but there were necessary accommodations, there always had been;nick in old times, had been the first to own it .... how theyhad laughed at the perpendicular people, the people who went byon the other side (since you couldn't be a good samaritanwithout stooping over and poking into heaps of you didn't knowwhat)! and now nick had suddenly become perpendicular ....
susy, that evening, at the head of the dinner table, saw--in thebreaks between her scudding thoughts--the nauseatingly familiarfaces of the people she called her friends: strefford, fredgillow, a giggling fool of a young breckenridge, of their newyork group, who had arrived that day, and prince neronealtineri, ursula's prince, who, in ursula's absence at atiresome cure, had, quite simply and naturally, preferred tojoin her husband at venice. susy looked from one to the otherof them, as if with newly-opened eyes, and wondered what lifewould be like with no faces but such as theirs to furnishit ....
ah, nick had become perpendicular! .... after all, most peoplewent through life making a given set of gestures, like dance-steps learned in advance. if your dancing manual told you at agiven time to be perpendicular, you had to be, automatically--and that was nick!
"but what on earth, susy," gillow's puzzled voice suddenly cameto her as from immeasurable distances, "are you going to do inthis beastly stifling hole for the rest of the summer?""ask nick, my dear fellow," strefford answered for her; and:
"by the way, where is nick--if one may ask?" young breckenridgeinterposed, glancing up to take belated note of his host'sabsence.
"dining out," said susy glibly. "people turned up: blightingbores that i wouldn't have dared to inflict on you." how easilythe old familiar fibbing came to her !
"the kind to whom you say, 'now mind you look me up'; and thenspend the rest of your life dodging-like our good hickses,"strefford amplified.
the hickses--but, of course, nick was with the hickses! it wentthrough susy like a knife, and the dinner she had so lightlyfibbed became a hateful truth. she said to herself feverishly:
"i'll call him up there after dinner--and then he will feelsilly"--but only to remember that the hickses, in theirmediaeval setting, had of course sternly denied themselves atelephone.
the fact of nick's temporary inaccessibility--since she was nowconvinced that he was really at the hickses'--turned herdistress to a mocking irritation. ah, that was where he carriedhis principles, his standards, or whatever he called the new setof rules he had suddenly begun to apply to the old game! it wasstupid of her not to have guessed it at once.
"oh, the hickses--nick adores them, you know. he's going tomarry coral next," she laughed out, flashing the joke around thetable with all her practiced flippancy.
"lord!" grasped gillow, inarticulate: while the princedisplayed the unsurprised smile which susy accused him ofpracticing every morning with his mueller exercises.
suddenly susy felt strefford's eyes upon her.
"what's the matter with me? too much rouge?" she asked, passingher arm in his as they left the table.
"no: too little. look at yourself," he answered in a low tone.
"oh, in these cadaverous old looking-glasses-everybody looksfished up from the canal!"she jerked away from him to spin down the long floor of thesala, hands on hips, whistling a rag-time tune. the prince andyoung breckenridge caught her up, and she spun back with thelatter, while gillow-it was believed to be his soleaccomplishment-snapped his fingers in simulation of bones, andshuffled after the couple on stamping feet.
susy sank down on a sofa near the window, fanning herself with afloating scarf, and the men foraged for cigarettes, and rang forthe gondoliers, who came in with trays of cooling drinks.
"well, what next--this ain't all, is it?" gillow presentlyqueried, from the divan where he lolled half-asleep withdripping brow. fred gillow, like nature, abhorred a void, andit was inconceivable to him that every hour of man's rationalexistence should not furnish a motive for getting up and goingsomewhere else. young breckenridge, who took the same view, andthe prince, who earnestly desired to, reminded the company thatsomebody they knew was giving a dance that night at the lido.
strefford vetoed the lido, on the ground that he'd just comeback from there, and proposed that they should go out on footfor a change.
"why not? what fun!" susy was up in an instant. "let's paysomebody a surprise visit--i don't know who! streffy, prince,can't you think of somebody who'd be particularly annoyed by ourarrival?""oh, the list's too long. let's start, and choose our victim onthe way," strefford suggested.
susy ran to her room for a light cloak, and without changing herhigh-heeled satin slippers went out with the four men. therewas no moon--thank heaven there was no moon!--but the stars hungover them as close as fruit, and secret fragrances dropped onthem from garden-walls. susy's heart tightened with memories ofcomo.
they wandered on, laughing and dawdling, and yielding to thedrifting whims of aimless people. presently someone proposedtaking a nearer look at the facade of san giorgio maggiore, andthey hailed a gondola and were rowed out through the bobbinglanterns and twanging guitar-strings. when they landed again,gillow, always acutely bored by scenery, and particularlyresentful of midnight aesthetics, suggested a night club near athand, which was said to be jolly. the prince warmly supportedthis proposal; but on susy's curt refusal they started theirrambling again, circuitously threading the vague dark lanes andmaking for the piazza and florian's ices. suddenly, at a calle-corner, unfamiliar and yet somehow known to her, susy paused tostare about her with a laugh.
"but the hickses--surely that's their palace? and the windowsall lit up! they must be giving a party! oh, do let's go upand surprise them!" the idea struck her as one of the drollestthat she had ever originated, and she wondered that hercompanions should respond so languidly.
"i can't see anything very thrilling in surprising the hickses,"gillow protested, defrauded of possible excitements; andstrefford added: "it would surprise me more than them if iwent."but susy insisted feverishly: "you don't know. it may beawfully exciting! i have an idea that coral's announcing herengagement--her engagement to nick! come, give me a hand,streff--and you the other, fred-" she began to hum the firstbars of donna anna's entrance in don giovanni. "pity i haven'tgot a black cloak and a mask ....""oh, your face will do," said strefford, laying his hand on herarm.
she drew back, flushing crimson. breckenridge and the princehad sprung on ahead, and gillow, lumbering after them, wasalready halfway up the stairs.
"my face? my face? what's the matter with my face? do youknow any reason why i shouldn't go to the hickses to-night?"susy broke out in sudden wrath.
"none whatever; except that if you do it will bore me to death,"strefford returned, with serenity.
"oh, in that case--!""no; come on. i hear those fools banging on the door already."he caught her by the hand, and they started up the stairway.
but on the first landing she paused, twisted her hand out ofhis, and without a word, without a conscious thought, dasheddown the long flight, across the great resounding vestibule andout into the darkness of the calle.
strefford caught up with her, and they stood a moment silent inthe night.
"susy--what the devil's the matter?""the matter? can't you see? that i'm tired, that i've got asplitting headache--that you bore me to death, one and all ofyou!" she turned and laid a deprecating hand on his arm.
"streffy, old dear, don't mind me: but for god's sake find agondola and send me home.""alone?""alone."it was never any concern of streff's if people wanted to dothings he did not understand, and she knew that she could counton his obedience. they walked on in silence to the next canal,and he picked up a passing gondola and put her in it.
"now go and amuse yourself," she called after him, as the boatshot under the nearest bridge. anything, anything, to be alone,away from the folly and futility that would be all she had leftif nick were to drop out of her life ....
"but perhaps he has dropped already--dropped for good," shethought as she set her foot on the vanderlyn threshold.
the short summer night was already growing transparent: a newborn breeze stirred the soiled surface of the water and sent itlapping freshly against the old palace doorways. nearly twoo'clock! nick had no doubt come back long ago. susy hurried upthe stairs, reassured by the mere thought of his nearness. sheknew that when their eyes and their lips met it would beimpossible for anything to keep them apart.
the gondolier dozing on the landing roused himself to receiveher, and to proffer two envelopes. the upper one was a telegramfor strefford: she threw it down again and paused under thelantern hanging from the painted vault, the other envelope inher hand. the address it bore was in nick's writing. "when didthe signore leave this for me? has he gone out again?"gone out again? but the signore had not come in since dinner:
of that the gondolier was positive, as he had been on duty allthe evening. a boy had brought the letter--an unknown boy: hehad left it without waiting. it must have been about half anhour after the signora had herself gone out with her guests.
susy, hardly hearing him, fled on to her own room, and there,beside the very lamp which, two months before, had illuminatedellie vanderlyn's fatal letter, she opened nick's.
"don't think me hard on you, dear; but i've got to work thisthing out by myself. the sooner the better-don't you agree? soi'm taking the express to milan presently. you'll get a properletter in a day or two. i wish i could think, now, of somethingto say that would show you i'm not a brute--but i can't. n. l. "there was not much of the night left in which to sleep, even hada semblance of sleep been achievable. the letter fell fromsusy's hands, and she crept out onto the balcony and coweredthere, her forehead pressed against the balustrade, the dawnwind stirring in her thin laces. through her closed eyelids andthe tightly-clenched fingers pressed against them, she felt thepenetration of the growing light, the relentless advance ofanother day--a day without purpose and without meaning--a daywithout nick. at length she dropped her hands, and staring fromdry lids saw a rim of fire above the roofs across the grandcanal. she sprang up, ran back into her room, and dragging theheavy curtains shut across the windows, stumbled over in thedarkness to the lounge and fell among its pillows-facedownward--groping, delving for a deeper night ....
she started up, stiff and aching, to see a golden wedge of sunon the floor at her feet. she had slept, then--was itpossible?--it must be eight or nine o'clock already! she hadslept--slept like a drunkard--with that letter on the table ather elbow! ah, now she remembered--she had dreamed that theletter was a dream! but there, inexorably, it lay; and shepicked it up, and slowly, painfully re-read it. then she toreit into shreds hunted for a match, and kneeling before the emptyhearth, as though she were accomplishing some funeral rite, sheburnt every shred of it to ashes. nick would thank her for thatsome day!
after a bath and a hurried toilet she began to be aware offeeling younger and more hopeful. after all, nick had merelysaid that he was going away for "a day or two." and the letterwas not cruel: there were tender things in it, showing throughthe curt words. she smiled at herself a little stiffly in theglass, put a dash of red on her colourless lips, and rang forthe maid.
"coffee, giovanna, please; and will you tell mr. strefford thati should like to see him presently."if nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a fewdays she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but hermind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of wasto take strefford into her confidence. she knew that he couldbe trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformeditself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends requiredit.
the maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and susysomewhat sharply repeated her order. "but don't wake him onpurpose," she added, foreseeing the probable effect onstrefford's temper.
"but, signora, the gentleman is already out.""already out?" strefford, who could hardly be routed from hisbed before luncheon-time! "is it so late?" susy cried,incredulous.
"after nine. and the gentleman took the eight o'clock train forengland. gervaso said he had received a telegram. he left wordthat he would write to the signora."the door closed upon the maid, and susy continued to gaze at herpainted image in the glass, as if she had been trying tooutstare an importunate stranger. there was no one left for herto take counsel of, then--no one but poor fred gillow! she madea grimace at the idea.
but what on earth could have summoned strefford back to england?
