«Not at all,» he said. «You’re just getting to be an old snob. Do you call that crowd of drunks you run with amusing people? Why, they’re not even very swell. They’re so hard that they’ve shifted down through Europe like nails in a sack of wheat, till they stick out of it a little into the Mediterranean Sea.»
Annoyed, Nicole fired a name at him, but he answered: «Class C. A good solid article for beginners.»
«The Colbys—anyway, her.»
«Third flight.»
«Marquis and Marquise de Kalb.»
«If she didn’t happen to take dope and he didn’t have other peculiarities.»
«Well, then, where are the amusing people?» she demanded impatiently.
«Off by themselves somewhere. They don’t hunt in herds, except occasionally.»
«How about you? You’d snap up an invitation from every person I named. I’ve heard stories about you wilder than any you can make up. There’s not a man that’s known you six months that would take your check for ten dollars. You’re a sponge and a parasite and everything—«
«Shut up for a minute,» he interrupted. «I don’t want to spoil this drive. . . . I just don’t like to see you kid yourself,» he continued. «What passes with you for international society is just about as hard to enter nowadays as the public rooms at the Casino; and if I can make my living by sponging off it, I’m still giving twenty times more than I get. We dead heats are about the only people in it with any stuff, and we stay with it because we have to.»
She laughed, liking him immensely, wondering how angry Nelson would be when he found that Oscar had walked off with his nail scissors and his copy of the New York Herald this morning.
«Anyhow,» she thought afterward, as she drove home toward luncheon, «we’re getting out of it all soon, and we’ll be serious and have a baby. After this last summer.»
Stopping for a moment at a florist’s, she saw a young woman coming out with an armful of flowers. The young woman glanced at her over the heap of color, and Nicole perceived that she was extremely smart, and then that her face was familiar. It was someone she had known once, but only slightly; the name had escaped her, so she did not nod, and forgot the incident until that afternoon.
They were twelve for luncheon: The Goldings’ party from the yacht, Liddell and Cardine Miles, Mr. Dane—seven different nationalities she counted; among them an exquisite young French-woman, Madame Delauney, whom Nicole referred to lightly as «Nelson’s girl.» Noel Delauney was perhaps her closest friend; when they made up foursomes for golf or for trips, she paired off with Nelson; but today, as Nicole introduced her to someone as «Nelson’s girl,» the bantering phrase filled Nicole with distaste.
She said aloud at luncheon: «Nelson and I are going to get away from it all.»
Everybody agreed that they, too, were going to get away from it all.
«It’s all right for the English,» someone said, «because they’re doing a sort of dance of death—you know, gayety in the doomed fort, with the Sepoys at the gate. You can see it by their faces when they dance—the intensity. They know it and they want it, and they don’t see any future. But you Americans, you’re having a rotten time. If you want to wear the green hat or the crushed hat, or whatever it is, you always have to get a little tipsy.»
«We’re going to get away from it all,» Nicole said firmly, but something within her argued: «What a pity—this lovely blue sea, this happy time.» What came afterward? Did one just accept a lessening of tension? It was somehow Nelson’s business to answer that. His growing discontent that he wasn’t getting anywhere ought to explode into a new life for both of them, or rather a new hope and content with life. That secret should be his masculine contribution.
«Well, children, good-by.»
«It was a great luncheon.»
«Don’t forget about getting away from it all.»
«See you when—«
The guests walked down the path toward their cars. Only Oscar, just faintly flushed on liqueurs, stood with Nicole on the veranda, talking on and on about the girl he had invited up to see his stamp collection. Momentarily tired of people, impatient to be alone, Nicole listened for a moment and then, taking a glass vase of flowers from the luncheon table, went through the French windows into the dark, shadowy villa, his voice following her as he talked on and on out there.
It was when she crossed the first salon, still hearing Oscar’s monologue on the veranda, that she began to hear another voice in the next room, cutting sharply across Oscar’s voice.
«Ah, but kiss me again,» it said, stopped; Nicole stopped, too, rigid in the silence, now broken only by the voice on the porch.
«Be careful.» Nicole recognized the faint French accent of Noel Delauney.
«I’m tired of being careful. Anyhow, they’re on the veranda.»
«No, better the usual place.»
«Darling, sweet darling.»
The voice of Oscar Dane on the veranda grew weary and stopped and, as if thereby released from her paralysis, Nicole took a step—forward or backward, she did not know which. At the sound of her heel on the floor, she heard the two people in the next room breaking swiftly apart.
Then she went in. Nelson was lighting a cigarette; Noel, with her back turned, was apparently hunting for hat or purse on a chair. With blind horror rather than anger, Nicole threw, or rather pushed away from her, the glass vase which she carried. If at anyone, it was at Nelson she threw it, but the force of her feeling had entered the inanimate thing; it flew past him, and Noel Delauney, just turning about, was struck full on the side of her head and face.
«Say, there!» Nelson cried. Noel sank slowly into the chair before which she stood, her hand slowly rising to cover the side of her face. The jar rolled unbroken on the thick carpet, scattering its flowers.
«You look out!» Nelson was at Noel’s side, trying to take the hand away to see what had happened.
«C’est liquide,» gasped Noel in a whisper. «Est-ce que c’est le sang?»
He forced her hand away, and cried breathlessly, «No, it’s just water!» and then, to Oscar, who had appeared in the doorway: «Get some cognac!» and to Nicole: «You fool, you must be crazy!»
Nicole, breathing hard, said nothing. When the brandy arrived, there was a continuing silence, like that of people watching an operation, while Nelson poured a glass down Noel’s throat. Nicole signaled to Oscar for a drink, and, as if afraid to break the silence without it, they all had a brandy. Then Noel and Nelson spoke at once:
«If you can find my hat—«
«This is the silliest—«
«—I shall go immediately.»
«—thing I ever saw; I—«
They all looked at Nicole, who said: «Have her car drive right up to the door.» Oscar departed quickly.
«Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?» asked Nelson anxiously.
«I want to go.»
A minute later, when the car had driven away, Nelson came in and poured himself another glass of brandy. A wave of subsiding tension flowed over him, showing in his face; Nicole saw it, and saw also his gathering will to make the best he could of it.
«I want to know just why you did that,» he demanded. «No, don’t go, Oscar.» He saw the story starting out into the world.
«What possible reason—«
«Oh, shut up!» snapped Nicole.
«If I kissed Noel, there’s nothing so terrible about it. It’s of absolutely no significance.»
She made a contemptuous sound. «I heard what you said to her.»
«You’re crazy.»
He said it as if she were crazy, and wild rage filled her.
«You liar! All this time pretending to be so square, and so particular what I did, and all the time behind my back you’ve been playing around with that little—«
She used a serious word, and as if maddened with the sound of it, she sprang toward his chair. In protection against this sudden attack, he flung up his arm quickly, and the knuckles of his open hand struck across the socket of her eye. Covering her face with her hand as Noel had done ten minutes previously, she fell sobbing to the floor.
«Hasn’t this gone far enough?» Oscar cried.
«Yes,» admitted Nelson, «I guess it has.»
«You go on out on the veranda and cool off.»
He got Nicole to a couch and sat beside her, holding her hand.
«Brace up—brace up, baby,» he said, over and over. «What are you—Jack Dempsey? You can’t go around hitting French women; they’ll sue you.»
«He told her he loved her,» she gasped hysterically. «She said she’d meet him at the same place. . . . Has he gone there now?»
«He’s out on the porch, walking up and down, sorry as the devil that he accidentally hit you, and sorry he ever saw Noel Delauney.»
«Oh, yes!»
«You might have heard wrong, and it doesn’t prove a thing, anyhow.»
After twenty minutes, Nelson came in suddenly and sank down on his knees by the side of his wife. Mr. Oscar Dane, reënforced in his idea that he gave much more than he got, backed discreetly and far from unwillingly to the door.
In another hour, Nelson and Nicole, arm in arm, emerged from their villa and walked slowly down to the Café de Paris. They walked instead of driving, as if trying to return to the simplicity they had once possessed, as if they were trying to unwind something that had become visibly tangled. Nicole accepted his explanations, not
