 Chapter 33 of the Custom of the Country. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, Chapter 33. The upshot of Ralph's visit was that Mr. Sprague, after considerable deliberation, agreed, pending farther negotiations between the opposing lawyers, to undertake that no attempt should be made to remove Paul from his father's custody. Nevertheless, he seemed to think it quite natural that Ondine, on the point of making a marriage which would put it in her power to give her child a suitable home, should assert her claim on him. It was more disconcerting to Ralph to learn that Mrs. Sprague, for once departing from her attitude of passive impartiality, had eagerly abetted her daughter's move. He had somehow felt that Ondine's desertion of the child had established a kind of mute understanding between himself and his mother-in-law. I thought Mrs. Sprague would know there's no earthly use trying to take Paul from me. He said with a desperate awkwardness of entreaty, and Mr. Sprague startled him by replying, I presume his grandma thinks he'll belong to her more if we keep him in the family. Ralph, abruptly awakened from his dream of recovered peace, found himself confronted on every side by indifference or hostility. It was as though the June fields in which his boy was playing had suddenly opened to engulf him. Mrs. Marbelle's fears and tremors were almost harder to bear than the Sprague's antagonism. And for the next few days, Ralph wandered about miserably, dreading some fresh communication from Ondine's lawyers, yet wracked by the strain of hearing nothing more from them. Mr. Sprague had agreed to cable his daughter, asking her to await a letter before enforcing her demands, but on the fourth day after Ralph's visit to the Malibran, a telephone message summoned him to his father-in-law's office. Half an hour later, their talk was over, and he stood once more on the landing outside Mr. Sprague's door. Ondine's answer had come, and Paul's fate was sealed. His mother refused to give him up, refused to await the arrival of her lawyer's letter, and reiterated, in more peremptory language, her demand that the child should be sent immediately to Paris in Mrs. Heaney's care. Mr. Sprague, in face of Ralph's entreaties, remained pacific but remote. It was evident that, though he had no wish to quarrel with Ralph, he saw no reason for resisting Ondine. I guess she's got the law on her side, he said, and in response to Ralph's passionate remonstrances, he added, fatalistically, I presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter. Ralph had gone to the office resolved to control his temper, and keep on the watch for any shred of information he might glean. But it soon became clear that Mr. Sprague knew as little as himself of Ondine's projects or of the stage her plans had reached. All she had apparently vouchsafed her parent was the statement that she intended to remarry and the command to send Paul over. And Ralph reflected that his own betrothal to her had probably been announced to Mr. Sprague in the same curt fashion. The thought brought back an overwhelming sense of the past. One by one, the details of that incredible moment revived, and he felt in his veins the glow of rapture with which he had first approached the dingy threshold he was now leaving. There came back to him with peculiar vividness the memory of his rushing up to Mr. Sprague's office to consult him about a necklace for Ondine. Ralph recalled the incident because his eager appeal for advice had been received by Mr. Sprague with the very phrase he had just used, I presume you'll have to leave the matter to my daughter. Ralph saw him slouching in his chair, swung sideways from the untidy desk, his legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets, his jaws engaged on the phantom toothpick, and in a quarter of the office, the figure of a middle-sized red-faced young man who seemed to have been interrupted in the act of saying something disagreeable. Well, it must have been then that I first saw Moffat, Ralph reflected, and the thought suggested the memory of others subsequent meetings in the same building and a frequent assent to Moffat's office during the ardent weeks of their mysterious and remunerative deal. Ralph wondered if Moffat's office were still in the Ararat, and on the way out he paused before the black tablet fixed to the wall of the vestibule and sought and found the name in its familiar place. The next moment he was again absorbed in his own cares. Now that he had learned the imminence of Paul's danger and the futility of pleading for delay, a thousand fantastic projects were contending in his head to get the boy away. That seemed the first thing to do, to put him out of reach and then invoke the law, get the case reopened and carry the fight from court to court till his rights should be recognized. It would cost a lot of money. Well, the money would have to be found. The first step was to secure the boy's temporary safety. After that, the question of ways and means would have to be considered. Had there ever been a time, Ralph wondered when that question hadn't been at the root of all the others. He had promised to let Claire Van Degen know the result of his visit, and half an hour later he was in her drawing room. It was the first time he had entered it since his divorce. But Van Degen was tarpon fishing in California, and besides, he had to see Claire. His one relief was in talking to her, in feverishly turning over with her every possibility of delay and obstruction. And he marveled at the intelligence and energy she brought to the discussion of these questions. It was as if she had never before felt strongly enough about anything to put her heart or brains into it. But now, everything in her was at work for him. She listened intently to what he told her. Then she said, You tell me it will cost a great deal. But why take it to the courts at all? Why not give the money to Van Degen instead of to your lawyers? Ralph looked at her in surprise. And she continued, Why do you suppose she suddenly made up her mind she must have, Paul? That's comprehensible enough to anyone who knows her. She wants him because he'll give her the appearance of respectability. Having him with her will prove no mere assertions can that all the rights are on her side and the wrongs on mine. Claire considered. Yes, that's the obvious answer. But shall I tell you what I think, my dear? You and I are both completely out of date. I don't believe when Dean cares a straw for the appearance of respectability. What she wants is the money for her annulment. Ralph uttered an incredulous explanation. But don't you see? She hurried on. It's her only hope, her last chance. She's much too clever to burden herself with a child merely to annoy you. What she wants is to make you buy him back from her. She stood up and came to him without stretched hands. Perhaps I can be of use to you at last. You? He summoned up a haggard smile. As if you weren't always letting me load you with all my bothers. Oh, if only I've hit on the way out of this one. Then there wouldn't be any others left. Her eyes followed him intently as he turned away to the window and stood staring down at the Sultry's Prospect of Fifth Avenue. As he turned over her conjecture, its probability became more and more apparent. It put into logical relation all the incoherencies of Undine's recent conduct. Completed and defined her anew as if a sharp line had been drawn about her fading image. If it's that, I shall soon know, he said, turning back into the room. His course had instantly become plain. He had only to resist and Undine would have to show her hand. Simultaneously with this thought, there sprang up in his mind the remembrance of the autumn afternoon in Paris when he had come home and found her among her half-packed finery, desperately bewailing her coming motherhood. Claire's touch was on his arm. If I'm right, you will let me help? He laid his hand on hers without speaking, and she went on. It will take a lot of money, all these lawsuits do. Besides, she'd be ashamed to sell him cheap. You must be ready to give her anything she wants. And I've had a lot saved up. Money of my own, I mean. Your own? As he looked at her, a rare blush rose under her brown skin. My very own. Why shouldn't you believe me? I'd been hoarding up my scrap of an income for years, thinking that someday I'd find I couldn't stand this any longer. You just your embrace there, sumptuous setting. But now I know I shall never budge. There are the children, things are easier for me since... she paused, embarrassed. Yes, yes, I know. He felt like completing her phrase, since my wife has furnished you with the means of putting pressure on your husband. But he simply repeated, I know. And you will let me help? Oh, we must get out the facts first. He caught her hands and his with sudden energy. As you say, when Paul save, there won't be another bother left. End of chapter 33. Chapter 34 of the Custom of the Country. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. The Custom of the Country. By Edith Wharton. Chapter 34. The means of raising the requisite amount of money became, during the next few weeks, the anxious theme of all Ralph's thoughts. His lawyer's enquiries soon brought the confirmation of Clair's surmise, and it became clear that for reasons suavd in all the ingenuities of legal verbiage, Undine might, in return for a substantial consideration, be prevailed on to admit that it was for her son's advantage to remain with his father. The day this admission was communicated to Ralph, his first impulse was to carry the news to his cousin. His mood was one of pure exaltation. He seemed to be hugging his boy to him as he walked. Paul and he were to belong to each other forever. No mysterious threat of separation could ever menace them again. He had the blissful sense of relief that the child himself might have had on waking out of a frightened dream and finding the jolly daylight in his room. Clair at once renewed her entreaty to be allowed to aid in ransoming her little cousin, but Ralph tried to put her off by explaining that he meant to look about. Look where? In the Dagonette coffers? Oh Ralph, what's the use of pretending? Tell me what you've got to give her. It was amazing how his cousin suddenly dominated him, but as yet he couldn't go into the details of the bargain, that the reckoning between himself and Undine should be settled in dollars and cents, seen the last bitterest satire on his dreams. He felt himself miserably diminished by the smallness of what had filled his world. Nevertheless, the looking about had to be done, and a day came when he found himself once more at the door of Elmer Moffat's office. His thoughts had been drawn back to Moffat by the insistence with which the latter's name had lately been put forward by the press in connection with the revival of the Ararat investigation. Moffat, it appeared, had been regarded as one of the most valuable witnesses for the state. His return from Europe had been anxiously awaited, his unreadiness to testify costically criticized, then at last he had arrived, had gone on to Washington, and had apparently had nothing to tell. Ralph was too deep in his own troubles to waste any wonder over this anti-climax, but the frequent appearance of Moffat's name in the morning papers acted as an unconscious suggestion. Besides, to whom else could he look for help? The sum his wife demanded could be acquired only by a quick turn, and the fact that Ralph had once rendered the same kind of service to Moffat made it natural to appeal to him now. The market, moreover, happened to be booming, and it seemed not unlikely that so experienced a speculator might have a good thing up his sleeve. Moffat's office had been transformed since Ralph's last visit. Paint, varnish, and brass railings gave an air of opulence to the outer precincts. In the inner room, with its mahogany bookcases containing morocco-bound sets and its wide blue leather armchairs, lacked only a palm or two to resemble the lounge of a fashionable hotel. Moffat himself, as he came forward, gave Ralph the impression of having been done over by the same hand. He was smoother, broader, more supremely tailored, and his whole person exhaled the faintest whiff of an expensive scent. He installed his visitor in one of the blue armchairs, and sitting opposite, an elbow on his impressive Washington desk, listened attentively while Ralph made his request. You want to be put onto something good in a damned hurry? Moffat twisted his mustache between two plump square-tipped fingers with a little black rope on their lower joints. I don't suppose, he remarked, there's a sane man between here and San Francisco who isn't consumed by that yearning. Having permitted himself this pleasantry, he passed on to business. Yes, it's the first straight time to buy, no doubt of that. But you say you want to make a quick turnover? Heard of a soft thing that won't wait, I presume? Let's have to be the way with soft things, all kinds of them. There's always other fellows after them. Moffat's smile was playful. Well, I'd go considerably out of my way to do you a good turn because you did me one when I needed it mighty bad. In you, you sheltered me. Yes, sir, that's the kind I am. He stood up, sauntered to the other side of the room and took a small object from the top of the bookcase. Fond of these pink crystals? He held the oriental toy against the light. Oh, I ain't a judge, but now and then I like to pick up a pretty thing. Ralph noticed that his eyes caressed it. Well now, let's talk. You say you've got to have the funds for your investment within three weeks. That's quick work. And you want 100,000. Can you put up 50? Ralph had been prepared for the question, but when it came, he felt a moment's tremor. He knew he could count on half the amount from his grandfather, could possibly ask Fairford for a small additional loan. But what of the rest? Well, there was Claire. He'd always known there would be no other way. And after all, the money was Claire's. It was Dagonette money. At least she said it was. All the mystery of his predicament was distilled into the short silence that preceded his answer. Yes, I think so. Well, I guess I can double it for you. Moffat spoke with an air of Olympian modesty. Anyhow, I'll try. Only don't tell the other girls. He proceeded to develop his plan to ears which Ralph tried to make alert and attentive, but in which, perpetually, through the intricate concert of facts and figures, there broke the shout of a small boy racing across a suburban lawn. When I pick him up tonight, he'll be mine for good. Ralph thought, as Moffat summed up, there's a whole scheme in a nutshell, but you better think it over. I don't want to let you in for anything you ain't quite sure about. Oh, if you're sure, Ralph was already calculating the time it would take to dash up to Claire van Degen's on his way to catch the train for the Fairfords. His impatience made it hard to pay due regard to Moffat's parting civilities. Glad to have seen you. He heard the latter assuring him with a final hand-grass. Wish you'd dine with me some evening at my club. And as Ralph murmured a vague acceptance, how's that boy of yours, by the way? Moffat continued, he was a stunning chap last time I saw him. Excuse me if I put my foot in it, but I understood you kept him with you. Yes, that's what I thought. Well, so long. Claire's inner sitting room was empty, but the servant, presently returning, led Ralph into the gilded and tapestry wilderness where she occasionally chose to receive her visitors. There, under Popple's effigy of herself, she sat, small and alone, on a monumental sofa behind a tea-table laden with gold plate. While from his lofty frame on the opposite wall, van Degen, portrayed by a powerful artist, cast on her the satisfied eye of proprietorship. Ralph, swept forward on the blast of this excitement, felt, as in a dream, the frivolous perversity of her receiving him in such a setting, instead of in their usual quiet corner. But there was no room in his mind for anything but the cry that broke from him. I believe I've done it! He sat down and explained to her by what means, trying, as best he could, to restate the particulars of Moffat's deal. And her manifest ignorance of business methods and the act of making his vagueness appear less vague. Anyhow, he seems to be sure it's a safe thing. I understand he's in with Roliver now, and Roliver practically controls Apex. This is some kind of a scheme to buy up all the works of public utility at Apex. They're practically sure of their charter, and Moffat tells me I can count on doubling my investment within a few weeks. Of course, I'll go into the details if you like. Oh no, you've made it all so clear to me. She really made him feel he had. And besides, what on earth does it matter? The great thing is that it's done. She lifted her sparkling eyes. And now, my share, you haven't told me. He explained that Mr. Dagonet, to whom he had already named the amount demanded, had at once promised him $25,000 to be eventually deducted from his share of the estate. His mother had something put by that she insisted on contributing. And Henley Fairford, of his own accord, had come forward with $10,000. It was awfully decent of Henley. Even Henley, clear aside, that I'm the only one left out. Rol felt the color in his face. Well, you see, I shall need as much as $50. Her hands flew together joyfully. But then you've got to let me help. Oh, I'm so glad. So glad. I've $20,000 waiting. He looked about the room, checked anew by all its oppressive implications. You're a darling, but I couldn't take it. I've told you it's mine, every penny of it. Yes, but supposing things went wrong. Nothing can, if you'll only take it. I may lose it. I shed, if I've given it to you. The look followed his about the room and then came back to him. Can't you imagine all it will make up for? The rapture of the cry caught him up with it. Ah, yes, he could imagine it all. He stooped his head above her hands. I accept, he said. And they stood and looked at each other like radiant children. She followed him to the door and as he turned to leave, he broke into a laugh. It's queer, though. It's happening in this room. She was close beside him, her hand on the heavy tapestry curtening the door and her glance shot past him to her husband's portrait. Alph caught the look and a flood of old tendernesses and hates welled up in him. He drew her under the portrait and kissed her vehemently. End of Chapter 34 Chapter 35 of The Custom of the Country This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org. Reading by Mary Rody The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Chapter 35 Within forty-eight hours Ralph's money was in Muffett's hands and the interval of suspense had begun. The transaction over he felt the deceptive buoyancy that follows on periods of painful indecision. It seemed to him that now at last life had freed him from all trampling delusions leaving him only the best thing in its gift— his boy. The things he meant Paul to do and to be filled his fancy with happy pictures. The child was growing more and more interesting, throwing out countless tendrils of feeling and perception that delighted Ralph but preoccupied the watchful Laura. He's going to be exactly like you, Ralph. She paused and then risked it. For his own sake I wish there were just a drop or two of sprag in him. Ralph laughed, understanding her, oh, the plotting citizen I've become will keep him from taking after the lyric idiot who begot him. Paul and I, between us, are going to turn out something first-rate. His book, too, was spreading and throwing out tendrils and he worked at it in the white heat of energy which his facetious exhilaration produced. For a few weeks everything he did and said seemed as easy and unconditioned as the actions in a dream. Claire Van Degen, in the light of this mood, became again the comrade of his boyhood. He did not see her often for she had gone down to the country with her children, but they communicated daily by letter or telephone, and soon then she came over to the Fairfords for a night. There they renewed the long rambles of their youth and once more the summer fields and woods seemed full of magic presences. Claire was no more intelligent. She followed him no farther in his flights, but some of the qualities that had become most precious to him were as native to her as its perfume to a flower. In the long June afternoons they ranged together over many themes, and if her answers sometimes missed the mark it did not matter because her silences never did. Meanwhile Ralph, from various sources, continued to pick up a good deal of more or less contradictory information about Elmer Muffett. It seemed to be generally understood that Muffett had formed Europe with the intention of testifying in the Ararat investigation, and that his former patron, the great Harmon B. Driscoll, had managed to silence him. And it was implied that the price of his silence, which was said at a considerable figure, had been turned to account in a series of speculations likely to lift Muffett to permanent eminence among the rulers of Wall Street. The stories as to his latest achievement and the theories as to the man himself varied with the visual angle of each reporter. And whenever any attempt was made to focus his hard shop personality some guardian divinity seemed to throw a veil of mystery over him. His detractors, however, were the first to own that there was something about him. It was felt that he had passed beyond the meteoric stage and the business world was unanimous in recognizing that he had come to stay. A dawning sense of his stability was even beginning to make itself felt in Fifth Avenue. It was said that he had bought a house in Seventy Second Street then that he meant to build near the park. One or two people, always taken by a friend had been to his flat in St. Louis to see his Chinese porcelains and Persian rugs. Now and then he had a few important men to dine at a Fifth Avenue restaurant. His name began to appear in philanthropic reports and on municipal committees. There were even rumors of its having been put up at a well-known club. And the rector of a wealthy parish who was raising funds for a chantry was known to have met him at dinner and to have stated afterward that the man was not wholly a materialist. All these converging proofs of Moffat's solidity strengthened Ralph's faith in his venture. He remembered with what astuteness and authority Moffat had conducted their real-estate transaction, how far off and unreal it all seemed. And awaited events with the passive faith of a sufferer in the hands of a skillful surgeon. The days moved on toward the end of June, and each morning Ralph opened his newspaper with the keener thrill of expectation. Any day now he might read of the granting of the apex charter. Moffat had assured him it would go through before the close of the month. But the announcement did not appear and after what seemed to Ralph a decent lapse of time he telephoned to ask for news. Moffat was away and when he came back a few days later he answered Ralph's inquiries evasively with an edge of irritation in his voice. The same day Ralph received a letter from his lawyer, who had been reminded by Mrs. Marvel's representatives that the latest date agreed on for the execution of the financial agreement was the end of the following week. Ralph alarmed but took himself at once the arorat and his first glimpse of Moffat's round common face and fastidiously dressed person gave him an immediate sense of reassurance. He felt that under the circle of baldness on top of that carefully brushed head laid the solution of every monetary problem that could beset the soul of man. Moffat's voice had recovered its usual cordial note and the warmth of his welcome to last apprehension. Why yes, everything's going along first rate. They thought they'd hung us up last week, but they haven't. There may be another week's delay but we ought to be opening a bottle of wine on it by the fourth. An office boy came in with a name on a slip of paper and Moffat looked at his watch and held out a hearty hand. Glad you came, of course I'll keep you posted. No, this way. Look in again. And he steered Ralph out by another door. July came and passed into its second week. Ralph's lawyer had obtained a postponement from the other side but Undine's representatives had given him to understand that the transaction must be closed before the first of August. Ralph telephoned once or twice to Moffat receiving genially worded sentences that everything was going their way but he felt a certain embarrassment in returning again to the office and let himself drift through the days in a state of hungry apprehension. Finally, one afternoon Henley Fairford, coming back from town which Ralph had left in the morning to join his boy over Sunday brought word that the apex consolidation scheme had failed to get its charter. It was useless to attempt to reach Moffat on Sunday and Ralph wore on as he could through the succeeding twenty-four hours. Claire Randeegan had come down to stay with her youngest boy and in the afternoon she and Ralph took the two children for a sail. A light breeze brightened the waters of the sound and they ran down the shore before it and then tacked out toward the sunset coming back at last under a breeze as the summer sky passed from blue to a translucent green and then into the accumulating grays of twilight. As they left the landing and walked up behind the children across the darkening lawn a sense of security descended again on Ralph. He could not believe that such a scene and such a mood could be the disguise of any impending evil and all his doubts and anxieties fell away from him. The next morning he and Claire traveled up to town together and at the station he put her in the motor which was to take her to Long Island and hastened down to Moffat's office. When he arrived he was told that Moffat was engaged and he had to wait for nearly half an hour in the outer office where to the steady click of the typewriter and the spasmodic buzzing of the telephone his thoughts again began their restless circlings. Finally the inner door opened and he found himself in the sanctuary. Moffat was seated behind his desk examining another little crystal vase somewhat like the one he had shown Ralph a few weeks earlier. As his visitor entered he held it up against the light revealing on its dewy sides an incised design as frail as the shadow of the grass blades on water. Ain't she a peach? He put the toy down and reached across the desk to shake hands. Well, well, he went on leaning back in his chair and pushing out his lower lip in a half comic pout. They've got us in the neck this time and no mistake. Seen this morning's radiator? I don't know how the thing leaked out, but the reformer if whenever they get swishing round something's bound to get spilt. He talked gaily, genially, in his roundest tones and with his easiest gestures. Never had he conveyed a completeer sense of unhurried power. But Ralph noticed for the first time the crow's feet about his eyes and the sharpness of the contrast between the white of his forehead and the redness of the fold in the neck above his collar. Do you mean to say it's not going through? Not this time anyhow. We're high and dry. Something seemed to snap in Ralph's head and he sat down in the nearest chair. Has the common stock dropped a lot? Well, you've got to lean over to see it. Muffett pressed his fingertips together and added thoughtfully. But it's there all right. We're bound to get our charter in the end. What do you call the end? Oh, before the day of judgment, sure. Next year, I guess. Next year? Ralph flushed. What earthly good will that do me? I don't say it's as pleasant as driving your best girl home by moonlight. But that's how it is. And the stuff's safe enough anyway. But you've told me all along I could count on a rise before August. You knew I had to have the money now. I knew you wanted to have the money now and so did I and several of my friends. I put you on to it because it was the only thing in sight likely to give you the return you wanted. You ought at least to have warned me of the risk. Risk? I don't call it much of a risk to lie back in your chair and wait another few months for fifty thousand to drop into your lap. I tell you the thing is as safe as a bank. How do I know it is? You've misled me about it from the first. Muffet's face grew dark red to the forehead. For the first time in their acquaintance, Ralph saw him on the verge of anger. Well, if you get stuck so do I. Muffet, a good deal deeper than you. That's about the best guarantee I can give. Unless you won't take my word for that either. To control himself Muffet spoke with extreme deliberation separating his syllables like a machine cutting something into even lengths. Ralph listened through a cloud of confusion but he saw the madness of offending Muffet and tried to take a more conciliatory tone. Of course I take your word for it but I can't. I simply can't afford to lose. You ain't going to lose. I don't believe you'll even have to put up any margin. It's there safe enough, I tell you. Yes, yes, I understand. I'm sure you wouldn't have advised me. Ralph's tongue seemed swollen and he had difficulty in bringing out the words. You see, I can't wait. It's not possible. And I want to know if there isn't a way. Muffet looked at him with a sort of resigned compassion as a doctor looks at a despairing mother who will not understand what he has tried to imply without uttering the words she dreads. Ralph understood the look but hurried on. You'll think I'm mad or an ass to talk like this but the fact is I must have the money. He waited and drew a hard breath. I must have it, that's all. Perhaps I'd better tell you— Muffet, who had risen as if assuming that the interview was over, sat down again and turned an attentive look on him. Go ahead, he said, more humanly than he had hitherto spoken. My boy! You spoke of him the other day. I'm awfully fond of him. Ralph broke off, deterred by the impossibility of confiding his feeling for Paul to this coarse-grained man with whom he hadn't a sentiment in common. Muffet was still looking at him. I should say you would be. He's a smart little chap as I ever saw and I guess he's the kind that gets better every day. Ralph had collected himself and went on with sudden resolution. Well, you see, when my wife and I separated I never dreamed she'd want the boy. The question never came up. If it had, of course, but she left him with me when she went away two years before and at the time of the divorce I was a fool. I didn't take the proper steps. You mean she's got soul custody? Ralph made a sign of assent and Muffet pondered. That's bad! Bad! And now I understand she's going to marry again and, of course, I can't give up my son. She wants you to, eh? Ralph again assented. Muffet swung his chair about and leaned back in it, stretching out his plump legs and contemplating the tips of his varnished boots. He hummed a low tune behind inscrutable lips. That's what you want the money for? He finally raised his head to ask. The word came out of the depths of Ralph's anguish. Yes. And why you want it in such a hurry? I see. Muffet reverted to the study of his boots. It's a lot of money. Yes, that's the difficulty and I—she— Ralph's tongue was again too thick for his mouth. I'm afraid she won't wait or take less. Muffet, abandoning the boots, was scrutinizing him through half-shut lids. No, he said slowly. I don't believe Undine Spragil take a single scent less. Ralph felt himself whiten. Was it insolence or ignorance that had prompted Muffet's speech? Nothing in his voice or face showed the sense of any shades of expression or a feeling. He seemed to apply to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy. But such considerations could not curb Ralph now. He said to himself Keep your temper, keep your temper. And his anger suddenly boiled over. Look here, Muffet, he said, getting to his feet. The fact that I've been divorced from Mrs. Marvell doesn't authorize anyone to take that tone with me in speaking of her. Muffet met the challenge with the calm stare under which there were dawning signs of surprise and interest. That's so. Well, if that's the case, I presume I ought to feel the same way. I've been divorced from her myself. For an instant the words conveyed no meaning to Ralph. Then they surged up in his brain and flung him forward but he felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arms dropped back to his side. A series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his mind. Then obscurity settled down on it. This man, this man, was the one-fairy point in his darkened consciousness. What on earth are you talking about? He brought out. Why, facts, said Muffet in a beautiful half-humorous voice. You didn't know? I understood from Mrs. Marvel your folks had a prejudice against divorce. So I suppose she kept quiet about that early episode. The truth is, he continued amicably, I wouldn't have alluded to it now if you hadn't taken rather a high tone with me about our little venture. But now it's out. I've come for a man to have a round now and then with a few facts. Shall I go on? Ralph had stood listening without a sign, but as Muffet ended he made a slight motion of acquiescence. He did not otherwise change his attitude except to grasp with one hand the back of the chair that Muffet pushed toward him. Rather stand Muffet himself dropped back into his seat and took the pose out of. Well, it was this way. Undean Sprague and I were made one at Opochie, Nebraska just nine years ago last month. My, she was a beauty then. Nothing much had happened to her before but being engaged for a year or two to a soft-called Millard Bench, the same she passed on to Indiana Roliver. And, well, I guess she liked the change. We didn't have what you'd call a society wedding. No best man or bridesmaids or voice that breathed over Eden. Fact is, Pa and Ma didn't know about it till it was over. But it was a marriage fast enough as they found out when they tried to undo it. Trouble was, they caught on too soon. We only had a fortnight. Then they hauled Undean back to Apex and, well, I hadn't the cash or the pool to fight him. There was a pretty big man out there then, and he had James J. Roliver behind him. I always know when I'm licked, and I was licked that time. So we unlooped the loop and they fixed it up for me to make a trip to Alaska. Let me see, that was the year before they moved over to New York. Next time I saw Undean I sat alongside of her at the theater the day your engagement was announced. He still kept his half-humorous minor key as though he were in the first stages of an after-dinner speech. But as he went on, his bodily presence, which he the two had seemed to raft the mere-average garment of vulgarity, began to loom, huge and portentious as some monster released from a magician's bottle. His redness, his glossiness, his baldness, and the carefully brushed ring of hair encircling it. The square line of his shoulders, the too-careful fit of his clothes, the prominent luster of his scarf-pin, the growth of short black hair on his manicured hands, even the tiny cracks and crow's feet beginning to show in the hard, closed surface of his complexion. All these solid witnesses to his reality and his proximity pressed on Ralph with the mounting-pang of physical nausea. This man, this man, he couldn't get beyond the thought, whichever way he turned his haggard thought. There was Moffat bodily blocking the perspective. Ralph's eyes roamed toward the crystal toy that stood on the desk beside Moffat's hand. Faw, that such a hand should have touched it. Suddenly he heard himself speaking. Before my marriage, did you know they hadn't told me? Why, I understood as much. Ralph pushed on. You knew it the day I met you in Mr. Sprague's office? Moffat considered a moment as if the incident had escaped him. Did we meet there? He seemed benevolently ready for enlightenment, but Ralph had been assailed by another memory. He recalled that Moffat had dined in his house, that he and the man who now faced him had sat at the same table, their wife between them. He was seized with another dumb gust of fury, but it died out and left him face to face with the uselessness, the irrelevance of all the old attitudes of appropriation and defiance. He seemed to be stumbling about in his inherited prejudices, like a modern man in medieval armor. Moffat still sat at his desk, unmoved and apparently uncomprehending. He doesn't even know what I'm feeling flashed through Ralph, and the whole archaic structure of his rights and sanctions tumbled down about him. Through the noise of the crash he heard Moffat's voice going on without perceptible change of tone. I'm not going to say any other matter now. You can't feel any meaner about it than I do, I can tell you that. But all we've got to do is to sit tight, Ralph turned from the voice and found himself outside on the landing, and then in the street below. End of chapter 35 Chapter 36 He stood at the corner of Wall Street, looking up and down at its hot summer perspective. He noticed the swirls of dust and the cracks of the pavement, the rubbish and the gutters, the ceaseless stream of perspiring faces that poured by under tilted hats. He found himself next slipping northward between the glazed walls of the subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him, and the nasal yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual wail. The blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells combined with the acuter perception of these offences was a complete indifference to them as though he were some vivisected animal deprived of the power of discrimination. Now he had turned into Waverly Place and was walking westward towards Washington Square. At the corner he pulled himself up saying half aloud, the office, I ought to be at the office. He drew out his watch and stared at it blankly. What the devil had he taken it out for? He had to go through a laborious process of readjustment to find out what it had to say. Twelve o'clock. Should he turn back to the office? It seemed easier to cross the square, go up the steps of the old house and slip his key into the door. The house was empty. His mother, a few days previously, had departed with Mr. Dagonet for their usual two months on the main coast, where Ralph was to join them with his boy. The blinds were all drawn down and the freshness and silence of the marble-paved hall laid soothing hands on him. He said to himself, I'll jump into a cab presently and go and lunch at the club. He laid down his hat and stick and climbed the carpetless stairs to his room. When he entered it he had the shock of feeling himself in a strange place. It did not seem like anything to him. Then, one by one, all the old stale usual things in it confronted him and he longed with a sick intensity to be in a place that was really strange. How on earth can I go on living here? he wondered. A careless servant had left the outer shutters open and the sun was beating on the window panes. Ralph pushed open the windows, shut the shutters and wandered toward his armchair. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. The temperature of the room reminded him of the heat under the iluxes of the Sienese villa, where he and Undine had sat through a long July afternoon. He saw her before him, leaning against the tree-trunk in her white dress, limpid and inscrutable. We were made one at Opaque, Nebraska. Had she been thinking of it that afternoon at Siena, he wondered? Did she ever think of it at all? It was she who had asked Moffat to dine. She had said, Father brought him home one day at Apex. I don't remember ever having seen him since. And the man she spoke of had had her in his arms. And perhaps it was really all she remembered. She had lied to him. Lied to him from the first. There hadn't been a moment when she hadn't lied to him deliberately, ingeniously and inventively. As he thought of it, there came to him for the first time in months that overwhelming sense of her physical nearness which had once so haunted and tortured him. Her freshness, her fragrance, the luminous haze of her youth filled the room with a mocking glory. And he dropped his head on his hands to shut it out. The vision was swept away by another wave of hurrying thoughts. He felt it was intensely important that he should keep the thread that they all represented things to be said or done or guarded against, and his mind with the unwondering versatility and tireless haste of the dreamer's brain seemed to be pursuing them all simultaneously. Then they became as unreal and meaningless as the red specks dancing behind the lids against which he had pressed his fists clenched and he had the feeling that if he opened his eyes they would vanish and the familiar daylight look in on him. A knock disturbed him. The old parlor maid who was always left in charge at the house had come up to ask if he wasn't well and if there was anything she could do for him. He told her no. He was perfectly well, or rather no, he wasn't. He supposed it must be the heat and he began to scold her for having forgotten to close the shutters. It wasn't her fault it appeared, but Eliza's. Her tone implied that he knew what one had to expect of Eliza down to the nice, cool, shady dining-room and let her make him an iced drink and a few sandwiches. I've always told Mrs. Marvell I couldn't turn my back for a second but what Eliza'd find a way to make trouble? The old woman continued, evidently glad of the chance to air perennial grievance. It's not only the things she forgets to do," she added significantly and it dawned on Ralph that she was making an appeal to him, expecting him to take sides with her to make conflict between herself and Eliza. He said to himself that perhaps she was right, that perhaps there was something he ought to do, that his mother was old and didn't always see things and for a while his mind revolved this problem with feverish intensity. Then you'll come down, sir. Yes. The door closed and he heard her heavy heels along the passage. But the money! Where's the money to come from? The question sprang out from some denser fold of the fog in his brain. The money! How unearthed was he to pay it back? How could he have wasted his time in thinking of anything else while that central difficulty existed? But I can't. I can't. It's gone and even if it weren't. He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. He had forgotten what he wanted the money for. He made a great effort to regain the hold of the idea. But all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly ceased in his brain and he sat with his eyes shut staring straight into darkness. The clock struck and he remembered that he had said he would go down to the dining-room. If I don't she'll come up. He raised his head and sat listening for the sound of the old woman's step. It seemed to him perfectly intolerable that anyone should cross the threshold of the room again. Can't they leave me alone? He groaned. At length through the silence of the empty house he fancied he heard a door opening and closing far below and he said to himself she's coming. He got to his feet and went to the door. He didn't feel anything now except the insane dread of hearing the woman's steps come nearer. He bolted the door and stood looking about the room. For a moment he was conscious of seeing it in every detail and the distinctness he had never known before. Then everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel of a drawer under one of the bookcases. He went up to the drawer, knelt down, and slipped his hand into it. As he raised himself he listened again and this time he distinctly heard the old servant's steps on the stairs. He passed his left hand over the side of his head and down the curve of the skull behind the ear. He said to himself my wife, this will make it all right for her. And a last flash of irony twitched through him. Then he felt again more deliberately for the spot he wanted and put the muzzle of his revolver against it. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of the Custom of the Country This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Elizabeth Klett The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Chapter 37 In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in parukes and orders a circle of ladies and gentlemen looking not unlike everyday versions of the official figures above their heads sat examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning. The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure islanded in the middle of the wide lustrous floor looked curiously lonely and remote. This effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as something intentional and almost naughty for after having launched him from the door and waited to judge of the impression he produced she came forward and, giving him a slight push, said impatiently Paul, why don't you go and kiss your new granny? The boy, without turning to her or moving, sent his blue glance gravely about the circle. Does she want me to? He asked in a tone of evident apprehension and on his mother's answering Of course you silly! he added earnestly How many more do you think there'll be? Undean blush to the ripples of her brilliant hair I never knew such a child they've turned him into a perfect little savage. Raymond de Shell advanced from behind his mother's chair He won't be a savage long with me, he said, stooping down so that his fatigued, finely drawn face was close to Paul's their eyes met and the boy smiled Come along, old chap Shell continued in English drawing the little boy after him Il est bien beau the Marquis de Shell observed her eyes turning from Paul's grave face to her daughter-in-law's vivid countenance Do be nice, darling. C'est bonjour, madame Undean urged An odd mingling of emotions stirred in her while she stood watching Paul make the round of the family group under her husband's guidance It was lovely to have the child back and to find him after their three years separation grown into so endearing a figure Her first glimpse of him when, in Mrs. Heaney's arms he had emerged that morning from the summer-train had shown what an acquisition he would be If she had had any lingering doubts on the point the impression produced on her husband would have dispelled them Shell had been instantly charmed and Paul, in a shy, confused way was already responding to his advances The count and countess Raymond had returned but a few weeks before from their protracted wedding journey and were staying, as they were apparently to do whenever they came to Paris with the old Marquis, Raymond's father who had amicably proposed that little Paul Marvell should also share the hospitality of the Hotel de Shell Andine, at first, was somewhat mismayed to find that she was expected to fit the boy and his nurse into a corner of her contracted entressal But the possibility of a mother's not finding room for her son however cramped her own quarters seemed not to have occurred to her new relations and the preparing of her dressing room and boudoir for Paul's occupancy was carried on by the household with a zeal which obliged her to disemble her lukewarmness Andine had supposed that on her marriage one of the great suites of the Hotel de Shell would be emptied of its tenants and put at her husband's disposal But she had since learned that even had such a plan occurred to her parents-in-law considerations of economy would have hindered it The old Marquis and his wife who were content when they came up from Burgundy in the spring with a modest set of rooms waiting out on the court of their ancestral residence expected their son and his wife to fit themselves into the still smaller apartment which had served as Raymond's bachelor lodging The rest of the fine old mouldering house the tall windowed premiere in the garden and the whole of the floor above had been let for years to old-fashioned tenants who would have been more surprised than their landlord had he suddenly proposed to dispossess them Andine at first had regarded these arrangements as merely provisional She was persuaded that, under her influence, Raymond would soon convert his parents to more modern ideas and meanwhile she was still in the flush of a complete her well-being than she had ever known and disposed for the moment to make light of any inconveniences connected with it The three months since her marriage had been more nearly like what she had dreamed of than any of her previous experiments and happiness At last she had what she wanted and for the first time the glow of triumph was warmed by a deeper feeling Her husband was really charming It was odd how he reminded her of Ralph and after her bitter two years of loneliness and humiliation it was delicious to find herself once more adored and protected The very fact that Raymond was more jealous of her than Ralph had ever been or at any rate less reluctant to show it gave her a keener sense of her covered power None of the men who had been in love with her before had been so frankly possessive or so eager for reciprocal assurances of constancy She knew that Ralph had suffered deeply from her intimacy with Van Degen but he had betrayed his feeling only by a more studied detachment and Van Degen from the first had been contemptuously indifferent to what she did or felt when she was out of his sight As to her earlier experiences she had frankly forgotten them Her sentimental memories went back no farther than the beginning of her New York career Raymond seemed to attach more importance to love in all its manifestations than was usual or convenient in a husband and she gradually began to be aware that her domination over him involved a corresponding loss of independence Since their return to Paris she had found that she was expected to give a circumstantial report of every hour she spent away from him She had nothing to hide and no designs against his peace of mind except those connected with her frequent occasions at the dressmakers but she had never before been called upon to account to anyone for the use of her time and after the first amused surprise that Raymond's always wanting to know where she had been and whom she had seen she began to be oppressed by so exacting a devotion Her parents from her tenderest youth had tacitly recognized her inalienable right to go round and Ralph though from motives which she devined to be different had shown the same respect for her freedom It was therefore disconcerting to find that Raymond expected her to choose her friends and even her acquaintances in conformity not only with his personal tastes but with a definite and complicated code of family prejudices and traditions and she was especially surprised to discover that he viewed with disapproval her intimacy with the princess Estra Dina My cousin's extremely amusing, of course but utterly mad and very mal entouré Most of the people she has about her ought to be in prison or bedlam especially that unspeakable Madame Adelshine who's a candidate for both My aunt's an angel but she's been weak enough to let Lily turn the hotel de Dodon into an annex of Montmartre Of course you'll have to show yourself there now and then in these days families like ours must hold together but go to the Réunion du Famille rather than to Lily's intimate parties go with me or with my mother Don't let yourself be seen there alone you're too young and too good-looking to be mixed up with that crew a woman's class or rather unclassed by being known as one of Lily's set agreeable as it was to undine that an appeal to her discretion should be based on the ground of her youth and good looks she was dismayed to find herself cut off from the very circle she had meant them to establish her in Before she had become Raymond's wife there had been a moment of sharp tension in her relations with the Princess Estradaena and the Old Duchess they had done their best to prevent her marrying their cousin and had gone so far as openly to accuse her of being the cause of a breach between themselves and his parents but Ralph Marvell's death had brought about a sudden change in her situation she was now no longer a divorced woman struggling to obtain ecclesiastical sanction for her remarriage but a widow whose conspicuous beauty and independent situation was the object of lawful aspirations the first person to seize on this distinction and to make the most of it was her old enemy, the Marquis de Tarzac the latter, who had been loudly charged by the House of Shell with furthering her beautiful compatriots designs had instantly seen a chance of vindicating herself by taking the widowed Mrs. Marvell under her wing and favouring the attentions of other suitors these were not lacking and the expected result had followed Marvell, more than ever infatuated as attainment became less certain had claimed a definite promise from Undine and his family, discouraged by his persistent bachelorhood and their failure to fix his attention on any of the amiable maidens obviously designed to continue the race had ended by withdrawing their opposition and discovering in Mrs. Marvell the moral and financial merits necessary to justify their change affront a good match! if she isn't like to know what the Shell call one Madame de Tarzac went about indefatigably proclaiming related to the best people in New York well, by marriage that is and her husband left much more money than was expected it goes to the boy, of course but as the boy is with his mother she naturally enjoys the income and her father's a rich man much richer than is generally known I mean what we call rich in America you understand Madame de Tarzac had lately discovered that the proper attitude for the American married abroad was that of a militant patriotism and she flaunted Undine Marvell in the face of the faux-bourg like a particularly showy specimen of her national banner the success of the experiment emboldened her to throw off the most sacred observances of her past she took up Madame Adelshine she entertained the James J. Rollivers she resuscitated Creole dishes she patronized Negro melodists abandoned her weekly teas for impromptu afternoon dances and the prim drawing-room in which dowagers had droned echoed with a cosmopolitan hubbub even when the period of tension was over and Undine had been officially received into the family of her betrothed Madame de Tarzac did not at once surrender she laughingly professed to have had enough of the proprieties and declared herself bored by the social rights she had hitherto so piously performed you'll always find a corner of home dearest when you get tired of their ceremonies and solemnities she said as she embraced the bride after the wedding breakfast and Undine hoped that the devoted Nettie would in fact provide a refuge from the extreme domesticity of her new state but since her return to Paris and her taking up her domicile in the Hotel de Chez she had found Madame de Tarzac less and less disposed to abet her in any assertion of independence my dear a woman must adopt a nationality whether she wants to or not it's the law and it's the custom besides if you wanted to amuse yourself with your nouveau luxe friends you wanted to have married Raymond but of course I say that only in joke as if any woman would have hesitated who had your chance take my advice keep out of Lily's set just at first later well perhaps Raymond won't be so particular but meanwhile you'd make a great mistake to go against his people and Madame de Tarzac with a Cher Madame swept forward from her tea-table to receive the first of the returning Dowagers it was about this time that Mrs. Heaney arrived with Paul and for a while Undine was pleasantly absorbed in her boy she kept Mrs. Heaney in Paris for a fortnight and between her more pressing occupations it amused her to listen to the masseuses New York gossip and her comments on the social organization of the old world it was Mrs. Heaney's first visit to Europe and she confessed to Undine that she had always wanted to see something of the aristocracy using the phrase as a naturalist might with no hint of personal pretensions Mrs. Heaney's democratic ease was combined with the strictest professional discretion and it would never have occurred to her to regard herself or to wish others to regard her as anything but a manipulator of muscles but in that character she felt herself entitled to admission to the highest circles they certainly do things with style over here but it's kind of one horse after New York ain't it is this what they call their season well you dined home two nights last week they ought to come over to New York and see and she poured into Undine's half envious ear a list of the entertainments which had illuminated the last weeks of the New York winter I suppose you'll begin to give parties as soon as ever you get into a house of your own you're not going to have one oh well then you'll give a lot of big weekends at your place down in the Shatter Country that's where the swells all go to in the summertime ain't it but I didn't know what your mom would say if she knew you were going to live on with his folks after you're done honeymooning why re-read in the papers you were going to live in some grand hotel or other oh they call their houses hotels do they that's funny I suppose it's because they let out part of them well you look handsomer than ever Undine take that back to your mother anyhow and he's dead in love I can see that reminds me of the way but she broke off suddenly as if something in Undine's look had silenced her even to herself Undine did not like to call up the image of Ralph Marvell and any mention of his name gave her a vague sense of distress his death had released her had given her what she wanted yet she could honestly say to herself that she had not wanted him to die at least not to die like that people said at the time that it was the hot weather his own family had said so he had never quite got over his attack of pneumonia and the sudden rise of temperature one of the fierce heat waves that devastate New York in summer had probably affected his brain the doctors said such cases were not uncommon she had worn black for a few weeks not quite mourning but something decently regretful the dressmakers were beginning to provide a special garb for such cases and even since her remarriage in the lapse of a year she continued to wish that she could have got what she wanted without having had to pay that particular price for it this feeling was intensified by an incident in itself far from unwelcome which had occurred about three months after Ralph's death her lawyers had written to say that the sum of a hundred thousand dollars had been paid over to Marvell's estate by the apex consolidation company Marvell left a will bequeathing everything he possessed to his son this unexpected windfall handsomely increased Paul's patrimony Undine had never relinquished her claim on her child she had merely by the advice of her lawyers waived the assertion of her right for a few months after Marvell's death with the express stipulation that her doing so was only a temporary concession to the feelings of her husband's family and she had held out against all attempts to induce her to surrender Paul permanently before her marriage she had somewhat conspicuously adopted her husband's creed and the Dagonats, picturing Paul as the prey of the Jesuits had made the mistake of repealing to the courts for his custody this had confirmed Undine's resistance and her determination to keep the child the case had been decided in her favour and she had thereupon demanded and obtained an allowance of five thousand dollars to be devoted to the bringing up and education of her son this sum added to what Mr. Sprague had agreed to give her an income which had appreciably bettered her position and justified Madame de Trezac's discreet illusions to her wealth nevertheless it was one of the facts about which she least liked to think when any chance illusion evoked Ralph's image the money was hers of course she had a right to it and she was an ardent believer in rights but she wished she could have got it in some other way she hated the thought of it as one more instance of the perverseness with which things she was entitled to always came to her as if they had been stolen the approach of summer and the culmination of the Paris season swept aside such thoughts the Countess Raymond de Chelle contrasting her situation with that of Mrs. Undine Marvell and the fullness and animation of her new life with the vacant dissatisfied days which had followed on her return from Dakota forgot the smallness of her apartment the inconvenient proximity of Paul and his nurse the interminable round of visits with her mother-in-law and the long dinners in the solemn hotels of all the family connection the world was radiant the lights were lit the music playing she was still young and better looking than ever with a Countess's carnet a famous chateau and a handsome and popular husband to adorn her and then suddenly the lights went out and the music stopped when one day Raymond putting his arm about her said in his tenderest tones and now my dear the world's had you long enough and it's my turn what do you say to going down to Sanda's air? End of Chapter 37 Chapter 38 of the Custom of the Country this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Elizabeth Clutt The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Chapter 38 in a window of the long gallery of the chateau de Sanda's air the new marquee's de Chelle stood looking down the popular avenue into the November rain it had been raining heavily and persistently for a longer time than she could remember day after day the hills beyond the park had been curtained by motionless clouds the gutters of the long steep roofs had gurgled with a perpetual overflow the opaque surface of the moat had been peppered by a continuous pelting of big drops the water lay in glassy stretches under the trees and along the sodden edges of the garden paths it rose in a white mist from the fields beyond it exuded in a chill moisture from the brick flooring of the passages and from the walls of the rooms on the lower floor everything in the great empty house smelt of dampness the stuffing of the chairs the threadbare folds of the faded curtains the splendid tapestries that were fading too on the walls of the room in which Undine stood and the wide bands of crepe which her husband had insisted on her keeping on her black dresses till the last hour of her mourning for the old marquee the summer had been more than usually in Clement and since her first coming to the country Undine had lived through many periods of rainy weather but none which had gone before had so completely epitomized so summed up in one vast monotonous blur the image of her long months at Sainte-des-Aire when the year before she had reluctantly suffered herself to be torn from the joys of Paris she had been sustained by the belief that her exile would not be of long duration once Paris was out of sight she had even found a certain lazy charm in the long warm days at Sainte-des-Aire her parents in law had remained in town and she enjoyed being alone with her husband exploring and appraising the treasures of the great half-abandoned house and watching her boy scamper over the June meadows or trot about the gardens on the pony his stepfather had given him Paul, after Mrs. Heaney's departure, had grown fretful and restive and Undine had found it more and more difficult to fit his small exacting personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life he irritated her by pining for his aunt Laura his Morvelle Granny and old Mr. Dagonet's funny stories about gods and fairies and his wistful allusions to his games with Claire's children sounded like a lesson he might have been drilled in to make her feel how little he belonged to her but once released from Paris and blessed with rabbits, a pony, and the freedom of the fields he became again all that a charming child should be and for a time it amused her to share in his romps and rambles Raymond seemed enchanted at the picture they made and the quiet weeks of fresh air and outdoor activity gave her back a bloom that reflected itself in her tranquilized mood she was the more resigned to this interlude because she was so sure of its not lasting before they left Paris a doctor had been found to say that Paul who was certainly looking pale and pulled down was in urgent need of sea air and Undine had nearly convinced her husband of the expediency of hiring a chalet at Deauville for July and August when this plan, and with it every other prospect of escape was dashed by the sudden death of the old Marquis Undine at first had supposed that the resulting change could not be other than favourable she had been on two formal terms with her father-in-law a remote and ceremonious old gentleman to whom her own personality was evidently an insoluble enigma to feel more than the nearest conventional pang at his death and it was certainly more fun to be Marchioness than a Countess and to know that one's husband was the head of the house besides now they would have the chateau to themselves or at least the old Marquis, when she came would be there as a guest and not a ruler and visions of smart house parties and big shoots lit up the first weeks of Undine's enforced seclusion then by degrees the inexorable conditions of French mourning closed in on her immediately after the long-drawn funeral observances the bereaved family, mother, daughters, sons and sons-in-law came down to seclude themselves at Santa's air and Undine through the slow, hot, crepe-smelling months lived encircled by shrouded images of woe in which the only live points with the eyes constantly fixed on her least movements the hope of escaping to the seaside with Paul vanished in the pained stare with which her mother-in-law received the suggestion Undine learned the next day that it had cost the old Marquis a sleepless night and might have had more distressing results had had not been explained as a harmless instance of transatlantic oddness Raymond entreated his wife to atone for her involuntary légèreté by submitting with a good grace to the usages of her adopted country and he seemed to regard the remaining months of the summer as hardly long enough for this act of expiation as Undine looked back on them they appeared to have been composed of an interminable succession of identical days in which attendance at early mass in the coronet gallery she had once so glowingly depicted to Van Degen was followed by a great deal of conversational sitting about a great deal of excellent eating an occasional drive to the nearest town behind a pair of heavy draft horses and long evenings in a lamp-heated drawing-room with all the windows shut and the stout curée making an asthmatic fourth at the Marquis's card-table still even these conditions were not permanent and the discipline of the last years had trained Undine to wait and dissemble the summer over it was decided after a protracted family conclave that the state of the old Marquis's health made it advisable for her to spend the winter with the married daughter who lived near Pau the other members of the family returned to their respective estates and Undine once more found herself alone with her husband but she knew by this time that there was to be no thought of Paris that winter or even the next spring worse still she was presently to discover that Raymond's accession of rank brought with it no financial advantages having but the vaguest notion of French testamentary law she was dismayed to learn that the compulsory division of property made it impossible for a father to benefit his eldest son at the expense of the others Raymond was therefore little richer than before and with the debts of honour of a troublesome younger brother to settle and send Azère to keep up his available income was actually reduced he held out indeed the hope of eventual improvement since the old Marquis had managed his estates with a lofty contempt for modern methods and the application of new principles of agriculture and forestry were certain to yield profitable results but for a year or two at any rate this very change of treatment would necessitate the owner's continual supervision and would not, in the meanwhile, produce any increase of income To fair valoir the family acres had always, it appeared, been Raymond's deep-seated purpose and all his frivolities dropped from him with the prospect of putting his hand to the plough he was not indeed inhuman enough to condemn his wife to perpetual exile he meant he assured her that she should have her annual spring visit to Paris but he stared and dismayed her suggestion that they should take possession of the coveted premier of the Hôtel de Chelle he was gallant enough to express the wish that were in his power to house her on such a scale but he could not conceal his surprise that she had ever seriously expected it she was beginning to see that he felt her constitutional inability to understand anything about money as the deepest difference between them it was a proficiency no one had ever expected her to acquire and the lack of which she had even been encouraged to regard as a grace and to use as a pretext during the interval between her divorce and her remarriage she had learned what things cost but not how to do without them and money still seemed to her like some mysterious and uncertain stream which occasionally vanished underground but was sure to bubble up again at one's feet now, however, she found herself in a world where it represented not the means of individual gratification but the substance binding together whole groups of interests and where the uses to which it might be put in twenty years were considered before the reasons for spending it on the spot at first she was sure she could laugh Raymond out of his prudence or coax him round to her point of view she did not understand how a man so romantically in love could be so unpersuadable on certain points hitherto she had had to contend with personal moods now she was arguing against a policy and she was gradually to learn that it was as natural to Raymond Duchel to adore her and resist her as it had been to Ralph Marvell to adore her and let her have her way at first indeed he appealed to her good sense using arguments evidently drawn from accumulations of hereditary experience but his economic plea was as unintelligible to her as the silly problems about pen knives and apples in the mental arithmetic of her infancy and when he struck a tenderer note and spoke of the duty of providing for the son he hoped for she put her arms about him to whisper but then I oughtn't to be worried after that she noticed though he was as charming as ever he behaved as if the case were closed he had apparently decided that his arguments were unintelligible to her and under all his ardour she felt the difference made by the discovery it did not make him less kind but it evidently made her less important and she had the half-frightened sense that the day she ceased to please him she would cease to exist for him that day was a long way off of course but the chill of it had brushed her face and she was no longer heedless of such signs she resolved to cultivate all the arts of patience and compliance this habit might have helped them to take root if they had not been nipped by a new cataclysm it was barely a week ago that her husband had been called to Paris to straighten out a fresh tangle in the affairs of the troublesome brother whose difficulties were apparently a part of the family tradition Raymond's letters had been hurried his telegrams brief and contradictory and now as Undeen stood watching for the broam that was to bring him from the station she had the sense that with his arrival all her vague fears would be confirmed there would be more money to pay out of course since the funds that could not be found for her just needs were apparently always forthcoming to settle Uber's scandalous prodigalities and that meant a longer perspective of solitude at Sainte-des-Aire and a fresh pretext for postponing the hospitalities that were to follow on their period of mourning the broam, a vehicle as massive and lumbering as the pair that drew it, presently rolled into the court and Raymond's sable figure, she had never before seen a man travel in such black clothes, sprang up the steps to the door whenever Undeen saw him after an absence she had a curious sense of his coming back from unknown distances and not belonging to her or to any state of things she understood then habit re-asserted itself and she began to think of him again with a quareless familiarity but she had learned to hide her feelings and as he came in she put up her face for a kiss yes everything settled his embrace expressed the satisfaction of the man returning from an accomplished task to the joys of his fireside settled her face kindled without your having to pay he looked at her with a shrug of course I've had to pay did you suppose Ubert's creditors would be put off with Vanilla E. Clairs oh if that's what you mean if Ubert has only to wire you at any time to be sure of his affairs being settled she saw his lips narrow and a line come out between his eyes wouldn't it be a happy thought to tell them to bring tea he suggested in the library then it's so cold here and the tapestry smells so of rain he paused a moment to scrutinize the long walls on which the fabulous blues and pinks of the great Boucher series looked as livid as withered roses I suppose they ought to be taken down and aired he said she thought in this air much good it would do them but she had already repented her outbreak about Ubert and she followed her husband into the library with the resolve not to let him see her annoyance compared with the Long Grey Gallery the library with its brown walls of books looked warm and home-like and Raymond seemed to feel the influence of the softer atmosphere he turned to his wife and put his arm about her I know it's been a trial to you dearest but this is the last time I shall have to pull the poor boy out in spite of herself she laughed incredulously Ubert's last times were a household word but when tea had been brought and they were alone over the fire Raymond unfolded the amazing sequel Ubert had found an heiress Ubert was to be married and henceforth the business of paying his debts which might be counted on to recur as inevitably as the changes of the seasons would devolve on his American bride the charming Miss Louty Arlington whom Raymond had remained over in Paris to meet an American he's marrying an American Undeen wavered between wrath and satisfaction she felt a flash of resentment at any other intruders venturing upon her territory Louty Arlington who is she what a name but it was quickly superseded by the relief of knowing that henceforth as Raymond said Ubert's debts would be someone else's business then a third consideration prevailed but if he's engaged to a rich girl why on earth do we have to pull him out her husband explained that no other course was possible though General Arlington was immensely wealthy her father's a general a general manager whatever that may be he had exactly recalled a clean slate from his future son-in-law and Ubert's creditors the boy was such a donkey had in their possession certain papers that made it possible for them to press for immediate payment New York compatriots views on such matters are so rigid and it's all to their credit that the marriage would have fallen through at once at the least hint of Ubert's mess had gotten out and then we should have had him on our hands for life yes from that point of view it was doubtless and best to pay up but Undeen obscurely wished that their doing so had not incidentally helped an unknown compatriot to what the American papers were no doubt already announcing as another brilliant foreign alliance where on earth did your brother pick up anybody respectable do you know where her people come from I suppose she's perfectly awful she broke out with a sudden escape of irritation I believe Ubert made her acquaintance at a skating rink they come from some new state the general apologized for its not yet being on the map but seemed surprised I hadn't heard of it he said it was already known as one of the divorce states and the principal city had in consequence a very agreeable society La Petite Raymond Patourmal I dare say not we're all good looking but she must be horribly common Raymond seems sincerely unable to formulate a judgment my dear you have your own customs oh I know we're all alike to you it was one of her grievances that he never attempted to discriminate between Americans you see no difference between me and a girl one gets engaged to at a skating rink he evaded the challenge by rejoining Miss Arlington's burning to know you she says she's heard a great deal about you and Ubert wants to bring her down next week I think we'd better do what we can of course but Andine was still absorbed in the economic aspect of the case if there's riches you say I suppose Ubert means to pay you back by and by naturally it's all arranged he's given me a paper he drew her hands into his you see we've every reason to be kind to Miss Arlington oh I'll be as kind as you like she was frightened at the prospect of repayment yes they would ask the girl down she leaned a little nearer to her husband but then after a while we shall be a good deal better off especially as you say with no more of Ubert's debts to worry us and leaning back far enough to give her upward smile she renewed her plea for the premier in the Hotel de Shell because really you know as the head of the house you ought to my dear is the head of the house of so many obligations and one of them is not to miss a good stroke of business when it comes my way her hands slipped from his shoulders and she drew back what do you mean by a good stroke of business why an incredible piece of luck it's what's kept me so long in Paris Miss Arlington's father was looking for an apartment for the young couple and I've let him the premier for twelve years on the understanding that he puts electric light and heating into the whole hotel it's a wonderful chance for of course we all benefit by it as much as Ubert a wonderful chance benefit by it as much as Ubert he seemed to be speaking a strange language in which familiar sounding syllables meant something totally unknown did he really think she was going to coop herself up again in their cramped quarters while Ubert and his skating rink bride luxuriated overhead in the coveted premier all the resentments that had been accumulating in her during the long baffled months since her marriage broke into speech it's extraordinary of you to do such a thing without consulting me without consulting you but my dear child you've always professed the most complete indifference to business matters you frequently beg me not to bore you with them you may be sure I've acted on the best advice and my mother whose head is as good as a man's thinks I've made a remarkably good arrangement I dare say but I'm not always thinking about money as you are as she spoke she had an ominous sense of impending peril but she was too angry to avoid even the risks she saw to her surprise Raymond put his arm about her with a smile there are many reasons why I have to think about money one is that you don't and another is that I must look out for the future of our son Andine flushed to the forehead she had grown accustomed to such illusions and the thought of having a child no longer filled her with the resentful tear she had felt before Paul's birth she had been insensibly influenced by a different point of view perhaps also by the difference in her own feeling and the vision of herself as the mother of the future Marquis de Chelle was softened to happiness by the thought of giving Raymond a son but all these lightly rooted sentiments went down in the rush of her resentment she freed herself with a petulant movement oh my dear you'd better leave it to your brother to perpetuate the race there'll be more room for nurseries in their apartment she waited a moment quivering with the expectation of her husband's answer then as none came except the silent darkening of his face she walked the door and turned round to fling back of course you can do what you like with your own house any arrangements that suit your family without consulting me but you needn't think I'm ever going back to live in that stuffy little hole with Ubert and his wife splurging round on top of our heads ah, said Raymond de Chelle, in a low voice End of Chapter 38 Chapter 39 of the Custom of the Country This is a Librivox recording All Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Recording by Elizabeth Klett The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Chapter 39 Undine did not fulfil her threat The month of May saw her back in the rooms she had declared she would never set foot in and after her long sojourn among the echoing vistas of Saint-Azare the ambiguity of her Paris quarters seemed like coziness In the interval many things had happened Ubert, permitted by his anxious relatives to anticipate the term of the family mourning had been showly and expensively united to his heiress the Hotel de Chelle had been piped, heated and illuminated in accordance with the bride's requirements and the young couple, not content with these utilitarian changes closed doors, opened windows, torn down partitions and given over the great trophied and pillister dining-room to a decorative painter with a new theory of the human anatomy Undine had silently assisted at this spectacle and at the side of the old Marquise's abject acquiescence she had seen the Duchesse de Dordogne and the Princess Estridina go past her door to visit Ubert's premier and marvel at the American bathtubs and the Anamite Brickabrack and she had been present, with her husband, at the banquet at which Ubert had revealed to the astonished Feubourg the prehistoric episodes depicted on his dining-room walls she had accepted all these necessities with the stoicism which the last months had developed in her for more and more, as the days passed she felt herself in the grasp of circumstances stronger than any effort she could oppose to them the very absence of external pressure, of any tactless assertion of authority on her husband's part intensified the sense of her helplessness he simply left it to her to infer that, important as she might be to him in certain ways there were others in which she did not weigh a feather their outward relations had not changed since her outburst on the subject of Ubert's marriage that incident had left her half-ashamed, half-frightened at her behaviour and she had tried to atone for it by the indirect arts that were her nearest approach to acknowledging herself in the wrong Raymond met her advances with a good grace and they lived through the rest of the winter on terms of apparent understanding when the spring approached it was he who suggested that since his mother had consented to Ubert's marrying before the year of mourning was over there was really no reason why they should not go up to Paris as usual and she was surprised at the readiness with which he prepared to accompany her a year earlier she would have regarded this as another proof of her power but she now drew her inferences less quickly Raymond was as lovely to her as ever but more than once during their months in the country she had had a startled sense of not giving him all he expected of her she had admired him before their marriage as a model of social distinction during the honeymoon he had been the most ardent of lovers and with their settling down at Saint-Desire she had prepared to resign herself to the society of a country gentleman absorbed in sport and agriculture but Raymond to her surprise had again developed a disturbing resemblance to his predecessor during the long winter afternoons after he had gone over his accounts with the bailiff or written out his business letters he took to dabbling with a paint-box or picking out new scores at the piano after dinner when they went to the library he seemed to expect to read aloud to her from the reviews and papers he was always receiving and when he had discovered her inability to fix her attention he fell into the way of absorbing himself in one of the old brown books with which the room was lined at first he tried, as Ralph had done, to tell her about what he was reading or what was happening in the world but her sense of inadequacy made her slip away to other subjects and little by little their talk died down to monosyllables was it possible that, in spite of his books, the evenings seemed as long to Raymond as to her and that he had suggested going back to Paris because he was bored at Saint-Desire bored as she was herself she resented his not finding her company all sufficient and was mortified by the discovery that there were regions of his life she could not enter but once back in Paris she had less time for introspection and Raymond less for books they resumed their dispersed and busy life and in spite of Hubert's ostentatious vicinity of the perpetual lack of money and of Paul's innocent encroachments on her freedom Undeen once more in her element ceased to brood upon her grievances she enjoyed going about with her husband whose presence at her side was distinctly ornamental he seemed to have grown subtly younger and more animated and when she saw other women looking at him she remembered how distinguished he was it amused her to have him in her train and driving about with him to dinners and dances waiting for him on flower-decked landings or pushing at his side through blazing theatre lobbies answer to her inmost ideal of domestic intimacy he seemed disposed to allow her more liberty than before and it was only now and then that he let drop a brief reminder of the conditions on which it was accorded she was to keep certain people at a distance she was not to cheapen herself by being seen at vulgar restaurants and tea-rooms she was to join with him in fulfilling certain family obligations going to a good many dull dinners among the number but in other respects she was free to fill her days as she pleased not that it leaves me much time, she admitted to Madame de Trezac what withgoing to see his mother every day and never missing one of his sister's jures and showing myself at the Hotel de D'Odon whenever the Duchess gives a pay-up party to the stuffy people Lily Estridina won't be bothered with there are days when I never lay eyes on Paul and barely have time to be waved and manicured but apart from that Raymond's really much nicer and less fussy than he was Andine, as she grew older, had developed her mother's craving for a confidant and Madame de Trezac had succeeded in that capacity to Mabel Lipscomb and Bertha Shalem less fussy? Madame de Trezac's long nose lengthened thoughtfully hmm are you sure that's a good sign? Andine stared and laughed oh my dear you're so quaint why nobody's jealous any more no that's the worst of it Madame de Trezac pondered it's a thousand pitties you haven't got a son yes I wish we had Andine stood up impatient to end the conversation since she had learned that her continued childlessness was regarded by everyone about her as not only unfortunate but somehow vaguely derogatory to her she had generally begun to regret it and any allusion to the subject disturbed her especially Madame de Trezac continued as Uber's wife oh if that's all they want it's a pity Raymond didn't marry Uber's wife Andine flung back and on the stairs she murmured to herself netty has been talking to my mother-in-law but this explanation did not quiet her and that evening as she and Raymond drove back together from a party she felt a sudden impulse to speak sitting close to him in the darkness of the carriage it ought to have been easy for her to find the needed word but the barrier of his indifference hung between them and street after street slipped by and the spangled blackness of the river unrolled itself beneath their wheels before she leaned over to touch his hand what is it my dear she had not yet found the word and already his tone told her she was too late a year ago if she had slipped her hand in his she would not have had that answer your mother blames me for our not having a child everybody thinks it's my fault he paused before answering and she sat watching his shadowy profile against the passing lamps my mother's ideas are old-fashioned and I don't know that it's anybody's business but yours and mine yes but here we are the brome was turning under the archway of the hotel and the light of uber's tall windows fell across the dusky court Raymond helped her out and they mounted to their door by the stairs which uber had recarpeted in velvet with a marble nymph lurking in the azaleas on the landing in the ante-chamber Raymond paused to take her cloak from her shoulders and his eyes rested on her with a faint smile of approval you never looked better your dress is extremely becoming good night my dear he said kissing her hand as he turned away Andine kept this incident to herself her wounded pride made her shrink from confessing it even to Madame de Thresac she was sure Raymond would come back Ralph always had to the last during their remaining weeks in Paris she reassured herself with the thought that once they were back at Saint-Azaire she would easily regain her lost hold and when Raymond suggested they're leaving Paris she acquiesced without a protest but at Saint-Azaire she seemed no nearer to him than in Paris he continued to treat her with unvarying amiability but he seemed wholly absorbed in the management of the estate in his books his sketching and his music he had begun to interest himself in politics and had been urged to stand for his department this necessitated frequent displacements trips to Bonne or Dijon and occasional absences in Paris Andine when he was away was not left alone for the Dowager Marquise had established herself at Saint-Azaire for the summer and relays of brothers and sisters-in-law aunts cousins and ecclesiastical friends and connections succeeded each other under its capacious roof only Uber and his wife were absent they had taken a villa at Dauville and in the morning papers Andine followed the chronicle of Uber's polo scores and of the Countess Uber's racing toilets the days crawled on with a benumbing sameness the old Marquise and the other ladies of the party sat on the terrace with their needlework the curée or one of the visiting uncles read aloud the journal de débat and prognosticated dark things of the Republic Paul scoured the park and despoiled the kitchen garden with the other children of the family the inhabitants of the adjacent château drove over to call and occasionally the ponderous pair were harnessed to a landow as lumbering as the brome and the ladies of Saint-Azaire measured the dusty kilometres between themselves and their neighbours it was the first time that Andine had seriously paused to consider the conditions of her new life and as the days passed she began to understand that so they would continue to succeed each other till the end everyone about her took it for granted that as long as she lived she would spend ten months of every year at Saint-Azaire and the remaining two in Paris of course if health required it she might go to Lézot with her husband but the Old Marquis was very doubtful as to the benefit of a course of waters and her uncle the Duke and her cousin the canal shared her view in the case of young married women especially the unwholesome excitement of the modern watering place was more than likely to do away with the possible benefit of the treatment as to travel had not Raymond his wife been to Egypt in Asia Minor on their wedding journey such reckless enterprise was unheard of in the annals of the house had they not spent days and days in the saddle and slept in tents among the Arabs who could tell indeed whether these imprudences were not the cause of the disappointment which it had pleased heaven to inflict on the young couple no one in the family had ever taken so long a wedding journey one bride had gone to England even that was considered extreme and another the artistic daughter had spent a week in Venice which certainly showed that they were not behind the times and had no old fashioned prejudices since wedding journeys with a fashion they had taken them but who had ever heard of travelling afterward what could be the possible object of leaving one's family one's habits one's friends it was natural that the Americans who had no homes who were born and died in hotels should have contracted nomadic habits but the new Marquis de Chelle was no longer an American and she had Saint-Desire in the Hotel de Chelle to live in as generations of ladies of her name had done before her thus Undine beheld her future laid out for her not direct blame in blunt words but obliquely and affably in the illusions the assumptions the insinuations of the amiable women among whom her days were spent their interminable conversations were carried on to the click of knitting needles and the rise and fall of industrious fingers above embroidery frames and as Undine sat staring at the lustrous nails of her idle hands she felt that her inability to occupy them was regarded as one of the chief causes of her restlessness the innumerable rooms of Saint-Desire were furnished with the embroidered hangings and tapestry chairs produced by generations of diligent chateleons and the untiring needles of the old Marquis her daughters and dependents were still steadily increasing the provision it struck Undine as curious that they should be willing to go on making chair coverings and bed curtains for a house that didn't really belong to them and that she had a right to pull about and rearrange as she chose then that was only a part of their whole incomprehensible way of regarding themselves in spite of their acute personal and parochial absorptions as minor members of a powerful and indivisible whole the huge voracious fetish they called the family notwithstanding their very definite theories as to what Americans were and were not they were evidently bewildered at finding no corresponding sense of solidarity in Undine Little Paul's rootlessness, his lack of all local and linear ties, made them, for all the charm he exercised, regard him with something of the shyness of pious Christians toward an elfin child but though mother and child gave them a sense of insuperable strangeness it plainly never occurred to them that both would not be gradually subdued to the customs of Saint-Desire dynasties had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals alas! to plurably declined but as far back as memory went the ladies of the line of shell had always sat at their needlework on the terrace of Saint-Desire while the men of the house lamented the corruption of the government and the curee ascribed the unhappy state of the country to the decline of religious feeling and the rise in the cost of living it was inevitable that, in the course of time, the New Marquis should come to understand the fundamental necessity of these things being as they were and meanwhile the forbearance of her husband's family exercised itself with the smiling discretion of their race through the long succession of uneventful days once, in September, this routine was broken in upon by the unannounced dissent of a flock of motors bearing the Princess Estrodina and a chosen band from one watering-place to another Raymond was away at the time but family loyalty constrained the Old Marquis to welcome her kinswoman and the latter's friends and Andine once more found herself immersed in the world from which her marriage had removed her first seemed totally to have forgotten their former intimacy and Andine was made to feel that in a life so variously agitated the episode could hardly have left a trace but the night before her departure the incalculable Lily, with one of her sudden changes of humor, drew her former friend into her bedroom and plunged into an exchange of confidences she naturally unfolded her own history first and it was so packed with incident that the courtyard clock had struck two before she turned her attention to Andine my dear you're handsomer than ever only perhaps a shade too stout domestic bliss I suppose take care you need an emotion a drama you Americans are really extraordinary you appear to live on change and excitement and then suddenly a man comes along and claps a ring on your finger and you never look through it to see what's going on outside aren't you ever the least bit bored why do I never see anything of you anymore I suppose it's the fault of my venerable aunt she's never forgiven me for having a better time than her daughters how can I help but if I don't look like the cure's umbrella I dare say she owes you the same grudge but why do you let her coop you up here it's a thousand pitties you haven't had a child they'd all treat you differently if you had it was the same perpetually reiterated condolence and Undine flushed with anger as she listened why indeed had she let herself be cooped up she could not have answered the princess's question she merely felt the impossibility of breaking through the mysterious web of traditions conventions prohibitions that enclosed her in their impenetrable network but her vanity suggested the obvious pretext and she murmured with a laugh I didn't know Raymond was going to be so jealous the princess stared is it Raymond who keeps you shut up here and what about his trips to Dijon and what do you suppose he does with himself when he runs up to Paris politics she shrugged ironically politics don't occupy a man after midnight Raymond jealous of you ha merci my dear it's what I always say when people talk to me about fast Americans you're the only innocent women left in the world end of chapter thirty nine