IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake sofamed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were ratherproud of not having been afraid to choose it as the setting oftheir own.
"It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for itas ours, to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as theyhung over the inevitable marble balustrade and watched theirtutelary orb roll its magic carpet across the waters to theirfeet.
"Yes--or the loan of Strefford's villa," her husband emended,glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch ofpaleness to which the moonlight was beginning to give the formof a white house-front.
"Oh, come when we'd five to choose from. At least if you countthe Chicago flat.""So we had--you wonder!" He laid his hand on hers, and histouch renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which thedeliberate survey of their adventure always roused in her ....
It was characteristic that she merely added, in her steadylaughing tone: "Or, not counting the flat--for I hate to brag-just consider the others: Violet Melrose's place at Versailles,your aunt's villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!"She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yetwith a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that heshouldn't accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to haveno desire to do so. "Poor old Fred!" he merely remarked; andshe breathed out carelessly: "Oh, well--"His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while theystood silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she wasaware only of the warm current running from palm to palm, as themoonlight below them drew its line of magic from shore to shore.
Nick Lansing spoke at last. "Versailles in May would have beenimpossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down withintwenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it'sexactly the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to you--it wasn't much of a mental strain todecide on Como."His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity.
"It took a good deal of argument to convince you that we couldface the ridicule of Como!""Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; atleast I thought I should till we got here. Now I see that thisplace is idiotic unless one is perfectly happy; and that thenit's-as good as any other."She sighed out a blissful assent. "And I must say that Streffyhas done things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you supposegave him those cigars?" She added thoughtfully: "You'll missthem when we have to go.""Oh, I say, don't let's talk to-night about going. Aren't weoutside of time and space ...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuffover there: what is it? Stephanotis?""Y-yes .... I suppose so. Or gardenias .... Oh, the fire-flies! Look ... there, against that splash of moonlight on thewater. Apples of silver in a net-work of gold ...." Theyleaned together, one flesh from shoulder to finger-tips, theireyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.
"I could bear," Lansing remarked, "even a nightingale at thismoment ...."A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a longliquid whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel abovetheir heads.
"It's a little late in the year for them: they're ending justas we begin."Susy laughed. "I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-byeto each other as sweetly."It was in her husband's mind to answer: "They're not sayinggood-bye, but only settling down to family cares." But as thisdid not happen to be in his plan, or in Susy's, he merely echoedher laugh and pressed her closer.
The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. Theripples of the lake had gradually widened and faded into asilken smoothness, and high above the mountains the moon wasturning from gold to white in a sky powdered with vanishingstars. Across the lake the lights of a little town went out,one after another, and the distant shore became a floatingblackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces withthe scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water agreat white moth like a drifting magnolia petal. Thenightingales had paused and the trickle of the fountain behindthe house grew suddenly insistent.
When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. "I havebeen thinking," she said, "that we ought to be able to make itlast at least a year longer."Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise ordisapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understoodher, but had been inwardly following the same train of thought.
"You mean," he enquired after a pause, "without counting yourgrandmother's pearls?""Yes--without the pearls."He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper:
"Tell me again just how.""Let's sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best." Hestretched himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up ona heap of boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee.
Just above her, when she lifted her lids, she saw bits ofmoonflooded sky incrusted like silver in a sharp blackpatterning of plane-boughs. All about them breathed of peaceand beauty and stability, and her happiness was so acute that itwas almost a relief to remember the stormy background of billsand borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.
"People with a balance can't be as happy as all this," Susymused, letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.
People with a balance had always been Susy Branch's bugbear;they were still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing's.
She detested them, detested them doubly, as the natural enemiesof mankind and as the people one always had to put one's selfout for. The greater part of her life having been passed amongthem, she knew nearly all that there was to know about them, andjudged them with the contemptuous lucidity of nearly twentyyears of dependence. But at the present moment her animositywas diminished not only by the softening effect of love but bythe fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes,ever so much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of mostreckless planning, had ever dared to hope for.
"After all, we owe them this!" she mused.
Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had notrepeated his question; but she was still on the trail of thethought he had started. A year--yes, she was sure now thatwith a little management they could have a whole year of it!
"It" was their marriage, their being together, and away frombores and bothers, in a comradeship of which both of them hadlong ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at least hadnever imagined the deeper harmony.
It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of theheterogeneous dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think"literary"--that the young man who chanced to sit next to her,and of whom it was vaguely rumoured that he had "written," hadpresented himself to her imagination as the sort of luxury towhich Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have treatedherself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond ofpicturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: itwas one of her chief grievances against her rich friends thatthey disposed of theirs so unimaginatively.
"I'd rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!" shehad thought at the end of her talk with the young man who hadwritten, and as to whom it had at once been clear to her thatnothing his pen had produced, or might hereafter set down, wouldput him in a position to offer his wife anything more costlythan a row-boat.
"His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he's not the kindto marry for a yacht either." In spite of her past, Susy hadpreserved enough inner independence to detect the latent signsof it in others, and also to ascribe it impulsively to those ofthe opposite sex who happened to interest her. She had anatural contempt for people who gloried in what they need onlyhave endured. She herself meant eventually to marry, becauseone couldn't forever hang on to rich people; but she was goingto wait till she found some one who combined the maximum ofwealth with at least a minimum of companionableness.
She had at once perceived young Lansing's case to be exactly theopposite: he was as poor as he could be, and as companionableas it was possible to imagine. She therefore decided to see asmuch of him as her hurried and entangled life permitted; andthis, thanks to a series of adroit adjustments, turned out to bea good deal. They met frequently all the rest of that winter;so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one day abruptly and sharplygave Susy to understand that she was "making herselfridiculous.""Ah--" said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend andpatroness straight in the painted eyes.
"Yes," cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, "before you interfered Nickliked me awfully ... and, of course, I don't want to reproachyou ... but when I think ...."Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? Thedress she had on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula's motorhad carried her to the feast from which they were bothreturning. She counted on spending the following August withthe Gillows at Newport ... and the only alternative was to go toCalifornia with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto refusedeven to dine with.
"Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and asto my interfering--" Susy hesitated, and then murmured: "But ifit will make you any happier I'll arrange to see him lessoften ...." She sounded the lowest depths of subservience inreturning Ursula's tearful kiss ....
Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the nextday she put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr.
Lansing in his lodgings. She was determined to keep her promiseto Ursula; but she meant to look her best when she did it.
She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, forhe was doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X),and had told her what hours were dedicated to the hateful task.
"Oh, if only it were a novel!" she thought as she mounted hisdingy stairs; but immediately reflected that, if it were thekind that she could bear to read, it probably wouldn't bring himin much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss Branch had herstandards in literature ....
The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good dealcleaner, but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy,knowing him to be addicted to Oriental archaeology, had picturedhim in a bare room adorned by a single Chinese bronze offlawless shape, or by some precious fragment of Asiatic pottery.
But such redeeming features were conspicuously absent, and noattempt had been made to disguise the decent indigence of thebed-sitting-room.
Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, andwith apparent indifference as to what she thought of hisfurniture. He seemed to be conscious only of his luck in seeingher on a day when they had not expected to meet. This made Susyall the sorrier to execute her promise, and the gladder that shehad put on her prettiest hat; and for a moment or two she lookedat him in silence from under its conniving brim.
Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a wordof love to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whosehabit it was to speak her meaning clearly when there were noreasons, worldly or pecuniary, for its concealment. After amoment, therefore, she told him why she had come; it was anuisance, of course, but he would understand. Ursula Gillow wasjealous, and they would have to give up seeing each other.
The young man's burst of laughter was music to her; for, afterall, she had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursulamight be as much in his day's work as doing the encyclopaedia.
"But I give you my word it's a raving-mad mistake! And I don'tbelieve she ever meant me, to begin with--" he protested; butSusy, her common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptlycut short his denial.
"You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions.
And it doesn't make any difference what you think. All thatmatters is what she believes.""Oh, come! I've got a word to say about that too, haven't I?"Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There wasnothing in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had everpossessed a spare dollar--or accepted a present.
"Not as far as I'm concerned," she finally pronounced.
"How do you mean? If I'm as free as air--?""I'm not."He grew thoughtful. "Oh, then, of course--. It only seems alittle odd," he added drily, "that in that case, the protestshould have come from Mrs. Gillow.""Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven'tany; in that respect I'm as free as you.""Well, then--? Haven't we only got to stay free?"Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to berather more difficult than she had supposed.
"I said I was as free in that respect. I'm not going tomarry--and I don't suppose you are?""God, no!" he ejaculated fervently.
"But that doesn't always imply complete freedom ...."He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideousblack marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As sheglanced up she saw his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.
"Was that what you came to tell me?" he asked.
"Oh, you don't understand--and I don't see why you don't, sincewe've knocked about so long among exactly the same kind ofpeople." She stood up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm.
"I do wish you'd help me--!"He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.
"Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but thatthere IS someone who--for one reason or another--really has aright to object to your seeing me too often?"Susy laughed impatiently. "You talk like the hero of a novel--the kind my governess used to read. In the first place I shouldnever recognize that kind of right, as you call it--never!""Then what kind do you?" he asked with a clearing brow.
"Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of yourpublisher." This evoked a hollow laugh from him. "A businessclaim, call it," she pursued. "Ursula does a lot for me: Ilive on her for half the year. This dress I've got on now isone she gave me. Her motor is going to take me to a dinnerto-night. I'm going to spend next summer with her atNewport .... If I don't, I've got to go to California with theBockheimers-so good-bye."Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steepthree flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking itover, she didn't even remember if he had tried to. She onlyrecalled having stood a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue,in the harsh winter radiance, waiting till a break in thetorrent of motors laden with fashionable women should let hercross, and saying to herself: "After all, I might have promisedUrsula ... and kept on seeing him ...."Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating aword with her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal;and had managed soon afterward to get taken to Canada for afortnight's ski-ing, and then to Florida for six weeks in ahouse-boat ....
As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance ofFlorida called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragranceand balmy airs; merging with the circumambient sweetness, itlaid a drowsy spell upon her lids. Yes, there had been a badmoment: but it was over; and she was here, safe and blissful,and with Nick; and this was his knee her head rested on, andthey had a year ahead of them ... a whole year .... "Notcounting the pearls," she murmured, shutting her eyes ....
LANSING threw the end of Strefford's expensive cigar into thelake, and bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallenasleep .... He leaned back and stared up again at thesilver-flooded sky. How queer--how inexpressibly queer--it wasto think that that light was shed by his honey-moon! A yearago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an adventure, hewould have replied by asking to be locked up at the firstsymptoms ....
There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was amad one. It was all very well for Susy to remind him twentytimes a day that they had pulled it off--and so why should heworry? Even in the light of her far-seeing cleverness, and ofhis own present bliss, he knew the future would not bear theexamination of sober thought. And as he sat there in the summermoonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to recapitulatethe successive steps that had landed them on Streffy'slake-front.
On Lansing's side, no doubt, it dated back to his leavingHarvard with the large resolve not to miss anything. Therestood the evergreen Tree of Life, the Four Rivers flowing fromits foot; and on every one of the four currents he meant tolaunch his little skiff. On two of them he had not gone veryfar, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the fourthhad carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the streamof his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest inevery form of beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream,sitting in the stout little craft of his poverty, hisinsignificance and his independence, he had made some notablevoyages .... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had sought outthrough a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing girlin sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation ofher modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard ofgood faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on onemore cruise into the unknown.
It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one briefvisit to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and nottried to see her again. Even if her straightforwardness had notroused his emulation, his understanding of her difficultieswould have moved his pity. He knew on how frail a thread thepopularity of the penniless hangs, and how miserably a girl likeSusy was the sport of other people's moods and whims. It was apart of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they likedthey so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping ofhis promise was a greater bore than he had expected. SusyBranch had become a delightful habit in a life where most of thefixed things were dull, and her disappearance had made itsuddenly clear to him that his resources were growing more andmore limited. Much that had once amused him hugely now amusedhim less, or not at all: a good part of his world of wonder hadshrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had kepttheir stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becomingless and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than apittance; he had spent rather too much of it in his first plungeinto life, and the best he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by brief and frugalholidays. He knew that he was more intelligent than theaverage, but he had long since concluded that his talents werenot marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a friendlypublisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had beensold; and though his essay on "Chinese Influences in Greek Art"had created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversialcorrespondence and dinner invitations rather than in moresubstantial benefits. There seemed, in short, no prospect ofhis ever earning money, and his restricted future made himattach an increasing value to the kind of friendship that SusyBranch had given him. Apart from the pleasure of looking at herand listening to her--of enjoying in her what others lessdiscriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense,between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocioustolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken themeasure of the world they happened to live in: they knew justwhat it was worth to them and for what reasons, and thecommunity of these reasons lent to their intimacy its lastexquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim of adissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no moreto blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners bygood manners, he was to be deprived of the one completecompanionship he had ever known ....
His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring inNew York after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his lastarticles, his listless speculations as to the cheapest and leastboring way of disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luckof going, reluctantly and at the last minute, to spend a Sundaywith the poor Nat Fulmers, in the wilds of New Hampshire, and offinding Susy there--Susy, whom he had never even suspected ofknowing anybody in the Fulmers' set!
She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they wereobviously much too glad to see each other. And then it wasunsettling to be with her in such a house as the Fulmers', awayfrom the large setting of luxury they were both used to, in thecramped cottage where their host had his studio in the verandah,their hostess practiced her violin in the dining-room, and fiveubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew trumpets andput tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was twohours late-and proportionately bad--because the Italian cookwas posing for Fulmer.
Lansing's first thought had been that meeting Susy in suchcircumstances would be the quickest way to cure them both oftheir regrets. The case of the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young people who lost their heads;poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had gone to seed soterribly-and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again beanything but the woman of whom people say, "I can remember herwhen she was lovely."But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such goodcompany, or Grace so free from care and so full of music; andthat, in spite of their disorder and dishevelment, and the badfood and general crazy discomfort, there was more amusement tobe got out of their society than out of the most opulentlystaged house-party through which Susy and Lansing had everyawned their way.
It was almost a relief to tile young man when, on the secondafternoon, Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: "Ireally can't stand the combination of Grace's violin and littleNat's motor-horn any longer. Do let us slip out till the duetis over.""How do they stand it, I wonder?" he basely echoed, as hefollowed her up the wooded path behind the house.
"It might be worth finding out," she rejoined with a musingsmile.
But he remained resolutely skeptical. "Oh, give them a year ortwo more and they'll collapse--! His pictures will never sell,you know. He'll never even get them into a show.""I suppose not. And she'll never have time to do anything worthwhile with her music."They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which thehouse was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscapeof endless featureless wooded hills. "Think of sticking hereall the year round!" Lansing groaned.
"I know. But then think of wandering over the world with somepeople!""Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with theMortimer Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuceis one to do?""I wish I knew!" she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; andhe turned and looked at her.
"Knew what?""The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one seesboth sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it,indeed?"They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines,but Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir ofthe brown lashes on her cheek.
"You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best ofit?""How can I say, when I've told you I see all the sides? Ofcourse," Susy added hastily, " I couldn't live as they do for aweek. But it's wonderful how little it's dimmed them.""Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it upeven better." He reflected. "We do them good, I daresay.""Yes--or they us. I wonder which?"After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long timesilent, and that his next utterance was a boyish outburstagainst the tyranny of the existing order of things, abruptlyfollowed by the passionate query why, since he and she couldn'talter it, and since they both had the habit of looking at factsas they were, they wouldn't be utter fools not to take theirchance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, Tothis challenge he did not recall Susy's making any definiteanswer; but after another interval, in which all the worldseemed framed in a sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herselfin a brooding tone: "I don't suppose it's ever been triedbefore; but we might--." And then and there she had laid beforehim the very experiment they had since hazarded.
She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began bydeclaring; and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucidimpartiality. In the first place, she should have to marry someday, and when she made the bargain she meant it to be an honestone; and secondly, in the matter of love, she would never giveherself to anyone she did not really care for, and if suchhappiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of half itsbrightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.
"I've seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women Iknow who've had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking andlying about it; but the other half have been miserable. And Ishould be miserable."It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn'tthey marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if forever so short a time, and with the definite understanding thatwhenever either of them got the chance to do better he or sheshould be immediately released? The law of their countryfacilitated such exchanges, and society was beginning to viewthem as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she warmed toher theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.
"We should really, in a way, help more than we should hampereach other," she ardently explained. "We both know the ropes sowell; what one of us didn't see the other might--in the way ofopportunities, I mean. And then we should be a novelty asmarried people. We're both rather unusually popular--why not befrank!--and it's such a blessing for dinner-givers to be able tocount on a couple of whom neither one is a blank. Yes, I reallybelieve we should be more than twice the success we are now; atleast," she added with a smile, "if there's that amount of roomfor improvement. I don't know how you feel; a man's popularityis so much less precarious than a girl's--but I know it wouldfurbish me up tremendously to reappear as a married woman." Sheglanced away from him down the long valley at their feet, andadded in a lower tone: "And I should like, just for a littlewhile, to feel I had something in life of my very own--somethingthat nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or a motor or anopera cloak."The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it wasenchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy'sarguments were irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Hadhe ever thought it all out? She asked. No. Well, she had; andwould he kindly not interrupt? In the first place, there wouldbe all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a motor, and a silverdinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She could seehe'd never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my dear,nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side:
she really thought she could count on about fifty, and shesupposed he could rake up a few more? Well, all that wouldsimply represent pocket-money! For they would have plenty ofhouses to live in: he'd see. People were always glad to lendtheir house to a newly-married couple. It was such fun to popdown and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. Allthey need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for a year! What was he afraid of? Didn't he thinkthey'd be happy enough to want to keep it up? And why not atleast try--get engaged, and then see what would happen? Even ifshe was all wrong, and her plan failed, wouldn't it have beenrather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy they were goingto be happy? "I've often fancied it all by myself," sheconcluded; "but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfullydifferent ...."That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it hadled up to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all herprevisions had come true. If there were certain links in thechain that Lansing had never been able to put his hand on,certain arrangements and contrivances that still needed furtherelucidation, why, he was lazily resolved to clear them up withher some day; and meanwhile it was worth all the past might havecost, and every penalty the future might exact of him, just tobe sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her sleeping headon his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was claspedin moonlight.
He stooped down and kissed her. "Wake up," he whispered, "it'sbed-time."
THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till thelast moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodatingStreffy had been unable to put the villa at their disposal for alonger time, since he had had the luck to let it for a thumpingprice to some beastly bouncers who insisted on taking possessionat the date agreed on.
Lansing, leaving Susy's side at dawn, had gone down to the lakefor a last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystallight he looked up at the garden brimming with flowers, the longlow house with the cypress wood above it, and the window behindwhich his wife still slept. The month had been exquisite, andtheir happiness as rare, as fantastically complete, as the scenebefore him. He sank his chin into the sunlit ripples and sighedfor sheer content ....
It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such completewell-being, but the next stage in their progress promised to behardly less delightful. Susy was a magician: everything shepredicted came true. Houses were being showered on them; on allsides he seemed to see beneficent spirits winging toward them,laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice to a camp inthe Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on theformer. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk theexpense of a journey across the Atlantic; so they were headinginstead for the Nelson Vanderlyns' palace on the Giudecca. Theywere agreed that, for reasons of expediency, it might be wise toreturn to New York for the coming winter. It would keep them inview, and probably lead to fresh opportunities; indeed, Susyalready had in mind the convenient flat that she was sure amigratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that theywould not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lendthem. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; andif there was one art in which young Lansing's twenty-eight yearsof existence had perfected him it was that of living completelyand unconcernedly in the present ....
If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistentlythan was his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant,when they married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself;and he knew she would have resented above everything hisregarding their partnership as a reason for anxious thought.
But since they had been together she had given him glimpses ofher past that made him angrily long to shelter and defend herfuture. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers shouldbe ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind ofcompromises out of which their wretched lives were made. Forhimself, he didn't care a hang: he had composed for his ownguidance a rough-and-ready code, a short set of "mays" and"mustn'ts" which immensely simplified his course. There werethings a fellow put up with for the sake of certain definite andotherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things hewouldn't traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he beganto see, it might be different. The temptations might begreater, the cost considerably higher, the dividing line betweenthe "mays" and "mustn'ts" more fluctuating and less sharplydrawn. Susy, thrown on the world at seventeen, with only a weakwastrel of a father to define that treacherous line for her, andwith every circumstance soliciting her to overstep it, seemed tohave been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn of most of theobjects of human folly. "Such trash as he went to pieces for,"was her curt comment on her parent's premature demise: asthough she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one'sself for something, but was resolved to discriminate firmlybetween what was worth it and what wasn't.
This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it beganto rouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness hadpreserved her from the kind of risks she had hitherto beenexposed to; but what if others, more subtle, found a joint init? Was there, among her delicate discriminations, anyequivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste for the bestand rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and ifsomething that wasn't "trash" came her way, would she hesitate asecond to go to pieces for it?
He was determined to stick to the compact that they should donothing to interfere with what each referred to as the other's"chance"; but what if, when hers came, he couldn't agree withher in recognizing it? He wanted for her, oh, so passionately,the best; but his conception of that best had so insensibly, sosubtly been transformed in the light of their first monthtogether!
His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but thehour was so exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laidhold of the mooring rope of Streffy's boat and floated there,following his dream .... It was a bore to be leaving; no doubtthat was what made him turn things inside-out so uselessly.
Venice would be delicious, of course; but nothing would everagain be as sweet as this. And then they had only a year ofsecurity before them; and of that year a month was gone.
Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushedopen a window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs ofdeparture were already visible. There were trunks in the hall,tennis rackets on the stairs; on the landing, the cook Giuliettahad both arms around a slippery hold-all that refused to letitself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense of unreality,as if the past month had been an act on the stage, andits setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings tomake room for another play in which he and Susy had no part.
By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to theterrace where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usualpleasant sense of security. Susy was there, fresh and gay, arose in her breast and the sun in her hair: her head was bowedover Bradshaw, but she waved a fond hand across the breakfastthings, and presently looked up to say: "Yes, I believe we canjust manage it.""Manage what?""To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at tensharp."He stared. "The motor? What motor?""Why, the new people's--Streffy's tenants. He's never told metheir name, and the chauffeur says he can't pronounce it. Thechauffeur's is Ottaviano, anyhow; I've been making friends withhim. He arrived last night, and he says they're not due at Comotill this evening. He simply jumped at the idea of running usover to Milan.""Good Lord--" said Lansing, when she stopped.
She sprang up from the table with a laugh. "It will be ascramble; but I'll manage it, if you'll go up at once and pitchthe last things into your trunk. ""Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it's going to cost?"She raised her eyebrows gaily. "Why, a good deal less than ourrailway tickets. Ottaviano's got a sweetheart in Milan, andhasn't seen her for six months. When I found that out I knewhe'd be going there anyhow."It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that hehad grown to shrink from even such harmless evidence of heralways knowing how to "manage"? "Oh, well," he said to himself,"she's right: the fellow would be sure to be going to Milan."Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in acloud of finery which her skilful hands were forciblycompressing into a last portmanteau. He had never seen anyonepack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant thingsinto a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant factsinto her life. "When I'm rich," she often said, "the thing Ishall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks."As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink withthe struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. "Dearest,do put a couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip forOttaviano."Lansing stared. "Why, what on earth are you doing withStreffy's cigars?""Packing them, of course .... You don't suppose he meant themfor those other people?" She gave him a look of honest wonder.
"I don't know whom he meant them for--but they're notours ...."She continued to look at him wonderingly. "I don't seewhat there is to be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy'seither ... you may be sure he got them out of some bounder. Andthere's nothing he'd hate more than to have them passed on toanother.""Nonsense. If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine.
Hand them over, please, dear.""Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course,the other people will never have one of them .... The gardenerand Giulietta's lover will see to that!"Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslinfrom which she emerged like a rosy Nereid. "How many boxes ofthem are left?""Only four.""Unpack them, please."Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge thatLansing had time for an exasperated sense of the disproportionbetween his anger and its cause. And this made him stillangrier.
She held out a box. "The others are in your suitcasedownstairs. It's locked and strapped.""Give me the key, then.""We might send them back from Venice, mightn't we? That lock isso nasty: it will take you half an hour.""Give me the key, please." She gave it.
He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allottedhalf-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonicgrin of the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold,politely reminded him how long it would take to get to Milan.
Finally the key turned, and Lansing, broken-nailed andperspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked with them into thedeserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden roses thathe and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping theirpetals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camelliasfloated in the alabaster tazzas between the windows, hauntingscents of the garden blew in on him with the breeze from thelake. Never had Streffy's little house seemed so like a nest ofpleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes on a console and ranupstairs to collect his last possessions. When he came downagain, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was seatedin their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, andGiulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping outinconsolable farewells.
"I wonder what she's given them?" he thought, as he jumped inbeside her and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.
CHARLIE STREFFORD'S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; theNelson Vanderlyns' palace called for loftier analogies.
Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive toSusy. Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the greatshadowy staircase, their dinner at a dimly-lit table under aceiling weighed down with Olympians, their chilly evening in acorner of a drawing room where minuets should have been dancedbefore a throne, contrasted with the happy intimacies of Como astheir sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the mutualconfidence of the day before.
The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansinghad had too long a discipline in the art of smoothing thingsover not to make a special effort to hide from each other theravages of their first disagreement. But, deep down andinvisible, the disagreement remained; and compunction for havingbeen its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she sat in hertapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before atarnished mirror.
"I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out ofscale," she mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand moveback and forward in the dim recesses of the mirror. "And yet,"she continued, "Ellie Vanderlyn's hardly half an inch tallerthan I am; and she certainly isn't a bit more dignified .... Iwonder if it's because I feel so horribly small to-night thatthe place seems so horribly big."She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsomeand high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having everbefore been oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her claspedhands .... Even now she could not understand what had made hertake the cigars. She had always been alive to the value of herinherited scruples: her reasoned opinions were unusually free,but with regard to the things one couldn't reason about she wasoddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy's cigars! Shehad taken them--yes, that was the point--she had taken them forNick, because the desire to please him, to make the smallestdetails of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had becomeher absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,precisely the kind of little baseness she would most havescorned to commit for herself; and, since he hadn't instantlyfelt the difference, she would never be able to explain it tohim.
She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, andglanced around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant hadsaid something about the Signora's having left a letter for her;and there it lay on the writing-table, with her mail and Nick's;a thick envelope addressed in Ellie's childish scrawl, with aglaring "Private" dashed across the corner.
"What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,"Susy mused.
She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealedletters fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie's hand, toNelson Vanderlyn Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintlypencilled a number and a date: one, two, three, four--with aweek's interval between the dates.
"Goodness--" gasped Susy, understanding.
She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a longtime she sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of papercovered with Ellie's writing had fluttered out among them, butshe let it lie; she knew so well what it would say! She knewall about her friend, of course; except poor old Nelson, whodidn't, But she had never imagined that Ellie would dare to useher in this way. It was unbelievable ... she had never picturedanything so vile .... The blood rushed to her face, and shesprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits andthrow them all into the fire.
She heard her husband's knock on the door between their rooms,and swept the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
"Oh, go away, please, there's a dear," she called out; "Ihaven't finished unpacking, and everything's in such a mess."Gathering up Nick's papers and letters, she ran across the roomand thrust them through the door. "Here's something to keep youquiet," she laughed, shining in on him an instant from thethreshold.
She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie's letter lay onthe floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one byone the expected phrases sprang out at her.
"One good turn deserves another .... Of course you and Nick arewelcome to stay all summer .... There won't be a particle ofexpense for you--the servants have orders .... If you'll justbe an angel and post these letters yourself .... It's been myonly chance for such an age; when we meet I'll explaineverything. And in a month at latest I'll be back to fetchClarissa ...."Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had readaright. To fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie's child was here? Here,under the roof with them, left to their care? She read on,raging. "She's so delighted, poor darling, to know you'recoming. I've had to sack her beastly governess forimpertinence, and if it weren't for you she'd be all alone witha lot of servants I don't much trust. So for pity's sake begood to my child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinksI've gone to take a cure; and she knows she's not to tell herDaddy that I'm away, because it would only worry him if hethought I was ill. She's perfectly to be trusted; you'll seewhat a clever angel she is ...." And then, at the bottom of thepage, in a last slanting postscript: "Susy darling, if you'veever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on yoursacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. AndI know I can count on you to rub out the numbers."Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter into the fire:
then she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow,lay the four fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make upher mind what to do with them.
To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought,inevitable: it might be saving Ellie as well as herself. Butsuch a step seemed to Susy to involve departure on the morrow,and this in turn involved notifying Ellie, whose letter she hadvainly scanned for an address. Well--perhaps Clarissa's nursewould know where one could write to her mother; it was unlikelythat even Ellie would go off without assuring some means ofcommunication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing tobe done that night: nothing but to work out the details oftheir flight on the morrow, and rack her brains to find asubstitute for the hospitality they were rejecting. Susy didnot disguise from herself how much she had counted on theVanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so hadsingularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie's largeness ofhand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were herguests their only expense would be an occasional present to theservants. And what would the alternative be? She and Lansing,in their endless talks, had so lived themselves into the visionof indolent summer days on the lagoon, of flaming hours on thebeach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams on theirbroad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having torenounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susywith a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that whenthey were quietly settled in Venice he "meant to write."Already nascent in her breast was the fierce resolve of theauthor's wife to defend her husband's privacy and facilitate hisencounters with the Muse. It was abominable, simply abominable,that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a trap!
Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of thewhole thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars-howtrivial it now seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he wouldtake, and communicated to her something of his ownuncompromising energy. She would tell him the whole story inthe morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy's faithin her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. Butsuddenly she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs.
Vanderlyn's letter: "If you're ever owed me anything in the wayof kindness, you won't, on your sacred honour, say a word toNick ...."It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask ofher: if indeed the word "right", could be used in anyconceivable relation to this coil of wrongs. But the factremained that, in the way of kindness, she did owe much toEllie; and that this was the first payment her friend had everexacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the sameposition as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, hadappealed to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected;but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and themoney Ellie had been so kind with was Nelson's .... The queeredifice of Susy's standards tottered on its base she honestlydidn't know where fairness lay, as between so much that wasfoul.
The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in"tight places" before; had indeed been in so few that were not,in one way or another, constricting! As she looked back on herpast it lay before her as a very network of perpetualconcessions and contrivings. But never before had she had sucha sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned. The littlemisery of the cigars still galled her, and now this bighumiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, thesecond month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily ....
She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressingtable--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented toaccept in kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour.
In a moment Nick would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensationin her throat warned her that through sheer nervousness andexasperation she might blurt out something ill-advised. The oldhabit of being always on her guard made her turn once more tothe looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard; and having,by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased itsappearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly openedher husband's door.
He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as sheentered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that hewas certainly still thinking about the cigars.
"I'm very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly thatI've come to bid you good-night." Bending over the back of hischair, she laid her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his handsto clasp hers, but, as he threw his head back to smile up at hershe noticed that his look was still serious, almost remote. Itwas as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between hiseyes and hers.
"I'm so sorry: it's been a long day for you," he said absently,pressing his lips to her handsShe felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
"Nick!" she burst out, tightening her embrace, "before I go,you've got to swear to me on your honour that you know I shouldnever have taken those cigars for myself!"For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him withequal gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up inboth, and Susy's compunctions were swept away on a gale oflaughter.
When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in betweenher curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripplesof the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across thevaulted ceiling. The maid had just placed a tray on a slimmarquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susydiscovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At thesight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.
Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her littleround chin was barely on a level with the tea-service, and herclear brown eyes gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose in an old Murano glass. Susy hadnot seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the interval, tohave passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness offeminine experience. She was looking with approval at hermother's guest.
"I'm so glad you've come," she said in a small sweet voice. "Ilike you so very much. I know I'm not to be often with you; butat least you'll have an eye on me, won't you?""An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if yousay such nice things to me!" Susy laughed, leaning from herpillows to draw the little girl up to her side.
Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on thesilken bedspread. "Oh, I know I'm not to be always about,because you're just married; but could you see to it that I havemy meals regularly?""Why, you poor darling! Don't you always?""Not when mother's away on these cures. The servants don'talways obey me: you see I'm so little for my age. In a fewyears, of course, they'll have to--even if I don't grow much,"she added judiciously. She put out her hand and touched thestring of pearls about Susy's throat. "They're small, butthey're very good. I suppose you don't take the others when youtravel?""The others? Bless you! I haven't any others--and never shallhave, probably.""No other pearls?""No other jewels at all."Clarissa stared. "Is that really true?" she asked, as if inthe presence of the unprecedented.
"Awfully true," Susy confessed. "But I think I can make theservants obey me all the same."This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, whowas still gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while shebrought forth another question.
"Did you have to give up all your jewels when you weredivorced?""Divorced--?" Susy threw her head back against the pillows andlaughed. "Why, what are you thinking of? Don't you rememberthat I wasn't even married the last time you saw me?""Yes; I do. But that was two years ago." The little girl woundher arms about Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly.
"Are you going to be soon, then? I'll promise not to tell if youdon't want me to.""Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world madeyou think so? ""Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlynsimply.
IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy'smind: that first morning in Venice Nick had gone out withoutfirst coming in to see her. She had stayed in bed late,chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to see the door open andher husband appear; and when the child left, and she had jumpedup and looked into Nick's room, she found it empty, and a lineon his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to senda telegram.
It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessaryto explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in andtold her! She instinctively connected the little fact with theshade of preoccupation she had noticed on his face the nightbefore, when she had gone to his room and found him absorbed inletter; and while she dressed she had continued to wonder whatwas in the letter, and whether the telegram he had hurried outto send was an answer to it.
She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happyas the morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part ofher life-long policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It wasnot only that her jealous regard for her own freedom was matchedby an equal respect for that of others; she had steered too longamong the social reefs and shoals not to know how narrow is thepassage that leads to peace of mind, and she was determined tokeep her little craft in mid-channel. But the incident hadlodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolicsignificance, as of a turning-point in her relations with herhusband. Not that these were less happy, but that she nowbeheld them, as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as anunstable islet in a sea of storms. Her present bliss was ascomplete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace ofall she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspectedhim of hiding from her ....
She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeksafter their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she satalone on the balcony, watching the cross-lights on the waterweave their pattern above the flushed reflection of oldpalace-basements. She was almost always alone at that hour.
Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons--he had been as goodas his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was hishabit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on thelagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the GiardinoPubblico, where that obliging child had politely butindifferently "played"--Clarissa joined in the diversions of herage as if conforming to an obsolete tradition--and had broughther back for a music lesson, echoes of which now drifted downfrom a distant window.
Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But forthe little girl, her pride in her husband's industry might havebeen tinged with a faint sense of being at times left out andforgotten; and as Nick's industry was the completestjustification for their being where they were, and for herhaving done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa forhelping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, representedthe other half of her justification: it was as much on thechild's account as on Nick's that Susy had held her tongue,remained in Venice, and slipped out once a week to post one ofEllie's numbered letters. A day's experience of the PalazzoVanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of desertingClarissa. Long experience had shown her that the most crowdedhouseholds often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that therich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered infancy;but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of theuglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she foundherself feeling where before she had only judged: herprecarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.
She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date ofEllie Vanderlyn's return, and of the searching truths she wasstoring up for that lady's private ear, when she noticed agondola turning its prow toward the steps below the balcony.
She leaned over, and a tall gentleman in shabby clothes,glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy Panama injoyful greeting.
"Streffy!" she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way downthe stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-ladenboatman.
"It's all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come," heexplained in a shrill cheerful voice; "and I'm to have my samegreen room with the parrot-panels, because its furniture isalready so frightfully stained with my hair-wash."Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfactionwhich his presence always produced in his friends. There was noone in the world, they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy anddelightful as Streffy; no one who combined such outspokenselfishness with such imperturbable good humour; no one who knewso well how to make you believe he was being charming to youwhen it was you who were being charming to him.
In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated thevalue more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had forSusy another attraction of which he was probably unconscious.
It was that of being the one rooted and stable being among thefluid and shifting figures that composed her world. Susy hadalways lived among people so denationalized that those one tookfor Russians generally turned out to be American, and those onewas inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated inRome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in countriesnot their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotelswhere the guests were as international as the waiters, hadinter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other overthe whole face of Europe, and according to every code thatattempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his homein this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one hespoke of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dullEnglish country-house in a northern county, where a life asmonotonous and self-contained as his own was chequered anddispersed had gone on for generation after generation; and itwas the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to hisvagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in histalk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave hima firmer outline and a steadier footing than the othermarionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, andso eager to outdo them in detachment and adaptability,ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the people towhom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, theskeleton of old faiths and old fashions. "He talks everylanguage as well as the rest of us," Susy had once said of him,"but at least he talks one language better than the others"; andStrefford, told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot,and been pleased.
As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she wasthinking of this quality with a new appreciation of its value.
Even she and Lansing, in spite of their unmixed Americanism,their substantial background of old-fashioned cousinships in NewYork and Philadelphia, were as mentally detached, as universallyat home, as touts at an International Exhibition. If they wereusually recognized as Americans it was only because they spokeFrench so well, and because Nick was too fair to be "foreign,"and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford wasEnglish with all the strength of an inveterate habit; andsomething in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty ofhabit.
Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her withoutpausing to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himselfimmensely interested in the last chapter of her history, greatlypleased at its having been enacted under his roof, and hugelyand flippantly amused at the firmness with which she refused tolet him see Nick till the latter's daily task was over.
"Writing? Rot! What's he writing? He's breaking you in, mydear; that's what he's doing: establishing an alibi. What'llyou bet he's just sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire?
Let's go and see."But Susy was firm. "He's read me his first chapter: it'swonderful. It's a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, youknow.""Oh, yes--I do!" said Strefford, with a laugh that she thoughtidiotic.
She flushed up like a child. "You're stupid, Streffy. Youforget that Nick and I don't need alibis. We've got rid of allthat hyprocrisy by agreeing that each will give the other a handup when either of us wants a change. We've not married to spyand lie, and nag each other; we've formed a partnership for ourmutual advantage.""I see; that's capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nickwants a change, you'll consider it for his advantage to haveone?"It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; sheoften wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
"I hope I shall have enough common sense--" she began.
"Oh, of course: common sense is what you're both bound to baseyour argument on, whichever way you argue."This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a littleirritably: "What should you do then, if you married?--Hush,Streffy! I forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas arestopping to look!""How can I help it?" He rocked backward and forward in hischair. "'If you marry,' she says: 'Streffy, what have youdecided to do if you suddenly become a raving maniac?'""I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died,you'd marry to-morrow; you know you would.""Oh, now you're talking business." He folded his long arms andleaned over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripplesstreaked with fire. "In that case I should say: 'Susan, mydear--Susan--now that by the merciful intervention of Providenceyou have become Countess of Altringham in the peerage of GreatBritain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d'Amblay in the peeragesof Ireland and Scotland, I'll thank you to remember that you area member of one of the most ancient houses in the UnitedKingdom--and not to get found out.'"Susy laughed. "We know what those warnings mean! I pity mynamesake."He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small uglytwinkling eyes. "Is there any other woman in the world namedSusan?""I hope so, if the name's an essential. Even if Nick chucks me,don't count on me to carry out that programme. I've seen it inpractice too often.""Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody's in perfect health atAltringham." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountainpen, a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet ofdishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the otherobjects to his pocket, he continued calmly: "Tell me how didyou manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula wasrunning amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was justwhen people were beginning to say that you were going to marryNick. I was afraid she'd put a spoke in your wheel; and I hearshe put a big cheque in your hand instead."Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford'sappearance she had known that in the course of time he wouldput that question. He was as inquisitive as a monkey, and whenhe had made up his mind to find out anything it was useless totry to divert his attention. After a moment's hesitation shesaid: "I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was verydecent.""He would be--poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughlyfrightened!""Well--enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineriturned up from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a jobas an engineer, and Ursula made Fred put him in their ironworks." She paused again, and then added abruptly: "Streffy!
If you knew how I hate that kind of thing. I'd rather have Nickcome in now and tell me frankly, as I know he would, that he'sgoing off with--""With Coral Hicks?" Strefford suggested.
She laughed. "Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you thinkof the Hickses?""Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri.
They're cruising about: they said they were coming in here.""What a nuisance! I do hope they won't find us out. They wereawfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, andthey're so simple-minded that they would expect him to be gladto see them."Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree whowas gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. "Ah," hemurmured with satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then headded: "Coral Hicks is growing up rather pretty.""Oh, Streff--you're dreaming! That lump of a girl withspectacles and thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say toNick: 'When Mr. Hicks and I had Coral educated we presumedculture was in greater demand in Europe than it appears to be.'""Well, you'll see: that girl's education won't interfere withher, once she's started. So then: if Nick came in and told youhe was going off--""I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral!
But you know," she added with a smile, "we've agreed that it'snot to happen for a year."
SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense,unusually kind and responsive. The interest he showed in herfuture and Nick's seemed to proceed not so much from hishabitual spirit of scientific curiosity as from simplefriendliness. He was privileged to see Nick's first chapter, ofwhich he formed so favourable an impression that he spokesternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband'sworking hours; and he even carried his general benevolence tothe length of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn.
He was always charming to children, but fitfully and warily,with an eye on his independence, and on the possibility of beingsuddenly bored by them; Susy had never seen him abandon theseprecautions so completely as he did with Clarissa.
"Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick areoff together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governessand went away without having anyone to take her place?""I think she expected me to do it," said Susy with a touch ofasperity. There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighedon her somewhat heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nickshe was pursued by the vision of a little figure waving wistfulfarewells from the balcony.
"Ah, that's like Ellie: you might have known she'd get anequivalent when she lent you all this. But I don't believe shethought you'd be so conscientious about it."Susy considered. "I don't suppose she did; and perhaps Ishouldn't have been, a year ago. But you see"--she hesitated--"Nick's so awfully good: it's made me look; at a lot of thingsdifferently ....""Oh, hang Nick's goodness! It's happiness that's done it, mydear. You're just one of the people with whom it happens toagree."Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crookedironic face.
"What is it that's agreeing with you, Streffy? I've never seenyou so human. You must be getting an outrageous price for thevilla."Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. "Ishould be an ass not to: I've got a wire here saying they musthave it for another month at any price.""What luck! I'm so glad. Who are they, by the way?"He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he wasdisjointedly lounging, and looked down at her with a smile.
"Another couple of love-sick idiots like you and Nick .... Isay, before I spend it all let's go out and buy somethingripping for Clarissa."The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for herconcern for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious ofher hostess's protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said:
"Four weeks at the latest," and the four weeks were over, andshe had neither arrived nor written to explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life since herdeparture, save in the shape of a post-card which had reachedClarissa the day after the Lansings' arrival, and in which Mrs.
Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not toforget to feed the mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive hadbeen posted in Milan.
She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. "I don't trustthat green-eyed nurse. She's forever with the youngergondolier; and Clarissa's so awfully sharp. I don't see whyEllie hasn't come: she was due last Monday."Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laughsuggested that he probably knew as much of Ellie's movements asshe did, if not more. The sense of disgust which the subjectalways roused in her made her look away quickly from histolerant smile. She would have given the world, at that moment,to have been free to tell Nick what she had learned on the nightof their arrival, and then to have gone away with him, no matterwhere. But there was Clarissa--!
To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixedher thoughts on her husband. Of Nick's beatitude there could beno doubt. He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced inhis work; and concerning the quality of that work her judgmentwas as confident as her heart. She still doubted if he wouldever earn a living by what he wrote, but she no longer doubtedthat he would write something remarkable. The mere fact that hewas engaged on a philosophic romance, and not a mere novel,seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And if she hadmistrusted her impartiality Strefford's approval would havereassured her. Among their friends Strefford passed as anauthority on such matters: in summing him up his eulogistsalways added: "And you know he writes." As a matter of fact,the paying public had remained cold to his few published pages;but he lived among the kind of people who confuse taste withtalent, and are impressed by the most artless attempts atliterary expression; and though he affected to disdain theirjudgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry tohave it said of him: "Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!"Strefford's approval of the philosophic romance convinced herthat it had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick's sake;and if only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St.
Moritz or Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which theirhappiness was based would vanish like a cloud, and leave them tocomplete enjoyment.
Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and NickLansing was assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen.
Strefford, coming back one evening from the Lido, reportedhaving recognized the huge outline of the Ibis among thepleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very next evening,as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices atFlorian's, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.
Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.
"Remember you're here to write, dearest; it's your duty not tolet any one interfere with that. Why shouldn't we tell themwe're just leaving!""Because it's no use: we're sure to be always meeting them.
And besides, I'll be hanged if I'm going to shirk the Hickses.
I spent five whole months on the Ibis, and if they bored meoccasionally, India didn't.""We'll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow," said Streffordphilosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearingdown on the defenceless trio.
They presented a formidable front, not only because of theirmere physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally andmajestically three-dimensional--but because they never movedabroad without the escort of two private secretaries (one forthe foreign languages), Mr. Hicks's doctor, a maiden lady knownas Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs. Hicks's cousin andstenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral Hicks.
Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had beena fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents,with a reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone,and his mistress led the procession. The fat school-girl hadchanged into a young lady of compact if not graceful outline; along-handled eyeglass had replaced the spectacles, and throughit, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral Hicks projected on theworld a glance at once confident and critical. She looked sostrong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in a flash,saw that her position at the head of the procession was notfortuitous, and murmured inwardly: "Thank goodness she's notpretty too!"If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she wasovereducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, ofcarrying off even this crowning disadvantage. At any rate, shewas above disguising it; and before the whole party had beenseated five minutes in front of a fresh supply of ices (withEldorada and the secretaries at a table slightly in thebackground) she had taken up with Nick the question ofexploration in Mesopotamia.
"Queer child, Coral," he said to Susy that night as they smokeda last cigarette on their balcony. "She told me this afternoonthat she'd remembered lots of things she heard me say in India.
I thought at the time that she cared only for caramels andpicture-puzzles, but it seems she was listening to everything,and reading all the books she could lay her hands on; and shegot so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she took a courselast year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next spring,and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan."Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand inNick's, while the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the belfry of San Giorgio.
"Poor Coral! How dreary--" Susy murmured"Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing asanything I know.""Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me, she laughed,getting up lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight,dividing her room onto two shadowy halves, lay on the paintedVenetian bed with its folded-back sheet, its old damask coverletand lace-edged pillows. She felt the warmth of Nick's enfoldingarm and lifted her face to his.
The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick's sojourn onthe Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meetinghim again, was glad he had not followed her advice and tried toelude them. She had always admired Strefford's ruthless talentfor using and discarding the human material in his path, but nowshe began to hope that Nick would not remember her suggestionthat he should mete out that measure to the Hickses. Even if ithad been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their door duringthe long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the Hickses'
admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.
She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, aliking inspired by the very characteristics that would once haveprovoked her disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training inliking common people with big purses; in such cases her stock ofallowances and extenuations was inexhaustible. But they had tobe successful common people; and the trouble was that theHickses, judged by her standards, were failures. It was notonly that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many oftheir rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous andunsuccessful. They had consistently resisted the efforts of theexperienced advisers who had first descried them on the horizonand tried to help them upward. They were always taking up thewrong people, giving the wrong kind of party, and spendingmillions on things that nobody who mattered cared about. Theyall believed passionately in "movements" and "causes" and"ideals," and were always attended by the exponents of theirlatest beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggardwomen in peplums, and having their portraits painted by wildpeople who never turned out to be the fashion.
All this would formerly have increased Susy's contempt; now shefound herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. Shewas touched by their simple good faith, their isolation in themidst of all their queer apostles and parasites, their way ofdrifting about an alien and indifferent world in a compactlyclinging group of which Eldorada Tooker, the doctor and the twosecretaries formed the outer fringe, and by their view ofthemselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of some paststate of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what shecalled "the court of the Renaissance." Eldorada, of course, wastheir chief prophetess; but even the intensely "bright" andmodern young secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed atouching tendency to share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as"promoting art," in the spirit of Pandolfino celebrating themunificence of the Medicis.
"I'm getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should benice to them even if they were staying at Danieli's," Susy saidto Strefford.
"And even if you owned the yacht?" he answered; and for once hisbanter struck her as beside the point.
The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far andwide along the enchanted shores; they roamed among theEuganeans, they saw Aquileia and Pomposa and Ravenna. Theirhosts would gladly have taken them farther, across the Adriaticand on into the golden network of the Aegean; but Susy resistedthis infraction of Nick's rules, and he himself preferred tostick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early mornings, sothat on most days they could set out before noon and steam backlate to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon. His workcontinued to progress, and as page was added to page Susyobscurely but surely perceived that each one corresponded with ahidden secretion of energy, the gradual forming within him ofsomething that might eventually alter both their lives. In whatsense she could not conjecture: she merely felt that the factof his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only through afew rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of saying"Yes" and "No."
OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself wasequally aware. He was a better judge of the book he was tryingto write than either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses,its treacheries, its tendency to slip through his fingers justas he thought his grasp tightest; but he knew also that at thevery moment when it seemed to have failed him it would suddenlybe back, beating its loud wings in his face.
He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had wincedmore than he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion toMarius. His book was to be called The Pageant of Alexander.
His imagination had been enchanted by the idea of picturing theyoung conqueror's advance through the fabulous landscapes ofAsia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely felt thatunder the guise of fiction he could develop his theory ofOriental influences in Western art at the expense of lesslearning than if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay.
He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not knowenough to write about it; but he consoled himself by rememberingthat Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty volumes onaesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he tookhimself at Susy's valuation, and found an unmixed joy in histask.
Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidentlyhappy. His hack-work had given him the habit of application,and now habit wore the glow of inspiration. His previousliterary ventures had been timid and tentative: if this one wasgrowing and strengthening on his hands, it must be because theconditions were so different. He was at ease, he was secure, hewas satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since hisearly youth, before his mother's death, the sense of having someone to look after, some one who was his own particular care, andto whom he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he hadnever felt himself answerable to the hurried and indifferentpeople among whom he had chosen to live.
Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke theirlanguage, though she understood others, she required theirpleasures if she did not revere their gods. But from the momentthat she had become his property he had built up in himself aconception of her answering to some deep-seated need ofveneration. She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken herplace in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved,honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. Hedidn't pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact thatshe was his wife gave purpose and continuity to his scatteredimpulses, and a mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had askedhimself with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy shouldbegin to bore him. The thing had happened to him with otherwomen as to whom his first emotions had not differed inintensity from those she inspired. The part he had played inhis previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed up inthe memorable line: "I am the hunter and the prey," for he hadinvariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as thesecond. This experience had never ceased to cause him theliveliest pain, since his sympathy for his pursuer was only lesskeen than his commiseration for himself; but as he was always alittle sorrier for himself, he had always ended by distancingthe pursuer.
All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicableto the new man he had become. He could not imagine being boredby Susy--or trying to escape from her if he were. He could notthink of her as an enemy, or even as an accomplice, sinceaccomplices are potential enemies: she was some one with whom,by some unheard-of miracle, joys above the joys of friendshipwere to be tasted, but who, even through these fleetingecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.
These new feelings did not affect his general attitude towardlife: they merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate"jolliness." Never had he more thoroughly enjoyed the things hehad always enjoyed. A good dinner had never been as good tohim, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still rejoiced in thefact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He was asproud as ever of Susy's cleverness and freedom from prejudice:
she couldn't be too "modern" for him now that she was his. Heshared to the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, andall her feverish eagerness to make it last. He knew when shewas thinking of ways of extending their golden opportunity, andhe secretly thought with her, wondering what new means theycould devise. He was thankful that Ellie Vanderlyn was stillabsent, and began to hope they might have the palace tothemselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, hewould have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a littleinterest on their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted yearmight conceivably be prolonged to two.
Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford's in Venicehad already drawn thither several wandering members of theirset. It was characteristic of these indifferent butagglutinative people that they could never remain long partedfrom each other without a dim sense of uneasiness. Lansing wasfamiliar with the feeling. He had known slight twinges of ithimself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others. Itwas hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls thetea-hour to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining asabundantly; but it gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helpedmany hesitating spirits over the annual difficulty of decidingbetween Deauville and St. Moritz, Biarritz and Capri.
Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming thefashion, that summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look atthe Lansings. Streffy had set the example, and Streffy'sexample was always followed. And then Susy's marriage was stilla subject of sympathetic speculation. People knew the story ofthe wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing how long theycould be made to last. It was going to be the thing, that year,to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on theadventurous couple. Before June was over a band of friends werebasking with the Lansings on the Lido.
Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. Toavoid comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susyto speak of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval ofrest. His wife instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view,guarding him from the temptation to work as jealously as she haddiscouraged him from idling; and he was careful not to let herfind out that the change in his habits coincided with his havingreached a difficult point in his book. But though he was notsorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly oppressed bythe weight of his leisure. For the first time communal dawdlinghad lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers wereless congenial than of old, but because in the interval he hadknown something so immeasurably better. He had always felthimself to be the superior of his habitual associates, but nowthe advantage was too great: really, in a sense, it was hardlyfair to them.
He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; buthe perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friendsheightened her animation. It was as if the inward glow whichhad given her a new beauty were now refracted upon her by thepresence of the very people they had come to Venice to avoid.
Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how sheliked being with their old crowd again his irritation wasincreased by her answering with a laugh that she only hoped thepoor dears didn't see too plainly how they bored her. Thepatent insincerity of the reply was a shock to Lansing. He knewthat Susy was not really bored, and he understood that she hadsimply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them:
that henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. Toconfirm this fear he said carelessly: "Oh, all the same, it'srather jolly knocking about with them again for a bit;" and sheanswered at once, and with equal conviction: "Yes, isn't it?
The old darlings--all the same!"A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing.
Susy's independence and self-sufficiency had been among herchief attractions; if she were to turn into an echo theirdelicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest ofmonologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resentedher being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he foundhimself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of thesentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, andto be agreed with monotonous.
Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentallyunfitted for the married state; and was saved from despair onlyby remembering that Susy's subjection to his moods was notlikely to last. But even then it never occurred to him toreflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since their tiewas avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding onwhich their marriage had been based not a trace remained in histhoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounceeach other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to theghost of an old joke.
It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbrokensociability, that of all his old friends it was the MortimerHickses who bored him the least. The Hickses had left the Ibisfor an apartment in a vast dilapidated palace near theCanareggio. They had hired the apartment from a painter (one oftheir newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically withthe absence of modern conveniences in order to secure theinestimable advantage of "atmosphere." In this privileged airthey gathered about them their usual mixed company of quietstudious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselvestotally unconscious of the disparity between their differentguests, and beamingly convinced that at last they were seated atthe source of wisdom.
In old days Lansing would have got half an hour's amusement,followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs.
Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-lookingprofessor of archaeology and a large-browed composer, or thehigh priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming abovehis vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowedmore abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretariesindustriously "kept up" with the dizzy cross-current of prophecyand erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto itwas in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemedmost insufferable; now it was as an escape from these samefriends that they had become not only sympathetic but eveninteresting. It was something, after all, to be with people whodid not regard Venice simply as affording exceptionalopportunities for bathing and adultery, but who were reverentlyif confusedly aware that they were in the presence of somethingunique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of theirprivilege.
"After all," he said to himself one evening, as his eyeswandered, with somewhat of a convalescent's simple joy, from oneto another of their large confiding faces, "after all, they'vegot a religion ...." The phrase struck him, in the moment ofusing it, as indicating a new element in his own state of mind,and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about theHickses. Their muddled ardour for great things was related tohis own new view of the universe: the people who felt, howeverdimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearerto him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one'sbalance at the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that waswhat he meant when he thought of the Hickses as having "areligion" ....
A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed bythe arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerantliking for Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with anintense and serious desire to miss nothing attainable by one ofhis fortune and standing. What use he made of his experiences,Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest adventuresrather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he hadalways suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to viewhim with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasypoint in Nick's conscience. He and Susy from the first, hadtalked of them less than of any other members of their group:
they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which Susy hadcome to Lansing's lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had askedher to renounce him, till that other day, just before theirmarriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry: "Here'sour first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fredand Ursula!"Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tellhim just what had happened in the interval between those twodates; but he had taken care not to ask. He had even affectedan initiation so complete that the friends who burned toenlighten him were discouraged by his so obviously knowing morethan they; and gradually he had worked himself around to theirview, and had taken it for granted that he really did.
Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the"Hullo, old Fred!" with which Susy hailed Gillow's arrival mightbe either the usual tribal welcome--since they were all "old,"and all nicknamed, in their private jargon--or a greeting thatconcealed inscrutable depths of complicity.
Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad ofeverything just then, and so glad to show her gladness! Thefact disarmed her husband and made him ashamed of hisuneasiness. "You ought to have thought this all out sooner, orelse you ought to chuck thinking of it at all," was the soundbut ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow'sarrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the wholematter.
Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one'speace of mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lidosands, his arms folded under his head, listening to Streffy'snonsense and watching Susy between sleepy lids; but he betrayedno desire to see her alone, or to draw her into talk apart fromthe others. More than ever he seemed content to be thegratified spectator of a costly show got up for his privateentertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace ofmosquitoes, that he said, quite as if they had talked the matterover long before, and finally settled it: "The moor will beready any time after the first of August."Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself upmore defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming acrossthe dying ripples at their feet.
"You'll be a lot cooler in Scotland," Fred added, with what, forhim, was an unusual effort at explicitness.
"Oh, shall we?" she retorted gaily; and added with an air ofmystery and importance, pivoting about on her high heels:
"Nick's got work to do here. It will probably keep us allsummer.""Work? Rot! You'll die of the smells." Gillow staredperplexedly skyward from under his tilted hat-brim; and thenbrought out, as from the depth of a rankling grievance: "Ithought it was all understood.""Why," Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-enteredEllie's cool drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, "didGillow think it was understood that we were going to his moor inAugust?" He was conscious of the oddness of speaking of theirfriend by his surname, and reddened at his blunder.
Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood beforehim in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white throughblack transparencies.
She raised her eyebrows carelessly. "I told you long ago he'dasked us there for August.""You didn't tell me you'd accepted."She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. "Iaccepted everything--from everybody!"What could he answer? It was the very principle on which theirbargain had been struck. And if he were to say: "Ah, but thisis different, because I'm jealous of Gillow," what light wouldsuch an answer shed on his past? The time for being jealous-ifso antiquated an attitude were on any ground defensible-wouldhave been before his marriage, and before the acceptance of thebounties which had helped to make it possible. He wondered alittle now that in those days such scruples had not troubledhim. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased hisirritation against Gillow. "I suppose he thinks he owns us!" hegrumbled inwardly.
He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancingacross the shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at hisfeet, pressed her slender length against him, and whispered withlifted face and lips close to his: "We needn't ever go anywhereyou don't want to." For once her submission was sweet, andfolding her close he whispered back through his kiss: "Notthere, then."In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of herwhole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only itgave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held eachother fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem likea silly injustice.
"Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us," he said,as if the shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundarydrawn about his happiness.
She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy armabove her shoulders. "How dreadfully late it is .... Will youunhook me? ... Oh, there's a telegram."She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared amoment at the message. "It's from Ellie. She's coming to-morrow."She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nickfollowed her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay inmoonless shadow, barred with a few lingering lights. A lastsnatch of gondola-music came from far off, carried upward on asultry gust.
"Dear old Ellie. All the same ... I wish all this belonged toyou and me." Susy sighed.
IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn's fault if, after her arrival, herpalace seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.
She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it wasimpossible for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone,to make her view even her own recent conduct in any but the mostbenevolent light.
"I knew you'd be the veriest angel about it all, darling,because I knew you'd understand me-- especially now," shedeclared, her slim hands in Susy's, her big eyes (so likeClarissa's) resplendent with past pleasures and future plans.
The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful toSusy Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warmavowals. She had always imagined that being happy one's selfmade one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn appeared to assume --more tolerantof the happiness of others, of however doubtful elementscomposed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so languidlyto her friend's outpourings. But she herself had no desire toconfide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe asimilar reticence?
"It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to behappy," that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusuala characteristic singled her out for special privileges.
Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had alwayssupposed we all were.
"Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law andcompanions, and that sort of people. They wouldn't know how ifthey tried. But you and I, darling--""Oh, I don't consider myself in any way exceptional," Susyintervened. She longed to add: "Not in your way, at anyrate--" but a few minutes earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told herthat the palace was at her disposal for the rest of the summer,and that she herself was only going to perch there--if they'dlet her!--long enough to gather up her things and start for St.
Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect ofcurbing Susy's irony, and of making her shift the conversationto the safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number ofday and evening dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.
As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on thistheme than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf betweenher past and present. "This is the life I used to lead; theseare the things I used to live for," she thought, as she stoodbefore the outspread glories of Mrs. Vanderlyn's wardrobe. Notthat she did not still care: she could not look at Ellie'slaces and silks and furs without picturing herself in them, andwondering by what new miracle of management she could giveherself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists.
But these had become minor interests: the past few months hadgiven her a new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled anddisconcerted her about Ellie was the fact that love and fineryand bridge and dining-out were seemingly all on the same planeto her.
The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was markedby many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, whopassed from comparative hopefulness to despair at the totalinadequacy of her wardrobe. It wouldn't do to go to St. Moritzlooking like a frump, and yet there was no time to get anythingsent from Paris, and, whatever she did, she wasn't going to showherself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at home. But suddenlylight broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy. "Why,Nelson'll bring them--I'd forgotten all about Nelson! There'llbe just time if I wire to him at once.""Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?" Susy asked,surprised.
"Heavens, no! He's coming here to pick up Clarissa and take herto some stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It's too lucky:
there's just time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn'tmean to wait for him; but it won't delay me more than day ortwo."Susy's heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, butEllie and Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No onecould tell what spark of truth might dash from their collision.
Susy felt that she could deal with the two dangers separatelyand successively, but not together and simultaneously.
"But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I'm certain tofind someone here who's going to St. Moritz and will take yourthings if he brings them. It's a pity to risk losing yourrooms."This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. "That'strue; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you'realways so practical!" She clasped Susy to her scented bosom.
"And you know, darling, I'm sure you'll be glad to get rid ofme--you and Nick! Oh, don't be hypocritical and say 'Nonsense!'
You see, I understand ... I used to think of you so often, youtwo ... during those blessed weeks when we two were alone...."The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie's lovely eyes, andthreatening to make the blue circles below them run into theadjoining carmine, filled Susy with compunction.
"Poor thing--oh, poor thing!" she thought; and hearing herselfcalled by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usualsunset on the lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deludedcreature who would never taste that highest of imaginable joys.
"But all the same," Susy reflected, as she hurried down to herhusband, "I'm glad I persuaded her not to wait for Nelson."Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset tothemselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned thesuperior quality of the sympathy that held them together. Shenow viewed all the rest of life as no more than a show: a jollyshow which it would have been a thousand pities to miss, butwhich, if the need arose, they could get up and leave at anymoment--provided that they left it together.
In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, andthrough the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him andmurmured, her mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie:
"Nick, should you hate me dreadfully if I had no clothes?"Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up thegrin with which he answered: "But, my dear, have I ever shownthe slightest symptom--?""Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: 'No clothes,' she means:
'Not the right clothes.'"He took a meditative puff. "Ah, you've been going over Ellie'sfinery with her.""Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she'sgot nothing for St. Moritz!""Of course," he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifestingbut a languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn'swardrobe.
"Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson'sarrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three moretrunkfuls from Paris. But mercifully I've managed to persuadeher that it would be foolish to wait."Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband'slounging body, and was aware, through all her watchfultentacles, of a widening of his half-closed lids.
"You 'managed'--?" She fancied he paused on the wordironically. "But why?""Why--what?""Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie's waiting forNelson, if for once in her life she wants to?"Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though theleap of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blueflannel shoulder against which she leaned.
"Really, dearest--!" she murmured; but with a sudden doggednesshe renewed his "Why?""Because she's in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in sucha funk lest the hotel shouldn't keep her rooms," Susy somewhatbreathlessly produced.
"Ah--I see." Nick paused again. "You're a devoted friend,aren't you!""What an odd question! There's hardly anyone I've reason to bemore devoted to than Ellie," his wife answered; and she felt hiscontrite clasp on her hand.
"Darling! No; nor I--. Or more grateful to for leaving usalone in this heaven."Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met hisbending ones.
Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that,after all, she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.
"I should simply worry myself ill if I weren't sure of gettingmy things," she said, in the tone of tender solicitude withwhich she always discussed her own difficulties. "After all,people who deny themselves everything do get warped and bitter,don't they?" she argued plaintively, her lovely eyes wanderingfrom one to the other of her assembled friends.
Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which hadfatally undermined his own health; and in the laugh thatfollowed the party drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.
"Oh, I don't mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling," hishostess retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy,receiving the shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said toherself, with a sharp twinge of apprehension: "Of courseStreffy knows everything; he showed no surprise at finding Ellieaway when he arrived. And if he knows, what's to preventNelson's finding out?" For Strefford, in a mood of mischief,was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.
Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be evenbetraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealingthe depth of her own danger could she hope to secure hissilence.
On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others werelistening indoors to the low modulations of a young composer whohad embroidered his fancies on Browning's "Toccata," Susy foundher chance. Strefford, unsummoned, had followed her out, andstood silently smoking at her side.
"You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries toeach other?" she suddenly began.
"Why, indeed: but do we?"Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. "About Ellie,I mean--and Nelson.""Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should assoon apply the term to one of the million candle-poweradvertisements that adorn your native thoroughfares.""Well, yes. But--" She stopped again. Had she not tacitlypromised Ellie not to speak?
"My Susan, what's wrong?" Strefford asked.
"I don't know....""Well, I do, then: you're afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meethere, she'll blurt out something--injudicious.""Oh, she won't!" Susy cried with conviction.
"Well, then--who will! I trust that superhuman child not to.
And you and I and Nick--""Oh," she gasped, interrupting him, "that's just it. Nickdoesn't know ... doesn't even suspect. And if he did...."Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. "Idon't see--hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us,after all?"That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in anair of decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction,and she hesitated.
"If Nick should find out that I know....""Good Lord--doesn't he know that you know? After all, I supposeit's not the first time--"She remained silent.
"The first time you've received confidences--from marriedfriends. Does Nick suppose you've lived even to your tender agewithout ... Hang it, what's come over you, child?"What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yetmore than ever she felt the need of having him securely on herside. Once his word was pledged, he was safe: otherwise therewas no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness.
"Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn't been awayfor a cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy itwas not because it 'worries father' to think that mother needsto take care of her health." She paused, hating herself for theironic note she had tried to sound.
"Well--?" he questioned, from the depths of the chair into whichhe had sunk.
"Well, Nick doesn't ... doesn't dream of it. If he knew that weowed our summer here to ... to my knowing...."Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through thedarkness. "Jove!" he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bentover the balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.
"What was left of soul, I wonder--?" the young composer's voiceshrilled through the open windows.
Strefford sank into another silence, from which he rousedhimself only as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.
"Well, my dear, we'll see it through between us; you and I-andClarissa," he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her.
He caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively toFred Gillow: "I can never hear that thing sung without wantingto cry like a baby."
NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on thethreshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene withpardonable satisfaction.
He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetiouseyes and a large and credulous smile.
At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Streffordand Nick Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair,Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up apeach for her. Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted inupon the white-clad group.
"Well--well--well! So I've caught you at it!" cried the happyfather, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife andfriends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment.
Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air,while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson," hailed his appearance.
It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr.
Vanderlyn, who was now the London representative of the big NewYork bank of Vanderlyn & Co., and had exchanged his sumptuoushouse in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, inMayfair; and the young man looked curiously and attentively athis host.
Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face stillkept its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife,greeted Susy affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-graspsto the two men.
"Hullo," he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coraltrinket hanging from Clarissa's neck. "Who's been giving mydaughter jewellery, I'd like to know!""Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I'd ratherhave it than a book, you know," Clarissa lucidly explained, herarms tight about her father's neck, her beaming eyes onStrefford.
Nelson Vanderlyn's own eyes took on the look of shrewdness whichcame into them whenever there was a question of material values.
"What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoilingthe brat like that! You'd no business to, my dear chap-alovely baroque pearl--" he protested, with the half-apologetictone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from animpecunious friend.
"Oh, hadn't I? Why? Because it's too good for Clarissa, or tooexpensive for me? Of course you daren't imply the first; and asfor me--I've had a windfall, and am blowing it in on theladies."Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang whenhe was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention fromthe main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention didhe wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn's protest hadbeen merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only thedimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But itwas unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, andespecially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixedVanderlyn's attention.
"A windfall?" he gaily repeated.
"Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my littleplace at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions withthe rest of you," said Strefford imperturbably.
Vanderlyn's look immediately became interested and sympathetic.
"What--the scene of the honey-moon?" He included Nick and Susyin his friendly smile.
"Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, willyou, old man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worseluck--and I don't mind telling you that Ellie's no judge oftobacco, and that Nick's too far gone in bliss to care what hesmokes," Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand toward his host'scigar-case.
"I do like jewellery best," Clarissa murmured, hugging herfather.
Nelson Vanderlyn's first word to his wife had been that he hadbrought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him withappropriate enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy atseeing him seemed rather too patently in proportion to hersatisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such suspicionappeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn's happiness in being, for once,and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with hiswife and child. He did not conceal his regret at havingpromised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with awistful glance at Ellie: "If only I'd known you meant to waitfor me!"But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as businessaffairs, he did not even consider the possibility ofdisappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being.
"Mother cares for so few people," he used to say, not without atouch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, "that Ihave to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable";and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa shouldbe ready to start the next evening.
"And meanwhile," he concluded, "we'll have all the good timethat's going."The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to furtherthis resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlynhad despatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susyshould carry him off for a tea-picnic at Torcello. They did noteven suggest that Strefford or Nick should be of the party, orthat any of the other young men of the group should be summoned;as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his harem. AndLansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of thehappy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.
"Well--that's what you call being married!" Streffordcommented, waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.
"Oh, no, I don't!" Lansing laughed.
"He does. But do you know--" Strefford paused and swung abouton his companion--"do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, Idon't care to be there. I believe there'll be some crockerybroken.""Shouldn't wonder," Lansing answered indifferently. He wanderedaway to his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to hispipe.
Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn't,except poor old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusingbecause so typical; now, it rather irritated Nick that Vanderlynshould be so complete an ass. But he would be off the next day,and so would Ellie, and then, for many enchanted weeks, thepalace would once more be the property of Nick and Susy. Of allthe people who came and went in it, they were the only ones whoappreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; andthat made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light itbecame easy to regard the Vanderlyns as mere transientintruders.
Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shuthimself up with his book. He had returned to it with freshenergy after his few weeks of holiday-making, and was determinedto finish it quickly. He did not expect that it would bring inmuch money; but if it were moderately successful it might givehim an opening in the reviews and magazines, and in that case hemeant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only as apurveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living forhimself and Susy.
Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out ofdoors. He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, thebruised peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling ofsunlight on dark green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruitsand flowers thickening the languid air. What visions he couldbuild, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the atticof some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with aterrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden--and chequesfrom the publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Whyshould they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!
He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushingopen the leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl ofrose-and-lemon angels in Tiepolo's great vault. It was not achurch in which one was likely to run across sight-seers; but hepresently remarked a young lady standing alone near the choir,and assiduously applying her field-glass to the celestialvortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an openmanual.
As Lansing's step sounded on the pavement, the young lady,turning, revealed herself as Miss Hicks.
"Ah--you like this too? It's several centuries out of yourline, though, isn't it!" Nick asked as they shook hands.
She gazed at him gravely. "Why shouldn't one like things thatare out of one's line?" she answered; and he agreed, with alaugh, that it was often an incentive.
She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or tworemarks about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling herway toward a subject of more personal interest.
"I'm glad to see you alone," she said at length, with anabruptness that might have seemed awkward had it not been socompletely unconscious. She turned toward a cluster of strawchairs, and signed to Nick to seat himself beside her.
"I seldom do," she added, with the serious smile that made herheavy face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no timeto protest: "I wanted to speak to you--to explain aboutfather's invitation to go with us to Persia and Turkestan.""To explain?""Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just afteryour marriage, didn't you? You must have thought it odd, ourasking you just then; but we hadn't heard that you weremarried.""Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I wasremiss about announcing it, even to old friends."Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the eveningwhen he had found Mrs. Hicks's letter in the mail awaiting himat Venice. The day was associated in his mind with theridiculous and mortifying episode of the cigars--the expensivecigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from Strefford'svilla. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had leftthe first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and hestill felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a fewhours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; andit was just at that moment that he had found the letter fromMrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible invitation. If onlyher daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!
"It was a dreadful temptation," he said, smiling.
"To go with us? Then why--?""Oh, everything's different now: I've got to stick to mywriting."Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny.
"Does that mean that you're going to give up your real work?""My real work--archaeology?" He smiled again to hide a twitchof regret. "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage;and I've got to think of that." He coloured suddenly, as ifsuspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an openingfor he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid. The Hicksmunificence was too uncalculating not to be occasionallyoppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes werefull of tears.
"I thought it was your vocation," she said.
"So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.""Oh, I understand. There may be things--worth giving up allother things for.""There are!" cried Nick with beaming emphasis.
He was conscious that Miss Hicks's eyes demanded of him evenmore than this sweeping affirmation.
"But your novel may fail," she said with her odd harshness.
"It may--it probably will," he agreed. "But if one stopped toconsider such possibilities--""Don't you have to, with a wife?""Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you? Not twenty?" hequestioned, laying a brotherly hand on hers.
She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from herchair. "I was never young ... if that's what you mean. It'slucky, isn't it, that my parents gave me such a grand education?
Because, you see, art's a wonderful resource." (She pronouncedit RE-source.)He continued to look at her kindly. "You won't need it--or anyother--when you grow young, as you will some day," he assuredher.
"Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love--Oh,there's Eldorada and Mr. Beck!" She broke off with a jerk,signalling with her field-glass to the pair who had justappeared at the farther end of the nave. "I told them that ifthey'd meet me here to-day I'd try to make them understandTiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really haveunderstood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only onesto realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won't." She turned toLansing and held out her hand. "I am in love," she repeatedearnestly, "and that's the reason why I find art such a REsource."She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strodeacross the church to the expectant neophytes.
Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whetherMr. Beck were the object of this apparently unrequitedsentiment; then, with a queer start of introspection, abruptlydecided that, no, he certainly was not. But then--but then--.
Well, there was no use in following up such conjectures .... Heturned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers had alreadyreached Palazzo Vanderlyn.
They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff andlaughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other'ssociety. Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughteroff to bed with a kiss, and leaning back in his armchair beforethe fruit-and-flower-laden table, declared that he'd never spenta jollier day in his life. Susy seemed to come in for a fullshare of his approbation, and Lansing thought that Ellie wasunusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford, from hishostess's side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.
Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential commenton the Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always havingprivate jokes with people or about them; and Lansing wasirritated with himself for perpetually suspecting his bestfriends of vague complicities at his expense. "If I'm going tobe jealous of Streffy now--!" he concluded with a grimace ofself-derision.
Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the mostirrational pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people'staste, a trifle fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her oldlightness of line was added a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were slower, less angular; hermouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed weighed down by theirlashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would reveal itselfthrough the new languor, like the tartness at the core of asweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowersand lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all thingselse.
Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.
Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon,devoted her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid andSusy. Strefford, with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone fora swim at the Lido, and Lansing seized the opportunity to getback to his book.
The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste ofthe solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would bescattered: the Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean,Fred Gillow on the way to his moor, Strefford to stay withfriends in Capri till his annual visit to Northumberland inSeptember. One by one the others would follow, and Lansing andSusy be left alone in the great sun-proof palace, alone underthe star-laden skies, alone with the great orange moons-stilltheirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, inthat blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as hisdreams.
He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the dooropened and he heard a step behind him. The next moment twohands were clasped over his eyes, and the air was full of Mrs.
Vanderlyn's last new scent.
"You dear thing--I'm just off, you know," she said. "Susy toldme you were working, and I forbade her to call you down. Sheand Streffy are waiting to take me to the station, and I've runup to say good-bye.""Ellie, dear!" Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside hiswriting and started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.
"No, no! I should never forgive myself if I'd interrupted you.
I oughtn't to have come up; Susy didn't want me to. But I hadto tell you, you dear .... I had to thank you..."In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous,so negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, andgloves hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, morenatural than he had ever seen her. Poor Ellie such a goodfellow, after all!
"To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?" he laughed,taking her hands.
She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about hisneck.
"For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you twoblessed darlings!" she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.
Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowlydownward, dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like astone.
"Oh," she gasped, "why do you stare so? Didn't you know ...?"They heard Strefford's shrill voice on the stairs. "Ellie,where the deuce are you? Susy's in the gondola. You'll missthe train!"Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. "Whatdo you mean? What are you talking about?""Oh, nothing ... But you were both such bricks about theletters .... And when Nelson was here, too .... Nick, don'thurt my wrist so! I must run!"He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her andlistening to the click of her high heels as she fled across theroom and along the echoing corridor.
When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small moroccocase had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, andbefore him, on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set witha perfect pearl. He picked the box up, and was about to hastenafter Mrs. Vanderlyn--it was so like her to shed jewels on herpath!--when he noticed his own initials on the cover.
He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for along while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burntitself into his flesh.
At last he roused himself and stood up.
WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threwherself down on the lounge.
The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlynhad safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not notedfor prudence, and when life smiled on her she was given tobetraying her gratitude too openly; but thanks to Susy'svigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford's tacit co-operation),the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. NelsonVanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and thoughEllie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, hadseemed to Susy less serene than usual, she became her normalself as soon as it was discovered that the red morocco bag withher jewel-box was missing. Before it had been discovered in thedepths of the gondola they had reached the station, and therewas just time to thrust her into her "sleeper," from which shewas seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to her friends.
"Well, my dear, we've been it through," Strefford remarked witha deep breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
"Oh," Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover herself-betrayal: "Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!""Yes--even if it's a rotten bounder," Strefford agreed.
"A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--""That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the lastsix months. Didn't she tell you--?"Susy felt herself redden. "I didn't ask her--""Ask her? You mean you didn't let her!""I didn't let her. And I don't let you," Susy added sharply, ashe helped her into the gondola.
"Oh, all right: I daresay you're right. It simplifies things,"Strefford placidly acquiesced.
She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on thedistance she had travelled during the last year. Strefford hadread her mind with his usual penetration. It was true thatthere had been a time when she would have thought it perfectlynatural that Ellie should tell her everything; that the name ofyoung Davenant's successor should be confided to her as a matterof course. Apparently even Ellie had been obscurely aware ofthe change, for after a first attempt to force her confidenceson Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions ofgratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty "surprise"of the sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in theact of their farewell embrace.
The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had anauctioneer's eye for values, knew to a fraction the worth ofthose deep convex stones alternating with small emeralds andbrilliants. She was glad to own the bracelet, and enchantedwith the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even whileadmiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had alreadytransmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would gotoward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came toher now interested her only as something more to be offered upto Nick.
The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and shecould not see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried towardhim with outstretched wrist.
"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table,and her husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight.
She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him.
"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pullinga morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl becauseshe was afraid to look again at Nick.
"Ellie--gave you this?" she asked at length.
"Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause. "Would you mindtelling me," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone,"exactly for what services we've both been so handsomely paid?""The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while herhead spun round with unimaginable terrors.
"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, myservices would appear to have been valued rather higher thanyours. Would you be kind enough to tell me just what theywere?"Susy threw her head back and looked at him. "What on earth areyou talking about, Nick! Why shouldn't Ellie have given usthese things? Do you forget that it's like our giving her apen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you are trying tosuggest?"It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while sheput the questions. Something had happened between him andEllie, that was evident-one of those hideous unforeseeableblunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at astroke; and again Susy shuddered at the frailty of her bliss.
But her old training stood her in good stead. There had beenmore than one moment in her past when everything-somebodyelse's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and aclear glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felther own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up asgood a defence.
"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued toremain silent.
"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes assteady as she kept hers. "There's no reason on earth, as yousay, why Ellie shouldn't give us presents--as expensive presentsas she likes; and the pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: forwhat specific services were they given? For, allowing for allthe absence of scruple that marks the intercourse of trulycivilized people, you'll probably agree that there are limits;at least up to now there have been limits ....""I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted toshow that she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.""But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" hesuggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowyroom. "A whole summer of it if we choose."Susy smiled. "Apparently she didn't think that enough.""What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon herchild.""Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa?""Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn't mention her inoffering me this recompense."Susy lifted her head again. "Whom did she mention?""Vanderlyn," said Lansing.
"Vanderlyn? Nelson?""Yes--and some letters ... something about letters .... What isit, my dear, that you and I have been hired to hide fromVanderlyn? Because I should like to know," Nick broke outsavagely, "if we've been adequately paid."Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, andstudy her next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fearthat she could at last only retort: "What is it that Ellie saidto you?"Lansing laughed again. "That's just what you'd like to findout--isn't it?--in order to know the line to take in making yourexplanation."The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, andthat Susy herself had not expected.
"Oh, don't--don't let us speak to each other like that!" shecried; and sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her facein her hands.
It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that theirlove for each other, their faith in each other, should be savedfrom some unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nickeverything--she wanted to tell him everything--if only she couldbe sure of reaching a responsive chord in him. But the scene ofthe cigars came back to her, and benumbed her. If only shecould make him see that nothing was of any account as long asthey continued to love each other!
His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. "Poor child--don't," he said.
Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breakingthrough her tears. "Don't you see," he continued, "that we'vegot to have this thing out?"She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. "Ican't--while you stand up like that," she stammered, childishly.
She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; butLansing did not seat himself at her side. He took a chairfacing her, like a caller on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. "Will that do?" he asked with a stiff smile, as if tohumour her.
"Nothing will do--as long as you're not you!""Not me?"She shook her head wearily. "What's the use? You accept thingstheoretically--and then when they happen ....""What things? What has happened!"A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, afterall--? "But you know all about Ellie. We used to talk abouther often enough in old times," she said.
"Ellie and young Davenant?""Young Davenant; or the others ....""Or the others. But what business was it of ours?""Ah, that's just what I think!" she cried, springing up with anexplosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was noanswering light in his face.
"We're outside of all that; we've nothing to do with it, havewe?" he pursued.
"Nothing whatever.""Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's gratitude?
Gratitude for what we've done about some letters--and aboutVanderlyn?""Oh, not you," Susy cried, involuntarily.
"Not I? Then you?" He came close and took her by the wrist.
"Answer me. Have you been mixed up in some dirty business ofEllie's?"There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with thatburning grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At lengthhe let her go and moved away. "Answer," he repeated.
"I've told you it was my business and not yours."He received this in silence; then he questioned: "You've beensending letters for her, I suppose? To whom?""Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to knowthat she'd been away. She left me the letters to post to himonce a week. I found them here the night we arrived .... Itwas the price--for this. Oh, Nick, say it's been worth it-sayat least that it's been worth it!" she implored him.
He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on thecorner of her dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
"How many letters?""I don't know ... four ... five ... What does it matter?""And once a week, for six weeks--?""Yes.""And you took it all as a matter of course?""No: I hated it. But what could I do?""What could you do?""When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how couldyou think I'd give you up?""Give me up?" he echoed.
"Well--doesn't our being together depend on--on what we can getout of people? And hasn't there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you ever in your life get anything for nothing?" shecried with sudden exasperation. "You've lived among thesepeople as long as I have; I suppose it's not the first time--""By God, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing. "And that's thedifference--the fundamental difference.""The difference!""Between you and me. I've never in my life done people's dirtywork for them--least of all for favours in return. I supposeyou guessed it, or you wouldn't have hidden this beastlybusiness from me."The blood rose to Susy's temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in hisbare lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. Buthow could she tell him that under his influence her standard hadbecome stricter too, and that it was as much to hide herhumiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she hadheld her tongue?
"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known,"he continued.
"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?""You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?""Well--isn't it," she faltered.
"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as ifthis had been the inevitable conclusion to which theirpassionate argument had led.
Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious ofthe causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to havesmothered her under its ruins.
Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing outof the window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. Shelooked at his back, and wondered what would happen if she wereto go up to him and fling her arms about him. But even if hertouch could have broken the spell, she was not sure she wouldhave chosen that way of breaking it. Beneath her speechlessanguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having beenunfairly treated. When they had entered into their queercompact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises andconcessions the life they were to live together must be based.
That he should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that shewondered, with a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretchedEllie's indiscretion as a means of escape from a tie alreadywearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
"After all--you were right when you wanted me to be yourmistress."He turned on her with an astonished stare. "You--my mistress?"Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discoverythat such a possibility had long since become unthinkable tohim. But she insisted. "That day at the Fulmers'--have youforgotten? When you said it would be sheer madness for us tomarry."Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyesfixed on the mosaic volutes of the floor.
"I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for usto marry," he rejoined at length.
She sprang up trembling. "Well, that's easily settled. Ourcompact--""Oh, that compact--" he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
"Aren't you asking me to carry it out now?""Because I said we'd better part?" He paused. "But thecompact--I'd almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn't it,that we were to give each other a helping hand if either of ushad a better chance? The thing was absurd, of course; a merejoke; from my point of view, at least. I shall never want anybetter chance ... any other chance ....""Oh, Nick, oh, Nick ... but then ...." She was close to him,his face looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
"It would have been easy enough, wouldn't it," he rejoined, "ifwe'd been as detachable as all that? As it is, it's going tohurt horribly. But talking it over won't help. You were rightjust now when you asked how else we were going to live. We'reborn parasites, both, I suppose, or we'd have found out some waylong ago. But I find there are things I might put up with formyself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time that I can'tlet you put up with for me ... ever .... Those cigars at Como:
do you suppose I didn't know it was for me? And this too?
Well, it won't do ... it won't do ...."He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out:
"But your writing--if your book's a success ....""My poor Susy--that's all part of the humbug. We both know thatmy sort of writing will never pay. And what's the alternativeexcept more of the same kind of baseness? And getting more andmore blunted to it? At least, till now, I've minded certainthings; I don't want to go on till I find myself taking them forgranted."She reached out a timid hand. "But you needn't ever, dear ...
if you'd only leave it to me ...."He drew back sharply. "That seems simple to you, I suppose?
Well, men are different." He walked toward the dressing-tableand glanced at the little enamelled clock which had been one ofher wedding-presents.
"Time to dress, isn't it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dinewith Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I'd rather like along tramp, and no more talking just at present except withmyself."He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stoodmotionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a finalword of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs.
Vanderlyn's gifts glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
Yes: men were different, as he said.