"One never knows, with you."
He was looking about the room with a kind of confused pleasure in its
pale shadows and spots of dark rich colour. The old lacquer screen
behind Clare's head looked like a lustreless black pool with gold leaves
floating on it; and another piece, a little table at her elbow, had the
brown bloom and the pear-like curves of an old violin.
"I like to be here," Ralph said.
She did not make the mistake of asking: "Then why do you never come?"
Instead, she turned away and drew an inner curtain across the window to
shut out the sunlight which was beginning to slant in under the awning.
The mere fact of her not answering, and the final touch of well-being
which her gesture gave, reminded him of other summer days they had spent
together long rambling boy-and-girl days in the hot woods and fields,
when they had never thought of talking to each other unless there was
something they particularly wanted to say. His tired fancy strayed off
for a second to the thought of what it would have been like come back,
at the end of the day, to such a sweet community of silence; but his
mind was too crowded with importunate facts for any lasting view of
visionary distances. The thought faded, and he merely felt how restful
it was to have her near...
"I'm glad you stayed in town: you must let me come again," he said.
"I suppose you can't always get away," she answered; and she began to
listen, with grave intelligent eyes, to his description of his tedious
days.
With her eyes on him he felt the exquisite relief of talking about
himself as he had not dared to talk to any one since his marriage.
He would not for the world have confessed his discouragement, his
consciousness of incapacity; to Undine and in Washington Square any
hint of failure would have been taken as a criticism of what his wife
demanded of him. Only to Clare Van Degen could he cry out his present
despondency and his loathing of the interminable task ahead.
"A man doesn't know till he tries it how killing uncongenial work is,
and how it destroys the power of doing what one's fit for, even if
there's time for both. But there's Paul to be looked out for, and I
daren't chuck my job--I'm in mortal terror of its chucking me..."
Little by little he slipped into a detailed recital of all his lesser
worries, the most recent of which was his experience with the Lipscombs,
who, after a two months' tenancy of the West End Avenue house, had
decamped without paying their rent.
Clare laughed contemptuously. "Yes--I heard he'd come to grief and been
suspended from the Stock Exchange, and I see in the papers that his
wife's retort has been to sue for a divorce."
Ralph knew that, like all their clan, his cousin regarded a divorce-suit
as a vulgar and unnecessary way of taking the public into one's
confidence. His mind flashed back to the family feast in Washington
Square in celebration of his engagement. He recalled his grandfather's
chance allusion to Mrs. Lipscomb, and Undine's answer, fluted out on her
highest note: "Oh, I guess she'll get a divorce pretty soon. He's been a
disappointment to her."
Ralph could still hear the horrified murmur with which his mother had
rebuked his laugh. For he had laughed--had thought Undine's speech fresh
and natural! Now he felt the ironic rebound of her words. Heaven knew he
had been a disappointment to her; and what was there in her own feeling,
or in her inherited prejudices, to prevent her seeking the same redress
as Mabel Lipscomb? He wondered if the same thought were in his cousin's
mind...
They began to talk of other things: books, pictures, plays; and one
by one the closed doors opened and light was let into dusty shuttered
places. Clare's mind was neither keen nor deep: Ralph, in the past, had
smiled at her rash ardours and vague intensities. But she had his own
range of allusions, and a great gift of momentary understanding; and
he had so long beaten his thoughts out against a blank wall of
incomprehension that her sympathy seemed full of insight.
She began by a question about his writing, but the subject was
distasteful to him, and he turned the talk to a new book in which he had
been interested. She knew enough of it to slip in the right word here
and there; and thence they wandered on to kindred topics. Under the
warmth of her attention his torpid ideas awoke again, and his eyes took
their fill of pleasure as she leaned forward, her thin brown hands
clasped on her knees and her eager face reflecting all his feelings.
There was a moment when the two currents of sensation were merged in
one, and he began to feel confusedly that he was young and she was kind,
and that there was nothing he would like better than to go on sitting
there, not much caring what she said or how he answered, if only she
would let him look at her and give him one of her thin brown hands to
hold. Then the corkscrew in the back of his head dug into him again with
a deeper thrust, and she seemed suddenly to recede to a great distance
and be divided from him by a fog of pain. The fog lifted after a minute,
but it left him queerly remote from her, from the cool room with its
scents and shadows, and from all the objects which, a moment before, had
so sharply impinged upon his senses. It was as though he looked at it
all through a rain-blurred pane, against which his hand would strike if
he held it out to her...
That impression passed also, and he found himself thinking how tired he
was and how little anything mattered. He recalled the unfinished piece
of work on his desk, and for a moment had the odd illusion that it was
there before him...
She exclaimed: "But are you going?" and her exclamation made him aware
that he had left his seat and was standing in front of her... He fancied
there was some kind of appeal in her brown eyes; but she was so dim and
far off that he couldn't be sure of what she wanted, and the next moment
he found himself shaking hands with her, and heard her saying something
kind and cold about its having been so nice to see him...
Half way up the stairs little Paul, shining and rosy from supper, lurked
in ambush for his evening game. Ralph was fond of stooping down to let
the boy climb up his outstretched arms to his shoulders, but to-day, as
he did so, Paul's hug seemed to crush him in a vice, and the shout
of welcome that accompanied it racked his ears like an explosion of
steam-whistles. The queer distance between himself and the rest of the
world was annihilated again: everything stared and glared and clutched
him. He tried to turn away his face from the child's hot kisses; and as
he did so he caught sight of a mauve envelope among the hats and sticks
on the hall table.
Instantly he passed Paul over to his nurse, stammered out a word about
being tired, and sprang up the long flights to his study. The pain
in his head had stopped, but his hands trembled as he tore open the
envelope. Within it was a second letter bearing a French stamp and
addressed to himself. It looked like a business communication and had
apparently been sent to Undine's hotel in Paris and forwarded to him by
her hand. "Another bill!" he reflected grimly, as he threw it aside and
felt in the outer envelope for her letter. There was nothing there, and
after a first sharp pang of disappointment he picked up the enclosure
and opened it.
Inside was a lithographed circular, headed "Confidential" and bearing
the Paris address of a firm of private detectives who undertook, in
conditions of attested and inviolable discretion, to investigate
"delicate" situations, look up doubtful antecedents, and furnish
reliable evidence of misconduct--all on the most reasonable terms.
For a long time Ralph sat and stared at this document; then he began to
laugh and tossed it into the scrap-basket. After that, with a groan, he
dropped his head against the edge of his writing table.