said you were observed associating with a questionable crowd in Lausanne. Is that a deafening whisper? Or does it simply deafen YOU?”
“It’s still not loud enough,” said Dick, a little too late. “So I am actually a notorious—”
Golding crushed out the phrase with his voice saying:
“What! What!” and moved his guests on out, with the threat of his powerful body. Turning the corner of the door Nicole saw that Dick was still sitting at the table. She was furious at the woman for her preposterous statement, equally furious at Dick for having brought them here, for having become fuddled, for having untipped the capped barbs of his irony, for having come off humiliated—she was a little more annoyed because she knew that her taking possession of Tommy Barban on their arrival had first irritated the Englishwoman.
A moment later she saw Dick standing in the gangway, apparently in complete control of himself as he talked with Golding; then for half an hour she did not see him anywhere about the deck and she broke out of an intricate Malay game, played with string and coffee beans, and said to Tommy:
“I’ve got to find Dick.”
Since dinner the yacht had been in motion westward. The fine night streamed away on either side, the Diesel engines pounded softly, there was a spring wind that blew Nicole’s hair abruptly when she reached the bow, and she had a sharp lesion of anxiety at seeing Dick standing in the angle by the flagstaff. His voice was serene as he recognized her.
“It’s a nice night.”
“I was worried.”
“Oh, you were worried?”
“Oh, don’t talk that way. It would give me so much pleasure to think of a little something I could do for you, Dick.”
He turned away from her, toward the veil of starlight over Africa.
“I believe that’s true, Nicole. And sometimes I believe that the littler it was, the more pleasure it would give you.”
“Don’t talk like that—don’t say such things.”
His face, wan in the light that the white spray caught and tossed back to the brilliant sky had none of the lines of annoyance she had expected. It was even detached; his eyes focussed upon her gradually as upon a chessman to be moved; in the same slow manner he caught her wrist and drew her near.
“You ruined me, did you?” he inquired blandly. “Then we’re both ruined. So—”
Cold with terror she put her other wrist into his grip. All right, she would go with him—again she felt the beauty of the night vividly in one moment of complete response and abnegation—all right, then—
—but now she was unexpectedly free and Dick turned his back sighing. “Tch! tch!”
Tears streamed down Nicole’s face—in a moment she heard some one approaching; it was Tommy.
“You found him! Nicole thought maybe you jumped overboard, Dick,” he said, “because that little English poule slanged you.”
“It’d be a good setting to jump overboard,” said Dick mildly.
“Wouldn’t it?” agreed Nicole hastily. “Let’s borrow life- preservers and jump over. I think we should do something spectacular. I feel that all our lives have been too restrained.”
Tommy sniffed from one to the other trying to breathe in the situation with the night. “We’ll go ask the Lady Beer-and-Ale what to do—she should know the latest things. And we should memorize her song ‘There was a young lady from l’enfer.’ I shall translate it, and make a fortune from its success at the Casino.”
“Are you rich, Tommy?” Dick asked him, as they retraced the length of the boat.
“Not as things go now. I got tired of the brokerage business and went away. But I have good stocks in the hands of friends who are holding it for me. All goes well.”
“Dick’s getting rich,” Nicole said. In reaction her voice had begun to tremble.
On the after deck Golding had fanned three pairs of dancers into action with his colossal paws. Nicole and Tommy joined them and Tommy remarked: “Dick seems to be drinking.”
“Only moderately,” she said loyally.
“There are those who can drink and those who can’t. Obviously Dick can’t. You ought to tell him not to.”
“I!” she exclaimed in amazement. “
But in a reticent way Dick was still vague and sleepy when they reached the pier at Cannes. Golding buoyed him down into the launch of the Margin whereupon Lady Caroline shifted her place conspicuously. On the dock he bowed good-by with exaggerated formality, and for a moment he seemed about to speed her with a salty epigram, but the bone of Tommy’s arm went into the soft part of his and they walked to the attendant car.
“I’ll drive you home,” Tommy suggested.
“Don’t bother—we can get a cab.”
“I’d like to, if you can put me up.”
On the back seat of the car Dick remained quiescent until the yellow monolith of Golfe Juan was passed, and then the constant carnival at Juan les Pins where the night was musical and strident in many languages. When the car turned up the hill toward Tarmes, he sat up suddenly, prompted by the tilt of the vehicle and delivered a peroration:
“A charming representative of the—” he stumbled momentarily, “—a firm of—bring me Brains addled a
