As she lay in her chaise longue the day before the event, Chiki explained the arrangements, in which he had evidently aided.
“Everyone who arrives must drink two cocktails in the American style before they can come aboard--as a ticket of admission.”
“But I thought that very fashionable French--Faubourg St. Germain and all that--didn’t drink cocktails.”
“Oh, but my family is very modern. We adopt many American customs.”
“Who’ll be there?”
“Everyone! Everyone in Paris.”
Great names swam before her eyes. Next day she could not resist dragging the affair into conversation with her doctor. But she was rather offended at the look of astonishment and incredulity that came into his eyes.
“Did I understand you aright?” he demanded. “Did I understand you to say that you were going to a ball tomorrow?”
“Why, yes,” she faltered. “Why not?”
“My dear lady, you are not going to stir out of the house for two more weeks; you are not going to dance or do anything strenuous for two more after that.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she cried. “It’s been three weeks already! Esther Sherman went to America after--”
“Never mind,” he interrupted. “Every case is different. There is a complication which makes it positively necessary for you to follow my orders.”
“But the idea is that I’ll just go for two hours, because of course I’ll have to come home to Sonny--”
“You’ll not go for two minutes.”
She knew, from the seriousness of his tone, that he was right, but, perversely, she did not mention the matter to Nelson. She said, instead, that she was tired, that possibly she might not go, and lay awake that night measuring her disappointment against her fear. She woke up for Sonny’s first feeding, thinking to herself: “But if I just take ten steps from a limousine to a chair and just sit half an hour--”
At the last minute the pale green evening dress from Callets, draped across a chair in her bedroom, decided her. She went.
Somewhere, during the shuffle and delay on the gangplank while the guests went aboard and were challenged and drank down their cocktails with attendant gayety, Nicole realized that she had made a mistake. There was, at any rate, no formal receiving line and, after greeting their hosts, Nelson found her a chair on deck, where presently her faintness disappeared.
Then she was glad she had come. The boat was hung with fragile lanterns, which blended with the pastels of the bridges and the reflected stars in the dark Seine, like a child’s dream out of the Arabian Nights. A crowd of hungry-eyed spectators were gathered on the banks. Champagne moved past in platoons like a drill of bottles, while the music, instead of being loud and obtrusive, drifted down from the upper deck like frosting dripping over a cake. She became aware presently that they were not the only Americans there--across the deck were the Liddell Mileses, whom she had not seen for several years.
Other people from that crowd were present, and she felt a faint disappointment. What if this was not the marquis’ best party? She remembered her mother’s second days at home. She asked Chiki, who was at her side, to point out celebrities, but when she inquired about several people whom she associated with that set, he replied vaguely that they were away, or coming later, or could not be there. It seemed to her that she saw across the room the girl who had made the scene in the Café de Paris at Monte Carlo, but she could not be sure, for with the faint almost imperceptible movement of the boat, she realized that she was growing faint again. She sent for Nelson to take her home.
“You can come right back, of course. You needn’t wait for me, because I’m going right to bed.”
He left her in the hands of the nurse, who helped her upstairs and aided her to undress quickly.
“I’m desperately tired,” Nicole said. “Will you put my pearls away?”
“Where?”
“In the jewel box on the dressing table.”
“I don’t see it,” said the nurse after a minute.
“Then it’s in a drawer.”
There was a thorough rummaging of the dressing table, without result.
“But of course it’s there.” Nicole attempted to rise, but fell back, exhausted. “Look for it, please, again. Everything is in it--all my mother’s things and my engagement things.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kelly. There’s nothing in this room that answers to that description.”
“Wake up the maid.”
The maid knew nothing; then, after a persistent cross-examination, she did know something. Count Sarolai’s valet had gone out, carrying his suitcase, half an hour after madame left the house.
Writhing in sharp and sudden pain, with a hastily summoned doctor at her side, it seemed to Nicole hours before Nelson came home. When he arrived, his face was deathly pale and his eyes were wild. He came directly into her room.
“What do you think?” he said savagely. Then he saw the doctor. “Why, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, Nelson, I’m sick as a dog and my jewel box is gone, and Chiki’s valet has gone. I’ve told the police. . . . Perhaps Chiki would know where the man--”
“Chiki will never come in this house again,” he said slowly. “Do you know whose party that was? Have you got any idea whose party that was?” He burst into wild laughter. “It was our party--our party, do you understand? We gave it--we didn’t know it, but we did.”
“Maintenant, monsieur, il ne faut pas exciter madame--” the doctor began.
“I thought it was odd when the marquis went home early, but I didn’t suspect till the end. They were just guests--Chiki invited all the people. After it was over, the caterers and musicians began to come up and ask me where to send their bills. And that damn Chiki had the nerve to tell me he thought I knew all the time. He said that all he’d promised was that it would be his brother-in-law’s sort of party, and that his sister would be there. He said perhaps I was drunk, or perhaps I didn’t understand French--as if we’d ever talked anything but English to him.”
“Don’t pay!” she said. “I wouldn’t think of paying.”
“So I said, but they’re going to sue--the boat people and the others. They want twelve thousand dollars.”
She relaxed suddenly. “Oh, go away!” she cried. “I don’t care! I’ve lost my jewels and I’m sick, sick!”
IV
This is the story of a trip abroad, and the geographical element must not be slighted. Having visited North Africa, Italy, the Riviera, Paris and points in between, it was not surprising that eventually the Kellys should go to Switzerland. Switzerland is a country where very few things begin, but many things end.
Though there was an element of choice in their other ports of call, the Kellys went to Switzerland because they had to. They had been married a little more than four years when they arrived one spring day at the lake that is the center of Europe--a placid, smiling spot with pastoral hillsides, a backdrop of mountains and waters of postcard blue, waters that are a little sinister beneath the surface with all the misery that has dragged itself here from every corner of Europe. Weariness to recuperate and death to die. There are schools, too, and young people splashing at the sunny plages; there is Bonivard’s dungeon and Calvin’s city, and the ghosts of Byron and Shelley still sail the dim shores by night; but the Lake Geneva that Nelson and Nicole came to was the dreary one of sanatoriums and rest hotels.
For, as if by some profound sympathy that had continued to exist beneath the unlucky destiny that had pursued their affairs, health had failed them both at the same time; Nicole lay on the balcony of a hotel coming slowly back to life after two successive operations, while Nelson fought for life against jaundice in a hospital two miles away. Even after the reserve force of twenty-nine years had pulled him through, there were months ahead during which he must live quietly. Often they wondered why, of all those who sought pleasure over the face of Europe, this misfortune should have come to them.
“There’ve b
een too many people in our lives,” Nelson said. “We’ve never been able to resist people. We were so happy the first year when there weren’t any people.”
Nicole agreed. “If we could ever be alone--really alone--we could make up some kind of life for ourselves. We’ll try, won’t we, Nelson?”
But there were other days when they both wanted company desperately, concealing it from each other. Days when they eyed the obese, the wasted, the crippled and the broken of all nationalities who filled the hotel, seeking for one who might be amusing. It was a new life for them, turning on the daily visits of their two doctors, the arrival of the mail and newspapers from Paris, the little walk into the hillside village or occasionally the descent by funicular to the pale resort on the lake, with its Kursaal, its grass beach, its tennis clubs and sight-seeing busses. They read Tauchnitz editions and yellow-jacketed Edgar Wallaces; at a certain hour each day they watched the baby being given its bath; three nights a week there was a tired and patient orchestra in the lounge after dinner, that was all.
And sometimes there was a booming from the vine-covered hills on the other side of the lake, which meant that cannons were shooting at hail-bearing clouds, to save the vineyard from an approaching storm; it came swiftly, first falling from the heavens and then falling again in torrents from the mountains, washing loudly down the roads and stone ditches; it came with a dark, frightening sky and savage filaments of lightning and crashing, world-splitting thunder, while ragged and destroyed clouds fled along before the wind past the hotel. The mountains and the lake disappeared completely; the hotel crouched alone amid tumult and chaos and darkness.
It was during such a storm, when the mere opening of a door admitted a tornado of rain and wind into the hall, that the Kellys for the first time in months saw someone they knew. Sitting downstairs with other victims of frayed nerves, they became aware of two new arrivals--a man and woman whom they recognized as the couple, first seen in Algiers, who had crossed their path several times since. A single unexpressed thought flashed through Nelson and Nicole. It seemed like destiny that at last here in this desolate place they should know them, and watching, they saw other couples eying them in the same tentative way. Yet something held the Kellys back. Had they not just been complaining that there were too many people in their lives?
Later, when the storm had dozed off into a quiet rain, Nicole found herself near the girl on the glass veranda. Under cover of reading a book, she inspected the face closely. It was an inquisitive face, she saw at once, possibly calculating; the eyes, intelligent enough, but with no peace in them, swept over people in a single quick glance as though estimating their value. “Terrible egoist,” Nicole thought, with a certain distaste. For the rest, the cheeks were wan, and there were little pouches of ill health under the eyes; these combining with a certain flabbiness of arms and legs to give an impression of unwholesomeness. She was dressed expensively, but with a hint of slovenliness, as if she did not consider the people of the hotel important.
On the whole, Nicole decided she did not like her; she was glad that they had not spoken, but she was rather surprised that she had not noticed these things when the girl crossed her path before.
Telling Nelson her impression at dinner, he agreed with her.
“I ran into the man in the bar, and I noticed we both took nothing but mineral water, so I started to say something. But I got a good look at his face in the mirror and I decided not to. His face is so weak and self-indulgent that it’s almost mean--the kind of face that needs half a dozen drinks really to open the eyes and stiffen the mouth up to normal.”
After dinner the rain stopped and the night was fine outside. Eager for the air, the Kellys wandered down into the dark garden; on their way they passed the subjects of their late discussion, who withdrew abruptly down a side path.
“I don’t think they want to know us any more than we do them,” Nicole laughed.
They loitered among the wild rosebushes and the beds of damp-sweet, indistinguishable flowers. Below the hotel, where the terrace fell a thousand feet to the lake, stretched a necklace of lights that was Montreux and Vevey, and then, in a dim pendant, Lausanne; a blurred twinkling across the lake was Evian and France. From somewhere below--probably the Kursaal--came the sound of full-bodied dance music--American, they guessed, though now they heard American tunes months late, mere distant echoes of what was happening far away.
Over the Dent du Midi, over a black bank of clouds that was the rearguard of the receding storm, the moon lifted itself and the lake brightened; the music and the far-away lights were like hope, like the enchanted distance from which children see things. In their separate hearts Nelson and Nicole gazed backward to a time when life was all like this. Her arm went through his quietly and drew him close.
“We can have it all again,” she whispered. “Can’t we try, Nelson?”
She paused as two dark forms came into the shadows nearby and stood looking down at the lake below.
Nelson put his arm around Nicole and pulled her closer.
“It’s just that we don’t understand what’s the matter,” she said. “Why did we lose peace and love and health, one after the other? If we knew, if there was anybody to tell us, I believe we could try. I’d try so hard.”
The last clouds were lifting themselves over the Bernese Alps. Suddenly, with a final intensity, the west flared with pale white lightning. Nelson and Nicole turned, and simultaneously the other couple turned, while for an instant the night was as bright as day. Then darkness and a last low peal of thunder, and from Nicole a sharp, terrified cry. She flung herself against Nelson; even in the darkness she saw that his face was as white and strained as her own.
“Did you see?” she cried in a whisper. “Did you see them?”
“Yes!”
“They’re us! They’re us! Don’t you see?”
Trembling, they clung together. The clouds merged into the dark mass of mountains; looking around after a moment, Nelson and Nicole saw that they were alone together in the tranquil moonlight.
OUTSIDE THE CABINET-MAKER’S
The Century Magazine (December, 1928)
The automobile stopped at the corner of Sixteenth and some dingy-looking street. The lady got out. The man and the little girl stayed in the car.
“I’m going to tell him it can’t cost more than twenty dollars,” said the lady.
“All right. Have you the plans?”
“Oh, yes”--she reached for her bag in the back seat--”at least I have now.”
“Dites qu’il ne faut pas avoir les forts placards,” said the man. “Ni le bon bois.”
“All right.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk French,” said the little girl.
“Et il faut avoir un bon ‘height.’ L’un des Murphys était comme ça.”
He held his hand five feet from the ground. The lady went through a door lettered “Cabinet-Maker” and disappeared up a small stairs.
The man and the little girl looked around unexpectantly. The neighborhood was red brick, vague, quiet. There were a few darkies doing something or other up the street and an occasional automobile went by. It was a fine November day.
“Listen,” said the man to the little girl, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” said the little girl, smiling politely.
“Listen,” the man continued. “Do you see that house over the way?”
The little girl looked. It was a flat in back of a shop. Curtains masked most of its interior, but there was a faint stir behind them. On one window a loose shutter banged from back to forth every few minutes. Neither the man nor the little girl had ever seen the place before.
“There’s a Fairy Princess behind those curtains,” said the man. “You can’t see her but she’s there, kept concealed by an Ogre. Do you know what an Ogre is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this Princess is very beautiful with long golden hair.”
They both regarded the house. Part of a
yellow dress appeared momentarily in the window.
“That’s her,” the man said. “The people who live there are guarding her for the Ogre. He’s keeping the King and Queen prisoner ten thousand miles below the earth. She can’t get out until the Prince finds the three--” He hesitated.
“And what, Daddy? The three what?”
“The three--Look! There she is again.”
“The three what?”
“The three--the three stones that will release the King and Queen.”
He yawned.
“And what then?”
“Then he can come and tap three times on each window and that will set her free.”
The lady’s head emerged from the upper story of the cabinetmaker’s.
“He’s busy,” she called down. “Gosh, what a nice day!”
“And what, Daddy?” asked the little girl. “Why does the Ogre want to keep her there?”
“Because he wasn’t invited to the christening. The Prince has already found one stone in President Coolidge’s collar-box. He’s looking for the second in Iceland. Every time he finds a stone the room where the Princess is kept turns blue. Gosh!”
“What, Daddy?”
“Just as you turned away I could see the room turn blue. That means he’s found the second stone.”
“Gosh!” said the little girl. “Look! It turned blue again, that means he’s found the third stone.”
Aroused by the competition the man looked around cautiously and his voice grew tense.
“Do you see what I see?” he demanded. “Coming up the street--there’s the Ogre himself, disguised--you know: transformed, like Mombi in ‘The Land of Oz.’“
“I know.”
They both watched. The small boy, extraordinarily small and taking very long steps, went to the door of the flat and knocked; no one answered but he didn’t seem to expect it or to be greatly disappointed. He took some chalk from his pocket and began drawing pictures under the door-bell.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 290