Page 295 - tender-is-the-night

Club.’
Dick got up, Tommy too. Prince Chillicheff started out
of a wan study of nothing, perhaps of his chances of ever
getting out of Russia, a study that had occupied him so long
that it was doubtful if he could give it up immediately, and
joined them in leaving.
‘Abe North beaten to death.’
On the way to the hotel, a journey of which Dick was
scarcely aware, Tommy said:
‘We’re waiting for a tailor to finish some suits so we can
get to Paris. I’m going into stock-broking and they wouldn’t
take me if I showed up like this. Everybody in your country
is making millions. Are you really leaving to-morrow? We
can’t even have dinner with you. It seems the Prince had an
old girl in Munich. He called her up but she’d been dead five
years and we’re having dinner with the two daughters.’
The Prince nodded.
‘Perhaps I could have arranged for Doctor Diver.’
‘No, no,’ said Dick hastily.
He slept deep and awoke to a slow mournful march pass-
ing his window. It was a long column of men in uniform,
wearing the familiar helmet of 1914, thick men in frock
coats and silk hats, burghers, aristocrats, plain men. It was
a society of veterans going to lay wreaths on the tombs of
the dead. The column marched slowly with a sort of swag-
ger for a lost magnificence, a past effort, a forgotten sorrow.
The faces were only formally sad but Dick’s lungs burst for
a moment with regret for Abe’s death, and his own youth of
ten years ago.

295