Chapter SEVEN: The Hedge Which Grew So Fast

§ i

In order to escape she had told the old lady a deliberate lie. She had said she was going shopping with Mrs. Martinsburgh, because Mrs. Martinsburgh was a highly approved of young married woman considered to be a good influence for the peculiar young Mrs. Vincelle. Whereas she was really going to meet Lance. She had written to him to meet her in a certain respectable restaurant where ladies on shopping tours often went to lunch.

It was a risk; she was quite likely to be seen there and her outrageous escapade reported to the old lady, but she was desperate. She had to see him. She went upstairs and secured a table, self-conscious and wretched at being there alone. She dared not look about the room for fear of seeing a familiar face, she dared not tell the waiter she was expecting someone. She pretended to study the menu, taking a long time to order, hoping and hoping that Lance would come. But he was late as he always was. Her lunch was set before her and she felt obliged to begin eating it. The room was full, she expected every moment that someone else would be put at her table. She had laid her muff and hand bag on the chair beside her as a futile protection, and sipped her chocolate with an engrossed air.

By raising her eyes, she could see her own reflection in one of the mirrors which lined the room; she was paler, thinner, more elegant but--what was it that had gone from her face? She fingered her veil with a delicate little gesture, and glanced down again to her hands, adorned with rings. She wondered if Lance would find her changed?

And just at this moment she heard his voice, his calm, serious voice, always so low that it was difficult for strangers to understand him.

“Hello, Claudine!” he said. “Am I late? How are you?”

He sat down beside her and looked at her seriously through his spectacles.

“Well!” he said. “You’ve changed.... What on earth did you want to see me for?”

The recollection of her suffering rushed over her. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I had to--talk to someone,” she said. “And there was nobody else.”

“But--” he began, and stopped. This was a matter for caution, she who had a husband, a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, and yet could find no one but himself to confide in.

Five years before, when he was a boy of twenty, he had come to live with his uncle, Doctor Mason. He was a youth of strongly scientific tendency, too poor to study, and the doctor had offered to keep him. His mother was a garrulous, vulgar woman, with a bitter tongue, well able to make life a burden for her household. Her husband, the doctor’s younger brother, endured her with English fatalism; he was an ineffectual sort of chap, anyway, who like so many of his countrymen had turned to farming in the hope of finding in it a refuge from competition and struggle. He had a wretched, stony, hillside farm in Sullivan County, which produced next to nothing; the family were kept alive only by the exertions of his relentless wife and the boundless charity of his brother. Lance, amazingly christened Launcelot--had lived in calm, unceasing opposition to both parents. He _would_ be a paleontologist, and he would _not_ devote himself to money-making. If he did make anything through that work, his parents could have it, if he didn’t they would have to do without.

He was the most unimpressionable, unsusceptible young man ever born. Nothing moved him, nothing troubled him. He was a pleasant housemate, for he was never impatient or cross, but he remained marvelously aloof. He sat at the doctor’s feet, worshipping his scientific knowledge, grateful to him for the opportunities he had given him, the years in college, the quiet and peace for independent study, he was grateful to his aunt, too, for her kindly care of him. But he would have been delighted to go to the ends of the earth on an expedition, and it wouldn’t have cost him a pang to bid them farewell forever.

The only soul with whom he was really human was Claudine. They had been like brother and sister, only at once more friendly and more formal than brothers and sisters usually are. And Claudine was quite conscious of something not at all brotherly in Lance’s regard. She had had too many suitors to be deceived. She had very carefully maintained a nice balance. She knew that he thought she didn’t know, and she was artful about it. She thoroughly respected Lance, he was the most candid, unbiased, truly independent person she had ever known, and he was kind, consistently and invariably kind, without effort, simply because it was his impulse to be so.

It was upon his candour, his intelligence, his kindness, that she counted now.

“Oh, Lance!” she said. “I’m so unhappy!”

“What’s the trouble?”

The waiter was hovering near.

“You’d better order something,” she murmured.

“I’m not hungry!”

“But you must, Lance! Please! It would look so queer.”

“A glass of milk,” he said, “and a piece of apple pie, then!”

The waiter was astounded and offended at this plebeian order; he had, nevertheless, to go and fetch it and they were able to talk again.

“What makes you unhappy, Claudine?” he asked.

“I suppose I ought to bear it, and say nothing, but I can’t any longer. Lance ...! I want to leave Gilbert!”

This time she had certainly shaken his scientific calm.

“What!” he said. “After three months!”

“I wish I could tell you.... But I could never make anyone understand. It’s just--unendurable.”

“Isn’t he--decent to you?”

“It’s not altogether Gilbert’s fault. He tries to be kind. He thinks he is. But it’s the whole life. Oh, Lance, it’s so horrible! It’s like being buried alive....” She had to stop, to struggle with her tears. “I’ve tried. I’ve really tried my best. But I can’t stand it. I want to go home and live with Father and Mother. Oh, Lance, do you think it would be wrong?”

He regarded her thoughtfully.

“Do you mean as a general principle?” he asked. “Do you mean--do I think it’s wrong for a woman to leave her husband?”

“I suppose I do mean that.”

“It’s hard for me to say,” he went on, frowning. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought much about the modern system of marriage. I suppose it’s the best--or at least, the most expedient system for our present stage of development. But I haven’t considered exactly what it is. Is marriage popularly considered indissoluble? No, there’s divorce. No!... I suppose it’s an arrangement for the convenience of both the parties to the contract. In that case--”

“But I never thought about divorce!” she cried. “I only wanted to get away. Can that possibly be wrong?”

Lance was never greatly concerned about ethical problems, certainly not about the relations between men and women. It didn’t seem a matter of much importance to him. He envisaged the human race as gradually progressing, adopting now this expedient, now that; marriage he had looked upon as a rather silly but necessary part of modern existence. As for woman’s revolt, feminism, and so on, he merely smiled at it all. He knew too much about Pre-Historic Woman.

He bent his mind to the problem as to whether the sanctity of marriage was a help or a hindrance to civilization.

“I can’t see that there’s anything wrong in it, Claudine,” he said.

“Then you think--” she began. “But oh, I don’t know what Father and Mother would say. Everyone but you would think I was wicked--and that my life was ruined.... Just because I want to be myself!”

He glanced up in surprise at her tone, and saw her eyes fastened on him, swimming in tears, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. It came to him with a sort of shock that this was Claudine’s specific case, and not a general problem; that it was not women who wished to leave their husbands, but Claudine who wished to leave Gilbert. He saw that she was a lovely and innocent young thing, unhappy and desperate; he saw suddenly what this might lead to. She would be cast adrift, blamed, gossiped about, always under a sort of cloud. Her position in her own home would be an equivocal one, an unending embarrassment and distress. Hers was not a strong spirit; she couldn’t go forward unsupported. A terrible pain seized him, he turned his eyes away because he couldn’t bear to look at her. And the most intolerable part of his pain was his certainty that she could grow out of her pain; that what she now found unbearable she could one day regard with indifference. She suffered cruelly; she thought her fate was a lamentable and wretched one, and it was really nothing; a trifle, a few moments in her history.

“What would be the sense of my going on?” she asked him. “I don’t make Gilbert happy, and I’m--dreadfully unhappy myself.”

“It isn’t important--to be happy,” said Lance. “The question is, are you useful?”

“No! No, I’m not!”

He pushed away his plate with a nervous gesture.

“You want to know what I think,” he said. “Well, I think you’d better go back to your husband.”

§ ii

She went home, to dress for a euchre party which was to be given in her honour. She felt numb and cold, ready to die of despair. Everyone was against her. No one understood, no one cared, what she suffered. She had appealed in vain to all the people who loved her, and they had all said--“Continue to suffer. It is best for you.”

She had gone to her father for his support in the piano battle.

“Buy me a piano of my own, Father!” she had entreated. “Send it to me as a present. Then the disagreeable old thing _can’t_ object.”

“But, my dear!” said her father. “When in Rome--you know! If I were you, I should avoid conflicts. There’s no use exasperating your mother-in-law. The wisest course is to conciliate.”

She had gone to her mother, to pour out all her misery at living under the domination of a strange woman, at not being mistress in her husband’s house. But her mother had no comfort to give.

“I don’t see what’s to be done, chickabiddy,” she said. “You can’t expect Gilbert to leave his mother alone at her age. It can’t be cured, so it must be endured.”

Gilbert was still more hopeless. When he saw her dejected, weary, full of nervous excitement and irritability after her long day of emptiness, his remedy was the theatre; and when even that didn’t enliven her, he too became irritable. He was beginning to lose patience with her, he was willing now to admit that she was peculiar. And he felt that he was justified....

Justified in doing things which she never mentioned to anyone. They had had quarrels, the very memory of which appalled her. She remembered coarse words he had used, brutal expressions, sneers, gibes. He was always very sorry, always apologized, he said he had the devil’s own temper; but Claudine could not forget them. She was neither quick to anger nor quick to forgive. When her temper was aroused, she was cold and contemptuous and often childishly indignant, but she was never fierce, never cruel. She could not understand or forgive his absolute loss of dignity.

And she could not understand what he called his weakness! She remembered the first time he had revealed it as one remembers a nightmare, the very thought of it brought back the incredulous horror she had felt. He hadn’t come home to dinner that night, he had sent a telegram, “Detained on business. Will not be home till late,” and Claudine and the old lady had sat down at the table alone, in that sort of hostile intimacy which had grown upon them. After dinner they had gone up to sit in the old lady’s room where it would be cosier for two lone women, the old lady with a book and Claudine with the fancy-work she had taken to in desperation.

Just before bed-time Gilbert came in, flushed, jolly, anxious to talk. He had sat down and entertained them with a long account of the dinner he had attended, and the speeches he had heard.

“Best thing for business,” he said. “You get to know just the men you need to know. It was an impromptu thing, but wonderfully well done.”

And he told them everything he had had to eat.

“And by the way,” he said, “They had some oyster pâtés that were the best things of their kind I’ve ever eaten, bar none. I spoke to the waiter, and he packed me a couple in a box and I brought them home. They’re downstairs with my overcoat. Will you get them, Claudine?”

She did so, and he opened the box and took the pâtés out.

“Just try this!” he said, offering one to Claudine.

“I couldn’t eat it now, thank you, Gilbert,” she said. “To-morrow I’d enjoy--”

“No! Nonsense! Eat it now! I want you to!”

She shook her head, smiling.

“To oblige me!” said Gilbert in a grieved voice.

The idea of gracefully yielding, of doing something she _didn’t want to do_, never occurred to Claudine.

“No, thank you!” she said, more firmly.

“I insist!” said Gilbert.

That made her laugh, she thought he was rather funny, anyway, with his excessive garrulousness and his oyster Pâtés. She was about to answer him with a good-humoured joke, when she saw his face suddenly change, and grow convulsed with rage. She hardly heard what he said, she was so startled. He jumped to his feet and addressed her in a furious trembling voice, and suddenly took the pâtés, on their little frilled paper plates, and threw them on the carpet and stamped on them.

His mother got up and came near to him.

“Gilbert! Gilbert!” she whispered, patting his shoulder. “You’d better get to bed, my boy!”

He threw a savage glance at Claudine and walked unsteadily away. The old lady bent over her cherished carpet, regarding the damage with distress.

“Dear! Dear!” she said. “_I_ don’t know....”

She never looked at Claudine, standing behind her, wringing her hands, her teeth chattering with a sort of nervous chill.

“I don’t know!” she said again. “I suppose I’d better leave it so until the morning. Then in the daylight, perhaps....”

As she straightened herself she met the eyes of her daughter-in-law.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Let me stay with you!” cried Claudine.

The old lady looked at her with frigid contempt.

“You go to Gilbert!” she said. “Your place is with your husband.”

“No!” cried Claudine, desperately. “I can’t!”

“You go!” said the old lady. “Quick! I’ll have none of this under my roof.”

And she went so far as to take her by the arm and hurry her out of the room. But there was no cause to be worried about any further scene; Gilbert had gone to sleep, fully dressed, on the bed.

§ iii

And the next morning he regarded it all as a great joke. He complained ruefully of a headache, but he was proud of it. He burst out laughing when his mother mentioned her damaged carpet, and to Claudine’s surprise, the old lady was wonderfully indulgent. He told Claudine not to mind, it wouldn’t happen again; but it did, more than once. Only on special occasions, though, as he pointed out to her; he was no drunkard. He was simply a good fellow; and he felt that she ought to appreciate his social qualities. He was sincerely aggrieved at her attitude, her scorn, her cold aversion. He told her she was straitlaced and puritanical; he thought she was shocked because he could not imagine that she was disgusted. She didn’t find him devilish; she found him repulsive. It was not a question of forgiveness; she felt for him a profound distaste and aversion which she never again overcame. It was not even that she had ceased to love him; she had simply discovered that she never had loved him. She was not by nature affectionate or indulgent; she was fastidious, always a little apart from life, never quite human. She was a dutiful egoist.

She looked back over these three months of married life with a sort of cold wonder. The long, long days, the tedious drives, the dull calls on dull people, the unpleasant meals, the stuffy dismalness of the house! She thought that the Vincelle friends were the most unspeakably tiresome people in the world. To go with her mother-in-law and sit in their augustly gloomy parlours for the required fifteen minutes, or to receive them in like fashion at home, to sit at their dinner tables, or to see them sitting at hers, was an infliction almost beyond her endurance. Except at dinners, she saw nothing but women; they had euchre-parties, receptions, luncheons, once in a while a matinée party. A harem world of pampered women, interested in nothing, women whose husbands were pleased to see them expensively dressed, wearing jewels, who required them to be ladylike; but didn’t expect them to be seductive. They were all good, all complacent, and they seemed to Claudine years and years older and more mature than herself. She made no friends. Vincelle heard that one of the young married women did china painting, and that aroused a spark of interest in her. She approached the alleged artist, young Mrs. Ryder.

“Oh, yes! I love it!” the artist told her. “Of course I don’t have much time; but I positively made up my mind _not_ to drop it after I married. It’s such a mistake, don’t you think, to get into a rut? I believe a man thinks ever so much more of his wife if she has some interests of her own.”

Claudine’s heart sank; then it was, after all, nothing but another harem accomplishment, a trick to secure attention.

“Of course I don’t have much time,” the other went on. “There’s so much to do, isn’t there?”

“What _do_ you do?” Claudine asked, with earnestness. “I wish you’d tell me what you do all day?”

“Oh ... so _many_ things!” murmured the other, taken aback. “There’s the house-keeping, of course--and social duties ... and with a man in the house there are such a lot of little things....”

Now it must be admitted that Claudine was not a lover of her kind. She had no special interest in humanity; she was not ready to see the simple human qualities in those about her. She was an aloof, eager soul, greedy for activity, for gaiety, and for something more than that. She wanted food for thought; she was not very original, she needed perpetual stimulation, a constant flow of external impressions. She did not wish to meditate, she wished to observe.

She was baffled at every turn. She tried to discover what it was that enabled the old lady to pass the time so tranquilly without impatience or weariness. After a few orders to the servants and her marketing, she had nothing to do. Other old ladies came in during the afternoons to talk with her; often there were old ladies from the country spending a few days with her, they talked of other old ladies known to them with a sort of good-humoured indifference.... Perhaps that was the key to it--a profound and cynical indifference, nothing mattered; one endured and existed, and life consisted not in accomplishment, but in a perfectly passive Duty.

The old lady said Claudine was excitable, and even went so far as to call her frivolous. And yet the only part of Claudine’s life which either she or her son took with any seriousness were these horrible little frivolities, the euchre club, the dinner parties, the calls. Her social duties....

“What in the world makes you so restless, child?” the old lady asked her one afternoon. Claudine had come into her room and was wandering about looking at the photographs, asking idle questions.

“I don’t know what to do with myself!” she answered suddenly.

“Do? Why, what under the sun do you _want_ to do?”

“I don’t know.... But it seems.... Oh, it seems such a waste of time!”

“I must say you have very queer notions for a young married woman, Claudine. I’ve never heard of anyone else with such notions. You have your home, and your friends. And there’s the euchre club, and Gilbert takes you to the theatre every mortal week. What more do you want?”

This Claudine was unable to answer. The old lady regarded her severely.

“I only hope,” she went on, “that the time will never come when you’ll look back on these days as the happiest time of your life.... I remember when I was a young married woman--” she sighed. “I can tell you, I hadn’t much time to worry about what to do, with my five children.”

“I wish I had five children,” said Claudine.

The old lady looked at her again.

“Humph!” she said.

§ iv

She was ready now for the euchre, she cast a last glance in the mirror and gathered up her little possessions, handkerchiefs, gloves, cardcase, and muff. A composed and mature figure she looked, in her grey broadcloth dress with a trailing skirt and well-boned bodice, slender, dignified in spite of her smallness. A lady--a young married woman, a finished product. She was supposed to have done with adventure, romance and excitement, she was presumed to have settled down.

She smiled frigidly.

“We’ll see!” she said. “Just wait! They’re all against me--even Lance. But I won’t give in! If I can’t get away, then I’ll change all this! I won’t have a life like this. I won’t! I won’t!”