XXII
STREFFORD was leaving for England.
Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself,he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reasonfor further mystery. She understood his impatience to have theirplans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of themarriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now thatthe novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolencereasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having tobe on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers wereperpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying herbecause to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.
"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others," shelaughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Boisde Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. "Ibelieve I'm only a protection to you."
An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that hewas thinking: "And what else am I to you?"
She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: "Well, you're thatat any rate, thank the Lord!"
She pondered, and then questioned: "But in the interval-how are yougoing to defend yourself for another year?"
"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little house inLondon. You've got to look after me, you know."
It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: "Oh, if that's allyou care--!" But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much aspossible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She couldnot ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the samequestion; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Streffordwas not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament,perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegratingevery sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for heras much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habitentered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because hewas used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knewhe was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, byher; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhapsthose most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; butthe idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakablydepressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say.The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she wouldhave to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the otherwomen, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, aslittle Breckenridge would have said, she could "pull it off"; but shedid not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would havebeen to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till theywere married. But she dared not tell him that either.
"A little house in London--?" She wondered.
"Well, I suppose you've got to have some sort of a roof over your head."
"I suppose so."
He sat down beside her. "If you like me well enough to live atAltringham some day, won't you, in the meantime, let me provide you witha smaller and more convenient establishment?"
Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live onUrsula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, anyone of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on theprospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run,would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive toher independence, than Altringham's little establishment. But shetemporized. "I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a whilewith various people--then we can look about."
"All right; as you like." He obviously considered her hesitationridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having starteddivorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.
"And now, look here, my dear; couldn't I give you some sort of a ring?"
"A ring?" She flushed at the suggestion. "What's the use, Streff, dear?With all those jewels locked away in London--"
"Oh, I daresay you'll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, whyshouldn't I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimeryesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you likesapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I've seen a thumping one....I'd like you to have it."
Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Theircase always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt anunreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same seasonfor her unmating and re-mating.
"I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! Ican hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn."
"Hullo? What's wrong? You mean because of her giving up Clarissa?"
"Not that only.... You don't know.... I can't tell you...." She shiveredat the memory, and rose restlessly from the bench where they had beensitting.
Strefford gave his careless shrug. "Well, my dear, you can hardly expectme to agree, for after all it was to Ellie I owed the luck of being solong alone with you in Venice. If she and Algie hadn't prolonged theirhoneymoon at the villa--"
He stopped abruptly, and looked at Susy. She was conscious that everydrop of blood had left her face. She felt it ebbing away from her heart,flowing out of her as if from all her severed arteries, till it seemedas though nothing were left of life in her but one point of irreduciblepain.
"Ellie--at your villa? What do you mean? Was it Ellie and Bockheimerwho--?"
Strefford still stared. "You mean to say you didn't know?"
"Who came after Nick and me...?" she insisted.
"Why, do you suppose I'd have turned you out otherwise? That beastlyBockheimer simply smothered me with gold. Ah, well, there's one goodthing: I shall never have to let the villa again! I rather like thelittle place myself, and I daresay once in a while we might go there fora day or two.... Susy, what's the matter?" he exclaimed.
She returned his stare, but without seeing him. Everything swam anddanced before her eyes.
"Then she was there while I was posting all those letters for her--?"
"Letters--what letters? What makes you look so frightfully upset?"
She pursued her thought as if he had not spoken. "She and AlgieBockheimer arrived there the very day that Nick and I left?"
"I suppose so. I thought she'd told you. Ellie always tells everybodyeverything."
"She would have told me, I daresay--but I wouldn't let her."
"Well, my dear, that was hardly my fault, was it? Though I really don'tsee--"
But Susy, still blind to everything but the dance of dizzy sparks beforeher eyes, pressed on as if she had not heard him. "It was their motor,then, that took us to Milan! It was Algie Bockheimer's motor!" She didnot know why, but this seemed to her the most humiliating incident inthe whole hateful business. She remembered Nick's reluctance to use themotor-she remembered his look when she had boasted of her "managing."The nausea mounted to her throat.
Strefford burst out laughing. "I say--you borrowed their motor? And youdidn't know whose it was?"
"How could I know? I persuaded the chauffeur... for a little tip....It was to save our railway fares to Milan... extra luggage costs sofrightfully in Italy...."
"Good old Susy! Well done! I can see you doing it--"
"Oh, how horrible--how horrible!" she groaned.
"Horrible? What's horrible?"
"Why, your not seeing... not feeling..." she began impetuously; and thenstopped. How could she explain to him that what revolted her was not somuch the fact of his having given the little house, as soon as she andNick had left it, to those two people of all others--though the visionof them in the sweet secret house, and under the plane-trees of theterrace, drew such a trail of slime across her golden hours? No, it wasnot that from which she most recoiled, but from the fact that Strefford,living in luxury in Nelson Vanderlyn's house, should at the same timehave secretly abetted Ellie Vand
erlyn's love-affairs, and allowedher--for a handsome price--to shelter them under his own roof. Thereproach trembled on her lip--but she remembered her own part in thewretched business, and the impossibility of avowing it to Strefford, andof revealing to him that Nick had left her for that very reason. She wasnot afraid that the discovery would diminish her in Strefford's eyes: hewas untroubled by moral problems, and would laugh away her avowal, witha sneer at Nick in his new part of moralist. But that was just what shecould not bear: that anyone should cast a doubt on the genuineness ofNick's standards, or should know how far below them she had fallen.
She remained silent, and Strefford, after a moment, drew her gently downto the seat beside him. "Susy, upon my soul I don't know what you'redriving at. Is it me you're angry with-or yourself? And what's it allabout! Are you disgusted because I let the villa to a couple who weren'tmarried! But, hang it, they're the kind that pay the highest price andI had to earn my living somehow! One doesn't run across a bridal pairevery day...."
She lifted her eyes to his puzzled incredulous face. Poor Streff! No,it was not with him that she was angry. Why should she be? Even thatill-advised disclosure had told her nothing she had not already knownabout him. It had simply revealed to her once more the real point ofview of the people he and she lived among had shown her that, in spiteof the superficial difference, he felt as they felt, judged as theyjudged, was blind as they were-and as she would be expected to be,should she once again become one of them. What was the use of beingplaced by fortune above such shifts and compromises, if in one's heartone still condoned them? And she would have to--she would catch thegeneral note, grow blunted as those other people were blunted, andgradually come to wonder at her own revolt, as Strefford now honestlywondered at it. She felt as though she were on the point of losing somenew-found treasure, a treasure precious only to herself, but besidewhich all he offered her was nothing, the triumph of her wounded pridenothing, the security of her future nothing.
"What is it, Susy?" he asked, with the same puzzled gentleness.
Ah, the loneliness of never being able to make him understand! She hadfelt lonely enough when the flaming sword of Nick's indignation had shuther out from their Paradise; but there had been a cruel bliss in thepain. Nick had not opened her eyes to new truths, but had waked in heragain something which had lain unconscious under years of accumulatedindifference. And that re-awakened sense had never left her since,and had somehow kept her from utter loneliness because it was a secretshared with Nick, a gift she owed to Nick, and which, in leaving her, hecould not take from her. It was almost, she suddenly felt, as if he hadleft her with a child.
"My dear girl," Strefford said, with a resigned glance at his watch,"you know we're dining at the Embassy...."
At the Embassy? She looked at him vaguely: then she remembered. Yes,they were dining that night at the Ascots', with Strefford's cousin, theDuke of Dunes, and his wife, the handsome irreproachable young Duchess;with the old gambling Dowager Duchess, whom her son and daughter-in-lawhad come over from England to see; and with other English and Frenchguests of a rank and standing worthy of the Duneses. Susy knew that herinclusion in such a dinner could mean but one thing: it was her definiterecognition as Altringham's future wife. She was "the little American"whom one had to ask when one invited him, even on ceremonial occasions.The family had accepted her; the Embassy could but follow suit.
"It's late, dear; and I've got to see someone on business first,"Strefford reminded her patiently.
"Oh, Streff--I can't, I can't!" The words broke from her without herknowing what she was saying. "I can't go with you--I can't go to theEmbassy. I can't go on any longer like this...." She lifted her eyesto his in desperate appeal. "Oh, understand-do please understand!" shewailed, knowing, while she spoke, the utter impossibility of what sheasked.
Strefford's face had gradually paled and hardened. From sallow it turnedto a dusky white, and lines of obstinacy deepened between the ironiceyebrows and about the weak amused mouth.
"Understand? What do you want me to understand," He laughed. "Thatyou're trying to chuck me already?"
She shrank at the sneer of the "already," but instantly remembered thatit was the only thing he could be expected to say, since it was justbecause he couldn't understand that she was flying from him.
"Oh, Streff--if I knew how to tell you!"
"It doesn't so much matter about the how. Is that what you're trying tosay?"
Her head drooped, and she saw the dead leaves whirling across the pathat her feet, lifted on a sudden wintry gust.
"The reason," he continued, clearing his throat with a stiff smile, "isnot quite as important to me as the fact."
She stood speechless, agonized by his pain. But still, she thought, hehad remembered the dinner at the Embassy. The thought gave her courageto go on.
"It wouldn't do, Streff. I'm not a bit the kind of person to make youhappy."
"Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?"
"No, I can't. Because I should be unhappy too."
He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. "You've taken a ratherlong time to find it out." She saw that his new-born sense of his ownconsequence was making him suffer even more than his wounded affection;and that again gave her courage.
"If I've taken long it's all the more reason why I shouldn't takelonger. If I've made a mistake it's you who would have suffered fromit...."
"Thanks," he said, "for your extreme solicitude."
She looked at him helplessly, penetrated by the despairing sense oftheir inaccessibility to each other. Then she remembered that Nick,during their last talk together, had seemed as inaccessible, andwondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they donot inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision. She would haveliked to say this to Streff-but he would not have understood it either.The sense of loneliness once more enveloped her, and she groped in vainfor a word that should reach him.
"Let me go home alone, won't you?" she appealed to him.
"Alone?"
She nodded. "To-morrow--to-morrow...."
He tried, rather valiantly, to smile. "Hang tomorrow! Whatever is wrong,it needn't prevent my seeing you home." He glanced toward the taxi thatawaited them at the end of the deserted drive.
"No, please. You're in a hurry; take the taxi. I want immensely a longlong walk by myself... through the streets, with the lights comingout...."
He laid his hand on her arm. "I say, my dear, you're not ill?"
"No; I'm not ill. But you may say I am, to-night at the Embassy."
He released her and drew back. "Oh, very well," he answered coldly;and she understood by his tone that the knot was cut, and that at thatmoment he almost hated her. She turned away, hastening down the desertedalley, flying from him, and knowing, as she fled, that he was stillstanding there motionless, staring after her, wounded, humiliated,uncomprehending. It was neither her fault nor his....
The Glimpses of the Moon Page 22