“Do you remember, Susy, when you and Nick came to stay at the bungalow? Nat said you’d be horrified by our primitiveness-but I knew better! And I was right, wasn’t I? Seeing us so happy made you and Nick decide to follow our example, didn’t it?” She glowed with the remembrance. “And now, what are your plans? Is Nick’s book nearly done? I suppose you’ll have to live very economically till he finds a publisher. And the baby, darling- when is that to be? If you’re coming home soon I could let you have a lot of the children’s little old things.”
“You’re always so dear, Grace. But we haven’t any special plans as yet–not even for a baby. And I wish you’d tell me all of yours instead.”
Mrs. Fulmer asked nothing better: Susy perceived that, so far, the greater part of her European experience had consisted in talking about what it was to be. “Well, you see, Nat is so taken up all day with sight-seeing and galleries and meeting important people that he hasn’t had time to go about with us; and as so few theatres are open, and there’s so little music, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with my mending. Junie helps me with it now–she’s our eldest, you remember? She’s grown into a big girl since you saw her. And later, perhaps, we’re to travel. And the most wonderful thing of all–next to Nat’s recognition, I mean–is not having to contrive and skimp, and give up something every single minute. Just think–Nat has even made special arrangements here in the pension, so that the children all have second helpings to everything. And when I go up to bed I can think of my music, instead of lying awake calculating and wondering how I can make things come out at the end of the month. Oh, Susy, that’s simply heaven!”
Susy’s heart contracted. She had come to her friend to be taught again the lesson of indifference to material things, and instead she was hearing from Grace Fulmer’s lips the long- repressed avowal of their tyranny. After all, that battle with poverty on the New Hampshire hillside had not been the easy smiling business that Grace and Nat had made it appear. And yet … and yet ….
Susy stood up abruptly, and straightened the expensive hat which hung irresponsibly over Grace’s left ear.
“What’s wrong with it? Junie helped me choose it, and she generally knows,” Mrs. Fulmer wailed with helpless hands.
“It’s the way you wear it, dearest–and the bow is rather top- heavy. Let me have it a minute, please.” Susy lifted the hat from her friend’s head and began to manipulate its trimming. “This is the way Maria Guy or Suzanne would do it …. And now go on about Nat ….”
She listened musingly while Grace poured forth the tale of her husband’s triumph, of the notices in the papers, the demand for his work, the fine ladies’ battles over their priority in discovering him, and the multiplied orders that had resulted from their rivalry.
“Of course they’re simply furious with each other-Mrs. Melrose and Mrs. Gillow especially–because each one pretends to have been the first to notice his ‘Spring Snow-Storm,’ and in reality it wasn’t either of them, but only poor Bill Haslett, an art- critic we’ve known for years, who chanced on the picture, and rushed off to tell a dealer who was looking for a new painter to push.” Grace suddenly raised her soft myopic eyes to Susy’s face. “But, do you know, the funny thing is that I believe Nat is beginning to forget this, and to believe that it was Mrs. Melrose who stopped short in front of his picture on the opening day, and screamed out: ‘This is genius!’ It seems funny he should care so much, when I’ve always known he had genius-and he has known it too. But they’re all so kind to him; and Mrs. Melrose especially. And I suppose it makes a thing sound new to hear it said in a new voice.”
Susy looked at her meditatively. “And how should you feel if Nat liked too much to hear Mrs. Melrose say it? Too much, I mean, to care any longer what you felt or thought?”