XIV
THE next day a lot of people turned up unannounced for luncheon. Theywere not of the far-fetched and the exotic, in whom Mrs. Melrose nowspecialized, but merely commonplace fashionable people belonging toSusy's own group, people familiar with the amusing romance of herpenniless marriage, and to whom she had to explain (though none of themreally listened to the explanation) that Nick was not with her justnow but had gone off cruising... cruising in the AEgean with friends...getting up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in thenight).
It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it proved, afterall, easy enough to go through compared with those endless hours ofturning to and fro, the night before, in the cage of her lonely room.Anything, anything, but to be alone....
Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually in tunewith the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the references toabsent friends, the light allusions to last year's loves and quarrels,scandals and absurdities. The women, in their pale summer dresses,were so graceful, indolent and sure of themselves, the men so easy andgood-humoured! Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world shewas meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, hadalready shut its golden doors upon her. And then, as they sat on theterrace after luncheon, looking across at the yellow tree-tops of thepark, one of the women said something--made just an allusion--that Susywould have let pass unnoticed in the old days, but that now filled herwith a sudden deep disgust.... She stood up and wandered away, away fromthem all through the fading garden.
Two days later Susy and Strefford sat on the terrace of the Tuileriesabove the Seine. She had asked him to meet her there, with the desire toavoid the crowded halls and drawing-room of the Nouveau Luxe where, evenat that supposedly "dead" season, people one knew were alwaysdrifting to and fro; and they sat on a bench in the pale sunlight,the discoloured leaves heaped at their feet, and no one to share theirsolitude but a lame working-man and a haggard woman who were lunchingtogether mournfully at the other end of the majestic vista.
Strefford, in his new mourning, looked unnaturally prosperous andwell-valeted; but his ugly untidy features remained as undisciplined,his smile as whimsical, as of old. He had been on cool though friendlyterms with the pompous uncle and the poor sickly cousin whose jointdisappearance had so abruptly transformed his future; and it was hisway to understate his feelings rather than to pretend more than hefelt. Nevertheless, beneath his habitual bantering tone Susy discerneda change. The disaster had shocked him profoundly; already, in his briefsojourn among his people and among the great possessions so tragicallyacquired, old instincts had awakened, forgotten associations had spokenin him. Susy listened to him wistfully, silenced by her imaginativeperception of the distance that these things had put between them.
"It was horrible... seeing them both there together, laid out in thathideous Pugin chapel at Altringham... the poor boy especially. Isuppose that's really what's cutting me up now," he murmured, almostapologetically.
"Oh, it's more than that--more than you know," she insisted; but hejerked back: "Now, my dear, don't be edifying, please," and fumbled fora cigarette in the pocket which was already beginning to bulge with hismiscellaneous properties.
"And now about you--for that's what I came for," he continued, turningto her with one of his sudden movements. "I couldn't make head or tailof your letter."
She paused a moment to steady her voice. "Couldn't you? I suppose you'dforgotten my bargain with Nick. He hadn't-and he's asked me to fulfilit."
Strefford stared. "What--that nonsense about your setting each otherfree if either of you had the chance to make a good match?"
She signed "Yes."
"And he's actually asked you--?"
"Well: practically. He's gone off with the Hickses. Before going hewrote me that we'd better both consider ourselves free. And Coral sentme a postcard to say that she would take the best of care of him."
Strefford mused, his eyes upon his cigarette. "But what the deuce led upto all this? It can't have happened like that, out of a clear sky."
Susy flushed, hesitated, looked away. She had meant to tell Streffordthe whole story; it had been one of her chief reasons for wishing to seehim again, and half-unconsciously, perhaps, she had hoped, in his laxeratmosphere, to recover something of her shattered self-esteem. But nowshe suddenly felt the impossibility of confessing to anyone the depthsto which Nick's wife had stooped. She fancied that her companion guessedthe nature of her hesitation.
"Don't tell me anything you don't want to, you know, my dear."
"No; I do want to; only it's difficult. You see--we had so very littlemoney...."
"Yes?"
"And Nick--who was thinking of his book, and of all sorts of big things,fine things--didn't realise... left it all to me... to manage...."
She stumbled over the word, remembering how Nick had always wincedat it. But Strefford did not seem to notice her, and she hurried on,unfolding in short awkward sentences the avowal of their pecuniarydifficulties, and of Nick's inability to understand that, to keepon with the kind of life they were leading, one had to put up withthings... accept favours....
"Borrow money, you mean?"
"Well--yes; and all the rest." No--decidedly she could not revealto Strefford the episode of Ellie's letters. "Nick suddenly felt, Isuppose, that he couldn't stand it," she continued; "and instead ofasking me to try--to try to live differently, go off somewhere with himand live, like work-people, in two rooms, without a servant, as I wasready to do; well, instead he wrote me that it had all been a mistakefrom the beginning, that we couldn't keep it up, and had betterrecognize the fact; and he went off on the Hickses' yacht. The lastevening that you were in Venice--the day he didn't come back todinner--he had gone off to Genoa to meet them. I suppose he intends tomarry Coral."
Strefford received this in silence. "Well--it was your bargain, wasn'tit?" he said at length.
"Yes; but--"
"Exactly: I always told you so. You weren't ready to have him goyet--that's all."
She flushed to the forehead. "Oh, Streff--is it really all?"
"A question of time? If you doubt it, I'd like to see you try, for awhile, in those two rooms without a servant; and then let me hear fromyou. Why, my dear, it's only a question of time in a palace, witha steam yacht lying off the door-step, and a flock of motors in thegarage; look around you and see. And did you ever imagine that you andNick, of all people, were going to escape the common doom, and survivelike Mr. and Mrs. Tithonus, while all about you the eternal passionswere crumbling to pieces, and your native Divorce-states piling up theirrevenues?"
She sat with bent head, the weight of the long years to come pressinglike a leaden load on her shoulders.
"But I'm so young... life's so long. What does last, then?"
"Ah, you're too young to believe me, if I were to tell you; thoughyou're intelligent enough to understand."
"What does, then?"
"Why, the hold of the things we all think we could do without.Habits--they outstand the Pyramids. Comforts, luxuries, the atmosphereof ease... above all, the power to get away from dulness and monotony,from constraints and uglinesses. You chose that power, instinctively,before you were even grown up; and so did Nick. And the only differencebetween you is that he's had the sense to see sooner than you that thoseare the things that last, the prime necessities."
"I don't believe it!"
"Of course you don't: at your age one doesn't reason one's materialism.And besides you're mortally hurt that Nick has found out sooner thanyou, and hasn't disguised his discovery under any hypocritical phrases."
"But surely there are people--"
"Yes--saints and geniuses and heroes: all the fanatics! To which oftheir categories do you suppose we soft people belong? And the heroesand the geniuses--haven't they their enormous frailties and their giantappetites? And how should we escape being the victims of our littleones?"
She sat for a while without sp
eaking. "But, Streff, how can you say suchthings, when I know you care: care for me, for instance!"
"Care?" He put his hand on hers. "But, my dear, it's just thefugitiveness of mortal caring that makes it so exquisite! It's becausewe know we can't hold fast to it, or to each other, or to anything...."
"Yes... yes... but hush, please! Oh, don't say it!" She stood up, thetears in her throat, and he rose also.
"Come along, then; where do we lunch?" he said with a smile, slippinghis hand through her arm.
"Oh, I don't know. Nowhere. I think I'm going back to Versailles."
"Because I've disgusted you so deeply? Just my luck--when I came over toask you to marry me!"
She laughed, but he had become suddenly grave. "Upon my soul, I did."
"Dear Streff! As if--now--"
"Oh, not now--I know. I'm aware that even with your accelerated divorcemethods--"
"It's not that. I told you it was no use, Streff--I told you long ago,in Venice."
He shrugged ironically. "It's not Streff who's asking you now. Streffwas not a marrying man: he was only trifling with you. The present offercomes from an elderly peer of independent means. Think it over, my dear:as many days out as you like, and five footmen kept. There's not theleast hurry, of course; but I rather think Nick himself would adviseit."
She flushed to the temples, remembering that Nick had; and theremembrance made Strefford's sneering philosophy seem less unbearable.Why should she not lunch with him, after all? In the first days of hismourning he had come to Paris expressly to see her, and to offer herone of the oldest names and one of the greatest fortunes in England.She thought of Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn, Violet Melrose, of theircondescending kindnesses, their last year's dresses, their Christmascheques, and all the careless bounties that were so easy to bestow andso hard to accept. "I should rather enjoy paying them back," somethingin her maliciously murmured.
She did not mean to marry Strefford--she had not even got as far ascontemplating the possibility of a divorce but it was undeniable thatthis sudden prospect of wealth and freedom was like fresh air in herlungs. She laughed again, but now without bitterness.
"Very good, then; we'll lunch together. But it's Streff I want to lunchwith to-day."
"Ah, well," her companion agreed, "I rather think that for a tete-a-tetehe's better company."
During their repast in a little restaurant over the Seine, where sheinsisted on the cheapest dishes because she was lunching with "Streff,"he became again his old whimsical companionable self. Once or twice shetried to turn the talk to his altered future, and the obligations andinterests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject,questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's,and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people shenamed.
It was not till they had finished their coffee, and she was glancing ather watch with a vague notion of taking the next train, that he askedabruptly: "But what are you going to do? You can't stay forever atViolet's."
"Oh, no!" she cried with a shiver.
"Well, then--you've got some plan, I suppose?"
"Have I?" she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothinginterlude of their hour together.
"You can't drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back tothe old sort of life once for all."
She reddened and her eyes filled. "I can't do that, Streff--I know Ican't!"
"Then what--?"
She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: "Nick said he wouldwrite again--in a few days. I must wait--"
"Oh, naturally. Don't do anything in a hurry." Strefford also glanced athis watch. "Garcon, l'addition! I'm taking the train back to-night, andI've a lot of things left to do. But look here, my dear--when you cometo a decision one way or the other let me know, will you? Oh, I don'tmean in the matter I've most at heart; we'll consider that closed forthe present. But at least I can be of use in other ways--hang it, youknow, I can even lend you money. There's a new sensation for our jadedpalates!"
"Oh, Streff... Streff!" she could only falter; and he pressed on gaily:"Try it, now do try it--I assure you there'll be no interest to pay, andno conditions attached. And promise to let me know when you've decidedanything."
She looked into his humorously puckered eyes, answering. Their friendlysmile with hers.
"I promise!" she said.