“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
