Her father looked at her compassionately. “I guess most of us feel that once in a way when we’re youngy, Undine. Later on you’ll see going away ain’t much use when you’ve got to turn round and come back.”
She nodded at him with close-pressed lips, like a child in possession of some solemn secret.
“That’s just it—that’s the reason I’m so wild to go; because it MIGHT mean I wouldn’t ever have to come back.”
“Not come back? What on earth are you talking about?”
“It might mean that I could get free—begin over again…”
He had pushed his seat back with a sudden jerk and cut her short by striking his palm on the arm of the chair.
“For the Lord’s sake. Undine—do you know what you’re saying?”
“Oh, yes, I know.” She gave him back a confident smile. “If I can get away soon—go straight over to Paris…there’s some one there who’d do anything… who COULD do anything…if I was free…”
Mr. Spragg’s hands continued to grasp his chair-arms. “Good God, Undine Marvell—are you sitting there in your sane senses and talking to me of what you could do if you were FREE?”
Their glances met in an interval of speechless communion; but Undine did not shrink from her father’s eyes and when she lowered her own it seemed to be only because there was nothing left for them to say.
“I know just what I could do if I were free. I could marry the right man,” she answered boldly.
He met her with a murmur of helpless irony. “The right man? The right man? Haven’t you had enough of trying for him yet?”
As he spoke the door behind them opened, and Mr. Spragg looked up abruptly.
The stenographer stood on the threshold, and above her shoulder Undine perceived the ingratiating grin of Elmer Moffatt.
“‘A little farther lend thy guiding hand’—but I guess I can go the rest of the way alone,” he said, insinuating himself through the doorway with an airy gesture of dismissal; then he turned to Mr. Spragg and Undine.
“I agree entirely with Mrs. Marvell—and I’m happy to have the opportunity of telling her so,” he proclaimed, holding his hand out gallantly.
Undine stood up with a laugh. “It sounded like old times, I suppose—you thought father and I were quarrelling? But we never quarrel any more: he always agrees with me.” She smiled at Mr. Spragg and turned her shining eyes on Moffatt. “I wish that treaty had been signed a few years sooner!” the latter rejoined in his usual tone of humorous familiarity.
Undine had not met him since her marriage, and of late the adverse turn of his fortunes had carried him quite beyond her thoughts. But his actual presence was always stimulating, and even through her self-absorption she was struck by his air of almost defiant prosperity. He did not look like a man who has been beaten; or rather he looked like a man who does not know when he is beaten; and his eye had the gleam of mocking confidence that had carried him unabashed through his lowest hours at Apex.
“I presume you’re here to see me on business?” Mr. Spragg enquired, rising from his chair with a glance that seemed to ask his daughter’s silence.
“Why, yes. Senator,” rejoined Moffatt, who was given, in playful moments, to the bestowal of titles high-sounding. “At least I’m here to ask you a little question that may lead to business.”
Mr. Spragg crossed the office and held open the door. “Step this way, please,” he said, guiding Moffatt out before him, though the latter hung back to exclaim: “No family secrets, Mrs. Marvell—anybody can turn the fierce white light on ME!”
With the closing of the door Undine’s thoughts turned back to her own preoccupations. It had not struck her as incongruous that Moffatt should have business dealings with her father: she was even a little surprised that Mr. Spragg should still treat him so coldly. But she had no time to give to such considerations. Her own difficulties were too importunately present to her. She moved restlessly about the office, listening to the rise and fall of the two voices on the other side of the partition without once wondering what they were discussing.
What should she say to her father when he came back—what argument was most likely to prevail with him? If he really had no money to give her she was imprisoned fast—Van Degen was lost to her, and the old life must go on interminably…In her nervous pacings she paused before the blotched looking-glass that hung in a corner of the office under a steel engraving of Daniel Webster. Even that defective surface could not disfigure her, and she drew fresh hope from the sight of her beauty. Her few weeks of ill-health had given her cheeks a subtler curve and deepened the shadows beneath her eyes, and she was handsomer than before her marriage. No, Van Degen was not lost to her even! From narrowed lids to parted lips her face was swept by a smile like retracted sunlight. He was not lost to her while she could smile like that! Besides, even if her father had no money, there were always mysterious ways of “raising” it—in the old Apex days he had often boasted of such feats. As the hope rose her eyes widened trustfully, and this time the smile that flowed up to them was as limpid as a child’s. That was the was her father liked her to look at him…
The door opened, and she heard Mr. Spragg say behind her: “No, sir, I won’t—that’s final.”
He came in alone, with a brooding face, and lowered himself heavily into his chair. It was plain that the talk between the two men had had an abrupt ending. Undine looked at her father with a passing flicker of curiosity. Certainly it was an odd coincidence that Moffatt should have called while she was there…
“What did he want?” she asked, glancing back toward the door.
Mr. Spragg mumbled his invisible toothpick. “Oh, just another of his wild-cat schemes—some real-estate deal he’s in.”
“Why did he come to YOU about it?”
He looked away from her, fumbling among the letters on the desk. “Guess he’d tried everybody else first. He’d go and ring the devil’s front-door bell if he thought he could get anything out of him.”
“I suppose he did himself a lot of harm by testifying in the Ararat investigation?”
“Yes, SIR—he’s down and out this time.”
He uttered the words with a certain satisfaction. His daughter did not answer, and they sat silent, facing each other across the littered desk. Under their brief about Elmer Moffatt currents of rapid intelligence seemed to be flowing between them. Suddenly Undine leaned over the desk, her eyes widening trustfully, and the limpid smile flowing up to them.
“Father, I did what you wanted that one time, anyhow—won’t you listen to me and help me out now?”
XVIII
Undine stood alone on the landing outside her father’s office.
Only once before had she failed to gain her end with him—and there was a peculiar irony in the fact that Moffatt’s intrusion should have brought before her the providential result of her previous failure. Not that she confessed to any real resemblance between the two situations. In the present case she knew well enough what she wanted, and how to get it. But the analogy had served her father’s purpose, and Moffatt’s unlucky entrance had visibly strengthened his resistance.
The worst of it was that the obstacles in the way were real enough. Mr. Spragg had not put her off with vague asseverations—somewhat against her will he had forced his proofs on her, showing her how much above his promised allowance he had contributed in the last three years to the support of her household. Since she could not accuse herself of extravagance—having still full faith in her gift of “managing”—she could only conclude that it was impossible to live on what her father and Ralph could provide; and this seemed a practical reason for desiring her freedom. If she and Ralph parted he would of course return to his family, and Mr. Spragg would no longer be burdened with a helpless son-in-law. But even this argument did not move him. Undine, as soon as she had risked Van Degen’s name, found herself face to face with a code of domestic conduct as rigid as its exponent’s business principles were elastic. Mr. Spragg did not regard divorce as intrinsically wrong or even inexpedient; and of its social disadvantages he had never even heard. Lots of women did it, as Undine said, and if their reasons were adequate they were justified. If Ralph Marvell had been a drunkard or “unfaithful” Mr. Spragg would have approved Undine’s desire to divorce him; but that it should be prompted by her inclination for another man—and a man with a wife of his own—was as shocking to him as it would have been to the most uncompromising of the Dagonets and Marvells. Such things happened, as Mr. Spragg knew, but they should not happen to any woman of his name while he had the power to prevent it; and Undine recognized that for the moment he had that power.