Chapter 20 - Page 2

there had been no child to hamper their movements, their
money anxieties had hardly begun, the face of life had been fresh and
radiant, and she had been doomed to waste such opportunities on a
succession of ill-smelling Italian towns. She still felt it to be her
deepest grievance against her husband; and now that, after four years of
petty household worries, another chance of escape had come, he already
wanted to drag her back to bondage!

This fit of retrospection had been provoked by two letters which had
come that morning. One was from Ralph, who began by reminding her that
he had not heard from her for weeks, and went on to point out, in his
usual tone of good-humoured remonstrance, that since her departure the
drain on her letter of credit had been deep and constant. "I wanted
you," he wrote, "to get all the fun you could out of the money I made
last spring; but I didn't think you'd get through it quite so fast. Try
to come home without leaving too many bills behind you. Your illness and
Paul's cost more than I expected, and Lipscomb has had a bad knock in
Wall Street, and hasn't yet paid his first quarter..."

Always the same monotonous refrain! Was it her fault that she and the
boy had been ill? Or that Harry Lipscomb had been "on the wrong side" of
Wall Street? Ralph seemed to have money on the brain: his business life
had certainly deteriorated him. And, since he hadn't made a success of
it after all, why shouldn't he turn back to literature and try to write
his novel? Undine, the previous winter, had been dazzled by the figures
which a well-known magazine editor, whom she had met at dinner had named
as within reach of the successful novelist. She perceived for the first
time that literature was becoming fashionable, and instantly decided
that it would be amusing and original if she and Ralph should owe their
prosperity to his talent. She already saw herself, as the wife of a
celebrated author, wearing "artistic" dresses and doing the drawing-room
over with Gothic tapestries and dim lights in altar candle-sticks. But
when she suggested Ralph's taking up his novel he answered with a laugh
that his brains were sold to the firm--that when he came back at night
the tank was empty...And now he wanted her to sail for home in a week!

The other letter excited a deeper resentment. It was an appeal from
Laura Fairford to return and look after Ralph. He was overworked and out
of spirits, she wrote, and his mother and sister, reluctant as they
were to interfere, felt they ought to urge Undine to come back to him.
Details followed, unwelcome and officious. What right had Laura Fairford
to preach to her of wifely obligations? No doubt Charles Bowen had sent
home a