Presently the older man asked: “How did you get acquainted with Moffatt?”
“Why, by chance—Undine ran across him somewhere and asked him to dine the other night.”
“Undine asked him to dine?”
“Yes: she told me you used to know him out at Apex.”
Mr. Spragg appeared to search his memory for confirmation of the fact. “I believe he used to be round there at one time. I’ve never heard any good of him yet.” He paused at a crossing and looked probingly at his son-in-law. “Is she terribly set on this trip to Europe?”
Ralph smiled. “You know how it is when she takes a fancy to do anything—”
Mr. Spragg, by a slight lift of his brooding brows, seemed to convey a deep if unspoken response.
“Well, I’d let her do it this time—I’d let her do it,” he said as he turned down the steps of the Subway.
Ralph was surprised, for he had gathered from some frightened references of Mrs. Spragg’s that Undine’s parents had wind of her European plan and were strongly opposed to it. He concluded that Mr. Spragg had long since measured the extent of profitable resistance, and knew just when it became vain to hold out against his daughter or advise others to do so.
Ralph, for his own part, had no inclination to resist. As he left Moffatt’s office his inmost feeling was one of relief. He had reached the point of recognizing that it was best for both that his wife should go. When she returned perhaps their lives would readjust themselves—but for the moment he longed for some kind of benumbing influence, something that should give relief to the dull daily ache of feeling her so near and yet so inaccessible. Certainly there were more urgent uses for their brilliant windfall: heavy arrears of household debts had to be met, and the summer would bring its own burden. But perhaps another stroke of luck might befall him: he was getting to have the drifting dependence on “luck” of the man conscious of his inability to direct his life. And meanwhile it seemed easier to let Undine have what she wanted.
Undine, on the whole, behaved with discretion. She received the good news languidly and showed no unseemly haste to profit by it. But it was as hard to hide the light in her eyes as to dissemble the fact that she had not only thought out every detail of the trip in advance, but had decided exactly how her husband and son were to be disposed of in her absence. Her suggestion that Ralph should take Paul to his grandparents, and that the West End Avenue house should be let for the summer, was too practical not to be acted on; and Ralph found she had already put her hand on the Harry Lipscombs, who, after three years of neglect, were to be dragged back to favour and made to feel, as the first step in their reinstatement, the necessity of hiring for the summer months a cool airy house on the West Side. On her return from Europe, Undine explained, she would of course go straight to Ralph and the boy in the Adirondacks; and it seemed a foolish extravagance to let the house stand empty when the Lipscombs were so eager to take it.
As the day of departure approached it became harder for her to temper her beams; but her pleasure showed itself so amiably that Ralph began to think she might, after all, miss the boy and himself more than she imagined. She was tenderly preoccupied with Paul’s welfare, and, to prepare for his translation to his grandparents’ she gave the household in Washington Square more of her time than she had accorded it since her marriage. She explained that she wanted Paul to grow used to his new surroundings; and with that object she took him frequently to his grandmother’s, and won her way into old Mr. Dagonet’s sympathies by her devotion to the child and her pretty way of joining in his games.
Undine was not consciously acting a part: this new phase was as natural to her as the other. In the joy of her gratified desires she wanted to make everybody about her happy. If only everyone would do as she wished she would never be unreasonable. She much preferred to see smiling faces about her, and her dread of the reproachful and dissatisfied countenance gave the measure of what she would do to avoid it.
These thoughts were in her mind when, a day or two before sailing, she came out of the Washington Square house with her boy. It was a late spring afternoon, and she and Paul had lingered on till long past the hour sacred to his grandfather’s nap. Now, as she came out into the square she saw that, however well Mr. Dagonet had borne their protracted romp, it had left his playmate flushed and sleepy; and she lifted Paul in her arms to carry him to the nearest cab-stand.
As she raised herself she saw a thick-set figure approaching her across the square; and a moment later she was shaking hands with Elmer Moffatt. In the bright spring air he looked seasonably glossy and prosperous; and she noticed that he wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. His small black eyes twinkled with approval as they rested on her, and Undine reflected that, with Paul’s arms about her neck, and his little flushed face against her own, she must present a not unpleasing image of young motherhood.
“That the heir apparent?” Moffatt asked; adding “Happy to make your acquaintance, sir,” as the boy, at Undine’s bidding, held out a fist sticky with sugarplums.
“He’s been spending the afternoon with his grandfather, and they played so hard that he’s sleepy,” she explained. Little Paul, at that stage in his career, had a peculiar grace of wide-gazing deep-lashed eyes and arched cherubic lips, and Undine saw that Moffatt was not insensible to the picture she and her son composed. She did not dislike his admiration, for she no longer felt any shrinking from him—she would even have been glad to thank him for the service he had done her husband if she had known how to allude to it without awkwardness. Moffatt seemed equally pleased at the meeting, and they looked at each other almost intimately over Paul’s tumbled curls.
“He’s a mighty fine fellow and no mistake—but isn’t he rather an armful for you?” Moffatt asked, his eyes lingering with real kindliness on the child’s face.
“Oh, we haven’t far to go. I’ll pick up a cab at the corner.”
“Well, let me carry him that far anyhow,” said Moffatt.
Undine was glad to be relieved of her burden, for she was unused to the child’s weight, and disliked to feel that her skirt was dragging on the pavement. “Go to the gentleman, Pauly—he’ll carry you better than mother,” she said.
The little boy’s first movement was one of recoil from the ruddy sharp-eyed countenance that was so unlike his father’s delicate face; but he was an obedient child, and after a moment’s hesitation he wound his arms trustfully about the red gentleman’s neck.
“That’s a good fellow—sit tight and I’ll give you a ride,” Moffatt cried, hoisting the boy to his shoulder.
Paul was not used to being perched at such a height, and his nature was hospitable to new impressions. “Oh, I like it up here—you’re higher than father!” he exclaimed; and Moffatt hugged him with a laugh.
“It must feel mighty good to come uptown to a fellow like you in the evenings,” he said, addressing the child but looking at Undine, who also laughed a little.
“Oh, they’re a dreadful nuisance, you know; but Paul’s a very good boy.”
“I wonder if he knows what a friend I’ve been to him lately,” Moffatt went on, as they turned into Fifth Avenue.
Undine smiled: she was glad he should have given her an opening. “He shall be told as soon as he’s old enough to thank you. I’m so glad you came to Ralph about that business.”
“Oh I gave him a leg up, and I guess he’s given me one too. Queer the way things come round—he’s fairly put me in the way of a fresh start.”
Their eyes met in a silence which Undine was the first to break. “It’s been awfully nice of you to do what you’ve done—right along. And this last thing has made a lot of difference to us.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way. I never wanted to be anything but ‘nice,’ as you call