The unlit lamp

§ ii

It was a charming Christmas. Claudine had her Christmas dinner decorously at home with her husband and various members of both families; there were all the proper presents and ceremonies, and she was happy. Happy because she could fly to Andrée in the afternoon. Her visits there were a secret of Polchinelle; Gilbert never mentioned them, nor Andrée. And yet to-day, as she was putting on her hat, he entered the bedroom and gave her a crumpled handful of bills.

“Buy something for her!” he said.

She was terribly touched, but she knew better than to show it.

“I will!” she said, brightly.

After he had gone, she smoothed out the bills and put them into an envelope, on which she wrote—“From Father.”

She gave it to Andrée with a smile.

“Is he coming round?” asked Andrée.

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t expect him to until there was a little grandchild. That would be the proper thing, of course, and Father does love to do the proper thing.... I wish there was a little grandchild! That would be something important and interesting. Something real.”

“Andrée, you’re not going to be trying to-day!”

“No, I’m not! I’m going to be lovely—the spirit of Christmas,” she said.

And she was. She was delighted with her glittering little tree, and with all their gifts. She was gay, loving, almost tender. She dominated everything; they all watched her with pleasure, moving about the little room; they listened while she played for them. At the end of the evening she and Edna and Bertie sang a Christmas carol they had learned as children, and it made her cry a little.

“Dear people!” she said. “Thank you all, so very much! You’ve given me such a happy Christmas!”

No one thought of denying that it was her Christmas, or that the common object had been her happiness.

She went out to the lift with them and kissed each one with particular ardour, her mother, her sister, her laughing brother.

“Good night!” she said, still looking after them, still smiling, as if she could not bear to see them go.

They were always glad to look back at that Christmas, for they were never to have another like it.

§ iii

Andrée went back into the room where the little man was sitting, under the Christmas tree. She fancied he looked a little disconsolate and forlorn, and her heart smote her.

“Al!” she said. “Are you happy?”

“Not so very!” he answered, candidly.

“But why? Haven’t we had a lovely, happy time?”

“I feel—a million miles away from you,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll ever get any nearer to you.”

She sat down beside him and drew his head down on her shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t!” she cried. “It—chills me so! I want us to be so very near to each other. I must have it so! I can’t bear it if you don’t understand everything about me. Why did you say that?”

“To-night,” he said, “with this Christmas tree and all—I don’t know—but you—it seemed to me that you were like a child—just playing at life.... And I can’t play! I never did, in my life. I can tell you, that chilled me! You seem so very young and so pretty, and so—heedless—that it makes me feel so very old and worn—”

“You idiot!” she cried, laughing. “It’s just the other way! You’re a little boy; you’re always talking and thinking about such new things, things that come and go. It makes me feel such a wise woman, a sort of Sibyl. I think that’s why I love you—because you’re so awfully earnest and serious about things that I know don’t matter.”

“What things don’t matter? Human wretchedness and cruelty and pain?”

“You don’t even know what makes human wretchedness. It isn’t poverty. Why, Al, if you could make everyone perfectly comfortable this very night, if you could take away all hunger and want and injustice, it wouldn’t give one little bit of happiness to any of the people who had lost someone they loved. It wouldn’t help a woman who had lost her man, or a mother who’d lost a baby. That’s what you don’t know. Nothing can ever, ever be done to spare people their anguish.... I always know—it comes across me in my very happiest moments—that the day is coming nearer and nearer when we’ll have to part—one of us to leave the other forever.... What do you think you can do for that?”

“That’s morbid,” he said, curtly. “No healthy person thinks about death like that.”

But he caught her close to his heart and looked down at her bent head with troubled eyes, stroked her soft hair with an uncertain hand.

“I’ve never heard you talk like this,” he said. “I don’t like it, darling! Don’t you believe that we’ll meet again—afterward?”

“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t do any good, even if we knew. People who do believe that suffer just as much. More, I think, because they haven’t as much fortitude as the ones who don’t believe. Look at you. You think all these miserable people are going to be made happy somewhere after they’re dead, but it doesn’t seem to give you much comfort.”

“I don’t look at it that way, Andrée. The world seems to me like a—sort of school, and I want to see everyone get a chance to learn all there is to know, in decency and—dignity, before it’s over.”

“Maybe your way isn’t a good way. Maybe they learn more as things are.”

“Injustice never teaches anyone anything but resentment and malice.”

“I’m going to play!” she said, suddenly. “Oh, Al! Al! Why didn’t you let me be happy? It may be only for such a little while!”

“I didn’t mean to make you unhappy! I wouldn’t for anything in the world. I’m sorry! Don’t play! That damned music sets you all on edge. Stay here and talk to me!”

“I’m tired of talking.... Al, you take up too much time! I’ll never amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice, quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”

“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl. I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each other alone, and just love each other.”

“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”

“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out—three books. I have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking for you all my life.”

She smiled at him.

“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you! You’re a surprise—and a nuisance!”

She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him roughly.

“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me and nothing else!”

“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship I used to hate so.”

“I am a friend to you!”

“Oh, no, you’re not! You don’t care a rap about my work and my plans. I don’t exactly want you to. You haven’t anything to do with everyday life. You’re—you’re my love.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be awfully nice,” she said, “not to spoil all that.”

“No. It doesn’t matter what you do. You couldn’t change what I love so in you. It’s eternal.”

“Till death do us part!” she said, with a sombre little smile.

“And after,” he added.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE HOUSEWARMING

Personally, he was ashamed of it. Riverside Drive itself had long been for him a sort of symbol; many, many times he had come to sit there and feast his eyes upon the opulent women with their pet dogs. As a fat man in a white vest and a silk hat typified the Capitalist, so was a stout, well-dressed woman with a Pomeranian the outward and visible sign of all this inward corruption of private life. He saw many such from his windows; there had been one that day in the very lift with him.

On the question of servants he had been firm. And had been diddled.

“No,” he said. “I can’t have people paid to wait on my personal wants.”

“People wait on you in hotels,” said Andrée.

“Professionally,” he said. “They serve the public, not me.”

“But if we don’t have servants, how can we be free to do our work?”

“That’s one of the reasons these private homes are so bad,” he said. “It means nothing but an autocratic—”

“I know,” said Andrée, hastily. “Well, then, we can go out to dinner every night, and we’ll have a visiting maid and a Jap for a few hours every day. They can still be serving some more of the public when they’re not with us.”

“That’s nothing but compromise. But it’s better than having anyone’s life entirely given up to our personal service. I suppose it’s a necessary part of—all this,” he said, looking about his domain. He was inwardly miserable and humiliated; Andrée knew it, but she felt that he would soon enough get used to it. She wanted beauty and luxury about her, and she considered that several grosser souls might well be occupied in ministering to her.

“Servants aren’t unhappy, Al,” she said, “if they’re well treated.”

“No, I dare say they’re not. Neither are kept women. Or imbeciles,” he replied. He suppressed the rest of his thoughts, in deference to Andrée’s instincts, both feminine and artistic. As a woman she was apparently obliged to have a home, and as an artist, it had to be this sort of home. He was conscious himself of a very unreasonable instinct to give her everything she wanted; he consoled himself by the reflection that this desire to please women was what stimulated men to supreme effort—a condition which gave more credit to his sex than to hers, he thought. He had by this time almost entirely discarded his idea that men and women were not very different, were all simply human beings. He considered it generously; which, he asked himself, was the true normal human being, Man or Woman? Not both of them....

“Perhaps what we call feminine traits are the really human ones,” he thought. “Woman’s compassion, her intuition, her flexibility.... Our masculine justice and logic may be aberrations from the normal.... Women are primarily concerned with reality—birth, love, death—”

Only Andrée was not. He felt discouraged, and went into his brand new bedroom to dress for this party he so dreaded. He had flatly refused to wear a dinner jacket—and not entirely from principle, either. Andrée had been unexpectedly nice about it. She came into his room now as he stood before the mirror in his shirt sleeves, and rumpled his wiry hair.

“That’s the way you ought to wear it,” she said, laughing. “Every inch a Socialist! But you are a darling.”

He saw her in the mirror, and it gave him a shock. She was lovely, radiant, in a low cut frock of silver cloth; he might have admired her impersonally on the stage. But as Mrs. Al Stephens, as his wife and comrade, it made his heart sink. He fastened his low collar and made a neat little bow of his necktie.... The two clear eyed and fearless comrades who were to face life together—to solve problems of living—this earnest young man in a blue serge suit, and this slender, seductive creature in silver.

“My God!” he said to himself. “The Life Urge works the wrong way—no doubt about it. It’s against progress and clear thinking.”

He was not given to facile caresses; he only looked at Andrée, with eyes sombre and doubtful.

“Am I outrageous?” she asked, smiling, utterly sure of her power. “Would you rather I had short hair and wore a red flannel blouse?”

“I don’t know ...” he answered, with a sigh. “I’m no better and no worse than lots of others.... I’d be damned eternally for you.”

She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.

“That’s dear of you!” she cried. “Only I don’t want you to be. I don’t want to be a drag on you.”

“A drag,” he repeated, thoughtfully. She appeared to him not at all a drag, but a terrific impetus—in the wrong direction.

§ ii.

Mr. MacGregor was watching Andrée with mild amusement. He had pupils who played better than she, who were undoubtedly more gifted, but he had never had one of whom he expected a more brilliant future. He was careful not to tell her that not through talent alone would she conquer, that, on the contrary, her greatest advantage was something quite different. It lay in her extraordinary and provocative charm. He believed that her beauty, the ardour and grace of her playing might atone for certain undeniable imperfections not only in technic, but in interpretation, a certain perilous latitude, an alarming tendency to anarchistic originality. She was standing in the centre of a group of her guests, all men, as befitted her; she was listening with her moody, unsmiling air, quite indifferent to any whisper of admiration. She knew very well how to take care of herself; she had her own particular sort of rudeness, an odd, innocent sort of bluntness; she wasn’t in the least like a married woman. Mr. MacGregor was glad of this, because her husband was a grave error, and it was necessary to keep him in the background. Fortunately, he seemed willing to stay there; he appeared to be neither jealous nor uxurious. Mr. MacGregor had told her that if she wished to appear in public she couldn’t possibly be called Mrs. Stephens, and he hoped that she would have sufficient tact not to look or to behave like Mrs. Stephens either.

He was approached by Claudine, who had a secret atonement to make; he understood how she felt; she had, in the matter of Andrée, gone farther and fared worse. He was sorry for her, for having sent him away and thus left the field to Stephens. He liked Claudine; she was one of those agreeable people who took everything for granted and never said what she meant; there was a feeling of security in talking to her. She looked charming that evening because she was happy, bright with pride in her marvelous children. She was enthralled by Andrée in her beautiful dress; this was how she liked to see her; Andrée was born to be worshipped. The somewhat scandalous Bevan Martinsburgh stood beside her, and obviously approved. He was a fair, very tall young fellow of twenty-eight, casual, magnificent, good-humouredly regal; he had a habit of looking down from his great height into adoring feminine eyes uplifted—Andrée’s were not. He approved all the more. She was the only girl present who was making no effort to attract; she had the attitude of her father in his young days; it was for others to please her. She was notably unresponsive, not even critical. The conquering Bevan compared her with Vi Sidell, who was quite as good-looking and apparently as indifferent, but Vi’s was a false indifference which covered a smouldering readiness to be pleased. Vi was insolent, while Andrée was only distrait. He had known Andrée more or less all her life, but never before had he bestowed attention upon her. It was her cachet; Claudine saw it as such. She couldn’t help a little pang of regret at the sight of Al in his blue suit, off in a corner talking to that eccentric Cyril Smith—talking so much and so earnestly. Of course, Smith always looked blank and supercilious like that; and never answered, but she had an unpleasant conviction that he must be bored and indignant. He surely hadn’t come that evening for this. It was, she reflected, like the wedding guests and the Ancient Mariner, only that Al’s tale was frequently by no means absorbingly interesting. No one else paid the least attention to the host; it really wasn’t right. She smiled brightly at Mr. MacGregor, but her mind was on the Breath of Life. She saw him run his fingers through his hair in that familiar gesture, making himself so untidy and so touching. It was cruel to put him here, where none of his good qualities were visible.... Her belief, never shaken by experience or observation, that in a marriage, one or the other of the couple would inevitably change and conform to the other, was slightly disturbed at that moment. What if Alfred never became less opinionated, or Andrée more amenable? If they didn’t change ...?

She was glad as a relief from this oppressive fancy to look at Edna with that young Malloy. He was entirely right. He had been brought over by Mr. Quillen from the English branch of the Line, and was reputed as promising; he was altogether a gentleman, and very handsome, and there was about him a romantic air which charmed her mother heart. When he first arrived in the country he had been instantly smitten by the graceless Vi Sidell, but quite of his own accord he had turned toward the simpler charms of little Edna. They were progressing slowly; Edna was not the sort to smite; she grew on you little by little, with her thoughtful, gracious air, and her infantile, dimpled smile. That would be such a good thing....

Bertie too was entirely reassuring. He was never infatuated, like those other silly boys; he had a gallant and delightful air, but it hid a secret indifference. He always knew what he was doing; he was no passionate fool, that boy of hers. He could be silly enough, but never without a certain grace; it was impossible for him to be ridiculous. He had characteristically passed over all the younger and prettier girls and concerned himself with poor Phyllis Jenkins, who already at twenty-five had learned not to take anyone seriously. She was penniless; years ago this had had a sort of romantic appeal, and she had been many times on the point of becoming engaged, to quite nice men. But that has its limits; it was a horrible fact, now, known to all men, that to be engaged to Phyllis Jenkins would be a joke. She knew it herself, and was obliged to be sprightly. She was an angular, almost pretty girl, nervously vivacious; she had had to be grateful so much that it had rather worn her down. She was wearing a superfluous bouquet of Edna’s and a necklace universally recognized as a former possession of Mrs. Arnold’s; she had come with the Sidells in their motor and someone else would be morally obliged to take her home. Let Bertie flatter and cajole her as much as he wished; it did him only credit and no harm.

It is probable that no one else enjoyed the evening quite so much as Claudine. Andrée was an inexperienced hostess and by no means solicitous for the pleasure of her guests. There was a sort of formality and stiffness that didn’t wear off; there was dancing—Bertie saw to that—but it was dutiful and polite. The supper, provided waiters and all, by Santi, was good enough, but trite; Andrée lacked all hostess alchemy. Only Claudine retained the joyous air of a proud mother at a children’s party.

At last it was over. Bertie had taken Phyllis home, everyone had gone but Claudine and Edna and the attentive Malloy. Andrée stood yawning by the piano.

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said, frankly.

“It was very nice,” said her mother. “Where is Alfred?”

“I don’t know. He went out with Cyril Smith long ago,” Andrée answered, carelessly. Claudine didn’t like that; she frowned slightly, but the presence of Malloy restrained her from speaking further. She kissed her beloved child and prepared to go; she took it for granted that the young man was coming with them, but Edna, with a nice perception for the psychologic moment for parting, thought otherwise. She and Malloy had had a little conversation to which she desired no anticlimax.

“Good night, Mr. Malloy,” she said, with a smile there was no mistaking. The young man looked after her, astonished and rueful. He was for the moment forgetful of Andrée.

“That’s that,” he said aloud.

Andrée laughed, and he turned quickly; the light of a red-shaded lamp gave a strange lustre to her silver dress; she was sitting in a big chair, with her hands clasped behind her head, and she looked—she looked very unlike a Vincelle, he thought.

“Sit down, if you like,” she said, “and smoke a cigarette before you go.”

He was willing enough to do that.

“I thought I was taking them home,” he observed, “but it seems I wasn’t.”

“Edna’s like that,” said Andrée, smiling. “Misleading.”

He considered that the privilege of pretty girls. He was a chivalrous and rather artless young fellow, with a kind and susceptible heart; he was a little vain and unduly anxious to please; he was what would have been called a “flirt” in Claudine’s day, with all the innocence the word implied. He gratified Andrée’s æsthetic eye; he was faultless, an ornament to the room. He was supple and tall, with a punctilious grace; he had a dark, lean face which might have been too regular in its beauty but for the attractive defects of cheek-bones that were too high and an upper lip a trifle too long. Andrée had long ago put him down as stupid as an owl, and had expressed to her mother her dislike for the way he “hovered” about Edna.

“He’s like a stage lover,” she had said.

But to-night she was tired, and his stupidity was agreeable; moreover she was annoyed at Al and wished to keep this handsome creature sitting here until he returned, to punish him.

He talked about her music, and very agreeably remembered all the various times he had heard her play, and gave her ardent praise.

“Oh, but you’re not a critic,” she said.

“No,” he said, looking at her with a smile. “I’m certainly not a critic—of you.”

It was agreeable of him, she thought, not to be serious, like Al, but to be frankly interested, just in her. She offered him a cigarette from a box on the table and lighted one herself.

“Al’s late,” she observed. “I suppose he’s gone to a meeting. He can’t keep away from them.... Are you a Socialist, Mr. Malloy?”

“I don’t really know what a Socialist is. I may be one without knowing it. But I’m afraid I’m frivolous.”

“You’re in business, though. That justifies you. I’ve heard often enough from Father what a prodigious struggle that is!”

“I’ve dabbled in music, too.”

“What a horrible thing to say!”

“I’m not a bit ashamed of it. If you asked me, I’d sing for you.”

“I couldn’t accompany you now. I’m too tired.”

“I accompany myself.”

“Go ahead then! But don’t forget that I am a critic!”

“You’d never have the heart to criticize my artless efforts.”

He sat down at the piano and began playing in a loose, execrable style which made her frown. But when he began to sing, her frown vanished. He had a delightful voice, true, strong, and full of touching fervour. He emphasized his Irishness, he sang old Irish ballads, exactly as they should be sung....

Andrée, leaning back in her chair and listening, was half amused at her own pleasure.

“Have I ‘worked up’ this mood?” she reflected. “What a darling he is! I’ll be glad to have him in the family.... He’ll be a nice foil for little rumpled Al.”

With his strong and tender voice still sounding in her ears, she held out her hand to bid him good-by. And perhaps without quite meaning it, she gave him a glance that went to his head. She saw him kindle, and she smiled, withdrawing her hand.

“Indeed I didn’t want to criticize!” she said. “It was very lovely!”

“You’d inspire a donkey!” he cried.

“Don’t be a donkey!” she said, laughing. “It’s late. You’d better go.”

“May I come again?”

“Of course!” she answered, and almost without meaning it, smiled again, a little too nicely.

“You’re wonderful,” he cried, impulsively. “Like—”

“I know,” she interrupted, laughing. “Never mind! Good night!”

“I shouldn’t have been like that,” she reflected, when he had gone. It had been the most insignificant little conversation in the world, and yet it took on the aspect of a betrayal. She was really uneasy about it; she wandered about the room, waiting for Al, in a most unpleasant frame of mind. Certainly she hadn’t said or done anything to feel guilty about; it must have been some secret mutiny in her heart of which she was only half aware.

“Very silly of me,” she said, almost surprised. “It might help Edna.... He’s a dilatory suitor.... I can talk a lot about her, in an artful way.... If I see him again....”

CHAPTER SIX

DISCORDS

He had gone into the kitchen, where he was not expected to go, because he had been hungry at a wrong time, and there he had seen a hideous thing. It might have looked to other people like a char-woman scrubbing the floor, but to him it was very much more than that. She didn’t even look up; what concern was it of hers who came and went in this house? She was a wretched little old woman; he stood in the doorway looking down at her, at the tiny knob of white hair on her bony skull, her narrow shoulders working stiffly, at her clumsy hands pushing the brush back and forth. She breathed hard from her puny effort; she tried to appear more vigorous when she heard someone enter, being well aware that for the char-women of the world effort is accounted of more worth than accomplishment. He stared and stared at her, crawling slowly on her hands and knees, doing this work in the stupidest and cruellest way.... On the kitchen table her lunch was set out for her on a newspaper by the superior visiting maid; no one would come near her or speak to her; she was shut up here to scrub alone.

“Here! Get up!” he said, abruptly.

She looked round with bleared and watery eyes.

“Get up!” he said, again.

“But I ain’t done,” she protested.

“Get up!” he shouted. He could not tolerate for one instant longer the sight of this old creature at his feet; it was obscene. She clutched at the table and pulled herself to her feet.

“I can do it, if yer give me time,” she said, with quivering indignation. “If I take longer, I don’t charge so much.”

Al knew everything in the world about her; she was the typical “case”; he knew where and how she lived, what she earned and how she spent it. He cross-examined her and she answered him mendaciously, but he was able to sift the truth from the lies.

“Now, see here,” he said. “You’re sixty-five or so.” She declared, for working purposes, that she was fifty. “You’ve earned a rest. You’ve worked all your life.”

“I’m able—” she began.

“You’re not. Now, see here! I want you to go home—now. I’ll see that you get a living allowance from—from a certain source every week. It’s not charity, d’you understand, not charity. It’s what you have a right to demand from society. You can consider me the agent of society.”

Her education was incomplete and she did not understand the meaning of his terms.

“The Society give me coal last winter,” she observed. “I didn’t never—”

He didn’t trouble to explain that he represented nothing more than impartial justice.

“Take this now and go home,” he said. “And for God’s sake, don’t go crawling round scrubbing up anyone else’s floors, ever! Get drunk, if you want—”

“Oh, I never, never, never—”

“It’s better,” he said. “Better than this. It’ll be your money—the allowance you’ll get. Little enough, but you can waste it any way you like. Try to live.”

From behind the kitchen door she took down a heart-breaking fuzzy black cape trimmed with jet, and the disreputable ghost of a hat; she tucked the money he gave her into a tremendous hand-bag and retied the clasps with string. She was not grateful, any more than one is grateful for sunshine; in an inexplicable world these benefits came sometimes upon the just and the unjust. She had had a neighbor, mother of nine children, who had been miraculously sent off to the sea-side for two weeks of rest out of forty years of life; she knew of other things like that. She was only in a hurry to get away before further investigation revealed little weaknesses that might repel the Agent of Society.

Al had gone to his wife about this, and she had been angry.

“Who’s going to finish the floor?” she demanded. “Jennie won’t do that rough work.”

“I don’t care if it’s never finished. I won’t have that sort of thing in my house. It’s just what I’d give my life to put an end to. It’s—”

“I suppose you’d admire me if I did it?”

“Yes, I should,” he answered. “You’re better able to do it than that poor old skeleton.”

“I don’t care much about your admiration,” said Andrée, slowly. “This is your house, is it? Not mine? That’s just the way Father talks. ‘My’ house ... ‘I’ won’t have this and that—”

“I didn’t mean to be arbitrary,” he said, quickly contrite. “Only, don’t you see ...?”

He went on, to explain. Andrée could, as usual, see his point of view, but she didn’t agree.

“She’s a wretched, drunken old creature,” she said.

“But, damn it all, why shouldn’t she be?” he cried. “What’s that got to do with it? You know plenty of people who drink, but you don’t suggest condemning them to servitude for life, do you?”

“If you want to run the house, you can,” she said. “You can settle this now. Jennie won’t finish that floor, and I certainly won’t.”

“Then I will,” he said, and he did. Andrée hated him for that; she was not too aloof to be unconcerned with what Jennie would think and say of that performance.

They had lunch in absolute silence; and yet, little by little, they were weakening. They were neither of them quarrelsome or resentful, and they had a marked respect for each other’s obstinacy. One hour more would probably have seen them reconciled and laughing, if Tomlinson and Bucks hadn’t appeared. These comrades were more than Andrée could endure; she had in the beginning made a frigid attempt to be polite on Al’s account, but her politeness was neither desired nor understood. Tomlinson was a big, stout, brutal fellow with a jaw shaved blue; he didn’t hesitate to express his opinion of Al’s mode of living, and he did it profanely.

“How the hell you expect to have any influence?” he shouted. “You preach one thing and you practise another. You and your —— flat and your servants and your —— fine clothes!”

He was a professional Socialist, a politician; he was honest enough in his aims, but quite otherwise in his methods. He had to consult Al frequently, because Al had a considerable personal following in various clubs and centrals, and was quicker and more intelligent than he. He admired Al; he told him frankly enough of his shadiest transactions, because Al, although tiresomely honourable, knew life and was not squeamish. He wanted him now to accept a nomination on their ticket, which Al refused. He had a great many reasons for refusing and Tomlinson a great many for his accepting; it was a very loud and furious argument, although neither of them was really angry.

Bucks didn’t enter into it. He was a bald, scholarly little man with a full brown beard, a sort of secretary and mentor to Tomlinson. He rarely talked; he sat and smiled and watched, and was ready to give data at any moment. Andrée would have rather liked him for his mildness and courtesy, if his collars had been cleaner; she was not constituted to rise above that.

She shut herself into her room while they stayed this day; every sound of that loud discussion reached her, and filled her with rage and disgust. And then, to cap it—

“It’s your wife!” shouted Tomlinson. “That’s what it is! Your damn society lady with her fine airs—that’s what’s ruining you!”

“You shut up and mind your own business!” said Al, and no more than that, no other defense or praise of her.

Perhaps she didn’t realize how tired he was, or how secretly guilty Tomlinson’s reproaches had made him, for after the comrades had gone, she took occasion to speak her mind, and she found him unusually irritable. They took a long stride forward in frankness that afternoon. She called him vulgar and coarse, and he said she was idle and selfish.

All this Al remembered now, walking up and down the room.

“It mustn’t be this way,” he thought. “It must not be. And I’m the one to change it. I’m older—I’m responsible. I knew there’d be difficulties—it’s my job to explain and to reason, and not to quarrel with her. There must be some common ground....”

“And even if there isn’t,” he went on. “Even if we never think alike, it needn’t matter. Good God! Haven’t I enough restraint and common decency to get along with the woman I love, even if she has different opinions? Let her be herself!”

He washed his flushed face in cold water and brushed his unruly hair; he subdued his spirit, and went to look for Andrée. He found her in the library, dressed for the street, drawing on her gloves.

“Going out?” he asked, unnecessarily.

She said “Yes,” curtly, and then her heart melted; he looked so neat and subdued and good.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

They went out together into the bright Winter air; but try as they would, no words of reconciliation came from either of them. No words at all....

Was it some subtle reflection of her own mood that made him feel so wretched? He was quite as tall as she, he was properly dressed, he carried himself well, he was strong, vigorous, not bad looking. Why then should he feel so small, and so—he had no other word for it—so cheap—as he walked beside her that day? Of course she was beautiful, but she always had been; of course she was proud and a little disdainful, but that also was nothing new. She looked very lovely in her furs; he saw people turn to look at her.... And suddenly, as plainly as if she had spoken the words, he knew that she was ashamed of him.

He stopped short.

“I forgot....” he said. “There’s something I must finish. I’ll go back.”

She made no attempt to dissuade him, she let him go without a word, with a smile which he knew was one of relief. When he turned back, he saw her, still walking down the drive, a distinguished and beautiful creature.

“Snob!” he said to himself. “Vain, fickle, cold-hearted snob! She didn’t want me with her. She doesn’t give a damn where I go, or what I do.”

A terrible grief assailed him, which he imagined was anger.

“I might have known it!” he told himself. “They’re all alike—her sort. Pampered and flattered....”

He struggled desperately back to justice.

“I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.... She simply wanted to be alone.... Nothing very bad in that!... She’s only a kid, after all.... She cared enough for me to marry me.... She does care for me!”

§ ii

If he had been able to measure the molehill, he might not have been so sure of exaggeration. Andrée went on as if she could never walk enough, block after block, until the sun had gone, and twilight come, and lights began to glitter. She stopped in at the Plaza for a cup of tea.

“I’m ashamed of him! I’m ashamed of him!” she said to herself. “I’d be ashamed to have him here, with me. I only like him when we’re alone. I can’t bear for other people to see him. It’s like a nasty secret—amour.... It degrades me.... Oh, I ought to have had more pride than to throw myself away on a common little man like that! Oh, why didn’t someone stop me?”

§ iii

The next afternoon, at exactly the same hour, she was walking down Fifth Avenue with Malloy, and with him, went again into the Plaza for tea, no doubt to vindicate her pride.

And if it was a test, it was successful, for she was not ashamed of him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PASTRY-COOK’S DAUGHTER

To tell the truth, she would not really have been sorry to be ill. It would have been a respite from the nightmare life of the past weeks. Nothing but worry and distress about her son, nothing but disgraceful quarrels between him and his father, and an exasperation and irritability on the part of Gilbert which terrified her. He blamed her for everything, for his disappointment in the boy, for the costly folly of the boy’s existence. Claudine was neither able to quarrel nor to keep silent. She felt obliged to defend Bertie, to make excuses for him, she even told lies for him, and paid his debts herself when she was able. Gilbert frequently found this out, and said that she deceived him treacherously, which was true. She was not at all contrite; she knew that with Bertie threats and bluster were of no use whatever; one had either to convince him by reasoning—which she was incapable of—or to win him through his affection, which was what she tried to do. She knew that he loved her perhaps more than anyone else had ever loved her.

“How can you bear to make me so unhappy, Bertie!” she had asked him.

“It isn’t me that makes you unhappy, Mammy,” he had answered. “It’s Father. You wouldn’t worry about me, if he didn’t make you. You know I’m all right—a heart of gold under a rough exterior. A harmless buffoon. I’m just consciously being wild, as is proper for my years. It’s all Father’s fault.”

She acknowledged to herself, with some surprise, that he was right. Left to herself, she would not have worried over Bertie; there was a quality in even his most grave follies, a grace, an innate delicacy which in her eyes quite redeemed them. He didn’t love his vices, he played with them.

She rang the bell, and the door was opened instantly, not by the maid, but by Bertie himself.

“Hello, Mammy!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you! Your tea’s ready!”

She followed him into the front room, and found it charmingly prepared for her. He had lighted the gas logs, and had drawn up before the blaze a little gilt table never before used for such a purpose, on which he had arranged a silver tea-service always kept in state on the dining-room sideboard, and a bowl of red carnations.

“Why, Bertie!” she cried. “How dear of you!”

“Wasn’t it? Sit down, Mammy, and try a cake!”

“My dear boy! Did you buy the flowers and cakes for me yourself?”

“I bought the flowers. The cakes were a gage of love. Mammy, lookin’ about you, don’t you feel convinced that I’d be the best husband that ever was?”

“I dare say!” she answered, smiling.

“Mammy, don’t you smell a rat?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why these preparations? Why this introduction of the topic of husbands?”

“Do explain! what new nonsense is this?”

“I’ll tell you, Mammy! I’m going to be married!”

“Bertie!”

She frowned with displeasure.

“True!”

“I don’t like to hear you say such things, even in joke. A boy of eighteen—”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be for five years, Mammy!”

“You mustn’t think of binding yourself to anything of that sort at your age. Surely you’re sensible enough to know that you’re sure to change—”

“I never do. But don’t you see what a good idea it is? How it will keep me safe in the midst of all sorts of temptations which beset a handsome youth? I suppose I am a youth, aren’t I? Although no one ever called me one.”

“It’s not right to expect any girl to wait five years for you. And what makes you think you’ll be able to marry in five years, you silly boy? You’ve never earned a penny—”

“I’ll explain all that presently. Mammy, seriously, I’ve arranged my future in a very remarkable way.”

“And who on earth do you imagine will marry you, after waiting five years?”

“She is beautiful, good, and rich,” said Bertie. “She’s the daughter of the King of the Pastry-Cooks.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Giulia Santigiorni.”

“But who is she? An Italian?”

“Yes, her father’s Santi, the caterer.”

“Oh, Bertie!”

“I only ask you to see her. She’s altogether lovely, and she’s had one of those marvelous nouveau riche educations. You know the sort of thing—lessons in everything from the most expensive teachers. Sings, plays, paints, speaks all known languages, studied deportment and household management and First Aid. She’s been for the last two years in a convent in Paris, and they’ve made one of those regular foreign young girls out of her. You know, modest and gentle, always on the alert to be respectful and polite to old people.... The King of the Pastry-Cooks is rather keen on society. He gives monster parties—you never saw anything like them; they’re awfully pathetic. He gets paid entertainers, singers and dancers and—oh Lord!—wizards! He loves wizards. We sit in rows in the ball-room, while the wizard holds a show on the stage he’s had put up. Then he serves a supper! Oh! Never in your life have you dreamed of such suppers!... And when you’re going home, you each get a present. Not a favour, Mammy, but a genuine present—silver cigarette case, and so on.... Of course, he doesn’t know half the people who come. He prowls around, a poor, fat, gloomy devil, and no one bothers with him. But he sees a crowd in his house, and that satisfies him.”

“Where is the mother?”

“Dead, long ago. He has two daughters and two sons. They’re all very nice and respectful.”

“But do you think it’s quite a suitable match?”

“Couldn’t be more so! My Giulia is the most well-bred thing that ever drew breath. You’d feel quite ashamed before her. I believe she took lessons in how to behave in all European courts, and how to entertain royalty.”

“But, my dear boy, how do you propose to live? On the—the pastry-cook father?”

“No; I’ll get on, Mammy. I always do. I’ll either go to Princeton next autumn, or go into Father’s business, whichever you advise.”

“No, Bertie, you’re the one to decide. What do you want to do? What do you want to make of your life?”

“Whatever I can,” he said. “I don’t really care very much. I want to make a good show, that’s all—earn a living.”

“Bertie, dear boy, with your intelligence you ought to aim higher than making a living. Isn’t there something you can put your heart into? Some sort of work you could really—”

“Not any more, Mammy. It’s this ice-cap.”

“What do you mean?”

“You ought to know. Old Lance talks enough about it.... It’s going to cover the earth—a new glacial period—going to destroy life on this planet.”

He rose and began walking about the room and when he spoke again, his voice had changed.

“I’ve always wanted to be useful. I’m so dam’ sorry for people—for almost everyone. I welcomed Evolution like a long lost brother. I thought I could do something to help it, perhaps.... I imagined us all evoluting along into something magnificent. I didn’t see any end to our possibilities. I agreed with Al that, if we got together, we could make a heavenly world out of this.... But then Lance sprang this ice-cap on me. And—”

He paused.

“It was something pretty much like despair.... Nothing seemed any use. The happier we got, the less would we want to be frozen, don’t you see?”

She was terribly touched by the pain in his voice, by the suffering she divined in his queer soul.

“But it’s millions of years away,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter, as long as it’s sure.”

“We might find a way to live in it, by the time it comes. It might even be a mistake.”

“Lance couldn’t be mistaken. You have only to look at him to know he’s infallible. And—have you seen their fossils, and their reconstructed pre-historic animals? Those chaps know everything, Mammy, past, present and future.”

“Come here!” she said. “Sit beside me, dear.”

She drew his sleek head down on her breast.

“Did this idea bring you to—to any sort of—faith?” she asked.

“No, Mammy. I simply felt that the ice-cap ought to be kept a secret. I’d have been glad to be a martyr to humanity and kill all the scientists who knew about it, only I knew more would crop up. I even thought of being a fake scientist myself, and getting up something more cheerful, but that wouldn’t get by.”

She cried over him a little, and he sat quite still, with his head resting on her shoulder. She wished so passionately that she had something to give him, some invincibly right word.

“I think you’ll get over this, dear boy,” she said.

“Of course I shall,” he answered promptly. “I’ll get fat and pompous in fifteen years or so. You know that dish, Mammy—Angels on Horseback—oysters wrapped up in bacon? I’m in a hurry to wrap my little oyster of a soul in a lot of nice fat bacon. Then I’ll be comfortable. Nothing better, is there, than making money and getting married?”

“Don’t be cynical,” she said, gently.

“You know I’m not. I’m only trying to do what I can. I know what’s good for me. Little Giulia’s good for me. She’s all spirit, but it’s the nice, old-fashioned, hopeful kind. I never could tell her anything about the ice-cap, for instance; nothing that would hurt her; and being by nature very candid, that’ll help me to learn not to have anything to tell. I’ll have to grow placid, don’t you see?”

He sat up and looked at her, with his diabolic smile and his soft eyes.

“Now, then, will you tell Father in some nice mendacious way that I’ve got serious and want to settle down to something? Is it to be college or business?”

“I think college,” she said, smiling back at him. “You know, after all, Bertie, there may be something left for you to learn.”

“All right!” he answered, cheerfully. “And then—come with me to see my pastry-cook’s daughter.”

“But shouldn’t you bring her here?”

“I want you to see her in all her gorgeousness.”

“But it isn’t quite the thing. You see, you’re not—you can’t be actually engaged to her.”

“She considers that we are. Anyway, their code of etiquette isn’t inflexible. Please come! And—look here, Mammy, if you don’t like her, if you don’t agree that I’ve done a masterly thing in getting her, I’ll give her up!”

“I’ll go, Bertie,” she said. “But bear this in mind, dear boy. If you change your mind, for any reason whatever, about either of your plans, don’t hesitate to say so. Don’t go on in a wrong course, simply because you’ve entered upon it.”

“You know I wouldn’t. But this time I’m righter than I’ve ever been before.”

§ ii

She went with him the next afternoon, to the house near Prospect Park. The door was opened by a man servant in an elaborate livery.

“My idea of a flunkey, whatever that is!” Bertie murmured.

They were ushered into a drawing-room, an immense room, furnished with an out-of-date sort of magnificence; it gave Claudine a sudden insight into the pathos of the household.

“Look around you!” said Bertie. “You will see a pastry-cook’s dream. But you won’t have long to observe; Giulia would prefer death to keeping my mother waiting.”

He was right; she entered almost at once, and came up to Claudine with a most polite, a supplicating air, held out her hand, raised to her face a pair of sorrowful and beautiful eyes. They sat down to talk but it was too much of a task even for Claudine’s experience. She was as affable and impersonal as it was possible to be, she was really well-disposed toward this pretty little thing. But she could evoke from her nothing but a humble sort of politeness. It was evident that she adored Bertie, and that his mother was to her a person of superhuman augustness. She was well-bred, she had pretty manners and a sweet little voice; she was dressed very nicely in a dark blue crêpe de chine, which was simple, but excessively expensive. And she herself had an innocent and spiritual charm, like a little strayed angel. She was small and fragile, and she hadn’t the least hint of a womanly figure—a child’s body, with flat wrists and a tiny neck. Her dark, pallid face was broad at the brows and very narrow at the chin, which made her childish mouth look larger; she had a wonderful profile, a nose straight with the forehead, a short, full upper lip, a minute and heart-breaking perfection. But it was not her beauty which captured Claudine, it was the transparent sweetness and fidelity of the little soul. She was stupid, she was pliable, she was a baby, but she had a heart to appreciate Bertie, and a charm to hold him.

Tea was brought in by two men servants on a tea-waggon, and the signorina dispensed it with deftness. There were cakes and cakes and cakes, cheese straws, rolls, all sorts of sandwiches, and when these had been sampled, the servants returned with ices in the form of lilies lying on leaves of green almond paste.

Bertie didn’t say much, but from time to time Claudine caught him looking at his Giulia with half a smile, a look tender and a trifle amused. He wasn’t going to take her too seriously, or expect too much of her. It was, in short, one of those loves which cause a mother very little pain; she knows she is not supplanted, not diminished. Singular that two of her children should “marry beneath them”!

She took leave of her future daughter-in-law with a kiss, and the man servant in the hall opened the door for them.

“It’s pouring!” said Bertie. “Go in again, Mammy, and I’ll send a few flunkies for a taxi.”

“I’d rather not. We’ll find one.”

“You mustn’t get wet, especially with that cold. I can’t allow it!”

But she was briskly descending the steps, and he had to hurry after her.

“How obstinate you are, Mammy! If you won’t think of your health, have some regard for your pretty little hat!”

She shook her head, laughing. She was so happy with this son, with his affectionate, half effeminate ways, his open admiration. She had with him a gay and coquettish little air no one else ever saw.

“Come along! We’ll be sure to pick up a cab in a minute, Bertie! Look at the streams of them going by!”

But all the cabs were full. It was quite fifteen minutes before they stopped an empty one, and by that time Claudine was chilled to the bone, and shivering in her wet shoes and dripping skirts.

“I’m sorry, Bertie!” she said. “I was very stupid!”

He looked at her in silence, and when she was home and safely in bed, he telephoned for the doctor.

§ iii

Andrée and Al had been to the opera that evening and to supper afterward, so that they were late in getting back to the apartment. The desk clerk handed them a message received hours ago.

“Please ask Mrs. Stephens to go home at once. Her mother is ill.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

MUTINY

They were thoroughly and beautifully reconciled now. In spite of his disappointment over the conduct of other people under the shadow of death, Gilbert knew that he had acted properly. He had forgiven his daughter, and he intended, in due course of time, to forgive his son-in-law. He had been profoundly affected by Claudine’s illness; he had wished to be with her constantly. But she had not wanted him; she had turned always to Andrée. He had certainly expected, although they had been more or less estranged for some years, that under the shadow of death she would come back to him. She should have said, “After all, we have lived more than twenty years together in storm and sunshine. Let us forget our differences!” But she had not. She had said nothing at all, except to thank him for the profusion of flowers he sent. They hadn’t had a single touching conversation. On that night, which he had spent at her bedside, in agony and fear, she had not even seen him; she had lain gasping, exhausted, bathed in perspiration, with half-open eyes, as far away from him as if she were already dead. It was Edna who had consoled him, and led him away, and it was Andrée who had stayed by Claudine until the crisis was past. It was always Andrée’s name she had murmured—“Andrée! Baby! My baby!”

He had done his best to be just and temperate about this, but it hurt. And as she began to grow better, and the danger was over, his old exasperation at her aloofness returned. He had really longed for a reconciliation; he would have told her frankly that he was sorry for many things in the past, and that he hoped with all his heart to understand her better in the future. It was his eternal passion for something perfect and beautiful in life; if only these twenty years could be crowned now with love, he could have been content. It was easy for him to forgive and forget, the sins of other people as well as his own. But it was not easy for Claudine. He clung to her, for he had nothing else, but she had turned away from him to her children, and she had forgotten him.

He had made a very thoughtful provision for her convalescence. He had learned from her lawyer that her old home in Staten Island—which her father had left her at his death—was temporarily vacant, and he had secured it for a year. Half of it, that is, for her father had converted it into a double house, an improvement by which she had profited, for she had received rent for both halves for years. With the help of Edna he had removed from the storage warehouse as much of Mrs. Mason’s old furniture as they thought good, and later in the spring, when Claudine was strong enough, she was to go there with Edna, to find it all prepared for her. This plan had touched her, she had thanked him with tears in her eyes. He would have gone there with them, if it had been suggested....

“What’s this?” asked Andrée.

He roused himself from his unpleasant meditation, and turned to look at the object she held in her hand.

“That? It’s a game—‘Pigs in Clover.’ I remember your mother was very much amused with it when she was first married.”

Andrée smiled and began to manipulate it, singing again.

Now Gilbert had been brought up to distrust happiness, especially feminine happiness. His mother had never been happy. Claudine was never happy; the only permissible thing in that line was the benevolent, and possibly alcoholically stimulated, high spirits of the pater familias, coming home bearing gifts. He loved Andrée, he was delighted to have the pretty, wilful creature about him again, but still, he could not help distrusting such gaiety.

“When do you expect to go home?” he asked.

“This is home!” said Andrée.

“Your home is with your husband, young lady!” he said, severely.

“I know! I’m going—pretty soon.”

There wasn’t the slightest need or reason for staying another hour. She had been there for four weeks, and her mother was now well on the road to recovery. Al telephoned every day, first he asked about Claudine, whose illness he had taken terribly to heart, and then he always said—

“When are you coming home, old girl?”

And she always answered “In a day or so.”

“You know your old father likes nothing better than to have his girl at home,” Gilbert went on. “But you’re a married woman, and you have to think of your duty.”

“I do think of it. But not all the time.... I think I’ll run up and see if Mother’s dressed.”

She had started up the stairs, when the telephone rang, and she ran back to answer it. She was quite sure it would be Al; this was his regular hour.

His voice responded.

“Mrs. Stephens in?”

“This is Andrée!” she answered, brightly. “How are you, Alfred?”

“Your mother doing well?”

“Yes, very!”

And then, instead of his usual query, he said—

“It’s about time you were coming home, isn’t it?”

His voice was somewhat alarming, and she answered in her very pleasantest manner.

“Yes; I’m coming in a day or two, Al.”

“Suppose you come this evening?”

“Oh, I couldn’t! Not possibly!”

“Why not? I’ll come for you about eight.”

“No, Al, it’s not possible. My things aren’t packed.”

“Edna can pack them and send them after you to-morrow.”

“But how ridiculous! Why should I rush off like this?”

“Well,” he said slowly. “Suppose—because I particularly ask you to—?”

“You’re very unreasonable!”

“Humour me, then, for once.”

“No, Al!” she said, firmly. “I can’t come to-night. To-morrow—or the next day—I’ll let you know—”

“Look here, Andrée; I’m coming for you to-night!”

“But I tell you I’m not going home!”

“I insist!”

She laughed.

“What in the world is the matter with you, my dear boy? Do you imagine you can bully me?”

“I don’t want to. I’m asking you—to do me a favour.”

“It’s a ridiculous, selfish, unreasonable favour, and I shan’t do it.”

“I’m coming for you just the same, at eight o’clock!” he said.

She was going to remonstrate with him, but she found that he had left the telephone. Her cheeks flushed, and she bit her lip.

“Little beast!” she said to herself. But some secret thought made her unusually indulgent, she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed the thought of him.

She went on up to her mother’s room and knocked at the door.

“It’s Andrée!” she announced in her triumphal voice, as if that name were a talisman to admit her anywhere.

Claudine was sitting at her dressing-table, brushing her hair. There was grey in it now, on the temples, and her face was thin and drawn. She wore a negligée with high collar and long sleeves, to conceal the pitiful emaciation of her neck and arms. Andrée couldn’t look at her without a twinge of pain.