The Glimpses of the Moon

THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON

By Edith Wharton

PART I

I

IT rose for them--their honey-moon--over the waters of a lake so famed

as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not

having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own.

“It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours,

to risk the experiment,” Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the

inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its

magic carpet across the waters to their feet.

“Yes--or the loan of Strefford’s villa,” her husband emended, glancing

upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the

moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front.

“Oh, come when we’d five to choose from. At least if you count the

Chicago flat.”

“So we had--you wonder!” He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed

the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their

adventure always roused in her.... It was characteristic that she merely

added, in her steady laughing tone: “Or, not counting the flat--for

I hate to brag--just consider the others: Violet Melrose’s place at

Versailles, your aunt’s villa at Monte Carlo--and a moor!”

She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with

a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn’t

accuse her of slurring it over. But he seemed to have no desire to

do so. “Poor old Fred!” he merely remarked; and she breathed out

carelessly: “Oh, well--”

His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood

silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of

the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them

drew its line of magic from shore to shore.

Nick Lansing spoke at last. “Versailles in May would have been

impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within

twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it’s exactly

the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to

you--it wasn’t much of a mental strain to decide on Como.”

His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. “It took

a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule

of Como!”

“Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I

thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic

unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it’s--as good as any other.”

She sighed out a blissful assent. “And I must say that Streffy has done

things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose gave him those

cigars?” She added thoughtfully: “You’ll miss them when we have to go.”

“Oh, I say, don’t let’s talk to-night about going. Aren’t we outside of

time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is

it? Stephanotis?”

“Y--yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...

there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver

in a net-work of gold....” They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder

to finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.

“I could bear,” Lansing remarked, “even a nightingale at this

moment....”

A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid

whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.

“It’s a little late in the year for them: they’re ending just as we

begin.”

Susy laughed. “I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each

other as sweetly.”

It was in her husband’s mind to answer: “They’re not saying good-bye,

but only settling down to family cares.” But as this did not happen to

be in his plan, or in Susy’s, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her

closer.

The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of

the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and

high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in

a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a

little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a

floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with

the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white

moth like a drifting magnolia petal. The nightingales had paused and the

trickle of the fountain behind the house grew suddenly insistent.

When Susy spoke it was in a voice languid with visions. “I have been

thinking,” she said, “that we ought to be able to make it last at least

a year longer.”

Her husband received the remark without any sign of surprise or

disapprobation; his answer showed that he not only understood her, but

had been inwardly following the same train of thought.

“You mean,” he enquired after a pause, “without counting your

grandmother’s pearls?”

“Yes--without the pearls.”

He pondered a while, and then rejoined in a tender whisper: “Tell me

again just how.”

“Let’s sit down, then. No, I like the cushions best.” He stretched

himself in a long willow chair, and she curled up on a heap of

boat-cushions and leaned her head against his knee. Just above her,

when she lifted her lids, she saw bits of moon-flooded sky incrusted

like silver in a sharp black patterning of plane-boughs. All about them

breathed of peace and beauty and stability, and her happiness was so

acute that it was almost a relief to remember the stormy background of

bills and borrowing against which its frail structure had been reared.

“People with a balance can’t be as happy as all this,” Susy mused,

letting the moonlight filter through her lazy lashes.

People with a balance had always been Susy Branch’s bugbear; they were

still, and more dangerously, to be Susy Lansing’s. She detested them,

detested them doubly, as the natural enemies of mankind and as the

people one always had to put one’s self out for. The greater part of her

life having been passed among them, she knew nearly all that there was

to know about them, and judged them with the contemptuous lucidity

of nearly twenty years of dependence. But at the present moment her

animosity was diminished not only by the softening effect of love but

by the fact that she had got out of those very people more--yes, ever so

much more--than she and Nick, in their hours of most reckless planning,

had ever dared to hope for.

“After all, we owe them this!” she mused.

Her husband, lost in the drowsy beatitude of the hour, had not repeated

his question; but she was still on the trail of the thought he had

started. A year--yes, she was sure now that with a little management

they could have a whole year of it! “It” was their marriage, their being

together, and away from bores and bothers, in a comradeship of which

both of them had long ago guessed the immediate pleasure, but she at

least had never imagined the deeper harmony.

It was at one of their earliest meetings--at one of the heterogeneous

dinners that the Fred Gillows tried to think “literary”--that the young

man who chanced to sit next to her, and of whom it was vaguely rumoured

that he had “written,” had presented himself to her imagination as the

sort of luxury to which Susy Branch, heiress, might conceivably have

treated herself as a crowning folly. Susy Branch, pauper, was fond of

picturing how this fancied double would employ her millions: it was one

of her chief grievances against her rich friends that they disposed of

theirs so unimaginatively.

“I’d rather have a husband like that than a steam-yacht!” she had

thought at the end of her talk with the young man who had written, and

as to whom it had at once been clear to her that nothing his pen had

produced, or might hereafter set down, would put him in a position to

offer his wife anything more costly than a row-boat.

“His wife! As if he could ever have one! For he’s not the kind to marry

for a yacht either.” In spite of her past, Susy had preserved enough

inner independence to detect the latent signs of it in others, and also

to ascribe it impulsively to those of the opposite sex who happened to

interest her. She had a natural contempt for people who gloried in what

they need only have endured. She herself meant eventually to marry,

because one couldn’t forever hang on to rich people; but she was going

to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with

at least a minimum of companionableness.

She had at once perceived young Lansing’s case to be exactly the

opposite: he was as poor as he could be, and as companionable as it was

possible to imagine. She therefore decided to see as much of him as her

hurried and entangled life permitted; and this, thanks to a series of

adroit adjustments, turned out to be a good deal. They met frequently

all the rest of that winter; so frequently that Mrs. Fred Gillow one

day abruptly and sharply gave Susy to understand that she was “making

herself ridiculous.”

“Ah--” said Susy with a long breath, looking her friend and patroness

straight in the painted eyes.

“Yes,” cried Ursula Gillow in a sob, “before you interfered Nick liked

me awfully... and, of course, I don’t want to reproach you... but when I

think....”

Susy made no answer. How could she, when she thought? The dress she had

on had been given her by Ursula; Ursula’s motor had carried her to the

feast from which they were both returning. She counted on spending the

following August with the Gillows at Newport... and the only alternative

was to go to California with the Bockheimers, whom she had hitherto

refused even to dine with.

“Of course, what you fancy is perfect nonsense, Ursula; and as to my

interfering--” Susy hesitated, and then murmured: “But if it will make

you any happier I’ll arrange to see him less often....” She sounded the

lowest depths of subservience in returning Ursula’s tearful kiss....

Susy Branch had a masculine respect for her word; and the next day she

put on her most becoming hat and sought out young Mr. Lansing in his

lodgings. She was determined to keep her promise to Ursula; but she

meant to look her best when she did it.

She knew at what time the young man was likely to be found, for he was

doing a dreary job on a popular encyclopaedia (V to X), and had told her

what hours were dedicated to the hateful task. “Oh, if only it were a

novel!” she thought as she mounted his dingy stairs; but immediately

reflected that, if it were the kind that she could bear to read, it

probably wouldn’t bring him in much more than his encyclopaedia. Miss

Branch had her standards in literature....

The apartment to which Mr. Lansing admitted her was a good deal cleaner,

but hardly less dingy, than his staircase. Susy, knowing him to be

addicted to Oriental archaeology, had pictured him in a bare room

adorned by a single Chinese bronze of flawless shape, or by some

precious fragment of Asiatic pottery. But such redeeming features were

conspicuously absent, and no attempt had been made to disguise the

decent indigence of the bed-sitting-room.

Lansing welcomed his visitor with every sign of pleasure, and with

apparent indifference as to what she thought of his furniture. He seemed

to be conscious only of his luck in seeing her on a day when they had

not expected to meet. This made Susy all the sorrier to execute her

promise, and the gladder that she had put on her prettiest hat; and for

a moment or two she looked at him in silence from under its conniving

brim.

Warm as their mutual liking was, Lansing had never said a word of love

to her; but this was no deterrent to his visitor, whose habit it was

to speak her meaning clearly when there were no reasons, worldly or

pecuniary, for its concealment. After a moment, therefore, she told him

why she had come; it was a nuisance, of course, but he would understand.

Ursula Gillow was jealous, and they would have to give up seeing each

other.

The young man’s burst of laughter was music to her; for, after all, she

had been rather afraid that being devoted to Ursula might be as much in

his day’s work as doing the encyclopaedia.

“But I give you my word it’s a raving-mad mistake! And I don’t believe

she ever meant me, to begin with--” he protested; but Susy, her

common-sense returning with her reassurance, promptly cut short his

denial.

“You can trust Ursula to make herself clear on such occasions. And it

doesn’t make any difference what you think. All that matters is what she

believes.”

“Oh, come! I’ve got a word to say about that too, haven’t I?”

Susy looked slowly and consideringly about the room. There was nothing

in it, absolutely nothing, to show that he had ever possessed a spare

dollar--or accepted a present.

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” she finally pronounced.

“How do you mean? If I’m as free as air--?”

“I’m not.”

He grew thoughtful. “Oh, then, of course--. It only seems a little odd,”

he added drily, “that in that case, the protest should have come from

Mrs. Gillow.”

“Instead of coming from my millionaire bridegroom, Oh, I haven’t any; in

that respect I’m as free as you.”

“Well, then--? Haven’t we only got to stay free?”

Susy drew her brows together anxiously. It was going to be rather more

difficult than she had supposed.

“I said I was as free in that respect. I’m not going to marry--and I

don’t suppose you are?”

“God, no!” he ejaculated fervently.

“But that doesn’t always imply complete freedom....”

He stood just above her, leaning his elbow against the hideous black

marble arch that framed his fireless grate. As she glanced up she saw

his face harden, and the colour flew to hers.

“Was that what you came to tell me?” he asked.

“Oh, you don’t understand--and I don’t see why you don’t, since we’ve

knocked about so long among exactly the same kind of people.” She stood

up impulsively and laid her hand on his arm. “I do wish you’d help

me--!”

He remained motionless, letting the hand lie untouched.

“Help you to tell me that poor Ursula was a pretext, but that there IS

someone who--for one reason or another--really has a right to object to

your seeing me too often?”

Susy laughed impatiently. “You talk like the hero of a novel--the kind

my governess used to read. In the first place I should never recognize

that kind of right, as you call it--never!”

“Then what kind do you?” he asked with a clearing brow.

“Why--the kind I suppose you recognize on the part of your publisher.”

This evoked a hollow laugh from him. “A business claim, call it,” she

pursued. “Ursula does a lot for me: I live on her for half the year.

This dress I’ve got on now is one she gave me. Her motor is going to

take me to a dinner to-night. I’m going to spend next summer with her

at Newport.... If I don’t, I’ve got to go to California with the

Bockheimers--so good-bye.”

Suddenly in tears, she was out of the door and down his steep three

flights before he could stop her--though, in thinking it over, she

didn’t even remember if he had tried to. She only recalled having stood

a long time on the corner of Fifth Avenue, in the harsh winter radiance,

waiting till a break in the torrent of motors laden with fashionable

women should let her cross, and saying to herself: “After all, I might

have promised Ursula... and kept on seeing him....”

Instead of which, when Lansing wrote the next day entreating a word with

her, she had sent back a friendly but firm refusal; and had managed soon

afterward to get taken to Canada for a fortnight’s ski-ing, and then to

Florida for six weeks in a house-boat....

As she reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida

called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs;

merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon

her lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but it was over; and she was

here, safe and blissful, and with Nick; and this was his knee her head

rested on, and they had a year ahead of them... a whole year.... “Not

counting the pearls,” she murmured, shutting her eyes....

II.

LANSING threw the end of Strefford’s expensive cigar into the lake, and

bent over his wife. Poor child! She had fallen asleep.... He leaned

back and stared up again at the silver-flooded sky. How queer--how

inexpressibly queer--it was to think that that light was shed by his

honey-moon! A year ago, if anyone had predicted his risking such an

adventure, he would have replied by asking to be locked up at the first

symptoms....

There was still no doubt in his mind that the adventure was a mad one.

It was all very well for Susy to remind him twenty times a day that they

had pulled it off--and so why should he worry? Even in the light of her

far-seeing cleverness, and of his own present bliss, he knew the future

would not bear the examination of sober thought. And as he sat there

in the summer moonlight, with her head on his knee, he tried to

recapitulate the successive steps that had landed them on Streffy’s

lake-front.

On Lansing’s side, no doubt, it dated back to his leaving Harvard with

the large resolve not to miss anything. There stood the evergreen Tree

of Life, the Four Rivers flowing from its foot; and on every one of the

four currents he meant to launch his little skiff. On two of them he had

not gone very far, on the third he had nearly stuck in the mud; but the

fourth had carried him to the very heart of wonder. It was the stream of

his lively imagination, of his inexhaustible interest in every form of

beauty and strangeness and folly. On this stream, sitting in the stout

little craft of his poverty, his insignificance and his independence, he

had made some notable voyages.... And so, when Susy Branch, whom he had

sought out through a New York season as the prettiest and most amusing

girl in sight, had surprised him with the contradictory revelation of

her modern sense of expediency and her old-fashioned standard of good

faith, he had felt an irresistible desire to put off on one more cruise

into the unknown.

It was of the essence of the adventure that, after her one brief visit

to his lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see

her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation,

his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew

on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how

miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people’s moods and

whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they

liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his

promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch had become

a delightful habit in a life where most of the fixed things were

dull, and her disappearance had made it suddenly clear to him that his

resources were growing more and more limited. Much that had once amused

him hugely now amused him less, or not at all: a good part of his world

of wonder had shrunk to a village peep-show. And the things which had

kept their stimulating power--distant journeys, the enjoyment of art,

the contact with new scenes and strange societies--were becoming less

and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had

spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best

he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work,

mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more

intelligent than the average, but he had long since concluded that

his talents were not marketable. Of the thin volume of sonnets which a

friendly publisher had launched for him, just seventy copies had been

sold; and though his essay on “Chinese Influences in Greek Art” had

created a passing stir, it had resulted in controversial correspondence

and dinner invitations rather than in more substantial benefits.

There seemed, in short, no prospect of his ever earning money, and his

restricted future made him attach an increasing value to the kind of

friendship that Susy Branch had given him. Apart from the pleasure of

looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less

discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between

himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and

irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world

they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them

and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their

intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim

of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more to

blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by good manners,

he was to be deprived of the one complete companionship he had ever

known....

His thoughts travelled on. He recalled the long dull spring in New York

after his break with Susy, the weary grind on his last articles,

his listless speculations as to the cheapest and least boring way of

disposing of the summer; and then the amazing luck of going, reluctantly

and at the last minute, to spend a Sunday with the poor Nat Fulmers, in

the wilds of New Hampshire, and of finding Susy there--Susy, whom he had

never even suspected of knowing anybody in the Fulmers’ set!

She had behaved perfectly--and so had he--but they were obviously much

too glad to see each other. And then it was unsettling to be with her in

such a house as the Fulmers’, away from the large setting of luxury

they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host had

his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the

dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew

trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was

two hours late--and proportionately bad--because the Italian cook was

posing for Fulmer.

Lansing’s first thought had been that meeting Susy in such circumstances

would be the quickest way to cure them both of their regrets. The case

of the Fulmers was an awful object-lesson in what happened to young

people who lost their heads; poor Nat, whose pictures nobody bought, had

gone to seed so terribly--and Grace, at twenty-nine, would never again be

anything but the woman of whom people say, “I can remember her when she

was lovely.”

But the devil of it was that Nat had never been such good company, or

Grace so free from care and so full of music; and that, in spite of

their disorder and dishevelment, and the bad food and general crazy

discomfort, there was more amusement to be got out of their society

than out of the most opulently staged house-party through which Susy and

Lansing had ever yawned their way.

It was almost a relief to the young man when, on the second afternoon,

Miss Branch drew him into the narrow hall to say: “I really can’t

stand the combination of Grace’s violin and little Nat’s motor-horn any

longer. Do let us slip out till the duet is over.”

“How do they stand it, I wonder?” he basely echoed, as he followed her

up the wooded path behind the house.

“It might be worth finding out,” she rejoined with a musing smile.

But he remained resolutely skeptical. “Oh, give them a year or two more

and they’ll collapse--! His pictures will never sell, you know. He’ll

never even get them into a show.”

“I suppose not. And she’ll never have time to do anything worth while

with her music.”

They had reached a piny knoll high above the ledge on which the house

was perched. All about them stretched an empty landscape of endless

featureless wooded hills. “Think of sticking here all the year round!”

Lansing groaned.

“I know. But then think of wandering over the world with some people!”

“Oh, Lord, yes. For instance, my trip to India with the Mortimer

Hickses. But it was my only chance and what the deuce is one to do?”

“I wish I knew!” she sighed, thinking of the Bockheimers; and he turned

and looked at her.

“Knew what?”

“The answer to your question. What is one to do--when one sees both

sides of the problem? Or every possible side of it, indeed?”

They had seated themselves on a commanding rock under the pines, but

Lansing could not see the view at their feet for the stir of the brown

lashes on her cheek.

“You mean: Nat and Grace may after all be having the best of it?”

“How can I say, when I’ve told you I see all the sides? Of course,”

Susy added hastily, “I couldn’t live as they do for a week. But it’s

wonderful how little it’s dimmed them.”

“Certainly Nat was never more coruscating. And she keeps it up even

better.” He reflected. “We do them good, I daresay.”

“Yes--or they us. I wonder which?”

After that, he seemed to remember that they sat a long time silent, and

that his next utterance was a boyish outburst against the tyranny of the

existing order of things, abruptly followed by the passionate query why,

since he and she couldn’t alter it, and since they both had the habit of

looking at facts as they were, they wouldn’t be utter fools not to take

their chance of being happy in the only way that was open to them, To

this challenge he did not recall Susy’s making any definite answer; but

after another interval, in which all the world seemed framed in a

sudden kiss, he heard her murmur to herself in a brooding tone: “I don’t

suppose it’s ever been tried before; but we might--.” And then and there

she had laid before him the very experiment they had since hazarded.

She would have none of surreptitious bliss, she began by declaring;

and she set forth her reasons with her usual lucid impartiality. In the

first place, she should have to marry some day, and when she made the

bargain she meant it to be an honest one; and secondly, in the matter

of love, she would never give herself to anyone she did not really care

for, and if such happiness ever came to her she did not want it shorn of

half its brightness by the need of fibbing and plotting and dodging.

“I’ve seen too much of that kind of thing. Half the women I know who’ve

had lovers have had them for the fun of sneaking and lying about it; but

the other half have been miserable. And I should be miserable.”

It was at this point that she unfolded her plan. Why shouldn’t they

marry; belong to each other openly and honourably, if for ever so short

a time, and with the definite understanding that whenever either of them

got the chance to do better he or she should be immediately released?

The law of their country facilitated such exchanges, and society was

beginning to view them as indulgently as the law. As Susy talked, she

warmed to her theme and began to develop its endless possibilities.

“We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each

other,” she ardently explained. “We both know the ropes so well; what

one of us didn’t see the other might--in the way of opportunities, I

mean. And then we should be a novelty as married people. We’re both

rather unusually popular--why not be frank!--and it’s such a blessing

for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one is

a blank. Yes, I really believe we should be more than twice the success

we are now; at least,” she added with a smile, “if there’s that amount

of room for improvement. I don’t know how you feel; a man’s popularity

is so much less precarious than a girl’s--but I know it would furbish me

up tremendously to reappear as a married woman.” She glanced away from

him down the long valley at their feet, and added in a lower tone: “And

I should like, just for a little while, to feel I had something in life

of my very own--something that nobody had lent me, like a fancy-dress or

a motor or an opera cloak.”

The suggestion, at first, had seemed to Lansing as mad as it was

enchanting: it had thoroughly frightened him. But Susy’s arguments were

irrefutable, her ingenuities inexhaustible. Had he ever thought it all

out? She asked. No. Well, she had; and would he kindly not interrupt? In

the first place, there would be all the wedding-presents. Jewels, and a

motor, and a silver dinner service, did she mean? Not a bit of it! She

could see he’d never given the question proper thought. Cheques, my

dear, nothing but cheques--she undertook to manage that on her side: she

really thought she could count on about fifty, and she supposed he could

rake up a few more? Well, all that would simply represent pocket-money!

For they would have plenty of houses to live in: he’d see. People were

always glad to lend their house to a newly-married couple. It was such

fun to pop down and see them: it made one feel romantic and jolly. All

they need do was to accept the houses in turn: go on honey-mooning for

a year! What was he afraid of? Didn’t he think they’d be happy enough to

want to keep it up? And why not at least try--get engaged, and then

see what would happen? Even if she was all wrong, and her plan failed,

wouldn’t it have been rather nice, just for a month or two, to fancy

they were going to be happy? “I’ve often fancied it all by myself,”

she concluded; “but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully

different....”

That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up

to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had

come true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing

had never been able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and

contrivances that still needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily

resolved to clear them up with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth

all the past might have cost, and every penalty the future might exact

of him, just to be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her

sleeping head on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was

clasped in moonlight.

He stooped down and kissed her. “Wake up,” he whispered, “it’s

bed-time.”

III.

THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last

moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had

been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since

he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly

bouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.

Lansing, leaving Susy’s side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a

last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked

up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the

cypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife still

slept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as

fantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin into

the sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....

It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but

the next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.

Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were

being showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits

winging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice

to a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the

former. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a

journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson

Vanderlyns’ palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons

of expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the coming

winter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh

opportunities; indeed, Susy already had in mind the convenient flat that

she was sure a migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured that

they would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lend

them. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and if there

was one art in which young Lansing’s twenty-eight years of existence had

perfected him it was that of living completely and unconcernedly in the

present....

If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently than

was his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when they

married, to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew she

would have resented above everything his regarding their partnership as

a reason for anxious thought. But since they had been together she had

given him glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelter

and defend her future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hers

should be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromises

out of which their wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn’t care

a hang: he had composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code,

a short set of “mays” and “mustn’ts” which immensely simplified his

course. There were things a fellow put up with for the sake of certain

definite and otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other things

he wouldn’t traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he began to

see, it might be different. The temptations might be greater, the cost

considerably higher, the dividing line between the “mays” and “mustn’ts”

more fluctuating and less sharply drawn. Susy, thrown on the world

at seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of a father to define that

treacherous line for her, and with every circumstance soliciting her to

overstep it, seemed to have been preserved chiefly by an innate scorn

of most of the objects of human folly. “Such trash as he went to pieces

for,” was her curt comment on her parent’s premature demise: as

though she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one’s self for

something, but was resolved to discriminate firmly between what was

worth it and what wasn’t.

This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began to

rouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preserved

her from the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what if

others, more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicate

discriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her taste

for the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and if

something that wasn’t “trash” came her way, would she hesitate a second

to go to pieces for it?

He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing to

interfere with what each referred to as the other’s “chance”; but what

if, when hers came, he couldn’t agree with her in recognizing it? He

wanted for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception of

that best had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light of

their first month together!

His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was so

exquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooring

rope of Streffy’s boat and floated there, following his dream.... It

was a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn things

inside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; but

nothing would ever again be as sweet as this. And then they had only a

year of security before them; and of that year a month was gone.

Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open a

window of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were already

visible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; on

the landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-all

that refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill sense

of unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and its

setting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make room

for another play in which he and Susy had no part.

By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terrace

where coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense of

security. Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and the

sun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fond

hand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: “Yes,

I believe we can just manage it.”

“Manage what?”

“To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp.”

He stared. “The motor? What motor?”

“Why, the new people’s--Streffy’s tenants. He’s never told me their

name, and the chauffeur says he can’t pronounce it. The chauffeur’s is

Ottaviano, anyhow; I’ve been making friends with him. He arrived last

night, and he says they’re not due at Como till this evening. He simply

jumped at the idea of running us over to Milan.”

“Good Lord--” said Lansing, when she stopped.

She sprang up from the table with a laugh. “It will be a scramble; but

I’ll manage it, if you’ll go up at once and pitch the last things into

your trunk.”

“Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it’s going to cost?”

She raised her eyebrows gaily. “Why, a good deal less than our railway

tickets. Ottaviano’s got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn’t seen her for

six months. When I found that out I knew he’d be going there anyhow.”

It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grown

to shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to

“manage”? “Oh, well,” he said to himself, “she’s right: the fellow would

be sure to be going to Milan.”

Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of

finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last

portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way

she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she

fitted discordant facts into her life. “When I’m rich,” she often said,

“the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks.”

As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with the

struggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. “Dearest, do put a

couple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano.”

Lansing stared. “Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy’s

cigars?”

“Packing them, of course.... You don’t suppose he meant them for those

other people?” She gave him a look of honest wonder.

“I don’t know whom he meant them for--but they’re not ours....”

She continued to look at him wonderingly. “I don’t see what there is to

be solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy’s either... you may be sure

he got them out of some bounder. And there’s nothing he’d hate more than

to have them passed on to another.”

“Nonsense. If they’re not Streffy’s they’re much less mine. Hand them

over, please, dear.”

“Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the other

people will never have one of them.... The gardener and Giulietta’s

lover will see to that!”

Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from which

she emerged like a rosy Nereid. “How many boxes of them are left?”

“Only four.”

“Unpack them, please.”

Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing had

time for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger and

its cause. And this made him still angrier.

She held out a box. “The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It’s

locked and strapped.”

“Give me the key, then.”

“We might send them back from Venice, mightn’t we? That lock is so

nasty: it will take you half an hour.”

“Give me the key, please.” She gave it.

He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allotted

half-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin of

the chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely reminded

him how long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, and

Lansing, broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalked

with them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of golden

roses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping their

petals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated in

the alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the garden

blew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy’s little

house seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxes

on a console and ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. When

he came down again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, was

seated in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, and

Giulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolable

farewells.

“I wonder what she’s given them?” he thought, as he jumped in beside her

and the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.

IV.

CHARLIE STREFFORD’S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the Nelson

Vanderlyns’ palace called for loftier analogies.

Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.

Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,

their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down with

Olympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room where

minuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with the

happy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted

with the mutual confidence of the day before.

The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had had

too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to make

a special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their first

disagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained;

and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy’s bosom as she

sat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a

tarnished mirror.

“I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale,” she

mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forward

in the dim recesses of the mirror. “And yet,” she continued, “Ellie

Vanderlyn’s hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainly

isn’t a bit more dignified.... I wonder if it’s because I feel so

horribly small to-night that the place seems so horribly big.”

She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome and

high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before been

oppressed by the evidences of wealth.

She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands....

Even now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars.

She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her

reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things

one couldn’t reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken

Streffy’s cigars! She had taken them--yes, that was the point--she

had taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make

the smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious,

had become her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,

precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have scorned to

commit for herself; and, since he hadn’t instantly felt the difference,

she would never be able to explain it to him.

She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glanced

around the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said something

about the Signora’s having left a letter for her; and there it lay on

the writing-table, with her mail and Nick’s; a thick envelope addressed

in Ellie’s childish scrawl, with a glaring “Private” dashed across the

corner.

“What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so,” Susy

mused.

She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters

fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie’s hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn

Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a

date: one, two, three, four--with a week’s interval between the dates.

“Goodness--” gasped Susy, understanding.

She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long time

she sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered with

Ellie’s writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie;

she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, of

course; except poor old Nelson, who didn’t, But she had never imagined

that Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... she

had never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face,

and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits and

throw them all into the fire.

She heard her husband’s knock on the door between their rooms, and swept

the dangerous packet under the blotting-book.

“Oh, go away, please, there’s a dear,” she called out; “I haven’t

finished unpacking, and everything’s in such a mess.” Gathering up

Nick’s papers and letters, she ran across the room and thrust them

through the door. “Here’s something to keep you quiet,” she laughed,

shining in on him an instant from the threshold.

She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie’s letter lay on the

floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the

expected phrases sprang out at her.

“One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome

to stay all summer.... There won’t be a particle of expense for you--the

servants have orders.... If you’ll just be an angel and post these

letters yourself.... It’s been my only chance for such an age; when we

meet I’ll explain everything. And in a month at latest I’ll be back to

fetch Clarissa....”

Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To

fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie’s child was here? Here, under the roof with

them, left to their care? She read on, raging. “She’s so delighted, poor

darling, to know you’re coming. I’ve had to sack her beastly governess

for impertinence, and if it weren’t for you she’d be all alone with a

lot of servants I don’t much trust. So for pity’s sake be good to my

child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I’ve gone to take a

cure; and she knows she’s not to tell her Daddy that I’m away, because

it would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She’s perfectly to be

trusted; you’ll see what a clever angel she is....” And then, at the

bottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: “Susy darling, if

you’ve ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your

sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I

can count on you to rub out the numbers.”

Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter into the fire: then

she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four

fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do

with them.

To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: it

might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susy

to involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifying

Ellie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well--perhaps

Clarissa’s nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it was

unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of

communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done

that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the

morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality

they were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had

counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do

so had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie’s largeness of

hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her guests

their only expense would be an occasional present to the servants. And

what would the alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks,

had so lived themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on the

lagoon, of flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of music

and dreams on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of

having to renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy

with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when they

were quietly settled in Venice he “meant to write.” Already nascent in

her breast was the fierce resolve of the author’s wife to defend her

husband’s privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It was

abominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn

her into such a trap!

Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the whole

thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars--how trivial it now

seemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated to

her something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him the

whole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy’s

faith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenly

she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter: “If

you’re ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your

sacred honour, say a word to Nick....”

It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if

indeed the word “right”, could be used in any conceivable relation to

this coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness,

she did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her

friend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same

position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealed

to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then Nelson

Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kind

with was Nelson’s.... The queer edifice of Susy’s standards tottered on

its base she honestly didn’t know where fairness lay, as between so much

that was foul.

The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in “tight

places” before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way or

another, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before her

as a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. But

never before had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged and

pinioned. The little misery of the cigars still galled her, and now

this big humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the

second month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily....

She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing

table--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept in

kind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nick

would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warned

her that through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt out

something ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard made

her turn once more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard;

and having, by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased

its appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened her

husband’s door.

He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she

entered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he was

certainly still thinking about the cigars.

“I’m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I’ve come

to bid you good-night.” Bending over the back of his chair, she laid

her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, as

he threw his head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look was

still serious, almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faint

veil hung between his eyes and hers.

“I’m so sorry: it’s been a long day for you,” he said absently, pressing

his lips to her hands

She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.

“Nick!” she burst out, tightening her embrace, “before I go, you’ve got

to swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have taken

those cigars for myself!”

For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equal

gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy’s

compunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.

When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between her

curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of the

Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the vaulted ceiling.

The maid had just placed a tray on a slim marquetry table near the bed,

and over the edge of the tray Susy discovered the small serious face

of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormant

qualms awoke.

Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chin

was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyes

gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose

in an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and she

seemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy to

complete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approval

at her mother’s guest.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said in a small sweet voice. “I like you

so very much. I know I’m not to be often with you; but at least you’ll

have an eye on me, won’t you?”

“An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say such

nice things to me!” Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw the

little girl up to her side.

Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silken

bedspread. “Oh, I know I’m not to be always about, because you’re just

married; but could you see to it that I have my meals regularly?”

“Why, you poor darling! Don’t you always?”

“Not when mother’s away on these cures. The servants don’t always obey

me: you see I’m so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they’ll

have to--even if I don’t grow much,” she added judiciously. She put out

her hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy’s throat. “They’re

small, but they’re very good. I suppose you don’t take the others when

you travel?”

“The others? Bless you! I haven’t any others--and never shall have,

probably.”

“No other pearls?”

“No other jewels at all.”

Clarissa stared. “Is that really true?” she asked, as if in the presence

of the unprecedented.

“Awfully true,” Susy confessed. “But I think I can make the servants

obey me all the same.”

This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was still

gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forth

another question.

“Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were divorced?”

“Divorced--?” Susy threw her head back against the pillows and laughed.

“Why, what are you thinking of? Don’t you remember that I wasn’t even

married the last time you saw me?”

“Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.” The little girl wound her arms

about Susy’s neck and leaned against her caressingly. “Are you going to

be soon, then? I’ll promise not to tell if you don’t want me to.”

“Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made you think

so? ”

“Because you look so awfully happy,” said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.

V.

IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy’s mind: that

first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without first coming in to see

her. She had stayed in bed late, chatting with Clarissa, and expecting

to see the door open and her husband appear; and when the child left,

and she had jumped up and looked into Nick’s room, she found it empty,

and a line on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to

send a telegram.

It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary to

explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and told her! She

instinctively connected the little fact with the shade of preoccupation

she had noticed on his face the night before, when she had gone to his

room and found him absorbed in letter; and while she dressed she had

continued to wonder what was in the letter, and whether the telegram he

had hurried out to send was an answer to it.

She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy as the

morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of her life-long

policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was not only that her

jealous regard for her own freedom was matched by an equal respect for

that of others; she had steered too long among the social reefs and

shoals not to know how narrow is the passage that leads to peace of

mind, and she was determined to keep her little craft in mid-channel.

But the incident had lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of

symbolic significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her

husband. Not that these were less happy, but that she now beheld them,

as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an unstable islet in

a sea of storms. Her present bliss was as complete as ever, but it was

ringed by the perpetual menace of all she knew she was hiding from Nick,

and of all she suspected him of hiding from her....

She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks after

their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat alone on the

balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water weave their pattern

above the flushed reflection of old palace-basements. She was

almost always alone at that hour. Nick had taken to writing in the

afternoons--he had been as good as his word, and so, apparently, had the

Muse and it was his habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late

row on the lagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino

Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but indifferently

“played”--Clarissa joined in the diversions of her age as if conforming

to an obsolete tradition--and had brought her back for a music lesson,

echoes of which now drifted down from a distant window.

Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for the little

girl, her pride in her husband’s industry might have been tinged with

a faint sense of being at times left out and forgotten; and as Nick’s

industry was the completest justification for their being where they

were, and for her having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa

for helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented the

other half of her justification: it was as much on the child’s account

as on Nick’s that Susy had held her tongue, remained in Venice, and

slipped out once a week to post one of Ellie’s numbered letters. A

day’s experience of the Palazzo Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the

impossibility of deserting Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that

the most crowded households often contain the loneliest nurseries,

and that the rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered

infancy; but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the

uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she found herself

feeling where before she had only judged: her precarious bliss came to

her charged with a new weight of pity.

She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of Ellie

Vanderlyn’s return, and of the searching truths she was storing up for

that lady’s private ear, when she noticed a gondola turning its

prow toward the steps below the balcony. She leaned over, and a tall

gentleman in shabby clothes, glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved

a mouldy Panama in joyful greeting.

“Streffy!” she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was half-way down the

stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden boatman.

“It’s all right, I suppose?--Ellie said I might come,” he explained in

a shrill cheerful voice; “and I’m to have my same green room with the

parrot-panels, because its furniture is already so frightfully stained

with my hair-wash.”

Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction which his

presence always produced in his friends. There was no one in the world,

they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and delightful as Streffy; no

one who combined such outspoken selfishness with such imperturbable good

humour; no one who knew so well how to make you believe he was being

charming to you when it was you who were being charming to him.

In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the value

more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for Susy another

attraction of which he was probably unconscious. It was that of being

the one rooted and stable being among the fluid and shifting figures

that composed her world. Susy had always lived among people so

denationalized that those one took for Russians generally turned out to

be American, and those one was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to

have originated in Rome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in

countries not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in

hotels where the guests were as international as the waiters, had

inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over the whole

face of Europe, and according to every code that attempts to regulate

human ties. Strefford, too, had his home in this world, but only one

of his homes. The other, the one he spoke of, and probably thought

of, least often, was a great dull English country-house in a northern

county, where a life as monotonous and self-contained as his own was

chequered and dispersed had gone on for generation after generation;

and it was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his

vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his talk, or

in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him a firmer

outline and a steadier footing than the other marionettes in the dance.

Superficially so like them all, and so eager to outdo them in detachment

and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the

people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the

skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. “He talks every language as

well as the rest of us,” Susy had once said of him, “but at least he

talks one language better than the others”; and Strefford, told of the

remark, had laughed, called her an idiot, and been pleased.

As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was thinking of

this quality with a new appreciation of its value. Even she and Lansing,

in spite of their unmixed Americanism, their substantial background of

old-fashioned cousinships in New York and Philadelphia, were as

mentally detached, as universally at home, as touts at an International

Exhibition. If they were usually recognized as Americans it was only

because they spoke French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be

“foreign,” and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford

was English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and something

in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of habit.

Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without pausing

to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely

interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its

having been enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused

at the firmness with which she refused to let him see Nick till the

latter’s daily task was over.

“Writing? Rot! What’s he writing? He’s breaking you in, my dear; that’s

what he’s doing: establishing an alibi. What’ll you bet he’s just

sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire? Let’s go and see.”

But Susy was firm. “He’s read me his first chapter: it’s wonderful. It’s

a philosophic romance--rather like Marius, you know.”

“Oh, yes--I do!” said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought idiotic.

She flushed up like a child. “You’re stupid, Streffy. You forget that

Nick and I don’t need alibis. We’ve got rid of all that hyprocrisy by

agreeing that each will give the other a hand up when either of us wants

a change. We’ve not married to spy and lie, and nag each other; we’ve

formed a partnership for our mutual advantage.”

“I see; that’s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a

change, you’ll consider it for his advantage to have one?”

It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often

wondered if it equally tormented Nick.

“I hope I shall have enough common sense--” she began.

“Oh, of course: common sense is what you’re both bound to base your

argument on, whichever way you argue.”

This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little

irritably: “What should you do then, if you married?--Hush, Streffy! I

forbid you to shout like that--all the gondolas are stopping to look!”

“How can I help it?” He rocked backward and forward in his chair. “‘If

you marry,’ she says: ‘Streffy, what have you decided to do if you

suddenly become a raving maniac?’”

“I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died, you’d marry

to-morrow; you know you would.”

“Oh, now you’re talking business.” He folded his long arms and leaned

over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples streaked with fire.

“In that case I should say: ‘Susan, my dear--Susan--now that by

the merciful intervention of Providence you have become Countess of

Altringham in the peerage of Great Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville

and d’Amblay in the peerages of Ireland and Scotland, I’ll thank you to

remember that you are a member of one of the most ancient houses in the

United Kingdom--and not to get found out.’”

Susy laughed. “We know what those warnings mean! I pity my namesake.”

He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly twinkling

eyes. “Is there any other woman in the world named Susan?”

“I hope so, if the name’s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me, don’t

count on me to carry out that programme. I’ve seen it in practice too

often.”

“Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody’s in perfect health at

Altringham.” He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain pen,

a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of dishevelled

cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other objects to his pocket,

he continued calmly: “Tell me how did you manage to smooth things over

with the Gillows? Ursula was running amuck when I was in Newport last

Summer; it was just when people were beginning to say that you were

going to marry Nick. I was afraid she’d put a spoke in your wheel; and I

hear she put a big cheque in your hand instead.”

Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford’s appearance she had

known that in the course of time he would put that question. He was as

inquisitive as a monkey, and when he had made up his mind to find out

anything it was useless to try to divert his attention. After a moment’s

hesitation she said: “I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very

decent.”

“He would be--poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly frightened!”

“Well--enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri turned up

from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job as an engineer,

and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron works.” She paused again,

and then added abruptly: “Streffy! If you knew how I hate that kind of

thing. I’d rather have Nick come in now and tell me frankly, as I know

he would, that he’s going off with--”

“With Coral Hicks?” Strefford suggested.

She laughed. “Poor Coral Hicks! What on earth made you think of the

Hickses?”

“Because I caught a glimpse of them the other day at Capri. They’re

cruising about: they said they were coming in here.”

“What a nuisance! I do hope they won’t find us out. They were

awfully kind to Nick when he went to India with them, and they’re so

simple-minded that they would expect him to be glad to see them.”

Strefford aimed his cigarette-end at a tourist on a puggaree who was

gazing up from his guidebook at the palace. “Ah,” he murmured with

satisfaction, seeing the shot take effect; then he added: “Coral Hicks

is growing up rather pretty.”

“Oh, Streff--you’re dreaming! That lump of a girl with spectacles and

thick ankles! Poor Mrs. Hicks used to say to Nick: ‘When Mr. Hicks and

I had Coral educated we presumed culture was in greater demand in Europe

than it appears to be.’”

“Well, you’ll see: that girl’s education won’t interfere with her, once

she’s started. So then: if Nick came in and told you he was going off--”

“I should be so thankful if it was with a fright like Coral! But you

know,” she added with a smile, “we’ve agreed that it’s not to happen for

a year.”

VI.

SUSY found Strefford, after his first burst of nonsense, unusually kind

and responsive. The interest he showed in her future and Nick’s seemed

to proceed not so much from his habitual spirit of scientific curiosity

as from simple friendliness. He was privileged to see Nick’s first

chapter, of which he formed so favourable an impression that he spoke

sternly to Susy on the importance of respecting her husband’s working

hours; and he even carried his general benevolence to the length

of showing a fatherly interest in Clarissa Vanderlyn. He was always

charming to children, but fitfully and warily, with an eye on his

independence, and on the possibility of being suddenly bored by them;

Susy had never seen him abandon these precautions so completely as he

did with Clarissa.

“Poor little devil! Who looks after her when you and Nick are off

together? Do you mean to tell me Ellie sacked the governess and went

away without having anyone to take her place?”

“I think she expected me to do it,” said Susy with a touch of asperity.

There were moments when her duty to Clarissa weighed on her somewhat

heavily; whenever she went off alone with Nick she was pursued by the

vision of a little figure waving wistful farewells from the balcony.

“Ah, that’s like Ellie: you might have known she’d get an equivalent

when she lent you all this. But I don’t believe she thought you’d be so

conscientious about it.”

Susy considered. “I don’t suppose she did; and perhaps I shouldn’t have

been, a year ago. But you see”--she hesitated--“Nick’s so awfully good:

it’s made me look; at a lot of things differently....”

“Oh, hang Nick’s goodness! It’s happiness that’s done it, my dear.

You’re just one of the people with whom it happens to agree.”

Susy, leaning back, scrutinized between her lashes his crooked ironic

face.

“What is it that’s agreeing with you, Streffy? I’ve never seen you so

human. You must be getting an outrageous price for the villa.”

Strefford laughed and clapped his hand on his breast-pocket. “I should

be an ass not to: I’ve got a wire here saying they must have it for

another month at any price.”

“What luck! I’m so glad. Who are they, by the way?”

He drew himself up out of the long chair in which he was disjointedly

lounging, and looked down at her with a smile. “Another couple of

love-sick idiots like you and Nick.... I say, before I spend it all

let’s go out and buy something ripping for Clarissa.”

The days passed so quickly and radiantly that, but for her concern

for Clarissa, Susy would hardly have been conscious of her hostess’s

protracted absence. Mrs. Vanderlyn had said: “Four weeks at the latest,”

and the four weeks were over, and she had neither arrived nor written

to explain her non-appearance. She had, in fact, given no sign of life

since her departure, save in the shape of a post-card which had

reached Clarissa the day after the Lansings’ arrival, and in which Mrs.

Vanderlyn instructed her child to be awfully good, and not to forget

to feed the mongoose. Susy noticed that this missive had been posted in

Milan.

She communicated her apprehensions to Strefford. “I don’t trust

that green-eyed nurse. She’s forever with the younger gondolier; and

Clarissa’s so awfully sharp. I don’t see why Ellie hasn’t come: she was

due last Monday.”

Her companion laughed, and something in the sound of his laugh suggested

that he probably knew as much of Ellie’s movements as she did, if not

more. The sense of disgust which the subject always roused in her made

her look away quickly from his tolerant smile. She would have given

the world, at that moment, to have been free to tell Nick what she had

learned on the night of their arrival, and then to have gone away with

him, no matter where. But there was Clarissa--!

To fortify herself against the temptation, she resolutely fixed her

thoughts on her husband. Of Nick’s beatitude there could be no doubt.

He adored her, he revelled in Venice, he rejoiced in his work; and

concerning the quality of that work her judgment was as confident as

her heart. She still doubted if he would ever earn a living by what

he wrote, but she no longer doubted that he would write something

remarkable. The mere fact that he was engaged on a philosophic romance,

and not a mere novel, seemed the proof of an intrinsic superiority. And

if she had mistrusted her impartiality Strefford’s approval would have

reassured her. Among their friends Strefford passed as an authority on

such matters: in summing him up his eulogists always added: “And you

know he writes.” As a matter of fact, the paying public had remained

cold to his few published pages; but he lived among the kind of people

who confuse taste with talent, and are impressed by the most artless

attempts at literary expression; and though he affected to disdain their

judgment, and his own efforts, Susy knew he was not sorry to have it

said of him: “Oh, if only Streffy had chosen--!”

Strefford’s approval of the philosophic romance convinced her that it

had been worth while staying in Venice for Nick’s sake; and if

only Ellie would come back, and carry off Clarissa to St. Moritz or

Deauville, the disagreeable episode on which their happiness was based

would vanish like a cloud, and leave them to complete enjoyment.

Ellie did not come; but the Mortimer Hickses did, and Nick Lansing was

assailed by the scruples his wife had foreseen. Strefford, coming back

one evening from the Lido, reported having recognized the huge outline

of the Ibis among the pleasure craft of the outer harbour; and the very

next evening, as the guests of Palazzo Vanderlyn were sipping their ices

at Florian’s, the Hickses loomed up across the Piazza.

Susy pleaded in vain with her husband in defence of his privacy.

“Remember you’re here to write, dearest; it’s your duty not to let any

one interfere with that. Why shouldn’t we tell them we’re just leaving!”

“Because it’s no use: we’re sure to be always meeting them. And besides,

I’ll be hanged if I’m going to shirk the Hickses. I spent five whole

months on the Ibis, and if they bored me occasionally, India didn’t.”

“We’ll make them take us to Aquileia anyhow,” said Strefford

philosophically; and the next moment the Hickses were bearing down on

the defenceless trio.

They presented a formidable front, not only because of their mere

physical bulk--Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were equally and majestically

three-dimensional--but because they never moved abroad without the

escort of two private secretaries (one for the foreign languages), Mr.

Hicks’s doctor, a maiden lady known as Eldoradder Tooker, who was Mrs.

Hicks’s cousin and stenographer, and finally their daughter, Coral

Hicks.

Coral Hicks, when Susy had last encountered the party, had been a

fat spectacled school-girl, always lagging behind her parents, with a

reluctant poodle in her wake. Now the poodle had gone, and his mistress

led the procession. The fat school-girl had changed into a young lady

of compact if not graceful outline; a long-handled eyeglass had replaced

the spectacles, and through it, instead of a sullen glare, Miss Coral

Hicks projected on the world a glance at once confident and critical.

She looked so strong and so assured that Susy, taking her measure in

a flash, saw that her position at the head of the procession was not

fortuitous, and murmured inwardly: “Thank goodness she’s not pretty

too!”

If she was not pretty, she was well-dressed; and if she was

overeducated, she seemed capable, as Strefford had suggested, of

carrying off even this crowning disadvantage. At any rate, she was above

disguising it; and before the whole party had been seated five minutes

in front of a fresh supply of ices (with Eldorada and the secretaries

at a table slightly in the background) she had taken up with Nick the

question of exploration in Mesopotamia.

“Queer child, Coral,” he said to Susy that night as they smoked a last

cigarette on their balcony. “She told me this afternoon that she’d

remembered lots of things she heard me say in India. I thought at the

time that she cared only for caramels and picture-puzzles, but it seems

she was listening to everything, and reading all the books she could lay

her hands on; and she got so bitten with Oriental archaeology that she

took a course last year at Bryn Mawr. She means to go to Bagdad next

spring, and back by the Persian plateau and Turkestan.”

Susy laughed luxuriously: she was sitting with her hand in Nick’s, while

the late moon--theirs again--rounded its orange-coloured glory above the

belfry of San Giorgio.

“Poor Coral! How dreary--” Susy murmured

“Dreary? Why? A trip like that is about as well worth doing as anything

I know.”

“Oh, I meant: dreary to do it without you or me,” she laughed, getting up

lazily to go indoors. A broad band of moonlight, dividing her room onto

two shadowy halves, lay on the painted Venetian bed with its folded-back

sheet, its old damask coverlet and lace-edged pillows. She felt the

warmth of Nick’s enfolding arm and lifted her face to his.

The Hickses retained the most tender memory of Nick’s sojourn on the

Ibis, and Susy, moved by their artless pleasure in meeting him again,

was glad he had not followed her advice and tried to elude them. She had

always admired Strefford’s ruthless talent for using and discarding the

human material in his path, but now she began to hope that Nick would

not remember her suggestion that he should mete out that measure to the

Hickses. Even if it had been less pleasant to have a big yacht at their

door during the long golden days and the nights of silver fire, the

Hickses’ admiration for Nick would have made Susy suffer them gladly.

She even began to be aware of a growing liking for them, a liking

inspired by the very characteristics that would once have provoked her

disapproval. Susy had had plenty of training in liking common people

with big purses; in such cases her stock of allowances and extenuations

was inexhaustible. But they had to be successful common people; and the

trouble was that the Hickses, judged by her standards, were failures.

It was not only that they were ridiculous; so, heaven knew, were many

of their rivals. But the Hickses were both ridiculous and unsuccessful.

They had consistently resisted the efforts of the experienced advisers

who had first descried them on the horizon and tried to help them

upward. They were always taking up the wrong people, giving the wrong

kind of party, and spending millions on things that nobody who mattered

cared about. They all believed passionately in “movements” and “causes”

and “ideals,” and were always attended by the exponents of their latest

beliefs, always asking you to hear lectures by haggard women in peplums,

and having their portraits painted by wild people who never turned out

to be the fashion.

All this would formerly have increased Susy’s contempt; now she found

herself liking the Hickses most for their failings. She was touched by

their simple good faith, their isolation in the midst of all their

queer apostles and parasites, their way of drifting about an alien

and indifferent world in a compactly clinging group of which Eldorada

Tooker, the doctor and the two secretaries formed the outer fringe, and

by their view of themselves as a kind of collective re-incarnation of

some past state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what

she called “the court of the Renaissance.” Eldorada, of course, was

their chief prophetess; but even the intensely “bright” and modern young

secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to

share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as “promoting art,” in the spirit

of Pandolfino celebrating the munificence of the Medicis.

“I’m getting really fond of the Hickses; I believe I should be nice to

them even if they were staying at Danieli’s,” Susy said to Strefford.

“And even if you owned the yacht?” he answered; and for once his banter

struck her as beside the point.

The Ibis carried them, during the endless June days, far and wide along

the enchanted shores; they roamed among the Euganeans, they saw Aquileia

and Pomposa and Ravenna. Their hosts would gladly have taken them

farther, across the Adriatic and on into the golden network of the

Ægean; but Susy resisted this infraction of Nick’s rules, and he

himself preferred to stick to his task. Only now he wrote in the early

mornings, so that on most days they could set out before noon and steam

back late to the low fringe of lights on the lagoon. His work continued

to progress, and as page was added to page Susy obscurely but surely

perceived that each one corresponded with a hidden secretion of energy,

the gradual forming within him of something that might eventually alter

both their lives. In what sense she could not conjecture: she merely

felt that the fact of his having chosen a job and stuck to it, if only

through a few rosy summer weeks, had already given him a new way of

saying “Yes” and “No.”

VII.

OF some new ferment at work in him Nick Lansing himself was equally

aware. He was a better judge of the book he was trying to write than

either Susy or Strefford; he knew its weaknesses, its treacheries,

its tendency to slip through his fingers just as he thought his grasp

tightest; but he knew also that at the very moment when it seemed to

have failed him it would suddenly be back, beating its loud wings in his

face.

He had no delusions as to its commercial value, and had winced more than

he triumphed when Susy produced her allusion to Marius. His book was to

be called The Pageant of Alexander. His imagination had been enchanted

by the idea of picturing the young conqueror’s advance through the

fabulous landscapes of Asia: he liked writing descriptions, and vaguely

felt that under the guise of fiction he could develop his theory of

Oriental influences in Western art at the expense of less learning than

if he had tried to put his ideas into an essay. He knew enough of his

subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it; but he

consoled himself by remembering that Wilhelm Meister has survived many

weighty volumes on aesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust

he took himself at Susy’s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in his

task.

Never--no, never!--had he been so boundlessly, so confidently happy. His

hack-work had given him the habit of application, and now habit wore the

glow of inspiration. His previous literary ventures had been timid and

tentative: if this one was growing and strengthening on his hands, it

must be because the conditions were so different. He was at ease, he was

secure, he was satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since his

early youth, before his mother’s death, the sense of having some one to

look after, some one who was his own particular care, and to whom he

was answerable for himself and his actions, as he had never felt himself

answerable to the hurried and indifferent people among whom he had

chosen to live.

Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke their language,

though she understood others, she required their pleasures if she did

not revere their gods. But from the moment that she had become his

property he had built up in himself a conception of her answering to

some deep-seated need of veneration. She was his, he had chosen her,

she had taken her place in the long line of Lansing women who had been

loved, honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. He didn’t

pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact that she was his

wife gave purpose and continuity to his scattered impulses, and a

mysterious glow of consecration to his task.

Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had asked himself

with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy should begin to bore

him. The thing had happened to him with other women as to whom his first

emotions had not differed in intensity from those she inspired. The part

he had played in his previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed

up in the memorable line: “I am the hunter and the prey,” for he had

invariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as the second.

This experience had never ceased to cause him the liveliest pain, since

his sympathy for his pursuer was only less keen than his commiseration

for himself; but as he was always a little sorrier for himself, he had

always ended by distancing the pursuer.

All these pre-natal experiences now seemed utterly inapplicable to the

new man he had become. He could not imagine being bored by Susy--or

trying to escape from her if he were. He could not think of her as

an enemy, or even as an accomplice, since accomplices are potential

enemies: she was some one with whom, by some unheard-of miracle, joys

above the joys of friendship were to be tasted, but who, even through

these fleeting ecstasies, remained simply and securely his friend.

These new feelings did not affect his general attitude toward life: they

merely confirmed his faith in its ultimate “jolliness.” Never had he

more thoroughly enjoyed the things he had always enjoyed. A good dinner

had never been as good to him, a beautiful sunset as beautiful; he still

rejoiced in the fact that he appreciated both with an equal acuity. He

was as proud as ever of Susy’s cleverness and freedom from prejudice:

she couldn’t be too “modern” for him now that she was his. He shared to

the full her passionate enjoyment of the present, and all her feverish

eagerness to make it last. He knew when she was thinking of ways of

extending their golden opportunity, and he secretly thought with her,

wondering what new means they could devise. He was thankful that Ellie

Vanderlyn was still absent, and began to hope they might have the palace

to themselves for the remainder of the summer. If they did, he would

have time to finish his book, and Susy to lay up a little interest on

their wedding cheques; and thus their enchanted year might conceivably

be prolonged to two.

Late as the season was, their presence and Strefford’s in Venice had

already drawn thither several wandering members of their set. It was

characteristic of these indifferent but agglutinative people that they

could never remain long parted from each other without a dim sense of

uneasiness. Lansing was familiar with the feeling. He had known slight

twinges of it himself, and had often ministered to its qualms in others.

It was hardly stronger than the faint gnawing which recalls the tea-hour

to one who has lunched well and is sure of dining as abundantly; but it

gave a purpose to the purposeless, and helped many hesitating spirits

over the annual difficulty of deciding between Deauville and St. Moritz,

Biarritz and Capri.

Nick was not surprised to learn that it was becoming the fashion, that

summer, to pop down to Venice and take a look at the Lansings. Streffy

had set the example, and Streffy’s example was always followed. And then

Susy’s marriage was still a subject of sympathetic speculation. People

knew the story of the wedding cheques, and were interested in seeing

how long they could be made to last. It was going to be the thing,

that year, to help prolong the honey-moon by pressing houses on the

adventurous couple. Before June was over a band of friends were basking

with the Lansings on the Lido.

Nick found himself unexpectedly disturbed by their arrival. To avoid

comment and banter he put his book aside and forbade Susy to speak

of it, explaining to her that he needed an interval of rest. His wife

instantly and exaggeratedly adopted this view, guarding him from the

temptation to work as jealously as she had discouraged him from idling;

and he was careful not to let her find out that the change in his habits

coincided with his having reached a difficult point in his book. But

though he was not sorry to stop writing he found himself unexpectedly

oppressed by the weight of his leisure. For the first time communal

dawdling had lost its charm for him; not because his fellow dawdlers

were less congenial than of old, but because in the interval he had

known something so immeasurably better. He had always felt himself to be

the superior of his habitual associates, but now the advantage was too

great: really, in a sense, it was hardly fair to them.

He had flattered himself that Susy would share this feeling; but he

perceived with annoyance that the arrival of their friends heightened

her animation. It was as if the inward glow which had given her a new

beauty were now refracted upon her by the presence of the very people

they had come to Venice to avoid.

Lansing was vaguely irritated; and when he asked her how she liked being

with their old crowd again his irritation was increased by her answering

with a laugh that she only hoped the poor dears didn’t see too plainly

how they bored her. The patent insincerity of the reply was a shock to

Lansing. He knew that Susy was not really bored, and he understood that

she had simply guessed his feelings and instinctively adopted them: that

henceforth she was always going to think as he thought. To confirm this

fear he said carelessly: “Oh, all the same, it’s rather jolly knocking

about with them again for a bit;” and she answered at once, and with

equal conviction: “Yes, isn’t it? The old darlings--all the same!”

A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy’s

independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions;

if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of

becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier

he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment

he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the

sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be

agreed with monotonous.

Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally unfitted for

the married state; and was saved from despair only by remembering that

Susy’s subjection to his moods was not likely to last. But even then

it never occurred to him to reflect that his apprehensions were

superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the

special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace

remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever

renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the

ghost of an old joke.

It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken sociability,

that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer Hickses who bored him

the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis for an apartment in a vast

dilapidated palace near the Canareggio. They had hired the apartment

from a painter (one of their newest discoveries), and they put up

philosophically with the absence of modern conveniences in order to

secure the inestimable advantage of “atmosphere.” In this privileged

air they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet

studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves totally

unconscious of the disparity between their different guests, and

beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at the source of

wisdom.

In old days Lansing would have got half an hour’s amusement, followed

by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs. Hicks, vast and

jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking professor of archaeology and a

large-browed composer, or the high priest of a new dance-step, while

Mr. Hicks, beaming above his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the

champagne flowed more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young

secretaries industriously “kept up” with the dizzy cross-current of

prophecy and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto

it was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed most

insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same friends that they

had become not only sympathetic but even interesting. It was something,

after all, to be with people who did not regard Venice simply as

affording exceptional opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who

were reverently if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of

something unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of

their privilege.

“After all,” he said to himself one evening, as his eyes wandered, with

somewhat of a convalescent’s simple joy, from one to another of their

large confiding faces, “after all, they’ve got a religion....” The

phrase struck him, in the moment of using it, as indicating a new

element in his own state of mind, and as being, in fact, the key to his

new feeling about the Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things

was related to his own new view of the universe: the people who felt,

however dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer

to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one’s balance at

the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that was what he meant when he

thought of the Hickses as having “a religion”....

A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by the

arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant liking for

Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an intense and serious

desire to miss nothing attainable by one of his fortune and standing.

What use he made of his experiences, Lansing, who had always gone into

his own modest adventures rather thoroughly, had never been able to

guess; but he had always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more

than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view

him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy point in

Nick’s conscience. He and Susy from the first, had talked of them less

than of any other members of their group: they had tacitly avoided the

name from the day on which Susy had come to Lansing’s lodgings to say

that Ursula Gillow had asked her to renounce him, till that other day,

just before their marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry:

“Here’s our first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fred

and Ursula!”

Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell him just

what had happened in the interval between those two dates; but he had

taken care not to ask. He had even affected an initiation so complete

that the friends who burned to enlighten him were discouraged by his so

obviously knowing more than they; and gradually he had worked himself

around to their view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.

Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the “Hullo, old

Fred!” with which Susy hailed Gillow’s arrival might be either the usual

tribal welcome--since they were all “old,” and all nicknamed, in their

private jargon--or a greeting that concealed inscrutable depths of

complicity.

Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of everything just

then, and so glad to show her gladness! The fact disarmed her husband

and made him ashamed of his uneasiness. “You ought to have thought this

all out sooner, or else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,”

was the sound but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after

Gillow’s arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole

matter.

Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one’s peace of

mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido sands, his arms

folded under his head, listening to Streffy’s nonsense and watching Susy

between sleepy lids; but he betrayed no desire to see her alone, or

to draw her into talk apart from the others. More than ever he seemed

content to be the gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his

private entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,

grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of mosquitoes,

that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter over long before,

and finally settled it: “The moor will be ready any time after the first

of August.”

Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up more

defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across the dying

ripples at their feet.

“You’ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,” Fred added, with what, for him,

was an unusual effort at explicitness.

“Oh, shall we?” she retorted gaily; and added with an air of mystery

and importance, pivoting about on her high heels: “Nick’s got work to do

here. It will probably keep us all summer.”

“Work? Rot! You’ll die of the smells.” Gillow stared perplexedly skyward

from under his tilted hat-brim; and then brought out, as from the depth

of a rankling grievance: “I thought it was all understood.”

“Why,” Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered Ellie’s cool

drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, “did Gillow think it was

understood that we were going to his moor in August?” He was conscious

of the oddness of speaking of their friend by his surname, and reddened

at his blunder.

Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before him

in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through black

transparencies.

She raised her eyebrows carelessly. “I told you long ago he’d asked us

there for August.”

“You didn’t tell me you’d accepted.”

She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. “I accepted

everything--from everybody!”

What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their bargain

had been struck. And if he were to say: “Ah, but this is different,

because I’m jealous of Gillow,” what light would such an answer shed on

his past? The time for being jealous--if so antiquated an attitude were

on any ground defensible--would have been before his marriage, and before

the acceptance of the bounties which had helped to make it possible. He

wondered a little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled

him. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his irritation

against Gillow. “I suppose he thinks he owns us!” he grumbled inwardly.

He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing across the

shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his feet, pressed her

slender length against him, and whispered with lifted face and lips

close to his: “We needn’t ever go anywhere you don’t want to.” For

once her submission was sweet, and folding her close he whispered back

through his kiss: “Not there, then.”

In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her whole

happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it gave them enough

of such moments as this; and as they held each other fast in silence his

doubts and distrust began to seem like a silly injustice.

“Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,” he said, as if the

shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary drawn about his

happiness.

She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm above

her shoulders. “How dreadfully late it is.... Will you unhook me?... Oh,

there’s a telegram.”

She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a moment at

the message. “It’s from Ellie. She’s coming to-morrow.”

She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick followed

her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in moonless shadow,

barred with a few lingering lights. A last snatch of gondola-music came

from far off, carried upward on a sultry gust.

“Dear old Ellie. All the same... I wish all this belonged to you and

me.” Susy sighed.

VIII.

IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn’s fault if, after her arrival, her palace

seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.

She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was impossible

for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone, to make her view

even her own recent conduct in any but the most benevolent light.

“I knew you’d be the veriest angel about it all, darling, because I knew

you’d understand me--especially now,” she declared, her slim hands

in Susy’s, her big eyes (so like Clarissa’s) resplendent with past

pleasures and future plans.

The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to Susy

Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm avowals. She had

always imagined that being happy one’s self made one--as Mrs. Vanderlyn

appeared to assume--more tolerant of the happiness of others, of however

doubtful elements composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so

languidly to her friend’s outpourings. But she herself had no desire to

confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a similar

reticence?

“It was all so perfect--you see, dearest, I was meant to be happy,”

that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual a characteristic

singled her out for special privileges.

Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always supposed

we all were.

“Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and companions, and

that sort of people. They wouldn’t know how if they tried. But you and

I, darling--”

“Oh, I don’t consider myself in any way exceptional,” Susy intervened.

She longed to add: “Not in your way, at any rate--” but a few minutes

earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her that the palace was at her disposal

for the rest of the summer, and that she herself was only going to perch

there--if they’d let her!--long enough to gather up her things and

start for St. Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of

curbing Susy’s irony, and of making her shift the conversation to the

safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of day and evening

dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.

As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn--no less eloquent on this theme

than on the other--Susy began to measure the gulf between her past and

present. “This is the life I used to lead; these are the things I used

to live for,” she thought, as she stood before the outspread glories of

Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe. Not that she did not still care: she could

not look at Ellie’s laces and silks and furs without picturing herself

in them, and wondering by what new miracle of management she could give

herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists. But

these had become minor interests: the past few months had given her a

new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and disconcerted her

about Ellie was the fact that love and finery and bridge and dining-out

were seemingly all on the same plane to her.

The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked by

many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who passed

from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total inadequacy of her

wardrobe. It wouldn’t do to go to St. Moritz looking like a frump, and

yet there was no time to get anything sent from Paris, and, whatever she

did, she wasn’t going to show herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done

at home. But suddenly light broke on her, and she clasped her hands

for joy. “Why, Nelson’ll bring them--I’d forgotten all about Nelson!

There’ll be just time if I wire to him at once.”

“Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?” Susy asked, surprised.

“Heavens, no! He’s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her to some

stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It’s too lucky: there’s just

time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn’t mean to wait for him;

but it won’t delay me more than day or two.”

Susy’s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but Ellie and

Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one could tell what

spark of truth might dash from their collision. Susy felt that she could

deal with the two dangers separately and successively, but not together

and simultaneously.

“But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I’m certain to find someone

here who’s going to St. Moritz and will take your things if he brings

them. It’s a pity to risk losing your rooms.”

This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. “That’s

true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you’re always

so practical!” She clasped Susy to her scented bosom. “And you know,

darling, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get rid of me--you and Nick! Oh,

don’t be hypocritical and say ‘Nonsense!’ You see, I understand... I

used to think of you so often, you two... during those blessed weeks

when we two were alone....”

The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie’s lovely eyes, and threatening to

make the blue circles below them run into the adjoining carmine, filled

Susy with compunction.

“Poor thing--oh, poor thing!” she thought; and hearing herself called

by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual sunset on the

lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded creature who would

never taste that highest of imaginable joys. “But all the same,” Susy

reflected, as she hurried down to her husband, “I’m glad I persuaded her

not to wait for Nelson.”

Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to

themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the superior

quality of the sympathy that held them together. She now viewed all the

rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly show which it would have

been a thousand pities to miss, but which, if the need arose, they could

get up and leave at any moment--provided that they left it together.

In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and through

the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and murmured, her

mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie: “Nick, should you hate me

dreadfully if I had no clothes?”

Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the grin

with which he answered: “But, my dear, have I ever shown the slightest

symptom--?”

“Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: ‘No clothes,’ she means: ‘Not the right

clothes.’”

He took a meditative puff. “Ah, you’ve been going over Ellie’s finery

with her.”

“Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she’s got nothing

for St. Moritz!”

“Of course,” he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting but a

languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe.

“Only fancy--she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson’s arrival

next week, so that he might bring her two or three more trunkfuls from

Paris. But mercifully I’ve managed to persuade her that it would be

foolish to wait.”

Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband’s lounging body,

and was aware, through all her watchful tentacles, of a widening of his

half-closed lids.

“You ‘managed’--?” She fancied he paused on the word ironically. “But

why?”

“Why--what?”

“Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie’s waiting for Nelson, if

for once in her life she wants to?”

Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap

of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder

against which she leaned.

“Really, dearest--!” she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness he

renewed his “Why?”

“Because she’s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz--and in such a funk

lest the hotel shouldn’t keep her rooms,” Susy somewhat breathlessly

produced.

“Ah--I see.” Nick paused again. “You’re a devoted friend, aren’t you!”

“What an odd question! There’s hardly anyone I’ve reason to be more

devoted to than Ellie,” his wife answered; and she felt his contrite

clasp on her hand.

“Darling! No; nor I--. Or more grateful to for leaving us alone in this

heaven.”

Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his bending

ones.

Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that, after all,

she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.

“I should simply worry myself ill if I weren’t sure of getting my

things,” she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with which she

always discussed her own difficulties. “After all, people who deny

themselves everything do get warped and bitter, don’t they?” she argued

plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering from one to the other of her

assembled friends.

Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had fatally

undermined his own health; and in the laugh that followed the party

drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.

“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,” his hostess

retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy, receiving the

shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to herself, with a sharp

twinge of apprehension: “Of course Streffy knows everything; he showed

no surprise at finding Ellie away when he arrived. And if he knows,

what’s to prevent Nelson’s finding out?” For Strefford, in a mood of

mischief, was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.

Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even

betraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing the depth

of her own danger could she hope to secure his silence.

On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were listening

indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who had embroidered

his fancies on Browning’s “Toccata,” Susy found her chance. Strefford,

unsummoned, had followed her out, and stood silently smoking at her

side.

“You see, Streff--oh, why should you and I make mysteries to each

other?” she suddenly began.

“Why, indeed: but do we?”

Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. “About Ellie, I

mean--and Nelson.”

“Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as soon apply

the term to one of the million candle-power advertisements that adorn

your native thoroughfares.”

“Well, yes. But--” She stopped again. Had she not tacitly promised Ellie

not to speak?

“My Susan, what’s wrong?” Strefford asked.

“I don’t know....”

“Well, I do, then: you’re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet here,

she’ll blurt out something--injudicious.”

“Oh, she won’t!” Susy cried with conviction.

“Well, then--who will! I trust that superhuman child not to. And you and

I and Nick--”

“Oh,” she gasped, interrupting him, “that’s just it. Nick doesn’t

know... doesn’t even suspect. And if he did....”

Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. “I don’t

see--hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us, after all?”

That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an air of

decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction, and she hesitated.

“If Nick should find out that I know....”

“Good Lord--doesn’t he know that you know? After all, I suppose it’s not

the first time--”

She remained silent.

“The first time you’ve received confidences--from married friends. Does

Nick suppose you’ve lived even to your tender age without... Hang it,

what’s come over you, child?”

What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than

ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word

was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity

for wilful harmfulness.

“Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn’t been away for a

cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it was not because

it ‘worries father’ to think that mother needs to take care of her

health.” She paused, hating herself for the ironic note she had tried to

sound.

“Well--?” he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which he had

sunk.

“Well, Nick doesn’t... doesn’t dream of it. If he knew that we owed our

summer here to... to my knowing....”

Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the

darkness. “Jove!” he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent over the

balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.

“What was left of soul, I wonder--?” the young composer’s voice shrilled

through the open windows.

Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused himself only

as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.

“Well, my dear, we’ll see it through between us; you and I--and

Clarissa,” he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her. He

caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the

drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to Fred Gillow: “I can

never hear that thing sung without wanting to cry like a baby.”

IX.

NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the

threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with pardonable

satisfaction.

He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious eyes and

a large and credulous smile.

At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford and Nick

Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair, Clarissa throned

in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a peach for her. Through

wide orange awnings the sun slanted in upon the white-clad group.

“Well--well--well! So I’ve caught you at it!” cried the happy father,

whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he

had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he

lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of “Hello, old Nelson,”

hailed his appearance.

It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr. Vanderlyn, who

was now the London representative of the big New York bank of Vanderlyn

& Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous house in Fifth Avenue for

another, more sumptuous still, in Mayfair; and the young man looked

curiously and attentively at his host.

Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still kept

its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife, greeted Susy

affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps to the two men.

“Hullo,” he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral trinket

hanging from Clarissa’s neck. “Who’s been giving my daughter jewellery,

I’d like to know!”

“Oh, Streffy did--just think, father! Because I said I’d rather have it

than a book, you know,” Clarissa lucidly explained, her arms tight about

her father’s neck, her beaming eyes on Strefford.

Nelson Vanderlyn’s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which came

into them whenever there was a question of material values.

“What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat

like that! You’d no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl--”

he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed

by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend.

“Oh, hadn’t I? Why? Because it’s too good for Clarissa, or too expensive

for me? Of course you daren’t imply the first; and as for me--I’ve had a

windfall, and am blowing it in on the ladies.”

Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was

slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point.

But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It

was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had been merely formal: like most of

the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented

to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present,

and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed

Vanderlyn’s attention.

“A windfall?” he gaily repeated.

“Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little place at

Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with the rest of

you,” said Strefford imperturbably.

Vanderlyn’s look immediately became interested and sympathetic.

“What--the scene of the honey-moon?” He included Nick and Susy in his

friendly smile.

“Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will you, old

man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse luck--and I don’t mind

telling you that Ellie’s no judge of tobacco, and that Nick’s too far

gone in bliss to care what he smokes,” Strefford grumbled, stretching a

hand toward his host’s cigar-case.

“I do like jewellery best,” Clarissa murmured, hugging her father.

Nelson Vanderlyn’s first word to his wife had been that he had

brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with appropriate

enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at seeing him seemed

rather too patently in proportion to her satisfaction at getting her

clothes. But no such suspicion appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn’s happiness

in being, for once, and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same

roof with his wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having

promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a wistful

glance at Ellie: “If only I’d known you meant to wait for me!”

But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did

not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady

to whom he owed his being. “Mother cares for so few people,” he used to

say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness,

“that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable”;

and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should be

ready to start the next evening.

“And meanwhile,” he concluded, “we’ll have all the good time that’s

going.”

The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further this

resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn had despatched

a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy should carry him off for a

tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not even suggest that Strefford or Nick

should be of the party, or that any of the other young men of the group

should be summoned; as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his

harem. And Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the

happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.

“Well--that’s what you call being married!” Strefford commented, waving

his battered Panama at Clarissa.

“Oh, no, I don’t!” Lansing laughed.

“He does. But do you know--” Strefford paused and swung about on his

companion--“do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I don’t care to

be there. I believe there’ll be some crockery broken.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered away to

his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his pipe.

Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn’t, except poor

old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing because so typical; now, it

rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn should be so complete an ass. But

he would be off the next day, and so would Ellie, and then, for many

enchanted weeks, the palace would once more be the property of Nick and

Susy. Of all the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones

who appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and that

made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it became easy to

regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient intruders.

Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut himself

up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh energy after his few

weeks of holiday-making, and was determined to finish it quickly. He did

not expect that it would bring in much money; but if it were moderately

successful it might give him an opening in the reviews and magazines,

and in that case he meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since

it was only as a purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a

living for himself and Susy.

Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of doors.

He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the bruised

peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of sunlight on dark

green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits and flowers thickening

the languid air. What visions he could build, if he dared, of being

tucked away with Susy in the attic of some tumble-down palace, above

a jade-green waterway, with a terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected

garden--and cheques from the publishers dropping in at convenient

intervals! Why should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!

He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing open the

leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of rose-and-lemon

angels in Tiepolo’s great vault. It was not a church in which one was

likely to run across sight-seers; but he presently remarked a young lady

standing alone near the choir, and assiduously applying her field-glass

to the celestial vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an

open manual.

As Lansing’s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady, turning,

revealed herself as Miss Hicks.

“Ah--you like this too? It’s several centuries out of your line, though,

isn’t it!” Nick asked as they shook hands.

She gazed at him gravely. “Why shouldn’t one like things that are out

of one’s line?” she answered; and he agreed, with a laugh, that it was

often an incentive.

She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two remarks

about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her way toward a

subject of more personal interest.

“I’m glad to see you alone,” she said at length, with an abruptness that

might have seemed awkward had it not been so completely unconscious.

She turned toward a cluster of straw chairs, and signed to Nick to seat

himself beside her.

“I seldom do,” she added, with the serious smile that made her heavy

face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time to protest: “I

wanted to speak to you--to explain about father’s invitation to go with

us to Persia and Turkestan.”

“To explain?”

“Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after your

marriage, didn’t you? You must have thought it odd, our asking you just

then; but we hadn’t heard that you were married.”

“Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was remiss about

announcing it, even to old friends.”

Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening when he

had found Mrs. Hicks’s letter in the mail awaiting him at Venice.

The day was associated in his mind with the ridiculous and mortifying

episode of the cigars--the expensive cigars that Susy had wanted to

carry away from Strefford’s villa. Their brief exchange of views on the

subject had left the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness,

and he still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few

hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and it was

just at that moment that he had found the letter from Mrs. Hicks, with

its almost irresistible invitation. If only her daughter had known how

nearly he had accepted it!

“It was a dreadful temptation,” he said, smiling.

“To go with us? Then why--?”

“Oh, everything’s different now: I’ve got to stick to my writing.”

Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny. “Does that

mean that you’re going to give up your real work?”

“My real work--archaeology?” He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret.

“Why, I’m afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I’ve got to think

of that.” He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might

consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous

offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be

occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes

were full of tears.

“I thought it was your vocation,” she said.

“So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.”

“Oh, I understand. There may be things--worth giving up all other things

for.”

“There are!” cried Nick with beaming emphasis.

He was conscious that Miss Hicks’s eyes demanded of him even more than

this sweeping affirmation.

“But your novel may fail,” she said with her odd harshness.

“It may--it probably will,” he agreed. “But if one stopped to consider

such possibilities--”

“Don’t you have to, with a wife?”

“Oh, my dear Coral--how old are you? Not twenty?” he questioned, laying

a brotherly hand on hers.

She stared at him a moment, and sprang up clumsily from her chair. “I

was never young... if that’s what you mean. It’s lucky, isn’t it, that

my parents gave me such a grand education? Because, you see, art’s a

wonderful resource.” (She pronounced it RE-source.)

He continued to look at her kindly. “You won’t need it--or any

other--when you grow young, as you will some day,” he assured her.

“Do you mean, when I fall in love? But I am in love--Oh, there’s

Eldorada and Mr. Beck!” She broke off with a jerk, signalling with her

field-glass to the pair who had just appeared at the farther end of the

nave. “I told them that if they’d meet me here to-day I’d try to make

them understand Tiepolo. Because, you see, at home we never really

have understood Tiepolo; and Mr. Beck and Eldorada are the only ones to

realize it. Mr. Buttles simply won’t.” She turned to Lansing and held

out her hand. “I am in love,” she repeated earnestly, “and that’s the

reason why I find art such a RE source.”

She restored her eye-glasses, opened her manual, and strode across the

church to the expectant neophytes.

Lansing, looking after her, wondered for half a moment whether Mr. Beck

were the object of this apparently unrequited sentiment; then, with a

queer start of introspection, abruptly decided that, no, he certainly

was not. But then--but then--. Well, there was no use in following up

such conjectures.... He turned home-ward, wondering if the picnickers

had already reached Palazzo Vanderlyn.

They got back only in time for a late dinner, full of chaff and

laughter, and apparently still enchanted with each other’s society.

Nelson Vanderlyn beamed on his wife, sent his daughter off to bed with a

kiss, and leaning back in his armchair before the fruit-and-flower-laden

table, declared that he’d never spent a jollier day in his life. Susy

seemed to come in for a full share of his approbation, and Lansing

thought that Ellie was unusually demonstrative to her friend. Strefford,

from his hostess’s side, glanced across now and then at young Mrs.

Lansing, and his glance seemed to Lansing a confidential comment on the

Vanderlyn raptures. But then Strefford was always having private jokes

with people or about them; and Lansing was irritated with himself for

perpetually suspecting his best friends of vague complicities at his

expense. “If I’m going to be jealous of Streffy now--!” he concluded

with a grimace of self-derision.

Certainly Susy looked lovely enough to justify the most irrational

pangs. As a girl she had been, for some people’s taste, a trifle

fine-drawn and sharp-edged; now, to her old lightness of line was added

a shadowy bloom, a sort of star-reflecting depth. Her movements were

slower, less angular; her mouth had a needing droop, her lids seemed

weighed down by their lashes; and then suddenly the old spirit would

reveal itself through the new languor, like the tartness at the core

of a sweet fruit. As her husband looked at her across the flowers and

lights he laughed inwardly at the nothingness of all things else.

Vanderlyn and Clarissa left betimes the next morning; and Mrs.

Vanderlyn, who was to start for St. Moritz in the afternoon, devoted

her last hours to anxious conferences with her maid and Susy. Strefford,

with Fred Gillow and the others, had gone for a swim at the Lido, and

Lansing seized the opportunity to get back to his book.

The quietness of the great echoing place gave him a foretaste of the

solitude to come. By mid-August all their party would be scattered: the

Hickses off on a cruise to Crete and the AEgean, Fred Gillow on the way

to his moor, Strefford to stay with friends in Capri till his annual

visit to Northumberland in September. One by one the others would

follow, and Lansing and Susy be left alone in the great sun-proof

palace, alone under the star-laden skies, alone with the great orange

moons--still theirs!--above the bell-tower of San Giorgio. The novel, in

that blessed quiet, would unfold itself as harmoniously as his dreams.

He wrote on, forgetful of the passing hours, till the door opened and he

heard a step behind him. The next moment two hands were clasped over his

eyes, and the air was full of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s last new scent.

“You dear thing--I’m just off, you know,” she said. “Susy told me you

were working, and I forbade her to call you down. She and Streffy are

waiting to take me to the station, and I’ve run up to say good-bye.”

“Ellie, dear!” Full of compunction, Lansing pushed aside his writing and

started up; but she pressed him back into his seat.

“No, no! I should never forgive myself if I’d interrupted you. I

oughtn’t to have come up; Susy didn’t want me to. But I had to tell you,

you dear.... I had to thank you...”

In her dark travelling dress and hat, so discreetly conspicuous, so

negligent and so studied, with a veil masking her paint, and gloves

hiding her rings, she looked younger, simpler, more natural than he had

ever seen her. Poor Ellie such a good fellow, after all!

“To thank me? For what? For being so happy here?” he laughed, taking her

hands.

She looked at him, laughed back, and flung her arms about his neck.

“For helping me to be so happy elsewhere--you and Susy, you two blessed

darlings!” she cried, with a kiss on his cheek.

Their eyes met for a second; then her arms slipped slowly downward,

dropping to her sides. Lansing sat before her like a stone.

“Oh,” she gasped, “why do you stare so? Didn’t you know...?”

They heard Strefford’s shrill voice on the stairs. “Ellie, where the

deuce are you? Susy’s in the gondola. You’ll miss the train!”

Lansing stood up and caught Mrs. Vanderlyn by the wrist. “What do you

mean? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing... But you were both such bricks about the letters.... And

when Nelson was here, too.... Nick, don’t hurt my wrist so! I must run!”

He dropped her hand and stood motionless, staring after her and

listening to the click of her high heels as she fled across the room and

along the echoing corridor.

When he turned back to the table he noticed that a small morocco case

had fallen among his papers. In falling it had opened, and before him,

on the pale velvet lining, lay a scarf-pin set with a perfect pearl. He

picked the box up, and was about to hasten after Mrs. Vanderlyn--it

was so like her to shed jewels on her path!--when he noticed his own

initials on the cover.

He dropped the box as if it had been a hot coal, and sat for a long

while gazing at the gold N. L., which seemed to have burnt itself into

his flesh.

At last he roused himself and stood up.

X.

WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herself

down on the lounge.

The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn had

safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence,

and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too

openly; but thanks to Susy’s vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford’s

tacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.

Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though

Ellie’s, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to

Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it

was discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing.

Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola they had

reached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her

“sleeper,” from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell to

her friends.

“Well, my dear, we’ve been it through,” Strefford remarked with a deep

breath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.

“Oh,” Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover her

self-betrayal: “Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!”

“Yes--even if it’s a rotten bounder,” Strefford agreed.

“A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--”

“That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the last six

months. Didn’t she tell you--?”

Susy felt herself redden. “I didn’t ask her--”

“Ask her? You mean you didn’t let her!”

“I didn’t let her. And I don’t let you,” Susy added sharply, as he

helped her into the gondola.

“Oh, all right: I daresay you’re right. It simplifies things,” Strefford

placidly acquiesced.

She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.

Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distance

she had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind with

his usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time when

she would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tell

her everything; that the name of young Davenant’s successor should be

confided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had been

obscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force her

confidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions of

gratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty “surprise” of the

sapphire bangle slipped onto her friend’s wrist in the act of their

farewell embrace.

The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer’s eye

for values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stones

alternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own the

bracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;

yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had

already transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go

toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her now

interested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.

The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could not

see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused her

ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretched

wrist.

“Look, dearest--wasn’t it too darling of Ellie?”

She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and her

husband’s face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped off

the bracelet and held it up to him.

“Oh, I can go you one better,” he said with a laugh; and pulling a

morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.

Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she was

afraid to look again at Nick.

“Ellie--gave you this?” she asked at length.

“Yes. She gave me this.” There was a pause. “Would you mind telling

me,” Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, “exactly for what

services we’ve both been so handsomely paid?”

“The pearl is beautiful,” Susy murmured, to gain time, while her head

spun round with unimaginable terrors.

“So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services would

appear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kind

enough to tell me just what they were?”

Susy threw her head back and looked at him. “What on earth are you

talking about, Nick! Why shouldn’t Ellie have given us these things? Do

you forget that it’s like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook?

What is it you are trying to suggest?”

It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she put

the questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that was

evident--one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one’s

cleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered at

the frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.

There had been more than one moment in her past when everything--somebody

else’s everything--had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clear

glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her own

everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.

“What is it?” she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remain

silent.

“That’s what I’m here to ask,” he returned, keeping his eyes as steady

as she kept hers. “There’s no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellie

shouldn’t give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and the

pearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were they

given? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks the

intercourse of truly civilized people, you’ll probably agree that there

are limits; at least up to now there have been limits....”

“I really don’t know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show that

she was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa.”

“But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn’t she?” he

suggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room.

“A whole summer of it if we choose.”

Susy smiled. “Apparently she didn’t think that enough.”

“What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child.”

“Well, don’t you set store upon Clarissa?”

“Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn’t mention her in offering me

this recompense.”

Susy lifted her head again. “Whom did she mention?”

“Vanderlyn,” said Lansing.

“Vanderlyn? Nelson?”

“Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, my

dear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because I

should like to know,” Nick broke out savagely, “if we’ve been adequately

paid.”

Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study her

next move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could at

last only retort: “What is it that Ellie said to you?”

Lansing laughed again. “That’s just what you’d like to find out--isn’t

it?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation.”

The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susy

herself had not expected.

“Oh, don’t--don’t let us speak to each other like that!” she cried; and

sinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.

It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their love

for each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from some

unhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted to

tell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsive

chord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbed

her. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account as

long as they continued to love each other!

His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. “Poor child--don’t,” he

said.

Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking through

her tears. “Don’t you see,” he continued, “that we’ve got to have this

thing out?”

She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. “I can’t--while

you stand up like that,” she stammered, childishly.

She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing did

not seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a caller

on the farther side of a stately tea-tray. “Will that do?” he asked with

a stiff smile, as if to humour her.

“Nothing will do--as long as you’re not you!”

“Not me?”

She shook her head wearily. “What’s the use? You accept things

theoretically--and then when they happen....”

“What things? What has happened!”

A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? “But

you know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in old

times,” she said.

“Ellie and young Davenant?”

“Young Davenant; or the others....”

“Or the others. But what business was it of ours?”

“Ah, that’s just what I think!” she cried, springing up with an

explosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answering

light in his face.

“We’re outside of all that; we’ve nothing to do with it, have we?” he

pursued.

“Nothing whatever.”

“Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie’s gratitude? Gratitude for

what we’ve done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?”

“Oh, not you,” Susy cried, involuntarily.

“Not I? Then you?” He came close and took her by the wrist. “Answer me.

Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie’s?”

There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning

grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go

and moved away. “Answer,” he repeated.

“I’ve told you it was my business and not yours.”

He received this in silence; then he questioned: “You’ve been sending

letters for her, I suppose? To whom?”

“Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she’d

been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found

them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,

Nick, say it’s been worth it--say at least that it’s been worth it!” she

implored him.

He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her

dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.

“How many letters?”

“I don’t know... four... five... What does it matter?”

“And once a week, for six weeks--?”

“Yes.”

“And you took it all as a matter of course?”

“No: I hated it. But what could I do?”

“What could you do?”

“When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think

I’d give you up?”

“Give me up?” he echoed.

“Well--doesn’t our being together depend on--on what we can get out of

people? And hasn’t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you

ever in your life get anything for nothing?” she cried with sudden

exasperation. “You’ve lived among these people as long as I have; I

suppose it’s not the first time--”

“By God, but it is,” he exclaimed, flushing. “And that’s the

difference--the fundamental difference.”

“The difference!”

“Between you and me. I’ve never in my life done people’s dirty work for

them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or

you wouldn’t have hidden this beastly business from me.”

The blood rose to Susy’s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;

instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare

lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she

tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter

too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to

escape his anger that she had held her tongue?

“You knew I wouldn’t have stayed here another day if I’d known,” he

continued.

“Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?”

“You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is

the price of our remaining together?”

“Well--isn’t it,” she faltered.

“Then we’d better part, hadn’t we?”

He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had

been the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument had

led.

Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the

causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered

her under its ruins.

Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the

window at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at his

back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and

fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the

spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.

Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense

of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their

queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and

concessions the life they were to live together must be based. That he

should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with

a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie’s indiscretion

as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised

her head with a laugh.

“After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress.”

He turned on her with an astonished stare. “You--my mistress?”

Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that

such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she

insisted. “That day at the Fulmers’--have you forgotten? When you said

it would be sheer madness for us to marry.”

Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on

the mosaic volutes of the floor.

“I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to

marry,” he rejoined at length.

She sprang up trembling. “Well, that’s easily settled. Our compact--”

“Oh, that compact--” he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.

“Aren’t you asking me to carry it out now?”

“Because I said we’d better part?” He paused. “But the compact--I’d

almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn’t it, that we were to give

each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thing

was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. I

shall never want any better chance... any other chance....”

“Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then....” She was close to him, his face

looming down through her tears; but he put her back.

“It would have been easy enough, wouldn’t it,” he rejoined, “if we’d

been as detachable as all that? As it is, it’s going to hurt horribly.

But talking it over won’t help. You were right just now when you asked

how else we were going to live. We’re born parasites, both, I suppose,

or we’d have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I

might put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time

that I can’t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at

Como: do you suppose I didn’t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it

won’t do... it won’t do....”

He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: “But your

writing--if your book’s a success....”

“My poor Susy--that’s all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort

of writing will never pay. And what’s the alternative except more of

the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At

least, till now, I’ve minded certain things; I don’t want to go on till

I find myself taking them for granted.”

She reached out a timid hand. “But you needn’t ever, dear... if you’d

only leave it to me....”

He drew back sharply. “That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men

are different.” He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the

little enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.

“Time to dress, isn’t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with

Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I’d rather like a long tramp, and

no more talking just at present except with myself.”

He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood

motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word

of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn’s gifts

glittered in the rosy lamp-light.

Yes: men were different, as he said.

XI.

BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in

old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the

Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since

you couldn’t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking

into heaps of you didn’t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become

perpendicular....

Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the breaks

between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar faces of the

people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool

of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived that

day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula’s Prince, who, in Ursula’s

absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred

to join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of

them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like

with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it....

Ah, Nick had become perpendicular!... After all, most people went

through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned

in advance. If your dancing manual told you at a given time to be

perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was Nick!

“But what on earth, Susy,” Gillow’s puzzled voice suddenly came to her

as from immeasurable distances, “Are you going to do in this 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 Breckenridge interposed,

glancing up to take belated note of his host’s absence.

“Dining out,” said Susy glibly. “People turned up: blighting bores that

I wouldn’t have dared to inflict on you.” How easily the old familiar

fibbing came to her!

“The kind to whom you say, ‘Now mind you look me up’; and then spend the

rest of your life dodging-like our good Hickses,” Strefford amplified.

The Hickses--but, of course, Nick was with the Hickses! It went through

Susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightly fibbed became a

hateful truth. She said to herself feverishly: “I’ll call him up there

after dinner--and then he will feel silly”--but only to remember that

the Hickses, in their mediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied

themselves a telephone.

The fact of Nick’s temporary inaccessibility--since she was now

convinced that he was really at the Hickses’--turned her distress to a

mocking irritation. Ah, that was where he carried his principles, his

standards, or whatever he called the new set of rules he had suddenly

begun to apply to the old game! It was stupid of her not to have guessed

it at once.

“Oh, the Hickses--Nick adores them, you know. He’s going to marry Coral

next,” she laughed out, flashing the joke around the table with all her

practiced flippancy.

“Lord!” grasped Gillow, inarticulate: while the Prince displayed the

unsurprised smile which Susy accused him of practicing 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, passing her 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 looks fished up

from the canal!”

She jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of the sala, hands

on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. The Prince and young Breckenridge

caught her up, and she spun back with the latter, while Gillow--it was

believed to be his sole accomplishment--snapped his fingers in simulation

of bones, and shuffled after the couple on stamping feet.

Susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with a

floating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang for the

gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.

“Well, what next--this ain’t all, is it?” Gillow presently queried, from

the divan where he lolled half-asleep with dripping brow. Fred Gillow,

like Nature, abhorred a void, and it was inconceivable to him that every

hour of man’s rational existence should not furnish a motive for getting

up and going somewhere else. Young Breckenridge, who took the same view,

and the Prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company that

somebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the Lido.

Strefford vetoed the Lido, on the ground that he’d just come back from

there, and proposed that they should go out on foot for a change.

“Why not? What fun!” Susy was up in an instant. “Let’s pay somebody a

surprise visit--I don’t know who! Streffy, Prince, can’t you think of

somebody who’d be particularly annoyed by our arrival?”

“Oh, the list’s too long. Let’s start, and choose our victim on the

way,” Strefford suggested.

Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her

high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There was no

moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung over them as

close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on them from garden-walls.

Susy’s heart tightened with memories of Como.

They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the drifting

whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed taking a nearer look

at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and they hailed a gondola and

were rowed out through the bobbing lanterns and twanging guitar-strings.

When they landed again, Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and

particularly resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club

near at hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported

this proposal; but on Susy’s curt refusal they started their rambling

again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and making for the

Piazza and Florian’s ices. Suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and

yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to stare about her with a laugh.

“But the Hickses--surely that’s their palace? And the windows all lit

up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let’s go up and surprise them!”

The idea struck her as one of the drollest that she had ever originated,

and she wondered that her companions should respond so languidly.

“I can’t see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,” Gillow

protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and Strefford added: “It

would surprise me more than them if I went.”

But Susy insisted feverishly: “You don’t know. It may be awfully

exciting! I have an idea that Coral’s announcing her engagement--her

engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand, Streff--and you the other,

Fred-” she began to hum the first bars of Donna Anna’s entrance in Don

Giovanni. “Pity I haven’t got a black cloak and a mask....”

“Oh, your face will do,” said Strefford, laying his hand on her arm.

She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince had sprung

on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was already halfway up the

stairs.

“My face? My face? What’s the matter with my face? Do you know 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 of his, and without a word,

without a conscious thought, dashed down the long flight, across the

great resounding vestibule and out into the darkness of the calle.

Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in the

night.

“Susy--what the devil’s the matter?”

“The matter? Can’t you see? That I’m tired, that I’ve got a splitting

headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of you!” She turned and

laid a deprecating hand on his arm. “Streffy, old dear, don’t mind me:

but for God’s sake find a gondola and send me home.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

It was never any concern of Streff’s if people wanted to do things he

did not understand, and she knew that she could count on 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 boat shot

under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone, away from the

folly and futility that would be all she had left if Nick were to drop

out of her life....

“But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good,” she thought as

she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.

The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new born

breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it lapping

freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two o’clock! Nick had no

doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up the stairs, reassured by the

mere thought of his nearness. She knew that when their eyes and their

lips met it would be impossible for anything to keep them apart.

The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive her, and

to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram for Strefford:

she threw it down again and paused under the lantern hanging from the

painted vault, the other envelope in her hand. The address it bore was

in Nick’s writing. “When did the 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 all the evening.

A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: he had left it without

waiting. It must have been about half an hour 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 illuminated Ellie Vanderlyn’s

fatal letter, she opened Nick’s.

“Don’t think me hard on you, dear; but I’ve got to work this thing out

by myself. The sooner the better--don’t you agree? So I’m taking the

express to Milan presently. You’ll get a proper letter in a day or two.

I wish I could think, now, of something to 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 had a

semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from Susy’s hands,

and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered there, her forehead

pressed against the balustrade, the dawn wind stirring in her thin

laces. Through her closed eyelids and the tightly-clenched fingers

pressed against them, she felt the penetration of the growing light,

the relentless advance of another day--a day without purpose and without

meaning--a day without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and

staring from dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand

Canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the heavy

curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the darkness to the

lounge and fell among its pillows-face downward--groping, delving for a

deeper night....

She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun on the

floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it possible?--it must

be eight or nine o’clock already! She had slept--slept like a

drunkard--with that letter on the table at her elbow! Ah, now she

remembered--she had dreamed that the letter was a dream! But there,

inexorably, it lay; and she picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read

it. Then she tore it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before

the empty hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite,

she burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that some

day!

After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of feeling

younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely said that he was

going away for “a day or two.” And the letter was not cruel: there

were tender things in it, showing through the curt words. She smiled

at herself a little stiffly in the glass, put a dash of red on her

colourless lips, and rang for the maid.

“Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should

like to see him presently.”

If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she

must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to

work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into

her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty;

his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when

his friends required it.

The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat

sharply repeated her order. “But don’t wake him on purpose,” she added,

foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford’s temper.

“But, signora, the gentleman is already out.”

“Already out?” Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before

luncheon-time! “Is it so late?” Susy cried, incredulous.

“After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o’clock train for England.

Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would

write to the signora.”

The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted

image in the glass, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate

stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one

but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.

But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?

XII.

NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of

sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his

stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to

Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty

about trenchant decisions was that the 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 his journey to

Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward postponed action and

dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that

was exactly what he wanted.

He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals

of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the

train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and

grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his

lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the

night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve

indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of

clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.

At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case

and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a

little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the

coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he

waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently

examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone

at the adjoining table.

“Hullo--Buttles!” Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the

recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks’s endeavour to

convert him to Tiepolo.

Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and

bowed ceremoniously.

Nick Lansing’s first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his

solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone 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 her wings.

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 saw Miss Hicks

in Venice the day before yesterday,” Lansing continued, dazed at the

thought that hardly forty-eight hours had passed since his encounter

with Coral in the Scalzi.

Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.

“May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am

not here as an advance guard--though I believe the Ibis is due some

time to-morrow.” He cleared his throat, wiped his eyeglasses on a silk

handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: “Perhaps,

to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no

longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.”

Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered

horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not

lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.

“Really,” Nick smiled, and then ventured: “I hope it’s not owing to

conscientious objections to Tiepolo?”

Mr. Buttles’s blush became a smouldering agony. “Ah, Miss Hicks

mentioned to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled

against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I

confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily

to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence it is not for me to

protest or to criticize. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far

exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming....”

He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyeglasses.

It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and

yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge

the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant

pause, went on: “If you see me here to-day it is only because, after

a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of

our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so many

stimulating hours. But I must beg you,” he added earnestly, “should you

see Miss Hicks--or any other member of the party--to make no allusion

to my presence in Genoa. I wish,” said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, “to

preserve the strictest incognito.”

Lansing glanced at him kindly. “Oh, but--isn’t that a little

unfriendly?”

“No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing,” said the ex-secretary, “and

I commit myself to your discretion. The truth is, if I am here it is not

to look once more at the Ibis, but at Miss Hicks: once only. You will

understand me, and appreciate what I am suffering.”

He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted feet;

pausing on the threshold to say: “From the first it was hopeless,”

before he disappeared through the glass doors.

A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick’s mind: there was

something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient

Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what

a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the

secretary who possessed “the foreign languages”! Mr. Beck kept the

accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles’s

loftier task to entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who

flocked about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his

departure 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 own woes.

The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from a little

restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often patronized, he had

done so with the firm intention of going away for a day or two in order

to collect his wits and think over the situation. But after his letter

had been entrusted to the landlord’s little son, who was a particular

friend of Susy’s, Nick had decided to await the lad’s return. The

messenger had not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing

the friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the boy,

in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger about while the

letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid knocking at his wife’s

darkened room, and Susy dashing some powder on her tear-stained face

before she turned on the light--poor foolish child!

The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he had

brought no answer, but merely the statement that the signora was out:

that everybody was out.

“Everybody?”

“The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the palace. They

all went out together on foot soon after dinner. There was no one to

whom I could give the note but the gondolier on 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, gone out immediately with her innamorato.”

“Ah--” said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy’s hand, and walking

out of the restaurant.

Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did every

night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her talk with Nick,

as if nothing had happened, as if his whole world and hers had not

crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poor Susy! After all, she had merely

obeyed the instinct of self preservation, the old hard habit of keeping

up, going ahead and hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had

already engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as

for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from sorrow to

the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?

His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the restaurant

Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs brought him to a

standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a gondolier’s wine-shop at

a landing close to the Piazzetta. There he could absorb cooling drinks

until it was time to go to the station.

It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a boat, when

a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much chaff and laughter a

party of young people in evening dress jumped out. Nick, from under the

darkness of the vine, saw that there was only one lady among them, and

it did not need the lamp above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy,

bareheaded and laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders,

a cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford’s arm and turned in the

direction of Florian’s, with Gillow, the Prince and young Breckenridge

in her wake....

Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his hours

in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets of Genoa. In

that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy’s you had to keep going

or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had chosen to keep going. Under

the lamp-flare on the landing he had had a good look at her face, and

had seen that the mask of paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted

to hide any ravages the scene between them might have left. He even

fancied that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes....

There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight train, and

no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just left. He sprang

into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to the station. The cushions,

as he leaned back, gave out a breath of her scent; and in the glare of

electric light at the station he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen

from her dress. He ground his heel into it as he got out.

There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of her. For

he knew now that he was not going back; at least not to take up their

life together. He supposed he should have to see her once, to talk

things over, settle something for their future. He had been sincere in

saying that he bore her no ill-will; only he could never go back into

that slough again. If he did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn

under, slipping downward from concession to concession....

The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have kept

the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake he did

not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more deafening. Dawn

brought a negative relief, and out of sheer weariness he dropped into a

heavy sleep. When he woke it was nearly noon, and from his window he saw

the well-known outline of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter

of the harbour. He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless

long since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more fashionable

regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed to accentuate his loneliness, his

sense of having no one on earth to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out

disconsolately to pick up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.

As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It became

obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a petulant child--he

preferred to think it was like a madman. If he and Susy were to separate

there was no reason why it should not be done decently and quietly, as

such transactions were habitually managed among people of their kind.

It seemed grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world

of unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the

incongruity of his gesture.... But suddenly his eyes filled with tears.

The future without Susy was unbearable, inconceivable. Why, after all,

should they separate? At the question, her soft face seemed close

to his, and that slight lift of the upper lip that made her smile so

exquisite. Well--he would go back. But not with any presence of going to

talk things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like

a business association. No--if he went back he would go without

conditions, for good, forever....

Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day when

the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny’s pearls sold,

and nothing left except unconcealed and unconditional dependence on rich

friends, the role of the acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other

possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No--there

was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and

leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat

Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in

New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous

children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life with him? If he

did, she would probably have the sense to refuse. Their alliance had

been based on a moment’s midsummer madness; now the score must be

paid....

He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust himself to

see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and paper, and pushed aside

a pile of unread newspapers on the corner of the table where his coffee

had been served. As he did so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days

before. As a pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and

glanced down the first page. He read:

“Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham and

his son Viscount d’Amblay drowned in midnight collision. Both bodies

recovered.”

He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the

night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in

the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and

possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was

vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such

an adventure. And what irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in

one day, had plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it

tossed the other to the stars!

With an intenser precision he saw again Susy’s descent from the gondola

at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of Strefford’s chaff,

the way she had caught his arm and clung to it, sweeping the other men

on in her train. Strefford--Susy and Strefford!... More than once, Nick

had noticed the softer inflections of his friend’s voice when he spoke

to Susy, the brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In

the security 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. Yet Nick knew that such

material advantages would never again suffice for Susy. With Strefford

it was different. She had delighted 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 pledged their faith.

But was it so absurd, after all? It had been Susy’s suggestion (not his,

thank God!); and perhaps in making it she had been more serious than he

imagined. Perhaps, even if their rupture had not occurred, Strefford’s

sudden honours might have caused her to ask for her freedom....

Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones

of her existence. He had always known it--she herself had always

acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful talk together; and once he

had gloried in her frankness. How could he ever have imagined that, to

have her fill of these things, she would not in time stoop lower than

she had yet stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be

saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so bitter to him

that he was moved to thank whatever gods there were for pushing that

mortuary paragraph under his eye....

“Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future in hand,

and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have sometimes been

selfish enough to forget the conditions on which you agreed to marry

me, they have come back to me during these two 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 I haven’t the ability to provide you with what you

want, I recognize that I’ve no right to stand in your way. We must owe

no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the newspapers

that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you want. Let him have

the chance--I fancy he’ll jump at it, and he’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 the letter

into an envelope, and addressed it to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing. As he did

so, he reflected that it was the first time he had ever written his

wife’s married name.

“Well--by God, no other woman shall have it after her,” he vowed, 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 in the

name of goodness shall I do next, I wonder?” He jammed his hat down on

his head and walked out into the sun-blaze.

As he was turning away from the square by the general Post Office, a

white parasol waved from a passing cab, and Coral Hicks leaned forward

with outstretched hand. “I knew I’d find you,” she triumphed. “I’ve

been driving up and down in this broiling sun for hours, shopping and

watching for you at the same time.”

He stared at her blankly, too bewildered even to wonder how she knew he

was in Genoa; and she continued, with the kind of shy imperiousness that

always made him feel, in her presence, like a member of an orchestra

under a masterful baton; “Now please get right into this carriage, and

don’t keep me roasting here another minute.” To the cabdriver she called

out: “Al porto.”

Nick Lansing sank down beside her. As he did so he noticed a heap of

bundles at her feet, and felt that he had simply added one more to the

number. He supposed that she was taking her spoils to the Ibis, and

that he would be carried up to the deck-house to be displayed with the

others. Well, it would all help to pass the day--and by night he would

have reached some kind of a decision about his future.

On the third day after Nick’s departure the post brought to the Palazzo

Vanderlyn three letters for Mrs. Lansing.

The first to arrive was a word from Strefford, scribbled in the train

and posted at Turin. In it he briefly said that he had been called home

by the dreadful accident of which Susy had probably read in the daily

papers. He added that he would write again from England, and then--in

a blotted postscript--: “I wanted uncommonly badly to see you for

good-bye, but the hour was impossible. Regards to Nick. Do write me just

a word to Altringham.”

The other two letters, which came together in the afternoon, were both

from Genoa. Susy scanned the addresses and fell upon the one in her

husband’s writing. Her hand trembled so much that for a moment she could

not open the envelope. When she had done so, she devoured the letter in

a flash, and then sat and brooded over the outspread page as it lay on

her knee. It might mean so many things--she could read into it so

many harrowing alternatives of indifference and despair, of irony and

tenderness! Was he suffering tortures when he wrote it, or seeking

only to inflict them upon her? Or did the words represent his actual

feelings, no more and no less, and did he really intend her to

understand that he considered it his duty to abide by the letter of

their preposterous compact? He had left her in wrath and indignation,

yet, as a closer scrutiny revealed, there was not a word of reproach in

his brief lines. Perhaps that was why, in the last issue, they seemed so

cold to her.... She shivered and turned to the other envelope.

The large stilted characters, though half-familiar, called up no

definite 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 little cruise. You

may count on our taking the best of care of him.

“CORAL”

PART II

XIII

WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before in New

York: “But why on earth don’t you and Nick go to my little place at

Versailles for the honeymoon? I’m off to China, and you could have it to

yourselves all summer,” the offer had been tempting enough to make the

lovers waver.

It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the

demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the

kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick

had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with

acquaintances who would hunt them down at all hours; and Susy’s own

experience had led her to remark that there was nothing the very rich

enjoyed more than taking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore

gave Strefford’s villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on Susy’s

part) that Violet’s house might very conveniently serve their 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 boxes piled high on the roof of

the cab she had taken at the station. She had travelled straight through

from Venice, stopping in Milan just long enough to pick up a reply

to the telegram she had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose

permanent presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: “Oh, when I’m sick

of everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty at

Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs.”

The perfect house-keeper had replied to Susy’s enquiry: “Am sure Mrs.

Melrose most happy”; and Susy, without further thought, had jumped

into a Versailles train, and now stood in the thin rain before the

sphinx-guarded threshold of the pavilion.

The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs. Melrose’s

house might be convenient: no visitors were to be feared at Versailles

at the end of August, and though Susy’s reasons for seeking solitude

were so remote from those she had once prefigured, they were none the

less cogent. To be alone--alone! After those first exposed days when,

in the persistent presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the

mocking radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned

about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to be alone

had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to be alone somewhere in a

setting as unlike as possible to the sensual splendours of Venice, under

skies as unlike its azure roof. If she could have chosen she would have

crawled away into a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had

never been and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here

she was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place, under

lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily departing for

his moor (where she had half-promised to join him in September); the

Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few remaining survivors of the

Venetian group, had dispersed in the direction of the Engadine or

Biarritz; and now she could at least collect her wits, take stock of

herself, and prepare the countenance with which she was to face the next

stage in her career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!

The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a slender

languishing figure appeared on the threshold.

“Darling!” Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into the

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 more planless, more

inexplicable than that of any of the other ephemeral 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 attenuated hands. “Of

course, of course! I had meant to go to China--no, India.... But I’ve

discovered a genius... and Genius, you know....” Unable to complete

her thought, she sank down upon a pillowy divan, stretched out an arm,

cried: “Fulmer! Fulmer!” and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle

of the room with widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply

cushioned and scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with

surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire bungalow

and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in lordly ease, his

hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips, his feet solidly

planted in the insidious depths of one of Violet 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 your genius?”

Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.

Fulmer laughed. “No; I’m Grace’s. But Mrs. Melrose has been our

Providence, and....”

“Providence?” his hostess interrupted. “Don’t talk as if you were at

a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York... it was the most

fabulous success. He’s come abroad to make studies for the decoration of

my music-room in New York. Ursula Gillow 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

a lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. “I’d got as far

as Brindisi. I’ve travelled day and night to be here to meet him,” she

declared. “But, you darling,” and she held out a caressing hand to Susy,

“I’m forgetting to ask if you’ve had tea?”

An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself

mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native element.

Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice; but Susy was then

nourished on another air, the air of Nick’s presence and personality;

now that she was abandoned, left again to her own devices, she felt

herself suddenly at the mercy of the 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 have tossed Nat

Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose chasing back from the

ends of the earth to bask in his success. Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose

belonged to the class of moral parasites; for in that strange world the

parts were sometimes reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper.

Wherever there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet

appeared, a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the

notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Any one less

versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little world 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 Ellie Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her

artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with

a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a

drifting interrogation.

And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built

figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and

wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to

have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference

to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of

his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked

commonplace enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though

it was Violet 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 sunk like a wan Nereid

in a midnight sea. “You mustn’t believe a word 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 a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked

higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually

pretends... oh, for pity’s sake don’t say it doesn’t matter, Fulmer!

Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she

did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on

varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was

in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people

about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St.

Paul did--didn’t he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that’s

exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was

down at Roslyn at the time, and didn’t come up for the opening of the

exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs, and says it

doesn’t matter, and that he’ll paint another picture any day for me to

discover!”

Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with

eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in

the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind.

She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the

instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in

from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for

an hour in Violet’s drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon

might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had come from,

or why she was alone, or what was the key to the tragedy 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, was virtually over: one was left

with one’s drama, one’s disaster, on one’s hands, because there was

nobody to stop and notice the little shrouded object one was carrying.

As Susy watched the two people before her, each so frankly unaffected

by her presence, Violet Melrose so engrossed in her feverish pursuit of

notoriety, Fulmer so plunged in the golden sea of his success, she felt

like a ghost making inaudible and imperceptible appeals to the grosser

senses of the living.

“If I wanted to be alone,” she thought, “I’m alone enough, in all

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 we can

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 a chance for her as for

me, you see, and she’s making the most of it, fiddling and listening to

the fiddlers. Well, it’s a considerable change from New Hampshire.” He

looked at her dreamily, as if making an intense effort to detach himself

from his dream, and situate her in the fading past. “Remember the

bungalow? And Nick--ah, how’s Nick?” he brought out triumphantly.

“Oh, yes--darling Nick?” Mrs. Melrose chimed in; and Susy, her head

erect, her cheeks aflame, declared with resonance: “Most awfully

well--splendidly!”

“He’s not here, though?” from Fulmer.

“No. He’s off travelling--cruising.”

Mrs. Melrose’s attention was faintly roused. “With anybody interesting?”

“No; you wouldn’t know them. People we met....” She did not have to

continue, for her hostess’s gaze had again strayed.

“And you’ve come for your clothes, I suppose, darling? Don’t listen

to people who say that skirts are to be wider. I’ve discovered a new

woman--a Genius--and she absolutely swathes you.... Her name’s my

secret; but we’ll go to her together.”

Susy rose from her engulphing armchair. “Do you mind if I go up to my

room? I’m rather tired--coming straight through.”

“Of course, dear. I think there are some people coming to dinner... 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’s perpendicular

wake, she mounted to the white-panelled room with its gay linen hangings

and the low bed heaped with more cushions.

“If we’d come here,” she thought, “everything might have been

different.” And she shuddered at the sumptuous memories of the Palazzo

Vanderlyn, and the great painted bedroom where she had met her doom.

Mrs. Match, hoping she would find everything, and mentioning that dinner

was not till nine, shut her softly in among her terrors.

“Find everything?” Susy echoed the phrase. Oh, yes, she would always

find everything: every time the door shut on her now, and the sound of

voices ceased, her memories would be there waiting for her, every one

of them, waiting quietly, patiently, obstinately, like poor people in a

doctor’s office, the people who are always last to be attended to,

but whom nothing will discourage or drive away, people to whom time is

nothing, fatigue nothing, hunger nothing, other engagements nothing: who

just wait.... Thank heaven, after all, that she had not found the

house empty, if, whenever she returned to her room, she was to 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 she understood that there was

nothing she was so unprepared for, so unfitted for. When, in all her

life, had she ever been alone? And how was she to bear it now, with all

these ravening memories besetting her!

Dinner not till nine? What on earth was she to do till nine o’clock? She

knelt before her boxes, and feverishly began to unpack.

Gradually, imperceptibly, the subtle influences of her old life were

stealing into her. As she pulled out her tossed and crumpled dresses she

remembered Violet’s emphatic warning: “Don’t believe the people who tell

you that skirts are going to be wider.” Were hers, perhaps, too wide

as it was? She looked at her limp raiment, piling itself up on bed and

sofa, and understood that, according to Violet’s standards, and that

of all her set, those dresses, which Nick had thought so original and

exquisite, were already commonplace and dowdy, fit only to be passed on

to poor relations or given to one’s maid. And Susy would have to go on

wearing them till they fell to bits--or else.... Well, or else begin the

old life again in some new form....

She laughed aloud at the turn of her thoughts. Dresses? How little they

had mattered a few short weeks ago! And now, perhaps, they would again

be one of the foremost considerations in her life. How could it be

otherwise, if she were to return again to her old dependence on Ellie

Vanderlyn, Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose? And beyond that, only the

Bockheimers and their kind 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? With a throbbing heart

she tore open the envelope and read:

“Shall be in Paris Friday for twenty-four hours where can I see you

write Nouveau Luxe.”

Ah, yes--she remembered now: she had written to Strefford! And this 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 she remembered having added, in a precipitate

postscript: “I can’t give your message to Nick, for he’s gone off with

the Hickses--I don’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 sealed her

letter to Strefford her eye had fallen on Nick’s missive, which lay

beside it. Nothing in her husband’s brief lines had embittered her as

much as the allusion to Strefford. It seemed to imply that Nick’s own

plans were made, that his own future was secure, and that he could

therefore freely and handsomely take thought for hers, and give her a

pointer in the right direction. Sudden rage had possessed her at the

thought: where she had at first read jealousy she now saw only a cold

providence, and in a blur of tears she had scrawled her postscript to

Strefford. She remembered that she had not even asked him to keep her

secret. Well--after all, what would it matter if people should already

know that Nick had left her? Their parting could not long remain a

mystery, and the fact that it was known might help her to keep up a

presence of indifference.

“It was in the bargain--in the bargain,” rang through her brain as she

re-read Strefford’s telegram. She understood that he had snatched the

time for this hasty trip solely in the hope of seeing her, and her eyes

filled. The more bitterly she thought of Nick the more this proof of

Strefford’s friendship moved her.

The clock, to her relief, reminded her that it was time to dress for

dinner. She would go down presently, chat with Violet and Fulmer, and

with Violet’s other guests, who would probably be odd and amusing, and

too much out of her world to embarrass her by 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 old associations. Anything, anything but to be alone....

She dressed with even more than her habitual care, reddened her lips

attentively, brushed the faintest bloom of pink over her drawn cheeks,

and went down--to meet Mrs. Match coming up with a tray.

“Oh, Madam, I thought you were too tired.... I was bringing it up to you

myself--just a little morsel of chicken.”

Susy, glancing past her, saw, through the open door, that the lamps were

not lit in the drawing-room.

“Oh, no, I’m not tired, thank you. I thought Mrs. Melrose expected

friends at dinner!”

“Friends at dinner-to-night?” Mrs. Match heaved a despairing sigh.

Sometimes, the sigh seemed to say, her mistress put too great a strain

upon her. “Why, Mrs. Melrose and Mr. Fulmer were engaged to dine in

Paris. They left an hour ago. Mrs. Melrose told 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 will have my tray

upstairs.”

Slowly she turned, and followed the housekeeper up into the dread

solitude she had just left.

XIV.

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 fashionable people belonging to

Susy’s own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of her

penniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of them

really listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her just

now but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends...

getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the

night).

It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, after

all, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours of

turning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.

Anything, anything, but to be alone....

Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tune

with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references to

absent friends, the light allusions to last year’s loves and quarrels,

scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses,

were so graceful, indolent and sure of 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

already shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on the

terrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of the

park, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susy

would have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled her

with a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away from

them all through the fading garden.

Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileries

above the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire to

avoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, even

at that supposedly “dead” season, people one knew were always

drifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight,

the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share their

solitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunching

together mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.

Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous and

well-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined,

his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendly

terms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose joint

disappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was his

way to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than he

felt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerned

a change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his brief

sojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragically

acquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spoken

in him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginative

perception of the distance that these things had put between them.

“It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in that

hideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. 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; but he

jerked back: “Now, my dear, don’t be edifying, please,” and fumbled for

a cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning 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’t make head or tail

of your letter.”

She paused a moment to steady her voice. “Couldn’t you? I suppose you’d

forgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn’t--and he’s asked me to fulfil

it.”

Strefford stared. “What--that nonsense about your setting each other

free if either of you had the chance to make a good match?”

She signed “Yes.”

“And he’s actually asked you--?”

“Well: practically. He’s gone off with the Hickses. Before going he

wrote me that we’d better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sent

me a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him.”

Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. “But what the deuce led up

to all this? It can’t have happened like that, out of a clear sky.”

Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Strefford

the whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to see

him again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxer

atmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But now

she suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depths

to which Nick’s wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessed

the nature 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 very little

money....”

“Yes?”

“And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things,

fine things--didn’t realise... left it all to me... to manage....”

She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always winced

at it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on,

unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniary

difficulties, and of Nick’s inability to understand that, to keep

on with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up with

things... accept favours....

“Borrow money, you mean?”

“Well--yes; and all the rest.” No--decidedly she could not reveal

to Strefford the episode of Ellie’s letters. “Nick suddenly felt, I

suppose, that he couldn’t stand it,” she continued; “and instead of

asking me to try--to try to live differently, 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

from the beginning, that we couldn’t keep it up, and had better

recognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses’ yacht. The last

evening that you were in Venice--the day he didn’t come back to

dinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose 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 him go

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 let me hear from

you. Why, my dear, it’s only a question of time in a palace, with

a steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in the

garage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you and

Nick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survive

like Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passions

were crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up their

revenues?”

She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressing

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, the atmosphere

of ease... above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony,

from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively,

before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only difference

between you is that he’s had the sense to see sooner than you that those

are the things that last, the prime necessities.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Of course you don’t: at your age one doesn’t reason one’s materialism.

And besides you’re mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner than

you, and hasn’t disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases.”

“But surely there are people--”

“Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which of

their categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroes

and the geniuses--haven’t they their enormous frailties and their giant

appetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our little

ones?”

She sat for a while without speaking. “But, Streff, how can you say such

things, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!”

“Care?” He put his hand on hers. “But, my dear, it’s just the

fugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It’s because

we know we can’t hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything....”

“Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don’t say it!” She stood 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 to Versailles.”

“Because I’ve disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when I came over to

ask you to marry me!”

She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. “Upon my soul, I did.”

“Dear Streff! As if--now--”

“Oh, not now--I know. I’m aware that even with your accelerated divorce

methods--”

“It’s not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you long 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 independent means. Think it over, my dear:

as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There’s not the

least hurry, of course; but I rather think Nick himself would advise

it.”

She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and the

remembrance made Strefford’s sneering philosophy seem less unbearable.

Why should she not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of his

mourning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer her

one of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England.

She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of their

condescending kindnesses, their last year’s dresses, their Christmas

cheques, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow and

so hard 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 far as

contemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable that

this sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in her

lungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness.

“Very good, then; we’ll lunch together. But it’s Streff I want to lunch

with to-day.”

“Ah, well,” her companion agreed, “I rather think that for a tête-à-tête

he’s better company.”

During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where she

insisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with “Streff,”

he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice she

tried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations and

interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject,

questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose’s,

and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people she

named.

It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing at

her watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, 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 the soothing

interlude of their hour together.

“You can’t drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to

the old sort of life once for all.”

She reddened and her eyes filled. “I can’t do that, Streff--I know I

can’t!”

“Then what--?”

She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: “Nick said he would

write again--in a few days. I must wait--”

“Oh, naturally. Don’t do anything in a hurry.” Strefford also glanced at

his watch. “Garcon, l’addition! I’m taking the train back to-night, and

I’ve a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear--when you come

to a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don’t

mean in the matter I’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, I can even lend you money. There’s a new sensation for our jaded

palates!”

“Oh, Streff... Streff!” she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:

“Try it, now do try it--I assure you there’ll be no interest to pay, and

no conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you’ve decided

anything.”

She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendly

smile with hers.

“I promise!” she said.

XV.

THAT hour with Strefford had altered her whole perspective. Instead of

possible dependence, an enforced return to the old life 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 for her. She had dimly felt its significance,

felt the need of its presence in her inmost soul, even in the young

thoughtless days when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the

austere divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing’s wife she had

consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she fell

beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give her that

sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs, only wealth and

position could ensure. If she had not the mental or moral training to

attain independence in any other way, 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 it without him.

If that happened--ah, if that happened! Then she would cease to strain

her eyes into the future, would seize upon the present moment and plunge

into it to the very bottom of oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter

then--money or freedom or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only

she were in Nick’s arms again!

But there was Nick’s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks’s insolent

post-card, to show how little chance there was of such a solution. Susy

understood that, even before the discovery of her transaction with Ellie

Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied, if not of his wife, at least of

the life that their marriage compelled him to lead. His passion was not

strong enough--had never been strong enough--to outweigh his prejudices,

scruples, principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy’s dignity

might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was made of a

less combustible substance. She had felt, in their last talk together,

that she had forever destroyed the inner harmony between them.

Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his,

but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt

for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her

half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough

to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the

journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room;

and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast

tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided,

however half-heartedly, on a definite course.

She had said to herself: “If there’s no letter from Nick this time 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 no

word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that, foreseeing the

probability of her leaving Venice, he would write to her in care of

their Paris bank. But though she had immediately notified the bank of

her change of address no communication from Nick had reached her; and

she smiled with a touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless

finding in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket,

for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments of the letters

she had begun; and she told herself that, since they both found it so

hard to write, it was probably because they had nothing left to say to

each other.

Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose’s drifted by as they had been wont

to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had marked

time between one episode and the next of her precarious existence.

Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to make her acutely

conscious of their effect on her temporary hosts; and in the present

case she knew that Violet was hardly aware of her presence. But if no

more than tolerated she was at least not felt to be an inconvenience;

when your hostess forgot about you it proved that at least you were not

in her way.

Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound

indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer had

returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress was still

constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose was whirled away

in her noiseless motor it was generally toward the scene of some new

encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On these 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 the familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed

impossible, as furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought

back, and at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim

of the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or

none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not possess

the means to make her choice regardless of cost.

Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would evaporate,

and daylight re-enter Susy’s soul; yet she felt that the old poison was

slowly insinuating itself into her system. To dispel it she decided

one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She was curious to know how the

happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer’s evil days was bearing the weight of

his prosperity, and she vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see

some one who had never been afraid of poverty.

The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a reluctant

maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer, did not have

the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace to put up with such

quarters when she shared them with Fulmer; but to live there while he

basked in the lingering radiance of Versailles, or rolled from chateau

to picture gallery in Mrs. Melrose’s motor, showed a courage that Susy

felt unable to emulate.

“My dear! I knew you’d look me up,” Grace’s joyous voice ran down the

stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy to her tumbled

person.

“Nat couldn’t remember if he’d given you our address, though he promised

me he would, the last time he was here.” She held Susy at arms’

length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted eyes: the same

old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her neglected beauty and her

squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the

boisterous air of the New Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her

into the little air-tight salon.

While she poured out the tale of Nat’s sudden celebrity, and its

unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the secret

of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded years, the

steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to every kind of

material ease in which his wife had so gaily abetted him? Had it been

bought at the cost of her own freshness and her own talent, of the

children’s “advantages,” of everything except the closeness of the tie

between husband and wife? Well--it was worth the price, no doubt; but

what if, now that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped,

and Grace were left alone among the ruins?

There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a possibility.

Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was costlier 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 new situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in

it, filling her hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had

evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the

bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.

“My dear, it’s too wonderful! He’s told me to take as many concert and

opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the children with me. The

big concerts don’t begin till later; but of course the Opera is always

going. And there are little things--there’s music in Paris at all

seasons. And later it’s just possible we may get to Munich for a

week--oh, Susy!” Her hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new

wine of life almost sacramentally.

“Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow?

Nat said you’d be horrified by our primitiveness--but I knew better! And

I was right, wasn’t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to

follow our example, didn’t it?” She glowed with the remembrance. “And

now, what are your plans? Is Nick’s book nearly done? I suppose you’ll

have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby,

darling--when is that to be? If you’re coming home soon I could let you

have a lot of the children’s little old things.”

“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans

as yet--not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of yours

instead.”

Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the

greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about

what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with

sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important 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. Junie helps me with it now--she’s our eldest, you remember?

She’s grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,

we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all--next to Nat’s

recognition, I mean--is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up

something every single minute. Just think--Nat has even made special

arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second

helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music,

instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things

come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”

Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again

the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was

hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long-repressed avowal of their

tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire

hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had

made it appear. And yet ... and yet....

Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung

irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.

“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally

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 hat from her friend’s

head and began to manipulate its trimming. “This is the way Maria Guy or

Suzanne would do it.... And now go on about Nat....”

She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband’s

triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the

fine ladies’ battles over their priority in discovering him, and the

multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.

“Of course they’re simply furious with each other--Mrs. Melrose and Mrs.

Gillow especially--because each one pretends to have been the first to

notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality it wasn’t either of them,

but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we’ve known for years, who

chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking

for a new painter to push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes

to Susy’s face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat

is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who

stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed

out: ‘This is genius!’ It seems funny he should care so much, when I’ve

always known he had genius--and he 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 to hear it said in a new voice.”

Susy looked at her meditatively. “And how should you feel if Nat liked

too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any

longer what you felt or thought?”

Her friend’s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost

repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity.

“You haven’t been married long enough, dear, to understand... how people

like Nat and me feel about such things... or how trifling they seem, in

the balance... the balance 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 as that, and yet not

have sense enough to buy a decent hat?” She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick

embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it

was not exactly the one she had come to seek.

The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word

from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by

without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride

had hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick’s

address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after

enquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing

had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months

previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite

intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning’s post brought

a letter.

The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from

Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for

a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her

hostess’s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage

of the park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her

letters. She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: “Susy

darling, have you any particular plans--for the next few months, I

mean?”

Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she

understood what it implied.

“Plans, dearest? Any number... I’m tearing myself away the day after

to-morrow... to the Gillows’ moor, very probably,” she hastened to

announce.

Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose’s

dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.

“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 to ask you

to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and

I are going to Spain next week--I want to be with him when he makes his

studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience,

to be there when he and Velasquez meet!” She broke off, lost in

prospective ecstasy. “And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming

with us--”

“Ah, I see.”

“Well, there are the five children--such a problem,” sighed the

benefactress. “If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick’s

away with his friends, I could really make it worth your 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 even

truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered

how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New

Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as

the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more

and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner

of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several

elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who

still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon,

but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices.

Never in the world would she join their numbers.

Mrs. Melrose’s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive

bewilderment of the wielder of millions to whom everything that cannot

be bought is imperceptible.

“But I can’t see why you can’t change your plans,” she murmured with 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 of Mrs.

Fulmer’s presence on the journey had evidently tried her nerves, and

this new obstacle to her arrangements shook her faith in the divine

order of things.

“Your plans are not yours only? But surely you won’t let Ursula Gillow

dictate to you?... There’s my jade pendant; the one you said you liked

the other day.... The Fulmers won’t go with me, you understand, unless

they’re satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall

through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you

sacrificed to Ursula.”

Susy’s smile lingered. Time was when she might have been glad to add

the jade pendant to the collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn’s

sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult

to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she

might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes,

enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral

freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer’s uncontrollable

cry: “The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and

skimp, and give up something every single minute!” Yes; it was only on

such terms that one could call one’s soul one’s own. The sense of it

gave Susy the grace to answer amicably: “If I could possibly help you

out, Violet, I shouldn’t want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,

there’s no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to anybody

else. Only, as it happens”--she paused and took the plunge--“I’m going

to England because I’ve promised to see a friend.” That night she wrote

to Strefford.

XVI.

STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing

looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged

again into his book.

He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he

had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming

up from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study

absorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the

first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind

of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient

spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive

scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed

them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still

pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to 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 he needed.

There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite

views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.

In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she

would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had

passed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found

fifty reasons for postponing it.

Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have been

different; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea that

she was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settled

long ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modest

fortune. On their marriage Nick’s own meagre income, paid in, none too

regularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling family

properties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding present

he could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all been

deposited in her name. There were therefore no “business” reasons for

communicating with her; and when it came to reasons of 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, for both their sakes

a waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susy

because he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discovered

their life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more was

there to say?

Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they came

together it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the days

went by, seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reached

the point of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughts

travelled back over their past life he recoiled from any attempt to

return to it. As long as this state of mind continued there seemed

nothing to add to the letter he had already written, except indeed the

statement that he was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressing

reason for communicating that.

To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks,

a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa,

and carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinner

and perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging,

he had confessed that he had not been well--had indeed gone off

hurriedly for a few days’ change of air--and that left him without

defence against the immediate proposal that he should take his change

of air on the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and from

there to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back at

Venice in ten days.

Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And he really

liked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicity

breathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of their

present life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. The

mere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When the

yacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to go

on to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples for

the last time before they got up steam, said: “Any letters for the post,

sir?” he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: “No, thank

you: none.”

Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had never

been, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness of

the season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short waves

danced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of the

Ibis hardly swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.

Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht--of course with

Eldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist,

who was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at the

last moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetually

apologizing for the great man’s absence, Coral merely smiled and said

nothing.

As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant as

when one had them to one’s self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk of

appearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names in

the desire to embrace all culture in her conversation. 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 her early married days in Apex City, when, on being brought

home to her 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 had

supposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from his

mysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty for

knowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms to

conclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture on

which Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend--her own memory being, alas, so

inadequate to the range of her interests.

Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks’s

way to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but left

them, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while she

pursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledge

filled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested only

in fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They were

illuminated 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-date public library.

To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectual

curiosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, from

seduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions that

were Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small,

and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if they

had been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially,

when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, her

swift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and,

penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belonged

to her. What a pity that this exquisite insight, this intuitive

discrimination, should for the most part have been spent upon reading

the thoughts of vulgar people, and extracting a profit from them--should

have been wasted, since her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of

“managing”!

And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had not guessed it,

or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their way

through Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood before

the little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at the

picture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. His

own momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of the

Music Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then he

had missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,

forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragic

sky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. 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 primitive build, in the projection of

the black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, and

the faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle of

will-power, combined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, had

turned the fat sallow girl he remembered into this commanding young

woman, almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her big

authoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile against

the blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity,

how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--he

had seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleading

and almost humble. That was Coral....

Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: “You’ve had no letters

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 hard

statistical 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’m not particularly

tied down.”

“And your book?”

“Oh, my book--” He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant of

Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but

since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions

were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had

felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her

scent, and heard her breathless “I had to thank you!”

“My book’s hung up,” he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks’s lack

of tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....

“Yes; I thought it was,” she went on quietly, and he gave her a startled

glance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had never

supposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapace

of self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else’s feelings.

“The truth is,” he continued, embarrassed, “I suppose I dug away at

it rather too continuously; that’s probably why I felt the need 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 glittering deck, and

then out across the glittering water. “I’ve been dreaming dreams, you

see. I rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and try

to look out for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literature

one must first have an assured income.”

He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in his

relations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusion

that might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But the

idle procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to the

need of putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhaps

help to make them more definite.

To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke it

was in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.

“It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn’t find some

kind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your real

work....”

He shrugged ironically. “Yes--there are a goodish number of us hunting

for that particular kind of employment.”

Her tone became more business-like. “I know it’s hard to find--almost

impossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered to

you--?”

She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blank

terror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,

in the same untroubled voice: “Mr. Buttles’s place, I mean. My parents

must absolutely have some one 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 had looked as

they had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much not to shrink

from reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles’s place: why not?

“Poor Buttles!” he murmured, to gain time.

“Oh,” she said, “you won’t find the same reasons as he did for throwing

up the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions.”

He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know of

his meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter’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? Till after our

expedition to Mesopotamia?” she pressed on, a little breathlessly.

“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 ask you,” 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. The fact is

I shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chucked

everything, even letters, for a few weeks.”

“Ah, you are tired,” she murmured, giving him a last downward glance as

she turned away.

From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send his

letters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail was

brought on board, the thick envelope handed to him contained 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 bank he knew

he had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. And

she had made no sign.

Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their first

expedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nick

picked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down the

list of social events.

He read:

“Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for the

season to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri of

Rome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived in

London last week from Paris.” Nick threw down the paper. It was just a

month since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into the

night express for Milan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only a

month--and Susy and Strefford were already together!

XVII.

SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.

The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, and though she

found a telegram on arriving, saying that he would join her in town the

following week, she had still an interval of several days to fill.

London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone in the

shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the best she could

afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.

From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out her plan

for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visibly waned. Often

before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt the same abrupt change of

temperature in the manner of the hostess of the moment; and often--how

often--had yielded, and performed the required service, rather than risk

the consequences of estrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she

need never stoop again.

But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scraped together

an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye to Violet (grown

suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw her visitor safely headed

for the station)--as Susy went through the old familiar mummery of the

enforced leave-taking, there rose in her so deep a disgust for the

life of makeshifts and accommodations, that if at that moment Nick had

reappeared and held out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have

had the courage to return to them.

In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.

Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless love of

beauty... the curse it had always been to her, the blessing it might

have been if only she had had the material means to gratify and to

express it! And instead, it only gave her a morbid loathing of that

hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellow rain-light, of the smell of soot

and cabbage through the window, the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax

bouquets under glass globes, and the electric lighting so contrived that

as you turned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of the ceiling

the feebler one beside the bed went out!

What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their few months

together! What right had either of them to those exquisite settings

of the life of leisure: the long white house hidden in camellias and

cypresses above the lake, or the great rooms on the Giudecca with the

shimmer of the canal always playing over their frescoed ceilings! Yet

she had come to imagine that these places really belonged to them, that

they would always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in the frame

of other people’s wealth.... That, again, was the curse of her love of

beauty, the way she always took to it as if it belonged to her!

Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps better that

it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no use in letting her

thoughts wander back to that shattered fool’s paradise of theirs. Only,

as she sat there and reckoned up the days till Strefford arrived, what

else in the world was there to think of?

Her future and his?

But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spent her life

among the rich and fashionable without having learned every detail of

the trappings of a rich and fashionable marriage. She had calculated

long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much

lacy lingerie would go to make up the outfit of the future Countess of

Altringham. She had even decided to which dressmaker she would go for

her chinchilla cloak--for she meant to have one, and down to her feet,

and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantly sumptuous than

Violet’s or Ursula’s... not to speak of silver foxes and sables... nor

yet of the Altringham jewels.

She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It all belonged to the

make-up of the life of elegance: there was nothing new about it. What

had been new to her was just that short interval with Nick--a life

unreal indeed in its setting, but so real in its essentials: the one

reality she had ever known. As she looked back on it she saw how much

it had given her besides the golden flush of her happiness, the sudden

flowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there had been the

flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of something graver, stronger,

fuller of future power, something she had hardly heeded in her first

light rapture, but that always came back and possessed her stilled soul

when the rapture sank: the deep disquieting sense of something that

Nick and love had taught her, but that reached out even beyond love and

beyond Nick.

Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the

dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the

door when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon

she must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought

with it a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug,

the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food

that tasted as if it had been rained on too. There was really no reason

why she should let such material miseries add to her depression....

She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxi drove

to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It was just one o’clock

and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, for though London was empty

that great establishment was not. It never was. Along those sultry

velvet-carpeted halls, in that great flowered and scented dining-room,

there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people

who, having nothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from

one end 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 fresh disgust seized her at

the sight of them: she wavered, and then turned and fled. But on the

threshold a still more familiar figure met her: that of a lady in

exaggerated pearls and sables, descending from an exaggerated motor,

like the motors in magazine advertisements, the huge arks in which

jewelled beauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from an

Alpine 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 that Ursula, detained

till the next evening by a dress-maker’s delay, was also out of a job

and killing time, and the two were soon smiling at each other over

the exquisite preliminaries of a luncheon 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 when it did

her benevolence knew no bounds.

Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too much absorbed

in her own affairs to give more than a passing thought to any one

else’s; but she was delighted at the meeting with Susy, as her wandering

kind always were when they ran across fellow-wanderers, unless the

meeting happened to interfere with choicer pleasures. Not to be alone

was the urgent thing; and Ursula, who had been forty-eight hours alone

in London, at once exacted from her friend a promise that they should

spend the rest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mind

turned again to her own affairs, and she poured out her confidences

to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifested the head-waiter’s

understanding of the case.

Ursula’s confidences were always the same, though they were usually

about a different person. She demolished and rebuilt her sentimental

life with the same frequency and impetuosity as that with which she

changed her dress-makers, did over her drawing-rooms, ordered new

motors, altered the mounting of her jewels, and generally renewed the

setting of her life. Susy knew in advance what the tale would be; but

to listen to it over perfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at

her lips, was pleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy

coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to take a

languid interest in her friend’s narrative.

After luncheon they got into the motor together and began a systematic

round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers and dealers in old

furniture. Nothing could be more unlike Violet Melrose’s long hesitating

sessions before the things she thought she wanted till the moment came

to decide. Ursula pounced on silver foxes and old lacquer as promptly

and decisively as on the objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew

at once what she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.

“And now--I wonder if you couldn’t help me choose a grand piano?” she

suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.

“A piano?”

“Yes: for Ruan. I’m sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She’s coming to

stay... did I tell you? I want people to hear her. I want her to get

engagements in London. My dear, she’s a Genius.”

“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 is off her head about

Nat--it’s really pitiful. Of course he has talent: 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 to the Prince, who was with me: ‘The man has talent.’ But

genius--why, it’s his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace

play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I’ve

given Fulmer my garden-house to do--no doubt Violet told you--because

I wanted to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I’m determined to

make her known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius

of the two. I’ve told her she simply must come to Ruan, and bring the

best accompanyist she can find. You know poor Nerone is dreadfully bored

by sport, though of course he goes out with the guns. And if 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? I thought you were so fond of

music!”

“I am fond of it; but without knowing anything about it--in the way

we’re all of us fond of the worthwhile things in our stupid set,”

she added to herself--since it was obviously useless to impart 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’m giving her

a thousand dollars and all her expenses.”

It was not till they were having tea in a Piccadilly tea-room that Mrs.

Gillow began to manifest some interest in her companion’s plans. The

thought of losing Susy became suddenly intolerable to her. The Prince,

who did not see why he should be expected to linger in London out of

season, was already at Ruan, and Ursula could not face the evening and

the whole of the next day by herself.

“But what are you doing in town, darling, I don’t remember if I’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 come when she

should have to give some account of herself; and why should she not

begin by telling Ursula?

But telling her what?

Her silence appeared to strike Mrs. Gillow as a reproach, and she

continued with compunction: “And Nick? Nick’s with you? How is he, I

thought you and he still were in Venice with Ellie Vanderlyn.”

“We were, for a few weeks.” She steadied her voice. “It was delightful.

But now we’re both on our own again--for a while.”

Mrs. Gillow scrutinized her more searchingly. “Oh, you’re alone here,

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! I know Fred

asked you didn’t he? And he told me that both you and Nick had refused.

He was awfully huffed at your not coming; but I suppose that was because

Nick had other plans. We couldn’t have him now, because there’s no room

for another gun; but since he’s not here, and you’re free, why you

know, dearest, don’t you, how we’d love to have you? Fred would be too

glad--too outrageously 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 every night to

dine, and Fred caring only for sport, and Nerone simply loathing it and

ridiculing it, and not a minute to myself to try to keep him in a good

humour.... Oh, Susy darling, don’t say no, but let me telephone at once

for a place in the train to-morrow 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 for a few weeks... and here

was the very person she needed. Susy shivered at the thought. She had

never really meant to go to Ruan. She had simply used the moor as a

pretext when Violet Melrose had gently put her out of doors. Rather than

do what Ursula asked she would borrow a few hundred pounds of Strefford,

as he had suggested, and then look about for some temporary occupation

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 supposed you would,”

she murmured. Susy, meeting her eyes, looked into them down a long vista

of favours bestowed, and perceived that Ursula was not the woman to

forget on which side the obligation lay between them.

Susy hesitated: she remembered the weeks of ecstasy she had owed to the

Gillows’ wedding cheque, and it hurt her to appear ungrateful.

“If I could, Ursula... but really... I’m not free at the moment.” She

paused, and then took an abrupt decision. “The fact is, I’m waiting here

to see Strefford.”

“Strefford’ Lord Altringham?” Ursula stared. “Ah, yes—I remember. You

and he used to be great friends, didn’t you?” Her roving attention

deepened.... But if Susy were waiting to see Lord Altringham--one of the

richest men in England! Suddenly Ursula opened her gold-meshed bag and

snatched a miniature diary from it.

“But wait a moment--yes, it is next week! I knew it was next week he’s

coming to Ruan! But, you darling, that makes everything all right.

You’ll send him a wire at once, and come with me to-morrow, and meet him

there instead of in this nasty sloppy desert.... Oh, Susy, if you knew

how hard life is for me in Scotland between the Prince and Fred you

couldn’t possibly say no!”

Susy still wavered; but, after all, if Strefford were really bound

for Ruan, why not see him there, agreeably and at leisure, instead of

spending a dreary day with him in roaming the wet London streets, or

screaming at him through the rattle of a restaurant orchestra? She knew

he would not be likely to postpone his visit to Ruan in order to linger

in London with her: such concessions had never been his way, and were

less than ever likely to be, now that he could do so thoroughly and

completely as he pleased.

For the first time she fully understood how different his destiny had

become. Now of course all his days and hours were mapped out in advance:

invitations assailed him, opportunities pressed on him, he had only to

choose.... And the women! She had never before thought of the women. All

the girls in England would be wanting to marry him, not to mention her

own enterprising compatriots. And there were the married women, who were

even more to be feared. Streff might, for the time, escape marriage;

though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the

converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as

she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible

women at Altringham--his uncle’s widow, his mother, the spinster

sisters--it was not impossible that, with tact and patience--and the

stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions--they

might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just

the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at

once, there were the married women. Ah, they wouldn’t wait, they were

doubtless laying their traps already! Susy shivered at the thought. She

knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often,

all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous

nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time

came; 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, thank heaven, she

had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for the

asking: would she not be a fool to refuse it?

Perhaps; though on that point her mind still wavered. But at any

rate she saw that, decidedly, it would be better to yield to Ursula’s

pressure; better to meet him at Ruan, in a congenial setting, where she

would have time to get her bearings, observe what dangers threatened

him, and make up her mind whether, after all, 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 post office,

and send off the wire ourselves.”

As they got into the motor Mrs. Gillow seized Susy’s arm with a pleading

pressure. “And you will let Fred make love to you a little, won’t you,

darling?”

XVIII.

“BUT I can’t think,” said Ellie Vanderlyn earnestly, “why you don’t

announce your engagement before waiting for your divorce. People are

beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”

Mrs. Vanderlyn, on the way back from St. Moritz to England, had paused

in Paris to renew the depleted wardrobe which, only two months earlier,

had filled so many trunks to bursting. Other ladies, flocking there

from all points of the globe for the same purpose, disputed with her

the Louis XVI suites of the Nouveau Luxe, the pink-candled tables in

the restaurant, the hours for trying-on at the dressmakers’; and just

because they were so many, and all feverishly fighting to get the same

things at the same time, they were all excited, happy and at ease. It

was the most momentous period of the year: the height of the “dress

makers’ season.”

Mrs. Vanderlyn had run across Susy Lansing at one of the Rue de la Paix

openings, where rows of ladies wan with heat and emotion sat for hours

in rapt attention while spectral apparitions in incredible raiment

tottered endlessly past them on aching feet.

Distracted from the regal splendours of a chinchilla cloak by the

sense that another lady was also examining it, Mrs. Vanderlyn turned in

surprise at sight of Susy, whose head was critically bent above the fur.

“Susy! I’d no idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with

the Gillows.” The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn,

her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of

receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: “Are you shopping for Ursula?

If you mean to order that cloak for her I’d rather know.”

Susy smiled, and paused a moment before answering. During the pause

she took in all the exquisite details of Ellie Vanderlyn’s perpetually

youthful person, from the plumed crown of her head to the perfect arch

of her patent-leather shoes. At last she said quietly: “No--to-day I’m

shopping for myself.”

“Yourself? Yourself?” Mrs. Vanderlyn echoed with a stare of incredulity.

“Yes; just for a change,” Susy serenely acknowledged.

“But the cloak--I meant the chinchilla cloak... the one with the ermine

lining....”

“Yes; it is awfully good, isn’t it? But I mean to look elsewhere before

I decide.”

Ah, how often she had heard her friends use that phrase; and how amusing

it was, now, to see Ellie’s amazement as she heard it tossed off in

her own tone of contemptuous satiety! Susy was becoming more and more

dependent on such diversions; without them her days, crowded as they

were, would nevertheless have dragged by heavily. But it still amused

her to go to the big dressmakers’, watch the mannequins sweep by, and

be seen by her friends superciliously examining all the most expensive

dresses in the procession. She knew the rumour was abroad that she and

Nick were to be divorced, and that Lord Altringham was “devoted” to her.

She neither confirmed nor denied the report: she just let herself be

luxuriously carried forward on its easy tide. But although it was now

three months since Nick had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn she had not yet

written to him--nor he to her.

Meanwhile, in spite of all that she packed into them, the days passed

more and more slowly, and the excitements she had counted on no longer

excited her. Strefford was hers: she knew that he would marry her as

soon as she was free. They had been together at Ruan for ten days, and

after that she had motored south with him, stopping on the way to see

Altringham, from which, at the moment, his mourning relatives were

absent.

At Altringham they had parted; and after one or two more visits in

England she had come back to Paris, where he was now about to join her.

After her few hours at Altringham she had understood that he would wait

for her as long as was necessary: the fear of the “other women” had

ceased to trouble her. But, perhaps for that very reason, the future

seemed less exciting than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it

was the sight of that great house which had overwhelmed her: it was

too vast, too venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient

territorial traditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for

too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she

could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet

that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture

either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county

responsibilities, dull parties, laborious duties, weekly church-going,

and presiding over local committees.... What a pity they couldn’t sell

it and have a little house on the Thames!

Nevertheless she was not sorry to let it be known that Altringham was

hers when she chose to take it. At times she wondered whether Nick

knew... whether rumours had reached him. If they had, he had only his

own letter to thank for it. He had told her what course to pursue; and

she was pursuing it.

For a moment the meeting with Ellie Vanderlyn had been a shock to her;

she had hoped never to see Ellie again. But now that they were actually

face to face Susy perceived how dulled her sensibilities were. In a

few moments she had grown used to Ellie, as she was growing used to

everybody and to everything in the old life she had returned to. What

was the use of making such a fuss about things? She and Mrs. Vanderlyn

left the dress-maker’s together, and after an absorbing session at a new

milliner’s were now taking tea in Ellie’s drawing-room at the Nouveau

Luxe.

Ellie, with her spoiled child’s persistency, had come back to the

question of the chinchilla cloak. It was the only one she had seen that

she fancied in the very least, and as she hadn’t a decent fur garment

left to her name she was naturally in somewhat of a hurry... but, of

course, if Susy had been choosing that model for a friend....

Susy, leaning back against her cushions, examined through half-closed

lids Mrs. Vanderlyn’s small delicately-restored countenance, which wore

the same expression of childish eagerness as when she discoursed of the

young Davenant of the moment. Once again Susy remarked that, in Ellie’s

agitated existence, every interest appeared to be on exactly the same

plane.

“The poor shivering dear,” she answered laughing, “of course it shall

have its nice warm winter cloak, and I’ll choose another one instead.”

“Oh, you darling, you! If you would! Of course, whoever you were

ordering it for need never know....”

“Ah, you can’t comfort yourself with that, I’m afraid. I’ve already told

you that I was ordering it for myself.” Susy paused to savour to the

full Ellie’s look of blank bewilderment; then her amusement was checked

by an indefinable change in her friend’s expression.

“Oh, dearest--seriously? I didn’t know there was someone....”

Susy flushed to the forehead. A horror of humiliation overwhelmed her.

That Ellie should dare to think that of her--that anyone should dare to!

“Someone buying chinchilla cloaks for me? Thanks!” she flared out. “I

suppose I ought to be glad that the idea didn’t immediately occur to

you. At least there was a decent interval of doubt....” She stood up,

laughing again, and began to wander about the room. In the mirror above

the mantel she caught sight of her flushed angry face, and of Mrs.

Vanderlyn’s disconcerted stare. She turned toward her friend.

“I suppose everybody else will think it if you do; so perhaps I’d better

explain.” She paused, and drew a quick breath. “Nick and I mean to

part--have parted, in fact. He’s decided that the whole thing was a

mistake. He will probably; marry again soon--and so shall I.”

She flung the avowal out breathlessly, in her nervous dread of letting

Ellie Vanderlyn think for an instant longer that any other explanation

was conceivable. She had not meant to be so explicit; but once the words

were spoken she was not altogether sorry. Of course people would soon

begin to wonder why she was again straying about the world alone; and

since it was by Nick’s choice, why should she not say so? Remembering

the burning anguish of those last hours in Venice she asked herself what

possible consideration she owed to the man who had so humbled her.

Ellie Vanderlyn glanced at her in astonishment. “You? You and Nick--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. He sent it

back almost at once, with the oddest note--just: ‘I haven’t earned it,

really.’ I couldn’t think why he didn’t care for the pin. But, now I

suppose it was because you and he had quarrelled; though really, even

so, I can’t see why he should bear me a grudge....”

Susy’s quick blood surged up. Nick had sent back the pin--the fatal pin!

And she, Susy, had kept the bracelet--locked it up out of sight, shrunk

away from the little packet whenever her hand touched it in packing or

unpacking--but never thought of returning it, no, not once! Which of the

two, she wondered, had been right? Was it not an indirect slight to her

that Nick should fling back the gift to poor uncomprehending Ellie? Or

was it not rather another proof of his finer moral sensitiveness!...

And how could one tell, in their bewildering world, “It was not because

we’ve quarrelled; we haven’t quarrelled,” she said slowly, moved by the

sudden desire to defend her privacy and Nick’s, to screen from every

eye their last bitter hour together. “We’ve simply decided that our

experiment was impossible--for two paupers.”

“Ah, well--of course we all felt that at the time. And now somebody else

wants to marry you! And it’s your trousseau you were choosing that cloak

for?” Ellie cried in incredulous rapture; then she flung her arms about

Susy’s shrinking shoulders. “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 pronounced the name

of Lord Altringham.

“Streff--Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to marry

you?” As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became dithyrambic.

“But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck! Of course I always knew he

was awfully gone on you: Fred Davenant used to say so, I remember... and

even Nelson, who’s so stupid about such things, noticed it in Venice....

But then it was so different. No one could possibly have thought of

marrying him then; whereas now of course every woman is trying for him.

Oh, Susy, whatever you do, don’t miss your chance! You can’t conceive

of the wicked plotting and intriguing there will be to get him--on all

sides, and even where one least suspects it. You don’t know what horrors

women will do--and even girls!” A shudder ran through her at the thought,

and she caught Susy’s wrists in vehement fingers. “But I can’t think,

my dear, why you don’t announce your engagement at once. People are

beginning to do it, I assure you--it’s so much safer!”

Susy looked at her, wondering. Not a word of sympathy for the ruin of

her brief bliss, not even a gleam of curiosity as to its cause! No

doubt Ellie Vanderlyn, like all Susy’s other friends, had long since

“discounted” the brevity of her dream, and perhaps planned a sequel to

it before she herself had seen the glory fading. She and Nick had spent

the greater part of their few weeks together under Ellie Vanderlyn’s

roof; but to Ellie, obviously, the fact meant no more than her own

escapade, at the same moment, with young Davenant’s supplanter--the

“bounder” whom Strefford had never named. Her one thought for her friend

was that Susy should at last secure her prize--her incredible prize. And

therein at any rate Ellie showed the kind of cold disinterestedness that

raised her above the smiling perfidy of the majority of her kind. At

least her advice was sincere; and perhaps it was wise. Why should Susy

not let every one know that she meant to marry Strefford as soon as the

“formalities” were fulfilled?

She did not immediately answer Mrs. Vanderlyn’s question; and the

latter, repeating it, added impatiently: “I don’t understand you; if

Nick agrees--”

“Oh, he agrees,” said Susy.

“Then what more do you want! Oh, Susy, if you’d only follow my example!”

“Your example?” Susy paused, weighed the word, was struck by something

embarrassed, arch yet half-apologetic in her friend’s expression. “Your

example?” she repeated. “Why, Ellie, what on earth do you mean? Not that

you’re going to part from poor Nelson?”

Mrs. Vanderlyn met her reproachful gaze with a crystalline glance. “I

don’t want to, heaven knows--poor dear Nelson! I assure you I simply

hate it. He’s always such an angel to Clarissa... and then we’re used

to each other. But what in the world am I to do? Algie’s so rich, so

appallingly rich, that I have to be perpetually on the watch to keep

other women away from him--and it’s too exhausting....”

“Algie?”

Mrs. Vanderlyn’s lovely eyebrows rose. “Algie: Algie Bockheimer. Didn’t

you know, I think he said you’ve dined with his parents. Nobody else in

the world is as rich as the Bockheimers; and Algie’s their only

child. Yes, it was with him... with him I was so dreadfully happy last

spring... and now I’m in mortal terror of losing him. And I do assure

you there’s no other way of keeping them, when they’re as hideously rich

as that!”

Susy rose to her feet. A little shudder ran over her. She remembered,

now, having seen Algie Bockheimer at one of his parents’ first

entertainments, in their newly-inaugurated marble halls in Fifth Avenue.

She recalled his too faultless clothes and his small glossy furtive

countenance. She looked at Ellie Vanderlyn 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 past together... and all

the money you can possibly want... and that man! Abominable.”

Ellie stood up trembling: she was not used to scenes, and they

disarranged her thoughts as much as her complexion.

“You’re very cruel, Susy--so cruel and dreadful that I hardly know how

to answer you,” she stammered. “But you simply don’t know what you’re

talking about. As if anybody ever had all the money they wanted!” She

wiped her dark-rimmed eyes with a cautious handkerchief, glanced at

herself in the mirror, and added magnanimously: “But I shall try to

forget what you’ve said.”

XIX.

JUST such a revolt as she had felt as a girl, such a disgusted recoil

from the standards and ideals of everybody about her as had flung her

into her mad marriage with Nick, now flamed in Susy Lansing’s bosom.

How could she ever go back into that world again? How echo its

appraisals of life and bow down to its judgments? Alas, it was only

by marrying according to its standards that she could escape such

subjection. Perhaps the same thought had actuated Nick: perhaps he had

understood sooner than she that to attain moral freedom they must both

be above material cares. Perhaps...

Her talk with Ellie Vanderlyn had left Susy so oppressed and humiliated

that she almost shrank from her meeting with Altringham the next day.

She knew that he was coming to Paris for his final answer; he would wait

as long as was necessary if only 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

lunch at the Nouveau Luxe, or at some fashionable restaurant of the

Boulevards. As before, she insisted on going to an out-of-the-way place

near the Luxembourg, where the prices were moderate enough for her own

purse.

“I can’t understand,” Strefford objected, as they turned from her hotel

door toward this obscure retreat, “why you insist on giving me bad food,

and depriving me of the satisfaction of being 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 always sound so

unnatural on his lips.

“No,” she said, with a laugh, “they simply think, for the present, that

you’re giving me pearls and chinchilla cloaks.”

He wrinkled his brows good-humouredly. “Well, so I would, with joy--at

this particular minute. Don’t you think perhaps you’d better take

advantage of it? I don’t wish to insist--but I foresee that I’m much too

rich not to become stingy.”

She gave a slight shrug. “At present there’s nothing I loathe more than

pearls and chinchilla, or anything else in the world that’s expensive

and enviable....”

Suddenly she broke off, colouring with the consciousness that she had

said exactly the kind of thing that all the women who were trying for

him (except the very cleverest) would be sure to say; and that he

would certainly suspect her of attempting the conventional comedy of

disinterestedness, than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to

flatter him.

His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on,

meeting them with a smile: “But don’t imagine, all the same, that if I

should... decide... it would be altogether for your beaux yeux....”

He laughed, she thought, rather drily. “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose

that’s ever likely to happen to me again.”

“Oh, Streff--” she faltered with compunction. It was odd--once upon a

time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever

he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the

difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort

of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such

speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real

love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other

trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and

groping like a beginner under Strefford’s ironic scrutiny.

They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door 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 a

squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower

panes of which served for the floor below. Strefford opened 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 because she

felt so sure of Strefford it seemed ungenerous to keep him longer in

suspense. The moment had come when they must have a decisive talk, and

in the crowded rooms below it would have been impossible.

Strefford, when the waiter had brought the first course and left them

to themselves, made no effort to revert to personal matters. He turned

instead to the topic always most congenial to him: the humours and

ironies of the human comedy, as presented by his own particular group.

His malicious commentary on life had always amused Susy because of the

shrewd flashes of philosophy he shed on the social antics they had

so often watched together. He was in fact the one person she knew

(excepting Nick) who was in the show and yet outside of it; and she was

surprised, as the talk proceeded, to find herself so little interested

in his scraps of gossip, and so little amused by his comments on them.

With an inward shrug of discouragement she said to herself that probably

nothing would ever really amuse her again; then, as she listened, she

began to understand that her disappointment arose from the fact that

Strefford, in reality, could not live without these people whom he

saw through and satirized, and that the rather commonplace scandals he

narrated interested him as much as his own racy considerations on them;

and she was filled with terror at the thought that the inmost core of

the richly-decorated life of the Countess of Altringham would be just

as poor and low-ceilinged a place as the little room in which he and she

now sat, elbow to elbow yet so unapproachably apart.

If Strefford could not live without these people, neither could she and

Nick; but for reasons how different! And if his opportunities had

been theirs, what a world they would have created for themselves! Such

imaginings were vain, and she shrank back from them into the present.

After all, as Lady Altringham she would have the power to create that

world which she and Nick had dreamed... only she must create it alone.

Well, that was probably the law of things. All human happiness was thus

conditioned and circumscribed, and hers, no doubt, must always be of the

lonely kind, since material things did not suffice for it, even though

it depended on them as Grace Fulmer’s, for instance, never had. Yet even

Grace Fulmer had succumbed to Ursula’s offer, and had arrived at Ruan

the day before Susy left, instead of going to Spain with her husband

and Violet Melrose. But then Grace was making the sacrifice for her

children, and somehow one had the feeling that in giving up her liberty

she was not surrendering a tittle of herself. All the difference was

there....

“How I do bore you!” Susy heard Strefford exclaim. She became aware

that she had not been listening: stray echoes of names of places and

people--Violet Melrose, Ursula, Prince Altineri, others of their group

and persuasion--had vainly knocked at her barricaded brain; what had he

been telling her about them? She turned to him and their eyes met; his

were full of a melancholy irony.

“Susy, old girl, what’s wrong?”

She pulled herself together. “I was thinking, Streff, just now--when I

said I hated the very sound of pearls and chinchilla--how impossible

it was that you should believe me; in fact, what a blunder I’d made in

saying it.”

He smiled. “Because it was what so many other women might be likely to

say so awfully unoriginal, in fact?”

She laughed for sheer joy at his insight. “It’s going to be easier than

I imagined,” she thought. Aloud she rejoined: “Oh, Streff--how you’re

always going to find me out! Where on earth shall 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 it took

all the mockery from his retort, checked on her lips the: “What? A

valentine!” and made her suddenly feel that, if he were afraid, so was

she. Yet she was touched also, and wondered half exultingly if any

other woman had ever caught that particular deep inflexion of his shrill

voice. She had never liked him as much as at that moment; and she said

to herself, with an odd sense of detachment, as if she had been rather

breathlessly observing the vacillations of someone whom she longed to

persuade but dared not: “Now--NOW, if he speaks, I shall say yes!”

He did not speak; but abruptly, and as startlingly to her as if she

had just dropped from a sphere whose inhabitants had other methods of

expressing their sympathy, he slipped his arm around her 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 arm and 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 not the first

time she had been kissed. It was true that one didn’t habitually

associate Streff with such demonstrations; but she had not that excuse

for surprise, for even in Venice she had begun to notice that he looked

at her differently, and avoided her hand when he used to seek it.

No--she ought not to have been surprised; nor ought a kiss to have been

so disturbing. Such incidents had punctuated the career 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 than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had

all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted

“business” of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford’s was what

Nick’s had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had

decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a

ring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that

followed--while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled

the spoon in his cup, Susy remembered what she had seen through the

circle of Nick’s kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once

the landscape at their feet and the future in their souls....

Perhaps that was what Strefford’s sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now,

that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever--perhaps he was

saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left Nick’s:

“Each time we kiss we shall see it all again....” Whereas all she

herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford’s touch, and an

intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their

two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been

a sudden thrusting apart....

The moment prolonged itself, and they sat numb. How long had it lasted?

How long ago was it that she had thought: “It’s going to be easier than

I imagined”? Suddenly she felt Strefford’s queer smile upon her, and saw

in his eyes a look, not of reproach or disappointment, but of deep and

anxious comprehension. Instead of being angry or hurt, he had seen, he

had understood, he was sorry for her!

Impulsively she slipped her hand into his, and they sat silent for

another moment. Then he stood up and took her cloak from the divan.

“Shall we go now! I’ve got cards for the private view of the Reynolds

exhibition at the Petit Palais. There are some portraits from

Altringham. It might amuse you.”

In the taxi she had time, through their light rattle of talk, to

readjust herself and drop back into her usual feeling of friendly ease

with him. He had been extraordinarily considerate, for anyone who always

so undisguisedly sought his own satisfaction above all things; and

if his considerateness were just an indirect way of seeking that

satisfaction now, well, that proved how much he cared for her, how

necessary to his happiness she had become. The sense of power was

undeniably pleasant; pleasanter still was the feeling that someone

really needed her, that the happiness of the man at her side depended

on her yes or no. She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the

abysmal interval of his caress, or at least saying to herself that in

time she would forget it, that really there was nothing to make a fuss

about in being kissed by anyone she liked as much as Streff....

She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.

Fashionable and artistic Paris had recently discovered English

eighteenth century art. The principal collections of England had yielded

up their best examples of the great portrait painter’s work, and the

private view at the Petit Palais was to be the social event of the

afternoon. Everybody--Strefford’s everybody and Susy’s--was sure to

be there; and these, as she knew, were the occasions that revived

Strefford’s intermittent interest in art. He really liked picture shows

as much as the races, if one could be sure of seeing as many people

there. With Nick how different it would have been! Nick hated openings

and varnishing days, and worldly aesthetics in general; he would have

waited till the tide of fashion had ebbed, and slipped off with Susy to

see the pictures some morning when they were sure to have the place to

themselves.

But Susy divined that there was another reason for Strefford’s

suggestion. She had never yet shown herself with him publicly, among

their own group of people: now he had determined that she should do

so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and

forgiven her. But she still continued to treat him as she had always

treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible

impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and

adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer

Strefford, but Lord Altringham.

At the very threshold, his Ambassador’s greeting marked the difference:

it was followed, wherever they turned, by ejaculations of welcome from

the rulers of the world they moved in. Everybody rich enough or titled

enough, or clever enough or stupid enough, to have forced a way into the

social citadel, was there, waving and flag-flying from the battlements;

and to all of them Lord Altringham had become a marked figure. During

their slow progress through the dense mass of important people who made

the approach to the pictures so well worth fighting for, he never left

Susy’s side, or failed to make her feel herself a part of his triumphal

advance. She heard her name mentioned: “Lansing--a Mrs. Lansing--an

American... Susy Lansing? Yes, of course.... You remember her? At

Newport, At St. Moritz? Exactly.... Divorced already? They say so...

Susy darling! I’d no idea you were here... and Lord Altringham! 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,” Strefford

explained, giving a last push that drew him and Susy to the front rank,

before a tall isolated portrait which, by sheer majesty of presentment,

sat in its great carved golden frame as on 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: “Do you remember? It

hangs where you noticed the empty space above the mantel-piece, in the

Vandyke room. They say Reynolds stipulated that it should be put with

the Vandykes.”

She had never before heard him speak of his possessions, whether

ancestral or merely material, in just that full and satisfied tone of

voice: the rich man’s voice. She saw that he was already feeling the

influence of his surroundings, that he was glad the portrait of a

Countess of Altringham should occupy the central place in the principal

room of the exhibition, that the crowd about it should be denser there

than before any of the other 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 his

pictured ancestress.

On the way back to her hotel, Strefford made no farther allusion to

their future; they chatted like old comrades in their respective corners

of the taxi. But as the carriage stopped at her door he said: “I must go

back to England the day after to-morrow, worse luck! Why not dine with

me to-night at the Nouveau Luxe? I’ve got to have the Ambassador and

Lady Ascot, with their youngest girl and my old Dunes aunt, the Dowager

Duchess, who’s over here hiding from her creditors; but I’ll try to get

two or three amusing men to leaven the lump. We might go on to a boite

afterward, if you’re bored. Unless the dancing amuses you more....”

She understood that he had decided to hasten his departure rather than

linger on in uncertainty; she also remembered having heard the Ascots’

youngest daughter, Lady Joan Senechal, spoken of as one of the prettiest

girls of the season; and she recalled the almost exaggerated warmth of

the Ambassador’s greeting at the private view.

“Of course I’ll come, Streff dear!” she cried, with an effort at gaiety

that sounded successful to her own strained ears, and reflected itself

in the sudden lighting up of his face.

She waved a good-bye from the step, saying to herself, as she looked

after him: “He’ll drive me home to-night, and I shall say ‘yes’; and

then he’ll kiss me again. But the next time it won’t be nearly as

disagreeable.”

She turned into the hotel, glanced automatically at the empty

pigeon-hole for letters under her key-hook, and mounted the stairs

following the same train of images. “Yes, I shall say ‘yes’ to-night,”

she repeated firmly, her hand on the door of her room. “That is, unless,

they’ve brought up a letter....” She never re-entered the hotel without

imagining that the letter she had not found below had already been

brought up.

Opening the door, she turned on the light and sprang to the table on

which her correspondence sometimes awaited her.

There was no letter; but the morning papers, still unread, lay at hand,

and glancing listlessly down the column which chronicles the doings of

society, she read:

“After an extended cruise in the AEgean and the Black Sea on their

steam-yacht Ibis, Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks and their daughter are

established at the Nouveau Luxe in Rome. They have lately had the honour

of entertaining at dinner the Reigning Prince of Teutoburger-Waldhain

and his mother the Princess Dowager, with their suite. Among those

invited to meet their Serene Highnesses were the French and Spanish

Ambassadors, the Duchesse de Vichy, Prince and Princess Bagnidilucca,

Lady Penelope Pantiles--” Susy’s eye flew impatiently on over the long

list of titles--“and Mr. Nicholas Lansing of New York, who has been

cruising with Mr. and Mrs. Hicks on the Ibis for the last few months.”

XX.

THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former times

have been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagna

or the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied fever

and nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all the

ostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilings

of one of the high-perched “Palaces,” where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelessly

declared, they could “rely on the plumbing,” and “have the privilege 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 Eternal City, that had

suddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point of

view.

As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedly

joined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidious

and unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had run

across a Reigning Prince on his travels.

Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs.

Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was the

only one which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed an

intellect, in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to one

of the most beautiful Field Marshal’s uniforms that had ever encased a

royal warrior. The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping,

pacific and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had been

revealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph in

a Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written slantingly across its

legs. The Prince--and herein lay the Hickses’ undoing--the Prince was

an archaeologist: an earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulous

archaeologist. Delicate health (so his suite hinted) banished him for

a part of each year from his cold and foggy principality; and in the

company of his mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, he

wandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting at

the exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of Delphic

temples or of North African basilicas. The beginning of winter usually

brought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice, unless indeed they

were summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for an

extended connection with the principal royal houses of Europe compelled

them, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying or marrying a

cousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere

of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more

modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.

Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in Palace

Hotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them,

they liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by their

friends--“or even to tea, my dear,” the Princess laughingly avowed,

“for I’m so awfully fond of buttered scones; 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 had known a great many

archaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and above

all never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve in

Libyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these two

gifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to “marry a cousin” at

the Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly to

the far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade had

dropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages should be

unable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, and

should enjoy themselves “like babies” when they were invited to the

other kind of “Palace,” to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.

She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,

after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic than

anyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested by

the fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.

But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and his

mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the

thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who

overran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing,

and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive

and self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this

cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own

frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of the

eccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who had

hitherto represented the higher life to the Hickses.

Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic and

luxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing and

yet keeping the talk on the highest level. “If the poor dear Princess

wants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn’t we give her that

pleasure?” Mrs. Hicks smilingly enquired; “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, with her

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 that Mrs. Hicks’s outline became

firmer, her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that,

should anyone chance to detect the daughter’s likeness to her mother,

the result was less likely to be disturbing.

Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but note

because of the different standards of the society in which the Hickses

now moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy of

the Prince and his mother--who continually declared themselves to be

the pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless

involved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who

frequented them. The Prince’s aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man of

easy manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses, though

so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed to

inspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wished

to invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks’s lists,

having been “submitted,” usually came back lengthened by the addition of

numerous wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck out

a name; they welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses’ oddest

and most inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a

later day on the plea that it would be “cosier” to meet them on a more

private occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends of

their own, with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (though

socially so well-provided for) to have the “immense privilege” of

knowing the Hickses. And thus it happened that when October gales

necessitated laying up the Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome

the august travellers from whom they had parted the previous month in

Athens, also found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital

contained of fashion.

It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the Princess

Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings of

Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousness

of perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea and

modern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,

while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his

mother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to

himself--“Since poor Mamma,” as he observed, “is so courageous when 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 were under

obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled persons

whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; “and it seems to their Serene

Highnesses,” he added, “the most flattering return they can make for

the hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectual

opportunity.”

The dinner-table at which their Highnesses’ friends were seated on

the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatest

intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were grouped

about the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck had

been excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy parties

and begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirty

at table. Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her

faithful followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same

skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses’ social circle usually

managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries.

Their banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that,

for the last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles’s place, and was

himself their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post,

his obvious duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers’

requirements; and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that

he had, as Eldorada ungrudgingly said, “Something of Mr. Buttles’s

marvellous social gifts.”

During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was glad

of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as the

Hickses’ secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large cheque

which Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshed

his languishing sense of self-respect.

He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses’

affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of people

he liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounter

with the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as that

of his employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and

estimable assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had

become a social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in

his capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, and

surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, the

Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess Mother’s rich and

aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him with enthusiastic “Old

Nicks”, and he was almost as familiar as His Highness’s own aide-de-camp

with all those secret ramifications of love and hate that made

dinner-giving so much more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.

Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of

subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing’s

hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if

the young man’s value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had

deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had

not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in

bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners

and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had

caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks’s, Nick had flushed to

the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job the

next day.

Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.

He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient

in humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not

restored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked

about the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he

would give up his position on the morrow.

Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was Coral

Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall lean

countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes

perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a

pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed

or fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally

caught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.

In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.

Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a

street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which

had brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest

society of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.

Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also

looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;

but as his eyes met Lansing’s he readjusted his official smile.

“I was admiring our hostess’s daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--an

inspiration,” he remarked in the confidential tone which 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 if inspirations were rarer

than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. “She is the equal

of any situation, I am sure,” he replied; and then abandoned the subject

with one of his automatic transitions.

After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised

Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it

needful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his

manner was studiously informal.

“I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks’s invariable sense of

appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost

any future, however exalted.”

Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted to

know what was in his companion’s mind.

“What do you mean by exalted?” he asked, with a smile of faint

amusement.

“Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye.”

Lansing still smiled. “The question is, I suppose, whether her desire 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 eyes completed the

sentence; and it was Lansing’s turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced the

stare. “Yes,” his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:

“The Princess Mother admires her immensely.” But at that moment a wave

of Mrs. Hicks’s fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.

“Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the difference

between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but the

Manager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris have

arrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room and

take a peep at them.... 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 lifted the

scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been 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 the Prince’s founding a family,

suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburger

treasury....

Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princely

guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took little

interest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from the

party, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled but

smiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the difference

between Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.

Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observe

the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centre

of all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she was

growing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massive

lines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her long

eye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the large

beauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was

nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprised

that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had discerned 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 drifted to guess that,

within a very short time, the hint of the Prince’s aide-de-camp would

reappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself would

probably--as the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom one

could intelligibly commune--be entrusted with the next step in the

negotiations: he would be asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said,

“to feel the ground.” It was clearly part of the state policy of

Teutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an

opportunity to replenish its treasury.

What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt that

her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knew

no more what his own was going to be than on the night, four months

earlier, when he had flung out of his wife’s room in Venice to take the

midnight express for Genoa.

The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had once

prided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances it

offered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that he

had never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of his

immediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to give

himself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurrying

past it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the manner

of the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had always

grouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked his

life with Susy’s that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into a

future he longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his own

wants and purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that future

had become his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.

Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him.

He had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he felt

like a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, for

lack of skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield a

trowel and carry bricks. He simply did not know how.

Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself

to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a

succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing

of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting

their burden on others. The making of the substance called character was

a process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; and

the thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodge

one’s descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinct

was the one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitive

joys to linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....

XXI.

ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events had

followed the course foreseen by Susy.

She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, and

he had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she had

expected, the kiss less difficult to receive.

She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learning

that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it though

she had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for the

first time the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had not

written--the modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it to

time and the newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagine

Nick’s saying to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded

him of an unanswered letter: “But there are lots of ways of answering a

letter--and writing doesn’t happen to be mine.”

Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute, as

she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herself

dropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in the

Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body and

nerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she felt

herself irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. He

didn’t want her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all the

old expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the atropine

for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Strefford

and his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners of

the Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven no

one would say: “Poor old Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?” They

would all say: “Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck

him; but Altringham’s mad to marry her, and what could she do?”

And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeing

her at Lord Altringham’s table, with the Ascots and the old Duchess

of Dunes, the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner as

confirming the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn’t

wait nowadays to announce their “engagements” till the tiresome divorce

proceedings were over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined,

had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in

conspicuous tête-à-tête, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.

Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemed

to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As the party, after dinner,

drifted from the restaurant back into the hall, she caught, in the

smiles and hand-pressures crowding about her, the scarcely-repressed

hint of official congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner

with Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whisper

tenderly: “It’s most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be wearing

any jewels.”

In all the women’s eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels she

could wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reached

her from the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringham

strong-box. What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would ever

believe she didn’t care for them!

The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade less

affable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan--and

the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probably

every one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes was

delightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls

(Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality

was so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to

account for than Lady Ascot’s coldness, till she heard the old lady, as

they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew:

“Streff, dearest, when you have a minute’s time, and can drop in at

my wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words what

I ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you’ll bring

your exquisite American to see me, won’t you!... No, Joan Senechal’s too

fair for my taste.... Insipid....”

Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days later

she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford’s endearments could

have been so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when he

did touch her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter.

An almost complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to the

first wild flurry of her nerves.

And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. If

it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure,

the very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhile

she was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum of

bliss to most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, the

exhilaration of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel

or a bibelot or a new “model” that one’s best friend wanted, or of being

invited to some private show, or some exclusive entertainment, that

one’s best friend couldn’t get to. There was nothing, now, that she

couldn’t buy, nowhere that she couldn’t go: she had only to choose and

to triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave her

the illusion of enjoyment.

Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England,

and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, and

virtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiest

part of it would be just the being with Strefford--the falling back

on their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,

though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remained

curiously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the

old Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view had

changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the small

sides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction;

and though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations,

it was now with a jealous laughter.

It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all the

people who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same table

persons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited together

lest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating was

the capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when the

brilliant and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for

example, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine

with the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month’s

holiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar’s wife while the Duchess

narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and

Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had once

been supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.

Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher

order; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas

Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied

with such triumphs.

Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to

have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,

and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of

ossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his

wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert

himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his

limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been

his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he

was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the

first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were

talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit

of saying over and over again: “Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am

I getting deaf, I wonder?” which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of

a corresponding mental infirmity.

These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity

on which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;

and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his

relation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw

that he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances after

their first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring of

imagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.

She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,

and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce

she had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her

asking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be

in the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was to

consult a young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she felt

she could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, and

probably unacquainted with her history.

She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she was

surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it was

a shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in New

York or Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.

“I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it could

always be managed,” she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, after

the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.

The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely client

evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her

inexperience.

“It can be--generally,” he admitted; “and especially so if... as I

gather is the case... your husband is equally anxious....”

“Oh, quite!” she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to admit it.

“Well, then--may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point, the best

way would be for you to write to him?”

She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers

would not “manage it” without her intervention.

“Write to him... but what about?”

“Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I

assume,” said the young lawyer, “may be left to Mr. Lansing.”

She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by

the idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train

of thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she

confess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He

would, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated

perplexedly.

“Wouldn’t it be better,” she suggested, “if the letter were to come

from--from your office?”

He considered this politely. “On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an

amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence then

a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable.”

“An interview? Is an interview necessary?” She was ashamed to show her

agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at

her childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was

uncontrollable.

“Oh, please write to him--I can’t! And I can’t see him! Oh, can’t you

arrange it for me?” she pleaded.

She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something

one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete and

portable, that Strefford’s money could pay for, and that it required no

personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her!

Stiffening herself, she rose from her seat.

“My husband and I don’t wish to see each other again.... I’m sure it

would be useless... and very painful.”

“You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from

you, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of

evidence....”

“Very well, then; I’ll write,” she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely

hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her

letter.

That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been impossible,

if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed into her box. He

was just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses (“a bang-up

show--they’re really lances--you wouldn’t know them!”), and had met there

Lansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral “as soon as things

were settled”. “You were dead right, weren’t you, Susy,” he snickered,

“that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking

about their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the

Hickses, and sent Streff up to drag us back just as we were breaking in!

You remember?”

He flung off the “Streff” airily, in the old way, but with a tentative

side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said

coldly: “Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn’t catch what he

said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?”

After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her

at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her

address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge’s

snicker, and the words rushed from her. “Nick dear, it was July when you

left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you

said you had gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.

“You haven’t written yet, and it is five months since you left me. That

means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me

mine. Wouldn’t it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse

than anything to go on as we are now. I don’t know how to put these

things but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would

prefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer

here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--”

She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him

or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and

she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above

all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few

lines would be torture. So she left “I hope,” and simply added: “to hear

before long what you have decided.”

She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past--not one

allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had

enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place

had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted

to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other

Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed

concerned with the present business.

The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence

in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either

tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the

sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the

nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time

would be gained. “I want it out of the house,” she insisted: and waited

sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the

errand.

As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and

she remembered the lawyer’s injunction to take a copy of her letter. A

copy to be filed away with the documents in “Lansing versus Lansing!”

She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she

wondered? Didn’t the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the

sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget

a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she

was lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the darkness,

while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out: “Nick dear, it was

July when you left me...” and so on, word after word, down to the last

fatal syllable?

XXII.

STREFFORD was leaving for England.

Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,

he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason

for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their

plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the

marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that

the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence

reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to

be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were

perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her

because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.

“To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,” she

laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois

de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. “I

believe I’m only a protection to you.”

An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he

was thinking: “And what else am I to you?”

She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: “Well, you’re that

at any rate, thank the Lord!”

She pondered, and then questioned: “But in the interval--how are you

going to defend yourself for another year?”

“Ah, you’ve got to see to that; you’ve got to take a little house in

London. You’ve got to look after me, you know.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: “Oh, if that’s all

you care--!” But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as

possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could

not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same

question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford

was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,

perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating

every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her

as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit

entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he

was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew

he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by

her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps

those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.

She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but

the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably

depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.

The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would

have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the other

women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as

little Breckenridge would have said, she could “pull it off”; but she

did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would have

been to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till they

were married. But she dared not tell him that either.

“A little house in London--?” She wondered.

“Well, I suppose you’ve got to have some sort of a roof over your head.”

“I suppose so.”

He sat down beside her. “If you like me well enough to live at

Altringham some day, won’t you, in the meantime, let me provide you with

a smaller and more convenient establishment?”

Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on

Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any

one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the

prospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run,

would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to

her independence, than Altringham’s little establishment. But she

temporized. “I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while

with various people--then we can look about.”

“All right; as you like.” He obviously considered her hesitation

ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started

divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.

“And now, look here, my dear; couldn’t I give you some sort of a ring?”

“A ring?” She flushed at the suggestion. “What’s the use, Streff, dear?

With all those jewels locked away in London--”

“Oh, I daresay you’ll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why

shouldn’t I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer

yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like

sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I’ve seen a thumping one....

I’d like you to have it.”

Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their

case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an

unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season

for her unmating and re-mating.

“I wish you wouldn’t speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I

can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn.”

“Hullo? What’s wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?”

“Not that only.... You don’t know.... I can’t tell you....” She shivered

at the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had been

sitting.

Strefford gave his careless shrug. “Well, my dear, you can hardly expect

me to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being so

long alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn’t prolonged their

honeymoon at the villa--”

He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that every

drop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,

flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemed

as though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreducible

pain.

“Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimer

who--?”

Strefford still stared. “You mean to say you didn’t know?”

“Who came after Nick and me...?” she insisted.

“Why, do you suppose I’d have turned you out otherwise? That beastly

Bockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there’s one good

thing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like the

little place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there for

a day or two.... Susy, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.

She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam and

danced before her eyes.

“Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?”

“Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?”

She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. “She and Algie

Bockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?”

“I suppose so. I thought she’d told you. Ellie always tells everybody

everything.”

“She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn’t let her.”

“Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don’t

see--”

But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks before

her eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. “It was their motor,

then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer’s motor!” She did

not know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident in

the whole hateful business. She remembered Nick’s reluctance to use the

motor--she remembered his look when she had boasted of her “managing.”

The nausea mounted to her throat.

Strefford burst out laughing. “I say--you borrowed their motor? And you

didn’t know whose it was?”

“How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....

It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs so

frightfully in Italy....”

“Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it--”

“Oh, how horrible--how horrible!” she groaned.

“Horrible? What’s horrible?”

“Why, your not seeing... not feeling...” she began impetuously; and then

stopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not so

much the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she and

Nick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the vision

of them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of the

terrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it was

not that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,

living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn’s house, should at the same time

have secretly abetted Ellie Vanderlyn’s love-affairs, and allowed

her--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. The

reproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in the

wretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, and

of revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She was

not afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford’s eyes: he

was untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, with

a sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what she

could not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness of

Nick’s standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.

She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently down

to the seat beside him. “Susy, upon my soul I don’t know what you’re

driving at. Is it me you’re angry with--or yourself? And what’s it all

about! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren’t

married! But, hang it, they’re the kind that pay the highest price and

I had to earn my living somehow! One doesn’t run across a bridal pair

every day....”

She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,

it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even that

ill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already known

about him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point of

view of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spite

of the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as they

judged, was blind as they were--and as she would be expected to be,

should she once again become one of them. What was the use of being

placed by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one’s heart

one still condoned them? And she would have to--she would catch the

general note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, and

gradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestly

wondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing some

new-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but beside

which all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pride

nothing, the security of her future nothing.

“What is it, Susy?” he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.

Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She had

felt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick’s indignation had shut

her out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in the

pain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in her

again something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulated

indifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,

and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secret

shared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, he

could not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he had

left her with a child.

“My dear girl,” Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,

“you know we’re dining at the Embassy....”

At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,

they were dining that night at the Ascots’, with Strefford’s cousin, the

Duke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;

with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-law

had come over from England to see; and with other English and French

guests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that her

inclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definite

recognition as Altringham’s future wife. She was “the little American”

whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.

The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.

“It’s late, dear; and I’ve got to see someone on business first,”

Strefford reminded her patiently.

“Oh, Streff--I can’t, I can’t!” The words broke from her without her

knowing what she was saying. “I can’t go with you--I can’t go to the

Embassy. I can’t go on any longer like this....” She lifted her eyes

to his in desperate appeal. “Oh, understand--do please understand!” she

wailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what she

asked.

Strefford’s face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turned

to a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironic

eyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.

“Understand? What do you want me to understand,” He laughed. “That

you’re trying to chuck me already?”

She shrank at the sneer of the “already,” but instantly remembered that

it was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was just

because he couldn’t understand that she was flying from him.

“Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!”

“It doesn’t so much matter about the how. Is that what you’re trying to

say?”

Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the path

at her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.

“The reason,” he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, “is

not quite as important to me as the fact.”

She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, he

had remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courage

to go on.

“It wouldn’t do, Streff. I’m not a bit the kind of person to make you

happy.”

“Oh, leave that to me, please, won’t you?”

“No, I can’t. Because I should be unhappy too.”

He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. “You’ve taken a rather

long time to find it out.” She saw that his new-born sense of his own

consequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;

and that again gave her courage.

“If I’ve taken long it’s all the more reason why I shouldn’t take

longer. If I’ve made a mistake it’s you who would have suffered from

it....”

“Thanks,” he said, “for your extreme solicitude.”

She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense of

their inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,

during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, and

wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do

not inevitably become mere blurs to each other’s vision. She would have

liked to say this to Streff--but he would not have understood it either.

The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vain

for a word that should reach him.

“Let me go home alone, won’t you?” she appealed to him.

“Alone?”

She nodded. “To-morrow--to-morrow....”

He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. “Hang to-morrow! Whatever is wrong,

it needn’t prevent my seeing you home.” He glanced toward the taxi that

awaited them at the end of the deserted drive.

“No, please. You’re in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a long

long walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights coming

out....”

He laid his hand on her arm. “I say, my dear, you’re not ill?”

“No; I’m not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy.”

He released her and drew back. “Oh, very well,” he answered coldly;

and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at that

moment he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the deserted

alley, flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was still

standing there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated,

uncomprehending. It was neither her fault nor his....

XXIII.

AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedom

seemed to blow into her face.

Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months had

dropped from her: she was herself again, Nick’s Susy, and no one else’s.

She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facades

of the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakening

glitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she would

never again be able to buy....

In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner’s window, and said

to herself: “Why shouldn’t I earn my living by trimming hats?” She met

work-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch trams

and omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tired

independent faces. “Why shouldn’t I earn my living as well as they do?”

she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity with

softly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in her

capacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: “Why shouldn’t I be

a Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a white

coif helping poor people?”

All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back at

enviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and would

not have known what she meant if she had told them that she must have

so much money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much for

bridge and cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at that

moment she ought to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy,

where her permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognized

and ratified.

The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as with

stifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long panting

breaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly,

she began to saunter along a street of small private houses in damp

gardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not far

off, the Arc de Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it a

river of lights streamed down toward Paris, and the stir of the city’s

heart-beats troubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. She

seemed to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; and

as she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in the

evening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the glittering

avenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows from which it takes

its name, and as if she were a ghost among ghosts.

Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seated

herself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors and

carriages were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares,

streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out of each other in a

tangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels and

shirt-fronts and hard bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur and

velvet. She seemed to hear what the couples were saying to each other,

she pictured the drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they were

hastening to, the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, as

Time, the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of their

carriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense of

release....

At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing a

man in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and Nelson

Vanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,

and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had he

guessed, of her complicity in his wife’s affairs? No doubt Ellie had

blabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide her

love-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prize

was landed.

“Well--well--well--so I’ve caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy,

my dear.” She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn’s, and

his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing

matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or

hate or remember?

“No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself,” Vanderlyn continued,

visibly delighted at the meeting. “Look here, don’t suppose you’re out

of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone

bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that’s luck for once! I say, where

shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl

the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the

times! Hold on, taxi! Here--I’ll drive you home first, and wait while

you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.” As he steered her toward the

carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in

after her with difficulty.

“Mayn’t I come as I am, Nelson, I don’t feel like dancing. Let’s go and

dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la

Bourse.”

He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off

together. In a corner at Bauge’s they found a quiet table, screened from

the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study

the carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more

than his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat

wrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at

smartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its

familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match

his clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker,

shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of

high spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands

of hair were skilfully brushed over his baldness.

“Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?” He chose,

fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little at

the bourgeois character of the dishes. “Capital food of its kind, no

doubt, but coarsish, don’t you think? Well, I don’t mind... it’s rather

a jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation--I’m all for new

sensations, ain’t you, my dear?” He re-filled their champagne glasses,

flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy

benevolence.

As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.

“Suppose you know what I’m here for--this divorce business? We wanted to

settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place

for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None

of your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... they

understand Life over here!”

Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson

would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to

truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of

his perpetual ejaculation--“Caught you at it, eh?”--seemed to hint at a

constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,

as the saying was, he had “swallowed his dose” like all the others. No

strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal

stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to

rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the

patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.

“Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything’s changed

nowadays; why shouldn’t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business

partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up

to each other for life because we’ve blundered into a church one day and

said ‘Yes’ before one of ’em. No, no--that’s too easy. We’ve got

beyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the Ten

Commandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and

there ain’t a word against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That’s what I tell my

poor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place

where it says: ‘Thou shalt not sue for divorce.’ It makes her wild, poor

old lady, because she can’t; and she doesn’t know how they happen to

have left it out.... I rather think Moses left it out because he knew

more about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not

that they’ll always bear investigating either; but I don’t care about

that. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven’t we all got a right to our

Affinities? I hear you’re following our example yourself. First-rate

idea: I don’t mind telling you I saw it coming on last summer at Venice.

Caught you at it, so to speak! Old Nelson ain’t as blind as people

think. Here, let’s open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs.

Streff!”

She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier.

This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a

more heroic figure. “No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides,” she

suddenly added, “it’s not true.”

He stared. “Not true that you’re going to marry Altringham?”

“No.”

“By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain’t you got an

Affinity, my dear?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Do you mean to tell me it’s all Nick’s doing, then?”

“I don’t know. Let’s talk of you instead, Nelson. I’m glad you’re in

such good spirits. I rather thought--”

He interrupted her quickly. “Thought I’d cut up a rumpus--do some

shooting? I know--people did.” He twisted his moustache, evidently proud

of his reputation. “Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two--but I’m

a philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I’d made and

lost two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build ’em up again? Not by

shooting anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning all

over again. That’s how... and that’s what I am doing now. Beginning all

over again.” His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistful

melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a

mask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes,

that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep

seas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar to

which he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played

in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her with

such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance

and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon.

Suddenly she too felt old--old and unspeakably tired.

“It’s been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home.”

He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty air

while he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behind

her after calling for a taxi.

They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: “And Clarissa?” but dared

not ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared out

of the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.

“Susy--do you ever see her?”

“See--Ellie?”

He nodded, without turning toward her.

“Not often... sometimes....”

“If you do, for God’s sake tell her I’m happy... happy as a king...

tell her you could see for yourself that I was....” His voice broke in

a little gasp. “I... I’ll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappy

about me... if I can help it....” The cigarette dropped from his

fingers, and with a sob he covered his face.

“Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson,” Susy breathed. While their cab rattled

across the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued to

sit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scented

handkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.

“I’m all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our old

times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindly

to her, and not angry. I didn’t know it would be so, beforehand--but it

is.... And now the thing’s settled I’m as right as a trivet, and you can

tell her so.... Look here, Susy...” he caught her by the arm as the taxi

drew up at her hotel.... “Tell her I understand, will you? I’d rather

like her to know that....”

“I’ll tell her, Nelson,” she promised; and climbed the stairs alone to

her dreary room.

Susy’s one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day,

should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of “nerves”

to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeply

to seek to see her at once; but his easygoing modern attitude toward

conduct and convictions made that improbable. She had an idea that

what he had most minded was her dropping so unceremoniously out of the

Embassy Dinner.

But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough of

explanations during the last months to have learned how seldom they

explain anything. If the other person did not understand at the first

word, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only to

deepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all--and especially since her

hour with Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retain

her hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote to

Strefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to write than

the one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelings

were in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to give

up Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, his

forbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had always

liked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which must

cause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. She

knew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way she

framed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then she

remembered Vanderlyn’s words about his wife: “There are some of our

old times I don’t suppose I shall ever forget--” and a phrase of Grace

Fulmer’s that she had but half grasped at the time: “You haven’t been

married long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in the

balance of one’s memories.”

Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the

labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of

its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other

half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning

on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding

is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and

denial.

“The real reason is that you’re not Nick” was what she would have said

to Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knew

that, whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.

“He’ll think it’s because I’m still in love with Nick... and perhaps I

am. But even if I were, the difference doesn’t seem to lie there, after

all, but deeper, in things we’ve shared that seem to be meant to outlast

love, or to change it into something different.” If she could have

hoped to make Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easy

enough to write--but she knew just at what point his imagination would

fail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest.

“Poor Streff--poor me!” she thought as she sealed the letter.

After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. She

had succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts,

returns upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. But

they left a queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about as

thoughts might, she supposed, in the first moments after death--before

one got used to it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be her

immediate business. And she felt such a novice at it--felt so horribly

alive! How had those others learned to do without living? Nelson--well,

he was still in the throes; and probably never would understand, or

be able to communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But Grace

Fulmer--she suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forth

to find her.

XXIV.

NICK LANSING had walked out a long way into the Campagna. His hours were

seldom his own, for both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were becoming more and more

addicted to sudden and somewhat imperious demands upon his time; but on

this occasion he had simply slipped away after luncheon, and taking the

tram to the Porta Salaria, had wandered on thence in the direction of

the Ponte Nomentano.

He wanted to get away and think; but now that he had done it the

business proved as unfruitful as everything he had put his hand to since

he had left Venice. Think--think about what? His future seemed to him

a negligible matter since he had received, two months earlier, the few

lines in which Susy had asked him for her freedom.

The letter had been a shock--though he had fancied himself so prepared

for it--yet it had also, in another sense, been a relief, since, now

that at last circumstances compelled him to write to her, they also told

him what to say. And he had said it as briefly and simply as possible,

telling her that he would put no obstacle in the way of her release,

that he held himself at her lawyer’s disposal to answer any further

communication--and that he would never forget their days together, or

cease to bless her for them.

That was all. He gave his Roman banker’s address, and waited for another

letter; but none came. Probably the “formalities,” whatever they were,

took longer than he had supposed; and being in no haste to recover his

own liberty, he did not try to learn the cause of the delay. From that

moment, however, he considered himself virtually free, and ceased, by

the same token, to take any interest in his own future. His life seemed

as flat as a convalescent’s first days after the fever has dropped.

The only thing he was sure of was that he was not going to remain in

the Hickses’ employ: when they left Rome for Central Asia he had no

intention of accompanying them. The part of Mr. Buttles’ successor was

becoming daily more intolerable to him, for the very reasons that had

probably made it most gratifying to Mr. Buttles. To be treated by Mr.

and Mrs. Hicks as a paid oracle, a paraded and petted piece of property,

was a good deal more distasteful than he could have imagined any

relation with these kindly people could be. And since their aspirations

had become frankly social he found his task, if easier, yet far less

congenial than during his first months with them. He preferred patiently

explaining to Mrs. Hicks, for the hundredth time, that Sassanian and

Saracenic were not interchangeable terms, to unravelling for her the

genealogies of her titled guests, and reminding her, when she “seated”

her dinner-parties, that Dukes ranked higher than Princes. No--the job

was decidedly intolerable; and he would have to look out for another

means of earning his living. But that was not what he had really got

away to think about. He knew he should never starve; he had even begun

to believe again in his book. What he wanted to think of was Susy--or

rather, it was Susy that he could not help thinking of, on whatever

train of thought he set out.

Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had

come to terms--the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy

called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely

knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy

had embarked on. It had been the tragedy, of their relation that loving

her roused in him ideals she could never satisfy. He had fallen in

love with her because she was, like himself, amused, unprejudiced and

disenchanted; and he could not go on loving her unless she ceased to

be all these things. From that circle there was no issue, and in it he

desperately revolved.

If he had not heard such persistent rumours of her re-marriage to Lord

Altringham he might have tried to see her again; but, aware of the

danger and the hopelessness of a meeting, he was, on the whole, glad to

have a reason for avoiding it. Such, at least, he honestly supposed to

be his state of mind until he found himself, as on this occasion, free

to follow out his thought to its end. That end, invariably, was Susy;

not the bundle of qualities and defects into which his critical

spirit had tried to sort her out, but the soft blur of identity, of

personality, of eyes, hair, mouth, laugh, tricks of speech and gesture,

that were all so solely and profoundly her own, and yet so mysteriously

independent of what she might do, say, think, in crucial circumstances.

He remembered her once saying to him: “After all, you were right

when you wanted me to be your mistress,” and the indignant stare of

incredulity with which he had answered her. Yet in these hours it

was the palpable image of her that clung closest, till, as invariably

happened, his vision came full circle, and feeling her on his breast he

wanted her also in his soul.

Well--such all-encompassing loves were the rarest of human experiences;

he smiled at his presumption in wanting no other. Wearily he turned, and

tramped homeward through the winter twilight....

At the door of the hotel he ran across the Prince of Teutoburg’s

aide-de-camp. They had not met for some days, and Nick had a vague

feeling that if the Prince’s matrimonial designs took definite shape he

himself was not likely, after all, to be their chosen exponent. He

had surprised, now and then, a certain distrustful coldness under the

Princess Mother’s cordial glance, and had concluded that she perhaps

suspected him of being an obstacle to her son’s aspirations. He had no

idea of playing that part, but was not sorry to appear to; for he was

sincerely attached to Coral Hicks, and hoped for her a more human fate

than that of becoming Prince Anastasius’s consort.

This evening, however, he was struck by the beaming alacrity of the

aide-de-camp’s greeting. Whatever cloud had hung between them had

lifted: the Teutoburg clan, for one reason or another, no longer feared

or distrusted him. The change was conveyed in a mere hand-pressure,

a brief exchange of words, for the aide-de-camp was hastening after a

well-known dowager of the old Roman world, whom he helped into a large

coronetted brougham which looked as if it had been extracted, for

some ceremonial purpose, from a museum of historic vehicles. And in an

instant it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen

to lay the Prince’s offer at Miss Hicks’s feet.

The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own

room he went up to Mrs. Hicks’s drawing-room.

The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an

immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table. As he turned

away, Eldorada Tooker, flushed and tear-stained, abruptly entered.

“Oh, Mr. Lansing--we were looking everywhere for you.”

“Looking for me?”

“Yes. Coral especially... she wants to see you. She wants you to come to

her own sitting-room.”

She led him across the ante-chamber and down the passage to the separate

suite which Miss Hicks inhabited. On the threshold Eldorada gasped out

emotionally: “You’ll find her looking lovely--” and jerked away with a

sob as he entered.

Coral Hicks was never lovely: but she certainly looked unusually

handsome. Perhaps it was the long dress of black velvet which, outlined

against a shaded lamp, made her strong build seem slenderer, or perhaps

the slight flush on her dusky cheek: a bloom of womanhood hung upon

her which she made no effort to dissemble. Indeed, it was one of her

originalities that she always gravely and courageously revealed the

utmost of whatever mood possessed her.

“How splendid you look!” he said, smiling at her.

She threw her head back and gazed him straight in the eyes. “That’s

going to be my future job.”

“To look splendid?”

“Yes.”

“And wear a crown?”

“And wear a crown....”

They continued to consider each other without speaking. Nick’s heart

contracted with pity and perplexity.

“Oh, Coral--it’s not decided?”

She scrutinized him for a last penetrating moment; then she looked away.

“I’m never long deciding.”

He hesitated, choking with contradictory impulses, and afraid to

formulate any, lest they should either mislead or pain her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he questioned lamely; and instantly perceived

his blunder.

She sat down, and looked up at him under brooding lashes--had he ever

noticed the thickness of her lashes before?

“Would it have made any difference if I had told you?”

“Any difference--?”

“Sit down by me,” she commanded. “I want to talk to you. You can say

now whatever you might have said sooner. I’m not married yet: I’m still

free.”

“You haven’t given your answer?”

“It doesn’t matter if I have.”

The retort frightened him with the glimpse of what she still expected of

him, and what he was still so unable to give.

“That means you’ve said yes?” he pursued, to gain time.

“Yes or no--it doesn’t matter. I had to say something. What I want is

your advice.”

“At the eleventh hour?”

“Or the twelfth.” She paused. “What shall I do?” she questioned, with a

sudden accent of helplessness.

He looked at her as helplessly. He could not say: “Ask yourself--ask

your parents.” Her next word would sweep away such frail hypocrisies.

Her “What shall I do?” meant “What are you going to do?” and he knew it,

and knew that she knew it.

“I’m a bad person to give any one matrimonial advice,” he began, with a

strained smile; “but I had such a different vision for you.”

“What kind of a vision?” She was merciless.

“Merely what people call happiness, dear.”

“‘People call’--you see you don’t believe in it yourself! Well, neither

do I--in that form, at any rate.”

He considered. “I believe in trying for it--even if the trying’s the

best of it.”

“Well, I’ve tried, and failed. And I’m twenty-two, and I never was

young. I suppose I haven’t enough imagination.” She drew a deep breath.

“Now I want something different.” She appeared to search for the word.

“I want to be--prominent,” she declared.

“Prominent?”

She reddened swarthily. “Oh, you smile--you think it’s ridiculous: it

doesn’t seem worth while to you. That’s because you’ve always had all

those things. But I haven’t. I know what father pushed up from, and

I want to push up as high again--higher. No, I haven’t got much

imagination. I’ve always liked Facts. And I find I shall like the fact

of being a Princess--choosing the people I associate with, and being up

above all these European grandees that father and mother bow down to,

though they think they despise them. You can be up above these people by

just being yourself; you know how. But I need a platform--a sky-scraper.

Father and mother slaved to give me my education. They thought education

was the important thing; but, since we’ve all three of us got mediocre

minds, it has just landed us among mediocre people. Don’t you suppose I

see through all the sham science and sham art and sham everything we’re

surrounded with? That’s why I want to buy a place at the very top, where

I shall be powerful enough to get about me the people I want, the big

people, the right people, and to help them I want to promote culture,

like those Renaissance women you’re always talking about. I want to do

it for Apex City; do you understand? And for father and mother too. I

want all those titles carved on my tombstone. They’re facts, anyhow!

Don’t laugh at me....” She broke off with one of her clumsy smiles, and

moved away from him to the other end of the room.

He sat looking at her with a curious feeling of admiration. Her harsh

positivism was like a tonic to his disenchanted mood, and he thought:

“What a pity!”

Aloud he said: “I don’t feel like laughing at you. You’re a great

woman.”

“Then I shall be a great Princess.”

“Oh--but you might have been something so much greater!”

Her face flamed again. “Don’t say that!”

He stood up involuntarily, and drew near her.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the only man with whom I can imagine the other kind of

greatness.”

It moved him--moved him unexpectedly. He got as far as saying to

himself: “Good God, if she were not so hideously rich--” and then of

yielding for a moment to the persuasive vision of all that he and she

might do with those very riches which he dreaded. After all, there was

nothing mean in her ideals they were hard and material, in keeping with

her primitive and massive person; but they had a certain grim nobility.

And when she spoke of “the other kind of greatness” he knew that she

understood what she was talking of, and was not merely saying something

to draw him on, to get him to commit himself. There was not a drop of

guile in her, except that which her very honesty distilled.

“The other kind of greatness?” he repeated.

“Well, isn’t that what you said happiness was? I wanted to be happy...

but one can’t choose.”

He went up to her. “No, one can’t choose. And how can anyone give you

happiness who hasn’t got it himself?” He took her hands, feeling how

large, muscular and voluntary they were, even as they melted in his

palms.

“My poor Coral, of what use can I ever be to you? What you need is to be

loved.”

She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: “No,” she

said gallantly, “but just to love.”

PART III

XXV

IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked

back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four

eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two

months, she had been living with them.

She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year’s hat;

but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particular

pride in them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much about

them. Since she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in the

absence of both their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through such

an arduous apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her waking

hours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to remember

to do later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were

like an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was

equalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow

mute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book

in some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought of

hunting for them--and which, of course, were it the bonne’s room in the

attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been

singled out by them for that very reason.

These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy,

a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics

not calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She

had grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their

methods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the

development of a detective story.

What interested her most in the whole stirring business was the

discovery that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upward

into experience on the tossing waves of their parents’ agitated lives,

had managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government.

Junie, the eldest (the one who already chose her mother’s hats, and

tried to put order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of the

state. At twelve she knew lots of things which her mother had never

thoroughly learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never even

guessed at: she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, from

castor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of stamps

or marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or jam which each

child was entitled to.

There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjects

revolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to laws

which Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of this

mysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been without

difficulty for Susy.

Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six of

them, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, had

but a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you’d have thought

the boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, a

great deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. They

had definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and were

capable of concerted rebellion when Susy’s catering fell beneath their

standard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, but

never--what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.

It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmer

children had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. She

knew--had known since Nick’s first kiss--how she would love any child of

his and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn with

a shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers she

took a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear to

her. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; and

because their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.

However inadequate Grace Fulmer’s bringing-up of her increasing tribe

had been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: good

music, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if at

times they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessed

by such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry and

spoke with the voice of wisdom.

That had been Susy’s discovery: for the first time she was among

awakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From their

cramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed to

keep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above all

the din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like those

ancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Roman

households.

No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no sense

of a missed vocation: “mothering” on a large scale would never, she

perceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the sense

of being herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life of

immaterial values which had begun to seem so much more substantial than

any she had known.

On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfort

she had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She had

found her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding the

large untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian.

Grace was probably the only person among Susy’s friends who could have

understood why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; but

at the moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems to

pay much attention to her friend’s, and, according to her wont, she

immediately “unpacked” her difficulties.

Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.

Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be

fallow periods--that the impact of new impressions seldom produced

immediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience

of Nat’s moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating,

when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he

knew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too

much excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for

a while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Grace

spoke calmly, but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, oh

horribly, at his going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn’t, for the

children’s sake, afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had given

her for her fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, and

led, on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in private

houses in London. Fashionable society had made “a little fuss”

about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a new

importance in his eyes. “He was beginning to forget that I wasn’t only

a nursery-maid, and it’s been a good thing for him to be reminded...

but the great thing is that with what I’ve earned he and I can go off

to southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know how

to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: to

observing, feeling, soaking things in. It’s the only way. Mrs. Melrose

wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again--well she shan’t. I’ll

pay them.” Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. “And you’ll see what

wonders will come of it.... Only there’s the problem of the children.

Junie quite agrees that we can’t take them....”

Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and

hard up, why shouldn’t she take charge of the children while their

parents were in Italy? For three months at most--Grace could promise it

shouldn’t be longer. They couldn’t pay her much, of course, but at least

she would be lodged and fed. “And, you know, it will end by interesting

you--I’m sure it will,” the mother concluded, her irrepressible

hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with

a hesitating smile.

Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If

there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the

band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second

in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side

on their fatal day at the Fulmers’ and there were the twins, Jack and

Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule

this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile

Clarissa Vanderlyn’s ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the

spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives

had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for

advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said

in her quiet grown-up voice: “Oh, yes, I’m sure Mrs. Lansing and I can

manage while you’re away--especially if she reads aloud well.”

Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never

before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with

a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip

and the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showing

Strefford’s trinket to her father: “Because I said I’d rather have it

than a book.”

And here were children who consented to be left for three months by

their parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided for

them!

“Very well--I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?” she

had gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her sober

pauses of reflection: “The little ones like nearly everything; but Nat

and I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we so

often pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid.”

“Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right,” Susy murmured, stricken with

self-distrust and humility.

Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twins

and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing

page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night’s Dream,

to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at times

to be provided.

There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; but

its commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore less

fatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of people like

Altringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and the

noisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was beginning to greet her

with the eyes of home when she returned there after her tramps to and

from the children’s classes. At any rate she had the sense of doing

something useful and even necessary, and of earning her own keep, though

on so modest a scale; and when the children were in their quiet

mood, and demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at the

surprising Junie’s instigation, a collective visit to the Louvre, where

they recognized the most unlikely pictures, and the two elders emitted

startling technical judgments, and called their companion’s attention to

details she had not observed); on these occasions, Susy had a surprised

sense of being drawn back into her brief life with Nick, or even still

farther and deeper, into those visions of Nick’s own childhood on which

the trivial later years had heaped their dust.

It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, and

she had had a child--the vision used to come to her, in her sleepless

hours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed--their

life together might have been very much like the life she was now

leading, a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselves

how wide and deep and crowded!

She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mystic

relation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigue

of her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hours

when the children were as “horrid” as any other children, and turned a

conspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all this

she did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parents

returned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat’s

success continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they would

need a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture no

future less distasteful.

She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick’s answer to her letter. In the

interval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had broken

with Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. If

Nick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, as

the weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high when

she read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently “inspired”

allusion to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highness

the reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks of

Apex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on a

paragraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks “requested to state” that

there was no truth in the report.

On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-tower

of hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by every

chance hint from the outer world wherein Nick’s name figured with the

Hickses’. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, either

from him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quaking

structures.

Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little to

distract her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimes

at the thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had let

her drop out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days,

the feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.

Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanished

or to wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her

“engagement” (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the fact

gone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken up

when it was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know;

though she fancied Strefford’s newly-developed pride would prevent his

revealing to any one what had passed between them. For several days

after her abrupt flight he had made no sign; and though she longed to

write and ask his forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally it

was he who wrote: a short note, from Altringham, typical of all that was

best in the old Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her,

to think quietly over their last talk, and try to understand what

she had been driving at. He had to own that he couldn’t; but that, he

supposed, was the very head and front of his offending. Whatever he had

done to displease her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of his

invincible ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a cause

for a final break. The possibility of that, he found, would make him

even more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew, his own happiness

had always been his first object in life, and he therefore begged her to

suspend her decision a little longer. He expected to be in Paris within

another two months, and before arriving he would write again, and ask

her to see him.

The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote that

she was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he came

to Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yet

changed her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness to

have her try to do so.

He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep her

thoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.

On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the “cours” (to

which she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it was

two months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to release

him--and that after such a delay he was not likely to take any further

steps. The thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fix

an arbitrary date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed that

one; and behold she was justified. For what could his silence mean but

that he too....

On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. She

opened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman’s

office address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... “Has

notified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...

arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers....”

Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of Nick’s

return to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms!

She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and stared

vacantly before her. It had fallen at last--this blow in which she now

saw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she was

prepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future life

in view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the service of somebody

else’s children--when, in reality, under that thin surface of abnegation

and acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering red-hot in their

ashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, any

experience, if the lawless self underneath could in an instant consume

them like tinder?

She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened. Nick was

coming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! It

meant, of course, that he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;

and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after more

than six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could be

only because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.

Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and the

newspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. It

was evident that Miss Hicks’s projected marriage with the Prince of

Teutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and broken

off because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrival

in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks’s formal denial of

their daughter’s betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any other

inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to

picture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of Coral

Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy’s own!--and

entering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily welcomed by the very

people who, a few months before, had welcomed Susy with the same warmth.

In spite of Nick’s growing dislike of society, and Coral’s attitude of

intellectual superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back into

the world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and associations.

And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that world as a dispenser of

hospitality, to play the part of host where he had so long been a guest;

just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse her to re-enter it as Lady

Altringham.... But, try as she would, now that the reality was so close

on her, she could not visualize it or relate it to herself. The mere

juxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times she had

so often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her brain.

She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears running

down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngest

charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better,

but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the

house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to

him. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking

howls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak and

umbrella and hurried up.

“Oh, that child!” she groaned.

Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgence

of private sorrows. From morning till night there was always some

immediate practical demand on one’s attention; and Susy was beginning

to see how, in contracted households, children may play a part less

romantic but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction,

through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell on

irremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life

had been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mental

readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private cares

were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature, diet and medicine.

Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time it

happened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper.

“What a child I was myself six months ago!” she thought, wondering that

Nick’s influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have done

less to mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full of

children.

Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to use

his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with a

continuous supply of stories, songs and games. “You’d better be careful

never to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie,” the astute Junie had

warned Susy at the outset, “because he’s got such a memory, and he won’t

make it up with you till you’ve told him every fairy-tale he’s ever

heard before.”

But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie’s indignation

melted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and racking

her dazed brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by the

smoothing out of his mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that he

was going to give her the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock of

being a good boy.

Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; then

he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.

“Poor Susy got a pain too,” he said, putting his arms about her; and

as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: “Tell Geordie a new

story, darling, and you’ll forget all about it.”

XXVI.

NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer had announced

his coming to Mr. Spearman.

He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himself and Susy;

and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he had not concealed from

her the object of his journey. In vain had he tried to rouse in himself

any sense of interest in his own future. Beyond the need of reaching a

definite point in his relation to Susy his imagination could not travel.

But he had been moved by Coral’s confession, and his reason told him

that he and she would probably be happy together, with the temperate

happiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement of

opportunities. He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her to marry

him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had not spoken before

leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate, or keeping her longer

in suspense, but simply because of the strange apathy that had fallen

on him since he had received Susy’s letter. In his incessant

self-communings he dressed up this apathy as a discretion which forbade

his engaging Coral’s future till his own was assured. But in truth he

knew that Coral’s future was already engaged, and his with it: in Rome

the fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.

In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Not because

Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; but because hidden away

somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinth was the half-forgotten part

of himself that was Susy.... For weeks, for months past, his mind had

been saturated with Susy: she had never seemed more insistently near him

than as their separation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became

less probable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him had

broken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirt of his

memories. There were moments when, to his memory, their actual embraces

seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared with this deep deliberate

imprint of her soul on his.

Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was in the same

place with her, and might at any moment run across her, meet her eyes,

hear her voice, avoid her hand--now that penetrating ghost of her

with which he had been living was sucked back into the shadows, and

he seemed, for the first time since their parting, to be again in her

actual presence. He woke to the fact on the morning of his arrival,

staring down from his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk

through that very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one

of which covered her at that hour. The abruptness of the transition

startled him; he had not known that her mere geographical nearness would

take him by the throat in that way. What would it be, then, if she were

to walk into the room?

Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently informed as

to French divorce proceedings to know that they would not necessitate

a confrontation with his wife; and with ordinary luck, and some

precautions, he might escape even a distant glimpse of her. He did not

mean to remain in Paris more than a few days; and during that time it

would be easy--knowing, as he did, her tastes and Altringham’s--to avoid

the places where she was likely to be met. He did not know where she was

living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or some other

rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective affluence, at the Nouveau

Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own. Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to

“manage”!

His first visit was to his lawyer’s; and as he walked through the

familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure seemed

hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last, of course; but

meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive in a nightmare, who

feels himself the only creature visible in a ghostly and besetting

multitude. The eye of the metropolis seemed fixed on him in an immense

unblinking stare.

At the lawyer’s he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he must

secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this necessity: he

had seen too many friends through the Divorce Court, in one country

or another, not to be fairly familiar with the procedure. But the fact

presented a different aspect as soon as he tried to relate it to himself

and Susy: it was as though Susy’s personality were a medium through

which events still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the

“domicile” that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee,

obviously destined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after the

concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter’s payment in

her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy place, he burst

out laughing at what it was about to figure in the eyes of the law: a

Home, and a Home desecrated by his own act! The Home in which he and

Susy had reared their precarious bliss, and seen it crumble at the

brutal touch of his unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told

that he must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at the

walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze “nudes,”

the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed--and once more the

unreality, the impossibility, of all that was happening to him entered

like a drug into his veins.

To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous place, and

returned to his lawyer’s. He knew that in the hard dry atmosphere of the

office the act of giving the address of the flat would restore some kind

of reality to the phantasmal transaction. And with wonder he watched the

lawyer, as a matter of course, pencil the street and the number on one

of the papers enclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaborately

engrossed.

As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy was living. At

least he imagined that it had just occurred to him, and that he was

making the enquiry merely as a measure of precaution, in order to know

what quarter of Paris to avoid; but in reality the question had been on

his lips since he had first entered the office, and lurking in his mind

since he had emerged from the railway station that morning. The fact

of not knowing where she lived made the whole of Paris a meaningless

unintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a huge clock that

has lost its hour hand.

The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that she would be

somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees or the Place de

l’Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose or Ellie Vanderlyn had taken

a house at Passy. Well--it was something of a relief to know that she

was so far off. No business called him to that almost suburban region

beyond the Trocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than

if she had been in the centre of Paris.

All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, the streets

in which private motors glittered five deep, and furred and feathered

silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms, picture-galleries and

jewellers’ shops. In some such scenes Susy was no doubt figuring:

slenderer, finer, vivider, than the other images of clay, but imitating

their gestures, chattering their jargon, winding her hand among the same

pearls and sables. He struck away across the Seine, along the quays

to the Cite, the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.

Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed at monuments

dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and on quays, watching

people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in

linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges, derelicts doze in the pale

winter sun, mothers in mourning hasten by taking children to school, and

street-walkers beat their weary rounds before the cafes.

The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid of his

solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, or some

other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sure to

meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boite or a

dancing-hall. Anything, anything now, to get away from the maddening

round of his thoughts. He felt the same blank fear of solitude as months

ago in Genoa.... Even if he were to run across Susy and Altringham, what

of it? Better get the job over. People had long since ceased to take on

tragedy airs about divorce: dividing couples dined together to the last,

and met afterward in each other’s houses, happy in the consciousness

that their respective remarriages had provided two new centres of

entertainment. Yet most of the couples who took their re-matings so

philosophically had doubtless had their hour of enchantment, of belief

in the immortality of loving; whereas he and Susy had simply and frankly

entered into a business contract for their mutual advantage. The fact

gave the last touch of incongruity to his agonies and exaltations, and

made him appear to himself as grotesque and superannuated as the hero of

a romantic novel.

He stood up from a bench on which he had been lounging in the Luxembourg

gardens, and hailed a taxi. Dusk had fallen, and he meant to go back to

his hotel, take a rest, and then go out to dine. But instead, he threw

Susy’s address to the driver, and settled down in the cab, resting both

hands on the knob of his umbrella and staring straight ahead of him as

if he were accomplishing some tiresome duty that had to be got through

with before he could turn his mind to more important things.

“It’s the easiest way,” he heard himself say.

At the street-corner--her street-corner--he stopped the cab, and stood

motionless while it rattled away. It was a short vague street, much

farther off than he had expected, and fading away at the farther end in

a dusky blur of hoardings overhung by trees. A thin rain was beginning

to fall, and it was already night in this inadequately lit suburban

quarter. Lansing walked down the empty street. The houses stood a few

yards apart, with bare-twigged shrubs between, and gates and railings

dividing them from the pavement. He could not, at first, distinguish

their numbers; but presently, coming abreast of a street-lamp, he

discovered that the small shabby facade it illuminated was precisely

the one he sought. The discovery surprised him. He had imagined that, as

frequently happened in the outlying quarters of Passy and La Muette,

the mean street would lead to a stately private hotel, built upon some

bowery fragment of an old country-place. It was the latest whim of the

wealthy to establish themselves on these outskirts of Paris, where

there was still space for verdure; and he had pictured Susy behind

some pillared house-front, with lights pouring across glossy turf to

sculptured gateposts. Instead, he saw a six-windowed house, huddled

among neighbours of its kind, with the family wash fluttering between

meagre bushes. The arc-light beat ironically on its front, which had

the worn look of a tired work-woman’s face; and Lansing, as he leaned

against the opposite railing, vainly tried to fit his vision of Susy

into so humble a setting.

The probable explanation was that his lawyer had given him the wrong

address; not only the wrong number but the wrong street. He pulled out

the slip of paper, and was crossing over to decipher it under the lamp,

when an errand-boy appeared out of the obscurity, and approached the

house. Nick drew back, and the boy, unlatching the gate, ran up the

steps and gave the bell a pull.

Almost immediately the door opened; and there stood Susy, the light full

upon her, and upon a red-checked child against her shoulder. The space

behind them was dark, or so dimly lit that it formed a black background

to her vivid figure. She looked at the errand-boy without surprise, took

his parcel, and after he had turned away, lingered a moment in the door,

glancing down the empty street.

That moment, to her watcher, seemed quicker than a flash yet as long

as a life-time. There she was, a stone’s throw away, but utterly

unconscious of his presence: his Susy, the old Susy, and yet a new Susy,

curiously transformed, transfigured almost, by the new attitude in which

he beheld her.

In the first shock of the vision he forgot his surprise at her being in

such a place, forgot to wonder whose house she was in, or whose was

the sleepy child in her arms. For an instant she stood out from the

blackness behind her, and through the veil of the winter night, a thing

apart, an unconditioned vision, the eternal image of the woman and

the child; and in that instant everything within him was changed and

renewed. His eyes were still absorbing her, finding again the familiar

curves of her light body, noting the thinness of the lifted arm that

upheld the little boy, the droop of the shoulder he weighed on, the

brooding way in which her cheek leaned to his even while she looked

away; then she drew back, the door closed, and the street-lamp again

shone on blankness.

“But she’s mine!” Nick cried, in a fierce triumph of recovery...

His eyes were so full of her that he shut them to hold in the crowding

vision.

It remained with him, at first, as a complete picture; then gradually it

broke up into its component parts, the child vanished, the strange house

vanished, and Susy alone stood before him, his own Susy, only his Susy,

yet changed, worn, tempered--older, even--with sharper shadows under

the cheek-bones, the brows drawn, the joint of the slim wrist more

prominent. It was not thus that his memory had evoked her, and he