The Glimpses of the Moon

by Edith Wharton

  XX

  THE Mortimer Hickses were in Rome; not, as they would in former timeshave been, in one of the antiquated hostelries of the Piazza di Spagnaor the Porta del Popolo, where of old they had so gaily defied feverand nourished themselves on local colour; but spread out, with all theostentation of philistine millionaires, under the piano nobile ceilingsof one of the high-perched "Palaces," where, as Mrs. Hicks shamelesslydeclared, they could "rely on the plumbing," and "have the privilege ofover-looking the Queen Mother's Gardens."

  It was that speech, uttered with beaming aplomb at a dinner-tablesurrounded by the cosmopolitan nobility of the Eternal City, that hadsuddenly revealed to Lansing the profound change in the Hicks point ofview.

  As he looked back over the four months since he had so unexpectedlyjoined the Ibis at Genoa, he saw that the change, at first insidiousand unperceived, dated from the ill-fated day when the Hickses had runacross a Reigning Prince on his travels.

  Hitherto they had been proof against such perils: both Mr. and Mrs.Hicks had often declared that the aristocracy of the intellect was theonly one which attracted them. But in this case the Prince possessed anintellect, in addition to his few square miles of territory, and to oneof the most beautiful Field Marshal's uniforms that had ever encased aroyal warrior. The Prince was not a warrior, however; he was stooping,pacific and spectacled, and his possession of the uniform had beenrevealed to Mrs. Hicks only by the gift of a full-length photograph ina Bond Street frame, with Anastasius written slantingly across itslegs. The Prince--and herein lay the Hickses' undoing--the Prince wasan archaeologist: an earnest anxious enquiring and scrupulousarchaeologist. Delicate health (so his suite hinted) banished him fora part of each year from his cold and foggy principality; and in thecompany of his mother, the active and enthusiastic Dowager Princess, hewandered from one Mediterranean shore to another, now assisting atthe exhumation of Ptolemaic mummies, now at the excavation of Delphictemples or of North African basilicas. The beginning of winter usuallybrought the Prince and his mother to Rome or Nice, unless indeed theywere summoned by family duties to Berlin, Vienna or Madrid; for anextended connection with the principal royal houses of Europe compelledthem, as the Princess Mother said, to be always burying or marrying acousin. At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphereof courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and moremodern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged.

  Yes: the Prince and his mother (they gaily avowed it) revelled in PalaceHotels; and, being unable to afford the luxury of inhabiting them,they liked, as often as possible, to be invited to dine there by theirfriends--"or even to tea, my dear," the Princess laughingly avowed,"for I'm so awfully fond of buttered scones; and Anastasius gives me solittle to eat in the desert."

  The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal--Lansingnow perceived it--to Mrs. Hicks's principles. She had known a great manyarchaeologists, but never one as agreeable as the Prince, and aboveall never one who had left a throne to camp in the desert and delve inLibyan tombs. And it seemed to her infinitely pathetic that these twogifted beings, who grumbled when they had to go to "marry a cousin" atthe Palace of St. James or of Madrid, and hastened back breathlessly tothe far-off point where, metaphorically speaking, pick-axe and spade haddropped from their royal hands--that these heirs of the ages should beunable to offer themselves the comforts of up-to-date hotel life, andshould enjoy themselves "like babies" when they were invited to theother kind of "Palace," to feast on buttered scones and watch the tango.

  She simply could not bear the thought of their privations; and neither,after a time, could Mr. Hicks, who found the Prince more democratic thananyone he had ever known at Apex City, and was immensely interested bythe fact that their spectacles came from the same optician.

  But it was, above all, the artistic tendencies of the Prince and hismother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in thethought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties whooverran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing,and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusiveand self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet thiscultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their ownfrivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were exactly those of theeccentric, unreliable and sometimes money-borrowing persons who hadhitherto represented the higher life to the Hickses.

  Now at last Mrs. Hicks saw the possibility of being at once artistic andluxurious, of surrendering herself to the joys of modern plumbing andyet keeping the talk on the highest level. "If the poor dear Princesswants to dine at the Nouveau Luxe why shouldn't we give her thatpleasure?" Mrs. Hicks smilingly enquired; "and as for enjoying herbuttered scones like a baby, as she says, I think it's the sweetestthing about her."

  Coral Hicks did not join in this chorus; but she accepted, with hercurious air of impartiality, the change in her parents' manner of life,and for the first time (as Nick observed) occupied herself with hermother's toilet, with the result that Mrs. Hicks's outline becamefirmer, her garments soberer in hue and finer in material; so that,should anyone chance to detect the daughter's likeness to her mother,the result was less likely to be disturbing.

  Such precautions were the more needful--Lansing could not but notebecause of the different standards of the society in which the Hicksesnow moved. For it was a curious fact that admission to the intimacy ofthe Prince and his mother--who continually declared themselves to bethe pariahs, the outlaws, the Bohemians among crowned heads neverthelessinvolved not only living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those whofrequented them. The Prince's aide-de-camp--an agreeable young man ofeasy manners--had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses, thoughso thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet accustomed toinspecting in advance the names of the persons whom their hosts wishedto invite with them; and Lansing noticed that Mrs. Hicks's lists,having been "submitted," usually came back lengthened by the addition ofnumerous wealthy and titled guests. Their Highnesses never struck outa name; they welcomed with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses' oddestand most inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to alater day on the plea that it would be "cosier" to meet them on a moreprivate occasion; but they invariably added to the list any friends oftheir own, with the gracious hint that they wished these latter (thoughsocially so well-provided for) to have the "immense privilege" ofknowing the Hickses. And thus it happened that when October galesnecessitated laying up the Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Romethe august travellers from whom they had parted the previous month inAthens, also found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capitalcontained of fashion.

  It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the PrincessMother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and the paintings ofGauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a beaming unconsciousnessof perspective, adored large pearls and powerful motors, caravan tea andmodern plumbing, perfumed cigarettes and society scandals; and her son,while apparently less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored hismother, and was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost tohimself--"Since poor Mamma," as he observed, "is so courageous when weare roughing it in the desert."

  The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were underobligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the titled personswhom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; "and it seems to their SereneHighnesses," he added, "the most flattering return they can make forthe hospitality of their friends to give them such an intellectualopportunity."

  The dinner-table at which their Highnesses' friends were seated onthe evening in question represented, numerically, one of the greatestintellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty guests were groupedabout the flower-wreathed board, from which Eldorada and Mr. Beck hadbeen excluded on the plea that the Princess Mother liked cosy partiesand begged her hosts that there should never be more than thirtyat table. Such, at least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks t
o herfaithful followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the sameskilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses' social circle usuallymanaged to exclude from it the timid presences of the two secretaries.Their banishment was the more displeasing to Lansing from the fact that,for the last three months, he had filled Mr. Buttles's place, and washimself their salaried companion. But since he had accepted the post,his obvious duty was to fill it in accordance with his employers'requirements; and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck thathe had, as Eldorada ungrudgingly said, "Something of Mr. Buttles'smarvellous social gifts."

  During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He was gladof any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more independent as theHickses' secretary than as their pampered guest, and the large chequewhich Mr. Hicks handed over to him on the first of each month refreshedhis languishing sense of self-respect.

  He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the Hickses'affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the employ of peoplehe liked and respected. But from the moment of the ill-fated encounterwith the wandering Princes, his position had changed as much as thatof his employers. He was no longer, to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful andestimable assistant, on the same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he hadbecome a social asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles inhis capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette, andsurpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick Lansing, theHickses found, already knew most of the Princess Mother's rich andaristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him with enthusiastic "OldNicks", and he was almost as familiar as His Highness's own aide-de-campwith all those secret ramifications of love and hate that madedinner-giving so much more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.

  Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth ofsubterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing'shand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But ifthe young man's value had risen in the eyes of his employers it haddeteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he hadnot bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid inbank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinnersand luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp hadcaught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed tothe forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job thenext day.

  Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficientin humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had notrestored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he lookedabout the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that hewould give up his position on the morrow.

  Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was CoralHicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall leancountenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyesperched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and apediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfedor fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finallycaught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.

  In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in astreet of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law whichhad brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldestsociety of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.

  Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was alsolooking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;but as his eyes met Lansing's he readjusted his official smile.

  "I was admiring our hostess's daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--aninspiration," he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing hadcome to dread.

  "Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations," he returned curtly, and theaide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarerthan pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. "She is the equalof any situation, I am sure," he replied; and then abandoned the subjectwith one of his automatic transitions.

  After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprisedNick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking itneedful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though hismanner was studiously informal.

  "I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks's invariable sense ofappropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almostany future, however exalted."

  Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he wanted toknow what was in his companion's mind.

  "What do you mean by exalted?" he asked, with a smile of faintamusement.

  "Well--equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the public eye."

  Lansing still smiled. "The question is, I suppose, whether her desire toshine equals her capacity."

  The aide-de-camp stared. "You mean, she's not ambitious?"

  "On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious."

  "Immeasurably?" The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it. "But not,surely, beyond--beyond what we can offer," his eyes completed thesentence; and it was Lansing's turn to stare. The aide-de-camp faced thestare. "Yes," his eyes concluded in a flash, while his lips let fall:"The Princess Mother admires her immensely." But at that moment a waveof Mrs. Hicks's fan drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.

  "Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the differencebetween the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in Carolingian art; but theManager has sent up word that the two new Creole dancers from Paris havearrived, and her Serene Highness wants to pop down to the ball-room andtake a peep at them.... She's sure the Professor will understand...."

  "And accompany us, of course," the Princess irresistibly added.

  Lansing's brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted thescales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had been floodedwith light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp's: things hehad heard, hints he had let pass, smiles, insinuations, cordialities,rumours of the improbability of the Prince's founding a family,suggestions as to the urgent need of replenishing the Teutoburgertreasury....

  Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their princelyguests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and took littleinterest in the sight of others so engaged, she remained aloof from theparty, absorbed in an archaeological discussion with the baffled butsmiling savant who was to have enlightened the party on the differencebetween Sassanian and Byzantine ornament.

  Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could observethe girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen her as the centreof all these scattered threads of intrigue. Yes; decidedly she wasgrowing handsomer; or else she had learned how to set off her massivelines instead of trying to disguise them. As she held up her longeye-glass to glance absently at the dancers he was struck by the largebeauty of her arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There wasnothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not surprisedthat, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had discerned herpossibilities.

  Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future. He knewenough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted to guess that,within a very short time, the hint of the Prince's aide-de-camp wouldreappear in the form of a direct proposal. Lansing himself wouldprobably--as the one person in the Hicks entourage with whom onecould intelligibly commune-be entrusted with the next step in thenegotiations: he would be asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said,"to feel the ground." It was clearly part of the state policy ofTeutoburg to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, anopportunity to replenish its treasury.

  What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly felt thather attitude would depend in a great degree upon his own. And he knewno more what his own was going to be than on the night, four monthsearlier, when he had flung out of his wife's room in Veni
ce to take themidnight express for Genoa.

  The whole of his past, and above all the tendency, on which he had onceprided himself, to live in the present and take whatever chances itoffered, now made it harder for him to act. He began to see that hehad never, even in the closest relations of life, looked ahead of hisimmediate satisfaction. He had thought it rather fine to be able to givehimself so intensely to the fullness of each moment instead of hurryingpast it in pursuit of something more, or something else, in the mannerof the over-scrupulous or the under-imaginative, whom he had alwaysgrouped together and equally pitied. It was not till he had linked hislife with Susy's that he had begun to feel it reaching forward into afuture he longed to make sure of, to fasten upon and shape to his ownwants and purposes, till, by an imperceptible substitution, that futurehad become his real present, his all-absorbing moment of time.

  Now the moment was shattered, and the power to rebuild it failed him.He had never before thought about putting together broken bits: he feltlike a man whose house has been wrecked by an earthquake, and who, forlack of skilled labour, is called upon for the first time to wield atrowel and carry bricks. He simply did not know how.

  Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneselfto possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of asuccession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facingof daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shiftingtheir burden on others. The making of the substance called character wasa process about as slow and arduous as the building of the Pyramids; andthe thing itself, like those awful edifices, was mainly useful to lodgeone's descendants in, after they too were dust. Yet the Pyramid-instinctwas the one which had made the world, made man, and caused his fugitivejoys to linger like fading frescoes on imperishable walls....