Posts filed under 'Stories'
At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to
hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty
is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a
hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all
his hitable qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain
that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his
face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a
girl’s lips.
I’m sure every one has met a man like that, been casually
introduced, even made a friend of him, yet felt he was the sort
who aroused passionate dislike–expressed by some in the
involuntary clinching of fists, and in others by mutterings
about “takin’ a poke” and “landin’ a swift smash in ee eye.” In
the juxtaposition of Samuel Meredith’s features this quality was
so strong that it influenced his entire life.
What was it? Not the shape, certainly, for he was a pleasant-
looking man from earliest youth: broad-bowed with gray eyes that
were frank and friendly. Yet I’ve heard him tell a room full of
reporters angling for a “success” story that he’d be ashamed to
tell them the truth that they wouldn’t believe it, that it
wasn’t one story but four, that the public would not want to
read about a man who had been walloped into prominence.
It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen.
He had been brought up on a diet of caviar and bell-boys’ legs
in half the capitals of Europe, and it was pure luck that his
mother had nervous prostration and had to delegate his education
to less tender, less biassed hands.
At Andover he was given a roommate named Gilly Hood. Gilly was
thirteen, undersized, and rather the school pet. From the
September day when Mr. Meredith’s valet stowed Samuel’s clothing
in the best bureau and asked, on departing, “hif there was
hanything helse, Master Samuel?” Gilly cried out that the
faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in
whose bowl has been put goldfish.
“Good gosh!” he complained to his sympathetic contemporaries,
“he’s a damn stuck-up Willie. He said, ‘Are the crowd here
gentlemen?’ and I said, ‘No, they’re boys,’ and he said age
didn’t matter, and I said, ‘Who said it did?’ Let him get fresh
with me, the ole pieface!”
For three weeks Gilly endured in silence young Samuel’s comments
on the clothes and habits of Gilly’s personal friends, endured
French phrases in conversation, endured a hundred half-feminine
meannesses that show what a nervous mother can do to a boy, if
she keeps close enough to him–then a storm broke in the aquarium.
Samuel was out. A crowd had gathered to hear Gilly be wrathful
about his roommate’s latest sins.
“He said, ‘Oh, I don’t like the windows open at night,’ he said,
‘except only a little bit,’” complained Gilly.
“Don’t let him boss you.”
“Boss me? You bet he won’t. I open those windows, I guess, but
the darn fool won’t take turns shuttin’ ‘em in the morning.”
“Make him, Gilly, why don’t you?”
“I’m going to.” Gilly nodded his head in fierce agreement.
“Don’t you worry. He needn’t think I’m any ole butler.”
“Le’s see you make him.”
At this point the darn fool entered in person and included the
crowd in one of his irritating smiles. Two boys said, “‘Lo,
Mer’dith”; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking
to Gilly. But Samuel seemed unsatisfied.
“Would you mind not sitting on my bed?” he suggested politely to
two of Gilly’s particulars who were perched very much at ease.
“Huh?”
“My bed. Can’t you understand English?”
This was adding insult to injury. There were several comments on
the bed’s sanitary condition and the evidence within it of animal
life.
“S’matter with your old bed?” demanded Gilly truculently.
“The bed’s all right, but—”
Gilly interrupted this sentence by rising and walking up to
Samuel. He paused several inches away and eyed him fiercely.
“You an’ your crazy ole bed,” he began. “You an’ your crazy—”
“Go to it, Gilly,” murmured some one.
“Show the darn fool—”
Samuel returned the gaze coolly.
“Well,” he said finally, “it’s my bed— ”
He got no further, for Gilly hauled of and hit him succinctly in
the nose.
“Yea! Gilly!”
“Show the big bully!”
Just let him touch you–he’ll see!”
The group closed in on them and for the first time in his life
Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being
passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the
glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller
than his roommate, so if he hit back he’d be called a bully and
have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five minutes;
yet if he didn’t he was a coward. For a moment he stood there
facing Gilly’s blazing eyes, and then, with a sudden choking
sound, he forced his way through the ring and rushed from the
room.
The month following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of
his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues
of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts
for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of
adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a
natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him
through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he
was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve
specialist. When he returned to Andover he arranged to arrive
late so that he could be alone in the bus during the drive from
station to school.
Of course when he had learned to keep his mouth shut every one
promptly forgot all about him. The next autumn, with his
realization that consideration for others was the discreet
attitude, he made good use of the clean start given him by the
shortness of boyhood memory. By the beginning of his senior year
Samuel Meredith was one of the best-liked boys of his class–and
no one was any stronger for him than his first friend and
constant companion, Gilly Hood.
II
Samuel became the sort of college student who in the early
nineties drove tandems and coaches and tallyhos between
Princeton and Yale and New York City to show that they
appreciated the social importance of football games. He believed
passionately in good form–his choosing of gloves, his tying of
ties, his holding of reins were imitated by impressionable
freshmen. Outside of his own set he was considered rather a
snob, but as his set was THE set, it never worried him. He
played football in the autumn, drank high-balls in the winter,
and rowed in the spring. Samuel despised all those who were
merely sportsmen without being gentlemen or merely gentlemen
without being sportsmen.
He live in New York and often brought home several of his
friends for the week-end. Those were the days of the horse-car
and in case of a crush it was, of course, the proper thing for
any one of Samuel’s set to rise and deliver his seat to a
standing lady with a formal bow. One night in Samuel’s junior
year he boarded a car with two of his intimates. There were
three vacant seats. When Samuel sat down he noticed a heavy-eyed
laboring man sitting next to him who smelt objectionably of
garlic, sagged slightly against Samuel and, spreading a little
as a tired man will, took up quite too much room.
The car had gone several blocks when it stopped for a quartet of
young girls, and, of course, the three men of the world sprang
to their feet and proffered their seats with due observance of
form. Unfortunately, the laborer, being unacquainted with the
code of neckties and tallyhos, failed to follow their example,
and one young lady was left at an embarrassed stance. Fourteen
eyes glared reproachfully at the barbarian; seven lips curled
slightly; but the object of scorn stared stolidly into the
foreground in sturdy unconsciousness of his despicable conduct.
Samuel was the most violently affected. He was humiliated that
any male should so conduct himself. He spoke aloud.
“There’s a lady standing,” he said sternly.
That should have been quite enough, but the object of scorn only
looked up blankly. The standing girl tittered and exchanged
nervous glances with her companions. But Samuel was aroused.
“There’s a lady standing,” he repeated, rather raspingly. The
man seemed to comprehend.
“I pay my fare,” he said quietly.
Samuel turned red and his hands clinched, but the conductor was
looking their way, so at a warning nod from his friends he
subsided into sullen gloom.
They reached their destination and left the car, but so did the
laborer, who followed them, swinging his little pail. Seeing his
chance, Samuel no longer resisted his aristocratic inclination.
He turned around and, launching a full-featured, dime-novel
sneer, made a loud remark about the right of the lower animals
to ride with human beings.
In a half-second the workman had dropped his pail and let fly at
him. Unprepared, Samuel took the blow neatly on the jaw and
sprawled full length into the cobblestone gutter.
“Don’t laugh at me!” cried his assailant. “I been workin’ all
day. I’m tired as hell!”
As he spoke the sudden anger died out of his eyes and the mask
of weariness dropped again over his face. He turned and picked
up his pail. Samuel’s friends took a quick step in his direction.
“Wait!” Samuel had risen slowly and was motioning back. Some
time, somewhere, he had been struck like that before. Then he
remembered–Gilly Hood. In the silence, as he dusted himself
off, the whole scene in the room at Andover was before his eyes–
and he knew intuitively that he had been wrong again. This
man’s strength, his rest, was the protection of his family. He
had more use for his seat in the street-car than any young girl.
“It’s all right,” said Samuel gruffly. “Don’t touch ‘him. I’ve
been a damn fool.”
Of course it took more than an hour, or a week, for Samuel to
rearrange his ideas on the essential importance of good form. At
first he simply admitted that his wrongness had made him
powerless–as it had made him powerless against Gilly–but
eventually his mistake about the workman influenced his entire
attitude. Snobbishness is, after all, merely good breeding grown
dictatorial; so Samuel’s code remained but the necessity of
imposing it upon others had faded out in a certain gutter.
Within that year his class had somehow stopped referring to him
as a snob.
III
After a few years Samuel’s university decided that it had shone
long enough in the reflected glory of his neckties, so they
declaimed to him in Latin, charged him ten dollars for the paper
which proved him irretrievably educated, and sent him into the
turmoil with much self-confidence, a few friends, and the proper
assortment of harmless bad habits.
His family had by that time started back to shirt-sleeves,
through a sudden decline in the sugar-market, and it had already
unbuttoned its vest, so to speak, when Samuel went to work. His
mind was that exquisite TABULA RASA that a university education
sometimes leaves, but he had both energy and influence, so he
used his former ability as a dodging half-back in twisting
through Wall Street crowds as runner for a bank.
His diversion was–women. There were half a dozen: two or three
debutantes, an actress (in a minor way), a grass-widow, and one
sentimental little brunette who was married and lived in a
little house in Jersey City.
They had met on a ferry-boat. Samuel was crossing from New York
on business (he bad been working several years by this time) and
he helped her look for a package that she had dropped in the crush.
“Do you come over often?” he inquired casually.
“Just to shop,” she said shyly. She had great brown eyes and the
pathetic kind of little mouth. “I’ve only been married three
months, and we find it cheaper to live over here.”
“Does he–does your husband like your being alone like this?”
She laughed, a cheery young laugh.
“Oh, dear me, no. We were to meet for dinner but I must have
misunderstood the place. He’ll be awfully worried.”
“Well,” said Samuel disapprovingly, “he ought to be. If you’ll
allow me I’ll see you home.”
She accepted his offer thankfully, so they took the cable-car
together. When they walked up the path to her little house they
saw a light there; her husband had arrived before her.
“He’s frightfully jealous,” she announced, laughingly apologetic.
“Very well,” answered Samuel, rather stiffly. “I’d better leave
you here.”
She thanked him and, waving a good night, he left her.
That would have been quite all if they hadn’t met on Fifth
Avenue one morning a week later. She started and blushed and
seemed so glad to see him that they chatted like old friends.
She was going to her dressmaker’s, eat lunch alone at Taine’s,
shop all afternoon, and meet her husband on the ferry at five.
Samuel told her that her husband was a very lucky man. She
blushed again and scurried off.
Samuel whistled all the way back to his office, but about twelve
o’clock he began to see that pathetic, appealing little mouth
everywhere–and those brown eyes. He fidgeted when he looked at
the clock; he thought of the grill down-stairs where he lunched
and the heavy male conversation thereof, and opposed to that
picture appeared another; a little table at Taine’s with the
brown eyes and the mouth a few feet away. A few minutes before
twelve-thirty he dashed on his hat and rushed for the cable-car.
She was quite surprised to see him.
“Why–hello,” she said. Samuel could tell that she was just
pleasantly frightened.
“I thought we might lunch together. It’s so dull eating with a
lot of men.”
She hesitated.
“Why, I suppose there’s no harm in it. How could there be!”
It occurred to her that her husband should have taken lunch with
her–but he was generally so hurried at noon. She told Samuel
all about him: he was a little smaller than Samuel, but, oh,
MUCH better-looking. He was a book-keeper and not making a lot
of money, but they were very happy and expected to be rich
within three or four years.
Samuel’s grass-widow had been in a quarrelsome mood for three or
four weeks, and through contrast, he took an accentuated
pleasure in this meeting; so fresh was she, and earnest, and
faintly adventurous. Her name was Marjorie.
They made another engagement; in fact, for a month they lunched
together two or three times a week. When she was sure that her
husband would work late Samuel took her over to New Jersey on
the ferry, leaving her always on the tiny front porch, after
she had gone in and lit the gas to use the security of his
masculine presence outside. This grew to be a ceremony–and it
annoyed him. Whenever the comfortable glow fell out through the
front windows, that was his CONGE; yet he never suggested coming
in and Marjorie didn’t invite him.
Then, when Samuel and Marjorie had reached a stage in which they
sometimes touched each other’s arms gently, just to show that
they were very good friends, Marjorie and her husband had one of
those ultrasensitive, supercritical quarrels that couples never
indulge in unless they care a great deal about each other. It
started with a cold mutton-chop or a leak in the gas-jet–and
one day Samuel found her in Taine’s, with dark shadows under her
brown eyes and a terrifying pout.
By this time Samuel thought he was in love with Marjorie–so he
played up the quarrel for all it was worth. He was her best
friend and patted her hand–and leaned down close to her brown
curls while she whispered in little sobs what her husband had
said that morning; and he was a little more than her best friend
when he took her over to the ferry in a hansom.
“Marjorie,” he said gently, when he left her, as usual, on the
porch, “if at any time you want to call on me, remember that I
am always waiting, always waiting.”
She nodded gravely and put both her hands in his. “I know,” she
said. “I know you’re my friend, my best friend.”
Then she ran into the house and he watched there until the gas
went on.
For the next week Samuel was in a nervous turmoil. Some
persistently rational strain warned him that at bottom he and
Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is
usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see to the
bottom. Every dream and desire told him that he loved Marjorie,
wanted her, had to have her.
The quarrel developed. Marjorie’s husband took to staying in New
York until late at night came home several times disagreeably
overstimulated, and made her generally miserable. They must have
had too much pride to talk it out–for Marjorie’s husband was,
after all, pretty decent–so it drifted on from one
misunderstanding to another. Marjorie kept coming more and more
to Samuel; when a woman can accept masculine sympathy at is much
more satisfactory to her than crying to another girl. But
Marjorie didn’t realize how much she had begun to rely on him,
how much he was part of her little cosmos.
One night, instead of turning away when Marjorie went in and lit
the gas, Samuel went in, too, and they sat together on the sofa
in the little parlor. He was very happy. He envied their home,
and he felt that the man who neglected such a possession out of
stubborn pride was a fool and unworthy of his wife. But when he
kissed Marjorie for the first time she cried softly and told him
to go. He sailed home on the wings of desperate excitement,
quite resolved to fan this spark of romance, no matter how big
the blaze or who was burned. At the time he considered that his
thoughts were unselfishly of her; in a later perspective he knew
that she had meant no more than the white screen in a motion
picture: it was just Samuel–blind, desirous.
Next day at Taine’s, when they met for lunch, Samuel dropped all
pretense and made frank love to her. He had no plans, no
definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her
in his arms and feel that she was very little and pathetic and
lovable. . . . He took her home, and this time they kissed until
both their hearts beat high–words and phrases formed on his lips.
And then suddenly there were steps on the porch–a hand tried
the outside door. Marjorie turned dead-white.
“Wait!” she whispered to Samuel, in a frightened voice, but in
angry impatience at the interruption he walked to the front door
and threw it open.
Every one has seen such scenes on the stage–seen them so often
that when they actually happen people behave very much like
actors. Samuel felt that he was playing a part and the lines
came quite naturally: he announced that all had a right to lead
their own lives and looked at Marjorie’s husband menacingly, as
if daring him to doubt it. Marjorie’s husband spoke of the
sanctity of the home, forgetting that it hadn’t seemed very holy
to him lately; Samuel continued along the line of “the right to
happiness”; Marjorie’s husband mentioned firearms and the
divorce court. Then suddenly he stopped and scrutinized both of
them–Marjorie in pitiful collapse on the sofa, Samuel
haranguing the furniture in a consciously heroic pose.
“Go up-stairs, Marjorie,” he said, in a different tone.
“Stay where you are!” Samuel countered quickly.
Marjorie rose, wavered, and sat down, rose again and moved
hesitatingly toward the stairs.
“Come outside,” said her husband to Samuel. “I want to talk to
you.”
Samuel glanced at Marjorie, tried to get some message from her
eyes; then he shut his lips and went out.
There was a bright moon and when Marjorie’s husband came down
the steps Samuel could see plainly that he was suffering–but
he felt no pity for him.
They stood and looked at each other, a few feet apart, and the
husband cleared his throat as though it were a bit husky.
“That’s my wife,” he said quietly, and then a wild anger surged
up inside him. “Damn you!” he cried–and hit Samuel in the
face with all his strength.
In that second, as Samuel slumped to the ground, it flashed to
him that he had been hit like that twice before, and
simultaneously the incident altered like a dream–he felt
suddenly awake. Mechanically he sprang to his feet and squared
off. The other man was waiting, fists up, a yard away, but
Samuel knew that though physically he had him by several inches
and many pounds, he wouldn’t hit him. The situation had
miraculously and entirely changed–a moment before Samuel had
seemed to himself heroic; now he seemed the cad, the outsider,
and Marjorie’s husband, silhouetted against the lights of the
little house, the eternal heroic figure, the defender of his home.
There was a pause and then Samuel turned quickly away and went
down the path for the last time.
IV
Of course, after the third blow Samuel put in several weeks at
conscientious introspection. The blow years before at Andover
had landed on his personal unpleasantness; the workman of his
college days had jarred the snobbishness out of his system, and
Marjorie’s husband had given a severe jolt to his greedy
selfishness. It threw women out of his ken until a year later,
when he met his future wife; for the only sort of woman worth
while seemed to be the one who could be protected as Marjorie’s
husband had protected her. Samuel could not imagine his grass-
widow, Mrs. De Ferriac, causing any very righteous blows on her
own account.
His early thirties found him well on his feet. He was associated
with old Peter Carhart, who was in those days a national figure.
Carhart’s physique was like a rough model for a statue of
Hercules, and his record was just as solid–a pile made for the
pure joy of it, without cheap extortion or shady scandal. He had
been a great friend of Samuel’s father, but he watched the son
for six years before taking him into his own office. Heaven
knows how many things he controlled at that time–mines,
railroads, banks, whole cities. Samuel was very close to him,
knew his likes and dislikes, his prejudices, weaknesses and
many strengths.
One day Carhart sent for Samuel and, closing the door of his
inner office, offered him a chair and a cigar.
“Everything 0. K., Samuel?” he asked.
“Why, yes.”
“I’ve been afraid you’re getting a bit stale.”
“Stale?” Samuel was puzzled.
“You’ve done no work outside the office for nearly ten years?”
“But I’ve had vacations, in the Adiron—”
Carhart waved this aside.
“I mean outside work. Seeing the things move that we’ve always
pulled the strings of here.”
“No ” admitted Samuel; “I haven’t.”
“So,” he said abruptly “I’m going to give you an outside job
that’ll take about a month.”
Samuel didn’t argue. He rather liked the idea and he made up his
mind that, whatever it was, he would put it through just as
Carhart wanted it. That was his employer’s greatest hobby, and
the men around him were as dumb under direct orders as infantry
subalterns.
“You’ll go to San Antonio and see Hamil,” continued Carhart.
“He’s got a job on hand and he wants a man to take charge.”
Hamil was in charge of the Carhart interests in the Southwest, a
man who had grown up in the shadow of his employer, and with
whom, though they had never met, Samuel had had much official
correspondence.
“When do I leave?”
“You’d better go to-morrow,” answered Carhart, glancing at the
calendar. “That’s the 1st of May. I’ll expect your report here on
the 1st of June.”
Next morning Samuel left for Chicago, and two days later he was
facing Hamil across a table in the office of the Merchants’
Trust in San Antonio. It didn’t take long to get the gist of the
thing. It was a big deal in oil which concerned the buying up of
seventeen huge adjoining ranches. This buying up had to be done
in one week, and it was a pure squeeze. Forces had been set in
motion that put the seventeen owners between the devil and the
deep sea, and Samuel’s part was simply to “handle” the matter
from a little village near Pueblo. With tact and efficiency the
right man could bring it off without any friction, for it was
merely a question of sitting at the wheel and keeping a firm
hold. Hamil, with an astuteness many times valuable to his
chief, had arranged a situation that would give a much greater
clear gain than any dealing in the open market. Samuel shook
hands with Hamil, arranged to return in two weeks, and left for
San Felipe, New Mexico.
It occurred to him, of course, that Carhart was trying him out.
Hamil’s report on his handling of this might be a factor in
something big for him, but even without that he would have done
his best to put the thing through. Ten years in New York hadn’t
made him sentimental and he was quite accustomed to finish
everything he began–and a little bit more.
All went well at first. There was no enthusiasm, but each one of
the seventeen ranchers concerned knew Samuel’s business, knew
what he had behind him, and that they had as little chance of
holding out as flies on a window-pane. Some of them were
resigned–some of them cared like the devil, but they’d talked
it over, argued it with lawyers and couldn’t see any possible
loophole. Five of the ranches had oil, the other twelve were
part of the chance, but quite as necessary to Hamil’s purpose,
in any event.
Samuel soon saw that the real leader was an early settler named
McIntyre, a man of perhaps fifty, gray-haired, clean-shaven,
bronzed by forty New Mexico summers, and with those clear steady
eye that Texas and New Mexico weather are apt to give. His ranch
had not as yet shown oil, but it was in the pool, and if any man
hated to lose his land McIntyre did. Every one had rather looked
to him at first to avert the big calamity, and he had hunted all
over the territory for the legal means with which to do it, but
he had failed, and he knew it. He avoided Samuel assiduously,
but Samuel was sure that when the day came for the signatures he
would appear.
It came–a baking May day, with hot wave rising off the parched
land as far as eyes could see, and as Samuel sat stewing in his
little improvised office–a few chairs, a bench, and a wooden
table–he was glad the thing was almost over. He wanted to get
back East the worst way, and join his wife and children for a
week at the seashore.
The meeting was set for four o’clock, and he was rather
surprised at three-thirty when the door opened and McIntyre came
in. Samuel could not help respecting the man’s attitude, and
feeling a bit sorry for him. McIntyre seemed closely related to
the prairies, and Samuel had the little flicker of envy that
city people feel toward men who live in the open.
“Afternoon,” said McIntyre, standing in the open doorway, with
his feet apart and his hands on his hips.
“Hello, Mr. McIntyre.” Samuel rose, but omitted the formality of
offering his hand. He imagined the rancher cordially loathed
him, and he hardly blamed him. McIntyre came in and sat down
leisurely.
“You got us,” he said suddenly.
This didn’t seem to require any answer.
“When I heard Carhart was back of this,” he continued, “I gave up.”
“Mr. Carhart is—” began Samuel, but McIntyre waved him silent.
“Don’t talk about the dirty sneak-thief!”
“Mr. McIntyre,” said Samuel briskly, “if this half-hour is to be
devoted to that sort of talk—”
“Oh, dry up, young man,” McIntyre interrupted, “you can’t abuse
a man who’d do a thing like this.”
Samuel made no answer.
“It’s simply a dirty filch. There just ARE skunks like him too
big to handle.”
“You’re being paid liberally,” offered Samuel.
“Shut up!” roared McIntyre suddenly. “I want the privilege of
talking.” He walked to the door and looked out across the land,
the sunny, steaming pasturage that began almost at his feet and
ended with the gray-green of the distant mountains. When he
turned around his mouth was trembling.
“Do you fellows love Wall Street?” he said hoarsely, “or
wherever you do your dirty scheming—” He paused. “I suppose you
do. No critter gets so low that he doesn’t sort of love the
place he’s worked, where he’s sweated out the best he’s had in
him.”
Samuel watched him awkwardly. McIntyre wiped his forehead with a
huge blue handkerchief, and continued:
“I reckon this rotten old devil had to have another million. I
reckon we’re just a few of the poor he’s blotted out to buy a
couple more carriages or something.” He waved his hand toward
the door. “I built a house out there when I was seventeen, with
these two hands. I took a wife there at twenty-one, added two
wings, and with four mangy steers I started out. Forty summers
I’ve saw the sun come up over those mountains and drop down red
as blood in the evening, before the heat drifted off and the
stars came out. I been happy in that house. My boy was born
there and he died there, late one spring, in the hottest part of
an afternoon like this. Then the wife and I lived there alone
like we’d lived before, and sort of tried to have a home, after
all, not a real home but nigh it–cause the boy always seemed
around close, somehow, and we expected a lot of nights to see
him runnin’ up the path to supper.” His voice was shaking so he
could hardly speak and he turned again to the door, his gray
eyes contracted.
“That’s my land out there,” he said, stretching out his arm, “my
land, by God— It’s all I got in the world–and ever wanted.” He
dashed his sleeve across his face, and his tone changed as he
turned slowly and faced Samuel. “But I suppose it’s got to go
when they want it–it’s got to go.”
Samuel had to talk. He felt that in a minute more he would lose
his head. So he began, as level-voiced as he could–in the sort
of tone he saved for disagreeable duties.
“It’s business, Mr. McIntyre,” he said. “It’s inside the law.
Perhaps we couldn’t have bought out two or three of you at any
price, but most of you did have a price. Progress demands some
things—”
Never had he felt so inadequate, and it was with the greatest
relief that he heard hoof-beats a few hundred yards away.
But at his words the grief in McIntyre’s eyes had changed to fury.
“You and your dirty gang of crooks!” be cried. “Not one of you
has got an honest love for anything on God’s earth! You’re a
herd of money-swine!”
Samuel rose and McIntyre took a step toward him.
“You long-winded dude. You got our land–take that for Peter
Carhart!”
He swung from the shoulder quick as lightning and down went
Samuel in a heap. Dimly he heard steps in the doorway and knew
that some one was holding McIntyre, but there was no need. The
rancher had sunk down in his chair, and dropped his head in his
hands.
Samuel’s brain was whirring. He realized that the fourth fist
had hit him, and a great flood of emotion cried out that the law
that had inexorably ruled his life was in motion again. In a
half-daze he got up and strode from the room.
The next ten minutes were perhaps the hardest of his life. People
talk of the courage of convictions, but in actual life a man’s
duty to his family may make a rigid corpse seem a selfish
indulgence of his own righteousness. Samuel thought mostly of
his family, yet he never really wavered. That jolt had brought him
to.
When he came back in the room there were a log of worried faces
waiting for him, but he didn’t waste any time explaining.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “Mr. McIntyre has been kind enough to
convince me that in this matter you are absolutely right and the
Peter Carhart interests absolutely wrong. As far as I am
concerned you can keep your ranches to the rest of your days.”
He pushed his way through an astounded gathering, and within a
half-hour he had sent two telegrams that staggered the operator
into complete unfitness for business; one was to Hamil in San
Antonio; one was to Peter Carhart in New York.
Samuel didn’t sleep much that night. He knew that for the first
time in his business career he had made a dismal, miserable
failure. But some instinct in him, stronger than will, deeper
than training, had forced him to do what would probably end his
ambitions and his happiness. But it was done and it never
occurred to him that he could have acted otherwise.
Next morning two telegrams were waiting for him. The first was
from Hamil. It contained three words:
“You blamed idiot!”
The second was from New York:
“Deal off come to New York immediately Carhart.”
Within a week things had happened. Hamil quarrelled furiously
and violently defended his scheme. He was summoned to New York
and spent a bad half-hour on the carpet in Peter Carhart’s
office. He broke with the Carhart interests in July, and in
August Samuel Meredith, at thirty-five years old, was, to all
intents, made Carhart’s partner. The fourth fist had done its
work.
I suppose that there’s a caddish streak in every man that runs
crosswise across his character and disposition and general
outlook. With some men it’s secret and we never know it’s there
until they strike us in the dark one night. But Samuel’s showed
when it was in action, and the sight of it made people see red.
He was rather lucky in that, because every time his little devil
came up it met a reception that sent it scurrying down below in
a sickly, feeble condition. It was the same devil, the same
streak that made him order Gilly’s friends off the bed, that
made him go inside Marjorie’s house.
If you could run your hand along Samuel Meredith’s jaw you’d
feel a lump. He admits he’s never been sure which fist left it
there, but he wouldn’t lose it for anything. He says there’s no
cad like an old cad, and that sometimes just before making a
decision, it’s a great help to stroke his chin. The reporters
call it a nervous characteristic, but it’s not that. It’s so he
can feel again the gorgeous clarity, the lightning sanity of
those four fists.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
June 20th, 2007
In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be
given to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This
work will have the flavor of Montaigne’s essays and Samuel
Butler’s note-books–and a little of Tolstoi and Marcus
Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful nor pleasant but will
contain numerous passages of striking humor. Since first-class
minds never believe anything very strongly until they’ve
experienced it, its value will be purely relative . . . all
people over thirty will refer to it as “depressing.”
This prelude belongs to the story of a young man
who lived, as you and I do, before the book.
II
The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of
adolescence to a mighty fan-fare of trumpets. Bryan played the
star in an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp
behind the retreating German lines, so luck triumphant or
sentiment rampant awarded him a row of medals and on his arrival
in the States he was told that he was second in importance only
to General Pershing and Sergeant York. This was a lot of fun.
The governor of his State, a stray congressman, and a citizens’
committee gave him enormous smiles and “By God, Sirs” on the
dock at Hoboken; there were newspaper reporters and
photographers who said “would you mind” and “if you could just”;
and back in his home town there were old ladies, the rims of
whose eyes grew red as they talked to him, and girls who hadn’t
remembered him so well since his father’s business went blah! in
nineteen-twelve.
But when the shouting died he realized that for a month he had
been the house guest of the mayor, that he had only fourteen
dollars in the world and that “the name that will live forever
in the annals and legends of this State” was already living
there very quietly and obscurely.
One morning he lay late in bed and just outside his door he
heard the up-stairs maid talking to the cook. The up-stairs maid
said that Mrs. Hawkins, the mayor’s wife, had been trying for a
week to hint Dalyrimple out of the house. He left at eleven
o’clock in intolerable confusion, asking that his trunk be sent
to Mrs. Beebe’s boarding-house.
Dalyrimple was twenty-three and he had never worked. His father
had given him two years at the State University and passed away
about the time of his son’s nine-day romp, leaving behind him
some mid-Victorian furniture and a thin packet of folded paper
that turned out to be grocery bills. Young Dalyrimple had very
keen gray eyes, a mind that delighted the army psychological
examiners, a trick of having read it–whatever it was–some time
before, and a cool hand in a hot situation. But these things did
not save him a final, unresigned sigh when he realized that he
had to go to work–right away.
It was early afternoon when he walked into the office of Theron
G. Macy, who owned the largest wholesale grocery house in town.
Plump, prosperous, wearing a pleasant but quite unhumorous
smile, Theron G. Macy greeted him warmly.
“Well–how do, Bryan? What’s on your mind?”
To Dalyrimple, straining with his admission, his own words, when
they came, sounded like an Arab beggar’s whine for alms.
“Why–this question of a job.” (”This question of a job” seemed
somehow more clothed than just “a job.”)
“A job?” An almost imperceptible breeze blew across Mr. Macy’s
expression.
“You see, Mr. Macy,” continued Dalyrimple, “I feel I’m wasting
time. I want to get started at something. I had several chances
about a month ago but they all seem to have–gone—”
“Let’s see,” interrupted Mr. Macy. “What were they?”
“Well, just at the first the governor said something about a
vacancy on his staff. I was sort of counting on that for a
while, but I hear he’s given it to Allen Gregg, you know, son of
G. P. Gregg. He sort of forgot what he said to me–just talking,
I guess.”
“You ought to push those things.”
“Then there was that engineering expedition, but they decided
they’d have to have a man who knew hydraulics, so they couldn’t
use me unless I paid my own way.”
“You had just a year at the university?”
“Two. But I didn’t take any science or mathematics. Well, the
day the battalion paraded, Mr. Peter Jordan said something about
a vacancy in his store. I went around there to-day and I found
he meant a sort of floor-walker–and then you said something one
day”–he paused and waited for the older man to take him up, but
noting only a minute wince continued–”about a position, so I
thought I’d come and see you.”
“There was a position,” confessed Mr. Macy reluctantly, “but
since then we’ve filled it.” He cleared his throat again.
“You’ve waited quite a while.”
“Yes, I suppose I did. Everybody told me there was no hurry–and
I’d had these various offers.”
Mr. Macy delivered a paragraph on present-day opportunities
which Dalyrimple’s mind completely skipped.
“Have you had any business experience?”
“I worked on a ranch two summers as a rider.”
“Oh, well,” Mr. Macy disparaged this neatly, and then continued:
“What do you think you’re worth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Bryan, I tell you, I’m willing to strain a point and give
you a chance.”
Dalyrimple nodded.
“Your salary won’t be much. You’ll start by learning the stock.
Then you’ll come in the office for a while. Then you’ll go on
the road. When could you begin?”
“How about to-morrow?”
“All right. Report to Mr. Hanson in the stock-room. He’ll start
you off.”
He continued to regard Dalyrimple steadily until the latter,
realizing that the interview was over, rose awkwardly.
“Well, Mr. Macy, I’m certainly much obliged.”
“That’s all right. Glad to help you, Bryan.”
After an irresolute moment, Dalyrimple found himself in the
hall. His forehead was covered with perspiration, and the room
had not been hot.
“Why the devil did I thank the son of a gun?” he muttered.
III
Next morning Mr. Hanson informed him coldly of the necessity of
punching the time-clock at seven every morning, and delivered
him for instruction into the hands of a fellow worker, one
Charley Moore.
Charley was twenty-six, with that faint musk of weakness hanging
about him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took
no psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into
indulgence and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life,
and was to drift out. He was pale and his clothes stank of
smoke; he enjoyed burlesque shows, billiards, and Robert
Service, and was always looking back upon his last intrigue or
forward to his next one. In his youth his taste had run to loud
ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his vitality, and
was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and indeterminate
gray collars. Charley was listlessly struggling that losing
struggle against mental, moral, and physical anaemia that takes
place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes.
The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal
cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron
G. Macy Company.
“It’s a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me.
I’m quittin’ in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!”
The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month.
They do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit
around comparing their last job with the present one, to the
infinite disparagement of the latter.
“What do you get?” asked Dalyrimple curiously.
“Me? I get sixty.” This rather defiantly.
“Did you start at sixty?”
“Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he’d put me on the
road after I learned the stock. That’s what he tells ‘em all.”
“How long’ve you been here?” asked Dalyrimple with a sinking
sensation.
“Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots.”
Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective
as he resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him
almost immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule
was a thorn in his side. He was accustomed to his three or four
cigarettes in a morning, and after three days without it he
followed Charley Moore by a circuitous route up a flight of back
stairs to a little balcony where they indulged in peace. But
this was not for long. One day in his second week the detective
met him in a nook of the stairs, on his descent, and told him
sternly that next time he’d be reported to Mr. Macy. Dalyrimple
felt like an errant schoolboy.
Unpleasant facts came to his knowledge. There were “cave-
dwellers” in the basement who had worked there for ten or
fifteen years at sixty dollars a month, rolling barrels and
carrying boxes through damp, cement-walled corridors, lost in
that echoing half-darkness between seven and five-thirty and,
like himself, compelled several times a month to work until nine
at night.
At the end of a month he stood in line and received forty
dollars. He pawned a cigarette-case and a pair of field-glasses
and managed to live–to eat, sleep, and smoke. It was, however,
a narrow scrape; as the ways and means of economy were a closed
book to him and the second month brought no increase, he voiced
his alarm.
“If you’ve got a drag with old Macy, maybe he’ll raise you,” was
Charley’s disheartening reply. “But he didn’t raise ME till I’d
been here nearly two years.”
“I’ve got to live,” said Dalyrimple simply. “I could get more
pay as a laborer on the railroad but, Golly, I want to feel I’m
where there’s a chance to get ahead.”
Charles shook his head sceptically and Mr. Macy’s answer next
day was equally unsatisfactory.
Dalyrimple had gone to the office just before closing time.
“Mr. Macy, I’d like to speak to you.”
“Why–yes.” The unhumorous smile appeared. The voice vas faintly
resentful.
“I want to speak to you in regard to more salary.”
Mr. Macy nodded.
“Well,” he said doubtfully, “I don’t know exactly what you’re
doing. I’ll speak to Mr. Hanson.”
He knew exactly what Dalyrimple was doing, and Dalyrimple knew
he knew.
“I’m in the stock-room–and, sir, while I’m here I’d like to
ask you how much longer I’ll have to stay there.”
“Why–I’m not sure exactly. Of course it takes some time to
learn the stock.”
“You told me two months when I started.”
“Yes. Well, I’ll speak to Mr. Hanson.”
Dalyrimple paused irresolute.
“Thank you, sir.”
Two days later he again appeared in the office with the result
of a count that had been asked for by Mr. Hesse, the bookkeeper.
Mr. Hesse was engaged and Dalyrimple, waiting, began idly
fingering in a ledger on the stenographer’s desk.
Half unconsciously he turned a page–he caught sight of his name
–it was a salary list:
Dalyrimple
Demming
Donahoe
Everett
His eyes stopped–
Everett…………………….$60
So Tom Everett, Macy’s weak-chinned nephew, had started at sixty
–and in three weeks he had been out of the packing-room and
into the office.
So that was it! He was to sit and see man after man pushed over
him: sons, cousins, sons of friends, irrespective of their
capabilities, while HE was cast for a pawn, with “going on the
road” dangled before his eyes–put of with the stock remark:
I’ll see; I’ll look into it.” At forty, perhaps, he would be a
bookkeeper like old Hesse, tired, listless Hesse with a dull
routine for his stint and a dull background of boarding-house
conversation.
This was a moment when a genii should have pressed into his
hand the book for disillusioned young men. But the book has
not been written.
A great protest swelling into revolt surged up in him. Ideas
half forgotten, chaoticly perceived and assimilated, filled his
mind. Get on–that was the rule of life–and that was all. How
he did it, didn’t matter–but to be Hesse or Charley Moore.
“I won’t!” he cried aloud.
The bookkeeper and the stenographers looked up in surprise.
“What?”
For a second Dalyrimple stared–then walked up to the desk.
“Here’s that data,” he said brusquely. “I can’t wait any longer.”
Mr. Hesse’s face expressed surprise.
It didn’t matter what he did–just so he got out
of this rut. In a dream he stepped from the elevator into the
stock-room, and walking to an unused aisle, sat down on a box,
covering his face with his hands.
His brain was whirring with the frightful jar of discovering a
platitude for himself.
“I’ve got to get out of this,” he said aloud and then repeated,
“I’ve got to get out”–and he didn’t mean only out of Macy’s
wholesale house.
When he left at five-thirty it was pouring rain, but he struck
off in the opposite direction from his boarding-house, feeling,
in the first cool moisture that oozed soggily through his old
suit, an odd exultation and freshness. He wanted a world that
was like walking through rain, even though he could not see far
ahead of him, but fate had put him in the world of Mr. Macy’s
fetid storerooms and corridors. At first merely the overwhelming
need of change took him, then half-plans began to formulate in
his imagination.
“I’ll go East–to a big city–meet people–bigger people–people
who’ll help me. Interesting work somewhere. My God, there MUST
be.”
With sickening truth it occurred to him that his facility for
meeting people was limited. Of all places it was here in his own
town that he should be known, was known–famous–before the water
of oblivion had rolled over him.
You had to cut corners, that was all. Pull–relationship–wealthy
marriages—
For several miles the continued reiteration of this preoccupied
him and then he perceived that the rain had become thicker and
more opaque in the heavy gray of twilight and that the houses
were falling away. The district of full blocks, then of big
houses, then of scattering little ones, passed and great sweeps
of misty country opened out on both sides. It was hard walking
here. The sidewalk had given place to a dirt road, streaked with
furious brown rivulets that splashed and squashed around his
shoes.
Cutting corners–the words began to fall apart, forming curious
phrasings–little illuminated pieces of themselves. They
resolved into sentences, each of which had a strangely familiar
ring.
Cutting corners meant rejecting the old childhood principles
that success came from faithfulness to duty, that evil was
necessarily punished or virtue necessarily rewarded–that honest
poverty was happier than corrupt riches.
It meant being hard.
This phrase appealed to him and he repeated it over and over.
It had to do somehow with Mr. Macy and Charley Moore–the
attitudes, the methods of each of them.
He stopped and felt his clothes. He was drenched to the skin. He
looked about him and, selecting a place in the fence where a
tree sheltered it, perched himself there.
In my credulous years–he thought–they told me that evil was a
sort of dirty hue, just as definite as a soiled collar, but it
seems to me that evil is only a manner of hard luck, or
heredity-and-environment, or “being found out.” It hides in the
vacillations of dubs like Charley Moore as certainly as it does
in the intolerance of Macy, and if it ever gets much more
tangible it becomes merely an arbitrary label to paste on the
unpleasant things in other people’s lives.
In fact–he concluded–it isn’t worth worrying over what’s evil
and what isn’t. Good and evil aren’t any standard to me–and
they can be a devil of a bad hindrance when I want something.
When I want something bad enough, common sense tells me to go
and take it–and not get caught.
And then suddenly Dalyrimple knew what he wanted first. He
wanted fifteen dollars to pay his overdue board bill.
With a furious energy he jumped from the fence, whipped off his
coat, and from its black lining cut with his knife a piece about
five inches square. He made two holes near its edge and then
fixed it on his face, pulling his hat down to hold it in place.
It flapped grotesquely and then dampened and clung clung to his
forehead and cheeks.
Now . . . The twilight had merged to dripping dusk . . . black
as pitch. He began to walk quickly back toward town, not waiting
to remove the mask but watching the road with difficulty through
the jagged eye-holes. He was not conscious of any nervousness
. . . the only tension was caused by a desire to do the thing as
soon as possible.
He reached the first sidewalk, continued on until he saw a hedge
far from any lamp-post, and turned in behind it. Within a minute
he heard several series of footsteps–he waited–it was a woman
and he held his breath until she passed . . . and then a man,
a laborer. The next passer, he felt, would be what he wanted
. . . the laborer’s footfalls died far up the drenched street
. . . other steps grew nears grew suddenly louder.
Dalyrimple braced himself.
“Put up your hands!”
The man stopped, uttered an absurd little grunt, and thrust
pudgy arms skyward.
Dalyrimple went through the waistcoat.
“Now, you shrimp,” he said, setting his hand suggestively to
his own hip pocket, “you run, and stamp–loud! If I hear your
feet stop I’ll put a shot after you!”
Then he stood there in sudden uncontrollable laughter as
audibly frightened footsteps scurried away into the night.
After a moment he thrust the roll of bills into his pocket,
snatched of his mask, and running quickly across the street,
darted down an alley.
IV
Yet, however Dalyrimple justified himself intellectually, he had
many bad moments in the weeks immediately following his decision.
The tremendous pressure of sentiment and inherited ambition kept
raising riot with his attitude. He felt morally lonely.
The noon after his first venture he ate in a little lunch-room
with Charley Moore and, watching him unspread the paper, waited
for a remark about the hold-up of the day before. But either the
hold-up was not mentioned or Charley wasn’t interested. He
turned listlessly to the sporting sheet, read Doctor Crane’s
crop of seasoned bromides, took in an editorial on ambition with
his mouth slightly ajar, and then skipped to Mutt and Jeff.
Poor Charley–with his faint aura of evil and his mind that
refused to focus, playing a lifeless solitaire with cast-off
mischief.
Yet Charley belonged on the other side of the fence. In him
could be stirred up all the flamings and denunciations of
righteousness; he would weep at a stage heroine’s lost virtue,
he could become lofty and contemptuous at the idea of dishonor.
On my side, thought Dalyrimple, there aren’t any resting-places;
a man who’s a strong criminal is after the weak criminals as
well, so it’s all guerilla warfare over here.
What will it all do to me? he thoughts with a persistent
weariness. Will it take the color out of life with the honor?
Will it scatter my courage and dull my mind?–despiritualize me
completely–does it mean eventual barrenness, eventual remorse,
failure?
With a great surge of anger, he would fling his mind upon the
barrier–and stand there with the flashing bayonet of his pride.
Other men who broke the laws of justice and charity lied to all
the world. He at any rate would not lie to himself. He was more
than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the
philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his
own century–defying the sentimental a priori forms of his own
mind—
Happiness was what he wanted–a slowly rising scale of
gratifications of the normal appetites–and he had a strong
conviction that the materials, if not the inspiration of
happiness, could be bought with money.
V
The night came that drew him out upon his second venture, and
as he walked the dark street he felt in himself a great
resemblance to a cat–a certain supple, swinging litheness. His
muscles were rippling smoothly and sleekly under his spare,
healthy flesh–he had an absurd desire to bound along the
street, to run dodging among trees, to tarn “cart-wheels” over
soft grass.
It was not crisp, but in the air lay a faint suggestion of
acerbity, inspirational rather than chilling.
“The moon is down–I have not heard the clock!”
He laughed in delight at the line which an early memory had
endowed with a hushed awesome beauty.
He passed a man and then another a quarter of mile afterward.
He was on Philmore Street now and it was very dark. He blessed
the city council for not having put in new lamp-posts as a
recent budget had recommended. Here was the red-brick Sterner
residence which marked the beginning of the avenue; here was the
Jordon house, the Eisenhaurs’, the Dents’, the Markhams’, the
Frasers’; the Hawkins’, where he had been a guest; the
Willoughbys’, the Everett’s, colonial and ornate; the little
cottage where lived the Watts old maids between the imposing
fronts of the Macys’ and the Krupstadts’; the Craigs–
Ah . . . THERE! He paused, wavered violently–far up the street
was a blot, a man walking, possibly a policeman. After an
eternal second be found himself following the vague, ragged
shadow of a lamp-post across a lawn, running bent very low.
Then he was standing tense, without breath or need of it, in the
shadow of his limestone prey.
Interminably he listened–a mile off a cat howled, a hundred
yards away another took up the hymn in a demoniacal snarl, and
he felt his heart dip and swoop, acting as shock-absorber for
his mind. There were other sounds; the faintest fragment of song
far away; strident, gossiping laughter from a back porch
diagonally across the alley; and crickets, crickets singing in
the patched, patterned, moonlit grass of the yard. Within the
house there seemed to lie an ominous silence. He was glad he did
not know who lived here.
His slight shiver hardened to steel; the steel softened and his
nerves became pliable as leather; gripping his hands he
gratefully found them supple, and taking out knife and pliers he
went to work on the screen.
So sure was he that he was unobserved that, from the dining-room
where in a minute he found himself, he leaned out and carefully
pulled the screen up into position, balancing it so it would
neither fall by chance nor be a serious obstacle to a sudden
exit.
Then he put the open knife in his coat pocket, took out his
pocket-flash, and tiptoed around the room.
There was nothing here he could use–the dining-room had never
been included in his plans for the town was too small to permit
disposing of silver.
As a matter of fact his plans were of the vaguest. He had found
that with a mind like his, lucrative in intelligence, intuition,
and lightning decision, it was best to have but the skeleton of
a campaign. The machine-gun episode had taught him that. And he
was afraid that a method preconceived would give him two points
of view in a crisis–and two points of view meant wavering.
He stumbled slightly on a chair, held his breath, listened, went
on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh
stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was
counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again
for over a minute–and in that minute he felt more alone than he
had ever felt before. Between the lines on patrol, even when
alone, he had had behind him the moral support of half a billion
people; now he was alone, pitted against that same moral
pressure–a bandit. He had never felt this fear, yet he had
never felt this exultation.
The stairs came to an end, a doorway approached; he went in and
listened to regular breathing. His feet were economical of steps
and his body swayed sometimes at stretching as he felt over the
bureau, pocketing all articles which held promise–he could not
have enumerated them ten seconds afterward. He felt on a chair
for possible trousers, found soft garments, women’s lingerie.
The corners of his mouth smiled mechanically.
Another room . . . the same breathing, enlivened by one ghastly
snort that sent his heart again on its tour of his breast. Round
object–watch; chain; roll of bills; stick-pins; two rings–he
remembered that he had got rings from the other bureau. He
started out winced as a faint glow flashed in front of him,
facing him. God!–it was the glow of his own wrist-watch on his
outstretched arm.
Down the stairs. He skipped two crumbing steps but found
another. He was all right now, practically safe; as he neared
the bottom he felt a slight boredom. He reached the dining-room
–considered the silver–again decided against it.
Back in his room at the boarding-house he examined the additions
to his personal property:
Sixty-five dollars in bills.
A platinum ring with three medium diamonds, worth, probably,
about seven hundred dollars. Diamonds were going up.
A cheap gold-plated ring with the initials O. S. and the date
inside–’03–probably a class-ring from school. Worth a few
dollars. Unsalable.
A red-cloth case containing a set of false teeth.
A silver watch.
A gold chain worth more than the watch.
An empty ring-box.
A little ivory Chinese god–probably a desk ornament.
A dollar and sixty-two cents an small change.
He put the money under his pillow and the other things in the
toe of an infantry boot, stuffing a stocking in on top of them.
Then for two hours his mind raced like a high-power engine here
and there through his life, past and future, through fear and
laughter. With a vague, inopportune wish that he were married,
he fell into a deep sleep about half past five.
VI
Though the newspaper account of the burglary failed to mention
the false teeth, they worried him considerably. The picture of
a human waking in the cool dawn and groping for them in vain,
of a soft, toothless breakfast, of a strange, hollow, lisping
voice calling the police station, of weary, dispirited visits
to the dentist, roused a great fatherly pity in him.
Trying to ascertain whether they belonged to a man or a woman,
he took them carefully out of the case and held them up near
his mouth. He moved his own jaws experimentally; he measured
with his fingers; but he failed to decide: they might belong
either to a large-mouthed woman or a small-mouthed man.
On a warm impulse he wrapped them in brown paper from the
bottom of his army trunk, and printed FALSE TEETH on the
package in clumsy pencil letters. Then, the next night, he
walked down Philmore Street, and shied the package onto the
lawn so that it would be near the door. Next day the paper
announced that the police had a clew–they knew that the
burglar was in town. However, they didn’t mention what the
clew was.
VII
At the end of a month “Burglar Bill of the Silver District
was the nurse-girl’s standby for frightening children. Five
burglaries were attributed to him, but though Dalyrimple had
only committed three, he considered that majority had it and
appropriated the title to himself. He had once been seen–”a
large bloated creature with the meanest face you ever laid eyes
on.” Mrs. Henry Coleman, awaking at two o’clock at the beam of
an electric torch flashed in her eye, could not have been
expected to recognize Bryan Dalyrimple at whom she had waved
flags last Fourth of July, and whom she had described as “not
at all the daredevil type, do you think?”
When Dalyrimple kept his imagination at white heat he managed to
glorify his own attitude, his emancipation from petty scruples
and remorses–but let him once allow his thought to rove
unarmored, great unexpected horrors and depressions would
overtake him. Then for reassurance he had to go back to think
out the whole thing over again. He found that it was on the
whole better to give up considering himself as a rebel. It was
more consoling to think of every one else as a fool.
His attitude toward Mr. Macy underwent a change. He no longer
felt a dim animosity and inferiority in his presence. As his
fourth month in the store ended he found himself regarding his
employer in a manner that was almost fraternal. He had a vague
but very assured conviction that Mr. Macy’s innermost soul would
have abetted and approved. He no longer worried about his
future. He had the intention of accumulating several thousand
dollars and then clearing out–going east, back to France, down
to South America. Half a dozen times in the last two months he
had been about to stop work, but a fear of attracting attention
to his being in funds prevented him. So he worked on, no longer
in listlessness, but with contemptuous amusement.
VIII
Then with astounding suddenness something happened that changed
his plans and put an end to his burglaries.
Mr. Macy sent for him one afternoon and with a great show of
jovial mystery asked him if he had an engagement that night. If
he hadn’t, would he please call on Mr. Alfred J. Fraser at eight
o’clock. Dalyrimple’s wonder was mingled with uncertainty. He
debated with himself whether it were not his cue to take the
first train out of town. But an hour’s consideration decided him
that his fears were unfounded and at eight o’clock he arrived at
the big Fraser house in Philmore Avenue.
Mr. Fraser was commonly supposed to be the biggest political
influence in the city. His brother was Senator Fraser, his son-
in-law was Congressman Demming, and his influence, though not
wielded in such a way as to make him an objectionable boss, was
strong nevertheless.
He had a great, huge face, deep-set eyes, and a barn-door of an
upper lip, the melange approaching a worthy climax if a long
professional jaw.
During his conversation with Dalyrimple his expression kept
starting toward a smile, reached a cheerful optimism, and then
receded back to imperturbability.
“How do you do, sir?” he laid, holding out his hand. “Sit down.
I suppose you’re wondering why I wanted you. Sit down.”
Dalyrimple sat down.
“Mr. Dalyrimple, how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“You’re young. But that doesn’t mean you’re foolish. Mr.
Dalyrimple, what I’ve got to say won’t take long. I’m going to
make you a proposition. To begin at the beginning, I’ve been
watching you ever since last Fourth of July when you made that
speech in response to the loving-cup.”
Dalyrimple murmured disparagingly, but Fraser waved him to
silence.
“It was a speech I’ve remembered. It was a brainy speech,
straight from the shoulder, and it got to everybody in that
crowd. I know. I’ve watched crowds for years.” He cleared his
throat as if tempted to digress on his knowledge of crowds–then
continued. “But, Mr. Dalyrimple, I’ve seen too many young men
who promised brilliantly go to pieces, fail through want of
steadiness, too many high-power ideas, and not enough
willingness to work. So I waited. I wanted to see what you’d
do. I wanted to see if you’d go to work, and if you’d stick to
what you started.”
Dalyrimple felt a glow settle over him.
“So,” continued Fraser, “when Theron Macy told me you’d started
down at his place, I kept watching you, and I followed your
record through him. The first month I was afraid for awhile.
He told me you were getting restless, too good for your job,
hinting around for a raise—”
Dalyrimple started.
“—But he said after that you evidently made up your mind to
shut up and stick to it. That’s the stuff I like in a young man!
That’s the stuff that wins out. And don’t think I don’t
understand. I know how much harder it was for you after all that
silly flattery a lot of old women had been giving you. I know
what a fight it must have been—”
Dalyrimple’s face was burning brightly. It felt young and
strangely ingenuous.
“Dalyrimple, you’ve got brains and you’ve got the stuff in you–
and that’s what I want. I’m going to put you into the State
Senate.”
“The WHAT?”
“The State Senate. We want a young man who has got brains, but
is solid and not a loafer. And when I say State Senate I don’t
stop there. We’re up against it here, Dalyrimple. We’ve got to
get some young men into politics–you know the old blood that’s
been running on the party ticket year in and year out.”
Dalyrimple licked his lips.
“You’ll run me for the State Senate?”
“I’ll PUT you in the State Senate.”
Mr. Fraser’s expression had now reached the
point nearest a smile and Dalyrimple in a happy frivolity felt
himself urging it mentally on–but it stopped, locked, and slid
from him. The barn-door and the jaw were separated by a line
strait as a nail. Dalyrimple remembered with an effort that it
was a mouth, and talked to it.
“But I’m through,” he said. “My notoriety’s dead. People are
fed up with me.”
“Those things,” answered Mr. Fraser, “are mechanical. Linotype
is a resuscitator of reputations. Wait till you see the HERALD,
beginning next week–that is if you’re with us–that is,” and
his voice hardened slightly, “if you haven’t got too many ideas
yourself about how things ought to be run.”
“No,” said Dalyrimple, looking him frankly in the eye. “You’ll
have to give me a lot of advice at first.”
“Very well. I’ll take care of your reputation then. Just keep
yourself on the right side of the fence.”
Dalyrimple started at this repetition of a phrase he had thought
of so much lately. There was a sudden ring at the door-bell.
“That’s Macy now,” observed Fraser, rising. “I’ll go let him in.
The servants have gone to bed.”
He left Dalyrimple there in a dream. The world was opening up
suddenly— The State Senate, the United States Senate–so life
was this after all–cutting corners–common sense, that was the
rule. No more foolish risks now unless necessity called–but it
was being hard that counted– Never to let remorse or self-
reproach lose him a night’s sleep–let his life be a sword of
courage–there was no payment–all that was drivel–drivel.
He sprang to his feet with clinched hands in a sort of triumph.
“Well, Bryan,” said Mr. Macy stepping through the portieres.
The two older men smiled their half-smiles at him.
“Well Bryan,” said Mr. Macy again.
Dalyrimple smiled also.
“How do, Mr. Macy?”
He wondered if some telepathy between them had made this new
appreciation possible–some invisible realization. . . .
Mr. Macy held out his hand.
“I’m glad we’re to be associated in this scheme–I’ve been for
you all along–especially lately. I’m glad we’re to be on the
same side of the fence.”
“I want to thank you, sir,” said Dalyrimple simply. He felt a
whimsical moisture gathering back of his eyes.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
June 20th, 2007
The Baltimore Station was hot and crowded, so Lois was forced to
stand by the telegraph desk for interminable, sticky seconds
while a clerk with big front teeth counted and recounted a large
lady’s day message, to determine whether it contained the
innocuous forty-nine words or the fatal fifty-one.
Lois, waiting, decided she wasn’t quite sure of the address, so
she took the letter out of her bag and ran over it again.
“Darling,” IT BEGAN–”I understand and I’m happier than life ever
meant me to be. If I could give you the things you’ve always
been in tune with–but I can’t Lois; we can’t marry and we can’t
lose each other and let all this glorious love end in nothing.
“Until your letter came, dear, I’d been sitting here in the half
dark and thinking where I could go and ever forget you; abroad,
perhaps, to drift through Italy or Spain and dream away the pain
of having lost you where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower
civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart–and
then your letter came.
“Sweetest, bravest girl, if you’ll wire me I’ll meet you in
Wilmington–till then I’ll be here just waiting and hoping for
every long dream of you to come true.
“Howard.”
She had read the letter so many times that she knew it word by
word, yet it still startled her. In it she found many faint
reflections of the man who wrote it–the mingled sweetness and
sadness in his dark eyes, the furtive, restless excitement she
felt sometimes when he talked to her, his dreamy sensuousness
that lulled her mind to sleep. Lois was nineteen and very
romantic and curious and courageous.
The large lady and the clerk having compromised on fifty words,
Lois took a blank and wrote her telegram. And there were no
overtones to the finality of her decision.
It’s just destiny–she thought–it’s just the way things work
out in this damn world. If cowardice is all that’s been holding
me back there won’t be any more holding back. So we’ll just let
things take their course and never be sorry.
The clerk scanned her telegram:
“Arrived Baltimore today spend day with my brother meet me
Wilmington three P.M. Wednesday
Love
“Lois.”
“Fifty-four cents,” said the clerk admiringly.
And never be sorry–thought Lois–and never be sorry—
II
Trees filtering light onto dapple grass. Trees like tall, languid
ladies with feather fans coquetting airily with the ugly roof of
the monastery. Trees like butlers, bending courteously over
placid walks and paths. Trees, trees over the hills on either
side and scattering out in clumps and lines and woods all through
eastern Maryland, delicate lace on the hems of many yellow
fields, dark opaque backgrounds for flowered bushes or wild
climbing garden.
Some of the trees were very gay and young, but the monastery
trees were older than the monastery which, by true monastic
standards, wasn’t very old at all. And, as a matter of fact, it
wasn’t technically called a monastery, but only a seminary;
nevertheless it shall be a monastery here despite its Victorian
architecture or its Edward VII additions, or even its Woodrow
Wilsonian, patented, last-a-century roofing.
Out behind was the farm where half a dozen lay brothers were
sweating lustily as they moved with deadly efficiency around the
vegetable-gardens. To the left, behind a row of elms, was an
informal baseball diamond where three novices were being batted
out by a fourth, amid great chasings and puffings and blowings.
And in front as a great mellow bell boomed the half-hour a swarm
of black, human leaves were blown over the checker-board of paths
under the courteous trees.
Some of these black leaves were very old with cheeks furrowed
like the first ripples of a splashed pool. Then there was a
scattering of middle-aged leaves whose forms when viewed in
profile in their revealing gowns were beginning to be faintly
unsymmetrical. These carried thick volumes of Thomas Aquinas and
Henry James and Cardinal Mercier and Immanuel Kant and many
bulging note-books filled with lecture data.
But most numerous were the young leaves; blond boys of nineteen
with very stern, conscientious expressions; men in the late
twenties with a keen self-assurance from having taught out in the
world for five years–several hundreds of them, from city and
town and country in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia and
West Virginia and Delaware.
There were many Americans and some Irish and some tough Irish and
a few French, and several Italians and Poles, and they walked
informally arm in arm with each other in twos and threes or in
long rows, almost universally distinguished by the straight mouth
and the considerable chin–for this was the Society of Jesus,
founded in Spain five hundred years before by a tough-minded
soldier who trained men to hold a breach or a salon, preach a
sermon or write a treaty, and do it and not argue . . .
Lois got out of a bus into the sunshine down by the outer gate.
She was nineteen with yellow hair and eyes that people were
tactful enough not to call green. When men of talent saw her in a
street-car they often furtively produced little stub-pencils and
backs of envelopes and tried to sum up that profile or the thing
that the eyebrows did to her eyes. Later they looked at their
results and usually tore them up with wondering sighs.
Though Lois was very jauntily attired in an expensively
appropriate travelling affair, she did not linger to pat out the
dust which covered her clothes, but started up the central walk
with curious glances at either side. Her face was very eager and
expectant, yet she hadn’t at all that glorified expression that
girls wear when they arrive for a Senior Prom at Princeton or New
Haven; still, as there were no senior proms here, perhaps it
didn’t matter.
She was wondering what he would look like, whether she’d possibly
know him from his picture. In the picture, which hung over her
mother’s bureau at home, he seemed very young and hollow-cheeked
and rather pitiful, with only a well-developed mouth and all
ill-fitting probationer’s gown to show that he had already made a
momentous decision about his life. Of course he had been only
nineteen then and now he was thirty-six–didn’t look like that at
all; in recent snap-shots he was much broader and his hair had
grown a little thin–but the impression of her brother she had
always retained was that of the big picture. And so she had
always been a little sorry for him. What a life for a man!
Seventeen years of preparation and he wasn’t even a priest
yet–wouldn’t be for another year.
Lois had an idea that this was all going to be rather solemn if
she let it be. But she was going to give her very best imitation
of undiluted sunshine, the imitation she could give even when her
head was splitting or when her mother had a nervous breakdown or
when she was particularly romantic and curious and courageous.
This brother of hers undoubtedly needed cheering up, and he was
going to be cheered up, whether he liked it or not.
As she drew near the great, homely front door she saw a man break
suddenly away from a group and, pulling up the skirts of his
gown, run toward her. He was smiling, she noticed, and he looked
very big and–and reliable. She stopped and waited, knew that her
heart was beating unusually fast.
“Lois!” he cried, and in a second she was in his arms. She was
suddenly trembling.
“Lois!” he cried again, “why, this is wonderful! I can’t tell
you, Lois, how MUCH I’ve looked forward to this. Why, Lois,
you’re beautiful!”
Lois gasped.
His voice, though restrained, was vibrant with energy and that
odd sort of enveloping personality she had thought that she only
of the family possessed.
“I’m mighty glad, too–Kieth.”
She flushed, but not unhappily, at this first use of his name.
“Lois–Lois–Lois,” he repeated in wonder. “Child, we’ll go in
here a minute, because I want you to meet the rector, and then
we’ll walk around. I have a thousand things to talk to you
about.”
His voice became graver. “How’s mother?”
She looked at him for a moment and then said something that she
had not intended to say at all, the very sort of thing she had
resolved to avoid.
“Oh, Kieth–she’s–she’s getting worse all the time, every way.”
He nodded slowly as if he understood.
“Nervous, well–you can tell me about that later. Now—”
She was in a small study with a large desk, saying something to a
little, jovial, white-haired priest who retained her hand for
some seconds.
“So this is Lois!”
He said it as if he had heard of her for years.
He entreated her to sit down.
Two other priests arrived enthusiastically and shook hands with
her and addressed her as “Kieth’s little sister,” which she found
she didn’t mind a bit.
How assured they seemed; she had expected a certain shyness,
reserve at least. There were several jokes unintelligible to her,
which seemed to delight every one, and the little Father Rector
referred to the trio of them as “dim old monks,” which she
appreciated, because of course they weren’t monks at all. She had
a lightning impression that they were especially fond of
Kieth–the Father Rector had called him “Kieth” and one of the
others had kept a hand on his shoulder all through the
conversation. Then she was shaking hands again and promising to
come back a little later for some ice-cream, and smiling and
smiling and being rather absurdly happy . . . she told herself
that it was because Kieth was so delighted in showing her off.
Then she and Kieth were strolling along a path, arm in arm, and
he was informing her what an absolute jewel the Father Rector
was.
“Lois,” he broken off suddenly, “I want to tell you before we go
any farther how much it means to me to have you come up here. I
think it was–mighty sweet of you. I know what a gay time you’ve
been having.”
Lois gasped. She was not prepared for this. At first when she had
conceived the plan of taking the hot journey down to Baltimore
staying the night with a friend and then coming out to see her
brother, she had felt rather consciously virtuous, hoped he
wouldn’t be priggish or resentful about her not having come
before–but walking here with him under the trees seemed such a
little thing, and surprisingly a happy thing.
“Why, Kieth,” she said quickly, “you know I couldn’t have waited
a day longer. I saw you when I was five, but of course I didn’t
remember, and how could I have gone on without practically ever
having seen my only brother?”
“It was mighty sweet of you, Lois,” he repeated.
Lois blushed–he DID have personality.
“I want you to tell me all about yourself,” he said after a
pause. “Of course I have a general idea what you and mother did
in Europe those fourteen years, and then we were all so worried,
Lois, when you had pneumonia and couldn’t come down with
mother–let’s see that was two years ago–and then, well, I’ve
seen your name in the papers, but it’s all been so
unsatisfactory. I haven’t known you, Lois.”
She found herself analyzing his personality as she analyzed the
personality of every man she met. She wondered if the effect
of–of intimacy that he gave was bred by his constant repetition
of her name. He said it as if he loved the word, as if it had an
inherent meaning to him.
“Then you were at school,” he continued.
“Yes, at Farmington. Mother wanted me to go to a convent–but I
didn’t want to.”
She cast a side glance at him to see if he would resent this.
But he only nodded slowly.
“Had enough convents abroad, eh?”
“Yes–and Kieth, convents are different there anyway. Here even
in the nicest ones there are so many COMMON girls.”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose there are, and I know how you feel
about it. It grated on me here, at first, Lois, though I wouldn’t
say that to any one but you; we’re rather sensitive, you and I,
to things like this.”
“You mean the men here?”
“Yes, some of them of course were fine, the sort of men I’d
always been thrown with, but there were others; a man named
Regan, for instance–I hated the fellow, and now he’s about the
best friend I have. A wonderful character, Lois; you’ll meet him
later. Sort of man you’d like to have with you in a fight.”
Lois was thinking that Kieth was the sort of man she’d like to
have with HER in a fight.
“How did you–how did you first happen to do it?” she asked,
rather shyly, “to come here, I mean. Of course mother told me the
story about the Pullman car.”
“Oh, that—” He looked rather annoyed.
“Tell me that. I’d like to hear you tell it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing except what you probably know. It was evening
and I’d been riding all day and thinking about–about a hundred
things, Lois, and then suddenly I had a sense that some one was
sitting across from me, felt that he’d been there for some time,
and had a vague idea that he was another traveller. All at once
he leaned over toward me and I heard a voice say: ‘I want you to
be a priest, that’s what I want.’ Well I jumped up and cried out,
‘Oh, my God, not that!’–made an idiot of myself before about
twenty people; you see there wasn’t any one sitting there at all.
A week after that I went to the Jesuit College in Philadelphia
and crawled up the last flight of stairs to the rector’s office
on my hands and knees.”
There was another silence and Lois saw that her brother’s eyes
wore a far-away look, that he was staring unseeingly out over the
sunny fields. She was stirred by the modulations of his voice
and the sudden silence that seemed to flow about him when he
finished speaking.
She noticed now that his eyes were of the same fibre as hers,
with the green left out, and that his mouth was much gentler,
really, than in the picture –or was it that the face had grown
up to it lately? He was getting a little bald just on top of his
head. She wondered if that was from wearing a hat so much. It
seemed awful for a man to grow bald and no one to care about it.
“Were you–pious when you were young, Kieth?” she asked. “You
know what I mean. Were you religious? If you don’t mind these
personal questions.”
“Yes,” he said with his eyes still far away–and she felt that
his intense abstraction was as much a part of his personality as
his attention. “Yes, I suppose I was, when I was–sober.”
Lois thrilled slightly.
“Did you drink?”
He nodded.
“I was on the way to making a bad hash of things.” He smiled and,
turning his gray eyes on her, changed the subject.
“Child, tell me about mother. I know it’s been awfully hard for
you there, lately. I know you’ve had to sacrifice a lot and put
up with a great deal and I want you to know how fine of you I
think it is. I feel, Lois, that you’re sort of taking the place
of both of us there.”
Lois thought quickly how little she had sacrificed; how lately
she had constantly avoided her nervous, half-invalid mother.
“Youth shouldn’t be sacrificed to age, Kieth,” she said steadily.
“I know,” he sighed, “and you oughtn’t to have the weight on
your shoulders, child. I wish I were there to help you.”
She saw how quickly he had turned her remark and instantly she
knew what this quality was that he gave off. He was SWEET. Her
thoughts went of on a side-track and then she broke the silence
with an odd remark.
“Sweetness is hard,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she denied in confusion. “I didn’t mean to speak
aloud. I was thinking of something –of a conversation with a man
named Freddy Kebble.”
“Maury Kebble’s brother?”
“Yes,” she said rather surprised to think of him having known
Maury Kebble. Still there was nothing strange about it. “Well, he
and I were talking about sweetness a few weeks ago. Oh, I don’t
know–I said that a man named Howard–that a man I knew was
sweet, and he didn’t agree with me, and we began talking about
what sweetness in a man was: He kept telling me I meant a sort of
soppy softness, but I knew I didn’t–yet I didn’t know exactly
how to put it. I see now. I meant just the opposite. I suppose
real sweetness is a sort of hardness–and strength.”
Kieth nodded.
“I see what you mean. I’ve known old priests who had it.”
“I’m talking about young men,” she said rather defiantly.
They had reached the now deserted baseball diamond and, pointing
her to a wooden bench, he sprawled full length on the grass.
“Are these YOUNG men happy here, Kieth?”
“Don’t they look happy, Lois?”
“I suppose so, but those YOUNG ones, those two we just
passed–have they–are they—?
“Are they signed up?” he laughed. “No, but they will be next
month.”
“Permanently?”
“Yes–unless they break down mentally or physically. Of course in
a discipline like ours a lot drop out.”
“But those BOYS. Are they giving up fine chances outside–like
you did?”
He nodded.
“Some of them.”
“But Kieth, they don’t know what they’re doing. They haven’t had
any experience of what they’re missing.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“It doesn’t seem fair. Life has just sort of scared them at
first. Do they all come in so YOUNG?”
“No, some of them have knocked around, led pretty wild
lives–Regan, for instance.”
“I should think that sort would be better,” she said
meditatively, “men that had SEEN life.”
“No,” said Kieth earnestly, “I’m not sure that knocking about
gives a man the sort of experience he can communicate to others.
Some of the broadest men I’ve known have been absolutely rigid
about themselves. And reformed libertines are a notoriously
intolerant class. Don’t you thank so, Lois?”
She nodded, still meditative, and he continued:
“It seems to me that when one weak reason goes to another, it
isn’t help they want; it’s a sort of companionship in guilt,
Lois. After you were born, when mother began to get nervous she
used to go and weep with a certain Mrs. Comstock. Lord, it used
to make me shiver. She said it comforted her, poor old mother.
No, I don’t think that to help others you’ve got to show yourself
at all. Real help comes from a stronger person whom you respect.
And their sympathy is all the bigger because it’s impersonal.”
“But people want human sympathy,” objected Lois. “They want to
feel the other person’s been tempted.”
“Lois, in their hearts they want to feel that the other person’s
been weak. That’s what they mean by human.
“Here in this old monkery, Lois,” he continued with a smile, “they
try to get all that self-pity and pride in our own wills out of
us right at the first. They put us to scrubbing floors–and other
things. It’s like that idea of saving your life by losing it.
You see we sort of feel that the less human a man is, in your
sense of human, the better servant he can be to humanity. We
carry it out to the end, too. When one of us dies his family
can’t even have him then. He’s buried here under plain wooden
cross with a thousand others.”
His tone changed suddenly and he looked at her with a great
brightness in his gray eyes.
“But way back in a man’s heart there are some things he can’t get
rid of–an one of them is that I’m awfully in love with my
little sister.”
With a sudden impulse she knelt beside him in the grass and,
Leaning over, kissed his forehead.
“You’re hard, Kieth,” she said, “and I love you for it–and
you’re sweet.”
III
Back in the reception-room Lois met a half-dozen more of Kieth’s
particular friends; there was a young man named Jarvis, rather
pale and delicate-looking, who, she knew, must be a grandson of
old Mrs. Jarvis at home, and she mentally compared this ascetic
with a brace of his riotous uncles.
And there was Regan with a scarred face and piercing intent eyes
that followed her about the room and often rested on Kieth with
something very like worship. She knew then what Kieth had meant
about “a good man to have with you in a fight.”
He’s the missionary type–she thought vaguely–China or something.
“I want Kieth’s sister to show us what the shimmy is,” demanded
one young man with a broad grin.
Lois laughed.
“I’m afraid the Father Rector would send me shimmying out the
gate. Besides, I’m not an expert.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be best for Jimmy’s soul anyway,” said
Kieth solemnly. “He’s inclined to brood about things like
shimmys. They were just starting to do the–maxixe, wasn’t it,
Jimmy?–when he became a monk, and it haunted him his whole first
year. You’d see him when he was peeling potatoes, putting his
arm around the bucket and making irreligious motions with his
feet.”
There was a general laugh in which Lois joined.
“An old lady who comes here to Mass sent Kieth this ice-cream,”
whispered Jarvis under cover of the laugh, “because she’d heard
you were coming. It’s pretty good, isn’t it?”
There were tears trembling in Lois’ eyes.
IV
Then half an hour later over in the chapel things suddenly went
all wrong. It was several years since Lois had been at
Benediction and at first she was thrilled by the gleaming
monstrance with its central spot of white, the air rich and heavy
with incense, and the sun shining through the stained-glass
window of St. Francis Xavier overhead and falling in warm red
tracery on the cassock of the man in front of her, but at the
first notes of the “O SALUTARIS HOSTIA” a heavy weight seemed to
descend upon her soul. Kieth was on her right and young Jarvis on
her left, and she stole uneasy glance at both of them.
What’s the matter with me? she thought impatiently.
She looked again. Was there a certain coldness in both their
profiles, that she had not noticed before–a pallor about the
mouth and a curious set expression in their eyes? She shivered
slightly: they were like dead men.
She felt her soul recede suddenly from Kieth’s. This was her
brother–this, this unnatural person. She caught herself in the
act of a little laugh.
“What is the matter with me?”
She passed her hand over her eyes and the weight increased. The
incense sickened her and a stray, ragged note from one of the
tenors in the choir grated on her ear like the shriek of a
slate-pencil. She fidgeted, and raising her hand to her hair
touched her forehead, found moisture on it.
“It’s hot in here, hot as the deuce.”
Again she repressed a faint laugh and, then in an instant the
weight on her heart suddenly diffused into cold fear. . . . It
was that candle on the altar. It was all wrong–wrong. Why didn’t
somebody see it? There was something IN it. There was something
coming out of it, taking form and shape above it.
She tried to fight down her rising panic, told herself it was the
wick. If the wick wasn’t straight, candles did something–but
they didn’t do this! With incalculable rapidity a force was
gathering within her, a tremendous, assimilative force, drawing
from every sense, every corner of her brain, and as it surged up
inside her she felt an enormous terrified repulsion. She drew her
arms in close to her side away from Kieth and Jarvis.
Something in that candle . . . she was leaning forward–in
another moment she felt she would go forward toward it–didn’t
any one see it? . . . anyone?
“Ugh!”
She felt a space beside her and something told her that Jarvis
had gasped and sat down very suddenly . . . then she was kneeling
and as the flaming monstrance slowly left the altar in the hands
of the priest, she heard a great rushing noise in her ears–the
crash of the bells was like hammer-blows . . . and then in a
moment that seemed eternal a great torrent rolled over her
heart–there was a shouting there and a lashing as of waves . . .
. . . She was calling, felt herself calling for Kieth, her lips
mouthing the words that would not come:
“Kieth! Oh, my God! KIETH!”
Suddenly she became aware of a new presence, something external,
in front of her, consummated and expressed in warm red tracery.
Then she knew. It was the window of St. Francis Xavier. Her mind
gripped at it, clung to it finally, and she felt herself calling
again endlessly, impotently–Kieth–Kieth!
Then out of a great stillness came a voice:
“BLESSED BE GOD.”
With a gradual rumble sounded the response rolling heavily
through the chapel:
“Blessed be God.”
The words sang instantly in her heart; the incense lay mystically
and sweetly peaceful upon the air, and THE CANDLE ON THE ALTAR
WENT OUT.
“Blessed be His Holy Name.”
“Blessed be His Holy Name.”
Everything blurred into a swinging mist. With a sound half-gasp,
half-cry she rocked on her feet and reeled backward into Kieth’s
suddenly outstretched arms.
V
“Lie still, child.”
She closed her eyes again. She was on the grass outside, pillowed
on Kieth’s arm, and Regan was dabbing her head with a cold towel.
“I’m all right,” she said quietly.
“I know, but just lie still a minute longer. It was too hot in
there. Jarvis felt it, too.”
She laughed as Regan again touched her gingerly with the towel.
“I’m all right,” she repeated.
But though a warm peace was falling her mind and heart she felt
oddly broken and chastened, as if some one had held her stripped
soul up and laughed.
VI
Half an hour later she walked leaning on Kieth’s arm down the
long central path toward the gate.
“It’s been such a short afternoon,” he sighed, “and I’m so sorry
you were sick, Lois.”
“Kieth, I’m feeling fine now, really; I wish you wouldn’t worry.”
“Poor old child. I didn’t realize that Benediction’d be a long
service for you after your hot trip out here and all.”
She laughed cheerfully.
“I guess the truth is I’m not much used to Benediction. Mass is
the limit of my religious exertions.”
She paused and then continued quickly:
“I don’t want to shock you, Kieth, but I can’t tell you how–how
INCONVENIENT being a Catholic is. It really doesn’t seem to apply
any more. As far as morals go, some of the wildest boys I know
are Catholics. And the brightest boys–I mean the ones who think
and read a lot, don’t seem to believe in much of anything any
more.”
“Tell me about it. The bus won’t be here for another half-hour.”
They sat down on a bench by the path.
“For instance, Gerald Carter, he’s published a novel. He
absolutely roars when people mention immortality. And then
Howa–well, another man I’ve known well, lately, who was Phi Beta
Kappa at Harvard says that no intelligent person can believe in
Supernatural Christianity. He says Christ was a great socialist,
though. Am I shocking you?”
She broke off suddenly.
Kieth smiled.
“You can’t shock a monk. He’s a professional shock-absorber.”
“Well,” she continued, “that’s about all. It seems so–so NARROW.
Church schools, for instance. There’s more freedom about things
that Catholic people can’t see–like birth control.”
Kieth winced, almost imperceptibly, but Lois saw it.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “everybody talks about everything now.”
“It’s probably better that way.”
“Oh, yes, much better. Well, that’s all, Kieth. I just wanted to
tell you why I’m a little–luke-warm, at present.”
“I’m not shocked, Lois. I understand better than you think. We
all go through those times. But I know it’ll come out all right,
child. There’s that gift of faith that we have, you and I,
that’ll carry us past the bad spots.”
He rose as he spoke and they started again down the path.
“I want you to pray for me sometimes, Lois. I think your prayers
would be about what I need. Because we’ve come very close in
these few hours, I think.”
Her eyes were suddenly shining.
“Oh we have, we have!” she cried. “I feel closer to you now than
to any one in the world.”
He stopped suddenly and indicated the side of the path.
“We might–just a minute—”
It was a pieta, a life-size statue of the Blessed Virgin set
within a semicircle of rocks.
Feeling a little self-conscious she dropped on her knees beside
him and made an unsuccessful attempt at prayer.
She was only half through when he rose. He took her arm again.
“I wanted to thank Her for letting as have this day together,” he
said simply.
Lois felt a sudden lump in her throat and she wanted to say
something that would tell him how much it had meant to her, too.
But she found no words.
“I’ll always remember this,” he continued, his voice trembling a
little—”this summer day with you. It’s been just what I
expected. You’re just what I expected, Lois.”
“I’m awfully glad, Keith.”
“You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of
you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the
beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful
little girl with wondering, pure eyes–and I used to build dreams
about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I
think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near
me–even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea
of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a
million things came up to me and said: ‘Look here at me! See, I’m
Life. You’re turning your back on it!’ All the way through that
shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead
of me, very frail and clear and wonderful.”
Lois was crying softly. They had reached the gate and she rested
her elbow on it and dabbed furiously at her eyes.
“And then later, child, when you were sick I knelt all one night
and asked God to spare you for me–for I knew then that I wanted
more; He had taught me to want more. I wanted to know you moved
and breathed in the same world with me. I saw you growing up,
that white innocence of yours changing to a flame and burning to
give light to other weaker souls. And then I wanted some day to
take your children on my knee and hear them call the crabbed old
monk Uncle Kieth.”
He seemed to be laughing now as he talked.
“Oh, Lois, Lois, I was asking God for more then. I wanted the
letters you’d write me and the place I’d have at your table. I
wanted an awful lot, Lois, dear.”
“You’ve got me, Kieth,” she sobbed “you know it, say you know it.
Oh, I’m acting like a baby but I didn’t think you’d be this way,
and I–oh, Kieth–Kieth—”
He took her hand and patted it softly.
“Here’s the bus. You’ll come again won’t you?”
She put her hands on his cheeks, add drawing his head down,
pressed her tear-wet face against his.
“Oh, Kieth, brother, some day I’ll tell you something.”
He helped her in, saw her take down her handkerchief and smile
bravely at him, as the driver kicked his whip and the bus rolled
off. Then a thick cloud of dust rose around it and she was gone.
For a few minutes he stood there on the road his hand on the
gate-post, his lips half parted in a smile.
“Lois,” he said aloud in a sort of wonder, “Lois, Lois.”
Later, some probationers passing noticed him kneeling before the
pieta, and coming back after a time found him still there. And he
was there until twilight came down and the courteous trees grew
garrulous overhead and the crickets took up their burden of song
in the dusky grass.
VII
The first clerk in the telegraph booth in the Baltimore Station
whistled through his buck teeth at the second clerk:
“S’matter?”
“See that girl–no, the pretty one with the big black dots on her
veil. Too late–she’s gone. You missed somep’n.”
“What about her?”
“Nothing. ‘Cept she’s damn good-looking. Came in here yesterday
and sent a wire to some guy to meet her somewhere. Then a minute
ago she came in with a telegram all written out and was standin’
there goin’ to give it to me when she changed her mind or somep’n
and all of a sudden tore it up.”
“Hm.”
The first clerk came around tile counter and picking up the two
pieces of paper from the floor put them together idly. The second
clerk read them over his shoulder and subconsciously counted the
words as he read. There were just thirteen.
“This is in the way of a permanent goodbye. I should suggest
Italy.
“Lois.”
“Tore it up, eh?” said the second clerk.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
June 20th, 2007
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of
the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow
expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this
ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few
of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional’s deaf
sister–and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who
might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the
gallery.
The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker
chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and
ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine;
a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy
hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of
the balcony was critical, it occasionally showed grudging
admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies
over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the
summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world,
and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will
dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more
popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the
parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.
But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the
stage to see the actors’ faces and catch the subtler byplay. It
can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory
deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which
states that every young man with a large income leads the life of
a hunted partridge. It never really appreciates the drama of the
shifting, semi-cruel world of adolescence. No; boxes,
orchestra-circle, principals, and chorus be represented by the
medley of faces and voices that sway to the plaintive African
rhythm of Dyer’s dance orchestra.
>From sixteen-year-old Otis Ormonde, who has two more years at
Hill School, to G. Reece Stoddard, over whose bureau at home
hangs a Harvard law diploma; from little Madeleine Hogue, whose
hair still feels strange and uncomfortable on top of her head, to
Bessie MacRae, who has been the life of the party a little too
long–more than ten years–the medley is not only the centre of
the stage but contains the only people capable of getting an
unobstructed view of it.
With a flourish and a bang the music stops. The couples exchange
artificial, effortless smiles, facetiously repeat “LA-de-DA-DA
dum-DUM,” and then the clatter of young feminine voices soars
over the burst of clapping.
A few disappointed stags caught in midfloor as they bad been
about to cut in subsided listlessly back to the walls, because
this was not like the riotous Christmas dances–these summer
hops were considered just pleasantly warm and exciting, where
even the younger marrieds rose and performed ancient waltzes and
terrifying fox trots to the tolerant amusement of their younger
brothers and sisters.
Warren McIntyre, who casually attended Yale, being one of the
unfortunate stags, felt in his dinner-coat pocket for a cigarette
and strolled out onto the wide, semidark veranda, where couples
were scattered at tables, filling the lantern-hung night with
vague words and hazy laughter. He nodded here and there at the
less absorbed and as he passed each couple some half-forgotten
fragment of a story played in his mind, for it was not a large
city and every one was Who’s Who to every one else’s past. There,
for example, were Jim Strain and Ethel Demorest, who had been
privately engaged for three years. Every one knew that as soon as
Jim managed to hold a job for more than two months she would
marry him. Yet how bored they both looked, and how wearily Ethel
regarded Jim sometimes, as if she wondered why she had trained
the vines of her affection on such a wind-shaken poplar.
Warren was nineteen and rather pitying with those of his friends
who hadn’t gone East to college. But, like most boys, he bragged
tremendously about the girls of his city when he was away from
it. There was Genevieve Ormonde, who regularly made the rounds of
dances, house-parties, and football games at Princeton, Yale,
Williams, and Cornell; there was black-eyed Roberta Dillon, who
was quite as famous to her own generation as Hiram Johnson or Ty
Cobb; and, of course, there was Marjorie Harvey, who besides
having a fairylike face and a dazzling, bewildering tongue was
already justly celebrated for having turned five cart-wheels in
succession during the last pump-and-slipper dance at New Haven.
Warren, who had grown up across the street from Marjorie, had
long been “crazy about her.” Sometimes she seemed to reciprocate
his feeling with a faint gratitude, but she had tried him by her
infallible test and informed him gravely that she did not love
him. Her test was that when she was away from him she forgot him
and had affairs with other boys. Warren found this discouraging,
especially as Marjorie had been making little trips all summer,
and for the first two or three days after each arrival home he
saw great heaps of mail on the Harveys’ hall table addressed to
her in various masculine handwritings. To make matters worse, all
during the month of August she had been visited by her cousin
Bernice from Eau Claire, and it seemed impossible to see her
alone. It was always necessary to hunt round and find some one to
take care of Bernice. As August waned this was becoming more and
more difficult.
Much as Warren worshipped Marjorie he had to admit that Cousin
Bernice was sorta dopeless. She was pretty, with dark hair and
high color, but she was no fun on a party. Every Saturday night
he danced a long arduous duty dance with her to please Marjorie,
but he had never been anything but bored in her company.
“Warren”—a soft voice at his elbow broke in upon his thoughts,
and he turned to see Marjorie, flushed and radiant as usual. She
laid a hand on his shoulder and a glow settled almost
imperceptibly over him.
“Warren,” she whispered “do something for me–dance with Bernice.
She’s been stuck with little Otis Ormonde for almost an
hour.”
Warren’s glow faded.
“Why–sure,” he answered half-heartedly.
“You don’t mind, do you? I’ll see that you don’t get stuck.”
“‘Sall right.”
Marjorie smiled–that smile that was thanks enough.
“You’re an angel, and I’m obliged loads.”
With a sigh the angel glanced round the veranda, but Bernice and
Otis were not in sight. He wandered back inside, and there in
front of the women’s dressing-room he found Otis in the centre of
a group of young men who were convulsed with laughter. Otis was
brandishing a piece of timber he had picked up, and discoursing
volubly.
“She’s gone in to fix her hair,” he announced wildly. “I’m
waiting to dance another hour with her.”
Their laughter was renewed.
“Why don’t some of you cut in?” cried Otis resentfully. “She
likes more variety.”
“Why, Otis,” suggested a friend “you’ve just barely got used to
her.”
“Why the two-by-four, Otis?” inquired Warren, smiling.
“The two-by-four? Oh, this? This is a club. When she comes out
I’ll hit her on the head and knock her in again.”
Warren collapsed on a settee and howled with glee.
“Never mind, Otis,” he articulated finally. “I’m relieving you
this time.”
Otis simulated a sudden fainting attack and handed the stick to
Warren.
“If you need it, old man,” he said hoarsely.
No matter how beautiful or brilliant a girl may be, the
reputation of not being frequently cut in on makes her position
at a dance unfortunate. Perhaps boys prefe