PART III
XXV
IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walkedback alone from the school at which she had just deposited the foureldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last twomonths, she had been living with them.
She had on ready-made boots, an old waterproof and a last year's hat;but none of these facts disturbed her, though she took no particularpride in them. The truth was that she was too busy to think much aboutthem. Since she had assumed the charge of the Fulmer children, in theabsence of both their parents in Italy, she had had to pass through suchan arduous apprenticeship of motherhood that every moment of her wakinghours was packed with things to do at once, and other things to rememberto do later. There were only five Fulmers; but at times they werelike an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication wasequalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, growmute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a bookin some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought ofhunting for them--and which, of course, were it the bonne's room in theattic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had beensingled out by them for that very reason.
These changes from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy,a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristicsnot calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. Shehad grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to theirmethods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as thedevelopment of a detective story.
What interested her most in the whole stirring business was thediscovery that they had a method. These little creatures, pitched upwardinto experience on the tossing waves of their parents' agitated lives,had managed to establish a rough-and-ready system of self-government.Junie, the eldest (the one who already chose her mother's hats, andtried to put order in her wardrobe) was the recognized head of thestate. At twelve she knew lots of things which her mother had neverthoroughly learned, and Susy, her temporary mother, had never evenguessed at: she spoke with authority on all vital subjects, fromcastor-oil to flannel under-clothes, from the fair sharing of stampsor marbles to the number of helpings of rice-pudding or jam which eachchild was entitled to.
There was hardly any appeal from her verdict; yet each of her subjectsrevolved in his or her own orbit of independence, according to lawswhich Junie acknowledged and respected; and the interpreting of thismysterious charter of rights and privileges had not been withoutdifficulty for Susy.
Besides this, there were material difficulties to deal with. The six ofthem, and the breathless bonne who cooked and slaved for them all, hadbut a slim budget to live on; and, as Junie remarked, you'd have thoughtthe boys ate their shoes, the way they vanished. They ate, certainly, agreat deal else, and mostly of a nourishing and expensive kind. Theyhad definite views about the amount and quality of their food, and werecapable of concerted rebellion when Susy's catering fell beneath theirstandard. All this made her life a hurried and harassing business, butnever--what she had most feared it would be a dull or depressing one.
It was not, she owned to herself, that the society of the Fulmerchildren had roused in her any abstract passion for the human young. Sheknew--had known since Nick's first kiss--how she would love any child ofhis and hers; and she had cherished poor little Clarissa Vanderlyn witha shrinking and wistful solicitude. But in these rough young Fulmers shetook a positive delight, and for reasons that were increasingly clear toher. It was because, in the first place, they were all intelligent; andbecause their intelligence had been fed only on things worth caring for.However inadequate Grace Fulmer's bringing-up of her increasing tribehad been, they had heard in her company nothing trivial or dull: goodmusic, good books and good talk had been their daily food, and if attimes they stamped and roared and crashed about like children unblessedby such privileges, at others they shone with the light of poetry andspoke with the voice of wisdom.
That had been Susy's discovery: for the first time she was amongawakening minds which had been wakened only to beauty. From theircramped and uncomfortable household Grace and Nat Fulmer had managed tokeep out mean envies, vulgar admirations, shabby discontents; above allthe din and confusion the great images of beauty had brooded, like thoseancestral figures that stood apart on their shelf in the poorest Romanhouseholds.
No, the task she had undertaken for want of a better gave Susy no senseof a missed vocation: "mothering" on a large scale would never, sheperceived, be her job. Rather it gave her, in odd ways, the senseof being herself mothered, of taking her first steps in the life ofimmaterial values which had begun to seem so much more substantial thanany she had known.
On the day when she had gone to Grace Fulmer for counsel and comfortshe had little guessed that they would come to her in this form. She hadfound her friend, more than ever distracted and yet buoyant, riding thelarge untidy waves of her life with the splashed ease of an amphibian.Grace was probably the only person among Susy's friends who could haveunderstood why she could not make up her mind to marry Altringham; butat the moment Grace was too much absorbed in her own problems topay much attention to her friend's, and, according to her wont, sheimmediately "unpacked" her difficulties.
Nat was not getting what she had hoped out of his European opportunity.Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must befallow periods--that the impact of new impressions seldom producedimmediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experienceof Nat's moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating,when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and heknew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, toomuch excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, fora while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, no doubt. Gracespoke calmly, but the lines of her face sharpened: she had suffered, ohhorribly, at his going to Spain without her. Yet she couldn't, for thechildren's sake, afford to miss the big sum that Ursula Gillow had givenher for her fortnight at Ruan. And her playing had struck people, andled, on the way back, to two or three profitable engagements in privatehouses in London. Fashionable society had made "a little fuss"about her, and it had surprised and pleased Nat, and given her a newimportance in his eyes. "He was beginning to forget that I wasn't onlya nursery-maid, and it's been a good thing for him to be reminded...but the great thing is that with what I've earned he and I can go offto southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know howto manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: toobserving, feeling, soaking things in. It's the only way. Mrs. Melrosewants to take him, to pay all the expenses again-well she shan't. I'llpay them." Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. "And you'll see whatwonders will come of it.... Only there's the problem of the children.Junie quite agrees that we can't take them...."
Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, andhard up, why shouldn't she take charge of the children while theirparents were in Italy? For three months at most-Grace could promise itshouldn't be longer. They couldn't pay her much, of course, but at leastshe would be lodged and fed. "And, you know, it will end by interestingyou--I'm sure it will," the mother concluded, her irrepressiblehopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her witha hesitating smile.
Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. Ifthere had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of theband, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the secondin age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-sideon their fatal day at the Fulmers' and there were the twins, Jack andPeggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rulethis uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguileClarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on thespot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternativeshad not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in foradvice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not saidin
her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I canmanage while you're away--especially if she reads aloud well."
Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had neverbefore known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered witha shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossipand the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showingStrefford's trinket to her father: "Because I said I'd rather have itthan a book."
And here were children who consented to be left for three months bytheir parents, but on condition that a good reader was provided forthem!
"Very well--I will! But what shall I be expected to read to you?" shehad gaily questioned; and Junie had answered, after one of her soberpauses of reflection: "The little ones like nearly everything; but Natand I want poetry particularly, because if we read it to ourselves we sooften pronounce the puzzling words wrong, and then it sounds so horrid."
"Oh, I hope I shall pronounce them right," Susy murmured, stricken withself-distrust and humility.
Apparently she did; for her reading was a success, and even the twinsand Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringingpage of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night's Dream,to their own more specialized literature, though that had also at timesto be provided.
There were, in fact, no lulls in her life with the Fulmers; butits commotions seemed to Susy less meaningless, and therefore lessfatiguing, than those that punctuated the existence of people likeAltringham, Ursula Gillow, Ellie Vanderlyn and their train; and thenoisy uncomfortable little house at Passy was beginning to greet herwith the eyes of home when she returned there after her tramps to andfrom the children's classes. At any rate she had the sense of doingsomething useful and even necessary, and of earning her own keep, thoughon so modest a scale; and when the children were in their quietmood, and demanded books or music (or, even, on one occasion, at thesurprising Junie's instigation, a collective visit to the Louvre, wherethey recognized the most unlikely pictures, and the two elders emittedstartling technical judgments, and called their companion's attention todetails she had not observed); on these occasions, Susy had a surprisedsense of being drawn back into her brief life with Nick, or even stillfarther and deeper, into those visions of Nick's own childhood on whichthe trivial later years had heaped their dust.
It was curious to think that if he and she had remained together, andshe had had a child--the vision used to come to her, in her sleeplesshours, when she looked at little Geordie, in his cot by her bed--theirlife together might have been very much like the life she was nowleading, a small obscure business to the outer world, but to themselveshow wide and deep and crowded!
She could not bear, at that moment, the thought of giving up this mysticrelation to the life she had missed. In spite of the hurry and fatigueof her days, the shabbiness and discomfort of everything, and the hourswhen the children were as "horrid" as any other children, and turned aconspiracy of hostile faces to all her appeals; in spite of all thisshe did not want to give them up, and had decided, when their parentsreturned, to ask to go back to America with them. Perhaps, if Nat'ssuccess continued, and Grace was able to work at her music, they wouldneed a kind of governess-companion. At any rate, she could picture nofuture less distasteful.
She had not sent to Mr. Spearman Nick's answer to her letter. In theinterval between writing to him and receiving his reply she had brokenwith Strefford; she had therefore no object in seeking her freedom. IfNick wanted his, he knew he had only to ask for it; and his silence, asthe weeks passed, woke a faint hope in her. The hope flamed high whenshe read one day in the newspapers a vague but evidently "inspired"allusion to the possibility of an alliance between his Serene Highnessthe reigning Prince of Teutoburg-Waldhain and Miss Coral Hicks ofApex City; it sank to ashes when, a few days later, her eye lit on aparagraph wherein Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer Hicks "requested to state" thatthere was no truth in the report.
On the foundation of these two statements Susy raised one watch-towerof hope after another, feverish edifices demolished or rebuilt by everychance hint from the outer world wherein Nick's name figured with theHickses'. And still, as the days passed and she heard nothing, eitherfrom him or from her lawyer, her flag continued to fly from the quakingstructures.
Apart from the custody of the children there was indeed little todistract her mind from these persistent broodings. She winced sometimesat the thought of the ease with which her fashionable friends had lether drop out of sight. In the perpetual purposeless rush of their days,the feverish making of winter plans, hurrying off to the Riviera or St.Moritz, Egypt or New York, there was no time to hunt up the vanishedor to wait for the laggard. Had they learned that she had broken her"engagement" (how she hated the word!) to Strefford, and had the factgone about that she was once more only a poor hanger-on, to be taken upwhen it was convenient, and ignored in the intervals? She did not know;though she fancied Strefford's newly-developed pride would prevent hisrevealing to any one what had passed between them. For several daysafter her abrupt flight he had made no sign; and though she longed towrite and ask his forgiveness she could not find the words. Finally itwas he who wrote: a short note, from Altringham, typical of all that wasbest in the old Strefford. He had gone down to Altringham, he told her,to think quietly over their last talk, and try to understand whatshe had been driving at. He had to own that he couldn't; but that, hesupposed, was the very head and front of his offending. Whatever he haddone to displease her, he was sorry for; but he asked, in view of hisinvincible ignorance, to be allowed not to regard his offence as a causefor a final break. The possibility of that, he found, would make himeven more unhappy than he had foreseen; as she knew, his own happinesshad always been his first object in life, and he therefore begged her tosuspend her decision a little longer. He expected to be in Paris withinanother two months, and before arriving he would write again, and askher to see him.
The letter moved her but did not make her waver. She simply wrote thatshe was touched by his kindness, and would willingly see him if he cameto Paris later; though she was bound to tell him that she had not yetchanged her mind, and did not believe it would promote his happiness tohave her try to do so.
He did not reply to this, and there was nothing further to keep herthoughts from revolving endlessly about her inmost hopes and fears.
On the rainy afternoon in question, tramping home from the "cours" (towhich she was to return at six), she had said to herself that it wastwo months that very day since Nick had known she was ready to releasehim--and that after such a delay he was not likely to take any furthersteps. The thought filled her with a vague ecstasy. She had had to fixan arbitrary date as the term of her anguish, and she had fixed thatone; and behold she was justified. For what could his silence mean butthat he too....
On the hall-table lay a typed envelope with the Paris postage-mark. Sheopened it carelessly, and saw that the letter-head bore Mr. Spearman'soffice address. The words beneath spun round before her eyes.... "Hasnotified us that he is at your disposal... carry out your wishes...arriving in Paris... fix an appointment with his lawyers...."
Nick--it was Nick the words were talking of! It was the fact of Nick'sreturn to Paris that was being described in those preposterous terms!She sank down on the bench beside the dripping umbrella-stand and staredvacantly before her. It had fallen at last--this blow in which she nowsaw that she had never really believed! And yet she had imagined she wasprepared for it, had expected it, was already planning her future lifein view of it--an effaced impersonal life in the service of somebodyelse's children--when, in reality, under that thin surface of abnegationand acceptance, all the old hopes had been smouldering red-hot in theirashes! What was the use of any self-discipline, any philosophy, anyexperience, if the lawless self underneath could in an instant consumethem like tinder?
She tried to collect herself--to understand what had happened. Nick wascoming to Paris--coming not to see her but to consult his lawyer! Itmeant, of course, th
at he had definitely resolved to claim his freedom;and that, if he had made up his mind to this final step, after morethan six months of inaction and seeming indifference, it could beonly because something unforeseen and decisive had happened to him.Feverishly, she put together again the stray scraps of gossip and thenewspaper paragraphs that had reached her in the last months. Itwas evident that Miss Hicks's projected marriage with the Prince ofTeutoburg-Waldhain had been broken off at the last moment; and brokenoff because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrivalin Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks's formal denial oftheir daughter's betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any otherinference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, topicture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of CoralHicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing--her name, Susy's own!--andentering drawing-rooms with Nick in her wake, gaily welcomed by the verypeople who, a few months before, had welcomed Susy with the same warmth.In spite of Nick's growing dislike of society, and Coral's attitude ofintellectual superiority, their wealth would fatally draw them back intothe world to which Nick was attached by all his habits and associations.And no doubt it would amuse him to re-enter that world as a dispenser ofhospitality, to play the part of host where he had so long been a guest;just as Susy had once fancied it would amuse her to re-enter it as LadyAltringham.... But, try as she would, now that the reality was so closeon her, she could not visualize it or relate it to herself. The merejuxtaposition of the two names--Coral, Nick--which in old times she hadso often laughingly coupled, now produced a blur in her brain.
She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tears runningdown her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne aroused her. Her youngestcharge, Geordie, had been feverish for a day or two; he was better,but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock thehouse-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up tohim. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of rackinghowls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak andumbrella and hurried up.
"Oh, that child!" she groaned.
Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for the indulgenceof private sorrows. From morning till night there was always someimmediate practical demand on one's attention; and Susy was beginningto see how, in contracted households, children may play a part lessromantic but not less useful than that assigned to them in fiction,through the mere fact of giving their parents no leisure to dwell onirremediable grievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family lifehad been so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapid mentalreadjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery her private careswere dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature, diet and medicine.
Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time ithappened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility of temper."What a child I was myself six months ago!" she thought, wondering thatNick's influence, and the tragedy of their parting, should have doneless to mature and steady her than these few weeks in a house full ofchildren.
Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned to usehis grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at his beck with acontinuous supply of stories, songs and games. "You'd better be carefulnever to put yourself in the wrong with Geordie," the astute Junie hadwarned Susy at the outset, "because he's got such a memory, and he won'tmake it up with you till you've told him every fairy-tale he's everheard before."
But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie's indignationmelted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious, abject and rackingher dazed brain for his favourite stories, when she saw, by thesmoothing out of his mouth and the sudden serenity of his eyes, that hewas going to give her the delicious but not wholly reassuring shock ofbeing a good boy.
Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside the cot; thenhe poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearful cheek.
"Poor Susy got a pain too," he said, putting his arms about her; andas she hugged him close, he added philosophically: "Tell Geordie a newstory, darling, and you'll forget all about it."