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

disturbing.

 

Such precautions were the more needful—Lansing could not but

note because of the different standards of the society in which

the Hickses now moved. For it was a curious fact that admission

to the intimacy of the Prince and his mother— who continually

declared themselves to be the pariahs, the outlaws, the

Bohemians among crowned heads nevertheless involved not only

living in Palace Hotels but mixing with those who frequented

them. The Prince’s aide-de-camp—an agreeable young man of easy

manners—had smilingly hinted that their Serene Highnesses,

though so thoroughly democratic and unceremonious, were yet

accustomed to inspecting in advance the names of the persons

whom their hosts wished to invite with them; and Lansing noticed

that Mrs. Hicks’s lists, having been “submitted,” usually came

back lengthened by the addition of numerous wealthy and titled

guests. Their Highnesses never struck out a name; they welcomed

with enthusiasm and curiosity the Hickses’ oddest and most

inexplicable friends, at most putting off some of them to a

later day on the plea that it would be “cosier” to meet them on

a more private occasion; but they invariably added to the list

any friends of their own, with the gracious hint that they

wished these latter (though socially so well-provided for) to

have the “immense privilege” of knowing the Hickses. And thus

it happened that when October gales necessitated laying up the

Ibis, the Hickses, finding again in Rome the august travellers

from whom they had parted the previous month in Athens, also

found their visiting-list enlarged by all that the capital

contained of fashion.

 

It was true enough, as Lansing had not failed to note, that the

Princess Mother adored prehistoric art, and Russian music, and

the paintings of Gauguin and Matisse; but she also, and with a

beaming unconsciousness of perspective, adored large pearls and

powerful motors, caravan tea and modern plumbing, perfumed

cigarettes and society scandals; and her son, while apparently

less sensible to these forms of luxury, adored his mother, and

was charmed to gratify her inclinations without cost to

himself—“Since poor Mamma,” as he observed, “is so courageous

when we are roughing it in the desert.”

 

The smiling aide-de-camp, who explained these things to Lansing,

added with an intenser smile that the Prince and his mother were

under obligations, either social or cousinly, to most of the

titled persons whom they begged Mrs. Hicks to invite; “and it

seems to their Serene Highnesses,” he added, “the most

flattering return they can make for the hospitality of their

friends to give them such an intellectual opportunity.”

 

The dinner-table at which their Highnesses’ friends were seated

on the evening in question represented, numerically, one of the

greatest intellectual opportunities yet afforded them. Thirty

guests were grouped about the flower-wreathed board, from which

Eldorada and Mr. Beck had been excluded on the plea that the

Princess Mother liked cosy parties and begged her hosts that

there should never be more than thirty at table. Such, at

least, was the reason given by Mrs. Hicks to her faithful

followers; but Lansing had observed that, of late, the same

skilled hand which had refashioned the Hickses’ social circle

usually managed to exclude from it the timid presences of the

two secretaries. Their banishment was the more displeasing to

Lansing from the fact that, for the last three months, he had

filled Mr. Buttles’s place, and was himself their salaried

companion. But since he had accepted the post, his obvious duty

was to fill it in accordance with his employers’ requirements;

and it was clear even to Eldorada and Mr. Beck that he had, as

Eldorada ungrudgingly said, “Something of Mr. Buttles’s

marvellous social gifts. “

 

During the cruise his task had not been distasteful to him. He

was glad of any definite duties, however trivial, he felt more

independent as the Hickses’ secretary than as their pampered

guest, and the large cheque which Mr. Hicks handed over to him

on the first of each month refreshed his languishing sense of

self-respect.

 

He considered himself absurdly over-paid, but that was the

Hickses’ affair; and he saw nothing humiliating in being in the

employ of people he liked and respected. But from the moment of

the ill-fated encounter with the wandering Princes, his position

had changed as much as that of his employers. He was no longer,

to Mr. and Mrs. Hicks, a useful and estimable assistant, on the

same level as Eldorada and Mr. Beck; he had become a social

asset of unsuspected value, equalling Mr. Buttles in his

capacity for dealing with the mysteries of foreign etiquette,

and surpassing him in the art of personal attraction. Nick

Lansing, the Hickses found, already knew most of the Princess

Mother’s rich and aristocratic friends. Many of them hailed him

with enthusiastic “Old Nicks”, and he was almost as familiar as

His Highness’s own aide-de-camp with all those secret

ramifications of love and hate that made dinner-giving so much

more of a science in Rome than at Apex City.

 

Mrs. Hicks, at first, had hopelessly lost her way in this

labyrinth of subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies;

and finding Lansing’s hand within reach she clung to it with

pathetic tenacity. But if the young man’s value had risen in

the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own. He

was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it

seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his

retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious

lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught

his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks’s, Nick had flushed to

the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his

job the next day.

 

Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid

secretary. He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that

he was too deficient in humour to be worth exchanging glances

with; but even this had not restored his self-respect, and on

the evening in question, as he looked about the long table, he

said to himself for the hundredth time that he would give up his

position on the morrow.

 

Only—what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently,

was Coral Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning

with the tall lean countenance of the Princess Mother, with its

small inquisitive eyes perched as high as attic windows under a

frizzled thatch of hair and a pediment of uncleaned diamonds;

passed on to the vacuous and overfed or fashionably haggard

masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally caught, between

branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.

 

In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly

noble. Her large grave features made her appear like an old

monument in a street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the

mysterious law which had brought this archaic face out of Apex

City, and given to the oldest society of Europe a look of such

mixed modernity.

 

Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour,

was also looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and

even thoughtful; but as his eyes met Lansing’s he readjusted his

official smile.

 

“I was admiring our hostess’s daughter. Her absence of jewels

is—er—an inspiration,” he remarked in the confidential tone

which Lansing had come to dread.

 

“Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations,” he returned curtly,

and the aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if

inspirations were rarer than pearls, as in his milieu they

undoubtedly were. “She is the equal of any situation, I am

sure,” he replied; and then abandoned the subject with one of

his automatic transitions.

 

After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he

surprised Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time

without thinking it needful to readjust his smile. His face

remained serious, though his manner was studiously informal.

 

“I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks’s invariable sense of

appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her

almost any future, however exalted.”

 

Lansing hesitated, and controlled his annoyance. Decidedly he

wanted to know what was in his companion’s mind.

 

“What do you mean by exalted?” he asked, with a smile of faint

amusement.

 

“Well—equal to her marvellous capacity for shining in the

public eye.”

 

Lansing still smiled. “The question is, I suppose, whether her

desire to shine equals her capacity.”

 

The aide-de-camp stared. “You mean, she’s not ambitious?”

 

“On the contrary; I believe her to be immeasurably ambitious.”

 

“Immeasurably?” The aide-de-camp seemed to try to measure it.

“But not, surely, beyond—” “beyond what we can offer,” his eyes

completed the sentence; and it was Lansing’s turn to stare. The

aide-de-camp faced the stare. “Yes,” his eyes concluded in a

flash, while his lips let fall: “The Princess Mother admires

her immensely.” But at that moment a wave of Mrs. Hicks’s fan

drew them hurriedly from their embrasure.

 

“Professor Darchivio had promised to explain to us the

difference between the Sassanian and Byzantine motives in

Carolingian art; but the Manager has sent up word that the two

new Creole dancers from Paris have arrived, and her Serene

Highness wants to pop down to the ballroom and take a peep at

them …. She’s sure the Professor will understand ….”

 

“And accompany us, of course,” the Princess irresistibly added.

 

Lansing’s brief colloquy in the Nouveau Luxe window had lifted

the scales from his eyes. Innumerable dim corners of memory had

been flooded with light by that one quick glance of the aide-de-camp’s: things he had heard, hints he had let pass, smiles,

insinuations, cordialities, rumours of the improbability of the

Prince’s founding a family, suggestions as to the urgent need of

replenishing the Teutoburger treasury ….

 

Miss Hicks, perforce, had accompanied her parents and their

princely guests to the ballroom; but as she did not dance, and

took little interest in the sight of others so engaged, she

remained aloof from the party, absorbed in an archaeological

discussion with the baffled but smiling savant who was to have

enlightened the party on the difference between Sassanian and

Byzantine ornament.

 

Lansing, also aloof, had picked out a post from which he could

observe the girl: she wore a new look to him since he had seen

her as the centre of all these scattered threads of intrigue.

Yes; decidedly she was growing handsomer; or else she had

learned how to set off her massive lines instead of trying to

disguise them. As she held up her long eyeglass to glance

absently at the dancers he was struck by the large beauty of her

arm and the careless assurance of the gesture. There was

nothing nervous or fussy about Coral Hicks; and he was not

surprised that, plastically at least, the Princess Mother had

discerned her possibilities.

 

Nick Lansing, all that night, sat up and stared at his future.

He knew enough of the society into which the Hickses had drifted

to guess that, within a very short time, the hint of the

Prince’s aide-de-camp would reappear in the form of a direct

proposal. Lansing himself would probably—as the one person in

the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly commune-be

entrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would be

asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, “to feel the

ground.” It was clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg

to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an

opportunity to replenish its treasury.

 

What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly

felt that her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his

own. And he knew no more what his own was going to be than on

the night, four months earlier, when he had flung out of his

wife’s room