Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (139 page)

“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. . . .”

“At what? What did you say?”

“I say he walked, old Warren--he walked!”

“But why not?”

“He was supposed to be dying of general collapse . . . he got up and walked away, back to Chicago, I guess. . . . I don’t know, the nurse is here now. . . . I don’t know, Franz--I’ve just heard about it. . . . Call me later.”

He spent the better part of two hours tracing Warren’s movements. The patient had found an opportunity between the change of day and night nurses to resort to the bar where he had gulped down four whiskeys; he paid his hotel bill with a thousand dollar note, instructing the desk that the change should be sent after him, and departed, presumably for America. A last minute dash by Dick and Dangeu to overtake him at the station resulted only in Dick’s failing to meet Nicole; when they did meet in the lobby of the hotel she seemed suddenly tired, and there was a tight purse to her lips that disquieted him.

“How’s father?” she demanded.

“He’s much better. He seemed to have a good deal of reserve energy after all.” He hesitated, breaking it to her easy. “In fact he got up and went away.”

Wanting a drink, for the chase had occupied the dinner hour, he led her, puzzled, toward the grill, and continued as they occupied two leather easy-chairs and ordered a high-ball and a glass of beer: “The man who was taking care of him made a wrong prognosis or something--wait a minute, I’ve hardly had time to think the thing out myself.”

“He’s
gone?”

“He got the evening train for Paris.”

They sat silent. From Nicole flowed a vast tragic apathy.

“It was instinct,” Dick said, finally. “He was really dying, but he tried to get a resumption of rhythm--he’s not the first person that ever walked off his death-bed--like an old clock--you know, you shake it and somehow from sheer habit it gets going again. Now your father--”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said.

“His principal fuel was fear,” he continued. “He got afraid, and off he went. He’ll probably live till ninety--”

“Please don’t tell me any more,” she said. “Please don’t--I couldn’t stand any more.”

“All right. The little devil I came down to see is hopeless. We may as well go back to-morrow.”

“I don’t see why you have to--come in contact with all this,” she burst forth.

“Oh, don’t you? Sometimes I don’t either.”

She put her hand on his.

“Oh, I’m sorry I said that, Dick.”

Some one had brought a phonograph into the bar and they sat listening to The Wedding of the Painted Doll.

III

One morning a week later, stopping at the desk for his mail, Dick became aware of some extra commotion outside: Patient Von Cohn Morris was going away. His parents, Australians, were putting his baggage vehemently into a large limousine, and beside them stood Doctor Ladislau protesting with ineffectual attitudes against the violent gesturings of Morris, senior. The young man was regarding his embarkation with aloof cynicism as Doctor Diver approached.

“Isn’t this a little sudden, Mr. Morris?”

Mr. Morris started as he saw Dick--his florid face and the large checks on his suit seemed to turn off and on like electric lights. He approached Dick as though to strike him.

“High time we left, we and those who have come with us,” he began, and paused for breath. “It is high time, Doctor Diver. High time.”

“Will you come in my office?” Dick suggested.

“Not I! I’ll talk to you, but I’m washing my hands of you and your place.”

He shook his finger at Dick. “I was just telling this doctor here. We’ve wasted our time and our money.”

Doctor Ladislau stirred in a feeble negative, signalling up a vague Slavic evasiveness. Dick had never liked Ladislau. He managed to walk the excited Australian along the path in the direction of his office, trying to persuade him to enter; but the man shook his head.

“It’s you, Doctor Diver,
you,
the very man. I went to Doctor Ladislau because you were not to be found, Doctor Diver, and because Doctor Gregorovius is not expected until the nightfall, and I would not wait. No, sir! I would not wait a minute after my son told me the truth.”

He came up menacingly to Dick, who kept his hands loose enough to drop him if it seemed necessary. “My son is here for alcoholism, and he told us he smelt liquor on your breath. Yes, sir!” He made a quick, apparently unsuccessful sniff. “Not once, but twice Von Cohn says he has smelt liquor on your breath. I and my lady have never touched a drop of it in our lives. We hand Von Cohn to you to be cured, and within a month he twice smells liquor on your breath! What kind of cure is that there?”

Dick hesitated; Mr. Morris was quite capable of making a scene on the clinic drive.

“After all, Mr. Morris, some people are not going to give up what they regard as food because of your son--”

“But you’re a doctor, man!” cried Morris furiously. “When the workmen drink their beer that’s bad ‘cess to them--but you’re here supposing to cure--”

“This has gone too far. Your son came to us because of kleptomania.”

“What was behind it?” The man was almost shrieking. “Drink--black drink. Do you know what color black is? It’s black! My own uncle was hung by the neck because of it, you hear? My son comes to a sanitarium, and a doctor reeks of it!”

“I must ask you to leave.”

“You
ask
me! We
are
leaving!”

“If you could be a little temperate we could tell you the results of the treatment to date. Naturally, since you feel as you do, we would not want your son as a patient--”

“You dare to use the word temperate to me?”

Dick called to Doctor Ladislau and as he approached, said: “Will you represent us in saying good-by to the patient and to his family?”

He bowed slightly to Morris and went into his office, and stood rigid for a moment just inside the door. He watched until they drove away, the gross parents, the bland, degenerate offspring: it was easy to prophesy the family’s swing around Europe, bullying their betters with hard ignorance and hard money. But what absorbed Dick after the disappearance of the caravan was the question as to what extent he had provoked this. He drank claret with each meal, took a nightcap, generally in the form of hot rum, and sometimes he tippled with gin in the afternoons--gin was the most difficult to detect on the breath. He was averaging a half-pint of alcohol a day, too much for his system to burn up.