look back on these days as the happiest time of your life.... I remember
when I was a young married woman--” she sighed. “I can tell you, I
hadn’t much time to worry about what to do, with my five children.”
“I wish I had five children,” said Claudine.
The old lady looked at her again.
“Humph!” she said.
§ iv
She was ready now for the euchre, she cast a last glance in the mirror
and gathered up her little possessions, handkerchiefs, gloves, cardcase,
and muff. A composed and mature figure she looked, in her grey
broadcloth dress with a trailing skirt and well-boned bodice, slender,
dignified in spite of her smallness. A lady--a young married woman, a
finished product. She was supposed to have done with adventure, romance
and excitement, she was presumed to have settled down.
She smiled frigidly.
“We’ll see!” she said. “Just wait! They’re all against me--even Lance.
But I won’t give in! If I can’t get away, then I’ll change all this! I
won’t have a life like this. I won’t! I won’t!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A YEAR LATER
§ i
The old lady was going upstairs to the store-room on one of her
periodical rummaging excursions, conducted for mysterious purposes of
her own. She looked through trunks, bags, and boxes, and emerged from
the dark little room quite exhausted, but without bringing anything with
her. As she passed the big bedroom she looked in at the open door and
smiled to herself, with grim satisfaction. There sat Claudine by the
window, her head leaning against the back of a venerable rocking chair,
her eyes fixed dreamily on the ceiling. She had been sitting there quite
three-quarters of an hour, and perfectly content in her idleness. Not a
trace of restlessness, of mutiny, about her, the sparkle too had gone
from her glance, she had a new, half melancholy charm....
The old lady admitted that Claudine had at last “settled down.” She was
still peculiar. Perhaps more peculiar than ever, but that was a matter
beyond hope of remedy. It was her bringing up. She had queer notions
about sitting alone, and she very obviously discouraged conversation,
she read pretentious and quite immoral books, but as she never said or
did anything improper, Gilbert and his mother were agreed to overlook
these unpleasant eccentricities. Naturally, they remonstrated with her
at every opportunity, but in a despairing way.
She was conquered, and she was happy. Not one of the hopes of her
girlhood had been fulfilled; she had seen no foreign countries; she had
met no remarkable people; she was denied the active and interesting life
she had expected. But she was able to smile at these lost hopes. She was
happy.
She had lost the best and dearest friend of her life, her mother. She
was obliged to live without a confidant, without sympathy or
encouragement. In losing her mother she had irrevocably lost her
girlhood, and been cast adrift on a strange sea. But she had resigned
herself even to that bitter loss.
She was well aware that she had missed the beauty and romance of the
love between a man and a woman. She certainly didn’t love Gilbert, she
didn’t even like him; she was in fear of coming to hate him. But even
that she endured with tranquil indifference, as she endured her fettered
existence, her hostile mother-in-law, her wearisome social duties.
Because she had Andrée. She wanted nothing more. Andrée was enough to
fill heaven and earth for her. Her love for Andrée, her hope for her,
the watchful care of her, gave her utter and complete satisfaction.
It had come as an astounding revelation. She had looked forward to the
coming of a baby with despair and revolt; it would be, she thought,
another link in the chain slowly forging to bind her to slavery. She
didn’t feel old enough or wise enough for a baby. She looked upon the
whole thing as a horrible indignity put upon her by merciless Nature,
and she even hoped that she might die.
She took it for granted that it would be a son, because everyone else
required a son from her. Another Gilbert, she thought, a pompous and
obstinate creature whom she could never hope to influence, and who would
soon learn to disapprove of her. She looked forward to its birth with
dread and terror, she imagined the wretched tedium of being obliged to
carry it about, to nurse it, to be perpetually tied to it, the broken
nights, the distasteful duties.
And to think that it was Andrée who had come, after all! This son, who
was to have been named Andrew, after Gilbert’s father, had been
miraculously transformed into that wonderful little dark-haired baby,
that tiny, plaintive little creature whose first cry had almost broken
her heart.
She had lain with the little bundle beside her, and from time to time
reached out a weak hand to turn down a corner of the blanket and look at
its sleeping face. The _queer_ little thing! The pathos, the marvelous
appeal of its weakness, its aloofness, the charm of its doll-like
completeness! She never tired of looking at it, she never wanted it out
of her arms. Its fierce and despairing cries pierced her soundest sleep;
its faintest stir aroused her.
She occupied the big room on the third floor, so that the baby shouldn’t
disturb Gilbert, and after the nurse went, she was alone with the baby.
Miss Dorothy had eagerly offered to take charge of it at night, but
Claudine wouldn’t listen to that. She had a little bassinet beside her,
where the baby was supposed to sleep, but at the least sound, she would
take it into the bed, to lie close to her, while she comforted its
inexplicable little woes, whispered to it, sang to it, stroked its
downy, restless little head.
She passed hours of mystic happiness alone with it in the big silent
room, where a night-light burned dimly. They would lie looking at each
other; she would gaze into its solemn unfathomable eyes, trying to
impress her image upon it, trying to reach it. It would fall asleep
clutching her finger, and she would weep with joy and terror, afraid of
everything, haunted by spectres of croup, whooping-cough, of accidents,
of all the cruel chances of life.
Gilbert had very much objected to the name Andrée. But Claudine was so
ill and weak, and so determined, that he had submitted to it. He thought
it was a charming and wonderful baby, and that it would undoubtedly be a
comfort to him in his old age. He boasted about it to his business
friends; he said it was the greatest thing in life. But he saw only the
promise in it; he was impatient for it to develop, to become responsive
and human. But Claudine loved it at each moment; she dreaded its
changing. Every day she thought, “This is the very sweetest age! I wish
she would stay like this forever!”
It was now two months old, and on this day was taking its first airing,
in the arms of a highly recommended nurse-maid. The old lady had a
prejudice against perambulators; she thought it all nonsense anyhow to
take babies out into the street, but as Dr. Perceval was newfangled and
insistent, she made no objection to a daily outing, provided it was
carried. Perambulators were against nature; babies were meant to be
carried, she said.
Claudine took little interest in this discussion. As long as they did
nothing actually harmful, she didn’t care. Her only concern was to
protect it, to keep it near her; matters of hygiene she considered a
little unreal.
She heard the sound of heavy and deliberate footsteps ascending the
stairs, and she rushed out into the hall.
“Be careful, Katie!” she called. “Go very slowly, and be sure you don’t
catch your foot!”
She watched with frowning anxiety the progress of the nurse and the
bundle in her arms, and the instant they reached the hall, she snatched
the baby.
“She’s asleep!” said the nurse, warningly, but in vain, because the
wicked mother had kissed it until it was awake and crying and had to be
rocked. It was the first separation, it had been out of the house nearly
an hour. Who was to blame her for her rapture at getting it back alive
and well?
And it looked so queer and darling in a little lace bonnet, with muslin
strings tied under its querulous face, and a coat with capes encasing
its helpless arms.
“Oh, Andrée!” she cried. “My heart’s darling! I don’t think I can ever
let you go again!”
§ ii
A year later there was another little girl, and after that, the
requisite son. They were delightful, pretty, healthy babies, and she
loved them passionately. But they were not like Andrée. There could
never be anything in the world like Andrée. She concealed her fanatic
worship of her first-born; she was a wonderful mother to them all,
patient, gentle, wise. She took an unfailing delight in them; she gave
her life to them joyfully; she was flattered and enchanted by the solemn
loyalty of little Edna and the teasing affection of her small son. But
the look of understanding in Andrée’s eyes was immeasurably dearer to
her; the clasp of Andrée’s hand, a kiss from her, were the very
consummation of her life.
_BOOK TWO_
THE BREATH OF LIFE
CHAPTER ONE
AFTER TWENTY YEARS
§ i
“Lord! I’ll be glad when this is over!” said Andrée. “And this is
Father’s idea of a holiday! The poor thing actually said he envied us!”
Her younger sister was engaged in drawing on her stockings.
“Come on, Andrée!” she said. “We’ll be late for lunch and Mother does
hate that so.... No: I suppose this _would_ be a treat for poor Father,
after being shut up in a hot office all the time.”
“I’d like to see him stand it for _one week_!” said Andrée, grimly.
“Just for one week, that’s all!”
“And then, of course, it’s cheap,” said the sensible Edna. “I suppose he
has to think of that, poor thing, with Bertie going to college and you
and your awful Mr. MacGregor. We must be a tremendous expense.”
“I don’t want to be!” cried Andrée. “And I wouldn’t be, either, if he
wasn’t so darned obstinate. I’ve told him and told him that I could
easily earn enough to pay for my lessons by teaching. Mr. MacGregor says
I’m thoroughly qualified, and that he’d help me to get pupils. But no!
Father pretends to be so advanced, and says he wants us to be able to
earn our own livings, and then when we can, he stops it. He and Mother
are both hoping and praying I’ll get married before I have a chance to
do anything. But I won’t! I’m going to--”
“Oh, Andrée! For pity’s sake! _Not_ that! _Do_ get your shoes and
stockings on! It’s after twelve!”
They were sitting on the bank of a wide, shallow stream running its
hasty course down the mountain side; a favourite spot with them. They
liked to come there in the morning and with bare feet and skirts pinned
up, to pick their way over the stones, with the cold water lapping about
their ankles. It was like a broad and deserted highway, lined with
trees. On either side were the dark woods, of which they were both a
little afraid. They would ascend the stream, “stepping stones,” past the
sombre belt of woodland to the wide meadows basking in the sun, and then
suddenly the banks grew high and rocky, the stream went out of the
sunlight and entered a ravine, gloomy and mysterious, and was no longer
a stream but a deep and ice-cold pool, fed by a trickling waterfall.
Farther than this they had never gone, the climb up the rocks beside the
waterfall would have been a very difficult one, and moreover it was a
spot where they didn’t care to linger. City born and bred, they had a
sort of horror of this silent, imprisoned place.
The stream--the “crick,” the country people called it, had an unfailing
charm for them. They came to it every fine morning and indulged in
pursuits which they were a little ashamed of and which they justified by
their ennui--an ennui more pretended than real. They talked to each
other and to their mother a great deal about the horrible dulness of the
little Catskill Mountains summer resort, but they were really very happy
in it, and they secretly enjoyed their infantile amusements. They
whittled little boats of soft wood and sailed them; they brought tin
pails and scooped up the lazy, fat pollywogs that lay along the edges of
the shallow pools in long rows, nasty creatures with a sort of horrible
fascination about them. Andrée would watch them wriggling sluggishly in
the pail for a long time, with the sun shining through their
translucent, speckled tails, and sniff the queer primeval smell of them.
“Aren’t they horrible!” she would cry.
“Don’t look at them, idiot!” her sister would say. “You’ll be having
nightmares about them again to-night.”
Andrée was very irritating about such matters. She wouldn’t keep away
from things and people and facts that troubled and tormented her. That
pool, for instance.... She would argue Edna into going there with her
and insist upon lingering beside it, looking into the dark depths of the
water, standing in its icy shallows, laying her hands against the wet
moss-grown rocks, until she became so filled with her absurd dreads and
fancies that even the sensible Edna would become infected.
They had been there that morning; they had sat on a fallen tree and
stared at the quiet pool, the dark face of the cliff over which the puny
trickle of water ran, ran, ran, had been running, just in this way, for
God knows how many centuries. And suddenly they had seen a great black
snake, swimming rapidly and silently on its way. They had fled in a
panic, barefooted over the stones and rough ground, out to the ravine
and into the sun again.
Edna had been angry.
“Why _will_ you go there!” she cried. “You’re so morbid!”
There was nothing morbid about Edna; she was a distractingly pretty
thing of nineteen, very like her mother in her young days as far as
appearance went--small, slight, self-confident, with crisp fair hair
like a halo about a flower-like face. She was alert, independent and
unsociable; her most profound instinct was to keep silent, to stay
alone, to be untouched, undisturbed while her strong spirit grew. She
was a disappointment to her mother because she was so difficult, so
impossible to influence. She wished to take every new idea and run off
with it, to examine it alone, in peace; she never wanted to talk over
anything. Nor did she care much for reading. She observed, and she made
deductions from her observations, she formed intelligent opinions, she
judged people with sane and kindly indifference.
But she did not understand, as Andrée did. Andrée apparently never did
any thinking. She simply knew things, spontaneously. She knew what
people would do, what they were, she loved them or hated them. And she
was forced to discuss everything with everybody, to talk, to think,
until her brain was sick and frightened. She couldn’t quite believe
anything or quite doubt anything. She was a thin, tall girl of twenty,
pale, distrait, not very pretty, but with a face wonderfully mobile and
sensitive. There was a perverse charm about her, about her moods, her
immature high-mindedness, her terrible dependence upon others. She would
ask your opinion, and if it differed from hers she would begin to doubt
herself, and if you agreed with her, she was obliged to change her
mind....
They had got their shoes and stockings on and set off by a convenient
path for the little hotel.
“If only we didn’t have to eat with all those people!” said Andrée,
sighing. “It takes my appetite away. I do so _hate_ the noise they make
... and those awful babies!”
Edna laughed at her.
“Poor grandma always used to call you ‘pernicketty.’ And you are, aren’t
you? They’re not such bad people.”
“How could they be worse? They’re stupid and vulgar and horrible to look
at and horrible to listen to. We wouldn’t think of bothering with such
people when we’re at home, and I can’t see why we should here. They’re
not any better in the summer time or in the mountains, than they are in
the winter, in the city.”
“Mother hates snobbishness--”
“Ha! _Does_ she? She’s the worst sort of snob in the world. She doesn’t
like _anybody_ at all. She’s bored with everyone, just as much bored
with right people as with wrong ones.”
They had come now to the hotel grounds, and were walking across the lawn
with great decorum. And just on time, for a bell rang out with a loud
and hostile clamour, and the embroidering ladies on the porch began to
collect their work and rise.
Andrée and Edna hurried up to their room for the process of
“neatening,” which their mother considered indispensable. She was there,
in the adjoining bedroom, standing before the mirror.
“How hot you are!” she said. “Hurry, I’ll wait for you.”
She was a pleasure to the eye, as she always was. She had a
well-deserved reputation for being the best-dressed woman in her set,
and she took infinite pains to sustain it. She wasn’t by any means
beautiful, the promise of her young days had never been fulfilled; she
was pale, colourless, except for her bright hair still untouched by
grey; she was thin and angular, and her features were as tranquil and
expressionless as a statue’s. But the dignity of the small creature! She
was absolutely imposing, she had a look of melancholy and resignation,
but a melancholy without lassitude, a resignation without weakness. She
had a passion for reserve. Even in her limitless devotion to her
children she was a little formal, a little aloof. She was certainly in
no way tyrannical or severe, but she commanded unfailing respect. They
adored her like a goddess, instead of loving her like a human being. She
was a perpetual mystery to them.
Poor Claudine! Like a strayed nymph, forever astonished and affrighted
at the strange world into which she had been betrayed! She had known no
way of adapting herself, she could never feel at home, her one refuge
had been to withdraw into herself.
She was courteous and agreeable enough to all her fellow-guests, but she
fled from them. She went off every morning after breakfast, her thin
form, straight as a dart, charmingly dressed in clear summer colours, a
parasol held over her burnished head, and two or three portentous
volumes under her arm, to find a secluded spot in the woods where she
could read undisturbed. She read Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and
Schopenhauer and Emerson, with ardent attention, marking passages,
meditating on them, trying to appease and fortify her desperate spirit.
The idea of her being desperate would have seemed ludicrous to anyone
who knew her. She was calm, so self-possessed, so well-poised! She had a
great social success in her own milieu, she was something of an
authority upon correctness in dress and manner. She was moreover a lady
of unblemished reputation, she was never even indiscreet or stupid. She
was quite perfect. Not even the resentful Gilbert could find a flaw in
her public demeanour.
And yet, in her own heart, she was bewildered and lost.
§ ii
They went down, all three, to the dining-room, and sat down at their
small table, accompanied by a great many glances from the other guests.
They never suspected how much they were gossiped about, how much
interest they aroused. It was the first time they had come to so small
and cheap a place for their summer holiday; heretofore they had stopped
at lively and agreeable resorts with others of their own comfortable
sort. But Gilbert had taken one of those unaccountable fancies to which
husbands are so prone. It may have been an obscure resentment at the
sight of the care-free and pampered existence of his women-folk, or one
of those sudden anxieties he often felt at the thought of the future.
However, from no matter what cause, he had suddenly required Claudine to
retrench and she had obeyed, with her usual profound and polite
indifference. Hence the “Pine View Villa,” in the Catskills, and two
small rooms without a bath.
Their attitude aroused resentment. Claudine had her own special tea,
which she made in a pot at the table, and they had extra milk and cream,
and various potted delicacies ordered from the city. The landlady took
this as a reflection upon her table and it was. And then they had made a
special arrangement whereby Andrée was to have the exclusive use of the
piano in the mornings, and on chilly or wet mornings, when some of the
ladies would have enjoyed sitting in the parlour and rocking and
chatting, they were not at all pleased by the vigorous rhythm of her
interminable exercises. She regarded them no more than so many chairs.
Edna was the most approachable, but she had a scrutinizing air, an
amused sort of interest outrageous in one so young. Altogether a
conceited, snobbish, intolerable family; that was the verdict.
“Take the tea and the anchovy paste, Andrée!” said Claudine. “And will
you bring them up to my room, please? I’d like to speak to you for a
moment. Edna’ll wait on the veranda for you.”
She closed the door of her room and sat down.
“Andrée, dear,” she said. “Was that another letter from Mr. MacGregor
this morning?”
“Yes, it was,” said Andrée, nonchalantly.
Claudine waited for a moment.
“I wish you’d show it to me!” she said, coaxingly.
“I’d _rather_ not, Mother, it’s private.”
“But Andrée, my dear, why should you have private letters from that man
which you can’t show your mother?”
She had adopted a very tranquil, reasonable tone, to conceal her own
distress and the advantage which it gave to Andrée. She was confronted
once more by the terrible _independence_ of her children, they all led
such busy, lively, entertaining lives in which there was no need at all
for her. They loved her, but they would have gone on in exactly the same
way if she were not with them. She was unessential, they needed nothing
from her. She had never been able to understand how it had happened.
When they were little, she was their universe, she consoled, protected,
she alone understood them. She had wished to give her life to them. And
then little by little they had got upon their feet and walked away,
leaving her still standing with empty arms in the nursery. She couldn’t
follow them; she didn’t know how to draw near to them, how to win them.
She was helpless, just as she was now helpless before Andrée. The very
sight of Andrée frightened her, the fragile and mysterious charm of her
beloved child wrung her heart, robbed her of worldly wisdom and common
sense. She could have knelt before Andrée and adored her, and wept for
the pity that touching youth and ignorance caused her.
“I have loved you every moment of your life, from your first breath!”
she might have cried. “There is no one in the world for me but you! I
love my other children, but oh, not like you! Not like you! I wanted to
give all my life to your service. I wanted to live for you, to wear
myself out to give you happiness. And you will not have me!”
She stole a glance at the child’s downcast face, mutinous, impatient.
“Andrée, my dear,” she said again. “Why should you have letters from
that man which you don’t wish me to see?”
For answer Andrée put her hand inside her blouse and drew out a crumpled
letter.
“Here!” she said. “Read it then, if you want!”
But it was impossible to do so, to pry into her poor little secret.
“I don’t want to read it, my darling. I only want to talk to you
about--”
To her great surprise Andrée began to cry.
“Oh, Mother!” she sobbed. “That’s just what I _knew_ you’d do! Talk it
over, and talk and talk, and spoil everything.... Why can’t you
understand? It’s nothing, just nothing at all, and you want to talk it
into something. Why can’t I be let alone? I’m so unhappy!”
“_Unhappy?_ Andrée, why? Tell me! Let me help you!”
“I don’t know why--except that I never have any peace or freedom. It’s
_disgusting_ to have to talk about every thought that comes into your
head.... How would you like it? How would you like to have to tell
exactly how you felt toward everyone and everything?”
Claudine turned away her head.
“I see how you feel,” she said. “It must be disgusting, as you say....
But you’re surely fair-minded enough to see that I must make every
possible effort to safeguard you. You are young and inexperienced.”
“When you were my age you were married and had a baby.”
Claudine smiled, one of her rare and enchanting smiles.
“That’s true. I had _you_.”
“So you see I’m not so very young. And as for experience ... well,
honestly, Mother, I don’t think you’ve had much.”
Claudine was startled. She who had suffered so much, been so cruelly
disappointed and mocked by life, who had learned so many, many bitter
lessons, to be reproached with lack of experience by this baby? She
smiled again, sadly.