Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ You forget that my youth is past, and that with it the time for sacrifices is past, too. I have no claims on life. Life, at my age and in my position, can only be a dedication. I can, perhaps, never soften or change her: but I can still protect her; I can still lend her the dignity, such as it is, of my home and my companionship. And I can pity her, most piteous creature—whose mother has no love for her.”
“Ah, you do not love me!” cried Damier, and all his youth was in the cry. ”

“ I could not keep you as my friend under her eyes. I must live with her, and for her; that is the only life possible for me. I made it for myself. Whatever her cruelty, whatever her baseness, I have only to remember that I am responsible for her, that I am her only chance. And after this her presence in my life makes yours wrong. She knows now that you are not a friend only, and as a husband you could not remain. Such a ménage à trois would be as detestable as it would be grotesque.”
“She will marry!” cried Damier. “She must marry Monsieur Daunay.” ”

“ At such moments something joyous and conscienceless in him responded to her, half intellectual comprehension and half mere flesh and blood. It was a little swirl of emotion that his soul, calm and disdainfully aloof, could look down on and observe, in no danger of being shaken by it; but it did swirl through him like a tremulous coil of Venusberg music; and Claire, in her transparent white, with her heavy braids and grave, shining eyes, gleamed at such moments with the baleful beauty of the eternal siren. As long as one was human something human in one must respond to that siren call. ”

“ Claire looked at him for a moment with a smile unresentful and yet rueful.
“How often you surprise me,” she said, “and how often you make me feel that I don’t, even yet, quite understand you! It is so difficult to realize that a person so comprehending can at the same time be so rigid. With you tout comprendre is not tout pardonner.”
“By no means,” Damier owned, unable to repress a smile.
“Well, I would far rather have you understand me completely, even if you can’t forgive. I told you that I was wicked; one good point I have: I never pretend to be better than I am.” ”

“ Damier wondered over the strange contrast to her frequent smile. He saw that where Mademoiselle Vicaud was still and grave her mother was light and gay, but the gaiety and lightness—he traced the impression further—were part of the manner, the protecting, ornamental manner; were something that had once been real, and were now put on, like her shoes, again. The daughter showed herself, or seemed to show herself, imperturbably: the mother was hidden, masked; her eyes, with their contrasting smile, made him think of Tragedy glancing among garlands of roses. ”

“ I USTACE DAMIER bent his long, melancholy profile over the photograph-album. It was an old-fashioned album; its faded morocco cover, its gilt clasp loosened with age, went with the quiet old-fashioned little room, that had no intentions, made no efforts, and yet was full of meaning, with the charm of an epoch near enough to be easily understood, yet with a grace and a pathos in its modern antiquity deeper than that possessed by a more romantic remoteness. ”

“ Not only had she cast her glamour upon him: he evidently loved her—“but adore her, you understand,” as he had said in his expressive French.
His hands clasped behind him, Monsieur Daunay, with now a reminiscent confidence, shook his head and sighed profoundly. “Que voulez-vous?” he repeated. “Since her girlhood it has been with me a hidden passion. Ce que j’ai souffert!” He showed no antagonism now, no resentment; Damier could but be grateful.
“Claire has not suffered through me,” he went on. “She allows me to love her, but she knows that she is free. ”

“ It was now Damier’s turn to flush. He nerved himself, after a moment, to say:
“But this is not the mother.”
“No; and my husband is dead: otherwise the wish to meet me would not overcome that disability.”
“You are a little unjust, my dearest friend,” said the young man.
“I know the world,” she replied; but she raised her eyes in saying it, and looked at him with a sad kindness that separated him from the world she knew. “I don’t judge it—only see it as it is. It seeks happiness, it avoids unhappiness. To be unfortunate is to be lost, in its eyes—to sink from sight. ”

“ Madame Vicaud, in her black dress, with flowing white about her wrists and throat,—a throat erect and beautiful,—had closed the door softly behind her, and as she came toward him, Damier, involuntarily carrying further his Venusberg simile of some moments before, thought of an Elizabeth bringing peace and radiance; yet there was, too, a gravity in her gaze, a quick intentness that went swiftly from her daughter to him. ”

“ I will never marry him against your will. Oh, Claire, try to understand me—try to trust me—try to love me!” She rose to her feet, her face ardent with the upsurging of all her longing motherhood, its sudden flaming into desperate hope through the deep driftings of ashen hopelessness; and as if swayed forward by this flame of hope, this longing of love, this ardor, she leaned toward her child, stretched out her arms toward her face of heavy impassivity. ”

“ Damier was not able quite to restrain the resentment he felt at the idea of Claire complaining.
“Ah, I could not blame her if she did,” said Madame Vicaud, her quiet eyes on her work, “for mothers personify circumstance to children; we are symbols, to them, of baffling, cramping fate; very often, and very naturally, we are fate’s whipping-boys: and when one is a young and talented and beautiful woman whose youth is passing in giving lessons, in seeing people who seldom interest or amuse her, fate must often seem to deserve blows.” ”

“ Damier spoke lightly, but at the moment he believed what he spoke.
Claire smiled without replying, and said, after a little silence:
“Of course you have seen how good Mamma is. You both of you have a moral perfume, and recognize it in each other. I puzzle and worry her so because I won’t suffer, won’t go out of my life into other people’s. You asked me how one could avoid suffering; really, for the most part, it is very easy to avoid. Sympathy is the fatal thing: to suffer with—why should one? It is a mere increasing of the suffering in the world, if one comes to think of it. ”

“ But she was not a woman that men of Madame Vicaud’s world, of Lady Surfex’s world, would care to marry. Had she been an heiress,—and she was of the type that one associates with unfragrant and recent wealth,—had it not been for her poverty, her essential obscurity, she would no doubt have been enrolled among the powerful young women who are watched with admiring envy as they advance toward a luminous match. Claire had quite the manner of placid advance, quite the manner (and how detestable to her mother the manner must be!) ”

“ She smiled swiftly, from her gravity, at him. “There is good Madame Dépressier, and the comtesse, and little Sophie,—who needs me, poor child, in her struggle and loneliness,—and the others, true and good all; but none near. You would be near,—would you not?—and have me share pain with you—lean on you, you say.” His fine young face, stern with eagerness, followed her words in silent assent. “But it would be difficult for me to have such a friend. I have never had such a friend. It is difficult, painful to me to show myself, be myself. I am a hard, I fear a spoiled, stunted nature. ”

“ That she should so finely appreciate her mother was one. It was touching—meant to be so, perhaps, for even in his attraction he had these moments of doubt; but a sincerity that could paint herself so unbecomingly and her mother so beautifully was a new revelation of her frankness. There was attraction, too, though of a mingled quality, in her strength and in her apparent indifference to his impression of her. These were better things than the glamour; yet that, too, he felt, as when she turned her eyes on him and said that the world was beautiful. ”

“ Damier, in the surge of his comprehension,—of which she must be so ignorant and at which perhaps she yet guessed,—longed to throw himself at her knees: her pity for Claire equaled, surpassed his own; and he had—not blaming her for it, thinking it, indeed, the penalty of her superiority—thought her unconscious of Claire’s pathos.
“You deepen your shadows too much,” he said; “for a daughter more like yourself your life would not be a narrow one.” He paused, for, though she did not lift her eyes, a faint flush passed over Madame Vicaud’s face. ”