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

in the young thoughtless days

when she had seemed to sacrifice so little to the austere

divinities. And since she had been Nick Lansing’s wife she had

consciously acknowledged it, had suffered and agonized when she

fell beneath its standard. Yes: to marry Strefford would give

her that sense of self-respect which, in such a world as theirs,

only wealth and position could ensure. If she had not the

mental or moral training to attain independence in any other

way, was she to blame for seeking it on such terms?

 

Of course there was always the chance that Nick would come back,

would find life without her as intolerable as she was finding it

without him. If that happened—ah, if that happened! Then she

would cease to strain her eyes into the future, would seize upon

the present moment and plunge into it to the very bottom of

oblivion. Nothing on earth would matter then—money or freedom

or pride, or her precious moral dignity, if only she were in

Nick’s arms again!

 

But there was Nick’s icy letter, there was Coral Hicks’s

insolent postcard, to show how little chance there was of such

a solution. Susy understood that, even before the discovery of

her transaction with Ellie Vanderlyn, Nick had secretly wearied,

if not of his wife, at least of the life that their marriage

compelled him to lead. His passion was not strong enough-had

never been strong enough—to outweigh his prejudices, scruples,

principles, or whatever one chose to call them. Susy’s dignity

might go up like tinder in the blaze of her love; but his was

made of a less combustible substance. She had felt, in their

last talk together, that she had forever destroyed the inner

harmony between them.

 

Well—there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor

his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own

moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his

half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them

both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough

to yield. She stared at the fact on the journey back to

Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and the

next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast

tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having

decided, however half-heartedly, on a definite course.

 

She had said to herself: “If there’s no letter from Nick this

time next week I’ll write to Streff—” and the week had passed,

and there was no letter.

 

It was now three weeks since he had left her, and she had had no

word but his note from Genoa. She had concluded that,

foreseeing the probability of her leaving Venice, he would write

to her in care of their Paris bank. But though she had

immediately notified the bank of her change of address no

communication from Nick had reached her; and she smiled with a

touch of bitterness at the difficulty he was doubtless finding

in the composition of the promised letter. Her own scrap-basket, for the first days, had been heaped with the fragments

of the letters she had begun; and she told herself that, since

they both found it so hard to write, it was probably because

they had nothing left to say to each other.

 

Meanwhile the days at Mrs. Melrose’s drifted by as they had been

wont to drift when, under the roofs of the rich, Susy Branch had

marked time between one episode and the next of her precarious

existence. Her experience of such sojourns was varied enough to

make her acutely conscious of their effect on her temporary

hosts; and in the present case she knew that Violet was hardly

aware of her presence. But if no more than tolerated she was at

least not felt to be an inconvenience; when your hostess forgot

about you it proved that at least you were not in her way.

 

Violet, as usual, was perpetually on the wing, for her profound

indolence expressed itself in a disordered activity. Nat Fulmer

had returned to Paris; but Susy guessed that his benefactress

was still constantly in his company, and that when Mrs. Melrose

was whirled away in her noiseless motor it was generally toward

the scene of some new encounter between Fulmer and the arts. On

these occasions she sometimes offered to carry Susy to Paris,

and they devoted several long and hectic mornings to the dressmakers, where Susy felt herself gradually succumbing to the

familiar spell of heaped-up finery. It seemed impossible, as

furs and laces and brocades were tossed aside, brought back, and

at last carelessly selected from, that anything but the whim of

the moment need count in deciding whether one should take all or

none, or that any woman could be worth looking at who did not

possess the means to make her choice regardless of cost.

 

Once alone, and in the street again, the evil fumes would

evaporate, and daylight re-enter Susy’s soul; yet she felt that

the old poison was slowly insinuating itself into her system.

To dispel it she decided one day to look up Grace Fulmer. She

was curious to know how the happy-go-lucky companion of Fulmer’s

evil days was bearing the weight of his prosperity, and she

vaguely felt that it would be refreshing to see some one who had

never been afraid of poverty.

 

The airless pension sitting-room, where she waited while a

reluctant maid-servant screamed about the house for Mrs. Fulmer,

did not have the hoped-for effect. It was one thing for Grace

to put up with such quarters when she shared them with Fulmer;

but to live there while he basked in the lingering radiance of

Versailles, or rolled from chateau to picture gallery in Mrs.

Melrose’s motor, showed a courage that Susy felt unable to

emulate.

 

“My dear! I knew you’d look me up,” Grace’s joyous voice ran

down the stairway; and in another moment she was clasping Susy

to her tumbled person.

 

“Nat couldn’t remember if he’d given you our address, though he

promised me he would, the last time he was here.” She held Susy

at arms’ length, beaming upon her with blinking short-sighted

eyes: the same old dishevelled Grace, so careless of her

neglected beauty and her squandered youth, so amused and absent-minded and improvident, that the boisterous air of the New

Hampshire bungalow seemed to enter with her into the little air-tight salon.

 

While she poured out the tale of Nat’s sudden celebrity, and its

unexpected consequences, Susy marvelled and dreamed. Was the

secret of his triumph perhaps due to those long hard unrewarded

years, the steadfast scorn of popularity, the indifference to

every kind of material ease in which his wife had so gaily

abetted him? Had it been bought at the cost of her own

freshness and her own talent, of the children’s “advantages,” of

everything except the closeness of the tie between husband and

wife? Well—it was worth the price, no doubt; but what if, now

that honours and prosperity had come, the tie were snapped, and

Grace were left alone among the ruins?

 

There was nothing in her tone or words to suggest such a

possibility. Susy noticed that her ill-assorted raiment was

costlier in quality and more professional in cut than the home-made garments which had draped her growing bulk at the bungalow:

it was clear that she was trying to dress up to Nat’s new

situation. But, above all, she was rejoicing in it, filling her

hungry lungs with the strong air of his success. It had

evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to

share the bread of adversity may want the whole cake of

prosperity for themselves.

 

“My dear, it’s too wonderful! He’s told me to take as many

concert and opera tickets as I like; he lets me take all the

children with me. The big concerts don’t begin till later; but

of course the Opera is always going. And there are little

things—there’s music in Paris at all seasons. And later it’s

just possible we may get to Munich for a week—oh, Susy!” Her

hands clasped, her eyes brimming, she drank the new wine of life

almost sacramentally.

 

“Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the

bungalow? Nat said you’d be horrified by our primitiveness-but

I knew better! And I was right, wasn’t I? Seeing us so happy

made you and Nick decide to follow our example, didn’t it?” She

glowed with the remembrance. “And now, what are your plans? Is

Nick’s book nearly done? I suppose you’ll have to live very

economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling-when is that to be? If you’re coming home soon I could let you

have a lot of the children’s little old things.”

 

“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans

as yet—not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of

yours instead.”

 

Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far,

the greater part of her European experience had consisted in

talking about what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so

taken up all day with sight-seeing and galleries and meeting

important people that he hasn’t had time to go about with us;

and as so few theatres are open, and there’s so little music,

I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie

helps me with it now—she’s our eldest, you remember? She’s

grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps,

we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all—next to

Nat’s recognition, I mean—is not having to contrive and skimp,

and give up something every single minute. Just think—Nat has

even made special arrangements here in the pension, so that the

children all have second helpings to everything. And when I go

up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake

calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the

end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”

 

Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be

taught again the lesson of indifference to material things, and

instead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After all, that battle with

poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easy

smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet

… and yet ….

 

Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which

hung irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.

 

“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she

generally knows,” Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.

 

“It’s the way you wear it, dearest—and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please.” Susy lifted the hat

from her friend’s head and began to manipulate its trimming.

“This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it …. And now

go on about Nat ….”

 

She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her

husband’s triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for

his work, the fine ladies’ battles over their priority in

discovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resulted

from their rivalry.

 

“Of course they’re simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose

and Mrs. Gillow especially—because each one pretends to have

been the first to notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality

it wasn’t either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we’ve known for years, who chanced on the picture, and

rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking for a new painter to

push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to Susy’s

face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is