Chapter FOUR: The Beginning

§ i

That day she brought an electric tea-pot. They laughed when she took it from its box, for she always brought something, she was trying to introduce an element of house-keeping into their business-like existence.

“But it will be very nice,” she said. “We can make our tea up here, all by ourselves, just as we like it. And I’ve brought a box of cakes from Sherry’s, the sort you like.”

Andrée was sitting at the piano, weary and a little dishevelled.

“It will be nice,” she said. “Better than going down to the tea-room, or having a tray sent up.... Gosh! I’ve been practicing over two hours!”

Al smiled.

“Doesn’t she look like a musical genius?” he asked Claudine. “With that hair?”

“Give me a cake!” said Andrée. “Mr. MacGregor came in last evening, Mother, and we played until someone downstairs asked us to stop.... But this one part of ‘Thais’ is lovely, even with a piano alone, isn’t it? We’re going to hear it again to-night.”

Claudine announced that the tea was ready and Andrée came over to sit beside her on the sofa. Al waited on them with a clumsiness which Claudine found very pitiful; she saw too that he was attempting an improvement in manners, not in a shamefaced way, as another man might have done, but carefully and frankly, watching them with earnestness.

Andrée rose.

“Come into the bedroom, won’t you, Mother?” she said.

Claudine followed her into the little room, so bare, so impersonal, and stood for a moment by the window looking out over Central Park, bright under a new fall of snow.

“It’s a rather nice view,” she said, politely.

“Mother, look here, darling! I want you to help me to get up something for Christmas, will you?”

“Of course I will! What had you thought of?”

“I don’t know.... Something nice and human.... You and Edna and Bertie.... Something like old times.... How’s Father?”

“Very well....”

“Does he ever mention my name? Lord! Isn’t it romantic? A young bride, cut off by her father.... I wish there were someone to appreciate the situation--and me.”

“I’m sure Alfred appreciates you, Andrée!”

“Well, he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about my music, and that’s me. He’s awfully fond of me, I know that, but he doesn’t think I’m really any more important than all the other young females of twenty with black hair. My ‘group,’ he’d call it. I wish he’d think a little more about me, and less about social justice. I’m sick of it!”

“My dear!”

“I am! Not sick of him, but just of his talking. Just imagine! When I’ve been playing extra well, I sometimes ask if I’ve been disturbing him--hoping he’ll say he liked it. But what do you suppose he does say? ‘Not a bit! I don’t hear it at all when my mind’s concentrated on my work.’ He’s writing some sort of silly book, you know.”

“You shouldn’t call it ‘silly,’ Andrée. It’s not fair. He’s not silly. He’s a very intelligent, earnest man.”

“That’s the trouble with him! He’s too earnest. When I want to talk to him about nice little things--about us--he’s always so--oh, so _mighty_! We’re all types, and everything we do is typical of something. Imagine! Last night Bertie brought in Gaston Matthews and Johnnie Martinsburgh--darling children--Bertie says it’s chic to live like this in a hotel, without any squaw atmosphere--and Al would talk to them about his theories. Of course, they listened to him; he’s generally interesting enough, but it’s--I hated it! I suppose I wanted to do the boring myself, about music. And I know so well what they’d think of him if he weren’t rich.... They call him eccentric now, but if he were poor!”

Andrée was lying on the bed, her arms clasped behind her head; how--intractable she looked, thought her mother!

“I’m thoroughly sick of it all! All this busy life.... I can’t be busy. I don’t know how. When I look back on the old days, it seems to me I spent most of my time sitting around with you or Edna. That’s what I want now, but there’s no one to sit round with. Even when Al isn’t working, he wants to ‘take advantage’ of his playtime and rush around and see instructive things and--”

“Andrée, it’s not kind or wise to dwell so much on his little shortcomings. He has so many, many fine qualities--”

“He adores you. Mother, do you want to go and talk to him while I’m dressing? It’s very unselfish of me, because I want you every moment.... And you’re right. He is rather wonderful. He’s not common inside of him, a bit. I don’t believe he ever had a vulgar thought in his head. He’s--really delicate. He’s a nice person to--to live with.... If he only wouldn’t talk so much!”

Claudine went back into the sitting-room and found her son-in-law hard at work with a German magazine and a dictionary.

“I’ve taught myself enough German to get the sense out of things,” he explained. “We get out a little magazine we call ‘Comrades,’ with all sorts of stuff in it from the European Socialist papers, as a step toward Internationalism. I’d be satisfied if I could get just that one idea more generally accepted in my lifetime--that all the people in the world are just about the same, everywhere, that they all want the same things, and suffer from the same causes.”

He stopped suddenly.

“Do you think Andrée’s well and happy?” he asked.

“Yes.... She was speaking about Christmas. She thought it would be nice to have some sort of little celebration.”

“Sure! “We’ll invite some people, and I’ll reserve a table downstairs in the dining-room--”

“I don’t think that’s quite what she meant. I think something more--intimate, Alfred....”

“I see! Then how about having a supper sent up here--champagne and so on?”

“That would be very nice, of course.... But--you know she’s very young for her years.... I thought if you and I could arrange a little surprise--a Christmas tree--”

“Great! I’ve never had one in my life!”

“You see, she’s always had one, since she was a baby. I suppose it seems silly--”

“Not to me, it doesn’t. It’s just one of those nice, pretty little ideas that I fall short in. My one idea is to buy things. It seems so wonderful to buy what you want. I’m not used to it yet.... Gosh! You can’t imagine how much I learn from you! That’s what we need--my kind. We need to learn how to live--oh--poetically, from the people like you. We never get those ideas. We’re too darned worried about food. At first I used to be pretty hard and vindictive, and talk about bringing the comfortable people down to earth. But now I’d like to take the other people a little bit _off_ the earth--a little bit up.”

She thought as she went home in a taxi, what a loveable creature he was. He was everything that she had always imagined a husband ought to be, a comrade, kind, loyal, never interfering, never attempting to impose his own will. Their life was what she had often dreamed of; Andrée had freedom combined with love.

And yet--it wasn’t satisfactory; it was so little satisfactory that it frightened her.

“Somehow,” she thought, “all that isn’t enough.... That bond--that tie of sex alone--isn’t enough. Even love isn’t enough.... Perhaps there must be more obligation with it.”

§ ii

It was a charming Christmas. Claudine had her Christmas dinner decorously at home with her husband and various members of both families; there were all the proper presents and ceremonies, and she was happy. Happy because she could fly to Andrée in the afternoon. Her visits there were a secret of Polchinelle; Gilbert never mentioned them, nor Andrée. And yet to-day, as she was putting on her hat, he entered the bedroom and gave her a crumpled handful of bills.

“Buy something for her!” he said.

She was terribly touched, but she knew better than to show it.

“I will!” she said, brightly.

After he had gone, she smoothed out the bills and put them into an envelope, on which she wrote--“From Father.”

She gave it to Andrée with a smile.

“Is he coming round?” asked Andrée.

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t expect him to until there was a little grandchild. That would be the proper thing, of course, and Father does love to do the proper thing.... I wish there was a little grandchild! That would be something important and interesting. Something real.”

“Andrée, you’re not going to be trying to-day!”

“No, I’m not! I’m going to be lovely--the spirit of Christmas,” she said.

And she was. She was delighted with her glittering little tree, and with all their gifts. She was gay, loving, almost tender. She dominated everything; they all watched her with pleasure, moving about the little room; they listened while she played for them. At the end of the evening she and Edna and Bertie sang a Christmas carol they had learned as children, and it made her cry a little.

“Dear people!” she said. “Thank you all, so very much! You’ve given me such a happy Christmas!”

No one thought of denying that it was _her_ Christmas, or that the common object had been her happiness.

She went out to the lift with them and kissed each one with particular ardour, her mother, her sister, her laughing brother.

“Good night!” she said, still looking after them, still smiling, as if she could not bear to see them go.

They were always glad to look back at that Christmas, for they were never to have another like it.

§ iii

Andrée went back into the room where the little man was sitting, under the Christmas tree. She fancied he looked a little disconsolate and forlorn, and her heart smote her.

“Al!” she said. “Are you happy?”

“Not so very!” he answered, candidly.

“But why? Haven’t we had a lovely, happy time?”

“I feel--a million miles away from you,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll ever get any nearer to you.”

She sat down beside him and drew his head down on her shoulder.

“I wish you wouldn’t!” she cried. “It--chills me so! I want us to be so very near to each other. I must have it so! I can’t bear it if you don’t understand everything about me. _Why_ did you say that?”

“To-night,” he said, “with this Christmas tree and all--I don’t know--but you--it seemed to me that you were like a child--just playing at life.... And I can’t play! I never did, in my life. I can tell you, that chilled _me_! You seem so very young and so pretty, and so--heedless--that it makes me feel so very old and worn--”

“You idiot!” she cried, laughing. “It’s just the other way! You’re a little boy; you’re always talking and thinking about such new things, things that come and go. It makes me feel such a wise woman, a sort of Sibyl. I think that’s why I love you--because you’re so awfully earnest and serious about things that I know don’t matter.”

“What things don’t matter? Human wretchedness and cruelty and pain?”

“You don’t even know what makes human wretchedness. It isn’t poverty. Why, Al, if you could make everyone perfectly comfortable this very night, if you could take away all hunger and want and injustice, it wouldn’t give one little bit of happiness to any of the people who had lost someone they loved. It wouldn’t help a woman who had lost her man, or a mother who’d lost a baby. That’s what you don’t know. Nothing can ever, ever be done to spare people their anguish.... I always know--it comes across me in my very happiest moments--that the day is coming nearer and nearer when we’ll have to part--one of us to leave the other forever.... What do you think you can do for that?”

“That’s morbid,” he said, curtly. “No healthy person thinks about death like that.”

But he caught her close to his heart and looked down at her bent head with troubled eyes, stroked her soft hair with an uncertain hand.

“I’ve never heard you talk like this,” he said. “I don’t like it, darling! Don’t you believe that we’ll meet again--afterward?”

“It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t do any good, even if we knew. People who do believe that suffer just as much. More, I think, because they haven’t as much fortitude as the ones who don’t believe. Look at you. You think all these miserable people are going to be made happy somewhere after they’re dead, but it doesn’t seem to give you much comfort.”

“I don’t look at it that way, Andrée. The world seems to me like a--sort of school, and I want to see everyone get a chance to learn all there is to know, in decency and--dignity, before it’s over.”

“Maybe your way isn’t a good way. Maybe they learn more as things are.”

“Injustice never teaches anyone anything but resentment and malice.”

“I’m going to play!” she said, suddenly. “Oh, Al! Al! Why didn’t you let me be happy? It may be only for such a little while!”

“I didn’t mean to make you unhappy! I wouldn’t for anything in the world. I’m sorry! Don’t play! That damned music sets you all on edge. Stay here and talk to me!”

“I’m tired of talking.... Al, you take up too much time! I’ll never amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice, quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”

“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl. I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each other alone, and just love each other.”

“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”

“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out--three books. I have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking for you all my life.”

She smiled at him.

“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you! You’re a surprise--and a nuisance!”

She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him roughly.

“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me and nothing else!”

“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship I used to hate so.”

“I _am_ a friend to you!”

“Oh, no, you’re not! You don’t care a rap about my work and my plans. I don’t exactly want you to. You haven’t anything to do with everyday life. You’re--you’re my love.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be awfully nice,” she said, “not to spoil all that.”

“No. It doesn’t matter what you do. You couldn’t change what I love so in you. It’s eternal.”

“Till death do us part!” she said, with a sombre little smile.

“And after,” he added.