 CHAPTER XIV. After the Princess Estradaena's departure, the days at Saint-Dazaire succeeded each other indistinguishably, and more and more as they passed, Undeen felt herself drawn into the slow, strong current, already fed by so many tributary lives. Some spell she could not have named seemed to emanate from the old house, which had so long been the custodian of an unbroken tradition. Things had happened there in the same way for so many generations, that to try and alter them seemed as vain as to contend with the elements. Winter came and went, and once more the calendar marked the first days of spring. But though the horse-chestnuts of the Champs-Elysées were budding, snow still lingered in the grass-drives of Saint-Dazaire, and along the ridges of the hills beyond the park. Sometimes as Undeen looked out of the windows of the Boucher Gallery, she felt as if her eyes had never rested on any other scene. Even her occasional brief trips to Paris left no lasting trace. The life of the vivid streets faded to a shadow as soon as the black and white horizon of Saint-Dazaire closed in on her again. Though the afternoons were still cold, she had lately taken to sitting in the gallery. The smiling scenes on its walls and the tall screens which broke its length made it more habitable than the drawing-rooms beyond. What her chief reason for preferring it was the satisfaction she found in having fires lit in both the monumental chimneys that faced each other down its long perspective. This satisfaction had its source in the old Marquises disapproval. Never before in the history of Saint-Dazaire had the consumption of firewood exceeded a certain carefully calculated measure. But since Undeen had been an authority this allowance had been doubled. If anyone had told her, a year earlier, that one of the chief distractions of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying her mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea of wasting her time on such trifles. But she found herself with a great deal of time to waste, and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the immemorial customs of Saint-Dazaire. Her husband had mastered her in essentials, but she had discovered innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him, and one, not the least effectual, was to do anything that went counter to his mother's prejudices. It was not that he always shared her views, or was a particularly subservient son, but it seemed to be one of his fundamental principles that a man should respect his mother's wishes, and see to it that his household respected them. All Frenchmen of his class appeared to share this view, and to regard it as beyond discussion. It was based on something so much more immutable than personal feeling, that one might even hate one's mother, and yet insist that her ideas as to the consumption of firewood should be regarded. The Old Marquise, during the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom, and there, between the tapestryed fore-poster and the fireplace, the family grouped itself around the ground glass of her single carceral lamp. In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library, otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise's lamp, till the footmen came in at ten with tassane and biscuits to rem. After which everyone bade the dowager good-night, and scattered down the corridors to chill distances, marked by tapers floating in cups of oil. Since Undean's coming, the library fire had never been allowed to go out, and of late, after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and the so-called study, where Raymond kept his guns and saw the bailiff, she had selected the gallery as the most suitable place for the new and unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. Afternoon refreshments had never before been served at Saint-Ausser, except when company was expected. When they had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port and a plate of small dry cakes, the kind that kept, that the complicated rites of the tea-earn, with its offering up of perishable delicacies, should be enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family, was a thing so unheard of that, for a while, Undean found sufficient amusement in elaborating the ceremonial, and in making the ancestral plate grown under more varied veins, and when this pawled, she devised the plan of performing the office in the gallery, and lighting sacrificial fires in both chimneys. She had said to Raymond at first, It's ridiculous that your mother should sit in her bedroom all day. She says she does it to save fires, but if we have a fire downstairs, why can't she let hers go out, and come down? I don't see why I should spend my life in your mother's bedroom." Raymond made no answer, and the Marquis did, in fact, let her fire go out. But she did not come down. She simply continued to sit upstairs, without a fire. At first this also amused Undean. Then the tacit criticism implied began to irritate her. She hoped Raymond would speak of his mother's attitude. She had her answer ready, if he did. But he made no comment. He took no notice. Her impulses of retaliation spent themselves against the blank surface of his indifference. He was as amiable as considerate as ever, as ready within reason to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims. Once or twice, when she suggested running up to Paris to take Paul to the dentist, or to look for a servant, he agreed to the necessity and went up with her. But instead of going to a hotel, they went to their apartment, where carpets were up and curtains down, and a caretaker prepared primitive food at uncertain hours, and Undean's first glimpse of Hubert's illuminated windows deepened her rancor and her sense of helplessness. As Madame de Trezac had predicted, Raymond's vigilance gradually relaxed, and during their excursions to the capital, Undean came and went as she pleased. But her visits were too short to permit of her falling in with the social pace, and when she showed herself among her friends, she felt contriphied and out of place, as if even her clothes had come from Saint-Azaire. Nevertheless, her dresses were more than ever her chief preoccupation. In Paris she spent hours at the dressmakers, and in the country the arrival of a box of new gowns was the chief event of the vacant days. But there was more bitterness than joy in the unpacking, and the dresses hung in her wardrobe like so many unfulfilled promises of pleasure, reminding her of the days at the Stentorian, when she had reviewed other finery with the same cheated eyes. In spite of this, she multiplied her orders, writing up to the dressmakers for patterns, and to the milleners for boxes of hats which she tried on, and kept for days without being able to make a choice. Now and then she even sent her maid up to Paris to bring back great assortments of veils, gloves, flowers, and laces, and after periods of painful indecision she ended by keeping the greater number, lest those she sent back should turn out to be the ones that were worn in Paris. She knew she was spending too much money, and she had lost her youthful faith in providential solutions. But she had always had the habit of going out to buy something when she was bored, and never had she been in greater need of such solace. The dullness of her life seemed to have passed into her blood. Her complexion was less animated, her hair less shining. The change in her looks alarmed her, and she scanned the fashion papers for new scents and powders, and experimented in facial bandaging, electric massage, and other processes of renovation. Odd atavisms woken her, and she began to pour over patent medicine advertisements, to send stamped envelopes to beauty doctors and professors of physical development, and to brood on the advantage of consulting faith-healers, mind-readers, and their kindred adepts. She even wrote to her mother for the receipts of some of her grandfather's forgotten nostrums, and modified her daily life and her hours of sleeping, eating, and exercise, in accordance with each new experiment. Her constitutional restlessness lapsed into an apathy like Mrs. Sprague's, and the least demand on her activity irritated her. But she was beset by endless annoyances, bickering with discontented maids, the difficulty of finding a tutor for Paul, and the problem of keeping him amused and occupied without having him too much on her hands. A great liking had sprung up between Raymond and the little boy, and during the summer Paul was perpetually at his stepfather's side in the stables and the park. But with the coming of winter Raymond was often her away, and Paul developed a persistent cold that kept him frequently indoors. The confinement made him fretful and exacting, and the Old Marquis ascribed the change in his behaviour to the deplorable influence of his tutor, a laic recommended by one of Raymond's old professors. Raymond himself would have preferred an abbey. It was in the tradition of the house, and though Paul was not of the house, it seemed fitting that he should conform to its ways. Moreover, when the married sisters came to stay, they objected to having their children exposed to the tutor's influence, and even implied that Paul's society might be contaminating. But on Dean, though she had so readily embraced her husband's faith, stubbornly resisted the suggestion that she should hand over her son to the church. The tutor therefore remained, but the friction caused by his presence was so irritating to on Dean that she began to consider the alternative of sending Paul to school. He was still small and tender for the experiment, but she persuaded herself that what he needed was hardening, and having heard of a school where fashionable infancy was subjected to this process, she entered into correspondence with the master. His first letter convinced her that his establishment was just the place for Paul, but the second contained the price list, and after comparing it with the tutor's keep and salary, she wrote to say that she feared her little boy was too young to be sent away from home. Her husband, for some time past, had ceased to make any comment on her expenditure. She knew he thought her too extravagant, and felt sure he was minutely aware of what she spent. For Saint-Desire projected on economic details, a light as different as might be, from the haze that veiled them in West End Avenue. She therefore concluded that Ramon's silence was intentional, and described it to his having shortcomings of his own to conceal. The Princess Estradaena's pleasantry had reached its mark. Undean did not believe that her husband was seriously in love with another woman. She could not conceive that any one could tire of her, of whom she had not first tired. But she was humiliated by his indifference, and it was easier to ascribe it to the arts of arrival than to any deficiency in herself. It exasperated her to think that he might have consolations for the outward monotony of his life, and she resolved that when they returned to Paris, he should see that she was not without similar opportunities. March meanwhile was verging on April, and still he did not speak of leaving. Undean had learned that he expected to have such decisions left to him, and she hid her impatience lest her showing it should incline him to delay. But one day, as she sat at tea in the gallery, he came in in his riding-clothes, and said, I've been over to the other side of the mountain. The February rains have weakened the dam of the Alette, and the vineyards will be in danger if we don't rebuild at once. She suppressed a yawn, thinking, as she did so, how dull he always looked when he talked of agriculture. It made him seem years older, and she reflected with a shiver that listening to him probably gave her the same look. He went on as she handed him his tea. I'm sorry it should happen just now. I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to give up your spring in Paris. Oh, no, no! She broke out. A throng of half-subdued grievances choked in her. She wanted to burst into sobs like a child. I know it's a disappointment, but our expenses have been unusually heavy this year. It seems to me they always are. I don't see why we should give up Paris, because you've got to make repairs to a dam. Isn't Hubert ever going to pay back that money? He looked at her with mild surprise. But surely you understood at the time that it won't be possible till his wife inherits. Till General Arlington dies, you mean. He doesn't look much older than you. You may remember that I showed you Hubert's note. He has paid the interest quite regularly. That's kind of him. She stood up, flaming with rebellion. You can do as you please, but I mean to go to Paris. My mother is not going. I didn't intend to open our apartment. I understand. But I shall open it, that's all. He had risen too, and she saw his face whiten. I prefer that you shouldn't go without me. Then I shall go and stay at the nouveau luxe with my American friends. That never. Why not? I consider it unsuitable. Your considering it so doesn't prove it. They stood facing each other, quivering with an equal anger. Then he controlled himself and said in a more conciliatory tone, You never seem to see that there are necessities. Oh, neither do you. That's the trouble. You can't keep me shut up here all my life and interfere with everything I want to do, just by saying it's unsuitable. I've never interfered with your spending money as you please. It was her turn to stare, sincerely wondering. Mercy, I should hope not, when you've always grudged me every penny of yours. You know it's not because I grudge it. I would gladly take you to Paris if I had the money. You can always find the money to spend on this place. Why don't you sell it if it's so fearfully expensive? Sell it. Sell, Saint-Ausser. The suggestions seemed to strike him as something monstrously, almost fiendishly significant, as if her random word had at last thrust into his hand the clue to their whole unhappy difference. Without understanding this, she guessed it from the change in his face. It was as if a deadly solvent had suddenly decomposed its familiar lines. Well, why not? His horror spurred her on. You might sell some of the things in it anyhow. In America we're not ashamed to sell what we can't afford to keep. Her eyes fell on the storied hangings at his back. Why, there's a fortune in this one room. You could get anything you chose for those tapestries. And you stand here and tell me you're a pauper. His glance followed hers to the tapestries, and then returned to her face. Ah, you don't understand, he said. I understand that you care for all this old stuff more than you do for me, and that you'd rather see me unhappy and miserable than touch one of your great grandfather's arm-chairs. The colour came slowly back to his face, but it hardened into lines she had never seen. Looked at her as though the place where she stood was empty. You don't understand, he said again. CHAPTER 41 The incident left Undeen with the baffled feeling of not being able to count on any of her old weapons of aggression. In all her struggles for authority, her sense of the rightfulness of her cause had been measured by her power of making people do as she pleased. Raymond's firmness shook her faith in her own claims, and a blind desire to wound and destroy replaced her usual business-like intentness on gaining her end. But her ironies were as ineffectual as her arguments, and his imperviousness was the more exasperating because she divined that some of the things she said would have hurt him if anyone else had said them. It was the fact of their coming from her that made them innocuous. Even when, at the close of their talk, she had burst out, If you grudged me everything I care about, we'd better separate. He had merely answered with a shrug. It's one of the things we don't do. And the answer had been like the slamming of an iron door in her face. An interval of silent brooding had resulted in a reaction of rebellion. She dared not carry out her threat of joining her compatriots at the Nouveau Luxe. She had to clear a memory of the results of her former revolt. But neither could she submit to her present fate without attempting to make Raymond understand his selfish folly. She had failed to prove it by argument, but she had an inherited faith in the value of practical demonstration. If he could be made to see how easily he could give her what she wanted, perhaps he might come round to her view. With this idea in mind she had gone up to Paris for twenty-four hours, on the pretext of finding a new nurse for Paul, and the steps then taken had enabled her, on the first occasion, to set her plan in motion. The occasion was furnished by Raymond's next trip to Bonne. He went off early one morning, leaving word that he should not be back till night, and on the afternoon of the same day she stood at her usual post in the gallery, scanning the long perspective of the Poplar Avenue. She had not stood there long before a black speck at the end of the avenue expanded into a motor that was presently throbbing at the entrance. Undeen, at its approach, turned from the window, and as she moved down the gallery, her glance rested on the great tapestries, with their ineffable minglings of blue and rose, as complacently as though they had been mirrors reflecting her own image. She was still looking at them when the door opened, and a servant ushered in a small, swarthy man, who in spite of his conspicuously London-made clothes, had an odd exotic air, as if he had worn rings in his ears, or left a bale of spices at the door. He bowed to Undeen, cast a rapid eye up and down the room, and then with his back to the windows stood intensely contemplating the wall that faced them. Undeen's heart was beating excitedly. She knew the old Marquis was taking her afternoon nap in her room, yet each sound in the silent house seemed to be that of her heels on the stairs. Ah! said the visitor. He had begun to pace slowly down the gallery, keeping his face to the tapestries, like an actor playing to the footlights. Ah! he said again. To ease the tension of her nerves, Undeen began. They were given by Louis XV to the Marquis de Chelle, who—their history has been published. The visitor briefly interposed, and she coloured at her blunder. The swarthy stranger, fitting a pair of eyeglasses to a nose that was like an instrument of precision, had begun a closer and more detailed inspection of the tapestries. He seemed totally unmindful of her presence, and his air of lofty indifference was beginning to make her wish she had not sent for him. His manner in Paris had been so different. Suddenly he turned and took off the glasses which sprang back into a fold of his clothing, like retracted feelers. Yes. He stood and looked at her without seeing her. Very well. I have brought down a gentleman. A gentleman? The greatest American collector. He buys only the best. He will not be long in Paris, and it was his only chance of coming down. Sheen drew herself up. I don't understand. I never said the tapestries were for sale. Precisely. But this gentleman buys only this that are not for sale. It sounded dazzling, and she wavered. I don't know. You were only to put a price on them. Let me see him look at them first. Then I'll put a price on them," he chuckled, and without waiting for her answer he went to the door and opened it. The gesture revealed the fur-coated back of a gentleman who stood at the opposite end of the hall, examining the bust of a seventeenth-century field-martial. The dealer addressed the back respectfully. A Mr. Moffat. Moffat, who appeared to be interested in the bust, glanced over his shoulder without moving. See here! His glance took in Undeen, widened to astonishment, and passed into apostrophe. Well if this ain't the damnedest! He came forward and took her by both hands. Why, what on earth are you doing down here? She laughed and blushed in a tremor at the odd turn of the adventure. I live here, didn't you know? Not a word! Never thought of asking the party's name. He turned jovially to the bowing dealer. Say, I told you those tapestries would have to be out and outers to make up for the trip, but now I see I was mistaken. Undeen looked at him curiously. His physical appearance was unchanged. He was as compact and ruddy as ever, with the same astute eyes under the same guileless brow. But his self-confidence had become less aggressive, and she had never seen him so gallantly at ease. I didn't know you'd become a great collector. The greatest! Didn't he tell you so? I thought that was why I was allowed to come. She hesitated. Of course, you know, the tapestries are not for sale. That's so. I thought that was only his dodge to get me down. Well, I'm glad they ain't. It'll give us more time to talk. Watch in hand the dealer intervened. If nevertheless he would first take a glance, our train— It ain't mine, Moffitt interrupted, at least not if there's a later one. Undeen's presence of mind had returned. Of course there is, she said gaily. She led the way back into the gallery, half hoping the dealer would allege a pressing reason for departure. She was excited and amused at Moffitt's unexpected appearance, but humiliated that he should suspect her of being in financial straits. She never wanted to see Moffitt except when she was happy and triumphant. The dealer had followed the other two into the gallery, and there was a moment's pause while they all stood silently before the tapestries. By George, Moffitt finally brought out. They're historical, you know. The King gave them to Raymond's great-great-grandfather. The other day, when I was in Paris—Undeen hurried on—I asked Mr. Fleishauer 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. Fleishauer inclined himself eloquently. It is not nothing to have seen such beauty. Moffitt gave him a humorous look. I'd hate to see Mr. Fleishauer miss his train. I shall not miss it. I miss nothing," said Mr. Fleishauer. He bowed to Undeen and backed toward the door. See here, Moffitt 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 Undeen 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 spent 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 Chalems and Mrs. Rolliver, and all your old crowd were there whooping things up. The Driscolls and Chalems 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 completeer 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 sort of 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. Ho! 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 Rolova 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 them, they die off like goldfish. 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. And 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 someone who spoke her language, who knew her meanings, who understood instinctively all the deep-steeded 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 luster 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. Roliver had stood in with him at the critical moment, and between them they had chucked out old Harman B. Driscoll, bag and baggage, and got the whole town in their control. Absorbed in his theme, and forgetting her inability to follow him, Moffett launched out on an epic recital of plot and counter-plot. And she hung, a new Desdemona, on his conflict with the new anthropophagy. 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 the things he could have unrolled itself before her, like the long triumph of an Asiatic conqueror. "'And what are you going to do next?' she asked, almost breathlessly, when he had ended. "'Oh, there's always a lot to do next. Business never goes to sleep.' "'Yes, but I mean besides business.' "'Why, everything I can, I guess.' He leaned back in his chair with an air of placid power, as if he were so sure of getting what he wanted that there was no longer any use in hurrying, huge as his vistas had become. She continued to question him, and he began to talk of his growing passion for pictures and furniture, and of his desire to form a collection which should be a great representative assemblage of unmatched specimens. As he spoke she saw his expression change, and his eyes grow younger, almost boyish, with a concentrated look in them that reminded her of long-forgotten things. "'I mean to have the best, you know. Not just to get ahead of the other fellows, but because I know it when I see it. I guess it's the only good reason,' he concluded, and he added, looking at her with a smile. "'It was what you were always after, wasn't it?' CHAPTER 42 Andine had gained her point, and the entressal of the Hôtel d'Achel reopened its doors for the season. Ubert and his wife, in expectation of the birth of an heir, had withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which General Arlington had hired for them near Compennes, and Andine was at least spared the sight of their bright windows and animated stairway. But she had to take her share of the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and relations distributed to every member of Ubert's family on the approach of the happy event. Nor was this the hardest of her trials. Raymond had done what she asked. He had stood out against his mother's protests, set aside considerations of prudence, and consented to go up to Paris for two months. But he had done so on the understanding that during their stay they should exercise the most unremitting economy. As dinner-giving put the heaviest strain on their budget, all hospitality was suspended. And when Andine attempted to invite a few friends informally, she was warned that she could not do so without causing the gravest offence to the many others genealogically entitled to the same attention. Raymond's insistence on this rule was simply part of an elaborate and inveterate system of relations—the whole of French social life seemed to depend on the exact interpretation of that word. And Andine felt the uselessness of struggling against such mysterious inhibitions. He reminded her, however, that their inability to receive would give them all the more opportunity for going out, and he showed himself more socially disposed than in the past. But his concession did not result as she had hoped. They were asked out as much as ever, but they were asked to big dinners, to impersonal crushes, to the kind of entertainment it is a slight to be omitted from, but no compliment to be included in. Everything could have been more galling to Andine, and she frankly bewailed the fact to Madame de Trezac. Of course it's what was sure to come of being mewed up for months and months in the country. We're out of everything, and the people who are having a good time are simply too busy to remember us. We're only asked of the things that are made up from visiting lists. Madame de Trezac listened sympathetically, but did not suppress a candid answer. It's not altogether that, my dear. Raymond's not a man his friends forget. It's rather more, if you'll excuse my saying so, the fact of your being, you personally, in the wrong set. The wrong set? Why, I'm in his set, the one that thinks itself too good for all the others. That's what you've always told me when I've said it bored me. Well, that's what I mean. Madame de Trezac took the plunge. It's not a question of your being bored." Undeen coloured. But she could take the hardest thrusts where her personal interest was involved. You mean that I'm the bore, then? Well, you don't work hard enough. You don't keep up. It's not that they don't admire you. Your looks, I mean. They think you beautiful. They're delighted to bring you out at their big dinners, with the sevre in the plate. But a woman has got to be something more than good-looking to have a chance to be intimate with them. She's got to know what's being said about things. I watched you the other night at the Duchesses, and half the time you hadn't an idea what they were talking about. I haven't always either, but then I have to put up with the big dinners." Undeen winced under the criticism. But she had never lacked insight into the cause of her own failures, and she had already had premonitions of what Madame de Trezac so bluntly phrased. When Raymond ceased to be interested in her conversation, she had concluded it was the way of husbands. But since then it had been slowly dawning on her that she produced the same effect on others. Her entrances were always triumphs. But they had no sequel. As soon as people began to talk they ceased to see her. Any sense of insufficiency exasperated her, and she had vague thoughts of cultivating herself, and went so far as to spend a morning in the Louvre, or to go to one or two lectures by a fashionable philosopher. But though she returned from these expeditions charged with opinions, their expression did not excite the interest she had hoped. Her views, if abundant, were confused, and the more she said the more nebulous they seemed to grow. She was disconcerted moreover by finding that everybody appeared to know about the things she thought she had discovered, and her comments clearly produced more bewilderment than interest. Given the attention she had attracted on her first appearance in Raymond's world, she concluded that she had gone off, or grown dowdy, and instead of wasting more time in museums and lecture halls, she prolonged her hours at the dressmakers, and gave up the rest of the day to the scientific cultivation of her beauty. "'I suppose I've turned into a perfect frump down there in that wilderness,' she lamented to Madame de Trezac, who replied inexorably, "'Oh no, yours handsome as ever! But people here don't go on looking at each other for ever as they do in London!' Meanwhile financial cares became more pressing. A dunning letter from one of her tradesmen fell into Raymond's hands, and the talk it led to ended in his making it clear to her that she must settle her personal debts without his aid. All the scenes about money which had disturbed her past had ended in some mysterious solution of her difficulty. As usual as they were, she had always, vulgarly speaking, found they paid. But now it was she who was expected to pay. Raymond took his stand without ill temper or apology. He simply argued from inveterate precedent. But it was impossible for Undine to understand a social organization which did not regard the indulging of women as its first purpose, or to believe that any one taking another view was not moved by avarice or malice, and the discussion ended in mutual acrimony. The morning afterward, Raymond came into her room with a letter in his hand. "'Is this your doing?' he asked. His look and voice expressed something she had never known before. The disciplined anger of a man trained to keep his emotions in fixed channels, but knowing how to fill them to the brim. The letter was from Mr. Fleishauer, who begged to transmit to the Marquis de Chael an offer for his boucher tapestries from a client, prepared to pay the large sum, named on condition that it was accepted before his approaching departure for America. What does it mean?" Raymond continued, as she did not speak. "'How should I know? It's a lot of money!' she stammered, shaken out of her self-possession. She had not expected so prompt a sequel to the dealer's visit, and she was vexed with him for writing to Raymond without consulting her. But she recognized Moffitt's high-handed way, and her fears faded in the great blaze of the sum he offered. Her husband was still looking at her. It was Fleishauer who brought a man down to see the tapestries one day when I was away at Bone. He had known, then, every thing was known at Sainte-des-Aire. She wavered a moment, and then gave him back his look. "'Yes, it was Fleishauer, and I sent for him.' "'You sent for him?' He spoke in a voice so veiled and repressed that he seemed to be consciously saving it for some premeditated outbreak. Undeen felt its menace, but the thought of Moffitt sent a flame through her, and the words he would have spoken seemed to fly to her lips. "'Why shouldn't I? Something had to be done. We can't go on as we are. I've tried my best to economize. I've scraped and scrimped and gone without heaps of things I've always had. I've moped for months and months at Sainte-des-Aire, and given up sending Paul to school because it was too expensive, and asking my friends to dine because we couldn't afford it. And you expect me to go on living like this for the rest of my life when all you've got to do is hold out your hand and have two million francs drop into it.' Her husband stood looking at her coldly and curiously, as though she were some alien apparition his eyes had never before beheld. Ah! that's your answer. That's all you feel when you lay hands on things that are sacred to us. He stopped a moment, and then let his voice break out with the volume she had felt it to be gathering. "'And you're all alike,' he exclaimed, every one of you. You come among us from a country we don't know and can't imagine, a country you care for so little that before you've been a day and hours you've forgotten the very house you were born in, if it wasn't torn down before you knew it. You come among us speaking our language and not knowing what we mean, wanting the things we want and not knowing why we want them, aping our weaknesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care about. You come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as paper, where the streets haven't had time to be named, and the buildings are demolished before they're dry, and the people are as proud of changing as we are of holding on to what we have. And we're fools enough to imagine that because you copy our ways and pick up our slang you understand anything about the things that make life decent and honorable for us." He stopped again, his white face and drawn nostrils giving him so much the look of an extremely distinguished actor and a fine part, that, in spite of the vehemence of his emotion, his silence might have been the deliberate pause for a replique. Jane kept in waiting long enough to give the effect of having lost her cue. Then she brought out, with a little soft stare of incredulity, �Do you mean to say you're going to refuse such an offer?� �Ah!� he turned back from the door, and picking up the letter that lay on the table between them, tore it in pieces, and tossed the pieces on the floor. That's how I refuse it. The violence of his tone and gesture made her feel as though the fluttering strips were so many lashes laid across her face, and a rage that was half fear possessed her. �How dare you speak to me like that?� Nobody's ever dared to before. Is talking to a woman in that way one of the things you call decent and honorable? Now that I know what you feel about me I don't want to stay in your house another day, and I don't mean to, I mean to walk out of it this very hour.� For a moment they stood face to face, the depths of their mutual incomprehension at last bared to each other's angry eyes. Then Ramon, his glance travelling past her, pointed to the fragments of paper on the floor. �If you're capable of that, you're capable of anything�, he said, as he went out of the room. CHAPTER 43 She watched him go in a kind of stupor, knowing that when they next met he would be as courteous and self-possessed as if nothing had happened, but that everything would nevertheless go on in the same way, in his way, and that there was no more hope of shaking his resolve or altering his point of view than there would have been of transporting the deep-rooted masonry of Saint-Desire by means of the wheeled supports on which Apex architecture performed its easy transits. One of her childish rages possessed her, sweeping away every feeling saved the primitive impulse to hurt and destroy, but search as she would she could not find a crack in the strong armour of her husband's habits and prejudices. For a long time she continued to sit where he had left her, staring at the portraits on the walls as though they had joined hands to imprison her. Hitherto she had almost always felt herself a match for circumstances, but now the very dead were leaked to feed her. People she had never seen and whose name she couldn't even remember seemed to be plotting and contriving against her under the escutchant gravestones of Saint-Desire. Her eyes turned to the old warm-toned furniture beneath the pictures, and to her own idle image in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Even in that one small room there were enough things of price to buy a release from her most pressing cares, and the great house in which the room was a mere cell, and the other greater house in Burgundy, held treasures to deplete even such a purse as Moffat's. She liked to see such things about her. Without any real sense of their meaning she felt them to be the appropriate setting of a pretty woman, to embody something of the rareness and distinction she had always considered she possessed, and she reflected that if she had still been Moffat's wife, he would have given her just such a setting, and the power to live in it as became her. The thought sent her memory flying back to things she had turned it from for years. For the first time since their far-off weeks together she let herself relive the brief adventure. She had been drawn to Elmer Moffat from the first, from the day when Ben Frusk, Indiana's brother, had brought him to a church picnic at Mulvey's Grove, and he had taken instant possession of Undine, sitting in the big stage beside her on the ride to the Grove, supplanting Millard Bench, to whom she was still, though intermittently and incompletely engaged. Swinging her between the trees, rowing her on the lake, catching and kissing her in forfeits, awarding her the first prize in the beauty show he hilariously organized and gallantly carried out, and finally, no one knew how, contriving to borrow a buggy and a fast colt from old Mulvey, and driving off with her at a two-forty gate while Millard and the others took their dust in the crawling stage. No one in Apex knew where young Moffat had come from, and he offered no information on the subject. He simply appeared one day behind the counter in Luckabac's dollar shoe-store, drifted thence to the office of Semple and Bench, the coal-merchants, reappeared as the stenographer of the police-court, and finally edged his way into the powerhouse of the Apex Waterworks. He boarded with Old Mrs. Flynn, down in North Fifth Street, on the edge of the red-light slum. He never went to church or attended lectures, or showed any desire to improve or refine himself, but he managed to get himself invited to all the picnics and lodge sociables, and at a supper of the Phi Upsilon Society, to which he had contrived to affiliate himself, he made the best speech that had been heard there since young Jim Rolliver's first flights. The brothers of Undine's friends all pronounced him great, though he had fits of uncouthness that made the young women slower in admitting him to favour. But at the Mulvey's growth picnic he suddenly seemed to dominate them all, and Undine, as she drove away with him, tasted the public triumph which was necessary to her personal enjoyment. After that he became a leading figure in the youthful world of Apex, and no one was surprised when the sons of Jonah Dab, the local temperate society, invited him to deliver their fourth of July oration. The ceremony took place, as usual in the Baptist Church, and Undine, all in white, with red rose in her breast, sat just beneath the platform, with Indiana jealously glaring at her from a less privileged seat, and poor Millard's long neck craning over the row of prominent citizens behind the orator. Elmer Moffat had been magnificent, rolling out his alternating effects of humour and pathos, stirring his audience by moving references to the blue and the grey, convulsing them by a new version of Washington and the cherry-tree, in which the infant patriot was depicted as having cut down the tree to check the deleterious spread of cherry-bounds, dazzling them by his erudite allusions and apt quotations. He confessed to Undine that he had sat up half the night over Bartlett, and winding up with a parroration that drew tears from the Grand Army pensioners in the front row, and caused the minister's wife to say that many a sermon from that platform had been less uplifting. An ice-cream supper always followed the exercises, and as repairs were being made in the church basement, which was the usual scene of the festivity, the minister had offered the use of his house. The long table ran through the doorway between parlor and study, and another was set in the passage outside, with one end under the stairs. The stair-rail was wreathed in fire-weed and early golden rod, and temperance texts in smile-axe decked the walls. When the first course had been dispatched, the young ladies, gallantly seconded by the younger of the sons, helped to ladle out and carry in the ice-cream, which stood in great pales on the larder floor, and to replenish the jugs of lemonade and coffee. Elmer Moffat was indefatigable in performing these services, and when the minister's wife pressed him to sit down and take a mouthful himself, he modestly declined the place reserved for him among the dignitaries of the evening, and withdrew with a few chosen spirits to the dim table-end beneath the stairs. Explosions of hilarity came from this corner with increasing frequency, and now and then tumultuous wrappings and howls of song, song, followed by adjurations to cough it up and let her go, drowned the conversational efforts at the other table. At length the noise subsided, and the group was ceasing to attract attention, when toward the end of the evening, the upper table, drooping under the lengthy elusibrations of the minister and the president of the temperance society, called on the order of the day for a few remarks. There was an interval of scuffling and laughter beneath the stairs, and then the minister's lifted hand and joined silence, and Elmer Moffat got to his feet. "'Step out where the ladies can hear you better, Mr. Moffat,' the minister called. Moffat did so, steadying himself against the table and twisting his head about as if his collar had grown too tight. But if his bearing was vacillating, his smile was unabashed, and there was no lack of confidence in the glance he threw at Undine's sprag as he began. "'Ladies and gentlemen, if there's one thing I like better than another about getting drunk, and I like most everything about it except the next morning, it's the opportunity you've given me of doing it right here, in the presence of this society, which, as I gather from its literature, knows more about the subject than anybody else. Ladies and gentlemen,' he straightened himself, and the tablecloth slid toward him. "'Ever since you honored me with an invitation to address you from the temperance platform, I've been assiduously studying that literature, and I've gathered from your own evidence, what I'd strongly suspected before, that all your converted drunkards had a hell of a good time before you got at them, and that, that a good many of them have gone on having it since.' At this point he broke off, swept the audience with his confident smile, and then, collapsing, tried to sit down on a chair that didn't happen to be there, and disappeared among his agitated supporters. There was a nightmare moment during which Undine, through the doorway, saw Ben Fruske and the others close about the fallen orator to the crash of crockery and tumbling chairs. Then someone jumped up and shut the parlor door, and a long-necked Sunday school teacher, who had been nervously waiting his chance, and had almost given it up, rose from his feet and recited high tide at Gettysburg, amid hysterical applause. The scandal was considerable. But Moffat, though he vanished from the social horizon, managed to keep his place in the powerhouse, till he went off for a week and turned up again without being able to give a satisfactory reason for his absence. After that he drifted from one job to another, now extolled for his smartness and business capacity, now dismissed in disgrace as an irresponsible loafer. His head was always full of immense nebulous schemes for the enlargement and development of any business he happened to be employed in. Sometimes his suggestions interested his employers, but proved unpractical and inapplicable. Sometimes he wore out their patience or was thought to be a dangerous dreamer. Whenever he found there was no hope of his ideas being adopted, he lost interest in his work, came late, and left early, or disappeared for two or three days at a time without troubling himself to account for his absences. Alasd, even those who had been cynical enough to smile over his disgrace at the temperance supper, began to speak of him as a hopeless failure, and he lost the support of the feminine community when one Sunday morning, just as the Baptist and Methodist churches were releasing their congregations, he walked up Eubol Avenue, with a young woman less known to those sacred edifices, than to the saloons of North Fifth Street. Undean's estimate of people had always been based on their apparent power of getting what they wanted, provided it came under the category of things she understood wanting. Success was beauty and romance to her. Yet it was at the moment when Elmer Moffat's failure was most complete and flagrant that she suddenly felt the extent of his power. After the Eubol Avenue scandal, he had been asked not to return to the surveyor's office to which Ben Frusk had managed to get him admitted, and on the day of his dismissal he met Undean in Main Street, at the shopping-hour, hence, entering up cheerfully, invited her to take a walk with him. She was about to refuse when she saw Millard Bench's mother looking at her disapprovingly from the opposite street corner. "'Oh! well, I will,' she said, and they walked the length of Main Street and out to the immature park in which it ended. She was in a mood of aimless discontent and unrest, tired of her engagement to Millard Bench, disappointed with Moffat, half ashamed of being seen with him, and yet not sorry to have it known that she was independent enough to choose her companions without regard to the apex verdict. "'Well, I suppose you know I'm down and out,' he began, and she responded virtuously. "'You must have wanted to be, or you wouldn't have behaved the way you did last Sunday.' "'Oh, shucks!' he sneered. "'What do I care in a one-horse place like this? If it hadn't been for you I'd have got a move on long ago.'" She did not remember afterward what else he said. She recalled only the expression of a great sweeping scorn of apex into which her own disdain of it was absorbed like a drop in the sea, and the affirmation of a soaring self-confidence that seemed to lift her on wings. All her own attempts to get what she wanted had come to nothing, but she had always attributed her lack of success to the fact that she had had no one to second her. It was strange that Elmer Moffat, a shiftless outcast from even the small world she despised, should give her, in the very moment of his downfall, the sense of being able to succeed where she had failed. It was a feeling she never had in his absence, but that his nearness always instantly revived, and he seemed nearer to her now than he had ever been. They wandered on to the edge of the vague park and sat down on a bench behind the empty bandstand. I went with that girl on purpose, and you know it. He broke out abruptly. It makes me too damned sick to see Millard Bench going round looking as if he patented you. You've got no right," she interrupted, and suddenly she was in his arms, and feeling that no one had ever kissed her before. The week that followed was a big bright blur, the wildest, vividest moment of her life, and it was only eight days later that they were in the train together, apex and all her plans and promises behind them, and a bigger and brighter blur ahead into which they were plunging as the limited plunged into the sunset. Undine stood up, looking about her with vague eyes as if she had come back from a long distance. Elmer Moffat was still in Paris. He was in reach, within telephone call. She stood hesitating a moment. Then she went to her dressing-room, and turning over the pages of the telephone book, looked out the number of the nouveau luxe. CHAPTER 44 Undine had been right, and supposing that her husband would expect their life to go on as before. There was no appreciable change in the situation, save that he was more often absent, finding abundant reasons agricultural and political, for frequent trips to Saint-Azaire, and that when in Paris he no longer showed any curiosity concerning her occupations and engagements. They lived as much apart as if their cramped domicile had been a palace, and when Undine, as she now frequently did, joined the chalems or rollovers for a dinner at the nouveau luxe, or a party at a petit théâtre, she was not put to the trouble of pervericating. Her first impulse, after her scene with Raymond, had been to ring up Indiana Roliver and invite herself to dine. It chants that Indiana, who was now in full social progress, and had run over for a few weeks to get her dresses for Newport, had organised for the same evening a showy cosmopolitan banquet in which she was enchanted to include the marquise de chel. And Undine, as she had hoped, found Elmer Moffitt of the party. When she drove up to the nouveau luxe, she had not fixed on any plan of action, but once she had crossed its magic threshold, her energies revived like plants and water. At last she was in her native air again, among associations she shared and conventions she understood, and all herself confidence returned as the familiar accents uttered the accustomed things. Save for an occasional perfunctory call, she had hitherto made no effort to see her compatriots, and she noticed that Mrs. Jim Driscoll and Bertha Shalem received her with a touch of constraint. But it vanished when they remarked the cordiality of Moffitt's greeting. Her seat was at his side, and her old sense of triumph returned as she perceived the importance his notice conferred, not only in the eyes of her own party, but of the other diners. Moffitt was evidently a notable figure in all the worlds represented about the crowded tables, and Undine saw that many people who seemed personally unacquainted with him were recognizing and pointing him out. She was conscious of receiving a large share of the attention he attracted, and, bathed again in the bright air of publicity, she remembered the evening when Raymond de Chels first admired in glance had given her the same sense of triumph. This inopportune memory did not trouble her. She was almost grateful to Raymond for giving her the touch of superiority her compatriots clearly felt in her. It was not merely her title and her situation, but the experiences she had gained through them, that gave her this advantage over the loud, vague company. She had learned things they did not guess—shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude, and easy and free and enviable as she thought them, she would not for the world have been back among them at the cost of knowing no more than they. Moffitt made no allusion to his visit to Saint-Azare, but when the party had regrouped itself about coffee and liqueurs on the terrace, he bent over to ask confidentially, What about my tapestries? She replied in the same tone, You oughtn't to have let Fleishauer write that letter, my husband's furious. He seemed honestly surprised. Why, didn't I offer him enough? He's furious that anyone should offer anything. I thought when he found out what they were worth he might be tempted, but he'd rather see me starve than part with one of his grandfather's snuff-boxes. Well, now he knows what the tapestries are worth. I offered more than Fleishauer advised. Yes, but you were in too much of a hurry. I've got to be, I'm going back next week. She felt her eyes cloud with disappointment. Oh, why do you? I hoped you might stay on. They looked at each other uncertainly a moment. Then he dropped his voice to say, Even if I did, I probably shouldn't see anything of you. Why not? Why won't you come and see me? I've always wanted to be friends. He came the next day and found in her drawing-room two ladies whom she introduced as her sisters in law. The ladies lingered on for a long time, sipping their tea stiffly and exchanging low-voiced remarks while Undine talked with Moffat, and when they left with small side-long bows in his direction. Undine exclaimed, Now you see how they all watch me. She began to go into the details of her married life, drawing on the experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to her present liberated state. She could thus, without great exaggeration, picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to Moffat, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. I call it darned low, darned low, he broke in at intervals. 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, sight-seeing and excursions, and she could perhaps show him something 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 had on one he had found inaccessible and was particularly anxious to visit. There's an angre 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 angre 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. Moffitt put off sailing, saw the Duke's angre 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 procure the impression of being well-informed, and Moffitt'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 dinner she usually excused herself at the last moment on the plea of a headache, and calling up Indiana or Bertha Shalom, 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 Deserre 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 unasswaged rankers and hungers for 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. Bragg'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 Roliver's enmity was a hand perpetually stretched out to strike him lower. At most, Mr. Bragg'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 dispoil 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. Moffat 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-Azare. Little as she understood of the qualities that made Moffat 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 drowsed 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 strongbox 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 ante-room before the man threateningly withdrew—a scene witnessed by the servants and overheard by her mother-in-law, whom she found seated in the drawing-room when she entered. The old Marquis'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 ante-room had been too loud for concealment. The Marquis 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, all ready. The words broke from Undine unguardedly, but once spoken they nourished her defiance. I'm sure my son has frequently recommended greater prudence," the Marquis 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 Uber's debts. Raymond has told me that there are certain things you fail to understand. I have no wish whatever to discuss them. The Marquis had gone toward the door, with her hand on it she paused to add, I shall say nothing whatever of what has happened. Her icy magnanimity added the last touch to Undine's wrath. They knew her extremity one and all, and it did not move them. At most they would join in concealing it like a blot on their honour. And the menace grew and mounted, and not a hand was stretched to help her. Hardly a half-hour earlier Moffat, with whom she had been visiting a private view, had sent her home and his motor with the excuse that he must hurry back to the Nouveau Luxe to meet his stenographer, and sign a batch of letters for the New York Mail. It was therefore probable that he was still at home, that she should find him if she hastened there at once. An overwhelming desire to cry out her wrath and wretchedness brought her to her feet, and sent her down to hail a passing cab. As it whirled her through the bright streets, powdered with amber sunlight, her brain throbbed with confused intentions. She did not think of Moffat as a power she could use, but simply as someone who knew her and understood her grievance. It was essential to her at that moment to be told that she was right, and that everyone opposed to her was wrong. At the hotel she asked his number and was carried up in the lift. On the landing she paused a moment, disconcerted. It had occurred to her that he might not be alone. But she walked on quickly, found the number, and knocked. Moffat opened the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw that the big bright sitting-room was empty. "'Hullo!' he exclaimed, surprised. And as he stood aside to let her enter, she saw him draw out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously. He was expecting some one, or he had an engagement elsewhere. Something claimed him from which she was excluded. The thought flushed her with sudden resolution. She knew now what she had come for—to keep him from everyone else, to keep him for herself alone." Don't send me away," she said, and laid her hand on his beseechingly. The big vulgar writing-table wreath in bronze was heaped with letters and papers. Among them stood a lapis bowl in a renaissance mounting of enamel, and a vase of Phoenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in cobwebs. On a table against the window a little Greek marble lifted its pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive objects seemed to be shrinking back from the false colors and crude contours of the hotel furniture. There were no books in the room, but the florid consul under the mirror was stacked with old numbers of town-talk and the New York radiator. Queen recalled the dinghy hall-room that Muffet had lodged in at Mrs. Flynn's over-hober's livery-stable and her heart beat at the signs of his altered state. When her eyes came back to him their lids were moist. Don't send me away," she repeated. He looked at her and smiled. What is it? What's the matter? I don't know, but I had to come. The day when you spoke again of sailing I felt as if I couldn't stand it. She lifted her eyes and looked in his profoundly. He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening or confusion in the shrewd, steady glance he gave her back. Things going wrong again? Is that the trouble? He merely asked with a comforting inflection. They always are wrong. It's all been an awful mistake. But I shouldn't care if you were here and I could see you sometimes. You're so strong. That's what I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to feel it that time they all turned against you out at Apex. Do you remember the afternoon I met you down on Main Street and we walked out together to the park? I knew then that you were stronger than any of them. She had never spoken more sincerely. For the moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance, and she felt again, as she had felt that day, the instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his. Something in her voice must have attested it, for she saw a change in his face. You're not the beauty you were, he said irrelevantly, but you're a lot more fetching. The oddly qualified praise made her laugh with mingled pleasure and annoyance. I suppose I must be dreadfully changed. You're all right, but I've got to go back home. He broke off abruptly. I've put it off too long. She paled and looked away, helpless in her sudden disappointment. I knew you'd say that, and I shall just be left here. She sat down on the sofa near which they had been standing, and two tears formed on her lashes and fell. Muffet sat down beside her, and both were silent. She had never seen him at a loss before. She made no attempt to draw nearer, or to use any of the arts of cajolery. But presently she said, without rising, I saw you look at your watch when I came in. I suppose somebody else is waiting for you. It don't matter. Some other woman? It don't matter. I wondered so often, but of course I've got no right to ask. She stood up slowly, understanding that he meant to let her go. Just tell me one thing. Did you ever miss me? Oh, damnably! He brought out with sudden bitterness. She came nearer, sinking her voice to a low whisper. It's the only time I ever really cared, all through. He had risen too, and they stood intensely gazing at each other. Muffet's face was fixed and grave, as she had seen it in hours she now found herself rapidly reliving. I believe you did, he said. Oh, Elmer, if I'd known, if I'd only known— He made no answer, and she turned away, touching with an unconscious hand the edge of the lapis bowl among his papers. Elmer, if you're going away it can't do any harm to tell me. Is there anyone else? He gave a laugh that seemed to shake him free. In that kind of way? Lord, no. Too busy. She came close again, and laid a hand on his shoulder. Then why not—why shouldn't we? She leaned her head back so that her gaze slanted up through her wet lashes. I can do as I please—my husband does. They think so differently about marriage over here. It's just a business contract. As long as a woman doesn't make a show of herself, no one cares. She put her other hand up so that she held him facing her. I've always felt, all through everything, that I belong to you. Muffet left her hands on his shoulders, but did not lift his own to clasp them. For a moment she thought she had mistaken him, and a leaden sense of shame descended on her. Then he asked, You say your husband goes with other women? Lily Estradina's taunt flashed through her, and she seized on it. People have told me so. His own relations have. I've never stooped to spy on him. And the women in your set? I suppose it's taken for granted they all do the same? She laughed. Everything fixed up for them, same as it is for the husband's, eh? She meddles, or makes trouble, if you know the ropes? No, nobody, it's all quite easy. She stopped, her faint smile checked, as his backward movement made her hands drop from his shoulders. And that's what you're proposing to me? That you and I should do like the rest of them? His face had lost its comic roundness, and grown harsh and dark as it had when her father had taken her away from him at Opeke. He turned on his heel, walked the length of the room, and halted, with his back to her, in the embrasure of the window. There he paused a full minute, his hands in his pockets, staring out at the perpetual interweaving of motors in the luminous setting of the square. Then he turned and spoke from where he stood. Look here, Undine, if I'm to have you again, I don't want to have you that way. That time out in Apex, when everybody in the place was against me, and I was down and out, you stood up to them, and stuck by me. Remember that walk down Main Street, don't I? And the way the people glared and hurried by, and how you kept on alongside of me, talking, and laughing, and looking your Sunday best. When Abner Sprague came out to Opeke after us, and pulled you back, I was pretty sore at your deserting. But I came to see it was natural enough. You were only a spoiled girl, used to having everything you wanted, and I couldn't give you a thing then. And the folks you'd been taught to believe in, all told you I never would. Well, I did look like a back number, and no blame to you for thinking so. I used to say it to myself over and over again, laying awake nights and totting up my mistakes. And then there were days when the wind set another way, and I knew I'd pull it off yet. And I thought you might have held on. He stopped, his head a little lowered, his concentrated gaze on her flushed face. Well, anyhow, he broke out. You were my wife once, and you were my wife first, and if you want to come back you've got to come that way. Not slink through the back way when there's no one watching, but walk in by the front door with your head up and your main street look. Since the days when he had poured out to her his great fortune-building projects, she had never heard him make so long a speech, and her heart, as she listened, beat with a new joy and terror. It seemed to her that the great moment of her life had come at last. The moment all her minor failures and successes had been building up with blind, indefatigable hands. Elmer, Elmer! she sobbed out. She expected to find herself in his arms, shut in and shielded from all her troubles. But he stood his ground across the room, immovable. Is it yes? She faltered the word after him. Yes? Are you going to marry me? She stared bewildered. Why, Elmer, marry you! You forget! Forget what? That you don't want to give up what you've got? How can I? Such things are not done out here. Why, I'm a Catholic, and the Catholic Church—she broke off reading the end in his face. But later, perhaps, things might change. Oh, Elmer, if only you'd stay over here and let me see you sometimes. Yes, the way your friends see each other—we're differently made out in apex. When I want that sort of thing I go down to North Fifth Street for it. She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. What he asked was impossible, and she gloried in his asking it, feeling her power she tried to temporize. At least if you stayed we could be friends. I shouldn't feel so terribly alone. He laughed impatiently. Don't talk magazine stuff to me, Undean Sprague. I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different. You've got all muddles living out here among a lot of loafers who call it a career to run round after every petticoat. I've got my job out at home, and I belong where my job is. Are you going to be tied to business all your life? Her smile was faintly depreciatory. I guess business is tied to me. Wall Street acts as if it couldn't get along without me. He gave his shoulders a shake, and moved a few steps nearer. See here, Undean, you're the one that don't understand. If I was to sell out to-morrow and spend the rest of my life reading art magazines in a pink villa, I wouldn't do what you're asking me. And I've about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to district nursing. There are things a man doesn't do. I understand why your husband won't sell those tapestries till he's got to. His ancestors are his business. Wall Street's mine. He paused, and they silently faced each other. Undean made no attempt to approach him. She understood that if he yielded it would be only to recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat. She put out her hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering. I suppose it's good-bye, then, she said. You haven't got the nerve? The nerve for what? To come where you belong, with me. She laughed a little, and then sighed. She wished he would come nearer, or look at her differently. She felt, under his cool eye, no more compelling than a woman of wax in a showcase. How could I get a divorce, with my religion? Why, you were born a Baptist, weren't you? That's where you used to attend church, when I waited round the corner Sunday mornings, with one of old Hobers' buggies. They both laughed, and he went on. If you'll come along home with me, I'll see you get your divorce all right. Who cares what they do over here? You're an American, ain't you? What you want is the homemade article. She listened, discouraged, yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility to all her arguments and objections. He knew what he wanted, saw his road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles. Her defense was drawn from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did not exist for him. And gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady pressure of his will. Yet the reasons he brushed away came back with redouble tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the consequences of what he exacted. You don't know, you don't understand, she kept repeating, but she knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to give up. See here, Undine, he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance, though he couldn't fathom it. I guess it had better be yes or no, right here. It ain't going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out. If you want to come back with me, come. If you don't, we'll shake hands on it now. I'm due in Apex for a director's meeting on the twentieth, and as it is I'll have to cable for a special to get me out there. No, no, don't cry. It ain't that kind of a story, but I'll have a dick-suite for you on the semantic, if you'll sail with me the day after tomorrow. End of chapter forty-five. Chapter forty-six of The Custom of the Country. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Custom of the Country by Edith Horton. Chapter forty-six. In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out into the twilight. The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below, and Paul, looking down, saw between windows and treetops a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semicircular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly nine who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas, and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his stepfather had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffitt had hastily established themselves a few weeks earlier on their return from a flying trip to America. They were always coming and going during the two years since their marriage. They had been perpetually dashing over to New York and back, or rushing down to Rome, or up to the Angentine. Paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons, less laconic than that of the electric wire, and once when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity, oh yes, I got a telegram last week. He had been almost sure, as sure he ever was of anything, that he should find her at home when he arrived, but a message for she hadn't had time to telegraph apprised him that she and Mr. Moffitt had run down to Doville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the summer. They were taking an early train back and would be at home for dinner, were in fact having a lot of people to dine. It was just what he ought to have expected and had been used to ever since he could remember, and generally he didn't much mind, especially since his mother had become Mrs. Moffitt, and the father he had been most used to and liked best had abruptly disappeared from his life. But the new hotel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there was not a toy or a book or one of his dear battered relics, none of the new servants they were always new, could find his things, or think where they had been put, seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house. He had gone up there after his solitary luncheon served in the immense marble dining room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to occupy himself with pasting postcards into his album. But the newness and sumptuousness of the room embarrassed him. The white fur rugs and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and ink spots, and after a while he pushed the album aside and began to roam through the house. He went to all the rooms in turn, his mother's first, the wonderful lacy bedroom, all pale silks and velvets, artful mirrors and veiled lamps, and the boudoir as big as a drawing room, with pictures he would have liked to know about, and tables and cabinets holding things he was afraid to touch. Mr. Moffat's rooms came next. They were soberer and darker, but as big and splendid, and in the bedroom on the brown wall hung a single picture, the portrait of a boy in gray velvet that interested Paul most of all. The boy's hand rested on the head of a big dog, and he looked infinitely noble and charming, and yet, in spite of the dog, so sad and lonely that he too might have come home that very day to a strange house in which none of his old things could be found. From these rooms Paul wandered downstairs again. The library attracted him most. There were rows and rows of books bound in dim browns and golds, and old faded reds as rich as velvet. They all looked as if they might have had stories in them as splendid as their bindings. But the bookcases were closed with guilt trellising, and when Paul reached up to open one, a servant told him that Mr. Moffat's secretary kept them locked because the books were too valuable to be taken down. This seemed to make the library as strange as the rest of the house, and he passed on to the ballroom at the back. Through its closed doors he heard a sound of hammering, and when he tried the door handle a servant passing with a tray full of glasses told him that they hadn't finished and wouldn't let anybody in. The mysterious pronoun somehow increased Paul's sense of isolation, and he went on to the drawing rooms staring his way prudently between the gold armchairs and shining tables and wondering whether the wigged and corseted heroes on the walls represented Mr. Moffat's ancestors and why, if they did, he looked so little like them. The drawing room beyond was more amusing because busy servants were already laying the long table. It was too early for the florist, and the center of the table was empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer fruits, figs, strawberries, and big blushing nectarines. Between them stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine and little dishes full of sweets, and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces of gold and silver, ewers and urns, and branching candelabra which sprinkled the green marble walls with star-like reflections. After a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of white-sleeved footmen and of listening to the butler's vociferated orders and straight back into the library. The habit of solitude had given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found a book anywhere, any kind of a book, he would have forgotten the long hours and the empty house. But the tables in the library held only massive unused ink stands and immense immaculate blotters, not a single volume, had slipped its golden prison. His loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he suddenly thought of Mrs. Heaney's clippings. His mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight, had brought the masseuse back from New York with her, and Mrs. Heaney, with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. She had been loud in her joy at seeing her little friend that morning, but four years had passed since their last parting, and her personality had grown remote to him. He saw too many people, and they too often disappeared and were replaced by others. His scattered affections had ended by concentrating themselves on the charming image of the gentleman he called his French father, and since his French father had vanished, no one else seemed to matter much to him. Oh well, Mrs. Heaney had said, discerning the reluctance under his civil greeting, I guess you're as strange here as I am, and we're both pretty strange to each other. You just go and look around, see what a lovely home your mom's got to live in, and when you get tired of that, come up here to me and I'll give you a look at my clippings. The word woke a train of dormant associations, and Paul saw himself seated on a dingy carpet between two familiar taciturn old presences, while he rummaged in the depths of a bag stuffed with strips of newspaper. He found Mrs. Heaney sitting in a pink armchair, her bonnet perched on a pink shaded electric lamp, and her numerous implements spread out on an immense pink toilet table. Vague as his recollection of her was, she gave him at once a sense of reassurance that nothing else in the house conveyed, and after he had examined all her scissors and pastes and nail polishers, he turned to the bag, which stood on the carpet at her feet as if she were waiting for a train. My, my, she said, do you want to get into that again? How you used to hunt in for Taffy to be sure when your Paul brought you up to Grandma Sprague's old Saturdays. Well, I'm afraid there ain't Taffy in it now, but there's pals and pals of lovely new clippings you ain't seen. My Papa, he paused his hand among the strips of newspaper. My Papa never saw my Grandma Sprague. He never went to America. Never went to America? Your Paul never, why land alive? Mrs. Heaney gasped, a blushed and purpling, her large warm face. Why, Paul Marvell, don't you remember your own father? You that bear his name, she exclaimed. The boy blushed also, conscious, that it must have been wrong to forget and yet not seeing how he was to blame. That one died a long time ago, didn't he? I was thinking of my French father, he explained. Oh, mercy, ejaculated Mrs. Heaney. As if to cut the conversation short, she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump, strong hand into the bag. Here and now, just you look at these clippings. I guess you'll find a lot of them about your mom. Where do they come from? Why, out of the papers, of course, she added in response to Paul's inquiry. You'd ought to start a scrapbook yourself, you're plenty old enough. You could make a beauty just about your mom, with her picture pasted in the front, and another about Mr. Moffat and his collections. There's one I cut out the other day that says he's the greatest collector in America. Paul listened, fascinated. He had the feeling that Mrs. Heaney's clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him the clue to many things he didn't understand, and that nobody had ever had time to explain to him. His mother's marriages, for instance, he was sure there was a great deal to find out about them. But she always said, I'll tell you all about it when I come back. And when she came back, it was invariably to rush off somewhere else. So he had remained without a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other boys he knew. Here, here it is, said Mrs. Heaney, adjusting the big tortoiseshell spectacles she had taken to wearing and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy. It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr. Elmer Moffat for the celebrated gray boy is the largest sum ever given for a van dyke. Since Mr. Moffat began to buy extensively, it is estimated in art circles that values have gone up at least 75 percent. But the price of the gray boy did not interest Paul, and he said a little impatiently, I'd rather hear about my mother. To be sure you would, you wait now. Mrs. Heaney made another dive, and again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black table. Here's one about her last portrait. No, here's a better one about her pearl necklace, the one Mr. Moffat gave her last Christmas. The necklace, which was formerly the property of an Austrian archduchess, is composed of 500 perfectly matched pearls that took 30 years to collect. It is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since Mr. Moffat began to buy, the price of pearls has gone up over 50 percent. Even this did not fix Paul's attention. He wanted to hear about his mother and Mr. Moffat, and not about their things, and he didn't quite know how to frame his question. But Mrs. Heaney looked kindly at him, and he tried. Why is mother married to Mr. Moffat now? Why, you must know that much, Paul. Mrs. Heaney again looked warm and worried. She's married to him because she got a divorce, that's why. And suddenly she had another inspiration. Didn't she ever send you over any of those splendid clippings that came out of the time they were married? Why, I declare, that's a shame, but I must have someone right here. She dived again, shuffled, sorted, and pulled out a long discolored strip. I've carried this round with me ever since, and so many wanted to read it, it's all torn. She smoothed out the paper and began. Divorce and remarriage of Mrs. Undine Sprague Dichel. American Marquess renounces ancient French title to wed railroad king. Quick work untying and tying. Boy and girl romance renewed. Reno, November 23. The Marquess Dichel of Paris, France, formally Mrs. Undine Sprague Marvell of Apex City and New York, got a decree of divorce at a special session of the court last night, and was remarried 15 minutes later to Mr. Elmer Moffat, the billionaire railroad king, who is the Marquess's first husband. No case has ever been railroaded through the divorce courts of this state at a higher rate of speed. As Mr. Moffat said last night before he and his bride jumped on to their eastbound special, every record has been broken. It was just six months ago yesterday that the present Mrs. Moffat came to Reno to look for her divorce. Owing to a delayed train, her counsel was late yesterday in receiving some necessary papers, and it was feared the decision would have to be held over, but Judge Toomey, who is a personal friend of Mr. Moffat's, held a night session and rushed it through so that the happy couple could have the knot tied and board their special in time for Mrs. Moffat to spend Thanksgiving in New York with her aged parents. The hearing began at 7.10 p.m., and at 8 o'clock the bridal couple were steaming out of the station. At the trial, Mrs. Sprague Dichel, who wore copper velvet and sables, gave evidence as to the brutality of her French husband, but she had to talk fast as time pressed and Judge Toomey wrote the entry at top speed and then jumped into a motor with the happy couple and drove to the justice of the peace where he acted as best man to the bridegroom. The latter is said to be one of the six wealthiest men east of the Rockies. His gifts to the bride are a necklace and tiara of pigeon blood rubies belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette, a million dollar check, and a house in New York. The happy pair will pass the honeymoon in Mrs. Moffat's new home, 5009 Fifth Avenue, which is an exact copy of the Petite Palace, Florence. They plan to spend their springs in France. Mrs. Heaney drew a long breath, folded the napkin, and took off her spectacles. There, she said, with a benign smile and a tap on Paul's cheek. Now you see how it all happened. Paul was not sure he did, but he made no answer. His mind was too full of troubled thoughts. In the dazzling description of his mother's latest nuptials, one fact alone stood up for him, that she had said things that weren't true of his French father. Something he had half-guessed in her, and diverted his frightened thoughts from, took his little heart in an iron grasp. She said things that weren't true. That was what he had always feared to find out. She had got up and said before a lot of people things that were awfully false about his dear French father. The sound of a motor turning in at the gates made Mrs. Heaney exclaim, here they are. And a moment later, Paul heard his mother calling to him. He got up reluctantly and stood wavering till he felt Mrs. Heaney's astonished eye upon him. Then he heard Mr. Moffat's jovial shout of Paul Marvell over there, and roused himself to run downstairs. As he reached the landing, he saw that the ballroom doors were open and all the lusters lit. His mother and Mr. Moffat stood in the middle of the shining floor, looking up at the walls, and Paul's heart gave a wondering bound. For there, said in great guilt panels, were the tapestries that had always hung in the gallery at Sondes-Air. Well, Senator, it feels good to shake your fist again, his stepfather said, taking him in a friendly grasp, and his mother, who looked handsomer and taller, and more splendidly dressed than ever exclaimed, Mercy, how they've cut his hair before she bent to kiss him. Oh, mother, mother, he burst out, feeling between his mother's face and the others hardly less familiar on the walls, that he was really at home again and not in a strange house. Gracious how you squeeze, she protested, loosening his arms, but you look splendidly, and how you've grown. She turned away from him and began to inspect the tapestries critically. Somehow they look smaller here, she said with a tinge of disappointment. Mr. Moffat gave a slight laugh and walked slowly down the room as if to study its effect. As he turned back, his wife said, I didn't think you'd ever get them. He laughed again more complacently. Well, I don't know as I ever should have if General Arlington hadn't happened to bust up. They both smiled, and Paul, seeing his mother's softened face, stole his hand in hers, and began, Mother, I took a prize in composition. Did you? You really must tell me about it tomorrow. No, I really must rush off now, and dressed, I haven't even placed the dinner cards. She freed her hand, and as she turned to go, Paul heard Mr. Moffat say, can't you ever give him a minute's time, Undine? She made no answer, but sailed through the door with her head high, as she did when anything annoyed her, and Paul and his stepfather stood alone in the illuminated ballroom. Mr. Moffat smiled good-naturedly at the little boy and then turned back to the contemplation of the hangings. I guess you know where those come from, don't you? He asked in a tone of satisfaction. Oh yes, Paul answered eagerly, with the hope he dared not utter that, since the tapestries were there, his French father might be coming, too. You're a smart boy to remember them. I don't suppose you ever thought you'd see him here. I don't know, said Paul, embarrassed. Well, I guess you wouldn't have if their owner hadn't been in a pretty tight place. It was like drawing teeth for him to let him go. Paul flushed up, and again the iron grasp was on his heart. He hadn't hitherto actually disliked Mr. Moffat, who was always in a good humor, and seemed less busy and absent-minded than his mother, but at that instant he felt a rage of hate for him. He turned away and burst into tears. Why, hello, old chap! Why, what's up? Mr. Moffat was on his knees beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly. But Paul, for the life of him, couldn't answer. He could only sob and sob, as the great surges of loneliness broke over him. Is it because your mother hadn't time for you? Well, she's like that, you know. And you and I have got to lump it, Mr. Moffat continued, getting to his feet. He stood, looking down at the boy with a queer smile. If we two chap stick together, it won't be so bad. We can keep each other warm, don't you see? I like you first-rate, you know. When you're big enough, I mean to put you in my business. And it looks as if, one of these days, you'll be the richest boy in America. The lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the footmen assembled on the landing and in the vestibule below, when Undine descended to the drawing room. As she passed the ballroom door, she glanced in approvingly at the tapestries. They really looked better than she had been willing to admit. They made her ballroom the handsomest in Paris. But something had put her out on the way up from Deauville, and the simplest way of easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries. Now she had quite recovered her good humor, and as she glanced down the list of guests, she was awaiting, she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies. For the first time since her marriage to Moffat, she was about to receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. The beginnings had been a little difficult. Their first attempt in New York was so unpromising, that she feared they might not be able to live down the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her husband's taking her back to Paris. But her apprehensions were unfounded. It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they had forgotten, and already they were all pretending beautifully. The French world had of course held out longest. It had strong holds she might never capture. But already, seceders were beginning to show themselves, and her dinner list that evening was graced with the names of an authentic duke, and a not too damaged countess. In addition, of course, she had the Shalems, the Chauncey Ellings, Mae Barringer, Dickie Bowles, Wall Singham Popple, and the rest of the New York frequenters of the Nouveau Luxe. She had even at the last minute had the amusement of adding Peter Van Degen to their number. In the evening, there were to be Spanish dancing and Russian singing, and Dickie Bowles had promised her a grand duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who always refused to sing in private houses. Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt at times there were other things she might want if she knew about them. And there had been moments lately when she had had to confess to herself that Moffat did not fit into the picture. At first, she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than she had ever dreamed of having. He had made up to her for all her failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exalted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them, when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swaggering and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perception that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors, who were gradually becoming merged in her memory, would have said this or that differently, be heaved otherwise in such and such a case. And the comparison was almost always to Moffat's disadvantage. This evening, however, she thought of him indulgently. She was pleased with his clever stroke in capturing the sawn-desire tapestries which General Arlington's sudden bankruptcy and a fresh gambling scandal of Hubert's had compelled their owner to part with. She knew that Raymond Duchel had told the dealers he would sell his tapestries to anyone but Mr. Elmer Moffat, or a buyer acting for him, and it amused her to think that, thanks to Elmer's astuteness, they were under her roof after all, and that Raymond, and all his clan, were by this time aware of it. These facts disposed her favorably toward her husband and deepened the sense of well-being with which, according to her, in variable habit, she walked up to the mirror above the mantelpiece and studied the image it reflected. She was still lost in this pleasing contemplation when her husband entered, looking stouter and redder than ever, in evening clothes that were a little too tight. His sure front was as glossy as his baldness, and in his buttonhole, he wore the red ribbon bestowed on him for waving his claim to a Velazquez that was wanted for the Louvre. He carried a newspaper in his hand, and stood looking about the room with a complacent eye. Well, I guess this is all right, he said, and she answered briefly, Don't forget you're to take down Madame de Faulrive, and for goodness sake don't call her Countess. Why, she is one, ain't she? He returned good-humoredly. I wish you'd put that newspaper away. She continued, his habit of leaving old newspapers about the drawing room annoyed her. Oh, that reminds me, instead of obeying her, he unfolded the paper. I brought it in to show you something. Jim Driscoll's been appointed Ambassador to England. Jim Driscoll! She caught up the paper and stared at the paragraph he pointed to, Jim Driscoll, that pitiful non-entity with his stout mistrustful commonplace wife. It seemed extraordinary that the government should have hunted up such insignificant people, and immediately she had a great vague vision of the splendors they were going to, all the banquets and ceremonies and precedences. I shouldn't say she'd want to with so few jewels. She dropped the paper and turned to her husband. If you had a spark of ambition, that's the kind of thing you'd try for. You could have got it just as easily as not. He laughed and thrust his thumbs and his waistcoat armholes with the gesture she disliked. As it happens, it's about the one thing I couldn't. You couldn't? Why not? Because you're divorced. They won't have divorced ambassadors. They won't? Why not? I'd like to know. Well, I guess the court ladies are afraid there'd be too many pretty women in the embassies, he answered jocularly. She burst into an angry laugh and the blood flamed up into her face. I never heard of anything so insulting! She cried as if the rule had been invented to humiliate her. There was a noise of motors backing and advancing in the court, and she heard the first voices on the stairs. She turned to give herself a last look in the glass, saw the blaze of her rubies, the glitter of her hair, and remembered the brilliant names on her list. But under all the dazzle, a tiny black cloud remained. She had learned that there was something she could never get, something that neither beauty nor influence nor millions could ever buy for her. She could never be an ambassador's wife, and as she advanced to welcome her first guests, she had said to herself that it was the one part she was really made for. The End End of Chapter 46 Recorded by Aaron Elliott, St. Louis, Missouri End of The Custom of the Country