“Of course I go round more now,” she concluded. “I mean to see my friends—I don’t care what he says.”
“What CAN he say?”
“Oh, he despises Americans—they all do.”
“Well, I guess we can still sit up and take nourishment.”
They laughed and slipped back to talking of earlier things. She urged him to put off his sailing—there were so many things they might do together: sightseeing and excursions—and she could perhaps show him some of the private collections he hadn’t seen, the ones it was hard to get admitted to. This instantly roused his attention, and after naming one or two collections he had already seen she hit on one he had found inaccessible and was particularly anxious to visit. “There’s an Ingres there that’s one of the things I came over to have a look at; but I was told there was no use trying.”
“Oh, I can easily manage it: the Duke’s Raymond’s uncle.” It gave her a peculiar satisfaction to say it: she felt as though she were taking a surreptitious revenge on her husband. “But he’s down in the country this week,” she continued, “and no one—not even the family—is allowed to see the pictures when he’s away. Of course his Ingres are the finest in France.”
She ran it off glibly, though a year ago she had never heard of the painter, and did not, even now, remember whether he was an Old Master or one of the very new ones whose names one hadn’t had time to learn.
Moffatt put off sailing, saw the Duke’s Ingres under her guidance, and accompanied her to various other private galleries inaccessible to strangers. She had lived in almost total ignorance of such opportunities, but now that she could use them to advantage she showed a surprising quickness in picking up “tips,” ferreting out rare things and getting a sight of hidden treasures. She even acquired as much of the jargon as a pretty woman needs to produce the impression of being well-informed; and Moffatt’s sailing was more than once postponed.
They saw each other almost daily, for she continued to come and go as she pleased, and Raymond showed neither surprise nor disapproval. When they were asked to family dinners she usually excused herself at the last moment on the plea of a headache and, calling up Indiana or Bertha Shallum, improvised a little party at the Nouveau Luxe; and on other occasions she accepted such invitations as she chose, without mentioning to her husband where she was going.
In this world of lavish pleasures she lost what little prudence the discipline of Saint Desert had inculcated. She could never be with people who had all the things she envied without being hypnotized into the belief that she had only to put her hand out to obtain them, and all the unassuaged rancours and hungers of her early days in West End Avenue came back with increased acuity. She knew her wants so much better now, and was so much more worthy of the things she wanted!
She had given up hoping that her father might make another hit in Wall Street. Mrs. Spragg’s letters gave the impression that the days of big strokes were over for her husband, that he had gone down in the conflict with forces beyond his measure. If he had remained in Apex the tide of its new prosperity might have carried him to wealth; but New York’s huge waves of success had submerged instead of floating him, and Rolliver’s enmity was a hand perpetually stretched out to strike him lower. At most, Mr. Spragg’s tenacity would keep him at the level he now held, and though he and his wife had still further simplified their way of living Undine understood that their self- denial would not increase her opportunities. She felt no compunction in continuing to accept an undiminished allowance: it was the hereditary habit of the parent animal to despoil himself for his progeny. But this conviction did not seem incompatible with a sentimental pity for her parents. Aside from all interested motives, she wished for their own sakes that they were better off. Their personal requirements were pathetically limited, but renewed prosperity would at least have procured them the happiness of giving her what she wanted.
Moffatt lingered on; but he began to speak more definitely of sailing, and Undine foresaw the day when, strong as her attraction was, stronger influences would snap it like a thread. She knew she interested and amused him, and that it flattered his vanity to be seen with her, and to hear that rumour coupled their names; but he gave her, more than any one she had ever known, the sense of being detached from his life, in control of it, and able, without weakness or uncertainty, to choose which of its calls he should obey. If the call were that of business—of any of the great perilous affairs he handled like a snake-charmer spinning the deadly reptiles about his head—she knew she would drop from his life like a loosened leaf.
These anxieties sharpened the intensity of her enjoyment, and made the contrast keener between her crowded sparkling hours and the vacant months at Saint Desert. Little as she understood of the qualities that made Moffatt what he was, the results were of the kind most palpable to her. He used life exactly as she would have used it in his place. Some of his enjoyments were beyond her range, but even these appealed to her because of the money that was required to gratify them. When she took him to see some inaccessible picture, or went with him to inspect the treasures of a famous dealer, she saw that the things he looked at moved him in a way she could not understand, and that the actual touching of rare textures—bronze or marble, or velvets flushed with the bloom of age—gave him sensations like those her own beauty had once roused in him. But the next moment he was laughing over some commonplace joke, or absorbed in a long cipher cable handed to him as they re-entered the Nouveau Luxe for tea, and his aesthetic emotions had been thrust back into their own compartment of the great steel strong-box of his mind.
Her new life went on without comment or interference from her husband, and she saw that he had accepted their altered relation, and intended merely to keep up an external semblance of harmony. To that semblance she knew he attached intense importance: it was an article of his complicated social creed that a man of his class should appear to live on good terms with his wife. For different reasons it was scarcely less important to Undine: she had no wish to affront again the social reprobation that had so nearly wrecked her. But she could not keep up the life she was leading without more money, a great deal more money; and the thought of contracting her expenditure was no longer tolerable.
One afternoon, several weeks later, she came in to find a tradesman’s representative waiting with a bill. There was a noisy scene in the anteroom before the man threateningly withdrew—a scene witnessed by the servants, and overheard by her motherin-law, whom she found seated in the drawing-room when she entered. The old Marquise’s visits to her daughter-in-law were made at long intervals but with ritual regularity; she called every other Friday at five, and Undine had forgotten that she was due that day. This did not make for greater cordiality between them, and the altercation in the anteroom had been too loud for concealment. The Marquise was on her feet when her daughter-in-law came in, and instantly said with lowered eyes: “It would perhaps be best for me to go.”
“Oh, I don’t care. You’re welcome to tell Raymond you’ve heard me insulted because I’m too poor to pay my bills—he knows it well enough already!” The words broke from Undine unguardedly, but once spoken they nourished her defiance.
“I’m sure my son has frequently recommended greater prudence—” the Marquise murmured.
“Yes! It’s a pity he didn’t recommend it to your other son instead! All the money I was entitled to has gone to pay Hubert’s debts.”
