The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Page B

entr’acte wore on, and no one turned the handle of their door, or disturbed the peaceful somnolence of Harry Lipscomb, who, not being (as he put it) ‘on to’ grand opera, had abandoned the struggle and withdrawn to the seclusion of the inner box. Undine jealously watched Mr Popple’s progress from box to box, from brilliant woman to brilliant woman; but just as it seemed about to carry him to their door he reappeared at his original post across the house.
    ‘Undie, do look – there’s Mr Marvell!’ Mabel began again, with another conspicuous outbreak of signalling; and this time Undine flushed to the nape as Mrs Peter Van Degen appeared in the opposite box with Ralph Marvell behind her. The two seemed to be alone in the box – as they had doubtless been alone all the evening! – and Undine furtively turned to see if Mr Van Degen shared her disapproval. ButMr Van Degen had disappeared, and Undine, leaning forward, nervously touched Mabel’s arm.
    ‘What’s the matter, Undine? Don’t you see Mr Marvell over there? Is that his sister he’s with?’
    ‘No. – I wouldn’t beckon like that,’ Undine whispered between her teeth.
    ‘Why not? Don’t you want him to know you’re here?’
    ‘Yes – but the other people are not beckoning.’
    Mabel looked about unabashed. ‘Perhaps they’ve all found each other. Shall I send Harry over to tell him?’ she shouted above the blare of the wind instruments.
    ‘
No
!’ gasped Undine as the curtain rose.
    She was no longer capable of following the action on the stage. Two presences possessed her imagination: that of Ralph Marvell, small, unattainable, remote, and that of Mabel Lipscomb, near-by, immense and irrepressible.
    It had become clear to Undine that Mabel Lipscomb was ridiculous. That was the reason why Popple did not come to the box. No one would care to be seen talking to her while Mabel was at her side: Mabel, monumental and moulded while the fashionable were flexible and diaphanous, Mabel strident and explicit while they were subdued and allusive. At the Stentorian she was the centre of her group – here she revealed herself as unknown and unknowing. Why, she didn’t even know that Mrs Peter Van Degen was not Ralph Marvell’s sister! And she had a way of trumpeting out her ignorances that jarred on Undine’s subtler methods. It was precisely at this point that there dawned on Undine what was to be one of the guiding principles of her career: ‘
It’s better to watch than to ask questions.
’
    The curtain fell again, and Undine’s eyes flew back to the Van Degen box. Several men were entering it together, and a moment later she saw Ralph Marvell rise from his seat and pass out. Half-unconsciously she placed herself in such a way as to have an eye on the door of the box. But its handle remained unturned, and Harry Lipscomb, leaning back on the sofa, his head against the opera cloaks, continued tobreathe stertorously through his open mouth and stretched his legs a little farther across the threshold …
    The entr’acte was nearly over when the door opened and two gentlemen stumbled over Mr Lipscomb’s legs. The foremost was Claud Walsingham Popple; and above his shoulder shone the batrachian countenance of Peter Van Degen. A brief murmur from Mr Popple made his companion known to the two ladies, and Mr Van Degen promptly seated himself behind Undine, relegating the painter to Mrs Lipscomb’s elbow.
    ‘Queer go – I happened to see your friend there waving to old Popp across the house. So I bolted over and collared him: told him he’d got to introduce me before he was a minute older. I tried to find out who you were the other day at the Motor Show – no, where was it? Oh, those pictures at Goldmark’s. What d’you think of ’em, by the way? You ought to be painted yourself – no, I mean it, you know – you ought to get old Popp to do you. He’d do your hair rippingly. You must let me come and talk to you about it … About the