you’ve never--” Andrée flushed and hesitated. “You’ve never had any
romance. Nothing but just Father, and he’s not very thrilling.”
“My dear!”
“_Please_ don’t be shocked! It makes it so hard to talk to you. It’s no
use my pretending that I want a life like yours or that I’d marry a man
like Father. I wouldn’t for _anything_!”
“Andrée, I really--”
Andrée shook her head. She alone of the three had never been drawn to
her father, had never been influenced by him.
“No,” she said. “It’s no use talking. I want something _very_ different.
I don’t want any stuffy family life. I’d like to go away, by myself--”
“Andrée! Think what you’re saying! How can you be so cruel? What should
I do without you?”
“You’ve got Bertie and Edna. And you’re settled down and all that sort
of thing. You have lots of things to interest you, but I haven’t
anything. That’s why--” Once more she stopped, her cheeks scarlet.
“That’s why I like to hear from--Mr. MacGregor. He encourages me. He
says there’s no reason why I shouldn’t make a name for myself, giving
concerts. _He_--well, I know he exaggerates, but he says I’m a--a--sort
of--wonder.”
“Is he urging you to leave your parents?”
“Heavens, _no_! He just encourages me. He says to keep on practising and
practising. And when I get back he’s going to give me a lot of extra
time.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks I’m--promising.”
“Andrée, isn’t there anything more personal beneath this interest?”
“I don’t know,” said Andrée, curtly. “I don’t want to know.”
Claudine was still for a moment, thinking with supreme displeasure of
that man, that music teacher, who had by flattery, by chicanery, won her
child’s interest. It must be stopped! Should she ridicule him, point out
to Andrée that Mr. MacGregor was as old as her father, and a man of no
distinction, either mental or physical, a shaggy, lumbering, grey-haired
creature only too well used to the silly admiration of young girl
pupils? No, ridicule was not a weapon Claudine could handle. She thought
for a moment of appealing to her affection, but that too she rejected.
She _dared_ not....
“Andrée,” she said at last, very gravely. “I am going to ask you to
promise me something. If Mr. MacGregor--if this thing--”
“I know what you mean. You mean you want me to promise to tell you if
anything happens.”
“Yes.”
“But don’t you see that that isn’t a fair promise?”
Claudine was startled.
“Surely your mother has the right--”
“Oh, yes, you have all sorts of rights!” said Andrée, bitterly. “And I
haven’t any. But if I were you--if ever I have a daughter--I’ll never,
never ask her to promise to tell me things. I wouldn’t want to know them
if she didn’t _want_ to tell them.”
Claudine approached and put her arm about the unwilling girl.
“Very well!” she said, with a sigh. “I will leave you free to do as you
please about telling me.”
Then Andrée bent down and kissed her.
“You _are_ a darling!” she cried. “Now I’ll rush to Edna!”
CHAPTER TWO
THE FORSAKEN PROVIDER
§ i
“One of Gilbert’s bad mornings!” thought Miss Dorothy.
And she slipped into her place behind the coffee urn, a little more
ingratiating, a little more careful not to disturb him, than usual. He
sat at the head of the table, glowering behind his newspaper, and by the
very sound of the grunt with which he answered the cousinly
good-morning, she was warned of what might be expected. She sat very
still, in order not to attract the lightning.
He ate his grape-fruit, quite reasonably, and a little dish of oatmeal,
and then Delia brought in the eggs and bacon. He glanced at the plate
suspiciously.
“Are these Murray’s eggs?” he demanded.
Miss Dorothy sent the girl a warning glance.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When did they come?”
“ ... Yesterday, sir.”
“Let me see the box!”
“It was thrown away, sir.”
His face became alarming.
“Dorothy!” he said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe these are
Murray’s eggs!”
He leaned across the table and sniffed at the dish.
“No!” he shouted. “They are _not_! I know it!”
He flung down his napkin and pushed back his chair. He had for a few
weeks past been importing eggs for his special use from a fellow he knew
in the country, and he knew that he was being duped, that these immoral
women, Miss Dorothy and Delia, used _his_ eggs for other purposes, for
the household, for puddings, perhaps even ate them themselves. His
appetite was extremely delicate at breakfast, no one could quite
comprehend how he felt, especially the morning after a banquet. Suddenly
his anger turned into a frightful gloom.
“Take them away!” he said, with a sigh. “Take the damned things away and
never bring me eggs again. Never!... Good Lord! I can’t trust _anyone_!”
Miss Dorothy flushed, and smiled nervously.
“Would you like ... a slice of ham, Gilbert?” she ventured.
“Nothing!... More coffee!”
He had put down his paper, and she was in the full glare of his bilious
and lowering regard. He picked the thing up again, not to read it, for
he had finished all that interested him, but as a screen to conceal from
him this scene which he so hated to contemplate, from that dining-room
where he had eaten so many hundreds of breakfasts. Claudine hadn’t
really changed it, or anything else. By the time the old lady had
departed this life, Claudine had no more ideas, no more desire to make
changes. The huge sideboard opposite him was crowded with cut glass,
silver, hand-painted china, wedding presents, Christmas presents,
birthday and anniversary presents, milestones along the road of twenty
years of married life. All very neat, comfortable and prosperous, and
yet it offended him. He couldn’t really find fault with this home or
this atmosphere, couldn’t well imagine anything much better. If he had
been compelled to furnish a dining-room according to his own taste, he
would have produced something very similar. He had even a sort of pride
in the old furniture and the curtains and the presents. And yet it hurt
and angered him so.
He looked up stealthily and saw Miss Dorothy, with such a pleased face,
just about to begin her grape-fruit.
The face of a fool he called it to himself, a half complacent, half
terrified countenance, a sallow, soul-wearying creature in gold
eyeglasses, who existed through his benefactions, one of the thankless
crew he laboured unendingly to feed and clothe.
And not one of them made the least effort to comprehend him. He was a
man, and therefore to be humoured; he was a man and therefore to be
conciliated. Like so many sun-worshippers did they all bow down before
the inscrutable source of all comforts, all security, supplicating him
to continue shedding his golden rays. Not from humility, you understand,
or because they had the least admiration for his productivity, but
because only in this way could they obtain what they wished. It was
really a worship, with rites and sacrifices, and splendid rewards to be
got if you understood how to go about it. Claudine and his two daughters
and even the unfortunate Miss Dorothy had all a dearly bought knowledge
of what topics would infuriate him, knew his good hours and his bad
ones, could read the warning symptoms of his more deadly moods. They
knew what he liked to eat and what he liked to hear. And nothing else.
His queer, gloomy soul remained mysterious and solitary. In an alien
world he groped for light, he existed like a sensitive child among
impervious and indifferent adults. Even his children seemed to him
possessed of worldly knowledge impossible to him; they were aware of
things, they discussed things, of which he was ignorant. They were
somehow freer and brighter.
To be considered cross when the spirit was writhing, crying for help
...! He was passionately convinced that his malign fate had driven him
into an utterly wrong life and that somewhere else there was an utterly
right life, beautiful and satisfying, which he ought to have been
enjoying. He had no idea of making adjustments, or of trying to modify
his environment; he wanted, most naïvely, to step into another world.
What it was he so thirsted for, he didn’t exactly know. It was not
peace, or love, or fame, or money, or any of those things a man might
legitimately demand from his destiny. He knew only that his daily bread
was ashes in his mouth, that his soul found no nourishment, and pined
and sickened, that it lived in a universe everywhere insipid and
meaningless. And that with all his heart he resented this fate, above
all, this marriage of his. Because it was his conviction, that he, as
well as every other man on earth, was entitled to an ideal marriage, and
a more or less ardent and beautiful wife. The men who got rather less
than this had been cheated, defrauded of what he called “the greatest
thing in life.” It never occurred to him that he was disappointed
because he expected too much, he believed himself disappointed because
he had received too little.
He never thought of Claudine without a savage resentment. She had
swindled him. She was to have brought light, gaiety, charm, into his
life, to have transformed it into something resembling her old Staten
Island existence, she was to have been perpetually alluring, fairylike,
sparkling. And she had failed in all of this. She was nothing more than
a decorous and virtuous wife, and she regarded him with something
criminally like aversion. She was cold. And he believed, like more than
one other man--that her coldness was a fault in her own temperament, and
not due to any lack of fascination in himself. It was certainly not a
happy marriage. He had grounds for believing that she thought herself a
martyr, and he _knew_ that he was one.
§ ii
Some occult sense warned him of the time. He glanced up at the clock on
the mantelpiece, and caught sight of his own face in the mirror behind
it. And he wondered, as he always did when he really, consciously
regarded himself, _how_ it was he looked like _that_, how it was
possible that his appearance should so little express himself. It was
another cause for resentment.
A heavy, grizzled man of forty-five with a straggling little mustache
over a brutally obstinate month. He had a surly way about him, but he
was not unattractive; on the contrary, there was something about the
gloomy and bilious gaze of his black eyes that engendered pity and
good-will.
But neither pity nor good-will dwelt in Miss Dorothy at that particular
instant. She was not resentful, because resentment didn’t belong in her
stock of feelings, but she was _miserable_. He was upsetting all her
neat little plans for the day, he was keeping back Delia. He was so
late, why on earth didn’t he get up and be off to his office, where he
belonged? Every moment of these days was so precious to her, when she
was sole and undisputed mistress in this house which she had always
regarded with awe. She could wish that the summer would last forever,
and Claudine and the children never return. Think of the joy of going to
market in the electric coupé! Think of the charm of eating her lunch
alone, benevolent chatelaine of all this domain!
At last, with his terribly rough gesture, he shoved away the plates
before him, so that they upset a milk jug, pushed back his chair in a
way that made furrows in the carpet, and got up. He went heavily
upstairs and took his straw hat from the gigantic hat-rack. He frowned,
there was something he didn’t like about that dark hall, with the rug
removed for the summer. There were certain changes from his mother’s
day, the glass top of the front door was covered with shirred green
silk, and over the open door of the front parlour hung a portière of
bamboo tubes strung together with green and blue glass beads, hung there
fifteen summers ago. On the shelf of the hat-rack was a little rubber
plant in a horrible green scalloped bowl, and a clumsy bronze statue of
a fat shepherd boy, holding out an altogether incongruous little tray
for visiting cards, a wedding anniversary present from his senior
partner. Each of these objects _per se_ he regarded with more or less
admiration, but the ensemble disgusted him. He felt that there was
something wrong here, and that it was of course his wife’s fault. He
execrated her in silence.
He set off down the tranquil street, blazing in the July sun, removing
his hat now and then to salute a familiar face. He knew so many people
in the neighbourhood, through having lived there all his life, but they
were not his friends, these people. They respected him as a man who paid
his bills promptly and provided well for his family, but they didn’t
like him, had no warm feeling for him. He was too gloomy, too
preoccupied. He had an air of misery about him which was distressing to
a hostess. Claudine was obliged to confess, and to apologize for his
reluctance to make visits. She said he was such a man’s man! He was only
happy among his business associates. But what she didn’t know, what
nobody suspected, was the positive hatred concealed beneath his
_farouche_ manner for all these respectable people. He despised them and
loathed them, and was mortally sick of them, and worst of all, he
couldn’t feel justified in such feelings. Theoretically they were what
he admired, and he couldn’t see in what way he differed from them, and,
yet he knew that he _did_. This feeling, like all his other feelings, he
kept gloomily to himself.
He jumped on a crowded car going across the bridge, very hot, very angry
at being jostled, and was carried off to New York, to make more
money....
§ iii
Not only at home were his moods known and respected, at his office it
was a recognized thing that the early morning was a bad time for him,
and that it was most unwise to disturb him. As usual he strode through
the outer office and shut himself into his own small room, without
exchanging a word or even a nod. He looked through his mail which had
been opened and neatly sorted for him, then pushed it aside, staring
after it with a distrait and wretched look. He couldn’t put his mind on
it, he hated every detail, every possibility.
“Why the devil am I slaving away here?” he asked himself. “Working day
in and day out, so that she can go flaunting in fine clothes and idling
away the whole summer up there in the mountains.”
He remembered the extensive wardrobe Claudine had taken with her. Never
did she suspect, never could she have suspected, how he resented it. The
primeval male in him would deny all luxuries to the unloved woman.
“_She!_ In her silk dresses--loafing all day long--servants to wait on
her, _never_ does a useful thing! Good God! Think of the time and
leisure she’s got, and she doesn’t even read the papers! Not even
charitable! Useless, through and through.... Where would she be if it
weren’t for me? She’s got everything she wants, without raising a finger
for it. Food, clothes, jewels, money to spend, fool women to jabber
with--”
It seemed to him quite intolerable to think of her privileges; he
couldn’t have endured it at all if he hadn’t had a certain very curious
consolation for his grievances. His delight was to picture his wife as
cast away upon a desert island, and he gloated over her utter futility
there. He could imagine how helpless she would be, how incongruous, she
with her fastidiousness, her chilly dignity. _She_ wouldn’t be able to
make herself dresses out of grass, sewing with a thorn for a needle. She
wouldn’t know how, and couldn’t learn how, to grind flour from exotic
roots, to tame birds, to construct houses. Incurably romantic Gilbert!
That was his test for any woman; how she would look and behave on his
classic desert isle. She must be lovely, strong, and young, and she must
be altogether daring and brave and unwifelike, she must be resourceful
and full of alluring wiles, she must urgently _need_ him, and yet be
entirely independent.
He glanced at the clock, took up his hat, and went out to a celebrated
café near by, had two whiskies and soda, and immediately felt much
better. He would confess to you that he was rather too dependent upon
“bracers,” but like all that army, he was merely waiting for a
propitious day to renounce the thing entirely. Some day when he wasn’t
worried or depressed. No hurry about it; it didn’t interfere with his
business, and it helped him beyond measure through his fits of awful
despondency. He was willing to admit that perhaps his health might be
better if he drank less, but he couldn’t become really interested in his
health.
He chatted with the other ten o’clock frequenters of the bar, whom he
knew very well, for they came with great regularity. He felt ready for
business now; he went back--in fact, he now entered the office
officially for the first time, in his proper character, nodded genially
to the cashier and to his stenographer, an ambitious young Cuban, and
began to pace up and down the big sample room, planning his autumn
campaign and reviewing his “line.” A very fine line this year; he looked
upon it with satisfaction as it lay spread out before him on a big
counter sloping steeply on both sides and divided into little
compartments filled with red rubber cows and white rubber horses, big,
brightly colored balls and tiny hard rubber ones, dolls in knitted
dresses, rattles, teething rings. There were among these several
novelties which he considered very promising....
“A gentleman to see you!” said the young Cuban, with his alert and
zealous air.
“Who?”
“Mr. MacGregor.”
“Don’t know him. Where’s he from?”
“Didn’t say,” replied the young Cuban, with a creditable imitation of
his chief’s brusque business-like tone.
“Bring him in!” said Gilbert.
He stood facing the door with a non-committal expression which would be
either menacing or genial, as circumstances might dictate. But the man
who entered was a type not familiar to him; he couldn’t place him; a
big, shambling, rugged man of forty or so, a bit uncouth in appearance,
but not without distinction. His face was ironic, but his smile was
genial.
“Mr. Vincelle?” he asked.
“What can I do for you, sir?” inquired Gilbert, briefly.
“My name is Alexander MacGregor,” said he. “I have had the pleasure of
instructing your elder daughter in music.”
Oh, a music teacher! Probably about a bill, or those outrageous “extra
lessons” which his children were forever in need of.
“Sit down, sir, sit down!” said Gilbert.
Mr. MacGregor did so.
“I hope I don’t find you very busy!” he said. “This is quite a personal
matter....”
“Cigar?” asked Gilbert.
Mr. MacGregor accepted one.
“It’s about Miss Andrée,” he said. “I understand that you’re going out
there this afternoon, and I thought--”
They talked for more than an hour, and Gilbert was captivated. He liked
this fellow! He liked his cool, manly air, his practical outlook. Mr.
MacGregor began his proposal by stating his financial position, which
was sound and satisfactory. He put forward his own good points with
assurance and he affirmed that his age was an asset.
“Andrée is very temperamental,” he said, “and hard to understand. A
young, inexperienced man wouldn’t be able to. She requires the greatest
tact. A rare, peculiar nature. Only men of our age can appreciate it.”
Well, thought Gilbert, after all, why not? Wouldn’t he himself be a
marvelous lover for a young girl, if she were the right sort of young
girl? There was a sort of indirect flattery in Mr. MacGregor’s idea.
Moreover, he found Andrée an intensely irritating young woman, and he
would be glad to see her safely married and gone away. She was a sort of
ally to her mother. She was antagonistic; she didn’t admire him; she
wasn’t the sort of daughter he had expected.
And he was delighted with Mr. MacGregor’s old fashioned idea of asking
his permission before speaking to Andrée. It was really the first time
he had ever been treated as a father should be treated. He took Mr.
MacGregor out to lunch, to a sedate little second floor restaurant known
only to connoisseurs. They ate largely and critically....
By two o’clock indigestion had engulfed Gilbert in black misery. He
lingered at the table, chewing a cigar, and meditating. It was Saturday;
the office was closed; he had nothing to do until train time. He ordered
more liqueurs, more coffee, and refused to be parted from Mr. MacGregor,
clung to him, in fact.
Of course, he said, it all depended upon Andrée herself. Of course it
did, Mr. MacGregor agreed.
“See here!” said Gilbert. “Come out there with me, and we’ll see. You’ll
have plenty of time to pack what you need for over Sunday. Come on!”
Naturally Mr. MacGregor went.
CHAPTER THREE
THE SUITOR WITH CREDENTIALS
§ i
It was a filial duty, as well as a wifely duty, to meet Gilbert’s train.
He wished them all to do so, he liked to see these three charmingly
dressed, feminine creatures all looking for and expecting him. But he
never showed this; he always wore the distracted and annoyed expression
of a tremendously busy man snatching a little time for his family.
He got off the train in his rather clumsy way, and they started toward
him, when the sight of Mr. MacGregor following him, bag in hand, changed
their politely eager smiles to looks of consternation.
Gilbert kissed them all perfunctorily, and then brought forward his
companion.
“I’ve brought Mr. MacGregor down with me,” he announced. “I hope the
place isn’t crowded.”
“It isn’t,” said Andrée. “I don’t see why it should be. I don’t see
anything to bring crowds of people here, I’m sure.”
“Hush, Andrée!” murmured her mother, and bestowed a gracious and
expressionless smile upon the visitor. “I’m sure there’ll be a room for
Mr. MacGregor. Hadn’t we better get into the bus now? It’s waiting, you
know!”
All the way to the hotel she was quite perfect; she told Mr. MacGregor
about Andrée’s difficulties in practising, she was gay, in a formal,
stereotyped way; when they arrived she arranged with the landlady for a
room, even went about, picking him out a nice one. Then they all sat on
the veranda for an hour or so, in the terrific heat, looking out over
the sun-scorched lawn and the dusty road, and the motionless fir trees,
and talked more. It was not an altogether successful conversation;
Andrée was perverse and wilfully tactless, Edna was frankly indifferent,
and Gilbert very garrulous. He wished to talk about the wholesale rubber
business, and he did.
Then it was time to dress for dinner and they all went upstairs. The
door into the girls’ room was locked, and Gilbert sat down, prepared for
a more confidential talk, and an accounting of Claudine’s expenditure.
But she attacked him at once, with a fiercely restrained wrath.
“Gilbert, what made you bring that man here?”
“Who? You mean Mr. MacGregor? I wanted to!” he answered, defiantly.
“It was a stupid, meddlesome thing to do!” she cried.
“See here, Claudine--!”
“You don’t realize the trouble it may cause.... Why didn’t you consult
me?”
He laughed unpleasantly.
“I don’t think I’ll start that now, after twenty years--”
“You’ve no right to bring any man, where the girls are, without
consulting me.... I particularly didn’t want this man.”
“Why?”
“I don’t care to explain.”
“It’s no use your being so high-handed with me. I’ll bring anyone I see
fit. I consider my judgment--”
“Then I shall take Andrée away.”
“Going to leave me? I’ve heard that before!”
She was quite white with anger.
“When it’s a question of _Andrée_--” she began.
“There it is again--your cursed, unfair, unwomanly favouritism. What’s
the matter with MacGregor? Not good enough for your princess?”
“Then he’s spoken to you!” she cried, in horror.
“Yes, he has, and very decently, too. I don’t see how she could do much
better, if you ask me.”
“Gilbert! Are you mad? That old man--old enough to be her father!”
This touched a sore spot.
“Even that isn’t so very ancient,” he said, with infantile resentment.
“No one but you would call a man of his age old. He’s a fine fellow. He
has a good name, and he’s well fixed, and he’s very fond of Andrée--”
“You’re--you’re positively wicked!” she cried, choking with sobs.
“Andrée--that wonderful, beautiful child--and that silly old man ...!
I’m ashamed of you! I’m disgusted with you!”
He was astonished and somewhat alarmed. How was he to explain to this
unreasonably violent woman his pretty fancies about young brides and
adoring, distinguished, grey-haired husbands?