“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans as yet—not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of yours instead.”
Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn’t had time to go about with us; and as so few theatres are open, and there’s so little music, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me with it now—she’s our eldest, you remember? She’s grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all—next to Nat’s recognition, I mean—is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single minute. Just think—Nat has even made special arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”
Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long-repressed avowal of their tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet … and yet….
Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.
“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally knows,” Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
“It’s the way you wear it, dearest—and the bow is rather top-heavy. Let me have it a minute, please.” Susy lifted the hat from her friend’s head and began to manipulate its trimming. “This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it…. And now go on about Nat….”
She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband’s triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine ladies’ battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
“Of course they’re simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose and Mrs. Gillow especially—because each one pretends to have been the first to notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality it wasn’t either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art-critic we’ve known for years, who chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking for a new painter to push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to Susy’s face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed out: ‘This is genius!’ It seems funny he should care so much, when I’ve always known he had genius-and he has known it too. But they’re all so kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing sound new to hear it said in a new voice.”
Susy looked at her meditatively. “And how should you feel if Nat liked too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer what you felt or thought?”
Her friend’s worn face flushed quickly, and then paled: Susy almost repented the question. But Mrs. Fulmer met it with a tranquil dignity. “You haven’t been married long enough, dear, to understand… how people like Nat and me feel about such things… or how trifling they seem, in the balance… the balance of one’s memories.”
Susy stood up again, and flung her arms about her friend. “Oh, Grace,” she laughed with wet eyes, “how can you be as wise as that, and yet not have sense enough to buy a decent hat?” She gave Mrs. Fulmer a quick embrace and hurried away. She had learned her lesson after all; but it was not exactly the one she had come to seek.
The week she had allowed herself had passed, and still there was no word from Nick. She allowed herself yet another day, and that too went by without a letter. She then decided on a step from which her pride had hitherto recoiled; she would call at the bank and ask for Nick’s address. She called, embarrassed and hesitating; and was told, after enquiries in the post-office department, that Mr. Nicholas Lansing had given no address since that of the Palazzo Vanderlyn, three months previously. She went back to Versailles that afternoon with the definite intention of writing to Strefford unless the next morning’s post brought a letter.
The next morning brought nothing from Nick, but a scribbled message from Mrs. Melrose: would Susy, as soon as possible, come into her room for a word, Susy jumped up, hurried through her bath, and knocked at her hostess’s door. In the immense low bed that faced the rich umbrage of the park Mrs. Melrose lay smoking cigarettes and glancing over her letters. She looked up with her vague smile, and said dreamily: “Susy darling, have you any particular plans—for the next few months, I mean?”
Susy coloured: she knew the intonation of old, and fancied she understood what it implied.
“Plans, dearest? Any number… I’m tearing myself away the day after tomorrow… to the Gillows’ moor, very probably,” she hastened to announce.
Instead of the relief she had expected to read on Mrs. Melrose’s dramatic countenance she discovered there the blankest disappointment.
“Oh, really? That’s too bad. Is it absolutely settled—?”
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Susy crisply.
The other sighed. “I’m too sorry. You see, dear, I’d meant to ask you to stay on here quietly and look after the Fulmer children. Fulmer and I are going to Spain next week—I want to be with him when he makes his studies, receives his first impressions; such a marvellous experience, to be there when he and Velasquez meet!” She broke off, lost in prospective ecstasy. “And, you see, as Grace Fulmer insists on coming with us—”
“Ah, I see.”
“Well, there are the five children—such a problem,” sighed the benefactress. “If you were at a loose end, you know, dear, while Nick’s away with his friends, I could really make it worth your while….”
“So awfully good of you, Violet; only I’m not, as it happens.”
Oh the relief of being able to say that, gaily, firmly and even truthfully! Take charge of the Fulmer children, indeed! Susy remembered how Nick and she had fled from them that autumn afternoon in New Hampshire. The offer gave her a salutary glimpse of the way in which, as the years passed, and she lost her freshness and novelty, she would more and more be used as a convenience, a stop-gap, writer of notes, runner of errands, nursery governess or companion. She called to mind several elderly women of her acquaintance, pensioners of her own group, who still wore its livery, struck its attitudes and chattered its jargon, but had long since been ruthlessly relegated to these slave-ant offices. Never in the world would she join their numbers.
Mrs. Melrose’s face fell, and she looked at Susy with the plaintive bewilderment of the wielder of millions to
