Mr. Spragg mused. “Wasn’t he ever TAUGHT to work?”
“No; I really couldn’t have afforded that.”
“I see. Then they’ve got to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a month.”
Mr. Dagonet remained pleasantly unmoved. “Does it cost anything like that to buy your daughter’s dresses?”
A subterranean chuckle agitated the lower folds of Mr. Spragg’s waistcoat.
“I might put him in the way of something—I guess he’s smart enough.”
Mr. Dagonet made a gesture of friendly warning. “It will pay us both in the end to keep him out of business,” he said, rising as if to show that his mission was accomplished.
The results of this friendly conference had been more serious than Mr. Spragg could have foreseen—and the victory remained with his antagonist. It had not entered into Mr. Spragg’s calculations that he would have to give his daughter any fixed income on her marriage. He meant that she should have the “handsomest” wedding the New York press had ever celebrated, and her mother’s fancy was already afloat on a sea of luxuries—a motor, a Fifth Avenue house, and a tiara that should out-blaze Mrs. Van Degen’s; but these were movable benefits, to be conferred whenever Mr. Spragg happened to be “on the right side” of the market. It was a different matter to be called on, at such short notice, to bridge the gap between young Marvell’s allowance and Undine’s requirements; and her father’s immediate conclusion was that the engagement had better be broken off. Such scissions were almost painless in Apex, and he had fancied it would be easy, by an appeal to the girl’s pride, to make her see that she owed it to herself to do better.
“You’d better wait awhile and look round again,” was the way he had put it to her at the opening of the talk of which, even now, he could not recall the close without a tremor.
Undine, when she took his meaning, had been terrible. Everything had gone down before her, as towns and villages went down before one of the tornadoes of her native state. Wait awhile? Look round? Did he suppose she was marrying for MONEY? Didn’t he see it was all a question, now and here, of the kind of people she wanted to “go with”? Did he want to throw her straight back into the Lipscomb set, to have her marry a dentist and live in a West Side flat? Why hadn’t they stayed in Apex, if that was all he thought she was fit for? She might as well have married Millard Binch, instead of handing him over to Indiana Frusk! Couldn’t her father understand that nice girls, in New York, didn’t regard getting married like going on a buggy-ride? It was enough to ruin a girl’s chances if she broke her engagement to a man in Ralph Marvell’s set. All kinds of spiteful things would be said about her, and she would never be able to go with the right people again. They had better go back to Apex right off—it was they and not SHE who had wanted to leave Apex, anyhow—she could call her mother to witness it. She had always, when it came to that, done what her father and mother wanted, but she’d given up trying to make out what they were after, unless it was to make her miserable; and if that was it, hadn’t they had enough of it by this time? She had, anyhow. But after this she meant to lead her own life; and they needn’t ask her where she was going, or what she meant to do, because this time she’d die before she told them—and they’d made life so hateful to her that she only wished she was dead already.
Mr. Spragg heard her out in silence, pulling at his beard with one sallow wrinkled hand, while the other dragged down the armhole of his waistcoat. Suddenly he looked up and said: “Ain’t you in love with the fellow, Undie?”
The girl glared back at him, her splendid brows beetling like an Amazon’s. “Do you think I’d care a cent for all the rest of it if I wasn’t?”
“Well, if you are, you and he won’t mind beginning in a small way.”
Her look poured contempt on his ignorance. “Do you s’pose I’d drag him down?” With a magnificent gesture she tore Marvell’s ring from her finger. “I’ll send this back this minute. I’ll tell him I thought he was a rich man, and now I see I’m mistaken—” She burst into shattering sobs, rocking her beautiful body back and forward in all the abandonment of young grief; and her father stood over her, stroking her shoulder and saying helplessly: “I’ll see what I can do, Undine—”
All his life, and at ever-diminishing intervals, Mr. Spragg had been called on by his womenkind to “see what he could do”; and the seeing had almost always resulted as they wished. Undine did not have to send back her ring, and in her state of trance-like happiness she hardly asked by what means her path had been smoothed, but merely accepted her mother’s assurance that “father had fixed everything all right.”
Mr. Spragg accepted the situation also. A son-in-law who expected to be pensioned like a Grand Army veteran was a phenomenon new to his experience; but if that was what Undine wanted she should have it. Only two days later, however, he was met by a new demand—the young people had decided to be married “right off,” instead of waiting till June. This change of plan was made known to Mr. Spragg at a moment when he was peculiarly unprepared for the financial readjustment it necessitated. He had always declared himself able to cope with any crisis if Undine and her mother would “go steady”; but he now warned them of his inability to keep up with the new pace they had set. Undine, not deigning to return to the charge, had commissioned her mother to speak for her; and Mr. Spragg was surprised to meet in his wife a firmness as inflexible as his daughter’s.
“I can’t do it, Loot—can’t put my hand on the cash,” he had protested; but Mrs. Spragg fought him inch by inch, her back to the wall—flinging out at last, as he pressed her closer: “Well, if you want to know, she’s seen Elmer.”
The bolt reached its mark, and her husband turned an agitated face on her.
“Elmer? What on earth—he didn’t come HERE?”
“No; but he sat next to her the other night at the theatre, and she’s wild with us for not having warned her.”
Mr. Spragg’s scowl drew his projecting brows together. “Warned her of what? What’s Elmer to her? Why’s she afraid of Elmer Moffatt?”
“She’s afraid of his talking.”
“Talking? What on earth can he say that’ll hurt HER?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Spragg wailed. “She’s so nervous I can hardly get a word out of her.”
Mr. Spragg’s whitening face showed the touch of a new fear. “Is she afraid he’ll get round her again—make up to her? Is that what she means by ‘talking’?” “I don’t know, I don’t know. I only know she is afraid—she’s afraid as death of him.”
For a long interval they sat silently looking at each other while their heavy eyes exchanged conjectures: then Mr. Spragg rose from his chair, saying, as he took up his hat: “Don’t you fret, Leota; I’ll see what I can do.”
He had been “seeing” now for an arduous fortnight; and the strain on his vision had resulted in a state of tension such as he had not undergone since the epic days of the Pure Water Move at Apex. It was not his habit to impart his fears to Mrs. Spragg and Undine, and they continued the bridal preparations, secure in their invariable experience that, once “father” had been convinced of the impossibility of evading their demands, he might be trusted to satisfy them by means with which his womenkind need not concern themselves. Mr. Spragg, as he approached his office on the morning in question, felt reasonably sure of fulfilling these expectations; but he reflected that a few more such victories would mean disaster.
He entered the vast marble vestibule of the Ararat Trust Building and walked toward the express elevator that was to carry him up to his office. At the door of the elevator a man turned to him, and he recognized Elmer Moffatt, who put out his hand with an easy gesture.