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...