X.
WITH a sigh of relief Susy drew the pins from her hat and threw herselfdown on the lounge.
The ordeal she had dreaded was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderlyn hadsafely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence,and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude tooopenly; but thanks to Susy's vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford'stacit co-operation), the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over.Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and thoughEllie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed toSusy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as itwas discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing.Before it had been discovered in the depths of the gondola they hadreached the station, and there was just time to thrust her into her"sleeper," from which she was seen to wave an unperturbed farewell toher friends.
"Well, my dear, we've been it through," Strefford remarked with a deepbreath as the St. Moritz express rolled away.
"Oh," Susy sighed in mute complicity; then, as if to cover herself-betrayal: "Poor darling, she does so like what she likes!"
"Yes--even if it's a rotten bounder," Strefford agreed.
"A rotten bounder? Why, I thought--"
"That it was still young Davenant? Lord, no--not for the last sixmonths. Didn't she tell you--?"
Susy felt herself redden. "I didn't ask her--"
"Ask her? You mean you didn't let her!"
"I didn't let her. And I don't let you," Susy added sharply, as hehelped her into the gondola.
"Oh, all right: I daresay you're right. It simplifies things," Streffordplacidly acquiesced.
She made no answer, and in silence they glided homeward.
Now, in the quiet of her own room, Susy lay and pondered on the distanceshe had travelled during the last year. Strefford had read her mind withhis usual penetration. It was true that there had been a time whenshe would have thought it perfectly natural that Ellie should tellher everything; that the name of young Davenant's successor should beconfided to her as a matter of course. Apparently even Ellie had beenobscurely aware of the change, for after a first attempt to force herconfidences on Susy she had contented herself with vague expressions ofgratitude, allusive smiles and sighs, and the pretty "surprise" of thesapphire bangle slipped onto her friend's wrist in the act of theirfarewell embrace.
The bangle was extremely handsome. Susy, who had an auctioneer's eyefor values, knew to a fraction the worth of those deep convex stonesalternating with small emeralds and brilliants. She was glad to own thebracelet, and enchanted with the effect it produced on her slim wrist;yet, even while admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she hadalready transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would gotoward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to her nowinterested her only as something more to be offered up to Nick.
The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she could notsee his face; but something in the jerk of the door-handle roused herever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward him with outstretchedwrist.
"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"
She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table, and herhusband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight. She slipped offthe bracelet and held it up to him.
"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling amorocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-bottles.
Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because she wasafraid to look again at Nick.
"Ellie--gave you this?" she asked at length.
"Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause. "Would you mind tellingme," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone, "exactly for whatservices we've both been so handsomely paid?"
"The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while her headspun round with unimaginable terrors.
"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my services wouldappear to have been valued rather higher than yours. Would you be kindenough to tell me just what they were?"
Susy threw her head back and looked at him. "What on earth are youtalking about, Nick! Why shouldn't Ellie have given us these things? Doyou forget that it's like our giving her a pen-wiper or a button-hook?What is it you are trying to suggest?"
It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she putthe questions. Something had happened between him and Ellie, that wasevident-one of those hideous unforeseeable blunders that may cause one'scleverest plans to crumble at a stroke; and again Susy shuddered atthe frailty of her bliss. But her old training stood her in good stead.There had been more than one moment in her past when everything-somebodyelse's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a clearglance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt her owneverything at stake, she had not been able to put up as good a defence.
"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to remainsilent.
"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes as steadyas she kept hers. "There's no reason on earth, as you say, why Ellieshouldn't give us presents--as expensive presents as she likes; and thepearl is a beauty. All I ask is: for what specific services were theygiven? For, allowing for all the absence of scruple that marks theintercourse of truly civilized people, you'll probably agree that thereare limits; at least up to now there have been limits...."
"I really don't know what you mean. I suppose Ellie wanted to show thatshe was grateful to us for looking after Clarissa."
"But she gave us all this in exchange for that, didn't she?" hesuggested, with a sweep of the hand around the beautiful shadowy room."A whole summer of it if we choose."
Susy smiled. "Apparently she didn't think that enough."
"What a doting mother! It shows the store she sets upon her child."
"Well, don't you set store upon Clarissa?"
"Clarissa is exquisite; but her mother didn't mention her in offering methis recompense."
Susy lifted her head again. "Whom did she mention?"
"Vanderlyn," said Lansing.
"Vanderlyn? Nelson?"
"Yes--and some letters... something about letters.... What is it, mydear, that you and I have been hired to hide from Vanderlyn? Because Ishould like to know," Nick broke out savagely, "if we've been adequatelypaid."
Susy was silent: she needed time to reckon up her forces, and study hernext move; and her brain was in such a whirl of fear that she could atlast only retort: "What is it that Ellie said to you?"
Lansing laughed again. "That's just what you'd like to find out--isn'tit?--in order to know the line to take in making your explanation."
The sneer had an effect that he could not have foreseen, and that Susyherself had not expected.
"Oh, don't--don't let us speak to each other like that!" she cried; andsinking down by the dressing-table she hid her face in her hands.
It seemed to her, now, that nothing mattered except that their lovefor each other, their faith in each other, should be saved from someunhealable hurt. She was willing to tell Nick everything--she wanted totell him everything--if only she could be sure of reaching a responsivechord in him. But the scene of the cigars came back to her, and benumbedher. If only she could make him see that nothing was of any account aslong as they continued to love each other!
His touch fell compassionately on her shoulder. "Poor child--don't," hesaid.
Their eyes met, but his expression checked the smile breaking throughher tears. "Don't you see," he continued, "that we've got to have thisthing out?"
She continued to stare at him through a prism of tears. "I can't--whileyou stand up like that," she stammered, childishly.
She had cowered down again into a corner of the lounge; but Lansing didnot seat himself at her side. He took a chair facing her, like a calleron the farther side of a stately tea-tray. "Will that do?" he asked witha stiff smile, as if to humour her.
"Nothing wil
l do--as long as you're not you!"
"Not me?"
She shook her head wearily. "What's the use? You accept thingstheoretically--and then when they happen...."
"What things? What has happened!"
A sudden impatience mastered her. What did he suppose, after all--? "Butyou know all about Ellie. We used to talk about her often enough in oldtimes," she said.
"Ellie and young Davenant?"
"Young Davenant; or the others...."
"Or the others. But what business was it of ours?"
"Ah, that's just what I think!" she cried, springing up with anexplosion of relief. Lansing stood up also, but there was no answeringlight in his face.
"We're outside of all that; we've nothing to do with it, have we?" hepursued.
"Nothing whatever."
"Then what on earth is the meaning of Ellie's gratitude? Gratitude forwhat we've done about some letters--and about Vanderlyn?"
"Oh, not you," Susy cried, involuntarily.
"Not I? Then you?" He came close and took her by the wrist. "Answer me.Have you been mixed up in some dirty business of Ellie's?"
There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burninggrasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her goand moved away. "Answer," he repeated.
"I've told you it was my business and not yours."
He received this in silence; then he questioned: "You've been sendingletters for her, I suppose? To whom?"
"Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she'dbeen away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I foundthem here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh,Nick, say it's been worth it-say at least that it's been worth it!" sheimplored him.
He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of herdressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
"How many letters?"
"I don't know... four... five... What does it matter?"
"And once a week, for six weeks--?"
"Yes."
"And you took it all as a matter of course?"
"No: I hated it. But what could I do?"
"What could you do?"
"When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you thinkI'd give you up?"
"Give me up?" he echoed.
"Well--doesn't our being together depend on--on what we can get out ofpeople? And hasn't there always got to be some give-and-take? Did youever in your life get anything for nothing?" she cried with suddenexasperation. "You've lived among these people as long as I have; Isuppose it's not the first time--"
"By God, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing. "And that's thedifference--the fundamental difference."
"The difference!"
"Between you and me. I've never in my life done people's dirty work forthem--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, oryou wouldn't have hidden this beastly business from me."
The blood rose to Susy's temples also. Yes, she had guessed it;instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his barelodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could shetell him that under his influence her standard had become strictertoo, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as toescape his anger that she had held her tongue?
"You knew I wouldn't have stayed here another day if I'd known," hecontinued.
"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?"
"You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take isthe price of our remaining together?"
"Well--isn't it," she faltered.
"Then we'd better part, hadn't we?"
He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this hadbeen the inevitable conclusion to which their passionate argument hadled.
Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of thecauses of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smotheredher under its ruins.
Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of thewindow at the darkening canal flecked with lights. She looked at hisback, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him andfling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken thespell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious senseof having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into theirqueer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises andconcessions the life they were to live together must be based. That heshould have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, witha new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie's indiscretionas a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raisedher head with a laugh.
"After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress."
He turned on her with an astonished stare. "You--my mistress?"
Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery thatsuch a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But sheinsisted. "That day at the Fulmers'--have you forgotten? When you saidit would be sheer madness for us to marry."
Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed onthe mosaic volutes of the floor.
"I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us tomarry," he rejoined at length.
She sprang up trembling. "Well, that's easily settled. Our compact--"
"Oh, that compact--" he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
"Aren't you asking me to carry it out now?"
"Because I said we'd better part?" He paused. "But the compact--I'dalmost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn't it, that we were to giveeach other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thingwas absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. Ishall never want any better chance... any other chance...."
"Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then...." She was close to him, his facelooming down through her tears; but he put her back.
"It would have been easy enough, wouldn't it," he rejoined, "if we'dbeen as detachable as all that? As it is, it's going to hurt horribly.But talking it over won't help. You were right just now when you askedhow else we were going to live. We're born parasites, both, I suppose,or we'd have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things Imight put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in timethat I can't let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars atComo: do you suppose I didn't know it was for me? And this too? Well, itwon't do... it won't do...."
He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: "But yourwriting--if your book's a success...."
"My poor Susy--that's all part of the humbug. We both know that my sortof writing will never pay. And what's the alternative except more ofthe same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? Atleast, till now, I've minded certain things; I don't want to go on tillI find myself taking them for granted."
She reached out a timid hand. "But you needn't ever, dear... if you'donly leave it to me...."
He drew back sharply. "That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, menare different." He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at thelittle enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
"Time to dress, isn't it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine withStreffy, and whoever else is coming? I'd rather like a long tramp, andno more talking just at present except with myself."
He passed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stoodmotionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final wordof appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn's giftsglittered in the rosy lamp-light.
Yes: men were different, as he said.
The Glimpses of the Moon Page 10
