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

reticence?

 

“It was all so perfect—you see, dearest, I was meant to be

happy,” that lady continued, as if the possession of so unusual

a characteristic singled her out for special privileges.

 

Susy, with a certain sharpness, responded that she had always

supposed we all were.

 

“Oh, no, dearest: not governesses and mothers-in-law and

companions, and that sort of people. They wouldn’t know how if

they tried. But you and I, darling—”

 

“Oh, I don’t consider myself in any way exceptional,” Susy

intervened. She longed to add: “Not in your way, at any

rate—” but a few minutes earlier Mrs. Vanderlyn had told her

that the palace was at her disposal for the rest of the summer,

and that she herself was only going to perch there—if they’d

let her!—long enough to gather up her things and start for St.

Moritz. The memory of this announcement had the effect of

curbing Susy’s irony, and of making her shift the conversation

to the safer if scarcely less absorbing topic of the number of

day and evening dresses required for a season at St. Moritz.

 

As she listened to Mrs. Vanderlyn—no less eloquent on this

theme than on the other—Susy began to measure the gulf between

her past and present. “This is the life I used to lead; these

are the things I used to live for,” she thought, as she stood

before the outspread glories of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s wardrobe. Not

that she did not still care: she could not look at Ellie’s

laces and silks and furs without picturing herself in them, and

wondering by what new miracle of management she could give

herself the air of being dressed by the same consummate artists.

But these had become minor interests: the past few months had

given her a new perspective, and the thing that most puzzled and

disconcerted her about Ellie was the fact that love and finery

and bridge and dining-out were seemingly all on the same plane

to her.

 

The inspection of the dresses lasted a long time, and was marked

by many fluctuations of mood on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn, who

passed from comparative hopefulness to despair at the total

inadequacy of her wardrobe. It wouldn’t do to go to St. Moritz

looking like a frump, and yet there was no time to get anything

sent from Paris, and, whatever she did, she wasn’t going to show

herself in any dowdy re-arrangements done at home. But suddenly

light broke on her, and she clasped her hands for joy. “Why,

Nelson’ll bring them—I’d forgotten all about Nelson! There’ll

be just time if I wire to him at once.”

 

“Is Nelson going to join you at St. Moritz?” Susy asked,

surprised.

 

“Heavens, no! He’s coming here to pick up Clarissa and take her

to some stuffy cure in Austria with his mother. It’s too lucky:

there’s just time to telegraph him to bring my things. I didn’t

mean to wait for him; but it won’t delay me more than day or

two.”

 

Susy’s heart sank. She was not much afraid of Ellie alone, but

Ellie and Nelson together formed an incalculable menace. No one

could tell what spark of truth might dash from their collision.

Susy felt that she could deal with the two dangers separately

and successively, but not together and simultaneously.

 

“But, Ellie, why should you wait for Nelson? I’m certain to

find someone here who’s going to St. Moritz and will take your

things if he brings them. It’s a pity to risk losing your

rooms.”

 

This argument appealed for a moment to Mrs. Vanderlyn. “That’s

true; they say all the hotels are jammed. You dear, you’re

always so practical!” She clasped Susy to her scented bosom.

“And you know, darling, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get rid of

me—you and Nick! Oh, don’t be hypocritical and say ‘Nonsense!’

You see, I understand … I used to think of you so often, you

two … during those blessed weeks when we two were alone….”

 

The sudden tears, brimming over Ellie’s lovely eyes, and

threatening to make the blue circles below them run into the

adjoining carmine, filled Susy with compunction.

 

“Poor thing—oh, poor thing!” she thought; and hearing herself

called by Nick, who was waiting to take her out for their usual

sunset on the lagoon, she felt a wave of pity for the deluded

creature who would never taste that highest of imaginable joys.

“But all the same,” Susy reflected, as she hurried down to her

husband, “I’m glad I persuaded her not to wait for Nelson.”

 

Some days had elapsed since Susy and Nick had had a sunset to

themselves, and in the interval Susy had once again learned the

superior quality of the sympathy that held them together. She

now viewed all the rest of life as no more than a show: a jolly

show which it would have been a thousand pities to miss, but

which, if the need arose, they could get up and leave at any

moment—provided that they left it together.

 

In the dusk, while their prow slid over inverted palaces, and

through the scent of hidden gardens, she leaned against him and

murmured, her mind returning to the recent scene with Ellie:

“Nick, should you hate me dreadfully if I had no clothes?”

 

Her husband was kindling a cigarette, and the match lit up the

grin with which he answered: “But, my dear, have I ever shown

the slightest symptom—?”

 

“Oh, rubbish! When a woman says: ‘No clothes,’ she means:

‘Not the right clothes.’”

 

He took a meditative puff. “Ah, you’ve been going over Ellie’s

finery with her.”

 

“Yes: all those trunks and trunks full. And she finds she’s

got nothing for St. Moritz!”

 

“Of course,” he murmured, drowsy with content, and manifesting

but a languid interest in the subject of Mrs. Vanderlyn’s

wardrobe.

 

“Only fancy—she very nearly decided to stop over for Nelson’s

arrival next week, so that he might bring her two or three more

trunkfuls from Paris. But mercifully I’ve managed to persuade

her that it would be foolish to wait.”

 

Susy felt a hardly perceptible shifting of her husband’s

lounging body, and was aware, through all her watchful

tentacles, of a widening of his half-closed lids.

 

“You ‘managed’—?” She fancied he paused on the word

ironically. “But why?”

 

“Why—what?”

 

“Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie’s waiting for

Nelson, if for once in her life she wants to?”

 

Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the

leap of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue

flannel shoulder against which she leaned.

 

“Really, dearest—!” she murmured; but with a sudden doggedness

he renewed his “Why?”

 

“Because she’s in such a fever to get to St. Moritz—and in such

a funk lest the hotel shouldn’t keep her rooms,” Susy somewhat

breathlessly produced.

 

“Ah—I see.” Nick paused again. “You’re a devoted friend,

aren’t you!”

 

“What an odd question! There’s hardly anyone I’ve reason to be

more devoted to than Ellie,” his wife answered; and she felt his

contrite clasp on her hand.

 

“Darling! No; nor I—. Or more grateful to for leaving us

alone in this heaven.”

 

Dimness had fallen on the waters, and her lifted lips met his

bending ones.

 

Trailing late into dinner that evening, Ellie announced that,

after all, she had decided it was safest to wait for Nelson.

 

“I should simply worry myself ill if I weren’t sure of getting

my things,” she said, in the tone of tender solicitude with

which she always discussed her own difficulties. “After all,

people who deny themselves everything do get warped and bitter,

don’t they?” she argued plaintively, her lovely eyes wandering

from one to the other of her assembled friends.

 

Strefford remarked gravely that it was the complaint which had

fatally undermined his own health; and in the laugh that

followed the party drifted into the great vaulted dining-room.

 

“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing at me, Streffy darling,” his

hostess retorted, pressing his arm against her own; and Susy,

receiving the shock of their rapidly exchanged glance, said to

herself, with a sharp twinge of apprehension: “Of course

Streffy knows everything; he showed no surprise at finding Ellie

away when he arrived. And if he knows, what’s to prevent

Nelson’s finding out?” For Strefford, in a mood of mischief,

was no more to be trusted than a malicious child.

 

Susy instantly resolved to risk speaking to him, if need be even

betraying to him the secret of the letters. Only by revealing

the depth of her own danger could she hope to secure his

silence.

 

On the balcony, late in the evening, while the others were

listening indoors to the low modulations of a young composer who

had embroidered his fancies on Browning’s “Toccata,” Susy found

her chance. Strefford, unsummoned, had followed her out, and

stood silently smoking at her side.

 

“You see, Streff—oh, why should you and I make mysteries to

each other?” she suddenly began.

 

“Why, indeed: but do we?”

 

Susy glanced back at the group around the piano. “About Ellie,

I mean—and Nelson.”

 

“Lord! Ellie and Nelson? You call that a mystery? I should as

soon apply the term to one of the million candle-power

advertisements that adorn your native thoroughfares.”

 

“Well, yes. But—” She stopped again. Had she not tacitly

promised Ellie not to speak?

 

“My Susan, what’s wrong?” Strefford asked.

 

“I don’t know….”

 

“Well, I do, then: you’re afraid that, if Ellie and Nelson meet

here, she’ll blurt out something—injudicious.”

 

“Oh, she won’t!” Susy cried with conviction.

 

“Well, then—who will! I trust that superhuman child not to.

And you and I and Nick—”

 

“Oh,” she gasped, interrupting him, “that’s just it. Nick

doesn’t know … doesn’t even suspect. And if he did….”

 

Strefford flung away his cigar and turned to scrutinize her. “I

don’t see—hanged if I do. What business is it of any of us,

after all?”

 

That, of course, was the old view that cloaked connivance in an

air of decency. But to Susy it no longer carried conviction,

and she hesitated.

 

“If Nick should find out that I know….”

 

“Good Lord—doesn’t he know that you know? After all, I suppose

it’s not the first time—”

 

She remained silent.

 

“The first time you’ve received confidences—from married

friends. Does Nick suppose you’ve lived even to your tender age

without … Hang it, what’s come over you, child?”

 

What had, indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet

more than ever she felt the need of having him securely on her

side. Once his word was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there

was no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness.

 

“Look here, Streff, you and I know that Ellie hasn’t been away

for a cure; and that if poor Clarissa was sworn to secrecy it

was not because it ‘worries father’ to think that mother needs

to take care of her health.” She paused, hating herself for the

ironic note she had tried to sound.

 

“Well—?” he questioned, from the depths of the chair into which

he had sunk.

 

“Well, Nick doesn’t … doesn’t dream of it. If he knew that we

owed our summer here to … to my knowing….”

 

Strefford sat silent: she felt his astonished stare through the

darkness. “Jove!” he said at last, with a low whistle Susy bent

over the balustrade, her heart thumping against the stone rail.

 

“What was left of soul, I wonder—?” the young composer’s voice

shrilled through the open windows.

 

Strefford sank into another silence, from which he roused

himself only as Susy turned back toward the lighted threshold.