XXVIII.
IN the stillness of the sleeping house she sat up with a start, plucked out of a tormented sleep.
“But it can’t be—it can’t be—it can’t be!”
She jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and stared about her. What secret warning had waked her with that cry on her lips? She could not recall having dreamed: she had only tossed and fought with some impalpable oppression. And now, as she stood there, in that hideously familiar room, the silence went on echoing with her cry. All the excuses, accommodations, mitigations, mufflings, disguisings, had dropped away from the bare fact that her lover was going to marry her daughter, and that nothing she could do would prevent it.
A few hours ago she had still counted on the blessed interval of time, the lulling possibilities of delay. She had kissed Anne goodnight very quietly, she remembered. Then it was eleven o’clock of the night before; now it was the morning of the day. A pitch-black winter morning: there would be no daylight for another three hours. No daylight—but the Day was here!
She glanced at the clock. Half-past four. The longing seized her to go and look at Anne for the last time; but the next moment she felt that hardly a sight in the world would be less bearable.
She turned back into her room, wrapped herself in her dressing-gown, and went and sat in the window.
What did Fifth Avenue look like nowadays at half-past four o’clock of a winter morning? Much as it had when she had kept the same vigil nearly twenty years earlier, on the morning of her flight with Hylton Davies. That night too she had not slept, and for the same reason: the thought of Anne. On that other day she had deserted her daughter for the first time—and now it seemed as though she were deserting her again. One betrayal of trust had led inexorably to the other.
Fifth Avenue was much more brilliantly lit than on that other far-off morning. Long streamers of radiance floated on the glittering asphalt like tropical sea-weeds on a leaden sea. But overhead the canopy of darkness was as dense, except for the tall lights hanging it here and there with a planetary glory.
The street itself was empty. In old times one would have heard the desolate nocturnal sound of a lame hoof-beat as a market-gardener’s cart went by: they always brought out in the small hours the horses that were too bad to be seen by day. But allthat was changed. The last lame horse had probably long since gone to the knacker’s yard, and no link of sound was left between the Niagara-roar of the day and the hush before dawn.
On that other morning a hansom-cab had been waiting around the corner for young Mrs. Clephane. It had all been very well arranged—Hylton Davies had a gift for arranging. His yacht was a marvel of luxury: food, service, appointments. He was the kind of man who would lean across the table to say confidentially: “I particularly recommend that sauce.” He had the soul of a club steward. It was curious to be thinking of him now....
She remembered that, as she jumped into the hansom on that fateful morning, she had thought to herself: “Now I shall never again hear my mother-in-law say: ‘I do think, my dear, you make a mistake not to humour John’s prejudices a little more’.” She had fixed her mind with intensity on the things she most detested in the life she was leaving; it struck her now that she had thought hardly at all of the life she was going to. Above all, that day, she had crammed into her head every possible thought that might crowd out the image of little Anne: John Clephane’s bad temper, his pettiness about money, his obstinacy, his obtuseness, the detested sound of his latch-key when he came home, flown with self-importance, from his club. “Thank God,” she rememberedthinking, “there can’t possibly be a latch-key on a yacht!”
Now she suddenly reminded herself that before long she would have to get used to the click of another key. Dear Fred Landers! That click would symbolize all the securities and placidities: all the thick layers of affection enfolding her from loneliness, from regret, from remorse. It comforted her already to know that, after tomorrow, there would always be some one between herself and her thoughts. In that mild warmth she would bask like one of those late bunches of grapes that have just time, before they drop, to turn from sourness to insipidity.
Now again she was at the old game of packing into her mind every thought that might crowd out the thought of Anne; but her mind was like a vast echoing vault, and the thoughts she had to put into it would not have filled the palm of her hand.
Where would she and Landers live? A few months of travel, no doubt; and then—New York. Could she picture him anywhere else? Would it be materially possible for him to give up his profession—renounce “the office”? Her mind refused to see him in any other setting. And yet—and yet.... But no; it was useless to linger on that. Nothing, nothing that she could invent would crowd out the thought of Anne.
She sat in the window, and watched the sky turnfrom black to gray, and then to the blank absence of colour before daylight....
In the motor, on the way to St. Stephen’s, the silence had become oppressive, and Kate suddenly laid her hand on her daughter’s.
“My darling, I wish you all the happiness there ever was in the world—happiness beyond all imagining.”
“Oh, mother, take care! Not too much! You frighten me....” Through the white mist of tulle Kate caught the girl’s constrained smile. She had been too vehement, then? She had over-emphasized? Doubtless she would never get exactly the right note. She heard herself murmuring vaguely: “But there can’t be too much, can there?” and Anne’s answer: “Oh, I don’t know....” and mercifully that brought them to the verge of the crimson carpet and the awning.
In the vestibule of the church they were received into a flutter of family. No bridesmaids; but Fred Landers and Hendrik Drover, stationed there as participants in the bridal procession, amid a cluster of Drovers and Tresseltons who had lingered for a glimpse of the bride before making their way to the front pews. A pervading lustre of pearls and tall hats; a cloud of expensive furs, a gradual vague impression of something having possibly gone wrong, and no one wishing to be the first to suggest it. FinallyJoe Tresselton approached to say in Mrs. Clephane’s ear: “He’s not here yet—”
Anne had caught the whisper. Her mother saw her lips whiten as they framed a laugh. “Chris late? How like him! Or is it that we’re too indecently punctual—?”
Oh, the tidal rush in the mother’s breast! TheNot here! Not here! Not here!shouted down at her from every shaft and curve of the vaulting, rained down on her from the accomplice heavens! And she had called the sky indifferent! But of course he was not here—he would not be here. She had always known that she would wear him out in the end. Her case was so much stronger than his. In a flash all her torturing doubts fell away from her.
All about her, wrist-watches were being furtively consulted. Anne stood between the groups, a pillar of snow.
“Anne alwaysisindecently punctual,” Nollie Tresselton laughed; Uncle Hendrik mumbled something ponderous about traffic obstruction. Once or twice the sexton’s black gown fluttered enquiringly out of an aisle door and back; the bridal group began to be aware of the pressure, behind them, of late arrivals checked in the doorway till the procession should have passed into the church.
Kate Clephane caught Fred Landers’s eyes anxiously fixed on her; she suspected her own ofshooting out rays of triumph, and bent down hurriedly to straighten a fold of Anne’s train.Not here! Not here! Not here!the sky shouted down at her. And none of them—except perhaps Anne—knew why.... Anne—yes; Anne’s suffering would be terrible. But she was young—she was young; and some day she would know what she had been saved from....
The central doors were suddenly flung open; the Mendelssohn march rolled out. Mrs. Clephane started up from her stooping posture to signal to Fred Landers that the doors must be shut.... The music stopped ... since the bridegroom was not coming.
But the folds of Anne’s train were already slipping through her mother’s fingers, Anne was in motion on Uncle Hendrik’s stalwart arm. The rest of the family had drifted up to their front pews: Fred Landers, a little flushed, stood before Mrs. Clephane, his arm bent to receive her hand. The bride, softly smiling, drew aside to let her mother pass into the church before her. At the far end of the nave, on the chancel-steps, two figures had appeared against a background of lawn sleeves and lilies.
Blindly Kate Clephane moved forward, keeping step with Landers’s slow stride. At the chancel-steps he left her, taking his seat with Mrs. Drover. The mother stood alone and waited for her daughter.