“No, no—tea afterward, thanks. Are they all upstairs with my grandfather? I must make my peace with Undine—” His sister put her arm through his, and drew him back to the fire.
“Undine didn’t come.”
“Didn’t come? Who brought the boy, then?”
“He didn’t come either. That’s why the cake’s not cut.”
Ralph frowned. “What’s the mystery? Is he ill, or what’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened—Paul’s all right. Apparently Undine forgot. She never went home for him, and the nurse waited till it was too late to come.”
She saw his eyes darken; but he merely gave a slight laugh and drew out his cigarette case. “Poor little Paul—poor chap!” He moved toward the fire. “Yes, please—some tea.”
He dropped back into his chair with a look of weariness, as if some strong stimulant had suddenly ceased to take effect on him; but before the tea-table was brought back he had glanced at his watch and was on his feet again.
“But this won’t do. I must rush home and see the poor chap before dinner. And my mother—and my grandfather? I want to say a word to them—I must make Paul’s excuses!”
“Grandfather’s taking his nap. And mother had to rush out for a postponed committee meeting—she left as soon as we heard Paul wasn’t coming.”
“Ah, I see.” He sat down again. “Yes, make the strong, please. I’ve had a beastly fagging sort of day.”
He leaned back with half-closed eyes, his untouched cup in his hand. Bowen took leave, and Laura sat silent, watching her brother under lowered lids while she feigned to be busy with the kettle. Ralph presently emptied his cup and put it aside; then, sinking into his former attitude, he clasped his hands behind his head and lay staring apathetically into the fire. But suddenly he came to life and started up. A motor-horn had sounded outside, and there was a noise of wheels at the door.
“There’s Undine! I wonder what could have kept her.” He jumped up and walked to the door; but it was Clare Van Degen who came in. At sight of him she gave a little murmur of pleasure. “What luck to find you! No, not luck—I came because I knew you’d be here. He never comes near me, Laura: I have to hunt him down to get a glimpse of him!”
Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and then turned back to Ralph. “Yes, I knew I’d catch you here. I knew it was the boy’s birthday, and I’ve brought him a present: a vulgar expensive Van Degen offering. I’ve not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. When I look for a present nowadays I never say to the shopman: ‘I want this or that’—I simply say: ‘Give me something that costs so much.’”
She drew a parcel from her muff. “Where’s the victim of my vulgarity? Let me crush him under the weight of my gold.”
Mrs. Fairford sighed out “Clare—Clare!” and Ralph smiled at his cousin.
“I’m sorry; but you’ll have to depute me to present it. The birthday’s over; you’re too late.”
She looked surprised. “Why, I’ve just left Mamie Driscoll, and she told me Undine was still at Popple’s studio a few minutes ago: Popple’s giving a tea to show the picture.”
“Popple’s giving a tea?” Ralph struck an attitude of mock consternation. “Ah, in that case—! In Popple’s society who wouldn’t forget the flight of time?”
He had recovered his usual easy tone, and Laura sat that Mrs. Van Degen’s words had dispelled his preoccupation. He turned to his cousin. “Will you trust me with your present for the boy?”
Clare gave him the parcel. “I’m sorry not to give it myself. I said what I did because I knew what you and Laura were thinking—but it’s really a battered old Dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered great-grandmother.”
“What—the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?” Ralph detained her hand to put a kiss on it. “That’s dear of you!”
She threw him one of her strange glances. “Why not say: ‘That’s like you?’ But you don’t remember what I’m like.” She turned away to glance at the clock. “It’s late, and I must be off. I’m going to a big dinner at the Chauncey Ellings’—but you must be going there too, Ralph? You’d better let me drive you home.”
In the motor Ralph leaned back in silence, while the rug was drawn over their knees, and Clare restlessly fingered the row of gold-topped objects in the rack at her elbow. It was restful to be swept through the crowded streets in this smooth fashion, and Clare’s presence at his side gave him a vague sense of ease.
For a long time now feminine nearness had come to mean to him, not this relief from tension, but the ever-renewed dread of small daily deceptions, evasions, subterfuges. The change had come gradually, marked by one disillusionment after another; but there had been one moment that formed the point beyond which there was no returning. It was the moment, a month or two before his boy’s birth, when, glancing over a batch of belated Paris bills, he had come on one from the jeweller he had once found in private conference with Undine. The bill was not large, but two of its items stood out sharply. “Resetting pearl and diamond pendant. Resetting sapphire and diamond ring.” The pearl and diamond pendant was his mother’s wedding present; the ring was the one he had given Undine on their engagement. That they were both family relics, kept unchanged through several generations, scarcely mattered to him at the time: he felt only the stab of his wife’s deception. She had assured him in Paris that she had not had her jewels reset. He had noticed, soon after their return to New York, that she had left off her engagement-ring; but the others were soon discarded also, and in answer to his question she had told him that, in her ailing state, rings “worried” her. Now he saw she had deceived him, and, forgetting everything else, he went to her, bill in hand. Her tears and distress filled him with immediate contrition. Was this a time to torment her about trifles? His anger seemed to cause her actual physical fear, and at the sight he abased himself in entreaties for forgiveness. When the scene ended she had pardoned him, and the reset ring was on her finger…
Soon afterward, the birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these humiliating memories; yet Marvell found in time that they were not effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. In reality, the incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness, for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife’s character. He no longer minded her having lied about the jeweller; what pained him was that she had been unconscious of the wound she inflicted in destroying the identity of the jewels. He saw that, even after their explanation, she still supposed he was angry only because she had deceived him; and the discovery that she was completely unconscious of states of feeling on which so much of his inner life depended marked a new stage in their relation. He was not thinking of all this as he sat beside Clare Van Degen; but it was part of the chronic disquietude which made him more alive to his cousin’s sympathy, her shy unspoken understanding. After all, he and she were of the same blood and had the same traditions. She was light and frivolous, without strength of will or depth of purpose; but she had the frankness of her foibles, and she would never have lied to him or traded on his tenderness.
Clare’s nervousness gradually subsided, and she lapsed into a low-voiced mood which seemed like an answer to his secret thought. But she did not sound the personal note, and they chatted quietly of commonplace things: of the dinner-dance at
