III

Next morning Dick came early into Nicole’s room. “I feel badly about the evening. Tommy drove us home? Or did I dream it?”

“You know he did.”

“I think I’ll call on him.”

She was glad when he left her, for almost the first time in her life.

Tommy was in his bed.

“Feel all right?” Dick asked.

When Tommy complained of a sore throat he remembered he was a professional.

“Better have something for it.”

“You have one?”

“I haven’t—probably Nicole has.”

“Don’t disturb her.”

“She’s up.”

“How is she?”

Nicole, going downstairs, heard the conversation. She knew, as she had always known, that Tommy loved her; she knew he had come to dislike Dick, and that Dick had realized it. This thought was followed by a moment of satisfaction. She came up to her children’s breakfast table and gave instructions to the governess, while upstairs two men were thinking about her.

Later in the garden she was happy; she did not want anything to happen, but only for the situation to remain as it was; she had not existed for a long time.

Nicole went on through her garden routine. Reaching the sea wall she stopped and thought. She was shocked at the idea of being interested in another man—but other women have lovers—why not me? Why shouldn’t I?

She sat upon the low wall and looked down upon the sea. If she need not be forever with Dick, she must be something, not an addition to him. Going back to the house she became doubtful again.

Dick and Tommy were on the terrace. She walked through them, and kept her eyes away from Dick.

“Nicole—” Tommy began but started coughing.

“I’m going to get you some special camphor rub,” she suggested. “It’s American—Dick believes in it. I’ll be just a minute.”

“I must go really.”

When she returned with the jar, the chauffeur was at the door.

“When you get to the hotel rub this into your throat and chest,” she said.

As Tommy went down the steps, Dick whispered: “Don’t give Tommy the whole jar—it has to be ordered from Paris —we can’t get it here.”

Tommy came back. Nicole walked up to the car.

“Take it,” she said. “It’s very rare.”

She heard Dick grow silent at her side; she waved as the car drove off with Tommy and the special camphor rub.

“That gesture was not necessary,” Dick said. “There are four of us here—and for years whenever there’s a cough—”

They looked at each other.

In a week Nicole forgot about Tommy—she had not much memory for people and forgot them easily. But in June he wrote a little note to them both—and she opened it together with other mail. After reading it she threw it over to Dick, and he threw a telegram to her:

Dears will be at Gausses tomorrow unfortunately without mother want see you.

“I’ll be glad to see her,” said Nicole, grimly.

But she went to the beach with Dick next morning, afraid that he was making some desperate decision. Since the evening on Golding’s yacht she had felt what was going on. For months every word had seemed to have some other meaning. The most unhappy aspect of their relations was Dick’s growing indifference, which led to too much drink. She couldn’t guess how he was going to behave next, nor what would happen at the end.

Nicole had been designed for flight, with money as wings. Nicole could feel the fresh breeze already.

As the Divers went out on the beach, Nicole hardened as Dick looked about for Rosemary.

“There she is,” Nicole remarked, pointing at a raft.

“Let’s swim out and speak to Rosemary,” he suggested.

“You go.”

“We’ll both go.” She struggled a moment against him, but then they swam out together.

Rosemary was beautiful—her youth was a shock to Nicole—she was more confident than she had been five years ago.

“Five years ago you came here,” said Dick. “And what a funny little thing you were, in one of those hotel peignoirs!”

“How you remember things! You always did —and always the nice things.”

Nicole saw the old game beginning again and she dove under water, coming up again to hear:

“I’m going to pretend it’s five years ago and I’m a girl of eighteen again. You could always make me feel happy, you and Nicole. You’re the nicest people I’ve ever known, maybe ever will.”

Swimming away, Nicole saw that the cloud of Dick’s heart-sickness had lifted a little as he began to play with Rosemary.

“Do you practise on the Riviera?” Rosemary asked later, seated under an umbrella.

“It’d be easy to find likely patients.” He nodded here and there at the people around them. “Great candidates. Notice our old friend, Mrs. Abrams?”

Nicole could stand it no more. She stood up sharply, turned to Topsy.

“Would you like to be an actress when you grow up? I think you’d make a fine actress,” Rosemary said to the girl.

Nicole stared at her and in her grandfather’s voice said, slow and distinct:

“It’s absolutely OUT to put such ideas in the heads of other people’s children. Remember, we may have quite different plans for them.” She turned sharply to Dick. “I’m going to take the car home.”

“You haven’t driven for months,” he protested.

“I haven’t forgotten how.”

Driving home, Nicole relaxed and felt new and happy; her thoughts were clear—she felt being cured. “I’m practically alone, without him,” she thought. And as soon as she got home, she wrote Tommy Barban in Nice a short provocative letter.

But that was in the daytime—toward evening she was again afraid of what was in Dick’s mind; again she felt that he had a plan, she was afraid of his plans—they worked well and they had a logic which Nicole was not able to control.

Next morning, back from shopping in Cannes, Nicole found a note saying that Dick had taken the small car and gone up into Provence for a few days by himself. As she read it the phone rang—it was Tommy Barban, saying that he had received her letter and was driving over.

Nicole took a bath, put on a smart dress, and crossed herself with Chanel Sixteen. When Tommy drove up at one o’clock she was ready.

How good to look like this, to be loved again, to pretend to have a mystery! She had lost two years in the life of a pretty girl—now she felt like making up for them. Attractive women of nineteen and of twenty-nine are alike in their confidence.

Nicole did not want any spiritual romance—she wanted an “affair”; she wanted a change. She realized that it was a vulgar business, an affair without emotion. On the other hand, she blamed Dick for the current situation, and honestly thought that such an experiment might have a therapeutic value. All summer she had been stimulated by watching people do exactly what they wanted to do without any punishment.

Tommy caught her up in his arms and pulled her around to him, looking at her eyes.

“Don’t move,” he said. “I’m going to look at you a great deal from now on.”

“Do you like what you see?” she asked.

He pulled her closer.

“I like whatever I see about you.” He hesitated. “I thought I knew your face but it seems there are some things I didn’t know about it. When did you begin to have a crook’s eyes?”

She broke away, shocked and indignant, and cried:

“I have no mirror here,” she said, “but if my eyes have changed it’s because I’m well again. And perhaps I’ve gone back to my true self—I suppose my grandfather was a crook and I’m a crook after him.”

“Where’s Dick—is he lunching with us?”

“Dick’s on a tour,” she said. “Rosemary Hoyt turned up, and either they’re together or she upset him so much that he wants to go away and dream about her.”

“You are the most dramatic person I have known.”

“I suppose I’ve got—”

“You’ve got too much money,” he said impatiently. “That’s the trouble with you. Dick can’t stand it.”

“What do you think I ought to do?”

For the first time in ten years she was under the influence of a personality other than her husband’s. Everything Tommy said to her became part of her forever.

They drank a bottle of wine, Tommy came over behind her and laid his arms on hers, their cheeks touched and then their lips.

“Can’t you send the governess and the children away for the afternoon?”

“They have a piano lesson. Anyhow I don’t want to stay here.”

“Kiss me again.”

A little later, riding toward Nice, she thought: So I have a crook’s eyes, have I? Very well then, better a sane crook than a mad puritan.

She turned to Tommy.

“Have we GOT to go all the way to your hotel?”

He brought the car to a stop.

“No!” he answered. “And, my God, I have never been so happy as I am this minute.”

They had passed through Nice, and stopped near a small shore hotel.

Tommy filled out the police blanks—his real, hers false. Their room was a Mediterranean room, almost ascetic, almost clean. Simplest of places. Tommy ordered two cognacs, and when the door closed behind the waiter, he sat in the only chair, dark and handsome, like a Satan.

Before they had finished the brandy they suddenly moved together and met standing up; she forgot about Dick and her new crook’s eyes, forgot Tommy himself and sank deeper and deeper into the minutes and the moment.

… When he got up, he inspected her white torso and the brown limbs and head, and said laughing:

“You are all new like a baby.”

“With a crook’s eyes.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“It’s very hard taking care of a crook’s eyes—especially the ones made in Chicago.”

“I know lots of tricks.”

They dined at the new Beach Casino at Monte Carlo and then much later they swam in the sea. She liked his bringing her there; it was all as new as they were to each other.

They awoke together finding the moon gone down and the air cool. She demanded the time and Tommy called it was about three.

“I’ve got to go home then.”

“I thought we’d sleep in Monte Carlo.”

“No. There’s a governess and the children. I’ve got to get home before daylight.”

“As you like.”

At the gate of Villa Diana she kissed him an almost automatic good-by.