Chapter THREE: Gilbert Goes A-Wooing

“Well ...” said the old lady. “She’s very--_peculiar_.”

There was no word her son could have disliked more; he frowned.

“Why?” he demanded. “In what way? How is she ‘peculiar’?”

“She’s been brought up,” the old lady began, and stopped. “After all, you’re the one to be suited, Gilbert. You’re marrying her, not I. If you’ve got it into your head that she’s the only woman on earth to make you happy, very well. Marry her. And I only hope you _will_ be happy.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s likely, if you’re going to quarrel with her.”

“Gilbert,” said the old lady, “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my life.”

True enough, he was obliged to admit it. He saw that he had used a wrong word. She didn’t quarrel, she didn’t argue. But she conquered. And when she disapproved of people, she changed them. He had never tried to understand her methods, but he had seen the results. He supposed it was force of character and that it must be admirable and beneficent.

“You needn’t worry about that, my boy,” she went on. “I’ve never yet had a word of disagreement with any of my sons-or daughters-in-law.”

“I know it, Mother. But living under the same roof ... and she’s been brought up very differently.”

“Yes; just as I said,” the old lady observed. “Very peculiar.... However, if you’ve made up your mind, my boy, there’s no use talking about it. I’ll do my best, as I always have done and always expect to do.”

Her son believed this; he had never doubted that she was a perfectly noble, perfectly wise and magnificent woman and he worshipped her. There was an inscrutable and malicious smile on her shrunken lips; the changeless, infinitely remote smile of god-like amusement at earth’s follies which one sees on the face of a bronze Buddha. She had a majesty beyond the need of charm or of fashion. She belonged to an old Brooklyn family which had become aristocratic by reason of having lived in the same place for four generations, and she had married into a similar one. She had always been rich and immeasurably secure, living isolated in the big house on “The Heights” like the somewhat ferocious monarch of a desert isle, an obscure and uncomfortable existence in which nothing was accomplished and nothing enjoyed. She disdained society as frivolous; and all luxury was to her abomination. She made, she said, a “proper use” of her money.

Her chief claims to moral excellence were these: that she had borne six children, and that she had lived for sixty years; and above all because of her marvelous lack of sensibility, an imperviousness which no actual image of Buddha could have surpassed. She had looked on at suffering, anguish, despair, unmoved, and that was fortitude; she had witnessed birth, death, without a gleam of curiosity or speculation, and that was common sense. She had been “just” toward her little children with all the blindness proper to that virtue.

“It makes no difference _why_ you do things,” she always said. “A thing’s _right_, or it’s _wrong_. I don’t want to hear your reasons.”

He recognized the old familiar attitude now, the old air of saying--“Very well; go your own way, and learn by bitter experience!” Within herself he felt she was saying--“You’ll have to reap what you sow. You’ll make your bed and you’ll have to lie in it.” And so on.

“You don’t approve of my marrying her then, do you?” he asked.

“You’re twenty-five years old,” said his mother, “You’re old enough to decide for yourself.”

He felt more irritated than his ideas of filial piety allowed. He drank his coffee slowly and reminded himself that his mother was a widow and that all her other children had married and left her. His thoughts were readily distracted that day, though, and good-will very easy to him. He sat back, lighted a cigar and looked about him, at the dismal basement dining-room, used for all the family meals, with its barred windows through which one could see the feet of passersby, and the horrible walnut buffet and sideboard and the massive square table, and the twelve chairs, three invalided and permanently in corners, the faded carpet that had once been upstairs, the immense crayon picture of a lion’s head, the general economical hideousness of this room which proclaimed the old lady’s genial idea that anything was good enough for the inmates of the house, and the owner. He had never liked the room, but he fancied it this morning as it _might be_--a Paradise, with the charm, the youth, the mysterious strangeness of a young wife in it.

Here, without question, the young wife would have to come, because Gilbert could not and would not consider leaving his mother alone. And to be candid, dared not. He owed everything to his mother, he said. Hadn’t she made sacrifices to give her children every advantage, lessons of various sorts, and unstinted moral advice? She talked candidly of moulding their characters, and that is just what she had done. She had moulded them in her own image, supreme and devastating blasphemy. They were all of them like fainter copies of her own sharply written character. This man sitting across the breakfast table from her now was literally made by her. By nature credulous and imitative, he had lent himself perfectly to her manipulations; he thought exactly as she had taught him to think; he disagreed with her in some points, because she had taught him that a man must in certain respects disagree with women; he knew things, he had had experiences unknown to her, but she had caused him to believe, sadly, that a man must so conduct himself. She had taught him that, as a man, he must disappoint his mother. She despised him a little, but she certainly, undeniably loved him.

She looked at him, stalwart black-avised fellow, with his heavy brows and his obstinate mouth. Wasn’t he _manly_, she thought!

“Ah, well!” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it’s all for the best, Gilbert.”

He finished his breakfast in manly silence,--which no decent woman dare trouble--and getting up, went round the table to his mother, dutifully to kiss her good-bye.

“I’m sorry you didn’t--take to her, Mother,” he said, a little grieved.

“Well,” she answered. “_You’re_ marrying her, Gilbert, not _I_.”

“If she’ll have me,” he said. “I haven’t asked her yet, you know.”

He had long ago promised his mother never to propose marriage to any woman without telling her first. And it was in loyalty to this promise that he had lured Miss Mason from Staten Island to Brooklyn under pretense of showing her a wonderful picture on exhibition in a department store--a Dutch peasant sweeping her cottage, and the motes in the sunbeam were reputed marvelously life-like. It was a quite natural thing, after gazing at this picture for fifteen awkward minutes, to suggest a call on his mother living so near. The old lady had heard more than one mention from her son of this Miss Mason from Staten Island, and she knew, and Miss Mason knew, that this was a visit of inspection.

After it was over, and the beloved young lady had left the house on his arm, he had, of course, to take her back to Staten Island. And never had she been so nice to him, so kind, so gracious, never had he felt so encouraged. The next evening was her birthday, and he had been invited to the little dance by her mother.

“Why don’t you come to supper?” Miss Mason had suggested. And they had both turned red and become silent, a little startled and alarmed. Because they knew, both of these, that this would be the time....

“She may refuse me,” he said, and with a glance his mother saw all the anguish he was trying to hide.

“I don’t think she will!” said she with a most detestable smile, which fully expressed her opinion of Miss Mason and her matrimonial hopes. “I don’t think there’s much fear of _that_!”

But Gilbert knew better, and he spent a day of black misery in his office. As the afternoon wore on he became _sure_ that she would refuse him. She had such a lot of fellows hanging around--and all of them had those qualities which he lacked, those fascinating social graces.... He so silent, so unready, a clumsy dancer, a man interested in nothing but business--and the Republican party. He dreaded, he shrank from asking her, and yet he was feverishly impatient to do so before those other fellows had a chance.

Never was there a lover more humble than he. And he liked to be humble; he liked to think how a great, powerful fellow like himself could be brought low by a slip of a girl. It was a wonderful example, he thought, of the Power of Love. Well, who knows ...?

He had been seeing a great deal of Miss Mason during the past three months. He had gone with Pendleton to make their party call in due form and he had found her on that occasion more friendly and more intimate. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was alone with Lance. Her mother and father, she said, had gone out for a walk in the Silver Lake woods--which Vincelle thought a very peculiar thing for an elderly couple to do, above all, on a Sunday afternoon, when respectable people were best invisible. There were a good many things about this family which he could not approve of; Lance was one of these. That thin sunburnt young man in spectacles with his gloomy face and didactic air jarred upon him beyond reason. He had observed too, that Lance had been reading to his cousin, in cosy intimacy, before the fire in the library.

But Claudine had been remarkably kind to him, and gentle and friendly. Moreover, Lance had had the decency to remove himself and his big book. Pendleton, of course, monopolized the talk, with his flippant nonsense, but Gilbert felt that that did him no harm. He felt that he, sitting in silence, with only a word now and then, a sensible word, mind you, appeared more manly, and he was right! He touched the heart of the lively young lady; she felt suddenly rather sorry for him, and because he was stupid she fancied him more honest than others. She quite cordially invited him to come again.

He did, and this time alone. He didn’t even mention the fact to Pendleton, and when Pendleton learned of it he took it amiss.

“I introduced you there,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d go behind my back that way, Vincelle.”

“I was invited,” said Gilbert, “and I went. I didn’t know the family was your private property. I didn’t know I had to account to you for every--”

“Damn unfriendly, _I_ call it!” said Pendleton.

Gilbert smiled scornfully.

If their friendship had been a more genuine one, this would have caused a serious quarrel; but it was a forced sort of friendship, simply brought about by propinquity. They had grown up together, gone to the same school, the same dancing school, they moved in the same set. They had no respect for each other; Gilbert despised the other’s frivolity and lack of money-making ability, and Pendleton looked upon Gilbert as a surly and ungenerous young boor. After their brief disagreement about Miss Mason they went on as usual, except that they were wary about the Staten Island visits. They went down there at different times, never again together, and each took what advantage he could get.

The unhappy Gilbert had suffered much, and perhaps learned a little. He had been dreadfully humiliated. Once Claudine had asked him to ride with her and he had been forced to admit that he didn’t ride. Her astonished face ...! And he hadn’t read any of those books she knew so affectionately.

He had, when younger and slimmer, played tennis, but of late years since he had become so engrossed in business, his great recreation had been poker. As for books, he liked reading as much as the next man, provided they were entertaining books. And he liked music, too; not operas, but not trashy stuff, either; he liked Schubert’s _Serenade_, and _Traumerei_, and things like that.... He hadn’t Pendleton’s talent for picking up information, for knowing something about everything, but when he heard Pendleton talking so glibly, he consoled himself by remembering that he had had an education _exactly_ like his, of precisely the same length and the same price. So Pendleton couldn’t really know any more than he did, no matter how he talked.

The free, careless air of that household had encouraged him. In other families where there were marriageable daughters, he had had an uncomfortable feeling of eligibility, he had felt that everything he did was important and significant, and that he must be careful. Here it was obvious that no one cared. He could come and be welcome, or he could stay away. He had begun to bring flowers and candy, which Claudine received with pretty appreciation. But other people brought flowers and candy, also, and were as nicely thanked.

He made an effort to study her to learn if she really was a flirt, as Pendleton said. But he couldn’t decide. She reigned like a queen over a court of admirers, but without undue coquetry. She was, in spite of her gaiety and liveliness, a serious girl. She read marvelous books. She played astounding music; she was a great companion to her father on his botanical walks and she collected “specimens,” dried and pressed in a book. Weeds, they looked like to Gilbert, but he was willing to admit their value. He had never imagined anyone, so happy as she, so interested and delighted with life. She was a fine horsewoman, she skated and danced beautifully; she took long, long walks in the country, and enjoyed them wholeheartedly; she went to the opera, to concerts, she read, she practised her music, she painted in water-colours, she had any number of friends and all sorts of informal society, she hadn’t a dull, or idle moment in her existence.

He saw no evidences of domesticity in her, but that didn’t trouble him. It wasn’t an era of domesticity. A wife, in his class, was an ornament and a diversion. Domestic science was an unknown term to both of them. Claudine had escaped the thorough training of her two elder sisters; her mother had conscientiously taught them to cook, to sew, and to superintend a household, just as she herself had been taught, but with this youngest and brightest child, she had lost heart. She was growing older; she was tired. And moreover, it seemed to her that the time for all that had passed. No one would ever expect Claudine to cook or to sew.

“Let her enjoy herself while she can,” her mother said to herself. “Youth is over so soon.”

She would make a charming hostess, let that suffice. Gilbert asked no more. He was completely dazzled.

His feelings would be incomprehensible to a later generation. They were such polite, respectful feelings! He never thought of Claudine and himself as a woman and a man. She was a young lady, and he was a gentleman, and even in his most secret soul he respected her. He wanted to marry her and he let it go at that. He didn’t even analyze her charms.

He was a man of invincible honesty. He wasn’t clear-sighted; he had no self-knowledge, but neither had he any subtlety. He loved Claudine: he longed to give her everything he had. He felt himself unworthy and inferior beside her purity, her innocence, her lovely young spirit. He had tried to the best of his ability to set before her whatever advantages there might be in marrying him, but not through conceit, only to persuade her.

He had brought with him on one occasion an old magazine, to show her an article in it--“The Old Vincelles of Brooklyn.” It had been written by a sort of Miss Dorothy, a humble and admiring relation, and it was a narrative of that singularly unillustrious family, beginning with the Huguenot who had come first to American shores, and mentioning with solemn veneration a long line of lawyers, ministers, and business men, all respectable, serious, and thrifty. Not a vagary, not a passion, among them.

He showed her this not from pride--although he was proud of it--but merely as an added inducement, in the same spirit he had talked to her of his “business prospects,” and his remarkable progress. It was as if he said, “Here is all I have, beloved girl, won’t it compensate for what I am?” And now he rested his case. He had nothing further to offer. His inarticulate and unhappy wooing was at an end. He was going to ask her, quite simply, if she would have him.

He arrived at the house in the June twilight. The house was still unlighted, the windows were open, the curtains fluttering gently in a little breeze. There was a magical fragrance from the garden: it was in all ways a magical evening. He never quite forgot it.

He dismissed the carriage at the gate and walked along the drive, the gravel crunching under his deliberate tread, the perfumed breeze blowing against his miserable and sullen face. Because, under his serious and pompous demeanor, he was after all, very young; almost a boy. And his whole heart was set on this, his whole heart! Claudine was the one woman on earth for him.

If she only knew the power she held in her little hands, he reflected!