“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, and his round pink face bent on her with all its old urbanity. Did nothing matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or hate 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 out of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that’s luck for once! I say, where shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the times! Hold on, taxi! Here–I’ll drive you home first, and wait while you jump into your toggery. Lots of time.” As he steered her toward the carriage she noticed that he had a gouty limp, and pulled himself in after her with difficulty.
“Mayn’t I come as I am, Nelson, I don’t feel like dancing. Let’s go and dine in one of those nice smoky little restaurants by the Place de la Bourse.”
He seemed surprised but relieved at the suggestion, and they rolled off together. In a corner at Bauge’s they found a quiet table, screened from the other diners, and while Vanderlyn adjusted his eyeglasses to study the carte Susy stole a long look at him. He was dressed with even more than his usual formal trimness, and she detected, in an ultra-flat wrist-watch and discreetly expensive waistcoat buttons, an attempt at smartness altogether new. His face had undergone the same change: its familiar look of worn optimism had been, as it were, done up to match his clothes, as though a sort of moral cosmetic had made him pinker, shinier and sprightlier without really rejuvenating him. A thin veil of high spirits had merely been drawn over his face, as the shining strands of 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 at the bourgeois character of the dishes. “Capital food of its kind, no doubt, but coarsish, don’t you think? Well, I don’t mind … it’s rather a jolly change from the Luxe cooking. A new sensation–I’m all for new sensations, ain’t you, my dear?” He re-filled their champagne glasses, flung an arm sideways over his chair, and smiled at her with a foggy benevolence.
As the champagne flowed his confidences flowed with it.
“Suppose you know what I’m here for–this divorce business? We wanted to settle it quietly without a fuss, and of course Paris is the best place for that sort of job. Live and let live; no questions asked. None of your dirty newspapers. Great country, this. No hypocrisy … they understand Life over here!”
Susy gazed and listened. She remembered that people had thought Nelson would make a row when he found out. He had always been addicted to truculent anecdotes about unfaithful wives, and the very formula of his perpetual ejaculation– “Caught you at it, eh?”–seemed to hint at a constant preoccupation with such ideas. But now it was evident that, as the saying was, he had “swallowed his dose” like all the others. No strong blast of indignation had momentarily lifted him above his normal stature: he remained a little man among little men, and his eagerness to rebuild his life with all the old smiling optimism reminded Susy of the patient industry of an ant remaking its ruined ant-heap.
“Tell you what, great thing, this liberty! Everything’s changed nowadays; why shouldn’t marriage be too? A man can get out of a business partnership when he wants to; but the parsons want to keep us noosed up to each other for life because we’ve blundered into a church one day and said ‘Yes’ before one of ’em. No, no–that’s too easy. We’ve got beyond that. Science, and all these new discoveries …. I say the Ten Commandments were made for man, and not man for the Commandments; and there ain’t a word against divorce in ’em, anyhow! That’s what I tell my poor old mother, who builds everything on her Bible. Find me the place where it says: ‘Thou shalt not sue for divorce.’ It makes her wild, poor old lady, because she can’t; and she doesn’t know how they happen to have left it out…. I rather think Moses left it out because he knew more about human nature than these snivelling modern parsons do. Not that they’ll always bear investigating either; but I don’t care about that. Live and let live, eh, Susy? Haven’t we all got a right to our Affinities? I hear you’re following our example yourself. First-rate idea: 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 people think. Here, let’s open another bottle to the health of Streff and Mrs. Streff!”