IV

Rosemary dozed for three hours and then lay awake. She had been brought up with the idea of work. Mrs. Speers had spent what little was left by her husbands on her daughter’s education, and when she blossomed out at sixteen with that extraordinary hair, brought her into a hotel suite of an American producer who was recuperating there. When the producer went to New York they went too. Thus Rosemary had passed her entrance examinations. With the following success and the promise of financial stability, Mrs. Speers said tonight:

“You were brought up to work—not to marry. Now you’ve found your first nut to crack and it’s a good nut—go ahead. Hurt yourself or him—whatever happens it can’t spoil you because economically you’re a boy, not a girl.”

Rosemary had never done much thinking, so her mother’s words disturbed her sleep. Getting up she walked out on the terrace. Beyond the sea and far up on the hill lived the Divers. She thought of them both together. Their children slept, their gate was shut for the night.

She went along the terrace toward the front door. She stopped at the sight of a figure seated on the wide white stairway of the entrance—then she saw that it was Luis Campion and that he was weeping. She touched him on the shoulder.

“What is it? Can I help you?”

“Nobody can help me. I have only myself to blame. It’s always the same.”

“What is it—do you want to tell me?”

He looked at her. “No,” he decided. She felt sudden disgust with whatever it was.

“Abe North is around here somewhere,” Campion said.

“Why, he’s staying at the Divers’!”

“Yes, but he’s up—don’t you know what happened? There’s going to be a duel.”

“Wh-at?”

“A duel with—we don’t know what yet.”

“Who’s going to duel?”

“I’ll tell you from the beginning. Of course, you were in the other automobile. Well, in a way you were lucky—It came so suddenly.”

“What came?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what began it. First she began to talk—”

“Who?”

“Violet McKisco. But don’t mention the Divers because he made threats against anybody who mentioned it.”

“Who did?”

“Tommy Barban. None of us ever found out what Violet had to say because he kept interrupting her, and then her husband got into it and now, my dear, we have the duel. This morning—at five o’clock—in an hour.”

At that moment Abe North came out of the hotel and saw them.

“What are YOU doing up?” he demanded.

She started to laugh. “I just got up.”

Abe sat down beside Rosemary.

“Who’s going to duel? Is it true?”

“It certainly seems to be true.”

Abe said the trouble had begun at the time Violet McKisco was telling Mrs. Abrams something she had found out about the Divers—she had gone upstairs in their house and she had come upon something there which had made a great impression on her. But Tommy was a watch-dog about the Divers. He said:

“Mrs. McKisco, please don’t talk further about Mrs. Diver.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she objected.

“I think it’s better to leave them out.”

“Are they so sacred?”

“Leave them out. Talk about something else.”

The people in the car did not know just what happened until the car stopped and Barban cried in a voice that shook everybody.

“Do you want to get out here—we’re only a mile from the hotel and you can walk it. YOU’VE GOT TO SHUT UP AND SHUT YOUR WIFE UP!”

“You know you’re stronger muscularly than I am. But I’m not afraid of you—what they ought to have is a duel—” said McKisco.

“Tommy telephoned some man in Cannes to act as second and McKisco telephoned me to come right down. Violet McKisco collapsed and Mrs. Abrams took her to her room. When I got there I tried to argue with Tommy but the latter wouldn’t accept anything short of an apology and McKisco wouldn’t give it.”

When Abe had finished Rosemary asked thoughtfully:

“Do the Divers know it was about them?”

“No—and they’re not ever going to know they had anything to do with it. That damn Campion had no business talking to you about it. This fight’s between two men—what Tommy needs is a good war.”

Abe looked at his watch.

“I’ve got to go up and see McKisco—do you want to come?”

After a moment Rosemary agreed and went upstairs beside Abe.

McKisco was sitting on his bed with his alcoholic agression vanished, in spite of the glass of champagne in his hand. He asked:

“Is it time?”

“I don’t think you ought to fight a duel,” said Rosemary

“Yeah, I should have tried to beat him up, but it’s done now. The trouble was I suggested the duel—if Violet had only kept her mouth shut I could have fixed it. Of course even now I can just leave, or sit back and laugh at the whole thing—but I don’t think Violet would ever respect me again.”

“Yes, she would,” said Rosemary. “She’d respect you more.”

“No—you don’t know Violet. She’s very hard when she gets an advantage over you. We’ve been married twelve years, we had a little girl seven years old and she died and after that you know how it is. We both played around on the side a little, nothing serious but we drifted apart—”

“Well, we’ll see there’s as little damage done as possible,” Abe opened a case. “These are Barban’s duelling pistols—I borrowed them so you could get familiar with them.”

“How about distance?” asked McKisco.

“I’ve asked about that. If one or the other parties has to be killed they make it eight paces, if they’re just offended it’s twenty paces, and if it’s only to vindicate their honor it’s forty paces. His second agreed with me to make it forty.”

“That’s good. I don’t see what it’s all about,” he said helplessly. “I don’t see why I’m doing it.”

It was the first thing he had ever done in his life.

“We might as well be going,” said Abe.

She found Campion downstairs in the lobby.

“I saw you go upstairs,” he said. “Is he all right? When is the duel going to be?”

“I don’t know.” She resented his speaking of it as a circus, with McKisco as the tragic clown.

“Will you go with me?” he demanded. “I’ve hired the hotel car.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“Why not?”

From the steps downstairs she saw Abe and McKisco drive away—but after a moment the hotel car came around the corner. Luis Campion pulled her in beside him.

“I’ve got my movie camera, you see.”

She laughed helplessly. He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.

“I wonder why Mrs. McKisco didn’t like the Divers?” she said. “They were very nice to her.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. It was something she saw. We never found what it was because of Barban.”

They followed the other car, turned off the main road and into the country.

“It’s the golf course,” cried Campion, “I’m sure that’s where it’s going to be.”

He was right.

They saw the two men, Barban and McKisco, face each other. Rosemary felt terrible pity and hatred for Barban; then:

“One—two—three!” Abe counted.

They fired at the same moment. McKisco swayed but recovered himself. Both shots had missed.

“Now, that’s enough!” cried Abe.

The duellists walked in, and everyone looked at Barban.

“I declare myself unsatisfied.”

“What? Sure you’re satisfied,” said Abe impatiently. “You just don’t know it.”

“Your man refuses another shot?”

“You’re damn right, Tommy. You insisted on this and my client went through with it.”

Tommy laughed. “The distance was ridiculous,” he said. “Your man must remember he’s not now in America.”

“This has gone far enough, Tommy,” said Abe rather sharply. He turned to McKisco.

“Come on, let’s get out.”

V

They were at a houseboat café on the Seine, Rosemary, the Norths and the Divers. They had been two days in Paris but actually they were still the same beach company.

The trio of women at the table represented American life. Nicole was the granddaughter of a self-made American capitalist and the granddaughter of a Count of the House of Lippe Weissenfeld. Mary North was the daughter of a paper-hanger and a descendant of President Tyler. Rosemary was from the middle of the middle class, making a career in Hollywood. They were all happy to exist in a man’s world—they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition to them.

Rosemary found it a pleasant party, that luncheon, nicer in that there were only seven people, about the limit of a good party, and after it she and Nicole went to the shops.

Shopping with Nicole, Rosemary spent money she had earned—she was here in Europe due to the fact that she had gone in the canal six times that January day with her temperature rising from 99° in the early morning to 103°, when her mother stopped it.

With Nicole’s help Rosemary bought two dresses and two hats and four pairs of shoes with her money. Nicole bought from a great list that ran two pages, and bought the things she saw besides. Everything she liked that she couldn’t possibly use herself, she bought as a present for a friend. She bought colored beads, artificial flowers, honey, a guest bed, bags, scarfs, a doll’s house. She bought a dozen bathing suits, a rubber alligator, a travelling chess set of gold and ivory, big handkerchiefs for Abe and two leather jackets. Nicole was the product of much work. For her sake trains ran at Chicago to California; men mixed toothpaste; girls canned tomatoes quickly in August; Indians worked on Brazilian coffee plantations and patent rights for new tractors were stolen from engineers—these were some of the people who worked for Nicole and people like her, and the whole system worked for them.

It was almost four. Nicole stood in a shop and said something about herself, which was so rare.

“Just before the war we were in Berlin—I was thirteen, it was just before Mother died. My sister was going to a court ball and she had three of the royal princes on her dance card. Half an hour before she was going to start she had a side ache and a high fever. The doctor said it was appendicitis and she ought to be operated on. But Mother had her plans made, so Baby went to the ball and danced till two with an ice pack under her evening dress. She was operated on at seven o’clock next morning.”

It was good to be hard, then, thought Rosemary. All nice people were hard on themselves.

At eleven that night she sat with Dick and the Norths at a restaurant. Since reaching Paris Abe North had been always stopping in places to get a drink, and she wondered how Mary North liked it. Mary was quiet, so quiet that Rosemary had learned little about her.

“We’ll turn in early tonight, Abe, after this drink.” Mary’s voice was light.

“Oh, no.” Abe protested. “Oh, no, not yet. We’ll have another bottle of champagne.”

“No more for me,” said Dick.

“It’s Rosemary I’m thinking of.”

He emptied what was left of the first bottle into Rosemary’s glass. She had taken nothing with them but now she raised the champagne and drank at it.

“What’s this?” exclaimed Dick. “You told me you didn’t drink.”

“I’m just going to drink this one glass. Besides, yesterday was my birthday—I was eighteen.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” they said indignantly.

“I knew you’d make a fuss over it and go to a lot of trouble.” She finished the champagne. “So this is the celebration.”

“It most certainly is not,” Dick said. “The dinner tomorrow night is your birthday party and don’t forget it. Eighteen—why, that’s a terribly important age.”

“I used to think until you’re eighteen nothing matters,” said Mary.

“That’s right,” Abe agreed. “And afterward it’s the same way.”

“Abe feels that nothing matters till he gets on the boat,” said Mary. “He’ll be writing music in America and I’ll be working as a singer in Munich, so when we get together again there’ll be nothing we can’t do.”

“That’s wonderful,” agreed Rosemary, feeling the champagne.

Abe said lightly, “Something tells me I’ll be a success on Broadway long before you’ve finished your scientific book.”

“I hope so,” said Dick. “I hope so. I may even give up what you call my ‘scientific book.’”

“Oh, Dick!” Mary’s voice was shocked. Rosemary had never before seen Dick’s face so expressionless; she felt that these words were important.

Suddenly she was so tired, so drunk that she could stay there no longer. She had to be taken to the hotel at once. Dick insisted on accompanying her.

“What is it you are giving up?” demanded Rosemary, facing Dick in the taxi.

“Nothing of importance.”

“Are you a scientist?”

“I’m a doctor of medicine.”

“Oh-h!” she smiled. “My father was a doctor too. Then why don’t you—”, she stopped.

“There’s no mystery. I’m just not practising. I’ll probably practise again some day.”

Rosemary put up her face quietly to be kissed. He looked at her for a moment as if he didn’t understand.

“Such a lovely child,” he said gravely.

She smiled up at him. “I’m in love with you and Nicole. Actually that’s my secret—I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are. Honestly—I love you and Nicole—I do.”

So many times he had heard this—even the formula was the same.

Suddenly she came toward him and he had kissed her breathlessly. Then she lay back against his arm and sighed.

“I’ve decided to give you up,” she said.

Dick started—had he said anything to imply that she possessed any part of him?

“But that’s very mean,” he managed to say lightly, “just when I was getting interested.”

“I’ve loved you so—” As if it had been for years. She was weeping a little now. “I’ve loved you so-o-o.”

Then he should have laughed, but he heard himself saying, “Not only are you beautiful but you are somehow on the grand scale. Everything you do, like pretending to be in love or pretending to be shy gets across.”

In the dark taxi, she came close again, clinging to him. He kissed her without enjoying it. He knew that there was passion there, but there was no shadow of it in her eyes or on her mouth; there was a faint spray of champagne on her breath. She clung nearer desperately and once more he kissed her and was chilled by the innocence of her kiss.

Her room in the hotel was diagonally across from theirs. When they reached the door she said suddenly:

“I know you don’t love me—I don’t expect it. Well, for my birthday present I want you to come into my room a minute while I tell you something. Just one minute.”

They went in and he closed the door, and Rosemary stood close to him, not touching him. The night had drawn the color from her face—she was very pale. She came close up against him.

“Take me.”

“Take you where?”

He was frozen with astonishment.

“Go on,” she whispered. “Oh, please go on. I don’t care if I don’t like it—I never expected to—I’ve always hated to think about it but now I don’t. I want you to.”

She was astonished at herself—she had never imagined she could talk like that. Suddenly she knew too that it was one of her greatest roles.

“Isn’t it just the champagne? Let’s more or less forget it,” said Dick.

“Oh, no, NOW. I want you to do it now, take me, show me, I’m absolutely yours and I want to be.”

“For one thing, have you thought how much it would hurt Nicole?”

“She won’t know—this won’t have anything to do with her.”

He continued kindly.

“Then there’s the fact that I love Nicole.”

“But you can love more than just one person, can’t you? Like I love Mother and I love you—more. I love you more now.”

“—you’re not in love with me but you might be afterwards, and that would begin your life with a terrible mess.”

“No, I promise I’ll never see you again. I’ll get Mother and go to America right away.”

He took another tone. “You’re just in that mood.”

“Oh, please, I don’t care even if I had a baby. I could go into Mexico like a girl at the studio. Oh, this is so different from anything I ever thought—I used to hate it when they kissed me seriously.” He saw she was still under the impression that it must happen. “Some of them had great big teeth, but you’re all different and beautiful. I want you to do it. I know you’re not in love with me.” She was suddenly humble and quiet. “I didn’t expect that much. I know I must seem just nothing to you.”

“Nonsense. But you seem young to me.”

Rosemary waited till Dick said, “And lastly things aren’t arranged so that this could be as you want.”

He followed her to the bed, and sat down beside her while she wept. He was suddenly confused and for a moment his usual grace was absent.

“I knew you wouldn’t,” she sobbed.

He stood up.

“Good night, child. Let’s forget it. So many people are going to love you and it might be nice to meet your first love intact, emotionally too. That’s an old-fashioned idea, isn’t it?” She looked up at him as he walked towards the door. When it closed behind him, she got up and went to the mirror, and began to brush her hair, sniffling a little.