“Perhaps it would be better to steal a musical saw and—”
“That’s enough,” Mary interrupted. “When Abe begins bringing up that it’s time to go home.” Anxiously she confided to Rosemary:
“I’ve got to get Abe home. His boat train leaves at eleven. It’s so important—I feel the whole future depends on his catching it, but whenever I argue with him he does the exact opposite.”
“I’ll try and persuade him,” offered Rosemary.
“Would you?” Mary said doubtfully. “Maybe you could.”
Then Dick came up to Rosemary:
“Nicole and I are going home and we thought you’d want to go with us.”
Her face was pale with fatigue in the false dawn. Two wan dark spots in her cheek marked where the color was by day.
“I can’t,” she said. “I promised Mary North to stay along with them—or Abe’ll never go to bed. Maybe you could do something.”
“Don’t you know you can’t do anything about people?” he advised her. “If Abe was my room-mate in college, tight for the first time, it’d be different. Now there’s nothing to do.”
“Well, I’ve got to stay. He says he’ll go to bed if we only come to the Halles with him,” she said, almost defiantly.
He kissed the inside of her elbow quickly.
“Don’t let Rosemary go home alone,” Nicole called to Mary as they left. “We feel responsible to her mother.”
—Later Rosemary and the Norths and a manufacturer of dolls’ voices from Newark and ubiquitous Collis and a big splendidly dressed oil Indian named George T. Horseprotection were riding along on top of thousands of carrots in a market wagon. The earth in the carrot beards was fragrant and sweet in the darkness, and Rosemary was so high up in the load that she could hardly see the others in the long shadow between infrequent street lamps. Their voices came from far off, as if they were having experiences different from hers, different and far away, for she was with Dick in her heart, sorry she had come with the Norths, wishing she was at the hotel and him asleep across the hall, or that he was here beside her with the warm darkness streaming down.
“Don’t come up,” she called to Collis, “the carrots will all roll.” She threw one at Abe who was sitting beside the driver, stiffly like an old man. . . .
Later she was homeward bound at last in broad daylight, with the pigeons already breaking over Saint-Sulpice. All of them began to laugh spontaneously because they knew it was still last night while the people in the streets had the delusion that it was bright hot morning.
“At last I’ve been on a wild party,” thought Rosemary, “but it’s no fun when Dick isn’t there.”
She felt a little betrayed and sad, but presently a moving object came into sight. It was a huge horse-chestnut tree in full bloom bound for the Champs Élysées, strapped now into a long truck and simply shaking with laughter—like a lovely person in an undignified position yet confident none the less of being lovely. Looking at it with fascination Rosemary identified herself with it, and laughed cheerfully with it, and everything all at once seemed gorgeous.
XIX
Abe left from the Gare Saint Lazare at eleven—he stood alone under the fouled glass dome, relic of the seventies, era of the CrystalPalace; his hands, of that vague gray color that only twenty-four hours can produce, were in his coat pockets to conceal the trembling fingers. With his hat removed it was plain that only the top layer of his hair was brushed back—the lower levels were pointed resolutely sidewise. He was scarcely recognizable as the man who had swum upon Gausse’s Beach a fortnight ago.
He was early; he looked from left to right with his eyes only; it would have taken nervous forces out of his control to use any other part of his body. New-looking baggage went past him; presently prospective passengers, with dark little bodies, were calling: “Jew-uls-HOO-OO!” in dark piercing voices.
At the minute when he wondered whether or not he had time for a drink at the buffet, and began clutching at the soggy wad of thousand-franc notes in his pocket, one end of his pendulous glance came to rest upon the apparition of Nicole at the stairhead. He watched her—she was self-revelatory in her little expressions as people seem to some one waiting for them, who as yet is himself unobserved. She was frowning, thinking of her children, less gloating over them than merely animally counting them—a cat checking her cubs with a paw.
When she saw Abe, the mood passed out of her face; the glow of the morning skylight was sad, and Abe made a gloomy figure with dark circles that showed through the crimson tan under his eyes. They sat down on a bench.
“I came because you asked me,” said Nicole defensively. Abe seemed to have forgotten why he asked her and Nicole was quite content to look at the travellers passing by.
“That’s going to be the belle of your boat—that one with all the men to say good-by—you see why she bought that dress?” Nicole talked faster and faster. “You see why nobody else would buy it except the belle of the world cruise? See? No? Wake up! That’s a story dress—that extra material tells a story and somebody on world cruise would be lonesome enough to want to hear it.”
She bit close her last words; she had talked too much for her; and Abe found it difficult to gather from her serious set face that she had spoken at all. With an effort he drew himself up to a posture that looked as if he were standing up while he was sitting down.
“The afternoon you took me to that funny ball—you know, St. Genevieve’s—” he began.
“I remember. It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“No fun for me. I haven’t had fun seeing you this time. I’m tired of you both, but it doesn’t show because you’re even more tired of me—you know what I mean. If I had any enthusiasm, I’d go on to new people.”
There was a rough nap on Nicole’s velvet gloves as she slapped him back:
“Seems rather foolish to be unpleasant, Abe. Anyhow you don’t mean that. I can’t see why you’ve given up about everything.”
Abe considered, trying hard not to cough or blow his nose.
“I suppose I got bored; and then it was such a long way to go back in order to get anywhere.”
Often a man can play the helpless child in front of a woman, but he can almost never bring it off when he feels most like a helpless child.
“No excuse for it,” Nicole said crisply.