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

York, and

probably unacquainted with her history.

 

She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she

was surprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions;

but it was a shock to learn that a divorce could not be

obtained, either in New York or Paris, merely on the ground of

desertion or incompatibility.

 

“I thought nowadays … if people preferred to live apart … it

could always be managed,” she stammered, wondering at her own

ignorance, after the many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.

 

The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely

client evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by

her inexperience.

 

“It can be—generally,” he admitted; “and especially so if …

as I gather is the case … your husband is equally

anxious ….”

 

“Oh, quite!” she exclaimed, suddenly humiliated by having to

admit it.

 

“Well, then—may I suggest that, to bring matters to a point,

the best way would be for you to write to him?”

 

She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the

lawyers would not “manage it” without her intervention.

 

“Write to him … but what about?”

 

“Well, expressing your wish … to recover your freedom ….

The rest, I assume,” said the young lawyer, “may be left to Mr.

Lansing.”

 

She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much

perturbed by the idea of having to communicate with Nick to

follow any other train of thought. How could she write such a

letter? And yet how could she confess to the lawyer that she

had not the courage to do so? He would, of course, tell her to

go home and be reconciled. She hesitated perplexedly.

 

“Wouldn’t it be better,” she suggested, “if the letter were to

come from—from your office?”

 

He considered this politely. “On the whole: no. If, as I take

it, an amicable arrangement is necessary—to secure the

requisite evidence then a line from you, suggesting an

interview, seems to me more advisable.”

 

“An interview? Is an interview necessary?” She was ashamed to

show her agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who

must wonder at her childish lack of understanding; but the break

in her voice was uncontrollable.

 

“Oh, please write to him—I can’t! And I can’t see him! Oh,

can’t you arrange it for me?” she pleaded.

 

She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was

something one went out—or sent out—to buy in a shop:

something concrete and portable, that Strefford’s money could

pay for, and that it required no personal participation to

obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her! Stiffening

herself, she rose from her seat.

 

“My husband and I don’t wish to see each other again …. I’m

sure it would be useless … and very painful.”

 

“You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter

from you, a friendly letter, seems wiser … considering the

apparent lack of evidence ….”

 

“Very well, then; I’ll write,” she agreed, and hurried away,

scarcely hearing his parting injunction that she should take a

copy of her letter.

 

That night she wrote. At the last moment it might have been

impossible, if at the theatre little Breckenridge had not bobbed

into her box. He was just back from Rome, where he had dined

with the Hickses (“a bang-up show—they’re really lances-you

wouldn’t know them!”), and had met there Lansing, whom he

reported as intending to marry Coral “as soon as things were

settled”. “You were dead right, weren’t you, Susy,” he

snickered, “that night in Venice last summer, when we all

thought you were joking about their engagement? Pity now you

chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, and sent Streff up to

drag us back just as we were breaking in! You remember?”

 

He flung off the “Streff” airily, in the old way, but with a

tentative side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning

toward Susy, said coldly: “Was Breckenridge speaking about me?

I didn’t catch what he said. Does he speak indistinctly—or am

I getting deaf, I wonder?”

 

After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had

dropped her at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed

off the date and her address, and then stopped; but suddenly she

remembered Breckenridge’s snicker, and the words rushed from

her. “Nick dear, it was July when you left Venice, and I have

had no word from you since the note in which you said you had

gone for a few days, and that I should hear soon again.

 

“You haven’t written yet, and it is five months since you left

me. That means, I suppose, that you want to take back your

freedom and give me mine. Wouldn’t it be kinder, in that case,

to tell me so? It is worse than anything to go on as we are

now. I don’t know how to put these things but since you seem

unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send your

answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here. His

address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope—”

 

She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope,

either for him or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would

sound like a mockery—and she would rather her letter should

seem bitter than unfeeling. Above all, she wanted to get it

done. To have to re-write even those few lines would be

torture. So she left “I hope,” and simply added: “to hear

before long what you have decided.”

 

She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past-not

one allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives

which had enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its

sheath! What place had such memories in such a letter? She had

the feeling that she wanted to hide that other Nick away in her

own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had once

imagined her to be …. Neither of them seemed concerned with

the present business.

 

The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its

presence in the room became intolerable, and she understood that

she must either tear it up or post it immediately. She went

down to the hall of the sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the nearest post office, though he

objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained. “I want

it out of the house,” she insisted: and waited sternly by the

desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.

 

As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck

her; and she remembered the lawyer’s injunction to take a copy

of her letter. A copy to be filed away with the documents in

“Lansing versus Lansing!” She burst out laughing at the idea.

What were lawyers made of, she wondered? Didn’t the man guess,

by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, that

she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that

letter—that night after night she would lie down, as she was

lying down to-night, to stare wide-eyed for hours into the

darkness, while a voice in her brain monotonously hammered out:

“Nick dear, it was July when you left me …” and so on, word

after word, down to the last fatal syllable?

XXII

STREFFORD was leaving for England.

 

Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing

herself, he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and

could see no reason for further mystery. She understood his

impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him

from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause

people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the novelty of

his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted

itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be

on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers

were perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was

marrying her because to do so was to follow the line of least

resistance.

 

“To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others,”

she laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of

the Bois de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various

preliminaries. “I believe I’m only a protection to you.”

 

An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed

that he was thinking: “And what else am I to you?”

 

She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: “Well,

you’re that at any rate, thank the Lord!”

 

She pondered, and then questioned: “But in the interval-how

are you going to defend yourself for another year?”

 

“Ah, you’ve got to see to that; you’ve got to take a little

house in London. You’ve got to look after me, you know.”

 

It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: “Oh, if that’s

all you care—!” But caring was exactly the factor she wanted,

as much as possible, to keep out of their talk and their

thoughts. She could not ask him how much he cared without

laying herself open to the same question; and that way terror

lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent

wooer—perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps

merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating

every sentiment and every conviction—yet she knew he did care

for her as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the

element of habit entered largely into the feeling—if he liked

her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her

indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be

bored, and almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such

ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most

likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.

She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable

weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a

year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was

precisely what she could not say. The long period of probation,

during which, as she knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard

him, to hold him, and to keep off the other women, was a

necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as little

Breckenridge would have said, she could “pull it off”; but she

did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred

would have been to go away—no matter where and not see

Strefford again till they were married. But she dared not tell

him that either.

 

“A little house in London—?” She wondered.

 

“Well, I suppose you’ve got to have some sort of a roof over

your head.”

 

“I suppose so.”

 

He sat down beside her. “If you like me well enough to live at

Altringham some day, won’t you, in the meantime, let me provide

you with a smaller and more convenient establishment?”

 

Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to

live on Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich

friends, any one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest

hospitality on the prospective Lady Altringham. Such an

arrangement, in the long run, would be no less humiliating to

her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than

Altringham’s little establishment. But she temporized. “I

shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while with

various people—then we can look about.”

 

“All right; as you like.” He obviously considered her

hesitation ridiculous, but was too full