“Oh, yes—Mabel Lipscomb. We were schoolmates,” she said indifferently.
“Lipscomb? Lipscomb? What is Mr. Lipscomb’s occupation?”
“He’s a broker,” said Undine, glad to be able to place her friend’s husband in so handsome a light. The subtleties of a professional classification unknown to Apex had already taught her that in New York it is more distinguished to be a broker than a dentist; and she was surprised at Mr. Dagonet’s lack of enthusiasm.
“Ah? A broker?” He said it almost as Popple might have said “A DENTIST?” and Undine found herself astray in a new labyrinth of social distinctions. She felt a sudden contempt for Harry Lipscomb, who had already struck her as too loud, and irrelevantly comic. “I guess Mabel’ll get a divorce pretty soon,” she added, desiring, for personal reasons, to present Mrs. Lipscomb as favourably as possible.
Mr. Dagonet’s handsome eyebrows drew together. “A divorce? H’m—that’s bad. Has he been misbehaving himself?”
Undine looked innocently surprised. “Oh, I guess not. They like each other well enough. But he’s been a disappointment to her. He isn’t in the right set, and I think Mabel realizes she’ll never really get anywhere till she gets rid of him.”
These words, uttered in the high fluting tone that she rose to when sure of her subject, fell on a pause which prolonged and deepened itself to receive them, while every face at the table, Ralph Marvell’s excepted, reflected in varying degree Mr. Dagonet’s pained astonishment.
“But, my dear young lady—what would your friend’s situation be if, as you put it, she ‘got rid’ of her husband on so trivial a pretext?”
Undine, surprised at his dullness, tried to explain. “Oh that wouldn’t be the reason GIVEN, of course. Any lawyer could fix it up for them. Don’t they generally call it desertion?”
There was another, more palpitating, silence, broken by a laugh from Ralph.
“RALPH!” his mother breathed; then, turning to Undine, she said with a constrained smile: “I believe in certain parts of the country such—unfortunate arrangements—are beginning to be tolerated. But in New York, in spite of our growing indifference, a divorced woman is still—thank heaven!—at a decided disadvantage.”
Undine’s eyes opened wide. Here at last was a topic that really interested her, and one that gave another amazing glimpse into the camera obscura of New York society. “Do you mean to say Mabel would be worse off, then? Couldn’t she even go round as much as she does now?”
Mrs. Marvell met this gravely. “It would depend, I should say, on the kind of people she wished to see.”
“Oh, the very best, of course! That would be her only object.”
Ralph interposed with another laugh. “You see, Undine, you’d better think twice before you divorce me!”
“RALPH!” his mother again breathed; but the girl, flushed and sparkling, flung back: “Oh, it all depends on YOU! Out in Apex, if a girl marries a man who don’t come up to what she expected, people consider it’s to her credit to want to change. YOU’D better think twice of that!”
“If I were only sure of knowing what you expect!” he caught up her joke, tossing it back at her across the fascinated silence of their listeners.
“Why, EVERYTHING!” she announced—and Mr. Dagonet, turning, laid an intricately-veined old hand on, hers, and said, with a change of tone that relaxed the tension of the listeners: “My child, if you look like that you’ll get it.”
VIII
It was doubtless owing to Mrs. Fairford’s foresight that such possibilities of tension were curtailed, after dinner, by her carrying off Ralph and his betrothed to the theatre.
Mr. Dagonet, it was understood, always went to bed after an hour’s whist with his daughter; and the silent Mr. Fairford gave his evenings to bridge at his club. The party, therefore, consisted only of Undine and Ralph, with Mrs. Fairford and her attendant friend. Undine vaguely wondered why the grave and grey-haired Mr. Bowen formed so invariable a part of that lady’s train; but she concluded that it was the York custom for married ladies to have gentlemen “‘round” (as girls had in Apex), and that Mr. Bowen was the sole survivor of Laura Fairford’s earlier triumphs.
She had, however, little time to give to such conjectures, for the performance they were attending—the debut of a fashionable London actress—had attracted a large audience in which Undine immediately recognized a number of familiar faces. Her engagement had been announced only the day before, and she had the delicious sense of being “in all the papers,” and of focussing countless glances of interest and curiosity as she swept through the theatre in Mrs. Fairford’s wake. Their stalls were near the stage, and progress thither was slow enough to permit of prolonged enjoyment of this sensation. Before passing to her place she paused for Ralph to remove her cloak, and as he lifted it from her shoulders she heard a lady say behind her: “There she is—the one in white, with the lovely back—” and a man answer: “Gad! Where did he find anything as good as that?”
Anonymous approval was sweet enough; but she was to taste a moment more exquisite when, in the proscenium box across the house, she saw Clare Van Degen seated beside the prim figure of Miss Harriet Ray. “They’re here to see me with him—they hate it, but they couldn’t keep away!” She turned and lifted a smile of possessorship to Ralph. Mrs. Fairford seemed also struck by the presence Of the two ladies, and Undine heard her whisper to Mr. Bowen: “Do you see Clare over there—and Harriet with her? Harriet WOULD COME—I call it Spartan! And so like Clare to ask her!”
Her companion laughed. “It’s one of the deepest instincts in human nature. The murdered are as much given as the murderer to haunting the scene of the crime.”
Doubtless guessing Ralph’s desire to have Undine to himself, Mrs. Fairford had sent the girl in first; and Undine, as she seated herself, was aware that the occupant of the next stall half turned to her, as with a vague gesture of recognition. But just then the curtain rose, and she became absorbed in the development of the drama, especially as it tended to display the remarkable toilets which succeeded each other on the person of its leading lady. Undine, seated at Ralph Marvell’s side, and feeling the thrill of his proximity as a subtler element in the general interest she was exciting, was at last repaid for the disappointment of her evening at the opera. It was characteristic of her that she remembered her failures as keenly as her triumphs, and that the passionate desire to obliterate, to “get even” with them, was always among the latent incentives of her conduct. Now at last she was having what she wanted—she was in conscious possession of the “real thing”; and through her other, diffused, sensations Ralph’s adoration gave her such a last refinement of pleasure as might have come to some warrior Queen borne in triumph by captive princes, and reading in the eyes of one the passion he dared not speak. When the curtain fell this vague enjoyment was heightened by various acts of recognition. All the people she wanted to “go with,” as they said in Apex, seemed to be about her in the stalls and boxes; and her eyes continued to revert with special satisfaction to the incongruous group formed by Mrs. Peter Van Degen and Miss Ray. The sight made it irresistible to whisper to Ralph: “You ought to go round and talk to your cousin. Have you told her we’re engaged?”
“Clare? of course. She’s going to call on you tomorrow.”
“Oh, she needn’t put herself out—she’s never been yet,” said Undine loftily.
He made no rejoinder, but presently asked: “Who’s that you’re waving to?”
“Mr. Popple. He’s coming round to see us. You know he wants to paint me.” Undine fluttered and beamed as the brilliant Popple made his way across the stalls to the seat which her neighbour had momentarily left.
“First-rate chap next to you—whoever he is—to give me this