XXVII
SUSY and Lord Altringham sat in the little drawing-room, divided fromeach other by a table carrying a smoky lamp and heaped with tatteredschool-books.
In another half hour the bonne, despatched to fetch the children fromtheir classes, would be back with her flock; and at any moment Geordie'simperious cries might summon his slave up to the nursery. In the scanttime allotted them, the two sat, and visibly wondered what to say.
Strefford, on entering, had glanced about the dreary room, with itspiano laden with tattered music, the children's toys littering the lamesofa, the bunches of dyed grass and impaled butterflies flanking thecast-bronze clock. Then he had turned to Susy and asked simply: "Why onearth are you here?"
She had not tried to explain; from the first, she had understood theimpossibility of doing so. And she would not betray her secret longingto return to Nick, now that she knew that Nick had taken definite stepsfor his release. In dread lest Strefford should have heard of this, andshould announce it to her, coupling it with the news of Nick's projectedmarriage, and lest, hearing her fears thus substantiated, she shouldlose her self-control, she had preferred to say, in a voice that shetried to make indifferent: "The 'proceedings,' or whatever the lawyerscall them, have begun. While they're going on I like to stay quite bymyself.... I don't know why...."
Strefford, at that, had looked at her keenly. "Ah," he murmured; andhis lips were twisted into their old mocking smile. "Speaking ofproceedings," he went on carelessly, "what stage have Ellie's reached,I wonder? I saw her and Vanderlyn and Bockheimer all lunching cheerfullytogether to-day at Larue's."
The blood rushed to Susy's forehead. She remembered her tragic eveningwith Nelson Vanderlyn, only two months earlier, and thought to herself."In time, then, I suppose, Nick and I...."
Aloud she said: "I can't imagine how Nelson and Ellie can ever want tosee each other again. And in a restaurant, of all places!"
Strefford continued to smile. "My dear, you're incorrigiblyold-fashioned. Why should two people who've done each other the bestturn they could by getting out of each other's way at the right momentbehave like sworn enemies ever afterward? It's too absurd; the humbug'stoo flagrant. Whatever our generation has failed to do, it's got rid ofhumbug; and that's enough to immortalize it. I daresay Nelson and Ellienever liked each other better than they do to-day. Twenty years ago,they'd have been afraid to confess it; but why shouldn't they now?"
Susy looked at Strefford, conscious that under his words was the ache ofthe disappointment she had caused him; and yet conscious also that thatvery ache was not the overwhelming penetrating emotion he perhaps wishedit to be, but a pang on a par with a dozen others; and that even whilehe felt it he foresaw the day when he should cease to feel it. And shethought to herself that this certainty of oblivion must be bitterer thanany certainty of pain.
A silence had fallen between them. He broke it by rising from hisseat, and saying with a shrug: "You'll end by driving me to marry JoanSenechal."
Susy smiled. "Well, why not? She's lovely."
"Yes; but she'll bore me."
"Poor Streff! So should I--"
"Perhaps. But nothing like as soon--" He grinned sardonically. "There'dbe more margin." He appeared to wait for her to speak. "And what else onearth are you going to do?" he concluded, as she still remained silent.
"Oh, Streff, I couldn't marry you for a reason like that!" she murmuredat length.
"Then marry me, and find your reason afterward."
Her lips made a movement of denial, and still in silence she held outher hand for good-bye. He clasped it, and then turned away; but on thethreshold he paused, his screwed-up eyes fixed on her wistfully.
The look moved her, and she added hurriedly: "The only reason I can findis one for not marrying you. It's because I can't yet feel unmarriedenough."
"Unmarried enough? But I thought Nick was doing his best to make youfeel that."
"Yes. But even when he has--sometimes I think even that won't make anydifference."
He still scrutinized her hesitatingly, with the gravest eyes she hadever seen in his careless face.
"My dear, that's rather the way I feel about you," he said simply as heturned to go.
That evening after the children had gone to bed Susy sat up late in thecheerless sitting-room. She was not thinking of Strefford but of Nick.He was coming to Paris--perhaps he had already arrived. The idea that hemight be in the same place with her at that very moment, and without herknowing it, was so strange and painful that she felt a violent revolt ofall her strong and joy-loving youth. Why should she go on suffering sounbearably, so abjectly, so miserably? If only she could see him, hearhis voice, even hear him say again such cruel and humiliating words ashe had spoken on that dreadful day in Venice when that would be betterthan this blankness, this utter and final exclusion from his life! Hehad been cruel to her, unimaginably cruel: hard, arrogant, unjust; andhad been so, perhaps, deliberately, because he already wanted to befree. But she was ready to face even that possibility, to humble herselfstill farther than he had humbled her--she was ready to do anything, ifonly she might see him once again.
She leaned her aching head on her hands and pondered. Do anything? Butwhat could she do? Nothing that should hurt him, interfere with hisliberty, be false to the spirit of their pact: on that she was more thanever resolved. She had made a bargain, and she meant to stick to it, notfor any abstract reason, but simply because she happened to love him inthat way. Yes--but to see him again, only once!
Suddenly she remembered what Strefford had said about Nelson Vanderlynand his wife. "Why should two people who've just done each other thebest turn they could behave like sworn enemies ever after?" If inoffering Nick his freedom she had indeed done him such a service asthat, perhaps he no longer hated her, would no longer be unwillingto see her.... At any rate, why should she not write to him on thatassumption, write in a spirit of simple friendliness, suggesting thatthey should meet and "settle things"? The business-like word "settle"(how she hated it) would prove to him that she had no secret designsupon his liberty; and besides he was too unprejudiced, too modern, toofree from what Strefford called humbug, not to understand and acceptsuch a suggestion. After all, perhaps Strefford was right; it wassomething to have rid human relations of hypocrisy, even if, in theprocess, so many exquisite things seemed somehow to have been torn awaywith it....
She ran up to her room, scribbled a note, and hurried with it throughthe rain and darkness to the post-box at the corner. As she returnedthrough the empty street she had an odd feeling that it was notempty--that perhaps Nick was already there, somewhere near her in thenight, about to follow her to the door, enter the house, go up withher to her bedroom in the old way. It was strange how close he had beenbrought by the mere fact of her having written that little note to him!
In the bedroom, Geordie lay in his crib in ruddy slumber, and she blewout the candle and undressed softly for fear of waking him.
Nick Lansing, the next day, received Susy's letter, transmitted to hishotel from the lawyer's office.
He read it carefully, two or three times over, weighing and scrutinizingthe guarded words. She proposed that they should meet to "settlethings." What things? And why should he accede to such a request? Whatsecret purpose had prompted her? It was horrible that nowadays, inthinking of Susy, he should always suspect ulterior motives, be meanlyon the watch for some hidden tortuousness. What on earth was she tryingto "manage" now, he wondered.
A few hours ago, at the sight of her, all his hardness had melted, andhe had charged himself with cruelty, with injustice, with every sin ofpride against himself and her; but the appearance of Strefford, arrivingat that late hour, and so evidently expected and welcomed, had drivenback the rising tide of tenderness.
Yet, after all, what was there to wonder at? Nothing was changed intheir respective situations. He had left his wife, deliberately, and forreasons which no subsequent experience had caused him to modify. She hadapparently acquiesced in his
decision, and had utilized it, as she wasjustified in doing, to assure her own future.
In all this, what was there to wail or knock the breast between twopeople who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and makingtheir grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right inthinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled hisjudgment, and they had had their year... their mad year... or at leastall but two or three months of it. But his first intuition had beenright; and now they must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldomforget the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compoundinterest. Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up gallantly,and remember of the episode only what had made it seem so supremelyworth the cost?
He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say that hewould call on her that afternoon at four. "That ought to give us time,"he reflected drily, "to 'settle things,' as she calls it, withoutinterfering with Strefford's afternoon visit."
The Glimpses of the Moon Page 27
