After the Princess Estradina’s
departure, the days at Saint Desert succeeded each
other indistinguishably; and more and more, as they
passed, Undine felt herself drawn into the slow strong
current already fed by so many tributary lives.
Some spell she could not have named seemed to emanate
from the old house which had so long been the custodian
of an unbroken tradition: things had happened
there in the same way for so many generations that
to try to alter them seemed as vain as to contend
with the elements.
Winter came and went, and once more
the calendar marked the first days of spring; but
though the horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees were
budding snow still lingered in the grass drives of
Saint Desert and along the ridges of the hills beyond
the park. Sometimes, as Undine looked out of
the windows of the Boucher gallery, she felt as if
her eyes had never rested on any other scene.
Even her occasional brief trips to Paris left no lasting
trace: the life of the vivid streets faded to
a shadow as soon as the black and white horizon of
Saint Desert closed in on her again.
Though the afternoons were still cold
she had lately taken to sitting in the gallery.
The smiling scenes on its walls and the tall screens
which broke its length made it more habitable than
the drawing-rooms beyond; but her chief reason for
preferring it was the satisfaction she found in having
fires lit in both the monumental chimneys that faced
each other down its long perspective. This satisfaction
had its source in the old Marquise’s disapproval.
Never before in the history of Saint Desert had the
consumption of firewood exceeded a certain carefully-calculated
measure; but since Undine had been in authority this
allowance had been doubled. If any one had told
her, a year earlier, that one of the chief distractions
of her new life would be to invent ways of annoying
her mother-in-law, she would have laughed at the idea
of wasting her time on such trifles. But she
found herself with a great deal of time to waste,
and with a fierce desire to spend it in upsetting the
immemorial customs of Saint Desert. Her husband
had mastered her in essentials, but she had discovered
innumerable small ways of irritating and hurting him,
and one and not the least effectual was
to do anything that went counter to his mother’s
prejudices. It was not that he always shared her
views, or was a particularly subservient son; but
it seemed to be one of his fundamental principles
that a man should respect his mother’s wishes,
and see to it that his household respected them.
All Frenchmen of his class appeared to share this
view, and to regard it as beyond discussion:
it was based on something so much more Immutable than
personal feeling that one might even hate one’s
mother and yet insist that her ideas as to the consumption
of fire-wood should be regarded.
The old Marquise, during the cold
weather, always sat in her bedroom; and there, between
the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the
family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her
single carcel lamp. In the evening,
if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library;
otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise’s
lamp till the footman came in at ten with tisane and
biscuits de Reims; after which every one bade the
dowager good night and scattered down the corridors
to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups
of oil.
Since Undine’s coming the library
fire had never been allowed to go out; and of late,
after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and
the so-called “study” where Raymond kept
his guns and saw the bailiff, she had selected the
gallery as the most suitable place for the new and
unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. Afternoon
refreshments had never before been served at Saint
Desert except when company was expected; when they
had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port
and a plate of small dry cakes the kind
that kept. That the complicated rites of the
tea-urn, with its offering-up of perishable delicacies,
should be enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family,
was a thing so unheard of that for a while Undine
found sufficient amusement in elaborating the ceremonial,
and in making the ancestral plate groan under more
varied viands; and when this palled she devised the
plan of performing the office in the gallery and lighting
sacrificial fires in both chimneys.
She had said to Raymond, at first:
“It’s ridiculous that your mother should
sit in her bedroom all day. She says she does
it to save fires; but if we have a fire downstairs
why can’t she let hers go out, and come down?
I don’t see why I should spend my life in your
mother’s bedroom.”
Raymond made no answer, and the Marquise
did, in fact, let her fire go out. But she did
not come down she simply continued to sit
upstairs without a fire.
At first this also amused Undine;
then the tacit criticism implied began to irritate
her. She hoped Raymond would speak of his mother’s
attitude: she had her answer ready if he did!
But he made no comment, he took no notice; her impulses
of retaliation spent themselves against the blank
surface of his indifference. He was as amiable,
as considerate as ever; as ready, within reason, to
accede to her wishes and gratify her whims. Once
or twice, when she suggested running up to Paris to
take Paul to the dentist, or to look for a servant,
he agreed to the necessity and went up with her.
But instead of going to an hotel they went to their
apartment, where carpets were up and curtains down,
and a care-taker prepared primitive food at uncertain
hours; and Undine’s first glimpse of Hubert’s
illuminated windows deepened her rancour and her sense
of helplessness.
As Madame de Trezac had predicted,
Raymond’s vigilance gradually relaxed, and during
their excursions to the capital Undine came and went
as she pleased. But her visits were too short
to permit of her falling in with the social pace,
and when she showed herself among her friends she
felt countrified and out-of-place, as if even her clothes
had come from Saint Desert. Nevertheless her
dresses were more than ever her chief preoccupation:
in Paris she spent hours at the dressmaker’s,
and in the country the arrival of a box of new gowns
was the chief event of the vacant days. But there
was more bitterness than joy in the unpacking, and
the dresses hung in her wardrobe like so many unfulfilled
promises of pleasure, reminding her of the days at
the Stentorian when she had reviewed other finery
with the same cheated eyes. In spite of this,
she multiplied her orders, writing up to the dress-makers
for patterns, and to the milliners for boxes of hats
which she tried on, and kept for days, without being
able to make a choice. Now and then she even
sent her maid up to Paris to bring back great assortments
of veils, gloves, flowers and laces; and after periods
of painful indecision she ended by keeping the greater
number, lest those she sent back should turn out to
be the ones that were worn in Paris. She knew
she was spending too much money, and she had lost
her youthful faith in providential solutions; but
she had always had the habit of going out to buy something
when she was bored, and never had she been in greater
need of such solace.
The dulness of her life seemed to
have passed into her blood: her complexion was
less animated, her hair less shining. The change
in her looks alarmed her, and she scanned the fashion-papers
for new scents and powders, and experimented in facial
bandaging, electric massage and other processes of
renovation. Odd atavisms woke in her, and she
began to pore over patent medicine advertisements,
to send stamped envelopes to beauty doctors and professors
of physical development, and to brood on the advantage
of consulting faith-healers, mind-readers and their
kindred adepts. She even wrote to her mother for
the receipts of some of her grandfather’s forgotten
nostrums, and modified her daily life, and her hours
of sleeping, eating and exercise, in accordance with
each new experiment.
Her constitutional restlessness lapsed
into an apathy like Mrs. Spragg’s, and the least
demand on her activity irritated her. But she
was beset by endless annoyances: bickerings with
discontented maids, the difficulty of finding a tutor
for Paul, and the problem of keeping him amused and
occupied without having him too much on her hands.
A great liking had sprung up between Raymond and the
little boy, and during the summer Paul was perpetually
at his step-father’s side in the stables and
the park. But with the coming of winter Raymond
was oftener away, and Paul developed a persistent
cold that kept him frequently indoors. The confinement
made him fretful and exacting, and the old Marquise
ascribed the change in his behaviour to the deplorable
influence of his tutor, a “laic” recommended
by one of Raymond’s old professors. Raymond
himself would have preferred an abbe: it was in
the tradition of the house, and though Paul was not
of the house it seemed fitting that he should conform
to its ways. Moreover, when the married sisters
came to stay they objected to having their children
exposed to the tutor’s influence, and even implied
that Paul’s society might be contaminating.
But Undine, though she had so readily embraced her
husband’s faith, stubbornly resisted the suggestion
that she should hand over her son to the Church.
The tutor therefore remained; but the friction caused
by his presence was so irritating to Undine that she
began to consider the alternative of sending Paul
to school. He was still small and tender for
the experiment; but she persuaded herself that what
he needed was “hardening,” and having
heard of a school where fashionable infancy was subjected
to this process, she entered into correspondence with
the master. His first letter convinced her that
his establishment was just the place for Paul; but
the second contained the price-list, and after comparing
it with the tutor’s keep and salary she wrote
to say that she feared her little boy was too young
to be sent away from home.
Her husband, for some time past, had
ceased to make any comment on her expenditure.
She knew he thought her too extravagant, and felt sure
he was minutely aware of what she spent; for Saint
Desert projected on economic details a light as different
as might be from the haze that veiled them in West
End Avenue. She therefore concluded that Raymond’s
silence was intentional, and ascribed it to his having
shortcomings of his own to conceal. The Princess
Estradina’s pleasantry had reached its mark.
Undine did not believe that her husband was seriously
in love with another woman she could not
conceive that any one could tire of her of whom she
had not first tired but she was humiliated
by his indifference, and it was easier to ascribe
it to the arts of a rival than to any deficiency in
herself. It exasperated her to think that he
might have consolations for the outward monotony of
his life, and she resolved that when they returned
to Paris he should see that she was not without similar
opportunities.
March, meanwhile, was verging on April,
and still he did not speak of leaving. Undine
had learned that he expected to have such decisions
left to him, and she hid her impatience lest her showing
it should incline him to delay. But one day,
as she sat at tea in the gallery, he came in in his
riding-clothes and said: “I’ve been
over to the other side of the mountain. The February
rains have weakened the dam of the Alette, and the
vineyards will be in danger if we don’t rebuild
at once.”
She suppressed a yawn, thinking, as
she did so, how dull he always looked when he talked
of agriculture. It made him seem years older,
and she reflected with a shiver that listening to
him probably gave her the same look.
He went on, as she handed him his
tea: “I’m sorry it should happen
just now. I’m afraid I shall have to ask
you to give up your spring in Paris.” “Oh,
no no!” she broke out. A throng
of half-subdued grievances choked in her: she
wanted to burst into sobs like a child.
“I know it’s a disappointment.
But our expenses have been unusually heavy this year.”
“It seems to me they always
are. I don’t see why we should give up Paris
because you’ve got to make repairs to a dam.
Isn’t Hubert ever going to pay back that money?”
He looked at her with a mild surprise.
“But surely you understood at the time that
it won’t be possible till his wife inherits?”
“Till General Arlington dies,
you mean? He doesn’t look much older than
you!”
“You may remember that I showed
you Hubert’s note. He has paid the interest
quite regularly.”
“That’s kind of him!”
She stood up, flaming with rebellion. “You
can do as you please; but I mean to go to Paris.”
“My mother is not going.
I didn’t intend to open our apartment.”
“I understand. But I shall open it that’s
all!”
He had risen too, and she saw his
face whiten. “I prefer that you shouldn’t
go without me.”
“Then I shall go and stay at
the Nouveau Luxe with my American friends.”
“That never!”
“Why not?”
“I consider it unsuitable.”
“Your considering it so doesn’t prove
it.”
They stood facing each other, quivering
with an equal anger; then he controlled himself and
said in a more conciliatory tone: “You never
seem to see that there are necessities ”
“Oh, neither do you that’s
the trouble. You can’t keep me shut up here
all my life, and interfere with everything I want to
do, just by saying it’s unsuitable.”
“I’ve never interfered with your spending
your money as you please.”
It was her turn to stare, sincerely
wondering. “Mercy, I should hope not, when
you’ve always grudged me every penny of yours!”
“You know it’s not because
I grudge it. I would gladly take you to Paris
if I had the money.”
“You can always find the money
to spend on this place. Why don’t you sell
it if it’s so fearfully expensive?”
“Sell it? Sell Saint Desert?”
The suggestion seemed to strike him
as something monstrously, almost fiendishly significant:
as if her random word had at last thrust into his
hand the clue to their whole unhappy difference.
Without understanding this, she guessed it from the
change in his face: it was as if a deadly solvent
had suddenly decomposed its familiar lines.
“Well, why not?” His horror
spurred her on. “You might sell some of
the things in it anyhow. In America we’re
not ashamed to sell what we can’t afford to
keep.” Her eyes fell on the storied hangings
at his back. “Why, there’s a fortune
in this one room: you could get anything you
chose for those tapestries. And you stand here
and tell me you’re a pauper!”
His glance followed hers to the tapestries,
and then returned to her face. “Ah, you
don’t understand,” he said.
“I understand that you care
for all this old stuff more than you do for me, and
that you’d rather see me unhappy and miserable
than touch one of your great-grandfather’s arm-chairs.”
The colour came slowly back to his
face, but it hardened into lines she had never seen.
He looked at her as though the place where she stood
were empty. “You don’t understand,”
he said again.