Then she was glad she had come. The boat was hung with fragile lanterns, which blended with the pastels of the bridges and the reflected stars in the dark Seine, like a child’s dream out of the Arabian Nights. A crowd of hungry-eyed spectators were gathered on the banks. Champagne moved past in platoons like a drill of bottles, while the music, instead of being loud and obtrusive, drifted down from the upper deck like frosting dripping over a cake. She became aware presently that they were not the only Americans there—across the deck were the Liddell Mileses, whom she had not seen for several years.
Other people from that crowd were present, and she felt a faint disappointment. What if this was not the marquis’ best party? She remembered her mother’s second days at home. She asked Chiki, who was at her side, to point out celebrities, but when she inquired about several people whom she associated with that set, he replied vaguely that they were away, or coming later, or could not be there. It seemed to her that she saw across the room the girl who had made the scene in the Café de Paris at Monte Carlo, but she could not be sure, for with the faint almost imperceptible movement of the boat, she realized that she was growing faint again. She sent for Nelson to take her home.
«You can come right back, of course. You needn’t wait for me, because I’m going right to bed.»
He left her in the hands of the nurse, who helped her upstairs and aided her to undress quickly.
«I’m desperately tired,» Nicole said. «Will you put my pearls away?»
«Where?»
«In the jewel box on the dressing table.»
«I don’t see it,» said the nurse after a minute.
«Then it’s in a drawer.»
There was a thorough rummaging of the dressing table, without result.
«But of course it’s there.» Nicole attempted to rise, but fell back, exhausted. «Look for it, please, again. Everything is in it—all my mother’s things and my engagement things.»
«I’m sorry, Mrs. Kelly. There’s nothing in this room that answers to that description.»
«Wake up the maid.»
The maid knew nothing; then, after a persistent cross-examination, she did know something. Count Sarolai’s valet had gone out, carrying his suitcase, half an hour after madame left the house.
Writhing in sharp and sudden pain, with a hastily summoned doctor at her side, it seemed to Nicole hours before Nelson came home. When he arrived, his face was deathly pale and his eyes were wild. He came directly into her room.
«What do you think?» he said savagely. Then he saw the doctor. «Why, what’s the matter?»
«Oh, Nelson, I’m sick as a dog and my jewel box is gone, and Chiki’s valet has gone. I’ve told the police. . . . Perhaps Chiki would know where the man—«
«Chiki will never come in this house again,» he said slowly. «Do you know whose party that was? Have you got any idea whose party that was?» He burst into wild laughter. «It was our party—our party, do you understand? We gave it—we didn’t know it, but we did.»
«Maintenant, monsieur, il ne faut pas exciter madame—» the doctor began.
«I thought it was odd when the marquis went home early, but I didn’t suspect till the end. They were just guests—Chiki invited all the people. After it was over, the caterers and musicians began to come up and ask me where to send their bills. And that damn Chiki had the nerve to tell me he thought I knew all the time. He said that all he’d promised was that it would be his brother-in-law’s sort of party, and that his sister would be there. He said perhaps I was drunk, or perhaps I didn’t understand French—as if we’d ever talked anything but English to him.»
«Don’t pay!» she said. «I wouldn’t think of paying.»
«So I said, but they’re going to sue—the boat people and the others. They want twelve thousand dollars.»
She relaxed suddenly. «Oh, go away!» she cried. «I don’t care! I’ve lost my jewels and I’m sick, sick!»
IV
This is the story of a trip abroad, and the geographical element must not be slighted. Having visited North Africa, Italy, the Riviera, Paris and points in between, it was not surprising that eventually the Kellys should go to Switzerland. Switzerland is a country where very few things begin, but many things end.
Though there was an element of choice in their other ports of call, the Kellys went to Switzerland because they had to. They had been married a little more than four years when they arrived one spring day at the lake that is the center of Europe—a placid, smiling spot with pastoral hillsides, a backdrop of mountains and waters of postcard blue, waters that are a little sinister beneath the surface with all the misery that has dragged itself here from every corner of Europe. Weariness to recuperate and death to die. There are schools, too, and young people splashing at the sunny plages; there is Bonivard’s dungeon and Calvin’s city, and the ghosts of Byron and Shelley still sail the dim shores by night; but the Lake Geneva that Nelson and Nicole came to was the dreary one of sanatoriums and rest hotels.
For, as if by some profound sympathy that had continued to exist beneath the unlucky destiny that had pursued their affairs, health had failed them both at the same time; Nicole lay on the balcony of a hotel coming slowly back to life after two successive operations, while Nelson fought for life against jaundice in a hospital two miles away. Even after the reserve force of twenty-nine years had pulled him through, there were months ahead during which he must live quietly. Often they wondered why, of all those who sought pleasure over the face of Europe, this misfortune should have come to them.
«There’ve been too many people in our lives,» Nelson said. «We’ve never been able to resist people. We were so happy the first year when there weren’t any people.»
Nicole agreed. «If we could ever be alone—really alone—we could make up some kind of life for ourselves. We’ll try, won’t we, Nelson?»
But there were other days when they both wanted company desperately, concealing it from each other. Days when they eyed the obese, the wasted, the crippled and the broken of all nationalities who filled the hotel, seeking for one who might be amusing. It was a new life for them, turning on the daily visits of their two doctors, the arrival of the mail and newspapers from Paris, the little walk into the hillside village or occasionally the descent by funicular to the pale resort on the lake, with its Kursaal, its grass beach, its tennis clubs and sight-seeing busses. They read Tauchnitz editions and yellow-jacketed Edgar Wallaces; at a certain hour each day they watched the baby being given its bath; three nights a week there was a tired and patient orchestra in the lounge after dinner, that was all.
And sometimes there was a booming from the vine-covered hills on the other side of the lake, which meant that cannons were shooting at hail-bearing clouds, to save the vineyard from an approaching storm; it came swiftly, first falling from the heavens and then falling again in torrents from the mountains, washing loudly down the roads and stone ditches; it came with a dark, frightening sky and savage filaments of lightning and crashing, world-splitting thunder, while ragged and destroyed clouds fled along before the wind past the hotel. The mountains and the lake disappeared completely; the hotel crouched alone amid tumult and chaos and darkness.
It was during such a storm, when the mere opening of a door admitted a tornado of rain and wind into the hall, that the Kellys for the first time in months saw someone they knew. Sitting downstairs with other victims of frayed nerves, they became aware of two new arrivals—a man and woman whom they recognized as the couple, first seen in Algiers, who had crossed their path several times since. A single unexpressed thought flashed through Nelson and Nicole. It seemed like destiny that at last here in this desolate place they should know them, and watching, they saw other couples eying them in the same tentative way. Yet something held the Kellys back. Had they not just been complaining that there were too many people in their lives?
Later, when the storm had dozed off into a quiet rain, Nicole found herself near the girl on the glass veranda. Under cover of reading a book, she inspected the face closely. It was an inquisitive face, she saw at once, possibly calculating; the eyes, intelligent enough, but with no peace in them, swept over people in a single quick glance as though estimating their value. «Terrible egoist,» Nicole thought, with a certain distaste. For the rest, the cheeks were wan, and there were little pouches of ill health under the eyes; these combining with a certain flabbiness of arms and legs to give an impression of unwholesomeness. She was dressed expensively, but with a hint of slovenliness, as if she did not consider the people of the hotel important.
On the whole, Nicole decided she did not like her; she was glad that they had not spoken, but she was rather surprised that she had not noticed these things when the girl crossed her path before.
Telling Nelson her impression at dinner, he agreed with her.
«I ran into the man in the bar, and I noticed we both took nothing but mineral water, so I started to say something.
