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

it. But his first intuition had been right; and now

they must both pay for their madness. The Fates seldom forget

the bargains made with them, or fail to ask for compound

interest. Why not, then, now that the time had come, pay up

gallantly, and remember of the episode only what had made it

seem so supremely worth the cost?

 

He sent a pneumatic telegram to Mrs. Nicholas Lansing to say

that he would call on her that afternoon at four. “That ought

to give us time,” he reflected drily, “to ‘settle things,’ as

she calls it, without interfering with Strefford’s afternoon

visit.”

XXVIII

HER husband’s note had briefly said:

 

“To-day at four o’clock. N.L.”

 

All day she pored over the words in an agony of longing, trying

to read into them regret, emotion, memories, some echo of the

tumult in her own bosom. But she had signed “Susy,” and he

signed “N.L.” That seemed to put an abyss between them. After

all, she was free and he was not. Perhaps, in view of his

situation, she had only increased the distance between them by

her unconventional request for a meeting.

 

She sat in the little drawing-room, and the cast-bronze clock

ticked out the minutes. She would not look out of the window:

it might bring bad luck to watch for him. And it seemed to her

that a thousand invisible spirits, hidden demons of good and

evil, pressed about her, spying out her thoughts, counting her

heart-beats, ready to pounce upon the least symptom of over-confidence and turn it deftly to derision. Oh, for an altar on

which to pour out propitiatory offerings! But what sweeter

could they have than her smothered heart-beats, her choked-back

tears?

 

The bell rang, and she stood up as if a spring had jerked her to

her feet. In the mirror between the dried grasses her face

looked long pale inanimate. Ah, if he should find her too

changed—! If there were but time to dash upstairs and put on a

touch of red ….

 

The door opened; it shut on him; he was there.

 

He said: “You wanted to see me?”

 

She answered: “Yes.” And her heart seemed to stop beating.

 

At first she could not make out what mysterious change had come

over him, and why it was that in looking at him she seemed to be

looking at a stranger; then she perceived that his voice sounded

as it used to sound when he was talking to other people; and she

said to herself, with a sick shiver of understanding, that she

had become an “other person” to him.

 

There was a deathly pause; then she faltered out, not knowing

what she said: “Nick—you’ll sit down?”

 

He said: “Thanks,” but did not seem to have heard her, for he

continued to stand motionless, half the room between them. And

slowly the uselessness, the hopelessness of his being there

overcame her. A wall of granite seemed to have built itself up

between them. She felt as if it hid her from him, as if with

those remote new eyes of his he were staring into the wall and

not at her. Suddenly she said to herself: “He’s suffering more

than I am, because he pities me, and is afraid to tell me that

he is going to be married.”

 

The thought stung her pride, and she lifted her head and met his

eyes with a smile.

 

“Don’t you think,” she said, “it’s more sensible-with

everything so changed in our lives—that we should meet as

friends, in this way? I wanted to tell you that you needn’t

feel—feel in the least unhappy about me.”

 

A deep flush rose to his forehead. “Oh, I know—I know that—”

he declared hastily; and added, with a factitious animation:

“But thank you for telling me.”

 

“There’s nothing, is there,” she continued, “to make our meeting

in this way in the least embarrassing or painful to either of

us, when both have found ….” She broke off, and held her hand

out to him. “I’ve heard about you and Coral,” she ended.

 

He just touched her hand with cold fingers, and let it drop.

“Thank you,” he said for the third time.

 

“You won’t sit down?”

 

He sat down.

 

“Don’t you think,” she continued, “that the new way of … of

meeting as friends … and talking things over without ill-will … is much pleasanter and more sensible, after all?”

 

He smiled. “It’s immensely kind of you to feel that.”

 

“Oh, I do feel it!” She stopped short, and wondered what on

earth she had meant to say next, and why she had so abruptly

lost the thread of her discourse.

 

In the pause she heard him cough slightly and clear his throat.

“Let me say, then,” he began, “that I’m glad too—immensely glad

that your own future is so satisfactorily settled.”

 

She lifted her glance again to his walled face, in which not a

muscle stirred.

 

“Yes: it—it makes everything easier for you, doesn’t it?”

 

“For you too, I hope.” He paused, and then went on: “I want

also to tell you that I perfectly understand—”

 

“Oh,” she interrupted, “so do I; your point of view, I mean.”

 

They were again silent.

 

“Nick, why can’t we be friends real friends? Won’t it be

easier?” she broke out at last with twitching lips.

 

“Easier—?”

 

“I mean, about talking things over—arrangements. There are

arrangements to be made, I suppose?”

 

“I suppose so.” He hesitated. “I’m doing what I’m told-simply

following out instructions. The business is easy enough,

apparently. I’m taking the necessary steps—”

 

She reddened a little, and drew a gasping breath. “The

necessary steps: what are they? Everything the lawyers tell

one is so confusing …. I don’t yet understand—how it’s

done.”

 

“My share, you mean? Oh, it’s very simple.” He paused, and

added in a tone of laboured ease: “I’m going down to

Fontainebleau tomorrow—”

 

She stared, not understanding. “To Fontainebleau—?”

 

Her bewilderment drew from him his first frank smile. “Well—

I chose Fontainebleau—I don’t know why … except that we’ve

never been there together.”

 

At that she suddenly understood, and the blood rushed to her

forehead. She stood up without knowing what she was doing, her

heart in her throat. “How grotesque—how utterly disgusting!”

 

He gave a slight shrug. “I didn’t make the laws ….”

 

“But isn’t it too stupid and degrading that such things should

be necessary when two people want to part—?” She broke off

again, silenced by the echo of that fatal “want to part.” …

 

He seemed to prefer not to dwell farther on the legal

obligations involved.

 

“You haven’t yet told me,” he suggested, “how you happen to be

living here.”

 

“Here—with the Fulmer children?” She roused herself, trying to

catch his easier note. “Oh, I’ve simply been governessing them

for a few weeks, while Nat and Grace are in Sicily.” She did

not say: “It’s because I’ve parted with Strefford.” Somehow it

helped her wounded pride a little to keep from him the secret of

her precarious independence.

 

He looked his wonder. “All alone with that bewildered bonne?

But how many of them are there? Five? Good Lord!” He

contemplated the clock with unseeing eyes, and then turned them

again on her face.

 

“I should have thought a lot of children would rather get on

your nerves.”

 

“Oh, not these children. They’re so good to me.”

 

“Ah, well, I suppose it won’t be for long.”

 

He sent his eyes again about the room, which his absent-minded

gaze seemed to reduce to its dismal constituent elements, and

added, with an obvious effort at small talk: “I hear the

Fulmers are not hitting it off very well since his success. Is

it true that he’s going to marry Violet Melrose?”

 

The blood rose to Susy’s face. “Oh, never, never! He and Grace

are travelling together now.”

 

“Oh, I didn’t know. People say things ….” He was visibly

embarrassed with the subject, and sorry that he had broached it.

 

“Some of the things that people say are true. But Grace doesn’t

mind. She says she and Nat belong to each other. They can’t

help it, she thinks, after having been through such a lot

together.”

 

“Dear old Grace!”

 

He had risen from his chair, and this time she made no effort to

detain him. He seemed to have recovered his self-composure, and

it struck her painfully, humiliatingly almost, that he should

have spoken in that light way of the expedition to Fontainebleau

on the morrow …. Well, men were different, she supposed; she

remembered having felt that once before about Nick.

 

It was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: “But wait—wait!

I’m not going to marry Strefford after all!”—but to do so would

seem like an appeal to his compassion, to his indulgence; and

that was not what she wanted. She could never forget that he

had left her because he had not been able to forgive her for

“managing”—and not for the world would she have him think that

this meeting had been planned for such a purpose.

 

“If he doesn’t see that I am different, in spite of

appearances … and that I never was what he said I was that

day—if in all these months it hasn’t come over him, what’s the

use of trying to make him see it now?” she mused. And then, her

thoughts hurrying on: “Perhaps he’s suffering too—I believe he

is suffering-at any rate, he’s suffering for me, if not for

himself. But if he’s pledged to Coral, what can he do? What

would he think of me if I tried to make him break his word to

her?”

 

There he stood—the man who was “going to Fontainebleau tomorrow”; who called it “taking the necessary steps!” Who could

smile as he made the careless statement! A world seemed to

divide them already: it was as if their parting were already

over. All the words, cries, arguments beating loud wings in her

dropped back into silence. The only thought left was: “How

much longer does he mean to go on standing there?”

 

He may have read the question in her face, for turning back from

an absorbed contemplation of the window curtains he said:

“There’s nothing else?”

 

“Nothing else?”

 

“I mean: you spoke of things to be settled—”

 

She flushed, suddenly remembering the pretext she had used to

summon him.

 

“Oh,” she faltered, “I didn’t know … I thought there might

be …. But the lawyers, I suppose ….”

 

She saw the relief on his contracted face. “Exactly. I’ve

always thought it was best to leave it to them. I assure you”—

again for a moment the smile strained his lips— “I shall do

nothing to interfere with a quick settlement.”

 

She stood motionless, feeling herself turn to stone. He

appeared already a long way off, like a figure vanishing down a

remote perspective.

 

“Then—good-bye,” she heard him say from its farther end.

 

“Oh,—good-bye,” she faltered, as if she had not had the word

ready, and was relieved to have him supply it.

 

He stopped again on the threshold, looked back at her, began to

speak. “I’ve—” he said; then he repeated “Good-bye,” as though

to make sure he had not forgotten to say it; and the door closed

on him.

 

It was over; she had had her last chance and missed it. Now,

whatever happened, the one thing she had lived and longed for

would never be. He had come, and she had let him go again ….

 

How had it come about? Would