She saw that she had scored in the first part of the argument, but every watchful nerve reminded her that the hardest stage was still ahead.
“Oh, they’re willing enough he should take your money—that’s only natural, they think.”
A chuckle sounded deep down under Mr. Spragg’s loose collar. “There seems to be practical unanimity on that point,” he observed. “But I don’t see,” he continued, jerking round his bushy brows on her, “how going to Europe is going to help you out.”
Undine leaned close enough for her lowered voice to reach him. “Can’t you understand that, knowing how they all feel about me—and how Ralph feels—I’d give almost anything to get away?”
Her father looked at her compassionately. “I guess most of us feel that once in a way when we’re youngy, Undine. Later on you’ll see going away ain’t much use when you’ve got to turn round and come back.”
She nodded at him with close-pressed lips, like a child in possession of some solemn secret.
“That’s just it—that’s the reason I’m so wild to go; because it MIGHT mean I wouldn’t ever have to come back.”
“Not come back? What on earth are you talking about?”
“It might mean that I could get free—begin over again…”
He had pushed his seat back with a sudden jerk and cut her short by striking his palm on the arm of the chair.
“For the Lord’s sake. Undine—do you know what you’re saying?”
“Oh, yes, I know.” She gave him back a confident smile. “If I can get away soon—go straight over to Paris… there’s some one there who’d do anything… who COULD do anything…if I was free…”
Mr. Spragg’s hands continued to grasp his chair-arms. “Good God, Undine Marvell—are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of what you could do if you were FREE?”
Their glances met in an interval of speechless communion; but Undine did not shrink from her father’s eyes and when she lowered her own it seemed to be only because there was nothing left for them to say.
“I know just what I could do if I were free. I could marry the right man,” she answered boldly.
He met her with a murmur of helpless irony. “The right man? The right man? Haven’t you had enough of trying for him yet?”
As he spoke the door behind them opened, and Mr. Spragg looked up abruptly.
The stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder Undine perceived the ingratiating grin of Elmer Moffatt.
“‘A little farther lend thy guiding hand’—but I guess I can go the rest of the way alone,” he said, insinuating himself through the doorway with an airy gesture of dismissal; then he turned to Mr. Spragg and Undine.
“I agree entirely with Mrs. Marvell—and I’m happy to have the opportunity of telling her so,” he proclaimed, holding his hand out gallantly.
Undine stood up with a laugh. “It sounded like old times, I suppose—you thought father and I were quarrelling? But we never quarrel any more: he always agrees with me.” She smiled at Mr. Spragg and turned her shining eyes on Moffatt. “I wish that treaty had been signed a few years sooner!” the latter rejoined in his usual tone of humorous familiarity.
Undine had not met him since her marriage, and of late the adverse turn of his fortunes had carried him quite beyond her thoughts. But his actual presence was always stimulating, and even through her self-absorption she was struck by his air of almost defiant prosperity. He did not look like a man who has been beaten; or rather he looked like a man who does not know when he is beaten; and his eye had the gleam of mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest hours at Apex.
“I presume you’re here to see me on business?” Mr. Spragg enquired, rising from his chair with a glance that seemed to ask his daughter’s silence.
“Why, yes. Senator,” rejoined Moffatt, who was given, in playful moments, to the bestowal of titles high- sounding. “At least I’m here to ask you a little question that may lead to business.”
Mr. Spragg crossed the office and held open the door. “Step this way, please,” he said, guiding Moffatt out before him, though the latter hung back to exclaim: “No family secrets, Mrs. Marvell—anybody can turn the fierce white light on ME!”
With the closing of the door Undine’s thoughts turned back to her own preoccupations. It had not struck her as incongruous that Moffatt should have business dealings with her father: she was even a little surprised that Mr. Spragg should still treat him so coldly. But she had no time to give to such considerations. Her own difficulties were too importunately present to her. She moved restlessly about the office, listening to the rise and fall of the two voices on the other side of the partition without once wondering what they were discussing.
What should she say to her father when he came back—what argument was most likely to prevail with him? If he really had no money to give her she was imprisoned fast—Van Degen was lost to her, and the old life must go on interminably…In her nervous pacings she paused before the blotched looking-glass that hung in a corner of the office under a steel engraving of Daniel Webster. Even that defective surface could not disfigure her, and she drew fresh hope from the sight of her beauty. Her few weeks of ill-health had given her cheeks a subtler curve and deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and she was handsomer than before her marriage. No, Van Degen was not lost to her even! From narrowed lids to parted lips her face was swept by a smile like retracted sunlight. He was not lost to her while she could smile like that! Besides, even if her father had no money, there were always mysterious ways of “raising” it—in the old Apex days he had often boasted of such feats. As the hope rose her eyes widened trustfully, and this time the smile that flowed up to them was as limpid as a child’s. That was the was her father liked her to look at him…
The door opened, and she heard Mr. Spragg say behind her: “No, sir, I won’t—that’s final.”
He came in alone, with a brooding face, and lowered himself heavily into his chair. It was plain that the talk between the two men had had an abrupt ending. Undine looked at her father with a passing flicker of curiosity. Certainly it was an odd coincidence that Moffatt should have called while she was there…
