Her constitutional restlessness lapsed into an apathy like Mrs. Spragg’s, and the least demand on her activity irritated her. But she was beset by endless annoyances: bickerings with discontented maids, the difficulty of finding a tutor for Paul, and the problem of keeping him amused and occupied without having him too much on her hands. A great liking had sprung up between Raymond and the little boy, and during the summer Paul was perpetually at his stepfather’s side in the stables and the park. But with the coming of winter Raymond was oftener away, and Paul developed a persistent cold that kept him frequently indoors. The confinement made him fretful and exacting, and the old Marquise ascribed the change in his behaviour to the deplorable influence of his tutor, a “laic” recommended by one of Raymond’s old professors. Raymond himself would have preferred an abbe: it was in the tradition of the house, and though Paul was not of the house it seemed fitting that he should conform to its ways. Moreover, when the married sisters came to stay they objected to having their children exposed to the tutor’s influence, and even implied that Paul’s society might be contaminating. But Undine, though she had so readily embraced her husband’s faith, stubbornly resisted the suggestion that she should hand over her son to the Church. The tutor therefore remained; but the friction caused by his presence was so irritating to Undine that she began to consider the alternative of sending Paul to school. He was still small and tender for the experiment; but she persuaded herself that what he needed was “hardening,” and having heard of a school where fashionable infancy was subjected to this process, she entered into correspondence with the master. His first letter convinced her that his establishment was just the place for Paul; but the second contained the price-list, and after comparing it with the tutor’s keep and salary she wrote to say that she feared her little boy was too young to be sent away from home.
Her husband, for some time past, had ceased to make any comment on her expenditure. She knew he thought her too extravagant, and felt sure he was minutely aware of what she spent; for Saint Desert projected on economic details a light as different as might be from the haze that veiled them in West End Avenue. She therefore concluded that Raymond’s silence was intentional, and ascribed it to his having shortcomings of his own to conceal. The Princess Estradina’s pleasantry had reached its mark. Undine did not believe that her husband was seriously in love with another woman—she could not conceive that any one could tire of her of whom she had not first tired—but she was humiliated by his indifference, and it was easier to ascribe it to the arts of a rival than to any deficiency in herself. It exasperated her to think that he might have consolations for the outward monotony of his life, and she resolved that when they returned to Paris he should see that she was not without similar opportunities.
March, meanwhile, was verging on April, and still he did not speak of leaving. Undine had learned that he expected to have such decisions left to him, and she hid her impatience lest her showing it should incline him to delay. But one day, as she sat at tea in the gallery, he came in in his riding-clothes and said: “I’ve been over to the other side of the mountain. The February rains have weakened the dam of the Alette, and the vineyards will be in danger if we don’t rebuild at once.”
She suppressed a yawn, thinking, as she did so, how dull he always looked when he talked of agriculture. It made him seem years older, and she reflected with a shiver that listening to him probably gave her the same look.
He went on, as she handed him his tea: “I’m sorry it should happen just now. I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to give up your spring in Paris.” “Oh, no—no!” she broke out. A throng of half-subdued grievances choked in her: she wanted to burst into sobs like a child.
“I know it’s a disappointment. But our expenses have been unusually heavy this year.”
“It seems to me they always are. I don’t see why we should give up Paris because you’ve got to make repairs to a dam. Isn’t Hubert ever going to pay back that money?”
He looked at her with a mild surprise. “But surely you understood at the time that it won’t be possible till his wife inherits?”
“Till General Arlington dies, you mean? He doesn’t look much older than you!”
“You may remember that I showed you Hubert’s note. He has paid the interest quite regularly.”
“That’s kind of him!” She stood up, flaming with rebellion. “You can do as you please; but I mean to go to Paris.”
“My mother is not going. I didn’t intend to open our apartment.”
“I understand. But I shall open it—that’s all!”
He had risen too, and she saw his face whiten. “I prefer that you shouldn’t go without me.”
“Then I shall go and stay at the Nouveau Luxe with my American friends.”
“That never!”
“Why not?”
“I consider it unsuitable.”
“Your considering it so doesn’t prove it.”
They stood facing each other, quivering with an equal anger; then he controlled himself and said in a more conciliatory tone: “You never seem to see that there are necessities—”
“Oh, neither do you—that’s the trouble. You can’t keep me shut up here all my life, and interfere with everything I want to do, just by saying it’s unsuitable.”
“I’ve never interfered with your spending your money as you please.”
It was her turn to stare, sincerely wondering. “Mercy, I should hope not, when you’ve always grudged me every penny of yours!”
“You know it’s not because I grudge it. I would gladly take you to Paris if I had the money.”
“You can always find the money to spend on this place. Why don’t you sell it if it’s so fearfully expensive?”
“Sell it? Sell Saint Desert?”
The suggestion seemed to strike him as something monstrously, almost fiendishly significant: as if her random word had at last thrust into his hand the clue to their whole unhappy difference. Without understanding this, she guessed it from the change in his face: it was as if a deadly solvent had suddenly decomposed its familiar lines.
“Well, why not?” His horror spurred her on. “You might sell some of the things in it anyhow. In America we’re not ashamed to sell what we can’t afford to keep.” Her eyes fell on the storied hangings at his back. “Why, there’s a fortune in this one room: you could get anything you chose for those tapestries. And you stand here and tell me you’re a pauper!”
His glance followed hers to the tapestries, and then returned to her face. “Ah, you don’t understand,” he said.
“I understand that you care for all this old stuff more than you do for me, and that you’d rather see me unhappy and miserable than touch one of your great-grandfather’s armchairs.”
The colour came slowly back to his face, but it hardened into lines she had never seen. He looked at her as though the place where she stood were empty. “You don’t understand,” he said again.
XLI
The incident left Undine with the baffled feeling of not being able to count on any of her old weapons of aggression. In all her struggles for authority her sense of the rightfulness of her cause had been measured by her power of making people do as she pleased. Raymond’s firmness shook her faith in her own claims, and a blind desire to wound and destroy replaced her usual business-like intentness on gaining her end. But her ironies were as ineffectual as her arguments, and his imperviousness was the more exasperating because she divined that some of the things she said would have hurt him if any one else had said them: it was the fact of their coming from her that made them innocuous. Even when, at the close of their talk, she had burst out: “If you grudge me everything I care about we’d better separate,” he had merely answered with a shrug: “It’s one of the things we don’t do—” and the answer had been like the slamming of an iron door in her face.