Wall Street was beginning to fix a fascinated eye. When Ralph, the year after his marriage, had renounced his profession to go into partnership with a firm of real-estate agents, he had come in contact for the first time with the drama of “business,” and whenever he could turn his attention from his own tasks he found a certain interest in watching the fierce interplay of its forces. In the down-town world he had heard things of Moffatt that seemed to single him out from the common herd of money-makers: anecdotes of his coolness, his lazy good-temper, the humorous detachment he preserved in the heat of conflicting interests; and his figure was enlarged by the mystery that hung about it—the fact that no one seemed to know whence he came, or how he had acquired the information which, for the moment, was making him so formidable. “I should like to see him,” Ralph said; “he must be a good specimen of the one of the few picturesque types we’ve got.”
“Yes—it might be amusing to fish him out; but the most picturesque types in Wall Street are generally the tamest in a drawingroom.” Clare considered. “But doesn’t Undine know him? I seem to remember seeing them together.”
“Undine and Moffatt? Then you KNOW him—you’ve’ met him?”
“Not actually met him—but he’s been pointed out to me. It must have been some years ago. Yes—it was one night at the theatre, just after you announced your engagement.” He fancied her voice trembled slightly, as though she thought he might notice her way of dating her memories. “You came into our box,” she went on, “and I asked you the name of the redfaced man who was sitting in the stall next to Undine. You didn’t know, but some one told us it was Moffatt.”
Marvell was more struck by her tone than by what she was saying. “If Undine knows him it’s odd she’s never mentioned it,” he answered indifferently.
The motor stopped at his door and Clare, as she held out her hand, turned a first full look on him.
“Why do you never come to see me? I miss you more than ever,” she said.
He pressed her hand without answering, but after the motor had rolled away he stood for a while on the pavement, looking after it.
When he entered the house the hall was still dark and the small over-furnished drawingroom empty. The parlourmaid told him that Mrs. Marvell had not yet come in, and he went upstairs to the nursery. But on the threshold the nurse met him with the whispered request not to make a noise, as it had been hard to quiet the boy after the afternoon’s disappointment, and she had just succeeded in putting him to sleep. Ralph went down to his own room and threw himself in the old college armchair in which, four years previously, he had sat the night out, dreaming of Undine. He had no study of his own, and he had crowded into his narrow bedroom his prints and bookshelves, and the other relics of his youth. As he sat among them now the memory of that other night swept over him—the night when he had heard the “call”! Fool as he had been not to recognize its meaning then, he knew himself triply mocked in being, even now, at its mercy. The flame of love that had played about his passion for his wife had died down to its embers; all the transfiguring hopes and illusions were gone, but they had left an unquenchable ache for her nearness, her smile, her touch. His life had come to be nothing but a long effort to win these mercies by one concession after another: the sacrifice of his literary projects, the exchange of his profession for an uncongenial business, and the incessant struggle to make enough money to satisfy her increasing exactions. That was where the “call” had led him… The clock struck eight, but it was useless to begin to dress till Undine came in, and he stretched himself out in his chair, reached for a pipe and took up the evening paper. His passing annoyance had died out; he was usually too tired after his day’s work for such feelings to keep their edge long. But he was curious—disinterestedly curious—to know what pretext Undine would invent for being so late, and what excuse she would have found for forgetting the little boy’s birthday.
He read on till half-past eight; then he stood up and sauntered to the window. The avenue below it was deserted; not a carriage or motor turned the corner around which he expected Undine to appear, and he looked idly in the opposite direction. There too the perspective was nearly empty, so empty that he singled out, a dozen blocks away, the blazing lamps of a large touring-car that was bearing furiously down the avenue from Morningside. As it drew nearer its speed slackened, and he saw it hug the curb and stop at his door. By the light of the street lamp he recognized his wife as she sprang out and detected a familiar silhouette in her companion’s fur-coated figure. Then the motor flew on and Undine ran up the steps. Ralph went out on the landing. He saw her coming up quickly, as if to reach her room unperceived; but when she caught sight of him she stopped, her head thrown back and the light falling on her blown hair and glowing face.
“Well?” she said, smiling up at him.
“They waited for you all the afternoon in Washington Square—the boy never had his birthday,” he answered.
Her colour deepened, but she instantly rejoined: “Why, what happened? Why didn’t the nurse take him?”
“You said you were coming to fetch him, so she waited.”
“But I telephoned—”
He said to himself: “Is THAT the lie?” and answered: “Where from?”
“Why, the studio, of course—” She flung her cloak open, as if to attest her veracity. “The sitting lasted longer than usual—there was something about the dress he couldn’t get—”
“But I thought he was giving a tea.”
“He had tea afterward; he always does. And he asked some people in to see my portrait. That detained me too. I didn’t know they were coming, and when they turned up I couldn’t rush away. It would have looked as if I didn’t like the picture.” She paused and they gave each other a searching simultaneous glance. “Who told you it was a tea?” she asked.
“Clare Van Degen. I saw her at my mother’s.”
“So you weren’t unconsoled after all—!”
“The nurse didn’t get any message. My people were awfully disappointed; and the poor boy has cried his eyes out.”
“Dear me! What a fuss! But I might have known my message wouldn’t be delivered. Everything always happens to put me in the wrong with your family.”
With a little air of injured pride she started to go to her room; but he put out a hand to detain her.
“You’ve just come from the studio?”
“Yes. It is awfully late? I must go and dress. We’re dining with the Ellings, you know.”
“I know… How did you come? In a cab?”
She faced him limpidly. “No; I couldn’t find one that would bring me—so Peter gave me a lift, like an angel. I’m blown to bits. He had his open car.”
Her colour was still high, and Ralph noticed that her lower lip twitched a little. He had led her to the point they had reached solely to be able to say: “If you’re straight from the studio, how was it that I saw you coming down from Morningside?”
Unless he asked her that there would be no point in his cross-questioning, and he would have sacrificed his pride without a purpose. But suddenly, as they stood there face to face, almost touching, she became something immeasurably alien and far off, and the question died on his lips.
“Is that all?” she asked with a slight smile.
“Yes;
