Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (528 page)

The sun coming through high French windows woke us one week later. Outside we could hear the high, clear honk of strange auto horns and we remembered that we were in Paris.

The baby was already sitting up in her cot, ringing the bells which summoned the different fonctionnaires of the hotel as though she had determined to start the day immediately. It was indeed her day, for we were in Paris for no other reason than to get her a nurse.

“Entrez!” we shouted together as there was a knock at the door.

The Governess We Did Not Engage

A handsome waiter opened it and stepped inside, whereupon our child ceased her harmonizing upon the bells and regarded him with marked disfavor.

“Iss a mademoiselle who waited out in the street, “ he remarked.

“Speak French, “ I said sternly. “We’re all French here. “

He spoke French for some time.

“All right, “ I interrupted after a moment. “Now say that again very slowly in English; I didn’t quite understand. “

“His name’s Entrez, “ remarked the baby helpfully.

“Be that as it may, “ I flared up, “his French strikes me as very bad. “

We discovered finally that an English-governess was outside to answer our advertisement in the paper.

“Tell her to come in. “

After an interval, a tall, languid person in a Rue de la Paix hat strolled into the room and we tried to look as dignified as is possible when sitting up in bed.

“You’re Americans ?” she said, seating herself with scornful care.

“Yes. “

“I understand you want a nurse. Is this the child?”

“Yes, ma’am. “

Here is some high-born lady of the English court, we thought, in temporarily reduced circumstances.

“I’ve had a great deal of experience, “ she said, advancing upon our child and attempting unsuccessfully to take her hand. “I’m practically a trained nurse; I’m a lady born and I never complain. “

“Complain of what?” demanded my wife.

The applicant waved her hand vaguely.

“Oh, the food, for example. “

“Look here, “ I asked suspiciously, “before we go any farther, let me ask what salary you’ve been getting. “

“For you, “ she hesitated, “one hundred dollars a month. “

“Oh, you wouldn’t have to do the cooking too, “ we assured her; “it’s just to take care of one child. “

She arose and adjusted her feather boa with fine scorn.

“You’d better get a French nurse, “ she said, “if you’re that kind of people. She won’t open the windows at night and your baby will never learn the French word for ‘tub, ‘ but you’ll only have to pay her ten dollars a month. “

“Good-by, “ we said together.

“I’ll come for fifty. “

“Good-by, “ we repeated.

“For forty — and I’ll do the baby’s washing. “

“We wouldn’t take you for your board. “

The hotel trembled slightly as she closed the door.

“Where’s the lady gone?” asked our child.

“She’s hunting Americans, “ we said. “She looked in the hotel register and thought she saw Chicago written after our names. “

We are always witty like that with the baby. She considers us the most amusing couple she has ever known.

The Hot, Sweet South of France

After breakfast I went to the Paris branch of our American bank to get money; but I had no sooner entered it than I wished myself at the hotel, or at least that I had gone in by the back way, for I had evidently been recognized and an enormous crowd began to gather outside. The crowd grew, and I considered going to the window and making them a speech; but I thought that might only increase the disturbance, so I looked around intending to ask someone’s advice. I recognized no one, however, except one of the bank officials and a Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks from America, who were buying francs at a counter in the rear. So I decided not to show myself; and by the time I had cashed my check the crowd had given up and melted away.

I think now that we did well to get away from Paris in nine days, which, after all, was only a week more than we had intended. Every morning a new boatload of Americans poured into the boulevards, and every afternoon our room at the hotel was filled with familiar faces until — except that there was no faint taste of wood alcohol in the refreshments — we might have been in New York. But at last, with six thousand five hundred dollars remaining, and with an English nurse whom we engaged for twenty-six dollars a month, we boarded the train for the Riviera, the hot, sweet South of France.

When your eyes first fall upon the Mediterranean you know at once why it was here that man first stood erect and stretched out his arms toward the sun. It is a blue sea; or rather it is too blue for that hackneyed phrase which has described every muddy pool from pole to pole. It is the fairy blue of Maxfield Parrish’s pictures; blue like blue books, blue oil, blue eyes, and in the shadow of the mountains a green belt of land runs along the coast for a hundred miles and makes a playground for the world. The Riviera! The names of its resorts, Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, call up the memory of a hundred kings and princes who have lost their thrones and come here to die, of mysterious rajahs and beys flinging blue diamonds to English dancing girls, of Russian millionaires tossing away fortunes at roulette in the lost caviar days before the war.

From Charles Dickens to Catherine de’ Medici, from Prince Edward of Wales in the height of his popularity, to Oscar Wilde in the depth of Jus disgrace, the whole world has come here to forget or to rejoice, to hide its face or have its fling, to build white palaces out of the spoils of oppression or to write the books which sometimes batter those palaces down. Under striped awnings beside the sea grand dukes and gamblers and diplomats and noble courtesans and Balkan czars smoked their slow cigarettes while 1913 drifted into 1914 without a quiver of the calendar, and the fury gathered in the north that was to sweep three-fourths of them away.

Floundering in Flawless French

We reached Hyeres, the town of our destination, in the blazing noon, aware immediately of the tropic’s breath as it oozed out of the massed pines. A cabby with a large egg-shaped carbuncle in the center of his forehead struggled with a uniformed hotel porter for the possession of our grips.

“Je suis a stranger here, “ I said in flawless French. “Je veux aller to le best hotel dans le town. “

The porter pointed to an imposing autobus in the station drive.

“Which is the best?” I asked.

For answer, he picked up our heaviest grip, balanced it a moment in his hand, hit the cabby a crashing blow on the forehead — I immediately understood the gradual growth of the carbuncle — and then pressed us firmly toward the car. I tossed several nickels — or rather francs — upon the prostrate carbuncular man.

“Isn’t it hot, “ remarked the nurse.

“I like it very much indeed, “ I responded, mopping my forehead and attempting a cool smile. I felt that the moral responsibility was with me. I had picked out Hyeres for no more reason than that a friend had once spent a winter there. Besides, we hadn’t come here to keep cool; we had come here to economize, to live on practically nothing a year.

“Nevertheless, it’s hot,” said my wife, and a moment later the child shouted, “Coat off!” in no uncertain voice.

“He must think we want to see the town, “ I said when, after driving for a mile along a palm-lined road, we stopped in an ancient Mexican-looking square. “Hold on!”

This last was in alarm, for he was hurriedly disembarking our baggage in front of a dilapidated quick-lunch emporium.

“Is this a joke?” I demanded. “Did I tell you to go to the best hotel in town?”

“Here it is, “ he said.

“No, it isn’t. This is the worst hotel I ever saw. “

“I am the proprietor, “ he said.

“I’m sorry, but we’ve got a baby here” — the nurse obligingly held up the baby — “and we want a more modern hotel, with a bath.”

“We have a bath.”

“I mean a private bath.”

“We will not use while you are here. All the big hotels have shut up themselves for during the summer. “

“I don’t believe him for a minute, “ said my wife.

I looked around helplessly. Two scanty, hungry women had come out of the door and were looking voraciously at our baggage. Suddenly I heard the sound of slow hoofs, and glancing up I beheld the carbuncular man driving disconsolately up the dusty street.

“What’s le best hotel dans le town?” I shouted at him.

“Non, non, non, non!” he cried, waving his reins excitedly. “Jardin Hotel open!”

As the proprietor dropped my grip and started toward the cabby at a run, I turned to the hungry women accusingly.

“What do you mean by having a bus like this?” I demanded.

I felt very American and superior; I intimated that if the morals of the French people were in this decadent state I regretted that we had ever entered the war.

“Daddy’s hot too, “ remarked the baby irrelevantly.

“I am not hot!”

“Daddy had better stop talking and find us a hotel, “ remarked the English nurse, “before we all melt away. “

It was the work of but an hour to pay off the proprietor, to add damages for his wounded feelings and to install ourselves in the Hotel du Jardin, on the edge of town.

“Hyeres, “ says my guidebook, “is the very oldest and warmest of the Riviera winter resorts and is now frequented almost exclusively by the English. “

But when we arrived there late in May, even the English, except the very oldest and warmest, had moved away. At dinner, only a superannuated dozen, a slowly decaying dozen, a solemn and dispirited dozen remained. But we were to be there merely while we searched for a villa, and it had the advantage of being amazingly cheap for a first class hotel. The rate for four of us, including meals, was one hundred and fifty francs — less than eight dollars a day.

The real-estate agent, an energetic young gentleman with his pants buttoned snugly around his chest, called on us next morning.

“Dozens of villas, “ he said enthusiastically. “We will take the horse and buggy and go see. “

It was a simmering morning, but the streets already swarmed with the faces of Southern France — dark faces, for there is an Arab streak along the Riviera, left from turbulent, forgotten centuries. Once the Moors harried the coast for gain, and later, as they swept up through Spain in mad glory, they threw out frontier towns along the shores as outposts for their conquest of the world. They were not the first people, or the last, that have tried to overrun France. All that remains now for proud Moslem hopes is an occasional Moorish tower and the tragic glint of black Eastern eyes.

“Now this villa rents for thirty dollars a month, “ said the real-estate agent as we stopped at a small house on the edge of town.

“What’s the matter with it?” asked my wife suspiciously.

“Nothing at all. It is superb. It has six rooms and a well. “

“A well?”

“A fine well. “

“Do you mean it has no bathroom?”

“Not what you would call an actual bathroom. “

“Drive on, “ we said.

It was obvious by noon that there were no villas to be let in Hyeres. Those we saw were all too hot, too small, too duty or too triste, an expressive word which implies that the mad marquis still walk through the halls in his shroud.

“Yes, we have no villas today, “ remarked the agent, smiling.

“That’s a very old played-out joke, “ I said, “and I am too hot to laugh. “

Extracting Information

Our clothes were hanging on us like wet towels, but when I had established our identity by a scar on my left hand we were admitted to the hotel. I decided to ask one of the lingering Englishmen if there was perhaps another quiet town near by.

Now, asking something of an American or a Frenchman is a definite thing: the only difference is that you can understand the American’s reply. But getting an answer from an Englishman is about as complicated as borrowing a match from the Secretary of State. The first one I approached dropped his paper, looked at me in horror and bolted precipitately from the room. This disconcerted me for a moment but luckily my eyes fell on a man whom I had seen being wheeled in to dinner.

“Good morning, “ I said. “Could you tell me — “ He jerked spasmodically, but to my relief, he was unable to leave his seat. “I wonder if you know a town where I could get a villa for the summer. “

“Don’t know any at all, “ he said coldly. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I did. “

He didn’t exactly pronounce the last sentence, but I could read the words as they issued from his eyes.

“I suppose you’re a newcomer too, “ I suggested.

“I’ve been here every winter for sixteen years. “

Pretending to detect an invitation in this, I drew up my chair.

“Then you must know some town, “ I assured him.

“Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo. “

“But they’re too expensive. I want a quiet place to do a lot of work. “

“Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo. All quiet in summer. Don’t know any others. Wouldn’t tell you if I did. Good day. “

Upstairs, the nurse was counting the mosquito bites on the baby, all received during the night, and my wife was adding them up in a big book.

“Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, “ I said.

“I’m glad we’re going to leave this broiling town, “ remarked the nurse.

“I think we’d better try Cannes. “

“I think so too, “ said my wife eagerly. “I hear it’s very gay — I mean, it’s no economy to stay where you can’t work, and I don’t believe we can get a villa here after all. “

“Let’s go on the big boat, “ said the baby suddenly.

“Silence! We’ve come to the Riviera and we’re here to stay. “

The Villa of Our Dreams

So we decided to leave the nurse and baby in Hyeres and run up to Cannes, which is a more fashionable town in a more northerly situation along the shore. Now when you run up to somewhere you have to have an automobile, so we bought the only new one in town next day. It had the power of six horses — the age of the horses was not stated — and it was so small that we loomed out of it like giants; so small that you could run it under the veranda for the night. It had no lock, no speedometer, no gauge, and its cost, including the parcel-post charge, was seven hundred and fifty dollars. We started for Cannes in it, and except for the warm exhaust when other cars drove over us, we found the trip comparatively cool.