"Refuse? I don't need to! Do you want to succeed to half the
chorus-world of New York?"
"They won't be on board with us, I suppose!"
"The echoes of their conversation will. It's the only language Peter
knows."
"He told me he longed for the influence of a good woman--" She checked
herself, reddening at Ralph's laugh.
"Well, tell him to apply again when he's been under it a month or two.
Meanwhile we'll stick to the liners."
Ralph was beginning to learn that the only road to her reason lay
through her vanity, and he fancied that if she could be made to see
Van Degen as an object of ridicule she might give up the idea of the
Sorceress of her own accord. But her will hardened slowly under his
joking opposition, and she became no less formidable as she grew more
calm. He was used to women who, in such cases, yielded as a matter of
course to masculine judgments: if one pronounced a man "not decent"
the question was closed. But it was Undine's habit to ascribe all
interference with her plans to personal motives, and he could see that
she attributed his opposition to the furtive machinations of poor Clare.
It was odious to him to prolong the discussion, for the accent of
recrimination was the one he most dreaded on her lips. But the moment
came when he had to take the brunt of it, averting his thoughts as best
he might from the glimpse it gave of a world of mean familiarities, of
reprisals drawn from the vulgarest of vocabularies. Certain retorts sped
through the air like the flight of household utensils, certain charges
rang out like accusations of tampering with the groceries. He stiffened
himself against such comparisons, but they stuck in his imagination and
left him thankful when Undine's anger yielded to a burst of tears. He
had held his own and gained his point. The trip on the Sorceress was
given up, and a note of withdrawal despatched to Van Degen; but at the
same time Ralph cabled his sister to ask if she could increase her loan.
For he had conquered only at the cost of a concession: Undine was to
stay in Paris till October, and they were to sail on a fast steamer, in
a deck-suite, like the Harvey Shallums.
Undine's ill-humour was soon dispelled by any new distraction, and she
gave herself to the untroubled enjoyment of Paris. The Shallums were the
centre of a like-minded group, and in the hours the ladies could spare
from their dress-makers the restaurants shook with their hilarity
and the suburbs with the shriek of their motors. Van Degen, who had
postponed his sailing, was a frequent sharer in these amusements; but
Ralph counted on New York influences to detach him from Undine's train.
He was learning to influence her through her social instincts where he
had once tried to appeal to other sensibilities.
His worst moment came when he went to see Clare Van Degen, who, on the
eve of departure, had begged him to come to her hotel. He found her less
restless and rattling than usual, with a look in her eyes that reminded
him of the days when she had haunted his thoughts. The visit passed off
without vain returns to the past; but as he was leaving she surprised
him by saying: "Don't let Peter make a goose of your wife."
Ralph reddened, but laughed.
"Oh, Undine's wonderfully able to defend herself, even against such
seductions as Peter's."
Mrs. Van Degen looked down with a smile at the bracelets on her thin
brown wrist. "His personal seductions--yes. But as an inventor of
amusements he's inexhaustible; and Undine likes to be amused."
Ralph made no reply but showed no annoyance. He simply took her hand and
kissed it as he said good-bye; and she turned from him without audible
farewell.
As the day of departure approached. Undine's absorption in her dresses
almost precluded the thought of amusement. Early and late she was
closeted with fitters and packers--even the competent Celeste not being
trusted to handle the treasures now pouring in--and Ralph cursed his
weakness in not restraining her, and then fled for solace to museums and
galleries.
He could not rouse in her any scruple about incurring fresh debts, yet
he knew she was no longer unaware of the value of money. She had
learned to bargain, pare down prices, evade fees, brow-beat the small
tradespeople and wheedle concessions from the great--not, as Ralph
perceived, from any effort to restrain her expenses, but only to prolong
and intensify the pleasure of spending. Pained by the trait, he tried
to laugh her out of it. He told her once that she had a miserly
hand--showing her, in proof, that, for all their softness, the fingers
would not bend back, or the pink palm open. But she retorted a little
sharply that it was no wonder, since she'd heard nothing talked of since
their marriage but economy; and this left him without any answer. So
the purveyors continued to mount to their apartment, and Ralph, in the
course of his frequent nights from it, found himself always dodging the
corners of black glazed boxes and swaying pyramids of pasteboard; always
lifting his hat to sidling milliners' girls, or effacing himself before
slender vendeuses floating by in a mist of opopanax. He felt incompetent
to pronounce on the needs to which these visitors ministered; but the
reappearance among them of the blond-bearded jeweller gave him ground
for fresh fears. Undine had assured him that she had given up the idea
of having her ornaments reset, and there had been ample time for their
return; but on his questioning her she explained that there had been
delays and "bothers" and put him in the wrong by asking ironically if he
supposed she was buying things "for pleasure" when she knew as well as
he that there wasn't any money to pay for them.
But his thoughts were not all dark. Undine's moods still infected him,
and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness. Even when
her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their
reflection in her face. Only, as he looked back, he was struck by the
evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and
by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. Yet he still
fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she
acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.
Something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their
departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements. She
had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon,
into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark
when he returned. The evening before she had seemed pale and nervous,
and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the Shallums
at a suburban restaurant. It was so unlike her to miss any opportunity
of the kind that Ralph had felt a little anxious. But with the arrival
of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew
submissively, as Mr. Spragg, in the early Apex days, might have fled
from the spring storm of "house-cleaning."
When he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder. Every
chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the
yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery. Undine lay with
closed eyes on the sofa.
She raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away.
"My poor girl, what's the matter? Haven't they finished yet?"
Instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to
sob. The violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders,
and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her
as if any contact were insufferable.
Ralph bent over her in alarm. "Why, what's wrong, dear? What's
happened?"
Her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him--a puzzled hunted
look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived. He had
fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the
hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not
welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man
loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell
Undine. If this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine:
for the moment that was all he felt.
"Dear, tell me what's the matter," he pleaded.
She sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside. He
shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he
wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in long
kiss.
Suddenly she sat upright and turned a desperate face on him. "Why on
earth are you staring at me like that? Anybody can see what's the
matter!"
He winced at her tone, but managed to get one of her hands in his; and
they stayed thus in silence, eye to eye.
"Are you as sorry as all that?" he began at length conscious of the
flatness of his voice.
"Sorry--sorry? I'm--I'm--" She snatched her hand away, and went on
weeping.
"But, Undine--dearest--bye and bye you'll feel differently--I know you
will!"
"Differently? Differently? When? In a year? It TAKES a year--a whole
year out of life! What do I care how I shall feel in a year?"
The chill of her tone struck in. This was more than a revolt of the
nerves: it was a settled, a reasoned resentment. Ralph found himself
groping for extenuations, evasions--anything to put a little warmth into
her! "Who knows? Perhaps, after all, it's a mistake."
There was no answering light in her face. She turned her head from him
wearily.
"Don't you think, dear, you may be mistaken?"
"Mistaken? How on earth can I be mistaken?"
Even in that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of
her tone, and wondered how she could be so sure.
"You mean you've asked--you've consulted--?" The irony of it took him
by the throat. They were the very words he might have spoken in some
miserable secret colloquy--the words he was speaking to his wife!