The Glimpses of the Moon - Edith Wharton (short novels in english txt) 📗

knocking about with them again for a bit;” and she

answered at once, and with equal conviction: “Yes, isn’t it?

The old darlings—all the same!”

 

A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing.

Susy’s independence and self-sufficiency had been among her

chief attractions; if she were to turn into an echo their

delicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest of

monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented

her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found

himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the

sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and

to be agreed with monotonous.

 

Once more he began to wonder if he were not fundamentally

unfitted for the married state; and was saved from despair only

by remembering that Susy’s subjection to his moods was not

likely to last. But even then it never occurred to him to

reflect that his apprehensions were superfluous, since their tie

was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on

which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his

thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce

each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the

ghost of an old joke.

 

It was borne in on him, after a week or two of unbroken

sociability, that of all his old friends it was the Mortimer

Hickses who bored him the least. The Hickses had left the Ibis

for an apartment in a vast dilapidated palace near the

Canareggio. They had hired the apartment from a painter (one of

their newest discoveries), and they put up philosophically with

the absence of modern conveniences in order to secure the

inestimable advantage of “atmosphere.” In this privileged air

they gathered about them their usual mixed company of quiet

studious people and noisy exponents of new theories, themselves

totally unconscious of the disparity between their different

guests, and beamingly convinced that at last they were seated at

the source of wisdom.

 

In old days Lansing would have got half an hour’s amusement,

followed by a long evening of boredom, from the sight of Mrs.

Hicks, vast and jewelled, seated between a quiet-looking

professor of archaeology and a large-browed composer, or the

high priest of a new dance-step, while Mr. Hicks, beaming above

his vast white waistcoat, saw to it that the champagne flowed

more abundantly than the talk, and the bright young secretaries

industriously “kept up” with the dizzy cross-current of prophecy

and erudition. But a change had come over Lansing. Hitherto it

was in contrast to his own friends that the Hickses had seemed

most insufferable; now it was as an escape from these same

friends that they had become not only sympathetic but even

interesting. It was something, after all, to be with people who

did not regard Venice simply as affording exceptional

opportunities for bathing and adultery, but who were reverently

if confusedly aware that they were in the presence of something

unique and ineffable, and determined to make the utmost of their

privilege.

 

“After all,” he said to himself one evening, as his eyes

wandered, with somewhat of a convalescent’s simple joy, from one

to another of their large confiding faces, “after all, they’ve

got a religion ….” The phrase struck him, in the moment of

using it, as indicating a new element in his own state of mind,

and as being, in fact, the key to his new feeling about the

Hickses. Their muddled ardour for great things was related to

his own new view of the universe: the people who felt, however

dimly, the wonder and weight of life must ever after be nearer

to him than those to whom it was estimated solely by one’s

balance at the bank. He supposed, on reflexion, that that was

what he meant when he thought of the Hickses as having “a

religion” ….

 

A few days later, his well-being was unexpectedly disturbed by

the arrival of Fred Gillow. Lansing had always felt a tolerant

liking for Gillow, a large smiling silent young man with an

intense and serious desire to miss nothing attainable by one of

his fortune and standing. What use he made of his experiences,

Lansing, who had always gone into his own modest adventures

rather thoroughly, had never been able to guess; but he had

always suspected the prodigal Fred of being no more than a well-disguised looker-on. Now for the first time he began to view

him with another eye. The Gillows were, in fact, the one uneasy

point in Nick’s conscience. He and Susy from the first, had

talked of them less than of any other members of their group:

they had tacitly avoided the name from the day on which Susy had

come to Lansing’s lodgings to say that Ursula Gillow had asked

her to renounce him, till that other day, just before their

marriage, when she had met him with the rapturous cry: “Here’s

our first wedding present! Such a thumping big cheque from Fred

and Ursula!”

 

Plenty of sympathizing people were ready, Lansing knew, to tell

him just what had happened in the interval between those two

dates; but he had taken care not to ask. He had even affected

an initiation so complete that the friends who burned to

enlighten him were discouraged by his so obviously knowing more

than they; and gradually he had worked himself around to their

view, and had taken it for granted that he really did.

 

Now he perceived that he knew nothing at all, and that the

“Hullo, old Fred!” with which Susy hailed Gillow’s arrival might

be either the usual tribal welcome—since they were all “old,”

and all nicknamed, in their private jargon—or a greeting that

concealed inscrutable depths of complicity.

 

Susy was visibly glad to see Gillow; but she was glad of

everything just then, and so glad to show her gladness! The

fact disarmed her husband and made him ashamed of his

uneasiness. “You ought to have thought this all out sooner, or

else you ought to chuck thinking of it at all,” was the sound

but ineffectual advice he gave himself on the day after Gillow’s

arrival; and immediately set to work to rethink the whole

matter.

 

Fred Gillow showed no consciousness of disturbing any one’s

peace of mind. Day after day he sprawled for hours on the Lido

sands, his arms folded under his head, listening to Streffy’s

nonsense and watching Susy between sleepy lids; but he betrayed

no desire to see her alone, or to draw her into talk apart from

the others. More than ever he seemed content to be the

gratified spectator of a costly show got up for his private

entertainment. It was not until he heard her, one morning,

grumble a little at the increasing heat and the menace of

mosquitoes, that he said, quite as if they had talked the matter

over long before, and finally settled it: “The moor will be

ready any time after the first of August.”

 

Nick fancied that Susy coloured a little, and drew herself up

more defiantly than usual as she sent a pebble skimming across

the dying ripples at their feet.

 

“You’ll be a lot cooler in Scotland,” Fred added, with what, for

him, was an unusual effort at explicitness.

 

“Oh, shall we?” she retorted gaily; and added with an air of

mystery and importance, pivoting about on her high heels:

“Nick’s got work to do here. It will probably keep us all

summer.”

 

“Work? Rot! You’ll die of the smells.” Gillow stared

perplexedly skyward from under his tilted hat-brim; and then

brought out, as from the depth of a rankling grievance: “I

thought it was all understood.”

 

“Why,” Nick asked his wife that night, as they re-entered

Ellie’s cool drawing-room after a late dinner at the Lido, “did

Gillow think it was understood that we were going to his moor in

August?” He was conscious of the oddness of speaking of their

friend by his surname, and reddened at his blunder.

 

Susy had let her lace cloak slide to her feet, and stood before

him in the faintly-lit room, slim and shimmering-white through

black transparencies.

 

She raised her eyebrows carelessly. “I told you long ago he’d

asked us there for August.”

 

“You didn’t tell me you’d accepted.”

 

She smiled as if he had said something as simple as Fred. “I

accepted everything—from everybody!”

 

What could he answer? It was the very principle on which their

bargain had been struck. And if he were to say: “Ah, but this

is different, because I’m jealous of Gillow,” what light would

such an answer shed on his past? The time for being jealous-if

so antiquated an attitude were on any ground defensible-would

have been before his marriage, and before the acceptance of the

bounties which had helped to make it possible. He wondered a

little now that in those days such scruples had not troubled

him. His inconsistency irritated him, and increased his

irritation against Gillow. “I suppose he thinks he owns us!” he

grumbled inwardly.

 

He had thrown himself into an armchair, and Susy, advancing

across the shining arabesques of the floor, slid down at his

feet, pressed her slender length against him, and whispered with

lifted face and lips close to his: “We needn’t ever go anywhere

you don’t want to.” For once her submission was sweet, and

folding her close he whispered back through his kiss: “Not

there, then.”

 

In her response to his embrace he felt the acquiescence of her

whole happy self in whatever future he decided on, if only it

gave them enough of such moments as this; and as they held each

other fast in silence his doubts and distrust began to seem like

a silly injustice.

 

“Let us stay here as long as ever Ellie will let us,” he said,

as if the shadowy walls and shining floors were a magic boundary

drawn about his happiness.

 

She murmured her assent and stood up, stretching her sleepy arm

above her shoulders. “How dreadfully late it is …. Will you

unhook me? … Oh, there’s a telegram.”

 

She picked it up from the table, and tearing it open stared a

moment at the message. “It’s from Ellie. She’s coming tomorrow.”

 

She turned to the window and strayed out onto the balcony. Nick

followed her with enlacing arm. The canal below them lay in

moonless shadow, barred with a few lingering lights. A last

snatch of gondola-music came from far off, carried upward on a

sultry gust.

 

“Dear old Ellie. All the same … I wish all this belonged to

you and me.” Susy sighed.

 

VIII.

 

IT was not Mrs. Vanderlyn’s fault if, after her arrival, her

palace seemed to belong any less to the Lansings.

 

She arrived in a mood of such general benevolence that it was

impossible for Susy, when they finally found themselves alone,

to make her view even her own recent conduct in any but the most

benevolent light.

 

“I knew you’d be the veriest angel about it all, darling,

because I knew you’d understand me— especially now,” she

declared, her slim hands in Susy’s, her big eyes (so like

Clarissa’s) resplendent with past pleasures and future plans.

 

The expression of her confidence was unexpectedly distasteful to

Susy Lansing, who had never lent so cold an ear to such warm

avowals. She had always imagined that being happy one’s self

made one—as Mrs. Vanderlyn appeared to assume —more tolerant

of the happiness of others, of however doubtful elements

composed; and she was almost ashamed of responding so languidly

to her friend’s outpourings. But she herself had no desire to

confide her bliss to Ellie; and why should not Ellie observe a

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