Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (328 page)

With every detail imagined, with every refinement of jealousy beating in his mind, including even envy for their community of misfortune as they stood together in the vestibule, Basil went up to Miss Beecher’s next day. Radiant and glowing, more mysteriously desirable than ever, wearing her very sins like stars, she came down to him in her plain white uniform dress, and his heart turned over at the kindness of her eyes.

“You were wonderful to come up, Basil. I’m so excited having a beau so soon. Everybody’s jealous of me.”

The glass doors hinged like French windows, shutting them in on all sides. It was hot. Down through three more compartments he could see another couple--a girl and her brother, Minnie said--and from time to time they moved and gestured soundlessly, as unreal in these tiny human conservatories as the vase of paper flowers on the table. Basil walked up and down nervously.

“Minnie, I want to be a great man some day and I want to do everything for you. I understand you’re tired of me now. I don’t know how it happened, but somebody else came along--it doesn’t matter. There isn’t any hurry. But I just want you to--oh, remember me in some different way--try to think of me as you used to, not as if I was just another one you threw over. Maybe you’d better not see me for a while--I mean at the dance this fall. Wait till I’ve accomplished some big scene or deed, you know, and I can show it to you and say I did that all for you.”

It was very futile and young and sad. Once, carried away by the tragedy of it all, he was on the verge of tears, but he controlled himself to that extent. There was sweat on his forehead. He sat across the room from her, and Minnie sat on the couch, looking at the floor, and said several times: “Can’t we be friends, Basil? I always think of you as one of my best friends.”

Toward the end she rose patiently.

“Don’t you want to see the chapel?”

They walked upstairs and he glanced dismally into a small dark space, with her living, sweet-smelling presence half a yard from his shoulder. He was almost glad when the funereal business was over and he walked out of the school into the fresh autumn air.

Back in New Haven he found two pieces of mail on his desk. One was a notice from the registrar telling him that he had failed his trigonometry examination and would be ineligible for football. The second was a photograph of Minnie--the picture that he had liked and ordered two of in Mobile. At first the inscription puzzled him: “L. L. from E. G. L. B. Trains are bad for the heart.” Then suddenly he realized what had happened, and threw himself on his bed, shaken with wild laughter.

III

Three weeks later, having requested and passed a special examination in trigonometry, Basil began to look around him gloomily to see if there was anything left in life. Not since his miserable first year at school had he passed through such a period of misery; only now did he begin for the first time to be aware of Yale. The quality of romantic speculation reawoke, and, listlessly at first, then with growing determination, he set about merging himself into this spirit which had fed his dreams so long.

“I want to be chairman of the News or the Record,” thought his old self one October morning, “and I want to get my letter in football, and I want to be in Skull and Bones.”

Whenever the vision of Minnie and Le Moyne on the train occurred to him, he repeated this phrase like an incantation. Already he thought with shame of having stayed over in Mobile, and there began to be long strings of hours when he scarcely brooded about her at all.

He had missed half of the freshman football season, and it was with scant hope that he joined the squad on Yale field. Dressed in his black and white St. Regis jersey, amid the motley of forty schools, he looked enviously at the proud two dozen in Yale blue. At the end of four days he was reconciling himself to obscurity for the rest of the season when the voice of Carson, assistant coach, singled him suddenly out of a crowd of scrub backs.

“Who was throwing those passes just now?”

“I was, sir.”

“I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“I just got eligible.”

“Know the signals?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you take this team down the field--ends, Krutch and Bispam; tackles--”

A moment later he heard his own voice snapping out on the crisp air: “Thirty-two, sixty-five, sixty-seven, twenty-two--”

There was a ripple of laughter.

“Wait a minute! Where’d you learn to call signals like that?” said Carson.

“Why, we had a Harvard coach, sir.”

“Well, just drop the Haughton emphasis. You’ll get everybody too excited.”

After a few minutes they were called in and told to put on headgears.

“Where’s Waite?” Carson asked. “Test, eh? Well, you then--what’s your name?--in the black and white sweater?”

“Lee.”

“You call signals. And let’s see you get some life into this outfit. Some of you guards and tackles are big enough for the varsity. Keep them on their toes, you--what’s your name?”

“Lee.”

They lined up with possession of the ball on the freshmen’s twenty-yard line. They were allowed unlimited downs, but when, after a dozen plays, they were in approximately that same place, the ball was given to the first team.

“That’s that!” thought Basil. “That finishes me.”

But an hour later, as they got out of the bus, Carson spoke to him:

“Did you weigh this afternoon?”

“Yes. Hundred and fifty-eight.”

“Let me give you a tip--you’re still playing prep-school football. You’re still satisfied with stopping them. The idea here is that if you lay them down hard enough you wear them out. Can you kick?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, it’s too bad you didn’t get out sooner.”

A week later his name was read out as one of those to go to Andover. Two quarterbacks ranked ahead of him, Danziger and a little hard rubber ball of a man, named Appleton, and Basil watched the game from the sidelines, but when, the following Tuesday, Danziger splintered his arm in practice, Basil was ordered to report to training table.

On the eve of the game with the Princeton freshmen, the egress of the student body to Princeton for the Varsity encounter left the campus almost deserted. Deep autumn had set in, with a crackling wind from the west, and walking back to his room after final skull practice, Basil felt the old lust for glory sweep over him. Le Moyne was playing end on the Princeton freshman and it was probable that Minnie would be in the stands, but now, as he ran along the springy grass in front of Osborne, swaying to elude imaginary tacklers, the fact seemed of less importance than the game. Like most Americans, he was seldom able really to grasp the moment, to say: “This, for me, is the great equation by which everything else will be measured; this is the golden time,” but for once the present was sufficient. He was going to spend two hours in a country where life ran at the pace he demanded of it.

The day was fair and cool; an unimpassioned crowd, mostly townsmen, was scattered through the stands. The Princeton freshmen looked sturdy and solid in their diagonal stripes, and Basil picked out Le Moyne, noting coldly that he was exceptionally fast, and bigger than he had seemed in his clothes. On an impulse Basil turned and searched for Minnie in the crowd, but he could not find her. A minute later the whistle blew; sitting at the coach’s side, he concentrated all his faculties on the play.

The first half was played between the thirty-yard lines. The main principles of Yale’s offense seemed to Basil too simple; less effective than the fragments of the Haughton system he had learned at school, while the Princeton tactics, still evolved in Sam White’s long shadow, were built around a punter and the hope of a break. When the break came, it was Yale’s. At the start of the second half Princeton fumbled and Appleton sent over a drop kick from the thirty-yard line.

It was his last act of the day. He was hurt on the next kick-off and, to a burst of freshmen cheering, assisted from the game.

With his heart in a riot, Basil sprinted out on the field. He felt an overpowering strangeness, and it was someone else in his skin who called the first signals and sent an unsuccessful play through the line. As he forced his eyes to take in the field slowly, they met Le Moyne’s, and Le Moyne grinned at him. Basil called for a short pass over the line, throwing it himself for a gain of seven yards. He sent Cullum off tackle for three more and a first down. At the forty, with more latitude, his mind began to function smoothly and surely. His short passes worried the Princeton fullback, and, in consequence, the running gains through the line were averaging four yards instead of two.

At the Princeton forty he dropped back to kick formation and tried Le Moyne’s end, but Le Moyne went under the interfering halfback and caught Basil by a foot. Savagely Basil tugged himself free, but too late--the halfback bowled him over. Again Le Moyne’s face grinned at him, and Basil hated it. He called the same end and, with Cullum carrying the ball, they rolled over Le Moyne six yards, to Princeton’s thirty-two. He was slowing down, was he? Then run him ragged! System counseled a pass, but he heard himself calling the end again. He ran parallel to the line, saw his interference melt away and Le Moyne, his jaw set, coming for him. Instead of cutting in, Basil turned full about and tried to reverse his field. When he was trapped he had lost fifteen yards.

A few minutes later the ball changed hands and he ran back to the safety position thinking: “They’d yank me if they had anybody to put in my place.”

The Princeton team suddenly woke up. A long pass gained thirty yards. A fast new back dazzled his way through the line for another first down. Yale was on the defensive, but even before they had realized the fact, the disaster had happened. Basil was drawn on an apparently developed play; too late he saw the ball shoot out of scrimmage to a loose end; saw, as he was neatly blocked, that the Princeton substitutes were jumping around wildly, waving their blankets. They had scored.

He got up with his heart black, but his brain cool. Blunders could be atoned for--if they only wouldn’t take him out. The whistle blew for the quarter, and squatting on the turf with the exhausted team, he made himself believe that he hadn’t lost their confidence, kept his face intent and rigid, refusing no man’s eye. He had made his errors for today.

On the kick-off he ran the ball back to the thirty-five, and a steady rolling progress began. The short passes, a weak spot inside tackle, Le Moyne’s end. Le Moyne was tired now. His face was drawn and dogged as he smashed blindly into the interference; the ball carrier eluded him--Basil or another.

Thirty more to go--twenty--over Le Moyne again. Disentangling himself from the pile, Basil met the Southerner’s weary glance and insulted him in a crisp voice:

“You’ve quit, Littleboy. They better take you out.”

He started the next play at him and, as Le Moyne charged in furiously, tossed a pass over his head for the score. Yale 10, Princeton 7. Up and down the field again, with Basil fresher every minute and another score in sight, and suddenly the game was over.

Trudging off the field, Basil’s eye ranged over the stands, but he could not see her.

“I wonder if she knows I was pretty bad,” he thought, and then bitterly: “If I don’t, he’ll tell her.”

He could hear him telling her in that soft Southern voice--the voice that had wooed her so persuasively that afternoon on the train. As he emerged from the dressing room an hour later he ran into Le Moyne coming out of the visitors’ quarters next door. He looked at Basil with an expression at once uncertain and angry.

“Hello, Lee.” After a momentary hesitation he added: “Good work.”

“Hello, Le Moyne,” said Basil, clipping his words.

Le Moyne turned away, turned back again.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Do you want to carry this any further?”

Basil didn’t answer. The bruised face and the bandaged hand assuaged his hatred a little, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. The game was over, and now Le Moyne would meet Minnie somewhere, make the defeat negligible in the victory of the night.

“If it’s about Minnie, you’re wasting your time being sore,” Le Moyne exploded suddenly. “I asked her to the game, but she didn’t come.”

“Didn’t she?” Basil was startled.

“That was it, eh? I wasn’t sure. I thought you were just trying to get my goat in there.” His eyes narrowed. “The young lady kicked me about a month ago.”

“Kicked you?”

“Threw me over. Got a little weary of me. She runs through things quickly.”

Basil perceived that his face was miserable.

“Who is it now?” he asked in more civil tone.

“It seems to be a classmate of yours named Jubal--and a mighty sad bird, if you ask me. She met him in New York the day before her school opened, and I hear it’s pretty heavy. She’ll be at the Lawn Club Dance tonight.”

IV

Basil had dinner at the Taft with Jobena Dorsey and her brother George. The Varsity had won at Princeton and the college was jubilant and enthusiastic; as they came in, a table of freshmen by the door gave Basil a hand.

“You’re getting very important,” Jobena said.

A year ago Basil had thought for a few weeks that he was in love with Jobena; when they next met he knew immediately that he was not.

“And why was that?” he asked her now, as they danced. “Why did it all go so quick?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Because I let it go.”

“You let it go?” he repeated. “I like that!”

“I decided you were too young.”

“Didn’t I have anything to do with it?”

She shook her head.

“That’s what Bernard Shaw says,” Basil admitted thoughtfully. “But I thought it was just about older people. So you go after the men.”

“Well, I should say not!” Her body stiffened indignantly in his arms. “The men are usually there, and the girl blinks at them or something. It’s just instinct.”

“Can’t a man make a girl fall for him?”

“Some men can--the ones who really don’t care.”

He pondered this awful fact for a moment and stowed it away for future examination. On the way to the Lawn Club he brought forth more questions.