Halfway to the Malibran he changed his direction, and drove to the house of the lawyer he had consulted at the time of his divorce. The lawyer had not yet come up town, and Ralph had a half hour of bitter meditation before the sound of a latch-key brought him to his feet. The visit did not last long. His host, after an affable greeting, listened without surprise to what he had to say, and when he had ended reminded him with somewhat ironic precision that, at the time of the divorce, he had asked for neither advice nor information—had simply declared that he wanted to “turn his back on the whole business” (Ralph recognized the phrase as one of his grandfather’s), and, on hearing that in that case he had only to abstain from action, and was in no need of legal services, had gone away without farther enquiries.
“You led me to infer you had your reasons—” the slighted counsellor concluded; and, in reply to Ralph’s breathless question, he subjoined, “Why, you see, the case is closed, and I don’t exactly know on what ground you can re-open it—unless, of course, you can bring evidence showing that the irregularity of the mother’s life is such…”
“She’s going to marry again,” Ralph threw in.
“Indeed? Well, that in itself can hardly be described as irregular. In fact, in certain circumstances it might be construed as an advantage to the child.”
“Then I’m powerless?”
“Why—unless there’s an ulterior motive—through which pressure might be brought to bear.”
“You mean that the first thing to do is to find out what she’s up to?”
“Precisely. Of course, if it should prove to be a genuine case of maternal feeling, I won’t conceal from you that the outlook’s bad. At most, you could probably arrange to see your boy at stated intervals.”
To see his boy at stated intervals! Ralph wondered how a sane man could sit there, looking responsible and efficient, and talk such rubbish…As he got up to go the lawyer detained him to add: “Of course there’s no immediate cause for alarm. It will take time to enforce the provision of the Dakota decree in New York, and till it’s done your son can’t be taken from you. But there’s sure to be a lot of nasty talk in the papers; and you’re bound to lose in the end.”
Ralph thanked him and left.
He sped northward to the Malibran, where he learned that Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were at dinner. He sent his name down to the subterranean restaurant, and Mr. Spragg presently appeared between the limp portieres of the “Adam” writing-room. He had grown older and heavier, as if illness instead of health had put more flesh on his bones, and there were greyish tints in the hollows of his face.
“What’s this about Paul?” Ralph exclaimed. “My mother’s had a message we can’t make out.”
Mr. Spragg sat down, with the effect of immersing his spinal column in the depths of the armchair he selected. He crossed his legs, and swung one foot to and fro in its high wrinkled boot with elastic sides.
“Didn’t you get a letter?” he asked.
“From my—from Undine’s lawyers? Yes.” Ralph held it out. “It’s queer reading. She hasn’t hitherto been very keen to have Paul with her.”
Mr. Spragg, adjusting his glasses, read the letter slowly, restored it to the envelope and gave it back. “My daughter has intimated that she wishes these gentlemen to act for her. I haven’t received any additional instructions from her,” he said, with none of the curtness of tone that his stiff legal vocabulary implied.
“But the first communication I received was from you—at least from Mrs. Spragg.”
Mr. Spragg drew his beard through his hand. “The ladies are apt to be a trifle hasty. I believe Mrs. Spragg had a letter yesterday instructing her to select a reliable escort for Paul; and I suppose she thought—”
“Oh, this is all too preposterous!” Ralph burst out, springing from his seat. “You don’t for a moment imagine, do you—any of you—that I’m going to deliver up my son like a bale of goods in answer to any instructions in God’s world?—Oh, yes, I know—I let him go—I abandoned my right to him…but I didn’t know what I was doing…I was sick with grief and misery. My people were awfully broken up over the whole business, and I wanted to spare them. I wanted, above all, to spare my boy when he grew up. If I’d contested the case you know what the result would have been. I let it go by default—I made no conditions all I wanted was to keep Paul, and never to let him hear a word against his mother!”
Mr. Spragg received this passionate appeal in a silence that implied not so much disdain or indifference, as the total inability to deal verbally with emotional crises. At length, he said, a slight unsteadiness in his usually calm tones: “I presume at the time it was optional with you to demand Paul’s custody.”
“Oh, yes—it was optional,” Ralph sneered.
Mr. Spragg looked at him compassionately. “I’m sorry you didn’t do it,” he said.
XXXIII
The upshot of Ralph’s visit was that Mr. Spragg, after considerable deliberation, agreed, pending farther negotiations between the opposing lawyers, to undertake that no attempt should be made to remove Paul from his father’s custody. Nevertheless, he seemed to think it quite natural that Undine, on the point of making a marriage which would put it in her power to give her child a suitable home, should assert her claim on him. It was more disconcerting to Ralph to learn that Mrs. Spragg, for once departing from her attitude of passive impartiality, had eagerly abetted her daughter’s move; he had somehow felt that Undine’s desertion of the child had established a kind of mute understanding between himself and his motherin-law.
“I thought Mrs. Spragg would know there’s no earthly use trying to take Paul from me,” he said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty, and Mr. Spragg startled him by replying: “I presume his grandma thinks he’ll belong to her more if we keep him in the family.”
Ralph, abruptly awakened from his dream of recovered peace, found himself confronted on every side by. indifference or hostility: it was as though the June fields in which his boy was playing had suddenly opened to engulph him. Mrs. Marvell’s fears and tremors were almost harder to bear than the Spraggs’ antagonism; and for the next few days Ralph wandered about miserably, dreading some fresh communication from Undine’s lawyers, yet racked by the strain of hearing nothing more from them. Mr. Spragg had agreed to cable his daughter asking her to await a letter before enforcing her demands; but on the fourth day after Ralph’s visit to the Malibran a telephone message summoned him to his father-in-law’s office.
Half an hour later their talk was over and he stood once more on the landing outside Mr. Spragg’s door.
