CHAPTER4
The taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on into the dark, still climbing, then levelled out onto a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt, passed the trees and the standing bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe, then turned onto the cobbles of the Rue Mouffetard. There were lighted bars and late open shops on each side of the street. We were sitting apart and we jolted close together going down the old street. Brett’s hat was off. Her head was back. I saw her face in the lights from the open shops, then it was dark, then I saw her face clearly as we came out on the Avenue des Gobelins. The street was torn up and men were working on the car-tracks by the light of acetylene flares. Brett’s face was white and the long line of her neck showed in the bright light of the flares. The street was dark again and I kissed her. Our lips were tight together and then she turned away and pressed against the corner of the seat, as far away as she could get. Her head was down.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Please don’t touch me.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t stand it.”
“Oh, Brett.”
“You mustn’t. You must know. I can’t stand it, that’s all. Oh, darling, please understand!”
“Don’t you love me?”
“Love you? I simply turn all to jelly when you touch me.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do about it?”
She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else’s eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.
“And there’s not a damn thing we could do,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to go through that hell again.”
“We’d better keep away from each other.”
“But, darling, I have to see you. It isn’t all that you know.”
“No, but it always gets to be.”
“That’s my fault. Don’t we pay for all the things we do, though?”
She had been looking into my eyes all the time. Her eyes had different depths, sometimes they seemed perfectly flat. Now you could see all the way into them.
“When I think of the hell I’ve put chaps through. I’m paying for it all now.”
“Don’t talk like a fool,” I said. “Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it.”
“Oh, no. I’ll lay you don’t.”
“Well, let’s shut up about it.”
“I laughed about it too, myself, once.” She wasn’t looking at me. “A friend of my brother’s came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody ever knows anything.”
I was pretty well through with the subject. At one time or another I had probably considered it from most of its various angles, including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them.
“It’s funny,” I said. “It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love.”
“Do you think so?” her eyes looked flat again.
“I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling.”
“No,” she said. “I think it’s hell on earth.”
“It’s good to see each other.”
“No. I don’t think it is.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I have to.”
We were sitting now like two strangers. On the right was the Parc Montsouris. The restaurant where they have the pool of live trout and where you can sit and look out over the park was closed and dark. The driver leaned his head around.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked. Brett turned her head away.
“Oh, go to the Select.”
“Café Select,” I told the driver. “Boulevard Montparnasse.” We drove straight down, turning around the Lion de Belfort that guards the passing Montrouge trams. Brett looked straight ahead. On the Boulevard Raspail, with the lights of Montparnasse in sight, Brett said: “Would you mind very much if I asked you to do something?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Kiss me just once more before we get there.”
When the taxi stopped I got out and paid. Brett came out putting on her hat. She gave me her hand as she stepped down. Her hand was shaky. “I say, do I look too much of a mess?” She pulled her man’s felt hat down and started in for the bar. Inside, against the bar and at tables, were most of the crowd who a been at the dance.
“Hello, you chaps,” Brett said. “I’m going to have a drink.”
“Oh, Brett! Brett!” the little Greek portrait-painter, who called himself a duke, and whom everybody called Zizi, pushed up to her. “I got something fine to tell you.”
“Hello, Zizi,” Brett said.
“I want you to meet a friend,” Zizi said. A fat man came up.
“Count Mippipopolous, meet my friend Lady Ashley.”
“How do you do?” said Brett.
“Well, does your Ladyship have a good time here in Paris?” asked Count Mippipopolous, who wore an elk’s tooth on his watch-chain.
“Rather,” said Brett.
“Paris is a fine town all right,” said the count. “But I guess you have pretty big doings yourself over in London.”
“Oh, yes,” said Brett. “Enormous.”
Braddocks called to me from a table. “Barnes,” he said, “have a drink. That girl of yours got in a frightful row.”
“What about?”
“Something the patronne’s daughter said. A corking row. She was rather splendid, you know. Showed her yellow card and demanded the patronne’s daughter’s too. I say it was a row.”
“What finally happened?”
“Oh, some one took her home. Not a bad-looking girl. Wonderful command of the idiom. Do stay and have a drink.”
“No,” I said. “I must shove off. Seen Cohn?”
“He went home with Frances,” Mrs. Braddock put in.
“Poor chap, he looks awfully down,” Braddocks said.
“I dare say he is,” said Mrs. Braddocks.
“I have to shove off,” I said. “Good night.”
I said good night to Brett at the bar. The count was buying champagne. “Will you take a glass of wine with us, sir?” he asked.
“No. Thanks awfully. I have to go.”
“Really going?” Brett asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got a rotten headache.”
“I’ll see you to-morrow?”
“Come in at the office.”
“Hardly.”
“Well, where will I see you?”
“Anywhere around five o’clock.”
“Make it the other side of town then.”
“Good. I’ll be at the Crillon at five.”
“Try and be there,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Brett said. “I’ve never let you down, have I?”
“Heard from Mike?”
“Letter to-day.”
“Good night, sir,” said the count.
I went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dome, its tables running out to the edge of the pavement. Some one waved at me from a table, I did not see who it was and went on. I wanted to get home. The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne’s was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney’s statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base. I stopped and read the inscription: from the Bonapartist Groups, some date; I forget. He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his swordamong the green new horse-chestnut leaves. My flat was just across the street, a little way down the Boulevard St. Michel.
There was a light in the concierge’s room and I knocked on the door and she gave me my mail. I wished her good night and went up-stairs. There were two letters and some papers. I looked at them under the gas-light in the dining-room. The letters were from the States. One was a bank statement. It showed a balance of $2432.60. I got out my check-book and deducted four checks drawn since the first of the month, and discovered I had a balance of $1832.60. I wrote this on the back of the statement. The other letter was a wedding announcement. Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Kirby announce the marriage of their daughter Katherine—I knew neither the girl nor the man she was marrying. They must be circularizing the town. It was a funny name. I felt sure I could remember anybody with a name like Aloysius. It was a good Catholic name. There was a crest on the announcement. Like Zizi the Greek duke. And that count. The count was funny. Brett had a title, too. Lady Ashley. To hell with Brett. To hell with you, Lady Ashley.
I lit the lamp beside the bed, turned off the gas, and opened the wide windows. The bed was far back from the windows, and I sat with the windows open and undressed by the bed. Outside a night train, running on the street-car tracks, went by carrying vegetables to the markets. They were noisy at night when you could not sleep. Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed. That was a typically French way to furnish a room. Practical, too, I suppose. Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny. I put on my pajamas and got into bed. I had the two bull-fight papers, and I took their wrappers off. One was orange. The other yellow. They would both have the same news, so whichever I read first would spoil the other.Le Torilwas the better paper, so I started to read it. I read it all the way through, including the Petite Correspondanceand the Cornigrams. I blew out the lamp. Perhaps I would be able to sleep.
My head started to work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded and flying on a joke front like the Italian. In the Italian hospital we were going to form a society. It had a funny name in Italian. I wonder what became of the others, the Italians. That was in the Ospedale Maggiore in Milano, Padiglione Ponte. The next building was the Padiglione Zonda. There was a statue of Ponte, or maybe it was Zonda. That was where the liaison colonel came to visit me. That was funny. That was about the first funny thing. I was all bandaged up. But they had told him about it. Then he made that wonderful speech: “You, a foreigner, an Englishman” (any foreigner was an Englishman) “have given more than your life.” What a speech! I would like to have it illuminated to hang in the office. He never laughed. He was putting himself in my place, I guess. “Che mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!”
I never used to realize it, I guess. I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people. Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn’t run into Brett when they shipped me to England. I suppose she only wanted what she couldn’t have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.
I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by and way down the street, and then I went to sleep.
I woke up. There was a row going on outside. I listened and Ithought I recognized a voice. I put on a dressing-gown and went to the door. The concierge was talking down-stairs. She was very angry. I heard my name and called down the stairs.
“Is that you, Monsieur Barnes?” the concierge called.
“Yes. It’s me.”
“There’s a species of woman here who’s waked the whole street up. What kind of a dirty business at this time of night! She says she must see you. I’ve told her you’re asleep.”
Then I heard Brett’s voice. Half asleep I had been sure it was Georgette. I don’t know why. She could not have known my address.
“Will you send her up, please?”
Brett came up the stairs. I saw she was quite drunk. “Silly thing to do,” she said. “Make an awful row. I say, you weren’t asleep, were you?”
“What did you think I was doing?”
“Don’t know. What time is it?”
I looked at the clock. It was half-past four. “Had no idea what hour it was,” Brett said. “I say, can a chap sit down? Don’t be cross, darling. Just left the count. He brought me here.”
“What’s he like?” I was getting brandy and soda and glasses.
“Just a little,” said Brett. “Don’t try and make me drunk. The count? Oh, rather. He’s quite one of us.”
“Is he a count?”
“Here’s how. I rather think so, you know. Deserves to be, anyhow. Knows hell’s own amount about people. Don’t know where he got it all. Owns a chain of sweetshops in the States.”
She sipped at her glass.
“Think he called it a chain. Something like that. Linked them all up. Told me a little about it. Damned interesting. He’s one of us, though. Oh, quite. No doubt. One can always tell.”
She took another drink.
“How do I buck on about all this? You don’t mind, do you? He’s putting up for Zizi, you know.”
“Is Zizi really a duke, too?”
“I shouldn’t wonder. Greek, you know. Rotten painter. I rather liked the count.”
“Where did you go with him?”
“Oh, everywhere. He just brought me here now. Offered me ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz with him. How much is that in pounds?”
“Around two thousand.”
“Lot of money. I told him I couldn’t do it. He was awfully nice about it. Told him I knew too many people in Biarritz.”
Brett laughed.
“I say, you are slow on the up-take,” she said. I had only sipped my brandy and soda. I took a long drink.
“That’s better. Very funny,” Brett said. “Then he wanted me to go to Cannes with him. Told him I knew too many people in Cannes. Monte Carlo. Told him I knew too many people in Monte Carlo. Told him I knew too many people everywhere. Quite true, too. So I asked him to bring me here.”
She looked at me, her hand on the table, her glass raised. “Don’t look like that,” she said. “Told him I was in love with you. True, too. Don’t look like that. He was damn nice about it. Wants to drive us out to dinner to-morrow night. Like to go?”
“Why not?”
“I’d better go now.”
“Why?”
“Just wanted to see you. Damned silly idea. Want to get dressed and come down? He’s got the car just up the street.”
“The count?”
“Himself. And a chauffeur in livery. Going to drive me around and have breakfast in the Bois. Hampers. Got it all at Zelli’s. Dozen bottles of Mumms. Tempt you?”
“I have to work in the morning,” I said. “I’m too far behind you now to catch up and be any fun.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Right. Send him a tender message?”
“Anything. Absolutely.”
“Good night, darling.”
“Don’t be sentimental.”
“You make me ill.”
We kissed good night and Brett shivered. “I’d better go,” she said. “Good night, darling.”
“You don’t have to go.”
“Yes.”
We kissed again on the stairs and as I called for the cordon the concierge muttered something behind her door. I went back up-stairs and from the open window watched Brett walking up the street to the big limousine drawn up to the curb under the arc-light. She got in and it started off. I turned around. On the table was an empty glass and a glass half-full of brandy and soda. I took them both out to the kitchen and poured the half-full glass down the sink. I turned off the gas in the dining-room, kicked off my slippers sitting on the bed, and got into bed. This was Brett, that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.
CHAPTER5
In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work. I got on an S bus and rode down to the Madeleine, standing on the back platform. From the Madeleine I walked along the Boulevard des Capucines to the Opéra, and up to my office. I passed the man with the jumping frogs and the man with the boxer toys. I stepped aside to avoid walking into the thread with which his girl assistant manipulated the boxers. She was standing looking away, the thread in her folded hands. The man was urging two tourists to buy. Three more tourists had stopped and were watching. I walked on behind a man who was pushinga roller that printed the name CINZANO on the sidewalk in damp letters. All along people were going to work. It felt pleasant to be going to work. I walked across the avenue and turned in to my office.
Up-stairs in the office I read the French morning papers, smoked, and then sat at the typewriter and got off a good morning’s work. At eleven o’clock I went over to the Quai d’Orsay in a taxi and went in and sat with about a dozen correspondents, while the foreign-office mouthpiece, a young Nouvelle Revue Française diplomat in horn-rimmed spectacles, talked and answered questions for half an hour. The President of the Council was in Lyons making a speech, or, rather he was on his way back. Several people asked questions to hear themselves talk and there were a couple of questions asked by news service men who wanted to know the answers. There was no news. I shared a taxi back from the Quai d’Orsay with Woolsey and Krum.
“What do you do nights, Jake?” asked Krum. “I never see you around.”
“Oh, I’m over in the Quarter.”
“I’m coming over some night. The Dingo. That’s the great place, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That, or this new dive, The Select.”
“I’ve meant to get over,” said Krum. “You know how it is, though, with a wife and kids.”
“Playing any tennis?” Woolsey asked.
“Well, no,” said Krum. “I can’t say I’ve played any this year. I’ve tried to get away, but Sundays it’s always rained, and the courts are so damned crowded.”
“The Englishmen all have Saturday off,” Woolsey said.
“Lucky beggars,” said Krum. “Well, I’ll tell you. Some day I’m not going to be working for an agency. Then I’ll have plenty of time to get out in the country.”
“That’s the thing to do. Live out in the country and have a little car.”
“I’ve been thinking some about getting a car next year.”
I banged on the glass. The chauffeur stopped. “Here’s my street,” I said. “Come in and have a drink.”
“Thanks, old man,” Krum said. Woolsey shook his head. “I’ve got to file that line he got off this morning.”
I put a two-franc piece in Krum’s hand.
“You’re crazy, Jake,” he said. “This is on me.”
“It’s all on the office, anyway.”
“Nope. I want to get it.”
I waved good-by. Krum put his head out. “See you at the lunch on Wednesday.”
“You bet.”
I went to the office in the elevator. Robert Cohn was waiting for me. “Hello, Jake,” he said. “Going out to lunch?”
“Yes. Let me see if there is anything new.”
“Where will we eat?”
“Anywhere.”
I was looking over my desk. “Where do you want to eat?”
“How about Wetzel’s? They’ve got good hors d’œuvres.”
In the restaurant we ordered hors d’œuvres and beer. The sommelier brought the beer, tall, beaded on the outside of the steins, and cold. There were a dozen different dishes of hors d’œuvres.
“Have any fun last night?” I asked.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“How’s the writing going?”
“Rotten. I can’t get this second book going.”
“That happens to everybody.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that. It gets me worried, though.”
“Thought any more about going to South America?”
“I mean that.”
“Well, why don’t you start off?”
“Frances.”
“Well,” I said, “take her with you.”
“She wouldn’t like it. That isn’t the sort of thing she likes. She likes a lot of people around.”
“Tell her to go to hell.”
“I can’t. I’ve got certain obligations to her.”
He shoved the sliced cucumbers away and took a pickled herring.
“What do you know about Lady Brett Ashley, Jake?”
“Her name’s Lady Ashley. Brett’s her own name. She’s a nice girl,” I said. “She’s getting a divorce and she’s going to marry Mike Campbell. He’s over in Scotland now. Why?”
“She’s a remarkably attractive woman.”
“Isn’t she?”
“There’s a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight.”
“She’s very nice.”
“I don’t know how to describe the quality,” Cohn said. “I suppose it’s breeding.”
“You sound as though you liked her pretty well.”
“I do. I shouldn’t wonder if I were in love with her.”
“She’s a drunk,” I said. “She’s in love with Mike Campbell, and she’s going to marry him. He’s going to be rich as hell some day.”
“I don’t believe she’ll ever marry him.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t believe it. Have you known her a long time?”
“Yes,” I said. “She was a V. A. D. in a hospital I was in during the war.”
“She must have been just a kid then.”
“She’s thirty-four now.”
“When did she marry Ashley?”
“During the war. Her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery.”
“You talk sort of bitter.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to give you the facts.”
“I don’t believe she would marry anybody she didn’t love.”
“Well,” I said. “She’s done it twice.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Well,” I said, “don’t ask me a lot of fool questions if you don’t like the answers.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
“You asked me what I knew about Brett Ashley.”
“I didn’t ask you to insult her.”
“Oh, go to hell.”
He stood up from the table his face white, and stood there white and angry behind the little plates of hors d’œuvres.
“Sit down,” I said. “Don’t be a fool.”
“You’ve got to take that back.”
“Oh, cut out the prep-school stuff.”
“Take it back.”
“Sure. Anything. I never heard of Brett Ashley. How’s that?
“No. Not that. About me going to hell.”
“Oh, don’t go to hell,” I said. “Stick around. We’re just starting lunch.”
Cohn smiled again and sat down. He seemed glad to sit down. What the hell would he have done if he hadn’t sat down? “You say such damned insulting things, Jake.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got a nasty tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty things.”
“I know it,” Cohn said. “You’re really about the best friend I have, Jake.”
God help you, I thought. “Forget what I said,” I said out loud. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. It’s fine. I was just sore for a minute.”
“Good. Let’s get something else to eat.”
After we finished the lunch we walked up to the Café de la Paix and had coffee. I could feel Cohn wanted to bring up Brett again, but I held him off it. We talked about one thing and another, and I left him to come to the office.
CHAPTER6
At five o’clock I was in the Hotel Crillon waiting for Brett. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not very good letters but I hoped their being on Crillon stationery would help them. Brett did not turn up, so about quarter to six I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman. Brett had not been in the bar either, and so I looked for her up-stairs on my way out, and took a taxi to the Café Select. Crossing the Seine I saw a string of barges being towed empty down the current, riding high, the bargemen at the sweeps as they came toward the bridge. The river looked nice. It was always pleasant crossing bridges in Paris.
The taxi rounded the statue of the inventor of the semaphore engaged in doing same, and turned up the Boulevard Raspail, and I sat back to let that part of the ride pass. The Boulevard Raspail always made dull riding. It was like a certain stretch on the P. L. M. between Fontainebleau and Montereau that always made me feel bored and dead and dull until it was over. I supposeit is some association of ideas that makes those dead places in a journey. There are other streets in Paris as ugly as the Boulevard Raspail. It is a street I do not mind walking down at all. But I cannot stand to ride along it. Perhaps I had read something about it once. That was the way Robert Cohn was about all of Paris. I wondered where Cohn got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken.
The taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what café in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde. Ten years from now it will probably be the Dome. It was near enough, anyway. I walked past the sad tables of the Rotonde to the Select. There were a few people inside at the bar, and outside, alone, sat Harvey Stone. He had a pile of saucers in front of him, and he needed a shave.
“Sit down,” said Harvey, “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just looking for you.”
“Been out to the races?”
“No. Not since Sunday.”
“What do you hear from the States?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. I’m through with them. I’m absolutely through with them.”
He leaned forward and looked me in the eye.
“Do you want to know something, Jake?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t had anything to eat for five days.”
I figured rapidly back in my mind. It was three days ago that Harvey had won two hundred francs from me shaking poker dice in the New York Bar.
“What’s the matter?”
“No money. Money hasn’t come,” he paused. “I tell you it’s strange, Jake. When I’m like this I just want to be alone. I want to stay in my own room. I’m like a cat.”
I felt in my pocket.
“Would a hundred help you any, Harvey?”
“Yes.”
“Come on. Let’s go and eat.”
“There’s no hurry. Have a drink.”
“Better eat.”
“No. When I get like this I don’t care whether I eat or not.”
We had a drink. Harvey added my saucer to his own pile.
“Do you know Mencken, Harvey?”
“Yes. Why?”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s all right. He says some pretty funny things. Last time I had dinner with him we talked about Hoffenheimer. ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘he’s a garter snapper.’ That’s not bad.”
“That’s not bad.”
“He’s through now,” Harvey went on. “He’s written about all the things he knows, and now he’s on all the things he doesn’t know.”
“I guess he’s all right,” I said. “I just can’t read him.”
“Oh, nobody reads him now,” Harvey said, “except the people that used to read the Alexander Hamilton Institute.”
“Well,” I said. “That was a good thing, too.”
“Sure,” said Harvey. So we sat and thought deeply for a while.
“Have another port?”
“All right,” said Harvey.
“There comes Cohn,” I said. Robert Cohn was crossing the street.
“That moron,” said Harvey. Cohn came up to our table.
“Hello, you bums,” he said.
“Hello, Robert,” Harvey said. “I was just telling Jake here that you’re a moron.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell us right off. Don’t think. What would you rather do if you could do anything you wanted?”
Cohn started to consider.
“Don’t think. Bring it right out.”
“I don’t know,” Cohn said. “What’s it all about, anyway?”
“I mean what would you rather do. What comes into your head first. No matter how silly it is.”
“I don’t know,” Cohn said. “I think I’d rather play football again with what I know about handling myself, now.”
“I misjudged you,” Harvey said. “You’re not a moron. You’re only a case of arrested development.”
“You’re awfully funny, Harvey,” Cohn said. “Some day somebody will push your face in.”
Harvey Stone laughed. “You think so. They won’t, though. Because it wouldn’t make any difference to me. I’m not a fighter.”
“It would make a difference to you if anybody did it.”
“No, it wouldn’t. That’s where you make your big mistake. Because you’re not intelligent.”
“Cut it out about me.”
“Sure,” said Harvey. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. You don’t mean anything to me.”
“Come on, Harvey,” I said. “Have another porto.”
“No,” he said. “I’m going up the street and eat. See you later, Jake.”
He walked out and up the street. I watched him crossing the street through the taxis, small, heavy, slowly sure of himself in the traffic.
“He always gets me sore,” Cohn said. “I can’t stand him.”
“I like him,” I said. “I’m fond of him. You don’t want to get sore at him.”
“I know it,” Cohn said. “He just gets on my nerves.”
“Write this afternoon?”
“No. I couldn’t get it going. It’s harder to do than my first book. I’m having a hard time handling it.”
The sort of healthy conceit that he had when he returned from America early in the spring was gone. Then he had been sure of his work, only with these personal longings for adventure. Now the sureness was gone. Somehow I feel I have not shown Robert Cohn clearly. The reason is that until he fell in love with Brett, I never heard him make one remark that would, in any way, detach him from other people. He was nice to watch on the tennis-court, he had a good body, and he kept it in shape; he handled his cards well at bridge, and he had a funny sort of undergraduate quality about him. If he were in a crowd nothing he said stood out. He wore what used to be called polo shirts at school, and may be called that still, but he was not professionally youthful. I do not believe he thought about his clothes much. Externally he had been formed at Princeton. Internally he had been moulded by the two women who had trained him. He had a nice, boyish sort of cheerfulness that had never been trained out of him, and I probably have not brought it out. He loved to win at tennis. He probably loved to win as much as Lenglen, for instance. On the other hand, he was not angry at being beaten. When he fell in love with Brett his tennis game went all to pieces. People beat him who had never had a chance with him. He was very nice about it.
Anyhow, we were sitting on the terrace of the Café Select, and Harvey Stone had just crossed the street.
“Come on up to the Lilas,” I said.
“I have a date.”
“What time?”
“Frances is coming here at seven-fifteen.”
“There she is.”
Frances Clyne was coming toward us from across the street. She was a very tall girl who walked with a great deal of movement. She waved and smiled. We watched her cross the street.
“Hello,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here, Jake. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Hello, Frances,” said Cohn. He smiled.
“Why, hello, Robert. Are you here?” She went on, talking rapidly. “I’ve had the darndest time. This one”—shaking her head at Cohn—“didn’t come home for lunch.”
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Oh, I know. But you didn’t say anything about it to the cook. Then I had a date myself, and Paula wasn’t at her office. I went to the Ritz and waited for her, and she never came, and of course I didn’t have enough money to lunch at the Ritz——”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, went out, of course.” She spoke in a sort of imitation joyful manner. “I always keep my appointments. No one keeps theirs, nowadays. I ought to know better. How are you, Jake, anyway?”
“Fine.”
“That was a fine girl you had at the dance, and then went off with that Brett one.”
“Don’t you like her?” Cohn asked.
“I think she’s perfectly charming. Don’t you?”
Cohn said nothing.
“Look, Jake. I want to talk with you. Would you come over with me to the Dome? You’ll stay here, won’t you, Robert? Come on, Jake.”
We crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse and sat down at a table. A boy came up with theParis Times, and I bought one and opened it.
“What’s the matter, Frances?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said, “except that he wants to leave me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh, he told every one that we were going to be married, and I told my mother and every one, and now he doesn’t want to do it.”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’s decided he hasn’t lived enough. I knew it would happen when he went to New York.”
She looked up, very bright-eyed and trying to talk inconsequentially.
“I wouldn’t marry him if he doesn’t want to. Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t marry him now for anything. But it does seem to me to be a little late now, after we’ve waited three years, and I’ve just gotten my divorce.”
I said nothing.
“We were going to celebrate so, and instead we’ve just had scenes. It’s so childish. We have dreadful scenes, and he cries and begs me to be reasonable, but he says he just can’t do it.”
“It’s rotten luck.”
“I should say it is rotten luck. I’ve wasted two years and a half on him now. And I don’t know now if any man will ever want to marry me. Two years ago I could have married anybody I wanted, down at Cannes. All the old ones that wanted to marry somebody chic and settle down were crazy about me. Now I don’t think I could get anybody.”
“Sure, you could marry anybody.”
“No, I don’t believe it. And I’m fond of him, too. And I’d like to have children. I always thought we’d have children.”
She looked at me very brightly. “I never liked children much, but I don’t want to think I’ll never have them. I always thought I’d have them and then like them.”
“He’s got children.”
“Oh, yes. He’s got children, and he’s got money, and he’s got a rich mother, and he’s written a book, and nobody will publishmy stuff; nobody at all. It isn’t bad, either. And I haven’t got any money at all. I could have had alimony, but I got the divorce the quickest way.”
She looked at me again very brightly.
“It isn’t right. It’s my own fault and it’s not, too. I ought to have known better. And when I tell him he just cries and says he can’t marry. Why can’t he marry? I’d be a good wife. I’m easy to get along with. I leave him alone. It doesn’t do any good.”
“It’s a rotten shame.”
“Yes, it is a rotten shame. But there’s no use talking about it, is there? Come on, let’s go back to the café.”
“And of course there isn’t anything I can do.”
“No. Just don’t let him know I talked to you. I know what he wants.” Now for the first time she dropped her bright, terribly cheerful manner. “He wants to go back to New York alone, and be there when his book comes out so when a lot of little chickens like it. That’s what he wants.”
“Maybe they won’t like it. I don’t think he’s that way. Really.”
“You don’t know him like I do, Jake. That’s what he wants to do. I know it. I know it. That’s why he doesn’t want to marry. He wants to have a big triumph this fall all by himself.”
“Want to go back to the café?”
“Yes. Come on.”
We got up from the table—they had never brought us a drink—and started across the street toward the Select, where Cohn sat smiling at us from behind the marble-topped table.
“Well, what are you smiling at?” Frances asked him. “Feel pretty happy?”
“I was smiling at you and Jake with your secrets.”
“Oh, what I’ve told Jake isn’t any secret. Everybody will know it soon enough. I only wanted to give Jake a decent version.”
“What was it? About your going to England?”
“Yes, about my going to England. Oh, Jake! I forgot to tell you. I’m going to England.”
“Isn’t that fine!”
“Yes, that’s the way it’s done in the very best families. Robert’s sending me. He’s going to give me two hundred pounds and then I’m going to visit friends. Won’t it be lovely? The friends don’t know about it, yet.”
She turned to Cohn and smiled at him. He was not smiling now.
“You were only going to give me a hundred pounds, weren’t you, Robert? But I made him give me two hundred. He’s really very generous. Aren’t you, Robert?”
I do not know how people could say such terrible things to Robert Cohn. There are people to whom you could not say insulting things. They give you a feeling that the world would be destroyed, would actually be destroyed before your eyes, if you said certain things. But here was Cohn taking it all. Here it was, all going on right before me, and I did not even feel an impulse to try and stop it. And this was friendly joking to what went on later.
“How can you say such things, Frances?” Cohn interrupted.
“Listen to him. I’m going to England. I’m going to visit friends. Ever visit friends that didn’t want you? Oh, they’ll have to take me, all right. ‘How do you do, my dear? Such a long time since we’ve seen you. And how is your dear mother?’ Yes, how is my dear mother? She put all her money into French war bonds. Yes, she did. Probably the only person in the world that did. ‘And what about Robert?’ or else very careful talking around Robert. ‘You must be most careful not to mention him, my dear. Poor Frances has had a most unfortunate experience.’ Won’t it be fun, Robert? Don’t you think it will be fun, Jake?”
She turned to me with that terribly bright smile. It was very satisfactory to her to have an audience for this.
“And where are you going to be, Robert? It’s my own fault, all right. Perfectly my own fault. When I made you get rid of your little secretary on the magazine I ought to have known you’d get rid of me the same way. Jake doesn’t know about that. Should I tell him?”
“Shut up, Frances, for God’s sake.”
“Yes, I’ll tell him. Robert had a little secretary on the magazine. Just the sweetest little thing in the world, and he thought she was wonderful, and then I came along and he thought I was pretty wonderful, too. So I made him get rid of her, and he had brought her to Provincetown from Carmel when he moved the magazine, and he didn’t even pay her fare back to the coast. All to please me. He thought I was pretty fine, then. Didn’t you, Robert?
“You mustn’t misunderstand, Jake, it was absolutely platonic with the secretary. Not even platonic. Nothing at all, really. It was just that she was so nice. And he did that just to please me. Well, I suppose that we that live by the sword shall perish by the sword. Isn’t that literary, though? You want to remember that for your next book, Robert.
“You know Robert is going to get material for a new book. Aren’t you, Robert? That’s why he’s leaving me. He’s decided I don’t film well. You see, he was so busy all the time that we were living together, writing on this book, that he doesn’t remember anything about us. So now he’s going out and get some new material. Well, I hope he gets something frightfully interesting.
“Listen, Robert, dear. Let me tell you something. You won’t mind, will you? Don’t have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can’t have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can’t remember what the other person’s said. You’ll never be able to remember any conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it’s awfully hard. But remember, it’s for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices forliterature. Look at me. I’m going to England without a protest. All for literature. We must all help young writers. Don’t you think so, Jake? But you’re not a young writer. Are you, Robert? You’re thirty-four. Still, I suppose that is young for a great writer. Look at Hardy. Look at Anatole France. He just died a little while ago. Robert doesn’t think he’s any good, though. Some of his French friends told him. He doesn’t read French very well himself. He wasn’t a good writer like you are, was he, Robert? Do you think he ever had to go and look for material? What do you suppose he said to his mistresses when he wouldn’t marry them? I wonder if he cried, too? Oh, I’ve just thought of something.” She put her gloved hand up to her lips. “I know the real reason why Robert won’t marry me, Jake. It’s just come to me. They’ve sent it to me in a vision in the Café Select. Isn’t it mystic? Some day they’ll put a tablet up. Like at Lourdes. Do you want to hear, Robert? I’ll tell you. It’s so simple. I wonder why I never thought about it. Why, you see, Robert’s always wanted to have a mistress, and if he doesn’t marry me, why, then he’s had one. She was his mistress for over two years. See how it is? And if he marries me, like he’s always promised he would, that would be the end of all the romance. Don’t you think that’s bright of me to figure that out? It’s true, too. Look at him and see if it’s not. Where are you going, Jake?”
“I’ve got to go in and see Harvey Stone a minute.”
Cohn looked up as I went in. His face was white. Why did he sit there? Why did he keep on taking it like that?
As I stood against the bar looking out I could see them through the window. Frances was talking on to him, smiling brightly, looking into his face each time she asked: “Isn’t it so, Robert?” Or maybe she did not ask that now. Perhaps she said something else. I told the barman I did not want anything to drink and went out through the side door. As I went out the door I looked backthrough the two thicknesses of glass and saw them sitting there. She was still talking to him. I went down a side street to the Boulevard Raspail. A taxi came along and I got in and gave the driver the address of my flat.