Ralph had begun to laugh again. Suddenly he heard
his own laugh and it pulled him up. What was
he laughing about? What was he talking about?
The thing was to act—to hold his tongue
and act. There was no use uttering windy threats
to this broken-spirited old man.
A fury of action burned in Ralph, pouring light into
his mind and strength into his muscles. He caught
up his hat and turned to the door.
As he opened it Mr. Spragg rose again and came forward
with his slow shambling step. He laid his hand
on Ralph’s arm.
“I’d ‘a’ given anything—anything
short of my girl herself—not to have this
happen to you, Ralph Marvell.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ralph.
They looked at each other for a moment; then Mr. Spragg
added: “But it has happened, you know.
Bear that in mind. Nothing you can do will change
it. Time and again, I’ve found that a good
thing to remember.”
In the Adirondacks Ralph Marvell sat day after day
on the balcony of his little house above the lake,
staring at the great white cloud-reflections in the
water and at the dark line of trees that closed them
in. Now and then he got into the canoe and paddled
himself through a winding chain of ponds to some lonely
clearing in the forest; and there he lay on his back
in the pine-needles and watched the great clouds form
and dissolve themselves above his head.
All his past life seemed to be symbolized by the building-up
and breaking-down of those fluctuating shapes, which
incalculable wind-currents perpetually shifted and
remodelled or swept from the zenith like a pinch of
dust. His sister told him that he looked well—better
than he had in years; and there were moments when his
listlessness, his stony insensibility to the small
pricks and frictions of daily life, might have passed
for the serenity of recovered health.
There was no one with whom he could speak of Undine.
His family had thrown over the whole subject a pall
of silence which even Laura Fairford shrank from raising.
As for his mother, Ralph had seen at once that the
idea of talking over the situation was positively frightening
to her. There was no provision for such emergencies
in the moral order of Washington Square. The
affair was a “scandal,” and it was not
in the Dagonet tradition to acknowledge the existence
of scandals. Ralph recalled a dim memory of his
childhood, the tale of a misguided friend of his mother’s
who had left her husband for a more congenial companion,
and who, years later, returning ill and friendless
to New York, had appealed for sympathy to Mrs. Marvell.
The latter had not refused to give it; but she had
put on her black cashmere and two veils when she went
to see her unhappy friend, and had never mentioned
these errands of mercy to her husband.
