The Custom of the Country (19 page)

There were moments after Undine’s return to New York when she was tempted to class her marriage with the hateful early mistakes from the memories of which she had hoped it would free her. Since it was never her habit to accuse herself of such mistakes it was inevitable that she should gradually come to lay the blame on Ralph. She found a poignant
pleasure, at this stage of her career, in the question: ‘What does a young girl know of life?’ And the poignancy was deepened by the fact that each of the friends to whom she put the question seemed convinced that – had the privilege been his – he would have known how to spare her the disenchantment it implied.

The conviction of having blundered was never more present to her than when, on this particular afternoon, the guests invited by Mr Popple to view her portrait began to assemble before it.

Some of the principal figures of Undine’s group had rallied for the occasion, and almost all were in exasperating enjoyment of the privileges for which she pined. There was young Jim Driscoll, heir apparent of the house, with his short stout mistrustful wife, who hated society, but went everywhere lest it might be thought she had been left out; the ‘beautiful Mrs Beringer’, a lovely aimless being, who kept (as Laura Fairford said) a home for stray opinions, and could never quite tell them apart; little Dicky Bowles, whom every one invited because he was understood to ‘say things’ if one didn’t; the Harvey Shallums, fresh from Paris, and dragging in their wake a bewildered nobleman vaguely designated as ‘the Count’, who offered cautious conversational openings, like an explorer trying beads on savages; and, behind these more salient types, the usual filling in of those who are seen everywhere because they have learned to catch the social eye. Such a company was one to flatter the artist as much as his sitter, so completely did it represent that unanimity of opinion which constitutes social strength. Not one of the number was troubled by any personal theory of art: all they asked of a portrait was that the costume should be sufficiently ‘life-like’, and the face not too much so; and a long experience in idealizing flesh and realizing dress-fabrics had enabled Mr Popple to meet both demands.

‘Hang it,’ Peter Van Degen pronounced, standing before the easel in an attitude of inspired interpretation, ‘the great thing in a man’s portrait is to catch the likeness – we all know
that; but with a woman’s it’s different – a woman’s picture has got to be pleasing. Who wants it about if it isn’t? Those big chaps who blow about what they call realism – how do
their
portraits look in a drawing-room? Do you suppose they ever ask themselves that?
They
don’t care – they’re not going to live with the things! And what do they know of drawing-rooms, anyhow? Lots of them haven’t even got a dress-suit. There’s where old Popp has the pull over ’em –
he
knows how we live and what we want.’

This was received by the artist with a deprecating murmur, and by his public with warm expressions of approval.

‘Happily in this case,’ Popple began (‘as in that of so many of my sitters,’ he hastily put in), ‘there has been no need to idealize – nature herself has outdone the artist’s dream.’

Undine, radiantly challenging comparison with her portrait, glanced up at it with a smile of conscious merit, which deepened as young Jim Driscoll declared: ‘By Jove, Mamie, you must be done exactly like that for the new music-room.’

His wife turned a cautious eye upon the picture.

‘How big is it? For our house it would have to be a good deal bigger,’ she objected; and Popple, fired by the thought of such a dimensional opportunity, rejoined that it would be the chance of all others to ‘work in’ a marble portico and a court-train: he had just done Mrs Lycurgus Ambler in a court-train and feathers, and as
that
was for Buffalo of course the pictures needn’t clash.

‘Well, it would have to be a good deal bigger than Mrs Ambler’s,’ Mrs Driscoll insisted; and on Popple’s suggestion that in that case he might ‘work in’ Driscoll, in court-dress also – (‘You’ve been presented? Well, you
will
be, – you’ll
have
to, if I do the picture – which will make a lovely memento’) – Van Degen turned aside to murmur to Undine: ‘Pure bluff, you know – Jim couldn’t pay for a photograph. Old Driscoll’s high and dry since the Ararat investigation.’

She threw him a puzzled glance, having no time, in her crowded existence, to follow the perturbations of Wall Street save as they affected the hospitality of Fifth Avenue.

‘You mean they’ve lost their money? Won’t they give their fancy ball, then?’

Van Degen shrugged. ‘Nobody knows how it’s coming out. That queer chap Elmer Moffatt threatens to give old Driscoll a fancy ball – says he’s going to dress him in stripes! It seems he knows too much about the Apex street-railways.’

Undine paled a little. Though she had already tried on her costume for the Driscoll ball her disappointment at Van Degen’s announcement was effaced by the mention of Moffatt’s name. She had not had the curiosity to follow the reports of the ‘Ararat Trust Investigation’, but once or twice lately, in the snatches of smoking-room talk she had been surprised by a vague allusion to Elmer Moffatt, as to an erratic financial influence, half-ridiculed, yet already half-redoubtable. Was it possible that the redoubtable element had prevailed? That the time had come when Elmer Moffatt – the Elmer Moffatt of Apex! – could, even for a moment, cause consternation in the Driscoll camp? He had always said he ‘saw things big’; but no one had ever believed he was destined to carry them out on the same scale. Yet apparently in those idle Apex days, while he seemed to be ‘loafing and fooling’, as her father called it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had always felt in him. Her heart beat faster, and she longed to question Van Degen; but she was afraid of betraying herself, and turned back to the group about the picture.

Mrs Driscoll was still presenting objections in a tone of small mild obstinacy. ‘Oh, it’s a
likeness
, of course – I can see that; but there’s one thing I must say, Mr Popple. It looks like a last year’s dress.’

The attention of the ladies instantly rallied to the picture, and the artist paled at the challenge.

‘It doesn’t look like a last year’s face, anyhow – that’s what makes them all wild,’ Van Degen murmured.

Undine gave him back a quick smile. She had already forgotten about Moffatt. Any triumph in which she shared
left a glow in her veins, and the success of the picture obscured all other impressions. She saw herself throning in a central panel at the spring exhibition, with the crowd pushing about the picture, repeating her name; and she decided to stop on the way home and telephone her press-agent to do a paragraph about Popple’s tea.

But in the hall, as she drew on her cloak, her thoughts reverted to the Driscoll fancy ball. What a blow if it were given up after she had taken so much trouble about her dress! She was to go as the Empress Josephine, after the Prudhon portrait in the Louvre. The dress was already fitted and partly embroidered, and she foresaw the difficulty of persuading the dress-maker to take it back.

‘Why so pale and sad, fair cousin? What’s up?’ Van Degen asked as they emerged from the lift in which they had descended alone from the studio.

‘I don’t know – I’m tired of posing. And it was so frightfully hot.’

‘Yes. Popple always keeps his place at low-neck temperature, as if the portraits might catch cold.’ Van Degen glanced at his watch. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘West End Avenue, of course – if I can find a cab to take me there.’

It was not the least of Undine’s grievances that she was still living in the house which represented Mr Spragg’s first real-estate venture in New York. It had been understood, at the time of her marriage, that the young couple were to be established within the sacred precincts of fashion; but on their return from the honeymoon the still untenanted house in West End Avenue had been placed at their disposal, and in view of Mr Spragg’s financial embarrassment even Undine had seen the folly of refusing it. That first winter, moreover, she had not regretted her exile: while she awaited her boy’s birth she was glad to be out of sight of Fifth Avenue, and to take her hateful compulsory exercise where no familiar eye could fall on her. And the next year of course her father would give them a better house.

But the next year rents had risen in the Fifth Avenue quarter, and meanwhile little Paul Marvell, from his beautiful pink cradle, was already interfering with his mother’s plans. Ralph, alarmed by the fresh rush of expenses, sided with his father-in-law in urging Undine to resign herself to West End Avenue; and thus after three years she was still submitting to the incessant pin-pricks inflicted by the incongruity between her social and geographical situation – the need of having to give a west side address to her tradesmen and the deeper irritation of hearing her friends say: ‘Do let me give you a lift home, dear – Oh, I’d forgotten! I’m afraid I haven’t the time to go so far –’

It was bad enough to have no motor of her own, to be avowedly dependent on ‘lifts’, openly and unconcealably in quest of them, and perpetually plotting to provoke their offer (she did so hate to be seen in a cab!); but to miss them, as often as not, because of the remoteness of her destination, emphasized the hateful sense of being ‘out of things’.

Van Degen looked out at the long snow-piled street, down which the lamps were beginning to put their dreary yellow splashes.

‘Of course you won’t get a cab on a night like this. If you don’t mind the open car, you’d better jump in with me. I’ll run you out to the High Bridge and give you a breath of air before dinner.’

The offer was tempting, for Undine’s triumph in the studio had left her tired and nervous – she was beginning to learn that success may be as fatiguing as failure. Moreover, she was going to a big dinner that evening, and the fresh air would give her the eyes and complexion she needed; but in the back of her mind there lingered the vague sense of a forgotten engagement. As she tried to recall it she felt Van Degen raising the fur collar about her chin.

‘Got anything you can put over your head? Will that lace thing do? Come along, then.’ He pushed her through the swinging doors, and added with a laugh, as they reached the street: ‘You’re not afraid of being seen with me, are you? It’s
all right at this hour – Ralph’s still swinging on a strap in the “Elevated”.’

The winter twilight was deliciously cold, and as they swept through Central Park, and gathered impetus for their northward flight along the darkening Boulevard, Undine felt the rush of physical joy that drowns scruples and silences memory. Her scruples, indeed, were not serious; but Ralph disliked her being too much with Van Degen, and it was her way to get what she wanted with as little ‘fuss’ as possible. Moreover, she knew it was a mistake to make herself too accessible to a man of Peter’s sort: her impatience to enjoy was curbed by an instinct for holding off and biding her time that resembled the patient skill with which her father had conducted the sale of his ‘bad’ real estate in the Pure Water Move days. But now and then youth had its way – she could not always resist the present pleasure. And it was amusing, too, to be ‘talked about’ with Peter Van Degen, who was noted for not caring for ‘nice women’. She enjoyed the thought of triumphing over meretricious charms: it ennobled her in her own eyes to influence such a man for good.

Nevertheless, as the motor flew on through the icy twilight, her present cares flew with it. She could not shake off the thought of the useless fancy dress which symbolized the other crowding expenses she had not dared confess to Ralph. Van Degen heard her sigh, and bent down, lowering the speed of the motor.

‘What’s the matter? Isn’t everything all right?’

His tone made her suddenly feel that she could confide in him, and though she began by murmuring that it was nothing she did so with the conscious purpose of being persuaded to confess. And his extraordinary ‘niceness’ seemed to justify her and to prove that she had been right in trusting her instinct rather than in following the counsels of prudence. Heretofore, in their talks, she had never gone beyond the vaguest hint of material ‘bothers’ – as to which dissimulation seemed vain while one lived in West End Avenue! But now that the avowal of a definite worry had
been wrung from her she felt the injustice of the view generally taken of poor Peter. For he had been neither too enterprising nor too cautious (though people said of him that he ‘didn’t care to part’); he had just laughed away, in bluff brotherly fashion, the gnawing thought of the fancy dress, had assured her he’d give a ball himself rather than miss seeing her wear it, and had added: ‘Oh, hang waiting for the bill – won’t a couple of thou’ make it all right?’ in a tone that showed what a small matter money was to any one who took the larger view of life.

The whole incident passed off so quickly and easily that within a few minutes she had settled down – with a nod for his ‘Everything jolly again now?’ – to untroubled enjoyment of the hour. Peace of mind, she said to herself, was all she needed to make her happy and that was just what Ralph had never given her! At the thought his face seemed to rise before her, with the sharp lines of care between the eyes: it was almost like a part of his ‘nagging’ that he should thrust himself in at such a moment! She tried to shut her eyes to the face; but a moment later it was replaced by another, a small odd likeness of itself; and with a cry of compunction she started up from her furs.

‘Mercy! It’s the boy’s birthday – I was to take him to his grandmother’s. She was to have a cake for him, and Ralph was to come up town. I
knew
there was something I’d forgotten!’

I
N THE
Dagonet drawing-room the lamps had long been lit, and Mrs Fairford, after a last impatient turn, had put aside the curtains of worn damask to strain her eyes into the darkening square. She came back to the hearth, where Charles Bowen stood leaning between the prim caryatides of the white marble chimney-piece.