Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country Edith Wharton

Undine Spragg-how can you?" her mother wailed, raising a prematurely-wrinkled hand heavy withrings to defend the note which a languid "bell-boy" had just brought in. But her defence was as feeble as her protest, and she continued to smile on her visitor while MissSpragg, with a turn of her quick young fingers, possessed herself of the missive and withdrew to thewindow to read it."I guess it's meant for me," she merely threw over her shoulder at her mother."Did you EVER, Mrs. Heeny?" Mrs. Spragg murmured with deprecating pride. Mrs. Heeny, a stout professional-looking person in a waterproof, her rusty veil thrown back, and ashabby alligator bag at her feet, followed the mother's glance with good-humoured approval."I never met with a lovelier form," she agreed, answering the spirit rather than the letter of herhostess's enquiry. Mrs. Spragg and her visitor were enthroned in two heavy gilt armchairs in one of the privatedrawing-rooms of the Hotel Stentorian. The Spragg rooms were known as one of the Looey suites, and the drawing-room walls, above their wainscoting of highly-varnished mahogany, were hung withsalmon-pink damask and adorned with oval portraits of Marie Antoinette and the Princess deLamballe. In the centre of the florid carpet a gilt table with a top of Mexican onyx sustained a palmin a gilt basket tied with a pink bow. But for this ornament, and a copy of "The Hound of theBaskervilles" which lay beside it, the room showed no traces of human use, and Mrs. Spragg herselfwore as complete an air of detachment as if she had been a wax figure in a show-window. Her attirewas fashionable enough to justify such a post, and her pale soft-cheeked face, with puffy eye-lids anddrooping mouth, suggested a partially-melted wax figure which had run to double-chin. Mrs. Heeny, in comparison, had a reassuring look of solidity and reality. The planting of her firmblack bulk in its chair, and the grasp of her broad red hands on the gilt arms, bespoke an organizedand self-reliant activity, accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Heeny was a "society" manicure andmasseuse. Toward Mrs. Spragg and her daughter she filled the double role of manipulator andfriend; and it was in the latter capacity that, her day's task ended, she had dropped in for a momentto "cheer up" the lonely ladies of the Stentorian.