The Glimpses of the Moon, Edith Wharton [most important books of all time .TXT] 📗

His lovely client evidently intimidated him by her grace, and still more by her inexperience.

"It can be--generally," he admitted; "and especially so if... as I gather 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 best way would be for you to write to him?"

She recoiled slightly. It had never occurred to her that the lawyers would not "manage it" without her intervention.

"Write to him... but what about?"

"Well, expressing your wish... to recover your freedom.... The rest, I assume," said the young lawyer, "may be left to Mr. Lansing."

She did not know exactly what he meant, and was too much perturbed by the idea of having to communicate with Nick to follow any other train of thought. How could she write such a letter? And yet how could she confess to the lawyer that she had not the courage to do so? He would, of course, tell her to go home and be reconciled. She hesitated perplexedly.

"Wouldn't it be better," she suggested, "if the letter were to come from--from your office?"

He considered this politely. "On the whole: no. If, as I take it, an amicable arrangement is necessary--to secure the requisite evidence then a line from you, suggesting an interview, seems to me more advisable."

"An interview? Is an interview necessary?" She was ashamed to show her agitation to this cautiously smiling young man, who must wonder at her childish lack of understanding; but the break in her voice was uncontrollable.

"Oh, please write to him--I can't! And I can't see him! Oh, can't you arrange it for me?" she pleaded.

She saw now that her idea of a divorce had been that it was something one went out--or sent out--to buy in a shop: something concrete and portable, that Strefford's money could pay for, and that it required no personal 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 it would be useless... and very painful."

"You are the best judge, of course. But in any case, a letter from you, a friendly letter, seems wiser... considering the apparent lack of evidence...."

"Very well, then; I'll write," she agreed, and hurried away, scarcely hearing his parting injunction that she should take a copy of her letter.

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. He was just back from Rome, where he had dined with the Hickses ("a bang-up show--they're really lances-you wouldn't know them!"), and had met there Lansing, whom he reported as intending to marry Coral "as soon as things were settled". "You were dead right, weren't you, Susy," he snickered, "that night in Venice last summer, when we all thought you were joking about their engagement? Pity now you chucked our surprise visit to the Hickses, 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 tentative side-glance at his host; and Lord Altringham, leaning toward Susy, said coldly: "Was Breckenridge speaking about me? I didn't catch what he said. Does he speak indistinctly--or am I getting deaf, I wonder?"

After that it seemed comparatively easy, when Strefford had dropped her at her hotel, to go upstairs and write. She dashed off the date and her address, and then stopped; but suddenly she remembered Breckenridge's snicker, and the words rushed from her. "Nick dear, it was July when you left Venice, and I have had no word from you since the note in which you said 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. That means, I suppose, that you want to take back your freedom and give me mine. Wouldn't it be kinder, in that case, to tell me so? It is worse than anything to go on as we are now. I don't know how to put these things but since you seem unwilling to write to me perhaps you would prefer to send your answer to Mr. Frederic Spearman, the American lawyer here. His address is 100, Boulevard Haussmann. I hope--"

She broke off on the last word. Hope? What did she hope, either for him or for herself? Wishes for his welfare would sound like a mockery--and she would rather her letter should seem bitter than unfeeling. Above all, she wanted to get it done. To have to re-write even those few lines would be torture. So she left "I hope," and simply added: "to hear before long what you have decided."

She read it over, and shivered. Not one word of the past-not one allusion to that mysterious interweaving of their lives which had enclosed them one in the other like the flower in its sheath! What place had such memories in such a letter? She had the feeling that she wanted to hide that other Nick away in her own bosom, and with him the other Susy, the Susy he had once imagined her to be.... Neither of them seemed concerned with the present business.

The letter done, she stared at the sealed envelope till its presence in the room became intolerable, and she understood that she must either tear it up or post it immediately. She went down to the hall of the sleeping hotel, and bribed the night-porter to carry the letter to the nearest post office, though he objected that, at that hour, no time would be gained. "I want it out of the house," she insisted: and waited sternly by the desk, in her dressing-gown, till he had performed the errand.

As she re-entered her room, the disordered writing-table struck her; and she remembered the lawyer's injunction to take a copy of her letter. A copy to be filed away with the documents in "Lansing versus Lansing!" She burst out laughing at the idea. What were lawyers made of, she wondered? Didn't the man guess, by the mere look in her eyes and the sound of her voice, that she would never, as long as she lived, forget a word of that letter--that night after night she would lie down, as she was 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 was July when you left me..." and so on, word after word, down to the last fatal syllable?


XXII

STREFFORD was leaving for England.

Once assured that Susy had taken the first step toward freeing herself, he frankly regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his well-wishers were perpetually making for him. Sometimes Susy fancied he was marrying her because to do so was to follow the line of least resistance.

"To marry me is the easiest way of not marrying all the others," she laughed, as he stood before her one day in a quiet alley of the Bois de Boulogne, insisting on the settlement of various preliminaries. "I believe I'm only a protection to you."

An odd gleam passed behind his eyes, and she instantly guessed that he was thinking: "And what else am I to you?"

She changed colour, and he rejoined, laughing also: "Well, you're that at any rate, thank the Lord!"

She pondered, and then questioned: "But in the interval-how are you going to defend yourself for another year?"

"Ah, you've got to see to that; you've got to take a little house in London. You've got to look after me, you know."

It was on the tip of her tongue to flash back: "Oh, if that's all you care--!" But caring was exactly the factor she wanted, as much as possible, to keep out of their talk and their thoughts. She could not ask him how much he cared without laying herself open to the same question; and that way terror lay. As a matter of fact, though Strefford was not an ardent wooer--perhaps from tact, perhaps from temperament, perhaps merely from the long habit of belittling and disintegrating every sentiment and every conviction--yet she knew he did care for her as much as he was capable of caring for anyone. If the element of habit entered largely into the feeling--if he liked her, above all, because he was used to her, knew her views, her indulgences, her allowances, knew he was never likely to be bored, and almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature. She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say. The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and to keep off the other women, was a necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as little Breckenridge would have said, she could "pull it off"; but she did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred would have been to go away--no matter where and not see Strefford again till they were married. But she dared not tell him that either.

"A little house in London--?" She wondered.

"Well, I suppose you've got to have some sort of a roof over your head."

"I suppose so."

He sat down beside her. "If you like me well enough to live at Altringham some day, won't you, in the meantime, let me provide you with a smaller and more convenient establishment?"

Still she hesitated. The alternative, she knew, would be to live on Ursula Gillow, Violet Melrose, or some other of her rich friends, any one of whom would be ready to lavish the largest hospitality on the prospective Lady Altringham. Such an arrangement, in the long run, would be no less humiliating to her pride, no less destructive to her independence, than Altringham's little establishment. But she temporized. "I shall go over to London in December, and stay for a while with various people--then we can look about."

"All right; as you like." He obviously considered her hesitation ridiculous, but was too full of satisfaction at her having started divorce proceedings to be chilled by her reply.

"And now, look here, my dear; couldn't I give you some sort of a ring?"

"A ring?" She flushed at the suggestion. "What's the use, Streff, dear? With all those jewels locked away in London--"

"Oh, I daresay you'll think them old-fashioned. And, hang it, why shouldn't I give you something new, I ran across Ellie and Bockheimer yesterday, in the rue de la Paix, picking out sapphires. Do you like sapphires, or emeralds? Or just a diamond? I've seen a thumping one.... I'd like you to have it."

Ellie and