ON the drive back from her dinner at the Nouveau Luxe, eventshad followed the course foreseen by Susy.
She had promised Strefford to seek legal advice about herdivorce, and he had kissed her; and the promise had been easierto make than she had expected, the kiss less difficult toreceive.
She had gone to the dinner a-quiver with the mortification oflearning that her husband was still with the Hickses. Morallysure of it though she had been, the discovery was a shock, andshe measured for the first time the abyss between fearing andknowing. No wonder he had not written--the modern husband didnot have to: he had only to leave it to time and the newspapersto make known his intentions. Susy could imagine Nick's sayingto himself, as he sometimes used to say when she reminded him ofan unanswered letter: "But there are lots of ways of answeringa letter--and writing doesn't happen to be mine."Well--he had done it in his way, and she was answered. For aminute, as she laid aside the paper, darkness submerged her, andshe felt herself dropping down into the bottomless anguish ofher dreadful vigil in the Palazzo Vanderlyn. But she was wearyof anguish: her healthy body and nerves instinctively rejectedit. The wave was spent, and she felt herself irresistiblystruggling back to light and life and youth. He didn't wanther! Well, she would try not to want him! There lay all theold expedients at her hand--the rouge for her white lips, theatropine for her blurred eyes, the new dress on her bed, thethought of Strefford and his guests awaiting her, and of theconclusions that the diners of the Nouveau Luxe would draw fromseeing them together. Thank heaven no one would say: "Poor oldSusy--did you know Nick had chucked her?" They would all say:
"Poor old Nick! Yes, I daresay she was sorry to chuck him; butAltringham's mad to marry her, and what could she do? "And once again events had followed the course she had foreseen.
Seeing her at Lord Altringham's table, with the Ascots and theold Duchess of Dunes, the interested spectators could not butregard the dinner as confirming the rumour of her marriage. AsEllie said, people didn't wait nowadays to announce their"engagements" till the tiresome divorce proceedings were over.
Ellie herself, prodigally pearled and ermined, had floated inlate with Algie Bockheimer in her wake, and sat, in conspicuoustete-a-tete, nodding and signalling her sympathy to Susy.
Approval beamed from every eye: it was awfully exciting, theyall seemed to say, seeing Susy Lansing pull it off! As theparty, after dinner, drifted from the restaurant back into thehall, she caught, in the smiles and hand-pressures crowdingabout her, the scarcely-repressed hint of officialcongratulations; and Violet Melrose, seated in a corner withFulmer, drew her down with a wan jade-circled arm, to whispertenderly: "It's most awfully clever of you, darling, not to bewearing any jewels."In all the women's eyes she read the reflected lustre of thejewels she could wear when she chose: it was as though theirglitter reached her from the far-off bank where they lay sealedup in the Altringham strong-box. What a fool she had been tothink that Strefford would ever believe she didn't care forthem!
The Ambassadress, a blank perpendicular person, had been a shadeless affable than Susy could have wished; but then there wasLady Joan--and the girl was handsome, alarmingly handsome toaccount for that: probably every one in the room had guessedit. And the old Duchess of Dunes was delightful. She lookedrather like Strefford in a wig and false pearls (Susy was surethey were as false as her teeth); and her cordiality was sodemonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult toaccount for than Lady Ascot's coldness, till she heard the oldlady, as they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisperto her nephew: "Streff, dearest, when you have a minute's time,and can drop in at my wretched little pension, I know you canexplain in two words what I ought to do to pacify those awfulmoney-lenders .... And you'll bring your exquisite American tosee me, won't you! ... No, Joan Senechal's too fair for mytaste .... Insipid...""Yes: the taste of it all was again sweet on her lips. A fewdays later she began to wonder how the thought of Strefford'sendearments could have been so alarming. To be sure he was notlavish of them; but when he did touch her, even when he kissedher, it no longer seemed to matter. An almost complete absenceof sensation had mercifully succeeded to the first wild flurryof her nerves.
And so it would be, no doubt, with everything else in her newlife. If it failed to provoke any acute reactions, whether ofpain or pleasure, the very absence of sensation would make forpeace. And in the meanwhile she was tasting what, she had begunto suspect, was the maximum of bliss to most of the women sheknew: days packed with engagements, the exhilaration offashionable crowds, the thrill of snapping up a jewel or abibelot or a new "model" that one's best friend wanted, or ofbeing invited to some private show, or some exclusiveentertainment, that one's best friend couldn't get to. Therewas nothing, now, that she couldn't buy, nowhere that shecouldn't go: she had only to choose and to triumph. And for awhile the surface-excitement of her life gave her the illusionof enjoyment.
Strefford, as she had expected, had postponed his return toEngland, and they had now been for nearly three weeks togetherin their new, and virtually avowed, relation. She had fanciedthat, after all, the easiest part of it would be just the beingwith Strefford--the falling back on their old tried friendshipto efface the sense of strangeness. But, though she had so soongrown used to his caresses, he himself remained curiouslyunfamiliar: she was hardly sure, at times, that it was the oldStrefford she was talking to. It was not that his point of viewhad changed, but that new things occupied and absorbed him. Inall the small sides of his great situation he took an almostchildish satisfaction; and though he still laughed at both itsprivileges and its obligations, it was now with a jealouslaughter.
It amused him inexhaustibly, for instance, to be made up to byall the people who had always disapproved of him, and to uniteat the same table persons who had to dissemble their annoyanceat being invited together lest they should not be invited atall. Equally exhilarating was the capricious favouring of thedull and dowdy on occasions when the brilliant and disreputableexpected his notice. It enchanted him, for example, to ask theold Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine with the Vicarof Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month's holiday,and to watch the face of the Vicar's wife while the Duchessnarrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius toall that had once been supposed to belong exclusively toRespectability and Dulness.
Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of ahigher order; but then she put up with them for lack of better,whereas Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, wascompletely satisfied with such triumphs.
Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, heseemed to have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been alarger person, and she wondered if material prosperity werealways a beginning of ossification. Strefford had been muchmore fun when he lived by his wits. Sometimes, now, when hetried to talk of politics, or assert himself on some question ofpublic interest, she was startled by his limitations. Formerly,when he was not sure of his ground, it had been his way to turnthe difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he wasactually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, forthe first time, that he did not always hear clearly when severalpeople were talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; andhe developed a habit of saying over and over again: "Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am I getting deaf, I wonder?"which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of a correspondingmental infirm............