XVI
STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansinglooked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plungedagain into his book.
He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs hehad absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, loomingup from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of studyabsorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For thefirst time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kindof scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatientspirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitivescenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowedthem with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to stillpain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him amoral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with thefierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactlythe kind of drug that he needed.
There is probably no point on which the average man has more definiteviews than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that shewould hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days hadpassed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he foundfifty reasons for postponing it.
Had there been any practical questions to write about it would have beendifferent; he could not have borne for twenty-four hours the idea thatshe was in uncertainty as to money. But that had all been settledlong ago. From the first she had had the administering of their modestfortune. On their marriage Nick's own meagre income, paid in, none tooregularly, by the agent who had managed for years the dwindling familyproperties, had been transferred to her: it was the only wedding presenthe could make. And the wedding cheques had of course all beendeposited in her name. There were therefore no "business" reasons forcommunicating with her; and when it came to reasons of another order themere thought of them benumbed him.
For the first few days he reproached himself for his inertia; then hebegan to seek reasons for justifying it. After all, for both their sakesa waiting policy might be the wisest he could pursue. He had left Susybecause he could not tolerate the conditions on which he had discoveredtheir life together to be based; and he had told her so. What more wasthere to say?
Nothing was changed in their respective situations; if they cametogether it could be only to resume the same life; and that, as the dayswent by, seemed to him more and more impossible. He had not yet reachedthe point of facing a definite separation; but whenever his thoughtstravelled back over their past life he recoiled from any attempt toreturn to it. As long as this state of mind continued there seemednothing to add to the letter he had already written, except indeed thestatement that he was cruising with the Hickses. And he saw no pressingreason for communicating that.
To the Hickses he had given no hint of his situation. When Coral Hicks,a fortnight earlier, had picked him up in the broiling streets of Genoa,and carried him off to the Ibis, he had thought only of a cool dinnerand perhaps a moonlight sail. Then, in reply to their friendly urging,he had confessed that he had not been well--had indeed gone offhurriedly for a few days' change of air--and that left him withoutdefence against the immediate proposal that he should take his changeof air on the Ibis. They were just off to Corsica and Sardinia, and fromthere to Sicily: he could rejoin the railway at Naples, and be back atVenice in ten days.
Ten days of respite--the temptation was irresistible. And he reallyliked the kind uncomplicated Hickses. A wholesome honesty and simplicitybreathed through all their opulence, as if the rich trappings of theirpresent life still exhaled the fragrance of their native prairies. Themere fact of being with such people was like a purifying bath. When theyacht touched at Naples he agreed since they were so awfully kind--to goon to Sicily. And when the chief steward, going ashore at Naples forthe last time before they got up steam, said: "Any letters for the post,sir?" he answered, as he had answered at each previous halt: "No, thankyou: none."
Now they were heading for Rhodes and Crete--Crete, where he had neverbeen, where he had so often longed to go. In spite of the lateness ofthe season the weather was still miraculously fine: the short wavesdanced ahead under a sky without a cloud, and the strong bows of theIbis hardly swayed as she flew forward over the flying crests.
Only his hosts and their daughter were on the yacht-of course withEldorada Tooker and Mr. Beck in attendance. An eminent archaeologist,who was to have joined them at Naples, had telegraphed an excuse at thelast moment; and Nick noticed that, while Mrs. Hicks was perpetuallyapologizing for the great man's absence, Coral merely smiled and saidnothing.
As a matter of fact, Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were never as pleasant aswhen one had them to one's self. In company, Mr. Hicks ran the risk ofappearing over-hospitable, and Mrs. Hicks confused dates and names inthe desire to embrace all culture in her conversation. But alone withNick, their old travelling-companion, they shone out in their nativesimplicity, and Mr. Hicks talked soundly of investments, and Mrs. Hicksrecalled her early married days in Apex City, when, on being broughthome to her new house in Aeschylus Avenue, her first thought had been:"How on earth shall I get all those windows washed?"
The loss of Mr. Buttles had been as serious to them as Nick hadsupposed: Mr. Beck could never hope to replace him. Apart from hismysterious gift of languages, and his almost superhuman faculty forknowing how to address letters to eminent people, and in what terms toconclude them, he had a smattering of archaeology and general culture onwhich Mrs. Hicks had learned to depend--her own memory being, alas, soinadequate to the range of her interests.
Her daughter might perhaps have helped her; but it was not Miss Hicks'sway to mother her parents. She was exceedingly kind to them, but leftthem, as it were, to bring themselves up as best they could, while shepursued her own course of self-development. A sombre zeal for knowledgefilled the mind of this strange girl: she appeared interested onlyin fresh opportunities of adding to her store of facts. They wereilluminated by little imagination and less poetry; but, carefullycatalogued and neatly sorted in her large cool brain, they were alwaysas accessible as the volumes in an up-to-date public library.
To Nick there was something reposeful in this lucid intellectualcuriosity. He wanted above all things to get away from sentiment, fromseduction, from the moods and impulses and flashing contradictions thatwere Susy. Susy was not a great reader: her store of facts was small,and she had grown up among people who dreaded ideas as much as if theyhad been a contagious disease. But, in the early days especially,when Nick had put a book in her hand, or read a poem to her, herswift intelligence had instantly shed a new light on the subject, and,penetrating to its depths, had extracted from them whatever belongedto her. What a pity that this exquisite insight, this intuitivediscrimination, should for the most part have been spent upon readingthe thoughts of vulgar people, and extracting a profit from them--shouldhave been wasted, since her childhood, on all the hideous intricacies of"managing"!
And visible beauty--how she cared for that too! He had not guessed it,or rather he had not been sure of it, till the day when, on their waythrough Paris, he had taken her to the Louvre, and they had stood beforethe little Crucifixion of Mantegna. He had not been looking at thepicture, or watching to see what impression it produced on Susy. Hisown momentary mood was for Correggio and Fragonard, the laughter of theMusic Lesson and the bold pagan joys of the Antiope; and then hehad missed her from his side, and when he came to where she stood,forgetting him, forgetting everything, had seen the glare of that tragicsky in her face, her trembling lip, the tears on her lashes. That wasSusy....
Closing his book he stole a glance at Coral Hicks's profile, thrown backagainst the cushions of the deck-chair at his side. There was somethingharsh and bracing in her blunt primitive build, in the projection ofthe black eyebrows that nearly met over her thick straight nose, andthe faint barely visible black down on her upper lip. Some miracle ofwill-power, com
bined with all the artifices that wealth can buy, hadturned the fat sallow girl he remembered into this commanding youngwoman, almost handsome at times indisputably handsome--in her bigauthoritative way. Watching the arrogant lines of her profile againstthe blue sea, he remembered, with a thrill that was sweet to his vanity,how twice--under the dome of the Scalzi and in the streets of Genoa--hehad seen those same lines soften at his approach, turn womanly, pleadingand almost humble. That was Coral....
Suddenly she said, without turning toward him: "You've had no letterssince you've been on board."
He looked at her, surprised. "No--thank the Lord!" he laughed.
"And you haven't written one either," she continued in her hardstatistical tone.
"No," he again agreed, with the same laugh.
"That means that you really are free--"
"Free?"
He saw the cheek nearest him redden. "Really off on a holiday, I mean;not tied down." After a pause he rejoined: "No, I'm not particularlytied down."
"And your book?"
"Oh, my book--" He stopped and considered. He had thrust The Pageant ofAlexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; butsince then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusionswere pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he hadfelt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of herscent, and heard her breathless "I had to thank you!"
"My book's hung up," he said impatiently, annoyed with Miss Hicks's lackof tact. There was a girl who never put out feelers....
"Yes; I thought it was," she went on quietly, and he gave her a startledglance. What the devil else did she think, he wondered? He had neversupposed her capable of getting far enough out of her own thick carapaceof self-sufficiency to penetrate into any one else's feelings.
"The truth is," he continued, embarrassed, "I suppose I dug away atit rather too continuously; that's probably why I felt the need of achange. You see I'm only a beginner."
She still continued her relentless questioning. "But later--you'll go onwith it, of course?"
"Oh, I don't know." He paused, glanced down the glittering deck, andthen out across the glittering water. "I've been dreaming dreams, yousee. I rather think I shall have to drop the book altogether, and tryto look out for a job that will pay. To indulge in my kind of literatureone must first have an assured income."
He was instantly annoyed with himself for having spoken. Hitherto in hisrelations with the Hickses he had carefully avoided the least allusionthat might make him feel the heavy hand of their beneficence. But theidle procrastinating weeks had weakened him and he had yielded to theneed of putting into words his vague intentions. To do so would perhapshelp to make them more definite.
To his relief Miss Hicks made no immediate reply; and when she spoke itwas in a softer voice and with an unwonted hesitation.
"It seems a shame that with gifts like yours you shouldn't find somekind of employment that would leave you leisure enough to do your realwork...."
He shrugged ironically. "Yes--there are a goodish number of us huntingfor that particular kind of employment."
Her tone became more business-like. "I know it's hard to find--almostimpossible. But would you take it, I wonder, if it were offered toyou--?"
She turned her head slightly, and their eyes met. For an instant blankterror loomed upon him; but before he had time to face it she continued,in the same untroubled voice: "Mr. Buttles's place, I mean. My parentsmust absolutely have some one they can count on. You know what an easyplace it is.... I think you would find the salary satisfactory."
Nick drew a deep breath of relief. For a moment her eyes had looked asthey had in the Scalzi--and he liked the girl too much not to shrinkfrom reawakening that look. But Mr. Buttles's place: why not?
"Poor Buttles!" he murmured, to gain time.
"Oh," she said, "you won't find the same reasons as he did for throwingup the job. He was the martyr of his artistic convictions."
He glanced at her sideways, wondering. After all she did not know ofhis meeting with Mr. Buttles in Genoa, nor of the latter's confidences;perhaps she did not even know of Mr. Buttles's hopeless passion. At anyrate her face remained calm.
"Why not consider it--at least just for a few months? Till after ourexpedition to Mesopotamia?" she pressed on, a little breathlessly.
"You're awfully kind: but I don't know--"
She stood up with one of her abrupt movements. "You needn't, allat once. Take time think it over. Father wanted me to ask you," sheappended.
He felt the inadequacy of his response. "It tempts me awfully, ofcourse. But I must wait, at any rate--wait for letters. The fact isI shall have to wire from Rhodes to have them sent. I had chuckedeverything, even letters, for a few weeks."
"Ah, you are tired," she murmured, giving him a last downward glance asshe turned away.
From Rhodes Nick Lansing telegraphed to his Paris bank to send hisletters to Candia; but when the Ibis reached Candia, and the mail wasbrought on board, the thick envelope handed to him contained no letterfrom Susy.
Why should it, since he had not yet written to her?
He had not written, no: but in sending his address to the bank he knewhe had given her the opportunity of reaching him if she wished to. Andshe had made no sign.
Late that afternoon, when they returned to the yacht from their firstexpedition, a packet of newspapers lay on the deck-house table. Nickpicked up one of the London journals, and his eye ran absently down thelist of social events.
He read:
"Among the visitors expected next week at Ruan Castle (let for theseason to Mr. Frederick J. Gillow of New York) are Prince Altineri ofRome, the Earl of Altringham and Mrs. Nicholas Lansing, who arrived inLondon last week from Paris." Nick threw down the paper. It was just amonth since he had left the Palazzo Vanderlyn and flung himself into thenight express for Milan. A whole month--and Susy had not written. Only amonth--and Susy and Strefford were already together!