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

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“Well, my dear, we’ll see it through between us; you and I-and

Clarissa,” he said with his rasping laugh, rising to follow her.

He caught her hand and gave it a short pressure as they re-entered the drawing-room, where Ellie was saying plaintively to

Fred Gillow: “I can never hear that thing sung without wanting

to cry like a baby.”

 

IX.

 

NELSON VANDERLYN, still in his travelling clothes, paused on the

threshold of his own dining-room and surveyed the scene with

pardonable satisfaction.

 

He was a short round man, with a grizzled head, small facetious

eyes and a large and credulous smile.

 

At the luncheon table sat his wife, between Charlie Strefford

and Nick Lansing. Next to Strefford, perched on her high chair,

Clarissa throned in infant beauty, while Susy Lansing cut up a

peach for her. Through wide orange awnings the sun slanted in

upon the white-clad group.

 

“Well—well—well! So I’ve caught you at it!” cried the happy

father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and

friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment.

Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air,

while a chorus of “Hello, old Nelson,” hailed his appearance.

 

It was two or three years since Nick Lansing had seen Mr.

Vanderlyn, who was now the London representative of the big New

York bank of Vanderlyn & Co., and had exchanged his sumptuous

house in Fifth Avenue for another, more sumptuous still, in

Mayfair; and the young man looked curiously and attentively at

his host.

 

Mr. Vanderlyn had grown older and stouter, but his face still

kept its look of somewhat worn optimism. He embraced his wife,

greeted Susy affectionately, and distributed cordial hand-grasps

to the two men.

 

“Hullo,” he exclaimed, suddenly noticing a pearl and coral

trinket hanging from Clarissa’s neck. “Who’s been giving my

daughter jewellery, I’d like to know!”

 

“Oh, Streffy did—just think, father! Because I said I’d rather

have it than a book, you know,” Clarissa lucidly explained, her

arms tight about her father’s neck, her beaming eyes on

Strefford.

 

Nelson Vanderlyn’s own eyes took on the look of shrewdness which

came into them whenever there was a question of material values.

 

“What, Streffy? Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling

the brat like that! You’d no business to, my dear chap-a

lovely baroque pearl—” he protested, with the half-apologetic

tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an

impecunious friend.

 

“Oh, hadn’t I? Why? Because it’s too good for Clarissa, or too

expensive for me? Of course you daren’t imply the first; and as

for me—I’ve had a windfall, and am blowing it in on the

ladies.”

 

Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when

he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from

the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did

he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had

been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the

dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But it

was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and

especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed

Vanderlyn’s attention.

 

“A windfall?” he gaily repeated.

 

“Oh, a tiny one: I was offered a thumping rent for my little

place at Como, and dashed over here to squander my millions with

the rest of you,” said Strefford imperturbably.

 

Vanderlyn’s look immediately became interested and sympathetic.

“What—the scene of the honeymoon?” He included Nick and Susy

in his friendly smile.

 

“Just so: the reward of virtue. I say, give me a cigar, will

you, old man, I left some awfully good ones at Como, worse

luck—and I don’t mind telling you that Ellie’s no judge of

tobacco, and that Nick’s too far gone in bliss to care what he

smokes,” Strefford grumbled, stretching a hand toward his host’s

cigar-case.

 

“I do like jewellery best,” Clarissa murmured, hugging her

father.

 

Nelson Vanderlyn’s first word to his wife had been that he had

brought her all her toggery; and she had welcomed him with

appropriate enthusiasm. In fact, to the lookers-on her joy at

seeing him seemed rather too patently in proportion to her

satisfaction at getting her clothes. But no such suspicion

appeared to mar Mr. Vanderlyn’s happiness in being, for once,

and for nearly twenty-four hours, under the same roof with his

wife and child. He did not conceal his regret at having

promised his mother to join her the next day; and added, with a

wistful glance at Ellie: “If only I’d known you meant to wait

for me!”

 

But being a man of duty, in domestic as well as business

affairs, he did not even consider the possibility of

disappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being.

“Mother cares for so few people,” he used to say, not without a

touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, “that I

have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable”;

and with smiling resignation he gave orders that Clarissa should

be ready to start the next evening.

 

“And meanwhile,” he concluded, “we’ll have all the good time

that’s going.”

 

The ladies of the party seemed united in the desire to further

this resolve; and it was settled that as soon as Mr. Vanderlyn

had despatched a hasty luncheon, his wife, Clarissa and Susy

should carry him off for a tea-picnic at Torcello. They did not

even suggest that Strefford or Nick should be of the party, or

that any of the other young men of the group should be summoned;

as Susy said, Nelson wanted to go off alone with his harem. And

Lansing and Strefford were left to watch the departure of the

happy Pasha ensconced between attentive beauties.

 

“Well—that’s what you call being married!” Strefford

commented, waving his battered Panama at Clarissa.

 

“Oh, no, I don’t!” Lansing laughed.

 

“He does. But do you know—” Strefford paused and swung about

on his companion—“do you know, when the Rude Awakening comes, I

don’t care to be there. I believe there’ll be some crockery

broken.”

 

“Shouldn’t wonder,” Lansing answered indifferently. He wandered

away to his own room, leaving Strefford to philosophize to his

pipe.

 

Lansing had always known about poor old Nelson: who hadn’t,

except poor old Nelson? The case had once seemed amusing

because so typical; now, it rather irritated Nick that Vanderlyn

should be so complete an ass. But he would be off the next day,

and so would Ellie, and then, for many enchanted weeks, the

palace would once more be the property of Nick and Susy. Of all

the people who came and went in it, they were the only ones who

appreciated it, or knew how it was meant to be lived in; and

that made it theirs in the only valid sense. In this light it

became easy to regard the Vanderlyns as mere transient

intruders.

 

Having relegated them to this convenient distance, Lansing shut

himself up with his book. He had returned to it with fresh

energy after his few weeks of holiday-making, and was determined

to finish it quickly. He did not expect that it would bring in

much money; but if it were moderately successful it might give

him an opening in the reviews and magazines, and in that case he

meant to abandon archaeology for novels, since it was only as a

purveyor of fiction that he could count on earning a living for

himself and Susy.

 

Late in the afternoon he laid down his pen and wandered out of

doors. He loved the increasing heat of the Venetian summer, the

bruised peach-tints of worn house-fronts, the enamelling of

sunlight on dark green canals, the smell of half-decayed fruits

and flowers thickening the languid air. What visions he could

build, if he dared, of being tucked away with Susy in the attic

of some tumble-down palace, above a jade-green waterway, with a

terrace overhanging a scrap of neglected garden—and cheques

from the publishers dropping in at convenient intervals! Why

should they not settle in Venice if he pulled it off!

 

He found himself before the church of the Scalzi, and pushing

open the leathern door wandered up the nave under the whirl of

rose-and-lemon angels in Tiepolo’s great vault. It was not a

church in which one was likely to run across sight-seers; but he

presently remarked a young lady standing alone near the choir,

and assiduously applying her field-glass to the celestial

vortex, from which she occasionally glanced down at an open

manual.

 

As Lansing’s step sounded on the pavement, the young lady,

turning, revealed herself as Miss Hicks.

 

“Ah—you like this too? It’s several centuries out of your

line, though, isn’t it!” Nick asked as they shook hands.

 

She gazed at him gravely. “Why shouldn’t one like things that

are out of one’s line?” she answered; and he agreed, with a

laugh, that it was often an incentive.

 

She continued to fix her grave eyes on him, and after one or two

remarks about the Tiepolos he perceived that she was feeling her

way toward a subject of more personal interest.

 

“I’m glad to see you alone,” she said at length, with an

abruptness that might have seemed awkward had it not been so

completely unconscious. She turned toward a cluster of straw

chairs, and signed to Nick to seat himself beside her.

 

“I seldom do,” she added, with the serious smile that made her

heavy face almost handsome; and she went on, giving him no time

to protest: “I wanted to speak to you—to explain about

father’s invitation to go with us to Persia and Turkestan.”

 

“To explain?”

 

“Yes. You found the letter when you arrived here just after

your marriage, didn’t you? You must have thought it odd, our

asking you just then; but we hadn’t heard that you were

married.”

 

“Oh, I guessed as much: it happened very quietly, and I was

remiss about announcing it, even to old friends.”

 

Lansing frowned. His thoughts had wandered away to the evening

when he had found Mrs. Hicks’s letter in the mail awaiting him

at Venice. The day was associated in his mind with the

ridiculous and mortifying episode of the cigars—the expensive

cigars that Susy had wanted to carry away from Strefford’s

villa. Their brief exchange of views on the subject had left

the first blur on the perfect surface of his happiness, and he

still felt an uncomfortable heat at the remembrance. For a few

hours the prospect of life with Susy had seemed unendurable; and

it was just at that moment that he had found the letter from

Mrs. Hicks, with its almost irresistible invitation. If only

her daughter had known how nearly he had accepted it!

 

“It was a dreadful temptation,” he said, smiling.

 

“To go with us? Then why—?”

 

“Oh, everything’s different now: I’ve got to stick to my

writing.”

 

Miss Hicks still bent on him the same unblinking scrutiny.

“Does that mean that you’re going to give up your real work?”

 

“My real work—archaeology?” He smiled again to hide a twitch

of regret. “Why, I’m afraid it hardly produces a living wage;

and I’ve got to think of that.” He coloured suddenly, as if

suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening

for he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid. The Hicks

munificence was too uncalculating not to be occasionally

oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes were

full of tears.

 

“I thought it was your vocation,” she said.

 

“So did I. But life comes along, and upsets things.”

 

“Oh, I