Chapter 40 - Page 2

even hate one's mother and yet insist
that her ideas as to the consumption of fire-wood should be regarded.

The old Marquise, during the cold weather, always sat in her bedroom;
and there, between the tapestried four-poster and the fireplace, the
family grouped itself around the ground-glass of her single carcel lamp.
In the evening, if there were visitors, a fire was lit in the library;
otherwise the family again sat about the Marquise's lamp till the
footman came in at ten with tisane and biscuits de Reims; after which
every one bade the dowager good night and scattered down the corridors
to chill distances marked by tapers floating in cups of oil.

Since Undine's coming the library fire had never been allowed to go out;
and of late, after experimenting with the two drawing-rooms and the
so-called "study" where Raymond kept his guns and saw the bailiff, she
had selected the gallery as the most suitable place for the new and
unfamiliar ceremony of afternoon tea. Afternoon refreshments had never
before been served at Saint Desert except when company was expected;
when they had invariably consisted in a decanter of sweet port and a
plate of small dry cakes--the kind that kept. That the complicated rites
of the tea-urn, with its offering-up of perishable delicacies, should be
enacted for the sole enjoyment of the family, was a thing so unheard of
that for a while Undine found sufficient amusement in elaborating the
ceremonial, and in making the ancestral plate groan under more varied
viands; and when this palled she devised the plan of performing the
office in the gallery and lighting sacrificial fires in both chimneys.

She had said to Raymond, at first: "It's ridiculous that your mother
should sit in her bedroom all day. She says she does it to save fires;
but if we have a fire downstairs why can't she let hers go out, and come
down? I don't see why I should spend my life in your mother's bedroom."

Raymond made no answer, and the Marquise did, in fact, let her fire go
out. But she did not come down--she simply continued to sit upstairs
without a fire.

At first this also amused Undine; then the tacit criticism implied began
to irritate her. She hoped Raymond would speak of his mother's attitude:
she had her answer ready if he did! But he made no comment, he took no
notice; her impulses of retaliation spent themselves against the blank
surface of his indifference. He was as amiable, as considerate as ever;
as ready, within reason, to accede to her wishes and gratify her whims.
Once or twice, when she suggested running up to Paris to take Paul to
the dentist, or to look for a servant, he agreed to the necessity and
went up with her. But instead of going to an hotel they went to