Barbara, ordinarily considerate of her mother, especially during the past year or two, answered with spirit: “I disagree. The time to live is when one is young, and the time to study, and remember, is when one is old.”
“Except,” interrupted Ursula, with cold sarcasm, “that all children are not so fortunate as to be supported until middle-age by wealthy parents, while they romp and have a gay and heedless time.”
Julia cast up her lovely eyes towards the ceiling and murmured resignedly: “Lecture on the Subject of the Honor and Necessity of Duty will now be delivered by Mrs. William Prescott.”
Ursula stared grimly at her elder daughter, then rose. “I am afraid I am interrupting, Miss Vincent,” she said.
“Dear me, no,” faltered Miss Vincent. “Not at all, Mrs. Prescott.”
The girls were silent, but Julia smirked under the long fall of auburn curls which drooped across her cheek. Ursula left the room, closing the door silently behind her. Barbara, her gray eyes snapping, looked at her sister. “You are the nastiest pig in the world,” she said, quietly. “I’ve told you that a dozen times or more. Do you have to talk to Mama like that, you ill-mannered wretch?”
Julia laughed gaily. “Don’t be a prig, Barbie. You get more spinsterish all the time; you’ll be a spinster to the end of your life. Mama is so dull. She is so full of platitudes, just like all her generation. And as futile, too. All old people are futile, and now that it’s a new century it will be the young people who will teach their elders and correct their stupidities—”
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” said the common-sense Barbara. “I don’t remember who it was who said it, but it’s true: ‘The young generations blame their parents for evils for which the parents once blamed the grandparents, and for which the young generations, in their turn, will be blamed by their own children.’”
“Young ladies,” murmured Miss Vincent helplessly.
But Barbara, aroused, jumped to her feet. She looked down at her sister’s beautiful face and at the patronizing smile that curved Julia’s full red mouth. However, before she could speak, Julia said: “You talk about being ‘weak’, Barbie. You are one of the weak ones in the family, because you have what Mama calls ‘common-sense’. Do you know what common-sense is, Barbie? It is compromise. And when you compromise all the time, it is because you can never take a stand for or against anything, not even for or against yourself.”
Again, she spoke before Barbara could speak in answer: “Mama is weak, because she is ‘sensible’, and can always see the other side, the other person’s point of view. If she’d just concentrate on her own point of view, sometimes, and insist upon it, she might have a little personal satisfaction. She might even have had some happiness with Papa, instead of going around in an agonized fog all the time.”
“Look who is talking about principles!” cried Barbara. Her face was dark with a deep flush.
“I didn’t mention principles at all,” replied Julia, languidly. “You’ve got ‘principles’ on the brain, just like Mama. I was only talking about taking a stand for or against a thing, and principles have nothing to do with that. Only getting what you want.”
Sick pain stood in Barbara’s eyes. She said: “We have never been denied anything—”
Julia nodded, smiling brightly. “Exactly what I mean, my pet. None of us has an atom of love for Papa—because he never took a stand against any of us, or denied us anything, even when the biggest fool would know it was wrong. And Mama was so concerned with trying to make Papa happy, and keeping peace in the family, that she never fought it out with him about us when we were little and she had at least physical influence over us. Oh, she tried a few times, but Papa got so stirred up, and she was so afraid he was being hurt, that she gave up at precisely the moment when she could have been victorious.”
Barbara was silent. Julia’s extraordinarily lovely face sparkled.
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit hell,”’ she said.
“My dear Miss Julie!” cried Miss Vincent, aghast at this blasphemy. “And what language for a young lady!”
Julia shrugged. “Somebody has to tell the truth around here,” she added.
“You dare to say you ever tell the truth!” said Barbara bitterly.
“Well, I do, sometimes,” laughed Julia. “And you know I am telling the truth, now, little Miss Spinster.”
Barbara, though she knew that what she was about to say was childish, could not help saying: “Being a spinster is not half so bad as being in love with a dreadful old man.”
She turned to Miss Vincent, who was much distressed at these evidences of “dark disharmony”, as she termed them. “I am sorry, Miss Vincent, but I don’t feel well. You’ll have to excuse me.”
Accompanied by Julie’s pretty laughter, she ran out of the room, her dark mane flying.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The cold spring sunlight brightened upon the mountains, which were still dark and black against a brilliant blue sky. The piny ridges appeared almost black; no green promised that April was approaching. Barbara stood at the wide window of her room and stared somberly at the mountains that faced her. She saw the houses upon them very clearly, not yet hidden by summer foliage; she saw tiny red roofs, rising one above the other, or roofs of dull bluish slate, or the glisten of a white wall, or the flash of the sun on a far window. The house behind her was very still. It was not time yet for supper, when she and her sister would go down to the morning-room to meet her mother. There was still time for a swift bicycle ride on a mountain road, time for clean astringent air rushing against her face, for freedom and release.
How she hated this house! She hated the long gloomy corridors of the upper floors, the shut doors, the silences, the rich dim carpets, the opulence downstairs, the flare of color, the chill that lay in all the vast corners, the mighty circular staircase that rose, marble and cold and wide, to the roof. This was not a home, this house. She had been born here, but it was not a home for her. Perhaps there would never be a home.
If only I could get away, thought Barbara. If only I need never return here again. The silence of the great house lay behind her like a chasm. In a few hours, her father would be home, and he, and her mother and her sister and herself would gather in the shadowy and gigantic dining-room, and they would eat, and perhaps talk a little, tensely and warily, each fearing that a false word, an open word, would precipitate angers and fierce misunderstandings. If the meal survived without disruption, there would be nothing worse to carry into the evening than the memory of Ursula’s drawn and haggard face, William’s black silences, and the dreary reflections of servants tiptoeing across the mirror over the enormous buffet. After that, the preparation of lessons for the next day, a little needlework, a book; then bed, with the last fire glimmering on the hearth and the strong spring wind against the windows. But never, through it all, the sound of dear laughter, a gay joke, an eager rush of words, or the bantering voice of love that teased in order that it might not reveal itself too openly.
There would be no life or movement, no promise, until almost three months had passed, until Oliver returned from Harvard, Matthew from Princeton, and Thomas from Yale. Barbara gave a little short laugh of hard wretchedness. It was typical of this family that the young men in it should not want to be at any university together, that they had separated themselves from one another and that there was no question of their corresponding or inquiring about one another in letters to their parents. Only Oliver wrote her.
Well, thought Barbara, there is nothing anyone can do about us. Nothing at all. I must accept that, and not whine over it. She went to her wardrobe and brought out a small felt hat and a thick wool jacket and skirt. She must hurry, if she wished to have her ride. She stood before the mirror, a slender young girl, with none of Julia’s beautiful charm, but with a firm straightness of figure much like her mother’s. She saw the pale shadow of her face, her clear, wide gray eyes, her strong still mouth. No, she reflected, it was not a p
retty face. It could not be called even a “wholesome” one. She shrugged, caught up her long dark hair and twisted it across the back of her head, where she fastened it with pins. She put on the rugged skirt and jacket, found a pair of gloves, and went out of the room.
She passed the shut door of her mother’s apartments; she hesitated. Then, resolutely, she knocked on the door. Ursula’s voice, weary and low, answered her, and Barbara entered. Ursula was sitting by the window, an unopened book on her knee. When she saw her daughter her lips tightened, her eyes became cold. “Well, Barbie,” she said. “What is the matter? Why aren’t you in the school-room?” She looked with deliberation at the watch on her shirtwaist.
Why can’t we talk to each other? thought Barbara, with as much despair as a nature so firm and reasonable could feel. Why, when we are so much alike, isn’t there any intimacy between Mama and me?
Ursula regarded her daughter with bleak expectancy. She had hoped so much for Barbara, but it had been useless, after all. She searched that young steadfast face, and saw there only self-sufficient hardness, without warmth, without tenderness. Barbara, so acute, understood what her mother was thinking, and she acknowledged that there was truth in Ursula’s thoughts. But, was it not possible for Mama to see that she, Barbara, had changed?
“I thought a ride would do me more good today than lessons,” said Barbara, trying to make her smile gay and succeeding only in making it appear superior.
“You are wrong, of course, Barbie,” said Ursula, putting her hand on her book, and indicating that, as she had no control over her daughter, she had no desire for her presence. “However, you are old enough to know that you alone will suffer for a lack of education.”
Barbara leaned against the door she had shut, and stared at the floor. She tried again: “Mama, we’ve talked about it so often. Julie and I are such big girls, now. We ought not to have a governess. We ought to be away somewhere, at school.”
“Julie doesn’t want to go away to school,” said Ursula. Her hands dropped from the book, and her brows drew together in a wretched frown.
“That is quite true, Mama. But I want to go. Papa won’t listen. I’ve tried to tell him that I’d like to go to college. I want to be independent. I have even thought I might like to teach in some school, afterwards. You promised to ask him—”
Ursula’s pale dry mouth took on a distressed expression. “I have asked him, my dear. You know his usual answer: He doesn’t approve of girls leaving home for school. You know what he calls girls who want to do so: ‘Raucous, modern women, sexless and unattractive, repulsive to men.’ Your father detests the ‘new woman’. You made it no better, Barbie, by arguing that you thought women ought to have the franchise.” Ursula could not help smiling, though it was a dull smile.
“His arguments are only an excuse!” cried Barbara. “You know the real reason. He just doesn’t want to let any of us get away from him! Even I, for whom he doesn’t care particularly. He wouldn’t have let the boys get away, either, if there had been any universities near Andersburg.”
Ursula sighed, put up her hands and pushed back the russet hair which was so heavily interwoven now with white and gray. Fatigue and abandon were in the gesture. She removed her spectacles, rubbed them abstractedly with her handkerchief.
Barbara was right. But Ursula would not admit this to her daughter. Her fanatic loyalty and devotion to William prevented her from allowing any criticism of him to be made by any of the children.
“It seems to me that you are speaking very treacherously of your father, Barbie, your father who has given you everything, denied you nothing—”
“Oh, I’ve heard that so often!” exclaimed Barbara. “Now it has become sickening. I’m not so stupid that I don’t know what Papa has done and is always doing for us. But I don’t want it any longer, Mama. I want my own life; I want to go to college. I want to be free.”
“You mean, you want to leave this house, and everything and everyone in it,” said Ursula, in an inflexible voice which rejected all that was Barbara.
Barbara again stared at the floor. Her head bent slowly. Very quietly, she said: “Yes.”
She lifted her head again and fixed her eyes upon her mother. Ursula was silent. For an instant, she had the disloyal impulse to cry: “Barbie! I know, my dear. I know all about it. I wish I could help you. But I cannot. Your father comes first with me, and what he wants.” She held back the impulse, made her face rigid.
“You are so ungrateful, Barbie,” she said, with bitter dismissal. “You never think of anyone but yourself. Don’t you think you owe your father something? Don’t you think his desires should be considered, rather than yours?”
“Yes, perhaps I am ungrateful,” admitted Barbara in a low tone. “Perhaps I am selfish, too—”
“There is no ‘perhaps’ about it, Barbie,” interrupted Ursula.
Barbara went on steadfastly: “But I ought to be considered, too, and what I want, myself. I want to be a little happy. I know that happiness isn’t something that comes easily; perhaps it doesn’t come to any of us, ever. But it would give me some pleasure, some freedom, to plan my own life—and to go away.”
Ursula wanted to say: “Why do you want to go away?” But before she could speak them the words were smothered in a kind of terror. She knew what the answer would be, and she could not bear to hear it. She lifted her hands again in an involuntary gesture, as if to cover her ears; then dropped them half-way. She said: “Young girls are so restless these days. They don’t know what they really want, or what is good for them. They have lost their way.”
Barbara drew herself up, standing straight against the door. “I don’t want to lose my way, Mama. But I’m afraid I’ll lose it, if I don’t get out of this house and go away to school.” She waited for Ursula to speak, but her mother did not reply, did not look at her. She continued: “All of us have lost our way, because no way was ever shown us except the way of self-indulgence and self-gratification.”
Ursula stood up, in panic. “Barbie! I won’t listen to you any longer! You—you don’t understand. You speak of going to college. You have made no allowance for marriage. You don’t speak of marriage; yet, in two or three years, it will be expected of you that you’ll marry.”
“No, Mama,” replied Barbara, calmly. “I’m not making any plans for marrying. I don’t think I’m fit for anyone to marry—yet. I have so much to learn, and it’s not in books. Mama, I’ve got to save myself.”
“You talk like a silly romantic young fool!” cried Ursula, thrusting out her hands as if pushing away her daughter. “You are only quoting the words uttered by irresponsible spinsters and dissatisfied wives—”
Barbara opened the door. “If I don’t hurry, I shan’t have time for my ride,” she said. There was no emotion in her voice, not even regret or anger. She closed the door after her, taking despair with her, leaving despair behind her.
She went out of the house to the stables. She found her bicycle, rolled expertly down the long winding road that uncoiled from the house through the parklike grounds. The harsh bright wind struck her face, but it gave her no delight. In her eyes there was the deepest and most desolate trouble. The gate-keeper opened the iron gates for her; if he spoke to her, she did not hear him. She rolled out upon Schiller Road, carefully avoided the carriage traffic which filled it, set out for the mountains. In a few minutes she was climbing; the resistance of the grade was a hard pleasure to her.
She was climbing rapidly. On a lonely mountainside, she rolled past the gates of the great estates which had grown up there during the past twenty years. Dogs barked at her fiercely. She climbed higher and higher. Everything about her was shining and lonely; stark and still were the empty trees tracing twisting branches against the intensely blue sky. Stone walls flowed past her; she crossed a little stone bridge, under which a brown brook, released from winter, chattered and foamed. She turned her wheel down a road which dipped and rose and curved, a road that ran with water and liquid mud.
Now she had to get down and walk her bicycle; she could hear and feel the mud sucking at her heels. It was very early, as yet, for such an excursion. But there was in her a terrible need for solitude and flight.
She had left all houses behind. She was in a wood of fir trees, black and chill and motionless, though she could hear the rushing of the wind far above this sheltered place. Once or twice she saw a robin, newly returned. Sparrows chittered about her. Wings flashed through the illuminated air. A squirrel dashed across her path. Life was awakening. Barbara did not see it. Her hands and feet were cold, her cheeks roughened and reddened. The trouble was still deep in her eyes, so deep, indeed, that she did not detect the first faint sweetness of the stirring air, the clear fragrance of resin. She did not see, here and there, patches of old honeycombed snow, scabrous against the brown earth.
Now she emerged from the woods, reached her old favorite spot, unsheltered, open to the wind and the blue and brilliant air. There were the brown flat rocks, where she had sat so often in the summer. They were wet, dripping with moisture. Two snakes lay on them, folded together in a nuptial embrace. Barbara, who had no fear of these harmless serpents, decided not to disturb them. She leaned her bicycle against a tree, walked away from the stones, and stood on a narrow terrace. Far below her lay Andersburg, smoking, gray-and-brown, crowded, huddled and branching. Curving away from Andersburg lay the whitish-blue river. She could see the corroded floes of ice upon it. But river traffic was being resumed. She could almost hear the sound of the puffing tugs, towing flat-boats.
She could see the Prescott house clearly, a dusky toy house amid its grounds. There was an unreality about it. Barbara stood there and stared at her home for a long time. Even at that distance it had for her a quality sinister and threatening. She turned from it, found the gigantic saw-mills of her father, saw the smoke rising from them, the flat-boats at the docks. A spur of the railroad ran down to the mills now; she could see the tiny engine, gushing smoke, the flat cars covered with raw yellow lumber. Except for the birds cheeping in the bare trees and the wind on the higher levels, everything about her was silent.
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