IV.
CHARLIE STREFFORD'S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the NelsonVanderlyns' palace called for loftier analogies.
Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to Susy.Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great shadowy staircase,their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a ceiling weighed down withOlympians, their chilly evening in a corner of a drawing room whereminuets should have been danced before a throne, contrasted with thehappy intimacies of Como as their sudden sense of disaccord contrastedwith the mutual confidence of the day before.
The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing had hadtoo long a discipline in the art of smoothing things over not to makea special effort to hide from each other the ravages of their firstdisagreement. But, deep down and invisible, the disagreement remained;and compunction for having been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as shesat in her tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before atarnished mirror.
"I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of scale," shemused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move back and forwardin the dim recesses of the mirror. "And yet," she continued, "EllieVanderlyn's hardly half an inch taller than I am; and she certainlyisn't a bit more dignified.... I wonder if it's because I feel sohorribly small to-night that the place seems so horribly big."
She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome andhigh ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever before beenoppressed by the evidences of wealth.
She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped hands....Even now she could not understand what had made her take the cigars.She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: herreasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the thingsone couldn't reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had takenStreffy's cigars! She had taken them--yes, that was the point--shehad taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to makethe smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious,had become her absorbing preoccupation. She had committed, for him,precisely the kind of little baseness she would most have scorned tocommit for herself; and, since he hadn't instantly felt the difference,she would never be able to explain it to him.
She stood up with a sigh, shook out her loosened hair, and glancedaround the great frescoed room. The maid-servant had said somethingabout the Signora's having left a letter for her; and there it lay onthe writing-table, with her mail and Nick's; a thick envelope addressedin Ellie's childish scrawl, with a glaring "Private" dashed across thecorner.
"What on earth can she have to say, when she hates writing so," Susymused.
She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed lettersfell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie's hand, to Nelson VanderlynEsqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and adate: one, two, three, four--with a week's interval between the dates.
"Goodness--" gasped Susy, understanding.
She had dropped into an armchair near the table, and for a long timeshe sat staring at the numbered letters. A sheet of paper covered withEllie's writing had fluttered out among them, but she let it lie;she knew so well what it would say! She knew all about her friend, ofcourse; except poor old Nelson, who didn't, But she had never imaginedthat Ellie would dare to use her in this way. It was unbelievable... shehad never pictured anything so vile.... The blood rushed to her face,and she sprang up angrily, half minded to tear the letters in bits andthrow them all into the fire.
She heard her husband's knock on the door between their rooms, and sweptthe dangerous packet under the blotting-book.
"Oh, go away, please, there's a dear," she called out; "I haven'tfinished unpacking, and everything's in such a mess." Gathering upNick's papers and letters, she ran across the room and thrust themthrough the door. "Here's something to keep you quiet," she laughed,shining in on him an instant from the threshold.
She turned back feeling weak with shame. Ellie's letter lay on thefloor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one theexpected phrases sprang out at her.
"One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcometo stay all summer.... There won't be a particle of expense for you--theservants have orders.... If you'll just be an angel and post theseletters yourself.... It's been my only chance for such an age; when wemeet I'll explain everything. And in a month at latest I'll be back tofetch Clarissa...."
Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. Tofetch Clarissa! Then Ellie's child was here? Here, under the roof withthem, left to their care? She read on, raging. "She's so delighted, poordarling, to know you're coming. I've had to sack her beastly governessfor impertinence, and if it weren't for you she'd be all alone with alot of servants I don't much trust. So for pity's sake be good to mychild, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I've gone to take acure; and she knows she's not to tell her Daddy that I'm away, becauseit would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She's perfectly to betrusted; you'll see what a clever angel she is...." And then, at thebottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: "Susy darling, ifyou've ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on yoursacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know Ican count on you to rub out the numbers."
Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter into the fire: thenshe came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the fourfatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to dowith them.
To destroy them on the spot had seemed, at first thought, inevitable: itmight be saving Ellie as well as herself. But such a step seemed to Susyto involve departure on the morrow, and this in turn involved notifyingEllie, whose letter she had vainly scanned for an address. Well--perhapsClarissa's nurse would know where one could write to her mother; it wasunlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means ofcommunication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be donethat night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on themorrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitalitythey were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she hadcounted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to doso had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie's largeness ofhand, and had been sure in advance that as long as they were her gueststheir only expense would be an occasional present to the servants. Andwhat would the alternative be? She and Lansing, in their endless talks,had so lived themselves into the vision of indolent summer days on thelagoon, of flaming hours on the beach of the Lido, and evenings of musicand dreams on their broad balcony above the Giudecca, that the idea ofhaving to renounce these joys, and deprive her Nick of them, filled Susywith a wrath intensified by his having confided in her that when theywere quietly settled in Venice he "meant to write." Already nascent inher breast was the fierce resolve of the author's wife to defend herhusband's privacy and facilitate his encounters with the Muse. It wasabominable, simply abominable, that Ellie Vanderlyn should have drawnher into such a trap!
Well--there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the wholething to Nick. The trivial incident of the cigars-how trivial it nowseemed!--showed her the kind of stand he would take, and communicated toher something of his own uncompromising energy. She would tell him thewhole story in the morning, and try to find a way out with him: Susy'sfaith in her power of finding a way out was inexhaustible. But suddenlyshe remembered the adjuration at the end of Mrs. Vanderlyn's letter: "Ifyou're ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won't, on yoursacred honour, say a word to Nick...."
It was, of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: ifindeed the word "right", could be used in any conceivable relation tothis 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 herfriend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the sameposition as when Ursula Gillow, using the same argument, had appealedto her to give up Nick Lan
sing. Yes, Susy reflected; but then NelsonVanderlyn had been kind to her too; and the money Ellie had been so kindwith was Nelson's.... The queer edifice of Susy's standards tottered onits base she honestly didn't know where fairness lay, as between so muchthat was foul.
The very depth of her perplexity puzzled her. She had been in "tightplaces" before; had indeed been in so few that were not, in one way oranother, constricting! As she looked back on her past it lay before heras a very network of perpetual concessions and contrivings. Butnever before had she had such a sense of being tripped up, gagged andpinioned. The little misery of the cigars still galled her, and nowthis big humiliation superposed itself on the raw wound. Decidedly, thesecond month of their honey-moon was beginning cloudily....
She glanced at the enamel led travelling-clock on her dressingtable--one of the few wedding-presents she had consented to accept inkind--and was startled at the lateness of the hour. In a moment Nickwould be coming; and an uncomfortable sensation in her throat warnedher that through sheer nervousness and exasperation she might blurt outsomething ill-advised. The old habit of being always on her guard madeher turn once more to the looking-glass. Her face was pale and haggard;and having, by a swift and skilful application of cosmetics, increasedits appearance of fatigue, she crossed the room and softly opened herhusband's door.
He too sat by a lamp, reading a letter which he put aside as sheentered. His face was grave, and she said to herself that he wascertainly still thinking about the cigars.
"I'm very tired, dearest, and my head aches so horribly that I've cometo bid you good-night." Bending over the back of his chair, she laidher arms on his shoulders. He lifted his hands to clasp hers, but, ashe threw his head back to smile up at her she noticed that his look wasstill serious, almost remote. It was as if, for the first time, a faintveil hung between his eyes and hers.
"I'm so sorry: it's been a long day for you," he said absently, pressinghis lips to her hands
She felt the dreaded twitch in her throat.
"Nick!" she burst out, tightening her embrace, "before I go, you've gotto swear to me on your honour that you know I should never have takenthose cigars for myself!"
For a moment he stared at her, and she stared back at him with equalgravity; then the same irresistible mirth welled up in both, and Susy'scompunctions were swept away on a gale of laughter.
When she woke the next morning the sun was pouring in between hercurtains of old brocade, and its refraction from the ripples of theCanal 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 faceof Clarissa Vanderlyn. At the sight of the little girl all her dormantqualms awoke.
Clarissa was just eight, and small for her age: her little round chinwas barely on a level with the tea-service, and her clear brown eyesgazed at Susy between the ribs of the toast-rack and the single tea-rosein an old Murano glass. Susy had not seen her for two years, and sheseemed, in the interval, to have passed from a thoughtful infancy tocomplete ripeness of feminine experience. She was looking with approvalat her mother's guest.
"I'm so glad you've come," she said in a small sweet voice. "I like youso very much. I know I'm not to be often with you; but at least you'llhave an eye on me, won't you?"
"An eye on you! I shall never want to have it off you, if you say suchnice things to me!" Susy laughed, leaning from her pillows to draw thelittle girl up to her side.
Clarissa smiled and settled herself down comfortably on the silkenbedspread. "Oh, I know I'm not to be always about, because you're justmarried; 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 obeyme: you see I'm so little for my age. In a few years, of course, they'llhave to--even if I don't grow much," she added judiciously. She put outher hand and touched the string of pearls about Susy's throat. "They'resmall, but they're very good. I suppose you don't take the others whenyou 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 presenceof the unprecedented.
"Awfully true," Susy confessed. "But I think I can make the servantsobey me all the same."
This point seemed to have lost its interest for Clarissa, who was stillgravely scrutinizing her companion. After a while she brought forthanother 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 evenmarried the last time you saw me?"
"Yes; I do. But that was two years ago." The little girl wound her armsabout Susy's neck and leaned against her caressingly. "Are you going tobe 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 thinkso? "
"Because you look so awfully happy," said Clarissa Vanderlyn simply.