it took two brimming taxi-cabs to carry the nicholas lansings tothe station on their second honey-moon. in the first were nick,susy and the luggage of the whole party (little nat's motor hornincluded, as a last concession, and because he had hithertoforborne to play on it); and in the second, the five fulmers,the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had refused to be left, acage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who had murderousdesigns on them; all of which had to be taken because, if thebonne came, there would be nobody left to look after them.
at the corner susy tore herself from nick's arms and held up theprocession while she ran back to the second taxi to make surethat the bonne had brought the house-key. it was found ofcourse that she hadn't but that junie had; whereupon the caravangot under way again, and reached the station just as the trainwas starting; and there, by some miracle of good nature on thepart of the guard, they were all packed together into an emptycompartment--no doubt, as susy remarked, because train officialsnever failed to spot a newly-married couple, and treat themkindly.
the children, sentinelled by junie, at first gave promise ofsuperhuman goodness; but presently their feelings overflowed,and they were not to be quieted till it had been agreed that natshould blow his motor-horn at each halt, while the twins calledout the names of the stations, and geordie, with the canariesand kitten, affected to change trains.
luckily the halts were few; but the excitement of travel,combined with over-indulgence in the chocolates imprudentlyprovided by nick, overwhelmed geordie with a sudden melancholythat could be appeased only by susy's telling him stories tillthey arrived at fontainebleau.
the day was soft, with mild gleams of sunlight on decayingfoliage; and after luggage and livestock had been dropped at thepension susy confessed that she had promised the children ascamper in the forest, and buns in a tea-shop afterward. nickplacidly agreed, and darkness had long fallen, and a great manybuns been consumed, when at length the procession turned downthe street toward the pension, headed by nick with the sleepinggeordie on his shoulder, while the others, speechless withfatigue and food, hung heavily on susy.
it had been decided that, as the bonne was of the party, thechildren might be entrusted to her for the night, and nick andsusy establish themselves in an adjacent hotel. nick hadflattered himself that they might remove their possessions therewhen they returned from the tea-room; but susy, manifestlysurprised at the idea, reminded him that her charges must firstbe given their supper and put to bed. she suggested that heshould meanwhile take the bags to the hotel, and promised tojoin him as soon as geordie was asleep.
she was a long time coming, but waiting for her was sweet, evenin a deserted hotel reading-room insufficiently heated by asulky stove; and after he had glanced through his morning'smail, hurriedly thrust into his pocket as he left paris, he sankinto a state of drowsy beatitude. it was all the maddestbusiness in the world, yet it did not give him the sense ofunreality that had made their first adventure a mere goldendream; and he sat and waited with the security of one in whomdear habits have struck deep roots. in this mood ofacquiescence even the presence of the five fulmers seemed anatural and necessary consequence of all the rest; and when susyat length appeared, a little pale and tired, with the broodinginward look that busy mothers bring from the nursery, that tooseemed natural and necessary, and part of the new order ofthings.
they had wandered out to a cheap restaurant for dinner; now, inthe damp december night, they were walking back to the hotelunder a sky full of rain-clouds. they seemed to have saideverything to each other, and yet barely to have begun what theyhad to tell; and at each step they took, their heavy feetdragged a great load of bliss.
in the hotel almost all the lights were already out; and theygroped their way to the third floor room which was the only onethat susy had found cheap enough. a ray from a street-lampstruck up through the unshuttered windows; and after nick hadrevived the fire they drew their chairs close to it, and satquietly for a while in the dark.
their silence was so sweet that nick could not make up his mindto break it; not to do so gave his tossing spirit such a senseof permanence, of having at last unlimited time before him inwhich to taste his joy and let its sweetness stream through him.
but at length he roused himself to say: "it's queer how thingscoincide. i've had a little bit of good news in one of theletters i got this morning."susy took the announcement serenely. "well, you would, youknow," she commented, as if the day had been too obviouslydesigned for bliss to escape the notice of its dispensers.
"yes," he continued with a thrill of pardonable pride. "duringthe cruise i did a couple of articles on crete--oh, just travel-impressions, of course; they couldn't be more. but the editorof the new review has accepted them, and asks for others. andhere's his cheque, if you please! so you see you might have letme take the jolly room downstairs with the pink curtains. andit makes me awfully hopeful about my book."he had expected a rapturous outburst, and perhaps somereassertion of wifely faith in the glorious future that awaitedthe pageant of alexander; and deep down under the lover's well-being the author felt a faint twinge of mortified vanity whensusy, leaping to her feet, cried out, ravenously and withoutpreamble: "oh, nick, nick--let me see how much they've givenyou!"he flourished the cheque before her in the firelight. "a coupleof hundred, you mercenary wretch!""oh, oh--" she gasped, as if the good news had been almost toomuch for her tense nerves; and then surprised him by dropping tothe ground, and burying her face against his knees.
"susy, my susy," he whispered, his hand on her shaking shoulder.
"why, dear, what is it? you're not crying?""oh, nick, nick--two hundred? two hundred dollars? then i'vegot to tell you--oh now, at once!"a faint chill ran over him, and involuntarily his hand drew backfrom her bowed figure.
"now? oh, why now?" he protested. "what on earth does itmatter now--whatever it is?""but it does matter--it matters more than you can think!"she straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and liftedher head so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into aruddy halo. "oh, nick, the bracelet--ellie's bracelet ....
i've never returned it to her," she faltered out.
he felt himself recoiling under the hands with which sheclutched his knees. for an instant he did not remember what shealluded to; it was the mere mention of ellie vanderlyn's namethat had fallen between them like an icy shadow. what anincorrigible fool he had been to think they could ever shake offsuch memories, or cease to be the slaves of such a past!
"the bracelet?--oh, yes," he said, suddenly understanding, andfeeling the chill mount slowly to his lips.
"yes, the bracelet ... oh, nick, i meant to give it back atonce; i did--i did; but the day you went away i forgoteverything else. and when i found the thing, in the bottom ofmy bag, weeks afterward, i thought everything was over betweenyou and me, and i had begun to see ellie again, and she was kindto me and how could i?" to save his life he could have found noanswer, and she pressed on: "and so this morning, when i sawyou were frightened by the expense of bringing all the childrenwith us, and when i felt i couldn't leave them, and couldn'tleave you either, i remembered the bracelet; and i sent you offto telephone while i rushed round the corner to a littlejeweller's where i'd been before, and pawned it so that youshouldn't have to pay for the children .... but now, darling,you see, if you've got all that money, i can get it out of pawnat once, can't i, and send it back to her?"she flung her arms about him, and he held her fast, wondering ifthe tears he felt were hers or his. still he did not speak; butas he clasped her close she added, with an irrepressible flashof her old irony: "not that ellie will understand why i've doneit. she's never yet been able to make out why you returned herscarf-pin."for a long time she continued to lean against him, her head onhis knees, as she had done on the terrace of como on the lastnight of their honeymoon. she had ceased to talk, and he satsilent also, passing his hand quietly to and fro over her hair.
the first rapture had been succeeded by soberer feelings. herconfession had broken up the frozen pride about his heart, andhumbled him to the earth; but it had also roused forgottenthings, memories and scruples swept aside in the first rush oftheir reunion. he and she belonged to each other for always:
he understood that now. the impulse which had first drawn themtogether again, in spite of reason, in spite of themselvesalmost, that deep-seated instinctive need that each had of theother, would never again wholly let them go. yet as he satthere he thought of strefford, he thought of coral hicks. hehad been a coward in regard to coral, and susy had been sincereand courageous in regard to strefford. yet his mind dwelt oncoral with tenderness, with compunction, with remorse; and hewas almost sure that susy had already put strefford utterly outof her mind.
it was the old contrast between the two ways of loving, theman's way and the woman's; and after a moment it seemed to nicknatural enough that susy, from the very moment of finding himagain, should feel neither pity nor regret, and that streffordshould already be to her as if he had never been. after all,there was something providential in such arrangements.
he stooped closer, pressed her dreaming head between his hands,and whispered: "wake up; it's bedtime."she rose; but as she moved away to turn on the light he caughther hand and drew her to the window. they leaned on the sill inthe darkness, and through the clouds, from which a few dropswere already falling, the moon, labouring upward, swam into aspace of sky, cast her troubled glory on them, and was againhidden.
