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

of preoccupation she had noticed on his face the night

before, when she had gone to his room and found him absorbed in

letter; and while she dressed she had continued to wonder what

was in the letter, and whether the telegram he had hurried out

to send was an answer to it.

 

She had never found out. When he reappeared, handsome and happy

as the morning, he proffered no explanation; and it was part of

her life-long policy not to put uncalled-for questions. It was

not only that her jealous regard for her own freedom was matched

by an equal respect for that of others; she had steered too long

among the social reefs and shoals not to know how narrow is the

passage that leads to peace of mind, and she was determined to

keep her little craft in mid-channel. But the incident had

lodged itself in her memory, acquiring a sort of symbolic

significance, as of a turning-point in her relations with her

husband. Not that these were less happy, but that she now

beheld them, as she had always formerly beheld such joys, as an

unstable islet in a sea of storms. Her present bliss was as

complete as ever, but it was ringed by the perpetual menace of

all she knew she was hiding from Nick, and of all she suspected

him of hiding from her ….

 

She was thinking of these things one afternoon about three weeks

after their arrival in Venice. It was near sunset, and she sat

alone on the balcony, watching the cross-lights on the water

weave their pattern above the flushed reflection of old

palace-basements. She was almost always alone at that hour.

Nick had taken to writing in the afternoons—he had been as good

as his word, and so, apparently, had the Muse and it was his

habit to join his wife only at sunset, for a late row on the

lagoon. She had taken Clarissa, as usual, to the Giardino

Pubblico, where that obliging child had politely but

indifferently “played”—Clarissa joined in the diversions of her

age as if conforming to an obsolete tradition—and had brought

her back for a music lesson, echoes of which now drifted down

from a distant window.

 

Susy had come to be extremely thankful for Clarissa. But for

the little girl, her pride in her husband’s industry might have

been tinged with a faint sense of being at times left out and

forgotten; and as Nick’s industry was the completest

justification for their being where they were, and for her

having done what she had, she was grateful to Clarissa for

helping her to feel less alone. Clarissa, indeed, represented

the other half of her justification: it was as much on the

child’s account as on Nick’s that Susy had held her tongue,

remained in Venice, and slipped out once a week to post one of

Ellie’s numbered letters. A day’s experience of the Palazzo

Vanderlyn had convinced Susy of the impossibility of deserting

Clarissa. Long experience had shown her that the most crowded

households often contain the loneliest nurseries, and that the

rich child is exposed to evils unknown to less pampered infancy;

but hitherto such things had merely been to her one of the

uglier bits in the big muddled pattern of life. Now she found

herself feeling where before she had only judged: her

precarious bliss came to her charged with a new weight of pity.

 

She was thinking of these things, and of the approaching date of

Ellie Vanderlyn’s return, and of the searching truths she was

storing up for that lady’s private ear, when she noticed a

gondola turning its prow toward the steps below the balcony.

She leaned over, and a tall gentleman in shabby clothes,

glancing up at her as he jumped out, waved a mouldy Panama in

joyful greeting.

 

“Streffy!” she exclaimed as joyfully; and she was halfway down

the stairs when he ran up them followed by his luggage-laden

boatman.

 

“It’s all right, I suppose?—Ellie said I might come,” he

explained in a shrill cheerful voice; “and I’m to have my same

green room with the parrot-panels, because its furniture is

already so frightfully stained with my hair-wash.”

 

Susy was beaming on him with the deep sense of satisfaction

which his presence always produced in his friends. There was no

one in the world, they all agreed, half as ugly and untidy and

delightful as Streffy; no one who combined such outspoken

selfishness with such imperturbable good humour; no one who knew

so well how to make you believe he was being charming to you

when it was you who were being charming to him.

 

In addition to these seductions, of which none estimated the

value more accurately than their possessor, Strefford had for

Susy another attraction of which he was probably unconscious.

It was that of being the one rooted and stable being among the

fluid and shifting figures that composed her world. Susy had

always lived among people so denationalized that those one took

for Russians generally turned out to be American, and those one

was inclined to ascribe to New York proved to have originated in

Rome or Bucharest. These cosmopolitan people, who, in countries

not their own, lived in houses as big as hotels, or in hotels

where the guests were as international as the waiters, had

inter-married, inter-loved and inter-divorced each other over

the whole face of Europe, and according to every code that

attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his home

in this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one he

spoke of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull

English country-house in a northern county, where a life as

monotonous and self-contained as his own was chequered and

dispersed had gone on for generation after generation; and it

was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his

vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his

talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him

a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other

marionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, and

so eager to outdo them in detachment and adaptability,

ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the people to

whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the

skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. “He talks every

language as well as the rest of us,” Susy had once said of him,

“but at least he talks one language better than the others”; and

Strefford, told of the remark, had laughed, called her an idiot,

and been pleased.

 

As he shambled up the stairs with her, arm in arm, she was

thinking of this quality with a new appreciation of its value.

Even she and Lansing, in spite of their unmixed Americanism,

their substantial background of old-fashioned cousinships in New

York and Philadelphia, were as mentally detached, as universally

at home, as touts at an International Exhibition. If they were

usually recognized as Americans it was only because they spoke

French so well, and because Nick was too fair to be “foreign,”

and too sharp-featured to be English. But Charlie Strefford was

English with all the strength of an inveterate habit; and

something in Susy was slowly waking to a sense of the beauty of

habit.

 

Lounging on the balcony, whither he had followed her without

pausing to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself

immensely interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly

pleased at its having been enacted under his roof, and hugely

and flippantly amused at the firmness with which she refused to

let him see Nick till the latter’s daily task was over.

 

“Writing? Rot! What’s he writing? He’s breaking you in, my

dear; that’s what he’s doing: establishing an alibi. What’ll

you bet he’s just sitting there smoking and reading Le Rire?

Let’s go and see.”

 

But Susy was firm. “He’s read me his first chapter: it’s

wonderful. It’s a philosophic romance—rather like Marius, you

know.”

 

“Oh, yes—I do!” said Strefford, with a laugh that she thought

idiotic.

 

She flushed up like a child. “You’re stupid, Streffy. You

forget that Nick and I don’t need alibis. We’ve got rid of all

that hyprocrisy by agreeing that each will give the other a hand

up when either of us wants a change. We’ve not married to spy

and lie, and nag each other; we’ve formed a partnership for our

mutual advantage.”

 

“I see; that’s capital. But how can you be sure that, when Nick

wants a change, you’ll consider it for his advantage to have

one?”

 

It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she

often wondered if it equally tormented Nick.

 

“I hope I shall have enough common sense—” she began.

 

“Oh, of course: common sense is what you’re both bound to base

your argument on, whichever way you argue.”

 

This flash of insight disconcerted her, and she said, a little

irritably: “What should you do then, if you married?—Hush,

Streffy! I forbid you to shout like that—all the gondolas are

stopping to look!”

 

“How can I help it?” He rocked backward and forward in his

chair. “‘If you marry,’ she says: ‘Streffy, what have you

decided to do if you suddenly become a raving maniac?’”

 

“I said no such thing. If your uncle and your cousin died,

you’d marry tomorrow; you know you would.”

 

“Oh, now you’re talking business.” He folded his long arms and

leaned over the balcony, looking down at the dusky ripples

streaked with fire. “In that case I should say: ‘Susan, my

dear—Susan—now that by the merciful intervention of Providence

you have become Countess of Altringham in the peerage of Great

Britain, and Baroness Dunsterville and d’Amblay in the peerages

of Ireland and Scotland, I’ll thank you to remember that you are

a member of one of the most ancient houses in the United

Kingdom—and not to get found out.’”

 

Susy laughed. “We know what those warnings mean! I pity my

namesake.”

 

He swung about and gave her a quick look out of his small ugly

twinkling eyes. “Is there any other woman in the world named

Susan?”

 

“I hope so, if the name’s an essential. Even if Nick chucks me,

don’t count on me to carry out that programme. I’ve seen it in

practice too often.”

 

“Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody’s in perfect health at

Altringham.” He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain

pen, a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of

dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other

objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: “Tell me how did

you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was

running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just

when people were beginning to say that you were going to marry

Nick. I was afraid she’d put a spoke in your wheel; and I hear

she put a big cheque in your hand instead.”

 

Susy was silent. From the first moment of Strefford’s

appearance she had known that in the course of time he would

put that question. He was as inquisitive as a monkey, and when

he had made up his mind to find out anything it was useless to

try to divert his attention. After a moment’s hesitation she

said: “I flirted with Fred. It was a bore but he was very

decent.”

 

“He would be—poor Fred. And you got Ursula thoroughly

frightened!”

 

“Well—enough. And then luckily that young Nerone Altineri

turned up from Rome: he went over to New York to look for a job

as an engineer, and Ursula made Fred put him in their iron

works.” She paused