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

shining in on him an instant from the

threshold.

 

She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie’s letter lay on

the floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by

one the expected phrases sprang out at her.

 

“One good turn deserves another …. Of course you and Nick are

welcome to stay all summer …. There won’t be a particle of

expense for you—the servants have orders …. If you’ll just

be an angel and post these letters yourself …. It’s been my

only chance for such an age; when we meet I’ll explain

everything. And in a month at latest I’ll be back to fetch

Clarissa ….”

 

Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read

aright. To fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie’s child was here? Here,

under the roof with them, left to their care? She read on,

raging. “She’s so delighted, poor darling, to know you’re

coming. I’ve had to sack her beastly governess for

impertinence, and if it weren’t for you she’d be all alone with

a lot of servants I don’t much trust. So for pity’s sake be

good to my child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks

I’ve gone to take a cure; and she knows she’s not to tell her

Daddy that I’m away, because it would only worry him if he

thought I was ill. She’s perfectly to be trusted; you’ll see

what a clever angel she is ….” And then, at the bottom of the

page, in a last slanting postscript: “Susy darling, if you’ve

ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your

sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And

I know I can count on you to rub out the numbers.”

 

Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter into the fire:

then she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow,

lay the four fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up

her mind what to do with them.

 

To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought,

inevitable: it might be saving Ellie as well as herself. But

such a step seemed to Susy to involve departure on the morrow,

and this in turn involved notifying Ellie, whose letter she had

vainly scanned for an address. Well—perhaps Clarissa’s nurse

would know where one could write to her mother; it was unlikely

that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of

communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to

be done that night: nothing but to work out the details of

their flight on the morrow, and rack her brains to find a

substitute for the hospitality they were rejecting. Susy did

not disguise from herself how much she had counted on the

Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so had

singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie’s largeness of

hand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her

guests their only expense would be an occasional present to the

servants. And what would the alternative be? She and Lansing,

in their endless talks, had so lived themselves into the vision

of indolent summer days on the lagoon, of flaming hours on the

beach of the Lido, and evenings of music and dreams on their

broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea of having to

renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susy

with a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when

they were quietly settled in Venice he “meant to write.”

Already nascent in her breast was the fierce resolve of the

author’s wife to defend her husband’s privacy and facilitate his

encounters with the Muse. It was abominable, simply abominable,

that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawn her into such a trap!

 

Well—there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the

whole thing to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars-how

trivial it now seemed!—showed her the kind of stand he would

take, and communicated to her something of his own

uncompromising energy. She would tell him the whole story in

the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy’s faith

in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But

suddenly she remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs.

Vanderlyn’s letter: “If you’re ever owed me anything in the way

of kindness, you won’t, on your sacred honour, say a word to

Nick ….”

 

It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of

her: if indeed the word “right”, could be used in any

conceivable relation to this coil of wrongs. But the fact

remained that, in the way of kindness, she did owe much to

Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had ever

exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same

position as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had

appealed to her to give up Nick Lansing. Yes, Susy reflected;

but then Nelson Vanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the

money Ellie had been so kind with was Nelson’s …. The queer

edifice of Susy’s standards tottered on its base she honestly

didn’t know where fairness lay, as between so much that was

foul.

 

The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in

“tight places” before; had indeed been in so few that were not,

in one way or another, constricting! As she looked back on her

past it lay before her as a very network of perpetual

concessions and contrivings. But never before had she had such

a sense of being tripped up, gagged and pinioned. The little

misery of the cigars still galled her, and now this big

humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, the

second month of their honeymoon was beginning cloudily ….

 

She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressing

table—one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to

accept in kind—and was startled at the lateness of the hour.

In a moment Nick would be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation

in her throat warned her that through sheer nervousness and

exasperation she might blurt out something ill-advised. The old

habit of being always on her guard made her turn once more to

the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard; and having,

by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increased its

appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened

her husband’s door.

 

He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as she

entered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he

was certainly still thinking about the cigars.

 

“I’m very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that

I’ve come to bid you good-night.” Bending over the back of his

chair, she laid her arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands

to clasp hers, but, as he threw his head back to smile up at her

she noticed that his look was still serious, almost remote. It

was as if, for the first time, a faint veil hung between his

eyes and hers.

 

“I’m so sorry: it’s been a long day for you,” he said absently,

pressing his lips to her hands

 

She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.

 

“Nick!” she burst out, tightening her embrace, “before I go,

you’ve got to swear to me on your honour that you know I should

never have taken those cigars for myself!”

 

For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with

equal gravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in

both, and Susy’s compunctions were swept away on a gale of

laughter.

 

When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between

her curtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples

of the Canal was drawing a network of golden scales across the

vaulted ceiling. The maid had just placed a tray on a slim

marquetry table near the bed, and over the edge of the tray Susy

discovered the small serious face of Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the

sight of the little girl all her dormant qualms awoke.

 

Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little

round chin was barely on a level with the tea-service, and her

clear brown eyes gazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rose in an old Murano glass. Susy had

not seen her for two years, and she seemed, in the interval, to

have passed from a thoughtful infancy to complete ripeness of

feminine experience. She was looking with approval at her

mother’s guest.

 

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said in a small sweet voice. “I

like you so very much. I know I’m not to be often with you; but

at least you’ll have an eye on me, won’t you?”

 

“An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you

say such nice things to me!” Susy laughed, leaning from her

pillows to draw the little girl up to her side.

 

Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the

silken bedspread. “Oh, I know I’m not to be always about,

because you’re just married; but could you see to it that I have

my meals regularly?”

 

“Why, you poor darling! Don’t you always?”

 

“Not when mother’s away on these cures. The servants don’t

always obey me: you see I’m so little for my age. In a few

years, of course, they’ll have to—even if I don’t grow much,”

she added judiciously. She put out her hand and touched the

string of pearls about Susy’s throat. “They’re small, but

they’re very good. I suppose you don’t take the others when you

travel?”

 

“The others? Bless you! I haven’t any others—and never shall

have, probably.”

 

“No other pearls?”

 

“No other jewels at all.”

 

Clarissa stared. “Is that really true?” she asked, as if in

the presence of the unprecedented.

 

“Awfully true,” Susy confessed. “But I think I can make the

servants obey me all the same.”

 

This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who

was still gravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she

brought forth another question.

 

“Did you have to give up all your jewels when you were

divorced?”

 

“Divorced—?” Susy threw her head back against the pillows and

laughed. “Why, what are you thinking of? Don’t you remember

that I wasn’t even married the last time you saw me?”

 

“Yes; I do. But that was two years ago.” The little girl wound

her arms about Susy’s neck and leaned against her caressingly.

“Are you going to be soon, then? I’ll promise not to tell if you

don’t want me to.”

 

“Going to be divorced? Of course not! What in the world made

you think so? “

 

“Because you look so awfully happy,” said Clarissa Vanderlyn

simply.

 

V.

 

IT was a trifling enough sign, but it had remained in Susy’s

mind: that first morning in Venice Nick had gone out without

first coming in to see her. She had stayed in bed late,

chatting with Clarissa, and expecting to see the door open and

her husband appear; and when the child left, and she had jumped

up and looked into Nick’s room, she found it empty, and a line

on his dressing table informed her that he had gone out to send

a telegram.

 

It was lover-like, and even boyish, of him to think it necessary

to explain his absence; but why had he not simply come in and

told her! She instinctively connected the little fact with the

shade