Tender Is the Night (36 page)

It was
like visiting a great turbulent family. An actress approached Dick and talked
to him for five minutes under the impression that he was an actor recently
arrived from
London
.
Discovering her mistake she scuttled away in panic. The majority of the company
felt either sharply superior or sharply inferior to the world outside, but the
former feeling prevailed. They were people of bravery and industry; they were
risen
to a position of prominence in a nation that for a
decade had wanted only to be entertained.

The
session ended as the light grew misty—a fine light for painters, but, for the
camera, not to be compared with the clear
California
air.
Nicotera
followed Rosemary to the car and whispered something to her—she looked at him
without smiling as she said good-by.

Dick and
Rosemary had luncheon at the
Castelli
dei
Cæsari
, a splendid restaurant
in a high-terraced villa overlooking the ruined forum of an undetermined period
of the decadence. Rosemary took a cocktail and a little wine, and Dick took
enough so that his feeling of dissatisfaction left him. Afterward they drove
back to the hotel, all flushed and happy, in a sort of exalted quiet. She
wanted to be taken and she was, and what had begun with a childish infatuation
on a beach was accomplished at last.

XXI

Rosemary
had another dinner date, a birthday party for a member of the company. Dick ran
into Collis Clay in the lobby, but he wanted to dine alone, and pretended an
engagement at the Excelsior. He drank a cocktail with Collis and his vague
dissatisfaction crystallized as impatience—he no longer had an excuse for
playing truant to the clinic. This was less an infatuation than a romantic
memory. Nicole was his girl—too often he was sick at heart about her, yet she
was his girl. Time with Rosemary was self-indulgence— time with Collis was
nothing plus nothing.

In the
doorway of the Excelsior he ran into Baby Warren. Her large beautiful eyes,
looking precisely like marbles, stared at him with surprise and curiosity. “I
thought you were in
America
,
Dick! Is Nicole with you?”

“I came
back by way of
Naples
.”

The
black band on his arm reminded her to say: “I’m so sorry to hear of your
trouble.”

Inevitably
they dined together.

“Tell me
about everything,” she demanded.

Dick
gave her a version of the facts, and Baby frowned. She found it necessary to
blame
some one
for the catastrophe in her sister’s
life.

“Do you
think Doctor
Dohmler
took the right course with her
from the first?”

“There’s
not much variety in treatment any more—of course you try to find the right
personality to handle a particular case.”

“Dick, I
don’t pretend to advise you or to know much about it but don’t you think a
change might be good for her—to get out of that atmosphere of sickness and live
in the world like other people?”

“But you
were keen for the clinic,” he reminded her. “You told me you’d never feel
really safe about her—”

“That
was when you were leading that hermit’s life on the
Riviera
, up on a hill way off from anybody.
I didn’t mean to go back to that life. I meant, for instance,
London
. The English are the best-balanced
race in the world.”

“They
are not,” he disagreed.

“They
are. I know them, you see. I meant it might be nice for you to take a house in
London
for the spring
season—I know a dove of a house in

She
would have gone on to tell him all the old propaganda stories of 1914 if he had
not laughed and said:

“I’ve been
reading a book by Michael Arlen and if that’s—”

She
ruined Michael Arlen with a wave of her salad spoon.

“He only
writes about degenerates. I mean the worthwhile English.”

As she
thus dismissed her friends they were replaced in Dick’s mind only by a picture
of the alien, unresponsive faces that peopled the small hotels of
Europe
.

“Of
course it’s none of my business,” Baby repeated, as a preliminary to a further
plunge, “but to leave her alone in an atmosphere like that—”

“I went
to
America
because my father died.”

“I
understand that, I told you how sorry I was.” She fiddled with the glass grapes
on her necklace. “But there’s so MUCH money now. Plenty for
everything,
and it ought to be used to get Nicole well.”

“For one
thing I can’t see myself in
London
.”

“Why not?
I should think you could work there as well as anywhere else.”

He sat
back and looked at her. If she had ever suspected the rotted old truth, the
real reason for Nicole’s illness, she had certainly determined to deny it to
herself, shoving it back in a dusty closet like one of the paintings she bought
by mistake.

They
continued the conversation in the
Ulpia
, where Collis
Clay came over to their table and sat down, and a gifted guitar player thrummed
and rumbled “
Suona
Fanfara
Mia” in the cellar piled with wine casks.

“It’s
possible that I was the wrong person for Nicole,” Dick said. “Still she would
probably have married some one of my type,
some one
she thought she could rely on—indefinitely.”

“You
think she’d be happier with somebody else?” Baby thought aloud suddenly. “Of
course it could be arranged.”

Only as
she saw Dick bend forward with helpless laughter did she realize the
preposterousness of her remark.

“Oh, you
understand,” she assured him. “Don’t think for a moment that we’re not grateful
for all you’ve done. And we know you’ve had a hard time—”

“For
God’s sake,” he protested. “If I didn’t love Nicole it might be different.”

“But you
do love Nicole?” she demanded in alarm.

Collis
was catching up with the conversation now and Dick switched it quickly:
“Suppose we talk about something else—about you, for instance. Why don’t you
get married? We heard you were engaged to Lord Paley, the cousin of the—”

“Oh, no.”
She became coy and elusive. “That was last year.”

“Why
don’t you marry?” Dick insisted stubbornly.

“I don’t
know. One of the men I loved was killed in the war, and the other one threw me
over.”

“Tell me
about it. Tell me about your private life, Baby, and your opinions. You never
do—we always talk about Nicole.”

“Both of
them were Englishmen. I don’t think there’s any higher type in the world than a
first-rate Englishman, do you? If there is I haven’t met him. This man—oh, it’s
a long story. I hate long stories, don’t you?”

“And
how!” said Collis.

“Why,
no—I like them if they’re good.”

“That’s
something you do so well, Dick. You can keep a party moving by just a little
sentence or a saying here and there. I think that’s a wonderful talent.”

“It’s a
trick,” he said gently. That made three of her opinions he disagreed with.

“Of
course I like formality—I like things to be just so, and on the grand scale. I
know you probably don’t but you must admit it’s a sign of solidity in me.”

Dick did
not even bother to dissent from this.

“Of
course I know people say, Baby Warren is racing around over
Europe
,
chasing one novelty after another, and missing the best things in life, but I
think on the contrary that I’m one of the few people who really go after the
best things. I’ve known the most interesting people of my time.” Her voice
blurred with the tinny drumming of another guitar number, but she called over
it, “I’ve made very few big mistakes—”

“—
Only
the very big ones, Baby.”

She had
caught something facetious in his eye and she changed the subject. It seemed
impossible for them to hold anything in common. But he admired something in
her, and he deposited her at the Excelsior with a series of compliments that
left her shimmering.

Rosemary
insisted on treating Dick to lunch next day. They went to a little
trattoria
kept by an Italian who had worked in
America
, and
ate ham and eggs and waffles. Afterward, they went to the hotel. Dick’s
discovery that he was not in love with her, nor she with him, had added to
rather than diminished his passion for her. Now that he knew he would not enter
further into her life, she became the strange woman for him. He supposed many
men meant no more than that when they said they were in love—not a wild
submergence of soul, a dipping of all colors into an obscuring dye, such as his
love for Nicole had been. Certain thoughts about Nicole, that she should die,
sink into mental darkness, love another man, made him physically sick.

Nicotera
was in Rosemary’s sitting-room, chattering about a professional matter. When
Rosemary gave him his cue to go, he left with humorous protests and a rather
insolent wink at Dick. As usual the phone clamored and Rosemary was engaged at
it for ten minutes, to Dick’s increasing impatience.

“Let’s
go up to my room,” he suggested, and she agreed.

She lay
across his knees on a big sofa; he ran his fingers through the lovely forelocks
of her hair.

“Let me
be curious about you again?” he asked.

“What do
you want to know?”

“About men.
I’m curious, not to say prurient.”

“You
mean how long after I met you?”

“Or before.”

“Oh, no.”
She was shocked. “There was nothing before. You were the first man I cared
about. You’re still the only man I really care about.” She considered. “It was
about a year, I think.”

“Who was
it?”

“Oh, a man.”

He
closed in on her evasion.

“I’ll
bet I can tell you about it: the first affair was unsatisfactory and after that
there was a long gap. The second was better, but you hadn’t been in love with
the man in the first place. The third was all right—”

Torturing
himself he ran on. “Then you had one real affair that fell of its own weight, and
by that time you were getting afraid that you wouldn’t have anything to give to
the man you finally loved.” He felt increasingly Victorian. “Afterwards there
were half a dozen just episodic affairs, right up to the present. Is that
close?”

She
laughed between amusement and tears.

“It’s
about as wrong as it could be,” she said, to Dick’s relief. “But some day I’m
going to find somebody and love him and love him and never let him go.”

Now his
phone rang and Dick recognized
Nicotera’s
voice,
asking for Rosemary. He put his palm over the transmitter.

“Do you
want to talk to him?”

She went
to the phone and jabbered in a rapid Italian Dick could not understand.

“This
telephoning takes time,” he said. “It’s after four and I have an engagement at
five. You better go play with Signor
Nicotera
.”

“Don’t
be silly.”

“Then I
think that while I’m here you ought to count him out.”

“It’s
difficult.” She was suddenly crying. “Dick, I do love you, never anybody like
you. But what have you got for me?”

“What
has
Nicotera
got for anybody?”

“That’s
different.”

—Because
youth called to youth.

“He’s a
spic!” he said. He was frantic with
jealousy,
he
didn’t want to be hurt again.

“He’s
only a baby,” she said, sniffling. “You know I’m yours first.”

In
reaction he put his arms about her but she relaxed wearily backward; he held
her like that for a moment as in the end of an adagio, her eyes closed, her
hair falling straight back like that of a girl drowned.

“Dick,
let me go. I never felt so mixed up in my life.”

He was a
gruff red bird and instinctively she drew away from him as his unjustified
jealousy began to snow over the qualities of consideration and understanding
with which she felt at home.

“I want
to know the truth,” he said.

“Yes,
then. We’re a lot together, he wants to marry me, but I don’t want to. What of
it? What do you expect me to do? You never asked me to marry you. Do you want
me to play around forever with half-wits like Collis Clay?”