Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (377 page)

“You’ve lived so much in Europe that I don’t often see you,” he said to Teddy. Teddy didn’t answer and Stuart Oldhorne turned to Helen: “I’m early; I didn’t realize--”

“You came at the right time,” said Teddy rather harshly. “I stayed to play you my congratulations.”

To Helen’s alarm, he turned and ran his fingers over the keyboard. Then he began.

What he was playing, neither Helen nor Stuart knew, but Teddy always remembered. He put his mind in order with a short résumé of the history of music, beginning with some chords from The Messiah and ending with Debussy’s La Plus Que Lent, which had an evocative quality for him, because he had first heard it the day his brother died. Then, pausing for an instant, he began to play more thoughtfully, and the lovers on the sofa could feel that they were alone--that he had left them and had no more traffic with them--and Helen’s discomfort lessened. But the flight, the elusiveness of the music, piqued her, gave her a feeling of annoyance. If Teddy had played the current sentimental song from Erminie, and had played it with feeling, she would have understood and been moved, but he was plunging her suddenly into a world of mature emotions, whither her nature neither could nor wished to follow.

She shook herself slightly and said to Stuart: “Did you buy the horse?”

“Yes, and at a bargain. . . . Do you know I love you?”

“I’m glad,” she whispered.

The piano stopped suddenly. Teddy closed it and swung slowly around: “Did you like my congratulations?”

“Very much,” they said together.

“It was pretty good,” he admitted. “That last was only based on a little counterpoint. You see, the idea of it was that you make such a handsome pair.”

He laughed unnaturally; Helen followed him out into the hall.

“Good-by, Teddy,” she said. “We’re going to be good friends, aren’t we?”

“Aren’t we?” he repeated. He winked without smiling, and with a clicking, despairing sound of his mouth, went out quickly.

For a moment Helen tried vainly to apply a measure to the situation, wondering how she had come off with him, realizing reluctantly that she had never for an instant held the situation in her hands. She had a dim realization that Teddy was larger in scale; then the very largeness frightened her and, with relief and a warm tide of emotion, she hurried into the drawing-room and the shelter of her lover’s arms.

Their engagement ran through a halcyon summer. Stuart visited Helen’s family at Tuxedo, and Helen visited his family in Wheatley Hills. Before breakfast, their horses’ hoofs sedately scattered the dew in sentimental glades, or curtained them with dust as they raced on dirt roads. They bought a tandem bicycle and pedaled all over Long Island--which Mrs. Cassius Ruthven, a contemporary Cato, considered “rather fast” for a couple not yet married. They were seldom at rest, but when they were, they reminded people of His Move on a Gibson pillow.

Helen’s taste for sport was advanced for her generation. She rode nearly as well as Stuart and gave him a decent game in tennis. He taught her some polo, and they were golf crazy when it was still considered a comic game. They liked to feel fit and cool together. They thought of themselves as a team, and it was often remarked how well mated they were. A chorus of pleasant envy followed in the wake of their effortless glamour.

They talked.

“It seems a pity you’ve got to go to the office,” she would say. “I wish you did something we could do together, like taming lions.”

“I’ve always thought that in a pinch I could make a living breeding and racing horses,” said Stuart.

“I know you could, you darling.”

In August he brought a Thomas automobile and toured all the way to Chicago with three other men. It was an event of national interest and their pictures were in all the papers. Helen wanted to go, but it wouldn’t have been proper, so they compromised by driving down Fifth Avenue on a sunny September morning, one with the fine day and the fashionable crowd, but distinguished by their unity, which made them each as strong as two.

“What do you suppose?” Helen demanded. “Teddy sent me the oddest present--a cup rack.”

Stuart laughed. “Obviously, he means that all we’ll ever do is win cups.”

“I thought it was rather a slam,” Helen ruminated. “I saw that he was invited to everything, but he didn’t answer a single invitation. Would you mind very much stopping by his apartment now? I haven’t seen him for months and I don’t like to leave anything unpleasant in the past.”

He wouldn’t go in with her. “I’ll sit and answer questions about the auto from passers-by.”

The door was opened by a woman in a cleaning cap, and Helen heard the sound of Teddy’s piano from the room beyond. The woman seemed reluctant to admit her.

“He said don’t interrupt him, but I suppose if you’re his cousin--”

Teddy welcomed her, obviously startled and somewhat upset, but in a minute he was himself again.

“I won’t marry you,” he assured her. “You’ve had your chance.”

“All right,” she laughed.

“How are you?” He threw a pillow at her. “You’re beautiful! Are you happy with this--this centaur? Does he beat you with his riding crop?” He peered at her closely. “You look a little duller than when I knew you. I used to whip you up to a nervous excitement that bore a resemblance to intelligence.”

“I’m happy, Teddy. I hope you are.”

“Sure, I’m happy; I’m working. I’ve got MacDowell on the run and I’m going to have a shebang at Carnegie Hall next September.” His eyes became malicious. “What did you think of my girl?”

“Your girl?”

“The girl who opened the door for you.”

“Oh, I thought it was a maid.” She flushed and was silent.

He laughed. “Hey, Betty!” he called. “You were mistaken for the maid!”

“And that’s the fault of my cleaning on Sunday,” answered a voice from the next room.

Teddy lowered his voice. “Do you like her?” he demanded.

“Teddy!” She teetered on the arm of the sofa, wondering whether she should leave at once.

“What would you think if I married her?” he asked confidentially.

“Teddy!” She was outraged; it had needed but a glance to place the woman as common. “You’re joking. She’s older than you. . . . You wouldn’t be such a fool as to throw away your future that way.”

He didn’t answer.

“Is she musical?” Helen demanded. “Does she help you with your work?”

“She doesn’t know a note. Neither did you, but I’ve got enough music in me for twenty wives.”

Visualizing herself as one of them, Helen rose stiffly.

“All I can ask you is to think how your mother would have felt--and those who care for you. . . . Good-by, Teddy.”

He walked out the door with her and down the stairs.

“As a matter of fact, we’ve been married for two months,” he said casually. “She was a waitress in a place where I used to eat.”

Helen felt that she should be angry and aloof, but tears of hurt vanity were springing to her eyes.

“And do you love her?”

“I like her; she’s a good person and good for me. Love is something else. I loved you, Helen, and that’s all dead in me for the present. Maybe it’s coming out in my music. Some day I’ll probably love other women--or maybe there’ll never be anything but you. Good-by, Helen.”

The declaration touched her. “I hope you’ll be happy, Teddy. Bring your wife to the wedding.”

He bowed noncommittally. When she had gone, he returned thoughtfully to his apartment.

“That was the cousin that I was in love with,” he said.

“And was it?” Betty’s face, Irish and placid, brightened with interest. “She’s a pretty thing.”

“She wouldn’t have been as good for me as a nice peasant like you.”

“Always thinking of yourself, Teddy Van Beck.”

He laughed. “Sure I am, but you love me, anyhow?”

“That’s a big wur-red.”

“All right. I’ll remember that when you come begging around for a kiss. If my grandfather knew I married a bog trotter, he’d turn over in his grave. Now get out and let me finish my work.”

He sat at the piano, a pencil behind his ear. Already his face was resolved, composed, but his eyes grew more intense minute by minute, until there was a glaze in them, behind which they seemed to have joined his ears in counting and hearing. Presently there was no more indication in his face that anything had occurred to disturb the tranquillity of his Sunday morning.

II

Mrs. Cassius Ruthven and a friend, veils flung back across their hats, sat in their auto on the edge of the field.

“A young woman playing polo in breeches.” Mrs. Ruthven sighed. “Amy Van Beck’s daughter. I thought when Helen organized the Amazons she’d stop at divided skirts. But her husband apparently has no objections, for there he stands, egging her on. Of course, they always have liked the same things.”

“A pair of thoroughbreds, those two,” said the other woman complacently, meaning that she admitted them to be her equals. “You’d never look at them and think that anything had gone wrong.”

She was referring to Stuart’s mistake in the panic of 1907. His father had bequeathed him a precarious situation and Stuart had made an error of judgment. His honor was not questioned and his crowd stood by him loyally, but his usefulness in Wall Street was over and his small fortune was gone.

He stood in a group of men with whom he would presently play, noting things to tell Helen after the game--she wasn’t turning with the play soon enough and several times she was unnecessarily ridden off at important moments. Her ponies were sluggish--the penalty for playing with borrowed mounts--but she was, nevertheless, the best player on the field, and in the last minute she made a save that brought applause.

“Good girl! Good girl!”

Stuart had been delegated with the unpleasant duty of chasing the women from the field. They had started an hour late and now a team from New Jersey was waiting to play; he sensed trouble as he cut across to join Helen and walked beside her toward the stables. She was splendid, with her flushed cheeks, her shining, triumphant eyes, her short, excited breath. He temporized for a minute.

“That was good--that last,” he said.

“Thanks. It almost broke my arm. Wasn’t I pretty good all through?”

“You were the best out there.”

“I know it.”

He waited while she dismounted and handed the pony to a groom.

“Helen, I believe I’ve got a job.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t jump on the idea till you think it over. Gus Myers wants me to manage his racing stables. Eight thousand a year.”

Helen considered. “It’s a nice salary; and I bet you could make yourself up a nice string from his ponies.”

“The principal thing is that I need the money; I’d have as much as you and things would be easier.”

“You’d have as much as me,” Helen repeated. She almost regretted that he would need no more help from her. “But with Gus Myers, isn’t there a string attached? Wouldn’t he expect a boost up?”

“He probably would,” answered Stuart bluntly, “and if I can help him socially, I will. As a matter of fact, he wants me at a stag dinner tonight.”

“All right, then,” Helen said absently. Still hesitating to tell her her game was over, Stuart followed her glance toward the field, where a runabout had driven up and parked by the ropes.

“There’s your old friend, Teddy,” he remarked dryly--”or rather, your new friend, Teddy. He’s taking a sudden interest in polo. Perhaps he thinks the horses aren’t biting this summer.”

“You’re not in a very good humor,” protested Helen. “You know, if you say the word, I’ll never see him again. All I want in the world is for you and I to be together.”

“I know,” he admitted regretfully. “Selling horses and giving up clubs put a crimp in that. I know the women all fall for Teddy, now he’s getting famous, but if he tries to fool around with you I’ll break his piano over his head. . . . Oh, another thing,” he began, seeing the men already riding on the field. “About your last chukker--”

As best he could, he put the situation up to her. He was not prepared for the fury that swept over her.

“But it’s an outrage! I got up the game and it’s been posted on the bulletin board for three days.”

“You started an hour late.”

“And do you know why?” she demanded. “Because your friend Joe Morgan insisted that Celie ride sidesaddle. He tore her habit off her three times, and she only got here by climbing out the kitchen window.”

“I can’t do anything about it.”

“Why can’t you? Weren’t you once a governor of this club? How can women ever expect to be any good if they have to quit every time the men want the field? All the men want is for the women to come up to them in the evening and tell them what a beautiful game they played!”

Still raging and blaming Stuart, she crossed the field to Teddy’s car. He got out and greeted her with concentrated intensity:

“I’ve reached the point where I can neither sleep nor eat from thinking of you. What point is that?”

There was something thrilling about him that she had never been conscious of in the old days; perhaps the stories of his philanderings had made him more romantic to her.

“Well, don’t think of me as I am now,” she said. “My face is getting rougher every day and my muscles lean out of an evening dress like a female impersonator. People are beginning to refer to me as handsome instead of pretty. Besides, I’m in a vile humor. It seems to me women are always just edged out of everything.”

Stuart’s game was brutal that afternoon. In the first five minutes, he realized that Teddy’s runabout was no longer there, and his long slugs began to tally from all angles. Afterward, he bumped home across country at a gallop; his mood was not assuaged by a note handed him by the children’s nurse:

DEAR: Since your friends made it possible for us to play, I wasn’t going to sit there just dripping; so I had Teddy bring me home. And since you’ll be out to dinner, I’m going into New York with him to the theater. I’ll either be out on the theater train or spend the night at mother’s.

HELEN.    Stuart went upstairs and changed into his dinner coat. He had no defense against the unfamiliar claws of jealousy that began a slow dissection of his insides. Often Helen had gone to plays or dances with other men, but this was different. He felt toward Teddy the faint contempt of the physical man for the artist, but the last six months had bruised his pride. He perceived the possibility that Helen might be seriously interested in someone else.