Dick waited until she was out of sight. Then he leaned his head forward on the parapet. The case was finished. Doctor Diver was at liberty.
X
AT two o'clock that night the phone woke Nicole and she heard Dick answer it from what they called the restless bed, in the next room.
"Oui, oui ... mais a qui est-ce que je parle?... Oui...." His voice woke up with surprise. "But can I speak to one of the ladies, Sir the Officer? They are both ladies of the very highest prominence, ladies of connections that might cause political complications of the most serious.... It is a fact, I swear to you.... Very well, you will see."
He got up and, as he absorbed the situation, his self-knowledge assured him that he would undertake to deal with it--the old fatal pleasingness, the old forceful charm, swept back with its cry of "Use me!" He would have to go fix this thing that he didn't care a damn about, because it had early become a habit to be loved, perhaps from the moment when he had realized that he was the last hope of a decaying clan. On an almost parallel occasion, back in Dohmler's clinic on the Zurichsee, realizing this power, he had made his choice, chosen Ophelia, chosen the sweet poison and drunk it. Wanting above all to be brave and kind, he had wanted, even more than that, to be loved. So it had been. So it would ever be, he saw, simultaneously with the slow archaic tinkle from the phone box as he rang off.
There was a long pause. Nicole called, "What is it? Who is it?"
Dick had begun to dress even as he hung up the phone.
"It's the poste de police in Antibes--they're holding Mary North and that Sibly-Biers. It's something serious--the agent wouldn't tell me; he kept saying 'pas de mortes--pas d'automobiles' but he implied it was just about everything else."
"Why on earth did they call on you? It sounds very peculiar to me."
"They've got to get out on bail to save their faces; and only some property owner in the Alpes-Maritimes can give bail."
"They had their nerve."
"I don't mind. However I'll pick up Gausse at the hotel----"
Nicole stayed awake after he had departed wondering what offense they could have committed; then she slept. A little after three when Dick came in she sat up stark awake saying, "What?" as if to a character in her dream.
"It was an extraordinary story--" Dick said. He sat on the foot of her bed, telling her how he had roused old Gausse from an Alsatian coma, told him to clean out his cash drawer, and driven with him to the police station.
"I don't like to do something for that Anglaise," Gausse grumbled.
Mary North and Lady Caroline, dressed in the costume of French sailors, lounged on a bench outside the two dingy cells. The latter had the outraged air of a Briton who momentarily expected the Mediterranean fleet to steam up to her assistance. Mary Minghetti was in a condition of panic and collapse--she literally flung herself at Dick's stomach as though that were the point of greatest association, imploring him to do something. Meanwhile the chief of police explained the matter to Gausse who listened to each word with reluctance, divided between being properly appreciative of the officer's narrative gift and showing that, as the perfect servant, the story had no shocking effect on him.
"It was merely a lark," said Lady Caroline with scorn. "We were pretending to be sailors on leave, and we picked up two silly girls. They got the wind up and made a rotten scene in a lodging house."
Dick nodded gravely, looking at the stone floor, like a priest in the confessional--he was torn between a tendency to ironic laughter and another tendency to order fifty stripes of the cat and a fortnight of bread and water. The lack, in Lady Caroline's face, of any sense of evil, except the evil wrought by cowardly Provencal girls and stupid police, confounded him; yet he had long concluded that certain classes of English people lived upon a concentrated essence of the anti-social that, in comparison, reduced the gorgings of New York to something like a child contracting indigestion from ice cream.
"I've got to get out before Hosain hears about this," Mary pleaded. "Dick, you can always arrange things--you always could. Tell 'em we'll go right home, tell 'em we'll pay anything."
"I shall not," said Lady Caroline disdainfully. "Not a shilling. But I shall jolly well find out what the Consulate in Cannes has to say about this."
"No, no!" insisted Mary. "We've got to get out tonight."
"I'll see what I can do," said Dick, and added, "but money will certainly have to change hands." Looking at them as though they were the innocents that he knew they were not, he shook his head: "Of all the crazy stunts!"
Lady Caroline smiled complacently.
"You're an insanity doctor, aren't you? You ought to be able to help us--and Gausse has got to!"
At this point Dick went aside with Gausse and talked over the old man's findings. The affair was more serious than had been indicated--one of the girls whom they had picked up was of a respectable family. The family were furious, or pretended to be; a settlement would have to be made with them. The other one, a girl of the port, could be more easily dealt with. There were French statutes that would make conviction punishable by imprisonment or, at the very least, public expulsion from the country. In addition to the difficulties, there was a growing difference in tolerance between such townspeople as benefited by the foreign colony and the ones who were annoyed by the consequent rise of prices. Gausse, having summarized the situation, turned it over to Dick. Dick called the chief of police into conference.
"Now you know that the French government wants to encourage American touring--so much so that in Paris this summer there's an order that Americans can't be arrested except for the most serious offenses."
"This is serious enough, my God."
"But look now--you have their Cartes d'Identite?"
"They had none. They had nothing--two hundred francs and some rings. Not even shoe-laces that they could have hung themselves with!"
Relieved that there had been no Cartes d'Identite Dick continued.
"The Italian Countess is still an American citizen. She is the grand-daughter--" he told a string of lies slowly and portentously, "of John D. Rockefeller Mellon. You have heard of him?"
"Yes, oh heavens, yes. You mistake me for a nobody?"
"In addition she is the niece of Lord Henry Ford and so connected with the Renault and Citroen companies--" He thought he had better stop here. However the sincerity of his voice had begun to affect the officer, so he continued: "To arrest her is just as if you arrested a great royalty of England. It might mean--War!"
"But how about the Englishwoman?"
"I'm coming to that. She is affianced to the brother of the Prince of Wales--the Duke of Buckingham."
"She will be an exquisite bride for him."
"Now we are prepared to give--" Dick calculated quickly, "one thousand francs to each of the girls--and an additional thousand to the father of the 'serious' one. Also two thousand in addition, for you to distribute as you think best--" he shrugged his shoulders, "--among the men who made the arrest, the lodging-house keeper and so forth. I shall hand you the five thousand and expect you to do the negotiating immediately. Then they can be released on bail on some charge like disturbing the peace, and whatever fine there is will be paid before the magistrate tomorrow--by messenger."
Before the officer spoke Dick saw by his expression that it would be all right. The man said hesitantly, "I have made no entry because they have no Cartes d'Identite. I must see--give me the money."
An hour later Dick and M. Gausse dropped the women by the Majestic Hotel, where Lady Caroline's chauffeur slept in her landaulet.
"Remember," said Dick, "you owe Monsieur Gausse a hundred dollars apiece."
"All right," Mary agreed, "I'll give him a check tomorrow--and something more."
"Not I!" Startled, they all turned to Lady Caroline, who, now entirely recovered, was swollen with righteousness. "The whole thing was an outrage. By no means did I authorize you to give a hundred dollars to those people."
Little Gausse stood beside th
e car, his eyes blazing suddenly.
"You won't pay me?"
"Of course she will," said Dick.
Suddenly the abuse that Gausse had once endured as a bus boy in London flamed up and he walked through the moonlight up to Lady Caroline.
He whipped a string of condemnatory words about her, and as she turned away with a frozen laugh, he took a step after her and swiftly planted his little foot in the most celebrated of targets. Lady Caroline, taken by surprise, flung up her hands like a person shot as her sailor-clad form sprawled forward on the sidewalk.
Dick's voice cut across her raging: "Mary, you quiet her down! or you'll both be in leg-irons in ten minutes!"
On the way back to the hotel old Gausse said not a word, until they passed the Juan-les-Pins Casino, still sobbing and coughing with jazz; then he sighed forth:
"I have never seen women like this sort of women. I have known many of the great courtesans of the world, and for them I have much respect often, but women like these women I have never seen before."
XI
DICK and Nicole were accustomed to go together to the barber, and have haircuts and shampoos in adjoining rooms. From Dick's side Nicole could hear the snip of shears, the count of changes, the Voilas and Pardons. The day after his return they went down to be shorn and washed in the perfumed breeze of the fans.
In front of the Carleton Hotel, its windows as stubbornly blank to the summer as so many cellar doors, a car passed them and Tommy Barban was in it. Nicole's momentary glimpse of his expression, taciturn and thoughtful and, in the second of seeing her, wide-eyed and alert, disturbed her. She wanted to be going where he was going. The hour with the hair-dresser seemed one of the wasteful intervals that composed her life, another little prison. The coiffeuse in her white uniform, faintly sweating lip-rouge and cologne reminded her of many nurses.
In the next room Dick dozed under an apron and a lather of soap. The mirror in front of Nicole reflected the passage between the men's side and the women's, and Nicole started up at the sight of Tommy entering and wheeling sharply into the men's shop. She knew with a flush of joy that there was going to be some sort of showdown.
She heard fragments of its beginning.
"Hello, I want to see you."
"... serious."
"... serious."
"... perfectly agreeable."
In a minute Dick came into Nicole's booth, his expression emerging annoyed from behind the towel of his hastily rinsed face.
"Your friend has worked himself up into a state. He wants to see us together, so I agreed to have it over with. Come along!"
"But my hair--it's half cut."
"Never mind--come along!"
Resentfully she had the staring coiffeuse remove the towels.
Feeling messy and unadorned she followed Dick from the hotel. Outside Tommy bent over her hand.
"We'll go to the Cafe des Allies," said Dick.
"Wherever we can be alone," Tommy agreed.
Under the arching trees, central in summer, Dick asked: "Will you take anything, Nicole?"
"A citron presse."
"For me a demi," said Tommy.
"The Blackenwite with siphon," said Dick.
"Il n'y a plus de Blackenwite. Nous n'avons que le Johnny Walkair."
"Ca va."
"She's--not--wired for sound
but on the quiet
you ought to try it----"
"Your wife does not love you," said Tommy suddenly. "She loves me."
The two men regarded each other with a curious impotence of expression. There can be little communication between men in that position, for their relation is indirect, and consists of how much each of them has possessed or will possess of the woman in question, so that their emotions pass through her divided self as through a bad telephone connection.
"Wait a minute," Dick said. "Donnez moi du gin et du siphon."
"Bien, Monsieur."
"All right, go on, Tommy."
"It's very plain to me that your marriage to Nicole has run its course. She is through. I've waited five years for that to be so."
"What does Nicole say?"
They both looked at her.
"I've gotten very fond of Tommy, Dick."
He nodded.
"You don't care for me any more," she continued. "It's all just habit. Things were never the same after Rosemary."
Unattracted to this angle, Tommy broke in sharply with:
"You don't understand Nicole. You treat her always like a patient because she was once sick."
They were suddenly interrupted by an insistent American, of sinister aspect, vending copies of The Herald and of The Times fresh from New York.
"Got everything here, buddies," he announced. "Been here long?'"
"Cessez cela! Allez ouste!" Tommy cried and then to Dick, "Now no woman would stand such----"
"Buddies," interrupted the American again. "You think I'm wasting my time--but lots of others don't." He brought a gray clipping from his purse--and Dick recognized it as he saw it. It cartooned millions of Americans pouring from liners with bags of gold. "You think I'm not going to get part of that? Well, I am. I'm just over from Nice for the Tour de France."
As Tommy got him off with a fierce "allez-vous-en," Dick identified him as the man who had once hailed him in the rue des Saints Anges, five years before.
"When does the Tour de France get here?" he called after him.
"Any minute now, Buddy."
He departed at last with a cheery wave and Tommy returned to Dick.
"Elle doit avoir plus avec moi qu'avec vous."
"Speak English! What do you mean 'doit avoir'?"
" 'Doit avoir?' Would have more happiness with me."
"You'd be new to each other. But Nicole and I have had much happiness together, Tommy."
"L'amour de famille," Tommy said, scoffing.
"If you and Nicole married won't that be 'l'amour de famille'?" The increasing commotion made him break off; presently it came to a serpentine head on the promenade and a group, presently a crowd, of people sprung from hidden siestas, lined the curbstone.
Boys sprinted past on bicycles, automobiles jammed with elaborate betasselled sportsmen slid up the street, high horns tooted to announce the approach of the race, and unsuspected cooks in undershirts appeared at restaurant doors as around a bend a procession came into sight. First was a lone cyclist in a red jersey, toiling intent and confident out of the westering sun, passing to the melody of a high chattering cheer. Then three together in a harlequinade of faded color, legs caked yellow with dust and sweat, faces expressionless, eyes heavy and endlessly tired.
Tommy faced Dick, saying: "I think Nicole wants a divorce--I suppose you'll make no obstacles?"
A troupe of fifty more swarmed after the first bicycle racers, strung out over two hundred yards; a few were smiling and self-conscious, a few obviously exhausted, most of them indifferent and weary. A retinue of small boys passed, a few defiant stragglers, a light truck carried the dupes of accident and defeat. They were back at the table. Nicole wanted Dick to take the initiative, but he seemed content to sit with his face half-shaved matching her hair half-washed.
"Isn't it true you're not happy with me any more?" Nicole continued. "Without me you could get to your work again--you could work better if you didn't worry about me."
Tommy moved impatiently.
"That is so useless. Nicole and I love each other, that's all there is to it."
"Well, then," said the Doctor, "since it's all settled, suppose we go back to the barber shop."
Tommy wanted a row: "There are several points----"
"Nicole and I will talk things over," said Dick equitably. "Don't worry--I agree in principle, and Nicole and I understand each other. There's less chance of unpleasantness if we avoid a three-cornered discussion."
Unwillingly acknowledging Dick's logic, Tommy was moved by an irresistible racial tendency to chisel for an advantage.
"Let
it be understood that from this moment," he said, "I stand in the position of Nicole's protector until details can be arranged. And I shall hold you strictly accountable for any abuse of the fact that you continue to inhabit the same house."
"I never did go in for making love to dry loins," said Dick.
He nodded, and walked off toward the hotel with Nicole's whitest eyes following him.
"He was fair enough," Tommy conceded. "Darling, will we be together tonight?"
"I suppose so."
So it had happened--and with a minimum of drama; Nicole felt outguessed, realizing that from the episode of the camphor-rub, Dick had anticipated everything. But also she felt happy and excited, and the odd little wish that she could tell Dick all about it faded quickly. But her eyes followed his figure until it became a dot and mingled with the other dots in the summer crowd.
XII
THE day before Doctor Diver left the Riviera he spent all his time with his children. He was not young any more with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have about himself, so he wanted to remember them well. The children had been told that this winter they would be with their aunt in London and that soon they were going to come and see him in America. Fraulein was not to be discharged without his consent.
He was glad he had given so much to the little girl--about the boy he was more uncertain--always he had been uneasy about what he had to give to the ever-climbing, ever-clinging, breast-searching young. But, when he said good-by to them, he wanted to lift their beautiful heads off their necks and hold them close for hours.
Tender Is the Night Page 37
