“Father, you’ve got to take a box for
me at the opera next Friday.”
From the tone of her voice Undine’s parents
knew at once that she was “nervous.”
They had counted a great deal on the Fairford dinner
as a means of tranquillization, and it was a blow
to detect signs of the opposite result when, late
the next morning, their daughter came dawdling into
the sodden splendour of the Stentorian breakfast-room.
The symptoms of Undine’s nervousness were unmistakable
to Mr. and Mrs. Spragg. They could read the approaching
storm in the darkening of her eyes from limpid grey
to slate-colour, and in the way her straight black
brows met above them and the red curves of her lips
narrowed to a parallel line below.
Mr. Spragg, having finished the last course of his
heterogeneous meal, was adjusting his gold eye-glasses
for a glance at the paper when Undine trailed down
the sumptuous stuffy room, where coffee-fumes hung
perpetually under the emblazoned ceiling and the spongy
carpet might have absorbed a year’s crumbs without
a sweeping.
About them sat other pallid families, richly dressed,
and silently eating their way through a bill-of-fare
which seemed to have ransacked the globe for gastronomic
incompatibilities; and in the middle of the room a
knot of equally pallid waiters, engaged in languid
conversation, turned their backs by common consent
on the persons they were supposed to serve.
Undine, who rose too late to share the family breakfast,
usually had her chocolate brought to her in bed by
Celeste, after the manner described in the articles
on “A Society Woman’s Day” which
were appearing in Boudoir Chat. Her mere appearance
in the restaurant therefore prepared her parents for
those symptoms of excessive tension which a nearer
inspection confirmed, and Mr. Spragg folded his paper
and hooked his glasses to his waistcoat with the air
of a man who prefers to know the worst and have it
over.
“An opera box!” faltered Mrs. Spragg,
pushing aside the bananas and cream with which she
had been trying to tempt an appetite too languid for
fried liver or crab mayonnaise.
“A parterre box,” Undine corrected, ignoring
the exclamation, and continuing to address herself
to her father. “Friday’s the stylish
night, and that new tenor’s going to sing again
in ‘Cavaleeria,’” she condescended
to explain.
“That so?” Mr. Spragg thrust his hands
into his waistcoat pockets, and began to tilt his
chair till he remembered there was no wall to meet
it. He regained his balance and said: “Wouldn’t
a couple of good orchestra seats do you?”
“No; they wouldn’t,” Undine answered
with a darkening brow. He looked at her humorously.
“You invited the whole dinner-party, I suppose?”
“No—no one.”
“Going all alone in a box?” She was disdainfully
silent. “I don’t s’pose you’re
thinking of taking mother and me?”
