XXI
ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, events hadfollowed the course foreseen by Susy.
She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about her divorce, andhe had kissed her; and the promise had been easier to make than she hadexpected, the kiss less difficult to receive.
She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification of learningthat her husband was still with the Hickses. Morally sure of it thoughshe had been, the discovery was a shock, and she measured for thefirst time the abyss between fearing and knowing. No wonder he had notwritten--the modern husband did not have to: he had only to leave it totime and the newspapers to make known his intentions. Susy could imagineNick's saying to himself, as he sometimes used to say when she remindedhim of an unanswered letter: "But there are lots of ways of answering aletter--and writing doesn't happen to be mine."
Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For a minute, asshe laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, and she felt herselfdropping down into the bottomless anguish of her dreadful vigil in thePalazzo Vanderlyn. But she was weary of anguish: her healthy body andnerves instinctively rejected it. The wave was spent, and she feltherself irresistibly struggling back to light and life and youth. Hedidn't want her! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all theold expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, the atropinefor her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, the thought of Streffordand his guests awaiting her, and of the conclusions that the diners ofthe Nouveau Luxe would draw from seeing them together. Thank heaven noone would say: "Poor old Susy--did you know Nick had chucked her?" Theywould all say: "Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuckhim; but Altringham's mad to marry her, and what could she do?"
And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen. Seeingher at Lord Altringham's table, with the Ascots and the old Duchessof Dunes, the interested spectators could not but regard the dinner asconfirming the rumour of her marriage. As Ellie said, people didn'twait nowadays to announce their "engagements" till the tiresome divorceproceedings were over. Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined,had floated in late with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, inconspicuous tete-a-tete, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, they all seemedto say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As the party, after dinner,drifted from the restaurant back into the hall, she caught, in thesmiles and hand-pressures crowding about her, the scarcely-repressedhint of official congratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a cornerwith Fulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whispertenderly: "It's most awfully clever of you, darling, not to be wearingany jewels."
In all the women's eyes she read the reflected lustre of the jewels shecould wear when she chose: it was as though their glitter reachedher from the far-off bank where they lay sealed up in the Altringhamstrong-box. What a fool she had been to think that Strefford would everbelieve she didn't care for them!
The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shade lessaffable than Susy could have wished; but then there was Lady Joan--andthe girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome to account for that: probablyevery one in the room had guessed it. And the old Duchess of Dunes wasdelightful. She looked rather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls(Susy was sure they were as false as her teeth); and her cordialitywas so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult toaccount for than Lady Ascot's coldness, till she heard the old lady, asthey passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew:"Streff, dearest, when you have a minute's time, and can drop in atmy wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words whatI ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you'll bringyour exquisite American to see me, won't you!... No, Joan Senechal's toofair for my taste.... Insipid...."
Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A few days latershe began to wonder how the thought of Strefford's endearments couldhave been so alarming. To be sure he was not lavish of them; but when hedid touch her, even when he kissed her, it no longer seemed to matter.An almost complete absence of sensation had mercifully succeeded to thefirst wild flurry of her nerves.
And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her new life. Ifit failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether of pain or pleasure,the very absence of sensation would make for peace. And in the meanwhileshe was tasting what, she had begun to suspect, was the maximum ofbliss to most of the women she knew: days packed with engagements, theexhilaration of fashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewelor a bibelot or a new "model" that one's best friend wanted, or of beinginvited to some private show, or some exclusive entertainment, thatone's best friend couldn't get to. There was nothing, now, that shecouldn't buy, nowhere that she couldn't go: she had only to choose andto triumph. And for a while the surface-excitement of her life gave herthe illusion of enjoyment.
Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return to England,and they had now been for nearly three weeks together in their new, andvirtually avowed, relation. She had fancied that, after all, the easiestpart of it would be just the being with Strefford--the falling backon their old tried friendship to efface the sense of strangeness. But,though she had so soon grown used to his caresses, he himself remainedcuriously unfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was theold Strefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of view hadchanged, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. In all the smallsides of his great situation he took an almost childish satisfaction;and though he still laughed at both its privileges and its obligations,it was now with a jealous laughter.
It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to by all thepeople who had always disapproved of him, and to unite at the same tablepersons who had to dissemble their annoyance at being invited togetherlest they should not be invited at all. Equally exhilarating wasthe capricious favouring of the dull and dowdy on occasions when thebrilliant and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, forexample, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dinewith the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month'sholiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar's wife while the Duchessnarrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, andViolet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had oncebeen supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.
Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higherorder; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereasStrefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfiedwith such triumphs.
Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed tohave shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning ofossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by hiswits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or asserthimself on some question of public interest, she was startled by hislimitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had beenhis way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now hewas actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for thefirst time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people weretalking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habitof saying over and over again: "Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or amI getting deaf, I wonder?" which wore on her nerves by its suggestion ofa corresponding mental infirmity.
These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activityon which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In hisrelation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She sawthat he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances aftertheir first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring ofimagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.
She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,and after she had promised Strefford to take
steps toward a divorceshe had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented herasking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to bein the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of was toconsult a young American lawyer practicing in Paris, with whom she feltshe could talk the more easily because he was not from New York, andprobably unacquainted with her history.
She was so ignorant of the procedure in such matters that she wassurprised and relieved at his asking few personal questions; but it wasa shock to learn that a divorce could not be obtained, either in NewYork or Paris, merely on the ground of desertion or incompatibility.
"I thought nowadays... if people preferred to live apart... it couldalways be managed," she stammered, wondering at her own ignorance, afterthe many conjugal ruptures she had assisted at.
The young lawyer smiled, and coloured slightly. His lovely clientevidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by herinexperience.
"It can be--generally," he admitted; "and especially so if... as Igather 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 bestway would be for you to write to him?"
She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyerswould not "manage it" without her intervention.
"Write to him... but what about?"
"Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, Iassume," said the young lawyer, "may be left to Mr. Lansing."
She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed bythe idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other trainof thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could sheconfess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? Hewould, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitatedperplexedly.
"Wouldn't it be better," she suggested, "if the letter were to comefrom--from your office?"
He considered this politely. "On the whole: no. If, as I take it, anamicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence thena line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable."
"An interview? Is an interview necessary?" She was ashamed to show heragitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder ather childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice wasuncontrollable.
"Oh, please write to him--I can't! And I can't see him! Oh, can't youarrange it for me?" she pleaded.
She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was somethingone went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete andportable, that Strefford's money could pay for, and that it required nopersonal 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 itwould be useless... and very painful."
"You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter fromyou, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack ofevidence...."
"Very well, then; I'll write," she agreed, and hurried away, scarcelyhearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of herletter.
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. Hewas just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses ("a bang-upshow--they're really lances-you wouldn't know them!"), and had met thereLansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral "as soon as thingswere settled". "You were dead right, weren't you, Susy," he snickered,"that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were jokingabout their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to theHickses, 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 tentativeside-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, saidcoldly: "Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn't catch what hesaid. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?"
After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped herat her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and heraddress, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge'ssnicker, and the words rushed from her. "Nick dear, it was July when youleft Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which yousaid 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. Thatmeans, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give memine. Wouldn't it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worsethan anything to go on as we are now. I don't know how to put thesethings but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you wouldprefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyerhere. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--"
She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for himor for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--andshe would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Aboveall, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those fewlines would be torture. So she left "I hope," and simply added: "to hearbefore long what you have decided."
She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past-not oneallusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which hadenclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What placehad such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wantedto hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the otherSusy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemedconcerned with the present business.
The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presencein the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must eithertear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of thesleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to thenearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no timewould be gained. "I want it out of the house," she insisted: and waitedsternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed theerrand.
As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; andshe remembered the lawyer's injunction to take a copy of her letter. Acopy to be filed away with the documents in "Lansing versus Lansing!"She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, shewondered? Didn't the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and thesound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forgeta word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as shewas 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 wasJuly when you left me..." and so on, word after word, down to the lastfatal syllable?