Page 254 - tender-is-the-night

men with her from London, one scarcely down from Cam-
bridge, one old and hard with Victorian lecheries. Baby
had certain spinsters’ characteristics— she was alien from
touch, she started if she was touched suddenly, and such
lingering touches as kisses and embraces slipped directly
through the flesh into the forefront of her consciousness.
She made few gestures with her trunk, her body proper—
instead, she stamped her foot and tossed her head in almost
an old-fashioned way. She relished the foretaste of death,
prefigured by the catastrophes of friends—persistently she
clung to the idea of Nicole’s tragic destiny.
Baby’s younger Englishman had been chaperoning the
women down appropriate inclines and harrowing them on
the bob-run. Dick, having turned an ankle in a too ambi-
tious telemark, loafed gratefully about the ‘nursery slope’
with the children or drank kvass with a Russian doctor at
the hotel.
‘Please be happy, Dick,’ Nicole urged him. ‘Why don’t
you meet some of these ickle durls and dance with them in
the afternoon?’
‘What would I say to them?’
Her low almost harsh voice rose a few notes, simulating a
plaintive coquetry: ‘Say: ‘Ickle durl, oo is de pwettiest sing.’
What do you think you say?’
‘I don’t like ickle durls. They smell of castile soap and
peppermint. When I dance with them, I feel as if I’m push-
ing a baby carriage.’
It was a dangerous subject—he was careful, to the point
of selfconsciousness, to stare far over the heads of young

254 Tender is the Night