The Custom of the Country (Romance Classic). Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ delight could they be tasting? Undine remembered that the numbers of the boxes and the names of their owners were given on the back of the programme, and after a rapid computation she turned to consult the list. Mondays and Fridays, Mrs. Peter Van Degen. That was it: the box was empty because Mrs. Van Degen was dining alone with Ralph Marvell! “PETER WILL BE AT ONE OF HIS DINNERS.” Undine had a sharp vision of the Van Degen diningroom—she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous with gilding —with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and Ralph Marvell, across the hothouse grapes and champagne, leaning to take a light from his hostess’s cigarette. Undine had seen such scenes on the stage, she had come upon them in the glowing pages of fiction, and it seemed to her that every detail was before her now, from the glitter of jewels on Mrs. Van Degen’s bare shoulders to the way young Marvell stroked his slight blond moustache while he smiled and listened.

      Undine blushed with anger at her own simplicity in fancying that he had been “taken” by her—that she could ever really count among these happy self-absorbed people! They all had their friends, their ties, their delightful crowding obligations: why should they make room for an intruder in a circle so packed with the initiated?

      As her imagination developed the details of the scene in the Van Degen diningroom it became clear to her that fashionable society was horribly immoral and that she could never really be happy in such a poisoned atmosphere. She remembered that an eminent divine was preaching a series of sermons against Social Corruption, and she determined to go and hear him on the following Sunday.

      This train of thought was interrupted by the feeling that she was being intently observed from the neighbouring box. She turned around with a feint of speaking to Mrs. Lipscomb, and met the bulging stare of Peter Van Degen. He was standing behind the lady of the eyeglass, who had replaced her tortoiseshell implement by one of closely-set brilliants, which, at word from her companion, she critically bent on Undine.

      “No—I don’t remember,” she said; and the girl reddened, divining herself unidentified after this protracted scrutiny.

      But there was no doubt as to young Van Degen’s remembering her. She was even conscious that he was trying to provoke in her some reciprocal sign of recognition; and the attempt drove her to the haughty study of her programme.

      “Why, there’s Mr. Popple over there!” exclaimed Mabel Lipscomb, making large signs across the house with fan and play-bill.

      Undine had already become aware that Mabel, planted, blond and brimming, too near the edge of the box, was somehow out of scale and out of drawing; and the freedom of her demonstrations increased the effect of disproportion. No one else was wagging and waving in that way: a gestureless mute telegraphy seemed to pass between the other boxes. Still, Undine could not help following Mrs. Lipscomb’s glance, and there in fact was Claud Popple, taller and more dominant than ever, and bending easily over what she felt must be the back of a brilliant woman.

      He replied by a discreet salute to Mrs. Lipscomb’s intemperate motions, and Undine saw the brilliant woman’s opera-glass turn in their direction, and said to herself that in a moment Mr. Popple would be “round.” But the entr’acte wore on, and no one turned the handle of their door, or disturbed the peaceful somnolence of Harry Lipscomb, who, not being (as he put it) “onto” grand opera, had abandoned the struggle and withdrawn to the seclusion of the inner box. Undine jealously watched Mr. Popple’s progress from box to box, from brilliant woman to brilliant woman; but just as it seemed about to carry him to their door he reappeared at his original post across the house.

      “Undie, do look—there’s Mr. Marvell!” Mabel began again, with another conspicuous outbreak of signalling; and this time Undine flushed to the nape as Mrs. Peter Van Degen appeared in the opposite box with Ralph Marvell behind her. The two seemed to be alone in the box—as they had doubtless been alone all the evening!—and Undine furtively turned to see if Mr. Van Degen shared her disapproval. But Mr. Van Degen had disappeared, and Undine, leaning forward, nervously touched Mabel’s arm.

      “What’s the matter. Undine? Don’t you see Mr. Marvell over there? Is that his sister he’s with?”

      “No.—I wouldn’t beckon like that,” Undine whispered between her teeth.

      “Why not? Don’t you want him to know you’re here?”

      “Yes—but the other people are not beckoning.”

      Mabel looked about unabashed. “Perhaps they’ve all found each other. Shall I send Harry over to tell him?” she shouted above the blare of the wind instruments.

      “NO!” gasped Undine as the curtain rose.

      She was no longer capable of following the action on the stage. Two presences possessed her imagination: that of Ralph Marvell, small, unattainable, remote, and that of Mabel Lipscomb, near-by, immense and irrepressible.

      It had become clear to Undine that Mabel Lipscomb was ridiculous. That was the reason why Popple did not come to the box. No one would care to be seen talking to her while Mabel was at her side: Mabel, monumental and moulded while the fashionable were flexible and diaphanous, Mabel strident and explicit while they were subdued and allusive. At the Stentorian she was the centre of her group—here she revealed herself as unknown and unknowing. Why, she didn’t even know that Mrs. Peter Van Degen was not Ralph Marvell’s sister! And she had a way of trumpeting out her ignorances that jarred on Undine’s subtler methods. It was precisely at this point that there dawned on Undine what was to be one of the guiding principles of her career: “IT’S BETTER TO WATCH THAN TO ASK QUESTIONS.”

      The curtain fell again, and Undine’s eyes flew back to the Van Degen box. Several men were entering it together, and a moment later she saw Ralph Marvell rise from his seat and pass out. Half-unconsciously she placed herself in such a way as to have an eye on the door of the box. But its handle remained unturned, and Harry Lipscomb, leaning back on the sofa, his head against the opera cloaks, continued to breathe stentorously through his open mouth and stretched his legs a little farther across the threshold…

      The entr’acte was nearly over when the door opened and two gentlemen stumbled over Mr. Lipscomb’s legs. The foremost was Claud Walsingham Popple; and above his shoulder shone the batrachian countenance of Peter Van Degen. A brief murmur from Mr. Popple made his companion known to the two ladies, and Mr. Van Degen promptly seated himself behind Undine, relegating the painter to Mrs. Lipscomb’s elbow.

      “Queer go—I happened to see your friend there waving to old Popp across the house. So I bolted over and collared him: told him he’d got to introduce me before he was a minute older. I tried to find out who you were the other day at the Motor Show—no, where was it? Oh, those pictures at Goldmark’s. What d’you think of ‘em, by the way? You ought to be painted yourself—no, I mean it, you know—you ought to get old Popp to do you. He’d do your hair ripplingly. You must let me come and talk to you about it… About the picture or your hair? Well, your hair if you don’t mind. Where’d you say you were staying? Oh, you LIVE here, do you? I say, that’s first rate!”

      Undine sat well forward, curving toward him a little, as she had seen the other women do, but holding back sufficiently to let it be visible to the house that she was conversing with no less a person than Mr. Peter Van Degen. Mr. Popple’s talk was certainly more brilliant and purposeful, and she saw him cast longing glances at her from behind Mrs. Lipscomb’s shoulder; but she remembered how lightly he had been treated at the Fairford dinner, and she wanted—oh, how she wanted!—to have Ralph Marvell see her talking to Van Degen.

      She poured out her heart to him, improvising an opinion on the pictures and an opinion on the music, falling in gaily with his suggestion of a jolly little dinner some night soon, at the Café Martin, СКАЧАТЬ