As he reached the landing he saw that the ballroom doors were open and all the lustres lit. His mother and Mr. Moffatt stood in the middle of the shining floor, looking up at the walls; and Paul’s heart gave a wondering bound, for there, set in great gilt panels, were the tapestries that had always hung in the gallery at Saint Desert.
“Well, Senator, it feels good to shake your fist again!” his stepfather said, taking him in a friendly grasp; and his mother, who looked handsomer and taller and more splendidly dressed than ever, exclaimed: “Mercy! how they’ve cut his hair!” before she bent to kiss him.
“Oh, mother, mother!” he burst out, feeling, between his mother’s face and the others, hardly less familiar, on the walls, that he was really at home again, and not in a strange house.
“Gracious, how you squeeze!” she protested, loosening his arms. “But you look splendidly—and how you’ve grown!” She turned away from him and began to inspect the tapestries critically. “Somehow they look smaller here,” she said with a tinge of disappointment.
Mr. Moffatt gave a slight laugh and walked slowly down the room, as if to study its effect. As he turned back his wife said: “I didn’t think you’d ever get them.” He laughed again, more complacently. “Well, I don’t know as I ever should have, if General Arlington hadn’t happened to bust up.”
They both smiled, and Paul, seeing his mother’s softened face, stole his hand in hers and began: “Mother, I took a prize in composition—”
“Did you? You must tell me about it tomorrow. No, I really must rush off now and dress—I haven’t even placed the dinner-cards.” She freed her hand, and as she turned to go Paul heard Mr. Moffatt say: “Can’t you ever give him a minute’s time, Undine?”
She made no answer, but sailed through the door with her head high, as she did when anything annoyed her; and Paul and his stepfather stood alone in the illuminated ballroom.
Mr. Moffatt smiled good-naturedly at the little boy and then turned back to the contemplation of the hangings.
“I guess you know where those come from, don’t you?” he asked in a tone of satisfaction.
“Oh, yes,” Paul answered eagerly, with a hope he dared not utter that, since the tapestries were there, his French father might be coming too.
“You’re a smart boy to remember them. I don’t suppose you ever thought you’d see them here?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul, embarrassed.
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t have if their owner hadn’t been in a pretty tight place. It was like drawing teeth for him to let them go.”
Paul flushed up, and again the iron grasp was on his heart. He hadn’t, hitherto, actually disliked Mr. Moffatt, who was always in a good humour, and seemed less busy and absent-minded than his mother; but at that instant he felt a rage of hate for him. He turned away and burst into tears.
“Why, hullo, old chap—why, what’s up?” Mr. Moffatt was on his knees beside the boy, and the arms embracing him were firm and friendly. But Paul, for the life of him, couldn’t answer: he could only sob and sob as the great surges of loneliness broke over him.
“Is it because your mother hadn’t time for you? Well, she’s like that, you know; and you and I have got to lump it,” Mr. Moffatt continued, getting to his feet. He stood looking down at the boy with a queer smile. “If we two chaps stick together it won’t be so bad—we can keep each other warm, don’t you see? I like you first rate, you know; when you’re big enough I mean to put you in my business. And it looks as if one of these days you’d be the richest boy in America….”
The lamps were lit, the vases full of flowers, the footmen assembled on the landing and in the vestibule below, when Undine descended to the drawing-room. As she passed the ballroom door she glanced in approvingly at the tapestries. They really looked better than she had been willing to admit: they made her ballroom the handsomest in Paris. But something had put her out on the way up from Deauville, and the simplest way of easing her nerves had been to affect indifference to the tapestries. Now she had quite recovered her good humour, and as she glanced down the list of guests she was awaiting she said to herself, with a sigh of satisfaction, that she was glad she had put on her rubies.
For the first time since her marriage to Moffatt she was about to receive in her house the people she most wished to see there. The beginnings had been a little difficult; their first attempt in New York was so unpromising that she feared they might not be able to live down the sensational details of their reunion, and had insisted on her husband’s taking her back to Paris. But her apprehensions were unfounded. It was only necessary to give people the time to pretend they had forgotten; and already they were all pretending beautifully. The French world had of course held out longest; it had strongholds she might never capture. But already seceders were beginning to show themselves, and her dinner-list that evening was graced with the names of an authentic Duke and a not too-damaged Countess. In addition, of course, she had the Shallums, the Chauncey Ellings, May Beringer, Dicky Bowles, Walsingham Popple, and the rest of the New York frequenters of the Nouveau Luxe; she had even, at the last minute, had the amusement of adding Peter Van Degen to their number. In the evening there were to be Spanish dancing and Russian singing; and Dicky Bowles had promised her a Grand Duke for her next dinner, if she could secure the new tenor who always refused to sing in private houses.
Even now, however, she was not always happy. She had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them. And there had been moments lately when she had had to confess to herself that Moffatt did not fit into the picture. At first she had been dazzled by his success and subdued by his authority. He had given her all she had ever wished for, and more than she had ever dreamed of having: he had made up to her for all her failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors—who were gradually becoming merged in her memory—would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise in such and such a case. And the comparison was almost always to Moffatt’s disadvantage.
This evening, however, she thought of him indulgently. She was pleased with his clever stroke in capturing the Saint Desert tapestries, which General Arlington’s sudden bankruptcy, and a fresh gambling scandal of Hubert’s, had compelled their owner to part with. She knew that Raymond de Chelles had told the dealers he would sell his tapestries to anyone but Mr. Elmer Moffatt, or a buyer acting for him; and it amused her to think that, thanks to Elmer’s astuteness, they were under her roof after all, and that Raymond and all his clan were by this time aware of it. These facts disposed her favourably toward her husband, and deepened the sense of well-being with which—according to her invariable habit—she walked up to the mirror above the mantelpiece and studied the image it reflected.
She was still lost in this pleasing contemplation when her husband entered, looking stouter and redder than ever, in evening clothes that were a little too tight. His shirt front was as glossy as his baldness, and in his buttonhole he wore the red ribbon bestowed on him for waiving his claim to a Velasquez that was wanted for the Louvre. He carried a newspaper in his hand, and stood looking about the room with a complacent eye.
“Well, I guess this is all right,” he said, and she answered briefly: “Don’t forget you’re to take down Madame de Follerive; and for goodness’ sake don’t call her ‘Countess.’”