Tender Is the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

area so green and cool that the leaves and petals
were curled with tender damp.
    Knotted
at her throat she wore a lilac scarf that even in the achromatic sunshine cast
its color up to her face and down around her moving feet in a lilac shadow. Her
face was hard, almost stern, save for the soft gleam of piteous doubt that
looked from her green eyes. Her once fair hair had darkened, but she was
lovelier now at twenty-four than she had been at eighteen, when her hair was
brighter than she.
    Following
a walk marked by an intangible mist of bloom that followed the white border
stones she came to a space overlooking the sea where there were lanterns asleep
in the fig trees and a big table and wicker chairs and a great market umbrella
from Sienna, all gathered about an enormous pine, the biggest tree in the
garden. She paused there a moment, looking absently at a growth of nasturtiums
and iris tangled at its foot, as though sprung from a careless handful of
seeds, listening to the plaints and accusations of some nursery squabble in the
house. When this died away on the summer air, she walked on, between
kaleidoscopic peonies massed in pink clouds, black and brown tulips and fragile
mauve-stemmed roses, transparent like sugar flowers in a confectioner’s window—
until, as if the scherzo of color could reach no further intensity, it broke
off suddenly in mid-air, and moist steps went down to a level five feet below.
    Here
there was a well with the boarding around it dank and slippery even on the
brightest days. She went up the stairs on the other side and into the vegetable
garden; she walked rather quickly; she liked to be active, though at times she
gave an impression of repose that was at once static and evocative. This was
because she knew few words and believed in none, and in the world she was
rather silent, contributing just her share of urbane humor with a precision
that approached meagreness . But at the moment when
strangers tended to grow uncomfortable in the presence of this economy she
would seize the topic and rush off with it, feverishly surprised with
herself—then bring it back and relinquish it abruptly, almost timidly, like an
obedient retriever, having been adequate and something more.
    As she
stood in the fuzzy green light of the vegetable garden, Dick crossed the path
ahead of her going to his work house. Nicole waited silently till he had
passed; then she went on through lines of prospective salads to a little
menagerie where pigeons and rabbits and a parrot made a medley of insolent
noises at her. Descending to another ledge she reached a low, curved wall and
looked down seven hundred feet to the
Mediterranean Sea
.
    She
stood in the ancient hill
village
of
Tarmes
.
The villa and its grounds were made out of a row of peasant dwellings that
abutted on the cliff—five small houses had been combined to make the house and
four destroyed to make the garden. The exterior walls were untouched so that
from the road far below it was indistinguishable from the violet gray mass of
the town.
    For a
moment Nicole stood looking down at the
Mediterranean
but there was nothing to do with that, even with her tireless hands. Presently
Dick came out of his one-room house carrying a telescope and looked east toward
Cannes
. In a
moment Nicole swam into his field of vision, whereupon he disappeared into his
house and came out with a megaphone. He had many light mechanical devices.
    “Nicole,”
he shouted, “I forgot to tell you that as a final apostolic gesture I invited
Mrs. Abrams, the woman with the white hair.”
    “I
suspected it. It’s an outrage.”
    The ease
with which her reply reached him seemed to belittle his megaphone, so she
raised her voice and called, “Can you hear me?”
    “Yes.”
He lowered the megaphone and then raised it stubbornly. “I’m going to invite
some more people too. I’m going to invite the two young men.”
    “All
right,” she