SUSY had decided to wait for Strefford in London.
The new Lord Altringham was with his family in the north, andthough she found a telegram on arriving, saying that he wouldjoin her in town the following week, she had still an intervalof several days to fill.
London was a desert; the rain fell without ceasing, and alone inthe shabby family hotel which, even out of season, was the bestshe could afford, she sat at last face to face with herself.
>From the moment when Violet Melrose had failed to carry out herplan for the Fulmer children her interest in Susy had visiblywaned. Often before, in the old days, Susy Branch had felt thesame abrupt change of temperature in the manner of the hostessof the moment; and often--how often--had yielded, and performedthe required service, rather than risk the consequences ofestrangement. To that, at least, thank heaven, she need neverstoop again.
But as she hurriedly packed her trunks at Versailles, scrapedtogether an adequate tip for Mrs. Match, and bade good-bye toViolet (grown suddenly fond and demonstrative as she saw hervisitor safely headed for the station)--as Susy went through theold familiar mummery of the enforced leave-taking, there rose inher so deep a disgust for the life of makeshifts andaccommodations, that if at that moment Nick had reappeared andheld out his arms to her, she was not sure she would have hadthe courage to return to them.
In her London solitude the thirst for independence grew fiercer.
Independence with ease, of course. Oh, her hateful useless loveof beauty ... the curse it had always been to her, the blessingit might have been if only she had had the material means togratify and to express it! And instead, it only gave her amorbid loathing of that hideous hotel bedroom drowned in yellowrain-light, of the smell of soot and cabbage through the window,the blistered wall-paper, the dusty wax bouquets under glassglobes, and the electric lighting so contrived that as youturned on the feeble globe hanging from the middle of theceiling the feebler one beside the bed went out!
What a sham world she and Nick had lived in during their fewmonths together! What right had either of them to thoseexquisite settings of the life of leisure: the long white househidden in camellias and cypresses above the lake, or the greatrooms on the Giudecca with the shimmer of the canal alwaysplaying over their frescoed ceilings! Yet she had come toimagine that these places really belonged to them, that theywould always go on living, fondly and irreproachably, in theframe of other people's wealth .... That, again, was the curseof her love of beauty, the way she always took to it as if itbelonged to her!
Well, the awakening was bound to come, and it was perhaps betterthat it should have come so soon. At any rate there was no usein letting her thoughts wander back to that shattered fool'sparadise of theirs. Only, as she sat there and reckoned up thedays till Strefford arrived, what else in the world was there tothink of?
Her future and his?
But she knew that future by heart already! She had not spenther life among the rich and fashionable without having learnedevery detail of the trappings of a rich and fashionablemarriage. She had calculated long ago just how many dinner-dresses, how many tea-gowns and how much lacy lingerie would goto make up the outfit of the future Countess of Altringham. Shehad even decided to which dressmaker she would go for herchinchilla cloak-for she meant to have one, and down to herfeet, and softer and more voluminous and more extravagantlysumptuous than Violet's or Ursula's ... not to speak of silverfoxes and sables ... nor yet of the Altringham jewels.
She knew all this by heart; had always known it. It allbelonged to the make-up of the life of elegance: there wasnothing new about it. What had been new to her was just thatshort interval with Nick--a life unreal indeed in its setting,but so real in its essentials: the one reality she had everknown. As she looked back on it she saw how much it had givenher besides the golden flush of her happiness, the suddenflowering of sensuous joy in heart and body. Yes--there hadbeen the flowering too, in pain like birth-pangs, of somethinggraver, stronger, fuller of future power, something she hadhardly heeded in her first light rapture, but that always cameback and possessed her stilled soul when the rapture sank: thedeep disquieting sense of something that Nick and love hadtaught her, but that reached out even beyond love and beyondNick.
Her nerves were racked by the ceaseless swish, swish of the rainon the dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that camein under the door when she shut the window. This nauseatingforetaste of the luncheon she must presently go down to was morethan she could bear. It brought with it a vision of the dankcoffee-room below, the sooty Smyrna rug, the rain on the sky-light, the listless waitresses handing about food that tasted asif it had been rained on too. There was really no reason whyshe should let such material miseries add to her depression ....
She sprang up, put on her hat and jacket, and calling for a taxidrove to the London branch of the Nouveau Luxe hotel. It wasjust one o'clock and she was sure to pick up a luncheon, forthough London was empty that great establishment was not. Itnever was. Along those sultry velvet-carpeted halls, in thatgreat flowered and scented dining-room, there was always a come-and-go of rich aimless people, the busy people who, havingnothing to do, perpetually pursue their inexorable task from oneend of the earth to the other.
Oh, the monotony of those faces--the faces one always knew,whether one knew the people they belonged to or not! A freshdisgust seized her at the sight of them: she wavered, and thenturned and fled. But on the threshold a still more familiarfigure met her: that of a lady in exaggerated pearls andsables, descending from an exaggerated motor, like the motors inmagazine advertisements, the huge arks in which jewelledbeauties and slender youths pause to gaze at snowpeaks from anAlpine summit.
It was Ursula Gillow--dear old Ursula, on her way to Scotland--and she and Susy fell on each other's necks. It appeared thatUrsula, detained till the next evening by a dress-maker's delay,was also out of a job and killing time, and the two were soonsmiling at each other over the exquisite preliminaries of aluncheon which the head-waiter had authoritatively asked Mrs.
Gillow to "leave to him, as usual."Ursula was in a good humour. It did not often happen; but whenit did her benevolence knew no bounds.
Like Mrs. Melrose, like all her tribe in fact, she was too muchabsorbed in her own affairs to give more than a passing thoughtto any one else's; but she was delighted at the meeting withSusy, as her wandering kind always were when they ran acrossfellow-wanderers, unless the meeting happened to interfere withchoicer pleasures. Not to be alone was the urgent thing; andUrsula, who had been forty-eight hours alone in London, at onceexacted from her friend a promise that they should spend therest of the day together. But once the bargain struck her mindturned again to her own affairs, and she poured out herconfidences to Susy over a succession of dishes that manifestedthe head-waiter's understanding of the case.
Ursula's confidences were always the same, though they wereusually about a different person. She demolished and rebuilther sentimental life with the same frequency and impetuosity asthat with which she changed her dress-makers, did over herdrawing-rooms, ordered new motors, altered the mounting of herjewels, and generally renewed the setting of her life. Susyknew in advance what the tale would be; but to listen to it overperfect coffee, an amber-scented cigarette at her lips, waspleasanter than consuming cold mutton alone in a mouldy coffee-room. The contrast was so soothing that she even began to takea languid interest in her friend's narrative.
After luncheon they got into the motor together and began asystematic round of the West End shops: furriers, jewellers anddealers in old furniture. Nothing could be more unlike VioletMelrose's long hesitating sessions before the things she thoughtshe wanted till the moment came to decide. Ursula pounced onsilver foxes and old lacquer as promptly and decisively as onthe objects of her surplus sentimentality: she knew at oncewhat she wanted, and valued it more after it was hers.
"And now--I wonder if you couldn't help me choose a grandpiano?" she suggested, as the last antiquarian bowed them out.
"A piano?""Yes: for Ruan. I'm sending one down for Grace Fulmer. She'scoming to stay ... did I tell you? I want people to hear her.
I want her to get engagements in London. My dear, she's aGenius.""A Genius--Grace!" Susy gasped. "I thought it was Nat ....""............