III.
THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the lastmoment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy hadbeen unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, sincehe had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastlybouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.
Lansing, leaving Susy's side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for alast plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he lookedup at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with thecypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife stillslept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, asfantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin intothe sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....
It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, butthe next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses werebeing showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spiritswinging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Veniceto a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on theformer. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of ajourney across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the NelsonVanderlyns' palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasonsof expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the comingwinter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to freshopportunities; indeed, Susy already had in mind the convenient flat thatshe was sure a migratory cousin (if tactfully handled, and assured thatthey would not overwork her cook) could certainly be induced to lendthem. Meanwhile the need of making plans was still remote; and if therewas one art in which young Lansing's twenty-eight years of existence hadperfected him it was that of living completely and unconcernedly in thepresent....
If of late he had tried to look into the future more insistently thanwas his habit, it was only because of Susy. He had meant, when theymarried, to be as philosophic for her as for himself; and he knew shewould have resented above everything his regarding their partnership asa reason for anxious thought. But since they had been together she hadgiven him glimpses of her past that made him angrily long to shelterand defend her future. It was intolerable that a spirit as fine as hersshould be ever so little dulled or diminished by the kind of compromisesout of which their wretched lives were made. For himself, he didn't carea hang: he had composed for his own guidance a rough-and-ready code,a short set of "mays" and "mustn'ts" which immensely simplified hiscourse. There were things a fellow put up with for the sake of certaindefinite and otherwise unattainable advantages; there were other thingshe wouldn't traffic with at any price. But for a woman, he began tosee, it might be different. The temptations might be greater, the costconsiderably higher, the dividing line between the "mays" and "mustn'ts"more fluctuating and less sharply drawn. Susy, thrown on the worldat seventeen, with only a weak wastrel of a father to define thattreacherous line for her, and with every circumstance soliciting her tooverstep it, seemed to have been preserved chiefly by an innate scornof most of the objects of human folly. "Such trash as he went to piecesfor," was her curt comment on her parent's premature demise: asthough she accepted in advance the necessity of ruining one's self forsomething, but was resolved to discriminate firmly between what wasworth it and what wasn't.
This philosophy had at first enchanted Lansing; but now it began torouse vague fears. The fine armour of her fastidiousness had preservedher from the kind of risks she had hitherto been exposed to; but what ifothers, more subtle, found a joint in it? Was there, among her delicatediscriminations, any equivalent to his own rules? Might not her tastefor the best and rarest be the very instrument of her undoing; and ifsomething that wasn't "trash" came her way, would she hesitate a secondto go to pieces for it?
He was determined to stick to the compact that they should do nothing tointerfere with what each referred to as the other's "chance"; but whatif, when hers came, he couldn't agree with her in recognizing it? Hewanted for her, oh, so passionately, the best; but his conception ofthat best had so insensibly, so subtly been transformed in the light oftheir first month together!
His lazy strokes were carrying him slowly shoreward; but the hour was soexquisite that a few yards from the landing he laid hold of the mooringrope of Streffy's boat and floated there, following his dream.... Itwas a bore to be leaving; no doubt that was what made him turn thingsinside-out so uselessly. Venice would be delicious, of course; butnothing would ever again be as sweet as this. And then they had only ayear of security before them; and of that year a month was gone.
Reluctantly he swam ashore, walked up to the house, and pushed open awindow of the cool painted drawing-room. Signs of departure were alreadyvisible. There were trunks in the hall, tennis rackets on the stairs; onthe landing, the cook Giulietta had both arms around a slippery hold-allthat refused to let itself be strapped. It all gave him a chill senseof unreality, as if the past month had been an act on the stage, and itssetting were being folded away and rolled into the wings to make roomfor another play in which he and Susy had no part.
By the time he came down again, dressed and hungry, to the terracewhere coffee awaited him, he had recovered his usual pleasant sense ofsecurity. Susy was there, fresh and gay, a rose in her breast and thesun in her hair: her head was bowed over Bradshaw, but she waved a fondhand across the breakfast things, and presently looked up to say: "Yes,I believe we can just manage it."
"Manage what?"
"To catch the train at Milan--if we start in the motor at ten sharp."
He stared. "The motor? What motor?"
"Why, the new people's--Streffy's tenants. He's never told me theirname, and the chauffeur says he can't pronounce it. The chauffeur's isOttaviano, anyhow; I've been making friends with him. He arrived lastnight, and he says they're not due at Como till this evening. He simplyjumped at the idea of running us over to Milan."
"Good Lord--" said Lansing, when she stopped.
She sprang up from the table with a laugh. "It will be a scramble; butI'll manage it, if you'll go up at once and pitch the last things intoyour trunk."
"Yes; but look here--have you any idea what it's going to cost?"
She raised her eyebrows gaily. "Why, a good deal less than our railwaytickets. Ottaviano's got a sweetheart in Milan, and hasn't seen her forsix months. When I found that out I knew he'd be going there anyhow."
It was clever of her, and he laughed. But why was it that he had grownto shrink from even such harmless evidence of her always knowing how to"manage"? "Oh, well," he said to himself, "she's right: the fellow wouldbe sure to be going to Milan."
Upstairs, on the way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud offinery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a lastportmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the wayshe coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way shefitted discordant facts into her life. "When I'm rich," she often said,"the thing I shall hate most will be to see an idiot maid at my trunks."
As he passed, she glanced over her shoulder, her face pink with thestruggle, and drew a cigar-box from the depths. "Dearest, do put acouple of cigars into your pocket as a tip for Ottaviano."
Lansing stared. "Why, what on earth are you doing with Streffy'scigars?"
"Packing them, of course.... You don't suppose he meant them for thoseother people?" She gave him a look of honest wonder.
"I don't know whom he meant them for--but they're not ours...."
She continued to look at him wonderingly. "I don't see what there is tobe solemn about. The cigars are not Streffy's either... you may be surehe got them out of some bounder. And there's nothing he'd hate more thanto have them passed on to another."
"Nonsense. If they're not Streffy's they're much less mine. Hand themover, please, dear."
"Just as you like. But it does seem a waste; and, of course, the otherpeople will never have one of them.... The gard
ener and Giulietta'slover will see to that!"
Lansing looked away from her at the waves of lace and muslin from whichshe emerged like a rosy Nereid. "How many boxes of them are left?"
"Only four."
"Unpack them, please."
Before she moved there was a pause so full of challenge that Lansing hadtime for an exasperated sense of the disproportion between his anger andits cause. And this made him still angrier.
She held out a box. "The others are in your suitcase downstairs. It'slocked and strapped."
"Give me the key, then."
"We might send them back from Venice, mightn't we? That lock is sonasty: it will take you half an hour."
"Give me the key, please." She gave it.
He went downstairs and battled with the lock, for the allottedhalf-hour, under the puzzled eyes of Giulietta and the sardonic grin ofthe chauffeur, who now and then, from the threshold, politely remindedhim how long it would take to get to Milan. Finally the key turned, andLansing, broken-nailed and perspiring, extracted the cigars and stalkedwith them into the deserted drawing room. The great bunches of goldenroses that he and Susy had gathered the day before were dropping theirpetals on the marble embroidery of the floor, pale camellias floated inthe alabaster tazzas between the windows, haunting scents of the gardenblew in on him with the breeze from the lake. Never had Streffy's littlehouse seemed so like a nest of pleasures. Lansing laid the cigar boxeson a console and ran upstairs to collect his last possessions. Whenhe came down again, his wife, her eyes brilliant with achievement, wasseated in their borrowed chariot, the luggage cleverly stowed away, andGiulietta and the gardener kissing her hand and weeping out inconsolablefarewells.
"I wonder what she's given them?" he thought, as he jumped in beside herand the motor whirled them through the nightingale-thickets to the gate.