F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night [19]
She went inside and dressing in a light gown and espadrilles went out her window again and along the continuous terrace toward the front door, going fast since she found that other private rooms, exuding sleep, gave upon it. She stopped at the sight of a figure seated on the wide white stairway of the formal entrance—then she saw that it was Luis Campion and that he was weeping.
He was weeping hard and quietly and shaking in the same parts as a weeping woman. A scene in a role she had played last year swept over her irresistibly and advancing she touched him on the shoulder. He gave a little yelp before he recognized her.
“What is it?” Her eyes were level and kind and not slanted into him with hard curiosity. “Can I help you?”
“Nobody can help me. I knew it. I have only myself to blame. It’s always the same.”
“What is it—do you want to tell me?”
He looked at her to see.
“No,” he decided. “When you’re older you’ll know what people who love suffer. The agony. It’s better to be cold and young than to love. It’s happened to me before but never like this—so accidental—just when everything was going well.”
His face was repulsive in the quickening light. Not by a flicker of her personality, a movement of the smallest muscle, did she betray her sudden disgust with whatever it was. But Campion’s sensitivity realized it and he changed the subject rather suddenly.
“Abe North is around here somewhere.”
“Why, he’s staying at the Divers’!”
“Yes, but he’s up—don’t you know what happened?”
A shutter opened suddenly in a room two stories above and an English voice spat distinctly:
“Will you kaindlay stup tucking!”
Rosemary and Luis Campion went humbly down the steps and to a bench beside the road to the beach.
“Then you have no idea what’s happened? My dear, the most extraordinary thing—” He was warming up now, hanging on to his revelation. “I’ve never seen a thing come so suddenly—I have always avoided violent people—they upset me so I sometimes have to go to bed for days.”
He looked at her triumphantly. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“My dear,” he burst forth, leaning toward her with his whole body as he touched her on the upper leg, to show it was no mere irresponsible venture of his hand—he was so sure of himself. “There’s going to be a duel.”
“Wh-at?”
“A duel with—we don’t know what yet.”
“Who’s going to duel?”
“I’ll tell you from the beginning.” He drew a long breath and then said, as if it were rather to her discredit but he wouldn’t hold it against her. “Of course, you were in the other automobile. Well, in a way you were lucky—I lost at least two years of my life, it came so suddenly.”
“What came?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what began it. First she began to talk—”
“Who?”
“Violet McKisco.” He lowered his voice as if there were people under the bench. “But don’t mention the Divers because he made threats against anybody who mentioned it.”
“Who did?”
“Tommy Barban, so don’t you say I so much as mentioned them. None of us ever found out anyhow what it was Violet had to say because he kept interrupting her, and then her husband got into it and now, my dear, we have the duel. This morning—at five o’clock—in an hour.” He sighed suddenly thinking of his own griefs. “I almost wish it were I. I might as well be killed now I have nothing to live for.” He broke off and rocked to and fro with sorrow.
Again the iron shutter parted above and the same British voice said:
“Rilly, this must stup immejetely.”
Simultaneously Abe North, looking somewhat distracted, came out of the hotel, perceived them against the sky, white over the sea. Rosemary shook her head warningly before he could speak and they moved another bench further down the road. Rosemary saw that Abe was a little tight.
“What are YOU doing up?” he demanded.
“I just got up.” She started to laugh, but remembering the voice above, she restrained herself.
“Plagued by the