XVI.
ANNE had decreed that they should return home; and they returned.
The day after the scene at Rio the girl had faltered out an apology, and the mother had received it with a silent kiss. After that neither had alluded to the subject of their midnight talk. Anne was as solicitous as ever for her mother’s comfort and enjoyment, but the daughter had vanished in the travelling companion. Sometimes, during those last weary weeks of travel, Kate Clephane wondered if any closer relation would ever be possible between them. But it was not often that she dared to look ahead. She felt like a traveller crawling along a narrow ledge above a precipice; a glance forward or down might plunge her into the depths.
As they drew near New York she recalled her other return there, less than a year before, and the reckless confidence with which she had entered on her new life. She recalled her first meeting with her daughter, her sense of an instant understanding on the part of each, and the way her own past had fallen from her at the girl’s embrace.
Now Anne seemed remoter than ever, and it was the mother’s past which had divided them. Sheshuddered at the fatuity with which she had listened to Enid Drover and Fred Landers when they assured her that she had won her daughter’s heart. “She’s taken a tremendous fancy to you—” Was it possible that that absurd phrase had ever satisfied her? But daughters, she said to herself, don’t take a fancy to their mothers! Mothers and daughters are part of each other’s consciousness, in different degrees and in a different way, but still with the mutual sense of something which has always been there. A real mother is just a habit of thought to her children.
Well—this mother must put up with what she had, and make the most of it. Yes; for Anne’s sake she must try to make the most of it, to grope her own way and the girl’s through this ghastly labyrinth without imperilling whatever affection Anne still felt for her. So a conscientious chaperon might have reasoned—and what more had Kate Clephane the right to call herself?
They reached New York early in October. None of the family were in town; even Fred Landers, uninformed of the exact date of their return, was off shooting with Horace Maclew in South Carolina. Anne had wanted their arrival to pass unperceived; she told her mother that they would remain in town for a day or two, and then decide where to spend the rest of the autumn. On the steamer they languidly discussed alternatives; but, from the girl’s inability to decide, the mother guessed that she was waitingfor something—probably a letter. “She’s written to him after all; she expects to find the answer when we arrive.”
They reached the house and went upstairs to their respective apartments. Everything in Anne’s establishment was as discreetly ordered as in a club; each lady found her correspondence in her sitting-room, and Kate Clephane, while she glanced indifferently over her own letters, sat with an anguished heart wondering what message awaited Anne.
They met at dinner, and she fancied the girl looked paler and more distant than usual. After dinner the two went to Kate’s sitting-room. Aline had already laid out some of the presents they had brought home: a Mexican turquoise ornament for Lilla, an exotic head-band of kingfishers’ feathers for Nollie, an old Spanish chronicle for Fred Landers. Mother and daughter turned them over with affected interest; then talk languished, and Anne rose and said goodnight.
On the threshold she paused. “Mother, I was odious to you that night at Rio.”
Kate started up with an impulsive gesture. “Oh, my darling, what does that matter? It was all forgotten long ago.”
“I haven’t forgotten it. I’m more and more ashamed of what I said. But I was dreadfully unhappy....”
“I know, dear, I know.”
The girl still stood by the door, clutching the knob in an unconscious hand. “I wanted to tell you that now I’m cured—quite cured.” Her smile was heart-breaking. “I didn’t follow your advice; I wrote to him. I told him—I pretended—that you were going to accept my plan of giving you back the money, and that I should have only a moderate allowance, so that he needn’t feel any inequality ... any sense of obligation....”
Kate listened with lowered head. “Perhaps you were right to write to him.”
“Yes, I was right,” Anne answered with a faint touch of self-derision. “For now I know. It was not the money; he has told me so. I’ve had a letter.”
“Ah—”
“I’m dismissed,” said the girl with an abrupt laugh.
“What do you mean, dear, when you say I was right?”
“I mean that there was another woman.” Anne came close to her, with the same white vehement face as she had shown during their nocturnal talk at Rio.
Kate’s heart stood still. “Another woman?”
“Yes. And you made me feel that you’d always suspected it.”
“No, dear ... really....”
“Youdidn’t?” She saw the terrible flame of hope rekindling in Anne’s eyes.
“Not—not about any one in particular. But of course, with a man ... a man like that....” (Should she go on, or should she stop?)
Anne was upon her with a cry. “Mother, what kind of a man?”
Fool that she was, not to have foreseen the consequences of such a slip! She sat before her daughter like a criminal under cross-examination, feeling that whatever word she chose would fatally lead her deeper into the slough of avowal.
Anne repeated her question with insistence. “You knew him before I did,” she added.
“Yes; but it’s so long ago.”
“But what makes you suspect him now?”
“Suspect? I suspect nothing!”
The girl stood looking at her fixedly under dark menacing brows. “I do, then! I wouldn’t allow myself to before; but all the while I knew there was another woman.” Between the sentences she drew short panting breaths, as though with every word speech grew more difficult. “Mother,” she broke out, “the day I went to Baltimore to see him the maid who opened the door didn’t want to let me in because there’d been a woman there two days before who’d made a scene. A scene—that’s what she said! Isn’t it horrible?” She burst into tears.
Kate Clephane sat stupefied. She could not yet grasp the significance of the words her daughter was pouring out, and repeated dully: “You went toBaltimore?” How secret Anne must be, she thought, not only to have concealed her visit at the time, but even to have refrained from any allusion to it during their stormy talk at Rio! How secret, since, even in moments of seeming self-abandonment, she could refrain from revealing whatever she chose to keep to herself! More acutely than ever, the mother had the sense of being at arm’s length from her child.
“Yes, I went to Baltimore,” said Anne, speaking now in a controlled incisive voice. “I didn’t tell you at the time because you were not well. It was just after you came back from Meridia, and had that nervous break-down—you remember? I didn’t want to bother you about my own affairs. But as soon as I got his letter saying the engagement was off I jumped into the first train, and went straight to Baltimore to see him.”
“And you did?” It slipped from Kate irresistibly.
“No. He was away; he’d left. But I didn’t believe it at the time; I thought the maid-servant had had orders not to let me in....” She paused. “Mother, it was too horrible; she took me for the woman who had made the scene. She said I looked just like her.”
Kate gasped: “The negress said so?”
Her question seemed to drop into the silence like a shout; it was as if she had let fall a platter of brass on a marble floor.
“The negress?” Anne echoed.
Kate Clephane sank down into the depths of her chair as if she had been withered by a touch. She pressed her elbows against her side to try to hide the trembling of her body.
“How did you know it was a negress, mother?”
Kate sat helpless, battling with confused possibilities of fear; and in that moment Anne leapt on the truth.
“It wasyou, mother—youwere the other woman? You went to see him the day you said you’d been to Meridia?” The girl stood before her now like a blanched Fury.
“Ididgo to Meridia!” Kate Clephane declared.
“You went to Baltimore too, then. You went to his house; you saw him. You were the woman who made the scene.” Anne’s voice had mounted to a cry; but suddenly she seemed to regain a sense of her surroundings. At the very moment when Kate Clephane felt the flash of the blade over her head it was arrested within a hair’s-breadth of her neck. Anne’s voice sank to a whisper.
“Mother—you did that? It was really you—it was your doing? You’ve always hated him, then? Hated him enough for that?”
Ah, that blessed word—hated! When the other had trembled in the very air! The mother, bowed there, her shrunken body drawn in on itself, felt a faint expanding of the heart.
“No, dear; no; not hate,” she stammered.
“But itwasyou?” She suddenly understood that, all the while, Anne had not really believed it. But the moment for pretense was past.
“I did go to see him; yes.”
“To persuade him to break our engagement?”
“Anne—”
“Answer me, please.”
“To ask him—to try to make him see....”
The girl interrupted her with a laugh. “You made him break our engagement—you did it. And all this time—all these dreadful months—you let me think it was because he was tired of me!” She sprang to her mother and caught her by the wrists. Her hot fingers seemed to burn into Kate’s shivering flesh.
“Look at me, please, mother; no, straight in the eyes. I want to try to find out which of us you hated most; which of us you most wanted to see suffer.”
The mother disengaged herself and stood up. “As for suffering—if you look at me, you’ll see I’ve had my share.”
The girl seemed not to hear. “But why—why—why?” she wailed.
A reaction of self-defence came over Kate Clephane. Anne’s white-heat of ire seemed to turn her cold, and her self-possession returned.
“What is it you want me to tell you? I did go to see Major Fenno—yes. I wanted to speak to him privately; to ask him to reconsider his decision. I didn’t believe he could make you happy. He cameround to my way of thinking. That’s all. Any mother would have done as much. I had the right—”
“The right?” Anne shrilled. “What right? You gave up all your rights over me when you left my father for another man!”
Mrs. Clephane rose with uncertain steps, and moved toward the door of her bedroom. On the threshold she paused and turned toward her daughter. Strength had come back to her with the thought that after all the only thing that mattered was to prevent this marriage. And that she might still do.
“The right of a friend, then, Anne. Won’t you even allow me that? You’ve treated me as a friend since you asked me to come back. You’ve trusted me, or seemed to. Trust me now. I did what I did because I knew you ought not to marry Major Fenno. I’ve known him for a great many years. I knew he couldn’t make you happy—make any woman happy. Some men are not meant to marry; he’s one of them. I know enough of his history to know that. And you see he recognized that I was right—”
Anne was still staring at her with the same fixed implacable brows. Then her face broke up into the furrows of young anguish, and she became again a helpless grief-tossed girl, battling blindly with her first sorrow. She flung up her arms, buried her head in them, and sank down by the sofa. Kate watched her for a moment, hesitating; then she stole up andlaid an arm about the bowed neck. But Anne shook her off and sprang up.
“No—no—no!” she cried. They stood facing each other, as on that other cruel night.
“You don’t know me; you don’t understand me. What right have you to interfere with my happiness? Won’t you please say nothing more now? It was my own fault to imagine that we could ever live together like mother and daughter. A relation like that can’t be improvised in a day.” She flung a tragic look at her mother. “If you’ve suffered, I suppose it was my fault for asking you to make the experiment. Excuse me if I’ve said anything to hurt you. But you must leave me to manage my life in my own way.” She turned toward the door.
“Goodnight—my child,” Kate whispered.