Tender Is the Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald Page A

the trees above the tennis court; footfalls followed a round drive in the
rear of the hotel, taking their tone in turn from the dust road, the
crushed-stone walk, the cement steps, and then reversing the process in going
away. Beyond the inky sea and far up that high, black shadow of a hill lived
the Divers. She thought of them both together, heard them still singing faintly
a song like rising smoke, like a hymn, very remote in time and far away. Their
children slept, their gate was shut for the night.
    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