I havent seen Paris since Ive been grown, said Rosemary. Id love to see it with you.
Thats nice of you. Did she imagine that his voice was suddenly metallic? Of course weve been excited about you from the moment you came on the beach. That vitality, we were sure it was professional especially Nicole was. Itd never use itself up on anyone person or group.
Her instinct cried out to her that he was passing her along slowly toward Nicole and she put her own brakes on, saying with an equal harness:
I wanted to know all of you too especially you. I told you I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.
She was right going at it that way. But the space between heaven and earth had cooled his mind, destroyed the impulsiveness that had led him to bring her here, and made him aware of the too obvious appeal, the struggle with an unrehearsed scene and unfamiliar words.
He tried now to make her want to go back to the house and it was difficult, and he did not quite want to lose her. She felt only the draft blowing as he joked with her good-humoredly.
You dont know what you want. You go and ask your mother what you want.
She was stricken. She touched him, feeling the smooth cloth of his dark coat like a chasuble. She seemed about to fall to her knees from that position she delivered her last shot.
I think youre the most wonderful person I ever met except my mother.
You have romantic eyes.
His laughter swept them on up toward the terrace where he delivered her to Nicole
Too soon it had become time to go and the Divers helped them all to go quickly. In the Divers big Isotta[73] there would be Tommy Barban and his baggage he was spending the night at the hotel to catch an early train with Mrs. Abrams, the McKiscos and Campion. Earl Brady was going to drop Rosemary and her mother on his way to Monte Carlo, and Royal Dumphry rode with them because the Divers car was crowded. Down in the garden lanterns still glowed over the table where they had dined, as the Divers stood side by side in the gate, Nicole blooming away and filling the night with graciousness, and Dick bidding good-by to everyone by name. To Rosemary it seemed very poignant to drive away and leave them in their house. Again she wondered what Mrs. McKisco had seen in the bathroom.
IX
It was a limpid black night, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. The horn of the car ahead was muffled by the resistance of the thick air. Bradys chauffeur drove slowly; the tail-light of the other car appeared from time to time at turnings then not at all. But after ten minutes it came into sight again, drawn up at the side of the road. Bradys chauffeur slowed up behind but immediately it began to roll forward slowly and they passed it. In the instant they passed it they heard a blur of voices from behind the reticence of the limousine and saw that the Divers chauffeur was grinning. Then they went on, going fast through the alternating banks of darkness and thin night, descending at last in a series of roller-coaster swoops, to the great bulk of Gausses hotel.
Rosemary dozed for three hours and then lay awake, suspended in the moonshine. Cloaked by the erotic darkness she exhausted the future quickly, with all the eventualities that might lead up to a kiss, but with the kiss itself as blurred as a kiss in pictures. She changed position in bed deliberately, the first sign of insomnia she had ever had, and tried to think with her mothers mind about the question. In this process she was often acute beyond her experience, with remembered things from old conversations that had gone into her half-heard.
Rosemary had been brought up with the idea of work. Mrs. Speers had spent the slim leavings of the men who had widowed her on her daughters education, and when she blossomed out at sixteen with that extraordinary hair, rushed her to Aix-les-Bains[74]and marched her unannounced into the 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 ensuing success and the promise of comparative stability that followed, Mrs. Speers had felt free to tacitly imply tonight:
You were brought up to work not especially to marry. Now youve found your first nut to crack and its a good nut go ahead and put whatever happens down to experience. Wound yourself or him whatever happens it cant spoil you because economically youre a boy, not a girl.
Rosemary had never done much thinking, save about the illimitability of her mothers perfections, so this final severance of the umbilical cord[75] disturbed her sleep. A false dawn sent the sky pressing through the tall French windows, and getting up she walked out on the terrace, warm to her bare feet. There were secret noises in the air, an insistent bird achieved an ill-natured triumph with regularity in the trees above the tennis court; footfalls followed a round drive in the rear of the hotel, taking their tone in turn from the dust road, the crushed-stone walk, the cement steps, and then reversing the process in going away. Beyond the inky sea and far up that high, black shadow of a hill lived the Divers. She thought of them both together, heard them still singing faintly a song like rising smoke, like a hymn, very remote in time and far away. Their children slept, their gate was shut for the night.
She went inside and dressing in a light gown and espadrilles went out her window again and along the continuous terrace toward the front door, going fast since she found that other private rooms, exuding sleep, gave upon it. She stopped at the sight of a figure seated on the wide white stairway of the formal entrance[76] then she saw that it was Luis Campion and that he was weeping.
He was weeping hard and quietly and shaking in the same parts as a weeping woman. A scene in a role she had played last year swept over her irresistibly and advancing she touched him on the shoulder. He gave a little yelp before he recognized her.
What is it?[77] Her eyes were level and kind and not slanted into him with hard curiosity. Can I help you?
Nobody can help me. I knew it. I have only myself to blame. Its always the same.
What is it do you want to tell me?
He looked at her to see.
No, he decided. When youre older youll know what people who love suffer. The agony. Its better to be cold and young than to love. Its happened to me before but never like this so accidental just when everything was going well.
His face was repulsive in the quickening light. Not by a flicker of her personality, a movement of the smallest muscle, did she betray her sudden disgust with whatever it was. But Campions sensitivity realized it and he changed the subject rather suddenly.
Abe North is around here somewhere.
Why, hes staying at the Divers!
Yes, but hes up dont you know what happened?
A shutter opened suddenly in a room two stories above and an English voice spat distinctly:
Will you kaindlay stup tucking![78]
Rosemary and Luis Campion went humbly down the steps and to a bench beside the road to the beach.
Then you have no idea whats happened? My dear, the most extraordinary thing He was warming up now, hanging on to his revelation. Ive never seen a thing come so suddenly I have always avoided violent people they upset me so I sometimes have to go to bed for days.