XX.
HE must have been very sure of her not acting on his final challenge, or he would not have dared to make it. That was the continuous refrain of Kate Clephane’s thoughts as the train carried her down to Long Island the next morning.
“He’s convinced I shall never tell her; but what if I do?” The thought sustained her through the long sleepless night, and gave her the strength and clearness of mind to decide that she must at once see Anne, however little her daughter might desire the meeting. After all, she still had that weapon in her depleted armoury: she could reveal the truth.
At the station she found one of the Drover motors, and remembered with a start that it was a Saturday, and that she would probably come upon a large house-party at her sister-in-law’s. But to her relief she learned that the motor had only brought a departing visitor to the up-train. She asked to be driven back in it, and in a few moments was rolling between the wrought-iron gates and down the long drive to the house. The front door stood open, and she went into the hall. The longoak tables were so laden with golf-sticks, tennis racquets and homespun garments that she saw she had been right in guessing she would encounter a houseful. But it was too late to turn back; and besides, what did the other people matter? They might, if they were numerous enough, make it easier for her to isolate herself with Anne.
The hall seemed empty; but as she advanced she saw a woman’s figure lazily outstretched in a deep armchair before the fire. Lilla Maclew rose from the chair to greet her.
“Hallo—Aunt Kate?” Mrs. Clephane caught the embarrassment in her niece’s rich careless voice, and guessed that the family had already been made aware of the situation existing between Anne and Anne’s mother, and probably, therefore, of the girl’s engagement. But Lilla Maclew was even more easy, self-confident and indifferent than Lilla Gates had been. The bolder dash of peroxyde on her hair, and the glint of jewels on her dusky skin, made her look like a tall bronze statue with traces of gilding on it.
“Hallo,” she repeated, rather blankly; “have you come to lunch?”
“I’ve come to see Anne,” Anne’s mother answered.
Lilla’s constraint visibly increased, and with it her sullen reluctance to make any unnecessary effort. One hadn’t married money, her tone proclaimed,to be loaded up like this with family bothers.
“Anne’s out. She’s gone off with Nollie to a tennis match or something. I’m just down; we played bridge till nearly daylight, and I haven’t seen anybody this morning. I suppose mother must be somewhere about.”
She glanced irritably around her, as if her look ought to have been potent enough to summon her mother to the spot; and apparently it was, for a door opened, and Mrs. Drover appeared.
“Kate! I didn’t know you were here! How did you come?” Her hostess’s mild countenance betrayed the same embarrassment as Lilla’s, and under it Mrs. Clephane detected the same aggrieved surprise. Having at last settled her own daughter’s difficulties, Mrs. Drover’s eyes seemed to ask, why should she so soon be called upon to deal with another family disturbance? Even juries, after a protracted trial, are excused from service for seven years; yet here she was being drawn into the thick of a new quarrel when the old one was barely composed.
“Anne’s out,” she added, offering a cool pink cheek to her sister-in-law.
“May I wait, then? I came to see her,” Kate said timidly.
“Of course, my dear! You must stay to lunch.” Mrs. Drover’s naturally ceremonious manner becamestiff with apprehension. “You look tired, you know; this continuous travelling must be very exhausting. And the food!... Yes; Anne ought to be back for lunch. She and Nollie went off to the Glenvers’ to see the tennis finals; didn’t they, Lilla? Of course I can’tpromisethey’ll be back ... but you must stay....” She rang and gave orders that another seat should be put at table. “We’re rather a large party; you won’t mind? The men are off at a polo practice at Hempstead. Dawson, how many shall we be for lunch?” she asked the butler. Under her breath she added: “Yes; champagne.” If we ever need it, she concluded in a parenthetic glance, it will be today!
The hall was already filling up with a jocund bustle of Drovers and Tresseltons. Young, middle-aged and elderly, they poured out of successive motors, all ruddy, prosperous, clamouring for food. Hardly distinguishable from the family were the week-end friends returning with them from one sportive spectacle or another. As Kate Clephane stood among them, going through the mechanical gestures of greeting and small-talk, she felt so tenuous and spectral that she almost wondered how she could be visible to their hearty senses. They were all glad to see her, all a little surprised at her being there, and all soon forgetful of their own surprise in discussing the more important questions of polo, tennis and lunch. Once more she had theimpression of being hurried with them down a huge sliding stairway that perpetually revolved upon itself, and once more she recalled her difficulty in telling one of them from another, and in deciding whether it was the Tresseltons or the Drovers who had the smallest noses.
“But Anne—where’s Anne?” Hendrik Drover enquired, steering the tide of arrivals toward the shining stretch of a long luncheon-table. He put Mrs. Clephane at his left, and added, as he settled her in her seat: “Anne and Nollie went off early to the Glenver finals. But Joe was there too—weren’t you, Joe?”
He did not wait for Joe Tresselton’s answer, but addressed himself hurriedly to the lady on his right. Kate had the feeling that they all thought she had committed an error of taste in appearing among them at that particular moment, but that it was no business of theirs, after all, and they must act in concert in affecting that nothing could be more natural. The Drovers and Tresseltons were great at acting in concert, and at pretending that whatever happened was natural, usual, and not of a character to interfere with one’s lunch. When a member of the tribe was ill, the best doctors and most expensive nurses were summoned, but the illness was spoken of as a trifling indisposition; when misfortune befell any one of them, it was not spoken of at all. Taking Lilla for granted had brought this artto the highest point of perfection, and her capture of Horace Maclew had fully confirmed its usefulness.
All this flashed through Kate Clephane while she refused the champagne ordered on her behalf, and pretended to eat Maryland chicken and cornsoufflé; but under the surface-rattle of her thoughts a watchful spirit brooded haggardly on the strangeness and unreality of the scene. She had come, in agony of soul, to seek her daughter, to have speech with her at all costs; and the daughter was away watching a tennis match, and no one seemed surprised or concerned. Life, even Anne’s life, was going on in its usual easy way. The girl had found her betrothed again, and been reunited to him; what would it matter to her, or to her approving family, if the intruder who for a few months had gone through the pretence of being one of them, and whose delusion they had good-naturedly abetted, should vanish again from the group? As she looked at them all, so obtuse and so powerful, so sure of themselves and each other, her own claim to belong to them became incredible even to herself. She had made her choice long ago, and she had not chosen them; and now their friendly indifference made the fact clear.
Well—perhaps it also made her own course clearer. She was as much divided from them already as death could divide her. Why not die,then—die altogether? She would tell Anne the truth, and then go away and never see her again; and that would be death....
“Ah, here they are!” Hendrik Drover called out genially. Lunch was over; the guests, scattered about in the hall and billiard-room, were lighting their cigarettes over coffee and liqueurs. Mrs. Clephane, who had drifted out with the rest, and mechanically taken her cup of coffee as the tray passed her, lifted her head and saw Anne and Nollie Tresselton. Anne entered first. She paused to take off her motor coat, glanced indifferently about her, and said to Mrs. Drover: “You didn’t wait for us, Aunt Enid? We were so late that we stopped to lunch at Madge’s—.” Then she saw her mother and her pale cheek whitened.
Mrs. Clephane’s eyes filled, and she stood motionless. Everything about her was so blurred and wavering that she dared not stir, or even attempt to set down her cup.
“Mother!” the girl exclaimed. With a quick movement she made her way through the cluster of welcoming people, and went up with outstretched arms to Mrs. Clephane.
For a moment the two held each other; then Mrs. Drover, beaming up to them, said benevolently: “Your mother must be awfully tired, Anne. Do carry her off to your own quarters for a quiet talk—” and dazed, trembling, half-fearing she wasin a dream from which the waking would be worse than death, Mrs. Clephane found herself mounting the stairs with her daughter.
On the first landing she regained her senses, said to herself: “She thinks I’ve come to take back what I said,” and tried to stiffen her soul against this new form of anguish. Anne moved silently at her side. After the first cry and the first kiss she had drawn back into herself, perhaps obscurely conscious of some inward resistance in her mother. But when the bedroom door had closed on them she drew Mrs. Clephane down into an armchair, dropped on her knees beside it, and whispered: “Mother—how could you and I ever give each other up?”
The words sounded like an echo of the dear unuttered things the mother had heard said to herself long ago, in her endless dialogues with an invisible Anne. No tears rose to her eyes, but their flood seemed to fill her thirsty breast. She drew Anne’s head against it. “Anne ... little Anne....” Her fingers crept through the warm crinklings of hair, wound about the turn of the temples, and slipped down the cheeks. She shut her eyes, softly saying over her daughter’s name.
Anne was the first to speak. “I’ve been so unhappy. I wanted you so to come.”
“Darling, you were sure I would?”
“How could I tell? You seemed so angry.”
“With you? Never, child!”
There was a slight pause; then, raising herself, the girl slipped her arms about her mother’s neck.
“Nor with him, any longer?”
The chill of reality smote through Mrs. Clephane’s happy trance. She felt herself turning again into the desolate stranger who had stood below watching for Anne’s return.
“Mother—you see, I want you both,” she heard the girl entreating; and “Now!” the inward voice admonished her.
Now indeed was the time to speak; to make an end. It was clear that no compromise would be of any use. Anne had obviously imagined that her mother had come to forgive and be forgiven, and that Chris was to be included in the general amnesty. On no other terms would any amnesty be accepted. Through the girl’s endearments Kate felt, as never before, the steely muscles of her resolution.
Anne pressed her closer. “Can’t we agree, mother, that I must take my chance—and that, if the risks are as great as you think, you’ll be there to help me? After all, we’ve all got to buy our own experience, haven’t we? And perhaps the point of view about ... about early mistakes ... is more indulgent now than in your time. But I don’t want to discuss that,” the girl hurried on. “Can’t we agree not to discuss anything—not evenChris—and just be the perfect friends we were before? You’d say yes if you knew the difference it has made, this last year, to have you back!” She lifted her face close to Mrs. Clephane’s to add, with a half-whimsical smile: “Mothers oughtn’t ever to leave their daughters.”
Kate Clephane sat motionless in that persuasive hold. It did not seem to her, at the moment, as if she and her child were two, but as if her whole self had passed into the young body pressed pleadingly against her.
“How can I leave her—how can I ever leave her?” was her only thought.
“You see,” the cajoling voice went on, “when I asked you to come back and live with me, though Ididwant you to, most awfully, I wasn’t as sure ... well, as sure as Uncle Fred was ... that the experiment would be a success—a perfect success. My life had been rather lonely, but it had been very independent too, in spite of Granny, and I didn’t know how well I should behave to my new mother, or whether she’d like me, or whether we’d be happy together. And then you came, and the very first day I forgot all my doubts—didn’tyou?”
Kate Clephane assented: “The very first day.”
“And every day afterward, as I saw how right Uncle Fred had been, and how perfectly he’d remembered what you were, and what you would have been to me if we hadn’t been separated whenI was a baby, I was more and more grateful to you for coming, and more and more anxious to make you forget that we hadn’t always been together.”
“You did make me forget it—”
“And then, suddenly, the great gulf opened again, and there I was on one side of it, and you on the other, just as it was in all those dreary years when I was without you; and it seemed as if it was you who had chosen again that we should be divided, and in my unhappiness I said dreadful things.... I know I did....”
Kate felt as if it were her own sobs that were shaking her daughter’s body. She held her fast, saying over and over, as a mother would to a child that has fallen and hurt itself: “There, there ... don’t cry.” She no longer knew what she herself was feeling. All her consciousness had passed into Anne. This young anguish, which is the hardest of all to bear, must be allayed: she was ready to utter any words that should lift that broken head from her breast.
“My Anne—how could I ever leave you?” she whispered. And as she spoke she felt herself instantly caught in the tight net of her renunciation. If she did not tell Anne now she would never tell her—and it was exactly on this that Chris had counted. He had known that she would never speak.