NICK Lansing arrived in Paris two days after his lawyer hadannounced his coming to Mr. Spearman.
He had left Rome with the definite purpose of freeing himselfand Susy; and though he was not pledged to Coral Hicks he hadnot concealed from her the object of his journey. In vain hadhe tried to rouse in himself any sense of interest in his ownfuture. Beyond the need of reaching a definite point in hisrelation to Susy his imagination could not travel. But he hadbeen moved by Coral's confession, and his reason told him thathe and she would probably be happy together, with the temperatehappiness based on a community of tastes and an enlargement ofopportunities. He meant, on his return to Rome, to ask her tomarry him; and he knew that she knew it. Indeed, if he had notspoken before leaving it was with no idea of evading his fate,or keeping her longer in suspense, but simply because of thestrange apathy that had fallen on him since he had receivedSusy's letter. In his incessant self-communings he dressed upthis apathy as a discretion which forbade his engaging Coral'sfuture till his own was assured. But in truth he knew thatCoral's future was already engaged, and his with it: in Romethe fact had seemed natural and even inevitable.
In Paris, it instantly became the thinnest of unrealities. Notbecause Paris was not Rome, nor because it was Paris; butbecause hidden away somewhere in that vast unheeding labyrinthwas the half-forgotten part of himself that was Susy .... Forweeks, for months past, his mind had been saturated with Susy:
she had never seemed more insistently near him than as theirseparation lengthened, and the chance of reunion became lessprobable. It was as if a sickness long smouldering in him hadbroken out and become acute, enveloping him in the Nessus-shirtof his memories. There were moments when, to his memory, theiractual embraces seemed perfunctory, accidental, compared withthis deep deliberate imprint of her soul on his.
Yet now it had become suddenly different. Now that he was inthe same place with her, and might at any moment run across her,meet her eyes, hear her voice, avoid her hand--now thatpenetrating ghost of her with which he had been living wassucked back into the shadows, and he seemed, for the first timesince their parting, to be again in her actual presence. Hewoke to the fact on the morning of his arrival, staring downfrom his hotel window on a street she would perhaps walk throughthat very day, and over a limitless huddle of roofs, one ofwhich covered her at that hour. The abruptness of thetransition startled him; he had not known that her meregeographical nearness would take him by the throat in that way.
What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?
Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficientlyinformed as to French divorce proceedings to know that theywould not necessitate a confrontation with his wife; and withordinary luck, and some precautions, he might escape even adistant glimpse of her. He did not mean to remain in Paris morethan a few days; and during that time it would be easy--knowing,as he did, her tastes and Altringham's--to avoid the placeswhere she was likely to be met. He did not know where she wasliving, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, orsome other rich friend, or else lodged, in prospectiveaffluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own.
Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to "manage"!
His first visit was to his lawyer's; and as he walked throughthe familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figureseemed hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last,of course; but meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitivein a nightmare, who feels himself the only creature visible in aghostly and besetting multitude. The eye of the metropolisseemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.
At the lawyer's he was told that, as a first step to freedom, hemust secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of thisnecessity: he had seen too many friends through the DivorceCourt, in one country or another, not to be fairly familiar withthe procedure. But the fact presented a different aspect assoon as he tried to relate it to himself and Susy: it was asthough Susy's personality were a medium through which eventsstill took on a transfiguring colour. He found the "domicile"that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviouslydestined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after theconcierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter'spayment in her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushyplace, he burst out laughing at what it was about to figure inthe eyes of the law: a Home, and a Home desecrated by his ownact! The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precariousbliss, and seen it crumble at the brutal touch of hisunfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told that hemust be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at thewalls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze"nudes," the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed-andonce more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that washappening to him entered like a drug into his veins.
To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideousplace, and returned to his lawyer's. He knew that in the harddry atmosphere of the office the act of giving the address ofthe flat would restore some kind of reality to the phantasmaltransaction. And with wonder he watched the lawyer, as a matterof course, pencil the street and the number on one of the papersenclosed in a folder on which his own name was elaboratelyengrossed.
As he took leave it occurred to him to ask where Susy wasliving. At least he imagined that it had just occurred to him,and that he was making the enquiry merely as a measure ofprecaution, in order to know what quarter of Paris to avoid; butin reality the question had been on his lips since he had firstentered the office, and lurking in his mind since he had emergedfrom the railway station that morning. The fact of not knowingwhere she lived made the whole of Paris a meaninglessunintelligible place, as useless to him as the face of a hugeclock that has lost its hour hand.
The address in Passy surprised him: he had imagined that shewould be somewhere in the neighborhood of the Champs Elysees orthe Place de l'Etoile. But probably either Mrs. Melrose orEllie Vanderlyn had taken a house at Passy. Well--it wassomething of a relief to know that she was so far off. Nobusiness called him to that almost suburban region beyond theTrocadero, and there was much less chance of meeting her than ifshe had been in the centre of Paris.
All day he wandered, avoiding the fashionable quarters, thestreets in which private motors glittered five deep, and furredand feathered silhouettes glided from them into tea-rooms,picture-galleries and jewellers' shops. In some such scenesSusy was no doubt figuring: slenderer, finer, vivider, than theother images of clay, but imitating their gestures, chatteringtheir jargon, winding her hand among the same pearls and sables.
He struck away across the Seine, along the quays to the Cite,the net-work of old Paris, the great grey vaults of St.
Eustache, the swarming streets of the Marais. He gazed atmonuments dawdled before shop-windows, sat in squares and onquays, watching people bargain, argue, philander, quarrel, work-girls stroll past in linked bands, beggars whine on the bridges,derelicts doze in the pale winter sun, mothers in mourninghasten by taking children to school, and street-walkers beattheir weary rounds before the cafes.
The day drifted on. Toward evening he began to grow afraid ofhis solitude, and to think of dining at the Nouveau Luxe, orsome other fashionable restaurant where he would be fairly sureto meet acquaintances, and be carried off to a theatre, a boiteor a dancing-hall. Anything, anything now, to get away from themaddening round of his thoughts. He felt the same blank fear ofsolitude as months ago in Genoa .... Even if he were to runacross Susy and Altringham, what of it? Better get the jobover. People had long since ceased to take on tragedy airsabout divorce: div............