"Undine Spragg--how can you?" her mother wailed1, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note which a languid "bell-boy" had just brought in.
But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while Miss Spragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed2 herself of the missive and withdrew to the window to read it.
"I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother.
"Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride.
Mrs. Heeny, a stout4 professional-looking person in a waterproof5, her rusty6 veil thrown back, and a shabby alligator7 bag at her feet, followed the mother's glance with good-humoured approval.
"I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of her hostess's enquiry.
Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt8 armchairs in one of the private drawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian9. The Spragg rooms were known as one of the Looey suites10, and the drawing-room walls, above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung with salmon-pink damask and adorned11 with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette and the Princess de Lamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palm in a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. But for this ornament12, and a copy of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and Mrs. Spragg herself wore as complete an air of detachment as if she had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attire13 was fashionable enough to justify14 such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids and drooping15 mouth, suggested a partially-melted wax figure which had run to double-chin.
Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring16 look of solidity and reality. The planting of her firm black bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke17 an organized and self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a "society" manicure and masseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughter she filled the double role of manipulator and friend; and it was in the latter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for a moment to "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.
The young girl whose "form" had won Mrs. Heeny's professional commendation suddenly shifted its lovely lines as she turned back from the window.
"Here--you can have it after all," she said, crumpling18 the note and tossing it with a contemptuous gesture into her mother's lap.
"Why--isn't it from Mr. Popple?" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed unguardedly.
"No--it isn't. What made you think I thought it was?" snapped her daughter; but the next instant she added, with an outbreak of childish disappointment: "It's only from Mr. Marvell's sister--at least she says she's his sister."
Mrs. Spragg, with a puzzled frown, groped for her eye-glass among the jet fringes of her tightly-girded front.
Mrs. Heeny's small blue eyes shot out sparks of curiosity. "Marvell--what Marvell is that?"
The girl explained languidly: "A little fellow--I think Mr. Popple said his name was Ralph"; while her mother continued: "Undine met them both last night at that party downstairs. And from something Mr. Popple said to her about going to one of the new plays, she thought--"
"How on earth do you know what I thought?" Undine flashed back, her grey eyes darting19 warnings at her mother under their straight black brows.
"Why, you SAID you thought--" Mrs. Spragg began reproachfully; but Mrs. Heeny, heedless of their bickerings, was pursuing her own train of thought.
"What Popple? Claud Walsingham Popple--the portrait painter?"
"Yes--I suppose so. He said he'd like to paint me. Mabel Lipscomb introduced him. I don't care if I never see him again," the girl said, bathed in angry pink.
"Do you know him, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg enquired20.
"I should say I did. I manicured him for his first society portrait--a full-length of Mrs. Harmon B. Driscoll." Mrs. Heeny smiled indulgently on her hearers. "I know everybody. If they don't know ME they ain't in it, and Claud Walsingham Popple's in it. But he ain't nearly AS in it," she continued judicially21, "as Ralph Marvell--the little fellow, as you call him."
Undine Spragg, at the word, swept round on the speaker with one of the quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility22. She was always doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless feet.
"Why, do you know the Marvells? Are THEY stylish23?" she asked.
Mrs. Heeny gave the discouraged gesture of a pedagogue24 who has vainly striven to implant25 the rudiments26 of knowledge in a rebellious27 mind.
"Why, Undine Spragg, I've told you all about them time and again! His mother was a Dagonet. They live with old Urban Dagonet down in Washington Square."
To Mrs. Spragg this conveyed even less than to her daughter, "'way down there? Why do they live with somebody else? Haven't they got the means to have a home of their own?"
Undine's perceptions were more rapid, and she fixed28 her eyes searchingly on Mrs. Heeny.
"Do you mean to say Mr. Marvell's as swell29 as Mr. Popple?"
"As swell? Why, Claud Walsingham Popple ain't in the same class with him!"
The girl was upon her mother with a spring, snatching and smoothing out the crumpled30 note.
"Laura Fairford--is that the sister's name?"
"Mrs. Henley Fairford; yes. What does she write about?"
Undine's face lit up as if a shaft31 of sunset had struck it through the triple-curtained windows of the Stentorian.
"She says she wants me to dine with her next Wednesday. Isn't it queer? Why does SHE want me? She's never seen me!" Her tone implied that she had long been accustomed to being "wanted" by those who had.
Mrs. Heeny laughed. "HE saw you, didn't he?"
"Who? Ralph Marvell? Why, of course he did--Mr. Popple brought him to the party here last night."
"Well, there you are... When a young man in society wants to meet a girl again, he gets his sister to ask her."
Undine stared at her incredulously. "How queer! But they haven't all got sisters, have they? It must be fearfully poky for the ones that haven't."
"They get their mothers--or their married friends," said Mrs. Heeny omnisciently32.
"Married gentlemen?" enquired Mrs. Spragg, slightly shocked, but genuinely desirous of mastering her lesson.
"Mercy, no! Married ladies."
"But are there never any gentlemen present?" pursued Mrs. Spragg, feeling that if this were the case Undine would certainly be disappointed.
"Present where? At their dinners? Of course--Mrs. Fairford gives the smartest little dinners in town. There was an account of one she gave last week in this morning's TOWN TALK: I guess it's right here among my clippings." Mrs. Heeny, swooping33 down on her bag, drew from it a handful of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded to sort with a moistened forefinger34. "Here," she said, holding one of the slips at arm's length; and throwing back her head she read, in a slow unpunctuated chant: '"Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her natty35 little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs as Madame Olga Loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances after dinner'--that's the French for new dance steps," Mrs. Heeny concluded, thrusting the documents back into her bag.
"Do you know Mrs. Fairford too?" Undine asked eagerly; while Mrs. Spragg, impressed, but anxious for facts, pursued: "Does she reside on Fifth Avenue?"
"No, she has a little house in Thirty-eighth Street, down beyond Park Avenue."
The ladies' faces drooped36 again, and the masseuse went on promptly37: "But they're glad enough to have her in the big houses!--Why, yes, I know her," she said, addressing herself to Undine. "I mass'd her for a sprained38 ankle a couple of years ago. She's got a lovely manner, but NO conversation. Some of my patients converse39 exquisitely," Mrs. Heeny added with discrimination.
Undine was brooding over the note. "It IS written to mother--Mrs. Abner E. Spragg--I never saw anything so funny! 'Will you ALLOW your daughter to dine with me?' Allow! Is Mrs. Fairford peculiar40?"
"No--you are," said Mrs. Heeny bluntly. "Don't you know it's the thing in the best society to pretend that girls can't do anything without their mothers' permission? You just remember that. Undine. You mustn't accept invitations from gentlemen without you say you've got to ask your mother first."
"Mercy! But how'll mother know what to say?"
"Why, she'll say what you tell her to, of course. You'd better tell her you want to dine with Mrs. Fairford," Mrs. Heeny added humorously, as she gathered her waterproof together and stooped for her bag.
"Have I got to write the note, then?" Mrs. Spragg asked with rising agitation41.
Mrs. Heeny reflected. "Why, no. I guess Undine can write it as if it was from you. Mrs. Fairford don't know your writing."
This was an evident relief to Mrs. Spragg, and as Undine swept to her room with the note her mother sank back, murmuring plaintively42: "Oh, don't go yet, Mrs. Heeny. I haven't seen a human being all day, and I can't seem to find anything to say to that French maid."
Mrs. Heeny looked at her hostess with friendly compassion43. She was well aware that she was the only bright spot on Mrs. Spragg's horizon. Since the Spraggs, some two years previously44, had moved from Apex45 City to New York, they had made little progress in establishing relations with their new environment; and when, about four months earlier, Mrs. Spragg's doctor had called in Mrs. Heeny to minister professionally to his patient, he had done more for her spirit than for her body. Mrs. Heeny had had such "cases" before: she knew the rich helpless family, stranded46 in lonely splendour in a sumptuous47 West Side hotel, with a father compelled to seek a semblance48 of social life at the hotel bar, and a mother deprived of even this contact with her kind, and reduced to illness by boredom49 and inactivity. Poor Mrs. Spragg had done her own washing in her youth, but since her rising fortunes had made this occupation unsuitable she had sunk into the relative inertia50 which the ladies of Apex City regarded as one of the prerogatives51 of affluence52. At Apex, however, she had belonged to a social club, and, until they moved to the Mealey House, had been kept busy by the incessant53 struggle with domestic cares; whereas New York seemed to offer no field for any form of lady-like activity. She therefore took her exercise vicariously, with Mrs. Heeny's help; and Mrs. Heeny knew how to manipulate her imagination as well as her muscles. It was Mrs. Heeny who peopled the solitude54 of the long ghostly days with lively anecdotes55 of the Van Degens, the Driscolls, the Chauncey Ellings and the other social potentates56 whose least doings Mrs. Spragg and Undine had followed from afar in the Apex papers, and who had come to seem so much more remote since only the width of the Central Park divided mother and daughter from their Olympian portals.
Mrs. Spragg had no ambition for herself--she seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her child--but she was passionately57 resolved that Undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that Mrs. Heeny, who crossed those sacred thresholds so familiarly, might some day gain admission for Undine.
"Well--I'll stay a little mite58 longer if you want; and supposing I was to rub up your nails while we're talking? It'll be more sociable," the masseuse suggested, lifting her bag to the table and covering its shiny onyx surface with bottles and polishers.
Mrs. Spragg consentingly slipped the rings from her small mottled hands. It was soothing59 to feel herself in Mrs. Heeny's grasp, and though she knew the attention would cost her three dollars she was secure in the sense that Abner wouldn't mind. It had been clear to Mrs. Spragg, ever since their rather precipitate60 departure from Apex City, that Abner was resolved not to mind--resolved at any cost to "see through" the New York adventure. It seemed likely now that the cost would be considerable. They had lived in New York for two years without any social benefit to their daughter; and it was of course for that purpose that they had come. If, at the time, there had been other and more pressing reasons, they were such as Mrs. Spragg and her husband never touched on, even in the gilded61 privacy of their bedroom at the Stentorian; and so completely had silence closed in on the subject that to Mrs. Spragg it had become non-existent: she really believed that, as Abner put it, they had left Apex because Undine was too big for the place.
She seemed as yet--poor child!--too small for New York: actually imperceptible to its heedless multitudes; and her mother trembled for the day when her invisibility should be borne in on her. Mrs. Spragg did not mind the long delay for herself--she had stores of lymphatic patience. But she had noticed lately that Undine was beginning to be nervous, and there was nothing that Undine's parents dreaded62 so much as her being nervous. Mrs. Spragg's maternal63 apprehensions64 unconsciously escaped in her next words.
"I do hope she'll quiet down now," she murmured, feeling quieter herself as her hand sank into Mrs. Heeny's roomy palm.
"Who's that? Undine?"
"Yes. She seemed so set on that Mr. Popple's coming round. From the way he acted last night she thought he'd be sure to come round this morning. She's so lonesome, poor child--I can't say as I blame her."
"Oh, he'll come round. Things don't happen as quick as that in New York," said Mrs. Heeny, driving her nail-polisher cheeringly.
Mrs. Spragg sighed again. "They don't appear to. They say New Yorkers are always in a hurry; but I can't say as they've hurried much to make our acquaintance."
Mrs. Heeny drew back to study the effect of her work. "You wait, Mrs. Spragg, you wait. If you go too fast you sometimes have to rip out the whole seam."
"Oh, that's so--that's SO!" Mrs. Spragg exclaimed, with a tragic66 emphasis that made the masseuse glance up at her.
"Of course it's so. And it's more so in New York than anywhere. The wrong set's like fly-paper: once you're in it you can pull and pull, but you'll never get out of it again."
Undine's mother heaved another and more helpless sigh. "I wish YOU'D tell Undine that, Mrs. Heeny."
"Oh, I guess Undine's all right. A girl like her can afford to wait. And if young Marvell's really taken with her she'll have the run of the place in no time."
This solacing67 thought enabled Mrs. Spragg to yield herself unreservedly to Mrs. Heeny's ministrations, which were prolonged for a happy confidential68 hour; and she had just bidden the masseuse good-bye, and was restoring the rings to her fingers, when the door opened to admit her husband.
Mr. Spragg came in silently, setting his high hat down on the centre-table, and laying his overcoat across one of the gilt chairs. He was tallish, grey-bearded and somewhat stooping, with the slack figure of the sedentary man who would be stout if he were not dyspeptic; and his cautious grey eyes with pouch-like underlids had straight black brows like his daughter's. His thin hair was worn a little too long over his coat collar, and a Masonic emblem69 dangled70 from the heavy gold chain which crossed his crumpled black waistcoat.
He stood still in the middle of the room, casting a slow pioneering glance about its gilded void; then he said gently: "Well, mother?"
Mrs. Spragg remained seated, but her eyes dwelt on him affectionately. "Undine's been asked out to a dinner-party; and Mrs. Heeny says it's to one of the first families. It's the sister of one of the gentlemen that Mabel Lipscomb introduced her to last night."
There was a mild triumph in her tone, for it was owing to her insistence71 and Undine's that Mr. Spragg had been induced to give up the house they had bought in West End Avenue, and move with his family to the Stentorian. Undine had early decided72 that they could not hope to get on while they "kept house"--all the fashionable people she knew either boarded or lived in hotels. Mrs. Spragg was easily induced to take the same view, but Mr. Spragg had resisted, being at the moment unable either to sell his house or to let it as advantageously as he had hoped. After the move was made it seemed for a time as though he had been right, and the first social steps would be as difficult to make in a hotel as in one's own house; and Mrs. Spragg was therefore eager to have him know that Undine really owed her first invitation to a meeting under the roof of the Stentorian.
"You see we were right to come here, Abner," she added, and he absently rejoined: "I guess you two always manage to be right."
But his face remained unsmiling, and instead of seating himself and lighting73 his cigar, as he usually did before dinner, he took two or three aimless turns about the room, and then paused in front of his wife.
"What's the matter--anything wrong down town?" she asked, her eyes reflecting his anxiety.
Mrs. Spragg's knowledge of what went on "down town" was of the most elementary kind, but her husband's face was the barometer74 in which she had long been accustomed to read the leave to go on unrestrictedly, or the warning to pause and abstain75 till the coming storm should be weathered.
He shook his head. "N--no. Nothing worse than what I can see to, if you and Undine will go steady for a while." He paused and looked across the room at his daughter's door. "Where is she--out?"
"I guess she's in her room, going over her dresses with that French maid. I don't know as she's got anything fit to wear to that dinner," Mrs. Spragg added in a tentative murmur3.
Mr. Spragg smiled at last. "Well--I guess she WILL have," he said prophetically.
He glanced again at his daughter's door, as if to make sure of its being shut; then, standing76 close before his wife, he lowered his voice to say: "I saw Elmer Moffatt down town to-day."
"Oh, Abner!" A wave of almost physical apprehension65 passed over Mrs. Spragg. Her jewelled hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the pulpy77 curves of her face collapsed78 as if it were a pricked79 balloon.
"Oh, Abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. Mr. Spragg's black eyebrows80 gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife.
"What's the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt's nothing to us--no more'n if we never laid eyes on him."
"No--I know it; but what's he doing here? Did you speak to him?" she faltered81.
He slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "No--I guess Elmer and I are pretty well talked out."
Mrs. Spragg took up her moan. "Don't you tell her you saw him, Abner."
"I'll do as you say; but she may meet him herself."
"Oh, I guess not--not in this new set she's going with! Don't tell her ANYHOW."
He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her hand on his arm.
"He can't do anything to her, can he?"
"Do anything to her?" He swung about furiously. "I'd like to see him touch her--that's all!"
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wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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alligator
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| n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼) | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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stentorian
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| adj.大声的，响亮的 | |
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suites
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| n.套( suite的名词复数 )；一套房间；一套家具；一套公寓 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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reassuring
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| a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的，使人放心的 | |
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bespoke
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| adj.（产品）订做的；专做订货的v.预定( bespeak的过去式 )；订（货）；证明；预先请求 | |
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crumpling
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| 压皱，弄皱( crumple的现在分词 )； 变皱 | |
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darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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enquired
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| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
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judicially
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| 依法判决地，公平地 | |
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flexibility
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| n.柔韧性，弹性，（光的）折射性，灵活性 | |
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stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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pedagogue
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| n.教师 | |
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implant
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| vt.注入，植入，灌输 | |
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rudiments
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| n.基础知识，入门 | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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omnisciently
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| 无所不知的 | |
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swooping
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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forefinger
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natty
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| adj.整洁的，漂亮的 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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promptly
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sprained
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| v.&n. 扭伤 | |
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converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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peculiar
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agitation
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plaintively
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compassion
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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prerogatives
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| n.权利( prerogative的名词复数 )；特权；大主教法庭；总督委任组成的法庭 | |
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affluence
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| n.充裕，富足 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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potentates
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| n.君主，统治者( potentate的名词复数 )；有权势的人 | |
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passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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soothing
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| adj.慰藉的；使人宽心的；镇静的 | |
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precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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solacing
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| v.安慰，慰藉( solace的现在分词 ) | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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emblem
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| n.象征，标志；徽章 | |
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dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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barometer
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| n.气压表，睛雨表，反应指标 | |
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abstain
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| v.自制，戒绝，弃权，避免 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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pulpy
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| 果肉状的，多汁的，柔软的； 烂糊； 稀烂 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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