Tender Is the Night (41 page)

He
talked automatically, having abandoned the case ten minutes before. They talked
pleasantly through another hour about the boy’s home in Chili and about his
ambitions. It was as close as Dick had ever come to comprehending such a
character from any but the pathological angle—he gathered that this very charm
made it possible for Francisco to perpetrate his outrages, and, for Dick, charm
always had an independent existence, whether it was the mad gallantry of the
wretch who had died in the clinic this morning, or the courageous grace which
this lost young man brought to a drab old story. Dick tried to dissect it into
pieces small enough to store away—realizing that the totality of a life may be
different in quality from its segments, and also that life during the forties
seemed capable of being observed only in segments. His love for Nicole and
Rosemary, his friendship with Abe North, with Tommy
Barban
in the broken universe of the war’s ending—in such contacts the personalities
had seemed to press up so close to him that he became the personality
itself—there seemed some necessity of taking all or nothing; it was as if for
the remainder of his life he was condemned to carry with him the egos of
certain people, early met and early loved, and to be only as complete as they
were complete themselves. There was some element of loneliness involved—so easy
to be loved—so hard to love.

As he
sat on the veranda with young Francisco, a ghost of the past swam into his ken.
A tall, singularly swaying male detached himself from the shrubbery and
approached Dick and Francisco with feeble resolution. For a moment he formed
such an apologetic part of the vibrant landscape that Dick scarcely remarked
him—then Dick was on his feet, shaking hands with an abstracted air, thinking,
“My God, I’ve stirred up a nest!” and trying to collect the man’s name.

“This is
Doctor Diver, isn’t it?”

“Well,
well—Mr.
Dumphry
, isn’t it?”

“Royal
Dumphry
.
I had the pleasure of having
dinner one night in that lovely garden of yours.”

“Of course.”
Trying to dampen Mr.
Dumphry’s
enthusiasm,
Dick went into impersonal chronology. “It was in nineteen—twenty-four—or
twenty-five—”

He had
remained standing, but Royal
Dumphry
, shy as he had
seemed at first, was no laggard with his pick and spade; he spoke to Francisco
in a flip, intimate manner, but the latter, ashamed of him, joined Dick in
trying to freeze him away.

“Doctor
Diver—one thing I want to say before you go. I’ve never forgotten that evening
in your garden—how nice you and your wife were. To me it’s one of the finest
memories in my life, one of the happiest ones. I’ve always thought of it as the
most civilized gathering of people that I have ever known.”

Dick
continued a crab-like retreat toward the nearest door of the hotel.

“I’m
glad you remembered it so pleasantly. Now I’ve got to see—”

“I
understand,” Royal
Dumphry
pursued sympathetically.
“I hear he’s dying.”

“Who’s
dying?”

“Perhaps
I shouldn’t have said that—but we have the same physician.”

Dick
paused, regarding him in astonishment. “Who’re you talking about?”

“Why,
your wife’s father—perhaps I—”

“My WHAT?”

“I
suppose—you mean I’m the first person—”

“You
mean my wife’s father is here, in
Lausanne
?”

“Why, I
thought you knew—I thought that was why you were here.”

“What
doctor is taking care of him?”

Dick
scrawled the name in a notebook, excused himself, and hurried to a telephone
booth.

It was
convenient for Doctor
Dangeu
to see Doctor Diver at
his house immediately.

Doctor
Dangeu
was a young
Génevois
; for
a moment he was afraid that he was going to lose a profitable patient, but,
when Dick reassured him, he divulged the fact that Mr. Warren was indeed dying.

“He is
only fifty but the liver has stopped restoring itself; the precipitating factor
is alcoholism.”

“Doesn’t
respond?”

“The man
can take nothing except liquids—I give him three days, or at most, a week.”

“Does
his elder daughter, Miss Warren, know his condition?”

“By his
own wish no one knows except the man-servant. It was only this morning I felt I
had to tell him—he took it excitedly, although he has been in a very religious
and resigned mood from the beginning of his illness.”

Dick
considered: “Well—” he decided slowly, “in any case I’ll take care of the
family angle. But I imagine they would want a consultation.”

“As you like.”

“I know
I speak for them when I ask you to call in one of the best- known medicine men
around the lake—
Herbrugge
, from Geneva.”

“I was
thinking of
Herbrugge
.”

“Meanwhile
I’m here for a day at least and I’ll keep in touch with you.”

That
evening Dick went to
Señor
Pardo
y
Cuidad
Real and they talked.

“We have
large estates in Chili—” said the old man. “My son could well be taking care of
them. Or I can get him in any one of a dozen enterprises in Paris—” He shook
his head and paced across the windows against a spring rain so cheerful that it
didn’t even drive the swans to cover, “My only son! Can’t you take him with
you?”

The
Spaniard knelt suddenly at Dick’s feet.

“Can’t
you cure my only son? I believe in you—you can take him with you, cure him.”

“It’s
impossible to commit a person on such grounds. I wouldn’t if I could.”

The Spaniard
got up from his knees.

“I have
been hasty—I have been driven—”

Descending
to the lobby Dick met Doctor
Dangeu
in the elevator.

“I was
about to call your room,” the latter said. “Can we speak out on the terrace?”

“Is Mr.
Warren dead?” Dick demanded.

“He is
the same—the consultation is in the morning. Meanwhile he wants to see his
daughter—your wife—with the greatest fervor. It seems there was some quarrel—”

“I know
all about that.”

The
doctors looked at each other, thinking.

“Why
don’t you talk to him before you make up your mind?”
Dangeu
suggested. “His death will be graceful—merely a weakening and sinking.”

With an
effort Dick consented.

“All right.”

The
suite in which Devereux Warren was gracefully weakening and sinking was of the
same size as that of the
Señor
Pardo
y
Cuidad
Real—throughout this hotel there were many
chambers wherein rich ruins, fugitives from justice, claimants to the thrones
of
mediatized
principalities, lived on the
derivatives of opium or
barbitol
listening eternally
as to an inescapable radio, to the coarse melodies of old sins. This corner of
Europe
does not so much draw people as accept them
without inconvenient questions. Routes cross here—people bound for private
sanitariums or tuberculosis resorts in the mountains, people who are no longer
persona gratis in
France
or
Italy
.

The
suite was darkened. A nun with a holy face was nursing the man whose emaciated
fingers stirred a rosary on the white sheet. He was still handsome and his
voice summoned up a thick burr of individuality as he spoke to Dick, after
Dangeu
had left them together.

“We get
a lot of understanding at the end of life. Only now, Doctor Diver, do I realize
what it was all about.”

Dick
waited.

“I’ve
been a bad man. You must know how little right I have to see Nicole again, yet
a Bigger Man than either of us says to forgive and to pity.” The rosary slipped
from his weak hands and slid off the smooth bed covers. Dick picked it up for
him. “If I could see Nicole for ten minutes I would go happy out of the world.”

“It’s not
a decision I can make for myself,” said Dick. “Nicole is not strong.” He made
his decision but pretended to hesitate. “I can put it up to my professional
associate.”

“What
your associate says goes with me—very well, Doctor. Let me tell you my debt to
you is so large—”

Dick
stood up quickly.

“I’ll
let you know the result through Doctor
Dangeu
.”

In his
room he called the clinic on the
Zugersee
. After a
long time
Kaethe
answered from her own house.

“I want
to get in touch with Franz.”

“Franz
is up on the mountain. I’m going up myself—is it something I can tell him,
Dick?”

“It’s
about Nicole—her father is dying here in
Lausanne
.
Tell Franz that, to show him it’s important; and ask him to phone me from up
there.”

“I
will.”

“Tell
him I’ll be in my room here at the hotel from three to five, and again from
seven to eight, and after that to page me in the dining-room.”

In
plotting these hours he forgot to add that Nicole was not to be told; when he
remembered it he was talking into a dead telephone. Certainly
Kaethe
should realize.

. . .
Kaethe
had no exact intention of telling Nicole about the
call when she rode up the deserted hill of mountain wild-flowers and secret
winds, where the patients were taken to ski in winter and to climb in spring.
Getting off the train she saw Nicole shepherding the children through some
organized romp. Approaching, she drew her arm gently along Nicole’s shoulder,
saying: “You are clever with children—you must teach them more about swimming
in the summer.”

In the
play they had grown hot, and Nicole’s reflex in drawing away from
Kaethe’s
arm was automatic to the point of rudeness.
Kaethe’s
hand fell awkwardly into space, and then she too
reacted, verbally, and deplorably.

“Did you
think I was going to embrace you?” she demanded sharply. “It was only about
Dick, I talked on the phone to him and I was sorry—”

“Is
anything the matter with Dick?”

Kaethe
suddenly realized her error, but she had taken a tactless course and there was
no choice but to answer as Nicole pursued her with reiterated questions: “. . .
then why were you sorry?”

“Nothing about Dick.
I must talk to Franz.”

“It is
about Dick.”

There
was terror in her face and collaborating alarm in the faces of the Diver
children, near at hand.
Kaethe
collapsed with: “Your
father is ill in
Lausanne
—Dick
wants to talk to Franz about it.”

“Is he
very sick?” Nicole demanded—just as Franz came up with his hearty hospital
manner. Gratefully
Kaethe
passed the remnant of the
buck to him—but the damage was done.

“I’m
going to
Lausanne
,”
announced Nicole.

“One
minute,” said Franz. “I’m not sure it’s advisable. I must first talk on the
phone to Dick.”

“Then
I’ll miss the train down,” Nicole protested, “and then I’ll miss the
three o’clock
from
Zurich
! If my father is dying I must—” She
left this in the air, afraid to formulate it. “I MUST go. I’ll have to run for
the train.” She was running even as she spoke toward the sequence of flat cars
that crowned the bare hill with bursting steam and sound. Over her shoulder she
called back, “If you phone Dick tell him I’m coming, Franz!” . . .

. . .
Dick was in his own room in the hotel reading The New York Herald when the
swallow-like nun rushed in—simultaneously the phone rang.

“Is he
dead?” Dick demanded of the nun, hopefully.

“Monsieur,
il
est
parti
—he has gone away.”

“Com-MENT?”

“Il
est
parti
—his man and his baggage
have gone away too!”

It was
incredible.
A man in that condition to arise and depart.

Dick
answered the phone-call from Franz. “You shouldn’t have told Nicole,” he
protested.

“
Kaethe
told her, very unwisely.”

“I
suppose it was my fault. Never tell a thing to a woman till it’s done. However,
I’ll meet Nicole . . . say, Franz, the craziest thing has happened down
here—the old boy took up his bed and walked. . . .”