XXIII
AS she fled on toward the lights of the streets a breath of freedomseemed to blow into her face.
Like a weary load the accumulated hypocrisies of the last months haddropped from her: she was herself again, Nick's Susy, and no one else's.She sped on, staring with bright bewildered eyes at the stately facadesof the La Muette quarter, the perspectives of bare trees, the awakeningglitter of shop-windows holding out to her all the things she wouldnever again be able to buy....
In an avenue of shops she paused before a milliner's window, and saidto herself: "Why shouldn't I earn my living by trimming hats?" She metwork-girls streaming out under a doorway, and scattering to catch tramsand omnibuses; and she looked with newly-wakened interest at their tiredindependent faces. "Why shouldn't I earn my living as well as they do?"she thought. A little farther on she passed a Sister of Charity withsoftly trotting feet, a calm anonymous glance, and hands hidden in hercapacious sleeves. Susy looked at her and thought: "Why shouldn't I bea Sister, and have no money to worry about, and trot about under a whitecoif helping poor people?"
All these strangers on whom she smiled in passing, and glanced back atenviously, were free from the necessities that enslaved her, and wouldnot have known what she meant if she had told them that she must haveso much money for her dresses, so much for her cigarettes, so much forbridge and cabs and tips, and all kinds of extras, and that at thatmoment she ought to be hurrying back to a dinner at the British Embassy,where her permanent right to such luxuries was to be solemnly recognizedand ratified.
The artificiality and unreality of her life overcame her as withstifling fumes. She stopped at a street-corner, drawing long pantingbreaths as if she had been running a race. Then, slowly and aimlessly,she began to saunter along a street of small private houses in dampgardens that led to the Avenue du Bois. She sat down on a bench. Not faroff, the Arc de Triomphe raised its august bulk, and beyond it ariver of lights streamed down toward Paris, and the stir of the city'sheart-beats troubled the quiet in her bosom. But not for long. Sheseemed to be looking at it all from the other side of the grave; andas she got up and wandered down the Champs Elysees, half empty in theevening lull between dusk and dinner, she felt as if the glitteringavenue were really changed into the Field of Shadows from which it takesits name, and as if she were a ghost among ghosts.
Halfway home, a weakness of loneliness overcame her, and she seatedherself under the trees near the Rond Point. Lines of motors andcarriages were beginning to animate the converging thoroughfares,streaming abreast, crossing, winding in and out of each other in atangle of hurried pleasure-seeking. She caught the light on jewels andshirt-fronts and hard bored eyes emerging from dim billows of fur andvelvet. She seemed to hear what the couples were saying to each other,she pictured the drawing-rooms, restaurants, dance-halls they werehastening to, the breathless routine that was hurrying them along, asTime, the old vacuum-cleaner, swept them away with the dust of theircarriage-wheels. And again the loneliness vanished in a sense ofrelease....
At the corner of the Place de la Concorde she stopped, recognizing aman in evening dress who was hailing a taxi. Their eyes met, and NelsonVanderlyn came forward. He was the last person she cared to run across,and she shrank back involuntarily. What did he know, what had heguessed, of her complicity in his wife's affairs? No doubt Ellie hadblabbed it all out by this time; she was just as likely to confide herlove-affairs to Nelson as to anyone else, now that the Bockheimer prizewas landed.
"Well--well--well--so I've caught you at it! Glad to see you, Susy,my dear." She found her hand cordially clasped in Vanderlyn's, andhis round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothingmatter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love orhate or remember?
"No idea you were in Paris--just got here myself," Vanderlyn continued,visibly delighted at the meeting. "Look here, don't suppose you're outof a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lonebachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that's luck for once! I say, whereshall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirlthe light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with thetimes! Hold on, taxi! Here--I'll drive you home first, and wait whileyou jump into your toggery. Lots of time." As he steered her toward thecarriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself inafter her with difficulty.
"Mayn't I come as I am, Nelson, I don't feel like dancing. Let's go anddine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de laBourse."
He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled offtogether. In a corner at Bauge's they found a quiet table, screened fromthe other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to studythe carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even morethan his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flatwrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt atsmartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: itsfamiliar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to matchhis clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker,shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil ofhigh spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strandsof hair were skilfully brushed over his baldness.
"Here! Carte des vins, waiter! What champagne, Susy?" He chose,fastidiously, the best the cellar could produce, grumbling a little atthe bourgeois character of the dishes. "Capital food of its kind, nodoubt, but coarsish, don't you think? Well, I don't mind... it's rathera jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation--I'm all for newsensations, ain't you, my dear?" He re-filled their champagne glasses,flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggybenevolence.
As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
"Suppose you know what I'm here for--this divorce business? We wanted tosettle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best placefor that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. Noneof your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy... theyunderstand Life over here!"
Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelsonwould make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted totruculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula ofhis perpetual ejaculation--"Caught you at it, eh?"--seemed to hint at aconstant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that,as the saying was, he had "swallowed his dose" like all the others. Nostrong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normalstature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness torebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of thepatient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
"Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything's changednowadays; why shouldn't marriage be too? A man can get out of a businesspartnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed upto each other for life because we've blundered into a church one day andsaid 'Yes' before one of 'em. No, no--that's too easy. We've gotbeyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries.... I say the TenCommandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; andthere ain't a word against divorce in 'em, anyhow! That's what I tell mypoor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the placewhere it says: 'Thou shalt not sue for divorce.' It makes her wild, poorold lady, because she can't; and she doesn't know how they happen tohave left it out.... I rather think Moses left it out because he knewmore about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Notthat they'll always bear investigating either; but I don't care aboutthat. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven't we all got a right to ourAffinities? I hear you're following our example yourself. First-rateidea: I don't mind telling you I saw it coming on last summer at Venice.Caught you at it, so to speak! Old Nelson ain't as blind as peoplethink. Here, let's open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs.Streff!"
She caught the hand with which he was signalling to the sommelier.This flushed and garrulous Nelson moved her more poignantly than a
more heroic figure. "No more champagne, please, Nelson. Besides," shesuddenly added, "it's not true."
He stared. "Not true that you're going to marry Altringham?"
"No."
"By George then what on earth did you chuck Nick for? Ain't you got anAffinity, my dear?"
She laughed and shook her head.
"Do you mean to tell me it's all Nick's doing, then?"
"I don't know. Let's talk of you instead, Nelson. I'm glad you're insuch good spirits. I rather thought--"
He interrupted her quickly. "Thought I'd cut up a rumpus-do someshooting? I know--people did." He twisted his moustache, evidently proudof his reputation. "Well, maybe I did see red for a day or two--but I'ma philosopher, first and last. Before I went into banking I'd made andlost two fortunes out West. Well, how did I build 'em up again? Not byshooting anybody even myself. By just buckling to, and beginning allover again. That's how... and that's what I am doing now. Beginning allover again." His voice dropped from boastfulness to a note of wistfulmelancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like amask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes,that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deepseas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar towhich he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had playedin his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her withsuch forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificanceand isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon.Suddenly she too felt old--old and unspeakably tired.
"It's been nice seeing you, Nelson. But now I must be getting home."
He offered no objection, but asked for the bill, resumed his jaunty airwhile he scattered largesse among the waiters, and sauntered out behindher after calling for a taxi.
They drove off in silence. Susy was thinking: "And Clarissa?" but darednot ask. Vanderlyn lit a cigarette, hummed a dance-tune, and stared outof the window. Suddenly she felt his hand on hers.
"Susy--do you ever see her?"
"See--Ellie?"
He nodded, without turning toward her.
"Not often... sometimes...."
"If you do, for God's sake tell her I'm happy... happy as a king...tell her you could see for yourself that I was...." His voice broke ina little gasp. "I... I'll be damned if... if she shall ever be unhappyabout me... if I can help it...." The cigarette dropped from hisfingers, and with a sob he covered his face.
"Oh, poor Nelson--poor Nelson," Susy breathed. While their cab rattledacross the Place du Carrousel, and over the bridge, he continued tosit beside her with hidden face. At last he pulled out a scentedhandkerchief, rubbed his eyes with it, and groped for another cigarette.
"I'm all right! Tell her that, will you, Susy? There are some of our oldtimes I don't suppose I shall ever forget; but they make me feel kindlyto her, and not angry. I didn't know it would be so, beforehand--but itis.... And now the thing's settled I'm as right as a trivet, and you cantell her so.... Look here, Susy..." he caught her by the arm as the taxidrew up at her hotel.... "Tell her I understand, will you? I'd ratherlike her to know that...."
"I'll tell her, Nelson," she promised; and climbed the stairs alone toher dreary room.
Susy's one fear was that Strefford, when he returned the next day,should treat their talk of the previous evening as a fit of "nerves"to be jested away. He might, indeed, resent her behaviour too deeplyto seek to see her at once; but his easygoing modern attitude towardconduct and convictions made that improbable. She had an idea thatwhat he had most minded was her dropping so unceremoniously out of theEmbassy Dinner.
But, after all, why should she see him again? She had had enough ofexplanations during the last months to have learned how seldom theyexplain anything. If the other person did not understand at the firstword, at the first glance even, subsequent elucidations served only todeepen the obscurity. And she wanted above all--and especially since herhour with Nelson Vanderlyn--to keep herself free, aloof, to retainher hold on her precariously recovered self. She sat down and wrote toStrefford--and the letter was only a little less painful to write thanthe one she had despatched to Nick. It was not that her own feelingswere in any like measure engaged; but because, as the decision to giveup Strefford affirmed itself, she remembered only his kindness, hisforbearance, his good humour, and all the other qualities she had alwaysliked in him; and because she felt ashamed of the hesitations which mustcause him so much pain and humiliation. Yes: humiliation chiefly. Sheknew that what she had to say would hurt his pride, in whatever way sheframed her renunciation; and her pen wavered, hating its task. Then sheremembered Vanderlyn's words about his wife: "There are some of ourold times I don't suppose I shall ever forget--" and a phrase of GraceFulmer's that she had but half grasped at the time: "You haven't beenmarried long enough to understand how trifling such things seem in thebalance of one's memories."
Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into thelabyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some ofits thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the otherhalf-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawningon her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understandingis too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight anddenial.
"The real reason is that you're not Nick" was what she would have saidto Strefford if she had dared to set down the bare truth; and she knewthat, whatever she wrote, he was too acute not to read that into it.
"He'll think it's because I'm still in love with Nick... and perhaps Iam. But even if I were, the difference doesn't seem to lie there, afterall, but deeper, in things we've shared that seem to be meant to outlastlove, or to change it into something different." If she could havehoped to make Strefford understand that, the letter would have been easyenough to write--but she knew just at what point his imagination wouldfail, in what obvious and superficial inferences it would rest.
"Poor Streff--poor me!" she thought as she sealed the letter.
After she had despatched it a sense of blankness descended on her. Shehad succeeded in driving from her mind all vain hesitations, doubts,returns upon herself: her healthy system naturally rejected them. Butthey left a queer emptiness in which her thoughts rattled about asthoughts might, she supposed, in the first moments after death--beforeone got used to it. To get used to being dead: that seemed to be herimmediate business. And she felt such a novice at it--felt so horriblyalive! How had those others learned to do without living? Nelson--well,he was still in the throes; and probably never would understand, orbe able to communicate, the lesson when he had mastered it. But GraceFulmer--she suddenly remembered that Grace was in Paris, and set forthto find her.