“You drink—all the time!”
Nicole called over the awning: “What’s the matter, Dick?” and he answered in English:
“The old girl has been polishing off the vintage wines.
I’m firing her—at least I’m trying to.”
“Heavens!
Well, don’t let her reach you with that knife.”
Augustine shook her knife up at Nicole.
Her old mouth was made of two small intersecting cherries.
“I would like to say, Madame, if you knew that your husband drinks over at his Bastide comparatively as a day-laborer—”
“Shut up and get out!” interrupted Nicole.
“We’ll get the gendarmes.”
“YOU’LL get the gendarmes!
With my brother in the corps!
You—a disgusting American?”
In English Dick called up to Nicole: “Get the children away from the house till I settle this.”
“—disgusting Americans who come here and drink up our finest wines,” screamed Augustine with the voice of the commune.
Dick mastered a firmer tone.
“You must leave now!
I’ll pay you what we owe you.”
“Very sure you’ll pay me!
And let me tell you—” she came close and waved the knife so furiously that Dick raised his stick, whereupon she rushed into the kitchen and returned with the carving knife reinforced by a hatchet.
The situation was not prepossessing—Augustine was a strong woman and could be disarmed only at the risk of serious results to herself—and severe legal complications which were the lot of one who molested a French citizen.
Trying a bluff Dick called up to Nicole:
“Phone the poste de police.” Then to Augustine, indicating her armament,
“This means arrest for you.”
“Ha-HA!” she laughed demoniacally; nevertheless she came no nearer.
Nicole phoned the police but was answered with what was almost an echo of Augustine’s laugh.
She heard mumbles and passings of the word around—the connection was suddenly broken.
Returning to the window she called down to Dick:
“Give her something extra!”
“If I could get to that phone!”
As this seemed impracticable, Dick capitulated.
For fifty francs, increased to a hundred as he succumbed to the idea of getting her out hastily, Augustine yielded her fortress, covering the retreat with stormy grenades of “Salaud!”
She would leave only when her nephew could come for her baggage.
Waiting cautiously in the neighborhood of the kitchen Dick heard a cork pop, but he yielded the point.
There was no further trouble—when the nephew arrived, all apologetic, Augustine bade Dick a cheerful, convivial good-by and called up “All revoir, Madame! Bonne chance!” to Nicole’s window.
The Divers went to Nice and dined on a bouillabaisse, which is a stew of rock fish and small lobsters, highly seasoned with saffron, and a bottle of cold Chablis.
He expressed pity for Augustine.
“I’m not sorry a bit,” said Nicole.
“I’m sorry—and yet I wish I’d shoved her over the cliff.”
There was little they dared talk about in these days; seldom did they find the right word when it counted, it arrived always a moment too late when one could not reach the other any more.
To- night Augustine’s outburst had shaken them from their separate reveries; with the burn and chill of the spiced broth and the parching wine they talked.
“We can’t go on like this,” Nicole suggested.
“Or can we?—what do you think?”
Startled that for the moment Dick did not deny it, she continued,
“Some of the time I think it’s my fault—I’ve ruined you.”
“So I’m ruined, am I?” he inquired pleasantly.
“I didn’t mean that.
But you used to want to create things—now you seem to want to smash them up.”
She trembled at criticizing him in these broad terms—but his enlarging silence frightened her even more.