Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 205

After three more days Hallie finally consented to being torn away from Brussels, and the tour continued through Antwerp, Rotterdam and The Hague. But it was not the same sort of tour that had left Paris a short week before. It traveled in two limousines, for there were always at least one pair of attentive cavaliers in attendance—not to mention a quartet of hirelings who made the jumps by train. Corcoran’s guidebooks and histories appeared no more. In Antwerp they did not stay at a mere hotel, but at a famous old shooting box on the outskirts of the city which Corcoran hired for six days, servants and all.

Before they left, Hallie’s photograph appeared in the Antwerp papers over a paragraph which spoke of her as the beautiful American heiress who had taken Brabant Lodge and entertained so delightfully that a certain Royal Personage had been several times in evidence there.

In Rotterdam, Hallie saw neither the Boompjes nor the Groote Kerk—they were both obscured by a stream of pleasant young Dutchmen who looked at her with soft blue eyes. But when they reached The Hague and the tour neared its end, she was aware of a growing sadness—it had been such a good time and now it would be over and put away. Already Amsterdam and a certain Ohio gentleman, who didn’t understand entertaining on the grand scale, were sweeping toward her—and though she tried to be glad she wasn’t glad at all. It depressed her too that Corcoran seemed to be avoiding her—he had scarcely spoken to her or danced with her since they left Antwerp. She was thinking chiefly of that on the last afternoon as they rode through the twilight toward Amsterdam and her mother drowsed sleepily in a corner of the car.

“You’ve been so good to me,” she said. “If you’re still angry about that evening in Brussels, please try to forgive me now.”

“I’ve forgiven you long ago.”

They rode into the city in silence and Hallie looked out the window in a sort of panic. What would she do now with no one to take care of her, to take care of that part of her that wanted to be young and gay forever? Just before they drew up at the hotel, she turned again to Corcoran and their eyes met in a strange disquieting glance. Her hand reached out for his and pressed it gently, as if this was their real good-bye.

Mr. Claude Nosby was a stiff, dark, glossy man, leaning hard toward forty, whose eyes rested for a hostile moment upon Corcoran as he helped Hallie from the car.

“Your father arrives tomorrow,” he said portentously. “His attention has been called to your picture in the Antwerp papers and he is hurrying over from London.”

“Why shouldn’t my picture be in the Antwerp papers, Claude?” inquired Hallie innocently.

“It seems a bit unusual.”

Mr. Nosby had had a letter from Mr. Bushmill which told him of the arrangement. He looked upon it with profound disapproval. All through dinner he listened without enthusiasm to the account which Hallie, rather spiritedly assisted by her mother, gave of the adventure; and afterwards when Hallie and her mother went to bed he informed Corcoran that he would like to speak to him alone.

“Ah—Mr. Corcoran,” he began, “would you be kind enough to let me see the little account book you are keeping for Mr. Bushmill?”

“I’d rather not,” answered Corcoran pleasantly. “I think that’s a matter between Mr. Bushmill and me.”

“It’s the same thing,” said Nosby impatiently. “Perhaps you are not aware that Miss Bushmill and I are engaged.”

“I had gathered as much.”

“Perhaps you can gather too that I am not particularly pleased at the sort of good time you chose to give her.”

“It was just an ordinary good time.”

“That is a matter of opinion. Will you give me the notebook?”

“Tomorrow,” said Corcoran, still pleasantly, “and only to Mr. Bushmill. Good-night.”

Corcoran slept late. He was awakened at eleven by the telephone, through which Nosby’s voice informed him coldly that Mr. Bushmill had arrived and would see him at once. When he rapped at his employer’s door ten minutes later, he found Hallie and her mother also were there, sitting rather sulkily on a sofa. Mr. Bushmill nodded at him coolly but made no motion to shake hands.

“Let’s see that account book,” he said immediately.

Corcoran handed it to him, together with a bulky packet of vouchers and receipts.

“I hear you’ve all been out raising hell,” said Bushmill.

“No,” said Hallie, “only Mama and me.”

“You wait outside, Corcoran. I’ll let you know when I want you.”

Corcoran descended to the lobby and found out from the porter that a train left for Paris at noon. Then he bought a “New York Herald” and stared at the headlines for half an hour. At the end of that time he was summoned upstairs.

Evidently a heated discussion had gone on in his absence. Mr. Nosby was staring out the window with a look of patient resignation. Mrs. Bushmill had been crying, and Hallie, with a triumphant frown on her childish brow, was making a camp stool out of her father’s knee.

“Sit down,” she said sternly.

Corcoran sat down.

“What do you mean by giving us such a good time?”

“Oh, drop it, Hallie!” said her father impatiently. He turned to Corcoran: “Did I give you any authority to lay out twelve thousand dollars in six weeks? Did I?”

“You’re going to Italy with us,” interrupted Hallie reassuringly. “We—”

“Will you be quiet?” exploded Bushmill. “It may be funny to you, but I don’t like to make bad bets, and I’m pretty sore.”

“What nonsense!” remarked Hallie cheerfully. “Why, you were laughing a minute ago!”

“Laughing! You mean at that idiotic account book? Who wouldn’t laugh? Four titles at five hundred francs a head! One baptismal font to American Church for presence of clergyman at tea. It’s like the log book of a lunatic asylum!”

“Never mind,” said Hallie. “You can charge the baptismal font off your income tax.”

“That’s consoling,” said her father grimly. “Nevertheless, this young man will spend no more of my money for me.”

“But he’s still a wonderful guide. He knows everything—don’t you? All about the monuments and catacombs and the Battle of Waterloo.”

“Will you please let me talk to Mr. Corcoran?” Hallie was silent. “Mrs. Bushmill and my daughter and Mr. Nosby are going to take a trip through Italy as far as Sicily, where Mr. Nosby has some business, and they want you—that is, Hallie and her mother think they would get more out of it if you went along. Understand—it isn’t going to be any royal fandango this time. You’ll get your salary and your expenses and that’s all you’ll get. Do you want to go?”

“No, thanks, Mr. Bushmill,” said Corcoran quietly. “I’m going back to Paris at noon.”

“You’re not!” cried Hallie indignantly. “Why—why how am I going to know which is the Forum and the—the Acropolis and all that?” She rose from her father’s knee. “Look here, Daddy, I can persuade him.” Before they guessed her intentions she had seized Corcoran’s arm, dragged him into the hall and closed the door behind her.

“You’ve got to come,” she said intensely. “Don’t you understand? I’ve seen Claude in a new light and I can’t marry him and I don’t dare tell Father, and I’ll go mad if we have to go off with him alone.”

The door opened and Mr. Nosby peered suspiciously out into the hall.

“It’s all right,” cried Hallie. “He’ll come. It was just a question of more salary and he was too shy to say anything about it.”

As they went back in Bushmill looked from one to the other.

“Why do you think you ought to get more salary?”

“So he can spend it, of course,” explained Hallie triumphantly. “He’s got to keep his hand in, hasn’t he?”

This unanswerable argument closed the discussion. Corcoran was to go to Italy with them as courier and guide at three hundred and fifty dollars a month, an advance of some fifty dollars over what he had received before. From Sicily they were to proceed by boat to Marseilles, where Mr. Bushmill would meet them. After that Mr. Corcoran’s services would be no longer required—the Bushmills and Mr. Nosby would sail immediately for home.

They left next morning. It was evident even before they reached Italy that Mr. Nosby had determined to run the expedition in his own way. He was aware that Hallie was less docile and less responsive than she had been before she came abroad, and when he spoke of the wedding a curious vagueness seemed to come over her, but he knew that she adored her father and that in the end she would do whatever her father liked. It was only a question of getting her back to America before any silly young men, such as this unbalanced spendthrift, had the opportunity of infecting her with any nonsense. Once in the factory town and in the little circle where she had grown up, she would slip gently back into the attitude she had held before.

So for the first four weeks of the tour he was never a foot from her side, and at the same time he managed to send Corcoran on a series of useless errands which occupied much of his time. He would get up early in the morning, arrange that Corcoran should take Mrs. Bushmill on a day’s excursion and say nothing to Hallie until they were safely away. For the opera in Milan, the concerts in Rome, he bought tickets for three, and on all automobile trips he made it plain to Corcoran that he was to sit with the chauffeur outside.

In Naples they were to stop for a day and take the boat trip to the Island of Capri in order to visit the celebrated Blue Grotto. Then, returning to Naples, they would motor south and cross to Sicily. In Naples Mr. Nosby received a telegram from Mr. Bushmill, in Paris, which he did not read to the others, but folded up and put into his pocket. He told them, however, that on their way to the Capri steamer he must stop for a moment at an Italian bank.

Mrs. Bushmill had not come along that morning, and Hallie and Corcoran waited outside in the cab. It was the first time in four weeks that they had been together without Mr. Nosby’s stiff, glossy presence hovering near.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” said Hallie in a low voice. “I’ve tried so many times, but it’s almost impossible. He got Father to say that if you molested me, or even were attentive to me, he could send you immediately home.”

“I shouldn’t have come,” answered Corcoran despairingly. “It was a terrible mistake. But I want to see you alone just once—if only to say good-bye.”

As Nosby hurried out of the bank, he broke off and bent his glance casually down the street, pretending to be absorbed in some interesting phenomenon that was taking place there. And suddenly, as if life were playing up to his subterfuge, an interesting phenomenon did immediately take place on the corner in front of the bank. A man in his shirt-sleeves rushed suddenly out of the side street, seized the shoulder of a small, swarthy hunchback standing there and, swinging him quickly around, pointed at their taxi-cab. The man in his shirt-sleeves had not even looked at them—it was as if he had known that they would be there.

The hunchback nodded and instantly both of them disappeared—the first man into the side street which had yielded him up, the hunchback into nowhere at all. The incident took place so quickly that it made only an odd visual impression upon Corcoran—he did not have occasion to think of it again until they returned from Capri eight hours later.

The Bay of Naples was rough as they set out that morning, and the little steamer staggered like a drunken man through the persistent waves. Before long Mr. Nosby’s complexion was running through a gamut of yellows, pale creams and ghostly whites, but he insisted that he scarcely noticed the motion and forced Hallie to accompany him in an incessant promenade up and down the deck.

When the steamer reached the coast of the rocky, cheerful little island, dozens of boats put out from shore and swarmed about dizzily in the waves as they waited for passengers to the Blue Grotto. The constant Saint Vitus’ dance which they performed in the surf turned Mr. Nosby from a respectable white to a bizarre and indecent blue and compelled him to a sudden decision.

“It’s too rough,” he announced. “We won’t go.”

Hallie, watching fascinated from the rail, paid no attention. Seductive cries were floating up from below:

“Theesa a good boat, lady an’ ge’man!”

“I spik American—been America two year!”

“Fine, sunny day for go to see Blue Grotte!”

The first passengers had already floated off, two to a boat, and now Hallie was drifting with the next batch down the gangway.

“Where are you going, Hallie?” shouted Mr. Nosby. “It’s too dangerous today. We’re going to stay on board.”

Hallie, half down the gangway, looked back over her shoulder.

“Of course I’m going!” she cried. “Do you think I’d come all the way to Capri and miss the Blue Grotto?”

Nosby took one more look at the sea—then he turned hurriedly away. Already Hallie, followed by Corcoran, had stepped into one of the small boats and was waving him a cheerful good-bye.

They approached the shore, heading for a small dark opening in the rocks. When they arrived, the boatman ordered them to sit on the floor of the boat to keep from being bumped against the low entrance. A momentary passage through darkness, then a vast space opened up around them and they were in a bright paradise of ultramarine, a cathedral cave where the water and air and the high-vaulted roof were of the most radiant and opalescent blue.

“Ver’ pret’,” sing-songed the boatman. He ran his oar through the water and they watched it turn to an incredible silver.

“I’m going to put my hand in!” said Hallie, enraptured. They were both kneeling now, and as she leaned forward to plunge her hand under the surface the strange light enveloped them like a spell and their lips touched—then all the world turned to blue and silver, or else this was not the world but a delightful enchantment in which they would dwell forever.

“Ver’ beaut’ful,” sang the boatman. “Come back see Blue Grotte tomorrow, next day. Ask for Frederico, fine man for Blue Grotte. Oh, chawming!”

Again their lips sought each other and blue and silver seemed to soar like rockets above them, burst and shower down about their shoulders in protective atoms of color, screening them from time, from sight. They kissed again. The voices of tourists were seeking echoes here and there about the cave. A brown naked boy dived from a high rock, cleaving the water like a silver fish, and starting a thousand platinum bubbles to churn up through the blue light.

“I love you with all my heart,” she whispered. “What shall we do? Oh, my dear, if you only had a little common sense about money!”

The cavern was emptying, the small boats were feeling their way out, one by one, to the glittering restless sea.

“Good-bye, Blue Grotte!” sang the boatman. “Come again soo-oon!”

Blinded by the sunshine they sat back apart and looked at each other. But though the blue and silver was left behind, the radiance about her face remained.

“I love you,” rang as true here under the blue sky.

Mr. Nosby was waiting on the deck, but he said not a word—only looked at them sharply and sat between them all the way back to Naples. But for all his tangible body, they were no longer apart. He had best be quick and interpose his four thousand miles.

It was not until they had docked and were walking from the pier that Corcoran was jerked sharply from his mood of rapture and despair by something that sharply recalled to him the incident of the morning. Directly in their path, as if waiting for them, stood the swarthy hunchback to whom the man in the shirt-sleeves had pointed out their taxi. No sooner did he see them, however, than he stepped quickly aside and melted into a crowd. When they had passed, Corcoran turned back, as if for a last look at the boat, and saw in the sweep of his eye that the hunchback was pointing them out in his turn to still another man.

As they got into a taxi Mr. Nosby broke the silence.

“You’d better pack immediately,” he said. “We’re leaving by motor for Palermo right after dinner.”

“We can’t make it tonight,” objected Hallie.

“We’ll stop at Cosenza. That’s halfway.”

It was plain that he wanted to bring the trip to an end at the first possible moment. After dinner he asked Corcoran to come to the hotel garage with him while he engaged an automobile for the trip, and Corcoran understood that this was because Hallie and he were not to be left together. Nosby, in an ill humor, insisted that the garage price was too high; finally he walked out and up to a dilapidated taxi in the street. The taxi agreed to make the trip to Palermo for twenty-five dollars.

“I don’t believe this old thing will make the grade,” ventured Corcoran. “Don’t you think it would be wiser to pay the difference and take the other car?”

Nosby stared at him, his anger just under the surface.

“We’re not all like you,” he said dryly. “We can’t all afford to throw it away.”

Corcoran took the snub with a cool nod.

“Another thing,” he said. “Did you get money from the bank this morning—or anything that would make you likely to be followed?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Nosby quickly.

“Somebody’s been keeping pretty close track of our movements all day.”

Nosby eyed him shrewdly.

“You’d like us to stay here in Naples a day or so more, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Unfortunately you’re not running this party. If you stay, you can stay alone.”

“And you won’t take the other car?”

“I’m getting a little weary of your suggestions.”

At the hotel, as the porters piled the bags into the high old-fashioned car, Corcoran was again possessed by a feeling of being watched. With an effort he resisted the impulse to turn his head and look behind. If this was a product of his imagination, it was better to put it immediately from his mind.

It was already eight o’clock when they drove off into a windy twilight. The sun had gone behind Naples, leaving a sky of pigeon’s-blood and gold, and as they rounded the bay and climbed slowly toward Torre Annunziata, the Mediterranean momentarily toasted the fading splendor in pink wine. Above them loomed Vesuvius and from its crater a small persistent fountain of smoke contributed darkness to the gathering night.

“We ought to reach Cosenza about twelve,” said Nosby.

No one answered. The city had disappeared behind a rise of ground, and now they were alone, tracing down the hot mysterious shin of the Italian boot where the Maffia sprang out of rank human weeds and the Black Hand rose to throw its ominous shadow across two continents. There was something eerie in the sough of the wind over these grey mountains, crowned with the decayed castles. Hallie suddenly shivered.

“I’m glad I’m American,” she said. “Here in Italy I feel that everybody’s dead. So many people dead and all watching from up on those hills—Carthaginians and old Romans and Moorish pirates and medieval princes with poisoned rings—”

The solemn gloom of the countryside communicated itself to all of them. The wind had come up stronger and was groaning through the dark massed trees along the way. The engine labored painfully up the incessant slopes and then coasted down winding spiral roads until the brakes gave out a burning smell. In the dark little village of Eboli they stopped for gasoline, and while they waited for their change another car came quickly out of the darkness and drew up behind.

Corcoran looked at it closely, but the lights were in his face and he could distinguish only the pale blots of four faces which returned his insistent stare. When the taxi had driven off and toiled a mile uphill in the face of the sweeping wind, he saw the lamps of the other car emerge from the village and follow. In a low voice he called Nosby’s attention to the fact—whereupon Nosby leaned forward nervously and tapped on the front glass.

“Piu presto!” he commanded. “Il sera sono tropo tarde!”

Corcoran translated the mutilated Italian and then fell into conversation with the chauffeur. Hallie had dozed off to sleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder. It might have been twenty minutes later when she awoke with a start to find that the car had stopped. The chauffeur was peering into the engine with a lighted match, while Corcoran and Mr. Nosby were talking quickly in the road.

“What is it?” she cried.

“He’s broken down,” said Corcoran, “and he hasn’t got the proper tools to make the repair. The best thing is for all of you to start out on foot for Agropoli. That’s the next village—it’s about two miles away.”

“Look!” said Nosby uneasily. The lights of another car had breasted a rise less than a mile behind.

“Perhaps they’ll pick us up?” asked Hallie.

“We’re taking no such chances,” answered Corcoran. “This is the special beat of one of the roughest gangs of holdup men in Southern Italy. What’s more, we’re being followed. When I asked the chauffeur if he knew that car that drove up behind us in Eboli, he shut right up. He’s afraid to say.”

As he spoke he was helping Hallie and her mother from the car. Now he turned authoritatively to Nosby.

“You better tell me what you got in that Naples bank.”

“It was ten thousand dollars in English bank notes,” admitted Nosby in a frightened voice.

“I thought so. Some clerk tipped them off. Hand over those notes to me!”

“Why should I?” demanded Nosby. “What are you going to do with them?”

“I’m going to throw them away,” said Corcoran. His head went up alertly. The complaint of a motor car taking a hill in second speed was borne toward them clearly on the night. “Hallie, you and your mother start on with the chauffeur. Run as fast as you can for a hundred yards or so and then keep going. If I don’t show up, notify the carabinieri in Agropoli.” His voice sank lower. “Don’t worry, I’m going to fix this thing. Good-bye.”

As they started off he turned again to Nosby.

“Hand over that money,” he said.

“You’re going to—”

“I’m going to keep them here while you get Hallie away. Don’t you see that if they got her up in these hills they could ask any amount of money they wanted?”

Nosby paused irresolute. Then he pulled out a thick packet of fifty-pound notes and began to peel half a dozen from the top.

“I want all of it,” snapped Corcoran. With a quick movement he wrested the packet violently from Nosby’s hand. “Now go on!”

Less than half a mile away, the lights of the car dipped into sight. With a broken cry Nosby turned and stumbled off down the road.

Corcoran took a pencil and an envelope from his pocket and worked quickly for a few minutes by the glow of the headlights. Then he wet one finger and held it up tentatively in the air as if he were making an experiment. The result seemed to satisfy him. He waited, ruffling the large thin notes—there were forty of them—in his hands.

The lights of the other car came nearer, slowed up, came to a stop twenty feet away.

Leaving the engine running idle, four men got out and walked toward him.

“Buona sera!” he called, and then continued in Italian, “We have broken down.”

“Where are the rest of your people?” demanded one of the men quickly.

“They were picked up by another car. It turned around and took them back to Agropoli,” Corcoran said politely. He was aware that he was covered by two revolvers, but he waited an instant longer, straining to hear the flurry in the trees which would announce a gust of wind. The men drew nearer.

“But I have something here that may interest you.” Slowly, his heart thumping, he raised his hand, bringing the packet of notes into the glare of the headlight. Suddenly out of the valley swept the wind, louder and nearer—he waited a moment longer until he felt the first cold freshness on his face. “Here are two hundred thousand lire in English bank notes!” He raised the sheaf of paper higher as if to hand it to the nearest man. Then he released it with a light upward flick and immediately the wind seized upon it and whirled the notes in forty directions through the air.

The nearest man cursed and made a lunge for the closest piece. Then they were all scurrying here and there about the road while the frail bills sailed and flickered in the gale, pirouetting like elves along the grass, bouncing and skipping from side to side in mad perversity.

From one side to the other they ran, Corcoran with them—crumpling the captured money into their pockets, then scattering always farther and farther apart in wild pursuit of the elusive beckoning symbols of gold.

Suddenly Corcoran saw his opportunity. Bending low, as if he had spotted a stray bill beneath the car, he ran toward it, vaulted over the side and hitched into the driver’s seat. As he plunged the lever into first, he heard a cursing cry and then a sharp report, but the warmed car had jumped forward safely and the shot went wide.

In a moment, his teeth locked and muscles tense against the fusillade, he had passed the stalled taxi and was racing along into the darkness. There was another report close at hand and he ducked wildly, afraid for an instant that one of them had clung to the running board—then he realized that one of their shots had blown out a tire.

After three-quarters of a mile he stopped, cut off his motor and listened. There wasn’t a sound, only the drip from his radiator onto the road.

“Hallie!” he called. “Hallie!”

A figure emerged from the shadows not ten feet away, then another figure and another.

“Hallie!” he said.

She clambered into the front seat with him—her arms went about him.

“You’re safe!” she sobbed. “We heard the shots and I wanted to go back.”

Mr. Nosby, very cool now, stood in the road.

“I don’t suppose you brought back any of that money,” he said.

Corcoran took three crumpled bank notes from his pocket.

“That’s all,” he said. “But they’re liable to be along here any minute and you can argue with them about the rest.”

Mr. Nosby, followed by Mrs. Bushmill and the chauffeur, stepped quickly into the car.

“Nevertheless,” he insisted shrilly, as they moved off, “this has been a pretty expensive business. You’ve flung away ten thousand dollars that was to have bought goods in Sicily.”

“Those are English bank notes,” said Corcoran. “Big notes too. Every bank in England and Italy will be watching for those numbers.”

“But we don’t know the numbers!”

“I took all the numbers,” said Corcoran.

The rumor that Mr. Julius Bushmill’s purchasing department keeps him awake nights is absolutely unfounded. There are those who say that a once conservative business is expanding in a way that is more sensational than sound, but they are probably small, malevolent rivals with a congenital disgust for the Grand Scale. To all gratuitous advice, Mr. Bushmill replies that even when his son-in-law seems to be throwing it away, it all comes back. His theory is that the young idiot really has a talent for spending money.

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