“Are you by any chance interested in this French boy? If you are, it’s all right with me. We’ve been apart for a long time and if you’ve changed — “
She took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes.
“How can you say that to me?”
“Well, I thought that maybe gratitude was influencing you — “
“Gratitude has nothing to do with it. You’re the best man I ever knew.”
“The point is, do I happen to be attractive to you?”
“Of course you are — other men seem unimportant when you’re around. That’s why I don’t like to see them. Oh, Tom, I wish your mother would hurry so we can get married and leave here — “
As he caught her into his arms, she gave a sob that went through him like a knife. But as the minutes passed and she half lay in his arms in the shadow of the cab’s awning, he loved her so much and felt so close to her that he couldn’t believe anything could really have gone wrong.
Tudy took her examinations. “Not that they matter, because of course I’m not going on. But that’s what you sent me for. I’m now ‘finished.’ Darling, do I look finished?”
He regarded her appraisingly.
“You’ve probably learned enough French to get you in trouble,” he said. “You’re a little sweeter, perhaps, but not much — there wasn’t very much room for improvement.”
“Oh, but French wasn’t all I learned. How about Siamese. I sat next to the cutest little Siamese all during one lecture course, and he tried so desperately to make up to me. I learned to say, ‘No, I will not climb out the window of the pension tonight’ in Siamese. Do you want to hear me say it?”
It was a bright morning — he had called for her at eight to walk to the University. Arm in arm they strolled.
“What are you going to do while I’m being examined?” she asked.
“I’m going to get the car — “
“Our car — I’m wild to see it.”
“It’s a funny little thing, but it’ll take us all over Italy — “
“Then what will you do the rest of the time, after you get the car?”
“Why, I’ll try it out and then I’ll probably stop in front of the cafe about noon and have a bock, and maybe run into Riccard or one of your French friends — “
“What do you talk about with Riccard?” she asked.
“Oh, we do tricks. We don’t talk — not exactly, at least it doesn’t seem like talk.”
She hesitated. “I don’t see why you like to talk to Riccard,” she said at last.
“He’s a very nice type, very impetuous and fiery — “
“I know,” she said suddenly. “He once told me he’d resign his commission if I’d fly to China with him and fight in the war.”
When she said this, they had come to a halt engulfed by a crowd of students pouring into the buildings. She joined them as if she had said nothing at all:
“Goodbye, darling. I’ll be on this corner at one o’clock.”
He walked thoughtfully down to the garage. She had told him a great deal. He wasn’t asking her to fly to China; he was asking her to go for a quiet honeymoon in Sicily. He promised her security, not adventure.
“Well, it’s absurd to be jealous of this man,” he thought. “I’m just getting a little old before my time.”
So in the week of waiting for his mother, he organized picnics and swimming parties and trips to Aries and Nimes, inviting Tudy’s friends from the University, and they danced and sang and were very gay in little restaurant gardens and bistros all over that part of Provence — and behaved in such a harmless, lazy, wasteful summer manner that Tom, who wanted only to be alone with Tudy, almost managed to convince himself that he was having a good time…
…until the night on the steps of Tudy’s pension when he broke the silence and told her he wasn’t.
“Perhaps you’d better think it over,” he said.
“Think what over, Tom?”
“Whether you love me enough to marry me.”
Alarmed she cried: “Why, Tom, of course I do.”
“I’m not so sure. I like to see you have a good time, but I’m not the sort of man who could ever play — well, call it ‘background.’ “
“But you’re not background. I’m trying to please you, Tom; I thought you wanted to see a lot of young people and be very
Provencal and dance the Carmagnol’ and all that.”
“But it seems to be Riccard who’s dancing it with you. You didn’t actually have to kiss him tonight.”
“You were there — you saw. There was nothing secret about it. It was in front of a lot of people.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry if it hurt you, Tom. It was all playing. Sometimes with a man it’s difficult to avoid those things. You feel like a fool if you do. It was just Provence, just the lovely night — and I’ll never see him again after three or four days.”
He shook his head slowly.
“No, I’ve changed ideas. I don’t think we’ll see him any more at all.”
“What?” Was it alarm or relief in her voice? “Oh, then all right, Tom — that’s all right. You know best.”
“Is that agreed then?”
“You’re absolutely right,” she repeated after a minute. “But I think we could see him once more, just before he goes.”
“I’ll see him tomorrow,” he said almost gruffly. “You’re not a child and neither is he. It isn’t as if you were a debutante tapering off some heartsick swain.”
“Then why can’t you and I go away until he leaves.”
“That’s running away — that’d be a fine way to start a marriage.”
“Well, do what you want,” she said, and he saw by the starlight that her face was strained. “You know that more than anything in the world I want to marry you, Tom.”
Next day on the Rue de Provence he encountered Riccard; by mutual instinct they turned to a table of the nearest cafe.
“I must talk to you,” said Riccard.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Tom said, but he waited.
Riccard tapped his breast pocket.
“I have a letter here from Tudy delivered by hand this morning.”
“Yes?”
“You must understand that I am fond of you too, Tom — that I am very sad about the whole thing.”
“Well, what?” Tom demanded impatiently. “If Tudy wrote that she was in love with you — “
Riccard tapped his pocket again.
“She did not say that. I could show you this letter — “
“I don’t want to see it.”
Their tempers were rising.
“You’re upsetting Tudy,” Tom said. “Your business is to keep out.”
Riccard’s answer was humble but his eyes were proud.
“I have no money,” he said.
And, of all things, Tom was sorry for him.
“A girl must make her choice,” he said kindly. “You’re in the way now.”
“I understand that, too. I shall perhaps shorten my leave. I shall borrow a friend’s plane and fly down, and if I crash so much the better.”
“That’s nonsense.”
They shook hands and Tom duplicated the other’s formal little bow, succinct as a salute. . . .
He picked up Tudy at her pension an hour later. She was lovely in an inky blue muslin dress above which her hair shone like a silver angel. As they drove away from the house he said:
“I feel like a brute. But you can’t have two men, can you — like a young girl at a dance?”
‘‘Oh, I know it — don’t talk about it, darling. He did it all. I haven’t done anything I couldn’t tell you about.”
Riccard had said much the same thing. What bothered Tom was the image on the heart.
They drove southward past cliffs that might have had Roman lookouts posted on them, or that might have concealed barbarians waiting to drop boulders upon the Roman legions if they defil
ed through some pass.
Tom kept thinking: “Between Riccard and me which is the Roman, and which is the barbarian?”
…Over the crest of a cliff a singing dot came into sight — a dark bee, a hawk — an airplane. They looked up idly, then they were suddenly thinking the same thing, wondering if it were Riccard on his way back to the naval base in Toulon.
“It probably is.” Her voice sounded dry and uninterested.
“It looks like an old-fashioned monoplane to me.”
“Oh, I guess he can fly anything. He was picked to make some flight to Brazil that they called off. It was in the papers before you came — “
She broke off because of a sudden change of the situation in the sky. After passing over them the plane had begun to circle back, and in a moment its flight resolved itself into a slowly graduated spiral which was undoubtedly intended to center over the road a quarter of a mile ahead of them.
“What’s he trying to do?” exclaimed Tom. “Drop flowers on us?”
She didn’t answer. During what must have been less than a minute of time, the car and plane approached the same spot. Tom stopped the car.
“If this is one of his tricks, let’s get out.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t — “
“But look!”
The plane had come out of its dive, straightened out and was headed straight for them. Tom caught at Tudy’s hand, trying to pull her from the car, but he had misjudged the time and the plane was already upon them, with a roaring din — then suddenly it was over them and away.
“The fool!” Tom cried.
“He’s a wonderful flier.” Her face was still and calm. “He might have killed himself.”
Tom got back in the car and sat looking at her for a moment. Then he turned the car around and started back the way they had come.
For a long time they drove in silence. Then she asked:
“What are you going to do — send me home to America?”
The simplicity of her question confused him; it was impossible to punish her for an episode that was no fault of her own, yet he had intended just that when he turned the car around.
“What do you want to do?” he asked, stalling.
Her face had that fatalistic helplessness that he had seen on it one day ten months before when he broke the news to her that her husband had left nothing. And the same wave of protective love that had swept over him then swept over him again now. In the same moment he realized that the tragedy of her marriage — which had come so quickly she scarcely knew what had happened — had not really matured her. And by protecting her from its consequences he had aided the retardation.
“You’re just a girl,” he said aloud. “I suppose it’s my fault.”
In that case his responsibility was not over, and deep in his heart he knew that in spite of her inopportune coquetry so obvious under her thin denials, he did not want it to be over. On the contrary he seized upon it as a reason for holding her to him.
“You’re making a little trip,” he said as they neared town. “But not to America. I want you to go up to Paris for three or four days and shop a little. Meanwhile I’ll go down to Marseilles and meet Mother.”
Tudy cheered up at the suggestion.
“I’ll get my graduation dress and my trousseau at the same time.”
“All right, but I want you to leave this afternoon. So pack your bags right away.”
An hour later they stood together in the station.
“I miss my exam tomorrow,” she said.
“But it’ll give you a chance to come down to earth.”
He hated the phrase even as it left his lips: To come down to earth — was that an appealing prospect to hold out to any woman?
“Goodbye, dearest, dearest Tom.”
As the train started off he ran beside it a moment, throwing into her window a packet of two bright handkerchiefs she had liked in a bazaar.
“Thanks — oh, thanks.”
It was a long platform — when he came out at its end into the sunlight he stopped. There was his heart in motion with the train; he could feel the rip when the shadow of the last car broke from under the station roof.
She wrote immediately from Paris.
Oh, I miss you so, Tom. And I miss Provence, too. (Then a lot of erasing.) I miss everything that I’ve grown so fond of this last year. But I don’t miss any person but you!
There are no Americans in the streets — maybe we belong at home now and always did. They have a life they never take us into. They plan their lives so differently. But our American lives are so strange that we can never figure things out ahead. Like the hurricanes in Florida and the tornadoes and floods. All of a sudden things happen to us and we hardly know what hit us.
But I guess we must like that sort of thing or our ancestors wouldn’t have come to America. Does this make sense? There is a man knocking on the door with a package. More later.
Later:
Darling, it is my wedding dress and I cried on it just a little in the corner where I can wash it out. And darling, it makes me think of my other wedding dress and of how kind you have been to me and how I love you.
It is blue — oh, the frailest blue. I’m getting afraid I won’t be able to get the tears out of the corner.
Later:
I did — and it is so lovely, hanging now in the closet with the door open. It’s now eight o’clock — you know l’heure bleu — when everything is really blue — and I’m going to walk up to the Opera along the Avenue de l’Opera and then back to the hotel.
Before I go to sleep I’ll think of you and thank you for the dress and the lovely year and the new life you’re giving me.
Your devoted, your loving,
TUDY.
P.S. I still think I should have stayed and gone with you to meet your mother in Marseilles. She —
Tom broke off and went back to the signature: “Your devoted, your loving.” Which was she? He read back over the letter pausing at any erasure, for an erasure often means an evasion, a second thought. And a love letter should come like a fresh stream from the heart, with no leaf on its current.
Then a second the next morning:
I’m so glad for your telegram — this will reach you just before you start down to Marseilles. Give your mother my dearest love and tell her how much I hate missing her and how I wish I could welcome her to Provence. (There were two lines crossed out and rewritten.) I will be starting back day after tomorrow. How funny it is to be buying things, when I never had any money like this to spend before — $225.00 — that’s what it was, after I’d figured the hotel bill and even thought of keeping enough cash in hand so I won’t arrive absolutely penniless.
I’ve bought two presents, I hope you won’t mind, one for your mother and one for somebody else and that’s you. And don’t think I’ve stinted myself and that I won’t be a pretty bride for you! In fact I haven’t waited until my wedding day to find out. I’ve dressed all up half a dozen times and stood in front of the mirror.
I’ll be glad when it’s over. Won’t you, darling? I mean I’ll be glad when it’s begun — won’t you, darling?
Meanwhile, on the morning after she left, Tom had run into Riccard in the street. He nodded to him coldly, still angry about the airplane stunt, but Riccard seemed so unconscious of any guilt, seemed to think of it merely as a trick as innocuous as the bulb under the plate, that Tom waived the matter and stood talking with him a while under the freckled poplar shadows.
“So you decided not to go,” he remarked.
“Oh, I shall go, but not until tomorrow after all. And how is Madame — I mean Tudy?”
“She’s gone up to Paris to do some shopping.”
He felt a malicious satisfaction in seeing Riccard’s face fall.
“Where does she stay there? I would like to send her a telegram of goodbye.”
No, you don’t, Tom thought. Aloud he lied:
“I’m not sure — the hotel where she was going to stay is fu
ll.”
“When does she come back?”
“She gets here day after tomorrow morning. I’m going to meet her with the car at Avignon.”
“I see.” Riccard hesitated for a moment. “I hope you will be very happy,” he said.
His face was sad and bright at once; he was a gallant and charming young man, and Tom was sorry for a moment that they had not met under other circumstances.
But next day, driving to Marseilles, a very different idea came to him. Suppose instead of going to the air base at Toulon today, Riccard should go to Paris. There were not an infinite number of good hotels and in a morning’s search he might find out which was Tudy’s. And in the inevitable emotion of a “last meeting,” who could tell what might happen.
The worry so possessed him that when he reached Marseilles he put in a telephone call for the Naval Aviation Depot at Toulon.
“I’m calling Lieutenant Riccard,” he said.
“I do not understand.”
“Lieutenant Riccard.”
“This is not Lieutenant Riccard, surely?”
“No. I want to speak to Lieutenant Riccard.”
“Ah.”
“Is he there?”
“Riccard — wait till I look in the orderly room book… Yes… he is here — or at least he was here.”
Tom’s heart turned over as he waited.
“He is here,” said the voice. “He is in the mess room. One minute.”
Tom put the receiver very gently on the hook. His first instinct was relief — Riccard could not make it now; then he felt ashamed of his suspicions. Strolling that morning around a seaport where so many graver things had happened, he thought again of Tudy in a key above jealousy. He knew, though, that love should be a simpler, kinder thing; but every man loves out of something in himself that cannot be changed, and if he loved possessively and jealously, he could not help it.
Before he met his mother at the steamer he wired Tudy in Paris, asking an answer with a last thought that she might not be there. Bringing his mother back to the hotel for lunch he asked the concierge:
“Have you a telegram for me?”
It was there. His hands trembled as he opened it.
WHERE ELSE SHOULD I BE STOP LEAVING AT SIX TONIGHT AND REACHING AVIGNON TOMORROW MORNING AT FIVE A.M.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 348