Tender Is the Night (44 page)

“He had
to—they all left. His honor makes it necessary.”

Now both
the Divers were up and dressing; Mary went on:

“And
what’s all that about the bathwater. As if a thing like that could happen in
this house! We’ll ask Lanier about it.”

Dick sat
on the bedside indicating in a private gesture to Nicole that she should take
over. Meanwhile Mary went to the door and spoke to an attendant in Italian.

“Wait a
minute,” Nicole said. “I won’t have that.”

“You
accused us,” answered Mary, in a tone she had never used to Nicole before. “Now
I have a right to see.”

“I won’t
have the child brought in.” Nicole threw on her clothes as though they were chain
mail.

“That’s
all right,” said Dick. “Bring Lanier in. We’ll settle this bathtub matter—fact
or myth.”

Lanier,
half clothed mentally and physically, gazed at the angered faces of the adults.

“Listen,
Lanier,” Mary demanded, “how did you come to think you were bathed in water
that had been used before?”

“Speak
up,” Dick added.

“It was
just dirty, that was all.”

“Couldn’t
you hear the new water running, from your room, next door?”

Lanier
admitted the possibility but reiterated his point—the water was dirty. He was a
little awed; he tried to see ahead:

“It
couldn’t have been running, because—”

They
pinned him down.

“Why not?”

He stood
in his little kimono arousing the sympathy of his parents and further arousing
Mary’s impatience—then he said:

“The
water was
dirty,
it was full of soap-suds.”

“When
you’re not sure what you’re saying—” Mary began, but Nicole interrupted.

“Stop
it, Mary. If there were dirty suds in the water it was logical to think it was
dirty. His father told him to come—”

“There
couldn’t have been dirty suds in the water.”

Lanier
looked reproachfully at his father, who had betrayed him. Nicole turned him
about by the shoulders and sent him out of the room; Dick broke the
tensity
with a laugh.

Then, as
if the sound recalled the past, the old friendship, Mary guessed how far away
from them she had gone and said in a mollifying tone: “It’s always like that
with children.”

Her
uneasiness grew as she remembered the past. “You’d be silly to go—
Hosain
wanted to make this trip anyhow. After all, you’re
my guests and you just blundered into the thing.” But Dick, made
more angry
by this obliqueness and the use of the word
blunder, turned away and began arranging his effects, saying:

“It’s
too bad about the young women. I’d like to apologize to the one who came in
here.”

“If you’d only listened on the piano seat!”

“But
you’ve gotten so damned dull, Mary. I listened as long as I could.”

“Be
quiet!” Nicole advised him.

“I
return his compliment,” said Mary bitterly.
“Good-by,
Nicole.”
She went out.

After
all that there was no question of her coming to see them off; the major-domo
arranged the departure. Dick left formal notes for
Hosain
and the sisters. There was nothing to do except to go, but all of them,
especially Lanier, felt bad about it.

“I
insist,” insisted Lanier on the train, “that it was dirty bathwater.”

“That’ll
do,” his father said. “You better forget it—unless you want me to divorce you.
Did you know there was a new law in
France
that you can divorce a
child?”

Lanier
roared with delight and the Divers were unified again—Dick wondered how many
more times it could be done.

Nicole
went to the window and bent over the sill to take a look at the rising
altercation on the terrace; the April sun shone pink on the saintly face of
Augustine, the cook, and blue on the butcher’s knife she waved in her drunken
hand. She had been with them since their return to Villa Diana in February.

Because
of an obstruction of an awning she could see only Dick’s head and his hand
holding one of his heavy canes with a bronze knob on it. The knife and the
cane, menacing each other, were like
tripos
and short
sword in a gladiatorial combat. Dick’s words reached her first:

“—care
how much kitchen wine you drink but when I find you digging into a bottle of
Chablis
Moutonne
—”

“You
talk about drinking!” Augustine cried, flourishing her
sabre
.
“You drink—all the time!”

Nicole
called over the awning: “What’s the matter, Dick?” and he answered in English:

“The old
girl has been polishing off the vintage wines. I’m firing her—at least I’m
trying to.”

“Heavens!
Well, don’t let her reach you with that knife.”

Augustine
shook her knife up at Nicole. Her old mouth was made of two small intersecting
cherries.

“I would
like to say, Madame, if you knew that your husband drinks over at his
Bastide
comparatively as a day-laborer—”

“Shut up
and get out!” interrupted Nicole. “We’ll get the gendarmes.”

“YOU’LL
get the gendarmes! With my brother in the corps!
You—a
disgusting American?”

In
English Dick called up to Nicole:

“Get the
children away from the house till I settle this.”

“—disgusting
Americans who come here and drink up our finest wines,” screamed Augustine with
the voice of the commune.

Dick
mastered a firmer tone.

“You
must leave now! I’ll pay you what we owe you.”

“Very
sure you’ll pay me! And let me tell you—” she came close and waved the knife so
furiously that Dick raised his stick, whereupon she rushed into the kitchen and
returned with the carving knife reinforced by a hatchet.

The
situation was not prepossessing—Augustine was a strong woman and could be
disarmed only at the risk of serious results to
herself—
and
severe legal complications which were the lot of one who molested a French
citizen. Trying a bluff Dick called up to Nicole:

“Phone
the
poste
de police.” Then to Augustine, indicating
her armament, “This means arrest for you.”

“Ha-HA!”
she laughed demoniacally; nevertheless she came no nearer. Nicole phoned the
police but was answered with what was almost an echo of Augustine’s laugh. She
heard mumbles and
passings
of the word around—the
connection was suddenly broken.

Returning
to the window she called down to Dick: “Give her something extra!”

“If I could get to that phone!”
As this seemed impracticable, Dick capitulated. For
fifty francs, increased to a hundred as he succumbed to the idea of getting her
out hastily, Augustine yielded her fortress, covering the retreat with stormy
grenades of “
Salaud
!” She would leave only when her
nephew could come for her baggage. Waiting cautiously in the neighborhood of
the kitchen Dick heard a cork pop, but he yielded the point. There was no
further trouble—when the nephew arrived, all apologetic, Augustine bade Dick a
cheerful, convivial good-by and called up “All
revoir
,
Madame!
Bonne chance!” to Nicole’s window.

The
Divers went to Nice and dined on a bouillabaisse, which is a stew of rock fish
and small lobsters, highly seasoned with saffron, and a bottle of cold Chablis.
He expressed pity for Augustine.

“I’m not
sorry a bit,” said Nicole.

“I’m
sorry—and yet I wish I’d shoved her over the cliff.”

There
was little they dared talk about in these days; seldom did they find the right
word when it counted, it arrived always a moment too late when one could not
reach the other
any more
. To- night Augustine’s
outburst had shaken them from their separate reveries; with the burn and chill
of the spiced broth and the parching wine they talked.

“We
can’t go on like this,” Nicole suggested. “Or can we?—what do you think?”
Startled that for the moment Dick did not deny it, she continued, “Some of the
time I think it’s my fault—I’ve ruined you.”

“So I’m
ruined, am I?” he inquired pleasantly.

“I
didn’t mean that. But you used to want to create things—now you seem to want to
smash them up.”

She
trembled at criticizing him in these broad terms—but his enlarging silence
frightened her even more. She guessed that something was developing behind the
silence, behind the hard, blue eyes, the almost unnatural interest in the
children. Uncharacteristic bursts of temper surprised her—he would suddenly
unroll a long scroll of contempt for some person, race, class, way of life,
way
of thinking. It was as though an incalculable story was
telling itself inside him, about which she could only guess at in the moments
when it broke through the surface.

“After
all, what do you get out of this?” she demanded.

“Knowing
you’re stronger every day.
Knowing that your illness follows
the law of diminishing returns.”

His
voice came to her from far off, as though he were speaking of something remote
and academic; her alarm made her exclaim, “Dick!” and she thrust her hand
forward to his across the table. A reflex pulled Dick’s hand back and he added:
“There’s the whole situation to think of, isn’t there?
There’s
not just you.” He covered her hand with his and said in the old pleasant voice
of a conspirator for pleasure, mischief, profit, and delight:

“See
that boat out there?”

It was
the motor yacht of T. F. Golding lying placid among the little swells of the
Nicean
Bay
, constantly bound
upon a romantic voyage that was not dependent upon actual motion. “We’ll go out
there now and ask the people on board what’s the matter with them. We’ll find
out if they’re happy.”

“We
hardly know him,” Nicole objected.

“He
urged us. Besides, Baby knows him—she practically married him, doesn’t
she—didn’t she?”

When
they put out from the port in a hired launch it was already summer dusk and
lights were breaking out in spasms along the rigging of the Margin. As they
drew up alongside, Nicole’s doubts reasserted themselves.

“He’s
having a party—”

“It’s
only a radio,” he guessed.

They
were hailed—a huge white-haired man in a white suit looked down at them,
calling:

“Do I
recognize the Divers?”

“Boat
ahoy, Margin!”

Their
boat moved under the companionway; as they mounted Golding doubled his huge
frame to give Nicole a hand.

“Just in time for dinner.”

A small
orchestra was playing astern.

“I’m
yours for the asking—but till then you can’t ask me to behave—”

And as
Golding’s cyclonic arms blew them aft without touching them, Nicole was sorrier
they had come, and more impatient at Dick. Having taken up an attitude of
aloofness from the gay people here, at the time when Dick’s work and her health
were incompatible with going about, they had a reputation as
refusers
.
Riviera
replacements during the ensuing years interpreted this as a vague unpopularity.
Nevertheless, having taken such a stand, Nicole felt it should not be cheaply
compromised for a momentary self- indulgence.

As they
passed through the principal salon they saw ahead of them figures that seemed
to dance in the half light of the circular stern. This was an illusion made by
the enchantment of the music, the unfamiliar lighting, and the surrounding
presence of water. Actually, save for some busy stewards, the guests loafed on
a wide divan that followed the curve of the deck. There were a white, a red, a
blurred dress, the laundered chests of several men, of whom one, detaching and
identifying himself, brought from Nicole a rare little cry of delight.

“Tommy!”

Brushing
aside the Gallicism of his formal dip at her hand, Nicole pressed her face
against his. They
sat,
or rather lay down together on
the
Antoninian
bench. His handsome face was so dark
as to have lost the pleasantness of deep tan, without attaining the blue beauty
of Negroes—it was just worn leather. The foreignness of his
depigmentation
by unknown suns, his nourishment by strange soils, his tongue awkward with the
curl of many dialects, his reactions attuned to odd alarms—these things
fascinated and rested Nicole—in the moment of meeting she lay on his bosom,
spiritually, going out and out. . . . Then self-preservation reasserted itself
and retiring to her own world she spoke lightly.