Tender Is the Night (37 page)

“You
were with
Nicotera
last night?”

“That’s
none of your business,” she sobbed. “Excuse me, Dick, it is your business. You
and Mother are the only two people in the world I care about.”

“How about
Nicotera
?”

“How do
I know?”

She had
achieved the elusiveness that gives hidden significance to the least
significant remarks.

“Is it
like you felt toward me in
Paris
?”

“I feel
comfortable and happy when I’m with you. In
Paris
it was different. But you never know
how you once felt. Do you?”

He got
up and began collecting his evening clothes—if he had to bring all the
bitterness and hatred of the world into his heart, he was not going to be in
love with her again.

“I don’t
care about
Nicotera
!” she declared. “But I’ve got to
go to
Livorno
with the company to-morrow. Oh,
why did this have to happen?” There was a new flood of tears. “It’s such a shame.
Why did you come here? Why couldn’t we just have the memory anyhow? I feel as
if I’d
quarrelled
with Mother.”

As he
began to dress, she got up and went to the door.

“I won’t
go to the party to-night.” It was her last effort. “I’ll stay with you. I don’t
want to go anyhow.”

The tide
began to flow again, but he retreated from it.

“I’ll be
in my room,” she said.
“Good-by, Dick.”

“Good-by.”

“Oh, such a shame, such a shame.
Oh, such a shame. What’s it all about anyhow?”

“I’ve
wondered for a long time.”

“But why
bring it to me?”

“I guess
I’m the Black Death,” he said slowly. “I don’t seem to bring people happiness
any more
.”

XXII

There
were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high- class Italian frail
who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender’s
bored: “Si . . . Si . . . Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but
chary of the woman, and the two Americans.

Dick was
always vividly conscious of his surroundings, while Collis Clay lived vaguely,
the sharpest impressions dissolving upon a recording apparatus that had early
atrophied, so the former talked and the latter listened, like a man sitting in
a breeze.

Dick,
worn away by the events of the afternoon, was taking it out on the inhabitants
of
Italy
.
He looked around the bar as if he hoped an Italian had heard him and would
resent his words.

“This
afternoon I had tea with my sister-in-law at the Excelsior. We got the last
table and two men came up and looked around for a table and couldn’t find one.
So one of them came up to us and said, ‘Isn’t this table reserved for the
Princess
Orsini
?’ and I said: ‘There was no sign on
it,’ and he said: ‘But I think it’s reserved for the Princess
Orsini
.’ I couldn’t even answer him.”

“What’d
he do?”

“He
retired.” Dick switched around in his chair. “I don’t like these people. The
other day I left Rosemary for two minutes in front of a store and an officer
started walking up and down in front of her, tipping his hat.”

“I don’t
know,” said Collis after a moment. “I’d rather be here than up in
Paris
with somebody
picking your pocket every minute.”

He had
been enjoying himself, and he held out against anything that threatened to dull
his pleasure.

“I don’t
know,” he persisted. “I don’t mind it here.”

Dick
evoked the picture that the few days had imprinted on his mind, and stared at
it. The walk toward the American Express past the odorous confectioneries of
the Via
Nationale
, through the foul tunnel up to the
Spanish Steps, where his spirit soared before the flower stalls and the house
where Keats had died. He cared only about people; he was scarcely conscious of
places except for their weather, until they had been invested with color by
tangible events.
Rome
was the end of his dream of Rosemary.

A
bell-boy came in and gave him a note.

“I did
not go to the party,” it said. “I am in my room. We leave for
Livorno
early in the morning.”

Dick
handed the note and a tip to the boy.

“Tell
Miss Hoyt you couldn’t find me.” Turning to Collis he suggested the
Bonbonieri
.

They
inspected the tart at the bar, granting her the minimum of interest exacted by
her profession, and she stared back with bright boldness; they went through the
deserted lobby oppressed by draperies holding Victorian dust in stuffy folds,
and they nodded at the night concierge who returned the gesture with the bitter
servility peculiar to night servants. Then in a taxi they rode along cheerless
streets through a dank November night. There were no women in the streets, only
pale men with dark coats buttoned to the neck, who stood in groups beside
shoulders of cold stone.

“My God!”
Dick sighed.

“What’s
a matter?”

“I was
thinking of that man this afternoon: ‘This table is reserved for the Princess
Orsini
.’ Do you know what these old Roman families are?
They’re bandits, they’re the ones who got possession of the temples and palaces
after
Rome
went
to pieces and preyed on the people.”

“I like
Rome
,” insisted Collis.
“Why won’t you try the races?”

“I don’t
like races.”

“But all
the women turn out—”

“I know
I wouldn’t like anything here. I like
France
, where everybody thinks he’s
Napoleon—down here everybody thinks he’s Christ.”

At the
Bonbonieri
they descended to a
panelled
cabaret, hopelessly impermanent amid the cold stone. A listless band played a
tango and a dozen couples covered the wide floor with those elaborate and
dainty steps so offensive to the American eye. A surplus of waiters precluded
the stir and bustle that even a few busy men can create; over the scene as its
form of animation brooded an air of waiting for something, for the dance, the
night, the balance of forces which kept it stable, to cease. It assured the
impressionable guest that whatever he was seeking he would not find it here.

This was
plain as plain to Dick. He looked around, hoping his eye would catch on
something, so that spirit instead of imagination could carry on for an hour.
But there was nothing and after a moment he turned back to Collis. He had told
Collis some of his current notions, and he was bored with his audience’s short
memory and lack of response. After half an hour of Collis he felt a distinct
lesion of his own vitality.

They
drank a bottle of Italian
mousseaux
, and Dick became
pale and somewhat noisy. He called the orchestra leader over to their table;
this was a
Bahama
Negro, conceited and unpleasant,
and in a few minutes there was a row.

“You
asked me to sit down.”

“All right.
And I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I?”

“All right.
All right.
All right.”

“All
right, I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I? Then you come up and asked me to put
some more in the horn!”

“You
asked me to sit down, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I asked
you to sit down but I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I?”

“All right.
All right.”

The
Negro got up sourly and went away, leaving Dick in a still more evil humor. But
he saw a girl smiling at him from across the room and immediately the pale
Roman shapes around him receded into decent, humble perspective. She was a
young English girl, with blonde hair and a healthy, pretty English face and she
smiled at him again with an invitation he understood, that denied the flesh
even in the act of tendering it.

“There’s
a quick trick or else I don’t know bridge,” said Collis.

Dick got
up and walked to her across the room.

“Won’t
you dance?”

The
middle-aged Englishman with whom she was sitting said, almost apologetically:
“I’m going out soon.”

Sobered
by excitement Dick danced. He found in the girl a suggestion of all the
pleasant English things; the story of safe gardens ringed around by the sea was
implicit in her bright voice and as he leaned back to look at her, he meant
what he said to her so sincerely that his voice trembled. When her current
escort should leave, she promised to come and sit with them. The Englishman
accepted her return with repeated apologies and smiles.

Back at
his table Dick ordered another bottle of
spumante
.

“She
looks like somebody in the movies,” he said. “I can’t think who.” He glanced
impatiently over his shoulder. “Wonder what’s keeping her?”

“I’d
like to get in the movies,” said Collis thoughtfully. “I’m supposed to go into
my father’s business but it doesn’t appeal to me much. Sit in an office in
Birmingham
for twenty
years—”

His
voice resisted the pressure of materialistic civilization.

“Too
good for it?” suggested Dick.

“No, I
don’t mean that.”

“Yes,
you do.”

“How do
you know what I mean? Why don’t you
practise
as a
doctor, if you like to work so much?”

Dick had
made them both wretched by this time, but simultaneously they had become vague
with drink and in a moment they forgot; Collis
left,
and they shook hands warmly.

“Think
it over,” said Dick sagely.

“Think
what over?”

“You
know.” It had been something about Collis going into his father’s business—good
sound advice.

Clay
walked off into space. Dick finished his bottle and then danced with the
English girl again, conquering his unwilling body with bold revolutions and
stern determined marches down the floor. The most remarkable thing suddenly
happened. He was dancing with the girl, the music stopped—and she had
disappeared.

“Have
you seen her?”

“Seen
who?”

“The
girl I was dancing with.
Su’nly
disappeared.
Must be in the building.”

“No! No!
That’s the ladies’ room.”

He stood
up by the bar. There were two other men there, but he could think of no way of
starting a conversation. He could have told them all about
Rome
and the violent origins of the Colonna
and
Gaetani
families but he realized that as a
beginning that would be somewhat abrupt. A row of
Yenci
dolls on the cigar counter fell suddenly to the floor; there was a subsequent
confusion and he had a sense of having been the cause of it, so he went back to
the cabaret and drank a cup of black coffee. Collis was gone and the English
girl was gone and there seemed nothing to do but go back to the hotel and lie
down with his black heart. He paid his check and got his hat and coat.

There
was dirty water in the gutters and between the rough cobblestones; a marshy
vapor from the
Campagna
, a sweat of exhausted
cultures tainted the morning air. A quartet of taxi- drivers, their little eyes
bobbing in dark pouches, surrounded him. One who leaned insistently in his face
he pushed harshly away.

“
Quanto
a Hotel Quirinal?”

“Cento lire.”

Six dollars.
He shook his head and offered thirty lire which was twice the day-time
fare, but they shrugged their shoulders as one pair, and moved off.

“
Trente-cinque
lire e
mancie
,” he
said firmly.

“Cento lire.”

He broke
into English.

“To go half a mile?
You’ll take me for forty lire.”

“Oh, no.”

He was
very tired. He pulled open the door of a cab and got in.

“Hotel
Quirinal!” he said to the driver who stood obstinately outside the window.
“Wipe that sneer off your face and take me to the
Quirinal
.”

“Ah, no.”

Dick got
out. By the door of the
Bonbonieri
some one
was arguing with the taxi-drivers,
some one
who now tried to explain their attitude to Dick;
again one of the men pressed close, insisting and gesticulating and Dick shoved
him away.