The Custom of the Country

by Edith Wharton

  Van Degen had got to his feet again and was standing accusingly before her; but as she spoke the blood rose to his neck and ears.

  ‘What difference does that make?’

  ‘It might make a good deal. I see,’ she added, ‘how careful I ought to be about going round with you.’

  ‘With me?’ His face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh. He adored Undine’s ‘smartness’, which was of precisely the same quality as his own. ‘Oh, that’s another thing: you can always trust me to look after you!’

  ‘With your reputation? Much obliged!’

  Van Degen smiled. She knew he liked such allusions, and was pleased that she thought him compromising.

  ‘Oh, I’m as good as gold. You’ve made a new man of me!’

  ‘Have I?’ She considered him in silence for a moment. ‘I wonder what you’ve done to me but make a discontented woman of me – discontented with everything I had before I knew you?’

  The change of tone was thrilling to him. He forgot her mockery, forgot his rival, and sat down at her side, almost in possession of her waist. ‘Look here,’ he asked, ‘where are we going to dine tonight?’

  His nearness was not agreeable to Undine, but she liked his free way, his contempt for verbal preliminaries. Ralph’s reserves and delicacies, his perpetual desire that he and she should be attuned to the same key, had always vaguely bored her; whereas in Van Degen’s manner she felt a hint of the masterful way that had once subdued her in Elmer Moffatt. But she drew back, releasing herself.

  ‘Tonight? I can’t – I’m engaged.’

  ‘I know you are: engaged to me! You promised last Sunday you’d dine with me out of town tonight.’

  ‘How can I remember what I promised last Sunday? Besides, after what you’ve said, I see I oughtn’t to.’

  ‘What do you mean by what I’ve said?’

  ‘Why, that I’m imprudent; that people are talking –’

  He stood up with an angry laugh. ‘I suppose you’re dining with Chelles. Is that it?’

  ‘Is that the way you cross-examine Clare?’

  ‘I don’t care a hang what Clare does – I never have.’

  ‘That must – in some ways – be rather convenient for her!’

  ‘Glad you think so. Are you dining with him?’

  She slowly turned the wedding-ring upon her finger. ‘You know I’m not married to you – yet!’

  He took a random turn through the room; then he came back and planted himself wrathfully before her. ‘Can’t you see the man’s doing his best to make a fool of you?’

  She kept her amused gaze on him. ‘Does it strike you that it’s such an awfully easy thing to do?’

  The edges of his ears were purple. ‘I sometimes think it’s easier for these damned little dancing-masters than for one of us.’

  Undine was still smiling up at him; but suddenly her face grew grave. ‘What does it matter what I do or don’t do, when Ralph has ordered me home next week?’

  ‘Ordered you home?’ His face changed. ‘Well, you’re not going, are you?’

  ‘What’s the use of saying such things?’ She gave a disenchanted laugh. ‘I’m a poor man’s wife, and can’t do the things my friends do. It’s not because Ralph loves me that he wants me back – it’s simply because he can’t afford to let me stay!’

  Van Degen’s perturbation was increasing. ‘But you mustn’t go – it’s preposterous! Why should a woman like you be sacrificed when a lot of dreary frumps have everything they want? Besides, you can’t chuck me like this! Why, we’re all to motor down to Aix next week, and perhaps take a dip into Italy –’

  ‘Oh, Italy –’ she murmured on a note of yearning.

  He was closer now, and had her hands. ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you? As far as Venice, anyhow; and then in August there’s Trouville – you’ve never tried Trouville? There’s an awfully jolly crowd there – and the motoring’s ripping in Normandy. If you say so I’ll take a villa there instead of going back to Newport. And I’ll put the Sorceress in commission, and you can make up parties and run off whenever you like, to Scotland or Norway –’ He hung above her. ‘Don’t dine with Chelles tonight! Come with me, and we’ll talk things over; and next week we’ll run down to Trouville to choose the villa.’

  Undine’s heart was beating fast, but she felt within her a strange lucid force of resistance. Because of that sense of security she left her hands in Van Degen’s. So Mr Spragg might have felt at the tensest hour of the Pure Water Move. She leaned forward, holding her suitor off by the pressure of her bent-back palms.

  ‘Kiss me good-bye, Peter; I sail on Wednesday,’ she said.

  It was the first time she had permitted him a kiss, and as his face darkened down on her she felt a moment’s recoil. But her physical reactions were never very acute: she always vaguely wondered why people made ‘such a fuss’, were so violently for or against such demonstrations. A cool spirit within her seemed to watch over and regulate her sensations, and leave her capable of measuring the intensity of those she provoked.

  She turned to look at the clock. ‘You must go now – I shall be hours late for dinner.’

  ‘Go – after that?’ He held her fast. ‘Kiss me again,’ he commanded.

  It was wonderful how cool she felt – how easily she could slip out of his grasp! Any man could be managed like a child if he were really in love with one …

  ‘Don’t be a goose, Peter; do you suppose I’d have kissed you if –’

  ‘If what – what – what?’ he mimicked her ecstatically, not listening.

  She saw that if she wished to make him hear her she must put more distance between them, and she rose and moved across the room. From the fireplace she turned to add – ‘if we hadn’t been saying good-bye?’

  ‘Good-bye – now? What’s the use of talking like that?’ He jumped up and followed her. ‘Look here, Undine – I’ll do anything on earth you want; only don’t talk of going! If you’ll only stay I’ll make it all as straight and square as you please. I’ll get Bertha Shallum to stop over with you for the summer; I’ll take a house at Trouville and make my wife come out there. Hang it, she shall, if you say so! Only be a little good to me!’

  Still she stood before him without speaking, aware that her implacable brows and narrowed lips would hold him off as long as she chose.

  ‘What’s the matter, Undine? Why don’t you answer? You know you can’t go back to that deadly dry-rot!’

  She swept about on him with indignant eyes. ‘I can’t go on with my present life either. It’s hateful – as hateful as the other. If I don’t go home I’ve got to decide on something different.’

  ‘What do you mean by “something different”?’ She was silent, and he insisted: ‘Are you really thinking of marrying Chelles?’

  She stared as if he had surprised a secret. ‘I’ll never forgive you if you speak of it –’

  ‘Good Lord! Good Lord!’ he groaned.

  She remained motionless, with lowered lids, and he went up to her and pulled her about so that she faced him. ‘Undine, honour bright – do you think he’ll marry you?’

  She looked at him with a sudden hardness in her eyes. ‘I really can’t discuss such things with you.’

  ‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake don’t take that tone! I don’t half know what I’m saying … but you mustn’t throw yourself away a second time. I’ll do anything you want – I swear I will!’

  A knock on the door sent them apart, and a servant entered with a telegram.

  Undine turned away to the window with the narrow blue slip. She was glad of the interruption: the sense of what she had at stake made her want to pause a moment and to draw breath.

  The message was a long cable signed with Laura Fairford’s name. It told her that Ralph had been taken suddenly ill with pneumonia, that his condition was serious and that the doctors advised his wife’s immediate return.

  Undine had to read the words over two or three times to get them into her crow
ded mind; and even after she had done so she needed more time to see their bearing on her own situation. If the message had concerned her boy her brain would have acted more quickly. She had never troubled herself over the possibility of Paul’s falling ill in her absence, but she understood now that if the cable had been about him she would have rushed to the earliest steamer. With Ralph it was different. Ralph was always perfectly well – she could not picture him as being suddenly at death’s door and in need of her. Probably his mother and sister had had a panic: they were always full of sentimental terrors. The next moment an angry suspicion flashed across her: what if the cable were a device of the Marvell women to bring her back? Perhaps it had been sent with Ralph’s connivance! No doubt Bowen had written home about her – Washington Square had received some monstrous report of her doings! … Yes, the cable was clearly an echo of Laura’s letter – mother and daughter had cooked it up to spoil her pleasure. Once the thought had occurred to her it struck root in her mind and began to throw out giant branches.

  Van Degen followed her to the window, his face still flushed and working. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, as she continued to stare silently at the telegram.

  She crumpled the strip of paper in her hand. If only she had been alone, had had a chance to think out her answers!

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he repeated.

  ‘Oh, nothing – nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? When you’re as white as a sheet?’

  ‘Am I?’ She gave a slight laugh. ‘It’s only a cable from home.’

  ‘Ralph?’

  She hesitated. ‘No. Laura.’

  ‘What the devil is she cabling you about?’

  ‘She says Ralph wants me.’

  ‘Now – at once?’

  ‘At once.’

  Van Degen laughed impatiently. ‘Why don’t he tell you so himself? What business is it of Laura Fairford’s?’

  Undine’s gesture implied a ‘What indeed?’

  ‘Is that all she says?’

  She hesitated again. ‘Yes – that’s all.’ As she spoke she tossed the telegram into the basket beneath the writing-table. ‘As if I didn’t have to go anyhow!’ she exclaimed.

  With an aching clearness of vision she saw what lay before her – the hurried preparations, the long tedious voyage on a steamer chosen at haphazard, the arrival in the deadly July heat, and the relapse into all the insufferable daily fag of nursery and kitchen – she saw it and her imagination recoiled.

  Van Degen’s eyes still hung on her: she guessed that he was intensely engaged in trying to follow what was passing through her mind. Presently he came up to her again, no longer perilous and importunate, but awkwardly tender, ridiculously moved by her distress.

  ‘Undine, listen: won’t you let me make it all right for you to stay?’

  Her heart began to beat more quickly, and she let him come close, meeting his eyes coldly but without anger.

  ‘What do you call “making it all right”? Paying my bills? Don’t you see that’s what I hate, and will never let myself be dragged into again?’ She laid her hand on his arm. ‘The time has come when I must be sensible, Peter; that’s why we must say good-bye.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me you’re going back to Ralph?’

  She paused a moment; then she murmured between her lips: ‘I shall never go back to him.’

  ‘Then you do mean to marry Chelles?’

  ‘I’ve told you we must say good-bye. I’ve got to look out for my future.’

  He stood before her, irresolute, tormented, his lazy mind and impatient senses labouring with a problem beyond their power. ‘Ain’t I here to look out for your future?’ he said at last.

  ‘No one shall look out for it in the way you mean. I’d rather never see you again –’

  He gave her a baffled stare. ‘Oh, damn it – if that’s the way you feel!’ He turned and flung away toward the door.

  She stood motionless where he left her, every nerve strung to the highest pitch of watchfulness. As she stood there, the scene about her stamped itself on her brain with the sharpest precision. She was aware of the fading of the summer light outside, of the movements of her maid, who was laying out her dinner-dress in the room beyond, and of the fact that the tea-roses on her writing-table, shaken by Van Degen’s tread, were dropping their petals over Ralph’s letter, and down on the crumpled telegram which she could see through the trellised sides of the scrap-basket.

  In another moment Van Degen would be gone. Worse yet, while he wavered in the doorway the Shallums and Chelles, after vainly awaiting her, might dash back from the Bois and break in on them. These and other chances rose before her, urging her to action; but she held fast, immovable, unwavering, a proud yet plaintive image of renunciation.

  Van Degen’s hand was on the door. He half-opened it and then turned back.

  ‘That’s all you’ve got to say, then?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  He jerked the door open and passed out. She saw him stop in the ante-room to pick up his hat and stick, his heavy figure silhouetted against the glare of the wall-lights. A ray of the same light fell on her where she stood in the unlit sitting-room, and her reflection bloomed out like a flower from the mirror that faced her. She looked at the image and waited.

  Van Degen put his hat on his head and slowly opened the door into the outer hall. Then he turned abruptly, his bulk eclipsing her reflection as he plunged back into the room and came up to her.

  ‘I’ll do anything you say, Undine; I’ll do anything in God’s world to keep you!’

  She turned her eyes from the mirror and let them rest on his face, which looked as small and withered as an old man’s, with a lower lip that trembled queerly …

  BOOK III

  XXI

  THE SPRING in New York proceeded through more than its usual extremes of temperature to the threshold of a sultry June.

  Ralph Marvell, wearily bent to his task, felt the fantastic humours of the weather as only one more incoherence in the general chaos of his case. It was strange enough, after four years of marriage, to find himself again in his old brown room in Washington Square. It was hardly there that he had expected Pegasus to land him; and, like a man returning to the scenes of his childhood, he found everything on a much smaller scale than he had imagined. Had the Dagonet boundaries really narrowed, or had the breach in the walls of his own life let in a wider vision?

  Certainly there had come to be other differences between his present and his former self than that embodied in the presence of his little boy in the next room. Paul, in fact, was now the chief link between Ralph and his past. Concerning his son he still felt and thought, in a general way, in the terms of the Dagonet tradition; he still wanted to implant in Paul some of the reserves and discriminations which divided that tradition from the new spirit of limitless concession. But for himself it was different. Since his transaction with Moffatt he had had the sense of living under a new dispensation. He was not sure that it was any worse than the other; but then he was no longer very sure about anything. Perhaps this growing indifference was merely the reaction from a long nervous strain: that his mother and sister thought it so was shown by the way in which they mutely watched and hovered. Their discretion was like the hushed tread about a sick-bed. They permitted themselves no criticism of Undine; he was asked no awkward questions, subjected to no ill-timed sympathy. They simply took him back, on his own terms, into the life he had left them to; and their silence had none of those subtle implications of disapproval which may be so much more wounding than speech.

  For a while he received a weekly letter from Undine. Vague and disappointing though they were, these missives helped him through the days; but he looked forward to them rather as a pretext for replies than for their actual contents. Undine was never at a loss for the spoken word: Ralph had often wondered at her verbal range and her fluent use of terms outside the current vocabulary. She had certainly not picked these up in books, since she never op
ened one: they seemed rather like some odd transmission of her preaching grandparent’s oratory. But in her brief and colourless letters she repeated the same bald statements in the same few terms. She was well, she had been ‘round’ with Bertha Shallum, she had dined with the Jim Driscolls or May Beringer or Dicky Bowles, the weather was too lovely or too awful; such was the gist of her news. On the last page she hoped Paul was well and sent him a kiss; but she never made a suggestion concerning his care or asked a question about his pursuits. One could only infer that, knowing in what good hands he was, she judged such solicitude superfluous; and it was thus that Ralph put the matter to his mother.

  ‘Of course she’s not worrying about the boy – why should she? She knows that with you and Laura he’s as happy as a king.’

  To which Mrs Marvell would answer gravely: ‘When you write, be sure to say I shan’t put on his thinner flannels as long as this east wind lasts.’

  As for her husband’s welfare, Undine’s sole allusion to it consisted in the invariable expression of the hope that he was getting along all right: the phrase was always the same, and Ralph learned to know just how far down the third page to look for it. In a postscript she sometimes asked him to tell her mother about a new way of doing hair or cutting a skirt; and this was usually the most eloquent passage of the letter.

  What satisfaction he extracted from these communications he would have found it hard to say; yet when they did not come he missed them hardly less than if they had given him all he craved. Sometimes the mere act of holding the blue or mauve sheet and breathing its scent was like holding his wife’s hand and being enveloped in her fresh young fragrance: the sentimental disappointment vanished in the penetrating physical sensation. In other moods it was enough to trace the letters of the first line and the last for the desert of perfunctory phrases between the two to vanish, leaving him only the vision of their interlaced names, as of a mystic bond which her own hand had tied. Or else he saw her, closely, palpably before him, as she sat at her writing-table, frowning and a little flushed, her bent nape showing the light on her hair, her short lip pulled up by the effort of composition; and this picture had the violent reality of dream-images on the verge of waking. At other times, as he read her letter, he felt simply that at least in the moment of writing it she had been with him. But in one of the last she had said (to excuse a bad blot and an incoherent sentence): ‘Everybody’s talking to me at once, and I don’t know what I’m writing.’ That letter he had thrown into the fire …