Tender Is the Night (43 page)

Lanier
was an unpredictable boy with an inhuman curiosity. “Well, how many Pomeranians
would it take to lick a lion, father?” was typical of the questions with which
he harassed Dick.
Topsy
was easier. She was nine and
very fair and exquisitely made like Nicole, and in the past Dick had worried
about that. Lately she had become as robust as any American child. He was
satisfied with them both, but conveyed the fact to them only in a tacit way.
They were not let off breaches of good conduct—“Either one learns politeness at
home,” Dick said, “or the world teaches it to you with a whip and you may get
hurt in the process. What do I care whether
Topsy
‘adores’ me or not? I’m not bringing her up to be my wife.”

Another
element that distinguished this summer and autumn for the Divers was a
plenitude of money. Due to the sale of their interest in the clinic, and to
developments in
America
,
there was now so much that the mere spending of it, the care of goods, was an
absorption in itself. The style in which they travelled seemed fabulous.

Regard
them, for example, as the train slows up at
Boyen
where they are to spend a fortnight visiting. The shifting from the wagon-lit
has begun at the Italian frontier. The governess’s maid and Madame Diver’s maid
have come up from second class to help with the baggage and the dogs. Mlle.
Bellois
will superintend the hand- luggage, leaving the
Sealyhams to one maid and the pair of Pekinese to the other. It is not
necessarily poverty of spirit that makes a woman
surround
herself with life—it can be a superabundance of interest, and, except during
her flashes of illness, Nicole was capable of being curator of it all. For
example with the great quantity of heavy baggage—presently from the van would
be unloaded four wardrobe trunks, a shoe trunk, three hat trunks, and two hat
boxes, a chest of servants’ trunks, a portable filing-cabinet, a medicine case,
a spirit lamp container, a picnic set, four tennis rackets in presses and
cases, a phonograph, a typewriter.
Distributed among the
spaces reserved for family and entourage were two dozen supplementary grips,
satchels and packages, each one numbered, down to the tag on the cane case.
Thus all of it could be checked up in two minutes on any station platform, some
for storage,
some
for accompaniment from the “light
trip list” or the “heavy trip list,” constantly revised, and carried on
metal-edged plaques in Nicole’s purse. She had devised the system as a child
when travelling with her failing mother. It was equivalent to the system of a
regimental supply officer who must think of the bellies and equipment of three
thousand men.

The
Divers flocked from the train into the early gathered twilight of the valley.
The village people watched the debarkation with
an
awe
akin to that which followed the Italian
pilgrimages of Lord Byron a century before. Their hostess was the
Contessa
di
Minghetti
,
lately Mary North. The journey that had begun in a room over the shop of a
paperhanger in
Newark
had ended in an extraordinary marriage.

“Conte
di
Minghetti
” was merely a papal
title—the wealth of Mary’s husband flowed from his being ruler-owner of
manganese deposits in southwestern
Asia
. He
was not quite light enough to travel in a
pullman
south of Mason-Dixon; he was of the
Kyble
-Berber-
Sabaean
- Hindu strain that belts across
north
Africa and
Asia
, more sympathetic to the
European than the mongrel faces of the ports.

When
these princely households, one of the
East
, one of the
West, faced each other on the station platform, the splendor of the Divers
seemed pioneer simplicity by comparison. Their hosts were accompanied by an
Italian major-domo carrying a staff, by a quartet of turbaned retainers on
motorcycles, and by two half-veiled females who stood respectfully a little
behind Mary and salaamed at Nicole, making her jump with the gesture.

To Mary
as well as to the Divers the greeting was faintly comic; Mary gave an
apologetic, belittling giggle; yet her voice, as she introduced her husband by
his Asiatic title, flew proud and high.

In their
rooms as they dressed for dinner, Dick and Nicole grimaced at each other in an
awed way: such rich as want to be thought democratic pretend in private to be
swept off their feet by swank.

“Little
Mary North knows what she wants,” Dick muttered through his shaving cream. “Abe
educated her, and now she’s married to a Buddha. If
Europe
ever goes Bolshevik she’ll turn up as the bride of Stalin.”

Nicole
looked around from her dressing-case. “Watch your tongue, Dick, will you?” But
she laughed. “They’re very swell. The warships all fire at them or salute them
or something. Mary rides in the royal bus in
London
.”

“All
right,” he agreed. As he heard Nicole at the door asking for pins, he called,
“I wonder if I could have some whiskey; I feel the mountain air!”

“She’ll
see to it,” presently Nicole called through the bathroom door. “It was one of
those women who were at the station. She has her veil off.”

“What
did Mary tell you about life?” he asked.

“She
didn’t say so much—she was interested in high life—she asked me a lot of
questions about my genealogy and all that sort of thing, as if I knew anything
about it. But it seems the bridegroom has two very tan children by another
marriage—one of them ill with some Asiatic thing they can’t diagnose. I’ve got
to warn the children.
Sounds very peculiar to me.
Mary
will see how we’d feel about it.” She stood worrying a minute.

“She’ll
understand,” Dick reassured her. “Probably the child’s in bed.”

At
dinner Dick talked to
Hosain
, who had been at an
English public school.
Hosain
wanted to know about
stocks and about
Hollywood
and Dick, whipping up his imagination with champagne, told him preposterous
tales.

“Billions?”
Hosain
demanded.

“Trillions,”
Dick assured him.

“I
didn’t truly realize—”

“Well,
perhaps millions,” Dick conceded. “Every hotel guest is assigned a harem—or
what amounts to a harem.”

“Other than the actors and directors?”

“Every hotel guest—even travelling salesmen.
Why, they tried to send me up a
dozen candidates, but Nicole wouldn’t stand for it.”

Nicole
reproved him when they were in their room alone.
“Why so many
highballs?
Why did you use your word spic in front of him?”

“Excuse
me, I meant smoke. The tongue slipped.”

“Dick,
this isn’t faintly like you.”

“Excuse
me again. I’m not much like myself
any more
.”

That
night Dick opened a bathroom window, giving on a narrow and tubular court of
the château, gray as rats but echoing at the moment to plaintive and peculiar
music, sad as a flute. Two men were chanting in an Eastern language or dialect
full of
k’s
and l’s—he leaned out but he could not
see them; there was obviously a religious significance in the sounds, and tired
and emotionless he let them pray for him too, but what for, save that he should
not lose himself in his increasing melancholy, he did not know.

Next
day, over a thinly wooded hillside they shot scrawny birds, distant poor
relations to the partridge. It was done in a vague imitation of the English
manner, with a corps of inexperienced beaters whom Dick managed to miss by
firing only directly overhead.

On their
return Lanier was waiting in their suite.

“Father,
you said tell you immediately if we were near the sick boy.”

Nicole
whirled about, immediately on guard.

“—so,
Mother,” Lanier continued, turning to her, “the boy takes a bath every evening
and
to
-night he took his bath just before mine and I
had to take mine in his water, and it was dirty.”

“What?
Now what?”

“I saw
them take Tony out of it, and then they called me into it and the water was
dirty.”

“But—did
you take it?”

“Yes,
Mother.”

“Heavens!”
she exclaimed to Dick.

He
demanded: “Why didn’t
Lucienne
draw your bath?”

“
Lucienne
can’t. It’s a funny heater—it reached out of
itself and burned her arm last night and she’s afraid of it, so one of those
two women—”

“You go
in this bathroom and take a bath now.”

“Don’t
say
I
told you,” said Lanier from the doorway.

Dick
went in and sprinkled the tub with
sulphur
; closing
the door he said to Nicole:

“Either
we speak to Mary or we’d better get out.”

She
agreed and he continued: “People think their children are constitutionally
cleaner than other people’s, and their diseases are less contagious.”

Dick
came in and helped himself from the decanter, chewing a biscuit savagely in the
rhythm of the pouring water in the bathroom.

“Tell
Lucienne
that she’s got to learn about the heater—” he
suggested. At that moment the Asiatic woman came in person to the door.

“El
Contessa
—”

Dick
beckoned her inside and closed the door.

“Is the
little sick boy better?” he inquired pleasantly.

“Better,
yes, but he still has the eruptions frequently.”

“That’s
too bad—I’m very sorry. But you see our children mustn’t be bathed in his
water. That’s out of the question—I’m sure your mistress would be furious if
she had known you had done a thing like that.”

“I?” She
seemed thunderstruck. “Why, I merely saw your maid had difficulty with the
heater—I told her about it and started the water.”

“But
with a sick person you must empty the bathwater entirely out, and clean the
tub.”

“I?”

Chokingly
the woman drew a long breath, uttered a convulsed sob and rushed from the room.

“She
mustn’t get up on western civilization at our expense,” he said grimly.

At
dinner that night he decided that it must inevitably be a truncated visit:
about his own country
Hosain
seemed to have observed
only that there were many mountains and some goats and herders of goats. He was
a reserved young man—to draw him out would have required the sincere effort
that Dick now reserved for his family. Soon after dinner
Hosain
left Mary and the Divers to themselves, but the old unity was split—between
them lay the restless social fields that Mary was about to conquer. Dick was
relieved when, at nine-thirty, Mary received and read a note and got up.

“You’ll
have to excuse me. My husband is leaving on a short trip— and I must be with
him.”

Next
morning, hard on the heels of the servant bringing coffee, Mary entered their
room. She was dressed and they were not dressed, and she had the air of having
been up for some time. Her face was toughened with quiet jerky fury.

“What is
this story about Lanier having been bathed in a dirty bath?”

Dick
began to protest, but she cut through:

“What is
this story that you commanded my husband’s sister to clean Lanier’s tub?”

She
remained on her feet staring at them, as they sat impotent as idols in their
beds, weighted by their trays. Together they exclaimed: “His SISTER!”

“That
you ordered one of his sisters to clean out a tub!”

“We
didn’t—” their voices rang together saying the same thing, “— I spoke to the
native servant—”

“You
spoke to
Hosain’s
sister.”

Dick
could only say: “I supposed they were two maids.”

“You
were told they were
Himadoun
.”

“What?”
Dick got out of bed and into a robe.

“I
explained it to you at the piano night before last. Don’t tell me you were too
merry to understand.”

“Was
that what you said? I didn’t hear the beginning. I didn’t connect the—we didn’t
make any connection, Mary. Well, all we can do is see her and apologize.”

“See her
and apologize! I explained to you that when the oldest member of the
family—when the oldest one marries, well, the two oldest sisters consecrate
themselves to being
Himadoun
, to being his wife’s
ladies-in-waiting.”

“Was
that why
Hosain
left the house last night?”

Mary
hesitated; then nodded.