"That so? I thought that was only his dodge to get me down. Well, I'm
glad they ain't: it'll give us more time to talk."
Watch in hand, the dealer intervened. "If, nevertheless, you would first
take a glance. Our train--"
"It ain't mine!" Moffatt interrupted; "at least not if there's a later
one."
Undine's presence of mind had returned. "Of course there is," she said
gaily. She led the way back into the gallery, half hoping the dealer
would allege a pressing reason for departure. She was excited and amused
at Moffatt's unexpected appearance, but humiliated that he should
suspect her of being in financial straits. She never wanted to see
Moffatt except when she was happy and triumphant.
The dealer had followed the other two into the gallery, and there was a
moment's pause while they all stood silently before the tapestries. "By
George!" Moffatt finally brought out.
"They're historical, you know: the King gave them to Raymond's
great-great-grandfather. The other day when I was in Paris," Undine
hurried on, "I asked Mr. Fleischhauer to come down some time and tell us
what they're worth ... and he seems to have misunderstood ... to have
thought we meant to sell them." She addressed herself more pointedly to
the dealer. "I'm sorry you've had the trip for nothing."
Mr. Fleischhauer inclined himself eloquently. "It is not nothing to have
seen such beauty."
Moffatt gave him a humorous look. "I'd hate to see Mr. Fleischhauer miss
his train--"
"I shall not miss it: I miss nothing," said Mr. Fleischhauer. He bowed
to Undine and backed toward the door.
"See here," Moffatt called to him as he reached the threshold, "you let
the motor take you to the station, and charge up this trip to me."
When the door closed he turned to Undine with a laugh. "Well, this beats
the band. I thought of course you were living up in Paris."
Again she felt a twinge of embarrassment. "Oh, French people--I mean my
husband's kind--always spend a part of the year on their estates."
"But not this part, do they? Why, everything's humming up there now.
I was dining at the Nouveau Luxe last night with the Driscolls and
Shallums and Mrs. Rolliver, and all your old crowd were there whooping
things up."
The Driscolls and Shallums and Mrs. Rolliver! How carelessly he reeled
off their names! One could see from his tone that he was one of them
and wanted her to know it. And nothing could have given her a completer
sense of his achievement--of the number of millions he must be worth.
It must have come about very recently, yet he was already at ease in his
new honours--he had the metropolitan tone. While she examined him with
these thoughts in her mind she was aware of his giving her as close a
scrutiny. "But I suppose you've got your own crowd now," he continued;
"you always WERE a lap ahead of me." He sent his glance down the lordly
length of the room. "It's sorter funny to see you in this kind of place;
but you look it--you always DO look it!"
She laughed. "So do you--I was just thinking it!" Their eyes met. "I
suppose you must be awfully rich."
He laughed too, holding her eyes. "Oh, out of sight! The Consolidation
set me on my feet. I own pretty near the whole of Apex. I came down to
buy these tapestries for my private car."
The familiar accent of hyperbole exhilarated her. "I don't suppose I
could stop you if you really wanted them!"
"Nobody can stop me now if I want anything."
They were looking at each other with challenge and complicity in their
eyes. His voice, his look, all the loud confident vigorous things he
embodied and expressed, set her blood beating with curiosity. "I didn't
know you and Rolliver were friends," she said.
"Oh JIM--" his accent verged on the protective. "Old Jim's all right.
He's in Congress now. I've got to have somebody up in Washington." He
had thrust his hands in his pockets, and with his head thrown back and
his lips shaped to the familiar noiseless whistle, was looking slowly
and discerningly about him.
Presently his eyes reverted to her face. "So this is what I helped you
to get," he said. "I've always meant to run over some day and take a
look. What is it they call you--a Marquise?"
She paled a little, and then flushed again. "What made you do it?" she
broke out abruptly. "I've often wondered."
He laughed. "What--lend you a hand? Why, my business instinct, I
suppose. I saw you were in a tight place that time I ran across you in
Paris--and I hadn't any grudge against you. Fact is, I've never had
the time to nurse old scores, and if you neglect 'em they die off like
gold-fish." He was still composedly regarding her. "It's funny to think
of your having settled down to this kind of life; I hope you've got what
you wanted. This is a great place you live in."
"Yes; but I see a little too much of it. We live here most of the year."
She had meant to give him the illusion of success, but some underlying
community of instinct drew the confession from her lips.
"That so? Why on earth don't you cut it and come up to Paris?"
"Oh, Raymond's absorbed in the estates--and we haven't got the money.
This place eats it all up."
"Well, that sounds aristocratic; but ain't it rather out of date? When
the swells are hard-up nowadays they generally chip off an heirloom."
He wheeled round again to the tapestries. "There are a good many Paris
seasons hanging right here on this wall."
"Yes--I know." She tried to check herself, to summon up a glittering
equivocation; but his face, his voice, the very words he used, were like
so many hammer-strokes demolishing the unrealities that imprisoned her.
Here was some one who spoke her language, who knew her meanings, who
understood instinctively all the deep-seated wants for which her
acquired vocabulary had no terms; and as she talked she once more seemed
to herself intelligent, eloquent and interesting.
"Of course it's frightfully lonely down here," she began; and through
the opening made by the admission the whole flood of her grievances
poured forth. She tried to let him see that she had not sacrificed
herself for nothing; she touched on the superiorities of her situation,
she gilded the circumstances of which she called herself the victim, and
let titles, offices and attributes shed their utmost lustre on her tale;
but what she had to boast of seemed small and tinkling compared with the
evidences of his power.
"Well, it's a downright shame you don't go round more," he kept saying;
and she felt ashamed of her tame acceptance of her fate.
When she had told her story she asked for his; and for the first time
she listened to it with interest. He had what he wanted at last. The
Apex Consolidation scheme, after a long interval of suspense, had
obtained its charter and shot out huge ramifications. Rolliver had
"stood in" with him at the critical moment, and between them they had
"chucked out" old Harmon B. Driscoll bag and baggage, and got the
whole town in their control. Absorbed in his theme, and forgetting her
inability to follow him, Moffatt launched out on an epic recital of plot
and counterplot, and she hung, a new Desdemona, on his conflict with the
new anthropophagi. It was of no consequence that the details and the
technicalities escaped her: she knew their meaningless syllables stood
for success, and what that meant was as clear as day to her. Every Wall
Street term had its equivalent in the language of Fifth Avenue, and
while he talked of building up railways she was building up palaces, and
picturing all the multiple lives he would lead in them. To have things
had always seemed to her the first essential of existence, and as she
listened to him the vision of the things he could have unrolled itself
before her like the long triumph of an Asiatic conqueror.
"And what are you going to do next?" she asked, almost breathlessly,
when he had ended.
"Oh, there's always a lot to do next. Business never goes to sleep."
"Yes; but I mean besides business."
"Why--everything I can, I guess." He leaned back in his chair with an
air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted
that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had
become.
She continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing
passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a
collection which should be a great representative assemblage of
unmatched specimens. As he spoke she saw his expression change, and his
eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that
reminded her of long-forgotten things.
"I mean to have the best, you know; not just to get ahead of the other
fellows, but because I know it when I see it. I guess that's the only
good reason," he concluded; and he added, looking at her with a smile:
"It was what you were always after, wasn't it?"