Read Online The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton - Free Book Online

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, and strengthening her position, as she thought, by an easy allusion to her acquaintance with Mrs Van Degen. But at the word her companion’s eye clouded, and a shade of constraint dimmed his enterprising smile.
    ‘My wife –? Oh,
she
doesn’t go to restaurants – she moves on too high a plane. But we’ll get old Popp, and Mrs –, Mrs –, what’d you say your fat friend’s name was? Just a select little crowd of four – and some kind of a cheerful show afterward … Jove! There’s the curtain, and I must skip.’
    As the door closed on him Undine’s cheeks burned with resentment. If Mrs Van Degen didn’t go to restaurants, why had he supposed that
she
would? And to have to drag Mabel in her wake! The leaden sense of failure overcame her again. Here was the evening nearly over, and what had it led to? Looking up from the stalls, she had fancied that to sit in a box was to be in society – now she saw it might but emphasize one’s exclusion. And she was burdened with the box for the rest of the season! It was really stupid of her father to have exceeded his instructions: why had he not done as she told him? … Undine felt helpless and tired … hateful memories of Apex crowded back on her. Was it going to be as dreary here as there?
    She felt Lipscomb’s loud whisper in her back: ‘Say, you girls, I guess I’ll cut this and come back for you when the show busts up.’ They heard him shuffle out of the box, and Mabel settled back to undisturbed enjoyment of the stage.
    When the last entr’acte began Undine stood up, resolved to stay no longer. Mabel, lost in the study of the audience, had not noticed her movement, and as she passed alone into the back of the box the door opened and Ralph Marvell came in.
    Undine stood with one arm listlessly raised to detach her cloak from the wall. Her attitude showed the long slimness of her figure and the fresh curve of the throat below her bent-back head. Her face was paler and softer than usual, and the eyes she rested on Marvell’s face looked deep and starry under their fixed brows.
    ‘Oh – you’re not going?’ he exclaimed.
    ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she answered simply.
    ‘I waited till now on purpose to dodge your other visitors.’
    She laughed with pleasure. ‘Oh, we hadn’t so many!’
    Some intuition had already told her that frankness was the tone to take with him. They sat down together on the red damask sofa, against the hanging cloaks. As Undine leaned back her hair caught in the spangles of the wrap behind her, and she had to sit motionless while the young man freed the captive mesh. Then they settled themselves again, laughing a little at the incident.
    A glance had made the situation clear to Mrs Lipscomb, and they saw her return to her rapt inspection of the boxes. In their mirror-hung recess the light was subdued to a rosy dimness and the hum of the audience came to them through half-drawn silken curtains. Undine noticed the delicacy and finish of her companion’s features as his head detached itself against the red silk walls. The hand with