The winter twilight was deliriously cold, and as they swept through Central Park, and gathered impetus for their northward flight along the darkening Boulevard, Undine felt the rush of physical joy that drowns scruples and silences memory. Her scruples, indeed, were not serious; but Ralph disliked her being too much with Van Degen, and it was her way to get what she wanted with as little “fuss” as possible. Moreover, she knew it was a mistake to make herself too accessible to a man of Peter’s sort: her impatience to enjoy was curbed by an instinct for holding off and biding her time that resembled the patient skill with which her father had conducted the sale of his “bad” real estate in the Pure Water Move days. But now and then youth had its way—she could not always resist the present pleasure. And it was amusing, too, to be “talked about” with Peter Van Degen, who was noted for not caring for “nice women.” She enjoyed the thought of triumphing over meretricious charms: it ennobled her in her own eyes to influence such a man for good.
Nevertheless, as the motor flew on through the icy twilight, her present cares flew with it. She could not shake off the thought of the useless fancy dress which symbolized the other crowding expenses she had not dared confess to Ralph. Van Degen heard her sigh, and bent down, lowering the speed of the motor.
“What’s the matter? Isn’t everything all right?”
His tone made her suddenly feel that she could confide in him, and though she began by murmuring that it was nothing she did so with the conscious purpose of being persuaded to confess. And his extraordinary “niceness” seemed to justify her and to prove that she had been right in trusting her instinct rather than in following the counsels of prudence. Heretofore, in their talks, she had never gone beyond the vaguest hint of material “bothers”—as to which dissimulation seemed vain while one lived in West End Avenue! But now that the avowal of a definite worry had been wrung from her she felt the injustice of the view generally taken of poor Peter. For he had been neither too enterprising nor too cautious (though people said of him that he “didn’t care to part”); he had just laughed away, in bluff brotherly fashion, the gnawing thought of the fancy dress, had assured her he’d give a ball himself rather than miss seeing her wear it, and had added: “Oh, hang waiting for the bill—won’t a couple of thou make it all right?” in a tone that showed what a small matter money was to any one who took the larger view of life.
The whole incident passed off so quickly and easily that within a few minutes she had settled down—with a nod for his “Everything jolly again now?”—to untroubled enjoyment of the hour. Peace of mind, she said to herself, was all she needed to make her happy—and that was just what Ralph had never given her! At the thought his face seemed to rise before her, with the sharp lines of care between the eyes: it was almost like a part of his “nagging” that he should thrust himself in at such a moment! She tried to shut her eyes to the face; but a moment later it was replaced by another, a small odd likeness of itself; and with a cry of compunction she started up from her furs.
“Mercy! It’s the boy’s birthday—I was to take him to his grandmother’s. She was to have a cake for him and Ralph was to come up town. I KNEW there was something I’d forgotten!”
XV
In the Dagonet drawing-room the lamps had long been lit, and Mrs. Fairford, after a last impatient turn, had put aside the curtains of worn damask to strain her eyes into the darkening square. She came back to the hearth, where Charles Bowen stood leaning between the prim caryatides of the white marble chimney-piece.
“No sign of her. She’s simply forgotten.”
Bowen looked at his watch, and turned to compare it with the high-waisted Empire clock.
“Six o’clock. Why not telephone again? There must be some mistake. Perhaps she knew Ralph would be late.”
Laura laughed. “I haven’t noticed that she follows Ralph’s movements so closely. When I telephoned just now the servant said she’d been out since two. The nurse waited till half-past four, not liking to come without orders; and now it’s too late for Paul to come.”
She wandered away toward the farther end of the room, where, through half-open doors, a shining surface of mahogany reflected a flower-wreathed cake in which two candles dwindled.
“Put them out, please,” she said to some one in the background; then she shut the doors and turned back to Bowen.
“It’s all so unlucky—my grandfather giving up his drive, and mother backing out of her hospital meeting, and having all the committee down on her. And Henley: I’d even coaxed Henley away from his bridge! He escaped again just before you came. Undine promised she’d have the boy here at four. It’s not as if it had never happened before. She’s always breaking her engagements.”
“She has so many that it’s inevitable some should get broken.”
“All if she’d only choose! Now that Ralph has had into business, and is kept in his office so late, it’s cruel of her to drag him out every night. He told us the other day they hadn’t dined at home for a month. Undine doesn’t seem to notice how hard he works.”
Bowen gazed meditatively at the crumbling fire. “No—why should she?”
“Why SHOULD she? Really, Charles—!”
“Why should she, when she knows nothing about it?”
“She may know nothing about his business; but she must know it’s her extravagance that’s forced him into it.” Mrs. Fairford looked at Bowen reproachfully. “You talk as if you were on her side!”
“Are there sides already? If so, I want to look down on them impartially from the heights of pure speculation. I want to get a general view of the whole problem of American marriages.”
Mrs. Fairford dropped into her armchair with a sigh. “If that’s what you want you must make haste! Most of them don’t last long enough to be classified.”
“I grant you it takes an active mind. But the weak point is so frequently the same that after a time one knows where to look for it.”
“What do you call the weak point?”
He paused. “The fact that the average American looks down on his wife.”
Mrs. Fairford was up with a spring. “If that’s where paradox lands you!”
Bowen mildly stood his ground. “Well—doesn’t he prove it? How much does he let her share in the real business of life? How much does he rely on her judgment and help in the conduct of serious affairs? Take Ralph for instance—you say his wife’s extravagance forces him to work too hard; but that’s not what’s wrong. It’s normal for a man to work hard for a woman—what’s abnormal is his not caring to tell her anything about it.”
“To tell Undine? She’d be bored to death if he did!”
“Just so; she’d even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it’s against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man’s again—I don’t mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven’t we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don’t take enough interest in THEM.”
Mrs. Fairford, sinking back into her chair, sat gazing at the vertiginous depths above which his thought seemed to dangle her.
“YOU don’t? The American man doesn’t—the most slaving, self-effacing, self-sacrificing—?”
“Yes; and the most indifferent: there’s the point. The ‘slaving’s’ no argument against the indifference To slave for women is part of the old American tradition; lots of people give their lives for dogmas they’ve ceased to believe in. Then again, in this country the passion for making money has preceded the knowing how to spend it, and the American man lavishes his fortune on his wife because he doesn’t know what else to do with it.”
“Then you call it a mere want of imagination for a man to spend his money on his wife?”