than tuning. It needs--”
“It’ll do very well as it is, I dare say!” said the old lady, briefly.
“But it isn’t good to practise on a piano--”
“Practise! What do you want with practising? You play very nicely.”
“Oh, but not nearly well enough! I’m going to keep on with my lessons.”
“What!” cried the old lady. “Lessons! A young married woman fiddling
about with piano lessons!”
Claudine was surprised at this sudden hostility.
“Yes; why not?”
“Haven’t you anything better than that to do with your time?”
“What else _should_ I do?”
“I never heard such rubbish in my life! A married woman taking lessons!
What do you think you’re going to do? Give concerts?”
Claudine was not skilled in quarreling. She had always been quite free
to follow her inclinations, and her inclinations had never been harmful
or ridiculous. She was accustomed to dignified independence, no one in
her household had the least desire to interfere with any of the others,
and she could not understand such interference. She felt herself growing
very angry with this meddlesome and tyrannical old person, but she made
a gallant effort to answer nicely.
“It’s only that I’m very fond of music,” she began.
“You’d better be fond of your husband, that’s my advice! Piano
lessons!... Very well, young woman! There’ll be no practising on _my_
piano! It’s there to be _played_ on and not fiddled on and banged on.”
Claudine actually turned pale.
“But you surely can’t mind my practising ...?” she cried.
“I do. All the neighbours’ll hear you. A married woman strumming and
jigging away like a school girl.... Piece of nonsense!”
Anger got the better of Claudine.
“I never heard of anything so unreasonable and so ridiculous!” she said.
“I don’t intend to give it up.”
“Women that can’t give up their childish nonsense have no business to
get married. Now then!”
She walked over and closed the piano and handed Czerny and Liszt to her
daughter-in-law.
“You put all this nonsense out of your head!” she said. “And run
upstairs and put on a nice fresh dress and see if you can’t tidy that
wild looking head of hair before Gilbert gets home.”
But when Gilbert got home he was not welcomed by the smiling and
charming young wife he had a right to expect. Instead he found Claudine
locked in the bedroom, her eyes red with weeping, and in a state of
terrible excitement.
“Gilbert!” she cried. “Your mother says she won’t let me practise on her
piano!”
He was astounded and a little frightened. So they were at it already!
“Well ...” he said. “I don’t know.... It’ll probably blow over, if
you’ll use tact and patience.... Anyway, it’s a small matter.”
“It’s _not_! It’s not! My music is all I have left!”
“Hold on, Claudine! That’s rather strong!”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Gilbert dear. Of course, you come first,
only you’re away most of the time.... And you don’t know what it means
to me. The idea of her being so domineering and cruel!”
“Claudine,” he said, very gravely. “I hoped this would never happen.
Especially as you’re so fond of your own people.... I thought you’d
understand how I felt about--Mother. I _know_ she’s unreasonable
sometimes--but remember that she’s old, and I’m all she has left.”
As an argument this seemed remarkably weak to Claudine, but the tone,
the very pitiful inconsequence of the poor chap, touched her to the
heart. She began to weep in his arms, bitterly, forlornly, knowing
herself defeated, pitying herself and pitying him still more.
He kissed her and smoothed her disordered hair, perplexed and unhappy.
He was very tender and kind to her; he bathed her eyes with cold water,
he took the pins out of her hair and released the complicated structure.
Her sobs ceased; she grew calm and tranquil again, and when the gong
sounded for dinner, she came downstairs on her husband’s arm, smiling,
nicely dressed, the very model of a bride.
But that night, when they were alone in the bedroom again, she returned
to the subject.
“Gilbert!” she said. “Let me get a piano of my own!”
“I couldn’t, dear. Mother would never consent to that. No, darling,
better put the idea out of your head for the time being. You’ll find
lots of new things to interest you.”
“But won’t you speak to her, Gilbert? Won’t you _help_ me? Gilbert, if
it’s something I want so very, very much, don’t you _care_?”
“Of course I care!” he protested. “I want you to be happy. But ... after
all, it’s Mother’s house, and she has to be consulted.”
“Then let’s live by ourselves, Gilbert!”
“We can’t move to-night!” he said laughing, and turning out the gas, got
into bed.
But Claudine could not sleep. She had a dreadful feeling of being
trapped, of being a captive, helpless, weak, insignificant.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HEDGE WHICH GREW SO FAST
§ i
In order to escape she had told the old lady a deliberate lie. She had
said she was going shopping with Mrs. Martinsburgh, because Mrs.
Martinsburgh was a highly approved of young married woman considered to
be a good influence for the peculiar young Mrs. Vincelle. Whereas she
was really going to meet Lance. She had written to him to meet her in a
certain respectable restaurant where ladies on shopping tours often went
to lunch.
It was a risk; she was quite likely to be seen there and her outrageous
escapade reported to the old lady, but she was desperate. She had to see
him. She went upstairs and secured a table, self-conscious and wretched
at being there alone. She dared not look about the room for fear of
seeing a familiar face, she dared not tell the waiter she was expecting
someone. She pretended to study the menu, taking a long time to order,
hoping and hoping that Lance would come. But he was late as he always
was. Her lunch was set before her and she felt obliged to begin eating
it. The room was full, she expected every moment that someone else
would be put at her table. She had laid her muff and hand bag on the
chair beside her as a futile protection, and sipped her chocolate with
an engrossed air.
By raising her eyes, she could see her own reflection in one of the
mirrors which lined the room; she was paler, thinner, more elegant
but--what was it that had gone from her face? She fingered her veil with
a delicate little gesture, and glanced down again to her hands, adorned
with rings. She wondered if Lance would find her changed?
And just at this moment she heard his voice, his calm, serious voice,
always so low that it was difficult for strangers to understand him.
“Hello, Claudine!” he said. “Am I late? How are you?”
He sat down beside her and looked at her seriously through his
spectacles.
“Well!” he said. “You’ve changed.... What on earth did you want to see
me for?”
The recollection of her suffering rushed over her. Her eyes filled with
tears.
“I had to--talk to someone,” she said. “And there was nobody else.”
“But--” he began, and stopped. This was a matter for caution, she who
had a husband, a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, and yet could
find no one but himself to confide in.
Five years before, when he was a boy of twenty, he had come to live with
his uncle, Doctor Mason. He was a youth of strongly scientific tendency,
too poor to study, and the doctor had offered to keep him. His mother
was a garrulous, vulgar woman, with a bitter tongue, well able to make
life a burden for her household. Her husband, the doctor’s younger
brother, endured her with English fatalism; he was an ineffectual sort
of chap, anyway, who like so many of his countrymen had turned to
farming in the hope of finding in it a refuge from competition and
struggle. He had a wretched, stony, hillside farm in Sullivan County,
which produced next to nothing; the family were kept alive only by the
exertions of his relentless wife and the boundless charity of his
brother. Lance, amazingly christened Launcelot--had lived in calm,
unceasing opposition to both parents. He _would_ be a paleontologist,
and he would _not_ devote himself to money-making. If he did make
anything through that work, his parents could have it, if he didn’t they
would have to do without.
He was the most unimpressionable, unsusceptible young man ever born.
Nothing moved him, nothing troubled him. He was a pleasant housemate,
for he was never impatient or cross, but he remained marvelously aloof.
He sat at the doctor’s feet, worshipping his scientific knowledge,
grateful to him for the opportunities he had given him, the years in
college, the quiet and peace for independent study, he was grateful to
his aunt, too, for her kindly care of him. But he would have been
delighted to go to the ends of the earth on an expedition, and it
wouldn’t have cost him a pang to bid them farewell forever.
The only soul with whom he was really human was Claudine. They had been
like brother and sister, only at once more friendly and more formal than
brothers and sisters usually are. And Claudine was quite conscious of
something not at all brotherly in Lance’s regard. She had had too many
suitors to be deceived. She had very carefully maintained a nice
balance. She knew that he thought she didn’t know, and she was artful
about it. She thoroughly respected Lance, he was the most candid,
unbiased, truly independent person she had ever known, and he was kind,
consistently and invariably kind, without effort, simply because it was
his impulse to be so.
It was upon his candour, his intelligence, his kindness, that she
counted now.
“Oh, Lance!” she said. “I’m so unhappy!”
“What’s the trouble?”
The waiter was hovering near.
“You’d better order something,” she murmured.
“I’m not hungry!”
“But you must, Lance! Please! It would look so queer.”
“A glass of milk,” he said, “and a piece of apple pie, then!”
The waiter was astounded and offended at this plebeian order; he had,
nevertheless, to go and fetch it and they were able to talk again.
“What makes you unhappy, Claudine?” he asked.
“I suppose I ought to bear it, and say nothing, but I can’t any longer.
Lance ...! I want to leave Gilbert!”
This time she had certainly shaken his scientific calm.
“What!” he said. “After three months!”
“I wish I could tell you.... But I could never make anyone understand.
It’s just--unendurable.”
“Isn’t he--decent to you?”
“It’s not altogether Gilbert’s fault. He tries to be kind. He thinks he
is. But it’s the whole life. Oh, Lance, it’s so horrible! It’s like
being buried alive....” She had to stop, to struggle with her tears.
“I’ve tried. I’ve really tried my best. But I can’t stand it. I want to
go home and live with Father and Mother. Oh, Lance, do you think it
would be wrong?”
He regarded her thoughtfully.
“Do you mean as a general principle?” he asked. “Do you mean--do I think
it’s wrong for a woman to leave her husband?”
“I suppose I do mean that.”
“It’s hard for me to say,” he went on, frowning. “I can’t say I’ve ever
thought much about the modern system of marriage. I suppose it’s the
best--or at least, the most expedient system for our present stage of
development. But I haven’t considered exactly what it is. Is marriage
popularly considered indissoluble? No, there’s divorce. No!... I suppose
it’s an arrangement for the convenience of both the parties to the
contract. In that case--”
“But I never thought about divorce!” she cried. “I only wanted to get
away. Can that possibly be wrong?”
Lance was never greatly concerned about ethical problems, certainly not
about the relations between men and women. It didn’t seem a matter of
much importance to him. He envisaged the human race as gradually
progressing, adopting now this expedient, now that; marriage he had
looked upon as a rather silly but necessary part of modern existence. As
for woman’s revolt, feminism, and so on, he merely smiled at it all. He
knew too much about Pre-Historic Woman.
He bent his mind to the problem as to whether the sanctity of marriage
was a help or a hindrance to civilization.
“I can’t see that there’s anything wrong in it, Claudine,” he said.
“Then you think--” she began. “But oh, I don’t know what Father and
Mother would say. Everyone but you would think I was wicked--and that my
life was ruined.... Just because I want to be myself!”
He glanced up in surprise at her tone, and saw her eyes fastened on him,
swimming in tears, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. It came to
him with a sort of shock that this was Claudine’s specific case, and not
a general problem; that it was not women who wished to leave their
husbands, but Claudine who wished to leave Gilbert. He saw that she was
a lovely and innocent young thing, unhappy and desperate; he saw
suddenly what this might lead to. She would be cast adrift, blamed,
gossiped about, always under a sort of cloud. Her position in her own
home would be an equivocal one, an unending embarrassment and distress.
Hers was not a strong spirit; she couldn’t go forward unsupported. A
terrible pain seized him, he turned his eyes away because he couldn’t
bear to look at her. And the most intolerable part of his pain was his
certainty that she could grow out of her pain; that what she now found
unbearable she could one day regard with indifference. She suffered
cruelly; she thought her fate was a lamentable and wretched one, and it
was really nothing; a trifle, a few moments in her history.
“What would be the sense of my going on?” she asked him. “I don’t make
Gilbert happy, and I’m--dreadfully unhappy myself.”
“It isn’t important--to be happy,” said Lance. “The question is, are you
useful?”
“No! No, I’m not!”
He pushed away his plate with a nervous gesture.
“You want to know what I think,” he said. “Well, I think you’d better go
back to your husband.”
§ ii
She went home, to dress for a euchre party which was to be given in her
honour. She felt numb and cold, ready to die of despair. Everyone was
against her. No one understood, no one cared, what she suffered. She had
appealed in vain to all the people who loved her, and they had all
said--“Continue to suffer. It is best for you.”
She had gone to her father for his support in the piano battle.
“Buy me a piano of my own, Father!” she had entreated. “Send it to me as
a present. Then the disagreeable old thing _can’t_ object.”
“But, my dear!” said her father. “When in Rome--you know! If I were you,
I should avoid conflicts. There’s no use exasperating your
mother-in-law. The wisest course is to conciliate.”
She had gone to her mother, to pour out all her misery at living under
the domination of a strange woman, at not being mistress in her
husband’s house. But her mother had no comfort to give.
“I don’t see what’s to be done, chickabiddy,” she said. “You can’t
expect Gilbert to leave his mother alone at her age. It can’t be cured,
so it must be endured.”
Gilbert was still more hopeless. When he saw her dejected, weary, full
of nervous excitement and irritability after her long day of emptiness,
his remedy was the theatre; and when even that didn’t enliven her, he
too became irritable. He was beginning to lose patience with her, he was
willing now to admit that she was peculiar. And he felt that he was
justified....
Justified in doing things which she never mentioned to anyone. They had
had quarrels, the very memory of which appalled her. She remembered
coarse words he had used, brutal expressions, sneers, gibes. He was
always very sorry, always apologized, he said he had the devil’s own
temper; but Claudine could not forget them. She was neither quick to
anger nor quick to forgive. When her temper was aroused, she was cold
and contemptuous and often childishly indignant, but she was never
fierce, never cruel. She could not understand or forgive his absolute
loss of dignity.
And she could not understand what he called his weakness! She remembered
the first time he had revealed it as one remembers a nightmare, the very
thought of it brought back the incredulous horror she had felt. He
hadn’t come home to dinner that night, he had sent a telegram, “Detained
on business. Will not be home till late,” and Claudine and the old lady
had sat down at the table alone, in that sort of hostile intimacy which
had grown upon them. After dinner they had gone up to sit in the old
lady’s room where it would be cosier for two lone women, the old lady
with a book and Claudine with the fancy-work she had taken to in
desperation.
Just before bed-time Gilbert came in, flushed, jolly, anxious to talk.
He had sat down and entertained them with a long account of the dinner
he had attended, and the speeches he had heard.
“Best thing for business,” he said. “You get to know just the men you
need to know. It was an impromptu thing, but wonderfully well done.”
And he told them everything he had had to eat.
“And by the way,” he said, “They had some oyster pâtés that were the
best things of their kind I’ve ever eaten, bar none. I spoke to the
waiter, and he packed me a couple in a box and I brought them home.
They’re downstairs with my overcoat. Will you get them, Claudine?”
She did so, and he opened the box and took the pâtés out.
“Just try this!” he said, offering one to Claudine.
“I couldn’t eat it now, thank you, Gilbert,” she said. “To-morrow I’d
enjoy--”
“No! Nonsense! Eat it now! I want you to!”
She shook her head, smiling.
“To oblige me!” said Gilbert in a grieved voice.
The idea of gracefully yielding, of doing something she _didn’t want to
do_, never occurred to Claudine.
“No, thank you!” she said, more firmly.
“I insist!” said Gilbert.
That made her laugh, she thought he was rather funny, anyway, with his
excessive garrulousness and his oyster Pâtés. She was about to answer
him with a good-humoured joke, when she saw his face suddenly change,
and grow convulsed with rage. She hardly heard what he said, she was so
startled. He jumped to his feet and addressed her in a furious trembling
voice, and suddenly took the pâtés, on their little frilled paper
plates, and threw them on the carpet and stamped on them.
His mother got up and came near to him.
“Gilbert! Gilbert!” she whispered, patting his shoulder. “You’d better
get to bed, my boy!”
He threw a savage glance at Claudine and walked unsteadily away. The old
lady bent over her cherished carpet, regarding the damage with distress.
“Dear! Dear!” she said. “_I_ don’t know....”
She never looked at Claudine, standing behind her, wringing her hands,
her teeth chattering with a sort of nervous chill.
“I don’t know!” she said again. “I suppose I’d better leave it so until
the morning. Then in the daylight, perhaps....”
As she straightened herself she met the eyes of her daughter-in-law.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Let me stay with you!” cried Claudine.
The old lady looked at her with frigid contempt.
“You go to Gilbert!” she said. “Your place is with your husband.”
“No!” cried Claudine, desperately. “I can’t!”
“You go!” said the old lady. “Quick! I’ll have none of this under my
roof.”
And she went so far as to take her by the arm and hurry her out of the
room. But there was no cause to be worried about any further scene;
Gilbert had gone to sleep, fully dressed, on the bed.
§ iii
And the next morning he regarded it all as a great joke. He complained
ruefully of a headache, but he was proud of it. He burst out laughing
when his mother mentioned her damaged carpet, and to Claudine’s
surprise, the old lady was wonderfully indulgent. He told Claudine not
to mind, it wouldn’t happen again; but it did, more than once. Only on
special occasions, though, as he pointed out to her; he was no drunkard.
He was simply a good fellow; and he felt that she ought to appreciate
his social qualities. He was sincerely aggrieved at her attitude, her
scorn, her cold aversion. He told her she was straitlaced and
puritanical; he thought she was shocked because he could not imagine
that she was disgusted. She didn’t find him devilish; she found him
repulsive. It was not a question of forgiveness; she felt for him a
profound distaste and aversion which she never again overcame. It was
not even that she had ceased to love him; she had simply discovered that
she never had loved him. She was not by nature affectionate or
indulgent; she was fastidious, always a little apart from life, never
quite human. She was a dutiful egoist.
She looked back over these three months of married life with a sort of
cold wonder. The long, long days, the tedious drives, the dull calls on
dull people, the unpleasant meals, the stuffy dismalness of the house!
She thought that the Vincelle friends were the most unspeakably tiresome
people in the world. To go with her mother-in-law and sit in their
augustly gloomy parlours for the required fifteen minutes, or to
receive them in like fashion at home, to sit at their dinner tables, or
to see them sitting at hers, was an infliction almost beyond her
endurance. Except at dinners, she saw nothing but women; they had
euchre-parties, receptions, luncheons, once in a while a matinée party.
A harem world of pampered women, interested in nothing, women whose
husbands were pleased to see them expensively dressed, wearing jewels,
who required them to be ladylike; but didn’t expect them to be
seductive. They were all good, all complacent, and they seemed to
Claudine years and years older and more mature than herself. She made no
friends. Vincelle heard that one of the young married women did china
painting, and that aroused a spark of interest in her. She approached
the alleged artist, young Mrs. Ryder.
“Oh, yes! I love it!” the artist told her. “Of course I don’t have much
time; but I positively made up my mind _not_ to drop it after I married.
It’s such a mistake, don’t you think, to get into a rut? I believe a man
thinks ever so much more of his wife if she has some interests of her
own.”
Claudine’s heart sank; then it was, after all, nothing but another harem
accomplishment, a trick to secure attention.
“Of course I don’t have much time,” the other went on. “There’s so much
to do, isn’t there?”
“What _do_ you do?” Claudine asked, with earnestness. “I wish you’d tell
me what you do all day?”
“Oh ... so _many_ things!” murmured the other, taken aback. “There’s the
house-keeping, of course--and social duties ... and with a man in the
house there are such a lot of little things....”
Now it must be admitted that Claudine was not a lover of her kind. She
had no special interest in humanity; she was not ready to see the simple
human qualities in those about her. She was an aloof, eager soul, greedy
for activity, for gaiety, and for something more than that. She wanted
food for thought; she was not very original, she needed perpetual
stimulation, a constant flow of external impressions. She did not wish
to meditate, she wished to observe.
She was baffled at every turn. She tried to discover what it was that
enabled the old lady to pass the time so tranquilly without impatience
or weariness. After a few orders to the servants and her marketing, she
had nothing to do. Other old ladies came in during the afternoons to
talk with her; often there were old ladies from the country spending a
few days with her, they talked of other old ladies known to them with a
sort of good-humoured indifference.... Perhaps that was the key to it--a
profound and cynical indifference, nothing mattered; one endured and
existed, and life consisted not in accomplishment, but in a perfectly
passive Duty.
The old lady said Claudine was excitable, and even went so far as to
call her frivolous. And yet the only part of Claudine’s life which
either she or her son took with any seriousness were these horrible
little frivolities, the euchre club, the dinner parties, the calls. Her
social duties....
“What in the world makes you so restless, child?” the old lady asked her
one afternoon. Claudine had come into her room and was wandering about
looking at the photographs, asking idle questions.
“I don’t know what to do with myself!” she answered suddenly.
“Do? Why, what under the sun do you _want_ to do?”
“I don’t know.... But it seems.... Oh, it seems such a waste of time!”
“I must say you have very queer notions for a young married woman,
Claudine. I’ve never heard of anyone else with such notions. You have
your home, and your friends. And there’s the euchre club, and Gilbert
takes you to the theatre every mortal week. What more do you want?”
This Claudine was unable to answer. The old lady regarded her severely.