The Custom of the Country Part 10

Undine shrugged away from her. "Mercy! At this hour? You'll be as white as a sheet to-morrow, sitting up all night like this."

She moved toward the toilet-table, and began to demolish with feverish hands the structure which Mrs. Heeny, a few hours earlier, had so lovingly raised. But the rose caught in a mesh of hair, and Mrs. Spragg, venturing timidly to release it, had a full view of her daughter's face in the gla.s.s.

"Why, Undie, YOU'RE as white as a sheet now! You look fairly sick.

What's the matter, daughter?"

The girl broke away from her.

"Oh, can't you leave me alone, mother? There--do I look white NOW?" she cried, the blood flaming into her pale cheeks; and as Mrs. Spragg shrank back, she added more mildly, in the tone of a parent rebuking a persistent child: "It's enough to MAKE anybody sick to be stared at that way!"

Mrs. Spragg overflowed with compunction. "I'm so sorry, Undie. I guess it was just seeing you in this glare of light."

"Yes--the light's awful; do turn some off," ordered Undine, for whom, ordinarily, no radiance was too strong; and Mrs. Spragg, grateful to have commands laid upon her, hastened to obey.

Undine, after this, submitted in brooding silence to having her dress unlaced, and her slippers and dressing-gown brought to her. Mrs. Spragg visibly yearned to say more, but she restrained the impulse lest it should provoke her dismissal.

"Won't you take just a sup of milk before you go to bed?" she suggested at length, as Undine sank into an armchair.

"I've got some for you right here in the parlour."

Without looking up the girl answered: "No. I don't want anything. Do go to bed."

Her mother seemed to be struggling between the life-long instinct of obedience and a swift unformulated fear. "I'm going, Undie." She wavered. "Didn't they receive you right, daughter?" she asked with sudden resolution.

"What nonsense! How should they receive me? Everybody was lovely to me."

Undine rose to her feet and went on with her undressing, tossing her clothes on the floor and shaking her hair over her bare shoulders.

Mrs. Spragg stooped to gather up the scattered garments as they fell, folding them with a wistful caressing touch, and laying them on the lounge, without daring to raise her eyes to her daughter. It was not till she heard Undine throw herself on the bed that she went toward her and drew the coverlet up with deprecating hands.

"Oh, do put the light out--I'm dead tired," the girl grumbled, pressing her face into the pillow.

Mrs. Spragg turned away obediently; then, gathering all her scattered impulses into a pa.s.sionate act of courage, she moved back to the bedside.

"Undie--you didn't see anybody--I mean at the theatre? ANYBODY YOU DIDN'T WANT TO SEE?"

Undine, at the question, raised her head and started right against the tossed pillows, her white exasperated face close to her mother's twitching features. The two women examined each other a moment, fear and anger in their crossed glances; then Undine answered: "No, n.o.body.

Good-night."

IX

Undine, late the next day, waited alone under the leafless trellising of a wistaria arbour on the west side of the Central Park. She had put on her plainest dress, and wound a closely, patterned veil over her least vivid hat; but even thus toned down to the situation she was conscious of blazing out from it inconveniently.

The habit of meeting young men in sequestered spots was not unknown to her: the novelty was in feeling any embarra.s.sment about it. Even now she--was disturbed not so much by the unlikely chance of an accidental encounter with Ralph Marvell as by the remembrance of similar meetings, far from accidental, with the romantic Aaronson. Could it be that the hand now adorned with Ralph's engagement ring had once, in this very spot, surrendered itself to the riding-master's pressure? At the thought a wave of physical disgust pa.s.sed over her, blotting out another memory as distasteful but more remote.

It was revived by the appearance of a ruddy middle-sized young man, his stoutish figure tightly b.u.t.toned into a square-shouldered over-coat, who presently approached along the path that led to the arbour. Silhouetted against the slope of the asphalt, the newcomer revealed an outline thick yet compact, with a round head set on a neck in which, at the first chance, prosperity would be likely to develop a red crease. His face, with its rounded surfaces, and the sanguine innocence of a complexion belied by prematurely astute black eyes, had a look of jovial cunning which Undine had formerly thought "smart" but which now struck her as merely vulgar. She felt that in the Marvell set Elmer Moffatt would have been stamped as "not a gentleman." Nevertheless something in his look seemed to promise the capacity to develop into any character he might care to a.s.sume; though it did not seem probable that, for the present, that of a gentleman would be among them. He had always had a brisk swaggering step, and the faintly impudent tilt of the head that she had once thought "das.h.i.+ng"; but whereas this look had formerly denoted a somewhat desperate defiance of the world and its judgments it now suggested an almost a.s.sured relation to these powers; and Undine's heart sank at the thought of what the change implied.

As he drew nearer, the young man's air of a.s.surance was replaced by an expression of mildly humorous surprise.

"Well--this is white of you. Undine!" he said, taking her lifeless fingers into his dapperly gloved hand.

Through her veil she formed the words: "I said I'd come."

He laughed. "That's so. And you see I believed you. Though I might not have--"

"I don't see the use of beginning like this," she interrupted nervously.

"That's so too. Suppose we walk along a little ways? It's rather chilly standing round."

He turned down the path that descended toward the Ramble and the girl moved on beside him with her long flowing steps.

When they had reached the comparative shelter of the interlacing trees Moffatt paused again to say: "If we're going to talk I'd like to see you. Undine;" and after a first moment of reluctance she submissively threw back her veil.

He let his eyes rest on her in silence; then he said judicially: "You've filled out some; but you're paler." After another appreciative scrutiny he added: "There's mighty few women as well worth looking at, and I'm obliged to you for letting me have the chance again."

Undine's brows drew together, but she softened her frown to a quivering smile.

"I'm glad to see you too, Elmer--I am, REALLY!"

He returned her smile while his glance continued to study her humorously. "You didn't betray the fact last night. Miss Spragg."

"I was so taken aback. I thought you were out in Alaska somewhere."

The young man shaped his lips into the mute whistle by which he habitually vented his surprise. "You DID? Didn't Abner E. Spragg tell you he'd seen me down town?"

Undine gave him a startled glance. "Father? Why, have you seen him? He never said a word about it!"

Her companion's whistle became audible. "He's running yet!" he said gaily. "I wish I could scare some people as easy as I can your father."

The girl hesitated. "I never felt toward you the way father did," she hazarded at length; and he gave her another long look in return.

"Well, if they'd left you alone I don't believe you'd ever have acted mean to me," was the conclusion he drew from it.

"I didn't mean to, Elmer ... I give you my word--but I was so young ...

I didn't know anything...."

His eyes had a twinkle of reminiscent pleasantry. "No--I don't suppose it WOULD teach a girl much to be engaged two years to a stiff like Millard Binch; and that was about all that had happened to you before I came along."

Undine flushed to the forehead. "Oh, Elmer--I was only a child when I was engaged to Millard--"

"That's a fact. And you went on being one a good while afterward. The Apex Eagle always head-lined you 'The child-bride'--"

"I can't see what's the use--now--."

"That ruled out of court too? See here. Undine--what CAN we talk about?

I understood that was what we were here for."

"Of course." She made an effort at recovery. "I only meant to say--what's the use of raking up things that are over?"