F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night [121]
Franz’s buoyant face fell.
“I knew he’d left. I met Ladislau on the veranda.”
“What did Ladislau 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 Ladislau into a colonial subject by the time I came along. What about Ladislau? 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. “Ladislau 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.
IV
The 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 is 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