“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.
“He had to--they all left. His honor makes it necessary.”
Now both the Divers were up and dressing; Mary went on:
“And what’s all that about the bathwater. As if a thing like that could happen in this house! We’ll ask Lanier about it.”
Dick sat on the bedside indicating in a private gesture to Nicole that she should take over. Meanwhile Mary went to the door and spoke to an attendant in Italian.
“Wait a minute,” Nicole said. “I won’t have that.”
“You accused us,” answered Mary, in a tone she had never used to Nicole before. “Now I have a right to see.”
“I won’t have the child brought in.” Nicole threw on her clothes as though they were chain mail.
“That’s all right,” said Dick. “Bring Lanier in. We’ll settle this bathtub matter--fact or myth.”
Lanier, half clothed mentally and physically, gazed at the angered faces of the adults.
“Listen, Lanier,” Mary demanded, “how did you come to think you were bathed in water that had been used before?”
“Speak up,” Dick added.
“It was just dirty, that was all.”
“Couldn’t you hear the new water running, from your room, next door?”
Lanier admitted the possibility but reiterated his point--the water was dirty. He was a little awed; he tried to see ahead:
“It couldn’t have been running, because--”
They pinned him down.
“Why not?”
He stood in his little kimono arousing the sympathy of his parents and further arousing Mary’s impatience--then he said:
“The water was dirty, it was full of soap-suds.”
“When you’re not sure what you’re saying--” Mary began, but Nicole interrupted.
“Stop it, Mary. If there were dirty suds in the water it was logical to think it was dirty. His father told him to come--”
“There couldn’t have been dirty suds in the water.”
Lanier looked reproachfully at his father, who had betrayed him. Nicole turned him about by the shoulders and sent him out of the room; Dick broke the tensity with a laugh.
Then, as if the sound recalled the past, the old friendship, Mary guessed how far away from them she had gone and said in a mollifying tone: “It’s always like that with children.”
Her uneasin
ess grew as she remembered the past. “You’d be silly to go--Hosain wanted to make this trip anyhow. After all, you’re my guests and you just blundered into the thing.” But Dick, made more angry by this obliqueness and the use of the word blunder, turned away and began arranging his effects, saying:
“It’s too bad about the young women. I’d like to apologize to the one who came in here.”
“If you’d only listened on the piano seat!”
“But you’ve gotten so damned dull, Mary. I listened as long as I could.”
“Be quiet!” Nicole advised him.
“I return his compliment,” said Mary bitterly. “Good-by, Nicole.” She went out.
After all that there was no question of her coming to see them off; the major-domo arranged the departure. Dick left formal notes for Hosain and the sisters. There was nothing to do except to go, but all of them, especially Lanier, felt bad about it.
“I insist,” insisted Lanier on the train, “that it was dirty bathwater.”
“That’ll do,” his father said. “You better forget it--unless you want me to divorce you. Did you know there was a new law in France that you can divorce a child?”
Lanier roared with delight and the Divers were unified again--Dick wondered how many more times it could be done.
V
Nicole went to the window and bent over the sill to take a look at the rising altercation on the terrace; the April sun shone pink on the saintly face of Augustine, the cook, and blue on the butcher’s knife she waved in her drunken hand. She had been with them since their return to Villa Diana in February.
Because of an obstruction of an awning she could see only Dick’s head and his hand holding one of his heavy canes with a bronze knob on it. The knife and the cane, menacing each other, were like tripos and short sword in a gladiatorial combat. Dick’s words reached her first:
“--care how much kitchen wine you drink but when I find you digging into a bottle of Chablis Moutonne--”
“You talk about drinking!” Augustine cried, flourishing her sabre. “You drink--all the time!”
Nicole called over the awning: “What’s the matter, Dick?” and he answered in English:
“The old girl has been polishing off the vintage wines. I’m firing her--at least I’m trying to.”
“Heavens! Well, don’t let her reach you with that knife.”
Augustine shook her knife up at Nicole. Her old mouth was made of two small intersecting cherries.
“I would like to say, Madame, if you knew that your husband drinks over at his Bastide comparatively as a day-laborer--”
“Shut up and get out!” interrupted Nicole. “We’ll get the gendarmes.”
“You’ll get the gendarmes! With my brother in the corps! You--a disgusting American?”
In English Dick called up to Nicole:
“Get the children away from the house till I settle this.”
“--disgusting Americans who come here and drink up our finest wines,” screamed Augustine with the voice of the commune.
Dick mastered a firmer tone.
“You must leave now! I’ll pay you what we owe you.”
“Very sure you’ll pay me! And let me tell you--” she came close and waved the knife so furiously that Dick raised his stick, whereupon she rushed into the kitchen and returned with the carving knife reinforced by a hatchet.
The situation was not prepossessing--Augustine was a strong woman and could be disarmed only at the risk of serious results to herself--and severe legal complications which were the lot of one who molested a French citizen. Trying a bluff Dick called up to Nicole:
“Phone the poste de police.” Then to Augustine, indicating her armament, “This means arrest for you.”
“Ha-ha!” she laughed demoniacally; nevertheless she came no nearer. Nicole phoned the police but was answered with what was almost an echo of Augustine’s laugh. She heard mumbles and passings of the word around--the connection was suddenly broken.
Returning to the window she called down to Dick: “Give her something extra!”
“If I could get to that phone!” As this seemed impracticable, Dick capitulated. For fifty francs, increased to a hundred as he succumbed to the idea of getting her out hastily, Augustine yielded her fortress, covering the retreat with stormy grenades of “Salaud!” She would leave only when her nephew could come for her baggage. Waiting cautiously in the neighborhood of the kitchen Dick heard a cork pop, but he yielded the point. There was no further trouble--when the nephew arrived, all apologetic, Augustine bade Dick a cheerful, convivial good-by and called up “All revoir, Madame! Bonne chance!” to Nicole’s window.
The Divers went to Nice and dined on a bouillabaisse, which is a stew of rock fish and small lobsters, highly seasoned with saffron, and a bottle of cold Chablis. He expressed pity for Augustine.
“I’m not sorry a bit,” said Nicole.
“I’m sorry--and yet I wish I’d shoved her over the cliff.”
There was little they dared talk about in these days; seldom did they find the right word when it counted, it arrived always a moment too late when one could not reach the other any more. To-night Augustine’s outburst had shaken them from their separate reveries; with the burn and chill of the spiced broth and the parching wine they talked.
“We can’t go on like this,” Nicole suggested. “Or can we?--what do you think?” Startled that for the moment Dick did not deny it, she continued, “Some of the time I think it’s my fault--I’ve ruined you.”
“So I’m ruined, am I?” he inquired pleasantly.
“I didn’t mean that. But you used to want to create things--now you seem to want to smash them up.”
She trembled at criticizing him in these broad terms--but his enlarging silence frightened her even more. She guessed that something was developing behind the silence, behind the hard, blue eyes, the almost unnatural interest in the children. Uncharacteristic bursts of temper surprised her--he would suddenly unroll a long scroll of contempt for some person, race, class, way of life, way of thinking. It was as though an incalculable story was telling itself inside him, about which she could only guess at in the moments when it broke through the surface.
“After all, what do you get out of this?” she demanded.
“Knowing you’re stronger every day. Knowing that your illness follows the law of diminishing returns.”
His voice came to her from far off, as though he were speaking of something remote and academic; her alarm made her exclaim, “Dick!” and she thrust her hand forward to his across the table. A reflex pulled Dick’s hand back and he added: “There’s the whole situation to think of, isn’t there? There’s not just you.” He covered her hand with his and said in the old pleasant voice of a conspirator for pleasure, mischief, profit, and delight:
“See that boat out there?”
It was the motor yacht of T. F. Golding lying placid among the little swells of the NiceanBay, constantly bound upon a romantic voyage that was not dependent upon actual motion. “We’ll go out there now and ask the people on board what’s the matter with them. We’ll find out if they’re happy.”
“We hardly know him,” Nicole objected.
“He urged us. Besides, Baby knows him--she practically married him, doesn’t she--didn’t she?”
When they put out from the port in a hired launch it was already summer dusk and lights were breaking out in spasms along the rigging of the Margin. As they drew up alongside, Nicole’s doubts reasserted themselves.
“He’s having a party--”
“It’s only a radio,” he guessed.
They were hailed--a huge white-haired man in a white suit looked down at them, calling:
“Do I recognize the Divers?”
“Boat ahoy, Margin!”
Their boat moved under the companionway; as they mounted Golding doubled his huge frame to give Nicole a hand.
“Just in time for dinner.”
A small orchestra was playing astern.
“I’m yours for the asking--but till then you can’t ask me to behave--”
And as Golding’s cyclonic arms blew them aft without touching them, Nicole was sorrier they had come, and more impatient at Dick. Having taken up an attitude of aloofness from the gay people here, at the time when Dick’s work and her health were incompatible with going about, they had a reputation as refusers. Riviera replacements during the ensuing years interpreted this as a vague unpopularity. Nevertheless, having taken such a stand, Nicole felt it should not be cheaply compromised for a momentary self-indulgence.
As they passed through the principal salon they saw ahead of them figures that seemed to dance in the half light of the circular stern. This was an illusion made by the enchantment of the music, the unfamiliar lighting, and the surrounding presence of water. Actually, save for some busy stewards, the guests loafed on a wide divan that followed the curve of the deck. There were a white, a red, a blurred dress, the laundered chests of several men, of whom one, detaching and identifying himself, brought from Nicole a rare little cry of delight.
“Tommy!”
Brushing aside the Gallicism of his formal dip at her hand, Nicole pressed her face against his. They sat, or rather lay down together on the Antoninian bench. His handsome face was so dark as to have lost the pleasantness of deep tan, without attaining the blue beauty of Negroes--it was just worn leather. The foreignness of his depigmentation by unknown suns, his nourishment by strange soils, his tongue awkward with the curl of many dialects, his reactions attuned to odd alarms--these things fascinated and rested Nicole--in the moment of meeting she lay on his bosom, spiritually, going out and out. . . . Then self-preservation reasserted itself and retiring to her own world she spoke lightly.
“You look just like all the adventurers in the movies--but why do you have to stay away so long?”
Tommy Barban looked at her, uncomprehending but alert; the pupils of his eyes flashed.
“Five years,” she continued, in throaty mimicry of nothing. “Much too long. Couldn’t you only slaughter a certain number of creatures and then come back, and breathe our air for a while?”
In her cherished presence Tommy Europeanized himself quickly.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 111