Tender Is the Night (14 page)

Later
she was homeward bound at last in broad daylight, with the pigeons already
breaking over Saint-
Sulpice
. All of them began to
laugh spontaneously because they knew it was still last night while the people
in the streets had the delusion that it was bright hot morning.

“At last
I’ve been on a wild party,” thought Rosemary, “but it’s no fun when Dick isn’t
there.”

She felt
a little betrayed and sad, but presently a moving object came into sight. It
was a huge horse-chestnut tree in full bloom bound for the Champs
Élysées
, strapped now into a long truck and simply shaking
with laughter—like a lovely person in an undignified position yet confident
none the less of being lovely. Looking at it with fascination Rosemary
identified herself with it, and laughed cheerfully with it, and everything all
at once seemed gorgeous.

XIX

Abe left
from the
Gare
Saint
Lazare
at eleven—he stood alone under the fouled glass dome, relic of the seventies,
era of the
Crystal
Palace
; his hands, of
that vague gray color that only twenty-four hours can produce, were in his coat
pockets to conceal the trembling fingers. With his hat removed it was plain
that only the top layer of his hair was brushed back—the lower levels were
pointed resolutely sidewise. He was scarcely recognizable as the man who had
swum upon
Gausse’s
Beach a fortnight ago.

He was
early; he looked from left to right with his eyes only; it would have taken
nervous forces out of his control to use any other part of his body.
New-looking baggage went past him; presently prospective passengers, with dark
little bodies, were calling: “Jew-
uls
-HOO-OO!” in
dark piercing voices.

At the
minute when he wondered whether or not he had time for a drink at the buffet,
and began clutching at the soggy wad of thousand-franc notes in his pocket, one
end of his pendulous glance came to rest upon the apparition of Nicole at the
stairhead
. He watched her—she was self-revelatory in her
little expressions as people seem to
some one
waiting
for them, who as yet
is himself
unobserved. She was
frowning, thinking of her children, less gloating over them than merely
animally counting them—a cat checking her cubs with a paw.

When she
saw Abe, the mood passed out of her face; the glow of the morning skylight was
sad, and Abe made a gloomy figure with dark circles that showed through the
crimson tan under his eyes. They sat down on a bench.

“I came
because you asked me,” said Nicole defensively. Abe seemed to have forgotten
why he asked her and Nicole was quite content to look at the
travellers
passing by.

“That’s
going to be the belle of your boat—that one with all the men to say good-by—you
see why she bought that dress?”
Nicole talked faster and
faster.
“You see why nobody else would buy it except the belle of the
world cruise? See? No? Wake up! That’s a story dress—that extra material tells
a story and somebody on world cruise would be lonesome enough to want to hear
it.”

She bit
close her last words; she had talked too much for her; and Abe found it
difficult to gather from her serious set face that she had spoken at all. With
an effort he drew himself up to a posture that looked as if he were standing up
while he was sitting down.

“The
afternoon you took me to that funny ball—you know, St. Genevieve’s—” he began.

“I
remember. It was fun, wasn’t it?”

“No fun
for me. I haven’t had fun seeing you this time. I’m tired of you both, but it
doesn’t show because you’re even more tired of me—you know what I mean. If I
had any enthusiasm, I’d go on to new people.”

There
was a rough nap on Nicole’s velvet gloves as she slapped him back:

“Seems
rather foolish to be unpleasant, Abe. Anyhow you don’t mean that. I can’t see
why you’ve given up about everything.”

Abe
considered, trying hard not to cough or blow his nose.

“I
suppose I got bored; and then it was such a long way to go back in order to get
anywhere.”

Often a
man can play the helpless child in front of a woman, but he can almost never
bring it off when he feels most like a helpless child.

“No
excuse for it,” Nicole said crisply.

Abe was
feeling worse every minute—he could think of nothing but disagreeable and
sheerly
nervous remarks. Nicole thought that the correct
attitude for her was to sit staring straight ahead, hands in her lap. For a
while there was no communication between them— each was racing away from the
other, breathing only insofar as there was blue space ahead, a sky not seen by
the other. Unlike lovers they possessed no past; unlike man and wife, they
possessed no future; yet up to this morning Nicole had liked Abe better than
any one
except Dick—and he had been heavy,
belly-frightened, with love for her for years.

“Tired
of women’s worlds,” he spoke up suddenly.

“Then
why don’t you make a world of your own?”

“Tired of friends.
The thing is to have sycophants.”

Nicole
tried to force the minute hand around on the station clock, but, “You agree?”
he demanded.

“I am a
woman and my business is to hold things together.”

“My
business is to tear them apart.”

“When
you get drunk you don’t
tear
anything apart except
yourself,” she said, cold now, and frightened and unconfident. The station was
filling but no one she knew came. After a moment her eyes fell gratefully on a
tall girl with straw hair like a helmet, who was dropping letters in the mail
slot.

“A girl
I have to speak to, Abe. Abe, wake up! You fool!”

Patiently
Abe followed her with his eyes. The woman turned in a startled way to greet
Nicole, and Abe recognized her as
some one
he had
seen around
Paris
.
He took advantage of Nicole’s absence to cough hard and
retchingly
into his handkerchief, and to blow his nose loud. The morning was warmer and
his underwear was soaked with sweat. His fingers trembled so violently that it
took four matches to light a cigarette; it seemed absolutely necessary to make
his way into the buffet for a drink, but immediately Nicole returned.

“That
was a mistake,” she said with frosty humor. “After begging me to come and see
her, she gave me a good snubbing. She looked at me as if I were rotted.”
Excited, she did a little laugh, as with two fingers high in the scales. “Let
people come to you.”

Abe
recovered from a cigarette cough and remarked:

“Trouble
is when you’re sober you don’t want to see anybody, and when you’re tight
nobody wants to see you.”

“Who, me?”
Nicole laughed again; for some reason the late encounter had cheered her.

“No—me.”

“Speak
for yourself. I like people, a lot of people—I like—”

Rosemary
and Mary North came in sight, walking slowly and searching for Abe, and Nicole
burst forth grossly with “Hey! Hi! Hey!” and laughed and waved the package of
handkerchiefs she had bought for Abe.

They
stood in an uncomfortable little group weighted down by Abe’s gigantic
presence: he
lay
athwart them like the wreck of a
galleon, dominating with his presence his own weakness and self-indulgence, his
narrowness and bitterness. All of them were conscious of the solemn dignity
that flowed from him, of his achievement, fragmentary, suggestive and
surpassed. But they were frightened at his
survivant
will, once a will to live, now become a will to die.

Dick
Diver came and brought with him a fine glowing surface on which the three women
sprang like monkeys with cries of relief, perching on his shoulders, on the
beautiful crown of his hat or the gold head of his cane. Now, for a moment,
they could disregard the spectacle of Abe’s gigantic obscenity. Dick saw the
situation quickly and grasped it quietly. He pulled them out of themselves into
the station, making plain its wonders. Nearby, some Americans were saying
good-by in voices that mimicked the cadence of water running into a large old
bathtub. Standing in the station, with
Paris
in back of them, it seemed as if they were vicariously leaning a little over
the ocean, already undergoing a sea-change, a shifting about of atoms to form
the essential molecule of a new people.

So the
well-to-do Americans poured through the station onto the platforms with frank
new faces, intelligent, considerate, thoughtless,
thought
-for.
An occasional English face among them seemed sharp and emergent. When there
were enough Americans on the platform the first impression of their immaculacy
and their money began to fade into a vague racial dusk that hindered and
blinded both them and their observers.

Nicole
seized Dick’s arm crying, “Look!” Dick turned in time to see what took place in
half a minute. At a
Pullman
entrance two cars
off, a vivid scene detached itself from the tenor of many farewells. The young
woman with the helmet-like hair to whom Nicole had spoken made an odd dodging
little run away from the man to whom she was talking and plunged a frantic hand
into her purse; then the sound of two revolver shots cracked the narrow air of
the platform. Simultaneously the engine whistled sharply and the train began to
move, momentarily dwarfing the shots in significance. Abe waved again from his
window, oblivious to what had happened. But before the crowd closed in, the
others had seen the shots take effect, seen the target sit down upon the
platform.

Only
after a hundred years did the train stop; Nicole, Mary, and Rosemary waited on
the outskirts while Dick fought his way through. It was five minutes before he
found them again—by this time the crowd had split into two sections, following,
respectively, the man on a stretcher and the girl walking pale and firm between
distraught gendarmes.

“It was
Maria Wallis,” Dick said hurriedly. “The man she shot was an Englishman—they
had an awful time finding out
who
, because she shot
him through his identification card.” They were walking quickly from the train,
swayed along with the crowd. “I found out what
poste
de police they’re taking her to so I’ll go there—”

“But her
sister lives in
Paris
,”
Nicole objected. “Why not phone her? Seems very peculiar nobody thought of
that. She’s married to a Frenchman, and he can do more than we can.”

Dick
hesitated, shook his head and started off.

“Wait!”
Nicole cried after him. “That’s foolish—how can you do any good—with your
French?”

“At
least I’ll see they don’t do anything outrageous to her.”

“They’re
certainly going to hold on to her,” Nicole assured him briskly. “She DID shoot
the man. The best thing is to phone right away to Laura—she can do more than we
can.”

Dick was
unconvinced—also he was showing off for Rosemary.

“You
wait,” said Nicole firmly, and hurried off to a telephone booth.

“When
Nicole takes things into her hands,” he said with affectionate irony, “there is
nothing more to be done.”

He saw
Rosemary for the first time that morning. They exchanged glances, trying to
recognize the emotions of the day before. For a moment each seemed unreal to
the other—then the slow warm hum of love began again.

“You
like to help everybody, don’t you?” Rosemary said.

“I only
pretend to.”

“Mother
likes to help everybody—of course she can’t help as many people as you do.” She
sighed. “Sometimes I think I’m the most selfish person in the world.”

For the
first time the mention of her mother annoyed rather than amused Dick. He wanted
to sweep away her mother, remove the whole affair from the nursery footing upon
which Rosemary persistently established it. But he realized that this impulse
was a loss of control—what would become of Rosemary’s urge toward him if, for
even a moment, he relaxed. He saw, not without panic, that the affair was
sliding to rest; it could not stand still, it must go on or go back; for the
first time it occurred to him that Rosemary had her hand on the lever more
authoritatively than he.

Before
he had thought out a course of procedure, Nicole returned.

“I found
Laura. It was the first news she had and her voice kept fading away and then
getting loud again—as if she was fainting and then pulling herself together.
She said she knew something was going to happen this morning.”

“Maria
ought to be with
Diaghileff
,” said Dick in a gentle
tone, in order to bring them back to quietude. “She has a nice sense of
decor—not to say rhythm. Will any of us ever see a train pulling out without
hearing a few shots?”