The Custom of the Country

In a lavish but slightly gaudy New York hotel called the Stentorian, a young woman named Undine Spragg was waiting anxiously for a letter.Two years earlier, Undine and her parents had left their hometown of Apex to seek a grander life in New York.When a note finally arrived addressed to her mother, Undine opened it herself before Mrs. Spragg even saw it.

Mrs. Heeny, the family’s talkative manicurist, explained that the note was an invitation from Laura Fairford — the sister of a young man named Ralph Marvell, whom Undine had recently met at a hotel dance.“When a young man in society wants to see a girl again,” Mrs. Heeny said, “he gets his sister to invite her first.”Undine had never heard of such a custom, but she sensed at once that the Marvells belonged to the old, respected families she longed to join.

Mrs. Heeny advised her to write back as though she were only asking her mother’s permission, to keep up the appearance of a proper young lady.Undine practiced her signature several times before finally sending a careful, polite acceptance in her mother’s name.

Later, alone in her room, Undine stood before her mirror, imagining herself already welcomed into the elegant world she had only glimpsed from a distance.She thought back to an earlier disappointment — a brief, foolish engagement to a foreign riding instructor who had turned out to be no gentleman at all.

That evening, when her father came home, Undine announced that she needed a box at the opera for the coming season.Mr. Spragg, worried about money, tried gently to explain that such an expense was more than they could easily afford just then.Undine grew furious and declared that if she could not have proper opera seats, she would rather go straight back to Apex.

Long after Undine had stormed off to her room, Mr. Spragg quietly told his wife that he intended to get the box anyway, whatever it cost him.“I’m bound to have her go around with these people she knows,” he said. “I want her to be with them all she can.”

A worry from his old business days in Apex still weighed on him, one he preferred to keep entirely from his daughter.But for now, he pushed that worry aside and thought only of how to give Undine the chance she wanted so badly.The next evening, he came home with tickets to a parterre box at the opera, quietly determined, as always, to give his daughter everything within his power.