BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been;Nick in old times, had been the first to own it .... How theyhad laughed at the Perpendicular People, the people who went byon the other side (since you couldn't be a good Samaritanwithout stooping over and poking into heaps of you didn't knowwhat)! And now Nick had suddenly become perpendicular ....
Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in thebreaks between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiarfaces of the people she called her friends: Strefford, FredGillow, a giggling fool of a young Breckenridge, of their NewYork group, who had arrived that day, and Prince NeroneAltineri, Ursula's Prince, who, in Ursula's absence at atiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred tojoin her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the otherof them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what lifewould be like with no faces but such as theirs to furnishit ....
Ah, Nick had become perpendicular! .... After all, most peoplewent through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned in advance. If your dancing manual told you at agiven time to be perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was Nick!
"But what on earth, Susy," Gillow's puzzled voice suddenly cameto her as from immeasurable distances, "Are you going to do inthis beastly stifling hole for the rest of the summer?""Ask Nick, my dear fellow," Strefford answered for her; and:
"By the way, where is Nick--if one may ask?" young Breckenridgeinterposed, glancing up to take belated note of his host'sabsence.
"Dining out," said Susy glibly. "People turned up: blightingbores that I wouldn't have dared to inflict on you." How easilythe old familiar fibbing came to her !
"The kind to whom you say, 'Now mind you look me up'; and thenspend the rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,"Strefford amplified.
The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It wentthrough Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightlyfibbed became a hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly:
"I'll call him up there after dinner--and then he will feelsilly"--but only to remember that the Hickses, in theirmediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied themselves atelephone.
The fact of Nick's temporary inaccessibility--since she was nowconvinced that he was really at the Hickses'--turned herdistress to a mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carriedhis principles, his standards, or whatever he called the new setof rules he had suddenly begun to apply to the old game! It wasstupid of her not to have guessed it at once.
"Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know. He's going tomarry Coral next," she laughed out, flashing the joke around thetable with all her practiced flippancy.
"Lord!" grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Princedisplayed the unsurprised smile which Susy accused him ofpracticing every morning with his Mueller exercises.
Suddenly Susy felt Strefford's eyes upon her.
"What's the matter with me? Too much rouge?" she asked, passingher arm in his as they left the table.
"No: too little. Look at yourself," he answered in a low tone.
"Oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looksfished up from the canal!"She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of thesala, hands on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince andyoung Breckenridge caught her up, and she spun back with thelatter, while Gillow-it was believed to be his soleaccomplishment-snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, andshuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with afloating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang forthe gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
"Well, what next--this ain't all, is it?" Gillow presentlyqueried, from the divan where he lolled half-asleep withdripping brow. Fred Gillow, like Nature, abhorred a void, andit was inconceivable to him that every hour of man's rationalexistence should not furnish a motive for getting up and goingsomewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view, andthe Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company thatsomebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.
Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he'd just comeback from there, and proposed that they should go out on footfor a change.
"Why not? What fun!" Susy was up in an instant. "Let's paysomebody a surprise visit--I don't know who! Streffy, Prince,can't you think of somebody who'd be particularly annoyed by ourarrival?""Oh, the list's too long. Let's start, and choose our victim onthe way," Strefford suggested.
Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing herhigh-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. Therewas no moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hungover them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped onthem from garden-walls. Susy's heart tightened with memories ofComo.
They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to thedrifting whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposedtaking a nearer look at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, andthey hailed a gondola and were rowed out through the bobbinglanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When they landed again,Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularlyresentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near athand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supportedthis proposal; but on Susy's curt refusal they started theirrambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes andmaking for the Piazza and Florian's ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, Susy paused tostare about her with a laugh.
"But the Hickses--surely that's their palace? And the windowsall lit up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let's go upand surprise them!" The idea struck her as one of the drollestthat she had ever originated, and she wondered that hercompanions should respond so languidly.
"I can't see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,"Gillow protested, defrauded of possible excitements; andStrefford added: "It would surprise me more than them if Iwent."But Susy insisted feverishly: "You don't know. It may beawfully exciting! I have an idea that Coral's announcing herengagement--her engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand,Streff--and you the other, Fred-" she began to hum the firstbars of Donna Anna's entrance in Don Giovanni. "Pity I haven'tgot a black cloak and a mask ....""Oh, your face will do," said Strefford, laying his hand on herarm.
She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Princehad sprung on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, wasalready halfway up the stairs.
"My face? My face? What's the matter with my face? Do youknow any reason why I shouldn't go to the Hickses to-night?"Susy broke out in sudden wrath.
"None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,"Strefford returned, with serenity.
"Oh, in that case--!""No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already."He caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway.
But on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out ofhis, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dasheddown the long flight, across the great resounding vestibule andout into the darkness of the calle.
Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent inthe night.
"Susy--what the devil's the matter?""The matter? Can't you see? That I'm tired, that I've got asplitting headache--that you bore me to death, one and all ofyou!" She turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm.
"Streffy, old dear, don't mind me: but for God's sake find agondola and send me home.""Alone?""Alone."It was never any concern of Streff's if people wanted to dothings he did not understand, and she knew that she could counton his obedience. They walked on in silence to the next canal,and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it.
"Now go and amuse yourself," she called after him, as the boatshot under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone,away from the folly and futility that would be all she had leftif Nick were to drop out of her life ....
"But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good," shethought as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
The short summer night was already growing transparent: a newborn breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent itlapping freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly twoo'clock! Nick had no doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried upthe stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness. Sheknew that when their eyes and their lips met it would beimpossible for anything to keep them apart.
The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receiveher, and to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegramfor Strefford: she threw it down again and paused under thelantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope inher hand. The address it bore was in Nick's writing. "When didthe signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?"Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner:
of that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty allthe evening. A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: hehad left it without waiting. It must have been about half anhour after the signora had herself gone out with her guests.
Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there,beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminatedEllie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's.
"Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work thisthing out by myself. The sooner the better-don't you agree? SoI'm taking the express to Milan presently. You'll get a properletter in a day or two. I wish I could think, now, of somethingto say that would show you I'm not a brute--but I can't. N. L. "There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even hada semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell fromSusy's hands, and she crept out onto the balcony and coweredthere, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawnwind stirring in her thin laces. Through her closed eyelids andthe tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt thepenetration of the growing light, the relentless advance ofanother day--a day without purpose and without meaning--a daywithout Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring fromdry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the GrandCanal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging theheavy curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in thedarkness to the lounge and fell among its pillows-facedownward--groping, delving for a deeper night ....
She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sunon the floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was itpossible?--it must be eight or nine o'clock already! She hadslept--slept like a drunkard--with that letter on the table ather elbow! Ah, now she remembered--she had dreamed that theletter was a dream! But there, inexorably, it lay; and shepicked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read it. Then she toreit into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before the emptyhearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, sheburnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for thatsome day!
After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware offeeling younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merelysaid that he was going away for "a day or two." And the letterwas not cruel: there were tender things in it, showing throughthe curt words. She smiled at herself a little stiffly in theglass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang forthe maid.
"Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford thatI should like to see him presently."If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a fewdays she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but hermind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of wasto take Strefford into her confidence. She knew that he couldbe trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformeditself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends requiredit.
The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susysomewhat sharply repeated her order. "But don't wake him onpurpose," she added, foreseeing the probable effect onStrefford's temper.
"But, signora, the gentleman is already out.""Already out?" Strefford, who could hardly be routed from hisbed before luncheon-time! "Is it so late?" Susy cried,incredulous.
"After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train forEngland. Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left wordthat he would write to the signora."The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at herpainted image in the glass, as if she had been trying tooutstare an importunate stranger. There was no one left for herto take counsel of, then--no one but poor Fred Gillow! She madea grimace at the idea.
But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same barof sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked withdisgust at his stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why hehad decided to go to Milan, and what on earth he should do whenhe got there. The difficulty about trenchant decisions was thatthe next morning they generally left one facing a void ....
When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out,got some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue hisjourney to Genoa. The state of being carried passively onwardpostponed action and dulled thought; and after twelve hours offurious mental activity that was exactly what he wanted.
He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggardintervals of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clankand rattle of the train. Inside his head, in his wakingintervals, the same clanking and grinding of wheels and chainswent on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid thinkingwithin an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the nightbefore; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolveindefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee,instead of clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated theirpace.
At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheapsuit-case and some underclothes, and then went down to the portin search of a little hotel he remembered there. An hour laterhe was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantlyover the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became awareof being timidly but intently examined by a small round-facedgentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the adjoining table.
"Hullo--Buttles!" Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprisethe recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks'sendeavour to convert him to Tiepolo.
Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half roseand bowed ceremoniously.
Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbedin his solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having topostpone them even to converse with Mr. Buttles.
"No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?" he asked,remembering that the Ibis must be just about to spread herwings.
Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation:
for the moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
"Ah--you're here as an advance guard? I remember now--I sawMiss Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday," Lansingcontinued, dazed at the thought that hardly forty-eight hourshad passed since his encounter with Coral in the Scalzi.
Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached histable. "May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thankyou. No, I am not here as an advance guard--though I believethe Ibis is due some time to-morrow." He cleared his throat,wiped his eyeglasses on a silk handkerchief, replaced them onhis nose, and went on solemnly: "Perhaps, to clear up anypossible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no longer inthe employ of Mr. Hicks."Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that hesuffered horribly in imparting this information, though hiscompact face did not lend itself to any dramatic display ofemotion.
"Really," Nick smiled, and then ventured: "I hope it's notowing to conscientious objections to Tiepolo?"Mr. Buttles's blush became a smouldering agony. "Ah, Miss Hicksmentioned to you ... told you ...? No, Mr. Lansing. I amprincipled against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all hiscontemporaries, I confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses tosurrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of theItalian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize.
Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humblecapacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming ...."He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from hiseyeglasses. It was evident that he was suffering from adistress which he longed and yet dreaded to communicate. ButNick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his ownpreoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, wenton: "If you see me here to-day it is only because, after asomewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave ofour friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of somany stimulating hours. But I must beg you," he addedearnestly, "should you see Miss Hicks--or any other member ofthe party--to make no allusion to my presence in Genoa. Iwish," said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, "to preserve thestrictest incognito."Lansing glanced at him kindly. "Oh, but--isn't that a littleunfriendly?""No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing," said the ex-secretary, "and I commit myself to your discretion. The truthis, if I am here it is not to look once more at the Ibis, but atMiss Hicks: once only. You will understand me, and appreciatewhat I am suffering."He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-bootedfeet; pausing on the threshold to say: "From the first it washopeless," before he disappeared through the glass doors.
A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind: there wassomething quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk andefficient Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequitedpassion. And what a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thussuddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed "the foreignlanguages"! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with thehotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles's loftier task toentertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who flockedabout the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting hisdeparture must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs.
Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded,and Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his ownwoes. The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, froma little restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they oftenpatronized, he had done so with the firm intention of going awayfor a day or two in order to collect his wits and think over thesituation. But after his letter had been entrusted to thelandlord's little son, who was a particular friend of Susy's,Nick had decided to await the lad's return. The messenger hadnot been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing thefriendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that theboy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would lingerabout while the letter was carried up. And he pictured the maidknocking at his wife's darkened room, and Susy dashing somepowder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!
The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and hehad brought no answer, but merely the statement that thesignora was out: that everybody was out.
"Everybody?""The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at thepalace. They all went out together on foot soon after dinner.
There was no one to whom I could give the note but the gondolieron the landing, for the signora had said she would be very late,and had sent the maid to bed; and the maid had, of course, goneout immediately with her innamorato.""Ah--" said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, andwalking out of the restaurant.
Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she didevery night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after hertalk with Nick, as if nothing had happened, as if his wholeworld and hers had not crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poorSusy! After all, she had merely obeyed the instinct of selfpreservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going ahead andhiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had alreadyengendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her asfor most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, fromsorrow to the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?
His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving therestaurant Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legsbrought him to a standstill under the vine-covered pergola of agondolier's wine-shop at a landing close to the Piazzetta.
There he could absorb cooling drinks until it was time to go tothe station.
It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for aboat, when a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with muchchaff and laughter a party of young people in evening dressjumped out. Nick, from under the darkness of the vine, saw thatthere was only one lady among them, and it did not need the lampabove the landing to reveal her identity. Susy, bareheaded andlaughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, acigarette between her fingers, took Strefford's arm and turnedin the direction of Florian's, with Gillow, the Prince and youngBreckenridge in her wake ....
Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during hishours in the train and his aimless trampings through the streetsof Genoa. In that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy'syou had to keep going or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, hadchosen to keep going. Under the lamp-flare on the landing hehad had a good look at her face, and had seen that the mask ofpaint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide anyravages the scene between them might have left. He even fanciedthat she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes ....
There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnighttrain, and no gondola in sight but that which his wife had justleft. He sprang into it, and bade the gondolier carry him tothe station. The cushions, as he leaned back, gave out a breathof her scent; and in the glare of electric light at the stationhe saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her dress. Heground his heel into it as he got out.
There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have ofher. For he knew now that he was not going back; at least notto take up their life together. He supposed he should have tosee her once, to talk things over, settle something for theirfuture. He had been sincere in saying that he bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into that slough again. If hedid, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slippingdownward from concession to concession ....
The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would havekept the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awakehe did not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was moredeafening. Dawn brought a negative relief, and out of sheerweariness he dropped into a heavy sleep. When he woke it wasnearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known outlineof the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless longsince landed and betaken themselves to cooler and morefashionable regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed toaccentuate his loneliness, his sense of having no one on earthto turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to pickup a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. Itbecame obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or apetulant child--he preferred to think it was like a madman. Ifhe and Susy were to separate there was no reason why it shouldnot be done decently and quietly, as such transactions werehabitually managed among people of their kind. It seemedgrotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world ofunruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at theincongruity of his gesture .... But suddenly his eyes filledwith tears. The future without Susy was unbearable,inconceivable. Why, after all, should they separate? At thequestion, her soft face seemed close to his, and that slightlift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite. Well-he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talkthings over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life likea business association. No--if he went back he would go withoutconditions, for good, forever ....
Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant daywhen the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny'spearls sold, and nothing left except unconcealed andunconditional dependence on rich friends, the role of theacknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other possible solution,no new way of ordering their lives? No--there was none: hecould not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,could not picture either of them living such a life as the NatFulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalowin New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food andubiquitous children. How could he ask Susy to share such a lifewith him? If he did, she would probably have the sense torefuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummermadness; now the score must be paid ....
He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trusthimself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen andpaper, and pushed aside a pile of unread newspapers on thecorner of the table where his coffee had been served. As he didso, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before. As apretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper andglanced down the first page. He read:
"Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringhamand his son Viscount d'Amblay drowned in midnight collision.
Both bodies recovered."He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happenedthe night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of afog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl ofAltringham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunesin England. It was vertiginous to think of their oldimpecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure. And whatirony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, hadplunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while ittossed the other to the stars!
With an intenser precision he saw again Susy's descent from thegondola at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and ofStrefford's chaff, the way she had caught his arm and clung toit, sweeping the other men on in her train. Strefford--Susy andStrefford! ... More than once, Nick had noticed the softerinflections of his friend's voice when he spoke to Susy, thebrooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In thesecurity of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs.
The only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow,because of his unlimited power to satisfy a woman's whims. YetNick knew that such material advantages would never againsuffice for Susy. With Strefford it was different. She haddelighted in his society while he was notoriously ineligible;might not she find him irresistible now?
The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick:
the absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledgedtheir faith. But was it so absurd, after all? It had beenSusy's suggestion (not his, thank God!); and perhaps in makingit she had been more serious than he imagined. Perhaps, even iftheir rupture had not occurred, Strefford's sudden honours mighthave caused her to ask for her freedom ....
Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the fourcornerstones of her existence. He had always known it--sheherself had always acknowledged it, even in their last dreadfultalk together; and once he had gloried in her frankness. Howcould he ever have imagined that, to have her fill of thesethings, she would not in time stoop lower than she had yetstooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might besaving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now sobitter to him that he was moved to thank whatever gods therewere for pushing that mortuary paragraph under his eye ....
"Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our futurein hand, and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I havesometimes been selfish enough to forget the conditions on whichyou agreed to marry me, they have come back to me during thesetwo days of solitude. You've given me the best a man can have,and nothing else will ever be worth much to me. But since Ihaven't the ability to provide you with what you want, Irecognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must oweno more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by thenewspapers that Streff can now give you as many palaces as youwant. Let him have the chance--I fancy he'll jump at it, andhe's the best man in sight. I wish I were in his shoes.
"I'll write again in a day or two, when I've collected my wits,and can give you an address. NICK."He added a line on the subject of their modest funds, put theletter into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. NicholasLansing. As he did so, he reflected that it was the first timehe had ever written his wife's married name.
"Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her," hevowed, as he groped in his pocketbook for a stamp.
He stood up with a stretch of weariness--the heat was stifling!
--and put the letter in his pocket.
"I'll post it myself, it's safer," he thought; "and then what inthe name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?" He jammed hishat down on his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.
As he was turning away from the square by the general PostOffice, a white parasol waved from a passing cab, and CoralHicks leaned forward with outstretched hand. "I knew I'd findyou," she triumphed. "I've been driving up and down in thisbroiling sun for hours, shopping and watching for you at thesame time."He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how sheknew he was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shyimperiousness that always made him feel, in her presence, like amember of an orchestra under a masterful baton; "Now please getright into this carriage, and don't keep me roasting hereanother minute." To the cabdriver she called out: Al porto."Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed aheap of bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply addedone more to the number. He supposed that she was taking herspoils to the Ibis, and that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the others. Well, it would all helpto pass the day--and by night he would have reached some kind ofa decision about his future.
On the third day after Nick's departure the post brought to thePalazzo Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.
The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in thetrain and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he hadbeen called home by the dreadful accident of which Susy hadprobably read in the daily papers. He added that he would writeagain from England, and then--in a blotted postscript--: "Iwanted uncommonly badly to see you for good-bye, but the hourwas impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just a word toAltringham."The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon,were both from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell uponthe one in her husband's writing. Her hand trembled so muchthat for a moment she could not open the envelope. When she haddone so, she devoured the letter in a flash, and then sat andbrooded over the outspread page as it lay on her knee. It mightmean so many things--she could read into it so many harrowingalternatives of indifference and despair, of irony andtenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, orseeking only to inflict them upon her? Or did the wordsrepresent his actual feelings, no more and no less, and did hereally intend her to understand that he considered it his dutyto abide by the letter of their preposterous compact? He hadleft her in wrath and indignation, yet, as a closer scrutinyrevealed, there was not a word of reproach in his brief lines.
Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so cold toher .... She shivered and turned to the other envelope.
The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up nodefinite image. She opened the envelope and discovered a post-card of the Ibis, canvas spread, bounding over a rippled sea.
On the back was written:
"So awfully dear of you to lend us Mr. Lansing for a littlecruise. You may count on our taking the best of care of him.
CORAL"
WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter beforein New York: "But why on earth don't you and Nick go to mylittle place at Versailles for the honeymoon? I'm off to China,and you could have it to yourselves all summer," the offer hadbeen tempting enough to make the lovers waver.
It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of thedemoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susyjust the kind of place in which to take the first steps inrenunciation. But Nick had objected that Paris, at that time ofyear, would be swarming with acquaintances who would hunt themdown at all hours; and Susy's own experience had led her toremark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more thantaking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore gaveStrefford's villa the preference, with an inward proviso (onSusy's part) that Violet's house might very conveniently servetheir purpose at another season.
These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs.
Melrose's door on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxespiled high on the roof of the cab she had taken at the station.
She had travelled straight through from Venice, stopping inMilan just long enough to pick up a reply to the telegram shehad despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanentpresence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: "Oh, when I'm sick ofeverything I just rush off without warning to my little shantyat Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs."The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy's enquiry: "Amsure Mrs. Melrose most happy"; and Susy, without furtherthought, had jumped into a Versailles train, and now stood inthe thin rain before the sphinx-guarded threshold of thepavilion.
The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs.
Melrose's house might be convenient: no visitors were to befeared at Versailles at the end of August, and though Susy'sreasons for seeking solitude were so remote from those she hadonce prefigured, they were none the less cogent. To be alone--alone! After those first exposed days when, in the persistentpresence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mockingradiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turnedabout in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, tobe alone had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to bealone somewhere in a setting as unlike as possible to thesensual splendours of Venice, under skies as unlike its azureroof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled away intoa dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never beenand no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here shewas on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place,under lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkilydeparting for his moor (where she had half-promised to join himin September); the Prince, young Breckenridge, and the fewremaining survivors of the Venetian group, had dispersed in thedirection of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could atleast collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare thecountenance with which she was to face the next stage in hercareer. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!
The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and aslender languishing figure appeared on the threshold.
"Darling!" Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her intothe dusky perfumed room.
"But I thought you were in China!" Susy stammered.
"In China ... in China," Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes,and Susy remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life moreplanless, more inexplicable than that of any of the otherephemeral beings blown about upon the same winds of pleasure.
"Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs.
Melrose last evening," remarked the perfect house-keeper,following with Susy's handbag.
Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuatedhands. "Of course, of course! I had meant to go to China--no,India .... But I've discovered a genius ... and Genius, youknow ...." Unable to complete her thought, she sank down upon apillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried: "Fulmer! Fulmer!"and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room withwidening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned andscented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw withsurprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshirebungalow and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her inlordly ease, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between hislips, his feet solidly planted in the insidious depths of one ofViolet Melrose's white leopard skins.
"Susy!" he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured:
"You didn't know, then? You hadn't heard of his masterpieces?"In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. "Is Nat yourgenius?"Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.
Fulmer laughed. "No; I'm Grace's. But Mrs. Melrose has beenour Providence, and ....""Providence?" his hostess interrupted. "Don't talk as if youwere at a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York ...
it was the most fabulous success. He's come abroad to makestudies for the decoration of my music-room in New York. UrsulaGillow has given him her garden-house at Roslyn to do. And Mrs.
Bockheimer's ball-room--oh, Fulmer, where are the cartoons?"She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on alacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. "I'd gotas far as Brindisi. I've travelled day and night to be here tomeet him," she declared. "But, you darling," and she held out acaressing hand to Susy, "I'm forgetting to ask if you've hadtea?"An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herselfmysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her nativeelement. Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice;but Susy was then nourished on another air, the air of Nick'spresence and personality; now that she was abandoned, left againto her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the mercy ofthe influences from which she thought she had escaped.
In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled,it seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should havetossed Nat Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrosechasing back from the ends of the earth to bask in his success.
Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class of moralparasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimesreversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Whereverthere was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared,a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on thenotoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Anyone less versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her littleworld would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress,in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim. Susy knew better. Violet,poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant EllieVanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her artless mixtureof amorous and social interests, was a woman with a purpose, acreature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a driftinginterrogation.
And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes thatdreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you likeclaws, Susy seemed to have found the key to all his years ofdogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference topoverty, indifference to the needs of his growing family ....
Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplaceenough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though it wasViolet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.
"Yes, I did discover him--I did," Mrs. Melrose was insisting,from the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunklike a wan Nereid in a midnight sea. "You mustn't believe aword that Ursula Gillow tells you about having pounced on his'Spring Snow Storm' in a dark corner of the American Artists'
exhibition--skied, if you please! They skied him less than ayear ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked higherthan the first line at a picture-show. And now she actuallypretends ... oh, for pity's sake don't say it doesn't matter,Fulmer! Your saying that just encourages her, and makes peoplethink she did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at theexhibition on varnishing-day .... Who? Well, EddyBreckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhapshe was! As if one could remember the people about one, whensuddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did--didn't he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well ... that'sexactly what happened to me that day ... and Ursula, everybodyknows, was down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up forthe opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there andlaughs, and says it doesn't matter, and that he'll paint anotherpicture any day for me to discover!"Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling witheagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare hersituation in the face, and collect herself before she came outagain among her kind. She had stood on the door-step, coweringamong her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded andthe door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare ofthe outer world .... And now she had sat for an hour inViolet's drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moonmight have been spent; and no one had asked her where she hadcome from, or why she was alone, or what was the key to thetragedy written on her shrinking face ....
That was the way of the world they lived in. Nobody questioned,nobody wondered any more-because nobody had time to remember.
The old risk of prying curiosity, of malicious gossip, wasvirtually over: one was left with one's drama, one's disaster,on one's hands, because there was nobody to stop and notice thelittle shrouded object one was carrying. As Susy watched thetwo people before her, each so frankly unaffected by herpresence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit ofnotoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success,she felt like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appealsto the grosser senses of the living.
"If I wanted to be alone," she thought, "I'm alone enough, inall conscience." There was a deathly chill in such security.
She turned to Fulmer.
"And Grace?"He beamed back without sign of embarrassment. "Oh, she's here,naturally--we're in Paris, kids and all. In a pension, where wecan polish up the lingo. But I hardly ever lay eyes on her,because she's as deep in music as I am in paint; it was as big achance for her as for me, you see, and she's making the most ofit, fiddling and listening to the fiddlers. Well, it's aconsiderable change from New Hampshire." He looked at herdreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself fromhis dream, and situate her in the fading past. "Remember thebungalow? And Nick--ah, how's Nick?" he brought outtriumphantly.
"Oh, yes--darling Nick?" Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, herhead erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: "Mostawfully well--splendidly!""He's not here, though?" from Fulmer.
"No. He's off travelling--cruising."Mrs. Melrose's attention was faintly roused. "With anybodyinteresting?""No; you wouldn't know them. People we met ...." She did nothave to continue, for her hostess's gaze had again strayed.
"And you've come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don'tlisten to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I'vediscovered a new woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathesyou.... Her name's my secret; but we'll go to her together."Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. "Do you mind if I go upto my room? I'm rather tired--coming straight through.""Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming todinner ... Mrs. Match will tell you. She has such a memory ....
Fulmer, where on earth are those cartoons of the music-room?"Their voices pursued Susy upstairs, as, in Mrs. Match'sperpendicular wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room withits gay linen hangings and the low bed heaped with morecushions.
"If we'd come here," she thought, "everything might have beendifferent." And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of thePalazzo Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she hadmet her doom.
Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioningthat dinner was not till nine, shut her softly in among herterrors.
"Find everything?" Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she wouldalways find everything: every time the door shut on her now,and the sound of voices ceased, her memories would be therewaiting for her, every one of them, waiting quietly, patiently,obstinately, like poor people in a doctor's office, the peoplewho are always last to be attended to, but whom nothing willdiscourage or drive away, people to whom time is nothing,fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: whojust wait .... Thank heaven, after all, that she had not foundthe house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she wasto meet her memories there!
It was just a week since Nick had left her. During that week,crammed with people, questions, packing, explaining, evading,she had believed that in solitude lay her salvation. Now sheunderstood that there was nothing she was so unprepared for, sounfitted for. When, in all her life, had she ever been alone?
And how was she to bear it now, with all these ravening memoriesbesetting her!
Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nineo'clock? She knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began tounpack.
Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old lifewere stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed andcrumpled dresses she remembered Violet's emphatic warning:
"Don't believe the people who tell you that skirts are going tobe wider." Were hers, perhaps, too wide as it was? She lookedat her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and sofa, andunderstood that, according to Violet's standards, and that ofall her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so originaland exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only tobe passed on to poor relations or given to one's maid. And Susywould have to go on wearing them till they fell to bits-orelse .... Well, or else begin the old life again in some newform ....
She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? Howlittle they had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now,perhaps, they would again be one of the foremost considerationsin her life. How could it be otherwise, if she were to returnagain to her old dependence on Ellie Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow,Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the Bockheimers and theirkind awaited her ....
A knock on the door--what a relief! It was Mrs. Match again,with a telegram. To whom had Susy given her new address? Witha throbbing heart she tore open the envelope and read:
"Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I seeyou write Nouveau Luxe."Ah, yes--she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! Andthis was his answer: he was coming. She dropped into a chair,and tried to think. What on earth had she said in her letter?
It had been mainly, of course, one of condolence; but now sheremembered having added, in a precipitate postscript: "I can'tgive your message to Nick, for he's gone off with the Hickses-Idon't know where, or for how long. It's all right, of course:
it was in our bargain."She had not meant to put in that last phrase; but as she sealedher letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick's missive,which lay beside it. Nothing in her husband's brief lines hadembittered her as much as the allusion to Strefford. It seemedto imply that Nick's own plans were made, that his own futurewas secure, and that he could therefore freely and handsomelytake thought for hers, and give her a pointer in the rightdirection. Sudden rage had possessed her at the thought: whereshe had at first read jealousy she now saw only a coldprovidence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled herpostscript to Strefford. She remembered that she had not evenasked him to keep her secret. Well--after all, what would itmatter if people should already know that Nick had left her?
Their parting could not long remain a mystery, and the fact thatit was known might help her to keep up a presence ofindifference.
"It was in the bargain--in the bargain," rang through her brainas she re-read Strefford's telegram. She understood that he hadsnatched the time for this hasty trip solely in the hope ofseeing her, and her eyes filled. The more bitterly she thoughtof Nick the more this proof of Strefford's friendship moved her.
The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dressfor dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet andFulmer, and with Violet's other guests, who would probably beodd and amusing, and too much out of her world to embarrass herby awkward questions. She would sit at a softly-lit table,breathe delicate scents, eat exquisite food (trust Mrs. Match!),and be gradually drawn again under the spell of her oldassociations. Anything, anything but to be alone ....
She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened herlips attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over herdrawn cheeks, and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with atray.
"Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired .... I was bringing itup to you myself--just a little morsel of chicken."Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that thelamps were not lit in the drawing-room.
"Oh, no, I'm not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melroseexpected friends at dinner!""Friends at dinner-to-night?" Mrs. Match heaved a despairingsigh. Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put toogreat a strain upon her. "Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer wereengaged to dine in Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrosetold me she'd told you," the house-keeper wailed.
Susy kept her little fixed smile. "I must have misunderstood.
In that case ... well, yes, if it's no trouble, I believe I willhave my tray upstairs. "Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into thedread solitude she had just left.
THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon.
They were not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs.
Melrose now specialized, but merely commonplace fashionablepeople belonging to Susy's own group, people familiar with theamusing romance of her penniless marriage, and to whom she hadto explain (though none of them really listened to theexplanation) that Nick was not with her just now but had goneoff cruising ... cruising in the AEgean with friends ... gettingup material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in thenight).
It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but itproved, after all, easy enough to go through compared with thoseendless hours of turning to and fro, the night before, in thecage of her lonely room. Anything, anything, but to bealone ....
Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actuallyin tune with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in thereferences to absent friends, the light allusions to last year'sloves and quarrels, scandals and absurdities. The women, intheir pale summer dresses, were so graceful, indolent and sureof themselves, the men so easy and good-humoured! Perhaps,after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she was meant for,since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had alreadyshut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on theterrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-topsof the park, one of the women said something--made just anallusion--that Susy would have let pass unnoticed in the olddays, but that now filled her with a sudden deep disgust ....
She stood up and wandered away, away from them all through thefading garden.
Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of theTuileries above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there,with the desire to avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room ofthe Nouveau Luxe where, even at that supposedly "dead" season,people one knew were always drifting to and fro; and they sat ona bench in the pale sunlight, the discoloured leaves heaped attheir feet, and no one to share their solitude but a lameworking-man and a haggard woman who were lunching togethermournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperousand well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained asundisciplined, his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had beenon cool though friendly terms with the pompous uncle and thepoor sickly cousin whose joint disappearance had so abruptlytransformed his future; and it was his way to understate hisfeelings rather than to pretend more than he felt.
Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerneda change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, inhis brief sojourn among his people and among the greatpossessions so tragically acquired, old instincts had awakened,forgotten associations had spoken in him. Susy listened to himwistfully, silenced by her imaginative perception of thedistance that these things had put between them.
"It was horrible ... seeing them both there together, laid outin that hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham ... the poor boyespecially. I suppose that's really what's cutting me up now,"he murmured, almost apologetically.
"Oh, it's more than that--more than you know," she insisted; buthe jerked back: "Now, my dear, don't be edifying, please," andfumbled for a cigarette in the pocket which was alreadybeginning to bulge with his miscellaneous properties.
"And now about you--for that's what I came for," he continued,turning to her with one of his sudden movements. "I couldn'tmake head or tail of your letter."She paused a moment to steady her voice. "Couldn't you? Isuppose you'd forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn't-andhe's asked me to fulfil it."Strefford stared. "What--that nonsense about your setting eachother free if either of you had the chance to make a goodmatch?"She signed "Yes.""And he's actually asked you--?""Well: practically. He's gone off with the Hickses. Beforegoing he wrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free.
And Coral sent me a postcard to say that she would take the bestof care of him."Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. "But what thedeuce led up to all this? It can't have happened like that, outof a clear sky."Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tellStrefford the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasonsfor wishing to see him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps,she had hoped, in his laxer atmosphere, to recover something ofher shattered self-esteem. But now she suddenly felt theimpossibility of confessing to anyone the depths to which Nick'swife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed thenature of her hesitation.
"Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear.""No; I do want to; only it's difficult. You see--we had so verylittle money ....""Yes?""And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of bigthings, fine things--didn't realise ... left it all to me ... tomanage ...."She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had alwayswinced at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and shehurried on, unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal oftheir pecuniary difficulties, and of Nick's inability tounderstand that, to keep on with the kind of life they wereleading, one had to put up with things ... accept favours ....
"Borrow money, you mean?""Well--yes; and all the rest." No--decidedly she could notreveal to Strefford the episode of Ellie's letters. "Nicksuddenly felt, I suppose, that he couldn't stand it," shecontinued; "and instead of asking me to try--to try to livedifferently, go off somewhere with him and live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I was ready to do;well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistake fromthe beginning, that we couldn't keep it up, and had betterrecognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses' yacht. Thelast evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn't comeback to dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. Isuppose he intends to marry Coral."Strefford received this in silence. "Well--it was your bargain,wasn't it?" he said at length.
"Yes; but--""Exactly: I always told you so. You weren't ready to have himgo yet--that's all."She flushed to the forehead. "Oh, Streff--is it really all?""A question of time? If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try,for a while, in those two rooms without a servant; and then letme hear from you. Why, my dear, it's only a question of time ina palace, with a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and aflock of motors in the garage; look around you and see. And didyou ever imagine that you and Nick, of all people, were going toescape the common doom, and survive like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus,while all about you the eternal passions were crumbling topieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up theirrevenues?"She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to comepressing like a leaden load on her shoulders.
"But I'm so young ... life's so long. What does last, then?""Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you;though you're intelligent enough to understand.""What does, then?""Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.
Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, theatmosphere of ease ... above all, the power to get away fromdulness and monotony, from constraints and uglinesses. Youchose that power, instinctively, before you were even grown up;and so did Nick. And the only difference between you is thathe's had the sense to see sooner than you that those are thethings that last, the prime necessities.""I don't believe it!""Of course you don't: at your age one doesn't reason one'smaterialism. And besides you're mortally hurt that Nick hasfound out sooner than you, and hasn't disguised his discoveryunder any hypocritical phrases.""But surely there are people--""Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! Towhich of their categories do you suppose we soft people belong?
And the heroes and the geniuses--haven't they their enormousfrailties and their giant appetites? And how should we escapebeing the victims of our little ones?"She sat for a while without speaking. "But, Streff, how can yousay such things, when I know you care: care for me, forinstance!""Care?" He put his hand on hers. "But, my dear, it's just thefugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It'sbecause we know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, orto anything ....""Yes ... yes ... but hush, please! Oh, don't say it!" Shestood up, the tears in her throat, and he rose also.
"Come along, then; where do we lunch?" he said with a smile,slipping his hand through her arm.
"Oh, I don't know. Nowhere. I think I'm going back toVersailles.""Because I've disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when Icame over to ask you to marry me!"She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. "Upon my soul, Idid.""Dear Streff! As if--now--""Oh, not now--I know. I'm aware that even with your accelerateddivorce methods--""It's not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told youlong ago, in Venice."He shrugged ironically. "It's not Streff who's asking you now.
Streff was not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you.
The present offer comes from an elderly peer of independentmeans. Think it over, my dear: as many days out as you like, andfive footmen kept. There's not the least hurry, of course; butI rather think Nick himself would advise it."She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and theremembrance made Strefford's sneering philosophy seem lessunbearable. Why should she not lunch with him, after all? Inthe first days of his mourning he had come to Paris expressly tosee her, and to offer her one of the oldest names and one of thegreatest fortunes in England. She thought of Ursula Gillow,Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their condescendingkindnesses, their last year's dresses, their Christmas cheques,and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and sohard to accept. "I should rather enjoy paying them back,"something in her maliciously murmured.
She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as faras contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it wasundeniable that this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom waslike fresh air in her lungs. She laughed again, but now withoutbitterness.
"Very good, then; we'll lunch together. But it's Streff I wantto lunch with to-day.""Ah, well," her companion agreed, "I rather think that for atete-a-tete he's better company."During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, whereshe insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunchingwith "Streff," he became again his old whimsical companionableself. Once or twice she tried to turn the talk to his alteredfuture, and the obligations and interests that lay before him;but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her insteadabout the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting adroll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she named.
It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she wasglancing at her watch with a vague notion of taking the nexttrain, that he asked abruptly: "But what are you going to do?
You can't stay forever at Violet's.""Oh, no!" she cried with a shiver.
"Well, then--you've got some plan, I suppose?""Have I?" she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from thesoothing interlude of their hour together.
"You can't drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to goback to the old sort of life once for all."She reddened and her eyes filled. "I can't do that, Streff--Iknow I can't!""Then what--?"She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: "Nick said hewould write again--in a few days. I must wait--""Oh, naturally. Don't do anything in a hurry." Strefford alsoglanced at his watch. "Garcon, l'addition! I'm taking thetrain back to-night, and I've a lot of things left to do. Butlook here, my dear--when you come to a decision one way or theother let me know, will you? Oh, I don't mean in the matterI've most at heart; we'll consider that closed for the present.
But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, you know, Ican even lend you money. There's a new sensation for our jadedpalates!""Oh, Streff ... Streff!" she could only falter; and he pressedon gaily: "Try it, now do try it--I assure you there'll be nointerest to pay, and no conditions attached. And promise to letme know when you've decided anything. "She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Theirfriendly smile with hers.
"I promise!" she said.
THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective.
Instead of possible dependence, an enforced return to the oldlife of connivances and concessions, she saw before her--whenever she chose to take them--freedom, power and dignity.
Dignity! It was odd what weight that word had come to have forher. She had dimly felt its significance, felt the need of itspresence in her inmost soul, even in the young thoughtless dayswhen she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austeredivinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing's wife she hadconsciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when shefell beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would giveher that sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs,only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not themental or moral training to attain independence in any otherway, was she to blame for seeking it on such terms?
Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back,would find life without her as intolerable as she was finding itwithout him. If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then shewould cease to strain her eyes into the future, would seize uponthe present moment and plunge into it to the very bottom ofoblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then--money or freedomor pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were inNick's arms again!
But there was Nick's icy letter, there was Coral Hicks'sinsolent post-card, to show how little chance there was of sucha solution. Susy understood that, even before the discovery ofher transaction with Ellie Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied,if not of his wife, at least of the life that their marriagecompelled him to lead. His passion was not strong enough-hadnever been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices, scruples,principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy's dignitymight go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his wasmade of a less combustible substance. She had felt, in theirlast talk together, that she had forever destroyed the innerharmony between them.
Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers norhis, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their ownmoral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of hishalf-talents and her half-principles, of the something in themboth that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enoughto yield. She stared at the fact on the journey back toVersailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and thenext morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfasttray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from havingdecided, however half-heartedly, on a definite course.
She had said to herself: "If there's no letter from Nick thistime next week I'll write to Streff--" and the week had passed,and there was no letter.
It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had noword but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that,foreseeing the probability of her leaving Venice, he would writeto her in care of their Paris bank. But though she hadimmediately notified the bank of her change of address nocommunication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with atouch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless findingin the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket, for the first days, had been heaped with the fragmentsof the letters she had begun; and she told herself that, sincethey both found it so hard to write, it was probably becausethey had nothing left to say to each other.
Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose's drifted by as they had beenwont to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch hadmarked time between one episode and the next of her precariousexistence. Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough tomake her acutely conscious of their effect on her temporaryhosts; and in the present case she knew that Violet was hardlyaware of her presence. But if no more than tolerated she was atleast not felt to be an inconvenience; when your hostess forgotabout you it proved that at least you were not in her way.
Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profoundindolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmerhad returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactresswas still constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrosewas whirled away in her noiseless motor it was generally towardthe scene of some new encounter between Fulmer and the arts. Onthese occasions she sometimes offered to carry Susy to Paris,and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dress-makers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to thefamiliar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, asfurs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought back, andat last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim ofthe moment need count in deciding whether one should take all ornone, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did notpossess the means to make her choice regardless of cost.
Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes wouldevaporate, and daylight re-enter Susy's soul; yet she felt thatthe old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system.
To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer. Shewas curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer'sevil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity, and shevaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who hadnever been afraid of poverty.
The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while areluctant maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer,did not have the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Graceto put up with such quarters when she shared them with Fulmer;but to live there while he basked in the lingering radiance ofVersailles, or rolled from chateau to picture gallery in Mrs.
Melrose's motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable toemulate.
"My dear! I knew you'd look me up," Grace's joyous voice randown the stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susyto her tumbled person.
"Nat couldn't remember if he'd given you our address, though hepromised me he would, the last time he was here." She held Susyat arms' length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sightedeyes: the same old dishevelled Grace, so careless of herneglected beauty and her squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous air of the NewHampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little air-tight salon.
While she poured out the tale of Nat's sudden celebrity, and itsunexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was thesecret of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewardedyears, the steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference toevery kind of material ease in which his wife had so gailyabetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of her ownfreshness and her own talent, of the children's "advantages," ofeverything except the closeness of the tie between husband andwife? Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, nowthat honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, andGrace were left alone among the ruins?
There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such apossibility. Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment wascostlier in quality and more professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped her growing bulk at the bungalow:
it was clear that she was trying to dress up to Nat's newsituation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling herhungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It hadevidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent toshare the bread of adversity may want the whole cake ofprosperity for themselves.
"My dear, it's too wonderful! He's told me to take as manyconcert and opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all thechildren with me. The big concerts don't begin till later; butof course the Opera is always going. And there are littlethings--there's music in Paris at all seasons. And later it'sjust possible we may get to Munich for a week--oh, Susy!" Herhands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of lifealmost sacramentally.
"Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at thebungalow? Nat said you'd be horrified by our primitiveness-butI knew better! And I was right, wasn't I? Seeing us so happymade you and Nick decide to follow our example, didn't it?" Sheglowed with the remembrance. "And now, what are your plans? IsNick's book nearly done? I suppose you'll have to live veryeconomically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling-when is that to be? If you're coming home soon I could let youhave a lot of the children's little old things.""You're always so dear, Grace. But we haven't any special plansas yet--not even for a baby. And I wish you'd tell me all ofyours instead."Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far,the greater part of her European experience had consisted intalking about what it was to be. "Well, you see, Nat is sotaken up all day with sight-seeing and galleries and meetingimportant people that he hasn't had time to go about with us;and as so few theatres are open, and there's so little music,I've taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Juniehelps me with it now--she's our eldest, you remember? She'sgrown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,we're to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all--next toNat's recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp,and give up something every single minute. Just think--Nat haseven made special arrangements here in the pension, so that thechildren all have second helpings to everything. And when I goup to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awakecalculating and wondering how I can make things come out at theend of the month. Oh, Susy, that's simply heaven!"Susy's heart contracted. She had come to her friend to betaught again the lesson of indifference to material things, andinstead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer's lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After all, that battle withpoverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easysmiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet... and yet ....
Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat whichhung irresponsibly over Grace's left ear.
"What's wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and shegenerally knows," Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
"It's the way you wear it, dearest--and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please." Susy lifted the hatfrom her friend's head and began to manipulate its trimming.
"This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it .... And nowgo on about Nat ...."She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of herhusband's triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand forhis work, the fine ladies' battles over their priority indiscovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resultedfrom their rivalry.
"Of course they're simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melroseand Mrs. Gillow especially--because each one pretends to havebeen the first to notice his 'Spring Snow-Storm,' and in realityit wasn't either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we've known for years, who chanced on the picture, andrushed off to tell a dealer who was looking for a new painter topush." Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to Susy'sface. "But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Natis beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs.
Melrose who stopped short in front of his picture on the openingday, and screamed out: 'This is genius!' It seems funny heshould care so much, when I've always known he had genius-andhe has known it too. But they're all so kind to him; and Mrs.
Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing sound new tohear it said in a new voice."Susy looked at her meditatively. "And how should you feel ifNat liked too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, Imean, to care any longer what you felt or thought?"Her friend's worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susyalmost repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with atranquil dignity. "You haven't been married long enough, dear,to understand ... how people like Nat and me feel about suchthings ... or how trifling they seem, in the balance ... thebalance of one's memories."Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. "Oh,Grace," she laughed with wet eyes, "how can you be as wise asthat, and yet not have sense enough to buy a decent hat?" Shegave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace and hurried away. She hadlearned her lesson after all; but it was not exactly the one shehad come to seek.
The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there wasno word from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, andthat too went by without a letter. She then decided on a stepfrom which her pride had hitherto recoiled; she would call atthe bank and ask for Nick's address. She called, embarrassedand hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in the post-officedepartment, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address sincethat of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously. Shewent back to Versailles that afternoon with the definiteintention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning's postbrought a letter.
The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbledmessage from Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible,come into her room for a word, Susy jumped up, hurried throughher bath, and knocked at her hostess's door. In the immense lowbed that faced the rich umbrage of the park Mrs. Melrose laysmoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters. She looked upwith her vague smile, and said dreamily: "Susy darling, haveyou any particular plans--for the next few months, I mean?"Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied sheunderstood what it implied.
"Plans, dearest? Any number ... I'm tearing myself away the dayafter to-morrow ... to the Gillows' moor, very probably," shehastened to announce.
Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose'sdramatic countenance she discovered there the blankestdisappointment.
"Oh, really? That's too bad. Is it absolutely settled--?""As far as I'm concerned," said Susy crisply.
The other sighed. "I'm too sorry. You see, dear, I'd meant toask you to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmerchildren. Fulmer and I are going to Spain next week--I want tobe with him when he makes his studies, receives his firstimpressions; such a marvellous experience, to be there when heand Velasquez meet!" She broke off, lost in prospectiveecstasy. "And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming withus--""Ah, I see.""Well, there are the five children--such a problem," sighed thebenefactress. "If you were at a loose end, you know, dear,while Nick's away with his friends, I could really make it worthyour while ....""So awfully good of you, Violet; only I'm not, as it happens."Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and eventruthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susyremembered how Nick and she had fled from them that autumnafternoon in New Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutaryglimpse of the way in which, as the years passed, and she losther freshness and novelty, she would more and more be used as aconvenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of errands,nursery governess or companion. She called to mind severalelderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group,who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chatteredits jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated tothese slave-ant offices. Never in the world would she jointheir numbers.
Mrs. Melrose's face fell, and she looked at Susy with theplaintive bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whomeverything that cannot be bought is imperceptible.
"But I can't see why you can't change your plans," she murmuredwith a soft persistency.
"Ah, well, you know"--Susy paused on a slow inward smile--"they're not mine only, as it happens."Mrs. Melrose's brow clouded. The unforeseen complication ofMrs. Fulmer's presence on the journey had evidently tried hernerves, and this new obstacle to her arrangements shook herfaith in the divine order of things.
"Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won't let UrsulaGillow dictate to you? ... There's my jade pendant; the one yousaid you liked the other day .... The Fulmers won't go with me,you understand, unless they're satisfied about the children; thewhole plan will fall through. Susy darling, you were always toounselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to Ursula."Susy's smile lingered. Time was when she might have been gladto add the jade pendant to the collection already enriched byEllie Vanderlyn's sapphires; more recently, she would haveresented the offer as an insult to her newly-found principles.
But already the mere fact that she might henceforth, if shechose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes, enabled her tolook down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral freedomthat wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer'suncontrollable cry: "The most wonderful thing of all is nothaving to contrive and skimp, and give up something every singleminute!" Yes; it was only on such terms that one could callone's soul one's own. The sense of it gave Susy the grace toanswer amicably: "If I could possibly help you out, Violet, Ishouldn't want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,there's no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or toanybody else. Only, as it happens"--she paused and took theplunge--"I'm going to England because I've promised to see afriend." That night she wrote to Strefford.
STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, NickLansing looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Maltaand then plunged again into his book.
He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. Thedrugs he had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeinglandscapes, looming up from the blue sea to vanish into itagain, and visions of study absorbed from the volumes piled upday and night at his elbow. For the first time in months he wasin reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yetmiscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spiritcraved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitivescenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: heswallowed them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeksonly to still pain and deaden memory. But they were beginningto produce in him a moral languor that was not disagreeable,that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first days,was almost pleasurable. It was exactly the kind of drug that heneeded.
There is probably no point on which the average man has moredefinite views than on the uselessness of writing a letter thatis hard to write. In the line he had sent to Susy from GenoaNick had told her that she would hear from him again in a fewdays; but when the few days had passed, and he began to considersetting himself to the task, he found fifty reasons forpostponing it.
Had there been any practical questions to write about it wouldhave been different; he could not have borne for twenty-fourhours the idea that she was in uncertainty as to money. Butthat had all been settled long ago. From the first she had hadthe administering of their modest fortune. On their marriageNick's own meagre income, paid in, none too regularly, by theagent who had managed for years the dwindling family properties,had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present hecould make. And the wedding cheques had of course all beendeposited in her name. There were therefore no "business"reasons for communicating with her; and when it came to reasonsof another order the mere thought of them benumbed him.
For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia;then he began to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, forboth their sakes a waiting policy might be the wisest he couldpursue. He had left Susy because he could not tolerate theconditions on which he had discovered their life together to bebased; and he had told her so. What more was there to say?
Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they cametogether it could be only to resume the same life; and that, asthe days went by, seemed to him more and more impossible. Hehad not yet reached the point of facing a definite separation;but whenever his thoughts travelled back over their past life herecoiled from any attempt to return to it. As long as thisstate of mind continued there seemed nothing to add to theletter he had already written, except indeed the statement thathe was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing reasonfor communicating that.
To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. WhenCoral Hicks, a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in thebroiling streets of Genoa, and carried him off to the Ibis, hehad thought only of a cool dinner and perhaps a moonlight sail.
Then, in reply to their friendly urging, he had confessed thathe had not been well--had indeed gone off hurriedly for a fewdays' change of air--and that left him without defence againstthe immediate proposal that he should take his change of air onthe Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and fromthere to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and beback at Venice in ten days.
Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And hereally liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesomehonesty and simplicity breathed through all their opulence, asif the rich trappings of their present life still exhaled thefragrance of their native prairies. The mere fact of being withsuch people was like a purifying bath. When the yacht touchedat Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go on toSicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples forthe last time before they got up steam, said: "Any letters forthe post, sir?" he answered, as he had answered at each previoushalt: "No, thank you: none."Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he hadnever been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of thelateness of the season the weather was still miraculously fine:
the short waves danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, andthe strong bows of the Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forwardover the flying crests.
Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht-of coursewith Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminentarchaeologist, who was to have joined them at Naples, hadtelegraphed an excuse at the last moment; and Nick noticed that,while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually apologizing for the great man'sabsence, Coral merely smiled and said nothing.
As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasantas when one had them to one's self. In company, Mr. Hicks ranthe risk of appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confuseddates and names in the desire to embrace all culture in herconversation. But alone with Nick, their old travelling-companion, they shone out in their native simplicity, and Mr.
Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicks recalled herearly married days in Apex City, when, on being brought home toher new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:
"How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?"The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick hadsupposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart fromhis mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhumanfaculty for knowing how to address letters to eminent people,and in what terms to conclude them, he had a smattering ofarchaeology and general culture on which Mrs. Hicks had learnedto depend--her own memory being, alas, so inadequate to therange of her interests.
Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not MissHicks's way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind tothem, but left them, as it were, to bring themselves up as bestthey could, while she pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge filled the mind ofthis strange girl: she appeared interested only in freshopportunities of adding to her store of facts. They wereilluminated by little imagination and less poetry; but,carefully catalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain,they were always as accessible as the volumes in an up-to-datepublic library.
To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectualcuriosity. He wanted above all things to get away fromsentiment, from seduction, from the moods and impulses andflashing contradictions that were Susy. Susy was not a greatreader: her store of facts was small, and she had grown upamong people who dreaded ideas as much as if they had been acontagious disease. But, in the early days especially, whenNick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, herswift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on thesubject, and, penetrating to its depths, had extracted from themwhatever belonged to her. What a pity that this exquisiteinsight, this intuitive discrimination, should for the most parthave been spent upon reading the thoughts of vulgar people, andextracting a profit from them--should have been wasted, sinceher childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of "managing"!
And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had notguessed it, or rather he had not been sure of it, till the daywhen, on their way through Paris, he had taken her to theLouvre, and they had stood before the little Crucifixion ofMantegna. He had not been looking at the picture, or watchingto see what impression it produced on Susy. His own momentarymood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the MusicLesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he hadmissed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare ofthat tragic sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on herlashes. That was Susy ....
Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks's profile,thrown back against the cushions of the deck-chair at his side.
There was something harsh and bracing in her blunt primitivebuild, in the projection of the black eyebrows that nearly metover her thick straight nose, and the faint barely visible blackdown on her upper lip. Some miracle of will-power, combinedwith all the artifices that wealth can buy, had turned the fatsallow girl he remembered into this commanding young woman,almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her bigauthoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profileagainst the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that wassweet to his vanity, how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi andin the streets of Genoa--he had seen those same lines soften athis approach, turn womanly, pleading and almost humble. Thatwas Coral ....
Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: "You've had noletters since you've been on board."He looked at her, surprised. "No--thank the Lord!" he laughed.
"And you haven't written one either," she continued in her hardstatistical tone.
"No," he again agreed, with the same laugh.
"That means that you really are free--""Free?"He saw the cheek nearest him redden. "Really off on a holiday,I mean; not tied down." After a pause he rejoined: "No, I'mnot particularly tied down.""And your book?""Oh, my book--" He stopped and considered. He had thrust ThePageant of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bightfrom Venice; but since then he had never looked at it. Too manymemories and illusions were pressed between its pages; and heknew just at what page he had felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending overhim from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and heard herbreathless "I had to thank you!""My book's hung up," he said impatiently, annoyed with MissHicks's lack of tact. There was a girl who never put outfeelers ....
"Yes; I thought it was," she went on quietly, and he gave her astartled glance. What the devil else did she think, hewondered? He had never supposed her capable of getting farenough out of her own thick carapace of self-sufficiency topenetrate into any one else's feelings.
"The truth is," he continued, embarrassed, "I suppose I dug awayat it rather too continuously; that's probably why I felt theneed of a change. You see I'm only a beginner."She still continued her relentless questioning. "But later--you'll go on with it, of course?""Oh, I don't know." He paused, glanced down the glitteringdeck, and then out across the glittering water. "I've beendreaming dreams, you see. I rather think I shall have to dropthe book altogether, and try to look out for a job that willpay. To indulge in my kind of literature one must first have anassured income."He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken.
Hitherto in his relations with the Hickses he had carefullyavoided the least allusion that might make him feel the heavyhand of their beneficence. But the idle procrastinating weekshad weakened him and he had yielded to the need of putting intowords his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps help to makethem more definite.
To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when shespoke it was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
"It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn't findsome kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough todo your real work ...."He shrugged ironically. "Yes--there are a goodish number of ushunting for that particular kind of employment."Her tone became more business-like. "I know it's hard tofind--almost impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if itwere offered to you--?"She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For aninstant blank terror loomed upon him; but before he had time toface it she continued, in the same untroubled voice: "Mr.
Buttles's place, I mean. My parents must absolutely have someone they can count on. You know what an easy place it is ....
I think you would find the salary satisfactory."Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes hadlooked as they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too muchnot to shrink from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles'splace: why not?
"Poor Buttles!" he murmured, to gain time.
"Oh," she said, "you won't find the same reasons as he did forthrowing up the job. He was the martyr of his artisticconvictions."He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did notknow of his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of thelatter's confidences; perhaps she did not even know of Mr.
Buttles's hopeless passion. At any rate her face remained calm.
"Why not consider it--at least just for a few months? Tillafter our expedition to Mesopotamia?" she pressed on, a littlebreathlessly.
"You're awfully kind: but I don't know--"She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. "You needn't,all at once. Take time think it over. Father wanted me to askyou," she appended.
He felt the inadequacy of his response. "It tempts me awfully,of course. But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters. Thefact is I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. Ihad chucked everything, even letters, for a few weeks.""Ah, you are tired," she murmured, giving him a last downwardglance as she turned away.
>From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to sendhis letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and themail was brought on board, the thick envelope handed to himcontained no letter from Susy.
Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bankhe knew he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if shewished to. And she had made no sign.
Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from theirfirst expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-housetable. Nick picked up one of the London journals, and his eyeran absently down the list of social events.
He read:
"Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let forthe season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are PrinceAltineri of Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. NicholasLansing, who arrived in London last week from Paris. "Nick threwdown the paper. It was just a month since he had left thePalazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the night express forMilan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only a month--and Susy and Strefford were already together!
SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, andthough she found a telegram on arriving, saying that he wouldjoin her in town the following week, she had still an intervalof several days to fill.
London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone inthe shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the bestshe could afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
>From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out herplan for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visiblywaned. Often before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt thesame abrupt change of temperature in the manner of the hostessof the moment; and often--how often--had yielded, and performedthe required service, rather than risk the consequences ofestrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she need neverstoop again.
But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scrapedtogether an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye toViolet (grown suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw hervisitor safely headed for the station)--as Susy went through theold familiar mummery of the enforced leave-taking, there rose inher so deep a disgust for the life of makeshifts andaccommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared andheld out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have hadthe courage to return to them.
In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless loveof beauty ... the curse it had always been to her, the blessingit might have been if only she had had the material means togratify and to express it! And instead, it only gave her amorbid loathing of that hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellowrain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage through the window,the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under glassglobes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as youturned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of theceiling the feebler one beside the bed went out!
What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their fewmonths together! What right had either of them to thoseexquisite settings of the life of leisure: the long white househidden in camellias and cypresses above the lake, or the greatrooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the canal alwaysplaying over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come toimagine that these places really belonged to them, that theywould always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in theframe of other people's wealth .... That, again, was the curseof her love of beauty, the way she always took to it as if itbelonged to her!
Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps betterthat it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no usein letting her thoughts wander back to that shattered fool'sparadise of theirs. Only, as she sat there and reckoned up thedays till Strefford arrived, what else in the world was there tothink of?
Her future and his?
But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spenther life among the rich and fashionable without having learnedevery detail of the trappings of a rich and fashionablemarriage. She had calculated long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy lingerie would goto make up the outfit of the future Countess of Altringham. Shehad even decided to which dressmaker she would go for herchinchilla cloak-for she meant to have one, and down to herfeet, and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantlysumptuous than Violet's or Ursula's ... not to speak of silverfoxes and sables ... nor yet of the Altringham jewels.
She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It allbelonged to the make-up of the life of elegance: there wasnothing new about it. What had been new to her was just thatshort interval with Nick--a life unreal indeed in its setting,but so real in its essentials: the one reality she had everknown. As she looked back on it she saw how much it had givenher besides the golden flush of her happiness, the suddenflowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there hadbeen the flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of somethinggraver, stronger, fuller of future power, something she hadhardly heeded in her first light rapture, but that always cameback and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture sank: thedeep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love hadtaught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyondNick.
Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rainon the dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that camein under the door when she shut the window. This nauseatingforetaste of the luncheon she must presently go down to was morethan she could bear. It brought with it a vision of the dankcoffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted asif it had been rained on too. There was really no reason whyshe should let such material miseries add to her depression ....
She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxidrove to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It wasjust one o'clock and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, forthough London was empty that great establishment was not. Itnever was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted halls, in thatgreat flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, havingnothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from oneend of the earth to the other.
Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew,whether one knew the people they belonged to or not! A freshdisgust seized her at the sight of them: she wavered, and thenturned and fled. But on the threshold a still more familiarfigure met her: that of a lady in exaggerated pearls andsables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like the motors inmagazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelledbeauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from anAlpine summit.
It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--and she and Susy fell on each other's necks. It appeared thatUrsula, detained till the next evening by a dress-maker's delay,was also out of a job and killing time, and the two were soonsmiling at each other over the exquisite preliminaries of aluncheon which the head-waiter had authoritatively asked Mrs.
Gillow to "leave to him, as usual."Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but whenit did her benevolence knew no bounds.
Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too muchabsorbed in her own affairs to give more than a passing thoughtto any one else's; but she was delighted at the meeting withSusy, as her wandering kind always were when they ran acrossfellow-wanderers, unless the meeting happened to interfere withchoicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the urgent thing; andUrsula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London, at onceexacted from her friend a promise that they should spend therest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mindturned again to her own affairs, and she poured out herconfidences to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifestedthe head-waiter's understanding of the case.
Ursula's confidences were always the same, though they wereusually about a different person. She demolished and rebuilther sentimental life with the same frequency and impetuosity asthat with which she changed her dress-makers, did over herdrawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the mounting of herjewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life. Susyknew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it overperfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, waspleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to takea languid interest in her friend's narrative.
After luncheon they got into the motor together and began asystematic round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers anddealers in old furniture. Nothing could be more unlike VioletMelrose's long hesitating sessions before the things she thoughtshe wanted till the moment came to decide. Ursula pounced onsilver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and decisively as onthe objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew at oncewhat she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
"And now--I wonder if you couldn't help me choose a grandpiano?" she suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
"A piano?""Yes: for Ruan. I'm sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She'scoming to stay ... did I tell you? I want people to hear her.
I want her to get engagements in London. My dear, she's aGenius.""A Genius--Grace!" Susy gasped. "I thought it was Nat ....""Nat--Nat Fulmer? Ursula laughed derisively. "Ah, of course--you've been staying with that silly Violet! The poor thing isoff her head about Nat--it's really pitiful. Of course he hastalent: I saw that long before Violet had ever heard of him.
Why, on the opening day of the American Artists' exhibition,last winter, I stopped short before his 'Spring Snow-Storm'
(which nobody else had noticed till that moment), and said tothe Prince, who was with me: 'The man has talent.' Butgenius--why, it's his wife who has genius! Have you never heardGrace play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on thewrong tack. I've given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubtViolet told you--because I wanted to help him. But Grace is mydiscovery, and I'm determined to make her known, and to haveevery one understand that she is the genius of the two. I'vetold her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the bestaccompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfullybored by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. Andif one didn't have a little art in the evening .... Oh, Susy,do you mean to tell me you don't know how to choose a piano? Ithought you were so fond of music!""I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in theway we're all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupidset," she added to herself--since it was obviously useless toimpart such reflections to Ursula.
"But are you sure Grace is coming?" she questioned aloud.
"Quite sure. Why shouldn't she? I wired to her yesterday. I'mgiving her a thousand dollars and all her expenses."It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-roomthat Mrs. Gillow began to manifest some interest in hercompanion's plans. The thought of losing Susy became suddenlyintolerable to her. The Prince, who did not see why he shouldbe expected to linger in London out of season, was already atRuan, and Ursula could not face the evening and the whole of thenext day by herself.
"But what are you doing in town, darling, I don't remember ifI've asked you," she said, resting her firm elbows on the tea-table while she took a light from Susy's cigarette.
Susy hesitated. She had foreseen that the time must soon comewhen she should have to give some account of herself; and whyshould she not begin by telling Ursula?
But telling her what?
Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, andshe continued with compunction: "And Nick? Nick's with you?
How is he, I thought you and he still were in Venice with EllieVanderlyn.""We were, for a few weeks." She steadied her voice. "It wasdelightful. But now we're both on our own again--for a while."Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. "Oh, you're alonehere, then; quite alone?""Yes: Nick's cruising with some friends in the Mediterranean."Ursula's shallow gaze deepened singularly. "But, Susy darling,then if you're alone--and out of a job, just for the moment?"Susy smiled. "Well, I'm not sure.""Oh, but if you are, darling, and you would come to Ruan! Iknow Fred asked you didn't he? And he told me that both you andNick had refused. He was awfully huffed at your not coming; butI suppose that was because Nick had other plans. We couldn'thave him now, because there's no room for another gun; but sincehe's not here, and you're free, why you know, dearest, don'tyou, how we'd love to have you? Fred would be too glad--toooutrageously glad--but you don't much mind Fred's love-making,do you? And you'd be such a help to me--if that's any argument!
With that big house full of men, and people flocking over everynight to dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simplyloathing it and ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to tryto keep him in a good humour .... Oh, Susy darling, don't sayno, but let me telephone at once for a place in the train tomorrow night!"Susy leaned back, letting the ash lengthen on her cigarette.
How familiar, how hatefully familiar, was that old appeal!
Ursula felt the pressing need of someone to flirt with Fred fora few weeks ... and here was the very person she needed. Susyshivered at the thought. She had never really meant to go toRuan. She had simply used the moor as a pretext when VioletMelrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than do whatUrsula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporaryoccupation until--Until she became Lady Altringham? Well, perhaps. At any rate,she was not going back to slave for Ursula.
She shook her head with a faint smile. "I'm so sorry, Ursula:
of course I want awfully to oblige you--"Mrs. Gillow's gaze grew reproachful. "I should have supposedyou would," she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked intothem down a long vista of favours bestowed, and perceived thatUrsula was not the woman to forget on which side the obligationlay between them.
Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she hadowed to the Gillows' wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appearungrateful.
"If I could, Ursula ... but really ... I'm not free at themoment." She paused, and then took an abrupt decision. "Thefact is, I'm waiting here to see Strefford.""Strefford' Lord Altringham?" Ursula stared. "Ah, yes-Iremember. You and he used to be great friends, didn't you?"Her roving attention deepened .... But if Susy were waiting tosee Lord Altringham--one of the richest men in England!
Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and snatched aminiature diary from it.
"But wait a moment--yes, it is next week! I knew it was nextweek he's coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makeseverything all right. You'll send him a wire at once, and comewith me tomorrow, and meet him there instead of in this nastysloppy desert .... Oh, Susy, if you knew how hard life is forme in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you couldn't possiblysay no!"Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were reallybound for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure,instead of spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wetLondon streets, or screaming at him through the rattle of arestaurant orchestra? She knew he would not be likely topostpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger in London withher: such concessions had never been his way, and were lessthan ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly andcompletely as he pleased.
For the first time she fully understood how different hisdestiny had become. Now of course all his days and hours weremapped out in advance: invitations assailed him, opportunitiespressed on him, he had only to choose .... And the women! Shehad never before thought of the women. All the girls in Englandwould be wanting to marry him, not to mention her ownenterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, whowere even more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escapemarriage; though she could guess the power of persuasion, familypressure, all the converging traditional influences he had sooften ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had never completely thrownoff .... Yes, those quiet invisible women at Altringham-hisuncle's widow, his mother, the spinster sisters--it was notimpossible that, with tact and patience--and the stupidest womencould be tactful and patient on such occasions--they mighteventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might putjust the right young loveliness in his way .... But meanwhile,now, at once, there were the married women. Ah, they wouldn'twait, they were doubtless laying their traps already! Susyshivered at the thought. She knew too much about the way thetrick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities ofsuch approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays:
more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the timecame; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it.
She knew them, oh, how she knew them--though with Streff, thankheaven, she had never been called upon to exercise them! Hislove was there for the asking: would she not be a fool torefuse it?
Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But atany rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield toUrsula's pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenialsetting, where she would have time to get her bearings, observewhat dangers threatened him, and make up her mind whether, afterall, it was to be her mission to save him from the other women.
"Well, if you like, then, Ursula ....""Oh, you angel, you! I'm so glad! We'll go to the nearest postoffice, and send off the wire ourselves."As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy's arm with apleading pressure. "And you will let Fred make love to you alittle, won't you, darling?"
"BUT I can't think," said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, "why youdon't announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce.
People are beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so muchsafer!"Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, hadpaused in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only twomonths earlier, had filled so many trunks to bursting. Otherladies, flocking there from all points of the globe for the samepurpose, disputed with her the Louis XVI suites of the NouveauLuxe, the pink-candled tables in the restaurant, the hours fortrying-on at the dressmakers'; and just because they were somany, and all feverishly fighting to get the same things at thesame time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It was themost momentous period of the year: the height of the "dressmakers' season."Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue dela Paix openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotionsat for hours in rapt attention while spectral apparitions inincredible raiment tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.
Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak bythe sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs.
Vanderlyn turned in surprise at sight of Susy, whose head wascritically bent above the fur.
"Susy! I'd no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that youwere with the Gillows." The customary embraces followed; thenMrs. Vanderlyn, her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as itdisappeared down a vista of receding mannequins, interrogatedsharply: "Are you shopping for Ursula? If you mean to orderthat cloak for her I'd rather know."Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During thepause she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn'sperpetually youthful person, from the plumed crown of her headto the perfect arch of her patent-leather shoes. At last shesaid quietly: "No--to-day I'm shopping for myself.""Yourself? Yourself?" Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare ofincredulity.
"Yes; just for a change," Susy serenely acknowledged.
"But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak ... the one withthe ermine lining ....""Yes; it is awfully good, isn't it? But I mean to lookelsewhere before I decide."Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and howamusing it was, now, to see Ellie's amazement as she heard ittossed off in her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy wasbecoming more and more dependent on such diversions; withoutthem her days, crowded as they were, would nevertheless havedragged by heavily. But it still amused her to go to the bigdressmakers', watch the mannequins sweep by, and be seen by herfriends superciliously examining all the most expensive dressesin the procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she andNick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was "devoted"to her. She neither confirmed nor denied the report: she justlet herself be luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide.
But although it was now three months since Nick had left thePalazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet written to him-nor he to her.
Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the dayspassed more and more slowly, and the excitements she had countedon no longer excited her. Strefford was hers: she knew that hewould marry her as soon as she was free. They had been togetherat Ruan for ten days, and after that she had motored south withhim, stopping on the way to see Altringham, from which, at themoment, his mourning relatives were absent.
At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visitsin England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about tojoin her. After her few hours at Altringham she had understoodthat he would wait for her as long as was necessary: the fearof the "other women" had ceased to trouble her. But, perhapsfor that very reason, the future seemed less exciting than shehad expected. Sometimes she thought it was the sight of thatgreat house which had overwhelmed her: it was too vast, toovenerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient territorialtraditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in fortoo long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women:
somehow she could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts andadultery. And yet that was what would have to be, of course ...
she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself continuingthere the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties,laborious duties, weekly church-going, and presiding over localcommittees .... What a pity they couldn't sell it and have alittle house on the Thames!
Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known thatAltringham was hers when she chose to take it. At times shewondered whether Nick knew ... whether rumours had reached him.
If they had, he had only his own letter to thank for it. He hadtold her what course to pursue; and she was pursuing it.
For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shockto her; she had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now thatthey were actually face to face Susy perceived how dulled hersensibilities were. In a few moments she had grown used toEllie, as she was growing used to everybody and to everything inthe old life she had returned to. What was the use of makingsuch a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn left thedress-maker's together, and after an absorbing session at a newmilliner's were now taking tea in Ellie's drawing-room at theNouveau Luxe.
Ellie, with her spoiled child's persistency, had come back tothe question of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one shehad seen that she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn't adecent fur garment left to her name she was naturally insomewhat of a hurry ... but, of course, if Susy had beenchoosing that model for a friend ....
Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed lids Mrs. Vanderlyn's small delicately-restoredcountenance, which wore the same expression of childisheagerness as when she discoursed of the young Davenant of themoment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie's agitatedexistence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the sameplane.
"The poor shivering dear," she answered laughing, "of course itshall have its nice warm winter cloak, and I'll choose anotherone instead.""Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever youwere ordering it for need never know ....""Ah, you can't comfort yourself with that, I'm afraid. I'vealready told you that I was ordering it for myself." Susypaused to savour to the full Ellie's look of blank bewilderment;then her amusement was checked by an indefinable change in herfriend's expression.
"Oh, dearest--seriously? I didn't know there was someone ...."Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliationoverwhelmed her. That Ellie should dare to think that of her--that anyone should dare to!
"Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!" she flaredout. "I suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn'timmediately occur to you. At least there was a decent intervalof doubt ...." She stood up, laughing again, and began towander about the room. In the mirror above the mantel shecaught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs. Vanderlyn'sdisconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.
"I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhapsI'd better explain." She paused, and drew a quick breath.
"Nick and I mean to part--have parted, in fact. He's decidedthat the whole thing was a mistake. He will probably; marryagain soon--and so shall I."She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread ofletting Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that anyother explanation was conceivable. She had not meant to be soexplicit; but once the words were spoken she was not altogethersorry. Of course people would soon begin to wonder why she wasagain straying about the world alone; and since it was by Nick'schoice, why should she not say so? Remembering the burninganguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself whatpossible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbledher.
Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. "You? You andNick--are going to part?" A light appeared to dawn on her.
"Ah--then that's why he sent me back my pin, I suppose?""Your pin?" Susy wondered, not at once remembering.
"The poor little scarf-pin I gave him before I left Venice. Hesent it back almost at once, with the oddest note--just: 'Ihaven't earned it, really.' I couldn't think why he didn't carefor the pin. But, now I suppose it was because you and he hadquarrelled; though really, even so, I can't see why he shouldbear me a grudge ...."Susy's quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin-thefatal pin! And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it upout of sight, shrunk away from the little packet whenever herhand touched it in packing or unpacking--but never thought ofreturning it, no, not once! Which of the two, she wondered, hadbeen right? Was it not an indirect slight to her that Nickshould fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Orwas it not rather another proof of his finer moralsensitiveness! ... And how could one tell, in their bewilderingworld, "It was not because we've quarrelled; we haven'tquarrelled," she said slowly, moved by the sudden desire todefend her privacy and Nick's, to screen from every eye theirlast bitter hour together. "We've simply decided that ourexperiment was impossible-for two paupers.""Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time. And nowsomebody else wants to marry you! And it's your trousseau youwere choosing that cloak for?" Ellie cried in incredulousrapture; then she flung her arms about Susy's shrinkingshoulders. "You lucky lucky girl! You clever clever darling!
But who on earth can he be?"And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronouncedthe name of Lord Altringham.
"Streff--Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wantsto marry you?" As the news took possession of her mind Elliebecame dithyrambic. "But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck!
Of course I always knew he was awfully gone on you: FredDavenant used to say so, I remember ... and even Nelson, who'sso stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice .... But thenit was so different. No one could possibly have thought ofmarrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is tryingfor him. Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don't miss your chance!
You can't conceive of the wicked plotting and intriguing therewill be to get him--on all sides, and even where one leastsuspects it. You don't know what horrors women will do-andeven girls!" A shudder ran through her at the thought, and shecaught Susy's wrists in vehement fingers. "But I can't think,my dear, why you don't announce your engagement at once. Peopleare beginning to do it, I assure you--it's so much safer!"Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for theruin of her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to itscause! No doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy's other friends,had long since "discounted" the brevity of her dream, andperhaps planned a sequel to it before she herself had seen theglory fading. She and Nick had spent the greater part of theirfew weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn's roof; but to Ellie,obviously, the fact meant no more than her own escapade, at thesame moment, with young Davenant's supplanter--the "bounder"whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friendwas that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredibleprize. And therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of colddisinterestedness that raised her above the smiling perfidy ofthe majority of her kind. At least her advice was sincere; andperhaps it was wise. Why should Susy not let every one knowthat she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the "formalities"were fulfilled?
She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn's question; andthe latter, repeating it, added impatiently: "I don'tunderstand you; if Nick agrees-""Oh, he agrees," said Susy.
"Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you'd only follow myexample!""Your example?" Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck bysomething embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend'sexpression. "Your example?" she repeated. "Why, Ellie, what onearth do you mean? Not that you're going to part from poorNelson?"Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystallineglance. "I don't want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson! Iassure you I simply hate it. He's always such an angel toClarissa ... and then we're used to each other. But what in theworld am I to do? Algie's so rich, so appallingly rich, that Ihave to be perpetually on the watch to keep other women awayfrom him--and it's too exhausting ....""Algie?"Mrs. Vanderlyn's lovely eyebrows rose. "Algie: AlgieBockheimer. Didn't you know, I think he said you've dined withhis parents. Nobody else in the world is as rich as theBockheimers; and Algie's their only child. Yes, it was withhim ... with him I was so dreadfully happy last spring ... andnow I'm in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure youthere's no other way of keeping them, when they're as hideouslyrich as that!"Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. Sheremembered, now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of hisparents' first entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marblehalls in Fifth Avenue. She recalled his too faultless clothesand his small glossy furtive countenance. She looked at EllieVanderlyn with sudden scorn.
"I think you're abominable," she exclaimed.
The other's perfect little face collapsed. "A-bo-minable?
A-bo-mi-nable? Susy!""Yes ... with Nelson ... and Clarissa ... and your pasttogether ... and all the money you can possibly want ... andthat man! Abominable."Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and theydisarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.
"You're very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardlyknow how to answer you," she stammered. "But you simply don'tknow what you're talking about. As if anybody ever had all themoney they wanted!" She wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with acautious handkerchief, glanced at herself in the mirror, andadded magnanimously: "But I shall try to forget what you'vesaid."
JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgustedrecoil from the standards and ideals of everybody about her ashad flung her into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed inSusy Lansing's bosom.
How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo itsappraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it wasonly by marrying according to its standards that she couldescape such subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuatedNick: perhaps he had understood sooner than she that to attainmoral freedom they must both be above material cares.
Perhaps ...
Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed andhumiliated that she almost shrank from her meeting withAltringham the next day. She knew that he was coming to Parisfor his final answer; he would wait as long as was necessary ifonly she would consent to take immediate steps for a divorce.
She was staying at a modest hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain,and had once more refused his suggestion that they should lunchat the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of theBoulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderateenough for her own purse.
"I can't understand," Strefford objected, as they turned fromher hotel door toward this obscure retreat, "why you insist ongiving me bad food, and depriving me of the satisfaction ofbeing seen with you. Why must we be so dreadfully clandestine?
Don't people know by this time that we're to be married?"Susy winced a little: she wondered if the word would alwayssound so unnatural on his lips.
"No," she said, with a laugh, "they simply think, for thepresent, that you're giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks."He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. "Well, so I would, withjoy--at this particular minute. Don't you think perhaps you'dbetter take advantage of it? I don't wish to insist--but Iforesee that I'm much too rich not to become stingy."She gave a slight shrug. "At present there's nothing I loathemore than pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the worldthat's expensive and enviable ...."Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness thatshe had said exactly the kind of thing that all the women whowere trying for him (except the very cleverest) would be sure tosay; and that he would certainly suspect her of attempting theconventional comedy of disinterestedness, than which nothing wasless likely to deceive or to flatter him.
His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she wenton, meeting them with a smile: "But don't imagine, all thesame, that if I should ... decide ... it would be altogether foryour beaux yeux ...."He laughed, she thought, rather drily. "No," he said, "I don'tsuppose that's ever likely to happen to me again.""Oh, Streff--" she faltered with compunction. It was odd-onceupon a time she had known exactly what to say to the man of themoment, whoever he was, and whatever kind of talk he required;she had even, in the difficult days before her marriage, reeledoff glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality thatplunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude. Butsince then she had spoken the language of real love, looked withits eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumperyart had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling andgroping like a beginner under Strefford's ironic scrutiny.
They had reached their obscure destination and he opened thedoor and glanced in.
"It's jammed--not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go?
Perhaps they could give us a room to ourselves--" he suggested.
She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to asquat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window,the lower panes of which served for the floor below. Streffordopened the window, and Susy, throwing her cloak on the divan,leaned on the balcony while he ordered luncheon.
On the whole she was glad they were to be alone. Just becauseshe felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep himlonger in suspense. The moment had come when they must have adecisive talk, and in the crowded rooms below it would have beenimpossible.
Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and leftthem to themselves, made no effort to revert to personalmatters. He turned instead to the topic always most congenialto him: the humours and ironies of the human comedy, aspresented by his own particular group. His malicious commentaryon life had always amused Susy because of the shrewd flashes ofphilosophy he shed on the social antics they had so oftenwatched together. He was in fact the one person she knew(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; andshe was surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself solittle interested in his scraps of gossip, and so little amusedby his comments on them.
With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself thatprobably nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as shelistened, she began to understand that her disappointment arosefrom the fact that Strefford, in reality, could not live withoutthese people whom he saw through and satirized, and that therather commonplace scandals he narrated interested him as muchas his own racy considerations on them; and she was filled withterror at the thought that the inmost core of the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just aspoor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which heand she now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.
If Strefford could not live without these people, neither couldshe and Nick; but for reasons how different! And if hisopportunities had been theirs, what a world they would havecreated for themselves! Such imaginings were vain, and sheshrank back from them into the present. After all, as LadyAltringham she would have the power to create that world whichshe and Nick had dreamed ... only she must create it alone.
Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happinesswas thus conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, mustalways be of the lonely kind, since material things did notsuffice for it, even though it depended on them as GraceFulmer's, for instance, never had. Yet even Grace Fulmer hadsuccumbed to Ursula's offer, and had arrived at Ruan the daybefore Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband andViolet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for herchildren, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up herliberty she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All thedifference was there ....
"How I do bore you!" Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She becameaware that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names ofplaces and people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri,others of their group and persuasion--had vainly knocked at herbarricaded brain; what had he been telling her about them? Sheturned to him and their eyes met; his were full of a melancholyirony.
"Susy, old girl, what's wrong?"She pulled herself together. "I was thinking, Streff, justnow--when I said I hated the very sound of pearls andchinchilla--how impossible it was that you should believe me; infact, what a blunder I'd made in saying it."He smiled. "Because it was what so many other women might belikely to say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?"She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. "It's going to beeasier than I imagined," she thought. Aloud she rejoined: "Oh,Streff--how you're always going to find me out! Where on earthshall I ever hide from you?""Where?" He echoed her laugh, laying his hand lightly on hers.
"In my heart, I'm afraid."In spite of the laugh his accent shook her: something about ittook all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the:
"What? A valentine!" and made her suddenly feel that, if hewere afraid, so was she. Yet she was touched also, and wonderedhalf exultingly if any other woman had ever caught thatparticular deep inflexion of his shrill voice. She had neverliked him as much as at that moment; and she said to herself,with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been ratherbreathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom shelonged to persuade but dared not: "Now--NOW, if he speaks, Ishall say yes!"He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as ifshe had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had othermethods of expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm aroundher and bent his keen ugly melting face to hers ....
It was the lightest touch--in an instant she was free again.
But something within her gasped and resisted long after his armand his lips were gone, and he was proceeding, with a too-studied ease, to light a cigarette and sweeten his coffee.
He had kissed her .... Well, naturally: why not? It was notthe first time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn'thabitually associate Streff with such demonstrations; but shehad not that excuse for surprise, for even in Venice she hadbegun to notice that he looked at her differently, and avoidedher hand when he used to seek it.
No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss tohave been so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated thecareer of Susy Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow's large but artless embraces.
Well--nothing of that kind had seemed of any more account thanthe click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had all been merelyepidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted "business" ofthe social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford's was what Nick'shad been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that haddecided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like aring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause thatfollowed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case andrattled the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seenthrough the circle of Nick's kiss: that blue illimitabledistance which was at once the landscape at their feet and thefuture in their souls ....
Perhaps that was what Strefford's sharply narrowed eyes wereseeing now, that same illimitable distance that she had lostforever--perhaps he was saying to himself, as she had said toherself when her lips left Nick's: "Each time we kiss we shallsee it all again ...." Whereas all she herself had felt was thegasping recoil from Strefford's touch, and an intenser vision ofthe sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their twoselves, more distant from each other than if their embrace hadbeen a sudden thrusting apart ....
The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had itlasted? How long ago was it that she had thought: "It's goingto be easier than I imagined"? Suddenly she felt Strefford'squeer smile upon her, and saw in his eyes a look, not ofreproach or disappointment, but of deep and anxiouscomprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, hehad understood, he was sorry for her!
Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silentfor another moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak fromthe divan. "Shall we go now! I've got cards for the privateview of the Reynolds exhibition at the Petit Palais. There aresome portraits from Altringham. It might amuse you."In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, toreadjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling offriendly ease with him. He had been extraordinarilyconsiderate, for anyone who always so undisguisedly sought hisown satisfaction above all things; and if his consideratenesswere just an indirect way of seeking that satisfaction now,well, that proved how much he cared for her, how necessary tohis happiness she had become. The sense of power was undeniablypleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone reallyneeded her, that the happiness of the man at her side dependedon her yes or no. She abandoned herself to the feeling,forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or at leastsaying to herself that in time she would forget it, that reallythere was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyoneshe liked as much as Streff ....
She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see theReynoldses. Fashionable and artistic Paris had recentlydiscovered English eighteenth century art. The principalcollections of England had yielded up their best examples of thegreat portrait painter's work, and the private view at the PetitPalais was to be the social event of the afternoon. Everybody--Strefford's everybody and Susy's--was sure to be there; andthese, as she knew, were the occasions that revived Strefford'sintermittent interest in art. He really liked picture shows asmuch as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many peoplethere. With Nick how different it would have been! Nick hatedopenings and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general;he would have waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, andslipped off with Susy to see the pictures some morning when theywere sure to have the place to themselves.
But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford'ssuggestion. She had never yet shown herself with him publicly,among their own group of people: now he had determined that sheshould do so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; hehad understood, and forgiven her. But she still continued totreat him as she had always treated the Strefford of old,Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; andhe wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that theman who had asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, butLord Altringham.
At the very threshold, his Ambassador's greeting marked thedifference: it was followed, wherever they turned, byejaculations of welcome from the rulers of the world they movedin. Everybody rich enough or titled enough, or clever enough orstupid enough, to have forced a way into the social citadel, wasthere, waving and flag-flying from the battlements; and to allof them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. Duringtheir slow progress through the dense mass of important peoplewho made the approach to the pictures so well worth fightingfor, he never left Susy's side, or failed to make her feelherself a part of his triumphal advance. She heard her namementioned: "Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an American ... SusyLansing? Yes, of course .... You remember her? At Newport, AtSt. Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so ...
Susy darling! I'd no idea you were here ... and LordAltringham! You've forgotten me, I know, Lord Altringham ....
Yes, last year, in Cairo ... or at Newport ... or in Scotland... Susy, dearest, when will you bring Lord Altringham to dine?
Any night that you and he are free I'll arrange to be ....""You and he": they were "you and he" already!
"Ah, there's one of them--of my great-grandmothers," Streffordexplained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to thefront rank, before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheermajesty of presentment, sat in its great carved golden frame ason a throne above the other pictures.
Susy read on the scroll beneath it: "The Hon'ble Diana Lefanu,fifteenth Countess of Altringham"--and heard Strefford say: "Doyou remember? It hangs where you noticed the empty space abovethe mantel-piece, in the Vandyke room. They say Reynoldsstipulated that it should be put with the Vandykes."She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whetherancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfiedtone of voice: the rich man's voice. She saw that he wasalready feeling the influence of his surroundings, that he wasglad the portrait of a Countess of Altringham should occupy thecentral place in the principal room of the exhibition, that thecrowd about it should be denser there than before any of theother pictures, and that he should be standing there with Susy,letting her feel, and letting all the people about them guess,that the day she chose she could wear the same name as hispictured ancestress.
On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusionto their future; they chatted like old comrades in theirrespective corners of the taxi. But as the carriage stopped ather door he said: "I must go back to England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with me to-night at theNouveau Luxe? I've got to have the Ambassador and Lady Ascot,with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the DowagerDuchess, who's over here hiding from her creditors; but I'll tryto get two or three amusing men to leaven the lump. We might goon to a boite afterward, if you're bored. Unless the dancingamuses you more ...."She understood that he had decided to hasten his departurerather than linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered havingheard the Ascots' youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spokenof as one of the prettiest girls of the season; and she recalledthe almost exaggerated warmth of the Ambassador's greeting atthe private view.
"Of course I'll come, Streff dear!" she cried, with an effort atgaiety that sounded successful to her own strained ears, andreflected itself in the sudden lighting up of his face.
She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as shelooked after him: "He'll drive me home to-night, and I shallsay 'yes'; and then he'll kiss me again. But the next time itwon't be nearly as disagreeable."She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the emptypigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted thestairs following the same train of images. "Yes, I shall say'yes' to-night," she repeated firmly, her hand on the door ofher room. "That is, unless, they've brought up a letter ...."She never re-entered the hotel without imagining that the lettershe had not found below had already been brought up.
Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to thetable on which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.
There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, layat hand, and glancing listlessly down the column whichchronicles the doings of society, she read:
"After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea ontheir steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and theirdaughter are established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They havelately had the honour of entertaining at dinner the ReigningPrince of Teutoburger-Waldhain and his mother the PrincessDowager, with their suite. Among those invited to meet theirSerene Highnesses were the French and Spanish Ambassadors, theDuchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca, LadyPenelope Pantiles--" Susy's eye flew impatiently on over thelong list of titles--"and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, whohas been cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for thelast few months."
THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in formertimes have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of thePiazza di Spagna or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they hadso gaily defied fever and nourished themselves on local colour;but spread out, with all the ostentation of philistinemillionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings of one of thehigh-perched "Palaces," where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelesslydeclared, they could "rely on the plumbing," and "have theprivilege of over-looking the Queen Mother's Gardens."It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-table surrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the EternalCity, that had suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound changein the Hicks point of view.
As he looked back over the four months since he had sounexpectedly joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change,at first insidious and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated daywhen the Hickses had run across a Reigning Prince on histravels.
Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. andMrs. Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of theintellect was the only one which attracted them. But in thiscase the Prince possessed an intellect, in addition to his fewsquare miles of territory, and to one of the most beautifulField Marshal's uniforms that had ever encased a royal warrior.
The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping, pacificand spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had beenrevealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-lengthphotograph in a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius writtenslantingly across its legs. The Prince--and herein lay theHickses' undoing--the Prince was an archaeologist: an earnestanxious enquiring and scrupulous archaeologist. Delicate health(so his suite hinted) banished him for a part of each year fromhis cold and foggy principality; and in the company of hismother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, hewandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assistingat the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation ofDelphic temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning ofwinter usually brought the Prince and his mother to Rome orNice, unless indeed they were summoned by family duties toBerlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an extended connection with theprincipal royal houses of Europe compelled them, as the PrincessMother said, to be always burying or marrying a cousin. Atother moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere ofcourts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and moremodern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.
Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelledin Palace Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury ofinhabiting them, they liked, as often as possible, to be invitedto dine there by their friends--"or even to tea, my dear," thePrincess laughingly avowed, "for I'm so awfully fond of butteredscones; and Anastasius gives me so little to eat in the desert."The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--Lansing now perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She hadknown a great many archaeologists, but never one as agreeable asthe Prince, and above all never one who had left a throne tocamp in the desert and delve in Libyan tombs. And it seemed toher infinitely pathetic that these two gifted beings, whogrumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" at the Palaceof St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to thefar-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spadehad dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the agesshould be unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-datehotel life, and should enjoy themselves "like babies" when theywere invited to the other kind of "Palace," to feast on butteredscones and watch the tango.
She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; andneither, after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Princemore democratic than anyone he had ever known at Apex City, andwas immensely interested by the fact that their spectacles camefrom the same optician.
But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince andhis mother which had conquered the Hickses. There wasfascination in the thought that, among the rabble of vulgaruneducated royalties who overran Europe from Biarritz to theEngadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on no less vulgarplebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting Hickses,should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, whojoined them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk,and whose tastes were exactly those of the eccentric, unreliableand sometimes money-borrowing persons who had hithertorepresented the higher life to the Hickses.
Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at onceartistic and luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys ofmodern plumbing and yet keeping the talk on the highest level.
"If the poor dear Princess wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe whyshouldn't we give her that pleasure?" Mrs. Hicks smilinglyenquired; "and as for enjoying her buttered scones like a baby,as she says, I think it's the sweetest thing about her."Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, withher curious air of impartiality, the change in her parents'
manner of life, and for the first time (as Nick observed)occupied herself with her mother's toilet, with the result thatMrs. Hicks's outline became firmer, her garments soberer in hueand finer in material; so that, should anyone chance to detectthe daughter's likeness to her mother, the result was lesslikely to be disturbing.
Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not butnote because of the different standards of the society in whichthe Hickses now moved. For it was a curious fact that admissionto the intimacy of the Prince and his mother-- who continuallydeclared themselves to be the pariahs, the outlaws, theBohemians among crowned heads nevertheless involved not onlyliving in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who frequentedthem. The Prince's aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of easymanners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yetaccustomed to inspecting in advance the names of the personswhom their hosts wished to invite with them; and Lansing noticedthat Mrs. Hicks's lists, having been "submitted," usually cameback lengthened by the addition of numerous wealthy and titledguests. Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they welcomedwith enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses' oddest and mostinexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to alater day on the plea that it would be "cosier" to meet them ona more private occasion; but they invariably added to the listany friends of their own, with the gracious hint that theywished these latter (though socially so well-provided for) tohave the "immense privilege" of knowing the Hickses. And thusit happened that when October gales necessitated laying up theIbis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellersfrom whom they had parted the previous month in Athens, alsofound their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capitalcontained of fashion.
It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that thePrincess Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, andthe paintings of Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with abeaming unconsciousness of perspective, adored large pearls andpowerful motors, caravan tea and modern plumbing, perfumedcigarettes and society scandals; and her son, while apparentlyless sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his mother, andwas charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost tohimself--"Since poor Mamma," as he observed, "is so courageouswhen we are roughing it in the desert."The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother wereunder obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of thetitled persons whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; "and itseems to their Serene Highnesses," he added, "the mostflattering return they can make for the hospitality of theirfriends to give them such an intellectual opportunity."The dinner-table at which their Highnesses' friends were seatedon the evening in question represented, numerically, one of thegreatest intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirtyguests were grouped about the flower-wreathed board, from whichEldorada and Mr. Beck had been excluded on the plea that thePrincess Mother liked cosy parties and begged her hosts thatthere should never be more than thirty at table. Such, atleast, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithfulfollowers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the sameskilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses' social circleusually managed to exclude from it the timid presences of thetwo secretaries. Their banishment was the more displeasing toLansing from the fact that, for the last three months, he hadfilled Mr. Buttles's place, and was himself their salariedcompanion. But since he had accepted the post, his obvious dutywas to fill it in accordance with his employers' requirements;and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, asEldorada ungrudgingly said, "Something of Mr. Buttles'smarvellous social gifts. "During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. Hewas glad of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt moreindependent as the Hickses' secretary than as their pamperedguest, and the large cheque which Mr. Hicks handed over to himon the first of each month refreshed his languishing sense ofself-respect.
He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was theHickses' affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in theemploy of people he liked and respected. But from the moment ofthe ill-fated encounter with the wandering Princes, his positionhad changed as much as that of his employers. He was no longer,to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable assistant, on thesame level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a socialasset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in hiscapacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette,and surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. NickLansing, the Hickses found, already knew most of the PrincessMother's rich and aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed himwith enthusiastic "Old Nicks", and he was almost as familiar asHis Highness's own aide-de-camp with all those secretramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so muchmore of a science in Rome than at Apex City.
Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in thislabyrinth of subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies;and finding Lansing's hand within reach she clung to it withpathetic tenacity. But if the young man's value had risen inthe eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own. Hewas condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and itseemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if hisretribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxuriouslodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caughthis eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed tothe forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck hisjob the next day.
Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paidsecretary. He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel thathe was too deficient in humour to be worth exchanging glanceswith; but even this had not restored his self-respect, and onthe evening in question, as he looked about the long table, hesaid to himself for the hundredth time that he would give up hisposition on the morrow.
Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently,was Coral Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginningwith the tall lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with itssmall inquisitive eyes perched as high as attic windows under afrizzled thatch of hair and a pediment of uncleaned diamonds;passed on to the vacuous and overfed or fashionably haggardmasks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught, betweenbranching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.
In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisinglynoble. Her large grave features made her appear like an oldmonument in a street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at themysterious law which had brought this archaic face out of ApexCity, and given to the oldest society of Europe a look of suchmixed modernity.
Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour,was also looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, andeven thoughtful; but as his eyes met Lansing's he readjusted hisofficial smile.
"I was admiring our hostess's daughter. Her absence of jewelsis--er--an inspiration," he remarked in the confidential tonewhich Lansing had come to dread.
"Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations," he returned curtly,and the aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as ifinspirations were rarer than pearls, as in his milieu theyundoubtedly were. "She is the equal of any situation, I amsure," he replied; and then abandoned the subject with one ofhis automatic transitions.
After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, hesurprised Nick by returning to the same topic, and this timewithout thinking it needful to readjust his smile. His faceremained serious, though his manner was studiously informal.
"I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks's invariable sense ofappropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for heralmost any future, however exalted."Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly hewanted to know what was in his companion's mind.
"What do you mean by exalted?" he asked, with a smile of faintamusement.
"Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in thepublic eye."Lansing still smiled. "The question is, I suppose, whether herdesire to shine equals her capacity."The aide-de-camp stared. "You mean, she's not ambitious?""On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.""Immeasurably?" The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it.
"But not, surely, beyond--" "beyond what we can offer," his eyescompleted the sentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare. Theaide-de-camp faced the stare. "Yes," his eyes concluded in aflash, while his lips let fall: "The Princess Mother admiresher immensely." But at that moment a wave of Mrs. Hicks's fandrew them hurriedly from their embrasure.
"Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us thedifference between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives inCarolingian art; but the Manager has sent up word that the twonew Creole dancers from Paris have arrived, and her SereneHighness wants to pop down to the ball-room and take a peep atthem .... She's sure the Professor will understand ....""And accompany us, of course," the Princess irresistibly added.
Lansing's brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had liftedthe scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory hadbeen flooded with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp's: things he had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles,insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the improbability of thePrince's founding a family, suggestions as to the urgent need ofreplenishing the Teutoburger treasury ....
Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and theirprincely guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, andtook little interest in the sight of others so engaged, sheremained aloof from the party, absorbed in an archaeologicaldiscussion with the baffled but smiling savant who was to haveenlightened the party on the difference between Sassanian andByzantine ornament.
Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he couldobserve the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seenher as the centre of all these scattered threads of intrigue.
Yes; decidedly she was growing handsomer; or else she hadlearned how to set off her massive lines instead of trying todisguise them. As she held up her long eye-glass to glanceabsently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of herarm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There wasnothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was notsurprised that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother haddiscerned her possibilities.
Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future.
He knew enough of the society into which the Hickses had driftedto guess that, within a very short time, the hint of thePrince's aide-de-camp would reappear in the form of a directproposal. Lansing himself would probably--as the one person inthe Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly commune-beentrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would beasked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, "to feel theground." It was clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburgto offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, anopportunity to replenish its treasury.
What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimlyfelt that her attitude would depend in a great degree upon hisown. And he knew no more what his own was going to be than onthe night, four months earlier, when he had flung out of hiswife's room in Venice to take the midnight express for Genoa.
The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which hehad once prided himself, to live in the present and takewhatever chances it offered, now made it harder for him to act.
He began to see that he had never, even in the closest relationsof life, looked ahead of his immediate satisfaction. He hadthought it rather fine to be able to give himself so intenselyto the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying past it inpursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner ofthe over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had alwaysgrouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he hadlinked his life with Susy's that he had begun to feel itreaching forward into a future he longed to make sure of, tofasten upon and shape to his own wants and purposes, till, by animperceptible substitution, that future had become his realpresent, his all-absorbing moment of time.
Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failedhim. He had never before thought about putting together brokenbits: he felt like a man whose house has been wrecked by anearthquake, and who, for lack of skilled labour, is called uponfor the first time to wield a trowel and carry bricks. Hesimply did not know how.
Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decreeoneself to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly andlaboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meetdefinite objects, out of the facing of daily difficultiesinstead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden onothers. The making of the substance called character was aprocess about as slow and arduous as the building of thePyramids; and the thing itself, like those awful edifices, wasmainly useful to lodge one's descendants in, after they too weredust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct was the one which had made theworld, made man, and caused his fugitive joys to linger likefading frescoes on imperishable walls ....