dinner that evening proved a lugubrious and problematic meal. the conversation was interjectory and spasmodic, the topics comet-like in character, smiting vaguely through a void of silence. gabriel attempted a hypocritic cheerfulness for the better masking of his own discomfort. his vivacity inspired no feminine response. he was compelled to undergo the ordeal of being studied in detail by his wife and her brown-haired friend. from the first handshake he had conceived a sincere disrelish for miss mabel saker, and her critical silence that evening did not tend to dispossess him of his antipathy. he was not grieved when the white napkins were laid upon the table and the women carried their perfumed persons to the privacy of the drawing-room.
miss saker bared the keyboard of the piano and suffered her slim fingers to produce musical etchings in black and white. she was considered something of a wit in her own circle, her humor emulating the spangled, short-skirted brilliance of the variety stage. miss saker was in a mischievous mood that evening, and the starched artificiality of the dinner-hour emphasized the reaction.
putting down sundry chords in the base with melodramatic thunder, she glanced over her shoulder with a theatrical frown.
“tragedy, my dear—tragedy,” she said; “the man is in a deep, deceitful mood. he has something ponderous and painful upon his conscience.”
ophelia turned herself in her lounge-chair and lay with one cheek on the cushion, a diamond crescent shining in her hair.
“he is too talkative,” she remarked.
“true, o queen. when a man talks thus”—and miss saker evolved a rackety and hysterical air—“you may bet your boots his nerves are on the tingle. he is hiding something under his coat.”
“it was easy to see that from the first,” remarked the wife.
“he went green when he saw us in the hall.”
“rather a shock, perhaps. the man had been out all day; i can guess where.”
meanwhile gabriel had wandered to the garden, where the hand of evening was crushing the red juices of the sunset, staining the cloudy steps of heaven. the lawns were of green silk, the flowers thereon like color fallen from the pallet of day. the cypresses stood clothed with azure, the pines like ethiop maidens wrapped in gossamer work of gold. in the thickets two thrushes were singing, flinging lyric rivalry over the dusky leaves.
the man plunged to the more lonely depths, a broad hollow where flowers and shrubs were tangled in a mist of green. he walked, inhaling the perfumed breath of the hour, with head thrown back, as one who watches the heavens. all the damsels of the night seemed to steal out of their chambers, dewy-lipped, ebon-tressed, with eyes liquid as moon-kissed water. love! what was it? a vapor and a shade? an intangible essence dying on the lips when tasted, with an infinite regret!
he passed again from the swarthy shrubberies, and saw the windows of his own home yellow and tiger-eyed towards the night. roses beckoned in the gloom. what were they to him? with the grass like velvet moss under his feet, he drew near to a window and listened. music came from within, and laughter, facile and light. they were merry, these two, merry at his heart’s cost, and perhaps gabriel guessed it. their words were like falling water to him, confused and meaningless. despite the pleading voice of his woman of dreams, he grew full of bitterness and keen irony of soul.
it had grown dark when he went in to them. a constrained quiet seemed to pervade the room even from the moment that his hand had touched the door. books were forthcoming, cushions, and an occasional trite monosyllable that broke the silence. more than once a yawn arose behind the ivory screen of five white fingers. the man’s presence seemed to agree ill with the atmosphere. it was not long before the two oppressed ones arose and trailed languidly to bed.
gabriel sat on over a paper-backed novel that he had found lying in a chair. a close climax was its title, and from some casual introspection of its pages he surmised that it was gotten from the french, and not the more ideal for that same reason. he noted remarks concerning ladies’ underclothing, a perfervid scene in a fashionable spanish beauty’s boudoir, sundry hints as to happiness, physical of course, and a frequent appeal to a sentiment named love. the book did not hold much converse with him that evening. it abode on his knee more as a cynical fragment of realism. an instinctive and nameless fear of the future was the wraith that stood at his side that night.
the expression of the ensuing week was no less proud and icy. an intangible antagonism pervaded the home life of the place, freezing the fibres and sinews of truth, congealing such magnanimity as moved in the man’s blood. after the first three days he abandoned all attempts at conjuring his wife from her impregnable attitude of silence. she appeared unimpressionable as granite; her very beauty was the opalescent flash of sunlight upon ice. moreover, the inevitable miss saker, like a watchful crow, was forever flapping on the horizon. on no single occasion did gabriel succeed in obtaining any lengthy privacy with his wife. they seemed to exist on frigid society small-talk and on mundane inanities that gave no scope to the man’s conscience.
on the wednesday after ophelia strong’s return the gabingly folk with half the saltire worthies descended upon the friary for the purpose of courteous chatter. to gabriel’s sensitive melancholy the house appeared converted into a sudden pandemonium of fashion. his political responsibilities hung like a girdle of thorns about his loins. mr. mince, with his usual oleaginous arrogance, deigned to dictate to him on the educational question and the rights of church schools. later he was cornered by his father-in-law, who demanded, with superlative geniality: “why the deuce, man, don’t you run over and see us oftener; my blanche swears you’re turning into a damned political hermit, only bobbing up on state occasions.” the culminating irritation descended upon him in the person of his father, who indulged, for some fateful reason, in parental inquires as to his domestic happiness. the suggestion was the last bodkin prick, rankling in the man’s flesh. john strong parted from his son that afternoon with a somewhat ruffled temper. gabriel was more than ever an enigma to the paternal mind, and john strong, like most britishers, cordially detested anything he could not understand.
at the end of the aforesaid week gabriel was like a man groping through a quagmire on a moonless night. the stagnant pools around him, symbolizing his own thoughts, gave back a distorted and sinister reflection of his misery. it was not in his nature to suspect the sincerity of his wife’s scorn. the mood was logical enough, condoned, indeed, by his own conscience. how much she knew or surmised he dared not imagine; it was sufficient for him to realize that some deep gulf lay between them. harassed with loneliness, unable to thread the future or to pierce the past, he seemed surrounded by a deep and desolate wilderness where he heard the shriek of the lapwing, the beating of invisible wings, the hoarse chatter of dead and wind-shaken grass. above lay the sky, the black bowl of fate, starless, limitless, and void.
