"If you'd only had the sense to come straight to me, Undine Spragg!
There isn't a tip I couldn't have given you--not one!"
This speech, in which a faintly contemptuous compassion for her friend's
case was blent with the frankest pride in her own, probably represented
the nearest approach to "tact" that Mrs. James J. Rolliver had yet
acquired. Undine was impartial enough to note in it a distinct advance
on the youthful methods of Indiana Frusk; yet it required a good deal
of self-control to take the words to herself with a smile, while they
seemed to be laying a visible scarlet welt across the pale face she kept
valiantly turned to her friend. The fact that she must permit herself to
be pitied by Indiana Frusk gave her the uttermost measure of the depth
to which her fortunes had fallen. This abasement was inflicted on her
in the staring gold apartment of the Hotel Nouveau Luxe in which the
Rollivers had established themselves on their recent arrival in Paris.
The vast drawing-room, adorned only by two high-shouldered gilt baskets
of orchids drooping on their wires, reminded Undine of the "Looey suite"
in which the opening scenes of her own history had been enacted; and
the resemblance and the difference were emphasized by the fact that the
image of her past self was not inaccurately repeated in the triumphant
presence of Indiana Rolliver.
"There isn't a tip I couldn't have given you--not one!" Mrs.
Rolliver reproachfully repeated; and all Undine's superiorities and
discriminations seemed to shrivel up in the crude blaze of the other's
solid achievement.
There was little comfort in noting, for one's private delectation, that
Indiana spoke of her husband as "Mr. Rolliver," that she twanged a
piercing R, that one of her shoulders was still higher than the other,
and that her striking dress was totally unsuited to the hour, the
place and the occasion. She still did and was all that Undine had so
sedulously learned not to be and to do; but to dwell on these obstacles
to her success was but to be more deeply impressed by the fact that she
had nevertheless succeeded.
Not much more than a year had elapsed since Undine Marvell, sitting
in the drawing-room of another Parisian hotel, had heard the immense
orchestral murmur of Paris rise through the open windows like the
ascending movement of her own hopes. The immense murmur still sounded
on, deafening and implacable as some elemental force; and the discord in
her fate no more disturbed it than the motor wheels rolling by under
the windows were disturbed by the particles of dust that they ground to
finer powder as they passed.
"I could have told you one thing right off," Mrs. Rolliver went on with
her ringing energy. "And that is, to get your divorce first thing. A
divorce is always a good thing to have: you never can tell when you may
want it. You ought to have attended to that before you even BEGAN with
Peter Van Degen."
Undine listened, irresistibly impressed. "Did YOU?" she asked; but Mrs.
Rolliver, at this, grew suddenly veiled and sibylline. She wound her
big bejewelled hand through her pearls--there were ropes and ropes of
them--and leaned back, modestly sinking her lids.
"I'm here, anyhow," she rejoined, with "CIRCUMSPICE!" in look and tone.
Undine, obedient to the challenge, continued to gaze at the pearls.
They were real; there was no doubt about that. And so was Indiana's
marriage--if she kept out of certain states.
"Don't you see," Mrs. Rolliver continued, "that having to leave him when
you did, and rush off to Dakota for six months, was--was giving him too
much time to think; and giving it at the wrong time, too?" "Oh, I see.
But what could I do? I'm not an immoral woman."
"Of course not, dearest. You were merely thoughtless that's what I meant
by saying you ought to have had your divorce ready."
A flicker of self-esteem caused Undine to protest. "It wouldn't have
made any difference. His wife would never have given him up."
"She's so crazy about him?"
"No: she hates him so. And she hates me too, because she's in love with
my husband."
Indiana bounced out of her lounging attitude and struck her hands
together with a rattle of rings.
"In love with your husband? What's the matter, then? Why on earth didn't
the four of you fix it up together?"
"You don't understand." (It was an undoubted relief to be able, at last,
to say that to Indiana!) "Clare Van Degen thinks divorce wrong--or
rather awfully vulgar."
"VULGAR?" Indiana flamed. "If that isn't just too much! A woman who's in
love with another woman's husband? What does she think refined, I'd like
to know? Having a lover, I suppose--like the women in these nasty French
plays? I've told Mr. Rolliver I won't go to the theatre with him again
in Paris--it's too utterly low. And the swell society's just as bad:
it's simply rotten. Thank goodness I was brought up in a place where
there's some sense of decency left!" She looked compassionately at
Undine. "It was New York that demoralized you--and I don't blame you for
it. Out at Apex you'd have acted different. You never NEVER would have
given way to your feelings before you'd got your divorce."
A slow blush rose to Undine's forehead.
"He seemed so unhappy--" she murmured.
"Oh, I KNOW!" said Indiana in a tone of cold competence. She gave Undine
an impatient glance. "What was the understanding between you, when you
left Europe last August to go out to Dakota?"
"Peter was to go to Reno in the autumn--so that it wouldn't look too
much as if we were acting together. I was to come to Chicago to see him
on his way out there."
"And he never came?"
"No."
"And he stopped writing?"
"Oh, he never writes."
Indiana heaved a deep sigh of intelligence. "There's one perfectly clear
rule: never let out of your sight a man who doesn't write."
"I know. That's why I stayed with him--those few weeks last summer...."
Indiana sat thinking, her fine shallow eyes fixed unblinkingly on her
friend's embarrassed face.
"I suppose there isn't anybody else--?"
"Anybody--?"
"Well--now you've got your divorce: anybody else it would come in handy
for?"
This was harder to bear than anything that had gone before: Undine could
not have borne it if she had not had a purpose. "Mr. Van Degen owes it
to me--" she began with an air of wounded dignity.
"Yes, yes: I know. But that's just talk. If there IS anybody else--"
"I can't imagine what you think of me, Indiana!"
Indiana, without appearing to resent this challenge, again lost herself
in meditation.
"Well, I'll tell him he's just GOT to see you," she finally emerged from
it to say.
Undine gave a quick upward look: this was what she had been waiting
for ever since she had read, a few days earlier, in the columns of her
morning journal, that Mr. Peter Van Degen and Mr. and Mrs. James J.
Rolliver had been fellow-passengers on board the Semantic. But she did
not betray her expectations by as much as the tremor of an eye-lash. She
knew her friend well enough to pour out to her the expected tribute of
surprise.
"Why, do you mean to say you know him, Indiana?"
"Mercy, yes! He's round here all the time. He crossed on the steamer
with us, and Mr. Rolliver's taken a fancy to him," Indiana explained, in
the tone of the absorbed bride to whom her husband's preferences are the
sole criterion.
Undine turned a tear-suffused gaze on her. "Oh, Indiana, if I could only
see him again I know it would be all right! He's awfully, awfully fond
of me; but his family have influenced him against me--"
"I know what THAT is!" Mrs. Rolliver interjected.
"But perhaps," Undine continued, "it would be better if I could meet him
first without his knowing beforehand--without your telling him ... I
love him too much to reproach him!" she added nobly.
Indiana pondered: it was clear that, though the nobility of the
sentiment impressed her, she was disinclined to renounce the idea of
taking a more active part in her friend's rehabilitation. But Undine
went on: "Of course you've found out by this time that he's just a big
spoiled baby. Afterward--when I've seen him--if you'd talk to him; or it
you'd only just let him BE with you, and see how perfectly happy you and
Mr. Rolliver are!"
Indiana seized on this at once. "You mean that what he wants is the
influence of a home like ours? Yes, yes, I understand. I tell you what
I'll do: I'll just ask him round to dine, and let you know the day,
without telling him beforehand that you're coming."
"Oh, Indiana!" Undine held her in a close embrace, and then drew away
to say: "I'm so glad I found you. You must go round with me everywhere.
There are lots of people here I want you to know."
Mrs. Rolliver's expression changed from vague sympathy to concentrated
interest. "I suppose it's awfully gay here? Do you go round a great deal
with the American set?"
Undine hesitated for a fraction of a moment. "There are a few of them
who are rather jolly. But I particularly want you to meet my friend the
Marquis Roviano--he's from Rome; and a lovely Austrian woman, Baroness
Adelschein."
Her friend's face was brushed by a shade of distrust. "I don't know as I
care much about meeting foreigners," she said indifferently.
Undine smiled: it was agreeable at last to be able to give Indiana a
"point" as valuable as any of hers on divorce.
"Oh, some of them are awfully attractive; and THEY'LL make you meet the
Americans."
Indiana caught this on the bound: one began to see why she had got on in
spite of everything.
"Of course I'd love to know your friends," she said, kissing Undine; who
answered, giving back the kiss:
"You know there's nothing on earth I wouldn't do for you."
Indiana drew back to look at her with a comic grimace under which a
shade of anxiety was visible. "Well, that's a pretty large order. But
there's just one thing you CAN do, dearest: please to let Mr. Rolliver
alone!"
"Mr. Rolliver, my dear?" Undine's laugh showed that she took this for
unmixed comedy. "That's a nice way to remind me that you're heaps and
heaps better-looking than I am!"
Indiana gave her an acute glance. "Millard Binch didn't think so--not
even at the very end."
"Oh, poor Millard!" The women's smiles mingled easily over the common
reminiscence, and once again, on the threshold. Undine enfolded her
friend. In the light of the autumn afternoon she paused a moment at
the door of the Nouveau Luxe, and looked aimlessly forth at the brave
spectacle in which she seemed no longer to have a stake.
Many of her old friends had already returned to Paris: the Harvey
Shallums, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles and other westward-bound nomads
lingering on for a glimpse of the autumn theatres and fashions before
hurrying back to inaugurate the New York season. A year ago Undine would
have had no difficulty in introducing Indiana Rolliver to this group--a
group above which her own aspirations already beat an impatient wing.
Now her place in it had become too precarious for her to force an
entrance for her protectress. Her New York friends were at no pains to
conceal from her that in their opinion her divorce had been a blunder.
Their logic was that of Apex reversed. Since she had not been "sure" of
Van Degen, why in the world, they asked, had she thrown away a position
she WAS sure of? Mrs. Harvey Shallum, in particular, had not scrupled
to put the question squarely. "Chelles was awfully taken--he would have
introduced you everywhere. I thought you were wild to know smart French
people; I thought Harvey and I weren't good enough for you any longer.
And now you've done your best to spoil everything! Of course I feel for
you tremendously--that's the reason why I'm talking so frankly. You
must be horribly depressed. Come and dine to-night--or no, if you don't
mind I'd rather you chose another evening. I'd forgotten that I'd asked
the Jim Driscolls, and it might be uncomfortable--for YOU...."
In another world she was still welcome, at first perhaps even more so
than before: the world, namely, to which she had proposed to present
Indiana Rolliver. Roviano, Madame Adelschein, and a few of the freer
spirits of her old St. Moritz band, reappearing in Paris with the close
of the watering-place season, had quickly discovered her and shown a
keen interest in her liberation. It appeared in some mysterious way to
make her more available for their purpose, and she found that, in the
character of the last American divorcee, she was even regarded as
eligible to the small and intimate inner circle of their loosely-knit
association. At first she could not make out what had entitled her to
this privilege, and increasing enlightenment produced a revolt of the
Apex puritanism which, despite some odd accommodations and compliances,
still carried its head so high in her.
Undine had been perfectly sincere in telling Indiana Rolliver that she
was not "an Immoral woman." The pleasures for which her sex took such
risks had never attracted her, and she did not even crave the excitement
of having it thought that they did. She wanted, passionately and
persistently, two things which she believed should subsist together in
any well-ordered life: amusement and respectability; and despite her
surface-sophistication her notion of amusement was hardly less innocent
than when she had hung on the plumber's fence with Indiana Frusk. It
gave her, therefore, no satisfaction to find herself included among
Madame Adelschein's intimates. It embarrassed her to feel that she was
expected to be "queer" and "different," to respond to pass-words and
talk in innuendo, to associate with the equivocal and the subterranean
and affect to despise the ingenuous daylight joys which really satisfied
her soul. But the business shrewdness which was never quite dormant in
her suggested that this was not the moment for such scruples. She must
make the best of what she could get and wait her chance of getting
something better; and meanwhile the most practical use to which she
could put her shady friends was to flash their authentic nobility in the
dazzled eyes of Mrs. Rolliver.
With this object in view she made haste, in a fashionable tea-room of
the rue de Rivoli, to group about Indiana the most titled members of the
band; and the felicity of the occasion would have been unmarred had she
not suddenly caught sight of Raymond de Chelles sitting on the other
side of the room.
She had not seen Chelles since her return to Paris. It had seemed
preferable to leave their meeting to chance and the present chance
might have served as well as another but for the fact that among his
companions were two or three of the most eminent ladies of the
proud quarter beyond the Seine. It was what Undine, in moments of
discouragement, characterized as "her luck" that one of these should
be the hated Miss Wincher of Potash Springs, who had now become the
Marquise de Trezac. Undine knew that Chelles and his compatriots,
however scandalized at her European companions, would be completely
indifferent to Mrs. Rolliver's appearance; but one gesture of Madame de
Trezac's eye-glass would wave Indiana to her place and thus brand the
whole party as "wrong."
All this passed through Undine's mind in the very moment of her
noting the change of expression with which Chelles had signalled
his recognition. If their encounter could have occurred in happier
conditions it might have had far-reaching results. As it was, the
crowded state of the tea-room, and the distance between their tables,
sufficiently excused his restricting his greeting to an eager bow; and
Undine went home heavy-hearted from this first attempt to reconstruct
her past.
Her spirits were not lightened by the developments of the next few
days. She kept herself well in the foreground of Indiana's life,
and cultivated toward the rarely-visible Rolliver a manner in which
impersonal admiration for the statesman was tempered with the politest
indifference to the man. Indiana seemed to do justice to her efforts and
to be reassured by the result; but still there came no hint of a
reward. For a time Undine restrained the question on her lips; but one
afternoon, when she had inducted Indiana into the deepest mysteries
of Parisian complexion-making, the importance of the service and the
confidential mood it engendered seemed to warrant a discreet allusion to
their bargain.
Indiana leaned back among her cushions with an embarrassed laugh.
"Oh, my dear, I've been meaning to tell you--it's off, I'm afraid. The
dinner is, I mean. You see, Mr. Van Degen has seen you 'round with me,
and the very minute I asked him to come and dine he guessed--"
"He guessed--and he wouldn't?"
"Well, no. He wouldn't. I hate to tell you."
"Oh--" Undine threw off a vague laugh. "Since you're intimate enough for
him to tell you THAT he must, have told you more--told you something to
justify his behaviour. He couldn't--even Peter Van Degen couldn't--just
simply have said to you: 'I wont see her.'"
Mrs. Rolliver hesitated, visibly troubled to the point of regretting her
intervention.
"He DID say more?" Undine insisted. "He gave you a reason?
"He said you'd know."
"Oh how base--how base!" Undine was trembling with one of her
little-girl rages, the storms of destructive fury before which Mr. and
Mrs. Spragg had cowered when she was a charming golden-curled cherub.
But life had administered some of the discipline which her parents had
spared her, and she pulled herself together with a gasp of pain. "Of
course he's been turned against me. His wife has the whole of New York
behind her, and I've no one; but I know it would be all right if I could
only see him."
Her friend made no answer, and Undine pursued, with an irrepressible
outbreak of her old vehemence: "Indiana Rolliver, if you won't do it for
me I'll go straight off to his hotel this very minute. I'll wait there
in the hall till he sees me!"