XXIV.
SHE turned away from the Rectory and walked aimlessly up Madison Avenue. It was a warm summer-coloured October day. At Fifty-ninth Street she turned into the Park and wandered on over the yellowing leaf-drifts of the ramble. In just such a state of blind bewilderment she had followed those paths on the day when she had first caught sight of Chris Fenno and Lilla Gates in the twilight ahead of her. That was less than a year ago, and she looked back with amazement at the effect which that chance encounter had had on her. She seemed hardly to be suffering more now than she had suffered then. It had seemed unbearable, impossible, at the moment, that Chris Fenno should enter, even so episodically, so remotely, into her new life; and here he was, ensconced in its very centre, in complete possession of it.
She tried to think the situation out; but, as always, her trembling thoughts recoiled, just as she had seen Dr. Arklow’s recoil.
Every one to whom she had tried to communicate her secret without betraying it had had the same instantaneous revulsion. “Not that—don’t tell me that!” their averted eyes, their shrinkingvoices seemed to say. It was too horrible for any ears.
How then was she to obey Dr. Arklow’s bidding and impart the secret to Anne? He had said it as positively as if he were handing down a commandment from Sinai: “The daughter must be told.”
How easy to lay down abstract rules for other people’s guidance: “The daughter” was just an imaginary person—a convenient conversational pawn. But Kate Clephane’s daughter—her own Anne! She closed her eyes and tried to face the look in Anne’s as the truth dawned on her.
“You—you, mother? The mother I’ve come to adore—the mother I can’t live without, even with all my other happiness?You?”
Yes—perhaps that would be the worst of it, the way Anne would look at her and say “You?” For, once the girl knew the truth, her healthy youth might so revolt from Chris’s baseness, Chris’s duplicity, that the shock of the discovery would be its own cure. But when the blow had fallen, when Anne’s life had crashed about her, and the ruins been cleared away—what then of her mother? Why, her mother would be buried under those ruins; her life would be over; but a hideous indestructible image of her would remain, overshadowing, darkening the daughter’s future.
“This man you are going to marry has—”
No; Kate Clephane could go no farther thanthat. Such confessions were not to be made; were not for a daughter’s ears. She began the phrase to herself again and again, but could not end it....
And, after all, she suddenly thought, Dr. Arklow himself, having given the injunction, had at once qualified, had virtually withdrawn it. In declaring that such an abomination must at all costs be prevented he had spoken with the firmness of a priest; but almost at once the man had intervened, and had suggested to the hypothetical mother the alternative of not speaking at all, if only she could be sure of never betraying herself in the future, of sacrificing everything to the supreme object of avoiding what he called sterile pain. Those tentative, half-apologetic words now effaced the others in Kate’s mind. Though spoken with the accent of authority—and almost under his breath—she knew they represented what he really felt. But where should she find the courage to conform to them?
She had left the Park, aimlessly, unseeingly, and was walking eastward through a half-built street in the upper Nineties. The thought of returning home—re-entering that house where the white dress still lay on the bed—was unbearable. She walked on and on.... Suddenly she came upon an ugly sandstone church-front with a cross above the doorway. The leathern swing-doors were flapping back and forth, women passing in and out. Kate Clephane pushed open one of the doors and looked in. Theday was fading, and in the dusky interior lights fluttered like butterflies about the paper flowers of the altar. There was no service, but praying figures were scattered here and there. Against the brown-washed walls of the aisles she observed a row of confessionals of varnished wood, like cigar-boxes set on end; before one or two, women were expectantly kneeling. Mrs. Clephane wondered what they had to tell.
Leaning against one of the piers of the nave she evoked all those imaginary confessions, and thought how trivial, how childish they would seem, compared to what she carried in her breast.... What a help it must be to turn to somebody who could tell one firmly, positively what to do—to be able to lay down one’s moral torture like a heavy load at the end of the day! Dr. Arklow had none of the authority which the habit of the confessional must give. He could only vaguely sympathize and deplore, and try to shuffle the horror out of sight as soon as he caught an unwilling glimpse of it. But these men whose office it was to bind and to unbind—who spoke as the mere impersonal mouth-pieces of a mighty Arbitrator, letting neither moral repugnance nor false delicacy interfere with the sacred task of alleviation and purification—how different must they be! Her eyes filled at the thought of laying her burden in such hands.
And why not? Why not entrust her anonymoussecret to one of those anonymous ears? In talking to Dr. Arklow she had felt that both he and she were paralyzed by the personal relation, and all the embarrassments and complications arising from it. When she spoke of her friend in distress, and he replied with the same evasive formula, both were conscious of the evasion, and hampered by it. And so it had been from the first—there was not an ear into which she dared pour her agony. What if, now, at once, she were to join those unknown penitents? It was possible, she knew—she had but a step to take....
She did not take it. Her unrest drove her forth again into the darkening street, drove her homeward with uncertain steps, in the mood of forlorn expectancy of those who, having failed to exert their will, wait helplessly on the unforeseen. After all, how could one tell? Chris must, in his own degree, be suffering as she was suffering. Why not stick to her old plan of waiting, holding on, enduring everything, in the hope of wearing him out? She reached the door of her house, set her teeth, and went in. Overhead, she remembered with a shudder, the white dress waited, with all that it implied....
The drawing-room was empty, and she went up to her own room. There, as usual, the fire shone invitingly, fresh flowers opened in the lamplight. All was warmth, peace, intimacy. As she sat down by the fireside she seemed to see Fred Landers’s heavyfigure in the opposite armchair, his sturdy square-toed boots turned to the hearth. She remembered how, one day, as he sat there, she had said to herself that it might be pleasant to see him there always. Now, in the extremity of her loneliness, the thought returned. Since then he had confessed his own hope to her—shyly, obliquely, apologetically; but under his stammering words she had recognized the echo of a long desire. She knew he had always loved her; had not Anne betrayed that it was her guardian who had persuaded her to recall her unknown mother? Kate Clephane owed him everything, then—all her happiness and all her sorrow! He knew everything of her life—or nearly everything. To whom else could she turn with the peculiar sense of security which that certitude gave? She felt sorry that she had received his tentative advance so coldly, so inarticulately. After all, he might yet be her refuge—her escape. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what life would be—years and years of it—at Fred Landers’s side. To feel the nearness of that rugged patient kindness; would it not lighten her misery, make the thoughts and images that were torturing her less palpable, less acute, less real?
She sat there for a long time, brooding. Now and then a step passing her door, or a burst of voices on the landing, told her that Anne was probably receiving some of her friends in her own rooms at the other end of the passage. The wedding presentswere already arriving; Anne, with a childish pleasure that was unlike her usual aloofness from material things, had set them out on a long table in her sitting-room. The mother pictured the eager group inspecting and admiring, the talk of future plans, the discussion of all the details of the wedding. The date for it would soon be fixed; ostensibly, her own visit to Dr. Arklow had been made for the purpose. But at the last moment her courage had failed her, and she had said vaguely, in leaving, that she would let him know.
As she sat there, she saw her daughter’s pale illuminated face as though it were before her. Anne’s happiness shone through her, making her opaque and guarded features luminous and transparent; and the mother could measure, from her own experience, the amount of heat and force that fed that incandescence. She herself had always had a terrible way of being happy—and that way was Anne’s.
She simply could not bear to picture to herself the change, in Anne’s face, from ecstasy to anguish. She had seen that change once, and the sight had burned itself into her eye-balls. To destroy Anne’s happiness seemed an act of murderous cruelty. What did it matter—as the chances of life went—of what elements such happiness was made? Had she, Kate Clephane, ever shrunk from her own bliss because of the hidden risks it contained? She hadplayed high, staked everything—and lost. Could she blame her daughter for choosing to take the same risks? No; there was, in all great happiness, or the illusion momentarily passing for it, a quality so beatific, so supernatural, that no pain with which it might have to be paid could, at the time, seem too dear; could hardly, perhaps, ever seem so, to headlong hearts like hers and Anne’s.
Her own heart had begun to tremble and dilate with her new resolve; the resolve to accept the idea of Anne’s marriage, to cease her inward struggle against it, and try to be in reality what she was already pretending to be: the acquiescent, approving mother.... After all, why not? Legally, technically, there was nothing wrong, nothing socially punishable, in the case. And what was there on the higher, the more private grounds where she pretended to take her stand and deliver her judgment? Chris Fenno was a young man—she was old enough to be, if not his mother, at least his mother-in-law. What had she ever hoped or expected to be to him but a passing incident, a pleasant memory? From the first, she had pitched their relation in that key; had insisted on the difference in their ages, on her own sense of the necessary transiency of the tie, on the fact that she would not have it otherwise. Anything rather than to be the old woman clutching at an impossible prolongation of bliss—anything rather than be remembered as a burden instead of being regrettedas a delight! How often had she told him that she wanted to remain with him like the memory of a flowering branch brushed by at night? “You won’t quite know if it was lilac or laburnum, or both—you’ll only know it was something vanishing and sweet.” Vanishing and sweet—that was what she had meant to be! And she had kept to her resolution till the blow fell—
Well, and was he so much to blame for its falling? She herself had been the witness of his resistance, of his loyal efforts to escape. The vehemence of Anne’s passion had thwarted him, had baffled them both; if he loved her as passionately as she loved him, was he not justified in accepting the happiness forced upon him? And how refuse it without destroying the girl’s life?
“If any one is to be destroyed, oh God, don’t let it be Anne!” the mother cried. She seemed at last to have reached a clearer height, a more breathable air. Renunciation—renunciation. If she could attain to that, what real obstacle was there to her daughter’s happiness?
“I would sell my soul for her—why not my memories?” she reflected.
The sound of steps and voices outside had ceased. From the landing had come a “Goodbye, dearest!” in Nollie Tresselton’s voice; no doubt she had been the last visitor to leave, and Anne was now alone; perhaps alone with her betrothed. Well; to thatthought also Kate Clephane must accustom herself; by and bye they would be always alone, those two, in the sense of being nearer to each other than either of them was to any one else. The mother could bear that too. Not to lose Anne—at all costs to keep her hold on the girl’s confidence and tenderness: that was all that really mattered. She would go to Anne now. She herself would ask the girl to fix the date for the wedding.
She got up and walked along the deep-piled carpet of the corridor. The door of Anne’s sitting-room was ajar, but no sound came from within. Every one was gone, then; even Chris Fenno. With a breath of relief the mother pushed the door open. The room was empty. One of the tall vases was full of branching chrysanthemums and autumn berries. In a corner stood a tea-table with scattered cups and plates. The Airedale drowsed by the hearth. As she stood there, Kate Clephane saw the little Anne who used to sit by that same fire trying to coax the red birds through the fender. The vision melted the last spot of resistance in her heart. The door of Anne’s bedroom was also ajar, but no sound came from there either. Perhaps the girl had gone out with her last visitors, escaping for a starlit rush up the Riverside Drive before dinner. These sudden sallies at queer hours were a way the young people had.
The mother listened a moment longer, then laidher hand on the bedroom door. Before her, directly in the line of her vision, was Anne’s narrow bed. On it the wedding-dress still lay, in a dazzle of whiteness; and between Mrs. Clephane and the bed, looking also at the dress, stood Anne and Chris Fenno. They had not heard her cross the sitting-room or push open the bedroom door; they did not hear her now. All their faculties were absorbed in each other. The young man’s arms were around the girl, her cheek was against his. One of his hands reached about her shoulder and, making a cup for her chin, pressed her face closer. They were looking at the dress; but the curves of their lips, hardly detached, were like those of a fruit that has burst apart of its own ripeness.
Kate Clephane stood behind them like a ghost. It made her feel like a ghost to be so invisible and inaudible. Then a furious flame of life rushed through her; in every cell of her body she felt that same embrace, felt the very texture of her lover’s cheek against her own, burned with the heat of his palm as it clasped Anne’s chin to press her closer.
“Oh, not that—not that—not that!” Mrs. Clephane imagined she had shrieked it out at them, and pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle the cry; then she became aware that it was only a dumb whisper within her. For a time which seemed without end she continued to stand there, invisible, inaudible, and they remained in each other’s embrace, motionless,speechless. Then she turned and went. They did not hear her.
A dark fermentation boiled up into her brain; every thought and feeling was clogged with thick entangling memories.... Jealous? Was she jealous of her daughter? Was she physically jealous? Was that the real secret of her repugnance, her instinctive revulsion? Was that why she had felt from the first as if some incestuous horror hung between them?
She did not know—it was impossible to analyze her anguish. She knew only that she must fly from it, fly as far as she could from the setting of these last indelible impressions. How had she ever imagined that she could keep her place at Anne’s side—that she could either outstay Chris, or continue to live under the same roof with them? Both projects seemed to her, now, equally nebulous and impossible. She must put the world between them—the whole width of the world was not enough. The very grave, she thought, would be hardly black enough to blot out that scene.
She found herself, she hardly knew how, at the foot of the stairs, in the front hall. Her precipitate descent recalled the early winter morning when, as hastily, almost as unconsciously, she had descended those same stairs, flying from her husband’s house. Nothing was changed in the hall: her eyes, once again morbidly receptive of details, noted on thedoor the same patent locks with which her fingers had then struggled. Now, as then, a man’s hat and stick lay on the hall table; on that other day they had been John Clephane’s, now they were Chris Fenno’s. That was the only difference.
She stood there, looking about her, wondering why she did not push back the bolts and rush out into the night, hatless and cloakless as she was. What else was there to do but to go straight to the river, or to some tram line with its mortal headlights bearing straight down on one? One didn’t have to have a hat and cloak to go out in search of annihilation....
As she stood there the door-bell rang, and she heard the step of a servant coming to open the door. She shrank back into the drawing-room, and in another moment Enid Drover had rustled in, her pink cheeks varnished with the cold, her furs full of the autumn freshness. Her little eyes were sharp with excitement.
“My dear Kate! I’ve rushed in with such good news: I shall be late for dinner, Hendrik will be furious. But never mind; I had to tell you. The house next door reallyisfor sale! Isn’t it too perfect? The agent thinks it could be got for a fairly reasonable price. But Hendrik says it may be snapped up at any minute, and Anne ought to decide at once. Then you could stay on comfortably here, and you and she and Chris would always be together,just as she wants you to be.... No; don’t send for her; I can’t wait. And besides, I want you to have the pleasure of telling her.” On the doorstep Mrs. Drover turned to call back: “Remember, Hendrik says she must decide.” Her limousine engulfed her.