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

PART II XIII

WHEN Violet Melrose had said to Susy Branch, the winter before

in New York: “But why on earth don’t you and Nick go to my

little place at Versailles for the honeymoon? I’m off to China,

and you could have it to yourselves all summer,” the offer had

been tempting enough to make the lovers waver.

 

It was such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the

demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy

just the kind of place in which to take the first steps in

renunciation. But Nick had objected that Paris, at that time of

year, would be swarming with acquaintances who would hunt them

down at all hours; and Susy’s own experience had led her to

remark that there was nothing the very rich enjoyed more than

taking pot-luck with the very poor. They therefore gave

Strefford’s villa the preference, with an inward proviso (on

Susy’s part) that Violet’s house might very conveniently serve

their purpose at another season.

 

These thoughts were in her mind as she drove up to Mrs.

Melrose’s door on a rainy afternoon late in August, her boxes

piled high on the roof of the cab she had taken at the station.

She had travelled straight through from Venice, stopping in

Milan just long enough to pick up a reply to the telegram she

had despatched to the perfect housekeeper whose permanent

presence enabled Mrs. Melrose to say: “Oh, when I’m sick of

everything I just rush off without warning to my little shanty

at Versailles, and live there all alone on scrambled eggs.”

 

The perfect housekeeper had replied to Susy’s enquiry: “Am

sure Mrs. Melrose most happy”; and Susy, without further

thought, had jumped into a Versailles train, and now stood in

the thin rain before the sphinx-guarded threshold of the

pavilion.

 

The revolving year had brought around the season at which Mrs.

Melrose’s house might be convenient: no visitors were to be

feared at Versailles at the end of August, and though Susy’s

reasons for seeking solitude were so remote from those she had

once prefigured, they were none the less cogent. To be alone—

alone! After those first exposed days when, in the persistent

presence of Fred Gillow and his satellites, and in the mocking

radiance of late summer on the lagoons, she had fumed and turned

about in her agony like a trapped animal in a cramping cage, to

be alone had seemed the only respite, the one craving: to be

alone somewhere in a setting as unlike as possible to the

sensual splendours of Venice, under skies as unlike its azure

roof. If she could have chosen she would have crawled away into

a dingy inn in a rainy northern town, where she had never been

and no one knew her. Failing that unobtainable luxury, here she

was on the threshold of an empty house, in a deserted place,

under lowering skies. She had shaken off Fred Gillow, sulkily

departing for his moor (where she had half-promised to join him

in September); the Prince, young Breckenridge, and the few

remaining survivors of the Venetian group, had dispersed in the

direction of the Engadine or Biarritz; and now she could at

least collect her wits, take stock of herself, and prepare the

countenance with which she was to face the next stage in her

career. Thank God it was raining at Versailles!

 

The door opened, she heard voices in the drawing-room, and a

slender languishing figure appeared on the threshold.

 

“Darling!” Violet Melrose cried in an embrace, drawing her into

the dusky perfumed room.

 

“But I thought you were in China!” Susy stammered.

 

“In China … in China,” Mrs. Melrose stared with dreamy eyes,

and Susy remembered her drifting disorganised life, a life more

planless, more inexplicable than that of any of the other

ephemeral beings blown about upon the same winds of pleasure.

 

“Well, Madam, I thought so myself till I got a wire from Mrs.

Melrose last evening,” remarked the perfect housekeeper,

following with Susy’s handbag.

 

Mrs. Melrose clutched her cavernous temples in her attenuated

hands. “Of course, of course! I had meant to go to China—no,

India …. But I’ve discovered a genius … and Genius, you

know ….” Unable to complete her thought, she sank down upon a

pillowy divan, stretched out an arm, cried: “Fulmer! Fulmer!”

and, while Susy Lansing stood in the middle of the room with

widening eyes, a man emerged from the more deeply cushioned and

scented twilight of some inner apartment, and she saw with

surprise Nat Fulmer, the good Nat Fulmer of the New Hampshire

bungalow and the ubiquitous progeny, standing before her in

lordly ease, his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his

lips, his feet solidly planted in the insidious depths of one of

Violet Melrose’s white leopard skins.

 

“Susy!” he shouted with open arms; and Mrs. Melrose murmured:

“You didn’t know, then? You hadn’t heard of his masterpieces?”

 

In spite of herself, Susy burst into a laugh. “Is Nat your

genius?”

 

Mrs. Melrose looked at her reproachfully.

 

Fulmer laughed. “No; I’m Grace’s. But Mrs. Melrose has been

our Providence, and ….”

 

“Providence?” his hostess interrupted. “Don’t talk as if you

were at a prayer-meeting! He had an exhibition in New York …

it was the most fabulous success. He’s come abroad to make

studies for the decoration of my music-room in New York. Ursula

Gillow has given him her garden-house at Roslyn to do. And Mrs.

Bockheimer’s ballroom—oh, Fulmer, where are the cartoons?”

She sprang up, tossed about some fashion-papers heaped on a

lacquer table, and sank back exhausted by the effort. “I’d got

as far as Brindisi. I’ve travelled day and night to be here to

meet him,” she declared. “But, you darling,” and she held out a

caressing hand to Susy, “I’m forgetting to ask if you’ve had

tea?”

 

An hour later, over the tea-table, Susy already felt herself

mysteriously reabsorbed into what had so long been her native

element. Ellie Vanderlyn had brought a breath of it to Venice;

but Susy was then nourished on another air, the air of Nick’s

presence and personality; now that she was abandoned, left again

to her own devices, she felt herself suddenly at the mercy of

the influences from which she thought she had escaped.

 

In the queer social whirligig from which she had so lately fled,

it seemed natural enough that a shake of the box should have

tossed Nat Fulmer into celebrity, and sent Violet Melrose

chasing back from the ends of the earth to bask in his success.

Susy knew that Mrs. Melrose belonged to the class of moral

parasites; for in that strange world the parts were sometimes

reversed, and the wealthy preyed upon the pauper. Wherever

there was a reputation to batten on, there poor Violet appeared,

a harmless vampire in pearls who sought only to feed on the

notoriety which all her millions could not create for her. Any

one less versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little

world would have seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress,

in Nat Fulmer her helpless victim. Susy knew better. Violet,

poor Violet, was not even that. The insignificant Ellie

Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her artless mixture

of amorous and social interests, was a woman with a purpose, a

creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a drifting

interrogation.

 

And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that

dreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like

claws, Susy seemed to have found the key to all his years of

dogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference to

poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing family ….

Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace

enough to be a genius—was a genius, perhaps, even though it was

Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,

their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.

 

“Yes, I did discover him—I did,” Mrs. Melrose was insisting,

from the depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk

like a wan Nereid in a midnight sea. “You mustn’t believe a

word that Ursula Gillow tells you about having pounced on his

‘Spring Snow Storm’ in a dark corner of the American Artists’

exhibition—skied, if you please! They skied him less than a

year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked higher

than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually

pretends … oh, for pity’s sake don’t say it doesn’t matter,

Fulmer! Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people

think she did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the

exhibition on varnishing-day …. Who? Well, Eddy

Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps

he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when

suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did—

didn’t he?—and the scales fell from his eyes. Well … that’s

exactly what happened to me that day … and Ursula, everybody

knows, was down at Roslyn at the time, and didn’t come up for

the opening of the exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and

laughs, and says it doesn’t matter, and that he’ll paint another

picture any day for me to discover!”

 

Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with

eagerness—eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her

situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out

again among her kind. She had stood on the doorstep, cowering

among her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded and

the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of

the outer world …. And now she had sat for an hour in

Violet’s