Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (322 page)

Fidgeting, she looked up and down the street, while Riply, in astonishment and dismay, tried to take her arm.

“Come on,” he urged. “Didn’t I have a date with you first?”

“But I didn’t know whether you’d come or not,” she said perversely.

Elwood and the two sisters added their entreaties.

“Maybe I could go on the Ferris wheel,” she said grudgingly, “but not the Old Mill. This fellow would be sore.”

Riply’s confidence reeled with the blow; his mouth fell ajar, his hand desperately pawed her arm. Basil stood glancing now with agonized politeness at his own girl, now at the others, with an expression of infinite reproach. Elwood alone was successful and content.

“Let’s go on the Ferris wheel,” he said impatiently. “We can’t stand here all night.”

At the ticket booth the recalcitrant Olive hesitated once more, frowning and glancing about as if she still hoped Riply’s rival would appear.

But when the swooping cars came to rest she let herself be persuaded in, and the three couples, with their troubles, were hoisted slowly into the air.

As the car rose, following the imagined curve of the sky, it occurred to Basil how much he would have enjoyed it in other company, or even alone, the fair twinkling beneath him with new variety, the velvet quality of the darkness that is on the edge of light and is barely permeated by its last attenuations. But he was unable to hurt anyone whom he thought of as an inferior. After a minute he turned to the girl beside him.

“Do you live in St. Paul or Minneapolis?” he inquired formally.

“St. Paul. I go to Number 7 School.” Suddenly she moved closer. “I bet you’re not so slow,” she encouraged him.

He put his arm around her shoulder and found it warm. Again they reached the top of the wheel and the sky stretched out overhead, again they lapsed down through gusts of music from remote calliopes. Keeping his eyes turned carefully away, Basil pressed her to him, and as they rose again into darkness, leaned and kissed her cheek.

The significance of the contact stirred him, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her face--he was thankful when a gong struck below and the machine settled slowly to rest.

The three couples were scarcely reunited outside when Olive uttered a yelp of excitement.

“There he is!” she cried. “That Bill Jones I met this afternoon--that I had the date with.”

A youth of their own age was approaching, stepping like a circus pony and twirling, with the deftness of a drum major, a small rattan cane. Under the cautious alias, the three boys recognized a friend and contemporary--none other than the fascinating Hubert Blair.

He came nearer. He greeted them all with a friendly chuckle. He took off his cap, spun it, dropped it, caught it, set it jauntily on the side of his head.

“You’re a nice one,” he said to Olive. “I waited here fifteen minutes this evening.”

He pretended to belabor her with the cane; she giggled with delight. Hubert Blair possessed the exact tone that all girls of fourteen, and a somewhat cruder type of grown women, find irresistible. He was a gymnastic virtuoso and his figure was in constant graceful motion; he had a jaunty piquant nose, a disarming laugh and a shrewd talent for flattery. When he took a piece of toffee from his pocket, placed it on his forehead, shook it off and caught it in his mouth, it was obvious to any disinterested observer that Riply was destined to see no more of Olive that night.

So fascinated were the group that they failed to see Basil’s eyes brighten with a ray of hope, his feet take four quick steps backward with all the guile of a gentleman burglar, his torso writhe through the parting of a tent wall into the deserted premises of the Harvester and Tractor Show. Once safe, Basil’s tensity relaxed, and as he considered Riply’s unconsciousness of the responsibilities presently to devolve upon him, he bent double with hilarious laughter in the darkness.

Ten minutes later, in a remote part of the fairgrounds, a youth made his way briskly and cautiously toward the fireworks exhibit, swinging as he walked a recently purchased rattan cane. Several girls eyed him with interest, but he passed them haughtily; he was weary of people for a brief moment--a moment which he had almost mislaid in the bustle of life--he was enjoying his long pants.

He bought a bleacher seat and followed the crowd around the race track, seeking his section. A few Union troops were moving cannon about in preparation for the Battle of Gettysburg, and, stopping to watch them, he was hailed by Gladys Van Schellinger from the box behind.

“Oh, Basil, don’t you want to come and sit with us?”

He turned about and was absorbed. Basil exchanged courtesies with Mr. and Mrs. Van Schellinger and he was affably introduced to several other people as “Alice Riley’s boy,” and a chair was placed for him beside Gladys in front.

“Oh, Basil,” she whispered, glowing at him, “isn’t this fun?”

Distinctly, it was. He felt a vast wave of virtue surge through him. How anyone could have preferred the society of those common girls was at this moment incomprehensible.

“Basil, won’t it be fun to go East? Maybe we’ll be on the same train.”

“I can hardly wait,” he agreed gravely. “I’ve got on long pants. I had to have them to go away to school.”

One of the ladies in the box leaned toward him. “I know your mother very well,” she said. “And I know another friend of yours. I’m Riply Buckner’s aunt.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Riply’s such a nice boy,” beamed Mrs. Van Schillinger.

And then, as if the mention of his name had evoked him, Riply Buckner came suddenly into sight. Along the now empty and brightly illuminated race track came a short but monstrous procession, a sort of Lilliputian burlesque of the wild gay life. At its head marched Hubert Blair and Olive, Hubert prancing and twirling his cane like a drum major to the accompaniment of her appreciative screams of laughter. Next followed Elwood Leaming and his young lady, leaning so close together that they walked with difficulty, apparently wrapped in each other’s arms. And bringing up the rear without glory were Riply Buckner and Basil’s late companion, rivaling Olive in exhibitionist sound.

Fascinated, Basil stared at Riply, the expression of whose face was curiously mixed. At moments he would join in the general tone of the parade with silly guffaw, at others a pained expression would flit across his face, as if he doubted that, after all, the evening was a success.

The procession was attracting considerable notice--so much that not even Riply was aware of the particular attention focused upon him from this box, though he passed by it four feet away. He was out of hearing when a curious rustling sigh passed over its inhabitants and a series of discreet whispers began.

“What funny girls,” Gladys said. “Was that first boy Hubert Blair?”

“Yes.” Basil was listening to a fragment of conversation behind:

“His mother will certainly hear of this in the morning.”

As long as Riply had been in sight, Basil had been in an agony of shame for him, but now a new wave of virtue, even stronger than the first, swept over him. His memory of the incident would have reached actual happiness, save for the fact that Riply’s mother might not let him go away to school. And a few minutes later, even that seemed endurable. Yet Basil was not a mean boy. The natural cruelty of his species toward the doomed was not yet disguised by hypocrisy--that was all.

In a burst of glory, to the alternate strains of Dixie and The Star-Spangled Banner, the Battle of Gettysburg ended. Outside by the waiting cars, Basil, on a sudden impulse, went up to Riply’s aunt.

“I think it would be sort of a--a mistake to tell Riply’s mother. He didn’t do any harm. He--”

Annoyed by the event of the evening, she turned on him cool, patronizing eyes.

“I shall do as I think best,” she said briefly.

He frowned. Then he turned and got into the Van Schellinger limousine.

Sitting beside Gladys in the little seats, he loved her suddenly. His hand swung gently against hers from time to time and he felt the warm bond that they were both going away to school tightened around them and pulling them together.

“Can’t you come and see me tomorrow?” she urged him. “Mother’s going to be away and she says I can have anybody I like.”

“All right.”

As the car slowed up for Basil’s house, she leaned toward him swiftly. “Basil--”

He waited. Her breath was warm on his cheek. He wanted her to hurry, or, when the engine stopped, her parents, dozing in back, might hear what she said. She seemed beautiful to him then; that vague unexciting quality about her was more than compensated for by her exquisite delicacy, the fine luxury of her life.

“Basil--Basil, when you come tomorrow, will you bring that Hubert Blair?”

The chauffeur opened the door and Mr. and Mrs. Van Schellinger woke up with a start. When the car had driven off, Basil stood looking after it thoughtfully until it turned the corner of the street.

AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR

Esquire
(August 1936)

When he woke up he felt better than he had for many weeks, a fact that became plain to him negatively--he did not feel ill. He leaned for a moment against the door frame between his bedroom and bath till he could be sure he was not dizzy. Not a bit, not even when he stooped for a slipper under the bed.

It was a bright April morning, he had no idea what time because his clock was long unwound but as he went back through the apartment to the kitchen he saw that his daughter had breakfasted and departed and that the mail was in, so it was after nine.

“I think I’ll go out today,” he said to the maid.

“Do you good--it’s a lovely day.” She was from New Orleans, with the features and coloring of an Arab.

“I want two eggs like yesterday and toast, orange juice and tea.”

He lingered for a moment in his daughter’s end of the apartment and read his mail. It was an annoying mail with nothing cheerful in it--mostly bills and advertisements with the diurnal Oklahoma school boy and his gaping autograph album. Sam Goldwyn might do a ballet picture with Spessiwitza and might not--it would all have to wait till Mr. Goldwyn got back from Europe when he might have half a dozen new ideas. Paramount wanted a release on a poem that had appeared in one of the author’s books, as they didn’t know whether it was an original or quoted. Maybe they were going to get a title from it. Anyhow he had no more equity in that property--he had sold the silent rights many years ago and the sound rights last year.

“Never any luck with movies,” he said to himself. “Stick to your last, boy.”

He looked out the window during breakfast at the students changing classes on the college campus across the way.

“Twenty years ago I was changing classes,” he said to the maid. She laughed her débutante’s laugh.

“I’ll need a check,” she said, “if you’re going out.”

“Oh, I’m not going out yet. I’ve got two or three hours’ work. I meant late this afternoon.”

“Going for a drive?”

“I wouldn’t drive that old junk--I’d sell it for fifty dollars. I’m going on the top of a bus.”

After breakfast he lay down for fifteen minutes. Then he went into the study and began to work.

The problem was a magazine story that had become so thin in the middle that it was about to blow away. The plot was like climbing endless stairs, he had no element of surprise in reserve, and the characters who started so bravely day-before-yesterday couldn’t have qualified for a newspaper serial.

“Yes, I certainly need to get out,” he thought. “I’d like to drive down the Shenandoah Valley, or go to Norfolk on the boat.”

But both of these ideas were impractical--they took time and energy and he had not much of either--what there was must be conserved for work. He went through the manuscript underlining good phrases in red crayon and after tucking these into a file slowly tore up the rest of the story and dropped it in the waste-basket. Then he walked the room and smoked, occasionally talking to himself.

“Wee-l, let’s see--”

“Nau-ow, the next thing--would be--”

“Now let’s see, now--”

After awhile he sat down thinking:

“I’m just stale--I shouldn’t have touched a pencil for two days.”

He looked through the heading “Story Ideas” in his notebook until the maid came to tell him his secretary was on the phone--part time secretary since he had been ill.

“Not a thing,” he said. “I just tore up everything I’d written. It wasn’t worth a damn. I’m going out this afternoon.”

“Good for you. It’s a fine day.”

“Better come up tomorrow afternoon--there’s a lot of mail and bills.”

He shaved, and then as a precaution rested five minutes before he dressed. It was exciting to be going out--he hoped the elevator boys wouldn’t say they were glad to see him up and he decided to go down the back elevator where they did not know him. He put on his best suit with the coat and trousers that didn’t match. He had bought only two suits in six years but they were the very best suits--the coat alone of this one had cost a hundred and ten dollars. As he must have a destination--it wasn’t good to go places without a destination--he put a tube of shampoo ointment in his pocket for his barber to use, and also a small phial of luminol.

“The perfect neurotic,” he said, regarding himself in the mirror. “By-product of an idea, slag of a dream.”

II

He went into the kitchen and said good-by to the maid as if he were going to Little America. Once in the war he had commandeered an engine on sheer bluff and had it driven from New York to Washington to keep from being A.W.O.L. Now he stood carefully on the street corner waiting for the light to change, while young people hurried past him with a fine disregard for traffic. On the bus corner under the trees it was green and cool and he thought of Stonewall Jackson’s last words: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” Those Civil War leaders seemed to have realized very suddenly how tired they were--Lee shriveling into another man, Grant with his desperate memoir-writing at the end.