Эрнест Хемингуэй - Across the River and Into the Trees

'I will go in.'

'No, let me ask the price. They will charge me less than they would charge you. After all you are a rich American.'

' Et toi , Rimbaud?'

'You'd make an awfully funny Verlalne,' the girl told him. 'We'll be some other famous characters.'

'Go on to, Majesty, and we'll buy the God–damn jewel.'

'You wouldn't make a very good Louis XVI either.'

'I'd get up to that tumbril with you and still be able to spit.'

'Let's forget all the tumbrils and everyone's sorrows and buy the small object and then we can walk to Cipriani's and be famous people.'

Inside the shop they looked at the two heads and she asked the price and then, there was some very rapid talk and the price was much lower. But still it was more money than the Colonel had.

'I'll go to Cipriani's and get some money.'

'No,' the girl said. Then to the clerk, 'Put it in a box and send it to Cipriani's and say the Colonel said to pay for it and hold it for him.'

'Please,' the clerk said. 'Exactly as you say.'

They went out into the street and the sunlight and the unremitting wind.

'By the way,' the Colonel said. 'Your stones are in the safe at the Gritti in your name.'

'Your stones.'

'No,' he told her, not rough, but to make her understand truly. 'There are some things that a person cannot do. You know about that. You cannot marry me and I understand that, although I do not approve it.'

'Very well,' the girl said. 'I understand. But would you take one for a lucky stone?'

'No. I couldn't. They are too valuable.'

'But the portrait has value.'

'That is different.'

'Yes,' she agreed. 'I suppose so. I think I begin to understand.'

'I would accept a horse from you, if I was poor and young and riding very well. But I could not take a motor car.'

'I understand it now very well. Where can we go now, at this minute, where you can kiss me?'

'In this side alley, if you know no one who lives in it.'

'I don't care who lives in it. I want to feel you hold me tight and kiss me.'

They turned into the side street and walked towards its blind end.

'Oh, Richard,' she said. 'Oh, my dear.'

'I love you.'

'Please love me.'

'I do.'

The wind had blown her hair up and around his neck and he kissed her once more with it beating silkily against both his cheeks.

Then she broke away, suddenly and hard, and looked at him and said, 'I suppose we had better go to Harry's.'

'I suppose so. Do you want to play historical personages?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Let us play that you are you and I am me.'

'Let's play,' the Colonel said.

There was no one in Harry's except some early morning drinkers that the Colonel did not know and two men that were doing business at the back of the bar.

There were hours at Harry's when it filled with the people that you knew, with the same rushing regularity as the tide coming in at Mont St. Michel. Except, the Colonel thought, the hours of the tides change each day with the moon and the hours at Harry's are as the Greenwich Meridian, or the standard metre in Paris, or the good opinion the French military hold of themselves.

'Do you know any of these morning drinkers?' he asked the girl.

'No. I am not a morning drinker so I have never met them.'

'They will be swept out when the tide comes in.'

'No. They will leave, just as it comes, of their own accord.'

'Do you mind being here out of season?'

'Did you think I was a snob because I come from an old family? We're the ones who are not snobs. The snobs are what you call jerks and the people with all the new money. Did you ever see so much new money?'

'Yes,' the Colonel said. 'I saw it in Kansas City when I used to come in from Fort Riley to play polo at the Country Club.'

'Was it as bad as here?'

'No, it was quite pleasant. I liked it and that part of Kansas City is very beautiful.'

'Is it really? I wish that we could go there. Do they have the camps there too? The ones that we are going to stay at?'

'Surely. But we'll stay at the Muehlebach hotel which has the biggest beds in the world and we'll pretend that we are oil millionaires.'

'Where will we leave the Cadillac?'

'Is it a Cadillac now?'

'Yes. Unless you want to take the big Buick Roadmaster, with the Dynaflow drive. I've driven it all over Europe. It was in that last Vogue you sent me.'

'We'd probably better just use one at a time,' the Colonel said. 'Whichever one we decide to use we will park in the garage alongside the Muehlebach.'

'Is the Muehlebach very splendid?'

'Wonderful. You'll love it. When we leave town we'll drive north to St. Joe and have a drink in the bar at the Roubidoux, maybe two drinks and then we will cross the river and go west. You can drive and we can spell each other.'

'What is that?'

'Take turns driving.'

'I'm driving now.'

'Let's skip the dull part and get to Chimney Rock and go on to Scott's Bluff and Torrington and after that you will begin to see it.'

'I have the road maps and the guides and that man who says where to eat and the A.A.A. guide to the camps and the hotels.'

'Do you work on this much?'

'I work at it in the evenings, with the things you sent me. What kind of a licence will we have?'

'Missouri. We'll buy the car in Kansas City. We fly to Kansas City, don't you remember? Or we can go on a really good train.'

'I thought we flew to Albuquerque.'

'That was another time.'

'Will we stop early in the afternoons at the best Hotel in the A.A.A. book and I make you any drinks you want while you read the paper and Life and Time and Newsweek and I will read the new fresh Vogue and Harper's Bazaar ?

'Yes. But we come back here, too.'

'Of course. With our car. On an Italian liner; whichever one is best then. We drive straight here from Genoa.'

'You don't want to stop anywhere for the night?'

'Why? We want to get home to our own house.'

'Where will our house be?'

'We can decide that any time. There are always plenty of houses in this town. Would you like to live in the country too?'

'Yes,' said the Colonel. 'Why not?'

'Then we could see the trees when we woke up. What sort of trees will we see on this journey?'

'Pine mostly and cotton–wood along the creeks and aspen. Wait till you see the aspen turn yellow in the fall.'

'I'm waiting. Where will we stay in Wyoming?'

'We'll go to Sheridan first and then decide.'

'Is Sheridan nice?'

'It's wonderful. In the car we'll drive to where they had the Wagon–Box Fight and I'll tell you about it. We will drive up, on the way to Billings, to where they killed that fool George Armstrong Custer and you can see the markers where everybody died and I'll explain the fight to you.'

'That will be wonderful. Which is Sheridan more like; Mantova or Verona or Vicenza?'

'It isn't like any of those. It is right up against the mountains, almost like Schio.'

'Is it like Cortina then?'

'Nothing like. Cortina is in a high valley in the mountains. Sheridan lays right up against them. There aren't any foothills to the Big Horns. They rise high out of the plateau. You can see Cloud's Peak.'

'Will our cars climb them properly?'

'You're damn right they will. But I would much rather not have any hydromatic drive.'

'I can do without it,' the girl said. Then she held herself straight and hard not to cry. 'As I can do without everything else.'

'What are you drinking?' the Colonel said. 'We haven't even ordered yet.'

'I don't think I will drink anything.'

'Two very dry Martinis,' the Colonel said to the bartender, 'and a glass of cold water.'