Tender is the Night (41 page)

“Did you think I was going to embrace you?” she demanded sharply. “It was only about Dick, I talked on the phone to him and I was sorry——”

“Is anything the matter with Dick?”

Kaethe suddenly realized her error, but she had taken a tactless course and there was no choice but to answer as Nicole pursued her with reiterated questions: “… then
why
were you sorry?”

“Nothing about Dick. I must talk to Franz.”

“It
is
about Dick.”

There was terror in her face and collaborating alarm in the faces of the Diver children, near at hand. Kaethe collapsed with: “Your father is ill in Lausanne—Dick wants to talk to Franz about it.”

“Is he very sick?” Nicole demanded—just as Franz came up with his hearty hospital manner. Gratefully Kaethe passed the remnant of the buck to him—but the damage was done.

“I'm going to Lausanne,” announced Nicole.

“One minute,” said Franz. “I'm not sure it's advisable. I must first talk on the phone to Dick.”

“Then I'll miss the train down,” Nicole protested, “and then I'll miss the three o'clock from Zurich! If my father is dying I must—” She left this in the air, afraid to formulate it. “I
must
go. I'll have to run for the train.” She was running even as she spoke toward the sequence of flat cars that crowned the bare hill with bursting steam and sound. Over her shoulder she called back, “If you phone Dick tell him I'm coming, Franz!” …

… Dick was in his own room in the hotel reading The
New York Herald when the swallow-like nun rushed in—simultaneously the phone rang.

“Is he dead?” Dick demanded of the nun, hopefully.

“Monsieur, il est parti—he has gone away.”

“Com
ment?
”

“Il est parti—his man and his baggage have gone away too!”

It was incredible. A man in that condition to arise and depart.

Dick answered the phone-call from Franz. “You shouldn't have told Nicole,” he protested.

“Kaethe told her, very unwisely.”

“I suppose it was my fault. Never tell a thing to a woman till it's done. However, I'll meet Nicole … say, Franz, the craziest thing has happened down here—the old boy took up his bed and walked….”

“At what? What did you say?”

“I say he walked, old Warren—he walked!”

“But why not?”

“He was supposed to be dying of general collapse … he got up and walked away, back to Chicago, I guess…. I don't know, the nurse is here now…. I don't know, Franz—I've just heard about it…. Call me later.”

He spent the better part of two hours tracing Warren's movements. The patient had found an opportunity between the change of day and night nurses to resort to the bar where he had gulped down four whiskeys; he paid his hotel bill with a thousand dollar note, instructing the desk that the change should be sent after him, and departed, presumably for America. A last-minute dash by Dick and Dangeu to overtake him at the station resulted only in Dick's failing to meet Nicole; when they did meet in the lobby of the hotel she seemed suddenly tired, and there was a tight purse to her lips that disquieted him.

“How's father?” she demanded.

“He's much better. He seemed to have a good deal of reserve energy after all.” He hesitated, breaking it to her easy. “In fact he got up and went away.”

Wanting a drink, for the chase had occupied the dinner hour, he led her, puzzled, toward the grill, and continued as they occupied two leather easy-chairs and ordered a highball and a glass of beer: “The man who was taking care of him made a wrong prognosis or something—wait a minute, I've hardly had time to think the thing out myself.”

“He's
gone?
”

“He got the evening train for Paris.”

They sat silent. From Nicole flowed a vast tragic apathy.

“It was instinct,” Dick said, finally. “He was really dying, but he tried to get a resumption of rhythm—he's not the first person that ever walked off his death-bed—like an old clock—you know, you shake it and somehow from sheer habit it gets going again. Now your father——”

“Oh, don't tell me,” she said.

“His principal fuel was fear,” he continued. “He got afraid, and off he went. He'll probably live till ninety——”

“Please don't tell me any more,” she said. “Please don't—I couldn't stand any more.”

“All right. The little devil I came down to see is hopeless. We may as well go back to-morrow.”

“I don't see why you have to—come in contact with all this,” she burst forth.

“Oh, don't you? Sometimes I don't either.”

She put her hand on his.

“Oh, I'm sorry I said that, Dick.”

Some one had brought a phonograph into the bar and they sat listening to “The Wedding of the Painted Doll.”

O
NE
morning a week later, stopping at the desk for his mail, Dick became aware of some extra commotion outside: patient Von Cohn Morris was going away. His parents, Australians, were putting his baggage vehemently into a large limousine, and beside them stood Doctor Lladislau protesting with ineffectual attitudes against the violent
gesturings of Morris, senior. The young man was regarding his embarkation with aloof cynicism as Doctor Diver approached.

“Isn't this a little sudden, Mr. Morris?”

Mr. Morris started as he saw Dick—his florid face and the large checks on his suit seemed to turn off and on like electric lights. He approached Dick as though to strike him.

“High time we left, we and those who have come with us,” he began, and paused for breath. “It is high time, Doctor Diver. High time.”

“Will you come in my office?” Dick suggested.

“Not I! I'll talk to you, but I'm washing my hands of you and your place.”

“I'm sorry about that.”

He shook his finger at Dick. “I was just telling this doctor here. We've wasted our time and our money.”

Doctor Lladislau stirred in a feeble negative, signalling up a vague Slavic evasiveness. Dick had never liked Lladislau. He managed to walk the excited Australian along the path in the direction of his office, trying to persuade him to enter; but the man shook his head.

“It's
you
, Doctor Diver,
you
, the very man. I went to Doctor Lladislau because you were not to be found, Doctor Diver, and because Doctor Gregorovious is not expected until the nightfall, and I would not wait. No, sir! I would not wait a minute after my son told me the truth.”

He came up menacingly to Dick, who kept his hands loose enough to drop him if it seemed necessary. “My son is here for alcoholism, and he told us he smelt liquor on your breath. Yes, sir!” He made a quick, apparently unsuccessful sniff. “Not once, but twice Von Cohn says he has smelt liquor on your breath. I and my lady have never touched a drop of it in our lives. We hand Von Cohn to you to be cured, and within a month he twice smells liquor on your breath! What kind of cure is that there?”

Dick hesitated; Mr. Morris was quite capable of making a scene on the clinic drive.

“After all, Mr. Morris, some people are not going to give up what they regard as food because of your son——”

“But you're a doctor, man!” cried Morris furiously. “When the workmen drink their beer that's bad cess to them—but you're here supposing to cure——”

“This has gone too far. Your son came to us because of kleptomania.”

“What was behind it?” The man was almost shrieking. “Drink—black drink. Do you know what color black is? It's black! My own uncle was hung by the neck because of it, you hear! My son comes to a sanitarium, and a doctor reeks of it!”

“I must ask you to leave.”

“You
ask
me! We
are
leaving!”

“If you could be a little temperate we could tell you the results of the treatment to date. Naturally, since you feel as you do, we would not want your son as a patient——”

“You dare to use the word temperate to me?”

Dick called to Doctor Lladislau and as he approached, said: “Will you represent us in saying good-by to the patient and to his family?”

He bowed slightly to Morris and went into his office, and stood rigid for a moment just inside the door. He watched until they drove away, the gross parents, the bland, degenerate offspring: it was easy to prophesy the family's swing around Europe, bullying their betters with hard ignorance and hard money. But what absorbed Dick after the disappearance of the caravan was the question as to what extent he had provoked this. He drank claret with each meal, took a night-cap, generally in the form of hot rum, and sometimes he tippled with gin in the afternoons—gin was the most difficult to detect on the breath. He was averaging a half-pint of alcohol a day, too much for his system to burn up.

Dismissing a tendency to justify himself, he sat down at his desk and wrote out, like a prescription, a régime that would cut his liquor in half. Doctors, chauffeurs, and Protestant clergymen could never smell of liquor, as could painters, brokers, cavalry leaders; Dick blamed himself only for indiscretion. But the matter was by no means clarified half an hour later when Franz, revivified by an Alpine fort-night,
rolled up the drive, so eager to resume work that he was plunged in it before he reached his office. Dick met him there.

“How was Mount Everest?”

“We could very well have done Mount Everest the rate we were doing. We thought of it. How goes it all? How is my Kaethe, how is your Nicole?”

“All goes smooth domestically. But my God, Franz, we had a rotten scene this morning.”

“How? What was it?”

Dick walked around the room while Franz got in touch with his villa by telephone. After the family exchange was over, Dick said: “The Morris boy was taken away—there was a row.”

Franz's buoyant face fell.

“I knew he'd left. I met Lladislau on the veranda.”

“What did Lladislau say?”

“Just that young Morris had gone—that you'd tell me about it. What about it?”

“The usual incoherent reasons.”

“He was a devil, that boy.”

“He was a case for anesthesia,” Dick agreed. “Anyhow, the father had beaten Lladislau into a colonial subject by the time I came along. What about Lladislau? Do we keep him? I say no—he's not much of a man, he can't seem to cope with anything.” Dick hesitated on the verge of the truth, swung away to give himself space within which to recapitulate. Franz perched on the edge of a desk, still in his linen duster and travelling gloves. Dick said:

“One of the remarks the boy made to his father was that your distinguished collaborator was a drunkard. The man is a fanatic, and the descendant seems to have caught traces of vin-du-pays on me.”

Franz sat down, musing on his lower lip. “You can tell me at length,” he said finally.

“Why not now?” Dick suggested. “You must know I'm the last man to abuse liquor.” His eyes and Franz's glinted on each other, pair on pair. Lladislau let the man get so worked up that I was on the defensive. It might have happened
in front of patients, and you can imagine how hard it could be to defend yourself in a situation like that!”

Franz took off his gloves and coat. He went to the door and told the secretary, “Don't disturb us.” Coming back into the room he flung himself at the long table and fooled with his mail, reasoning as little as is characteristic of people in such postures, rather summoning up a suitable mask for what he had to say.

“Dick, I know well that you are a temperate, well-balanced man, even though we do not entirely agree on the subject of alcohol. But a time has come—Dick, I must say frankly that I have been aware several times that you have had a drink when it was not the moment to have one. There is some reason. Why not try another leave of abstinence?”

“Absence,” Dick corrected him automatically. “It's no solution for me to go away.”

They were both chafed, Franz at having his return marred and blurred.

“Sometimes you don't use your common sense, Dick.”

“I never understood what common sense meant applied to complicated problems—unless it means that a general practitioner can perform a better operation than a specialist.”

He was seized by an overwhelming disgust for the situation. To explain, to patch—these were not natural functions at their age—better to continue with the cracked echo of an old truth in the ears.

“This is no go,” he said suddenly.

“Well, that's occurred to me,” Franz admitted. “Your heart isn't in this project any more, Dick.”

“I know. I want to leave—we could strike some arrangement about taking Nicole's money out gradually.”

“I have thought about that too, Dick—I have seen this coming. I am able to arrange other backing, and it will be possible to take all your money out by the end of the year.”

Dick had not intended to come to a decision so quickly, nor was he prepared for Franz's so ready acquiescence in the break, yet he was relieved. Not without desperation he had long felt the ethics of his profession dissolving into a lifeless mass.

T
HE
Divers would return to the Riviera, which was home. The Villa Diana had been rented again for the summer, so they divided the intervening time between German spas and French cathedral towns where they were always happy for a few days. Dick wrote a little with no particular method; it was one of those parts of life that are an awaiting; not upon Nicole's health, which seemed to thrive on travel, nor upon work, but simply an awaiting. The factor that gave purposefulness to the period was the children.

Dick's interest in them increased with their ages, now eleven and nine. He managed to reach them over the heads of employees on the principle that both the forcing of children and the fear of forcing them were inadequate substitutes for the long, careful watchfulness, the checking and balancing and reckoning of accounts, to the end that there should be no slip below a certain level of duty. He came to know them much better than Nicole did, and in expansive moods over the wines of several countries he talked and played with them at length. They had that wistful charm, almost sadness, peculiar to children who have learned early not to cry or laugh with abandon; they were apparently moved to no extremes of emotion, but content with a simple regimentation and the simple pleasures allowed them. They lived on the even tenor found advisable in the experience of old families of the Western world, brought up rather than brought out. Dick thought, for example, that nothing was more conducive to the development of observation than compulsory silence.