The Glimpses of the Moon

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"For you too, I hope." He paused, and then went on: "I want
also to tell you that I perfectly understand--"

"Oh," she interrupted, "so do I; your point of view, I mean."

They were again silent.

"Nick, why can't we be friends real friends? Won't it be
easier?" she broke out at last with twitching lips.

"Easier--?"

"I mean, about talking things over--arrangements. There are
arrangements to be made, I suppose?"

"I suppose so." He hesitated. "I'm doing what I'm told-simply
following out instructions. The business is easy enough,
apparently. I'm taking the necessary steps--"

She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. "The
necessary steps: what are they? Everything the lawyers tell
one is so confusing .... I don't yet understand--how it's
done."

"My share, you mean? Oh, it's very simple." He paused, and
added in a tone of laboured ease: "I'm going down to
Fontainebleau to-morrow--"

She stared, not understanding. "To Fontainebleau--?"

Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. "Well--
I chose Fontainebleau--I don't know why ... except that we've
never been there together."

At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her
forehead. She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her
heart in her throat. "How grotesque--how utterly disgusting!"

He gave a slight shrug. "I didn't make the laws ...."

"But isn't it too stupid and degrading that such things should
be necessary when two people want to part--?" She broke off
again, silenced by the echo of that fatal "want to part." ...

He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal
obligations involved.

"You haven't yet told me," he suggested, "how you happen to be
living here."

"Here--with the Fulmer children?" She roused herself, trying to
catch his easier note. "Oh, I've simply been governessing them
for a few weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily." She did
not say: "It's because I've parted with Strefford." Somehow it
helped her wounded pride a little to keep from him the secret of
her precarious independence.

He looked his wonder. "All alone with that bewildered bonne?
But how many of them are there? Five? Good Lord!" He
contemplated the clock with unseeing eyes, and then turned them
again on her face.

"I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on
your nerves."

"Oh, not these children. They're so good to me."

"Ah, well, I suppose it won't be for long."

He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded
gaze seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and
added, with an obvious effort at small talk: "I hear the
Fulmers are not hitting it off very well since his success. Is
it true that he's going to marry Violet Melrose?"

The blood rose to Susy's face. "Oh, never, never! He and Grace
are travelling together now."

"Oh, I didn't know. People say things ...." He was visibly
embarrassed with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.

"Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn't
mind. She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can't
help it, she thinks, after having been through such a lot
together."

"Dear old Grace!"

He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to
detain him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and
it struck her painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should
have spoken in that light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau
on the morrow .... Well, men were different, she supposed; she
remembered having felt that once before about Nick.

It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: "But wait--wait!
I'm not going to marry Strefford after all!"--but to do so would
seem like an appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and
that was not what she wanted. She could never forget that he
had left her because he had not been able to forgive her for
"managing"--and not for the world would she have him think that
this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.

"If he doesn't see that I am different, in spite of
appearances ... and that I never was what he said I was that
day--if in all these months it hasn't come over him, what's the
use of trying to make him see it now?" she mused. And then, her
thoughts hurrying on: "Perhaps he's suffering too--I believe he
is suffering-at any rate, he's suffering for me, if not for
himself. But if he's pledged to Coral, what can he do? What
would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to
her?"

There he stood--the man who was "going to Fontainebleau to-
morrow"; who called it "taking the necessary steps!" Who could
smile as he made the careless statement! A world seemed to
divide them already: it was as if their parting were already
over. All the words, cries, arguments beating loud wings in her
dropped back into silence. The only thought left was: "How
much longer does he mean to go on standing there?"

He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from
an absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said:
"There's nothing else?"

"Nothing else?"

"I mean: you spoke of things to be settled--"

She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to
summon him.

"Oh," she faltered, "I didn't know ... I thought there might
be .... But the lawyers, I suppose ...."

She saw the relief on his contracted face. "Exactly. I've
always thought it was best to leave it to them. I assure you"--
again for a moment the smile strained his lips-- "I shall do
nothing to interfere with a quick settlement."

She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He
appeared already a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a
remote perspective.

"Then--good-bye," she heard him say from its farther end.

"Oh,--good-bye," she faltered, as if she had not had the word
ready, and was relieved to have him supply it.

He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to
speak. "I've--" he said; then he repeated "Good-bye," as though
to make sure he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed
on him.

It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now,
whatever happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for
would never be. He had come, and she had let him go again ....

How had it come about? Would she ever be able to explain it to
herself? How was it that she, so fertile in strategy, so
practiced in feminine arts, had stood there before him,
helpless, inarticulate, like a school-girl a-choke with her
first love-longing? If he was gone, and gone never to return,
it was her own fault, and none but hers. What had she done to
move him, detain him, make his heart beat and his head swim as
hers were beating and swimming? She stood aghast at her own
inadequacy, her stony inexpressiveness ....

And suddenly she lifted her hands to her throbbing forehead and
cried out: "But this is love! This must be love!"

She had loved him before, she supposed; for what else was she to
call the impulse that had drawn her to him, taught her how to
overcome his scruples, and whirled him away with her on their
mad adventure? Well, if that was love, this was something so
much larger and deeper that the other feeling seemed the mere
dancing of her blood in tune with his ....

But, no! Real love, great love, the love that poets sang, and
privileged and tortured beings lived and died of, that love had
its own superior expressiveness, and the sure command of its
means. The petty arts of coquetry were no farther from it than
the numbness of the untaught girl. Great love was wise, strong,
powerful, like genius, like any other dominant form of human
power. It knew itself, and what it wanted, and how to attain
its ends.

Not great love, then ... but just the common humble average of
human love was hers. And it had come to her so newly, so
overwhelmingly, with a face so grave, a touch so startling, that
she had stood there petrified, humbled at the first look of its
eyes, recognizing that what she had once taken for love was
merely pleasure and spring-time, and the flavour of youth.

"But how was I to know? And now it's too late!" she wailed.

XXIX

THE inhabitants of the little house in Passy were of necessity
early risers; but when Susy jumped out of bed the next morning
no one else was astir, and it lacked nearly an hour of the call
of the bonne's alarm-clock.

For a moment Susy leaned out of her dark room into the darker
night. A cold drizzle fell on her face, and she shivered and
drew back. Then, lighting a candle, and shading it, as her
habit was, from the sleeping child, she slipped on her dressing-
gown and opened the door. On the threshold she paused to look
at her watch. Only half-past five! She thought with
compunction of the unkindness of breaking in on Junie Fulmer's
slumbers; but such scruples did not weigh an ounce in the
balance of her purpose. Poor Junie would have to oversleep
herself on Sunday, that was all.

Susy stole into the passage, opened a door, and cast her light
on the girl's face.

"Junie! Dearest Junie, you must wake up!"

Junie lay in the abandonment of youthful sleep; but at the sound
of her name she sat up with the promptness of a grown person on
whom domestic burdens have long weighed.

"Which one of them is it?" she asked, one foot already out of
bed.

"Oh, Junie dear, no ... it's nothing wrong with the children ...
or with anybody," Susy stammered, on her knees by the bed.

In the candlelight, she saw Junie's anxious brow darken
reproachfully.

"Oh, Susy, then why--? I was just dreaming we were all driving
about Rome in a great big motor-car with father and mother!"

"I'm so sorry, dear. What a lovely dream! I'm a brute to have
interrupted it--"

She felt the little girl's awakening scrutiny. "If there's
nothing wrong with anybody, why are you crying, Susy? Is it you
there's something wrong with? What has happened?"

"Am I crying?" Susy rose from her knees and sat down on the
counterpane. "Yes, it is me. And I had to disturb you."

"Oh, Susy, darling, what is it?" Junie's arms were about her in
a flash, and Susy grasped them in burning fingers.

"Junie, listen! I've got to go away at once-- to leave you all
for the whole day. I may not be back till late this evening;
late to-night; I can't tell. I promised your mother I'd never
leave you; but I've got to--I've got to."

Junie considered her agitated face with fully awakened eyes.
"Oh, I won't tell, you know, you old brick, " she said with
simplicity.

Susy hugged her. "Junie, Junie, you darling! But that wasn't
what I meant. Of course you may tell--you must tell. I shall
write to your mother myself. But what worries me is the idea of
having to go away-- away from Paris--for the whole day, with
Geordie still coughing a little, and no one but that silly
Angele to stay with him while you're out--and no one but you to
take yourself and the others to school. But Junie, Junie, I've
got to do it!" she sobbed out, clutching the child tighter.

Junie Fulmer, with her strangely mature perception of the case,
and seemingly of every case that fate might call on her to deal
with, sat for a moment motionless in Susy's hold. Then she
freed her wrists with an adroit twist, and leaning back against
the pillows said judiciously: "You'll never in the world bring
up a family of your own if you take on like this over other
people's children."

Through all her turmoil of spirit the observation drew a laugh
from Susy. "Oh, a family of my own--I don't deserve one, the
way I'm behaving to your"

Junie still considered her. "My dear, a change will do you
good: you need it," she pronounced.

Susy rose with a laughing sigh. "I'm not at all sure it will!
But I've got to have it, all the same. Only I do feel
anxious--and I can't even leave you my address!"

Junie still seemed to examine the case.

"Can't you even tell me where you're going?" she ventured, as if
not quite sure of the delicacy of asking.

"Well--no, I don't think I can; not till I get back. Besides,
even if I could it wouldn't be much use, because I couldn't give
you my address there. I don't know what it will be."

"But what does it matter, if you're coming back to-night?"

"Of course I'm coming back! How could you possibly imagine I
should think of leaving you for more than a day?"

"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid--not much, that is, with the poker,
and Nat's water-pistol," emended Junie, still judicious.

Susy again enfolded her vehemently, and then turned to more
practical matters. She explained that she wished if possible to
catch an eight-thirty train from the Gare de Lyon, and that
there was not a moment to lose if the children were to be
dressed and fed, and full instructions written out for Junie and
Angele, before she rushed for the underground.

While she bathed Geordie, and then hurried into her own clothes,
she could not help wondering at her own extreme solicitude for
her charges. She remembered, with a pang, how often she had
deserted Clarissa Vanderlyn for the whole day, and even for two
or three in succession--poor little Clarissa, whom she knew to
be so unprotected, so exposed to evil influences. She had been
too much absorbed in her own greedy bliss to be more than
intermittently aware of the child; but now, she felt, no sorrow
however ravaging, no happiness however absorbing, would ever
again isolate her from her kind.

And then these children were so different! The exquisite
Clarissa was already the predestined victim of her surroundings:
her budding soul was divided from Susy's by the same barrier of
incomprehension that separated the latter from Mrs. Vanderlyn.
Clarissa had nothing to teach Susy but the horror of her own
hard little appetites; whereas the company of the noisy
argumentative Fulmers had been a school of wisdom and
abnegation.

As she applied the brush to Geordie's shining head and the
handkerchief to his snuffling nose, the sense of what she owed
him was so borne in on Susy that she interrupted the process to
catch him to her bosom.

"I'll have such a story to tell you when I get back to-night, if
you'll promise me to be good all day," she bargained with him;
and Geordie, always astute, bargained back: "Before I promise,
I'd like to know what story."

At length all was in order. Junie had been enlightened, and
Angele stunned, by the minuteness of Susy's instructions; and
the latter, waterproofed and stoutly shod, descended the
doorstep, and paused to wave at the pyramid of heads yearning to
her from an upper window.

It was hardly light, and still raining, when she turned into the
dismal street. As usual, it was empty; but at the corner she
perceived a hesitating taxi, with luggage piled beside the
driver. Perhaps it was some early traveller, just arriving, who
would release the carriage in time for her to catch it, and thus
avoid the walk to the metro, and the subsequent strap-hanging;
for it was the work-people's hour. Susy raced toward the
vehicle, which, overcoming its hesitation, was beginning to move
in her direction. Observing this, she stopped to see where it
would discharge its load. Thereupon the taxi stopped also, and
the load discharged itself in front of her in the shape of Nick
Lansing.

The two stood staring at each other through the rain till Nick
broke out: "Where are you going? I came to get you."

"To get me? To get me?" she repeated. Beside the driver she
had suddenly remarked the old suit-case from which her husband
had obliged her to extract Strefford's cigars as they were
leaving Como; and everything that had happened since seemed to
fall away and vanish in the pang and rapture of that memory.

"To get you; yes. Of course." He spoke the words peremptorily,
almost as if they were an order. "Where were you going?" he
repeated.

Without answering, she turned toward the house. He followed
her, and the laden taxi closed the procession.

"Why are you out in such weather without an umbrella?" he
continued, in the same severe tone, drawing her under the
shelter of his.

"Oh, because Junie's umbrella is in tatters, and I had to leave
her mine, as I was going away for the whole day." She spoke the
words like a person in a trance.

"For the whole day? At this hour? Where?"

They were on the doorstep, and she fumbled automatically for her
key, let herself in, and led the way to the sitting-room. It
had not been tidied up since the night before. The children's
school books lay scattered on the table and sofa, and the empty
fireplace was grey with ashes. She turned to Nick in the pallid
light.

"I was going to see you," she stammered, "I was going to follow
you to Fontainebleau, if necessary, to tell you ... to prevent
you...."

He repeated in the same aggressive tone: "Tell me what?
Prevent what?"

"Tell you that there must be some other way ... some decent
way ... of our separating ... without that horror. that horror
of your going off with a woman ...."

He stared, and then burst into a laugh. The blood rushed to her
face. She had caught a familiar ring in his laugh, and it
wounded her. What business had he, at such a time, to laugh in
the old way?

"I'm sorry; but there is no other way, I'm afraid. No other way
but one," he corrected himself.

She raised her head sharply. "Well?"

"That you should be the woman. --Oh, my dear!" He had dropped
his mocking smile, and was at her side, her hands in his. "Oh,
my dear, don't you see that we've both been feeling the same
thing, and at the same hour? You lay awake thinking of it all
night, didn't you? So did I. Whenever the clock struck, I said
to myself: 'She's hearing it too.' And I was up before
daylight, and packed my traps--for I never want to set foot
again in that awful hotel where I've lived in hell for the last
three days. And I swore to myself that I'd go off with a woman
by the first train I could catch--and so I mean to, my dear."

She stood before him numb. Yes, numb: that was the worst of
it! The violence of the reaction had been too great, and she
could hardly understand what he was saying. Instead, she
noticed that the tassel of the window-blind was torn off again
(oh, those children!), and vaguely wondered if his luggage were
safe on the waiting taxi. One heard such stories ....

His voice came back to her. "Susy! Listen!" he was entreating.
"You must see yourself that it can't be. We're married--isn't
that all that matters? Oh, I know--I've behaved like a brute:
a cursed arrogant ass! You couldn't wish that ass a worse
kicking than I've given him! But that's not the point, you see.
The point is that we're married .... Married .... Doesn't it
mean something to you, something--inexorable? It does to me. I
didn't dream it would--in just that way. But all I can say is
that I suppose the people who don't feel it aren't really
married-and they'd better separate; much better. As for us--"

Through her tears she gasped out: "That's what I felt ...
that's what I said to Streff ...."

He was upon her with a great embrace. "My darling! My darling!
You have told him?"

"Yes," she panted. "That's why I'm living here." She paused.
"And you've told Coral?"

She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still
holding her, but with lowered head.

"No ... I ... haven't."

"Oh, Nick! But then--?"

He caught her to him again, resentfully. "Well--then what?
What do you mean? What earthly difference does it make?"

"But if you've told her you were going to marry her--" (Try as
she would, her voice was full of silver chimes.)

"Marry her? Marry her?" he echoed. "But how could I? What
does marriage mean anyhow? If it means anything at all it
means--you! And I can't ask Coral Hicks just to come and live
with me, can I?"

Between crying and laughing she lay on his breast, and his hand
passed over her hair.

They were silent for a while; then he began again: "You said it
yourself yesterday, you know."

She strayed back from sunlit distances. "Yesterday?"

"Yes: that Grace Fulmer says you can't separate two people
who've been through a lot of things--"

"Ah, been through them together--it's not the things, you see,
it's the togetherness," she interrupted.

"The togetherness--that's it!" He seized on the word as if it
had just been coined to express their case, and his mind could
rest in it without farther labour.

The door-bell rang, and they started. Through the window they
saw the taxi-driver gesticulating enquiries as to the fate of
the luggage.

"He wants to know if he's to leave it here," Susy laughed.

"No--no! You're to come with me," her husband declared.

"Come with you?" She laughed again at the absurdity of the
suggestion.

"Of course: this very instant. What did you suppose? That I
was going away without you? Run up and pack your things," he
commanded.

"My things? My things? But I can't leave the children!"

He stared, between indignation and amusement. "Can't leave the
children? Nonsense! Why, you said yourself you were going to
follow me to Fontainebleau--"

She reddened again, this time a little painfully "I didn't know
what I was doing .... I had to find you ... but I should have
come back this evening, no matter what happened."

"No matter what?"

She nodded, and met his gaze resolutely.

"No; but really--"

"Really, I can't leave the children till Nat and Grace come
back. I promised I wouldn't."

"Yes; but you didn't know then .... Why on earth can't their
nurse look after them?"

"There isn't any nurse but me."

"Good Lord!"

"But it's only for two weeks more," she pleaded. "Two weeks!
Do you know how long I've been without you!" He seized her by
both wrists, and drew them against his breast. "Come with me at
least for two days--Susy!" he entreated her.

"Oh," she cried, "that's the very first time you've said my
name!"

"Susy, Susy, then--my Susy--Susy! And you've only said mine
once, you know."

"Nick!" she sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a
magic seed that hung out great branches to envelop them.

"Well, then, Susy, be reasonable. Come!"

"Reasonable--oh, reasonable!" she sobbed through laughter.

"Unreasonable, then! That's even better."

She freed herself, and drew back gently. "Nick, I swore I
wouldn't leave them; and I can't. It's not only my promise to
their mother--it's what they've been to me themselves. You
don't, know ... You can't imagine the things they've taught me.
They're awfully naughty at times, because they're so clever; but
when they're good they're the wisest people I know." She
paused, and a sudden inspiration illuminated her. "But why
shouldn't we take them with us?" she exclaimed.

Her husband's arms fell away from her, and he stood dumfounded.

"Take them with us?"

"Why not?"

"All five of them?"

"Of course--I couldn't possibly separate them. And Junie and
Nat will help us to look after the young ones."

"Help us!" he groaned.

"Oh, you'll see; they won't bother you. Just leave it to me;
I'll manage--" The word stopped her short, and an agony of
crimson suffused her from brow to throat. Their eyes met; and
without a word he stooped and laid his lips gently on the stain
of red on her neck.

"Nick," she breathed, her hands in his.

"But those children--"

Instead of answering, she questioned: "Where are we going?"

His face lit up.

"Anywhere, dearest, that you choose."

"Well--I choose Fontainebleau!" she exulted.

"So do I! But we can't take all those children to an hotel at
Fontainebleau, can we?" he questioned weakly. "You see, dear,
there's the mere expense of it--"

Her eyes were already travelling far ahead of him. "The expense
won't amount to much. I've just remembered that Angele, the
bonne, has a sister who is cook there in a nice old-fashioned
pension which must be almost empty at this time of year. I'm
sure I can ma--arrange easily," she hurried on, nearly tripping
again over the fatal word. "And just think of the treat it will
be to them! This is Friday, and I can get them let off from
their afternoon classes, and keep them in the country till
Monday. Poor darlings, they haven't been out of Paris for
months! And I daresay the change will cure Geordie's cough--
Geordie's the youngest," she explained, surprised to find
herself, even in the rapture of reunion, so absorbed in the
welfare of the Fulmers.

She was conscious that her husband was surprised also; but
instead of prolonging the argument he simply questioned: "Was
Geordie the chap you had in your arms when you opened the front
door the night before last?"

She echoed: "I opened the front door the night before last?"

"To a boy with a parcel."

"Oh," she sobbed, "you were there? You were watching?"

He held her to him, and the currents flowed between them warm
and full as on the night of their moon over Como.

In a trice, after that, she had the matter in hand and her
forces marshalled. The taxi was paid, Nick's luggage deposited
in the vestibule, and the children, just piling down to
breakfast, were summoned in to hear the news.

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