Free Tender Is the Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

they went along. “And I
did it pretty well, didn’t I? I wasn’t yellow.”
    “You
were pretty drunk,” said Abe bluntly.
    “No, I
wasn’t.”
    “All
right, then, you weren’t.”
    “Why
would it make any difference if I had a drink or so?”
    As his
confidence mounted he looked resentfully at Abe.
    “What
difference does that make?” he repeated.
    “If you
can’t see it, there’s no use going into it.”
    “Don’t
you know everybody was drunk all the time during the war?”
    “Well,
let’s forget it.”
    But the
episode was not quite over. There were urgent footsteps in the heather behind
them and the doctor drew up alongside.
    “Pardon,
Messieurs,” he panted. “ Voulez-vous regler mes honorairies ? Naturellement c’est pour soins médicaux seulement . M. Barban n’a qu’un billet de mille et ne peut pas les régler et l’autre a laissé son porte-monnaie chez lui .”
    “Trust a
Frenchman to think of that,” said Abe, and then to the doctor. “ Combien ?”
    “Let me
pay this,” said McKisco .
    “No,
I’ve got it. We were all in about the same danger.”
    Abe paid
the doctor while McKisco suddenly turned into the
bushes and was sick there. Then paler than before he strutted
on with Abe toward the car through the now rosy morning.
    Campion
lay gasping on his back in the shrubbery, the only casualty of the duel, while
Rosemary suddenly hysterical with laughter kept kicking at him with her
espadrille. She did this persistently until she roused him—the only matter of
importance to her now was that in a few hours she would see the person whom she
still referred to in her mind as “the Divers” on the beach.

 
 

     
    XII
    They
were at Voisins waiting for Nicole, six of them,
Rosemary, the Norths , Dick Diver and two young French
musicians. They were looking over the other patrons of the restaurant to see if
they had repose—Dick said no American men had any repose, except himself , and they were seeking an example to confront him
with. Things looked black for them—not a man had come into the restaurant for
ten minutes without raising his hand to his face.
    “We
ought never to have given up waxed mustaches,” said Abe. “Nevertheless Dick
isn’t the ONLY man with repose—”
    “Oh,
yes, I am.”
    “—but he
may be the only sober man with repose.”
    A
well-dressed American had come in with two women who swooped and fluttered
unselfconsciously around a table. Suddenly, he perceived that he was being
watched—whereupon his hand rose spasmodically and arranged a phantom bulge in
his necktie. In another unseated party a man endlessly patted his shaven cheek
with his palm, and his companion mechanically raised and lowered the stub of a
cold cigar. The luckier ones fingered eyeglasses and facial hair, the
unequipped stroked blank mouths, or even pulled desperately at the lobes of
their ears.
    A
well-known general came in, and Abe, counting on the man’s first year at
West Point
—that year during which no cadet can resign and
from which none ever recovers—made a bet with Dick of five dollars.
    His
hands hanging naturally at his sides, the general waited to be seated. Once his
arms swung suddenly backward like a jumper’s and Dick said, “Ah!” supposing he
had lost control, but the general recovered and they breathed again—the agony
was nearly over, the garçon was pulling out his chair
. . .
    With a
touch of fury the conqueror shot up his hand and scratched his gray immaculate
head.
    “You
see,” said Dick smugly, “I’m the only one.”
    Rosemary
was quite sure of it and Dick, realizing that he never had a better audience,
made the group into so bright a unit that Rosemary felt an impatient disregard
for all who were not at their table. They had been two days in
Paris
but actually they were still under the
beach umbrella. When, as at the ball of the Corps des Pages the night before,
the surroundings seemed