The Glimpses of the Moon
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Edith Wharton >> The Glimpses of the Moon
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Susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing her
high-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. There
was no moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hung
over them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped on
them from garden-walls. Susy's heart tightened with memories of
Como.
They wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to the
drifting whims of aimless people. Presently someone proposed
taking a nearer look at the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore, and
they hailed a gondola and were rowed out through the bobbing
lanterns and twanging guitar-strings. When they landed again,
Gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularly
resentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near at
hand, which was said to be jolly. The Prince warmly supported
this proposal; but on Susy's curt refusal they started their
rambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes and
making for the Piazza and Florian's ices. Suddenly, at a calle-
corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, Susy paused to
stare about her with a laugh.
"But the Hickses--surely that's their palace? And the windows
all lit up! They must be giving a party! Oh, do let's go up
and surprise them!" The idea struck her as one of the drollest
that she had ever originated, and she wondered that her
companions should respond so languidly.
"I can't see anything very thrilling in surprising the Hickses,"
Gillow protested, defrauded of possible excitements; and
Strefford added: "It would surprise me more than them if I
went."
But Susy insisted feverishly: "You don't know. It may be
awfully exciting! I have an idea that Coral's announcing her
engagement--her engagement to Nick! Come, give me a hand,
Streff--and you the other, Fred-" she began to hum the first
bars of Donna Anna's entrance in Don Giovanni. "Pity I haven't
got a black cloak and a mask ...."
"Oh, your face will do," said Strefford, laying his hand on her
arm.
She drew back, flushing crimson. Breckenridge and the Prince
had sprung on ahead, and Gillow, lumbering after them, was
already halfway up the stairs.
"My face? My face? What's the matter with my face? Do you
know any reason why I shouldn't go to the Hickses to-night?"
Susy broke out in sudden wrath.
"None whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,"
Strefford returned, with serenity.
"Oh, in that case--!"
"No; come on. I hear those fools banging on the door already."
He caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway.
But on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out of
his, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dashed
down the long flight, across the great resounding vestibule and
out into the darkness of the calle.
Strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent in
the night.
"Susy--what the devil's the matter?"
"The matter? Can't you see? That I'm tired, that I've got a
splitting headache--that you bore me to death, one and all of
you!" She turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm.
"Streffy, old dear, don't mind me: but for God's sake find a
gondola and send me home."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
It was never any concern of Streff's if people wanted to do
things he did not understand, and she knew that she could count
on his obedience. They walked on in silence to the next canal,
and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it.
"Now go and amuse yourself," she called after him, as the boat
shot under the nearest bridge. Anything, anything, to be alone,
away from the folly and futility that would be all she had left
if Nick were to drop out of her life ....
"But perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good," she
thought as she set her foot on the Vanderlyn threshold.
The short summer night was already growing transparent: a new
born breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent it
lapping freshly against the old palace doorways. Nearly two
o'clock! Nick had no doubt come back long ago. Susy hurried up
the stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness. She
knew that when their eyes and their lips met it would be
impossible for anything to keep them apart.
The gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receive
her, and to proffer two envelopes. The upper one was a telegram
for Strefford: she threw it down again and paused under the
lantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope in
her hand. The address it bore was in Nick's writing. "When did
the signore leave this for me? Has he gone out again?"
Gone out again? But the signore had not come in since dinner:
of that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty all
the evening. A boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: he
had left it without waiting. It must have been about half an
hour after the signora had herself gone out with her guests.
Susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there,
beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminated
Ellie Vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened Nick's.
"Don't think me hard on you, dear; but I've got to work this
thing out by myself. The sooner the better-don't you agree? So
I'm taking the express to Milan presently. You'll get a proper
letter in a day or two. I wish I could think, now, of something
to say that would show you I'm not a brute--but I can't. N. L. "
There was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even had
a semblance of sleep been achievable. The letter fell from
Susy's hands, and she crept out onto the balcony and cowered
there, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawn
wind stirring in her thin laces. Through her closed eyelids and
the tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt the
penetration of the growing light, the relentless advance of
another day--a day without purpose and without meaning--a day
without Nick. At length she dropped her hands, and staring from
dry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the Grand
Canal. She sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging the
heavy curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in the
darkness to the lounge and fell among its pillows-face
downward--groping, delving for a deeper night ....
She started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sun
on the floor at her feet. She had slept, then--was it
possible?--it must be eight or nine o'clock already! She had
slept--slept like a drunkard--with that letter on the table at
her elbow! Ah, now she remembered--she had dreamed that the
letter was a dream! But there, inexorably, it lay; and she
picked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read it. Then she tore
it into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before the empty
hearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, she
burnt every shred of it to ashes. Nick would thank her for that
some day!
After a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware of
feeling younger and more hopeful. After all, Nick had merely
said that he was going away for "a day or two." And the letter
was not cruel: there were tender things in it, showing through
the curt words. She smiled at herself a little stiffly in the
glass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang for
the maid.
"Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that
I should like to see him presently."
If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few
days she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her
mind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of was
to take Strefford into her confidence. She knew that he could
be trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformed
itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends required
it.
The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy
somewhat sharply repeated her order. "But don't wake him on
purpose," she added, foreseeing the probable effect on
Strefford's temper.
"But, signora, the gentleman is already out."
"Already out?" Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his
bed before luncheon-time! "Is it so late?" Susy cried,
incredulous.
"After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for
England. Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word
that he would write to the signora."
The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her
painted image in the glass, as if she had been trying to
outstare an importunate stranger. There was no one left for her
to take counsel of, then--no one but poor Fred Gillow! She made
a grimace at the idea.
But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?
XII
NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar
of sunshine lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with
disgust at his stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he
had decided to go to Milan, and what on earth he should do when
he got there. The difficulty about trenchant decisions was that
the next morning they generally left one facing a void ....
When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out,
got some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his
journey to Genoa. The state of being carried passively onward
postponed action and dulled thought; and after twelve hours of
furious mental activity that was exactly what he wanted.
He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard
intervals of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank
and rattle of the train. Inside his head, in his waking
intervals, the same clanking and grinding of wheels and chains
went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid thinking
within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night
before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve
indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee,
instead of clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their
pace.
At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap
suit-case and some underclothes, and then went down to the port
in search of a little hotel he remembered there. An hour later
he was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly
over the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became aware
of being timidly but intently examined by a small round-faced
gentleman with eyeglasses who sat alone at the adjoining table.
"Hullo--Buttles!" Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise
the recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's
endeavour to convert him to Tiepolo.
Mr. Buttles, blushing to the roots of his scant hair, half rose
and bowed ceremoniously.
Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed
in his solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to
postpone them even to converse with Mr. Buttles.
"No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?" he asked,
remembering that the Ibis must be just about to spread her
wings.
Mr. Buttles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation:
for the moment he seemed too embarrassed to speak.
"Ah--you're here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw
Miss Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday," Lansing
continued, dazed at the thought that hardly forty-eight hours
had passed since his encounter with Coral in the Scalzi.
Mr. Buttles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his
table. "May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank
you. No, I am not here as an advance guard--though I believe
the Ibis is due some time to-morrow." He cleared his throat,
wiped his eyeglasses on a silk handkerchief, replaced them on
his nose, and went on solemnly: "Perhaps, to clear up any
possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no longer in
the employ of Mr. Hicks."
Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he
suffered horribly in imparting this information, though his
compact face did not lend itself to any dramatic display of
emotion.
"Really," Nick smiled, and then ventured: "I hope it's not
owing to conscientious objections to Tiepolo?"
Mr. Buttles's blush became a smouldering agony. "Ah, Miss Hicks
mentioned to you ... told you ...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am
principled against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his
contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to
surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of the
Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize.
Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble
capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming ...."
He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his
eyeglasses. It was evident that he was suffering from a
distress which he longed and yet dreaded to communicate. But
Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his own
preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went
on: "If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a
somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of
our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so
many stimulating hours. But I must beg you," he added
earnestly, "should you see Miss Hicks--or any other member of
the party--to make no allusion to my presence in Genoa. I
wish," said Mr. Buttles with simplicity, "to preserve the
strictest incognito."
Lansing glanced at him kindly. "Oh, but--isn't that a little
unfriendly?"
"No other course is possible, Mr. Lansing," said the ex-
secretary, "and I commit myself to your discretion. The truth
is, if I am here it is not to look once more at the Ibis, but at
Miss Hicks: once only. You will understand me, and appreciate
what I am suffering."
He bowed again, and trotted away on his small, tightly-booted
feet; pausing on the threshold to say: "From the first it was
hopeless," before he disappeared through the glass doors.
A gleam of commiseration flashed through Nick's mind: there was
something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and
efficient Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited
passion. And what a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus
suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed "the foreign
languages"! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the
hotel-keepers; but it was Mr. Buttles's loftier task to
entertain in their own tongues the unknown geniuses who flocked
about the Hickses, and Nick could imagine how disconcerting his
departure must be on the eve of their Grecian cruise which Mrs.
Hicks would certainly call an Odyssey.
The next moment the vision of Coral's hopeless suitor had faded,
and Nick was once more spinning around on the wheel of his own
woes. The night before, when he had sent his note to Susy, from
a little restaurant close to Palazzo Vanderlyn that they often
patronized, he had done so with the firm intention of going away
for a day or two in order to collect his wits and think over the
situation. But after his letter had been entrusted to the
landlord's little son, who was a particular friend of Susy's,
Nick had decided to await the lad's return. The messenger had
not been bidden to ask for an answer; but Nick, knowing the
friendly and inquisitive Italian mind, was almost sure that the
boy, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Susy, would linger
about while the letter was carried up. And he pictured the maid
knocking at his wife's darkened room, and Susy dashing some
powder on her tear-stained face before she turned on the light--
poor foolish child!
The boy had returned rather sooner than Nick expected, and he
had brought no answer, but merely the statement that the
signora was out: that everybody was out.
"Everybody?"
"The signora and the four gentlemen who were dining at the
palace. They all went out together on foot soon after dinner.
There was no one to whom I could give the note but the gondolier
on the landing, for the signora had said she would be very late,
and had sent the maid to bed; and the maid had, of course, gone
out immediately with her innamorato."
"Ah--" said Nick, slipping his reward into the boy's hand, and
walking out of the restaurant.
Susy had gone out--gone out with their usual band, as she did
every night in these sultry summer weeks, gone out after her
talk with Nick, as if nothing had happened, as if his whole
world and hers had not crashed in ruins at their feet. Ah, poor
Susy! After all, she had merely obeyed the instinct of self
preservation, the old hard habit of keeping up, going ahead and
hiding her troubles; unless indeed the habit had already
engendered indifference, and it had become as easy for her as
for most of her friends to pass from drama to dancing, from
sorrow to the cinema. What of soul was left, he wondered--?
His train did not start till midnight, and after leaving the
restaurant Nick tramped the sultry by-ways till his tired legs
brought him to a standstill under the vine-covered pergola of a
gondolier's wine-shop at a landing close to the Piazzetta.
There he could absorb cooling drinks until it was time to go to
the station.
It was after eleven, and he was beginning to look about for a
boat, when a black prow pushed up to the steps, and with much
chaff and laughter a party of young people in evening dress
jumped out. Nick, from under the darkness of the vine, saw that
there was only one lady among them, and it did not need the lamp
above the landing to reveal her identity. Susy, bareheaded and
laughing, a light scarf slipping from her bare shoulders, a
cigarette between her fingers, took Strefford's arm and turned
in the direction of Florian's, with Gillow, the Prince and young
Breckenridge in her wake ....
Nick had relived this rapid scene hundreds of times during his
hours in the train and his aimless trampings through the streets
of Genoa. In that squirrel-wheel of a world of his and Susy's
you had to keep going or drop out--and Susy, it was evident, had
chosen to keep going. Under the lamp-flare on the landing he
had had a good look at her face, and had seen that the mask of
paint and powder was carefully enough adjusted to hide any
ravages the scene between them might have left. He even fancied
that she had dropped a little atropine into her eyes ....
There was no time to spare if he meant to catch the midnight
train, and no gondola in sight but that which his wife had just
left. He sprang into it, and bade the gondolier carry him to
the station. The cushions, as he leaned back, gave out a breath
of her scent; and in the glare of electric light at the station
he saw at his feet a rose which had fallen from her dress. He
ground his heel into it as he got out.
There it was, then; that was the last picture he was to have of
her. For he knew now that he was not going back; at least not
to take up their life together. He supposed he should have to
see her once, to talk things over, settle something for their
future. He had been sincere in saying that he bore her no ill-
will; only he could never go back into that slough again. If he
did, he knew he would inevitably be drawn under, slipping
downward from concession to concession ....
The noises of a hot summer night in the port of Genoa would have
kept the most care-free from slumber; but though Nick lay awake
he did not notice them, for the tumult in his brain was more
deafening. Dawn brought a negative relief, and out of sheer
weariness he dropped into a heavy sleep. When he woke it was
nearly noon, and from his window he saw the well-known outline
of the Ibis standing up dark against the glitter of the harbour.
He had no fear of meeting her owners, who had doubtless long
since landed and betaken themselves to cooler and more
fashionable regions: oddly enough, the fact seemed to
accentuate his loneliness, his sense of having no one on earth
to turn to. He dressed, and wandered out disconsolately to pick
up a cup of coffee in some shady corner.
As he drank his coffee his thoughts gradually cleared. It
became obvious to him that he had behaved like a madman or a
petulant child--he preferred to think it was like a madman. If
he and Susy were to separate there was no reason why it should
not be done decently and quietly, as such transactions were
habitually managed among people of their kind. It seemed
grotesque to introduce melodrama into their little world of
unruffled Sybarites, and he felt inclined, now, to smile at the
incongruity of his gesture .... But suddenly his eyes filled
with tears. The future without Susy was unbearable,
inconceivable. Why, after all, should they separate? At the
question, her soft face seemed close to his, and that slight
lift of the upper lip that made her smile so exquisite. Well-
he would go back. But not with any presence of going to talk
things over, come to an agreement, wind up their joint life like
a business association. No--if he went back he would go without
conditions, for good, forever ....
Only, what about the future? What about the not far-distant day
when the wedding cheques would have been spent, and Granny's
pearls sold, and nothing left except unconcealed and
unconditional dependence on rich friends, the role of the
acknowledged hangers-on? Was there no other possible solution,
no new way of ordering their lives? No--there was none: he
could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure,
could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat
Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow
in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and
ubiquitous children. How could he ask Susy to share such a life
with him? If he did, she would probably have the sense to
refuse. Their alliance had been based on a moment's midsummer
madness; now the score must be paid ....
He decided to write. If they were to part he could not trust
himself to see her. He called a waiter, asked for pen and
paper, and pushed aside a pile of unread newspapers on the
corner of the table where his coffee had been served. As he did
so, his eye lit on a Daily Mail of two days before. As a
pretext for postponing his letter, he took up the paper and
glanced down the first page. He read:
"Tragic Yachting Accident in the Solent. The Earl of Altringham
and his son Viscount d'Amblay drowned in midnight collision.
Both bodies recovered."
He read on. He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened
the night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a
fog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of
Altringham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes
in England. It was vertiginous to think of their old
impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure. And what
irony in that double turn of the wheel which, in one day, had
plunged him, Nick Lansing, into nethermost misery, while it
tossed the other to the stars!
With an intenser precision he saw again Susy's descent from the
gondola at the calle steps, the sound of her laughter and of
Strefford's chaff, the way she had caught his arm and clung to
it, sweeping the other men on in her train. Strefford--Susy and
Strefford! ... More than once, Nick had noticed the softer
inflections of his friend's voice when he spoke to Susy, the
brooding look in his lazy eyes when they rested on her. In the
security of his wedded bliss Nick had made light of those signs.
The only real jealousy he had felt had been of Fred Gillow,
because of his unlimited power to satisfy a woman's whims. Yet
Nick knew that such material advantages would never again
suffice for Susy. With Strefford it was different. She had
delighted in his society while he was notoriously ineligible;
might not she find him irresistible now?
The forgotten terms of their bridal compact came back to Nick:
the absurd agreement on which he and Susy had solemnly pledged
their faith. But was it so absurd, after all? It had been
Susy's suggestion (not his, thank God!); and perhaps in making
it she had been more serious than he imagined. Perhaps, even if
their rupture had not occurred, Strefford's sudden honours might
have caused her to ask for her freedom ....
Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four
cornerstones of her existence. He had always known it--she
herself had always acknowledged it, even in their last dreadful
talk together; and once he had gloried in her frankness. How
could he ever have imagined that, to have her fill of these
things, she would not in time stoop lower than she had yet
stooped? Perhaps in giving her up to Strefford he might be
saving her. At any rate, the taste of the past was now so
bitter to him that he was moved to thank whatever gods there
were for pushing that mortuary paragraph under his eye ....
"Susy, dear [he wrote], the fates seem to have taken our future
in hand, and spared us the trouble of unravelling it. If I have
sometimes been selfish enough to forget the conditions on which
you agreed to marry me, they have come back to me during these
two days of solitude. You've given me the best a man can have,
and nothing else will ever be worth much to me. But since I
haven't the ability to provide you with what you want, I
recognize that I've no right to stand in your way. We must owe
no more Venetian palaces to underhand services. I see by the
newspapers that Streff can now give you as many palaces as you
want. Let him have the chance--I fancy he'll jump at it, and
he's the best man in sight. I wish I were in his shoes.
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