The day before Doctor Diver left the Riviera he spent all his time with his children. He was not young any more with a lot of nice thoughts and dreams to have about himself, so he wanted to remember them well. The children had been told that this winter they would be with their aunt in London and that soon they were going to come and see him in America. Fraulein was not to be discharged without his consent.
He was glad he had given so much to the little girl – about the boy he was more uncertain – always he had been uneasy about what he had to give to the ever-climbing, ever-clinging, breast-searching young. But, when he said goodbye to them, he wanted to lift their beautiful heads off their necks and hold them close for hours.
He embraced the old gardener who had made the first garden at Villa Diana six years ago; he kissed the Provencal girl who helped with the children. She had been with them for almost a decade and she fell on her knees and cried until Dick jerked her to her feet and gave her three hundred francs. Nicole was sleeping late, as had been agreed upon – he left a note for her, and one for Baby Warren who was just back from Sardinia and staying at the house. Dick took a big drink from a bottle of brandy three feet high, holding ten quarts, that some one had presented them with.
Then he decided to leave his bags by the station in Cannes and take a last look at Gausse’s Beach.
The beach was peopled with only an advance guard of children when Nicole and her sister arrived that morning. A white sun, chivied of outline by a white sky, boomed over a windless day. Waiters were putting extra ice into the bar; an American photographer from the A. and P. worked with his equipment in a precarious shade and looked up quickly at every footfall descending the stone steps. At the hotel his prospective subjects slept late in darkened rooms upon their recent opiate of dawn.
When Nicole started out on the beach she saw Dick, not dressed for swimming, sitting on a rock above. She shrank back in the shadow of her dressing-tent. In a minute Baby joined her, saying:
“Dick’s still there.”
“I saw him.”
“I think he might have the delicacy to go.”
“This is his place – in a way, he discovered it. Old Gausse always says he owes everything to Dick.”