Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (342 page)

Aghast, she led the way into the library. “What time is sister meeting you?” she asked when she could.

“Oh, in half an hour, if she isn’t delayed.”

She tried to be especially polite, to atone in advance for what impoliteness might be necessary later. In five minutes the bell rang again; there was the romantic figure on the porch, cut sharp and clear against the bleak sky; and up the steps behind him came Travis de Coppet and Ed Bement.

“Stay!” she whispered quickly. “These people will all go.”

“I’ve two hours,” he said. “Of course, I’ll wait if you want me to.”

She wanted to throw her arms around him then, but she controlled herself, even her hands. She introduced everyone, she sent for tea. The men asked Edward Dicer questions about the war and he parried them politely but restlessly.

After half an hour he asked Josephine: “Have you the time? I must keep track of my train.”

They might have noticed the watch on his own wrist and taken the hint, but he fascinated them all, as though they had isolated a rare specimen and were determined to find out all about it. Even had they realized Josephine’s state of mind, it would have seemed to them that she was selfish to want something of such general interest for her own.

The arrival of Constance, her married sister, did not help matters; again Dicer was caught up into the phenomenon of human curiosity. As the clock in the hall struck six, he shot a desperate glance at Josephine. With a belated appreciation of the situation, the group broke itself up. Constance took the Dillons upstairs to the other sitting room, the two young men went home.

Silence, save for the voices fading off on the stairs, the automobile crunching away on the snow outside. Before a word was said, Josephine rang for the maid, and instructing her that she was not at home, closed the door into the hall. Then she went and sat down on the couch next to him and clasped her hands and waited.

“Thank God,” he said. “I thought if they stayed another minute--”

“Wasn’t it terrible?”

“I came out here because of you. The night you left New York I was ten minutes late getting to the train because I was detained at the French propaganda office. I’m not much good at letters. Since then I’ve thought of nothing but getting out here to see you.”

“I felt sad.” But not now; now she was thinking that in a moment she would be in his arms, feeling the buttons of his tunic press bruisingly against her, feeling his diagonal belt as something that bound them both and made her part of him. There were no doubts, no reservations, he was everything she wanted.

“I’m over here for six months more--perhaps a year. Then, if this damned war goes on, I’ll have to go back. I suppose I haven’t really got the right--”

“Wait--wait!” she cried. She wanted a moment longer to taste, to feel fully her happiness. “Wait,” she repeated, putting her hand on his. She felt every object in the room vividly; she saw the seconds passing, each one carrying a load of loveliness toward the future. “All right; now tell me.”

“Just that I love you,” he whispered. She was in his arms, her hair against his cheek. “We haven’t known each other long, and you’re only eighteen, but I’ve learned to be afraid of waiting.”

Now she leaned her head back until she was looking up at him, supported by his arm. Her neck curved gracefully, full and soft, and she leaned in toward his shoulder, as she knew how, so that her lips were every minute closer to him. “Now,” she thought. He gave a funny little sigh and pulled her face up to his.

After a minute she leaned away from him and twisted herself upright.

“Darling--darling--darling,” he said.

She looked at him, stared at him. Gently he pulled her over again and kissed her. This time, when she sat up, she rose and went across the room, where she opened a dish of almonds and dropped some in her mouth. Then she came back and sat beside him, looking straight ahead, then darting a sudden glance at him.

“What are you thinking, darling, darling Josephine?” She didn’t answer; he put both hands over hers. “What are you feeling, then?”

As he breathed, she could hear the faint sound of his leather belt moving on his shoulder; she could feel his strong, kind handsome eyes looking at her; she could feel his proud self feeding on glory as others feed on security; she heard the jingle of spurs ring in his strong, rich, compelling voice.

“I feel nothing at all,” she said.

“What do you mean?” He was startled.

“Oh, help me!” she cried. “Help me!”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Kiss me again.”

He kissed her. This time he held on to her and looked down into her face.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “You mean you don’t love me?”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“But you did love me.”

“I don’t know.”

He let her go. She went across the room and sat down.

“I don’t understand,” he said after a minute.

“I think you’re perfect,” she said, her lips quivering.

“But I’m not--thrilling to you?”

“Oh, yes, very thrilling. I was thrilled all afternoon.”

“Then what is it, darling?”

“I don’t know. When you kissed me I wanted to laugh.” It made her sick to say this, but a desperate, interior honesty drove her on. She saw his eyes change, saw him withdrawing a little from her. “Help me,” she repeated.

“Help you how? You’ll have to be more definite. I love you; I thought perhaps you loved me. That’s all. If I don’t please you--”

“But you do. You’re everything--you’re everything I’ve always wanted.” Her voice continued inside herself: “But I’ve had everything.”

“But you simply don’t love me.”

“I’ve got nothing to give you. I don’t feel anything at all.”

He got up abruptly. He felt her vast, tragic apathy pervading the room, and it set up an indifference in him now, too--a lot of things suddenly melted out of him.

“Good-by.”

“You won’t help me,” she murmured abstractedly.

“How in the devil can I help you?” he answered impatiently. “You feel indifferent to me. You can’t change that, but neither can I. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

She was very tired and lay face downward on the couch with that awful, awful realization that all the old things are true. One cannot both spend and have. The love of her life had come by, and looking in her empty basket, she had found not a flower left for him--not one. After a while she wept.

“Oh, what have I done to myself?” she wailed. “What have I done? What have I done?”

FINANCING FINNEGAN

Esquire
(January 1938)

Finnegan and I have the same literary agent to sell our writings for us--but though I’d often been in Mr. Cannon’s office just before and just after Finnegan’s visits, I had never met him. Likewise we had the same publisher and often when I arrived there Finnegan had just departed. I gathered from a thoughtful sighing way in which they spoke of him--

“Ah--Finnegan--”

“Oh yes, Finnegan was here.”

--that the distinguished author’s visit had been not uneventful. Certain remarks implied that he had taken something with him when he went--manuscripts, I supposed, one of those great successful novels of his. He had taken “it” off for a final revision, a last draft, of which he was rumored to make ten in order to achieve that facile flow, that ready wit, which distinguished his work. I discovered only gradually that most of Finnegan’s visits had to do with money.

“I’m sorry you’re leaving,” Mr. Cannon would tell me, “Finnegan will be here tomorrow.” Then after a thoughtful pause, “I’ll probably have to spend some time with him.”

I don’t know what note in his voice reminded me of a talk with a nervous bank president when Dillinger was reported in the vicinity. His eyes looked out into the distance and he spoke as to himself:

“Of course he may be bringing a manuscript. He has a novel he’s working on, you know. And a play too.”

He spoke as though he were talking about some interesting but remote events of the cinquecento; but his eyes became more hopeful as he added: “Or maybe a short story.”

“He’s very versatile, isn’t he?” I said.

“Oh yes,” Mr. Cannon perked up. “He can do anything--anything when he puts his mind to it. There’s never been such a talent.”

“I haven’t seen much of his work lately.”

“Oh, but he’s working hard. Some of the magazines have stories of his that they’re holding.”

“Holding for what?”

“Oh, for a more appropriate time--an upswing. They like to think they have something of Finnegan’s.”

His was indeed a name with ingots in it. His career had started brilliantly and if it had not kept up to its first exalted level, at least it started brilliantly all over again every few years. He was the perennial man of promise in American letters--what he could actually do with words was astounding, they glowed and coruscated--he wrote sentences, paragraphs, chapters that were masterpieces of fine weaving and spinning. It was only when I met some poor devil of a screen writer who had been trying to make a logical story out of one of his books that I realized he had his enemies.

“It’s all beautiful when you read it,” this man said disgustedly, “but when you write it down plain it’s like a week in the nut-house.”

From Mr. Cannon’s office I went over to my publishers on Fifth Avenue and there too I learned in no time that Finnegan was expected tomorrow.

Indeed he had thrown such a long shadow before him that the luncheon where I expected to discuss my own work was largely devoted to Finnegan. Again I had the feeling that my host, Mr. George Jaggers, was talking not to me but to himself.

“Finnegan’s a great writer,” he said.

“Undoubtedly.”

“And he’s really quite all right, you know.”

As I hadn’t questioned the fact I inquired whether there was any doubt about it.

“Oh no,” he said hurriedly. “It’s just that he’s had such a run of hard luck lately--”

I shook my head sympathetically. “I know. That diving into a half-empty pool was a tough break.”

“Oh, it wasn’t half-empty. It was full of water. Full to the brim. You ought to hear Finnegan on the subject--he makes a side-splitting story of it. It seems he was in a run-down condition and just diving from the side of the pool, you know--” Mr. Jaggers pointed his knife and fork at the table, “and he saw some young girls diving from the fifteen-foot board. He says he thought of his lost youth and went up to do the same and made a beautiful swan dive--but his shoulder broke while he was still in the air.” He looked at me rather anxiously. “Haven’t you heard of cases like that--a ball player throwing his arm out of joint?”

I couldn’t think of any orthopedic parallels at the moment.

“And then,” he continued dreamily, “Finnegan had to write on the ceiling.”

“On the ceiling?”

“Practically. He didn’t give up writing--he has plenty of guts, that fellow, though you may not believe it. He had some sort of arrangement built that was suspended from the ceiling and he lay on his back and wrote in the air.”

I had to grant that it was a courageous arrangement.

“Did it affect his work?” I inquired. “Did you have to read his stories backward--like Chinese?”

“They were rather confused for a while,” he admitted, “but he’s all right now. I got several letters from him that sounded more like the old Finnegan--full of life and hope and plans for the future--”

The faraway look came into his face and I turned the discussion to affairs closer to my heart. Only when we were back in his office did the subject recur--and I blush as I write this because it includes confessing something I seldom do--reading another man’s telegram. It happened because Mr. Jaggers was intercepted in the hall and when I went into his office and sat down it was stretched out open before me:

WITH FIFTY I COULD AT LEAST PAY TYPIST AND GET HAIRCUT AND PENCILS LIFE HAS BECOME IMPOSSIBLE AND I EXIST ON DREAM OF GOOD NEWS DESPERATELY FINNEGAN

I couldn’t believe my eyes--fifty dollars, and I happened to know that Finnegan’s price for short stories was somewhere around three thousand. George Jaggers found me still staring dazedly at the telegram. After he read it he stared at me with stricken eyes.

“I don’t see how I can conscientiously do it,” he said.

I started and glanced around to make sure I was in the prosperous publishing office in New York. Then I understood--I had misread the telegram. Finnegan was asking for fifty thousand as an advance--a demand that would have staggered any publisher no matter who the writer was.

“Only last week,” said Mr. Jaggers disconsolately, “I sent him a hundred dollars. It puts my department in the red every season, so I don’t dare tell my partners any more. I take it out of my own pocket--give up a suit and a pair of shoes.”

“You mean Finnegan’s broke?”

“Broke!” He looked at me and laughed soundlessly--in fact I didn’t exactly like the way that he laughed. My brother had a nervous--but that is afield from this story. After a minute he pulled himself together. “You won’t say anything about this, will you? The truth is Finnegan’s been in a slump, he’s had blow after blow in the past few years, but now he’s snapping out of it and I know we’ll get back every cent we’ve--” He tried to think of a word but “given him” slipped out. This time it was he who was eager to change the subject.

Don’t let me give the impression that Finnegan’s affairs absorbed me during a whole week in New York--it was inevitable, though, that being much in the offices of my agent and my publisher, I happened in on a lot. For instance, two days later, using the telephone in Mr. Cannon’s office, I was accidentally switched in on a conversation he was having with George Jaggers. It was only partly eavesdropping, you see, because I could only hear one end of the conversation and that isn’t as bad as hearing it all.

“But I got the impression he was in good health . . . he did say something about his heart a few months ago but I understood it got well . . . yes, and he talked about some operation he wanted to have--I think he said it was cancer. . . . Well, I felt like telling him I had a little operation up my sleeve too, that I’d have had by now if I could afford it. . . . No, I didn’t say it. He seemed in such good spirits that it would have been a shame to bring him down. He’s starting a story today, he read me some of it on the phone. . . .