Tender is the night / Ночь нежна. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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[74]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[75] 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[76] – 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?[77]” 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![78]”

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[79] with sorrow.

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

“Rilly, this must stup immejetely.[80]”*

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:

“Mrs. McKisco, please don’t talk further about Mrs. Diver.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she objected.

“I think it’s better to leave them out.”

“Are they so sacred?”

“Leave them out. Talk about something else.”

He was sitting on one of the two little seats beside Campion. Campion told me the story.

“Well, you’re pretty high-handed,” Violet came back.

You know how conversations are in cars late at night, some people murmuring and some not caring, giving up after the party, or bored or asleep. Well, none of them knew just what happened until the car stopped and Barban cried in a voice that shook everybody, a voice for cavalry.

“Do you want to step out here – we’re only a mile from the hotel and you can walk it or I’ll drag you there. You’ve got to shut up and shut your wife up!”

“You’re a bully,” said McKisco. “You know you’re stronger muscularly than I am. But I’m not afraid of you – what they ought to have is the code duello[81] —”

There’s where he made his mistake because Tommy, being French, leaned over and clapped him one[82], and then the chauffeur drove on. That was where you passed them. Then the women began. That was still the state of things when the car got to the hotel.

Tommy telephoned some man in Cannes to act as second and McKisco said he wasn’t going to be seconded by Campion, who wasn’t crazy for the job anyhow, so he telephoned me not to say anything but to come right down. Violet McKisco collapsed and Mrs. Abrams took her to her room and gave her a bromide whereupon she fell comfortably asleep on the bed. When I got there I tried to argue with Tommy but the latter wouldn’t accept anything short of an apology and McKisco rather spunkily wouldn’t give it.

When Abe had finished Rosemary asked thoughtfully:

“Do the Divers know it was about them?”

“No – and they’re not ever going to know they had anything to do with it. That damn Campion had no business talking to you about it, but since he did – I told the chauffeur I’d get out the old musical saw if he opened his mouth about it. This fight’s between two men – what Tommy needs is a good war.”

“I hope the Divers don’t find out,” Rosemary said.

Abe peered at his watch.

“I’ve got to go up and see McKisco – do you want to come? – he feels sort of friendless – I bet he hasn’t slept.”

Rosemary had a vision of the desperate vigil that high-strung, badly organized man had probably kept. After a moment balanced between pity and repugnance she agreed, and full of morning energy, bounced upstairs beside Abe.

McKisco was sitting on his bed with his alcoholic combativeness vanished, in spite of the glass of champagne in his hand. He seemed very puny and cross and white. Evidently he had been writing and drinking all night. He stared confusedly at Abe and Rosemary and asked:

“Is it time?”

“No, not for half an hour[83].”

The table was covered with papers which he assembled with some difficulty into a long letter; the writing on the last pages was very large and illegible. In the delicate light of electric lamps fading, he scrawled his name at the bottom, crammed it into an envelope and handed it to Abe. “For my wife.”

“You better souse your head in cold water,” Abe suggested.

“You think I’d better?” inquired McKisco doubtfully. “I don’t want to get too sober.”

“Well, you look terrible now.”

Obediently McKisco went into the bathroom.

“I’m leaving everything in an awful mess,” he called. “I don’t know how Violet will get back to America. I don’t carry any insurance. I never got around to it.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, you’ll be right here eating breakfast in an hour.”

“Sure, I know.” He came back with his hair wet and looked at Rosemary as if he saw her for the first time. Suddenly tears stood in his eyes. “I never have finished my novel. That’s what makes me so sore. You don’t like me,” he said to Rosemary, “but that can’t be helped. I’m primarily a literary man.” He made a vague discouraged sound and shook his head helplessly. “I’ve made lots of mistakes in my life – many of them. But I’ve been one of the most prominent – in some ways —”

He gave this up and puffed at a dead cigarette.

“I do like you,” said Rosemary, “but I don’t think you ought to fight a duel.”

“Yeah, I should have tried to beat him up, but it’s done now. I’ve let myself be drawn into something that I had no right to be. I have a very violent temper —” He looked closely at Abe as if he expected the statement to be challenged. Then with an aghast laugh he raised the cold cigarette butt toward his mouth. His breathing quickened.

“The trouble was I suggested the duel – if Violet had only kept her mouth shut I could have fixed it. Of course even now I can just leave, or sit back and laugh at the whole thing – but I don’t think Violet would ever respect me again.”

“Yes, she would,” said Rosemary. “She’d respect you more.”

“No – you don’t know Violet. She’s very hard when she gets an advantage over you. We’ve been married twelve years, we had a little girl seven years old and she died and after that you know how it is. We both played around on the side a little[84], nothing serious but drifting apart – she called me a coward out there to-night.”

Troubled, Rosemary didn’t answer.

“Well, we’ll see there’s as little damage done as possible,” said Abe. He opened the leather case. “These are Barban’s duelling pistols – I borrowed them so you could get familiar with them. He carries them in his suitcase.” He weighed one of the archaic weapons in his hand. Rosemary gave an exclamation of uneasiness and McKisco looked at the pistols anxiously.

“Well – it isn’t as if we were going to stand up and pot each other with forty-fives[85],” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Abe cruelly; “the idea is you can sight better along a long barrel.”

“How about distance?” asked McKisco.

“I’ve inquired about that. If one or the other parties has to be definitely eliminated they make it eight paces, if they’re just good and sore it’s twenty paces, and if it’s only to vindicate their honor it’s forty paces. His second agreed with me to make it forty.”

“That’s good.”

“There’s a wonderful duel in a novel of Pushkin’s[86],” recollected Abe. “Each man stood on the edge of a precipice, so if he was hit at all he was done for.”

This seemed very remote and academic to McKisco, who stared at him and said, “What?”

“Do you want to take a quick dip[87] and freshen up?”

“No – no, I couldn’t swim.” He sighed. “I don’t see what it’s all about,” he said helplessly. “I don’t see why I’m doing it.”

It was the first thing he had ever done in his life. Actually he was one of those for whom the sensual world does not exist, and faced with a concrete fact he brought to it a vast surprise.

“We might as well be going[88],” said Abe, seeing him fail a little.

“All right.” He drank off a stiff drink of brandy, put the flask in his pocket, and said with almost a savage air: “What’ll happen if I kill him – will they throw me in jail?”

“I’ll run you over the Italian border.”

He glanced at Rosemary – and then said apologetically to Abe:

“Before we start there’s one thing I’d like to see you about alone[89].”

“I hope neither of you gets hurt,” Rosemary said. “I think its very foolish and you ought to try to stop it.”

XI

She found Campion downstairs in the deserted lobby.

“I saw you go upstairs,” he said excitedly. “Is he all right? When is the duel going to be?”

“I don’t know.” She resented his speaking of it as a circus, with McKisco as the tragic clown.

“Will you go with me?” he demanded, with the air of having seats. “I’ve hired the hotel car.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Why not? I imagine it’ll take years off my life but I wouldn’t miss it for words[90]. We could watch it from quite far away.”

“Why don’t you get Mr. Dumphry to go with you?”

His monocle fell out, with no whiskers to hide in[91] – he drew himself up.

“I never want to see him again.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t go. Mother wouldn’t like it.”

As Rosemary entered her room Mrs. Speers stirred sleepily and called to her:

“Where’ve you been?”

“I just couldn’t sleep. You go back to sleep, Mother.”

“Come in my room.” Hearing her sit up in bed, Rosemary went in and told her what had happened.

“Why don’t you go and see it?” Mrs. Speers suggested. “You needn’t go up close and you might be able to help afterwards.”

Rosemary did not like the picture of herself looking on and she demurred, but Mrs. Speers’ consciousness was still clogged with sleep and she was reminded of night calls to death and calamity when she was the wife of a doctor. “I like you to go places and do things on your own initiative without me – you did much harder things for Rainy’s publicity stunts.”

Still Rosemary did not see why she should go, but she obeyed the sure, clear voice that had sent her into the stage entrance of the Odéon[92] in Paris when she was twelve and greeted her when she came out again.

She thought she was reprieved when from the steps she saw Abe and McKisco drive away – but after a moment the hotel car came around the corner. Squealing delightedly Luis Campion pulled her in beside him.

“I hid there because they might not let us come. I’ve got my movie camera, you see.”

She laughed helplessly. He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.

“I wonder why Mrs. McKisco didn’t like the Divers?” she said. “They were very nice to her.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. It was something she saw. We never did find exactly what it was because of Barban.”

“Then that wasn’t what made you so sad.”

“Oh, no,” he said, his voice breaking, “that was something else that happened when we got back to the hotel. But now I don’t care – I wash my hands of it completely.”

They followed the other car east along the shore past Juan les Pins, where the skeleton of the new Casino was rising. It was past four and under a blue-gray sky the first fishing boats were creaking out into a glaucous sea. Then they turned off the main road and into the back country.

“It’s the golf course,” cried Campion. “I’m sure that’s where it’s going to be.”

He was right. When Abe’s car pulled up ahead of them the east was crayoned red and yellow, promising a sultry day. Ordering the hotel car into a grove of pines Rosemary and Campion kept in the shadow of a wood and skirted the bleached fairway where Abe and McKisco were walking up and down, the latter raising his head at intervals like a rabbit scenting. Presently there were moving figures over by a farther tee and the watchers made out Barban and his French second – the latter carried the box of pistols under his arm.

Somewhat appalled, McKisco slipped behind Abe and took a long swallow of brandy. He walked on choking and would have marched directly up into the other party, but Abe stopped him and went forward to talk to the Frenchman. The sun was over the horizon.

Campion grabbed Rosemary’s arm.

“I can’t stand it,” he squeaked, almost voiceless. “It’s too much. This will cost me —”

“Let go,” Rosemary said peremptorily. She breathed a frantic prayer in French.

The principals[93] faced each other, Barban with the sleeve rolled up from his arm. His eyes gleamed restlessly in the sun, but his motion was deliberate as he wiped his palm on the seam of his trousers. McKisco, reckless with brandy, pursed his lips in a whistle and pointed his long nose about nonchalantly, until Abe stepped forward with a handkerchief in his hand. The French second stood with his face turned away. Rosemary caught her breath in terrible pity and gritted her teeth with hatred for Barban; then:

“One – two – three!” Abe counted in a strained voice.

They fired at the same moment. McKisco swayed but recovered himself. Both shots had missed.

“Now, that’s enough!” cried Abe.

The duellists walked in, and everyone looked at Barban inquiringly.

“I declare myself unsatisfied.”

“What? Sure you’re satisfied,” said Abe impatiently. “You just don’t know it.”

“Your man refuses another shot?”

“You’re damn right, Tommy. You insisted on this and my client went through with it.”

Tommy laughed scornfully.

“The distance was ridiculous,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to such farces – your man must remember he’s not now in America.”

“No use cracking at America,” said Abe rather sharply. And then, in a more conciliatory tone, “This has gone far enough, Tommy.” They parleyed briskly for a moment – then Barban nodded and bowed coldly to his late antagonist.

“No shake hand?” suggested the French doctor.

“They already know each other[94],” said Abe.

He turned to McKisco.

“Come on, let’s get out.”

As they strode off, McKisco, in exultation, gripped his arm.

“Wait a minute!” Abe said. “Tommy wants his pistol back. He might need it again.”

McKisco handed it over.

“To hell with him,” he said in a tough voice. “Tell him he can —”

“Shall I tell him you want another shot?”

“Well, I did it,” cried McKisco, as they went along. “And I did it pretty well, didn’t I? I wasn’t yellow.[95]“

“You were pretty drunk,” said Abe bluntly.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“All right, then, you weren’t.”

“Why would it make any difference if I had a drink or so?” As his confidence mounted he looked resentfully at Abe.

“What difference does that make?” he repeated.

“If you can’t see it, there’s no use going into it.”

“Don’t you know everybody was drunk all the time during the war?”

“Well, let’s forget it.”

But the episode was not quite over. There were urgent footsteps in the heather behind them and the doctor drew up alongside.

“Pardon, Messieurs,” he panted. “Voulez-vous régler mes honoraires? Naturellement c’est pour soins médicaux seulement. M. Barban n’a qu’un billet de mille et ne peut pas les régler et l’autre a laissé son porte-monnaie chez lui.[96]“