"No." She stretched out her hand and began to finger the dusty objects
on his desk. "I'm unhappy at home."
"Unhappy--!" His start overturned the gorged waste-paper basket and shot
a shower of paper across the rug. He stooped to put the basket back;
then he turned his slow fagged eyes on his daughter. "Why, he worships
the ground you walk on, Undie."
"That's not always a reason, for a woman--" It was the answer she would
have given to Popple or Van Degen, but she saw in an instant the
mistake of thinking it would impress her father. In the atmosphere
of sentimental casuistry to which she had become accustomed, she had
forgotten that Mr. Spragg's private rule of conduct was as simple as his
business morality was complicated.
He glowered at her under thrust-out brows. "It isn't a reason, isn't it?
I can seem to remember the time when you used to think it was equal to a
whole carload of whitewash."
She blushed a bright red, and her own brows were levelled at his above
her stormy steel-grey eyes. The sense of her blunder made her angrier
with him, and more ruthless.
"I can't expect you to understand--you never HAVE, you or mother, when
it came to my feelings. I suppose some people are born sensitive--I
can't imagine anybody'd CHOOSE to be so. Because I've been too proud to
complain you've taken it for granted that I was perfectly happy. But my
marriage was a mistake from the beginning; and Ralph feels just as I do
about it. His people hate me, they've always hated me; and he looks at
everything as they do. They've never forgiven me for his having had to
go into business--with their aristocratic ideas they look down on a man
who works for his living. Of course it's all right for YOU to do it,
because you're not a Marvell or a Dagonet; but they think Ralph ought to
just lie back and let you support the baby and me."
This time she had found the right note: she knew it by the tightening of
her father's slack muscles and the sudden straightening of his back.
"By George, he pretty near does!" he exclaimed bringing down his fist
on the desk. "They haven't been taking it out of you about that, have
they?" "They don't fight fair enough to say so. They just egg him on to
turn against me. They only consented to his marrying me because they
thought you were so crazy about the match you'd give us everything, and
he'd have nothing to do but sit at home and write books."
Mr. Spragg emitted a derisive groan. "From what I hear of the amount of
business he's doing I guess he could keep the Poet's Corner going right
along. I suppose the old man was right--he hasn't got it in him to make
money."
"Of course not; he wasn't brought up to it, and in his heart of hearts
he's ashamed of having to do it. He told me it was killing a little more
of him every day."
"Do they back him up in that kind of talk?"
"They back him up in everything. Their ideas are all different from
ours. They look down on us--can't you see that? Can't you guess how they
treat me from the way they've acted to you and mother?"
He met this with a puzzled stare. "The way they've acted to me and
mother? Why, we never so much as set eyes on them."
"That's just what I mean! I don't believe they've even called on mother
this year, have they? Last year they just left their cards without
asking. And why do you suppose they never invite you to dine? In their
set lots of people older than you and mother dine every night of the
winter--society's full of them. The Marvells are ashamed to have you
meet their friends: that's the reason. They're ashamed to have it known
that Ralph married an Apex girl, and that you and mother haven't always
had your own servants and carriages; and Ralph's ashamed of it too, now
he's got over being crazy about me. If he was free I believe he'd turn
round to-morrow and marry that Ray girl his mother's saving up for him."
Mr. Spragg listened with a heavy brow and pushed-out lip. His daughter's
outburst seemed at last to have roused him to a faint resentment. After
she had ceased to speak he remained silent, twisting an inky penhandle
between his fingers; then he said: "I guess mother and I can worry along
without having Ralph's relatives drop in; but I'd like to make it clear
to them that if you came from Apex your income came from there too. I
presume they'd be sorry if Ralph was left to support you on HIS."
She saw that she had scored in the first part of the argument, but every
watchful nerve reminded her that the hardest stage was still ahead.
"Oh, they're willing enough he should take your money--that's only
natural, they think."
A chuckle sounded deep down under Mr. Spragg's loose collar. "There
seems to be practical unanimity on that point," he observed. "But I
don't see," he continued, jerking round his bushy brows on her, "how
going to Europe is going to help you out."
Undine leaned close enough for her lowered voice to reach him. "Can't
you understand that, knowing how they all feel about me--and how Ralph
feels--I'd give almost anything to get away?"
Her father looked at her compassionately. "I guess most of us feel that
once in a way when we're youngy, Undine. Later on you'll see going away
ain't much use when you've got to turn round and come back."
She nodded at him with close-pressed lips, like a child in possession of
some solemn secret.
"That's just it--that's the reason I'm so wild to go; because it MIGHT
mean I wouldn't ever have to come back."
"Not come back? What on earth are you talking about?"
"It might mean that I could get free--begin over again..."
He had pushed his seat back with a sudden jerk and cut her short by
striking his palm on the arm of the chair.
"For the Lord's sake. Undine--do you know what you're saying?"
"Oh, yes, I know." She gave him back a confident smile. "If I can get
away soon--go straight over to Paris...there's some one there who'd do
anything... who COULD do anything...if I was free..."
Mr. Spragg's hands continued to grasp his chair-arms. "Good God, Undine
Marvell--are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of
what you could do if you were FREE?"
Their glances met in an interval of speechless communion; but Undine did
not shrink from her father's eyes and when she lowered her own it seemed
to be only because there was nothing left for them to say.
"I know just what I could do if I were free. I could marry the right
man," she answered boldly.
He met her with a murmur of helpless irony. "The right man? The right
man? Haven't you had enough of trying for him yet?"
As he spoke the door behind them opened, and Mr. Spragg looked up
abruptly.
The stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder Undine
perceived the ingratiating grin of Elmer Moffatt.
"'A little farther lend thy guiding hand'--but I guess I can go the rest
of the way alone," he said, insinuating himself through the doorway with
an airy gesture of dismissal; then he turned to Mr. Spragg and Undine.
"I agree entirely with Mrs. Marvell--and I'm happy to have the
opportunity of telling her so," he proclaimed, holding his hand out
gallantly.
Undine stood up with a laugh. "It sounded like old times, I suppose--you
thought father and I were quarrelling? But we never quarrel any more: he
always agrees with me." She smiled at Mr. Spragg and turned her shining
eyes on Moffatt. "I wish that treaty had been signed a few years
sooner!" the latter rejoined in his usual tone of humorous familiarity.
Undine had not met him since her marriage, and of late the adverse turn
of his fortunes had carried him quite beyond her thoughts. But
his actual presence was always stimulating, and even through her
self-absorption she was struck by his air of almost defiant prosperity.
He did not look like a man who has been beaten; or rather he looked like
a man who does not know when he is beaten; and his eye had the gleam of
mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest
hours at Apex.
"I presume you're here to see me on business?" Mr. Spragg enquired,
rising from his chair with a glance that seemed to ask his daughter's
silence.
"Why, yes. Senator," rejoined Moffatt, who was given, in playful
moments, to the bestowal of titles high-sounding. "At least I'm here to
ask you a little question that may lead to business."
Mr. Spragg crossed the office and held open the door. "Step this way,
please," he said, guiding Moffatt out before him, though the latter hung
back to exclaim: "No family secrets, Mrs. Marvell--anybody can turn the
fierce white light on ME!"
With the closing of the door Undine's thoughts turned back to her own
preoccupations. It had not struck her as incongruous that Moffatt should
have business dealings with her father: she was even a little surprised
that Mr. Spragg should still treat him so coldly. But she had no time to
give to such considerations. Her own difficulties were too importunately
present to her. She moved restlessly about the office, listening to
the rise and fall of the two voices on the other side of the partition
without once wondering what they were discussing.
What should she say to her father when he came back--what argument was
most likely to prevail with him? If he really had no money to give her
she was imprisoned fast--Van Degen was lost to her, and the old life
must go on interminably...In her nervous pacings she paused before the
blotched looking-glass that hung in a corner of the office under a
steel engraving of Daniel Webster. Even that defective surface could not
disfigure her, and she drew fresh hope from the sight of her beauty.
Her few weeks of ill-health had given her cheeks a subtler curve and
deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and she was handsomer than before
her marriage. No, Van Degen was not lost to her even! From narrowed lids
to parted lips her face was swept by a smile like retracted sunlight. He
was not lost to her while she could smile like that! Besides, even if
her father had no money, there were always mysterious ways of "raising"
it--in the old Apex days he had often boasted of such feats. As the
hope rose her eyes widened trustfully, and this time the smile that
flowed up to them was as limpid as a child's. That was the was her
father liked her to look at him...
The door opened, and she heard Mr. Spragg say behind her: "No, sir, I
won't--that's final."
He came in alone, with a brooding face, and lowered himself heavily into
his chair. It was plain that the talk between the two men had had an
abrupt ending. Undine looked at her father with a passing flicker of
curiosity. Certainly it was an odd coincidence that Moffatt should have
called while she was there...
"What did he want?" she asked, glancing back toward the door.
Mr. Spragg mumbled his invisible toothpick. "Oh, just another of his
wild-cat schemes--some real-estate deal he's in."
"Why did he come to YOU about it?"
He looked away from her, fumbling among the letters on the desk. "Guess
he'd tried everybody else first. He'd go and ring the devil's front-door
bell if he thought he could get anything out of him."
"I suppose he did himself a lot of harm by testifying in the Ararat
investigation?"
"Yes, SIR--he's down and out this time."
He uttered the words with a certain satisfaction. His daughter did not
answer, and they sat silent, facing each other across the littered desk.
Under their brief about Elmer Moffatt currents of rapid intelligence
seemed to be flowing between them. Suddenly Undine leaned over the desk,
her eyes widening trustfully, and the limpid smile flowing up to them.
"Father, I did what you wanted that one time, anyhow--won't you listen
to me and help me out now?"