self-knowledge, but neither had he any subtlety. He loved Claudine: he
longed to give her everything he had. He felt himself unworthy and
inferior beside her purity, her innocence, her lovely young spirit. He
had tried to the best of his ability to set before her whatever
advantages there might be in marrying him, but not through conceit, only
to persuade her.
He had brought with him on one occasion an old magazine, to show her an
article in it--“The Old Vincelles of Brooklyn.” It had been written by a
sort of Miss Dorothy, a humble and admiring relation, and it was a
narrative of that singularly unillustrious family, beginning with the
Huguenot who had come first to American shores, and mentioning with
solemn veneration a long line of lawyers, ministers, and business men,
all respectable, serious, and thrifty. Not a vagary, not a passion,
among them.
He showed her this not from pride--although he was proud of it--but
merely as an added inducement, in the same spirit he had talked to her
of his “business prospects,” and his remarkable progress. It was as if
he said, “Here is all I have, beloved girl, won’t it compensate for what
I am?” And now he rested his case. He had nothing further to offer. His
inarticulate and unhappy wooing was at an end. He was going to ask her,
quite simply, if she would have him.
He arrived at the house in the June twilight. The house was still
unlighted, the windows were open, the curtains fluttering gently in a
little breeze. There was a magical fragrance from the garden: it was in
all ways a magical evening. He never quite forgot it.
He dismissed the carriage at the gate and walked along the drive, the
gravel crunching under his deliberate tread, the perfumed breeze blowing
against his miserable and sullen face. Because, under his serious and
pompous demeanor, he was after all, very young; almost a boy. And his
whole heart was set on this, his whole heart! Claudine was the one woman
on earth for him.
If she only knew the power she held in her little hands, he reflected!
CHAPTER FOUR
CLAUDINE’S PECULIAR MOTHER
§ i
No one could have known this better. She was in her room, standing
before the mirror, looking with critical attention at her image. She was
at her loveliest and well she knew it. She was in white, with a pale
green sash about her twenty inch waist. Her red hair was curled over her
forehead in a low bang, below which her brown eyes were marvelously
bright and alluring. Her face was radiant with happiness, but there lay
over it a faint shadow, a sort of tenderness.
This was to be the day. She knew it. She had read his determination in
his face the day before. And it was all coming out just as she had
wished it to come. Ever since her school days that had been her
dream--to be proposed to by a dark, handsome man in evening dress, at a
dance. There had been other proposals but none of them just right; there
had been other men to whom her fancy had strayed, but never like this.
She felt for this silent and stalwart young fellow a pity, a compassion
that bordered on pain. She didn’t like to let him out of her sight. She
longed so to make him happy. He seemed so lonely, so helpless, so
neglected, so pitiably in need of a comrade. Since she had seen his
horrible home and his chilly old mother, she had loved him more, felt
more sorry for him than ever. Oh, no doubt about it, he was the man!
The sense of impending change was upon her. This room would never look
the same to her again, her own face would never have quite this look
again; after this evening everything would be _different_. She was
lively and high-spirited, but she was in no way frivolous. She wouldn’t
make a promise unless she meant to keep it. This was the most important
step in her life, and she had considered it well. She had studied her
man; she felt that she knew him. She was well aware that he wasn’t
clever, and that he wasn’t very good-natured, but she was so accustomed
to good-nature, to kindness, tolerance, that she did not know their
value. Let him be a little cross if he wished, the dear old bear! She
would wheedle away his ill-humour with her own gaiety. She would be the
light of his life, she would bring youth and happiness into his
monotonous existence. She could be more to him than to any other man.
Divine and naïve idea of a young girl, innocently conscious of her own
immeasurable value!
§ ii
It had been a beautiful day for her, a day of profound significance. She
had been waked up by her mother coming into her bedroom to kiss her and
wish her “many happy returns.” Half asleep she had watched the stout
figure moving about the room, pulling up the shades to let in the light
of the summer morning, picking up the clothes she had left carelessly
about, folding bits of ribbon, straightening the articles on her bureau
with that silent and inexhaustible kindness she counted upon as she did
upon the very sun.
“Well!” said her mother at last, with her benevolent smile, “are you
never going to look at your little presents, chickabiddy?”
Then she had sat up, her short heavy braid over one shoulder, and began
opening the packages always found on birthday mornings at one’s bedside.
The gifts had brought tears to her eyes. The love in them, the
unspeakably dear intimacy! Her mother had embroidered a dozen linen
handkerchiefs, and an exquisite sachet case for them; her father had
presented her with the bottle of Cherry Blossom perfume he had bought
every year since she was a child--and which she didn’t like--and a big
box of chocolates with a ten dollar gold piece on top. Lance gave her a
book of verse. Then there was a photograph in a silver frame of her
eldest sister with her three babies; there were six pairs of French
gloves from one brother and a beautiful edition of “Ingoldsby Legends”
from the other, and from the sister who had married only a year ago a
combing jacket, trimmed with pale green ribbons. She had so well
remembered Claudine’s tastes!
“Oh, Mother!” she had said, with a sob, “you’re all so good and dear! I
wish ...?”
“What _do_ you wish, Goosie?”
But she didn’t quite know. Perhaps she wished to clutch at Time and hold
him here forever.
She had got up and dressed and gone into the garden before breakfast to
look at the flowers, and to pick a very few. The roses were just
beginning; they were so lovely that she almost wept again. The buds
were drooping in a sort of enchanted drowsiness, some yellow, some so
faintly pink, some a dark and wonderful red; she touched with her finger
the waxy satin petals, she bent over them to inhale the fragrance of
them, that heavenly fragrance warmed with the sun. She went about from
one bed to the other, to see what new thing had come up, what was
flourishing, what was disappointing. Her father was a notable gardener;
she hadn’t his skill, but she had his love for growing things. She
enjoyed the garden perhaps more than he did, for she had not his
anxieties about it. She sauntered over the wide lawn that ran all down
the hillside, the sun warm on her bare head, her white dress trailing
over the grass, and as she went she reflected, with a little fleeting
melancholy in her happiness, Nineteen! Nineteen such wonderful years in
this garden!
But the years to come she thought, would be far more wonderful.
§ iii
The Masons were quite unabashed in their family celebrations--Mrs. Mason
had a perfectly clear conception of the value of these ceremonies in
holding together a family, and she made the most of them, in her calm
way. It was a revelation to young Vincelle; he thought it somewhat
childish and absurd and not quite the thing. The table that night was
set with unusual magnificence with a lace cloth and four silver
candelabra, and at the end a wonderful cake was brought, frosted with
pink and white and green, and bearing twenty candles, one for good luck.
He was the only guest and he felt embarrassed.
After the dinner the dance, the same sort of dance that had been on the
occasion of his first visit, but without that unique flavor. He felt a
little chilled, a little aloof, dreading unspeakably what lay before
him. Never had Claudine seemed so distant, never had she seemed so much
a stranger. He began to grow certain that he had no chance at all.
Perhaps it would be better if she did refuse him, and he could go home
again....
Young men invited to dances at Mrs. Mason’s house in those days were
expected to dance, and Gilbert had not much time for reflection. He went
dutifully waltzing about the ball-room with one young lady after the
other, and once or twice went out upon the veranda with a partner.
Actually a moonlight night; he couldn’t have devised a better
setting....
The moment came. He stood out there with Claudine, on the lawn, in the
moonlight. She had suddenly grown quiet: he could see her face plainly,
and it was grave, serious, almost sad. She looked more than ever like a
spirit, in her white dress with her slim bare neck and arms.
The breeze blew the end of her silvery scarf against his face, and
brought to his nostrils the faint scent of the perfume she used--some
innocent, old-fashioned thing of her mother’s. He took her by the arm
and led her under the shadow of a row of horse chestnuts.
Poor devil! He had no fit words. God knows what he faltered out.... But
she didn’t care. Tears came to her eyes; indeed they were both very
close to weeping. She reached out and touched his hot trembling hand,
and they clung to each other, mute, with their pitiful young love, their
hearts aching with the beauty of the matchless night and the supreme
moment, unique in their lives, never again to be recaptured.
“Don’t tell anyone to-night!” she whispered, and for these few hours it
was their secret.
§ iv
The very next day the trouble began. His mother received the news of his
acceptance with a smile of satirical amusement.
“You’re old enough to know what you’re doing,” she said. “And so is
_she_.”
“Claudine’s only nineteen,” said her son, answering her tone rather than
her words.
“_Is_ she?” said his mother. “I shouldn’t have thought so. She seems
very sophisticated.... But I suppose that’s her upbringing.”
Pursuant to Claudine’s instructions he had taken an afternoon off from
the office so that he could go down to Staten Island, and see her
father. This ordeal didn’t particularly distress him: he felt that as a
son-in-law he was faultless. He had practically no past; nothing that
could be troublesome, anyway, and financially he was ready and anxious
for the most minute investigation.
The Professor received him with kindliness. He said “Well, young man!”
offered him a cigar and said that as Claudine had made up her mind, what
were they to do? He asked him a few questions, and then sent him off to
Claudine. But, as he left the library, he met Mrs. Mason in the hall.
And her look astonished him. Her bland face wore no smile for him: on
the contrary, she gave him a glance so cold, severe and merciless that
he winced.
When he learned the truth he was still more taken aback. She objected!
Claudine was tearful and dejected. She said they’d had a dreadful time
that morning.
“Father says I’m to decide for myself, and that neither he nor Mother
ought to interfere. But Mother said--Oh, Gilbert, I can’t understand
Mother! It’s not a bit like her!... She said she’d never consent to her
dying day.”
“But why?” cried the affronted and amazed young man.
“She thinks--we’re not suited to each other.”
“Rubbish!” he said, scornfully. That was a woman’s objection for you!
Nothing against him financially, morally or physically, but some absurd
feminine notion of suitability. He was a little relieved.
“I suppose the truth of it is, she doesn’t want to lose you, Claudine. I
don’t blame her.”
“Oh, no!” said Claudine, “it can’t be that, because--” she stopped short
with a sudden blush.
“Because what?”
“Because--I know it isn’t that.... Oh, Gilbert, do try to--win her
affection!”
“I don’t see why I should!” he answered. “Upon my word I don’t see why I
should humble myself--”
“She’s my mother, Gilbert, and I love her.”
“Yes, of course, my sweet girl! But, after all, if you’re going to marry
me, I come first, don’t I? If you really love me--” She began to cry.
“You _know_ I do! Only--you can’t imagine how dear and wonderful
Mother’s always been.”
He said he could have a talk with her and he did. It was not a pleasant
talk. This benevolent matronly creature, whom he had always taken for
granted as a part of Claudine’s background, had suddenly come alive as a
woman, as a difficult and unmanageable feminine creature.
She said:
“I should prefer not to discuss this matter with you, Mr. Vincelle.”
“But why?” he protested. “If you have any objection to me, isn’t it only
fair to tell me what it is? To let me defend myself?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I couldn’t put it into words.... I am positive that you
cannot make Claudine happy.”
“Why do you think I can’t make her happy, Mrs. Mason?”
“It isn’t in you,” she said frankly. “You are not suited to each other.”
“Well, I believe a woman can adapt herself to any man, if she really
cares for him.”
“Claudine’s not adaptable. It would be necessary for _you_ to make
concessions--to be very tolerant and wise. And I don’t think you would
be.”
He smiled indulgently.
“I think I understand her,” he said. “And I’m used to feminine ways, you
know. My mother--”
She shook her head.
“It won’t do!” she said, with emphasis. “I shall never consent to it.”
This was the most outrageous affront imaginable. If she had objected to
him for any other reason, because of his morals, his religion, his
social standing, his financial position, he could have endured it,
because he could have argued and proved her absolutely wrong. But just
simply to dislike him....
Of course, he knew how perverse, unreasonable and provoking women were,
a man must take that into consideration. But that a mature woman should
be so idiotic as to insult an eligible suitor for her daughter’s hand
was a thing unheard of. He despised her; she had no common sense; she
had no regard for her child’s welfare....
He asked Claudine if she would marry him without her mother’s consent.
“As long as your father agrees, and there’s no valid objection,” he
said. “You wouldn’t jilt me because your mother’s taken some sort of--”
he checked the words on his lips and said, very moderately--“taken a
dislike to me, would you?”
But he could get nothing sensible from her; only that she really did
love him, and that her mother was so dear and wonderful, and that there
was no hurry, anyway, was there?
He refused to stay for dinner; he went home in a state of sullen rage,
and he carried his intolerable hurt to the person whom he fancied best
appreciated his worth. He got cold comfort.
“There’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” said his
mother. “They’re very peculiar people. They’d never suit _you_.”
“I don’t want to marry the family,” he said sharply. “Claudine’s not
responsible for her mother.”
“Her mother’s responsible for her, though. She’s brought her up
according to her own ideas. If you take my advice, you’ll put the whole
thing out of your head.”
He went up to his own room, with a most unpleasant fancy that all these
women knew things about him which he didn’t know; that they were all,
his own mother included, ruled by motives not to be comprehended by him.
He was very unhappy. If it were only a matter of Claudine and himself!
When he had the dear little thing in his arms, she was his, she loved
him, she forgot everyone else; if they were married, it would always be
so. He did understand her; he knew he could make her happy if they were
alone.
If they had a little house somewhere, by themselves.... He began to
dream impossible rustic dreams; he saw them in a vine-covered cottage,
such as he had certainly never seen; he fancied Claudine running down
the path to meet him when he came home, flinging her arms about him, her
bright sweet face uplifted, her curly hair blowing ... oh, he was
frightfully unhappy!
He didn’t know whether he ought to go down to Staten Island again, or
not. But Claudine wrote to him, and told him to come. Her mother didn’t
in the least mind their seeing each other. So he went, sulky and
reluctant, and was very well received. Mrs. Mason was quite natural and
pleasant, and treated him just as she treated everyone else; and
Claudine was heavenly. She found a chance to slip out into the garden
with him, and as soon as they were alone, she kissed him, quite of her
own accord.
“You see,” she said. “Poor mother thinks that if we see each other often
enough, we’ll quarrel, or something of the sort. So if we just wait
long enough, and she sees that we _don’t_, she’ll realize that she’s
wrong; and it will be all right.”
“How long will it take?” he asked, gloomily. “Five years?”
“Oh, mercy, no! Only be patient.”
“I can’t be! I don’t want to wait! I love you so! I don’t want to waste
years--”
“They won’t be wasted, Gilbert. They’ll be the happiest time of our
lives. You’re happy now, aren’t you, this very moment?”
“Not so very. I want you for my own, Claudine.”
“I am your own. I love you and love you, darling Gilbert.”
Impossible to argue with her innocence; he resigned himself to get what
joy he could from these stolen moments. And he knew that no matter how
long he had to wait, no matter what humiliation and unpleasantness he
had to endure, Claudine was worth it.
Suddenly, without the slightest pretense of reason, Mrs. Mason gave in,
she no longer objected.
“Marry him if you want to, chickabiddy,” she said.
They were all astonished and a little uneasy. A change had come over
that incomprehensible woman. Her color was as ruddy, her activity as
great, she was as kind, as pleasant, as competent as ever. But an
immense moral apathy had seized her, she no longer interfered, no longer
gave advice. Let her husband smoke fifteen cigars a day, let her child
marry whom she would, she seemed indifferent. She had become strangely
and terribly remote. She seemed to have a grim secret of her own, a
knowledge of some event in comparison with which all these things were
of no importance.
No one realized what shadow had fallen upon her. They were willing to
accept her change of heart as a whim. But she who was about to be exiled
forever had come to see the futility of resistance. She saw her own
death coming toward her; she could bear to watch it. And she saw so
clearly too that when she was no longer standing in the highway, the
others would still go on, and that cry after her child as she might, no
sound would ever again reach her.
Gilbert and Claudine were married that autumn in a little church on
Staten Island. Old Mrs. Vincelle was brought there, like a Buddha
carried in a procession, and there were a certain number of Brooklyn
_haute bourgeoisie_. But it was a Mason wedding, and Mrs. Mason
dominated it. She gave a marvelous breakfast after it in the house on
the hill, and hers was the last face they saw as they drove away. She
had come out into the road, to look after them, a stout, dignified
figure in black silk waving her hand, and smiling after her youngest
child....
CHAPTER FIVE
CLAUDINE LEARNS TO ADAPT HERSELF
Before she had been in that house an hour she knew that she could never
be happy there. She wasn’t ready when the dinner gong sounded, but
Gilbert hadn’t waited. Lateness upset his mother, he said. She had tried
to hurry then, but she was an inveterate dawdler, and it was some time
before she was quite dressed. She came downstairs with the sprightly air
proper to a bride just returned from her honeymoon, but it was a forced
and desperate sprightliness. She felt all the helplessness and terror of
a deserted child among strangers as she descended the dark old
staircase, padded so thickly with carpet that it was like walking in a
bog.
On the newel post was a standing lamp in which burned a gas jet turned
very low, in a shade of red, green and blue glass. She turned along the
narrow hall, past the open door of the front parlour, feebly
illuminated, the middle parlour, the obscure and neglected back parlour,
all dark, still, and bitterly unfamiliar to her. She reached the steep
flight of stairs leading to the basement, and began going down in utter
darkness and silence. The door at the foot of the flight was closed;
she fumbled for the handle in an absurd panic and stumbled forward as it
burst open.
They were sitting at the table in there, Gilbert at the head, his mother
at the foot, and they were taking their soup, evidently determined to
begin right with the child, to show her, pleasantly but inexorably, that
she would never, never be waited for. She sat down at the place laid for
her, facing the door, and the servant brought her a plate of soup.
“_Well!_” said old Mrs. Vincelle.
Her tone was tart, but good-humoured, and she smiled at her
daughter-in-law.
“We’re old fashioned here,” she said. “Meals served on the minute.
That’s the way I was brought up. And Mr. Vincelle was very strict; if
one of the boys was late for a meal, he had to sit at one side of the
room till we’d all finished and then eat by himself.”
“I know.... I’m sorry,” said Claudine. “But I couldn’t find things, this
first evening.”
Gilbert looked at her indulgently for an instant, and then turned his
attention to the roast chickens that had been set before him. He rather
prided himself upon his carving, he felt sure that Claudine would
observe and admire his dexterity. He had had, in fact, ever since they
had arrived that afternoon, an air of showing off, as much as to
say--here you can see me in my own kingdom, at my ease, my natural self.
He had consciously tried to impress her; he had given a great many
orders to the servants, and had found fault. But he had not produced the
impression he intended; Claudine saw him suddenly as a little boy,
pampered, spoiled, but led by the nose. His mother ruled him
absolutely.
In a way she was pleased to find that in spite of his sturdiness and his
impatient masculinity he was certainly very human, but on the other
hand, it frightened her. She so greatly needed to respect him, to look
up to him, to see in him a great spiritual authority. She had left the
security and peace of her girlhood to follow him, and he _must_ lead.
Why did he look so young and sulky to-night? He caught her looking at
him and he smiled again, tenderly, but with a sort of constraint. It
never occurred to her that he too was suffering from a great
disappointment. He had believed, poor devil, that with Claudine he would
have a new life; and lo, it was nothing but the old life with a new
person in it. She was overshadowed; she had suddenly lost importance;
she had quite ceased to be that rare and precious creature he had
adored, and had become a sort of phantom.
“You’re not eating!” said the old lady, suddenly. “Don’t tell me you
don’t like chicken!”
For she too had her disappointment. She had arranged a dinner really
sumptuous according to her very frugal mind, and no one appreciated it!
“Oh, yes, I do like it, very much!” said Claudine, hastily. “Only ... I
think I must be a little tired. It was so stuffy in the train.”
“You mustn’t take notions about your food,” said the old lady. “A young
married woman owes it to other people to keep up her health and
strength. You must _eat_, whether you _feel_ like it or not.”
“Yes, I know!” said Claudine, pleasantly.
She was mortally afraid of bursting into tears. All their meals hitherto
had been eaten in hotels, or trains, or boats, where there was plenty
to divert her, to make her forget that thing which had been gnawing at
her heart all the time these last two weeks, but now in the quiet room,
with these two quiet people intent upon their food, there was nothing to
help her. It rushed upon her like a flood--that terrible
homesickness.... On this mild September night they would be sitting in
the lofty dining-room, with the windows open on the dear old garden. She
could imagine them in the light of the suspended lamp, her mother, her
father, Lance, perhaps other familiar friends’ faces, the neat and
smiling Selma waiting upon them; she could imagine their talk, casual,
cheerful, full of family jokes, with the scholarly leaven introduced by
her father and Lance.... And at every pause would be heard the sounds
from the dark garden, the trees stirring, that branch of the big
grape-vine tapping against the window....