She paled under the retort, but her heart beat high with it. What he asked was impossible – and she gloried in his asking it. Feeling her power, she tried to temporize. ‘At least if you stayed we could be friends – I shouldn’t feel so terribly alone.’
He laughed impatiently. ‘Don’t talk magazine stuff to me, Undine Spragg. I guess we want each other the same way. Only our ideas are different. You’ve got all muddled, living out here among a lot of loafers who call it a career to run round after every petticoat. I’ve got my job out at home, and I belong where my job is.’
‘Are you going to be tied to business all your life?’ Her smile was faintly depreciatory.
‘I guess business is tied to me: Wall Street acts as if it couldn’t get along without me.’ He gave his shoulders a shake and moved a few steps nearer. ‘See here, Undine – you’re the one that don’t understand. If I was to sell out tomorrow, and spend the rest of my life reading art magazines in a pink villa, I wouldn’t do what you’re asking me. And I’ve about as much idea of dropping business as you have of taking to district nursing. There are things a man doesn’t do. I understand why your husband won’t sell those tapestries – till he’s got to. His ancestors are his business: Wall Street’s mine.’
He paused, and they silently faced each other. Undine made no attempt to approach him: she understood that if he yielded it would be only to recover his advantage and deepen her feeling of defeat. She put out her hand and took up the sunshade she had dropped on entering. ‘I suppose it’s good-bye then,’ she said.
‘You haven’t got the nerve?’
‘The nerve for what?’
‘To come where you belong: with me.’
She laughed a little and then sighed. She wished he would come nearer, or look at her differently: she felt, under his cool eye, no more compelling than a woman of wax in a show-case.
‘How could I get a divorce? With my religion –’
‘Why, you were born a Baptist, weren’t you? That’s where you used to attend church when I waited round the corner, Sunday mornings, with one of old Hober’s buggies.’ They both laughed, and he went on: ‘If you’ll come along home with me I’ll see you get your divorce all right. Who cares what they do over here? You’re an American, ain’t you? What you want is the home-made article.’
She listened, discouraged yet fascinated by his sturdy inaccessibility to all her arguments and objections. He knew what he wanted, saw his road before him, and acknowledged no obstacles. Her defence was drawn from reasons he did not understand, or based on difficulties that did not exist for him; and gradually she felt herself yielding to the steady pressure of his will. Yet the reasons he brushed away came back with redoubled tenacity whenever he paused long enough for her to picture the consequences of what he exacted.
‘You don’t know – you don’t understand –’ she kept repeating; but she knew that his ignorance was part of his terrible power, and that it was hopeless to try to make him feel the value of what he was asking her to give up.
‘See here, Undine,’ he said slowly, as if he measured her resistance though he couldn’t fathom it, ‘I guess it had better be yes or no right here. It ain’t going to do either of us any good to drag this thing out. If you want to come back to me, come – if you don’t, we’ll shake hands on it now. I’m due in Apex for a directors’ meeting on the twentieth, and as it is I’ll have to cable for a special to get me out there. No, no, don’t cry – it ain’t that kind of a story … but I’ll have a deck-suite for you on the Semantic if you’ll sail with me the day after tomorrow.’
XLVI
IN THE great high-ceilinged library of a private hôtel overlooking one of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out into the twilight.
The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul, looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornaments, the marble kerb of a semi-circular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas, and it was the first time he had seen the new hôtel which his step-father had bought, and in which Mr and Mrs Moffatt had hastily established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a flying trip to America. They were always coming and going; during the two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine: Paul never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: ‘Oh yes – I got a telegram last week.’
He had been almost sure – as sure as he ever was of anything – that he should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn’t had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and Mr Moffatt had run down to Deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for dinner – were in fact having a lot of people to dine.
It was just what he ought to have expected, and had been used to ever since he could remember; and generally he didn’t much mind, especially since his mother had become Mrs Moffatt, and the father he had been most used to, and liked best, had abruptly disappeared from his life. But the new hotel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there was not a toy or a book, or one of his dear battered relics (none of the new servants – they were always new – could find his things, or think where they had been put), seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house. He had gone up there after his solitary luncheon, served in the immense marble dining-room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to occupy himself with pasting postcards into his album; but the newness and sumptuousness of the room embarrassed him – the white fur rugs and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and ink-spots – and after a while he pushed the album aside and began to roam through the house.
He went to all the rooms in turn: his mother’s first, the wonderful lacy bedroom, all pale silks and velvets, artful mirrors and veiled lamps, and the boudoir as big as a drawing-room, with pictures he would have liked to know about, and tables and cabinets holding things he was afraid to touch. Mr Moffatt’s rooms came next. They were soberer and darker, but as big and splendid; and in the bedroom, on the brown wall, hung a single picture – the portrait of a boy in grey velvet – that interested Paul most of all. The boy’s hand rested on the head of a big dog, and he looked infinitely noble and charming, and yet (in spite of the dog) so sad and lonely that he too might have come home that very day to a strange house in which none of his old things could be found.
From these rooms Paul wandered downstairs again. The library attracted him most: there were rows and rows of books, bound in dim browns and golds, and old faded reds as rich as velvet: they all looked as if they might have had stories in them as splendid as their bindings. But the bookcases were closed with gilt trellising, and when Paul reached up to open one, a servant told him that Mr Moffatt’s secretary kept them locked because the books were too valuable to be taken down. This seemed to make the library as strange as the rest of the house, and he passed on to the ballroom at the back. Through its closed doors he heard a sound of hammering, and when he tried the door-handle a servant passing with a tray full of glasses told him that ‘they’ hadn’t finished, and wouldn’t let anybody in.
The mysterious pronoun somehow increased Paul’s sense of isolation, and he went on to the drawing-rooms, steering his way prudently between the gold armchairs and shining tables, and wondering whether the wigged and corseleted heroes on the walls represented Mr Moffatt’s ancestors, and why, if they did, he looked so little like them. The dining-room beyond was more amusing, because busy servants were already layin
g the long table. It was too early for the florist, and the centre of the table was empty, but down the sides were gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer fruits – figs, strawberries and big blushing nectarines. Between them stood crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, and little dishes full of sweets; and against the walls were sideboards with great pieces of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which sprinkled the green marble walls with star-like reflections.
After a while he grew tired of watching the coming and going of white-sleeved footmen, and of listening to the butler’s vociferated orders, and strayed back into the library. The habit of solitude had given him a passion for the printed page, and if he could have found a book anywhere – any kind of a book – he would have forgotten the long hours and the empty house. But the tables in the library held only massive unused inkstands and immense immaculate blotters: not a single volume had slipped its golden prison.
His loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he suddenly thought of Mrs Heeny’s clippings. His mother, alarmed by an insidious gain in weight, had brought the masseuse back from New York with her, and Mrs Heeny, with her old black bag and waterproof, was established in one of the grand bedrooms lined with mirrors. She had been loud in her joy at seeing her little friend that morning, but four years had passed since their last parting, and her personality had grown remote to him. He saw too many people, and they too often disappeared and were replaced by others: his scattered affections had ended by concentrating themselves on the charming image of the gentleman he called his French father; and since his French father had vanished no one else seemed to matter much to him.
‘Oh, well,’ Mrs Heeny had said, discerning the reluctance under his civil greeting, ‘I guess you’re as strange here as I am, and we’re both pretty strange to each other. You just go and look round, and see what a lovely home your Ma’s got to live in; and when you get tired of that, come up here to me and I’ll give you a look at my clippings.’
The word woke a train of dormant associations, and Paul saw himself seated on a dingy carpet, between two familiar taciturn old presences, while he rummaged in the depths of a bag stuffed with strips of newspaper.
He found Mrs Heeny sitting in a pink armchair, her bonnet perched on a pink-shaded electric lamp and her numerous implements spread out on an immense pink toilet-table. Vague as his recollection of her was, she gave him at once a sense of reassurance that nothing else in the house conveyed, and after he had examined all her scissors and pastes and nail-polishers he turned to the bag, which stood on the carpet at her feet as if she were waiting for a train.
‘My, my!’ she said, ‘do you want to get into that again? How you used to hunt in it for taffy, to be sure, when your Pa brought you up to Grandma Spragg’s o’ Saturdays! Well, I’m afraid there ain’t any taffy in it now; but there’s piles and piles of lovely new clippings you ain’t seen.’
‘My Papa?’ He paused, his hand among the strips of newspaper. ‘My Papa never saw my Grandma Spragg. He never went to America.’
‘Never went to America? Your Pa never –? Why, land alive!’ Mrs Heeny gasped, a blush empurpling her large warm face. ‘Why, Paul Marvell, don’t you remember your own father, you that bear his name?’ she exclaimed.
The boy blushed also, conscious that it must have been wrong to forget, and yet not seeing how he was to blame.
‘That one died a long long time ago, didn’t he? I was thinking of my French father,’ he explained.
‘Oh, mercy,’ ejaculated Mrs Heeny; and as if to cut the conversation short she stooped over, creaking like a ship, and thrust her plump strong hand into the bag.
‘Here, now, just you look at these clippings – I guess you’ll find a lot in them about your Ma. – Where do they come from? Why, out of the papers, of course,’ she added, in response to Paul’s inquiry. ‘You’d oughter start a scrap-book yourself – you’re plenty old enough. You could make a beauty just about your Ma, with her picture pasted in the front – and another about Mr Moffatt and his collections. There’s one I cut out the other day that says he’s the greatest collector in America.’
Paul listened, fascinated. He had the feeling that Mrs Heeny’s clippings, aside from their great intrinsic interest, might furnish him the clue to many things he didn’t understand, and that nobody had ever had time to explain to him. His mother’s marriages, for instance: he was sure there was a great deal to find out about them. But she always said: ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I come back’ – and when she came back it was invariably to rush off somewhere else. So he had remained without a key to her transitions, and had had to take for granted numberless things that seemed to have no parallel in the experience of the other boys he knew.
‘Here – here it is,’ said Mrs Heeny, adjusting the big tortoise-shell spectacles she had taken to wearing, and reading out in a slow chant that seemed to Paul to come out of some lost remoteness of his infancy.
‘ “It is reported in London that the price paid by Mr Elmer Moffatt for the celebrated Grey Boy is the largest sum ever given for a Vandyck. Since Mr Moffatt began to buy extensively it is estimated in art circles that values have gone up at least seventy-five per cent.” ’
But the price of the Grey Boy did not interest Paul, and he said a little impatiently: ‘I’d rather hear about my mother.’
‘To be sure you would! You wait now.’ Mrs Heeny made another dive, and again began to spread her clippings on her lap like cards on a big black table.
‘Here’s one about her last portrait – no, here’s a better one about her pearl necklace, the one Mr Moffatt gave her last Christmas. “The necklace, which was formerly the property of an Austrian Archduchess, is composed of five hundred perfectly matched pearls that took thirty years to collect. It is estimated among dealers in precious stones that since Mr Moffatt began to buy the price of pearls has gone up over fifty per cent.” ’
Even this did not fix Paul’s attention. He wanted to hear about his mother and Mr Moffatt, and not about their things; and he didn’t quite know how to frame his question. But Mrs Heeny looked kindly at him and he tried. ‘Why is mother married to Mr Moffatt now?’
‘Why, you must know that much, Paul.’ Mrs Heeny again looked warm and worried. ‘She’s married to him because she got a divorce – that’s why.’ And suddenly she had another inspiration. ‘Didn’t she ever send you over any of those splendid clippings that came out the time they were married? Why, I declare, that’s a shame; but I must have some of ’em right here.’
She dived again, shuffled, sorted, and pulled out a long discoloured strip. ‘I’ve carried this round with me ever since, and so many’s wanted to read it, it’s all torn.’ She smoothed out the paper and began:
‘ “Divorce and remarriage of Mrs Undine Spragg-de Chelles. American Marquise renounces ancient French title to wed Railroad King. Quick work untying and tying. Boy and girl romance renewed.
‘ “Reno, November 23rd. The Marquise de Chelles, of Paris, France, formerly Mrs Undine Spragg Marvell, of Apex City and New York, got a decree of divorce at a special session of the Court last night, and was remarried fifteen minutes later to Mr Elmer Moffatt, the billionaire Railroad King, who was the Marquise’s first husband.
‘ “No case has ever been railroaded through the divorce courts of this State at a higher rate of speed: as Mr Moffatt said last night, before he and his bride jumped onto their east-bound special, every record has been broken. It was just six months ago yesterday that the present Mrs Moffatt came to Reno to look for her divorce. Owing to a delayed train, her counsel was late yesterday in receiving some necessary papers, and it was feared the decision would have to be held over; but Judge Toomey, who is a personal friend of Mr Moffatt’s, held a night session and rushed it through so that the happy couple could have the knot tied and board their special in time for Mrs Moffatt to spend Thanksgiving in New York with her aged parents. The hearing began at seven ten p.m. and at eight o’clock the bridal couple were steaming o
ut of the station.
‘ “At the trial Mrs Spragg-de Chelles, who wore copper velvet and sables, gave evidence as to the brutality of her French husband, but she had to talk fast as time pressed, and Judge Toomey wrote the entry at top speed, and then jumped into a motor with the happy couple and drove to the Justice of the Peace, where he acted as best man to the bridegroom. The latter is said to be one of the six wealthiest men east of the Rockies. His gifts to the bride are a necklace and tiara of pigeon-blood rubies belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette, a million dollar cheque and a house in New York. The happy pair will pass the honeymoon in Mrs Moffatt’s new home, 5009 Fifth Avenue, which is an exact copy of the Pitti Palace, Florence. They plan to spend their springs in France.” ’
Mrs Heeny drew a long breath, folded the paper and took off her spectacles. ‘There,’ she said, with a benignant smile and a tap on Paul’s cheek, ‘now you see how it all happened …’
Paul was not sure he did; but he made no answer. His mind was too full of troubled thoughts. In the dazzling description of his mother’s latest nuptials one fact alone stood out for him – that she had said things that weren’t true of his French father. Something he had half-guessed in her, and averted his frightened thoughts from, took his little heart in an iron grasp. She said things that weren’t true … That was what he had always feared to find out … She had got up and said before a lot of people things that were awfully false about his dear French father …
The sound of a motor turning in at the gates made Mrs Heeny exclaim ‘Here they are!’ and a moment later Paul heard his mother calling to him. He got up reluctantly, and stood wavering till he felt Mrs Heeny’s astonished eye upon him. Then he heard Mr Moffatt’s jovial shout of ‘Paul Marvell, ahoy there!’ and roused himself to run downstairs.
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