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 info 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 Café des Alliées,” 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 pressé.”

“For me a demi,” said Tommy.

“The Blackenwite with siphon,” said Dick.

“II n’y a plus de Blackenwite. Nous n’avons que le Johnny Walkair.”

“Ça 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 de 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 ‘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 principal, 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 to-night?”

“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. Fräulein 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.

He embraced the old gardener who had made the first garden at Villa Diana six years ago; he kissed the Provençal girl who helped with the children. She had been with them for almost a decade and she fell on her knees and cried until Dick jerked her to her feet and gave her three hundred francs. Nicole was sleeping late, as had been agreed upon – he left a note for her, and one for Baby Warren who was just back from Sardinia and staying at the house. Dick took a big drink from a bottle of brandy three feet high, holding ten quarts, that someone had presented them with.

Then he decided to leave his bags by the station in Cannes and take a last look at Gausse’s Beach.

* * *

The beach was peopled with only an advance guard of children when Nicole and her sister arrived that morning. A white sun, chivied of outline by a white sky, boomed over a windless day. Waiters were putting extra ice into the bar; an American photographer from the A. and P. worked with his equipment in a precarious shade and looked up quickly at every footfall descending the stone steps. At the hotel his prospective subjects slept late in darkened rooms upon their recent opiate of dawn.

When Nicole started out on the beach she saw Dick, not dressed for swimming, sitting on a rock above. She shrank back in the shadow of her dressing-tent. In a minute Baby joined her, saying:

“Dick’s still there.”

“I saw him.”

“I think he might have the delicacy to go.”

“This is his place – in a way, he discovered it. Old Gausse always says he owes everything to Dick.”

Baby looked calmly at her sister.

“We should have let him confine himself to his bicycle excursions,” she remarked. “When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up.”

“Dick was a good husband to me for six years,” Nicole said. “All that time I never suffered a minute’s pain because of him, and he always did his best never to let anything hurt me.”

Baby’s lower jaw projected slightly as she said:

“That’s what he was educated for.”

The sisters sat in silence; Nicole wondering in a tired way about things; Baby considering whether or not to marry the latest candidate for her hand and money, an authenticated Hapsburg. She was not quite thinking about it. Her affairs had long shared such a sameness, that, as she dried out, they were more important for their conversational value than for themselves. Her emotions had their truest existence in the telling of them.

“Is he gone?” Nicole asked after a while. “I think his train leaves at noon.”

Baby looked.

“No. He’s moved up higher on the terrace and he’s talking to some women. Anyhow there are so many people now that he doesn’t have to see us.”

He had seen them though, as they left their pavilion, and he followed them with his eyes until they disappeared again. He sat with Mary Minghetti, drinking anisette.

“You were like you used to be the night you helped us,” she was saying, “except at the end, when you were horrid about Caroline. Why aren’t you nice like that always? You can be.”

It seemed fantastic to Dick to be in a position where Mary North could tell him about things.

“Your friends still like you, Dick. But you say awful things to people when you’ve been drinking. I’ve spent most of my time defending you this summer.”

“That remark is one of Doctor Eliot’s classics.”

“It’s true. Nobody cares whether you drink or not – ” She hesitated, “even when Abe drank hardest, he never offended people like you do.”

“You’re all so dull,” he said.

“But we’re all there is!” cried Mary. “If you don’t like nice people, try the ones who aren’t nice, and see how you like that! All people want is to have a good time and if you make them unhappy you cut yourself off from nourishment.”

“Have I been nourished?” he asked.

Mary was having a good time, though she did not know it, as she had sat down with him only out of fear. Again she refused a drink and said: “Self-indulgence is back of it. Of course, after Abe you can imagine how I feel about it – since I watched the progress of a good man toward alcoholism – ”

Down the steps tripped Lady Caroline Sibly-Biers with blithe theatricality.

Dick felt fine – he was already well in advance of the day; arrived at where a man should be at the end of a good dinner, yet he showed only a fine, considered, restrained interest in Mary. His eyes, for the moment clear as a child’s, asked her sympathy and stealing over him he felt the old necessity of convincing her that he was the last man in the world and she was the last woman.

…Then he would not have to look at those two other figures, a man and a woman, black and white and metallic against the sky…

“You once liked me, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Liked you – I loved you. Everybody loved you. You could’ve had anybody you wanted for the asking – ”

“There has always been something between you and me.”

She bit eagerly. “Has there, Dick?”

“Always – I knew your troubles and how brave you were about them.” But the old interior laughter had begun inside him and he knew he couldn’t keep it up much longer.

“I always thought you knew a lot,” Mary said enthusiastically. “More about me than anyone has ever known. Perhaps that’s why I was so afraid of you when we didn’t get along so well.”

His glance fell soft and kind upon hers, suggesting an emotion underneath; their glances married suddenly, bedded, strained together. Then, as the laughter inside of him became so loud that it seemed as if Mary must hear it, Dick switched off the light and they were back in the Riviera sun.

“I must go,” he said. As he stood up he swayed a little; he did not feel well any more – his blood raced slow. He raised his right hand and with a papal cross he blessed the beach from the high terrace. Faces turned upward from several umbrellas.

“I’m going to him.” Nicole got to her knees.

“No, you’re not,” said Tommy, pulling her down firmly. “Let well enough alone.”