The Wheel of Life | Page 9

then--I mean afterward."

"What could you expect, my dear? It was just after the War, and,
though she loved your father, she never in her heart of hearts forgave
him his blue uniform. There was no reason in her--she was all one
fluttering impulse, and to live peaceably in this world one must have at
least a grain of leaven in the lump of one's emotion." He chuckled as he
ended and fixed his mild gaze upon the lamp. Being very old, he had
come to realise that of the two masks possible to the world's stage, the
comic, even if the less spectacular, is also the less commonplace.
"So she died of an overdose of medicine," said Laura; "I have never
been told and yet I have always known that she died by her own hand.
Something in my blood has taught me."
Uncle Percival shook his head. "No--no, she only made a change," he
corrected. "She was a little white moth who drifted to another
sphere--because she had wanted so much, my child, that this earth
would have been bankrupt had it attempted to satisfy her."
"She wanted what?" demanded Laura, her eyes glowing.
The old man turned upon her a glance in which she saw the wistful
curiosity which belongs to age. "At the moment you remind me of her,"
he returned, "and yet you seem so strong where she was only weak."
"What did she want? What did she want?" persisted Laura.
"Well, first of all she wanted your father--every minute of him, every
thought, every heart-beat. He couldn't give it to her, my dear. No man
could. I tell you I have lived to a great age, and I have known great
people, and I have never seen the man yet who could give a woman all
the love she wanted. Women seem to be born with a kind of
divination--a second sight where love is concerned--they aren't content
with the mere husk, and yet that is all that the most of them ever get--"
"But my father?" protested Laura; "he broke his heart for her."
A smile at the fine ironic humour of existence crossed the old man's
sunken lips. "He gave to her dead what she had never had from him

living," he returned. "When she was gone everything--even the man's
life for which he had sacrificed her--turned worthless. He always had
the seeds of consumption, I suppose, and his gnawing remorse caused
them to develop."
A short silence followed his words, while Laura stared at him with eyes
which seemed to weigh gravely the meaning of his words. Then, rising
hurriedly, she made a gesture as if throwing the subject from her and
walked rapidly to the door.
"Aunt Rosa and Aunt Sophy are coming to dine," she said, "so I must
glance at the table. I can't remember now whether I ordered the oysters
or not."
The old man glanced after her with timid disappointment. "So you
haven't time to hear me play?" he asked wistfully.
"Not now--there's Aunt Angela's dinner to be seen to. If Mr. Bleeker
comes with Aunt Sophy you can play to him. He likes it."
"But he always goes to sleep, Laura. He doesn't listen--and besides he
snores so that I can't enjoy my own music."
"That's because he'd rather snore than do anything else. I wouldn't let
that worry me an instant. He goes to sleep at the opera."
She went out, and after giving a few careful instructions to a servant in
the dining-room, ascended the staircase to the large square room in the
left wing where Angela remained a wilful prisoner. As she opened the
door she entered into a mist of dim candle light, by which her aunt was
pacing restlessly up and down the length of the apartment.
To pass from the breathless energy of modern New York into this quiet
conventual atmosphere was like crossing by a single step the division
between two opposing civilisations. Even the gas light, which Angela
could not endure, was banished from her eyes, and she lived always in
a faint, softened twilight not unlike that of some meditative Old-World
cloisters. The small iron bed, the colourless religious prints, the pale

drab walls and the floor covered only by a chill white matting, all
emphasised the singular impression of an expiation that had become as
pitiless as an obsession of insanity. On a small table by a couch, which
was drawn up before a window overlooking the park, there was a row
of little devotional books, all bound neatly in black leather, but beyond
this the room was empty of any consolation for mind or body. Only the
woman herself, with her accusing face and her carelessly arranged
snow-white hair, held and quickened the imagination in spite of