Read Online Tender Is the Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page A

you could get familiar with them. He carries them in
his suitcase.” He weighed one of the archaic weapons in his hand. Rosemary gave
an exclamation of uneasiness and McKisco looked at
the pistols anxiously.
    “Well—it
isn’t as if we were going to stand up and pot each other with forty-fives,” he
said.
    “I don’t
know,” said Abe cruelly; “the idea is you can sight better along a long
barrel.”
    “How
about distance?” asked McKisco .
    “I’ve
inquired about that. If one or the other parties has to be definitely
eliminated they make it eight paces, if they’re just good and sore it’s twenty
paces, and if it’s only to vindicate their honor it’s forty paces. His second
agreed with me to make it forty.”
    “That’s
good.”
    “There’s
a wonderful duel in a novel of Pushkin’s,” recollected Abe. “Each man stood on
the edge of a precipice, so if he was hit at all he was done for.”
    This
seemed very remote and academic to McKisco , who
stared at him and said, “What?”
    “Do you
want to take a quick dip and freshen up?”
    “No—no, I couldn t swim.” He sighed. “I don’t see what it’s
all about,” he said helplessly. “I don’t see why I’m doing it.”
    It was
the first thing he had ever done in his life. Actually he was one of those for
whom the sensual world does not exist, and faced with a concrete fact he
brought to it a vast surprise.
    “We
might as well be going,” said Abe, seeing him fail a little.
    “All right.” He drank off a stiff drink of brandy, put the flask in his pocket, and
said with almost a savage air: “What’ll happen if I kill him—will they throw me
in jail?”
    “I’ll
run you over the Italian border.”
    He
glanced at Rosemary—and then said apologetically to Abe:
    “Before
we start there’s one thing I’d like to see you about alone.”
    “I hope
neither of you gets hurt,” Rosemary said. “I think it’s very foolish and you
ought to try to stop it.”
    XI
    She
found Campion downstairs in the deserted lobby.
    “I saw
you go upstairs,” he said excitedly. “Is he all right? When is the duel going
to be?”
    “I don’t
know.” She resented his speaking of it as a circus, with McKisco as the tragic clown.
    “Will
you go with me?” he demanded, with the air of having seats. “I’ve hired the
hotel car.”
    “I don’t
want to go.”
    “Why not? I imagine it’ll take years off my life but I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. We
could watch it from quite far away.”
    “Why
don’t you get Mr. Dumphry to go with you?”
    His
monocle fell out, with no whiskers to hide in—he drew himself up.
    “I never
want to see him again.”
    “Well,
I’m afraid I can’t go. Mother wouldn’t like it.”
    As
Rosemary entered her room Mrs. Speers stirred sleepily and called to her:
    “Where’ve
you been?”
    “I just
couldn’t sleep. You go back to sleep, Mother.”
    “Come in
my room.” Hearing her sit up in bed, Rosemary went in and told her what had
happened.
    “Why
don’t you go and see it?” Mrs. Speers suggested. “You needn’t go up close and
you might be able to help afterwards.”
    Rosemary
did not like the picture of herself looking on and she demurred, but Mrs.
Speer’s consciousness was still clogged with sleep and she was reminded of
night calls to death and calamity when she was the wife of a doctor. “I like you
to go places and do things on your own initiative without me—you did much
harder things for Rainy’s publicity stunts.”
    Still
Rosemary did not see why she should go, but she obeyed the sure, clear voice
that had sent her into the stage entrance of the Odeon in
Paris
when she was twelve and greeted her
when she came out again.
    She
thought she was reprieved when from the steps she saw Abe and McKisco drive away—but after a moment the hotel car came
around the corner. Squealing delightedly Luis Campion pulled her in beside him.
    “I hid