The Greatest Works of Edith Wharton - 31 Books in One Edition. Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ the bracelets on her thin brown wrist. “His personal seductions—yes. But as an inventor of amusements he’s inexhaustible; and Undine likes to be amused.”

      Ralph made no reply but showed no annoyance. He simply took her hand and kissed it as he said goodbye; and she turned from him without audible farewell.

      As the day of departure approached. Undine’s absorption in her dresses almost precluded the thought of amusement. Early and late she was closeted with fitters and packers—even the competent Celeste not being trusted to handle the treasures now pouring in—and Ralph cursed his weakness in not restraining her, and then fled for solace to museums and galleries.

      He could not rouse in her any scruple about incurring fresh debts, yet he knew she was no longer unaware of the value of money. She had learned to bargain, pare down prices, evade fees, browbeat the small tradespeople and wheedle concessions from the great—not, as Ralph perceived, from any effort to restrain her expenses, but only to prolong and intensify the pleasure of spending. Pained by the trait, he tried to laugh her out of it. He told her once that she had a miserly hand—showing her, in proof, that, for all their softness, the fingers would not bend back, or the pink palm open. But she retorted a little sharply that it was no wonder, since she’d heard nothing talked of since their marriage but economy; and this left him without any answer. So the purveyors continued to mount to their apartment, and Ralph, in the course of his frequent nights from it, found himself always dodging the corners of black glazed boxes and swaying pyramids of pasteboard; always lifting his hat to sidling milliners’ girls, or effacing himself before slender vendeuses floating by in a mist of opopanax. He felt incompetent to pronounce on the needs to which these visitors ministered; but the reappearance among them of the blond-bearded jeweller gave him ground for fresh fears. Undine had assured him that she had given up the idea of having her ornaments reset, and there had been ample time for their return; but on his questioning her she explained that there had been delays and “bothers” and put him in the wrong by asking ironically if he supposed she was buying things “for pleasure” when she knew as well as he that there wasn’t any money to pay for them.

      But his thoughts were not all dark. Undine’s moods still infected him, and when she was happy he felt an answering lightness. Even when her amusements were too primitive to be shared he could enjoy their reflection in her face. Only, as he looked back, he was struck by the evanescence, the lack of substance, in their moments of sympathy, and by the permanent marks left by each breach between them. Yet he still fancied that some day the balance might be reversed, and that as she acquired a finer sense of values the depths in her would find a voice.

      Something of this was in his mind when, the afternoon before their departure, he came home to help her with their last arrangements. She had begged him, for the day, to leave her alone in their cramped salon, into which belated bundles were still pouring; and it was nearly dark when he returned. The evening before she had seemed pale and nervous, and at the last moment had excused herself from dining with the Shallums at a suburban restaurant. It was so unlike her to miss any opportunity of the kind that Ralph had felt a little anxious. But with the arrival of the packers she was afoot and in command again, and he withdrew submissively, as Mr. Spragg, in the early Apex days, might have fled from the spring storm of “housecleaning.”

      When he entered the sitting-room, he found it still in disorder. Every chair was hidden under scattered dresses, tissue-paper surged from the yawning trunks and, prone among her heaped-up finery. Undine lay with closed eyes on the sofa.

      She raised her head as he entered, and then turned listlessly away.

      “My poor girl, what’s the matter? Haven’t they finished yet?”

      Instead of answering she pressed her face into the cushion and began to sob. The violence of her weeping shook her hair down on her shoulders, and her hands, clenching the arm of the sofa, pressed it away from her as if any contact were insufferable.

      Ralph bent over her in alarm. “Why, what’s wrong, dear? What’s happened?”

      Her fatigue of the previous evening came back to him—a puzzled hunted look in her eyes; and with the memory a vague wonder revived. He had fancied himself fairly disencumbered of the stock formulas about the hallowing effects of motherhood, and there were many reasons for not welcoming the news he suspected she had to give; but the woman a man loves is always a special case, and everything was different that befell Undine. If this was what had befallen her it was wonderful and divine: for the moment that was all he felt.

      “Dear, tell me what’s the matter,” he pleaded.

      She sobbed on unheedingly and he waited for her agitation to subside. He shrank from the phrases considered appropriate to the situation, but he wanted to hold her close and give her the depth of his heart in long kiss.

      Suddenly she sat upright and turned a desperate face on him. “Why on earth are you staring at me like that? Anybody can see what’s the matter!”

      He winced at her tone, but managed to get one of her hands in his; and they stayed thus in silence, eye to eye.

      “Are you as sorry as all that?” he began at length conscious of the flatness of his voice.

      “Sorry—sorry? I’m—I’m—” She snatched her hand away, and went on weeping.

      “But, Undine—dearest—bye and bye you’ll feel differently—I know you will!”

      “Differently? Differently? When? In a year? It TAKES a year—a whole year out of life! What do I care how I shall feel in a year?”

      The chill of her tone struck in. This was more than a revolt of the nerves: it was a settled, a reasoned resentment. Ralph found himself groping for extenuations, evasions—anything to put a little warmth into her! “Who knows? Perhaps, after all, it’s a mistake.”

      There was no answering light in her face. She turned her head from him wearily.

      “Don’t you think, dear, you may be mistaken?”

      “Mistaken? How on earth can I be mistaken?”

      Even in that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of her tone, and wondered how she could be so sure.

      “You mean you’ve asked—you’ve consulted—?” The irony of it took him by the throat. They were the very words he might have spoken in some miserable secret colloquy—the words he was speaking to his wife!

      She repeated dully: “I know I’m not mistaken.”

      There was another long silence. Undine lay still, her eyes shut, drumming on the arm of the sofa with a restless hand. The other lay cold in Ralph’s clasp, and through it there gradually stole to him the benumbing influence of the thoughts she was thinking: the sense of the approach of illness, anxiety, and expense, and of the general unnecessary disorganization of their lives.

      “That’s all you feel, then?” he asked at length a little bitterly, as if to disguise from himself the hateful fact that he felt it too. He stood up and moved away. “That’s all?” he repeated.

      “Why, what else do you expect me to feel? I feel horribly ill, if that’s what you want.” He saw the sobs trembling up through her again.

      “Poor dear—poor girl…I’m so sorry—so dreadfully sorry!”

      The senseless reiteration seemed to exasperate her. He knew it by the quiver that ran through her like the premonitory ripple on smooth water СКАЧАТЬ