The Custom of the Country (22 page)

These thoughts were with her as she dressed; but at the Ellings’ they fled like ghosts before light and laughter. She had never been more open to the suggestions of immediate enjoyment. At last she had reached the envied situation of the pretty woman with whom society must reckon, and if she had only had the means to live up to her opportunities she would have been perfectly content with life, with herself and
her husband. She still thought Ralph ‘sweet’ when she was not bored by his good advice or exasperated by his inability to pay her bills. The question of money was what chiefly stood between them; and now that this was momentarily disposed of by Van Degen’s offer she looked at Ralph more kindly – she even felt a return of her first impersonal affection for him. Everybody could see that Clare Van Degen was ‘gone’ on him, and Undine always liked to know that what belonged to her was coveted by others.

Her reassurance had been fortified by the news she had heard at the Elling dinner – the published fact of Harmon B. Driscoll’s unexpected victory. The Ararat investigation had been mysteriously stopped – quashed, in the language of the law – and Elmer Moffatt ‘turned down’, as Van Degen (who had sat next to her) expressed it.

‘I don’t believe we’ll ever hear of that gentleman again,’ he said contemptuously; and their eyes crossed gaily as she exclaimed: ‘Then they’ll give the fancy ball after all?’

‘I should have given you one anyhow – shouldn’t you have liked that as well?’

‘Oh, you can give me one too!’ she returned; and he bent closer to say: ‘By Jove, I will – and anything else you want.’

But on the way home her fears revived. Ralph’s indifference struck her as unnatural. He had not returned to the subject of Paul’s disappointment, had not even asked her to write a word of excuse to his mother. Van Degen’s way of looking at her at dinner – he was incapable of graduating his glances – had made it plain that the favour she had accepted would necessitate her being more conspicuously in his company (though she was still resolved that it should be on just such terms as she chose); and it would be extremely troublesome if, at this juncture, Ralph should suddenly turn suspicious and secretive.

Undine, hitherto, had found more benefits than drawbacks in her marriage; but now the tie began to gall. It was hard to be criticized for every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the reaching for her! Ralph had
gone into business to make more money for her; but it was plain that the ‘more’ would never be much, and that he would not achieve the quick rise to affluence which was man’s natural tribute to woman’s merits. Undine felt herself trapped, deceived; and it was intolerable that the agent of her disillusionment should presume to be the critic of her conduct.

Her annoyance, however, died out with her fears. Ralph, the morning after the Elling dinner, went his way as usual, and after nerving herself for the explosion which did not come she set down his indifference to the dulling effect of ‘business’. No wonder poor women whose husbands were always ‘down town’ had to look elsewhere for sympathy! Van Degen’s cheque helped to calm her, and the weeks whirled on toward the Driscoll ball.

The ball was as brilliant as she had hoped, and her own part in it as thrilling as a page from one of the ‘society novels’ with which she had cheated the monotony of Apex days. She had no time for reading now: every hour was packed with what she would have called life, and the intensity of her sensations culminated on that triumphant evening. What could be more delightful than to feel that, while all the women envied her dress, the men did not so much as look at it? Their admiration was all for herself, and her beauty deepened under it as flowers take a warmer colour in the rays of sunset. Only Van Degen’s glance weighed on her a little too heavily. Was it possible that he might become a ‘bother’ less negligible than those he had relieved her of? Undine was not greatly alarmed – she still had full faith in her powers of self-defence; but she disliked to feel the least crease in the smooth surface of existence. She had always been what her parents called ‘sensitive’.

As the winter passed, material cares once more assailed her. In the thrill of liberation produced by Van Degen’s gift she had been imprudent – had launched into fresh expenses. Not that she accused herself of extravagance: she had done nothing not really necessary. The drawing-room, for
instance, cried out to be ‘done over’, and Popple, who was an authority on decoration, had shown her, with a few strokes of his pencil, how easily it might be transformed into a French ‘period’ room, all curves and cupids: just the setting for a pretty woman and his portrait of her. But Undine, still hopeful of leaving West End Avenue, had heroically resisted the suggestion, and contented herself with the renewal of the curtains and carpet, and the purchase of some fragile gilt chairs which, as she told Ralph, would be ‘so much to the good’ when they moved – the explanation, as she made it, seemed an additional evidence of her thrift.

Partly as a result of these exertions she had a ‘nervous breakdown’ toward the middle of the winter, and her physician having ordered massage and a daily drive it became necessary to secure Mrs Heeny’s attendance and to engage a motor by the month. Other unforeseen expenses – the bills, that, at such times, seem to run up without visible impulsion – were added to by a severe illness of little Paul’s: a long costly illness, with three nurses and frequent consultations. During these days Ralph’s anxiety drove him to what seemed to Undine foolish excesses of expenditure and when the boy began to get better the doctors advised country air. Ralph at once hired a small house at Tuxedo and Undine of course accompanied her son to the country; but she spent only the Sundays with him, running up to town during the week to be with her husband, as she explained. This necessitated the keeping up of two households, and even for so short a time the strain on Ralph’s purse was severe. So it came about that the bill for the fancy dress was still unpaid, and Undine left to wonder distractedly what had become of Van Degen’s money. That Van Degen seemed also to wonder was becoming unpleasantly apparent: his cheque had evidently not brought in the return he expected, and he put his grievance to her frankly one day when he motored down to lunch at Tuxedo.

They were sitting, after luncheon, in the low-ceilinged drawing-room to which Undine had adapted her usual
background of cushions, bric-à-brac and flowers – since one must make one’s setting ‘home-like’, however little one’s habits happened to correspond with that particular effect. Undine, conscious of the intimate charm of her
mise-en-scène
, and of the recovered freshness and bloom which put her in harmony with it, had never been more sure of her power to keep her friend in the desired state of adoring submission. But Peter, as he grew more adoring, became less submissive; and there came a moment when she needed all her wits to save the situation. It was easy enough to rebuff him, the easier as his physical proximity always roused in her a vague instinct of resistance; but it was hard so to temper the rebuff with promise that the game of suspense should still delude him. He put it to her at last, standing squarely before her, his batrachian sallowness unpleasantly flushed, and primitive man looking out of the eyes from which a frock-coated gentleman usually pined at her.

‘Look here – the instalment plan’s all right; but ain’t you a bit behind even on that?’ (She had brusquely eluded a nearer approach.) ‘Anyhow, I think I’d rather let the interest accumulate for a while. This is good-bye till I get back from Europe.’

The announcement took her by surprise. ‘Europe? Why, when are you sailing?’

‘On the first of April: good day for a fool to acknowledge his folly. I’m beaten, and I’m running away.’

She sat looking down, her hand absently occupied with the twist of pearls he had given her. In a flash she saw the peril of this departure. Once off on the
Sorceress
, he was lost to her – the power of old associations would prevail. Yet if she were as ‘nice’ to him as he asked – ‘nice’ enough to keep him – the end might not be much more to her advantage. Hitherto she had let herself drift on the current of their adventure, but she now saw what port she had half-unconsciously been trying for. If she had striven so hard to hold him, had ‘played’ him with such patience and such skill, it was for something more than her passing amusement and
convenience: for a purpose the more tenaciously cherished that she had not dared name it to herself. In the light of this discovery she saw the need of feigning complete indifference.

‘Ah, you happy man! It’s good-bye indeed, then,’ she threw back at him, lifting a plaintive smile to his frown.

‘Oh, you’ll turn up in Paris later, I suppose – to get your things for Newport.’

‘Paris? Newport? They’re not on my map! When Ralph can get away we shall go to the Adirondacks for the boy. I hope I shan’t need Paris clothes there! It doesn’t matter, at any rate,’ she ended, laughing, ‘because nobody I care about will see me.’

Van Degen echoed her laugh. ‘Oh, come – that’s rough on Ralph!’

She looked down with a slight increase of colour. ‘I oughtn’t to have said it, ought I? But the fact is I’m unhappy – and a little hurt –’

‘Unhappy? Hurt?’ He was at her side again. ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

She lifted her eyes with a grave look. ‘I thought you’d be sorrier to leave me.’

‘Oh, it won’t be for long – it needn’t be, you know.’ He was perceptibly softening. ‘It’s damnable, the way you’re tied down. Fancy rotting all summer in the Adirondacks! Why do you stand it? You oughtn’t to be bound for life by a girl’s mistake.’

The lashes trembled slightly on her cheek. ‘Aren’t we all bound by our mistakes – we women? Don’t let us talk of such things! Ralph would never let me go abroad without him.’ She paused, and then, with a quick upward sweep of the lids: ‘After all, it’s better it should be good-bye – since I’m paying for another mistake in being so unhappy at your going.’

‘Another mistake? Why do you call it that?’

‘Because I’ve misunderstood you – or you me.’ She continued to smile at him wistfully. ‘And some things are best mended by a break.’

He met her smile with a loud sigh – she could feel him in the meshes again. ‘
Is
it to be a break between us?’

‘Haven’t you just said so? Anyhow, it might as well be, since we shan’t be in the same place again for months.’

The frock-coated gentleman once more languished from his eyes: she thought she trembled on the edge of victory. ‘Hang it,’ he broke out, ‘you ought to have a change – you’re looking awfully pulled down. Why can’t you coax your mother to run over to Paris with you? Ralph couldn’t object to that.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe she could afford it, even if I could persuade her to leave father. You know father hasn’t done very well lately: I shouldn’t like to ask him for the money.’

‘You’re so confoundedly proud!’ He was edging nearer. ‘It would all be so easy if you’d only be a little fond of me …’

She froze to her sofa-end. ‘We women can’t repair our mistakes. Don’t make me more miserable by reminding me of mine.’

‘Oh, nonsense! There’s nothing cash won’t do. Why won’t you let me straighten things out for you?’

Her colour rose again, and she looked him quickly and consciously in the eye. It was time to play her last card. ‘You seem to forget that I am – married,’ she said.

Van Degen was silent – for a moment she thought he was swaying to her in the flush of surrender. But he remained doggedly seated, meeting her look with an odd clearing of his heated gaze, as if a shrewd businessman had suddenly replaced the pining gentleman at the window.

‘Hang it – so am I!’ he rejoined; and Undine saw that in the last issue he was still the stronger of the two.

N
OTHING
was bitterer to her than to confess to herself the failure of her power; but her last talk with Van
Degen had taught her a lesson almost worth the abasement. She saw the mistake she had made in taking money from him, and understood that if she drifted into repeating that mistake her future would be irretrievably compromised. What she wanted was not a hand-to-mouth existence of precarious intrigue: to one with her gifts the privileges of life should come openly. Already in her short experience she had seen enough of the women who sacrifice future security for immediate success, and she meant to lay solid foundations before she began to build up the light superstructure of enjoyment.

Nevertheless it was galling to see Van Degen leave, and to know that for the time he had broken away from her. Over a nature so insensible to the spells of memory, the visible and tangible would always prevail. If she could have been with him again in Paris, where, in the shining spring days, every sight and sound ministered to such influences, she was sure she could have regained her hold. And the sense of frustration was intensified by the fact that every one she knew was to be there: her potential rivals were crowding the east-bound steamers. New York was a desert, and Ralph’s seeming unconsciousness of the fact increased her resentment. She had had but one chance at Europe since her marriage, and that had been wasted through her husband’s unaccountable perversity. She knew now with what packed hours of Paris and London they had paid for their empty weeks in Italy.

Meanwhile the long months of the New York spring stretched out before her in all their social vacancy to the measureless blank of a summer in the Adirondacks. In her girlhood she had plumbed the dim depths of such summers; but then she had been sustained by the hope of bringing some capture to the surface. Now she knew better: there were no ‘finds’ for her in that direction. The people she wanted would be at Newport or in Europe, and she was too resolutely bent on a definite object, too sternly animated by her father’s business instinct, to turn aside in quest of casual distractions.

The chief difficulty in the way of her attaining any distant end had always been her reluctance to plod through the intervening stretches of dullness and privation. She had begun to see this, but she could not always master the weakness: never had she stood in greater need of Mrs Heeny’s ‘Go slow, Undine!’ Her imagination was incapable of long flights. She could not cheat her impatience with the mirage of far-off satisfactions, and for the moment present and future seemed equally void. But her desire to go to Europe and to rejoin the little New York world that was re-forming itself in London and Paris was fortified by reasons which seemed urgent enough to justify an appeal to her father.