There was a pause. She found it impossible to speak, with that burning grasp on the wrist where the bangle had been. At length he let her go and moved away. "Answer," he repeated.
"I"ve told you it was my business and not yours."
He received this in silence; then he questioned: "You"ve been sending letters for her, I suppose? To whom?"
"Oh, why do you torment me? Nelson was not supposed to know that she"d been away. She left me the letters to post to him once a week. I found them here the night we arrived.... It was the price--for this. Oh, Nick, say it"s been worth it-say at least that it"s been worth it!" she implored him.
He stood motionless, unresponding. One hand drummed on the corner of her dressing-table, making the jewelled bangle dance.
"How many letters?"
"I don"t know... four... five... What does it matter?"
"And once a week, for six weeks--?"
"Yes."
"And you took it all as a matter of course?"
"No: I hated it. But what could I do?"
"What could you do?"
"When our being together depended on it? Oh, Nick, how could you think I"d give you up?"
"Give me up?" he echoed.
"Well--doesn"t our being together depend on--on what we can get out of people? And hasn"t there always got to be some give-and-take? Did you ever in your life get anything for nothing?" she cried with sudden exasperation. "You"ve lived among these people as long as I have; I suppose it"s not the first time--"
"By G.o.d, but it is," he exclaimed, flushing. "And that"s the difference--the fundamental difference."
"The difference!"
"Between you and me. I"ve never in my life done people"s dirty work for them--least of all for favours in return. I suppose you guessed it, or you wouldn"t have hidden this beastly business from me."
The blood rose to Susy"s temples also. Yes, she had guessed it; instinctively, from the day she had first visited him in his bare lodgings, she had been aware of his stricter standard. But how could she tell him that under his influence her standard had become stricter too, and that it was as much to hide her humiliation from herself as to escape his anger that she had held her tongue?
"You knew I wouldn"t have stayed here another day if I"d known," he continued.
"Yes: and then where in the world should we have gone?"
"You mean that--in one way or another--what you call give-and-take is the price of our remaining together?"
"Well--isn"t it," she faltered.
"Then we"d better part, hadn"t we?"
He spoke in a low tone, thoughtfully and deliberately, as if this had been the inevitable conclusion to which their pa.s.sionate argument had led.
Susy made no answer. For a moment she ceased to be conscious of the causes of what had happened; the thing itself seemed to have smothered her under its ruins.
Nick wandered away from the dressing-table and stood gazing out of the window at the darkening ca.n.a.l flecked with lights. She looked at his back, and wondered what would happen if she were to go up to him and fling her arms about him. But even if her touch could have broken the spell, she was not sure she would have chosen that way of breaking it.
Beneath her speechless anguish there burned the half-conscious sense of having been unfairly treated. When they had entered into their queer compact, Nick had known as well as she on what compromises and concessions the life they were to live together must be based. That he should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie"s indiscretion as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh.
"After all--you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress."
He turned on her with an astonished stare. "You--my mistress?"
Through all her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted. "That day at the Fulmers"--have you forgotten? When you said it would be sheer madness for us to marry."
Lansing stood leaning in the embrasure of the window, his eyes fixed on the mosaic volutes of the floor.
"I was right enough when I said it would be sheer madness for us to marry," he rejoined at length.
She sprang up trembling. "Well, that"s easily settled. Our compact--"
"Oh, that compact--" he interrupted her with an impatient laugh.
"Aren"t you asking me to carry it out now?"
"Because I said we"d better part?" He paused. "But the compact--I"d almost forgotten it--was to the effect, wasn"t it, that we were to give each other a helping hand if either of us had a better chance? The thing was absurd, of course; a mere joke; from my point of view, at least. I shall never want any better chance... any other chance...."
"Oh, Nick, oh, Nick... but then...." She was close to him, his face looming down through her tears; but he put her back.
"It would have been easy enough, wouldn"t it," he rejoined, "if we"d been as detachable as all that? As it is, it"s going to hurt horribly.
But talking it over won"t help. You were right just now when you asked how else we were going to live. We"re born parasites, both, I suppose, or we"d have found out some way long ago. But I find there are things I might put up with for myself, at a pinch--and should, probably, in time that I can"t let you put up with for me... ever.... Those cigars at Como: do you suppose I didn"t know it was for me? And this too? Well, it won"t do... it won"t do...."
He stopped, as if his courage failed him; and she moaned out: "But your writing--if your book"s a success...."
"My poor Susy--that"s all part of the humbug. We both know that my sort of writing will never pay. And what"s the alternative except more of the same kind of baseness? And getting more and more blunted to it? At least, till now, I"ve minded certain things; I don"t want to go on till I find myself taking them for granted."
She reached out a timid hand. "But you needn"t ever, dear... if you"d only leave it to me...."
He drew back sharply. "That seems simple to you, I suppose? Well, men are different." He walked toward the dressing-table and glanced at the little enamelled clock which had been one of her wedding-presents.
"Time to dress, isn"t it? Shall you mind if I leave you to dine with Streffy, and whoever else is coming? I"d rather like a long tramp, and no more talking just at present except with myself."
He pa.s.sed her by and walked rapidly out of the room. Susy stood motionless, unable to lift a detaining hand or to find a final word of appeal. On her disordered dressing-table Mrs. Vanderlyn"s gifts glittered in the rosy lamp-light.
Yes: men were different, as he said.
XI.
BUT there were necessary accommodations, there always had been; Nick in old times, had been the first to own it.... How they had laughed at the Perpendicular People, the people who went by on the other side (since you couldn"t be a good Samaritan without stooping over and poking into heaps of you didn"t know what)! And now Nick had suddenly become perpendicular....
Susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in the breaks between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiar faces of the people she called her friends: Strefford, Fred Gillow, a giggling fool of a young Breckenridge, of their New York group, who had arrived that day, and Prince Nerone Altineri, Ursula"s Prince, who, in Ursula"s absence at a tiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred to join her husband at Venice. Susy looked from one to the other of them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what life would be like with no faces but such as theirs to furnish it....