Caroline’s observation confirmed his remarks about the environment. The village itself was like a mining town—hasty, flimsy buildings dominated by the sinister bulk of four or five sanatoriums; chastely cheerful when the sun glittered on the snow, gloomy when the cold seeped through the gloomy pines. In contrast were the flushed, pretty girls in Paris clothes whom she passed on the street, and the well-turned-out men. It was hard to believe they were fighting such a desperate battle, and as the doctor had said, many of them were not. There was an air of secret ribaldry—it was considered funny to send miniature coffins to new arrivals, and there was a continual undercurrent of scandal. Weight, weight, weight; everyone talked of weight—how many pounds one had put on last month or lost the week before.
She was conscious of death around her, too, but she felt her own strength returning day by day in the high, vibrant air, and she knew she was not going to die.
After a month came a stilted letter from Sidney. It said:
I stayed only until the immediate danger was past. I knew that, feeling as you do, you wouldn’t want my face to be the first thing you saw. So I’ve been down here in Sierre at the foot of the mountain, polishing up my Cambodge diary. If it’s any consolation for you to have someone who cares about you within call, I’d like nothing better than to stay on here. I hold myself utterly responsible for what happened to you, and many times I’ve wished I had died before I came into your life. Now there’s only the present—to get you well.
About your son—once a month I plan to run up to his school in Fontainebleau and see him for a few days—I’ve seen him once now and we like each other. This summer I’ll either arrange for him to go to a camp or take him through the Norwegian fjords with me, whichever plan seems advisable.
The letter depressed Caroline. She saw herself sinking into a bondage of gratitude to this man—as though she must thank an attacker for binding up her wounds. Her first act would be to earn the money to pay him back. It made her tired even to think of such things now, but it was always present in her subconscious, and when she forgot it she dreamed of it. She wrote:
Dear Sidney:
It’s absurd your staying there and I’d much rather you didn’t. In fact, it makes me uncomfortable. I am, of course, enormously grateful for all you’ve done for me and for Dexter. If it isn’t too much trouble, will you come up here before you go to Paris, as I have some things to send him?
Sincerely,
Caroline M. Corcoran.
He came a fortnight later, full of a health and vitality that she found as annoying as the look of sadness that was sometimes in his eyes. He adored her and she had no use for his adoration. But her strongest sensation was one of fear—fear that since he had made her suffer so much, he might be able to make her suffer again.
“I’m doing you no good, so I’m going away,” he said. “The doctors seem to think you’ll be well by September. I’ll come back and see for myself. After that I’ll never bother you again.”
If he expected to move her, he was disappointed.
“It may be some time before I can pay you back,” she said.
“I got you into this.”
“No, I got myself into it… Good-by, and thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Her voice might have been thanking him for bringing a box of candy. She was relieved at his departure. She wanted only to rest and be alone.
The winter passed. Toward the end she skied a little, and then spring came sliding up the mountain in wedges and spear points of green. Summer was sad, for two friends she had made there died within a week and she followed their coffins to the foreigners’ graveyard in Sierre. She was safe now. Her affected lung had again expanded; it was scarred, but healed; she had no fever, her weight was normal and there was a bright mountain color in her cheeks.
October was set as the month of her departure, and as autumn approached, her desire to see Dexter again was overwhelming. One day a wire came from Sidney in Tibet stating that he was starting for Switzerland.
Several mornings later the floor nurse looked in to toss her a copy of the Paris Herald and she ran her eyes listlessly down the columns. Then she sat up suddenly in bed.
AMERICAN FEARED LOST IN BLACK SEA
Sidney Lahaye, Millionaire Aviator, and Pilot Missing Four Days.
Teheran, Persia, October 5——
Caroline sprang out of bed, ran with the paper to the window, looked away from it, then looked at it again.
AMERICAN FEARED LOST IN BLACK SEA
Sidney Lahaye, Millionaire Aviator——
“The Black Sea,” she repeated, as if that was the important part of the affair—“in the Black Sea.”
She stood there in the middle of an enormous quiet. The pursuing feet that had thundered in her dream had stopped. There was a steady, singing silence.
“Oh-h-h!” she said.
AMERICAN FEARED LOST IN BLACK SEA
Sidney Lahaye, Millionaire Aviator, and Pilot Missing Four Days.
Teheran, Persia, October 5——
Caroline began to talk to herself in an excited voice.
“I must get dressed,” she said; “I must get to the telegraph and see whether everything possible has been done. I must start for there.” She moved around the room, getting into her clothes. “Oh-h-h!” she whispered. “Oh-h-h!” With one shoe on, she fell face downward across the bed. “Oh, Sidney—Sidney!” she cried, and then again, in terrible protest: “Oh-h-h!” She rang for the nurse. “First, I must eat and get some strength; then I must find out about trains.”
She was so alive now that she could feel parts of herself uncurl, unroll. Her heart picked up steady and strong, as if to say, “I’ll stick by you,” and her nerves gave a sort of jerk as all the old fear melted out of her. Suddenly she was grown, her broken girlhood dropped away from her, and the startled nurse answering her ring was talking to someone she had never seen before.
“It’s all so simple. He loved me and I loved him. That’s all there is. I must get to the telephone. We must have a consul there somewhere.”
For a fraction of a second she tried to hate Dexter because he was not Sidney’s son, but she had no further reserve of hate. Living or dead, she was with her love now, held close in his arms. The moment that his footsteps stopped, that there was no more menace, he had overtaken her. Caroline saw that what she had been shielding was valueless—only the little girl in the garden, only the dead, burdensome past.
“Why, I can stand anything,” she said aloud—“anything—even losing him.”
The doctor, alarmed by the nurse, came hurrying in.
“Now, Mrs. Corcoran, you’re to be quiet. No matter what news you’ve had, you——Look here, this may have some bearing on it, good or bad.”
He handed her a telegram, but she could not open it, and she handed it back to him mutely. He tore the envelope and held the message before her:
PICKED UP BY COALER CITY OF CLYDE STOP ALL WELL——
The telegram blurred; the doctor too. A wave of panic swept over her as she felt the old armor clasp her metallically again. She waited a minute, another minute; the doctor sat down.
“Do you mind if I sit in your lap a minute?” she said. “I’m not contagious any more, am I?”
With her head against his shoulder, she drafted a telegram with his fountain pen on the back of the one she had just received. She wrote:
PLEASE DON’T TAKE ANOTHER AEROPLANE BACK HERE. WE’VE GOT EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE UP, SO WHAT DOES A DAY OR TWO MATTER? I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL.
Comments
The story was probably written in Switzerland in April 1931. The Post bought the story with some reluctance, and Harold Ober reported to Fitzgerald: “The Post are taking FLIGHT AND PURSUIT but they want me to tell you that they do not feel that your last three stories have been up to the best you can do. They think it might be a good idea for you to write some American stories—that is stories laid on this side of the Atlantic and they feel that the last stories have been lacking in plot.” The Saturday Evening Postindicated its reservations about this story by holding it for a year before publishing it on 14 May 1932 in fourth position and leaving Fitzgerald’s name off the cover.
