a baby. I suppose it seems silly—”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s just one of those nice, pretty little ideas that I fall short in. My one idea is to buy things. It seems so wonderful to buy what you want. I’m not used to it yet.... Gosh! You can’t imagine how much I learn from you! That’s what we need—my kind. We need to learn how to live—oh—poetically, from the people like you. We never get those ideas. We’re too darned worried about food. At first I used to be pretty hard and vindictive, and talk about bringing the comfortable people down to earth. But now I’d like to take the other people a little bit off the earth—a little bit up.”

She thought as she went home in a taxi, what a loveable creature he was. He was everything that she had always imagined a husband ought to be, a comrade, kind, loyal, never interfering, never attempting to impose his own will. Their life was what she had often dreamed of; Andrée had freedom combined with love.

And yet—it wasn’t satisfactory; it was so little satisfactory that it frightened her.

“Somehow,” she thought, “all that isn’t enough.... That bond—that tie of sex alone—isn’t enough. Even love isn’t enough.... Perhaps there must be more obligation with it.”