Tender Is the Night (7 page)

Now—she
was thinking—I’ve earned a time alone with him. He must know that because his
laws are like the laws Mother taught me.

Rosemary
was right—presently he detached her from the company on the terrace, and they
were alone together, borne away from the house toward the seaside wall with
what were less steps than irregularly spaced intervals through some of which
she was pulled, through others blown.

They
looked out over the
Mediterranean
. Far below,
the last excursion boat from the Isles des
Lerins
floated across the bay like a Fourth-of-July balloon foot-loose in the heavens.
Between the black isles it floated, softly parting the dark tide.

“I
understand why you speak as you do of your mother,” he said. “Her attitude
toward you is very fine, I think. She has a sort of wisdom that’s rare in
America
.”

“Mother
is perfect,” she prayed.

“I was
talking to her about a plan I have—she told me that how long you both stayed in
France
depended on you.”

On YOU,
Rosemary all but said aloud.

“So
since things are over down here—”

“Over?”
she inquired.

“Well,
this is over—this part of the summer is over. Last week Nicole’s sister left,
to-morrow Tommy
Barban
leaves, Monday Abe and Mary
North are leaving. Maybe we’ll have more fun this summer but this particular
fun is over. I want it to die violently instead of fading out
sentimentally—that’s why I gave this party. What I’m coming to is—Nicole and I
are going up to
Paris
to see Abe North off for
America
—I
wonder if you’d like to go with us.”

“What
did Mother say?”

“She
seemed to think it would be fine. She doesn’t want to go herself. She wants you
to go alone.”

“I
haven’t seen
Paris
since I’ve been grown,” said Rosemary. “I’d love to see it with you.”

“That’s
nice of you.” Did she imagine that his voice was suddenly metallic? “Of course
we’ve been excited about you from the moment you came on the beach. That
vitality, we were sure it was professional—especially Nicole was. It’d never
use itself up on any one person or group.”

Her
instinct cried out to her that he was passing her along slowly toward Nicole
and she put her own brakes on, saying with an equal harness:

“I
wanted to know all of you too—especially you. I told you I fell in love with
you the first time I saw you.”

She was
right going at it that way. But the space between heaven and earth had cooled
his mind, destroyed the impulsiveness that had led him to bring her here, and
made him aware of the too obvious appeal, the struggle with an unrehearsed
scene and unfamiliar words.

He tried
now to make her want to go back to the house and it was difficult, and he did
not quite want to lose her. She felt only the draft blowing as he joked with
her good-humoredly.

“You
don’t know what you want. You go and ask your mother what you want.”

She was
stricken. She touched him, feeling the smooth cloth of his dark coat like a
chasuble. She seemed about to fall to her knees— from that position she delivered
her last shot.

“I think
you’re the most wonderful person I ever met—except my mother.”

“You
have romantic eyes.”

His
laughter swept them on up toward the terrace where he delivered her to Nicole.
. . .

Too soon
it had become time to go and the Divers helped them all to go quickly. In the
Divers’ big
Isotta
there would be Tommy
Barban
and his baggage—he was spending the night at the
hotel to catch an early train—with Mrs. Abrams, the
McKiscos
and Campion. Earl Brady was going to drop Rosemary and her mother on his way to
Monte Carlo
,
and Royal
Dumphry
rode with them because the Divers’
car was crowded. Down in the garden lanterns still glowed over the table where
they had dined, as the Divers stood side by side in the gate, Nicole blooming
away and filling the night with graciousness, and Dick bidding good-by to
everyone by name. To Rosemary it seemed very poignant to drive away and leave
them in their house. Again she wondered what Mrs.
McKisco
had seen in the bathroom.

IX

It was a
limpid black night, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. The horn of
the car ahead was muffled by the resistance of the thick air. Brady’s chauffeur
drove slowly; the tail-light of the other car appeared from time to time at
turnings—then not at all. But after ten minutes it came into sight again, drawn
up at the side of the road. Brady’s chauffeur slowed up behind but immediately
it began to roll forward slowly and they passed it. In the instant they passed
it they heard a blur of voices from behind the reticence of the limousine and
saw that the Divers’ chauffeur was grinning. Then they went on, going fast
through the alternating banks of darkness and thin night, descending at last in
a series of roller-coaster swoops, to the great bulk of
Gausse’s
hotel.

Rosemary
dozed for three hours and then lay awake, suspended in the moonshine. Cloaked
by the erotic darkness she exhausted the future quickly, with all the
eventualities that might lead up to a kiss, but with the kiss itself as blurred
as a kiss in pictures. She changed position in bed deliberately, the first sign
of insomnia she had ever had, and tried to think with her mother’s mind about
the question. In this process she was often acute beyond her experience, with
remembered things from old conversations that had gone into her half-heard.

Rosemary
had been brought up with the idea of work. Mrs. Speers had spent the slim
leavings of the men who had widowed her on her daughter’s education, and when
she blossomed out at sixteen with that extraordinary hair, rushed her to
Aix-les-
Bains
and marched her unannounced into the
suite of an American producer who was recuperating there. When the producer
went to
New York
they went too. Thus Rosemary had passed her entrance examinations. With the
ensuing success and the promise of comparative stability that followed, Mrs.
Speers had felt free to tacitly imply tonight:

“You
were brought up to work—not especially to marry. Now you’ve found your first
nut to crack and it’s a good nut—
go
ahead and put
whatever happens down to experience. Wound yourself or him— whatever happens it
can’t spoil you because economically you’re a boy, not a girl.”

Rosemary
had never done much thinking, save about the illimitability of her mother’s
perfections, so this final severance of the umbilical cord disturbed her sleep.
A false dawn sent the sky pressing through the tall French windows, and getting
up she walked out on the terrace, warm to her bare feet. There were secret
noises in the air, an insistent bird achieved an ill-natured triumph with regularity
in the trees above the tennis court; footfalls followed a round drive in the
rear of the hotel, taking their tone in turn from the dust road, the
crushed-stone walk, the cement steps, and then reversing the process in going
away. Beyond the inky sea and far up that high, black shadow of a hill lived
the Divers. She thought of them both together, heard them still singing faintly
a song like rising smoke, like a hymn, very remote in time and far away. Their
children slept, their gate was shut for the night.

She went
inside and dressing in a light gown and espadrilles went out her window again
and along the continuous terrace toward the front door, going fast since she
found that other private rooms, exuding sleep, gave upon it. She stopped at the
sight of a figure seated on the wide white stairway of the formal entrance—then
she saw that it was Luis Campion and that he was weeping.

He was
weeping hard and quietly and shaking in the same parts as a weeping woman. A
scene in a role she had played last year swept over her irresistibly and
advancing she touched him on the shoulder. He gave a little yelp before he
recognized her.

“What is
it?” Her eyes were level and kind and not slanted into him with hard curiosity.
“Can I help you?”

“Nobody
can help me. I knew it. I have only myself to blame. It’s always the same.”

“What is
it—do you want to tell me?”

He
looked at her to see.

“No,” he
decided. “When you’re older you’ll know what people who love suffer.
The agony.
It’s better to be cold and young than to love. It’s
happened to me before but never like this—so accidental—just when everything
was going well.”

His face
was repulsive in the quickening light. Not by a flicker of her personality, a
movement of the smallest muscle, did she betray her sudden disgust with whatever
it was. But Campion’s sensitivity realized it and he changed the subject rather
suddenly.

“Abe
North is around here somewhere.”

“Why,
he’s staying at the Divers’!”

“Yes, but he’s up—don’t you know what happened?”

A
shutter opened suddenly in a room two stories above and an English voice spat
distinctly:

“Will
you
kaindlay
stup
tucking!”

Rosemary
and Luis Campion went humbly down the steps and to a bench beside the road to
the beach.

“Then
you have no idea what’s happened? My dear, the most extraordinary thing—” He
was warming up now, hanging on to his revelation. “I’ve never seen a thing come
so suddenly—I have always avoided violent people—they upset me so I sometimes
have to go to bed for days.”

He
looked at her triumphantly. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“My
dear,” he burst forth, leaning toward her with his whole body as he touched her
on the upper leg, to show it was no mere irresponsible venture of his hand—he
was so sure of himself. “There’s going to be a duel.”

“
Wh
-
at?”

“A duel
with—we don’t know what yet.”

“Who’s
going to duel?”

“I’ll
tell you from the beginning.” He drew a long breath and then said, as if it
were
rather to her discredit but he wouldn’t hold it against
her. “Of course, you were in the other automobile. Well, in a way you were
lucky—I lost at least two years of my life, it came so suddenly.”

“What
came?” she demanded.

“I don’t
know what began it. First she began to talk—”

“Who?”

“Violet
McKisco
.”
He lowered his voice as if there
were people under the bench. “But don’t mention the Divers because he made
threats against anybody who mentioned it.”

“Who
did?”

“Tommy
Barban
, so don’t you say I so much as mentioned them. None
of us ever found out anyhow what it was Violet had to say because he kept
interrupting her, and then her husband got into it and now, my dear, we have
the duel.
This morning—at
five o’clock
—in an hour.”
He sighed suddenly
thinking of his own
griefs
. “I almost wish it were I.
I might as well be killed now I have nothing to live for.” He broke off and rocked
to and fro with sorrow.

Again
the iron shutter parted above and the same British voice said:

“
Rilly
, this must
stup
immejetely
.”

Simultaneously
Abe North, looking somewhat distracted, came out of the hotel, perceived them
against the sky, white over the sea. Rosemary shook her head warningly before
he could speak and they moved another bench further down the road. Rosemary saw
that Abe was a little tight.

“What
are YOU doing up?” he demanded.

“I just
got up.” She started to laugh, but remembering the voice above, she restrained
herself.

“Plagued
by the nightingale,” Abe suggested, and repeated, “probably plagued by the
nightingale. Has this sewing-circle member told you what happened?”

Campion
said with dignity:

“I only
know what I heard with my own ears.”

He got
up and walked swiftly away; Abe sat down beside Rosemary.

“Why did
you treat him so badly?”

“Did I?”
he asked surprised. “He’s been weeping around here all morning.”

“Well,
maybe he’s sad about something.”

“Maybe
he is.”

“What
about a duel? Who’s going to duel? I thought there was something strange in
that car. Is it true?”

“It
certainly is coo-coo but it seems to be true.”

X

The
trouble began at the time Earl Brady’s car passed the Divers’ car stopped on
the road—Abe’s account melted impersonally into the thronged night—Violet
McKisco
was telling Mrs. Abrams something she had found out
about the Divers—she had gone upstairs in their house and she had come upon
something there which had made a great impression on her. But Tommy is a
watch-dog about the Divers. As a matter of fact she is inspiring and
formidable—but it’s a mutual thing, and the fact of The Divers together is more
important to their friends than many of them realize. Of course it’s done at a
certain sacrifice—sometimes they seem just rather charming figures in a ballet,
and worth just the attention you give a ballet, but it’s more than that—you’d
have to know the story. Anyhow Tommy is one of those men that Dick’s passed
along to Nicole and when Mrs.
McKisco
kept hinting at
her story, he called them on it. He said: