"Nothing's happened--Paul's all right. Apparently Undine forgot. She
never went home for him, and the nurse waited till it was too late to
come."
She saw his eyes darken; but he merely gave a slight laugh and drew out
his cigarette case. "Poor little Paul--poor chap!" He moved toward the
fire. "Yes, please--some tea."
He dropped back into his chair with a look of weariness, as if some
strong stimulant had suddenly ceased to take effect on him; but before
the tea-table was brought back he had glanced at his watch and was on
his feet again.
"But this won't do. I must rush home and see the poor chap before
dinner. And my mother--and my grandfather? I want to say a word to
them--I must make Paul's excuses!"
"Grandfather's taking his nap. And mother had to rush out for a
postponed committee meeting--she left as soon as we heard Paul wasn't
coming."
"Ah, I see." He sat down again. "Yes, make the strong, please. I've had
a beastly fagging sort of day."
He leaned back with half-closed eyes, his untouched cup in his hand.
Bowen took leave, and Laura sat silent, watching her brother under
lowered lids while she feigned to be busy with the kettle. Ralph
presently emptied his cup and put it aside; then, sinking into his
former attitude, he clasped his hands behind his head and lay staring
apathetically into the fire. But suddenly he came to life and started
up. A motor-horn had sounded outside, and there was a noise of wheels at
the door.
"There's Undine! I wonder what could have kept her." He jumped up and
walked to the door; but it was Clare Van Degen who came in. At sight of
him she gave a little murmur of pleasure. "What luck to find you! No,
not luck--I came because I knew you'd be here. He never comes near me,
Laura: I have to hunt him down to get a glimpse of him!"
Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and
then turned back to Ralph. "Yes, I knew I'd catch you here. I knew
it was the boy's birthday, and I've brought him a present: a vulgar
expensive Van Degen offering. I've not enough imagination left to find
the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. When I
look for a present nowadays I never say to the shopman: 'I want this or
that'--I simply say: 'Give me something that costs so much.'"
She drew a parcel from her muff. "Where's the victim of my vulgarity?
Let me crush him under the weight of my gold."
Mrs. Fairford sighed out "Clare--Clare!" and Ralph smiled at his cousin.
"I'm sorry; but you'll have to depute me to present it. The birthday's
over; you're too late."
She looked surprised. "Why, I've just left Mamie Driscoll, and she told
me Undine was still at Popple's studio a few minutes ago: Popple's
giving a tea to show the picture."
"Popple's giving a tea?" Ralph struck an attitude of mock consternation.
"Ah, in that case--! In Popple's society who wouldn't forget the flight
of time?"
He had recovered his usual easy tone, and Laura sat that Mrs. Van
Degen's words had dispelled his preoccupation. He turned to his cousin.
"Will you trust me with your present for the boy?"
Clare gave him the parcel. "I'm sorry not to give it myself. I said what
I did because I knew what you and Laura were thinking--but it's really
a battered old Dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered
great-grandmother."
"What--the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?" Ralph
detained her hand to put a kiss on it. "That's dear of you!"
She threw him one of her strange glances. "Why not say: 'That's like
you?' But you don't remember what I'm like." She turned away to glance
at the clock. "It's late, and I must be off. I'm going to a big dinner
at the Chauncey Ellings'--but you must be going there too, Ralph? You'd
better let me drive you home."
In the motor Ralph leaned back in silence, while the rug was drawn
over their knees, and Clare restlessly fingered the row of gold-topped
objects in the rack at her elbow. It was restful to be swept through the
crowded streets in this smooth fashion, and Clare's presence at his side
gave him a vague sense of ease.
For a long time now feminine nearness had come to mean to him, not
this relief from tension, but the ever-renewed dread of small daily
deceptions, evasions, subterfuges. The change had come gradually, marked
by one disillusionment after another; but there had been one moment that
formed the point beyond which there was no returning. It was the moment,
a month or two before his boy's birth, when, glancing over a batch of
belated Paris bills, he had come on one from the jeweller he had once
found in private conference with Undine. The bill was not large, but two
of its items stood out sharply. "Resetting pearl and diamond pendant.
Resetting sapphire and diamond ring." The pearl and diamond pendant was
his mother's wedding present; the ring was the one he had given Undine
on their engagement. That they were both family relics, kept unchanged
through several generations, scarcely mattered to him at the time: he
felt only the stab of his wife's deception. She had assured him in Paris
that she had not had her jewels reset. He had noticed, soon after their
return to New York, that she had left off her engagement-ring; but the
others were soon discarded also, and in answer to his question she had
told him that, in her ailing state, rings "worried" her. Now he saw she
had deceived him, and, forgetting everything else, he went to her, bill
in hand. Her tears and distress filled him with immediate contrition.
Was this a time to torment her about trifles? His anger seemed to
cause her actual physical fear, and at the sight he abased himself in
entreaties for forgiveness. When the scene ended she had pardoned him,
and the reset ring was on her finger...
Soon afterward, the birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these
humiliating memories; yet Marvell found in time that they were not
effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. In reality, the
incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness,
for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife's character. He
no longer minded her having lied about the jeweller; what pained him was
that she had been unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying
the identity of the jewels. He saw that, even after their explanation,
she still supposed he was angry only because she had deceived him; and
the discovery that she was completely unconscious of states of feeling
on which so much of his inner life depended marked a new stage in their
relation. He was not thinking of all this as he sat beside Clare Van
Degen; but it was part of the chronic disquietude which made him more
alive to his cousin's sympathy, her shy unspoken understanding. After
all, he and she were of the same blood and had the same traditions. She
was light and frivolous, without strength of will or depth of purpose;
but she had the frankness of her foibles, and she would never have lied
to him or traded on his tenderness.
Clare's nervousness gradually subsided, and she lapsed into a low-voiced
mood which seemed like an answer to his secret thought. But she did not
sound the personal note, and they chatted quietly of commonplace things:
of the dinner-dance at which they were presently to meet, of the
costume she had chosen for the Driscoll fancy-ball, the recurring
rumours of old Driscoll's financial embarrassment, and the mysterious
personality of Elmer Moffatt, on whose movements Wall Street was
beginning to fix a fascinated eye. When Ralph, the year after his
marriage, had renounced his profession to go into partnership with a
firm of real-estate agents, he had come in contact for the first time
with the drama of "business," and whenever he could turn his attention
from his own tasks he found a certain interest in watching the fierce
interplay of its forces. In the down-town world he had heard things
of Moffatt that seemed to single him out from the common herd of
money-makers: anecdotes of his coolness, his lazy good-temper, the
humorous detachment he preserved in the heat of conflicting interests;
and his figure was enlarged by the mystery that hung about it--the fact
that no one seemed to know whence he came, or how he had acquired the
information which, for the moment, was making him so formidable. "I
should like to see him," Ralph said; "he must be a good specimen of the
one of the few picturesque types we've got."
"Yes--it might be amusing to fish him out; but the most picturesque
types in Wall Street are generally the tamest in a drawing-room." Clare
considered. "But doesn't Undine know him? I seem to remember seeing them
together."
"Undine and Moffatt? Then you KNOW him--you've' met him?"
"Not actually met him--but he's been pointed out to me. It must have
been some years ago. Yes--it was one night at the theatre, just after
you announced your engagement." He fancied her voice trembled slightly,
as though she thought he might notice her way of dating her memories.
"You came into our box," she went on, "and I asked you the name of the
red-faced man who was sitting in the stall next to Undine. You didn't
know, but some one told us it was Moffatt."
Marvell was more struck by her tone than by what she was saying. "If
Undine knows him it's odd she's never mentioned it," he answered
indifferently.
The motor stopped at his door and Clare, as she held out her hand,
turned a first full look on him.
"Why do you never come to see me? I miss you more than ever," she said.
He pressed her hand without answering, but after the motor had rolled
away he stood for a while on the pavement, looking after it.
When he entered the house the hall was still dark and the small
over-furnished drawing-room empty. The parlour-maid told him that Mrs.
Marvell had not yet come in, and he went upstairs to the nursery. But on
the threshold the nurse met him with the whispered request not to make
a noise, as it had been hard to quiet the boy after the afternoon's
disappointment, and she had just succeeded in putting him to sleep.
Ralph went down to his own room and threw himself in the old college
arm-chair in which, four years previously, he had sat the night out,
dreaming of Undine. He had no study of his own, and he had crowded into
his narrow bed-room his prints and bookshelves, and the other relics of
his youth. As he sat among them now the memory of that other night swept
over him--the night when he had heard the "call"! Fool as he had been
not to recognize its meaning then, he knew himself triply mocked in
being, even now, at its mercy. The flame of love that had played
about his passion for his wife had died down to its embers; all the
transfiguring hopes and illusions were gone, but they had left an
unquenchable ache for her nearness, her smile, her touch. His life
had come to be nothing but a long effort to win these mercies by one
concession after another: the sacrifice of his literary projects,
the exchange of his profession for an uncongenial business, and the
incessant struggle to make enough money to satisfy her increasing
exactions. That was where the "call" had led him... The clock struck
eight, but it was useless to begin to dress till Undine came in, and he
stretched himself out in his chair, reached for a pipe and took up the
evening paper. His passing annoyance had died out; he was usually too
tired after his day's work for such feelings to keep their edge long.
But he was curious--disinterestedly curious--to know what pretext Undine
would invent for being so late, and what excuse she would have found for
forgetting the little boy's birthday.
He read on till half-past eight; then he stood up and sauntered to the
window. The avenue below it was deserted; not a carriage or motor turned
the corner around which he expected Undine to appear, and he looked idly
in the opposite direction. There too the perspective was nearly empty,
so empty that he singled out, a dozen blocks away, the blazing lamps
of a large touring-car that was bearing furiously down the avenue from
Morningside. As it drew nearer its speed slackened, and he saw it hug
the curb and stop at his door. By the light of the street lamp he
recognized his wife as she sprang out and detected a familiar silhouette
in her companion's fur-coated figure. Then the motor flew on and Undine
ran up the steps. Ralph went out on the landing. He saw her coming up
quickly, as if to reach her room unperceived; but when she caught sight
of him she stopped, her head thrown back and the light falling on her
blown hair and glowing face.
"Well?" she said, smiling up at him.
"They waited for you all the afternoon in Washington Square--the boy
never had his birthday," he answered.
Her colour deepened, but she instantly rejoined: "Why, what happened?
Why didn't the nurse take him?"
"You said you were coming to fetch him, so she waited."
"But I telephoned--"